Washington Post: Condemnation of Israeli Settlements Goes Too Far

Surprisingly, the editorial board of the Washington Post decries the Overheated Rhetoric on Israeli Settlements:

Facing an election in which his most dangerous competition is from the far right, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has adopted a familiar tactic: a flurry of announcements of new construction in Jewish settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank. The predictable result has been a storm of denunciations by the United States and every other member of the U.N. Security Council, along with dire predictions that the new building would “make a negotiated two-state solution . . . very difficult to achieve,” as British Foreign Secretary William Hague put it.

The criticism is appropriate, in the sense that such unilateral action by Israel, like the unilateral Palestinian initiative to seek statehood recognition in November from the U.N. General Assembly, serves to complicate the negotiations that are the only realistic route to a Middle East peace. But the reaction is also counterproductive because it reinforces two mistaken but widely held notions: that the settlements are the principal obstacle to a deal and that further construction will make a Palestinian state impossible.

BEFORE THE MOVIE, READ THE ARTICLE: While we are waiting for the movie version of Joe and Valerie's Excellent Adventure, it pays to separate the fact from the fiction.

Hat Tip: Instapundit

The Washington Post, July 10, 2004:

Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.

The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.

The Washington Post, March 7, 2007:

Mr. Wilson was embraced by many because he was early in publicly charging that the Bush administration had "twisted," if not invented, facts in making the case for war against Iraq. In conversations with journalists or in a July 6, 2003, op-ed, he claimed to have debunked evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger; suggested that he had been dispatched by Mr. Cheney to look into the matter; and alleged that his report had circulated at the highest levels of the administration.

A bipartisan investigation by the Senate intelligence committee subsequently established that all of these claims were false -- and that Mr. Wilson was recommended for the Niger trip by Ms. Plame, his wife. When this fact, along with Ms. Plame's name, was disclosed in a column by Robert D. Novak, Mr. Wilson advanced yet another sensational charge: that his wife was a covert CIA operative and that senior White House officials had orchestrated the leak of her name to destroy her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson.

The partisan furor over this allegation led to the appointment of special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald. Yet after two years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald charged no one with a crime for leaking Ms. Plame's name. In fact, he learned early on that Mr. Novak's primary source was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage, an unlikely tool of the White House. The trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame's identity -- and no evidence that she was, in fact, covert.

It would have been sensible for Mr. Fitzgerald to end his investigation after learning about Mr. Armitage. Instead, like many Washington special prosecutors before him, he pressed on, pursuing every tangent in the case.

You can argue about the war in Iraq and the way that the White House has handled it, but Wilson and Plame's planned movie will take war profiteering to a new level.

Technorati Tag: Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame and Scooter Libby.

October 15, 2006: 3rd Anniversary of the Murder of 3 Americans by Palestinian Terrorists

Three years later, and nothing has been done about it.

Jeff Jacoby reported at the time:

THREE AMERICANS -- John Branchizio, Mark Parson, and John Martin Linde -- were murdered last Wednesday when terrorists in Gaza bombed the diplomatic convoy they were riding in. News accounts immediately described the attack as a first -- "an unprecedented deadly attack on a US target in the Palestinian territories," to quote the Associated Press. But Branchizio, Parson, and Linde were not the first Americans to be murdered by Palestinian terrorists. They were the 49th, 50th, and 51st in the past 10 years alone.

But instead, the murders were downplayed:

USA Today's Arieh O'Sullivan claimed that “the killings reflected a potentially dangerous new escalation in a conflict that for the past half-century has largely treated U.S. officials as bystanders. Terrorist Palestinian groups have generally avoided attacks on U.S. officials.”

The New York Times’ John F. Burns reported that “the bombing was the first fatal attack on an official American target since the current Palestinian uprising began three years ago .... In decades of conflict, attacks on American officials in Israel and the Palestinian territories have been almost unknown, notwithstanding Palestinian militants’anger at American support for Israel.”

Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, and Washington Times’ coverage was similar.

According to CAMERA, these are not the first American officials to be murdered by Palestinian Arabs:

On March 3, 1973, “Black September Organization” gunmen acting for Yasir Arafat's Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization kidnapped and later murdered U.S. Ambassador to Sudan Cleo A. Noel Jr., U.S. diplomat George C. Moore, and a Belgian colleague. Some reports state that National Security Administration communication intercepts show that Arafat approved the kidnapping and the murders (Inside the PLO by Livingstone and Halevy, p. 280; Wall Street Journal, Ion Mihai Pacepa, Jan. 10, 2002)

On Jan. 1, 1977, gunmen reportedly part of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, another P.L.O. faction, kidnapped and murdered U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Frances E. Meloy and U.S. diplomat Robert O. Waring in Beirut.

In addition to U.S. officials, approximately 103 American citizens have been killed, 119 wounded, by Palestinian terrorists in Israel and the disputed territories since 1968. At least 39 have been murdered since the Palestinians rejected the U.S.-Israeli offer of a West Bank and Gaza Strip state and launched the current terror war three years ago. Although many of these victims were not targeted for being Americans, reports stating that the three security guards murdered on October 15 are the first Americans killed by Palestinian terrorists, either following September 29, 2000, or before, are simply wrong.

The Republican Study Committee on December 10, 2003 published a detailed list of American Citizens Killed or Injured by Palestinian Terrorists, stating:

Since Yasser Arafat “renounced” violence in the Oslo Peace Accords on September 13, 1993, at least 52 American citizens, including women and children, have been murdered by Palestinian terrorists, and at least another 83 Americans have been injured.

Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow in terrorism studies at The Washington Institute, wrote on the same day as the murders that other Western diplomats have been targeted by Palestinian terrorists:

there is precedent for Palestinian groups attacking convoys of Western diplomats traveling in Gaza and the West Bank. On December 21, 2002, a Palestinian gunman fired on a German diplomatic vehicle at close range as it drove through Jenin. Similar incidents occurred in February 2001 and November 2002, when Palestinian gunmen fired on Canadian and Danish diplomatic vehicles, respectively.

Levitt specifies cases of anti-American rhetoric and attacks by various Palestinian terrorist groups--

On December 17, 2002, Hamas and Palestinian Islamist Jihad joined together in declaring that "Americans are the enemies of the Palestinian people . . . [and] a target for future attacks." The very next day Hamas declared that "Americans [are] now considered legitimate targets as well as Israelis." In June 2002, there was a chat-room discussion on an official Hamas website considering various options for killing Americans either in Israel or Gaza.

On March 26, 2002, members of Palestinian Islamist Jihad (PIJ) attacked the members of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH). They murdered two observers--Jinjis Twintuk of Turkey and Catherine Broyikes of Switzerland--and injured Hussein Asraslan of Turkey. Two members of PIJ were formally charged with executing the attack, and according to the indictment the terrorists fired at the observers' car even though they identified themselves as TIPH representatives.

When members of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades swore to avenge the arrest of Fatah and al-Aqsa leader Marwan Barghouti, a senior leader of al-Aqsa declared in late April 2002, "Now, American targets are the same as Israeli targets." A month later, on May 1, 2002, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) took credit for detonating a bomb in the garden of the British Council in Gaza City. They claimed it was in retaliantion for the transfer of five PFLP terrorists and a PA official to a Jericho jail where U.S. and British civilian observers were stationed to verify their confinement.

Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch notes anti-American rhetoric in the PA-controlled media leading up to the October 15 murders:

A recent sermon on official PA TV described the US as "the foremost enemy of the Muslim nation" and compared it to Pharaoh of the Bible saying: "There is no God besides me." [PA TV February 21, 2003]

This past Friday, the PA sermon broadcast on official PA TV included the following threats and warnings to the US: "We hear statements by the little American President, oppressive statements. He says Israel has the right to defend itself... These statements carry destruction for America itself... This president sees himself like one who has ascended to the mountaintop and like one expecting someone to push him so that he falls into the abyss, he and his people with him. We warn the American people that this president is dragging them to the abyss... [Allah] take vengeance on Your enemies, our enemies, enemies of religion." [PA TV Sheikh Ibrahim Madiras, Oct. 10, 2003]

A recent sermon on official PA TV told Muslim believers to anticipate the destruction of the US:

"If we go back 1400 years in time, we find that history is repeating itself, worshippers of Allah. The Prophet Mohammed was besieged by two powers, Persia in the east and Rome in the west. These represent the Soviet Union and America of today. Persia represents Russia in the east, and America stands for Rome in the west. Persia fell first in the east, just as Russia fell first in the east, and America will fall, may it be Allah's will, just as Rome fell..." [Official Sermon PA TV, September 5,2003,Sheikh Ibrahim Madiras.]

Clearly, the American diplomats were murdered today by Palestinians fulfilling their role in their war against Americans, as they have been taught by their leaders, through years of hate-mongering and calls for violence against Americans.

In response, the US has done nothing substansive or even symbolic.

Arutz Sheva reported on April 14, 2006:

The United States has enabled the PLO office in Washington to stay open despite the Hamas terrorist group’s rise to power. The US Ambassador to the UN, however, blocked an anti-Israel proposal.

A six-month waiver was enacted by the Bush administration Thursday allowing the PLO’s Washington office to stay open despite the fact that the movement’s Fatah group is responsible for dozens of terrorist attacks and attempts a week in Israel.

That Thursday was April 13. That means the 6-month waiver should be expiring any day now.
Bush will probably sign the waiver again--and it will be the closest thing we have to an American response to the Palestinian murder of Americans.

Crossposted at Israpundit

Technorati Tag: US and Terrorists and Palestinians.

CAIR's Odd 2005 Rating Of The US Congress

Project Vote Smart has a page from 2005 where CAIR evaluates Congressmen.

According to the page:

"CAIR's mission is to enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding."

The following ratings indicate the degree that each elected official supported the interests of the organization in that year.

My Pet Jawa points out the oddity of the rating given to the Congressmen--they either have a rating of 100...or 0, which implies the rating is based on the results of single vote on a particular issue, which would not make for a particularly in-depth evaluation.

Rob at Say Anything discusses this and finds out what the single issue is that CAIR used as the basis of their rating system: The Real ID Act.

According to Wikipedia:

The REAL ID Act of 2005 is Division B of United States Public Law 109-13 (H.R. 1268). This controversial legislation is claimed to deter terrorism by:

* Establishing national standards for state-issued driver's licenses and non-driver's identification cards;
* Waiving laws that interfere with construction of physical barriers at the borders;
* Updating and tightening the laws on application for asylum and deportation of aliens for terrorist activity;
* Introducing rules covering "delivery bonds" (rather like bail bonds, but for aliens that have been released pending hearings);
* Funding some reports and pilot projects related to border security; and
* Changing visa limits for temporary workers, nurses, and Australians.

It might not be obvious at first glance why CAIR is so opposed to this bill. They actually give 2 reasons.

First:

The bill makes it harder for people fleeing persecution to gain asylum in the U.S. In some cases, it may create a situation where an asylum seeker needs documents from the very government they are fleeing to prove their case.

To me, this does not seem like a whopper of a reason for opposing a bill that is designed to help fight the war on terror. Surely in such a rare case as CAIR is describing special allowances can be made.

But there is the second reason why CAIR opposes the bill:

The bill also states: "An alien who is an officer, official, representative or spokesman of the Palestine Liberation Organization is considered, for purposes of this Act, to be engaged in a terrorist activity." If enacted, this would terminate the current high hopes that the new situation in the Palestinian Territories can lead to a just peace.

Joel Mowbray has written extensively about CAIR and its connection with Keith Ellison, who is aiming to be the first Moslem to be elected to Congress. Mowbray writes about CAIR's less than covincing condemnation of terrorism:

Although CAIR has repeatedly condemned "terrorism," it has pointedly refused invitations to do so by naming specific Islamic terrorist organizations. In November 2001, the Washington Post asked a CAIR spokesman to condemn Hamas or Islamic Jihad. He refused, explaining, "It's not our job to go around denouncing." Given a similar opportunity to denounce Hamas and Hezbollah by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in February 2002, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper called such queries a "game," and added, "We're not in the business of condemning."

But for those unfamiliar with the group, CAIR is very much "in the business of condemning"—but only when it comes to TV shows, Israel, or U.S. policy.

Sure enough, CAIR does not consider the PLO--which has killed Americans--to be a terrorist entity.

The only remaining question is how is it that the Real IDT Act was passed into law last year on May 11, 2005--yet Abbas was in the US just 2 weeks later on May 25 seeking American aid.

Probably the same way the US let in Khatami...and Ahmadinejad.

Technorati Tag: CAIR and Real ID Act and PLO.

Actual Study Disputes CAIR-Bears Mearsheimer and Walt

At The Corner, Michael Rubin asks How Important is the Israel Lobby?

And the answer falls short of what CAIR Bears Mearsheimer and Walt claim:

In the academy today, politics of research are more important than the supporting evidence. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt became academic pop stars when they used the internet to research and produce, under Harvard’s banner, a polemic blaming the Israel Lobby for skewing American policy away from Washington’s natural interests.

Now David Verbeeten has done research, not on internet blog, but rather in libraries and archives (imagine that!), and looked at U.S. policy going back to the Eisenhower administration. He shows how the White House and State Department played realpolitik and sought to align U.S. policy with the more numerous and oil-rich Arab states but, over time, successive administrations learned the hard way that Israel was a truer ally.

What’s really sad is that people will take a second mortgage to send their kids to Harvard or Chicago and, so long as their politics are correct for the academy, professors needn’t bother to do their homework.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Israel Lobby and Mearsheimer and Walt.

The Next Time CAIR Screams Discrimination...

Power Line links to a

ludicrous news story comes from Agence France-Presse: an article titled "US Muslims plagued by discrimination after 9/11 attacks."

The AFP piece alleges that:

Discrimination and harassment by law enforcement have come to plague American Muslims in the years since the terrorist attacks of September 11.

There have been suspicious looks, slurs, physical attacks, extra screening at airports and arrests on groundless charges.

And it seems to be getting worse.

"Suspicious" does seem to be the operative word when it comes to these claims.

The FBI tracks such attacks under the label of 'hate crime'. What exactly is a 'hate crime'? :

A hate crime, also known as a bias crime, is a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin.

The FBI breakdown of the hate crime attacks in 2004 based on anti-religious bias, shows that the Jews are far and away the majority victim of religion-based hate attacks.

Bias motivation	Incidents	Offenses	Victims	Known offenders
Anti-Jewish	954	1,003	1,076	330
Anti-Catholic	57	57	68	37
Anti-Protestant	38	43	48	28
Anti-Islamic	156	193	201	124
Anti-Other Religion	128	140	147	68
Anti-Multiple Religions, Group	35	37	39	14
Anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc.	6	7	7	3
Total religion:	1,374	1,480	1,586	604

As Daniel Pipes notes, Jews constitute 69% of the victims of such attacks, while Moslems constitute 11%.

