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‘New anti-Semitism’ on college campuses is largely blowback against orchestrated Israel advocacy

Jeff Warner & Dick Platkin, Mondoweiss – In the past month much has been written about two incidents of anti-Semitism at the University of California campuses. According to the NY Times and the Los Angeles Times, they represent a national trend of revived campus anti-Semitism.

We think an even cursory look at these two incidents reveals a different story, with some surprising revelations about them and the new role of Israel itself as the cause of a new anti-Semitism.

One incident was a swastika painted on the wall of a Jewish fraternity house at UC Davis after a campus divestment campaign.  The frat boys claim this incident was the work of pro-Palestinian BDS activists.  But neither they nor the campus cops have come forth with a shred of evidence.  Their charge, nevertheless, follows a broader trend labeled the New Anti-Semitism.  Defenders of the Israeli government equate criticisms of Israel, especially university divestment proposals, with earlier forms of anti-Semitism based on Christian theology or Nazi-type racial theories.

The second incident was at UCLA, where there has been no similar incident, before or after.   A Jewish undergraduate who is a campus Hillel officer, Rachel Beyda, applied to join the undergraduate Judicial Board.  In her interview student government officers asked if her involvement with campus Jewish organizations, specifically UCLA Hillel and her sorority, allowed her to impartially serve on the Judicial Board.  Several days later, her roommate wrote an article for The Daily Bruin, stating that she overheard the student officers, meeting in executive session after the interview, raise questions of dual loyalty.

In this case, we have a full video of the interview and also an extensive written record of Israel-related activism on the UCLA campus.  This context includes the intervention of an off-campus businessman and convicted felon, Adam Milstein.  Milstein is connected to right-wing Zionist groups and has funneled money through UCLA Hillel to influence student elections and oppose divestment campaigns on the UCLA campus led by Students for Justice in Palestine UCLA.

Although the details of the UC Davis case remain unknown, in the case of UCLA, there is a back-story to the anti-Semitic questioning of Rachel Beyda’s, namely Hillel’s role in funneling Milstein’s money into student elections.  Although this history has been excluded from the multiple stories about the incident, we believe that Milstein’s intervention through Hillel led to the student interviewers’ doubts about Hillel officer Rachel Beyda’s judicial impartiality.

While the student officers approved her application after their executive session, it took the intervention of staff advisor, Debra Geller.  She explained to the student officers that an applicant’s ethnic or religious identity could not be used to evaluate his or her candidacy.

How do these two incidents compare to empirical trends regarding anti-Semitic practices on U.S. college campuses?  According to the Anti-Defamation League, which conducts an annual audit of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States, anti-Semitism at US college campuses is at a historic low point.  As we have written previously in Mondoweiss, actual anti-Semitic incidents are barely measureable, and the long history of discrimination against Jews in academia has disappeared.

There are no more glass ceilings for Jewish professors to become department chairs, deans, or college presidents.  Admission quotas, especially for medical schools, are long gone.  And, fraternities and sororities have all dropped discriminatory clauses barring Jews from membership.  Finally, students interested in Jewish or Israeli studies, as well as Hebrew and Yiddish, now have multiple options at many campuses.

These developments are fully observable at UCLA, where the University’s Chancellor, Gene D. Bloch, is Jewish.   UCLA also offers abundant opportunities to take Jewish-related courses, write for Jewish publications, or participate in Jewish organizations. In fact, UCLA Hillel Executive Director Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller described these trends in full detail for one of his recent High Holiday sermons.

This brings us to the ultimate irony of these real and imagined anti-Semitic incidents on American campuses.  They are largely push back against externally orchestrated Israel advocacy, usually through Jewish institutions that receive support from the Israeli government, Israel-connected organization like the Jewish National Fund and AIPAC, or outside donors, like Milstein.  In many cases they operate well-funded programs, such as Hasbara Fellows, to train campus operatives supportive of the Israeli government.

So even though overall trends continue downward, the appearance of several anti-Semitic incidents directly or potentially related to Israel is simply blowback against clumsy efforts to oppose BDS campaigns or Israel Apartheid Week, a common spring program of Students for Justice in Palestine chapters.

In other words, even though Israel was established by the Zionist movement to escape what it viewed as ineradicable anti-Semitism, Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and its efforts to quash dissent in the U.S. have resulted in pushback that Israeli advocates mislabel as “anti-Semitism” or the New Anti-Semitism.  But political disagreement with Israel’s policies is not based on hatred of Jews.  Rather, it is opposition to Israel’s policies of occupation and denying Palestinians individual and group rights.  When it is incorrectly labeled “anti-Semitism,” it is a blatant attempt to suppress political speech.

Ironically, Israel and its extremist supporters in the United States are undercutting the work of Jewish defense organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League, that have had extraordinary success over the past century in eliminating real anti-Semitism.

One of their achievements was to rebut widespread allegations that American Jews had divided loyalties between the United States and Israel.

Recent Israeli declarations, however, from Netanyahu himself, that Israel is the state of the entire Jewish people, have revived these suspicions, including at UCLA.  When pro-Israel activists claim they speak for all Jews, it stigmatizes Jews everywhere with the biases of these pro-Israel activists.  That perception is what underlay the reported statements from student officers about Rachel Beyda’s divided loyalties.

As we examine these and related cases, we come to an inescapable conclusion.  Defenders of the Israeli government are fostering incidents of anti-Semitism that Israel was intended to ward off.

#

In addition to the above, it’s important to remember that a few years ago an AIPAC leader announced how AIPAC was going to counter the BDS movement on campuses.

