FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

In the previous post I talked about the ‘training’ young children receive from Hamas TV programs.

But even the so-called ‘moderate’ Fatah faction, which operates the official Palestinian Authority TV station, presents children’s programs which glorify death and martyrdom as a goal for children. For example, here’s one in which Mohammed Al-Dura calls on children to follow him. Palestinian Media Watch has many more examples.

Palestinian radio, TV, movies, music, schoolbooks, art, theater, sermons — every imaginable medium — contains hatred, exhortations to violence, historical revisionism, lies and accusations against Israel, and so forth. It is all brought to bear on children (and adults) for one purpose: to guarantee that there will be an unending supply of soldiers motivated by sheer hate, and that there will never be room in Palestinian hearts for peace or reconciliation.

Technorati Tags: Palestinians

Dion Nissenbaum is the McClatchy news bureau chief in Jerusalem. He has a blog, called “Checkpoint Jerusalem“. Most newsmen try to be more or less objective, but it’s not too hard to see where his sympathies lie.

For example, he presents the release of kidnapped BBC reporter Alan Johnston as a humanitarian act by Hamas, rather than a cynical attempt to exploit the situation. And he doesn’t mention the ransom.

He doesn’t attempt to hide his dislike of the Israelis. Almost every article describes some horrific situation, and hints that it’s Israel’s fault:

The footage doesn’t show what was going on around Imad [Ghanem of Hamas TV] when he was first shot, but it clearly shows the cameraman being shot twice while laying injured on the ground and appearing to pose no danger.

It’s not clear who fired the shots, though Imad later said that the bullets came from an Israeli tank.

“The Israeli military’s repeated attacks on media and journalists during military operations are unacceptable and constitute violations of international humanitarian law,” said Reporters Without Borders.

But the best is either a Freudian typo or a deliberate bit of editorializing. Here’s Nissenbaum on Fourth of July celebrations held by American representatives in Israel:

There are essentially two events: One that caters to the Israeli side, held near Tel Aviv, and one that caters to the Palestinian side, held in Jerusalem.

The Independence Day celebration in Israel was held on July 3rd and hosted by U.S. Ambassador Richard Jones…

The Independence Day celebration in Jerusalem was hosted by Consul General Jacob Walles and was a much more low-key affair.

So we have one in Israel and one in Jerusalem. And Jerusalem is where?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Nissenbaum, McClatchy

The LA Times has published a false, tendentious, and hateful article by Moussa Abu-Marzouk of Hamas on its op-ed page.

Writing from Damascus, Abu Marzouk lies about history, lies about Israel’s actions, and lies about her intentions. He compares the Hamas charter’s poisonous antisemitism to the US constitution’s counting slaves as partial persons — but Hamas has passed no 14th amendment.

Abu Marzouk believes that murder of Israeli civilians inside the 1967 borders constitutes ‘resistance to occupation’. There can be no peace between Israel and the Palestinians in Marzouk’s view, unless Israel vanishes:

One of Hamas’s founding principals is that it does not recognize Israel. We [participated in] the elections and the people voted for us based on this platform. Therefore, the question of recognizing Israel is definitely not on the table unless it withdraws from ALL the Palestinian lands, not only to the 1967 borders. –Moussa Abu Marzouk, tr. by MEMRI

Abu Marzouk’s speech is hate speech. It is incitement to murder. Nevertheless, a newspaper in the US can legally print almost anything.

However, we don’t have to read that newspaper, on paper or on the Internet. We don’t have to link to articles on that newspaper’s website. And we don’t have to buy advertising in it.

I call on everyone who is opposed to murder and terrorism to say NO to the Hamas mouthpiece, the Los Angeles Times.

Update [11 July 0810 PDT]: Email the LA Times and tell them that they are giving a platform to murderers.

Update [11 July 0927 PDT]: Read HonestReporting’s response to Marzouk’s lies here.

Technorati Tags: LA Times, Abu Marzouk, Abu Marzook, Hamas

A couple of weeks after publishing an op-ed by Hamas spokesperson Ahmed Yousef, the New York Times continues to present Hamas in the best possible light. In an article today, Isabel Kershner and Taghreed El-Khodary seem disappointed that

Hamas’s role in securing the release of Alan Johnston, the kidnapped BBC correspondent, was not enough to warrant any immediate change in policy toward it, Western and Israeli officials said today.

While Hamas, the more radical of the two main Palestinian factions, presented the release as proof of its ability to restore order in Gaza now that it is solely in control there, Western and Israeli officials said it would not translate into international recognition and support for the group — which the United States, Israel and the European Union still classify as a terrorist organization and formally boycott…

Nevertheless, Hamas has undoubtedly improved its image and gained some measure of respectability with Mr. Johnston’s release.

