Bowing to the Muslims. Defecating on the Jews.

As a company, Reuters is deeply hostile to Jewish nationalism and Jewish claims to Jerusalem.  The agency hires, trains and retains reporters, writers, editors, and managing editors who uphold an agenda intended to undermine Jewish territorial claims, while advocating for Arab Muslim claims, and employing sophisticated propaganda techniques in their stories to advance this agenda with audiences. 

Proof of this can be seen in academic studies which have analyzed Reuters coverage of the Middle East conflict.

Take for example, this Reuters story by Noah Browning about prominent Arabs visiting the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

Browning writes about the tension between Arabs from Jordan and other countries who wish to visit the mosque, and those Arabs who argue that doing so implicitly recognizes Israel's claim to sovereignty over the city.

In his lede, Browning writes:

Israel controls access to Islam's 3rd holiest site

While Browning trumpets a claim made by Muslims that the al-Aqsa mosque represents the "3rd holiest site" for their faith, he fails utterly to note that the site is the holiest to Jews and referred to as the Temple Mount.  Indeed, it is not until the 9th paragraph of his story that Browning tells readers, in typically propagandistic fashion:

Jews revere the al Aqsa compound as site of their Biblical Temple, destroyed by Roman troops in the 1st century.  

Actually of course, Jews do not revere the "al-Aqsa compound" -- any more than Muslims revere the Cathedral of Córdoba in Spain, which was converted from a mosque to a Catholic church in the thirteenth century following the Reconquista.  Religious Muslims refer to the latter by its original Islamic name, the Aljama Mosque, just as Jews refer to the al-Aqsa mosque compound as The Temple Mount.

(Of note, Muslims are officially banned from praying in the Cathedral of Córdoba by both the Roman Catholic Church of Spain and the Vatican.  Security guards enforce the ban.  Apparently, "Israeli occupation forces" in Jerusalem are extraordinarily more tolerant of Islamic worship than are "Spanish occupation forces" in al-Andalus).

Browning, who is apparently ignorant of both history and current events and completely unable to do any independent fact-checking as a reporter, then writes: 

Israel says that when Jordan controlled East Jerusalem, Jews were prevented from attending their holy places. Now, it says, followers of all the three monotheistic religions -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- are free to worship in Jerusalem.
Any restrictions placed on access by Palestinians to al-Aqsa are the result of security concerns, Israel says.

It's a well-documented fact that Jews were prevented from attending their holy places, or for that matter, setting foot in Jerusalem when Jordan controlled the city.  And that synagogues were burned to the ground.  And that landmark Jewish cemeteries were routinely desecrated by Arab Muslims.  Browning deliberately structures his report to relegate the 19-year ban on Jewish worship to a mere claim by Israel and predictably mentions none of the other historical detail, essential to an understanding of why Israel seeks to control the eastern portion of Jerusalem.

The Reuters correspondent then parrots the most risible Arab claims about Israeli visitors to the Temple Mount:

Jerusalem's Muslim community says the [Israeli] visits have coincided with a period of tension, as radical Jewish settlers grow increasingly assertive at the site. "Almost every day a group of settlers comes through the Mughrabi gate," said Faisal Mohammed, one of the sanctuary's guards, referring to an entrance under Israeli control through which non-Muslim tourists can access the leafy compound.
"These aren't just ordinary trips, they're invasions."

In reality, hundreds of Israeli Jews of all religious and political stripes, as well as tourists from around the world, visit the site every week.  No political demonstrations of any kind are permitted and Israeli security personnel quickly arrest or usher away any Jew seen as even remotely engaging in prayer.

But for the Palestinian Arabs, and apparently for Reuters' Browning:

"Visits which affirm the Arab and Islamic character of al-Aqsa, even before its liberation, are welcome. My own proclamations affirm this," the Grand Mufti told Reuters. "Those that are aggressive and meant to attack our shrine are not, and Israel must forbid them."

Attacking the shrine, uh-huh.

Israeli authorization of Jewish settlements gives lie to Reuters previous reporting

The Israeli government announced this week that it was going to formally authorize three Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank").

Here's how Reuters reports on the development:

Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement group, said the change of the three outposts' status marked the first time since 1990 that the Israeli government had established a new settlement, adding that the four-man committee did not have the authority to approve the change.

What's fascinating about the statement by Peace Now, is that it gives lie to the hundreds of stories Reuters has published over the last few years suggesting that Israel has been "expanding settlements".

As Reuters itself now reports, there has been absolutely no new Israeli-authorized settlement in the original Palestinian territories for over two decades.