As I wrote in an earlier blog entry:

“In a chilling JTA video from this convention, longtime AIPAC operative Jonathon Kessler is seen describing the Israel lobby’s’ plan to take over the University of California Berkeley student government, which had passed by 16-4 a resolution detested by the pro-Israel lobby.
In front of a cheering throng, Kessler announced:

“‘We’re going to make certain that pro-Israel students take over the student government and reverse the vote. That is how AIPAC operates in our nation’s capitol. This is how AIPAC must operate on our nation’s campuses.'”

#

For more embedded links in the Warner-Platkin article go to Mondoweiss.

In the past month much has been written about two incidents of anti-Semitism at University of California campuses.  According to the NY Times and the Los Angeles Times, they represent a national trend of revived campus anti-Semitism.

We think an even cursory look at these two incidents reveals a different story, with some surprising revelations about them and the new role of Israel itself as the cause of a new anti-Semitism.

One incident was a swastika painted on the wall of a Jewish fraternity house at UC Davis after a campus divestment campaign.  The frat boys claim this incident was the work of pro-Palestinian BDS activists.  But neither they nor the campus cops have come forth with a shred of evidence.  Their charge, nevertheless, follows a broader trend labeled the New Anti-Semitism.  Defenders of the Israeli government equate criticisms of Israel, especially university divestment proposals, with earlier forms of anti-Semitism based on Christian theology or Nazi-type racial theories.

The second incident was at UCLA, where there has been no similar incident, before or after.   A Jewish undergraduate who is a campus Hillel officer, Rachel Beyda, applied to join the undergraduate Judicial Board.  In her interview student government officers asked if her involvement with campus Jewish organizations, specifically UCLA Hillel and her sorority, allowed her to impartially serve on the Judicial Board.  Several days later, her roommate wrote an article for The Daily Bruin, stating that she overheard the student officers, meeting in executive session after the interview, raise questions of dual loyalty.

In this case we have a full video of the interview and also an extensive written record of Israel-related activism on the UCLA campus.  This context includes the intervention of an off-campus businessman and convicted felon, Adam Milstein.   Milstein is connected to right-wing Zionist groups and has funneled money through UCLA Hillel to influence student elections and oppose divestment campaigns on the UCLA campus lead by Students for Justice in Palestine UCLA.

Although the details of the UC Davis case remain unknown, in the case of UCLA, there is a back-story to the anti-Semitic questioning of Rachel Beyda’s, namely Hillel’s role in funneling Milstein’s money into student elections.  Although this history has been excluded from the multiple stories about the incident, we believe that Milstein’s intervention through Hillel led to the student interviewers’ doubts about Hillel officer Rachel Beyda’s judicial impartiality.

While the student officers approved her application after their executive session, it took the intervention of staff advisor, Debra Geller.  She explained to the student officers that an applicant’s ethnic or religious identity could not be used to evaluate his or her candidacy.

How do these two incidents compare to empirical trends regarding anti-Semitic practices on U.S. college campuses?  According to the Anti-Defamation League, which conducts an annual audit of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States, anti-Semitism at US college campuses is at a historic low point.  As we have written previously in Mondoweiss, actual anti-Semitic incidents are barely measureable, and the long history of discrimination against Jews in academia has disappeared.  There are no more glass ceilings for Jewish professors to become department chairs, deans, or college presidents.  Admission quotas, especially for medical schools, are long gone.  And, fraternities and sororities have all dropped discriminatory clauses barring Jews from membership.  Finally, students interested in Jewish or Israeli studies, as well as Hebrew and Yiddish, now have multiple options at many campuses.

These developments are fully observable at UCLA, where the University’s Chancellor, Gene D. Bloch, is Jewish.   UCLA also offers abundant opportunities to take Jewish-related courses, write for Jewish publications, or participate in Jewish organizations.  In fact, UCLA Hillel Executive Director Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller described these trends in full detail for one of his recent High Holiday sermons.

This brings us to the ultimate irony of these real and imagined anti-Semitic incidents on American campuses.  They are largely push back against externally orchestrated Israel advocacy, usually through Jewish institutions that receive support from the Israeli government, Israel-connected organization like the Jewish National Fund and AIPAC, or outside donors, like Milstein.  In many cases they operate well-funded programs, such as Hasbara Fellows, to train campus operatives supportive of the Israeli government.

So even though overall trends continue downward, the appearance of several anti-Semitic incidents directly or potentially related to Israel is simply blowback against clumsy efforts to oppose BDS campaigns or Israel Apartheid Week, a common spring program of Students for Justice in Palestine chapters.

In other words, even though Israel was established by the Zionist movement to escape what it viewed as ineradicable anti-Semitism, Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and its efforts to quash dissent in the U.S. have resulted in pushback that Israeli advocates mislabel as “anti-Semitism” or the New Anti-Semitism.  But political disagreement with Israel’s policies is not based on hatred of Jews.  Rather, it is opposition to Israel’s policies of occupation and denying Palestinians individual and group rights.  When it is incorrectly labeled “anti-Semitism,” it is a blatant attempt to suppress political speech.

Ironically, Israel and its extremist supporters in the United States are undercutting the work of Jewish defense organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League, that have had extraordinary success over the past century in eliminating real anti-Semitism.   One of their achievements was to rebut widespread allegations that American Jews had divided loyalties between the United States and Israel.   Recent Israeli declarations, however, from Netanyahu himself, that Israel is the state of the entire Jewish people, have revived these suspicions, including at UCLA.  When pro-Israel activists claim they speak for all Jews, it stigmatizes Jews everywhere with the biases of these pro-Israel activists.  That perception is what underlay the reported statements from student officers about Rachel Beyda’s divided loyalties.

As we examine these and related cases, we come to an inescapable conclusion.  Defenders of the Israeli government are fostering incidents of anti-Semitism that Israel was intended to ward off.

