Spin, spin, spin... BUSTED!

CNN's Nic Robertson is now admitting, when confronted, that his recent piece on Israeli targets in Lebanon (view video here) was heavily influenced by Hezbollah. NewsBusters, a group dedicated to "exposing and combating liberal media bias" has a piece on it here.

Some choice exerpts:

In his original story, Robertson had no complaints about the journalistic limitations of a story put together under such tight controls, and Robertson himself at one point seemed to agree with the Hezbollah propaganda claim that Israeli jets had targeted a civilian area: “As we run past the rubble, we see much that points to civilian life, no evidence apparent of military equipment.”

Challenged by Reliable Sources host (and Washington Post media writer)Howard Kurtz on Sunday, Robertson suggested Hezbollah has “very, very sophisticated and slick media operations,” that the terrorist group “had control of the situation. They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn't have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath,” and he even contradicted Hezbollah’s self-serving spin: “There's no doubt that the [Israeli] bombs there are hitting Hezbollah facilities.”

Follow the above link and read it all for yourself.
This should be required reading for everyone who watches CNN, or any other mass media outlet, for that matter.

On the other hand, Anderson Cooper (of CNN 360 fame) exposes Hezbollah's media manipulations.

Some quotes:

...“We'd come to get a look at the damage and had hoped to talk with a Hezbollah representative. Instead, we found ourselves with other foreign reporters taken on a guided tour by Hezbollah. Young men on motor scooters followed our every movement. They only allowed us to videotape certain streets, certain buildings. Once, when they thought we'd videotaped them, they asked us to erase the tape. These men are called al-Shabab, Hezbollah volunteers who are the organization's eyes and ears.”

And finally, the heart of the issue:

..."As the video showed a group reporters and photographers interviewing a single woman on a blanket, Cooper explained, “Civilian casualties are clearly what Hezbollah wants foreign reporters to focus on. It keeps the attention off them — and questions about why Hezbollah should still be allowed to have weapons when all the other militias in Lebanon have already disarmed.

“After letting us take pictures of a few damaged buildings, they take us to another location, where there are ambulances waiting.

“This is a heavily orchestrated Hezbollah media event. When we got here, all the ambulances were lined up. We were allowed a few minutes to talk to the ambulance drivers. Then one by one, they've been told to turn on their sirens and zoom off so that all the photographers here can get shots of ambulances rushing off to treat civilians. That's the story that Hezbollah wants people to know about.

“These ambulances aren't responding to any new bombings. The sirens are strictly for effect.” Cooper concluded: “Hezbollah may not be terribly subtle about spinning a story, but it is telling perhaps that they try. Even after all this bombing, Hezbollah is still organized enough to have a public relations strategy, still in control enough to try and get its message out.”

Kinds of reminds me of Pallywood, though that is Hamas.

Kudos to Cooper for telling how it is. Shame on Nic Robertson for being Hezbollah's propoganda outlet.

LkwdGuy/Lakewood Yid

LakewoodYid writes:

The other day as I was walking on the street, a Black man stuck his hand out to me and asked for a quarter.

I gave one to him.

My thoughts: Its was definitely worth the 25 cents, to have a Goy think highly of Jews. Now of course, this doesn't mean that one should run around passing out quarters to every Goy on the street. But once this Goy had already stuck his hand out, I thought it would be a Kiddush Hashem to give him one. To show him that Jews are compassionate people.

My comment:

I spent last night in the ER with a non-jewish employee of mine that attempted suicide. He told me that he was depressed and needed help and then I noticed the slash marks on his wrists and had him brought to the hospital. Things like ayn ma'alin v'ayn moridin went through my mind but not for any real amount of time. Vrachamav al kolmaasov won out without much of a battle.

And:

Who said this:

Our philosophy asserts that every human being is created in the image of the Lord and the primacy of integrity and honesty in all dealings without exception. I strongly repudiate any assertions in the name of Judaism that do not represent and reflect this philosophy.

A. Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm
B. Malcolm Hoenlien
C. Rabbi A. M. Kotler

Yet another fabulous letter to the editor

From this week's Yated, titled "Bears and Elephants":

"I would like to share with you an experience I recently had, one that I found very disturbing. I opened up a box of heimeshe-brand animal crackers and was terribly dismayed to see that a whole array of non-kosher animals are featured! What are we teaching our children, to eat treife animals?! Are we chas v'shalom teaching our children to eat bears and elephants?"

God help us. It boggles the mind.

How to combat terrorism

I'm not offering any great, new ideas. What I am doing in essence is repeating the Bush doctrine, which to me seems the only way to effectively combat terrorism.

We hear so much about a "cycle of violence". It seems never-ending. The problem is that barring a massacre, there is no effective way to fight those who melt into a civillian population, and those fight FROM a civillian population. Unlike terrorists, 1st world western powers today do not target civillians. Obviously, civillians do die, but IMO the terrorist group which draws the army into civillian areas deserve the blame.

So how do you fight it? Some people might answer that we should hold hands, sing Kumbaya, and we will slowly win them over. I disagree. I think the only way to fight it is by giving it an address. By saying that there is no distinction between the terrorists and those who harbor them. If a country wants to offer shelter to a terrorist group or terrorist leaders, they are responsible for the actions of whatever terrorist group it may be. Eventually, if that becomes real policy to all 1st world powers, countries will not want to harbor terrorists.

I realize this is very oversimplified, and it doesn't account for an oil blackmail or anything else. But at the core, I think it's the only way. Without it there is no way to fight it.

There is no difference between what Israel is doing in Lebanon today and what the US did in Afghanistan, except that it's much easier to justify an attack against a country who's leaders are religious tyrants than against a government which claims to be a bit of a democracy. Keep in mind though, that Hizbollah has 15 parliamentary seats in the Lebanese government, which makes it kind of ridiculous for the Lebanese government to say that they have nothing to do with Hizbollah.

Wow, what a speech!

I was very moved by Prime Minister Olmert's speech today. Yes, I know he probably has great speechwriters, and I would not exactly call him a man of God. But I think his inclusion of the "Mi Sheberach" that is said by some people for the soldiers of the IDF , and the inclusion of the pesukim from Yermiah was not only a great move, but the correct one.

Full translated text of the speech.

He appealed for help from God.

No longer can people dismiss it all as 'Kochi V'Otzem Yadi' (KVY). He publicly asked for divine assistance.

Yes, he did make the obligatory KVY statement right before his tefilla when he said:

"The strength of the State of Israel relies on the strength and capability of the IDF. This strength is the main guarantee to preserving and defending our lives on this land. "

But so what. That's to be expected. Asking for the help of God was not. And it's message was felt by me.

Now I'm not stupid. I know Olmert is a shrewd politician, and I think we know his true colors. But I also know there are no athiests in foxholes. And if the only thing this did is serve to pull the sometimes bitterly divided country a little closer together in this time of need, so be it. I applaud him for that.

And I say a heartfelt "Amein".

CNN - oops!

It's a serious time, and not a time to poke fun. But it IS CNN. And CNN is always open season.

A nameless CNN anchorwoman is discussing the Hezbollah strike on Nazereth.

Click here to view the video.

At about 1:42 in, she says:

"And Anand, help us understand the significance of this, because while it has been, I guess, open knowledge that Hezbollah had, uhh, some missiles that could reach some twenty miles, there was fear and growing concern they might use missiles they may have that reach thirty miles or potentially even more. So this strike in Nazereth, this historic city, which is known to be the place of residence of Jesus's parents Joesph and Mary would fit the bill of being struck by a missile of longer range?"

Did she just say that?

Yes. Yes, she did.

Nice.

Jblogsphere updates: Israel at war

Click here

Krauthammer on target, as always

Washington Post:

Next June will mark the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War. For four decades we have been told that the cause of the anger, violence and terror against Israel is its occupation of the territories seized in that war. End the occupation and the "cycle of violence" ceases.

