Tag Archive for: Associated Press

How Major News Outlets Use Headlines to Deceive

Eighty-percent of Americans who bother to read the news at all do not read beyond the headline. So when major news outlets reporting on the violence in Israel in just one 12-hour period failed in their headlines to properly identify the perpetrators of terror attack, or their victims, or the nature of the attack, it is cause for concern. More on this worrisome dereliction of journalistic duty can be found here: “Headlines Hazy on Details in Coverage of Palestinian Terror Attacks,” by Chaim Lax, HonestReporting, August 31, 2023:

Within the span of 12 hours, one Israeli was killed and at least six others were wounded in two separate Palestinian terror attacks.

The first attack occurred on the evening of August 30, when a Palestinian teen from East Jerusalem stabbed a 25-year-old Israeli in the back at the Shivtei Yisrael light rail station. The victim managed to escape before an off-duty Border Police officer shot the terrorist multiple times, ultimately killing him.

Approximately 12 hours later, a Palestinian terrorist rammed a truck into a group of off-duty soldiers walking along the highway near a checkpoint, hit a nearby car and then drove away. Israeli security forces were able to kill the terrorist before he could commit another ramming attack.

In their coverage of these two terror attacks, several news outlets provided vague headlines that left readers with hazy information as to the nature of these attacks.

In the headlines for their reports on the Jerusalem light rail stabbing attack, both the Associated Press (AP) and Agence France-Presse (AFP) wire services focused on the fate of the terrorist while obscuring the identity of his victim and the nature of his attack….

Here is the AP headline: “In latest violence, Israeli police kill Palestinian teen assailant and West Bank bomb hurts Israelis.” The headline is the killing of the “teen assailant” by the Israeli police, but there is no information given about what the “assailant” had done or about the identity of the person attacked. Might that Palestinian, for example, have been throwing rocks at the police? In fact, he had stabbed an Israeli civilian in the back, in an attempt to kill him. And no mention is made of the assailant’s affiliation with a terror group. It turns out that he was “claimed” by both Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, both groups proud of the teen assailant’s attempt to murder an Israeli and wanting the credit.

That AP headline was then enlarged so as to mention another attack, but again that new part of the headline — “West Bank bomb hurts Israelis” — does not make clear who planted the bomb that wounded those Israelis. Some might even think the bomb belonged to the Israelis and that this was a “work accident.” Why didn’t AP write “Palestinians plant bomb that injures Israelis”?

The AFP headline about the stabbing was this: “Teenage attacker shot dead after Jerusalem stabbing: police.” This was even more vague than the AP headline, not identifying the “teenage attacker” as a Palestinian, not mentioning that his victim was an Israeli, and failing to note that the attack was not personal but, as the Israelis say, “of a nationalistic character,” meaning it was one more attack designed to drive the hated Jews out of “Palestine, from the river to the sea.” AFP could have had as its headline: “Palestinian terrorist stabs Israeli in back, is shot dead by off-duty Border Police officer.”

Perhaps the most egregious (but unsurprising) headline on the Jerusalem attack came from Al Jazeera, which not only omitted the fact that an innocent Israeli had been stabbed in the back but left out any mention of an attack altogether.

For anyone reading the Al Jazeera headline, it would appear as if a random Palestinian teenager was killed by the Israel Police for no reason. This is the perfect example of how the Qatar-funded news organization conceals reality in order to promote its anti-Israel narrative.

Similar to its report on the Jerusalem light rail stabbing attack, AFP’s initial headline on the truck ramming attack was equally vague and uninformative.

Why did the AFP merely report that three people were injured in a truck ramming attack, omitting the fact that the perpetrator was a Palestinian, and that the victims were Israelis?

Even the first paragraph of this AFP report was hazy with the details, merely referring to the attack being committed by a “truck driver” and that “three people”– not “three Israelis” — had been injured.

In its headline, The Guardian not only omitted the fact that the victims were Israelis but even attempted to minimize the nature of the attack by describing it as “Palestinian motorist drives car into pedestrians.” For all the average reader can tell, this is a simple road accident and not the deliberate mowing down of Israelis by a terrorist bent on killing them….

This was no “motorist” who simply lost control of his car, but a terrorist hellbent on killing Israelis by running them down. The Guardian should have written “Palestinian terrorist rams car into Israeli pedestrians, kills one.”

