Tag Archives: The Independent

May 6 2013

Robert Fisk convinces himself that Israel has ‘dragged the West into Syrian war’

It seems that the ethically challenged British ‘journalist’ Robert Fisk wanted desperately to impute the worst motives to Israel in analyzing reports of up to a dozen IAF strikes over the last few days on advanced Syrian weapons to prevent their transfer to Hezbollah.  However, the weakness of his latest essay suggests that he may have found the case against Israel’s sober decision not to allow Iranian made Fateh-110 missiles to fall into the hands of the Shiite terror movement allied with Bashar al-Assad was simply too difficult.

File photo of the Iranian made Fateh 110 missile, which Israel reported targeted in raids into Syria over the weekend.

File photo of the Iranian made Fateh 110 missile, which Israel reportedly targeted in raids into Syria over the weekend.

Facts have not served much of an obstacle for Fisk in the past when desiring a particular conclusion to a story, and his May 5 piece in the Indy –  implicitly suggesting that Israel is dragging unwilling, ineffectual Western governments into foreign wars - seems to be no exception.

fisk

He begins by expressing skepticism over the ‘official’ reason for Israel’s reported raid on Bashar al-Assad’s weapons and military facilities:

The story is already familiar: the Israelis wanted to prevent a shipment of Iranian-made Fateh-110 missiles reaching Hezbollah in Lebanon;  they were being sent by the Syrian government. According, at least, to a ‘Western intelligence source’. Anonymous, of course. And it opens the old question: why when the Syrian regime is fighting for its life would it send advanced missiles out of Syria?

Well, for starters, Iran and Hezbollah have both backed President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war, a conflict, now in its third year, which has claimed over 70,000 lives and produced over one million refugees. But as fighting between forces loyal to the Assad regime and the rebels escalates,  Assad has a powerful interest in facilitating the delivery of advanced weapons to Hezbollah in case he loses his grip on power and it becomes more difficult for the regime to channel weapons from Iran directly to Damascus.

Additionally, some analysts have argued that an even more heavily armed Hezbollah could become a powerful ally for Assad if he is forced to leave Damascus and take refuge in the Hezbollah-controlled northern Bekaa Valley.

Later, Fisk gets to the central thesis of his polemic:

Much more important, however, is the salient fact that Israel has now intervened in the Syrian war.  It may say it was only aiming at weapons destined for the Hezbollah – but these were weapons also being used against rebel forces in Syria.  By diminishing the regime’s supply of these weapons, it is therefore helping the rebels overthrow Bashar al-Assad. And since Israel regards itself as a Western nation – best friend and best US military ally in the Middle East, etc, etc – this means that “we” are now involved in the war, directly and from the air. 

Fisk’s specious logic nearly “Fisks” itself, as his entire argument – that Israel has dragged the West into a foreign war – seems largely based on the following argument cum non-sequitur:

1. Israel has attacked arms caches in Syria

2. Israel regards itself as a Western nation.

3. Therefore, Israel has dragged the West into the Syrian war.

The Indy contributor offers nothing else to suggest that Israeli strikes to prevent the transfer of deadly weapons to Syria has any influence whatsoever on the current debate in the US, or within other Western nations, over whether to intervene militarily in the civil war.

Of course, in addition to the speciousness of his logic, Fisk is essentially parroting Assad talking points – which, notably, was also employed in a highly misleading headline chosen by a major UK news corporation - that Israel is acting in alliance with “Islamist terrorists” to overthrow the regime, a charge so unserious that even Guardian Middle East Editor Ian Black dismissed it as “lacking any evidence”.

Finally, Fisk complains thusly:

Let’s see if the US and the EU condemn Israel’s air attacks. I doubt it. Which would mean, if we are silent, that we approve of them.

However, Fisk’s suggestion that the US has been “silent” on the reported attacks is flatly untrue.

President Obama stated, after news of IAF strikes on Syria was first reported, that Israel was justified to guard “against the transfer of advanced weaponry to terror groups like Hezbollah” and suggested that there is considerable US-Israeli coordination regarding the threat of weapons transfers in Syria – a clear expression of support for Israel’s right to self-defense which was also echoed yesterday by UK foreign secretary William Hague.

