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War is decep­tion. — The Prophet Mohammed

Islamist, neo-Nazi and al-Taqwa direc­tor Achmed Huber made a pre­dic­tion in a 2002 news arti­cle: “The U.S. is the ally of 15 mil­lion Jews against 1.3 bil­lion Mus­lims; it is allied with 5 mil­lion Israelis against 200 mil­lion Arabs. . . We will bring down the Israel lob­by and change for­eign pol­i­cy.  We’ll do it in Amer­i­ca. When it hap­pens, you’ll under­stand.” This broad­cast devel­ops the argu­ment that Huber’s pre­dic­tion is indeed com­ing true, uti­liz­ing (among oth­er devices) dis­tort­ed media cov­er­age tai­lored to inflame pub­lic opin­ion. Ref­er­enc­ing the Nazi tract Ser­pen­t’s Walk, the pro­gram com­pares the cov­er­age of the Israeli/Palestinian con­flict with the O.J. Simp­son case, both dra­mat­i­cal­ly affect­ed by bla­tant, deeply prej­u­diced advo­ca­cy jour­nal­ism.

In recent years, jour­nal­is­tic cov­er­age of the Mid­dle East con­flict has fea­tured emblem­at­ic and sen­sa­tion­al sto­ries of Israeli atroc­i­ties. What has received lit­tle cov­er­age is the fact that many of them were either fal­si­fied or great­ly embell­ished to gen­er­ate anti-Israeli sen­ti­ment. The France2 broad­cast of the alleged killing of Mohamed Al Dura by Israeli troops has been ruled fraud­u­lent by a French appel­late court. The trag­ic death of Rachel Cor­rie, the alleged Israeli attack on an ambu­lance dur­ing the Lebanon war of 2006, the “killing” of chil­dren at Qana dur­ing that same con­flict and–most recently–the cov­er­age of Pales­tin­ian casu­al­ties dur­ing the Gaza war have either been utter­ly fab­ri­cat­ed or strate­gi­cal­ly dis­tort­ed. These media events are the “Pales­tin­ian pornog­ra­phy” referred to in the broad­cast’s title.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy is the fact that some of these inci­dents such as the Qana “non-mas­sacre” of 2006 and the alleged shelling of U.N. facil­i­ties and vehi­cles dur­ing the recent Gaza war have proved appar­ent­ly deci­sive in per­suad­ing the Israelis to con­clude the con­flict before achiev­ing their strate­gic aims.

Reveal­ing also is the fact that when Hamas kills Pales­tin­ian rivals of the Fatah orga­ni­za­tion it does not gen­er­ate the same degree of out­rage or media atten­tion.

After dis­cussing an Inter­net story/rumor that has been cir­cu­lat­ing for a num­ber of years con­cern­ing a direct Nazi her­itage for Karl Rove, the pro­gram notes a sig­nif­i­cant development–the deci­sive effect of col­lat­er­al dam­age to Pales­tin­ian civilians–real, embell­ished, pro­voked or fabricated–with regard to the actu­al tac­ti­cal and strate­gic con­duct of the con­flict. As was the case in the 2006 Lebanon war against Hezbol­lah (whose youth wing is pic­tured in this pho­to essay from Time mag­a­zine) dur­ing which a large­ly fab­ri­cat­ed inci­dent at Qana helped pre­cip­i­tate the Israeli with­draw­al, inci­dents such as the shelling of a UN school helped to halt the Israeli offen­sive in Gaza. Accord­ing to wit­ness­es, that shelling was delib­er­ate­ly drawn by Hamas fire. After the record­ing and broad­cast of the pro­gram, the U.N. retract­ed its claim, clar­i­fy­ing that the shells fell out­side the com­pound!

In addi­tion to that inci­dent and a pat­tern of Hamas com­bat­ants dress­ing like civil­ians and uti­liz­ing civil­ian instal­la­tions as muni­tions or fir­ing posi­tions (actions des­ig­nat­ed as war crimes), there have been a num­ber of fal­si­fied inci­dents such as a “doc­tor” sup­pos­ed­ly admin­is­ter­ing CPR to a wound­ed civil­ian and a super­mar­ket sup­pos­ed­ly devoid of food.

Cor­riere del­la Sera–Italy’s largest and most respect­ed daily–reported that the actu­al Pales­tin­ian death toll was clos­er to 600 (not 1300) and that most of the dead were Hamas fight­ers.

Among the fac­tors dis­tort­ing cov­er­age of the war is the fact that much of the cov­er­age in the U.S. accessed an AP reporter named Ibrahim Barzak, a long­time Pales­tin­ian res­i­dent of Gaza, whose home was bad­ly dam­aged in the fight­ing! Hard­ly an objec­tive source. Anoth­er major media source alleg­ing Israeli war crimes was a Nor­we­gian physi­cian who felt that the 9/11 attacks were jus­ti­fied!

Of para­mount impor­tance in assess­ing the Gaza war of 2008-09 is the fact that Hamas and its Mus­lim Broth­er­hood par­ent emerged the strate­gic vic­tor, due to the false per­cep­tion gen­er­at­ed by the cov­er­age of the con­flict, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in the Arab street.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Analy­sis of TV host Jon Stew­art’s ridicu­lous and destruc­tive­ly false analy­sis of the con­flict; review of the Asso­ci­at­ed Press Tele­vi­sion News Ser­vice and its deci­sive influ­ence on cov­er­age of the Mid­dle East con­flict; review of com­par­i­son between key points of infor­ma­tion in both the O.J. Simp­son case and the Israeli/Arab conflict–points of infor­ma­tion of which most peo­ple are not aware; review of the anti Semit­ic per­cep­tions pre­sent­ed in Ser­pen­t’s Walk.

1. Tack­ling an Inter­net sto­ry that’s made the rounds for the last five years, the pro­gram sets forth alle­ga­tions that Karl Rove has an overt Nazi her­itage. [This turned out to be dis­in­for­ma­tion, as I suspected–D.E.]

” . . . Karl Rove has par­al­lel ties. The shad­owy Rove serves as ‘Bush’s Brain’ in the cur­rent White House. He is the polit­i­cal mas­ter­mind behind the Cal­i­for­nia coup, and is now in the head­lines for out­ing Valerie Plame, the CIA wife of Ambas­sador Joseph Wil­son. A con­sum­mate strate­gist, Rove may have out­ed Plame in retal­i­a­tion for Wilson’s fail­ure to back up the Bush claim that Sad­dam Hus­sein was buy­ing nuclear weapons mate­ri­als in Africa. Accord­ing to some pub­lished reports, as many as sev­en­ty CIA oper­a­tives have been put at risk by Rove’s retal­ia­to­ry strike.

Accord­ing to Wil­son, and to Retired U.S. Navy Lt. Com­man­der Al Mar­tin (www.almartinraw.com), Rove’s grand­fa­ther was Karl Heinz Rover­er, the Gauleit­er of Old­en­burg. Rover­er was Reich-Statthal­ter — Nazi State Par­ty Chair­man — for his region. He was also a part­ner and senior engi­neer in the Rover­er Sud-Deutche Inge­nieur­buro A. G. engi­neer­ing firm, which built the Birke­nau death camp, at which tens of thou­sands of Jews, Gyp­sies, dis­si­dents and oth­er were slaugh­tered en masse. . . . “

“Fourth Reich? The Bush-Rove-Schwarzeneg­ger Nazi Nexus” by Bob Fitrakis and Har­vey Wasser­man;Coun­ter­punch; 10/6/2003.

