The Daily News 3 - ICJS Radio program

Here is The daily news episode 3

or download file The Daily News episode 3

Welcome to the ICJS Daily News programme on 96.1 Lion FM . In today's program Ralph will lead off with a discussion about how journalists are often misguided in the way they deal with radical ideologies in their reporting. Then, I will be talking about the UN Human Rights Council and it's findings about the Mavi Marmara Flotilla incident this past May.

We invite you to access our website at www.icjs-online.org.  That's www.icjs-online .org.  If you want to write us directly you can do so at lion@icjs-online.org. That's lion@icjs-online.org

Barry Rubin piece

RALPH: I came across an article by Prof Barry Rubin a day or two before sukkot. It summarises some of the points we tried to make in our first program. You are listening to Lion FM 96 1.

A New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning reporter in 1953, Harrison Salisbury, made a gross blunder when he covered Stalin's funeral. Salisbury wrote:

"The new Soviet leader [georgi malenkov] appeared to have the support and enthusiasm of Soviet citizens of all walks of life. His words have sent a surge of hope through the Soviet listeners."

This quotation shares some common characteristics with American or Western journalists and analysts today:

I paraphrase Rubin : Journalists are sucked in by the hype of the moment. They sincerely believe when they see crowds of people cheering a dictator, that maybe the dictator is not so bad after all.

You see this today with reporters in Gaza assuring us that Hamas is very popular there. It's a false conclusion. All dictatorships have means at their disposal of deploying rent-a-crowds at short notice. And I draw the listener's attention to the fact that Paul Mc in the Jewish News this week tells us, exactly in the same way that thw 1953 reporter Salisbury did, MgGeough tells us that we don't need to worry about Hamas because the Hamasniks that he's spoken to don't take their charter seriously. So all the stuff in the Hamas charter about never negotiating with the Zionist entity, not recognizing the state of Israel, we don't need to take it seriously. We don't need to worry. That's not what Hamas believes really believes says Mc. So let's just get this straight. (There are no negotiations happening between Hamas and Israel at the moment, but that, according to Mc has nothing to do with Hamas' charter. If only Israel would be willing to negotiate with Hamas, Hamas would forego its charter). Paul Mc is not a player in the ME. He is not Clinton, he's not George Mitchell, he's not Obama. By his own admission he is a reporter. I don't hear Tony Blair telling us to ignore Hamas charter, or Hilary Clinton telling us to ignore Hamas charter or Netanyahu or Hamas themselves. The only person telling us to ignore Hamas charter is a reporter. The listener will be aware of how little credibility the reporter has to give us the facts and the credibility of his other reporting is thereby diminished. And this is one of the points that our program is trying to make, reporters are straying out of their areas of expertise.

Another thing which Salisbury did in 1953 which the journalists are still doing today in Gaza is a systematic reinterpretion of radical statements into more moderate ones, simply refusing to believe that anyone could really be an extremist and mean it. They consistently fail to report at all on extremist statements and inciting rhetoric. Why? - asks Rubin - Because the reporter or analyst assumes that all ideology is just meaningless words since everyone is essentially pragmatic.

This systemic problem is what Rubin calls the concept of "lying for peace" and it always fails, as in the whitewashing of Palestinian behavior in the belief that doing so will make it easier to resolve the conflict. The truth, of course, is that the reality of underlying ideology, tactics, goals, and politics will come back to bite those who ignore them.

Rubin summarises brilliantly:

Nothing should be more obvious than the following: The job of reporters and scholars is to report accurately, not twist things to fit their own views or what they think is beneficial for society to know. The task for political leaders is to get the most accurate possible data even if it doesn't fit their preferences. Otherwise, their adversaries will make Salisbury Steak out of them.

SONG: Here is a song called "Maile" which loosely translated from the Hebrew means never mind.  better times are on their way…It's sung by Yehudit Ravitz,.

RONIT: Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban once joked that if a resolution was tabled at the United Nations that the world is flat, and that Israel flattened it – it would pass by a majority of 170 to 5 with 17 abstentions.

The Human Rights Council which is the main UN body charged with protecting human rights.  By the way, this council appears to have done very little about the human rights violations against Gilad Shalit!

In any case, an article appeared recently in the Australian, about this very topic of the Human Rights Council and you can find it on our website. The article is based on a talk given recently in Melbourne, by Irwin Cotler a member of parliament and former minister of justice and attorney-general of Canada.

