30-Jul-18: Neither Ahed's gaze nor her ideas are the problem – it’s what others do with them

Monday's media focus on Ahed Tamimi was wide, attentive - and
spectacularly shallow [Image Source]

A slightly different version of the opinion piece by Arnold Roth, below, was published today [online here] by the Jerusalem Post. It was solicited, we think, to be one of the alternative voices in the context of the wide and largely depressing current news reporting around the release from prison of Ahed Tamimi on July 29, 2018.

More horror than heroism
Arnold Roth

My sweet-natured daughter Malki, brimming with empathy and generosity toward others, always with a smile on her face, was 15 when she was murdered in the Sbarro pizzeria massacre seventeen years ago this week.

The experience of losing her, of trying to rebalance my life and my family’s and of trying to make sense of the reactions of other people has shaped much of what I believe about terrorism.

We know who plotted the Sbarro barbarism. It was not Ahed Tamimi. But when her clan, the Tamimis of Nabi Saleh, get together to celebrate it as we know they do, she is an enthusiastic participant.

In a village where almost everyone is related by blood and (yes, and) marriage, Ahed is a cousin of Ahlam Tamimi in multiple ways. Ahlam now lives free in Jordan. She boasts that she chose the site for the explosion, seeking to kill as many Jewish children as possible, and planted the human bomb. Via social media, public speeches and (for 5 years) her own TV program, she urges others to follow her lead.

When Ahlam married Nizar Tamimi ["22-Jun-12: A wedding and what came before it"], also a murderer from the village, a few months after both walked free in the Shalit Deal, Ahed was there to dance and gaze adoringly at the bride.

But neither her gaze nor her ideas are the problem. It’s what others do with them.

Ahed’s parents make a living from propagandizing against Israel. They fashioned and groomed Ahed ["24-Dec-17: Nabi Saleh, the media and a Tamimi child's journey"], leveraging her blondeness, pushing her into staged conflicts with Israeli soldiers from when she was 10, deliberately putting her at real risk on a weekly basis for years, long before she had the ability to discern what was being done to her.

Though all they had to go by was mostly-staged images of her thrusting fists at Israeli soldiers, too many reporters and editors responded (and still do) with absurd comparisons to Joan of Arc and Malala.

On the day of the slapping/kicking incident that led to her facing Israeli charges, Ahed’s mother pointed one of her cameras at the girl. She told her to speak to the world. And she did. The girl’s message was angry, urging anti-Israel violence and more conflict.

Though published and promoted by advocates of the Israeli cause, what Ahed said in that clip was largely ignored. As if she had said nothing. Its harsh reality was and still is denied.

The weaponization of Palestinian Arab children by their own society, even by their own families, is so incomprehensible to outsiders that it seems many deny its reality for that reason alone.

They deny what Ahed symbolizes too: identification with the vicious murderers in her own clan, with explosive rage, with a horrifying zealotry that brings people to push their society’s innocent children into the front lines. The Palestinian Arabs have many needs but what this girl stands for – more anger, more bitterness, more failure – delivers nothing of value to them.

They don’t hear this from the news industry - the reporters and editors who have built a podium for Ahed Tamimi and her enablers.

They don’t hear it either from their own utterly failed leadership who exploit Ahed Tamimi as another cheap diversion from the disasters they have brought on their people.

[Arnold Roth brought his family to Jerusalem from Australia 30 years ago. A lawyer and manager in Israel’s emerging technology industries, he now devotes his time to advocacy for special needs children and with his wife Frimet established the Malki Foundation in their murdered daughter’s memory.]

27-Feb-18: On Australia's ABC and being unbalanced

If you have spent time living in Australia, as we did before moving our family to Israel thirty years ago, you know of the pleasures and disappointments that the ABC is capable of delivering:

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia's national broadcaster, funded by the Australian Federal Government but specifically independent of Government and politics in the Commonwealth. The ABC plays a leading role in journalistic independence and is fundamental in the history of broadcasting in Australia, its model based on – but not restricted to – the BBC in the United Kingdom... In recent times, the Corporation provides television, radio, online and mobile services throughout metropolitan and regional Australia, as well as overseas through Australia Plus and Radio Australia... [Wikipedia]

Its annual funding from the Australian government had already easily exceeded a billion Australian dollars in the 2016 budget year and it has kept rising since then. A serious operation on any view.

We posted a pained analysis last week of the coverage the ABC gave to the violent and aggressive Tamimi clan and especially to Ahed Tamimi, the 17 year-old rising star of the Tamimi collective's robust "in your face" anti-Israel political activism ["21-Feb-18: News industry activism, its tendentious outcomes and the Tamimis"]. If you haven't already read it, please do before reading on. We feel we raised serious points worthy of rational discussion and consideration.

But we have been ignored by the ABC and by Sophie McNeill, its correspondent here in Jerusalem where she works and we and our children live. Being ignored is nothing new for us. And ignoring critics is, sad to say, hardly out of the ordinary in that particular organization.

It now occurs to us that our past personal experiences with ABC Australia are depressingly consistent with the latest chapter.

Here's the background.

A decade and a half ago, we documented what we experienced ["ABC Producer: "It will be difficult to proceed without appearing unbalanced..."" - an archived version because the Malki Foundation website where it was published has been re-organized in the years since we wrote it] and posted it there since it bore directly on the foundation's work in Australia.

Now via this blog of ours, we want to revisit what happened and the issues it threw up.

NOTE: Most of the text that follows is lifted verbatim from the archived 2003 report, with some light editing we have just done to reflect the passage of the years. Here goes.

In August 2001, the then-head of the ABC's Middle East bureau, Tim Palmer, emailed me [Arnold Roth]. This was just a few days after Malki's murder. He invited me to join him for a press interview in Jerusalem. I immediately agreed. For reasons described below, that interview never took place. 

Baby carriages everywhere: The scene outside the Sbarro pizzeria in
central Jerusalem in the first hour after the massive 2001 bomb explosion.
The body of our murdered 15 year old daughter was likely inside
the devastated shell of the building when this news photo was snapped.

In fact Palmer and I did not meet then or, despite efforts on my part but not his, ever.

A little after our conversation, he was posted to the ABC's Jakarta bureau and after that, I think, took up a senior ABC management position in Australia. I have not kept up with his career during the past decade and don't know where he is now or what he does. 

Fast forward. A day or two before I was due to travel back to Melbourne in August 2003 to visit my mother (who has since passed away), the ABC contacted me again by phone from Australia. They had learned I was coming and I was invited to be an on-air guest on their widely-heard Radio National breakfast program to speak. The subject was the work of Keren Malki, the charitable foundation my wife and I had created in September 2001 to honour the life of Malki and to do good in her name for families coping with the challenges of a seriously disabled child, as we ourselves do.

This early morning interview was set to take place just a few hours after my scheduled arrival from Israel. 

Late on the night before the program, just as I reached my mother's home from Melbourne Airport, a phone message and an email were waiting for me. The key part, sent to me by a radio producer at the ABC, was this:

"Given the coverage we gave on today's programme to the latest explosion in Jerusalem - my executive producer and I agree that we will have to cancel. This morning we devoted considerable time to representatives from both Jewish and Palestinian organisations, and always seek to put both views forward.  Although your foundation is working to benefit both Israeli and Palestinian families, it will nevertheless be difficult to proceed without appearing unbalanced."

The quote is verbatim. I added the bolding.

