Recently in journalistic bias Category

Let's see. The ayatollahs are genocidal Jew-haters who hope to obliterate Israel in a nuclear holocaust. The Tea Party isn't. The ayatollahs are in favor of stoning women who commit adultery. The Tea Party isn't. The ayatollahs support murdering people who leave Islam. The Tea Party doesn't. The ayatollahs support second-class status for women and non-Muslims. The Tea Party doesn't.

The mainstream media, of course, always uses the word "conservatives" for people they don't like. This creates the peculiar paradox that opponents of Sharia in the West are "far right" and "conservative," while those who support Sharia in Muslim countries are "far right" and "conservative." These appellations have become essentially meaningless.

Witless Moral Equivalence Alert: "Ayatollah DeMint? CBS Reporter Equates Iran's Islamist Hardliners To U.S. Tea Party," by Tim Graham for Newsbusters, June 15 (thanks to Maxwell):

For many years, the networks have done a sloppy job of comparing "conservatives" around the globe. As the Berlin Wall fell, the "conservatives" became the communists who wanted to keep their grip on power and not give way to democracy. That's hardly comparable to American conservatives.

On Saturday night, CBS News was doing this sloppy dance on the elections in Iran. From London, reporter Elizabeth Palmer declared all the candidates to succeed Ahmadinejad were the Islamist equivalent of the American Tea Party movement:

JIM AXELROD: Liz, a man named Hassan Rowhani will be the next president of Iran. Is he in the mold of Ahmadinejad?

ELIZABETH PALMER: Well he was seen as the most reform-minded of all the candidates who ran this time. That being said, they were all very conservative. In U.S. terms, it was as if all the candidates for the presidency came from the Tea Party.

Nevertheless, young people especially see Mr. Rowhani as presenting a little bit of a hope for liberal reforms. He is a cleric. He is 64 years old. Hes a very experienced diplomat, quite charismatic and extremely close to the centers of power in Iran.

Why must they do that? Can't they denounce the Tea Party for being alleged haters of Islam? Do they have to add the smear that they're somehow like the ayatollahs?

They're both the same length. "BBC alters title, avoids use of ‘anti-Semitism’ noting the word length, critics ask about ‘Islamophobia,’" from Global Dispatch, June 12:

The BBC recently reported the story of the Labor Lord who was suspended for claiming that Jews were responsible for his imprisonment after driving offenses.

Apparently the BBC chose not to use “anti-Semitism” and then claimed the decision was not about changing the tone of the story, but about length.

Instead of using “anti-Semitism”, the Beeb opted for “Jewish claims”, making the story seem like there were claims by Jewish people leading to Lord Ahmed’s suspension.

BBC: Thanks for your email and please accept our apologies for the delay in replying. We try and stick as closely as possible to the words used, so, in this case we  used ‘Jewish claims’ in the short space available for headlines to summarise his comments.

READER: Thanks for your reply, but with all due respect that is utter nonsense. ‘Jewish claims’ 13 characters. ‘Antisemitism’ 12 characters. Plus one look at the space available in the headline within the URL will tell you that there is/was PLENTY of space to report factually.

The article offered another challenge for the BBC:

Even more oddly, Islamophobia is also 12 characters yet the BBC has no trouble fitting it into every conceivable manner of headline including, “Islamophobia ‘explosion’ in UK”, “‘Islamophobia’ rises after 11 September”, “UK press ‘fuels Islamophobia”, “Islamophobia ‘just getting worse’”, “Terror jury Islamophobia warning” and finally “Islamophobia since Islam began”.

The word magicians at the BBC appear to have contrived ways to fit Islamophobia’s 12 character bulk into a headline, but can’t figure out how to get anti-Semitism in there.

Not that O'Reilly gets a clue.

Video thanks to Pamela Geller.

John Esposito is the director of Georgetown University's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU), a professor of religion and international affairs, and one of the most prominent scholars of Islam and the Middle East in the nation. He has called Muslim Brotherhood Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who advocates jihad-martyrdom suicide bombings and has praised Hitler's genocide of the Jews, a champion of a “reformist interpretation of Islam and its relationship to democracy, pluralism and human rights.” Esposito has called the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) “phenomenal organization” and has spoken at CAIR fundraisers in order, he explained, to “show solidarity not only with the Holy Land Fund [that is, the Holy Land Foundation], but also with CAIR.”

The Holy Land Foundation was shut down and prosecuted for funneling money to the jihad terror group Hamas, which once boasted on its website about its murders of civilians in pizza parlors and on buses; the Justice Department named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. Esposito himself refuses to condemn Hamas, as the Investigative Project notes: “In a 2000 interview in The United Association for Studies and Research’s (UASR) Middle East Affairs Journal, Esposito refused to condemn Hamas, which at the time was already designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the U.S. State Department.”

Esposito has also co-edited a book, Islam and Secularism in the Middle East, with Azzam Tamimi. Palestinian political scientist Muhammad Muslih calls Tamimi “a Hamas member.” Tamimi has said: “I admire the Taliban; they are courageous,” and “I support Hamas.” When University of South Florida computer science professor Sami al-Arian was accused of involvement with the leadership of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has claimed responsibility for the murders of several civilians, he became a cause célèbre, with his defenders ascribing his prosecution to “Islamophobia.” Esposito rushed to his defense, avowing: “Sami Al-Arian’s a very good friend of mine.” In 2008, Esposito advocated for al-Arian’s release, saying:

Sami Al-Arian is a proud, dedicated and committed American as well as a proud and committed Palestinian. He is an extraordinarily bright, articulate scholar and intellectual-activist, a man of conscience with a strong commitment to peace and social justice.

Al-Arian later pled guilty to “conspiring to provide services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a specially designated terrorist organization, in violation of U.S. law.” Al-Arian also, according to Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA), has “longstanding connections to associates of al Qaeda.” Wolf quotes a federal affidavit noting that “‘Sheik Rahman (the ‘Blind Sheik’) visited Al-Arian at his residence in Tampa and spoke at his mosque.’ Rahman is currently serving a life sentence in U.S. prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center attack and additional terror plots.”

Also associated with the Blind Sheik is the man Esposito calls “my old friend Siraj”: the popular Muslim speaker Siraj Wahhaj. Wahhaj was designated a “potential unindicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing for taking the Blind Sheik to speak at mosques in New York and New Jersey in the early 1990s. Wahhaj has warned that the United States will fall unless it “accepts the Islamic agenda.” He has also asserted that “if only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.”

This is the "expert" whom the Washington Post calls upon to clear up Tony Blair's "misconceptions" about Islam.

“Tony Blair misreads Muslim terrorism,” by John Esposito in the Washington Post, June 5:

The Boston Marathon bombings (April 15, 2013) and the Woolwich, UK attack and murder (May 22, 2013) are grim reminders not only of the continued threat from militant religious extremists but also of the need and importance for political and religious leaders, commentators and the media to put these horrific acts in their proper context.

