Monitor

Kerry Would Follow Powell: Once again the John Kerry presidential campaign has provided a disquieting glimpse into the kind of thinking that to Democrats equals strong support for Israel. Appearing over the weekend on CNN's "Capital Gang," senior Kerry campaign adviser Tad Devine stated that "the difference" between Kerry and President Bush regarding the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio "is understood very clearly. When Bush became president of the United States, he turned his back on the Middle East peace process....Until we have a president who is capable of exercising presiden tial leadership...the United States will not be a player in the peace process."

Every so often the Monitor features media criticism by the sharp-eyed folks HonestReporting.com. This is one of those weeks. The following article from the HonestReporting website highlights a particularly egregious example of anti-Israel bias on the part of the Canadian Broadcasting Authority.

The media's anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war drumbeat shows no sign of letting up, certainly not with a presidential election just six months away. Here are some recent gems from our overpaid, overrated and allegedly objective newshounds as rounded up by the invaluable Media Research Center (www.mrc.org):

"You can't ever make serious progress against terrorism unless you deal with Israel. We are not dealing with Israel. We've backed away. We're afraid of the political consequences."

Jews Force the Sacramento Turnverein to Cancel! That was the distress signal posted this week on the website of the International Revisionist Conference (IRC), a gathering that had been scheduled for the weekend of April 23-25 in Sacramento; was to be dedicated to the notorious Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel (described on the IRC website as a "prisoner of conscience" jailed by Canadian authorities "at the behest of the powerful and vindictive Holocaust Lobby" merely for "expressing his views on the second World War"); and promised to feature presentations by many of the world's foremost Holocaust deniers - Horst Mahler, Mark Weber, Bradley Smith - along with, shockingly, the Israel-based author and conspiracy theorist Barry Chamish. (More on Chamish later.)

Internet hoaxes are the bane of any editor's existence. Not a day goes by without the arrival of several e-mails breathlessly announcing either some horrible occurrence no sane person ever heard of, or some patently unbelievable piece of news -- unbelievable to persons who employ even the slightest bit of common sense, that is.

The New York Times never sleeps when it comes to trying to shape the news to fit its all-too-transparent agenda. Reader Tom Furst shared this cogent observation with the Monitor:

So it appears the allegations - many of them made by former colleagues - were spot on after all. Jack Kelley, at one time USA Today's star reporter, had this rather unfortunate habit of fabricating events and, apparently, entire stories.

Due to unavoidable circum-stances at deadline time, the Monitor turns the stage over this week to highlights of HonestReporting.com's analysis of the early media reaction to the killing by Israel of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin:

Another week another clip file bulging with fresh examples of the media's accelerating campaign in support of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. In fact it's difficult to recall a presidential race where the media's liberal spin was both so blatant and so early in coming.

Another week, another clip file bulging with fresh examples of the media's accelerating campaign in support of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. In fact, it's difficult to recall a presidential race where the media's liberal spin was both so blatant and so early in coming.

The Democrats and their lapdogs in the news media really do expect George W. Bush to campaign for reelection with one hand - possibly both hands - tied behind his back. Witness the largely media-manufactured outrage over the Bush ads that dared make reference to 9/11 - only, after all, a watershed in American history and the signature event of the Bush presidency.

It was just a couple of months ago that John Kerry told the Council on Foreign Relations of his inclination, should he win the White House, to appoint Jimmy Carter, James Baker or Bill Clinton as a Middle East peace process envoy.

Tom Friedman won over some previously skeptical readers in the months following the 9/11 attacks by advocating a tough line against Islamic extremists and, to the dismay of his fellow liberals, supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Dave Love of Sunburst Kosher Tours had a look of unmistakable disgust on his face as he handed the Monitor a copy of Heeb magazine. "Can you believe this garbage?" he asked, referring both to the publication's content and some of the sponsors listed on its masthead.

