But here, I think, are the most relevant facts in the entire article. The reporter followed five different Palestinians on five different days. He starts with this woe-is-them description of how long the crossing takes:

Until a decade ago, his commute from his West Bank village 20 kilometers (12 miles) north would have taken less than hour. But after the Palestinian uprising broke out in 2000, border checkpoints started going up. The Qalandia crossing grew steadily more arduous, and now Abu Jalil has to get up at 4:30 a.m.

So his commute was less than an hour. The reporter doesn’t say how much less, but he does let us know how much time was added to the commute:

[...] It has taken him 22 minutes to get through.

In fact, here are the five summations of how long the crossing takes to get through for the five Palestinians the reporter traveled with:

(Sunday) It has taken him 22 minutes to get through.
(Monday) Today, his crossing takes the same as Abu Jalil’s – 22 minutes.
(Tuesday) Time crossing: 54 minutes.
(Wednesday) Time crossing: 33 minutes.
(Thursday) Time crossing: 25 minutes.

The evidence does not support the reporter’s contention that the checkpoints are daily humiliation and misery, taking hours and hours out of Palestinians’ lives while they wait to go through to Jerusalem.

The story includes slaps at soldiers for sleeping on the job (those are deserved), being rude to the Palestinians (oh, the horrors! They belched over the loudspeakers), being bored and unconcerned, and not saying anything to the Palestinians. Yeah, they really know how to humiliate people waiting in line. (Say, AP, how about an article about how our TSA workers daily humiliate Americans of every shape and size? There’d be material there for a whole series!)

The AP merely brushes past the real reason for the checkpoints. Witness:

“People forget that the crossing is there for a reason and not because Israel decided, ‘Let’s make Palestinians wait in line,’” Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev says. He says the barrier and crossing were built after “a wave of very murderous suicide bombings that killed all too many innocent civilians.”

At the height of fighting in early 2002, suicide bombings were a near-daily occurrence in Israel, often in Jerusalem. There have been no bombings for two years, proving the crossings work, Regev says.

Here’s a list of those near-daily occurrences that killed hundreds and wounded thousands until the separation fence and Operation Defensive Shield. There were 242 deaths in 55 terror attacks in 2002. Publishing the numbers would legitimize the fence, though, so of course, the AP presents only one side of the story.

Last week we got a hagiography of a Hamas murderer. This week, we get a complaint about a device that was built to stop the machinations of people like the dead Hamas murderer. Don’t count on ever getting a story that follows up on the lives of Israelis affected by the suicide bombings. But you can pretty much count on the AP to whitewash the Palestinians and tar the Israelis.

Hey, at least they didn’t try to slip back in the phrase “traditionally Arab” in front of “east Jerusalem.”

The first AP headline (and gee, I love the name of that newspaper):

Ultra-Orthodox Jews make rare visit to Gaza

The lead:

A small group of ultra-Orthodox Jews were preparing Friday to celebrate the Jewish Sabbath in Gaza, in an unlikely show of support for Palestinians in the Hamas-run coastal territory.

Note that there is nothing to indicate the fact that the NK are about as relevant to Judaism as your local “homeless” guy begging for food on the town’s busiest street corner is homeless. You don’t find that out until the last two paragraphs.

Neturei Karta, Aramaic for “Guardians of the City,” was founded seven decades ago in Jerusalem by Jews who opposed the drive to establish the state of Israel, believing only the Messiah could do that.

Considered marginal even among ultra-Orthodox Jews, the group’s size is estimated at between a few hundred to a few thousand people.

Perhaps a more knowledgeable reader could explain to me why they use Aramaic instead of Hebrew for their name. Yet another way to disassociate themselves from mainstream Judaism?

Second headline and lead:

Members of fringe Jewish sect spend weekend in Gaza to show support for Palestinians
Several members of an anti-Zionist Jewish sect have spent the Jewish Sabbath in Gaza with some of Israel’s most bitter enemies, the militant Islamic group Hamas.

Better. Even better, the truth about the NK nuts:

Neturei Karta traditionally supports Israel’s enemies – most notably Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom members hugged at a Holocaust denial conference in 2006.

