Ax Wax Arafat Pols Say. New York Post. May 16, 2001
"More than 50 state lawmakers are demanding Madam Tussaud's [wax museum] yank a statue of a smiling Yassar Arafat from an exhibit of world leaders ..."

Emotions Run High After Poetry Reading Turns Political.
Jewish Bulletin of Northern California. May 18, 2001
"As an Israeli, I'm used to hearing people angry, but this was really extraordinary," recalled [Israeli poet Chana] Kronfeld, "I was really shocked and offended by the reaction. I really couldn't believe that in a place like Berkeley [California, home of the "free speech" movement] or wherever there is a Jewish community that values open speech that a five-minute statement could cause that kind of rude, vocal disruption."

Freud, Zionism, and Vienna, by Edward Said. Counterpunch. March 16, 2001
"What in their appalling pusilanimity the Freudian gang did not say publicly was that the real reason for the unseemly cancellation of my lecture was that it was the price they paid to their donors in Israel and the United States ... After 50 years of Zionist censorship and misrepresentation, the Palestinians continue their struggle."

Censorship 2001. By Moshe Negbi. The Jerusalem Report. May 31, 2001
"I said that in Israel, as in other democracies, 'The state is not the only menace threatening the uninhibited flow of information and ideas to the public. It seems that the all-powerful censors are no longer government offices, but enemies within -- the people who own the media and therefore enjoy tremendous power to control its editorial content ... Ofer Nimrodi, the owner of Ma'ariv -- the [Israeli] daily paper which I have been a columnist and legal commentator for eight years -- has been convicted of illegal wire tapping and obstruction of justuce. Now he is standing trial on charges that include conspiracy to murder ... [After writing about all this] I received a dismissal notice by registered mail ... Ninety percent of the Israeli media are in the hands of three families.'"

Answers Overdue on USS Liberty, by Charley Reese. Orlando Sentinel. June 3, 2001
"June 8, 1967, is a day that really ought to live in infamy. On that day, Israeli jets and torpedo boats attacked the U.S. Navy intelligence ship, the Liberty, in international waters. Thirty-four Americans were killed and 171 wounded ... This cover-up continues. Alone among the maritime disasters and attacks, the attack on the USS Liberty, clearly marked and sailing in calm sea under clear skies, is the only one that Congress has never made the subject of a public inquiry."

Failed Auction of Anti-Semitic Book Causes Controvery in British Jewry.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency. June 6, 2001.
"A controversial Victorian manuscript widely described as anti-Semitic failed to sell this week when it was put up for auction at Christie's in London. The result of Wednesday's auction was both disappointing and humiliating for the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the umbrella organization that sought to sell the document after suppressing it for nearly 100 years. The board's decision to auction the manuscript, 'Human Sacrifice Among the Sephardine [sic] or Eastern Jews,' by the 19th-century explorer Sir Richard Burton, provoked a furious reaction from leading members of Britain's Jewish community."

Family Dictionary Eradicates Verb 'Jew.' Moment, June/July 2001
"At 156 years old, the verb 'jew' is one of the oldest slanders in the book. Now, after protests from a national Jewish leader, the editors of the world's largest-selling English language dictionary are taking the anti-Semitic slur out. The Chicago-based World Book Publishing Company-publishers of the World Book Dictionary, a CD-ROM dictionary, and other learning resources-recently deleted the word 'jew' as a transitive verb from all its publications. 'This was a definition left over from the 60s, which we overlooked,' said Michael Ross, World Book's publisher. 'It's a slangy term, and it doesn't add anything to the body of human knowledge.' Perhaps the most high profile use of the slur came six years back, when pop icon Michael Jackson sang 'They Don't Care About Us' (HIStory) featuring the lyric, 'Jew me, sue me, everybody do me.' That line outraged many prominent Jews, and raised awareness of the slander to a new level. The decision to remove the word came after Murray Friedman, the American Jewish Committee's Mid-Atlantic director, addressed a letter to World Book: 'Your World Book CD-ROM dictionary defines the word 'jew' in an entirely inappropriate and offensive manner,' Friedman wrote. He objected to World Book's listing for "jew" (phonetically spelled "jü"), which states: '(Slang) to bargain with overkeenly; beat (down) in price (used in an unfriendly way).' Friedman urged World Book to label the verb 'deeply offensive.' 'We would have been happy with that as an amendment,' Friedman told Moment. 'But they went beyond us and struck it down.'"

Book Burning Matters. Haaretz [Israeli newspaper], July 13, 2001
"A few days after Limor Livnat was appointed [Israeli] minister of education, she banned a high-school history textbook called 'A World of Changes,' edited by Danny Yaakobi in consultation with seven scholars from four universities. A committee established by the Education Ministry before Livnat assumed office found that the book was in need of certain corrections. Public criticism of the book was largely political: Its critics wanted a more patriotic textbook.The book was published by the Ministry of Education in an edition of about 12,000 copies. Most of them were distributed to schools, a few remained in the ministry's warehouses. Apparently the Education Ministry continued to view the existing copies of the book as a serious hazard to the Zionist soul of the country's youth, as toxic material -- so it decided to destroy them. The ministry's decision was cited in a letter written by the director of the curriculum planning and development department, Nava Segen, to one of the book's scientific consultants, Haim Saadon. The Jerusalem weekly Kol Ha'Ir, which carried a report on the subject last week, headlined it 'Where books are destroyed,' and accompanied it with a photograph from the textbook that is going to be destroyed -- of the burning of books in Nazi Germany. The paper's reporter, Neta Alexander, quoted the response of the Education Ministry: Books that are not going to be used and contain 'sacred material' are sent to storage; books that do not contain 'sacred material' are sent to the shredder."

The Conformist: Right is Still Right. New York Press, Vol.14, Issue 30
"An uncomfortable moment at a Southampton dinner party: Norman Podhoretz nearly refused to shake my hand. The formidable former editor of Commentary, a man I had admired tremendously during the 80s and 90s when I wrote for his magazine, was taking his seat across from me. I had known him for years, never well, but had liked and trusted him enough to once spill my heart out in the Commentary offices about my own self-doubts as a writer. Such was my regard for his magazine and for him that when my politics changed a bit, I had hoped to avoid a real breach. The other Friday evening, Norman was standing across a round table from me, looking older and frailer (and thus in a way sweeter). When I approached him, hand extended, his distaste in putting forth his own was palpable. 'I always liked you Scott. But you wrote an anti-Israel piece, and I’m very ideological on that subject' ... To be charged with writing an 'anti-Israel' column is no small thing–it has been known to get people fired ... In political Washington (as at some Hamptons dinner parties), life may go more smoothly if one doesn’t do or say anything that irritates right-wing Zionists. As my encounter with Norman reminded me, the consequences of speaking out sincerely can be quite unsettling. But it is still the right thing to do."

The Black Arts Leave Writers Riled. Guardian [London], March 16, 2001
"An intellectual pillow fight between Conrad Black and a clutch of distinguished writers from his prestigious publications has exploded into a titanic battle of egos. After accusing the Spectator columnist Taki Theodoracopoulos of anti-semitism for criticising Israel's role in the Middle East conflict, the press baron is in the dock himself - accused of stifling reasoned debate. Three prominent writers - all of them past contributors to Mr Black's Telegraph group - have signed a letter to the Spectator accusing him of abusing his responsibilities as a proprietor. Such is the vehemence with which Mr Black has expounded his pro-Israel views, they say, no editor or reporter would dare write frankly about the Palestinian perspective. 'Readers have been warned. There may be many good things in Black's newspapers, but for balanced reporting from the Middle East, they must now, sadly, turn elsewhere.'"

John Sack. Dictionary of Literary Biography.
"Two years before the book version of Company C was released [John] Sack published what is arguably his most controversial book, An Eye for an Eye (1993). In fact, its subject was so politically and emotionally sensitive that seven years elapsed from the project's inception to the point that a publisher, Basic Books, would print it. In An Eye for an Eye Sack reports that at the end of World War II between sixty thousand and eighty thousand German civilians, including women and children, died in Polish prisons and concentration camps that were run by Jews ... The book's publication travails were not restricted to the United States. Facing vocal criticism, Piper Verlag, a Munich publisher, canceled the German-language version in February 1995 and destroyed the 6,000 copies which already had been printed. (Kabel Verlag would ultimately publish it.) The Polish edition was also accepted, then canceled, by one publisher before a second finally produced it."

BBC Staff Told Not to Call Israel Killings "Assassination."
The Independent [Great Britain], August 4, 2001
"In a major surrender to Israeli diplomatic pressure, BBC officials in London have banned their staff in Britain and the Middle East from referring to Israel's policy of murdering its guerrilla opponents as 'assassination.' BBC reporters have been told that in future they are to use Israel's own euphemism for the murders, calling them 'targeted killings.' BBC journalists were astonished that the assignments editor, Malcolm Downing, should have sent out the memorandum to staff, stating that the word 'assassinations' 'should only be used for high-profile political assassinations.' There were, Mr Downing said, 'lots of other words for death.' Up to 60 Palestinian activists – and numerous civilians, including two children killed last week – have been gunned down by Israeli death squads or missile-firing Israeli helicopter pilots. The White House has gently chided Israel about these attacks, but already this week the BBC has been using the phrase 'targeted attacks' for the policy of murder. The Palestinian killing of Israelis, however, is regularly referred to – accurately – as 'murder' or 'assassination.'

Tony Martin. Incident at Wellesly: Jewish Attack on Black Academics. blacksandjews.com [Martin in a professor of Africana studies at Wellesley College since 1973]
"The Jewish Onslaught [a book by Martin] was published as a response to the unprincipled attacks, defamatory statements, assaults on my livelihood and physical threats directed against me for several months. These emanated principally from the Jewish community and its agents and were triggered by my classroom use of a work detailing Jewish involvement in the African slave trade. In The Jewish Onslaught I sought to put my subjective situation into the context of deteriorating Black-Jewish relations of recent decades. I also attempted to evaluate the tactics used against me in the context of the well-documented dirty tricks that the Jewish groups have used against me in the context of the well-documented dirty tricks that the Jewish groups have used against Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, David Dinkins, Minister Louis Farrakhan, Len Jeffries, Black parents in Ocean Hill-Brownsville (Brooklyn) and any number of Euro-American individuals and organizations. The Jewish Onslaught is a book of analysis supported by normal scholarly documentation. There is not a single 'stereotype' or generalization in it that is not buttressed by evidence, either from my personal experience of the last year or from the historical record."

American Library Association Buries Israel Censorship Issue.
Washington Report on Mideast Affairs. Sept/Oct 1994
"A four-year battle within the 56,000-member American Library Association (ALA), in which B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League took a leading role in activating thousands of Jewish librarians to attend conventions and revoke a resolution condemning Israeli censorship of Palestinian libraries, appears to have ended at this year's annual conference in Miami. The ALA's Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT) Action Council voted 17 to 1, with 1 abstention, in a 30-minute closed meeting, to abolish the Israeli Censorship and Palestinian Libraries Task Force (ICPLTF), and to prevent Action Council member David Williams from serving out his three-year term. The vote at the June 24-29 ALA conference followed accusations that the Chicago librarian used the organization as a platform for "anti-Semitism" and harassment of other Action Council members ... Williams first forced the issue of Palestinian intellectual freedom onto the ALA's agenda in 1990, when he was attacked by members of the Chicago Jewish community, including B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League, over a bibliography he had compiled for the Chicago Public Library about the Arab-Israeli conflict. At the ALA's June 1992 convention in San Francisco, after receiving extensive documentation (including Information Freedom and Censorship: World Report 1991, co-published by the Article 19 organization and the American Library Association) detailing the existence of censorship and other human rights violations in the Israeli-occupied territories, the ALA Council took a stand. It adopted a resolution that "calls upon the government of Israel to end all censorship and human rights violations in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza, and in Israel itself; encourages the Israeli and Palestinian peoples in the quest for a peaceful and just solution of their conflict; and encourages ALA members to develop ways to support librarians, journalists, educators and others working for peace, human rights and freedom of information and expression in the Middle East ... For whatever reason, at its 1993 conference in New Orleans, the ALA Council, in an unprecedented action, revoked the 1992 resolution condemning Israeli censorship. The decision certainly was influenced by representatives sent to the convention by the ADL, Hadassah (a Zionist women's group), CAMERA (a Likud-oriented press monitoring organization) and the Jewish Federation."

In Defense of Michael Lopez-Calderon. Palestine Media Watch
"Michael Lopez-Calderon, a member of Palestine Media Watch, was dismissed on March 2, 2001, from his position as teacher at the Rabbi Alexander S. Gross Hebrew Academy in Miami Beach, Florida, for his involvement with Palestine Media Watch and his support of the Palestinian cause. Mr. Lopez-Calderon was accused by anonymous monitors of the Palestine Media Watch mailing list of endorsing violence against Israelis when he stated in one of his emails that Palestinians have the right to resist the Israeli Defense Forces through violence when necessary. (See Statement from Michael Lopez-Calderon for the full account.) Palestine Media Watch is shocked and deeply saddened by this development. It is extremely troubling that personal political opinions expressed outside of one's professional setting could result in punitive actions against the individual expressing those opinions. It is the definition of discrimination on political grounds, and it is shocking and shameful that such discrimination would occur here in the United States of America, where freedom of speech and expression are basic rights. Moreover, it is highly troubling that Mr. Lopez-Calderon's accusers chose to surreptitiously monitor a subscriber-only mailing list and to make their accusations under the cover of anonymity. Mr. Lopez-Calderon's remarks, when read in their proper context, express the obvious: that in a situation where an army is shooting at civilians under occupation, those civilians have the prerogative to exercise their internationally enshrined right to resist by any means."

He Wants to Rid Bible of Dark Interpretation of Jews. San Diego Union Tribune [from Knight Ridder News Services], August 17, 2001
"'The Jews.' It is a term that appears 195 times in the New Testament. And ever since the early Christian era, Jews striving to comprehend their persecution by Crusaders, Cossacks, Nazis or village thugs have lamented their New Testament portrait as Christ-killers. But unlike the millions who have shrugged off -- or suffered under -- the New Testament image of 'the Jews,' Irvin J. Borowsky is on a campaign to rid the Good Book of its dark depiction of his people. A retired magazine publisher and founder of the Liberty Museum in Philadelphia, Borowsky has for 19 years been urging Bible publishers to find other ways to translate the Greek hoi Ioudaioi -- literally, 'the Jews.' The New Testament was written in Greek. Hoi Ioudaioi (pronounced hoy yu-dye-yoy) appears 151 times in John and Acts, often referring to enemies of Jesus."

Concordia Nixes Plans for Palestinian Rally,
Canadian Jewish News, August 30, 2001
"A planned anti-Israel rally that organizers claim will attract more than 20,000 people has been delivered a setback after Concordia University denied permission for the event to be based on university land. Concordia rector Frederick Lowy said the administration was concerned by 'the risk of confrontation and possible violence' associated with an event of this size. The Sept. 15 event, organized by the campus group, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), was to have begun with a 'bazaar' on the vacant lot at the corner of Guy Street and de Maisonneuve Boulevard. From this point, demonstrators were to later march to the United States Consulate on St. Alexandre Street and the Israeli Consulate on René Lévesque Boulevard to denounce 'Israeli colonialism.' They will then return to the starting point. In a statement, which he acknowledged may result in some public controversy, Lowy said the land is too small to accommodate so many people ... SPHR says the event will take place as scheduled at the same place and that it is 'shocked by the unilateral decision' made by the university. The organization says it believes the decision is politically and perhaps racially motivated, noting that the administration has been 'under pressure from pro-Zionist individuals and groups for the past year to reign in Palestinian human rights activity ... More recently, [SPHR] succeeded in getting the Post-Graduate Society of McGill University to condemn Israel for violation of Palestinian rights and, specifically, the closure of Birzeit University.'"

Per the above article, just for starters, note Concordia's September 23, 1999 "Thursday Report" announcement, entitled Jewish Congress Makes Handsome Donation [to Concordia]: "CJC [Canadian Jewish Congress] president Moshe Ronen said, 'We are pleased to be donating Samuel Bronfman House to Concordia University, a distinguished institution of higher learning with a strong commitment to Jewish Studies. We believe that these new arrangements, which retain our national presence in Montreal, enhance our capabilities in Quebec and consolidate our Ottawa operations, will benefit the Canadian Jewish Congress and the entire Jewish community."

