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Understanding the Israel-Lebanon Maritime Border Dispute
BY GRIFFIN JUDD  AUGUST 4, 2019
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International border disputes are very common, and in the normal course of events rarely draw any attention. But what happens when one of the countries in the dispute refuses to acknowledge the other’s existence?  This complicates things, because the two countries then cannot negotiate directly. After all, negotiation implies recognition.

That is the dilemma currently facing Israel and Lebanon, who, since 2011, have been arguing over an 856 sq km piece of ocean.

But why is this area of the sea worth fighting about? What are the problems? And more importantly, what are the possible solutions?

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History of the Israel-Lebanon Maritime Dispute
To understand this dispute, one must understand the international laws behinds it. At the root of the problem lies is the jurisdiction of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Under this treaty, states are entitled to a 200-nautical mile Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ) off their coast. Within this zone, states have exclusive rights to exploit natural resources, such as fish and oil.

Lebanon ratified UNCLOS and submitted its proposed border to the UN in 2011; Israel never ratified the treaty, but generally adheres to it, and submitted its proposed border to the UN at the same time.

And here the dispute arose.

Lebanon does not recognize Israel as a country, and has no diplomatic relations with them. Instead, Lebanon refers to Israel as “the state of Palestine” when submitting treaties to the UN, and the two countries must rely on third parties when concluding negotiations. Israel and Lebanon’s land border (sometimes referred to as the Blue Line) is based on the 1949 armistice agreement and the British-French Paulet-Newcombe Agreement which demarcated the boundary between Mandatory Palestine and Mandatory Syria and Lebanon.

The UNCLOS and Paulet-Newcombe treaties are the foundation of all subsequent Israeli-Lebanese border negotiations.

Israel-Lebanon maritime border dispute

Both Lebanon in 2007 and Israel in 2010 concluded maritime border agreements with Cyprus. Lebanon, during its negotiations with Cyprus, marked the southernmost point of its border as Point 1. However, Lebanon was forced to cancel the agreement under pressure from Turkey (meaning it never entered into force). This provided a precedent for Israel, which during its negotiations with Cyprus used Point 1 to indicate its northernmost border.

Lebanon, meanwhile, submitted to the UN borders which were different from those used in its Cyprus negotiations. Point 23, and not Point 1, would be considered the southernmost point of Lebanon’ s EEZ, a provocative difference of 17 km. It’s not clear why the Lebanese altered their demarcation, though some believe they wanted to antagonize Israel.

Whatever the reason, this resulted in the overlap between Israel and Lebanon’s claimed EEZs.

Why Does It Matter?
If the disputed zone was just empty ocean, the Israel-Lebanon maritime border dispute would be a non-issue. However, Israel’s coastal waters contain reserves of oil and natural gas. It is speculated that the waters off Lebanon do as well, with reserves extending into the disputed zone.

The stakes are high.

Estimates based on seismic studies suggest Lebanon’s EEZ may contain up to 25 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas, an enormous windfall worth billions of dollars for a state whose economy has lagged in recent decades. However, there is also an element of geopolitical danger, as Lebanon seeks to assert its sovereignty at the cost of Israel’s. Indeed, the dispute only rose in prominence in 2018, when Lebanon began selling drilling permits for “blocks” of their EEZ; A combined venture by Total, ENI, and Novatek purchased rights to explore Blocks 4 and 9, the latter of which contains part of the disputed zone.

Tamar gas field
Workers on the Israeli ‘Tamar’ gas processing rig in 2014. Photo by Moshe Shai/FLASH90
The Israeli defense minister at the time, Avigdor Liberman, called the move “very provocative,” and the dispute quietly simmered for a year and a half until April, 2019, when Lebanese officials indicated a willingness to negotiate over the zone. Facilitated by the US, direct talks were expected to begin in July, 2019. However, that month an Israeli naval vessel entered the disputed waters, a possible provocation for the Lebanese government.

Lebanese officials hope to avoid geopolitical complications interfering with the exploitation of their resources, as happened to the Palestinian Authority. In 1999, the PA cooperated with Royal Dutch Shell to drill in the Gaza Marine gas field. However, Shell withdrew from the partnership in 2018 following almost two decades of political difficulties — much of it stemming from Hamas’ rule of the Gaza Strip and Israel’s blockade.

Related reading: The Gaza Blockade: An Explainer

What’s Being Done?
In the absence of direct relations between the two countries, resolving the Israel-Lebanon maritime border dispute is tricky. However, president Barack Obama sent several mediators to try resolving the dispute.

The first mediator, Frederic Hof presented a plan in May 2012 creating a provisional but legally binding maritime separation line and a buffer zone with no petroleum activities. According to media reports, it acknowledged that around 500 sq km of the disputed area belong to Lebanon. It didn’t satisfy Beirut but was neither approved nor officially rejected at the time.

A second US mediator, Amos J. Hochstein, proposed a plan more favorable to Lebanon. But the plan never took off due to Lebanese government instability and Israel’s lack of enthusiasm for it.

The Trump administration — notorious for its undermanned diplomatic staff — allowed the issue to simmer until Lebanon signaled it was ready to renew talks in  April 2019.  Since then, US envoy David Satterfield has been working to set the terms for the July conference, and it has been suggested that a possible solution to the Israel-Lebanon maritime border dispute will open both countries’ waters for seismic surveying.

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Exposed: Amnesty International’s Deceptive Press Release
BY EMANUEL MILLER  JULY 30, 2019
Amnesty-presents-Hate
‘Famous Actress cancels play to highlight suffering of Palestinians.’

It’s a compelling story, one sure to be picked up by journalists, but beyond the usual anti-Israel agitprop, it’s a tale of deception and dishonesty that should leave Amnesty International shamefaced.
A show called “Obliterated,” sponsored by the prominent human rights organization, was said to have been due to be performed exactly one year after the destruction of a Gaza theater.
In fact, the play was never due to have been performed at all — the whole thing was a PR stunt.
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In an email sent to people who had signed up for what was advertised as a free, one-night only performance, playwright Ahmed Masoud and actress Maxine Peake openly admitted to the devious trick: “There was never a play or a show. I didn’t write it and Maxine never rehearsed it.” This was confirmed when an Amnesty International UK press officer told HonestReporting, “they have cancelled it, and intended to cancel it.”

Despite openly admitting to registrants that the play was never written, a press release circulated by Amnesty International to announce the show was being pulled totally neglected to acknowledge that the cancellation was premeditated. The press release, seen by countless journalists, failed to mention that the play was never written, and that from the very outset, no performance was actually planned. Consequently, multiple news outlets picked up on the press release and failed to report the full story.

The episode should act as a cautionary tale to journalists not to rely on press releases for more than one reason.
The stunt was designed to draw attention to the first anniversary of the destruction of the al-Mishal Cultural Center in Gaza. In its press release, Amnesty wrote:
The scheduled performance – which is fully booked – would have marked exactly one year since the destruction by an Israeli airstrike of the Mishal Cultural Centre last year, the only working theatre in Gaza which housed numerous arts projects in the beleaguered Palestinian territory.

That’s one way to describe the theater. A more objective statement would have recognized that the theater was believed to have served as a command and control center for the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza in its ongoing hostilities against Israel.

For a self-described human rights organization, it’s hard to understand how a commitment to human rights is being served when Amnesty allows itself to be used as cover for Hamas’ human shields policy, in which the terror group embeds itself in civilian infrastructure in order to conceal its presence and avert being struck, even after being discovered. (Significantly, under international law, the responsibility for any civilian casualties and collateral damage incurred in the event of a military strike on such a military installment would fall firmly on Hamas’ shoulders.)

None of this seems to interest Amnesty International UK, whose media department failed to mention the controversy entirely.

When human rights organizations wage media campaigns to gain public sympathy while possibly providing cover for terror organizations committing war crimes, the cause of human rights is being shamelessly, deceitfully used for political ends.

To be clear, HonestReporting has no problem with PR stunts. They are a reality in the media world, are often ingenious, entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking, We do, however, have a problem with NGOs and activists conning journalists by pretending that their actions are not a PR stunt at all.

Please SHARE this article on social media and take a minute to leave a strong (but polite!) message to Amnesty International UK to convey your disgust at its duplicit

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What Really Happened at the Camp David II Summit?
BY DOV LIPMAN  JULY 29, 2019

“Why doesn’t Israel simply give the Palestinians what they are asking for and bring the conflict to an end?”

“What do you want from the Palestinians? Israel refuses to give them their own state so of course the Palestinians resort to terrorism and armed conflict!”

These two refrains are heard constantly from the pro-Palestinian camp in parliaments and college campuses around the world.

The problem with this line of questioning is that it ignores the fact that Israel has tried to make peace and has tried to offer the Palestinians as much as it can. The Camp David II summit of 2000 is a case in point.

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Camp David II
The last major attempt to resolve the issues between Israel and the Palestinians took place in July 2000. US President Bill Clinton invited Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat to meet at Camp David, the president’s retreat in western Maryland.

Years before, in 1979, Camp David had been the place where US President Jimmy Carter hosted Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat for talks that eventually led to the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. It was hoped that Camp David’s relaxed setting would facilitate a similar breakthrough for the Israelis and Palestinians. Hence the name, Camp David II.

The Oslo Accords, signed in 1993 between Arafat and the late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, called for a final status agreement between the two sides within five years of the Palestinians being given their own autonomy.

The Palestinians were not happy about coming to Camp David II, fearing they would be pressured into making concessions. But Arafat accepted the invitation and on July 11, the Israeli and Palestinian delegations arrived in Camp David.

The approach for this summit was “all or nothing.” The two sides were to strive to reach an agreement regarding territory and status of settlements, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, refugees and the Palestinian call for the right of return, and security arrangements. There were to be no partial or intermediate agreements.

Camp David 2
From left to right, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, US president Bill Clinton and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at the Camp David II summit in 2000.
The Positions
Territory: The Palestinians were demanding the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip but were willing to accept land swaps from within Israel for any part of these territories which Israel would hold on to. Prime Minister Barak offered the Palestinians 73% of the West Bank and 100% of the Gaza Strip with a plan for them to eventually control 91% of the West Bank, with an elevated highway and railroad to connect the two territories.

The Palestinians would also receive the equivalent of one percent of the West Bank by taking control of the Halutza Sand region next to the Gaza Strip. The plan would have required Israel to forcibly evacuate people from their homes in 63 settlements, while allowing Israel to annex the settlements of Gush Etzion and Maale Adumim where a few hundred thousand Israelis reside.

Jerusalem Camp David IIJerusalem: Israel proposed giving the Palestinians “custodianship” over the Temple Mount and “administration” over the Muslim and Christian Quarters of the Old City and all Islamic and Christian holy sites. They would be allowed to raise the Palestinian flag in all these locations.

Israel felt that it could not relinquish its sovereignty over these areas due to security concerns. The Israeli neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem would remain under Israeli sovereignty and the Palestinians would be given civilian autonomy in their areas. The Palestinians would create the city of Al-Quds to be the capital of Palestine. This city would include small cities and villages on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

Refugees: The Palestinian demand for a “right of return” for over 700,000 refugees from the Israeli War of Independence in 1948 and their descendants numbering in the millions, was not one which Israel could agree to. The influx of millions of Palestinians would amount to the end of the democratic Jewish state of Israel.

Instead, Israel proposed that a maximum of 100,000 refugees be allowed to enter Israel for family reunification and other humanitarian considerations. All remaining Palestinian “refugees” would be settled in the new Palestinian state or in third-party countries. An international fund worth $30 billion which Israel would contribute to, would register claims of property lost by Palestinian refugees and provide appropriate compensation.

Security: The number one concern for Israeli negotiators related to security. Israel demanded that the Palestinian state be demilitarized and that it commit to dismantling all terrorist groups.

Israel proposed that an international force be stationed in the Jordan Valley, with Palestine controlling the border crossing albeit under Israeli observation, and that Israel maintain a permanent security presence along 15% of the border between Jordan and Palestine. Israel also asked that be allowed to set up radar stations inside the Palestinian state and that it be able to deploy troops in the Palestinian state in a case of emergency.

A final peace: Israel’s number one demand was that for it to make all these concessions, Arafat must declare an end to the conflict and make no further demands of Israel in the future.

White House aides who were present at Camp David II were surprised at how far Barak was willing to go and felt that his offer met most of what the Palestinians were asking for.

But Arafat rejected the Israeli offer.

Instead of an agreement, the parties issued a declaration which said that “the two sides agreed that the aim of their negotiations is to put an end to decades of conflict and achieve a just and lasting peace” and that “the two sides commit themselves to continue their efforts to conclude an agreement on all permanent status issues as soon as possible.”

Clinton’s Post-Camp David II Proposals
Bill Clinton Camp David II
US president Bill Clinton
President Clinton did not give up on the mission to secure an actual agreement and following months of back and forth, presented a new proposal to both sides in December 2000 in which he pushed Israel to make even more concessions.

Territory: The Clinton proposal offered the Palestinians 94%-96% of the West Bank plus land swaps of up to 3% in Israel to give the Palestinians close to 100% of the land mass they sought.

Security: To provide Israel with its security needs, the Israeli army would withdraw from the Palestinian areas gradually over the course of three years while an international force would be gradually introduced into the region. Israel would maintain a small presence on the Jordan Valley for an additional three years, but under the authority of the international force.

Israel would be allowed to have an “early-warning” station in the West Bank but with the presence of a Palestinian liaison, and in the event of an “imminent and demonstrable threat to Israel’s security,” an arrangement would be made for IDF deployment to the West Bank on an emergency basis. And finally, the state of Palestine would be “non-militarized” but would have a strong security force.

Jerusalem: Clinton proposed that Arab neighborhoods be in Palestine, that Jewish neighborhoods be Israeli, that the Palestinians would have sovereignty over the Temple Mount and that the Israelis would maintain sovereignty over the Western Wall and the “holy space” which the Western Wall is part of. No excavations around the wall or under the Temple Mount would take place without mutual consent.

Related reading: Jewish Ties to the Temple Mount: What’s the Story?

Refugees: Clinton proposed that to address the refugee issue, the new state of Palestine would be the homeland for refugees displaced in the 1948 war and afterward. In addition, an international effort would be made to compensate refugees and assist them in finding houses in the new state of Palestine, in their new current host countries, in other willing nations, or in Israel.

A final peace: Clinton agreed with the Israeli demand that the agreement had to clearly mark the end of the conflict and put an end to all violence.

The Israeli government voted to accept the proposal on December 27, 2000. Arafat never gave Clinton an official “no,” but he also never said “yes,” amounting to a rejection of the proposal — an unceremonious ending for Camp David II and Clinton’s peacemaking efforts.

