Bennett schmoozes, Biden snoozes, mainstream media disabuses

 

The mainstream media went to extraordinary lengths to convince their readers that President Biden pictured below) had not fallen asleep during his White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on 27 August.

Typical of their efforts was USA Today:

“Our rating: False

We rate the claim that Biden fell asleep during a meeting with Bennett FALSE, because it is not supported by our research. A widely-shared video is misleadingly clipped to make it appear as if Biden was sleeping as Bennett spoke. The full video shows Biden looked up and responded just seconds after the clip ends.”

Reuters Fact Checking team concluded:

“VERDICT

Misleading. A clip saying Joe Biden fell asleep while in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has been misleadingly cropped. Longer versions show Biden continues the conversation right after this moment.”

AP Fact-Checking also chimed in:

“AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. News coverage of the meeting shows that Biden was awake and engaged during the meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.”

Their claims that a video of the meeting was “misleadingly clipped” or “misleadingly cropped” are fanciful - as the following transcript of what actually happened indicates.

Bennett had already been addressing Biden for almost six minutes at this starting point – when Biden suddenly nodded off during Bennett’s remarks underlined (ed. my emphasis):

“And one last word, Mr. President — I’ll take this off [Bennett’s face mask – ed.] for this part, if I may: You’re a man of faith, as am I. In the synagogues across the world, we read a biblical portion, beyond the Parsha; it’s called the Haftarah.

And tomorrow, we’re going to be reading words of the prophet Isaiah — Yeshaʿyahu. In Hebrew, the words are: (Recites verse of Isaiah in Hebrew.)

What this means — I can saying anything now. Right? (Laughter.) What this means is: The sons and daughters of the Jewish people are going to come back to our land, are going to nurse our ancient land and rebuild it.

And this ancient Jewish prophecy is today’s Israel reality. And it’s a miracle that you’ve been so central and so part of it for so many years.

So, Mr. President, today, you and I — and you’ve been so generous with your time in these difficult days — you and I are going to write yet another chapter in the beautiful story of the friendship between our two nations: The United States of America and the Jewish and democratic State of Israel — both of us who seek to do good and need to be strong, both of us who are a lighthouse in a very, very stormy world.

Thank you, Mr. President. I look forward to working with you now and for many years forward. Thank you.

PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well, thank you. And you give me credit, much of which should go to Barack Obama, for making sure that we committed to a qualitative edge you would have relative to your friends [should Biden have said “enemies” ?– ed] in the region. So, he’s the one that deserves the credit.

PRIME MINISTER BENNETT: Thank him as well.

PRESIDENT BIDEN: Thank you very much, folks.”

Important as Bennett thought it necessary to convey this amazing history of the Jewish people to Biden – using Jewish liturgical terms like “Parsha” and “Haftarah” and quoting a Biblical passage in Hebrew (text below) were understandably lost on Biden - who then dozed off for 30 seconds.

The mainstream media’s continuing honeymoon with Biden had clearly clouded its judgement.
In so doing - the mainstream media was exposed once again for its biased reporting on Biden – undermining its integrity and trumpeted independence.

Beware the mainstream media when reporting Biden news.

Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.

Media falsely discredit Trump as he confronts UN on Jerusalem

[Published 10 December 2017]


The media has discredited President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital - falsely claiming the President has reversed nearly seven decades of American foreign policy. Trump’s decision has pitted America squarely against the United Nations.

The New York Times led the pack declaring:

“President Trump on Wednesday formally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, reversing nearly seven decades of American foreign policy ...”

Australia’s publicly-funded national broadcaster — the ABC-followed suit with this headline:

“Donald Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, in reversal of decades of policy”

News outlets including Reuters, Financial Times, Iraqi news, Gulf news, and Today parroted this false claim.

America’s policy on Jerusalem is actually laid out in “The Jerusalem Embassy Act 1995 (Act)” passed by the Senate (93-5) and the House (374-37) on 24 October 1995 — specifically highlighted by Trump when announcing his decision:

“In 1995, Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act, urging the federal government to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize that that city — and so importantly — is Israel’s capital. This act passed Congress by an overwhelming bipartisan majority and was reaffirmed by a unanimous vote of the Senate only six months ago.”