The ABC's message left me astonished and perplexed. Balance, whatever view you take of how to achieve it, cannot mean - I felt - what this ABC producer interpreted it to mean.

About her mention of "the latest explosion": this referred to a ghastly Arab-on-Israeli terrorist massacre on a city bus in Jerusalem the previous night. It happened just as two of my daughters and I were stepping out of our Jerusalem home to drive to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport at the start of our Australian visit. The neighbourhood where the bomb attack was carried out is close to where we live.

This New York Times report filed right afterwards says 18 were killed but eventually it turned out to be 24, with about 130 seriously injured. The dead included 8 children. Two of them were babies of 3 months and 11 months. One of the adult dead was a young mother in the eighth month of her pregnancy.

From experience, we know Arab-on-Israeli terrorists usually have a strong sense of whom they want to kill and what sort of impact they hope for. Given the location, this attack was aimed at Haredi mothers, children and infants.

Piers Akerman, then as now an influential and widely-read and respected newspaper columnist whom I did not know until this visit and had never met previously, took up the issue in his weekly newspaper column a few days later.

Aunty trips up on its balancing act  

Piers Akerman | The Daily Telegraph, Sydney | August 25, 2003 | [Originally posted at this non-current location] | FIFTEEN-year-old Australian-born Malki Roth was murdered by a suicidal bomber as she sat among her girlfriends in a Jerusalem pizzeria two years ago. PIERS AKERMAN writes.

Her killer, Izzadin Al-Masri, 23, a member of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, came from a middle-class Palestinian family with investments in Jenin and Nablus.
He'd been hinting for about a month that he planned to become an Islamic "martyr".
Young Palestinians are encouraged to hate Jews and to believe they are destined to martyrdom (with a complete suite of virgins, in the case of the young boys) from their earliest childhood by the Palestinian authorities. 

Al-Masri's father, Shaheel, was subsequently quoted expressing pride in his son's suicide and at his son's slaughter of 14 Israelis. 

Arnold Roth, the father of the murdered teenager expressed his outrage at the barbarism in The Washington Post. This prompted the ABC's then-Middle East bureau chief Tim Palmer, to ask him for an interview.

Mr Roth said he would "have no objection at all to speaking with you on the record, and if it can help get out the story of how sad Malki's loss is, then I would like to do it".

But in a response which reveals either an appalling absence of any moral compass on the part of the ABC's senior staffer, or a total lack of any understanding of the conflict, Palmer said he intended to bracket Mr Roth with an interview with the murderer's proud father.

Can it be that this is what ABC boss Russell Balding has in mind when he babbles about "balance" at the national broadcaster?

Does it believe there can be some "balance", some symmetry, some moral equivalence in presenting the father of a murdered teenager who spent her school holidays providing care for severely handicapped children and the father of a young man who believed it was his religious purpose to murder innocent people? 

Palmer promised to get back to Mr Roth but did not.

Last week, Mr Roth, who has set up the Malki Foundation to raise funds to assist families with severely retarded children in memory of his daughter's passion, arrived in Melbourne from Israel to find a message from an ABC radio producer, who had earlier asked him to be a guest on a morning program.

The note said: "I'm writing to let you know that unfortunately we are going to have to cancel arrangements to interview you Friday morning on our programme.

"Given the coverage we gave on today's programme to the latest explosion in Jerusalem, my executive producer and I agree that we will have to cancel.

"This morning we devoted considerable time to representatives from both Jewish and Palestinian organisations, and always seek to put both views forward.

"Although your foundation is working to benefit both Israeli and Palestinian families, it will nevertheless be difficult to proceed without appearing unbalanced.

"My apologies and best wishes for your trip."

How a discussion with Mr Roth about the Malki Foundation - which places no religious or racial qualifications on those it helps - affects the ABC's "balance" is bewildering. The second family it assisted was in fact a Jordanian Palestinian.

Could it be that the ABC searched for an equivalent Palestinian charitable organisation but drew a blank? Perhaps it could ask Federal Labor's pro-Palestinian lobbyists Leo McLeay and Julia Irwin to point them to an Arab organisation as even-handed in its approach as the memorial to the murdered Australian Australian volunteer child care worker?

It might produce a program explaining that Israeli children are taught peace education while the Palestinian Authority's approved curriculum and Palestinian television teaches hate and prepares young people for "martyrdom". Or would such a program also fail the ABC's nonsensical idea of "balance"?

Mr Roth says the Malki Foundation is his retaliation at those who killed his daughter.
"These people, Hamas, radiate hate," he said. "We cannot out-hate them but we can help Palestinian Arabs and show them that their strategy of hate has failed. If they choke on our aid, so be it.

"They are non-entities, when they murder they will be forgotten, but my daughter will live in the memories of those we help."

In the warped ABC culture, however, Malki Roth will be forever marked as the equivalent of murderous "martyr" Izzadin Al-Masri - all in the interests of "balance".

Battle lines were quickly drawn. Responding later that week, the ABC's managing director (equivalent to its CEO) at the time, Russell Balding, published a letter in the same newspaper. A longer version of it was then posted on the ABC's own website (the following text is from there):

Thursday 28 August  2003 | Letter by the Managing Director to the Daily Telegraph 

Dear Editor 

Usually, it hardly seems worth the effort to respond to Mr Akerman's predictable criticisms of the ABC. It is better to trust in the readership of The Daily Telegraph to decipher his unique form of prejudice. Unfortunately, Mr Akerman's latest exercise in poor taste, ("Aunty trips up on its balancing act," August 26), demands a considered response. The article criticises the award winning ABC Journalist, Tim Palmer, for attempting to construct a story featuring the father of a suicide bomb victim (Malki Roth) and the father of the perpetrator (Izzadin Al-Masri). The Daily Telegraph did precisely this when it published two stories on the same page featuring the respective fathers on August 11, 2001. The attack occurred in Israel two years ago and Mr Palmer covered it extensively, including reporting on the reaction of other relatives of the victims. 

According to Mr Akerman, the ABC has no right to feature both fathers in a story, and such an approach reveals an appalling absence of any moral compass on the part of the ABC's senior staffer. Not only was Mr Arnold Roth told about the other interview - he was given the opportunity to reject having his words broadcast in a manner unacceptable to him. This was done as a courtesy and out of respect for a grieving father. The article's conclusion then drew a startling analogy: in the warped ABC culture, however, Malki Roth will be forever marked as the equivalent of murderous martyr Izzadin Al-Masri. 

This is a disgraceful and thoroughly unjustifiable slur on the ABC and Tim Palmer. The ABC never tried to argue there was a moral equivalence between the death of Malki Roth and the murder by Izzadin Al-Masri. In the end, Tim Palmer decided not to proceed with the story and Mr Roth was not interviewed. The fact that Mr Akerman acknowledges this and still continues with his theory of ABC moral turpitude compounds the overall offence of his article. 

Malki Roth's father, Arnold Roth, was interviewed by the ABC's 7.30 Report on August 21. He spoke of his foundation to help Arab and Israeli disabled children. Also on the program were Khaled Abu Awad and Robi Damelin, other parents of children killed in the Israel-Palestine conflict. They were involved in organising camps for Israeli and Palestinian children. Mr Damelin noted: "The idea is to get them to interact for four to five days and to create a friendship by the end of this, because they can go out and be ambassadors to their friends - and maybe that will start to grow from that age-group". I invite your readers to view the transcript. Does Mr Akerman detect an `absence of any moral compass' in this story? Unfortunately, I suspect he does, as he quite simply lacks the capacity for impartiality. 

