The Aftonbladet non-story

Question:
When is organ trafficking involving Palestinian victims not a headline-grabbing story?

Answer 1:
When Swedish extreme-Left tabloid Aftonbladet realizes that the despicable practice cannot be blamed on Jews, Israelis, Zionists or democrats.

Answer 2:
When Swedish extreme-Left tabloid Aftonbladet realizes that the despicable practice is in fact taking place among Muslims in Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza and Egypt.

The Aftonbladet Effect:
Total clampdown. The story does not exist.

Not in the totalitarian media empire run by Aftonbladet, Sweden’s biggest-circulation daily and largest stakeholder in TT, the Swedish news agency that dedicates itself to demonisation of the Jewish state while maintaining absolute silence on human rights abuses in such beacons of democracy and respectful coexistence as Sudan, Syria, Iran, the Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, the Fatah-ruled West Bank, Jordan, Pakistan, Afghanistan.

Is there a pattern in the above shortlist?

Scarcely surprisingly, Aftonbladet declined to publish a story about a massive organ-trafficking industry that continues to this day.

That’s because it discovered no Jews were involved. All the alleged perpetrators are Muslims. The victims are all Palestinian Arabs, exactly as in the original story published by Aftonbladet alleging systematic Israeli abuse (later retracted). All the other parameters are similar. It’s only the religion and ethnicity of the alleged perpetrators that are different.

Is a pattern beginning to emerge?

Immaterial really, since the story never made it into Aftonbladet.

CAMERA has published its exchange of correspondence with Aftonbladet on the issue of organised Muslim organ trafficking. “Exchange” is perhaps not the best word to use – Aftonbladet never replied. It’s a non-issue for the newspaper since no Jews were alleged to have been involved.

Is the pattern any clearer now?

No honest, principled or loyal Swedes were hurt in the publication of this article, but a whole lot of rabid publicly funded anti-Semites, virulent anti-Israeli fanatics and blatant pro-Islamists have undoubtedly been significantly aggrieved by its tone and content.

NGO Monitor - Dishonest Reporter Award
The Israel Project (TIP) - background to the organ trafficking allegations
Barry Rubin - The Blood Libel that Won't Die
Tundra Tabloids - Swedish Tabloid Aftonbladet Rejects Story of Organ Harvesting from Amman, Jordan
Mere Rhetoric - The Chinese Organ Harvesting Story that Also Doesn't Exist
Ilya Meyer on Swedish funding of anti-Israel radicalism: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
Ilya Meyer on Swedish news agency TT and its anti-Israel project: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,

CNN confuses propaganda with journalism

The CNN programme “God’s Holy Warriors” with Christiane Amanpour remarkably tried to equate the few actions of a handful of extremist Jewish Israelis (some dating back 20 years, that’s how difficult it was to find anything negative to portray) with the constant, repeated, widespread and – in the wider Muslim world – largely universally acclaimed bloodthirsty actions of legions of Muslim warriors performing acts of unspeakable barbarity in the name of Islam – their claim, not this writer’s.

Witness the actions of Jihad al-Islami, Hizb a Tahir, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Republic of Iran, al Qaeda, Force 17, Fatah al Islam, the Taliban – the list is endless.

It is a journalistic travesty to equate the actions and policies of these bloodthirsty groups – supported both financially and logistically by Muslim nations and entities such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Palestinian Authority – with the handful of acts of terror perpetrated by individual Jews in Israel in their misguided attempt to defend their beliefs through violence.

Israeli society virtually universally condemns such actions.

Muslim society virtually universally applauds death and mayhem inflicted on infidels in the name of Islam.

Amanpour’s propagandistic piece totally ignored the truth. Large swathes of on-air time were devoted to how much some Muslim women appreciate being able to wear their veils and other traditional garments. Apparently no such angle was of interest when it came to portraying Jewish women – or Christians. If the programme was about God’s Warriors, why was it of interest to know there are Muslim women who enjoy wearing the burqa or hijab since they are so evidently not warriors of any sort? What was the purpose of such an irrelevant angle – was this not supposed to be a report on warriors? Why was it necessary to portray Muslims in this gentle way while failing to do so in the other two pieces?

Amanpour’s piece was more remarkable for what it didn’t put across than for what it did.

There’s nothing surprising in that, it is unfortunately what we have come to expect of her.
Christiane Amanpour is an articulate, well-educated and extremely skilled public relations officer. It’s just such a shame CNN confuses her brief with journalism.

The strategy of accumulated abuse is permissible - depending on who you choose as its hapless victim

To the programming editors at Sky News,

I wish to draw your attention to the following quote, as close to verbatim as I can manage:

“These proceedings can take anything up to a year or a year and a half, but in the meantime the damage will have been well and truly done.”

Mr al Bari, editor of Al Quds newspaper and a frequent guest on Sky News, made the above statement in the channel’s newspaper review just before 9 am on Wednesday, 23 April.

At the time, Mr al Bari was reflecting on allegations of financial impropriety that have been levelled at British Labour MP George Galloway. The point Mr al Bari was making was that even if the allegations were refuted in a court of law and ultimately proven to be totally unfounded, the accumulated damage caused by their constant repetition in the interim would be irreversible.

Mr al Bari does of course know what he is talking about – he is an incessant practitioner of this effective tactic. He employs it in a constant barrage of attacks against Israel. In my (admittedly incomplete) records of Mr al Bari’s appearances on Sky News, he has never to my knowledge ever – ever – spoken on TV without in one way or another abusing the opportunity by casting slurs on Israel, however tenuous the links between that country and the subject under current discussion.



This time, for instance, in a review of the press coverage of the as yet unproven allegations against Mr Galloway, Mr al Bari actually managed to shoot off at a tangent and mention – of all things – a mayor of Nablus on the West Bank who lost his legs in a bomb attack purportedly carried out by Israel about 25 years ago. Mr al Bari thereby did – yet again - exactly what he protests is unfair in the case of Mr Galloway – whom he reveres.

What is at issue here is not the substantive content of Mr al Bari’s allegation – he may well be entirely right or abysmally wrong in his claim. What is at issue is his constant barrage of attacks against Israel whenever he is privileged to appear on TV. Can he not be persuaded to focus at least nominally on the subject at hand? There is, surely, a time and a place for everything – including criticism of Israel, the PA, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, the Lebanon, Zimbabwe. Every occasion can surely not be hijacked to pursue a highly personal agenda bordering on a private vendetta?

For the sake of scientific repeatability, may I suggest that Mr al Bari be invited to comment on the Sky News weather forecast or your channel’s excellent traffic updates – his skill at weaving negative comments on Israel into such a neutral context would be put to the ultimate test.