Tag Archives: politics

Racism In The Old and Antisemitism In The Youth

Posted on by
8

There used to be jokes about how to handle one’s racist uncle during the holidays. Now the question is how to deal with a person’s antisemitic niece.

While many older cisgender White men continue to be challenged by the changing nature of America, a large percentage of women aged 18-34 (and under 24 in particular) have a hatred for Jews that would make Nazis blush.

The results from the December Harvard/Harris poll about views of Israel and Hamas segmented by age were shocking. While well over 90% of people over 55 viewed the October 7, 2023 Hamas invasion and slaughter in Israel as an act of terrorism, only slightly more than 70% of the 18-34 cohort believed the killing of 1,200 people to be terrorism. An estimated 90% of people over 55 thought there was no justification for the Hamas attack, but 60% of people 18-24 thought the massacre was justified.

Young people are evenly split on supporting Hamas and Israel, while almost every older person supports Israel. After the October 7 attack, 76% of 18-24 year-olds thought Hamas is a rational actor with whom Israel can negotiate while 87% of those over 65 believe Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Consequently, 84% of seniors oppose a ceasefire now that would leave Hamas in place while 67% of the youth think a ceasefire should happen immediately and leave Hamas intact.

In the aftermath of the worst murder of Jews since the Holocaust, a majority of 51% of 18-24 year-olds think Israel should be dissolved and handed to Hamas and the Palestinians. Only 4% of those over 65 hold such views, with 71% preferring two states and 25% supporting Palestinians moving into neighboring Arab countries.

Lastly, the poll touched on gender-related violence. Two-thirds of seniors believe that human rights groups did not adequately condemn the rape of Israeli women, while 80% of those 18-24 thought that women’s rights organizations condemned Hamas sufficiently.

These findings confirm a January 2023 ADL poll which found “Young adults have more anti-Israel sentiment than older generations.”

The age divide is much the same regarding antisemitism in the United States.

An estimated 90% of people over 65 years old think that Jews face harassment on college campuses which drops to about two-thirds for 18-34 year-olds. Much of that disparity seems to do with whether words constitute harassment, as 92% of people over 65 think that calling for the genocide of Jews should be against university rules, while 53% of people 18-24 think students should be free to call for the genocide of Jews.

In addition to penalizing particular speech, one of the drivers seems to be driven by ideology. Roughly 81% of people over 65 oppose the notion that people should be viewed through the lens of White oppressors and non-White oppressed classes of people, while 79% of 18-24 year-olds support the ideology. Among those over 65, 91% believe that Jews should not fall into the White oppressor class while 67% of 18-24 year-olds believe Jews should be in the oppressor class.

What has driven the enormous disparity of opinions in which young people side with terrorists who slaughter Jews? What drives so many 18 to 24 year-olds to be so anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist?

A few ideas to review including a post-9/11 world, indoctrination in schools, race, social media and human rights groups.

Post-9/11 World

Americans who were adults in 2000 and 2001 can easily remember the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the continued heinous killing of Israeli Jews by Palestinian Arabs from 2000 to 2004. The clarity about the jihadi extremists perpetrating the disgusting murders was apparent to all, so the support for the United States and Israel responding to the attacks was wide and deep.

For young people who do not remember the attacks but only the consequences – America’s 20-year long war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Israeli Security Barrier which was put up to stop the flow of Palestinian Arab terrorists – the cause-and-effect is now inverted. Rather than see the Security Barrier as the effective reaction to jihadi terrorism, it is viewed as an obstacle to coexistence. Rather than appreciate the lack of mass casualty attacks in the U.S. over the past two decades, young people question why America fought wars abroad for so long.

Young people have come to believe that western powers are “imperialist” and wage wars to subjugate others. They have internalize the Iranian narrative of the US and Israel being “big Satan” and “Little Satan”, respectively, aggressively fighting Muslims and people of color for no reason.

University Indoctrination

The Iranian narrative took root in February 2001 as Muslim nations sought to reintroduce the “Zionism is racism” mantra back to the world at the 2001 Durban Conference. Together with Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, the Muslim countries took over the funding of American universities with billions of dollars to hire Islamist teachers and admit tens of thousands of Middle Eastern Muslim students. The universities’ direction changed and new anti-Zionist hate groups like Students For Justice in Palestine sprang up in hundreds of campuses.

When the 2014 Gaza War concluded around the same time as the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, the SJP chapters started to align themselves with the Black community in an effort of allyship. It created narratives of “Gaza to Detroit” and “Ferguson to Palestine” as if the two have anything remotely in common.

Muslims claimed it did – and latched onto the oppressor/oppressed narrative which has now become university doctrine over the past decade. Teacher union bosses pushed the notion into lower schools as well, that Jews should be seen as part of the elite “ownership class” who try to keep others down.

Coupled with this incorrect portrayal of American Jews as powerful is the mischaracterization of Israel as a European colonial project. In university departments focused on decolonization, Israel is being cast as a racist state which must be dismantled. There is no subtle debate about Israel/Palestine for young people; they have been taught that Jews are not indigenous to Israel and “stole” Palestinian land.

As toxic ideologies like this inevitably metastasize, the calls to actively be “anti-racist” compelled students to become vocal anti-Zionists. Elective courses on “anti-racism” in California universities soon became mandatory in high schools, infecting the minds of tens of thousands.

While older Americans were spared this indoctrination, many Americans under 30 have been schooled in antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

UN and Human Rights Groups Slander

Universities celebrated when Amnesty International published a report in February 2022 calling Israel an “apartheid” state. It gave credibility to anti-Zionists who had long defamed Israel at will – like The New York Times – using a third party’s definition rather than state personal bias.

The Obama Administration’s last middle finger to Israel as it departed was allowing United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 to pass which made it illegal for Jews to live east of the 1949 Armistice Lines with Jordan, including in Judaism’s holiest location of the Old City of Jerusalem. While older people may recall that Jews have been a majority of Jerusalem since the 1860s, younger people have grown up where Jews living in Jerusalem is an act of evil colonization.

Racial Overview of Youth

Today’s youth is much more multi-ethnic than older generations.