Clearly, the fact that the threat to Jews is greater is not helped by CAIR itself (some of whose board members have been convicted of having connections to terrorist groups) when in August it hosted a forum for Mearsheimer and Walt on the influence of the 'Israel Lobby'.

But Daniel Pipes goes a step further. He examines an annual report put out by CAIR entitled Unequal Protection: The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2005 which the media used as the basis at the time to come out with headlines about the dramatic rise in anti-Moslem hate crime.

Only one problem, according to Pipes:

We examined in detail some "examples of anti-Muslim hate crime reports received by CAIR in 2004," on p. 43, plus some "samples" on p. 53 and discovered a pattern of sloppiness, exaggeration, and distortion:

1. CAIR cites the July 9, 2004 case of apparent arson at a Muslim-owned grocery store in Everett, Washington. But investigators quickly determined that Mirza Akram, the store's operator, staged the arson to avoid meeting his scheduled payments and to collect on an insurance policy. Although Akram's antics were long ago exposed as a fraud, CAIR continues to list this case as an anti-Muslim hate crime.

2. CAIR also states that "a Muslim-owned market was burned down in Texas" on August 6, 2004. But already a month later, the owner was arrested for having set fire to his own business. Why does CAIR include this incident in its report?

3. CAIR lists the March 2005 lawsuit filed by the Salmi family for the firebombing of their family van as one example of a hate crime report it received in 2004. However, the crime named in the lawsuit occurred in March 2003, was already reported by CAIR in 2003, and should not have been tabulated again in the 2004 report.

4. CAIR reports that "a home-made bomb exploded outside of the Champions Mosque in the Houston suburb of Spring, Texas," staking its claim on eyewitness reports that on July 4, 2004, "two white males" were seen placing the bomb. We inquired about the incident and found that Spring's sheriff department could not locate any police files about an explosion. Further inquiries to the mosque and an e-mail to CAIR both went unanswered. There is scant evidence that any crime even occurred.

5. CAIR notes that "investigators in Massachusetts are still investigating a potential hate-motivated arson against the Al-Baqi Islamic Center in Springfield." However the case was long ago ruled a simple robbery, news that even CAIR's own website has posted. The Associated Press reported on January 21, 2005, that prosecutors determined the fire was set by teen-age boys "who broke into the Al-Baqi mosque to steal money and candy, then set the fire to cover their tracks." The boys, they clarified, "weren't motivated by hatred toward Muslims."

6. CAIR describes what happened to a Muslim family in Tucson, Arizona: "bullet shots pierced their home as they ate dinner in October 2004" and two months later their truck was smashed and vandalized. But the only evidence that either incident was motivated by hate of Muslims is the Dehdashti family itself, not the police. Detective Frank Rovi of Pima County Sheriff's Department, who handled the shooting investigation, said that according to the neighbors, the desert area by the Dehdashti house was often used for target practice. Neither incident was classified as a hate crime and both cases were closed by February 2005, long before the CAIR report went to press. [emphasis added]
   

Of twenty "anti-Muslim hate crimes" in 2004 that CAIR describes, at least six are invalid – and further research could likely find problems with the other fourteen instances.

Pipes goes on to give further examples.

In a follow-up post, Pipes notes that NPR did a segment on the problems with the methodology used by different groups in general to track and report bias attacks. The audio of the report is available from the NPR site. The reporter, Mike Pesca, notes that

any bias incident, from a Muslim being yelled at from a passing car, to a Muslim being profiled on a plane, can wind up in CAIR's report.

Pipes also has a post that refers to 2 posts by Michelle Malkin back in 2003--Myth of the Muslim hate crime epidemic and More Muslim hate crime myths about false accounts of hate crimes against Moslems.

The plague that the AFP report refers to is actually a plague of falsely attributed hate crimes that CAIR does not admit--let alone denounce--even after the deceit is revealed. According to The American Thinker last month:

To date, so far as I can tell, not only has CAIR not apologized for falsely accusing non-Muslims of hatred and bias in the respective communities where these hate crime hoaxes occurred, but the press releases on CAIR’s website go uncorrected even after the truth is revealed. For instance, a press release related to a staged hate crime in McAllen, Texas still appears today without any correction or update whatsoever, even though multiple media outlets, including even the New York Times, had debunked the incident as a hate crime hoax perpetrated by the “victim” almost two years ago.

The staging of hate crimes continues in July 2006--as the same article from The American Thinker describes in detail.

Besides the issue of hate crimes being staged, CAIR itself has dabbled in the kind of fake photography that would make Reuters proud. As reported in Jihad Watch on September 15 of last year, hijabs were photoshopped onto 2 women--and a man--at an interfaith vigel.

Photoshopped Photo	Actual Photo

CAIR does know how to keep itself busy.

Technorati Tag: CAIR and Islamophobia and ReutersGate.

Muslim Baalei Teshuva in America

Geneive Abdo, liaison for the Alliance of Civilizations at the United Nations and author of Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America After 9/11, has written a piece for the Washington Post that may not be reassuring.

According to the Amazon review of her book:

The younger generation of Muslims in particular is charting a different way of life. They are following new imams and placing their Muslim identity before their American one.

This is the theme of her article for the Washington Post as well, America's Muslims Aren't as Assimilated as You Think:

If only the Muslims in Europe -- with their hearts focused on the Islamic world and their carry-on liquids poised for destruction in the West -- could behave like the well-educated, secular and Americanizing Muslims in the United States, no one would have to worry.

So runs the comforting media narrative that has developed around the approximately 6 million Muslims in the United States, who are often portrayed as well-assimilated and willing to leave their religion and culture behind in pursuit of American values and lifestyle. But over the past two years, I have traveled the country, visiting mosques, interviewing Muslim leaders and speaking to Muslim youths in universities and Islamic centers from New York to Michigan to California -- and I have encountered a different truth. I found few signs of London-style radicalism among Muslims in the United States. At the same time, the real story of American Muslims is one of accelerating alienation from the mainstream of U.S. life, with Muslims in this country choosing their Islamic identity over their American one.

According to Abdo, this is due not only to the overall resurgence of Islam worldwide, but also--paradoxically--a result of 9-11, which has led American Muslims to feel more isolated on the one hand, but also has pushed them to rediscover Islam.

From schools to language to religion, American Muslims are becoming a people apart. Young, first-generation American Muslim women -- whose parents were born in Egypt, Pakistan and other Islamic countries -- are wearing head scarves even if their mothers had left them behind; increasing numbers of young Muslims are attending Islamic schools and lectures; Muslim student associations in high schools and at colleges are proliferating; and the role of the mosque has evolved from strictly a place of worship to a center for socializing and for learning Arabic and Urdu as well as the Koran.

In a sense, on some level you might even call them Ba'alei Teshuva.

But in keeping to that comparison--everything depends on the Rebbe you follow:

Imam Zaid Shakir -- who teaches at San Francisco's Zaytuna Institute, America's only true madrassa -- refers to such young Muslims as the "rejectionist generation." They are rejectionist, he says, because they turn their backs not only on absolutist religious interpretations, but also on America's secular ways. Many of these young American Muslims look to Shakir (and to celebrated Zaytuna founder Hamza Yusuf) for guidance on how to live pious lives in the United States.