They are estimated to have up to a few thousand followers and are mostly shunned by mainstream Judaism.

The last, and best, update:

Radical Jewish sect spends Sabbath in Gaza
Several members of an anti-Zionist Jewish sect have spent the Jewish Sabbath in Gaza with some of Israel’s most bitter enemies, the militant Islamic group Hamas.

So, credit where credit is due, and kudos to the AP.

It’s about damned time they told the truth about Israel and Jews.

In recent months, Hamas’ leader, Khaled Mashaal, has tried to reach out to the West with conciliatory statements, saying his group supports the idea of a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem. However, Mashaal hasn’t said if he would consider that the final arrangement.

Haniyeh suggested Monday that Hamas hasn’t dropped its objective of destroying Israel.

“This movement, with the help of the militant factions liberated the Gaza Strip, and we say, brothers and sisters, we will not be satisfied with Gaza,” Haniyeh told the crowd. “Hamas looks toward the whole of Palestine, the liberation of the strip is just a step to liberating all of Palestine,” meaning Israel as well as the West Bank and Gaza.

How is that a suggestion? How do the AP editors justify the pretense of the middle paragraph, that Haniyeh “suggested” that Hamas might still be thinking about destroying Israel? That isn’t a suggestion. It’s a flat-out declaration of purpose.

This is what is held up as the heights of journalism that blogging should reach? Puh-leeze.

And here’s the other part of the outrage that gets pretty much ignored: The Talibanization of Gaza is nearly complete.

Women stood in a separate section, many of them wearing face veils and green baseball hats over headscarves. Some children were dressed in combat fatigues and wore green headbands.

Yeah, let’s hear all about how Israel is a discriminatory state. I’m thinking not.

Obama braces for ‘vigorous’ town hall health talk
A day before facing a potentially boisterous town hall in New Hampshire, President Barack Obama praised the spirited debate over his health care plans on Monday and predicted “sensible and reasoned arguments” would ultimately prevail in Congress.

Let’s face it, Obama’s town hall audiences are more thoroughly vetted than his Cabinet appointees. This is a line of absolute bull. Doesn’t the media get tired of making stuff up?

“we won’t abandon any of our options, and we believe that resistance, in all forms, is a legitimate right of occupied people in confronting their occupiers.”

And yet, we never seem to see the AP articles that emphasize the Palestinian refusal to compromise. Only Israel’s. Funny, that.

What AP media bias? Yesterday, Palestinians fired mortars at the Erez crossing while sick Palestinians were being transferred from Palestinian ambulances to Israeli ones. So Israel bombed a smuggling tunnel (should have bombed a lot more of them). The AP, which can’t seem to notice that Fatah is turning into Hamas Lite, found its voice again, against Israel. The headline: Israeli warplanes bomb tunnel along Gaza border. Just in case you thought maybe it was sightseeing planes that bombed the tunnel.

The “Judaization” of Jerusalem includes rebuilding synagogues: Jews rebuilt a synagogue that was built in Jerusalem in 1867, but because it’s on the “wrong” side of the line, Ehud Barak has come under fire for attending the ceremony to welcome the return of the Torah to a 142-year-old Jewish house of worship. Jews were forced out of there in 1938, and yet, we never seem to read about that aspect of Jerusalem anywhere but in the Jewish press. The synagogue is 100 yards from the Temple Mount. And it was nearly destroyed, of course, when Jordan controlled Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967. Sure, give Jerusalem back to the Muslims. Because they did such a great job safeguarding other religious sites before.

Bibi to Beirut: L’etat, c’est Hezbullah. Benjamin Netanyahu warned Lebanon that Israel will hold the entire country responsible for whatever Hezbullah does. Which makes sense, considering that Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has thrown in with Hezbullah and declared that he was wrong about Iran, so they’re going to be making policy with a voting majority soon. Right now, it’s just a war of words. I hope it stays that way, but it looks like Iran is placing its ducks in a row to respond to any attack on its nuclear facilities. And speaking of Iran:

Iran to Obama: No fist unclenching until we say so. Iran is bent on running out the clock. I know my regular readers are going to be shocked to hear this, but they’re not going to adhere to any U.S. deadline for talks—not even the one set by The One. And the clock ticks closer to Israeli action. Say, Iranian opposition: Faster, please. Oh, wait. They’re all in jail now.

