http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/12 ... ish-state/
An Ambassador Admits There’s a Double-Standard for Israel. That’s When a Columnist Rips Him Apart for ‘Obsessive, Compulsive Need’ to Pick on the Jewish State.
Dec. 14, 2014 6:40am Sharona Schwartz
Supporters of Israel often complain that the Jewish State is held to a different standard than Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and neighboring Arab countries.
It’s a rare occurrence when a policymaker or media insider concedes they might have a point. So when a senior Danish diplomat admitted there is not only a double-standard for Israel but that Israelis should welcome it, his admission inflamed an Israeli columnist who proceeded to pillory the ambassador over Europe’s “obsessive, compulsive need” to pick on the Jewish State and what she called its patronizing attitude to Arabs.
The two came face to face in a roundtable that took place on Thursday at the Jerusalem Post’s Diplomatic Conference which featured Ambassador of Denmark to Israel Jesper Vahr and Jerusalem Post senior contributing editor Caroline Glick.
An excerpt of the exchange posted online opened with the ambassador voicing concern about the “Europe bashing” he was hearing.
“I think that Israel should insist that we discriminate you, that we apply double standards, this is because you are one of us,” Vahr said.
The heated exchange took place at the Jerusalem Post’s Diplomatic Conference which featured Danish Ambassador Jesper Vahr (second from L) and Jerusalem Post senior contributing editor Caroline Glick (center). (Image source: YouTube)
The heated exchange took place at the Jerusalem Post’s Diplomatic Conference which featured Danish Ambassador Jesper Vahr (second from L) and Jerusalem Post senior contributing editor Caroline Glick (center). (Image source: YouTube)
Vahr explained that when criticized, Israelis often point to Syria and other places with poor human rights records which are not condemned as frequently.
“Those are not the standards that you are being judged by. It is not the standards that Israel would want to be judged by,” Vahr said. “So I think you have the right to insist that we apply double standards and put you to the same standards as all the rest of the countries in the European context.”
Jerusalem Post diplomatic correspondent Herb Keinon, the event’s moderator, asked Vahr, “Isn’t it kind of patronizing to the Palestinians to say that, ‘We hold Israel to a higher standard than we hold you’?”
Vahr responded: “I am not sure it is,” adding that Europe views the conflict as being one between a “very strong party” and “a much weaker party.”
Engaging Israel “in a different fashion that we engage others is natural,” the ambassador added.
That’s when Jerusalem Post columnist Glick angrily chimed in:
I think that this patronizing attitude towards us that we should be happy that you have a separate standard for Israel is really, I’m sorry, a statement of contempt for our intelligence. I consider it to be an obsession. I consider Europe’s keen interest in the Middle East, specifically Israel, to be an obsession, and it’s an obsession that Jews have seen from Europeans from the time of Jesus.
Holding Israel to a different standard was highlighted over the summer by HBO host Bill Maher who called Israel “the victim of the soft bigotry of high expectations.”
Glick said, “‘We have this whole common culture,’ I mean, really? We respect international law. You guys make it up.” She cited the 2001 United Nations Security Council resolution 1373 adopted after the September 11 attacks which U.N. member states pledged to criminalize terrorism financing.
“You guys are funneling billions of euros into rebuilding terrorist-controlled Gaza. This is in contravention of binding international law that you signed onto,” Glick said.
“On the other hand, there’s imaginary international law … that says you are required … to sanction Jewish [construction] projects from Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. There is no such binding law,” Glick asserted. “You guys are funding settlements in Western Sahara.”
“This is not a double standard. This is a singular standard for Israel. It’s not about international law. It is about an obsessive, compulsive need to constantly pick at the Jewish state. And no, I don’t want to be proud that you are looking at us in a different standard from our neighbors because you are not looking at our neighbors as human beings. What you are saying is that they are objects,” Glick said.
“The only people who are supposed to be judged for our actions, and always poorly, are the people who are doing everything possible – more than Europe, more than the United States, more than anybody – in order to protect the lives of the Palestinians,” she said.
“I would love it if I could have more respect for Europe, but your treatment of Israel, your singular standard, your obsessive compulsive need to constantly pick at the Jewish state makes it very, very difficult,” Glick said.
