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1) John Kerry rejects a basic premise of the peace process

The past two days has seen the reporting on the beginning of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

First there was the reporting on the Israeli concession that made the talks possible. The New York Times reported Netanyahu agree to free 104 Prisoners:

An Israeli government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said many of those who remained in Israeli jails, like the 104 now chosen for early release, had been involved in particularly gruesome acts.

“The goal here is to augment the political dialogue with confidence-building measures,” the official said, adding that the cabinet was expected to approve the release. In moves meant to appease the more right-wing elements in the government, the cabinet is also expected to discuss legislation for a referendum on any peace deal and to set up a special ministerial committee to deal with the negotiations.
But the prisoner issue is the one that has inflamed passions on both sides. Palestinians view these long-serving prisoners, convicted before the signing of the Oslo peace accords in 1993, as political prisoners whose release is long overdue.

The Washington Post reported Peace talks set to begin after Israel agrees to free 104 Palestinian prisoners:

The list of prisoners who may be released in coming days includes militants who threw firebombs, in one case at a bus carrying children; stabbed and shot civilians, including women, elderly Jews and suspected Palestinian collaborators; and ambushed and killed border guards, police officers, security agents and soldiers. All of them have been in prison for at least two decades; some were serving life sentences.

The Israeli public views these prisoners as terrorists who have blood on their hands. Palestinians see them as freedom fighters struggling to reclaim their homeland and oust the occupiers. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his leadership refused to return to the negotiating table without their release.

Regardless of whether it is a grudging gesture of goodwill, diplomatic blackmail or something in between, Netanyahu’s move is a major concession to Kerry and the Palestinians.

The Washington Post, at least acknowledged that this was a major concession on Netanyahu’s part, but the troubling aspect in both cases is the parallelism that each sets up. In the New York Times, the language is “inflamed passions on both sides.” In the Washington Post it is “Israeli public views / Palestinians see” equation. Only in describing something in the Middle East would two such different viewpoints be place side by side. No doubt that most Americans would have their “passions inflamed” by the early release of brutal murderers. Most Americans would “view” people who tried to kill a busload of children as a terrorist. These are views that need not be qualified. Similarly most Americans would find it appalling that anyone would excuse or celebrate such barbarity. This reporting isn’t designed simply to tell a story, but to excuse the glorification of terrorist by the Palestinians. If that behavior isn’t excused, the peace talks make no sense. How could one side trust the other, when the latter celebrates the killing of the former’s citizens?

The fact that Mahmoud Abbas recently eulogized a mass murderer as a “pure soul” or that the Palestinian Authority celebrated 61 acts of terror only underscores this point. These two media outlets instead of reporting the news, are excusing the behavior on one side.

As the talks started, the New York Times reported Talks Begin on Mideast to Doubts on All Sides

In recent weeks, Mr. Kerry and his aides have outlined several basic arguments for why his efforts might bear fruit. Perhaps the most important one, which Mr. Kerry advanced almost the moment he was picked for the State Department post, is that the United States does not have the luxury of staying on the sidelines.

With the Palestinians poised to take their claim for statehood to the International Criminal Court and United Nations bodies, American officials say the two sides were facing a downward spiral in which the Israelis would respond by cutting off financing to the Palestinian territories and European nations might curtail their investment in Israel, further isolating the Israelis.

Another argument Mr. Kerry has used is that diplomatic progress would foster as much as $4 billion in private sector investment in the Palestinian economy, a portion of which would take effect in the near term.

Kerry’s reasoning makes no sense, of course. All he’s saying is that the reason talks might be successful is because he insisted on having them. What he doesn’t explain is why wouldn’t he, as America’s top diplomat, tell the Palestinians that the only reason their governing body is not considered a terrorist organization is because twenty years ago its leader rejected terror and committed to bilateral negotiations, and that since they are eschewing negotiations for international pressure he can no longer support their quest for statehood? This rebuke would be matched with an end to aid to the Palestinian Authority and no diplomatic support for their efforts. The United States would also seek to urge others, especially in the European Union to withdraw their support from the Palestinian Authority until the PA returned to negotiations. Instead the United States is staying on the sidelines, pressuring Israel to negotiate with a partner it knows is rejecting the foundations of the peace process – bilateral negotiations – it claims to support.