The Act unequivocally states:

“SEC. 3. TIMETABLE.

(a) Statement of the Policy of the United States.

1. Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected.

2. Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel; and

3. the United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999.”

The Act’s preamble details the following facts critical to Congress’s overwhelming vote:

1. Each sovereign nation, under international law and custom, may designate its own capital.

2. Since 1950, the city of Jerusalem has been the capital of the State of Israel.

3. The city of Jerusalem is the seat of Israel's President, Parliament, and Supreme Court, and the site of numerous government ministries and social and cultural institutions.

4. The city of Jerusalem is the spiritual center of Judaism, and is also considered a holy city by the members of other religious faiths.

5. From 1948-1967, Jerusalem was a divided city and Israeli citizens of all faiths as well as Jewish citizens of all states were denied access to holy sites in the area controlled by Jordan.

6. In 1967, the city of Jerusalem was reunited during the conflict known as the Six Day War.

7. Since 1967, Jerusalem has been a united city administered by Israel, and persons of all religious faiths have been guaranteed full access to holy sites within the city.

8. The United States maintains its embassy in the functioning capital of every country except in the case of our democratic friend and strategic ally, the State of Israel.

9. In 1996, the State of Israel will celebrate the 3,000th anniversary of the Jewish presence in Jerusalem since King David's entry.

The morally-bankrupt United Nations has ignored these facts for the last 22 years - choosing instead to pass countless resolutions supporting spurious Arab claims to East Jerusalem that could have been satisfied at any time between 1948 and 1967 following six Arab armies illegally invading Western Palestine and ethnically cleansing East Jerusalem’s entire Jewish population, destroying synagogues and desecrating Jewish cemeteries.

United Nations member States who vote — or abstain from voting — on future resolutions supporting specious artificially-contrived Arab claims in East Jerusalem risk being collectively shamed and internationally castigated.

The media’s latest myth remains unretracted and uncorrected. Trump’s principled decision follows United States policy adopted since 1995.

God bless America.

Gaza - Hamas Humiliates And Manipulates World Media

[Published 15 August 2014]


A family of 11 previously reported dead in an Israeli air strike in Gaza has turned out to be false — further fuelling the unprecedented furor caused by the Tel Aviv based Foreign Press Association (FPA) issuing the following statement on 11 August slamming Hamas for its treatment of journalists during the current conflict:

“The FPA protests in the strongest terms the blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza over the past month.

The international media are not advocacy organisations and cannot be prevented from reporting by means of threats or pressure, thereby denying their readers and viewers an objective picture from the ground.

In several cases, foreign reporters working in Gaza have been harassed, threatened or questioned over stories or information they have reported through their news media or by means of social media.

We are also aware that Hamas is trying to put in place a “vetting” procedure that would, in effect, allow for the blacklisting of specific journalists. Such a procedure is vehemently opposed by the FPA."

The FPA has also been mildly critical of Israel as this release on 23 July indicated:

“The FPA strongly condemns deliberate official and unofficial incitement against journalists working to cover the current warfare under very difficult circumstances as well as forcible attempts to prevent journalists and TV crews from carrying out their news assignments. While we do not condone the use of invective by any side, outright attacks on journalists are absolutely unacceptable.

On Tuesday, IDF forces aimed live fire at the Al Jazeera offices in Gaza City. The offices are on the 11th floor of a known commercial centre. The IDF apologised claiming it was in error and said they would investigate the incident.

Also Tuesday, FPA member Firas Khatib of BBC Arabic was physically attacked and abused in the midst of a live feed on the Israeli side of the border.”

The FPA numbers some 480 members representing TV, radio, photojournalists and print media from 32 countries including Australia, Qatar, Brazil, Norway, China , USA. Austria, Dubai, Russia, Japan, Finland, South Africa, Denmark and Germany, Turkey, the UAE and the United Kingdom.

It represents amongst others Le Monde, The New York Times, Reuters, the Guangming Daily, CBS Television, the Associated Press, Der Spiegel, the BBC, Danish Broadcasting Corp. and Bloomberg News. On its website, the FPA lists Australian journalists Matt Brown (ABC) and John Lyons (The Australian) as members.