According to the New York Times, in an article on both of these men:

Both Mr. Shakir and Mr. Yusuf have a history of anti-American rhetoric, but with age, they have tempered their views. Mr. Shakir told the Houston audience that they are blessed to live in a country that is stable and safe, and in which they have thrived.

The question is: how tempered are those views and how does that view reflect itself in the Islam that they teach.

While leading a mosque in New Haven in 1992, Mr. Shakir wrote a pamphlet that cautioned Muslims not to be co-opted by American politics. He wrote, "Islam presents an absolutist political agenda, or one which doesn't lend itself to compromise, nor to coalition building."

While he did not denounce Muslims who take part in politics, he pointed out the effectiveness of "extrasystemic political action" — like the "armed struggle" that brought about the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan. A copy of the pamphlet was found in the apartment of a suspect in the first World Trade Center bombing, in 1993. Mr. Shakir says he was questioned by the F.B.I., but had no link to the man, and that was the end of it.

While studying in Syria a few years later, he visited Hama, a city that had tried to revolt against the Syrian ruler, Hafez al-Assad. Mr. Shakir said he saw mass graves and bulldozed neighborhoods, and talked with widows of those killed. He gave up on the idea of armed struggle, he said, "just seeing the reality of where revolution can end."

The impression you get from Shakir's words is that he gave up the idea of armed struggle for purely pragmatic reasons. But that does not mean he has given up on the idea of the struggle itself--or its goals: the takeover of the US.

He said he still hoped that one day the United States would be a Muslim country ruled by Islamic law, "not by violent means, but by persuasion."

"Every Muslim who is honest would say, I would like to see America become a Muslim country," he said. "I think it would help people, and if I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be a Muslim. Because Islam helped me as a person, and it's helped a lot of people in my community."

Maybe we just need more honest Moslems.
Or maybe they need different Rebbes.

Technorati Tag: Islam and Zaid Shakir and Hamza Yusuf.

Mearsheimer and Walt Meet CAIR

Here we have two guys who have written about the Israel Lobby and how it has inordinate control over the US, which sacrifices its own interests for those of Israel--and who do these two great scholars go speak in front of?

CAIR-DC: 'Israel Lobby' Press Club Panel 'Sold Out'

Mearsheimer, Walt to discuss lobby's impact on U.S. response to Lebanon war

DC: 'ISRAEL LOBBY' PRESS CLUB PANEL 'SOLD OUT'

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 8/22/06) - The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced today that all the available spaces for a panel discussion on "The Israel Lobby and the U.S. Response to the War in Lebanon" at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., have been reserved.

The panel will feature Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of a recent Harvard University paper titled "The Israel Lobby."

If Mearsheimer and Walt need a proper introduction to CAIR, they couldn't do any better than take a look at the Anti-CAIR site: the one that CAIR sued--and then dropped their suit.

After hearing the claims that Mearsheimer and Walt made, and then to see them go and address CAIR--who epitomize everything that the two of them have claimed to be opposed to--is as good an indication as any of the emptiness of their claims.

While looking around, I noticed that Judeosphere has already dealt with the implications of this meeting of the minds in a post on his blog.

I'll just add my own too cents on the absurdity of Mearsheimer's and Walt's paper in light of who they like to associate with.

According to Anti-CAIR:

Sept. 2003 Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security U.S. Senator Richard Durbin said, "[CAIR is] unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are suspect" whule U.S. Senator Charles Schumer has stated that "we know [CAIR] has ties to terrorism" and "intimate links with Hamas"

On its home page, Anti-CAIR also notes:

Since its founding in 1994, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and its employees have combined, conspired, and agreed with third parties, including, but not limited to, the Islamic Association for Palestine ("IAP"), the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development ("HLF"), the Global Relief Foundation ("GRF "), and foreign nationals hostile to the interests of the United States, to provide material support to known terrorist organizations, to advance the Hamas agenda, and to propagate radical Islam. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, and certain of its officers, directors, and employees, have acted in support of, and in furtherance of, this conspiracy.

On that last point, Anti-CAIR give the specifics on five employees and officers of CAIR--not just members--who have supported terror.

Meanwhile, Daniel Pipes has information on a class action lawsuit in the name of John P. O'Neill, Sr., stemming from 9/11 which has named the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a defendant.

Hey, if Mearsheimer and Walt want to give credibility to CAIR, no one is going to stop them. But by showing what they are really made of, Mearsheimer and Walt have lost whatever credibility they may have still had.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Mearsheimer and CAIR.

The Many Uses of Jimmy Carter

"There you go again."
Reagan to Carter during 1980 debate

Jimmy Carter is clearly handy to have around.

The Palestinians know Carter is always good for approving flawed elections.
The Nobel Prize committee know Carter is good for a slap in the face to Bush.
The Washington Post knows that Carter is good for an anti-Bush diatribe.
Der Spiegel knows a good thing and gets some good mileage out of Carter as well.

SPIEGEL: You also mentioned the hatred for the United States throughout the Arab world which has ensued as a result of the invasion of Iraq. Given this circumstance, does it come as any surprise that Washington's call for democracy in the Middle East has been discredited?

Carter: No, as a matter of fact, the concerns I exposed have gotten even worse now with the United States supporting and encouraging Israel in its unjustified attack on Lebanon.

SPIEGEL: But wasn't Israel the first to get attacked?

Carter: I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza. I do not think that's justified, no.

Entire nation...civilian population
Is Carter in the running for Secretary General of the UN?

10,000 prisoners?
Well, if terrorists are militants, I guess when captured they become mere prisoners.

when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers...
Rockets, missiles, and threats to destroy Israel are irrelevant and need not be mentioned.

Not for nothing does Carter say:

I think most people believe that enough time has passed so that historical facts can be ignored.

True, past history--events--can be put behind us. If not, disagreements, conflicts and wars would never be brought to resolution.

But history cannot be merely ignored. And surely not historical facts.

Aside from history, it can easily be argued, based on Carter's general and context-free statements, that even contemporary events are beyond his grasp.

Worse, Carter believes that he has his finger on the pulse of Americans who have a similarly simplistic view of the world

I think I represent the vast majority of Democrats in this country. I think there is a substantial portion of American people that completely agree with me. I can't say a majority because we have fragmented portions in our country and divisions concerning gun control and the death penalty and abortion and gay marriage. [emphasis added]

I don't know how many people 'completely agree' with Jimmy Carter, but one thing is obvious--newspapers around the world adore him.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Jimmy Carter and Der Spiegel.

Media Fakery Goes Beyond Israel

Writing in the Washington Times, Joel Mowbray notes:

But while the widespread use of Arab locals in covering the Middle East raises many legitimate concerns, the Palestinian propaganda machine has enjoyed tremendous success over the years hoodwinking supposedly sophisticated Western journalists. And Hezbollah appears to have done the same over the past month.

It is easy to forget that Israel actually is not the only victim of faked photos. Glenn Harlan Reynolds reminds us:

We've seen this kind of fakery before, of course, and not just where Israel is concerned. The Boston Globe ran fake rape photos purporting to show U.S. troops raping Iraqi women. The photos turned out to come from a Hungarian porn site. Nor does the fakery stop with photos. Rutten's own L.A. Times ran a nasty piece about Paul Bremer's departure from Iraq, saying that he didn't even give a farewell speech and suggesting that he was afraid to look Iraqis in the eye. In fact, Bremer had given a speech that was nationally televised in Iraq. As columnist John Leo observed in response to this bit of bogosity: "What's new about the press is that so many people who follow it with a critical eye now have an outlet to howl about inaccuracy and partisanship. The big media used to be able to shrug off critics like this. Now they can't."