The Middle East's War of Words, by Sam Kiley,
Evening Standard [London], September 5, 2001
"Last week The Independent's Robert Fisk accused the BBC of buckling to Israeli pressure to drop the use of 'assassination' when referring to Israel's policy of knocking off alleged 'terrorists' ... Few belligerents have been so good at hijacking language to its own cause than Israel. The Jewish state has deliberately set out to bend English to serve its own ends ... More than two score Palestinians have been bumped off over the past year on suspicion that they have, or might be, planning to kill Israelis. These operations have been described by the European Union and Britain as 'assassinations' and 'extra judicial killings.' Human rights groups call them murders by death squads. The Israelis call them 'targetted killings' ... No newspaper has been so happy to hand over the keys of the armoury over to one side than The [London] Times, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's International. Murdoch is a close friend of Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister ... So, I was told, I should not refer to 'assassinations' of Israel's opponents, nor to 'extrajudicial killings or executions.' The professional Israeli hits in which at least four entirely innocent civilians have been killed were, if I had to write about them at all, just 'killings,' or, best of all -- 'targeted killings.' The fact that the Jewish colonies in the West Bank and Gaza were illegal under international law because they violated the Geneva Convention was not disputed by my editors -- but any reference to this was 'gratuitous.' The leader writers, meanwhile, were happy to repeat the canard that Palestinian gunmen were using children as human shields" ... No pro-Israel lobbyist ever dreamed of having such power over a great national newspaper. They didn't need to. Murdoch's executives were so afraid of irritating him that, when I pulled off a little scoop of tracking down and photographing the unit in the Israeli army which killed Mohammed al-Durrah, the 12-year-old boy whose death was captured on film and became the iconic image of the conflict, I was asked to file the piece 'without mentioning the dead kid.' After that conversation, I was left wordless, so I quit."

Differences of Opinion: The Greg Felton Case,
Thunderbird Magazine (University of British Columbia), April 3, 1999
"According to a recent BC Press Council ruling in favor of newspaper owner [non-Jewish pro-Zionist] David Black, columnists – or any editorial staff for that matter – can be told by newspaper owners not to write about certain issues. This is in line with property rights protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Newspaper owners, just like any business proprietor, can and should be allowed to do what they want with their investments. This is all fine, but the freedom of expression is also protected under the Charter. Hence the conundrum. What happens when one right is incompatible with another? Might wins, according to David Radler, Chief Operating Officer of Hollinger Inc., Canada's mega-media corporation which owns Southam Inc. ... The [Vancouver] Courier's owners told editor Mick Maloney not to publish any anti-Israel commentary, thus silencing [reporter Greg] Felton ... 'Crap' is how David Radler, Black's right-hand man, describes Felton's work. The silencing of Felton directly affects other columnists' rights to express diverse opinions. It is disappointing, but not surprising, that journalists have not drawn attention to this issue. Disappointing because cases like Felton's bring up important issues – such as freedom of speech - that should be debated in public. Not surprising because of journalists' fears of censure from above. Radler says he doesn't interfere with editorial content, but he has the power to if he should so desire. And he has definite opinions of his own on certain issues."

John Adams. The Death of Klinghoffer (a play in two acts -- 1990-91), Earbox
"The story [which this opera performance was based upon] was of the 1984 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro by Palestinian terrorists and their eventual murdering of one of the passengers, a retired, wheelchair-bound American Jew named Leon Klinghoffer. People who dismissed [opera performance] Nixon in China as a farce or as an operatic version of Pop Art were even faster to prejudge The Death of Klinghoffer as a hectic attempt to cash in on a garish and ghoulish public event in hopes of getting the public’s immediate attention. The term 'docu-opera' began to stick to these pieces like a burr. The Death of Klinghoffer started eliciting opinions even before a note of it had been heard outside my studio. Alice Goodman’s second libretto was disturbing for many, not only because the clarity and simplicity of her Nixon in China libretto had given way to a rhythm and utterance that echoed in density and depth the Koran and the Old Testament, but also because in her text, she gave voice to the sufferings of both Jews and Palestinians. The very words of the Exiled Palestinians that open the opera were to some listeners not a simple statement of fact, but rather a provocation. My father’s house was razed/ In nineteen forty-eight/ When the Israelis/ Passed over our street. ... When The Death of Klinghoffer played six performances at the San Francisco Opera in the fall of 1992, it was the second most attended opera of their season, and each performance was picketed by a Jewish information group who also wrote letters of condemnation to the local press. Shortly after, the Los Angeles Music Center Opera, one of the work’s co-commissioners, cancelled its planned series of performances without any explanation. Since then the opera has not been produced in an American opera house."

Weir Calls Coverage One-Sided,
Daily Northwestern (Northwestern University, IL), November 12, 2001
"An American journalist who has reported from the Middle East said on Sunday that U.S. news coverage of the region is biased toward Israelis, often ignoring the country's discrimination and violence toward Palestinians. Alison Weir, a freelance reporter who lived in Afghanistan for more than a year and spent a month reporting in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, told about 100 students and Evanston residents in Harris Hall that the biased reporting was 'consciously contrived manipulation of news.' She called it a 'cover-up' of a region of the world that seems distant, confusing and irrelevant to most Americans' daily lives. 'This is the most censored story I've ever encountered, Weir said. Weir has been a freelance reporter for the San Francisco Examiner and Rolling Stone magazine, and was an editor at Women Sports Magazine. She also was an editor at the Marin Scope newspaper in Sausalito, Calif., and was associated with founding the Center for Investigative Reporting."

Jewish Journalists Grapple with 'doing the write thing,'
Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, November 23, 2001
"Do Jewish journalists have more obligations than others? Are they responsible first to their communities, and do they need to represent Israel in their newspapers? These questions and others were raised by the 50 participants of 'Do the Write Thing,' a special program for student journalists sponsored by the Jewish Agency for Israel and the World Zionist Organization at the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities held here last week ... 'On campus there is already so much anti-Israeli sentiment that we have to be careful about any additional criticism against Israel,' said Marita Gringaus, who used to write for Arizona State University's newspaper. 'This is our responsibility as Jews, which obviously contradicts our responsibilities as journalists.' Gringaus explained her position by saying that in the campus media, 'groups are set against each other rather than as objective views.' Uzi Safanov, a writer at the Seawanhaka newspaper of Long Island University in New York, agreed. 'I'm a Jew before being a journalist, before someone pays me to write,' he said. 'If I find a negative thing about Israel, I will not print it and I will sink into why did it happen and what can I do to change it.' Safanov said that even if he eventually wrote about negative incidents that happen in Israel, he would try to find the way 'to shift the blame.' Others among the participants felt uncomfortable with these suggestions."

Journal Axes Genes Research on Jews and Palestinians,
Observer, [London] November 25, 2001
"A keynote research paper showing that Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians are genetically almost identical has been pulled from a leading journal. Academics who have already received copies of Human Immunology have been urged to rip out the offending pages and throw them away. Such a drastic act of self-censorship is unprecedented in research publishing and has created widespread disquiet, generating fears that it may involve the suppression of scientific work that questions Biblical dogma. 'I have authored several hundred scientific papers, some for Nature and Science, and this has never happened to me before,' said the article's lead author, Spanish geneticist Professor Antonio Arnaiz-Villena, of Complutense University in Madrid. 'I am stunned.' ... The paper, 'The Origin of Palestinians and their Genetic Relatedness with other Mediterranean Populations', involved studying genetic variations in immune system genes among people in the Middle East. In common with earlier studies, the team found no data to support the idea that Jewish people were genetically distinct from other people in the region. In doing so, the team's research challenges claims that Jews are a special, chosen people and that Judaism can only be inherited ... But the journal, having accepted the paper earlier this year, now claims the article was politically biased and was written using 'inappropriate' remarks about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its editor told the journal Nature last week that she was threatened by mass resignations from members if she did not retract the article."

Selling Mein Kampf, Toronto Globe and Mail [Editorial], Novembe 30, 2001
"It is entirely within Heather Reisman's province to order her Chapters and Indigo bookstores to stop selling Mein Kampf, just as she could order them to stop selling Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. She runs the merged chains, and is ultimately in charge of what books they do or don't stock and will or won't order for customers. Was she right to do it? Not in our opinion ... Hitler's textbook for what became the Holocaust may appeal to a few warped neo-Nazis, but it is also essential reading for students of the Third Reich, of the Holocaust and of the climate and reasoning that can produce such horrors ... . To dismiss it as nothing more than hate literature, as Ms. Reisman did, is to sell short the importance of knowing the enemy, and history. Ms. Reisman's edict has another effect. It reminds Canadians of how important it is to have competition for a monolith such as Chapters/Indigo. Independent bookstores, which have had a particularly hard time of it in the shadow of Chapters and Indigo, offer an important alternative to the book barns. But given the dominance of the Reisman empire, the federal government should also look at easing its Canadian cultural laws to allow foreign companies such as Amazon.com to set up warehouses in this country, to increase competition and choice. As Ms. Reisman made evident this week, choice is not something we can count on her for."

Paper Fires Two Involved in Editorial, Syracuse Post-Standard, October19, 2001
"The two top editors at The Oneida Daily Dispatch were fired this week over an editorial that some readers deemed anti-Semitic. The paper Thursday printed an apology, saying the Sept. 19 editorial about the reasons behind the World Trade Center attack was 'offensive, poorly reasoned and based on flawed facts.' Fired Wednesday were Associate Editor Dale Seth and Managing Editor Jean Ryan. Seth, who had worked at the paper for 13 years, declined to comment. Ryan said in a statement that she did not write the editorial. 'I am not working at the Oneida Daily Dispatch as of yesterday because of repercussions from allowing the Sept. 19 editorial to be published,' she wrote Thursday. 'I am not anti-Semitic, and anyone who knows me knows that. I did not write the editorial. I have always enjoyed a reputation for working hard to improve the papers for which I worked and for being fair and evenhanded.' Publisher Ann Campanie would not discuss the paper's apology or the firing of the two editors ... The original editorial quoted an unidentified Pakistani as saying Jews were responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. One section of the editorial read: 'Until 1948, there was no Israel. The United Nations took Palestinian land and gave it to a number of Jewish terrorists to rule - Jewish terrorists who had bombed and killed Palestinians and others in an effort to force hands of power to see an Israel formed. Today's freedom fighter, in many cases, was yesterday's terrorist."

Fiasco Behind the Firings, Poynter Institute, November 2, 2001
"[Jean Ryan] still seems flabbergasted by the charge. "I would never have printed anything that was intentionally anti-Semitic," she said. "I saw this as an attempt to get people to see the innocent people over there [in the Middle East] ... [Jewish attorney Randy] Schaal was joined by two representatives from the Jewish Community Federation of Mohawk Valley, and a retired military engineer. Pukanecz and Campanie offered their apologies, and showed the retraction and apology to the visitors. Minor changes were made to the copy. The final version went much further than the original clarification. 'We understand many felt [the editorial] expressed anti-Semitic sentiments,' it said. 'We will not further offend our readers by attempting in any way to justify what was written; we can only assure readers that The Dispatch is not anti-Semitic and that we acknowledge the editorial should not have been published.' After the meeting, Campanie summoned Ryan and Seth into her office and fired them. Ryan said she was told that the newspaper 'no longer trusted my judgment.' Seth declined to comment for this story and Campanie would not discuss the firing, so it is unclear what reason was given for Seth's dismissal. The Oneida Daily Dispatch had just lost its two top editors." [The objectionable "anti-Semitic" article is posted at this link]

Israel Backers Show Dual Loyalty, Congressional Aide Says in Letter,
[Jewish] Forward, December 7, 2001
"An aide to a Democratic congresswoman from Georgia resigned under fire last week after declaring that Jewish members of Congress have divided loyalties between America and Israel. It was not, however, the first time the aide had aired such views. Before signing on with Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Atlanta in September, Raeed Tayeh worked for two organizations that reportedly are linked to the Islamic terrorist group Hamas. Mr. Tayeh's comments appeared in a letter to the editor in the November 28 issue of The Hill, a Washington weekly. 'What is more disturbing to me is that many of these pro-Israeli lawmakers sit on the House International Relations Committee despite the obvious conflict of interest that their emotional attachments to Israel cause,' he wrote, identifying himself as a member of Ms. McKinney's staff. 'The Israeli occupation of all territories must end, including Congress,' he added. The letter drew strong condemnations. Mr. Tayeh's accusations recalled 'the most vile anti-Semitic canards that have been invoked against Jews throughout the ages,' said Ira Forman, director of the National Jewish Democratic Council." [Tayeh's Letter to the Editor is below].

McKinney Aide: Some Jewish Members Have Divided Loyalties,
The Hill, [Washington DC], December 6, 2001
"To the Editor: Regarding your Nov. 21 article ('Jewish lawmakers blast Bush on Palestinian statehood position'), I find it disturbing that the members quoted seem to care more about Israel than human rights and American values. They keep asserting that President Bush has rewarded Yasir Arafat with support of a state. But Arafat isn’t the only Palestinian in the world; there are 8 million others, half of whom are refugees Israel refuses to repatriate, despite United Nations resolutions. U.N. resolutions have been passed over three decades, in vain, calling on Israel to end its illegal occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, and its building of illegal Jewish settlements on stolen Palestinian land. President Bush did nothing more than finally take the courageous step to recognize that another people live on the holy land, that they are the indigenous inhabitants of the land, and that they deserve what every other colonized people have achieved — freedom. Finally, these members continue to refer to the 'great deal' that Arafat walked away from. What he walked away from was an offer for a Swiss cheese state with no sovereignty, no rights in Jerusalem, and no rights for refugees to return to their homes in Israel. You can see for yourself what he was offered by going to the website of an Israeli peace group called Gush Shalom at www.gush-shalom.org/english/index.html. What is more disturbing to me is that many of these pro-Israeli lawmakers sit on the House International Relations Committee despite the obvious conflict of interest that their emotional attachments to Israel cause. The Israeli occupation of all territories must end, including Congress. -- Raeed Tayeh. Office of Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.)."

The Contrary Son, by Beth Pinsker, The Independent (magazine)
"The Believer [by Jewish director Henry Bean is] a daring debut film about a yeshiva student who turns into a neo-Nazi ... Bean welcomes controversy, but the way his film has been received is something different. The Believer won the grand jury prize at Sundance and then catapulted the director into a Hollywood maelstrom that has left Bean without a major theatrical distributor. The process started normally enough. After Sundance, Bean went to Los Angeles to sell the film and he showed it to the staff at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, curators of Los Angeles’ Museum of Tolerance. This kind of screening has become more than a courtesy in the entertainment world ... Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the assistant dean of the Wiesenthal Center, didn’t like The Believer ... This self-hating or even just bare exploration of religion happens to be one of the most touchy subjects in American Judaism today. Bean’s film takes it to an extreme, but if Danny Balint had merely gone from being a yeshiva student to eating bacon cheeseburgers --- while expressing the same ambivalent emotions about his upbringing and God --- the filmmaker might have enraged the same groups of people. The character gets deep into this debate throughout the movie. At one point, he’s arguing with an old classmate at synagogue. Avi, who doesn’t know Danny really is a skinhead, calls him a Jewish Nazi because he thinks Jews are wimps. Danny fires back that Zionists are Nazis. 'They’re racist, militaristic, and act like storm troopers in the territories,' Danny says. An older woman standing with them sizes up the situation in a snap and asks Danny pointedly, 'Do you hate them because they’re wimps or because they’re storm troopers? Or do you just hate them?' In just one exchange, Bean has riled up about seven different ongoing theological and moral debates within the Jewish community --- self-hatred, the treatment of the Palestinians in Israel, the goals of Zionism, assimilation, ultra-Orthodoxy, Holocaust, obsession, and talking in synagogue."