– See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/03/blowback-orchestrated-advocacy#sthash.WBIUGVZm.dpuf

In the past month much has been written about two incidents of anti-Semitism at University of California campuses.  According to the NY Times and the Los Angeles Times, they represent a national trend of revived campus anti-Semitism.

We think an even cursory look at these two incidents reveals a different story, with some surprising revelations about them and the new role of Israel itself as the cause of a new anti-Semitism.

One incident was a swastika painted on the wall of a Jewish fraternity house at UC Davis after a campus divestment campaign.  The frat boys claim this incident was the work of pro-Palestinian BDS activists.  But neither they nor the campus cops have come forth with a shred of evidence.  Their charge, nevertheless, follows a broader trend labeled the New Anti-Semitism.  Defenders of the Israeli government equate criticisms of Israel, especially university divestment proposals, with earlier forms of anti-Semitism based on Christian theology or Nazi-type racial theories.

The second incident was at UCLA, where there has been no similar incident, before or after.   A Jewish undergraduate who is a campus Hillel officer, Rachel Beyda, applied to join the undergraduate Judicial Board.  In her interview student government officers asked if her involvement with campus Jewish organizations, specifically UCLA Hillel and her sorority, allowed her to impartially serve on the Judicial Board.  Several days later, her roommate wrote an article for The Daily Bruin, stating that she overheard the student officers, meeting in executive session after the interview, raise questions of dual loyalty.

In this case we have a full video of the interview and also an extensive written record of Israel-related activism on the UCLA campus.  This context includes the intervention of an off-campus businessman and convicted felon, Adam Milstein.   Milstein is connected to right-wing Zionist groups and has funneled money through UCLA Hillel to influence student elections and oppose divestment campaigns on the UCLA campus lead by Students for Justice in Palestine UCLA.

Although the details of the UC Davis case remain unknown, in the case of UCLA, there is a back-story to the anti-Semitic questioning of Rachel Beyda’s, namely Hillel’s role in funneling Milstein’s money into student elections.  Although this history has been excluded from the multiple stories about the incident, we believe that Milstein’s intervention through Hillel led to the student interviewers’ doubts about Hillel officer Rachel Beyda’s judicial impartiality.

While the student officers approved her application after their executive session, it took the intervention of staff advisor, Debra Geller.  She explained to the student officers that an applicant’s ethnic or religious identity could not be used to evaluate his or her candidacy.

How do these two incidents compare to empirical trends regarding anti-Semitic practices on U.S. college campuses?  According to the Anti-Defamation League, which conducts an annual audit of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States, anti-Semitism at US college campuses is at a historic low point.  As we have written previously in Mondoweiss, actual anti-Semitic incidents are barely measureable, and the long history of discrimination against Jews in academia has disappeared.  There are no more glass ceilings for Jewish professors to become department chairs, deans, or college presidents.  Admission quotas, especially for medical schools, are long gone.  And, fraternities and sororities have all dropped discriminatory clauses barring Jews from membership.  Finally, students interested in Jewish or Israeli studies, as well as Hebrew and Yiddish, now have multiple options at many campuses.

These developments are fully observable at UCLA, where the University’s Chancellor, Gene D. Bloch, is Jewish.   UCLA also offers abundant opportunities to take Jewish-related courses, write for Jewish publications, or participate in Jewish organizations.  In fact, UCLA Hillel Executive Director Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller described these trends in full detail for one of his recent High Holiday sermons.

This brings us to the ultimate irony of these real and imagined anti-Semitic incidents on American campuses.  They are largely push back against externally orchestrated Israel advocacy, usually through Jewish institutions that receive support from the Israeli government, Israel-connected organization like the Jewish National Fund and AIPAC, or outside donors, like Milstein.  In many cases they operate well-funded programs, such as Hasbara Fellows, to train campus operatives supportive of the Israeli government.

So even though overall trends continue downward, the appearance of several anti-Semitic incidents directly or potentially related to Israel is simply blowback against clumsy efforts to oppose BDS campaigns or Israel Apartheid Week, a common spring program of Students for Justice in Palestine chapters.

In other words, even though Israel was established by the Zionist movement to escape what it viewed as ineradicable anti-Semitism, Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and its efforts to quash dissent in the U.S. have resulted in pushback that Israeli advocates mislabel as “anti-Semitism” or the New Anti-Semitism.  But political disagreement with Israel’s policies is not based on hatred of Jews.  Rather, it is opposition to Israel’s policies of occupation and denying Palestinians individual and group rights.  When it is incorrectly labeled “anti-Semitism,” it is a blatant attempt to suppress political speech.

Ironically, Israel and its extremist supporters in the United States are undercutting the work of Jewish defense organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League, that have had extraordinary success over the past century in eliminating real anti-Semitism.   One of their achievements was to rebut widespread allegations that American Jews had divided loyalties between the United States and Israel.   Recent Israeli declarations, however, from Netanyahu himself, that Israel is the state of the entire Jewish people, have revived these suspicions, including at UCLA.  When pro-Israel activists claim they speak for all Jews, it stigmatizes Jews everywhere with the biases of these pro-Israel activists.  That perception is what underlay the reported statements from student officers about Rachel Beyda’s divided loyalties.

As we examine these and related cases, we come to an inescapable conclusion.  Defenders of the Israeli government are fostering incidents of anti-Semitism that Israel was intended to ward off.