Facile, superficial or biased statements and disproportionate coverage create a bias that plays to militant Muslims [sic] desire for national and international attention, terrorizes citizens in the belief that this may influence their country’s foreign policies and encourages copycats. At the same time, they risk reinforcing far right anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim (Islamophobic) forces, further driving a wedge between non-Muslim and Muslim citizens and alienating the majority of loyal mainstream Muslim citizens.

In reality, facile, superficial or biased statements like those of Esposito in this article play to militant Muslims' desire for national and international victory against the Infidels, lull citizens into complacency insofar as they're influenced to think the jihad threat is exaggerated or easily managed, encourage the manipulative Islamic supremacist victimhood narrative that is designed to discourage counter-terror initiatives, and damage free countries' foreign policies with wrongheaded policies that sap their strength and encourage jihadis. At the same time, they risk reinforcing far Left suicidal pandering to Islamic supremacist forces, further driving a wedge between non-Muslim and Muslim citizens and alienating the majority of loyal mainstream citizens of all creeds.

In the wake of the Woolwich attacks, Tony Blair’s recent article in the Daily Mail, titles “The ideology behind Lee Rigby’s murder is profound and dangerous. Why don’t we admit it?: Tony Blair launches a brave assault on Muslim extremism after Woolwich attack,” ignores the facts on the ground and opts for a common (ideological) thread: “There is a problem within Islam – from the adherents of an ideology that is a strain within Islam. And we have to put it on the table and be honest about it….It has at its heart a view about religion and about the interaction between religion and politics that is not compatible with pluralistic, liberal, open-minded societies.”

Though well intentioned, it perpetuates his long held belief since the Bush-Blair invasion and occupation of Iraq that the primary driver, the root cause of terrorism, is religion and not political and social contexts and foreign policies. It is wrong headed and doomed to continue to be part of the problem not the solution.

A similar flawed narrative can be seen in statements by other political leaders and media commentators such as London mayor, Boris Johnson’s article “By standing united, we can isolate the virus of Islamism” in the Daily Telegraph. The monolithic use of the term Islamism fails to distinguish between mainstream and violent extremist Islamists. Each are individuals or organizations that appeal to the religion of Islam but extremists, like their Christian and Jewish counterparts, are more often driven by political, economic or social issues and grievances, such as military intervention, invasion and/or occupation of land by foreign forces. They misinterpret or twist the religious beliefs of the mainstream majority to legitimate their hate speech, use of violence and terrorist attacks. Major polls (Gallup, Pew, Zogby and others) have long documented that widespread anti-Americanism or anti-European Muslim attitudes are driven by foreign policies. But that there is a distinct difference between the mainstream majority, who remain non-violent and admire and desire (Western) economic and technological accomplishments as well as the rule of law and freedoms and a minority of extremists who resort to violence and terrorism.

John Esposito knows very well that the there are armed groups of Muslims all over the world citing the Qur'an and Sunnah to legitimize their hate speech, use of violence and terrorist attacks. He also knows that there are absolutely no Christian or Jewish extremists quoting their Scriptures to justify hatred, violence or terrorism. He also draws above a distinction between violent and non-violent "Islamists" and Muslims, when the only really useful distinction is between Muslims who want to impose Sharia (by whatever means) on non-Muslim states, and those who do not. He completely ignores the fact that jihad violence existed for centuries before the invasion of Iraq, and instead tries to give you the impression that it is solely a result of that invasion.

Painting with broad brushes about mainstream Islam makes make innocent Muslims victims of discrimination, hate crimes and threaten their civil liberties. Yet, as also witnessed in public statements and denunciations by Muslim leaders, individuals and organizations in the US and UK and internationally, the vast majority, a mainstream consensus, abhor these attacks on their fellow citizens. While some municipal and national officials have done so, many others are challenged to develop a robust policy to counter terrorism policy, cooperating with mainstream Muslim partners.

Esposito concludes by parroting well-worn Islamic supremacist talking points: exploring Islam's violent texts and teachings would be "painting with broad brushes about mainstream Islam" and exposing innocent Muslims to discrimination and danger. In reality, the truth is the truth. No innocent people should ever be victimized. Esposito is trying to blackmail the U.S. into refraining from speaking the truth because of the prospect (endlessly exaggerated by Islamic supremacist groups in the U.S.) that innocent Muslims may be victimized. In fact, we will all be victimized, and already have been, if we refrain from speaking the truth -- as with the massive intelligence failures regarding the Boston Marathon jihad bombers, failures that may have been avoided if the Obama Administration weren't intent on obscuring the truth about jihad terror.

John Esposito is aiding and abetting ignorance and complacency about the jihad threat, and thereby helping enable more jihad attacks. I expect his Saudi paymasters are pleased.

I met Nicole Young of The Tennessean last night and asked her if she was as bad as her colleague Bob Smietana, who is one of the most truth-challenged, agenda-driven, pro-Muslim Brotherhood reporters in the country. Her report is probably not as bad as Smietana's would have been, but she still places front and center the preposterous claim that someone in the crowd was "afraid" of the other audience members, as if these patriots who came out to defend the freedom of speech were some gang of thugs -- but of course, that's how the mainstream media always portrays those who oppose jihad and Islamic supremacism, and the facts be damned.

The Tennessean report, like Bill Killian and Kenneth Moore, completely ignores the genuine concern that people have about jihad and Islamic supremacist activity, and the fact that Muslim groups (aided and abetted by Obama) use claims of "hate" and "bigotry" to shut down honest discussion of how jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism. Killian and Moore expatiated at length about how "inflammatory" speech could violate civil rights laws, and how Arab and Muslim children were being taunted in school, and how Tennesseans should be more welcoming, etc. But no one was there to defend the taunting of Muslim or Arab schoolchildren. No one was there because he hated foreigners. People were there because they know that truthful and accurate exploration of Islam's violent teachings has been deemed "inflammatory" by both Muslim groups and the Obama regime -- and that leaves us unable to examine the motives and goals of jihad terrorists, or to defend ourselves adequately against them. That's why everyone was so upset with Killian and Moore, but they were either oblivious to that fact or intent on ignoring it.

And Pamela Geller's questions are apposite: "The enemedia supporting the suppression and restriction of free speech in America presents an interesting paradox. Are they so clueless or self-important that they think they will be spared? Didn't the Obama administration spying on the AP and other news organizations teach them anything?" Good questions for Nicole Young to ponder.

"Diversity event draws raucous crowd in Coffee County," by Nicole Young for The Tennessean, June 4 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

MANCHESTER — Hundreds of people turned out at the Manchester Convention Center Tuesday evening for an event billed as a discussion of public discourse in a diverse society, with a particular focus on the Muslim religion.

