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NY Times Misses Iranian Connection
NY Times readers can be forgiven for not believing Iran is connected to arms boat seized en route to Syria. Reporter Myra Noveck writes:
News reports quoted the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, and other officials saying the ship had been carrying the arms from Iran to Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, but officials released no evidence to support those claims.
Heh. AP detailed that evidence:
Open crates from a cargo ship seized Wednesday by Israel revealed dark green missiles inside. Containers from the vessel bore writing in English that said "I.R. Iranian Shipping Lines Group." . . . .
Some of the weapons were hidden in the Francop's containers behind stacked bags of polyethylene labeled in English "NPC National Petrochemical Company," and the flame logo used by both the company and the Iranian Petroleum Ministry . . . .
The Francop's containers were carefully unloaded on army forklifts to avoid accidental detonation. Some of the containers had the initials "I.R.I.S.L.'' printed on one side and the fuller title, "I.R. (Islamic Republic of) Iran Shipping Lines Group" on the other. Explosives experts and dog-sniffing units examined the haul.
The Israeli military said cargo certificates showed the ship departed an Iranian port for Syria, from where the weapons would be transferred to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The military did not show the documents, and Syria denied the vessel was carrying weapons.
The AP story is on the NYT's web site. Good thing the Gray Lady's not experimenting with dropping AP content this week.
UPDATE: I see The Guardian and The Independent made similar mistakes.
Posted at 10:23 AM
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Watch The Goldstone Debate Live
Who: Judge Richard Goldstone, author of the Goldstone Report, and Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the UN.
What: Debate the report and the issues of Operation Cast Lead it raises.
Where: Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass.
When: Today, 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (that's 10:00 p.m in the UK, and midnight in Israel)
Why: If you have to ask, check out Understanding the Goldstone Report and HonestReporting's special report - The Goldstone Report: Rewarding Palestinian Terror - for more information.
How to watch: Just click on the play button to watch in streaming video.
Posted at 09:06 AM
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Nominate This Year's Dishonest Reporter
Besides some other elections in the news, now’s the time to send us your nominations for the 2009 Dishonest Reporting Awards -- our annual recognition of the year’s most skewed and biased coverage of Israel and the Mideast conflict.
Please nominate one reporter or news service along with a brief explanation why he/she/it deserves to receive our ignoble award. Then send your submission to action@honestreporting.com.
We’ll announce the results in a special year-end communiqué. Due to the volume of mail, we can't acknowledge nominations. See our past "winners" -- and don’t forget to vote!
Posted at 09:27 AM
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More Swedish Blood Libels
Not only has Donald Bostrom reiterated his bodysnatching charge against the IDF, Sunday's Aftonbladet reported (and Haaretz picked up on) that the Swedish daily has been in contact with
"a woman in Geneva whom, together with a lawyer, is preparing a letter to the UN concerning 15 illegally autopsied Palestinians, of whom eight have been proven to have missing organs - as late as in 2008."
Haaretz elaborates:
The piece, written by culture section editor Åsa Linderborg, claims that the material has not yet been disclosed as the Palestinian families in question are scared to death of Israeli reprisals.
Linderborg referred to a recent organ trafficking case in Haifa, in which two men were jailed, and the case of Yehuda Hiss, Israel's chief state pathologist and former director of the Abu Kabir forensic institute, who admitted to have taken tissue from a deceased Israeli soldier in 2001.
"Two months after the publication by Aftonbladet, the first verdict hits [in the Israeli organ affair]. There will be more," said the piece.
The Haifa incident was indeed shameful, and the case of Yehuda Hiss even more so. But Aftonbladet's attempt to link them (and the New Jersey scandal) to the IDF is based on no evidence.
The same Haaretz report also describes a telling exchange between Bostrom and one of his Swedish critics:
Economist Anna Vider also attacked Boström's working methods, citing his use of witness reports solely from Palestinians, his failure to follow up with the Israeli authorities, the lack of interviews, and research. She also slammed him for linking a 1992 incident to allegations of organ trafficking in New Jersey in 2009.
"It takes a lot of research, it´s not just something you do in a week," Vider said: "As a journalist, he [Boström] should have taken it further. I think it's dishonest."
Boström rebuffed the criticism by saying: "I'm a reporter, not an investigator."
"He links the events, but refuses to discuss the connection," Vider continued. "It is indecent to wait for the scandal in New Jersey before publishing it. Why didn't he do it in 1992? This article has great impact on how Israelis look on Sweden and our involvement in the conflict."
Whoa! Bostrom's shirking off a reporter's basic responsibility of fact checking. As every student learns in Journalism 101: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."
Posted at 09:15 AM
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Demonization, Day In Day Out
By monitoring and translating Arabic media, Memri and Palestinian Media Watch have opened an important window into the Arab world's views. The Memri blog frequently flags political cartoons like these; after seeing enough of them as I scroll down my feed, I "got used to" the poison pen style.
Fortunately, Tim Marshall of Sky News reminds us that this demonization isn't something we should "get used to." His wake up call was sparked by this cartoon in the PA-controlled daily, Al Hayat Al Jadida:
The context? Coverage and commentary of Hillary Clinton's about-face on Israeli settlements, Marshall explains:
Then comes another article. "Why, Mrs. Hillary? How much did the Zionists pay you as a bribe?"