The CanWorld Chill: 'We Do Not Run in Our Newspaper Op Ed Pieces that Expression Criticism of Israel,' Electronic Intifada, December 11, 2001
"The 7 December 2001 broadcast of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's As It Happens [online link included] uncovered a disturbing example of corporate and political interference in freedom of the press. The program reported on a new editorial policy directive from CanWest Global, a leading Canadian media conglomerate, that impairs readers' ability to make up their own minds about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, among other issues. As It Happens reported that over two dozen journalists at the Montreal Gazette have pulled their bylines to protest a new policy imposed by the newspaper's owners, Southam Newspapers Inc, which is owned by CanWest Global. The new policy requires the company's main local newspapers to run editorials written at headquarters in Winnipeg by Southam Editor-in-Chief Murdoch Davis. Bill Marsden, an investigative reporter at the Montreal Gazette, noted that up to 156 times a year -- about three times a week -- the editorial would be imposed and that the remainder of locally-written editorials would be required to reflect the viewpoints and stances taken by the paper's corporate headquarters ... ...[O]n July 31, CanWest announced its acquisition of all of the major Canadian newspaper and Internet assets of Hollinger Inc., including the metropolitan daily newspapers in nearly every large city across Canada and a 50% partnership interest in the National Post." [The owner of CanWest Global, which owns a huge percentage of Canadian newspapers, and the second largest Canadian TV network (as well as some media venues in Ireland, New Zealand, and other countries), is avid Zionist Israel Asper].

[Montreal] Gazette Reporters Protest National Editorials,
Straight Goods, December 14, 2001
"For two days last week, many reporters at The Gazette in Montreal removed their names from the articles they wrote. It was a protest against the decision by Southam News to force all of its 12 major metropolitan newspapers to run 'national editorials' written at the Winnipeg corporate headquarters of parent company CanWest Global Communications Corp. The first was published last week. Another is to run next Thursday. Credibility is the most precious asset a newspaper possesses. When the power of the press is abused, that credibility dies. We believe this is an attempt to centralize opinion to serve the corporate interests of CanWest. Far from offering additional content to Canadians, this will practically vacate the power of the editorial boards of Southam newspapers and thereby reduce the diversity of opinions and the breadth of debate that to date has been offered readers across Canada. CanWest's intention is initially to publish one national editorial a week in all major Southam newspapers. This will eventually become three a week. More important, each editorial will set the policy for that topic in such a way as to constrain the editorial boards of each newspaper to follow this policy. Essentially, CanWest will be imposing editorial policy on its papers on all issues of national significance. Without question, this decision will undermine the independence and diversity of each newspaper's editorial board and thereby give Canadians a greatly reduced variety of opinion, debate and editorial discussion. Editorial boards at each newspaper exist to debate public policy issues, reach a consensus and then present the reasoning to the public. They are designed to be largely free of corporate interests. This crucial process of journalistic debate is undermined by editorials dictated by corporate headquarters. We believe this centralizing process will weaken the credibility of every Southam paper. Last week's first editorial, for example, calls on the federal government to reduce and eventually to abolish capital-gains taxes for private foundations. Who would blame a reader for thinking the editorial simply serves the interests of the foundation run by the Asper family, owners of CanWest and Southam?"

French Envoy to UK: Israel Threatens World Peace,
Jerusalem Post, December 20, 2001
"The diplomatic career of French Ambassador to Britain Daniel Bernard was said to be in jeopardy yesterday, after he was quoted as having referred to Israel as 'that shitty little country' which threatens world peace. The undiplomatic remarks were made at a private gathering at the London home of Lord Black of Crossharbour, chairman of The Jerusalem Post's parent company Hollinger Inc. They were referred to - anonymously - in a column published in the Daily Telegraph on Monday by Black's [Jewish] wife, Barbara Amiel. In her column, which laments that anti-Semitism has become a respectable sentiment at London dinner tables, Amiel noted the ambassador of a major European Union country 'politely told a gathering at my home that the current troubles in the world were all because of 'that shitty little country Israel.' 'Why,' she quoted him as saying, 'should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?' Amiel did not name Bernard, a former French government spokesman said to be a close confidant of French President Jacques Chirac, but he was quickly unmasked by the media as the unnamed 'ambassador of a major European country' and his career was said to be 'under threat.'"

Now You See It, Now You Don't, by Justin Raimondo,
Anti-War (antiwar.com), December 22, 2001
"For the past week or so, I have been writing about the ominous implications of Carl Cameron's four-part Fox News exposé of Israeli intelligence operations in the US. My most recent column on the subject was posted today (December 21). Cameron's reports are, of course, key to understanding the context of these columns: without them, there is no way to understand either the context or the content of what I have written. We provided links to these reports in the column, and fully expected the links to remain valid, as Fox usually keeps its stories up for a month or so. But not this time…. The news that Fox had pulled the Cameron reports from its website was, to me, quite surprising. Now, it could be a technical glitch, a mistake, or whatever: after all, one assumes the Fox News people want visitors to their website, and the more the merrier – right? Israel's amen corner in the US is vocal, well-organized, and not averse to censorship when it advances their agenda, and so outside pressure on Fox News to pull the series cannot be ruled out. As disturbing as it is to contemplate, it seems that censorship is indeed a strong possibility in this case – that is, Fox News is engaging in self-censorship, for reasons of its own."

French Jews Strike a Blow Against Denying the Holocaust,
JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency), December 26, 2001
"French Jews have won an important victory in their struggle against Holocaust deniers. On Dec. 20, a coalition of five Jewish organizations — including the Union of French Jewish Students, or UEJF; the League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, known as LICRA; and Memory 2000 — reached an agreement with France´s most popular encyclopedia about its use of the work of Robert Faurisson, the father of French Holocaust denial. The Jewish groups had filed a motion in a Paris court to force the editors of Quid to remove its reference to Faurisson from future editions. The two parties managed to arrive at a settlement before the court could decide the issue. According to the arrangement, Quid will remove Faurisson´s account of the number of Jewish deaths at Auschwitz from all future print editions and from its Internet site. A former professor at the University of Lyon 2, Faurisson was condemned in a French court and removed from his post for disseminating scholarship radically minimizing the death count at Auschwitz and arguing that Jews there died of typhus and malnutrition, not at the hands of the Nazis. According to the arrangement, Quid will drop its mention of these ideas in its historical section on the Holocaust, but will continue to present Faurisson´s work in a more general description of Holocaust revisionism. However, the encyclopedia will include a reminder of Faurisson´s condemnation as an addendum. In addition to these revisions, Quid also must publicize the agreement by posting announcements in its 100 most important points of sale and in advertisements in the daily Le Figaro and in Le Monde de l´Education, a publication aimed at teachers and educational administrators."

Canadian Media Giant Censures Editorials Deemed Critical of Israel,
Arizona Daily Star, December 29, 2001
"Canadian newspaper readers are being warned not to expect a balanced opinion from their dailies after executive orders from the country’s largest media corporation were given to run a select number of national editorials and homogenize remaining editorials across the country so as not to, among other things, reflect negatively on Israel’s occupation of Arab land. Recently, media giant CanWest Global Communications Corp., owned by Israel (Izzy) Asper and family, announced that beginning Dec. 12 one, but eventually three, editorials a week would be written at corporate headquarters in Winnipeg and imposed on 14 dailies, which include the Vancouver Sun and Province, the Calgary Herald and the Montreal Gazette. CanWest also owns 50 percent of the nationally distributed National Post, which will be subject to the new directives as well. Furthermore, in addition to the imposed editorials themselves, all locally produced editorial column pieces will be forced to conform to reflect the viewpoints of the CanWest Global corporation. CanWest last year became Canada’s dominant newspaper chain when it purchased Southam News Inc. from Conrad Black’s holding company, Hollinger Inc., for a reported $3.2 billion Can. ($2 billion) The deal transferred ownership of the 14 metropolitan dailies and 128 local newspapers across the country."

A Conversation with Professor Norman Finkelstein. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Counterpunch, December 13, 2001
"[Norman Finkelstein] is best known as the author of four books, the most recent being The Holocaust Industry, which has catapulted him into the spotlight, due to its contention that American Jewry have ruthlessly exploited the Nazi holocaust for political and financial gain. Often lambasted for his intemperate approach, Finkelstein is unlikely to win popularity contests in America for the language he employs, as much as his arguments. Like his close friend and mentor Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein is not one to mince his words. In his eyes the mainstream Jewish organisations are 'hucksters', 'gangsters' and 'crooks'; Elie Wiesel (celebrity Holocaust survivor) is the 'resident clown' for the Holocaust 'circus'; reparations claims against Germany for Nazi era slave laborers are 'blackmail'; and he infamously dismissed Professor Goldhagen's critically acclaimed Holocaust bestseller 'Hitler's Willing Executioners' as the 'pornography of violence'. Small wonder then that he has few friends amongst the American Jewish establishment, with Elian Steinberg (World Jewish Congress Executive Secretary) stating on TV that 'Finkelstein is full of shit', and the literary editor of the pro Israeli New Republic describing him as 'poisonsomething you would find under a rock'. In its initial hardback edition, The Holocaust Industry was a tremendous success in many nations (selling 130 000 copies in a few weeks on its publication in Germany), but in America its sales were limited to a paltry 12000. This relative failure stateside is attributed at least in part by Finkelstein to a fatwah by the Jewish establishment--he notes indignantly that the New York Times book review was much more hostile toward The Holocaust Industry than it was even to Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf'. Now the revised paperback edition has just been released many of these same periodicals are uncharacteristically silent, perhaps thinking they can kill it more effectively through lack of exposure rather than outright aggression."

Foreign Media Protest Vs. Israel, Newsday, January 15, 2002
"Foreign media organizations, including The Associated Press, jointly protested Tuesday the Israeli government's refusal to renew official press accreditations of most Palestinian staffers. Government Press Office press cards, which have been used to facilitate travel and gain access for journalists, expired Dec. 31. With few exceptions, Palestinians who work for international media have not received the new cards even though Israeli and foreign journalists were accredited. 'This has already resulted in significant difficulties for us in covering the important story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a fair and balanced manner,' said a statement signed by two dozen media representatives, including the bureau chiefs of AP, Reuters, Agence France-Press, CNN, ABC, CBS and the BBC. The signatories said they were 'deeply concerned' about the development. The statement noted some foreigners have also not received accreditation, mostly foreign television crews operating out of Israel."

An Open Letter to David Horowitz on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,
antiwar.com, January 15, 2002
"I've found in the past several months that when one disagrees with one's Jewish friends about Israel, one risks losing those friends. I would add that few things in my political and journalistic experience have been more personally dispiriting. Not long ago, I had, in the course of a long and wine-filled dinner, a spirited argument about Israel and the Mid East with a Jewish colleague from the NY Press. I commented afterwards that this 'Jewish-Christian debate,' so rare in New York, had been quite refreshing. He agreed, saying the problem was that there were generally 'not enough Christians' to carry their end. Odd as it might seem, he was right: most American Christians who have given some thought to the issues involved have views similar to mine – but given the rank hostility their expression can provoke from Jewish friends and colleagues, have learned to simply keep their opinions to themselves. In so doing they do a disservice both to their friends, and to their own interests as citizens. I am not inclined to follow their example."

Palestinian Radio Defies Israeli Attacks, BBC News, January 19, 2002
"The Voice of Palestine radio station is back on air - only hours after Israeli soldiers blew up the building in the West Bank town of Ramallah that houses its studios and administrative office. Broadcasting from a private facility, the radio quoted nationalist and Islamic forces calling on Palestinians to 'take to the streets, create human shields, and participate in the battle to defend the resistance, the intifadah, and the symbols of our national sovereignty.' Israeli troops supported by tanks had entered the Voice of Palestine television and radio headquarters before dawn to set explosive charges and evacuate the occupants ... . Israel accuses the Palestinian Authority of using its television and radio networks to broadcast propaganda that it believes fuel the uprising that began more than 15 months ago. The Palestinians say the network has simply been reporting the mood of the people. 'This is another Israeli crime against the Voice of Palestine and at the same time against the Palestinian Authority,' said Bassem Abu Somaya, head of the Palestinian Broadcast Centre."

US University Sacks Palestinian, Guardian [UK], January 15, 2002
"A Palestinian professor about to sacked by the University of South Florida on security grounds after expressing anti-Israel views on a television talk-show is fighting his dismissal, calling it an assault on academic freedom. Sami al-Arian, a computer science professor at USF for 16 years, described Israel as a source of terrorism in the Middle East when he was challenged on the Fox News channel on September 28 last year about radical statements he had made 15 years earlier. He subsequently received death threats, and some of the university's sponsors threatened to withdraw their support. He was suspended three days after the television appearance, and informed of his dismissal in December. The university president, Judy Genshaft, has said she considers him a security risk whose views had cost the university financial support. Prof Arian, who said he would take his dismissal to binding arbitration, founded a think-tank called the World and Islam Studies Enterprises, based at the university until the FBI raided it in 1995 and froze its assets on the grounds that it was supporting Middle Eastern terrorism. Yesterday he said he had not been charged with a crime, and denied having terrorist links. His case has become the focus of complaints by academics that the campaign against terrorism is being used to restrict academic freedom."

In 'Historic' Step, Tribunal Rules Shoah Denier Can't Run Web Site,
JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency), January 22, 2002
"Jewish officials are praising a decision that will force Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel to close down a Web site. Officials of the Canadian Jewish Congress hailed the 110-page decision by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal as a 'historic victory.' The Tribunal ruled that Zundel was breaking the law through his arm´s-length operation of a California- based Web site. Ed Morgan, a law professor at the University of Toronto and chair of Congress´ Ontario region, said the Tribunal´s clear acceptance of Holocaust denial as a form of hate propaganda could have significant implications internationally. 'A judicial finding of this nature will have an educative effect worldwide, as Holocaust denial can no longer hide under the cloak of scholarly debate or legitimate discourse,' he said. Morgan also asserted that the Tribunal´s cease-and-desist order against Zundel will be 'a strong deterrent against anyone who aspires to set up a hate site in' Canada. 'The Tribunal has in effect declared that Canada will not be a base for the transmission of hate via the Internet,' Morgan said. Michelle Falardeau-Ramsay, chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, also welcomed the ruling, which came after six years of hearings and deliberations. 'Hate messaging and propaganda have no place in Canadian society,' she said. 'The Tribunal has confirmed that this Internet activity is against the law and Canadians will not tolerate it.' The ruling demonstrates that the Internet 'is not a lawless zone and cannot be used to promote hate,' Falardeau-Ramsay said. 'This is all the more important in light of the tensions that have emerged since last September´s terrorist activity.' The lengthy case began after the Commission received complaints in 1996 from the mayor of Toronto´s Committee on Community and Race Relations and from a private citizen, Paula Citron, a Holocaust survivor. Both alleged that Zundel´s Web site would expose Jews to hatred or contempt."

International Press Body Slams IDF [the Israeli army] for Attack on PA Media Facility, Haaretz, January 24, 2002
"The International Press Institute (IPI) has strongly condemned the IDF's demolition of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation's headquarters, studios and offices in Ramallah. In a letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the IPI also condemned the refusal by the Government Press Office to renew press cards that expired at the end of last year for some 450 Palestinian journalists and photographers, many of whom work for the foreign media ... 'These latest violations of press freedom appear to be part of a concerted strategy by the Israeli army to control reports on the surge in armed hostilities throughout the region,' the IPI wrote. The IPI said it regards the refusal as a 'gross violation of everyone's right to `seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers,' as guaranteed by Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.'"

Canadian Publisher Raises Hackles, Washington Post, January 27, 2002
"Late last year, columnist Stephen Kimber says, the editing of his writing became more and more inexplicable. It wasn't so much dropped commas or the introduction of errors. Sometimes he would open the newspaper, the Halifax Daily News, and find that his opinions had been removed. 'I put up with that for a while, then I began to censor myself,' said Kimber. 'I would remember, 'No, I'm not supposed to write about that.' Kimber had been writing his column without such concerns for 15 years. But things changed, he said, after CanWest Global Communications took over his newspaper and 135 others last summer. In December, the company announced that all 14 of its big-city newspapers would run the same national editorial each week, issued from headquarters in Winnipeg, and sometimes written at CanWest papers around the country. Any unsigned editorials written locally at the 14 papers, the company said, should not contradict the national editorials, which covered such subjects as military spending, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and property rights. The decision provoked immediate complaints from journalists across Canada, who say its effect goes far beyond the editorials, imposing control on columnists and reporters as well. In the United States, the National Conference of Editorial Writers, whose members include Canadians, joined in, saying the decision was 'likely to backfire with readers who are accustomed to editorials on national and international subjects that take account of the diversity of views in their communities.' Many journalists say the company is breaking age-old traditions that keep reporters and columnists independent of the publications' owners. CanWest and its owners, the [Jewish] Asper family, deny that the policy restricts freedom of expression in this way. All they are doing, they say, is exercising the legitimate prerogative of owners to influence a limited part of their publications, the editorials ... CanWest controls a major newspaper in every major city outside of Toronto."

