The next time you see an Arab woman arrested...

... you'll know why.

HONEST REPORTING: Note to New York Slimes: Throwing Stones is an Act of Violence

Last week’s return of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians has had little impact on the simmering Palestinian violence in the West Bank – or the efforts of some in the media to glorify the violence.

New York Times reporter Jodi Rudoren is thelatest apologist to present Palestinian stone throwers as noble defenders of their land and victims of Israeli oppression rather than as violent criminals:

Here in Beit Ommar, a village of 17,000 between Bethlehem and Hebron that is surrounded by Jewish settlements, rock throwing is a rite of passage and an honored act of defiance.The futility of stones bouncing off armored vehicles matters little: confrontation is what counts.

Rudoren focuses much of the story on a 17-year old Palestinian youth who has been arrested four times “for throwing stones at Israeli soldiers and settlers” – not civilians but settlers. Apparently do not merit the standard rights of civilians in Rudoren’s worldview simply because of where they choose to live. At the same time, Rudoren goes to great lengths to build sympathy for the Palestinian youth and his family, noting how his mother made sure to give him a long sleeve shirt for his stay in prison because “they both knew it would be cold in the interrogation room.”

The “settlers” don’t receive nearly the same level of empathy, even when they are the victims of the rocks being thrown. Menuha Shvat, the only Gush Etzion resident quoted in the story, is also the only one who discusses how dangerous rock throwing can be.

“It’s crazy: I’m going to get pizza, and I’m driving through a war zone,” said Ms. Shvat, who knew a man and his 1-year-old son who died when their car flipped in 2011 after being pelted with stones on Road 60. “It’s a game that can kill.”

Although we learn about the cold of the interrogation room and other details of the lives of the Palestinians in the story, Rudoren does not even bother to name the Israeli victims she mentions. In fact, the man’s name is Asher Palmer, and his one-year old son is Yonatan. And they didn’t simply die. They were killed, and the Palestinians who threw the rocks were convicted of murder.

The Palestinians Rudoren interviews never question the moral aspect of throwing stones, and neither does Rudoren. She has a matter-of-fact explanation for why they do it:

They throw because there is little else to do in Beit Ommar — no pool or cinema, no music lessons after school, no part-time jobs other than peddling produce along the road. They do it because their brothers and fathers did.

So long as the victims continue to be “soldiers and settlers,” it might not make much difference to Rudoren.

Rudoren’s piece follows on the heels of an article by Amira Hass in Haaretz in April that defended Palestinian stone throwing. That piece generated heated controversy when it came out. It remains to be seen if Rudoren’s piece gets the same reaction.

To get a sense of what Palestinian stone throwing in Beit Ommar looks like, watch the video below. It was originally posted to YouTube in February, 2012. 

To her credit, Rudoren attempts to present the values of the local Palestinians in their own terms. But the moral ambiguity that comes across in the article carries a price. By allowing the glorification of violence to go unchallenged, the article becomes yet another piece that fails to hold the Palestinians to any form of accountability.

Send your considered comments to the New York Times – letters@nytimes.com – Remember that letters for publication should be no longer than 150 words and must include the writer’s address and phone numbers.

Video: Anti-Jewish Riots in Jerusalem Arab mob smashes windshields of cars as frantic Jews make getaway. This is Jerusalem, 2013.

A video uploaded Wednesday showsa frenzied Arab mob targeting cars driven by Jews as they pass near Jerusalem's Damascus (Shechem) Gate.

The video was uploaded to the “Free Qudss” account on YouTube, and to a group by a similar name on Facebook.

The text at the start of the video reads: "Destroying the settlers cars and arrests", and claims to have been taken near Damascus Gate.

The account's operators and the videographers claim the events are from Tuesday evening, and that the identities of the attackers had been blurred out to protect them from being identified.

Scenes of mayhem like these are becoming increasingly frequent in Jerusalem and other parts of Israel.

Just this morning, Jewish residents of the Abu Tor neighbourhood woke up to find the tires of their cars slashed in an apparent attack by Arab extremists.

