ISRAEL GRANTS SANCTUARY TO GAY PALESTINIAN

Gay Palestinian Seeks Sanctuary from Non-Gay Palestinians

(LGF)

When gay and lesbian Palestinians want to be safe, they know where to go: Gay Palestinian gets OK to live with Israeli lover.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel has granted a Palestinian a rare residency permit after the man, who is gay, said his sexuality put his life in danger in the West Bank, a Defence Ministry official said on Tuesday.

The 33-year-old Palestinian from Jenin was issued a temporary permit to live with his Israeli partner in Tel Aviv after arguing he faced death threats from fellow Palestinians who disapproved of him being gay, the official said.

Israel’s Interior Ministry rarely issues permits for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank who want to live with their partners in Israel, regardless of sexuality. Requesting such a permit can take years.

“In this case the man’s lawyer said his life was in danger because of his sexual preference,” said Peter Lerner, spokesman for Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, whose office comes under the defence ministry.

“On this basis we issued the temporary permit,” he said.

It wouldn’t be Reuters, of course, if they didn’t find some way to: 1) excuse the medieval mentality that systemically targets gays for murder, and 2) blame it on Israel.

But while homosexuality is largely taboo in conservative and majority Muslim West Bank cities, one rights groups working with Palestinian gays said there had been few reports of physical violence in recent years.

However Palestinians are wary of collaborators and Rauda Morcos, director of Aswat support group for Palestinian lesbians, said this suspicion was directed at gay men and women.

Morcos said Palestinian gays were sometimes targeted by the Israeli secret service and told they must collaborate or face being outed.

REUTERS PROMOTES ANTI-ISRAEL BLOG

Reuters Promotes Anti-Israel Blog (Honest Reporting)

Why does Reuters give credibility to a one-sided and hateful blog story?

The Blogosphere contains a wealth of opinions and claims, some of which contribute to a rational debate and others which may be the personal rantings of a deranged individual. While freedom of speech requires a degree of responsibility that is sometimes lacking in blogs, reputable news services are compelled to comply with much higher standards.

So why, then, is Reuters publishing a blog posting entitled "Israeli Troops Given the Go-Ahead to Kill Peaceful Palestinian Protesters"? The posting reveals its true nature in the first line:

The Zionist regime has given orders to allow Israeli troops to fire live rounds on Palestinians protesting the illegal Apartheid Wall surrounding Jerusalem.

Continuing in a hateful and one-sided vein, failing to mention Palestinian terror or legitimate Israeli security concerns:

The Apartheid Wall, meant to strangle local West Bank economies and annex Palestinian land, started to encapsulate occupied Jerusalem in 2002.

Merely the term "Zionist regime", popularized by terrorist groups and individuals such as Iran's President Ahmadinejad, should have been enough to raise alarm bells at Reuters as to the unsuitability of such a posting. Not to mention the contents of the piece itself, which maliciously accuses Israel of actively seeking to kill Palestinian protestors.

Reuters includes the disclaimer: "The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by Reuters.com." While Reuters may not endorse the sentiments of the blog posting, it still decided to publish them on its own site, therefore giving it unwarranted credibility as a news source.

Reuters asks you to Let us know what you think of this feature. Please do so by selecting the Blogs option in the Topics menu and ask Reuters to exercise responsibility in its choice of blogs.

REUTERS: "DEATH TO THE JEWS" IS "PRO-PALESTINIAN"

Reuters: 'Death to the Jews' is 'Pro-Palestinian'

(LGF)

Graffiti found in an El Al plane in Italy has led the airline to demand an investigation; Reuters reports that it was “pro-Palestinian graffiti.”

MILAN, March 11 (Reuters) - Pro-Palestinian graffiti written in Arabic has been found scrawled inside the cargo hold of an El Al plane during unloading at Milan’s Malpensa airport, raising Israeli concerns about Italian airport security.

