A SPECIAL PLACE IN HELL

Haaretz columnist Bradley Burston has this advice for the Westerner who 'understands' the terrorist:

Spare us the explanations.

Spare us the learned, sociology-drenched justifications.

Spare us the reasons why you "get" Palestinians when they gun Jews down in cold blood.

Spare us the chapter and verse on how the plight of the Palestinians is at the root of Islamic terrorism the world over, and if the Palestinians were to receive full justice, Islamic terrorism would pass from the world.

Spare us.

You may well believe, with the blind faith of the hopeful and the fear-stricken, that when these people are through with the Jews, they won't come for you.

Think again.

There's more especially for those who think they know the meaning of the word "evil" - read the entire article on the above link.

EVIL

Ha'aretz reports that armed Arab terrorists today entered a Jerusalem school resulting in eight dead and nine wounded - Eight killed in terrorist attack at Jerusalem yeshiva.

And after the killing?

"In Gaza, Hamas welcomed the terrorist attack. 'We bless the [Jerusalem] operation. It will not be the last,' Hamas said in a statement.

"In Gaza City, residents went out into the streets and fired rifles in celebration in the air after hearing news of the attack on the yeshiva."

Evil. Sheer, evil.

POSTSCRIPT: The UN Security Council failed to reach an agreement on issuing an official condemnation over the deadly shooting attack in Jerusalem's Mercaz Harav Yeshiva because of Libyan opposition - more evil.

DOUBLE TALK

A Reuters photograph showing Palestinains celebrating the mass murder of Jews in Jerusalem.

Aid groups including Oxfam, Amnesty International, Save the Children and Care International UK have prepared a report on the dire humanitarian situation facing the people in Gaza. According to a report by Tim Butcher in today's Age (Gaza's ordeal 'its worst in 40 years'), the groups say that the crisis is "man made, completely avoidable, and with the necessary political will, can be reversed." I agree with them on this point. I disagree strongly with them on the identity of the man who "made" the crisis.

This bevy of aid groups is so bigoted against the Israelis that they simply can't see the forest for the rest of the greenery, most of which was removed from Gaza by the Palestinians after they left in 2005. At the time, the infrastructure set up by the Israelis maintained 21 Jewish settlements and its greenhouses and not only sustained 9,000 settlers but employed 50,000 Palestinians. This was all destroyed by the locals in the days and weeks after Israel left the area; much of it was dismantled and taken away to be sold by scavengers for scrap. Not a single Jew was left but Oxfam, Amnesty International, Save the Children and Care International UK are ignoring the facts on the ground and taking a highly political and warped stance in accepting the fiction of a continuing Israeli occupation.

The reality is and must be that the "man made" part of the equation lies largely in the hands of those who control Gaza. Butcher identifies them in his article; Hamas which he says "runs Gaza" but which flies in the face of international obligations made by the Palestinians to disarm terrorists.

Yet, in spite of all that, a director of Amnesty International UK, Kate Allen has the effrontery to describe Israel as "the occupying power in Gaza" and to heap obligations upon it which rightfully belong to Palestinian rulers of Gaza. Her double talk is particularly galling because she knows as does the rest of the world, that all it takes to end this crisis is for Hamas to issue the order for the various terrorist militias (including its own armed wing) to stop attacking civilian targets with missile fire into neighbouring Israeli towns.

To compound the situation, the aid groups' report lies about the humanitarian assistance being provided by the Israelis by simply ignoring it and turning its head away about the attacks on convoys by Palestinians at the crossings when bringing such aid into Gaza.

The aid groups are critical of Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza into Israel but they don't appear to care too much about the human rights of those who live under these attacks. Writing in today's Herald Sun, Alan Howe fills the void created by much of the mainstream media's reporting on this situation in Code word for hate.

It is becoming fashionable to suggest that the crisis could be solved by Israel and Hamas talking to each other and working out a lasting ceasefire. I have some misgivings about how such a strategy might work (see the final sentence from this sympathetic Reuters puff piece on a Hamas fighter), but wonder why these aid groups don't intercede on behalf of the poor, suffering Gazans and suggest to Hamas that they alleviate their plight by simply stopping the missile fire into Israel's populated areas.

Instead, they issue a report that heaps most of the blame on the Jewish State and hands Hamas a propaganda victory and a free pass to continue using its own people as pawns to further the cause of destroying Israel. In doing so, these groups have forfeited the right to claim they are working in the cause of humanity.

HYPOCRISY EXPOSED

Last week I followed up on a story about an AM report from David Hardaker on claims by Palestinian drug workers that a major reason for the increase in use by Palestinians is that Israeli authorities are turning a blind eye to the trafficking of drugs. It was alleged in the report an effort was being made to destroy the fabric of Palestinian life and this involved a plot to force Arabs to sell their land Jews as part of a fantastic conspiracy theory. A listener lodged a complaint and, after being jerked around for a time remarkably close to the mandatory time limit for a response, he received an apology of sorts from the ABC's internal watchdog. The response was set out in this article from Israellycool and it revealed inaccuracies had taken place in the broadcast which breached the standards outlined in the ABC's Code of Practice and Editorial Policies (despite earlier claims that a 90-page document coming from the Palestinian equivalent of the Bureau of Statistics supported the claims made in the report).

Among the points made were the following:-

3. You raise concerns that no facts were provided to support the statement from Hosni Shahin that “Some of them try to sell their houses to the Jews in their own city”. Please note that the reporter has advised ACA that the transcription is not accurate, it should read: “Some of them try to sell their houses to the Jews in the old city”. For the purposes of review against our editorial guidelines, I should explain that this statement is not considered factual content; it is an opinion or view put forward by an interviewee. Opinions put forward by story participants are not required to be factually accurate, or be supported by factual content.

