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Newsroom at Al-Jazeera in Doha, Qatar

Yesterday I said that Israel needs a world-class satellite channel. Apparently Egyptians can do this. Why can’t Israel?

A group of prominent clerics has announced the launch of a new satellite channel in Egypt that will promote the face of what it calls moderate Islam, in order to counter the “distortion of Islam into a violent, intolerant force.”

The non-governmental channel, Al-Azhari, is the brainchild of clerics associated with Al-Azhar University, considered the highest authority of religious teachings in Sunni Islam…

The 24-hour entertainment and education channel is expected to be launched during the month of Ramadan, which begins this year in mid-August…

The channel will feature cartoons for children, Islamic soap operas, lectures and call-in shows, which will all carry messages of tolerance and moderation. It will initially broadcast in Arabic and English, with a view to later expanding to programs that will include Hindi and Turkish…

An official at the channel said that, “In the Age of Obama, we realized it was time to look at new ways to deliver our message,” according to a promotional statement.– Jerusalem Post [my emphasis]

Although the opportunity to make jokes about “Islamic soap operas” (“All my Wives”, “The Bold and the Burka-clad”) is great, I will forgo it and instead point out that we too have a message to deliver. And the way to deliver it is in an “entertainment and educational”  format, in English and Arabic.

Gavin Gross recently described an Iranian news channel:

“Press TV” is an Iranian government-backed, 24-hour English language satellite TV news channel headquartered in Teheran. Launched globally nine months ago, it now airs on 10 different satellite systems and is endeavouring to be added to Britain’s Sky satellite package. The channel can also be watched “live” online from anywhere in the world. According to its Web site, regular programs include “Iran,” covering life in the Islamic Republic; “Middle East Today,” focusing on news from the region; “American Dream,” billed as a “warts-and-all picture of life in the USA”; and “Minbar,” a weekly Q&A on Islam “fielding questions about all aspects of the world’s fastest growing religion.”

Press TV claims that over 70% of the Web site’s hits are from the United States, and the station has just hired Andrew Gilligan, an influential British journalist, former BBC correspondent and columnist for London’s Evening Standard newspaper.

The Israel Broadcasting Authority does have a satellite channel aimed at the Middle East, Channel Three. But the programming is not inspired: three days a week it carries live broadcasts of Knesset debates — not exactly what I had in mind. Probably the government is not the best choice to do this job.

In November 2006, in response to the launch of Al-Jazeera English, Isi Liebler called for a Jewish satellite channel:

The creation of a global TV channel promoting a Jewish viewpoint must now assume the highest priority. The need for such a vehicle is not merely to provide a more balanced viewpoint on Israeli and Jewish issues. An equally important requirement is to ensure that Jewish youngsters are provided with an alternative to the anti-Israel offensives that now saturate European and Western media…

We spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually on numerous Jewish agencies and bodies whose primary objective is to protect Jewish rights, promote the case for Israel, and combat anti-Semitism. Yet many of these organizations are ineffective, overlap and compete with one another rather than pooling their resources to overcome the common threat.

Of course, this was pre-Madoff, but still…

During the Gaza War Al-Jazeera’s continuous bloody ‘coverage’ inflamed Muslim — and not just Muslim — sentiment against Israel around the world. Part of the reason the operation terminated early was worldwide outrage, based on news outlets reporting Hamas atrocity stories as fact.

Even during ‘peacetime’, if there is such a concept for Israelis, the continuous rain of anti-Israel content has a cumulative corrosive effect.

It’s time to take this seriously.

Technorati Tags: Israel, satellite channels

In an otherwise unexceptional editorial bashing Prime Minister Netanyahu for ‘resisting’ the two-state solution, the NY Times has managed to produce the single stupidest sentence about the Mideast since “Moses, life was better in Egypt”.

Here it is:

We have seen how former President George W. Bush’s delay in engaging seriously on Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts sabotaged United States interests in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran by giving Al Qaeda and other extremists a rallying point for anti-Americanism.

I was not a great fan of Mr. Bush’s policy during the last few years of his administration, although for different reasons than those of the Times’ editorial writer, but the suggestion that his sluggishness in forcing Israel to give up strategic land to a Palestinian Authority (PA) complicit in terrorism and ripe to be taken over by Hamas is somehow a cause of the advance of the jihadists in Afghanistan, etc. is more than ludicrous. But Bush is always an easy target.