America’s youth has many more non-White people while older Americans are mostly White. According to Pew Research, the most common age for Whites was 58 in 2019, and a much younger 29 for Asians, 27 for Blacks and 11 for Hispanics.

Among 70 year-olds, there are about 2.5 million White people but not even 1 million non-White people. However, among 20 year-olds, there are roughly 2.3 million White people and only slightly fewer, 2.1 million non-Whites, roughly an even split.

In U.S., most common age for whites is much older than for minorities

The multi-ethnic youth have come to see their White Jewish peers as part of the “White oppressor” class. They incorrectly assume that Israeli Jews are mostly White, like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In fact, White Ashkenazi Jews make up only one-third of the Israeli population.

Race In Colleges

The race of college students varies by the type of school. Overall, 42.3% of students are White, 17.4% Hispanic, 10.6% Black, 5.8% Asian according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The figures change dramatically when considering the type of school and degree.

At private, nonprofit four-year universities, 47% of students were white and 33% of students were Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC). A similar mix was found at public four-year schools where 46% of students were white, 38% were BIPOC. Shorter associate degrees attracted more minorities, with private two-year schools, 38% of students were white, 44% were BIPOC and public two-year schools, 29% of students were white, 42% were BIPOC.

More people are opting to not attend colleges, viewing them as expensive and not worth the time or investment. White enrollment declined the most from 2018 to 2022, dropping by 17.4%, while Black and Hispanic enrollment declined by 13.6% and 3.6%, respectively. Men are skipping universities in greater numbers than women, with women now accounting for 8.3 million students compared to 6.1 million men.

Despite women and minorities making up a greater share of college students, the professors are still mostly white, with White men making up 39% of all faculty and White women, 35%.

While White people make up a plurality of four-year degree programs, the schools have made very direct actions to change their faculty and curricula. They have implemented DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs, which are getting a lot of attention after the resignation of Harvard’s Black female president who failed to clearly condemn antisemitism at a congressional hearing.

Universities are not simply deploying indoctrinating students in a new socialist ideology compared to past generations; they are preaching to a more muti-ethnic population who are embracing the theology.

Social Media

The socialist antisemitic educational system deserves part of the blame but social media has fostered the toxicity as well.

While smartphones came to the world in 2008, the social media phenomenon on phones really took off from 2010 to 2015. Young people began to rely on news from influencers they followed (think sports stars, models, entertainers) rather than on professional news outlets. Young people fled to these idiots who offered opinions rather than facts, on platforms that pushed engagement via extremism rather than nuanced debate.

People like Kanye West, Kyrie Irving and Bella Hadid have many more people reading their drivel than CNN or the Wall Street Journal, especially young people. The youth get to enjoy the thrill of interacting with their stars rather than sit passively taking in boring news. Instagram became the simplest (fewest words) and most popular social media platform for young people while older Americans barely touched it.

And here also, race plays a part.

According to a May 2020 PRRI report, “young adults (ages 18-29) are notably more likely to use social media frequently than other age groups. Nearly half of young Americans (47%) report using social media sources frequently, compared to one in four (25%) Americans ages 30-49, about one in ten (11%) Americans ages 50-64, and only 3% of senior Americans (ages 65 and older).” It added that “Hispanic Americans (30%) are substantially more likely than white Americans (19%) and black Americans (19%) to be frequent social media user.”

According to Statista, Blacks are as likely as Hispanics to be active on social media, both much more than Whites. Daily use of social media is 46% for Blacks, 44% for Hispanics and only 34% for Whites. The gap in never-users shows the same contrast with only 18% of both Blacks and Hispanics never using social media and 30% of Whites never using it. So while 2.5 times as many Blacks and Hispanics use social media daily compared to never users, the numbers are almost the same for Whites.

So while over 70% of older Americans are White and not active on social media (and more inclined to use Facebook), the younger generation is almost 50/50 White/non-White and active on Instagram.

The Chinese company Tik Tok has a similar pattern. Roughly half of viewers are under 29 years old and 57% of all viewers are female. Almost no one over 55 uses the platform. Further, 80% of the content is made by people under 24 years old.

While the United States has the most viewers, it is followed immediately by Indonesia, Brazil and Russia. Almost all of the countries where the platform has the highest penetration are Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait, followed by Thailand, Qatar and Malaysia.

Antisemitism in Young People / Non-Whites

Aggregating this information leads to a real divide among older and younger Americans. Those 65 and over tend to be White, remember 9/11 and the Second Intifada, get their news from newspapers made in western countries and went to work believing in meritocracy. That’s in sharp contrast to Americans 18-24 who are are as likely to be non-White as White; have no recollection of 9/11, just the War on Terror; get their news from social media stars and very young people alongside the Muslim world and Russia; and receive an education that meritocracy is a myth and that they live under the thumb of a White patriarchy which imposes its imperialist whims on the Global South from where many of the youths’ ancestors originated.

Young people don’t comprehend that Jews were active in the 1960s Civil Rights movement and view Jews as part of the White elite. They don’t believe the FBI Hate Crime reports that Jews are the most targeted group of hate crimes, and they hold antisemitic views that Jews and Zionists are deeply racist who only care about money, power and themselves.

Older Americans are relatively homogenous and see a disappointing new generation which hates America and its ally Israel. They watch young people loudly cheering the mass slaughter of Jews in Israel, and call the young socialists and jihadists out as antisemites. For their part, the young see the older generation as impossibly out-of-touch White racists, unwilling to let the multi-ethnic future take the reigns of power.

Jews know math and their impossibly small numbers, and turn to the government and cling to law enforcement to protect them from the percolating tidal wave of hate.