In the Washington Post the issue is framed like this As talks begin, Jewish settlements loom as challenge.

“The Israelis talk about peace, but on the land they act otherwise. We want peace, but the settlements are taking the land. This is an enormous problem,” said Youssef Abu Maria, a spokesman for the Popular Movement, a Palestinian group that is protesting Israeli occupation with its own encampments. …

The United Nations and many governments consider Israeli settlements built in the West Bank illegal under international law because they are built on occupied lands. The Israeli government disagrees.

While the number of settlers has climbed steadily over the last five years, they remain controversial in Israel. A May Pew Research poll of Israeli Jews found that 35 percent said continued Jewish settlement building “hurts security,” while 31 percent said it “helps security” and 27 percent said it “makes no difference.”

The article is set up to present the issue of settlements as an obstacle to peace without even examining if the claim is accurate, rather than a dubious definition applied uniquely to Israel in accordance with the highly selective Palestinian interpretation of the term.

And that is the problem, not just with this latest iteration of the peace process but how it’s reported too. The process is almost exclusively described through the Palestinian narrative. Anything that falls short of Palestinian demands is Israel not doing enough for peace. For example here’s Ben Birnbaum in the New Republic:

Perhaps no words have been the source of so much mutual misunderstanding as the Palestinian “right of return.” To Israelis, it spells nothing less than the demographic annihilation of the Jewish state; to many Palestinians, for whom the refugees are at the core of their national identity, it doubtless means the same thing. But behind closed doors, the position of Palestinian negotiators has been far more nuanced. They wanted refugees to be compensated monetarily for suffering and lost property and to be given four choices about where to live: their current host countries in the Arab world, third-party countries, the new Palestinian state, and Israel. Israel, whose citizen population is already one-fifth Arab, has publicly rejected this fourth option, though both Barak and Olmert agreed to absorb a symbolic number of refugees under the guise of a family-reunification program. Their proposals fell far short of Palestinian needs. Olmert offered to take in 5,000 over the course of five years (though was reportedly prepared to quintuple the offer). Abbas balked at the offer. “I can’t tell four million Palestinians that only 5,000 of them can go home,” he told Condoleezza Rice, according to her memoir No Higher Honor. In official proposals, meanwhile, the Palestinians asked for 150,000 refugees over ten years. But as I reported in my March story, Abbas signaled to Rice that he could accept a compromise in the 40-60,000 range (60,000 additional Palestinians would change the Arab share of Israel’s population from 20.6 percent to 21.2 percent).

Somehow, in this telling, the unreasonable Palestinian “right of return” is really nuanced. For someone who demands that no Israeli be in his territory after peace is concluded is the height of chutzpah for him to demand that Israel accept some number of Palestinians. And it’s just as outrageous for journalists to pretend that there’s anything reasonable about the demand. And if the Palestinians are compromising on the right of return what serious compromise will Israel make? Why, according to Birnbaum, it’s Jerusalem. For a phony compromise on the right of return Israel must cede some portion of Judaism’s holiest city.

Do either of these articles on the start of talks note that it is Abbas who rejected a deal with Ehud Olmert in 2008? Does either acknowledge that it is Abbas who, except for a week, had refused to negotiation with Israel since 2009? Does either account that he refused to negotiate with Netanyahu even though Netanyahu acceded to American demands for a settlement freeze in 2010? (The Washington Post acknowledges the freeze, but not that Abbas didn’t try to negotiate until the freeze was nearly over and then stopped when Netanyahu didn’t extend the freeze.)

Seth Mandel critiques John Kerry’s precondition demands on Israel. Barry Rubin notes that by validating the Palestinian efforts to internationalize the conflict, the administration reversed twenty years of precedent.