According to notes taken by White House officials during the Camp David II meetings trying to convince the Palestinian leader to accept the agreement, Arafat was quoted as saying:

The Palestinian leader who will give up Jerusalem has not yet been born. I will not betray my people or the trust they have placed in me. Don’t look to me to legitimize the occupation. No one can continue indefinitely to impose domination by military force – look at South Africa. Our people will not accept less than their rights as stated by international resolutions and international legality.

Some said that the Palestinians felt that the land swaps being offered them were inferior lands to that which they were giving up in the West Bank, that they needed to have complete sovereignty over the entirety of eastern Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, and recognition of a full right of return for Palestinian refugees.

The Second Intifada Begins
Yasser Arafat Camp David II
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat
Not only did the Palestinians reject the Israeli offer, but soon after, the Second Intifada, a violent Palestinian uprising began. More than 1,000 innocent Israeli civilians were killed in a Palestinian campaign of suicide bombings and shootings.

President Clinton blamed Arafat for the failure of the two sides to reach an agreement:

I regret that in 2000 Arafat missed the opportunity to bring that nation into being.

Dennis Ross, the chief US negotiator, concluded that Arafat was never truly open to a two-state solution. Rather, Arafat and the Palestinians had clung to their desire for

a one-state solution. Not independent, adjacent Israeli and Palestinian states, but a single Arab state encompassing all of Historic Palestine.

Palestinian officials confirmed that the Second Intifada was premeditated all along. Speaking at the Ein Al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, PA Communications Minister, Imad Al-Faluji said,

Whoever thinks that the Intifada broke out because of the despised Sharon’s visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, is wrong, even if this visit was the straw that broke the back of the Palestinian people. This Intifada was planned in advance, ever since President Arafat’s return from the Camp David negotiations, where he turned the table upside down on President Clinton. [Arafat] remained steadfast and challenged [Clinton]. He rejected the American terms and he did it in the heart of the US.

Related reading: Did Ariel Sharon Start the Second Intifada?

Sadly and tragically for both Israelis and Palestinians, the Palestinian leadership continued its obstructionist ways by not replying to an even more generous offer made by Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert in 2008, and by stonewalling negotiations even when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu enacted a 10-month freeze on settlement activity, then a key precondition for talks by both the Palestinians and the Obama administration.

So, asking why Israel doesn’t bring the conflict to an end and give the Palestinians what they want isn’t the right question. Here’s the better question:
Why do the Palestinians continue to avoid making peace with Israel?

Daily Beast Attacks Baseball Legend For Supporting Israel
BY GUESTPOST  JULY 23, 2019
Mariano Rivera
https://honestreporting.com/daily-beast-attacks-baseball-legend-mariano-rivera-israel/?utm_source=pushengage&utm_medium=push_notification&utm_campaign=pushengage
This article on Maniaro Rivera in the Daily Beast is cross-posted with permission of the Elder of Ziyon blog.

This article in the Daily Beast by Robert Silverman is truly remarkable in how much it tries – and fails – to tar the greatest relief pitcher of all time as a bigoted, far-right racist.

Over the past three years, [Rivera’s] served at the pleasure of a racist president, taken part in thinly veiled propaganda on behalf of an apartheid government in Israel, and gotten chummy with outright bigots and apocalyptic loons. None of this will be inscribed on his Hall of Fame plaque. It should, even if much of the sports world would very much like to pretend none of it exists.

The article then goes into detail about these accusations, and ends up with nothing more than guilt by association with people whose views the author finds odious, again without proof.

The illustration of Rivera on a yarmulka/pitcher’s mound with the Israeli flag is actually perfect for this article – nothing but insinuation, zero facts, and showing how biased the author is.

Mariano Rivera Daily Beast

Let’s start off with Silverman’s “proof” that  Israel is an apartheid state. He links to an article about a document released by a UN commission made up exclusively of 18 Arab states, because whatever Arabs say about Israel must be true. He doesn’t mention that the document was not accepted by the UN and the person who wrote it was forced out of her job for making that accusation without clearing it with her UN bosses.

I’m not going into whether Trump is racist (I don’t believe he is although he is too willing to use racist dog whistles to help his political aims) but to imply that everyone who does anything for Trump is a racist is something that any decent editor would throw back in the face of the writer.

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Look at the doggerel in the article:

Rivera insisted he would retire from baseball in 2003 in order to focus on evangelical work; “Phil. 4:13″, referring to Philippians 4:13, was scribbled on his cleats; the year he retired, Rivera’s charitable organization, one very much powered by his faith, was distributing nearly a million dollars annually, according to New York magazine; he recently founded a church in New Rochelle, NY (his wife serves as pastor); when Rivera gave up the game-winning single that cost the Yankees the 2001 World Series, he said it was part of the greater good—God’s plan, even—because doing so prevented a teammate from possibly getting on a plane that crashed; and when it comes to his signature pitch, “He put it in me,” Rivera said. “He put it in me, for me to use it. To bring glory, not to Mariano Rivera, but to the Lord.”

But the vast majority of Evangelical Christians also believe in a particular messianic biblical prophecy: Jews must rule the Holy Land before Christ can return. Whether Rivera ascribes to those beliefs entirely is unclear, but his support for Israel and the Israel Defense Forces is a matter of public record. He has traveled to Israel on multiple occasions, possibly beginning in 2013.

Wow. Silverman has proven that Rivera is a devout Christian and supports Israel. Which is, of course, unforgivable to Silverman.

It gets more absurd:

[A]ccording to the NYBR {New York Board of Rabbis]  executive vice president, at one point they were in the Golan Heights. Gesturing toward Lebanon and Syria, which were visible from where they stood,“They could have a much better life and yet they choose not to take that path,” the rabbi claimed Rivera told him. “There’s an ideology that infects their thinking, and they just don’t want to live in peace.”

If Silverman has evidence that Syria and Lebanon want peace with Israel, he should stop writing about baseball and publicize that. He could win a Pulitzer.

While there, Rivera said the IDF trains soldiers to be “a better person, a better citizen, and a better human being,” according to a statement put out by the FIDF. Two-and-a-half months earlier, Israeli soldiers killed at least 60 Palestinian protesters in Gaza and injured thousands more.

Of whom nearly all those killed were Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.  But isn’t it better just to call them “protesters?”

The entire article has not a single fact to prove its point. All it has is loose linkages of Rivera with people and organizations that Silverman has an obsessive hatred for but who aren’t close to what Silverman claims they are.

In the end, Silverman is upset that a successful athlete is pro-Israel and a proud Christian, which proves that the only bigotry in this entire article comes from the author.

HonestReporting adds:
The original illustration of Rivera on a yarmulka/pitcher’s mound with the Israeli flag has now been replaced on the Daily Beast website. That such an image was produced at all and was deemed acceptable by the Daily Beast is shocking.

While the Daily Beast might be able to get away with using the Israeli flag, the use of a yarmulke or skullcap is a specifically Jewish image, not an Israeli one. This is arguably antisemitic. (Note: this isn’t the first time the Daily Beast has had to remove an image that misappropriated a skullcap.)

Israeli Genocide? No, It’s Herbicide!
BY SIMON PLOSKER  JULY 21, 2019
https://honestreporting.com/israel-genocide-no-its-herbicide-gaza-border/?utm_source=pushengage&utm_medium=push_notification&utm_campaign=pushengage
View of an agricultural aircraft, in Hevel Lakhish, Southern Israel, July 13, 2014. Photo by Moshe Shai/FLASH90
Israel has been accused of many things when it comes to its treatment of Palestinians, including the false charge of genocide. Here’s a new one: Herbicide.
The Guardian reports:

Israeli aircraft spraying herbicide beside the buffer zone along the Gaza strip is directly affecting the livelihoods of Palestinians in violation of international standards, a new report claims.

The study tracked the drift of the herbicides on to the Gazan side and concluded it was killing agricultural crops and causing “unpredictable and uncontrollable damage”, according to the report’s main researcher.

Forensic Architecture, a research agency based at Goldsmith’s University, London has apparently spent 16 months investigating. This is the research agency behind the front-page revelation in the New York Times in December 2018 that a Palestinian medic was killed by mistake after a bullet fragment tragically ricocheted into her, but nevertheless managed to suggest that her killing was perhaps not accidental.

It’s also the research agency whose director prompted an astonishing story in the Financial Times attacking Israeli shrubs and trees for “erasing memory” of other peoples.

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Forensic Architecture’s latest foraging for evidence to soil Israel’s image, courtesy of The Guardian, presents Palestinians as victims of some malevolent herbicide spraying that is taking place on the Israeli side of the border.

Why does Israel need to use herbicide at all?
As with so many Israeli actions, this is a response to Palestinian violence and the need to maintain Israeli security. The Gaza security fence can be breached by terrorists or other Palestinian infiltrators who are able to use the undergrowth to avoid detection. The IDF needs to be able to spot any infiltrators to prevent attacks on nearby Israeli communities.

Undergrowth can also be used to cover up the openings to attack tunnels running under the border from Gaza, many of which have been discovered in recent years.

And why is it necessary to use a plane to spray the area? It’s not hard to imagine, particularly in light of the violent Palestinian riots and violence during the March of Return, what would happen if Israeli soldiers or civilians carried out the spraying manually. No doubt they would be met with bullets, rocks or firebombs.

It’s difficult to treat The Guardian’s story with any sympathy given its failure to mention the real environmental destruction going on near the Gaza border. In the past year, hundreds of incendiary balloons and kites have been launched by Palestinians leading to the destruction of thousands of acres of forest and Israeli farmland, wiping out flora and fauna and decimating livelihoods.


View of the burnt area of Besor Stream in Tel Gama, near Kibbutz Re’im, near the border with the Gaza Strip, on July 25, 2018. Photo by Dario Sanchez/Flash90
And driven by the same wind that is allegedly spreading the herbicide further over the Gaza border. Why shouldn’t Israel prioritize the preservation of its own greenery above that of a relatively small area of Gaza?

Yet, according to The Guardian and Forensic Infrastructure, Israel is the real menace to the local environment. The same environment that has been damaged on the Gaza side of the border where tires have been burned and toxic smoke emitted, affecting Palestinians as well as Israelis.


Palestinian rioters burn tires during clashes with Israeli security forces on the Gaza Israeli border east of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip on April 6, 2018. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/ Flash90
Gaza, where it took enormous amounts of Israeli agricultural technology and ingenuity to grow crops in unfavorable conditions. Where state of the art greenhouses were left to the Palestinians when Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005, yet were destroyed by the very people who could have benefited from them.

Gaza, where a lack of a properly functioning sewage system has polluted the water sources and the groundwater. Along with the aforementioned toxic pollutants, couldn’t there be any number of contributory factors affecting Palestinian agriculture other than Israeli herbicides?

With its embedded video from Forensic Architecture presenting crop dusting as a sinister activity, and the comments of highly politicized anti-Israel non-governmental organizations such as Adalah and Al-Mezan, it’s hardly a stretch before herbicides, used to control weeds and undergrowth, become likened to the equivalent of chemical weapons.

It’s not genocide, it’s herbicide.

https://honestreporting.com/israel-china-ties-the-sticking-point-with-the-us/
Israel-China Ties: The ‘Sticking Point’ with the US?
BY TYLER KOTLER  JULY 11, 2019
US Israel China
At first glance, Israel and China don’t seem like natural allies. China’s population is 160 times larger than Israel’s, and Israel’s geographic size pales in comparison to China’s. The two countries have distinct histories, cultures, and religions, and their indigenous populations come from areas thousands of miles apart. There are major political obstacles too: The US, China’s greatest competitor, is also Israel’s strongest ally.

Nevertheless, Israel-China ties have grown substantially over the last few decades, centering around mutually beneficial economic exchanges.

As China has risen almost unchallenged as the economic powerhouse of the East, it has pushed forward with an aggressive, imperialist expansion plan. Through China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the country has put its full weight behind spreading its economic influence across Asia and into Europe, constructing a vast network of land and sea routes. It has already brought Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and many African nations under its sway, and it’s clear that the government has been eyeing Israel as its next target.

However, this has thrust Israel into the middle of the world’s most prominent great power rivalry, creating a complicated triangle of relations between Israel, the US, and China. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the US has worked tirelessly to maintain its status as the global hegemon and contain China’s rise to power.

So far, Israeli leadership has been able to walk a fine line between the two countries, but it’s playing a dangerous game that may backfire terribly. With growing concern from the US, the question of whether Israel will fall under the wing of China’s growing influence or remain a loyal enclave of US-oriented foreign policy in the Middle East remains up in the air.

Time will tell. However, the short but eventful history of Israel-China ties can at least explain how Jerusalem ended up in this situation.

HR Executive Director Delivers Antisemitism Petition to New York Times
BY SIMON PLOSKER  JULY 11, 2019
https://honestreporting.com/hr-executive-director-delivers-antisemitism-petition-to-new-york-times/
HonestReporting Executive Director Daniel Pomerantz’s recent trip to the US included a visit to the headquarters of the New York Times.

The publication of an openly antisemitic cartoon in the New York Times international edition, under the guise of criticism of Israel, marked the perfect opportunity to deliver our antisemitism definition petition to that newspaper’s offices as a constructive means of addressing the issue.

Daniel delivered the petition calling on the media to adopt the internationally recognized antisemitism definition to New York Times Editor-in-Chief, Dean Baquet. (You can view the cover letter here.)

The petition has, so far, gathered over 11,500 signatures, taking up 240 pages. And we’re still collecting signatures.

We intend to deliver the petition to other mainstream media outlets in the near future. If you haven’t signed yet, it’s not too late. Please also tell your friends and family to sign as well.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION: IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO TELL THE MEDIA TO ADOPT THE IHRA DEFINITION OF ANTISEMITISM
https://honestreporting.nationbuilder.com/ihra-antisemitism-definition
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Simon Plosker
With overall responsibility for HonestReporting’s content and output, Simon joined the HonestReporting team in November 2005 following several years working in a variety of non-profit organizations, including the Jewish Agency and the Board of Deputies of British Jews prior to immigrating to Israel in 2001 from London. In Israel, Simon has worked for BICOM and as Managing Editor of NGO Monitor as well as serving for a short period in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit. Simon has a BSoc.Sc in International Studies and Political Science from the University of Birmingham and a MSc in History of International Relations from the London School of Economics.

Foreign Editor Invents Trump Peace Plan as ‘Worse Than Apartheid’
BY SIMON PLOSKER  JUNE 24, 2019
https://honestreporting.com/shannon-ebrahim-invents-trump-peace-plan-worse-than-apartheid/
The details of US President Donald Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” economic plan to jump start the Palestinian and regional economies has been publicly released ahead of a Bahrain Conference. Anyone can read on the White House website where $50 billion of investment is supposed to go.