US Groups Oppose Europe Limiting Online Hate Speech,
Yahoo! (from Reuters), February 6, 2002
"More than a dozen business and civil liberties groups said on Wednesday that a proposed amendment to an international computer-crime law could limit free speech and expose high-tech firms to legal liability. Groups ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a letter to Bush Administration officials that they objected to a proposed amendment to the Council of Europe Convention on Cyber-Crime that seeks to place limits on racist or xenophobic speech. 'While we abhor both xenophobia and racism, this Protocol raises a number of fundamental procedural and substantive concerns to U.S. industry and public interest groups,'' the letter said. South Africa, the United States, Canada, and Japan joined nearly 30 European countries in signing the agreement last fall to fight Internet-based crime, from hacking and child pornography to life-threatening felonies. But negotiators failed to agree on hate-speech laws. Unlike the United States, which guarantees free speech under the First Amendment to the Constitution, many European countries have laws against inciting racial hatred. Under a compromise, hate-speech provisions are being negotiated in a separate side agreement. But even if the United States does not sign the agreement, U.S. business and citizens could find their rights threatened online, the groups said. U.S. Internet users could find themselves forced to comply with the hate-speech laws of other countries, while Internet providers could be forced to monitor their customers for possible violations, the groups said."

Schools Remove Donated Books, Los Angeles Times, February 7, 2002
"Los Angeles city school officials have pulled nearly 300 translations of the Koran from school libraries after learning that commentary in the books was derogatory toward Jews. Copies of 'The Meaning of the Holy Quran' were donated in December to the Los Angeles Unified School District by a local Muslim foundation, said Jim Konantz, director of information technology for the district. Konantz said the books, offered as a goodwill gesture in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, were distributed to the schools last week without the usual content review. The reasons for skipping the review were unclear, but the donor was known as a supportive community member. On Monday, Konantz received a complaint from a history teacher who concluded some of the book's footnotes were anti-Semitic. After reviewing the book, Konantz instructed principals to secure all copies in their offices until the district determines what to do with them. 'It's not an issue of whether the Koran should be available in the library,' Konantz said. 'It's like any other research volume. But these interpretations are certainly in question.'" [Conversely, note the way Arabs/Muslims are freely treated with abuse in American society, for example by the National Review with their cover entitled "Desert Rats."]

WCBM Bans Host for Anti-Israel Talk,
Jewish Week, February 22, 2002
"When WCBM-AM 680 radio talk-show host Tom Marr asked a friend to fill in for him on the air during his morning time slot Feb. 11-12, listeners got an unexpected jolt. A longtime advocate of Israel and favorite among Jewish listeners, Mr. Marr turned the microphone over to free-lance writer John Lofton for those two days. Mr. Lofton proceeded to infuriate some listeners by effectively calling Israel a terrorist state and questioned the Jewish state's actions in the current Palestinian uprising. In the wake of a flood of irate calls, Mr. Lofton, who denies that he is anti-Israel, was banned for life from appearing on WCBM's airwaves ... Mr. Marr was mad, too. When he returned to the airwaves Feb. 13, he promptly apologized to his listeners and excoriated Mr. Lofton. Specifically, he described Mr. Lofton's criticism of Israel as 'outrageous,' something that was scraped from the 'bottom of the barrel.'"

Union Files Grievance on Behalf of UCLA Librarian Suspended for Message about Terrorism,
The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 11, 2001
"A University of California clerical union has filed a grievance with the University of California at Los Angeles on behalf of a university librarian who was suspended last month for sending out a mass e-mail message that criticized U.S. foreign policy in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The librarian, Jonnie A. Hargis, works in the reference- and instructional-services department of the Young Research Library. Reached by telephone Tuesday, he said he had been suspended from September 17 to 21 after replying to a colleague's mass e-mail message to library workers that sought to bolster U.S. patriotism. Administrators said Mr. Hargis's response violated a university policy that bars mass distribution of unsolicited electronic communications. Mr. Hargis's message, which went to the recipients of the original message, accused the United States and Israel of waging their own terrorist campaigns against civilian Iraqis and Palestinians. 'U.S. taxpayers fund and arm an apartheid state called Israel, which is responsible for untold thousands upon thousands of deaths of Muslim Palestinian children and civilians,' Mr. Hargis wrote ... Lorraine Kram, head of the department, reprimanded Mr. Hargis in a September 14 letter. She wrote that his message 'demonstrated a lack of sensitivity that went beyond incivility and became harassment.' 'Your comments contribute to a hostile and threatening environment' for your colleagues with ties to Israel and 'for your other co-workers,' the letter continued."

Toronto Star Under Fire for Mideast Ad,
Canadian Jewish News, December 21, 2000
"A Muslim-led coalition is angry at the Toronto Star for requiring changes to an ad that called for an end to Israeli 'aggression' and 'occupation' in Gaza and the West Bank. The Canadian Coalition for Peace and Justice attempted to place the $14,000 ad in the Star about two weeks ago, but was told by the Star's advertising department that several changes would first have to be made. 'This is an attempt to censor a paid ad,' said Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress and a member of the coalition ... The ad asserts that 'peace will be achieved for all when Israel upholds international law, implements UN resolutions...stops human rights violations, withdraws from the occupied Palestinian territories...' It cites '300 Palestinian dead' and 'more than 10,000 wounded' and asks for support for a 'global peace campaign to stop human rights violations in Palestine and end the Israeli occupation.' According to Elmasry, the Star's advertising department requested he remove the reference to the Israeli occupation, remove references to the number of Palestinian casualties, delete sentences asking Israel to uphold international law and UN resolution 242, as well as stop human rights violations."

Angle's Radio Show Cut After Remarks,
Morning Call, March 5, 2002
"Ron Angle's radio show Saturday on Allentown's WAEB-AM 790 turned out to be his last, and the NAACP wants his term on Northampton County Council to be over as well. The station canceled the councilman's call-in show Monday, two days after he reportedly made racist and anti-Semitic remarks on the air. 'We feel it's in the best interest to cancel the show,' WAEB Operations Director Brian Check said, citing negative publicity and the possible loss of advertisers. 'This isn't based on what was said or wasn't said ... A caller described the reparations controversy as a 'media-created issue.' Angle then reportedly asked, 'Who controls the media? And who controls the financial world in America?' 'The Jews definitely dominate,' the caller said, according to the newspaper. 'Thank you,' Angle replied. 'The Jewish community controls the media and financial institutions …' Angle said, according to The Express-Times. 'That will incite a riot' ... 'A great deal of the media is controlled by people of Jewish descent,' he told The Morning Call. 'A great deal of the entertainment industry has been controlled by people of Jewish descent.' He later said, 'I can hold my head high. There was nothing I said on that show that was wrong.'''

Adversaries Go Inside ADL's Spying Operation,
San Francisco Examiner, April 4, 2002
"Locked in a nondescript computer database, a shadowy operative named Roy Bullock kept file upon file on liberal San Francisco Jews who disagreed with Israeli policies. The files included Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, addresses, phone numbers and group memberships. Some of the information was sold to foreign governments, including Israeli and South African intelligence groups. Shockingly, Bullock was in the employ of a civil rights group whose motto is 'fighting anti-Semitism, bigotry and extremism': the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. Numerous targets of the ADL -- who drew parallels to COINTELPRO, the FBI's tainted domestic surveillance program -- say the profiling and covert activities continue to this day. 'They are continuing to gather facts,' said Abdeen Jabara, a Manhattan attorney and former president of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. 'That, of course, is a euphemism for what we say is private spying.' Not only were liberal Jews a target, but information also was kept on labor unions, pro-Palestinian organizations, anti-apartheid groups, American Arabs and anti-Semites. After the Federal Bureau of Investigation broke the case in 1993, a number of these targets filed suit against the ADL. The last lawsuit was recently settled. The settlement in February marked the first time any of the organization's victims were allowed to speak out. Usually, the ADL demands plaintiffs keep quiet as a condition of any settlement. Without those constraints, victims Jeffrey Blankfort, Steve Zeltzer and Anne Poirier are revealing the underbelly of an organization that previously had successfully shielded itself from condemnation. They are using the ADL's own spy as a fulcrum ... Groups have been saying for years that the ADL isn't the civil rights organization it claims to be, but no one has been listening. Mostly, it's because those groups have been thinly-veiled anti-Semites, such as the Liberty Lobby, or hate groups such as White Aryan Resistance and the KKK. But, as vile as some of these groups are, there is a significant amount of evidence that their vitriol is not unfounded. For at least four decades, the ADL continuously has tracked and spied on groups it considers not only a threat to the Jewish community, but to the state of Israel. Hussein Ibish certainly thinks so. Ibish is the spokesman for the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee -- an organization that is, in many ways, the Arab counterpart to the ADL. Though certainly at odds with many Israeli policies, the ADC is not anti-Semitic, and plays a rather moderate role. 'Was the ADL spying on people?' asked Ibish, quickly answering his own question. "Certainly in San Francisco they were. We know they were engaging in illegal activities to gain information. They, and their operatives, were working hand-in-glove with South African intelligence and Israeli intelligence."

The Israel Lobby, by Taki, New York Press, Vol 15, No. 15 (April 2002)
"Over on these shores, it is not unusual to charge anti-Semitism against those who oppose the brutality of Israeli occupation. Norman Podhoretz is among the first to do so, an act I find not only unfair, but obnoxious and abhorrent. In fact it’s the oldest trick in the book. Israel’s interests and those of the United States are not necessarily one and the same. Also, in Henry Kissinger’s words, as long as there are 3.5 million Palestinian refugees, they will always have a vested interest in the destruction of Israel. And taking into account what Bill Buckley called 'inherited distinctive immunities' about Israel and the Jews, I nevertheless believe that [Israeli prime miniser Ariel] Sharon has been a disaster for Israel and the region, that his plan of 'Eretz Israel' means to cleanse it of the local population and to cover it with settlements, and that although Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, depriving people of the right to equality and freedom, and keeping them under occupation, is hardly a democratic act. Although Israel cannot look like it’s giving in to terrorism, it also cannot kill every Palestinian. The unqualified support it gets from the punditocracy for Sharon’s provocative gambles will only exasperate matters. Just as the harassment of certain individuals like myself from some Jewish groups will only make me more determined to write the truth the way I see it."

Fear and Learning in America, by Robert Fisk,
Counterpunch, April 16, 2002
"And there were the little tell-tale stories that showed just how biased and gutless the American press has become in the face of America's Israeli lobby groups. "I wrote a report for a major paper about the Palestinian exodus of 1948," a Jewish woman told me as we drove through the smog of downtown LA. "And of course, I mentioned the massacre of Palestinians at Deir Yassin by the Stern Gang and other Jewish groups - the massacre that prompted 750,000 Arabs to flee their homes. Then I look for my story in the paper and what do I find? The word 'alleged' has been inserted before the word 'massacre'. I called the paper's ombudsman and told him the massacre at Deir Yassin was a historical fact. Can you guess his reply? He said that the editor had written the word 'alleged' before 'massacre' because that way he thought he'd avoid lots of critical letters." By chance, this was the theme of my talks and lectures: the cowardly, idle, spineless way in which American journalists are lobotomising their stories from the Middle East, how the "occupied territories" have become "disputed territories" in their reports, how Jewish "settlements" have been transformed into Jewish "neighbourhoods", how Arab militants are "terrorists" but Israeli militants only "fanatics" or "extremists", how Ariel Sharon - the man held "personally responsible" by Israel's own commissioner's inquiry for the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacre of 1,700 Palestinians - could be described in a report in The New York Times as having the instincts of "a warrior". How the execution of surviving Palestinian fighters was so often called "mopping up". How civilians killed by Israeli soldiers were always "caught in the crossfire". I demanded to know of my audiences - and I expected the usual American indignation when I did - how US citizens could accept the infantile "dead or alive", "with us or against us", axis-of-evil policies of their President. And for the first time in more than a decade of lecturing in the United States, I was shocked. Not by the passivity of Americans - the all-accepting, patriotic notion that the President knows best - nor by the dangerous self-absorption of the United States since 11 September and the constant, all-consuming fear of criticising Israel. What shocked me was the extraordinary new American refusal to go along with the official line, the growing, angry awareness among Americans that they were being lied to and deceived. At some of my talks, 60 per cent of the audiences were over 40. In some cases, perhaps 80 per cent were Americans with no ethnic or religious roots in the Middle East - "American Americans", as I cruelly referred to them on one occasion, "white Americans", as a Palestinian student called them more truculently. For the first time, it wasn't my lectures they objected to, but the lectures they received from their President and the lectures they read in their press about Israel's "war on terror" and the need always, uncritically, to support everything that America's little Middle Eastern ally says and does."

Readers Protest Times,
Los Angeles Times, April 18, 2002
"Nearly 1,000 Los Angeles Times subscribers have ordered suspension of home delivery for a day or more to protest what they call inaccurate, pro-Palestinian reporting of the unrest in the Middle East. The protest reportedly was organized in the local Jewish community and was timed to correspond with Wednesday's 54th anniversary of Israeli independence. Times officials said they could not provide precise figures on the number of delivery suspensions, but said the orders amount to less than one-tenth of 1% of the paper's total daily circulation of slightly more than 1 million. They said the newspaper began receiving multiple calls about Middle East coverage Monday. About 900 calls were received Wednesday, but not all of them requested suspensions. Dr. Joe Englanoff, a physician at UCLA Medical Center, said talk about staging the protest against The Times' Middle East coverage began circulating through Southern California's Jewish community several weeks ago. 'Thousands have been contacted, mostly by e-mail,' he said. 'There's a feeling in the community that The Times clearly has been one-sided and biased in its reporting about the Middle East. People in the Jewish community want to express their anger.'"

Saudi Ads Nixed By Cable Nets,
emoline, 2002
"At least nine national cable networks have turned down a potentially lucrative -- though controversial -- ad schedule from the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia. No national cable networks are known to have accepted the ads. The 10-day flight is an image campaign from the Arab nation. The tagline for the spots is "The People of Saudi Arabia -- Allies Against Terrorism." National cable networks that have passed on the Saudi spots include A&E, AMC, Bravo, History Channel, Lifetime, USA Network and The Weather Channel. In total, the Saudis plan on spending more than $10 million on image advertising. 'We had a raging debate,' said a senior marketing executive at one of the cable networks approached to run the two 30-second spots. 'I looked at the tapes. I thought they were tastefully done,' said this executive, who, citing the issue's sensitivity, asked for anonymity. 'I didn't like the end line, '[Allies] Against Terrorism.' This network ended up walking away from a buy that was worth approximately $300,000 to $400,000, the executive said."

Officials Refuse Stance Against UC Berkeley Protesters,
bayarea.com (Contra Costa Times), May 1, 2002
"Pro-Palestinian students were arraigned Tuesday on charges stemming from a sit-in at UC Berkeley last month, but they say that is the least of their worries. The university suspended their group, Students for Justice in Palestine, and have threatened individuals with academic suspensions of up to a year. The students contend the university has tried to silence them by reacting with uncharacteristic harshness. "It's a political tactic to silence a major pro-Palestinian group on this campus," senior Bahar Mirhosseini said. "This has no precedence." On Thursday, the students will protest at Sproul Plaza over what they consider a foreboding shift in Cal's stance on free speech ... "We were somewhat surprised the DA wants to go through with these charges," said Hoang Phan, a graduate student and member of Students for Justice in Palestine. "Usually they drop misdemeanor trespassing charges." The university's reaction has drawn criticism from some faculty who consider it unprecedented in its severity. Linda Williams, head of the film studies program and a Berkeley student during the 1960s, said civil disobedience does have repercussions but that possible yearlong suspensions seem out of line with the students' actions. 'They didn't do anything violent. I can see throwing the book at them if they were violent,' Williams said, adding that the university's reaction surprised her: 'I can conjecture it had something to do with the American tendency to favor Israel and ignore the plight of the Palestinians, but I don't know that for sure.'"