Rather, as outlined in 3.5 of the Code, ABC editorial standards require the presentation of principal relevant viewpoints on matters of importance. ACA is satisfied that the views of Hosni Shahin were relevant for inclusion in the story and do not, in themselves, constitute a breach of ABC editorial guidelines. However, as acknowledged, the inclusion of such views requires a clear counter to the claims made, and the omission of a substantive Israeli viewpoint constitutes a breach of the Code.

and

5. As stated above, ACA is satisfied that the views of Hosni Shahin were relevant for inclusion in a report looking at drug use in the Palestinian community. The opinion expressed by Hosni Shahin that; ”… So the occupation, if he can keeps the youth calming down all thetime, the occupation will be, avoid a lot of problems, they will avoid it.” …” was given some context by the preceding statement by David Hardaker, who explained: “Israeli authorities have flatly denied using drugs as a tool of occupation. Drug workers on the ground can’t prove it, but they are convinced that the inaction of Israeli police is deliberate and that it’s aimed at pacifying angry young Palestinians.”.

However, as stated above, the inclusion of such allegations required that the Israeli position be explained more prominently in the report.

So in effect, reporters on the ABC can get away with more when they broadcast someone's opinion than if they were to state something as fact in the course of their reporting. What is suggested here is that Hardaker was let off the hook for broadcasting an opinion that suggests an evil purpose even if it's abundantly plain that there is no truth for the proposition made by the person giving the opinion.

But when the boot was on the other foot and the ABC lodged a complaint with the Australian Press Council in relation to the contents of an opinion column these were the key findings of Press Council adjudication 1257, located at http://www.presscouncil.org.au/pcsite/adj/1257.html (with thanks to correspondent Nathan)

Adjudication No. 1257 (adjudicated October 2004; re-issued December 2004)

The Press Council has upheld a complaint by an Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) correspondent against the Sydney Daily Telegraph over a bylined opinion column dealing with the aftermath of the killing of an Australian-born 15-year-old girl by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem. [Note that this complaint by the ABC is in relation to an OPINION column]

And the finding? The key portion is as follows (highlighing added)

However, the Akerman commentary went further and singled out Mr Palmer for criticism. In the Council's view material clearly labelled as opinion has a wider licence than, for example, news reports. However, this is not an unfettered licence and columnists are still bound by the ethical requirement that they not publish what they could reasonably know is false, nor fail to take reasonable steps to check the accuracy of what they report.

"Hypocrisy" is the only way to describe the ABC's conduct in handly this whole, very sorry story.

HAMAS SAYS THANKS

Hamas thanks the media for the role it played in pulling off its latest act of mass-deception.

BOMBS, RPG'S IN GAZA MOSQUES

Bombs in mosques? Why is this ignored in the main stream media?

THE LAME DUCK QUACKS - READERS HAVE THEIR SAY

A week or so ago, readers of the Australian Jewish News were treated to one of the most appalling pieces of self-justification and arrogance that one could ever come across in the print media. Given the opportunity to respond to an article published in the AJN almost six months before and written by ALP member for Melbourne Ports Michael Danby, lame duck Fairfax journo Ed O'Loughlin enhanced his Israel bashing credentials and his boundless capacity to come across as being sanctimonious and smug in Ed O'Loughlin: My Israel reporting explained.

Mr. Ed got a right whacking in the AJN editorial [Why we published O’Loughlin] and some may say unfairly so on the premise that he wrote his pithy rebuttal in good faith but others would challenge that premise. In any event, O'Loughlin was wasted in the newspaper's next edition by regular columnist Tzvi Fleisher (the item is not yet available on line but a link will be provided in due course).

Readers of the AJN made their views known in response and I have awarded their efforts with the joint honour of letters of the week. Here they are:

BALANCED REPORTING

I WISH to commend you on your challenging editorial, “Why we published O’Loughlin” (AJN 22/02). Your enabling O’Loughlin to defend his work highlighted your fair and balanced journalism in an exemplary way. As you put it, “Fairfax might produce some of Australia’s finest newspapers, but this week at least, we would like to think we have taught it a lesson in presenting both sides of a story.”

DR RACHEL BIRATI
North Balwyn, Vic

EXPLAIN YOURSELF, ED

PLEASE encourage Ed O’Loughlin to continue explaining his unbiased reporting tactics (AJN 22/02) so I can find out who the mystery expert in international law is who advises Ed to say that: “Israeli towns and villages in the West Bank and Gaza are illegal, built in defiance of international law and opinion” and that: “Longstanding UN resolutions call on Israel to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in what is now Israel” and that: “Israeli settlement-building is responsible for lack of progress towards peace”.

It appears from his articles that the same person has told Ed O’Loughlin that Israel’s actions are always aggressive and disproportionate (against Palestinian incitement and sadistic terrorism that isn’t worth reporting).

Anyway, Ed doesn’t seem to know that none of the above is true. You see it is clear that he believes that opinion can be peddled as the basis of international law.

IVAN CHER
Caulfield North, Vic

INFLAMMATORY AND UNNECESSARY

THE editorial last week stated The AJN took the unusual step of publishing an opinion piece by Ed O’Loughlin so that he could rebut some of the criticisms of his reporting from Israel made by Michael Danby MP last September.

Yet, in is own words, O’Loughlin admits the charge. He acknowledges that he did not file a piece on the Human Rights Watch report accusing Hezbollah of committing war crimes because he was too busy on assignment in Gaza, writing yet another piece critical of Israel’s conduct there. There you have it. O’Loughlin does not want to write about crimes committed against Israel, when the far more juicy option of writing about Israel’s conduct, inevitably in the poorest light available, can be undertaken instead.

The use of the term “scorched earth” in the caption accompanying the photo in O’Loughlin’s story this last weekend (“Demolitions continue on shaky ground”) was inflammatory and unnecessary. In contrast to the first sentence which is direct and dramatic, the second sentence presents as opinion the Israeli position, that is, “Israel says the farmers were building illegally on state land.” Yet the story was not about disputed territory, but about land from which Israel is not going to withdraw, and the caption was not fair or balanced.

The NSW Jewish Board of Deputies has made firm representations in person to the editor and his team at The Sydney Morning Herald about the above issues and about the breaches of the Press Council ruling in 2003 not to draw comparison between Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and Nazi treatment of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.

This community should rightly expect that such comparison will not again be drawn and that by the time Jason Koutsoukis replaces Mr O’Loughlin in Jerusalem in a few short weeks, fairness and balance will begin to be restored to the pages of the Fairfax Press.