So it will take organizations such as HonestReporting.com and CAMERA.org to continue their difficult and at times exhausting work of constantly monitoring not just the contents of the media stories about Israel and the Palestinians, but also the headlines of those stories, that for 80% of readers constitute all that they will see.

AUTHOR

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

How Green Investors Pay the Media to Promote ‘Climate Change’

A logo for The Associated Press is seen at its headquarters in New York on Tuesday, April 26, 2016. AP’s earnings rose 30 percent last year as the news cooperative recorded a huge tax gain and cut costs to help offset a revenue downturn reflecting the long-running financial woes plaguing newspapers and other media. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)

AP takes millions from groups leveraged in green investments to promote the need for green investments.


The Associated Press revealed last year that it had scored $8 million to promote claims of global warming. The AP impartially described this massive conflict of interest as an illustration of “how philanthropy has swiftly become an important new funding source for journalism”.

“This far-reaching initiative will transform how we cover the climate story,” its executive editor claimed. That is no doubt true. And an incredibly damaging admission.

The philanthropic quid-pro-quo saw five organizations fund the AP’s dedicated team of “more than two dozen journalists” to cover “climate issues” that the wire service would then plant in papers around the country to terrify Americans into supporting ‘green’ taxes and subsidies.

The Associated Press did not bother to explain to its readers or the newspapers that run its stories why these organizations were impelled to throw millions at it except sheer benevolence.

Nor did it explain why they might be particularly interested in convincing Americans that the climate sky is falling and that our economy must be dismantled and ‘greened’: raising energy prices and putting millions out of work. The paragon service of journalism did not even bother explaining to its readers what one of the five, Quadrivium, was beyond a Latin word.

Quadrivium is the pet project of James Murdoch and his wife, the ‘black sheep’ of Clan Murdoch, who left the family business in a huff “due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company’s news outlets“. Quadrivium seeks to reach “a majority of the public” to generate “urgent action” on the bipartisan passage of a US climate strategy.”

The proposed template is the “carbon rebate plan” which would tax Americans through their carbon use and then promise to pay some of the money back to them. The plan comes from the Climate Leadership Council whose board includes Kathryn Murdoch: James’s wife.

CLC’s partners include major banks, JP Morgan, Santander and Goldman Sachs, energy companies, BP, Shell and Conoco, who believe that the proposal will be good for them.

The AP has helpfully promoted the CLC’s carbon tax plan in puff pieces like “Carbon tax plan worthy of bipartisan support”. Its editorial board described the CLC as a “group of venerable Republicans” and claims that taxing Americans for the benefit of special interests would be “a quintessentially conservative plan”. That was a strange new respect from the AP which has relentlessly tried to associate Republicans and conservatives with Nazis.

The “venerable Republicans” currently on CLC’s board include not only Kathryn Murdoch, but also a former Goldman Sachs executive focusing on climate finance, a board member of the Brown Advisory Sustainable Investing Advisory Board and a founding managing partner of “Qiming Venture Partners: one of China’s premier VC firms” that was an early investor in TikTok.

That is what ESG looks like underneath the Gen Z activists being paid to scream in the streets even as the AP is being paid to scream more respectably in stories planted in local papers.

Serious journalism would ask questions or at least mention some of this in passing. The AP instead acts as a mouthpiece without even enough lingering self-respect to disclose any of that.

James Murdoch has put a lot of  money into green projects. His foundation joined a consortium of investors piling into BlackRock’s $250 million climate fund. He’s also on the board of directors of Tesla, and a potential candidate to succeed Musk, and the EV car company’s business model depends on a government subsidized climate panic.

Lupa Systems, Murdoch’s venture capital fund, also has some investments in environmental startups. The AP might have mentioned this to its readers before writing an article congratulating itself for taking cash to promote Murdoch’s views. But it’s not just Murdoch.

The Rockefeller Foundation, which is another of the Big 5 funding AP’s climate propaganda, put $500 million into green energy abroad. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, another of the AP’s climate sugar daddies, has numerous climate initiatives, and these include the Climate Finance Fund. The Foundation refuses to invest in companies that drill for gas or oil.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, set up by the eccentric tycoon as a tax shelter, was quickly hijacked after his death. Delaware, where it was incorporated, appointed a board that sold off Hughes Aircraft to GM. But HMMI’s original emphasis on medical research has more recently declined into wokeness. Last year, HMMI announced a $2 billion investment to increase “diversity” in science. HMI appears to be a major investor in Kreido Biofuels,

And finally there’s the fifth of the AP’s big five climate funders: the Walton Family Foundation.

