Why the U.S. Media Barely Covered Brutal Right-Wing Race Riots in Tel Aviv. June 17, 2012 | Like this article?
Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Several weeks back, Israel was rocked by a night of right-wing race-riots targeting African refugees in Tel Aviv. The thuggery was frightening – refugees were attacked, African-owned businesses and stores were vandalized and a community was forced to hunker down behind closed doors in fear for their lives. Perhaps more disturbing still was that the riots, which began with an anti-immigrant demonstration, were incited by Israeli politicians representing the increasingly influential hard-right. While a small number of people carried out the violence, they represented the views of many Israelis. The story received very little coverage in the United States. Joshua Holland: MJ, I want to talk to you about some issues you’ve been writing about.
MJ Rosenberg: Right. MR: They consider all criticism of Israel illegitimate. Campus Watch by Daniel Pipes. In response to: The Storm over the Israel Lobby from the June 8, 2006 issue To the Editors: Michael Massing [“The Storm over the Israel Lobby,” NYR, June 8] makes a factual error in his reference to Campus Watch when he writes that Campus Watch encouraged students to take notes on lectures by professors critical of Israel, with the goal of “exposing” them on the MEF Web site, but this feature was dropped after it was widely condemned as a form of McCarthyism.
Had Massing done even a modicum of research, he would have seen that inviting students to submit information about abusive professors (so as to keep professors honest in the classroom) was never dropped and remains very much in place at the Campus Watch Web site at “Keep Us Informed,” www.campus-watch.org/incident.php. I can’t but comment on the odd phrase that Campus Watch “encouraged students to take notes on lectures by professors critical of Israel.”
Daniel Pipes Director, Middle East Forum Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. MEMRI - The Middle East Media Research Institute. Yes, MEMRI, there is a Fatwa from Khamenei forbidding Nukes. I’m told that MEMRI, which has its origins in Israeli military intelligence, has put out a statement doubting that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ever issued a fatwa forbidding nuclear weapons.
(MEMRI claims to be a 501(c)3 non-profit but is actually an effort to cherry-pick Middle Eastern news to present the most negative face of the Arab world to Americans so as to prejudice them in favor of Israel; in this case it is just doing propaganda). A Reddit.com contributor has effectively answered this piece of disinformation. This posting points out that the official IRNA news agency said in 2005, “The Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued the Fatwa that the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons.”
Selective Memri. For some time now, I have been receiving small gifts from a generous institute in the United States.
The gifts are high-quality translations of articles from Arabic newspapers which the institute sends to me by email every few days, entirely free-of-charge. The emails also go to politicians and academics, as well as to lots of other journalists. The stories they contain are usually interesting. Whenever I get an email from the institute, several of my Guardian colleagues receive one too and regularly forward their copies to me - sometimes with a note suggesting that I might like to check out the story and write about it.
If the note happens to come from a more senior colleague, I'm left feeling that I really ought to write about it. The organisation that makes these translations and sends them out is the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri), based in Washington but with recently-opened offices in London, Berlin and Jerusalem. Mr Awadh is not exactly an independent figure. Middle East Forum - Profile - Right Web - Institute for Policy Studies. MuzzleWatch - Tracking efforts to stifle open debate about US-Israeli foreign policy. Rick Steve's "I've been duped" Rick Steves watched Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land and had an epiphany, he has seen the light.
If you happen to be one of the 3.5 people in America who have never heard of Rick Steves watch this 60 Minute episode. He’s huge, the only famous American tour guide. Rick Steves He’s got a popular TV show , hosts NPR Travel with Rick Steves, and has a 20-million-dollar-a-year business selling travel books. Can’t get much more mainstream than that. So imagine my surprise when I read his recent article on Huffington Post, Reflections on Israel and Palestine. I’ve been duped.Do you know the frustration you feel when you believed in something strongly and then you realize that the information that made you believe was from a source with an agenda to deceive?
Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land is a fantastic important film and Steves has a huge following.