Yours sincerely
Russell Balding
Managing Director, ABC

Believing that Mr. Balding's letter did not do justice to the issues, I sent a letter of my own to the Daily Telegraph. This was published on August 30, 2003 but in a heavily edited version which failed to convey most of the points I intended to make. The full text of my letter in the form I actually wrote it now follows.

Thursday 28th August 2003
The Editor
The Daily Telegraph
Sydney 

Sir: Russell Balding, the ABC's managing director, criticizes Piers Akerman's very cogent column "Aunty trips up on its balancing act". I'm sorry to be getting drawn into an unpleasant conflict over the actions and policies of the ABC. But the mis-characterization of events in the letter demands an answer. 

Mr Balding makes no mention at all of what occurred last Friday: an interview by ABC national radio with me, to focus on the work of the Malki Foundation, was cancelled because, as the producer wrote to me "it will... be difficult to proceed without appearing unbalanced."

The Malki Foundation exists to honour the memory of my murdered daughter, born in Melbourne and murdered in Jerusalem at the age of 15. The Foundation provides equipment and therapies for families, with absolutely no regard to their race or religion, so long as they want to give their disabled children the best possible home care. It does very decent humanitarian work.

On Wednesday, this human interest story was going to be a national radio feature. The following day -- not. What changed?

Just one thing: the fact that a terror attack -- the "massacre of the children" -- took place on a bus a few minutes drive from my Jerusalem home, proudly executed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.

Thus the question of whether a human interest story about an Australian family is suitable for broadcast on the ABC has turned into a function of whether or not a terror outrage occurred in Israel that day. Was that the intention? Does "balance" have to mean this?

Mr Balding's letter describes a conversation that took place two years ago between me and one of his reporters, the "award-winning" Tim Palmer (as Mr Balding carefully describes him). In doing so, he has seriously mis-stated aspects of what happened, perhaps because he took no part in that conversation himself.

My wife and I have been determined to ensure that Malki's death two years ago never becomes a mere statistical blip. This has meant we frequently meet with, and speak to, journalists from all over the world. We talk publicly about Malki at every possible opportunity.

Thus, when Tim Palmer, the ABC's man in Jerusalem at the time, approached me for an interview after the Sbarro restaurant massacre, I agreed immediately. Then Palmer told me it would take place only if I consented to his bracketing me with the father of the murderer. He explained that this was a political story and had to be told in a political fashion with both sides being heard.

If you ask me what he meant by "bracketing", I don't know. Did he mean to put the murderer's father and me in the same room, or have us both on the same phone line? Most likely not, but I don't know. We never got to the part where he explained it to me, because I told him right away I could never give a hand to his attempt at false comparisons and bogus moral equivalence. And if you wonder what the other side of the murder of a fifteen year-old could possibly be, then you can join the club. I'm simply baffled by this way of looking at things.

The ABC's MD says his organization "never tried to argue there was a moral equivalence between the death of Malki Roth and the murder". But Tim Palmer himself said in one of his emails that he dropped the interview with the murderer's father because he "was unable to present the counterpoint". To many people, the notion that there is a counterpoint to the murder of a child will be grotesque. It greatly hurt my wife and me.
Mr Balding's letter says that whatever the ABC did, the Daily Telegraph did the same or worse, and seems to imply this is good for the ABC's case. But I have carefully read the Telegraph's report of my daughter's murder [The actual August 2001 page is posted here - AR] and it is perfectly clear to me that Mr Balding's assertion on this point is wrong. The Telegraph's treatment of the story is fair and reasonable. The ABC's treatment of me was not. 

Finally, I'm puzzled that Mr Balding's letter does not seem to address the question of whether or not Palmer and the ABC acted properly towards me. I think it is inappropriate to raise matters of this kind in a newspaper, so I am preparing a brief for Mr Balding which will include copies of all the emails passing between Palmer and me over the past two years. I will be asking him to inform himself about the judgement and approach of the journalist he seeks to defend. His answer will be very important to me.

Arnold Roth
Jerusalem

I didn't hear from Mr Balding after the letter was published - not in 2003 and not in all the years since then. And I found it hard to follow up with a brief for him, so I let the matter drop.

One of the ABC's several regional headquarters [Image Source]

Piers Akerman then provided his own commentary on Balding's letter in another Telegraph column published the following week:

It's someone else's ABC ignoring facts
Piers Akerman | The Daily Telegraph, Sydney | September 2, 2003 | [Archived here]

ABC boss Russell Balding is in serious need of a reality check. His response to my column last Tuesday was full of argument but light on facts, as Arnold Roth, the father of murdered Australian schoolgirl Malki Roth, lucidly demonstrated in his letter published in The Daily Telegraph on Saturday. 

The bean counter's tasteless attack and threadbare defence clearly illustrated how profoundly the public broadcaster has lost its moral compass.

Unfortunately, such brainless bluster from the top appears to be in keeping with much of the ABC's warped culture of denial. Take the numerous complaints made about a Radio National broadcast just over a year ago in which reporter Peter Cave unequivocally asserted a massacre had taken place in Jenin in April, 2002.

The issue is of importance to Australian audiences as some Australian Muslims still believe that Israeli troops participated in the fictitious massacre, just as they choose to believe the US was behind the attacks on the World Trade Centre, despite Osama bin Laden's jubilant claim of responsibility, and that the US is a colonising power.

The ABC refuses to correct the record despite the fact that there have been two investigations, one by Human Rights Watch and the other by the UN, which have failed to support the claim.

The Human Rights Watch report, based on interviews with people present during the Jenin fighting, is straightforward. It states it "found no evidence to sustain claims of massacres or large-scale extrajudicial executions by the IDF [Israeli Defence Force] in Jenin refugee camp".

The UN report, compiled without a visit to Jenin, typically does not rule decisively either way. It appears to draw heavily on the Human Rights Watch report but does allow that an allegation by a Palestinian Authority official that some 500 people had been killed "has not been substantiated in the light of the evidence that has emerged".

Not good enough for the ABC, however, which remains the sole Western media outlet to maintain its curious but inflammatory view that a massacre took place.

A rational national broadcaster would recognise its serious error and atone and any examination of the record and the investigators' reports would indicate that the ABC has a clear responsibility to correct Cave's report.

But those who have asked for a correction have been treated very shabbily indeed.

When ABC listener Ralph Zwier sought a review of Cave's explicit report, he was told that the Independent Complaints Review Panel (ICRP) would first see whether it would accept the complaint. It did not.

In a patronising response, ICRP convenor Ted Thomas tartly told Mr Zwier: "You and I surely cannot be certain how all Western media dealt with the story."

He then went on to split hairs over whether the ABC's charter meant it was required to be a "mainstream" or a "specialist" broadcaster and dismissed the charter's requirement for balance and impartiality with the thought that "it does not require them to be unquestioning..." 

Mr Zwier then asked if the "independent" panel would clarify the criteria on which it determined whether to review complaints. He was told that it's up to the convenor of the ICRP - that is, it's arbitrary.

Under the ABC's risible complaints procedure, either the managing director or the convenor of its ridiculously titled panel call the shots if they are of the opinion that a complaint "alleges a sufficiently serious case of bias, lack of balance or unfair treatment to warrant independent review; or is a matter of public notoriety which warrants such a review". 

