Mideast Media Sampler 04/01/2011

Excerpted from an email from DG:

1) Syria-s criticism

Tony Badran - Time to rewrite America's Syria strategy

In reality, however, the peace process is merely the veneer that camouflages the absence of a real regional strategy. By making the peace process its default policy, the administration affords itself the ability to pretend that it possesses a coherent intellectual and strategic framework when, actually, it doesn’t. The peace process then becomes a panacea that the administration can present as a cogent, comprehensive policy.  But even if one were to take this position at face value, the administration’s approach to Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak quickly uncovers the underlying confusion. Mubarak maintained the peace treaty with Israel for three decades and opposed Iranian subversion. Meanwhile, Assad, Iran’s ally, brags – as he did in his speech yesterday and in a Wall Street Journal interview in January – that the basis of his legitimacy is his enmity toward Israel and his support for “resistance” groups that wage war against it. And yet, President Obama gave Mubarak the bum’s rush, while his secretary of state publicly referred to Assad as a “reformer.”

Charles Krauthammer - Syria's "reformer"

Sometimes you cover for a repressive ally because you need it for U.S. national security. Hence our muted words about Bahrain. Hence our slow response on Egypt. But there are rare times when strategic interest and moral imperative coincide completely. Syria is one such — a monstrous police state whose regime consistently works to thwart U.S. interests in the region.During the worst days of the Iraq war, this regime funneled terrorists into Iraq to fight U.S. troops and Iraqi allies. It is dripping with Lebanese blood as well, being behind the murder of independent journalists and democrats, including former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. This year, it helped topple the pro-Western government of Hariri’s son, Saad, and put Lebanon under the thumb of the virulently anti-Western Hezbollah. Syria is a partner in nuclear proliferation with North Korea. It is Iran’s agent and closest Arab ally, granting it an outlet on the Mediterranean. Those two Iranian warships that went through the Suez Canal in February docked at the Syrian port of Latakia, a long-sought Iranian penetration of the Mediterranean. 

Yet here was the secretary of state covering for the Syrian dictator against his own opposition.

The Washington Post's headline Syria announces step toward lifting emergency rule looks promising

So does the first paragraph:

The Syrian government, in a gesture to protesters who have shaken the country for the past 13 days, announced Thursday that it will draw up new anti-terrorism legislation as a first step toward lifting the country’s 48-year-old emergency rule.

Fortunately the report gives voice to some serious and pointed criticism of Assad's obvious ploy.

Activists denounced the announcement as a ploy, suggesting that Assad is only offering to replace one set of repressive laws with another, baptized this time as anti-terrorism. “Under the emergency laws we were conspirators. Under the terrorism law we will be terrorists, and the role of the security apparatus will stay the same,” said Razan Zeitoneh, a Syrian human rights lawyer. 

“This is not significant,” said Ammar Qurabi, the Cairo-based head of the Syrian National Organization for Human Rights. “It would take just one minute to reverse the emergency law. They are just trying to find something to replace the emergency law. Anyway, people are not interested in a law. People are interested in what the security forces are doing on the ground.”

The Post's story credits an unnamed correspondent in Syria.


2) What he said

This week the IDF released a map of Hezbollah positions inside Lebanon, including those south of the Litani River in direct contravention of Security Council resolution 1701. An AP report carried by the Washington Post begins:

The Israeli military on Thursday released a map detailing what it says are nearly 1,000 underground bunkers, weapons storage facilities and monitoring sites built by the militant Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon.

Love that qualification, "what it says." It's amazing how scrupulous the media are in making sure that they don't appear, in any way, to endorse Israeli claims. Elder of Ziyon has more on the Post's efforts to downplay the story.

Yaacov Lozowick has additional criticism.

Note that the paper didn't lift a finger to attempt to validate or disprove the story. Validation is apparently no longer part of the journalist ethos. Israel says yes, Hizballah says - well, it doesn't really say - and us journalists, what are we supposed to do? Send someone to poke around and try to report from the area? Inconceivable. 

Note further that there's no mention in the news item of Security Council Decision 1701, which specifically proscribed the re-armament of Hizballah in this area. There's likewise no mention of the legality or illegality of storing rockets in folks' basements and garages. The Washington Post doesn't do "illegal according to international law". 

There is, however, some indirect confirmation in an unrelated story in the New York Times.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said that it had investigated recent rocket explosions and found that locally produced projectiles had fallen on homes in Gaza or exploded in factories where they were made or stored. Shrapnel severely wounded several people, including a 22-year-old woman and her 7-month-old baby.
...
“This poses a major threat to the lives of the Palestinian civilians,” it said.  

Israel has long accused Hamas and other groups of endangering Palestinian civilians by carrying out militant activities in densely populated areas. 

And if Israel's charge is true about Hamas, it likely is also true regarding Hezbollah. Whatever the shortcomings of the PCHR's report, it does confirm a longstanding Israeli claim about its enemies that the media is hesitant to confirm.


3) Israel hating priest to represent Libya
Since the resignation of Libyan's ambassador to the UN, Fr. Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann has been tapped to succeed him.

Like Chavez, Ortega apparently has cultivated ties with Middle Eastern thugs.

Stung by recent high profile desertions, Libya's been taking steps to limit future defections.

As rebels challenging pro-Qaddafi forces struggled to regroup around the oil port of Brega, and the roar of allied warplanes was heard again over the capital, residents reacted in shock at the defection of Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa, a close ally of Colonel Qaddafi’s since the early days of the revolution, who once earned the nickname “envoy of death” for his role in the assassinations of earlier Libyan defectors.  

And then came the defection to Egypt of another senior official, Ali Abdussalam el-Treki, a former foreign minister and a former United Nationsambassador who had worked closely with Colonel Qaddafi for decades.  

Soon rumors swirled of a cascade of high-level defections. The pan-Arab news channel Al Jazeera reported without confirmation that the intelligence chief and the speaker of Parliament had fled to Tunisia. Other rumors, like the exit of the oil minister, were quickly shot down. But taking no chances, Libyan officials posted guards to prevent any other officials from leaving the country, two former officials said. 

Technorati Tag: Middle East.