Some parts of Jerusalem have become virtually no-go areas for Jewish residents. The Mount of Olives for example, site of an ancient Jewish cemetery, has become a danger zone, with Jews afraid to approach their ancestors' graves.

This latest video comes less than a day after a Jewish man was stabbed in the same area of Jerusalem.

This widespread grassroots terror against Jews has gone mostly unreported elsewhere in the media, and is often reported exclusively on Arutz Sheva.

JEWISH PRESS: The IDF’s “Spontaneous” Stone Throwing Problem

Rocks Can Kill The New York Times’ misnomer of “non-violent” Palestinian rock-throwers.

The great advocate of non-violent resistance, Mahatma Gandhi, never threw rocks.

Martin Luther King Jr. never threw rocks.

But according to the New York Times, Palestinians who throw rocks are following the “path of unarmed resistance.”

For its March 17 cover story (“Is This Where the Third Intifada Will Start?”), theTimes’ Sunday magazine profiled the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh. But not until over 1,000 words into the story does reporter Ben Ehrenreich mention that the “unarmed” resisters routinely throw stones at Israelis. One of the Palestinians quoted explains that “I want to help my country and my village… I can just throw stones.” Another says, “We see stones as our message.”

When it comes to whitewashingPalestinian violence, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

In the West Bank town of Bilin, where Palestinian rioters regularly hurl rocks, Molotov cocktails and burning tires, 170 Israeli soldiers were injured during one 18-month period. So how did the Christian Science Monitor describe this violence? “Peaceful Palestinian Resistance is Paying Off” (February 11, 2010). The Los Angeles Times – under the front-page headline, “Palestinians Who See Nonviolence as Their Weapon” – described how Palestinian weapons consist of innocuous “bullhorn, banners, and a fierce belief” in “peaceful protest” (November 4, 2009). Incredibly, the Times suggests that 170 Israelis were injured after being overwhelmed by bullhorns and banners.

This same media mentality can spin even the most violent Palestinian groupsas passive and calm. The Globe and Mail, Canada’s newspaper of record, bought into the false notion that Hamas – best known for perfecting the art of bus bombings, rocket fire and restaurant explosions – has evolved into “ethical,” “truthful,” "pragmatic” peaceniks who advocate “non-violent resistance.” (Patrick Martin, July 7, 2009; Orly Halpern, February 26, 2008)

As shards of glass hit the driver’s eyes, the bus veered off the road.

If anyone had any doubt about whether rock-throwing was perhaps “peaceful,” the events of March 14, 2013 have proved otherwise. Rock-throwing Palestinians hit an Israeli bus, sending shards of glass into the driver’s eyes and causing the bus to go off the road.

As a truck swerved to avoid the bus, a car crashed and became trapped under the truck, resulting in serious injuries to a mother and her three children. One of them, 2-year-old daughter, Adele, is in life-threatening condition.

On a single evening last week, seven people were injured in 10 different rock-throwing attacks. One 10-month-old baby was severely injured by glass fragments to the face.

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Over the years, dozens of Israeli civilians have been murdered and maimed by this "innocent act of "resistance" that should be more accurately defined as “low-tech terror.”

Tragically, the more the media presents Palestinian violence as peaceful, the more Israel is stripped of its license to fight against them – endangering the very foundation of Israel’s security.

This leaves just one question: Why does the media insist on covering all this up?

The New York Times calls for a third intifada

Three days before President Obama's trip to Israel, the New York Times writes a lengthy magazine piece which is so totally biased as to effectively call for a third intifada. Here are some small examples.

“We see our stones as our message,” Bassem explained. The message they carried, he said, was “We don’t accept you.” While Bassem spoke admiringly of Mahatma Gandhi, he didn’t worry over whether stone-throwing counted as violence. The question annoyed him: Israel uses far greater and more lethal force on a regular basis, he pointed out, without being asked to clarify its attitude toward violence. If the loincloth functioned as the sign of Gandhi’s resistance, of India’s nakedness in front of British colonial might, Bassem said, “Our sign is the stone.” The weekly clashes with the I.D.F. were hence in part symbolic. The stones were not just flinty yellow rocks, but symbols of defiance, of a refusal to submit to occupation, regardless of the odds. The army’s weapons bore messages of their own: of economic and technological power, of international support. More than one resident of Nabi Saleh reminded me that the tear gas used there is made by a company based in Pennsylvania.

