Much of the editorial opinion and some of the reporting in the mainstream media has opposed the Egyptian military’s forcible removal of Mohammed Morsi as President of Egypt. Actually, surprisingly, there’s a debate about it on the opinion pages of the New York Times. It’s surprising because the reporting of the New York Times has been skeptical of the Tamarod, the protest movement that sought Morsi’s resignation. It’s doubly surprising because the New York Times isn’t usually known for offering a diversity of opinion.

On the one side there’s an unsigned editorial, and an op-ed by Shadi Hamid. But perhaps the clearest anti-protest expression came from Samer Shehata, In Egypt, Democrats vs. Liberals.

Egypt has a dilemma: its politics are dominated by democrats who are not liberals and liberals who are not democrats.

In this case, the favored democrats are defined narrowly as the group that has won an election, but ignoring how it behaved once it achieved power.

On the other side are Roger Cohen and David Brooks. But the clearest anti-Morsi sentiment came from Sara Khorshid, A Coup, but Backed by the People.

Make no mistake: there is no democracy under military rule. Yet I supported the June 30 protests knowing that military rule was imminent, because Mr. Morsi’s rule had not been democratic, either.

Throughout the year of his presidency, protesters who opposed him were violently crushed by the police and by Muslim Brotherhood members. He supported the Interior Ministry in its violent tactics against demonstrators and failed to investigate incidents in which protesters were killed. Journalists and activists were arrested, and the president issued an edict giving him immunity from judicial review. The presidential election, conducted without a clear legal framework, was not enough to make Mr. Morsi’s rule democratic.

Despite Mr. Morsi’s constant claims that someone was undermining his efforts, his actions always seemed aimed at extending the Muslim Brotherhood’s domination of state institutions. He was in constant conflict with the judiciary, most recently with a proposal to lower the retirement age to clear the way for the appointment of his allies.

The nature of the Muslim Brotherhood seems to have been grasped by David Brooks, but not Roger Cohen.

I’ll include Thomas Friedman as a special case. For the most part, he sided with the protesters and he even got a nice mention by Eric Trager.

Accurate depiction of anti-Morsi mood. MT @ghazalairshad: To understand mass opp to MB, focus on "theft." #Egypt http://t.co/4CCMkDHHoA"

— Eric Trager ????? (@EricTrager18) July 5, 2013

His column, Egypt’s Revolution Part II made a number of good points but the problem is how it how it meshed with some of his previous columns.

Always remember: Morsi narrowly won the Presidency by 51 percent of the vote because he managed to persuade many secular and pious but non-Islamist Egyptians that he would govern from the center, focus on the economy and be inclusive. The Muslim Brotherhood never could have won 51 percent with just its base alone. Many centrist Egyptian urban elites chose to vote for Morsi because they could not bring themselves to vote for his opponent, Ahmed Shafik, a holdover from the regime of Hosni Mubarak. So they talked themselves into believing what Morsi was telling them.

As it gradually became apparent that Morsi, whenever he had a choice of acting in an inclusive manner – and pulling in all sectors of Egyptian society – or grabbing more power, would grab more power, a huge chunk of Morsi voters, Islamists and non-Islamist, started to feel cheated by him. They felt that he and his party had stolen something very valuable – their long sought chance to really put Egypt on a democratic course, with more equal growth.

However, a year and a half ago, Friedman wrote in Watching Elephants Fly:

If you do, the first thing you’ll write is that the Islamist parties — the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafist Al Nour Party — just crushed the secular liberals, who actually sparked the rebellion here, in the free Egyptian parliamentary elections, winning some 65 percent of the seats. To not be worried about the theocratic, antipluralistic, anti-women’s-rights, xenophobic strands in these Islamist parties is to be recklessly naïve. But to assume that the Islamists will not be impacted, or moderated, by the responsibilities of power, by the contending new power centers here and by the priority of the public for jobs and clean government is to miss the dynamism of Egyptian politics today.

Friedman’s old assumption was that the responsiblities of governing would moderate the Muslim Brotherhood. It wasn’t a hope, but an expectation (despite the qualification about not being worried.) So I don’t think it was “gradually apparent” that Morsi wouldn’t respect the rule of law; it was to be expected. (I have a similar reservation about Cohen’s column.)

Six months ago, in a remarkably prescient article, Think Again, Eric Trager laid out why the Muslim Brotherhood should have been expected to moderate, and noticed that the opposition was starting to coalesce.

Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post sees no good coming of the coup. He writes in Egypt’s Misguided Coup:

Applauders of military coups have in common two illusions: that the generals share their agenda and that their hated opponents, despite their electoral victories, can be politically nullified. Invariably, neither turns out to be true. Armed forces aren’t good at convening roundtables or implementing liberal platforms; they are good at using force. Even if they don’t torture and kill, they sweep up nonviolent political leaders, shut down media they regard as troublesome and try to impose political rules protecting their own political and economic interests.

That is what the Egyptian army did after removing Hosni Mubarak in 2011. On Wednesday it began shutting down television stations and rounding up Muslim Brotherhood leaders while Egypt’s self-described liberal democrats were still celebrating their supposed popular revolution.