People were turned away at the door because the facility was too full. Some grew angry and started hurling terms like “Communist,” “Socialist” and “Muslim” at law enforcement officials.

The indoor event, sponsored by the American Muslim Advisory Council, was countered by a large group of protesters, both outside and inside the facility. Some who made it in before admission was cut off continuously interrupted the speakers.

The interruptions were so intense at times that attendee Elaine Smith, 55, of Bedford County, said she was afraid of other audience members.

“I came here because I wanted to learn something … but I couldn’t hear because the audience was so disrespectful,” she said. “I cried when I got here. It makes me really sad especially because these people say they’re Christians. The God I worship doesn’t teach hate.”

During the keynote speech given by Bill Killian, US Attorney of the Eastern District of Tennessee, audience members continually interrupted, making it difficult to understand what was said. Killian brought a power point presentation that covered the First and 14th Amendments and what constitutes a hate crime, among other things. He read the First Amendment verbatim, between interruptions.

FBI special agent in charge of the Eastern Tennessee District Kenneth Moore took the podium after Killian.

“Our presence here tonight has generated some controversy,” he said. “People think we want to step on and stifle their First Amendment rights. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Moore said the FBI was continually working to build relationships with worshippers of Islam and other faiths because “they are essential” to keeping the country safe.

Protester Larry McIntosh, 54, of Manchester, said he was skeptical of Killian and Moore.

“I feel like (these) men are attempting to intimidate people with the freedom of speech and that bothers me,” he said. “I would like to say that Muslims have a right to live here and worship freely, but I do not think they have the right to change American law to fit Sharia law. Violence no matter where it comes from bothers me.”

Former Saturday Night Live star Victoria Jackson was among the protesters.

“The Constitution and Sharia cannot coexist,” she said. “Islam is evil.”

Event organizers said they chose Manchester and Coffee County because of a Facebook post made by Coffee County Commissioner Barry West last month that said Muslims were best greeted behind a shotgun barrel. West later apologized for the post, but it has since ignited a First Amendment debate.

Gene Policinski, senior vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center, a non-profit educational iniative [sic] with offices on Vanderbilt Campus and in Washington D.C., said the First Amendment does not restrict the right of a public official to express opinions.

“Are public officials held to a higher standard than you or I? I think yes, but it's not a limitation,” he said. “There's nothing in the First Amendment banning anyone to say things that people find repellant, distasteful, repugnant, or even bigoted. The antidote that our founders provided for speech is more speech, not less.”

Tell it to Killian.

Disgusting. "Boston bombing suspects is walking, mother says," by Max Seddon and Musa Sadulayev for the Associated Press, May 30:

MAKHACHKALA, Russia (AP) — The remaining suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings has recovered enough to walk and assured his parents in a phone conversation that he and his slain brother were innocent, their mother told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the father of a Chechen immigrant killed in Florida while being interrogated by the FBI about his ties to the slain brother maintained that the U.S. agents killed his son "execution-style."

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, walked without a wheelchair to speak to his mother last week for the first and only phone conversation they have had since he has been in custody, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told the AP.

In a rare glimpse at Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's state of mind, he told her he was getting better and that he had a very good doctor, but was struggling to understand what happened, she said.

"He didn't hold back his emotions either, as if he were screaming to the whole world: What is this? What's happening?," she said.

The April 15 bombings killed three people and wounded more than 260. Elder brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed in a shootout with police, and Dzhokhar remains in a prison hospital after being badly wounded.

"I could just feel that he was being driven crazy by the unfairness that happened to us, that they killed our innocent Tamerlan," their mother said, standing by the family's insistent belief that their children are innocent.

Dzhokhar killed him by running him over in a stolen car, but never mind.

The Tsarnaevs met the AP in their new apartment in a 14-story building in a well-to-do area of Makhachkala, the capital of the restive Caucasus province of Dagestan. The apartment had no furniture apart from a TV, a few rugs, and wallpaper materials lying on the floor.

Anzor Tsarnaev, the suspects' father, said they had bought it for Tamerlan, his wife, and their young daughter in the expectation that they would move to Makhachkala later this year. He added that they planned to turn their old home in a dingy district on the outskirts of town into a dentist's office, so that Dzhokhar, a dental hygiene student, could work out of it after completing his studies.

"All I can do is pray to God and hope that one day fairness will win out, our children will be cleared, and we will at least get Dzhokhar back, crippled, but at least alive," Tsarnaev said.

Separately, at a news conference in Moscow, the father of a 27-year-old mixed martial arts fighter who was killed during FBI questioning accused agents of being "bandits" who executed his son.

Abdul-Baki Todashev showed journalists 16 photographs that he said were of his son, Ibragim, in a Florida morgue. He said his son had six gunshot wounds to his torso and one to the back of his head and the pictures were taken by his son's friend, Khusen Taramov.

It was not immediately possible to authenticate the photographs.

The FBI says Todashev was being questioned by an FBI agent and two Massachusetts state troopers about his ties to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, as well as about a 2011 triple slaying in Massachusetts.

Three law enforcement officials said initially that Ibragim Todashev had lunged at the FBI agent with a knife, although two of them later said it was no longer clear what had happened.

The father said his son was "100 percent unarmed."

Taramov confirmed Thursday that he had taken some pictures of Ibragim Todashev's body at an Orlando funeral home and sent them to the father. He said Ibragim Todashev had a decorative sword with a broken handle, but that it was not a weapon.

"The sword wouldn't cut nothing," Tamarov said. "I played with it many times. It wasn't sharp from any angle. It would do the same harm as a piece of wood."

A spokesman for the Boston FBI declined to comment Thursday on the claim that Todashev was unarmed.

The father said Taramov told him that U.S. agents interrogated him on the street while five officials interrogated Todashev in his Florida house for eight hours on May 22, the night he was shot.

Todashev's father said that his son moved to the U.S. in 2008 on a study exchange program and met Tsarnaev at a boxing gym in Boston in 2011, about a year before he moved to Orlando. He said the two were "not particularly close friends."

Prior to last month's bombings, Todashev underwent an operation for a sports injury and was on crutches, making it physically impossible for him to have been involved in the bombings, his father said. He added that Todashev had recently received a green card and was planning to return to Chechnya for the summer last Friday, two days after he was killed.

The father said he and his brother were interviewed at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow on Thursday as they sought a visa to take his son's body back to Chechnya.

FBI agents interrogated the younger Todashev twice before the night he was shot, his father said. He said his son told him that he thought Tsarnaev had been set up to take the blame for the bombings.

"I'd only seen and heard things like that in the movies — they shoot somebody and then a shot in the head to make sure," Todashev said.

"These just aren't FBI agents, they're bandits," he added.

The Tsarnaevs' parents have held fast to their belief that their sons were framed. Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, dressed all in black and still visibly distressed, showed AP several YouTube videos on an iPad she claimed cleared her sons. They could not be authenticated by the AP.

