Israel's military censor wanted prior review of the New York Times' article on Second Lt. Hadar Goldin, a missing Israeli officer now believed dead

Israel's military censor wanted prior review of the New York Times' article on Second Lt. Hadar Goldin, a missing Israeli officer now believed dead

    Sunday, August 03, 2014   No comments

In the New York Times' August 1 article, "Gaza Fighting Intensifies as Cease-Fire Falls Apart," the newspaper revealed that it was the first time "in more than six years" Israel wanted prior review.

The Times said it didn't fully comply with the order. Instead of sending "a draft of this article," they just "summarized" the section of its article about Goldin in a phone call. The Times's report reads, as of August 2:

"Israel’s military censor informed The New York Times that material related to the missing officer had to be submitted for review, the first such notification in more than six years. International journalists must agree in writing to the censorship system in order to work in Israel. The Times did not send the censor a draft of this article before publication, but summarized over the phone its biographical references to Lieutenant Goldin."

Interestingly, the Huffington Post noted that the Times didn't include that paragraph about the censor until "nearly six hours" after publication, pointing to News Diffs' record of changes to the article. That may have been because the prior review request came after publication for future reports.

read more >>

Brian Eno on the Israel-Gaza crisis: How can you justify images such as this? and Peter Schwartz responds to Brian Eno's open letter on Israel-Gaza crisis

Brian Eno on the Israel-Gaza crisis: How can you justify images such as this? and Peter Schwartz responds to Brian Eno's open letter on Israel-Gaza crisis

    Sunday, August 03, 2014   No comments

Dear All of You,

I sense I’m breaking an unspoken rule with this letter, but I can’t keep quiet any more.

Today I saw a picture of a weeping Palestinian man holding a plastic carrier bag of meat. It was his son. He’d been shredded (the hospital’s word) by an Israeli missile attack – apparently using their fab new weapon, fléchette bombs. You probably know what those are – hundreds of small steel darts packed around explosive which tear the flesh off humans. The boy was Mohammed Khalaf al-Nawasra. He was four years old.

I suddenly found myself thinking that it could have been one of my kids in that bag, and that thought upset me more than anything has for a long time.

Then I read that the UN had said that Israel might be guilty of war crimes in Gaza, and they wanted to launch a commission into that. America won’t sign up to it.

What is going on in America? I know from my own experience how slanted your news is, and how little you get to hear about the other side of this story. But – for Christ’s sake! – it’s not that hard to find out. Why does America continue its blind support of this one-sided exercise in ethnic cleansing? WHY? I just don’t get it. I really hate to think it’s just the power of Aipac [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee]… for if that’s the case, then your government really is fundamentally corrupt. No, I don’t think that’s the reason… but I have no idea what it could be. The America I know and like is compassionate, broad-minded, creative, eclectic, tolerant and generous. You, my close American friends, symbolise those things for me. But which America is backing this horrible one-sided colonialist war? I can’t work it out: I know you’re not the only people like you, so how come all those voices aren’t heard or registered? How come it isn’t your spirit that most of the world now thinks of when it hears the word “America”? How bad does it look when the one country which more than any other grounds its identity in notions of Liberty and Democracy then goes and puts its money exactly where its mouth isn’t and supports a ragingly racist theocracy?

read more >>


Dear Brian and friends,

I am writing to respond to your note about Gaza and how America is responding. It deserves a response.

My feelings and the actual realities are complex on several levels; the realities of the Arab-Israeli history and conflicts, global politics and modern American history/demographics. All three levels interact to create the current situation. And to understand the US posture you have to consider the history. Let me say, that, as you know, I am an immigrant and child of Holocaust survivors. I am culturally Jewish, but with no religious or spiritual inclinations, an atheist. And I believe that creating the Jewish state of Israel was a historic mistake that is likely to destroy the religion behind it. The actions nation states take to assure their survival are usually in contradiction to any moral values that a religion might espouse. And that contradiction is now very evident in Israel’s behaviour. Israel will destroy Judaism.

read more >>

SPIEGEL has learned from reliable sources that Israeli intelligence eavesdropped on US Secretary of State John Kerry during Middle East peace negotiations