To the editor,

Could you please explain to me why the AP uses the phrase, “traditionally Arab east Jerusalem” when discussing Jews living in the eastern section of Jerusalem? Who has designated the eastern section as “traditionally Arab”? In point of fact, that is an inaccurate portrayal of the city’s character. There was a large Jewish community in east Jerusalem until 1948, when Jordan killed or forced out all of the Jewish inhabitants of the Jewish Quarter—which was in east Jerusalem. It is only in the years from 1948 to 1967 that there were no Jews in the eastern portion of the city. Prior to 1948, the history of the Jewish community of east Jerusalem goes back thousands of years.

In your article, Envoy: US favors overall Mideast peace accord, by Josef Federman, you write:

“Some 280,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, in addition to 180,000 residents living in Jewish neighborhoods built in traditionally Arab east Jerusalem.”

Clearly, east Jerusalem is not “traditionally” Arab, and has been Arab only for 19 of the last several thousand years. Or, if you want more recent history, out of the last sixty years, Jews were absent from the Jewish Quarter only for nineteen years, and not by their choice.

Why does the AP use such a description when the Jewish Quarter is, and always has been, in the eastern section of the city? Wouldn’t that make east Jerusalem “traditionally Jewish”?

I look forward to seeing you fix this error.

I have yet to hear back from the AP as to why east Jerusalem is “traditionally Arab.” I suspect I will not hear back at all, but that may be the cynic in me.

Update: No response, but no more “traditionally Arab” east Jerusalem, either.

Appealing to a powerful Saudi prince, an 8-year-old girl asked why she was not allowed to play sports in school like boys. She got an unexpected response: The prince said he hoped government schools for girls would allow playing fields.

And how cool is this? The AP is taking this mealy-mouthed, patronizing anti-feminist pap and pushing it like it’s the equivalent of America’s Title IX.

The stand taken by Prince Khaled al-Faisal, governor of the holy city of Mecca and one of the most senior second-generation members of the royal family, on the controversial issue is the strongest official endorsement so far of women’s sports and a sign the government may be tilting toward opening up on that front.

And exactly why is it such obvious bullshit? Because in the next breath, the AP reports this:

Physical education classes are banned in state-run girls schools in conservative Saudi Arabia. Saudi female athletes are not allowed to participate in the Olympics. Women’s games and marathons have been canceled when the powerful clergy get wind of them. And some clerics even argue that running and jumping can damage a woman’s hymen and ruin her chances of getting married.

“Conservative”? Ronald Reagan was a conservative. A better description of Saudi Arabia would be “feudal.” Except I’m pretty sure that women had more rights in feudal Europe than they have in modern Saudi Arabia. And lest you think that the prince was suggesting any form of equality for women, think again:

According to local newspapers, the 8-year-old girl told Khaled: “I ask myself why is it that only boys can play sports and have courts while we girls don’t have anything?”

“I hope to see sports courts for girls inside girls’ schools,” the prince responded, according to Al-Hayat newspaper.

He said if this were to happen, it will be in coordination with the Education Ministry and “according to certain mechanisms that take into consideration women’s privacy in this country.”

Yes, the fabled privacy excuse. Because given half the chance, women in Muslim lands won’t throw off the shackles of repression and try to live normal lives. Oh, wait. Yes, they will (cf: Afghanistan, Iraq).

But when you live with medieval freaks like these, well, your choices are limited:

A statement issued by three senior clerics last month lashed out at Saudis who demand the opening of more gyms for women, saying such a move would “open the doors wide for spreading decadence.”

“It is well-known that only women with no shame will go to these clubs,” said the statement signed by clerics Abdul-Rahman al-Barrack, Abdul-Aziz al-Rajihi and Abdullah bin Jibrin.

