Wednesday’s “News in Review” Round-Up

Media-ocrities of the Week

 

“[The] Israeli and American spreading of poisoned terms continues, with its penetration through the media into broad spheres of world public opinion. Even more dangerous, however, is the penetration of these poisoned terms into Arab and Palestinian public opinion, which is drawn into the trap of using them, without careful examination.”—Excerpt of a new book, Terminology in Media, Culture and Politics, published by the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Information, outlining the “proper” phrases to be used by Palestinians when discussing the conflict with Israel. According to the Ministry, “the Israeli terminology acts to distort the Palestinian national struggle, transforming the essence of Zionis[m] from a racist, colonialist endeavor into [one] of self-definition and independence for the Jewish people.” Therefore, for example, the book instructs Palestinians to replace the name “Israel” with the term “Israeli colonialism,” and the words “Palestinian terror” with “resistance.” (Palestinian Media Watch, June 19.) [To view the full PMW report see “On Topics” below—Ed.]

 

“The Arab awakening—at its core—was a nonreligious event, led by young people frustrated that they lacked the space, job opportunities and educational tools to realize their full potential. That was the volcanic energy source that blew the lid off Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen and Libya.”—Thomas Friedman, describing the “Arab Spring” as nonreligious, despite the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamic in movements in “Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen and Libya.” Friedman, who initially hailed the upheavals in the Middle East as “a quest for personal empowerment, dignity and freedom,” now admits that “the Arab awakenings…will have no chance of really empowering the new generation without [a] revolution in education.” (NY Times, June 16, 2012 & February 15, 2011.)

 

Weekly Quotes

 

“We are hopeful that…[European Union foreign policy chief Catherine] Ashton and I can reach a decision regarding the time and place for the next negotiations.”—Lead Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, calling for another round of diplomacy after this week’s two-day talks with world powers in Moscow—the third round of negotiations since April—again failed to resolve the dispute over Tehran’s illicit atomic program. Citing the “significant gaps” that remain between the two sides, Ashton agreed to a low-level, technical follow-up meeting in Istanbul on July 3. (Reuters & Wall Street Journal, June 19.)

 

“Our enemies should know that arrogance and unsubstantiated demands from Iran will lead to nowhere.”—Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reiterating Iran’s refusal to compromise on its nuclear program. (Wall Street Journal, June 19.)

 

“Eight years are enough. I will not found any political party or group.”—Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, claiming he will not run in Iran’s June 2013 presidential elections. (Independent Media Review and Analysis, June 17.)

 

“If Iran and Egypt stand beside each other, there won’t be any more need for war to root out enemies and Zionists’ domination. The news of unity between Iran and Egypt will make timorous and coward Zionists prefer to escape rather than to stay in the region.”—Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, claiming Tehran’s ongoing rapprochement with Cairo will bring about the end to “Zionist hegemony” in the Middle East. (Independent Media Review and Analysis, June 16.)

 

“What’s happening in Sinai [is that] terror bases are being established. We expect the Egyptians to exert their sovereignty there.”—IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, calling on Egypt’s government to immediately restore control over the Sinai, after terrorists launched a cross-border raid from the increasingly lawless territory which killed one Israeli. (Jerusalem Post, June 19.)

 

“The situation is now even more serious and abominable. To prevent this civil war from getting worse, we need…a viable alternative.”—French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, announcing his country will introduce a resolution in the UN Security Council providing member states with a mandate to intervene in Syria, possibly as part of a military operation. (Wall Street Journal, June 13.)

 

“Any data or information produced by this system will only be available to the alliance.…”—Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz, rejecting the possibility that Israel be given access to data from NATO’s X-band radar system, stationed in Kurecik, Turkey, designed to protect against ballistic missile threats from Iran. (Independent Media Review and Analysis, June 13.)

 

“There will be no peace with secularism. The only peace is first with God, then with Jihad, then with resistance, then with the people and with martyrs.”—Fathi Hammad, Interior Minister in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, at a graduation ceremony for 184 Palestinian police officers. (Independent Media Review and Analysis, June 13.)