Much of the criticism of the plan, including from the Palestinians, surrounds the fact that the plan only deals with economics and not the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The details of a political plan apparently in the works for later in the year have not yet been released.

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But the Foreign Editor of South Africa’s Independent Media, Shannon Ebrahim knows better. While most other mainstream media outlets were commenting on the actual contents of the Trump economic plan and the forthcoming Bahrain Conference, Ebrahim was making it up as she went along based on a clear hatred towards Israel.

According to her:

Under the deal, Palestinians will be squeezed into a tinier fraction of historic Palestine, from 22% (the Green line of 1967) to a meagre 12%, where they will be confined to cantons or Bantustans, stripped of water, resources, the right to a military or any real sovereignty.

The equivalent of bantustans will be surrounded by Israeli settlements. Settlements will no longer be illegal.

The plan kills any notion of a Palestinian state, but formalises the Zionist dream of a Greater Israel, containing self-governing cantons of Palestinians who will not have equal rights to Israelis. The sophisticated system of apartheid will be further perfected.

Within the context of this Greater Israel, Palestinians will be allowed to work only outside their cantons in low-paying jobs in agriculture and construction, and will have to pay Israel for its military protection.

No doubt Israel will continue to collect Palestinian tax and customs revenue, and withhold it as a form of punishment against those living in the cantons.

Israel will easily impose economic blockade on the Palestinian encampments as it has with Gaza for many years, starving them into submission.

The vision is beginning to look like a far worse version of apartheid South Africa, where there is one country but with masses of inhabitants who are disenfranchised, not accorded basic or equal rights, and living under the heavy hand of oppression and exploitation.

We could add more of this hateful rant but you probably get the picture by now.


Related reading: The False Israel-Apartheid Libel

It’s one thing to write anti-Israel hate speech based on nothing more than one’s own misguided and warped opinion. It’s another to claim that this opinion is based on fact – in this case a fully open US plan that anyone and everyone can see for themselves.

The Independent Media’s own Press Code in its clause on accuracy, states:

When publishing opinions, Independent Media shall require that the opinions are based on fact and are honestly held.

Maybe Shannon Ebrahim believes what she writes but her opinions are certainly not based on fact. In this case, attempting to invent parts of a US plan that don’t actually exist is a breach of the Press Code.

That the Foreign Editor of a mainstream media outlet could write such an opinion piece isn’t only unprofessional. It’s embarrassing.


We’ve submitted a complaint to Independent Media and ask that you do the same through its online feedback form.

UPDATE
Since the publication of this post, the story was covered by the South African Jewish Report with considerable input from HonestReporting.

Shannon Ebrahim responded with another vicious opinion piece that appeared in a number of South African printed editions belonging to the Independent Media stable of titles under the headline “Prosperity for Palestine in return for permanent occupation.”

It now appears online under a different headline. Ebrahim used the opening paragraphs to attack HonestReporting and its Managing Editor Simon Plosker. Following an official complaint, inaccurate background details concerning Plosker’s employment history (which is openly available for any journalist to find) have been corrected.

A serious and entirely false charge currently remains:

Plosker’s “Honest Reporting” were so desperate that they sent their article to all the contacts on my LinkedIn account, suggesting a rather sophisticated smear campaign.

HonestReporting is a transparent organization. When we critique media outlets or individual journalists, we do so publicly, including on our website, Facebook and Twitter.  We have never, nor would we, engage in a “rather sophisticated smear campaign” on LinkedIn.  Ebrahim has no evidence that we sent anything to all of her LinkedIn contacts because it simply never happened.

We have demanded a retraction and an apology from Independent Media.

https://honestreporting.com/guardian-recycles-old-discredited-anti-israel-smear-from-independent/
The Guardian Recycles Old, Discredited Anti-Israel Smear
BY EMANUEL MILLER  JUNE 20, 2019

Almost two weeks after The Independent published a baseless smear about Gazan babies dying alone in Israel – a claim swiftly exposed by HonestReporting – The Guardian’s Oliver Holmes and Hazem Balousha have now repeated the smear.

On June 7,  Dr Rosena Allin-Khan MP, a member of the British Labour party,  claimed that a Gazan mother was told by doctors over the phone that two of her prematurely-born babies died. In an op-ed published in The Independent, Allin-Khan alleged that the “mother had to return to Gaza days after giving birth,” and therefore was not present when two of the triplets died. It was only months later, wrote Allin-Khan, that the “mother was issued a permit and was able to collect her and take her [remaining daughter] home.

As HonestReporting responded at the time:

According to multiple news sources, the mother was with the boys when they died. Rather than being far away in Gaza, the reports clearly indicated that the mother was actually with her children in Israel until their final moments, and only then returned to Gaza in order to bury them.

Anyone looking into the story online would easily have been able to find these articles – from the Israeli media and the Palestinian media alike – all stating the same thing; that the babies’ mother was actually with them when two of them died, and only returned to Gaza afterwards. Similarly, a quick Google search would have yielded HonestReporting’s response.

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Despite the mass of contradictory evidence available online, the Guardian has now re-run this same story in an article entitled, “A Jerusalem hospital where Palestinian babies die alone.” In the Guardian article, a more detailed version of the claim appears:

In one case, a 24-year-old mother from Gaza was permitted to travel to Jerusalem to give birth to gravely ill triplets two months early. Two weighed less than a bag of sugar.

But Hiba Swailam’s permit expired and she had to return to Gaza. She was not there when her first child died at nine days old, or two weeks later when her second baby also died. She was informed by phone.

This is the exact same story. The only major difference, beyond the inclusion of the names of the family members, is the identity of the writer. This time the story is from a journalist, rather than a politician. Surely journalists are supposed to check their sources? What kind of journalist writes a story months after the event itself occurred, and almost two weeks after another newspaper publishes an article on it? And as if all that wasn’t enough, what kind of journalist disregards the fact that gaping holes have already been punched through the story?

Guardian Hospital Palestinian Babies Die Alone

The Guardian report correctly describes the “vicious political rivalry between the Palestinian political factions in the West Bank and Gaza” that has “deepened a health crisis.” In pointing out that the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) “has been accused of cutting medical aid to Gaza to press Hamas to cede control of the strip,” The Guardian mentions an important fact. However, the writers could, and should, have gone further. Not only has the PA cut medical aid to Gaza, it also deliberately drags its feet in processing exit permit requests for the people of Gaza, thus denying them vital medical care.

Indeed, a report in Hebrew published on Israel’s Channel 13 website on May 31 said that:

The hospital repeatedly asked the Palestinian Authority to request a permit from the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories for Shahd’s mother or father to come back to Israel and reunite with their daughter. ‘We tried over and over, but they refused.’

Israeli media also reported that a single permit request was made, which was faulty and therefore denied. Despite the refusal of the Palestinian Authority to re-apply for a permit for the infant’s mother to return to Israel, she was issued a special permit by COGAT following the intervention of the Israeli television channel. None of this was mentioned in The Guardian story.

Beyond the facts of this story, the wider context which is notably absent from The Guardian report. The fact that Gazans with medical permits have been caught providing information for terror attacks and smuggling explosives into Israel underscores the need for vetting. In one case, two sisters from Gaza smuggled explosives disguised inside medicine containers into Israel as they were headed for cancer treatment at a Jerusalem hospital. In another, a Gazan woman with a travel permit to accompany her sister, a cancer patient who received medical treatment in Israel, exploited the opportunity to pass on a phone and instructions to a Palestinian from the West Bank. The recipient then used the phone and instructions to start preparing bombs.

While journalists have every right to document the suffering of individuals in Gaza, circulating concocted and already discredited stories, and neglecting to contextualize the facts by mentioning Israel’s legitimate security concerns, is an insult to journalism.


Please send your considered complaints to The Guardian readers’ editor – guardian.readers@theguardian.com

https://honestreporting.com/honestreporting-prompts-improved-guardian-headline-planned-trump-village/
HonestReporting Prompts Improved Guardian Headline on Planned ‘Trump’ Village
BY EMANUEL MILLER  JUNE 17, 2019

With Sunday’s unveiling of a plaque marking the site of a planned village in the Golan to be named after United States President Donald Trump, media coverage was assured, and the vast majority of news outlets managed to keep their comments accurate and fair.

Not The Guardian.

Despite the fact that the plaque unveiling was merely symbolic, the Guardian’s headline informed readers that Israel has in fact already “built” a settlement in Trump’s honor. “Israeli settlement called Trump built on conquered land”

This is, of course, false.  With no budget allocated, no planning done, no final location decided for the project, and not even so much as a binding decision to actually oversee the construction of Ramat Trump, (Trump Heights in Hebrew,) no building whatsoever has been undertaken.

HonestReporting swiftly called the Guardian out on social media, including Facebook and Twitter, and the Guardian consequently renamed the article to more accurately reflect the reality: “‘Trump Heights’: Israeli settlement in Golan named after US president.”

Though the revised headline could make clear that Trump Heights is only being planned at this stage, and has not yet received funding or a government mandate, it at least doesn’t claim that it has already been “built”.

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 Reality: There is no budgeting, no planning, no location for a settlement, and no binding decision to implement the project.

The @guardian: Israeli settlement called Trump built on conquered land.

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Emanuel Miller
Emanuel Miller is a Jerusalem-based writer who has previously worked for the Jerusalem Post and the Times of Israel, and helped establish the English media department of My Truth, an organization that documents the experiences of Israeli soldiers while facing an immoral, cynical enemy. He regularly speaks about Israel, media bias, and Israel's geopolitical complexities to audiences including Birthright groups, student leaders visiting Israel, and for those seeking to get a more nuanced understanding of Israel.

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https://honestreporting.com/fanatic-jews-storm-al-aqsa-mosque-photo-captions/
Success: ‘Fanatic Jews Storm Al-Aqsa Mosque’ Photo Captions Corrected
BY SIMON PLOSKER  JUNE 3, 2019

Hundreds of Jewish visitors ascended the Temple Mount to celebrate Jerusalem Day on Sunday, June 2. The Times of Israel reports how clashes broke out between Palestinian rioters and Israeli police.

The Daily Mail’s Mail Online included a selection of photos in its story of events. A disturbing number of the captions, however, are astonishing in their bias and inaccuracy.

So, according to Mail Online, “fanatic Jews… raid Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Since when are Jews exercising their legal rights to visit Judaism’s holiest site “fanatics?” While it is admittedly unusual for Jews to visit the site during the final days of Ramadan, which happened to coincide with this year’s Jerusalem Day, the status quo agreement allows for non-Muslim visitors at set visiting times.

Related reading: Jewish Ties to the Temple Mount – What’s the Story?

Jews are also prohibited from praying on the Temple Mount and will be detained by the Israeli police if they are caught doing so and, as the Times of Israel video showed, are accompanied by the police on a set route.

How is this described as a “raid” on the Al-Aqsa compound?

The mosque itself is of no interest to the Jewish visitors and non-Muslims are prohibited from entering. So why would “Jews storm the building?”

Putting aside the abysmal copy editing, how is it that Palestinians initiate a riot yet Jews, according to the caption, are the ones who caused the clashes?

This is effectively an inversion of reality.

Much like the rest of the captions, which read as if they have been written by a Hamas media outlet.

We contacted Mail Online requesting changes to the photo captions. To its credit, Mail Online responded positively and the captions were swiftly amended.

The adjective “fanatic” used to describe Jewish visitors has been removed.
It has been clarified that the Jews’ visit was to the compound containing the Mosque, not the Mosque itself.
Jews are no longer ‘storming the building’ and are instead, entering the compound.
Nor are they ‘raiding’ the compound but are now ‘visiting.’
Their entrance no longer “caused” the clashes but “led to” them, a more subtle use of language.
How did this happen?
While the photos appear to be taken from the mainstream Getty Images photo service, further investigation reveals that the real credit lies with Anadolu Agency, an international news agency headquartered in Ankara, Turkey. The agency is state-run.

The series of photos on the Getty Images website is even titled: “Fanatic Jews’ raid Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound.”

The photos with the appalling captions that appeared on the Mail Online site can be found here, here, here, and here.

And the photographer? Faiz Abu Rmeleh, in addition to his work for Anadolu Agency, is also involved with the Activestills organization, which makes no secret of its particular political bias:

Activestills collective was established in 2005 by a group of documentary photographers out of a strong conviction that photography is a vehicle for social and political change. The collective views itself as part of the international and local struggle against all forms of oppression, racism and discrimination. It is composed of Israeli, Palestinian and international photographers, operating locally in Palestine/Israel and abroad.

Activestills approaches the region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as one, working to expose the most blatant attack on human rights and freedom within these borders: the Zionist settler-colonial project led by Israel against the Palestinian population. One of our main topics of documentation is the various forms of resistance against the colonial project, on both sides of the Green Line.

So we have a blatantly politicized photographer whose mission is to promote Palestinian “resistance” against Israel, presumably including portraying violent Palestinian riots on the Temple Mount as the result of “fanatic Jews.”

Related reading: Photojournalist Stages News for Profit and Ideology

While we do not know if Faiz Abu Rmeleh came up with the captions, his photos were distributed by the Anadolu Agency. That a Turkish state-run organization would produce anti-Israel propaganda is hardly surprising.

What is disturbing is how Getty Images accepted these captions on their own website while Mail Online’s editors failed to check the veracity of those captions when posting the photos in their own story.

All in all, a perfect storm of anti-Israel hate allied to a lack of vigilance on the part of Mail Online.

Featured image: CC BY-NC Patrick McKay;

LA Times Op-Ed Sweetens the Destruction of Israel
BY SIMON PLOSKER  MAY 26, 2019
https://honestreporting.com/one-state-solution-la-times-destruction-israel/
The concepts of equal rights and justice are embedded in the American psyche. US academic of Palestinian descent, George Bisharat is well aware of this when he makes his case for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the LA Times. But what looks like a winning formula couched in the language of human rights and equality is actually a thinly veiled way of sweetening the pill of advocating for Israel’s destruction as a Jewish state.

Bisharat’s prescription:

The way forward will be difficult, but it could start with a compassionate declaration from Palestinians, along the lines of South Africa’s Freedom Charter, committing to a just society that includes both Israeli Jews and Palestinians. Such a declaration should embrace a broad, multi-faceted and contemporary vision of justice for this troubled land.

Without even mentioning the word ‘apartheid,’ Bisharat has conflated the end of the South African apartheid regime with a solution to his Israel problem.

Needless to say, Israel is not apartheid South Africa.