What actually happened was that Hamas, finding the time ripe, made some kind of deal with the criminal Dagmush clan and the related “Army of Islam” group (which may or may not be one and the same), and produced a typical Pallywood movie sequence, surrounding the Dagmush compound where Johnston has been held, and ‘forcing’ his release.

Johnston, a BBC journalist quite friendly to the Palestinian cause, was held for almost four months in what apparently started as a ransom scheme — the BBC having very deep pockets. If the BBC did pay for his release, they are of course not saying. But Hamas expertly orchestrated the release of Johnston, who was taken to a photo-op with Hamas leader Ismail Haniya before finally being allowed out of Gaza.

The Times also implies that Hamas has had success in bringing ’security’ to Gaza:

“I feel extremely secure,” said Mona Bseiso, 43, a lawyer who works for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza City, and whose husband works for the intelligence service. “We are Fatah,” she said, but since Hamas took over, ”there is no theft, no crime and there are no bullets.”

Of course she is comparing the situation today to the nasty little civil war immediately preceding the Hamas takeover, in which Hamas guerrillas roamed the streets and settled scores, crippling and killing opponents, especially those associated with Fatah.

The piece ends with a filler, perhaps intending to contrast the clean, honest, secure atmosphere in Hamastan with a corrupt Israel:

In Israel, the parliament approved a cabinet reshuffle of ministers from Prime Minister Olmert’s Kadima party. Haim Ramon will serve as vice premier in place of Shimon Peres, who was elected to the largely ceremonial post of president; and the former interior minister, Ronnie Bar-On, will serve as minister of finance, replacing Abraham Hirchson, who resigned because he is under criminal investigation, accused of embezzlement in a previous position.

Mr. Ramon had previously resigned as justice minister, and recently performed 120 hours of community service after he was convicted of forcibly kissing a female soldier. [my emphasis]

Technorati Tags: Hamas, Israel, Johnston, NY Times

As I wrote in the previous post, terrorism lives in a symbiotic relationship with the media. Terrorism works by creating fear (or some other more complicated emotion) in the target population — either the enemy of the terrorist or some other group that the terrorists want to influence — and then the target population acts in response to the emotions generated.

One example is the way the Madrid train bombing in March 2004 may have swung the immediately following general election against the Partido Popular of José María Aznar, which lost power as a result (either of the bombing itself , the PP’s handling of the affair, or both).

The broadcast Monday of the Gilad Schalit audiotape and the Alan Johnston videotape on Web sites linked to Islamic terror groups, and the impact the broadcasts have on the national agenda as their images beam around the world, attest to the fact that modern terrorists have adopted the mass media as their weapon of choice, say top Israeli media experts.

“The better the show is, the higher the ratings are. The higher the ratings, the more people receive the terrorists’ message,” said Eviathar Ben-Zedeff, a research fellow at the International Institute for Counter Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, on Monday…

“The terrorists wish to influence three sectors: the enemy public, in this case Israelis; the wider international audience; and lastly, their own domestic audience. They want to cause fear among the enemy public, to make the international community understand that they constitute a crucial side in reaching an agreement and to receive money and support from their domestic constituents. These manipulations of the media are targeted to reach political success at the lowest cost. And it works.” — Jerusalem Post

Tuesday, Ahmed Yousef, author of the New York Times op-ed I wrote about in the previous post, actually called Noam Shalit, the father of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, during an on-camera interview with an Israeli TV station!

Can you imagine receiving a call from Eichmann to discuss your son’s health at Auschwitz? The combination of cruelty and real-time exploitation of terror to activate emotional forces among a population — in this case, the Israeli public, who Yousef hopes will pressure its government to release more prisoners, and more dangerous ones, in return for Shalit — is unprecedented.

Technorati Tags: terrorism, media, Israel, Hamas

By Vic Rosenthal

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one — A. J. Liebling, journalist.

The New York Times owns several. And so do the Washington Post, Sacramento Bee, and other newspapers, which they used to print an op-ed by Ahmed Yousef, an advisor to Gaza Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh last week.

Big media organizations have an arrogance that comes with power. Presses (and tv/radio transmitters too) are expensive, and they dole out access according to their priorities.

My local newspaper will publish a maximum of one letter a month from me, not to exceed 200 words (assuming that they find it interesting and not objectionable). Hey, it’s their press.

But those who own large numbers of big presses also have responsibilities beyond their bottom lines.

When the spokesman for an organization with an explicitly antisemitic charter, a charter that explicitly calls for another genocide against the Jewish people, writes an op-ed calling for the destruction of a legitimate state, should his voice be amplified by the ‘responsible’ media?