On Target: Banning Songs, Burning Books,
Jerusalem Post, April 25, 2002
"We [Israelis] are out of our minds. We are committing suicide, letting hysteria take over, letting fear-driven panic, leading to despair, run our lives. How else can you explain the bloodthirsty and furious reactions to any expression of a different opinion, any word of criticism against the government's policy and the IDF's operations? This can only mean we are willing to give up our main source of fortitude - our moral strength as a democratic, enlightened, open and liberal society - and become a dark bunch of narrow-minded, violent fascists. Several people who dared express views opposed to the sacred consensus were crucified this week. Anyone who dared punch a hole in the unity blanket with words of heresy was pilloried. Yaffa Yarkoni, an esteemed singer and Israel Prize laureate, a celebrated woman, spoke out against the operation suffered by the Palestinians, and since then her life has been a shambles. Her whole artistic and perhaps even historic value went down the drain ... And there you have the new emerging image of the Jew in the 21st century, and what a disgrace it is ... WE ARE demolishing ourselves. This McCarthyism is expanding and grinding us. People, apparently horrified by the terrible, murderous attacks, have just stopped thinking, and the darkest and most extreme demons have come out of their holes. We will not be toppled by our differences of opinion and our doubts about what is being done to the Palestinians. We might, though, by the chilling chorus of denouncers, boycotters and cursers."

Embattled Israel Clamps Down on Dissent,
Independent (UK), May 5, 2002
"Israel is becoming increasingly intolerant of dissent as war, and the perception that it is under collective threat, hardens attitudes. New rules have been issued for journalists working on the state-controlled Voice of Israel radio station. Israel's army are now referred to as "our forces"; its Arabic division has reportedly issued orders that Palestinians are not to be referred to as "assassinated", but "killed", and that the armed forces do not "take over" cities, they "enter" them. The once vibrant and diverse Israeli media has become markedly more nationalistic and less willing to broadcast criticism. Ishai Menuchin, chairman of Yesh Gvul – an organisation representing Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the occupied territories – says that he can barely attract any news coverage. Issues that used to command acres of space – such as the fact that the number of Israeli "refuseniks" in prison rose to 68 last month – now barely merit a few paragraphs, he says. Aides to Yossi Beilin, the former Israeli justice minister and peace negotiator, say requests for interviews with the politician, renowned for his liberal views, have shrivelled to nothing after Ariel Sharon launched a massive military offensive in the West Bank in the aftermath of the Passover suicide bombing. When academics at Ben-Gurion University discovered that Mr Beilin was to deliver a lecture there, 43 of them signed a petition trying to get it stopped. (They failed.) The latest, and most unlikely, target is the septuagenarian Yaffa Yarkoni, Israel's "singer of the wars". A national heroine, the khaki-clad chanteuse whose patriotic songs once carried Israel forces into battle caused shock and anger when she recently castigated Israel's army, comparing its conduct in Jenin with the Nazis. "When I saw the Palestinians with their hands tied behind their backs, I said, 'It is like what they did to us in the Holocaust,'" she told Army Radio. "We are a people who have been through the Holocaust. How are we capable of doing these things?" It was as if Vera Lynn had appeared on the BBC and denounced the conduct of British troops in Northern Ireland. Reprisals swiftly followed. A ceremony where she was to receive a lifetime award was cancelled. Israeli youth organi- sations declared they would boycott her songs. She was denounced by ministers, and told by one town – Kfar Yona – that she would no longer be welcome to perform at its Memorial Day event."

Anti-Israel Drawings Under Fire,
National Post, May 23, 2002
"The Toronto District School Board has reprimanded an Arabic language program that rents space in a public high school for displaying drawings by young children of an Israeli jet bombing a Palestinian village. A series of drawings made by elementary school children marked with the Arabic caption, 'Allah is great over Israel. Allah is great,' were hanging on the walls of Winston Churchill Collegiate Institute the Monday morning after the private group used the building for a weekend class. On the advice of a psychologist, the students were told to add colour to pre-produced, connect-the-dot drawings as a means to express their emotions about the war in Israel and the Palestinian territories, said Jennifer McIntyre, a school board spokeswoman ... The high school principal removed the drawings and held a meeting with the Arabic teachers to express her dismay over the artwork, as well as offer them advice from public school social workers on how to come up with a balanced forum for talking about the war."

Judge denies hearing in suit brought against conference,
Michigan Daily, October 11, 2002
"The legal fight to stop the University from allowing speakers to attend a controversial conference this weekend appears to have been defeated, plaintiffs and defendants agreed yesterday. Washtenaw County Circuit Court Judge Melinda Morris denied a request yesterday for a temporary restraining order to stop the conference. Deborah Schlussel, attorney for the plaintiffs, LSA sophomore Richard Dorfman and LSA senior Adi Neuman [all Jewish], made the request. Barring an appeal - which Schlussel said would be unlikely to succeed - the Second National Student Conference on the Palestine Solidarity Movement will likely go on as scheduled, tomorrow through Monday ... The judge's action reflects a victory for the right to free speech, University spokeswoman Julie Peterson said. 'The judge applied the law as we expected and made the right decision,' she said. 'I'm not concerned that the Court of Appeals will change the decision.'"

Foxman Slams Israeli Media Monitoring as 'Undemocratic.' Haaretz [Israeli newspaper], July 27, 2001
"The Israeli government's decision to upgrade its monitoring of the international media is 'undemocratic' and 'unbecoming to a democratic state,' Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham Foxman said in an interview with Anglo File this week. 'I am uncomfortable with the fact that the prime ministry has announced it will be monitoring the media [more closely] and lodging complaints if something doesn't sit well with it,' said Foxman, who is in the midst of a two-week visit to Israel. 'Media-monitoring is something we [the ADL] do, that lots of organizations do. Democratic governments do not do this. I find it more than a little strange.'"

Jewish Group, Police Team Up Against Hate,
Los Angeles Times, February 14, 2002
"The Anti-Defamation League on Wednesday announced a new partnership with law enforcement agencies to help deal with hate crimes and extremists. The group's Law Enforcement Advisory Committee, which includes representatives of 13 law enforcement agencies, was established as a way for the Jewish anti-discrimination organization and police to keep each other informed about the crimes and patterns prevalent among hate groups ... For much of its history, officials said, the Anti-Defamation League has worked with law enforcement to combat bias and hate crimes, but the creation of the committee formalizes this relationship and brings more agencies together. 'In the past we would develop training programs for police officers and take it to law enforcement; now we're asking them what they need,' said Nancy Volpert, the group's associate director."

Blair Shies Aways from EU Law on Holocaust,
Telegraph (UK), March 4, 2002
"Britain is opposing European moves to make denying or trivialising Nazi atrocities a criminal offence. Proposals by Brussels would make racism and xenophobia serious crimes in Britain for the first time, carrying a prison sentence of two years or more. Europe wants to harmonise laws before a new arrest warrant comes into force in 2004. This will allow police to send citizens of the 15 member states for trial anywhere in the EU without old-style extradition procedures. Among the crimes for which the warrant would be issued are racism and xenophobia. But these do not exist as specific offences in Britain or in some other EU states. The draft plans define racism and xenophobia as an aversion to individuals based on 'race, colour, descent, religion or belief, national or ethnic origin.' An offence of 'public denial or trivialisation of the crimes dealt with by the international military tribunal established in 1945' is also proposed. Holocaust denial laws are in place in seven countries, including Germany, France and Austria. But they would be a big departure for Britain, where a risk of fomenting public disorder is needed before a thought becomes a crime."

Why Does John Malkovich Want to Kill Me?, by Robert Fisk,
Independent (UK), May 14, 2002
"In 26 years in the Middle East, I have never read so many vile and intimidating messages addressed to me. Many now demand my death. And last week, the Hollywood actor John Malkovich did just that, telling the Cambridge Union that he would like to shoot me. How, I ask myself, did it come to this? Slowly but surely, the hate has turned to incitement, the incitement into death threats, the walls of propriety and legality gradually pulled down so that a reporter can be abused, his family defamed, his beating at the hands of an angry crowd greeted with laughter and insults in the pages of an American newspaper, his life cheapened and made vulnerable by an actor who – without even saying why – says he wants to kill me. Much of this disgusting nonsense comes from men and women who say they are defending Israel, although I have to say that I have never in my life received a rude or insulting letter from Israel itself. Israelis sometimes express their criticism of my reporting – and sometimes their praise – but they have never stooped to the filth and obscenities which I now receive ... The attacks on America were caused by "hate itself, of precisely the obsessive and dehumanising kind that Fisk and Bin Laden have been spreading," said a letter from a Professor Judea Pearl of UCLA. I was, he claimed, "drooling venom" and a professional "hate peddler". Another missive, signed Ellen Popper, announced that I was "in cahoots with the archterrorist" Bin Laden. Mark Guon labelled me "a total nut-case". I was "psychotic," according to Lillie and Barry Weiss. Brandon Heller of San Diego informed me that "you are actually supporting evil itself". It got worse. On an Irish radio show, a Harvard professor – infuriated by my asking about the motives for the atrocities of 11 September – condemned me as a "liar" and a "dangerous man" and announced that "anti-Americanism" – whatever that is – was the same as anti-Semitism. Not only was it wicked to suggest that someone might have had reasons, however deranged, to commit the mass slaughter. It was even more appalling to suggest what these reasons might be. To criticise the United States was to be a Jew-hater, a racist, a Nazi."

The Expulsion of Pappe from Haifa University," by Ian Pappe,
oznik.com, May 12, 2002
"I have received today an invitation to stand for a trial in my [Israeli] university, the university of Haifa. The prosecution, represented by Haifa Dean's of humanities demands my expulsion from the university due to the positions I have taken on the Katz affair. It calls upon the court 'to judge Dr. Pappe on the offences he has committed and to use to the full the court's legal authority to expel him from the university". These offences are in a nutshell my past critique of the university's conduct in the Katz affair, the MA student who discovered the Tantura massacre in 1948 and was disqualified for that. The reason the university waited so long is that now the time is ripe in Israel for any act of silencing academic freedom. My intent to teach a course on the Nakbah next year and my support for boycott on Israel has led the university to the conclusion that I can only be stopped by expulsion. Judging by past procedures this is not a request, but already a verdict, given the position of the person in question in the university and the way things had been done in the past. The ostensible procedure of a 'fair trial' does not exist and hence I do not even intend to participate in a McCarthyist charade. I do not appeal to you for my own sake. I ask you at this stage before a final decision has been taken to voice your opinion in whatever form you can and to whatever stage you have access to, not in order to prevent my expulsion (in many ways in the present atmosphere in Israel it will come now, and if not now later on, as the Israeli academia has deiced almost unanimously to support the government and to help silence any criticism). I ask those who are willing to do so, to take this case as part of your overall appreciation of, and attitude to, the preset situation in Israel. This should shed light also on the debate whether or not to boycott Israeli academia."

Looking Behind Ha'aretz's Liberal Image,
by Ran HaCohen, antiwar.com, September 30, 2002
"A new Israeli web-site, supported by two major settlers' sites from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, is dedicated to the holy cause of 'encouraging and supporting the employment of Jews only.' It is already listing dozens of Israeli firms that do not employ 'Gentiles.' In the first months of the Intifada, Israeli racists initiated a boycott of Arab shops and restaurants; now, employment of Arabs is targeted. Let's keep the inevitable historical analogies for another time; the point I want to make now is, that most of you haven't heard of this web-site. Right? The site is neither confidential nor is it my discovery: I simply read about it in the Hebrew Ha'aretz a few days ago (24.9.02). But most of you could not. Why? Because this item was left out of Haaretzdaily.com, the English version of Ha'aretz. Is this a mistake? An exception? No it is not. Ha'aretzdaily.com is not a full translation of the Hebrew paper; it's a selection. It often omits certain items, certain columns, that Ha'aretz does not find 'suitable' for foreign eyes, like the report I just mentioned. Another way to achieve the same hidden bias is by 'nationalistically correct' translations. For example, when Hebrew Ha'aretz read (2.7.02): 'Recent reports about Egyptian intentions to develop nuclear weaponry WERE APPARENTLY THE RESULT OF ISRAELI PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE AND do not match intelligence information in Jerusalem, according to a senior Israeli official', the English translation simply omitted the words I've capitalised. Or, quoting an Israeli officer on the use of Palestinians as 'human shields', the English version read (16.8.02): 'Before the search [in a Palestinian house] we go to a neighbour, take him out of his house and tell him to call the people we want out of the next door house. [...] The neighbour does not have the option to refuse to do it. He shouts, knocks on the door and says the army's here. If nobody answers, he comes back and we go to work.' Sounds pretty harmless? – Just because the last sentence is a 'nationalistically correct' translation of the following Hebrew sentence: 'If nobody answers, we have to tell the neighbour that he will be killed if no one comes out.'"

'Biased' Professors Posted On Web Site,
Washington Times, October 6, 2002
"An Internet site invites college students to cite the names of Middle Eastern studies professors who criticize Israel or in their view offer 'biased' views or make 'biased' classroom remarks about the Middle East, Islam and foreign policy issues. The Web site — www.campus-watch.org — so far cites eight professors and 14 universities. The site was created by the Philadelphia-based think tank Middle East Forum 'in defense of U.S. interests on campus, which includes the continued support of Israel.' ... Muslim-American groups and the American Civil Liberties Union say the Campus Watch site is an assault on academic freedom and amounts to a blacklist of professors and threatens to suppress discussions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ... The director of the Middle East Forum is a [Jewish] journalist and scholar, Daniel Pipes, who has argued that Americans have not paid sufficient attention to militant Islam. The forum's site includes short biographies of the professors and reprints of articles written about them or letters to the editor and essays they wrote. Some of the notes include the professors' photographs, e-mail addresses and office telephone numbers."

B'nai Brith to confront U of T over petition University faculty members accuse Israel of committing 'crimes against humanity': Jewish atrocities alleged,
National Post (Canada), August 2, 2002
"Officials from B'nai Brith will meet today with representatives of the University of Toronto to discuss the university's response to faculty members who have used their university titles and university facilities to circulate a petition denouncing Israel for 'atrocities' and 'crimes against humanity' ... B'nai Brith Canada, a Jewish advocacy group, has complained to the University of Toronto ... So far, 37 professors have signed the petition; 15 are affiliated with the U of T. The rest come from universities across Canada."

Opposition To Anti-Semitic Conference At University Of Michigan,
Israel National News, October 9, 2002,
"An anti-Semitic conference at an American university is arousing groundswells of objections. The University of Michigan has agreed to allow a three-day 'Palestinian Solidarity' conference to be held on its grounds, beginning this coming Saturday. The conference supports a campaign to urge divestment from Israel, while its web site condemns Israel for 'occupation,' 'colonization,' and 'apartheid,' and claims that 'racism and discrimination are inherent in Zionism.' Pro-Israel groups have organized opposition to the conference, including a "Shabbat Against Hate" at the University of Michigan this weekend with Rabbi Avi Weiss. In addition, buses will be leaving New York on Saturday night to hold a counter-demonstration."

Dershowitz: Divestment Petitioners Are ‘Bigots’,
The Harvard Crimson (posted at Front Page), October 11, 2002
"Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz is known for holding feisty debates on hot-button issues. Last night his only opponent was an empty chair, but he still managed to spark fireworks. The Harvard Law School professor had publicly challenged Winthrop House Master Paul D. Hanson to a debate over the Israel divestment petition that Hanson signed last spring. Last night, saying Hanson had turned down his offer, Dershowitz staged a solo debate in the Winthrop Junior Common Room. Standing beside a chair with a copy of the petition taped to it, he said students and professors who had signed the petition were anti-semitic and knew 'basically nothing about the Middle East.' 'Your House master is a bigot and you ought to know that,' he told the crowd of about 200 students. 'Everyone else who signed that petition is also a bigot.' Hanson’s knowledge of the Middle East 'ends with the death of Moses,' Dershowitz said. Hanson declined to comment last night. Several students in Winthrop, who did not attend the debate, said they were offended to learn how Dershowitz had referred to their House master ... The petition, which calls for Harvard and MIT to divest from Israel and from American companies that sell arms to Israel, also calls for the U.S. government to stop supplying weapons until four specific conditions are met by the Israeli government. Hanson signed the petition as a professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, along with 73 other Harvard faculty members and 56 from MIT. In total, nearly 600 faculty members, staff members, students and alumni of the two schools had signed the petition as of early this month."


