Coteret

Cross-posted from Promised Land.

David Horovitz

Other recent posts on the latest wave of suppression of dissent in Israel | Essays Hadas Ziv; Hagai El-Ad; Yariv Mohar; Aeyal Gross; Dorit Abramovitch; Amir Paz-Fuchs | News and analysis IDF joins assault on Israeli human rights community;Israeli media goes after New Israel Fund: “Responsible for Goldstone Report”; Hagee and CUFI fund anti-NIF campaign organizer; Two senior Maariv reporters attack the anti-NIF campaign sponsored by their newspaper; Following the Im Tirzu campaign: First Knesset steps against NIF; Israeli McCarthyism, circa 2010; Debunking the Im Tirzu report part I: Keshev’s Yizhar Be’er; Debunking the Im Tirzu report part II: Ha’ir media critic on journalism as propaganda |

Haaretz reveals today that following the right-wing campaign against the New Israel Fund, Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief David Horovitz informed NIF President Naomi Chazan that the paper will stop publishing her columns.

Yesterday Chazan received an e-mail from Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief David Horovitz, informing her the newspaper would cease publishing her column.

Chazan had provided the daily with one of its few leftist voices in recent years. Horovitz declined to respond to questions from Haaretz last night.

This is just one of several recent cases of self-censorship in the Israeli media: Both Maariv and Yediot, two of the leading tabloids in Israel, have decided recently not to publish major articles which were critical of Israel and the IDF.

Chazan, who was the target of a Der Sturmer style ads in the Israeli media, also commented on her personal feelings following the rightwing Im Tirzu movement’s campaign against her:

“I don’t know why they chose me – I can think of plenty of human rights supporters they could pick on. But I’m ever so proud to be a symbol of Israeli democracy. No doubt about it.”

Earlier this week, the Jewish community in Melbourne canceled a scheduled event with Chazan.

Dr. Amir Paz-Fuchs is a lecturer in the Faculty of Law at Ono Academic College and a member of the board of Bimkom — Planners for Planning Rights.

Other recent posts on the latest wave of suppression of dissent in Israel | Essays Hadas Ziv; Hagai El-Ad; Yariv Mohar; Aeyal Gross;Dorit Abramovitch | News and analysis IDF joins assault on Israeli human rights community;Israeli media goes after New Israel Fund: “Responsible for Goldstone Report”; Hagee and CUFI fund anti-NIF campaign organizer; Two senior Maariv reporters attack the anti-NIF campaign sponsored by their newspaper; Following the Im Tirzu campaign: First Knesset steps against NIF; Israeli McCarthyism, circa 2010; Debunking the Im Tirzu report part I: Keshev’s Yizhar Be’er; Debunking the Im Tirzu report part II: Ha’ir media critic on journalism as propaganda |

Im Tirzu (“if you wish”), we’ll tell you a fairytale

Ben Caspit

An ill wind is blowing and gloomy clouds are darkening our skies. Another red line was crossed last weekend. In an alarming and alarmist article, Maariv’s Ben Caspit expounded his political philosophy and gave generous space to a pathetic and superficial “investigation” carried out by an organization called Im Tirtzu (“if you wish”). According to the investigation and the article, the New Israel Fund supports many of the Israeli organizations that provided the Goldstone Committee with incriminating material relating to the IDF. The article was powerful enough to convince the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to consider establishing a committee of inquiry to examine the forwarding of information by Israeli organizations to the UN’s investigative committee.

The background to this investigation and the article is perfectly obvious. The Israel Police arrests a woman for wrapping herself in a prayer-shawl; regularly stops youths who are inoffensively walking in the Rechavia neighborhood of Jerusalem or the Hadar neighborhood of Haifa and carries out searches without legal grounds; disperses a demonstration that the court has ruled does not require a permit; and arrests human rights activists, including Hagai El-Ad, executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. The Knesset comes up with its own initiatives – the Loyalty Law, the Citizenship Law, the Nakba Law – in order to deny Israeli Arabs their basic rights and the possibility to share a common fate in solidarity. Not to speak of the Infiltration Law, which threatens to imprison refugees or those who assist them for decades.

Ben Dror Yemini

These are just a few examples from the past few months alone; there are many others. Who is trying to stop this repellent flood? Civil society organizations, which are funded by the New Israel Fund, among other sources. The New Israel Fund supports over 300 organizations active in the fields of women’s rights, the struggle against racism, immigrant absorption, single-parent families, and promoting equality and social justice in Israel. For Ben-Dror Yemini, however, editor of the opinions section in Ma’ariv, all this is just a sophisticated cover. He is convinced that “most of the bodies supported by the New Israel Fund are active in delegitimizing Israel… They are the biggest enemy… of the free world and human rights.” No less! Caspit follows suit with manipulative malice: “Are these activities by the Fund actually intended to conceal radical actions that undermine the foundations of the Zionist state?” His Machiavellian allusions do not end there. Responding to a question from the “journalist,” Ronen Shoval, chairman of Im Tirtzu, claims that the authors of the investigation drew on the intelligence skills they acquired during their army service. After all, for Shoval there is no difference between collecting information about “organizations that support Hamas and the New Israel Fund.”