The problem with this claim was that before Israel came into possession of the West Bank and Gaza in the Six-Day War, every Arab state had rejected Israel's right to exist and declared Israel's pre-1967 borders -- now deemed sacred -- to be nothing more than the armistice lines suspending, and not ending, the 1948-49 war to exterminate Israel.

But you don't have to be a historian to understand the intention of Israel's enemies. You only have to read today's newspapers.

Exhibit A: Gaza. Just last September, Israel evacuated Gaza completely. It declared the border between Israel and Gaza an international frontier, renouncing any claim to the territory. Gaza became the first independent Palestinian territory in history. Yet the Gazans continued the war. They turned Gaza into a base for launching rocket attacks against Israel and for digging tunnels under the border to conduct attacks such as the one that killed two Israeli soldiers on June 25 and yielded a wounded hostage brought back to Gaza. Israeli tanks have now had to return to Gaza to try to rescue the hostage and suppress the rocket fire.

Exhibit B: South Lebanon. Two weeks later, the Lebanese terror organization, Hezbollah, which has representation in the Lebanese parliament and in the cabinet, launched an attack into Israel on Wednesday that resulted in the deaths of eight soldiers and the wounding of two others, who were brought back to Lebanon as hostages.

What's the grievance here? Israel withdrew from Lebanon completely in 2000. It was so scrupulous in making sure that not one square inch of Lebanon was left inadvertently occupied that it asked the United Nations to verify the exact frontier defining Lebanon's southern border and retreated behind it. This "blue line" was approved by the Security Council, which declared that Israel had fully complied with resolutions demanding its withdrawal from Lebanon.

Grievance satisfied. Yet what happens? Hezbollah has done to South Lebanon exactly what Hamas has done to Gaza: turned it into a military base and terrorist operations center from which to continue the war against Israel. South Lebanon bristles with Hezbollah's 10,000 Katyusha rockets that put northern Israel under the gun. Fired in the first hours of fighting, just 85 of these killed two Israelis and wounded 120 in Israel's northern towns.

Over the past six years, Hezbollah has launched periodic raids and rocket attacks into Israel. Israeli retaliation has led to the cessation of these provocations -- until the next time convenient for Hezbollah. Wednesday was such a time. One terror base located in fully unoccupied Arab territory (South Lebanon) attacks Israel in support of another terror base in another fully unoccupied Arab territory (Gaza).

Why? Because occupation was a mere excuse to persuade gullible and historically ignorant Westerners to support the Arab cause against Israel. The issue is, and has always been, Israel's existence. That is what is at stake.

It was Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization that convinced the world that the issue was occupation. Yet, through all those years of pretense, Arafat's own group celebrated its annual Fatah Day on the anniversary of its first attack on Israel, the bombing of Israel's National Water Carrier -- on Jan. 1, 1965.

Note: 1965. Two years before the 1967 war. Two years before Gaza and the West Bank fell into Israeli hands. Two years before there were any "occupied territories."

But, again, who needs history? As the Palestinian excuses for continuing their war disappear one by one, the rhetoric is becoming more bold and honest. Just Tuesday, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, writing in The Post, referred to Israel as "a supposedly 'legitimate' state" ["Aggression Under False Pretenses," op-ed, July 11].

He made clear what he wants done with this bastard entity. "Contrary to popular depictions of the crisis in the American media," he writes, "the dispute is not only about Gaza and the West Bank." It is about "a wider national conflict" that requires the vindication of "Palestinian national rights."

That, of course, means the right to all of Palestine, with no Jewish state. In the end, the fighting is about "the core 1948 issues, rather than the secondary ones from 1967."

In 1967 Israel acquired the "occupied territories." In 1948 Israel acquired life. The fighting raging now in 2006 -- between Israel and the "genocidal Islamism" (to quote the writer Yossi Klein Halevi) of Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran behind them -- is about whether that life should and will continue to exist.