Yes, he calls for the destruction of a legitimate state. Yousef writes:

Yet it remains that Hamas has a world in common with Fatah and other parties, and they all share the same goals — the end of occupation; the release of political prisoners; the right of return for all Palestinians; and freedom to be a nation equal among nations, secure in its own borders and at peace. For more than 60 years, Palestinians have resisted walls and checkpoints intended to divide them. Now they must resist the poisonous inducements to fight one another and resume a unified front against the occupation. — (no link, I own this press) [my emphasis]

If the Hamas covenant were not clear enough, it’s obvious from this that to Hamas the ‘occupation’ is not just the occupation of the territories captured in 1967, nor even the ‘occupation’ marked by the establishment of the state of Israel — it is the presence of Jews in what they consider their land, Muslim-only land.

Terrorism lives in a symbiotic relationship with the media. Groups like Hamas feed on media coverage. Giving them a voice is aiding and abetting them.

Thank you, New York Times, Washington Post, Sacramento Bee, and so forth. Sleep well.

Technorati Tags: Hamas, Ahmed Yousef, New York Times, Washington Post, Sacramento Bee

Where’s Dan Parkinson when The Beeb needs him?

The BBC apologized this week for referring to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and promised not to repeat “the mistake,” following a complaint by four British organizations.

Arab Media Watch, Muslim Public Affairs Committee, Friends of Al-Aksa and the Institute of Islamic Political Thought sent a joint complaint to the BBC after a presenter on its Football Focus program on March 24 mentioned that Jerusalem was Israel’s capital and “historic soul.”

In a letter to the complaining NGOs, Fraser Steel, head of editorial complaints at the BBC, said: “We of course accept that the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and that the BBC should not describe it as such…”

[Israeli] Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said in response: “Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. It is the right of every sovereign state to determine which city will be its capital. If this is not accepted by everyone today, I am confident it will be in the future.”

London-based Arab Media Watch told The Jerusalem Post: “Under international law, neither east nor west Jerusalem is considered Israel’s capital. Tel Aviv is recognized as Israel’s capital, pending a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.” — Jerusalem Post

I’m not a lawyer, but this is impossible. West Jerusalem, where the Knesset is located, has been in Israeli hands since 1948. Before that, it was controlled by the British, and prior to that, the Turks. Possibly Arab Media Watch thinks that ‘International law’ means ‘any old UN resolution’.

Indeed, the US recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, despite the fact that the State Department is afraid to allow its embassy to be moved there.

Technorati Tags: BBC, Israel, Jerusalem

A Mighty Heart, directed by Michael Winterbottom, starring Angelina Jolie, Dan Futterman, Archie Panjabi. Based on the book “A Mighty Heart: the Brave Life and Death of my Husband Danny Pearl”, by Mariane Pearl and Sarah Crichton.

When I heard that a PR firm was distributing passes to a pre-release screening of a film about Daniel Pearl, I thought: this is the last film I want to see. Free or not. Angelina Jolie or not.

As you probably know, Pearl was the Jewish Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped in Pakistan in 2002 by al-Qaeda linked jihadists and beheaded shortly thereafter.

I was afraid of two things when I sat down in the theater. One was that the film would show Pearl’s murder, or even dwell on his captivity. I’ve forced myself to watch enough Jihadist footage to last several lifetimes; I don’t need any more.

The other was that it would have a sappy ‘message’ about the ambiguity of good and evil. Or even one about how we are all somehow responsible for terrorism.

But none of this happened. The film focused on Mariane Pearl, Daniel’s wife, during the month between his kidnapping and the appearance of the videotape of his murder. It didn’t editorialize, exaggerate, introduce irrelevant subplots, invent snappy dialog, have a “love interest” (except of course Mariane and Danny) or include gratuitous violence or sex. The bloodiest scene showed the birth of their son Adam, three months after Danny’s death.

The film simply and sparely portrayed Mariane’s experiences and her feelings, the efforts to trace the kidnappers and find Danny, the ups and downs of false hopes and the final, terrible loss.

Jolie’s acting, the Pakistani street scenes, and the lack of clichés give the film an authenticity so often lacking in Hollywood products.

Is it a good film? Yes. Just don’t plan to do anything for a couple of hours afterwards.

Technorati Tags: Movies, A Mighty Heart, Daniel Pearl

In April, the largest union of British Journalists voted to boycott Israeli goods. At that time BBC reporter Alan Johnston had been a prisoner in Gaza for about a month, and he’s still not out.

Yesterday, the Islamic Jihad organization showed its appreciation of continued support for the Palestinian cause by most of the world news media by using a jeep camouflaged to look like a press vehicle in order to attempt to carry out an attack (probably another kidnapping) against an Israeli position.

