The Following is VIA OnlySimchas.com
We all fell for it. This weekend there was a story circulating in the news about a Muslim “ring of peace” that was formed to “protect” Jews at an Oslo synagogue. According to an eyewitness report, local officials and photos of the event, it turned out to be a fabrication by the mainstream media.
According to an eyewitness, there were only about 20 or so Muslims. Photos from various angles show that there were not enough people to form a ring, so instead a horizontal line in front of the synagogue was formed.
A local news outlet explained how the media extrapolated the number of Muslims to be 1,300. “According to police, there were 1300 persons present in the event. Very many of them ethnic Norwegians,” read a translated report from Osloby.no.
Demonstrators also reportedly chanted, “No to anti-Semitism, no to Islamophobia,” combining fear and criticism of Islam and hatred of Jews.
Many news outlets, including wire services (such as the Associated Press and the Agence France-Presse) for hundreds of news sites, ran the false story that 1,000 or more people (some saying all of them Muslim) formed a “ring of peace” outside of the Oslo synagogue.
The AFP has no excuse for the false report, as it had a photographer on the scene. One of their photos shows a man at the end of the line of people holding hands with his left hand in his pocket.
More than 1,000 Muslims form ‘peace ring’ around Oslo synagogue http://t.co/K14QXWPELy pic.twitter.com/lU5hfmnXRR
— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) February 21, 2015
The far-left Think Progress site published a story titled, “More Than A Thousand Muslims Form Human Shield Around Norewegian Synagogue After Copenhagen Attacks.”
Even Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported, “More than 1,000 Muslims formed a human shield around an Oslo synagogue on February 21, offering symbolic protection for the city’s Jewish community and condemning an attack on a synagogue in neighboring Denmark the previous weekend.”
To add yet another stain on this event, it appears that the organizer of the Muslim “peace ring” is a vicious anti-Semite, 9/11 conpiracy theorist who believes the Jews knew about it, and an Israel-hater.
In 2008, Ali Chishti, the event orgainzer said, “I hate Jews and how they operate… it is a fact that during the attacks on the Twin Towers [World Trade Center] 1600 Jews were absent from work. OK, OK, what’s even more suspicious, is how unusually many Jews there were present in Mumbai on the day that Pakistani terrorists struck. How come?”
In March, 2008 at a meeting in Oslo promoting his 9/11 conspiracy theory that the Jews were responsible for the World Trade Center attacks, Chishti gave over his speech titled, “Therefore I Hate Jews And Gays,” Haaretz reports.
In reality, there were actually 40 times more Northern European Muslims in attendance at the funeral of a Copenhagen Muslim terrorist than those who came to form the so-called “ring of peace” around an Oslo synagogue.
The question is what is the incentive for news outlets to embellish the story? Increasing readership? Denial of Anti-Semitism? Attempting to paint Muslims in a positive light? A combination of the three? Or something else altogether?
Let us know what you think in the comments.
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7 Responses
Who says onlysimchas.com is reliable?
Very poor reporting here guys. Just google a little more info and you’ll get the whole story.
No doubt the MSM is exaggerating a non story but not nearly as egregious as the story you regurgitated.
Didn’t YWN report this as well. I thought something was wrong with the story I guess I was right. Just saying.
All of the above, and more reasons too.
As the daughter of a Norwegian, I have spent a great deal of time in the country, and in much of Northern Europe as a whole ( grew up in the UK; lived and worked in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, France.)
The prevailing sentiment in these places, as espoused by liberal middle classes and presented in the media, is that if society as a whole is seen to support the so-called moderate factions in Judaism and Islam, then extremism, by comparison, will diminish.
A case in point is the national honors recently bestowed by the French president upon the Muslim man who hid Jewish customers in the walk-in refrigerator in the kosher store that was attacked – not a demonstration of France’s love for Jews and all who care for them, but an attempt to show that Muslims and Jews are capable of getting along, even to the point of going out of their way to protect each other in situations of life and death. Here, the contention / goal of European liberals is that with the right political efforts, good Jewish – Muslim relations, rather than an exception, can be the norm. This will help everything from the political situation in the Middle East to the problems emanating from growing muslim numbers in Europe and elsewhere. The French president’s honors were a highly opportunistic political ‘stunt’ based on naive politics and distortion / exaggeration – just like this one outside the synagogue Oslo.
Liberals in Europe don’t, in principle, want to curtail muslim immigration – after the racism of WWII, and the decline of European empires overseas, it is considered important in Europe that borders are open to all peoples – but of course, this noble aim has been exploited. Europeans have now saddled themselves with the severe problems that muslim immigration is bringing (exponential population growth; the shoehorning of sharia law into established legal and political systems.) Europeans can’t complain about all this overtly – for various reasons – and nor can they turn back the clock. So instead, there is a push to emphasize and give political support to moderate factions in the hope – despite demographic and political red flags to the contrary – that these will prevail,
As frum Yidden, we know that it’s hardly as simple as all that. But that’s how the general public sees things in Europe.
P.S. I don’t think we can accuse YWN of misreporting. This story was covered in the Scandinavian media with the peacenik slant.
Breitbart News reported this and wrote that the 1000 Muslims was really only 20 and Breitbart Media called it a “Hoax,” in its headline story.
Try to find this story on NBC, ABC,CBS, CNN!!
Yeah, right.
The reason this didn’t appear anywhere else is that it is false. Check out the Facebook page of Rabbi Michael Melchior for an accurate first hand account.