"I remember when our cat was sick, Tamerlan was sick himself for two days afterward, because he was so worried about her," Tsarnaeva said....

What a sweetheart. Indeed, a decent fellow.

Big surprise here: the BBC is biased, hates Christianity and carries water for Islamic supremacists. "The BBC and its bias towards pro-immigration lobby: Report accuses 'left-wing Corporation of downplaying violence by Islamists,'" by Alasdair Glennie for the Daily Mail, May 29 (thanks to Inexion):

The BBC gives too much weight to pro-immigration voices and ‘almost totally ignores’ the negative social impact of multiculturalism, a new study has claimed.

The corporation suffers from left wing ‘groupthink’ that prevents its journalists from challenging institutional bias and results in pro-immigration ‘propaganda’, according to the research published yesterday.

It was also accused of ‘downplaying’ violence by Islamists while being happy to criticise Christianity and report on the activities of other violent extremists.

The report, by independent think-tank The New Culture Forum, looked at coverage by BBC news and current affairs programmes since 1997.

It comes as the BBC undertakes an ‘impartiality review’ by former ITV and Sky executive Stuart Prebble to see whether it gives ‘due weight’ to a full range of opinion on controversial topics, such as immigration....

Damagingly, in the wake of the Woolwich killing last week, the study accused the BBC of failing to report accurately on violence by Islamic fundamentalists.

It said: ‘In contrast to violence perpetrated by white-skinned extremists, the BBC tends to downplay any violent activity on the part of extremists.’

It added: ‘The BBC feels uncomfortable tackling Islamic extremism or aggression by minorities; it feels more at ease to see Muslims as victims of racism or Islamophobia.’

In 2010, the BBC’s then director general Mark Thompson accepted the corporation had once been guilty of a ‘massive’ Left-wing bias and admitted its coverage of immigration and Europe had been ‘weak’.

He said: ‘The BBC doesn’t always get it right. I think there are some areas, immigration, business and Europe where the BBC has historically been rather weak and rather nervous about letting that entire debate happen.

In 2007, a BBC Trust report into the BBC’s impartiality found the corporation had self-censored subjects it found unpalatable.

The BBC said coverage of immigration is ‘impartial and balanced’, but Trustees are carrying out a review to see if ‘due weight’ is given to a range of opinions on hot topics.

The Guardian is deeply impressed that Muslim groups in the U.K. are condemning the jihad murder of a British soldier on a London street yesterday -- so impressed, in fact, that it insists that "Muslim groups are doing all they can to counter the divisive intent of the killers." But what, exactly, are these Muslim groups doing? Do any of them have any kind of program to teach young Muslims why they should reject the understanding of Islam that the jihadist enunciated yesterday? Why, no, they do not. No one, however, seems to notice or care.

"Woolwich attack: 'these poor idiots have nothing to do with Islam,'" by Peter Walker and Matthew Taylor in The Guardian, May 24:

...If there is a wider message from the reaction in south-east London and more widely around Britain since Rigby's death it is that Muslim groups are doing all they can to counter the divisive intent of the killers.

Perhaps the biggest single expression of solidarity came at the East London mosque, in Tower Hamlets, as leaders of the Christian, Jewish and Buddhist faiths joined around 6,000 Muslims for Friday prayers.

The group included the Bishop of Stepney, Adrian Newman, and Leon Silver from the East London central synagogue. Speaking before prayers started they said they had come to condemn the Woolwich attacks and show that the various faith communities were standing shoulder to shoulder with their Muslim neighbours....

How the Media Solves a Problem Like the Woolwich Attack
by Enza Ferreri

The English vocabulary will soon be depleted of words, if everybody starts speaking like the mainstream media. In connection with the Woolwich killing, the media talked about "religious centres", not "mosques", a now obsolete word. Other archaic, disused terms are "Islam" and "Muslim": we just say "man", "woman" and as useful data we add their age.

A news flash on BBC Radio 5 Live delivered the information that, basically, a man had been killed in Woolwich by two men, and there were another man and a woman, both 29, involved. Of course it is that magic age, 29, that makes all the difference. There are plenty of men and women aged 29 who go around slaughtering and slaying, but thankfully none aged 28 or 30. How could anyone listening to that news flash be enlightened on the nature of the act by this kind of very general, non-specific "information"?

A TV news reporter, in a desperate attempt to exculpate Islam, said that there have been more Muslims than non-Muslims killed by Muslim attacks.

What does that mean? The first victims of Islam are Muslims themselves, that seems pretty obvious to me. The simplest way to realize that is to look at the Muslim-majority countries of the world and see in what terrible state they are. But this does not exonerate the doctrine of Islam and its violent nature.

The media commentaries seem to attach a lot of importance to finding out whether this was a "lone wolf" attack or had an organization behind it, the assumption probably being that lone wolves should provoke less concern, causing only a one-off incident.

If that is the assumption, it's far from correct. If we have not had another 7/7 in London and generally the UK, it is because a vast amount of money and resources from our cash-strapped government has had to be allocated to the police and intelligence services' task of keeping an eye on the "Muslim community".

When an attack is planned, it is easier for the security services to discover the plan and foil it. Yesterday's murder, on the surface, looks like it might have been one without much planning or organization: these killings will be practically impossible to be prevented, as the police said.

Therefore, some other Muslim "lone wolf" who has observed the success of this murder and the impossibility of thwarting it may be encouraged to repeat the enterprise. It is likely that we will see many more of these attacks, since the plots by organized groups are more vulnerable to preventative actions by security services.

This is also the prediction of radical Muslim Anjem Choudary, who led the ominous-sounding group Islam4UK, in its own words "working for the establishment of the Shariah - to make it dominate all other ways of life." The group is now banned, but not on YouTube.

Choudary prophesied: "We are a very politicised community. Some people are angered by draconian measures such as 'stop and search' and restrictions on free speech. There is a chance of more lone wolf attacks happening again due to these draconian measures".

A TV commentator said that the killer we saw on a video speaking to the camera is British and has an obvious London accent, but still feels closer to places, like Afghanistan and Iraq, that he's probably never even visited.

But shouldn't that ring an alarm bell? Oughtn't that to be an indication that place of birth and accent are irrelevant in this context? Of course he feels loyal to his "brothers" in Muslim countries. The nation-state is a European invention that followed the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. For Islam the nation is the Ummah, all the world's Muslims. This man does not feel British, he feels Muslim - and many other Muslims living in the UK will feel the same allegiance to the "Nation of Islam", as in the name of a black racist and Islamic supremacist organization in the USA.

The pathetic utterances about searches for "motives" behind the murder are also ridiculous. There is nothing to search: the jihadist on the video shown by TV stations the world over makes it very clear.

