Twisting Words About Attacks in Israel

                                                                                                             published at Jews Down Under

Common words and phrases are losing their meaning in reference to the terror wave in Israel. These obfuscations often start with political leaders and then are spread by media. A good guide to whether you are getting an unbiased report will be to notice if key words still keep their common meanings, or if, instead, odd usage directs readers and viewers toward minimizing or even justifying terrorism against Israelis.

Light or moderate wounds:  normally describes the level of injuries someone has sustained.

Referring to Israelis, now suggests that the danger was minimal.

Every day for the past two weeks, in some cases nearly every hour, Jewish Israelis have been the victims of stabbing or shooting attacks. Or of cars purposely rammed into people standing at bus stops.

Every one of these attacks is an attempted murder. This is true even when the victim manages to fight off the terrorist or stumbles away with only light or moderate wounds. All of the victims of terror who are injured and taken to hospitals are alive only because the terrorist failed at his or her goal of killing Jews.

The terms, "attempted murder" or "terrorist attack" do not seem to be applied to attempted murders and terrorist attacks by Palestinians against Jews.

Alleged:  normally indicates some possibility that there was no attack or that the individual apprehended was not an attacker.

Regarding terror against Israelis, now indicates that what we are seeing did not happen.

Dozens of people witness these events, and often the perpetrator has explicitly stated his or her intention to murder Jews. Although Jews have in fact been attacked, and the perpetrator has been stopped in the act of attacking, the word, "alleged" is included apparently to raise doubt about what really occurred. The effort to suggest that no security response is needed shows up even when there is video that allows viewers (and reporters) to see the terrorist in action.

Executed: Normally means that someone was summarily killed.

Now describes an attacker who was wounded by Israeli security and is at this moment alive and being interviewed.  Can also be used to suggest that live ammunition is inappropriate for use by Israeli security under any circumstances.

An Arab woman is shouting and wielding a knife at a bus station; she refuses to put down the knife after repeated requests by security who start clearing the area of civilians. She keeps the knife in her hand raised over her head and eventually an officer stops her by firing at her leg. She is rushed to an Israeli hospital and this is described as "an execution."

A young teen goes on a stabbing spree and is shot at in the process. He is rushed to the hospital where he is sitting up eating lunch and being interviewed. He says that he set out to kill Jews while Mahmoud Abbas gives a televised speech declaring that the boy was "executed." 

Resulting deaths: Normally refers to the number of people who have been killed by terrorists.

Now does not distinguish between victims and their murderers.

Rumors: The common term for unsubstantiated claims.

Now presented as justification for any kind of terrorism against Israelis.

For months, the false rumor rumor has been spread by Palestinian leaders, Muslim Imams, and Palestinian Authority teachers, that Jews will be allowed to pray at the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. Even the US State department said this and then had to issue a retraction. The "status quo" agreement the State of Israel made with Jordan in 1967 has never changed and isn't changing. News articles do not describe (or show curiosity about) this unusual arrangement but suggest that a rumor is simply a reason to take up guns or knives or cinder blocks and start trying to kill Israelis.

No one was harmed: Normally means that a harmful situation was diffused or stopped before anyone was hurt.

The now familiar, revised meaning suggests that attacks against Israelis are only harmful if a civilian is killed.

Long before the current round of Palestinian terror, the Hamas government of Gaza had been firing rockets into Israel. The press rarely mentions these rockets until there is an Israeli response. Every rocket fired into Israel is intended to harm civilians, and does harm them by terrorizing anyone in the area, by traumatizing families who have seconds to find a bomb shelter, as well as by injuring children and adults.

In the current terror wave, there is not even the 15 to 60 second siren warning. Only the sirens of ambulances.

Israel's Disappearing Ongoing Terror Wave

                                                                           
                                                                                                         published at Honest Reporting

A week into the ongoing wave of terror against Israeli Jews, it has become nearly impossible to learn -- from major news sources outside Israel -- what is going on in Israel.

