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11/20/2009

The problem with pundits

Filed under: Israel, Media Bias — Tags: , , — Meryl Yourish @ 9:15 am

One thing nearly all [anti-]Israel pundits have in common is the sheer inability to access reality. The only villain in the inability to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians is Israel, generally due to settlements, and as a result of the security fence. Just ask Roger Cohen, for instance.

But the deeper error was strategic: Obama’s assumption that he could resume where Clinton left off in 2000 and pursue the land-for-peace idea at the heart of the two-state solution.

This approach ignored the deep scars inflicted in the past decade: the killing of 992 Israelis and 3,399 Palestinians between the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000 and 2006; the Israeli Army’s harsh reoccupation of most of the West Bank; Hamas’ violent rise to power in Gaza and the accompanying resurgence of annihilationist ideology; the spectacular spread of Jewish settlements in the West Bank; and the Israeli construction of over 250 miles of a separation barrier that has protected Israel from suicide bombers even as it has shattered Palestinian lives, grabbed land and become, in the words of Michael Sfard, an Israeli lawyer, “an integral part of the West Bank settlement plan.”

That’s a pretty awesome list of what went wrong. Think Roger will devote any space in the rest of his column to the Palestinian terror attacks? The rockets from Gaza? Hamas’ constant warring with Israel?

Of course not. The rest of the article is about the fence, and about how Israelis are psychologically scarred and can only see themselves as “victims” of the Palestinians. Victims. Really? I thought they saw the Palestinians for what they are—a people who celebrate the mass murder of Israeli schoolchildren, killed while they were studying Torah in the heart of Jerusalem.

Gaza’s streets filled with joyous crowds of thousands on Thursday evening following the terror attack at a Jerusalem rabbinical seminary in which eight people were killed.

In mosques in Gaza City and northern Gaza, many residents went to perform the prayers of thanksgiving.

Armed men fired in the air in celebration and others passed out sweets to passersby.

But it’s the settlements. And the fence. Oh, and racism.

As Ron Nachman, the founder of the sprawling Ariel settlement, comments in René Backmann’s superb new book, “A Wall in Palestine,” the wave of Palestinian suicide attacks before work on the barrier began in mid-2002 meant that: “Israelis wanted separation. They did not want to be mixed with the Arabs. They didn’t even want to see them. This may be seen as racist, but that’s how it is.”

Really? Because I’m pretty sure there are well over a million Arab Israelis within Israel’s borders. But those “Palestinians” don’t count in any census except for the one where the rest of the world warns Israel that if they don’t negotiate a peace soon, the one-state solution will be forced upon them because Jews will make up a minority in the land formerly known as Palestine. Oh, and they mention them when they accuse Israelis of racism.

There’s one more bit of fantasy that all [anti-]Israel pundits like to promote. The fantasy that Mahmoud Abbas truly wants peace. (Plus, please… touting the Nobel given for nothing? We really are in Fantasyland here.)

Obama, who has his Nobel already, should ratchet expectations downward. Stop talking about peace. Banish the word. Start talking about détente. That’s what Lieberman wants; that’s what Hamas says it wants; that’s the end point of Netanyahu’s evasions.

It’s not what Abbas wants but he’s powerless. Shlomo Avineri, a political scientist, told me, “A nonviolent status quo is far from satisfactory but it’s not bad. Cyprus is not bad.”

Mahmoud Abbas pays lip service, in English to peace. But when he speaks to his fellow terrorists at the Fatah convention, it’s a whole different story.

“Although peace is our choice, we reserve the right to resistance, legitimate under international law,” Abbas said in a policy speech, using a term that encompasses armed confrontation with Israel and non-violent protests.

“Resistance” also encompasses suicide attacks. And when he’s not talking about “resistance,” he’s sending condolences to the family of dead Hizbullah fighters, and congratulating mass murderers like Samir Kuntar.

But these things never pop up on the radar of the anti-[Israel] pundits. They don’t exist. There is no Palestinian intransigence, only Israeli intransigence, and Palestinian intransigence caused by Israeli settlements—which is Israel’s fault, of course. The [anti-]Israel pundits simply refuse to acknowledge the facts of the matter, unless those facts damn Israel and praise Palestinians.

But if you’re a regular reader of this, or any other pro-Israel blog, well, you’re aware of that. Preaching to the choir here. But sometimes, someone else reads my posts and starts thinking.

I seriously doubt the Roger Cohens of the world will. But hey, he’s great post fodder.

11/18/2009

Passively described aggression

Filed under: Israel, Media Bias, palestinian politics — Tags: , — Soccerdad @ 10:00 am

In some ways there’s little to quibble with in Howard Schneider’s To two faiths, a holy patch of land; to the world, a powder keg in the Washington Post. It begins:

It is one of the most watched pieces of real estate in the world, 35 acres where an under-the-breath prayer or a whiff of a rumor can rouse warnings of war.

In both Judaism and Islam, the area known respectively as the Temple Mount and the Noble Sanctuary is considered a formative location. Jews believe it to be the site of Solomon’s Temple and key biblical events. Muslims regard it as the spot where Muhammad was brought by the angel Gabriel before embarking on a trip to heaven to visit the other prophets.

It also remains a flash point, and a series of disturbances there this fall showed just how difficult it will be for Israelis and Palestinians to reach agreement on an area over which they negotiate not just as political entities but also as representatives of two faiths with an often-troubled relationship.

I wish he were stronger in terms of the Jewish claim. Archaeology has confirmed the Temple. It’s more than just a Jewish “belief.”

However later on there are a few things that bother me.

If the Palestinians “want to let go of an area in the West Bank, no one from the outside is going to say anything,” said Abdul Fattah Salah, Jordan’s minister of religious affairs. “But when it comes to Jerusalem, they can’t. It is tied to all Muslims.” The Jordanian ministry employs 500 people who staff the Jerusalem compound.
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Salah said the hope is that if part of Jerusalem becomes the capital of a Palestinian state, Muslims from any country will be able to begin visiting a site where it is considered a special blessing to pray — access that he said Israel is unlikely to grant if it maintains sole sovereignty over the city.

First of all, Schneider lets stand the exaggerated claim of the Muslim attachment to Jerusalem. Yes Jerusalem is holy to Muslims, but for much of Islamic history Jerusalem was ignored. Even the Crusades aroused little interest at first. This leads Daniel Pipes to conclude:

First, Jerusalem will never be more than a secondary city for Muslims; “belief in the sanctity of Jerusalem,” Sivan rightly concludes, “cannot be said to have been widely diffused nor deeply rooted in Islam.” Second, the Muslim interest lies not so much in controlling Jerusalem as it does in denying control over the city to anyone else. Third, the Islamic connection to the city is weaker than the Jewish one because it arises as much from transitory and mundane considerations as from the immutable claims of faith.

The other point Schneider should have challenged Salah on was his claim that until Jerusalem becomes part of a Palestinian state, Muslims from around the world won’t be able to visit it. I expect that Muslims from Arab countries that are hostile to Israel won’t be able to visit Jerusalem easily. So there is a solution. Make peace with Israel. (And of course the Jordanian doesn’t acknowledge that when his country ruled the Old City, Jews were forbidden from visiting their holy site!)

And then at the end of the article Schneider writes:

Given recent history, the fall riots were viewed by some here as a cause for optimism. They were on a comparatively small scale, led to no deaths on either side and, after a tense period from Yom Kippur through late October, appear to have dissipated without consequence.

Far worse has happened: Dozens of people died in 1996 in clashes that erupted after access was opened for tourists to a tunnel that ran on an ancient street alongside the wall. And a visit to the area by former prime minister Ariel Sharon in 2000 helped trigger the multi-year uprising known as the al-Aqsa Intifada.

Let’s give a little more detail as to what happened in 1996 and 2000. Barry Rubin recently recalled:

In 1996, the Israeli government opened a tunnel which tourists could walk through and see certain features of the ancient wall and Jerusalem. Rumors that the Jews were trying to destroy the mosques were orchestrated by the Palestinian leadership with many lives lost and the peace process placed in jeopardy. As a result, too, 85 Palestinians and 16 Israelis were killed, and more than 1,300 people–mostly Palestinians–were wounded, a terrible bloodshed for no rational reason whatsoever.

In 2000, a brief tour of the Temple Mount by Ariel Sharon—he merely walked through for about an hour, looked around, and then left—was the rationale used to set off an intifada that lasted for about five years and cost several thousand lives.

Afterward, Marwan Barghouti, leader of Fatah on the West Bank, described in detail how he used this as an excuse to set off the uprising. This violence took place about the time that President Bill Clinton, with Israeli agreement, proposed the creation of an independent Palestinian state which would, among other things, control most of east Jerusalem.

Schneider uses “erupted” and “triggered” to describe how the violence started in those circumstances. But in both cases as Prof. Rubin observed, the violence was incited. Worse in 2000, the Arafat-PA orchestrated violence came after rejecting a peace offer that would have given the Palestinians significant control over the Temple Mount.

Left unsaid by Schneider and unfortunately not even implicit in his article is that there’s no peace in the Middle East, because the Arabs generally and the Palestinians specifically, refuse to make peace with Israel. Jerusalem might well be a sticking point, but it’s because the Arab world has chosen to make it one, rejecting any compromises with Israel.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

11/13/2009

Roger Cohen: about hinges and lack thereof

Filed under: Juvenile Scorn, Media Bias — SnoopyTheGoon @ 7:04 am

I have no doubt that all of you followed with bated breath the Iranian odyssey of the NYT grand vizier Roger Cohen. Well, if you didn’t, here is a reminder. So enamored was our jolly Roger with the regime, that I was quite sure he became a full time fellow traveler of Ayatollahs. Then, after the democratic elections in this “vibrant democracy” (according to Roger) and the following violence, Roger came up with a rare show of mea culpa, bewailing his own blindness.

One would assume that enough is enough and that Mr Cohen will do his best not to mention this professional fiasco. Even after the ominous sentence he dropped in one of the after-election pieces:

I’ve argued for engagement with Iran and I still believe in it, although, in the name of the millions defrauded, President Obama’s outreach must now await a decent interval.

(We have already seen the attempt to outreach – quite according to Cohen’s wishes – and the results of this attempt. But this is not about the current administration. It is about Mr Cohen.)

So imagine my surprise upon seeing the article The Hinge of History where not so jolly Roger takes another approach to Iran:

What if the vast protesting crowd of perhaps three million people had turned from Azadi (Freedom) Square toward the presidential complex? What if Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader, had stood before the throng and said, “Here I stand with you and here I will fall?” What, in short, if Azadi had been Prague’s Wenceslas Square of 20 years ago and Moussavi had been Vaclav Havel?

This absolutely pathetic piece, which has nothing to do with what professional journalism is about, is just an exercise in mental and moral masturbation. It made me suspect that Mr Cohen nurtures an intent to leave the field of journalism, where the possibilities of rich pickings are somewhat diminished for him, exchanging it for the “what if?” quasi-SF domain. But better people have already cornered this market, so it could hardly be. I don’t have an explanation for this miserable excuse for an op-ed column, unless it’s a cry of a tortured soul (bleh…).

What I do have, though, is a question: what if Roger Cohen and many of his oh so progressive and liberal colleagues, instead of doing their considerable best to poison the Western minds by their warm and fuzzy about the nice Iranian regime during the years that led up to the current tragedy, tried telling (for a change) not what they desire to see, but the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

But then, Roger Cohen is just another link in the long chain of the fellow travelers (or useful idiots, take your pick), one of whom produced that masterpiece in 1924 for NYT:

Sad.

P.S. I have already posted that snapshot of NYT article before. It bears repeating.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

11/09/2009

AP finds a shooter they can label terrorist

Filed under: Media Bias, Terrorism — Meryl Yourish @ 10:00 am

The AP can’t call the Fort Hood shooter a terrorist, in spite of there now being evidence that he attended the same mosque as the 9/11 terrorists, held anti-American views, and talked about jihad. And now we have word that he tried to contact al Qaeda. (And no, ABC News won’t call him a terrorist either.)

But here’s a terrorist for you:

The man accused in the Halloween-night shooting death of a Seattle policeman remains hospitalized, and authorities were expected to talk more Monday about why they believe the suspect is a domestic terrorist who held a grudge against law enforcement.

See, it’s safe to call Americans terrorists, because we’re not going to get all offended-ethnic on your ass. We’re going to roll our eyes, write letters to the editor, and put up blog posts ridiculing you. Nobody needs to worry about anything violent happening.

Way to report the news, news media.