– See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/03/blowback-orchestrated-advocacy#sthash.WBIUGVZm.dpuf

While everyone talks about the Israeli election, this is being ignored…

Recent news from the International Middle East Media Center, IMEMC (ignored by US media. Imagine the coverage if Palestinians had taken these actions against Israelis):

Wednesday March 18, 2015 – 13:54
Israeli soldiers invaded, Wednesday, two Palestinian villages in the central West Bank district of Tubas, and demolished a home and four residential structures. Full Story

Image Silwanic

Wednesday March 18, 2015 – 12:45
The Wadi Hilweh Information Center in Silwan (Silwanic) in occupied East Jerusalem, said Israeli extremists broke into, and occupied, a residential building inhabited by the al-Malhi family, and two lands in Wadi Hilweh. Full Story
Image By Wadi Hilweh Information Center - Silwan
Wednesday March 18, 2015 – 11:47
Israeli soldiers kidnapped, on Wednesday morning, ten Palestinians, including a woman and five children, in different parts of occupied East Jerusalem, and one in Ramallah. Two children and three teenagers have also been kidnapped in Jerusalem, on Tuesday evening. Full Story

File - Radio Bethlehem 2000

Wednesday March 18, 2015 – 11:15
Palestinian medical sources have reported, Wednesday, that a man was injured after Israeli soldiers attacked him on a military roadblock, near Beit Sahour, in the West Bank district of Bethlehem. Army invades Ya’bad town, near Jenin. Full Story

File - Image PalTimes

Wednesday March 18, 2015 – 09:59
Israeli soldiers kidnapped, on Tuesday evening, the general coordinator of the Popular Resistance Committee in the southern part of the occupied West Bank, as he was heading back to Hebron. Full Story

File - Image PalTimes

Wednesday March 18, 2015 – 05:06
Young Palestinians in Qaryout, near Nablus, today, were planting olive saplings to commemorate the 12th anniversary of the murder of activist Rachel Corrie. They then sat down for a peaceful picnic. Watch what happens next… Full Story

Image By PPS Office - Nablus

Wednesday March 18, 2015 – 03:37
The leftist Palestinian People’s Party (PPP) has reported that unknown gunmen fired, on Tuesday at dawn, rounds of live ammunition at its office in Hitteen Street, in the center of the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Full Story

Al Ray archive image

 

Tuesday March 17, 2015 – 22:58
Israel’s interior ministry has announced that it demolished about 18 Palestinian homes in the Negev, within the last week, according to Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency. Full Story
Tuesday March 17, 2015 – 21:51
Israeli occupation forces, Tuesday afternoon, attacked a popular demonstration that surfaced around the story of the Jerusalem Gate protest camp, on the day of Israeli Knesset elections. Full Story

(MaanImages/File)

Tuesday March 17, 2015 – 19:46
The Egyptian army demolished 1,020 houses in the border city of Rafah as part of the second stage of the establishment of a buffer zone along the border with the Gaza Strip. Full Story

 

A viewpoint from Prince Turki re: blogger punishement

From Saudi Arabi information service:

CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour interviewed Prince Turki al Faisal and an excerpt was posted to CNN.com in which he responded to questions about the punishment of flogging for a Saudi blogger, about the prospects for the Israeli elections and about the Iran nuclear negotiations. For your consideration we have a transcript from the interview excerpt along with the video segment.

 

CNN Interviews Prince Turki on Blogger Punishment

Posted March 17, 2015

[Amanpour] The world has been shocked by the blogger situation, the gentleman [Raif Badawi] who was assigned to one thousand lashes, and there’s been a lot of complaints and criticisms. I know Saudi Arabia has rejected those complaints and criticisms, but you have a new King now, you have potentially a younger generation maybe moving up in the power structure. Is it time for Saudi Arabia to give a little slack even if somebody writes something or says something that you may not like. I mean really, are lashes the kind of things that Saudi Arabia wants to be associated with in 2015?

[Prince Turki al-Faisal] You have to consider the problem from two points of view. The first point of view is that are we going to have an independent judiciary or not, and if we do have an independent judiciary whatever comes out of that then you have to live with it and try to improve it through education, through reforms of the judiciary, better understanding of the world today, et cetera, for the judges, et cetera, and that takes time. The other view is go ahead and interfere with the judiciary, and when you do interfere with the judiciary you get the same criticism from the people who objected to the decision coming out of the judiciary on these lashes as being interfering with the judiciary, that Saudi Arabia has no independent judiciary, it is backwards, et cetera, et cetera.

What the Kingdom is saying is we want an independent judiciary, but we’ve already started even before the present King came to power on a reform program for our judiciary in order – literally scores if not hundreds of sitting judges in Saudi Arabia that have been taken by this reform program to visit other countries to see how their judicial systems work. We’ve had them in the United States, we’ve had them in the U.K., we’ve had them in France and in other places, and in the Arab world as well. That is the long-term reform for the judiciary, but the King has said publicly that we are not going to have anybody interfere in our internal affairs. We’ll accept criticism as everybody does, but we will not accept vilification.

[See video here]

[Amanpour] From a gut reaction, from a personal perspective, what is your reaction to a man being lashed?

[Turki] My gut reaction to a man being lashed –

[Amanpour] For what he wrote, not for committing a murder or a crime or anything like that.

[Turki] It’s the same gut reaction that I got from seeing how those people in Abu Ghraib prison were treated by American soldiers in 2004 and 2005. It is the same gut reaction that I get even today from seeing people that have not been put on trial, that have not been charged with anything incarcerated still in Guantanamo. So it is not an issue that is unique to Saudi Arabia. If there is injustice in the world it happens in other places. What we are doing at least about it is we are trying to reform our judicial system, and hopefully we can get there sooner than people give us credit for.

[Amanpour] You have spent a long time in government, in the intelligence ministries – you know a lot about the region. What do you think is going to happen the day after tomorrow? What will be the best case scenario in the Israeli election or the outcome of the Iran P5+1 nuclear talks?