The terror wave itself is becoming invisible. Many reports minimize the hundreds of attacks against Israelis. Some suggest that attempting to stop a terrorist should be seen as the same thing as being a terrorist; other coverage depicts any Israeli defensive measures in such a way these will appear to cause the violence.

In a recent CNN report, terror against Israelis has disappeared. A video captioned "spiral of violence grips the Middle East" tells of Palestinians throwing "rocks and marbles" against "tanks and tear gas." Israel's Prime Minister is described as "stern and contentious" in contrast to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who "doesn't want the situation to escalate."

Readers would never know that Abbas and Palestinian officials have been "waging an unprecedented campaign of incitement against Israel" in what Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh describes as "calls for murder."

An Associated Press story in US News and World Report purports to be a timeline of "latest developments in the ongoing tensions between Palestinians and Israelis" but these tensions usually turn out to be that a Palestinian was stopped after killing or trying to kill an Israeli. Like many other stories, this one leads with the "shooting and wounding" of a Palestinian and then mentions that the "motorist" was trying to run over people at a checkpoint.

Similarly, BBC  writes "Israeli-Palestinian violence spreads over Gaza" which in itself is inaccurate since the Gaza government has taken credit for some of the attacks in Israel. These include what Hamas has praised as "the heroric terror attack," the murder of Eitam and Na'ama Henkin, a Tel Aviv University doctoral student and his wife who was a graphic designer, shot to death in their car in front of their four children.

The article claiming that "violence" is moving from Israel into Gaza has it backwards. Rockets have been fired in recent days from Gaza into Israel and violent rioters  from Gaza attempted to cross into Israel. BBC's "analysis" piece describes a "sudden and sharp escalation of violence" equating attacks on civilians with the attempt to prevent such attacks.

And as the reporting on the terror wave disappears, the terrorists are provided with a more sympathetic treatment than the Israeli victims of terror.

Why Don't We Hear About the Fate of Palestinians?

As of this May, 2,770 Palestinians had been killed since the start of the civil war in Syria. But when Palestinians there sought refuge in Palestinian controlled Gaza and the West Bank, PA President Mahmoud Abbas turned them down. He said, "It's better that they die in Syria than that they give up their right of return [to Israel]."

In Arab countries, Palestinians are subject to apartheid laws such as the ones in Lebanon that prevent them from working in many professions including medicine, law, engineering, and accounting. This stands in sharp contrast to Israel where all professions are open and Arab-Israelis are also Supreme Court justices and Knesset members.

While the Arab/Palestinian population in Israel is constantly growing, Palestinians have been and are being expelled from Arab countries in which they have lived for years.

In the 1990's, 200,000 Palestinians were forced to leave Kuwait.

In Iraq, only 6,000 out of 25,000 Palestinians are left. According to the head of the Palestinian League in Iraq, Thamer Meshainesh, militias routinely attack Palestinians as part of an organized plan to get them to leave the country.

Khaled Abu Toameh writes:

...when it comes to ethnic cleansing and torture of Palestinians in Arab countries such as Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, the Palestinian leadership chooses to look the other way.

Similarly, the international media seems to have forgotten that there are tens of thousands of Palestinians living in various Arab countries. The only Palestinians that Western journalists know and care about are those living in the West Bank and Gaza strip.

Toameh's report this week, "The Secret Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians" is startling because media tell us so little about Palestinians in the Arab world.

If Israel can't be blamed, there seems to be no interest in what happens to Palestinians.

Wait, Who's Opposed to UN Palestinian State Resolution?

Seems like someone should have checked to see if the Arab states’ resolution, presented by Jordan and Mahmoud Abbas, actually has Palestinian support.

The resolution demands that Israel shrink to the 1949 armistice lines, referred to as “withdrawing to the pre-67 borders and from east Jerusalem.”  This would be followed by the creation of a Palestinian state.