David D Knoll
President,
NSW Jewish Board of Deputies

ED PART OF MEDIA ONSLAUGHT

O’LOUGHLIN is part of the worldwide media onslaught that aims to delegitimise Israel’s existence by making sure that Israel’s suffering is never the focus. His coverage reminds me of the famous Dry Bones cartoon of the two boxers in the boxing ring, where only the Israeli punches are shown and never the Arab provocation.

RUTH ROSENBERG
Caulfield South, Vic

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

I’M pleased you printed Ed O’Loughlin’s op-ed piece and your measured editorial response. Ed reminded me about the story of the blind men describing the elephant. The one who felt the tusk said an elephant was hard and smooth, a second was feeling the legs and said the elephant was round and rugged like a tree trunk. The third guy stumbled upon the elephant faeces and said that an elephant was soft and squishy and smelled bad. They were all factually right to some extent, but for some reason that third guy reminds me of Ed. Go figure.

DR DORON SAMUELL
Bellevue Hill, NSW

CONGRATULATIONS, ED!

AMERICAN-BASED independent Honest Reporting (HR) website recognised Fairfax’s Ed O’Loughlin with its 2007 Dishonest Reporter Awards he was awarded the prize for Worst Moral Equivalence.

HR’s seventh annual recognition of the most skewed and biased coverage of the Mid-East conflict was awarded to Ed for his oversimplified background information on Kassam rockets.

Congratulations, Ed and thank you AJN for its excellent editorial response.

MICHAEL BURD
Toorak, Vic

DOES O’LOUGHLIN EXPLAIN?

WHEN I heard that Ed O’Loughlin was to explain his Israel reporting in your newspaper, I anticipated he might emulate Kevin Rudd, so I waited for his heartfelt apology for his biased coverage. Alas, there was nothing of the sort.

O’Loughlin claims he doesn’t refer to suicide bombers as “militants”, but he once wrote of a Palestinian schoolboy wearing a suicide belt, “... that Abdo is an impressionable teenager illustrates the way in which Palestinian militant groups send the young and vulnerable to carry out suicide attacks on their behalf”.

On Hanan Ashrawi, O’Loughlin ignores a recent George Negus interview, where she talked of articles coming from Australia “trying to justify what Hamas was doing by saying it had to deal with a situation that was unruly or a situation of lawlessness. You do not correct one error by committing another.”

Moreover, he neglects to address major criticisms about his use of warped standards of moral equivalence and his selectivity in presenting the news. Many readers also want to know why he is reluctant to cover Hamas’ genocidal charter against Jews, its connection to the Muslim brotherhood, its incitement to murder in its media, attacks on Christian communities and countless war crimes. Surely, these must be addressed before a reporter can be considered “a reliable source” for news from the region?

In his defence of course, O’Loughlin can always plead he was on “another assignment” elsewhere at the time.

JACK CHRAPOT

The lame duck is apparently on his way out of the Fairfax door: the long awaited event is expected by the end of the month. One rumour suggests that he might end up at Reuters where he should be right at home with the blind men and the elephants in the news room. My bet is that he won't be missed by any of the above AJN readers.

WHO REALLY IS THREATENING A HOLOCAUST?

The caption in the Hamas poster (above) reads "Death is coming. O Zionists, hide yourselves." The picture depicts Israeli civilians cowering in fear of incoming rocket fire. It is clear Hamas policy that ordinary Israeli civilians are its targets. Most of us already know this but the poster illustrates it very clearly. Many in our media just ignore this inconvenient fact. Ignorance or complicity? Take your pick.

TIME AFTER TIME

"Journalism has changed. It is a tool for advocacy. For a lot of reporters, writing articles is what they do instead of demonstrating or lobbying for a cause, and against another one. Behavior that twenty years ago would have been quickly condemned and resulted in either editorial changes or summary firings is accepted and defended routinely.

Just look at the texts. They are so skewed that even while being horrified one wants to laugh at the clumsy and obvious tricks employed." - Barry Rubin Pledges Not Made, Fairness Not Met.

Time and again, the media's coverage of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians falls short of revealing the true picture of what is happening over there. In the Age for example, you read about Palestinians mourning their civilian dead as if the recently ended Israeli raids were for no purpose other than to torment the normal every day population of mums, dads and children. This report by Ed O'Loughlin cites a figure of "up to half" of the 100 Palestinians who allegedly died as civilians - Mourning tents spread on Gaza Strip - and tells of stories about Israeli snipers on rooftops firing at children.

If you detect a touch of cynicism here, let me say first that I don't doubt that innocent civilians die in operations such as the one Israel called “Operation Hot Winter”. My cynicism is not directed at those people but at the author of the piece who writes purely from one perspective - that of those he seeks to characterise as the victims i.e. the Palestinians. His readers are provided with little or no perspective or context about what is really happening in and around the battlefield.

First, the reason why the Israelis went into to Gaza last week. The chief mourner among the Palestinians is quoted as saying: "Tell them this: I only want peace. I only want peace. I am an ordinary man. I never hurt anybody. Please. My English is not good. I would prefer to speak Hebrew. I worked in Israel for many years. I have many Jewish friends and I do not hate the Jews. I have told them this. I only want peace."

Most Israelis would agree with him but would then scratch their heads in bewilderment as to why the remarks are addressed to them and not to Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Aksa Martyrs and the countless other offshoots who, with the encouragement and blessing of the local leadership, have been pounding neighbouring Israeli towns with rockets on a daily basis for years and have recently introduced deadly Grad missiles from Iran. These missiles have increased the range of Palestinian missile fire to include Ashkelon and its environs so that the range now includes 150,000 Israeli civilians. Mr Abu Seif may only want peace but the thugs who rule his neighbourhood want something entirely different. They want him to remain busy in his role as a chief mourner.

Second, citing the number of civilian dead in any conflict in this region is fraught with danger. Apart from the fact that there have been countless cases of self-inflicted civilian deaths among Palestinians, the first problem is to determine who is a "civilian" or a "non-combatant" in an asymmetric war when the fighters wear no uniforms to distinguish them from the non-combatants.