The foundation of the Walmart heirs has four board members. Lukas Walton, Sam Walton’s grandson, also serves as its Environment Program Committee Chair. Lukas’ $4 billion Builders Version organization directs 90% of its investments into ESG. S2G Ventures, its capital fund, declares that its mission is “investing in a humane and healthy planet.” It has an extensive portfolio of ‘green’ companies including Bluestar Energy Capital, a green energy investment company, Common Energy, a solar power company, Electric Hydrogen, and Carbon America which focuses on carbon capture.

Those investments seem likely to do better if Mr. and Mrs. America, or at least the CEOs and financiers who take the media seriously, keep reading about the threat of “climate change”.

The AP is taking money from organizations heavily leveraged in green investments to promote the need for green investments. And it fails to disclose the financial interests that its funders have in promoting global warming hysteria.

The closest that it gets to addressing the inherent conflict of interest comes when Brian Carovillano, AP’s vice president for grants, concedes that, “this is a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

The AP’s benefit is obvious. What’s the benefit to the donors?

Instead of answering that question, the AP story simply notes that Brian Carovillano had to “get used to the idea that funders weren’t just being generous; they had their own goals to achieve.”

The AP echoes Carovillano’s insistence that the money comes “without strings attached; the funders have no influence on the stories that are done”. Except that the whole point of the grant is for the service to produce stories on the topic that the funders are interested in. Since the AP is not about to report that there are more polar bears than at any time since the 1960s or that climate doomers keep changing the date when everyone will die every few years, the content is predictable. The AP would like to benefit from repeat business from these massive foundations, so it’s going to produce the kinds of stories that will bring more money flowing its way.

That’s the way to maintain the “mutually beneficial arrangement” aimed at helping the Associated Press pay the bills while helping its generous donors fulfill their “goals”.

In recent years, Democrats and the media have targeted conservative groups like the Heartland Institute claiming that they act as “fronts” for oil companies. The AP promoted documents stolen from the Heartland Institute about its funders and has spent years running hit pieces on Heartland without revealing that the wire service is a paid shill for green special interests.

The AP’s arrangement sheds light on the media’s financial agenda in promoting green programs that would destroy the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of Americans. While the media has its biases, these are not wholly organic. The ability of special interests to capture the media at the source by targeting wire services like the AP shows how what we read about the environment is being manipulated by networks of special interests with billions at stake.

The next time you see an AP story about “climate change”, you know who’s paying for it.

Democrats have proposed an investigation of Heartland and the oil companies. It may be time for an investigation of the AP and the financial interests funding its global warming propaganda.

AUTHOR

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Media Tries to Report on Salman Rushdie Stabbing Without Mentioning ‘Islam’

Author Salman Rushdie, who was forced to spend a chunk of his life in hiding because his book, The Satanic Verses, offended Islamic religious authorities in Iran who imposed a murder fatwa on him, was stabbed in the neck and had to be airlifted to a hospital when he was attacked on stage.

 Author Salman Rushdie, being stabbed at an event in New York State on Friday, suffered “10 to 15” blows in the attack, eyewitnesses said. One of them said she thought it was “a stunt” at first.

“This guy ran on to platform and started pounding on Mr Rushdie,” said Rabbi Charles Savenor, who was in the audience for the lecture at Chautauqua Institution, about 100 km from the city.

A reporter from AP said the attacker “punched or stabbed Mr Rushdie 10 to 15 times”.

“At first you’re like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then it became abundantly clear in a few seconds that he was being beaten,” Mr Savenor told the news agency. He said the attack lasted about 20 seconds.

The media, at least in this country, has wrapped itself in knots to avoid using the “I” word.

Back when Rushdie wrote The Satanic Verses, it was controversial. Today, any kind of criticism of Mohammed is considered hate speech and censored to such a degree that the media would not even report what an Indian elected official said about Mohammed’s pedophilic tendencies, only to denounce it as hurtful and hateful to Muslims.

Today, a new author could never publish something like that. And the media is uncomfortable even discussing what it is that Rushdie wrote.

The various condemnations likewise don’t mention Islam, Islamic terrorism or any beyond generic concepts like “freedom of expression.”

Long before this attack, the sharia censorship that Iran wanted to impose on Americans had already been achieved.

