Mideast Media Sampler 09/05/2011

From DG:

1) Protests




The Washington Post reported on the September 3 protests:

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis returned to the streets in cities across the country Saturday night to protest the high cost of living, showing the resilience of a social justice movement eclipsed last month by security concerns after deadly attacks in southern Israel.
Police estimated that more than 300,000 people participated nationwide, but media reports from across the country said that more than 400,000 joined demonstrations in more than a dozen cities and towns — the most since the protests began two months ago.
The protest was one of the biggest in Israel’s history.

Coverage by Isabel Kershner of the New York Times Summer of Protest in Israel Peaks With 400,000 in City Streets was slightly more detailed.

The mass protest across the country had been planned for weeks and was considered by many to be the grand finale of the street phase of the social dissent that has swept Israel this summer. Organizers initially billed it as a million-person march, but had tried to lower expectations over the last few days, saying that it would be considered a success if the turnout equaled the 300,000 people who took to the streets on Aug. 6. 
The police estimated that more than 300,000 people turned out on Saturday night, but a company monitoring the turnout for the Israeli news media said the total was about 400,000, with almost 300,000 gathering in Tel Aviv alone. Tens of thousands more rallied in Jerusalem, Haifa and other cities. 

Interesting that Kershner notes that despite an impressive showing of 300,000 protesters, it was below the original expectations of the organizers. However she doesn't mention the possibility that attendance was driven, in part, by the concerts offered.

The police have given the organizers a permit to hold a mass rally at Kikar Hamedina after the march sets out at Habima Square.  
Eyal Golan and Shalom Hanoch are among singers expected to appear at the rally. Other performers have also been asked to take part.  

While earlier reports in the American newspapers stressed the supposed non-partisan nature of the protests, neither the Washington Post nor the New York Times have been more subtle on that angle this time.  Kershner wrote:

On Saturday, the main rally in Tel Aviv began with a march and ended in Kikar Hamedina, a broad traffic circle and park lined with luxury stores. Television commentators noted that not one display window was broken; these Israeli protests, largely driven by the middle class, have been carnival-like and nonviolent. 
“This square is filled with the new Israelis who would die for this country, but who expect you, Mr. Prime Minister, to let us live in this country,” Itzik Shmuli, the chairman of the National Union of Students and a leader of the protest movement, said from the stage at the Tel Aviv rally. 
Daphne Leef, 25, the young woman who pitched the first tent in Tel Aviv in mid-July and invited friends to join her on Facebook, told the crowd that the fact that her generation had stood up and raised its voice was “nothing short of a miracle — the miracle of the summer of 2011.” 

By now Daphne Leef's politics are well known, so despite mentioning "middle class" the pretense of non-partisanship is mostly absent from this report. This is a point emphasized by Arutz-7:

Press reports at around 10:00 p.m. Saturday evening estimated the total number of protesters at anywhere between 100,000 and 400,000. This would be the rough equivalent of the number of people represented by three to thirteen seats in the Knesset.

The protesters are mostly secular people and the participation of nationalists in the summer-long protest wave has gradually lessened, as details emerge of left-wing involvement in their organization. In Jerusalem, Channel 2 reporter Dafna Liel said most of the protesters are secular people. Liel's mother, Rachel Liel, is Director of the New Israel Fund, which has assisted the protests.

How did the New York Times cover the One Jerusalem protest in 2001? Deborah Sontag reported in Israelis Protest Plan to Divide Jerusalem

Crowd estimates are always inflated and deflated by politics, but this appeared to be one of the largest Israeli rallies alongside the Old City walls in decades. The police gave no figures. Israel's Channel Two put the crowd at more than 100,000. Mayor Ehud Olmert — a principal organizer along with Natan Sharansky, the Russian immigrant leader — announced to great cheers that there were 400,000 participants present. 
"I have never been so deeply moved as I am now to see all of you so pressed together here in the streets of Jerusalem, so excited and enthusiastic," Mayor Olmert said. "This is not a political rally. This is the expression of the deep emotional link of the people of Israel to our eternal and undivided capital." 
If not overtly political, the rally's sponsors and its participants tended to be conservative. In addition to Mr. Olmert and Mr. Sharansky, the founding committee of One Jerusalem included David Bar-Ilan, who was spokesman for Benjamin Netanyahu when he was prime minister; Dore Gold, the United Nations ambassador under Mr. Netanyahu; Tom Rose, publisher of The Jerusalem Post; and Jackie Mason, the American comedian. 

A few things stand out. When editorial opinion is skeptical of the cause, the numbers attending are subject to more scrutiny and the political affiliation of the organizers becomes an issue too.




2) Framing the narrative - Turkey and PA editions




A paragraph in the New York Times coverage of the Palmer report Report Finds Naval Blockade by Israel Legal but Faults Raid sticks out:

The 105-page report, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, was completed months ago. But its publication was delayed several times as Turkey and Israel sought to reconcile their deteriorating relationship and perhaps avoid making the report public. In reactions from both governments included in the report, as well as in interviews, each objected to its conclusions. Both said they believed that the report, which was intended to help mend relations, would instead make reconciliation harder. 

