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Sunday, March 30, 2003
Bronner's Myth
Ethan Bronner, the one-time Middle East correspondent for the Boston Globe, has been transferred to the editorial page of the paper that currently owns the Globe. Now he spreads disinformation about Israel for the New York Times. In today's editorial notebook Bronner wrote:
When a Palestinian terrorist shot Israel's London ambassador in the head in June 1982, the invasion was set in motion. The gunman was from a breakaway group that had nothing to do with Yasir Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization in southern Lebanon. But the shooting was the pretext Mr. Sharon needed. Israeli troops pushed through the northern border, smashing P.L.O. bases. Shiites had suffered terribly under the P.L.O.'s cruel and arbitrary rule and they were thrilled to see it broken. Israeli soldiers reported that locals welcomed them by throwing rice.
Things turned nasty for Israel when it helped engineer the election of Bashir Gemayel, a Christian ally, as president. Begin pushed him to recognize Israel as one of his first acts, something he resented terribly. Before much of anything could happen, though, Gemayel was assassinated. Within a week Israelis helped Christian militiamen enter two Palestinian refugee camps, where they carried out a massacre.
First of if the border with Lebanon was quiet it was not for a long time before June 1982. I was studying in Yeshiva in Israel in 1981, when I was told that Israel had attacked Iraq. I didn't believe it. I remember saying, "You mean Lebanon," because the border with Lebanon had been very busy. (Attacks by the PLO from the north and Israeli retaliations into Lebanon.) But I was assured that I had been informed correctly. And indeed I had.
It also doesn't really matter if cross-border attacks had ceased even for several months. By one account Israel recovered over $1 billion of weaponry that the PLO was holding. Are we to assume that the PLO was just accumulating weaponry for the heck of it? Or did they have longer term plans in mind? I assume the latter. Bronner apparently assumes the former.
It's also odd that Bronner asserts with confidence that Abu Nidal had nothing to do with Arafat. We know that they broke publicly over how honest they thought they should be about their intentions toward Israel: Abu Nidal said that the Palestinians should be honest about wanting to destroy Israel; Arafat said that the Palestinians should pretend to make nice. Still after years of assuring us that Arafat didn't support Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or even Fatah and finding out that Arafat lent and lends at least tacit support for terror even after he renounced it, shouldn't media types be hesitant before categorically denying any tie between Arafat and other terrorists?
The second paragraph is also annoying. Bronner is quite happy to tie Israel in with the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla. But how did Bashir Gemayal die? Did his car spontaneously explode? Why not report that Syria is suspected of having killed Gemayal for demonstrating too much independence from the occupying power in Lebanon?
Cross-posted on David's Israel Blog and IsraPundit.
Soccer Dad 7:39 PM
Why I read Sports Illustrated
Some of the best reporting on the Middle East recently has been done by Sports Illustrated. I kid you not. Last August, even before Abu Mazen was being talked about as a candidate for Palestinian PM, Sports Illustrated carried this article about Abu Daoud in which Abu Daoud alleged this:
Though he didn't know what the money was being spent for, longtime Fatah official Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, was responsible for the financing of the Munich attack. Abu Mazen could not be reached for comment regarding Abu Daoud's allegation. After Oslo in 1993, Abu Mazen went to the White House Rose Garden for a photo op with Arafat, President Bill Clinton and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. "Do you think that ... would have been possible if the Israelis had known that Abu Mazen was the financier of our operation?" Abu Daoud writes. "I doubt it." Today the Bush Administration seeks a Palestinian negotiating partner "uncompromised by terror," yet last year Abu Mazen met in Washington with Secretary of State Colin Powell.
It would seem that SI found out something that the NY Times missed. The NY Times insists that Abu Mazen is a "moderate."
And on the subject Iraq we learn of Uday Hussein's training methods for the Olympics.
With a wave of Uday's arm the manacled boxer was led into the room by Iraqi secret service. Sitting behind a dark wood desk beneath an oversized portrait of himself, Uday began his tirade. "In sport you can win or you can lose. I told you not to come home if you didn't win." His voice rising, he walked around the desk and gave the boxer a lesson. "This is how you box," he screamed as he threw a left and a right straight to the fighter's face. Blood dribbled from the athlete's nose as Uday launched another round of punches. Then, using the electric prod he was famous for carrying, Uday jolted the boxer in the chest.
Blood was streaming from a cut above the boxer's eye when Uday ordered his guards to fetch a straight razor. The boxer cried out as Uday held the razor to his throat, and as he moved the blade to the fighter's forehead, Uday laughed. He then shaved the man's eyebrows, an insult to Muslim males. "Take him downstairs and finish the job," Uday screamed.
Says Yahia, "They took him to the basement of the Olympic building. It has a 30-cell prison where athletes -- and anyone else who is out of favor with Uday -- are beaten and tortured. That was the last I ever heard of that boxer."