The Human Rights Council replaced the discredited UN Commission on Human Rights…so it's meant to be new and reformed...but in fact it's membership reads like a list of some of the worst human rights abusers…really! Saudi Arabia, Angola, Egypt, Cuba, China, Libya….not exactly what you'd call role models for human rights but hey…

There are other examples of this kind of craziness in the UN… did you know for example,that in 2007, Zimbabwe was elected to chair…. Of all things…..the UN commission on sustainable development…how's that …Zimbabwe, a country …. previously thriving …that was virtually destroyed by Robert Mugabe who raped and pillaged all the human and natural resources of the country for decades …is elected to represent sustainable development in the UN! If it wasn't so tragic it would be laughable!

Would it surprise you to hear that out of the 47 nations on the human rights commission only 20 are actually considered free by an independent NGO monitoring human rights and political freedoms. This means that the majority of the member nations do not allow basic freedoms for their own people, let alone care about anyone else's freedoms!

A prime example is Libya … considered one of the most repressive societies in the world yet it was voted onto the human rights council in a secret ballot receiving 155 out of 192 votes.

You might ask how can this happen? Well, it's because of the undue influence of the OIC which is the Organisation of Islamic Conference . The OIC and its allies have a majority on the UNHRC. And that's why Israel has been condemned 33 times out of 40 country specific condemnations and also why the commission decided to discuss Israel's human rights violations in all of its councils meetings. And that's why also it has been criticised for redirecting attention to the fate of Muslim minorites in non Muslim countries but diverting attention away from treatment of ethnic minorities in Muslim majority countries, for example the kurds in Syria, the Ahwaz in Iran or the Berbers in Algeria.
The OIC has also been instrumental in silencing free speech. How? Well, outrageously, they have banned anything they consider as criticism of Islam in an amendment to the duties of the special rapporteur on freedom of expression…an amendment which was passed in 2008.

In any case, the human rights council recently came up with the report which condemned Israel exclusively for the events surrounding the interception of the Mavi Marmara, which you'll remember was part of the flotilla in May that attempted to break the blockade of Gaza. A blockade by the way whose sole purpose is to prevent the delivery of arms and weaponry to lob at civilian centres in Israel! But this report is really blatantly biased because there were first hand accounts from credible people BOTH on board the Mavi marmara AND IN ISRAEL, which tell a very different story.
This is 96.1 Lion FM and OUR NEXT SONG…is by the Amsterdam Klezmer band. It is called "The Immigrant Song"

We are talking about the Human rights report into the events surrounding the Mavi Marmara and why it was so flawed.

Turkish journalist sympathetic to the IHH (who organised the flotilla) and who was on board the Mavi Marmara when Israeli soldiers boarded it, stated clearly that the violent confrontation was planned by the people on board , that preparations were made to resist the soldiers and not passively either, and that the Israeli soldiers did not open fire until their comrades had been taken hostage and they were in fear of their lives. He reported further that the first shots were fired by people on the boat and the first shot was fired by a non Israeli weapon as soon as the first commando landed on the boat. You know the soldiers were lowered down from helicopters one at a time.  From my own point of view…I was in Israel when this drama was unfolding…and it was clear from all news reports and footage of the event….that there were weapons on the boat, steel bars and batons….and these people were looking for a confrontation. Israelis were angry because they believed that their soldiers had been led into a deadly trap and that Israeli intelligence had let them down by giving them bad information, by telling them participants in the flotilla were peaceful protestors who didn't pose any threat. This rings true because I don't believe any military operation would lower soldiers from helicopters one at a time to meet deadly force armed with paint guns..  yes, the Israeli military had provided their soldiers with paint guns to deal with the protesters, that's how dangerous they were considered to be…before the event unfolded! I don't know if that information made it into the international press?

As it happened, the day after the event I was at a conference in Jerusalem and sitting next to me was a friend of the young commando who had been shot in the knee as he landed on the Mavi Marmara. Talk about 6 degrees of separation!  This young man told the same story, that the landing soldiers didn't expect violence and that they were brutally attacked… acting in self defence when they fired back. ….so the facts on the ground, at the time, bear little relation either to the international community's official watchdog's assessment or to the way it was reported in much of the international media. You'll have to forgive me for coming to the conclusion that it seems the international community's Human Rights council is nothing more than a corrupt bully not particularly interested in pursuing the truth.

Ralph: By the way, Australia boards foreign boats in international waters frequently to ensure they don't have illegal immigrants or drugs and whilst we have vigorous debate about it, one thing is absolutely clear…the UN Human Rights Council doesn't hold investigations into Australia's boarding of boats.

Finally you can find excellent information about all the going's on at the UN at a website called UN Watch and I highly recommend you read Anne Bayefsky's articles, and Irwin Cotler is also a contributor worth reading.

SONG

Our last song today is called Shekshenavo, It is sung by Arik Einstein, and it reflects the deep Jewish yearning for redemption.