Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.

Today’s top stories: Wife of Iranian nuclear scientist reveals goals of cooperation in nuclear program, Palestinian moderate loses faith in two-state solution, and a look at what it would take to press Iran to halt its drive to nuclear capability.

Israel and the Palestinians

• Incitement against Israel continues on Palestinian television.

• Der Spiegel has an interview with Palestinian intellectual Sari Nusseibeh, who no longer believes a two-state solution is viable.

• Hamas endorses Palestinian unity government with Mahmoud Abbas at the head.

Iranian Atomic Urgency

• Washington Post columnist David Ignatius asks what it will take to make Iran back down from its quest for nuclear weapons.

Recent history shows that the Iranian regime will change behavior only if confronted with overwhelming force and the prospect of an unwinnable war. Short of that, the Iranians seem ready to cruise along on the brink, expecting that the other side will steer away.

• Unfortunately, Iranian supreme leader says nothing will stop the nuclear program.

• Joel Greenburg says Israelis appear to be resigned to the inevitability of an attack on Iran.

• Jeffrey Goldberg reports that the wife of one of the assassinated Iranian scientists says her husband was bent on the annihilation of the Jews.

• Political scientist Dalia Dassa Kaye argues against an Israeli attack on Iran on the grounds that Iran would be that more dangerous in the aftermath if it every manages to get nuclear weapons in the future.

The consensus among Western analysts is that a military attack against Iran would at best delay Iran’s nuclear development, not stop it. This is because Iran’s nuclear facilities are believed to be widely dispersed and deeply buried, and because the nuclear expertise that Iran has developed so far cannot be eradicated through military strikes. On top of that, military attacks could push Iran to weaponize its program.

Thus, what the region’s future may hold is not an Iran that has or hasn’t acquired nuclear weapons, but rather a nuclear-armed Iran that has or hasn’t been attacked by Israel.

Arab Spring Winter

• Reporters believe the Syrian government is targeting foreign journalists covering Syria.

• Even the Golan Druze are speaking out against Bashar Assad these days.

Rest O’ the Roundup

• Anti-Semitism in Venezuelan election is making news. See HR’s coverage of the issue for more details.

• Jeffrey Goldberg says you can learn a lot about Israel by looking at its enemies.

The hatred of Jews and the Jewish national home by men whom history has adjudged as comprehensively evil should suggest a couple of lessons. Good people should take the hatred directed at Israel by evil people as a sign that, just maybe, Israel’s basic cause is just. And Israel and its supporters should understand that the enmity reflects well on their cause, and they should do whatever they can to guarantee that their behavior could never be seen as analogous to that of their enemies.

Original article can be viewed at Israel Daily News Stream 02/23/2012 on HonestReporting.

Related content: MSM, Stone Throwers Collude and Collide in Silwan 

The reality is that such attacks can seriously injure or kill as was the case in September 2011 when Asher Palmer and his infant son Yehonatan were killed when their car crashed as a result of a stoning attack.

As YNet News reports, Israeli teacher Zehava Weiss is extremely lucky to have escaped unharmed in another such attack this week:

Luckily, Weiss said, her car is armored, but even so “the windshield was shattered and the exterior was dented in several places. They were throwing bricks, not stones.”

The moment of the attack was caught by both AFP and AP photographers.

AFP

These images beg the question about the role of those photographers in this incident. We’ve seen many times how incidents such as this only occur if Palestinian youths have an audience. Clearly the presence of the media influences the situation. There have even been suggestions of active collusion with the stone throwers in order to create the perfect image for the watching media.

Continued on Page 2

Original article can be viewed at Caught on Camera: “Stoning” Attack on Israeli Car on HonestReporting.

In this cross-post courtesy of CIF Watch, Israelinurse addresses The Guardian’s decision to allow Adnan’s wife a propaganda platform.

Islamic Jihad terrorist Khader Adnan, imploring Palestinians to launch suicide attacks

Articles penned by high-ranking members of terrorist organizations proscribed by the British government – and also by UK-based supporters of those organizations – are, as we all too well know, nothing new to The Guardian’s Comment is Free.  Now we have the WAGs (wives and girlfriends) version of puff pieces whitewashing terror groups and their actions in the form of an article written by Randa Musa. (My husband, Khadar Adnan has shed a light on Israel’s disregard for human rights, Feb. 22).

