Times change: A day after the formerly neoconservative Washington Post ran an article calling for boycott and sanctions against Israel written by two prestigious Jewish scholars, it runs a piece by novelist Assaf Gavron saying Israel has become a savage rightwing society and it must end the occupation to save itself.
On Thursday, October 15 during Kate Snow Live, MSNBC aired a segment on the present violence in Israel/Palestine. Amazingly, it presented the four-map graphic about Palestinian land loss. Predictably, a firestorm of anger and invective was immediately directed at MSNBC. None of it was justified, but the pro-Israel lobby relies on brute force and not truth or logic in order to intimidate journalists and politicians. On Thursday October 19, both Snow and Fletcher issued an apology for presenting the map graphic and for their remarks.
Given the Jewish Week’s powerful reach into mainstream Jewish households – the paper has reported 100,000 weekly subscribers in the New York area (making it the single biggest-circulation Jewish periodical) – its commentary on the growing violence in Israel and the Occupied Territories carries significant weight. Alas, the Jewish Week’s most recent summary of events, while ostensibly expressing sympathy for victims of “terror,” confounds its subject matter so completely that, in the end, it succeeds only in propagandizing for systematic violence, defending international crime, and embracing disinformation as an instrument of justice.
Last week, MSNBC aired a map showing the loss of Palestinian land to Zionist settlers and then to Israel from 1946 to the present. Following criticism from Israelis and their supporters, MSNBC apologized and stated that the map was incorrect. But was it? Here is a fact check of MSNBC’s map and the criticisms of it.
On NPR’s “On Point,” Tom Ashbrook pairs Gerald Steinberg, the rightwing director of NGO Monitor, with Sayed Kashua the Palestinian writer. That’s like pairing an evolutionary biologist with a slick spokesperson for intelligent design.
The US media coverage of what many have dubbed the Third Intifada has, to this point, been so overwhelmingly pro-Israel biased, it’s as if CNN, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Fox News are operating as the media arm of both the Israeli Defense Force, and the Netanyahu government.
Jamil Dakwar of the ACLU says the violence in Israel and Palestine demands international opposition to the occupation, but Obama has spent all his political capital on Iran and Cuba, so he won’t say what is obvious
Rogel Alpher and Uri Avnery are two Israeli voices seeking dramatic transformation of their society. Why don’t we hear them in the U.S. mainstream?
American Jewish Zionists are all over NYT reporter Jodi Rudoren when she dares to convey the Palestinian experience of occupation in Jerusalem; and Rudoren responds to them on twiter
Jeffrey Goldberg says Palestinians are attacking Jews because they have a powerful “narrative” that denies the ancient Jewish connection to Jerusalem. He leaves out the Palestinian story of being forced off their land by Zionists again and again in the last 70 years.