AUTHOR

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UK: Muslim stabs his wife in the neck 27 times in front of their children

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

In the Run-Up to the 20th Anniversary of 9/11, Media Pushing Stories About How Muslims Were the Real Victims

My latest in PJ Media:

Saturday marks twenty years since Islamic jihadis attacked New York City and Washington, and the establishment media is doing all it can to ensure that Americans grasp the true significance of those attacks: not that America was hit by a global jihad that has only gained in strength since then and could hit us again, but that Muslims were and are the true victims of that fateful day. In the last few days, the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press have published lengthy pieces to that effect, and more in this vein is certain to come this week.

The LA Times on Friday published a lengthy weeper entitled “Muslim youth in America: A generation shadowed by the aftermath of 9/11,” all about how some people say rude things to innocent Muslims just because some people did something way back two decades ago. The article begins: “On a rainy day during her sophomore year of high school, as Aissata Ba studied in the library, a photo popped into her phone. It showed a beheading by Islamic State militants, along with a caption in red letters: ‘Go back to your country.’” In the big bad, “Islamophobic” USA, the perpetrator of this horror got off scot-free: “Ba reported the incident. Administrators never tracked down the person who sent it.”

Then there was “the boy in sixth grade who would say ‘allahu Akbar,’ Arabic for ‘God is great,’ and throw his backpack near her, pretending it was a bomb.” Actually, “Allahu akbar” means “Allah is greater,” that is, greater than your god; it is a declaration of the superiority of Islam and its victory over other religions, which is why Islamic jihadists so often scream out this phrase while committing acts of violence against unbelievers.

But the Los Angeles Times doesn’t explain any of that; it’s too busy explaining how Muslims are the true victims of the 9/11 attacks: “Asked when they thought such incidents became common, the Ba family didn’t hesitate. ‘It started with 9/11,’ said Ba’s mom, Zeinebou, who immigrated to Chicago in 1999. That day in 2001 caused a chain of tragedies — for the nearly 3,000 people who perished during the attacks in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania; for the young men and women who died serving their country in the wars that followed; and for Muslims, and those perceived as Muslim, who became targets of hate.”

It would be much easier to sympathize with all this if not for the fact that since 9/11, Islamic advocacy groups such as the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), with eager help from the establishment media, have insisted that any honest investigation of the motivating ideology behind the attacks, and jihad terror in general, constituted “hate.” Then there are the numerous fake anti-Muslim hate crimes, fabricated apparently in order to buttress the claim that Muslims are uniquely harassed and victimized in the United States.

There is more. Read the rest here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Can the Hamas-Linked AP Any Longer Be Considered a News Source?

My latest in PJ Media:

The Associated Press (AP) is one of the largest, most respected, most venerable news sources on the planet. It is also increasingly clear that the AP, in these overheated days, has reduced itself to acting as a press agency for Hamas. This tendency has become so pronounced recently that among all the massively biased far-Left propaganda outfits that make up the establishment media, the AP has essentially disqualified itself from being regarded any longer as even close to being a reliable source for news.

The first indication that the AP had run off the rails came during the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas, when Israeli forces bombed a building in Gaza that housed a Hamas operations base and an AP office. The AP protested, claiming that it had no idea, none whatsoever, that it was sharing a building with Hamas, and this organization of intrepid journalists was put into the embarrassing position of having to be informed by Israel’s Ambassador to the United States and the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, about the operations of Hamas right under their noses.

But it’s almost certain that they knew already, and said nothing about Hamas’ presence in their building because of sympathy with the jihad terror organization and a shared antipathy to Israel. This became clear again on July 13, when the AP ran a tear-jerker entitled “Israel bars jailed Palestinian from daughter’s funeral,” claiming: “Israel refused to let a prominent jailed Palestinian lawmaker attend her daughter’s funeral on Tuesday, despite a campaign by activists and human rights groups for her to be released on humanitarian grounds.”

Those terrible Israelis! And it gets even worse. According to the AP article, the “jailed lawmaker” was “Khalida Jarrar, 58, a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” who “has been in and out of Israeli prison in recent years. A military court sentenced her to two years in March for being a member of an outlawed group. With time served, she is set to be released in October.” Her late daughter Suha “worked on issues related to gender and climate change for the Al-Haq human rights group.”

