Israellycool

Of course, by impartial and professional, they mean not showing bias against any of the palestinian terror organizations. Bias against Israel is fine.

Journalists lamented the balkanization of Palestinian media at a symposium in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Sunday.

A panel titled “The Role of Journalism in Enhancing Civil Society” was held on Sunday at the Shepherd Hotel in Bethlehem. The panel was organized by the Peace Alliance Foundation.

The Director of the Peace Alliance Foundation, Nidal Fuqaha, opened the panel by asserting the important, but dangerous role journalism currently serves in Palestine. He argued that impartiality and professionalism are the way to approach the current crisis.

Ma’an’s Chief Editor, Nasser Lahham also addressed the panel, recommending that Palestinian media employ journalists with diverse affiliations.

“As long as Hamas media employs only Hamas-affiliated journalists, Fatah media employs only Fatah-affiliated journalists, and communist factions’ media employ only communist journalists, the inevitable outcome will be partial journalism far from the professionalism and impartiality that should be strived for,” Lahham explained.

He added that most Palestinian media outlets failed during the inter-Palestinian fighting because each reported according to its affiliation and factional attitudes. Thus, he advised that from now on, we should focus on professionalism rather than political affiliation in our reporting.

Lahham gave an example of Ma’an News Agency which employs journalists with different political affiliations in order to create balance and diversity. In its four years of existence, Ma’an has achieved the highest degree of impartiality, he added.

Which isn’t saying much.

Ma’an News has a tribute article to Yasser Arafat, which is begging for some mockery.

On Tuesday 11 November Palestinians commemorated the death of their first leader: Abu Ammar, Al-Ra’is (the president) and in the end Al-Khityar (the old man), former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Not to forget Abu Al-Shityar (the dirty old man), Abu Nimr (the tiger), and Abu Garyglitter (the pedophile).

At his best Arafat was a Palestinian hero and leader of the cause; he was a symbol of unity, pride and the power of the ideal. Arafat was a comfort for whoever had known him as much as he was a symbol of comfort for all his people.

The man embodied much of what it meant to be Palestinian.

Given he was an arch terrorist, this is a rather telling statement.

Somehow, at the same time he was a refugee, he was a Jerusalemite, a Gazan, a West Banker and an exiled Palestinian who had felt deeply all of his torments.

Not to mention an Egyptian.

Al-Ra’is was a man that loved his people who died before he was able to achieve their dream.

Being the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel.

Arafat knew he was dying when doctors diagnosed him first with the flu and then with a terminal immune-deficiency disease, said political writer and analyst Yahya Rabah.

Hmm, a terminal immune deficiency disease…

“He never told anyone how he felt,” said Rabah. Throughout his illness doctors piled him with advice which Arafat saw as a sort of lamentation, since he knew he was dying, Rabah, who was also a friend to Arafat, recalled.

Despite his determined and often stoic appearance Arafat was open about his affection for friends and comrades Abu Iyad (chief of the Palestinian Intelligence Agency) and Abu Jihad (founder of Fatah and military leader).

“When those two men were beside me I slept with comfort on my pillow, but since the day I lost them I felt explosives inside that pillow whenever I tried to sleep,” he was said to have lamented.

Probably to be taken literally.

Arafat was a man with a sweet tooth; he drank only tea and not coffee, and rather enjoyed Nabulsi Kanafeh.

I haven’t heard of him before.

Friends remember him slicing the sticky sweets with his hands and passing squares out to those around him.

Arafat also loved the simple company of children. Some of his happiest times, recall friends, were drinking tea and playing with his daughter and the children of his close friends.

So I’ve heard.

He would watch Mickey Mouse cartoons with them and laugh from the bottom of his chest.

Or should that be Farfur?

He also enjoyed the higher arts, would listen to the reverberating songs of Umm Kalthoum, and enjoyed deep friendships with Arab poets, writers and actors like Adel Imam, Yousef Sha’ban and Madiha Yousri.

On the day devoted to his memory, the celebration of his successes and the mourning of his failures, Palestinians gathered in groups to hear speeches, songs and stories bringing back into life the stories of the once great man.

The world is indeed a better place without this murderer.

The AFP reports:

Jewish settlers beat up Palestinian boy near Hebron

Bilal Daana was attacked by a group of settlers near the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba near Hebron. They beat him up and threw stones at him, the Palestinian medics said.

The boy was taken by Israeli soldiers to a checkpoint at the entrance to Hebron from where he was transferred to the local Al-Ahli hospital.

The incident was the latest in a surge of settler attacks on Palestinians, peace activists and Israeli soldiers since the authorities dismantled a settlement outpost near Hebron last month.

In other words, the headline and last paragraph convey what is essentially an allegation by palestinian medics as fact.

Interestingly enough, not all of the palestinian media outlets are reporting this incident, including Ramattan News and WAFA.

