Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.
Does a false Facebook photo have anything to do with death threats against a British MP who defended Israel? Is the NY Times softening on settlements? While Al Jazeera decided not air footage of the Toulouse massacre, one columnist asks, “What if this had been their policy for the last ten years?”
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Israel and the Palestinians
• Pairing up Land Day with the Global March on Jerusalem wasn’t a great idea after all. According to Haaretz, local organizers of Friday’s annual Land Day demonstrations are worried that foreigners under the GMJ banner will turn violent.
Haaretz has learned that major disagreements have developed between leading, mostly Palestinian, protest organizers in the West Bank and neighboring Arab countries, and other activists identified with Iran, Syria and Hezbollah . . . .
Particular concern is being expressed that the outsiders will take over protest marches and seek confrontations on Israel’s borders, particularly the Lebanese and Syrian frontiers, and that the outsiders will convey messages contrary to the original organizers’ wishes.
• Michael Sharnoff says the Global March on Jerusalem isn’t really about Palestinian rights.
• A NY Times staff-ed’s nuance on Migron suggests — dare I say — that the paper ain’t automatically ruling out all settlements as unacceptable or illegal:
The settlers should be relocated to existing settlements or as close to the Green Line as possible — all areas that are assumed to become part of Israel if there is ever a peace agreement.
• Reporter Catrina Stewart of The Independent thinks Marwan Barghouti enjoys support among “many Israelis.” But is that really so?
• Brett Stephens (Tablet) thoroughly deconstructs Peter Beinart’s book, “The Crisis of Zionism.”
• Just when I thought the news cycle on Khulood Badawi’s false photo had closed, two new developments came up. First, Richard Silverstein took a shot at HonestReporting.
Then, I read that British MP John Howell got death threats because he defended Israel in an email correspondence published on Harry Fear‘s blog. Fear’s open letter to Howell included this image recycled from 2009 and was recently recirculated on Facebook by Maissam Nablussi — who disingenuously tried to pass it off as current.
• The JPost sums up the Gaza energy crisis blame game — in an impressive 53 words:
The sides are arrayed like this: Hamas blames Egypt for the fuel shortage, as well as at various times Israel, Fatah and the local power company. Egypt blames Hamas. Fatah blames Hamas. The local power company blames Hamas, too. Even Islamic Jihad entered the blame game. But it can’t decide who is responsible.
• Israel’s efforts to fence off its borders with Egypt, Syria, and the Palestinains is old news. So in the absence of any real developments, Harriet Sherwood and The Guardian decided that Alex Fishman’s criticisms in Yediot Aharonot are news. Sherwood’s disdain is palpable.
• Andrew Beaujon‘s “astonished” by all the coverage of the Park Slope Food Co-op meeting on whether to boycott Israeli products. But Brian Braiker’s dispatch in The Guardian explains the heavy media interest — which, by the way, included The Daily Show.
(It also didn’t hurt publicity that approximately 87% of New York’s working journalists live in Park Slope – your correspondent, a co-op member in good standing for nearly a decade, included.)
In the end, Israeli products got a reprieve.
• BDS taken to its logical conclusion:
NGO that wants Palestinian refugees let into Israel is barred from Ramallah for being Israeli: Anti-normalization protests force cancellation of workshop on the practicalities of the ‘right of return’
• The Daily Telegraph picks up on British bureaucracy gearing up for the Olympics. Critics holler when Israel takes measures like this:
Nearly 20,000 people from outside the EU will be issued with six-month visas that bar them from forming any civil partnerships or marriages. They will also be barred from applying for visas to study in Britain. The restrictions were imposed amid concerns that the Olympics will be a target for illegal immigrants and terrorists trying to get into Britain.