2. Before enter­ing into dis­cus­sion of the recent Gaza war, the pro­gram access­es a col­umn by New York Times colum­nist Ethan Bron­ner, in which he sets forth his own frus­tra­tion at the seem­ing inabil­i­ty of par­ti­sans of the two sides in the Israeli/Palestinian con­flict to mod­er­ate their views.

“Faisal Hus­sei­ni, a Pales­tin­ian leader who died at the start of this decade, used to tell a sto­ry about his first vis­it to Israel. The 1967 war had just end­ed, bor­ders were sud­den­ly opened and he took a dri­ve to Tel Aviv, where at some point he found him­self detained by an Israeli police­man. Ques­tions and answers ensued. At one point the police­man said to him, ‘As a proud Zion­ist, I must tell you ....‘At which Mr. Hus­sei­ni burst out laugh­ing.

What’s so fun­ny? the police­man asked. ‘I have nev­er in my life,’ Mr. Hus­sei­ni replied, ‘heard any­one refer to Zion­ism with any­thing but con­tempt. I had no idea you could be a proud Zion­ist.’

I have writ­ten about the Arab-Israeli con­flict on and off for more than a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry and have spent the past four weeks cov­er­ing Israel’s war in Gaza. For me, Mr. Husseini’s sto­ry sums up how the two sides speak in two dis­tinct tongues, how the very words they use mean oppo­site things to each oth­er, and how the war of lan­guage can con­found a reporter’s attempts to nar­rate — or a new president’s attempts to medi­ate — this con­flict in a way both sides can accept as fair.

Among Israel’s Jews, there is almost no high­er val­ue than Zion­ism. The word is bathed in a celes­tial glow, sug­gest­ing self­less­ness and nobil­i­ty. But go any­where else in the Mid­dle East and Zion­ism stands for theft, oppres­sion, racist exclu­sion­ism.

No place, date or event in this con­flict­ed land is spo­ken of in a com­mon lan­guage. The bar­ri­er snaking across and inside the West Bank is a wall to Pales­tini­ans, a fence to Israelis. The holi­est site in Jerusalem is the Tem­ple Mount to Jews, the Noble Sanc­tu­ary to Mus­lims. The 1948 con­flict that cre­at­ed Israel is one side’s War of Inde­pen­dence, the Cat­a­stro­phe for the oth­er.

After Israel’s three-week air, sea and land assault in Gaza, aimed at halt­ing Hamas rock­et fire, it is worth paus­ing to note how dif­fi­cult it has been to nar­rate this war in a fash­ion oth­ers view as neu­tral, and to con­tem­plate what that means for any attempt by the new Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion to try to end it.

It turns out that both nar­ra­tion and medi­a­tion require com­mon ground. But try­ing to tell the sto­ry so that both sides can hear it in the same way feels more and more to me like a Greek tragedy in which I play the despised cho­rus. It feels like I am only fan­ning the flames, adding to the mis­un­der­stand­ings and mutu­al antag­o­nism with every word I write because the fer­vent inner voice of each side is so loud that it drowns every­thing else out. . . .”

“The Bul­lets in My In-Box” by Ethan Bron­ner; The New York Times; 1/25/2009.

3. Tack­ling the sub­stance of the Gaza war itself, the pro­gram notes a sig­nif­i­cant development–the deci­sive effect of col­lat­er­al dam­age to Pales­tin­ian civilians–real, embell­ished, pro­voked or fabricated–with regard to the actu­al tac­ti­cal and strate­gic con­duct of the con­flict. The shelling of a UN school in Gaza may well have been pro­voked and was cer­tain­ly a key ele­ment in help­ing to pre­cip­i­tate the Israeli cease­fire and with­draw­al. After the record­ing and broad­cast of the pro­gram, the U.N. retract­ed its claim, clar­i­fy­ing that the shells fell out­side the com­pound!

” . . . Until now, the inter­na­tion­al community–including Egypt–has giv­en Israel a long leash to strike a heavy blow against Hamas. But with the shelling of the U.N. school in the north­ern Gaza town of Jebaliya on Tues­day, the clock might start tick­ing for Israel to with­draw its troops. . . . The For­eign Min­istry also said it had good rea­son for tar­get­ing the school. ‘Ini­tial inves­ti­ga­tions indi­cate that Hamas ter­ror­ists fired mor­tar bombs from the area of the school towards Israeli forces, who returned fire towards the source of the shoot­ing. The Israeli return fire land­ed out­side the school, yet a series of explo­sions fol­lowed, indi­cat­ing the prob­a­ble pres­ence of muni­tions and explo­sives in the build­ing.’

The Israeli army also accused Hamas of ‘cyn­i­cal­ly’ using civil­ians Imad Abu Askar and Hasan Abu Askar, ‘two known Hamas mor­tar crew­men,’ the For­eign Min­istry said in a state­ment. two neigh­bor­hoods res­i­dents who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because they feared for their safe­ty, con­firmed the Israeli account, telling the Asso­ci­at­ed Press that a group of mil­i­tants fired mor­tar rounds from a street near the school, then fled into a crowd of peo­ple in the streets. . . .

‘A ground inva­sion was expect­ed and, in some Hamas quar­ters, hoped for,’ said the Inter­na­tion­al Cri­sis Group, a Brus­sels-based orga­ni­za­tion engaged in con­flict res­o­lu­tion, in a posi­tion paper pub­lished this week. ‘The islamist move­ment hopes to reap polit­i­cal ben­e­fit from mate­r­i­al loss­es It knows it is no mil­i­tary match for Israel but it can claim vic­to­ry by with­stand­ing the unprece­dent­ed onslaught.’

Shlo­mo Brom, the for­mer head of the strate­gic plan­ning divi­sion of the Israeli army, said min­i­miz­ing civil­ian casu­al­ties requires ‘a com­bi­na­tion of excel­lent intel­li­gence, very accu­rate weapons sys­tems and very good plan­ning that takes into account col­lat­er­al dam­age. Mis­takes are bound to hap­pen, and they will hap­pen in this war.’ Ger­ald Stein­berg, pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at Bar-Ilan Uni­vesi­ty in Ram­ag Gan, said the strike against the U.N. school and ensu­ing diplo­mat­ic pres­sure it could crate were not only fore­seen but dis­cussed in advance by israeli pol­i­cy­mak­ers.

‘There were many meet­ings on how to deal with this before the fight­ing start­ed. It hap­pens every time. The effect this time very much depends on how the sto­ry plays out in the next 24 hours,’ said Stein­ber. ‘If orga­ni­za­tions like Amnesty (Inter­na­tion­al) and Human Rights Wach give this issue much greater vis­i­bil­i­ty as they have in the past, the pres­sure on Israel will build and it will have some impact, but if it’s strict­ly Pales­tin­ian claims it won’t have much effect.’ But inter­na­tion­al pres­sure is mount­ing. . . .”

“Gaza School Attack Could Be a Trig­ger for Israeli Pull­out” by Matthew Kalman; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 1/07/2009.

4. Hamas has delib­er­ate­ly pre­cip­i­tat­ed sit­u­a­tions in which civil­ians would be exposed to Israeli retal­ia­to­ry fire.