As if the US was making clear progress in winning hearts and minds among the Taliban, the Iranian Mullahs and Osama bin Laden’s crowd when suddenly this progress was sabotaged! As if the Taliban and friends had nothing to rally the troops with, no anti-American phrases to stir up the ‘street’ until Bush infuriated them by his delay. And now look where we are, all because we didn’t throw Israel overboard quickly enough.

Let me remind you that during the period that Bush was ‘delaying’, Hezbollah and Hamas killed hundreds of Israelis and provoked two wars, while Hamas demonstrated exactly what Israel could expect if she vacated the West Bank as she did Gaza. PA negotiators were insisting on a total withdrawal to pre-1967 boundaries, including all of East Jerusalem, and a right of return for millions of ‘refugees’. And nobody was agreeing to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

One might describe the situation by saying that it was (and is) the Palestinians who resist ‘serious engagement’  for peace.

By perversely blaming Iranian expansionism, radical Islamic aggression and hatred of the West on Israel’s resistance to dismemberment, the Times joins the worst of the cynical Israel-haters. It’s surprising that they have not (as yet) followed the lead of Hamas and others in blaming Israel for AIDS and Swine Flu as well.

Technorati Tags: NY Times, Israel

Barry Rubin has written a remarkable, detailed analysis of just what is wrong with The Cartoon. I urge you to think about it: it’s more than just antisemitism or anti-Zionism.

I haven’t reproduced the cartoon here — I’d prefer not to look at it any more — but there’s a link in Prof. Rubin’s article below.

Keep this in mind: many Jews and Zionists are really, really angry at Pat Oliphant and the NY Times. But Oliphant and the publisher of the Times will not have to go into hiding, there will not be violent demonstrations, and nobody will hold up a sign saying “Behead those who insult Judaism”.

The Cartoon: the problem is stupidity, not hatred

By Barry Rubin

It is silly to say that the Pat Oliphant Cartoon in the New York Times and many newspapers around the world is antisemitic.  But it’s also a bad mistake because the cartoon deserves serious analysis to show just how dangerous and wrong it is, in ways that not only hurt Israel but all Western democracies.

Click here to see the cartoon.

Let’s deconstruct the cartoon to show the basic ideas that underlie it and that make it lie.

