Free Gaza From Arab Terrorist Hamas!

The "Free Gaza" is getting a lot of play internationally, but the protesters are barking up the wrong tree. They keep accusing Israel of occupying Gaza and making life hell for the residents. Israel hasn't ruled/occupied/administrated Gaza for quite a few years. Gaza is ruled by corrupt Arab terrorists aka Hamas.

Hamas is guilty of wasting the generous budget they get from foreign countries, United Nations organizations and lots of NGOs. Instead of  building and equipping hospitals and schools, they buy weapons to use not only against Israel but their own citizens. They have built a maze of tunnels to get closer to Israel, in order to attack us. But most of the money is "lining the pockets" and filling the "retirement accounts" of the Hamas leaders.

Israel even allows Gazans into its hospitals for medical care, despite the dangers for Israel.

Hamas is not interested in building a viable, humane country. It's just an internationally supported terror organization. It also terrorizes Gazan civilians. That's the truth.

And about those killed during the violent riots/protests, whether rioters, observers or press, that's their fault for being there. And everyone knows that journalists take risks and even die because the "press vest" can't provide any real protection. A quick google search will give you a nice long list of journalists killed in the line of duty, whether they were professionally objective or their reporting was clearly subjective and in favor of the violent event, sic.

If Gazans want a better life, not just "a slice of the pie," then they must push out Hamas and not blame Israel for their problems.

Objective Journalism, Does it Exist?

I used to be a real newshound, addicted to listening to the news, reading whatever newspapers I could find, watching news shows. Yes, the whole works. And I loved the dynamics of politics ever since I was a teen. Now, as you may have noticed from the blog posts here, I'm disgusted and horrified.

There is nothing that even vaguely resembles objective news reporting. Not only do they all have their agendas, but there's no such thing as fact checking. It's beyond ignorance. There's an innocence in ignorance, but nowadays a don't see that at all. There are vicious attacks, like a modern version of the auto-da-fé.

An auto-da-fé or auto-de-fé (from Portuguese auto da fé [ˈaw.tu dɐ ˈfɛ], meaning "act of faith") was the ritual of public penance of condemned heretics and apostates that took place when the Spanish Inquisition, Portuguese Inquisition or the Mexican Inquisition had decided their punishment, followed by the execution by the civil authorities of the sentences imposed.
The most extreme punishment imposed on those convicted was execution by burning. In popular usage, the term auto-da-fé, the act of public penance, came to mean the burning at the stake. Wikipedia

Media interviews are more like either vicious interrogations or the fawning style seen in simplistic fan magazines of old.

At first I was very excited to discover that we could watch BBC News on our television, since I had happily listened to the radio version for decades. Then I had considered it, except for news on Israel*, pretty objective. But as the last American Presidential Campaign began to heat up, their support for Hillary and the Democrats so distorted their reports I could no longer trust their objectivity about anything. And not only hasn't it gotten better, it has gotten much worse. We don't have cable, just a simple "dish," and recently we don't even get the Israeli stations. CNN was never known for its objectivity.

Then  I discovered the English French TV News Channel, and I had great hopes for it, since it's not that interested in American news. I began watching it, but then they began a feature about the Israel-Arab "conflict." It begins with:

"In 1967  Israel invaded..." 

Grrr... That's what people all over the world think, and what is taught in universities even in the USA. And I have this nasty, frightening feeling that even some Israelis are oblivious to the facts, the Arab aggression that led up to the 1967 Six Days War. In order to survive, Israel had no choice other than shoot first.

About thirty 30 years ago, in the days when we hosted many journalists of an amazing selection of international media, I had a talk with a top editor of an American newspaper. I asked him what training, education he looked for when hiring someone starting in the profession. He said that he does not like to hire those with degrees in journalism, since they don't know anything other than how to write. He looks for those who majored in History, Economics, Science etc.

"Any knowledgeable university graduate can be taught how to write a good article, but I can't teach a Journalism graduate facts."

Things have changed drastically in the international media. I no longer have objective sources to learn current events and get an accurate idea of what's really happening in politics. I just know what's happening on the ground here in Israel, but not from the media. Today fake news is all over, and when trying to check accuracy, you really need to be an expert. This is both dangerous and sad. People are making decisions based on lies, fantasies, fake news and worse.

