Tammuz 2, 5770, 14 June 10 01:54, by Maayana Miskin
(Israelnationalnews.com) A National Geographic exhibit on water that ended June 13 has caused anger due to its obvious anti-Israel bias. The photography exhibit entitled "Water: Our Thirsty World" was criticized by Israeli Consul Yaakov Dayan and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Washington.
Photographs by Paolo Pellegrin show Arabs dealing with scarce water supplies, while Israelis are pictured enjoying themselves on the banks of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) and at a water park. None of the swimming pools or fresh-water beaches located in the Palestinian Authority-controlled regions of Judea and Samaria or in Gaza are pictured.
The caption of one photo reads: “A source of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, water is emblematic of their unequal relationship. During dry summers, West Bank Palestinians—restricted to shallow wells by Israel’s occupation—have to buy groundwater tapped from beneath them.” In actual truth, Israeli water experts say that the PA Arabs are destroying the aquifer that is the source of water for both areas.
A second caption claims that Israelis “bask in [water's] relative abundance,” and cites a World Bank report saying Israelis use four times as much water per capita as PA Arabs. An Israeli denial of the report is also mentioned.
Yet another caption states, “Since 1967, Israel has blocked Syria's access to the shoreline” of the Kinneret. As Syria no longer shares a border with the Kinneret, and bombarded Israeli communities from the heights above it until it attacked Israel and lost the Six Day War, the charge of "blocked access" is not clear.
"In a blatant misrepresentation of the truth, the photos and captions suggest that the Israelis frivolously consume water while denying it to, even stealing it from, their neighbors,” said JCRC director Ron Halber.
"Where are the pictures with captions highlighting Israel's extraordinary efforts to conserve and recycle water, its global leadership in cutting-edge desalination or water-saving drip-irrigation technology, or its collaborative efforts with neighbors including Jordan and the Palestinian Authority to cooperate in water sharing ventures, even in times of political conflict?" Halber asked.
Dayan voiced similar thoughts, saying the exhibit “manufactures an outrageous fiction wherein Israel is depicted as stealing and hoarding water while her neighbors suffer from drought.”
“This is not only false, but the exact opposite is true,” he added.
National Geographic staff said in response that the photographs were taken from an article that did refer to cooperation between Israel and neighboring Arab countries regarding water.
National Geographic has been accused of anti-Israel bias on several occasions. Articles published in the 1990s led to accusations that the magazine supported revisionist history, depicting PA Arabs as descendants of the biblical Canaanite nation while ignoring Jewish history in Israel in recent centuries.%ad%
One article written during the Oslo Accords referred to Fatah head Yasser Arafat as a “peacemaker,” while Israel's government of the time was referred to as “hard-line.” A 2002 report that purported to give a history of the Israeli-Arab conflict did not mention Arab leaders' refusal to negotiate or the Yom Kippur War, and wrongly claimed that Jews had been treated well under Ottoman rule.
A more recent article, printed in the June 2009 issue, implicated Israel in the decreasing PA Christian population. The article did not note that Israel's Christian population enjoys a high growth rate, and ignored Muslim oppression of Christians under the PA which is the main reason for the population decline.
Gaza Raid Photos Fuel Propaganda War
By Daniel Steinvorth and Christoph Schult
The deadly raid on the Gaza aid flotilla triggered a propaganda war between Israel and pro-Palestinian activists. Surprisingly, it was Turkish newspaper Hürriyet that published the most spectacular photos.
On Friday, June 4, an agitated man with a bald head and full gray beard walked into the headquarters of the Muslim aid organization IHH in Istanbul. The 53-year-old man identified himself as Kevin Neish, a peace activist and amateur photographer from Victoria, Canada. Four days previously he had been on board the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, he said. He had taken photos that night when Israeli soldiers stormed the vessel. "Do you have a computer?" Neish asked breathlessly and handed a memory card containing digital photos to a surprised office worker.
The photos that appeared on a computer screen at IHH provide a fairly accurate portrayal of what happened on May 31 some 100 kilometers off the Israeli coast. They show two pro-Palestinian activists armed with iron bars standing in front of a door. One of the photos shows an Israeli soldier covered in blood and lying on the floor, the other shows a dead activist who appears to have been shot in the head. The photos show that a deadly scuffle took place on board -- one in which activists were killed by Israeli soldiers, but which was provoked by the Turkish and Arab passengers of the Mavi Marmara.
The IHH staff didn't like every photo they saw. Only Neish, who had managed to smuggle the memory card past the Israeli authorities and into Turkey, felt satisfied. "I hid the card everywhere while the soldiers were questioning us," he said. "I had it in my mouth, once in my shoes, and once in my underpants."
Three days later, on June 7, the photos were published in Turkish newspaper Hürriyet -- together with other photos taken by Turkish photographer Adem Özköse, who works for the Islamic publishing house Hayat Dergisi.