We've mentioned his recurring parallel between Israel on the one hand and the US in Iraq in a previous post on the problem of the reliance on 'fixers' by the media in both Israel and Iraq.

The media consistently shows itself to be a willing pawn of Islamists and those who oppose Democracy in the region. But which came first, their hatred of Bush and Israel, or their fawning--yet fearful--attitude towards the Islamists?

Technorati Tag: Israel and Media Bias and Iraq and US.

Olmert Accepts Blame For Operation's 'Failings'

That's the title of the Washington Post article this morning:

"There have been failings and shortcomings," Olmert, with deep circles under his eyes and a haggard look on his face, told a special session of the Israeli parliament. "We need to examine ourselves in all aspects and all areas. We will not sweep anything under the table, we will not hide anything. We must ensure that next time things will be done better."

Only one thing missing--where does Olmert accept blame? Much later in the article, it is clear that,to his credit, Olmert does in fact accept full responsibility for Israel's failure against Hezbollah:

"The responsibility for this operation lies with me," the prime minister said during his address before the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. "I am not asking to share this responsibility with anyone whatsoever.

Still it is disheartening to hear Olmert say "we must ensure that next time things will be done better," which many Israelis will blame on Israel's failure to deal Hezbollah a decisive blow:

The anguish, disappointment and confusion are widespread among soldiers who believe their leadership sent them to war unprepared, among residents of northern Israel who say their government abandoned its most vulnerable citizens, and among a public that believes its prime minister has left them open to future attack by agreeing to a cease-fire many think is not permanent. (emphasis added)

Olmert has even lost the backing of the media in Israel which has not hesitated to publish countless negative interviews with civlians matched by equally critical evaluations by the Israeli media itself.

In the end, he is reduced to claiming that the IDF "has struck a major blow to this murderous organization," while at the same time admitting that "the extent is not known."

At least Olmert has stopped trumpeting his intent to follow the Convergence Plan--and for good reason, according to the Jerusalem Post:

A month and a half ago, the IDF and police were preparing to dismantle three settler outposts, a dress rehearsal for Olmert's master-plan, realignment. Few believe that in the current public climate, especially since the settlers' share in the war's death-toll has been so high, Olmert can go ahead with what was the main plank of his electoral platform.

Painful retreats and peace-plans are only possible under popular prime ministers - Menachem Begin with the Egyptian treaty, Yitzhak Rabin at Oslo and Ariel Sharon and his disengagement. A discredited prime minister going ahead with such a controversial plan, whatever its merits, is a recipe for chaos and even civil war. And without realignment, the entire justification for Olmert's premiership will have dissolved. Less than six months since the election and once this war is over, Olmert's sole aim will be to survive as PM. The moment that happens to a prime minister, it's a sure sign that the countdown to his departure has begun.

Israel was supposed to have learned from the Yom Kippur War.
Now she is supposed to learn from her failure in this war against Hezbollah.
How many such opportunities can Israel safely endure?

Technorati Tag: Israel and Olmert and Lebanon and Hizbollah and Hezbollah.

Scowcroft and the Myth of Israeli Responsibility for Mideast Unrest

The Best of the Web notes that on October 25 last year, the following appeared in The Washington Post about Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor to Presidents Gerald Ford and H. W. Bush:

Scowcroft, in his interview, discussed an argument over Iraq he had two years ago with Condoleezza Rice, then-national security adviser and current secretary of state. "She says we're going to democratize Iraq, and I said, 'Condi, you're not going to democratize Iraq,' and she said, 'You know, you're just stuck in the old days,' and she comes back to this thing that we've tolerated an autocratic Middle East for fifty years and so on and so forth," he said. The article stated that with a "barely perceptible note of satisfaction," Scowcroft added: "But we've had fifty years of peace." [emphasis added]

In response to Scowcroft's satisfaction that there have been 50 years of peace among the autocratic rulers in the Mideast, James Taranto points out:

Now let's see. Between 1953 and 2003, here are the Mideast wars we can think of off the top of our head: the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War, the two Palestinian intifadas against Israel, the Algerian Civil War, the Yemen Civil War and two Sudanese civil wars. That doesn't even count acts of terror against non-Mideastern countries, from the Iranian invasion of the U.S. Embassy to the attacks of 9/11.

Now you can argue that Scowcroft was speaking only in terms of Arab conflicts and not those based on wars with Israel, which brings the number of conflicts down, but Raphael Patai, has his own list--which does not include Israel--counting just from 1970 to 1983, which he lists in a chapter he added to an updated version of his The Arab Mind in 1983:

1. Intermittent disputes involving border warfare and assassinations between South Yemen on the one hand, and North Yemen and Saudi Arabia, on the other since the early 1970's. A brief but fierce border war between the two Yemens took place as recently as March, 1979.

2. A major and bloody, albeit brief, conflict between Jordan and Palestinian guerillas in 1970, complicated by Syrian intevention.

3. Fighting between the Kurds and the Iraqis, which lasted several yesrs.

4. A bloody conflict between Northern and Southern Sudan, 1956-1972.

5. Clashes between South Yemen and Oman, linked to the Dhofar rebellion, 1972-1976.

6. A tripartite confict between Algeria on the one hand and Morocco and Mauritania, on the other, over the control of the former Spanish Sahara, beginning in 1976 and subsequently transformed into guerrilla warfare against Morocco by the Polisario, the freedom fighters of the Western Sahara, supported by Algeria and Libya, which was still in progrss in 1982.

7. Intermittent hostility, and actual border fighting, including air attacks, between Egypt and Libya in 1977.

8. The Lebanese civil war, which began in 1975, involving two outside parties, Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organization, still unresolved in early 1982.

9. The invasion of Chad by Libya in 1980.

10. The war between Iraq and Iran, wich began in the fall of 1980, in which Iraq is supported by Jordan and Iran by Syria, making it in effect, an inter-Arab conflict. It was still in progress in early 1982.

11. In February, 1982, a conflict flared up between the Syrian government and Muslim fundamentalists in the Syrian city of Hama, in which several thousands were killed and major parts of Hama were destroyed. [p.357-358]

Now on July 30, Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor to Presidents Gerald Ford and H. W. Bush, wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post about the potential opportunity for resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs based on the current war in Lebanon.

Besides some debatable assumptions about what Israel and the Palestinian Arabs can come to agreement on--unless Scowcroft is relying on international pressure on Israel to paper over their differences--Scowcroft still thinks Israel is the initial domino that will set everything else aright:

The benefits of reaching a comprehensive settlement of the root cause of
today's turmoil would likely ripple well beyond the Israelis and the
Palestinians. [emphasis added]

History clearly shows the capability of the Arab world to generate massacres and enormous bloodshed among themselves without recourse to Israel as a spark. Currently, the source of instability in the Mideast is Iran's drive towards Muslim leadership, now manifesting itself through its Hezbollah proxy attacking Israel, with whom Iran has no border and no real issue. This, as part of the growing Islamist threat, should direct the world's attention away from attempts at simplistic solutions focused purely on the Palestinian Arabs and instead towards the genuine threat to world peace.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Arabs and Brent Scowcroft and Jihad and Iran and Islam.

