Today’s Top Stories
1. If peace talks fail, Mahmoud Abbas will dump on Israel responsibility for administering the West Bank (Gaza too?). He’s eyeing an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank within three years. More on the story at Haaretz and the Times of Israel.
2. Jerusalem Post: The European Union is threatening to ban all imports of Israeli poultry and produce if it doesn’t mark items from the West Bank, Golan Heights, and eastern Jerusalem.
3. What are the Nusra Front’s demands in UN negotiations for the release of Fijian peace monitors kidnapped along the Israeli-Syrian border? AP writes:
Brig. Gen. Mosese Tikoitoga said the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front wants to be taken off the U.N. terrorist list, wants humanitarian aid delivered to parts of the Syrian capital Damascus, and wants compensation for three of its fighters it says were killed in a shootout with U.N. officers.
Tikoitoga didn’t say if the demands would be seriously considered.
Michael Totten sums up what you’re probably thinking:
If they don’t want to be called terrorists they shouldn’t do terroristy things like taking hostages . . .
4. American Campuses in the Heat of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Colleges must not tolerate anti-Semitic hate speech.
5. Irish Times Corrects Gaza Occupation Photo Caption: With prodding from HR, the Irish Times corrects the record.
6. The Independent Changes “Jewish Lobby” Headline: How kind of the paper to also remove the words “multi-tentacled” from the text of Mira Bar Hillel’s column.
7. The Guardian’s “Mandatory Red Roofs” is Nonsense: It’s gutter journalism as an architect “shingles” out Israel for bizarre criticism easily disproved.
Israel and the Palestinians
• A terror alert and manhunt came to an end with the arrest of a Palestinian near Netanya. Jerusalem Post coverage.
• Matti Friedman’s expose of Big Media’s disproportionate coverage and groupthink approach to Israel continues making waves. Former BBC correspondent Richard Miron weighs in. If you have a problem with Haaretz‘s paywall, you can read the piece on Miron’s blog.
Israel must be held to account not in comparison to elsewhere in the Middle East, but rather to other Western armies operating under similar conditions. And yet in reading and watching the coverage out of Gaza, it seems the media held Israel to an altogether different standard. Civilian casualties were often portrayed as the consequence of deliberate Israeli vengefulness and bloodletting . . .
Where Matti Friedman is entirely correct is in the failure of news organizations and their correspondents to point out the controls and “pressures” both implicit and explicit exerted upon them in Gaza by the all-pervasive and tightly-run Hamas media operation. This inaction can only be seen as – at best – moral cowardice by media organizations.
It was also notable in what remain unobserved. One senior BBC correspondent wrote after a week of reporting in Gaza that “he saw no evidence … of Israel’s accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields.” This is a very strange statement. Firstly, just because the journalist didn’t see it doesn’t mean it didn’t occur . . .
But, just as importantly, the (Western) media must also account for itself and for its own conduct, including apparent omissions and failures in the reporting of the conflict. It must question where reporting may have ended and emoting began; if it held Israel to a standard apart from all others; and why it allowed Hamas a free pass in controlling the flow of information.
• CNN host stunned when radical Muslim cleric makes 9/11 joke during soundcheck
Commentary/Analysis
• Bret Stephens (Wall St. Journal via Google News) weighs in on President Obama’s curious rage with Israel.
• The Guardian‘s Steve Bell serves up today’s cartoon with extra snark.
• How Hamas’ Casualty Figures Became News: The Washington Post misses a chance to expose Hamas’ deception.
• For more commentary/analysis, see David Feith (Wall St. Journal via Google News: Defenders of Hamas practice the bigotry of low expectations), Elliott Abrams (The fog of ceasefire), and Timothy Stanley (UK anti-Semitism). Last but not least, Fisk’s being Fisk again.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Meet the robots that fact-check.
Factchecking has been going out of style for years, as magazines and other publications embrace the feckless creed of modern journalism: Do More With Less. In its place has emerged a sort of after-the-fact, vigilante version of factchecking, in which journalists and their watchers use the internet to gleefully uncover everything from honest gaffes to quote-pipers and plagiarists. Now comes a wave of factchecking bots–semiautonomous software applications that perform a high volume of repetitive tasks. Like the rest of robot journalism, the prognosis for these things is uncertain . . .
Featured image: CC BY flickr/Jenny Downing, flag CC BY-SA HonestReporting, Nina Geometrieva, www.freestock.ca
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream and join the IDNS on Facebook.
