Between Dome of the Rock and a Hard Place
The only thing that distinguished this event from an endless stream of similar incidents was the fact it was recorded on video. Thankfully, a Palestinian held in hand one of B’Tselem’s video cameras and thereby managed to generate a massive quantity of evidence, which yielded an infinitesimal amount of accountability. To make a long story [...]
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Israel’s leaders are tripping over themselves to pay respects to the recently deceased Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu and thereby earn themselves some street cred with Israel’s religious ultra-nationalists. A Biography of Support for Terrorism and War Crimes Eliyahu was the “spiritual leader of the national religious movement in Israel” who served previously as the Sephardic chief [...]
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The last few blog posts have focused on the contradictions—that is, fabrications—coming out of the “IDF” Press Office and Israeli Foreign Ministry about the flotilla massacre. Here, I focus again on the IDF effort to paint the humanitarian activists as terrorists. The point is not new; it has been making the rounds on the blogosphere, [...]
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The Israeli government is very rapidly losing control of its own hasbara efforts. As documented in recent posts, Israel’s Consulate in New York first claimed no commandos were detained by activists, then Israel’s navy said there were, and just now the consulate wrote me again (@HybridStates) to say no IDF troops were captured at any [...]
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The Israeli government has decided to change its story, ostensibly because it felt it had generated enough sympathy in the international media through its confiscation and selective publishing of video from the flotilla attack. Israel’s orchestrated PR effort has only worked, of course, in generating jingoistic empathy for the soldiers among its own largely brainwashed [...]
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Yesterday Yuli Edelstein at the Israel Consulate in New York fielded questions via Twitter about the flotilla massacre. I asked directly: “Were IDF commandos detained by flotilla activists? If so, for how long? How were they released?” The Israeli Consulate responded: “Not true. Its a rumor.” About 30 hours later the world is informed that [...]
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In an effort to frame an attack by pirates on a civilian ship in international waters as an act of self-defense, the Israeli Foreign Ministry has taken to publishing photos on Flickr of “weapons” they claim to have found aboard the now seized ships. The terrifying photos suggest a ship absolutely full of metal parts [...]
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Still haven’t booked that Spring Break 2010 ticket? Allow to me to suggest something, a trip with mystique, exotic lands, spicy foods, incomprehensible languages, dark-haired beauties, and the smallest tinge of danger just to add that extra element to the trip. Am I talking about India, Cuba, Thailand, Turkey, or Nicaragua? Nope, I am talking [...]
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“They sat [the child] down and put his hand on the chair and simply broke it right there on the chair,” recounted a female IDF soldier. The blogosphere is burning today with the recently published accounts of female soldiers in the IDF, who are expected to compensate for their relative physical weakness with extraordinary violence [...]
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This is a rather scintillating example of the paradox of modern Israeli nationalism. Published in a right-wing newspaper, Arutz Sheva, the article describes how commandos and mercenaries from around the world come to Israel in order to undergo training by the Israeli Defense Forces, which “exposes foreign soldiers to Israel [and] creates a better understanding [...]
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