One of the few places outside of the Syrian propaganda ministry where Israel’s decision to prevent Hezbollah – an Iranian backed illegal militia which occupies large swaths of Lebanon – from acquiring more deadly weaponry represents a ‘dangerous provocation’ which may ignite another Western war in the Mid-East is the mind of Robert Fisk.

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Apr 24 2013

The Indy’s Alistair Dawber whitewashes terrorist crimes of Samer Issawi

An April 23 story in The Independent, written by the paper’s Jerusalem correspondent Alistair Dawber, entitled Palestinian prisoner gives up 250 day hunger strike after deal with Israel, begins with a photo of the joyful parents of the convicted Palestinian terrorist in question, Samer Issawi, celebrating their son’s decision to end his hunger strike.

samer

Dawber begins his story thusly:

One of the most high profile Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel has put an end to a 250-day hunger strike after reaching a deal with the Jewish state that will see him serve another eight months in jail.

Samer Issawi was sustained by vitamins and other supplements throughout his protest during which time he refused regular food and turned down a proposal to exile him. His cause has been taken up enthusiastically by Palestinians, many of whom consider the so-called security prisoners as national heroes. Throughout the West Bank and Gaza, several people have been seen wearing T-shirts emblazoned with Issawi’s face.

Dawber is correct that Palestinians and their political leaders routinely characterize even the most malevolent  terrorists in a manner which would lead some to believe they are civil rights martyrs and not cold-blooded killers – a disturbing dynamic which Palestinian Media Watch demonstrates continually.

In fact, some of the runners in the Palestinian Marathon on April 21 wore Samer Issawi t-shirts.

Palestine Marathon, Bethlehem, West Bank, 21.4.2013

Marathon runner on the left seen wearing Samer Issawi t-shirt

Additionally, the “so-called” security prisoners cum “national heroes” Dawber is referring to are the more than 4,800 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails who have been convicted of serious violent crimes, and include the following:

  • Masterminds who ‘organized’ terror attacks which killed Israelis
  • ‘Specialists’ who prepared the explosives used during such deadly attacks
  • Recruiters of suicide bombers
  • Senior members of terrorist Palestinian organizations

Further in the story, Dawber provides a bit of background on the hunger-striking Palestinian prisoner. 

Issawi, 32, was initially sentenced to 30 years in 2002 for, according to Israel, making pipe bombs during the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising. He was released in 2011 as part of the deal to release the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was freed by Hamas after five years being held in Gaza. Issawi was one of 1,027 Palestinians to be freed as part of the deal.

However, Issawi didn’t merely make pipe bombs.

Per Capt. Eytan Buchman, an IDF spokesman, as reported by CAMERA:

Issawi was convicted of multiple crimes which included five counts of attempted murder. This included four shootings, between July 2001 and February 2002, in which Issawi and his accomplices fired an AK-47 on police cars and buses travelling between Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem. In one attack, a policeman was injured and required surgery. On October 30, 2001, Issawi, together with an accomplice, fired at two students walking from the Hebrew University campus to their car in a nearby parking lot. In another case, Issawi provided guns and explosive devices to a terror squad, which then fired on a bus. Finally, in December 2001, Issawi ordered an attack on security personnel at Hebrew University, providing a terror squad with a pistol and a pipe bomb. Two of the squad members tracked security personnel but didn’t carry out the attack.

Issawi didn’t play merely a ‘supporting role’ in terror attacks, but, rather, was directly responsible for firing an automatic weapon at innocent Israeli civilians with the hope of murdering as many of them as possible – and was responsible for ordering additional lethal attacks on other Israelis.

Remarkably, even an AP story published on April 23 in the Guardian about the end of the Palestinian’s hunger strike included information on Issawi’s attempted murder of Israeli students at Hebrew University – a telling fact, and one which places Alistair Dawber whitewash of the terrorist’s crimes in even clearer context.     

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Apr 17 2013

Indy blogger Matt Hill engages in reckless smear about “forced sterilisation” in Israel

Matt Hill, a blogger for Liberal Conspiracy, published a piece at The Independent on April 16 titled ‘At 65, modern Israel is falling short of Zionism’s most basic goal‘, which ‘defends’ Israel existence, and even lists a few of its achievements over 65 years of statehood, before the inevitable descent into delegitimization and demonization.