You must not generalize

Filed under: Media Bias, Terrorism — Tags: , — Soccerdad @ 8:30 am

Remember when Stuart Nozette was arrested last month, that the Washington Post reported:

Nozette’s actions could be misinterpreted in ways that damage American impressions of Jews or provoke an overreaction that divides Americans.

Well actually the Post didn’t include any such line. It did note at the end of the article that prosecutors noted that Israel had nothing to do with Nozette’s espionage. But it did tell us this:

Sometime before Nozette took a foreign trip in January, he told a colleague that he would flee the United States if charged with a crime, the agent wrote. Nozette added that he would tell officials from an unidentified country and Israel “everything” he knew, the court papers allege.

This is, I suppose, part of the news story and legitimate news, but doesn’t it raise the specter of double loyalty that is often trotted out against Jews?

Yet here’s a story about Nidal Hasan.

A challenge for investigators is sorting out a potential thicket of psychological, ideological or religious motivations behind Hasan’s alleged actions. Hasan’s possible contact with extremists such as Aulaqi would complicate matters, suggesting that U.S. authorities may have missed chances to prevent the cleric from instigating this incident and others. But if it turns out that Hasan acted in the throes of an emotional breakdown, his questionable ties could be misinterpreted in ways that damage U.S. outreach to the Muslim world or provoke an overreaction that divides Americans.

Part of the Post’s reporting is to ensure that Americans don’t generalize from one man’s actions. While anti-Muslim hate crimes did increase after 9/11, they are back down again to very low levels. Why is it that when it comes to Muslims does the Washington Post (and American media in general) feel the need to tell us what to think?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

11/08/2009

When you’re serious about the Middle East, stop living in the past

Filed under: Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Media Bias — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 11:00 am

Thomas Freidman, today relives one of his greatest hits on Israel. In an op-ed entitled “Call White House, Ask for Barack,” Friedman writes:

Today, the Arabs, Israel and the Palestinians are clearly not feeling enough pain to do anything hard for peace with each other — a mood best summed up by a phrase making the rounds at the State Department: The Palestinian leadership “wants a deal with Israel without any negotiations” and Israel’s leadership “wants negotiations with the Palestinians without any deal.”

It is obvious that this Israeli government believes it can have peace with the Palestinians and keep the West Bank, this Palestinian Authority still can’t decide whether to reconcile with the Jewish state or criminalize it and this Hamas leadership would rather let Palestinians live forever in the hellish squalor that is Gaza than give up its crazy fantasy of an Islamic Republic in Palestine.

Don’t get me wrong. I agree with Friedman’s central premise that peace isn’t just around the corner. And he is also correct that the United States ought not to be making the peace process its central focus in the Middle East.

What I object to, is his characterization of Israel as being uninterested in peace. Israel, near as I can tell doesn’t possess the complete “West Bank,” as he calls it, having ceded the major cities there to the Palestinians during the 1990’s. Israel has taken quite a few significant steps for peace since 1993. But let’s go back to the scene of Friedman’s crime. (i.e. what the “Call Barack” line refers to.)

In 1990 then Secretary of State, James Baker expressed his frustration with the Israeli government. His pique was dutifully reported by the then New York Times diplomatic correspondent, Thomas Friedman.

If such new thinking is not forthcoming ”quickly” from Israel, Mr. Baker cautioned, then the Bush Administration is simply going to disengage from Middle East diplomacy. Washington, he suggested, will adopt the attitude that could be summed up as ”call us when you are serious about peace.”

To drive home that point to the Israelis, the Secretary of State gave them President Bush’s White House telephone number.

”I have to tell you that everybody over there should know that the telephone number is 1-202-456-1414,” Mr. Baker said. ”When you’re serious about peace, call us.”

(I believe that I’ve read the Friedman fed Baker the line about calling the White House, but have found no documentation of the charge.)

But continue reading the article.

In its coalition agreement, the new Israeli Government stipulated that Israel would not negotiate directly or indirectly with anyone affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization. It also excluded from the negotiations any Palestinians who are residents of Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.

Washington, as well as Israel’s Labor Party, has argued that to get Palestinians to accept negotiations, those Palestinians who are residents of both Jerusalem and the occupied territories should be allowed to take part, as well as those who might identify with the P.L.O. but have no formal affiliation with the organization.

Earlier today, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir added an additional condition: that Palestinian negotiators must formally embrace Israel’s idea that negotiations would be about autonomy for the occupied territories and nothing more, before talks could begin. The American position is that the talks should open with a discussion about autonomy, but then eventually move on to issues of final status.

Understand some things. In 1990, the only people in Israel who were advocating for a Palestinian state were those on the far left. Now even the supposedly “hawkish” Israeli Prime Ministers, Binyamin Netanyahu is working from that premise. In 1990, the discussion as to whether or not to negotiate with Palestinians affiliated with the PLO – there was virtually no one in Israel who, nineteen years ago, approved of negotiating with the PLO itself.

But these taboos have fallen by the wayside. The PLO is in charges of Palestinians living in “the West Bank.” The more extreme Hamas rules Gaza. And Israel is no closer to peace than it was back in 1990. In the name of peace, Israel has given the PLO land, money and even weapons. In the name of peace of the PLO has taken them, but made neither reciprocal nor concrete contributions to the “peace process.”

As Israel ceded territory to the PLO, the PLO under Yasser Arafat used its newfound freedom to create a “suicide factory” in the territories he controlled.

And after rejected Ehud Barak’s peace offer in 2000 at Camp David, Arafat launched a new war against Israel, that killed thousands until Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield to destroy the terror infrastructure Arafat built even whill being hailed as a “peace partner.” But how did Friedman react to the terror war that Arafat launched in 2000? This is what he wrote in “Arafat’s War.”

Mr. Arafat had a dilemma: make some compromises, build on Mr. Barak’s opening bid and try to get it closer to 100 percent ? and regain the moral high ground that way ? or provoke the Israelis into brutalizing Palestinians again, and regain the moral high ground that way. Mr. Arafat chose the latter. So instead of responding to Mr. Barak’s peacemaking overture, he and his boys responded to Ariel Sharon’s peace- destroying provocation. In short, the Palestinians could not deal with Barak, so they had to turn him into Sharon. And they did.

Of course, the Palestinians couldn’t explain it in those terms, so instead they unfurled all the old complaints about the brutality of the continued Israeli occupation and settlement- building. Frankly, the Israeli checkpoints and continued settlement- building are oppressive. But what the Palestinians and Arabs refuse to acknowledge is that today’s Israeli prime minister was offering them a dignified exit. It was far from perfect for Palestinians, but it was a proposal that, with the right approach, could have been built upon and widened. Imagine if when Mr. Sharon visited the Temple Mount, Mr. Arafat had ordered his people to welcome him with open arms and say, “When this area is under Palestinian sovereignty, every Jew will be welcome, even you, Mr. Sharon.” Imagine the impact that would have had on Israelis.

But that would have been an act of statesmanship and real peaceful intentions, and Mr. Arafat, it’s now clear, possesses neither. He prefers to play the victim rather than the statesman. This explosion of violence would be totally understandable if the Palestinians had no alternative. But that was not the case. What’s new here is not the violence, but the context. It came in the context of a serious Israeli peace overture, which Mr. Arafat has chosen to spurn. That’s why this is Arafat’s war. That’s its real name.

Not everything here is wrong or outrageous, but Charles Krauthammer identifies the underlying problem with Friedman’s observation.

We are now at Phase Two. This is the war Arafat has coveted all his life: the war against Israel from within Palestine. He tried first to make war from Jordan and was expelled in 1970. He then tried to make war from Lebanon and was expelled in 1982. And then in 1993, the miracle: Israel itself, in a fit of reckless high-mindedness unparalleled in the annals of diplomacy, brought him back to Palestine, gave him control of 98 percent of the Palestinian population, armed his 40,000 “police” (i.e. army), and granted him international legitimacy, foreign aid, and the territorial base of every city in the West Bank and Gaza.

Yet there are still observers in the West who remain puzzled by Arafat’s war. Taken in by Oslo for the entire eight years, the New York Times’ Tom Friedman, for example, now rationalizes the collapse of his illusions by characterizing Arafat’s war as senseless and self-defeating, “a grievous error” and an “idiotic uprising.”

This analysis is sheer nonsense. The war is the war Arafat always wanted. He has just seen Israel, facing guerrilla war in Lebanon, abjectly surrender and withdraw unilaterally. And now, after a year of his own guerrilla war within Palestine, the balance of forces with Israel has shifted dramatically in his favor.

Why was Friedman surprised? Had he not been paying to attention to Arafat’s perfidies over the previous 7 years? And yet Friedman thought it was conceivable that Arafat would see Barak’s proposal and make a counteroffer. Friedman refused to believe what happened since Oslo. He always figured that if Israel made enough concessions it would achieve peace. He accepted no evidence to the contrary.

Still even after that point, now nine years later, he still argues that Israel isn’t serious in peace. I notice that he didn’t write a column earlier this year after lame duck Israeli Prime Minister Olmert made an offer even more generous Camp David to “moderate” PA President Abbaas that was summarily rejected! Friedman who invested so much ink, pixels and prestige to (then) Crown Prince Abdullah’s peace ultimatum saying that it was significant (though the Saudi was vague about Arab commitments to Israel) refused to acknowledge a concrete Israeli peace offer that still didn’t bring peace.

That’s because no amount of land will satisfy the Palestinians, as long as Israel still exists. That has not changed in the sixteen years since Arafat and Rabin signed the Oslo Accords. Rather than acknowledge the sea change in Israeli politics that has occurred since then, Friedman chooses to retreat into his comfortable “plague on both their houses” approach. Sorry but all Friedman is doing, is validating the continued Palestinian rejection of Israel, ensuring that peace will remain remote.

Maybe one day Friedman will come to his senses. But for now he remains stuck in the glorious past when he was the Secretary of State’s favorite stenographer.

Related: see Meryl tomorrow (11/09/09).

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

11/02/2009

The blood libeler speaks

Filed under: Anti-Semitism, Gaza, Media Bias — Tags: , — Meryl Yourish @ 12:00 pm

Ha’aretz interviewed Donald Bostrom, who can’t understand why Israelis didn’t take seriously his article blaming the IDF for killing Palestinians for their organs, and immediately launch an investigation to make sure that it wasn’t true.

But he’s not sorry for any of it, really.

Are you sorry about anything?

“I’m sorry there are so many lies about me. Like for example that they say I wrote that the soldiers hunted for youths so as to take their organs. It’s obvious that’s a lie. Even the Palestinians don’t make a claim like that. And the other side attributes anti-Semitism to me. I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry I’ve become a political tool. I’m sorry the article caused damage to the struggle for human rights here. And above all, I’m sorry that no one took the article seriously and that they did not examine the suspicions. In Sweden too they didn’t take it seriously.”

What. A. Tool. The human rights he’s talking about? Palestinians being killed by soldiers. The fact that the Palestinian that was killed, the one that inspired his story, was a terrorist battling the IDF seems to have been conveniently left out of Bostrom’s narrative.

Note that he’s not sorry at all that Israel’s enemies have another Mohammed al-Dura club to wield. What a jackass. This guy is considered a journalist in Sweden?

Do you think the IDF killed people to get body organs?

“I don’t think soldiers behaved like that. I don’t think they killed in order to gather organs. The truth is that they kill them without a trial and their bodies are taken to Abu Kabir. We don’t know whether they take out the organs. That has still to be further investigated. No one opened up the bodies after they were returned and only one man knows the truth, Prof. Yehuda Hiss, the director of the forensic institute. “

Actually, any medical doctor knowledgeable in transplants could tell you the truth: The organs that were “harvested” in such a way would be useless. But don’t let the facts get in the way of your spreading lies.

You have already had scandals at your forensic institute with other bodies, he says, and there is illegal trade in organs, so there is a need to investigate.

In other words: Have you stopped beating your wife yet? Guilty until proven innocent. Except when Israel offers the proof, the world will still insist that Israel is guilty. And then there’s the fact that he’s being accompanied by a bodyguard, paid for, no doubt, by Israeli taxpayers. Why? Um. Because he was met by protesters at the airport. Oooh. Scary.

Then there’s the conference itself, where he was booed and challenged on his made-up facts:

Lapid shot back, “To say this without a shred of evidence, that Israel possibly harvested organs from Palestinians who disappeared, in other words, whom we kidnapped, killed, and robbed their organs, is a degrading and monstrous idea.”

In response, Bostrom said that he understands why people are angry, saying that everyone lies while at war. He said that it is difficult for reporters to distinguish between what is correct and what is a lie. “If it were just one family, fine. But there were many families. Mothers have a right to know what happened to their sons,” claimed Bostrom.