Unlike Thomas Friedman, Diehl is serious. He compares Egypt’s recent coup with others in recent years. However, his failure here is a failure to acknowledge the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Egyptian Organization of Human Rights wrote One year into Mohamed Morsi’s term Manifold abuses and the systematic undermining of the rule of law:

One year after Morsi became president, it is now clear that the priority of the presidency—and, of course, the Muslim Brotherhood —was to firmly establish the underpinnings for a new authoritarian regime in place of the Mubarak regime. It is no surprise, therefore, that the past year witnessed widespread human rights crimes, on a scale that rivaled than under the Mubarak regime. The brutal suppression of political and social protest movements did not cease; indeed, the security forces are no longer the only party to use of excessive force against demonstrators, as MB supporters have also been given free rein to use violence to punish and intimidate their opponents, including through torture and even killings, whether at the gates of the presidential palace, in front of the main MB headquarters in Muqattam, or in squares in other governorates. The situation has recently culminated in the incitement of violence against Shiites and against participants in the protests planned for June 30; the incitement took place at a recent press conference attended by the president, government officials, and leaders in the Muslim Brotherhood. Repercussions of this incitement have already become all too clear – days later, four Shiites were killed by a mob in the village of Abu Muslim in Giza.

To be sure a coup is a tricky thing and Egypt’s army mustn’t be confused with enlightened Western democrats. Still it’s likely that their self interest will lead to a more open government than would be possible with Muslim Brotherhood rule.

Let me allow Barry Rubin to get the last word in:

And, sorry, but if that means that popular totalitarian movements don’t get to enjoy the fruits of their election or military victories so that they can better wipe you out, then so be it. So that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth. And one day, others can enjoy those benefits when conditions are ripe.

2) Without the coup

A coup is, obviously, not an ideal way to change power. However, sometimes it needs to be asked, what would happen without the coup? Three recent stories raise this question.

While closing the tunnels affected traffic both ways, the arrest of the Hamas operatives suggest that the military authorities saw them as a threat to support the Muslim Brotherhood leadership (violently) against the protesters. Did Egypt’s military see Hamas as source of instability? An Egyptian court recently ruled that the Muslim Brotherhood conspired with Hamas and Hezbollah to orchestrate a massive jailbreak – freeing, among others, Mohammed Morsi – in 2011. (There might also be a larger question about how the Muslim Brotherhood is now being viewed in the Arab world.)

While the degree that Hamas threatens Egypt is speculative, Egypt continues to close its border with Gaza.

For the better part of a decade, Turkey and Israel have been growing apart politically. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party has Islamist leanings; confrontation with Israel is part of its popular appeal. The A.K.P. caters to a more conservative and religious cross-section of the Turkish electorate than the secular governments that preceded it. Indeed, Erdogan has undermined the political strength of Turkey’s traditional power base: the business elite and the military. The Turkish military has long had strong ties to Israel’s security establishment, meaning that its diminished domestic influence has weakened one of the main institutional linkages between Turkey and Israel.

The next paragraph blames the estrangement between Israel and Turkey on a “rightward shift” leading to “expanding … settlements” that diminish the “prospects for a two-state solution.” The language is temperate but the bias is clear. Turkey’s shift is posturing without real consequences, but Israel’s shift produces consequences that justify Turkish resentment. Later on the authors recommend unilateral steps for Israel to take to restore trust, but make no parallel suggestions for Turkey.

Tally – Anti-Israel – 1 / Pro-Israel – 0 

2) Please … draw me a state – Shmuel Rosner – April 3, 2013

Indeed. Jerusalem had good reasons to object to a settlement freeze — including for making the Palestinians less likely to compromise — but it also knew that any freeze would be, or could be, temporary and reversible. Drawing a border between a state and a would-be state is a far more significant step, and potentially far more permanent.

This paragraph sums up Rosner’s argument. It’s counter-intuitive to argue – as he does – that Obama is actually pressing Israel harder now. But this op-ed is overall sympathetic to Israel.

Tally – Anti-Israel – 1 / Pro-Israel – 1

3) Not your average Jane Doe – Shmuel Rosner – April 9, 2013

By making Riki his economic cause célèbre, Lapid exposed the extent to which he doesn’t know the average Israeli and is far more out of touch with reality than the nerds at finance. Lapid, whose party did well in the January election in almost all of Israel’s wealthier municipalities, now seems to be overly indebted to these affluent voters.

By focusing on a rookie mistake made by newly minted politician Yair Lapid, Rosner offers some insight into Israeli politics that a reader of the New York Times would not get from reading the regular news reporting.

Tally – Anti-Israel – 1 / Pro-Israel – 2

 4) Supermodel and draft dodger – Shmuel Rosner – April 15, 2013

The Foreign Ministry, always on the lookout for ways to make Israel’s image trendier, recently asked the supermodel Bar Refaeli, one of the country’s most famous celebrities, to lead an ad campaign promoting Israeli technology and innovation abroad. She agreed, free of charge. Apparently it was a success: “My Instagram feed has more readers than Israel’s most popular newspaper,” Refaeli bragged in a tweet.

But, as Rosner points out, Rafaeli never served in the army, and the military establishment was upset that someone who never served would represent Israel. Without rancor, Rosner presents both sides. I’d say he’s a bit more sympathetic to the military’s position. In short, he presents Israeli patriotism in a positive light.

Tally – Anti-Israel – 1 / Pro-Israel – 3 

5) Syria’s forgotten front – David Pollock – April 16, 2013

This convergence of interests provides an opening for America to quietly strike a deal between Israel and the leadership of the Syrian opposition: Israel should agree to refrain from arming proxies inside Syria to protect its border; and the Syrian opposition should work to keep extremist groups like Hezbollah and Jabhat al-Nusra and other affiliates of Al Qaeda far away from the Israeli frontier. This would demonstrate the Syrian opposition’s bona fides to potential Western supporters and dissuade Israel from intervening or arming allies in Syria.

