Mideast Media Sampler 04/07/2011

From an email from DG:

1) Col Kemp Tweets 

Col. Richard Kemp has had a few great tweets today.

First of all he put together a short, excellent essay in tweets:

Goldstone's Gaza report validated Gadaffi's human shield tactics, saying illegal to attack enemy when civilians present.(55751707673636864)

Brit Foreign Office: "Gaddafi forces... using human shields in urban areas." Yes, & those who supported Goldstone validated those tactics.(55752924588023808)

What goes around comes around. Fail to repudiate Hamas terror tactics and someone else will use them on you. Gaza Libya NATO FCO (55755181752721409)

So many NATO nations have encouraged human shield tactics by failing to condemn their use by the terror groups Hamas and Hizballah.(55759970486063105)

And if that wasn't enough he linked to an excellent takedown of Goldstone by British blogger, Ray Cook.

This paragraph was particularly incisive and devastating:

Yet Hamas never really figured in the aftermath of the Report, all focus was on Israel. Why? Because “it goes without saying” that Hamas are criminals, according to Goldstone. We all know they are terrorists so there’s not much point going after them. So put Israel under the microscope and see what dirt you can dig up.

Cook brings later brings up a comparison to Libya and at the end he writes:

Now Goldstone is really having a laugh, as we say in the UK. Since he later admits that the UNHRC is ‘skewed’ in its bias against Israel, and, given the fact that anyone in his or her right mind can see that the UN and especially the UNHRC is obsessed with bashing Israel at every opportunity, and making up a few opportunities of its own (remember Durban I and II?), then how can he expect Israel to have agreed to co-operate with a body that is so biased? 

This is like asking the defence lawyer to co-operate with the prosecutor to find a guilty verdict against the accused. In effect, Israel took ‘the 5th’; it refused to speak in what it saw as an enterprise predisposed to find it guilty. 

Goldstone is actually crticising Israel for not co-operating with his commission, a tool of the very UNHRC that he is himself condemning!

I bring this up because yesterday, Martin Kramer linked to an article by Shlomo Avineiri, Israel was wrong to boycott Goldstone probe

Above all - and this is an aspect the diligent legal experts and experienced PR experts missed entirely - those witnesses and testimonies should have been presented not only before the commission, but before the international media that flocked to Geneva. Even before the Goldstone Commission issued its decision, for days television viewers the world over would have seen the Israelis - all of them civilians, including the Shalit family - who were the deliberate targets of Hamas terrorism.  

That should have been accompanied by the appearance of a senior Israeli official who was not only familiar with the facts but also spoke fluent English and knew how to speak to the nations of the world. Because the court in Geneva was not the commission but the international television audience, into whose consciousness we should have etched the information about Hamas terror. In the absence of all that, the world saw only the photographs provided by the Palestinians and their supporters. 

Just because Israel didn't officially defend itself to Goldstone, didn't mean that there weren't Israelis to testify. One, Dr. Mirela Siderer - a doctor in Ashkelon - who was injured by a rocket attack testified before the commission. And her testimony was ignored.

The only coverage Dr. Siderer got was from pro-Israel blogs and publications. It's hard to imagine a more sympathetic figure than someone who devoted her life to helping others being attacked by terrorists. But no one in the MSM was interested in her story. I think that Prof Avineiri is wrong here.

2) Catching up with Syria 

The New York Times reports today Syria Tries to Placate Sunnis and Kurds

The government announced that Syria’s first and only casino, which had enraged Islamists when it opened on New Year’s Eve, would be closed. It also said that schoolteachers who had been dismissed last year for wearing the niqab, a type of face veil, would be allowed back to work. 

These concessions and others were made public as activists were calling for renewed demonstrations to be held on Thursday, which is the 64th anniversary of the formation of the Baath Party, which has been in power since 1963. Protests demanding expanded political rights and a multiparty democracy have spread to cities across Syria over the last three weeks, posing a highly unusual challenge to Mr. Assad. 

Videos of protest songs are starting to appear.

The lyrics to the latest underground anthem of the Syrian uprising are bolder than most of the chants heard so far in the streets, and could help galvanize a movement that has spread in fits and starts outside the small rural town of Deraa where it began.

"Biyan raqam wahid" or "statement number one" was released online anonymously, and for good reason. The song appears to call for outright revolution and takes on the government over corruption, sectarian fear-mongering and violent repression, accusations that could easily land the artists in jail. (Warning, there is some graphic, violent imagery in the video.)