ACTION ITEM

Vote extremists out of office in primaries

Related articles:

We Normalized Jew-Hatred For Years (December 2023)

Jews Are A Minority-Minority (November 2023)

Considering Campus Antisemitism (November 2023)

Deformity Of Palestinian Culture In America’s Youth (October 2023)

The DSA Is Systematically Coming For Zionist Jews (August 2023)

Conspiracy Theories About Jewish Power and Control (November 2022)

Under-educated, Liberal, Black Women Know The Least About The Holocaust (February 2022)

Rashida Tlaib’s Modern ‘Mein Kampf’ (August 2021)

Palestinians Want Their Young Girls To Become Terrorists (March 2021)

Americans Welcome the Philosophy of ISIS (June 2020)

The Joy of Lecturing Jews (May 2020)

The Antisemitic Youth (May 2019)

American Hate: The Right Targets Foreigners, The Left Targets Americans (November 2016)

The UN Has Joined The Jihadi Fray

Posted on by
9

The UN on Hamas

After the heinous butchering, raping and slaughtering of 1,200 people in Israel, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres did not call for Hamas to be brought to justice nor did he lambast Muslim extremism. Instead, he called for Israel to use “maximum restraint” against the killers. It seemed bizarre to excuse mass terrorism but the rationale soon became clear.

Just last week, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths was more explicit about excusing Hamas’s atrocities and said “Hamas is not a terrorist group for us, of course, as you know. It’s a political movement.”

The UN is correct at some level: Hamas is a popular Palestinian political party which was elected to 58% of the Palestinian parliament in 2006. It has had complete rule over Gaza since 2007. So it is indeed a political group. It is also a terrorist group and a deeply antisemitic group, but the UN refuses to acknowledge those two plain facts.

That is because the United Nations has long tried to distance the idea of “terrorism” and “Islamic extremism,” which are both at the heart of Hamas’s evil ideology.

On March 17, 2016, the then-United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon addressed the UN Human Rights Council about a “Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism.” At the event, the then-UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate Gilmore said that “selective application of the term “violent extremism” only to Muslim believers reinforces intolerance and discrimination.”

UN Secretary General visits Gaza in 2010, even though the region was not a UN member state, and it was ruled by Hamas, a terrorist Group (Photo: Reuters)

At least in regards to Islamic extremists. The media and United Nations talk about “Israeli settler extremism” and “right-wing Israeli government,” all of the time but whitewash the brutal attacks committed by Islamic fanatics.

US Politicians And NGOs

Aggravating this horrible situation, people attempt to smear people discussing terrorism and vicious antisemitism of jihadi radicals, as “Islamophobes.” Rep. Ilhan Omar made several comments which were widely viewed as antisemitic in her first weeks in office and then inverted the perpetrator-and-victim saying, “what I am fearful of is that because [Rep.] Rashida [Tlaib] and I are Muslim, that a lot of Jewish colleagues, a lot of our Jewish constituents, a lot of our allies, go to thinking that everything we say about Israel, to be anti-Semitic, because we are Muslim.”

Years later in 2024, when Congress passed a resolution condemning Hamas’s mass raping and mutilation of Jewish women, Rep. Tlaib refused to join civilized society and simply voted ‘present.’ The sadism of the emasculated Palestinian men was absolved by a sitting elected American official.

Tlaib’s sponsors like the DSA say much the same. The Democratic Socialists of America said that every Israeli Jew is fair game for annihilation by “resistance groups” in the months before the October 7 massacre. CAIR’s Zahara Billoo clearly called all Jews are the “enemy.” The “Mapping Project” in Massachusetts created by proponents of boycotting Israel, tried to make the targeting of Jews easy by providing names and addresses of Jewish organizations.

Notorious antisemite Rep. Rashida Tlaib being embraced by censured Rep. Jamaal Bowman (photo: AP)

The Arts and Media

The art world found its muse in Palestinian jihadists.

John Adams composed an opera called “The Death of Klinghoffer,” with arias about Palestinian terrorists who killed an elderly wheelchair-bound American Jew and threw him off a ship. The New York Times said the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager, Peter Gelb, said that the composer “John Adams said that in composing ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’ he tried to understand the hijackers and their motivations, and to look for humanity in the terrorists.” The Times went on to call the opera a “masterpiece.”

The media world’s empathy and shield for non-Palestinian jihadists extends to those who murder Jews around the world.

In 2008, ten Pakistani men from the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba terrorist group entered Mumbai, India and started slaughtering people. After killing dozens of people at a train station and luxury hotel, the terrorists descended on a small Jewish community center run by a Chabad rabbi. The terrorists killed the rabbi and his pregnant wife along with others at the facility. At no point in the storyline did CNN convey that the Pakistani men were Muslim and that they belonged to a radical jihadi group.

In 2015, four radical Muslim men killed people at the publishing offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, France, and then entered a kosher supermarket to kill more Jews. While CNN mentioned that the terrorists were upset at Charlie Hebdo for printing a picture of the Islamic prophet Mohammed, it never wrote that the killers were jihadi extremists.

The problem is not limited to The New York Times and CNN. Reuters avoids calling Hamas a terrorist group in its articles while comfortably doing so for other terrorist organizations.

The jihadists and socialists have already entered the final phase of their war against the Jews. The Four Step Battle Plan started with 1) Denying the Enemy Rights and Legitimacy; 2) Gathering Masses to the Cause; 3) Removing the Enemy’s Defenses; and 4) Assembling the Armies for the Battle. They are now bringing the world into phase 2 at the International Court of Justice, to advance quickly to phase 3, to abandon the Jewish State and global Jewry.

When the United Nations says aloud what radical socialists and jihadists have argued for years, that Hamas is not an antisemitic jihadi terrorist group but a legitimate political actor, it is time to ring the alarm bells. Global “legitimate” actors are now backing Hamas and its supporters who attack Jews around the world, smearing Jews as supporters of an apartheid, colonizing Zionist regime, consequently not victims but fair targets for assault.