First, Hill praises Israel thusly:

The survivors of Russian pogroms, Nazi genocide and Arab expulsions went on to build a state that defeated its enemies time after time.Today Israel’s GDP per head is close to that of the UK, and it has more scientists and engineers as a proportion of its population than any other country.

But, he then begins lecturing the Jewish state with the following psychological analysis:

But as with people who experience early trauma, the instincts Israel developed in order to survive have often proved its undoing. Having had to fight for its life in its early days, it spawned a military which sees violence as the solution to every problem and has spread its tentacles into every corner of the state. Having arrived as landless immigrants scrabbling for every inch of earth, after 1967 Israelis built settlements…on territories belonging to other peoples. And like a victim of abuse who has learnt never to trust anyone, Israel has too often been incapable of reaching out a hand in peace to its neighbours 

It gets worse:

Israel’s story, in brief, might be described as overcoming a horrific infancy to grow rich and successful. But its triumphs have come at a cost. Once full of youthful idealism, today it is cynical, increasingly corrupt, and calloused by hubris. The land of socialist pioneers has become, besides America, the most unequal country in the world. A state established as a home for the homeless now treats immigrants with contempt, as the scandal of its forced sterilisation of Ethiopian women has shown.

The charge that Israel engaged in “forced sterilisation of Ethiopian women” is a gross mischaracterization of a story which has been circulating since December.

As CAMERA’s Israel director Tamar Sternthal argued at the Algemeiner, even the originally deeply flawed report in Haaretz’t didn’t argue that there was “forced sterilisation”.  They claimed that Israeli doctors allegedly coerced ”some Ethiopian women in transit camps en route to Israel to receive ‘long-lasting contraceptive injections’ as a condition for immigrating”.

Sternthal:

The Ha’aretz stories were based on a Dec. 8, 2012 Israeli broadcast called “Vacuum,” with host Gal Gabai. Ignoring information to the contrary, and placing words in the mouths of her [35 Ethiopian] interviewees, Gabai relentlessly pushed her pre-determined and unsubstantiated thesis that the coerced injections of Depo-Provera, a contraception shot which lasts three months, led to a decrease in the birth rate among Ethiopian immigrants in the last decade.

Sternthal further noted that Gabai “ignored other factors aside from alleged coerced injections which contributed to a lower birth rate” such as “declining birth rates…associated with greater affluence and an improvement in the status of women”.

Additionally, added Sternthal, “Depo-Provera is the most popular birth control method in African countries, including Ethiopia [and] many women prefer the shot, a discreet means of birth control, which can be administered without the knowledge of disapproving husbands.”  As another CAMERA report demonstrated, while some Ethiopian women should likely have been given another contraception instead of Depo-Provera, there is no factual basis supporting the claim of a ‘systematic mechanism’.

Further, the Jan. 27 story in the Independent which Hill linked to about the birth control row – which didn’t once use the term “sterilisation” - mischaracterized the response to the controversy by Israel’s Health Ministry.  The Indy’s Alistair Dawber wrote the following:

Israel has admitted for the first time that it has been giving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants birth-control injections, often without their knowledge or consent.

The government had previously denied the practice but the Israeli Health Ministry’s director-general has now ordered gynaecologists to stop administering the drugs.

As CAMERA demonstrated, the letter by the Israel Health Ministry Director General (Prof. Rami Gamzu), “did not address the circulating charges that Ethiopian women were systematically coerced into taking shots against their will”, but simply instructed all gynecologists “not to renew prescriptions “if for any reason there is concern that they might not understand the ramifications of the treatment.”

Also, claims made by the Israeli documentary which propelled the story that “women who immigrated from Ethiopia…say they were told [by doctors at the Joint Distribution Committee, 'JDC'] that they would not be allowed into Israel unless they agreed to be injected with…Depo-Provera”, were flatly denied by Dr. Rick Hodes, JDC’s Medical Director in Ethiopia in an email to Elder of Zion:

Elder:

“So to be clear, you’re saying that you personally never told any woman that she would have to take Depo-Provera shots in order to immigrate to Israel? The women claim that JDC workers from Israel told them they had to do it. Is that claim to the best of your knowledge false?”

Dr. Hodes replied:

To the best of my knowledge, this claim is 100% false.

Neither myself nor my staff have ever told any women in our program that they should take Depo-Provera for any reason. 100% of Depo-Provera shots are purely voluntary, and may be discontinued (or changed to another method) at any time.