Taking Back the Narrative

Back in the beginning of July, Irwin Cotler, international human rights lawyer and former Canadian justice minister, gave a talk on the need for Israel to "take back the narrative" in framing Israel's conflict with the Arab world:

The conflict was not about borders, said Cotler, but about the refusal of the Hamas-led Palestinians and most Arab states to accept a Jewish state in the Middle East.

"It's double rejection" said Cotler. Not only did the Arabs reject Israel's right to exist at the dawn of Israel's statehood, they were prepared to forgo Palestinian independence if it meant accepting a Jewish state, he said.

"Now they're willing to destroy the Jewish state, even if it means not having a Palestinian state," he said.

In taking back the narrative, said Cotler, Israel must make it clear that radical transnational Islam is as much a danger to Muslims as it is to the rest of the world...

Cotler of course was speaking about framing the discussion about Israel in its broadest sense, in terms of her history since her re-establishment in 1948. But the attempts to reformulate that narrative continue and morph in the context of the war in Lebanon as well. It goes beyond talk about disproportionate force.

In a piece in The Telegraph on The tall story we Europeans now tell ourselves about Israel, Charles Moore recounts an episode in Parliament:

At foreign affairs questions in Parliament on Tuesday, Sir Peter rose. He wanted Margaret Beckett to tell him whether the Prime Minister had colluded with President Bush in allowing Israel to "wage unlimited war" in Lebanon, including attacks on civilian residential areas of Beirut. These attacks, he added, were "a war crime grimly reminiscent of the Nazi atrocity on the Jewish quarter in Warsaw".

...Here is a man who has been in public life for more than 50 years (he was an assistant to Anthony Eden in the general election of 1955), and yet he compared Israel's attack to the most famous genocide of the 20th century. What possessed him?

Moore is not concerned with Tapsell, but with the overall frame within which the war in Lebanon is now being framed--a narrative within which, not unexpectedly, Israel is once again cast as the evil villian.

You could criticise Israel's recent attack for many things. Some argue that it is disproportionate, or too indiscriminate. Others think that it is ill-planned militarily. Others hold that it will give more power to extremists in the Arab world, and will hamper a wider peace settlement. These are all reasonable, though not necessarily correct positions to hold. But European discourse on the subject seems to have been overwhelmed by something else - a narrative, told most powerfully by the way television pictures are selected, that makes Israel out as a senseless, imperialist, mass-murdering, racist bully. [emphasis added]

The images being used by the media--some of which have already been exposed as being either altered or staged--are more than just short term propaganda tools to score points. They create the way the story is going to be told now and the way it will be retold--and reacted to--for generations.

As well as being morally imbecilic, this narrative is the enemy of all efforts to understand what is actually going on in the Middle East. It is so lazy.

Thus, for example, you would hardly know from watching the television that most Arab nations in the region, with the notable exception of Syria, detest the power of Hizbollah. You would barely have noticed that Hizbollah is a Shia faction, actively supported by Iran, and therefore feared by most Sunnis and by all who resist Iranian hegemony.

Nor would you have seen investigations of how Hizbollah places its missile sites in civilian areas, or coverage of the report in a Kuwaiti newspaper that Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbollah, was expected in Damascus on Thursday for a meeting with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. You would also not have gathered that the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, which the television so recently invited you to admire, cannot possibly be carried through if Syria and Iran and Hizbollah are able to operate in that country.

Behind the dominant narrative of Israeli oppression is a patronising, almost racist assumption about the Arabs, and about Muslims, which is, essentially, that "they're all the same". Public discussion therefore does not stop to consider whether the immediate ceasefire called for by most European countries might hand a victory to Hizbollah, which, in turn, would ultimately lead to a much greater loss of life. It just postures.

The problem is not only that Israel is losing the narrative, but that it takes on the accepted narrative as well. That she accepts the concept of "occupied territories" in particular or the historical revisionism of "Post Zionism" in general.

Even now, it seems that Israel is already accepting the narrative of events in the war in Lebanon. The American Thinker reacts to comments by Israeli ambassador Dan Gillerman in the UN Security Council debate:

To my dismay, he stayed within the context of the UN narrative: start with the status quo ante, take account of the terrorists’ demands, and such baggage.

Israel should know that it is leaving its friends with little ground to stand on by taking this line. It is leaving us with the impression that it hopes some international force will take over the role of deterrence from it. This would mean that for the first time in its history, the IDF would not be the protector of the security of the state.

Instead, Greg Richards--the author of this post--describes the narrative that Gillerman should be presenting to the Security Council, that Israel should be presenting to the world:

We were attacked.
Because of that attack, a state of war exists between Israel and Hizbullah.
Our policy in war is victory.
How long will the war last? Until victory is achieved.

The alternative is the situation that Israel now finds herself as a result of her acceptance of the way the war is currently being framed:

By avoiding the narrative of war and the policy of victory, Israel puts itself on the ground that the international community prefers – how many more bombs will it drop; how big will any new offensive be; how long will the war last, always put in the form of how long will Israel continue attacking civilians in Lebanon.

Richards puts it another way:

The missile attacks by Hizbullah have, it is reported, either put 1 million Israelis in air raid shelters or forced them to move to other parts of the country. In the U.S., the equivalent number would be 50 million people displaced by hostile attack. This would be more than the combined populations of the three West Coast states. Would the U.S. think it was a satisfactory state of affairs if California, Oregon and Washington had to be evacuated due to enemy activity and that our policy would then be to follow whatever the bureaucrats at the UN decided?

On the one hand, Israel is facing a war on two fronts: Hamas and Hezbollah.

On the other hand, Israel is facing a war on three fronts: military, diplomatic, and psychological--the narrative.

Right now, Israel needs a change of strategy in all three.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Iran and Lebanon and Hizbollah and Hezbollah and Olmert

Myths and Facts: The Media Is Fairly And Accurately Covering the War in Lebanon

The following is written by Mitchell Bard, author of "Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict," which can be viewed online or ordered

The original online article--with footnotes--can be viewed here.
You can join the AICE mailing list here.

MYTH

“The media is fairly and accurately covering the war in Lebanon.”

FACT

During the last war in Lebanon, disinformation was the norm and Israel’s enemies learned that they could disseminate lies that the media would not investigate, that they could exaggerate Israeli actions, and that reporters could be manipulated by controlling their access. This pattern is now repeating itself in coverage of Israel’s war with Hizballah terrorists.

Reporters covering the war from Lebanon have been particularly egregious in revealing their own biases based, it seems, on having been based in the country and developing sympathies for their subjects. More serious, however, has been the way some of these correspondents have allowed themselves to be used by Hizballah. In the first Lebanon war, the PLO threatened reporters and made favorable coverage the price of access. Hizballah learned from their example and now influences much of what reporters can see and say.

CNN’s Nic Robertson, for example, was taken to an area of Beirut and told that the rubble of buildings was a result of Israeli air strikes on civilian targets. He repeated the allegation as fact. He had no way of knowing what was in the buildings, whether it was a rocket workshop, a hiding place for katyushas, the home of a Hizballah leader, or a command center. In fact, he didn’t even know if Israel was responsible for the destruction that he was shown.