“The grind­ing urban bat­tle unfold­ing in the dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed Gaza Strip is a war of new tac­tics, quick adap­ta­tion and lethal tricks.

Hamas, with train­ing from Iran and Hezbol­lah, has used the last two years to turn Gaza into a dead­ly maze of tun­nels, boo­by traps and sophis­ti­cat­ed road­side bombs. Weapons are hid­den in mosques, school­yards and civil­ian hous­es, and the leadership’s war room is a bunker beneath Gaza’s largest hos­pi­tal, Israeli intel­li­gence offi­cials say.

Unwill­ing to take Israel’s bait and come into the open, Hamas mil­i­tants are fight­ing in civil­ian clothes; even the police have been ordered to take off their uni­forms. The mil­i­tants emerge from tun­nels to shoot auto­mat­ic weapons or anti­tank mis­siles, then dis­ap­pear back inside, hop­ing to lure the Israeli sol­diers with their fire. . . .

Israeli press offi­cers call the tac­tics of Hamas cyn­i­cal, ille­gal and inhu­mane; even Israel’s crit­ics agree that Hamas’s reg­u­lar use of rock­ets to fire at civil­ians in Israel, and its use of civil­ians as shields in Gaza, are also vio­la­tions of the rules of war. Israeli mil­i­tary men and ana­lysts say that its urban guer­ril­la tac­tics, includ­ing the wide­spread use of civil­ian struc­tures and tun­nels, are delib­er­ate and come from the Iran­ian Army’s tac­ti­cal train­ing and the lessons of the 2006 war between Israel and Iran­ian-backed Hezbol­lah in Lebanon.

Hamas rock­et and weapons caches, includ­ing rock­et launch­ers, have been dis­cov­ered in and under mosques, schools and civil­ian homes, the army says. The Israeli intel­li­gence chief, Yuval Diskin, in a report to the Israeli cab­i­net, said that the Gaza-based lead­er­ship of Hamas was in under­ground hous­ing beneath the No. 2 build­ing of Shi­fa Hos­pi­tal, the largest in Gaza. That alle­ga­tion can­not be con­firmed.

While The New York Times and some oth­er news orga­ni­za­tions have local or Gaza-based Pales­tin­ian cor­re­spon­dents, any Israeli cit­i­zen or Israeli with dual cit­i­zen­ship has been banned for more than two years from enter­ing Gaza, and any for­eign cor­re­spon­dent who did not enter the ter­ri­to­ry before a six-month cease-fire with Hamas end­ed last month has not been allowed in. . . .”

“A Gaza War Full of Traps and Trick­ery” by Steven Erlanger; The New York Times; 1/11/2009.

5. Real­iz­ing the strate­gic goals set forth in Serpent’s Walk–the gam­bits high­light­ed above, cou­pled with favor­ably dis­tort­ed news cov­er­age by the “opin­ion-form­ing media” are real­iz­ing the vision of al-Taqwa direc­tor, Islamist and neo-Nazi Achmed Huber. For The Record has long pre­sent­ed the case that, like The Turn­er Diaries, a com­pan­ion vol­ume pub­lished by Nation­al Van­guard Books, Serpent’s Walk is in fact a blue­print and man­i­festo detail­ing Under­ground Reich strat­e­gy for its foot sol­diers.

“The U.S. is the ally of 15 mil­lion Jews against 1.3 bil­lion Mus­lims; it is allied with 5 mil­lion Israelis against 200 mil­lion Arabs. . . We will bring down the Israel lob­by and change for­eign pol­i­cy.  We’ll do it in Amer­i­ca. When it hap­pens, you’ll under­stand.”

”Swiss Probe Anti‑U.S. Neo-Nazi”; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 3/12/2002; p. A12.

6. A nau­se­at­ing but telling event sup­port­ing the the­o­ry that Huber’s words are accu­rate, the bad PR that Israel has expe­ri­enced has been exac­er­bat­ed by the com­ments of Jon Stew­art, the host of the “Dai­ly Show.” Demon­strat­ing the super­fi­cial, triv­i­al­iz­ing nature of the medi­um of TV, Stew­art (nee “Lei­bowitz”) intoned to the great acclaim of his audi­ence that Israel attacked Gaza to inflict civil­ian car­nage before Barack Oba­ma assumed the pres­i­den­cy. In fact, the tim­ing of the Israeli action had far more to do with the Feb­ru­ary Israeli elec­tions, with the right-wing Likud Par­ty hav­ing been the odds-on favorite to win, as recent­ly as Sep­tem­ber. (As of ear­ly Feb­ru­ary of 2009–the week before the elections–Likud and Kadi­ma were in a vir­tu­al dead heat.)

“As war rages between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and Pres­i­dent-elect Barack Oba­ma counts down the days until he has to deal direct­ly with the con­flict as the leader of the free world, a war to con­trol the mes­sage is rag­ing at home. And it’s unusu­al­ly fierce.

This week, some jar­ring events made head­lines and illus­trat­ed the nature of that war: Huge­ly pop­u­lar come­di­an Jon Stew­art, who is Jewish–birth name, Jonathan Stu­art Leibowitz–was laud­ed by the Mus­lim Pub­lic Affairs Coun­cil this week for a scathing ‘Dai­ly Show’ seg­ment enti­tled, ‘Israel Invades Gaza . . . Mis­sile Tov!’ The Com­e­dy Cen­tral host, not­ing that rock­ets lobbed from Hamas into Israel are not new, posed the ques­tion, ‘Why does Israel feel that they have to react so strong­ly right now?’ Answer the Oba­ma inau­gu­ra­tion. ‘I get it. . . . Israel gets their bomb­ing in before the Jan. 20 ‘hope and change’ dead­line . . . it’s like a civil­ian car­nage Toy­ota-thon!’ he said to roars of approval from his audi­ence. . . .”

“At War in Gaza, Israel Los­ing PR Bat­tle in the U.S.” by Car­la Mar­in­uc­ci; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 1/10/2009; pp. A1-A7.

7. Illus­trat­ing the political/economic dynam­ics under­ly­ing the jour­nal­is­tic dis­tor­tion of the Mid­dle East is the rela­tion­ship between the non-prof­it Asso­ci­at­ed Press and its prof­it-mak­ing tele­vi­sion news sub­sidiary APTN. In turn, the pro­found influ­ence of the Arab mar­ket on the cov­er­age pro­vid­ed by APTN and the influ­ence of APTN on oth­er broad­cast out­lets is a major cause of the media dis­tor­tion of events in the Mid­dle East.

“The vast major­i­ty of the TV news pic­tures you see are pro­duced by two TV news com­pa­nies. Pre­sent­ed here is a case for how a large amount of mon­ey has been used to inject a clear bias into the heart of the glob­al TV news­gath­er­ing sys­tem. That this hap­pens is not at ques­tion, whether it is by acci­dent or design is hard­er to tell. You may not real­ize it, but if you watch any TV news broad­cast on any sta­tion any­where in the world, there is a bet­ter than even chance you will view pic­tures from APTN. BBC, Fox, Sky, CNN and every major broad­cast­er sub­scribes to and uses APTN pic­tures. While the method by which they oper­ate is inter­est­ing, it is the extra ser­vice this US owned and UK based com­pa­ny offers to Arab states that is real­ly inter­est­ing.”