Often the figures used are supplied by Israeli human rights groups but some of these groups, like O'Loughlin, also seem to have their own agenda. Some years ago at a social function in Israel, I met a member of B'tselem, a group whose casualty statistics are often quoted by O'Loughlin. I questioned him about how his group compiles its figures of Palestinian deaths in the fighting and he revealed that a heavy reliance in many cases on information provided by the local population. When I suggested that the locals might have reasons to fudge the truth our conversation ended in stony silence. Fact is, I don't believe the figures O'Loughlin quotes and I'll take the IDF's figures of 90% of the casualties being "militants" any day.

In any event the O'Loughlin article masks much of the background as to what really transpired in the field of battle. The Australian's Martin Chulov filed a story yesterday entitled ‘Toll rising as Hamas faces military fury’, in which readers are provided a more clear insight on the course of the fighting and which proves the points I make above. Note the following: -

"Fighting appeared to be centred on the Jabaliya refugee camp, a maze of narrow laneways and prefabricated concrete homes from where Hamas and other Gaza militant factions were yesterday still managing to launch rockets and snipe at Israeli forces to the east.

"From inside Jabaliya, Palestinian media reported several instances of clashes between locals and Hamas militants who were attempting to set up rocket-firing sights.

"Some locals have reportedly been shot by Hamas, and others arrested for attempting to drive them out of their neighbourhoods, but it was difficult to gauge whether a groundswell of resistance was building against the group."

In today's Australian, Chulov quotes Israeli Defence Force Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi defending claims that the Israeli strikes had been improper. His story is consistent with those cited by the Palestinian media about Hamas militants attempting to set up rocket-firing sites:

"'In one case we saw an old Palestinian man leave Jabaliya with a wagon in which a Grad missile was concealed,' he told the cabinet meeting. 'He stopped, as though at random, beside an orchard, to which two gunmen came, took the missile, placed it on a launcher and launched it.'"

How is that O'Loughlin could have missed this picture which is so different to the one painted in his story? Imagine if the Israelis had killed the old Palestinian man. Would he be mourned as a civilian or as a fighter, an accomplice in a terrorist plot to murder neighbouring Israelis?

It seems that the stance taken by some of the civilians inside Jabaliya is not an isolated one. Arab writers are beginning to speak out about Hamas thuggery - Gaza killings fault of Hamas and silent Palestinians. According to Ray Hanania of the Arab Writers Group:

"Hamas is a terrorist organization that is as dedicated to the destruction of Israel as it is to the destruction of the secular Palestinian society and the elimination of Christian Palestinians and secular Muslims. The organization has never advocated rights for secular or Christian Arabs in Palestineand have always embraced violence as a means of creating an environment in which they hope to one day achieve their fascist goals. You cannot blame Israel for the deaths without speaking out even more forcefully against the terrorist policies of Hamas."

Hanania dutifully excoriates the Israelis for what he calls its "excessive" policies (and I disagree that they are excessive on the evidence before me) but adds that "... you cannot close your eyes to one form of terrorism and thenclaim to be a victim of another form of terrorism." and that "Palestinians have allowed themselves to surrender the moral high ground by remaining shamefully silent on the terrorist actions of Hamas and by refusing to condemn the Hamas policy of firing Qassem rockets into Israel at Israeli civilian targets."

Of course, it's not only Palestinians who have "closed their eyes" and remained silent. There are many in the media who close their eyes and remain silent as well and in doing so, they play into the hands of Hamas.

My guess is that the following story, which shows that Israelis are far different to the impression of them created in the mourner's tent story, is not likely to see the light of day in the Age any time soon. Entitled ‘MDA treats victims on both sides’, it's about how personel from Magen David Adom - Israel's equivalent of the "Red Cross" - help Israeli victims of Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza and also facilitate the transfer of Gazan patients to Israeli hospitals for treatment.

Like O'Loughlin's chief mourner, this story is about how Israel is telling its Palestinian neighbours that it too wants peace and it's a story is presented in a tangible way showing the humanity of the Jewish people. The MDA seeks to heal people on both sides of the conflict and often its personnel face great danger in undertaking this task. Sadly, stories such as this one are pushed time after time into the blank pages and remain untold to the readership of the Age.

PALESTINE AND THE HOLOCAUST

There's been a lot said and written about Israel, the Palestinians and The Holocaust lately so it's an appropriate time to cover the real facts about the subject.

One significant Palestinian leader during World War 2 was Haj Amin al Husseini (pictured above with a friend. You can read about his exploits here and about his meeting with The Fuehrer here. This man's philosophy is related closely to both major Palestinian political groups and his impact on them has been immense. In an interview in 2002 the late Yasser Arafat called Husseini, "our hero". Husseini was named a local leader of the Muslim Brotherhood after its establishment in Jerusalem in the mid-1940s. This was the movement that later was to spawn Hamas whose charter advocates the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews.

When Hamas forced open its border with Egypt in January, 2008, Muslim Brotherhood representatives travelled to Gaza to meet with Hamas. The meeting was not reported by the majority of the world's media and certainly not by the usual suspects who make it their business to hide the nasty side of Palestinian politics.


That nasty side includes a long history of Palestinian Holocaust Denial about which the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was one of the main proponents. Abbas was in it deep this week when the so-called "good guy" and moderate leader showed his true colours accused Israel of "international terrorism", saying its assault on Gaza constitutes "more than a holocaust". It says something about our media that this statement was ignored by those reporting on the conflict here but openly covered by Al Jazeera.

But then our media blames Israel, which is defending itself against what the United Nations calls terrorism, for harming the peace process while Abbas, the Holocaust Denier, said this week that he was "honored" to have fired the first bullet of the Fatah terror organization in 1965, and to have taught terror tactics around the world, including to such groups as Hizbullah. In an in-depth interview published today in the Jordanian daily Al-Dustur, he said that the PA is "unable" to pursue armed conflict for now, but said that "in the future stages things may be different." He also rejected Israel as a Jewish state, and said that it was the PA's rejection of Israel's Jewishness that almost aborted the Annapolis Conference last November - Palestine Media Watch. Of course, this news won't appear in your local paper unless you can find the blank pages.