In fact, we don’t have JDC workers from Israel come and tell women these things.

As a Haaretz commentary on Jan. 30 by Allison Kaplan Sommer observed, a story of “insensitivity, cultural condescension and yes, perhaps a certain level of racism” was transformed by some in the media “into some kind of villainous genocidal plot of sterilization aimed at ethnic and racial cleansing.” 

As Elder of Ziyon argued, though “some women may have misunderstood the use of the drug or the options they have for birth control”, there was never any plot by Israeli doctors to sterilize Ethiopian women. 

Whilst other publications have engaged in sloppy reporting over the Ethiopian birth control story, Hill’s charge at the Indy leads the pack by engaging in a reckless, hysterical smear that has absolutely no basis in fact.

(Update: Following our communication with The Independent, Hill’s reference to “forced sterilisation” was removed and the the original passage revised.)

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Mar 13 2013

How the British media have covered news regarding Omar Misharawi’s death

newspapers2We recently noted that on March 12 the Guardian’s media blogger Roy Greenslade corrected his erroneous Nov 15 report (a day after the start of the Gaza war) that an Israeli missile killed the 11-month old son of BBC Arabic journalist Jihad Misharawi, Omar, as well as Jihad’s sister-in-law. (Misharawi’s brother also later died of wounds suffered in the blast.)

Greenslade, as with journalists at numerous other news outlets over the past week, noted in his new report that on March 6 the UN issued an advance version of its report on the war which concluded that Misharawi was likely killed by an errant Palestinian missile, not by the IDF. (This information in the report was first discovered by Elder of Ziyon, who also was one of the few bloggers who critically examined initial reports in the MSM blaming Israel for Misharawi’s death.)

Additionally, the Guardian published an AP report on March 12, ‘UN report suggests Palestinian rocket killed baby in Gaza‘, which went into detail about the new information which contradicted the “widely believed story behind an image that became a symbol of what Palestinians said was Israeli aggression.”

Thus far, the Guardian still hasn’t corrected a Nov. 15 report by Paul Owen and Tom McCarthy, ‘Gaza Twitter war intensifies over pictures of infant casualties‘, which included the heartbreaking photo of Misharawi as well as the following text:

Pictures emerged of BBC cameraman Jihad Misharawi’s 11-month-old son Omar, who was killed on Wednesday during an Israeli attack. Misharawi’s sister-in-law also died in the strike on Gaza City, and his brother was seriously injured.

Though the damage done by the now iconic image of Misharawi ’clutching his slain child wrapped in a shroud‘ can not be ameliorated by even the clearest retractions, it’s important nonetheless that the media be held accountable to report new information which comes to light contradicting their previous version of events.

Whilst you can of course find out how the BBC covered the news at our sister site, BBC Watch, here’s a quick round-up of how others in the British media performed:

The Telegraph:

On Nov. 15, they published ‘Baby son of BBC worker killed in Gaza strike‘ which included the photo of Misharawi, and this passage:

Jihad Misharawi, who is employed by BBC Arabic, lost his 11-month-old baby Omar. Mr Misharawi’s brother was also seriously injured when his house was struck in the Israeli operation and his sister-in-law was killed.

 Additionally, a Nov. 15 Telegraph Live Blog post on the Gaza war included this passage:

Jihad Misharawi, who is employed by BBC Arabic, lost his 11-month-old baby Omar. His brother was also seriously injured when his house was struck in the Israeli operation and his sister-in-law was killed.

Corrections:

None.

Daily Mail:

On Nov. 15, they published a sensationalist piece by David Williams titled ‘What did my son do to die like this?’Anguish of BBC journalist as he cradles the body of his baby son who died in Israeli rocket attack on Gaza‘, which included multiple photos of Misharawi with his baby and the following passages:

“Tiny Omar…died after an Israeli airstrike on Hamas militants in Gaza.

Masharawi had arrived at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital after Omar suffered severe burns in an airstrike that sent shrapnel tearing into his home killing a woman and leaving his brother and uncle critically injured.

Corrections:

None.