Mrs Khader Adnan, as she is also known, seeks to inform readers about her husband’s supposed exposure of “Israel’s disregard for human rights”. With considerable drama she tells us that as a result of Adnan’s arrest last December she “would not be surprised if even our unborn baby which I now bear will also be affected”.

Randa Musa’s concern for human rights apparently does not extend to the trauma her husband’s terror group, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, has caused to the thousands of family members of those murdered or maimed in its car bombings, suicide bombings and other terror attacks.

In fact, she tries to pass Khadar Adnan off as a “student activist” which, to British readers probably conjures images of someone whose activities stretch to handing out flyers or drawing placards.

The truth is of course very different.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s own website describes Adnan as a “leader” of the organisation on more than one occasion. Reuters described him as a “senior figure in the Islamic Jihad” in 2010 and AP as “a top Islamic Jihad leader” in 2005. The Gulf Daily News has him down as “West Bank spokesman of the militant Islamic Jihad group” whilst Middle East Online and IMEMC both describe him as an “Islamic Jihad spokesperson”.

And if there were any further doubts about Adnan’s terrorist ideologies and affiliations, they are quickly dispelled in this video from 2007 in which he solicits suicide bombers.

Apparently banking on her readers’ lack of geographic knowledge, Musa tells us that “life under Israel’s military occupation has turned our dream into a nightmare”. However, their village – Arraba – has in fact been under Palestinian Authority control since the Oslo Accords in the earlier part of the 1990s.

Continued on Page 2

Original article can be viewed at Propaganda by Wife of Islamic Jihad Terrorist: Courtesy of the Guardian on HonestReporting.

Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.

Was Khader Adnan’s hunger strike a victory for Palestinian non-violent resistance? Is the Syrian army’s use of the world’s largest mortar shells against Homs a war crime? And how significant are budding Golan Druze protests against Assad?

Israel and the Palestinians

• Everybody picked up on Khader Adnan ending his hunger strike. Take your pick of NY Times, BBC, or AP.

• In a NY Times op-ed, Mustafa Barghouti declares Khader Adnan’s hunger strike a victory for Palestinian non-violence.

Iranian Atomic Urgency

Bushehr nuclear power plant

• In a Times of London column (paywall), Anatole Kaletsky argues against an Israeli strike on Iran. After sifting through various issues, Kaletsky concludes on this surprising note:

Israel, with a population of only seven million, would proclaim by its actions that it considers the hundreds of millions of Muslims living around it as permanent and implacable military enemies. It is this attitude, far more than any nuclear programme, that poses the real “existential threat” to Israel’s long-term survival.

Uh, Ahmadinejad hasn’t made repeated calls to wipe out the hundreds of millions of Muslims living around Israel.

But if it’s any consolation to Kaletsky, he’s joined in fretting by Seumas Milne (The Guardian print edition) and by the tag team of Richard Silverstein and Muhammad Sahimi (Christian Science Monitor).

• Jerusalem’s conundrum: By being too vocal with the US about stepping up pressure on Iran, Israel risks “owning”  the problem. Former diplomat Itamar Rabinovich‘s advice?

Israel would therefore be wise to reinforce its pressure on the US administration with a broader diplomatic campaign. Like it or not, Israel must urge the world to remember that Iran is everyone’s problem.

Arab Spring Winter

• New details on Syrian war crimes emerge as rights groups say Assad is using the world’s largest shells against Homs. The Christian Science Monitor writes:

From Peter Bouckaert, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, comes an indication why the death toll has been steadily climbing in Homs. He says a video from Homs that shows the fragments of a mortar the struck a building there is proof that Assad has deployed the Russian-made “Tulip” weapons system against the town, which fires the largest mortar round in any military’s arsenal. The tank-like vehicle that serves as the firing platform can lob 240mm mortar rounds up to 20 kilometers away, and they carry over 70 pounds of explosives. The largest mortar used by the US, in contrast, is 160mm . . . .

