Media Distort Mideast Debate

[Sofiyya 1,687]

I have a question for those who blindly support Israel. Why does this country support a state that is based on the preference for one religion over others? One sect of a religion over others? From what I know of most of you, you would not condone that in this country. Many of you don't even like religion. Yet, you push the agenda of a religious state that you claim has similar values to ours. That may have been so during the days when this country was clearing the land of Native Americans, or when we were justifying the systematic subjugation of Blacks. But, not now.

Some of you fought for the freedoms this country enjoys, and would fight to retain your property and the safety and stability of your families. At the same time, you refuse to see that others who do the same also share your values. You refuse to acknowledge their humanity. You refuse to learn the real history of the creation of the modern Middle East.

You are spoon fed the propaganda of one side and aren't interested in the whole story. How can you consider yourself informed if that's all you know? As the child of Palestinian refugees, I have the voided deeds of land once owned by family members in Jerusalem and confiscated in the years just prior to or after the declaration of the independent state of Israel. There are hundreds of thousands of us around the world like me, holding these deeds in boxes all over the world, taking them out to teach our children of our loss and how it came about.

We fought back, and that is nothing to be ashamed of.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

AP Reporter Explains What "Israel's Right to Exist" Really Means

Monday, 17 May 2010 11:42

By John Spritzler

AP reporter Rizek Abdel Jawad broke a taboo by providing truthful background in his report today on Palestinians in Gaza marching to commemorate the Nakba, which mean "catastrophe" in Arabic and refers to the Zionist removal of Palestinians from what is now Israel in 1948. Jawad may have sacrificed his career by letting the cat out of the bag: he broke an American mass media taboo by explaining why the very existence of Israel as a Jewish state is a catastrophe for Palestinians. This is what he wrote in an article titled Palestinians recall '48 displacement:

"The plight of the refugees--who fled or were driven from their homes during the 1948 Israeli-Arab war--is one of the most emotionally charged issues for Palestinians and Israel to resolve...Some 4.7 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants are scattered across the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, according to UN figures. About one-third still live in UN-supported refugee camps...

"Palestinian negotiators have demanded at least partial repatriation. Israel has refused, saying an influx of refugees would dilute Israel's Jewish majority and threaten the existence of the state."

The Boston Globe ran this report below the fold on page A17, where relatively few people will read it. Nonetheless, it may be the first time that a Globe article informed its readers about what "Israel's right to exist" really means. Because Israel officially defines itself as a Jewish state, a state of "The Jewish People" and not a state of all its citizens, a state that, in order to be a "Jewish state," must use ethnic cleansing (i.e. removal) of non-Jewish Palestinians to ensure that Jews are at least 80% of the population allowed to live inside it, a state that considers non-Jewish citizens to be a "dilution" of its very essence, because of this the phrase "Israel's right to exist" really means the right of Zionists to enforce the ethnic cleansing of non-Jews from their homes and villages by refusing to allow them to return. For perhaps the first time a Globe reader who puts two and two together could figure out that denying Israel's right to exist (as Albert Einstein did) is not anti-Semitism but rather is what decent people who oppose ethnic cleansing must do.

I doubt we will see this cat being let out of the bag too often in the future. The Globe and the rest of America's mass media don't want the American public to understand why Palestinians are so angry at the Israeli government; they want us to think it is just that Arabs and Muslims are and always have been anti-Semitic. They don't want us to know that before the Zionist project to make most of Palestine an exclusively Jewish state Arab Muslims and Jews got along fine in Palestine.

America's wealthy ruling elite want us to believe the lie that Arabs and Muslims are hate-driven anti-Semitic fanatics who "hate Israeli and American freedom." Why? Because that lie is how our rulers get us to obey them.

"Do what we order you to do," our leaders say, "because we are protecting you from terrorists."

"Send your sons and daughters to fight and die in wars to overthrow foreign governments and install regimes we like because this is necessary to defeat the terrorists," they say.

"Give up your jobs and pensions and affordable health care," they say, "and give up teachers for your children and public services like libraries and a social safety net so that we can transfer trillions of dollars to the bankers, because this is required to make America strong so we and our great ally--Israel--can win the war on terror."