(“How Much Does It Cost to Buy Glob­al TV News?”; Lit­tle Green Foot­balls)

8. The pro­gram encap­su­lates the his­to­ry of the AP and the oper­a­tions of its APTN sub­sidiary:

“The Asso­ci­at­ed Press (AP) is a not-for-prof­it news gath­er­ing and dis­sem­i­na­tion ser­vice based in the US. Formed in 1848, the AP grew up from an agree­ment between the six major New York news­pa­pers of the day. They want­ed to defray the large teleg­ra­phy costs that they were all inde­pen­dent­ly incur­ring for send­ing the same news coast to coast. Despite being high­ly com­pet­i­tive, they formed the Asso­ci­at­ed Press as a col­lec­tion agency and agreed to share the mate­r­i­al. Today, that six-news­pa­per coop­er­a­tive is an orga­ni­za­tion serv­ing more than 1,500 news­pa­pers and 5,000 broad­cast out­lets in the Unit­ed States. Abroad, AP ser­vices are print­ed and broad­cast in 112 coun­tries. Asso­ci­at­ed Press Tele­vi­sion News (APTN) is a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of AP. It was for­mal­ly set up as a sep­a­rate enti­ty in 1994. It is run as a com­mer­cial enti­ty and aims to make a prof­it. Any prof­it it does make is fed back to AP (which is non-prof­it mak­ing: APTN prof­its reduce the news­gath­er­ing costs incurred by the 1500 US news­pa­pers that col­lec­tive­ly own the AP). APTN is the largest tele­vi­sion news-gath­er­ing play­er (larg­er than Reuters, its only true com­peti­tor in this field). While AP is based in the US, APTN oper­ates out of large premis­es in Cam­den, Lon­don. They have news teams, offices and broad­cast facil­i­ties in just about every impor­tant place in the world.”

(Idem.)

9. Note the role in gen­er­at­ing APTN’s cov­er­age of local sources—in many cas­es ‘stringers’ in Arab coun­tries who are sub­ject to the polit­i­cal and eth­nic prej­u­dices that obtain in that part of the world.

“APTN uses news crews and broad­cast facil­i­ties all over the world to record video of news­wor­thy events (in News, Sport and Enter­tain­ment). These pic­tures are either sent unedit­ed or very par­tial­ly edit­ed back to Lon­don. Most news is fed back with­in hours but they also cov­er and feed cer­tain events live (news con­fer­ences in Iraq, press con­fer­ences after a sport­ing event etc.). Most of these sto­ries are sent in with ‘nat­ur­al sound’: there is no jour­nal­ist pro­vid­ing a voice over, but the choice of what to shoot is in the hands of the local pro­duc­er and cam­era crew. Local crews are some­times employed direct­ly by APTN, or more often ‘stringers’ are hired for a par­tic­u­lar event or paid for the footage they have already cap­tured. Once the sto­ries have been fed back to the UK they are edit­ed. This is a round the clock oper­a­tion. The goal is to pro­duce a 30 minute news bul­letin com­pris­ing 6 or 7 sto­ries every few hours. These sto­ries are made by edit­ing down the raw ‘rush­es’ that come in from all over the world. This is done by a team of pro­duc­ers who work for the news edi­tor. They don’t sup­ply a voice over but they do edit, dis­card and sequence pic­tures dic­tat­ing the empha­sis and direc­tion of the sto­ry. They will accom­pa­ny each sto­ry with a writ­ten descrip­tion of each shot and the gen­er­al rea­son this was a sto­ry. This is repeat­ed for News, Sport & Enter­tain­ment with a geo­graph­i­cal empha­sis that shifts around the world as dif­fer­ent mar­kets wake and sleep. The out­put of this is called the ‘Glob­al News Wire’ (GNW).”

(Idem.)

10. The pro­gram details how APTN makes its mon­ey:

“This is how APTN makes its mon­ey: news orga­ni­za­tions (most­ly TV but not all) sub­scribe to APTN and pay an annu­al amount to both watch and then re-use the sto­ries that are fed over the GNW. The sto­ries are sup­plied with sound, but no jour­nal­ist to do a voice over. Most com­mer­cial news sta­tions (like the BBC, SKY, Fox or CNN) would take this feed, decide which pic­tures to use then re-edit it and sup­ply an appro­pri­ate voice over for the sto­ry. The video comes with a writ­ten descrip­tion of the shots and the events that occur in them. The fee for this feed depends on the size of the receiv­ing orga­ni­za­tion, their audi­ence size and a nego­ti­a­tion with APTN’s sales force. It is pret­ty much impos­si­ble, how­ev­er, to oper­ate a TV news orga­ni­za­tion with­out tak­ing feeds from either APTN or Reuters or usu­al­ly both. The agree­ment with APTN usu­al­ly allows the receiv­ing news chan­nel unlim­it­ed use of the video for two weeks. If they want to re-show those pic­tures after that they have to sep­a­rate­ly license the pic­tures (which can cost any­thing from $100 to $10,000 per 30 sec­onds depend­ing on the con­tent).”

(Idem.)

11. Of para­mount impor­tance in under­stand­ing tele­vi­sion cov­er­age of news in the Mid­dle East is the deci­sive influ­ence of the Arab states’ APTN sub­scrip­tion ser­vice. This service—specifically tai­lored for the vir­u­lent­ly anti-Israeli Arab market—is pro­found­ly influ­en­tial on APTN con­tent as a whole. And with the great influ­ence of APTN cov­er­age on TV cov­er­age as a whole, this bad­ly skews the objec­tiv­i­ty of the cov­er­age of the Israel and the Lebanon war.

“How­ev­er, there is anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant part of their busi­ness mod­el that affects the rest of the busi­ness. While most of the world takes news pic­tures with min­i­mal inter­pre­ta­tion beyond edit­ing, the Arab Gulf States have asked for and receive a dif­fer­ent and far more expen­sive ser­vice. These states pay for a com­plete news report ser­vice includ­ing full edit­ing and voice-overs from known jour­nal­ists. The news orga­ni­za­tions in the Arab coun­tries don’t do any­thing (beyond ver­i­fy that they are appro­pri­ate for local tastes) before broad­cast. What this means is that while there are around 50 peo­ple pro­duc­ing news pic­tures for the whole world work­ing in Cam­den at any time, there are a fur­ther 50 Ara­bic speak­ing staff pro­duc­ing fin­ished sto­ries exclu­sive­ly for the Arab states of the gulf. This has a tremen­dous effect on the whole feel of the build­ing as these two teams feed pic­tures and peo­ple back and forth and sit in adja­cent work areas. The slant of the sto­ries required by the Gulf States has a def­i­nite effect on which footage is used and dis­card­ed. This affects both the Gulf news­room and the main glob­al news­room. This full ser­vice feed is much more expen­sive for the cus­tomers than the usu­al ser­vice, but it is also much high­er mar­gin for APTN. This is part­ly because there is great com­mon­al­i­ty in what they can send to most of the Gulf States tak­ing this ser­vice: sto­ries are made once and used in a num­ber of coun­tries.”

(Idem.)