During that period, Israel has approved only the building of additional homes (or additions to homes) within existing and boundary-limited communities, which incidentally, sit atop less than 2 percent of the land.  (Here too, Reuters frequently misleads its readers by suggesting that Israeli-approved settlements consume much of the West Bank).

With news of the first new Israeli settlements in 22 years, we see that Reuters has been systematically prevaricating for nearly as long.

Pravda, anyone?

In an interview with the Haaretz newspaper published yesterday, Israeli Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz was asked his view of the Iranian nuclear weapons program.  Here are some key excerpts:

"If Iran goes nuclear it will have negative dimensions for the world, for the region, for the freedom of action Iran will permit itself," Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz told Haaretz in an Independence Day interview. That freedom of action might be expressed "against us, via the force Iran will project toward its clients: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Islamic Jihad in Gaza. And there's also the potential for an existential threat. If they have a bomb, we are the only country in the world that someone calls for its destruction and also builds devices with which to bomb us. [...]

Asked whether 2012 is also decisive for Iran, Gantz shies from the term. "Clearly, the more the Iranians progress the worse the situation is. This is a critical year, but not necessarily 'go, no-go.' The problem doesn't necessarily stop on December 31, 2012. We're in a period when something must happen: Either Iran takes its nuclear program to a civilian footing only or the world, perhaps we too, will have to do something. We're closer to the end of the discussions than the middle."[...]

Iran, Gantz says, "is going step by step to the place where it will be able to decide whether to manufacture a nuclear bomb. It hasn't yet decided whether to go the extra mile.  As long as its facilities are not bomb-proof, the program is too vulnerable, in Iran's view. If the supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wants, he will advance it to the acquisition of a nuclear bomb, but the decision must first be taken. It will happen if Khamenei judges that he is invulnerable to a response. I believe he would be making an enormous mistake, and I don't think he will want to go the extra mile. I think the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people. But I agree that such a capability, in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists who at particular moments could make different calculations, is dangerous."

And here are Reuters correspondent Maayan Lubell's headline and lede in her report on the Haaretz/Gantz interview:

Israel army chief says Iran unlikely to make bomb

(Reuters) - Israel's military chief said he does not believe Iran will decide to produce an atomic bomb, describing its leadership as "very rational" in an interview published on Wednesday.

Of course, this is not what Gantz is saying at all.  He is saying that Iran is on the deliberate path toward nuclear weapons but that the regime will not take the final decision to build a bomb until the Supreme Leader "judges that Iran is invulnerable to a response", i.e., foreign attack.  Gantz believes this decision will be taken once Iran's nuclear facilities become bomb-proof.  It is in this sense, that Gantz judges Iran's leadership to be rational.

Lubell and Reuters willfully edit and twist Gantz' words to make it appear that he has said he believes Iran will not produce an atomic bomb, because the leadership is rational.

The depths to which Reuters correspondents will stoop to obfuscate reality are truly astounding.

Whack-A-Mole

With nearly 3,000 staffers worldwide, there are always those at Reuters who appear not to get the memo that the company has been caught out publishing false and fabricated information, employing overt propaganda, and spinning the news, maliciously, to harm national, religious and ethnic groups the agency's journalists hold in contempt.

These writers and editors continue to prepare stories incorporating false and malicious material long ago exposed as such on this website and elsewhere.

In a story appearing yesterday on the Reuters website and syndicated to perhaps hundreds of newspapers worldwide, Reuters correspondents Sebastian Moffett and Daren Butler report on the Turkish government blocking Israel from participating in an upcoming NATO summit:

(Reuters) - Turkey has refused to allow Israel to take part in a NATO summit next month because the Jewish state has not apologized for the 2010 killing of Turkish activists in a raid on a ship taking aid to Palestinians, a Turkish official said on Monday.
Relations between the regional powers deteriorated sharply after Israeli commandos raided the Mavi Marmara aid vessel in May 2010 to enforce a naval blockade of the Gaza Strip and killed nine Turks in clashes with activists.
Last September, Turkey expelled Israel's envoy and froze military cooperation after a U.N. report on the raid failed to prompt an apology from Israel.

Independent reports, including that of the United Nations cited by Reuters, concluded that the Mavi Marmara carried no humanitarian aid whatsoever and that passengers on board the ship, many of whom were members of the terror-linked Islamist group İnsani Yardım Vakfı (IHH), planned and actively sought violent confrontation with Israeli forces:

There were humanitarian supplies and construction materials on board three of the vessels in the flotilla (the Defne Y, Sofia and the Gazze I). No humanitarian supplies were found on the remaining vessels. Weapons and combat equipment were found on board the Mavi Marmara, including flares, rods, axes, knives, tear gas, gas masks, protective vests and night-vision goggles.