Robertson later admitted that his report had been influenced by his Hizballah guide. He acknowledged that he had been told what to film and where. “They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn’t have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath.” Robertson said Hizballah controls south Beirut. “You don’t get in there without their permission. We didn’t have enough time to see if perhaps there was somebody there who was, you know, a taxi driver by day, and a Hizballah fighter by night.” Unlike what he said on air during his guided reports, Robertson told CNN’s Reliable Sources, “there's no doubt that the bombs there are hitting Hezbollah facilities.”⁷⁴

Robertson’s CNN colleague, Anderson Cooper, is one of the journalists who has been consistently fair and balanced. He also has not hesitated to point out Hizballah's mendacity. He said the group was “just making things up,” and gave as one example a tour he was given in which Hizballah had lined up some ambulances. They were told to turn on their sirens and then the ambulances drove off as if they were picking up wounded civilians when, in fact, they were simply going back and forth.⁷⁵

Time Magazine contributor Christopher Albritton made clear that reporters understand the rules of the game. “To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hizballah is launching Katyushas, but I’m loath to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist’s passport, and they’ve already hassled a number of us and threatened one.”⁷⁶

Under no duress whatsoever, the Washington Post’s Thomas Ricks made perhaps the most outrageous charge of the war when he claimed that Israel is intentionally leaving Hizballah launchers intact because having Israeli civilians killed helps Israel in the public relations war.⁷⁷

Israel’s image is also being tarred by suggestions that it is targeting Lebanese Christian areas, intimating that Israel is killing innocent Christians and is not restricting its attacks to the Shiite Muslims of Hizballah. CNN reported, for example, an Israeli strike “on the edge of the city’s mostly Christian eastern district” that killed 10 people. In the next paragraph, however, the report says Israel hit “a building near a mosque” (emphasis added)⁷⁸

Photographs can be especially powerful, but they can also be misleading or outright fakes. In the last Lebanon war, for example, the Washington Post published a photograph (August 2, 1982) of a baby that appeared to have lost both its arms. The UPI caption said that the seven-month-old had been severely burned when an Israeli jet accidentally hit a Christian residential area. The photo and the caption, however, were inaccurate. The baby did not lose its arms, and the burns the child suffered were the result of a PLO attack on East Beirut.

A similarly dramatic photo of a baby pulled from the rubble of a building in Qana that appeared on front pages around the world is now being challenged as a fake.⁷⁹ One of the photographers involved, Adnan Hajj, was discovered to have doctored at least two photographs, one of which was changed to show more and darker smoke rising from buildings in Beirut bombed by Israel, and the other changed the image of an Israeli jet so it showed three flares being discharged instead of one. Reuters admitted the photos had been changed, suspended the photographer, and removed all of his photographs from its database.⁸⁰ This incident should make editors and viewers alike suspicious of images being disseminated by freelance Arab photographers and videographers who are engaging in propaganda rather than photo-journalism.

It is also conceivable that some of the scenes that reporters are being shown have been staged. It is difficult to prove without access to the raw footage of the photographers, but anyone who doubts that this is part of the strategy of Israel’s enemies need only look at the examples of Palestinians choreographing events in the territories documented on The Second Draft web site.

Reporters in Lebanon also continue to exaggerate the destruction in Beirut and elsewhere by showing tight shots of buildings hit in Israeli air strikes and rebroadcasting the same images repeatedly. “You would think Beirut has begun to resemble Dresden and Hamburg in the aftermath of Second World War air raids,” observed former Sunday Telegraph correspondent Tom Gross. But, Gross notes, “a careful look at aerial satellite photos of the areas targeted by Israel in Beirut shows that certain specific buildings housing Hizballah command centers in the city’s southern suburbs have been singled out. Most of the rest of Beirut, apart from strategic sites such as airport runways used to ferry Hizballah weapons in and out of Lebanon, has been left pretty much untouched.”⁸¹

Qana was also an example of how the press immediately reports whatever statistics they are fed by Lebanese officials. Again, we learned in the last war that these figures are usually inflated and the press rarely bothers to verify them. Front page stories around the world said that 57 civilians were killed when Israel bombed a building it believed to be empty. While still tragic, the actual casualty figure was only 28. Moreover, most accounts failed to mention the building was in an area where 150 rocket attacks on Israel had originated.

While an Israeli strike that killed UN observers drew headlines, little attention was given to reports that Hizballah was using the UN posts as shields. A Canadian soldier with UNIFIL, for example, reported that his team could observe “most of the Hizballah static positions in and around our patrol base” and noted that Israeli ordnance that fell near the base was not a result of deliberate targeting, but “has rather been due to tactical necessity.”⁸²

Over the years, the Arabs have learned one sure-fire way to get media attention is to scream “massacre” when Israelis are in the neighborhood. On August 7, news outlets repeated Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s claim that Israel had committed a “massacre” by killing 40 people in an air raid on the village of Houla. Later, it was learned that one person had died.⁸³ Throughout the fighting Siniora’s statements to the media have suggested that Israel has unique weaponry that only hits civilians and never terrorists.

Turning momentarily away from the carnage of war, some reporters have suggested that Israeli attacks have created environmental problems in Lebanon. Meanwhile, little attention has been devoted to the ecological damage caused by fires sparked by Katyusha rockets that have destroyed 16,500 acres of forests and grazing fields.

The press is also spending a great deal of time talking to Lebanese civilians and their relatives in the United States and highlighting the difficult conditions they are enduring. This is no doubt the case since they are living in a war zone; however, the media has spent almost no time talking to the Israelis living under the constant threat of rocket attacks. Few reporters have gone into the bomb shelters to interview the frightened Israeli families. No one seems interested in how the relatives of Israelis in the United States feel about their loved ones living under siege.

Similarly, initial reports focused on the Americans living in Lebanon while no one seems interested in the 120,000 North Americans living in Israel. It is terrible that tourists and students had to be evacuated from Lebanon, but what about those same groups in Israel? How many reporters talked to the hundreds of students on summer tours and programs in Israel, many of whom were in the north when the violence escalated? While the complications of leaving the country may not be as severe as in Lebanon, it is still very difficult to arrange a quick exit from Israel, and many American parents are in a state of panic worrying about their family and friends in Israel.

Here are some facts that the media has neglected:

• Two million Israelis are now living under threat of rockets, including approximately 700,000 Israeli Arabs.
• Altogether, more than 300,000 Israelis have been displaced from their homes.
• Fifteen percent of the entire Israeli population is living in bomb shelters.
• Approximately 5,500 homes have been damaged by Hizballah rockets.
• Israel’s tourist industry, which had finally started to recover from the Palestinian War, is again being devastated.
• Towns that are home to important sites of the three major religions have come under fire, including Tiberias, Nazareth and Safed.

Wars are never easy to cover, and each side of a conflict wants to make its case through the media. A responsible press, however, does not repeat whatever it hears, it first makes every effort to insure the accuracy of its reporting. That is the standard expected of journalists covering the war between Israel and Hizballah.

The original online article--with footnotes--can be viewed here.
You can join the AICE mailing list here..

Technorati Tag: Israel and Lebanon and Media Bias and Hizbollah and Hezbollah.

Washington Post Reporter: Israel Indescriminately Kills...Israelis

Hat Tip: Hot Air

From a transcript of Sunday's Reliable Sources on CNN:

KURTZ: All right, Matthew Chance, stand by, thank you for that report. We will come back to you.

And joining us now here Washington Anne Compton who covers the White House for ABC News, and Thomas Ricks, Pentagon reporter for "The Washington Post" and author of the new book "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq."

