Mideast Media Sampler 11/21/11

From DG:

1) Interview with a dictator I

Hala Jabar interviewed Bashar Assad for the Sunday (London) Times.

While Jabar seems skeptical of many of Assad's claims, she doesn't clearly refute them.

There are some telling elements to the interview.

When he became president at 34 after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, the world embraced him as a young leader who had trained as an ophthalmologist in London and could bring fresh perspectives and hope to Syria. 

His reputation in Washington took a dive with his refusal to back the Iraq war in 2003 and his support for fundamentalist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas soon attracted opprobrium in other western capitals. He then hit a new low — his finger looped down to illustrate it — with Syria’s suspected involvement in the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, in 2005. 

The election of President Barack Obama in 2008 heralded a brief revival, during which he found himself courted by leaders in Europe and the United States who were hoping to divide Syria from Iran, its near neighbour and friend.

With the indictment of Hezbollah for the killing of Hariri, Syria's involvement is more than a suspicion.

When Assad defends his regime's actions Jabar responds:

“The fact remains,” I told Assad, “that many innocent civilians — women and children — have been shot in the process.” 

“A human being cannot turn the clock back but can act wisely in this matter,” he said. 

“My role as president — this is my daily obsession now — is to know how to stop this bloodshed caused by armed terrorist acts that are hitting some areas.”

Jabar seems skeptical and maybe she has limits as to what she can ask. But if she lets his deflections go unanswered, what value is there in the interview other than to give an increasingly unpopular and  isolated tyrant put the best spin on a bad situation.

Lee Smith writes that Assad is finished. (h/t Instapundit)

Bashar al-Assad is finished. The Arab League has condemned him, as have former allies Qatar and Turkey. One time Saudi intelligence chief Turki al-Faisal says Assad’s exit is inevitable. Perhaps most significantly, King Abdullah II of Jordan felt sufficiently confident of Assad’s fall to call for the president of Syria, the Hashemite Kingdom’s historical nemesis, to step down. 

In the past, a more vigorous Syrian regime would have lashed out against its critics and rivals by unleashing its terrorist assets. But to date, Hezbollah has kept its head down, balancing its support of Damascus with the recognition that the regional Sunni majority has come to detest a regime that has so far slaughtered upward of 3,500 people, most of them Sunni. Hamas is doing its best to distance itself from Assad and is looking to relocate—maybe to Qatar, or even to Islamist-friendly Tunisia. It’s true that Assad hasn’t played all his cards yet: He’s still threatening to destabilize Turkey, but attacks on embassies in Damascus—including those of France, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Morocco, and others—rather than terrorist operations abroad suggest the regime is hemmed in.

And as Barry Rubin has observed, Lebanon's "weatherman" Walid Jumblatt - who knows which way the wind blows - feels confident enough to condemn Assad.

But now that Bashar is under assault from a revolution, Jumblatt has taken heart and made a dramatic speech criticizing Syria and asserting Lebanese sovereignty. In other words, he’s changed sides.

2) Interview with a dictator II (actually the dictator's apprentice)

The New York Times published excerpts from an Interview with with Mohammad Javad Larijani:

Here's one Q & A:

Q: Could you accept a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? 
A: We will honor any decision made by the Palestinians, even if we don’t agree. It is up to the Palestinians to decide their future – two states, one state. But our position is that the creation of two states does not resolve the conflict. Why should there be two states? There should be one state, in which Muslims and Jews and Christians live next to each other, with equal civil rights. Jerusalem is a jewel, a cultured jewel of humanity. Even the Jews are missing a lot by this conflict. Just hypothetically, suppose Jews and Christians and Muslims were living in one state, Palestine. Then, how much investment could be done in Jerusalem? Millions of people are coming to visit that place. This hostility is taking victims not only from the Muslims, but the future of Jews and Christians as well. 

So we think that if we pursue a policy for 60 years, and it does not produce good results, it’s very prudent that we sit down and evaluate our policy. To create a Jewish state, which is a very racial state, is a wrong attitude, is a wrong approach. Unfortunately, the Zionist regime in Israel doesn’t have any respect for any border lines. I don’t think even a two-state policy is something they can agree with. They want to distribute the Palestinians in small colonies. It’s almost impossible to create any state for them. 