I can't see how it will get better. I am pessimistic for the future.

Here's a picture of a program from the French news channel.

*During the Intifada Part 1, I was horrified to hear an excited BBC radio reporter telling that he was with Arabs throwing rocks on Jews and how they tried to protect their eyes from the teargas the Israeli soldiers aimed at them to stop them. And in those days BBC even came to our house to film us and ask us questions.

Is The Israeli Media Hyping for Early Elections Yet Again?

Should we all be preparing yet again for new elections here in Israel?

The reality here in Israel that no matter which party is "ruling" in the Knesset, the real movers and shakers are the media. The Israeli media has always been the spokesperson of the self-appointed elite. Evenhanded objective interviewing skills are neither seen nor heard nor written in Israeli media, whether television, radio or the press.

When a reporter does not agree with the person he is interviewing sic, he/she interrogates him like a TV district attorney trying to force a mass murderer to confess his/her dastardly crimes. But when the reporter agrees with the ideology of the interviewee, the oversweet fawning can put the viewer/reader in diabetic shock. Outright lies and illogic will go unchallenged when Left talks to Left.

Please don't forget that there isn't a Hebrew word for "objective." When I was a high school English teacher I would ask what it meant in Hebrew, and they would answer:

"אוביקטיבי" "obyectivi"

And they could not explain at all what it meant in Hebrew words. For some peculiar reason the concept just doesn't exist in Israeli culture.

That's why all the publicity given to political polls must have an ulterior motive. So when I hear that Lapid's and Lieberman's parties are doing better than the Likud in the polls, I know that it's a reminder to the Israeli public to get on the bandwagon.

Poll: Lapid, Liberman continue to gain strengthNew poll finds that Yesh Atid and Yisrael Beytenu are making gains at the expense of Likud and the Zionist Union.
The Likud and the Zionist Union parties are continuing to lose seats, while Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid and Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu are making gains, a Kol Yisrael radio poll released Friday found.
The poll suggests that if elections were held today, Likud would win 26 seats, compared to 30 in the elections a year ago...

But of course all these news articles  leave out the fact that the Likud has pretty much always done much better in elections than polls.

And I don't think that this time Netanyahu will make the mistake he did last time and call for early elections based on good polls for Likud, if there are any. I'm pretty sure that he will work hard to keep his bare minimum 61 out of 120 Knesset seats live for as long as possible. And I also think that the coalition members feel the same. They know that although opposition parties look good in today's polls, according to their present numbers, none of the opposition leaders are favored more than Bibi by the public. Yes, no matter how much Israelis don't like Bibi as Prime Minister, still more prefer him over Lieberman, Lapid, Herzog etc. And if the coalition MKs try stabbing Bibi in the back by deserting to the opposition and Bibi gets back in, he won't forget the traitors.

What do you think? Comment and share, please.

"Suspected," "Allegedly," Media Idiocy Against Israel!

Here are a few of recent headlines in the Jerusalem Post:

Yahoo news

Border Police officer critically wounded in suspected car ramming attack near Hebron
Israeli man allegedly attacked by Sudanese Muslim on flight to Ethiopia
Masked assailant reportedly stabs off-duty Hatzolah worker in New York

The emphasis (bold and italics) is mine.

Honestly, I don't understand these wishy-washy adverbs used to cast doubt on simple to prove facts.

French Hill, Givat Hamivtar, Jerusalem
location of "my" Arab terror attack.
I was injured along with about twenty others,
and a woman was murdered.

• For close to twenty years, Arab terrorists have used their cars/vehicles as weapons to kill, maim, injure and terrorize innocent Israelis. I know this too well, since I was injured in the very first one just under twenty years ago. After being attacked, David Bar Illan, who was then Editor-in-Chief of the Jerusalem Post, had me interviewed, posted an op-ed I wrote about it and used my information in a double-long editorial supporting my claim, later verified by the police, that it was a terror attack. Recently this method has become very popular  for Arab terrorists attacking Jews. It offers them protection they won't get as suicide bombers, and is much less intimate than stabbing.
• There were many witnesses of the attack on Arik Zanuda, an Israeli on the flight from Chad to Addis Ababa, so why cast doubt on the story by using the word "allegedly?"



photo credit:HAREDIM 10

• With pictures of the stabbed Hatzolah worker David Katz, and the simple fact that the article even says that Katz is hospitalized for stab wounds, why is the Jerusalem Post using the phrase "reportedly stabbed?" He was stabbed.

