The media fiddles while Israel burns - by Sean Durns

The press is failing to provide readers with coverage of a developing and dangerous situation in a country that is frequently the subject of disproportionate, and sometimes trivial, news coverage.

Sean Durns..
JNS.org/CAMERA..
09 September '20..

For weeks while communities in Israel burned, many major U.S. news outlets kept silent. Hamas, the U.S.-designated terror group that rules the Gaza Strip, has been intermittently launching firebombs into the south of Israel for years. Yet Hamas’s terrorism by fire was largely ignored during the summer of 2020.

By repeatedly launching incendiary devices into Israel, Hamas and other Gaza-based terror groups have violated numerous ceasefires. The damage has been extensive.

According to an Aug. 28 press release by Jewish National Fund-USA, almost “600 fires caused by incendiary and explosive-laden balloons sent by terrorists in the Gaza Strip have plagued Israel’s Gaza Envelope region over the past 19 days as thousands of acres have been destroyed.” On Aug. 23 alone, more than 28 fires were started by devices launched from Gaza. Nor is it merely balloons; as the Times of Israel reported “rockets have also been fired on multiple occasions at Israeli cities and towns, including over a dozen projectiles” on Aug. 20.

JNF-USA has helped to combat the fires by investing in firetrucks and firewagons. The threat to many communities in Israel’s south has been so pervasive that JNF-USA has helped develop “new, often fortified playgrounds, schools, parks and other amenity-enhancing projects.” Keith Isaacson, the head of security for Israel’s Eshkol region, lamented: “You can see that the forests are suffering. The wildlife is suffering. Instead of green behind our houses, we have black.”

As Ynet news previously reported, in February 2020 explosives-laden balloons landed in a preschool in the southern Israeli Kibbutz Sa’ad. More recently, others have landed near playgrounds. On several occasions, terrorists have attached the balloons with Disney characters—a tactic meant to entice unsuspecting children.

Israel, meanwhile, has responded with targeted strikes aimed at the terror network and its infrastructure.

Terrorist groups targeting children with balloon bombs and causing massive ecological damage is certainly newsworthy. Yet many major Western news outlets have completely ignored the story.

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Question: As Racial Tensions Boil Over, Are Car Rammings In Israel Covered Differently? - by Gidon Ben Zvi

Car ramming is no longer a distant Israeli story. Today, people around the world are increasingly being exposed to this brand of terrorism. They deserve to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Ignoring, glossing over, or misrepresenting car ramming attacks in Israel makes it difficult for people in other democratic societies to get a proper perspective as to the severity and scope of the problem.

Gidon Ben Zvi..
Honest Reporting..
20 July '20..

Over the past months, as renewed anti-police violence protests have spread across the US, dozens of drivers have accelerated into the crowds. Vehicle rammings first gained popularity in the United States as a violent anti-protest tactic during the early waves of Black Lives Matter street-blocking protests in 2015. In Europe as well, terror-ramming attacks have increased over the last five years. And since 2015, there have been over 80 vehicular ramming attacks in Israel.

But if the amount of vehicular attacks being perpetrated around the world is increasing, why are rammings that take place in Israel either not covered by the international media, or grossly misrepresented?

Car rammings: A growing first-world problem

Most other types of terrorist attacks occur in conflict zones in the developing world. However, most vehicle ramming attacks occur in developed countries. Europe and the United States account for more than half of the recent attacks. But it was Israel that was the canary in the coal mine. Ramming attacks did not become a terrorist tactic until the 1990s, when Palestinians started carrying out vehicular assaults in Israel.

According to counter-terrorism expert Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, terrorists began using vehicles as weapons in Israel partly because, “the security barrier is fairly effective, which makes it hard to get bombs into the country.” By 2016, vehicle ramming attacks had evolved from a statistically rare event to become the second most-common form of terror attack in Israel and the second-deadliest form of attack carried out by Palestinian assailants.

As for individual countries, Israel and the Palestinian Territories lead with 41 attacks, followed by the United States with 39 attacks, China with 28, France with 14, and the United Kingdom with 10.

Vehicular attacks in Israel: Wherefore art thou media?

Even though the international press is well aware of the car ramming phenomenon, and has reported on it extensively, it tends to go MIA when it comes to coverage of vehicular attacks inside Israel. In this case, a lack of reporting is as much of a breach in journalistic ethics as biased coverage. By choosing to report certain events over others, or withholding key details, the media controls access to information. When news organizations neglect to report on a car ramming in Israel, it’s engaging in a subtle yet highly effective form of media bias, selective omission.