While some Muslims in this country continue to claim a massacre took place in Jenin, despite all the proven facts, and use this assertion to reinforce their ridiculous claims about a global conspiracy against their religion, it is obvious the matter is serious.
That it is a matter of public notoriety goes without saying. 

Mr Zwier is now considering whether to take his complaint to the Australian Broadcasting Authority, the next link in the chain. 

It is to be hoped that he will pursue this option - and forward copies of all his correspondence to Communications Minister Richard Alston, Senator George Brandis and Opposition leader Simon Crean. 

The ABC's refusal to correct the record and apologise about the Jenin claim indicates "our" ABC belongs to Yasser Arafat's propaganda unit.

In wrapping up the 2003 version of this article, I noted that Palmer of the ABC, who sought to bracket me with the father of my child's murderer,

emailed me several times in the two years after Malki's murder, most recently on the day Akerman's first column appeared. I was puzzled and very bothered by some of the things he wrote and did. When a politically charged issue has to be covered, there's room for debate about whether and how the media achieve a balanced presentation of the competing versions of the facts and opinions. In the case of the ABC's coverage of my daughter's murder and of the work of the foundation we set up in her memory, I feel that the failures and mistakes of ABC management and staff are plain and clear. They call, it seems to me, for lessons to be learned and changes to be implemented. I intend to do what I can to advance that process.

From an APC brochure

Several months after this 2003 report above was published, Palmer filed a complaint against Piers Akerman with the Australian Press Council.

Crikey, a widely-read independent online source of analysis about Australia's media industries, gave it coverage [archived here]. In October 2004, the APC, which had rejected my [Arnold Roth's] written request to make a submission so that my obviously highly relevant position would be heard, ruled against Akerman and in favour of Palmer and the ABC. The text of the decision is reported in the Sydney Daily Telegraph [PDF here] which appealed. Its appeal was rejected.

The Australian Jewish News reported on November 4, 2004 [PDF here] about the outcome. Here's the part where they quote me:

Roth, who now lives in Jerusalem, has not been a party to the proceedings, but wrote an open letter to the ABC last year complaining of how it covered Malki’s murder. He told the AJN from Israel this week: “The notion that an opinion piece needs to incorporate the response of the person about whom the opinion is expressed seems to me to be very odd. Bearing in mind the complaint was made by [the ABC's Palmer] one of the most influential journalists in Australia – one who manages to get his views across at will – makes this even odder.” Roth said that of around 150 interviews he has given about Malki’s murder, Palmer was one of only two journalists who said they planned to weld the interview to an interview with the bomber’s father. “I said I will not give a hand to a bogus comparison between my views and those of the father of the murderer.” Roth said he was affronted by Palmer’s plans for the interview, regardless of what the final product might have looked like. “I don’t think that the issue of what the interview would have said ought to have been the matter that decided how the Press Council reached its decision. I think it’s a totally irrelevant question.”
In its statement, the Press Council made no comment about Akerman’s account of how, on a visit to Melbourne in 2003, Roth was asked to appear on ABC Radio to talk about Keren Malki, a foundation which he founded to raise money for Jewish and Palestinian families with disabilities, in memory of Malki’s work in this area. But, recalled Akerman, Roth was later notified that the interview would not take place because of coverage given to another Palestinian bombing and that it would be “difficult to proceed without appearing unbalanced”.

The way today's ABC Middle East correspondent and her editors and managers have been tackling the Tamimi phenomenon is very much on our minds - especially their obdurate silence in the face of criticism. We mean of course our criticism, though we have the impression they are not responding to other critics on this Tamimi issue either.

Reflecting on the same ABC's conduct of fifteen years ago, it's hard to see how the mistakes of the past have been addressed or the lessons learned. We find the similarity of mindset on display depressing and discouraging.

21-Feb-18: News industry activism, its tendentious outcomes and the Tamimis

ABC studios in Ultimo, a Sydney suburb [Image Source]

We've been busy the last few days responding to social media comments - some supportive, some critical, a lot of it disgustingly hateful - about Ahed Tamimi, a close relative and unabashed admirer of our child's murderer Ahlam Tamimi ["Ahed Tamimi and Her Family Aren't the Palestinian Saints You Want Them to Be", Haaretz].

Our Twitter account [here] has had orders of magnitude more traffic in the past week than we have seen before.

Yesterday, we saw that Sophie McNeill [background], whom we have never met and with whom we never had any conversation or email, had filed her own report on the Ahed phenomenon for Australia's ABC News. The ABC's site calls Sophie McNeill "a video-journalist based in the Middle East for the ABC". It doesn't mention that she's based in Jerusalem (or so we have been told) which is where we live.

Given the loaded nature of the issues in the ongoing Tamimi saga, it's a shabby and tendentious job of reporting and analyzing news.

Honest Reporting yesterday highlighted an outrageous problem with it - unprofessional recklessness or perhaps something much worse - that ought to have generated a fire-storm of controversy in the Australian media. But hasn't.

Here's how it starts:

On February 20, Australia’s 7.30 current affairs program on national broadcaster ABC included a ten minute segment on the Ahed Tamimi case. In the report, it appears that video footage of Tamimi has been deliberately cut mid-sentence to alter the impression that Tamimi was inciting violence – a key allegation in her trial... Not surprising given that the segment was put together by Sophie McNeill, who has a history of advocacy journalism and vilifying Israel. ["ABC’s Sophie McNeill Selectively Cuts Ahed Tamimi Video", Simon Plosker, February 20, 2018]

Ahed Tamimi speaks - but at the ABC she isn't heard: Some context

We aired our views some weeks back on the significance of what was yesterday excised from the Ahed Tamimi ABC record: see "04-Feb-18: The embarrassing violence of Ahed Tamimi and its fig-leafers". It's hard to understand anyone trying to get away with analyzing the Ahed Tamimi story without paying close attention to the violent things she actually said for the record. And that she intended to be heard since it was her mother holding the camera and urging her to unload. And who then published it.

There's nothing especially new in angry allegations of bias concerning Ms McNeill. Honest Reporting, among others, raised what seem to us to be serious and valid concerns when she first got the job: see "Should ABC News Have Given Advocacy Journalist the Keys to its Jerusalem Bureau?". The concerns are highlighted by a look at Section 4 of the ABC's own Code of Practice:

The ABC has a statutory duty to ensure that the gathering and presentation of news and information is impartial according to the recognised standards of objective journalism.

The Honest Reporting analysis goes on to say that Ms McNeill's reporting

does not show a clear record of separating her media career from her activism. And there is little doubt that her activism continues and influences her reporting in terms of how she frames stories, particularly about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Like her ABC Jerusalem bureau predecessors, Sophie McNeill could have done - but didn't ever do - a report that ties the conflict, the controversies, the human dimension of events here in Israel with her home market of Australia by doing a story on the Malki Foundation.

As many who read our blog know, we created the foundation in 2001 in the weeks after the murder of our Melbourne-born daughter Malki. It does wonderful, non-sectarian work and positively impacts on people's lives. More than that, it's worth pointing out that there is zero political dimension to its activity. In fact, people familiar with it have often commented that the Malki Foundation is exemplary in the way it provides benefits to a needy segment of the population in Israel without any regard for the political views, religion or ethnicity of the beneficiaries - of whom there are many thousands (roughly one-third are Arabs).

