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As Israel’s 60th birthday celebration approaches, those who want to destroy her are redoubling their efforts to delegitimize her, both by rewriting history and by feeding the irrational hatred that is fast becoming part of the common consciousness of ‘humanity’.

Karin Laub and the Associated Press do their part — along with the tens of thousands of Syrian and Hezbollah missiles which are today aimed at all parts of Israel, paid for and controlled by Teheran — to make possible again the mass murder of the Jewish people that was so rudely suspended in 1945.

AP Explains to you why Israel shouldn’t exist
By Barry Rubin

If I would choose one article in the Western media that I have read over many decades as the worst piece of anti-Israel propaganda of all, it might well be Karin Laub’s April 26, 2008 piece, “Palestinian plight is flip side of Israel’s independence joy.”

Why? Because many articles have slandered Israel on various points or told falsehoods ranging from the disgusting to the humorous or been based on assumptions that were at odds with the truth. But in this case, the article encapsulates the way in which much of the world has turned from admiration to loathing of Israel, and the way in which Israel’s destruction — which in other contexts would be seen as genocidal — has been justified.

Sound exaggerated? No doubt, reading the above two paragraphs would shock the author who, I believe, had no conscious intention of perpetuating such a verbal atrocity. It is, once again, the unchallenged myths that are blithely assumed, that do so much damage.

Let me explain, first briefly and then at length. Israel is the only country in the world which is regularly slated for extermination and it is certainly the one most reviled. Without entering into a discussion of why such extraordinary double standards are maintained, the core issue is that Israel is allegedly an illegitimate country because it is founded on the theft of other’s property and the suffering of other people.

This is the modern equivalent of the blood libel, which held that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood for the Passover matzoh. But if that myth is too exotic for people, remember that its “secular” equivalent was responsible for even more anti-Semitic persecution. That was the idea that any Jewish prosperity was based on the blood-sucking of Christian peasants or of society at large.

In this case, Israel is said to have murdered, ethnically cleansed and otherwise persecuted the Palestinians. Therefore, nothing it does can be good, no achievement of itself counts, and it has no right to self-defense. Obviously, such claims are often greatly diluted but nonetheless rest on this basis.

The Laub article is a systematic restatement of this thesis. To begin with, it is extraordinarily long for an AP article, 1,724 words. If this isn’t a record for an AP dispatch, it must be up near the top. Obviously, this is a message that the AP editors are especially eager to convey: that everything Israel has is at Palestinian expense.

That this is a lie can be explained on many levels but at least two must be presented here. First, why is this measure applied only to Israel, and certainly only to Israel on an existential basis? It is well-known, certainly, that Germany has taken responsibility for Nazi crimes, and also there are applications for reimbursement of Jewish property seized in eastern Europe during the Nazi period.

Yet most countries are founded on expropriation, often of Jewish property. For example, Oxford University, where recently debates were conducted calling for Israel’s destruction, was started on property stolen from Jews expelled in 1290. Far more recently, many Arab states received a huge infusion of capital from the expropriation of Jewish property after Israel’s creation. Does France’s or Britain’s or Belgium’s independence day require discussion of colonial depredations? We don’t read articles that Japan’s independence day is blighted by Chinese or Korean suffering, though the Japanese did engage in mass murder of those people. What about the fact that every country in the Western Hemisphere is based on the suffering of the indigenous natives? Or even in the case of Russia, given Czarist and Soviet behavior? In no case, however, is far worse behavior said to have poisoned any other country’s very existence.

But perhaps even more important is the question of where true responsibility for Palestinian suffering lies. Here is how Laub’s article begins:

JALAZOUN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank - Mohammed Shaikha was 9 when the carefree rhythm of his village childhood, going to third grade, picking olives, playing hide-and-seek , was abruptly cut short. Uprooted during the 1948 war over Israel’s creation, he’s now a wrinkled old man. He has spent a lifetime in this cramped refugee camp, and Israel’s 60th independence day, to be celebrated with fanfare on May 8, fills him with pain.

For 60 years, Israel has been sitting on my heart. It kicked me out of my home, my nation, and deprived me of many things,” he said. And each Israeli birthday makes it harder for 70-year-old Shaikha and his elderly gin rummy partners in the camp’s coffee house to cling to dreams of going back to Beit Nabala, one village among hundreds leveled to make way for the influx of Jewish immigrants into the newborn Jewish state.

Well, let us ask the following questions: How did Shaikha leave his “carefree” utopia of Palestine? Most likely because his parents decided to get out of the way while, they expected, the Jews were exterminated by Arab armies. He was in fact “kicked out” by an Arab decision to reject partition — in which case at worst he would be living as an Arab citizen of Israel and at best, depending on where he lived, be a citizen of Palestine celebrating its own sixtieth birthday.

Consider a worst-case alternative history:

Mohammaed Shaikha sat in his nice house and recalled how in 1948 his family left its village and moved a few miles into a village in the new state of Palestine. “It was rough for a while,” he said. “But with the compensation money we got for making peace and aid from Arab states I was able to build a very nice life for myself.”

In fact, it was the Palestinian and Arab leadership which — in contrast to every other refugee situation in modern history — insisted on keeping these people suffering and in refugee camps to use as political pawns. They, too, rejected every offer of peace and resettlement.