The fact that "the moments when the Israeli soldiers were beaten up," as Hürriyet put it, were published in a Turkish newspaper of all places is the climax of a bizarre war of interpretation that pro-Palestinian activists and the Israeli government have been waging against each other ever since the deadly raid.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan railed against Israel's "banditry and piracy." But Hürriyet belongs to the media group of entrepreneur Aydin Dogan which has been critical of the government in the past. Initially, Dogan's newspapers had criticized the Israeli raid just like Turkey's pro-government papers. But since then they have been warning against excessive Israel bashing and against the prime minister's increasingly authoritarian style of government.
Clash Between Turkish Newspapers
"I am afraid," wrote columnist Nuray Mert, "not just because emotions have supplanted reason in foreign policy but because one is immediately accused of Zionism and silenced whenever one criticizes government policy."
Erugrul Özkök, the former editor-in-chief of Hürriyet, regards the photos as a "journalistic success" that could not be censored. "Israel damaged itself with this mission but it is also wrong of Erdogan not to classify Hamas as a terrorist organization," he said.
Pro-government newspapers are accusing the Dogan group of playing into Israel's hands by publishing the photos. Fehmi Koru, one of the best-known columnists close to the ruling AKP party, has a simple explanation for the approach being taken by Dogan's paper's: the media mogul is a business partner of Germany's Axel Springer publishing group, says Koru, and Springer pursues a strategy of unquestioning solidarity with the Jewish state. Springer rejects this as absurd.
But not everyone in Israel is happy about the publication of the beaten-up soldiers. The sight of comrades in peril could hurt the morale of the troops, some generals fear -- an argument the army command used to try to prevent publication of video footage on the day of the raid. It took more than 12 hours for black-and-white sequences from the beatings to be released for publication, but by that time the version of the pro-Gaza activists was already dominating the news.
Reuters Criticized for Cropping Photos
But for the political leadership in Jerusalem the photos are final proof that activists on the Mavi Marmara wanted to "lynch" the soldiers. As a result, Jerusalem was all the angrier when the Reuters news agency manipulated the photos before it passed them on to its clients, newspapers and television stations around the world. On one photo showing an Israeli photo lying on the floor, Reuters cropped out the hand of one pro-Palestinian activist holding a knife, and on another photo a pool of blood was missing.
The agency has been accused before of editing photos in Israel's disfavor. During the 2006 Lebanon war, a Reuters photographer added darkened smoke in a picture of Beirut, which made an Israeli air raid look far more dramatic. Reuters said the most recent image crops were a mistake. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said they were further evidence of the "prejudice" of the international community.
That is one reason why the Israeli cabinet this week rejected an international investigation of the incident. It will only allow two "international observers" to join the Israeli commission which will be led by the former judge of the top court, Jacob Turkel. But those two foreign observers are known as being friendly towards Israel: David Trimble, the Protestant Nobel peace prize winner from Northern Ireland, and the former Canadian judge Ken Watkin, who converted to Judaism several years ago.
The Turkel commission is only supposed to clarify whether Israel acted in accordance with international law. Only the army itseld is permitted to investigate the actual military operation.
There is cause to doubt that the international community will be satisfied with that. It has not ruled out that the UN Security Council will yet vote in favor of instituting a commission. Turkey, which currently is a member of the Council, is insisting on one. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Ankara doesn't trust the Israeli commission. Israel, he said, was in the dock, yet wanted to be prosecutor and judge at the same time.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,700992,00.html
UPDATED ON:
Wednesday, June 16, 2010, 22:33 Mecca time, 19:33 GMT Al Jazeera
News Middle East
More than 40,000 people have died since the PKK began its armed struggle against Turkey [EPA]
Topics in this article Agencies Source:
Turkey has sent hundreds of troops into northern Iraq to chase fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in an operation likely to increase tensions within the region.
The soldiers killed four fighters escaping after a failed attack on a Turkish unit near the border, Turkey's military said.
The army did not say when their troops would withdraw, saying the soldiers were remaining in northern Iraq, supported by Turkish warplanes.
The Kurdistan regional goverment in northern Iraq has condemned similar cross-border attacks in the past, saying they violate Iraq's sovereignty.
Escalating fighting
Clashes between the PKK and the Turkish army, which started late on Tuesday, broke out in the Uludere district of Turkey's Sirnak province, near the border with Iraq, and lasted through the night.
The fighting also left a Turkish sergeant dead, Turkish security sources said.
The sources added that PKK fighters had attacked a convoy of trucks that belonged to a private construction company in the southeastern Turkish province of Hakkari.
The incident on Tuesday night took place near a military post on the border with Iraq.
The PKK were said to have released the drivers and set fire to the trucks.
Fighting has escalated in the southeast of Turkey, which is predominantly Kurdish, in recent weeks.
It follows increased infiltration by PKK members into Turkey from the mountains of northern Iraq where thousands of the fighters are based.
The PKK, which seeks an independent state for Kurds, has called off a year-old unilateral ceasefire and has resumed attacks on Turkish forces.
The group accuses the military of offensive attacks and the government of impeding a political resolution of the conflict.
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