“It was something like ‘Long Live Palestine’,” written with a marker pen, Raffaele Veri of the Malpensa airport police told Reuters on Tuesday. “It has happened once before.”

Something like “Long live Palestine?”

Sure, I guess you could say that “Long live Palestine” is the equivalent of “Death to the Jews.”

Tel Aviv - Despite the Israeli airline’s tight security, unknown vandals spray-painted anti-Semitic slogans inside the cargo bay of an El-Al passenger plane, probably as it was docked in Milan, an Israeli newspaper reported Tuesday. The slogans, in Arabic, included “Death to the Jews,” the Yediot Ahronot daily said.

El-Al staff members discovered them as they were loading luggage onto the plane at Milan’s Malpensa Airport before it was heading back to Tel Aviv.

The perpetrator spray-painted the graffiti in the plane’s cargo bay earlier, probably shortly after it landed in Milan and as luggage was being unloaded.

REUTERS' BIAS

One Year Analysis: Reuters 2007 "Pictures of the Month" (HonestReporting)

Each month, Reuters selects about 250 images from thousands of its own photographs for inclusion in a "Pictures of the Month" package. These photographs depict people and events from around the world, encompassing culture, sport, politics and significant news events. Reuters uses these photo packages to draw attention to the best examples of its work each month.

Key Findings

Having previously challenged Reuters for its objectivity in a subjectively selected group of images (see Desk Calendar below), we were interested in seeing if that case represented a one-time aberration, or if Reuters has a serious bias problem in its coverage of  the Arab-Israeli conflict.

We looked at those photographs that featured Palestinians or Israelis included by Reuters in the twelve monthly "Pictures" packages of 2007. We studied 2,666 photos. Our findings are based on 124 photographs of Israelis and Palestinians (promoted by Reuters as the "Best of the Month"):

• 62% of images provoke sympathy for the Palestinians.

• Fifteen photographs of Palestinian funerals were selected as "Pictures of the Month." None were similarly promoted of Israeli funerals of those killed in the conflict. (Nor were there pictures of funerals from Darfur, Afghanistan, or Sri Lanka from the thousands of combat deaths in those places).

• The images consistently depicted Israelis as the aggressors  and Palestinians as the victims. Only 10% of the  images could be considered sympathetic to Israelis.

REUTERS SHILLS FOR HAMAS

Inspired by God, Hamas fighters battle on
GAZA, March 3 (Reuters) - Abu Mohammed picked up his rifle, said farewell to his wife and six children and went out to face the Israeli tanks, helicopter gunships and missile-firing airborne drones.

“Being unable to defeat Israel is no reason to surrender,” the Hamas fighter said with a smile as he headed to the Gaza Strip’s front line last Saturday, ignoring pleas from his family to stay.

“My children and wife are very dear to me,” he said. “But reward in Heaven and the homeland are dearer.”

The 38-year-old furniture salesman says he is not afraid to die for the cause of destroying Israel and forging a Palestinian state on all Israel’s territory, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

To Israel and its allies, Abu Mohammed and his comrades are Jew-hating terrorists. But Abu Mohammed sees himself on a mission from God to rescue his people from 60 years of misery as refugees since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.

REUTERS PALESTINIAN PROPAGANDA WATCH

Reuters Palestinian Propaganda Watch (LGF)

Here’s some pure propaganda from al-Reuters in the Gaza Strip, starting with the headline, which avoids telling you how this “youth” was killed; if Israeli soldiers were to blame, even if the youth were armed to the teeth and bent on murder the headline would scream, “Israel Kills Teenage Palestinian!”

Instead we get: Palestinian youth killed in protest at Gaza border.

GAZA (Reuters) - A teenage Palestinian protester was killed as tens of thousands of Gazans demonstrated in the southern part of the strip on Saturday against the closure of a border crossing with Egypt.

The demonstration lasted several hours and broke up after dark, local security officials said.