America's ruling plutocracy needs a boogie man to control us, and with the Communist boogieman now vanished "anti-Semitic" Palestinians and their Arab/Muslim sympathizers must fill the bill. Do not, therefore, be surprised if honest reports like the career-ending one from Rizek Abdel Jawad remain scarce as hens' teeth.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

The Palestinian 'terrorist' turned Zionist

jorg luyken

03/30/2008 01:07

When he was 16, says Walid Shoebat, he was recruited by a PLO operative by the name of Mahmoud al-Mughrabi to carry out an attack on a branch of Bank Leumi in Bethlehem. At six in the evening he was supposed to detonate a bomb in the doorway of the bank. But when he saw a group of Arab children playing nearby, he says, his conscience was pricked and he threw the bomb onto the roof of the bank instead, where it exploded causing no fatalities. This is the story that Shoebat, who converted from Islam to Christianity in 1993 and has lived in the United States since the late 1970s, has told on tours around the US and Europe since 9/11 opened the West's public consciousness to the dangers of Islamic extremism. Shoebat's Web site says his is an assumed name, used to protect him from reprisal attacks by his former terror chiefs, whom he says have put a $10 million price on his head. Shoebat is sometimes paid for his appearances, and he also solicits donations to a Walid Shoebat Foundation to help fund this work and to "fight for the Jewish people." The BBC, Fox News and CNN have all presented Shoebat as a terrorist turned peacemaker, interviewing him as someone uniquely capable of providing insight into the terrorist mindset. Now he and two other former extremists are set to appear along with US Senator Joe Lieberman, Ambassador to the US Sallai Meridor and other notables at an annual "Christians United For Israel" conference in Washington in July. The three "ex-terrorists" have appeared previously at Harvard and Columbia universities and, most recently, at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado, in February, at a conference whose findings, the organizers said, would be circulated at the Pentagon and among members of Congress and other influential figures. Last year, Shoebat spoke to the BattleCry Christian gathering in San Francisco, which drew a reported 22,000 evangelical teenagers to what the San Francisco Chronicle described as "a mix of pep rally, rock concert and church service." The paper described Shoebat as a self-proclaimed "former Islamic terrorist" who said that Islam was a "satanic cult" and who told the crowd how he eventually accepted Jesus into his heart. However, Shoebat's claim to have bombed Bank Leumi in Bethlehem is rejected by members of his family who still live in the area, and Bank Leumi says it has no record of such an attack ever taking place. His relatives, members of the Shoebat family, are mystified by the notion of "Walid Shoebat" being an assumed name. And the Walid Shoebat Foundation's working process is less than transparent, with Shoebat's claim that it is registered as a charity in the state of Pennsylvania being denied by the Pennsylvania State Attorney's Office. Shoebat's claim to have been a terrorist rests on his account of the purported bombing of Bank Leumi. But after checking its files, the bank said it had no record of an attack on its Bethlehem branch anywhere in the relevant 1977-79 period. Shoebat told The Jerusalem Post that this could be because the bank building was robustly protected with steel and that the attack may have caused little damage. Asked whether word of the bombing made the news at the time, he said, "I don't know. I didn't read the papers because I was in hiding for the next three days." (In 2004, he had told Britain's Sunday Telegraph: "I was terribly relieved when I heard on the news later that evening that no one had been hurt or killed by my bomb.") Shoebat could not immediately recall the year, or even the time of year, of the purported bombing when talking to the Post by phone from the US. After wavering, he finally settled for the summer of 1977. The Sunday Telegraph described Shoebat as a man who "for much of his life... was eager to commit acts of terrorism for the sake of his soul and the Palestinian cause." In that interview he described how he and his peers were indoctrinated as children "to believe that the fires of hell were an ever-present reality. We were all terrified of burning in hell when we died... The teachers told us that the only way we could certainly avoid that fate was to die in a martyrdom operation - to die for Islam." But an uncle and a cousin of Shoebat, who still live in Beit Sahur in the Bethlehem area, where Shoebat grew up, said that Shoebat's education was rather mild ideologically, and that religion did not play a dominant role. The uncle, interviewed at his home, said he remembered little about his nephew, because Walid left for America at the age of 16, and because his American mother always kept a distance from the rest of the family. The uncle and his wife both said firmly that there was no attack on Bank Leumi. When questioned on this discrepancy, Shoebat was adamant that he did carry out such a bombing, and that his relatives deny it to cover up for another cousin who was with him during the attack and still lives in Bethlehem. Shoebat evinced no particular surprise that his family could be tracked down simply