For example, if Yasir Arafat had negotiated a solution on the basis of the framework proposed at Camp David in 2000, Shaikha and the other refugees would have shared out over $20 billion in compensation and a Palestinian state might be celebrating its seventh birthday. The PLO refused — a policy pursued since 1993 by the Palestinian Authority — to move people out of refugee camps. They must be kept there as tools with which to blame Israel and also to continue the fires of hatred and violence burning.
A hint of the truth is inadvertently given in the article — though not explained — by a Palestinian ideologue:

Anthropologist Sharif Kaananeh urges his fellow Palestinians to take the long view and learn from Jewish history: “If they waited 2,000 years to claim this country, we can wait 200 years.”

During those 2,000 years, however, Jews whenever possible built up their own lives and acted peacefully and productively. In Kaananeh’s version, he is willing to keep Shaikha and his descendants in refugee camps for 200 years. And why not, since the media will blame their suffering on Israel and provide it as a reason why Israel should disappear, or make endless concessions or be denied full support despite the assault on itself.

By the way, this is what the author prettifies as “perseverance” as if it were something admirable. Don’t make a peaceful compromise; keep fighting and spilling blood unless or until you achieve total victory. In any other situation, this would be decried as a foolish, bloodthirsty, and fanatical world view.

If the Palestinians want to make this their strategy they certainly should not be allowed to blame this on Israel. The true nakba (catastrophe) was not Israel’s creation but the Arab failure to create Palestine and their continuation of conflict to this day. But only Israel is branded, in effect, as a war criminal nation. In this light, the hateful and vicious attacks on it make sense.

Yet why don’t we see the following headline: “Israeli plight a flip side of Palestinian celebration,” or substitute “Israeli plight is flip side of [insert name of any Arab state name or Iran]” or “Israeli [or Jewish] plight is flip side of [insert name of any European state]”?

This could be followed with interviews of displaced Jews (living in poverty since they never left post-World War II refugee camps in Europe or the transit camps built in Israel to house Jewish refugees from the Arab world. Or interviews with Israelis who were maimed or whose families were murdered in wars or terrorist attacks?

For, indeed, Israeli misery is built on the support of terrorism and hatred by Arab states, the incitement to murder and appeals for genocide among Palestinian groups.

Even in direct Palestinian terms, the irony doesn’t stop. The same week as this article was written, it was reported (by Reuters) that while Arab states have promised $717.1 million in aid to the Palestinians, only $153.2 million, that is a bit more than 20 percent, was actually delivered. If Palestinians are not well-off perhaps this is what one must examine, or at least acknowledge.

How about this, from Laub’s article: “The 1948 war had largely separated Israelis and Palestinians, except for some 150,000 Palestinians who stayed put and became Israeli citizens.” No mention of the fact that those Israeli Palestinians have prospered.

And this: “The symbols of occupation, settlements, army bases, roadblocks, are visible across the West Bank.” No mention of the fact that Israel has withdrawn from large parts of the West Bank, and in all the populated areas (except a section of Hebron) Palestinians have had self-government, with massive international aid for 14 years!

And this: “Palestinians under Yasser Arafat took to bombings and hijackings to make the world notice their existence…” So the sole purpose of terrorism was as a misguided public relations’ campaign so the world would take pity on Palestinian suffering, not an attempt to destroy Israel [or just to kill Jews — ed.].

Or this, “Few refugees can realistically expect to go home again, because Israelis fear being swamped by a mass repatriation.” That makes the Palestinian predicament especially harsh, said Karen Abu Zayd, commissioner of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency which helps the Palestinian refugees.” While at least a motive is given for Israel’s refusal (though not that the problem here is not just that a massive influx of Palestinians might overwhelm social services but that the “returnees” goal would be turning Israel into a Palestinian Arab nationalist or Islamist state through violence), no other alternative is presented, not even resettlement in an independent Palestine.

That last point was, after all, the whole idea of the 1990s’ peace process. But the reporter collaborates with the Palestinian line: the only two choices are suffering or total victory, wiping out all other options.

I could literally write a book on the misstatements and misleading basis of this article. But it can be summarized as follows:

This is the Palestinian narrative adopted by a large sector of the American media, as well as academia: It is a zero-sum game in which either Israel must be eliminated or poor Palestinians suffer.

That the continued conflict — and their own suffering — is due to Palestinian actions or that it could be resolved by the kind of compromises Israel has long been advocating (and Palestinians rejecting) and taking risks to bring about is not mentioned. Equally, the perspective that Palestinian radical leadership (by both Fatah and Hamas) and doctrine must be eliminated as the source of Israeli suffering is understated or ignored.

The real victim here is both Israelis and Palestinians. The real cause of the suffering is Arab state intransigence and the kind of Palestinian leadership, strategy, goals, ideology, and behavior that this and so many media stories extol.

Remember that the poisonous forest of hatred and violence grow from the acorns of articles like this.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA and other GLORIA Center publications or to order books, visit http://www.gloriacenter.org.

Technorati Tags: Israel, AP, Karin Laub, Israeli-Palestinian conflict

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Politicians are not the only ones who determine whether there will be war or peace. Media have a lot to do with it, because they can form opinion in such a way as to provide the support for the policies of governments in democracies, or the screaming mobs on the streets of dictatorships. Hearst’s New York Journal is often accused of starting the Spanish-American war of 1897; while this may be an exaggeration, it certainly made it possible.