It is thus false and willfully misleading for Moffett and Butler to characterize the Mavi Marmara as an "aid vessel", to assert that the ship was "taking aid to Palestinians" and to describe the passengers who attempted to kill Israeli marines boarding the ship with the anodyne term "activists".

To date, Reuters has published some variation of the Mavi Marmara aid ship canard in some three hundred stories. 

UPDATE APRIL 25TH, 2012: Reuters correspondents Edmund Blair and Tom Perry repeat the lie in this story, about Egypt's increasing hostility toward Israel.

He suggested Egypt could follow Turkey's example where once-close ties with Israel had worsened sharply after Israeli naval commandos killed nine Turks in May 2010 in a raid on a ship carrying aid to the Gaza Strip.

Is Perry still employed at Reuters?

Journo-bloat

Our post just below reminded us of the extraordinarily superfluous staffing seen in Reuters Jerusalem Bureau and the ravenous appetite of those staffers for any morsel of news.

Thomson Reuters employs a total of 2,700 journalists across 200 news bureaus globally, 70 of whom are based in Jerusalem.  In a country of 7 million people, one-tenth of one percent of the world population, we would expect a representative crew of 2 journalists.

Rather, Reuters maintains an army 35 times that size, with every reporter, writer, editor, and photographer dependent for his or her living on getting a story or picture published by Reuters and its network of hundreds of media outlets.

With that kind of mad, competitive scramble for news combined with an institutionally-endorsed propaganda campaign targeting the Jews of Israel, one could well predict the enormous volume of biased rubbish produced by Reuters Jerusalem Bureau we see in an average week.

Bias? What bias?

We don't usually focus on Reuters bias in areas outside of the agency's Middle East reporting.  But we happened across the Reuters home webpage this evening and found the following lineup of stories under the Politics header (this is as it appears verbatim at 10:02 pm CDT):

Obama calls on Romney to release tax returns: Univision

Obama calls Romney's immigration stance "troublesome"

Obama: Romney claim about women job loss is "bogus"

Perhaps it was actually the DNC website we stumbled upon.

Reuters new shill for Iran

Despite being tossed out of the country for a story headline that the Iranian mullahs found not to their liking, Reuters continues to obfuscate and censor news of Iran's drive for nuclear weapons as documented by the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and respected intelligence think tanks.

The Reuters correspondent most responsible for shilling on behalf of the Iranian regime at the present time, is Marcus George.

In a story published this morning for example, about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasting that his country can withstand a total embargo on its oil sales for 2-3 years, George repeats the long-standing Reuters fallacy that the battle over Iran's nuclear program is merely a he said/she said between that country and the amorphous "West":

The United States and its allies hope the sanctions on Iran's energy and financial sectors will force it to abandon uranium enrichment which they suspect is aimed at developing nuclear weapons. Iran says its goals are entirely peaceful.

Note George's duplicitous handling of the dispute as merely one of (unproven) claim and denial: the United States and its allies "suspect"; Iran clarifies that this is not the case.

George makes no mention whatsoever of any of the long series of UN IAEA reports documenting Iranian efforts on all fronts -- uranium enrichment, weaponization, delivery --  to build a nuclear weapon.  Thus, his audience is systematically denied the facts needed to understand that Iran is in violation of its NPT obligations and that this is the driver behind punitive United Nations Security Council resolutions (which also go unmentioned).

Rather, readers are given the false impression that the United States, the EU and Israel are acting capriciously and in concert to punish Iran with sanctions for mere suspicion the regime is developing nuclear weapons.

Reuters: systematically dumbing down the planet.

Reuters handles PR for the Muslim Brotherhood

Reuters correspondent Andrew Quinn reports on a charm offensive by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, designed to win over American politicians.

Recall, the Brotherhood is committed to implementing Sharia law in Egypt, is deeply antisemitic, encourages Muslim men to treat women like chattel, advocates death for homosexuals, despises Western democracy, seeks the destruction of Israel, and believes in permanent underclass status for religious minorities.

So how does Quinn characterize the group?

The Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in 1928 and seeks to promote its conservative vision of Islam in society, has made dramatic gains since a popular uprising toppled President Hosni Mubarak last year and launched Egypt on an unpredictable political course.

Then, there's this reassuring news:

The FJP candidate, Khairat al-Shater, said in comments reported on Wednesday that introducing sharia law would be his "first and final objective," but the FJP group in Washington sought to dismissed fears this meant they aimed to establish an Islamic theocracy.