Bostrom was told to his face that he was an anti-Semite. Of course, he responded that not all critics of Israel are anti-Semitic. Kudos to Yair Lapid for this:

Lapid concluded, “You are an anti-Semite because you are prepared to believe that there is a possibility that the government and the authorities would take part in such a monstrous thing. The only thing I can say in your favor is that you don’t know you’re an anti-Semite.”

I don’t think that counts very much in his favor. In fact, let us all chant the Yourish.com mantra for our Swedish photographer who says he really, really, really likes Israel, no, really: Anti-Semites of the world, just die already.

10/30/2009

Time after Time about Israel

Filed under: American Scene, Israel, Media Bias — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 7:00 am

I was looking for something else when I found an article about published in the June 9, 1967 issue of Time Magazine. (Despite the publication date, the article was clearly written beforeThe tone towards Israel was a lot more sympathetic than it is nowadays. And can you imagine any publication writing this nowadays?

In fact, one trouble is the profoundly emotional and irrational nature of many of the Arab demands and expectations—almost an inability to recognize the hard facts of life. The Arabs have seen Israel prosper on soil from which they barely scratched a living when they had it; Israel’s success is not only a blow to their pride but a constant rebuke to the dismal poverty in which most of the Arab world lives.

Then I started searching through Time’s archives to get a sense of how Time’s attitude towards Israel changed over the years. I’m just going to take arbitrary paragraphs. Some are from news stories; others from opinion pieces. And, of course, you can follow the links to see the whole context.

Israel and its enemies (June 22, 1970) focused on the threat presented by the Arab world armed by Russia.

It is on the ground that the odds are longest against the Israelis—at least in terms of numbers. With a population of 2,800.000 v. 51 million Arabs, Israel can mobilize an army of 275,000 against Arab armies of 398,000 men. The Israelis depend on air superiority and wits to protect themselves. One reason that Israeli soldiers have hunkered down for so long on the Bar-Lev Line under barely tolerable siege conditions is that their string of hedgehog forts and minefields serve as a kind of trip wire. The line, using relatively few men, is designed to delay any kind of major Egyptian cross-canal attack until troops stationed in the desert behind them can come up to help.

For a mobile army whose motto has always been “Attack,” the static warfare of the Bar-Lev Line is an often demoralizing experience. So is the war of attrition that Israel is being forced to fight on all its borders. Casualties have been heavy. In May, 61 soldiers and civilians were killed, the heaviest one-month toll since the 1967 war; on the basis of population, this is the equivalent of losing 4,300 U.S. troops in one month in Viet Nam. During the six days of the ‘67 war, 777 soldiers and 26 Israeli civilians were killed. Since the war, 558 soldiers and 112 civilians have died, and the nation is feeling uneasy. “Before the Six-Day War,” says Bar-Lev, “there was general danger but day-to-day security. Today we have general security but day-to-day danger.”

A Nation sorely Beseiged ( 1974) also seems rather sympathetic, but has a mention of the “occupied West Bank.”.

The weekend alert could prove to be merely the opening drum roll of yet another crisis. Nov. 30 is the expiration date of the mandate for the presence of some 1,250 United Nations troops stationed along the Golan Heights cease-fire line, placed there last June under the cease-fire agreement worked out by Kissinger. Israel emphatically favors renewal of the mandate by the Security Council and might in fact regard nonrenewal as a casus belli.

To the ultrasensitive Israelis, the present period is all too reminiscent of the situation that existed in May 1967. Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser loudly proclaimed his revocation of the U.N. mandate in the Sinai, the Israelis mobilized, and U.N. Secretary-General U Thant precipitately withdrew U.N. forces, thereby setting the stage for the Six-Day War.

American Jews and Israel, ( March 10, 1975) I think, serves as a marker for when attitudes started to change.

Belatedly, the Arabs discovered public relations and began to cultivate U.S. opinion. For all of these reasons, Americans paid more attention to the area’s problems than ever before and began to examine the Arab cause more sympathetically.

Partly because of their continued insistence on security through territory, the Israelis suddenly seem intransigent to many people. The perception comes at a time when, globally, Israel is increasingly isolated. The nations of Western Europe appear willing to bargain away Israel’s security in return for access to Arabian oil. Arab petropower seems aimed at blacklisting Jews from many transactions in international finance, causing President Gerald Ford last week sharply to condemn such practices (see ECONOMY & BUSINESS). Last fall UNESCO voted to exclude Israel from some of its activities, and the United Nations General Assembly applauded the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Yasser Arafat, who frankly spoke at the U.N. of generations of war against Israel, as a legitimate spokesman for Palestinians.

In this atmosphere, minor and major events are seen as portents. Kissinger jokingly tries on an Arab headdress in Jordan; to some Jews this symbolizes his wooing of the Arabs (and because he himself is Jewish, he is believed by some other Jews to be bending over backward to demonstrate his impartiality). General George Brown, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declares that there is strong Jewish-Israeli influence on Congress (true) and that Jews dominate most U.S. banks and newspapers (false). The simplistic statement is seen as a harbinger of antiSemitism. There is also alarm when such longtime friends of Israel as Senators Charles Percy and Henry Jackson dare to urge Israel to be flexible.

(Charles Percy was once considered friendly to Israel! I didn’t know that.)

Stroke Talbott took a sharply anti-Israel stand in What to do about Israel ( September 7, 1981):

Israel argues that it is strong, stable and pro-Western, while most of the Arab states are weak, fractious and radical. But one reason the Arabs are that way, and becoming more so, is precisely because of their impasse with Israel. The tragedy and chaos that have engulfed the once peaceful, prosperous nation of Lebanon are a direct spillover of the Palestinian problem. Anwar Sadat’s position both within Egypt and among his Arab brethren elsewhere will remain precarious unless he can point to some success in the Palestinian autonomy talks initiated by the Camp David agreements and due to resume in three weeks. By and large Sadat has shown forbearance over Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and flexibility over the delicate issue of West Bank water rights. Israel, for its part, has done everything it could to prevent the West Bank Arabs from genuinely governing themselves—a goal set by the Camp David accords.

That’s a much different attitude from what was reported in 1967! In 1967 it was the lack of Arabi realism that was the main problem in the MIddle East, but fourteen years later it was Israel’s failings that were responsible for Arab radicalism.

And in an essay title Israel at 40: The dream confronts Palestinian fury (despite the date, it must be from 1988) we have this:

Herein lies Israel’s biggest dilemma. When the virtues of Israel are enumerated, almost the first to be mentioned by Israelis and their supporters is the fact that it is the only democracy in the Middle East. But when it comes to the Palestinians who live in the occupied territories, the Israelis are anything but democratic; Arabs have been denied fundamental civil and political rights. If present trends continue, Israel will have to choose between its democratic principles — which would eventually require sharing political power with Arabs — and its other profound ambition, to offer to Jews around the world a land they can always call their own. The Palestinian problem cannot be brushed aside by rhetoric or obliterated by military force.

Finally, in the February 26, 1990, Charles Krauthammer took aim at the prevailing media biases regarding Israel, in Judging Israel:

Last fall Anthony Lewis excoriated Israel for putting down a tax revolt in the town of Beit Sahour. He wrote: “Suppose the people of some small American town decided to protest Federal Government policy by withholding their taxes. The Government responded by sending in the Army . . . Unthinkable? Of course it is in this country. But it is happening in another . . . Israel.”

Middle East scholar Clinton Bailey tried to point out just how false this analogy is. Protesting Federal Government policy? The West Bank is not Selma. Palestinians are not demanding service at the lunch counter. They demand a flag and an army. This is insurrection for independence. They are part of a movement whose covenant explicitly declares its mission to be the abolition of the state of Israel.

Bailey tried manfully for the better analogy. It required him to posit 1) a pre-glasnost Soviet Union, 2) a communist Mexico demanding the return of “occupied Mexican” territory lost in the Mexican War (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and California) and 3) insurrection by former Mexicans living in these territories demanding secession from the Union. Then imagine, Bailey continued, that the insurrectionists, supported and financed by Mexico and other communist states in Latin America, obstruct communications; attack civilians and police with stones and fire bombs; kill former Mexicans holding U.S. Government jobs (”collaborators”); and then begin a tax revolt. Now you have the correct analogy. Would the U.S., like Israel, then send in the Army? Of course.

But even this analogy falls flat because it is simply impossible to imagine an America in a position of conflict and vulnerability analogous to Israel’s. Milan Kundera once defined a small nation as “one whose very existence may be put in question at any moment; a small nation can disappear and knows it.” Czechoslovakia is a small nation. Judea was. Israel is. The U.S. is not.

A recent ADL poll shows that Americans support Israel roughly at three times the rate they support the Palestinians. It’s quite remarkable that the ratio is that good given the propaganda that is so often passed off as news. It makes me wonder what support for Israel would be if the media made any effort to be evenhanded.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Addendum from Meryl: Then there’s this little gem from 1977 that made me cancel my subscription then and forever.

His first name means “comforter.”

Menachem Begin (rhymes with Fagin) has been anything but that to his numerous antagonists.

My grandfather had been telling me for years that Time was anti-Semitic. This was the item that proved it to me.

10/27/2009

The PA’s torturers: Made in the U.K. (and USA?)

Filed under: Israeli Double Standard Time, Media Bias, palestinian politics — Tags: , — Meryl Yourish @ 12:30 pm

The proponents of peace have declared for years that if only the Palestinians had western-trained security forces, the terrorism would stop. But they didn’t seem to notice that their millions of dollars per year to fund the Palestinian police force was going to a force that uses torture on a regular basis.

The horrific torture of hundreds of people by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank is being funded by British taxpayers.

An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has found that the forces responsible get £20million a year from the UK.

The victims – some left maimed – are rounded up for alleged involvement with the militant Islamic group Hamas, yet many have nothing to do with it.

I will be waiting for the UN to denounce this. But first, the Daily Mail, being the British press, must blame Israel for it somehow.

Not only are PA forces carrying out torture, the authority ignores judges’ orders to release political detainees. Last month at least 30 journalists, teachers and students were arrested – as the crackdown on Hamas was praised by a senior Israeli defence official as a necessary ‘iron fist policy’.

Say, do you think the Brits are aware that the Palestinians are using their money to pay torturers?

A British diplomat in Jerusalem said: ‘Obviously we are very aware of problems with the Palestinian security forces. We are working hard to improve their standards across the board – including human rights standards.’

This is some of what the Brits’ £20 million pounds per year is paying for:

The commonest ‘mini’ method, known as ‘shabah’, involves hanging up shackled victims by their arms. The teacher told how he was held in a cellar at Jenaid prison last month.

‘First they shackled my hands behind my back, tied a rope round the shackles and looped it over a beam. They pulled until I was standing on tiptoes, just still able to take some weight on my legs. Then they jerked the rope so it all came on to my arms and held me there until I was on the point of passing out. They were laughing, saying it would dislocate my shoulders. They did it over and over for five or six days.’

Sometimes sharp-edged sardine cans were placed under his heels, so that when weight came back on his legs, they inflicted deep cuts. Two other victims independently described this, too.

The Brits are now going to send intelligence officers into the West Bank to teach the PA torturers to stop torturing. Their initial budget? £100,000.

Interestingly, none of the wire services have managed to find this story worth picking up and spreading. Apparently, only Israel can be guilty of human rights abuses. Just imagine the number of headlines around the world media if it were the Israeli police forces that were abusing prisoners like this.

What time is it, kids? That’s right. It’s Israeli Double Standard Time.

10/23/2009

Briefs

Filed under: Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Media Bias — Tags: , — Meryl Yourish @ 10:00 am

The delegitimization of Israel continues: San Francisco idiots interrupt Ehud Olmert’s speech with repeated cries of “war criminal.” Best protester line: “I’m not against free speech, but this is not free speech.” Got it? His interruptions are free speech. Ehud Olmert speaking? Not free speech. Cell phone video at the link. Also moans and groans of the free speechnick protester, who is probably charging the police who walked him out with brutality.

Denial is not just a river in Egypt: George Mitchell says it’s too early to say that the Obama administration’s attempt to bulldoze Israel into giving concessions to the Palestinian—er, I mean, peace negotiations—has failed. You know, it’s really not.

Oh, yeah, like that’ll work: Don’t think that the truth means a thing in the world’s bias against Israel. Bringing foreign journalists into the tunnels under the Western Wall to prove that Israel isn’t digging under the wall to destroy al-aqsa? Feh. Who are you going to believe, them or the Palestinians’ lying mouths?