So there you have it. Guys, when you're explaining to your wives why you bought the swimsuit issue, just explain that you bought it for the in-depth coverage of the Middle East.
Cross-posted on David's Israel Blog and IsraPundit
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Soccer Dad 6:46 PM
Thursday, March 27, 2003
Potholes in the Roadmap
Earlier Fred Lapides commented on Sunday's James Bennett article in the NYT's Week in Review section. There's a lot about the article that calls for comment. Here goes:
The reasoning is that President Bush cannot hope to stabilize the region, much less democratize Arab states, so long as the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians endures as a propaganda tool for the likes of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. After the war with Iraq, Arab leaders will demand that President Bush "prove what he can do for peace," Dennis Ross, the former Clinton administration negotiator, wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal.
First Bennett starts off with the reasoning why President Bush would push the Road Map right now. Then ...
But there is a flaw in all this analysis: The Bush administration has never accepted it. It has never regarded peace between Israelis and Palestinians as a goal as central to American interests as, say, getting rid of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
Now Bennett's saying that Bush doesn't accept the Road Map because he "has never regarded peace between Israelis and Palestinians as a goal as central to American interests." Now Bush has often expressed his support for a Palestinian state so this doesn't quite wash.
Worse than that, Bennett attributes Bush's (and apparently *any*) objection to the Road Map simply in terms of his being unconcerned. There's a better reason, backed up by historical precedent, for saying that American participation in the Quartet's Road Map won't help bring peace in the Middle East: because American support for peace hasn't worked until now.
Go back to 2000. What happened?
1) President Clinton, representing PM Barak went to Geneva offering over 90% of the Golan to the President Hafez Assad of Syria.
2) PM Barak unilaterally withdrew Israeli troops from southern Lebanon.
3) PM Barak offered Arafat over 90% of the land Arafat demanded at Camp David.
What were the results?
1) Assad went to his grave refusing the Israeli offer.
2) Hezbollah still maintains a hostile posture towards Israel and claims (along with the Arab League) that Israel still occupies Lebanon.
3) Arafat refused the offer and two months later launched a new intifada.
Since the United States backed two of these efforts we can hardly say that American involvement was missing. The problem is that the Arab world refuses to change. Refuses to accept 1948.
Bennett continues:
The administration clearly recognizes there is a problem here, and it may truly want to help. But with rebuilding Iraq, confronting North Korea and addressing the American economy already on its agenda, this conflict may never rise to the level of a top priority, certainly not enough of one to justify the political risks involved in dragging the antagonists along the route outlined by the road
map — particularly during the coming presidential election year.
It would be much easier, some experts say, for the White House simply to create the impression that it is trying.
"You have a whole menu of diplomatic activity that doesn't force you to take political risks," said Robert Malley, a former Clinton negotiator who is the Middle East program director of the International Crisis Group, a non-governmental conflict prevention organization. "You don't have to look too far to find the pieces that will fill the diplomatic vacuum that Blair and others
have been complaining about."
For example, he said, "an international conference would be seen by Arab countries as a major step, even if didn't change that much" on the ground. Such a move, he said, would eat up time and score the administration political points, without risking a confrontation with Israel.
Now we're getting the real story. The problem are the political risks involved with pursuing peace. What might those risks be? Ah, I have it "...a confrontation with Israel." Left unsaid, of course, is that risk comes from the all powerful Jewish lobby that is well known to oppose peace. (Actually, we elders of Zion, oppose stupid risks that are unlikely to bring peace.) And quoting Malley without identifying him as the person who rewrote the history of Camp David (ie Barak wasn't really as generous as portrayed, all parties - including the US and Israel - were at fault for botching Camp David) is negligent.
The fundamental question is whether the two sides are expected to make their concessions at the same time or in sequence.
The plan now calls for action "in parallel," including, for example, an immediate halt to incitement by both sides. As the Palestinians crack down on violence, the Israelis are supposed to stop all punitive demolition of Palestinian homes and dismantle all settlement outposts built in the last two years.
In addressing the United Nations Security Council recently, Terje Roed-Larsen, the special envoy here, called parallelism "a key guiding principle" of the new plan.
"Critically, and as we have seen so many times, no cease-fire can take hold without also simultaneously addressing political progress and the economic suffering," he said.
But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says the Palestinians must act first.