SPIEGEL has learned from reliable sources that Israeli intelligence eavesdropped on US Secretary of State John Kerry during Middle East peace negotiations

    Sunday, August 03, 2014   No comments

SPIEGEL has learned from reliable sources that Israeli intelligence eavesdropped on US Secretary of State John Kerry during Middle East peace negotiations. In addition to the Israelis, at least one other intelligence service also listened in as Kerry mediated last year between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states, several intelligence service sources told SPIEGEL. Revelations of the eavesdropping could further damage already tense relations between the US government and Israel.
[...]
Still, there are no doubts about fundamental support for Israel on the part of the United States. On Friday, the US Congress voted to help fund Israel's "Iron Dome" missile defense system to the tune of $225 million (around €168 million).

read more >>

More than 1,000 Turks fighting for ISIL, "the Islamic Caliphate"

More than 1,000 Turks fighting for ISIL, "the Islamic Caliphate"

    Saturday, August 02, 2014   No comments

The number of Turkish citizens fighting under the umbrella of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is slightly more than 1,000, according to Turkish officials, who admit that they are unable to learn the exact number. The estimated number of armed ISIL fighters is around 12,000 to 15,000, which shows that Turks make up just less than 10 percent of the jihadist group.

Turkey has long been accused of not efficiently controlling its borders to prevent those foreigners joining the jihadist extremist groups and stop the flow of weapons into Syria. In response to these criticisms, Turkish officials have noted the difficulty of controlling a nearly 900-kilometer-long border while blaming Western countries for not sharing intelligence on potential recruits for the jihadist groups.

read more >>

American media's new pro-Israel bias: the same party line at the wrong time Evolving conversations on the ground demand probing questions on-air; So why does TV news look like a Netanyahu ad?

American media's new pro-Israel bias: the same party line at the wrong time Evolving conversations on the ground demand probing questions on-air; So why does TV news look like a Netanyahu ad?

    Friday, August 01, 2014   No comments

Here are a few questions you won’t hear asked of the parade of Israeli officials crossing US television screens during the current crisis in Gaza:

• What would you do if a foreign country was occupying your land?
• What does it mean that Israeli cabinet ministers deny Palestine’s right to exist?
• What should we make of a prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who as opposition leader in the 1990s addressed a rally under a banner reading “Death to Arafat” a year after the Palestinian leader signed a peace accord with Israel?

These are contentious questions, to be sure, and with complicated answers. But they are relevant to understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today. They also parallel the issues routinely raised by American journalists with Palestinian officials, pressing to consider how the US would react if it were under rocket fire from Mexico, to explain why Hamas won’t recognise Israel and to repudiate Palestinian anti-Semitism.

But it’s a feature of much mainstream journalism in the US, not just an issue of coverage during the last three weeks of the Gaza crisis, that while one set of questions gets asked all the time, the other is heard hardly at all.

In years of reporting from and about Israel, I’ve followed the frequently robust debate in its press about whether Netanyahu really wants a peace deal, about the growing power of right-wing members inside the Israeli cabinet opposed to a Palestinian state, about the creeping air of permanence to the occupation.

So it has been all the more striking to discover a far narrower discourse in Washington and the notoriously pro-Israel mainstream media in the US at a time when difficult questions are more important than ever. John Kerry, the US secretary of state, and a crop of foreign leaders have ratcheted up warnings that the door for the two-state solution is closing, in no small part because of Israel’s actions. But still the difficult questions go unasked.

Take Netanyahu’s appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. The host, Bob Schieffer, permitted the Israeli leader to make a lengthy case for the his military’s ground attack, guiding him along with one sympathetic question after another. Finally, after describing Netanyahu’s position as “very understandable”, Schieffer asked about dead Palestinian civilians – but only to wonder if they presented a public relations problem in “the battle for world opinion”.

read more >>

White House's strongest and most explicit condemnation of Israel comes as Palestinian leaders prepare for talks on short ceasefire

White House's strongest and most explicit condemnation of Israel comes as Palestinian leaders prepare for talks on short ceasefire

    Thursday, July 31, 2014   No comments

Israel has come under heavy pressure from the US to curtail civilian deaths after concluding that its forces were likely to have been behind the shelling of a UN school.  