[Turki] Well let’s separate the two. The Israeli election – my hope is that the party of Mr. Herzog and his allies will come out on top and be able to make a coalition that will govern Israel and go for the Arab Peace Initiative. That is my hope. On the P5+1, I hope there is an agreement that we in Saudi Arabia can look at and say yes, this agreement safeguards our interests. It will prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons and we can go on from there. But my cynical view of the talks, P5+1, because I’ve seen how they’ve been run since the beginning is that the outcome that will come from these talks will be proliferation of nuclear enrichment, uranium enrichment, that will open the door for everybody in the area and outside the area to go that option, and the better option from my point of view is to have a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.

This video and article are essential to understanding Israel

From Electronic Intifada

Note: This video shows disturbing footage of Israeli police shooting and killing a Palestinian youth.

At least thirty Palestinian citizens of Israel were arrested in the Galilee village of Kufr Kana on Sunday as protests spread over the cold-blooded police killing of a youth on Friday.

The video above shows Israeli police shooting 22-year-old Kheir Hamdan in Kufr Kana in circumstances that totally contradict their initial account.

“It is clear from the video footage that the shooting of Hamdan was a murder, as Hamdan did not pose an immediate threat to the lives of the police officers when they shot him,” the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel said in a statement.

An image of Kheir Hamdan widely circulated on social media.

“Hamdan approached the officers’ van and banged on the windows with an object. The officers then opened the door of the van, got out and shot him from close range as he tried to run away from the scene, without giving any prior warning such as firing a shot into the air,” Adalah added.

“After the murder occurred, the police rushed to publish a false statement about the details of the incident, but later it became clear that cameras had documented the incident, showing that the police narrative was false and fabricated,” Adalah said.

Israeli police had previously told media that Hamdan was shot “when he tried to stab an officer during an attempt to arrest him for allegedly throwing a stun grenade in the town.”

“The officers’ actions clearly violate the open fire regulations of the police,” Adalah added. “The video also raises suspicion that the police shot Hamdan again after he was injured and had fallen to the ground.”

The group notes that “the police dragged Hamdan’s body in a humiliating manner while he was bleeding and threw him into the police van, as if they were carrying a meaningless object, instead of calling on rescue teams to save him.”

Adalah called for the officers involved in the shooting to be suspended immediately and for a criminal investigation to be opened under the supervision of Israel’s attorney general.

Adalah expressed pessimism that the existing system could result in accountability. “The experience of Arab citizens proves that the Israeli Police Investigation Unit (Mahash) will not seriously investigate an incident of an Arab citizen’s murder at the hands of the police, and will not take those responsible for the murder to trial,” attorney Hussein Abu Hussein said in the statement.

Result of incitement

Adalah noted that the shooting came after direct incitement to violence against Arab citizens of Israel by a senior minister:

Adalah sees a direct connection between the murder of Kheir Hamdan and the statements made earlier this week by Israeli Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich. The Minister stated that anyone who attacks Israeli Jewish citizens should be killed immediately. In any democratic society that respects the life of its citizens, any government minister that makes statements such as those by Yitzhak Aharonovich should be immediately dismissed.

Impunity

There are more than 1.6 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, who unlike Palestinians living under Israeli siege and occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, are supposedly afforded civil rights and protections.

However, Palestinian citizens of Israel live under dozens of laws and de facto practices that leave them at best with second-class citizenship.

The Israeli state recognized this in the Or Commission report produced after the October 2000 police killings of thirteen Palestinian citizens of Israel. But as Patrick O. Strickland reported last month, Israeli police brutality against Palestinian citizens remains unchecked fourteen years after that massacre.

Kheir Hamdan’s killing is only the latest by Israeli forces to be caught on video. In May, CNN and security camera video showed the cold-blooded killings by Israeli snipers of two teens, Nadim Nuwara and Muhammad Abu al-Thahir, in the occupied West Bank village of Beitunia.

In December 2012, a camera caught the killing of seventeen-year-old Muhammad al-Salaymeh in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. In that case, as in the killing of Hamdan, the video directly contradicted Israeli claims that the youth posed an immediate threat to the person who shot him.

Protests and repression

This video shows hundreds of people marching in Hamdan’s funeral in Kufr Kana as many more line the streets…. Read more & see additional videos

JTA: “Supreme Court justices talk Jewish”- Kagan calls Rabbi Riskin (currently founder of notorious West Bank settlement) “gracious”

In a JTA article this week, Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan talk about the significance of their Jewish upbringing, of having 3 Jewish Justices on the US Supreme Court, and of Judge Kagan’s debt to Rabbi Shlomo Riskin (who has since founded a particularly notorious West Bank settlement).

They fail to discuss the significance of having no Christian Protestant justices on the Supreme Court (the largest religious group in the US), no Muslim Supreme Court Justices (Muslim-Americans are about equal in number to Jewish-Americans), no Buddhist Supreme Court Justices, etc.

JTA reports, “Kagan also talked about her bat mitzvah, crediting Rabbi Shlomo Riskin – then of the Lincoln Square Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side (and now rabbi in Efrat, West Bank) with enabling the ceremony…” He was, she says, “very gracious, and I think it was good for the synagogue.”

Neither JTA nor Kagan mention that Efrat is an illegal Israeli colony on Palestinian land that is known, according to blogger Richard Silverstein, for being “an especially cruel settlement to surrounding Palestinian villages.”

Jewish Studies professor Charles Manekin writes that Rabbi Riskin “emigrated to Israel and founded the town of Efrat, a sprawling settlement built entirely on Palestinian private and public land that never ceases to expand into, and pollute, the surrounding region. Through this his life-project, Riskin has caused more tragedy and pain to more Palestinians than any other rabbi of modern times….”

Apparently none of this bothers Supreme Court Justice Kagan.