In a recent column in Al-Watan newspaper, Sheik Abdullah al-Mani, an adviser at the royal court, said virgins should think twice before engaging in sports.

“Soccer or basketball require running and jumping and these could damage (a woman’s) the hymen,” he wrote. “If she marries, her husband will … think that her hymen was destroyed as a result of an (immoral) action.”

“He will either divorce her or lose confidence in her chastity,” he added.

But sure, let’s respect their culture and traditions. Because practices like these simply cry out for respect.

Shyeah.

Here’s how you do it: First, decide on the angle of your story—in this case, settlement growth is not “natural growth,” it’s a huge influx of people from elsewhere. Next, strengthen your case with quotes and statistics that back you up, while denigrating the other side of the argument so that your reader is left with little choice but to nod his head in agreement with your thesis. And last, make sure that you trick the reader into thinking your facts are relevant and up to date, even if they aren’t.

Let’s take a look at how the AP skews the article about Israeli settlement growth. First, the headline:

Migrants boost Jewish settler numbers in West Bank

Interesting choice of word, “migrants.” It makes you think of people swooping into the West Bank from all over the rest of Israel, not merely moving from, say, Tel Aviv to Ma’ale Adumim, a suburb of Jerusalem. But that is the word they’re using to encompass all “settlement” growth. Next, the lead:

Israelis moving to the West Bank accounted for more than a third of settler population growth in recent years, undercutting Israel’s argument that it is continuing settlement construction only to accommodate growing families already living there.

That’s a pretty damning statement, also written to make you believe that people are simply flocking in to Palestinian areas of the West Bank. But what “settlements,” exactly, are they talking about?

Opponents say the government invokes “natural growth” as a cover to build thousands of houses across the West Bank, including hundreds that Palestinian laborers are building in Maaleh Adumim, a major settlement outside Jerusalem.

Ah, Ma’ale Adumim. About that “settlement“:

Approximately 6,000 people live in surrounding settlements that are included in the Ma’ale bloc. Israel has long planned to fill in the empty gap between Jerusalem and this bedroom community (referred to as the E1 project). The corridor is approximately 3,250 acres and does not have any inhabitants, so no Palestinians would be displaced. According to the Clinton plan, Ma’ale was to be part of Israel.

The AP doesn’t go into Ma’ale Adumim’s history. But they do supply a quote from the Palestinians.

“The Israelis are playing a game of deception by what they call natural growth,” said Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Not a single Israeli official is quoted in the article. But there are plenty of other people quoted to support the AP’s thesis.

Yossi Navon, the foreman who spoke of the Embassy personnel, said apartments were going for about half of what a comparable apartment in Jerusalem would fetch.

That quote is deliberately placed without context to make you think that apartments in Ma’ale Adumim are priced low to attract people to the town. Try this thought exercise: Replace “Jerusalem” with “New York” and “Ma’ale Adumim” with “Hoboken” for context, and you see the way that the reporter and editor are slanting this piece to go along with the thesis. Of course apartments cost less outside of Jerusalem. My rent in Montclair, NJ (12 miles west) was far, far less than a comparable apartment in Manhattan.

Now let’s look at the way AP manipulates the facts. Let’s analyze the data they present.

Data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics supports that argument, showing that in 2007, 36 percent of all new settlers had moved from Israel or abroad.

It’s 2009. Have we got any data that’s more recent, perhaps?

More recent data, including for the period since Netanyahu’s government took office in March, is not yet available, but there are few reasons to think Israel has reversed the trend, said Hagit Ofran, a settlement expert for Peace Now, a settlement watchdog group.

No, we don’t have more recent data. But it’s all right to use two-year-old data. We have a quote from an opponent of settlements who says that two-year-old data can be relied on because, well, she says so. That’s some pretty awesome fact-checking, AP!

And then they back that up by using building statistics that aren’t broken down or contextualized.

Amid the influx of people drawn to cheaper housing in settlements, construction has continued—more than 5,500 new apartments have been completed over the past three years in the West Bank, bureau figures show.

