Unbiased about the Holocaust?

It sure was formulated rather delicately on the BBC website:

Hamas condemns Holocaust lessons: Gaza's ruling Islamist movement Hamas has resisted suggestions that Palestinian children should be taught about the Holocaust in UN-run schools."

 
The report went on to explain that the head of the education committee in Gaza had declared "that the Holocaust was a 'big lie'" and "that to teach it would be to 'grant a big favour' to Israel."

The BBC also reported that the UN, which runs most schools in Gaza and teaches some 200,000 children there, relies primarily on Egyptian textbooks but "has added its own coursework about human rights." According to the BBC, the UN has now consulted with local groups regarding "whether the Holocaust should be taught."

Well, one might wonder whether the head of the education committee, who describes the Holocaust as a "big lie," is a graduate of Gaza's UN-run schools. One might also wonder how many UN-employed educators in Gaza share his views, and how many of these educators - and how many of their UN employers - realize the irony in the fact that adding "coursework about human rights" was apparently uncontroversial, while "suggestions" that lessons about the Holocaust be added elicited indignant protests.

The blood libel 'Kultur'

Few readers of the Israeli or Jewish media will have missed the reports about a recent article in a Swedish tabloid that accused Israel of abducting and killing Palestinian civilians to harvest their organs.

Since the story broke last week, a number of interesting commentaries have been written; among the most worthwhile to check out is Barry Rubin's post, which includes several updates on additional developments and information.

I must confess that I was struck by a perhaps rather marginal aspect of the story: the fact that the article was published in the "Kultur" section of the paper. There may be some entirely mundane reasons for this arguably odd placement, but I felt that by publishing the article in the "Kultur" section, the paper's editors had - probably unwittingly - made a very fitting choice.

Israel, war crimes and the media

When it comes to accusing Israel of war crimes, you don't have to go looking for the international headlines. It's a very different matter when Israel defends itself against such accusations, or when Israel's enemies are accused of war crimes.

What do you know - it only took a few years and some ten thousand rocket and mortar attacks on Israel for Human Rights Watch (HRW) to come out with the statement:

Hamas forces violated the laws of war both by firing rockets deliberately or indiscriminately at Israeli cities and by launching them from populated areas and endangering Gazan civilians."

Indeed, HRW even got around to devoting a slim report to the "Rockets from Gaza", and this report acknowledges:

Since 2001, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Gaza have fired thousands of rockets deliberately or indiscriminately at civilian areas in Israel. ...Palestinian rocket attacks... are an ongoing threat to the nearly 800,000 Israeli civilians who live and work in range of the rockets. ...Statements from the leaders of Hamas and other armed groups indicate that many of these attacks are deliberately intended to strike Israeli civilians and civilian structures. Individuals who willfully authorize or carry out deliberate or indiscriminate attacks against civilians are committing war crimes."

Of course, since the media aren't all that interested in Palestinian war crimes, this report wasn't really global front page news.

Peace for our time

The newly published Global Peace Index makes for curious reading, considering the very long list of countries supposedly more peaceful than Israel.

Let's imagine you're an Israeli who feels a bit queasy about the country's security situation, the ever present danger of war and the lack of peace. Maybe you're wondering if you should look for a place that's a bit safer, a bit more peaceful?

It's easy enough to find out what the experts would advise: just consult this year's Global Peace Index, released by the widely respected Vision of Humanity group. In the report, 144 countries are ranked according to how "peaceful" they are.

If you're looking for Israel on this list, you'll have to scroll down all the way to the very bottom, to number 141. Yeah, that's right: only in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq are things worse, peace-wise, apparently.

The 'Israeli Apartheid' gospel

Advertised as "The new book by Ben White" on a website dedicated to marketing "Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide," everything seems skillfully designed to appeal both to dedicated Israel-bashers and newcomers eager to learn the basics. Those who have never heard of Ben White, a young Cambridge graduate with a BA in English Literature, will certainly be impressed by the long list of prominent people he could get to endorse his first book that has nothing whatsoever to do with anything he studied: Ben White's efforts to spread the idea that Israel should be denounced and opposed as an "apartheid state" are warmly praised by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the historian Ilan Pappe, and a number of well-known academics and writers as well as political and religious personalities.

