Tag: israel

NYT: All The News They Didn’t Print

I just read an article in  TimesWarp, a site that reports biased coverage in the New York Times of human rights violations in occupied Palestine. But never ever mention Palestine.

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Map provided in a brochure for a tour of the Holy Land in July 2016. Misinformation taken to the ultimate desired state.

Whitewashing Israeli War Crimes: the NYT Turns its Back on Survivors and Critics. It refers to bias on the part of Isabel Kershner in her New York Times article. It’s actually a pretty good textbook example of the fallacy of the middle ground. I think it is more than significant that her son is in the Israeli Army.

David Brooks may be the best known reporter for the Times. He is über well respected and considered a moderate and thoughtful writer. The guy has street cred. From his profile:

— David Brooks became an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times in September 2003. His column appears every Tuesday and Friday. He is currently a commentator on “PBS NewsHour,” NPR’s “All Things Considered” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

He also has a son in the Israeli army.  Do you think it might influence his reporting, well of course not. Why even bring it up?

Stories about Palestine are sanitized to remove any hint of a voice from a land destroyed in 1948 (The Nakba) and then further occupied in 1967 (The Naksa). It is still occupied as I write this. I was 8 months old on the day of Nakba (May 14, 1948), 19 years old on the day of Naksa (June 5, 1967).

Misinformation on Palestine has run rampant 24/7 for the last 24,943 days.

Journalists are rare and they seem to have left the building.

OK, let’s see how CAMERA.org views the New York Times. Here we have a monstrous and monstrously sized billboard below.

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CAMERA is an acronym for The “Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.” OK I’m dumbstruck by their understanding of Joseph Goebbels and Newspeak.

The NYT provides absolutely no reporting from within the occupied territories. Not good news if you are a reader of The Gray Lady, newspaper of record.

Last February Mondoweiss printed a parody of the New York Times that contained “all the news we didn’t print.”

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Map provided in a brochure for a tour of the Holy Land in July 2016. Misinformation taken to the ultimate desired state.

CAMERA explains the inaccuracies in the Mondoweiss parody. OK I’m dumbstruck again.

My humble gratitude to visitors identified on my WordPress analytics page as located in the “Palestinian Territories.” However, when I float an arrow cursor to find out where it is the names Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan pop up.  Hey, where in the world is Palestine? 

 

For freedom from misinformation know your sources.What about corporately sponsored media? …coming soon.

Thanks for reading. 

In the Land of Xenophobia the Rosary is an Assault Weapon

Humans cast some long Jungian shadows. Xenophobia and racism flourish in dark places. 2016 witnesses a political voice “from the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie.”

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Two sides of the triangle described above have denoted Judeo-Christian values since the Common Era began: Christianity and Judaism, but never Islam, although Abraham is patriarch for all three faiths.

Broadcasters who welcome the views of demagogues Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and such ilk become proudly complicit in the crimes committed by members of their audience.

Perhaps I am too easily offended or I am missing the subtlety of radio programs that boast of a battle-ready Jesus. The search argument “A rosary is an assault weapon with a 50 round clip” yields

About 874 results (0.67 seconds)

Ishmael? Do you mean the third word in Moby Dick? Otherwise, no, we don’t talk about that family member. Oh, you meant Israel. Well that’s better.

Well indeed. I discovered that the sentence “Call me Ishmael” is not the first line. My thanks to Ken Jennings for that correction and for his website The Debunker.

Pope Francis reminds us that baptized Catholics are just as ready to become unwitting militants. Islamophobes are not entirely pleased with the Francis’ papacy.

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Israel is Sparta. It is also a laboratory for weapons and “security” systems. Jeff Halper just posted an item on FB that takes on the euphemism “security.” His suggestion: substitute “pacification.” Propaganda (hasbara) suggests a patriotic rush to judgement and to a false security.

The last thing a spartan state needs is another 1.5 billion dollars to top off the annual contribution from the United States and the Marshall Islands. A response to stones thrown by Palestinian youth. I sense overreach.

Thanks for reading.