Little wonder that Palestinian leaders and their willing accomplices in the media have been doing their bit for the Holocaust Denial industry by revising history and playing games with the words "shoah", hashoah" and "holocaust" and little wonder that the Hamas dupes in our local media highlight the U.N's condemnation of Israel's operations in Gaza and ignore the fact that even its Secreary General described Hamas' quassam attacks which caused the escalation in the violence in the first place as "terrorism".

Joseph Goebbels must be smiling to himself today.

THE LIE THAT STARTED IT ALL

Pallywood, part of the only thriving industry that the Palestinians have thanks to their corrupt, dishonest and thuggish leadership (and I include both Fatah and Hamas here) has been well and truly exposed. From Media Backspin we learn that the now infamous al-Dura incident which triggered off the violence of the Second Intifada was just another Palestinian scam:-

INDEPENDENT BALLISTICS REPORT: IDF DIDN'T KILL AL-DURA

Haaretz quotes from an independent report by ballistics expert Jean-Claude Schlinger. Last week, Philippe Karsenty presented the report to a French court examining France 2 TV's footage of Mohammed al-Dura:

In his report, Schlinger wrote, "If Jamal [the boy's father] and Mohammed al-Dura were indeed struck by shots, then they could not have come from the Israeli position, from a technical point of view, but only from the direction of the Palestinian position."

He also wrote, "In view of the general context, and in light of many instances of staged incidents, there is no objective evidence that the child was killed and his father injured. It is very possible, therefore, that it is a case [in which the incident was] staged." . . .

This is the first time that an independent ballistics expert, not representing the State of Israel, undertook to examine Karsenty's claims.

THE WORD

When Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai used the word "shoah", he was speaking to the media in the Hebrew language about the current situation in Gaza. One of the words he used triggered off an international media blood libel against the Jews: the word is "shoah" and in Hebrew, it means "disaster".

Vilnai's exact words to the media were:-

"The more the Qassam rocket fire [on Israeli civilians] intensifies and increases its range, the Palestinians are bringing upon themselves a bigger disaster because we will use all our might to defend ourselves."

The Reuters newsagency came up with this story by Adam Entous and Joseph Nasr with additional reporting from Nidal al-Mughrabi - "Israel Minister warns Palestinians of "holocaust".

Among its dubious claims and reporting errors was the following gross blood libel made against the Jewish people and against the memory of all those those Jews who perished at the hands of Nazi Germany and its acolytes:-

"Holocaust" is a term rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi genocide during World War Two. Many Israelis are loathe to countenance using the word to describe other contemporary events".

This is a malicious and filthy lie calculated to bring Israel and the Jewish people into disrepute. The Hebrew word "shoah" for catastrophe, a cataclysm and a disaster entered the modern Hebrew language from the Biblical Hebrew. In modern Hebrew the word pre-dates the Second World War by decades and in Biblical Hebrew it has been around for millennia. "Shoah" can also be used in reference to a "holocaust" but when referring to "The Holocaust" the word used is "Hashoah" or "The Shoah". The Holocaust was all of these things - a catastrophe, a cataclysm and a disaster. It was the greatest example of a holocaust, hence called "The Holocaust". The Reuters spin is false however, because the word "shoah" is used in everyday modern Hebrew to refer not to a holocaust or The Holocaust but to a disaster which is exacly what Hamas is inviting on the Palestinians of Gaza with its escalation of rocket attacks at mainly civilian targets in Israel.

The Reuters article sparked off a frenzy among those in the news media eager to make capital from what they wanted to turn into an embarrasing gaffe:

The BBC: Israel warns of Gaza ‘holocaust’

The Guardian: Israeli minister warns of Palestinian ‘holocaust’

The Times (of London): Israel threatens to unleash ‘holocaust’ in Gaza

Melbourne Age - Israel warns of Palestinian 'holocaust' as violence in Gaza worsens.

Tom Gross opines on Media Blog that "... given the virulently anti-Israel (and many would say anti-Semitic) track record of some of the news organizations who have jumped to prominently headline these mistranslated comments on their home pages, one wonders if they are making this mistake in innocence?"

If it were a matter simply of innocent mistake, the newsagencies would be offering their apologies for the libel committed against the Jews rather than hastily rewriting their handiwork as the BBC has done - The Mother of all mistranslations.

As for the Fairfax newspaper, The Age, I just can't see any apology on the horizon. There was no apology for the Fairfax Sydney Morning Herald blood libel in the Warsaw/Gaza letter writing affair despite clear breaches of standards already set down by the Australian Press Council so would it apologise for shoddy jornalism from a correspondent who by his own admission is "lazy"?

After all, what journalist would not, in this instance, have taken some time to check whether the Hebrew word "shoah" as used by Vilnai meant what was inferred by the use of the emotive word "holocaust" given the history of the Jewish people? What journalist would fail to understand how implausible it would be for this Israeli minister to threaten a "holocaust" on another people?

Perhaps one who, in his reporting of the region, routinely looks away when Israel's enemies like Ahmadinejad refers to them as "filthy bacteria", when Nasrallah wishes that all Jews could be in Israel to be killed together "so that it saves us going after Jews worldwide", or when he tells the world he has body parts of Israeli soldiers left on southern Lebanon's battlefields? One who ignores the real threats of genocide made against Jews that are ingrained in the Hamas Charter (see Article 7)?

Or perhaps one who just gleefully picks up and runs with every irresistable opportunity to malign the Jewish State?

HAMAS' BATTLEFIELD

The inevitable battle is raging in Gaza and people are dying - 47 Palestinians killed during ongoing IDF raids in Gaza Strip.

Hamas and the other Palestinian terror groups have selected their battlefield by storing and firing rockets from populated areas. On Saturday evening, "the IAF bombed a truck filled with over a hundred rockets as well as several terrorists. It was unknown whether they were killed."

