Google Earth: (virtually) 'Wiping Israel off the map'

From The Jerusalem Center For Public Affairs:

"Virtual Israel, as represented by Google Earth, is littered with orange dots, many of which claim to represent "Palestinian localities evacuated and destroyed after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war." Thus, Israel is depicted as a state born out of colonial conquest rather than the return of a people from exile. Each dot links to the "Palestine Remembered" site, where further information advancing this narrative can be obtained.

"Many of the claims staked out in Google Earth present misinformation, and sites known to be ruins in 1946 are claimed to be villages destroyed in 1948. Arab villages which still exist today are listed as sites of destruction. The Google Earth initiative is not only creating a virtual Palestine, it is creating a falsification of history."

Read the rest.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is, no doubt, chortling.

While this isn't a new story (I blogged about almost two years ago), it's an important one, and this well-footnoted report certainly backs up my contentions from then:

"So much of of what passes for "successful" efforts to combat anti-Israel reportage, propaganda, etc always seems to overlook "viral," bottom-up, grassroots activism, with [pro-Israel] proponents preferring top-down "dreiing with the machers," and, all too often coming out looking overwrought, and counterproductive.

"Along with ubiquitous online tools like Wikipedia, Google Earth is a great example of how skewed coverage of Israel begins, from a nominally neutral source, that is then picked up by the ill-informed as "fact," and then spread at the speed of "enter."

As I wrote in a related (satiric) post back then:

This Just In: Israel Dismantles; World's Problems End (UPDATE: Video)

Related posts are here, and here.

Gilad Shalit: A Bronx Story

From Ynetnews:

Students at P.S. 22 in the Bronx, NY, take turns reading aloud a story written by IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, kidnapped by Hamas gunmen from an outpost facing the Gaza Strip. The event was part of an initiative by Israel's NY Consulate to mark the second anniversary of his captivity.

Click on the image above to read a personal letter from Aviva and Noam, the parents of captive IDF soldier, Gilad Shalit.

Click here to learn more about the events surrounding his abduction, and that of IDF soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser on the Israeli side of the Lebanese border.
Click here for downloadable versions of the story,
"When The Shark and the Fish First Met"

Jerusalem: ghosts of the Jaffa Gate

Night at the Jaffa Gate entrance to Jerusalem's Old City. (Dave Bender)

More (mostly) Israel photos are here.

'Israel As The Battered Woman'

(Graphic courtesy of Chabad)

I just came across this prescient article below, penned by American-born therapist Dr. Miriam Adahan, not long after the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the then nascent Palestinian Authority. Around the same period, I worked as a producer and program host at a "micro-broadcast" radio station in Jerusalem, called "RadioWest."

One evening as I was working the control board during the hourly newscast, Dr. Adahan was sitting in the studio alongside the news reader, waiting to begin her call-in show. As I watched the reader tersely recite a day's litany of terrorism and other mayhem, Adahan hid her eyes in her hands, and rocked back and forth in her seat as in grieved shock and mourning. How true her words ring today:

"In years to come, historians will be shocked at how Israeli leaders happily encouraged a gang of Arab murderers to create a country within our tiny borders -- a country which never existed before -- and gave them arms knowing that those arms could be used to kill and maim us, and then continued to try to appease the murderers. Why are we fulfilling Hitler's dream? Why did we ignore Arafat's rhetoric calling for our destruction, ignore the fact that they were flooding their cities with arms, and ignore the warnings that they are preparing for all-out war?"

(...)Want to understand what happened here in Israel? Listen to the battered woman:

1. "It takes two to make a fight. So I must deserve this abuse -- after all, I'm not perfect either. I left dishes in the sink, was talking on the phone when he came home and didn't have dinner ready on time. Sometimes, I was a little confused after he beat me up and didn't function so well. These sins of mine are so enormous that whatever he does is justified. I should have done better, should have known, should have anticipated...." (Israel: "As penance for not being perfect, we must allow them to continue murdering us.")

2. "If he's so angry, it means that I'm to blame. People don't get angry about nothing. It must be that I haven't done enough to please him. If I just try harder, I'm sure I'll eventually win his love." (Israel: "We must keep making more concessions. We're the more enlightened country, so we have to keep trying harder to get them to become more democratic, more humane, more civilized.")

3. "No matter how badly he acts at times, I truly believe that he doesn't really mean to hurt me and that he really does love me underneath it all. He just has to act like this to prove his masculinity. It doesn't really mean anything, because underneath it all, there's a good man." (Israel: "No matter how many of us he kills, Arafat is our partner. The fact that he keeps wanting to talk is proof of his love, isn't it? Otherwise, why would he take the time to talk to us?")

4. "I'm proud of myself for being loyal and determined! I stand by my man through thick and thin. You don't leave during the bad times. When you're willing to forgive after getting beaten up, that's when you prove how strong your love is." (Israel: "We take pride in the fact that we are the ones who care more about peace, and keep negotiating even when we're under attack. Hey world! Look at how much we're willing to suffer and not fight back! Now will you love the Jews?")

Read the rest, and weep.

Iranian prez shilling for Israeli cable TV !

Brilliant:



From Haaretz:

"My brothers," says the mock Iranian president in a speech broadcast through loudspeakers across the country, "the uranium is in our hands and after Monday it will be goodbye to Israel."

Unexpectedly, the Iranian leader's supporters - dressed in Shiite religious garb - take exception to the speech, dismayed at the prospect of missing their favorite Israeli television series.

"What are you talking about?" asks one of his followers. "It's the last episode of Danny Hollywood on Monday."

The declaration of Iranian president's intent to destroy Israel is met with riots and the police are deployed to control protests which suddenly take the form of a big budget musical.

The commercial, produced by advertising company McCann Erickson, is entirely a parody of "Kazablan," a hit Israeli musical of the 1960s:

From IMDB:

"An adaptation of a popular Israeli stage musical. Kazablan is an army veteran turned gang leader in the Israeli port of Jaffa who masks his feelings of bitterness with a lot of bravado."