by asking Beit Sahur locals where they lived, even though his Internet site claims that his is an assumed name. Shoebat describes his conversion to Christianity as a transformation "from hate to love." He told the Post that he believes "in a Greater Israel that includes Judea and Samaria, and by this I mean a Jewish state." He argued that Israel should retake the Gaza Strip and rehouse Jews there, regarding Gaza as Jewish by right. "If a Jew has no right to Gaza, then he has no right to Jaffa or Haifa either," he said. He advocates that the government of Greater Israel introduce a law providing for the exiling of anybody who denies its right to exist, "even if they were born there." He has little sympathy for the PLO or Hamas. "The Palestinians have not met a single demand from Israel," he said, and added, "Both the PLO and Hamas have not given up the goal of destroying Israel." "The Jews are not aware of the true threat," Shoebat said. "They are still fighting dead Nazis. It is easy to fight dead people. But they don't have the will to fight the living Nazis, the Islamic radicals." He told the Post he had set up his Walid Shoebat Foundation to educate Americans as to why the US should support Israel. Shoebat said the foundation had reached out to over 450 million people. He said it held events where he and others like him - whom he called "ex-terrorists" who have become Zionists - spoke about their views to Jewish, Christian and secular audiences. A New York Times report last month on the Air Force Academy event, headlined "Speakers at Academy Said to Make False Claims," noted that "Academic professors and others who have heard the three men speak in the United States and Canada said some of their stories border on the fantastic, like Mr. Saleem's account of how, as a child, he infiltrated Israel to plant bombs via a network of tunnels underneath the Golan Heights. No such incidents have been reported, the academic experts said. They also question how three middle-aged men who claim they were recruited as teenagers or younger could have been steeped in the violent religious ideology that only became prevalent in the late 1980s." The Times quoted Prof. Douglas Howard, who teaches the history of the modern Middle East at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as saying after he heard Saleem speak last November at the college that he thought the three were connected to several major Christian evangelical organizations. "It was just an old time gospel hour: 'Jesus can change your life, he changed mine,'" Howard said. The professor told the Times that his doubts about the authenticity of the three grew after he heard stories like that of the Golan Heights tunnels, "as well as something on Mr. Saleem's Web site along the lines that he was descended from the grand wazir of Islam. The grand wazir of Islam is a nonsensical term." The newspaper said Arab-American civil rights organizations have questioned "why, at a time when the United States government has vigorously moved to jail or at least deport anyone with a known terrorist connection, the three men, if they are telling the truth, are allowed to circulate freely." A spokesman for the FBI, the paper reported, said there were no warrants for their arrest. The Times said the three men were to be paid $13,000 for the Air Force Academy event. Visitors to Shoebat's Internet site are encouraged to make a donation to his foundation to enable him to disseminate his message. However, a notice on the page states that for "security reasons," the money will not be debited to his foundation, but rather to a company called Top Executive Media. The name Top Executive Media is used by a greetings card firm from Pennsylvania called Top Executive Greetings, a company with an annual turnover of $500,000. When one makes a donation through the Shoebat Internet site, the Web address changes to topexecutivegreetings.com/shoebat. This seems to be the only active page for the company; its homepage is blank. Asked by the Post whether the Walid Shoebat Foundation is a registered charity, Shoebat replied that it is registered in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania State Attorney's office said it had no record of a charity registered under this name. Questioned further, Shoebat said it was registered under a different name, but that he was not aware of the details, which are handled by his manager. "I remain separate to the running of the charity so that I am not constrained by church rules," he explained, adding that the organization's connection to certain churches meant it would be difficult for him to speak to secular audiences if he became too involved in running it. Dr. Joel Fishman, of the Allegany County Law Library in Pennsylvania, expressed doubts about this donation process. If the money were being given to a registered charity, the charity would have to make annual reports to the state and federal government on how it was being spent, he noted. Shoebat insisted donations were not being misused, however. "I survive by being an author," he said. "I only get paid for being an author. All the money that is donated gets put back into events." If the Bank Leumi bombing claim is unfounded, it is unclear why Shoebat would have wanted to manufacture a terrorist past. True or not, however, it has plainly brought him some prominence and provided him with a means to speak in favor of Israel and be paid for doing so.