In the case of the Israeli-Arab conflict, major organs of the media — the BBC is probably the most important of these, but we can also include CNN, Reuters, and others — have taken sides in such a way that can only prevent peace and bring war.

Note that I did not say that the problem is that they favor the Palestinian cause. Of course they do, but I would prefer to put it this way: they distort the basis of the conflict to promote policies that in fact lead directly to war, not peace.

If your understanding of the conflict was based solely on what is presented in the above media, here is what you would believe:

• Israel is an aggressor which undertakes military action to take Palestinian land and (for some unspecified reason) to make them suffer;

• Palestinian terrorism (they wouldn’t use this word) is a reaction to an illegal occupation, and therefore understandable if not justified;

• The Palestinians just want their human rights and to live in peace, but Israel refuses to end its punitive occupation.

All of the above are false. And there are important elements of the conflict that are left out. For example, here are some things that you would not learn from the BBC, CNN, or Reuters:

• The Palestinian quarrel with Israel is not about a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but about whether there should be a Jewish state at all;

• Palestinian Arab terrorism against Jews has been the going on since before the founding of the state, and continues — indeed gets worse — when Israel withdraws from occupied territory;

• Most Israelis would end the occupation and give up the right to live in traditional Jewish sites such as Hebron if they thought it would not bring massive terrorist attacks from the West Bank;

• Terrorism from Hamas and Hezbollah, which are financed and armed by Iran, combines with threats from Israel’s enemies among the Arab nations to constitute an existential threat to Israel.

So, for example, the average BBC consumer will probably support the policy of forcing Israel to withdraw from the West Bank without insisting that terrorist groups be disarmed. As a result, the West Bank would shortly be under the control of Hamas, making probable a three-front rocket assault from Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel would be in mortal danger, and the likelihood of the conflict expanding into a regional war involving at least Syria and possibly Iran would be great.

On the other hand, a correct reading of the situation would tend to support polices to disarm terrorists, both in the territories and in Lebanon. It would support Israel’s maintaining a posture of deterrence against its external enemies. It would make clear to both the Palestinians and the Arab nations that Israel cannot be destroyed by violence, and that a peaceful end to the conflict which leaves Israel standing is the only way to end it.

The decision for peace or war, interestingly, is less up to Israel than to the other players, in the Mideast and elsewhere. Israel, although you wouldn’t know this from the media, really wants to be left in peace and has shown over and over that she is prepared to make sacrifices to this end. But as long as her enemies think that they can actually succeed — and today they are encouraged in this by international policy — they will continue to try.

And the BBC, CNN, Reuters and numerous others continue to help them.

Technorati Tags: media, Israel, Israeli-Arab conflict, BBC, CNN, Reuters, terrorism

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The stupid bias of the media is one of the reasons that the world does not understand the Israeli-Arab conflict, and this lack of understanding encourages Arab and Iranian plans to wipe out Israel. When the inevitable war ensues, the media will bear much of the blame.

What’s More Important: Blue Jeans or Being Blown Up?
By Barry Rubin

It’s hard to satirize a lot of media coverage about Israel and the Arab-Israeli or Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. The truly dreadful stuff is in the details, the small stories and big assumptions on which they are based, rather than in any “scoops” or blockbuster articles.

There are basically two types of such articles. In one, the author’s basic and extreme political bias comes out clearly. The writer is consciously determined to slam Israel. This happens more often in large elements of the European press and in Reuters.

A Reuters reporter called me and told me that they were writing a story on how Israel destroyed the Palestinian economy. I suggested that perhaps they should do an article about the problems of the Palestinian economy rather than assume the answer. When the story came out, my short quote was represented fairly, but the rest of the article was totally biased, trying to prove a thesis, and even misquoted a World Bank report. In the article, the report blamed Israel for the problems but the actual text–available online–said the opposite.

Another personal experience. Australian Broadcasting Company, that country’s main and official television network interviewed me on the main events of the Middle East in 2007. I said that the most important single thing was Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip, an action which set back the chances for peace by many years, even decades.

When the story was broadcast it had been edited so that I appeared to be saying that Israel policy had set back the chances for peace by many years, even decades.

I filed an official complaint and in the end they came down on my side, sort of. The decision was that the piece had been carelessly edited or something like that. In the online correction, however, they didn’t even say that but merely that I had asked that an explanation be added to make clear my point was not about Israeli policy.

Of course, the reporter had done it on purpose.

(more…)

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Here’s how the AP tells a non-story:

Israel to Build on Contested Land

JERUSALEM (AP) — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had barely left Israel on Monday after her latest peacekeeping mission when Israeli officials announced plans to build 1,400 new homes on land Palestinians claim for a future state…

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed to keep building in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, dismissing Palestinian claims that construction on contested land is the greatest obstacle to peace…

He continues to support construction in disputed areas, over the objections of the Palestinians and the U.S., because it allows him to keep his fragile coalition intact.

The Israeli construction plans threatened to make it even harder for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to overcome his people’s skepticism that diplomacy, not violence, would win them a state.

So we understand that Olmert, in defiance of the US, acts in a manner calculated to damage the possibility of peace, for political reasons.