This is the core of the problem. Arafat took upon himself the obligation to fight and prevent terror. He has never done this completely. Even when his security forces were more involved in stopping Hamas and Islamic Jihad, his schools were teaching hatred and his channels were broadcasting it. To condition the PA's obligation on any Israeli behavior at all is to make a mockery of the idea of peace. The whole peace process was predicated on Arafat's supposed change. To say Israel is now obligated to withdraw from any area in return for Arafat (or the PA) fulfilling the premise of the whole process is to condone the past ten years of PA sponsored and incited terror. It's the reporters job to provide context and Bennett, again, has come up woefully short. Worse, in order to buttress the faulty premise he quotes Roed-Larsen - who in Bennett's mind and the mind of many diplomats is an unbiased referee but in reality is a pro-Palestinian agitator who helped promote the blood libel of a Jenin massacre last year - along with Roed-Larsen's rationale. In contrast he mentions PM Sharon but provides no reason. Clearly Bennett is taking sides and not offering a balanced analysis.
For example, the Bush administration has repeatedly called for Yasir Arafat to be sidelined. It largely left it to its Quartet allies and the Palestinians to make that happen — and last week, they achieved the appointment of the Americans' candidate, Mahmoud Abbas, to the new position of prime minister. It is still not clear how much authority Mr. Abbas will have.
Then, on Thursday, Palestinian security forces killed a Hamas militant in a renewed campaign to stop Hamas rocket fire at Israel.
"You see the little magnets getting in line with the new American power grid," said Dr. Eran Lerman, director of the Israel-Middle East office of the American Jewish Committee.
While I don't know that Abbas was the American's choice, Bennett makes no mention of any reason he might be controversial - like his Holocaust denial, his support of murdering Jewish civilians in Judea, Samaria and Azza, or his role in financing the Olympic massacre 31 years ago. Still even if we accept that this is a positive change and look at it along with the PA's action against the Hamas rocket launchers, did these things happen because of concessions or because America and Israel were steadfast in demanding change? Take the pressure off the PA and the situation will deteriorate again. Stand firm and maybe the PA will realize it has to change or be relegated to oblivion. Only the thoughts of irrelevance will force the PA to act in good faith. Incidentally, Dr. Lerman has written a number of good articles for the Jerusalem Post; I wonder if this is a full quote from him.
Cross Posted at David's Israel Blog and IsraPundit.
Soccer Dad 2:44 AM
Monday, March 24, 2003
Selective Outrage
I get annoyed when journalists act as if they're some sort of special breed, deserving of deferential treatment. Yes, I know, many of them put themselves in danger, and several of them paid the ultimate price. But there's this story from the Washington Post complaining that several Arab countries haven't allowed embedded journalists in to attach to American army units.
... in recent days reporters from CNN, U.S. News & World Report, NBC and The Washington Post have been unable to gain direct access to U.S. forces stationed in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Turkey has prevented some journalists from crossing its border into northern Iraq, according to media sources. Air bases in Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates have also been deemed off-limits to the media by those countries.
this has led to an outraged response:
"I think it proves that in the Coalition of the Willing, willingness is a very subjective thing," said Phil Bennett, The Post's assistant managing editor for foreign news. Saudi Arabia's denial, he said, was particularly "schizophrenic" because the Saudi government has issued numerous visas to journalists in recent months, but still won't allow access to military installations. "It's a false openness," he said.
The Saudis, however, have a ready response:
A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, Nail Al-Jubeir, characterized his government's policy as "a logistical issue. We got an enormous amount of requests from journalists. It got to the point where the government said, 'Let's put a hold on this and study it.' "
I may not have paid much mind to that article, except then I saw Caroline Glick's account of her experiences trying to get to an embedded unit in Kuwait:
I never felt any strong emotion towards Kuwait or towards the Kuwaiti people until I arrived in the country on Sunday, March 9, only to be greeted by blistering, virulent hatred accompanied by a reign of quiet, relentless discrimination.
From the moment I arrived, the Kuwaiti government sought to silence me as a writer, a journalist and an Israeli even as I was traveling as a US citizen on a valid visa.
A few hours before I was set to depart for Kuwait on a flight from Washington, DC, I began to realize that I would be in for a rough ride. I read on the Internet that the Kuwaitis issued a statement telling the international press corps in Kuwait that anyone transmitting reports to the Israeli media would face criminal prosecution.
Pretty strong stuff. If the Post didn't know about this Kuwaiti selectivity why not? Did any American newspaper (other than the Chicago Sun Times note Glick's difficulties? It's hard to feel much sympathy for the journalists who are excluded because Arab countries don't want to advertise their participation in the war, if they, in turn, don't manage to scare up a little bit of outrage about over this outright discrimination.
There's an irony here. After the Gulf War, Time magazine quoted a Kuwaiti official who said that now he understood why Israel chased war criminals, and that the Kuwaitis felt about Saddam the way he imagined the Jewish state would have felt about Hitler. (I don't remember the exact words, but you get the picture.) The reporter, I think, even noted the apparent softening of the Kuwaiti's attitude toward Israel. Apparently it was temporary. As was the appreciation for freedom the Kuwaitis gained from America's rescue of their country from the tyrant Saddam.