Hospital staff named the dead as 17-year-old Mohammed Qdaih who was accidentally hit by a bullet fired by Hamas Executive Force officers trying to keep the crowd under control.

That last sentence is a real whopper. They were firing live ammunition to “keep the crowd under control,” but it’s somehow an “accident” that a bullet hit someone? When was the last time you saw Reuters give Israel the presumption of innocence like this?

That’s why we call them “al-Reuters.”

And Agence France Presse follows suit: Palestinian killed in Gaza border protest.

But for once, the Associated Press breaks ranks and actually publishes something like the truth: Hamas men kill teenager at border rally.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip - Hamas gunmen opened fire on their own supporters Saturday, killing a teenager at a protest on the Gaza-Egypt border, hospital officials said.

Tens of thousands of flag-waving Hamas supporters gathered at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt to demand it be reopened. The border, Gaza’s only gateway to Egypt, has been shut since Hamas’ bloody takeover of the Gaza Strip in June.

Hamas gunmen guarding the border fired in the air as hundreds of protesters tried to rush the border terminal and go into Egypt.

REUTERS CAPITULATES TO HAMAS THREATS

Freedom of the Press, PalArab style (IV): Reuters capitulates to Hamas threats (Elder of Zyion)
This seems to be turning into a series....

From PCHR, events that happened last Thursday after a Fatah demonstration in Gaza:

Member of the Executive Force detained 3 journalists who were covering the demonstration and forced them to delete video footages and photographs from their cameras. The journalists are:

1) Rami Hasan Abu Shammala, a cameraman of Ramattan;

2) Ibrahim Abu Mustafa, a Reuters reporter; and

3) Bassam Mas’oud, a Reuters reporter.

One of the journalists told PCHR that members of the Executive Force took them to the office of the force inside the hospital and forced them to delete video footages that showed members of the force fining into the air to disperse the demonstrations. They also warned and the threatened the journalists not to publish any of those footages.

Needeless to say, a search through news archives from last Thursday reveal not a single word about this demonstration in Khan Younis. Hamas not only threatened the journalists - they successfully muzzled them, and proved yet again that they control all the news coming out of Gaza.

Gutless Reuters didn't even attempt to report on their own humiliation and impotence. They willingly went along with the demands of the terrorists, and as a result they chose not to report the news. And any way you look at it, a sizable pro-Fatah demonstration in the heart of Hamastan is worth a paragraph or two among the megabytes of dreck that Reuters publishes daily.

WHY DOES THE NYT CALL TERRORISTS, "MILITANTS"?

'Militant' media (JPost)
A New York Times July 6 report by Isabel Kershner had me mixed up. The headline read "Israeli Offensive in Central Gaza Kills 11 Militants" and the lead sentence began: "At least 11 Palestinian militants were killed in airstrikes and armed clashes during an Israeli Army incursion." It continued with these details: "Hamas officials said that seven of the dead were members of its military wing, known as the Qassam Brigades…The Islamic Jihad faction said one of its men was among the dead."

And to "balance" the information thus far provided, we next read that "Israeli military officials described the raid as a routine operation to root out 'terrorist infrastructures.'"

Why am I bewildered?

In the first instance, "militant" is used in the headline which is the main attention-grabbing element. It is also used in the lead sentence, the most important one, as any journalism student can tell you. But then the story acknowledges that 7 of the "militants" were members of Hamas's "military wing" and another was an Islamic Jihadist - individuals who generally specialize in anti-civilian warfare such as launching rockets into cities and blowing up buses.

However, when it comes to Israel's version, the term "terrorist" is in quotation marks, which means in the media lingo - don't believe them, that's only what they claim....

No matter how much we complain, the BBC, CNN, NYT and Reuters are stuck on "militants." They've taken a word that's synonymous with "combative" and employ it to describe those who specialize in killing unarmed civilians.

The right word is "terrorist."

In this way, the media is taking sides and corrupting not only language, but our minds. They are being zealously "militant" in perverting political and historical truth while inverting reality.