12. “Any­thing involv­ing Israel is a favorite with Gulf Arab states for show­ing to their view­ers. Could this be the rea­son why Israel receives such a dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount of par­tic­u­lar­ly neg­a­tive cov­er­age espe­cial­ly and increas­ing­ly ever since the ear­ly 1970’s? Hon­estRe­port­ing is usu­al­ly unable to decide which is most biased: AP or BBC. As the BBC is often using APTN footage, the dif­fer­ence is minor. A sig­nif­i­cant twist to what is seen, con­cerns what is not seen. Footage such as the Pales­tin­ian mob joy­ful­ly lynch­ing two Israeli reservists in Ramal­lah in Octo­ber 2000 is held by APTN’s library: any attempt to license this film for reshow is care­ful­ly vet­ted. Requests for the use of ‘sen­si­tive clips’ are referred direct­ly to the Library direc­tor. This is not the case with clips that paint Israel in a bad light. Like­wise, the re-show­ing of Pales­tin­ian cel­e­bra­tions on 9/11 is con­sid­ered ‘sen­si­tive’. The way in which raw footage such as APTN’s is com­piled into a news report and sent round the world has also been ana­lyzed. The Sec­ond Draft gives a com­pre­hen­sive view of how edit­ing can make all the dif­fer­ence. APTN is the gate­keep­er that sits between you and the actu­al event. You will nev­er see what the edi­tors at APTN see before they com­pile your evening news. What do you think is cut out?”

(Idem.)

13. There are indi­ca­tions that the Ara­bic APTN ser­vice may have been set up with this bias in mind.

“Was this orga­ni­za­tion set up with this in-built bias on pur­pose? Is there some way that the expen­sive pay­ments made by Gulf state gov­ern­ments form part of a delib­er­ate attempt to skew the media? In Islam and Dhim­mi­tude (2002) by Bat Ye’or on pp294-296 she recounts how deci­sions were tak­en in the wake of the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 to try to put across an anti-Jew­ish, anti-Zion­ist mes­sage. Suc­ces­sive con­fer­ences resolved to con­tribute vast sums ‘to uni­ver­si­ties, cen­ters for Islam­ic stud­ies, inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions agen­cies, and pri­vate and gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions in order to win over world opin­ion.’ (p296). The mes­sages from these con­fer­ences stressed an addi­tion to the more famil­iar vio­lent jihad: they also empha­sized the impor­tance of jihad by the writ­ten and spo­ken word—what we would rec­og­nize as clas­sic pro­pa­gan­da. With­out ques­tion APTN’s inter­est­ing busi­ness mod­el rep­re­sents a con­crete exam­ple of an ongo­ing finan­cial ‘con­tri­bu­tion’ to an impor­tant com­mu­ni­ca­tion agency pro­mot­ing a pro-Arab bias.”

(Idem.)

14. AP reporter Ibrahim Barzak did much of the report­ing on the con­flict that found itself into the West­ern news media. Barzak is a Pales­tin­ian res­i­dent of Gaza whose home was bad­ly dam­aged in the fight­ing! Not exact­ly an objec­tive source.

“I live alone in my office. My wife and two young chil­dren moved in with her father after our apart­ment was shat­tered. The neigh­bor­hood mosque, where I have prayed since I was a child, had its roof blown off. All the gov­ern­ment build­ings on my beat have been oblit­er­at­ed.

After days of Israeli shelling, the city and life I have known no longer exist. . . .”

“News Reporter Finds His Gaza Home in Ruins” by Ibrahim Barzak; TheLedger.com; 1/8/2009.

15. As has so often been the case in recent episodes of the decades-old war between the Jews and the Arabs, cov­er­age of the con­flict has been bad­ly skewed by embell­ished inci­dents and cov­er­age.

” . . . The net­work was caught run­ning an obvi­ous­ly faked video of a Gaza Pales­tin­ian sup­pos­ed­ly being treat­ed in the wake of an Israeli attack, sup­pos­ed­ly record­ed by a cam­era man who was his broth­er. The prob­lem was that the “doc­tor” who play­ing the role of an emer­gency room physi­cian admin­is­ter­ing CPR had not a clue what the real thing looks like. . . . Lit­tle Green Foot­balls exposed the fraud, so CNN pulled the video from its web­site with­out expla­na­tion. You can view the video, and keep in mind the com­ments of a real doc­tor post­ed on LGF: ‘I’m no mil­i­tary expert, but I am a doc­tor, and this video is bullsh‑t. The chest com­pres­sions that were being per­formed at the begin­ning of this video were absolute­ly, pos­i­tive­ly fake. The large man in the white coat was NOT per­form­ing CPR on that child. He was just sort of tap­ping on the child’s ster­num a lit­tle bit with his fin­gers. You can’t make blood flow like that. Fur­ther­more, there’s no point in doing chest com­pres­sions if you’re not also ven­ti­lat­ing the patient some­how. In this video, I can’t tell for sure if the patient has an endo­tra­cheal tube in place, but you can see that there is nobody bag-ven­ti­lat­ing him (a bag is actu­al­ly hang­ing by the head of the bed), and there is no ven­ti­la­tor attached to the patient. In a hos­pi­tal, dur­ing a code on a ven­ti­lat­ed patient, some­body would prob­a­bly be bag­ging the patient dur­ing the chest com­pres­sions. And they also would have moved the bed away from the wall, so that some­body could get back there to intu­bate the patient and/or bag him. In short, the ‘resus­ci­ta­tion scene’ at the begin­ning is fake, and it’s a pret­ty lame fake at that.’ . . .”

“CNN Bust­ed Run­ning Pho­ny Gaza Pro­pa­gan­da, Does­n’t Fess Up (Updat­ed)” by Thomas Lif­son; Amer­i­can Thinker; 1/9/2009.

16. The same French TV net­work that broad­cast the fab­ri­cat­ed footage of the “death” of Mohammed al-Dur­ra has once again trans­mit­ted pho­ny infor­ma­tion.

“But that pro­vides lit­tle com­fort to Jen­nifer Las­z­lo Mizrahi, pres­i­dent and founder of The Israel Project in Wash­ing­ton. Accord­ing to Mizrahi, France 2 com­mit­ted an addi­tion­al infrac­tion of late: Staged footage.

In a report main­tain­ing peo­ple are starv­ing in Gaza, Mizrahi said, France 2 showed a Gaza res­i­dent in a food store say­ing: ‘Appar­ent­ly, there is noth­ing, as you can see. There are no nat­ur­al prod­ucts for the kids. There is no milk. There is noth­ing here.’ . . .”

But, upon clos­er inspec­tion, shelves filled with food can be seen in the reflec­tion of a refrig­er­a­tor door. . . .”

“Crit­ics Say French TV Net­work Broad­cast Fab­ri­cat­ed Footage in Gaza, Again” by Stephanie L. Freid; FoxNews; 1/12/2009.

17. Fur­ther cloud­ing any attempts at sep­a­rat­ing jour­nal­is­tic wheat from pro­pa­gan­dis­tic chaff–by both sides–are indi­ca­tions that the sta­tis­tics con­cern­ing Gazan civil­ian casu­al­ties have been great­ly exag­ger­at­ed. This should not be mis­in­ter­pret­ed as say­ing that there was­n’t col­lat­er­al dam­age and the deaths of inno­cent civil­ians. Rather, it should lead an intel­li­gent observ­er to con­clude that what we have been told is not as adver­tised. Cor­riere del­la Sera–Italy’s largest and most pres­ti­gious daily–reported a vast­ly dif­fer­ent account of the Gazan casu­al­ty toll.