Related articles:

Know Your Enemies. This Is 1948 Redux (October 2023)

Palestinian Authority “Martyrs Fund” May Soon Fund Killing Jews in the US and UK (August 2023)

The Center Of Intersectionality Sounds Like Adolf Hitler (July 2023)

Neo Nazis’ Day Of Hate; Radical Jihadists’ Day Of Rage (February 2023)

Rashida Tlaib’s Modern ‘Mein Kampf’ (August 2021)

Excerpt of Hamas Charter to Share with Your Elected Officials (May 2021)

The Insidious Jihad in America (July 2019)

Examining Ilhan Omar’s Point About Muslim Antisemitism (March 2019)

Rep. Ilhan Omar and The 2001 Durban Racism Conference (March 2019)

Abbas’s Speech and the Window into Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism (May 2018)

Ban Ki Moon Stands with Gaza (July 2016)

Why the Media Ignores Jihadists in Israel (January 2015)

What do you Recognize in the Palestinians? (January 2015)

Eyal Gilad Naftali Klinghoffer. The new Blood Libel. (June 2014)

Saudi Arabia, “Ally” of the United States

Posted on by
3

The USA has many allies in the world. Many are natural due to common language or culture between the countries (such as United Kingdom and Canada). These allies have deep relationships that extend beyond military ties between the governments. The connections extend to the populations where there are natural flows of business and tourism. The relationships extend to the founding of the countries.

Other American allies developed over time for a number of reasons. A country may have discovered valuable natural resources (such as oil) or the geographical location of the country may have grown in significance because of evolving military dynamics. Other than such practical (sometimes temporary) reasons, the countries may share little in common. Saudi Arabia is such an example.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has one of the most repressive governments in the world. Minorities have virtually no rights and women have few freedoms. Still, the US government chooses to ignore Saudi policies and distrust between the populations, and focuses narrowly on Saudi oil and military cooperation between the countries.  US President Obama underscored the point again on September 10, 2014, with an announcement of strategic military cooperation.

On the 13th anniversary of the attacks of 9/11/01, it is worth remembering that 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. Countries with few common values will always remain tenuous friends.

A political music video (music by The Cars):

Sources:

http://nypost.com/2014/09/10/obama-moves-to-aide-syrian-rebels-in-fight-against-isis/

lashes

New York Times Creates, then Inflates Israeli Crimes

Posted on by
4

On August 28, the New York Times published an article called: “Heavy Use of Banned Cluster Bombs Reported in Syria”, which – one would imagine – was about Syria’s use of cluster bombs. A careful reader could come away with some information about Syria’s use of bombs; but any reader would be led to conclude that Israel is the worst offender on the planet.

The tone of the article (about Syria) moves quickly against Israel from the opening paragraph:

  •  Cluster bombs, outlawed munitions that kill and maim indiscriminately, have caused more casualties in the Syrian civil war than in the 2006 Lebanon conflict, when Israel’s heavy use of the weapons hastened the treaty banning them two years later, a monitoring group said Wednesday.

It is true that some countries adopted a treaty on the weapons about two years after the Israel-Lebanon war. In case Israel’s usage of bombs wasn’t clear, the article elaborated on this same point a few paragraphs later:

  • The [Human Rights] group’s statement said, “Already, casualties in Syria are higher than those attributed to the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict that triggered global outrage and contributed to the establishment of the ban convention.”

I guess the Times wasn’t sure if people read the point at the start of the article, so it added a line about “global outrage” to underscore the world’s opinion about Israel. The Times continued:

  • Israel’s military was widely criticized at home and abroad for its heavy cluster-bomb use in Lebanon, dropping HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS [CAPS ADDED]of them, containing more than 1.2 million bomblets, particularly in the final days of the 34-day conflict with Hezbollah. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted a commander of the Israel Defense Forces as saying, “What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs.”

By this point, the Times was really rolling. It repeated the anger at Israel two more times with “widely criticized” and “we [were] monstrous”. The attribution was given not only to the general global community, but also to Israelis criticizing themselves. The negative portrayal of Israel went on:

  • Jan Egeland, a Norwegian statesman and diplomat who at the time of the Lebanon conflict was the top humanitarian aid official at the United Nations, described Israel’s use of the weapons as “completely immoral.” Mr. Egeland’s criticism was widely credited with helping to galvanize the efforts to achieve a treaty two years later known as the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

To cap off the review of Israel, a fourth phrase “completely immoral” was given to “the top humanitarian aid official at the UN”. That totaled four attacks on Israel in an article about Syria’s use of cluster bombs. And how many negative comments were there against Syria – which was the subject of the story, and had more injuries than Israel? ZERO.

Further, the article was written in a manner that made it nearly impossible for a reader to clearly see that Israel used the weapons LEGALLY BEFORE THERE WAS ANY TREATY IN EXISTENCE. It inverted this point by repeatedly saying that Israel’s actions caused the treaty to come into existence.

The singular focus on Israel and phraseology were just the beginning of the Times’ crime creation.  Crime inflation was to come.

Gross omissions from the report gave the incorrect impression that Israel was the only country that used such weapons. In fact, according to the Cluster Munitions Monitor, 22 governments used the weapons in 38 countries since World War II. Today, over 90 countries hold stockpiles of the munitions. None of those points made it into the Times’ article.

On top of the obsession, wording and lies of omission, were complete falsehoods. The “hundreds of thousands” of bombs figure attributed to Israel was over-stated by about 250 times. It took three days for the Times to post a correction noting that the correct figure “was about 1,800 bombs”.

But wait, there’s more.

  • Megan Burke, another editor of the “Cluster Munition Monitor” report, said the widely accepted data for the Israel-Lebanon conflict showed 249 cluster munition casualties between July 12, 2006, and April 12, 2007. The time period goes beyond the conflict’s end to reflect the effects of the unexploded Israeli bomblets. The United Nations has said that many of the Israeli cluster bomblets in Lebanon did not explode, essentially turning them into booby traps that required an extensive cleanup operation.

A nice usage of “Israeli bomblets” twice in a single paragraph. By this point, “bomblet” is almost synonymous with Israel in the article as no other country in the article is married to the munitions in this way.

More egregious, the casualty figure is only compared to the 264 deaths in Syria until the very end of the article. If one were to read and report on the study, one would learn that the number of casualties from “Israeli bomblets” totaled 0.5% of the total casualties inflicted by cluster bombs – or roughly 1 in 200.

The article finally mentions some other countries at the end of the article – in a passive way. It notes that the number of casualties in Laos, Vietnam and Iraq was higher than in Syria today, but it does not state who the perpetrators dropping the bombs were. Maybe bombs just happen when other countries are involved; only Israel actively drops “Israeli bomblets”.