The Jerusalem Post is editorializing to cast doubt on the attacks on Jews, whether terror attacks here in Israel or attacks on Jews abroad. The vocabulary it uses gives the impression that there is a reasonable uncertainty as to whether or not the attacks actually took place.

It's very hard to get accurate unbiased news!

Israel, Facts Not Fiction

Shouldn't news be objective?  It's much too easy to slant news turning what's supposed to be a simple factual article into an insidious biased piece of fiction.  When I was growing up, the only newspaper we ever saw at home was the New York Times, and as I've reminisced before, for me the "Sunday funnies" were the political cartoons in its "News of the Week in Review."  And in elementary school when we learned about newspapers, we only used the NYT.  So it's rather ironic that as an Israeli I've discovered that that's the newspaper once should be most suspicious of.  Journalists and bloggers from all over are kept busy writing expose`s about the inaccuracies and intentional slanting of their "news" articles and biased op-eds.

Among the many Israeli sources of irritation for The New York Times, none is more persistently aggravating than Jewish settlements. August has been an especially difficult month for the Times. In rapid succession, its Jerusalem reporter Jodi Rudoren, Pulitzer-prize winning columnist Thomas Friedman, and editorial board contributed factual errors about settlements that not only  revealed  falsehoods but blatant bias. Algemeiner

So I have my own way of finding the news.  I'm a long time fan (and friend) of Ruthie Blum, who's very upfront about the fact that she writes op-eds from the Right point of view.  Here's her latest:

The Palestinians' two-faced solution

Last week, while the first batch of Palestinian terrorists was being released from Israeli jails, the Palestinian Authority was too busy condemning Israel to express satisfaction. This is because the Israeli government had approved the construction of hundreds of new houses in east Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

The plans to build these new units were made public well before the start of the current pre-negotiation discussions, brokered by the United States. Furthermore, the additional housing is slated for areas that the Palestinian Authority ostensibly agreed would remain in Israel after a "two-state solution" was reached.

Nevertheless, the Palestinian Authority and its apologists, both in Israel and abroad, did what they always do when faced with "settlement expansion" -- they raised a stink, accusing Israel of provocation, at best, and violation of international law, at worst...  Israel Hayom 

It's also a good idea to subscribe to the IDF's youtube page.



Seeing is believing.  I must admit that sometimes it works too ahrd to be PC-politically almost Leftist correct, but they do show some valuable videos.

The Jewish Press's site also gives real news and isn't afraid to tell the truth.  This isn't the same Jewish Press I first read when visiting my then future in-laws forty-five years ago.

There's also Arutz 7 which was a pioneer site telling the truth.

In terms of today's political cartoonists, there's Dry Bones.


Egypt's Turn

The current drama of the Middle East is that every Arab state seems to be under attack by one bunch of Islamists or another ...and the countries are crumbling.
Years ago, I encouraged his creator to blog them.

And now there's a new guy on the block, i24, hat tip Tablet Magazine.  I don't know how accurate and objective they will end up being, but we'll see.

As a blogger, my aim is more editorial than hard news. That's my choice, and I don't hide it.

Where do you find your most objective news? Please answer in the comments, thanks.

Jonathan Pollard's U.S. Incarceration/Freeing Shouldn't Be Compared to Arab Terrorists

I think it's a very serious mistake to connect the demand for the United States' releasing Jonathan Pollard with the American pressure on Israel to release murdering terrorists.

