Israel Daily News Stream 04/17/2012
April 17, 2012 14:29 by Pesach Benson
Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.
A whopping 40 percent of Europeans believe Israel is waging a “war of extermination” against the Palestinians. A PLO cadre slams the PA’s crackdown on press freedom — with a comment taking some steam out of Prisoners Day. The Columbia Journalism Review follows up on a flawed “jailed journalists per capita” stat used against Israel.
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Israel and the Palestinians
• You know the PA’s crackdown on media and free speech is getting out of hand when Saleh Ra’fat, a member of the PLO’s executive committee makes the following statement (picked up by the JPost):
Voicing outrage and discontent over the recent PA crackdown, Ra’fat accused the attorney-general of “cloning the policy of administrative detention” by ordering the arrest of journalists and bloggers exposing corruption in the PA and criticizing Palestinian leaders.
The Israeli administrative detention policy he decries was described as “draconian” by The Independent‘s Catrina Stewart — in her own words:
The hunger-strikers have a long list of demands, top of which is to protest against administrative detention, a draconian policy that Israel has used to jail indefinitely those it deems a security threat.
Without suggesting any moral equivalence between the Israeli and PA detentions on the Palestinian “Prisoners Day,” I don’t see any hunger strikes supporting Palestinians jailed for speaking out. As for Big Media interest in the PA’s war on free speech, the silence is deafening.
• A new study finds that a whopping 40 percent of Europeans believe Israel is waging a “war of extermination” against the Palestinians. Judging from the Times of Israel, it’s a reflection of anti-Semitism. But media demonization and misrepresentation is a factor worth adding to the conversation.
• AP picks up on the outrage of Lt. Col. Sholom Eisner hitting Danish activist Andreas Ias. I wonder how Ias feels about equated with the Turkish thugs aboard the Mavi Marmara who were indeed itching for a fight with Israeli naval commandos. Correspondent Aron Heller writes:
Israel has a long history of troubled relations with international activists. Several pro-Palestinian activists have been killed or maimed in clashes with the Israeli forces over the years.
In the worst instance, Israeli naval commandos clashed with activists on board a flotilla trying to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip in May 2010, killing nine activists.
• The sun’s a little brighter and the birds are chirpier today: Abbas Denies Plan to Dissolve PA
• Avraham Melamed, a survivor of the 1972 attack on the Israeli Olympic team shared his recollections with USA Today. Times have changed:
The Munich Games employed 2,140 police and other law enforcement officers, according to the official report, Olympic historian David Wallechinsky said. The London Games will have a security force of 23,700, according to the British government’s most recent report. With a security budget of at least $1.6 billion, the London Games are the largest peacetime security operation in Britain’s history.
• Palestinian media reports the existence of a Gaza organ-harvesting ring which apparently includes members of Hamas. Donald Bostrom, where are you?
• Oh joy. Sheikh Raed Salah’s back in Israel after months of legal tussling in the UK.
Frank Adam
4:39 pm
Apr 17, 2012
The quick answer to all Arab calumnies about “wars of extermination” is what sort of extermination is it when the literally f—ing Arabs of Palestine have quadrupled their population since 1967 ????
The truth about Arabs is that they are very good at accusing everybody else of what they the Arabs want to do so as to disguise what the Arabs want to do – namely kill every Christian and Jew East of Istanbul and south of Malta.
It is time for every Israeli apologist and diplomat to accuse the Arabs of being out to conquer, expel and liquidate [communist smear in that word] every Christian and Jew. qv Egypt and Iraq besides Gaza and Bethlehem; and above all always say Christian first so that the audience takes the kick does not switch off.
Well-loved. Agree or Disagree:
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Paul Tenenbaum
5:29 pm
Apr 17, 2012
I have been saying for the longest time: Israel has certainly the smartest people in medecine, science, innovations and so may others, but they fail in matching or even improving on the Arab “propaganda”. The ARABS rely on what Josef Goebbels said long ago: tell lies and keep repeating them and EVENTUALLY people will believe.
Israel prefers acting like a gentleman.. WRONG. You fight fire with fire. There is plenty Israel can come up such as: what Arab state will really support the Palestinians. Outside of Jordan which other Arab state has helped those who fled, not all Arabs were kicked out.
So the first objective for Israel is to convince Europe of the truth even if it means to embellish same.Example: given the opportunity, Arab women will prefer Israeli hospitals over their own.
This was true many years ago and it is still true TODAY. And there is so much more.
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Len Kurtz
3:42 am
Jun 21, 2012
War of extermination? Only one problem; where are the innocent victims of that extermination?
Arab propaganda too effective? No. It assumes that those to whom it is directed are not Jew haters. But they are and as a result the Arabs do not not have to work hard at it.
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