“There was a very inter­est­ing arti­cle in the Ital­ian news­pa­per Cor­riere del­la Sera last week.  It sug­gests that Pales­tin­ian hos­pi­tal admin­is­tra­tors and oth­er gov­ern­ment offi­cials in the Gaza strip gave great­ly exag­ger­at­ed casu­al­ty fig­ures to for­eign reporters and aid groups dur­ing Israel’s just-end­ed Oper­a­tion Cast Lead.

The num­ber that has come to be seen as ‘offi­cial’ — only because of rep­e­ti­tion — is 1,200 to 1,300.   But reporter Loren­zo Cre­mone­si spoke to a Gazan doc­tor who told him, ‘The num­ber of deaths was between 500–600...Most were young men between 17 and 23 who were recruit­ed into the ranks of Hamas, which sent them to be slaughtered...It was strange that the non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing West­ern ones, repeat­ed the high num­ber with­out check­ing, but the truth will come to light in the end.’

‘It’s like what hap­pened in Jenin in 2002,’ the doc­tor said, refer­ring to a UN inves­ti­ga­tion which con­tra­dict­ed media claims of a Israeli Defense Force ‘mas­sacre’ in the West Bank and set the num­ber of Pales­tin­ian dead at about 45.  ‘At the begin­ning they spoke of 500 dead; after­wards [sic] it was clear there were only 54 dead, at least 45 of them fight­ers.’

‘It is suf­fi­cient to vis­it sev­er­al hos­pi­tals [in the Gaza Strip] to under­stand that the num­bers don’t add up. ‘Cre­mone­si wrote.  He also not­ed that in near­ly all of Gaza­’s major hos­pi­tals, and espe­cial­ly those in major con­flict zones, he found most beds emp­ty. . . .”

“Cor­riere del­la Sera Chal­lenges the Con­ven­tion­al Wis­dom on Gaza” by Stephanie Guttman; Telegraph.co.uk; 1/25/2009.

18. One can only won­der how many of the accounts that found their way into the world’s media came from indi­vid­u­als such as a Nor­we­gian doc­tor who felt that the 9/11 attacks were, on the bal­ance, fair and jus­ti­fi­able.

“Nor­we­gian doc­tor Mads Gilbert entered the Gaza Strip sev­er­al days before Israel launched its mil­i­tary offen­sive there. In the course of the oper­a­tion Gilbert spoke to numer­ous media out­lets, pre­sent­ed him­self as “an objec­tive physi­cian” and repeat­ed­ly con­demned the IDF’s actions in Gaza. How­ev­er, it recent­ly became known that Gilbert might have been less impar­tial than he claimed to be. The only West­ern doc­tor allowed into the Strip dur­ing the fight­ing is a mem­ber of the Nor­we­gian social­ist par­ty Red, and a man who in the past expressed sup­port for al-Qaeda’s Sep­tem­ber 11 attack on the World Trade Cen­ter in New York. . . .”

“Doc­tor Who Slammed Gaza Vio­lence Sup­port­ed 9/11 Attacks” by Sha­har Ginosar; YnetNews.com; 2/4/09.

19. It should be not­ed that the net result of the war and its cov­er­age was to increase Hamas’s pop­u­lar­i­ty and to increase Mus­lim anger. A major ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the war was the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, par­ent orga­ni­za­tion of Hamas and an Islam­ic fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion.

“Inside Al Azhar Mosque, a 1,000-year-old cen­ter of reli­gious learn­ing, the preach­er was rail­ing on Fri­day against Jews. Out­side were rows of riot police offi­cers backed by water can­nons and dozens of plain­clothes offi­cers, there to pre­vent wor­shipers from charg­ing into the street to protest against the war in Gaza.

“Mus­lim broth­ers,” said the gov­ern­ment-appoint­ed preach­er, Sheik Eid Abdel Hamid Youssef, “God has inflict­ed the Mus­lim nation with a peo­ple whom God has become angry at and whom he cursed so he made mon­keys and pigs out of them. They killed prophets and mes­sen­gers and sowed cor­rup­tion on Earth. They are the most evil on Earth.”

As the war in Gaza burned through its 14th day, Arab gov­ern­ments have felt their legit­i­ma­cy chal­lenged with an uncom­mon vir­u­lence. With each pass­ing day, and each Pales­tin­ian death, the pop­u­lar­i­ty of Hamas and oth­er rad­i­cal move­ments has ratch­eted high­er on the Arab street, while the stand­ing of Arab lead­ers has suf­fered.. . .

‘The pres­sure is mount­ing on Egypt,’ said Abdel Raouf el-Reedy, a for­mer Egypt­ian ambas­sador to the Unit­ed States. ‘How come you keep the Israeli ambas­sador here? How come you keep the Egypt­ian ambas­sador in Israel? How come you still export gas to Israel in spite of a court order to stop? The sys­tem is on the defen­sive. Pub­lic opin­ion is more clear­ly on the side of Hamas.’

The mood on the streets of Cairo feels somber, dark, deject­ed. There is a heavy secu­ri­ty pres­ence. Armed riot police offi­cers are massed out­side of pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tions, like the Doctor’s Syn­di­cate, that are often run by mem­bers aligned with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the offi­cial­ly out­lawed but tol­er­at­ed Islam­ic move­ment. Mas­sive troop car­ri­ers clog small side streets.

Over three days of inter­views here, peo­ple seemed deflat­ed about the pub­lic crit­i­cism their coun­try had received, let down by the fail­ure of their own gov­ern­ment to help the Pales­tini­ans and sick­ened by the deaths of hun­dreds of Pales­tini­ans, not only com­bat­ants but many women and chil­dren as well. Over and over, Egyp­tians said they felt the only ones they could trust were the Islamists — not their gov­ern­ment.

‘The Mus­lim Brotherhood’s work gives them cred­i­bil­i­ty,’ said Heba Omar, 27, who col­lect­ed about $4,000 from her neigh­bors to donate to a char­i­ty con­trolled by broth­er­hood mem­bers. ‘They do what they can do at times of cri­sis.’ . . .”

“Egyp­tians Seethe Over Gaza, and Their Lead­ers Feel Heat” by Michael Slack­man; The New York Times; 12/10/2009.

20. In the past, For The Record com­pared the expe­ri­ence of cov­er­ing the Israeli/Palestinian con­flict to cov­er­ing the O.J. Simp­son case. Peo­ple are stri­dent­ly, vicious­ly polar­ized on both issues and fun­da­men­tal­ly misinformed—misinformed BECAUSE THE MEDIA UPON WHICH THEY DEPEND FOR THEIR INFORMATION ARE NOT PROPERLY INFORMING THEM. Although the pub­lic is not, for the most part, aware of it, there was a moun­tain of excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence in the O.J. Simp­son case, as well as enough evi­dence to indict, and per­haps con­vict, Mark Fuhrman, the detec­tive who con­duct­ed the ille­gal search of O.J.’s prop­er­ty. In the next para­graph, we will exam­ine some of that evi­dence. Note that this is from a fire­side chat. It is an infor­mal talk. Mr. Emory did not source his dis­cus­sion of the OJ case. For the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the infor­ma­tion, use the search func­tion to locate old pro­grams about the case. They are all avail­able on the archive page main­tained by WFMU.