Elder of Ziyon identifies 22 “elephants in the room” regarding these negotiations, but let’s just focus on the first

Elephant 1: Hamas controls Gaza

Every peace plan includes Gaza in a Palestinian Arab state, and none of them has any provision on how to handle the fact that Gaza is a terrorist haven, in much worse shape since Israel uprooted the settlements there, controlled by a terrorist group that is consistently and wholeheartedly against Israel’s existence. Peace is impossible with this elephant, so it is easier to pretend it isn’t there. (See also Elephant 11.)

Let’s say Israel satisfies every single (ever changing) demand of the Palestinian Authority and its many cheerleaders, Israel still won’t have peace.

2) The Great Shi’ite Hope

The New York Times published a rousing tribute to incoming Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, President-Elect Stirs Optimism in Iran and West. The profile starts with an anecdote:

Bogged down in faltering nuclear talks with the European powers nearly 10 years ago, Hassan Rouhani did something that no Iranian diplomat before or since has managed to do.

He took out his cellphone, say Western diplomats who were there, dialed up his longtime friend and associate, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and convinced him that Iran needed to suspend nuclear enrichment. The call by Mr. Rouhani, who was elected president in June and will take office next week, resulted in an agreement in October 2003, the only nuclear deal between Iran and the West in the past 11 years.

“Rouhani showed that he is a central player in Iran’s political establishment,” said Stanislas de Laboulaye, a retired director general of the French Foreign Ministry, who was a member of the European delegation during the talks between 2003 and 2005. “He was the only one able to sell something deeply unpopular to the other leaders.”

The agreement was reported at the time, IRAN WILL ALLOW U.N. INSPECTIONS OF NUCLEAR SITES.

In a news conference with the three ministers, Hassan Rowhani, a powerful middle-level cleric who has emerged as Iran’s chief negotiator during the current crisis, said the one-and-a-half-page agreement would first have to be approved by Iran’s elected Parliament.

He emphasized that the suspension of uranium enrichment would be for an ”interim period.”

In Washington, the State Department reacted skeptically to the agreement, with officials privately voicing concerns that Tehran would not fully comply. Officials there only grudgingly praised the work of their European colleagues.

But as the report goes on to explain:

In making the pledges, Iran seems to have been motivated primarily by a fear of international isolation and sanctions. Last month, in a vote that united Americans, Europeans and others, the 35-nation governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency ordered Iran to prove by Oct. 31 that it has no secret weapons program or face unspecified consequences at the Security Council.

In other words, shortly after the United States invaded Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein, the IAEA, then under the friendly leadership of Mohammed el Baradei, found that the Iranians had been cheating and could be subject to penalties for their subterfuge. This wasn’t a display of moderating but a tactical retreat when the other side was holding all the cards and there was a credible threat if Iran did not comply.

Gary Milhollin, a critic of the deal wrote a commentary for the New York Times, The Mullahs and the bomb:

Under the new deal, Iran is supposed to explain all this. If it doesn’t, it risks being condemned as a pariah by the Security Council and the European Union may have to shelve its trade agreement with Iran, which would cost all concerned a lot of money. Thus Britain, France and Germany, as well as Iran, have an interest in seeing Iran comply.

But the problem is, even if Iran does so, there will be little assurance that the deal will really dampen Iran’s nuclear hopes. Consider what happened with the pact hammered out by the Clinton administration with North Korea in 1994, which had much in common with the present situation.

North Korea faced worldwide condemnation and a possible war with the United States after violating its inspection agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency. By agreeing to suspend its effort to produce plutonium, North Korea avoided censure and got economic benefits from the West, and yet it preserved its nuclear potential intact. North Korea’s 8,000 fuel rods — containing five bombs’ worth of plutonium — never left the country. Like a sword poised over the world’s head, they remained only months away from being converted into bomb fuel — something that the North Koreans say was finally done this summer. The North Korean bomb program only shifted into neutral; now it is back in gear.

In any case a few months later, the Los Angeles Times reported Secret Iran Nuclear Plan Discovered:

International inspectors have discovered that Iran hid blueprints for a powerful device to enrich uranium, in an apparent breach of Tehran’s promise last year to disclose all of its nuclear activities, officials in Vienna and Washington said Thursday.