Although I would be the last to deny that Olmert’s motivation for much of what he does is crassly political, in this instance he is doing nothing that in any way — other than by giving the AP and the Palestinians something to get excited about — should prejudice a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

No less than eleven paragraphs down in the AP story, we finally read what Olmert’s provocative act has been:

The city of Jerusalem said it planned to build 600 new apartments in the Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood, which lies in the eastern sector of Jerusalem that Palestinians see as their future capital.

The Shas Party, a powerful partner in Olmert’s coalition government, said the prime minister had promised to revive frozen plans to build 800 homes in [Betar] Illit, an ultra-Orthodox settlement in the West Bank.

First of all, note that these are not “new settlements” in any sense. And they are ‘expansion’ only insofar as they are new construction. They do not represent any expansion of boundaries.

Second, everyone knows that if a two-state solution is possible, final borders will have to be drawn on the basis of Jewish and Arab populations. While outlying settlements might be abandoned (one wonders why ‘outlying’ Arab settlements within Israel will not), established Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem like Pisgat Ze’ev will have to be on the Israeli side. And settlements abutting the Green Line like Betar Illit will be kept. So who cares if there is construction there?

Third, since the parameters of a settlement have not been decided upon, why do the press and others automatically accept Abbas’ point of view that any settlement East of the Green Line is illegitimate?

Fourth, “Shas said that Olmert promised” is not exactly the same as “Israeli officials announced”.

And fifth, do we really think that the “greatest obstacle to peace” is some construction inside existing Jewish neighborhoods?

Or rather is it the dramatic way the Palestinians continue to express their ’skepticism’ that diplomacy is more effective than violence?

Update [1 Apr 1238 PDT]: Our local newspaper, the Fresno Bee, ran this story today. But they only included the first 10 paragraphs of it.

Technorati Tags: Olmert, Israel, Palestinians, media

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Maybe I need to change the station on my clock radio.

A few days ago I awoke to an NPR interview with a Palestinian plumber, in which the usual complaints about checkpoints, humiliation, and above all the security barrier were rehearsed in personal, emotional detail. Israel’s point of view was represented in entirety by the following statement by NPR’s Eric Westerveldt:

Israeli officials insist the wall and checkpoints are needed to stop Palestinian attacks inside Israel.

NPR has been criticized for their biased coverage on numerous occasions, and they say that although one piece may present a particular point of view, there will be others expressing the other side. So I said to myself “they owe us one”.

Today I got what they probably consider the Israeli point of view: “Israelis, Government Divided on Dealing with Hamas“. Big surprise, the four minute segment is almost all Israelis who want to talk to Hamas. Perhaps 30 seconds is given to a government spokesman who claims that the government is opposed to such negotiations — except indirect talks about the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, held by Hamas for over a year — and one woman who doesn’t trust Hamas.

NPR mentions a recent poll in which “two thirds of Israelis favored direct talks with Hamas“, but failed to explain that the question asked referred to talks intended to bring about the release of Shalit! So actually the government is in agreement with popular opinion on this issue.

Then they bring on Shlomo Brom, a former general who is far to the Left in Israeli politics, calling for a cease-fire, opening the crossings between Israel and Gaza, and for Israel to ’supply the needs’ of Gaza’s population.

The impression is given that this position — which is held by only a tiny minority of Israelis — is actually popular, as opposed to the hard-line stance of the government. But of course this is not so.

The reasons to not hold direct talks with Hamas and especially not to negotiate a cease-fire are simple.

For one, Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. It’s not possible to reach an accommodation with someone whose goal and bottom line is wiping you out. There isn’t a middle path between being and non-being.

A cease-fire would be advantageous to Hamas and bad for Israel. Barry Rubin writes,

A cease-fire is riddled with problems, paradoxically bringing even more violence. Hamas won’t observe it, letting both its own members and others attack Israel while inciting murder through every institution. The ceasefire won’t last long; Hamas would use it to strengthen its rule and army while demanding a reward for its “moderation”: an end to sanctions and diplomatic isolation; even Western aid.

Hamas is not a ‘normal’ political organization, as NPR wishes us to think. Hamas was dedicated to destroying Israel when it was out of power, and continued to be so dedicated after it took control of Gaza. Hamas did its best to murder Israelis when Gaza was under occupation, and continues to do its best now that Israel has completely withdrawn. When Hamas could have had international recognition (and aid) simply by agreeing to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept prior agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, they refused.

Hamas today is funded massively by Iran, which uses it as one of its proxies (the other main ones are Syria and Hezbollah). Iran is very interested in eliminating Israel, as I recently wrote:

There are multiple reasons for Iranian policy towards Israel, which include religious motives, the desire to earn propaganda points in the wider Arab and Muslim world, and their understanding that Israel is a base for American power in the Mideast which must be neutralized in order to expel Western influence from the region.

Naturally, NPR and Shlomo Brom don’t mention the Iranian context at all.

Update [19 Mar 2008 1729 PDT]:

Soccer Dad points out that there is a new poll in which only 25% of Israelis and just 17% of Israeli Jews want to talk to Hamas. Why the difference from the Ha’aretz poll? Read his explanation here.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, NPR

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The Jerusalem Post reports:

The latest deaths brought the number of Palestinians killed in army strikes on Thursday to 18, according to Gaza medical officials.