The idea here is to get the United States, Israel and whatever moderate forces there are among the rebels on the same page. The idea is to serve both American and Israeli interests and, if possible (though, at this point, improbable) create a credible moderate force among the rebels.

Tally – Anti-Israel – 1 / Pro-Israel – 4

6) The Jewish Hero History Forgot – Marci Shore – April 18, 2013

Edelman, who had survived by escaping through the sewers, was the last living commander of the uprising. After the war, in Communist Poland, he became a cardiologist: “to outwit God,” as he once said. In the 1970s and ’80s he re-emerged in the public sphere as an activist in the anti-Communist opposition, working with the Committee for the Defense of Workers and the Solidarity movement. He died in 2009, and to this day, he is celebrated as a hero in Poland.

Contrary to the premised of this essay, Marek Edelman is not forgotten. Perhaps he is not as well known as other fighters from the Warsaw Ghetto. However, Professor Shore’s point is to blame Zionism for any historical slights suffered by Edelman. By itself, this op-ed might be unremarkable. But given the efforts the New York Times has made to popularize anti-Zionism it can’t be ignored and must be seen as part of the paper’s strategy.

Tally – Anti-Israel – 2 / Pro-Israel – 4 

7) Separate but Equal – Shmuel Rosner – April 23, 2013

Sharansky’s deal, almost finalized, is a measured compromise with a grain of irony. To accommodate American Jews’ liberal leanings he brokered a “separate but equal” arrangement: The area near the wall where visitors can worship will be expanded to include a new section in which WoW — and all other Jews wanting to avoid strict Orthodox custom — can pray as they wish. Women will be able to wear a prayer shawl without being detained by the police; men and women will be able to mix, pray and celebrate together.

This is an issue that could have been portrayed with some level of vitriol, but Rosner avoided that. Instead he portrays Israel as trying to accommodate all viewpoints.

Tally – Anti-Israel – 2 / Pro-Israel – 5

8) Goodbye to all that – Thomas Friedman – April 23, 2013

For Palestinians, particularly Abbas and Fatah, who so easily turned their most effective executive into a scapegoat, if there is no place for a Salam Fayyad-type in your leadership, an independent state will forever elude you.

This is the first of four “takeaways” that Friedman presents at the end of the op-ed. It is correct. Fayyad’s failure had nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with the political environment in which he operated. Unfortunately, Friedman used most of the rest of the article blaming Israel for Fayyad’s failure.

Tally – Anti-Israel – 3 / Pro-Israel – 5
 

9) The Faces of Difference – Shmuel Rosner – April 30, 2013

The new bills are somewhat more colorful than current bills, but what has taken some Israelis aback is that all the new figureheads on them are Ashkenazi — that is, Jews of European origin. “It is unconscionable that not one Mizrahi poet could be found for embedding his portrait on the bank notes,” complained a Knesset member of Mizrahi, or Sephardic, origin.

Though Rosner highlights the controversy here, he goes to great lengths to show that whatever societal issues that new currency stirred up, the chasms between Ashkenazi and Sephardi have narrowed over time.

 Final total – Anti-Israel – 3 / Pro-Israel – 6

Methodology: I searched the archive for all opinion articles at the New York Times website for all opinion pieces from April 1, 2013 to April 30, 2013 mentioning “Israel.” I included op-ed and editorials that were substantially about Israel, but not letters to the editor. In nearly two years of doing these surveys I can’t recall a month where there were more pro-Israel articles than anti-Israel ones. Of course, this month’s total is mostly the work of one man Shmuel Rosner, who describes Israeli society in much more depth and nuance than most reporters. Also notable was that there were no unsigned editorials substantially about Israel. (There was one editorial that mocked Israeli proofs about the use of chemical weapons in Syria.) Is this the start of a positive trend at the New York Times? Or just a sign of fatigue?

Last year a former New York Times reporter, Neil Lewis wrote a defense of the New York Times’ coverage of Israel. (.pdf) Lewis writes of Arthur Hays Sulzberger:

Whatever complicated personal themes may have floated in Arthur Hays Sulzberger’s private seas can only be guessed at. (The most common — and plausible — speculation is that he, like many established and wealthy American Jews of German heritage, was profoundly uncomfortable, or simply snobbish, about the more recent waves of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who were seen by them as less cultured.)
So, while downplaying in The Times to a ludicrous degree the Jewish identity of the victims of some Nazi horrors (an editorial about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising
somehow managed to omit that it was a ghetto of Jews), Arthur and Iphigene worked diligently to help distant relatives still in Germany emigrate to the United
States. They surely understood these people were in danger from Hitler because of something more than their “choice” to subscribe to the Jewish, rather than say, the Lutheran, religion.
But it was out of this tradition that Arthur Hays Sulzberger positioned himself as an avid anti-Zionist even going so far to make speeches on the subject. He consistently opposed proposals ranging from the modest, like the (never realized) raising of an international Jewish military force, to the grand, the founding of a Jewish nation – state in the Middle East.

(Lewis’s description of “an international Jewish military force” as “modest” is curious.)

Lewis quotes Laurel Leff’s “Buried by the Times” favorably. Leff’s book documents how the New York Times covered (or didn’t cover) the Holocaust. Indeed Lewis is rather critical of the failure of the paper to give proper coverage to the Holocaust. However, Lewis seems less bothered by Sulzberger’s anti-Zionism.