Glick asserted that the only military organization in the area that is not a terrorist organization is the Israel Defense Forces, and for this “we are condemned, we are investigated, we are put on trial every single day.”
“Our soldiers, our soldiers are condemned by you. Our soldiers come in and are being called murderers for protecting our families and I’m sorry it’s very hard for me to feel any respect for this kind of behavior,” she added.
Glick is the author of the recently released book The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East” exploring a new arrangement for the Israelis and Palestinians not predicated on the two-state solution widely promoted by both U.S. and European governments.
Watch an excerpt of the exchange:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An example of a blatant expounding of the double standard here:
http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/German-pr ... aim-387043
Berlin -- The German Press Council reprimanded the largest broadsheet newspaper in Germany – the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) – for falsely claiming that tens of thousands of Israelis fled to Germany because of the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration.
The late December decision is believed to be the first rebuke regarding an SZ article covering Israel, Roman Portack, a media expert at the Press Council, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
According to the decision, SZ violated the press code because the paper did not exercise “due diligence in examining the truth” of the article before publication.
The dispute centered on Thorsten Schmitz’s claim that “tens of thousands of Israelis fled” Israel and sought refuge in Germany. Schmitz, a former SZ correspondent in the Jewish state, published his contention without proper sourcing in a September commentary titled “Germany’s Terrible Silence.”
Henryk M. Broder, an authority on contemporary German anti-Semitism and a columnist at the daily Die Welt, presented statistical data on his blog in September from the Office of Migration and Refugees that disproved Schmitz’s assertion.
The German Press Council relied on the Migration and Refugee data in determining that Schmitz employed a flawed method of journalistic verification. Post emails and telephone calls to Schmitz seeking a comment on the decision and whether he planned to correct his article were not returned.
In September, Schmitz declined to provide the Post with the source for his assertion that “tens of thousands of Israelis” had fled to the Federal Republic. He criticized Broder for the exposing the flaws in his commentary.
The Office of Migration and Refugees showed a total of 11,655 Israelis living in Germany in 2013. In 2012, 11,244 Israeli citizens lived in the Federal Republic.
Schmitz and the SZ told the Press Council they meant “refugees” in the sense of fleeing from “the difficult economic situation for the middle class” in Israel and the “hopelessness of the peace process,” but not in the definition an asylum-seeker. The Press Council limited the scope of its reprimand to the faulty numerical claim that tens of thousands of Israelis fled to Germany.
A spokeswoman for SZ told the Post on Wednesday that Mr. Gericke, the SZ’s attorney, was not immediately available for a comment. It is unclear if SZ plans to issue a correction to the online article and in its print edition.
Heribert Prantl, a top SZ editor covering domestic politics, did not immediately respond to Post queries.
Sacha Stawski, the head of the Frankfurt-based Honestly Concerned media watchdog group, filed the formal complaint against SZ with the Press Council in September.
SZ is a “permanent topic” for his NGO because of its sloppy reporting on Israel, he told the Post. SZ has published anti-Jewish and rabidly anti-Israel cartoons, Stawski noted. The paper published a caricature of Israel as a demonic, starving monster and showed Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, as a hook-nosed octopus devouring the world.
Stawski said that “piece by piece,” via articles and cartoons, SZ “demonizes and applies double standards to Israel.”
“No other country” is attacked in this form by SZ, he said. He praised the Press Council for establishing that SZ “crossed a line” with its false contention.
Portack from the Press Council told the Post that Stawski did a thorough job in proving that Schmitz’s numbers were incorrect. Asked if SZ is obligated to correct Schmitz’s report, Portack said in principle yes, because “a false presentation” exists.
Nathan Gelbart, a leading German media lawyer, told the Post it should be “self-evident for a Germany-wide traditional paper that a correction should take place regarding the false numbers without being compelled by external agencies.”
He criticized Schmitz for claiming to know the motivations of Israelis in Germany but failing to perform basic reporting to gather the views of Israelis. Gelbart, a managing partner with the international law firm FPS, said Schmitz sought to spread an “anti-Israel sentiment” in Germany. The commentary was “cheap and a badly researched article against Israel. Any provincial drug store newspaper would apologize for such an article,” Gelbart said.
Tabloid papers exaggerate, but a paper like SZ adheres to high journalistic standards and a correction should be a natural response to false statistical information, he said.