Monday, August 3, 2009
You may have already seen the images of Arabs being evicted from homes in Jerusalem that have been circulating recently. Not surprisingly, images deceive, and you can see just how badly when you read Aaron Klein's backgrounder on this matter: Media misleading on Jews evicting Arabs from Jerusalem
...The housing complex in question is located in the Sheik Jarra neighborhood of eastern Jerusalem. The home was originally Jewish, but its Jewish occupants were chased out during countrywide anti-Jewish Arab riots in 1929. Arabs then squatted on the property, with one family, the Hejazi family, becoming the de facto occupants despite never having purchased the property.
Even though documentation proves the complex is owned by Jews and that Arabs have been squatting on it illegally for almost a century, Jewish groups still legally re-purchased the property from the Hejazi family. Following pressure from the Palestinian Authority, however, the family later denied selling the complex back to the Jews despite documentation and other evidence showing the sale went through.
Israel's court system, not exactly a friend of Jewish "settlers," twice ruled now the property undoubtedly belongs to Jews.
Many of the articles on the home use the terms "occupied" and "East Jerusalem." Reuters called it "occupied Arab East Jerusalem."
According to the United Nations, eastern sections of Jerusalem are not "occupied" but "disputed." Referring to the area as "Arab East Jerusalem" presupposes the outcome of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that have yet to take place and ignores British documentation that authenticates Jews outnumbered Arabs in eastern Jerusalem from the 1800's until Jews were expelled by Arabs in 1929...
So, like many properties now, in racist fashion, referred to as "Arab," the site was purchased by Jews, the Jews were expelled, they bought it back (though they need not have), and now the laws are being applied exactly as they should be.
Right: knowing full well how all of us humans dislike nothing more than unsolicited advice, let me meekly suggest the following:
readers of all stripes stop reading blogs when they're linked to articles on WorldNetDaily. doesn't matter if the articles are credible or not, truthful or not, accurate or not. doesn't matter one bit, just like i'd be disinclined to believe bin Laden even if he were telling me that two and two make four.
Yes, like Herzen said: everyone can write a memoir (blog) because no one has to read it. but good god, man, one can easily find more, uh, stable reporting about I/P media bias without resorting to a website that suggested 9/11 was a direct result of american immorality.
good luck.
but good god, man, one can easily find more, uh, stable reporting about I/P media bias ...
So then does this serve?:
Regev Responds to Aggressive CNN Interrogation on House Eviction in East Jerusalem
CNN is not alone in this kind of coverage. Indeed, the virulently anti-Israel slant and the incitement to hatred of Israel is virtually a consensus in the MSNM (BBC, Times of London: “Israeli settlers ‘are wrecking peace process’“) and diplomatic communities, as Melanie Phillips points out:
By the way can you provide a link to a website that suggested 9/11 was a direct result of american immorality. so that one can catch up on events?
Two particularly salient compare-and-contrasts might be noted, in terms of how the "international community," officially and at the level of the hoi polloi, at grass roots levels, focus their energies:
1) While attention is given to this legal issue decided by the Supreme Court of Israel - a legal issue with an extraordinarily complex legal, social, political, etc. trail - Iran's proxy Hezbollah has been at work. Robin Shepherd summarizes a piece from the Times of London:
"Hezbollah has stockpiled 40,000 missiles over the last three years, some capable of hitting Tel Aviv. Brigadier-General Alon Friedman, the deputy head of the Israeli Northern Command, was quoted by the paper as saying that war could break out “at any minute”."
2) Via Z-word, Egyptian author and academic Dr. Sayed Mahmoud El Qemany and his family - a "liberal" in the true and classical sense of the term - is being exposed to gross and murderous incitements, by the MB, by other "scholarly" groups within Egypt and the Islamic world, by Islamicist militants, by mainstream Islamic leaders from within mosques.
Where is the "international community" in either of these cases? Where are the Carters, Tutus and Robinsons? Much concerned over Israel protecting itself, and much concerned over a protracted and deeply problematic legal case in Israel, yet largely mum when it comes to Hezbollah and an egyptian writer who is willing to place himself at the tip of the spear in terms of genuine moral and social/political probity.
Again, these types of imbalances, in terms of the focus applied by tranzi orgs such as the U.N., by NGOs, by the "international community," etc. is brought into sharp relief when such "compare and contrasts" themselves are brought into focus for probative effect.