In this interview, Leff argues that the Sulzberger’s anti-Zionism affected the paper’s coverage of the Holocaust and the founding of Israel:

Groner: One of the notable conclusions that struck me about your book was how strongly committed Arthur Hays Sulzberger was to the anti-Zionist credo that became associated with the American Council for Judaism. You provide meticulous documentation for the conclusion that Sulzberger was not merely a non-Zionist but was actively opposed to the creation of a Jewish state, and was even opposed to establishing Palestine as a refuge for hundreds of thousands of Jews trapped in Nazi-occupied Europe. Did those findings provide a major foundation for your thesis that the Times intentionally downplayed the news of the Holocaust as the news came in?
Leff: Yes, it did. Going into the project, I had assumed that Sulzberger was a fairly typical assimilationist German Jew, meaning that he acknowledged he was Jewish but had only the most tenuous connections to the religion and to the community. It was only when I started poking around in Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver’s papers, a copy of which are at Yale University, that I realized how deeply Sulzberger was involved in the fight against a Jewish state. Silver led several Zionist organizations during World War II. In Silver’s papers I found minutes of meetings where Jewish officials plotted to combat the Times’ anti-Zionism, as well as its downplaying of incidents such as the sinking of the Sturma. (Having been refused admission to Palestine, the unseaworthy boat sank, killing all but one of the 768 refugees aboard.)
Even more surprising, I found evidence that Sulzberger was actively engaged in the fight both publicly—making speeches, publishing letters in Jewish publications, writing widely circulated, angry letters—and privately, by lobbying U.S. and British officials and keeping a close watch on the Times’ news coverage. This contradicted not only my assumption that Sulzberger had no ties to the Jewish community, but also that, as publisher, Sulzberger didn’t involve himself in partisan causes or in the news side of the business.
…
That led me to explore his and his family’s Jewish background, his relationships with Jewish groups, including the American Council for Judaism and Rabbi Stephen Wise’s World Jewish Congress, his connections to other prominent Jews such as Felix Frankfurter and Henry Morgenthau, and his correspondence with U.S. government officials, including Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles. As a result, I concluded that his attitude toward Judaism, including his anti-Zionist orientation, affected his and his newspaper’s approach to reporting and editorializing on the ongoing destruction of European Jewry.

The American Council for Judaism was against the founding of the state of Israel.


According to the organization, Sulzberger was among its founders.

Many prominent figures in American life were involved in the Council’s earliest days. It was Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, who introduced the phrase “Americans of the Jewish faith” into the Council’s statement of principles. Rabbis who joined the Council led some of the nation’s leading congregations. Among them were Samuel H. Goldenson of New York, Irving Reichart of San Fransisco, Edward N. Calish of Richmond, David Marx of Atlanta, David Lefkowitz of Dallas, Henry Cohen of Galveston, Henry Barnston of Houston and Julian Feibelman of New Orleans.

Why is it relevant now?

In recent weeks, the New York Times has featured articles by anti-Zionists such as Joseph Levine and Ben Ehrenreich. Yousef Munayyer a supporter of a single state has regular column online. In 2010 the New York Times ran an admiring profile of the American Council for Judaism.

Aside from the imbalance that one can see in the opinion pages of the New York Times, one can only wonder what motivates the paper to espouse anti-Zionism so openly with little dissent.

Though Laurel Leff doesn’t go this far, I have to believe that Arthur Hays Sulzberger’s anti-Zionism still dictates much of editorial policy of the New York Times. In the past regular columnists like William Safire and A. M. Rosenthal and, currently, Shmuel Rosner are exceptions.

Anti-Zionism is in the DNA of the New York Times.

Author’s note: I saw a reference about Sulzberger and the American Council for Judaism in a comment to one of my recent posts. Though I can’t find the comment now, I’d like to thank the author for providing me with the idea.

Last week the New York Times published an essay by a philosophy professor, James Levine On Questioning the Jewish State. I won’t quote from the essay, but here are some of the responses.

Elder of Ziyon argues:

In fact, if you follow his bizarre logic, while “of course Jews have a right to self-determination,” in no practical way can that right be exercised. What kind of a right is it when it is hamstrung by definition?

Levine’s logical fallacy is that one’s right to self-determination is illegitimate if it happens to compete with anyone else’s similar right. This is something he simply made up. A people’s right to self-determination is independent of others’ rights. Unless there is a new continent that is discovered, by definition everyone’s rights to self-determination is going to interfere with others’.

…

Levine is essentially engaging in a sophisticated form of anti-semitism, where by his definition only the Jewish people’s rights must be subsumed to the rights of others; the others are not limited by any means that he sees fit to mention.

In addition to analyzing Levine’s argument, FresnoZionism asks a series of questions attacking Levine’s premise:

Why did you not write an article about whether Saudi Arabia has a right to exist as a Kingdom, or indeed whether any of the kingdoms, dictatorships, Islamic ‘republics’ or other undemocratic entities have a ‘right to exist’ as such?

Why did you not argue that the Kingdom of Jordan should not exist as such, not only because is it an undemocratic monarchy, but because a minority of Bedouins there rule over a majority of other Arabs? This is especially relevant, because Transjordan was created from the territory called ‘Palestine’, precisely to create an Arab state that would be a counterpart to the Jewish National Home that Britain was supposed to nurse into existence in Western Palestine.

Why do you find the relatively mild discrimination against Arab residents of Israel — especially in the context of the security situation — important when so many other Middle Eastern states with ethnic or religious minorities completely disenfranchise, even viciously oppress them (e.g., the Kurds or the Palestinians in Lebanon)?

Avi Bell writes in Pseudo-intellectual bigotry:

Ultimately, Levine’s claims boil down to the naked assertion that Jews alone among the peoples of the world should be denied self-determination, and that is because the general rules of self-determination should be selectively rewritten and reinterpreted to the detriment of the Jewish people only.