And this amusing piece of sophistry:

Abdul Mawgoud Dardery, an FJP lawmaker from Luxor, said the party was dedicated to the principle of a "civil state" and the objectives of sharia law rather than its specific practice.

Leading to this inadvertently hilarious juxtaposition:

The FJP team took pains to appear both reasonable and flexible during their Washington visit, quoting both from the Koran and from the U.S. self-help manual "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," and depicting themselves as the true heirs of the uprising in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

All reported on by Quinn with absolutely no background or critical insight on the Brotherhood, its fanatical founder, its dogma, or its, shall we say, less politically correct spokesmen.

"Conservative".

Jihan Abdalla forgets a little something

In a truly vile demonstration of pro-Palestinian propaganda, Reuters correspondent Jihan Abdalla reports on the Israel Supreme Court's decision to reject claims of ownership by the Husseini family to what remains of the Shepherd Hotel in Jerusalem:

It was declared "absentee property" by Israel after it was captured and annexed to East Jerusalem in 1967. The title was transferred to an Israeli firm, which sold it in 1985 to Irving Moskowitz, a Florida businessman and patron of Jewish settlers.
In 2009, Israel's Jerusalem city hall approved a project to replace the building with a block of 20 apartments. Israeli officials said Washington had voiced its opposition to the plan to Israel's ambassador in the United States.
"This property, which is legitimately ours, represents the Palestinians' rights to their land and to Jerusalem," Mona Husseini, heir to the property and Husseini's granddaughter, said on Monday.

What Abdalla fails to tell readers is that between 1948 and 1967, during which time the property was in the hands of, first, the British and then the King of Jordan, there was absolutely no claim of ownership made by the Husseini family or anyone else.  Only years after Israel took possession of the compound did Husseini and the Palestinians become incensed and seek to obtain title.

Abdalla notes that the original dwelling "served as the home of Jerusalem grand mufti Haj Amin Husseini, who fought the British and Zionists".  

More precisely, Husseini was a Nazi collaborator who exhorted Adolf Hitler not to allow the Jews of Europe to flee to Palestine.  Husseini assured Hitler that the Arabs would, consistent with the Nazi approach in Germany, exterminate those Jews living in Palestine and Arab countries. 

"Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion.  This saves your honor.  God is with you".

--  Haj Amin Husseini

Predictable bias and selective reporting from Reuters

In a story about the deportation to Gaza of previously detained Palestinian, Hana Shalabi, a member of Islamic Jihad, an internationally-recognized terror group responsible for the murder and maiming of hundreds of Israelis, Reuters hardcore propagandists Nidal al-Mughrabi and Allyn Fisher-Ilan write:

Israel says it uses detention without trial to protect intelligence sources in any legal proceedings against a Palestinian suspect.
The measure has drawn criticism from human rights groups and the European Union.

Pretty ironic, given that many countries in the European Union employ their own "administrative detention" for a host of reasons, including efforts to curb illegal immigration:

Ireland utilizes administrative detention to control illegal immigration. Beginning in 1996, a legal framework was put in place to authorize the use of administrative detention for this purpose. This legal framework includes the Refugee Act, 1996, the Immigration Acts, 1999, 2003 and 2004, and the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Act 2000. According to official Irish government statistics, in 2003-2004, a total of 2,798 people were administratively detained for immigration-related reasons, two thirds of whom were held in prison for periods of longer than 51 days. The vast majority (more than 90%) of detainees are held in one of two Dublin prisons, Cloverhill Prison (male detainees) and the Dóchas Centre at Mountjoy Prison (female detainees). The rest are held in prisons as well as border control (Garda Síochána) stations.  The UK has maintained many forms of Administrative detention over the years. The most recent forms were a series of Acts intended to introduce a form of administrative detention to Northern Ireland under the auspices of the Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1973. This Act allowed the security forces to apprehend and detain persons suspected of terrorist activities without trial for an unlimited period. The introduction of the Act led directly to the creation of internment camps (particularly Long Kesh (the Maze) and the prison ship Maidstone where suspects were detained, some for protracted periods.

No word from al-Mughrabi, Fisher-Ilan, or anyone else at Reuters on the EU's detention policies.