The Palestinian government of Gaza (Hamas) and a number of Palestinian factions including the DFLP (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine) are fully against it. This is because the resolution allows for Israel’s existence, something that these organizations oppose.

And recent polls indicate that Gazans themselves support Hamas over Abbas’ Fatah.

But it’s not clear that that the Palestinian Authority wants two states either.  Even when a Hamas-Fatah partnership looked like it was about to happen – as it did several months ago – Hamas was in no way asked to change its foundational agenda of removing Jewish Israel.

Naturally, the Israeli government opposes a resolution imposed on it by the UN – not only, or even primarily, because of the UN’s constant outpouring of resolutions against Israel far out of proportion to that of any other country, but because all the issues involved in creating a state of Palestine – something that the Israeli government supports – impact the entire existing state of Israel and the lives millions of people.

The US is expected to veto the resolution, in any case.

Meanwhile, a majority of the member states of the UN have already symbolically recognized a state of Palestine.

And Europe is rapidly following suit, reiterating after every vote that the support of their parliaments are merely “symbolic gestures.”

Even with a real UN resolution, demands are only symbolic without the work of negotiation between the two countries and the work of building the political structure for the state of Palestine. These resolutions have a way of ignoring the people actually involved, both Jews and Arabs.

Repeated polls have found that in predominately Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, more residents want to be part of Israel than of Palestine.  In a recent survey, 40% of Arabs said they would move into Israel if their neighborhood became Palestinian and 27% said they wanted to be part of a Palestinian state.

Mahmoud Abbas has said that when the state of Palestine is formed, not one Jew should be allowed to live there.

Gaza War Grade: Incomplete

The IDF prevented a disaster by demolishing the tunnels through which Hamas had planned surprise terror for Rosh Hashanah. The rockets, guns, IDF uniforms, handcuffs, drugs, and even motorcycles stored in the tunnels were to be used in massive attacks and kidnappings at kibbutzim and homes closest to the Gaza border.

Dozens of other tunnels and huge stockpiles of weapons were destroyed. The IDF killed many terrorists and a number of Hamas terrorist leaders. According to a poll conducted by Geocartography Institute, 61% of Israelis feel that the IDF won.

But interestingly, the question was framed in this way: “Do you agree with the statement that the IDF won while Israel lost?” That a majority agreed with this statement may be explained by another question in the same poll: 

Respondents expressed frustration with the ceasefire that ended the operation with Hamas still in power in the Gaza Strip. Fifty-eight percent said the IDF should have been allowed to continue the operation in order to degrade the terrorist organization’s military abilities and called the truce a mistake that wastes the achievements of the Israeli armed forces.

Meanwhile, as in previous wars, Hamas has declared itself victorious.  An excellent Gatestone Institute article explains what’s wrong with that assessment and even Mahmoud Abbas blames Hamas for the deaths and destruction in Gaza that he now says “could have been avoided.”

The photo above (why is there no dust on that white robe?) represents winning to Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader who has not appeared in Gaza during the war until now and is pictured here, smiling, raising his hand in a V for victory sign amid the rubble of his own house.

Reasons for ASA Boycott of Israel

                                                         Ben-Gurion University of the Negev


1. Otherwise, how would most people ever hear of the Association of American Studies?
2. Words like "human rights violations" are not scary to direct toward democratic countries with academic freedom.
3. Who would boycott China, Zimbabwe, Iran or Russia?
4. The boycott is "symbolic" and symbolic is cool on so many levels.
5. Singling out Israel and no other country does not indicate bias; how could you suggest that?
6. The ASA is not aware of the diversity of Israeli universities.
7. The ASA is not impressed that even Mahmoud Abbas opposes boycotting Israel.
8. The American Association of University Professors opposes academic boycotts but who cares? (Membership of AAUP: 47,000, of ASA: under 5000; 1252 voted with two-thirds for boycott.)
9. No one at a university in the Middle East actually benefits from this resolution.
10.There is no downside to the resolution for the lives of its promoters.