
This is a shocker. Part 2 of James O'Keefe's "sting" operation against National Public Radio.
NPR courting Muslim Brotherhood? NPR shows its true feelings about Israel Part I here
via newzeal.blogspot.com

This is a shocker. Part 2 of James O'Keefe's "sting" operation against National Public Radio.
NPR courting Muslim Brotherhood? NPR shows its true feelings about Israel Part I here
via newzeal.blogspot.com

Gerald Steinberg and Anne Herzberg March 10, 2011 Jerusalem Post
To read the original article, click here.
In 2009, Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch (HRW), visited Libya, where she claimed to have discovered a “Tripoli spring,” led by Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam. In two articles, she praised him for creating an “expanded space for discussion and debate.”
As a top official of a prominent human rights watchdog, Whitson’s endorsement gave credibility to this fictitious reform movement. Two years later, and weeks after the rebellion began and the Gaddafi regime had killed hundreds, if not thousands, Whitson belatedly reversed course, and in a February 24 Los Angeles Times op-ed acknowledged the façade of Saif’s human rights “reforms.”
In contrast to her earlier praise, Whitson wrote that “most Libyans we spoke with never had much faith that Muammar Gaddafi would learn new tricks, or that the announced reforms were anything more than an endless loop of promises made and broken.”
Clearly, this reversal came far too late to help the Libyans, and reflects the wider moral failure of HRW in the Middle East. In her wildly misnamed “Tripoli Spring,” (Foreign Policy, May 27, 2009), Whitson extolled Saif – who has since vowed to “fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet” against the Libyan protesters – as “the real impetus for transformation” via his Gaddafi Foundation and two semi-private papers.
Her embrace continued after a second visit in December 2009, when she referred to Gaddafi’s heir-apparent as one of the “forces of reform,” comparing his foundation to HRW (“Postcard from... Tripoli,” Foreign Policy in Focus, February, 11, 2010). Although HRW officials were placed under constant surveillance, and its press conference was cut short by government agents and ended in “pandemonium,” Whitson still spun her trip in a positive light.
In January 2010, when the regime imposed censorship on the Internet and blocked access to YouTube, Whitson was silent. At the same time, the government established a body to monitor journalists, and closed the two semi-private papers lauded by Whitson in “Tripoli Spring.”
But no correction was issued by HRW.
Whitson’s blindness was further reflected in the case of Fathi Eljahmi, Libya’s most prominent dissident, imprisoned, tortured and killed in 2009. His brother condemned both Amnesty International and HRW for hesitating “to advocate publicly for Fathi’s case” for fear they would “antagonize Gaddafi.”
He reserved special condemnation for Whitson’s reference to Saif ’s charity as a “spring,” observing that the foundation “is actively menacing my brother’s family. Some family members continue to endure interrogation, denial of citizenship papers and passports, round-the- clock surveillance and threats of rape and physical liquidation.”
But Whitson and HRW chose to remain silent.
In contrast to Whitson’s promotion of the “reformer” façade, others were not taken in. Journalist Michael Totten, who also visited Libya, compared the country to North Korea and Turkmenistan, pointedly noting that Saif “is ideologically committed to preserving his father’s prison state system... Gullible diplomats and journalists may sincerely believe he’s a reformer, but a close look at his own statements proves that he’s lying when he passes himself off as moderate.”
Whitson’s endorsement of Gaddafi’s son is not the only example of her cozying up to repressive regimes. In May 2009, Whitson led a fund-raising trip to Saudi Arabia where she marketed HRW’s work combating pro- Israel “pressure groups” to solicit funds from “prominent members of Saudi society” including the ruling Shura Council (the religious police).
In May 2010, Whitson had a meeting with Hamas Minister of Justice Faraj Alghoul. As in the Libyan and Saudi cases, Whitson took the soft approach to massive human-rights violations. Instead, she assured Alghoul that she was visiting Gaza “to listen to all parties directly so she will prepare more objective and impartial reports,” and promised that HRW’s next report would allege Israeli violations of international law.
Beirut was next on Whitson’s itinerary, and during a November 2010 trip she praised “the Lebanese sophistication for human rights.”
In contrast, HRW Lebanon director Nadim Houry condemned the lack of effectual and accountable state institutions, and the absence of political will to implement change. Two months after Whitson’s proclamation of support, Hezbollah took control of the government to block cooperation with the UN tribunal investigating the murder of prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2006.
In each of these cases – Libya, Saudi Arabia, Gaza and Lebanon – Whitson has displayed behavior completely lacking in moral leadership required for any organization claiming to support human rights. In addition, copying the strategy of the Arab dictatorships, year after year HRW has maintained an obsessive focus on allegations directed at Israel. Its website includes only 10 pages on Libya, but more than 40 on Israel.
As HRW founder Robert Bernstein stressed, the “plight of 350 million people” ruled by the most “brutal, closed and autocratic” regimes, “who would most benefit from the kind of attention a large and well-financed international human-rights organization can provide is being ignored as Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division prepares report after report on Israel.”
As long as ideologues like Whitson are responsible for HRW’s agenda in the Middle East, the spin will continue, at the expense of universal human rights.
Gerald Steinberg is on the faculty of Bar-Ilan University and president of NGO Monitor, the Jerusalem-based research organization. Anne Herzberg is NGO Monitor’s legal adviser.