Ronen Shoval

The investigation names sixteen organizations that supposedly assisted Goldstone. The truth must be told: if the investigators of Im Tirtzu honed their skills in the Israeli Intelligence Corps then the IDF is in a worse state than we thought. A simple examination would have revealed that at least half of these organizations are not involved at all in the subject of the Gaza Strip, so that they could not possibly have had any information, let alone “incriminating” information, about the IDF operations. Many of the organizations are active in the field of human rights in general, and their publications were quoted in the Goldstone Report in chapters that have nothing to do with the fighting in Gaza. For example, one of the organizations mentioned in the Im Tirtzu investigation — Rabbis for Human Rights — appears in the context of a petition it submitted to prevent the demolition of homes in a Palestinian village in the Jordan Valley. The publications of  Bimkom — Planners for Planning Rights association mentioned in the investigation relate to Israel’s planning policies, which strangle any possibility of development by Palestinians in “Area C” in the West Bank. The association Itach — Women Lawyers for Social Justice did not appear at all in the Goldstone investigation.

Unsurprisingly, Shoval, Caspit, and Yemini piously declare that their sole interest is to reveal the truth and encourage freedom of expression. There is no element of revealing the truth here. Is the argument about freedom of expression sincere and substantive in this case? Far from it. This is the conclusion to be drawn not only from their political positions but also from their intentions. An extreme right-wing activist such as Itamar Ben-Gvir can acknowledge the importance of the position of human rights organizations in supporting the right to carry out vigils without police interference. As he explains, this has been his principled position for years. Similarly, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel supported the demand by Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel to march in Umm al-Fahm. Genuine human rights discourse certainly serves diverse political orientations. But this is not the discourse proffered by Yemini, Caspit, and Shoval. Their discourse is in keeping with the strategy of the organization NGO Monitor, and its purpose is to silence expression. It is not about freedom of expression, but freedom of denigration. Its purpose is not to enrich public discussion, or even to advance a particular political position within the free market of ideas. Rather, it seeks to trample the opposing position through lies, manipulation, intimidation (as in the headline Fifth Column in Caspit’s article), and demonization. This is McCarthyism, pure and simple. Now more than ever we must remember the words of Edmund Burke: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Other recent posts on the latest wave of suppression of dissent in Israel | Essays Hadas Ziv; Hagai El-Ad; Yariv Mohar; Aeyal Gross;Dorit Abramovitch | News and analysis IDF joins assault on Israeli human rights community;Israeli media goes after New Israel Fund: “Responsible for Goldstone Report”; Hagee and CUFI fund anti-NIF campaign organizer; Two senior Maariv reporters attack the anti-NIF campaign sponsored by their newspaper; Following the Im Tirzu campaign: First Knesset steps against NIF; Israeli McCarthyism, circa 2010; Debunking the Im Tirzu report part I: Keshev’s Yizhar Be’er |

Im Tirzu (“if you wish”), this is what we’ll write

What is the difference between Ben Caspit and a reporter?  A reporter would have checked the content of the charges that the organizations gave Goldstone, verified them or not, and establish his view of the issue based on his findings.  Caspit, however, does not care about verifying the facts; he is here to uphold the approach he came with

Itay Ziv [media critic], Ha’ir [Tel-Aviv weekly owned by Haaretz], February 5 2010 Issue [Hebrew original here]

The difference between Ben Caspit and a reporter is that a reporter checks the facts, and Ben Caspit does not have to.  Once they are included in the Goldstone report, for example, they are no longer important.  Why?  Well, because Justice Richard Goldstone is “a loathsome liar,” according to Caspit.  Let us, for the moment, set aside the question of why Goldstone did not file a libel suit against Caspit and Maariv, the newspaper he works for (probably because he is an internationally renown legal expert who does not care much about being slandered by this or that Caspit).  What is more important is the chain of the underlying assumptions of the Caspit article that adorned the cover of Maariv’s Musafshabat supplement last weekend (“The Stuff the Goldstone Report Is Made Of”) and was given a front-page banner (reading “The New Fund and the Industry of Lies”).

Ben Caspit

That article was based on an inspection conducted by a movement named Im Tirzu (“if you wish”), which argued that almost half of the Israeli sources quoted in the Goldstone report are organizations that have one thing in common: they are all sponsored by the New Israel Fund.  Furthermore, when Im Tirzu isolated only the negative quoted passages — that is, claims about IDF wrongdoing — it turned out that 92% of them were furnished by those same organizations.  Caspit and Maariv celebrated the “disclosure,” branded it “an exclusive scoop,” and carried fancy banners on the paper’s front pages, as noted.  This was a celebrated political charge sheet disguised as a journalistic achievement.  What exactly is the achievement?  After all, every remark cited in the [Goldstone] report came with a clear reference to its source, specifying exactly what organization it was taken from.  Furthermore, the fact that the NIF sponsors some of those organizations is no secret matter; it actually takes pride in that.  If Caspit had bothered to read the report properly, including its reference list, he would have single-handedly found the “incriminating material” that he is now celebrating.  As one of those who came out against the report from the day it was published, it was actually Caspit’s duty to do so.  It seems, however, that he did not do the bare minimum he was required to, and so he shamelessly established his article on a “research” by an ephemeral and clearly politically-motivated movement, gave it a stage it could not even dream of and, to validate his accusations – that is, its accusations – he even exalted its leader, a 29-years-old character.Thus he did the same thing he had attributed to the cooperation between the Goldstone committee and the Israeli human rights organizations: “they scratch each other’s back and promote each other, as long as their common agenda wins.”