If the Times had cared to educate a reader, or if it cared to comment on a country other than Israel, it might have noted that the only country which continues to produce, export and use cluster munitions is the United States. But the goal of the Times is clearly not to educate or report facts that disrupt its Israel-bashing narrative.

 

It is a sad but reliable continuation of Israeli coverage by the New York Times: it creates and inflates crimes attributed to Israel. Now, it is even featured in articles about other countries, in case you missed their point elsewhere in their “news” coverage.

Source:

An article about Syria using cluster bombs in the New York Times – August 27

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/world/middleeast/monitor-reports-heavy-cluster-bomb-use-in-syria.html?_r=0

“Cluster Munition Monitor 2014,” : http://the-monitor.org/index.php/LM/Press-Room/Cluster-Munition-Monitor-Media-Kit/CMM14/CMM-Major-Findings-2014-English

 

Journalists in the Middle East

Posted on by
5

It is not easy to be a journalist in the Middle East.

The Middle East / North Africa (MENA) region is the only part of the world which does not have a single country with a full free press. This compares to Western Europe which does not have a single country without a free press according to Freedom House.

The profession has become much more dangerous as seen by the murders of two American journalists in Iraq by ISIS in August and September 2014. Some 70 journalists were killed around the world in 2013, the majority in volatile Muslim countries including: Syria; Iraq; Egypt; Pakistan; and Somalia.

Journalists lucky to be alive are often intimidated in their coverage (Gaza) or jailed (Turkey, Egypt and China).

Free press is only part of the problem in the region. There is virtually no freedom of assembly or freedom of speech. Protests in many cities around the world have been halted by government crackdowns – including in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Curiously, academia, which prides itself in freedom of expression, has singled out Israel for BDS (Boycott, Divestment & Sanction). Israel ranks far ahead of any country in the MENA region in every category of freedom of press, speech and assembly (Israel ranked #64 globally compared to the Palestinian Authority #182).

Free speech music video (Coldplay):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSuuuwPUjWI&list=PL42FF9A26E50944A7&index=20

Sources:

Click to access Global%20and%20regional%20tables.pdf

http://www.cpj.org/killed/2013/

http://www.cpj.org/imprisoned/2013.php

http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/12/turkey-leads-world-in-jailed-journalists-for-second-straight-year-98286.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6f70100a-fdba-11e2-a5b1-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2qZ6LIKvB

http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2013/country-chapters/algeria

http://www.channel4.com/news/university-of-london-student-protest-ban-senate-house-occupy

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/25/quebec-spain-anti-protest-laws-democracyEgypt jailing: http://fsrn.org/2014/06/egypt-sentences-journalists-confirms-mass-death-sentences-squelches-protests/

killing Steven Sotloff: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/isil-steven-sotloff-110520.html

Gaza intimidation: http://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-threatening-journalists-in-gaza-who-expose-abuse-of-civilians/

It’s the Democracy, Stupid

Posted on by
21

Skipping the Hamas Party ignores the Eight Year Palestinian War

Many pro-Israel people (myself included) have complained over the past several months that mainstream media’s coverage of Hamas neglected to refer to the group as “terrorists”, as the group is so labeled by: the United States; Canada; European Union; Japan; Israel; and Egypt. I believe that we have missed a more basic flaw in describing Hamas, namely that it is the majority democratically-elected party of the Palestinians.

In January, 2006, the Palestinian Authority held its last democratic elections. The Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza voted overwhelming for Hamas. The group secured 76 of 132 seats in the government, or 58% of the Palestinian Authority. By way of comparison:

  • In the United States (2012), the Democratic Party won 54% of the seats in the Senate;
  • In the United Kingdom (2010), the winning Conservative Party won 36% of the seats in the parliament; and
  • In Australia (2013), a coalition of four parties including the Liberal and Liberal National Party secured 53% of the seats

Hamas is the popular, mainstream political party that the Palestinians chose by an enormous margin (58% in a multi-party parliamentary system is a landslide; second place Fatah won 33% of the seats). When the Palestinians placed their votes, they all understood that Hamas was rabidly anti-Semitic, sought the murder of Jews and complete destruction of Israel, as it described clearly in its 1988 Charter and in repeated statements by its leadership. Further, Palestinians voted for this party knowing not just of Hamas’s positions, but of the world’s policy of isolating Hamas.

The media has not only ignored this, but has deliberately concealed this fact. Look at the adjectives used for Hamas: it is described as “Islamist” not “Palestinian”; it is described as a “faction”, not a “political party”; the group is described as having “seized” Gaza and does not convey that the people freely voted for the terrorist group.

  • New York Times: “Hamas, the Islamist faction that dominates the Gaza Strip.”
  • CNN: “Hamas, the militant Islamic group that runs Gaza,”
  • The Guardian: “Islamist organisation,”
  • Newsweek: “Hamas Islamist-dominated Gaza Strip”
  • Reuters: “Hamas, Gaza’s dominant Islamist group,”

Through the media’s – and world bodies’ – obfuscation of the Palestinian people’s complicity in the current situation, it dangerously absolves the Palestinians of responsibility. Palestinians have been artistically separated from their democratically-elected leaders who are carrying out the exact campaign promises that the Palestinian voters enthusiastically endorsed.

A reader of the photoshop-ed news is therefore led to conclude that Hamas is similar to ISIS in Iraq or Boko Haram in Nigeria or other declared terrorist groups. However, those groups are indeed “factions” and “Islamist organizations” that are apart from their respective governments. They were not elected by the people. In the West Bank and Gaza Hamas is the government and represents the Palestinians’ desires, irrespective of world leaders and the media pretending that acting-President Mahmoud Abbas (whose term expired way back in 2009) is an elected leader.

To further underscore the point, a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in August 2014 found that 61% of Palestinians would vote for Hamas. The breakdown was 53% for the terrorist party in Gaza and 66% in the West Bank.

The Palestinian people chose a path of war and continue to support an armed conflict today. They actively elected a group dedicated to jihad and the rejection of any and all negotiations with Israel in 2006, and back that same political terrorist party today.