Peace between Israel and the Palestinians requires the active involvement of the United States, as evidenced by Secretary John Kerry’s intensive efforts to bring the parties together.  But if peace is in our national interest, as the Obama Administration insists it is, and if peace requires sacrifice by both Israel and the Palestinians, then we too must be willing to give a little.  Releasing Jonathan Pollard after requiring him to serve 27 years, some in solitary confinement, is not much of a sacrifice to ask of the United States.  It is the least we can do to make it easier for Israel to make far greater sacrifices and take far more dangerous risks in order to secure peace.
The request to release Pollard now has bipartisan support in the United States and multi-partisan support in Israel.  Knesset members on all sides of the Israeli political spectrum have called for Pollard’s release as a way of encouraging the peace process.  “It’s a window of opportunity of good will to Israeli, who are not going through an easy time,” said Labor MK Nachman Shai.  “It would build up public support for negotiations and show that the US also understands the gravity of this historic moment.” (Alan Dershowitz writing for algemeiner)

Such a connection equates Pollard with terrorists making him appear guilty of things he never did.

On the other hand, I do think that the entire Jonathan Pollard issue and story provide an excellent example of why we Israelis, from ordinary citizens like myself to the government officials and Prime Minister should not trust the United States.

The United States is not a neutral, objective mediator when it comes to Israel.  There is an underlying anti-Semitic, anti-Israel sentiment in all levels and branches of the American Government, whether legislative, judicial or executive.  That means Congress, Courts and the President of the United States treat Jews and pro-Israelis differently from other citizens.

"Unprecedented" is the usual adjective used to describe the punishment meted Jonathan Pollard for giving information to an ally.  That means that in the history of the United States Judicial System, never ever before has someone been punished to such an extreme for such a crime.  Enemy spies have received much shorter and less severe restrictions.

This fact should be a red flashing light for Israelis that there's an anti-Israel agenda in the American Government.  Over the close to three decades already since Pollard was handed over to the American authorities by Israel, there have been many Presidents who could have released and pardoned Pollard, but they haven't.  And that would have been a good, legitimate, pragmatic, sensible reason to reject all American pressure.  Call a spade a spade, an anti-Semite an anti-Semite and an injustice an injustice.  The United States Government can't be trusted to do or support what it good for the State of Israel.   It's a fact!!!

Bibi, it's not too late.  Send the Israeli delegation home immediately!

Journalists Making The News, Rather Than Just Reporting It

In recent years there have been too many reports of Arab terror attacks and riots instigated/directed/inspired by journalists.  They get paid to show action, and the Arabs love to cooperate.  Having an audience well equipped with cameras to record Israeli citizens and IDF soldiers injured and cowering is great encouragement for them.

algemeiner.com just published a video which shows how this is done.



You can easily see how the journalists are well-dressed/equipped for the occasion with flak jackets, helmets etc.

Screen shot of Palestinian Arabs using press as cover to attack the IDF. Photo: Youtube/The Commentator.

A video has surfaced, posted to the website The Commentator, that purports to show several Palestinian Arabs hiding behind members of the press while hurling rocks and firebombs at the IDF. Taking cover behind a low wall, the attackers use members of the press, which number around 5 or 6, as cover to attack the Israeli soldiers.

This reminds me of a BBC Radio report I heard over twenty years ago, when the Intifada was a new Arab term for attacking Jews.   I don't number them since I've never heard of an official end.  It comes and goes in waves but never totally stops.  In that report, the radio journalist made it clear that he was crouched together with the attacking Arabs as they threw rocks and bricks at Israelis. You could hear the noises and his uncontrolled excitement. The IDF began responding with teargas, and the journalist told us how the Arabs had come equipped with cloths and remedies to protect their eyes and lungs from it.  He very emotionally described how parents comforted their children and covered their eyes to protect them.  It was 100% clear that the journalist was totally identified with the Arab attackers and considered this a great adventure for himself.

Unfortunately, not only foreign journalists identify with the Arabs who attack Israel, so do Israeli journalists, politicians and academics. They consider themselves "post-Zionists."  But to tell you the truth, there has always been Zionist, mostly Left-Labor who considered it important to give the Arabs their own country next to the State of Israel, even before the establishment of the state.  It's not enough that the British imported the Hashemites and gave them Transjordan to rule, but the United Nations Partition Plan, approved by David Ben-Gurion's followers, allocated most of what was left of the British Mandate of Palestine to the Arabs.

The World expected the Arabs to defeat us in 1948 and at best we'd be governed by a continuation of the Mandate.  Luckily G-d had other plans.

There's nothing new in journalists trying to make news; they just can't make facts out of lies.