Excellent roundtable talk on Israeli-Arab media coverage (Streaming Audio)

Fascinating roundtable discussion about (mainly) US media coverage of the mideast conflict streamed over at KRLA, LA:

On a Special Edition of Newsroom Confidential, a roundtable of journalists, PR experts, authors and diplomats discuss the current Middle East crisis and how the media are covering it.

Panelists:

• Lenny Ben-David, former Deputy Chief of Mission for the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C.
• Naomi Ragen, author and columnist, based in Israel
• Nonie Darwish, author and speaker, Arabs for Israel
• Gary P. Ratner, Executive Director, Western Region of the American Jewish Congress
• Simon Plosker, Senior Editor, Honest Reporting.com
• Natalia Derevyanny, PR Expert, Chicago
  
  (Hat tip: Naomi Ragen)
  

JerusalemOnline news update: 08:00, Aug. 6 (Video - Channel 2 TV)

• IDF Sgt. Or Shachar killed by Hezbollah fire a day before his 21st birthday
• Israeli commandoes kill ten Hizbullah terrorists and destroy long-range missile launcher in Tyre
• Agreement between US and France on cease-fire agreement

Click on image for latest Israel
Channel 2 TV video news summary

This Just In: M.E. WAR LOOMS AS FIGHTING BREAKS OUT BETWEEN CNN & FOX

Anderson Cooper, Geraldo in Border Skirmish

Fears of a wider war in the Middle East were realized today as fighting broke out between CNN and Fox in southern Lebanon...

Read it all.

Snug Harbor & Jerusalem: Picture of the Week

Sent in by reader S.L.

Starting a new feature: Readers photo of the week.

Send 'em in - nothing too large - with a clever comment - interesting, funny, sad, biting, etc... and we'll post 'em here.

(BTW to spammers, trolls, lurkers and similar slime: My virusware is comprehensive, up-to-date - and I return favors...)

New blogger in the north: My sirens and hers

Got this note in over the weekend from Esther at "My Sabra Prickles:"

I'm a blogger from Shlomi (north of Naharia). I listening to your audiocast as the sirens wail on my computer I can also hear sirens wailing outside as my children sit in our security room.

I don't need to hear what it is really like up here but so many people do.

She has some great posts of life with family under fire. Go take a look. Esther - stay safe, and I hope and pray that your husband returns home safe and sound from reserve duty in Lebanon.

'I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna' take it anymore!'

Noah Pollak has a thoughtful take on what National Review Online is touting as Hezbollah's "chillingly effective media strategy."

First thing it made me think of was that classic of filmaking, "Network," with Peter Finch as slowly unhinging network anchorman Howard Beale going apoplectic on-air:

It’s not clear which of my experiences last week was more educational: Sitting on a hilltop on Israel's northern border, watching Bint Jbiel getting pummeled by artillery, bombs, and missiles — or meeting the Western television reporters who were covering the war, and seeing firsthand how they made theater out of bloodshed.

NBC’s Ann Curry was on the scene. She was taken to a meadow from which a half-dozen 155mm artillery pieces were pounding away at Hezbollah. Curry approached a resting crew of artillery reservists, put a camera and microphone in the face of one pony-tailed young man, and asked (I quote from memory): “How does it make you feel to be firing artillery into Lebanon that is killing innocent civilians?” Curry, in her other interviews for NBC, has been similarly incredulous at the existence of civilian casualties in war.

Read it all.

Israel: Faith under fire in Nahariya (VIDEO)

Rabbi Yisroel Butman, Nahariya, Israel taking about faith and springing back after a Katyusha rocket strike from Hizbullah in Lebanon on an apartment (background) next to his synagogue.

For more on Chabad activities helping out the homefront in Israel, go here.

Liveblogging a Katyusha attack (UPDATED - AUDIO, VIDEO)

Nahariya resident Nissim Samsoni, 56, in front of his
Katyusha-scarred apartment. (Photo: Dave Bender)

I filed this report from a bomb shelter in Israel's coastal town of Nahariya, near Lebanon on Wednesday afternoon.

After visiting the home of a couple whose apartment next door had been damaged in a previous Katyusha rocket strike, I then interviewed a local Chabad rabbi who is deeply involved in aiding all the community's beleagured residents with food, entertainment and spiritual relief.

Rabbi Yisroel Butman, Nahariya

Then the Katyusha air-raid siren began to wail...

Young Nahariya residents in neighborhood bomb
shelter for nearly four weeks. (Photo: Dave Bender)

(Greetings, lizardoids...)

Olmert's other speech

Ma'ariv's Ben Caspit writes the speech that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert should have written:

Ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world. I, the Prime Minister of
Israel, am speaking to you from Jerusalem in the face of the terrible pictures from Kfar Kana. Any human heart, wherever it is, must sicken and recoil at the sight of such pictures. There are no words of comfort that can mitigate the enormity of this tragedy. Still, I am looking you straight in the eye and telling you that the State of Israel will continue its military campaign in Lebanon.

The Israel Defense Forces will continue to attack targets from which missiles and Katyusha rockets are fired at hospitals, old age homes and kindergartens in Israel. I have instructed the security forces and the IDF to continue to hunt for the Katyusha stockpiles and launch sites from which these savages are bombarding the State of Israel.

Today I am serving as the voice of six million bombarded Israeli citizens who serve as the voice of six million murdered Jews who were melted down to dust and ashes by savages in Europe. In both cases, those responsible for these evil acts were, and are, barbarians devoid of all humanity, who set themselves one simple goal: to wipe the Jewish race off the face of the earth, as Adolph Hitler said, or to wipe the State of Israel off the map, as Mahmoud Ahmedinjad proclaims. And you - just as you did not take those words seriously then, you are
ignoring them again now.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world, will not happen again.

Never again will we wait for bombs that never came to hit the gas chambers. Never again will we wait for salvation that never arrives. Now we have our own air force. The Jewish people are now capable of standing up to those who seek their destruction - those people will no longer be able to hide behind women and children. They will no longer be able to evade their responsibility.

Must reading.

(Hat tip: An Unsealed Room)

Greetings from the bombarded north!

Ma'alot: Residents and volunteers inspect home, demolished in
Katyusha attack, Wednesday, Aug. 3. (Photo: Dave Bender)

Sorry for being away a few days: I am posting this from Rosh Pina, near Tzfat along the northern border with Lebanon, as Katyusha and IDF artillery exchange fire nonstop - the sounds of both thudding nearby. I will post as many video and audio reports, and photos as possible.

I visited residents and rabbinic leaders in Nahariya, Ma'alot, Rosh Pina, and IDF forward artillery positions in the last two days - holding one interview under fire. Hizbullah lobbed close to 200 rockets into Israel in the last 48 hours, killing one Israeli-American immigrant and wounding dozens of others.


Remnants of Katyusha rocket which hit Ma'alot earlier in the week.
Orange sticker says, "Caution. Flammable material," written in Hebrew,
indicating that the propellant was either smuggled into Lebanon
from Israel or was taken from IDF stocks. (Photo: Dave Bender)

Rockets kept falling throughout the night and into this morning.

Editing these reports down now. Please check back here later today and tonight, (depending on Internet connectivity, and how long I hold out during the fast) to see and hear the results.