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Surprise! Sky News Headline Skews Facts About Attempted Car Ramming - by Gidon Ben-Zvi

This isn’t just a bad headline, it’s a serious lapse of journalistic standards. Sky News readers deserve much better than this.

Gidon Ben-Zvi..
Honest Reporting..
25 June '20..

On Wednesday, a Palestinian Arab driver drove into soldiers at an Israeli checkpoint tower near Jerusalem. In response, Israeli Border Police on the scene opened fire and killed the driver.

Palestinian officials charged Israel with cold-blooded murder. According to them, the suspect, a nephew of senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat, was simply rushing to pick up his sister and mother ahead of a family wedding later Tuesday evening.

However, security footage released by the Border Police, showing the vehicle turning sharply and speeding up abruptly when close to the soldiers, leaves little doubt as to the nature of the incident.

This is the headline from Sky News:

Horrendous headline on this article by @Stone_SkyNews.

Why is the emphasis on the response to this attack, rather than the attack itself? The man drove his car into soldiers, throwing one of them into the air. That's far more important, @SkyNews. pic.twitter.com/awe9UhAGcy

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) June 25, 2020

From the headline, you wouldn’t have known that Israeli soldiers were the target of a terrorist attack. Instead, Sky News buries that lead. Readers are told only that the border guards opened fire on and killed a relative of a top PLO official, with no justification mentioned.

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In a NY Times Op-Ed the Pandemic is a Pretext to Attack Israel and Deny Terrorism - by Gilead Ini

It’s one thing for the author to use the coronavirus in the service of anti-Israel activism. That’s his prerogative — though editors might be expected to balk at such cynical treatment of the crisis. But to inform readers that the curfew was arbitrary, that only Palestinians were under threat, and that normal life continued elsewhere is to show an egregious disregard for the truth.

Gilead Ini..
Camera..
24 March '20..

Is it “normal” for elderly Holocaust survivors to be murdered while celebrating Passover? That’s what today’s Op-Ed in the New York Times appears to suggest.

The piece, by anti-Israel activist Raja Shehadeh, uses the coronavirus scare as a pretext to attack the Jewish state. The hook is that American cities are ordering people to stay at home to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The pitch is that cruel Israelis ordered Palestinians to remain indoors for no reason at all. Shehadeh strains to squeeze anti-Israel talking points into his ostensible lesson about the coronavirus. Or is it the other way around? “Unlike the Israeli guns that posed an equal threat to anyone moving outside of their homes without permission, the virus discriminates by age.” He writes of Israel’s “strangulating roadblocks.”

And for what? Apparently nothing. In what is the piece’s most disingenuous and offensive passage, Shehadeh writes,

In 2002, when my neighbors and I had our movement severely restricted by an Israeli military siege, I tried my best to continue living as normally as I could. It was springtime then, as it is now. I would look out the window and lament my inability to venture out to the lush hills all around covered with wildflowers. But the danger lurking outside my house back then was readily recognizable: armed soldiers enforcing the stay-at-home orders. Only Palestinians were under threat. While we suffered, normal life continued elsewhere, indifferent to what we were enduring.

It is a flagrant distortion of history — a stark example of terrorism denial — to claim that, in 2002, “only Palestinians were under threat” while “normal life” continued in Israel. That year was the single deadliest in history for Israelis in terms of terrorism deaths, as a campaign of Palestinian suicide bombings targeted Jewish civilians. Life was turned upside-down for Israelis, many of whom wouldn’t dare enter a restaurant or city bus. The curfews imposed on parts of the West Bank, which the Op-Ed focuses on, was the direct result of a Palestinian terror campaign, which the Op-Ed dishonesty ignores, and which claimed over 400 Israeli lives that year alone.

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Surprise? UK’s 'The Independent', Gives Platform to Terror-Supporting Amnesty Official - by Emanuel Miller

In what world does calling for a violent uprising of murderous violence, of glorifying plane hijackers and senior terrorists who advocate suicide bombing attacks, without appearing to recant, make a person a suitable candidate for a ‘human rights organization’?

Emanuel Miller..
Honest Reporting..
29 December '19..