Kagan and Bryer were speaking at the 2014 General Assembly conference of the Jewish Federations of North America, a group that regularly advocates for Israel. Among the other conference speakers will be Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

I had originally thought that Justice Breyer was less connected to Israel than Kagan, who has said that the judge who inspired her most was an Israeli judge. Therefore, I was surprised to learn that Breyer serves on the board of advisors for an Israeli institution.

It is rare for sitting Supreme Court justices to serve on boards. Most resign board memberships upon being named to the Supreme Court or shortly thereafter, probably to preserve an appearance, at least, of nonpartisanship. However, Breyer is activity serving on the International Advisory Board of the Israel Democracy Institute.

While some might suggest that such foreign membership does not matter since the Supreme Court hears only American cases, in reality, there are currently at least two cases on the Supreme Court docket that involve Israel directly. (There may be others that affect it indirectly).

Perhaps Judge Breyer feels, as is so often the case with Israel partisans, that rules of ethics don’t apply in regard to Israel.

 

 

PBS and NPR appear to have collaborated on their responses to the David Brooks controversy

PBS NewsHour Executive Producer Sara Just and NPR Standards Editor Mark Memmott seem to have come up with almost identical statements about commentator David Brooks’ conflict of interest. (Brooks, who works for the New York Times, NPR and PBS, had kept hidden the fact that his son was serving in the Israeli military while Brooks was commenting on Israel.)

Either Sara Just and Mark Memmott have been gifted with telepathy, or they – and/or their bosses – collaborated on their statements.

UPDATE, 11am Pacific time: Mark Memmott has just emailed me: “I’ve had no contact with PBS. I’ve actually never met Sara Just, as far as I remember, and have not had any email correspondence with her. I have to think that they agreed with what I wrote and decided to (mostly) reissue it.”

I find it disconcerting that PBS’s Sara Just didn’t attribute her statement to NPR’s Memmott; this seems dangerously close to plagiarism. I wonder how she learned of his statement? I’m also curious about why she removed a small but significant portion of what he had written. Please read on:

Here are the facts:

PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler reports that on Oct. 15th NewsHour Executive Producer Sara Just issued the following statement:

“David Brooks is primarily an opinion columnist for The New York Times. He appears on the PBS NewsHour to offer his opinions, not as a reporter. His son’s service with the Israeli Defense Forces is not a secret. We agree with the New York Times’ editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, that Mr. Brooks’ long-standing views about Israel are informed by many factors. We also agree with the Times’ public editor, Margaret Sullivan, that Mr. Brooks should not be barred from commenting about Israel. She has recommended that he address the issue of his son’s service in the IDF in a future column. That seems reasonable to us as well. If a situation arises in which Mr. Brooks will be appearing on the NewsHour and discussing Israel and its military, we will consider how we might disclose his son’s service to the audience at that time.”

Five days before, in response to my questions about David Brooks, I had received an email from the NPR ombudsman’s office containing a statement that they said was from NPR’s standards and practices editor:

David Brooks is primarily an opinion columnist for The New York Times. He appears on All Things Considered to offer his opinions, not as a reporter. His son’s service with the Israeli Defense Forces is no secret. We agree with the Times’ editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, that Mr. Brooks’ long-standing views about Israel have been “formed by all kinds of things … [and] are not going to change whether or not his son is serving in the IDF, beyond his natural concerns as a father for his son’s safety and well-being.” We also agree with the Times’ public editor, Margaret Sullivan, that Mr. Brooks should not be barred from commenting about Israel. She has recommended that he address the issue of his son’s service in the IDF in a future column. That strikes us as a reasonable suggestion. If a situation arises and we feel he should also mention it on our air, we still [sic] discuss that with Mr. Brooks at that time. [Ellipsis was in the original statement emailed to me.]

(You can see the statements side by side below.)

I published this email and a rebuttal to the statement on my blog that same day, Friday, Oct 10th. The following Wednesday, Oct. 15th, I was able to reach NPR’s standards editor, Mark Memmott, who confirmed that he had written the statement. I then raised some of the flaws I saw with it (the same ones I discussed in my post).

Memmott was particularly interested when I pointed out that the statement acknowledging Mr. Brooks’ “natural concerns as a father for his son’s safety and well-being” indicated why Mr. Brooks should recuse himself, since his commentaries have the power to influence the public in ways that would impact his son either positively or negatively.

During the phone call it came out that Memmott had not known before I called him that his statement had been sent to me. After we hung up it occurred to me that Memmott was also probably unaware that I had published it. I told him I was working on a blog post and would send it to him. I was then involved in other projects over the following days and was only able to finish my new post tonight. This contains additional info on NPR’s ethics guidelines.

After I completed it, I then looked to see if PBS’s ombudsman Michael Getler (whom I had spoken with by phone last week) had yet written anything about Brooks. I discovered his column, and was startled to see Sara Just’s statement, parts of it word for word the same as Memmott’s. The only significant difference was that the reference to Brooks’ “natural concerns as a father” section was omitted.

I now plan to contact Memmott and Just, and ask about the source of their telepathy.

While PBS and NPR are both under the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the public perception is that they are largely independent entities with separate editorial control and decision-making. It appears that’s not the case.

Below are the two statements:

* * *

Following is information about Just and NewsHour from a press release on the PBS website:

In addition to being executive producer, Just is also Senior Vice President of NewsHour Productions LLC. She reports to Rick Schneider, President of NewsHour Productions LLC and Chief Operating Officer of WETA.

The press release states:

“In July 2014, WETA assumed management and control for PBS NewsHour, with the formation of NewsHour Productions LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of WETA. This transition followed the retirements of the program’s original founders, managing editors and co-anchors, Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil, who established the commitment to excellence in journalism that guides PBS NewsHour to this day.”