Let us face this question. How do Israelis want to live in this area? They are living in a totally military zone. They created an island curtain around themselves. Do they want to continue that life? And the changes in the Middle East definitely are not in ways the Israelis feel more secure. The changes in Egypt, for example. Israel is losing important ground over there. I think that the time will come that even the Western and the United States people will think about this project from the beginning and try a new model.

The only follow up here is a question about how long he thinks before the "new model" of Israel comes to be. There are only softballs here and no challenges to the Secretary General of the Iran High Council For Human Rights. There isn't even a question about his title given the reports revealing the lack of human rights respected in Iran.

Three years ago Neil MacFarquhar interviewed Larijani's boss, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In that interview, MacFarquhar was tougher than this uncredited interview. (Why was the Larijani interview uncredited?) The only question in which MacFarquhar let Ahmadinejad off the hook as Matthias Kunzel observed was the one about Israel.

3) The Washington Post's NGO overreaction

The Washington Post, which has been more reasonable in its editorial positions about the Middle East than the New York Times has gone off the deep end with an editorial, Israel’s effort to muffle speech:

The measures would have a devastating effect on more than a dozen Israeli groups that depend heavily on funding from European governments. These include some of Israel’s best-known organizations, among them Peace Now, which receives a third of its funding from abroad, and the human rights group B’Tselem, which gets half its money from foreign donors.
The groups have been targeted by right-wing politicians because many advocate for Palestinian rights and some have collaborated with international investigations of Israel. Critics say that European governments spend tens of millions annually to support them — far more than they give to civil-society groups in the Arab world. 

There is, however, nothing nefarious about public organizations in a democratic country receiving support from other democracies. The NGO funders are not enemies of Israel, and the groups themselves are not trying to subvert the state — only to correct what they see as its flaws. In the case of the illegal settlement construction often reported by Peace Now, or the human rights abuses by the Israeli army chronicled by B’Tselem, the government would be better off responding to rather than suppressing the criticism.

The assertion that  "... the groups themselves are not trying to subvert the state — only to correct what they see as its flaws," is belied by the observation in the second paragraph "...some have collaborated with international investigations of Israel." The Goldstone Commission was supported by many Israel NGO's and given its origin, with the recommendation of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and its implementation by the UN Human Rights Council was the very definition of an attempt to subvert Israel - specifically its ability to defend itself. If the work of Peace Now is so important, how is it that "settlements" only take up 1.1% of the land in Judea and Samaria?

More importantly how often do newspapers like the Washington Post report on accusations made by Peace Now or B'Tselem and how often do they report on documented incitement by Palestinian Media Watch? These NGO's get virtually uncritical attention from a supposedly skeptical media; their criticisms are treated as indictments of Israel not as correctable flaws. If the reporters and editors of the Washington Post scrutinized the claims of Peace Now and B'tselem with the same care it investigates the Israeli government or the IDF, maybe its criticism of the NGO law would hold some water. But they don't and it doesn't.

Finally the United States for example forbids foreign nationals from contributing to political candidates? Is that "muzzling" free speech? Further it would seem that similar organization to the NGO's that the Washington Post defends operating in America would probably have to register as foreign agents. Does the Washington Post describe Peace Now or B'Tselem as "Israeli" groups, or as "European funded" groups. I believe that the former is true, as calling them "Israeli" gives them a dose of unearned credibility that an outside group wouldn't have. If the Washington Post is going to criticize Israeli efforts to counter the damaging effects of these groups, it has to first report on them honestly and keep its reader informed of who they are.

4) Historical notes

Recently I referred to a couple of historical dates. Since then I've learned that they were incorrect.

Yesterday, in my reference to the Twitter account 1948War, I mentioned a UN vote prohibiting Jewish immigration to Palestine. The vote, Elder of Ziyon tweeted (with documentation)took place November 12, 1947, not November 17.

Israel Matzav and Daled Amos both informed me that the speech given by PM Ariel Sharon at the Gruenewald Railway Station had a mistaken date. There is obviously no 39.11.42. Daled Amos pointed out that the JINSA transcription of the speech give the date as November 1942. Assuming that the "39" was mistaken, that correction makes sense.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Middle East and Media Bias.