Tom Ricks, you've covered a number of military conflicts, including Iraq, as I just mentioned. Is civilian casualties increasingly going to be a major media issue? In conflicts where you don't have two standing armies shooting at each other?

THOMAS RICKS, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some U.S. military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon.

KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?

RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me.

KURTZ: That's an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here.

RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well. [emphasis added]

Ricks sounds pretty definite, that according to the ever popular 'anonymous military analysts', this is something that Israel is actually doing, effectively putting Israel on a level with Hezbollah.

After all, which is worse--Hezbollah hiding behind Lebanese civilians while bombing Israeli cities, or Israel supposedly allowing pockets of Hezbollah bomb Israeli citiesl so that they have an excuse to continue their operations in Lebanon.

While Kurtz refers to this plan as PR, Ricks instead sees this as an impressive strategy to maintain the 'moral high ground'--confusing morality with moral equivalency.

The next day, on the Hugh Hewitt show, Ricks backtracked:

Yeah, I wish I'd kept my mouth shut. What I said was accurate, that in an off-the-record conversation with some military analysts, a couple had said to me that they thought it was a smart strategy to leave some rocket pockets in place to help the Israelis shape public perceptions, and give their forces more freedom of maneuver in Lebanon. They weren't saying it was a bad strategy. They thought it was pretty intelligent, if it were the case. But I've since heard today from some very smart, well-informed people, that while such a strategy might be logical, and even morally defensible, that they thought the Israeli public just wouldn't stand for it, and they also expressed personal dismay to me that I had passed on the thought, which they thought was irresponsible. [emphasis added]

Once again, someone in the media tries to be provocative and seems surprised at the response he gets when he is successful.

But when Ricks says "if it were the case," isn't he now admitting that the whole thing was just a theory, while in the original interview it was cold objective analysis?

AllahPundit on Hot Air notes this inconsistency between Ricks' original interview and his comments to Hewitt:

I’m confused. Did they accuse Israel of having done this, or did they merely suggest it would be a good (albeit grossly immoral) idea if they did?

In both interviews, Ricks makes a big deal of the analysts he speaks to. In his interview with Hewitt he also notes the "very smart, well-informed people" who told him his comment was irresponsible.

Pity he could not figure that out for himself.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Hizbollah and Hezbollah

Carter Lectures Israel On How To React To Her Kidnapped Soldiers

Jimmy Carter, the former president during whose term in office 52 Americans were held hostage by Iran for 444 days, now writes an op-ed for the Washington Post to lecture Israel on how to deal with her kidnapped soldiers.

In Stop the Band-Aid Treatment, Carter follows in the footsteps of Ismail Haniyeh, terrorist leader and prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority who wrote an op-ed back on July 11. Carter now takes the podium with similar distortions--the only difference being that we assume that at least Carter wrote his own material. The difference is negligible.

Carter writes about 'women, 'children' and 'Lebanese' imprisoned in Israeli prisons, neglecting to point out the common denominator: these are terrorists that attempted and in all too many cases were successful in brutaling murdering 'women', 'children' and Israelis.

Carter hits his stride early, blindly and shamelessly accusing Israel of the very tactic that Hizbollah has been using since its inception:

It is inarguable that Israel has a right to defend itself against attacks on its citizens, but it is inhumane and counterproductive to punish civilian populations in the illogical hope that somehow they will blame Hamas and Hezbollah for provoking the devastating response. The result instead has been that broad Arab and worldwide support has been rallied for these groups, while condemnation of both Israel and the United States has intensified.

Equally clueless is Carter's to-do list of what must be done to bring peace, starting of course with Israel's ceasing its attacks and continuing with all sorts of unenforceable measures to defuse the situation--but including the return of Shebaa Farms (which is actually recognized as belonging to Syria) and the release of terrorists. Missing from Carter's list is the return of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers. And Carter cannot seem to understand why Olmert refused to accept such a ceasefire, which Carter himself labels as ambitious--for lack of a more accurate term.

After taking the required swipe at "the almost unprecedented six-year absence of any real effort to achieve such a goal," ignoring the marginalizing of Arafat, the attempt to establish a real government for Palestinian Arabs, The Road Map, and The Disengagement, Carter sinks further into blurred distinctions.

He condemns--

leaders on both sides ignore strong majorities that crave peace, allowing extremist-led violence to preempt all opportunities for building a political consensus. [emphasis added]

But does not clarify for the sake of the reader who exactly are the extremist Israelis whom one assumes somehow parallel the Palestinian Arab terrorists.

He writes about the security barrier "that fails to bring safety or stability," in spite of the fact that the number of terrorist attacks are down since its construction.

One can read Carter's description for how to bring peace and almost miss the implied obligations of the Arabs--again with no mention of terrorism:

The general parameters of a long-term, two-state agreement are well known. There will be no substantive and permanent peace for any peoples in this troubled region as long as Israel is violating key U.N. resolutions, official American policy and the international "road map" for peace by occupying Arab lands and oppressing the Palestinians. Except for mutually agreeable negotiated modifications, Israel's official pre-1967 borders must be honored. As were all previous administrations since the founding of Israel, U.S. government leaders must be in the forefront of achieving this long-delayed goal.

Carter is of course expansive--though vague--on Israel's alleged violations, neglecting to mention--as expected--that the first requirement of the The Road Map was the disarming of the Palestinian terrorists. But in Carter's strange universe, the disarming of terrorists as per agreement is criticized as "subservient behavior."

Whatever Carter's accomplishments may have been as president, when it comes to international affairs in general--and the Middle East in particular--Carter's unmistakable bias renders his opinions, and this op-ed, a defense of terrorists.

Jimmy Carter is correct when he concludes that, "the people of the Middle East deserve peace and justice, and we in the international community owe them our strong leadership and support."

But the first requirement is to have leaders who know where they are going.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Hizbollah and Hezbollah and Jimmy Carter and Washington Post.

Take The CAIR Quiz

CAIR’s spokesman was given the opportunity to condemn Hamas and Islamic Jihad by the Washington Post in November 2001. His response was telling: “It’s not our job to go around denouncing.” Asked a similar question about Hamas and Hezbollah by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in February 2002, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper called such queries a “game” and explained, “We’re not in the business of condemning.” [emphasis added]
Anti-CAIR


CAIR's website carries the following item: Israeli Missile Wounds NJ Teen in Lebanon

While CAIR has condemned noted the injury of an American accidentally wounded by Israel, which of the following deliberate murderers of Americans has CAIR been reluctant to condemn:

a) Hizbollah
b) Hamas
c) Al Qaeda*
d) All of the above

If you answered d) All of the above, you are correct!

Next time, the question will be: How many senior members of CAIR have been arrested for their association with terrorists? (hint; answer is 12 paragraphs from bottom of article)

* see also:
In October 1998, for instance, the group demanded the removal of a Los Angeles billboard that dubbed Osama bin Laden "the sworn enemy," complaining that such a caption was "offensive to Muslims." In the wake of 9/11, CAIR actually denied bin Laden's culpability, a position from which it would not budge until three months after the attacks, by which time the evidence against al-Qaeda's linchpin was irrefutable. The Website for CAIR's New York chapter - with which Mayor Bloomberg's appointee Omar Mohammedi has been affiliated - openly doubted that Islamic hijackers were responsible for the attacks, speculating that either the Bush administration or Israel orchestrated the nightmare.

Technorati Tag: Israel and CAIR and Terrorism.