Suha “worked on issues related to gender and climate change”! Why, she was a saint on earth, and the evil Israelis wouldn’t even let her bereaved mother pay her respects! However, the AP left out a few telling details. According to Gidon Ben-zvi in Algemeiner, Suha Jarrar worked for the same terrorist organization of which her mother was a member: “Suha Jarrar worked for al-Haq, a highly controversial organization with ties to the U.S.-designated terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP], of which her mother was a member. Al-Haq has asserted that terrorists have a ‘right’ to receive salaries from the Palestinian Authority.”

There is more. Read the rest here.

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

PODCAST: Taking a Newspaper to Task

It is no secret the main stream media has turned to the Left and actively supports liberal causes. As such, trying to get a conservative comment printed is next to impossible. This was one of the key reasons why I cancelled my subscription to the Tampa Bay Times a couple of years ago and started the Tampa Bay Conservatives web site. Enough is enough.

I am obviously not alone in this regard as I know many conservatives angered by the press. To illustrate, of the people in our Tampa Bay Trump Club, I have yet to meet anyone who subscribes to the Tampa Bay Times. It is simply loathed by conservatives and labeled “Fake News.” I also see this in other newspapers in Democrat-controlled urban strongholds where they pander to the Left, such as Portland, Seattle, Chicago, New York, etc.

I have offered suggestions for “Confronting the News Media,” including picketing and boycotting, but one of the most effective means to protest the media is simply the printed word which, unfortunately, few people use to express their displeasure.

Enter Larry Marlin, an old friend and conservative from Bryan, Texas (near College Station and Texas A & M University). For quite some time, Larry subscribed to the local newspaper, The Bryan-College Station Eagle. However, he began to notice a shift in the editorial slant of the paper and brought it to the attention of the Editor there. Unfortunately, the liberal slant went from bad to worse. Finally, he could stand it no more and wrote the following letter recently to the newspaper which I found particularly interesting:

Dear Editorial Board:

Since August 10th, I have kept copies of your newspaper and reviewed them for bias. As you may recall, you printed a letter I wrote saying most of “The Eagle” bias comes from your Associated Press articles. I later wrote a letter saying I had been mistaken and your paper was rife with bias. The second letter was based on material you printed after being “woke” by BLM and the rest of the “protesters.” You did not print that letter. I did say I was not a member of the “cancel culture” and, rather than cancel my subscription, I would see if your paper made any effort to reduce bias.

I have reviewed each issue since 8/10. You have not improved. If anything, you have gotten worse. During the period 8/10 through 9/4 you have printed 28 left wing editorials and 9 right wing ones. In editorial cartoons you did better with 5 right wing and 3 left wing. Concerning the cartoons, it is interesting that several days after Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s hypocritical visit to get her hair washed, you finally printed something about it in a cartoon relegated to the bottom of the editorial page. Other than that, as near as I can tell, you completely ignored the story.

Of course, your AP articles continue to be overwhelmingly left wing. I have not seen any indication of an attempt on your part to reduce this left wing bias. I doubt you have contacted AP concerning their outrageously dishonest presentations of the news. I don’t have time to list all the left-biased articles by AP. I would mention Steve People’s articles about the Democrat convention compared to his articles about the Republican convention — day and night.

Anyway, I will be cancelling my subscription. I just can’t imagine you will ever change. Should you surprise me and decide to make needed changes such as blasting AP, hiring a few conservatives, balancing your editorials, writing more unifying local editorials, or anything else please let me know. I might resubscribe.

Sincerely,
Lawrence P. Marlin*
Sep 4, 2020

What I liked about this letter is that it wasn’t ranting and raving, but rather, a matter-of-fact dissertation as to why someone was unsubscribing. If I was the Editor, I would consider it carefully and not dismiss it out of hand as it represents a legitimate concern of a reader. If Larry’s data is correct, the Editor should now realize his slip is showing and should take steps to correct it before all of his conservative readers abandon him. The reality though is, as a supporter of the far-Left, the Editor couldn’t care less and is willing to sacrifice readership to preserve the Left’s dogma. This is essentially no different than the attitude of the mayors of Democrat controlled cities where their citizen’s lives and businesses are threatened. This, of course, is reckless behavior and speaks volumes of their priorities of choosing Democrat policies over the safety and well-being of their citizens.