21. In FTR #571, we enu­mer­at­ed a num­ber of essen­tial facts about the O.J. Simp­son case that the media did not (for the most part) com­mu­ni­cate. The media did not tell peo­ple: that a report was sub­mit­ted to pros­e­cu­tor Mar­cia Clark a week or so after the killings indi­cat­ing that Mark Fuhrman had a sex­u­al inter­est in Nicole Brown Simp­son and may well have had an affair with her; that Mark Fuhrman was the head of a white suprema­cist group with­in the Los Ange­les Police Depart­ment called WASP (“White Anglo-Sax­on Police­men”); that O.J. and Nicole Simp­son were receiv­ing death threats from white suprema­cist groups (includ­ing some affil­i­at­ed with the Los Ange­les Police Depart­ment); that Judge Lance Ito’s wife was the high­est rank­ing female mem­ber of the LAPD; that Ito’s wife had been Fuhrman’s watch com­man­der and had to dis­ci­pline Fuhrman when he wrote “KKK” on the Mar­tin Luther King Hol­i­day on the sta­tion house cal­en­dar; that Ito’s wife lat­er claimed she had no rec­ol­lec­tion of Fuhrman and that, there­fore, Judge Ito had no con­flict of inter­est; that Fuhrman lied on the stand dur­ing the pre-tri­al hear­ings about where he was and what he was doing on the night of the killings; that Nicole wasn’t liv­ing in fear of O.J.—she had a piz­za par­ty at O.J.’s a few weeks before the killings; that all of the prin­ci­ples in the case had links to “orga­nized vice’; that Nicole appears to have been work­ing as a call girl for Hei­di Fleiss’s ring (the call girl oper­a­tion of “the Hol­ly­wood Madam”); that Ron Gold­man was open­ly gay and had no pas­sion­ate inter­est in Nicole; that Ron Gold­man may well have been work­ing as a gay pros­ti­tute and that he was receiv­ing death threats from his jeal­ous gay lover; that Michael Nigg—a defense witness—was mur­dered short­ly before he was to tes­ti­fy; that Casimir “Butch Casey” Sucharski—a reput­ed orga­nized crime asso­ciate of O.J.’s from his play­ing days was mur­dered short­ly after being writ­ten about in the Buf­fa­lo News; that Cowl­ings and Robert Kar­dashi­an (O.J.’s friend and attor­ney) were under inves­ti­ga­tion by a grand jury for pos­si­ble involve­ment in the largest sports-bet­ting ring in Cal­i­for­nia; that Cowl­ings was a dri­ver and body­guard for Joey Ippoli­to, a major South­ern Cal­i­for­nia orga­nized crime fig­ure; that Nicole tes­ti­fied in her divorce tes­ti­mo­ny that the New Year’s eve inci­dent was the only time O.J. had been vio­lent with her; that Duane Garrett—a Bay Area AM radio talk show host—reported that O.J. had approached by Edward J. DeBar­to­lo, Jr. (the own­er of the San Fran­cis­co 49’ers) and offered mil­lions of dol­lars to become the first black NFL fran­chise own­er; that O.J. (accord­ing to Gar­rett) turned the offer down because of the alleged orga­nized crime con­nec­tions of DeBar­to­lo; that Gar­rett began receiv­ing death threats short­ly after he made the report; that rough­ly a year after mak­ing the report, Gar­rett went off the Gold­en Gate Bridge (an alleged sui­cide); that the Mez­za­lu­na restau­rant (at which Ron Gold­man worked and which was man­aged by Nicole’s boy friend) was well known to have been an orga­nized crime front; that Ron Goldman’s father is alleged in a book pub­lished in Swe­den to be a mon­ey-laun­der­er for orga­nized crime; that Denise Brown (Nicole’s sis­ter) was dat­ing Tony “the Ani­mal” Fiat­to (a for­mer mob enforcer turned Fed­er­al infor­mant); that there is abun­dant, irrefutable evi­dence that the LAPD fal­si­fied evi­dence to frame O.J.; that the Los Ange­les Coun­ty grand jury would not indict O.J.; that wit­ness­es who saw the real killers were intim­i­dat­ed into silence; that knowl­edge­able inside sources allege that the killing of Ron and Nicole was videotaped—the ulti­mate snuff flick.

22. Per­haps the most dis­turb­ing aspect of the O.J. case was the per­ver­sion of the judi­cial process and the estab­lish­ment of legal prece­dents that fun­da­men­tal­ly under­mine cen­turies of Anglo-Sax­on legal tra­di­tion. The Cal­i­for­nia leg­is­la­ture passed a spe­cial law, vir­tu­al­ly in secret, which allowed Nicole’s “diary” to be intro­duced as evi­dence. The vol­ume was not, how­ev­er, a diary but a thought jour­nal that was main­tained for her ther­a­pist. It includ­ed her dreams and fan­tasies. With that rul­ing, Cal­i­for­nia law (and poten­tial­ly U.S. law) revert­ed to the Salem Witch Tri­als. In the civ­il case, one of the prin­ci­pal fac­tors decid­ing the case for the plain­tiffs was the intro­duc­tion of some crude­ly forged pic­tures of O.J. wear­ing “Bruno Magli shoes.” One set of the forged pic­tures showed O.J. wear­ing what pur­port to be “gray” Bruno Magli shoes. Bruno Magli has nev­er made a gray shoe! This evi­den­tiary trav­es­ty was allowed to stand because O.J.’s coun­sel was pre­vent­ed from exam­in­ing the evi­dence against his client! Mr. Emory hasn’t done much pro­gram­ming about the breach of civ­il lib­er­ties imple­ment­ed by some of the legal maneu­ver­ing around the “war on ter­ror.” The dam­age occurred a long time ago.

