Elizabeth Sullivan at the Cleveland Plain Dealer on the “Bin Ladenization of the Palestinian cause”:

A tightly organized militant faction tied to al-Qaida could gain leverage by offering its terrorist services to radical Palestinian aspirants for power. That in turn could push Hamas in an even more extremist direction, toppling an older wing now looking for a more mainstream political status by cooperating with Arafat and signing cease-fire deals.

The further radicalization of the [Gaza] Strip would shatter hopes of a Middle East peace deal by making it unlikely Palestinians will ever do the minimum required to rein in terrorist groups.

It is this very political radicalization that al-Qaida seeks as it spreads its tentacles into sensitive crevasses of the region.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad are already fueled by radical Islam, and already see themselves in the context of a global movement to overthrow the “infidels.” From the Hamas charter:

Article Seven: The Universality of Hamas
By virtue of the distribution of Muslims, who pursue the cause of the Hamas, all over the globe, and strive for its victory, for the reinforcement of its positions and for the encouragement of its Jihad, the Movement is a universal one. It is apt to be that due to the clarity of its thinking, the nobility of its purpose and the loftiness of its objectives. It is in this light that the Movement has to be regarded, evaluated and acknowledged. Whoever denigrates its worth, or avoids supporting it, or is so blind as to dismiss its role, is challenging Fate itself.

But Sullivan is right that the universalist dimension of Hamas et al is a growing concern. Given this, the media effort to separate Israel’s anti-terror struggle from the rest of the civilized world’s is artificial. This is a point we made in our last communique. The problem is when the media then turn the whole thing on its head and blame Israel for the global Islamist jihad against western civilization.

The al-Qaeda/Hamas link is real – and Israeli policy has nothing to do with it.

J Post has an article on the BBC’s unprecedented appointment of a “Middle East policeman” to oversee their own coverage of the region. The author gives justified credit to British lawyer Trevor Asserson and the Daily Telegraph, whose work in documenting BBC bias has been important, but doesn’t mention the central role of HonestReporting and other organizational media monitors in pressuring the Beeb to get their act together in Mideast coverage.

As we’ve noted recently, the jury’s still out on the BBC. One appointment does not objectivity make. Stay informed by subscribing to receive HonestReporting communiques: just go to the HR homepage.

From The Christian Science Monitor on Friday:

There is a pattern emerging, say some experts, that indicates the terror group [al Qaeda] is determined to wage a sort of world war.

You don’t say?

Truth is, most media outlets (and their “experts”) have simply refused until now to accept the scope of the self-proclaimed jihad against the West. By returning ad nasueum to the questions “What did Israel do to cause this?” and “What did America do to make them so upset?”, they’re simply turning a blind eye to what the jihadists themselves are saying – their enemy is not Israel or America, it’s Western civilization.

Did we really need Istanbul to know this?

In our communique on Thursday, we addressed the troubling trend of blaming Israeli policy for the entire Islamist war on Western civilization. Here’s yet another example:

In response to President Bush’s Tuesday speech at Whitehall, syndicated editorial cartoonist Ted Rall had this offering, blaming checkpoints and poverty for Muslim terrorism:

Note that while Bush’s speech addressed the phenomenon of global Islamic terrorism, Rall insists on a) locating the problem in Israel, and b) blaming Israeli policy.

And regarding the “substance” of Rall’s claims…

OCCUPATION: Palestinian terrorism far predates the 1967 war, and terrorist groups make it abundantly clear that their goal is not the elimination of the Israeli presence in their midst, but the elimination of Israel, period (see the Palestinian National Charter, and the Hamas Charter).

CHECKPOINTS: The necessity for checkpoints has been created by the Palestinians. By pursuing a violent campaign of terror against Israel’s citizens, they have forced Israel to set up barriers to make it as difficult as possible for terrorists to enter Israel or travel through the territories to carry out acts of violence. The checkpoints are an inconvenience to innocent Palestinians, but they do in fact prevent terror and save lives.

Commercial goods, food, medicine, ambulances, and medical crews continue to circulate freely, hampered only by continuing attacks. Palestinian workers going to jobs in Israel also may pass through the checkpoints with the proper identification; restrictions are only imposed when necessitated by the security situation.

Barriers are not set up to humiliate Palestinians, but to ensure the safety of Israeli citizens. Unfortunately, every time Israel has relaxed its policy and withdrawn checkpoints, Palestinian terrorists have taken advantage of the opportunity to launch new attacks on innocent Israelis.

And why the thoroughness of the checkpoints (which slows things down)? One recent example: on October 14, a Palestinian woman was arrested at the Hizma checkpoint north of Jerusalem after they found a knife and gun hidden in a baby stroller she was traveling with.

PALESTINIAN POVERTY: While the blaming of Israel for Palestinian poverty was always absurd, it reaches new heights of absurdity at a time when massive PA financial corruption (see this and this) is increasingly exposed. And whoever’s responsible for the poverty, that’s not what causes terror anyway.

But there’s something else here, from the fourth frame of the cartoon:

- Rall’s refusal to accept the idea that freedom (as defined by Bush) really does scare “Joe Terrorist.” It scared Stalin, it scared Hitler, it scared Saddam Hussein, and it scares Hamas and al Qaeda, because democratic reform in the Muslim world means their twisted brand of Islam cannot thrive.