NPR’s standards editor & ombudsman minimize and/or ignore NPR ethics requirements regarding David Brooks

In recent weeks I’ve phoned and emailed the NPR ombudsman’s office several times about commentator David Brooks’ conflict of interest – Brooks’ son has been serving in the Israeli military while Brooks has been commenting on Israel without divulging that his son was in the Israeli army. Ombudsmen are charged with publicly addressing ethical breaches by a news organization’s journalists.

Now I’ve also been in touch with NPR’s Standards and Practices Editor, Mark Memmot, who is in charge of ensuring that NPR journalists adhere to ethics standards. Last week NPR’s ombudsman’s office sent me an email that contained a statement by Mr. Memmott. I discussed this statement in a previous post and now will expand on this a bit more, specifically including information about NPR’s own ethics code.

Below is the email containing Mr. Memmott’s statement:

Dear Alison,
Thank you for contacting the NPR Ombudsman. We appreciate your comments and your thoughts will be taken into consideration as we continue to monitor the reporting.
The Ombudsman is currently working on a blog post about this issue. You may be interested in this statement from our standards and practices editor:

David Brooks is primarily an opinion columnist for The New York Times. He appears on All Things Considered to offer his opinions, not as a reporter. His son’s service with the Israeli Defense Forces is no secretWe [sic] agree with the Times’ editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, that Mr. Brooks’ long-standing views about Israel have been “formed by all kinds of things … [and] are not going to change whether or not his son is serving in the IDF, beyond his natural concerns as a father for his son’s safety and well-being.” We also agree with the Times’ public editor, Margaret Sullivan, that Mr. Brooks should not be barred from commenting about Israel. She has recommended that he address the issue of his son’s service in the IDF in a future column [see my comments on the Rosenthal and Sullivan statements here]. That strikes us as a reasonable suggestion. If a situation arises and we feel he should also mention it on our air, we still [sic] discuss that with Mr. Brooks at that time.

There are a number of problems with this statement, one of which is that it largely fails to apply NPR’s own ethics requirements to Mr. Brooks.

The fact is that NPR’s ethics codes place a strong emphasis on impartiality and transparency. They include the activities of family members among the activities that may interfere with impartiality, and decree that NPR journalists inform NPR of any potential conflicts of interest. And they apply these ethical requirements to analyses and commentaries, not just to reportorial activities.

NPR’s full ethics handbook states:

“This handbook also applies to material that comes to NPR from independent producers, member station journalists, outside writers, commentators and visual journalists. In cases where such contributors make statements of fact, those statements must be as accurate as anything else broadcast or published by NPR. We expect outside contributors to be free of conflicts of interest, to be fair and to perform their work in a manner consistent with NPR’s ethical principles. When they accept an assignment or make a story pitch to NPR, outside contributors must disclose potential conflicts of interest or other issues that involve matters discussed in this handbook. At the same time, NPR editors and producers should make sure that outside contributors are familiar with the principles laid out in this handbook, and that those contributors are living up to NPR’s standards.”

NPR’s ethics handbook states:

“We take full responsibility for our work, so we must always be ready and willing to answer for it”

and:

“We are vigilant in disclosing to both our supervisors and the public any circumstances where our loyalties may be divided – extending to the interests of spouses and other family members – and when necessary, we recuse ourselves from related coverage.”

The handbook has an entire section on the importance of impartiality. Below is a particularly relevant section:

Impartiality in our personal lives

Guideline

Be aware that a loved one’s political activity may create a perception of bias.

Some of our family members — including spouses, companions and children — may be involved in politics or advocacy. We are sensitive to the perception of bias. So we inform our supervisors and work with them to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interest [emphasis added].

NPR journalists recuse themselves from covering stories or events related to their family members’ political activities. We may go so far as to change job responsibilities (for instance, moving off the “politics desk” to an area of coverage well removed from that subject). “You have the right to marry anyone you want, but you don’t have the right to cover any beat you want” if the potential conflicts appear to be too great, as Tom Rosenstiel of Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism said to the Los Angeles Times.

The ethics handbook includes additional statements specifically about commentary, concluding:

Our commentaries must also hew to other Guiding Principles, reflecting honesty, accuracy and transparency.

In other words, NPR’s own standards indicate that Mr. Brooks should have informed his editors of his son’s employment in the Israeli military. They also suggest that he should recuse himself from commenting on Israel. If Mr. Brooks chooses not to recuse himself from this subject matter, and if NPR fails to require this, its ethics codes direct that he should at least divulge to the public the fact that his son is serving in the military of the foreign country he is discussing.

Yet, so far NPR

  • has not informed listeners that Brooks had a close personal interest in a subject in which he was supposedly offering disinterested analysis,
  • has not asked Mr. Brooks to recuse himself from future commentary on a subject in which he has a personal interest, and
  • has not stated clearly that this conflict of interest will be divulged in the future (only saying that they might discuss this with Mr. Brooks “if the situation arises”).

There are a number of factual errors and logical inconsistencies in Mr. Memmott’s statement (which I also discussed in my previous post):

1. While Mr. Memmott claims that Mr. Brooks’ situation is “no secret,” in reality, the large majority of NPR listeners quite likely have no idea of Mr. Brooks’ conflict of interest.

The only place the information about Brooks has appeared in print to date is a Hebrew version of an Israeli newspaper, and possibly the Los Angeles Jewish Journal (whose online article was the first place to reveal it in English; it was also on the New York Magazine website). It has not appeared on any mainstream radio or TV broadcast that I’m aware of.

2. While Mr. Memmott is correct in stating that Mr. Brooks is not a reporter, this does not exempt Mr. Brooks from the necessity of abiding by ethics requirements. The National Society of Newspaper Columnists‘ decrees that opinion writers should disclose potential conflicts of interest.