Ad on page 3 of the January 31 edition of the Jerusalem Post.

The hidden assumption at the core of the Caspit article is that the Goldstone report is illegitimate and thus each and every one of the claims or testimonies it contains is false.  This a far-reaching assumption that was borrowed one-for-one from the government position — I am speaking of the broadest meaning of the term, referring not to the political position of the government under Netanyahu – against whom Caspit has been conducting a personal campaign, for his own reasons – but to the ruling position that currently stands above the facts.  This is the core difference between Ben Caspit and a true reporter.  A reporter would have first checked the facts and, based on those, would determine his position later.  Caspit, however, has a basic attitude toward the facts the article is based on it.  In the specific case before us, a reporter would have checked the content of the claims that the organizations made to Goldstone, verified them or not, and established his view of the issue based on his findings.  If he found them wrong, he would have had an opportunity to screw those organizations, as well as Goldstone himself, which is what Caspit, the star of the Maariv team, has been dreaming of.  Caspit, however, does not care about verifying the facts; he is here to uphold the approach that he came with and, in most cases, he does that by simply declaring it.  In philosophy, this is called “assuming the consequent.”In this case, this conceptual distortion bred a journalistic absurdity.  Throughout his entire piece, Caspit rages against a series of arguments and quotations without citing their reference or verifying their veracity.  He hides that because, no matter what their content might be, once they were given to Goldstone, he views them as “contaminated” – that is, scheming against him and the position he serves, which is why they are compartmentalized.  In this context, we should pay attention to Caspit’s choice of words when he describes how it worked:  “The organizations provided him (Goldstone, I.Z.) with the references… offering the committee incriminating materials.”  That is to say, no one argues that the testimonies were true (they have “references”) and that they can substantiate real accusations against the IDF activities (they are “incriminating”), and the only trouble is that now this has been made known abroad as well – and that should have been prevented.

This is how journalism serves propaganda.

Read more…

Yizhar Be’er is the Director of Keshev — The Center for Protection of Democracy in Israel. Below is a synopsis of a report he published today, which methodically analyzes and debunks the Im Tirzu “report” attacking the New Israel Fund. The full report in Hebrew can be downloaded here.

Other recent posts on the latest wave of suppression of dissent in Israel | Essays Hadas Ziv; Hagai El-Ad; Yariv Mohar; Aeyal Gross; Dorit Abramovitch | News and analysis IDF joins assault on Israeli human rights community; Israeli media goes after New Israel Fund: “Responsible for Goldstone Report”; Hagee and CUFI fund anti-NIF campaign organizer; Two senior Maariv reporters attack the anti-NIF campaign sponsored by their newspaper; Following the Im Tirzu campaign: First Knesset steps against NIF; Israeli McCarthyism, circa 2010 |

“Im Tirtzu”: If you will it… or just full of it?

The “Im Tirtzu” movement has published a report on the involvement of organizations supported by the New Israel Fund in shaping the conclusions of the Goldstone Report, blaming them for causing serious damage to the state. Sources in the media and the Knesset have also blamed these organizations for harming the national interests of the State of Israel. Keshev analyses the report’s structural flaws and brings to light facts that the Israeli media did not relate about the identity and motives of its authors.

Im Tirzu demonstration outside Prof. Naomi Chazan's home

The Im Tirtzu movement has recently published a report attacking the New Israel Fund and organizations that it supports for their involvement in the report prepared by the Goldstone Commission, the commission appointed by the UN to investigate events in Operation Cast Lead. The report has gained widespread media exposure. Coverage of the report and interviews with its authors appeared in Ma’ariv, Channel 2, Channel 1, IDF Radio and Reshet Bet of the Voice of Israel. On the basis of this report, Im Tirtzu, which defines itself as a “centrist extra-parliamentary movement that strives to strengthen the values of Zionism in Israel”, has launched a public campaign against the New Israel Fund. Its activists, garbed in keffiyahs, have protested outside the home of former Knesset Member Naomi Chazan, President of the New Israel Fund. In the report itself and in media interviews, the movement’s leaders claim that the New Israel Fund is a fifth column that damages the security of the state.

A meticulous review of the Im Tirtzu report finds that it is tendentious, biased and rife with failings and distortions. The report analyses the sources of information in the Goldstone Report based on the footnotes that appear in it, while ignoring many other sources upon which it relies including government Ministers, generals, government institutions and major media outlets in Israel, including Ma’ariv. By the logic of the report, they too, should be blamed for “causing serious political harm to Israel and damaging the state’s military capability to defend itself during wartime”, and like the New Israel Fund, they too, should be considered “extremist leftists, anti-Zionists” (in the words of the report.)