Spectator:

David Blackburn published a piece titled ‘Israel’s public relations problem‘ which included the image of Misharawi with his baby, as well as the following passage:

The front page of today’s Washington Post shows a picture of the BBC’s Jihad Masharawi holding his dead 11-month-old son, an innocent victim of Israeli action against Hamas’ paramilitary targets following months of indiscriminate rocket attacks against civilians in southern Israel*

Corrections:

The piece has now been updated, per the asterisk, and includes the following at the bottom:

*Since this article was published, a United Nations investigation has found that the incident described by the Washington Post was caused by the shortfall of a rocket fired by Palestinian militants at targets in Israel.

The Sun

On Nov. 15 The Sun published ‘The Innocents: Beeb journalist’s son dead, another hurt..babies hit as Gaza war looms‘, by Nick Parker, which included a photo of Misharawi and his baby, and this passage:

Omar was one of at least 15 Palestinians killed in air strikes as Israel retaliated over the Hamas missiles.

Corrections:

None.

The Independent:

On Nov. 15 The Independent published a piece by Amol Rojan titled ’11-month-old son of BBC picture editor is killed in Gaza air strike‘.  The relevant passages in the report are a bit vague, and only suggest causation, but the title alone, informing readers that Omar was killed by an airstrike, clearly implies Israel was to blame.

Corrections:

The Indy has published two corrections: One by Alistair Dawber on March 12 titled ‘UN clears Israel and says errant Hamas rocket probably killed baby in Gaza‘, and a second shorter piece on the same day titled ‘Hamas rocket killed baby in Gaza’.

The Times:

On Nov. 15 The Times published ‘Israelis turn on officials after three die in Hamas strike’, by Sheera Frenkel (behind paywall). Here is the relevant passage:

One of the Palestinian dead was Ahmed Masharawi, the 11-month-old baby son of Jihad Masharawi, a picture editor for the BBC’s Arabic Service. An Israeli missile hit the family’s home in Gaza City, and Ahmed was pronounced dead in Shifa Hospital

On Nov. 16 The Times published ‘Tel Aviv within reach of Hamas rockets’, by Sheera Frenkel, (behind paywall).  Here are the relevant passages.

Meanwhile Israeli tanks, drones, Apache helicopters, warplanes and gunboats were firing into the densely populated Palestinian territory where so far 13 Palestinians, including seven militants and two children, are confirmed to have died and more than 100 to have been injured.

One of the Palestinian dead was Ahmed Masharawi, the 11-month-old baby son of Jihad Masharawi, a picture editor for the BBC’s Arabic Service. An Israeli missile hit the family’s home in Gaza City, and Ahmed was pronounced dead in Shifa Hospital

Corrections:

None.

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Nov 4 2012

Indy report on ‘apartheid’ poll illustrated with photo showing Palestinian kids seemingly behind bars

On June 27, Honest Reporting revealed The Independent‘s use of the following photo to illustrate a particularly critical story on the Israeli treatment of Palestinian child detainees.

HR noted that the photo above represented an example that featured in their Shattered Lens study on photo bias, in this case “the use of bars to portray Palestinians as “prisoners” of Israeli occupation and brutality.”

HR wrote:

“[The photo from 2010 was] one example of how wire agency photographers resort to using camera angles and staging techniques to present a distorted picture of a given situation. In the example above, it is clear that the photographer used this technique to project an image of Gazan children imprisoned. However, the sequence of photos taken from the same scene at the time illustrates how the effect was achieved.”


“What we see above is a tiny group of Palestinian children arriving at what appears to be a pre-planned photo-op outside the Gaza industrial area presumably organized by Hamas. The photographer either willingly colludes with Hamas or is used.Next, the children have been positioned behind a gate to give the effect of a prison.”

“However, using a great deal of skill to get the right position with the right lens from the right angle, the photographer manages to create an impression of many more than the several children in the actual shot.”

This photo fraud came to mind when reading a more recent Indy report, ‘The new Israeli apartheid: poll reveals widespread Jewish support for policy of discrimination against Arab minority‘, by Catrina Stewart regarding the poll about alleged Israeli ‘apartheid’ written by Gideon Levy at Haaretz.  

Stewart’s story on the widely discredited story by Levy – which elicited a retraction from Haaretz – was not the most egregious example of misleading coverage of the poll, though it did, nonetheless, convey the false impression that Israelis support ‘apartheid-like’ policies against Arabs.  The Indy report also severely downplayed results which demonstrated that a large majority of Israelis don’t, in fact, support denying the vote to Palestinians.