Egypt bans Israeli doctors, then un-bans them: It’s so good to know that Egypt is at peace with Israel, because then they’d never do anything as stupid as ban Israeli researchers from a long-planned breast cancer conference in Egypt. Oh, wait. They did. However, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure pushed until the Egyptians un-banned Israelis. Good for them. (Not the Egyptians. They’re asshats.)

10/19/2009

The Obama administration and the end of Israeli-Palestinian peace

Filed under: Hamas, Israel, Media Bias, The One — Tags: , , — Meryl Yourish @ 11:00 am

How clueless is the Obama administration? This clueless:

The time has come to relaunch negotiations without preconditions to reach a final status agreement on two states: a Jewish state of Israel, and a viable, independent and contiguous Palestine that ends the occupation that began in 1967 and realizes and unleashes the full potential of the Palestinian people.

Sen. Mitchell has worked hard with the parties over the past few weeks to find the right formula through which to begin these talks. We will continue that effort in the coming weeks, because it is our strong and unequivocal view that we must move beyond talking about talks and get to the hard work of addressing the core issues that separate Israelis and Palestinians.

We have reached the end of the peace talk era, according to Barry Rubin, and I agree with him. Hamas has no intention of giving up its attempt to destroy the state of Israel. Fatah has no intention of coming to peaceable terms with Israel, either, as has been shown by Mahmoud Abbas’ many references to “armed struggle” if peace talks fail, his insistence on the “right of return” (flooding Israel with millions of Palestinians descended from the original refugees), and his talk about the “Judaization” of Jerusalem. And the world simply will not accept these facts at face value, preferring instead to believe that Fatah is moderate, and Hamas will moderate someday, if only Israel gives up enough for that to happen. But that day is done.

Israel knows that if it yields territory and is attacked from that territory, no matter how great the provocation, it cannot depend on international support but can rather know it will face international condemnation.

What does this say about a two-state solution? Israel pulls out of the West Bank, a Palestinian state is created (either on the West Bank or that plus the Gaza Strip), that state either attacks Israel or allows (and encourages) terrorists to do so across the border.

Israel has no response to defend itself that isn’t highly costly.

Bottom line: No Israeli government will make such a deal; the Israeli people will not support such a deal.

It’s not just that. The Palestinians, having had their hopes raised by Obama introducing the insistence of a complete settlement freeze, refuse to so much as talk to Israel without having that condition met. And the media place the blame on Israel for refusing to freeze “settlements,” not for the Palestinians for refusing to meet with Israel. There is also the false meme that Israel does not want to negotiate with the Palestinians, spread most willingly by the AP:

Israel’s desire to push forward with the peace process is not clear. Several months ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under U.S. pressure, joined his predecessors in endorsing Palestinian statehood, albeit grudgingly and with caveats. But the idea is not popular with rightist members dominant in his coalition, and efforts to coax Israel into halting all settlement construction in the West Bank have not succeeded, resulting in apparent stalemate.

Note the text in bold. This is now AP boilerplate about Netanyahu and a Palestinian state. The “caveats,” by the way, are the insistence that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, have a demilitarized state, and also sign an agreement that the establishment of the state of Palestine ends all hostilities. (Those are “caveats,” but demanding that millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees flood Israel are considered a legitimate demand.)

Israel is willing to negotiate for peace. But Israel is not willing to give up land and then see herself attacked by terrorists from that land, such as happened in Gaza. Without a true peace agreement, acceptable to both sides, there will be nothing further from Israel in the near future. And for that, we can place part of the blame on the Obama administration and its utterly clueless Middle East peace team.

You can say “Now is the time” as many times as you like. Wishing doesn’t make it so.

Snarkly

Filed under: Gaza, Israel, Media Bias, News Briefs, The One, United Nations — Tags: , , , — Meryl Yourish @ 7:00 am

The Russians were for Goldstone before they were against it: Let’s see how this one plays out—Russia says it will not push the Goldstone report to the Hague from the Security Council. I will believe it when I see it. Oh, to be a fly on the wall during that session.

Obama abandons the victims of genocide: Now our president is turning his back on Darfur. He’s committing to a “softer” approach to Sudan. Because hey, it totally fits with the Obama foreign policy: Screw our allies, and give breaks to all our enemies. Even the ones that like to rape, torture, and murder with impunity. So, to the 78% of Jewish voters who voted for Obama, how’s that feeling about now? I mean, Jewish voters make up a large part of the save Darfur movements. Feeling proud of your guy, still?

Only Israel can violate UN resolutions: UNIFIL is still “investigating” those explosions in southern Lebanon, trying to determine if they’re in violation of UN Resolution 1701, which forbade Hezbollah from arming south of the Litani. But there is no such hesitation whatsoever in calling out Israel.

Williams said the use of drones was an obvious violation of Lebanese sovereignty and resolution 1701 “and not particularly helpful at a time of obvious tension in the south”.

Israel supplies evidence that Hezbollah is stocking arms, but UNIFIL must investigate. Uh-huh. No bias here. Move along. Nothing to see.

You know what isn’t brave? Criticizing Israel. Hell, everybody does it, and everybody seems to think that it’s a difficult thing to do. Jimmy Carter, Walt & Mearsheimer, and now, the president of Turkey. Because there’s so much negative impact from his countrymen for criticizing Israel. Now, if he stood up and supported Israel—well, that’d be very courageous. Also only in Bizarro World, so let’s not even pretend it might happen someday. It won’t.

Another kassam attack, another day of silence from the MSM: You won’t read about this kassam attack in the AP or Reuters until after Israel bombs a smuggling tunnel or three. Or unless Israel gets a rocket squad. Because it’s obvious that unprovoked attacks on civilians in Israel aren’t newsworthy—only Israel’s response to the unprovoked attacks. This is also one of those things that the Goldstone report didn’t bother to cover—you know, the reason why Israel went into Gaza in the first place. That’s unimportant. Well, maybe if it fell short and killed some Palestinians. I’m sure they’d blame Israel for that.

10/18/2009

Jacob Weisberg: See no liberal bias, hear no liberal bias

Filed under: Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 5:07 pm

The creator of Slate’s Bushisms, the author of a book called “The Bush Tragedy,” and a lifelong liberal writer is calling Fox News “unAmerican” for having—wait for it—a conservative bias. He is also accusing Fox of forcing MSNBC and CNN to swing to the left instead of maintaining their world-renowned objectivity in news reporting. (Yes indeed, that was sarcasm.) (Via Hot Air.)

Consider Fox’s Web story on the episode. It quotes five people. Two of them work for Fox. All of them assert that administration officials are either wrong in substance or politically foolish to criticize the network. No one is cited supporting Dunn’s criticisms or saying that it could make sense for Obama to challenge the network’s power. It’s a textbook example of a biased journalism.

Meanwhile, ABC presented what was essentially an infomercial on Obamacare earlier this year. A CNN reporter went off on the people she was supposed to be objectively interviewing, and ultimately lost her job—probably because she’s not supposed to be so overt in her liberal bias. But that’s objective journalism. (Say, did ABC present the other side of the healthcare debate in its informercial? I’m thinking not.)

That Rupert Murdoch may tilt the news rightward more for commercial than ideological reasons is beside the point. What matters is the way that Fox’s model has invaded the bloodstream of the American media. By showing that ideologically distorted news can drive ratings, Ailes has provoked his rivals at CNN and MSNBC to develop a variety of populist and ideological takes on the news. In this way, Fox hasn’t just corrupted its own coverage. Its example has made all of cable news unpleasant and unreliable.

That’s amazing… Fox is not only responsible for tilting itself right, but it is also responsible for the leftward tilt of the other cable news networks. But that’s not the biggest load of bull in the piece. This is:

What’s most distinctive about the American press is not its freedom but its century-old tradition of independence—that it serves the public interest rather than those of parties, persuasions, or pressure groups. Media independence is a 20th-century innovation that has never fully taken root in many other countries that do have a free press. The Australian-British-continental model of politicized media that Murdoch has applied at Fox is un-American, so much so that he has little choice but go on denying what he’s doing as he does it. For Murdoch, Ailes, and company, “fair and balanced” is a necessary lie. To admit that their coverage is slanted by design would violate the American understanding of the media’s role in democracy and our idea of what constitutes fair play. But it’s a demonstrable deceit that no longer deserves equal time.

I have three words in response: William Randolph Hearst.

Hearst’s reputation triumphed in the 1930s as his political views changed. In 1932, he was a major supporter of Roosevelt. His newspapers energetically supported the New Deal throughout 1933 and 1934. Hearst broke with FDR in spring 1935 when the President vetoed the Patman Bonus Bill. Hearst papers carried the old publisher’s rambling, vitriolic, all-capital-letters editorials, but he no longer employed the energetic reporters, editorialists and columnists who might have made a serious attack. His newspaper audience was the same working class that Roosevelt swept by three-to-one margins in the 1936 election. In 1934 after checking with Jewish leaders to make sure the visit would prove of benefit to Jews, Hearst visited Berlin to interview Adolf Hitler. Hitler asked why he was so misunderstood by the American press. “Because Americans believe in democracy,” Hearst answered bluntly, “and are averse to dictatorship.”[6]

A century-old tradition of independence? The deuce you say! (That’s a line from the 1930s. Or thereabouts.)

Weisberg is absolutely entitled to his own opinion. But he is not entitled to his own facts, and he is making those facts up out of whole cloth. There was no objective press in the 1930s, and the myth of the unbiased media is a new one, from less than fifty years ago, and I think it was spread by the media people themselves. The phrase “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America” was uttered by Lyndon Johnson after an editorial by the CBS anchor about Vietnam in 1968. Somehow, that doesn’t strike me as a century of unbiased media. The media was anti-Vietnam, anti-Richard Nixon (well, so was I, but that’s beside the point), pro-Democrat, anti-Republican, and absolutely not objective. It has had the illusion of objectivity for decades, and that illusion is courtesy of its own teachings in journalism schools, where, somehow, the professors manage to insist that the mainstream media outlets are all paragons of objectivity and unbiased reporting. The fact that everything skews liberal and Democrat is pooh-poohed as the ravings of the “vast, right-wing conspiracy”—the one that caused the Clinton impeachment.

And of course, Weisberg’s answer to the Fox News so-called bias? For “respectable” reporters to stop appearing on Fox at all.

By appearing on Fox, reporters validate its propaganda values and help to undermine the role of legitimate news organizations.

Apparently, editing Slate and creating the “Bushism of the Day” column—which ran even after George W. Bush was no longer in office—is considered legitimate news. But having opinion shows that run counter to the mainstream media’s wishes? Well. That’s just plain un-American.

Really, Newsweek is just embarrassing itself by running tripe like this.

Update: The cross-post was pushed to the front of Hot Air and picked up by Memeorandum. Thanks to both!

10/12/2009

The Goldstone Effect

Filed under: Anti-Semitism, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 5:41 pm

The Goldstone Commission is having its desired effect. With these few lines in an AP report, it explains exactly why Richard Goldstone was chosen to head the commission.

Israeli officials across the board have condemned the report, saying their country had little choice but to take harsh action against militants who were terrorizing southern Israel. They also blame Hamas for civilian casualties, saying the Islamic militant group took cover in residential areas during the fighting. However, Goldstone’s strong credentials as a respected South African jurist, his Jewish faith and past support for Israeli causes have made it hard for Israel to dismiss the claims.

Last year, when the UNHRC was looking for someone to head the inquiry into Gaza—the mandate of which was as follows:

“to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression,”

it couldn’t get its number one choice to head the commission. Mary Robinson, who is known to be an unfriend to Israel at best, refused, saying the mandate was a foregone conclusion against Israel alone. But Judge Richard Goldstone, eminent jurist from apartheid South Africa, self-proclaimed Zionist, and Jew, did not refuse. When the UNHRC tapped him, they won the lottery. If Israel objected to the report, the UNHRC could point out the facts. Goldstone is Jewish, he’s pro-Israel (even though we haven’t found much more than he and his daughter saying he’s very pro-Israel), and he says he’s a Zionist. These facts allow the UNHRC to counter the anti-Israel card in one fell swoop. The logic goes like this: Since Goldstone is not biased against Israel, how can he submit a report that is biased against Israel? Indeed, that is exactly what the commission’s defenders are saying.

But it’s so much more than that. The media are also doing much of the water-carrying for the UNHRC. The fact that 26 out of 32 UNHRC resolutions concern Israel is never brought up. The fact that the OIC dominates the council is irrelevant. What is relevant is that Richard Goldstone is a Jew who says he is pro-Israel and a Zionist, and therefore, the report cannot be anti-Israel.