While your at it, read how Glick celebrated Purim. I bet the Saudis will have conniptions about some of this too!
Cross Posted on IsraPundit and David's Israel Blog.
Soccer Dad 2:07 AM
Thursday, March 20, 2003
Always the Bridesmaid
An exception to Dennis Ross's generalization that Arabs don't want to be "on the wrong side of the U.S" is the PA.
"We Palestinians are against the war and we totally condemn this war in the Middle East. A solution must be found to this problem through diplomatic means, with the international community," local authorities minister Saeb Erakat said Thursday.
And it gets better. The article says that Hamas and Islamic Jihad support the PA's position. Not even a week after President Bush reiterates his dream of a Palestinian state, the PA shows whose side its on.
Why do Hamas and Islamic Jihad support Saddam?
The two opposition groups joined Erakat in slamming the US attack on Iraq's President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), who has disbursed millions of dollars to the families of suicide bommbers and Palestinian civilians shot dead by the Israeli army.
So if the PA wants peace shouldn't they be condemning the fellow who encourages suicide bombers?
Cross posted on IsraPundit and David's Israel Blog.
Soccer Dad 9:37 AM
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
Biases
Tom Gross did an excellent critique of how the New York Times skews its coverage of the Middle East. There's too much in the article to give you a full taste of his essay, but here's a small flavor:
While the Times couldn't find room to include a photo of Abigail (or any injured child) last Thursday, it did choose to again run its "Mideast Death Toll" chart alongside the news report about the Haifa bomb. Strangely, the Times (to my recollection) usually runs this chart — in which it lines up total numbers of Israeli deaths next to the greater number of Palestinian deaths — only on days after Israelis have died. The implication would seem to be that Israel is responsible for more fatalities than the Palestinians.
It also seems odd that the Times doesn't (to the best of my knowledge) run these kind of football-score-type charts for any other conflict (Protestant vs. Catholic deaths in Northern Ireland, for example, or Afghan vs. American deaths since September 11).
Indeed this is one of my pet peeves about any coverage. And it bothered me during the first intifada too. With no context, the numbers serve as a judgment - and not one that is favorable to Israel - despite what the editors say.
There were two examples that Gross didn't include in his article.
One of the more incredible stories of 2000 was that Egypt and Saudi Arabia encouraged Arafat to reject the Camp David agreement offered by the PM Barak. It's a really huge story that two "moderate pro-Western" Arab states played a role in this act of extremism. Of course neither country paid a diplomatic price for its perfidy; and, of course, this little item didn't cause the New York Times to rethink its evaluation of these countries.
During the last few days, a number of Arab leaders like Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudia Arabia and President Mubarak have joined with Mr. Arafat's domestic opponents in Islamic militant movements to weigh in on the issue. They all but threatened Mr. Arafat with political excommunication if he accepted Prime Minister Ehud Barak's proposals for administrative control over parts of the city and access to -- but not sovereignty over -- the major Muslim sites.
So there you have it. How did the Times work its own reporting into future stories? Let's see.
After more than 20 years of standing alongside American presidents in building peace in the region, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is feeling undermined by Washington, upstaged by Saudi Arabia and vulnerable before an angry Arab population, officials here say.
Apparently encouraging Arafat to reject the most generous Israeli offer (and one that was too generous) is considered "building peace." And what about our stalwart Saudi allies?
Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is expected to tell President Bush in stark terms at their meeting on Thursday that the strategic relationship between their two countries will be threatened if Mr. Bush does not moderate his support for Israel's military policies, a person familiar with the Saudi's thinking said today.
In a bleak assessment, he said there was talk within the Saudi royal family and in Arab capitals of using the "oil weapon" against the United States, and demanding that the United States leave strategic military bases in the region.
Such measures, he said, would be a "strategic debacle for the United States."
He also warned of a general drift by Arab leaders toward the radical politics that have been building in the Arab street.
The Saudi message contained undeniable brinkmanship intended to put pressure on Mr. Bush to take a much larger political gamble by imposing a peace settlement on Israelis and Palestinians.
These five paragraphs are breathtaking, especially knowing what we now know. First, of if the Saudis think that America "imposing a peace settlement" will help, why did torpedo the American effort nearly two years earlier. Why warn about the chance that America's supposed failure to take the initiative might radicalize Arab leaders when, in fact, they'd already demonstrated that radicalization at a pivotal moment? As he did in the Mubarak article, Patrick Tyler ignores the significant story his own newspaper had previously reported.
