A Case Study
I’ve never really gotten the hang of Twitter. But once in awhile, I make an effort to try to figure out the durned thing. So there I was yesterday, scrolling my Twitter feed when a tweet from Haaretz caught my eye.
“Palestinian circus performer in detention without trial for three months,” it said, with the sweet tweet accompanied by a touching photo of said circus performer at his craft.
Here’s a screenshot.
There was something about this tweet that seriously irked me—the obvious attempt to humanize him. Why the stress on him as a performance artist?
So, I decided to do some digging.
I found Ruthie Blum’s excellent piece in the Algemeiner from January, 22, and discovered that our dear little circus performer is a cause célèbre of the left, with the BDS-linked Amnesty International, leading the way.
The head of Amnesty International-Israel told The Algemeiner on Thursday why his organization is fighting tooth and nail to have a Palestinian who has expressed support for the destruction of Israel through terrorism on social media released from Israeli administrative detention.
Yonatan Gher was responding to a query about an Amnesty International USA petition circulating on Twitter, along with a YouTube video — both pointed out by pro-Israel blogger Elder of Ziyon — to protest the detention of 23-year-old Mohammad Faisal Abu Sakha, a circus performer and instructor from Jenin in the West Bank.
“Amnesty International opposes administrative detention and considers any case of administrative detention to be a serious human rights violation, regardless of what the suspicions may be,” Gher said. “We call on Israeli authorities to immediately release Mohammad Faisal Abu Sakha, who has been detained since December 15th, unless he is charged with a recognizable criminal offences and tried fairly and promptly. Detainees such as Abu Sakha are denied the right to defend themselves or effectively challenge the legality of their detention because the authorities largely withhold the ‘evidence’ against them from them and their lawyers.”
Gher’s saying “evidence” in quotation marks suggests doubt that Israel has any real cause to detain Abu Sakha. This is in spite of violent posts on his Facebook page, a practice among young Palestinians that the Israeli government claims constitutes part of an incitement campaign that has fueled the daily stabbing, rock-throwing, car-ramming and shooting attacks against Israelis since September.
So let’s take a look at how Ha’aretz presents this story:
A protest is planned on Wednesday calling for the release of Mohammed Abu Saha, a Palestinian circus performer who has spent approximately the past three months in detention without trial in Israel. The Shin Bet security service said he is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and constitutes a security risk that could not be addressed any other way other than through administrative detention.
Due to Abu Saha’s absence, the circus lessons he normally gives to adults and children, notably those with special needs, have not taken place. . . Abu Saha’s colleagues at the circus school told Haaretz that they don’t understand the detention order. “We know Mohammed very well,” said one of his close friends, who asked not to be identified. “His entire life is the circus and working with children, mostly children with special needs. He even likes to keep them busy during vacations and holidays and to play with them. There are about 30 children in his class and they are very attached to him,” the friend said. “They say he is dangerous and I don’t know what the danger would be from a guy like this, but if there really are suspicions against him, why don’t they put him on trial?”
His lawyer is quoted:
“Mohammed is doing welcome work with children with special needs and of course that’s not grounds for arrest.” She said the group obtained confidential information about the case and insisted that the administrative detention had no justification.
Works with special needs children??? Whatta guy!
Naturally, in order for this to be a really effective Ha’aretz piece, you need a quote from an anti-Israel Jew:
Hanita Hendelman, who represents the World Peace Committee and is organizing the protest in Israel over the case, said Abu Saha is well-known in the circus world. “The readiness to take part in the global protest is a result of his radiant and social personality and the good impression that he has left with everyone whom he has met,” she told Haaretz.
Hendelman, who is familiar with the Palestinian circus and its cultural activities, called it a “social circus” of global caliber that works to empower young people from outlying areas of the West Bank. Abu Saha has been a leader in his field of therapeutic work through the circus with children and adults with developmental difficulties, she said, and the circus works in areas where families either cannot pay for the activities or where they pay a nominal fee.
“They empower the children in the refugee camps and bring happiness to children who see destruction and death everywhere,” she said, adding: “It’s serious when a man is detained without an indictment, beyond the fact that it is harming a lot of children for whom he is their teacher, and a lot of children and [other] people for whom he brings joy into their lives. It’s very sad that they are harming Palestinian society, even a peace-creating culture.”
Asked about suspicions against Abu Saha, Hendelman said that as far as she knows, he is not associated with any political organization. “He eats, drinks and sleeps the circus. He is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Circus.”
And finally, in order to drive the point home: that big bad mean Israel has detained a guy who’s all about the children, you need not one, but TWO videos. The first one has heartbreaking music playing in the background.
The second has people in the UK putting on a big ole protest for poor Abu Saha, who doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.
Anyway, I got to thinking about this. The idea of humanizing a guy whose Facebook page is filled with violent posts inciting people to kill and maim Jews, a guy suspected by Israel of being in the PFLP, someone who calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. It’s a perfect hook. It makes people melt.
Which is why, I guess, no mainstream media news outlet worth its salt would ever humanize an Israeli victim of terror, especially a settler (can you spell Untermensch?).
Take the case of Evyatar Borovsky. He was murdered by a terrorist in April 2013. Not one mainstream news outlet offered the fact that he was also a talented actor who was known by his fans and friends as “Napo.”
Because that would have made him human.