Human Rights Wrongs,
American Prowler, October 8, 2002
"A new entry for the don't-let-this-happen-to-you file: the case of Kane v. Alberta Report, decided, last April 30, in favor of one Harvey Kane of the Jewish Defense League. The conflict should serve as a parable for what happens in modern politics when negative and positive (group) rights collide. One of the first casualties is free speech. The three-judge Alberta human rights tribunal examined charges that an article in an October '97 issue of the Edmonton-based newsmagazine Report, 'A Canmore mall project ends in a bitter feud,' had engaged in negative stereotyping of Jews and had therefore violated the very Canadian sounding Alberta Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act (hereafter, just 'Human Rights Act'). The judges found the Report 'guilty' of publishing, and the writer of expressing, an impolitic opinion. Maybe it's the fact that it emanates from Canada, home to one of the world's most dysfunctional politics, but it would be difficult to make up material this good. The judges' ruling reads like a parody of modern fuzzy-headed liberalism run amuck. After traipsing through past rulings on the subject of discrimination -- some of which are absolute howlers (e.g., the 'Sambo's Pepperpot' case) -- the judges held that 'freedom of expression, while a fundamental value in our society, is not absolute' and that there can be 'no social interest served in tolerating the free expression of such material.' 'Such material' means expressions of sentiments that the judges do not agree with; or, in this case, the quotation of a sentiment ('North American commercial real estate is dominated by firms that often happen to be Jewish-owned…') that they find distasteful. They found said quotation to be so offensive, in fact, 'that it warrants limiting freedom of expression in this case.'" [The sinful quote in the Alberta Report in 1997 is here, and this is its context: "One professional planner comments on the failed project: 'North American commercial real estate is dominated by firms that often happen to be Jewish-owned [e.g., Oshawa and Canmore Development]. The retail sector is much the same. Like cliques everywhere, some of these people tend to deal with each other, and Mr. Schickedanz is an outsider.'"]

Web hate sites on rise after terror attacks,
CTV (Canadian Television), October 17, 2002,
"The Web site, which Smith stumbled upon accidentally, is one of a growing number of hate sites that are sneaking into legitimate Internet domains to peddle their inflammatory messages. It's a problem experts say has worsened noticeably in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, with a marked increase in the volume of hate-inspired sites that are trying to attract new members. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has been tracking hate sites for the last several years, and recently put out a CD-ROM of 200 of the worst of an estimated 3,000 sites it deems 'problematic' ... 'These sites are spewing out hate and they're getting more and more sophisticated,' says Leo Adler of the Wiesenthal Center, a worldwide organization that promotes peace and education about the Holocaust ... Theories about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have also flourished on the Internet in the last year, with a recent survey showing that a growing percentage of people believe it was a joint Jewish, FBI plot ... Adler said most of the sites operate out of the United States, but it is nearly impossible to get locations for them. His group is trying to encourage countries to create an international convention governing the Internet. The centre is working with the Justice Department in Ottawa to draft controls for the Internet."

Right Wing Violence in North America, Part IV,
by Jeffrey Kaplan, William Paterson University
"The American Jewish Committee first focused on the activities of Gerald L. K. Smith on a formal level in May 1947 when, alarmed at the apparent success of Smith and other right wingers at linking Jews to Soviet communism, the AJC executive committee met to form a plan of attack against the Smith crusade. This and subsequent meetings failed to come to an agreement on a coherent strategy, due primarily to the delicate balance of the body politic in this, the first flush of the Cold War. Soviet Jews were simply too deeply involved in the Soviet state, and [w]ith the international communist movement as well, to risk involving a Jewish organization in the controversy. Making a virtue of indecision, the strategy which both the ADL and AJC eventually arrived at was termed at the time 'dynamic silence.' Championed by Rabbi S. A. Fineberg of the AJC, the idea was to close off all access to the public media- and thus the larger culture- to 'rabble rousers' such as Smith.This decision would mark the moment in time when the radical right would gradually fade from direct access to the popular media, and thus the public consciousness, leaving the 'watchdog' organizations such as the ADL and AJC in a position to assume stewardship of the public exposure of the movement. It was not until the attempt by Smith and others to block the appointment of Anna M. Rosenberg as an Assistant Secretary of Defense in 1950 that both the American Jewish Committee and the Anti- Defamation League opened a full fledged attack on Gerald L. K. Smith by bringing charges of anti- Semitism before the United States Senate. By then, the tactics employed by the ADL and the AJC were well honed: to identify potential anti-Semites and to seek to preempt if possible, to halt if not, their activities by putting pressure on elected officials and on local and national newspapers, by printing the names of suspected anti-Semites, and by distributing 'educational' materials intended to neutralize criticism of the Jewish community. It is an interpretive role that today continues to be performed by the 'watchdog' groups of which the ADL is the most influential. Acting in a role which is strikingly reminiscent of a 'high priesthood' whose self- appointed task it is to interpret the distant rumblings of the radical right wing milieu, the ADL and its numerous imitators have, through carefully nurtured connections with Congress, government agencies and the media, succeeded to a remarkable degree in banishing the adherents of right wing appeals to the margins of society. What's more, the ADL, once fastened on a target, is tenacious in its endeavors to isolate the target movement from the mainstream culture ... The tactics pioneered against Smith proved so efficacious that even before the onset of the 1980s language rectification movement known somewhat derisively as 'political correctness', the radical right had been all but silenced in the American public square."

[Comments by an Internet discussion group member about Jewhoo.com, the online site that had been listing famous -- and notorious -- Jews, with documented information per their Jewish heritage]

Arab legislators aren't equal,
International Herald Tribune, October 29, 2002
"Israel calls itself the only democracy in the Middle East, a description readily accepted in the West. Only critics in the Arab world and a handful of radical Israeli academics have challenged this orthodoxy, observing that the country is really a democracy only if you are a Jew. Azmi Bishara, a former philosophy professor and now an Arab member of the Knesset, calls Israel a 'tribal democracy.' Not included in the tribe, he says, are the country's million Arab citizens, a fifth of the population. Although they have the vote, they have long complained that they are excluded from participation in the government. Since the mid-1990s they have campaigned for the Jewish state to become a state of all its citizens. The Jewish Israeli public and political establishment angrily oppose such reforms, claiming that they would destroy Israel as a Jewish democratic state. However, a new report, 'Silencing Dissent,' commissioned by Israel's Arab Association for Human Rights, challenges the view that Israel can extol its virtues as a democracy while defining itself as a state for Jews. Our research throws up disturbing facts about the operation of Israel's parliamentary democracy that are little appreciated outside Israel ... The special treatment meted out to the Arab legislators has every appearance of being designed to intimidate and silence them. In fact, new pieces of legislation passed by the Knesset this past summer will do just that. Israel's election committee will now be able to ban any party from running which implicitly denies that Israel is a Jewish and democratic state."

Rights groups: Israel is waging a campaign to silence Arab MKs,
Ha'aretz (Israel), October 23, 2002
"Israel is carrying out at a 'campaign for silencing Arab members of Knesset [the Israeli Parliament],' and has adopted a 'strategy aimed at denying the [Arab] minority its voting rights, contrary to its international obligation,' organizations representing Arab minority rights said in two ground-breaking reports presented to the Knesset yesterday. According to reports prepared by the Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA) and the Mussawa Center, Israel's nine Arab MKs have been targets of a concerted policy of physical attack by security forces and their freedom of movement has been restricted. There are also a number of legal and legislative processes in the works aimed at neutralizing their political activity, the reports note. Since the current Knesset was convened in May 1999, eight of the Knesset Arab MKs have been physically hurt in 11 attacks carried out by military police, according to the rights organizations; most of the MKs were attacked more than once, and in seven cases medical treatment was required. 'In most of the cases, security forces knew who they were attacking,' the HRA report claims. According to both reports, no proceedings were taken against the attackers, despite complaints filed by the MKs."

World press freedom ranked,
BBC (UK), October 23, 2002
"This is the first time press freedom has been ranked The international journalism pressure group Reporters Without Borders has published a list judging 139 countries on their respect for press freedom. At the top of the list are Finland, Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands. North Korea, China and Burma are at the other end of the scale. There are some surprises for Western governments - the United States ranks below Costa Rica and Italy scores lower than Benin ... The US' 17th place was lowered because of the number of journalists arrested for refusing to reveal their sources, the report says ... Elsewhere, the organisation places the Palestinian Authority (82) higher than Israel (92) in terms of press freedom. Israel's ranking was hurt by what the pressure group claims are 'a large number of violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights' in the West Bank and Gaza." [Iraq is listed at the bottom, at 130]

Google excludes sites from French, German listings,
ITworld, October 24, 2002
"Internet search engine company Google Inc. has been discreetly removing over 100 controversial sites from some search result listings on its German and French Web sites, according to a study from Harvard University's Berkman Center. The study found that listings for 113 Web sites that are anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi, or related to white supremacy have been either partially or fully removed from Google.fr and Google.de, though they are available on the U.S. site, Google.com, according to the report posted Tuesday on Harvard University's Berkman Center Web site. Google, in Mountain View, California, could not immediately be reach for comment. The Harvard study, conducted by assistant professor Jonathan Zittrain and law student Benjamin Edelman, used automated testing, conducted between Oct. 4 and Oct. 21, of Google's 2.5 billion page index to compare the results returned by different foreign-language versions. The study found that among the banned sites are a 'white pride' site, Stormfront.org, and a fundamentalist Christian site opposing abortion, Jesus-is-lord.com. Testing revealed that 65 sites removed from German google.de were also removed from French google.fr results with an additional 48 sites removed only from google.fr results. Zittrain and Edelman point out that German and French Internet users can still circumvent such bans by simply conducting searches on Google.com. German law forbids material that is considered to incite racial and ethnic hatred, including the publication of Holocaust denials. Similar laws exist in France. Both countries have been involved in high profile cases in an attempt to get Internet providers to block access to offending U.S. Web sites." [Note: Who Has Hijacked Google? [Commentary, and links, about the Jewish dimensions of the Google World Wide web search engine] Focal Point, October 28, 2002

New York is starting to feel like Brezhnev's Moscow, Public debate in America has now become a question of loyalty,
Guardian (London) May 16, 2002
"What a sad place New York City has become. A vibrant, disputatious town with a worldwide reputation for loud voices and strongly expressed opinions is tip-toeing around in whispers. Grief over the casualties of the twin towers massacre is not the reason (those wounds are slowly healing), but a stifling conformity which muzzles public discourse on US foreign policy, the war on terrorism and Israel. 'If people knew I held these views, I wouldn't be able to stay in this job,' an old college friend confided as I passed through the city for a few days last week. He was appointed by the Bush administration to a top Federal position (not connected to foreign policy) some months ago. His subversive views on the Middle East, if uttered in Europe, would raise no eyebrows: Ariel Sharon has no vision or strategy; his tactics on the West Bank are counter-productive; the American media are failing to report adequately on the suffering of innocent Palestinians in cities ransacked by Israeli troops. Another friend, a liberal rabbi, was about to set off on a regular visit to Israel. She contrasted the usual furious public arguments which she expected to find there to the behind-the-hand mutterings of New Yorkers. 'Over here Sharon and Netanyahu have managed to turn the issue of terrorism, which was provoked by Israeli behaviour on the West Bank, into an existential question of the survival of the Israeli state. Debate becomes disloyalty,' she complained. The Israeli prime minister's humiliating refusal to heed the White House's call last month for an immediate halt to Israel's West Bank incursions should have prompted a debate on whether Bush or Sharon makes US foreign policy, she argued. Instead, the leaders of most American Jewish organisations sided with Sharon and were pleased when Bush backed down. Listening to these anguished but private complaints suddenly reminded me of the Soviet Union of the Brezhnev era when lower-level officials, journalists and other fringe members of the regime sat around their kitchen tables, expressing their true views only to family and close friends. A far-fetched analogy, of course, until you look at the narrowness of public discussion, not just on Israeli-Palestinian issues, but also on the threatened American attack on Iraq and the administration's war on terrorism in general."

French encyclopedia ordered to remove offensive Holocaust passage,
Jerusalem Post, November 6, 2002
"A French court on Wednesday ordered the publishers of France's leading reference book to remove from its next edition a revisionist historian's claim that the figure of 6 million deaths during the Holocaust was grossly exaggerated. Five French Jewish groups had launched the legal action against the encylopedia-like reference guide, Quid, saying the passage violated a French law that makes it illegal to publish revisionist theories. The Jewish groups demanded that Quid publishers retract the 300,000 copies of its 2003 edition, which had already been sent to stores. Judge Marie-Therese Feydau refused to grant the request, but ordered the publishers to remove the offensive passage from its 2004 edition as well as from its Internet site ... In a section on World War II extermination camps, the book says that the official number of deaths at Auschwitz-Birkenau was 1.2 million. However, it adds that 'other figures have circulated,' and cites one by a revisionist historian, Robert Faurisson, who claims that 150,000 people died at the camp, of which 100,000 were Jews. The Quid, a single volume 2,000-paged reference guide, is known in France as the book that holds the answers to all questions."

Europe Outlaws Net Hate Speech,
Wired, November 9, 2002
"The Council of Europe has adopted a measure that would criminalize Internet hate speech, including hyperlinks to pages that contain offensive content. The provision, which was passed by the council's decision-making body (the Committee of Ministers), updates the European Convention on Cybercrime. Specifically, the amendment bans 'any written material, any image or any other representation of ideas or theories, which advocates, promotes or incites hatred, discrimination or violence, against any individual or group of individuals, based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin, as well as religion if used as pretext for any of these factors.' It also obliquely refers to the Holocaust, outlawing sites that deny, minimize, approve or justify crimes against humanity, particularly those that occurred during World War II. 'The emergence of international communication networks like the Internet provide certain persons with modern and powerful means to support racism and xenophobia and enables them to disseminate easily and widely expressions containing such ideas,' the council's report on the amendment states. 'In order to investigate and prosecute such persons, international cooperation is vital.'"

Banned Concordia student sues school,
CBC (Canada), November 12, 2002
"A former student at Concordia University who was banned from the school after an investigation into anti-Israel graffiti is suing the university and its rector. Tom Keefer said he suffered stress and lost a year of school because of the ban. He's asking for $75,000 in damages. The former vice-president of the Concordia Student Union argued with school security guards last year over anti-Israel graffiti spray painted on a Concordia building. The guards went to the student union office and seized a bag containing spray paint. Keefer said the guards threatened his friend Laith Marouf and pushed him against a wall. Keefer then approached the guards, but said be didn't threaten them or touch them. Police investigated and did not file charges. But a month later, Keefer and Marouf were both banned from the school by rector Frederick Lowy. A board set up by the school determined Lowy should have listened to both students before banning them."

Mideast 'Bias' Stink at SUNY,
New York Post, October 17, 2002
"For the first time in 15 years, an upstate university has denied funding for a popular women's studies conference, deeming it too unbalanced in its portrayal of the Middle East. Some students and professors at SUNY-New Paltz have criticized the decision, saying the program should not be overlooked because of a controversial topic. The women's studies department requested $4,000 for Saturday's conference titled 'Women and War, Peace and Revolution.' Gerald Benjamin, dean of liberal arts and sciences, recommended to Provost David Lavallee, who officially decides who receives funding, that the conference be denied because it was not balanced. A speaker will be talking about human-rights abuses of Palestinians, while no one is speaking on behalf of Israel."