The discovery of the concealed blueprints for a state-of-the-art centrifuge, which could be used to enrich uranium for civilian reactors or nuclear bombs, raised questions about whether Tehran also has bought designs for a nuclear weapon from the same black-market sources, the officials said.

Unless making a deal for a deal’s sake is a virtue, the compromise wasn’t even observed.

After reviewing Rouhani’s record and his book on the subject of nuclear negotiations, veteran Israeli journalist, Yossi Melman, concluded:

“National Security and Nuclear Diplomacy,” which has been recently reprinted, is now a must read for every intelligence analyst and state official who wishes to know how Iran’s nuclear politics may be affected by the new president. In summary, it can be said that Iran will change its tone – it will be softer and more pleasant – but the music will remain the same.

The New York Times mistakes moderation in style for moderation in substance.

Later on the profile helpfully adds:

In his books on foreign policy, Mr. Rouhani writes that modernity has failed, and that Christians in the West gave in to secularism without a fight. According to him, the United States and the Islamic republic are in permanent conflict. Israel, he writes, is the “axis of all anti-Iranian activities.”

That last sentence is presented as it’s merely an eccentricity that requires no further elaboration. Does it make a difference that he’s actually recently praised Hezbollah for fighting Israel or that Tehran said that the United States and Israel are the two countries that are not invited to Rouhani’s inauguration? These aren’t just some offhand comments, but rather articles of faith, but the Times isn’t really interested in exploring how seriously he believes them.

The point of the article wasn’t to examine Rouhani’s record skeptically, but rather to advertise that he’s a man the West can do business with. It was less journalism than a tribute written for a dinner in his honor. For the most part the article paints a picture of a man who is looking for compromise, even at the cost of his own standing and ignores or downplays any evidence to the contrary. Maybe, Rouhani fell out of favor after the compromise of ten years ago, but he was one of the very few candidates who were approved by the Guardian Council. That suggests that he is no reformer, but, rather, a true believer.

Europe vs. Hezbollah

Yesterday, the European Union’s foreign minsters voted unanimously to designate Hezbollah’s “military wing” a terrorist organization. This will give European nations the authority to disrupt the organization’s finances.

The vote required unanimity and it was a long time in coming.

Last August, an article written by Nicholas Kulish of the New York Times, Despite Alarm by U.S., Europe Lets Hezbollah Operate Openly, told how freely Hezbollah operated in Germany.

While the group is believed to operate all over the Continent, Germany is a center of activity, with 950 members and supporters last year, up from 900 in 2010, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency said in its annual threat report. On Saturday, Hezbollah supporters and others will march here for the annual Jerusalem Day event, a protest against Israeli control of that city. Organizers told the Berlin police that the event would attract 1,000 marchers, and that two counterdemonstrations were also likely.

Hezbollah has maintained a low profile in Europe since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, quietly holding meetings and raising money that goes to Lebanon, where officials use it for an array of activities — building schools and clinics, delivering social services and, Western intelligence agencies say, carrying out terrorist attacks.

European security services keep tabs on the group’s political supporters, but experts say they are ineffective when it comes to tracking the sleeper cells that pose the most danger. “They have real, trained operatives in Europe that have not been used in a long time, but if they wanted them to become active, they could,” said Alexander Ritzmann, a policy adviser at the European Foundation for Democracy in Brussels, who has testified before Congress on Hezbollah.

However at that time:

The European Union’s unwillingness to place the group on its list of terrorist organizations is also complicating the West’s efforts to deal with the Bulgarian bus bombing and the Syrian conflict. The week after the attack in Bulgaria, Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, traveled to Brussels for a regular meeting with European officials, where he called for the European Union to include Hezbollah on the list. But his pleas fell on deaf ears.

“There is no consensus among the E.U. member states for putting Hezbollah in the terrorist-related list of the organizations,” Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, the foreign minister of Cyprus, which holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, said at the time. “Should there be tangible evidence of Hezbollah engaging in acts of terrorism, the E.U. would consider listing the organization.”