Reuters pardons Marwan Barghouti

In May of 2004, Marwan Barghouti, leader of the Tanzim terrorist organization (a branch of Palestinian President Abbas' Fatah party) was convicted on 5 counts of murder by an Israeli civilian court.  Among the atrocities organized and/or funded by Barghouti was an attack on a seafood market restaurant in Tel Aviv.  Here's how the incident is recounted in Barghouti's indictment: 

At that same time, the Restaurant was completely packed with dozens of diners. Hasouna [Barghouti's operative] arrived at the "Maariv House Bridge" located on the aforementioned street opposite the Restaurant and began shooting at the diners with the intention of willfully causing the deaths of many of them. Near this time Hasouna threw hand grenades into the Restaurant that, miraculously, did not explode. Immediately thereafter Hasouna approached the Restaurant and stabbed those Restaurant diners who got in his way, with the goal of willfully causing the deaths of many of the diners. 

Although Barghouti refused to present a defense at his trial, he admitted throughout that he supported "armed resistance" against Israelis.  Barghouti was sentenced to five life sentences for murder and another 40 years for attempted murder.

In a story published yesterday at 3:09 am EDT about Arabs attempting to march to Jerusalem in a show of force commemorating "Land Day", Reuters reports:

Leading Palestinian activist Marwan Barghouti, serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli jail for orchestrating suicide attacks, called on Monday for a new wave of civil resistance in the decades-long quest for statehood.

By 1:21 pm EDT, Reuters had pardoned Barghouti:

Leading Palestinian activist Marwan Barghouti, serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli jail for allegedly orchestrating suicide attacks, called on Monday for a new wave of civil resistance in the decades-long quest for statehood.

Only in Israel, where a liberal democracy makes and decides matters of law, where the burden of proof is on the state, and where capital punishment is banned, does Reuters have the chutzpah to seek to subvert the verdict of a civilian court by suggesting, post facto, that the charges against the convicted murderer remain "alleged".

This is one sick news company.

For Reuters, Israel is Arab territory

The Reuters Handbook of Journalism, a set of ethical guiding principles for the agency's reporters, specifically proscribes against taking sides in a conflict:

We must be on alert for language that could imply support for one side of a conflict, sympathy for a point of view, or an ethnocentric vantage point.

When it comes to reporting on the Middle East conflict however, Reuters correspondents long ago, tossed aside any adherence to these principles.

Take for example, Reuters many references to the city of Jerusalem.

Both the archaeological record and contemporaneous historical works, like that of Flavius Josephus, attest to Jerusalem's history as a city built and governed by the Jews for centuries prior to the Roman conquest.

For a mere 19 years of the city's 3,000 year history, Jerusalem was divided.  Between 1948, when the Arab Legion conquered the eastern part of the city, ethnically cleansing the area of its Jewish communities, and 1967, when Israel liberated and reunited the city, Jerusalem was bifurcated by barbed wire into Arab east and Jewish west.  19 years -- of a municipal history spanning three millennia. 

For Reuters however, an agency deeply committed to the Arab worldview and thus, hostile to Jewish nationalism, Jerusalem remains divided into an amorphous region currently controlled by Israel characterized as "west" (small "w") Jerusalem; and a clearly defined city, home to 3,000 years of historical and sacred Jewish relics and a population which is today roughly 50 percent Jewish, but which, according to Reuters, rightfully belongs to the Arabs: "East Jerusalem" (capital "E").

(Reuters correspondents also frequently take a less surreptitious route in their support for Arab interests by referring to Jerusalem straightforwardly as Arab East Jerusalem).

Thus, does the agency sustain the illusion of an Arab capital, forged from invasion and conquest, in the heart of the Jewish national home.

In this Reuters story about the Zivotofsky family, whom the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled may sue to compel the U.S. State Department to list their son's birthplace as Jerusalem Israel on his passport, note how the agency artfully handles the east/west issue:

Palestinians want East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as capital of the state they aim to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, alongside Israel. [...]

Zivotofsky was born on Oct. 17, 2002, in a hospital in west Jerusalem. His U.S.-born parents moved to Israel in 2000. Because his parents are U.S. citizens, Menachem is also a U.S. citizen.

"East Jerusalem": capital in-waiting for the Palestinian Arabs.

And "west Jerusalem": no-man's land.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Reuters

In March of last year, Palestinians bombed an Israeli bus in Jerusalem, killing one woman and injuring 30 other people.  In a patently absurd account of the attack intended to whitewash Arab terrorism targeting the Jews of Israel, Reuters Jerusalem (France) Bureau Chief, Crispian Balmer infamously reported:

Police said it was a "terrorist attack" -- Israel's term for a Palestinian strike. It was the first time Jerusalem had been hit by such a bomb since 2004.

Even uber-apologist Atlantic columnist, Jeffrey Goldberg, found Balmer's rhetorical gymnastics worthy of ridicule.

