One little house – Latma’s Passover musical treat and Judy Miller’s venture into the Israeli media swamp

Dear Friends, 

 

Here is a musical special from the crew at Latma, specially translated into English. The song is a current take on the Passover song Had Gadya – One little goat. Ours is called “Had Bayta,” or one little house. Editing note: the first photo you see in the video is the face of Yariv Oppenheimer, Peace Now’s executive director.

 

 

 

 

Latma’s voice in the media is more important now than ever before. Events in the past week make this clear. For the past 4 months, a radical anti-Zionist activist named Anat Kamm has been under house arrest suspected of serious acts of treason. It is alleged that during her service in the IDF, Kamm transferred up to a thousand classified documents to unauthorized sources outside of the IDF. Among the documents she allegedly transferred were operational plans for dealing with three senior terror masters from the Islamic Jihad terror group in Judea and Samaria. Kamm allegedly transferred the documents to Ha’aretz newspaper. Ha’aretz published the documents. 

 

After her release from military service, Kamm was hired as a journalist by Ha’aretz’s web portal Walla.

 

In its effort to prevent Kamm from hampering the investigation against her, the state prosecution asked and received a gag order on the fact of the investigation against her and the fact that there was a gag order placed on the investigation — that is, a total news blackout.

 

To get ahead of the story before it comes out that it hired an alleged traitor that it allegedly collaborated with, Ha’aretz turned to foreign journalists and claimed that Israel is “disappearing” journalists. The foreign press, and most destructively, Judith Miller swallowed the tale whole. Miller wrote up the story on the Daily Beast and then had this interview with Shepherd Smith — who apparently really doesn’t have much use for Israel or Jewish Americans who support Israel — yesterday on Fox News.

 

What this story shows is how destructive the Israeli media’s contempt for their own country can be for Israel not only at home, but abroad as well. The need to expose what the Israeli media is doing is absolutely essential if Israel’s elected leadership is to have the ability to protect the country from the likes of Iran and its terror proxies. If this sort of thing continues uncontested, the Netanyahu government today and any subsequent government that tries to defend the country will be stymied by a local and international media climate that will simply paralyze them by attacking everything they do. 

 

With Kamm we see Israel’s state prosecution trying to investigate and try an alleged traitor and for its efforts, its members, as well as the poor judge who issued the gag order, are accused of being totalitarian oppressors and the likes of Sheperd Smith are given a chance to strut their anti-Semitic stuff. 

 

Thankfully, through the generous efforts of readers like you, Latma’s message is catching on. Our videos are being watched by tens of thousands of people, our team members are being interviewed almost daily on television and radio, and our blog posts are being circulated throughout the Israeli blogosphere.

 

I promise not to make this pitch every week, but I happen to be in Washington this week and seeing the impact of the Israeli media’s shenanigans on the US media coverage of Israel has reinforced my belief in the necessity of Latma and the urgency of our mission. If you are interested in getting involved, please contact me.

 

All the best and enjoy the video. It’s gone viral in Israel and I think it is a work of genius. I can say that, because all I did was cheer on the team. 

 

Best,

Caroline