Jordanian Waqf guard punches, kicks Jew on Temple Mount, and accompanying police do nothing!

As Jewish visitors ascended the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, for the new month of Adar on Thursday, they were met by the now-routine heckling by Muslims along with a new low: one Jew was assaulted by a member of the Jordanian Waqf (Islamic trust) that has de facto control over the site.

During the visit by members of the “Returning to the Mount” movement, the Waqf guard kicked and punched the Jew after he didn’t comply with a demand to rush through his visit and leave the holy site.

The movement claims police officers who accompanied the group were witnesses to the assault, and yet the Waqf member was not arrested. Video from the shocking incident (filmed sideways) can be seen here:

Rafael Morris of the movement said “violence by Waqf members against Jewish visitors is a red line for us.” [It is illegal on for only Jews to even pray on the Temple Mount!]

“An American police officer who comes to Israel has no authority and if he struck an Israeli citizen next to officers and in front of cameras he would be arrested, and he certainly would have an indictment submitted against him,” remarked Morris.

“Yet members of the Waqf sense the powerlessness of the police on the Temple Mount very well, and take advantage of it to use authorities they don’t have,” he said.

Making a call for action, Morris added “the time has come for the Israel police to regain their composure, and fast. If the management of the police continues like this, we’ll reach a situation in which we will need to defend the Jewish visitors and the officers who accompany the groups.”

In recent months there has been growing tension at the Temple Mount, with Arab assailants constantly rioting to close the site to Jewish access and Arab nations pressuring Israel. In response, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu declared his desire to preserve the discriminatory “status quo” at the site under Waqf rule.

Under the Waqf, Jews are forbidden from praying; Netanyahu emphasized that Jews would still be allowed to visit their holiest site, but that the discriminatory ban on Jewish prayer would remain.

Aside from now assaulting Jewish visitors, the Waqf has in the past repeatedly destroyed ancient Jewish artifacts in an attempt to erase the Jewish nature of the site of the First and Second Temple.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/191616

3 comments

  • The Israeli Govt is like the NY Times. All this would change if Chaim was PM of Israel.

    http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=35&x_article=2945
    The Death of Adele Biton and The New York Times’ Justification of Lopsided Reporting
    by Ricki Hollander
    2/20/2015

    In March 2013, three-year-old Adele Biton was travelling with her two sisters in a car driven by their mother, when a Palestinian rock-throwing attack caused the car to slam into a truck ahead. Two of the girls suffered moderate wounds, while Adele was left in critical condition, with serious neurological injuries. She underwent extensive treatment in acute and rehabilitation care facilities, but never fully recovered.

    Nearly two years later, on Feb. 17, 2015, the pre-schooler died as a result of complications of pneumonia. Her mother told the Israeli newspaperYediot Aharonot that there was no doubt that Adele’s illness was part of the progression of her neurological injuries “that complicated her ability to cope with medical issues.”

    The following day, Voice of Israel’s Josh Hasten interviewed New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren. Asked what she knew about Adele, Rudoren responded:

    In any society, I suppose, and certainly here, there are certain individual cases among the victims who become somewhat iconic and I think Adele was one of those. She was two years old, critically injured, spent more than a year, maybe a year and a half, in rehab. Many, many articles were written about her. Her parents, her family, captured Israeli attention, so I was aware of that. Obviously, a two-year-old girl critically injured in the conflict is heart-tugging for any observer and because of that, she had become somewhat iconic. That’s why we wrote a brief item about her death.

    But it was not until after Adele had succumbed to her illness that Jodi Rudoren referred to Adele and the stone throwing attack that had maimed her. The reporter wrote about Adele’s death in a 169-word “world briefing” that appeared only in the newspaper’s online edition.

    Indeed, in a more than 1900-word feature article about Palestinian stone throwers that was published both online (“In a West Bank Culture of Conflict, Boys Wield the Weapon at Hand”) and prominently on the front page of the print edition (“My Hobby is Throwing Stones,” Aug. 5, 2013), Jodi found no room to mention the attack that had critically injured Adele. Nor did she mention an earlier stone throwing attack that had crushed the skull of 5-year-old Yehuda Shoham, an only child. And her only mention of a similar attack that resulted in the deaths of a young father and his infant son was in passing, presented as hearsay about unnamed victims.