Paul T. Jørgensen of Norway’s TV2 states that:

“several foreign journalists have been kicked out of Gaza because Hamas does not like what they wrote or said. We have received strict orders that if we record that Hamas fires rockets or that they shoot, we will face serious problems and be expelled from Gaza,”

Alan Johnson reported in the Telegraph:

The Wall Street Journal’s Nick Casey posted a photo of a Hamas spokesman being interviewed from a room in the hospital along with this tweet: “You have to wonder (with) the shelling how patients at Shifa hospital feel as Hamas uses it as a safe place to see media.” After “a flood of online threats”, the tweet was deleted.

John Reed of The Financial Times was reportedly threatened after he tweeted about rockets being fired from the same hospital.”

Yet Jodi Rudoren, Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times — who was not in Gaza - tweeted:

“Every reporter I’ve met who was in Gaza during war says this Israeli/now FPA narrative of Hamas harassment is nonsense,”

It was a strange remark to make considering the above claims — and having regard to the following comment reportedly made by New York Times vice president for corporate communications Eileen Murphy that the newspaper’s team in Gaza did not photograph any rocket launches, sent only:

“two very distant, poor quality images that were captioned Hamas fighters” and “hasn’t even seen anyone carrying a gun.”

Even more intriguing - Rudoren’s deputy at the NYT - Isabel Kershner - was one of the FPA board members who approved the condemnatory statement. How could two colleagues from the same newspaper observing the same sequence of events come to such different conclusions?

British freelancer Harry Fear said he was asked to leave Gaza by three plainclothes Hamas officials at Al-Shifa Hospital - apparently for referring to rocket launches near his hotel. He reportedly said he did not feel any intimidation or interference.

Some reporters however reportedly received death threats. Sometimes, cameras were smashed. Reporters were prevented from filming anti-Hamas demonstrations where more than 20 Palestinians were shot dead by Hamas gunmen.

Evidence of Hamas controlling the flow of news is obvious in its failure to allow the media to:

1. independently determine, separate and verify the number of civilian and Hamas deaths

2. photograph any Hamas forces launching rockets from residential areas or civilians being used as human shields.

A BBC investigation has uncovered photos of dead children from earlier conflicts being passed off as casualties in the current conflict — being fed to gullible reporters to send around the World to even more gullible target audiences.

Why would reporters keep going back into Gaza to be so humiliated by Hamas?

They are certainly not reporting what is actually happening.

Maybe they should stay out of Gaza and let Hamas do its own media releases.

The media barons would certainly save a lot of money.

Reuters Reprehensible Report Requires Retraction

[Published March 2010]

Reuters - considered the world’s top news source - has allowed its credibility to be seriously damaged with the publication of its “Timeline: Path to new Israel-Palestinian talks” on 7 March 2010.

Its cursory - almost totally dismissive - omission of Jewish claims to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Palestine - are made blatantly clear at the beginning of its Timeline which states:

“Here are key dates on the path to this point:
1897 - European Jews in Zionist movement declare goal of creating a Jewish state in Ottoman Turkish-ruled Palestine.

1917 - British forces take Palestine from collapsing Ottoman empire in World War One. British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour declares support for Jewish “national home” there.

1945 - Revelation of Nazi Holocaust and new Jewish migration to Palestine bolster Western support for creating Jewish state.

1948 - Britain quits and great powers recognize Israel as U.N. partition plan dissolves in war that leaves Jewish state on 78 percent of land and half of Palestine’s Arabs as refugees.”

1967 - In what it calls pre-emptive strikes on Arab states, Israeli forces seize rest of British-mandate Palestine, taking West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan and Gaza Strip from Egypt. Israel captures Golan Heights from Syria.

1988 - After a year of Intifada (uprising), exiled PLO leader Yasser Arafat, widely acknowledged as speaking for Palestinians, renounces “terrorism” and accepts Israel’s right to exist.

Omitted from this hastily concocted version are the following crucial - and critical - dates:

1920: Treaty of Sevres entrusts the administration of Palestine to a Mandatory for putting into effect the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.

1922: Britain appointed Mandatory for Palestine by unanimous vote of the League of Nations. 78% of Mandate Palestine excluded from inclusion in the future Jewish National Home in area known as Transjordan which is exclusively reserved for Arab homeland.

1937: Peel Commission recommends division of Palestine into two States - one Jewish, one Arab . Arabs reject recommendation.