- Rall’s refusal to accept that there really is a culture of glamorizing suicide bombing among Palestinians, telling them that “terror rocks.” Children are encouraged to become shahiddim, leaders regularly call for terrorist jihad, and terrorists become national heroes.

It seems that no matter how many attacks or facts you line up for some media personalities, they simply can’t accept the monstrosity of Muslim fundamentalist terror. There’s always that effort to “understand their grievences,” which inevitably leads to blaming the victims for horrific terror. Wake up folks – we are dealing with a different culture here, with different definitions of values and meaning of life.

Did the Rall cartoon run in your local paper? If so, write a letter that raises the points above.

Gerald Kaufman at the Spectator (UK) has an outrageous screed suggesting (half-seriously?) that the US should invade Israel, now that it’s done with Iraq.

This is the villification campaign, in a thousand words or less.

Comments to: editor@spectator.co.uk

Allahpundit has taken a timeout from parodying an Islamist whacko to parody Tom Friedman’s last few columns (which were particularly bad – find them here, here, and an old “classic” here).

A worthwhile article from Annenberg’s Online Journalism Review on the internet’s effect on media criticism includes this apt remark by William Powers, media critic for the National Journal:

Media critics all do the job so differently that I honestly don’t think of us as competitors. Some operate more as reporters, some as pundits, some as ideo-warriors, some as gossips, some as pure ranters. It’s like we’re a bunch of musicians reading the same sheet of music, the media, but interpreting it with different instruments and in radically different styles.

As members of that orchestra, it’s about time we at BackSpin define our instrument. Look for something more polished on our “About” page sometime soon, but for the time being here’s the skinny on this relatively new blog: BackSpin is an outgrowth of HonestReporting.com, the leading monitor of anti-Israel bias in world media, with over 60,000 subscribers. HonestReporting releases 1-2 email articles a week and encourages activism to promote fair reporting. BackSpin aims to address topics that don’t make their way into those HR articles, and supplement the articles themselves with additional information that emerges after they’re published.

So our focus is the Mideast conflict between Israel and the Palestinians (not that other one happening a few hundred miles to the East), and our overarching concern will remain the fair portrayal of Israel in world media. We believe there exists a chronic and near-ubiquitous problem of anti-Israel media bias, and that that bias is both morally wrong and deleterious to the welfare of the state of Israel. Since one of the key problems is a lack of presentation of the full context of the conflict, we occasionally present backgrounders that go beyond critiquing particular news articles to explore under-reported aspects of the conflict (like Arafat’s corruption). BackSpin is an additional forum for this background info.

BackSpin is anchored to HonestReporting, but we’ll take advantage of the blog form to sail around a bit. (That’s a musical and nautical metaphor in one posting.) Please comment often, and send us your feedback on this blog’s contents regularly.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer issued this today, which Taranto calls “The Best Correction Ever”:

Because of an editing error, a story on the front page yesterday misattributed a quote from the speaker on an audiotape purportedly of Saddam Hussein as coming from Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. It was the speaker on the tape, not Daschle, who said, “The evil ones now find themselves in crisis, and this is God’s will for them.” The only solution for Iraq was for “the zealous Iraqi sons, who ran its affairs and brought it out of backwardness . . . to return . . . to run its affairs anew,” the speaker on the tape said, referring to the Baath leadership.

Once you stop laughing, you realize this demonstrates how precarious news reporting can be.

An Iraqi blogger posts a letter from an Iraqi property owner to NY Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger about harassment and property seizure at the hands of guards employed by the Times in Baghdad:

My family has a property in the green zone in down town Baghdad on Abi-Nuas street. The New York Times rents the adjacent property. For several weeks now my brother Ali Al Ali has been denied automobile access to our property by security guards. Until two days ago we thought this was a coalition security measure. Now we known these guards are not coalition personal but are instead the private security force employed by your news paper.

The family property has two store fronts. Yesterday (Saturday November 15, 2003) my brother and two hired men were in one of the stores installing shelves. My brother lost his livelihood in the war and needs to open this store to make a living. His efforts were interrupted by several of the security guards employed by your paper. He was knocked roughly to the floor and threatened. Your guards pointed there AK-47 rifles and my brother and his work men and told them they would be shot if they did not leave immediately.

I feel sure if learned the United States Army was responsible an incident such as this you would feel obligated to publish the story and condemn the act.

In this his case I respectfully suggest you have an obligation to do somewhat more.

The author hasn’t had any response from the Times, and asks readers to join him in sending copies of the letter. If you’d like to do so, the email is letters@nytimes.com.

The latest report from the Palestinian Authority Finance Ministry indicates that Yassir Arafat personally received nearly 10% of the total PA budget for September. That’s 10% of $90 million, or $300,000 a day.

Let’s see how Arafat stacks up against NBA super-rookie LeBron James in daily earnings:

Yassir Arafat, Palestinian Authority – $300,000/day
LeBron James, Cleveland Cavaliers and Nike – $46,000/day

Arafat’s outearning LeBron 6 to 1 (and we suspect he’s not paying income tax).
The Nobel Laureate “revolutionary leader” of the Palestinian people doesn’t have a $90 million sneaker deal, but he does have financiers who are finally starting to wonder.