Gleanings from the web on the matter of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD), more precisely whether there were any to begin with: TimesWatch.org examined The New York Times's Jan. 28 front-page story on the findings of former WMD inspector David Kay and, not surprisingly, found the paper of record doing spin instead of news:

"After a quick prayer, Avi Shapiro and 12 other Jewish settlers put on their religious skullcaps, grabbed their semi-automatic rifles and headed toward Highway 60.... As they crouched in a ditch beside the road, Shapiro, the leader of the group, gave the settlers orders: Surround any taxi, "open fire," and kill as many of the "blood-sucking Arab" passengers as possible. "We are doing what [Israeli Prime Minister] Sharon promised but has failed to do: drive these sons of Arab whores from the land of Israel," said Shapiro, 42, who moved here with his wife and four children three years ago from Brooklyn. "If he won't get rid of the Muslim filth, we will.""

It's been some time since the Monitor shared a few of the more, shall we say, interesting letters and e-mails that come this way. Maybe it's the onset of a presidential campaign, or maybe we've been added to a Michael Moore mailing list - whatever the reason, there's been a definite uptick in the number of angry, off-the-wall screeds hurtling through cyberspace or trudging through the postal system, all seem ingly designed with the singular goal of disturbing the peace and interrupting the contemplation of this humble scribe.

Regular readers of this column know the esteem in which the Monitor holds the website TimesWatch.org. The site provides consistently trenchant analysis of the distortion and bias that have come to define the news coverage provided by The New York Times. TimesWatch's year-end look back at the alleged paper of record's 'lowlights' for 2003 merits as wide a readership as possible, and the Monitor is pleased to feature it this week.

This week's Monitor, as promised, features a listing of websites and blogs worth visiting, at least in our estimation and the estimation of our readers. Unlike our previous listing of favorite websites last September, we make no attempt here to rank the sites in order of popularity.

As reported in last week's Monitor, a number of prominent politically conservative religious leaders - including several Orthodox rabbis - opposed to legislation promoting gay marriage have aligned themselves with an organization that, according to terrorism expert Steven Emerson, is distinguished by "its ideological support of Islamic terror groups."

Are some conservatives willing to sleep with the devil in order to fight pro-gay legislation? An exclusive report by Evan Gahr on www.JewishWorldReview.com makes the charge that "prominent religious conservatives - Jews, Catholics and Evangelical Christians - are allied with a radical Islamic group to stop gay marriage."

A disturbing media trend blames Israeli policy for the Islamist war on Western civilization. The recent coordinated bombings against British targets in Istanbul, occurring just days after the dual bombings of Istanbul synagogues, make the Islamic terrorist message brutally clear: their targets are the Jewish people and Western democratic civilization.

Ditzy Dowd: Kudos to Andrew Sullivan for exposing the hypocrisy of Maureen Dowd, who, along with fellow New York Times op-ed columnists Nicholas Kristof and Paul Krugman, eats, sleeps and breathes hatred of George W. Bush.

No earth-shaking commentary this week, just a couple of items that took the Monitor by surprise. The first was an amusing exchange in the Nov. 6 issue of The New York Review of Books (NYR) between Forward editor J.J. Goldberg and journalist Elizabeth Drew. Here is Goldberg's letter to the editor complaining about Drew's mischaracterization of the Forward:

The influence of bloggers and their weblogs, already growing by leaps and bounds thanks to such polarizing controversies as the war in Iraq and such Internet-driven phenomena as the Howard Dean presidential campaign, reached new heights in October with the Gregg Easterbrook affair.

The New York Times last week confirmed - yet again - what a decidedly unreliable news source it's become, particularly for readers old-fashioned enough to put a premium on careful and accurate reporting.

Sen. Ted Kennedy, a man whose behavior was once described by Time magazine as that of "a drunken, overage frat-house boor," has decided that the war in Iraq was nothing more than one giant scam. Kennedy told the Associated Press last month that "There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud."

Freshly minted Democratic heartthrob Wesley Clark has stumbled badly during his first days as a declared presidential candidate.

The votes have been received and tabulated, and the winner in the Monitor's first-ever readers' Favorite Websites poll is ... Jewish World Review, the daily webzine that, hard to believe, is the fruit of one man's labor.