Throwing stones is definitely not Gandhi-like non-violence. 

“This is the worst time for us,” Bassem confided to me last summer. He meant not just that the villagers have less to show for their sacrifices each week, but that things felt grim outside the village too. Everyone I spoke with who was old enough to remember agreed that conditions for Palestinians are far worse now than they were before the first intifada. The checkpoints, the raids, the permit system, add up to more daily humiliation than Palestinians have ever faced. The number of Israeli settlers living in the West Bank has more than tripled since the Oslo Accords. Assaults on Palestinians by settlers are so common that they rarely made the news. The resistance, though, remained limited to a few scattered villages like Nabi Saleh and a small urban youth movement.

Really? Where are all the victims? Where are all the dead bodies? Where are all the funerals? Where are all the 'settlers' bragging about how many 'Palestinians' they have killed?

I sat down one afternoon in Ramallah with Samir Shehadeh, a former literature professor from Nabi Saleh who was one of the intellectual architects of the first intifada and whom I met several times at Bassem’s house. I reminded him of the car accident that ignited the first uprising and asked what kind of spark it would take to mobilize Palestinians to fight again. “The situation is 1,000 times worse,” he said. “There are thousands of possible sparks,” and still nothing has happened. 

It's like the reporters wants it to happen.  He wants another violent intifada in which hundreds will be killed, God forbid. And look what he's complaining about: He's complaining that many 'Palestinians' have hope of a normal life:

Worse than any corruption, though, was the apparent normalcy. Settlements are visible on the neighboring hilltops, but there are no checkpoints inside Ramallah. The I.D.F. only occasionally enters the city, and usually only at night. Few Palestinians still work inside Israel, and not many can scrape a living from the fields. For the thousands of waiters, clerks, engineers, warehouse workers, mechanics and bureaucrats who spend their days in the city and return to their villages every evening, Ramallah — which has a full-time population of less than 100,000 — holds out the possibility of forgetting the occupation and pursuing a career, saving up for a car, sending the children to college.

...

Bassem saw no easy way to break the torpor and ignite a more widespread popular resistance. “They have the power,” he said of the P.A., “more than the Israelis, to stop us.” The Palestinian Authority employs 160,000 Palestinians, which means it controls the livelihoods of about a quarter of West Bank households. One night I asked Bassem and Bilal, who works for the Ministry of Public Health, how many people in Nabi Saleh depend on P.A. salaries. It took them a few minutes to add up the names. “Let’s say two-thirds of the village,” Bilal concluded. 

This one was so biased, even the Left wing Haaretz couldn't take it.  

The article, which some may interpret as encouraging a third intifada, is decidedly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and hostile both to the IDF as well as to the Palestinian “Ramallah bubble”, which, the author maintains, serves as an inhibitor to the “popular struggle” of Palestinian villagers.

The article is likely to elicit sharp condemnation from Israeli and Jewish critics who view the New York Times as harboring anti-Israeli sentiments. The timing of the article, its prominent placement, its provocative headline and its undeniable one-sidedness will all serve as fodder for the critics, but their main line of attack may be the “track record” of Ehrenreich himself.

 However the article is attacked, it ought to be attacked. There is no excuse for this kind of bias in the media.

Peace loving Arabs stoning and lynching an Israeli

A 'Palestinian' hero

This picture of a 'Palestinian' about to throw a rock at a helpless Israeli motorist near Hebron, was published in a Gaza newspaper on Thursday. Typical comments were "good job," "this is a successful youth" and similar comments. What can be said about a 'people' that lives for nothing but bloodlust and for whom a 'youth' like this is a hero?

Washington's 'Palestinian' problem

Washington DC seems to have its very own 'Palestinian' problem.

When the 'Palestinians' throw rocks at buses and cars in Israel, that's deemed to be 'non-violent protest' by the United States, but also by Israel.

