Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Guardian UK:
"A Catholic bishop in Britain has issued an unusually strong condemnation of last week’s arson attack on the biblically symbolic Church of the Multiplication of Loaves and Fish in Israel, referring to 'Jewish zealots' and demanding the Israeli authorities act against religious bigotry. ...

Lang’s comments follow a report from the official Vatican news service describing the attack on the church as 'yet another episode in the long series of desecrations and acts of intimidation committed by groups of extremist Jewish settlers to the detriment of monasteries, churches and Christian cemeteries since February 2012'. The report also referred to attacks on mosques by 'militant extremist groups close to the settler movement'. ...

There have been dozens of attacks on Christian sites in the Holy Land in recent years. .... A surge of anti-Christian graffiti – such as 'Death to Christians', 'We will crucify you' and 'Jesus is a monkey' – preceded Pope Francis’s visit to the Holy Land last year. The Church of the Multiplication was also attacked in April, when perpetrators destroyed crosses in an outdoor prayer area and threw stones at worshippers.

-->Isabel Kershner's story in The NYT left out this reaction from Catholic Church authorities and the Vatican. Of course, Kershner's husband works for the Institute of National Security Studies (INSS), an Israeli funded organization dedicated to creating a positive image of Israel. A review of articles that Kershner has written since 2009 reveals that she overwhelmingly relies on the INSS for think tank analysis. Conflict of interest anyone?

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Guardian UK:
"Terrorism, at least in our national imagination, springs from an ideology of insurgence. Terrorism is radical. It seeks to upset and overturn a society, and to shake it to its foundations. But in America, there are few ideologies less insurgent than the doctrine of white supremacy. ...

Roof’s alleged acts were, by all indications, driven by a violent and extremist interpretation of an ideology that is as old as America itself. The murder of nine innocent black people because of their race doesn’t cut against the American grain in the same way that the spectre of Islamist terrorism does – it rides the grain all the way to its logical conclusion. ...

That’s terrorism any way you slice it – but in the long view of American history, it’s certainly not insurgent, revolutionary or new. Using the word 'terrorism' to describe violence exclusively against America’s non-white people is a historical first, but the terror visited exclusively upon America’s non-white people is not."

-->Straight talk about terrorism against African Americans. Too bad the US media can't bring itself to say these things. The Daily Show's Jon Stewart came about the closest.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/19/daily-shows-jon-stewart-on-charleston-shooting-this-was-a-terrorist-attack

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Guardian UK:
"A United Nations inquiry into the 2014 Gaza war has accused Israeli and Palestinian factions of multiple potential violations of international law including suspected war crimes.

Calling on Israel to 'break with its lamentable track record' and hold wrongdoers responsible, the hard-hitting report commissioned by the UN human rights council lays most of the blame for Israel’s suspected violations at the feet of the country’s political and military leadership.

The commission – chaired by a former New York supreme court judge, Mary McGowan Davis – says leaders should have been aware as the war progressed that their failure to change course was leading to mounting civilian casualties.
'Those responsible for suspected violations of international law at all levels of the political and military establishments must be brought to justice,' it says.

-->Things are reported a little bit differently in the pro-Israel NYT. In an article entitled, "U.N. Report on Gaza Finds Evidence of War Crimes by Israel and by Palestinian Militants," Jodi Rudoren does her best to equate the murder of 500 Palestinian children to the one Israeli child killed in an indiscriminate rocket attack. A study of the Times’ coverage of various international reports on human rights violations by Israelis and by Palestinians found "that the Times covered reports condemning Israeli human rights violations at a rate only one-twentieth the rate that it covered reports condemning Palestinian human rights violations."