So, from 2006-2009, that many new apartments have been completed. The data they are using ends sometime in 2007, so they’ve already neutralized one year of the data. How many were built in the last 18 months? How many in the last three months, since Netanyahu took office? The story doesn’t give that data. Why not? Well, it may not be available—or maybe it undercuts their arguments, in which case, a good reporter, working on slanting an article, knows better than to quote those facts. Again, standard practice when you want to slant an article. And so is analysis disguised as news, such as the following:

Settlements are a major obstacle to peacemaking because Israel has used them to extend its de facto boundaries into the West Bank and to cement its claim on east Jerusalem. The Palestinians claim both territories, captured by Israel in 1967, for a future state, along with the Gaza Strip, and want the Jewish construction there to stop.

Under the 2003 U.S.-backed road map peace plan, Israel promised to halt all settlement construction, including for natural growth. But the building has gone on.

Once again, use facts that support your argument, while ignoring inconvenient facts that would balance it. For instance, the fact that Palestinians are obligated to end terror and incitement in the first phase of the Road Map is never mentioned—only Israel’s obligations to halt settlements.

You’d think that objectivity might surface somewhere in the article. But you would be wrong.

Last week, Netanyahu grudgingly yielded to President Barack Obama’s demand that Israel endorse Palestinian independence, albeit shackled by a series of conditions. But he flatly resisted Obama’s pressure for a settlement freeze.

That’s a lie. Obama didn’t demand that Netanyahu endorse Palestinian “independence.” And Israel has had three Prime Ministers who agreed to Palestinian statehood. But the AP has to keep on slinging the mud at Bibi.

Netanyahu pointedly dropped the politically charged “natural growth” phrase for “normal lives.”

That wily Jew! Now he’s just messin’ with us! Like we’re messin’ with the statistics!

But the linguistic slight of hand doesn’t mask the fact that migration—and not just the growth of families—is a major factor in settler population growth.

Migration from Israel and abroad accounted for 5,300 of the 14,500 new settlers in 2007, the last year for which bureau data are available.

And 2007 wasn’t a random blip. Migration accounted for between a third and half of the population growth in each year between 1999 and 2007, save 2005, when numbers were skewed by Israel’s withdrawal of 8,500 settlers from the Gaza Strip.

Now you see how far back the AP is willing to go to bolster their argument. They have no statistics for 2008, which would be far more relevant, but that’s not stopping them from reaching back ten years for old data. And note how they don’t even mention the removal of settlements from Gaza. Because that would completely undercut their argument that Israel wants to keep every square dunum of land it got in the Six Day War.

To sum up: The AP has not made its argument. It has manipulated data, extrapolated it to explain current trends without any physical evidence to back up that extrapolation, quoted settlement opponents, chose only relevant facts from the Road Map, and used negative adjectives to describe everything the Israeli Prime Minister had to say, and put as negative a spin as possible on what “natural growth” really is.

And that, boys and girls, is how you manage to demonize Israel in the everyday news.

Israel strikes Gaza day after truce expires

Look at the cause-and-effect of the lead.

An Israeli airstrike against a Palestinian rocket squad killed a militant Saturday, the first death in Gaza since Hamas formally declared an end to a six-month truce.

Palestinians fired 10 rockets and at least 23 mortar shells from Gaza into Israel, causing some property damage but no casualties, the Israeli military said. An Israeli airstrike at one of the rocket squads in northern Gaza killed a militant, said the army and Palestinian medics.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement, identified the dead man as one of its fighters. Hamas, which controls Gaza, said it was behind the mortar fire.

If all you read is the first three paragraphs—and that is what most people read—you think that Israel struck first, then the Palestinians fired back. In reality, rockets have been raining down on Israel nearly every day this month. Here’s what happened this morning in Israel:

Residents of Israel’s Gaza-vicinity communities awoke to the sound of rockets landing near their homes on Saturday morning. At least 11 Qassam rockets and 16 mortars were fired by Palestinian groups towards the western Negev throughout the day.