When Namik Tan, Turkey’s ambassador to Washington, hosts jazz concerts and depicts Turkey as a modern, democratic model for the Middle East, he is increasingly at odds with reality. Turkey is among the world’s most anti-Semitic countries. The government that Tan represents subsidizes print runs of Mein Kampf and puts blood libel in the mass market. Tan himself has quipped about the “final solution” needed in the Middle East. Turkey is also consistently among the most anti-American countries. Whereas many Egyptians, Saudis, and Jordanians take pains to separate the American people from the U.S. government, most Turks simply hate us all.
While former American ambassadors continue to shill for Turkey as some sort of enlightened democracy, the country is backsliding into dictatorship. Last week, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Brownshirts staged middle-of-the-night raids on the homes of independent and critical journalists, taking several into custody. Turkey now ranks 138 out of 178 on Reporters Without Borders’s press freedom index. That puts it beyond Venezuela, Egypt, and Zimbabwe.
When President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton speak of Turkey as a model, someone might want to ask for what is Turkey a model? How to transform a democracy into a police state?
Well intentioned people are trying to start a nation-wide 5 minute "total shutdown" of Israel, in order to raise national consciousness of the plight of Gilad Shalit's captivity by Hamas for the past 5 years.Gilad Shalit was captured by Palestinians in June 2006.
At 11 am on Tuesday, March 15, Israel's citizens will be asked to stop what they're doing and observe five minutes of silence – one for every year kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit has been in Hamas captivity.Unfortunately, this "5 minute" campaign will simply raise the price for gaining the return of Gilad. See the video below to understand why this 5 minute campaign is probably the worst thing we could do for Gilad...
The campaign organizers hope that as many people as possible will leave their homes, offices and classrooms and get out of their cars in the middle of the road – in order to remind the country's leaders that the people of Israel have not forsaken Gilad.
"My goal is to get two million people who care out on the street," said businessman and former General-Manager of the Hapoel Tel Aviv soccer club Roni Sidi, 50, who is behind the campaign. (ynet)
This article gives a little too much 'credit' to one person, but to me the important point here is that we need to look into how the American college campus was lost so that we can go about trying to regain it.
How did the Jewish community, known for its rhetorical genius, lose a critically important political battle on American campuses? Here is a thumbnail sketch:There's another point that needs to be made here. For whatever reason, the vast majority of the American Jewish community is unfortunately incapable of voting Republican. As a result, the community either votes Democratic or stays home, and since most Jews don't stay home on Election Day, the result is that the Democrat gets the Jewish vote regardless of their position on the issues. That leaves the Democrats free to do anything they want to court the Left - including abandon Israel.
In 1990, James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, explained on Jordanian TV how the Arab Lobby can and will match Jewish political and organizational success in America. Zogby and his allies recognized that the campus and the media, unlike Capitol Hill, are two battle grounds that Arabists could win by allying themselves with the American left. In both venues they already had beachheads and feet on the ground. The campus was in transition politically, influenced by ’60s tenured radicals who had adopted the dogma of post-colonialism, and its Palestinian version, Professor Edward Said’s “Orientalism.”
Moreover, America was experiencing a significant increase in foreign born Muslim students as well as increased Muslim immigration (many from countries with a culture of vicious anti-Semitism). Zogby focused on forming alliances with Marxist professors, die-hard socialist activists, African- American student groups, gay-lesbian groups and, most importantly, Jewish progressives. He also realized that an emerging anti-Israel Left/Muslim axis on campus could be better organized and benefit from an inflow of Arab petro dollars into prestigious American universities. All this was happening while many Jewish leaders, intoxicated by the Oslo agreement, were abandoning Israel programming.
Today, we can see the brilliance of Zogby’s strategy: Anti-Israel sentiment suffuses the campus atmosphere. In the classroom, radical professors express the the dominant narrative that the Palestinians are right and the Israelis are in the wrong. In its mild form, the Palestinians suffer needlessly at the hands of Israeli occupiers; in its more vicious version, Israel is a racist, genocidal apartheid nation. Outside the classroom, anti-Israel groups hold conferences, screen films and conduct theatrical demonstrations that portray Israel in the harshest of terms. Israel’s advocates are rudely interrupted, prevented from speaking; pro-Israel events are disrupted; Jewish students are intimidated verbally or even physically, and are excluded from pro-Palestinian events. Pathetic attempts by Jewish groups to initiate dialogue with Palestinian students are rejected. Any acknowledgement of Israelis’ humanity is seen as a validation of Palestinian oppression. Our epoch’s secular religion – political correctness and multiculturalism – judges people by who they are, not what they do. Israelis are by definition always guilty, while darker skinned, impoverished, indigenous Palestinians are eternally innocent.
The picture below thus reflects reality in today's American Jewish community. And until that changes - until non-Orthodox Jews feel that they can vote Republican and not be deemed sinners for having done so - the Jewish community is likely to continue to be a partner in a radical Leftist agenda that includes supporting the 'Palestinians.'
What could go wrong?
This is shameful. The third ranking Democrat in the House is going to appear on stage on Friday with Louis Farrakhan.
Via Drudge, we see that Rep. James Clyburn, the assistant House minority leader, will appear with Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, Friday at “a live town hall meeting and broadcast of The Bev Smith Show entitled ‘The Disappearing Black Community and How We Can Get It Back.’”
What a disgrace. via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

Think like a liberal for a second. I know it hurts, that's why I said just for a second.When all the libtards across the planet were actually happy when they found a way to pin the shooting of Democrat Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords on Sarah Palin (even though by now everybody knows-and that's just not the same thing libs say when they want you to think that everyone does believe their innuendos and lies-that Jared Loughner had no political affiliations and did not pay attention to political rhetoric from either side and no targets on a map made any difference on his state of mind) that school of thought can now be put into action concerning far-left liberal film maker, Brian De Palma and his bomb of a film, Redacted. It made almost nothing at the box-office, but apparently it served its purpose in getting Americans killed.
Good job Mr. De Palma. Your message got through to the right people. Sleep well.