The Tulip was designed for use against dug in positions from a standoff distance. But its lethality has been used in the past to bring devastation to civilian neighborhoods, most famously by the Russians during the siege of the Chechen capital of Grozny over a decade ago, where thousands of civilians were killed and hundreds of buildings reduced to rubble. The use of such weapons in dense urban environments is a war crime.

From Russia with love: the 240 mm Tulip mortar

• Reuters reports two Western journos killed in the shelling of Homs today. Marie Colvin, a US national, was a correspondent for the Sunday Times of London. In the 80s and 90s, she was the Times’s Jerusalem correspondent. The shelling also killed French photographer Remi Ochlik and injured two other journalists. According to AFP, 31 civilians were killed on Tuesday.

• A Syrian blogger who posted on YouTube graphic images from Homs was killed in an arm shelling. The Lede has lots of links and video about Rami al-Sayed.

• A Times of London staff-ed wants Bashar Assad prosecuted for crimes against humanity in Homs.

• Elliott Abrams: It’s time to make Assad’s ouster a US policy goal and “encourage the arming and funding of the opposition.”

The problem is that our speeches and even our sanctions have not helped defend the people of Syria against Assad’s bullets . . .

Because the real questions in Syria now are who will win and how long will this take. We ought to find an Assad victory (or perhaps one should say an Assad, Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and Hezbollah victory) unacceptable. Moreover, we should avoid the false moral equivalence that leads people to say, “Oh, don’t arm anyone, just call for a ceasefire.” As in Darfur or Kosovo, such calls are in reality an abandonment of people fighting against oppression.

Druze elders in Majdal Shams

• These protests may be small in comparison to other places, but AP finds Golan’s Druze community starting to openly demonstrate against Assad:

But the very act of stepping into the square is a major departure for the Golan’s 20,000-member Druse community, which historically has been extremely reluctant to openly criticize the autocratic Assad family that has ruled Syria for the past four decades.

Some, particularly older residents who remember the days of Syrian rule, maintain a strong affinity for Syria. Others feared they might be harmed if the territory is ever returned to Syria, or had concerns that the Syrian regime would retaliate against relatives across the frontier.

But faced with the mounting scope of carnage in Syria, where thousands of people, mostly civilians, are believed to have been killed in an 11-month uprising against Assad, small numbers of Golan Druse are bringing their criticism out in the open.

• Hmmmm. According to the WSJ, Iraqi tribes are in a bind over helping kinsmen on the Syrian side of the border fight Assad.

But their leaders worry that an expanding cross-border arms trade here is re-energizing a radical group they say they have only just brought under relative control—al Qaeda in Iraq.

• Lenny Ben-David: Syria’s arsenal of unconventional weapons must be destroyed.

Rest O’ the Roundup

• Voice of America tours the Israel-Egypt border fence under construction.

(Image of Tulip via YouTube/Gromoslawski; Druze via YouTube/TheVJMovement)

Original article can be viewed at Israel Daily News Stream 02/22/2012 on HonestReporting.

Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.

US pressures Israel not attack Iran. Khader Adnan’s hunger strike continues. And foreign support for rebels “pours into Syria” — from Iraq.

Israel and the Palestinians

• Worth reading: Arab, Like Me

•  Maan News reports that Gaza’s electrical crisis was alleviated with the arrival of 300,000 liters of fuel — via the smuggling tunnels.

• Mark Regev explains to CNN‘s impatient Hala Gorani why Khader Adnan’s in administrative detention.

Meanwhile, AP reports that Israel’s Supreme Court moved up a hearing on Adnan’s appeal. The Islamic Jihad member is being treated for his hunger strike in a civilian hospital, where his health and living conditions are closely scrutinized by doctors, lawyers, journalists and NGOs. Gilad Shalit should’ve had it so good.

Iranian Atomic Urgency

• A widely quoted AFP report says the US is putting big time pressure on Israel not to attack Iran.

‘Israel is under pressure from all sides. The Americans don’t want to be surprised and faced with a fait accompli of an Israeli attack,’ a senior Israeli official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

‘They are telling us to be patient and see if the international sanctions against Teheran will eventually work,’ he said.

See also JPost coverage of Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s meeting with the visiting US National Security Advisor, Tom Donilon.