Ms McNeill was invited to interview us founders at a charity benefit hosted by the then-ambassador of Australia to Israel in his official Herzliya residence in the summer of 2015. We were told at the time that she had accepted. But she failed to show up on the night and the interview never happened. Nor did she ever try after that (or before) to contact us. Her privilege, of course.

Now her time here is drawing to a close. An Australian Jewish News report in December said

ABC’S controversial Israel correspondent Sophie McNeill is set to move back to Australia to join Four Corners next year. McNeil has been the focus of several complaints from Jewish communal leaders, and politicians, since she became the ABC’s Middle East correspondent in 2015.

Yesterday, for what we therefore assume will be the first and last time, Ms McNeill included a reference to our murdered daughter in one of her reports - the one on Ahed Tamimi who joyously danced at the wedding of her adored cousin, Malki's killer.

Concerning our daughter, here verbatim is the little that Ms McNeill and the ABC said about our Malki yesterday:

Israeli activists have long accused the Tamimi's of condoning violence, pointing to a cousin of Ms Tamimi's father, who was jailed 17 years ago for aiding a suicide bomber who killed 15 Israeli civilians in 2001 — including a 15-year-old who held Australian citizenship.

Just one sentence. Our comments:

1. Condoning violence? No, that's what the ABC arguably does. Critics of the Tamimi clan say the Tamimis do violence and incite more violence and worse ["Advocates for Terror: Why Ahed Tamimi and Her Family are No Heroes", Tablet, January 5, 2018, for instance]. It goes way beyond condoning.
2. Is it really only "Israeli activists" who see the reckless, dangerous and bigoted violence of Ahlam Tamimi and her uncles, aunts, cousins and extended clan? The FBI added Ahlam Tamimi to its Most Wanted Terrorists list in March 2017 and described her as "armed and dangerous". She faces Federal charges. The US State Department announced a $5 million reward for her apprehension and conviction three weeks ago. See also what we recounted in our recent article: "04-Feb-18: The embarrassing violence of Ahed Tamimi and its fig-leafers"
3. "Pointing to a cousin of Ms Tamimi's father" is a disingenuous way of avoiding the notably tight-knit nature of the Tamimi clan. In an interview, Manal Tamimi (Bassem Tamimi's sister-in-law and aunt of Ahed) here described the Tamimi reality: "Almost 600 residents. Most of us are Tamimis, one big family". It's a key point in understanding how the Nabi Saleh villagers operate. We drilled into this in our widely-read article: "17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns". There's further little-known background in these posts of ours: "29-Aug-15: Revisiting a Palestinian Arab village and its monsters"; "01-Sep-15: A tale of two villages: one devoted to non-violence, another that actually exists"; and "19-Dec-17: Uncovering some of Nabi Saleh's hideous buried secrets"
4. "For aiding a suicide bomber" is just as disingenuous. Ahlam Tamimi masterminded the August 2001 Sbarro pizzeria massacre. 15 people were immediately murdered; 130 or more were left badly injured and maimed; a sixteenth victim, a young mother when this happened, lies unconscious to this day and her then-two-year old daughter has been raised motherless. This was Ahlam Tamimi's second Arab-on-Israeli terror attack that month on behalf of Hamas, whose first-ever female terrorist she was. It earned her a criminal conviction from a notably furious judicial bench and an Israeli prison sentence of 16 life terms (in the end she served just 8 years). Some aid! It also turned her into a global, pan-Arab celebrity.
5. "Including a 15-year-old who held Australian citizenship". That's factual enough. But with all Ms McNeill's fawning attention to the details of the Tamimis and especially 17 year old Ahed, it might have been appropriate for the reporter to state Malki Roth's name, that she too was a girl, and that she not only "held Australian citizenship" but was Melbourne-born with an extended family who are based in Melbourne. Small and insignificant points in some people's eyes, we know. But the absence of any attempt to humanize and connect to the murder of an Australian girl strikes us as cold, deliberate and agenda-driven. Consider also when Sophie McNeill last addressed Malki's tragic murder during the several years of her Jerusalem posting. Hint: never.
6. On an ongoing basis, we want to engage the government of Australia to help us get the Sbarro bomber Ahlam Tamimi extradited from Jordan to the United States. She's wanted there, as we noted above, to face serious Federal charges and Australia has unusually good relations with the Hashemite Kingdom. Jordan is tight-lipped about its refusal to comply with its extradition obligation which arises under a signed and valid treaty (according to the US State Department). Parts of the Australian media gave this some appropriate attention during 2017: see "Help bring Malki’s murderer to justice, Mr Turnbull" and "Dad’s plea for justice as killer of Aussie girl spreads message of hate". But not Sophie McNeill, the only Australian reporter stationed in the city where we live. And not Australia's ABC. Busy, most likely.

We're not totally unrealistic. We realize that few people have the intensity of concern that we do about Malki's life and her murder. And that there might be very little interest in the story among the Australian news-consuming public. Those aren't our concerns. The pursuit of justice, never a quick process, continues to keep us focused and active, but has always gotten less media attention than we would have liked.  

But the Sophie McNeill phenomenon goes well beyond our private feelings. The ABC is one of Australia's most influential and significant national institutions. You don't have to be, to use Ms McNeill's inappropriate term, an Israeli activist to be outraged at the soft-pedaling she does on those who see value and even redemption in Palestinian Arab terrorism as the Tamimi clan do. 

She's entitled to her private ideological agenda - that goes without saying. But ABC management ought to be open enough and genuinely committed enough to the values of world-class journalism to know when to step in and object to brazen crusading, distortion and obvious manipulation of the news record. That's just outrageous.

In this latest case, they weren't and they aren't ready to act as far as we can tell and there are many losers as a result. And yes, of course we would have been glad to put these views to their Jerusalem correspondent if she had ever made contact.

UPDATE February 27, 2018: We decided to put up a post that revisits an unpleasant chain of experiences we had with the ABC back in the period immediately after our daughter's murder in a Hamas attack, and then again a couple of years later. See "27-Feb-18: On Australia's ABC and being unbalanced"

03-Oct-17: Released in Shalit Deal, a pious Pal Arab murderer is going back (too late) to life in an Israeli prison

The now-widowed Hadas Mizrahi and five of her children
in much happier times, with her murdered husband
Baruch Z"L [Image Source]. A family devastated
by another Shalit Deal-driven catastrophe

Another beneficiary of the catastrophic 2011 Shalit Deal was re-sentenced yesterday by an Israeli court. This has gotten only minor media attention, even here in Israel. That's a great pity. It highlights some lessons worth learning.

First about the deal.

We're referring to the massive act of terrorist extortion that induced Israel to allow 1,027 convicted terrorists, fully half of them (by our careful count) convicted murderers or attempted murderers, to walk free in October 2011. This was done to secure the release from Hamas of an Israeli hostage, Gilad Shalit.

Both of us (Frimet and Arnold Roth) put a lot of time, energy and effort into trying to persuade the public that this was a very, very bad idea. We felt strongly that one of the terrorists in particular should never have been released: See "14-Oct-11: Please sign a petition to keep this particular terrorist behind bars" and "15-Oct-11: Video: The murderer of our child says: "I don't regret anything""]

Could the terrible results of the catastrophic Shalit Deal have been avoided? It's a question that has haunted us since the terrible deed was done. Here's a relevant comment we made in a 2012 post ["18-Oct-12: The Shalit deal a year later - a personal reflection"]:

Before the release, it was hard to say, but immediately afterwards there were important revelations. A freshly-retired senior commander in IDF counter-terrorism intelligence, Colonel (res.) Ronen Cohen - most recently the intelligence officer of Central Command. - said when interviewed on the day Gilad walked free, that this constituted “a resounding failure… The IDF never took responsibility for the soldier and did not even set up a team to deal with bringing him back… Intelligence is not passive but must be activated. [In the Shalit case,] it never was.”