The Thomas Friedman peace proposal also brought out some dishonesty in the Times. After Thomas Friedman unveiled the supposed "Saudi peace plan" last year, the Times used all its resources to promote the plan and presumably promote their Op-Ed guy for a Nobel Peace Prize. The most egregious violation of journalistic ethics came in the context of Syrian support for the "Saudi Peace Plan." Serge Schmemann reported:
In its first statement on the plan proposed last month by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, which pledges Arab countries to a full normalization of relations with Israel in return for full Israeli withdrawal from land occupied in the 1967 war, Syria expressed its "satisfaction with the position of Saudi Arabia."
The statement followed a meeting between Prince Abdullah and President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in Riyadh. It said a comprehensive peace "cannot be achieved except with Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab land, including the Syrian Golan." The statement also called for the right of return for Palestinian refugees, a matter critical to Lebanon, where many of them live.
Since it's clear that Schmemann saw the statement its inconceivable that he didn't see this part:
Viewpoints were identical regarding all discussed issues and ideas where assertion was that the just and comprehensive peace in the region as the strategic option could never be realized but through the Israeli full withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories including from the Syrian Golan Heights to the line of June4 1967, the liberation of the remaining occupied territories in South Lebanon, the establishment of an independent Palestinian State with Jerusalem as its capital clinging the the right of the refugees return in accordance with related UN resolutions.
(Emphasis mine.) Syria added language (and Saudi Arabia agreed to this addition) demanding that Israel withdraw from southern Lebanon. It did not matter that Israel withdrew from Lebanon two years earlier or that the Security Council endorsed that withdrawal. Syria, Lebanon's occupier, changed the rules and made Shebaa Farms Lebanese territory. (It was captured from Syria and was to be discussed along with any part of an agreement with Syria.) Essentially Syria gave land to Lebanon in order to maintain a Lebanese grievance against Israel.
This is significant because it shows the hazards of any Arab peacemaking efforts. They will always change the goals. Here was a significant change in the Syrian proposal and the Times just ignored it. The reporter left out the part of the Syrian "agreement" with the Saudi plan that was inconvenient even though he had to have been aware of it. (Thomas Friedman, whose peace plan this was, clearly knew about this - I'm sure he read the Syrian statement too - and also remained silent.)
The funny thing is that the Times eventually acknowledge the Syrian position- at the end of the Arab League summit.
Some provisions in the plan run counter to existing Security Council resolutions, an official here said. Among these is the call by the Saudi plan for an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory. The Council does not consider Israel to be in control of any Lebanese land after the Israeli withdrawal from the border area two years ago. In Beirut this week, Lebanon revived its claim to a small part of the Israeli-held Golan Heights known as the Sheba Farms.
It's news enough that the Security Council was honest. But here was significant evidence that Saudi peace proposal had been significantly altered and sabotaged. The Times managed one article on the subject and only after the Arab League summit was over! The Times had a responsibility to report this but didn't. Promoting its columnist's peace proposal was more important than reporting the news.
These two examples show the degree to which the Times will go to say that Arabs are trying to make peace - even against the available evidence. You'd think that these countries with official media could promote these lies effectively on their own. But the New York Times apparently thinks the cause of peace is so important that it must promote it; even if it means repeating the lies of dictators.
Cross posted on David's Israel Blog and IsraPundit.
Soccer Dad 2:40 AM
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
Washington Post's Hypocrisy
The Washington Post ran a pretty good editorial today on Jim Moran, "Blaming the Jews"
"The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should." The comment perpetuates a stereotype of Jews as a unified bloc steering the world in their interest and against everyone else's. Over the centuries anti-Semites have used this libel to distract attention from their own failings and to instigate violence and discrimination against Jews. In the United States today, though anti-Semitism is far from eradicated, such violence may seem a mercifully distant danger.
There is a mistake here; one that's honest though. According to the FBI in 2000 hate crimes against Jews were committed at a higher rate than against any other ethnic group. However, the rest of this is reasonably solid from a historical standpoint. The problem with the editorial is that the Post kicks Rep. Moran when he's down. He's an easy target. As the editorial noted at the beginning:
OUR VIEW THAT Rep. James P. Moran Jr. is unfit to serve in Congress is not new. Last July, citing Mr. Moran's ethical obtuseness, we urged Democrats in Alexandria and surrounding neighborhoods to find another candidate for the fall election. Now, by blaming American Jews for an Iraq policy he opposes, the seven-term congressman has confirmed our opinion about him.
One gets the impression that they may not have taken such a strong stand against unless his behavior "confirmed" their previous impression of Moran.
Why the cynicism? Because last month, Robert Kaiser, the managing editor of the Washington Post wrote in "Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical On Mideast Policy":
Over the past dozen years or more, supporters of Sharon's Likud Party have moved into leadership roles in most of the American Jewish organizations that provide financial and political support for Israel.
True the article doesn't use the inflammatory language of Rep. Moran. Still the undercurrent of the article is that the rising prominence of right-wing Jews who are loyal to Israel has had an effect on the administration in terms of the Middle East generally and Israel and Iraq specifically.