Similarly Hillel Neuer writes (h/t HonestReporting)

Levine takes it as a given that the Palestinian Arabs have a natural claim to the same right of self-determination that he is so quick to deny to Israel and Jewish people.

Doc’s Talk quotes Barry Rubin (whose observation sounds like it came straight out the Haggadah):

For 1000 years there has only been one religion that has been marked for wiping out.

For 200 years there had only been one people that has been marked for wiping out.

For 60 years there has only been one country that has been marked for wiping out.

Coincidence?

Why is Levine’s article important?

In 1996, Charles Krauthammer wrote in At Last Zion:

A century ago, Europe was the center of Jewish life. More than 80 percent of world Jewry lived there. The Second World War destroyed European Jewry and dispersed the survivors to the New World (mainly the United States) and to Israel. Today, 80 percent of world Jewry lives either in the United States or in Israel. Today we have a bipolar Jewish universe with two centers of gravity of approximately equal size. It is a transitional stage, however. One star is gradually dimming, the other brightening.

Soon an inevitably the cosmology of the Jewish people will have been transformed again, turned into a single-star system with a dwindling Diaspora orbiting around. It will be a return to the ancient norm: The Jewish people will be centered—not just spiritually but physically—in their ancient homeland.

Recently Meryl Yourish noted examples of this dynamic and observed:

The exodus is gathering strength. Jews are leaving countries where they are being persecuted–again.

In short an argument against the legitimacy of Israel, is an argument against Judaism.

A new Film looks at NY Times and Holocaust.(h/t Robert Avrech) The synopsis reads:

A student documentary about the paper’s shallow coverage of the genocide — just six front-page stories throughout the war — will premiere at one of America’s most prestigious festivals

Seventy years ago a catastrophe was occurring to the Jews of Europe and the New York Times ignored it. Now Jews worldwide are facing numerous crises and the New York Times is giving voice to the cheerleaders of their enemies. It would be generous to say that the Times has learned nothing in that time, but that would assume that the paper and its publishers are acting out of ignorance, not malice. As more and more arguments like Levine’s find a home in the Times, the ignorance defense seems less credible.

No doubt there are those who disagree with Netanyahu as to whether Israel should be called a Jewish state. However, since one of the premises of Palestinian nationalism is the denial of the historical connection between Israel and the Jews, the demand is of utmost importance. If the Palestinians cannot accept Israel as a Jewish state, they are not serious about peace.

It’s ironic. During Netanyahu’s first term in office he withdrew Israel from most of Chevron. He took a concrete step for peace. But even the most basic steps of showing acceptance of Israel are too much to ask of the Palestinians. As long as the Palestinians don’t repudiate their denial of Jewish history, their commitment to peace is nonexistent. It makes their various “special sessions” moot.

As Jeff Jacoby recently wrote:

And yet to Israel’s enemies, Jewish sovereignty is as intolerable today as it was in 1948, when five Arab armies invaded the newborn Jewish state, vowing “a war of extermination and a momentous massacre.” Endless rounds of talks and countless invocations of the “peace process” have not changed the underlying reality of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is not about settlements or borders or Jerusalem or the rights of Palestinians. The root of the hostility is the refusal to recognize the immutable right of the Jewish people to a sovereign state in its historic homeland. Until that changes, no lasting peace is possible.

But instead of questioning the Palestinian commitment to peace the New York Times does what’s comfortable: pretends that Israel is being unreasonable.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

President Obama will begin his one-year effort to achieve Middle East peace on Wednesday, joining a long list of his predecessors who have tried to achieve a comprehensive peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

But unlike the presidents before him, Mr. Obama will know within three weeks whether the two sides are serious this time about reaching a deal.

Really? I would have thought that he already knows that. For one thing Barry Rubin pointed out:

It is amusing to see articles claiming that this is a victory for the Obama Administration. If the U.S. government had been doing such a good job it would have been able to announce the resumption of elections in April 2009, after the visit of Abbas to Washington. The president did indeed announce the resumption of negotiations in September 2009 and nothing has happened in a year.

Moreover, it is amusing to read accounts of the resumption of talks without any mention of the fact that the sole reason it has taken so long has been the PA’s resistance to negotiations.

Cooper doesn’t claim that the upcoming talks will be a victory for the administration, but she hypes the idea that there will be clarity. But she doesn’t acknowledge that the delay in the resumption of talks was due to a calculated fit of pique by Mahmoud Abbas, who wouldn’t even go back to the negotiating table after Netanyahu agreed to a freeze on building Jewish communiites in Judea and Samaria. I would think that alone shows who’s unserious.

Yet Cooper casts things like this:

Mr. Obama, administration officials said, will call on the four leaders to do all they can to settle, within a year, the final status issues: the fate of Jerusalem, the borders of a Palestinian state, the right of return for Palestinian refugees who fled their homes and the issue of Israeli security.

But on Sept. 26, Israel’s 10-month moratorium on settlement construction will expire. Mr. Netanyahu appears unlikely to extend it, Israeli and American officials said. And Mr. Abbas has said that he will withdraw from negotiations if settlement activity resumes.

In other words, she has Israel up for failure. A failure to resume the freeze will lead to a collapse of the talks.

According to Ha’aretz it does not seem that Netanyahu is likely to extend it. (via memeorandum).

So what to do?

Those officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the talks, said that discussions were under way on a number of possible solutions. They include trying to get a promise from Mr. Netanyahu that Israel will exercise restraint in settlement construction, perhaps allowing construction only within existing West Bank settlement blocks, but no housing starts beyond those blocks.