There’s no doubt that life for many Palestinians is hard. However, their situation is a complex one that has arisen as a result of years of bloody violence directed against Israelis. Put briefly, their situation is a consequence, not simply a cause. That’s why pieces focusing on Palestinian suffering without any mention of Israel’s legitimate security needs are misleading and misinform readers.

Regular readers of these pages are no doubt aware of the UK’s The Independent, a media outlet which regularly exhibits an anti-Israel bent. But one such piece, entitled, “My friend was banned from travelling to visit his dying mother. This is the personal, intimate price of occupation” — which tells the sad story of how one man was not allowed to see his mother before she died in an Israeli hospital — runs significantly deeper than readers may realize.

The writer of this piece is identified thus: “Saleh Hijazi is deputy regional director for Amnesty Middle East and North Africa.”

That’s one way of describing Hijazi. Here’s another: A terror-glorifying, war-crime-supporting anti-Israel activist in the clothing of a human rights worker.

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Like to guess what BBC audiences learned from a Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader interview? - by Hadar Sela

So who provided their audiences with the better view of the violent ideology of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and hence more context to Israel’s actions? Was it one of the world’s biggest and most influential news organisations with its dedicated Arabic language department and one of the most frequented websites in Europe or was it a relatively new, Cairo based and Abu Dhabi funded Arabic language TV station?

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
18 November '19..

On November 12th the BBC News website published a filmed report titled “Israel-Gaza violence: Rockets and air strikes follow militant death” on its ‘Middle East’ page.

In that film BBC audiences saw an interview (apparently filmed during the funeral proceedings for Baha Abu al Ata) with senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Khader Habib in which he made the following statements:

“We are on fire and angry and that should be translated into action. These actions have started this morning after the crime was committed. Rockets were fired towards Tel Aviv, and Islamic Jihad, with all the resistance groups, will continue targeting all the occupation’s safe places.”

The BBC promoted those statements to its worldwide audiences ‘as is’, making no effort to qualify the use of the term “crime” to describe the killing of a terrorist responsible for attacks on civilians or to clarify what Habib actually meant by ‘the occupation’ (seeing as Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip over 14 years ago) or precisely what “the resistance” is supposedly resisting.

Like the rest of the BBC’s coverage of this story (see ‘related articles’ below), this report too failed to provide audiences with any background information about the aims and ideology of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, even while quoting its leaders.

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Surprise? NY Times Scrubs "Terror" from Islamic Jihad Story - by Gilead Ini

The New York Times doesn't have a policy to avoid using the word "terrorist." So why did it scrub that word from coverage of Israel's strike on senior Islamic Jihad leader Baha Abu Al Ata?

Gilead Ini..
CAMERA..
12 November '19..

Abu Bakr al Baghdadi was a “terrorist” who led a “terrorist group” that committed “acts of terror” before ultimately losing his life during a U.S. “counterterrorism action,” the New York Times reported in numerous stories following the ISIS leader’s death in late October.

Those are all accurate, precise terms to describe the head of an organization that is clearly guilty of targeting civilians with violence for political aims.

But now, two weeks later, when Israel’s military killed senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Baha Abu al-Ata, the T-word is nowhere to be found in the New York Times report about the incident. More puzzling is that the first versions of the article, published in the early morning hours of November 12 after the terrorist was killed, did accurately note Islamic Jihad’s terror designation — but that information was later scrubbed from the story.

Why?

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Agence France Presse Covers Up Gaza Border Infiltration - by Tamar Sternthal

CAMERA calls on AFP to amend the captions to make clear that Shahin was reportedly attempting to cross the border when he was fatally injured.

Tamar Sternthal..
CAMERA..
27 October '19..

Multiple Agence France Presse photo captions last week concealed that Palestinian Imad Shahin was attempting to cross the Gaza Strip border into Israel when Israeli troops fatally shot him. According to the inaccurate APF captions, Imad Shahin, 17, of Gaza “reportedly died of his injuries sustained during a protest on the Gaza border fence last year.” Shahin did not die during a “protest,” but as he reportedly attempted to infiltrate into Israel. According to B’Tselem, an organization highly critical of Israeli actions in the region:

‘Imad Khalil Ibrahim Shahin

17 years old, resident of a-Nuseirat Camp, Deir al-Balah District, injured on 03 Nov 2018 in al-Maghazi R.C, Deir al-Balah District, by live ammunition, and died on 04 Nov 2018. Did not participate in hostilities. Additional information: Shot and wounded by soldiers when trying to breach the fence with an axe together with two friends, one of whom was also carrying an axe. The other was wounded by shrapnel. Evacuated to a hospital in Israel where he died of his wounds.

