Mideast Media Sampler 04/10/2011

From an email from DG
I forgot to post this yesterday.

1) Reconsidering Merkel
The other day I linked to a New York Times article which started

As Germany moves closer to other European countries in adopting an increasingly tough stance toward Israel’s reluctance to resume peace negotiations with the Palestinians, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday that it was more urgent than ever that the talks be restarted. With the Middle East highly volatile as fighting and protests continue in a number of countries, Mrs. Merkel warned the visiting Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, against any further delay in returning to the negotiating table. 

This is largely the reporter's biased interpretation.

Benjamin Weinthal reported on the meeting and it was somewhat more positive than the New York Times article portrayed it.

She added that the strains reported in the media in February are “not a realistic portrayal of what happened” and noted that the German-Israeli relationship is “very intense and close.”

Merkel reportedly accused Netanyahu then of not advancing the peace progress. According to media reports in February, Netanyahu complained to Merkel about Germany’s vote against Israel at the UN Security Council, condemning Israeli settlement construction in the disputed territories.

However, Netanyahu said on Thursday the talks were “candid and open.... We consider Germany and you [Merkel] a great friend of Germany, a great champion of Israel’s security.”

Merkel also stressed the importance, to her administration, of the “well-being of the State of Israel.”

However what it is still clear is that Merkel is being hypocritical. As Weinthal reports elsewhere:

While Chancellor Merkel reacted slowly to the disturbing revelations about Germany’s financial dealings with Tehran, she did stop payments to Iran on Wednesday, the day Netanyahu’s plane landed in Berlin. Her decision to turn the screws on EIH arose not from her supposed commitment to Israel’s security but, rather, because the U.S. Treasury said it “is concerned about recent reports that the German government authorized the use of E.I.H. as a conduit for India’s oil payments to Iran,”

Sadly, Merkel only seems to moderate her government’s substantial economic cooperation with Iran when she fears it could endanger German firms’ access to American markets.

The German firm Siemens and its Finnish partner Nokia sold the Iranian leaders surveillance equipment in 2008, which they promptly used to repress Iran’s pro-democracy movement the following year. The Siemens-Nokia technology (“Intelligence Platforms”) can also be used to monitor flight and traffic movements and intercept telecommunications to and from the Jewish state.

2) Reconsidering Goldstone

My view of Judge Richard Goldstone has been one of a man who has refused to acknowledge the great damage he has done to Israel. For example he refused to debate Alan Dershowitz and refused to answer CAMERA's objections to his infamous report. And after the revelation last week that he had offered an op-ed to the New York Times that wasn't published because it offered nothing new, I figured that some event must have triggered his measured reversal less than two weeks later in the Washington Post.

Maurice Ostroff, however knows Richard Goldstone and has been in continuous touch with the judge. He argues that Goldstone is misunderstood and is being misinterpreted.

HAVING BEEN in regular contact with Goldstone since the start of the UN Gaza Mission, my impression is that, contrary to the widely held speculation that his op-ed represents a sudden epiphany, the article merely expresses a continuation of a consistent pattern of the man re-evaluating his opinion as, and when, new information becomes available. 

The following anecdote may help illustrate my point. In November 2009, while delivering a lecture at Yale University, three obviously observant Jews walked into the hall and unfurled a poster that read “Protocols of the Elders of Zion – Dreyfus – Goldstone.” At the reception that followed, Goldstone was approached by one of the three who asked him: “How would you feel if all the allegations made against Israel in your report were proven to be incorrect?” He looked surprised when Goldstone responded: “I would rejoice.”

3) No longer darlings

The  New York Times reports Hero of Egypt’s Revolution, Military Now Faces Critics

Fed up and angry with Egypt’s military rulers, tens of thousands of demonstrators turned out on Friday in Tahrir Square here for one of the largest demonstrations since the former president, Hosni Mubarak, stepped down on Feb. 11. The protest was being called the Friday of Warning. 

Since the military assumed direct control after Mr. Mubarak was forced from power, it has seen its standing as defender of the revolution called into question by actions that reflect the authoritarian tactics of the past rather than a blueprint for a democratic future, many here said. 

The media has started to look at the Muslim Brotherhood more, but still the full implications of its participation in Egypt's pro-democracy protests don't get much attention. However this article doesn't mention the Brotherhood at all. It does explain why Egypt's military wasn't a good bet to change sides. Of course, all those reasons were known earlier. Presumably the military was hoping that releasing some pressure would leave it in control. But this article doesn't mention the Muslim Brotherhood at all. How long will the Brotherhood escape serious scrutiny?


4) Little attention to Syria

Lee Smith writes

What’s peculiar is that given the size of the uprising—people are in the streets of every major Syrian city except Aleppo—and the bravery of the demonstrators, there’s been little attention paid to it. 

After all, these are not Egyptian security forces under the command of a U.S. ally like former president Hosni Mubarak. Any Syrian who steps out into the street understands that if security forces have a clear shot, they’ll take it, and no one is going to stop them, certainly not the regime, and not fear of repercussions from the international press either. The same Western and Arab media that covered the Egyptian uprising as it unfolded is all but absent from Syria.

Nick Cohen provides a rationale for this oversight.

Logistics as much as infantile leftism produced the ideology of Middle Eastern commentary. Israel was the only story in the region journalists could cover daily. Rather than stop pretending to be omniscient and admit their limitations to the viewer, rather than show common human feeling and think of the silenced millions, journalists pretended that Israel was the region's only story because it was the source of the region's ills. The effect was anti-Semitic because the Jew once again was depicted as a supernatural figure with the diabolic power to create suffering on an epic scale. That narrow, prejudiced world of Middle Eastern commentary went up in flames when the Arab revolutionaries threw their first Molotovs. Whatever happens next, its loss will be no loss at all.

Maybe not a rationale, but still it explains quite a bit. Israel receives the often negative coverage it receives because it is easy to cover Israel. It is easy to judge Israel. Not so with Syria. The risks of reporting are too high, so Assad can repress in relative comfort.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Gaza and Hamas and Operation Cast Lead.