Thursday’s dead included members of rocket squads, but also five children, ranging in age from eight to 12, who their relatives said were playing soccer when they were killed in a missile strike…

Palestinians said Wednesday’s air strikes killed a 6-month-old baby, children ages 10 and 11, and heavily damaged the offices of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, a local humanitarian group.

The Post at least includes the phrase “according to Gaza [Hamas — ed.] medical officials” and “Palestinians said”. But other news agencies often do not. For example, the AP story by the intrepid Ibrahim Barzak and Karin Laub simply says:

The dead Thursday included members of rocket squads, as well as five children, ranging in age from 8 to 12, who their relatives said were playing soccer when they were killed in a missile strike…

Since Wednesday, 31 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli missile strikes, including 14 civilians, among them eight children, according to Palestinian officials. The youngest was a 6-month-old boy, Mohammed al-Borai, whose funeral was held Thursday.

The touch about the funeral is very nice, but how do we know that any of this is true?

The Palestinians have time and again fabricated entire incidents, like the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al-Dura. Why should they tell the truth now?

The news services depend on ‘official’ spokesmen, who are Hamas functionaries, and local Palestinian reporters — who won’t last 10 minutes if they deviate from the Hamas line — to report from Gaza. I mean, after what happened to Alan Johnston (who was pro-Palestinian) wouldn’t you? Yet their reports are treated as if they are as reliable as those of the latest killed and maimed in Sderot.

I am not saying that the IDF never accidentally kills or injures civilians. But great effort is expended to prevent it, and the true number of such cases is nowhere near what is reported.

It seems that the news services feel that it would be biased, racist or un-multicultural to treat Palestinian statements with a little bit more skepticism than those that come from a democratic state like Israel. But given the precedents, they should.

Technorati Tags: AP, Gaza, Israel

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I’ve been suspecting this for a long time, but now someone has come along and proven it:

The New York Times, LA Times (may its name be erased), and Washington Post’s op-ed sections are heavily biased against Israel:

A 19-month CAMERA study, from January 2006 through July 2007, of guest Op-Eds about the Arab-Israeli conflict found that in these three papers pro-Arab Op-Eds and/or those critical of Israel overwhelmingly outnumbered pro-Israel Op-Eds and/or those critical of Arabs. Even more telling is the striking fact that during the 19-month period, none of the newspapers ran even a single Op-Ed by an Israeli official. In contrast, each of the three papers ran four Op-Eds by Arab officials, including multiple pieces by Hamas leaders…

It should be noted that many of the Op-Eds generally supportive of Israel also contained criticism of the Jewish state. In contrast, virtually none of the Op-Eds expressing a pro-Arab point of view contained criticism of the Arab side.

While CAMERA inexplicably left our local paper, the McClatchy-owned Fresno Bee, out of the study, I have no doubt that it falls into the same category. Notable are periodic unsigned editorials which supposedly represent the opinion of the editorial board, although they are not written locally. And from time to time there is a particularly objectionable reader submission. Two weeks ago the Bee gave a prominent place to a poorly-written 700-word piece by a local pastor, a rehash of every libel and slander made against Israel, including accusations of murder, atrocities, ethnic cleansing, racism, apartheid, persecution (of Christians yet), etc.

I’m not the first one to note that journalists at media outlets great and not-so-great all do their best to get people to read their papers. And the op-ed page is, after all, the place where opinions are expressed, and strong opinions are interesting.

Nevertheless we know that the Timeses, the Post, or the Fresno Bee would not print an article which defames a racial or ethnic group. The editors would rightly judge this to be irresponsible.

So why is it acceptable to print hateful material that defames a nation?

Technorati Tags: Newspapers, Israel, NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, Fresno Bee

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The Jerusalem Post reports:

In an uncommon act of journalistic contrition, the BBC has apologized for equating former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh as “great national leaders.”

The BBC took the unusual step after Don Mell, The Associated Press’s former photographer in Beirut, lambasted the parallel, drawn by BBC correspondent Humphrey Hawkesley in a BBC World report last Thursday, as “an outrage” and “beyond belief”…

Hawkesley’s report on what he called “an amazing day for Lebanon,” when a memorial rally for Hariri was followed by Mughniyeh’s funeral, concluded: “The army is on full alert as Lebanon remembers two war victims with different visions but both regarded as great national leaders“…

Mell, who was present when journalist Terry Anderson was kidnapped by Hezbollah in 1985, wrote,

“For you to refer to former prime minister Rafik Hariri and Imad Mughniyeh as ‘great national leaders’ in the same sentence is beyond belief. One was an elected leader who spent years and millions of his own money rebuilding his country. The other was probably the world’s second most notorious terrorist, who was responsible for, in addition to running a major criminal enterprise, destroying the US Embassy, the French and US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983; the hijacking of TWA 847; the bombing of the Israeli cultural center in Buenos Aires, [and] the kidnapping and murder of many Westerners in Lebanon, including Terry Anderson, Terry Waite, John McCarthy”…

“Most recently, Mr. Mugnhiyeh was responsible for provoking the Israeli-Lebanese conflict in 2006, which one may ask, accomplished what?”

And the BBC’s response?