At least 16 of those killed were civilians, including a baby reported to have been struck when a Palestinian rocket misfired, as well as two teenagers. Civilian deaths in war are tragic but what was this baby doing at a place where rockets were being launched? Where does this child fit on the O'Loughlin scoreboard of casualties in the Age?

CALCULUS AND APPLIED MASS HYSTERIA AND LIES

"The Israeli town of Sderot lies less than a mile from the Gaza Strip. Since the beginning of the intifada seven years ago, it has borne the brunt of some 2,500 Kassam rockets fired from Gaza by Palestinian terrorists. Only about a dozen of these Kassams have proved lethal, though earlier this month brothers Osher and Rami Twito were seriously injured by one as they walked down a Sderot street on a Saturday evening. Eight-year-old Osher lost a leg.

It is no stretch to say that life in Sderot has become unendurable. Palestinians and their chorus of supporters including the 118 countries of the so-called Non-Aligned Movement, much of Europe, and the panoply of international aid organizations from the World Bank to the United Nations typically reply that life in the Gaza Strip is also unendurable, and that Palestinian casualties greatly exceed Israeli ones. But this argument is fatuous: Conditions in Gaza, in so far as they are shaped by Israel, are a function of conditions in Sderot. No Palestinian Kassams (or other forms of terrorism), no Israeli siege." - Bret Stephens - The Sderot Calculus.

Bret Stephens' article brilliantly sums up the moral and strategic dilemma faced by Israel in its war with Hamas. Should its response to constant attacks on Sderot be proportionate and what does that mean? Does it mean perhaps, the firing of "2,500 artillery shells at random against civilian targets in Gaza" or does proportionality mean "an exquisitely calibrated, eye-for-eye operation involving the killing of a dozen Palestinians and the deliberate maiming or traumatizing of several hundred more?" Should it pick off Hamas leaders or adopt purely economic measures or undertake limited military incursions, which would result in too many Palestinian casualties (again disproportionate to the number of Israelis casualties of the quassam rockets)? The answer from the perspective of international opinion seems always to no so that if Israel had to worry about such opinion then its pre-emptive right to self-defence becomes virtually worthless.

That right to self-defence is certainly considered less than worthless by the author of this piece, which appeared in today's Melbourne Age - Israel warns of Palestinian 'holocaust' as violence in Gaza worsens. It beggars belief that a newspaper editor could accept such a partisan rant as that which lurks through the words of this article. Interestingly, it was apparently not accepted by the editor of Sydney's Fairfax sister newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, who chose to run an alternative report written by Isabel Kershner in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The rant began with the use of the emotive word "holocaust" in a statement made by an Israeli Minister on the situation in Gaza. I will return to this at a later stage as I am waiting on details of the text of the statement.

Next came the allegation that the recent surge in violence in Gaza and southern Israel was "triggered" by an Israeli air strike on Wednesday. Well actually, the violence in the entire region was triggered off by Israel's coming into existence almost sixty years ago. The recent violence was in fact triggered off by daily barrages of rocket fire at Israeli towns at an escalating rate rather than by an Israeli retaliatory air strike.

The world knows full well that if Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli civilians ceased and if there was no build up of further deadly armaments, there would be no Israeli incursions or air strikes into Gaza and there would be no need to provide a scoreboard of casualties on both sides which shows a disproportionate number on the Palestinian side. But it doesn't suit the aims of the Palestinian propaganda machine for a cessation of violence.

Hamas and its willing helpers in the journalistic profession want the public to think of it as a bunch of reasonable and nice officials voted into power in a democratic vote to ensure that Palestinian buses could run on time and that welfare could be delivered efficiently to the people. But this was never the true Hamas platform and suggestions in the media that you can negotiate with these fraudsters are ludicrous.

In his article, Stephens points out that when Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlements from Gaza 2005 "there was a six-fold increase in the number of Kassam strikes on Israel." Hamas has made no effort to rewrite its explicitly anti-Semitic charter and it would seem "perverse for Israel merely to bide its time for an especially unlucky day a Kassam hitting a busload of schoolchildren, for instance before striking hard at Gaza."

Hamas is bringing the current situation upon itself and upon the Palestinians in Gaza and the inevitable result will be further "surges" of violence.

However, in the absence of a change of direction in favour of impartial reporting of the news, we will no doubt continue to to be treated to Age Middle East reports alleging perversely that Israel's defence of its citizens under attack "triggered" the violence and showing gory scoreboards of deaths and injuries from this conflict. Moreover, those scoreboards will contain misleading data that will show what appears to be a disproportionate number of casualties on one side. Misleading and meaningless unless it tells you that Hamas deliberately seeks to create civilian casualties while the Israeli Defence Forces are trying to prevent those people from achieving their deadly aims.

The people of the region and those who want to be informed about what's happening there need that and not the hysteria of scoreboards that slyly mask the truth about who is to blame for all of the casualties.

HEADS TURN AWAY

Writing in The New Republic, Eric Reeves discusses here how recent events in West Darfur should "compel us to start calling things by their correct names again."

Earlier this month, Janjaweed militias, in coordination with the Sudanese military attacked rebel strongholds in West Darfur targeting ethnically African Masseleit and Erenga civilians and towns. Using militarily imprecise barrel bombs they have caused deaths and massive displacement of civilians. Khartoum has suspended all humanitarian flights to the region; cutting off 160,000 people from food, medical, and water assistance.

"Ominously, a large number of children aged 12 through 18 are missing, disproportionately boys. Both the Janjaweed and Khartoum's regular troops have a long history of executing young males from non-Arab ethnic groups."

"What we're seeing in Darfur now is a level of ethnically targeted violence that hasn't been approached since the terrifying days of 2004."

Yet nobody uses the "G" word any more. "Genocide" is off the table and the United Nations Human Rights people are nowhere in sight. They're too preoccupied with their phony posturing against another country further east that's defending itself from those who want to destroy it utterly.

Reeves sees one of the problems in bringing this situation to the world's attention as being one of the way people are looking at the situation: -

"Human destruction and displacement are no longer 'genocidal,' but rather a function of rebel fractiousness, opportunistic banditry, and a generalized 'insecurity'."