However, in February of this year, when Bulgaria Implicated Hezbollah in July Attack on Israelis, the mood in Europe began to change.

The announcement could force the European Union to reconsider designating the Lebanon-based group as a terrorist organization and cracking down on its fund-raising. That would upend Europe’s policy of quiet tolerance of the group, which, in addition to operating schools and social services, is an influential force in Middle East politics, considers Israel an enemy and has extensive links with Iran. …

The United States, too, urged the European Union to condemn Hezbollah. John O. Brennan, President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser and his nominee to run the C.I.A., responded in a statement Tuesday: “We call on our European partners as well as other members of the international community to take proactive action to uncover Hezbollah’s infrastructure and disrupt the group’s financing schemes and operational networks in order to prevent future attacks.”

But countries including France and Germany have been wary of taking that step, which could force confrontations with large numbers of Hezbollah supporters living within their borders.

By May of this year, 3 in Europe Now Oppose Hezbollah, now including previously reluctant France and Germany.

The shift in stance by Germany, the most populous country in the European Union and its largest economy, signals a significant change in momentum. “The German position is based on an increasingly clearer picture of the facts and on the progress achieved by Cypriot authorities in analyzing terrorist activities,” the statement said. “Minister Westerwelle hopes that the necessary consultations within the E.U. can be concluded rapidly.” …

In the past, France and some other countries, like Sweden, have opposed putting Hezbollah on the terrorist blacklist, fearing it could destabilize the Lebanese government. The Palestinian group Hamas is on the list, and a number of European countries now believe that listing Hamas was a mistake because of the important political role it plays in Gaza and in the Palestinian political world. European officials are banned from talking openly to Hamas officials, for example.

Mr. Fabius explained the changed French position by emphasizing Syria, not Bulgaria. “Given the decisions taken by Hezbollah and the fact that it has fought very hard against the Syrian population, I confirm that France will propose to inscribe the military wing of Hezbollah on the list of terrorist organizations” of the European Union, he said, according to Agence France-Presse.

In June, at a meeting of EU security specialists, a vote to designate Hezbollah’s military wing, did not achieve unanimity.

Diplomatic sources said Austria and the Czech republic led opposition at a meeting of EU countries’ counter-terrorism specialists in Brussels on Wednesday (19 June).

Ireland, Italy and Poland also voiced concerns.

Objections centre around shaky evidence that Hezbollah bombed a bus containing Israeli tourists in Bulgaria last year.

At that point, it didn’t look like another vote was going to come up on the topic until later this year.

But by the beginning of the month, momentum started to change.

Britain has argued that the militant Shi’ite Muslim group should face European sanctions because of evidence that it was behind a bus bombing in Bulgaria last July that killed five Israelis and their driver. Hezbollah denies any involvement.

Diplomats say a majority of the 28 EU member states, including EU heavyweights France and Germany, back the British proposal. But unanimity is needed and Austria, the Czech Republic and Italy have been among EU governments that have voiced reservations.

The British proposal has gained urgency – and some support – in Europe in recent weeks because of Iranian-backed Hezbollah’s deeper involvement in the Syrian civil war.

Yesterday, the EU’s foreign ministers voted unanimously to ban Hezbollah’s “military wing,” even though Hezbollah acknowledges that it has a unified leadership.

What changed in recent weeks?

The New York Times recently suggested that it was part of a “carrot-and-stick approach” that Europe was employing towards Israel. According to the article, Europe wants to show Israel that it is concerned for its security even as it issues new guidelines regarding settlements, which, of course, are for Israel’s own good.

The problem is that the reporting for the article don’t support that thesis.

But the official said he was “not aware of any connection” made between the two issues either by Mr. Netanyahu or his counterparts. …
While Israel is deeply concerned about the Union’s declaring Hezbollah a terrorist group, Europe generally views Hezbollah as part of its issue with Syria, not Israel. And because the Europeans — in contrast to outraged Israelis — view the new guidelines as a minor step reflecting longstanding policy, they do not see themselves as “owing Israel one.”