 

“When I grow up I’ll join Islamic Jihad and the al-Quds Brigades. I’ll fight the Zionist enemy and fire missiles at it until I die as a shahid (martyr).… I want to blow myself up on Zionists and kill them on a bus in a suicide bombing.”—Hamza, at his kindergarten graduation ceremony in Gaza. During his commencement speech, the kindergarten’s director affirmed: “It is our obligation to educate the children to love the resistance, Palestine and Jerusalem, so they will recognize…who the enemy [Israel] is.” (Ynet News, June 12.)

 

“We find it puzzling that President Obama would say that the Israeli government is of the extreme right. There is no factual or analytical basis for it. First, the Netanyahu government, from its inception in 2009, made it clear that it accepted in-principle the idea of a negotiated Palestinian state.… Second, the Netanyahu government…agreed to a 10-month freeze on all Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria, a unilateral concession that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself described at the time, correctly, as ‘unprecedented.…’  Third, despite the failure of Mahmoud Abbas’ PA to negotiate virtually at all during the freeze and its failure to negotiate to date, Israel has made it clear that it is willing to negotiate with the PA immediately, without preconditions. Fourth, it is singularly strange that President Obama would say that the Israeli government is of the extreme right only days after Prime Minister Netanyahu formed a coalition with Shaul Mofaz’s leftwing opposition Kadima party.…”—Morton A. Klein, President of the Zionist Organization of America, debunking US President Barack Obama’s recent claim to a delegation of rabbis from the Orthodox Union that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government is “extreme right-[wing].” (Independent Media Review and Analysis, June 14.)

 

“If the UN were to form an anti-terrorism group dedicated to attacking the menace on a global scale, who do you think would be asked to lead it? A nation with a proven track record of anti-terror initiatives? A nation that esteems human rights and freedoms above all else? Unfortunately, in the case of the UN Centre for Counter Terrorism, the answer is emphatically neither.… In a move more befitting Alice in Wonderland than the United Nations, Saudi Arabia was named chair of the organization.…”—Brooke Goldstein and Zack Kousnetz, in “Saudi Arabia to Lead UN Counter Terrorism Initiative.” [For the complete article see ‘On Topics’ below—Ed.]

 

“He has lost more than 100 pounds since his arrest. He suffers from severe degenerative arthritis and is no longer able to walk in his cell. He has other health problems that cause pain and require treatment.”—US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, “call[ing] on the government of Cuba to release [from prison] Jewish-American Alan Gross immediately.” Gross, 63, was arrested in Havana in December 2009 and sentenced to 15 years in prison for setting up Internet networks under a US program aimed at promoting political change. (Reuters, June 15.)

 

“It has become increasingly clear that Hungarian authorities are encouraging the whitewashing of tragic and criminal episodes in Hungary’s past, namely the wartime Hungarian government’s involvement in the deportation and murder of hundreds of thousands of its Jewish citizens. I do not wish to be associated in any way with such activities.”—Elie Wiesel, in a letter to the speaker of the Hungarian Parliament, Laszlo Kover, renouncing Hungary’s highest honor, the Order of Merit, Grand Cross, awarded to him in 2004, after several Hungarian lawmakers participated in a memorial ceremony for Jozsef Nyiro, a WWII member of Hungary’s parliament who supported Hitler. (JTA, June 19.)

 

“This summer’s Olympic Games in London will mark the 40th anniversary of the worst terrorist atrocity in the history of the Games—the 1972 hostage murder of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches in Munich. Civil society groups and political leaders around the world have been calling on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to hold a moment of silence at the opening ceremony of the London Games. I am delighted that the Canadian Parliament is the first to unanimously support this call. The adoption of this motion is part of our responsibility to remember the victims of this terrorist assault 40 years ago—le devoir de mémoir (the duty of memory).”—Canadian Member of Parliament Irwin Cotler, after the House of Commons unanimously passed his motion calling on the IOC to commemorate at the upcoming London Games the Israeli victims of the 1972 Munich massacre. (Office of Irwin Cotler, June 13.) [The following is a link to a petition urging the IOC to hold a moment of silence: http://www.change.org/petitions/international-olympic-committee-minute-of-silence-at-the-2012-london-olympics.]