1939: Britain severely limits Jewish emigration to Palestine in breach of Mandate for duration of World War Two.

1945: League of Nations wound up and United Nations created. Article 80 inserted in United Nations Charter preserves Jewish rights to establish Jewish National Home in Palestine.

1946: Britain grants Transjordan independence in 78% of Mandate Palestine.

1947: United Nations votes to divide remaining 22% of Mandate Palestine into two states - one Jewish, one Arab. Arabs reject recommendation. Fighting breaks out between Jews and Arabs.

1948: Reuters omits to mention that

•six Arab armies invaded Palestine
•Egypt occupied Gaza and Transordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem
•The Palestinian National Conference decides to place the West Bank under the sovereignty of Transjordan and
•Erroneously states that Israel ended up with 78% - not 17% - of the land

1949: Transjordan changes its name to Jordan

1950: The West Bank and Jordan are unified into one country by the Jordanian Parliament comprising equal number of West Bank and Jordanian representatives

1967: Reuters omits to mention Security Council Resolution 242 requiring Israel to only withdraw to secure and recognized boundaries.

1988: Jordan cedes any claims to the West Bank

This perversion of the history of Palestine is either induced by ignorance or a deliberate suppression of critical information that goes to the heart of the debate currently raging at the moment.

Inclusion of the above dates in Reuters Timeline would substantiate Jewish claims to be entitled to sovereignty in all or part of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and to build settlements there based on the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter - rights grounded in international law.

Their absence from the Timeline needs to be explained or justified by Reuters if it is to regain any credibility in its reporting in the Middle East.

This Timeline has now been distributed throughout Reuters extensive network and can be viewed on its American, British and Indian websites and has been published and reproduced by other web sites and news services.

It has also been distributed on Reuters AlertNet site which proudly claims:

“AlertNet attracts upwards of ten million users a year, has a network of 400 contributing humanitarian organizations and its weekly email digest is received by more than 26,000 readers

It was started in 1997 by Reuters Foundation - an educational and humanitarian trust - to place Reuters’ core skills of speed, accuracy and freedom from bias at the service of the humanitarian community.”

Any claim to Reuters possessing these core skills is exposed as a sham and continues the gross media bias that continues to bury Jewish claims in international law to the West Bank and Gaza and to settle there to reconstitute the Jewish National Home.

Reuters continues the practice of the United Nations which similarly omitted any mention of many of these critical dates when seeking an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in 2004 on the legality of the construction of the security barrier on and over the 1967 armistice lines.

Judge Elaraby - gave this warning to his fellow 14 judges sitting on that case:

“,,, the international legal status of the Palestinian Territory merits more comprehensive treatment”.

Judge Elaraby identified the need for such a review saying:

“A historical survey is relevant to the question posed by the General Assembly, for it serves as the background to understanding the legal status of the Palestinian Territory on the one hand and underlines the special and continuing responsibility of the General Assembly on the other. This may appear as academic, without relevance to the present events. The present is however determined by the accumulation of past events and no reasonable and fair concern for the future can possibly disregard a firm grasp of past events. In particular, when on one or more than one occasion, the rule of law was consistently sidestepped.”

Judge Elaraby continued:

“The point of departure, or one can say in legal jargon, the critical date, is the League of Nations Mandate which was entrusted to Great Britain”

The bias of the United Nations against Israel in omitting to refer to the Mandate when approaching the International Court is par for the course.

Reuters omission to similarly inform its millions of readers now places it on a similar pedestal following the publication of its grossly inaccurate and misleading Timeline.

The best thing Reuters can do is immediately withdraw its Timeline. I would hope it has the integrity and honesty to do so with an appropriate - and prominent - apology for its publication in the first place.

Myanmar and Israel - Fighting The Semantic Wars

[Published October 2007]

Is it "Myanmar" or "Burma"? "Yangon" or "Rangoon"?

Burma and its major city Rangoon were renamed Myanmar and Yangon in 1989 by the military junta that had seized power there at that time.

The United Nations has officially recognised these changes in names by one of its member countries

America, England and Australia have not.

President George Bush, and Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and John Howard still continue to use "Burma" and "Rangoon". Such use is deliberate and is intended to signal their total rejection of the junta's takeover and anything done thereafter as a result.

