CNN Can't Be Bothered To Find Some Palestinians

The horrific attack which left five Israelis dead in Jerusalem yesterday was the top international news item in the United States and in many places around the globe. On CNN, it was covered in just about every program they had on during the day. As is generally the case when Israelis are victims of Palestinian violence, Western media zooms in. That can not be said for the other way around which is far more prevalent given the ongoing Israeli military occupation of Palestine.

On the occasions when Western media does cover Israeli violence against Palestinians, Israeli guests, often officials, are always brought on to provide their perspectives, narratives and analyses. In yesterday's lead story, it was Israelis who were the victims of Palestinian violence. The bloody attack, while certainly an event that merits coverage on its own, was part of a series of events in recent weeks which have not been covered with the same focus. And it was clear that the hosts and producers at CNN understood this since the notion of "rising tensions" and a "cycle of violence" was noted in many of the interviews with guests on CNN's air yesterday.

Violence against Israelis is not the only thing happening in and around Jerusalem of course. A Palestinian was stabbed multiple times by settlers in Kufr Aqab yesterday and a boy was shot in Beitin village. Just days ago an 11 and 10 year old were shot in the face in separate instances. Raids into people’s homes and wide scale arrests take places on a near daily basis. Homes of Palestinians in Jerusalem are being subjected to the vile spewing of an odor laced spray. Threats by Israeli officials of continued illegal settlement expansion are unabated. Oh, and this is just stuff that happened in the last few days.

Given that this event, which had brought so much focus to the "rising tensions", was part of a broader context that involved Israelis and Palestinians alike you'd think balanced coverage would invite analysis from different perspectives. You'd think the questions that are commonly asked like "Where do we go from here?", "What does this event mean?", "Is this the beginning of a new intifada?", "How can tensions be cooled?", "Who/what is responsible for escalating tensions?" would be answered from both Israeli and Palestinian analytical perspectives. But was that the case?

Below are images of all the guests CNN had on for information and analysis around yesterday's coverage. Scroll down to see how many Israelis, both officials and non-officials, Jewish Americans and Palestinians were guests on CNN yesterday. Note that not all images below are from yesterday's programming as not all video is available yet but full transcripts of all CNN shows yesterday where these guests did appear are here.

Israelis



Yuval Steinitz, Israeli Intelligence Minister


Micky Rosenfeld, Foreign Press Spokesman for the Israeli Police


Mark Regev, Chief Spokesman of the Israeli Prime Minister


Barak Ravid, Diplomatic Correspondent for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz


Ron Prosor, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations


Dore Gold, President of the Israeli think tank, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs 
and former advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu


Ron Dermer, Israeli Ambassador to the United States


Nir Barkat, Mayor of Jerusalem



Jewish Americans



Aaron David Miller, Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and former 
Senior Advisor on Arab–Israeli negotiations to Secretary of State Colin Powell


Peter Beinart, Political Commentator and author of The Crisis of Zionism


Alan Dershowitz, Professor at Harvard University and author of The Case for Israel

  Palestinians












































Yup, that's right. ZERO Palestinians. Not one in a day's worth of coverage and interviews which discussed not only the event of the day but also the context in which it was taking place. Keep in mind that some of the guests above appear multiple times throughout the day.

Yesterday when I got home I turned on CNN to see who they brought on, only to see yet another Israeli official on Erin Burnett's show and no Palestinians. I tagged the host in a tweet criticizing the lack of Palestinian perspectives and this was the response:

@YousefMunayyer @CNN we asked Palestinian reps. They need to say yes
— Erin Burnett (@ErinBurnett) November 19, 2014

Sorry Erin, that's a cop out if I've ever seen one. Can you imagine such a response in a different context? Imagine if CNN had men on all day talking about gender issues or Whites on all day talking about race issues. I think most anchors would be embarrassed to say we asked some women and some minorities but they need to say yes. Asking a couple folks does not absolve you the journalist of the responsibility to provide balanced coverage and perspectives. And, to be clear, this isn't only about Erin Burnett's show, this was a network-wide failure all day yesterday at CNN.

There is also no shortage of qualified Palestinian analysts, in the U.S. or in Palestine, including specialists in the issue of Jerusalem in particular which could have provided an informed analysis in the "rising tensions" and the situation Palestinians in Jerusalem face and have been facing. Specialists like Salim Tamari, Issam Nassar, Thomas Abowd, Rashid Khaldi and many others are experts in these areas.

It simply was not important to CNN to cover that angle or side of the story. They'd be better off making changes to prevent that from happening again rather than making lousy and frankly embarrassing excuses.

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Has CNN officially become Israeli State TV?