These days the whitewashing of the activities of Arab terrorist organisations bent on murder and destruction and the governments that support them is not news to us. That the Darfurians can’t buy publicity to cover their plight while the rest of the world turns its collective head away from these shocking atrocities is a sad sign of our times. This silence is shame!

ED'S PLATFORM

Ed O'Loughlin was given oxygen by the Australian Jewish News to explain his reporting on Israel last week and produced a pathetic piece of self-serving garbage on par with that which he routinely serves up in the Fairfax media. To his credit, he didn't deny the legion of claims of bias against the Jewish State or his turning of a blind eye to many of the crimes being committed by Palestinian terrorists not only against Israelis but also against their fellow Palestinians.

Today he has produced a piece about the killing of 21 Palestinian civilians in November 2006. The headline screams that the Israeli army won't probe Gaza deaths and Ed seems to boiling with anger about the incident. And just to embellish the message about those nasty Israelis, he throws in mention of another incident in June 2006 in which seven members of a picnicking family were killed by an explosion on a north Gaza beach. Not a single mention however, of the fact that there is a growing body of evidence that the Palestinian propaganda industry has milked this story for all its worth while it's now accepted that the family was probably killed by their own terrorist land mines.

That the story is just another beat up can best be summed by referring to O'Loughlin's own words:

"This week the Israel Defence Forces' (IDF) adjutant-general announced that an extremely rare computer malfunction had caused the shells to strike 500 metres from their intended target, a field that had been used by militants to fire missiles at Israel. There was therefore no reason to charge any soldier with negligence or any other offence, Brigadier-General Avihai Mandelblit decided. The announcement did not consider the gunners' supposed failure to notice their shells going astray."

So the IDF really did probe the incident and found the cause to be a computer malfunction but that's not enough for O'Loughlin who knows very little about fighting wars if he thinks that the gunners could have rectified the error having noticed their shells going astray: it would have been far too late. His comment is sheer stupidity.

Further, O'Loughlin will be noticed a little more if he ever applied the same standards he expects from the Israelis (including the ability to be clairvoyant about the munitions they fire when seeking to prevent "militants" from firing missiles at its civilians) to the Palestinians (see TRAGIC DEATHS: WILL THEY EVER LEARN? and NINETEEN GAZANS DIED:NOBODY CARED).

In an age and an area where Arab militias are causing great damage to civilian populations it's time for the Age to wake up to itself. One only has to look at the terrible and underreported crimes taking place in nearby Sudan to understand how disproportionate and unjust Ed's attacks are on Israel and its people.

EXPOSED

Back in November I wrote [in PALESTINIANS GET HIGH: JEWS GET BLAMED] about a news story aired on ABC radio's flagship programme AM in which claims were made that Israeli authorities were turning a blind eye to the trafficking of drugs and that this was part of a deliberate plan to destroy the fabric of Palestinian life. According to the report by ABC Middle East correspondent David Hardaker, Israelis were allowing Palestinians to become addicted so that Jews could oppress them and steal their homes. I made the point at the time that the report provided no balance or scope for the Israeli authorities to counter the claims and that it exhibited a paucity of research on the part of ABC staff that put together this blood libel against Israel and the Jews.

In it's own sort of way, the ABC now agrees having considered the complaint made by a medical professional about blatant errors in the Hardaker report. It has amended the report PALESTINIANS STRUGGLE WITH SURGE IN DRUG USE and added the following:-

Editor's Note: Parts of this story have been amended or omitted and the audio removed to address issues of factual correctness. The story was also found to have lacked balance because there was insufficient opportunity for Israeli authorities to respond. The ABC apologises for these instances of inaccuracy and lack of balance.

The ABC is playing cute by admitting the lack of balance in the story but it does very little about what it recognises as a clear problem with the report. The making of a cut here and there and adding a single word simply cannot repair the inestimable damage done when it aired this piece of scurrilous Israel bashing propaganda more than three months ago.

It took that length of time for the ABC to investigate the matter but rather than transparently provide listeners with a separate report on what moved it to amend, omit and remove parts of a story "to address issues of factual correctness" they are given a mere postscript at the end of the offending story, itself carefully massaged but still repeating the same odious message and still failing to provide an Israeli response.

Remember, the correspondent in question produced this piece on "The art of Middle Eastern conspiracy theories" and started off by stating that "the reporter's job is to get the facts."

In this case, the reporter clearly did not get the facts and despite three months of investigation by the ABC the matter has not been dealt with at all adequately and it must be taken further.

The ABC's own amendments have highlighted the scandalous way in which the presentation of news from the Middle East can be manipulated by those who have an agenda of maligning on particular side in the conflict. In this case, the report took up the cause of a Palestinian drug worker who was more concerned with beating Israel and the Jews across the head than with the welfare of the growing number of Palestinian drug addicts on his watch.

The following shows parts of the original report and how it was amended. Deletions are shown in blue and additions are shown in red.