Larry’s letter also happens to make a handy template for writing your own letter to other newspapers. For those of you who have difficulty penning a Letter to the Editor, simply copy Larry’s letter, update it with data specific to your area and send it in (preferably by e-mail). If enough people complain of the unfair tactics of the press, the better the chances of getting some honest news reporting. To do nothing is to surrender to the press.

I’ll leave it with you.

(* Letter written with the permission of the author)

Keep the Faith!

P.S. – Also, I have a NEW book, “Before You Vote: Know How Your Government Works”, What American youth should know about government, available in Printed, PDF and eBook form. This is the perfect gift for youth!

EDITORS NOTE: This Bryce is Right podcast is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All trademarks both marked and unmarked belong to their respective companies.

University of Florida Prof Hails Caliphate as ‘Historic Institution’ That ISIS Is ‘Hijacking’

My latest in PJ Media:

University of Florida professor Ken Chitwood wrote Wednesday in the Associated Press’ commentary section, “The Conversation,” that “the Islamic State tries to boost its legitimacy by hijacking a historic institution.” He then provided a drive-by overview of the history of various Islamic caliphates, so whitewashed as to rival the Washington Post’s famous characterization of Islamic State (ISIS) caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in misleading duplicity. Even worse, Chitwood tells us that “as a scholar of global Islam, every time I teach my ‘Introduction to Islam’ class,” he teaches this nonsense to his hapless University of Florida students. No surprise there, given the fact that most universities today are little more than Antifa recruitment centers.

“Under Umar,” Chitwood writes blandly, “the caliphate expanded to include many regions of the world such as the lands of the former Byzantine and Sassanian empires in Asia Minor, Persia and Central Asia.”

Yeah, uh, Professor Chitwood, how exactly did that “expansion” occur? In reality, beyond the pseudo-academic whitewash and fantasy that Chitwood purveys, the caliphates always behaved much like the Islamic State, because they were all working from the same playbook. The true, bloody history of the caliphates can be found, detailed from Islamic sources, in the only complete history of 1,400 years of jihad violence, The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS.

The word khalifa means “successor”; the caliph in Sunni Islamic theology is the successor of Muhammad as the military, political, and spiritual leader of the Muslims. The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS demonstrates that the great caliphates of history, from the immediate post-Muhammad period of the “Rightly Guided Caliphs” to the Umayyads, Abbasids, and Ottomans, as well as other Islamic states, all waged relentless jihad warfare against non-Muslims, subjugating them under the rule of Islamic law and denying them basic rights.

These weren’t the actions of a “tiny minority of extremists,” abhorred by the vast majority of peaceful Muslims for “hijacking” their religion, as Ken Chitwood would have you believe. This was, for fourteen centuries, mainstream, normative Islam, carried forth by the primary authorities in the Islamic world at the time. The accounts of eyewitnesses and contemporary chroniclers through the ages show that in every age and in every place where there were Muslims, some of them believed that they had a responsibility given to them by Allah to wage war against and subjugate unbelievers under the rule of Islamic law.

And so it is today: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi enunciated that responsibility more clearly and directly than most Muslim spokesmen do these days, but he is by no means the only one who believes that it exists.

There is much more. Read the rest here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

A Legacy of Propaganda

We’ve seen the way the Associated Press skews its commentaries, and this latest approach to delegitimize the State of Israel is to challenge her democratic values amid an expanse of dictatorships. After Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election to his post of Prime Minister, Dan Perry, AP’s Middle East editor, writes, “with the occupation of the West Bank grinding on toward the half-century mark, and with Netanyahu’s election-week statement that no change is imminent, hard questions arise.” His question and answer are, “Is Israel a democracy?  The answer is not so straightforward.”

Editor Perry’s premise is an immediate indictment against Israel, crafted to set the reader’s mind in motion to join in the attack.  Surely, he calculatedly omits the history that explains why these Arabs (now renamed Palestinians) remain in the West Bank.  Not only did he fail to recap that it was because Israel was attacked by Jordan and won that war that she acquired this territory, but he also excluded the fact that Israel offered land for peace on eleven separate occasions. The Palestinian leaders emphatically rejected the idea. Their strategy was to keep these Palestinians as pawns for as long as it takes to change world opinion and paint Israel as the aggressor and punishing “occupier,” until they succeed in hijacking all of Israel for Islam.