The interesting thing is that despite this thesis, Kaiser even undermines his premise:
The State Department pressed for continued negotiations and pressure on Sharon to limit the scope of his military response to Palestinian suicide bombers, while the Pentagon and the vice president's office favored more encouragement for the Israelis, and less concern for a peace process which, they said, was going nowhere anyhow.
and
Neumann agreed that Abrams's appointment was symbolically important, not least because Abrams's views were shared by his boss, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, by Vice President Cheney and by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "It's a strong lineup," he said.
So the tough line against Arafat and Saddam came from Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld. Not exactly Likudniks. It's true that Rumsfeld has always had a reputation for being pro-Israel. But Cheney and Rice didn't. Read "Broken Covenant" by Moshe Arens. During the Gulf War Defense Secretary Cheney did not come across as pro-Israel. Rice is a protege of Brent Scowcroft whose hostility towards Israel is well-known. (For more on possible expectations of W's orientation toward Israel see "Reorient" by Lawrence Kaplan and Sarah Wildman, originally published in The New Republic. I thought that Kaplan and Wildman didn't give W enough credit, and I think that my instincts have been confirmed.) Instead of attributing the change of policy direction in the current Bush administration to the influence of Jewish supporters of Israel, why doesn't Kaiser try to uncover the reason that Rice and Cheney seem to have changed their views? Even if unintentional, Kaiser's approach was damaging. No matter how dispassionately he wrote his article, the message of overly influential Jews comes through quite clearly.
Certainly Pat Buchanan got the message.
In a Feb. 9 front-page article in the Washington Post, Robert Kaiser quotes a senior U.S. official as saying, “The Likudniks are really in charge now.” Kaiser names Perle, Wolfowitz, and Feith as members of a pro-Israel network inside the administration and adds David Wurmser of the Defense Department and Elliott Abrams of the National Security Council.
For the Post to criticize Moran while giving a platform to Kaiser strikes me as a case of cognitive dissonance.
There are ways to make Kaiser's point but not do it in the same manner. In a recent issue of the New Yorker, Nicholas Lehmann did just that in an article "After Iraq." (No longer available on the Web.)
Yet another argument for war, which has emerged during the last few months, is that removing Saddam could help bring about a wholesale change for the better in the political, cultural, and economic climate of the Arab Middle East. To give one of many possible examples, Fouad Ajami, an expert on the Arab world who is highly respected inside the Bush Administration, proposes in the current issue of Foreign Affairs that the United States might lead "a reformist project that seeks to modernize and transform the Arab landscape. Iraq would be the starting point, and beyond Iraq lies an Arab political and economic tradition and a culture whose agonies have been on cruel display." The Administration's main public proponent of this view is Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, who often speaks about the possibility that war in Iraq could help bring democracy to the Arab Middle East. President Bush appeared to be making the same point in the State of the Union address when he remarked that "all people have a right to choose their own government, and determine their own destiny—and the United States supports their aspirations to live in freedom."
There may be support for the approach of democratizing the Arab world, but it is not exclusively the province of the pro-Israel crowd, or Likudniks. Lehmann credits Fouad Ajami with promoting this idea. But what makes Lehmann's article superior to Kaiser's is that he gives Feith a chance to elaborate on what he's thinking. Lehmann seems impressed with the thought that goes into Feith's ideas even if he doesn't seem to accept them. (Feith declined to be interviewed for Kaiser's article; did he refuse to speak because he thought there was a chance of being misrepresented?)
As I suggested above, perhaps the Bush adminstration took a more supportive view of Israel because of new information not due to the nefarious influence of Likudniks. This is something that David Frum seems to have picked up on:
Then Arafat made what may someday be reckoned as the most fateful miscalculation of his career. On January 5, 2002, Israeli naval forces intercepted a Gaza-bound merchant ship loaded with fifty tonnes of arms from Iran. Arafat hastily sent Bush a letter denying any involvement in the shipment. Probably Arafat did not even intend his denial to be interpreted literally; he may have written it as a social form, like the phrase I regret in a letter declining an invitation to a wedding or a dinner party. If so, Arafat sorely misunderstood his man. Bush does not lie to you. You had better not lie to him.
The Karine A. incident finished off Arafat in Bush's eyes. In conversation, Bush ceased to conceal either his contempt for the thuggish Palestinian or his irritation with the thug's European protectors. "They just luuuuuve Arafat," he would say with elongated wonder.
In other words Bush found Arafat's dishonesty so offensive that he re-thought his views on the Middle East. Why is it so hard to believe that other members of his adminstration were swayed by similarly weighing the evidence in front of them? Why is Kaiser intent on painting the Likud worldview as superstition not as something an open-minded person could conclude when weighing all the evidence. Why did the Washington Post give Kaiser a pass but not Moran?