• German military expert Hans Ruhle argues in Die Welt (German) that an Israeli strike could set the Iranian atomic agenda back 10 years. The ever-prescient Spengler quotes and expands on Ruhle’s essay. It’s polar opposite more pessimistic assessments at the NY Times and CNN.

F-15 takeoff, Hatzerim Base

• Iranian soccer team cancels match with Serbian club — because Partizan Belgrade head coach Avram Grant is Israeli.

• More commentary at the WSJ (staff-ed, click via Google News)  Jennifer Rubin, Niles Gardner, Uri Dromi, John Yemma, and (gulp) MP John Baron. Last but not least, Gideon Rachman (click via Google News) points out that Western leaders have more confidence in Netanyahu’s arguments than they’re publicly letting on.

Arab Spring Winter

• IDF foils terror attack on Egypt border

• If Egypt unilaterally alters the Camp David treaty, Israel may refuse to sign peace agreements with other neighbors.

. . . why sign agreements with other neighbors if these accords are not kept, Intelligence Agencies Minister Dan Meridor said Monday.

• Unrest spreads to Damascus, where soldiers fire on protesters. Reuters writes:

Demonstrations and clashes with security forces have rocked Damascus in the past week, undermining President Bashar al-Assad’s claims that the 11-month uprising has been the work of saboteurs and limited mainly to the provinces.

• Worth reading: Homs, City of Torture.

• As a result of  global paralysis, Syria’s sectarian war goes international as foreign fighters and arms pour into country.

For years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, weapons and fighters slipped in across the border from Syria. Now the roles are being reversed with the flow coming the other way, although the numbers involved remain unclear.

Asma Assad

• An exiled Iranian writes a poignant open letter to Asma Assad:

You are not the same woman who once spoke to me about the plight of children in Palestine and elsewhere. A river of blood, including that of children, runs through your country. It’s hard for me imagine your hands blood-soaked, but your family is behind this ongoing massacre.

Asma, you are a mother, so how can you stand by a man who gives the orders to execute entire families in their homes? How can you sing lullabies to your daughter and son when so many Syrian mothers, especially in Homs, now have no one to sing to? How can you sleep in a bed with a man who has mastered the dark arts of torture and murder?

(Image of F15 via Flickr/Israel Defense Forces)

Original article can be viewed at Israel Daily News Stream 02/21/2012 on HonestReporting.

Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.

Will Big Media take any interest in legal rulings chipping away at the myth of Mohammed al-Dura? Is the “Start Up Nation” phenomenon rubbing off on Palestinians? And who is really responsible for Gaza’s continuing fuel crisis?

Israel and the Palestinians

• Following a French court’s acquittal of Dr. Yehuda David, YNet looks at some of the other legal cases stemming from the al-Dura video.

This is not the only slander trial surrounding the al-Dura case. A series of trials revealed an abundance of contradicting testimonies, and evidence trying to ascertain whether al-Dura was killed by IDF fire or Hamas cross fire. However, rulings are always limited to the question of slander, leaving the mystery of al-Dura open for debate.

See also Lilac Sigan‘s must-read reaction asking, Where’s the media?

I don’t blame the boy’s father for lying, by the way. If it were me that had to choose between lying, or telling the truth and being attacked with axes and knives by terrorists again, I’m pretty sure I’d do the same. But while the poor father’s motive for lying is clear — what’s the motive of the western world to keep silent about the truth, and prefer to keep believing the myth?

Sadly, these are the rules of our allegedly truthful world. The myth was aired all over the world and burned into the collective memory. It will live forever, and who knows how many others will be “inspired” with hatred as a result. And what about the real story? For some crazy reason — no one is interested in reporting it. None of the major news channels that reported the incident 12 years ago felt necessary to report the ruling of the French supreme court. I guess it will remain our little secret, then. It kind of makes you wonder — maybe all we really want is a good story with a hero? And once we get it — please, don’t confuse us with the facts.

• Dan Margalit comments on Khader Adnan’s hunger strike. The Islamic Jihad member’s stunt is now at day 65.