23. Like the O.J. Simp­son case, the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict is fun­da­men­tal­ly mis­un­der­stood, due in large mea­sure to delib­er­ate­ly dis­tort­ed research, report­ing and his­tor­i­cal archiv­ing. Most peo­ple view­ing the Arab/Israeli con­flict do not under­stand that: the Pales­tin­ian cause and its lead­ers are affil­i­at­ed with geno­cide and fas­cism through­out its his­to­ry; that the gen­e­sis of the Nazi/Palestinian axis derives from the Ottoman Empire’s impe­r­i­al dynam­ic of sup­port­ing the Hus­sei­ni clan against the Hasemite and Nashashibi clans; that Haj Amin al-Hus­sei­ni (the first leader of the Pales­tin­ian nation­al move­ment) began his pro­fes­sion­al life as an offi­cer in the Turk­ish army dur­ing World War I (which was com­mit­ting geno­cide against the Chris­t­ian Arme­ni­ans and per­pe­trat­ing a bru­tal, atroc­i­ty-rid­den counter-insur­gency cam­paign against Arab insur­gents); that the British adopt­ed the same pro-Hus­sei­ni impe­r­i­al dynam­ic as the Turks when they assumed stew­ard­ship of that part of the Ottoman Empire; that Hus­sei­ni began per­pe­trat­ing pogroms against Jews liv­ing in Pales­tine decades before the state of Israel came into being; that Hus­sei­ni lat­er became an SS offi­cer, recruit­ed three Balkan Mus­lim Waf­fen SS divi­sions for the Third Reich and also worked for Impe­r­i­al Japan; that the League of Nations (and the British) endorsed a 23/77 per­cent divi­sion of Pales­tine between, respec­tive­ly Jews and Arabs; that the British (in the run-up to the Sec­ond World War and in an attempt to cur­ry favor with the Arabs) first reduced, and then negat­ed, their com­mit­ment to the Bal­four Dec­la­ra­tion grant­i­ng the Jews a Mid­dle East­ern home­land; that the 1948 U.N. res­o­lu­tion estab­lish­ing the state of Israel also called for the estab­lish­ment of a Pales­tin­ian state (which nei­ther the Arabs nor the Pales­tini­ans made any attempt to estab­lish); that the Saud­is are the pri­ma­ry financier of the Pales­tin­ian cause; that the Saud­is (despite being an orig­i­nal mem­ber of the Unit­ed Nations) have nev­er acknowl­edged the Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights—the legal and philo­soph­i­cal foun­da­tion of the Unit­ed Nations; that Sau­di Ara­bia issued a com­pet­ing “Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Mus­lim Rights” which (in effect) said that only Mus­lims had rights; that the major­i­ty of Pales­tini­ans left their homes at the request of their lead­ers so that the Jews could be wiped out when the Arab armies were pro­vid­ed with a clear field of fire; that (under the statutes of inter­na­tion­al law) Israel’s occu­pa­tion of the West Bank is not illegal—no sov­er­eign state claims the ter­ri­to­ry as its own (the Pales­tini­ans are not, and nev­er have been, a sov­er­eign state); that the U.N. res­o­lu­tions call­ing for Israel to with­draw from the West Bank are rec­om­men­da­tion (not enforce­ment) res­o­lu­tions and, as such, are fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from enforce­ment res­o­lu­tions; that, in the sum­mer of 1967, Israel offered to with­draw from all of the ter­ri­to­ries occu­pied dur­ing the Six Day War if the Arabs would rec­og­nize their exis­tence (the Arabs refused and vowed to exter­mi­nate them); that the 2000 peace res­o­lu­tion reject­ed by Yass­er Arafat called for the estab­lish­ment of a com­mon mar­ket to be shared by Israel and the Pales­tini­ans; that (pri­or to Israel’s with­draw­al from the Gaza Strip) a group of wealthy Amer­i­can Jews con­tributed mil­lions of dol­lars to buy some hydro­pon­ic veg­etable grow­ing facil­i­ties and ware­hous­es to give to the Pales­tini­ans as a good-will ges­ture; that those facil­i­ties had gen­er­at­ed between 10 and 20 per­cent of Israel’s agri­cul­ture exports; that those hydro­pon­ics facil­i­ties would have pro­vid­ed the Pales­tini­ans with 24,000 good jobs; that the Pales­tini­ans destroyed those facil­i­ties almost imme­di­ate­ly upon re-occu­py­ing the Gaza Strip; that (fol­low­ing Israel’s war of inde­pen­dence in 1948) the Arab nations eth­ni­cal­ly cleansed most of their own Jew­ish pop­u­la­tions; that the num­ber of Jews so cleansed (about 900,000 by best esti­mates) exceeds the orig­i­nal num­ber of Pales­tini­ans cleansed by the Israelis (about 660,000 accord­ing to the best avail­able sta­tis­tics); that most of the eth­ni­cal­ly cleansed Mid­dle East­ern Jews set­tled in Israel where (known as “the Mizrahi”) they con­sti­tute the foun­da­tion of the Israeli polit­i­cal and elec­toral right-wing, that gay mem­bers of the IDF (the Israel Defense Force) receive full spousal ben­e­fits for their domes­tic part­ners.

24. The goal of the dis­tort­ed cov­er­age of the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict is to bring about a mind­set like that pre­sent­ed in Ser­pen­t’s Walk. In Serpent’s Walk, a Nazi pro­pa­gan­da tract and teach­ing tool, like The Turn­er Diaries, the Nazi Fuehrer (Alan Less­ing) inveighs against the Jews. (This takes place after the Under­ground Reich has infil­trat­ed the US Army, a dev­as­tat­ing bio/terror attack involv­ing genet­i­cal­ly-engi­neered micro-organ­isms has wiped out much of the US pop­u­la­tion, mar­tial law is declared, Israel gets wiped out by an Under­ground Reich “pre­emp­tive strike”, and the Under­ground Reich takes over the world.) The premise of the tract is that the US and the world are being manip­u­lat­ed by a “Jew­ish conspiracy”-a theme one hears with increas­ing fre­quen­cy these days from the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor, as well as overt­ly fas­cist ele­ments.

“‘A pre­emp­tive, sur­gi­cal first strike, just like the Izzies pulled on the Arabs a few times.’ He picked up a sheaf of doc­u­ments. ‘We keep this stuff, right? It’s evi­dence of their inten­tions. I’ll give it to Liese’s pub­lic­i­ty peo­ple right away, and we’ll have it on Home-Net before night­fall. I think we can promise you sup­port.’”

(Serpent’s Walk by ‘Ran­dolph D. Calver­hall;’ Copy­right 1991 [SC]; Nation­al Van­guard Books; 0–937944-05‑X; pp. 432–433.)

25. “‘They deserved it!’ Kenow growled. ‘We didn’t do noth­in’ to ‘em.’” (Ibid.; p. 433.)

26. “‘Even if you did, I doubt if our eth­nos group’ll make more than token objec­tions. The world’s had it. Any­body as unpop­u­lar as the Jews have always been . . . Egypt, Baby­lon, Rome, Spain, every coun­try in Europe dur­ing the Mid­dle Ages, Rus­sia, Amer­i­ca, the Third Reich . . . must be doing some­thing wrong! We’d have pre­ferred peace­ful . . . and sep­a­rate . . . and dis­tant . . . co-exis­tence, but they nev­er got the mes­sage. Now we don’t care any­more.’” (Idem.)

27. “‘It’s too bad . . .’ Wrench began.” (Idem.)

28. “‘Don’t waste your pity!’ Less­ing snapped. ‘They wouldn’t waste any on you. Sure, it’s sad that inno­cent peo­ple have to suf­fer, but it can’t be helped. That’s real­i­ty! That’s Nature! You can’t save the dodo, the con­dors, and the oth­er losers in the bat­tle for sur­vival. Species-extinc­tion hap­pens over and over, like rain in the sum­mer-time. For­get ethics and moral­i­ty and ‘do-unto-oth­ers.’ The Izzies said ‘nev­er again!’ about the ‘Holo­caust,’ but then they turned around and did to the Pales­tini­ans every­thing they claimed the Ger­mans had done to them! They called it ‘self-defense’: war under the pre­text of peace, oppres­sion in the name of jus­tice and sta­bil­i­ty! The Arabs were weak and went under, but we’re a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. We’re going to make it, no mat­ter who gets in our way.’” (Idem.)

29. “‘I hear Bill God­dard again,’ Wrench mur­mured.” (Idem.)

30. “‘No, you hear me, Alan Less­ing! There was a time when I’d have waf­fled and gone for ‘turn the oth­er cheek,’ but not any­more! Now you hear me, and you hear our Par­ty, our eth­nos, our major­i­ty . . . our First Fuhrer! You hear the past, you hear the present, and you hear the future! We are the future!’” (Idem.)