Israel/Palestine

Brace yourselves, for NBC's Andrea Mitchell - on MSNBC no less - actually criticized Barack Obama Wednesday. During a News Nation segment about the President's trip to Israel, Mitchell said his relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is "one of the worst" she can remember going all the way back to her years covering Ronald Reagan (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Does Mika Brzezinski see Barack Obama as the Messiah?  Mika dismissed the notion, but Joe Scarborough had a very different point of view. As today's Morning Joe rolled live footage of President Obama's arrival in Tel Aviv, former Bush foreign policy advisor Dan Senor couldn't help sarcastically observing "the Messiah has returned to Israel."  Mika Brzezinski feigned dismissiveness, asking: "…

In an interview with Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren for NBC's online Meet the Press: Press Pass, which is also aired by some NBC-owned stations following Meet the Press on Sundays, moderator David Gregory wondered about President Obama's upcoming trip to Israel: "...the last Democratic president who had significant ties to Israel, President Clinton, was really a rock star in Israel. What are…

CNN's Erin Burnett on Monday asked former first lady Laura Bush a truly disgusting question. In a segment about the George W. Bush Institute's Women's Initiative Fellowship Program and its involvement with a group of Egyptian women, Burnett asked Mrs. Bush if the United States needs to "accept" anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism "when we want to make change" (video follows with transcript and…

If a completed picture is worth a thousand words, how much does a one-sided movie cost? The Israeli films “5 Broken Cameras” and “The Gatekeepers” earned two of the five 2013 Oscar nominations for documentary films. Although ten Israeli films have received nominations in the past, these two are different: they focus the spotlight on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict from a distinctly anti-…

"Based on every statement I’ve heard out of any Republican in the last two years, the Israelis are controlling our government." So said HBO's Bill Maher Friday (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Monday's Morning Edition, NPR's Larry Abramson boosted an "international boycott movement" against Israeli company SodaStream without mentioning the left-wing ideology of the organizations behind the protest. Abramson merely described the boycott organizers as "supporters of Palestinian rights." The correspondent featured a soundbite of a December 2012 anti-SodaStream protest in Boston,…

New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren, who has courted controversy from pro-Israel conservatives during her brief tenure, appeared in the Sunday Arts section to express concern over the muted reception in Israel to the new documentary "The Gatekeepers," an unflattering look back at Israel's Shin Bet, the country's security service: "'Most Israelis Are Not Listening.' – Little…

Dan Rather on Tuesday applauded Israel's new missile defense system known as Iron Dome. In a bizarre analysis published at the Huffington Post, the former CBS Evening News anchor cheered, "In the recent conflict, the Israeli missile defense system may have saved more Palestinian lives than Israelis."

Bill Maher came back from his long winter vacation Friday to predictably say stupid things on HBO's Real Time that only a liberal would utter or appreciate. One such was telling Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal, “What's happening in Israel is kind of what would happen in America if the Tea Party took over” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

The New York Times has taken the offensive on all fronts in support of Chuck Hagel, the "maverick" former Republican senator and President Obama's nominee for Secretary of Defense, recounting his Vietnam War heroics in a way that previous Republican presidential candidates John McCain and Bob Dole could only envy, while accusing his GOP opponents of "bullying" him with accusations of anti-…

Former This Week host Christiane Amanpour's reputation for biased reporting precedes her, despite her own denials. Despite this, ABC thought it fit to air a two-part special starting on Friday evening titled Back to the Beginning. The network's press release trumpeted, "Join...Christiane Amanpour on the ultimate road trip as she travels to the lands of the Bible....to investigate the roots of…

Dan Abrams at Mediaite caught a weird bit of anti-Israel bias in Jeffrey Gettleman's brutal investigation on Sunday's New York Times front page of the carnage in Congo: But for years Tutsi-led Rwanda has tried to carve out a zone of influence in eastern Congo, using ethnic Tutsi militias and Tutsi businessmen inside Congo to do its bidding. Rwanda has a very disciplined, patriotic army that…

In August, President Barack Obama "secretly" authorized support for Syria's rebels. It was so "secret" that Reuters had a story about it. It "broadly permits the CIA and other U.S. agencies to provide support that could help the rebels oust Assad." At the Daily Beast, former Obama administration State Department member P.J. Crowley believes that " Later this year or early next, Washington may…