George Bisharat
Bisharat continues:

For example, a Freedom Charter would address the rights of the Israeli Jews who currently inhabit homes of Palestinians seized in 1948, and fear eviction when Palestinian refugees return, as we are legally and morally due. My family, like survivors of the Nazi Holocaust seeking return of their seized works of art, insists that ownership of our grandfather’s Villa Harun ar-Rashid in West Jerusalem should be restored to us.

Again an immoral equivalence and this time an wholly offensive one.  Palestinians became refugees in 1948 as a result of a conflict that they and their Arab brethren initiated. Any homes or property they lost as a result was not “seized” as Bisharat would like readers to believe. This cannot and should not be compared to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust who lost everything for nothing more than being Jewish. Palestinians have every right to consider the events of 1948 to be a catastrophe. To turn their misfortune into the equivalent of the Holocaust, however, is entirely inappropriate.

Bisharat’s immoral equivalency then becomes farcical:

The charter should also address rights for women and members of the LGBTQ community, which some Palestinians as well as some Jewish Israelis have been slow to embrace. And it should address environmental issues that will be crucial as global warming puts increasing pressure on the Middle East.

Israel is the most progressive country in the Middle East when it comes to women’s and gay rights. Any suggestion that there is some similarity between Israelis and Palestinians on these values is simply laughable. Indeed, given the fact that openly identifying as a member of the LGBTQ community is a possible death sentence for Palestinians, it’s insulting to intimate that both Israelis and Palestinians need to equally improve their records on this issue.

As for throwing in environmental issues and global warming, Bisharat clearly knows his audience. In truth, these are simply irrelevant to the real conversation. Israel is a world leader in many environmental initiatives including water conservation and agriculture technology. Compare with the Palestinians whose ideas of environmental protection extends to polluting the air by burning tires, torching thousands of acres of forest and fields, and dumping sewage and waste on the land.

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Bisharat then claims that one-third of Palestinians support a one-state solution. However, he then states:

Meanwhile, in the U.S., polls show that about an equal number of Americans support one state with equality as support a two-state solution, with young people leading the way. According to a poll released by the University of Maryland in December 2018, 42% of Americans ages 18 to 35 support a single state, versus 33% for two states. And if a two-state solution is no longer possible, a majority of all Americans support one state with equal rights.

Quite frankly, so what? Why are the views of young Americans even relevant here? Israelis and Palestinians are the people who have to live together in a workable solution to the conflict, not Americans who cannot begin to fathom the practical issues that any solution would entail.

It is only in the eleventh paragraph of Bisharat’s 15 paragraph piece that he openly acknowledges his real agenda:

Of course, an Israel founded on equal rights for all will no longer be a “Jewish state” — just as South Africa, after the fall of apartheid, was no longer a state that institutionalized white supremacy. It was a fundamental misperception of Israel’s founders that a homeland privileging Jews could be accepted in another people’s land.

Bisharat makes a direct link between a Jewish state and white supremacism, essentially branding the concept of a Jewish homeland as a racist construct. Not only racist but illegitimate in its entirety because these Jews are living “in another people’s land.” In Bisharat’s worldview, Jewish self-determination in the land of their forefathers, a land that they have had a continuous connection to for over 3,000 years, is illegitimate.

And because Bisharat is attuned to his West Coast liberal audience, he makes sure to throw in another trigger:

Israeli Jews will not surrender their advantages easily. Privileged groups never do.

Being a professor on a US campus, Bisharat is well aware of the conversation surrounding intersectionality and supposed ‘white privilege.’ So it’s a natural stretch to turn Israeli Jews into a ‘privileged group’ in much the same way as bigoted left-wingers in US politics and academia have branded American Jews as the beneficiaries of ‘white privilege.’

Nowhere in his piece does the author address the glaring problem with a one-state solution from the Palestinian perspective. Palestinians are divided between two administrations, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip. Despite numerous efforts to come to an arrangement, these two bodies are in open conflict with each other. Palestinians cannot even unite among themselves. Bisharat expects both sides to come together in harmony in a one-state solution?

Bisharat ends with a call for “the prospect of building a just and genuinely free and democratic society — a true beacon of progress for the region if not the world.” There’s a state of this description already in the region. Its name is Israel. Bisharat knows that Palestinians are incapable of building anything genuinely free and democratic. Far easier to take over the state that already exists through the ballot box and bring an end to Jewish sovereignty.

This call for a one-state solution, while presented in the language of liberalism, equal rights and justice, is nothing more than Bisharat’s politically correct method for bringing about the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. Palestinian rejectionism has played a significant role in wrecking all initiatives for a Palestinian state living side by side with an Israeli one. Bisharat’s opinion piece is an admittance that his one-state solution is just that – a single Palestinian state where Israel currently exists.


Please send your letters to the LA Times and expose George Bisharat’s real agenda – https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-letter-to-the-editor-htmlstory.html

https://honestreporting.com/bbc-documentary-almost-gets-gaza-right/
Flawed BBC Documentary Proves Israeli Narrative Right
BY EMANUEL MILLER  MAY 14, 2019
One Day in Gaza yahud
A BBC documentary, One Day In Gaza, examining the events of May 14, 2018, when tens of thousands of people in Gaza protested along the border with Israel, confirmed Israel’s version of events and explanations for what went on that day at the Gaza border.

Directed by award-winning documentary maker Olly Lambert, the program details how events on that dramatic day unfolded.

Despite a number of flaws, One Day In Gaza proves that Israel was not facing mere unarmed protesters, but was dealing with a dynamic in which violent rioters and armed terrorists concealed themselves in large groups of civilians, including women and children, some of whom were willing human shields for their violence.

The Israel-Gaza conflict is an incredibly difficult, and thorny, topic to cover. It has many facets, including Israel’s right to self-defense, the suffering of the Palestinian people under Hamas’ decade-long reign of terror, their legitimate right to self-expression, and the willingness of Gazan civilians to allow themselves to be used as human shields.

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One Day in Gaza addresses all of these in context, giving  people a platform to speak in their own words. It allowed Israeli Adele Raemer to show Israelis are “on edge” and anxious about Israel being invaded. The film demonstrates that some of the Palestinians involved in the protests were potentially violent and extremist, with one young protester sharing his thoughts from the night before the march: “We’re going in, we’ll cross the fence. We’re going in and we’ll give them hell,” and another who speaks openly about his fantasy to “rip a Jew’s head off.”

Israel has long held that the protesters acted as human shields for more violent elements, sometimes willingly. During the program, numerous women spoke and children openly admit their role in enabling terrorists and rioters to get closer to the border: “We line up like a human shield so the men could advance further,” says one Gazan woman. Another tells viewers that previously, “some of us distracted the Israelis with stones and Molotov Cocktails” before cutting the fence.

Similarly, the program showed a Hamas official admitting that, at one location at least, Israeli shooting only commenced as a direct response to armed Palestinians firing on IDF soldiers, finally laying to rest the myth that all of these Palestinian protesters were unarmed innocents and Israel had attacked without cause. Gazan interviewees also reveal that the demonstrations, which originally were grassroots were infiltrated and co-opted by the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists groups.

For all this, the program should be praised. However, it was not without its flaws.

Censoring Palestinian antisemitism
The film demonstrated that some of the Palestinians involved in the protests were potentially violent and extremist. A Gazan boy says “the revolutionary songs excite you, they encourage you… to rip a Jew’s head off.” However, instead of translating the Arabic word for Jew, ‘Yahud,’ accurately, the translation is inaccurately rendered, and replaced with a more sterile one – Israeli, thus minimizing antisemitism.

Seth Frantzman of the Jerusalem Post writes:

Arabic media throughout the Middle East does not use the term “Yahud” to refer to Israel, but rather “Israel” written in Arabic letters. On any day numerous articles at newspaper like Al-Ghad in Jordan illustrate this. Even Hamas writes “Israel” in its official press release for media, not “Yahud.”

Yahud is routinely translated directly as “Jew” by the media in almost every other circumstance. In his article, Frantzman contrasts the BBC’s translation with news coverage after a doctor was fired in January following the surfacing of antisemitic tweets.  In its coverage of the firing, NBC noted that: “She tweeted that she would ‘purposely give all the yahood [sic] the wrong meds,’ using the Arabic word, Yahud, which means Jews.”

UPDATE: A BBC spokesperson has responded to the uproar provoked by the mistranslation of the word ‘Yahud’: “We sought expert advice on the translation before broadcast and we believe the translation of ‘Yehudi’ as ‘Israeli’ in this documentary is both accurate and true to the speakers’ intentions.”

Related Reading: Israel’s Existence Lost in BBC Translation

Removing context
The documentary sets out to frame the protest against the backdrop of the US embassy relocating from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In reality, the protests had been occurring on a weekly basis for over a month by this point. The protests of May 14 were originally scheduled to occur a day later, but Hamas deliberately brought the protest forward a day so as to compel the media to cover the embassy transfer in the context of mass riots and casualties. In not mentioning this, the BBC helped Hamas achieved its objective.

Similarly, even if the documentary focused on one just one day, the BBC had a responsibility to explain events preceding that day. It certainly showed the Gazan narrative, in which the day came about as a ‘response’ to the US transferring its embassy to Jerusalem. However, it didn’t show much from Israel’s perspective. In the lead-up to the protest covered in the documentary, Israel was attacked on numerous occasions by terrorists in Gaza.

At previous protests, people had breached the border fence with weapons, and shot at Israeli soldiers. For example, on March 30, in the very first in the series of protests, two men armed with AK-47 assault rifles and hand grenades opened fire on Israeli soldiers and then attempted to breach the security fence in the northern Gaza Strip.

 Embedded video

Israel Defense Forces

@IDF
 Moments ago, IDF troops thwarted an infiltration attempt by three terrorists in the northern Gaza Strip. The terrorists approached the security fence and attempted to infiltrate Israeli territory. In response, IDF troops targeted the terrorists with tank fire

1,655
5:54 PM - Mar 30, 2018
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The documentary could have found time to mention another border breach that took place a few weeks before, in which four Palestinians entered Israeli territory and  tried to set fire to a military vehicle before fleeing back to Gaza. Video footage of that incident was shown on Al Jazeera and other outlets, and could easily have been integrated into the program.

The BBC could also have highlighted that only a few weeks before, three Gazans with grenades and knives successfully infiltrated Israel and were discovered near an army base 20 kilometers from Gaza.

Other clips, such as the one below, were freely available on social media.

 Embedded video

(((Emanuel Miller)))
@emanumiller
 This is what a border infiltration from #Gaza into #Israel looks like. See the man (0:30) clutching a meat cleaver? Imagine hundreds like him coming into Israeli territory, hoping to murder as many Israelis as possible.

This is what Israel is up against.
3:49 PM - May 14, 2018
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Where was the footage? Why was there no mention of repeated attempts to lay booby-trapped flags, box-cutters and other tools at the border fence in order to kill or injure Israelis, on one occasion injuring four IDF soldiers after approaching the fence to remove a bomb disguised as a flag? Why was there no mention of the countless flying Molotov cocktails in the form of balloons or kites with petrol bombs attached, causing massive fires?

Showing these videos, or even just describing these events, would have left viewers in no doubt that Israel faced an array of threats, and was genuinely fearful of a mass invasion, with hordes of people intent on causing harm to Israeli citizens and Israeli property.

Israel’s measures to avoid mass casualties
Notably, entirely absent from the program were the measures taken by Israel to avoid mass casualties. Due to the most violent rioters and terrorists concealing themselves within larger groups of protesters, regular Israeli soldiers were taken off border duty, and only snipers were allowed to shoot. The guiding principle was that only a sniper rifle would be accurate enough to take aim at the most violent people without injuring the innocent people around them. Whether or not this was enough is a matter of opinion, but the fact that this was Israeli policy is undisputed and should have been mentioned.

‘Gassing’ Palestinians?
While that may have been missed by most people, watching Palestinians seemingly convulsing in agony towards the end of the program was an assault on the senses. Footage of Gazans suffering from the effects of an unknown gas is shown. Viewers are told that a “drone came and started dropping gas” and the narrator described Israelis deploying “gas” against the Gazan people in much the same way the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons during that country’s civil war.  People are seen writhing, convulsing and crying out, with others appearing flat on their backs, receiving saline solution to their eyes and hands. Some have breathing tubes.

There is no problem in documenting this, the very real result of Israel’s response to the mass rioting and attempted breach of its border. However, no description of the gas is given. All viewers are told is that Israel used “gas.” That the BBC notably failed to say “teargas” as it had done earlier in the program undoubtedly left viewers wondering if Israel was using chlorine or something far worse than a legitimate means of crowd dispersal used by other Western states.

As a result of the failure to define exactly what tools Israel used, a clip taken from the program spread swiftly on social media within hours of the program being aired, purporting to be evidence of Israeli ‘chemical weapons.’

Flawed, but the most balanced coverage so far?
Despite the numerous flaws listed above, One Day in Gaza deserves a degree of credit. It shows that human shields were used regularly, that Hamas deliberately bused civilians into military zones, sometimes against their will, and displays the horrendous embrace of violence by Gazan teens and youths. The program also allowed people on both sides to talk about their frustrations and hopes, allowing the humanity of one Israeli citizen and of numerous Israeli soldiers to come through.

An Israeli soldier, tasked with watching events through security cameras, speaks of Israel’s recognition that “tens of thousands of people aren’t all enemies,” and makes clear that the situation was complex and dynamic. “We’re talking about civilians, and that’s what makes this difficult.” Repeatedly, Israelis state clearly that they genuinely had no desire to hurt anyone innocent, but were forced to react to a military event.

In many ways, the documentary backs up the Israeli account of events that day, showing how hell-bent the protesters were on breaking through the fence and murdering Israelis. It’s just a pity that a lack of context, background and one lamentable translation ruined an otherwise fair program.

From the Scene: Under Fire in Israel’s South
BY SIMON PLOSKER  MAY 6, 2019
https://honestreporting.com/under-fire-gaza-rockets-israel-south/
In November 2018, I had the experience of walking through a bombed-out apartment building in Ashkelon where a Gaza rocket strike had resulted in a fatality. So I had some idea of what to expect when I hitched a ride south again with a group of journalists to see the situation for myself. Over 600 Gaza rockets had been launched into Israeli towns, cities and communities in the space of only a few days.

En route in a small minibus, the protocol for a warning siren was explained. The driver would pull over and we were to get out as quickly as possible and lie down on the side of the road. Sitting at the back of the bus, I contemplated that in the event of a rocket attack, it would be virtually impossible for everyone to get out of the one side door and take cover within the 15 seconds warning time before a rocket fell.