The specific Shalit Deal releasee about whom we write below was central to two earlier posts of ours: "15-Apr-14: Seder night shooting attack: dead and wounded Israeli victims" and "23-Jun-14: Quietly, inexorably, almost entirely unreported, the lethal consequences of the Shalit Transaction grow"

That 2014 terror attack was executed by Awad on Route 35 near the Tarqumiya-Idhna road junction near Hebron. Izzadin Awad, the son, was convicted of materially aiding the murder done by his father, and sentenced yesterday to 20 years in prison. The court ordered him to pay the Mizrahi family NIS 250,000.

Commander Mizrahi was the father of five children, aged at the time between three and thirteen. As the NY Times report says, his widow Hadas who was also shot, was pregnant at the time of her husband's murder. Their nine year old son was shot too.

Ynet says Ziad Awad the terrorist

was sentenced to two life sentences on Monday [yesterday]. The presiding judge also took into account that Awad had carried out the attack despite being one of the terrorists released as part of the Gilad Shalit deal. Baruch Mizrahi was killed on the eve of Passover while driving with his wife Hadas and five children to the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, to take part in the Passover Seder (feast). Awad, who is a resident of the Palestinian West Bank town of Idhna, opened fire on the vehicle, killing Baruch, seriously injuring Hadas and lightly wounding one of their children. ["2 life sentences for terrorist previously released in Shalit deal", Ynet, September 3, 2017]

Back in 2014 when Ziad was 45, the New York Times said he had been

freed from a life sentence for murdering Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel as part of the [Shalit] 2011... The authorities said Mr. Awad and his 18-year-old son, Izzedin Hassan Ziad Awad, were arrested May 7 [2014] for the April 14 slaying of the police commander... The authorities said that the younger Mr. Awad had produced the murder weapon, an AK-47 stained with his father’s DNA, and told interrogators that his father said his motive was religious because Islam promised paradise to anyone who kills a Jew. Mr. Mizrahi’s wife, Hadas, who was pregnant and wounded in the shooting, said Monday that his death shows the danger of releasing prisoners, an increasingly contentious issue in Israel, and called for Israel to institute the death penalty. “If they did not have a bargaining chip, my husband would have been alive today,” Ms. Mizrahi said in an interview on Army Radio... ["Palestinian Freed in 2011 Is Charged by Israel in a Killing", New York Times, June 23, 2014]

That religious piety - it's worth turning over in our minds. It was described elsewhere just after the arrests this way:

Before launching the attack, Awad confided in his son that he had religious motivation, saying that, "according to Islam, whoever kills a Jew goes to heaven." [Ynet, June 23, 2014]

So how dedicated was this killer to the creation of a Palestinian Arab homeland? To the rights of self-determination of his people? To ending the so-called occupation? Not much at all, the man himself is saying. For him, as for so many other Palestinian Arabs attracted to the extremist Islamist terror gangs, it's about religion and paradise. To us, it's fairly clear that the specifically religious passions motivating Palestinian Arab terror, and driver terror in general, don't in general get enough attention from anyone, and certainly not from the news-reporting industry. We can appreciate how much of a minefield this is for them. But not examining it is to do a major disservice to people who need to understand and expect the news media to help.

According to the go-free list issued in October 2011 in the two days before the Shalit Deal was consummated, Awad - whom it calls Awadh Ziad Awadh al-Salaima Awad, releasee number 431 - was "expelled" to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. That destination makes sense given his Hamas affiliation (described as a fact in this Arab source that says his son is a Hamas agent too).

Baruch Mizrahi, murdered by the Awads
[Image Source]

But then how did Awad leave there and become involved once again in terror in the vicinity of the Israeli communities of Judea and Samaria? He would have had to leave Gaza and that's not easy.

No one that we can find has offered an explanation. Our familiarity with the terms of the commutation-of-sentence that the Shalit Deal beneficiaries were granted (gained from first-person discussions with the public officials in charge of the commutations, and from seeing some of the relevant documents) make us think that being expelled also means they were forbidden from later returning to where they used to live before they were convicted.

So it's a real question - and for us at least, really troubling.

Awad had been arrested in 1993 on serious charges and convicted of murdering fellow Arabs, attempted murder, membership of a banned organization (we presume Hamas) and hurling fire-bombs at people (presumably Jewish people). He was sentenced to life imprisonment. But in the end he served only a small part of that.

His 2014 victim, Baruch Mizrahi, made a significant contribution to the well-being of Israelis in a tragically-shortened but strikingly productive life (and that's before we get into his role as husband and devoted father of five children between the ages of 3 and 13).

The official memorial page posted by the government of Israel says he

served in the IDF and the Israel Police for nearly three decades. For 25 years he served in various roles in the IDF, the last of which was as lieutenant colonel in the elite 8200 intelligence unit. After retiring from the army in June 2011, Mizrahi joined Israel Police, and for the past three years held a senior intelligence position in the Israel Police and was in charge of tracking organized crime. He was posthumously promoted to the rank of commander. 

Then there's the painful question of the other family: the killer's family.

Baruch Mizrahi's widow was quoted last night [here] observing with full justice that Palestinian Arab terrorists who are taken into Israeli custody

"receive grant money from the Palestinian Authority, supplies from the Red Cross and living conditions that many Israeli families in need can only dream of. We need to put an end to the terrorists' celebrations." 

The PA money that has already been coming to the Awads - and will continue to come to the end of their days tax-free - puts them well above the household earnings level of ordinary Palestinian Arabs. And way above the salary class of senior members of the Palestinian Authority's civil service.

That's of course, deliberate. The more Israelis the prisoner kills, and the longer the prison sentence he or she gets, the higher the monthly payment that reaches him/her and the family. It's a cruel reality that the relative few - we among them - aware of the human price of catastrophic releases of unrepentant terrorists need to keep in our minds.

It isn't only that Palestinian Arab society puts vicious shooters like the Awads on a pedestal. It's that foreign aid, provided by unwitting taxpayers in European, American and other Western countries whose governments pretend goes to improve the lives of ordinary Palestinian Arabs, is the indispensable fuel for the Abbas' regime's unspeakable and well-lubricated ["25-Jul-17: The scale of the PA's terror-funding scheme keeps growing"] incitement and encouragement of the murder of Jews.

And as payment schemes go, it's been proven to get relatively law-abiding Palestinian Arabs to consider killing one of their Israeli neighbours for the sake of... their families ["11-Jul-17: Incitement to terror: Sometimes it really is all about the money"] and/or their credit scores. It's a chilling phenomenon.

The Rewards for Terror scheme (the PA calls it something else but our name is more accurate) is an indefensible, immoral and entirely counter-productive reality that is long overdue for being stopped. Even people who see themselves as friends of Israel don't seem to appreciate that this can be stopped and easily. Those with the power to stop it are the funders. Many of them, we know, are reading this post but simply don't realize their elected and appointed officials can allow it to continue because analyses like the one we have just written in this post never get into their local mainstream media.

Maybe they should.