AM PALESTINIANS STRUGGLE WITH SURGE IN DRUG USE

Middle East correspondent David Hardaker reports.
DAVID HARDAKER: Not so long ago illicit drugs were virtually unheard of in Palestinian life. Now they’re freely available.
HOSNI SHAHIN: We are working very hard, day by night.
DAVID HARDAKER: It’s Hosni Shahin’s job to try to stop it but it’s only getting worse.
HOSNI SHAHIN: We are seeing that the numbers are increasing and this makes us crazy.
DAVID HARDAKER: Hosni Shahin is in charge of the Palestinian effort to stop the spread of drugs.[, but the figures are defying him.]
[A just-completed study shows up to 60,000 Palestinians in the West Bank use drugs, with 11,000 being addicts.]
In the east side of Jerusalem, where Palestinians live, the problem is even more acute. Hosni Shahin counts 20,000 drug users. Hashish is the most common drug. Then heroin.
HOSNI SHAHIN: Some of them try to sell their houses to the Jews in [their own] the old city.
DAVID HARDAKER: To get money for drugs?
HOSNI SHAHIN: To get money for drugs. If he is ready to destroy himself, you think that he is caring to destroy his family, or his brother, or his son?
DAVID HARDAKER: Researchers have found the reasons for increased drug addiction are poverty, unemployment and despair about the future. They’ve linked that to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, but they’ve also faulted the Palestinian Authority for not taking the problem seriously.
A former addict, Imad Shweiki, now works with the Palestinian anti-drug office.
(Imad Shweiki speaking)
“It’s easy for Palestinians to get drugs, especially in Jerusalem”, he says. “Here the borders are open. I have contacts with the Israelis”.
[The research backs up what Imad Schweiki says. Young Palestinians are getting their drugs in areas where they’re in contact with Israelis, either in Jerusalem itself or around the giant wall, known as the separation barrier, between Israel and the West Bank.]
Hosni Shahin.
HOSNI SHAHIN: There is no caring from the Palestinian side for this, and there is no caring from the Israel side for this. So you can say this place is, around the wall, it is a free market for commerce of drugs.
DAVID HARDAKER: The drug dealers are nearly always Arab-Israelis, sometimes working with Palestinians.
The Palestinian drug workers allege that while Israeli border security is generally ferocious, when it comes to drugs it is uncharacteristically lax.
Head of the research, Doctor Luay Shabaneh.
LUAY SHABANEH: There is something has to be worked out with the Israeli side, at the checkpoints and at the border points, to minimise the transfer of the drugs.
DAVID HARDAKER: From what you know, are the Israelis deliberately allowing drugs to come into the Palestinian area, or are they simply being neglectful?
LUAY SHABANEH: Well I can’t claim that they’re doing this on purpose. Maybe they are lazy, maybe are careless. I could say maybe they are careless, because they don’t feel that they are affected very much.
DAVID HARDAKER: So, in other words, that it might not matter to them. Is that what you’re saying?
LUAY SHABANEH: Yes. Yes, because I mean, we are the recipients. The drugs are coming from their side, therefore we are mostly affected not them.
DAVID HARDAKER: Israeli authorities have flatly denied using drugs as a tool of occupation. Drug workers on the ground can’t prove it, but they’re convinced that the inaction of Israeli police is deliberate and that it’s aimed at pacifying angry young Palestinians.
Hosni Shahin.
HOSNI SHAHIN: For all occupations, all over the world, the most dangerous thing for them - the youth people. So the occupation, if he can keeps the youth calming down all the time, the occupation will be, avoid a lot of problems, they will avoid it.

So while the ABC recognises that the report was unbalanced and factually incorrect, the amendments do little to correct what is a despicable attack on Israel and the Jewish people. Together with the footnote they are supposed to represent some form of correction and apology but very few listeners to the original AM programme will ever become aware of this travesty. Moreover, the amended version only makes Hardaker and the ABC look even more stupid, almost O'Loughlinesque.

The addition of the word "Arab" after Israeli is tantamount to a clear admission on the part of the ABC that the entire report was at the very least fundamentally flawed and at most something far more sinister. If the drug pushers were Israeli Arabs then the claim that this was all a plot by evil Zionists is a complete nonsense and proof that the entire production was a blood libel against the Jews. Remember, Hardaker knows about the art of Middle Eastern conspiracy theories and yet here he was becoming complicit in the broadcasting of one that is awash with all of the components of classical anti-Semitism.

To compound the situation, the ABC won't even admit that this piece was anti-Semitic both in its original and its current forms. The procedure governing complaints about this sort of reporting from the ABC is as flawed as the story. The ABC sits in judgement on itself and duly absolves itself of spreading hatred and lies - shameful!

POSTSCRIPTS: Aussie Dave at Israellycool has more on this story Drug Libel IV: The Admission of Wrongdoing. Rumour has it that Hardaker has left the ABC and is working for the government in Dubai.

It also appears that the ABC did broadcast some form of apology on ABC National at some time yesterday. Pathetic really!

LIES THE MEDIA TOLD ME

The BBC World News bulletin I watched yesterday led off with a story of the so-called peaceful demonstration in Gaza that allegedly attracted 40,000 to 50,000 but the true figue was about 10% of that number and included schoolkids given the day off and relieved of the pain of having to watch Assud the Jew-eating rabbit on the Hamas kid’s show Pioneers of Tomorrow.

Reuters reporter Nidal al-Mughrabi [Gazans stage mass protest against Israeli blockade] at least got the numbers right but it was a bit of stretch to call the event "peaceful" when 50 stone-throwers militants were detained. He also added that "militants in the Gaza Strip fired rockets at southern Israel while the protest was under way". Technically correct Mr. al-Mughrabi but in reality the rockets were targetting Israeli civilians i.e. human beings so the "militants are really terrorists but that's not the impression Hamas wants its media dupes to give to consumers of news.

Associated Press Writer Amy Teibel would have won more brownie points from Hamas. She left out the parts about the stone-throwers and the rockets, as did the BBC World News report which airbrushed the Israeli side of the story out of existence altogether.

WHERE'S ED?

If you can't find Ed in this picture then he's probably on an important assignment somewhere else which prevents him from reporting news about things that matter.

Haven't found him yet?

Then go directly to Gaza (but don't take your favourite pet with you).


Coming soon: News that happened while Ed was on assignment elsewhere.

NO OSCAR FOR ISMAIL

Academy Award Night in Hollywood and Pallywood is set to respond with the aid of its media dupes. Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that hundreds of Gazans are forming a human chain to protest what it calls Israel's "siege" of Gaza and the psycopaths from Hamas are threatening to send women and children to the border to penetrate the border fence and enter Israeli territory. And those media dupes who have looked away for years while Palestinian thugs fired their missiles at Israeli civilians are like Dracula - on their way to watch and report on bloodshed.

"Palestinian journalists said Sunday that Hamas is likely to bring school children to Erez and other potential sites of friction, who will be sent near the crossings to throw stones, as the cameras are rolling."

There was however, no Oscar for Ismail this time. The whole gig fizzled after a much lower than anticipated turnout, possibly a result of the fact that the people regarded the Hamas script involving sending kids out to face the IDF for propaganda purposes a bit of a stinker.