The War on Academic Freedom,
The Nation, November 11, 2002
"The year since Congress passed the USA Patriot Act has brought an ever-growing enemies list from our nation's thought police. First there was Senator Joseph Lieberman and Lynne Cheney's American Council of Trustees and Alumni report unveiled last November--'Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It.' The forty-three-page document purports to advocate the preservation of academic freedom and dissent while being all about suppressing both when the views expressed conflict with blind support for US foreign policy. In attempting to smear dozens of 'unpatriotic' professors, the organization laid the foundation for the Middle East Forum's recent blacklisting project, Campus Watch--a website that hopes to do for students and professors what Project TIPS would have done for mail carriers and plumbers. Based in Philadelphia and headed by [Jewish] anti-Arab propagandist Daniel Pipes, Campus Watch unleashed an Internet firestorm in late September, when it posted 'dossiers' on eight scholars who have had the audacity to criticize US foreign policy and the Israeli occupation. As a gesture of solidarity, more than 100 academics subsequently contacted the Middle East Forum asking to be added to the list. In response, Pipes has since posted 146 new names, all identified as supporters of 'apologists for suicide bombings and militant Islam' ... Naming the names of academics critical of Israeli policy has a history spanning more than two decades. In 1979 the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) formed its Political Leadership Development Program, which 'educates and trains young leaders in pro-Israel political advocacy,' enlisting hundreds of college students to collect information on pro-Palestinian professors and student organizations. By 1983 the program had attracted more than 5,000 students on 350 campuses in all fifty states. The next year the findings were published as The AIPAC College Guide: Exposing the Anti-Israel Campaign on Campus,which surveyed 100 campuses and instructed students on how best to counter a 'steady diet of anti-Israel vituperation.' Around the same time, the Anti-Defamation League covertly distributed a twenty-one-page booklet containing 'background information on pro-Arab sympathizers active on college campuses' who 'use their anti-Zionism as merely a guise for their deeply felt anti-Semitism.' As with redbaiting during the 1950s, the leaders of these current attacks are exploiting the fear and anxiety the American public feels about enemies abroad in order to advance their own political agenda. Now with access to the Internet, Pipes and his supporters have been able to expand their attacks into a virtually limitless campaign of harassment and intimidation."

Dangerous Days for the Internet,
by John Bottoms, Strike the Root, November 15, 2002
"Gone are the days when the internet was just a toy of college students and disaffected young people. Today’s internet is a throwback to the heady days of our nation’s founding, with its passionate political debates on the great issues of the day. The rich diversity of opinions available on internet sites stands in stark contrast to our newspapers and television news, which for the most part march in lockstep with whomever has scrambled to the top of the current political pile. Taken as a whole, the internet is like Thomas Paine's Common Sense, which flamed the desire for freedom and independence in the American colonists. It is our last public institution that cares about liberty, or any idea for that matter ... The internet may be the last truly independent medium for keeping the public informed, but a dangerously “loose cannon” to our power elites. The internet is more of a threat to the status quo than any medium of communication since printing became economical hundreds of years ago, especially with the likelihood of war, economic chaos, and political dissent in our near future ... Not surprisingly, authorities worldwide are responding to the loss of their propaganda monopoly by trying to restrict this free flow of information. The EU’s hook into internet control is “hate speech.” Buried in its prohibitions on racial prejudice is an attempt to outlaw sites which “deny, minimize, approve or justify crimes against humanity,” which could easily include critics of the US War on Terrorism."

The Bronfman Canadian Green Party & Jewish Congress Private HolyCost,
David Icke
"This site has not authored, even in one instance, a true, genuine, Holocaust Denial statement, attitude, or theory. In fact, it has admitted that something very evil and very insane, racially motivated, did really happen! And that many Jews and Gentiles alike lost their lives and suffered insane horrors at the hands of the Nazi Regime, through such names as Josef Mengele and countless others. This site has investigated some of the participants of those horrors, and questioned some of 'Bronfman's private agenda' versions of the history surrounding these atrocities. Yet, by the hand of Bronfman, this site has been thrown into his 'private lists' and 'labeled' by Seagrams as a 'Holocaust Denier', anti-Semitic, racist, hate-promoters, ad nauseum....When in reality, we have only challenged his 'presumed and self-appointed' messiahship control over the control of "FREE SPEECH, INTERNET and PRESS!' By law these are rights in most FREE nations (except Bronfman controlled Canada) guaranteed and preserved for the individual."

Canada: CanWest 'muzzles' staff, Corporate Censorship, CanWest-owned papers across Canada have pulled and censored not only any articles which criticise the corporation, but also those that simply fail to toe its line, the principal tenets of which are support for Israel and for the government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien,
Index on Censorship, April 2002
"Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) published a report on 15 April giving a balanced but firm view of the controversy surrounding allegations of corporate censorship in the CanWest Global media conglomerate. The report made it clear that 'freedom of expression includes the right of proprietors of news organisations to publish what they want in the media they own', but condemned CanWest for trying to 'muzzle its employees'. Since absorbing Hollinger, in the largest media take-over deal in Canadian history, the corporation, run by the Asper family, owns over 130 newspapers in Canada, including 14 major metropolitan dailies and a 50% stake in one of the country's largest national papers, the National Post. CanWest Global also has a television network in Canada and media interests in Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. CanWest-owned papers across Canada have pulled and censored not only any articles which criticise the corporation, but also those that simply fail to toe its line, the principal tenets of which are support for Israel and for the government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. CanWest's contempt for editorial independence was formally expressed in December 2001, when it introduced a policy of imposing three centrally-produced editorials a week on all its major publications, through its subsidiary, Southam newspapers ...In January, Halifax Daily News columnist Stephen Kimber resigned (after fifteen years on the paper) when his column criticising CanWest was spiked. Two colleagues followed suit after they were not permitted to report on the resignation. Bill Marsden, an investigative reporter for the Montreal Gazette, has been monitoring CanWest's interference and directives: 'They do not want to see any criticism of Israel. We do not run in our newspaper op-ed pieces that express criticism of Israel and what it is doing in the Middle East. We even had an incident where a fellow, a professor wrote an op-ed piece for us criticising the anti-terrorism law and elements of civil rights. Now that professor happens to be a Muslim and happens to have an Arab name. We got a call from headquarters demanding to know why we had printed this.' Various international Press organisation have condemned CanWest's behaviour. According to Robert Cribb, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, there have been many other cases of journalists on CanWest papers getting into trouble. He warned though that the real worry is the self-censorship that ensues: 'It's not the four or five we've heard about, it's about the dozens of journalists who self-censor as a result of this very public policy.' The management of CanWest remained defiant. 'I can say to our critics and to the bleeding hearts of the journalist community that it's the end of the world as they know it, and I feel fine,' declared David Asper, publications committee chairman, gleefully misquoting the REM song. The CJFE report said that media companies should defend freedom of expression because they are among its chief beneficiaries, and urged CanWest to cancel all pending disciplinary action against its employees, and to invite those who have left their posts to return to them. It also called for an Independent government enquiry look into the potential impact on free expression of media ownership concentration." [The Canadian Journalists for Free Expression Report about Asper and CanWest is here.

Judge grants injunction against public talk on Mideast at Canadian university,
Ha'aretz (Israel), November 16, 2002
"A judge issued an injunction Friday preventing a public talk on the Middle East at Concordia University, where a violent protest two months ago prevented a speech by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The university imposed a three-month moratorium on public events involving the Middle East conflict after protesting students broke windows and clashed with police to force the cancellation of Netanyahu's speech on Sept. 9. University lawyers sought the injunction Friday against a scheduled discussion by two members of the Canadian Parliament from the leftist New Democratic Party entitled 'Peace and Justice in the Middle East.' One of the participants, Svend Robinson, is known for pro-Palestinian views. Justice Jean Guibault of Quebec Superior Court granted a 10-day injunction, agreeing with the university that the event could cause violence ... Robinson, speaking on behalf of participants in the talks, said the university must respect constitutional rights of free speech. He rejected the university's contention the event could bring violence. On Thursday, another participant, Libby Davies, accused the university of overreacting. 'I heard one comment that the university was protecting its reputation," she said. "But I think this gives them a terrible reputation because they're shutting down free speech.'"

In About-Face, English Dept. Re-Invites Anti-Israeli Poet Dept. fears cancellation sent wrong message about free speech,
Harvard Crimson, November 20, 2002
"Concerned about the message it was sending on free speech, the English department yesterday renewed the invitation it cancelled just one week ago to Tom Paulin, an award-winning Irish poet who has expressed violently anti-Israeli views. English department chair Lawrence Buell said the department’s faculty met last night for two and a half hours and voted to re-invite Paulin. The vote, which was unanimous apart from two abstentions, marks a reversal of an earlier decision by a smaller group of English professors to cancel the speech. A main factor in the decision, Buell wrote in an e-mail, was the 'widespread concern and regret for the fact that the decision not to hold the event could easily be seen, and indeed has been seen—both within Harvard and beyond—as an unjustified breach of the principle of free speech within the academy. University [Jewish] President Lawrence H. Summers, who said in a speech two months ago he is concerned that anti-semitism is on the rise in 'progressive intellectual communities,' had conversations with English department faculty before Paulin’s invitation to deliver the annual Morris Gray Lecture was first cancelled. According to The National Review, Summers said privately he was 'horrified' that Paulin, who has called Israel a 'historical obscenity,' had been invited to campus. Facing protests from students, alumns and faculty, Buell announced last week that Paulin would not be coming to campus after all. Then, last night, the department decided to re-invite Paulin. 'The meeting was patient, it was passionate, and it went to the heart of everything this—or any university—stands for,' said Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory Jorie Graham ... Buell also noted that the members of the English department who initially helped decide to cancel the talk 'might have acted under a sense of pressure' ... Paulin has repeatedly said he is not anti-Semitic, and that he wishes for a peaceful resolution to the conflict in the Middle East. Harvard’s about-face may also have implications for other schools. The University of Vermont originally scheduled a talk by Paulin on its campus for today, but canceled it some time after the lecture at Harvard was canceled, according to a receptionist for the University of Vermont’s English department."

Netscape Heeds Jews' Gripes Over Web Directory,
[Jewish] Forward, November 22, 2002
"Internet giant Netscape has acknowledged anti-Israel bias in its massive Web cataloguing service and has taken several steps to correct the situation, including dismissing the volunteer editor Netscape says was responsible. Responding to a complaint by the Jewish Internet Association, an Internet watchdog group, Netscape's Robert Keating said the company would also eliminate a category that linked users to Jewish extremist groups such as Kahane Chai and would add a separate list of pro-Israel organizations under their own category ... The service, known as the Open Directory Project, is an effort to create a comprehensive catalog of the Internet, with millions of Web sites placed into categories and subcategories. Hosted and administered by Netscape, the directory is now featured by various search engines, including the popular Google. Tens of thousands of volunteer editors choose the Web sites, Web site descriptions and categories that will be placed in the directory, but Netscape 'sets the editorial policies and direction' of the project, according to the directory's own Web site. Netscape has said that the volunteers are chosen by unpaid senior editors, who are approved by Keating, the editor in chief of the project. Chriss said his organization discovered problems in the directory last month, and sent a letter with specific allegations of bias and distortions to Steve Case, chairman of Netscape's parent company, AOL Time Warner. [Chuck Chriss, president of the California-based Jewish Internet Agency] complained that the directory contained a link to 'Jewish Hate Groups,' including Kach and Kahane Chai, but did not contain a corresponding category for Islamic extremists, nor any sites describing antisemitism among Muslims ... Shortly afterwards, Chriss received a letter from Keating saying Netscape agreed that there was bias in the directory and that it had decided to dismiss the volunteer editor who they said was responsible. In addition, the company eliminated the 'Jewish Hate Group' section, added a separate list of pro-Israel organizations under their own category and included the Jewish Internet Association's own pro-Israel 'Palestine Facts' Web site. Chriss told the Forward last week that he did not blame Netscape for the initial bias, saying they had a small staff supervising tens of thousands of volunteer editors ... Derick Mains, a Netscape spokesman ... suggested that pro-Israel activists volunteer to be editors on the directory and correct some of the perceived bias."

CNN chief visits Israel on own peace mission,
Miami Herald (Associated Press), June 22, 2002
"CNN's chief news executive arrived in Israel on a peace mission of sorts Friday after issuing a memo urging his networks to resist airing statements from suicide bombers and their families. Eason Jordan, CNN's president of newsgathering, visited the sites of the last two terrorist bombings shortly after touching down in Israel. He also planned to meet with academic leaders, Israeli journalists, terror victims, Palestinians and government officials. CNN's coverage of the Middle East conflict has angered some Israelis. Jordan said legitimate concerns were raised about a handful of instances in which the CNN International network juxtaposed comments from victims of suicide bombings with people who applauded the acts ... Jordan's memo said CNN should not televise statements by suicide bombers or their families without `an extraordinarily compelling reason to do so.' Network executives compared the policy to CNN's practice after the release of the last few Osama bin Laden tapes. TV networks rushed to televise the first bin Laden tape but later -- prodded by the Bush administration -- declared subsequent ones propaganda and deemphasized or ignored them ... Earlier this week, Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, was quoted equating terrorist bombings and Israel's military response. ''I would make the case that both sides are engaged in terrorism,' he said in an interview with The Guardian, a British newspaper. He later apologized, saying in an interview with Israel's largest newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, that suicide bombings are inexcusable. CNN distanced itself from Turner's comments, noting that he no longer has an editorial role at the company. But the damage was done ... Some Palestinian groups also have complained that CNN's coverage favors Israel. Some Israeli citizens have published reports calling for CNN to get off the air."

Canada: CanWest 'muzzles' staff, Corporate Censorship, CanWest-owned papers across Canada have pulled and censored not only any articles which criticise the corporation, but also those that simply fail to toe its line, the principal tenets of which are support for Israel and for the government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien,
Index on Censorship, April 2002
"Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) published a report on 15 April giving a balanced but firm view of the controversy surrounding allegations of corporate censorship in the CanWest Global media conglomerate. The report made it clear that 'freedom of expression includes the right of proprietors of news organisations to publish what they want in the media they own', but condemned CanWest for trying to 'muzzle its employees'. Since absorbing Hollinger, in the largest media take-over deal in Canadian history, the corporation, run by the Asper family, owns over 130 newspapers in Canada, including 14 major metropolitan dailies and a 50% stake in one of the country's largest national papers, the National Post. CanWest Global also has a television network in Canada and media interests in Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. CanWest-owned papers across Canada have pulled and censored not only any articles which criticise the corporation, but also those that simply fail to toe its line, the principal tenets of which are support for Israel and for the government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. CanWest's contempt for editorial independence was formally expressed in December 2001, when it introduced a policy of imposing three centrally-produced editorials a week on all its major publications, through its subsidiary, Southam newspapers ...In January, Halifax Daily News columnist Stephen Kimber resigned (after fifteen years on the paper) when his column criticising CanWest was spiked. Two colleagues followed suit after they were not permitted to report on the resignation. Bill Marsden, an investigative reporter for the Montreal Gazette, has been monitoring CanWest's interference and directives: 'They do not want to see any criticism of Israel. We do not run in our newspaper op-ed pieces that express criticism of Israel and what it is doing in the Middle East. We even had an incident where a fellow, a professor wrote an op-ed piece for us criticising the anti-terrorism law and elements of civil rights. Now that professor happens to be a Muslim and happens to have an Arab name. We got a call from headquarters demanding to know why we had printed this.' Various international Press organisation have condemned CanWest's behaviour. According to Robert Cribb, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, there have been many other cases of journalists on CanWest papers getting into trouble. He warned though that the real worry is the self-censorship that ensues: 'It's not the four or five we've heard about, it's about the dozens of journalists who self-censor as a result of this very public policy.' The management of CanWest remained defiant. 'I can say to our critics and to the bleeding hearts of the journalist community that it's the end of the world as they know it, and I feel fine,' declared David Asper, publications committee chairman, gleefully misquoting the REM song. The CJFE report said that media companies should defend freedom of expression because they are among its chief beneficiaries, and urged CanWest to cancel all pending disciplinary action against its employees, and to invite those who have left their posts to return to them. It also called for an Independent government enquiry look into the potential impact on free expression of media ownership concentration." [The Canadian Journalists for Free Expression Report about Asper and CanWest is here.