UPDATE October 4, 2017: Over at the always-incisive BBC Watch, they pay special attention today to how the Ziad murder was covered by the world's largest broadcasting organization:

The BBC initially reported that attack in a belated thirty-four word paragraph and subsequent reporting failed to clarify that the incident was a terror attack. The terrorist’s arrest and indictment did not receive any BBC coverage and so audiences did not receive any information concerning the motive behind the murder.

“Before launching the attack, Awad confided in his son that he had religious motivation, saying that, “according to Islam, whoever kills a Jew goes to heaven.””

Such cases do not of course fit into the BBC’s chosen narrative of Palestinian terrorism caused by “frustration” at “decades of Israeli occupation” and audiences therefore do not get to hear about them. ["A terrorist defies the BBC’s narrative", BBC Watch, October 4, 2017]

Of course, BBC is not the only part of the news-reporting world that ignores the terrorist's explanation for why he murdered Baruch Mizrahi. Or his sentencing this week. Al-Araby Al-Jadeed does report on the conviction and sentencing but is silent on Awad's version of his own motive. And a syndicated Agence France-Press report [here] also reports the sentence and is also silent on the "Islam-made-me-do-it" aspect. But it does say concerning two of the most notorious terrorist organizations in the world, both of them outlawed under European - and therefore French - law, that "Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip, and its radical ally Islamic Jihad both hailed the attack on the policeman as “heroic”"

The "heroism" of concealed, heavily-armed gunmen firing on vehicles filled with Israeli families driving to a family event is tragically something we know only too well in Israel.

--

[This post, like a number of others before it, has been translated to Polish ("Uwolniony w umowie o Shalita pobożny Arab palestyński, morderca, wraca (zbyt późno) do więziennej celi") by courtesy of Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the Polish-language Listy z naszego sadu website. Our sincere thanks to her, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.]

17-Sep-17: Stopping terror?: Questions for Jordan's heir apparent

Jordan's crown prince and his parents [Image Source]

The Jordan Times, published in Amman and owned by a kingdom-controlled foundation,
reported this morning the not-entirely-stunning news that

His Majesty King Abdullah, accompanied by Her Majesty Queen Rania, on Friday left the Kingdom, heading to New York, where he will be leading the Jordanian delegation to the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly... Deputising for the King, HRH Crown Prince Hussein is scheduled to deliver Jordan’s speech before the General Assembly... In 2015, the Crown Prince became the youngest person ever to chair a Security Council meeting, when he called for measures to prevent the world’s youth from being lured into the dark world of extremism...  ["King to take part in UN meeting", September 16, 2017]

If you're a news reporter or editor, wouldn't you want to take the opportunity to get Jordan's ruler to clarify his view of terrorism in light of the free-pass and ongoing protection he has given to a mass-murdering Jordanian woman who was named to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list on March 14, 2017?

No mainstream media has tackled him on this. In view of his repeated public condemnations of terror, that's strange, disturbing and something that ought to be corrected.

If King Abdullah is out of reach, can we suggest putting a similar question to HRH Crown Prince Hussein who is going to deliver Jordan's speech to the UN General Assembly? There's much he could explain, but frankly it's the reference in the Jordan Times piece above that has us intrigued.

After all, a public official and next-in-line-to-the-Hashemite-throne who speaks publicly about "measures to prevent the world’s youth from being lured into the dark world of extremism" might be fair game for some timely questions about how to stop terror. He's young (now 23) and perhaps a little naive (just our impression). But editors ought to note he's already two years older than that other Jordanian, Ahlam Tamimi, was when she masterminded the massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria. And he has attracted some extravagant praise:

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised Hussein's attendance at the session saying, "He is not yet 21 years old – but he is already a leader in the 21st century." [Source]

Young Hussein has already shown he is ready to address some especially pertinent questions. As of a year ago, more than 2,500 Jordanians were reported to have joined the ranks of foreign jihadist fighters in Syria. Three sons of sitting members of its parliament had been killed fighting "with ISIS or the al Qaeda affiliate Jebhat al Nusra, in Syria" [source]. It makes sense that terror should be be occupying the thoughts of decision-making Jordanians, i.e. the king and the crown prince.

But since he is evidently on the side of those seeking a solution, HRH might explain how Tamimi, a woman terrorist who happily confesses (time and time and time again) to the murders by bombing of fifteen innocent people and the maiming and wounding of 130 more, can be treated so well by the Hashemite royal house that she and her family publicly thanked them.

Tapping into widespread support among Jordan's majority-Palestinian-Arab population, the Tamimi clan also called on King Abdullah II "along with his government to provide protection and stability" for the proud jihadist murderer and her convicted-murderer husband. From watching closely, we are convinced the "protection and stability" are indeed being delivered. Is this really how you prevent the world’s youth - or even Jordan's - from being lured into the dark world of extremism and murderous, cruel terrorism?

There's nothing especially shocking in any of this except for how the brazen hypocrisy on terror against Israelis gets repeatedly air-brushed out of all mainstream media coverage of King Abdullah's court.

UPDATE September 18, 2017:  In case reporters, journalists, editors or bloggers care to press the young prince on some terror-related matters, allow us to give a hand by pointing you to some questions - ignored of course and unanswered - that we posed to Jordan's current foreign minister who once not so long ago served as the editor of the same Jordan Times that we quoted at  the top. (No one ought to be surprised at the echo-chamber nature of Jordan's power elite.) They're here: "26-Jul-17: We listened carefully to Jordan's foreign minister and we have 10 questions".

18-Apr-17: In Gaza, a decade of darkness and a never-ending blame-game

Image Source

Times must be getting really tough down there in the Gaza Strip now that one of the most highly publicized of the plagues traditionally blamed on the "Zionist entity" has become (not for the first time) the subject of bitter mutual accusations between the two rival Palestinian Arab statelets - the PLO-controlled PA, and the Islamist thugocracy of Hamas.

Below is an extract from an Albawaba news report ["Gaza thrown into darkness as Hamas-Fatah spat worsens"] datelined April 16, 2017. (Albawaba is based in Jordan, with offices in Dubai, and calls itself "the largest independent producer and distributor of content in the Middle East... providing first-rate coverage of the Middle East from a local perspective.")

Gaza was plunged into darkness late Friday as the territory's Hamas-run power authority cut electricity across the besieged enclave in protest against the Palestinian Authority. Hamas, who control Gaza, and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, have for years blamed each other for an electricity crisis in the besieged coastal enclave.
Gaza's power alternates on eight-hour cycles, with those who can afford it using generators in the down times.
On Friday, Gaza's power authority cut electricity in the coastal territory from 7 pm until 11 pm in protest against the PA's recent decision to cut public sector salaries for Gaza employees and tax disputes over the import of fuel. The PA responded by saying Hamas was attempting to create a "new crisis" in Gaza, according to Ma’an News Agency.
Earlier in April, a decision by the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority to impose pay cuts on its civil servants in Gaza sparked widespread anger. Tens of thousands took to the streets in Gaza to protest the 30-percent pay cut, with demonstrators calling on PA president Mahmoud Abbas to sack his government. The PA says it was forced into the move because its budget has been hit by falling foreign aid. PA salaries in the West Bank, however, remained untouched.
Gaza's sole power plant is on the verge of shutting down as Qatari and Turkish fuel supplies run out. Gazan authorities have no other choice than to buy additional fuel from the PA, but say recent tax hikes make it unaffordable.
In January, thousands of Gazans took the streets to protest chronic power shortages in one of the largest unauthorised protests in Gaza since Hamas took power in 2007. Hamas security forces quickly suppressed the demonstration and blocked journalists from filming. A day earlier, a local comedian was arrested for making a satirical video criticising power cuts. "There is no work, no (border) crossing points, no food, no water and also no electricity," Adel al-Mashwakhi said in the video clip, which amassed over 250,000 views.