The first four rockets were fired at around 8:50 am, while many local residents were attending synagogue. Deputy security officer for the Eshkol Council, Nicky Levi, told Ynet that the Color Red rocket alert system sounded throughout several communities in the morning hours.

Two of the rockets landed in open areas in the Eshkol Regional Council, one landed in the Shaar Hanegev Regional Council and the fourth landed just north of Gaza.

A short while after the rockets landed the IDF struck in Beit Lahiya, killing one. Palestinian sources named the man killed as Ali Hijazi, and said he belonged to the Eiman Judeh squads, which are part of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades – the military wing of Fatah.

Nowhere—NOWHERE in the AP article is it indicated that the rockets were fired into Israel, and then Israel responded to her civilians being bombarded by firing on the terrorists launching the rockets.

Effing AP. I really cannot stand them. The only reason I give myself high blood pressure by reading them is that someone has to keep on telling the Israeli side of the story.

Israeli students slam American ‘Israel Lobby’ authors
Two prominent American professors, who have recently been causing an uproar with their best-selling book critical of the powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington, faced a raucous reception Thursday at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

About 200 students and faculty members crammed into a stuffy lecture hall and grilled John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt for more than two hours about the harsh findings in their book, “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” published last year.

Makes you think there are going to be some hard-hitting questions by Israeli students to the W-M team, doesn’t it? That opening makes you think you’re going to get some really nasty responses from the students at the lecture. Were W-M shouted down? Booed? Did anyone throw a pie in their faces?

I wouldn’t know. The AP didn’t inform me of anything other than that W-M spoke at Hebrew University, that they’re martyrs of the “Israel Lobby,” and that a lot of people disagree with them but some people don’t.

You won’t find a single question in the paragraphs that follow. Not one. You’ll get a statement by a student sympathetic to the W-M smear. You’ll get a very long explanation by the AP writer on how W-M have been attacked by people who disagree with their thesis. And you’ll get a quote at the very end of the article by someone from the ADL who, I think, is critical of them. It’s hard to tell in context. But most of the article is like this:

Since Mearsheimer, a University of Chicago professor, and Walt, of Harvard University, published their working paper of the same title in 2006, they have drawn the wrath of Jewish American groups and US Administration officials.

“If you bring up the Israel lobby, you are asking for trouble,” Walt said as he opened his lecture. He said he knew he was “playing with fire” when he wrote the book, but said he would not be deterred by personal attacks against him.

There is not a single quote of a question from the “raucous reception”. There is nothing but this description:

They said AIPAC wields disproportionate power because of deep financial resources and heavy-handed tactics. They were then showered with questions, as the classroom erupted in excited conversation. The exchange was mostly cordial, with the American professors eliciting some laughs from the crowd, but at times it got testy.

Gee. It got “testy.” But “the exchange was mostly cordial.” And yet, the scary lead talks about the “raucous reception” W-M got. You know, like this one:

Not all in the audience were hostile. Korina Kagan, a political science lecturer, said she essentially agreed with their thesis and was appalled by the attacks against them, especially from academic circles.

“The smear campaign against them is worse than anything they have ever written,” she said, adding that many of their positions are shared by commentators in the Israeli media. “We need to have a free academic exchange.”

Hm. That’s awfully raucous, Korina. You want to control yourself. You may suffer an aneurism if you’re not careful.

Here’s my question to the AP: Was this article written entirely from the Walt-Mearsheimer press release, or did you actually have someone in the audience for the student quote above?

The Chronicle of Higher Education managed to find a completely different angle for the same lecture:

‘Israel Lobby’ Professors Get Hospitable Greeting in Israel
Jerusalem — The first appearance in Israel by Stephen M. Walt and John J. Mearsheimer since the publication of their controversial book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, impressed a largely student audience at the Hebrew University, but left some faculty members wondering about their honesty.

A threatened boycott failed to have any effect, and the talk passed off with nothing more dramatic than some lively debate and repeated declarations from the pair that they are neither anti-Semitic nor Israel-haters.

So, gee, the AP is what, lying?

Yeah, I’m thinking.