Such a plan could also include early “confidence building” concessions from Israel on a few additional issues of concern to the Palestinians, officials said, including agreeing to limit Israeli Army incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas in the West Bank, and transferring key areas in the West Bank to Palestinian control before a final agreement is reached.

Of course! It always works, Israeli “confidence building measures.” It’s amazing how often we hear about “Israeli confidence building measures.” (From now on “cbm” for short.) If Israel won’t sweeten their offer, the Palestinians will be within their rights to walk away. Of course this failure for Israel to toss out new cbm’s will be regarded as a sign of Israel’s intransigence.

Did Israel withdraw from Gaza? From most of Hevron? From most of Judea and Samaria? Did Israel regard the PLO as a partner for peace even when the PLO was disregarding every single commitment it made? Does the PA/PLO still engage in incitement against Israel? Do its leaders still deny the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state?

I can see why we need more Israeli cbm’s. The peace process is so one-sided in Israel’s favor, why would the Palestinians participate? Oh wait, they want a state of their own? If their own state is so important why don’t they just make a deal? Or is it simply more important to wring concessions out of Israel in exchange for nothing?

So while Israel is introducing Arabic as a second language in many of its schools, the PA continues to deny Israel’s history.

I can see why cbm’s are needed. And I’m not surprised that the New York Times insists they’re needed, where they really aren’t.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Abuminah writes:

Mr. Mitchellâ€s comparison is misleading at best. Success in the Irish talks was the result not just of determination and time, but also a very different United States approach to diplomacy.

The conflict in Northern Ireland had been intractable for decades. Unionists backed by the British government saw any political compromise with Irish nationalists as a danger, one that would lead to a united Ireland in which a Catholic majority would dominate minority Protestant unionists. The British government also refused to deal with the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, despite its significant electoral mandate, because of its close ties to the Irish Republican Army, which had carried out violent acts in the United Kingdom.

A parallel can be seen with the American refusal to speak to the Palestinian party Hamas, which decisively won elections in the West Bank and Gaza in 2006. Asked what role Hamas would have in the renewed talks, Mr. Mitchell answered with one word: “None.” No serious analyst believes that peace can be made between Palestinians and Israelis without Hamas on board, any more than could have been the case in Northern Ireland without Sinn Fein and the I.R.A.

This is the heart of his specious claim: Hamas is just like the IRA and just like the IRA was convinced to make peace by being engaged instead of shunned, so too Hamas must be engaged in order to make peace in the Middle East.

Well for this analysis to hold, for one thing, Hamas and the I.R.A. ought to be comparable. They’re not.

All these contrasts come back to the one major difference between the IRA and Hamas — religion. For the Irish, religion is not rooted in all facets of life as it is in with Israelis and Palestinians. Religion in Northern Ireland is understood as a cultural and historical force, while in the Middle East it ties Israelis and Palestinians to the same land. Furthermore, Hamas being a religious organization claims religious justifications for attempting to wipe out Israel. This factor is what differentiates the two groups and will ultimately prove how futile Hamas’ reform efforts are.

Z-Word lays out how the concession to Gerry Addams would translate into terms of the Arab-Israeli conflict:

The concession of the visa to Adams, for a trip which involved nothing more than glad handing Irish American supporters of the Provisional Republican movement, may well have improved the mood of certain sectors of Sinn Féin – IRA with regard to calling a ceasefire. If the concession of US visa to Ismail Haniye for a trip that would allow him some tea drinking and back slapping with Arab American supporters were likely to lead to a complete Hamas ceasefire leading to something like a Good Friday deal between Israel and Hamas, Iâ€d be all for it.

Letâ€s just remind ourselves what Sinn Féin – IRA settled for in the Good Friday Agreement. They recognized Northern as an integral part of the UK, decommissioned their weapons and dissolved the military structure of the IRA. In return they got the early release of their prisoners (on license, any return to violence by the main Provisional Republican movement and theyâ€ll be straight back in the can), some policing reforms, a couple of cross border talking shops and an autonomous local assembly.

Iâ€ll try to translate that into the situation of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Hamas accepts that the West Bank and Gaza (why not?) form part of Greater Israel, a Jewish state. Hamas abandons the armed struggle and hands over its weapons to UN monitors. Israel sets up an autonomous Palestine parliament to rule the territories. As well as representative to that assembly Palestinians also get to elect some members to take care of their interests in the Knesset. In return, Israel releases Hamasâ€s prisoners on parole, guarantees that a larger percentage of Magav recruits will be Arabs and promises to make greater efforts to promote the Arabic language and Arab culture in Israel.

Abuminah argues that John Hume – a negotiator of the peace accord for Northern Ireland – wrote an op-ed advocating for Israeli recognition of Hamas. However, that isn’t the unanimous position of all those involved. David Trimble, also Nobel Lauereate for his efforts wrote:

If there is one lesson to learn from the Northern Ireland experience, it is that preconditions are crucial in ending violence and producing a settlement. Being overgenerous to extremist groups is like giving sweets to a spoilt child in the hope that it will improve its behaviour – it usually results in worse actions. Our experience suggests that while some flexibility is desirable, there have to be clear principles and boundaries. A failure to recognise this risks drawing the wrong conclusions from the recent history of Northern Ireland and fundamentally misunderstanding the peace process.