Currently reporting on the bloodbath in Syria, Balmer takes a decidely different tack to characterize opposition forces battling the Assad government:

Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdesi said this week that 3,000 members of the security forces had died in the uprising, which Damascus blames on terrorist gangs.

In this case, Balmer simply parrots the government line, employs no sneer quotes around the term terrorist, and obviously feels no compulsion to interpret the word for his audience.

Apparently, when government troops defending a ruthless Arab dictatorship are killed, the perpetrators are terrorist gangs.

But when Jewish commuters are killed, the perpetrators are "strikers".

Palestinian stabs Israeli on train; Reuters AWOL

On Thursday, a female Israeli soldier was stabbed within inches of her heart while traveling on the Jerusalem light railway.  A Palestinian Arab suspect was arrested a short time later near Ramallah.

Reuters fails to report on the incident, which is not unusual gatekeeping for an agency committed to providing public relations on behalf of the Palestinians.

Of particular note, is that the suspect would almost certainly have disappeared into that portion of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") under Palestinian control had Israel not been operating a checkpoint at Qalandiya between Jerusalem and Ramallah.

Of course, experience shows that had Reuters covered the story, the agency's correspondents would have focused on the "daily humiliation" of Israeli checkpoints.

Another reason why Reuters Middle East reporting is biased: fear

In our right sidebar, we feature a post from January of this year ("Reuters Big Problem") where we had suggested that one of the key drivers behind Reuters systematic anti-Israel bias is commercial interest, that is, the effort to win the audience of 350 million Arabs in the Middle East by participating in the political campaign against Israel. 

There is another obvious factor at work which corrodes the independence and integrity of reporters who cover the Middle East conflict: fear.

In an account, remarkable for its candidness, of the conditions under which journalists working in Gaza find themselves, George Hale, a correspondent for the Palestinian Arab agency Maan, offers a glimpse into the risks of reporting anything that fails to promote the Hamas line:

Mahmoud Abu Rahma, a Palestinian human rights activist and columnist based in Gaza, was the victim of one of the worst incidents recorded by Mada so far this year. The attack occured after the publication of his latest article calling out the government as well as armed groups for placing civilians at risk of Israeli reprisal attacks. The article also accused the authorities of making arrests based on political affiliation, and failing to respect basic rights. "It is safe to assume that neither the government nor the resistance is willing to step in to protect people who dare to criticize them,” he wrote.
Shortly thereafter, Abu Rahma was accosted in his lobby by masked men who denounced him as a traitor and “disbeliever” while delivering their blows. Days later, armed with knives, the assailants overpowered him outside his Gaza City flat. Abu Rahma says he suffered stab wounds to his thigh and above his knee. They sliced down his back and shoulder before cutting off part of his hand. He escaped alive after blocking his chest with the same laptop that started all this trouble in the first place.
The government claims it is committed to protecting journalists and the broad freedom of speech and press guarantees in Palestine’s basic law. The police, meanwhile, swear they’re hot on the trail of the writer’s attackers. But statements by top leaders tell a different story. Hamas has turned to its official media to incite violence, lambasting Abu Rahma’s publisher, Maan, as a “Zionist propaganda” outfit whose agenda “impugns the resistance” and stirs discord, as official radio put it the week he was stabbed.
While it may disavow the stabbing and other incidents, Hamas cannot deny its contribution to the hateful climate surrounding these attacks. The message to vigilantes is clear: Make these detractors pay, and we won’t come after you. Indeed, the authorities have made no arrests, not for the stabbing or other serious incidents such as the two bombing attempts which targeted Maan’s newsroom in 2011.
The outlet, Palestine’s largest non-partisan TV network, has had a rough few months since becoming the target of a dangerous effort to intimidate its journalists. What began as a petty media campaign has morphed into physical violence; reporters are being threatened, offices set on fire and worse. The authorities have announced no leads nearly a year after staff discovered what appeared to be an improvised explosive device drilled into a wall inside its building. Nor has anyone been arrested for the firebomb attack that torched the same entryway last summer. When I asked my colleague Emad Abu Eid, the bureau chief in Gaza City, if we ought to be surprised by the lack of progress, he just laughed. There was never any need for an investigation, he told me. The latest attack had predictably followed a report which had angered the government more than usual, he recalled. “The next day, we found a big message waiting for us.”

Absent coercion, venal interests, and antisemitism, one might find Reuters correspondents reasonably able to write a straight story on the Middle East conflict.