“While there is no doubt that supporters of Hizbullah did regard Mughniyeh in such terms [as a great leader], we accept that the scripting of this phrase was imprecise. The description of Imad Mughniyeh should have been directly attributed to those demonstrating their support for him.”

The statement noted that Hawkesley’s report “made clear that Mughniyeh was believed to have been responsible for a series of bombings; it drew attention to his believed connection with Osama bin Laden and to the fact that he had been hunted by Western intelligence agencies for more than 20 years.”

However, said the BBC, “We accept that this part of the report was open to misinterpretation. We apologize to anyone who may have been offended by this item.”

Imprecise? Actually, it was quite unambiguous.

Technorati Tags: BBC, media, Hawkesley, Mughniyeh, terrorism, Mell

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The New York Times is famous for being the Jewish-owned newspaper that didn’t report on the Holocaust. Today when even the Washington Post is beginning to understand the truth about the Hamas war against Israel, the Times continues its relentless bias.

Not Even Pretending to be Fair: The New York Times On Gaza
By Barry Rubin

The New York Times coverage of the Middle East, especially Steven Erlanger (who will soon be leaving) has often been terrible. Naturally, the Times and Mr. Erlanger will dispute this, but they will not do so by examining the specific stories filed and what these articles do–and do not–say.

Anyone who analyzes the articles themselves will find many points which seem slanted, and all the slants seem to lean in the same way.

Consider, for example, the January 28 article, “Israel Vows Not to Block Supplies to Gaza.” By presenting this decision as a negative rather than a positive (Israel will let supplies flow; Israel wants to avoid any humanitarian crisis in Gaza, etc) it seems as if the newspaper is grudgingly admitting that Israel is doing something good but trying to minimize it.

Then comes a spin slanted against Israel:

“Israel would no longer disrupt the supply of food, medicine and necessary energy into the Gaza Strip and intended to prevent a ‘humanitarian disaster’ there.”

The obvious and intended implication here is that Israel has been blocking three things, thus threatening to unleash a humanitarian disaster. In fact, Israel has never blocked food and medicine, and while it has reduced energy supplies slightly–to a level reducing the Gaza electricity by no more than 20 percent–it has not blocked “necessary” energy but only made a marginal reduction. Thus, in a masterfully crafted but factually inaccurate sentence, both newspapers accuse Israel of something it has never done and imply that it has committed inhuman crimes. (Or to put it another way, Congratulations, you have stopped beating your wife.)

Oh, we’re just getting started as Mr. Erlanger is a master of bias. Dig this sentence:

“Last Wednesday, the Hamas rulers of Gaza broke open the border to Egypt, allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to seek goods that Israel had restricted in its clampdown on the region.”

Now it would be fair to say that Palestinians went to Egypt to buy lots of things and not just goods Israel has restricted–which, remember, we have been just falsely told include food and medicine. In addition, as other reporters have noted, it is not just availability but the fact that many things are cheaper in Egypt than in Gaza, a fact that was also true before the restrictions.

Speaking about restrictions, it might be worth mentioning that there are no such Israeli restrictions on the West Bank. Why is that? It is because the Palestinian Authority regime there doesn’t systematically encourage and facilitate terrorist and rocket and mortar attacks on Israel. This, then, is the central issue pertaining to the Gaza Strip, and not the apparently motiveless meanness that much media coverage makes it seem to be Israel’s reason for so acting.

There are 16 paragraphs remaining in the New York Times version. Do you think that we will be told that some of the restricted goods Palestinians bought in Egypt are guns, ammunition, explosives, and material for making rockets? Of course not.

Every paragraph is a gem. Here’s the next one:

“As an indication of the altered Israeli attitude the government told the Supreme Court, which was meeting to hear a petition against Israeli efforts to cut electricity and fuel to Gaza, that industrial diesel fuel needed to run Gaza’s main power station would be supplied regularly, although in amounts that would not meet Gaza’s needs for uninterrupted electricity.”

This, too, is a well-crafted lie. For even if the proposed Israeli cuts were implemented, any blackouts would be minimal at most. It would be fair to say that Gaza’s total electricity supply would be reduced but certainly not far short of what is required for “uninterrupted electricity.” Moreover, in a further flaunting of bias we are never told that Israel supplies directly 70 percent of Gaza electricity. After all, a reader might think that is pretty humane to give power to an entity next door whose leadership openly states its intention of destroying Israel and killing its people, while that same leadership permits daily attacks on Israel.

The author goes out of his way not to tell us about Israel’s direct supply. Consider for example the next paragraph:

“The government also said that supplies of gasoline and regular diesel fuel to Gaza would be resumed although in diminished amounts.” But no mention of direct electrical supply which is almost four times larger than the total amount made using fuel.

There follows several paragraphs about the meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas and some material about the situation on the Egypt-Gaza border. What ensues, far down in the article, is the closest thing to explaining why Israel is acting:

“Israeli has restricted supplies into Gaza, which it has labelled a ‘hostile entity,’ to try to push Hamas to stop any militant group from firing into Israel. But the move backfired when Hamas breached the border, letting Gazans cross to buy supplies.”

Two points on the above paragraph. First, it is amusing that the reporter doesn’t say what Hamas has been firing–rockets and mortar shells in large numbers–so the reader could be forgiven for thinking it might be an occasional burst of automatic weapons’ fire.