The premise here is that reconciliation between Israel and Turkey are 1) possible 2) a laudable goal and 3) would be possible if not for the Israel raid on the Mavi Marmara. But Barry Rubin writes, that this isn't the case at all:

The “Godfather” film coined a famous phrase: To make someone an offer they can’t refuse. But in diplomacy there’s the opposite phenomen: To send someone an ultimatum you know they can’t accept. An example of the latter is recent Turkish government diplomacy toward (or should I say, against?) Israel. 
Its ultimatum demanded Israel apologize for Turkish citizens killed in the Mavi Marmara confrontation, pay compensation, and end all sanctions against the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. This is in spite of the fact that those killed were radical Islamist jihadis who openly spoke beforehand of happily dying if they could kill Israeli soldiers and about massacring all Jews. As for the sanctions, they are against a terrorist group openly declaring its goal of genocide against both Israel and Jews in general and which has repeatedly attacked Israel.
Since Israel refused to surrender to this ultimatum, the Turkish (Islamist) government has expelled Israel’s ambassador just as the new, Palmer report on the Gaza Flotilla incident is released. But while the report claims Israel used excessive force–what is the proper amount of force to use on jihadis with weapons who advocate genocide against you?–it also concluded that the blockade is completely legal and that the flotilla activists acted recklessly. In other words, the Turkish regime demands Israel apologize and pay compensation for those who committed an illegal act in order to harm it. 
During the negotiations, some high-ranking Israeli officials wanted to apologize; others didn’t. But it became clear that the Turkish regime kept increasing its demands to ensure there would be no deal. It wanted a pretext for bashing Israel and reducing relations. Israeli tourism to Turkey has already plummeted but is still valuable; bilateral trade had actually increased. 

While a reconciliation between Israel and Turkey would be a positive development, the deterioration is not due to any Israeli action but to the radicalization of Turkey's government. So while the Mavi Marmara raid is the pretext the Turkish government uses for downgrading its relations with Israel, it is only that, a pretext. By presenting the conflict between Israel and Turkey as a function of the Mavi Marmara raid, the New York Times is accepting Turkey's narrative and putting the onus of reconciliation solely upon Israel.




We see a similar narrative - in that it's critical of Israel - in yesterday's New York Times report U.S. Is Appealing to Palestinians to Stall U.N. Vote

Senior officials said the administration wanted to avoid not only a veto but also the more symbolic and potent General Assembly vote that would leave the United States and only a handful of other nations in the opposition. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic maneuverings, said they feared that in either case a wave of anger could sweep the Palestinian territories and the wider Arab world at a time when the region is already in tumult. President Obama would be put in the position of threatening to veto recognition of the aspirations of most Palestinians or risk alienating Israel and its political supporters in the United States. 

The (implicit) premises here are 1) the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state is a good thing 2) opposing it is the same as opposing the democratic aspirations of the Arab world and 3) supporting Israel in this matter is antithetical to supporting freedom and independence as well as isolating the United States diplomatically.




What makes this more disturbing than the article about Turkey is that this doesn't seem to be just the view of the reporters for the New York Times, but the views of some number of America's diplomats. Again let me quote Barry Rubin, who presents a much different (not to mention undistorted) perspective:

Consider that the United States is on the verge of a foreign policy disaster that could easily have been averted by proper statecraft. The Palestinian Authority (PA, technically speaking, along with its Hamas partner) is about to demand that the United Nations break every Israel-Palestinian agreement over almost twenty years, destroy any possibility of serious future negotiation, reward Palestinian intransigence, and generally make a mess of the Middle East.
The specific issue is recognition of a Palestinian state as existing right now. The result, as I’ve outlined previously, would be catastrophic and don’t let anyone get away with pretending that this isn’t a bad thing or won’t make much difference. 
A “normal” U.S. policy would have begun pressing the PA to back down from this strategy almost a year ago, when PA leaders began talking about it. Rather than take quick action—or, indeed, punish, pressure, or even criticize the PA for anything it did—the Obama Administration stood by and made disapproving murmurs from time to time.
We are now facing the consequences of the policy of: let’s be weak so people like us; leading from behind; not rewarding friends or punishing enemies,; refusing to use U.S. leverage (Turkey votes against sanctions on Iran? Let’s put them in charge of Syria’s future!); and generally letting other countries walk all over the United States. I’d love to list other examples of similar issues here but don’t want to take your time so you can fill in the additional details. 

It is a measure of the Obama administration's incompetence that it isn't clear what America's interests, friends and enemies are. Thus it is impossible for the United States to wield much influence in world affairs.




3) International law again




As noted before, the contents of the Palmer report have been made public and the report found Israel's blockade to be legal and appropriate. The term "legal" is unambiguous. Yet, in the past 15 months there has been plenty of commentary to the contrary. Consider a New York Times "Room for Debate" feature Rethinking the Gaza Blockade from June 2010. Precisely one of the eight viewpoints featured advocated maintaining the blockade as it was. But if it the blockade is legal and appropriate, what is the purpose of this debate? To change the meaning of "legal?" And if the participants don't know international law, why in the world should they be debating?




The International Committee of the Red Cross - an organization that discriminates against the Mogen David Adom and that hasn't demanded its representatives meet with Gilad Shalit - also declared the blockade to be illegal. But it isn't.




I guess what I'm asking is: does international law represent a universal standard or is it infinitely elastic conforming to the diplomatic, journalistic and academic fashions of the day?

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