However, the photo they used to illustrate the story indicates that the Indy learned nothing from their previous use of misleading imagery.

 

(The photo has no caption.)

Palestinian children are seemingly behind bars yet again, superbly illustrating the Indy’s desired narrative of oppressed Arabs.

However, upon doing a bit of research, it turns out that the photo was taken in Gaza, and the children are looking at the body of a Palestinian terrorist (killed after IDF forces retaliated against rocket attacks near Beit Lahiya) through the window of a hospital morgue on Oct. 22.

Here’s the photo and caption at Yahoo.

While the image selected by Indy editors has little, if anything, to do with the story it purports to illustrate, the broader truth is that the Palestinian children appearing in the photo are indeed prisoners – held captive to a life of backwardness, religious extremism, violence and racism by the very Palestinians they’re seen peering at.

Now, there’s a narrative you’d likely never see advanced in the Indy or Guardian. 

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Jul 5 2012

On Refugees and Racism: A Double Standard Against Israel

Cross posted by CAMERA

Recent press attention has focused on the repatriation of illegal African migrants from Israel. Reuters, the Associated Press, AFP, and UPI have disseminated stories. The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Financial Times, ABC, CNN, CBC, BBC and others have added their own reports.

None of this coverage has been complete. None has explained the context and difficult challenges facing Israel as a result of large-scale illegal immigration, particularly by non-Jews. Most of the media have depicted Israel as “rounding up,” “cracking down on,” “detaining,” “deporting,” “expelling,” and treating the migrants “like animals.”

But few media reports have been more offensive than a post on the blog of the reflexively anti-Israel British newspaper, The Independent. In his article, “Note to refugees from South Sudan: Israel is for the white man,” Richard Sudan tars Israel as openly racist and fascist, saying:

The continual persecution of the Palestinians, politically and ideologically, the military court system, and now the emerging negative view of non-white people should outline clearly what the overriding Israeli government consensus is. The superior race theory is one that we’ve seen in the past, and is the hallmark of theories centered on a perspective viewed through the prism of eugenics. Those theories are dangerous and they need to be relegated to the past-along with Zionism.

Richard Sudan ignores that Israel, alone among the nations, went out of its way to take in as free citizens black Africans — Ethiopian Jews airlifted in the 1980s and ’90s. In his efforts to falsely cast Israel as a racist state, he inadvertently betrays his own bias and either ignorance or dishonesty. He argues that Eritreans, South Sudanese, Ivorians and especially Palestinians have the right to be in Israel yet, according to his reasoning, only the Jews do not.

Whether overt, like Richard Sudan’s blog post, or more subtle, media coverage has framed Israel’s repatriation of illegal migrants incompletely, inaccurately and unfairly.

A Washington Post blog on the subject was peppered with words like “deportation” and “expulsion,”using the more apt term “repatriation” only once. And Isabel Kershner couldn’t resist a Holocaust reference in her New York Times article:

But the government clampdown is also ripping at Israel’s soul. For some, the connotations of roundups and the prospect of mass detentions cut too close to the bone.

“I feel I am in a movie in Germany, circa 1933 or 1936,” said Orly Feldheim, 46, a daughter of Holocaust survivors, as she doled out food last week to a long line of immigrants…

Does Feldheim mean to imply that those she’s assisting are in danger of being sent to Israeli death camps? By relaying this quote, does Kershner seek to conjure this idea? Inclusion of such misguided hyperbole distorts the news report.

International Law

There are an estimated 45,000-60,000 people currently living in Israel illegally, mostly from Eritrea and South Sudan. Some of them would be considered refugees by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR):

The 1951 Refugee Convention establishing UNHCR spells out that a refugee is someone who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.”

Many others would not be considered refugees, but instead migrants:

Migrants, especially economic migrants, choose to move in order to improve the future prospects of themselves and their families. Refugees have to move if they are to save their lives or preserve their freedom.

Only refugees have protected status under international law and the preferred outcome for them is to be repatriated. According to the UNHCR Handbook for Repatriation and Reintegration Activities, “The UN General Assembly (GA) has repeatedly affirmed UNHCR’s function of promoting/facilitating the voluntary repatriation of refugees.”