By ignoring the role of the democratic process and the stated desires of the Palestinian people, the past eight years have been mischaracterized as a having three Israeli-Gaza wars, instead of an eight year Palestinian-Israeli war, in which Israel has responded with three defensive operations.

Or, more accurately based on the latest Palestinian poll, eight years and counting…

Source:

Hamas election 2006: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/26/AR2006012600372.html

Hamas August 2014 poll: http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Hamas-Haniyeh-would-trounce-Abbas-if-elections-held-today-Palestinian-poll-says-374296

US Senate 2012: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,_2012

UK election 2010: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2010

Australia election 2013: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_federal_election,_2013

Hamas Charter: http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/www.thejerusalemfund.org/carryover/documents/charter.html?chocaid=397

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-conflict.html?_r=0

CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/11/world/meast/mideast-crisis/

The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/14/hamas-real-chance-gaza-agreement-israel-truce

Newsweek: http://www.newsweek.com/israel-warns-hamas-harsh-strikes-265100

Reuters: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/08/16/uk-mideast-gaza-hamas-talks-idUKKBN0GG0FJ20140816

Wall Street Journal: “The third major military clash between Israel and Hamas in less than six years” http://online.wsj.com/articles/israel-hamas-talks-over-gaza-deadlocked-1407920730

The Death of Civilians; the Three Shades of Sorrow

Posted on by
24

Every life is precious.

For many people, every life form is considered sacred, whether human or animal. In the United States alone there are an estimated 7 million people who restrict their diets to fruits and vegetables.

The vast majority of people around the world are not vegetarians. Still, there are limits to what they would consider eating. Domestic animals like dogs and cats are considered taboo in many cultures, and almost all 7 billion people on the planet avoid cannibalism. Even to those that do not consider eating meat to be immoral, there are limits.

The concept of the preciousness of life and limits of behavior extends beyond eating habits. Most of Europe has abolished the use of capital punishment.   The European Union considers the death penalty to be “cruel and inhuman”, even for heinous crimes.

However, 40+ countries still use capital punishment for a variety of offenses.  Each society decides the limits of acceptable and extreme behavior.  Even among countries that use capital punishment, the nature of the crime makes people assess the level of innocence of the person, the objection to the use of the death penalty, and sympathy for the accused. People may feel more upset when they hear about a homosexual who harmed no one, being stoned to death (in Mauritania, for example), than a mass murderer being executed (in the USA). There is a perceived range of innocence and guilt, and therefore associated gradations of grief.

This is true even among civilians who are killed during wartime. Some innocents are viewed as more “pure” than others and their unfortunate demise warrants more despair. Below are three categories of civilians from most to least innocent: Innocents; Targets; and Enablers.

  1. The Innocent
    A. Bystanders:     In battles, passers-by may be attacked and killed without cause. These people have no part in the conflict and may not even be aware that one was taking place. An example would be the passengers on the Malaysia Airlines flight 17 that was shot over the border of Ukraine and Russia in July 2014. The 298 bystanders were killed without reason- the people had no role in the war. One can imagine that even the people that carried out the attack did it by mistake and regretted the action.B. Children: Children are innocent by definition: they lack knowledge and ability; they have no control of their situation; they neither vote nor fight. Still, almost every war has witnessed children killed. In the War between Gaza and Israel in the summer of 2014, hundreds of children were killed as the fighting took place in heavily populated areas.

    C. Slaughtered Citizens:     Citizens of a country have every reason, right and expectation that their own government protects them. That protection is the primary basis for any government to exist. When a government reverses that course and turns its protective weaponry inwards to target its own population, it is a slaughter of innocents. Consider the millions of German Jews in the 1930s and 1940s who had every right to expect their government to protect them. When the Nazis specifically targeted these citizens, the Jews were left completely helpless. It was not a civil war of a division seeking independence; it was a slaughter of the defenseless by its own army.

2. The Targets

D. Initial Civilian Targets: Some civilians are attacked because of the actions of their government. The people going to work on September 11, 2001 in the USA were not military targets and were not part of the government. The attackers specifically targeted their places of work – America’s financial and military centers – as they were unhappy with America’s influence and presence in the Muslim world. The nearly 3,000 civilians were just going to work and had no role in, or understanding of the unhappiness of the attackers.

E. Civilians Targeted after Military Attack: The victims in Hiroshima and Nagaski were living in Japan when the US dropped an atomic bomb on them during the end of World War II in 1945. The Japanese initiated the war by attacking US military targets in Pearl Harbor four years earlier. As the war dragged on, the US concluded that it would end the war faster by obliterating entire cities which included both people involved in the war and uninvolved civilians who were part of the aggressor force. World reaction to the attack has been mixed, whether the action saved more lives by ending the war faster.

F. Civilians Targeted after Civilian Attack: The allies in WWII launched a bombing campaign on the German city of Dresden in February 1945. The Dresden attack was a reaction to the German-initiated war and attack on Great Britain. The further argument given to destroying the entire city was that it was an important center for the German war effort. An estimated 25,000 people were killed in the British and US bombing campaign.

  1. The Enablers
    G.  Backers of War Policy: Civilians are defined as people who are not part of the armed forces. However, there are people who are technically not part of the armed forces but are directly involved in advancing a war. For example, Palestinians voted overwhelmingly for Hamas and its war campaign against Israel in 2006. Hamas has fought constantly against Israel and Israel has responded with three operations: in 2008 (Operation Cast Lead); 2012 (Operation Pillar of Defense); and 2014 (Operation Protective Edge). Many civilians (both those that voted for the war policy and those that didn’t) were killed in those wars.

The loss of any life is sad, but it is human nature to react to the particular circumstance of each death. In an extreme example, an 8-year old killed while riding a bicycle brings more sympathy than a convicted murderer getting the death penalty. As detailed in the article above, it is not surprising that even in the finer shades of gray among civilians killed during war, that people feel more horror for the victims of Malaysia Airlines flight 17, than for Palestinians who voted for war.