This is also the view of former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw (h/t Daled Amos):

Could I just add one thing to that, if I may? Of course, negotiation is far, far better — infinitely better — than military action. As far as Northern Ireland is concerned, we welcome hugely the progress that has been made following the Good Friday Agreement. It also has to be said that before that happened, there had to be a change of approach by those who saw terrorism as the answer. And that approach partly changed because of the firmness of the military and police response to that terrorism. And if there had not been that firm response by successive British governments and others to the terrorist threat that was posed on both sides, we would not have been able to get some of those people into negotiations. We would not be marking what is a satisfactory day in the history of Northern Ireland today.

Fresno Zionism attacks Abuminah’s claim of the sanctity of the Palestinian right of return.

You must give Abumimah and his friends credit for chutzpah: first, they invent a ‘right†— the repatriation of the descendants of refugees from a war that their own leaders caused — that has never existed in history, then they breed a whole population in misery for years to make a demographic weapon of mass destruction out of them, and finally they demand that they be allowed to use it to end the Jewish state. What will remain for them to ‘recognize�

Naturally, he believes that the reason the US was tough on the British but will not get tough on Israel is the nefarious Jewish (OK, he says ‘Israelâ€) Lobby. Hamas knew about the Jewish Lobby all along.

Balfour Street makes a similar argument.

Elder of Ziyon gets to the heart of the matter with a single rhetorical question:

So according to Abunimah, for Israel to ask its negotiating partners to not demand its violent destruction is “unworkable”?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel satisfied their short-term political goals with an Oval Office meeting on Tuesday. It is less clear that they achieved much of substance.

So what now?

Mr. Obama is going to have to keep working hard to persuade Mr. Netanyahu that a peace deal with the Palestinians is also essential for Israelâ€s long-term security, the health of its democracy and its international standing — and not just something he has to try to mollify Washington.

This is funny, because before Netanyahu became Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas rejected a peace deal from then PM Olmert, just as Arafat rejected a peace deal from then PM Barak. If peace is so essential, why the do Palestinian leaders reject offers out of hand? Even if they think that the Israeli offers aren’t sufficient, why are they simply rejecting them rather than bringing counteroffers?

Might it be because they (Abbas and Arafat) view the lack of a peace deal to be to Israel’s detriment (and their advantage)? Certainly if the Times insists that despite Palestinian rejections, Israel is the party needing the deal, they are encouraging the Palestinians to reject future deals too.

The Palestinians need a peace process not peace. The peace process keeps them in the news and makes them indispensible. Peace means that they actually have to govern themselves and stay out of the news. Apparently the editors of the Times are happy to encourage further Palestinian rejectionism.

Finally we get to this paragraph:

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and his government also must do their part, doing more to discourage incitement against Israel — and seriously preparing to make the hard choices that peace will inevitably require.

“[D]oing more to discourage incitement against Israel?” Like the smoker who claims that he’s experienced at quitting because he’s already quit smoking five times, Abbas is expected to “discourage incitement” by the editors of the New York Times. Where exactly have they been these past (nearly) 17 years? Daniel Pipes asks:

Under Yasir Arafat, the Palestine Liberation Organization notoriously said one thing to Arab/Muslim audiences and the opposite to Israeli/Western ones, speaking venomously to the former and in dulcet tones to the latter. What about Arafat’s mild-mannered successor, Mahmoud Abbas? Did he break from this pattern of duplicity or continue it?

and answers:

Abbas and Fayyad spoke in English to Americans and Israelis, Erekat spoke in Arabic to Palestinians. Both statements cannot be true; one must be a lie. Which one, I wonder?

Palestinians play this transparent and simple-minded double game because it works. Israeli, American, and others too often accept the dulcet tones they hear directly and dismiss reports of harsh words they only hear about. The Palestinian Authority will blithely continue to spew its lies until the world heeds and rejects, for rewarding bad behavior invariably brings on more bad behavior.

Incitement is the official language of the PA. Blithely asking Abbas at this late date to stop incitement is a sign of unseriousness. This probably ought to be one of the major demands of anyone who truly wants peace.

I understand that the editors of the Times don’t trust Netanyahu. During his first term in office he withdrew Israeli forces from most of Hebron. That was a concrete action undertaken in the name of peace. Other than mouthing the right words in English, can the editors of the Times point to any action that Abbas has taken to promote peace?

By their willful ignorance it is clear that the editors of the Times don’t much care about peace, just about pressuring Israel.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

There is a bigger question that Israel — and the United States — must be asking: Is the blockade working? Is it weakening Hamas? Or just punishing Gazaâ€s 1.4 million residents — and diverting attention away from abuses by Hamas, including its shelling of Israeli cities and its refusal to accept Israelâ€s right to exist?

At this point, it should be clear that the blockade is unjust and against Israelâ€s long-term security.

After Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Israel — with Egyptâ€s help — imposed a blockade on many goods and most people going into and out of the territory. The goal was to quickly turn residents against their new government. Three years later, Hamas is still in charge — and the blockade has become an excuse for any and all of the governmentâ€s failures.

The situation in Gaza is grim. Eight out of 10 people depend on international aid agencies to survive. Basic foodstuffs are available, but medical supplies and construction materials are severely lacking. The desperation could be seen on Tuesday when Egypt lifted the blockade and several thousand Gazans rushed the border but were later sent home after police officers said they did not know when the crossing would be opened.

It is ironic that like their star columnist the editors of the Times seem to have forgotten that Israel withdrew from Gaza only to have it turned into a mini terrror state. For some reason the liberal editors of the New York Times think that it’s good for Israel to keep Hamas in power.

But Barry Rubin recently wrote:

Hamas has oppressed the people of the Gaza Strip, murdered Palestinian Authority supporters in hospitals and thrown them off roofs; driven the Christians out; taken relief supplies for its own soldiers; launched a war on Israel in December 2008 that caused avoidable death and destruction; used civilians as human shields and mosques for ammunition dumps; indoctrinated children to be suicide bombers; are putting women into a Taliban-like situation; and repeatedly announces its antisemitic views and intention to wipe out Israel and massacre its people.

