Israel and the Palestinians
• Maan News introduces us to one unusual student. Bushra Khalilieh is a 25-year old Israeli-Arab woman speaking up for Israel on South African campuses. During Israel Apartheid Week.
Khalilieh, a masters student at Tel Aviv University, stressed that she represents herself and not the position of the Israeli government.
“I represent myself as a Muslim Arab who lives in Israel as a liberal and free girl unlike other Arab girls who live in Arab countries and do not have the human rights I have like freedom of expression and dignity.”
• Worth reading: Emma Teitel (Macleans) picks apart Israel Apartheid Week.
• Harvard’s conference on a one-state solution is just a distraction from really resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Shmuel Rosner argues why.
• Palestinian activists plan another flytilla. The Times of Israel writes:
This year’s flytilla, as the Israeli media called the event in allusion to Gaza-bound sea flotillas which similarly aimed to castigate Israel for its policies, is scheduled for Sunday, April 15. The date is significant because the Passover holiday ends in Israel on the night of Friday, April 13, but because of Shabbat, observant Jewish tourists will not able to fly out of Israel before the day of the planned flytilla. It is unclear whether organizers chose that date intentionally, but increased police presence and potential scuffles might cause additional difficulties and embarrassments for an for already overstrained airport.
Arab Spring Winter
• YNet reports that this video of a “Syrian Mohammed Dura” has shocked the Arab world. A Saudi news anchor cried while reading the report.
• Turkish columnist Burak Bekdil (via Yisrael Medad) crunches some numbers:
. . . the Syrian death toll has moved from 2,000 to over 7,000 – about five times more than the Palestinian casualties during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in late 2008 and early 2009.
Bekdil’s point?
Mr. Erdogan is siding with the Syrians oppressed by the al-Assad regime. Perhaps he should lend an ear to one of the victims, a one-legged revolutionary singer undergoing medical treatment in safe Turkish territory. Time magazine quotes the man, one of the 300 who have fled to Turkey in the most recent wave of refugees, as saying: “We’d rather accept Israel than Bashar [. . .] The Israelis didn’t do to the Palestinians what Bashar has done to Syria.”
Who, really, knows better how to kill?
• Shocking footage from a Syrian military hospital in Homs indicates medics are torturing patients. Channel 4 obtained the video it says was covertly filmed by a worker. It’s graphic.
It is the first time such video evidence has emerged. Medical and human rights experts consider the intentional infliction of pain by doctors within the confines of a hospital to be the ultimate desecration of human rights and “a gross breach of medical ethics”.
• Is the Wind Turning in Assad’s Favor?
• According to Foreign Policy, the US is moving to directly aid the Syrian opposition.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Journalist arrested in New Delhi bomb attack.
• Dr. Eli Avraham of Haifa University’s offering a new course in media monitoring and web activism. The JPost explains:
Entitled “Ambassadors Online,” the spring semester class – the first of its kind – will explore international news coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and attempt to rectify alleged media bias.
Though it does not offer university credit, the course will teach students about the main issues behind Israel’s delegitimization . . .
The syllabus for “Ambassadors Online” will concentrate on identifying what constitutes hostile or non-objective reporting.
Afterward, students will be encouraged to contact foreign media outlets to present an Israeli perspective and reframe the public narrative.
• Is News International imploding? London’s Evening Standard says the phone hacking scandal took a distressing turn:
Two senior journalists at News International have apparently attempted to commit suicide as pressure mounts inside the Murdoch media empire . . .
The tragic developments happened after News Corp’s Management and Standards Commitee, a branch of the empire that reports directly to independent board directors in New York, passed evidence to Scotland Yard . . .
The MSC’s co-operation with the police has triggered a civil war inside the Murdoch empire. Bosses at News International, its UK-newspaper subsidiary, are furious that the committee, headed by Lord Grabiner QC, has “sold journalists down the river”.
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream.
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