And so, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decries the Goldstone Commission’s report, the AP explains that Israel is going to have a hard time disproving the report because Goldstone is Jewish and pro-Israel. When you have Israel’s supporters across the world pointing out the many errors, obfuscations, and outright lies in the report, you get Israel’s detractors pointing out that Goldstone is Jewish and pro-Israel, and therefore, the report can’t be biased.

Look again at the quote above. The AP does not refute Netanyahu’s statements that Hamas used human shields and hid within civilian areas. The AP does not refute Netanyahu’s statement that Hamas was terrorizing Israel. Instead, the AP emphasizes that Richard Goldstone is Jewish, pro-Israel, and a respected judge from apartheid South Africa—and therefore, Israel is going to have a hard time “dismissing” the report. In other words, Goldstone is Jewish and pro-Israel, and therefore the report can’t be biased.

It’s one of the logical fallacies. It’s known as “argument from authority,” and it is utterly vapid and meaningless. But the world is full of people who take what they read in the newspaper at face value, so this meme is going to succeed in its goal. The Goldstone Commission report’s job is to delegitimize Israel in the eyes of the international law crowd. The Palestinians will be pushing for trials at the Hague as hard as they can, and if the Obama administration doesn’t push back hard enough, the trials will happen.

That will be the slippery slope down which Israel must not go. The Arab and Muslim nations are trying to defeat Israel in the international arena, because they cannot defeat her on the battlefield. They are using a strategy that has been used against Jews for thousands of years: They found one of our own to be the figurehead for their anti-Jewish actions. Because if a Jew is speaking out against other Jews, well, then, he can’t possibly be biased. Just ask known Israel-haters Gilad Atzmon or Noam Chomsky. They’re Jewish. They can’t possibly be biased.

Right.

10/09/2009

Portraying Hamas

Filed under: Hamas, Israel, Media Bias — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 8:00 am

Barry Rubin writes about a recent Washington Post article about Hamas:

Here’s a good article on Hamas and how it’s a barrier to peace, with no illusions about the group moderating or being misunderstand. The article also points out how Hamas is responsible for continuing sanctions on Gaza and is uninterested in trying to improve the living standards of is own people.

Perhaps I’m nitpicking but I wasn’t so impressed with the article. There were two paragraphs that bugged me.

First, in the middle, there was this:

Hamas, which was founded as an Islamist alternative to the Palestine Liberation Organization and whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction, is considered a terrorist group by the United States for its sponsorship of suicide attacks and the launching of thousands of missiles and mortar shells from Gaza into Israel. The group draws financial and material support from Iran and Syria. Hamas says its attacks on Israel are defensive and a legitimate tactic in Palestinian efforts to establish a homeland.

“[I]s considered a terrorist group?” It is, by definition, a terrorist group for precisely the reasons stated. Second, when the reporter uses the term “legitimate tactic,” he allows that claim to stand unchallenged.

At the end of the article we read:

According to officials from Hamas and analysts of the group, those conditions are unlikely to be accepted, cutting as they do to the core of the group’s ideology and strategy. Just as there is no sense that the language of Hamas leaders has come close to meeting those requirements, despite talk of a possible compromise, there has been no obvious effort by Mitchell’s team to try to reshape the conditions.

What does “reshape the conditions” mean? And why does the article seem critical that Mitchell won’t? I’d understand the term to mean “water down the demands” and I see no reason for Mitchell to do so. And why should Mitchell “reshape the conditions?” So Israel will be forced to deal with an unrepentant terrorist organization?

Finally, the reporter, Howard Schneider compares Mitchell’s work here with his work with the IRA. There’s one important difference. The IRA wanted England gone from Northern Ireland; Hamas (and Fatah, for that matter) want Israel gone. Period.

I can’t disagree that Schneider hit on the points that Barry Rubin emphasized. I still find his packaging problematic.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

10/02/2009

A story about Gilad Shalit that does not discuss Gilad Shalit

Filed under: Hamas, Israeli Double Standard Time, Media Bias, Terrorism — Meryl Yourish @ 3:00 pm

The Christian Science Monitor, a newspaper that has never been a friend to Israel, carries a story with this headline:

Israel’s captured youths: Gilad Shalit and a Palestinian girl with braces

You would expect it to be a profile of both Gilad Shalit and a Palestinian girl. You would be wrong. It is a story about the girl, with references to Shalit thrown in.

The teaser explains what the story is really about:

In an interview, Baraah Malki – one of the first of 20 female Palestinian prisoners to be released by Israel in exchange for a video of kidnapped soldier Shalit – talks about her time in prison.

Ah. So it is a profile only of the Palestinian. It is a long, weepy tale of how the poor thing suffered by being imprisoned. And while the story mentions her crime—attempting to stab an Israeli soldier—it barely mentions Gilad Shalit at all.

Here’s one mention:

Like Sergeant Shalit, who was 19 at the time he was captured by Hamas militants in a cross-border raid, her youth seems to underscore the extent to which young people here continue to pay the price of a conflict their elders have failed to solve.

And another:

Qraqe says this week’s deal appears to be a test of readiness for a more substantial exchange that would involve a much larger number of prisoners in exchange for Shalit.

And that’s it. Except for the lead paragraph:

Baraah Malki, one of 20 Palestinian prisoners Israel released in exchange for a video of captured soldier Gilad Shalit, can hardly believe that she’s home.

And that is the narrative across the media world today: It’s all about the poor, poor, pitiful Palestinians, most of whom were arrested for crimes related to terrorist activity, and barely a mention of the soldier who was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists—those selfsame terrorists that these women tried to help in other times. The media act like the “prisoners” are equal when, in fact, Gilad Shalit is not a prisoner who committed a crime. He is a hostage, kidnapped and taken by terrorists, so they can get more prisoners who actually committed crimes released.

I’m guessing that more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners will be released for Shalit. But only one member of the exchange will be innocent of any crimes—and you won’t read about that in the media narrative.

09/22/2009

The Goldstone Standard Part II

Filed under: Israel, Israeli Double Standard Time, Media Bias — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 8:00 am

The Goldstone Commission report discusses the case of the al-Samouni family (.pdf page 202).

712. In the morning of 5 January 2009, around 6.30 – 7 a.m., Wa’el al-Samouni, Saleh al-Samouni, Hamdi Maher al-Samouni, Muhammad Ibrahim al-Samouni and Iyad al-Samouni, stepped outside the house to collect firewood. Rashad Helmi al-Samouni remained standing next to the door of the house. Saleh al-Samouni has pointed out to the Mission that from where the Israeli soldiers were positioned on the roofs of the houses they could see the men clearly. Suddenly, a projectile struck next to the five men, close to the door of Wa’el’s house and killed Muhammad Ibrahim al-Samouni and, probably, Hamdi Maher al-Samouni.403 The other men managed to retreat to the house. Within about five minutes, two or three more projectiles had struck the house directly. Saleh and Wa’el al-Samouni stated at the public hearing that these were missiles launched from Apache helicopters. The Mission has not been able to determine the type of munition used.

In additions to those killed part of the testimony accepted by the Goldstone commission is that after the fight Israel did not allow rescue workers to the area for two days. Later, in giving its “factual findings”, the Goldstone commission writes:

724. The Mission also reviewed the submission it received from an Israeli researcher, arguing generally that statements from Palestinian residents claiming that no fighting took place in their neighbourhood are disproved by the accounts Palestinian armed groups give of the armed operations. The Mission notes that, as far as the al-Samouni neighbourhood is concerned, this report would appear to support the statements of the witnesses that there was no combat.411

725. Regarding the attack on Ateya al-Samouni’s house, the Mission finds that the account given to it by Faraj al-Samouni is corroborated by the soldiers’ testimonies published by the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence. The assault on Ateya al-Samouni’s house appears to be the procedure of the Israeli armed forces referred to as a “wet entry”. A “wet entry” is, according to the soldier’s explanation, “missiles, tank fire, machine-gun fire into the house, grenades. Shoot
as we enter a room. The idea was that when we enter a house, no one there could fire at us.” his
procedure was, according to the soldier, thoroughly practised during recent Israeli armed forces manoeuvres.412

Paragraph 724 shows that evidence to the contrary was arbitrarily disregarded and 725 shows that “corroboration” came from a highly suspect source. Israel Matzav laid out the case against Breaking the Silence here and Honest Reporting had more here.

According to Goldstone then Israelis soldiers arbitrarily attacked civilians and then unconscionably refused to allow help to reach them for two days. Of course, if the accounts of the armed groups, so casually dismissed by Goldstone are true, than the attack on the civilians was, in fact, a battle and the reason no help was allowed for two days was because there were still enemy combatants in the area.

Col. Jonathan D. Halevi summarizes the reports that the Goldstone commission rejected.

The al-Samouni family members firmly adhere to the version that there was no Palestinian military activity near the house and that the nearest military activity was at least a mile away, and that, they claimed, was limited to firing rockets into Israeli territory, not close fighting.

However, the official Palestinian Islamic Jihad version is completely different. In a statement issued on January 5, Palestinian Islamic Jihad said that on the evening of January 4 its fighters had fired an R[PG] from the Zeitun neighborhood at an Israeli tank and had opened fire at IDF soldiers. At 1:20 a.m. on January 5, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad engineering unit detonated a 50-kg. bomb near an Israeli tank not far from the Al-Tawhid mosque near the house of Wail al-Samouni. At 6:30 a.m., the engineering unit detonated a bomb near an IDF infantry unit operating near the Al-Tawhid mosque in the Zeitun neighborhood.23 According to another official Palestinian Islamic Jihad statement, one of its operatives was killed in fighting nearby. His name was Muhammad Ibrahim al-Samouni.

The significance of the foregoing is that the four men who left the al-Samouni house in the early hours of the morning, among them Muhammad Ibrahim al-Samouni, did not necessarily do so for the innocent reasons given by their family. They might have gone out for a reason connected to the military activities taking place in the same area between Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist operatives and IDF forces. Palestinian Islamic Jihad reported that operatives of its military-terrorist wing, the Al-Quds Battalions, “surprised the occupation forces and attacked them from behind their lines, and there was a fierce battle in the southern part of the Zeitun neighborhood.” Another report, given “exclusively to the Muslim Brotherhood website,” detailed Palestinian Islamic Jihad activities in the Zeitun neighborhood on January 5: “According to eye-witnesses, the fighters of the resistance waited and barricaded themselves in secure locations, remaining in places inhabited by civilians, from which they left to carry out planned attacks against the forces of the Zionist occupier.”

These accounts have the advantage that the are detailed and contemporaneous. However they show that fighting was going on in the area of the al-Samouni house contrary to the testimony that Goldstone accepted uncritically.

The way this finding was reported was also problematic. Colum Lynch of the Washington Post – without mentioning the claims to the contrary – reported it like this:

The panel’s findings corroborate reports, including a detailed account in The Washington Post, that Israeli forces shelled the crowded home of the Palestinian Wael al-Samuni family in the neighborhood of Zaytoun on Jan. 5, killing 21 civilians, and prevented international relief agencies from tending to the wounded.

Actually the Goldstone commission didn’t corroborate the newspaper reports. It reached the same conclusion as the newspapers after considering the same limited testimony.

Elder of Ziyon concludes

…this doesn’t mean that Goldstone is incorrect concerning the immediate area of the Samouni house, but it does indicate that the commission ignored easily-available data that could indicate that their implication that no fighting was taking place in Al-Zaytoun is wrong.

It’s not just the Goldstone commission. As I observed above the Washington Post didn’t consider contrary evidence either.

After Philip Karsenty prevailed in court over Charles Enderlin, I was disappointed that no major newspaper covered it. (The New York Times covered it in its blog, but not on paper.) But the Karsenty verdict clearly should have raised questions about the way the media reports on the Middle East. Clearly they didn’t care about getting the story right.

Clearly that’s still a problem.

Previously: Goldstone Standard.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

NOTE: I’ve edited the original slightly for clarity.

09/16/2009

Kemp vs. Goldstone

Filed under: Israel, Media Bias — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 10:00 am

Why does an expert in fighting insurgencies who defended Israel get much less attention than a judge who tendentiously applies the law in service of an organization with a record of bias against Israel? Is it because the latter presented the narrative that the media wanted to hear?

Richard Kemp:

Despite Israel’s extraordinary measures, of course innocent civilians were killed and wounded. That was due to the frictions of war that I have spoken about, and even more was an inevitable consequence of Hamas’ way of fighting.