So, when Israel undertakes a program to voluntarily repatriate several hundred South Sudanese refugees, it is absolutely legal. Repatriation is exactly the course taken in the case of Liberian refugees being repatriated from Gambia, Angolan refugees being repatriated from Namibia, Angolan refugees being repatriated from Zambia, Congolese refugees being repatriated from Burundi,Ivorian refugees being repatriated from Liberia, and the refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo being repatriated from the Republic of Congo.

In all of the above cases U.N. member countries,through the UNHCR, funded in large part by the United States, pick up the tab. But in Israel’s case, the people of Israel are paying — adult migrants reportedly received $1,300 each and children $650 each. In the non-Israeli cases, repatriated refugees received much less, only a few hundred dollars each.

However, the main thing that differentiates the repatriation of refugees from other countries from the repatriation of refugees from Israel is that there’s no outrage about it. Only Israel is singled out for widespread coverage, much of it tilted to the negative by repeated omissions.

The History

The press has overlooked Israeli history, ignoring Operation Moses, Operation Joshua and Operation Solomon; herculean efforts by the government of Israel to bring Ethiopian Jews, black Ethiopian Jews, to Israel. In a recent article in The Jerusalem Post, journalist Ayanawo Fareda Sanbatu, who came to Israel in Operation Solomon wrote:

The relationship began with Menachem Begin’s note to the Mossad, “bring me the Ethiopian Jews,” and it was translated into action as Israel sent operators into enemy lands to help the Ethiopian Jews. In the middle of the night many Jews left their villages and, without maps but only faith to guide us, we walked through the hills and deserts of Ethiopia and Sudan to freedom. This helped unite us with the living Zion.

Never before had black Africans been taken from Africa, not from freedom to slavery but from slavery to freedom. No other nation has ever done that. Only Israel.

 

The media also ignores the history of the Vietnamese “Boat People.” After the United States retreated from South Vietnam and North Vietnamese communists took over, hundreds of thousands fled to escape persecution and oppression. Many took to small, rickety boats, braving the weather and the threat of pirates. Countless thousands perished.

On June 10, 1977, an Israeli cargo ship en route to Japan crossed paths with a boat carrying 66 Vietnamese refugees. Their SOS signals had been ignored by passing East German, Norwegian, Japanese, and Panamanian boats. The Israeli captain and crew offered food and water and brought the passengers aboard. Neither Hong Kong, then ruled by Great Britain, nor Taiwan would accept the refugees so the Israeli ship transported them to Israel where Prime Minister Menachem Begin authorized their Israeli citizenship. Between 1977 and 1979, Israel welcomed over three hundred Vietnamese refugees.

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Dec 15 2010

Jody McIntyre, professional anti-Israel activist, takes center stage

My thanks to Jonathan Hoffman for reminding me that Jody McIntyre is still very much in the thick of the hard left set in the UK.   When I was last following McIntyre, he was dumped from his gig as official blogger for a journal called Ctrl.Alt.Shift – the “hip” youth publication of Christian Aid.

Apparently, even the viscerally anti-Israel NGO, Christian Aid, couldn’t defend McIntyre’s ugly invectives against the Jewish state when it was exposed by The JC (as well as my essay in, believe it or not, Comment is Free).

The post at the heart of the controversy – published on International Holocaust Remembrance Day – was titled “[Shimon] Peres: War Criminal and Proud”.  In addition to the vitriolic commentary in his essay, the post included photos juxtaposing images of Jewish victims of Nazi genocide with photos of dead Palestinians, to advance the abhorrent impression of a moral equivalence between Israel and Nazi Germany.  (Christian Aid subsequently apologized and removed all of McIntyre’s posts from their site.)

The latest row involves McIntyre’s encounter with police while participating in the recent London riots, inspired by student tuition hikes.  I think the pure adolescent nature of the violent protests was best summed up by the blog, Mere Rhetoric, which noted that UK students seem to believe that “stuff costs money” is a concept invented by mean adults trying to harsh their mellow.

McIntyre (who Hoffman noted, has been at several of the boycott demonstrations at Ahava, the Israeli cosmetics shop in London), though something of a professional all-purpose activist, specializes in the anti-Israel variety.  Indeed, the passages cited during his stint with Christian Aid only touches the surface of his bile.

If you puruse his blog, called “Life on Wheels”, you’ll find him defending Hezbollah, frequently accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and apartheid, and labeling the entire nation a “racist state.”  In short, he has all the ingredients necessary to be a regular contributor to CiF.