1. To begin with, it is not a very good cartoon and bears a striking resemblance to anti-Israel propaganda cartoons in its crudity and one-sidedness.  Aesthetic decline has accompanied political crudeness. It doesn’t just say: these people are wrong but these people are 100 percent evil and hateful. The next step is, of course, they deserve to die and their state deserves to be wiped off the map. Is that what Oliphant thinks? Who cares? That’s what he said.
2. On the left is a huge figure.  On the right is a small figure. The implication that need not be spoken here is that the big figure—the powerful side—must be wrong. Oliphant like many or most Western intellectuals, academics, and policymakers, still don’t understand the concept of asymmetric warfare. In this, a weaker side wages war on a stronger side using techniques it thinks can make it win. What are these techniques? Terrorism, indifference to the sacrifice of its people, indifference to material losses, refusal to compromise, extending the war for ever.   This is precisely the technique of Hamas: let’s continue attacking Israel in order to provoke it to hit us, let’s target Israeli civilians, let’s seek a total victory based on genocide, let’s use our own civilians as human shields, and with such methods we will win. One way we will win is to demonize those who defend themselves, to put them in positions where they have a choice between surrender and looking bad. This cartoon is a victory for Hamas. But it is also a victory for all those who would fight the West and other democracies (India, for example) using these methods. Remember September 11?
3. The big figure has no head, and hence is not a human being. Israelis are not human. Moreover the headless figure is irrational. We are to believe that Israel attacked Gaza for no reason. Forget about thousands of rockets, hundreds of mortar shells, and scores of cross-border attacks. The tiny figure on the right is no threat. So there is no reason to attack it. Attacking is immoral and irrational. The same could—and has—been said about al-Qaida, Hizballah, Pakistani terrorists striking at Mumbai, etc.
4. Dehumanization: The figure on the left is a monster, a robot.  Monsters and robots deserve no sympathy; they have no right to self-defense. If tomorrow an Israeli child or civilian is killed in a terrorist attack, how can one have sympathy for these people since they are not people?
5. Goosestep: The leg is raised In a Nazi goosestep; the shoe is a jackboot. Thus, Israel is a Nazi power. But why is it a Nazi power? Because it isn’t human and just attacks women and children for no reason at all. And what happens then? Since Israel is said to be Nazi, any sympathy for 2000 years of Jewish suffering—including Arab terrorist attacks—is thus erased.  Incidentally, this is all being done when there is still no proof (not even weak proof) for a single Israeli soldier having committed a single atrocity. Where, then, is the rationality here?
6. Sword: Ironically, the sword is the weapon used by Islamists to behead people. Why a sword? Because it is a primitive weapon for a primitive people. The hand which is very hairy—again the ape, dehumanized image—holds the sword at a 45 degree angle reminiscent of a Nazi salute. See point 5 above.
7. The Magen David is Israel’s symbol. Therefore, despite the fact that it is also a general Jewish symbol, it is not antisemitic to use it. Of course, the context matters, too. But that is not what is most important in this cartoon. Still, the author could have labeled the monster “Israel.”  Note, however, that “magen” means shield, and the name of Israel’s army is the Israel Defense Forces. In Gaza, they were acting in a defensive manner but that of course escapes much of the media coverage and things said about the war. What strikes me as most bizarre about the usage of this symbol is that it is being wheeled forward, as if Israel seeks to install itself in the Gaza Strip. But Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, openly stating that it wanted peace. The symbolism is to make the action purely offensive, an aggressive war to annex territory, which of course is untrue
8. The shark is to me the most offensive part of the cartoon because it shows that the cartoonist has lost any sense of his tradition. Aren’t all the other elements enough to show his theme? The “over-kill” puts it into the category of Arab propaganda cartoons. It says: Israel is innately aggressive, that the whole state of Israel is permanently aggressive and exists for no other reason. If the cartoonist had shown Israel doing mean things to helpless Palestinians, the suggestion is that the Gaza War is a terrible thing. The way this cartoon is done it suggests that Israel’s existence is a terrible thing.
9. Palestinians are portrayed as only women and children. There are no fighters. Was there no army in Gaza, no 20,000 Hamas men under arms? Did Israel attack a defenseless area?  Again if the cartoonist wanted to portray Israel carelessly attacking into a civilian area, the implication would be that it used excessive force or insufficient care. I would disagree but the extremism of the cartoons suggestion, and its falseness, exceeds the usual bounds of Western rationality.
10. The evil Israel is heading right toward the Palestinians and they are running in fear. Here is an accurate way to describe the war: After Hamas unilaterally announced it was cancelling the ceasefire, it launched even more rockets and mortars at Israel than it did during the “normal” ceasefire.  Their range was increasing and the lives of one million Israelis became impossible. Hamas leaders openly bragged that Israel was afraid to fight back and they would keep escalating. Israel then attacked, the Hamas forces retreated into the middle of highly populated civilian areas. After some fighting, where civilians were used by Hamas as human shields, Israel had no intention of going into the most densely populated neighborhoods. It thus ended the war, and withdrew.  Hamas then came out of hiding and bragged that it had won a great victory. The fantasy Israel created by Oliphant and others would have continued the war, wiped out Hamas, and retaken the Gaza Strip. In military terms, Israel could have done this with minimal casualties for its own side. Far from proving anti-Israel claims, the history of the Gaza War proved the opposite.

This is, then, a loathsome cartoon. But to dismiss it by the single word “antisemitism” will foreclose thought as to why it is a loathsome cartoon. It will allow its defenders to avoid facing the real problems with this cartoon and the worldview it represents.

Finally, this cartoon represents the mentality that will plague every Western and democratic state in the coming years. Imagine the exact same cartoon but with the Magen David replaced by the Stars and Stripes—the evil America attacking the Taliban or al-Qaida, or Iraq, or Muslims in general.  Indeed, this is the kind of cartoon which has appeared aimed against America or the West in general. It is part of the merging of much Western fashionable intellectual and cultural thinking with that of extremist Third World, and especially radical Islamist, propaganda.

The cartoonist doesn’t hate Jews; he probably doesn’t even hate Israelis. What is involved here is a lack of understanding so enormous that it will incite hatred, cause violence and death, and block policies needed to help people—including Palestinians who, are supposedly the object of its sympathy but thus doomed to suffer under a repressive regime with a permanent war policy.

Antisemitism? Ask not for whom the bell tolls because Israel,  the canary in the mine—the one who first they came for—can tell you that you are all next.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA and other GLORIA Center publications or to order books, visit http://www.gloriacenter.org, or write to Barry Rubin at profbarryrubin@yahoo.com.

Technorati Tags: antisemitism, cartoon, NY Times, Pat Oliphant, Israel, Gaza