Everything you need to know about the latest media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.
Hussein Ibish bristles at critics calling him a “Zionist.” Egyptian elections in disarray as three leading candidates are disqualified. And why the Arab eagerness to restore synagogues for non-existent Jewish communities?
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Israel and the Palestinians
• Check out YNet if you haven’t seen Israel’s welcome letter to arriving flytilla activists. But CNN gave it a big thumbs down.
• Gerald Steinberg notes the 10th anniversary of the Jenin “massacre” and how the media and NGOs created a new model for demonizing Israel:
The “Jenin Massacre” proved that the Durban Strategy could be used successfully to wage political war. The Israeli government and military were unprepared to defeat this attack. Eventually, the facts began to replace the myths, but by then, the demonization campaign had already achieved its goals. On the basis of the Jenin fabrications, the first round of BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions) efforts began.
• Is Jordan’s King Abdullah trying to disengage from the Palestinians?
• Hussein Ibish rejects Palestinian claims that his support for the two-state solution makes him an Uncle Tom Zionist:
To call me a “Zionist” because of commitment to peace is to strip language of all meaning. By this logic, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were “Maoists” because they made peace with Communist China. And any Israeli who is committed to Palestinian statehood alongside Israel is also, therefore, a “Palestinian nationalist.”
For some, the term “Zionist” is simply a useful pejorative to attack the reputation of Arabs who seek peace, or who deviate from the increasingly intolerant one-state dogma. I’ve been amazed at the number of one-state advocates who adamantly refuse to agree to disagree and I’ve lost a number of once very close personal friendships simply because I do not follow their new party line.
I don’t think Norman Finkelstein was exaggerating at all when he recently described this movement as “a cult” led by self-appointed “gurus.”
See Jeffrey Goldberg‘s reaction to Ibish.
• Where’s the Outcry Over Palestinian Censorship?
• The JPost reports that the PA shut down the offices of a West Bank human rights organization. Why?
PA Interior Minister Said Abu Ali, who signed the closure order, said that the work of the Palestinian Human Rights Foundation monitor was “not consistent” with the interests of the Palestinians.
