Mideast Media Sampler 08/22/2011

From DG:

1) The phone excuse

As far as I can tell, the interview hasn't been published yet by Time magazine. The Jerusalem Post reports:

Lebanese State Prosecutor Saeed Mirza on Saturday denied reports made by one of the four Hezbollah members indicted for the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri that the government in Beirut knows his location but is unable to arrest him, Lebanon’s Daily Star newspaper reported.


“The Lebanese authorities know where I live, and if they wanted to arrest me they would have done it a long time ago. Simply, they cannot,” the accused assassin said. 

He gave an exclusive interview to Time magazine on Thursday in which he blamed Israel for the assassination, which took place in Beirut on February 14, 2005. He said that he would never turn himself in, nor would Hezbollah ever let him or his comrades go to trial.

 [Interview can be seen here. H/T Challah Hu Akbar]

Last week Time Magazine did report:  

The phone records showed a flurry of calls shortly before Hariri's assassination, then they stopped being used two minutes before the explosion and were never used again. The indictment said the records showed "a coordinated use of these phones to carry out the assassination."Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has long sought to cast doubt on the security of the Lebanon's telephone network, however, and he will likely use the tribunal's evidence to further cast doubt on the court's claims. Nasrallah has called the tribunal an Israeli plot against Lebanon.

Lebanese officials have confirmed that Israel has penetrated and has great control over Lebanon's telecommunications networks. In 2010, authorities detained two senior employees of one of the country's two cellular telecommunication companies on suspicion that they were spying for Israel. They remain in detention several months after their arrest. 

Since when do reports include "have confirmed," isn't the proper form "claimed" or "charged?"

 

Since then Hezbollah has denied the suspect's claim too. However a Lebanese MP says otherwise:

March 14 MP Ghazi Youssef said on Sunday that Hezbollah intentionally gave the interview with TIME magazine in order to embarrass the government and covey a message that the decision is in its hands.

Youssef told the Voice of Lebanon that “Prime Minister Najib Mikati and the government will try to cover this issue by pretending to be serious about it and sending security forces to search for the suspects.”

The article is at Time Magazine's website, plus more substance to Hezbollah's denial: 

The probe into the cell-phone networks was first revealed in October 2005 in the initial report of a U.N. commission investigating the assassination. The cell-phone evidence does beg a question, however. The indictment acknowledges that the conspirators were aware that the locations of mobile phones can be traced — that's why, it argues, they sought to disguise their tracks by activating the red network in a stronghold of Sunni Islamists in north Lebanon where few Shi'ites are found. But if they were that diabolically clever, it's puzzling that the conspirators would use their carefully camouflaged red-network phones while also carrying not only other operational color-coded phones but even their personal cell phones, which can still be traced even when not being used.

Hizballah's highly secretive and technologically proficient personnel would have known that the only way to avoid a trace is to remove the battery and sim card from the phone. Yet, according to the indictment, it was the proximity of the four men's personal phones to the color-coded secret phones that helped identify them. 

Hezbollah's claims about Israel's infiltration of the Lebanese mobile phone grid appear manufactured to refute the charges of its involvement in Hariri's murder. The question now is whether it will work.

 2) We didn't really report that

Over the weekend there was a diplomatic spat between Israel and Egypt. Egypt is claims that during a firefight with the terrorists who infiltrated Israel, the IDF killed some Egyptian soldiers. The claim has been met with a statement of regret by Israel.

The New York Times reported:

The defense minister, Ehud Barak, described the attacks as “a grave terrorist incident” that had originated in Gaza and could probably be attributed to the “loosening” of Egypt’s hold over Sinai since the revolution. Yet Israel appeared reluctant to blame the Egyptian authorities, not wanting to inflame an already delicate situation and preferring to use the events to urge more constructive Egyptian action. 

I understand that the reporters are quoting DM Barak, however one of the reporters, David Kirkpatrick, reported on the loosening of Egyptian control a week ago.