שַׁאֲלו שְׁלוֹם יְרוּשָׁלָים

Yesterday evening, between mincha and maariv we said tehillim for the people of Israel. I found myself thinking about what exactly I am praying for. Obviously number one is the safety of all our brothers and sisters in Israel, but what surprised my the most was the realization that for the first time ever instead of asking G-d to have mercy on His children and send Olmert and Peretz packing, I was asking Him to give Olmert and Peretz the wisdom to make the correct decisions and to give the IDF the abilities to implement those decisions.

These are the guys in charge like it or not, pray for them.

Where ever you might be, for the best coverage of the latest events in Israel and to get a little bit of the emotional experience, turn to Jameel.

I Blame Sharon

Israel withdrew from Gaza in a monumental blunder - a reward for terror. It showed that terrorism works, Israel will bend if hit enough.

For that I blame Sharon.

Hamas was elected, in my view, because of their precieved success in attacking Israel enough times that Israel withdrew from Gaza, not because they pick up the trash on time, as some will have you believe.

For that I blame Sharon.

Gilad Shalit was kidnapped because terrorists have seen that Israel had negotiated in the past for live people and bodies of dead soldiers. How did Israel not learn from it's earlier mistake in 1985? Regardless, prisoners were released in trade in 2004. Guess who was in charge then?

For that I blame Sharon.

Hezbolla has seen that Hamas is getting all the credit. Nasralla felt left out, so he attacked. But why was Hamas getting all the credit? Oh, because they rule Gaza and attack Israel daily from it.

For that I blame Sharon.

Judge Favorably

We are commanded to judge our friends and neighbors favorably, even when it seems what they are doing is wrong. It's usually pretty hard to do, but this may make it slightly easier.

A close friend of mine had a child who was born with serious health issues. (Sadly, the child passed away a few years ago.) There were many times when he was awake all night caring for the baby.

One morning he arrived at a "minyan factory" about 10:30 am to daven Shacharis. There was an older man sitting in the corner of the room trying to learn. Suddenly he (the older man) jumped up and started screaming at everyone in the room "You lazy idiots! You show up at this time of the day to daven Shacharis?! Your laziness is causing me to be unable to learn, it's too noisy!". He angrily slammed shut the sefer and stalked out.

My friend followed him and tapped him on the shoulder:

"Don't you know we are commanded to judge people favorably?"

"Oh please, you guys are just a bunch of lazy bums!"

"Is it not possible that some people might have been up all night caring for a sick baby, and they therefore are coming to daven at this time? "

"Oh come on! How many sick babies can there be? There are 20 people in there! Do they all have sick babies?!"

"I can't speak for them, but I know I have been up all night with my sick child".

"Oh, I'm very sorry, I wasn't referring to your case".

My friend responded:

"Just like I have a valid reason I am here now, so to you must look at each person here like they do as well. That's what being "Dan L'kaf Zechus" means. You have no idea what's going on in their lives. Don't be so quick to rush to judgment.

The man was left speechless.

I'd just like to add that not only does this apply to us and our friends and neighbors, but it certainly applies to gedolim as well. We are always so quick to judge, we don't always know the whole story, although we may think we do.

Hillary in Hamodia

(I wrote this post before I saw Shtender's last post. Please don't allow this negative post to detract from his positive post. There is both good and bad in most things.)

From Hamodia (weekend edition, 7/5/06) letters to the editor:

To the editor:

Please permit me a respectful, and I hope, constructive critical comment.

In a recent letter to the editor("Senator's moderation - verbal only," June 29), the writer takes aim at Senator Hillary Clinton. Her moderate tone, the writer asserts, does not reflect her true ultra - liberal views.
[...]
What troubles me, though, is that throughout the letter the writer refers to Senator Clinton by her first name only. Yes, I know that in the secular media "Hillary" is often the name by which she is known - not "Senator Clinton," or even "Mrs. Clinton" - but Hamodia is not a secular tabloid and she is entitled by virtue of her high public office to respect, and to the courtsy of being called Mrs. Clinton.