Here is how Ha’aretz (http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israeli-stabbed-and-killed-by-palestinian-in-west-bank-1.518326) reported THAT story:
Eviatar Borovzky, a 30-year-old resident of Yitzhar, was stabbed to death on Tuesday morning by a Palestinian at the Tapuach Junction in the northern West Bank. A short time later, IAF aircraft launched an air strike on the Gaza Strip that killed Haytham Al-Mishal, a 24-year-old resident of the Shati refugee camp who the IDF says was a Global Jihad militant.
Borovsky was attacked at the bus stop in Tapuach Junction. The attacker , a resident of Tul Karn, then took this firearm and began firing at a Border Police force nearby, who fired back, wounding the Palestinian. He was taken into custody for questioning.
Borovsky is the first Israeli to be killed in the West Bank since September 2011. His funeral will take place Tuesday afternoon in Kfar Hasidim, where his parents are buried.
They don’t even mention that he had a wife and five children—again because that would have made him human.
The worst part of the article is this:
Following the attack, a group of settlers from Yitzhar went down to Route 60 and began setting fields on fire, and throwing stones at a Palestinian school bus that was passing through.
Because far from making Napo human, they demonize him by association, citing a violent reaction to his murder by his community. And yeah, I’m gonna say I really doubt any of that happened. Because what I believe Ha’aretz does, is ask leading questions to get responses that make Jews and Israel look bad.
They probably go to the Arabs who live near Yitzhar and ask questions like, “Did you see any settlers taking revenge on your people for what happened to Evyatar Borovsky? Did anyone, for instance, set your fields on fire or perhaps throw stones at your school buses?” and maybe Haaretz embroiders a bit, elaborates on the meaning of the nod of a head to a leading question. Because the name of the game is “humanize the Arabs and turn the Jews into monsters.”
Because Ha’aretz is known as the “Palestinian newspaper that appears in Hebrew.”
Okay, so we expect it from Ha’aretz. But what of the other news outlets? CNN, Times of Israel, New York Times, NBC News? Nope. No mention of Borovsky’s nickname. No mention that Borovsky too, was in the performing arts. I looked and looked and looked and finally found Anav Silverman’s coverage HERE where she told the deeper story of Napo, how talented he was, how hard he worked, how beloved he was.
In the recent media coverage of Evyatar Borovsky’s murder, the 31-year-old father of five young children was described in several international reports as a “hardline settler.” Borovsky, who hailed from the community of Yitzhar, was on his way to a theater rehearsal when he was stabbed to death by a Palestinian on the morning of April 30 at the Tapuach Junction, a central point for busses and hitchhiking used by Arabs and Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria.
“Even Israelis outside of Judea and Samaria are not familiar with life here,” the spokesman for Yitzhar, Avraham Binyamin told Tazpit News Agency. “There is a rich theater and arts culture in Judea and Samaria, and there are many residents who work in these professions.” In Yitzhar alone, there are three different acting groups.
“It is important for us to give a human face to this tragedy — Evyatar was a story in himself,” says Binyamin.
Borovsky was a popular actor in the Ar El Group, an acting troupe made up of settlers from Judea and Samaria, which performs across Israel. The group incorporates improvisation, psychodrama and other role-playing techniques to help others overcome traumatic experiences through theater.
The kicker was this:
“In addition to his work as an actor, Borovsky was also studying to become a licensed clown therapist in order to work with sick children in hospitals.
His close friends and acting colleagues describe Borovsky as a shy man who found acting as an outlet to express himself.”
Napo didn’t just aim to become a circus performer. He was studying to become a medical clown. But Ha’aretz didn’t care about THIS circus performer, this gentle shy man who was NOT a terrorist, and who did NOT post violent photos on his Facebook page or call for the death of anyone at all. Napo was not suspected of being in a terrorist group, nor was he ever detained.
He was a hardworking husband and father who did beautiful things in his spare time. Things that made a difference in the world. In a good way.
He made people smile. He made people laugh.
And Tazpit News Service covered that story. Because to TPS, Jews are human.
News outlets like Ha’aretz, CNN, and the Times of Israel, on the other hand, saw no reason to humanize Napo who was living where Arabs don’t want him to live which is why he was murdered in the first place. I call it “ethnic cleansing.” Them? They call it “ending the Occupation.”
So there’s a vast difference in our world views. I don’t think Jews should be discriminated against. I don’t think that towns and villages should be segregated.
They do.
And it’s so ugly, that they have to accuse the Jews of doing what they are doing. They have to accuse the Jews of Apartheid, when it is THEY who are segregating towns and villages and US who let them serve in our parliament, ride on our buses, and serve as justices in the highest court in the land.
Deep down, of course, they know they’re not fooling us at all. They know how ugly the truth is. They know you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
But darn it, they’re going to keep trying, and their audience, the people who read the dishonest stories they churn out, will continue to pretend they believe this stuff. They’ll keep on pretending they believe that Arab terrorists, the ones who do the hard work of rubbing out the Jews, are loving circus performers who dote on special needs children from low-income homes.
The truth is, the media and the world are in cahoots: one provides the talking points, the other parrots them, covering up the real Apartheid with their endless, ongoing false narrative. And so, you have two performance artists with only one permitted to be depicted as human, the terrorist.
The Jew Borovsky? He will never be humanized by the mainstream media. That would be an admission that Napo’s murder was an attempt at ethnic cleansing. It would pull the legs out from under the Big Lie they call “occupation.” The thing they call “Apartheid” while keeping the Jews out.
And then they would have to look at why Borovsky was murdered.