[Pooky 3,849]

The Palestinian 'terrorist' turned Zionist

A little paragraphing would have been nice.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

“For the entire day of April 9, 1948, Irgun and LEHI soldiers carried out the slaughter in a cold and premeditated fashion...The attackers ‘lined men, women and children up against the walls and shot them,’...The ruthlessness of the attack on Deir Yassin shocked Jewish and world opinion alike, drove fear and panic into the Arab population, and led to the flight of unarmed civilians from their homes all over the country.” Israeli author, Simha Flapan, “The Birth of Israel.”

“By 1948, the Jew was not only able to ‘defend himself’ but to commit massive atrocities as well. Indeed, according to the former director of the Israeli army archives, ‘in almost every village occupied by us during the War of Independence, acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as murders, massacres, and rapes’...Uri Milstein, the authoritative Israeli military historian of the 1948 war, goes one step further, maintaining that ‘every skirmish ended in a massacre of Arabs.’” Norman Finkelstein, “Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.”

“Menahem Begin, the Leader of the Irgun, tells how ‘in Jerusalem, as elsewhere, we were the first to pass from the defensive to the offensive...Arabs began to flee in terror...Hagana was carrying out successful attacks on other fronts, while all the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter’...The Israelis now allege that the Palestine war began with the entry of the Arab armies into Palestine after 15 May 1948. But that was the second phase of the war; they overlook the massacres, expulsions and dispossessions which took place prior to that date and which necessitated Arab states’ intervention.” Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”

“In December 1947, the British announced that they would withdraw from Palestine by May 15, 1948. Palestinians in Jerusalem and Jaffa called a general strike against the partition. Fighting broke out in Jerusalem’s streets almost immediately...Violent incidents mushroomed into all-out war...During that fateful April of 1948, eight out of thirteen major Zionist military attacks on Palestinians occurred in the territory granted to the Arab state.” “Our Roots Are Still Alive” by the People Press Palestine Book Project.

“Before the end of the mandate and, therefore before any possible intervention by Arab states, the Jews, taking advantage of their superior military preparation and organization, had occupied...most of the Arab cities in Palestine before May 15, 1948. Tiberias was occupied on April 19, 1948, Haifa on April 22, Jaffa on April 28, the Arab quarters in the New City of Jerusalem on April 30, Beisan on May 8, Safad on May 10 and Acre on May 14, 1948...In contrast, the Palestine Arabs did not seize any of the territories reserved for the Jewish state under the partition resolution.” British author, Henry Cattan, “Palestine, The Arabs and Israel.”

A little paragraphing would have been nice.

I know, but it was posted online that way, and I didn't want to alter it.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

And Jews removed from Arab states to the newly formed Israel? Surely they also deserve repatriation and compensation? Sorry but "Palestine" was as much a fiction of European meddling in the ME as Israel.

It also seems, in addition to calls for death and/or actual killing, anyone who was once Muslim but converts but manages to live, is instantly defamed as a liar and fraud. Convenient that.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Anyone that supports Hamas is a terrorist.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Anyone that supports Hamas is a terrorist.

Well... thats not true now is it.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

And Jews removed from Arab states to the newly formed Israel? Surely they also deserve repatriation and compensation? Sorry but "Palestine" was as much a fiction of European meddling in the ME as Israel.

It also seems, in addition to calls for death and/or actual killing, anyone who was once Muslim but converts but manages to live, is instantly defamed as a liar and fraud. Convenient that.

If both Israel and Palestine were fictions of European meddling, then Israel has no greater legitimacy than you give to Palestine. Calls for death of Arabs by bloodthirsty founders of Israel must also carry weight.

BTW, there are many converts out of Islam that rate only a ho hum among Muslims. I'm related to quite a few. Walid Shoebat is a fraud because of his for profit lies, not because of any conversion he may have undertaken. The right-wing, in their zeal to undermine anything Muslim, is very susceptible to "former Muslim terrorist" frauds out to make a buck off of their gullibility and bigotry. He's not the first, nor will he be the last to be exposed.

Edited June 6, 2011 by Sofiyya

[ready4ONE 5,400]

I agree there was indeed violence and terrorism on the Israeli side of the formation of Israel. I would also agree Israel has made, and continues to make, heavy handed mistakes. None of which make Israel illegitimate but certainly worthy of criticism.

Sof both you and WOM have some great posts in this thread, even if I don't agree with everything the two of you have to say. It is appreciated, at least by me.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Thank you. That actually means a lot to me.

I agree there was indeed violence and terrorism on the Israeli side of the formation of Israel. I would also agree Israel has made, and continues to make, heavy handed mistakes. None of which make Israel illegitimate but certainly worthy of criticism.

Sof both you and WOM have some great posts in this thread, even if I don't agree with everything the two of you have to say. It is appreciated, at least by me.

[Zero Sum 305]

Very constructive comments by ready4ONE and Sofyia and WOM. This is the kind of flexible thinking that I see going against the grains of pessimism.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

I agree there was indeed violence and terrorism on the Israeli side of the formation of Israel. I would also agree Israel has made, and continues to make, heavy handed mistakes. None of which make Israel illegitimate but certainly worthy of criticism.

Sof both you and WOM have some great posts in this thread, even if I don't agree with everything the two of you have to say. It is appreciated, at least by me.

That was very gallant of you, Ready. I also appreciate everything you post, even if I don't agree, as that's what discussion is all about. And you bring a lot of different aspects into the conversation.

The one thing I agree with in the OP is the title. The media in the U.S. does distort the Palestinian-Israeli conflict -- by overwhelmingly reflecting the Israeli government's view (the right-wing Likud/hardcore settler position.) Journalists even go to the point of using Israel's own language to frame the conflict.

I wish mainstream U.S. media would at least present both sides, instead of what come off like IDF press releases. A person could learn much more accurate information about the situation from sampling a variety of Israeli media than from watching CNN or reading the New York Times. And of course there are many Israelis who are quite opposed to the occupation, the settlements, and their government's behavior in general... and are very active in trying to change the situation.

Americans deserve the chance to see both sides of the story.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

The one thing I agree with in the OP is the title.

Ditto