Here is my message for journalists and others who support the Palestinian and other jihadist causes:

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other such groups, in addition to being murderous terrorists, do not respect concepts like access to information, a free press, or indeed a free anything. Any part of the world that they inhabit becomes a kind of hell permeated by thuggery and intolerance. They cynically manipulate and take advantage of democratic and enlightened traditions in places like Israel to try to destroy them.

So when you ‘tell the story’ of the poor, persecuted Palestinians (whose terrorist militias are supported by the jihadist oil superpowers of Saudi Arabia and Iran), keep in mind that you might end up kidnapped like the unfortunate Johnston, or as the unintended target of an Israeli tank.

And keep in mind that Europe and North America are next.

Technorati Tags: Jihad, Journalists, Israel, Palestinians

The BBC, missing no chance to blacken the name of Israel, has published a report speculating that the 1976 Entebbe hijacking was in part perpetrated by — are we surprised? — Israel.

BBC reporter Dan Parkinson wrote,

An unnamed contact told a British diplomat in Paris that the Israeli Secret Service, the Shin Beit [sic], and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) collaborated to seize the plane.

There you are, positive proof. An unnamed contact told a diplomat named D. H. Colvin that they did it in order to “torpedo the PLO’s standing in France and to prevent what they see as a growing rapprochement between the PLO and the Americans”.

Now I want to get this on the record: last week my brother-in-law was told by an unnamed source that he saw Dan Parkinson having sexual intercourse with a sheep.

Go ahead, Parkinson, I want to hear you deny it.

Technorati Tags: BBC, lying whores, Entebbe, Israel

A recent article in the Fresno Bee entitled “Let’s talk: Islamic cultural center opens its doors to create more dialogue with other members of the community” highlights some of the activities of the Islamic Cultural Center of Fresno (ICCF) which are “designed to create better understanding between Muslims and other religious or ethnic groups”.

The article mentions a talk given by the evangelical Rev. Jim Franklin of the Cornerstone Church and a visit from Bishop John T. Steinbock of the Catholic diocese of Fresno. It continues, “The events feature guest speakers or panel members addressing a topic, followed by discussion. The center does not allow political debate” [my emphasis].

One event at the ICCF that the reporter did not mention were a lecture on April 13, 2007 by Michael Hubbart on the topic “The occupation: is it apartheid?”

Since I wasn’t able to attend, I don’t know what his answer was. However, we can get a clue from a similar talk he gave in March at the First Mennonite Church in Reedley:

Speaker: Michael Hubbart. Topic: The West Bank — It Sure Looks Like Apartheid to Me. In October Mike did a brief training with International Solidarity Movement and then worked with internationals at Birzeit University, at nonviolent demonstrations against the building of the wall at Bil’in and with the Tel Rumeida Project in Hebron.

Nope, no politics allowed. Or maybe politics is permitted as long as there isn’t any “debate”?

Another contribution of the ICCF to better understanding was to sponsor a series of events featuring the parents of Rachel Corrie, who spoke at the ICCF and several other venues in September of 2006.

The ICCF is certainly well within their rights in our free society to aggressively present their pro-Palestinian point of view.

But nobody should pretend that there’s anything non-political about it.

Technorati Tags: Fresno, Islamic Cultural Center, Fresno Bee

On the 6 PM (Pacific time) newscast today, here is how NPR described events in Gaza:

Despite promises to observe a cease-fire, fighting broke out today between Palestinian factions in the Gaza strip. Palestinian security officials say the fighting killed at least 16 people. They said fighters from the ruling Hamas movement shot and killed 6 guards belonging to the rival Fatah party. Hamas gunmen also mistakenly killed 5 of their own fighters in an apparent friendly fire incident. Israel fired missiles at Hamas positions in Gaza, saying the attack was in response to Hamas rockets fired into Israeli territory. — NPR (transcribed from streaming audio, no link available)

Ignoring errors (fighting didn’t ‘break out’ today, it’s been underway for some time), was NPR unaware that about 50 Palestinian rockets were fired into Sderot in the last 24 hours, causing numerous injuries and resulting in the evacuation of hundreds of residents? Shouldn’t they have mentioned this?

The report gives the impression that Israel just attacked for the hell of it, ’saying’ that it was in response to Hamas’ rockets. Of course I understand that the conscientious journalists of NPR don’t really know the motivation of the Israelis, so they have to depend on what they say – but honestly NPR, is it a mystery that Israel would want to stop the Hamas rocket barrage?

I’ve discussed NPR’s subtle and not-so-subtle pro-Palestinian bias before. The next time your local Public Radio station asks for your donation, tell them ‘no’, and explain exactly why.

Technorati Tags: NPR, Gaza, Israel