Today’s Top Stories
1. The UN team investigating war crimes during Operation Protection Edge wants to defer its report to June. A statement released by the Schabas commission said it needed more time to consider evidence received from Israelis and Palestinians.
The team’s report was originally scheduled to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council on March 23. UN Watch gives the deferral a thumbs up:
“Moreover,” said Neuer, “the resignation of William Schabas under a cloud of bias accusations requires a complete rewriting of the report.”
2. While Palestinians in the West Bank boycott Israeli products, Gazans are happily purchasing Israeli foods, drinks, dairy, and snacks. Xinhua notes that the strip’s factories are unable to produce necessities, and Hamas can’t rely on the old tunnel economy anymore. West Bank activists aren’t happy.
Abdul Fattah Zrei’e, one of the directors in the ministry of economy, told Xinhua in Gaza that importing Israeli-made products was “temporary,” and didn’t mean that “we encourage the Israeli products or we look for replacing Israeli products to our products.”
But this policy was slammed by officials and activists in the West Bank.
3. In a school-wide referendum, students of the London School of Oriental and African Studies voted to boycott Israel academics. But don’t be fooled into thinking this was a victory for the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement. Colin Shindler unspins the vote:
Yet it was not the governing body, not the administration, not even formally the lecturers’ union, but an invented “SOAS community” that participated. Anyone could vote who wanted to – including the SOAS cleaners, catering staff and security guards.
A total of 1,283 students supported the BDS motion – three-quarters of all students who voted. Yet there are some 5,000 students at SOAS plus another 3,600 engaged in distance-learning. Some 86 percent did not vote for BDS. Despite all the self-congratulatory self-deception, this was not exactly a resounding success for a weeklong referendum.
4. Australian Click-Bait: How to Misuse Israel to Attract Readers: Did an Australian teen really join ISIS because of media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
5. Heartbreak in Gaza: a Lesson in Non-Investigative Journalism: In a guest post, an award-winning Canadian journalist takes New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to task for lazy reporting from Gaza.
6. HR Radio: Hating Jews at UCLA, the Holocaust Card and a ‘Twitter-Fried’ Jim Clancy: Yarden Frankl discusses the good, the bad and the ugly from Big Media. Click below to hear the interview on Voice of Israel.
Iranian Atomic Urgency
• Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman discussed the Iranian nuclear issue, ISIS, and Russia with former CIA chief and retired army general David Petraeus.
• Critics of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to Congress accuse him of attributing a fabricated quote to Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah. Thumbs up to Yair Rosenberg for “walking the cat back” (with an assist from Tony Badran). You can now hear Nasrallah in his own voice from his 2002 speech:
“But I’ll tell you. Among the signs […] and signals which guide us, in the Islamic prophecies and not only in the Jewish prophecies, is that this State [of Israel] will be established, and that the Jews will gather from all parts of the world into occupied Palestine, not in order to bring about the anti-Christ and the end of the world, but rather that Allah the Glorified and Most High wants to save you from having to go to the ends of the world, for they have gathered in one place–they have gathered in one place–and there the final and decisive battle will take place.”
Israel and the Palestinians
• Both Israel and Hamas denied reports that Hamas offered a long-term truce in exchange for a lifting of the Gaza blockade.
• The Times of Israel picked up on a British university holding a three-day conference questioning the legitimacy of Israel’s right to exist. The contact person, Southampton University’s Professor Oren Ben-Dor, certainly has a background for this kind of gig. The hate-fest kicks off April 17.
Around the World
• French Jews are rattled after soldiers guarding Toulouse’s Otzer HaTorah school spotted an unauthorized drone flying overhead. This is same school where Mohammed Merah went on a rampage, killing Rabbi Yonatan Sandler, two of his sons, and an eight-year-old girl three years ago.
The school will mark the anniversary of the Toulouse massacre on March 19. Police are investigating who sent the drone.
• At Israel trade event in South Africa BDS supporters threaten to “kill Jews”
• A Swedish TV station stopped airing reruns of the Israeli episode of popular cooking show after it referred to Jerusalem as “Israel’s heart.”
TV4, a commercial channel, stopped airing reruns of the Israel episode of celebrity chef Tina Nordstrom’s “Tina Visiting” last month following viewers’ complaints over her characterization of Jerusalem, the news website varldenidag.se reported last week.
A spokesperson for TV4 said the footage was pulled to avoid having the show deal with political issues.
“Only under the most hateful of interpretations can this be deemed offensive,” Isaac Bachman, Israel’s ambassador to Stockholm wrote in an open letter.
• Houthis are receiving Syrian training and are fighting for Bashar Assad too. Can they do that?
Media Matters
• A Lebanese TV presenter cut off an interview when a long-winded sheikh became disrespectful. Kudos to Rima Karaki for keeping her cool and keeping control of the interview despite being told to “shut up” and “it’s beneath me to be interviewed by you. You are a woman . . .”. Nice spot by MEMRI.
• The problem with World Press Photo’s contest
There are certain things photojournalists are never supposed to do if they want to remain credible visual communicators.
• It’s all in the wrist: Smart watches have publishers strategizing how to present news on a screen that’s, say, 50 x 40 millimeters. What does this new “arms race” mean for the way we consume news? Jack Riley raises the questions.
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA Rob via flickr with additions by HonestReporting
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