 

Short Takes

 

DOZENS OF ROCKETS FIRED INTO ISRAEL; HAMAS RESPONSIBLE—(Jerusalem) Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip have fired approximately 100 rockets into Israeli territory since Monday, with Hamas claiming responsibility for many of the launches. The announcement by Hamas’s armed wing, the Izzaddin al-Kassam Brigades, marks a significant departure from the terrorist group’s position over the last few months; in recent rounds of violence Hamas has refrained from firing rockets and mortar shells itself, while encouraging other Palestinian terror groups to do so. [Hamas’ emboldened posture is at least in part a result of the strengthening in Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood, the terror group’s progenitor—Ed.] (Jerusalem Post, June 20.)

 

U.N. SUSPENDS OBSERVER MISSION IN SYRIA—(Istanbul) The United Nations has suspended its observer mission in Syria, citing a surge in violence over the last two weeks that posed a significant risk to the monitors. Syrian President Bashar Assad blamed the collapse of the mission on opposition fighters, with state news agency SANA claiming that “international parties are still supplying terrorists with advanced weapons…to commit their crimes and defy the United Nations and its plan.” The UN effort was part of a six-point peace plan, brokered by UN-Arab League special envoy to Syria Kofi Annan, that failed to stem the Syrian regime’s nearly 16-month crackdown on protests. Annan, meanwhile, reportedly is now working to bring world powers together—including Syrian ally Iran—for a meeting aimed at breaking the diplomatic deadlock. (Wall Street Journal, June 17.)

 

MUBARAK “CLINICALLY DEAD”; BROTHERHOOD APPEARS VICTORIOUS—(Cairo) Egyptian state media has declared Hosni Mubarak “clinically dead” after suffering a stroke; however, several sources in the military and security services denied the report, alleging instead that the deposed Egyptian president is in on life support in a Cairo hospital. The deterioration in Mubarak’s health came as hundreds of thousands of Egyptians rallied across the country to denounce recent moves by the military to consolidate power, and to support Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohammed Morsi, whose campaign claimed victory following last weekend’s run off election against ex-army man Ahmed Shafiq. Preliminary results show Morsi winning 51.8 percent of the vote to Shafiq’s 48.2 percent with 98 percent of the more than 13,000 poll centers counted. Egypt’s Presidential Election Commission, headed by a judge appointed by Mubarak, announced Tuesday that it would delay the release of official results of the election, originally expected on Thursday, a move being construed as another possible power grab by the country’s ruling generals. (JTA, June 18 & Reuters, Wall Street Journal, June 20.)

 

ISRAELI KILLED FOLLOWING EGYPTIAN BORDER ATTACK—(Jerusalem) Said Phashpashe, an Arab-Israeli father of four, has been killed in a terrorist attack near Israel’s border with Egypt. Israeli workmen involved in constructing a security fence along the border were driving in a car when a road-side bomb went off, killing Phashpashe and seriously injuring another. An IDF unit immediately arrived at the scene and a gun fight ensued; two terrorists were killed and a third is believed to have escaped into the Sinai. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu denounced the cross-border attack and vowed to expedite the completion of the fence, which he described as “a supreme national interest.” A group tied to al Qaeda, the Mujahedeen Shura Council of Jerusalem, claimed responsibility, confirming Israeli assertions that the terror network is operating on its doorstep. (Jerusalem Post, June 18 & Associated Press, June 19.)

 

TURKEY INVESTIGATING IHH HEAD FOR FUNDING AL-QAIDA—(Jerusalem) Turkish legal authorities are investigating allegations that one of the key figures behind the May 2010 Gaza flotilla, Bülent Yildirim, has connections to al-Qaida. According to the Turkish daily Habertürk, special prosecutors in both Istranbul and Diyarbakir are conducting separate investigations into claims that Yildirim, president of the IHH, an organization that was one of the main planners of the Gaza flotilla and is considered a terrorist organization by Israel’s government, has been secretly “providing financial aid to al-Qaida via his foundation.” The Israeli NGO The Intelligence and Information Center claims the IHH also is affiliated with Hamas and the Union of the Good, an Islamic umbrella affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. (Jerusalem Post, June 15.)