    Instead the reporter devoted her feature piece to Palestinian stone throwers’ justifications for, and expressions of pride in, their actions, as well as their hardship in being arrested by Israeli police for these activities. At the time, CAMERA posted a sharp media critique about the article, entitled “The New York Times Romanticizes Palestinian Stone Throwers and Ignores Their Victims.” In it, Rudoren was criticized for explaining the stone throwing by Palestinians as “pushback against Israel,” a “rite of passage,” and an “honored act of defiance” while downplaying the impact of this Palestinian “hobby” on its Israeli victims. The critique pointed out that while the reporter emphasized “the futility of stones bouncing off armored vehicles,” and interviewed one Israeli who had been frightened but uninjured by stone-throwing attacks, she provided almost no information about the deadlier and more injurious results of such attacks.

    In the Voice of Israel interview, host Josh Hasten brought up CAMERA’s criticism of Rudoren’s feature. The reporter defended and justified her treatment of the subject matter, dismissing her critics out of hand. According to Rudoren, CAMERA was “not criticizing or scrutinizing or reviewing coverage based on any journalistic values. They’re doing it based on a scorecard of what they think makes their side look good or bad. It’s not based on the kind of building blocks of mainstream journalism that is where our coverage comes from and that most of our vast global readership needs from us.”

    But it should be obvious to anyone who claims to understand the “building blocks of journalism” that to downplay and give such short shrift to the catastrophic and sometimes fatal results of stone-throwing is to deprive readers of the context necessary to understand the conflict. Neither Rudoren nor The New York Times provided readers with a parallel feature story about the impact of Palestinian stone throwing on their Israeli victims. So what Rudoren left readers with — what she apparently felt they “needed” — was a one-sided piece about Palestinian victims “provoked by the situation,” and forced into a “futile” hobby (of throwing stones), only to be arrested and incarcerated by fierce Israeli soldiers.

    Rudoren’s justification for this lopsided reporting was to claim she was on a “journalistic mission” whose agenda was “to unpack the caricature of Palestinian stone-throwers.” To that end, she asserted, the story “really wasn’t about their victims.”

    “Not every story looks at everybody in equal depth because that’s just not how journalism works and it doesn’t need to be that way,” Rudoren declared. But how can a journalist tell the story about stone throwing without thoroughly exploring the consequences? Without any comparative story about the Israeli victims, those victims remained voiceless, their side of the story left untold. Even while she acknowledged that “it was important to make sure that it was clear that people did get killed and that there were victims,” Rudoren justified the virtual absence of this information from her article, apparently deeming her fleeting hearsay reference to two anonymous fatalities sufficient.
    As to the article’s misleading implication that the “situation” that provokes Palestinian stone-throwers is one of Israel’s making, Rudoren ignored the fact that hate rhetoric and incitement against Israelis is also a significant factor in encouraging the stone throwers. Nowhere in the article does she even hint at the atmosphere of incitement by Palestinian leaders to attack Israelis by any means.

    This type of reporting is characteristic of Rudoren’s “journalistic values.” She routinely conceals relevant information, selectively quotes or cites those whose perspective she agrees with, while downplaying, ignoring or misrepresenting the viewpoints of those with whom she disagrees. In news articles, she tends to cast aspersions on or use pejoratives to discredit those with whom she disagrees. (See, for example, “A Guide to NYT Advocacy Journalism: Focus on Jodi Rudoren.”) And she uses these same tactics in dealing with legitimate criticism of her reporting. Instead of directly addressing the specific complaints about her reporting, she dismisses her critics with wholesale contempt. Those criticizing her articles, she argues, are just checking off a list “of who’s winning the story,” Here, too, Rudoren misrepresents. What CAMERA and many critics of The New York Times demand is that both sides’ perspectives be given voice — something the Society of Professional Journalists urges, but which Rudoren is apparently unwilling to do.

    The Society of Professional Journalist’s code of ethics calls on journalists, among other things, to recognize their own cultural values and avoid imposing them on readers, to distinguish between advocacy and news reporting, and to give voice to the voiceless. In addition, it urges journalists to be accountable to their readers, clarify and explain news coverage, invite dialogue and encourage readers to voice their grievances about news reporting.

    Many prominent and respected journalists adhere to this code, even when criticized. And they are better journalists for it. But as long as Rudoren continues to wear blinders, block her ears, and insist that it is not necessary to explore both sides of a conflict in equal depth, non-partisan readers who want to genuinely learn about the situation fully and fairly should continue to avoid the New York Times and its partisan Jerusalem bureau chief.

  • The Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu democracy republic state is the only country in the world where Jew are discriminated spitted open racism allowed by the Israel police bochevic nazi regime.

  • This is a cause for resignation of PM! Unheard of that such a party as Likud can claim center-right.

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