3. It is entirely correct that Mr. Brooks has “natural concerns as a father for his son’s safety and well-being,” which is precisely why Mr. Brooks should recuse himself from commenting on matters that concern Israel.

The reality is that Mr. Brooks is a powerful and influential journalist whose  commentary about Israel does indeed have the capacity to affect his son’s “safety and well-being.”

Commentary that defends Israel to the American public serves to help keep American tax money ($8-10 million per day) and American diplomatic support for Israel flowing, both of which are extremely important for his son’s safety and well-being.

Commentary that pointed out the illegality and immorality of Israel’s recent killing and injuring of thousands of Gazan men, women, and children by the Israeli military in which his son is serving would quite likely interfere with his son’s well-being, as an increasing number of Americans would join those around the world calling for war crimes tribunals.

Since Mr. Brooks does the former and not the latter, his commentary, at minimum, gives a strong appearance of bias.

According to NPR’s ethics handbook, NPR ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos is also responsible for addressing ethical violations. In fact, the ombudsman is called NPR’s Chief Ethics Officer. He is also responsible for informing the public about such matters.

Yet, so far Mr. Schumacher-Matos has failed to weigh in on this matter, most recently choosing instead to write about what to call the Washington DC football team.

Important as that issue is, it is hard to feel that it is more important than the life-and-death issue of Israel-Palestine and the recent killing and injuring of thousands of Gazan men, women, and children by the Israeli military that David Brooks’ son was serving in while Mr. Brooks was praising Israeli actions on NPR.

I hope that Mr. Schumacher-Matos will eventually step up to the plate and call on NPR, which proclaims its dedication to honesty, transparency, and the highest principles of journalism, to inform the public that commentator David Brooks has been issuing opinions on an issue in which he had a hidden interest. I hope he will also recommend that NPR look for another commentator to replace Mr. Brooks – one who doesn’t believe he is above ethical obligations.

NPR covers for David Brooks

Not surprisingly, NPR’s ombudsman goes with the flow that will neither interfere with his current employment nor injure his future prospects in American journalism.

Following is an email to me from the Office of the Ombudsman, and below that is my response to NPR:

Dear Alison,
Thank you for contacting the NPR Ombudsman. We appreciate your comments and your thoughts will be taken into consideration as we continue to monitor the reporting.
The Ombudsman is currently working on a blog post about this issue. You may be interested in this statement from our standards and practices editor:

David Brooks is primarily an opinion columnist for The New York Times. He appears on All Things Considered to offer his opinions, not as a reporter. His son’s service with the Israeli Defense Forces is no secretWe agree with the Times‘ editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, that Mr. Brooks’ long-standing views about Israel have been “formed by all kinds of things … [and] are not going to change whether or not his son is serving in the IDF, beyond his natural concerns as a father for his son’s safety and well-being.” We also agree with the Times‘ public editor, Margaret Sullivan, that Mr. Brooks should not be barred from commenting about Israel. She has recommended that he address the issue of his son’s service in the IDF in a future column. That strikes us as a reasonable suggestion. If a situation arises and we feel he should also mention it on our air, we still discuss that with Mr. Brooks at that time.

My Response:

1. In reality, the large majority of NPR listeners quite likely have no idea of Brooks’ conflict of interest (and they share this ignorance with PBS’s ombudsman).

The only place the information about Brooks has appeared in print to date is a Hebrew version of an Israeli newspaper, and possibly the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. It has not appeared on any mainstream broadcast entity that I’m aware of.

2. While, as you state, Mr. Brooks is not a reporter, he must still abide by journalistic ethics. The National Society of Newspaper Columnists‘ code of ethics states that columnists’ potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed.

3. You rightly point out that Mr. Brooks has the “natural concerns as a father for his son’s safety and well-being.”

The obvious reality is that Mr. Brooks’ commentary about Israel does directly affect his son’s “safety and well-being.”

Commentary that defends Israel to the American public keeps American tax money ($8-10 million per day) and American diplomatic support for Israel flowing, both of which are extremely important for his son’s safety and well-being.

Commentary that pointed out the illegality and immorality of Israel’s recent killing and injuring of thousands of Gazan men, women, and children by the Israeli military in which his son is serving would quite likely interfere with his son’s well-being, as an increasing number of Americans would join those around the world calling for war crimes tribunals.

4. Your statement is illogical, unfounded, and ludicrous. But your well-compensated career in mainstream American journalism will continue unhindered.

Will PBS now follow NYT lead on disclosing David Brooks’ conflict of interest?

The New York Times ombudsman (“public editor”) has now said that the Times should disclose to readers the fact that the son of columnist David Brooks, who often comments about Israel, is serving in the Israeli military. Ethics codes require such disclosure.

So far, however, PBS has stated nothing about this, despite the fact that Brooks regularly appears on PBS and was commenting on Israel during its most recent massacre in Gaza, while not disclosing that his son was at the time serving in the Israeli army.

I phoned PBS ombudsman Michael Getler about this last week, and he said he had not known about Brooks’ situation until a few of us had emailed him about it.

Getler said that he was friends with Clark Hoyt – the previous New York Times public editor who had written that a Jerusalem bureau chief whose son was serving in the IDF should be assigned to a different beat. He said, however, that he had disagreed with Hoyt’s finding.

When I suggested that viewers should at least be informed of Brooks’ son, he agreed that this should be done.

Yet, a week later – even after Times ombudsman Margaret Sullivan has publicly recommended public disclosure – there is still no word from Getler or PBS on the situation, even though the PBS ethics code calls for “intellectual honesty and transparency.”

I have no idea why PBS is taking so long over this. I’m beginning to wonder whether Getler himself may have family connections to Israel and its military that could cause him discomfort in tackling this issue.

Either way, journalistic ethics require that the network divulge Brooks’ conflict of interest.