In the fuller version of the video published by Jihad Watch, at the beginning he mentions Surat at-Tawba, the ninth sura (chapter) of the Qur'an, which contains exhortations to kill infidels. He says:

The only reason we have killed this man today is because Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers. And this British soldier is one. It is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. By Allah, we swear by the almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. So what if we want to live by the Shari'a in Muslim lands? Why does that mean you must follow us and chase us and call us extremists and kill us? Rather you lot are extreme. You are the ones that when you drop a bomb you think it hits one person? Or rather your bomb wipes out a whole family? This is the reality. By Allah if I saw your mother today with a buggy I would help her up the stairs. This is my nature. But we are forced by the Qur'an, in Sura At-Tawba, through many ayah in the Qu'ran, we must fight them as they fight us.

He also said that he wanted to "start a war in London tonight".

Could this be any clearer?

The only problem is that this is precisely the part that the mainstream media have cut out: it's not so much a search for motives that is needed, as refraining from covering them up.

It would appear that the jihadists were tired of media lies and wanted the public to know why they committed this atrocious beheading, in this day and age a quintessentially Islamic way of killing. The media won again, by depriving them (and more importantly us) of the benefit of telling (and hearing) the truth.

What a strange coincidence, having omitted just that highly explanatory bit!

The parents of at least one of the two perpetrators came from Nigeria, another interesting country where Muslims slaughter Christians like there's no tomorrow. Nigeria is in fact one of the worst countries in the world in this respect, called by International Christian Concern The deadliest place to be a Christian.

The Christianity Today blog has this information:

Nearly 1,000 Nigerian Christians were killed in 2012, and more than 100 have died in the first few months of 2013, according to Jubilee Campaign. Executive director Ann Buwalda says this accounts for “almost 70 percent of Christians killed globally” last year, making Nigeria “the most lethal country for Christians by a huge margin.”

But in the West, who cares? And, further, who is informed by the media? After we've been ignoring what Nigerian Muslims do to people in their country, now they are carrying out the same job here. Will we still ignore it?

Another thing that may make you laugh or cry, depending on your temperament, is the recommendation not to wear uniform in public given by commanders to troops, which has led the soldiers to the opposite behaviour of posting pictures of themselves in uniform on social media.

What next? Clergy advised not to wear cassocks and dog collars? Oh that's already happened, after a number of Muslim attacks on priests in East London some years ago.

We have made so many concessions to Islam that one more or less doesn't make much difference. What's a uniform between friends?

This kind of advice is akin to trying to cure pneumonia with paracetamol. The real treatment would be a bit more radical (from "radix", the Latin word for "root"), going to the root of the problem, addressing the disease rather than the symptom: if there were no Muslims in Britain, there would hardly be any terror attacks.

Enza Ferreri is an Italian-born, London-based author and journalist. She has been a London correspondent for several Italian magazines and newspapers, including Panorama, L'Espresso, and La Repubblica.

Note what Mehdi Hasan leaves out of his Qur'an quotation. "The Muslim faith does not turn men to terror: The two suspects in the Woolwich killing were violating the doctrine of their own holy book," by Mehdi Hasan in the Telegraph, May 23 (thanks to JH):

'Whosoever killeth a human being…” says the Koran, in the 32nd verse of its fifth chapter, “it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.”

Thus, the two supposedly Muslim men suspected of killing and mutilating an unarmed, off-duty soldier in the middle of a London street, while shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is Great”), were violating the injunction of their own holy book. Perversely, it was the non-Muslim Cub Scout leader who, in trying to save the soldier’s life, and standing up to his alleged attackers, was acting in accordance with Koranic principles. Let’s be clear: Islam doesn’t permit the killing of innocents. Jihad is permissible only in self-defence and if sanctioned by a legitimate government. To quote from our Prime Minister’s pitch-perfect statement outside No 10, Wednesday’s barbarism was “a betrayal of Islam and of the Muslim communities who give so much to our country”.

Yes, let's be clear. Qur'an 5:32 actually says this:

For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. Our messengers came unto them of old with clear proofs (of Allah's Sovereignty), but afterwards lo! many of them became prodigals in the earth.

Hasan quoted it thusly: "Whosoever killeth a human being...it shall be as if he had killed all mankind." Notice what he left out: "for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth." So the Qur'an is saying only that killing a human being for something other than manslaughter or "corruption in the earth" is as if one had killed all mankind.

But what if someone does commit "corruption in the earth"? The Qur'an goes on: "The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom." (Qur'an 5:33)

Now we see why Mehdi Hasan left that part out of his Qur'an quote.

So it is permissible -- indeed, commanded -- to kill those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after "corruption in the land." Islam doesn't permit the killing of innocents, but this victim was a British soldier. He was, in the view of his killer, making war upon Allah and his messenger and spreading corruption in the land by fighting in Afghanistan. In that case, the killer's jihad was defensive, and Hasan's words about it being only permissible if sanctioned by a legitimate government are simply false in terms of Islamic law.

To be sure, only the state authority can declare offensive jihad. A Shafi'i manual of Islamic law that was certified in 1991 by the clerics at Al-Azhar University, one of the leading authorities in the Islamic world, as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy, stipulates that “the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians...until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.” It adds a comment by Sheikh Nuh ‘Ali Salman, a Jordanian expert on Islamic jurisprudence: the caliph wages this war only “provided that he has first invited [Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians] to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya)...while remaining in their ancestral religions.” ('Umdat al-Salik, o9.8).

Of course, there is no caliph today, and upon this fact hinges the oft-repeated claim that people like the London murderer are waging jihad illegitimately, as no state authority has authorized their jihad. But he and others like him explain their actions in terms of defensive jihad, which needs no state authority to call it, and becomes "obligatory for everyone" ('Umdat al-Salik, o9.3) if a Muslim land is attacked. The end of the defensive jihad, however, is not peaceful coexistence with non-Muslims as equals: 'Umdat al-Salik specifies that the warfare against non-Muslims must continue until "the final descent of Jesus." After that, "nothing but Islam will be accepted from them, for taking the poll tax is only effective until Jesus' descent" (o9.8).

Surely Mehdi Hasan knows all this. So why is he misleading people in the pages of the Telegraph?

The egregiously dhimmi BBC does it again: giving an MPCUK spokesman, Asghar Bukhari, abundant airtime to retail Islamic supremacist grievances against British foreign policy. There is no discussion whatsoever, of course, of the killer's references to the Qur'an. The question is whether the jihad against Britain would really go away if the Muslims' foreign policy demands were all met, or if other grievances would be found, and the jihad would continue. But that question was not discussed.

Video thanks to Ygalg.

Video thanks to ygalg.