For some, none of this makes any difference though–to be fair–the media they get information from may not have presented these facts. For those on the left, Hamas should be considered as a fascist organization which they passionately oppose. For those sympathetic to human rights or womenâ€s rights, or many other good causes, Hamas should be anathema.

What should be paramount, then, is an international determination to overthrow the Hamas regime. After all, while it had earlier come in first in elections, it staged a coup and overthrew what was perceived as the rightful government of the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority. To do such a thing would—to paraphrase the Carnegie report—reduce regional tensions and aid the peace process lead to an independent Palestinian state. Yet this rather obvious idea simply does not seem to have occurred to any Western government or elite.

So instead there is a policy, albeit an eroding one, of isolating Hamas and denying it at least some supplies and money, demanding that it accept the idea of real peace with Israel and cease the use of terrorism. Even this seems too much for many people and, increasingly, for some governments.

The editors of the Times pretend that it’s only Israeli actions and shortsightedness that prevent peace and cause the people of Gaza to suffer. They (and many other likeminded people) don’t acknowledge the evil of Hamas.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

No subject arouses reader passion more consistently than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and The Times navigates a semantic minefield with almost every story on the subject. When Cooper wrote this month about a lunch that Obama had with Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, she said the president was trying to mend fences with American Jews upset at the administrationâ€s stance against construction of “Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem.”

Nathan Dodell of Rockville, Md., said it was “tendentious and arrogant” to use the word “settlements” four times in the article when the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has explicitly rejected it in relation to East Jerusalem. Obama has used the term himself to refer to construction in East Jerusalem, and Cooper told me, “I called them settlements because thatâ€s the heart of the dispute between the Israelis and the United States: settlement construction in Arab East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want for an eventual Palestinian state.”

But to Dodell, she was taking sides. He asked why she didnâ€t use a neutral term like “housing construction.”

Hoyt immediately starts with condscension. His “arouses reader passion” is a way of saying, “people who are offended don’t appreciate our professional reporting have an agenda.” But then Cooper’s defense isn’t exactly right.

Barry Rubin recently wrote:

But any freeze on Jerusalem wonâ€t be made too explicit for a number of reasons. First, ever since the Oslo agreement was originally made in 1993, Israeli leaders have maintained that they interpret it as permitting construction on existing settlements and Jerusalem. For 17 years, the PA accepted this position. It never refused to talk on the basis that such construction was happening. Only when President Barack Obama raised the issue in 2009, it became apparent that the PA couldnâ€t be less militant than the American president.

Israeli construction in Jerusalem has always been accepted as legitimate. It’s Cooper who’s rewriting history. ( Geography too. What the hell is the “Arab East Jerusalem” that Cooper refers anyway? Ramat Shlomo is in the north of Jerusalem.)

Hoyt continues:

Settlement is a charged word in this context, because it suggests something less than permanent on someone elseâ€s land. Israel argues that all of Jerusalem is its undivided capital, a claim not recognized by the United States and most of the world. Articles by Times reporters in Jerusalem do generally use words like “housing” instead of “settlement.” Still, Ethan Bronner, the bureau chief, said it would be unwise to adopt a hard and fast rule, because some areas of the city taken by Israel in 1967 had long been Jewish neighborhoods while others, built more recently, had the feeling of settlements.

Gee talk about using loaded terms. Frankly, I think that a description of Shiloh should be a Jewish city or community not a settlement. But how would Hoyt say his reporters should refer to Gush Etzion (the Etzion Bloc)? After all it was Jewish territory prior to Israel’s War of Independence, so when Jews build there it isn’t exactly built on “someone else’s land.” And remember that the Times has a habit of referring to residents of places in Israel where they don’t think Jews should live as “settlers” as if they were somehow less than people.

I do wonder about Bronner’s response. My guess is that Bronner might be referring to Sheikh Jarrah rather than Ramat Shlomo. It’s a distinction that Hoyt wouldn’t get. (Nor is it one that is justified. I’m just addressing Bronner’s likely intent.)

In general though, the Times has been careful not to refer to Jewish construction in Jerusalem as a settlement and has corrected itself when it has done so. Not every media organization takes such care.

But then there’s another issue. How does the Times refer to Hamas? Here are two recent examples.

Hamas executes 2 accused of aiding Israel:

Israel and Egypt have maintained a strict economic embargo on Gaza. Israel also refuses any direct contact with Hamas, which is classified as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union.

Gaza Rocket Attack Into Israel Kills a Thai Worker

The European Union, like the United States and Israel, classifies Hamas as a terrorist organization, and Lady Ashton — formally Baroness Ashton of Upholland — was not planning to meet with Hamas representatives in Gaza.

Note, Hamas is not a terrorist organization but is “classified” as one. This doesn’t appear in every article about Hamas, but it occurs with some frequency. Hamas, however clearly targets civilians, so by definition it is a terrorist organization. Yet the Times seems to take care not to hedge its description of Hamas on a regular basis. The corresponding language regarding Israel would be to describe Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria as “classifed as settlements by the Palestinian Authority” and not to use the term “settlements” as a judgment of the paper.

Of course that would assume that bias against Israel was a concern to the New York Times. But I’ve recently shown quantitatively (if not conclusively) that Israel doesn’t get a fair hearing on the Times’s opinion pages. It’s not surprising that it doesn’t get fair treatment in the news section either.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.