Alas, it looks like the Guardian was scooped this time.  His blog at The Independent launched today.

Oct 14 2010

Source for a Goose

‘Just Journalism’ has an interesting post which engages in comparative analysis of Harriet Sherwood’s CiF article of October 11th on the subject of accusations against Israel regarding the shooting of Palestinian children in the Gaza buffer zone and an article on the same subject, published the next day, by the Independent .  Despite the fact that even the Indy’s best friends could hardly describe it as a pro-Israel newspaper, as ‘Just Journalism’ rightly points out, their journalist – in sharp contrast to Sherwood – managed to provide some context and background for the story.

Not merely content with presenting a story devoid of context, Sherwood’s article relies heavily upon one prime source – the NGO ‘Defence for Children International’ , specifically its ‘Palestine Section’.  A less ideologically motivated reporter than Sherwood might have considered it worth taking the time to investigate that NGO a little before relying so heavily upon its reports for her information. Had she done so, one of the first things she would have noticed is that ‘Defence for Children International’ appears to have little or no interest in Israeli children affected by the conflict. She may also have noticed that incidents involving Palestinian  children  and Israelis appear to interest this organization far more than the fact that some of these children do not appear to be able to exercise their right to education, the fact that they are subject to horrific incitement from a very early age, or the issue of the employment of ‘child soldiers’ or ‘child activists’ by various terrorist groups, which as anyone who knows the region well is aware, is a very serious problem which often endangers children’s lives and wellbeing.

Israeli soldiers who served in Judea & Samaria during the second Intifada tell of Palestinian snipers who would fire from street corners and then send small children to collect their bullet casings for future melting down and recycling. In such a situation, a soldier seeing a head appear round a corner from which he was fired upon moments earlier can easily mistake a child for a legitimate target. A former commander of an Israeli guard post on the Gaza border shortly after the disengagement once told me of an incident in which a youth of around 14 years of age approached their position despite his repeated calls in Arabic for the boy to go back and warning shots in the air. The commander had to decide whether to shoot at the boy or risk the lives of his soldiers in a possible suicide bombing. He chose the latter course of action, and discovered that the boy was unarmed and suffered from Down’s Syndrome. He had been deliberately sent by terrorists to approach the Israeli position in order to test the reactions of the Israeli soldiers and learn their procedures.

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Sep 26 2010

Gideon Levy’s reductionist vision of Israel

This was published at Just Journalism


Today’s interview with Gideon Levy by Johann Hari in The Independent is a perfect example of how criticism of Israel can be distorted abroad to fit the preconceptions of the foreign media. Levy’s narrow focus on the ills of his country matches perfectly with Hari’s blinkered perspective, and is therefore presented as the only valid viewpoint – the ‘truth’ about Israel.

‘Is Gideon Levy the most hated man in Israel or just the most heroic?’ asks the headline of the interview. Over the course of the five and a half thousand word article, Hari argues that he is the former, stands a good chance of being the latter and, of course, that Levy’s supposed pariah status is the result of his staunch bravery in the face of adversity.

Gideon Levy is an editor and columnist at Ha’aretz, a liberal Israeli daily newspaper. According to Hari, Levy has done ‘something very simple, and something that almost no other Israeli has done. Nearly every week for three decades, he has travelled to the Occupied Territories and described what he sees, plainly and without propaganda.’ Taken literally, this is probably true – after all, only a very small percentage of Israelis at any one time are columnists at a national newspaper, and the amount of them that have been reporting for thirty years on the trot would be smaller still.

This, however, is not what Hari means. He seeks to suggest that Levy’s concern for Palestinians, and his objections to the occupation of their land, marks him out from his fellow Israelis, who are characterised as violent and racist. According to Hari, Levy ‘patiently [documents] his country’s crimes, and [tries] to call his people back to a righteous path.’ While Levy offers Palestinians empathy, ‘so many others offer only bullets and bombs.’

But it’s not just that Israeli’s don’t care about these issues – they are, in the myopic portrayal of Israel that is conjured up in the interview, actively trying to prevent Levy from speaking out as well. Many people, according to Hari, want Levy ‘silenced’, and if the ‘attempt to deride, suppress or deny his words’ is successful, then ‘Israel itself is lost.’

Read rest of the essay, here