There have been some other videos with violent images - from the protests.

Babylon and Beyond has videos apparently showing snipers firing down into crowds.

And Wael Ghonim linked to a video that show marchers who scurry and then after much confusion a number of people are shown on the ground bleeding.
http://twitter.com/#!/Ghonim/status/55071955317043200

Because of this violence some of Syria's revolutionaries are escaping to Lebanon to carry on the struggle.

Only 110 kilometers, or 70 miles, from the Syrian capital, Beirut has long been a transit point for Syrians — from former strongmen to failed conspirators and run of the mill dissenters — who have run afoul of their regime. Today, some exiles like Rami — who would disclose only his first name for fear of retribution — arrive armed with technology and contacts. A local cellphone number, an internet connection, and Skype and Facebook accounts are all the tools they need to continue an effective opposition from across the border. 

The Syrian government has been mostly successful so far in keeping journalists out of the country — and expelling or curtailing the movements of those who have managed to get in.  

In the absence of journalists, people like Rami have been responsible for disseminating much of the news coming out of the country. Every day, Rami collects reports from his activist contacts who remain in Syria and passes on the information to international media outlets. 

The brutality of the Syria crackdown has led some to question why the West isn't doing more.

Human-rights activists and leaders on Capitol Hill are increasingly criticizing the West’s tepid response to the Syrian uprising, saying it squanders a vital chance to weaken President Bashar al-Assad and his alliance with Iran. The White House and State Department have issued a series of statements calling for Assad to end a violent crackdown that is believed to have killed hundreds of Syrian demonstrators in recent weeks. But neither Washington nor the EU has mapped out any specific penalties Assad’s government would face.

This contrasts with the moves the White House and European states took to impose sanctions against Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi after his forces began a military offensive against protesters in February. Syrian democracy activists are calling for UN action as well as sanctions targeting the top members of Assad’s government.

3) Democracy is tough 

A week and a half ago Nicholas Kristof told us that Democracy is Messy in Egypt

Yet for Americans, what is unfolding is perhaps a reassuring mess. Westerners have mostly worried that Egypt might plunge into Iran-style Islamic fundamentalism — and, to me, that seems a reflection of our own hobgoblins more than Egypt’s. Indeed, it seems increasingly likely that Egypt won’t change as much as many had expected. Moreover, the biggest losers of the revolution are likely to be violent Islamic extremist groups that lose steam when the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood joins the system. 

Note Kristof's two false premises. First of all he tells us that the fear of Islamic extremism is a matter of Western prejudice and then he tells us that the Muslim Brotherhood is moderate!

Now, a week later we get a similar column from David Ignatius that informs of Egyptian democracy’s growing pains

The Tahrir Square activists were depressed after the vote, with some arguing that their revolution had been hijacked by an alliance of the Brotherhood and the military. “We were all down after the collapse of the referendum,” says Abou Youssef. “It turned out as a battle over religion, not the constitution.” 

But in the weeks since the referendum, the activists seem to have gotten a second wind and started forming new parties to compete with the Brotherhood. There’s the Social Democratic Party, which includes pro-democracy organizer Amr Hamzawy; the Egyptian Liberal Party, formed by Naguib Sawiris, the head of the telecommunications giant Orascom; and a leftist group called the Popular Alliance. Many more parties are on the way.  

Muslim voters, too, will have a broader array of choices in the fall, with former Brotherhood leaders splitting into three and perhaps four camps, with the Salafists forming two parties and a pro-jihad group forming at least one. That’s the new Egypt — all the ideologies that were suppressed by force under President Hosni Mubarak are now out campaigning in the sun. 

Kristof and Ignatius both are effectively telling us, "Don't worry, these are just speed bumps on the road to democracy," rather than events showing that the revolution might well be headed in the opposite directions.

Though both newspapers had been slow to report disturbing trends in Egypt, now two of their columnists are telling us not to worry.

But why shouldn't we?

One Presidential candidate was attacked by Brotherhood supporters;
another is increasingly belligerent towards Israel;
those currently in charge seek to restrict freedoms
and Copts are facing even greater persecution.

There's plenty of reason to worry, and Kristof and Ignatius are just telling us: pay not attention to the extremism behind the curtain.

4) Letters 

There were some good letters to the editor of the Washngton Post regarding Goldstone's retraction.

Technorati Tag: Goldstone Report and Middle East.