Second, it is not clear that “backfired” is the right word here. But the reason for the phrase becomes clear in the next paragraph:

“The Israeli statement to the court on Sunday was a kind of concession that the policy had failed, but it made clear that Israel would continue restrictions to keep Gazans uncomfortable.”

The problem here is that Israel had been backing off the limited restrictions before the border breakthrough took place. Moreover, if the reporter is going to be balanced he would say that if the policy had “backfired” it was because Hamas was left in a position in which it could continue to incite and implement attacks against Israel; gain some international popular sympathy (thanks to misleading media coverage like this one); maintain a policy of seeking Israel’s extermination; and still get everything required to conduct that military campaign and avoid pressures that might turn Gaza’s population against it.

The author will not do this, however, because he wants to minimize the reasons why Israel needs to make Gazans “uncomfortable.” After all, at a time when there were no restrictions on supplies the Gazans were making Israeli civilians “uncomfortable.” But only the Palestinians are permitted to be portrayed as having a reason to be aggrieved and to be victims.

Naturally, only one side within Israel is quoted on this issue:

“Sari Bashi, director of an Israeli advocacy group, Gisha, which was part of the court case, said, ‘This is part of a stop-start game that continually pushes Gazan residents to the brink, pushing them over, then pulling them back temporarily.” She said that ‘for the last seven months, Israel has been slowly reducing Gaza residents to desperation.’”

No one is quoted from Israel saying that residents of Sderot and the region are being hit by rockets, that their children are being terrified, that Hamas is holding an Israeli soldier as hostage, etc. (Yes, Erlanger has covered this occasionally in other articles but it also belongs here as a balancing quote.) It is fairly typical, of course, that Israelis are usually only quoted when they are being critical of Israel and supportive of the Palestinians.

Ah, but there is an Israeli quoted in the next paragraph which goes like this:

“Separately, as expected, the Israeli attorney general, Menachem Mazuz, said he would not indict police officers involved in the deaths of 13 Arab civilians in 10 days of Arab-Israeli demonstrations in October 2000. In a legal opinion, he upheld a decision by the Justice Ministry in September 2005 to close the investigation of the case.”

The reader would be left to think that this is a whitewash and that people who murdered Arabs are being let off the hook. The reader is not told that the report on the demonstrations (whose violence also goes unmentioned) said that the police acted reasonably given the difficult situation they faced at the time.

A detailed examination of this one article shows a pattern of one-sidedness that can be repeated in hundreds of others, showing clearly the bias in certain specific media outlets and by certain reporters.

To cite only one example, the Los Angeles Times ran an article simply transmitting false Hamas propaganda about the horrors of Israeli cutbacks. And this, to take the cake, was published–with no mention of this fact, after the far more limited reductions had been rescinded. Speaking of cakes, a Boston Globe op-ed piece lambasted Israel for starving Gaza of flour–though its estimate was somewhat skewed by the fact that the deprivation was based on the provision of a half-ton of flour daily for each Gaza resident. At any rate, there have never been any food shortages in Gaza that would lead to deprivation, as is admitted even by international institutions.

Naturally, none of this critique is ever going to appear in the mainstream media which will, at most carry pieces ridiculing this critique and proclaiming what a great job they are doing. This doesn’t mean that many newspapers and other media aren’t doing a good job–they are–but the ones that aren’t will not engage in honest self-criticism or work hard to root out the bias they are showing.

. . .

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA). His latest books are The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan) and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).

Technorati Tags: New York Times, Israel, Hamas, Gaza

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Reuters has gone completely over the top. They are no more reliable or less biased than Al-Jazeera — indeed, they are worse because everyone understands Al-Jazeera’s point of view, while some still take Reuters seriously.

Yesterday I mentioned several incidents in the ongoing war between Israel and Palestinian terrorists. In one case two border police officers were ambushed and shot, one fatally. In the other, two Hamas terrorists infiltrated a school in Kfar Etzion and started stabbing people; they were overpowered and killed by two of the teachers.

Get ready for this. Here is how Reuters reports these incidents:

Two Palestinians, Israeli killed in W.Bank incidents

JERUSALEM, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Jewish settlers shot dead two Palestinians and gunmen killed an Israeli border policeman in two separate incidents in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, medical and security services said.

Note that the headline and the story mentions the Palestinians first, and does not suggest that they were doing anything other than minding their own business when (in highly emotive language) the “settlers shot [them] dead”.

Police said Palestinian gunmen shot an Israeli paramilitary border policeman near the Shuafat refugee camp near Jerusalem and that he died of his wounds at the scene.

A woman, also from the Israeli security services, received moderate to serious gunshot wounds in the same incident, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Israel Radio reported that a large number of police and soldiers were combing the area, searching for the gunmen.

OK, although I’m not sure what the faintly disreputable word ‘paramilitary’ is supposed to add. Now let’s get to how the Palestinians died, five paragraphs into the story:

In the second incident, settlers overpowered and shot dead two Palestinians who infiltrated a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, an army spokeswoman said.

Israel radio said the Palestinians had stabbed two settlers at the Kfar Etzion settlement, not far from Bethlehem, before being shot, and a hospital spokeswoman in Jerusalem said the settlers’ injuries were light to moderate. [my emphasis]

Just in case you might have mistakenly thought that they were humans living in a kibbutz, the article uses the words ’settlers’ and ’settlement’ no less than six times.