Mason in race row,
BBC (UK), August 29, 2002
"Jewish comic Jackie Mason has refused to share a stage with a Palestinian stand-up. Arab comedian Ray Hanania was told he could not perform just hours before he was due to open for Mason in Chicago. Jyll Rosenfeld, Mason's manager, told CNN: 'It's not exactly like he's just an Arab-American. This guy's a Palestinian. Jackie does not feel comfortable having a Palestinian open for him. Right now it's a very sensitive thing, it's just not a good idea.' Ali Alarabi, president of the United Arab American League said: 'I'm outraged. It is an act of hate and racism against Palestinians.' But Rosenfeld said: 'Don't turn this into a racist issue, because it's not.'" [Hanania's statement about this here]

S.F. market angers Jewish community,
San Jose Mercury News, December 7, 2002
"Members of two departments in the Rainbow Grocery Cooperative have decided to remove Israeli products from their shelves, prompting a call Wednesday from the Jewish community for a boycott of the popular market in San Francisco ... 'The store's leadership is permitting a boycott to take place on its premises and bears responsibility for that decision,' said David Steirman, president of the Jewish Community Relations Council, which represents 80 synagogues and Jewish organizations in the Bay Area."

Jewish Groups Seek to Ban Book on Mideast Conflict,
Reuters, December 10, 2002
"Jewish organizations have called for a ban on a novel by a teenage girl about the Middle East conflict which they say glorifies Palestinian suicide bombers and fuels racial hatred. French publisher Flammarion said Tuesday it had been deluged by protests since publishing last month a translation of 'Sognando Palestina' ("Dream of Palestine") by 15-year-old Randa Ghazi as part of a series of books aimed at adolescents. The book was originally published in Italian in March. Ghazi, born in Italy of Egyptian parents, depicts teenagers caught up in the Palestinian uprising for independence. One of the characters blows himself up, killing five Israeli soldiers. Anti-racist group LICRA called on the government Tuesday to ban the book under publishing laws destined to protect young readers, but said it did not plan to fight the novel in court. The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center and France's CRIF umbrella group of Jewish organizations urged Flammarion and its Italian parent company, Rizzoli Corriere della Sera, to withdraw the book. They called on French Web Sites and the French and German arms of Internet retailer Amazon.com to stop selling the novel ... An official at Flammarion, which is also Houellebecq's publisher, said Ghazi's book portrayed both extremists and moderates and therefore did not constitute an incitement to hatred and violence. 'The publisher would like to point out, in a spirit of appeasement, that this is a work of fiction which should not be interpreted in ideological terms,' said the official, who asked not to be named."

How Diamond Joe's libel case could change the future of the internet. Australian court gives millionaire go-ahead to sue US website,
Guardian (UK), December 11, 2002
"Once it was heralded as the last bastion of freedom of speech, a realm which transcended national law and the whims of the courts. But last night the internet was facing up to a harsh new reality after Australia's supreme court ruled that a local businessman could sue a website for libel in Melbourne even though it was based in the United States. In a case which opens up a legal minefield for web publishers across the English-speaking world, the high court judges decided that an internet article is published wherever it is read, rather than where the publisher is based. The landmark ruling is the first instance in the developed world of a libel trial being admitted in a foreign jurisdiction purely because of the possibility of an article being downloaded from the internet. Media companies and internet campaigners immediately denounced the decision amid fears that it would open the floodgates for a wave of libel actions from around the world. They said the 'chilling' ruling would seriously undermine the internet's much-cherished reputation for freedom of speech and raised the threat of 'forum-shopping' by wealthy litigants looking for the easiest jurisdiction to ensure their victory in libel proceedings. The case centres on a two-year-old article about Melbourne gold mining magnate Joe Gutnick, published in the American business magazine Barron's. The article, entitled Unholy Gains, alleged that Mr Gutnick - a multimillionaire rabbi nicknamed Diamond Joe who became a local hero in Melbourne after he saved the local Australian Rules football club with a A$3m (£1.1m) cash injection - was involved in tax evasion and money laundering. Most significantly, it claimed that he was the biggest customer of Nachum Goldberg, a Melbourne money launderer jailed in 2000 for washing A$42m (£15.5m) in used notes through a bogus Israeli charity. Mr Gutnick is suing the American business information company Dow Jones, which owns Barron's as well as the Wall St Journal. He has brought the case in Victoria, where libel laws give him a better chance of winning than in the US, where 98% of Barron's' readers live. The magazine has 14 subscribers in Australia, of which five are in Victoria. But 1,700 of its internet subscribers had paid their bills using Australian credit cards, and the court ruled yesterday that this was enough to admit the case in Victoria. ... But the ruling has thrown internet publishers into disarray and left them facing a choice between two equally costly and undesirable options: restricting access to their websites to prevent people in potentially difficult legal jurisdictions reading them; or employing international legal teams to vet all content to ensure that it complies with the libel laws in each of the countries it is likely to be read ... Lance Taylor, founder of the UK web design association, said: 'It's quite ludicrous. This decision will open up a minefield of potential litigation against web-based publishers. In the rush to regulate the internet with ill-conceived laws, countries like Australia will put a stranglehold on the future development of the internet and its associated technologies.'"

Australia makes landmark net ruling Joseph Gutnik hailed the decision as a victory,
BBC News, Decmeber 11, 2002
"Australia's high court has ruled that the financial publishers Dow Jones can be sued in the Australian state of Victoria over an article that appeared on their website. The defamation case was brought by Melbourne mining magnate Joseph Gutnik, who argued that the article could be read on the internet by people who knew him in Melbourne. It will certainly be re-established that the net is no different than a regular newspaper.Dow Jones had argued that publication of the article on its Barron's website took place in the United States and wanted the case to be heard there. It is thought to be the first such decision in the high court of any country to consider the question of jurisdiction and the internet. Media organisations fear the ruling could unleash a flood of litigation around the world and will force them to review the content of their internet sites ... It would have a chilling effect because publishers would face potential liability everywhere the web reaches.Dow Jones had maintained that publication took place in New Jersey in the US and argued that courts in the State of Victoria had no jurisdiction. Several international media companies who also made submissions to the court - such as Reuters, News International and Amazon.com - backed up that position."

Israel bans documentary on army's invasion of Jenin,
The Independent (UK), December 12, 2002
"The Israeli film ratings board has banned a documentary on the army's invasion of Jenin in March, the first block on a film in 15 years. The documentary, Jenin, Jenin, was filmed by Mohammed Bakri, an Arab with Israeli citizenship, several weeks after the operation. It shows the huge area of destruction where Israeli bulldozers levelled more than 100 homes in Jenin refugee camp, and includes interviews with Palestinians living there. Nissim Abulouf, the chairman of the film board, wrote in explaining the ban: 'This is a propaganda film that presents the side with which the State of Israel is in a state of war, in a one-sided manner, while this war is still going on. It is a movie that severely offends the sentiments of the public, which might think mistakenly that the IDF [Israeli Defence Force] soldiers carry out war crimes methodically and deliberately' ... Mr Bakri said: 'This is a great disappointment with [Israeli] democracy, and proof that it is limited.'"

Firm won't ship book that extols 'killing all Israelis.' Canadian distributor asks stores to return Rêver la Palestine,
The Ottawa Citizen, December 12, 2002
"The Canadian distributor of a French-language novel about Palestinian teenagers has halted shipments of the book after Jewish leaders condemned it as anti-Semitic and an incitement to violence and suicide bombing. The publication of Rêver la Palestine (Dream of Palestine) by Randa Ghazi -- a 15-year-old author living in Italy with her Egyptian-born parents -- has also sparked controversy in Germany and France, where the book is said to be enjoying brisk sales in the juvenile fiction market. The book was published in Italian in March by media conglomerate Rizzoli Corriere della Sera and recently translated into French by one of its Paris-based subsidiaries, Flammarion. The French publishing company has a Montreal arm, which distributed 75 copies of the book last week to 20 stores in Quebec. The story depicts a group of teenagers caught up in the Palestinian uprising. One of the characters blows himself up, killing five Israeli soldiers. 'One of the novel's heroes calls for jihad against the Jews, who are 'a doomed people,' and to 'kill all Israelis,'" says the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a U.S.-based international Jewish human rights organization ... The Wiesenthal Center has launched an online petition to have the book pulled from stores, helped organize a rally outside Flammarion's headquarters in Paris, and threatened lawsuits over the book's publication and distribution. It has complained to Amazon.com's Internet book retailing branches in Canada, Germany and France. 'We believe that this book contravenes Canada's Criminal Code and customs regulation," says Leo Adler of the Toronto-based Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies."

WordsWorth targeted for WBUR funding boycott,
Boston Globe, December 12, 2002
"Protesters in Harvard Square fired a fresh volley in the heated battle over media coverage of the Mideast yesterday, targeting the president of WordsWorth Books for his role in an underwriter boycott of the Boston public radio affiliate WBUR-FM (90.9). Gathered outside the Brattle Street bookstore, a handful of activists distributed leaflets declaring that WordsWorth president Hillel Stavis 'Sells Words but Suppresses Words.' The campaign, slated to last all week, is in response to Stavis's decision last year to withdraw his company's financial support from WBUR because of his belief that there is anti-Israel bias in its Mideast coverage. The modest demonstration was a rare sign of an organized backlash in a year when supporters of Israel have pressured several media outlets that they view as tilted against the Jewish state ... WBUR, which says it has lost as much as $2 million in revenue as a result of a boycott that now involves seven former underwriters, issued a statement lauding the protesters ... Stavis and Cognex CEO Robert Shillman, the first two businessmen to suspend their companies' WBUR contributions, are members of a Boston-based media watchdog group, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America ... As Mideast violence has escalated in the past year, so have the battles over media coverage of that conflict. One pro-Israel group led a consumer drive to temporarily cancel subscriptions to The Washington Post. Other readers responded to calls to cancel subscriptions to The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. And an organization called Minnesotans Against Terrorism ran an ad signed by about 350 prominent citizens targeting the Minneapolis Star Tribune's reluctance to use the word ''terrorist'' to describe Palestinian bombers. 'Part of our job ... is to say there is no single unified voice for the Jewish community,' countered Sue Katz, a member of Jewish Women for Justice in Israel/ Palestine. 'Those people do not speak for the Jewish community. Our voices rarely get heard.'''

Court ruling in favor of rabbi could affect Internet,
Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, December 13, 2002
"In a decision that could have far-reaching effects regarding freedom of speech over the Internet, a court here has ruled that a defamation lawsuit brought by an Australian rabbi will not be heard in the United States. Last year, the online version of Barron's Magazine published a report claiming that Australian rabbi and mining magnate Joseph Gutnick was a major client of Nahum Goldberg, an Orthodox Jew currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for money laundering and tax evasion. Goldberg had been found guilty of defrauding the Australian government out of more than $24 million. Along with being a multimillionaire from mining and other commercial activities, Gutnick leads a congregation in Melbourne, Australia, is a major Likud supporter and a well-known figure in Israel. While Gutnick wanted the case heard in Melbourne, Dow Jones, which publishes Barron's, wanted to have the case heard in the United States. Last year, Gutnick's lawyers successfully argued that since the material was downloaded in the Australian state of Victoria, it should be deemed to have been published there -- and, consequently, the case should be heard there ... Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Internet Industry Association called the High Court's decision 'a great disappointment for the online industry. The global community now has to be extremely careful about what is published on the Internet. This will have a dampening effect.'''

Robert Fisk: Journalists are under fire for telling the truth,
by Robert Fisk, The Independent (UK), December18, 2002
"Let us forget, for a moment, that Fox News's Jerusalem bureau chief is Uri Dan, a friend of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the author of the preface of the new edition of Sharon's autobiography, which includes a revolting account of the Sabra and Chatila massacre of 1,700 Palestinian civilians and Sharon's innocence in this slaughter. Then Ted Koppel [also Jewish], one of America's leading news anchormen, announced that it may be a journalist's duty not to reveal events until the military want them revealed in a new war against Iraq. Can we go any further in journalistic cowardice? Oh yes, we can. ABC television announced, a little while ago, that it knew all about the killing of four al-Qa'ida members by an unmanned 'Predator' plane in Yemen but delayed broadcasting the news for four days 'at the request of the Pentagon.' So now at least we know for whom ABC works ... In Canada, the situation is even worse. Canwest, owned by Israel Asper, owns over 130 newspapers in Canada, including 14 city dailies and one of the country's largest papers, the National Post. His 'journalists' have attacked colleagues who have deviated from Mr Asper's pro-Israel editorials. As Index on Censorship reported, Bill Marsden, an investigative reporter for the Montreal Gazette has been monitoring Canwest's interference with its own papers. 'They do not want any criticism of Israel,' he wrote. 'We do not run in our newspaper op-ed pieces that express criticism of Israel and what it is doing in the Middle East...' But now, 'Izzy' Asper has written a gutless and repulsive editorial in the Post in which he attacks his own journalists, falsely accusing reporters of "lazy, sloppy or stupid" journalism and being 'biased or anti-Semitic'. These vile slanders are familiar to any reporter trying to do his work on the ground in the Middle East. They are made even more revolting by inaccuracies. Mr Asper, for example, claims that my colleague Phil Reeves compared the Israeli killings in Jenin earlier this year – which included a goodly few war crimes (the crushing to death of a man in a wheelchair, for example) – to the 'killing fields of Pol Pot'. Now Mr Reeves has never mentioned Pol Pot. But Mr Asper wrongly claims that he did. It gets worse. Mr Asper, whose 'lazy, sloppy or stupid' allegations against journalists in reality apply to himself, states – in the address to an Israel Bonds Gala Dinner in Montreal, which formed the basis of his preposterous article – that "in 1917, Britain and the League of Nations declared, with world approval, that a Jewish state would be established in Palestine". Now hold on a moment. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 did not say that a Jewish state would be established ... At no point, of course, does Mr Asper tell us about Israeli occupation or the building of Jewish settlements, for Jews and Jews only, upon Arab land. He talks about 'alleged Palestinian refugees' – about as wrongheaded a remark as you can get – and then claims that the corrupt and foolish Yasser Arafat is 'one of the world's cruel and most vicious terrorists for the past 30 years'. He concluded his speech to Israel's supporters in Montreal with the dangerous request that 'you, the public, must take action against the media wrongdoers'. Wrongdoers? Is this far from President Bush's 'evildoers'? What in the hell is going on here? I will tell you. Journalists are being attacked for telling the truth, for trying to tell it how it is. American journalists especially. I urge them to read a remarkable new book published by the New York University Press and edited by John Collins and Ross Glover. It's called Collateral Language and is, in its own words, intended to expose "the tyranny of political rhetoric"

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY OFFICIALS CANCEL PALESTINE CONFERENCE,
Statement from the Organizing Committee of the Third National Student Conference on the Palestine Solidarity Movement at Rutgers University
"This is an Urgent Call to Action! Your immediate solidarity is needed! (Press release follows this Call to Action) Today, Rutgers University officials have CANCELLED the Third National Student Conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement, scheduled for October 10-12, 2003 at Rutgers University. Yet, the students at Rutgers University are determined to hold the conference as planned. In canceling this widely supported conference throughout North America, the university administration has trampled on constitutional rights, muted free speech, and has betrayed its pledge to fairness and education. This is an attack on peace and justice activists everywhere. It is an attack on our society as a whole and on our right to free _expression and assembly. But the university administration has gone much farther, and has taken a shameful overt political stand in favor of Israeli Apartheid. As the university cancels the Palestine conference, it is simultaneously supporting an overarching pro-Israel program called "Israel Inspires", organized by the likes of AIPAC and Hillel International along with others, which will be held at Rutgers to "neutralize the Palestinian movement". According to the official website of "Israel Inspires" (www.israelinspires.org), the president of Rutgers University, Dr. Richard L. McCormick, "pledged his support for Israel Inspires, and asked to be personally involved in Hillel's positive pro-active initiative." In fact, President McCormick will appear tonight as a keynote at a pro-Israel event hosted by Zionists groups at Rutgers University. Featured participants at the "Israel Inspires" program during the weekend of October 10-12 will include the arch-Zionist Richard Perle and former CIA Director, James Woolsey. They will join the president of the right-wing Hudson Institute, Herbert London, and the publisher & CEO of the Jerusalem Post, Tom Rose. On September 18, 2003, Israeli Minister, Natan Sharansky, will be featured as the opening speaker of the anti-Palestinian year-long program. Palestine solidarity students and activists have the same right to assemble and hold a conference. They have the right to demand that their university is not invested in another Apartheid system, and that they are not party to the suppression of the Palestinian people. They have the right to express their views and be heard without intimidation and constant harassments."