Daniel Levy is the archetype of a media-friendly Middle East analyst. He has a pedigree of far left-wing government activism that allows journalists to label him a “veteran diplomat.” He’s available to turn convoluted geopolitical struggles into simplistic conspiracies, valorizing Walt and Mearsheimer while ginning up outrage toward shadowy neoconservatives. He’ll advocate all the proper bien pensant positions – Iran and Hamas should be coaxed, Israel should be pressured, and politicians who agree with that should be admired – in exquisitely pseudo-sophisticated terms. He’s even somewhat of a journalist and media figure himself, with a personal blog and a presence on the Huffington Post.

Even more importantly, journalists covering Levy’s anti-Israel talking points can write that he comes from a Jewish organization, since he co-founded and continues to sit on the board of advisors of J Street. Instant credibility! And so he ends up everywhere.

J Street itself has just wrapped up quite the week, what with all the admitting they’re foot soldiers in Soros’s anti-Israel army after lying about it for years and then trying to get ahead of the story by lying about it some more. Most of the criticism has focused on co-founder Jeremy Ben-Ami, who did not exactly fall on his sword and instead tried to hamfistedly change the subject. But it’s probably unfair to blame him for all of J Street’s failings, from rigging polls to being more anti-Israel than the Saudis to expressing fake confusion about Hamas’s intentions.

Per Eli Lake’s first story, Ben-Ami seems to have been the one who did most of the “misleading” about J Street’s fundraising, from furtively squirreling away Soros’s cash to opaquely raising 50% of the group’s 2008 money from a single foreign source. (more…)

Quote unquote:

The truth? In the week that three Presidents, a King and their own Prime Minister gather at the White House to begin a fresh round of talks on peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the truth is, Israelis are no longer preoccupied with the matter. They’re otherwise engaged; they’re making money; they’re enjoying the rays of late summer. A watching world may still define their country by the blood feud with the Arabs whose families used to live on this land and whether that conflict can be negotiated away, but Israelis say they have moved on… Asked in a March poll to name the “most urgent problem” facing Israel, just eight percent of Israeli Jews cited the conflict with Palestinians, putting it fifth behind education, crime, national security and poverty. Israeli Arabs placed peace first.

Obviously that poll actually shows that Israelis are preoccupied with educating their children, keeping their families safe from crime, and not getting killed by neighboring countries. Ergo listing those as priorities one, two, and three. But why let mere numbers get in the way of “Jews are too busy ‘making money’ to embrace negotiations?”

And obviously the West Bank Arabs with whom the Israelis are negotiating are very explicitly not Arabs who “used to live on this land,” insofar as they’re Arabs who “are living on this land” right now. That’s in sharp contrast to the descendants of Jews who were expelled from Arab lands, and who are being left out of the “comprehensive” peace talks. But why let all that get in the way of eliminationist, anti-Israel themes? (more…)

First the unremarkable, banal, veritably quotidian spectacle of Israel’s moderate partner in peace glorifying mass murderers. Palestinian President Abbas publicly mourned the death of Munich massacre mastermind Abu Daoud. He personally honored the three terrorists who murdered Rabbi Meir Avshalom Hai, an Israeli father of seven. He repeatedly celebrated Dalal Mughrabi, who murdered 13 Israeli schoolchildren and 25 other Israeli civilians. He glorifies “resistance” and incites rioting. He peddles anti-Jewish organ theft libels and even sets up formal committees to investigate those bigoted fantasies.

The Israelis have complained to the White House about Abbas’s incitement, but these things are apparently really complicated. For instance, maybe this video was done on a greenscreen, as opposed to being a recording of an Abbas-sponsored high school graduation celebrating mass murderer. You never know:

Now the New York Times editorial from Tuesday. The NYT board engaged in a little bit of diplomatic freelancing, hoping to cajole Abbas into embracing direct peace talks. Not so much to actually make peace, of course, as much as to expose Netanyahu as the barrier to Middle East stability: (more…)

Here’s what happened yesterday morning along the so-called Blue Line, the internationally recognized, UN-codified border between Israel and Lebanon. Israeli soldiers were trimming trees and clearing brush as they routinely do, because that kind of natural cover has been used by Iranian-backed Hezbollah soldiers to kidnap Israelis and start wars.

Behind them there was a group of commanders who were supervising the operation, because Israeli protocol calls for troops working near the border to be supervised from afar – again, in case Iranian-backed Hezbollah soldiers try to kidnap Israelis and start wars.

Israel’s physical border fence is very specifically built several meters on the Israeli side of the border inside the Jewish State’s territory, so that the Israelis can safely trim trees and clear brush, because – you know.

At some point soldiers dressed in Lebanese Armed Forces uniforms launched an ambush, with snipers trying to kill the supervising commanders in the distance. The Israelis promptly retaliated, wounding several of the LAF-uniformed soldiers. Then the Israelis – after receiving an explicit request from the other side of the border – suspended their fire so that the wounded could be evacuated. The Lebanese used the momentary humanitarian gesture to again open fire on the Israeli troops – this time it was an RPG at an Israeli tank – and the Israelis again retaliated. Israel is reporting one IDF soldier killed, one wounded.

There’s a post to be written about how this is the predictable outcome of the U.S. pouring weapons and logistical training into the LAF, even though the Lebanese political hierarchy and several LAF units long ago fell under Hezbollah’s control. Of course some of that security assistance will inevitably find its way into a battle with Israel. Of course it will be. But that’s not this post. (more…)

Libya has apparently decided that, if they’re going to have a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, they’re going to own it. So in between using the UNHRC to spread antisemitic organ harvesting libels, they’ve dispatched a ship in the direction of Gaza. This is actually the second time in three years that they’ve tried to break the Israeli blockade, the intention being to establish a pipeline between Hamas and their Tehran sponsors and to build an Iranian port on the Mediterranean Sea. Because the Iranians, they’re humanitarians too.