  

In what amounted to the strongest and most explicit condemnation of Israel since the Gaza conflict began, President Barack Obama's press secretary on Thursday called the attack "totally unacceptable" and "totally indefensible". He also said the administration was urging Israel to do more to avoid civilian deaths and said US officials were taking issue with "specific military decisions" by Israel. "It is clear that we need our allies in Israel to do more to live up to the high standards they have set themselves."

read more >>

Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, at least 30 people, mostly women and children, were injured in what is believed to be an Israeli shelling

Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, at least 30 people, mostly women and children, were injured in what is believed to be an Israeli shelling

    Thursday, July 31, 2014   No comments

Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, at least 30 people, mostly women and children, were injured in what is believed to be an Israeli shelling

Spain's leading film stars Penélope Cruz, Pedro Almodóvar and Javier Bardem are the latest major celebrities to go public with their views on the ongoing conflict in Gaza

Spain's leading film stars Penélope Cruz, Pedro Almodóvar and Javier Bardem are the latest major celebrities to go public with their views on the ongoing conflict in Gaza

    Wednesday, July 30, 2014   No comments

The trio are among a group of actors who have penned an open letter in a Spanish newspaper calling for Europe to condemn Israel's bombing of the Palestinian territory, which has now claimed at least 1,200 lives - many of them civilians.

The Spanish stars follow in the wake of celebrities, including singers Zayn Malik, Rihanna and Selena Gomez, and comedian Joan Rivers, who have spoken out either for or against the bombardment.
...
Branding himself 'outraged, ashamed and hurt', Bardem added that he did not want tax he pays in Spain to be used to support Israeli 'barbarism', before going on to recognise the distinction between the actions of the Israeli state and the opinions of Jews, who may not support the bombings.

'...being Jewish does not automatically mean you support this massacre, just like being Hebrew does not mean you are a Zionist, just like being Palestinian does not automatically make you a Hamas terrorist. That's just as absurd as saying that being German makes you Nazi,' he said.

Bardem went on to say that he had spoken to a lot of Jewish friends in the U.S. about the conflict, one of whom he claimed had told him: 'You can't call it self-defense while you're murdering children.'

The Spanish celebrities who penned today's open letter are the latest in a long line of famous names to voice their opinion on the four-week-old conflict, many of them coming out in support of Gaza.

Read more >>

UN official condemns ‘in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces’

UN official condemns ‘in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces’

    Tuesday, July 29, 2014   No comments

Gaza: at least 19 killed and 90 injured as another UN school is hit

At least 19 Palestinians were killed and about 90 injured early on Wednesday when a UN school sheltering displaced people was hit by shells during a second night of relentless bombardment that followed an Israeli warning of a protracted military campaign.

Pierre Krahenbuhl, commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, condemned “in in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces”.

He said in a statement: “Last night, children were killed as they slept next to their parents on the floor of a classroom in a UN-designated shelter in Gaza. Children killed in their sleep; this is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today the world stands disgraced.

“We have visited the site and gathered evidence. We have analysed fragments, examined craters and other damage. Our initial assessment is that it was Israeli artillery that hit our school, in which 3,300 people had sought refuge. We believe there were at least three impacts.

read more >>

Satellite images of Gaza show the devastation in the tiny Palestinian enclave

Satellite images of Gaza show the devastation in the tiny Palestinian enclave

    Monday, July 28, 2014   No comments

 Satellite images released by Unitar/Unosat show how vast tracts of the Gaza Strip have been completely destroyed over the course of the Israeli offensive, now in its 21st day.

As the death toll in Gaza passed 1,000, the US NGO distributed satellite photos of the tiny Palestinian enclave before and after the air strikes and ground assault by Israeli forces. United Nations experts have said it will take years for the Strip's civilian infrastructure to be rebuilt at a cost of at least $115 million - if the fighting ends now. 

[...]
More children than militants have been killed during the offensive, according to figures from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The death toll as of July 27 was comprised of 832 civilians - 221 of them children - and 182 armed combatants.

read more >>