Mideast Media Sampler 06/06/2011

From an email from DG:

1) Hama rules revisited

Thomas Friedman is famous for inventing the phrase Hama Rules, which means in the Middle East the only rule is there are no rules.

He invented the phrase to describe how Syrian President Hafez Assad killed 20,000 people to put down an uprising in 2002. In recent years we've seen similar brutality in (among other places) Iran, Libya and Syria, but regarding which country has Thomas Friedman most recently seen Hama rules in the past 12 months? Need I ask?

Israel today is enjoying another timeout because it recently won three short wars — and then encountered one pleasant surprise. The first was a war to dismantle the corrupt Arafat regime. The second was the war started by Hezbollah in Lebanon and finished by a merciless pounding of Shiite towns and Beirut suburbs by the Israeli Air Force. The third was the war to crush the Hamas missile launchers in Gaza. 

What is different about these three wars, though, is that Israel won them using what I call “Hama Rules” — which are no rules at all. “Hama Rules” are named after the Syrian town of Hama, where, in 1982, then-President Hafez el-Assad of Syria put down a Muslim fundamentalist uprising by shelling and then bulldozing their neighborhoods, killing more than 10,000 of his own people. 

He's portrayed the younger Assad's regime as foolish not evil -

There is a story making the rounds among Lebanese Facebook users about a Syrian democracy activist who was stopped at a Syrian Army checkpoint the other day. He reportedly had a laptop and a thumb drive on the seat next to him. The Syrian soldier examined them and then asked the driver: “Do you have a Facebook?” “No,” the man said, so the soldier let him pass. 

You have to feel sorry for that Syrian soldier looking for a Facebook on the front seat, but it’s that kind of regime. Syria really doesn’t know what’s hit it — how the tightest police state in the region could lose control over its population, armed only with cellphone cameras and, yes, access to Facebook and YouTube. 

Israel gets the honor of being compared to Syria of Hafez Assad, even as his own son is attempting to relive his father's glory.

This shows two aspects of Friedman's MO.

1) He comes up with a catchy phrase that purports to explain everything and it does, until he gets bored with it. Sometimes he uses it again if it serves his purposes.

2) He plays down the brutality with which Iran, Libya and now Syria have put down or attempted to put down legitimate protests shows Friedman demonstrating that has a deficient moral compass. That he accuses Israel of Hama rules when Israel was a) responding to threats and b) attempted to reduce collateral damage, showing that his compass always points to "Israel wrong.

Friedman's shallowness and hostility to Israel could be laughed off except

1) According to this "Insider's Poll" at the National Journal (you have to scroll down), Friedman is listed (above David Brooks and Charles Krauthammer) as the pundit who helps "...to shape your own opinion or worldview." This is a poll of 375 political insiders of both parties, and a significant number of them consider Friedman influential. (I've seen his name on at least one other "most influential pundit" survey

and

2) we now know that President Obama considers his advice important.

2) The "absolute truth" from SANA

The New York Times reported on yesterday's attempt by Syrians to breach Israel's border on the Golan, includes this paragraph (h/t Benjamin Weinthal):

By nightfall, the Syrian news agency SANA reported that 22 protesters had been killed and more than 350 had been wounded. Israeli officials said that they had no information on casualties but suggested that the Syrian figures were exaggerated. 

This has the quality of "when did you stop beating your wife?" SANA - a Syrian government run "news" agency and thus a very interested party - is quoted uncritically, leaving Israeli officials to deny that the claim was true.

Compare with Syrian Army Kills 38 In North, Reports Say

Syrian military forces were reported to have killed 38 people in the northern province of Idlib on Saturday and Sunday, demonstrators and rights activists said, as security forces appeared to redeploy from other towns to join the latest front in the harsh crackdown on a three-month-old popular uprising against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. 

You won't find SANA anywhere in this article, for good reason. SANA isn't credible. (It's also true that SANA may well have not reported about those killed by Syria's military.) So why is SANA report mentioned in an authoritative fashion the article about the attempts to breach Israel's border fence?

Meryl Yourish had similar observations about the AP report.

Now the AP is making the Syrian police into the good guys:

Syrian police are preventing pro-Palestinian marchers from approaching the border with the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, a day after deadly clashes with Israeli troops there.Police have set up a pair of checkpoints near the border area. One is about two miles (five kilometers) away, and the second is just half a mile (one kilometer) away.

A report from the Reform Party of Syria suggest that the setup of the Syria police is extremely cynical.

The Reform Party of Syria has learned today, from intelligence sources close to the Assad regime in Lebanon, that Syrians storming through the Golan Height next to the Quneitra crossing are Syrian farmers who have migrated in recent years from the drought-stricken northeast Syria to the south. Estimates put the number at 250,000 impoverished migrants.Information received cite the regime has paid hundreds of these farmers $1,000 each to show-up and $10,000 to their families should any of them succumb to Israeli fire. In Syria, an average salary is about $200 a month and to these impoverished farmers, such a one-time sum can keep them economically afloat for six months.

Given the nature of the Syrian police state, it's easy to believe that the protesters were allowed if not encouraged to attempt to breach Israel's border.


3) Where's the antisemitism?

Last week Barry Rubin observed that antisemitism has become fashionable again in many precincts and noted that not many seem to care:

Politicians fly to expensive hotels to hold conferences on "tolerance" and "anti-hatred." Big public relations' campaigns are held on these topics. But all this has nothing to do with reality. Extremist groups and ideologies--including Islamism--along with endless incitement against Jews and Israel, including in the most "respectable" media, are creating an atmosphere where antisemitism is permissible, even fashionable.

A recent report in the New York Times Efforts to Ban Circumcision Gain Traction in California demonstrates this obliviousness. (h/t William Daroff) The Times gives a face to the anti-circumcision movement:

Jena Troutman, the mother of two young boys who is promoting the ballot measure in Santa Monica, said she did not think of herself as a crusader against religion. Instead, she views her work as a chance to educate would-be parents against a procedure that “can really do serious damage to the child.” 

“I am just a mom trying to save the little babies,” Ms. Troutman said. “I’d rather be on the beach, but nobody is talking about this, so I have to.” 

Ms. Troutman has run the Web site wholebabyrevolution.com for two years, and she is fond of rattling off sayings like “Your baby is perfect, no snipping required.” Well versed in the stories of circumcisions gone awry, she said the recent death of a New York City toddler who was circumcised at a hospital convinced her that she should push for the ballot measure. 

So this measure is beautiful and wholesome isn't it?

Well actually it isn't. There's a comic book written by the man who wrote the legislation circulating that looks like a modern day blood libel.

Go, read the whole thing, and prepare to scrape your jaw from the floor.  It’s horrifying, nasty, awful, evil stuff.  

The New York Times included a single paragraph about the comic book but with none of the offensive graphics. Just a statement from the ADL.

It's not like the comic book was unknown to all but a few in-the-know bloggers. It had been reported on by both the LA Times and San Francisco Chronicle.

Imagine if the comic book had shown some African American stereotype, would the Times have limited its outrage to a statement by the ADL?


4) Looking for a good outcome

Jackson Diehl has a fascinating column about After Dictators Fall ...

Instead of assuming that the revolutions of the Arab Spring will all lead to freedom and democracy, Diehl looks at one factor that may play a role: the disposition of the ex-dictator? Might a soft landing be better for societies than swift justice?

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