Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.
Palestinian pogrom in Christian village averted. Leaked documents say PA wants to use a human rights group as an intelligence gathering and propaganda front. Iran confirms it has personnel in Syria helping Bashar Assad put down the uprising.
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Israel and the Palestinians
• Palestinian security forces narrowly averted a Muslim pogrom in the Christian village of Taybeh last week. Palestinian journalist Hisham Jarallah (Gatestone Institute, via Elder of Ziyon) explains Big Media’s silence:
Also at the request of the Palestinian government, residents of the village were requested not to talk to the media about the incident.
Even some of the leaders of the Christian community in the West Bank urged the Taybeh residents not to make a big fuss about the incident . . .
Western journalists based in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have refused to report about the most recent attack on Taybeh, most probably because the story does not have an “anti-Israel angle.”
Like Bob Simon, most Western journalists prefer to see only one side of the story. All they want is to find stories that shed a negative light on Israel.
Simon, by the way, has probably never heard of Taybeh.
The next time anyone wants to learn about the true problems facing the Christians of the Holy Land, he or she should head to Taybeh and conduct off the record and private interviews with the villagers.
• Israeli companies won UN tenders to reconstruct Gaza water plants. According to the Times of Israel, the Palestinian unions are banning their members from working with the Israelis. Spoiler alert: No comment from the UNICEF, which issued the bid.
“It is unreasonable for the Israeli occupation to be rewarded for its destruction of Gaza’s economy,” Kahil told Al-Quds Al-Arabi. “It waged a relentless war on our livelihood, and now our markets are being opened to its companies.”
• YNet: The IDF’s sitting on footage of a Palestinian terrorist using a woman as a human shield. According to the Spokesperson’s unit, “for security reasons not all documented events are released for publication.”
The footage shows the terrorists running toward a group of farmers. Then, one of them grabbed a woman and carried her until taking cover behind a building.
Golani Brigade soldiers, who are currently deployed in the sector, and have had the opportunity to see the footage, said it was clear that the woman was forced to run with her assailant until he found cover.
• Is the PA using a human rights organization — the Global Network for Rights, Development (GNRD) — as a front to gather intelligence and to discredit other human rights groups? Yes, according to leaked documents picked up on by the Jerusalem Post:
The plan envisages using GNRD as a front for the establishment of an “effective and credible international human rights group that would be based in Geneva and whose goal would be to defend Palestinian causes” and collect information.
• Credit Washington Post correspondent Karin Brulliard for tackling a difficult story: the assassination of Jenin governor Qaddoura Mousa. Jenin is no longer the hotbed of terror, but underneath the surface, PA corruption and clan rivalries are undermining their nation-building effort.
• Israel’s ambassador to South Africa, Dov Segev-Steinberg, discussed the country’s settlement labeling law with the Johannesburg Times.
Surely, it is about complying with consumer legislation, which states that products must be accurately labelled?
We beg to differ on that. We think what we are dealing with is a political step.
Why do you say that?
Because it’s the first time it’s being done by any ministry of any country in the world.
See also Time (Karl Vick) on the South African labelling law.
• Fed up with BDS harassment, Gerard Donovan takes to the op-ed pages of the Irish Times to tell Dr. Raymond Deane and the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign what they can do with their boycott. Donovan removed his gloves for this snippet:
Dr Deane, a professed human rights activist, had his music performed at the ICSM World Music Days Festival in Hong Kong on October 14th, 2002, which I believe was after the British handover, and a long time after the occupation of Tibet.
There he is at the head of the programme: Raymond Deane (Ireland). A case of “do as I say, not as I do”? How could he have allowed his music to be performed in China, given the situation in Tibet? Or is this the “Deane Exception”?
• Speaking of boycotts, The Independent visits the Habima Theater, which is scheduled to perform “The Merchant of Venice” in London.
• Critics accuse Israel of curbing Arabs from enrolling in medical schools. But the schools vigorously deny this to LA Times reporter Ed Sanders.