By taking these actions and many other significant measures during Operation Cast Lead the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other Army in the history of warfare.

See here too for an ealier video of the Colonel.

I previously wrote about Col. Kemp here.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

09/14/2009

J-Street: The lobby that isn’t

Filed under: Israel, Media Bias, Religion — Tags: , — Meryl Yourish @ 11:30 am

One of the things that struck me in the New York Times’ hagiography of J-Street is this quote:

The average age of the dozen or so staff members is about 30. Ben-Ami speaks for, and to, this post-Holocaust generation. “They’re all intermarried,” he says. “They’re all doing Buddhist seders.”

And of course, this follows logically:

They are, he adds, baffled by the notion of “Israel as the place you can always count on when they come to get you.”

So we have Jews that aren’t very Jewish running a pro-Israel lobby group that isn’t very pro-Israel. It makes a crazy kind of sense. But of course, it’s also an influential lobby that isn’t very influential. And a representative group that isn’t really representative.

But if you count J-Street as the Buddhist, intermarrying, Arab-supported segment of the Israel Lobby, it all works.

(Celebrating Passover with idolatry. Wow. That’s a new low.)

09/02/2009

Documenting Reuters anti-Israel bias

Filed under: Media Bias — Tags: — Meryl Yourish @ 11:00 am

It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it. A new blog is keeping an eye on the Reuters anti-Israel bias. Boy, are they never gonna run out of material for posts. For example:

“We believe our post is accurate”
That was the definitively equivocal reply of Reuters’ AxisMundi Jerusalem editor and Bureau Chief for Israel and the Palestinian territories, Alastair MacDonald, to a reader who had pointed out that Reuters’ correspondent Erika Solomon did not have her facts straight when she claimed that Uri Davis was Jewish:

Yeah. It’s an uphill climb.

08/26/2009

Netanyahu on Jerusalem

Filed under: Israel, Media Bias — Tags: , , — Meryl Yourish @ 7:00 am

This quote should be engraved in bronze:

“Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is the sovereign capital of the State of Israel. We have been building in Jerusalem for 3,000 years.”

British protesters were out in droves tonight, forcing Bibi to use the back entrance to 10 Downing Street. But I’d have to say that he got the last word.

The AP story didn’t seem to get the same quote as Ynet. In fact, the AP story doesn’t mention Jerusalem at all. I wonder how that happened? Because they’re both quoting the same press conference. The Reuters reporter and editor felt it was worth quoting.

“We accept no limitations on our sovereignty … Jerusalem is not a settlement,” Netanyahu said in response to a question.

Of course, they then called it “Arab east Jerusalem,” the lable which totally ignores the fact that the Jewish Quarter is in the eastern section of the city.

I’m shocked that this got into the AP report:

Netanyahu discussed at length his visit Tuesday to the London museum of the Palestine Exploration Fund, an organization that sent explorers on expeditions to the Holy Land in the 1800s to examine the physical traces of the Bible and Jewish history. He talked about the Arab invasion of the newly declared state of Israel in 1948 and the Arab “stranglehold” on Israel before the 1967 Mideast War, in which Israel captured territories that included the West Bank and Gaza. He touched on the construction of the first Jewish neighborhood outside the Old City of Jerusalem in the 19th century.

Of course, it was buried deep near the end. But Netanyahu is an excellent speaker. He’s getting his message across, in spite of the media barrage against him.

08/25/2009

Two sides to a blood libel

Filed under: Anti-Semitism, Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Media Bias — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 10:00 am

The New York Times seems to feel that there are two sides to the charges in a Swedish newspaper that the IDF kills Palestinians and takes their organs for transplants. Read Accusation of Organ Theft Stokes Ire in Israel. “Stokes Ire?” Is that what’s news?

As the furor in Israel over the article gathered into a diplomatic storm revolving around questions of anti-Semitism and freedom of speech, Mr. Netanyahu told ministers at a cabinet meeting on Sunday that the article, published in the Swedish daily newspaper Aftonbladet, was “outrageous” and compared it to a “blood libel,” referring to medieval anti-Semitic accusations that Jews ritually killed gentile children and collected their blood.

“We are not asking the government of Sweden for an apology,” Mr. Netanyahu said, according to an official who attended the cabinet meeting and who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We are asking for their condemnation. We are not asking from them anything we do not ask of ourselves.”

Why is “blood libel” in scare quotes? Maybe it’s something that is traced to medieval times but it has had a long, continuous and shameful history.

But what bugs me most about the article is how the reporter, Isabel Kershner, goes out of her way to explain why the charge may be credible.

The article, by the Swedish journalist Donald Bostrom, ran on an inside page of the newspaper on Aug. 17. It was based on accusations Mr. Bostrom heard from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in the 1990s, and which he published in a book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2001. Mr. Seaman said Mr. Bostrom last worked here in 2006.

Mr. Bostrom apparently revived the allegations by linking them to the July arrests of 44 people in New Jersey in a major corruption and international money laundering conspiracy that included several assemblymen, mayors and rabbis. One of its members, Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, faces charges of conspiring to broker the illegal sale of a human kidney for transplant.

Aftonbladet followed up on Sunday with an article about one of the Palestinian families at the center of the original accusations.

So were the charges in the 90’s true? Kershner didn’t report that. (She also didn’t report that the charges echoed an incident in a Turkish movie of a few years ago.)

And of course the article also takes pains to inform us that Israel’s reaction has been counterproductive. Some other details that are missing were noted by Barry Rubin:

And then there is the Swedish governmental complicity in this matter, since the original accusations were made in a book subsidized with its funds. There’s also far more behind the surface. For example, there is now a whispering campaign about alleged Jewish influence in Sweden, including personal attacks on the country’s ambassador to Israel for issuing a very carefully worded semi-apology.

Finally, this affair is only one of a number of such stories appearing simultaneously. In the focus on Sweden, an equally bad blood libel story in the Netherlands’ leading newspaper is being ignored. It accuses Jews of being Satan-worshippers who spread the swine flu. No, that’s not an exaggeration.

So here is how the system works. Palestinians or other Arabs or other Muslims, individuals or groups, tell incredible lies about Israel and then these are uncritically published in Western media. Aren’t reporters supposed to examine stories for accuracy BEFORE they are published? And aren’t editors supposed to critically look at what their publishing to see if it is credible?

So then it turns out that the Swedish government – not just the newspaper – is complicit in spreading the libel and the incident is a sign of a general obliviousness to outrageous claims made against Israel and Jews. It is the sign of a level of tolerance for the antisemitism, even in the enlightened West. The ire over this incident shouldn’t be confined to Israel. It seems to be absent from the New York Times.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

08/19/2009

Hopeful and defiant

Filed under: Israel, Israeli Double Standard Time, Media Bias — Tags: , — Soccerdad @ 10:30 am

Even as the Washington Post reports that President Obama, meeting with Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, is optimistic about peace in the Middle East, it runs a parallel story Netanyahu’s Defiance of U.S. Resonates at Home:

For five months, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been fending off U.S. pressure to halt the expansion of West Bank settlements. Now he is reaping dividends for his defiance.

Although Israeli leaders have historically been reluctant to publicly break with the United States for fear of paying a price in domestic support, polls show that Netanyahu’s strategy is working. And that means that after months of diplomacy, the quick breakthrough that President Obama had hoped would restart peace talks has instead turned into a familiar stalemate.

Arab states largely have rebuffed Obama’s request for an overture to Israel until the settlement issue is resolved — a stand that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak emphasized in a meeting with Obama on Tuesday — and the Palestinians have said a settlement freeze is a precondition for resuming negotiations. Meanwhile, the Israeli public seems to have rallied around Netanyahu’s refusal to halt all settlement construction, a backlash that intensified when the Obama administration made clear that it wanted Israel to stop building Jewish homes in some parts of Jerusalem as well as in the occupied West Bank.

In Israel, the dynamic seems to have shifted further from any dramatic concessions. Netanyahu “scored points” for standing up to Obama, said Yoel Hasson, a member of parliament from the opposition Kadima party. In contrast to the United States’ public demands for a settlement freeze, signaled early in the relationship between the two new governments, “I think the U.S. understands that it is better for them to do everything with Netanyahu more quietly,” Hasson said.

Note a few things. First of all despite their differences, Netanyahu has been working with the Obama administration. Now you can quibble whether Netanyahu caved or made a strategic retreat, but it doesn’t appear that Netanyahu is “defying” the administration. (via memeorandum)

(This would indicate strategic retreat.)

By coupling an article that highlights Israeli “defiance” with an article about President Obama being hopeful about peace, the Post effectively identifies Israel as the obstacle to peace. Yes, the reporter, Howard Schneider, acknowledges that no Arab country has acceded to President Obama’s request for confidence building measures for Israel, but he presents it as a reaction to Israel’s refusal to freeze “settlements.”

Israel’s political situation is also being misrepresented. Yes, Israelis apparently approve of Netanyahu’s handling of the diplomacy with the United States. But the approval isn’t simply a matter of Netanyahu’s defiance; he represents a large portion of the Israeli electorate. This isn’t 1996 anymore, Israel has conceded a lot and received nothing in return. At some point any country will get tired of giving away concrete assets in return for unfulfilled promises.

Lastly, Howard Schneider, the Post’s reporter, of course, ignored the hardline resolutions passed by the recently concluded Fatah convention. (See here or here.) For him to frame the issue as Israeli “defiance” is misleading, when, no matter moderate the Israeli government were, it would have no one to deal with on the other side.

The New York Times was somewhat more responsible and accurate in the way it presented the situation:

The leaders’ cautiously optimistic comments coincided with a sign that the Israeli government was trying to lower tensions with the United States on the settlement issue. That signal was in the form of an announcement by Israel’s housing minister that his government had not given final approval for any new housing projects in the West Bank since it took office in late March.

While the gesture from Jerusalem does not affect settlement housing units under construction, it at least allowed the American and Egyptian presidents to say they were hopeful about getting peace talks started again.

The Obama administration has demanded a freeze on all settlement construction, saying that such a move would create momentum for a peace agreement in the Middle East. The conservative-leaning Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has balked at the demand, resulting in an unusually public dispute between Israel and the United States.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Swedish newspaper channels der Sturmer

Filed under: Anti-Semitism, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Media Bias, World — Tags: , , , — Meryl Yourish @ 6:00 am

It’s 2009, but you wouldn’t know it from reading this Swedish newspaper article. It’s like a mixture of urban legend and anti-Semitic blood libel. It’s so awful, you just have to wonder: Are the editors of this newspaper out of their effing minds?

Leading Swedish daily Aftonbladet claimed in one of its articles that IDF soldiers killed Palestinians in order to trade in their organs.

[...] The report mentioned Brooklyn resident Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, who is accused of involvement in the recent human organ-trafficking case that caused a storm in the US and Israel. The report said Palestinians claim youngsters were forced to give up theirs before being executed. This suspicion, the report said, may lead to an international war crimes investigation against Israel.

And who, pray tell, is feeding the author this information?

Guess.

Aftonbladet also said Palestinian youths who were snatched from their villages in the middle of the night were buried after being dismembered. The reporter, Donald Boström, said he was informed of the alleged atrocities by UN employees while he was working on a book in the West Bank.

Those would be the same eyewitnesses that said that Israeli soldiers were bulldozing hundreds of bodies in Jenin. Yes, the ever-reliable Palestinian eyewitnesses—there’s no stopping their imaginations, in any case. As to their truthfulness, well—it’s been proven to be extremely limited.

Put this one in the same category as Palestinians who insist that Yasser Arafat was killed by Israeli death rays, Israel is giving Palestinians gum that increases their libido, and, of course, the Suha Arafat claim that Israel is poisoning Palestinian children. There is nothing, it seems, that people won’t blame on Israel. But that’s not much of a surprise. They blamed Jews for poisoning wells, too.

You would think that in this day and age, lies like this would not be published. But then you would be vastly underestimating the widespread insanity that I like to call Israel Derangement Syndrome. If Israel didn’t exist, they’d still be blaming us Jews in pretty much the same way—we just would be blamed for doing it to Swedes instead of Palestinians.

I would like nothing more than to wake up and find that this article was one big hoax. I suspect that won’t happen.

08/17/2009

Stuck on “moderate”

Filed under: Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Media Bias — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 11:00 am

As members of Fatah leave their conference preparing to govern their people effectively, they offered what sounds like a tantalizing commitment. They reiterated their commitment to the “peace option.”