Reuters reports on effects of Palestinian children arrested; nothing on their victims

Reuters newest hit-and-run propagandist is Jihan Abdalla, a correspondent who cares deeply for Palestinians who mastermind terror attacks and call for the genocide of all Jews, but not so much for the victims of these lunatics.

In today's illustration of Reuters vile one-sided reporting, Abdalla covers a paper from Save the Children about the alleged after-effects of detention on Palestinian Arab adolescents who have been arrested by Israeli security forces for a variety of violent offenses including throwing rocks:

(Reuters) - Of the hundreds of Palestinian children locked in Israeli jails each year, the vast majority suffer nightmares, bed-wetting and anxiety after their release, Save the Children said in a report published on Monday.
The charity said that since 2000, the Israeli army had detained more than 8,000 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank and prosecuted children as young as 12 in military courts, most of them suspected of rock-throwing.

In a story of 555 words, Abdalla devotes just 81 to the Israeli perspective (that throwing rocks "can cause injury or death") and provides no examples of this reality.  Historically as well, Reuters has rarely reported on these incidents (see our right sidebar "Reuters Censoring").

Here's a report from The Blaze on this murderous violence committed by Palestinian children, as well as adults, that apparently couldn't waken Reuters Jerusalem editors from their deep dark slumber:

An Israeli man and his pregnant wife who was in labor were attacked by Palestinian stone throwers this weekend as they were making their way to the delivery room, according to Arutz Sheva.
This comes less than a month after 25-year-old Asher Palmer and his baby son Yonatan were killed when Palestinians threw a large rock through their windshield near Hebron, causing it to overturn, as The Blaze previously reported.

That same week, a 20-month-old girl was left bloodied after police said Arabs threw rocks at the car she was traveling in.

What do they teach these guys at Reuters school?

Crispian Balmer attempts to show Israelis oppose strike on Iran, wrenches neck

Last week, we commented on a story by Reuters correspondent Maayan Lubell where she massaged the results of a survey which had asked Israelis whether they supported a military attack on Iran to prevent that country from obtaining nuclear weapons.  Lubell obfuscated the finding that, when U.S. moral support is provided, a wide majority of Israelis (61 percent) favor an attack.  Indeed, only 34 percent said Israel should not strike Iran with or without American accord.

Today, Reuters Jerusalem (France) Bureau Chief, Crispian Balmer, attempts to duplicate Lubell's heavily biased interpretation of the same poll, conveniently omits report of the 42 percent of Israelis who favor an attack with U.S. moral support, and ends up tying himself (and his readers) into knots:

An opinion poll published last week said just 19 percent of Israelis thought their nation should attack Iran, even if they did not first get the support of Washington.

Huh?  According to the poll, 19 percent of Israelis support a military strike against Iran absent any support from the U.S. and 42 percent support a military strike against Iran with moral support from the U.S. for a total conditional support base of 61 percent.

Memo to Crispian: reporting the facts straightforwardly is an obligation as a Reuters Bureau Chief -- and doesn't result in neck cramps.

Reuters certain where Islam was born; isn't telling about Judaism

In a story published last week noting a report by Human Rights Watch which took to task the Gulf Arab states for discrimination against women, particularly in sports, Reuters correspondent Mary Slosson writes:

The Human Rights Watch report outlined systematic discrimination against women in sports in Saudi Arabia, a conservative Islamic kingdom where gender segregation is strictly enforced. Women in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, are banned from driving and need permission of a close male relative to work or travel.

Reuters consistently whitewashes institutionalized misogyny and other medieval practices in Saudi Arabia by characterizing the kingdom, euphemistically, as "conservative".

But what we find most interesting, is the news agency's implied apologism for Saudi oppression with reference to Arabia as "the birthplace of Islam".

We have never seen, and a search on the Reuters websites does not produce, a single instance of Reuters reporting on the birthplace of Judaism: Judea, (the "West Bank"), including Jerusalem.

Indeed, a Reuters story published in 2007 about the Saudis condemning Israel for conducting an archeological excavation in Jerusalem, a story that also prominently cites Arabia as the "birthplace of Islam", fails to even mention that Jerusalem was founded by the Jews as their sovereign capital over three millennia ago.

The reason for this double-standard is obvious: Reuters is committed to erasing, as are the Arabs, the three-thousand-year-old Jewish connection to the city of Jerusalem and surrounding territory of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank").  This, to justify and facilitate hoped-for Arab sovereign control over the area.

A graphic illustration of Reuters long-standing propaganda campaign against the Jews.