Thus, these Palestinians became the world’s eternal ‘victims” of oppression, set up to receive perpetual support monies from the United Nations, Europe, America, and Israel, even as the original victims have long been replaced by succeeding generations. Meanwhile, the new Palestinians wage evermore-creative wars against Israel, including increasingly lethal rocket and human attacks; and myriad propagandist accusations of apartheid, illegal housing and roads; accusing Israelis of causing floods, droughts, and shortages. One effective accusation was the Jenin “Massacre that wasn’t,” when the majority of 52 dead were combatants, and Doctors Without Borders confirmed that Palestinians had disinterred old corpses for authentic scenography.

is dollPerry doesn’t remind his readers that just as non-citizens’ living outside of America have no voting rights within America, so non-citizen Palestinians’ living outside of Israel have no voting rights in Israel. The two million Palestinian Arabs who are citizens of Israel, of course, have the same voting rights as other Israelis, Jew and non-Jew alike.  If these Palestinian Arabs ever show themselves to be civilized enough to lay down their weapons and seek peace, and to create their own democratic state, they may one day be able to vote for their own leadership. Unfortunately, Palestinian parents and teachers are coaching their small children to hate and to kill – to even practice beheading skills on dolls.  Surveys show that the majority of Muslims worldwide prefers Islamic law, Sharia, which is antithetical to democracy, so that these long suffering people will be more harshly ruled than ever by their authoritarian clergy and perhaps never experience an authentic election.

The author makes at least three off-the-wall accusations that show a decided, preconceived effort to blemish the Jewish state.

  • The first was his expectation that non-citizens have the right to vote in their occupiers’ elections.  When the United States and our allies occupied Japan and Germany after winning the Second World War (and the U.S. still maintains military bases in Japan), neither Axis voted in the elections of the victors.
  • The third bears mention because it is so ludicrous.  Perry must accuse Israel as “indirectly” dominating Gaza because Israel completely vacated Gaza in 2005.  Gazan Palestinians are occupied and dominated by Hamas, terrorists whose activities consistently put the civilians in harm’s way and inhibit the potential for democracy.

gazaSecond, Perry claimed that Israelis are concerned that the West Bank Palestinians have no voting rights for Israel’s parliament. There are no such foolhardy concerns. The West Bank is Judea and Samaria, long acknowledged as the original Jewish homeland by the United Nations. Israelis know the unfeasibility of a two-state solution as long as the Palestinians adamantly maintain their enemy status. A handshake for peace requires two hands.

Associated Press is notorious for its false accusations against Israel, America’s ally, while defending Islamic countries, those that produce terrorists who maim, kill, and enslave innocents by the thousands, the same countries that vow Israel’s and America’s destruction. Perry is one of numerous unethical journalists who are willfully dishonest and unreliable. They use selective inattention (or willful blindness) straight from the Muslim playbook. Rather than write that the Arab nations control their people to such a degree that torture and death are commonplace, that hangings and beheadings are done in the public arena, that children begin their lessons of hate and acceptance of death with Kindergarten, he falsely accuses Israel of violating human rights.

One can’t help but wonder if these degenerate journalists comply with Associated Press’s directives to consciously misrepresent the facts for their own biases or gain, or that they are habitual liars who actually come to believe the untruths they spew. Contrary to what Perry himself concluded, I think the answer is quite straightforward.  They are in collusion: it is AP and its journalists.

Dissociated Press

Associated Press (AP), one of the largest and most trusted sources of independent news gathering, reported “Israeli house strikes killed mostly civilians.” It reported 247 airstrikes (bombings) in Gaza during the summer of 2014, killing 840. Of that number, 508 (60%) were civilians, 96 (11%) were terrorists, and 240 (29%) remained uncharacterized. The failure to seek identification of the “uncharacterized” reveals a scheme to re-engineer the outcome, and a flawed count can only lead to a flawed conclusion.

AP professes a commitment to the highest standards of objective, accurate journalism over the past 165 years. It employs the latest technology to collect and distribute news and photos, with a 24-hour update process, and has one of the largest collections of historical and contemporary imagery. Headquartered in New York, it operates in more than 180 locations worldwide, including every US statehouse, and has won 51 Pulitzer Prizes since the prize’s establishment in 1917.