Sources:

http://costsofwar.org/article/civilians-killed-and-wounded

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

EU human rights: http://eeas.europa.eu/human_rights/adp/index_en.htm

Death penalties worldwide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_capital_punishment_by_country#Capital_punishment_in_the_world_.28by_country_not_by_population.29

Hamas victory: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/26/AR2006012600372.html

Death sentence for homosexuality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aXPECeOilA

3shades

Save the Children

Posted on by
10

I first came upon the “Save the Children” organization when I saw that they sponsored an appeal to raise money for Gaza in a poster in the London Underground. The name of the group sounded so innocent and well-meaning. Who is more innocent than a child? Who could possibly be against helping children? Can helping children ever be considered a biased agenda?

DSC_0418
Save the Children sponsored poster on Gaza,
London August 2014

Some days later, I came across a retail thrift store bearing the STC name in Bath, England. Posters in the store window contained two new appeals to help rebuild Gaza and to stop the “Israeli” War in Gaza. There was no appeal or comment to stop the Palestinian war against Israel. I decided to look into the group on their own website.

The President & CEO of STC, Carolyn Miles, posted a blog called “Gaza’s Miracle Tomatoes” on July 8, a day after Israel launched Operation Protective Edge to stop the bombardment of Palestinian missiles into Israel. It was her first ever (and currently only) post about Israel or Gaza.

In the column she describes the “bleak landscape” and “dusty barren patches” of Gaza. The scene contained “donkeys pulling carts filled with rubble and surrounded by men and boys along harsh, rocky earth”.

The blog continued that 20 minutes away from the bleak picture along the border with Israel, a “miracle” appeared from nowhere: “a lush green field …a simple greenhouse …row after row of beautiful tomatoes … the result of a recently-concluded project by Save the Children and other partners and funded by USAID.” This oasis painted by Miles intentionally gave a reader the specific impression that STC helped create a miracle from nothing in the terrible Gaza landscape. It contained three significant lies of omission:

  1. Gaza had a flourishing greenhouse business built by the Israelis for years. The Israelis cultivated 1,125 acres and built hundreds of greenhouses in Gaza while there in the 1990s up until they left in 2005. The business generated roughly $75 million of revenue.
  2. Jewish donors bought and donated the greenhouses to the Palestinians.  World Bank president James Wolfensohn, Mort Zuckerman and several others paid the Israelis $14 million for two-thirds of the greenhouse equipment to donate them to the Palestinians (some Israelis opted to not take the payment and take their equipment with them to re-start businesses back in Israel).
  3. The Palestinians looted and destroyed the greenhouses. Soon after the expulsion of Jews from Gaza, Palestinian looters stripped the greenhouses of the irrigation pumps, computer monitors and greenhouse sheeting, leaving over one-fourth of the greenhouses bare.  The businesses withered.

The STC piece continued: “we drove through the streets of Gaza and heard from residents about the impact of border crossing restrictions on children there—the rising rates of malnutrition and resulting stunting, the lack of basic medicines and care when children became sick, and the severe circumstances disabled children were in.” The article had now moved past being the miracle machine and placed blame for the situation on Israel (for border crossing restrictions), and continued with outright lies:

  1. The children of Gaza have better health statistics than almost all Arabs in the Middle East. According to the United Nations, UNICEF and UNRWA, Palestinians in Gaza have the highest immunization rates and longest life expectancy of surrounding Arab and Muslim countries (including: Turkey; Jordan; Egypt and Iran). They have the highest literacy rate.However, the facts don’t add to the Save the Children’s non-miracle.

Save The Children claims it does not choose sides, it just chooses children, but is that factual? Is the characterization that the children of Gaza suffer because of the actions of Israel – as opposed to the actions of their parents – really not taking sides? Is a minute and one-half video featured on the STC site that only shows bombings in Gaza (and nothing in Israel), not choosing sides? Has STC helped fund a single bomb shelter just a few miles away, in the targeted playgrounds of Israel?

A bigger question for Save the Children – and the world – is how do you protect children from their own parents?

Sources:

Save the Children president blog on Gaza: http://loggingcarolynmiles.savethechildren.org/?_ga=1.229256220.1625656554.1409305814

STC YouTube video on Israel-Gaza: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISvA-rmhv4A

Jews donating the greenhouses to Palestinians: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/18/nyregion/18donate.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1409478973-DrXHog3bg5xC5HsRaqHwTg

Palestinians ransacking the greenhouses in 2005: http://www.haaretz.com/news/palestinian-militants-ransack-former-gush-katif-greenhouses-1.179788

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1025/p04s01-wome.html

FirstOneThrough on England’s Gaza Obsession: https://firstonethrough.wordpress.com/2014/08/29/no-disappearing-in-the-land-of-blind/

UNICEF immunization: http://www.childinfo.org/files/immunization_summary_en.pdf

CIA life expectancy at birth: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html

No Disappearing in the Land of the Blind

Posted on by
7

Vacation is a time to relax; a time to turn off the work, the sights and sounds. During the terrible period of global violence of August 2014, it was a welcome chance to escape.

Traveling to a foreign country could theoretically give a person a chance to focus on just being a tourist and detach from craziness of every day. England has so many great attractions; it seemed a well planned day would keep a diligent tourist occupied. However, the walls, streets and people of England were obsessed with a perceived Israeli “occupation” and aggression that bombarded the short break.

The London subway, the “underground”, was filled with posters entitled “Crisis in Gaza”. The poster had a picture of a boy in front of what appeared to be the remains of a building. The text alongside the picture had an appeal to text in £5 to help him rebuild his destroyed home. It was endorsed by a dozen organizations including Oxfam and Save the Children. Of course, the posters did not describe how Hamas started the fighting and launched its rockets targeting Israeli civilians from Gazan civilian neighborhoods.

DSC_0418
Poster in London Underground,
August 2014

There were many stores in London with banners that called to “end Israeli apartheid” posted in the store windows. Of course, there were no notes that Israel has over 1 million Muslim citizens, but Gaza doesn’t have a single Jew.