Ashton and others like her, here and around the world, have demanded that Israel minimize its use of administrative detention. One can understand where she is coming from, and this should be Israel’s objective too. But we must beware of the Islamic Jihad prisoner’s objective: He is trying to force Israel to refrain from one of the integral and essential aspects of the war against terror. If he wins, there will be no more administrative arrests . . .

Israel should make it very clear to the world that three principles will guide its approach toward Adnan and others like him: Israel will use administrative detention as infrequently as it possibly can; it will fight attempts to force it to abandon a key aspect of the war on terror, despite efforts by Adnan, his father and a handful of journalists to undermine the country’s security; and at the same time, Israel will forcibly prevent Adnan from dying.

• Gaza’s fuel crisis ain’t over yet. Maan News says Egyptian fuel deliveries hit a snag you could’ve seen coming:

Egypt wants to stop the passage of fuel through tunnels under the border between the countries, but the official Rafah terminal is not equipped for goods transfers and its development is restricted by an agreement between Egypt, Israel and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority.

The only alternative route while this agreement is being renegotiated is for the fuel to cross into Israel, and then back into the Gaza Strip . . .

Unfortunately for the people of Gaza, this Haaretz update says Hamas and the PA are balking at the latter option.

• Newsweek calls Beitar Jerusalem onto the carpet over the soccer team’s lack of Arab players:

“It’s hard to explain the policy as anything but racism,” says Yoav Borowitz, an Israeli journalist who writes regularly about football.

Supporters of the team have a more nuanced explanation. They say the ban is bound up with Beitar’s history and with tensions in Jerusalem, a city where Arabs and Jews live mostly in their own segregated neighborhoods (Israeli Arabs make up 20 percent of Israel’s population) . . .

But people who know Beitar from the inside say the managers fear that any change would prompt a backlash among fans. “Even if the racists are a small minority, they would cause a lot of trouble in the stands if the team suddenly put an Arab on the field,” said one person affiliated with the team who did not want to be identified.

• Is the “Start Up Nation” phenomenon rubbing off on the Palestinians? According to the Christian Science Monitor, West Bank entrepreneurial geeks are hip:

Until now, the primary Palestinian contribution to technology has been outsourcing programmers and engineers to firms in the United States and Israel, including Google and Cisco Systems.

But these new entrepreneurs want to do more. They want to create companies based on their own ideas and hire people to implement them. Already their ventures range from smart phone apps to Web design.

Crucially, the community is now beginning to attract investors.

• Haaretz: Bibi’s peace proposals at January’s Amman talks are remarkably similar to Kadima’s plan.

John Baird

• Canadian Foreign  Minister John Baird is tougher on the Palestinians than his speechwriters. Now you know:

Mr. Baird ended up delivering a much tougher address than envisioned by his speech writers, one that unequivocally emphasized Canada’s support for Israel – a position for which he makes no apologies and which has generated much criticism of the Harper Conservatives.

Copies of the draft texts of the speech, obtained under the Access to Information Act, show Mr. Baird used a radically reworked text when he represented Canada for the first time at the General Assembly on Sept. 26, 2011.

Iranian Atomic Urgency

• The NY Times assesses what an Israeli strike on Iran would entail. We’re talking about four primary targets, three possible flight routes, and at least 100 planes making a round trip of some 2,000 miles.

• Staff-eds in The Guardian and Irish Times urge conflict avoidance with Iran.

Arab Spring Winter

• A Syrian rebel tells CNN their uprising is an an “orphaned revolution.” With no international support, people are turning to Allah.

• A correction’s certainly warranted. But who in Australia wants to speak up for Bashar Assad and protest this Sydney Morning Herald headline?

For more, see yesterday’s Media Cheat Sheet.

Original article can be viewed at Israel Daily News Stream 02/20/2012 on HonestReporting.

With elections approaching in Venezuela, opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski – and especially his Jewish background – has become a lightening rod for criticism from state run media and supporters of Hugo Chavez.

Some of it clearly crosses into anti-Semitism.

Here, HR’s Latin American affiliate, ReporteHonesto takes a look at some of the most virulent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic press generated by the appointment of Radonsk as head of the opposition alliance, Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD) / the Coalition for Democratic Unity, who will be competing for the Venezuelan presidency on October 7 against Hugo Chavez.