But with that explanation, be assured dear readers that there is no Palestinian Arab that cannot - by hook, crook or outright fabrication - be blamed on the Zionists. Here's how the Albawaba piece ends:

In 2015, the United Nations warned that Gaza could become uninhabitable by 2020 if current political and economic trends caused by Israeli policies continue.

From our 2008 post: We wondered then whether the Reuters
photographer, depicting Gazan legislators working
by candle-light as clearly-visible daylight is shut out
by curtains, had a moron for an editor. [Image Source] 

To put that last claim into some perspective, please take a look at some relevant earlier posts of ours: "05-Mar-17: What Gaza's Pal Arabs think about the electricity problems in Gaza"; "30-Apr-15: What Gaza's oppressed know that reporters don't, and why it matters"; "28-Oct-12: What lies behind ongoing efforts to paint Gaza as a region under Israeli siege?"; and from nearly a decade ago when Hamas' silly games were not so different from today's: "10-Feb-08: The lies that pictures can tell".

That 2008 post, replete with some very revealing news photographs that tried to pin serious malfeasance on Israelis for "cheating" the Gazans of electric power, is worth going back to review.

Whatever has changed in the world of the Palestinian Arabs, one aspect has not: they continue to live in the dark, shutting out the light by whatever means and relying on the great news factories of the world to magnify and spread their baseless fury at Israel.

UPDATE Thursday April 20, 2017: The capacity of the two Palestinian Arab statelets - PLO/Fatah/PA and Hamas - to ride roughshod over the welfare of the people whose lives they dominate is a reality that gets almost no serious media attention. A report today by Avi Issacharoff, Times of Israel's Middle East analyst, updating the dire situation in Gaza ["Gaza hospitals on verge of blackout amid energy crisis"] says:

Hospitals in the Gaza Strip could face blackouts within days as an energy crisis continues to throttle power supplies in the Palestinian enclave. Israel and Palestinian officials estimated Thursday that hospitals would finish their reserve fuel for generators within 48-72 hours. On Sunday Gaza’s only functioning power station stopped working after running out of fuel. The crisis was compounded by a technical fault shutting down a power line between Egypt and Gaza that had provided over six hours of electricity a day. Gazans now have just four hours of electricity, followed by 12-hour blackouts, down from two eight-hour periods of electricity a day when the plant is operating normally and supplies are coming in from outside the enclave... On Wednesday, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov called on Palestinian leaders to put aside their internal squabbles and solve the energy crisis.

And who cares? Certainly not the people who control the people.

02-Mar-17: In case you thought objective Middle East news reporting was an actual thing

Jerusalem Post

Here's what we understand happened yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon just a few minutes' drive from where we live. It's in our own words and based on what we read, heard and found when checking (and since we're not news professionals, we might be wrong - but pros never are):

A Palestinian Arab sneaked his way in to an Israeli agricultural community, Havat Mor (in English: Mor Farm), in the region Israelis know as Drom Har Hevron, the Southern Hebron Hills, and close - less than a mile - from the established community of Teneh Omarim. Shabtai Kochowalsky, 33, lives in a mobile home in Havat Mor with his wife, their baby and a dog called Sophie. During the morning, Kochowalsky called the IDF to send a patrol because a Palestinian Arab shepherd had brought his flock worryingly close to his home. The shepherd was asked to keep his sheep at a fair distance and Kochowalsky promptly filed a formal complaint with the Israel Police. Soon afterwards, in the early afternoon, hearing a noise outside his home, Kochowalsky opened the door. Standing in the doorway was a Palestinian Arab male... brandishing two knives. Kochowalsky ran back inside to get his pistol. The assailant pursued him and in front of the wife and "children" (according to one Israeli report we saw) he lunged at the young Israeli, stabbing him in "the limbs". Sophie then intervened and did a great dog's job of keeping the terrorist at bay for the few critical moments needed for the stabbing victim to grab his gun and fire at the Arab. A local doctor arrived soon afterwards at the home and pronounced the attacker dead. In the Palestinian Arab media, the assailant is identified by a Palestinian Health Ministry official as Said Muhammad Ali Qisiyeh, 24, from Dahiriya, a village just a few kilometers down the road [see Google Map] from Teneh Omarim and some 25 km south west of Hebron.

A few words about the neighbourhood and the neighbours.

• In November 2015, Rabbi Yaakov Litman, 40, was gunned down and killed while driving a car full of family members to a pre-wedding celebration along Route 60. His son Netanel, 18, was also killed in the shooting attack ["14-Nov-15: Friday's lethal attack destroyed an Israeli family preparing for their daughter's wedding"]
• In January 2016, Dafna Meir, a young mother of six children, was stabbed to death at her front door by a Palestinian Arab teenage youth in the community of Otniel [background: "18-Jan-16: May it be Your will..."]
• In July 2016, Rabbi Michael “Mickey” Mark, 48, a father of 10 and the executive head of the renowned Otniel Yeshiva, was shot dead by Palestinian gunmen, as he too drove along Route 60 in the South Hebron Hills ["27-Jul-16: The Hamas terrorists who murdered Rabbi Miki Mark are located and forcibly retired"]

Most people will agree that there is a stunning viciousness in the cowardly attacks carried out against Israelis living in those Hill communities. More than enough to put Israelis on their guard. And certainly enough for reporters and editors to refer to the Arab-on-Israeli violence that characterizes much of the interaction - both recently and historically in the area. 

Now see the radically different emphases which the attack and its aftermath have acquired in the hands of the headline writers, the editors and the reporters.

First the Israelis:

Ynet | Palestinian stabs Israeli in southern Mount Hebron area

Times of Israel | Terrorist sneaks into outpost, stabs man as family watches

Then these others:

Tasnim (Iran) | Israeli settler kills young Palestinian in West Bank

Anadolu (Turkey) | Palestinian killed after alleged West Bank knife attack

iAFRICA (South Africa) | Palestinian stabs Israeli settler shoots dead [sic]

The Muslim News (UK) | Palestine: Palestinian killed after alleged West Bank knife attack

The New Arab (UK) | Palestinian shot dead after alleged stabbing attack

IMEMC | Israeli colonial kills a young Palestinian who reportedly stabbed him

Ma'an News Agency (Bethlehem) | Palestinian killed by Israeli settler in illegal Hebron outpost after alleged stab attack

Finally, last and in significant ways also least, the latest effort from the oddly-named semi-government PressTV from Iran:

PressTV (Iran) | Israeli settler guns down Palestinian in West Bank

If you visit PressTV's front page right now, today, you can experience a little more of their characteristic form of reality-inversion via an article entitled ''Israelis enjoy free pass to kill Palestinians: Commentator". It's based on an interview with an "expert" called Steppling, described as "an author and commentator" who says:

Israeli soldiers have always received a “free pass” to execute these types of killings, asserting that there are “hardcore rabbis” who are advocating the idea that “it is a religious crime" if you do not murder a Palestinian.

(We looked him up. He's a Californian playwright who lives in Norway. He told another Iranian news outlet yesterday that the US government is “the chief funder of global terror” )

So... which of these news producers would you choose to rely on?