The Saturday protest I stumbled upon had about 150 people waving Palestinian flags and yellow flags with a black four finger “R4bia” on it. The R4bia flag originated as a protest to the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, but has spread across the Middle East and beyond as a call for jihad against western values and a restoration of the caliphate. Of course, a quiet protest against the overthrow of the democratically-chosen Egyptian government masks the movement’s greater goal of a new Muslim world order.

In the town of Bath, England, a building housing the Islamist Society hung banners that read “Free Palestine” and “End the War”. It was unclear but understood that the sign “Free Palestine” was a call for war to destroy Israel which was contrary to the other sign (or more to the point, end the war in which Hamas was losing).

IMG_3129
Anti-Israel signs in windows of Bath England,
August 2014

In Brighton, a fruit store had two placards at the checkout counter: one read “End the Occupation” and the other read “Free Gaza”. Of course, there was no note that Israel left Gaza in 2005 and didn’t enforce an embargo until 2007 when Hamas (dedicated to destroy Israel) took control of the territory.

So much for getting away. I sought a moment to close my eyes to today’s troubles. Instead, ironically, I was constantly confronted by arguments that were blind to reality.

Sources:

Gaza Crisis poster: http://www.dec.org.uk/

Muslim state protest flag: http://english.alarabiya.net/en/media/2013/08/21/Four-finger-salute-Egypt-rivals-use-Rabaa-symbol-to-turn-Facebook-yellow.html

FirstOneThrough on Save The Children charity: https://firstonethrough.wordpress.com/2014/08/31/save-the-children/

 

New York Times Talking Turkey

Posted on by
9

Sometimes a contrast in coverage helps boldface the biases.

20140811_074503

The New York Times (for some reason) wrote quite glowingly of Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey during presidential elections in August 2014. Some of the choice language on August 9 before the election included:

  •  “hoping to secure a legacy greater than that of the revered founder of modern Turkey”;
  • “broken down secular taboos”;
  • “economic policies have improved the lives of many”;
  • “long been a strategic ally of the United States”;
  • “In 2011, President Obama developed a close personal relationship with Mr. Erdogan, seeing Turkey as a model to emulate for countries upended by revolution’”

After the elections, on August 11 the Times continued to use positive expressions: “thousands massed…and erupted in applause” to Erdogan’s victory, while caveating later in the article that there were some concerns among the country’s “liberals” about an “authoritarian” streak in Erdogan.

In both articles, the New York Times neglected to remind readers of a few policies of Erdogan over the prior year that gave Turkish citizens pause about Erdogan:

But if the New York Times likes you, certain facts will fade to the background.

Consider the surprisingly low-turnout for this first-time Turkish presidential election: only 74% came out to vote compared to 87% in 2011 general elections. The NYT said that few people showed up to vote “presumably because many had assumed Erdogan would win”. Erdogan squeaked out a win with 52% of the vote compared to the second place winner at 38% – only 37% higher. However, the NYT said “the election felt like a coronation”.

By way of comparison, look at the way the Times covered the election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in January 2013.  The Times did not include any of the commentary used for Turkey about Israel: being a strong US ally; the strong economy of Israel; the island of stability in the sea of chaos of the Middle East.  Instead, the headline read: “Tepid Vote for Netanyahu in Israel Is Seen as Rebuke”. In that “tepid vote”, Israelis came out in numbers greater than ever before – 67% voted for the cabinet, compared to the 2009 election turnout of 65% and of 63% in the 2003 election.  Not only was the vote not “tepid”, but Netanyahu’s Likud party won the vast majority with 31 seats compared to the second place winner, Yesh Atid, with 19 votes – a margin of 63% (almost twice Erdogan’s clearance).

But the Times despises Netanyahu. The article had remarkable quotes for the victorious Prime Minister:

  • “weakened Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu”;
  • “the outcome was a humbling rebuke”;
  • “Mr. Netanyahu posted a panicky message on Facebook”;
  • “The results were a blow to the prime minister, whose aggressive push to expand Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank has led to international condemnation and strained relations with Washington.”

This last quote is a particularly embarrassing and revealing lie.  Jodi Roduren (who wrote the piece from the fantasy of her head instead of based on facts) sought to lay out a scenario where the Israeli public disagreed with the “aggressive push to expand Jewish settlements”.  In the real world, both the number two party, Yesh Atid (19 seats) and the number four party, Jewish Home (11 seats), were in favor of a united Jerusalem and continuing to build homes for Jews in Judea & Samaria.  The Jewish Home party campaigned on the basis of annexing Judea & Samaria.  The Times’ favorite parties, the left-wing parties of Hatnua and Meretz came in almost last place with 6 seats each.  (If you’re counting at home, that’s 61 seats versus 12 seats for the parties that want to keep united Jerusalem- a margin so large and bold you would think Roduren’s handlers could have managed to edit her “news” article).

The Times ignored reality in both situations. In Turkey, it failed to report on Erdogan’s strong right-ward shift into deep Islamic camp and painted him as more of a moderate. His modest win as blown out of proportion.

For Israel, Netanyahu’s strong win was considered poor. The country’s support of his policies about the rights for Jews to live all parts of Judea and Samaria were not just dismissed, but painted in a way that was completely opposite of the facts.

I sometimes think of the Times the way I think about turkey:  it tastes quite good but it puts a person to sleep.  Oh, and of course, it is one of the dumbest animals on the planet.

Sources:

Turkey, most journalist jailed 2012 and 2013: http://cpj.org/reports/2013/12/second-worst-year-on-record-for-jailed-journalists.php

Erdogan banned twitter May 2013: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/03/21/turkey-bans-twitter-and-twitter-explodes/

Erdogan blocked Youtube: http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/27/world/europe/turkey-youtube-blocked/

Turkey ban kissing in public; late sale alcohol: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-22780773

Netanyahu headline “Tepid Vote for Netanyahu in Israel Is Seen as Rebuke”: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/world/middleeast/israel-votes-in-election-likely-to-retain-netanyahu.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Lapid, Yesh Atid: Jerusalem not for negotiation http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Lapid-Jerusalem-is-not-up-for-negotiation-because-the-city-will-never-be-divided-330680