The “Palestinians” — who should be called ‘terrorists’ if anyone should — disabled an alarm system and cut the perimeter fence at the kibbutz, which houses a yeshiva operated by the famed Talmudic scholar, Adin Steinsaltz. Dressed in stolen IDF uniforms, they sneaked into a meeting of teachers and attempted to stab them; they were shot by one of the teachers. Similar infiltrations have resulted in numerous Israeli deaths.

Just a word about the ’settlement’ of Kfar Etzion. It was originally founded on legally purchased land by Yemenite Jews in 1927, abandoned several times due to Arab attacks and rebuilt. Finally, in 1948 Kibbutz Kfar Etzion was overrun by the British-commanded Jordanian Arab legion. Here is an account of what happened:

On the 13th of May the defenders of Kfar Etzion surrendered to the Legion. The Legion honored the surrender, though Arab irregulars continued to fire for some time. The defenders gathered in front of the school and put down their weapons. They were photographed by someone in a kaffiyeh (Arab headdress and European suit). Then an armored car, apparently belonging to the Legion, approached and opened fire, and other Arab attackers opened fire with submachine guns and grenades. Some survivors claimed Legion soldiers were not involved, others insisted that they were. Survivors all recall that that the Arabs were screaming “Deir Yassin.” All accounts agree that Legion officers rescued several survivors.

About 50 defenders escaped to the cellar of the old German monastery that was within the grounds, and tried to defend themselves there. The Arab attackers finished them off with hand grenades and then blew up the building, which collapsed over them. All but about five defenders were eventually killed. In all, about 128 defenders were massacred by the Palestinian Arab irregulars or the Jordan Legion, counting those who had escaped to the basement of the monastery. Some accounts do not count these people as “massacred” and estimate that fifty were massacred. However, those who fled to the basement were given no chance to surrender. One of the survivors, a woman, was taken to a field to be raped by two Legion soldiers, but saved by an officer. About 157 Jewish defenders died in the final battle for Gush Etzion, including those killed in the massacre.

After the illegal 19-year Jordanian occupation ended in 1967, Kfar Etzion was rebuilt yet again.

Technorati Tags: Reuters, Kfar Etzion, Israel, terrorism, media bias

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This morning I wrote a letter to my local newspaper in response to a biased AP item written by Ibrahim Barzak which began, “Gaza City was plunged into darkness Sunday after Israel blocked the shipment of fuel that powers its only electrical plant in retaliation for persistent rocket attacks by Hamas militants.”

The article made it sound as though Israel had shut off power to Gaza, and quoted Hamas as saying that five patients at the hospital had died as a result of the power outage (but admits that this can not be confirmed. So why include it?).

Several paragraphs down it is mentioned in passing that Israel directly supplies 70% of Gaza’s electricity (another 5% comes from Egypt), and that this was not interrupted. So why was there a massive blackout?

Arye Mekel, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said, “What we are seeing now is a staged production by Hamas.”

Given the amount of electricity provided by Israel and Egypt, there was no justification for the massive blackouts, Mr. Mekel said, even with a shortage of fuel.– NY Times

I suppose that Hamas needed to divert that 70% to its really critical functions, like running the lathes that make rocket motors or lighting the weapons-smuggling tunnels under the Egyptian border.

In fact, as Honest Reporting points out, Hamas officials made a big deal about shutting down the power plant themselves and invited the media to watch them do it!

To add insult to injury, the Fresno Bee shortened the already slanted AP dispatch by leaving off the very last sentence, which mentioned the fact that 200 rockets and mortars had hit southern Israel since last Tuesday.

Of course this kind of coverage has been as constant as the Qassam barrage on Sderot in past months. Just search Yahoo News for “Gaza Barzak” to see numerous AP releases from staffer Barzak about the suffering Gazans and the sadistic Zionists.

Now it seems that the propaganda barrage has hit its target as well. Israel has announced that it will be sending a week’s supply of diesel fuel plus 50 truckloads of food and other supplies to Gaza. Supposedly this is not a result of international pressure. But given that Israeli officials do not themselves believe that that there is a “humanitarian crisis”, there’s no other explanation.

Schoolchildren in Sderot try to hide from Hamas missiles (courtesy Sderot Media)

Technorati Tags: Israel, Gaza, Hamas, AP, Barzak

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The rules of the game regarding anti-Semitic expression have changed. Here is a cartoon chosen by the editors of the Los Angeles Times to illustrate a violently anti-Israel article written by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the authors of the book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”, a book which many have argued is itself anti-Semitic.

Anti-Semitic cartoon from LA Times, January 6, 2008

CAMERA has written a response to the Mearsheimer-Walt article, and has even purchased a full-page advertisement in (other) LA-area newspapers criticizing the Times for its distorted coverage and incidentally pointing out the similarity of the cartoon to one in a German newspaper of the Nazi era.

Last July, I called for a boycott of the Times after they ran a op-ed by Hamas mouthpiece Moussa Abu-Marzouk, in which he asserts that murder of civilians within Israel is justified as ‘resistance to occupation’.

But the Times is just one example of a more widespread phenomenon. The fact is that extreme anti-Israeli expression (