The "moderate" Palestinian Authority has a grievance against free journalists, and in the U.S., it is our cultural custom to satisfy Muslims who have grievances. A dedicated team of pro-jihad, pro-Islamic supremacist journalists, including Christiane Amanpour, Spencer Ackerman, Lisa Wangsness, Manya Brachear, Bob Smietana, Kari Huus, Dave Weigel, Michael Kruse, Eli Clifton, Alex Kane, Alex Seitz-Wald, Adam Serwer, Max Blumenthal and others, should relocate to Baghdad. Then Mahmoud Abbas and other PA leaders could be assured of warmly favorable coverage.

"PA continues crackdown on journalists in W. Bank," by Khaled Abu Toameh for the Jerusalem Post, May 18 (thanks to Maxwell):

Despite promises to honor freedom of the media, the Palestinian Authority is continuing its crackdown on Palestinian journalists in the West Bank.

In the past week, PA security forces interrogated and detained two journalists: Haroun Abu Arrah and Omar Arqoub.

Abu Arrah, who was born in Jenin and lives in Ramallah, was detained by the PA’s General Intelligence Security [GIS] for interrogation.

“I went to the headquarters of the GIS two days after receiving a summons,” Abu Arrah told the SKeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom.

“They asked me provocative and personal questions, such as whether I was having or had sexual relationships. I told the interrogator that this was none of his business. He replied: You better answer the questions.”

Abu Arrah said he was also questioned about a comment he had posted on Facebook about the summons he received to report to the GIS.

He said the interrogator presented to him a printed copy of the Facebook comment.

“The interrogation lasted for two-and-a-half hours after which I was released without knowing why I had been summoned in the first place,” Abu Arrah said.

Earlier this year, Abu Arrah, who is also a film producer, was arrested for 10 days by the GIS for insulting PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

“There was a press conference in Oslo, Norway, where I asked President Mahmoud Abbas directly whether he was aware that people were dying in PA and Hamas prisons,” Abu Arrah said. “The president replied that he did not know about this. So I told him that he should stop it.”

The journalist said that shortly after he returned to the West Bank he was arrested for “extending my tongue” against Abbas.“I spent 10 days in solitary confinement,” Abu Arrah recalled. “In the first two days they confiscated my mattress and prevented me from sleeping.”

He said that the PA security forces have since been harassing him and asking his employers to fire him.

The second journalist, Arqoub, was arrested for 11 days by the GIS, whose agents also confiscated his laptop. He was questioned about a documentary film on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails that he is working on....

Grievance theater

An unmitigated triumph of jihad propaganda, with willing aid from France 2. "Second intifada icon Muhammad Al-Dura didn’t die in 2000 shooting, Israel claims," by Mitch Ginsburg for the Times of Israel, May 19:

Muhammad al-Dura, the Palestinian child who appeared to have been shockingly killed at his father’s feet in Gaza on September 30, 2000 — an iconic image that helped fuel the Second Intifada — was not harmed by Israeli forces and did not die in the exchange of fire, according to an Israeli government report released Sunday, three days before a French court rules on a related matter.

“Contrary to the report’s claim that the boy was killed, the committee’s review of the raw footage showed that in the final scenes, which were not broadcast by France 2, the boy is seen to be alive,” the Ministry of International Affairs and Strategy report stated regarding the television report.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who tasked the ministry with assembling the report in 2012, said the accusations aired on France 2 were “a manifestation of the ongoing, mendacious campaign to delegitimize Israel.”

Minister of International Affairs and Strategy Yuval Steinitz called the accusations baseless and said the affair was “a modern-day blood libel against the State of Israel.”

The 55 seconds of edited footage, filmed two days after Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, contributed to the October 2000 protest in which 13 Arab citizens of Israel were killed and quickly became the defining image of that Palestinian uprising against Israel.

The picture of Dura, apparently dead across his father’s knees, was shown for days on Arab and international TV stations and was cited as inspiration by both Osama bin Laden and the killers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Israel initially did not dispute that IDF troops had inadvertently killed the child. “It could very much be — this is an estimation — that a soldier in our position, who has a very narrow field of vision, saw somebody hiding behind a cement block in the direction from which he was being fired at, and he shot in that direction,” Maj. Gen. Yom-Tov Samia said at the time.

Only months later did the army complete an investigation that it said showed with certainty that, if Dura was killed, it could not have been from shots fired from the IDF position.

This AP story uses "conservative" to refer to the pro-Sharia Muslims who blocked this women's rights law. That's in accord with common journalistic practice, which refers to religious people of any religion as "conservative" and to more secular types as "liberal." The common journalistic practice runs into a contradiction, however, with the global alliance between Islamic supremacists and the forces of the Left. That leads the mainstream media to term opponents of Sharia "right-wing" and even "far-right," their all-purpose term to semaphore to readers that we are bad people and decent folks should stay away from us. But that means that in the U.S., opponents of Sharia are "conservatives," while in Afghanistan, proponents of Sharia are "conservatives." If ever (and this will never happen) a counter-jihad, anti-Sharia movement arose in Afghanistan, AP's collective head would explode.

Anyway, note that the Sharia supremacists block a law banning child marriage. This is because Muhammad consummated his marriage with Aisha when he was 54 and she was 9, and he is the supreme example for conduct (cf. Qur'an 33:21), so his example is normative and cannot be questioned. And the law also would have prevented the prosecution of rape victims -- one of the most noxious manifestations of the fact that in Islamic law, men are not called upon to exercise any self-control at all. Their conduct is entirely the woman's responsibility. If she gets raped, it is her fault.

"Conservative Afghan lawmakers block legislation protecting women’s rights," from the Associated Press, May 18 (thanks to all who sent this in):

KABUL, Afghanistan — Conservative religious lawmakers in Afghanistan blocked legislation on Saturday aimed at strengthening provisions for women’s freedoms, arguing that parts of it violate Islamic principles and encourage disobedience.

The fierce opposition highlights how tenuous women’s rights remain a dozen years after the ouster of the hard-line Taliban regime, whose strict interpretation of Islam once kept Afghan women virtual prisoners in their homes.

Khalil Ahmad Shaheedzada, a conservative lawmaker for Herat province, said the legislation was withdrawn shortly after being introduced in parliament because of an uproar by religious parties who said parts of the law are un-Islamic.

“Whatever is against Islamic law, we don’t even need to speak about it,” Shaheedzada said.

The Law on Elimination of Violence Against Women has been in effect since 2009, but only by presidential decree. It is being brought before parliament now because lawmaker Fawzia Kofi, a women’s rights activist, wants to cement it with a parliamentary vote to prevent its potential reversal by any future president who might be tempted to repeal it to satisfy hard-line religious parties.

The law criminalizes, among other things, child marriage and forced marriage, and bans “baad,” the traditional practice of selling and buying women to settle disputes. It also makes domestic violence a crime punishable by up to three years in prison and specifies that rape victims should not face criminal charges for fornication or adultery.

Kofi, who plans to run for president in next year’s elections, said she was disappointed because among those who oppose upgrading the law from presidential decree to legislation passed by parliament are women.