Aha, now the Americans are in the pay of the dastardly Zionists. This shift through the gears of paranoia and prejudice then accelerates backwards to the 1930's and a cartoon which could have come straight from the poisoned pages of the Nazi publication, Der Sturmer (The Attacker).
Uncle Sam looks into the mirror to see himself reflected as hook nosed religious Jew wearing a hat with the star of David. What a noxious collection of images, all rolling into the big lie that Jews control the world . . . .
When Israeli soldiers commit criminal acts in times of war, or scrawl 'Death To Arabs' on walls in Gaza, they are rightly taken to task, but this casual, day in day out, demonization of a people passes as normality in the Arab world, and without mainstream comment elsewhere. Why?
Why, indeed?
Posted at 08:46 AM
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Discovering Jewish Terror
See HonestReporting’s latest media critiques:
Posted at 05:15 PM
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Imagine the Outrage if Israel Did This
 From today's Globe & Mail:
In the wake of violent rioting in the western city of Urumqi back in July, Chinese authorities took a radical step: cutting off all Internet, text-messaging and international telephone services in Xinjiang, a restive province home to 21 million people.
Nearly four months later – and despite official assertions that calm has returned to Xinjiang following the ethnic violence that left almost 200 people dead – the cut-off remains in place, effectively severing the predominantly Uyghur Muslim region from communicating with the rest of the planet.
It's only called "collective punishment" if Israel does it.
Posted at 01:56 PM
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Bostrom in Israel: Contrasting Interviews
While in Israel for the Dimona Media Conference, Donald Bostrom -- better known for writing the Swedish blood libel -- was interviewed by Haaretz's Gideon Levy and by Channel 2's Yair Lapid.
Talk about stark contrasts. Levy gives Bostrom a platform to spout off with unchallenged answers like this:
Would you write it differently now?
"If I were writing it again, I would stress that the IDF liquidates so many youths without a trial and that they take bodies and conduct autopsies on them without the permission of the families. My article created confusion and was incorrectly interpreted. I admire your democratic courage to invite me to explain myself here."
Lapid, on the other hand, pulled no punches:
Lapid shot back, "To say this without a shred of evidence, that Israel possibly harvested organs from Palestinians who disappeared, in other words, whom we kidnapped, killed, and robbed their organs, is a degrading and monstrous idea."
In response, Bostrom said that he understands why people are angry, saying that everyone lies while at war. He said that it is difficult for reporters to distinguish between what is correct and what is a lie. "If it were just one family, fine. But there were many families. Mothers have a right to know what happened to their sons," claimed Bostrom.
See also Lapid's commentary on Bostrom, published before the interview.
Posted at 10:24 PM
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November 2 Links
• How Israel Destroyed Syria's Al Kibar Reactor
• Writing Jews Out of Jerusalem’s History
• Turkish TV Consultant Resigns Over Palestinian Protest
• Can One Bad Mouth Israel?
• Scandal Watch: New York Times
Posted at 01:02 PM
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A Poor Excuse for Stifling Debate
Donald Bostrom, better known as the journalist behind the Swedish blood libel, has now arrived in Israel to attend a media conference in Dimona.
To give you an idea of the passions surrounding Bostrom, the Swedish journalist -- who wrote that Israel was using the IDF to harvest Palestinian organs -- is being provided with bodyguards. Meanwhile, the Ministry for the Development of the Negev and the Galilee withheld $60,000 allocated for the event, which is going ahead as planned.
Don't say Bostrom's free speech was stifled in Israel . . .
Posted at 04:49 PM
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HR Canada Launches New Website
Check out HonestReporting Canada's new website, with exciting new features and a bevy of information, resources, and user functionality.
Posted at 11:00 AM
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Playing With Matches On the Temple Mount
The Palestinians and the MSM like to describe the Temple Mount as a tinderbox and Israeli actions could spark a new intifada or regional conflict. Two weekend Israeli media reports knock holes in that conventional wisdom.
First there's Haaretz, which reports that Fatah has been helping organize the latest violence at the Jerusalem holy site:
As is the case with his fellow Fatah activists, it's doubtful that [Hatem] Abdel Qader really wants the escalation on the mount to spark a conflagration throughout the territories. Their main intention seems to be to make their presence felt, to let off steam and then to return to routine in the compound. But the political environment, and especially the media, pushes them to make very aggressive statements against Israel, including accusations of attempts to damage the Al-Aqsa Mosque, even though nothing has changed on the ground at the Temple Mount in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post reports that Waqf officials who oversee the Temple Mount are quietly pleased that Israel finally clamped down on Qader and Sheikh Raed Salah. As Vered Levine argued two years ago, Salah's another troublemaker whose media fame is disproportionate to the constituency he actually represents.
So if another "the second Al-Aqsa intifada" breaks out, just remember the Palestinians and the big media were playing with the matches beforehand.
Posted at 12:08 AM
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CNN Waters Down the Israeli Response
See HonestReporting's latest media critiques:
Posted at 02:17 PM
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