One possibility, as mentioned above, is that Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian civil war on the side of the Assad regimes has hurt its image significantly in Europe. Another is that in the last week, Bulgaria announced new evidence linking Hezbollah to the Burgas bombing. Also last week the Gulf Cooperation Council announced that it would blacklist Hezbollah as a terrorist group. While it’s true that Hezbollah claims that Israel is its main enemy, it is not its exclusive target.

After giving a summary of the Hezbollah’s activities in Europe, Matthew Levitt explains how the new designation could hurt Hezbollah:

Despite the formal focus on asset freezing, the most significant impact of the EU ban will be felt on other fronts. First, it will enable EU governments to initiate preemptive intelligence investigations into activities that can be tied in any way to Hezbollah’s military wing. Germany and a handful of other European countries have already conducted such investigations, but the designation will spur many others to do so. This alone is a tremendous change that should make Europe a far less attractive place for Hezbollah operatives.

Second, the ban is a strong means of communicating to Hezbollah that its current activities are beyond the pale, and that continuing them will exact a high cost. Previously, the group had been permitted to mix its political and social welfare activities with its terrorist and criminal activities, giving it an effective way to raise and launder money along with a measure of immunity for its militant activities. Today’s designation makes clear to Hezbollah that international terrorism, organized crime, and militia operations will endanger its legitimacy as a political and social actor.

As for the financial angle, seizing significant amounts of Hezbollah funds is unlikely because the group’s accounts are presumably registered under its nonmilitary names. But the ban will probably still curtail Hezbollah fundraising. Some of the group’s members may be barred from traveling to Europe as governments become bolder in opening new investigations, and Hezbollah leaders may curtail certain activities on the continent as they assess the ban’s full impact.

Recently it was reported that Hezbollah uses a network of German mosques to raise funds for its activities. Time will tell if the new designation will disrupt this effort.

Hezbollah has reacted predictably. With threats.

Hezbollah member of Parliament Walid Sukkarieh told reporters: “Hezbollah isn’t a terrorist group with plans to commit acts of terror in Europe – that is religiously forbidden. Our resistance is different.”

“Europe, by taking this decision, puts itself into confrontation with a segment of people – with Hezbollah and its supporters and even all the forces of confrontation in the region,” Sukkarieh continued.

Hezbollah threatens through its "FM" Adnan Mansour: "states contributing to UNIFIL, more than others, should review its calculations." (1)

— Tony Badran (@AcrossTheBay) July 22, 2013

More Hezbollah threats via Mansour to al-Manar: "there are local factions that played a negative role in [the EU decision]." (2)

— Tony Badran (@AcrossTheBay) July 22, 2013

1) No peace, No justice

A decade ago Ahmed Jubarah walked out of jail a free man. Twenty eight years after he killed 13 people and wounded dozens more detonating an explosive laden refrigerator on a crowded Jerusalem street, Israel released Jubarah and others in order to restart peace talks with the Palestinians in 2003. The New York Times reported, Palestinian Bomber, Freed After 28 Years, Talks of Peace:

“We are not murderers. We are not criminals. We are people who seek peace and freedom,” Mr. Jubarah, 68, the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner, said. He was freed as an Israeli good-will gesture on the eve of a summit meeting in neighboring Jordan that will include Israeli and Palestinian leaders, as well as President Bush. …

Israel freed nearly 100 prisoners today and has been slightly easing punitive measures imposed on the Palestinians. The other detainees released today were arrested in the period since the fighting began in September 2000, and most had been held without charges, according to Israeli officials.

Notice the way this is framed. Israeli efforts to defend its citizens is termed “punitive” not “defensive.” Worse than that Jubarah’s first mention of peace is included with a lie about his causing death and destruction nearly thirty years earlier. Of course he was a criminal and murderer. Denying it doesn’t make him any less culpable. But to have his use of the “peace” in this context characterized as “[t]alk[ing] of peace” denudes the word “peace” of any meaning.