Moshe Agadi
We arrived at the home of 58-year old father of four, Moshe Agadi, killed by shrapnel from a rocket fired at his Ashkelon house. The scene was busy – journalists, IDF soldiers, police, damage assessors, as well as friends and members of the Agadi family gathered in the aftermath of the tragic and appalling disaster that had befallen them.

A crater in the front yard indicated where the rocket had landed. Twisted metal and shattered concrete littered what would otherwise have been an idyllic garden area of trees and shrubbery. While the rocket may not have scored a direct hit on the house, the impact was still obvious.


The crater to the left of a wall shattered by the rocket’s impact.
Pock marks on the house exterior struck by shrapnel; a blown out window; roof tiles dislodged. While Agadi was able to get family members into their safe room in the seconds before the rocket struck, he was killed by the shrapnel in his living room. While the house remained virtually intact and the damage appeared to be superficial, the deadly potential of what so many media have termed “homemade’ rockets was only too apparent.

Damaged roof tiles and shrapnel impact on the side of the house.

A blown out window frame.

The neighboring house was also damaged. We went inside, treading on debris and shattered glass. A double glazed window pane at the other end of the living room served as a graphic illustration of the sheer force of the shrapnel blast. Had that been a human being on the receiving end, the consequences do not bear thinking about.


The results of shrapnel hitting a window inside the neighboring house.
Despite the activity at the site, there was still a surreal calm even as journalists received briefings from the IDF and police spokespeople. Birds chirped in the trees while the journalists took photos and asked questions.

Then the siren
With approximately 30 seconds warning time for Ashkelon, whose population numbers nearly 140,000, the assorted people in the vicinity moved quickly inside. It became clear that the safe room simply wasn’t large enough to accommodate the number of people seeking shelter. Those of us left outside  the safe room crouched down and waited. I positioned myself by a wall in the small service porch immediately adjacent to the safe room. The broken tiles by my feet served as a reminder that this house had already endured one fatal attack. Lightning couldn’t possibly strike twice, could it?

In the ocean, if someone screams “shark,” your immediate instinct is to swim as fast as you can to shore. You don’t know if you’ll make it back or if that shark will grab you but you’ll do your utmost to survive. In this situation, however, there is no shore to swim to. All you can do is tread water and hope that the shark will swim by. All you can do is wait and hope.

As the siren continued to wail, multiple booms and thuds reverberated from outside, the sound of Gaza rockets being intercepted by the Iron Dome. It was clear from the noise that the rockets were close. Despite previous experiences, it was still unnerving. Finally, the siren stopped. After waiting a minute or two, we filed out of the house.



(Due to the limitations of a cellphone, the video footage barely does justice to the situation.)

The IDF Home Front Command instructs Israelis to stay in their protected spaces for at least 10 minutes after the end of a siren. Israelis are notoriously hesitant to follow instructions. These instructions are issued for a reason, which we found out only a few seconds after leaving the house as the siren began to blare again.

Another dash back to our previous positions inside the house and more booms. We were unaware that this was a massive rocket barrage aimed at Ashkelon. I was almost back on the minibus when the third siren in only a few minutes prompted yet another run to my now familiar space in the service porch for the limited protection it offered. Strangely, members of the Agadi family, perhaps struck by a fatalism resulting from Moshe Agadi’s death, stayed in the living room almost ignoring the incoming threat.

This time, the sounds of explosions rattled the house and there were audible gasps from the among those huddled in and out of the safe room. The booms felt as if they were literally right outside. I have to admit that it was genuinely frightening. As we eventually hurried out of the house in the aftermath of the siren, I realized that I was trembling slightly. I’ll put it down to the adrenaline but my nerves had most definitely been frayed.

Sadly, Iron Dome was unable to prevent at least one of the Gaza rockets from landing on a factory in Ashkelon’s industrial zone, killing one Israeli man. By the time we reached that scene, emergency services had already secured the factory site and evacuated the casualty, Israeli Bedouin resident of the Negev Ziad al-Hamamda, 47, who left behind a wife and seven children.


The scene from a factory struck by a rocket in Ashkelon.

Emergency services on the scene.

An attempt to visit the residents of Kibbutz Nahal Oz on the Gaza border was abandoned after Palestinian terrorists launched a Kornet anti-tank missile at a civilian car on a highway near Sderot, killing  68-year-old Moshe Feder. The road was promptly closed by security forces. As we waited at a gas station north of Gaza to see if the road would be reopened, the sound of booms and thuds in the near distance was incessant. It’s one thing to see the constant alert messages on a cellphone. It’s another to experience it in real time.

Over 600 Gaza rockets during the course of two days is hard to imagine. Being there felt even more intense than previous times such as the 2014 conflict, which stretched over a far greater length of time and breadth of the country. Yet the sheer number and the frequency of the rocket attacks over the southern region during the course of the past few days left me with a feeling of increased vulnerability borne out by the far greater numbers of Israeli deaths and injuries than in past violent flare ups.

I suspect those journalists who visited the scene also left with a new sense of anxiety and vulnerability. How unfortunate that it takes an experience of this nature to understand or even empathize with the suffering of Israelis who have to live through such events.

At this time, calm has been restored to both the residents of Israel’s south and the Gaza Strip. Until the next time.



https://honestreporting.com/gaza-blockade-explainer/
The Gaza Blockade: An Explainer
BY PESACH BENSON  FEBRUARY 26, 2019
Rafah crossing Gaza blockade
View of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, in the Gaza Strip on July 17, 2018. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/ Flash90
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Israel and Egypt have maintained a blockade of Gaza since Hamas seized control of the Strip in 2007.

Often overlooked, forgotten or taken for granted in media coverage and public discussion is the reason for the blockade: the threat of Hamas weapons smuggling.

Egypt captured Gaza during the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. The Strip would remain under Egyptian military occupation until the Six-Day War of 1967. Israel’s administration allowed Jews to settle in the Strip. (The Jewish Virtual Library expands on historical Jewish ties to Gaza). When Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza in 2005, 8,000 settlers were evacuated from 21 settlements. The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority managed Gaza’s affairs until 2007, when Hamas violently seized control of the Strip, killing and expelling Fatah personnel.

The Hamas takeover destroyed international agreements between Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt over Gaza’s border crossings. PA personnel and European monitors manning the crossings fled the violence.

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Since Hamas seized power, Israel has fought three wars in Gaza (Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09, Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012, and Operation Protective Edge in 2014). The IDF has foiled a number of attempts to smuggle Iranian arms to Gaza. Egypt has also has also periodically moved against Gaza-Sinai smuggling tunnels. Hamas has an up-and-down relationship with jihadist insurgents in the Sinai fighting the Egyptian military.

(For the sake of brevity, we look forward to addressing the legality of the Gaza blockade separately. For the time being, readers interested to learn more can see International Law and the Fighting in Gaza by Justus Reid Weiner and Avi Bell.)

The Cairo context
Egyptian flagThe Hamas coup set off alarm bells in both Israel and Egypt and the two countries established a blockade of the Strip. Jerusalem was worried because Hamas is sworn to Israel’s destruction.

Cairo’s concerns, however, aren’t as fully understood in the West but are a critical part of the Gaza blockade’s background.

Hamas is an ideological offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Article II of the Hamas covenant identifies the organization as “one of the wings of Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.” The Brotherhood, which was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, seeks to spread Islamist rule throughout the Middle East. In the years before Israel’s founding, the Brotherhood provided support for Palestinian terror attacks associated with the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Egypt’s failure to prevent the establishment of Israel led the Brotherhood to increase its rhetoric against King Farouk and attacks on government officials. Banna’s assassination in 1949 is widely thought to have been carried out by the Egyptian Iron Guard, a royalist movement which Farouk used to settle political and personal vendettas.

Successive Egyptian leaders Gamel Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak suppressed the Brotherhood. But the Egyptian Revolution turned the tables. In 2012 elections, the Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party’s candidate, Mohamed Morsi, was elected president. The FJP also won 47 percent of the Egyptian parliament. The Brotherhood sought to draft a new constitution enshrining Islamic law and authorizing the president wide powers to “protect the revolution.” The power struggle came to a head in 2013, when, in the face of mass anti-government protests, the Egyptian military overthrew Morsi, arrested Brotherhood members and seized the organization’s assets.

Despite being crushed in Egypt, the Brotherhood has affiliates in numerous other Arab countries, Europe and even Israel. (The Islamic Movement in Israel split in 1993 over the Oslo accords. The “Southern Branch” accepted Oslo and eventually ran in Knesset elections. The “Northern Branch” rejected Oslo and was outlawed in 2015 over its ties to Hamas.)

Timeline of key events
To better understand the Gaza blockade’s history, here is a timeline of key events followed by background information on Gaza’s three operational border crossings.

Gaza map
Sept. 12, 2005: Israel completes Gaza disengagement, evacuating 8,000 settlers from 21 Jewish communities in the Strip. Israel continues maintaining control of territorial waters, air space and borders. The PA, which administers Gaza, takes control of the Palestinian side of the border crossings, which remain open.

Sept. 23, 2005: Palestinians in Gaza fire first post-disengagement rockets at Israel.

Nov. 24, 2005: European monitors deploy to the Rafah border crossing as part of deal allowing PA control of the Gaza side of the crossing.

Jan. 25, 2006: Hamas wins Palestinian majority of seats in Palestinian legislative elections.

Jan. 30, 2006: The Quartet (the UN, US, EU and Russia) issues a statement demanding the new Palestinian government renounce violence, recognize Israel, and adhere to previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements. (The UN Security Council later endorsed the Quartet’s three principles in 2008.)

Feb. 20, 2006: Israel rules out contacts with any Palestinian government in which Hamas has a role.

June 25, 2006: In a cross-border raid, Hamas abducts IDF soldier Gilad Shalit and kills three other soldiers. Israel tightens its closure of Gaza to prevent possibility of Shalit being smuggled out of the Strip. A month-long military operation is waged in Gaza.

March 12, 2007: Islamists abduct the BBC’s Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston. The high profile affair ended with his release on July 4, 2007.

Gaza coup
Hamas gunmen celebrating takeover of Gaza in June, 2007
June 10-15, 2007: The Battle of Gaza: In a bloody coup, Hamas seizes control of Strip, murdering PA personnel and ousting Fatah. As security deteriorates, PA officials and European monitors flee the Rafah border crossings. With the PA no longer manning the border crossings, Israel closes the Karni crossing and Egypt closes the Rafah crossing. (Before Hamas seized power, an average of about 1,500 people a day used the Rafah crossing.) To curb weapons smuggling, Israel and Egypt impose restriction on Gaza’s maritime traffic.

Jan 23, 2008: Hamas breaches border wall with Egypt; hundreds of thousands of Palestinians pour into the Sinai to purchase essentials. The UN estimated that as much as half of Gaza’s 1.5 million population crossed the border.

Feb. 3, 2008: Egyptian forces and Hamas seal the Gaza-Sinai border.

Dec. 27, 2008: IDF launches Operation Cast Lead in response to Gaza rocket fire.

Jan. 2009: Israeli air strike in Sudan destroys a 23-truck convoy carrying Iranian rockets intended for Gaza terror groups.

Jan. 18, 2009: Operation Cast Lead ends with unilateral ceasefire.

Sept. 15, 2009: The UN releases the findings of its controversial inquiry and report (the Goldstone report) on Operation Cast Lead. In April, 2011, lead investigator Judge Richard Goldstone recanted the report’s most contentious conclusions about Palestinian civilian deaths.

May 31, 2010: Israeli naval forces intercept a six-ship flotilla trying to symbolically break the Gaza blockade. Ten Turkish Islamists die in violent clashes aboard the Mavi Marmara.

March 15, 2011: Israeli naval forces intercept the Victoria, seizing approximately 50 tons of weapons, as well as manuals written in Farsi, intended for Hamas.

Sept. 2, 2011: An independent UN inquiry into the Mavi Marmara affair (the Palmer report) criticizes Israeli forces for using excessive force but upholds the blockade’s legality. (See also the Turkel report, the independent Israeli inquiry’s findings, which elaborated on the blockade’s legality.)

Oct. 18, 2011: Hamas frees Gilad Shalit in prisoner swap. Israel immediately frees 477 prisoners plus another 550 in December.

Oct. 23 2012: A Sudanese munitions factory reportedly owned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards is destroyed in an explosion attributed to Israel.

Nov. 14, 2012: IDF launches Operation Pillar of Defense in response to Gaza rocket fire.

Nov. 21, 2012: Cease-fire ends Operation Pillar of Defense.

March 5, 2014: Israeli naval forces intercept the Klos-C, seizing an undisclosed amount of Iranian-made weapons intended for Gaza terror groups.

Klos C
Weapons captured from the Klos C on display in Eilat on March 10, 2014
July 8, 2014: IDF launches Operation Protective Edge in response to Gaza rocket fire and the Hamas kidnapping/murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank.

July 20, 2014: Hamas captures the bodies of Lt. Hadar Goldin and Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul, who were killed in an ambush after a ceasefire had taken effect. Hamas holds their bodies to this day.

July 23, 2014: Israeli engineers and scientists conduct first tests on a high-tech tunnel detection system.

Aug. 26, 2014: Operation Protective Edge ends as ceasefire takes hold.

Sept. 7, 2014: Avraham Mengistu, a mentally unstable Israeli, manages to cross the border into Gaza. Hamas holds Mengistu to this day.

Oct. 24, 2014: Islamist insurgents in the Sinai kill 31 Egyptian soldiers in two attacks on military positions. Among the responses by Cairo was an announcement of plans to expand a buffer zone along the Egypt-Gaza border

Jan. 8, 2015: Having discovered smuggling tunnels longer than expected, Egypt doubles the width of the Gaza buffer zone. Nearly 1,220 homes are demolished and 1,600 tunnels destroyed.

April 20, 2015: Hisham al-Sayed, a mentally unstable Israeli Bedouin, manages to cross the border into Gaza. Hamas holds Sayed to this day.

Sept. 11, 2015: Egyptian military begins pumping seawater into cross-border tunnels.

April 17, 2017: Gaza’s sole electric power plant runs out of fuel for the first time. Hamas and Fatah blame each other. Electricity from Israel and Egypt provides only four of hours daily of power to the Strip.

Jan. 17, 2018: Israel reveals plans for a 40-mile underground border barrier to block Palestinian tunnels into Israel.

March 30, 2018: Palestinians clash with Israeli soldiers in the first of weekly “March of Return” violence along the Gaza border.

May 12, 2018: IDF destroys Hamas terror tunnel beneath the Erez border crossing.