Somehow, when the  rocks are thrown at American buses and cars, they are suddenly 'dangerous' and against the law.

Well, yes, they are dangerous and they are against the law in Israel too. 

Metro says that Metrobuses traveling in parts of Southeast Washington are being pelted with rocks. As part of a campaign to discourage this, police are distributing a flier reminding people not to throw rocks at buses or cars.

Don't throw rocks flier.

The Metro Transit Police and Metropolitan Police Department have been distributing the flier, which features a reminder that throwing rocks at vehicles is a crime. It also includes 911 as well as numbers for D.C. police (202-727-9099) and the transit police (202-962-2121, which ridersmay or may not recognize as the number repeated in system-wide announcements). 
The transit agency took the rock attacks seriously enough to consider cutting nighttime service on the W6 and W8 routes. Metro decided last month not to discontinue the service.

So why the double standard folks? In Washington, it's a $500 fine up to ten years in jail. In Israel, it's zero up to sitting in a luxurious facility until  the next time 'Palestinian' terrorists are released. Are rocks just not dangerous in Israel?

Continuing centuries of sport throwing stones at Jews defending themselves

IDF Soldiers Compelled to Run & Hide Amid Horrific Standard Operating

The following video, embarrassing as it is, clearly shows what IDF soldiers are up against in the face of standard operating orders that do not permit the use of force when attacked by a mob pelting them with stones. The soldiers are compelled to flee and take cover, for using force will lead to charges and imprisonment as has been seen in many cases – aware that the cameras are always on standby waiting to document the brutal actions of Israeli soldiers against unarmed PA (Palestinian Authority) civilians.

Some feel that the orders that compel actions such as those viewed by the soldiers in the video are what lead to Arab uprisings, i.e. intifada, as security officials in Israel are once again warning of renewed widespread Arab attacks and terrorism throughout Yehuda and Shomron. The critics feels that permitting the soldiers to halt the rock attacks will send a clear message of zero tolerance instead of the current reality, which encourages stepped up violence and attacks against IDF soldiers and Israeli civilians.

Second Temple Mount Rock Attack

Arab youths Sunday morning hurled stones at Jewish worshipers who ascended the Temple Mount. The attack came just two days after Friday afternoon's stone throwing incident which forced the Israel Police to storm Judaism's holiest site.

Yoel Keren, a Land of Israel activist and regular visitor on the Temple Mount, told Israel National News that the attack came during his weekly ascent.

"It was the morning aliyah, my regular Sunday time, around 7:45," Keren related. "We went up... myself, attorney Baruch Ben Yosef, and four female [Jewish] worshipers."

Keren said the group was accompanied by a member of the Israel Police and a Waqf official onto the edge of the platform of the Al Aqsa mosque.

"We were on the northern end of the platform of the mosque," Keren explained. "Its closer [to the forbidden zone of the Mount] than most groups go, but still outside the halachic Temple Mount according to [Jewish sages] Radbaz, Rambam, Rav Tzvi Rogen... and most of the major archeologists," Keren explained.

"That's when I heard the rocks ricocheting near us and looked up to see three Arab kids throwing stones at us... kids from the school up there. They were about 20 meters away. I turned and asked Baruch if he saw it... and he had a rock at his feet."

Keren said the Israel Police officer present did nothing when the rocks and fleeing Muslim youths were pointed out to him and told the group to "keep going."

"I asked the officer if he saw what happened and he said he didn't know what I was talking about," Keren related. "When I pointed at the rocks and the kids, who were just kind of sauntering off, not sure what the cop would do, he just asked if we'd been hit [by the stones]. When we told him 'no' he just told us to 'keep going.' It probably woundn't have been a big deal if I was hit, but three of the ladies were elderly. He didn't do anything."

Israel police spokesman Mickey Rosenthal said in every incident, whether on the Temple Mount or elsewhere, the safety of the public is an officer's first priority.

"All incidents on the Temple Mount are investigated," Rosenthal told Israel National News. "Whether then and there, or using other means later, is something that has to be assessed by the officers on the scene, but our first concern in any incident anywhere is the safety of the public."

