Media Angles
• Must read: Another view on reporting
The family of kidnapped and murdered teen Gil-ad Shaer invited the reporters who covered their ordeal to their home to thank them, but the reporters ended up thanking the family. They were not “settlers” and “reporters” but rather people coming together.
• The shoe finally dropped: AP’s former Jerusalem bureau chief, Steve Gutkin, responded to Matti Friedman‘s description of bias.
Matti’s 4,000-word story in Tablet did not mention the word “occupation.” That a sizeable percentage of the population making up the Holy Land live under Israeli military rule against their will did not merit a single sentence tells us something about the prevalence of bias.
No, media coverage of Israel is not the new face of global anti-Semitism. In every society I covered in my decades as a foreign correspondent, whistle blowers were dubbed traitors and defenders of the status quo were considered patriots. Matti seems to argue that Israel should be left alone because it’s not as bad as Bashar Assad or the Taliban. I believe there’s nothing wrong with giving voice to all those who believe the Jewish state can and should do better.
And I feel the same way about the Palestinians.
• Israel acknowledged putting a gag order on local media reporting that Sotloff held Israeli citizenship. Reuters also notes that Avigdor Lieberman sidestepped a question of whether Israel tried rescuing the Miami-born journalist.
• Meet the Israeli analyst who leaked ISIS execution videos
• How Israel’s winning the social media war in China.
• Emily Gian takes apart The Australian after reporterJohn Lyons romanticized Hamas during an interviewing with Ahmed Yousef.
Commentary/Analysis
• Terrific analysis. And if you replace the word Russia with Hamas, it’s spot-on.
Why #RussiaInvadedUkraine matters
• Australia’s Minister of Education, Christopher Pyne, is worried about anti-Semitism on campuses Down Under. He denounced the harassment and intimidation in an op-ed in The Australian. If you’re blocked by the paywall, you can read it at Israeli Issues Watchdog.
I am not surprised that the number of anti-Semitic incidents reported in Australia last year was the second highest on record. The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement has made anti-Semitism fashionable on the far Left.
• Claudia Rosett deconstructs UNRWA’s sorry part of the Gaza war. Related reading: Stories I’d Like to See: Scratching the Surface of UNRWA.
• Former US Senator and Mideast envoy George Mitchell weighs in on the Mideast. Part 1 of his Boston Globe series addresses the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict.
• For more commentary/analysis, see Richard Landes (The Biggest Winner in the Lose-Lose “Operation Protective Edge”), Harry’s Place (Anti-Semitism is Still Anti-Semitism), Eugene Kontorovich (Defining Settlements Down: the False “Appropriation” Hysteria), and Isaac Ben-Israel (Israel won Gaza war after all).
Featured Image: CC BY-NC-SA HonestReporting, flickr/Natasha Mileshina, flickr/Giulio Bernardi, Quneitra via Flickr/in the bag solutions, UNRWA CC BY-SA HonestReporting, flickr/Andrew Magill
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