Mideast Media Sampler 05/06/2011

From an email from DG:

1) Excellent but troubling

The Washington Post had an excellent but troubling editorial In killing Osama bin Laden, U.S. had the law on its side
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in_killing_osama_bin_laden_us_had_the_law_on_its_side/2011/05/04/AFFCvRrF_story.html?wprss=rss_opinions

International law recognizes a country’s inherent right to act in self-defense, and it makes no distinction between vindicating these rights through a drone strike or through a boots-on-the-ground operation. Administration officials have described the raid as a “kill or capture” mission and asserted that the SEALs would have taken Osama bin Laden alive had he surrendered and presented no threat to U.S. personnel or the others in the compound that night. This, according to official accounts, did not happen.

What's troubling about that?
Nothing. But contrast it to the editorial about The Palestinian ‘reconciliation’
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the_palestinian_reconciliation/2011/05/03/AFdoSRrF_story.html?wprss=rss_opinions

The full consequences of the Palestinian deal are hard to predict because it leaves many crucial questions unanswered — and it could still fall apart. A caretaker government of “technocrats,” which is to prepare for elections in a year, has yet to be named, and it is not clear whether it will recognize Israel. If it does not, the Obama administration will be legally required to cut off $600 million in U.S. aid, and Congress may do so in any case. If Hamas prisoners now held in the West Bank are released, what has been close cooperation between Israel and the U.S.-trained Palestinian security forces could come to an abrupt end. Elections in a year could produce a new Palestinian leadership. But will a vote be fair if Hamas is not required to give up its stranglehold on Gaza? 

The assumption that a nation - Israel - has a right to defend itself is absent here. It shouldn't matter whether the joint government recognizes Israel or not, Fatah has joined with a belligerent. In face of an action like that - effectively declaring war on Israel - recognition hardly corrects the violation.

Or consider this editorial following the Mavi Marmara incident Turkey's Erdogan bears responsibility in flotilla fiasco
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/04/AR2010060404806.html

WESTERN GOVERNMENTS have been right to be concerned about Israel's poor judgment and botched execution in the raid against the Free Gaza flotilla. But they ought to be at least as worried about the Turkish government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which since Monday has shown a sympathy toward Islamic militants and a penchant for grotesque demagoguery toward Israel that ought to be unacceptable for a member of NATO. 

According to the Osama bin Laden editorial a country's right to self-defense is absolute. The Post's editor's even excuse possible military errors to the possibility that they occur in the heat of battle. But for Israel, the right to self-defense is qualified. 

Or consider the end to this editorial Divided on Gaza about Israel and Cast Lead
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/29/AR2008122901895.html?wprss=rss_print/editorialpages

Israel must be careful not to allow its military campaign to undermine its own diplomatic end game -- or to hand another political victory to an Iranian regime that remains a far greater threat to Israel than Hamas is. 

So fighting the Iranian proxy, Hamas undermined Israel and helps Iran!

Given that the editors of the Post subscribe to the view that a country has right to self-defense, it's astonishing to the degree that they circumscribe Israel's freedom to defend itself.

The two recent editorials I cited above were excellent and flawed, respectively. However taken together - along with other editorial opinion at the Post - they reveal a glaring inconsistency; a failure to acknowledge Israel's unconditional right to defend itself.

2) In thrall of idiocy

An activist named Nathan Thrall, who is identified as belonging to the International Crisis Group, penned an op-ed for the NYT, Hurting moderates, helping Militants
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/opinion/05Thrall.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

His argument: accept the legitimacy of Hamas or more extreme groups will take over.

THE rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah officially agreed this week to reconcile and form a unity government. In response, Israel has decided to punish the Palestinian Authority by withholding two-thirds of its annual revenues. It’s a tactic Israel tried after Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006 — and it will probably have as little success now as it did then.

Blocking the funds that pay the salaries of civil servants would destroy the Fatah-dominated West Bank’s relative prosperity, turning it into something resembling the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. There, several years of isolation have led not to the weakening of Hamas but to the strengthening of even more uncompromising enemies of the Jewish state. 

So then maybe Fatah shouldn't have allied itself with an uncompromising enemy of Israel, which is what Hamas is. Creating another one, doesn't change the nature of Hamas.

In Gaza, the number of Salafi jihadis — austere militants willing to kill those they don’t consider true Muslims — has grown significantly since 2006. Many of them are former Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters who see Hamas as caving to Israel while getting only blockades, closed border crossings and military incursions in return. 
Three weeks ago, a group of Salafi jihadis strangled Vittorio Arrigoni, a 36-year-old Italian activist who had advocated an end to the blockade of Gaza. Mr. Arrigoni’s killers posted a video showing him bloodied and blindfolded while scrolling text denounced Hamas for not instituting Islamic law in Gaza. It also demanded the release of all Salafi jihadi prisoners, especially Hisham Saidani, leader of a small group named Tawhid and Jihad. Earlier this year, he issued a religious ruling permitting the killing of Jewish and Christian civilians because they “are fundamentally not innocent.” 


Arrigoni, as we know, didn't simply object to the blockade of Gaza; he objected to Israel.
http://fresnozionism.org/2011/04/6881/


All Thrall manages to do is to make an argument for a stricter blockade of Gaza.


Five years of isolation have not dislodged Hamas, revived the peace process, strengthened Fatah or ensured Israel’s security. Most of the Gaza Strip’s imports now pass largely unimpeded through tunnels that are wide enough to carry cattle, cars, anti-tank missiles and foreign radicals. 
Nor has isolating Hamas persuaded most Palestinians to embrace the alternative model in the West Bank, where undemocratic practices remain common, local leaders lack popular legitimacy, and tight security coordination with Israel is routinely denounced. 