We would like very much to take the delegates’ words at face value, and it would be a lot easier to do that if they hadn’t laced their resolutions with terms like “armed struggle.” Even now, Fatah has not spelled out exactly what terms it is offering as a “peace option.” The resolutions passed rarely mentioned “Israel” without the word “boycott” nearby and nowhere has Fatah disavowed its stated goal of destroying Israel — which we believe must be part of any serious regional peace effort.

New York Times editorial – A peace option without peace – August 15, 2009

Actually the New York Times featured no such editorial. Had the editors of the Times bothered to study the record of the Fatah convention – available at MEMRI – they might have made such arguments. Actually the above “editorial” is my spoof of “Being a peace partner,” the Times’s thoroughly dishonest of Prime Minister Netanyahu assuming office back in March.

The media’s incuriousness about what went on at the Fatah conference is remarkable. This willful blindness is really perverse given the tendentiousness with which they cover Israeli politics.

The Washington Post celebrated Netanyahu’s election with an editorial “Israel’s step backwards.”

ISRAEL’S ELECTION last week propelled the country back in time to a political era when the parliament was sharply divided between parties that favored or opposed a two-state settlement with Palestinians. As in the 1980s, the right has the upper hand: Likud party leader Binyamin Netanyahu appears to have the best chance to become prime minister, even though his party finished second behind the centrist Kadima. Americans who remember Mr. Netanyahu’s last stint as prime minister in the 1990s — and there are several in the Obama administration who were working on Mideast policy then — have to be concerned that he would repeat his strategy of seeking to delay or undermine all peace negotiations with the Palestinians. He might also press for Israeli or American military action against Iran, and he has promised to “topple” and “uproot” Hamas from the Gaza Strip.

The 1990’s, as I recall, was a time when Arafat said many of the right things to the Americans and the international media while fomenting terror against Israel. He was falsely hailed as a peacemaker as he sought and won recognition for a change that he never rmade. Netanyahu didn’t buy that act. If hesitating to give into an unrepentant terrorist is “undermin[ing] all peace negotiations” those negotiations were doomed to failure. Still for all the fears expressed by the Post’s editors in this editorial, they were still somewhat amazed that President Obama apparently accepted their advice. Later they observed that the President was only “Tough on Israel.”

ONE OF THE MORE striking results of the Obama administration’s first six months is that only one country has worse relations with the United States than it did in January: Israel. The new administration has pushed a reset button with Russia and sent new ambassadors to Syria and Venezuela; it has offered olive branches to Cuba and Burma. But for nearly three months it has been locked in a public confrontation with Israel over Jewish housing construction in Jerusalem and the West Bank. To a less visible extent, the two governments also have differed over policy toward Iran.

Still the Post’s editors have yet to pronounce any judgment on last week’s Fatah convention. The extremism on display really renders any Israeli moderation moot. It seems that just because Fatah is the “moderate” party in Palestinian politics, any inconvenient contrary evidence must be disregarded.

For example, little attention has been paid to the man now in position to succeed Abbas as head of Fatah. Here’s how Barry Rubin describes the situation:

Fatah has apparently chosen as its next leader a man, Muhammad Ghaneim, who rejects the 1993 Israel-PLO (Oslo agreement) and the ensuing peace process. He was so passionately opposed even to negotiating with Israel that he refused to go to the Gaza Strip and West Bank with Yasir Arafat in 1994. He refused to participate in the Palestinian Authority which was created by the Oslo agreement. And when he later decided to go to PA-ruled territory—but without denouncing his previous view—Israel blocked it.

It would be as if Russia chose a hardline Stalinist as its next leader and that fact was not deemed worth reporting. Might not this tell us something important about the politics and future policies of Fatah and hence of the PA, too?

Why did all those people—two-thirds of the delegates–vote for him? Ghaneim got 33 percent more votes than did Barghouti, who not only has a personal base of support but the appeal of being a “political prisoner.”

Ghaneim is simply not that personally popular. I can speculate that he is the candidate of hardline Fatah chief Farouq Qaddumi, a man who is close to Syria’s radical dictatorship, who is popular but too old to run himself. But the key reason is that Mahmoud Abbas, PA and PLO leader, and his colleagues told delegates to vote for Ghaneim.

In general Rubin writes:

These two men—Abu Ala and Dahlan—are among the most moderate in Fatah. In their heads, they probably know that a compromise two-state solution is the best way forward for the Palestinians. But they will never have a chance to implement such a policy for two reasons.

First, the movement will always choose a much more hardline leadership—and I don’t necessarily mean as the nominal front man but as the group’s and the West Bank’s real rulers. Already, it is clear that the next leader of Fatah, the PLO, and the PA is Muhammad Ghaneim a man who—and this is no joke—is far more hardline tactically than Arafat. Ghaneim has still not even accepted the 1993 Oslo agreement which Arafat signed and which provides the basis not only for the peace process but for the PA itself.

Second, they know that whatever their personal views they must out-militant everyone else, insisting that there can be no concessions to Israel and that the Palestinians must maintain their demands inflexibly, glorify violence, while competing with Hamas in their inflexibility and radical rhetoric.

Overwhelmed by a belief that peace is near, media outlets pretend that it is only unreasonable Israel inflexibility that prevents a deal, ignore the the extreme elephant in the room. Essential to that belief is that Fatah is moderate and is capable of making a deal. Peace must be near. Fatah must be moderate. So Israel must be intransigent. That’s the apparent reasoning. If the media wasn’t so stuck on moderate, maybe they’d realize that the other two premises they hold are also wrong.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

08/09/2009

The fog of war lifted

Filed under: Israel, Media Bias — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 1:00 pm

The BBC at the time it happened.

Strike at Gaza school ‘kills 40′
…
The UN officials said they regularly provided the Israeli military with exact co-ordinates of their facilities, and that the school was in a built-up area.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was “deeply dismayed” that despite these efforts, three UN-run schools had been hit by nearby Israeli strikes.

The Israeli military said that, according to initial checks, its soldiers had come under mortar fire from militants inside the al-Fakhura school.

“The force responded with mortars at the source of fire,” it said in a statement. “Hamas cynically uses civilians as human shields.”

It later reported that two well-known members of a Hamas rocket-launching cell had been among those killed at the school, naming them as Imad and Hassan Abu Askar.

The Washington Post reported:

The Israeli military said its soldiers fired in self-defense after Hamas fighters launched mortar shells from the school. The United Nations condemned the attack and called for an independent investigation.

“We are completely devastated. There is nowhere safe in Gaza,” said John Ging, head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in the Gaza Strip.

The incident — one of the single most deadly during Israel’s 11-day offensive — underscored the dangers Palestinian civilians face as thousands of Israeli soldiers fight their way across Gaza against an enemy that does not wear uniforms or operate from bases, but instead mingles with the population.

The Post’s report deserves credit for acknowledging that Hamas does not conform to the laws of war, but the reporting generally took the tone of “both sides are wrong.” And the Post’s reporters failed to identify Hamas’s tactics as violations of international norms.

The New York Times headlined its article on the attack Grief and Rage at Stricken Gaza School

But Al Fakhura, set in the northern part of the densely packed Jabaliya refugee camp north of Gaza City, is in a crowded neighborhood full of Hamas fighters. Israel said that a preliminary investigation showed that mortar fire from the school compound prompted Israeli forces to return fire. The Israeli mortar rounds killed as many as 40 people outside the school; Palestinian hospital officials said Tuesday that 10 of the dead were children and 5 were women.

Residents of the neighborhood said two brothers who were Hamas fighters were in the area at the time of the attack. The military identified them as Imad Abu Asker and Hassan Abu Asker, and said they had been killed. But the residents also said the mortar fire had not come from the school compound, but from elsewhere in the neighborhood.

The Times noted the presence of terrorists among the civilians but didn’t give the level of detail that the Washington Post provided. Still the Times failed to explicitly report that Hamas’s embedding of fighters among the civilian population was a war crime.

In a column where he defended the coverage of Israel’s war against Hamas by his paper, the New York Times, Clark Hoyt gave the following background:

When Israeli bombs killed dozens at a United Nations school on Tuesday, it was too dangerous for the newspaper’s Palestinian stringer, Taghreed El-Khodary, who has worked for The Times for seven years, to go to the scene. She went instead to a hospital, where an official told her that 40 were killed, including 10 children and 5 women. The head surgeon and an ambulance driver said 45 were dead. United Nations officials, who were not on the scene, said 30 were killed. The Times emphasized the hospital’s count of 40.

And as we now know, that death toll was inflated.

Now Israel has released the results of the IDF’s investigation into the conduct of its troops during the war against Hamas. Here are the results of its investigation into the strike at the school.

335. The following illustrative examples demonstrate both the process of investigation undertaken thus far in Israel with respect to certain incidents involving U.N. facilities, and the application of the proper legal standards to the facts currently available. As discussed above, the Law of Armed Conflict turns not on the simple fact that certain sites were damaged in the course of battlefield operations, but rather on whether military forces targeted military objectives, and whether in doing so they took into account considerations of proportionality, in weighing the possibility of incidental (but unintended) harm to civilian facilities or persons.
(i) UNRWA School in Jabaliya (Fahoura School): 6 January 2009
336. In this incident, which occurred on 6 January 2009, IDF mortar shells landed outside a school being used as a UNRWA shelter. No mortar rounds hit the school itself, but landed in the road outside the school and at a nearby compound, resulting in flying shrapnel that reportedly injured several people inside the school, and killed or injured others nearby.
337. The IDF’s ‘investigation of the incident found that, on 6 January 2009, an IDF force operating in the El-Attatra-Jabaliya area came under an effective barrage of 120mm mortars launched from a site about 3.5 km. from the force. The launching site was situated only 80 metres west of the UNRWA school. The mortar attack lasted for almost an hour, with one mortar being fired every few minutes. As reported in the media, local residents later confirmed that mortar fire was coming from the vicinity of the school.
338. Soon after the source of fire was detected, a scouting unit was dispatched to confirm the location. Approximately 50 minutes after the mortar attack had begun, two independent sources cross-verified the location of the mortars. Only subsequent to this, and after verification of a safety margin of at least 50 metres between the target (i.e., the identified source of mortar fire) and the UNRWA school, did the force respond to the ongoing barrage, by using the most accurate weapon available to it — 120mm mortars.
339. The IDF force that was under attack fired four mortars, about 5-10 minutes after the cross-checked identification of the source of fire, and while Hamas mortars were still being fired towards the forces. The IDF response succeeded in stopping the Hamas mortar attack. Indeed, as a result of the response, five Hamas operatives were killed. The effectiveness of the mission in achieving its military objective is thus indisputable.
340. The IDF acted to defend the lives of soldiers under fire, in order to stop continuing mortar attack. The defensive action targeted an identified source of mortar fire which represented a concrete and immediate threat to the force. The IDF executed the responsive fire with as much precision as possible, given the available munitions. Indeed, the fact that all the Israeli shells landed outside the school grounds demonstrates the care Israel took not to hit the school itself, consistent with its obligations under the Law of Armed Conflict.

I suspect by now, most people who are questioned about the attack on the school, will respond that 40 people were killed. That’s what they read in the newspapers with no significant followup.

The Israeli investigation more or less confirmsthe correctness of its initial response. (Though in response to some charges, the IDF did allow that it may have made a mistake.)

I know the boast of the news industry made by Phil Graham, that it is the first rough draft of history. A rough draft, though, requires many corrections. News people nowadays aren’t much concerned with correcting mistaken first impressions or as Yaacov Lozowick, in his synopsis of his summary (Google Doc) of the IDF’s findings, writes:

Self anointed human rights organizations, followed by much of the media, have cast Israel as a serial transgressor against international law. The most recent case of this was Israel’s incursion into Hamas-controlled Gaza in January 2009, which was widely portrayed as criminal from inception to smallest detail. Defenders of Israel’s actions, generally not well versed in the minutiae of international law, have allowed themselves to be wrong footed, claiming that facts are wrong, or mooting the unacceptability of international law itself if it forbids Israel to defend its citizens.

The State of Israel has now published its legal and factual rebuttal. The authors of the report emphatically embrace international law and insist that its principles guide the IDF as it trains, plans, executes and investigate; they demonstrate all these actions on the case of the Gaza incursion.

The report is serious and learned, which means it is open to discussion and disagreement. Yet such a discussion must be informed and reasoned – precisely as much of the criticism leveled at Israel isn’t.

In his classic postmortem of Israel’s 1982 war against the PLO in Lebanon, Lebanon Eyewitness, Martin Peretz began:

MUCH OF WHAT you have read in the newspapers and newsmagazines about the war in Lebanon– and even more of what you have seen and heard on television–is simply not true.

