Jewish Life Digital Edition January 2014 | Page 11

A YEAR OF BIASED REPORTING:
WHY THE NEW YORK TIMES WON

FRANCE MULLS BAN ON DIEUDONNÉ
AFTER ANELKA’S NAZI-STYLE SALUTE

When HonestReporting readers were asked to choose
the “winner” of the 2013 Dishonest Reporting Award, the
prevailing displeasure was best summed up in a one-line
email: “The NY Times bludgeoned Israel all year.” Much of
the resentment focused on the paper’s op-ed section. Its
editorial board also added a known anti-Israel conspiracy
theorist to its ranks – at the same time as glorifying stonethrowers and challenging Israel’s right to exist. None of the
2013 runners-up, such as the BBC, CNN, and Haaretz, came
close to matching the tensions the Times stoked. The Times
is America’s most influential newspaper, with more than 1.8
million subscribers, 4.7 million followers on Facebook, and
another 10.4 million on Twitter. The New York Times is the
second most-visited news site in the world.

French interior minister Manuel Valls
Nicolas
is considering banning comedian
Anelka
Dieudonné’s shows in January over
concerns for public safety. The announcement came following an English Premier League football match in
December at which footballer Nicolas
Anelka, friend of Dieudonné, gave a
Nazi-style salute, said to have been
popularised by Dieudonné. He is currently being investigated by the Football Association. Dieudonné is known
to have performed the “quenelle”, a
downward version of the Nazi salute, as part of his stand-up routine.
He has been fined on a number of occasions for inciting racial hatred
and hate speech, and last month was ordered to pay £28 000 for
mocking the Holocaust in a song. Dieudonné claims the salute is antiestablishment and denies that his material is racist or anti-Semitic. But
Valls, who is keen to ban his performances, said: “Freedom of expression is sacred but racism and anti-Semitism are crimes.” Valls told the
daily French newspaper, Le Parisien, that the last straw had been when
Dieudonné attacked Jewish journalist Patrick Cohen. He said, “When
I hear Patrick Cohen speaking, I say to myself, you see the gas chambers… too bad [they no longer exist].” Dieudonné’s lawyer Jacques
Verdier said it would be impossible to ban his shows, and authorities
have admitted that even if a physical ban were in place, he could still
perform via the Internet. Last month, the American basketball star,
Tony Parker, gave the same Nazi-like salute on a French TV show.

PHOTOGRAPH: WWW.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

SNOWDEN DECLARES UK INTELLIGENCE
SPIED ON OLMERT, BARAK
American ‘whistle-blower’ Edward
Snowden has made recent claims that
former Israeli prime minister Ehud
Olmert and former defence minister
Ehud Barak were spied on by British and
US intelligence agencies. Documents
Ehud Barak
released by Snowden declare that the
Israeli politicians were two in a list of over 1 000 state officials
who were kept under surveillance between 2008 and 2009.
It is claimed that US and UK agencies had been evaluating an
email address called “Israeli prime minister”. Olmert confirmed
to the New York Times that he had used that email address, but
called it an “unimpressive target”. He also said prime minister
Benjamin Netanyahu had used the same email address when
he took office. The surveillance is also said to have included the
use of Israeli drones and at least two Israeli embassies.

Ehud Olmert and former US president George W Bush

EU ‘WASTED MILLIONS’ IN GAZA
A recent auditing report has raised serious question marks over EU aid
money worth hundreds of millions of euros and donated