May 29, 2018: IDF destroys Hamas terror tunnel under Kerem Shalom crossing that curled under Egyptian territory.

May 27, 2018: Israel announces start of construction of an underwater sea barrier to prevent infiltration.

Nov. 12, 2018: Following a botched Israeli intelligence operation in the Strip, Palestinians fire approximately 400 rockets at Israel, the largest barrage ever in a 24-hour period.

Gaza’s Three Border Crossings
Erez crossing: (with Israel): This terminal, the only crossing point for pedestrian traffic, is primarily used by international personnel such as diplomats, aid workers, journalists and also Palestinians with permits to leave Gaza, usually for medical treatment.

Israel is forced to scrutinize requests for medical permits because Hamas has used Palestinians being treated in Israel to pass messages to terror operatives in the West Bank. And healthy Palestinians trying to leave the Strip have paid doctors to write referrals for treatment abroad.

Further complicating matters, the Palestinian Authority often blocks patients from leaving the Strip by holding up the release of payment vouchers and delaying the transfer of drugs from West Bank warehouses, while cheap black market medicines smuggled from Egypt are fueling Gaza’s opioid crisis.

Erez crossing
A Palestinian woman at the Erez crossing who entered Israel with her children for medical treatment as a soldier assists her.
 

Kerem Shalom crossing (with Israel): Located at the convergence of the Gaza, Israeli and Egyptian borders, this crossing is used by all trucks delivering goods from both Israel and Egypt to the Strip. As other border crossings (noted below) were closed, Kerem Shalom became the sole transfer point. It currently sees an average of 100,000 tons of items delivered to the Strip.

Here’s a by-the-numbers look at what 147,540 trucks delivered to Gaza in 2017 per COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, a unit within the Defense Ministry which implements civilian policy in the West Bank and Gaza in liaison with the Palestinian Authority and other relevant international aid organizations).

3,383,440: tons of construction materials
568,744: tons of food
637,111: tons of gas
155,038: liters of diesel fuel
40,696: liters of gasoline
7,044: tons of medical equipment
3,154: vehicles
Further, more than 6.5 million tons of construction materials have been brought into the Strip to rebuild homes, roads, public facilities and other infrastructure since the 2014 Gaza war.

It’s worth noting that goods also flow out of Gaza through Kerem Shalom. Agricultural produce, textiles and other Palestinian exports pass through Kerem Shalom for sale around the world. For example, Gaza exported 36,765 tons of produce in 2015.

In addition, Israel provides Gaza with 125 megawatts of electricity (half of the Strip’s needs) and 10 million cubic meters of water.

Rafah crossing (with Egypt): This crossing for pedestrians is the only direct passage between Egypt and Gaza. Since President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power in 2013, Rafah is only opened sporadically. Egyptian trucks delivering goods are directed to the Kerem Shalom crossing, which is operated by Israel.

Three other Israel-Gaza border crossings are non-operational. The Sufa crossing was primarily used for deliveries of construction materials and closed in 2008. The Nahal Oz crossing — where underground lines transferred gas and fuel — was closed in 2010. Of all the border crossings, the Karni crossing had the highest capacity for truck deliveries. Its operations were reduced in 2007 and finally closed in March, 2011.

* * *

Images: Egypt via YouTube/ONLINE; gunmen screengrab via military.com; Klos C via YouTube/”Yerushalayim” – TV magazine in Russian about Israel; Erez crossing via YouTube/COGAT;

https://honestreporting.com/dishonest-headlines-parrot-hamas-claim/
Nikki Haley slams Israeli critics’ double-standard: ‘No other country would sit back and take this’
 May 5, 2019
Nikki Haley slams Israeli critics’ double-standard: ‘No other country would sit back and take this’Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley (AP/Andrew Harnik)
As Palestinian terrorists rain hundreds of rockets down on the Jewish state,  former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. questions why Israel should “sit back and take” it.
By World Israel News Staff
On Saturday, Nikki Haley responded to Palestinian terrorists’ ongoing rocket fire on Israel with a pointed post on Twitter questioning the double-standard many nations apply to the Jewish State.
“If this was any other country, the international community would raise havoc. No other country would sit back and take this. Why should Israel? #DoubleStandard,” she tweeted.
Former Amb. Haley also shared a video on Twitter showing the devastation caused by Palestinian rockets, which killed an Israeli father of four in Ashkelon, Moshe Agadi, and wounded a number of others severely.
Nikki Haley

@NikkiHaley
 If this was any other country, the international community would raise havoc. No other country would sit back and take this. Why should Israel? #DoubleStandard

Israel Defense Forces

@IDF
200+ rockets rained down on the homes of Israeli families today. WATCH:
 Embedded video
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The former ambassador is slated to visit the Jewish state at the end of June to serve as the keynote speaker at a forum hosted by daily newspaper Israel Hayom, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin are scheduled to attend.
During her tenure as the U.S. ambassador to the the United Nations, Haley proved herself a vocal supporter of the Jewish State.
Former Amb. Haley was joined by other leading U.S. diplomats in condemning Palestinian terrorists for the rocket attacks, with President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt tweeting:
“Hamas and [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] have engaged in yet another deplorable act of terrorism, indiscriminately firing hundreds of rockets at Israeli civilian communities. The U.S. stands firmly in support of Israel’s right to self-defense and we call on the international community to do the same.”
In a follow-up tweet, Greenblatt added, “When Hamas and [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] continue to choose terrorism, they prevent the world from trying to help the Palestinians in Gaza and they cause harm to Palestinians.”
The U.S. State Department similarly issued a statement stating, “The United States strongly condemns the ongoing barrage of rocket attacks by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad from Gaza upon innocent civilians and their communities across Israel.
“We call on those responsible for the violence to cease this aggression immediately. We stand with Israel and fully support its right to self-defense against these abhorrent attacks.”

Facebook Fights Fake News With Biased Gaza Video
BY EMANUEL MILLER  APRIL 30, 2019
Facebook Gaza Fake News
https://honestreporting.com/facebook-fights-fake-news-biased-gaza-video/
A video commissioned by British Channel 4 for Facebook Watch called “Gaza: life in the deadly blockade” shows a horrendously context-free and one-sided portrayal of the Gaza border protests.

The video, uploaded to UK television Channel 4’s Facebook page and promoted through Facebook Watch, fails to mention the deep involvement of Hamas in instigating the violence, even though the vast majority of those killed in the border riots were associated with the organization. The majority of the remainder were associated with a rival terror group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Instead, viewers are simply told that “these families went to the front lines together,  and came back severely wounded,” and that over “260 people have been killed, 50 of them children.” That some of those minors killed were members of Hamas’s armed wing is not deemed relevant enough for inclusion in the video, naturally.

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Beyond the omission of Hamas’s role in conducting the violence, there is also no coverage in the video of the thousands of explosive filled-balloons, condoms and kites that were launched on a daily basis for months. Nor do viewers see the result of the blazes sparked by these crude firebombs – many thousands of acres of scorched forest, crops and fields.

While covering the human toll is fair and important journalism, totally neglecting to mention the petrol bombs, grenades, and knives with which the more violent protesters equipped themselves lets Hamas off the hook. The video fails to inform viewers of the wider context of Hamas sporadically firing hundreds of rockets on Israeli cities and towns, hiding lethal improvised explosive devices IEDs on the border, shooting directly at Israeli soldiers, and constructing numerous tunnels into Israeli territory with the aim of kidnapping and killing Israelis, leaving Israel with a very real need to clamp down on the Gaza border.

Instead, all viewers are told is that, “traumatized and trapped, life in Gaza is suffocating.”

Hamas wants gullible audiences around the world to believe that its protests are mild and met with unreasonable force by the IDF. It wants to be viewed as the plucky underdog instead of seen for what it is; an aggressive, dangerous terrorist organization seeking to disturb the peace for the sake of political gain. In humanizing the protesters without subjecting Hamas officials or the protesters themselves to probing questions, the piece helps give Hamas what it’s looking for: legitimacy.

It all starts when Israel fires back
In one telling sentence, the presenter, clad in helmet and flak jacket, speaks directly to the camera:

These Friday protests follow a familiar pattern: first, the tear gas comes in, then the live ammunition starts, and then they bring back the injured.

Incredibly, the presenter’s summary simply avoids all mention of the Gazan rock-throwing, tire-burning, and attempts to rush the border en masse that would entail an Israeli response. As per usual, it is Israel that is the aggressor and the initiator of violence.

Romanticizing violence
Asking viewers to “meet Gaza’s young protesters” who are “risking their lives,” the video romanticizes the violence. A young boy tells the camera, “I didn’t have any weapons or gas bombs. I just had a slingshot and a stone, nothing else.” Portraying thuggish behavior as heroic, the video ignores the fact that hundreds of teens and children were allowed or even encouraged to be anywhere near a conflict zone. The video accepts wholesale the claim that protesters wanted to cross into Israel, but doesn’t question what their plans were after breaking through the border fence.

Here’s one video which might suggest the protesters’ true plans and the very real threat to Israeli lives:

 Embedded video

(((Emanuel Miller)))
@emanumiller
 This is what a border infiltration from #Gaza into #Israel looks like. See the man (0:30) clutching a meat cleaver? Imagine hundreds like him coming into Israeli territory, hoping to murder as many Israelis as possible.

This is what Israel is up against.

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Gaza under ‘siege’ claim repeated
Throughout the video, both the presenter and the Palestinians themselves refer to a ‘siege’ on numerous occasions. There is no such siege. Approximately two thousand people travel through the Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza each day, and the Kerem Shalom crossing sees approximately 150,000 trucks making deliveries to Gaza yearly per COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, a unit within the Defense Ministry responsible for implementing liaising with the Palestinian Authority and relevant international aid organizations). While there is a blockade on Gaza, it’s maintained by Israel and Egypt in order to negate the very real threat of Hamas weapons smuggling.


Related Reading: The Gaza Blockade: An Explainer

Bizarre ‘explosive bullet’ claim
During the interview, a Gazan resident called Malina Al Hindi claims that a remote Israeli sniper fired an explosive bullet at her leg. If the credulous reporter had bothered to do his job and check claims made by interviewees, the quote would never have been given air-time: there is quite simply no such thing as an explosive bullet. They simply do not exist. There is nothing wrong with Gazans sharing their own perspective, much of which may be hostile to Israel, but journalists should not provide a platform for Gazans to make false claims unchallenged.

Explosive Bullet smear

In telling her story, Al Hindi discloses a crucial piece of context that only locals and those with real knowledge of the situation on the ground would notice: there are multiple fences between Israel and Gaza. Al Hindi admits that “we opened a gap in the third barbed wire fence.” In other words, a group of protesters had broken through not one, not two, but three fences. It was only at this point that she was hit.

It would have been reasonable to ask at this point how many more warnings the IDF should have given Al Hindi and her fellow rioters. Should the IDF have waited till they entered Israel? Should the IDF have allowed her to start actively attacking Israeli civilians? Instead, the video moves on without questioning Al Hindi’s actions in any way.

Combating Fake News?
The irony of it all is that the Uncovered show was commissioned by Facebook as a means to tackle fake news. In June 2018, Facebook announced that it was looking to promote “high-quality and timely news content on the platform” to honor an earlier commitment to show news that is trustworthy, informative and local on Facebook.

Uncovered was launched in early 2019, but instead of meeting Facebook’s laudable criteria, Channel 4 has failed miserably with this video. Through missing context, failing to ask even simple questions, and selectively omitting uncomfortable details, the Gaza video fails to show nuanced, accurate picture of what’s really happening.

Concerned about the rise of fake news on Facebook? SHARE this article now

https://honestreporting.com/cartoon-scandal-new-york-times-keeps-digging/
There was disgust at the cartoon itself (drawn by Portuguese cartoonist Antonio Moreira Antunes, of the Lisbon weekly paper, Expresso) and the fact that it had been published at all. But there was also criticism aimed at the initial response of NY Times editors who tweeted that an Editors’ Note would appear in Monday’s international edition. The note acknowledged how offensive the cartoon was and admitted to an “error of judgment.” It did not, however, apologize.

New York Times Opinion

@nytopinion
 An Editors' Note to appear in Monday’s international edition.

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Eventually, some level of contrition was expressed in an actual apology.

View image on Twitter
New York Times Opinion

@nytopinion
 We apologize for the anti-Semitic cartoon we published. Here’s our statement.

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The New York Times’ own columnist Bret Stephens was also given the platform to castigate his own newspaper, saying:

The paper owes the Israeli prime minister an apology. It owes itself some serious reflection as to how it came to publish that cartoon — and how its publication came, to many longtime readers, as a shock but not a surprise.

Responding to the Stephens, I asked whether, despite his excellent article, events would lead to any meaningful action on the part of the NY Times or whether it would be soon back to business as usual.


Bret Stephens

@BretStephensNYT
 · Apr 28, 2019
 The Times published a despicable anti-Semitic cartoon this week in its international edition. Here's my column about the cartoon, and the lessons the Times urgently needs to learn about the episode, in @NYTopinion: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/28/opinion/cartoon-nytimes.html …


Opinion | A Despicable Cartoon in The Times
The paper of record needs to reflect deeply on how it came to publish anti-Semitic propaganda.

nytimes.com

Simon Plosker
@SimonPlosker
Thank you for writing this. I fear, however, that you have unavoidably become part of @nytimes damage limitation exercise. Will the paper engage in any self-reflection or will it be back to business as usual with the next hostile screed?

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The answer came quicker than anyone could have believed. Given the firestorm of anger raging around the newspaper, you’d think that publishing another Jewish-themed cartoon would be the last thing that any NY Times editor would even consider.

Think again.

Despite already releasing the Editors’ Note over the first cartoon, this is what appeared in the weekend’s international edition:

View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter

HonestReporting

@HonestReporting
 This appeared in @nytimes international edition this weekend. Whatever your interpretation of this particular image, we can only conclude that the New York Times is deliberately giving the Jewish community the proverbial finger even while it apologizes for its other cartoon.

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The message and imagery of this cartoon by Roar Hagen, that originally appeared in a Norwegian publication, may be open to interpretation but the subject material and the timing of its publication are astonishing in light of the situation the New York Times was already in.

Who on earth would approve another cartoon featuring Benjamin Netanyahu and Jewish or Israeli themes?!

Are the senior staff at the NY Times head office really that incompetent that they could have thrown oversight to the wind yet again? Someone at the international edition clearly has an unhealthy obsession that nobody higher up is dealing with.

Either way, this latest incident is the equivalent of giving the Jewish community the proverbial finger even while the NY Times apologizes for its other cartoon.

