CNN Israel Fired all Jewish Journalists - BDS conference at Penn met my worst expectations - ‘Haram’ to accept Israel, says Hadi

Source: Dreuz Info
Jean-Patrick Grumberg 

Update at 8:30 PST: we just received the names of the four journalists that were fired:


Moshe Cohen, editor, fired on january 30, 10 years with CNN.


Izi Landberg, Producer, about 25 years with CNN, fired on January 30.


Avi Kanner cameraman fired on january 30, 10 years with CNN.
Michal Zippori desk producer, situation still unclear.


The media scandal that you are about to read was revealed to us by a totally reliable source.


It is likely to provoke a wave of shock and indignation within the North American media industry, and it certainly will not calm down the controversy over the pro-palestinian CNN treatment of the conflict.


We learned today that the Israeli branch of CNN, located in Jerusalem, is downsizing to cope with reduced income from less advertising.

What goes beyond good management is that CNN has fired four Israeli Jewish journalists (out of a crew of 8), and has retained only Arab journalists. Where, until now, CNN always sent a Jewish and an Arab journalist to cover information, now there will be only an Arab journalist. The local chief editor of the News Chanel is now Arabic.

This is a conflict where information is central to public opinion, and it weighs a lot on diplomatic decisions. Furthermore, it is no secret that Arab journalists cannot freely publish what they want without risking for their own lives when traveling to Gaza, East Jerusalem, and Judea Samaria. Thus, CNN decision to fire all Jewish journalists from its Jerusalem office is of particular concern, because the general public is unaware that they will be receiving biased information from CNN.
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On February 13, 2012, I received the following email from Lauren Cone of CNN PR.  Please read the following exchange and draw your own conclusion:

Michelle,

With regard to your article, “CNN Israel fired all Jewish journalists”, I would like to offer you CNN’s official response.  Please update your post to include our statement, which is pasted below and also found here. Please note it has already been given to Jean Patrick Grumberg at Dreuz.info, where this misleading article originated.

In response to inaccurate reports, CNN has strongly denied since Friday rumors that it no longer employs Israeli Jews in its Jerusalem bureau. The company has said:

"CNN has recently reviewed its worldwide operations, an exercise we do regularly to ensure operational and technological efficiency in everything we do. As part of this exercise, we have reorganized the CNN bureau in Jerusalem."

To counter misinformation reported on various websites, the company has confirmed:

"CNN currently has seven employees working in CNN's Jerusalem bureau, four of whom are Jewish. There is no basis in fact for these reports."

"Some website reports also state that CNN's Jerusalem bureau chief is Arab, which is also untrue."

"CNN strongly rejects any suggestion that the reorganization in the Jerusalem bureau is in any way based on the small number of contract employees concerned being Israeli, particularly given CNN’s long history of working with locals in the region."

Best,

Lauren Cone

CNN PR

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Hi Lauren!

Thank you for the update.  

Please provide the names of the Jewish journalists working for CNN in Jerusalem.  Please specify whether Moshe Cohen,

Izi Landberg, Avi Kanner and Michal Zippori are still employed by CNN. If not, please explain why.

Please provide the name of the bureau chief.

I will include all of the above information. 

Thank you,

Michelle Cohen

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Hi Michelle - 

Kevin Flower is the bureau chief at CNN Jerusalem. 

We don’t comment on specific individuals involved in personnel decisions.

Best, 

Lauren

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Hi Lauren!

Well, then how can I trust that the article CNN has provided to counteract the previous article is true?

The names of CNN journalists working in Jerusalem ought to be made public.

Best regards,

Michelle

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To which I received no reply.

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BDS conference at Penn met my worst expectations

At the BDS conference at Penn, Tighe Barry of Washington, D.C. addresses a question to keynote speaker Ali Abunimah, a co-founder of Electric Intifada.
photo/peter tobia

Source: J Weekly
By Guy Herschmann 

Toward the end of last week, I flew from the Bay Area to Philadelphia for the national BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) conference at the University of Pennsylvania, curious to see whether it would be as extreme as many had warned. I also hoped to meet some cooler-headed attendees who were seeking ways to promote peaceful coexistence.


Instead, I heard lies and old anti-Semitic canards. Palestinian terrorism was swept away. Israel was demonized and accused of blood libels. The idea of compromise and peaceful coexistence was deplored.


Approximately 150 to 200 people attended each session over the three-day conference, with the number swelling to 400 for the keynote speech by Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electric Intifada.


The majority of attendees were beyond their college years, with a smaller number of students. Not one participant asked a question from Israel’s point of view; not one challenged the blood libels that I heard. It’s clear to me now that the purpose of this conference was to instill hostility against Israel, and then to call for its punishment.


The film shown at the pre-reception, “The Road to Apartheid,” set the tone for the weekend. The filmmaker used visual manipulation — splitting the screen with documentary footage of South African black-white struggles next to footage of Israel Defense Forces actions in the West Bank — in an effort to associate Israeli policies with apartheid. The scenes looked similar, as shots of violent conflicts between any groups would. But the filmmaker scrupulously erased context for Israel’s actions, such as the Palestinian terrorist war.


Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, spoke by videotape, exhorting the audience to “end your complicity” with Israel’s “apartheid regime” because doing so “is a profound, moral obligation.”