"A lone officer with a group on the Mount has to put the group's safety ahead of making arrests. We have CCTV cameras on the Temple Mount that we can and will review just like we did with Friday's incident. We made several new arrests over the weekend in that incident and more are coming. This incident will be investigated, too," Rosenthal promised.

Editor's Note: there are differing opinions on the permissability of ascending the Temple Mount among halachic decisors.

Israeli photographer receives int'l award for Silwan photo

A 23-year-old Israeli photographer was honored in an international photography competition for the “spot news” photo of the year, for his picture of the incident in east Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood last fall in which Elad head David Be’eri rammed into two Arab youths throwing rocks at his car.

The dramatic photo of a boy being thrown onto the hood of Be’eri’s car earned Ilia Yefimovich, a photographer for the Russian News Agency Itar-Tass, an award of excellence. The final winners of the Pictures of the Year International competition will be announced on February 23.

Yefimovich said he wasn’t surprised that his photo was cited, because “it so perfectly captured the moment” in an otherwise “lame” year of news in Israel.

The photo was greeted with suspicion around the world, with many accusing Yefimovich and the other photographers of “setting up” the situation, and even encouraging the youths to throw rocks so they would have something to photograph.

“I went to Silwan every week for the past eight months, every single Friday,” he told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

“So it’s not like, ‘Whoa, what were the journalists doing there?’ They send us to these places because things happen here.

“I pass there lots of times, and kids throw stones not because photographers are coming to shoot them, they do it because they want to do it.

“You can see them not just on Friday, but on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, morning, noon, and night.”

Yefimovich added that rocks were thrown at his own car on the way to Silwan that day, without any photographers present.

The intersection where he photographed the accident is less than 100 meters from a protest tent in the Al-Bustan area, where Friday prayers are held, and which often serves as a springboard for Friday violence.

On that particular day, October 8, Silwan residents were holding a funeral for the mother- in-law of Samr Sirkan, a Silwan man who was killed by a private security guard two weeks earlier. Sirkan’s mother-inlaw was hospitalized, possibly from tear gas inhalation or shock from a stun grenade, during the ensuing riots, and had died. Yefimovich said he was expecting riots or other violence during or after the funeral, which was held on the Mount of Olives.

He was joined by a few other photographers, including a videographer for Al-Jazeera who taped the entire incident. Most photographers stay away from Silwan on Fridays, Yefimovich said.

“[Rock throwing] is something that happens every week, and it’s dangerous, so why put yourself in danger if it’s not a picture?” he said. “But I go anyway, because I don’t know if it’s going to be big.”

When he photographed the incident, he had no idea who was driving the car. He sent the photos off to his editor and proceeded to the funeral for Sirkan’s mother-in-law, which ended up being a non-story with only a dozen people in attendance.

“In my opinion and also others’ opinions, this picture is working out much better for Be’eri than for the kids,” Yefimovich said. “The kid was arrested and he’s in jail. The guy who ran him over has no fine.”

Yefimovich, 23, is in his last semester of a bachelor’s degree in video and photography in Tel Aviv. He came to Israel with his family from Moscow when he was 13. In addition to the Russian news agency, Yefimovich also sells his photos to AFP. AFP nominated him for the Picture of the Year award.

Yefimovich had one word of advice for young photographers interested in photojournalism: Don’t come to Israel.

“Israel is a really difficult place to work, it’s really small and there aren’t any stories that nobody covers,” he said. “Everything you think about, somebody already did it. It’s a hard place to work, because it’s really small and there’s a lot of photographers.

Every event you go to, you find a lot of photographers.

“Everyone’s pushing and shouting and everyone is on top of everyone else. Then you have them in the frame and they get mad at you.”

Jewish couple almost lynched Here's another case of an attack on Jews in Jerusalem that was eagerly photographed by reporters who just happened to know ahead of time the location of the attack.

Settlements Aren't Holding Up Peace

Santa Clause Visits Biyalin... Arabs Throw Rocks at IDF Soldiers