Afghanistan’s parliament has more than 60 female lawmakers, mostly due to constitutional provisions reserving certain seats for women.

There has been spotty enforcement of the law as it stands. A United Nations analysis in late 2011 found only a small percentage of reported crimes against women were pursued by the Afghan government. Between March 2010 and March 2011 — the first full Afghan year the decree was in effect — prosecutors filed criminal charges in only 155 cases, or 7 percent of the total number of crimes reported.

The child marriage ban and the idea of protecting female rape victims from prosecution were particularly heated subjects in Saturday’s parliamentary debate, said Nasirullah Sadiqizada Neli, a conservative lawmaker from Daykundi province.

Neli suggested that removing the custom — common in Afghanistan — of prosecuting raped women for adultery would lead to social chaos, with women freely engaging in extramarital sex safe in the knowledge they could claim rape if caught.

Another lawmaker, Mandavi Abdul Rahmani of Barlkh province, also opposed the law’s rape provision.

“Adultery itself is a crime in Islam, whether it is by force or not,” Rahmani said.

He said the Quran also makes clear that a husband has a right to beat a disobedient wife as a last resort, as long as she is not permanently harmed. “But in this law,” he said, “It says if a man beats his wife at all, he should be jailed for three months to three years.”...

Sometimes public pressure works. An update on this story. "Newseum reverses plan to honor accused terrorists," by Lisa Daftari for FoxNews.com, May 13:

Washington’s Newseum reversed its plans to honor two accused members of a terrorist organization when it pays tribute to journalists who died in the line of duty last year, FoxNews.com has learned.

The museum dedicated to journalists had planned to include Mahmoud Al-Kumi and Hussam Salama, former members of the terrorist group Hamas and employees of a TV station known for anti-Israel propaganda at Monday’s annual Journalist Memorial dedication. But after FoxNews.com and other media outlets wrote about the controversy surrounding their inclusion, Newseum officials changed their minds.

“Serious questions have been raised as to whether two of the individuals included on our initial list of journalists who died covering the news this past year were truly journalists or whether they were engaged in terrorist activities,” said Newseum spokesman Jonathan Thompson. “We take the concerns raised about these two men seriously and have decided to re-evaluate their inclusion as journalists on our memorial wall pending further investigation.”

The dedication has recognized more than 2,000 reporters, photographers and broadcasters who have died in the line of duty from around the world, including Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped by Pakistani militants and murdered by Al Qaeda terrorists in 2002. Thompson's statement left open the door that their names could be inscribed on the memorial at a later date, though they are not being honored at today's ceremony....

I had to laugh when I saw this piece by National Review's Rich Lowry in the New York Post. Only now he is discovering all this? Pamela Geller sums up how absurd this is:

Nakoula has been a political prisoner for so many months. My headline on September 15, 2012 was  Political Prisoner: US Sharia police pick up Muhammad filmmaker. Robert Spencer wrote on September 17 in PJ Media, before Nakoula was jailed: "Nakoula has a checkered past, reportedly including methamphetamine dealing and bank fraud. But if he is indeed sent back to jail because of this video, no matter what priors he has, no matter how checkered his past, make no mistake: he will be a political prisoner. He will be in prison not for the meth or the fraud or for the technicality of the probation violation, but for insulting Muhammad. His imprisonment will be a symbol of America’s capitulation to the Sharia."

Where has Lowry been for the past eight months? What took him so long? And why does the right suppress voices that speak to this subject? I can assure you that if I or one of my colleagues had submitted such a piece to the Post or any other major publication in September 2012, it would not have run. Why must the mainstream right forever play catch-up, instead of leading?

"Jailed for blasphemy — in America," by Rich Lowry in the New York Post, May 9:

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula deserves a place in American history. He is the first person in this country jailed for violating Islamic anti-blasphemy laws.

You won’t find that anywhere in the charges against him, of course. As a practical matter, though, everyone knows that Nakoula wouldn’t be in jail if he hadn’t produced a video crudely lampooning the prophet Muhammad.

After the attack on US facilities in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, the Obama administration claimed the terrorist assault had been the outgrowth of a demonstration against the video. In a speech at the United Nations, the president declared — no doubt with Nakoula in mind — “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

After Benghazi, the administration was evidently filled with a fierce resolve — to bring Nakoula to justice.

Charles Woods, the father of a Navy SEAL killed in Benghazi, said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told him when his son’s body returned to Andrews Air Force Base: “We will make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.”

Lo and behold, Nakoula was brought in for questioning by five Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies at midnight, eventually arrested and held without bond, and finally thrown into jail for a year. He sits in La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution in Texas, even as the deceptive spin that blamed his video for the Benghazi attack looks more egregious by the day.

Two things must be said about Nakoula upfront. One is that his video can barely be called a video. The thing is lowdown, low-rent and should be offensive not just to Muslims, but to all people of good will....

Even as he reports all this, Lowry feels the need to temporize and backtrack. Why exactly should this video offend all people of good will? Because of its miserably poor production values? Or because it offends Muslims, and airs unpleasant facts about Muhammad?

Be sure to read the full post over at Atlas Shrugs, where Pamela Geller has more on this phenomenon, with examples from Andrew McCarthy and Andrew Bostom.

Sharyl Attkisson should know the basic rule of American journalism: do not investigate scandals perpetrated by Leftist presidents. Instead, cover them up. "Top Obama official’s brother is president of CBS News, may drop reporter over Benghazi coverage," by Patrick Howley in the Daily Caller, May 11 (thanks to Jerk Chicken):

The brother of a top Obama administration official is also the president of CBS News, and the network may be days away from dropping one of its top investigative reporters for covering the administration’s scandals too aggressively.

CBS News executives have reportedly expressed frustration with their own reporter, Sharyl Attkisson, who has steadily covered the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi terrorist attack in Libya since late last year.

“Network sources” told Politico Wednesday that CBS executives feel Attkisson’s Benghazi coverage is bordering on advocacy, and Attkisson “can’t get some of her stories on the air.”

Attkisson, who is in talks to leave the network before her contract expires, has been attempting to figure out who changed the Benghazi talking points for more than five months.

“We still don’t know who changed talking points but have had at least 4 diff explanations so far,” Attkisson tweeted on November 27, 2012.

But on Friday, ABC News reported that the Benghazi talking points went through 12 revisions before they were used on the public. The White House was intimately involved in that process, ABC reported, and the talking points were scrubbed free of their original references to a terror attack.

That reporting revealed that President Obama’s deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes — brother of CBS News president David Rhodes — was instrumental in changing the talking points in September 2012.

ABC’s reporting revealed that Ben Rhodes, who has a masters in fiction from NYU, called a meeting to discuss the talking points at the White House on September 15, 2012.

“We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation,” Rhodes wrote to his colleagues in the Obama administration. “We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.”