Remarkably, 27 years later, though the specifics have changed, outrageous charges against Israel’s military operations persist, and are accepted not just into the “first rough draft” but into the accepted narrative. Maybe it’s time for the media and those who depend on it to engage a little self reflection.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The Guardian: First in anti-Israelism

Filed under: Anti-Semitism, Hamas, Media Bias, Terrorism — Tags: , , — Meryl Yourish @ 10:20 am

You wouldn’t expect a glowing PR piece about a Hamas film that idealizes the life and death of a terrorist in any mainstream newspaper’s film section. But that would only be if you had never read the British Guardian. (Via reader Neil M.)

The headline and teaser:

First film produced by Hamas screens in Gaza

Imad Aqel is an action-packed movie of the life and violent death of a Hamas militant who topped Israel’s most-wanted list

The lead:

The film’s hero is a young militant, blamed by Israel for the deaths of 13 soldiers and settlers, who was killed at the age of 22 in a firefight in 1993.

Note the language: They are casting doubt in the first sentence on whether or not he murdered thirteen Israelis. And of course, instead of the word “civilians,” “settlers” is used.

The lead graph continues with this sad fact:

Many of the actors are Hamas members and, since the movie was finished, four of them have been killed in an Israeli attack. This is Imad Aqel, the first feature film funded by Hamas.

So does the Reuters

The description of the film:

Shot on the grounds of Gnai Tal, one of the Jewish settlements evacuated in 2005 when Israel withdrew from the territory, it is a two-hour, action-packed thriller celebrating the life and martyrdom of Aqel, a commander of the Hamas military wing who topped Israel’s most-wanted list.

This could be straight out of the Hamas PR release, and I would not be at all surprised to find out that it is.

According to newspaper reports, the line that elicits the biggest cheer from the Gazan audience is when one of the characters declares: “To kill Israeli soldiers is to worship God.”The film’s director, Majed Jendeya, says he hopes to screen Imad Aqel at the Cannes film festival.

Despicable. But not as despicable as this last paragraph, in which the writer editorializes as to why Hamas is making movies that honor mass murderers:

The biopic is just the latest effort in Hamas’s media campaign to instil a “culture of resistance” in the territory. It also owns a satellite television station, a radio network and websites, as well as sponsoring art exhibitions, plays and poetry which tell of the harsh conditions in Gaza.

“Resistance” is the word that terrorist groups use to describe suicide bomb attacks and other methods of murdering civilians. It is getting more and more mainstream as more and more of the world reverts to the Jew-hatred it has held over the millennia. The demonization has reached such heights that Phyllis Chesler can’t even bring herself to write about Israel anymore, and I have to admit it has affected me as well. And part of the problem are media outlets like the Guardian, which never hesitates to excoriate Israel, and builds up terrorist murderers with puff pieces on films about their lives.

If you need a palate cleanser, you can read the National Post of Canada, which may be based on the Reuters article, but at least uses the word “terrorist” to describe the subject of the film. But the Post is one of the few voices in the wilderness of anti-Israel media. Yaacov calls them the antisemitic media. I don’t think he’s wrong.

08/07/2009

Huzzahs for Hussam

Filed under: Media Bias, palestinian politics — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 10:00 am

Reading Isabel Kershner’s Fatah postpones elections but Extends Conference, I wonder if I’m missing anything. Kershner informs us that the younger members of Fatah want a greater say in its governance. Are they more moderate? She doesn’t tell us. But she does report:

Some of the younger generation of reformers, who are hoping to increase their power within the movement, complained that the traditional leaders had packed the conference with their own supporters at the last minute.

“They brought their relatives, their secretaries,” said Hussam Khader, a firebrand Fatah leader from Nablus who has long campaigned against corruption in the movement.

Well apparently Kuddar has done more than campaign against corruption. The Guardian sat profiled him last year.

Khader was arrested at his home in March 2003 and convicted of being a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of the Fatah movement that played a key role in the second intifada, and of helping fund the group through connections to Hizbullah and Iran. He was sentenced to seven years in jail but released after five and a half. It was his 24th time in an Israeli prison – he was first arrested at age 13 for taking part in a demonstration against the Israeli occupation.

So he funded a terrorist group through Hezbollah and Iran. So “reformer” then isn’t necessarily such an innocuous term in this case.

Khaled Abu Toameh observed recently that Fatah was being radicalized and that …

… one of the most disturbing signs of the growing radicalization of Fatah can be seen in calls by top representatives for a “strategic alliance” with Iran’s dictatorial and fundamental regime.

Kershner doesn’t tell us if Khader is one of those advocating for that alliance, but given his arrest, it’s hardly a stretch to believe that he is. But of course, all we know him as is a “firebrand” reformer.

Later on Kershner writes:

Delegates have come to Bethlehem from as far as Yemen and the United States. They include people as diverse as Sari Nusseibeh, an intellectual from Jerusalem who has championed nonviolence, and Khaled Abu Asba, who took part in a notorious attack in 1978 in which an Israeli bus was hijacked and about three dozen Israeli civilians were killed.

Barry Rubin observed that the AP didn’t report:

… the cheers for terrorists who murdered Israelis but were present at the meeting.

And neither did the New York Times. Again I think it’s safe to assume that Abu Asba was applauded. Kershner, though, simply used him as an example of the “diversity” of those attending the conference. I don’t know that “diversity” is a virtue when it involves including and honoring murderers.

So when Kershner reports that

One point of consensus reached on Thursday was the notion that Israel was responsible for the death of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader and Fatah founder, who died in 2004. In the convention hall, delegates blamed Israel for having kept the ailing Mr. Arafat under siege in his headquarters in the West Bank. Fatah officials said they would continue to investigate the circumstances of his death, and suspicions that Israel poisoned him.

it sounds more bizarre than malicious. It’s indicative that Fatah is still less interested in fighting corruption than in fighting Israel or in creating an independent state. (h/t memeorandum) But without more information – that Kershner could have provided – we can’t get a sense from her report how the Fatah conference has improved or hurt the chances for peace. Given those omissions, my suspicion is that the latter is true. That’s the sort of news that’s not fit to print.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

07/17/2009

Dissin’ Nissenbaum

Filed under: Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Israeli Double Standard Time, Media Bias — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 4:30 pm

Surely you remember back in March, there was quite an uproar about Israel’s conduct during Operation Cast Lead. A story in Ha’aretz, followed by one in the New York Times told of abuses committed by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian civilians.

But in the end the allegations didn’t exactly pan out. Even the head of the academy where the allegations were made, excoriated the press for making too much out of them.

Still that didn’t stop McClatchy’s execrable Dion Nissenbaum from trying to keep the allegations alive. He dismissed the IDF’s investigation of the charges that found no wrongdoing and didn’t bother to report that the charges were found to be hearsay.

So it should come as no surprise when similar unsubstantiated charges from anonymous soliders surfaced this week, Nissenbaum trumpeted them on his blog.

But wait, something different happened this time. The group responsible for the charges this time was trying to get an exclusive from Ha’aretz. But Ha’aretz, burnt in March, was shy this time. Amir Mizroch of the Jerusalem Post writes:

Several days before all this, Breaking The Silence gave out their report to a wide array of foreign media, and not to the IDF to probe into itself, with the caveat that they observe the embargo until after Ha’aretz published the report first. All of which shows their original intent was to get as much uncritical worldwide publicity for their report. Legitimate, sure. Fair? Not so sure.

(It turns out that Breaking the Silence is being bankrolled by the EU and the British and Dutch embassies. Given that the EU is part of the “Quartet” doesn’t that mean that the Quartet’s objectivity is suspect?)

Breaking the Silence wanted uncritical attention and Nissenbaum, so swept up in his contempt for Israel, played his role faithfully. He treated the allegations as convictions because they fit his own prejudices. Truth really wasn’t important. (Actually truth is important to Nissenbaum, if it has to do with a movie. He’s not just biased, he’s also frivolous.)

On the other hand a number of Israeli soldiers have been willing to speak out publicly, and not anonymously, to testify that they saw professional and moral behavior from their fellow soldiers. I wouldn’t expect Nissenbaum to report that. Nor will he report that Human Rights Watch has been found to be ethically compromised.

For Nissenbaum, Israel employs force arbitrarily and disproportionately, Anything that confirms his view is news; anything that doesn’t is ignored. Really he should be drawing a second paycheck from the PA as he is doing its work.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

07/08/2009

Kemp: Israel safeguarded civilian rights in Gaza

Filed under: Israel, Israeli Double Standard Time, Media Bias — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 9:00 am

Last week, I was surprised that both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued reports claiming that Israel unjustifiably killed civilians during Operation Cast Lead. (See a related posts at Media Backspin and at CAMERA.) But of course, it was no accident. Currently there is a “balanced war crimes” investigation going on in Gaza being run by the UN. No doubt Amnesty and HRW made their contributions with the hope of tilting the scales against Israel, just in case the UN doesn’t condemn Israel harshly enough when its report comes out.

Last month a conference called Hamas, the Gaza War and Accountability under International Law was held in Jerusalem. One of the participants was a British colonel, who served in Afghanistan, Richard Kemp. The following is an excerpt from Kemp’s remarks. First he presents an aspect of the fighting that the UN, Amnesty and HRW will ignore:

It is often overlooked in media and human rights groups’ frenzies to expose fault among military forces fighting in the toughest conditions. The fourth is preventing or minimising casualties among your own soldiers. There will frequently be times when a military commander must make a snap judgement between the safety of his own troops and that of other people.

Human nature dictates that he will often choose his own men. It is hard to see how it could be otherwise. And there is more to it even than the commander’s human nature and loyalty to his men. For soldiers to follow their commander into combat – at any level, but especially at the point of battle – they must trust him.

How many soldiers want to die, be blinded, burnt, or have their arms, legs or faces blown off? No soldier will trust, or follow, a commander who is profligate with his men’s lives.

Let us not forget that these calculations, judgements and decisions are not taken in an air conditioned office or from the safety of a rearward military headquarters. The commander must weigh these things up in altogether different circumstances.

But then he mentions some of the efforts Israel made to reduce civilian casualties even at risk to its troops:

It is the automatic, pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.

So what did the IDF do in Gaza to meet their obligation to operate within the laws of war? When possible the IDF gave at least four hours’ notice to civilians to leave areas targeted for attack.

Attack helicopter pilots, tasked with destroying Hamas mobile weapons platforms, had total discretion to abort a strike if there was too great a risk of civilian casualties in the area. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were cancelled because of this.

During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. This sort of task is regarded by military tacticians as risky and dangerous at the best of times. To mount such operations, to deliver aid virtually into your enemy’s hands, is to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable.

But the IDF took on those risks.

In the latter stages of Cast Lead the IDF unilaterally announced a daily three-hour cease fire. The IDF dropped over 900,000 leaflets warning the population of impending attacks to allow them to leave designated areas. A complete air squadron was dedicated to this task alone.

Leaflets also urged the people to phone in information to pinpoint Hamas fighters vital intelligence that could save innocent lives.

The IDF phoned over 30,000 Palestinian households in Gaza, urging them in Arabic to leave homes where Hamas might have stashed weapons or be preparing to fight. Similar messages were passed in Arabic on Israeli radio broadcasts warning the civilian population of forthcoming operations.

Despite Israel’s extraordinary measures, of course innocent civilians were killed and wounded. That was due to the frictions of war that I have spoken about, and even more was an inevitable consequence of Hamas’ way of fighting.

By taking these actions and many other significant measures during Operation Cast Lead the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other Army in the history of warfare.

UPDATE: Israelly Cool has an earlier video of Col. Kemp, speaking during the Gaza war.

UPDATE II: Barry Rubin quotes Jonathan Spyer:
“The interesting thing about Kemp is that at first glance you think that he’s extraordinary, and then you realise that he isnt. He’s just a sane, professional military man. Which makes you realize just how nuts the terms of debate in Britain and Europe have become.”

Elder of Ziyon addresses the UN investigating team directly. (Good luck with that. They’re not looking for the truth.)

The Hashmonean discusses what the UN Commission won’t be discussing:

We can talk about how Hamas seized the Gaza strip by force and violence and killings, persecutes Christians, instituted Sharia Laws, mutilated and murdered fellow Palestinians who resist them, stockpiled & launched thousands of rockets, stole humanitarian aid for their own use.. Then claimed they were being persecuted by Israel and were starving while the BBC and Jeremy ‘Bozo’ Bowen wept. We can talk about how we supply this population who swears our destruction with food, water, electricity, money and goods out of our kindness and sympathy for humanity’s sake day in & out.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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