Regrettably, the wire services, which include AP, Reuters, and similar sources of news for broadcast, print media, and on-line news, are responsible for the blatant lies peddled and truths compromised when the original story opposes the Arab Muslim narratives. A recent example was an international wire service report that accused Israel of releasing water to deliberately flood the Gaza Valley, destroying houses and causing hundreds of Gazans to flee. When caught in this lie, Daily Mail apologized and clarified that there are no dams in southern Israel, that the flooding was caused by unusually heavy rain and drainage issues. Al Jazeera retracted its statements and the photos of rushing waters. Similarly, Reuters had been found guilty of switching photos or cropping photo edges, such as when they excluded weapons held by activists aboard the Mavi Marmara during the Gaza flotilla raid. This is serious treachery.

We have now learned that the 240 “uncharacterized” males were indeed terrorists (ages 16-59), changing the total from 96 to 336 terrorists (40%), not an unusual ratio of women and children to terrorists, as these poor victims are customarily used as human shields, whether alongside the rocket sites or within the buildings. Hamas often secretes rockets and explosives in residential homes, which certainly contributes to the civilian casualty count. AP never reports Israel’s warnings to civilians to evacuate residential areas, never cites Israel’s casualties, and never reveals that the strikes are always retaliatory for wars begun by the Arabs.

AP has repeatedly sought to discredit Israel by accusing her armed forces of conducting disproportional warfare against Palestinians, when no war or sport has ever been fought for an equal outcome. From 2001 to July 2014, Palestinians have conducted a war of terror, resulting in psychological trauma (PTSD) to more than 50% of the children and depression and miscarriages to adults, and using more sophisticated rockets (some containing white phosphorous) to reach larger cities. AP did not propose that Israel conduct a comparable rocket attack into Gaza for the sake of proportionality, or suggest Israel bomb Palestinian school buses, or advocate that Israel dig an equivalent number of terror tunnels leading to Palestinian children’s schools and dormitories when Hamas’s were discovered.

In an attempt to further paint Israel as the aggressor, AP incorporates “evidence” to accuse Israel of intentionally targeting civilians. Hence, it presented the fatality figures of 844 against the backdrop of 247 air strikes, an equation of 3.4 people per bombing when, in fact, Israel actually made 20,000 air strikes, thereby achieving a .04 fatality figure per bombing. These percentages verify that AP’s reporters script deceptive, damaging information and that Israel does its utmost to avoid civilian casualties. Israel’s record is in fact, unparalleled.

AP also failed to provide comparative analyses, such as how these numbers match up to other wars and air strikes conducted in urban areas. Withheld information is as dishonest and harmful as erroneous information. In fact, investigative journalist Richard Behar’s studies of conflicts since World War II show that the norm of fatalities is 85 to 90 percent civilian. We might well be reminded of Germans’ killing 28,000 civilians in the London Blitz; Allies’ killing 25,000 civilians when they bombed Dresden and destroyed the Nazi industrial center; our killing 130,000 civilians with our nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, which brought about Japan’s unconditional surrender and peace.

The United Nations’ figures cited at least 1,483 Gazan Palestinian civilians killed, with an overall death toll of 2,205, the balance being militants, with the source of information being Hamas-controlled Gazan Health Ministry. AP actually did have access to figures from a trustworthy, private research institute in Israel, Meir Amit Intelligence and Information Center, but chose not to avail itself of them – although they do sort through their information if they can contribute to a war crimes accusation against Israel.

Oddly, throughout the world, Imams spew hate and incite to kill from their mosque podiums. Muslims murder Jews and Christians because of their religion or, as with Charlie Hebdo, because of cartoons against their prophet. Muslims (Hamas) fire deadly rockets for (Israeli) territory. Muslims (ISIS) chop off people’s heads and burn others alive, and just kidnapped 90 Christians. Muslims (Boko Haram) kidnapped young girls for sexual slavery and buried some alive. Muslims (Chechens) beheaded Russian soldiers and attacked, kidnapped and killed children and school staff. Muslims appear to have reached the percentage at which they are now capable of conquest of the Nordic countries, and the natives are committing cultural suicide without a fight. And we know of this through AP. Yet AP continues its deception as well as its unparalleled accusations not against Muslims, but against Israel primarily.

Not only has Associated Press become known for its sloppy, dishonest and unreliable reporting, but it has also been accused of biased reporting on the Middle East by its own journalists. Indictments included story-lines showing Arabs and Palestinians to be entirely blameless and Israel fully culpable; refusing to print a 2008 Israeli peace proposal when it would have verified Israel’s desire for peace; and killing a story that would have shown Israel appropriately.

It is time these wire services were rewired to overhaul their failed policies, and return to responsible, honest journalism.