Chavez supporters have launched an unscrupulous campaign to discredit the opposition candidate. One of the main focuses of these attacks concern Capriles parents’ Jewish religion, and Judaism in connection with Zionism and the State of Israel.

Related content: Chavez Media’s Seeds of Anti-Semitism

Among the articles analyzed by ReporteHonesto’s team, none of the writers evaluates MUD’s policy proposals or Capriles’ plans for government. Instead, the articles are filled with unfounded attacks demonizing and discrediting Judaism, Zionism and the State of Israel, with expressions such as “pro-Zionist rats”.

Here are some examples.

1. Venezuelan National Radio published an article entitled: “Zionism is the Enemy: a promise that conceals a pitfall”

It suggests that in order “to understand the interests that embody the candidate of the Venezuelan and transnational oligarchy, Capriles Radonski, it is important to know what Zionism is; the Israeli ideology he covertly represents”.

There follows a vicious attack on Zionism as a colonialist ideology based on racial superiority and Israel as the murderer of “millions” of Palestinians. Zionism is:

undoubtedly the ideology of terror, the most rotten of feelings represented by humanity; supposedly patriotic impulses based on greed… .

Drawing on classic anti-Semitism, the article states:

Zionism is the majority owner of financial institutions in the world, controlling almost 80 percent of the global economy and communications industry almost entirely, while maintaining decision-making positions within the US Department of State and European powers.

Capriles is depicted as an agent of “international Zionism, which threatens to destroy the planet we inhabit”.

Continued on Page 2

Original article can be viewed at “Pro-Zionist Rats”: Venezuelan Media Attack Chavez Opposition on HonestReporting.

In a pointed rebuke of Canadian public broadcaster CBC Radio-Canada and its Mideast correspondent Ginette Lamarche’s recent reporting on Israel, Radio-Canada’s Ombudsman, Pierre Tourangeau, this week upheld a series of five complaints filed by HonestReporting Canada about the network’s Mideast coverage.

Ginnette Lamarche

In the Ombudsman’s 12-page review of reports that aired between December 19- 23, 2011, Tourangeau concluded that Lamarche’s reports violated Radio-Canada’s standards for balance, impartiality and accuracy (one of these reports was corrected by Radio-Canada prior to the Ombudsman’s review). Significantly, Tourangeau found a lack of “diversity of opinion” as required for news coverage of controversial subjects, use of unverified facts and failure to challenge claims which led to “at least an appearance of bias”. Tourangeau recommended, given the scope of the review, that the management of Radio-Canada engage in substantive discussions over its methodology.

HonestReporting Canada objected to a December 19 radio report where journalist Lamarche interviewed two recently released Palestinian youths, one of whom claimed to have spent three years in jail for throwing stones. In this report, Lamarche reported that “many Palestinians spend a good part of their youth in jail for participating in a demonstration or throwing stones” without corroborating this information with a credible source. HRC obtained the list of released Palestinian prisoners which revealed that no ‘youths’ (Palestinians under 24 years of age) had been incarcerated for three years solely for throwing stones. Rather, convicted stone throwers were incarcerated for an average of seven months, the longest sentence consisting of 15 months. HRC asserted that this did not constitute “a good part of one’s youth”.  HRC also objected to the suggestion that the act of participating in peaceful demonstrations leads to incarceration. The Ombudsman concluded that this report was inaccurate as the journalist should have corroborated the length of stay in prison with official sources, brought an Israeli perspective into the story, and attributed the claims to the interviewees.

HRC also objected to a December 20 radio report about the arrests of Palestinians following the Shalit exchange. In this report, the narrator declared: “Since the exchange of prisoners following the release of Gilad Shalit in October, Israel imprisoned practically the same number of people it released”. HRC disputed this claim which was unverified by the reporter and has been denied by a spokesperson for the Israel Prison Authority. As well, HRC objected to Radio-Canada’s reliance on the statistics of Adameer (or Al-Dameer), a well-known pro-Palestinian NGO which has been accused of anti-Israel demonization. The Ombudsman agreed that this report breached Radio-Canada’s guidelines for accuracy as the statement was not attributed to Adameer, that this reporter did not properly describe this group as an NGO, a pro-Palestinian group or a Palestinian organization and, in reporting that Adameer “condemns the brutal and arbitrary arrests”, the reporter failed to attribute these statements to Adameer, instead leading the listener to assume these statements were necessarily correct.