 

UN DRAFT RESOLUTION REJECTS PALESTINIAN BID—(Geneva) A draft resolution rejecting a Palestinian bid to list the birthplace of Jesus as an endangered World Heritage site is being circulated in the UN, after a report by the International Council on Monuments and Sites—a Paris-based entity that advises the World Heritage Committee on which nominated properties to list—dismissed Palestinian claims that the Church of Nativity is under threat due to the “Israeli occupation”. The draft resolution will be considered by UNESCO’s 21-nation World Heritage Committee at a meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, later this month. The panel—which includes Algeria, Cambodia, Iraq, Malaysia, Mali, Qatar, Russia, Senegal, and the United Arab Emirates—has the power to overturn the expert-drafted text but insiders say that Arab states may not win the required two-thirds majority. “This is the first time in recent memory that a draft resolution circulated by the UN—let alone by UNESCO, which recently elected Assad’s Syria to its human rights committee—openly rejected a Palestinian claim or position,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch. According to the UN watchdog, “The reason for the extraordinary occurrence is very simple: the Palestinians have just been admitted to UNESCO as a member state, and this is their first time taking advantage of the World Heritage procedure, which is governed in its initial stages by experts who are non-political—instead of by the very political 195 governments, most of whom join the automatic UN majority that rubber-stamps Arab resolutions.” (UN Watch, June 13.)

 

PARIS UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT APOLOGIZES FOR GAZA EXAM QUESTION—(New York) The president of a prestigious university in Paris has apologized for an exam question which asked whether a 2009 bombing by Israel in the Gaza Strip constituted a “crime of war; crime against humanity or genocide.” Vincent Berger, president of Paris Diderot University, expressed his “dismay” and “regret” at the inclusion of the question in an exam for medical students on June 12, conceding that the question did not fit the relevant pedagogic framework, being irrelevant to medicine. Paris Diderot was ranked as France’s 4th best university for 2011 in the Academic Ranking of World Universities. (JTA, June 14.)

 

PULITZER-WINNING AUTHOR WON’T LET ISRAELI PUBLISHING HOUSE PRINT BOOK—(Jerusalem) Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Color Purple, has refused to authorize an Israeli company to republish her book because of what she called Israel’s “persecution of the Palestinian people.” In a June 9 letter to Yediot Books, Walker denounced Israel as an “apartheid state” and expressed hope that the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement “would have enough of an impact on Israeli civilian society to change the situation.” Walker, who participated in a flotilla to Gaza last year, recently has intensified her anti-Israel activities,. (JTA, June 19.)

 

JEWISH GROUPS DECRY NAZI SALUTES AT QUEBEC STUDENT PROTESTS—(Montreal) The Montreal Jewish community has strongly condemned the repeated usage of Nazi salutes by Quebec student protesters. The “Heil Hitler” salute has been employed in recent weeks to mock Montreal police at demonstrations in which chanting crowds have referred to local officers as the “SS” for their alleged brutality. According to B’nai Brith Canada CEO Frank Dimant, “th[e] inexcusable display of hate by Quebec student protesters…defile[s] the memory of the Holocaust and remind[s] us just how quickly anti-Semitism…can venture into our public discourse.” His comments came on what would have been the 83rd birthday of Holocaust victim and child author Anne Frank. (Gazette, June 12.)

 

WHITE HOUSE WON’T BUDGE ON POLLARD RELEASE—(Washington) The Obama administration reportedly has denied Israeli President Shimon Peres’ plea that former Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard be granted clemency. Peres, who last week received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama in Washington, said he would ask the US President in a private meeting before the ceremony to consider commuting Pollard’s sentence to time served. Pollard, who is in ill health, has served more than 26 years in a federal prison for passing classified information to an American ally—Israel—during peace time, an offense which historically has garnered an average term of 2-4 years. (JTA, June 13.)

 

GILAD SHALIT NAMED SPORTS COLUMNIST—(Jerusalem) Former captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit has been named a sports columnist for the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot. Shalit, whose first column appeared in the newspaper last Friday, is reportedly in the US to cover the NBA finals. Shalit was released last October after more than five years of captivity in Hamas-ruled Gaza. (JTA, June 13.)