This rocket is as big as a telephone poll, has a range of 75 km., and could reach Tel Aviv and most of central Israel. But the Fajr-5 can be moved through the smuggling tunnels to Gaza only if broken down into 8-10 sections and then reassembled on the other end.

The Fajr-5 carries a 200-pound warhead and is only effective if aimed at a large urban area. That means that the most likely victims will be civilians. Israel would certainly go into Gaza if a Fajr ever landed in Tel Aviv.

Source: Multiple Media

President Obama won 69 percent of the Jewish vote according to an exit poll.

The poll, posted on CNN’s website, was commensurate with projections by preelection polls by Gallup, the American Jewish Committee, among others, that Obama would win between 65 and 70 percent of the Jewish vote.

Both parties blitzed Jewish voters in swing states, particularly Ohio and Florida, ahead of the election.

Jews constituted 2 percent of the overall CNN response group, but the network did not reveal the total number of people polled, so it was impossible to assess a margin of error.

Republicans noted the discrepancy between Tuesday’s numbers and the 78 percent Obama garnered in 2008 exit polls.

Democrats, citing a more recent broader study of the 2008 results, now say Obama earned 74 percent of that year’s Jewish vote, and suggested that Tuesday’s showing was within the margin of error.

On social media, Republican and Democratic Jews argued over whether Tuesday night’s results showed a substantial drop in Jewish support for Obama.

Two organizations — J Street and the Republican Jewish Coalition — planned to release separate exit polls on Wednesday morning.

On June 27, Honest Reporting revealed The Independent‘s use of the following photo to illustrate a particularly critical story on the Israeli treatment of Palestinian child detainees.

HR noted that the photo above represented an example that featured in their Shattered Lens study on photo bias, in this case “the use of bars to portray Palestinians as “prisoners” of Israeli occupation and brutality.”

HR wrote:

“[The photo from 2010 was] one example of how wire agency photographers resort to using camera angles and staging techniques to present a distorted picture of a given situation. In the example above, it is clear that the photographer used this technique to project an image of Gazan children imprisoned. However, the sequence of photos taken from the same scene at the time illustrates how the effect was achieved.”

“What we see above is a tiny group of Palestinian children arriving at what appears to be a pre-planned photo-op outside the Gaza industrial area presumably organized by Hamas. The photographer either willingly colludes with Hamas or is used.Next, the children have been positioned behind a gate to give the effect of a prison.”

“However, using a great deal of skill to get the right position with the right lens from the right angle, the photographer manages to create an impression of many more than the several children in the actual shot.”

This photo fraud came to mind when reading a more recent Indy report, ‘The new Israeli apartheid: poll reveals widespread Jewish support for policy of discrimination against Arab minority‘, by Catrina Stewart regarding the poll about alleged Israeli ‘apartheid’ written by Gideon Levy at Haaretz.

Stewart’s story on the widely discredited story by Levy – which elicited a retraction from Haaretz – was not the most egregious example of misleading coverage of the poll, though it did, nonetheless, convey the false impression that Israelis support ‘apartheid-like’ policies against Arabs.  The Indy report also severely downplayed results which demonstrated that a large majority of Israelis don’t, in fact, support denying the vote to Palestinians.

However, the photo they used to illustrate the story indicates that the Indy learned nothing from their previous use of misleading imagery.

(The photo has no caption.)

Palestinian children are seemingly behind bars yet again, superbly illustrating the Indy’s desired narrative of oppressed Arabs.

However, upon doing a bit of research, it turns out that the photo was taken in Gaza, and the children are looking at the body of a Palestinian terrorist (killed after IDF forces retaliated against rocket attacks near Beit Lahiya) through the window of a hospital morgue on Oct. 22.

Here’s the photo and caption at Yahoo.

While the image selected by Indy editors has little, if anything, to do with the story it purports to illustrate, the broader truth is that the Palestinian children appearing in the photo are indeed prisoners – held captive to a life of backwardness, religious extremism, violence and racism by the very Palestinians they’re seen peering at.

Now, there’s a narrative you’d likely never see advanced in the Indy or Guardian.

Visit Cifwatch.com.