Meanwhile, here is how the palestinian Ma’an News reports it:

Israeli settlers wounded six-year-old Palestinian Bilal Da’na from Hebron after pelting the young boy with stones near the illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, Palestinian sources in Hebron said.

Notice the difference between this version and the AFP version?

In the AFP version, the palestinian medics claimed that the “settlers” “beat him up and threw stones at him,” whereas the Ma’an version mentions only “pelting..with stones.” Which is it? Surely if the “settlers” had really beat up the child, the palestinian media would have mentioned this.

Sounds to me like the palestinian medics elaborated for the sake of the international media. And the international media were more than willing to report their version as fact.

Time may tell whether or not this palestinian boy was indeed injured by Jewish residents of Kiryat Arba. What is clear, though, is once again, the mainstream media are not reporting fairly or accurately.

Back to the drawing board.

Journalist working on police success story has car vandalized near Ramallah police station

Unidentified vandals smashed the windshields of Ma’an’s Ramallah correspondent Muhammad Al-Lahham in the central West Bank while he was preparing a report on the Palestinian police units in the city.

According to Al-Lahham, he parked his car near Ramallah Park and left the area with another journalist in order to prepare a report about the success of the Ramallah police. When he returned one hour later, the windshield of his car was smashed and the car door open. He also reported that personal items were stolen from the car.

A palestinian terrorist today murdered an 86-year-old man, and wounded a police officer, in a stabbing attack in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo.

Here’s what went down:

A young Arab man murdered a civilian and injured a police officer in Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood on Thursday morning.

The 86-year-old citizen was critically injured and evacuated to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in the capital, where he died of his wounds. The police officer, 32, sustained light to moderate wounds and was evacuated to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital.

The terrorist sustained moderate to serious wounds in his stomach after being shot by the injured policeman. He was also taken to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital.

According to an initial report, the incident began when two police officers detained the young Arab man for a security check, but he pulled out a knife and stabbed one of them. The injured policeman pulled out his gun, shot and injured the terrorist, who fled the scene with the knife in his hand.

The assailant went on to stab the civilian, before being captured by another citizen and a municpal inspector.

Yoav Mizrahi, the citizen who captured the terrorist, recounted the incident. “I arrived with my car and saw an Arab man on the street fighting with the policeman. I stopped the car, when suddenly the guy pulled out a knife and began stabbing the policeman, who tried to defend himself. I ran and called out to him…

“The officer fell down, got up and fired at the fleeing terrorist before collapsing on the ground. While escaping, the Arab stabbed an elderly man walking across from him and that man collapsed.

“The terrorist continued running, and I ran after him and yelled at him to stop in Arabic. About 150 meters later I caught him from behind, dropped him to the ground and held on to him together with an inspector until the security forces arrived.”

The palestinians are predictably reporting this attack in their “unique” way.

• IMEMC reports today’s victim as the terrorist, who they say was killed after “allegedly” killing an “Israeli settler.” They also fabricate the words of an Israeli witness, who they claim said he saw the palestinian “accidently hit an elderly man causing him to fall on the ground.”
• Ma’an News also tries to turn the palestinians into the victims with their report under the headline Israeli forces invade Tuqu, threaten to demolish house of man involved in fatal Gilo stabbing. They are also reporting the victim as being only 60 years of age.
• Palestine News Network does the same thing, focusing on the IDF reprisals. They also make no mention of the elderly man being killed, claiming instead that “an Israeli settler and police officer..were moderately injured.”
• Ramattan makes it sound like a quarrel gone wrong, reporting “the Arab citizen quarreled with the guards of the settlements then they fought.” They also make it sound like the victim was somehow wounded as he passed by, rather than deliberately stabbed.

Updates to follow.

Updates (Israel time)

6:08PM: Honest Reporting have some examples of media bias in the reports of the attack from the usual suspects BBC, Reuters and AFP.

6:25PM: The victim has been identified as 86-year-old Jerusalem resident Abraham Ozeri.

Ma’an News reports:

Customs seizes tons of expired animal therapy products in Hebron

Palestinian Authority (PA) customs officers said Friday that the department seized five tons of expired drugs and other medical supplies for animals in Hebron.

Commander Wael Anati told Ma’an that officers discovered the expired supplies after raiding the house of a “suspected veterinarian.”

“On the basis of the information that we have from intelligence we broke into the house of the suspected veterinarian and seized quantities of expired animal drugs and forged documents,” he said.

Anati also warned traders not to deal in expired products under penalty of jail terms, and for locals to exercise caution when buying products in the markets.

Which begs the question: what on earth are “animal therapy products?”

Don’t get me wrong. I can fully understand why animals in the PA areas would need therapy. I just didn’t know such products existed, and that there was such a market for them in Hebron.

The irony (?!) is more animals in the PA areas would likely require therapy now that they have to contend with expired therapy products and “suspected veterinarians.”