Not a bad way to get your point across - by the use of just one word. Such is the power of semantics.

China, Russia and the Association of South East Asian Nations [ASEAN] on the other hand follow the United Nations and use "Myanmar" and "Yangon".

In their view when you deal with a Government you cannot interfere in the internal affairs of that country. Nothing could be more internal than calling a rose by any other name.

Semantics - especially where place names are concerned - clearly plays a big part in either clouding or clearly defining the real political issues that dog the conduct of foreign relations by many countries.

What is particularly interesting in this current semantic battleground is the role taken by the media. They are split on which terms to use.

President Bush's choice is not the choice of all in the US media.

The Voice of America, the Washington Post, and Time follow the President and use "Burma" and "Rangoon". However the New York Times, CNN and the Wall Street Journal use "Myanmar" and "Yangon".

Reuters, Associated Press and the International Herald Tribune have come down on the side of the United Nations and use "Myanmar" and "Yangon". They would consider themselves as being even-handed in accepting the choice of an independent arbiter.

Deliberate policy decisions are obviously being taken by individual media outlets as to which names to use - probably indicating their political position on the crisis. This is a healthy exercise in freedom of speech rather than all slavishly following each other in their reporting.

Honours are about even in the media's semantic war over Burma/Myanmar.

The media split on Burma /Myanmar is however absent when it comes to using the place names "Judea and Samaria" rather than the place name "the West Bank" to describe the area captured by Israel from Jordan in 1967.

"Judea and Samaria" were the names used by the United Nations in Resolution 181 on 29 November 1947 - the famous Partition Resolution - that is now in the media spotlight once again.

That constituted as official an endorsement as you could get from the United Nations of the correct place names for an area that had been so designated and known for the previous 3000 years.

Judea and Samaria were the two locations of the two biblical Kingdoms of the Jews - the southern Kingdom of Judah and the northern Kingdom of Israel, the capital of which was for a time in the town of Samaria. These areas were the cradle of the Jewish Nation. The main religious sites and tombs holy to the Jews are located there. 450000 Jews live there today.

"The West Bank" was only coined by Jordan in 1950 and was used till 1967 to delineate the area west of the Jordan River which had been seized by Jordan in the 1948 Arab- Israel War when Jews living there had been driven out by the Jordanian army. This new name operated to irrevocably sever any historic connection of the Jews with the place of their national birth and existence .

Israel's attempt to reinstate the term "Judea and Samaria" after its capture from Jordan in 1967 has been undermined by clever and persistent Arab use of the term "West Bank" at every opportunity in the media.

Only some right wing Jewish media in Israel and abroad now consistently and repeatedly use "Judea and Samaria"

The Israeli Foreign Office and the Foreign Minister use both as the occasion suits them. The fact that 450000 Jews live there now is apparently of little consequence to the Government that is supposed to be protecting their rights of permanent residence as provided by international law.

The international media have adopted the term "West Bank" without demur in virtually every editorial piece they publish. By extension this territory has now become "occupied Arab land", or "occupied Palestinian territories" as the Arabs ram home their semantic advantage on a daily basis.

The claims of the Jews to these areas have been arbitrarily dismissed by the media pack who hunt together with a broad unanimity and use the term "West Bank" - in stark contrast to the case of Burma/Myanmar.

One news outlet - the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) - has adopted a fair and reasoned stance calling the region "the West Bank ( Judea and Samaria, Israel's biblical heartland)" or "Judea and Samaria ( the "West Bank")".

This small area of land is going to receive blanket coverage in the media over the next six months.

Perhaps those in the media now deliberately making choices on the use of "Burma" or "Myanmar" might take the lead from CBN and make their own individual decisions to acknowledge the 3000 year old geographical names of "Judea and Samaria" alongside the use of the 50 year old term "West Bank" - thus giving recognition to the fact that Jews also have claims there as well as the Arabs.

The old adage "sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me" has been turned on its head by the media's failure to identify the "West Bank" as being also known as "Judea and Samaria."

It is never too late to redress the imbalance.

Newsagencies in Iran and China of all places have used the term "Judea and Samaria" recently. Western media outlets should use both names to dispel the notion of any possible bias in favour of the Arabs.