Reuters quick to report, blame Jews for vandalism. No word on daily Arab vandalism

When anti-Arab or anti-Christian graffiti is spray-painted in Israel, Reuters correspondents leap to their keyboards to report it, alleging vandalism by Jewish settlers.  While no one has been arrested for the graffiti and there is evidence that in a previous incident reported by Reuters, it was actually an Arab villager that did the defacing (to incriminate settlers), the propagandists at Reuters continue to highlight these property crimes so as to demonize Jews in the eyes of the public.

After all, everyone knows that the words "price tag" can only be inscribed by Jews.

By contrast, Reuters fails miserably to report on the daily Arab vandalism and desecration of Jewish property, including that taking place at the oldest and most revered of Jewish cemeteries, the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

Demonstrating, that for Reuters, there is no news value in stories of dogs biting men.

Crispian Balmer & Maayan Lubell get a history lesson

Crispian Balmer, who treks between France and Jerusalem to peddle his malodorous wares, and Maayan Lubell, who agitates for ethnic cleansing of the Jews, are back with a classic piece of antisemitic propaganda on behalf of Reuters.

Flying under the presumptuous banner, "Insight" (more like the blind leading the blind), Balmer and Lubell employ a combination of unsupported assertions, lies by omission, and testimony from a group found liable for publishing false information, to demonize Jews who choose, as is their right under international law, to live in the territories of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") and are now facing the prospect of having their homes demolished:

(Reuters) - The Jewish settlement of Migron perches high on a blustery hill in the occupied West Bank. Its inhabitants pay taxes, are hooked up to the electricity grid and get round-the-clock protection from Israeli soldiers.
Over the past decade the government has spent at least 4 million shekels ($1.1 million) on establishing and maintaining the cluster of squat, prefab bungalows, even building a neat tarmac road up the steep incline to the treeless ridge.
Yet despite all that state help, Migron is an illegal outpost, even under Israeli law, and its time is running out.
In an unprecedented ruling in August 2011, Israel's Supreme Court told the government to evacuate Migron by March 31, 2012. The land, the court said, belonged to Palestinians.

In fact, the Palestinian Arabs withdrew their claim to the land because they couldn't prove that it belonged to them, but the court responded to a motion by the libeling left-wing group Peace Now to order the Jewish home demolitions anyway.

Balmer and Lubell get a multitude of historical details deliberately wrong in their story but an erudite commenter has left a comprehensive riposte:

... exclusive political rights to the land in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem was granted to the Jews in trust in 1920 in the San Remo Convention. The British Mandate was in fact a trust agreement as shown by the first two paragraphs of Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant. The Mandate had adopted the policy of Lord Balfour. That was to give the Jews exclusive political rights to Palestine in trust, to become vested not until the Jews had attained a population majority in all Palestine. Arnold Toynbee and Lewis Namier exlained the reason for this in a memorandum of the British Foreign Office dated September 19, 1917. The chief argument against the award of political rights to the Jews was that in 1917 they only constituted 10% of the population of all Palestine, even though they had had a plurality in Jerusalem since 1845 and a majority since 1863. Article 4 of the Mandate authorized the Zionist organization to advise the staff of the trustee. The Arabs tried to obtain permission to form an advisory panel, but its application was rejected. The Mandate was also an integral part of the 1924 Anglo-American convention, making it the domestic law of the UK and the US as well as International Law. England abandoned its trusteeship and guardianship in 1948. Prior to that time, the Arabs were threatening violence so the General Assembly recommended that Israel give up part of its remaining grant. (transJordan had been eliminated in 1922 for England’s political reason to avoid a quarrel with the French. Ben Gurion was agreeable, in the UNSCOP hearings to give up part of the Jew’s political or national rights to even the remaining part of Palestine, 22%, if the UN would OK enough land so that a workable state could be reconstituted. Since 1920, the Arabs, by violence and threats of violence have been using extortion to obtain the political rights to Palestine granted in that year. In 1939, in a White Paper, as stated by Winston Churchill, Britain reneged on its promise to the Jews by denying them the right of immigration so that they could become a majority population. Nevertheless, after the war of Indepence in 1948, 700,000 Arabs fled, most without ever seeing a Jewish soldier, and that was much immigration from Europe, giving the Jews a majority of population. Now the Jews constitute 80% of the population within the Green Line and if the West Bank were added it would still have a majority. It has agreed with Jordan not to claim Jordainian land, and it unilaterally gave away the Gaza strip to the Gazans, withdrawing all Jewish population from that area. There is no illegality in Jewish settlement in the West Bank as stated by US Presidents after Carter and before Obama.

We would only add that, contrary to previous false claims by Reuters correspondents, even Obama has not had the chutzpah to suggest that Jewish settlements are illegal.