Is Obama anti-Israel?

A recent Jerusalem Post-sponsored poll showed that only 6 percent of Jewish Israelis consider the Obama administration as "pro-Israel," while 50 percent believe that Obama's policies reflect a "pro-Palestinian" stance and 36 percent see the policies as "neutral."

There is of course a noisy chorus of merry voices that cheer Obama's "tough love" for Israel and the shouts for "more" and "tougher, much tougher" are all over the media - and no doubt there is a dimension to it that has very little to do with sober political analysis. Indeed, it's hard to avoid the impression that at a time when there is no shortage of serious foreign policy challenges for the Obama administration, their determined fight against even one more brick in any Israeli building anywhere beyond the line that separated Israel and the Jordanian-occupied West Bank before 1967 attracts a rather disproportionate amount of media coverage.

Amalek and Der Spiegel

No doubt, when it comes to demonizing Israel, the race is on - though it's not entirely clear if the finish line is set at the bottom of journalism or the height of hypocrisy. In any case, here is a strong contender: under the title "Potential for Apocalypse," the German news magazine Der Spiegel asked on Monday: "Is War between Iran and Israel Inevitable?" The lead-in for the long essay of some 4400 words provides a sensationalist summary to whet the appetite of readers:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may seem very different, but they are united in their apocalyptic religious visions. Their respective beliefs may be propelling them on a collision course with potentially horrific consequences."

I rubbed my eyes in disbelief, and read it again, and again - but that's what it says: Bibi Netanyahu, the secular prime minister of a secular democracy, has "apocalyptic religious visions" that somehow "unite" him with the Holocaust-denying, fanatically religious Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who recently "won" re-election by "divine assessment," because the "supreme leader" of the Iranian mullahcracy said so.

'Israel is the key'

Who won the elections in Iran? Well, whoever won, Ahmadinejad was officially declared the winner, and once Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, described this result as a "divine assessment," it didn't take long for somewhat more mundane assessments to appear:

The most obvious winner is Israel's right-wing Likud government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. There was never the slightest indication that a Mousavi victory would lead Iran to dial back its program for enriching uranium and, potentially, building nuclear weapons. And Israelis see that program as a threat to their existence, no matter who is president of Iran. But Mousavi's touchy-feely image as a moderate reformist would have clouded the issue, obscuring the potential dangers as the Israelis see them, and making it harder, politically, for Netanyahu to keep open the option of a military attack to set back the nuclear program."

The Muslim world's anti-imperialists

President Obama's speech in Cairo has been debated already long before it was given, and there was a veritable tsunami of commentary afterwards. Some of the critical commentaries were in my view off the mark because they ignored the fact that this was a speech given by an American president who decided to go to an Arab capital to address the Muslim world in a quest for improved mutual understanding. Of course one can disagree with the notion that it is indeed America that should plead for better mutual understanding. As former secretary of state Madeleine Albright emphasized:

To most Americans, the idea that our country is attacking Islam or that we view the Islamic faith as an enemy is absurd. The first Gulf War was a response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of a neighboring Arab country. On 9/11, America was the victim, not the aggressor. In Iraq, President Bush's rationale for regime change, though misguided, was hardly anti-Islamic. US leaders can't be held accountable for what some writers say in order to scare people and sell books. What is more, in the 1990s, America twice led NATO into conflicts on behalf of Muslim populations - first in Bosnia, then Kosovo."

The UN hypocrites' council

An investigation initiated by the UN Human Rights Council to examine allegations about war crimes committed during the recent war in Gaza will begin this week, as widely reported. In order to fully appreciate the implications of this endeavor, some other recent news reports should be taken into account. Consider this report from the London Times:

Confidential United Nations documents...record nearly 7,000 civilian deaths in the no-fire zone up to the end of April. UN sources said that the toll then surged, with an average of 1,000 civilians killed each day until May 19...That figure concurs with the estimate made ... by Father Amalraj, a Roman Catholic priest who fled the no-fire zone on May 16 and is now interned with 200,000 other survivors in Manik Farm refugee camp. It would take the final toll above 20,000. 'Higher,' a UN source told The Times. 'Keep going':