 

America Nakba Tour Memories

 

Refugee crisis continues, right to return still a universal human right

It was my privilege to meet personally with Umm Akram, Amena Ashkar and Samir Salem when the North America Nakba Tour visited Cincinnati Clifton Mosque (Masjid): a Cincinnati Palestine Solidarity Coalition event.

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The British Empire closed shop on their Raj in India in 1947 and they left Palestine in 1948. At the same time another colonizer opened shop under new management and with a new name. They had owned the place 3,000 years ago and decided to own it again.

Speaking truth to power is not the same as speaking truth to the powerless.

I had a light bulb moment:

Amena momentarily flinched when a questioner referred to an entity I am calling SRL. Her reaction gave me pause and served as a reminder of the entity that controls the narrative: those who lived in Palestine 3,000 years ago and decided to own it again.

Never believe your own propaganda.

I’m calling the entity (one of the words Amena uses) SRL because I am presently learning one of the Semitic languages based on the root system. The larger of the Semitic languages has 300,000,000 speakers, but the principal language in SRL is spoken by 9,000,000. The word antisemitism should be redefined.

My ears and eyes are always open to the slightest mention of anything Palestinian in the news. American media is either corporately owned or corporately sponsored. Censoring the news is ungodly expensive. Without the billions of dollars infused into SRL the whole entity would collapse under its own weight.

Stolen land? What stolen land? Nina Paley’s animated take on land rights is worth your time IMO. Following Nina Paley is worth all the while. If you are having a problem choosing your next Paley animation: Nina Paley Blog.

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So my question hangs in the air: “why is it always okay to freely and frequently speak the word Isr**l, wave their colors, celebrate eternal victimhood, speak loud, act brazen, flex Spartan muscles, trot out the toys of a soldier society…

Occupation of another people is not a universal human right.

Back to SRL. The SRLies use the word Palestinian as a curse word. They never even whisper the word PALESTINE.

Thanks for reading.

May we Voice Criticism of Israel in Public?

Recent Opinions in Jewish Week and Washington Post

A good friend brought this opinion by Seymour D. Reich to my attention today.

A word to the wise…just might…

Multi-million dollar daily cash infusions are the price of eternal vigilance. “Keep moving. There’s nothing to see here. Keep moving…”

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Bernie Sanders did not say many words (measured rhetoric) on a theme of the “disproportionate force” but each word has sprung multiple leaks.

Media in the US and in Israel form the corpus politic. Tangential reporting relies on short attention spans in the audience, a single word must never gain purchase. Hasbara is serious business.

“For decades, most American Jews who cared about Israel’s welfare and security adhered to the maxim that we don’t voice criticism of Israel in public.”

Source: Israel’s Assault On Democracy: Time To Speak Out | The Jewish Week

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Source: Piercing the Veil or Reality

Speaking of hope, I read David Bernstein’s opinion in yesterday’s Washington Post.

Bernstein is a frequent contributor to the WP and has performed his perfunctory best at pressing the “hate site” label onto Philip Weiss, half of the Mondoweiss founders. Philip keeps getting into Mr. Bernstein’s craw and it’s hard to remain level-headed when your craw is aching. I understand.

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See also “antisemitism” and “anti-defamation” to learn less of the truth about Palestine and the Palestinian people, as refugees under occupation, as a people in exile for 68 years now.

I admit this: I am a comment reader, an observer of scary stuff that goes on in the worlds of Israel and her BFF. It festers as ever: Israel as promised land (“Because He promised. I swear He did”) Honey, milk, physical and spiritual perfection. A place where birthright yields more independence and recognition than birthplace.

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The whole construct relies upon holding fast to denial: the perfected society has skeletons in its closet (carpentered in 1948). PTSD is not unknown among IDF soldiers and veterans. They are breaking their silence.

Witness storied operations inspired by the sling of David, but remain unaware of the murderous occupation maintained for cleansing ethnicity.

Let’s say that your guess is as good as mine.

 

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Similarly, a Twitter page for those wishing to band together and fight Arabic fascism.

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Nothing facile about this logic. It’s from the gentle Zvi Lando.