The NY Times has reportedly severed its links with the syndication service that supplied the first antisemitic cartoon and has come to the decision not to use syndicated cartoons anymore. While it’s a start, this only deals with cutting off a compromised third party and fails to address the glaring failures within the New York Times itself.

HonestReporting’s many examples of NY Times bias against and utter disdain towards Israel demonstrate that the paper’s problem is institutional and deep rooted.  The past few days’ events were not isolated incidents that the NY Times can apologize for, move on and forget about.

Bret Stephens asks:

How have even the most blatant expressions of anti-Semitism become almost undetectable to editors who think it’s part of their job to stand up to bigotry?

The reason is the almost torrential criticism of Israel and the mainstreaming of anti-Zionism, including by this paper, which has become so common that people have been desensitized to its inherent bigotry.

Some serious self-reflection is most definitely required and someone needs to be held responsible. Heads should roll but some much-needed education is also vital. A good place to start would be for the New York Times to adopt the internationally recognized working definition of antisemitism, as produced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

We’ve been calling on mainstream media to do just that. Please sign our petition – the New York Times will be the first place we send it to. For the paper to ignore it would be pure folly.

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ANTISEMITIC CARTOONANTISEMITISMBENJAMIN NETANYAHUBRET STEPHENSNEW YORK TIMES

Simon Plosker
With overall responsibility for HonestReporting’s content and output, Simon joined the HonestReporting team in November 2005 following several years working in a variety of non-profit organizations, including the Jewish Agency and the Board of Deputies of British Jews prior to immigrating to Israel in 2001 from London. In Israel, Simon has worked for BICOM and as Managing Editor of NGO Monitor as well as serving for a short period in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit. Simon has a BSoc.Sc in International Studies and Political Science from the University of Birmingham and a MSc in History of International Relations from the London School of Economics

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Sign our petition to demand the media adopt the international definition of antisemitism. Because hate against anyone endangers everyone. Click here: https://honestreporting.nationbuilder...

New York Times Antisemitic Cartoon Shocker
BY SIMON PLOSKER  APRIL 27, 2019
https://honestreporting.com/new-york-times-antisemitic-cartoon-shocker/
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As Jews around the world prepared for the last days of the Passover festival, the New York Times international print edition (available in countries including Israel), published this cartoon:

A blind US President Donald Trump wearing a Jewish skullcap being led by a canine caricature of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It was drawn by Portuguese cartoonist Antonio Moreira Antunes, of the Lisbon weekly paper, Expresso. According to the Daily Mail, Expresso deleted the cartoon from its site without an explanation or apology.

The image of Israel leading the US draws upon a classic antisemitic trope of Jewish power and control.

The newspaper that makes a virtue out of promoting anti-racism, minority rights and giving a platform to every possible liberal or progressive cause appears to have no boundaries when it comes to offending Jews.

At least the New York Times has belatedly recognized its disgraceful editorial failure if this tweet is to be believed:
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New York Times Opinion

@nytopinion
 An Editors' Note to appear in Monday’s international edition.

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How do such ‘errors of judgment’ occur in the first place?

The image is so blatantly offensive, it’s hard to believe that editors at the New York Times international edition failed to see it before the damage was done.

And the damage has been done. The New York Times can issue its Editors’ Note in a future edition but this image has already been seared in the memories of an international audience that had the misfortune to pick up a copy of the paper that day.


Time for the Media to Adopt Antisemitism Definition
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The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism has already been adopted and endorsed by a growing number of governments and organizations (including HonestReporting).

But beyond the governmental level, there’s another sector that needs to adopt the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism: The media.

Help us to get the message out to the media: it's time to adopt the antisemitism definition.

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE AND SIGN OUR PETITION
https://honestreporting.nationbuilder.com/ihra-antisemitism-definition

https://honestreporting.com/newsweeks-false-notre-dame-fire-al-aqsa-mosque-link/
Newsweek’s False Notre Dame Fire/Al Aqsa Mosque Link
BY DANIEL POMERANTZ  APRIL 16, 2019
Notre Dame
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In a tasteless example of misleading clickbait, Newsweek published this headline, comparing a small and quickly extinguished fire near the Al Aqsa mosque to yesterday’s blaze at Notre Dame.
Complete with video of the blaze consuming Notre Dame cathedral, this article inspired dramatic reactions on social media, as readers had no idea of the truth, which you can find in today’s Jerusalem Post:

“The Fire broke out in the guard’s room outside the roof of the Marwani Prayer Hall,” according to the Wafa news agency. The fire was quickly put out by the Waqf with no injuries or interior damage reported.

This is what Newsweek saw fit to compare to the destructive inferno at Notre Dame?

Not only was the fire  a small one that caused no damage to people or property, but it was not even in the Al Aqsa Mosque. The fire was actually in the the Marwani Mosque which the Waqf (the Jordanian body that administers the site) constructed in 1996 by illegally bulldozing a protected archaeological site beneath the Temple Mount. Archaeologists believe the bulldozed soil to have been filled with ancient Jewish artifacts dating back as far as 3,000 years.

You can learn more about the site in our article, Jewish Ties to the Temple Mount.

The journalist, Tom O’Connor, mentioned none of this. He then went on to completely misstate modern history by claiming:

…President Donald Trump recognized the entirety of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in December 2017, dismissing competing Palestinian claims to the city and upsetting a broad international consensus.

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In truth, the White House was intentionally vague about Jerusalem’s borders and sovereignty, explicitly keeping the option open for the parties themselves to negotiate borders and the city’s final status, as per the official White House statement:

In making these announcements, I also want to make one point very clear: This decision is not intended, in any way, to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement. We want an agreement that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians. We are not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders. Those questions are up to the parties involved. 

You can read more about the details and legal effect of America’s recognition of Jerusalem in our previous article: Trump’s Embassy Move: Behind the Hysteria.

Long time HonestReporting readers will remember that Tom O’Connor has a history of irresponsible journalism, and we have on several occasions had his articles amended or removed. Here are two examples.

 
https://honestreporting.com/new-york-times-columnist-bds-makes-an-effort-to-distance-itself-from-anti-semitism/
New York Times Columnist: BDS Distances Itself from Antisemitism
BY EMANUEL MILLER  APRIL 17, 2019

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It should be obvious to anyone that while the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement portrays itself as ‘merely’ antisemitic, it is in actuality a movement frequently fueled by antisemitic intent and often supported by antisemitic individuals.

Although some may argue that anti-Zionism is not necessarily antisemitism, the reality is that the two often go hand-in-hand.

A sensible writer would at least consider the links between BDS and anti-semitism, but alas Michelle Goldberg, a columnist at The New York Times, totally dismisses the serious charges against numerous BDS leaders and activists.

Goldberg’s most recent NYT column, “Anti-Zionists Deserve Free Speech,” explores the downsides of barring a ‘critic of Israel’ from America, and flippantly claims that BDS leaders seek to distance themselves from anti-semitism.

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@HonestReporting
 Utter nonsense from @NYTtimes columnist @michelleinbklyn. BDS leaders have repeatedly peddled in hate speech, stating that Israel has "no right to exist", and often turn a blind eye as activists repeatedly engage in antisemitic rhetoric and narratives to demonize Israel.

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If only BDS leader Omar Barghouti were a mere critic of Israel.

BDS is not criticism
While the article covers “the assault on pro-Palestinian speech” and describes the denial of entry to Omar Barghouti to America,  it fails to acknowledge statements made by numerous leading BDS activists which shed light on the movement’s darker side.

John Spritzler, author, BDS leader and activist:

I think the BDS movement will gain strength from forthrightly explaining why Israel has no right to exist…

As’ad AbuKhalil, California State University Professor of Political Science, BDS leader and activist:

The real aim of BDS is to bring down the State of Israel…this should be stated as an unambiguous goal.

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If that wasn’t enough, Goldberg could have researched Barghouti himself, and found that the BDS founder had earlier pronounced:

Definitely most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine.

Separately, Barghouti clarifies that to him “Palestine” actually means all of Israel. Are these the words of those simply critical of Israel’s policies? Or are these the words of people with a vision of obliterating the world’s only Jewish state?

Is BDS really against “any exclusionary state?”
Goldberg’s article unquestioningly repeats the BDS claim about its official position:

Barghouti couches his opposition to Zionism in the language of humanist universalism. The official position of the BDS movement, he says, is that “any supremacist, exclusionary state in historic Palestine — be it a ‘Jewish state,’ an ‘Islamic state,’ or a ‘Christian state’ — would by definition conflict with international law and basic human rights principles.”

This may sound good to most people, but BDS is actually guilty of hypocrisy. If it were truly against all forms of discrimination in the area it terms ‘historic Palestine’, it would also call for a boycott against the Palestinian Authority, which outlaws the sale of land to Jews, punishing this heinous ‘crime’ with the death penalty. Is this not the very definition of exclusionary?

By extension, Goldberg is guilty of allowing this hypocrisy to pass unchecked. Why does she fail to query the movement’s motives? Repeatedly, the New York Times sides with those who seek to spread the poison of anti-Israel rhetoric. The New York Times is entitled to its opinion, as is the BDS movement. Yet no newspaper or journalist is entitled to mislead the public. The BDS movement is openly and proudly dedicated to the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state, and is attempting to do so by violating United States law.  If The New York Times supports this, then its editorial board should say so: clearly and unambiguously.

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Emanuel Miller
Emanuel Miller is a Jerusalem-based writer who has previously worked for the Jerusalem Post and the Times of Israel, and helped establish the English media department of My Truth, an organization that documents the experiences of Israeli soldiers while facing an immoral, cynical enemy. He regularly speaks about Israel, media bias, and Israel's geopolitical complexities to audiences including Birthright groups, student leaders visiting Israel, and for those seeking to get a more nuanced understanding of Israel.

https://honestreporting.com/guardian-op-ed-uses-eurovision-attack-israel/
Guardian Op-Ed Uses Eurovision to Attack Israel
BY EMANUEL MILLER  FEBRUARY 18, 2019
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Another day, another squalid Guardian op-ed perpetuating the lie that Israel is an ‘apartheid’ state.

With Eurovision, an annual international song contest held across Europe, coming to Israel this spring, anti-Israel BDS activists are in the midst of a massive campaign to smear Israel.

Ever since Israel was tipped to win the 2018 competition with eventual winner Netta Barzilai’s Toy, Eurovision has become the latest battlefield on which the anti-Israel BDS campaign has been fought.  Last month, leading BDS advocate and former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters penned an open letter calling on the BBC to urge relocation of the contest to another country.

A few weeks later, one of the cosignatories of that letter, musician Brian Eno, has written an op-ed in the Guardian, calling Israel an “actively repressive apartheid-like state.” The piece, entitled, “Israel must not be allowed to use Eurovision as a propaganda tool,” is a litany of half-truths and decontextualized facts.

It’s sad that this needs to be stated at all, but words have meaning. Apartheid is a legal system in which laws discriminate based on race or ethnicity. There is no dual system of law in Israel for Jewish and Muslim or Arab citizens.


You can read more about the Apartheid State Libel at HonestReporting’s dedicated resource page.

Under apartheid, black and white people didn’t have access to the same public services. They couldn’t sit on the same park benches and bus seats. They attended different schools, went to different swimming pools, and if black people were seen in certain areas at night, they could be shot on sight. Beaches, taxis, trains, even toilets were totally separated by race.

None of this is true for Arab citizens of Israel. There are plenty of ways to legitimately criticize Israel, but the apartheid claim is absolutely not one of them.
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It’s important to understand the legal distinction between citizens and non-citizens. Arab citizens of Israel are governed by the same laws, go to the same courts, and enjoy freedom of movement throughout the country. This not the case for Arab citizens under Palestinian Authority control. The reason for this is the same as why Canadians in the USA, for example, do not enjoy equal rights to American citizens – they are not citizens. Just as Canadians don’t have the right to vote in America, neither do subjects of Palestinian Authority have a right to vote and run in Israeli elections. Arab citizens of Israel, however, have both these rights.

Nevertheless, despite the ongoing periodical outbreaks of violence between Israel and Arabs under PA control, Israel grants entry permits to many thousands of non-citizens daily. Even then, Arabs who legally enter Israeli territory do not face the kind of discrimination experienced by blacks in apartheid South Africa.

Providing cover for Hamas
Beyond the atrocious apartheid claim, Eno repeats other Hamas talking points wholesale, never stopping to demonstrate a modicum of balance or willingness to address difficult truths.

Eno describes a cultural center in Gaza bombed by the Israeli armed forces last year as, “a place of music, theatre and dance.” The problem isn’t with what Eno says as much as what he doesn’t say; according to the IDF, the site also functioned as a Hamas nerve center, a hub of terrorism, weapons and hate.

Hamas, the terrorist group which seized control of Gaza in 2007 and has reigned with an iron fist ever since, routinely uses civilian infrastructure as a cover for its weapons and command centers. While doing so is in direct contravention of international humanitarian law, Hamas knows that as a sub-state actor, it is seen as the underdog facing the mighty Israel, and will escape censure. As a result, Israel is forced to either avoid hitting an ostensibly “civilian” site and allow Hamas to continue operating unimpeded, or to attack and face strong media and NGO criticism.

In simply categorizing the location of the strike as a mere cultural center, Eno parrots the Hamas line, and provides the terror organization with cover to continue its war crimes, and attacks Israel for defending itself.

Mischaracterizations and Missing Context
Eno uses scare quotes when mentioning that Israel imprisoned a poet for “inciting terrorism.” In reality, there is very little room for argument here. The poem called on people to “resist” and “evict” Israelis at a time when stabbing attacks on Israelis were practically a daily event. This simple fact isn’t mentioned in the Guardian article. Neither is the minor, inconvenient detail that the video released by the poet showed masked Palestinian youths hurling Molotov cocktails and rocks at IDF soldiers. Penning a poem at such a time, and creating a video which glorifies acts of violence, is incontrovertibly an act of incitement to violence and potentially murder.

Beyond that, Eno seeks to portray Israel as excluding Palestinians from the event, writing that “Israel’s myriad restrictions on the movement of Palestinians will ensure that almost all of them are excluded from the Eurovision festivities.” The reality is far more complex. As outlined above, there is no automatic right for non-citizens to enter any country. Despite this, Israel grants many thousands of Palestinians permits to enter Israel daily.

Then there’s the patently false description of the Gaza protests as “peaceful”. In the most recent protest, an IDF officer was injured Friday after an explosive device was thrown at him. Are grenades, machetes and guns “peaceful”?

 Embedded video

(((Emanuel Miller)))
@emanumiller
 This is what a border infiltration from #Gaza into #Israel looks like. See the man (0:30) clutching a meat cleaver? Imagine hundreds like him coming into Israeli territory, hoping to murder as many Israelis as possible.