The police have all but disappeared from the northern Sinai since the Egyptian revolution, and the smuggling business has grown so exponentially that Hamas, the militant group controlling Gaza, recently decided to limit the car imports to 30 a week for fear of pollution and traffic congestion in the narrow Mediterranean enclave, smugglers say. 

I understand the quote around "loosening," but it still makes it seem like it's a claim made by Barak, when in fact it has been documented by the Times own reporter. Why not add in "as reported earlier in the Times?"

3) Washington Post on the protests

The Washington Post featured an editorial on the economic protests in Israel

Still, the conservative government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — an implicit target of many protesters — isn’t out of the woods yet. Organizers have called for mega-marches in dozens of Israeli towns Sept. 3, with a goal of bringing 1 million people to the streets. Not counting Israel’s Arab citizens, who have mostly skipped the protests so far, that would mean a sixth of the country’s Jewish population would participate.

Even by the standards of a famously querulous country, these demonstrations, and the urban tent cities they have spawned, are something new, and not just because of their size. Lacking recognized leaders, fixed goals or allegiance to any political party, the rallies have morphed from low-grade anger over the price of cottage cheese, an Israeli breakfast staple, to a broad manifestation of genuine discontent with the nation’s social contract. 

There are a few things interesting about these two paragraphs. 

a) In the earlier paragraph the editors refer to "organizers," in the later "lacking recognized leaders." If organizers exist then there are, in fact, leaders. If the leaders are not recognized, it suggests that they are keeping a low profile. A million people protesting would require a degree of coordination and some authority figures. If the leaders are unrecognized it's less a sign of the popularity of the movement than of the leaders keeping a low profile.

b) September 3, is a Saturday, the Sabbath. A protest scheduled for a Saturday, would seem to indicate that the leaders are insensitive to concerns of observant Jews. (I don't doubt that some Sabbath observant Jews would attend; I'm guessing that most won't.)

c) If the protests don't coalesce around around a major point or two, they will likely fizzle out.

d) As I've written before, it's hard to see what sort of government action is possible. Encouraging more building or competition involves less government interference, not more, unless we're talking about breaking up a cartel.

e) Among the oligarchs who possess a disproportionate amount of Israel's wealth, are families in the media sector. It's hard to imagine employees of the Graham family openly rooting against any family - not named Murdoch - owned media company.

4) Why should Israel make peace?

From the AP article about "Flagman"

And so was born “flagman,” a figure who resonates with Egyptians angry not only with Israel’s killing of five Egyptian policemen on Thursday, but with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and their own government’s decades-long support of Israel under Hosni Mubarak’s ousted regime.

 What are the premises of this paragraph?

a) Peace benefited Israel at the expense of Egypt, or at least at the expense of ordinary Egyptians.
b) Making peace with a dictator is wrong if he mistreats his people.
c) Egyptians care about Palestinians.

Of couse "a" is false. Israel ceded the Sinai peninsula in order to make peace with Israel. Egypt never made more than a "cold peace" with Israel. No strata of Egyptian society approved interaction with their counterparts in Israel. Israel even helped Egypt especially in agriculture, before Egypt withdrew from those programs in 2002. Peace with Israel netted Egypt the Sinai and the second most generous infusion of foreign aid from the United States. Israel gave up strategic depths and the natural resources of the Sinai.

"b" might be true. But it's also true that all those who lecture Israel about making peace always insisted that Israel make peace with the unelected leaders of the Arab world. If "a" and "b" are true does that mean that Israel should just heed to the demands of its enemies, withdrawing to its 1967 and then hope that the sacrifices will be appreciated?

"c" is probably true. But it's less because Israel is denying freedoms to the Palestinians. Israeli Arabs enjoy more freedoms than Arabs in any Arab country. The Palestinians of Judea and Samaria despite not having a state of their own enjoy a measure of independence, and likely more freedom than in most Arab countries. The concern for the Palestinians is a pretext for the hatred of Israel.

In other words not only are Israel's sacrifices not appreciated they haven't even bought Israel goodwill! So why should Israel make concessions for peace?

Technorati Tag: Israel and Middle East.