Cross-posted on "IsraPundit" and "David's Israel Blog."
Soccer Dad 9:42 PM
Thursday, March 06, 2003
Buneul is Right
I was going to write this anyway, so I'm adding my voice to Bunuel's below. The New York Times ran the story, "Israelis Storm Gaza Camp; 11 Palestinians Are Killed" in yesterday's paper. After the headline and three paragraphs either asserting or implying that Israel killed all eleven James Bennet wrote:
The Israeli Army rejected that account. It said a tank had fired a shell from a spot near the crowd, but in another direction, toward a Palestinian who was firing a rocket-propelled grenade at the retreating Israelis. It said the casualties had been caused by a Palestinian explosive.
I give Bennet a little credit for at least acknowledging that the Israeli army disputed the PA view. But no more than a little. The Arab accounts he cites were more specific. But it isn't as if there wasn't a readily available Israeli account:
"The IDF forces were right next to a store. It is obvious that we would not fire at the store point blank with tanks shells. The control over the firing of the shells belongs solely to the commander and we know how to react in every situation, what to fire upon with shells and when. A tank commander will only fire if he receives an order from the battalion commander or if his life is in danger and firing is the only way to combat the danger. I was the battalion commander at that moment," noted Lt. Col. Moshe.
"We fired a shell a moment later, after the explosion, into an adjacent ally where an RPG rocket was threatening the tank. However this was only done after the incident where the bomb detonated inside the store. It was a powerful bomb that created a great blaze in the store and even, in our opinion, caused the walls to collapse and the ceiling to cave in," said Lt. Col. Moshe.
He added: "I imagine that many civilians were injured from that."
"As the ground commander I can say with certainty that the tank shell was fired at a lone terrorist armed with an RPG rocket, from a distance of 150-200 meters within the ally."
I've noted previously that Bennet strikes me as lazy. He doesn't make much of an effort. It's also interesting that in the earlier story that I commented on, Bennet noted that Israeli silence on the deaths of several ranking members of Hamas was an indication that Israel probably did it. I'm not convinced that he was correct there. But wouldn't the converse of that observation be that if Israel denies participation in violence it probably was not involved? So why not attach greater significance to Israel's version?
If over here, Bennet implicitly belittles Israel's version of events; elsewhere, he's not so subtle:
That is the approach Israel has taken in the West Bank, where soldiers have seized back territory ceded under the Oslo peace accords in what the army says is an effort to stop suicide bombers.
"...in what the army says is an effort to stop suicide bombers!" Qualifying it in this way implies that the only the army would draw such a conclusion. Hmm. How about this?
During the months of January-February 2003, 122 terror attacks against Israeli citizens were prevented.
That seems successful by any standard!!! Unfortunately, Wednesday, we saw that the Israeli tactics are not perfect.
Cross Posted to Israpundit and David's Israel Blog.
Soccer Dad 11:51 PM
Tuesday, March 04, 2003
Wealth of Bias
Recently, the Boston Globe's media critic, Mark Jurkowitz, critiqued CAMERA in an article "Blaming the Messenger". Aspects of the article were actually very good. He listed some of the group's successes. Still there are a number of troubling observations that he makes. The main problem is, of course, the title of the article. Though it doesn't really reflect the bulk of the article, it clearly shows where Jurkowitz stands. The problem in the perception of media coverage of Israel, is not the media but the perception of it by extreme partisans. Jurkowitz quotes one NPR official:
"Economic blackmail" is the term Klose uses to describe CAMERA's tactics. "CAMERA is essentially an advocacy group that calls itself an umpire but only calls foul balls," he adds.
The problem with repeating this sort of criticism is that Jurkowitz doesn't bring a single example of where CAMERA dealt dishonestly with a media outlet. In fact read this:
In September, a crucial effort to stanch the bleeding took place inside WBUR's Commonwealth Avenue offices. Christo and Klose sat down with a small group of WBUR funders, including some who had withdrawn their support. Klose says the meeting was "very satisfactory" and "made clear the complicated reality of doing what we do." But other reports say it was tense and adversarial and didn't exactly end with a meeting of the minds.
This gives NPR a chance to expain its "complicated reality." But even as the NPR official claims he was successful, Jurkowtiz reports that not everyone found Klose to be convincing. Interesting isn't it?
The article is worth reading. Despite the title, I think that Jurkowitz does a pretty good job of showing that CAMERA is correct in what it does.
It's also worth keeping in mind. Saturday's New York Times featured a report, "Palestinian Assets 'a Mess,' Official Says." The article leads of with:
The Palestinian Authority's top finance official said today that he had identified $600 million in Authority assets in 79 commercial ventures, including money that he said appeared to have given rise to Israeli accusations of slush funds controlled by Mr. Arafat and others.
