Mideast Media Sampler 09/15/2011

From DG:

1) Other than that the story was accurate


At the end of Beyond embassy attack, Israel senses wider siege the New York Times reported:

But as the months of Arab Spring have turned autumnal, Israel has increasingly become a target of public outrage. Some here say Israel is again being made a scapegoat, this time for unfulfilled revolutionary promises. 
But there is another interpretation, and it is the predominant one abroad — Muslims, Arabs and indeed many around the globe believe Israel is unjustly occupying Palestinian territories, and they are furious at Israel for it. And although some Israelis pointed fingers at Islamicization as the cause of the violence, Egyptians noted Saturday that Islamist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, distanced themselves from Friday’s protests and did not attend, while legions of secular-minded soccer fans were at the forefront of the embassy attacks. 

The tone here is disturbing. First the reporter, Ethan Bronner, establishes that many view Israeli actions as being unjust. What's important is that he then he makes a point of writing that the protests were not driven by the Islamist, Muslim Brotherhood, but by "secular" protesters.


In a Washington Post editorial, Israel is scapegoated again (which makes some good points) the editors of the Washington Post wrote:

The assault on the embassy in Cairo has been condemned by the leaders of Egypt’s popular revolution and by some leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. Both they and Western diplomats blame the ruling military for failing to secure the embassy, and they suspect the omission may have been part of an effort to divert rising public unrest toward a familiar target.

Again, they generally absolve the the Muslim Brotherhood from complicity in the riots and pin blame on the military.


The indispensible MEMRI reports (thanks to Barry Rubin) :

While many in Egypt have condemned the September 9, 2011 attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo,[1] various voices in the Muslim Brotherhood have justified it. They called it an understandable reaction to the Egyptian authorities' "feeble" and "helpless" response to the August 18, 2011 incident on the Egypt-Israel border, in which several Egyptian soldiers were killed.
It should be noted that in the weeks since the incident, the Muslim Brotherhood has taken an active role in stirring up widespread popular protest against Israel. The movement called to reassess the relationship with Israel and the peace agreement with it, and some of its leaders expressed disappointment with Egypt's official response to the August incident, calling for a military reaction commensurate with the Israeli's military action on the border.[2]

A leader of the Brotherhood is also reported to be calling for the abrogation of the peace treaty with Israel. If newspapers would devote the same energies to reporting accurately and analyzing honestly as they do to whitewashing the influence and extremism of the Muslim Brotherhood, the American public would be much better informed.


2) Shouldn't we vet our allies before allying?


The New York Times reports, In Libya, Islamists' growing sway raises questions:

In the emerging post-Qaddafi Libya, the most influential politician may well be Ali Sallabi, who has no formal title but commands broad respect as an Islamic scholar and populist orator who was instrumental in leading the mass uprising.
The most powerful military leader is now Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the former leader of a hard-line group once believed to be aligned with Al Qaeda.
The growing influence of Islamists in Libya raises hard questions about the ultimate character of the government and society that will rise in place of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s autocracy. The United States and Libya’s new leaders say the Islamists, a well-organized group in a mostly moderate country, are sending signals that they are dedicated to democratic pluralism. They say there is no reason to doubt the Islamists’ sincerity. 

Didn't they tell us the same thing about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt?



3) NY 9 and Israel


The New York Times reports, Republicans see ripple in nation's Jewish vote:

I like this paragraph:

Sensing trouble, the Obama campaign and Democratic Party leaders have mobilized to solidify the president’s standing with Jewish voters. The Democratic National Committee has established a Jewish outreach program. The campaign is singling out Jewish groups, donors and other supporters with calls and e-mails to counter the Republican narrative that Mr. Obama is hostile to Israel. 

"Republican narrative?" Who wrote the following?

Obama the timid suddenly turns tough when the “peace process” comes up. He has spoken in public on Syria just twice since its massacres began three months ago. But he chose to spell out U.S. terms for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations without the agreement of Israel’s prime minister, on the eve of meeting him at the White House and with only a few hours’ notice — arguably the most high-handed presidential act in U.S.-Israeli relations since the Eisenhower administration.

The article Why is Obama so tough on Israel and timid on Syria? was written by the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl back in June. Diehl may be less liberal than the editors at the New York Times, but I'd hardly classify him as a Republican.


The editors of the official newspaper of the Democratic Party, are in panic mode. They write in Israel and New York's Ninth District:

Mr. Obama has not handled the Israeli-Palestinian issue adroitly. Palestinians certainly waited too long to begin negotiations, and Arab leaders failed to offer initiatives that might give Israel confidence that a serious deal was possible. But Mr. Netanyahu has been the most intractable, building settlements and blaming his inability to be more forthcoming on his conservative coalition. Egged on by Congressional Republicans, he has sought to embarrass Mr. Obama — astonishing behavior for so close an ally that does not serve his own country’s interest. 

I would agree with the first sentence. But the editors give no sense that it was President Obama's own actions that gave the Palestinians the confidence to avoid negotiations. The New York Times reported on this a few days ago. To be sure, the article was an attempt to deflect blame from Abbas, but it told:

Among Palestinians, the disappointment is all the more acute because their hopes for Mr. Obama were so high. Judging by Mr. Obama’s background, temperament and worldview, Palestinians expected him to bring a new focus to the peace process and a greater sympathy for the Palestinian cause. It did not go unnoticed that he is friends with a prominent Palestinian-American scholar, Rashid Khalidi.
Mr. Obama named a high-profile special envoy to the region, George J. Mitchell Jr. He also spoke empathetically about the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza after an Israeli military campaign against Hamas there. And the president’s demand of Israel that it freeze settlement construction cheered the Palestinians, who believed that would remove a stubborn hurdle to a peace deal.
“We hoped a lot that in his administration, there would be real progress,” said Nabil Shaath, who leads the foreign affairs department of Fatah, the main party of the Palestinian Authority. “But later on, disappointment set in,” Mr. Shaath said in a telephone interview from Ramallah on the West Bank. “He really could not deliver what he promised in terms of a cessation of settlement activity.” 

Contrary to Shaath, Obama did get a settlement freeze from Netanyahu, and while Abbas came to negotiate near the end of the freeze, he made its continuation a condition for his continued participation. Abbas paid no political or diplomatic price for his intransigence. And Netanyahu's lecture was in response to a calculated move by President Obama to embarrass Netanyahu as Jackson Diehl noted above. Netanyahu did not seek the confrontation.


In terms of the Jewish vote, I think that Matthew Knee at Legal Insurrection is correct; it isn't likely to be duplicated. His story about Ira Forman is devastating and its why I think it was a mistake to hire him for outreach to the Jewish community. Forman treats disagreement as a sign of bad faith. Conciliation is not his strong suit. But more damaging than a decline Jewish votes might be a decline in Jewish donations to Democrats.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Middle East.