Russian Initiative: How Enforceable Is It?

September 16, 2013 13:25 by Pesach Benson How enforceable is Russia’s plan to get rid of Syria’s chemical weapons? Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, told the Jerusalem Post that Moscow’s plan isn’t realistic because A) no country will volunteer to send inspectors into the midst of a brutal civil […]

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Russian Peace Plan: The Fallout Begins

September 11, 2013 15:56 by Pesach Benson President Obama took his case for Syrian intervention to the public in a national address (video/transcript). See also the Wall St. Journal, which rounded up the highlights of the president’s six network interviews. Fallout from the Russian initiative: According to Israeli media reports, when Moscow told Bashar Assad […]

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How to Libel Israel: A Case Study

September 11, 2013 13:30 by Simon Plosker It’s easy to produce an anti-Israel libel that is subsequently debunked after the damage has been done. This was graphically demonstrated in the past few days. Anti-poverty organization Oxfam’s Campaigns and Policy Director Ben Phillips tweeted the following: There exists a symbiotic relationship between non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the […]

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BDS rally

No BDS Apology for “Shoot the Jew” Chant

September 3, 2013 13:43 by Pesach Benson It’s bad enough a BDS rally at South Africa’s Witwatersrand University featured protesters chanting, “Shoot the Jew.” But Mohammed Desai, the head of South Africa’s BDS movement, poured more fuel to the fire when he told the student paper, the Wits Vuvuzela: The coordinator of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions […]

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Syria: Israel Between a Rock and a Hard Place

August 29, 2013 14:04 by Simon Plosker The current news cycle is, unsurprisingly, dominated by Syria and the increasing probability of a US-led military strike in reaction to President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons. HonestReporting will be there monitoring the media to make sure that all angles concerning Israel are covered fairly and accurately […]

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Israeli flag

The Times of London: Israel Can Do No Right

September 1, 2013 15:43 by Simon Plosker It seems that Israel can never do right. At least, that’s the impression given by the following sensationalist headline in The Times of London: The immediate impression is one of abandonment. Instead of a story celebrating the remarkable and unprecedented in-gathering of Ethiopian Jewry by Israel over the […]

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Chemical war drill

Syrian Chemical Attack Kills Hundreds

August 21, 2013 17:39 by Pesach Benson According to press reports, hundreds of Syrians were killed in a chemical attack near Damascus. Jeffrey Goldberg hit the nail on the head: Two questions are raised by reports of this attack. The first, of course, is whether or not it happened the way Syrian rebels said it […]

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Five Thoughts on the Egypt Crisis

August 21, 2013 16:13 by Simon Plosker Compared to many parts of the Middle East, Israel is a veritable island of calm. With ongoing peace talks taking place in a media blackout, there has been relatively little to report for once. Which is just as well because most journalists’ attentions are now trained on Cairo […]

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