In the opening address, Susan Abulhawa, a U.S.-based author of Palestinian descent, distorted history, ignoring Palestinian and Arab wars against Israel, instead accusing Israel of committing “wholesale slaughter.” She urged extremism. Her passionate call for “justice without compromise or negotiations” had the dismantling of the Jewish state as a necessary outcome. The “no compromise” language exposed the BDS movement’s fundamental opposition to two states living side-by-side, and the hypocrisy of their claim that they are trying to uphold human rights and international law.


In Abunimah’s keynote speech, he absurdly charged that “Nakba denial is the equivalent of Holocaust denial.” The audience responded with enthusiastic applause. He indulged in classic anti-Semitic imagery. “Israelis as human beings don’t have a right to superiority.”


Abunimah claimed that an Israeli settler had killed a Palestinian teenager, Yousef al-Khalil, while he was innocently working alongside his father in their fields. I checked out that story further, and even the far left B’Tselem information agency reported that Khalil and a friend had been hurling rocks at an Israeli hiker who said he was forced to shoot in self-defense.


Abunimah’s distortion was typical of the charges made over the weekend. Isolated incidents that occurred in ambiguous circumstances were repeatedly used to portray Palestinian violence as peaceful activity and Israeli self-defense as cruel aggression.


In the other sessions, this pattern of distortion continued. The themes were often variations of anti-Semitic accusations. At a panel titled “A Faith-Based Approach to BDS,” the Rev. Graylan Hagler, national president of Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice, told a questioner that “one of the things I am constantly doing is trying to disengage Christians from Hebrew Scripture.”


Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb from Jewish Voice for Peace was no more sympathetic to Jews than Hagler. She boasted about the delegation she had led to Iran to speak with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and declared that “no war, no sanctions for Iran” is part of the BDS movement. She indulged in the canard of Jewish superiority, saying that “we Jewish people have to de-privilege ourselves.” Cyrus McGoldrick from the Council on American-Islamic Relations claimed that “Zionism depends on Islamophobia.”


As a college student, I was especially shocked by a Q&A during the academic boycott breakout session. A man who identified himself as a scholar and teacher asked how BDS could be incorporated into the classroom, “especially when the course is not dealing directly with material that has to do with Palestine.” A professor on the panel offered suggestions about how to do so.


I was stunned by the devious nature of this recommended tactic. I was stunned that faculty were encouraged to devise ways to indoctrinate their unsuspecting captive audience of students in any and all classrooms. This strategy to exploit the classroom struck me as an inevitable result of BDS’ distortion of liberal values.


I did not find anyone who wanted to build bridges. Instead, I found people who call themselves human rights activists preaching against the only free society in the Middle East. I found “social justice” advocates denying justice for Jews.

Guy Herschmann is a senior at U.C. Santa Cruz and the campus professional for StandWithUs in Northern California and Western Canada.














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‘Haram’ to accept Israel, says Hadi

Source: The Malaysian Insider 
By Shazwan Mustafa Kamal 

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 11 — PAS will not accept any efforts to recognise Israel as a sovereign state as its very existence is “haram” (illegal), Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang has said. 


The PAS president charged that the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, an initiative accepted by the Arab world, Malaysia as well as the Islamist party’s ally PKR went against Islamic principles. 


PAS, along with PKR and DAP make up Malaysia’s opposition coalition. 


“It is haram to accept the existence of a haram nation (Israel.) PAS, a party founded on Islamic principles reject the two-state solution, one for Palestine and one for Israel for the Zionist Jews. 


“For us, only one country has rights and that is Palestine,” he said in a blog posting which was picked up by Umno daily Utusan Malaysia. 


Abdul Hadi’s remarks are directly opposed to PKR defacto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who had during a recent Wall Street Journal interview expressed support for “all efforts to protect the security of the state of Israel.” 


Anwar has clarified his remarks by saying he was referring to a “two-state solution”, and that his support was also contingent on Israel respecting the aspirations of Palestinians. 


Abdul Hadi (picture) said today that Palestine, being one of the three holy lands for Muslims, did not just belong to the Palestinians, and that all Muslims had a religious duty to ensure the state’s sovereignty and independence. 


“The country named Israel did not exist when Allah created this earth. It was created illegally after World War Two... this country is by Islamic law and by international law illegal, as it pillages land from its original people and ousts them from their home,” he said. 


“For Muslims, it is a duty to free Palestine and to champion the oppressed,” added the Marang MP. 


Anwar came under heavy fire from Umno and its media after his statement was published by the Wall Street Journal. 


Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed labelled Anwar a Jewish sympathiser and a leader who disregarded the plight of the Palestinians for making such remarks. 


The opposition leader was forced to defend himself by stressing that his remarks in the newspaper meant that he supported a two-state solution, which he said was mentioned by Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Anifah Aman when the latter addressed the United Nations General Assembly in September last year. 


But Anifah responded by saying Anwar’s interview “clearly shows full support for all actions taken by Israel to protect its security, unless he is accusing the Wall Street Journal of making a mistake.” 


Muslim-majority Malaysia is a staunch supporter of Palestine and has no diplomatic ties with Israel. 


Muslim politicians have long vied for support from Malays by denouncing what they say are inhumane acts of aggression by Israel towards its neighbour. 


Anwar has previously been attacked as a supporter of the Zionist movement due to his interaction with prominent Jewish figures in the West. 


But the opposition leader turned the tables on Umno and Barisan Nasional in 2010 when he claimed public relations firm APCO Worldwide, then contracted by Putrajaya, was responsible for both the 1 Malaysia and 1 Israel campaigns.