I guess you learn something new every day, especially from the palestinian news outlets.

Ma’an News reports on the latest act of Israeli aggression.

Eyewitnesses told Ma’an that an Israeli military vehicle “intentionally” slammed into a car being driven by a Palestinian on Saturday near Nablus, seriously injuring the driver.

The Israeli jeep involved was reportedly a military jeep driven by a soldier on a bypass road northwest of the West Bank city of Nablus.

Witness Ala Al-A’mud told Ma’an in a telephone interview that the jeep’s driver “intentionally pushed a Palestinian’s car” off the road and over the cliff of an adjacent ravine, where it finally crashed.

30-year-old Awni Abu Shushah was “seriously injured” in the apparently intentional crash. Shushah is the manager at one of the nearby stone factories, according to a worker at the facility.

Rescue workers moved Shushah to a local hospital in Nablus, where he remained in serious condition, according to medical officials.

Of course, why would we bother to ram a car off the road when we could easily incapacitate the driver using our Zionist Electromagnetic Weapon of Death ^TM ?

Needless to say, this is not being reported anywhere else, although like other palestinian blood libels, it will likely get a fair bit of airplay on other palestinian, Arab and neo Nazi sites.

Update: The reason the link no longer works is that Ma’an inexplicably deleted the story. Perhaps it was too obviously fabricated even for their liking?

Update: I guess not. The story is back.

Ma’an News reports:

The 20-year-old daughter of de facto Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh was married Monday to her 31-year-old cousin in a magnanimous ceremony attended by dozens of high-level Hamas officials.

Khawla Haniyeh married Abd Al-Mo’ti Khaled Haniyeh, who was released from Israeli prison in August, after serving a 15 year sentence. The wedding that was described by one attendee as a “carnival;” lunch was served in the home of the groom’s family, rather than in the bride’s home. Haniyeh did, however, attend the event, along with huge crowds of civilian celebrators.

Although it is traditional for the wedding luncheon to be held in the bride’s home with the father of the bride as host, Gazans at Monday’s wedding considered Haniyeh’s attendance to the groom’s home a sign of great love and appreciation for him. “It is clear that the groom is considered part of the family,” said one guest.

Of course it’s clear. It’s her freakin’ cousin.

Introducing our latest weapon: Zionist Sinking Weapon of Confusion.^TM

It sinks boats…or does it?

Shots were fired by the Israeli military on Gazan fishermen of the Rafah shore on Sunday afternoon, sinking the fishing boat and endangering the lives of those aboard.

According to the de facto ministry of agriculture the sinking vessel and its operators were rescued by nearby boats. Omar Al-Habeel, the owner of the boat, said it was cracked down the side, but rescued from sinking.

Incidentally, the above Ma’an News article is titled: Gazan fiserman’s boat sunk by Israeli fire in local waters.

Yeah, it says fiserman.

While the palestinians claim they do not have enough flour in Gaza, I am glad to see that not only do they have enough to subside on, but they even have extra for their recreational needs.

White flower (sic.), not explosives was packed in a plastic bottle and thrown towards Israeli soldiers by a 15-year-old Palestinian boy who turned up at the Huwwara checkpoint south of Nablus two weeks ago.

The boy, Ra’fat Obeid from the Askar refugee camp, was arrested by Israeli forces and taken into Israeli custody, and was released to Palestinian Authority (PA) police this week.

Details of the events are murky, and officials have bounced blame between poverty, Israel and internally divisive forces.

Details from Palestinian security sources say the Obeid told police that his friend had convinced him to take the bottles filled with flower to the Huwwara checkpoint and surrender himself to Israeli soldiers.

Sources told Ma’an’s Nablus correspondent that Obeid hoped that after his arrest his family would receive a small monthly sum of money from the Palestinian government in compensation for his loss to the family. The PA has a policy of supporting the families of those arrested by the Israeli army.

Security sources explained that Obeid was handed over to his family after they signed several pledges to Palestinian Security Services ensuring that the boy would not try the stunt again. They added, however, that they suspected there was a third party involved which had provided the boys with the flower-stuffed bottles and advised them on the time and place for the plan’s execution. Such a force, said Palestinian Security, was an attempt to corrupt the children of the area.

In other words, palestinian children are wasting flour - which they claim is in short supply - so they can receive money for being arrested. As Elder of Ziyon notes:

Which means that the world is funding the PA which takes a significant amount of its budget to effectively pay salaries to anyone who gets arrested, from terrorists to kids who want a free education in Israeli prison. (A WashPo article from 2006 says that the amount is $220 a month per prisoner, so families with lots of sons in prison can stand to make a pretty penny.)

Meanwhile, a Ma’an News article without the blaming of Israel is like Spain without the running of the bulls.

For his part, the Palestinian official accused Israeli intelligence agencies as being behind the incident. He said that it was a ploy to have vulnerable children arrested and to plant ideas and strategies into their heads.