Continued on Page 2

Original article can be viewed at Ombudsman Rebukes CBC Radio-Canada’s Mideast Reporting on HonestReporting.

Everything you need to know about the weekend coverage of Israel and the Mideast.

Today’s top stories: freedom of speech getting worse in Egypt, Iranian ships dock in Syria, and former Mossad head speaks to the LA Times.

Israel and the Palestinians

• Isabel Kershner is the latest reporter to look at the IDF’s treatment of Palestinian minors. HR addressed similar stories in recent months.

• Hunger strike of Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan reaches 63 days and continues to draw international attention, most recently from Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief.

• CIF Watch takes on Pheobe Greenwood’s story from the Telegraph covering last week’s tragic bus accident but including the fact that two people posted nasty comments in a the Facebook thread of the story.

• David Ha’ivri decries accusations of racism against Israel.

In Israel (West Bank area included,) Arab residents enjoy the kind of freedom and security that many in neighboring countries can only dream of – but they generally expect Israel to be better than others. The fact that Arabs are being oppressed, beaten and slaughtered by dictators in Arab countries is of no consolation to Israeli Arabs who are delayed at security checkpoints.

Iranian Atomic Urgency

• Former Mossad head Efraim Halevy gives LA Times a Q+A on the Syrian situation and how it relates to Iran.

How does Israel ensure that Iran is defeated in Syria? Wouldn’t it backfire if Israel were seen to be involved?

Israel shouldn’t be directly involved for obvious reasons. Once Israel enters the fray, this becomes an Israeli-Arab or Israeli-Muslim confrontation, which deflects attention from the main issues of Sunni-Shiite, and the Shiite repression of a majority in a foreign country. Israel should promote through its channels with major powers in the world a dialogue between leaders in Western nations and Russia to try to forge a common policy on Syria, which would entail mutual concessions at the American and Russian level.

• CNN’s Fareed Zakaria interviews Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.

• Iranian warships dock in Syria.

Arab Spring Winter

• Freedom House official gets Wall Street Journal op-ed space to lament the worsening situation in Egypt since the fall of Mubarak.

The repression of civil society is far worse than anything seen under Mr. Mubarak. In the past, Egyptian groups were routinely harassed and occasionally shut down, but they never faced the kind of large-scale investigation that is going on now. Similarly, foreign democracy-assistance organizations encountered some interference but were tolerated by Mr. Mubarak’s regime. They have operated openly, and have never before had their offices shuttered, their foreign staff prevented from leaving the country, or their staff threatened with criminal prosecution.

• US officials to NBC News: Drones are monitoring Syria clashes.

Rest O’ the Roundup

• Normal Finkelstein calls out the BDS movement, calling it dishonest and referring to it as a cult.

• Turns out, Americans love Israel after all. Gallup poll shows Israel 8^th most beloved country.

• HR Canada scores nice victory with CBC, as ombudsman rebukes station for Middle East coverage.

• Prime Minister calls Dr. Yehuda David a hero for fighting for the truth about Jamal al-Dura, father of Muhammad al-Dura.

• Israel Hayom looks at the efforts of Phillipe Karsenty and Dr. Yehuda David on the al-Dura story and of Steven Sugar on the BBC’s Balen Report.

• Stephen Walt, co-author of the Israel Lobby, weighs in on the Twitter controversy surrounding newly appointed New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren.

• The White House is looking for a waiver on the ban on funding to UNESCO.

Original article can be viewed at Israel Daily News Stream 02/19/2012 on HonestReporting.

New vindication for Israel on the Mohammed al-Dura affair. Israel and Singapore collaborate to foil an assassination attempt. Care to guess how much taxpayer money the BBC spent covering up the Balen report?