When Israel intercepted the Turkish flotilla two months ago, it took five or six news cycles before the media’s beatific unarmed activists were proven to be lunatic death-worshiping jihadists. By then the anti-Israel narrative had already hardened, though Reuters gamely kept trying to hide the evidence and the New York Times continued hyperventilating about how “angry Israeli commandos” turned a “ship of protesters into a bloodbath” – just in case.

Now there’s this Libyan ship Amalthea, which may or may not end up reaching Israel. If it does, and if there’s a confrontation, the media coverage won’t exactly swing wildly in Israel’s direction. Instead you’ll see the same mostly lame attempts to whitewash the same mostly pathological jihadists. Except in this case there’s already tape on the whole lunatic death-worshiping thing, courtesy of an Al Jazeera interview with one of the passengers:

Here then, is the evidence that the media will be ignoring tomorrow, today: (more…)

After having to quietly pull cropped and photoshopped images that hid jihadist violence on the Mavi Marmara, images that were edited in explicit violation of their ethics guidelines, Reuters is now quietly reissuing the full undoctored photos.

And adding this kind of crap in the captions:

Pro-Palestinian activists hold down an Israeli commando on the Gaza-bound Turkish ship Mavi Marmara in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea early May 31, 2010. Israeli marines stormed the Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza on Monday and nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed, triggering a diplomatic crisis and an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council.

“Activists” were “holding down” the Israelis who “stormed” their “aid ship.” That’s a second stab at objectivity, from a media outlet that’s theoretically overcompensating for the functionally doctored propaganda they just got caught publishing. (more…)

For what it’s worth – and like fellow Big Journalism contributer Jeff Dunetz – I don’t think Helen Thomas should have been forced out. Now that she’s resigned, the story can be expected to die. And with it will die discussion of how anti-Semitism is not only rampant in some liberal elite media circles, which is what Jeff ran down, but also how it manages to make itself respectable.

First a very thin silver lining, which is that Hamas is going to be grumpy:

Thomas:”Jews do not belong in Israel” – White house correspondent Helen Thomas told Jews to get out of Palestine. In an interview with her, Jewish man named as David, asked Helen for her comment on Israel, she responded by saying: “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.” Turning her attention to the Palestinians, she said, “Remember, these people are occupied. And it’s their land,” adding the Jews should “go home” to Poland and Germany. No doubt that Thomas Helen has told the truth that everybody in the world knows, but as American in a very important position , she was attacked by Zionists who went mad from the reality she mentioned in front of all people.

And it’s not like this fiasco doesn’t have an upshot when it comes to elite liberal anti-Semitism. But the point isn’t merely that many leading anti-Israel reporters and academics are driven by pathological anti-Jewish bigotry.

That’s true, but we already knew that. The real significance is that this is another example of the nudge-wink game that they’re all allowed to play, where they channel their anti-Semitism into ostensibly respectable displays of anti-Israel journalism and scholarship. (more…)

From the New York Times’s Sabrina Tavernise and Ethan Bronner, a worthy follow-up to the thoroughly execrable and now unavailable “10 Reported Killed” story with which the New York Times began its Gaza Flotilla coverage. That one was Isabel Kershner’s handiwork, and the very end of this gem notes that she contributed here as well. Heartwarming teamwork at the Paper of Record:

The attempted takeover turned into an armed assault, with angry Israeli commandos opening fire. Within an hour, the commandos had taken control of the ship, and nine Turks, including one who also had American citizenship, were dead. Dozens of interviews in Israel and Turkey suggest that Israel’s decision to stop the flotilla at all costs collided with the intention of a small group of Islamic activists from Turkey, turning a raid on a ship of protesters in international waters into a bloodbath — and a major international event.

It’s particularly charming how the IHH-backed jihadists are described as a “small group of Islamic activists,” the IHH being the Hamas supporting group of Turkey-acknowledged terrorists which literally sponsored the boat. Merely calling them “activists” is something that any liberal apologist could have done. But that the lynch mob was an unrepresentative “small group” among the larger “ship of protesters” is why the NYT is virtually parody-proof.

The only thing left is to explain how the jihadists “misunderstood Islam” when they broke out into genocidal Islamic war songs celebrating Mohammed’s mass murder and enslavement of Jews. Then, later in the article, there’s this:

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It must be insanely frustrating to do media outreach or public diplomacy for Israel.

It’s not only that media outlets seem to have an endless supply of anti-Israel storylines that they just mix and match regardless of context, from lurid descriptions of imagined atrocities to old standbys about Palestinian dispossession. It’s also that journalists and editors seem to pick their themes with something approaching reckless abandon, throwing against the wall one thinly sourced anti-Israel libel after another. If something sticks they congratulate themselves on brave journalism. If a smear is debunked they just shrug and move on.

The problem isn’t so much a resistance to specific facts, though the BBC has indeed been conspicuously ignoring Israeli evidence that contradicts their preferred take on reality. It’s just that being wrong is a functionally costless proposition if the error works against Israel, so journalists can publish an endless stream of sensational accusations with minimal concern for their veracity. All they need is a quote, which anti-Israel partisans are more than willing to provide, and that qualifies as fact-checking.

The reports surrounding Israel’s Monday raid on the Mavi Marmara ship stands as a veritable textbook on how that coverage plays out in real time. (more…)