Ben Rhodes, a 35-year old New York City native and former Giuliani staffer who has worked for Obama since the president’s tenure in the U.S. Senate, has established himself as a hawkish force on the Obama foreign policy team, advocating for military intervention in Libya during the president’s first term and reportedly advocating for intervention in Syria, as well.

But despite his hawkish views, Rhodes identifies himself first and foremost as a strategist and mouthpiece for the president’s agenda....

Canonizing the Pallywood propaganda mill. "Terrorists or journalists? Washington's Newseum to honor fallen Hamas operatives," by Lisa Daftari for FoxNews.com, May 10 (thanks to Kenneth):

A Washington news museum plans to honor two accused terrorists among the journalists it recognizes at this year’s annual tribute to reporters, photographers and broadcasters who have died reporting the news.

Mahmoud Al-Kumi and Hussam Salama were killed by an Israeli air strike Nov. 20, 2012 while working for Al-Aqsa Television, a Hamas-funded media outlet designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. Treasury Department. While their supporters consider them to have been journalists, a 2010 report from Treasury said the TV station is “financed and controlled by Hamas,” and “airs programs and music videos designed to recruit children to become Hamas armed fighters and suicide bombers upon reaching adulthood.”

"Treasury will not distinguish between a business financed and controlled by a terrorist group, such as Al-Aqsa Television, and the terrorist group itself," Stuart Levey, then secretary for the Office Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, an agency overseen by Treasury.

Since its inception in 1997, The Newseum has recognized more than 2,000 journalists from around the world, including Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped by Pakistani militants and then murdered by Al Qaeda in 2002. The names of the journalists are engraved on glass panels as part of the facility’s Journalists Memorial.

The museum’s website describes Al-Kumi and Salama as “Al-Aqsa cameramen who were killed in an Israeli air strike. They were covering fighting between Israel and fighting between Israel and the militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, when a missile hit their vehicle. Al-Aqsa said the journalists’ car was clearly marked ‘TV.’”

An Israel Defense Force report about the incident in which the two were killed states: "Mahmoud Al-Kumi and Hussam Salama were Hamas operatives and cameramen for Hamas’ Al-Aqsa television network, which regularly features programming that encourages and praises attacks on Israeli civilians.”

Al Aqsa doesn’t only encourage attacks on Israelis, according to Steve Stalinsky at the Middle East Media and Research Institute, who called Al Aqsa TV “the microphone for Hamas” and a “vehicle for spreading their propaganda.”

“They are continually calling for the destruction of America. They are very active on social media and there’s a lot of Anti- American and Anti-West content,” Stalinsky said.

Stalinsky points to a YouTube video of Al Aqsa TV reporting the deaths of the two journalists at the time the attack took place, stating that the two were driving in a “regular, civilian car.” The reporter makes no claim that they were in a car with media signs.

Palestinian media also reported that the two men were Hamas operatives, according to the Weekly Standard.

Newseum maintains that the Journalists Memorial selection committee conducts “case-by-case reviews,” according to spokesman Jonathan Thompson, who defended Newseum’s decision to include the men in this year’s dedication....

Coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing has ignored admitted bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s connection to his college’s Muslim Student Association, a group that has close relations with both the Muslim Brotherhood and a local imam friendly with an al-Qaida operative.

Although a student leader and the mainstream media have downplayed Tsarnaev’s ties to the the group, Tsarnaev associated frequently with the Muslim Student Association (MSA) at University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

The Washington Post on April 27 reported that Tsarnaev, who has admitted his role in the Marathon terrorist bombing to police, played intramural soccer with MSA members, contradicting earlier reports that the U. Mass-Dartmouth student spurned an invitation to join the controversial Muslim Brotherhood-linked student organization.

“For a time, Jahar played on an intramural soccer team composed of students involved with the campus Muslim Student Association,” explained the Post’s Marc Fisher, a fact that has since been missing from coverage.

In fact, Tsarnaev played soccer with the Muslim Student Association nearly every week, according to MSA Secretary Bassel Nasri in an interview with George Stephanopoulos and Diane Sawyer on April 19, 2013. Nasri simply neglected to say they were MSA games. Although Stephanopoulos described Nasri as “a soccer buddy” of Tsarnaev, neither he nor Sawyer mentioned that they were co-religionists and that the soccer games were organized by the Muslim Student Association.

Nasri was later interviewed by CNN and again didn’t mention that he had known Tsarnaev through the Muslim Student Association’s weekly soccer games.

“We used to play soccer together,” Nasri told Piers Morgan. “We used to hang out a few times. We weren’t too close — we were more acquaintances than friends. But he was really mostly a pretty good guy in that sense. He would always like ask for — if you needed any help with anything. So I’m really surprised at the outcome of what happened in the past week or so.”

A day later, Nasri told 60 Minutes that he tried to recruit Tsarnaev to the Muslim Student Association, without any luck. He left out that the soccer games where Tsarnaev was a regular player were MSA activities. He even seemed to suggest to Scott Pelley that had Tsarnaev joined MSA more seriously, the bombing wouldn’t have happened. According to the 60 Minutes report:

These friends saw him two weeks ago. He was a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Ahmad Nassri and Bassel Nasri tried, without luck to get him to join the MSA, the Muslim Student Association.

Scott Pelley: Did you see him at mosque? You see him at prayers? Nothing like that?

Group: No.

Bassel Nasri: No, unfortunately.

Scott Pelley: Unfortunately?

Bassel Nasri: I would’ve loved for him to come to the MSA a few times so he can maybe understand his religion better. Maybe that would, that would’ve helped in what happened, I would say.

Assuming Nasri is telling the truth — he, along with half a dozen other MSA members and their faculty sponsor, Neil Fennessey, did not return request for comments — he is wrong about the Muslim Student Association’s not being a haven for radicalism, explains David Reaboi, Vice President of the Strategic Policy Center.

“As the first group established by expat Muslim Brothers in America in the 1960s, the MSA has a history of Islamist radicalism,” Reaboi explains. “At the time, educational grants and fellowships in the US brought large numbers of university-age students from the Middle East to study, especially in the Midwest. The MSA began as a front for Brotherhood activity in this country by providing cover for these recently emigrated Brothers to meet and connect.”

In fact, several Muslim Student Association students have been brought up on terrorism charges. In April 2012, Muslim Student Association member Tarek Mehanna, who earned a doctorate at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, was sentenced to 17 and a half years for  conspiring to aid al-Qaida. Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki (a.k.a. Omar Hammani), a terrorist leader and former president of the University of South Alabama’s Muslim Students’ Association, was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted List in 2012.

The Facebook page of the Muslim Student Association at University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth has over one hundred members and routinely advertises speeches and seminars taught by radical imams and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)’s Todd Gallinger, who visited the campus in the days after the Boston bombing.