Was Iran Responsible for Lockerbie?
February 4, 2013 16:03 by Pesach Benson
Everything you need to know about today’s coverage of Israel and the Mideast. Join the Israel Daily News Stream on Facebook.
Today’s Top Stories
1. According to an academic study (pdf) funded by the US State Dept., Israeli and Palestinian school textbooks both present “one-sided narratives” and maps with blind-spots, but little demonization of “the other.” Israel issued a detailed 21-page response (pdf) saying the report was flawed and misleading. Take your pick of AP, Washington Post, The Guardian, or NY Times coverage. The latter suggests a certain moral equivalence at play:
The new study avoids harsh language and couches the bad news in a kind of symmetry.
Related reading: Incitment, Bias: A Textbook Case
2. After describing Irish anti-Semitism in her Jerusalem Post column, Sarah Honig has been on the receiving end of ugly emails from the Emerald Isle. The Irish Independent and Irish Central picked up on the story.
3. After reading a NY Times profile of spy novelist Gerard de Villiers, it’s worth asking — as the Daily Mail did — Was Iran really responsible for the Lockerbie bombing?
Syrian Air Strike
• American intelligence sources told the NY Times that last week’s air strike damaged Syria’s main R&D facility for chemical and biological weapons, though the primary target was the convoy of anti-aircraft missiles apparently being moved to Hezbollah.
A senior United States military official, asked about reports that the research center had been targeted, said that any damage was likely “due to the bombs which targeted the vehicles” carrying the antiaircraft weapons, and from “the secondary explosions from the missiles.”
• Did Israel also hit a Hezbollah in the Lebanese city of Tyre? It depends: Who do you want to believe?
• For more commentary/analysis, see Bret Stephens (Wall St. Journal video), NBC News, and the Financial Times (click via Google News).
Israel and the Palestinians
• Deja vu all over again? Saeb Erekat to reporters: We’ll return to the negotiating table if Israel freezes settlements and releases prisoners.
• The Guardian‘s Steve Bell weighs in on the Sunday Times toon tempest and apology. Strikes me as trite, but feel free to disagree.
• A NY Daily News staff-ed slams Brooklyn College’s upcoming BDS event. (But Glenn Greenwald disagrees.)
• A NY Daily News staff-ed lauds Israel for “refusing to be stomped by the kangaroo in the kangaroo court” better known as the UN Human Rights Council.
• The IDF arrested a number of senior West Bank Hamasniks. YNet coverage.
• Worth reading: Armin Rosen of The Atlantic visited Sderot, where the city’s rocket alarms have been quiet for two months:
The lull in rocket fire only emphasizes the town’s arresting normality — it’s a place that’s interchangeable with much of the rest of the country, and clearly factored into its future plans and development. It isn’t a fringe frontier community, but an integrated part of the cramped coastal plane where the vast majority of the Israeli population lives.
• I don’t expect much from Russia Today, but Abby Martin really froths about “the occupation.” Her facial contortions, swagger and tone of voice are so over the top as to be entertaining in a twisted way. The “Hitler methodology” line is just icing on the cake.
Gary Katz
7:22 pm
Feb 04, 2013
So does Abby (not Dear) Martin really believe that Israel employs death camps, kills anyone who hides a Palestinian, forces Palestinians into slave labor and performs cruel medical experiments on them? Does she have evidence of an Israeli krystallnacht in the West Bank? If so, she’s ignorant. If not, she’s merely a liar. Probably both.
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batya dagan
9:27 pm
Feb 04, 2013
Does Israel have gulags? Did she kill millions to steal their grain? Russia committed so many crims against its own people that it has no right to even talk about other countries make belief crimes.
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David Guy
9:32 pm
Feb 04, 2013
What Jewish owned press is Steve Bell refering to? Aside from the Jewish Chronicle what media in Britain is owned by Jews? Seems to me this is not just trite but a blantant attempt to recycle the antisemitic meme that Jews control the Media.
Wish they did.
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Steve
10:11 pm
Feb 04, 2013
Pretty lady. Pretty uneducated! Pretty prejudiced! Pretty stupid! Maybe a pretty good actor but with pretty devious intentions. Should stick with modeling agencies because she just is not pretty bright!!!!
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Gary Katz
10:27 pm
Feb 04, 2013
Steve, imagine if you were married to her and had to listen to her constantly nagging you.
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Vitali
10:16 pm
Feb 04, 2013
Please, do not pay attention on those, the weak-minded and ignorant idiots who will shout about Israel. They desperately want to catch your attention. You haven’t look at them. They deserve only scorn
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shloime
5:22 pm
Feb 05, 2013
no!
it was weak-minded and ignorant idiots who led the national socialist party to power in 1933.
while the “smart” people just ignored them.
lies must be disproved before they become “common knowledge”.
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Steve
10:38 pm
Feb 04, 2013
Gary,,
That would be worse than torture. She’s waaaaay too demonstrative. In reality, laughable because one just cannot take someone like that too seriously.
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Gary Katz
10:43 pm
Feb 04, 2013
Ha ha! I can just picture her yelling and jumping around like in her video, “Why haven’t you taken out the garbage?! Are you going to just sit around, watching the ball game? You’re worse than an Israeli!”
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emes
12:23 am
Feb 05, 2013
…..and where did hitler learn his methods if not from the Russian pogroms, the partition of Poland, the Pale of Settlement, Jews in before the Revolutions – I could go on with a more detailed description of the abominations which Russia executed; as Ivan the Terrible decreed that if the Jews would not embrace Christianity then drowning was their lot and Jews were officially excluded from Russian territory until the partition of Poland in the late eighteenth century – Even in the 1980′s a Jew in Russia was ‘owned,’ a property of the State – oh, but that is child’s play according to the rantings of Abby Martin, Palestinians are far from being owned, they can go when they like from Israel.
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Ofra BenDavid
3:48 am
Feb 05, 2013
I liked all the comments that you all made, Martin and her twisted mind got what she deserved from you all, thank you for standing for Israel and G-d bless you all.
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Gary Katz
3:55 am
Feb 05, 2013
Ofra, thanks; same to you! We really trashed her, didn’t we, heh heh! She had it coming, though. Maybe the key to combating her kind of stupidity is to fight back with humor, as razor sharp as necessary.
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Carole63
10:04 pm
Feb 05, 2013
The only democratic nation in the Middle East, that`s Israel! Where does she get her information from? Probably all the muslim nut-jobs! They are good liars!
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Steve
11:08 pm
Feb 05, 2013
Shloime is correct about Germany in 1933 and is not wrong about disproving lies.
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anneinpt
6:11 pm
Feb 06, 2013
The link to the article about Sarah Honig in the Irish Independent is incorrect. Here is the correct link:
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/columnist-targeted-by-antisemitic-hate-mail-29045984.html
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