Furthermore, entirely apart from Senator Clinton's office, there is the tznius factor. Considerations of Tznius demand that a woman, especially a married woman, not be referred to by first name in the pages of a newspaper like Hamodia.

This letter writer strikes me as an example of someone who just "knows" that something is wrong without ever trying to understand the rationale behind it.

Let me be clear. I make an effort in my own life not to address my wife's friends by their first name. Addressing members of the opposite sex by their first names, can create an impression of closeness - even if it does not really exist - that is not desirable. Personally, I find this to be a useful geder in interaction with women in general. Others may disagree, and they are entitled to their opinions. I know of some frum corporations that have implemented such policies across the board - even for the non-frum employees - and I think that that's commendable.

But there is nothing inherantly non-tzniyusdik about a woman's first name. Refraining from using a first name may be justified as a means of preventing a close relationship from developing. NO LETTER WRITER TO HAMODIA IS RISKING BECOMING CHUMMY WITH HILLARY CLINTON BY REFERRING TO HER AS HILLARY.

Hillary. Hillary. Hillary. Hillary.

An Extraordinary Friendship

The editors of the weekly Hamodia had a contest for the best story of friendship. The winning story, titled "An Extraordinary Friendship" (Hamodia Magazine pg. 10-11 of this week's issue) made a really big impression on me. I advise everyone, even if you don't usually get the Hamodia, to pick up this weeks issue and read that story.

The sham of the UNHRC

UNHRC to send mission to Gaza.

Personally I think Israel should not let them in. It's an obvious witchhunt. Reminds me of the "Jenin massacre" investigation.

I like this part:

John Dugard, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the territories, will head the fact-finding team. In a speech to the talks on Wednesday the South African jurist accused Israel of violating the "most fundamental norms" of international human rights law.

So the guy heading the team already condemned Israel before setting foot in Gaza. Some "fact-finding" mission this is going to be.

And how can anyone miss this: What can the Palestinians possibly gain by attacking Israel at this point, either through suicide bombings, rocket attacks or the attack on the Army base? Israel withdrew from Gaza giving the Palestinians their first sovereign land in history. The current Israeli government wants to withdraw from most of the West Bank as well. This can only hurt their cause! Unless it's not land they're after, rather the destruction of Israel, or at least causing the deaths of as many Israelis as possible. Where is the UNHRC?

Required reading about the "new" UNHRC from Jpost.

Observations

Guest post from Yeshiva Orthodoxy.

While driving around lately I've noticed a curious thing.

The cars and minivans that are: driving most erratically; swerving in and out of lanes; obnoxiously honking; risking my life with their speeding; etc., - have prominently displayed on its rear: a green ribbon magnet written on it: "1800 cucumber"!

I'm not trying to cast aspersions, promote conspiracy theories; or CH"V derail a very fine organization, but now when I'm home using the phone service which these ribbons promote, I tightly strap myself in.

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Just days after a frum Lakewood man was charged with bribing a police officer, I read in the news how Kiryas Yoel gives more money to state lobbyists than any other NY town or city!

Some 675,000 kiryas yoel, taxpayers' bucks went to influence public officials.

So I guess if you want to LEGALLY bribe an officer: hire a lobbyist to do it for you!

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I was born a couple of decades to soon.

When I was in an out-of-town yeshiva and trying to get through a gruesome winter zman, for a little bit of entertainment I'd have to tirelessly scour the entire neighborhood to purchase a radio that was small enough to hide in my pocket, or squeeze into some shoe under my bed.

All so I could listen to a ballgame and Bob Grant.

Welcome to the 21st century.

The new, small, fancy-shmancy full service cell phones do absolutely anything and everything. They serve as a computer, VCR, TV, a camcorder, etc.
These uber-smart, tiny, entertainment machines bring the entire world to your palm, are easy to hide, and boy, can they help you pass time.

The present generation of spoiled out-of-town bochurim don't appreciate just know how "good" they have it!

Pallywood

Click here to view a short documentary. It's worth a few minutes of your time.
Don't believe everything you see and hear.

Check out the site as well.