Knesset Jeremy Weekly Average #4 (week of Oct 29-Nov 4) of 7 polls (Teleseker, two Panels, Dahaf, Geocartography, Smith, Dahaf):

Current Knesset seats in [brackets], Week 3 average in (brackets)

38 (36.6) [42] Likud Beitenu
22.1 (24.3) [08] Labor
14.7 (13.3) [---] Yesh Atid
11.7 (12) [10] Shas
9.1 (09) [07] National Union-Jewish Home
5.8 (5.3) [05] Yahadut Hatorah/UTJ
4.2 (05) [03] Meretz
4.0 (04) [04] Hadash
3.7 (3.3) [04] Ra’am-Ta’al
3.1 (03) [03] Balad
1.7 (2.6) [28] Kadima
0.5 (01) [05] Independence

03 [01] Am Shalem (based on 2 of 7 polls)

1.5 in one poll for Pensioners and Green Party each

66.3 (63) [65] Right
53.6 (57) [55] Center-Left

Visit Knesset Jeremy.

The website GOP.com on Monday suggested that President Obama’s campaign is trying to protect Pennsylvania, sending big gun Joe Biden to a state that was considered safe for Democrats. The website claims the reason for the sudden change in strategy was the huge GOP edge in absentee ballot returns in that state, which went for Obama by 10% in 2008.

In 2008 the GOP edged the Democrats by a mere 2% in absentee ballot returns, says the website As of Monday, the GOP’s lead was 18.8% — a 16.9% bump. Republicans have turned in 55.2% of the absentee ballots to date while the Democrats have returned just 36.4%.

GOP.com boasts a huge effort on the ground in Pennsylvania in recent months, with more than 60 staff and dozens of offices, adding: “We have made over 5 million volunteer voter contacts including over 1 million volunteer door knocks across Pennsylvania. That voter contact is paying off in the absentee ballot returns and clearly the President’s campaign sees it in their numbers. That’s why they are playing defense in the Keystone state as Governor Romney’s momentum allows us to expand the map.”

But while this good news for Romney may be very real, every single poll conducted in Pennsylvania in the past two weeks gives the edge to Obama, including Rasmussen Reports, which on October 24 showed Obama with a 51-46 lead. The poll average is at +4.6 in Obama’s favor.

Next Tuesday is going to be a very long night, possibly well into Wednesday…

H/T Simon Plosker

Harriet Sherwood’s latest report, Oct. 23, contains a dramatic headline,  ’Israeli poll finds majority in favor of ‘apartheid’ policies.

The highlights of the poll reported by Sherwood, and based on a Ha’aretz article by Gideon Levy which cited the results of polling conducted by a group called Dialog, are as follows: (Graph from Ha’aretz)

Critical omission by Sherwood on the findings

Here’s the opening passage of Sherwood’s story:

More than two-thirds of Israeli Jews say that 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank should be denied the right to vote if the area was annexed by Israel, in effect endorsing an apartheid state.” (emphasis added).

However, Sherwood failed to acknowledge that only 38 percent of the Jewish public wants Israel to annex the territories with settlements on them in the first place, which is arguably the most important stat, as many of the subsequent questions, such as the one highlighted by Sherwood, pertain to a scenario where such annexation occurs. The fact that a majority of Israelis do not express support for annexation renders the subsequent questions extremely less meaningful, and her conclusion about Israeli support for ‘apartheid’ dishonest.

A few additional observations.

* The sample size of the Dialog poll is 503 (out of a Jewish population of over 6 million), which is problematic. Further, since there is no link to the full poll it’s not possible to judge the methodology.

* Levy admits that “the survey conductors said that the term ‘apartheid’ “was not clear enough to some interviewees”, which may explain the following additional quote by Levy about the results: “39 percent believe apartheid is practiced “in a few fields”; 19 percent believe “there’s apartheid in many fields” and 11 percent do not know.”  Further, it’s unclear how ‘apartheid’ – widely understood as a systemic policy of separation based on race – could be characterized as a dynamic localized in certain fields. It seems possible that Israelis were expressing their belief that “discrimination” occurs in certain fields, which is a far different phenomenon than ‘apartheid’.

