Category Archives: Media

‘I wanted to make a film [on] the conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians’: David Koff on his groundbreaking 1981 film ‘Occupied Palestine’

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Joumana El Alaoui

Joumana El Alaoui interviews David Koff about his 1981 documentary “Occupied Palestine.”

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Media, Occupation, US Politics | 6 Comments

Hiding in plain sight

Posted on June 15, 2013 by Annie Robbins

On Thursday June 13, 2013 in an interview on IDF Radio the commander of the 53rd Battalion of the Givati Brigade, Yitzhak Pundak, confirmed that forces under his command ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages in 1948. The following day, June 14th, the Associated Press broke a story that’s spread like wildfire accusing 94 year old Ukrainian immigrant Michael Karkoc, an American citizen and Minnesota resident since 1949 of being a Nazi war criminal who commanded a unit of the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion responsible for committing atrocities during World War II.

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Media, Nakba, US Politics | 18 Comments

Film Review: ‘Hannah Arendt’ is a love letter, eulogy and elegy to the prophetic voice

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Marc H. Ellis

Marc Ellis reviews Margarethe Von Trotta’s new film on the philosopher Hannah Arendt: “The genius of ‘Hannah Arendt’ is that for the first time in her controversial public life, we see Hannah and Arendt together. We see both as one . . . It is s a film about a woman who refused to be a bystander. Arendt was a one woman dynamo of investigation and confrontation.”

Posted in American Jewish Community, Israel/Palestine, Media, US Politics | 5 Comments

‘Hannah Arendt”s ‘thoughtful’ hasbara

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Terri Ginsberg

Although its propaganda function is more difficult to detect than that of, say, the comparatively straightforward The Gatekeepers, Hannah Arendt is undeniably a product of hasbara that is non-threatening to the Israeli state.

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Media | 10 Comments

Exile and the Prophetic: (Accurately) reporting Alice Walker’s truth

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Marc H. Ellis

Media coverage of Alice Walker’s plea to Alicia Keys to cancel her Tel Aviv concert shows a change in the US discourse towards Israel.

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Media, US Politics | 8 Comments

Op-Ed: Sen. Schatz, the Israel visa waiver exemption bill promotes a process similar to Hawaii’s own history of colonization and exploitation

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Adam Horowitz

Kristen-Marie Puanani Young Ortiz has an Op-Ed in today’s Honolulu Star Advertiser asking Senator Brian Schatz to drop his support for the visa waiver exemption for Israel.

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Media, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics | 8 Comments

Rick Steves travels to Palestine and comments on nearly everything but the occupation

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Allison Deger

Travel host Rick Steves writes a series in the Huffington Post on Israel and Palestine.

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Media, US Politics | 28 Comments

Glenn Greenwald on the Woolwich attack and blowback from the ‘war on terror’

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Annie Robbins

Glenn Greenwald wrote another of his important blowback articles this morning in the Guardian; Was the London killing of a British soldier ‘terrorism’? He asks an essential question concerning the definition and use of the term “terrorism”. The media in western societies should be scrutinizing this definition and the hypocrisy with which the term is applied.

Posted in Media, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics, War on Terror | 63 Comments

Reporters Without Borders on the Israeli al-Dura investigation: ‘the nature and substance of this report are questionable and give the impression of a smear operation’

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Adam Horowitz

Reporters Without Borders just released a statement on recently released Israeli investigation into the death of Muhammad al-Dura.

Posted in Activism, Israel/Palestine, Israeli Government, Media, Occupation | 9 Comments

Jim from Newport Township, Illinois asks the wrong question

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Philip Weiss

When a listener asks a question about public broadcasting’s debt to Zionist funders, the Diane Rehm show cuts him off

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Media, US Politics | 11 Comments

Press Release: Isabel Kershner chosen to reveal future Israeli exonerations

Posted on May 21, 2013 by David Samel

Fresh from its triumph in exposing the Mohammed al-Dura death hoax, a secret Israeli Government Commission is nearing the completion of an even more comprehensive investigation absolving the IDF of all deaths of civilians in Lebanon in 2006, Gaza in 2008-2009, the Mavi Marmara in 2010, and Gaza in November, 2012.

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Israeli Government, Media, Occupation | 13 Comments

Both Massad, and ‘Open Zion’, ignore the experience of Middle Eastern Jews

Posted on May 21, 2013 by David Shasha

In the current media discourse the actual culture and history of the Arab Jews is completely ignored in favor of a bare-knuckles political approach that marks Jews and Arabs as separate categories. The narrative is one that has been constructed by the Zionists and leaves out the existential and cultural substance of the Sephardic community.

Posted in American Jewish Community, Israel/Palestine, Media, Middle East | 52 Comments

Exile and the Prophetic: Disappearing Massad, disappearing Palestine

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Marc H. Ellis
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Al Jazeera pulled Joseph Massad’s article – “The Last of the Anti-Semites” – from their website yesterday. Massad’s article is disappearing. Like disappearing Palestine, it will reappear. Neither are going away.

