Remembering that CNN’s president, Jon Klein, has touted its down-the-middle coverage and claims it is situated in the “center” of American politics, on a recent episode of Fareed Zakaria GPS, host Zakaria tried to claim that Lebanon’s terror group Hezbollah was some sort of model for religious tolerance. Someone should inform CNN that claiming Hezbollah is “religiously tolerant” is hardly a centrist position.

If we can discern “religious tolerance” in a group that says that the state of Israel should be wiped from the earth, then there is a new definition of “tolerance” that no one is aware of. But unbelievably here is CNN’s Zakaria coloring this murderous terror group as a “tolerant” organization.

At the end of his August 22 show, Zakaria turned to discuss the re-construction of a Synagogue in Beirut, Lebanon, a project that Zakaria claims proves how open minded and tolerant Hezbollah is towards Jews.

So why did this nation, often teetering on the brink of religious hostilities and hostilities with Israel, restore a Jewish house of worship? To show that Lebanon is an open and tolerant country.

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In his latest Time.com piece, Mark Halperin, Editor At Large and Senior MSNBC Political Analyst, has decided that the GOP must not jump into the furor surrounding the latest slip of the First Tongue as it relates to the controversy around the proposed Ground Zero Mosque.

Halperin is quick to point out that the situation has obvious “political potency” but he advises the GOP to avoid using it.  This is like asking Alex Rodriguez to layoff a hanging curveball because it’s late in the game and the Yankees have a large lead. What’s next, a slaughter rule for the upcoming elections?  Will your follow-up story on Time.com ask for candidates with a commanding poll lead to limit spending or fund raising in order to allow their opponent to catch up or save them from public embarrassment?

The savvy analyst also states what everyone else already knows, the GOP stands to win back a number of seats in the mid-term elections without pointing out the obvious problems with the President’s Ramadan Dinner statement being used as additional fuel on the campaign fires.

Halperin goes on to claim: (more…)

Five people lost their lives in the Lebanese attack, one Israeli officer, three Lebanese soldiers and a reporter from a Hezbollah-run Lebanese newspaper.

Most of the mainstream media used Reuters and AP reports which falsely said that Israel was on the border or on the Lebanese side.  Additionally the reports were written in a way to give the impression that Israel was the aggressor.

Reuters labeled the above picture as (emphasis mine):

An Israeli soldier is seen on a crane on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Israeli border near Adaisseh village, southern Lebanon August 3, 2010. Israeli artillery shelled the Lebanese village on Tuesday, wounding two people, after Lebanese Army troops fired warning shots at Israeli soldiers.

Forget the fact for a minute that if Reuters didn’t bother to check which side of the border Israel was on, or that the tree-trimming operation was coordinated with the UNIFIL “peace keepers,” but warning shots? Warning shots don’t kill people. The Lebanese bullets killed Israeli officer Lt. Col., Dov Harari, who was not near the fence but was monitoring the tree cutting operations from a distance.

The AP also told a fictional version of the story: (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…)

After a kerfuffle regarding an ill-advised tweet, Octavia Nasr has been dismissed from CNN. The tweet in question read, “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”

I would be tempted to commend CNN for firing Nasr and move on. But moving on lets CNN off the hook too easily. Nasr was the Senior Editor of Mideast Affairs for the network. She had worked for CNN for twenty years. Her views could not have been a secret to her colleagues, but the network continued to allow her to work at CNN. Giving CNN the benefit of every doubt, Nasr’s colleagues and superiors thought that Nasr’s work was unaffected by her admiration for Hezbollah’s leaders, and by implication, for Hezbollah itself.

More likely, Nasr’s views were considered unremarkable, and perhaps were shared by, her colleagues. It was only when she was so gauche as to tweet her admiration for a terrorist that she got into trouble. (more…)

Just a few short days after Octavia Nasr tweeted her fondness for the late Hezbollah leader Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, she’s out of a job.

The offending message? “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”  Bravo to CNN for having the courage to stand up quickly and act.  It took less than a week for this to unfold.

Interesting parallel is the Anita Dunn story.  It was just over a year ago when President Obama’s Communications Director made the shocking declaration during a commencement speech that one of her heroes was Chairman Mao: (more…)

Bet CNN’s Octavia Nasr, the network’s “senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs,” wishes she’d never sent this Tweet:

Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.

Yes, you read that right: an American “journalist” expressing admiration for a leader of a terrorist organization.

Even for CNN, that was too much. She’s just been fired. From Mediaite:

In the latest case of new media (or oversharing) gone wrong, CNN’s Senior Editor of Mideast Affairs Octavia Nasr is leaving the company following the controversy caused by her tweet in praise of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah

Mediaite has the internal memo, which says “we believe that her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised.”

As if further proof were needed that a sizable segment of the Fourth Estate is now effectively the Fifth Column, this one is right up there. Apparently it’s no longer enough that reporters and correspondents pretend to be neutral, even about the good guys — now, they’re not only not neutral, they publicly express their admiration for sheer, malevolent evil — a man who, according to the obits, was “known for his staunch anti-American stance.”

Good Lord, is this what American journalism has come to? (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…)

Barack Obama has found yet another way to express his special brand of anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel – while the mainstream media looks the other way. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Thursday dropped out of Obama’s 47-nation nuclear security summit, after discovering that Israel was going to be pressured there to sign on to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which would drastically weaken Israel’s defenses.

And you won’t find it in the American press, but the Israeli publication NRG/Maariv reported Wednesday that employees of Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor are now being denied entry into the United States. Do they have criminal records? Terrorist connections? Do they beat, murder and rape their people marching for freedom, as does Iran, a terrorist state Obama is effectively helping go nuclear?

No. These Jewish scientists and plant workers want to come to America to study nuclear engineering, chemistry and physics. But Obama won’t let them in, just because they work in a nuclear plant in the Jewish homeland. (more…)