Israel and the Palestinians

• A French court gave some new and welcome vindication to Israel over the Mohammed al-Dura affair by overturning Dr. David Yehuda’s libel conviction. Haaretz explains:

In a 2008 interview with a French Jewish weekly an Israeli orthopedic surgeon, Dr. David Yehuda disputed the elder Dura’s claim. Yehuda said the scars were not related to the incident in which Mohammed al-Dura, who was 12 years old, died.

Rather, Yehuda said, they were the result of an assault on Dura by Hamas militants who accused him of collaborating with Israel, as well as subsequent surgery performed by Yehuda himself in 1994.

Dr. David explained it all in this 2008 video (English subtitles).

Iranian Atomic Urgency

• The Israeli media’s buzzing that the Mossad and authorities in Singapore foiled an Iran-Hezbollah plot to assassinate Ehud Barak. YNet says three suspects have been arrested.

• CNN: Thai police are convinced that a bomber who accidentally blew himself was targeting Israelis in Bangkok:

“I can tell you that the target of the operation of this group is specifically aimed at Israeli diplomats,” Police Gen. Priewpan Damapong said late Wednesday in an interview with CNN affiliate Channel 3.

His comments came after a senior Thai security official had drawn a tentative link between the Bangkok blasts and the attacks aimed at Israeli officials in India and Georgia, saying the materials used in the explosive devices were similar.

But if its apologetics you want, see The Guardian‘s Comment is Free section.

• Fareed Zakaria ain’t buying into Ehud Barak’s talk of Iran’s approaching zone of immunity.

•  Iran and Al-Qaida’s ties have moved into an ”operational relationship.” More at Sky News.

• A staff-ed in The Independent isn’t happy with Ahmadinejad’s showy announcement of made-in-Iran nuclear fuel rods. It plays into the hands of “shrill” Israeli warnings:

The way Tehran now appears to be upping the ante suggests either that the Iranian leadership is gripped by something close to panic, or that it is lashing out in the belief that it has nothing left to lose. Either prospect can only give succour to those who argue that force is the only language Tehran understands.

Arab Spring Winter

• The UN General Assembly is due to vote on a condemnation of Syria this week. It’s just symbolic statement, but AP reports that Russia’s trying to water it down.

• “Bashar Assad can massacre 100 to 200 people a day,” but Only Israel Gets Goldstoned.

• David Schenker (LA Times op-ed) explains Egypt’s anti-American populism.

No doubt, SCAF, the government and the Islamists have little need for pro-democracy NGOs, but the investigation of the NGOs is a symptom rather than the root of the bilateral crisis. Notwithstanding the parliamentary elections, Egypt today is dominated by a coalition of military authoritarians and aspiring theocrats that views Washington with great suspicion.

Facing extreme challenges at home and in need of distractions, anti-Americanism has become Cairo’s preferred populist recourse. Although a solution might be found for this particular controversy — with or without U.S. foreign assistance — this bilateral dynamic assures that the next crisis is not far off.

Rest O’ the Roundup

• The UK Supreme Court ruled that the BBC does not have to release the Balen report assessing its Mideast coverage. While BBC’s the clear winner, the biggest losers are British taxpayers. According to the Daily Mail, the Beeb spent an overall £350,000 in legal fees to keep the Balen report covered up.

• Politico interviews the NY Times’s new Jerusalem bureau chief, Jodi Rudoren. See also Shmuel Rosner‘s thoughts.

• A WSJ op-ed (click via Google News) warns Mideast governments to rein in hackers. As they say, it’s all fun and games till somebody gets hurt:

If the hackers turn their attention to disruption and destruction, as some have threatened, they are likely to find the controls for electric power grids, oil pipelines and precious water systems inadequately secured. If a hacker causes real physical damage to critical systems in that region, it could quickly involve governments retaliating against each other with both cyber and conventional weapons. Middle Eastern governments need to get their citizen hackers under control and better protect their own critical networks, or they will eventually be dragged into unwanted conflict.

• Activists Down Under deconstruct “The Promise” and take SBS to task for airing. Tzvi Fleischer and Jamie Hyams got an op-ed soapbox at The Australian, but because of the paywall, you’ll have to read their critique at AIJAC.

(Image of money via Flickr/Images_of_Money)

Original article can be viewed at Israel Daily News Stream 02/16/2012 on HonestReporting.