Posted in American Jewish Community, Israel Lobby, Israel/Palestine, Media, US Politics | 12 Comments

Anthony Bourdain heads to Israel/Palestine

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Paul Karolyi

CNN’s Anthony Bourdain is going to Israel and that is a really good thing.

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Media, US Politics | 36 Comments

‘NY Times’ relays Israeli threat to attack Syria

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Ira Glunts

Mark Landler said the New York Times received a telephone call today (May 15) from an unnamed Israeli official who threatened more airstrikes against Syria and warned that if the Assad regime retaliates it would face “crippling consequences.” When contacted by the newspaper, Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesperson, refused to comment on the allegation.

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Media, US Politics | 42 Comments

Newseum honors newsman who ran guns for ethnic cleansing of Palestine

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Matthew Taylor

Newseum glorifies the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by honoring Hank Greenspun’s gun-running to Israel in the 1940s.

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Media, Nakba | Tagged , , , , , , | 18 Comments

The Newseum’s ‘further investigation’ must be public, credible, and thorough – and what we should do if it isn’t

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Joe Catron

An impartial investigation by the Newseum into the deaths of Mahmoud al-Kumi and Hussam Salama should be welcomed, but if the investigation is secretive, partisan, or perfunctory, or if the same conclusions already reached by every other responsible body fail to produce equivalent tribute to al-Kumi and Salama – some response will be demanded.

Posted in Activism, Israel/Palestine, Media, US Politics | 9 Comments

Glenn Greenwald brings facts and reason to ‘Real Time’, ruins Bill Maher’s night

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Scott Roth

Last night Bill Maher had Glenn Greenwald on his show. Maher, a self-professed atheist who thinks religion is poison but thinks Israel is wonderful got a big surprise.

Posted in Media, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics, War on Terror | 88 Comments

‘Newseum’ comes under pressure from Israel supporters for honoring Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Adam Horowitz

On May 13th, the Newseum in Washington, DC will be holding an event to honor “newspeople who died or were killed in the pursuit of news” in the past year. Among the 84 journalists who died are Mahmoud al-Kumi and Hussam Salama who were killed in Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip this past winter. Their inclusion in the ceremony has sent parts of the Israel lobby into overdrive as both worked for Al-Aqsa television which is affiliated with Hamas. The neocon think tank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies is threatening pull an annual policy summit out of the venue in protest.

Posted in Gaza, Israel Lobby, Israel/Palestine, Media, US Politics | 19 Comments

Exile and the Prophetic: Getting Israel ‘right’

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Marc H. Ellis

I love it when American pundits talk about American intervention just shy of American boots on the ground – as if everyone else’s suffering is unimportant in comparison.

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Media, Middle East, syria, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics | 4 Comments

Syria wrap: Grumbling This won’t be easy, NYT’s Bill Keller suits up for another Mid-East war

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Philip Weiss
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US has accused Syrian regime of using chemical weapons, but UN investigator says rebels have used them. At the New York Times, Bill Keller, who pushed the Iraq war, advises, “Syria Is Not Iraq,” and that “getting Syria right starts with getting over Iraq.” The columnist ascribes great power to the U.S. to be able to fix things over there– on what basis?

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Media, syria, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics | 38 Comments

Islamophobic ‘Foreign Policy’ article compares Boston bombing and Palestinian resistance to occupation

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Deanna Othman

Yair Shamir’s May 1, Foreign Policy article “Our Shared Islamist Enemy: From Boston to Israel, radicals are attempting to destroy Western culture” endeavors to draw baseless parallels between the Boston Marathon bombings and the resistance of Palestinians against the Israeli occupation, what he inaccurately portrays as an “aggressive and offensive jihad, unconnected to any particular conflict or borders, which conjoins Islamist terror groups around the world.” His unabashedly Zionist agenda rears its head through this opportunistic attempt to play into the media circus surrounding the Boston bombings.

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Media, US Politics, War on Terror | 16 Comments

Anonymous sources in the Israeli US Embassy don’t like what they see on television

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Adam Horowitz

Ynet has an oddly anonymously-sourced story on a trend the Israeli embassy in Washington has noticed in American popular culture – Israel and the Israel lobby are increasingly portrayed as the bad guy.

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Israeli Government, Media, US Politics | 58 Comments

Israel supporters use Boston bombing to call for firing of UN Rapporteur

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Phan Nguyen

A smear campaign against UN Rapporteur Richard Falk distorts his words to claim that he blames Israel and the US for the Boston bombing—and that he believes the vicitms had it coming. Yet Falk never made the comments he was accused of making. Above, Falk talks at the United Nations.

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Media | Tagged | 90 Comments

Exile and the prophetic: Farewell to Salam Fayyad and American innocence

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Marc H. Ellis

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is gone–and with him goes the Palestinian Arab Spring, according to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. The author is innocent about American politics and its relation to the politics he sees rampant in the Arab world. Friedman ignores the repression and corruption everywhere–even among the leaders of our American empire.

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Israeli Government, Media, US Politics | 9 Comments