And this implies that Hamas doesn't engage in undemocratic practices and its leader have popular legitimacy, though their elected terms have long since expired.


3) Did he or didn't he?


Did Khaled Meshal accept Israel's right to exist? According to Ethan Bronner of the New York Times the answer is "yes." In Hamas Leader Calls for Two-State Solution, but Refuses to Renounce Violence Bronner writes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/world/middleeast/06palestinians.html?partner=rss&emc=rss


One day after celebrating a landmark reconciliation accord for Palestinian unity, Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader, said on Thursday that he was fully committed to working for a two-state solution but declined to swear off violence or agree that a Palestinian state would produce an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 


As Elder of Ziyon notes, nothing quoted in the article supports Bronner's contention that Meshal supports a two state solution.
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/05/nyts-ethan-bronner-when-wishful.html


More than that:


So perhaps Bronner, who has been covering the area for a few years now, assumes that Meshal's statement that Hamas would end violence if the "occupation" ends as somehow accepting a two-state solution?

Only one problem. Hamas considers all of Israel "occupied." And you don't even have to look hard to realize this - just Google for the word "Occupied" in the English-language Qassam.ps website, run by Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades.

Here you see that Israel's "occupation" includes Ashkelon, Lod, Ashdod, Netivot - and all of the land "occupied in 1948."

Is Bronner this ignorant, after reporting about Hamas for years, not to know what their keywords are? Is it really possible that he doesn't know how Hamas has been playing this same semantic game for years, including in the pages of the NYT op-ed section? Has he not ever heard these same Hamas leaders saying, explicitly in Arabic, that their goal is to destroy Israel - and they have never abandoned that goal in any language? 


This response from Meshal is revealing:


Asked if a deal honoring those principles would produce an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr. Meshal said, “I don’t want to talk about that.” 


Effectively, Bronner asked Meshal if he believed there could be peace with Israel, and Meshal refused to answer. Maybe that's why Bronner also emphasizes that Meshal refuses to renounce violence.


He added: “When Israel made agreements with Egypt and Jordan, no one conditioned it on how Israel should think. The Arabs and the West didn’t ask Israel what it was thinking deep inside. All Palestinians know that 60 years ago they were living on historic Palestine from the river to the sea. It is no secret.” 


At this point, Bronner should have pointed out that 60 years ago was 1951, not prior to 1948 and that the state of Israel had already been founded. Intentionally or not, Meshal here was saying that he disagrees with the state of Israel.


It's bad enough that Bronner misrepresented what Meshal said, but being a reporter for the New York Times meant that his foul up was repeated by other news organizations.


UPI reported:


The day after Fatah and Hamas signed a unity accord, the leader of Hamas said Thursday he supports a two-state solution.

The UPI reports further:

He said Hamas was prepared to work with Fatah in a two-pronged approach -- diplomacy and "resistance in all its forms."

The line "resistance in all its forms" does not appear in the New York Times article so it isn't clear where UPI got it from. But if this is correct Meshal is saying that Fatah, like Hamas, is committed to terrorism.

The Atlantic:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/05/hamas-leader-supports-two-state-solution-again/37396/

Hamas's Record on Two-State Solution: This isn't the first time Hamas has called for a two-state solution. In 2006, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar expressed support for such a plan as a new Hamas-led Palestinian government came into being. Two years later, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter announced that the Islamist movement would accept a two-state solution so long as it was approved by a Palestinian referendum or a newly elected government. In 2009, Meshal, living in Damascus at the time, told the Times that he would accept a Palestinian state in the areas Israel won in the 1967 war, in a statement not unlike the one he issued today. Days later he rejected a two-state solution.

At least in this case, the Atlantic notes that Meshal changed his mind in short order. In other words, his moderate sounding statements are double talk, designed to mislead those who wish to be misled.

Yossi Melman claims that (though it's not included in Bronner's quotes) that Meshal did say something similar:
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/05/israeli-investigative-reporter-on-hamas-fatah-reconciliation-torture-and-israels-security/

Already, during the signing ceremony of the reconciliation agreement, the leader of Hamas said they were ready to make peace with Israel along the borders of ’67 after Israel dismantles all its Jewish settlements and Jerusalem becomes the Palestinian capital city.
It’s true they mentioned they would never give up the right of return – in other words, that the Palestinian refugees of ’48 would return to Israel, which means the end of Israel as a Jewish state. Israel would never accept this.  But maybe he said it only as lip service to the mythology of the Palestinian movement - to the charter of Hamas, which was founded in ’87 based on that notion.
But a lot of voices – even from the security community – including the former head of Mossad are supportive of talking to Hamas. Even the outgoing head of our domestic security service hinted today there is much ado about nothing and that the Israeli rejection of the reconciliation is overdoing it.

Also notice how Melman rationalizes Meshal's demand for right of return. Well if he demanded the right of return, why should Israel ignore that?

What about if Hamas, instead of making contradictory statements disarmed entirely and released Gilad Shalit, then we'd have pretty unambiguous proof that it was committed to peace wouldn't we? But it doesn't do that. So maybe it's (in)actions should speak louder than its words.

4) Same time next year, but not this year

No Arab League Summit this year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/arab_league_summit_that_was_to_have_been_held_in_baghdad_postponed_until_next_year/2011/05/05/AFBKlpwF_story.html?wprss=

The annual Arab summit that was to have been held in Baghdad this month has been postponed until next year at Iraq’s request, the Arab League announced on Thursday. Iraq has retained the right to host the summit in March 2012, the statement added.

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