I'm not sure what the impetus of the article was. Was it to bolster the efforts of PA "finance minister, Salam Fayyad, a former official of the International Monetary Fund who has been praised by American and Israeli officials as an energetic reformer?" Or was it to deflect criticism of Arafat likely to result from his listing as one of the world's richest world's leaders in Forbes magazine?
Reading the article, it really seems that the latter is going on. The bloodless way the Times discusses the PA's corruption is astounding. Read that first paragraph again, "... given rise to Israeli accusation ..." Please. There's plenty of corruption in the PA, it's been going on for a long time, and it's well documented. Using a quote from Fayyad to qualify the problem as an Israeli accusation or
"Of all the issues in public finance that cause us to have a bad name, this probably is the one that had the biggest neon sign on it..."
using this quote to say that corruption is a matter of appearances goes beyond being non-judgmental. It is abdicating the skepticism that every journalist is supposed to show. In fact the only negative James Bennet lists about Fayyad is that because Israel likes him it may be difficult for him to become Prime Minister of the PA.
Mark Jurkowitz may think that supporters of Israel hold the media to impossible standards. But reading this news report about the PA's finances you'd think that the NY Times is describing a person who has trouble keeping his checkbook straight not someone who, according to an editorial in the Jerusalem Post, "... has done more than his fair share of plundering his own people, treating their public resources as his personal ATM machine to be looted at will." In fact the Jerusalem Post editorial *reports* more relevant information about the misuse of aid money directed toward the PA than the news article in the New York Times. To any fair-minded person, the Times is whitewashing Arafat and the PA. (Yes that's my judgment.) Bennet's failure to provide a history of PA corruption is typical of American reporting from the Middle East.
The sins and crimes of the PA are downplayed. The statements of its officials are treated unskeptically. The opposite is true when dealing with Israel.
There's a joke, "Just because you're not paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you." In the case of reporting on the Middle East there could be a variation: "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean you're wrong." Maybe we supporters of Israel are looking too hard for signs of bias. Unfortunately, it doesn't take that much effort to turn it up.
Cross Posted on IsraPundit and David's Israel Blog.
Soccer Dad 7:46 PM
Monday, March 03, 2003
Dulling the Talons
An editorial in the Baltimore Sun last week, "Sharpening the Talons" was pretty typical of the paper's shrill anti-Israel bias. Several aspects of the article call out for rebuttal. The first paragraph begins:
ARIEL SHARON has finished putting together a governing coalition in Israel that includes an extreme right-wing party and a rabidly extreme right-wing party. This won't do the cause of peace in the Middle East any good at all.
Specifically the problem here is that neither of the "extreme right-wing" parties that joined the Likud's coalition has much power. Shinui, the one leftist party got all the major ministries outside of Defense, Foreign Affairs and Treasury. What's more, Sharon could have formed a coalition of just nationalist and religious parties and left out Shinui. Under the circumstances (i.e. the democratic choice of the Israeli people) the government Sharon formed was arguably the most left wing possible! Maybe the Sun wants to criticize the Israeli people; but it's criticism of Sharon is sheer propaganda.
More generally, the problem with the Sun's position is that in the year 2000, Israel 1) offered (through President Clinton) Syria over 90% of the land it wanted to make peace 2) pulled completely - as certified by the UN Security Council - out of Southern Lebanon (even as Syria continues to occupy that country with impunity) and 3) offered Yasser Arafat over 90% of the land he wanted to make peace. In return Israel got 1) Assad's even shriller and more belligerent son after Assad died refusing to make a deal 2) a continued threat from Hezbollah and 3) a renewed intifada overseen by Yasser Arafat. The notion that the composition of Israel's government plays any role in whether Israel makes is nonsense. The continued obstacle to peace is Arab rejectionism.
To Arab eyes, there is no daylight between the White House and Mr. Sharon. It has not gone unnoticed that one of the neoconservative arguments for an American-led regime change in Iraq is that it would be good for Israel. But if Israel is going to be so militant, Iraq's Arab neighbors might well ask, what's in it for them?
So if the Arabs had something to gain, they'd support US efforts? Something to gain, as implied by the editorial, means Israel retreating from the lands it obtained in defensive wars. So then explain, why is it that at the time of the Camp David summit in July, 2000 did Saudi Arabia and Egypt encourage Arafat to reject the American backed deal that Barak offered - as reported by the New York Times? (I sent a letter to the editor with similar substance to the Editor of the Sun.)
Again the answer is that support for Israel is not an obstacle to peace. It's Arab rejectionism of any compromise with Israel.
Cross-posted to IsraPundit and David's Israel Blog.
Soccer Dad 10:05 AM
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