The Palestine News Network acknowledges that Shahin was fatally injured “after he crossed the separation fence east of the central province for a few meters.” On Nov. 4, the Maan News Agency reported:

One Palestinian was shot and critically injured, on late Saturday, after he allegedly crossed the security border fence with Israel along the borders of the besieged Gaza Strip.

The Israeli army issued a statement in which it confirmed that a Palestinian was shot and injured after crossing the security border fence with Israel.

A sampling of the inaccurate captions follows.

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On thwarted justice, bearded women and Haaretz - by Arnold Roth

...And a lot more importantly, given its unexamined implications, Haaretz in all its various Hebrew, English, online, on-paper editions entirely ignores, just as do many other mainstream news outlets do, the much larger and weightier matter of Jordan's mendaciousness in purporting to fight terror while keeping one of its highest profile practitioners safe, well and protected in the bosom of the Hashemite Kingdom and its law courts.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
05 September '19..

We have devoted several years and considerable effort to generating awareness of the almost unfathomable evil of a Jordanian woman, Ahlam Tamimi.

Tamimi is a high-profile fugitive from the FBI with a $5 million reward on her head from the US State Department. She freely admits for the record and in public that she played a key role in the August 9, 2001 bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem. She has boasted of how she deliberately targeted and succeeded in massacring the Jewish children inside and on the street. One of them was our fifteen year old daughter Malki.

Recently, in her (since-shut-down) Instagram account, Tamimi called this Hamas attack "my operation":

Instagram shut down this account, which was Tamimi's, a few days

after it appeared in August 2019

She is protected by the Kingdom of Jordan which, in cynical breach of its 1995 extradition treaty with the United States, has refused since 2013 to hand her over to the US authorities for prosecution on terrorism charges. It continues to give her safe haven. But her hitherto-frequent travel in and around the Arab world, a key part of her evolution as a pan-Arab celebrity, has come to a halt as a result of an Interpol Red Notice.

What's more, for the nearly five years between early 2012 and mid 2016, it provided her with the freedom and means to have a television program of her own, "Breezes of the Free", which she recorded in Amman, Jordan every week  for a global TV and Internet audience.

The purpose of the show was to encourage support for Arab-on-Israeli terrorism, to celebrate and honor the terrorists and to provide a two-way channel for communication between terrorists imprisoned in Israel and their families. It's important to keep in mind that the privilege of engaging in years of incitement to extreme violence given to a confessed mass murderer comes against a background where Jordan has one of the most tightly controlled and un-free media regimes in the world. Had Jordan wanted, Tamimi - along with her Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood sponsors - could never have gotten these hideous "Breezes" off the ground.

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Barring the Truth About Israel at The Washington Post - by Sean Durns

Put simply: two members of Congress planned a trip sponsored by an NGO that traffics in antisemitism, which had — as its basis — the denial of Israel’s right to exist, and which included meeting a group with terror links. And yet, The Washington Post, as well as other outlets like Politico, The Hill, and USA Today, couldn’t be troubled to report the full story.

Sean Durns..
Algemeiner..
16 August '19..

You can tell a lot about a news outlet by what it chooses to cover — and even more by what it chooses to ignore. The Washington Post’s reporting on Israel is a case in point.

Take, for example, the murder of Dvir Sorek. The 18-year-old Israeli yeshiva student was found stabbed to death on August 8, outside of the community of Migal Oz. Sorek’s murder — and the subsequent manhunt and arrest of two Palestinian suspects, one of them a Hamas activist — attracted widespread coverage from major US news outlets, including The New York Times.

The Washington Post’s Jerusalem bureau, however, declined to file any reports on the terrorist attack, much less highlight the footage of Palestinians celebrating the murder by launching fireworks during Sorek’s funeral. Instead, the newspaper contented itself with reprinting Associated Press (AP) briefs on the murder, the majority of which appeared only online.

As the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) highlighted recently, The Post has a habit of under-reporting terrorist attacks and minimizing the antisemitic rhetoric and actions of Palestinian leadership.

Indeed, when The Jerusalem Post reported on July 11, 2019, that the PA was doubling the monthly payments to the terrorist responsible for masterminding the murders of three Israeli teenagers, The Washington Post was nowhere to be found.

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The writer is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.