* Sherwood writes that “58% believe Israel already practices apartheid against Palestinians”, a number, it seems, based on Levy’s report, cited above.  As I noted in the previous bullet, this is extremely problematic conclusion, based on what may be an unclear understanding of what the word ‘apartheid’ meant in the context it was being used.

Palestinian Context

The most glaring omission by Sherwood is her broader failure, in this or other reports alleging Israeli racism, to provide similar data indicating the political views of Palestinians.  This is part of a larger problem within the Guardian’s coverage of the region, which consistently fails to rigorously examine Palestinian society and mores.

As such, the following Palestinian poll results should at least serve to provide a bit of context to contrast the recent polling on Israelis:

* 51% support the August 2010 Hamas attack on settlers near Hebron that resulted in the death of four settlers? (PCPSR, October 2010);

* 54% support armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel? (Harry Truman Research Institute/PCPSR, March 1-7, 2009);

* 64% support launching rockets from the Gaza Strip against Israeli towns and cities such as Sderot and Ashkelon? (Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, March 13-15, 2008)

84% support the bombing attack that took place in a religious school in West Jerusalem in 2008. (Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, March 13-15, 2008);

60% of Palestinians eventually hope that one state − Palestine − will replace the Jewish state. Only 23 percent of Palestinians said they believed in Israel’s right to exist as the national homeland of the Jews  (Based on a poll in 2010);

Only 4% of Palestinians have a favorable view of Jews. (Pew Global, 2011);

* 47.5% of Palestinians still support terrorist attacks inside pre-1967 Israel. (2012 PSR Survey);

* 73% of Palestinians “believe” the Islamic Hadith that preaches it is Islamic destiny to kill Jews (2011 poll);

Of course, there is as good of a chance Sherwood would report these disturbing findings about Palestinian racism, support for violence, and intransigence as the chance she would avoid skewing the results of an Israeli poll in a misleading manner which shows Israelis in the worst possible light.

Knesset Jeremy Weekly Average #2 (week of Oct 14-20) of 4 polls (Walla, Arutz Sheva, Haaretz and Globes):

Current Knesset seats in [brackets], Week 1 average in (brackets)

28 (29) [27] Likud
19.7 (19.6) [08] Labor
13.2 (14.1) [15] Yisrael Beitenu
12.7 (13.3) [---] Yesh Atid
10.5 (10.3) [11] Shas
06 (5.3) [05] Yahadut Hatorah/UTJ
06 (5.8) [28] Kadima
04.5 (4.1) [03] Jewish Home
04 (3.8) [04] Hadash
04 (3.5) [04] Ra’am-Ta’al
04 (3.8) [03] Meretz
03.5 (3.1) [04] National Union
03 (3.1) [03] Balad
0.7 (0.6) [05] Independence

66 (66.1) [65] Right
54 (53.8) [55] Center-Left

Visit KnessetJeremy.com.

A poll conducted by Dialogue (supervised by Professor Kamil Fox of the Tel Aviv University’s statistics department) and published today in Haaretz shows that Aryeh Deri’s return to the Hared-Sephardi party Shas will bring the party an additional three mandates (they currently have 11), while causing the Likud to go down to 24 from its current 27 mandates.

These figures are based on a presumption taht former prime minister Ehud Olmert will establish a centrist party together with Kadima members Shaul Mofaz and Tzipi Livni as well as the fledgling Yesh Atid party’s Yair Lapid. The poll also assumes that Aryeh Deri will head the Shas slate alongside Eli Yishai (which, as of Wednesday night, he does).

According to the poll, conducted before Deri’s official return to Shas, in the aforementioned case, the right-wing block will not lose its majority of 63 mandates, while the Likud would be reduced to only 24 mandates, with Shas increasing to 14. In this scenario, the Olmert-Livni-Lapid party would receive 25 mandates, the Labor party 17 and Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu 13.

The poll also shows that the Likud-Liberman-Haredi bloc would maintain its majority in any possible scenario, no matter what combinations of left and center parties it faces.

The poll also shows that in a scenario where Livni would join forces with Labor Party chairman Yachimovich and Deri out of Shas, there would be a slight shift in mandate distribution showing Likud with 27, Labor – 24, Yisrael Beiteinu – 13, Shas – 11, Yesh Atid – 10 and Kadima – 7.