(A few weeks later, the New York Times profiled Jubarah again, with a nearly identically titled, Arab Bomber, Freed After 27 Years, Longs for Peace but Has No Regrets. One theme that’s common in both articles is a sense that the reporters consider it more significant that Jubarah was a “prisoner,” than that he was a mass murderer.) If reporters showed an implicit, grudging respect to Jubarah, after he died early last week, others, notably Mahmoud Abbas, were quite explicit in their praise for the deceased terrorist.

The presidential eulogy stated: ‘His pure soul passed on to the kingdom of Heaven during these blessed days in this honored month [Ramadan] after a journey of struggle full of exceptional giving and devoted activity for Palestine and for the freedom and honor of our people.’ The President said in the eulogy: ‘With the death of this fighter, Palestine and its people have lost a righteous son and loyal fighter, devoted wholeheartedly to protecting our people’s rights. He dedicated most of his life to this people’s independence and paid with many years of his life in the occupation’s prisons so that the dawn of freedom will break over the pure land of Palestine.’

Even as Secretary of State John Kerry has been working furiously to restart the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians – in part by calling for a prisoner release – the honor accorded Ahmed Jubarah shows that prisoner releases do more to excuse terror than they do to promote peace.

2) Helen Thomas

A New York Times recalled with an obituary titled, 50 Years of Tough Questions and ‘Thank You, Mr. President’. The obituary begins with:

Helen Thomas, whose keen curiosity, unquenchable drive and celebrated constancy made her a trailblazing White House correspondent in a press corps dominated by men and who was later regarded as the dean of the White House briefing room, died on Saturday at her home in Washington. She was 92.

The end of the obituary, however, observes:

Ms. Thomas bitterly opposed the war in Iraq and made no effort to appear neutral at White House news conferences, where some of her questions bordered on the prosecutorial. In “Watchdogs of Democracy?,” she wrote that most White House and Pentagon reporters had been too willing to accept the Bush administration’s rationale for going to war.

If Ms. Thomas harbored such strong opinions and didn’t hide them, how did she become the “dean” of White House reporters? Aren’t reporters supposed to be objective? In nearly any other milieu Helen Thomas would have been considered an eccentric or, as James Taranto often put it, “American journalism’s crazy old aunt in the attic.”

That she was regarded as “dean” by many of her colleagues reflects poorly on the state of American journalism today. As Israel Matzav points out, though, the New York Times obituary of Helen Thomas, softpedals her downfall.

But 16 months later, Ms. Thomas abruptly announced her retirement from Hearst amid an uproar over her assertion that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back where they belonged, perhaps Germany or Poland. Her remarks, made almost offhandedly days earlier at a White House event, set off a storm when a videotape was posted. In her retirement announcement, Ms. Thomas, whose parents immigrated to the United States from what is now Lebanon, said that she deeply regretted her remarks and that they did not reflect her “heartfelt belief” that peace would come to the Middle East only when all parties embraced “mutual respect and tolerance.” “May that day come soon,” she said.

Actually there’s a difference between offhand and unguarded comments. Helen Thomas’s statements were unguarded. When she was exposed for telling Jews to get out of “Palestine” and go back to “Poland” or “Germany.” The very fact that she used the term “Palestine” instead of “Israel” shows that this wasn’t simply a careless slip of the tongue, but the declaration of a deeply held belief.

Furthermore, as The Lid recounts, she wasn’t the least bit apologetic about her comments. Later, when she spoke at a dinner of the Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Thomas said:

“I paid the price for that,” said Thomas, a longtime White House correspondent. “But it was worth it, to speak the truth. The Zionists have to understand that’s their country, too. Palestinians were there long before any European Zionists.” … “You can not say anything (critical) about Israel in this country.

If she were really a well informed journalist who regularly perused the opinion pages of the New York Times, she’d know that wasn’t true. But Thomas was agenda driven; not the least concerned with facts. Not everyone put up with her shenanigans.

The late Tony Snow, who for too short a time was President George W. Bush’s press secretary, once chided her for “… providing Hezbollah’s view.” No doubt the media will continue to lionize Helen Thomas, but her record is one of shameful bias not one of journalistic courage or integrity.