This is what Israel is up against.

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From start to finish, Eno’s argument relies on numerous exaggerations, missing context, and falsifications. While there is plenty of room for opinion in the media, when the attack crosses the line to being more than slightly economical with the truth, it poisons the debate by sowing the seeds of mistrust and dishonesty.
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Emanuel Miller
Emanuel Miller is a Jerusalem-based writer who has previously worked for the Jerusalem Post and the Times of Israel, and helped establish the English media department of My Truth, an organization that documents the experiences of Israeli soldiers while facing an immoral, cynical enemy. He regularly speaks about Israel, media bias, and Israel's geopolitical complexities to audiences including Birthright groups, student leaders visiting Israel, and for those seeking to get a more nuanced understanding of Israel.

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https://honestreporting.com/ilhan-omar-arab-muslim-antisemitism/
Ilhan Omar Defender Denies Arab and Muslim Antisemitism
BY SIMON PLOSKER  FEBRUARY 14, 2019
Plenty has already been written about Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s antisemitic tweets. But what was the reaction in her home state of Minnesota?

One standout piece in the local media appears courtesy of the Minnesota Star Tribune where Ahmed Tharwat, described as the host/producer of the Arab American TV show, BelAhdan, writes some very disturbing things in defense of Omar.


Ahmed Tharwat (Screenshot: YouTube)
According to Tharwat:

In the end, Omar caved in, surrendering to the intimidation of a system that demonizes any critic of Israel, a system full of hypes, hypocrisies and dishonesties.

There is nothing dishonest or hypocritical about calling out antisemitism wherever it occurs and the real dishonesty is that of Tharwat for making this incident about Israel and turning Ilhan Omar into the victim.

Omar’s tweet ‘not automatically an antisemitic trope’
But then it becomes patently obvious what is guiding Tharwat’s thought processes. Referring to Omar’s “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby” tweet, he writes:

This simply is not automatically an anti-Semitic trope. A reference to $100 bills bearing Benjamin Franklin’s face simply reflects the undisputed role of money in our politics. To suggest that the Israeli advocacy group AIPAC influences some members of Congress to support Israel over the Palestinians doesn’t seem so radical or inherently anti-Semitic; it is actually bragged about by AIPAC on its own website.

Whether deliberately or not, Tharwat has entirely missed the point. Omar’s reference wasn’t about the “undisputed role of money in our politics.” It was specifically aimed at ‘Jewish money’ – a clear antisemitic trope. Omar wasn’t tweeting about AIPAC influencing politicians, which is the right of any political lobbying organization, of which AIPAC is just one of many. Omar was incorrectly claiming that AIPAC was paying US politicians to support Israel.

AIPAC ‘has the Democrats by the throat’
While Tharwat does mention other lobby groups, including”right-wing evangelical Christian Zionist fanatics,” he says:

Omar needs to understand that if AIPAC has the Democrats by the throat, the NRA has the GOP.

This appalling claim that the Democratic Party is somehow under the control of AIPAC in what he says is the same way that the gun lobby has a hold over the Republicans simply doesn’t hold up. While the NRA clearly has more influence over the GOP as a traditionally right-wing cause, AIPAC is bipartisan and lobbies for a cause that has arguably been one that the majority of Americans sympathize with irrespective of their voting intentions.

Antisemitism is only ‘a Western thing’
Then comes the attempts to disassociate any antisemitism from the Muslim or developing world:

But Omar wasn’t talking about “Jewish Money,” reflecting a deep, wicked feeling about “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” This is absurd and it is a Western thing.

Is Tharwat seriously suggesting that this antisemitic trope or antisemitism is limited to the West? While The Protocols of the Elders of Zion may have not have been written there, it has been imported, translated and spread to the Arab and Muslim world where its antisemitism has become accepted by millions.

Antisemitism an ‘alien concept’ and Arabs as ‘indirect Holocaust victims’
He continues:

What lots of Americans don’t understand is that anti-Semitism — the charge thrown causally at anyone who offers the slightest criticism of Israel — is an alien concept for most Muslims, since Arab/Muslims think of themselves not just as Semitic people, but also as indirect victims of the Holocaust atrocity, which led to establishing the Jewish state in the heart of the Middle East, beheading the nation of Palestine.

So much offensive nonsense in one paragraph.

The term antisemitism does not refer to a hatred of people from a linguistic branch (Semites) but was coined specifically to refer to Jews and only Jews. To attempt to redefine it is to attempt to diminish it and excuse hatred of Jews by Arabs.
There’s plenty of antisemitism in the Arab and Muslim world – it certainly isn’t an “alien concept.”
Claiming that Arabs and Muslims are “indirect victims of the Holocaust” is an appalling form of revisionism and diminishes the very real victims of that crime against humanity.
Claiming that the Holocaust was responsible for the establishment of the Jewish state “beheading the nation of Palestine” is a blatant attempt to deny Jewish historical rights in the Middle East, and to falsely present Israel as the product of European “colonization” at the expense of indigenous natives.
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‘Jewish ISIS’
Now that we have established where Tharwat is coming from, his complaints about being dragged into the Ilhan Omar issue by Fox News and the Daily Caller on account of an interview he conducted with her appear to be laughable:

The Daily Caller then published an article with a frantic headline, “Ilhan Omar Gave Interviews To Host Who Called Israel ‘Jewish ISIS’ And Compared Hamas To Holocaust Victims.”

I have no idea how the Daily Caller arrived at this conclusion, I have used “Jewish ISIS,” and “Jewish Taliban,” and “Jewish Jihadists” before, just to respond to the media narrative in which any misbehaving Muslim is labeled “Islamic” — Islamic terrorist, Islamic state, Islamic jihadists, Islamic Taliban.

We took a look at the Daily Caller piece. The screenshots of Tharwat’s tweets in the story speak for themselves as outlined here:

Tharwat has repeatedly described the Israeli government as a terrorist organization, including referring to it as “Jewish ISIS.”

“Zionism is terrorism,” Tharwat wrote in one tweet that described Israeli soldiers as the “Jewish Taliban.”

In another tweet, he wrote: “An antisemitic person these days, is not someone who hates the jew, it is someone hated by the jews.”

“Blaming Hamas for Israeli atrocities, is like blaming the Jew for the Holocaust,” Tharwat wrote in a July 2014 tweet.

After the U.S. began bombing ISIS targets in August 2014, Tharwat wrote on Twitter: “Obama should start bombing the Jewish state of Israel.”

‘It’s not antisemitism, it’s anti-Zionism’
But for Tharwat there is no antisemitism in the Muslim world, it’s simply anti-Zionism:

Anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitism. Equating the two is hurtful not just for Muslims/Arabs and Americans but also for lots of fair-minded, peace-loving Jews around the world. As Omar stated in her apology, anti-Semitism is real. But it mostly thrives in Europe and America, not in the Muslim world.

If there was ever an example of using a hatred of Israel to conceal or excuse blatant antisemitism, Ahmed Tharwat is the poster boy. For him, antisemitism doesn’t exist in the Arab and Muslim world, it doesn’t exist in Ilhan Omar’s tweets and it doesn’t exist in his own head.

On all accounts he is utterly wrong and the Minnesota Star Tribune needs to ask how it could give a platform to someone whose lack of credibility is quite stunning.

If this is who Ilhan Omar is relying on to defend her own improprieties, she’s certainly got some very real problems.

Send your letters to the Minnesota Star Tribune either through its dedicated online form – http://www.startribune.com/submit-a-letter-or-commentary/115289839/ – or via direct email – opinion@startribune.com

https://honestreporting.com/ilhan-omar-mission-invite/
Massive spike in anti-Semitic violence in Germany in 2018
10% increase in number of anti-Semitic crimes reported in Germany last year - and 67% increase in violent anti-Semitic attacks.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/258999
AFP and Arutz Sheva Staff, 13/02/19 13:33
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Crime scene Germany (Stock)
Crime scene Germany (Stock)iStock

Anti-Semitic crimes rose almost 10 percent in Germany last year, and violent attacks were up more than 60 percent, crime statistics showed Wednesday.

Police recorded 1,646 offences motivated by hatred against Jews, said a government answer to a request by far-left Die Linke party lawmaker Petra Pau.

Among these were 62 violent offences that left 43 people injured, up from 37 physical attacks the previous year.

Germany, like other western countries, has watched with alarm as anti-Semitic and other racist hate speech and violence have increased in recent years as the political climate has coarsened and grown more polarized.

A mass influx of mostly Muslim refugees and migrants to Germany from 2015 fueled the growth of far-right movements and nationalist parties, including the AfD.

Leading AfD members, aside from railing against Islam and multiculturalism, have also made comments that play down the Holocaust.

Party co-leader Alexander Gauland described Nazi Germany's industrial-scale murder of Jews and other minorities as a mere "speck of bird poo in over 1,000 years of successful German history".

Another leading AfD politician, Bjoern Hoecke, has criticized the sprawling Holocaust memorial in Berlin as a "monument of shame".

The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, and other Jewish community leaders have accused the AfD of fomenting hate against refugees, Muslims and Jews.

At the same time, Germany has also witnessed a rise in anti-Semitic attacks committed by migrants from Arab states.

In one prominent case last year a 19-year-old Syrian man was convicted for assault after lashing out with his belt at an Israeli man wearing a Jewish kippa skullcap while shouting "yahudi", Jew in Arabic.

A video of the street assault, filmed by the victim on his smartphone, had sparked widespread public revulsion as it spread on social media, and triggered street rallies in solidarity with Jews.

News of the belt attack coincided with another public outcry, over a rap duo who made light of Nazi death camp prisoners but went on to win the music industry's sales-based Echo award, which was subsequently axed.

Days after the belt assault, some 2,000 people rallied at a "Berlin Wears Kippa" solidarity demonstration, matched by smaller events in several other German cities.

Most anti-Semitic crimes were however committed by far-right perpetrators, reported the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel in an article on the new crime statistics.

Pau in her statement charged that "we are seeing that militant right-wing extremists can openly call for the desecration of Jewish institutions and attacks against Jewish people".

A rising number of people and groups in the "grey zone between conservatism and right-wing extremism are denying the Holocaust and engaging in anti-Semitic agitation," she said.

The Independent: Enabling UK Antisemitism in the Comments Section
BY SIMON PLOSKER  FEBRUARY 7, 2019
https://honestreporting.com/the-independent-enabling-uk-antisemitism/
Many British media outlets are covering the release of a new report by the Community Security Trust (CST) showing that antisemitic incidents in the UK have reached a new record high.

The Independent chose to focus its attention on the correlation between the one in ten incidents that were “examples of, or related to arguments over, alleged antisemitism in the Labour Party.”

The Independent’s article includes the following:

The CST warned that prevalence of antisemitism in public debate can cause belief that “that the taboo against expressing hostility towards Jews is weakening” adding: “The more people hear and read antisemitic comments and views, the more likely they are to have the confidence to express such views if they hold similar attitudes themselves.”

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn was previously slammed for comments that a group of Zionists had “no sense of irony” despite “having lived in this country for a very long time.”

British Jews (and others) will nonetheless note the irony of The Independent’s choice of quotes from the CST report when they take a look at The Independent’s own comments section. There are clear examples of how that media outlet has allowed antisemitic comments and views to proliferate.

Even The Independent’s very story of the CST report includes comments that raise serious questions.

The utter gall displayed by The Independent in allowing the conversation to become so poisonous while at the same time reporting that the normalization of this discourse has directly led to record levels of antisemitism in the UK is truly sickening.

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Down the sewer: Examples of hateful comments
One example draws on the antisemitic trope of dual loyalty, accusing British MPs of being in the pay of their Israeli masters:

This is just part of a longer and vicious post that essentially blames antisemitism on Jews and Israel. It’s signed by Ramzy Baroud & Romana Rubeo. Baroud happens to be a journalist and the editor of the Palestine Chronicle while Rubeo is that media outlet’s news editor.

A response to the post above shows exactly how the taboo against expressing hostility towards Jews has weakened, as the writer blames Jews for antisemitism, claiming that they are “Fifth Columnists.”

A plethora of examples can be found in an earlier Independent story focused on a meeting of Labour MPs that called the party leadership to account for not adequately tackling antisemitism within its ranks.

Simon Plosker
@SimonPlosker
 If you want to see the sort of filth that @UKLabour has unleashed, just take a look at the comments section of @Independent's report on last night's PLP meeting. @GnasherJew https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-party-antisemitism-mps-jeremy-corbyn-jewish-abuse-a8763171.html …

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7:33 AM - Feb 5, 2019
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Labour MPs criticise party leaders over their response to antisemiti…
The row over antisemitism in the Labour Party has reignited after furious MPs condemned party leaders for their "unacceptable" response to anti-Jewish abuse. During a heated showdown between MPs and

independent.co.uk
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The same “Deanna12” poster also featured in this comments section with a similar charge of dual loyalty:

There are many posters who believe that antisemitism in the Labour Party is simply a “smear campaign.” This one doesn’t even hide his belief that it is the “Jewish lobby” (not the Israel lobby) behind it all:

Of course, it could only be Jews, Israelis or political opponents creating “false flag” operations online:

Or could it be “Netanyahu lovers… trying to interfere with UK politics?”

Let’s be clear – denying there is an antisemitism problem makes one willfully blind and potentially very stupid. It doesn’t necessarily make someone an antisemite.

But indulging in accusations of Jews and Jewish politicians being disloyal to their country or owing their allegiance to Israel is a clear breach of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism:

Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.

The IHRA working definition’s examples are illustrative and it could be argued that the level of hostility generated by some of the online comments does indeed amount to antisemitic discourse.

It’s not about freedom of speech
Even trolls have a right to free speech as, of course, do legitimate critics of Israel and its policies. All too often, Israel’s supporters are accused of acting in bad faith and attempting to shut down the discourse, a charge that usually says a lot more about the agenda of the person making it. Turning those accused of hate speech against Jews into the victims of imaginary Jewish efforts to silence them is simply unacceptable.

No doubt, this critique will be judged by those standards by the same commenters who spend their time denying antisemitism and attacking Jews and Israel.

Not all offensive speech is antisemitic. But hate speech isn’t free speech. Those comments that have clearly breached the IHRA definition should not be left online. As for the rest, The Independent should ask itself whether the sewer is the level of discourse it wishes to see on its comments platforms.

* * *

Does The Independent deliberately cater for an audience of readers who are predisposed to hate or did the newspaper create those conditions? That’s another question. Either way, The Independent, while it certainly isn’t the only culprit, needs to take some responsibility for this distressing situation.