Since the initial disappearance of three Israelis feared kidnapped when hitchhiking in occupied Palestinian territory almost three weeks ago, Israel unleashed a wide-scale campaign of arrests and raids that resulted in ten Palestinian deaths and over 500 arbitrarily arrested Palestinians, and the destruction of property in countless homes. Yesterday, the news broke that the bodies of the three Israelis had been found in a field near the Palestinian city of Al-Khalil. Prior to these events, several other Palestinians were killed and scores of Palestinian political prisoners, held without charge, were engaged in a multi-month long hunger strike.

CNN decided to cover the developments after the fate of the missing Israelis became clear yesterday. Here is who they had on to talk about the events on the ground.

Former Israeli Ambassador turned CNN contributor Michael Oren was on in the 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. hours.

Just to break things up a bit though, and you know, give you another perspective, CNN shifted from the former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, to his replacement and sitting Israeli Ambassador Ron Dremer in the 4 o'clock hour.

In the same hour, CNN had the aunt of one of the Israeli victims.

And, in case you really wanted another official Israeli perspective but got tired of only hearing from current or former Israeli ambassadors, Mark Regev, the spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister's Office was there at 6 p.m. to provide a fresh stale take.

So, how many Palestinians were brought on to speak about the large-scale violence and collective punishment of civilians wrought upon them by the Israeli military machine? ZERO. In fact since the Israeli crackdown began on June 13th, CNN has invited no Palestinian guests on.

Maybe CNN should just change its name to the Israeli News Network.

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Nakba Day Killings: The Scoop the New York Times Didn't Want?

Last week I passed on to the New York Times some obvious questions that could lead to a scoop and it seems that they missed the opportunity. After two Palestinian kids were killed on Nakba Day, the New York Times had erroneously reported their ages. I contacted the relevant folks covering and editing these stories at the Times about the error and to their credit they eventually made the correction. 

A few days later, CNN released video that corroborated earlier video of the shootings but also showed the Israeli forces actually firing a kill shot. When I watched the video, something seemed odd to me. Why where the different Israeli forces assembled there in different uniforms? Why was the shooter approached from behind just before the shot by what appeared to be another member of the Israeli forces who was frustrated about something? Why did that seemingly frustrated figure try to take the gun away from the soldier before the shot, why did he ultimately take it away afterwards?

Something seemed fishy here. I decided to write a quick email to the sleuths at the Times, who are trained at uncovering the truth. There were two kids dead and now video evidence showing odd behavior at the moment a shot was fired was available. At minimum, more questions should be asked. I wanted them to look into it as quickly as possible and get the story right. If my hunch about something else going on here was right, the New York Times would break the story, or so I hoped. Below is the exact email I hastily sent to the same relevant journalists at the Times regarding the video (typos, misspellings and all).

From: Yousef Munayyer
Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2014 1:09 PM
To:
Subject: RE: Nakba Day Killings 

Hello                         , 

CNN has release footage it claims shows one of the kill shots http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2014/05/22/pkg-watson-4a-west-bank-teens-shot.cnn.html  

Please watch it and focus closely around 1:56 to 2:15. Several armed Israeli forces are filled[sic] on a roof top. One, in what seems to be a green helmet and perhaps from a different unit, is crouched down and aiming. His helmet is different from those around him. Just before the shot is fired, it appears the individual behind him in black fatigues and a black helmet and clear face shield realizes something is wrong. He moves toward the crouched shooter and seems to attempt to get his attention. It almost looks like he was trying to take the rifle from him before the shot and then the shot is fired at which point the man in black fatigues jumps back as if he was not expecting it to come at the moment when his hand was near. He then takes the rifle that fired the supposed kill shot away from the shooter in the green helmet.  

I’m no expert on these matters, but this doesn't pass the smell test. My hunch is that different units were involved here with different commands, perhaps there was a dispute over jurisdiction etc. This would explain why the investigation is taking time and isn’t clear. It seems someone wanted to use live fire and many someone else didn’t. For a couple of shots, the guy that wanted to use the live fire won the battle and two boys ended up dead.  

If you listen to the shots about 10 seconds later from what seems to be the same mic in pretty much the same position they sound different. Perhaps the military policy[sic] unit or whoever those dressed in black were only fired rubber bullets but they may not have been the only ones firing. 

This is at minimum something to look further into. I hope you will be able to now that this footage seems to raise new questions.  

Thanks,
Yousef

It is impossible from the footage to tell exactly what happened between those Israeli soldiers/police but it is clear something was out of the ordinary. I didn't hear back from the journalists at the Times that I e-mailed though I often do. Six days later, today, Haaretz publishes this:

Last Thursday, a week after the incident occurred, the belated broadcast of footage taken by a CNN cameraman seemed to shed new light on what happened. That footage showed one member of a group of border policemen firing at the Palestinians. The camera then showed the Palestinians evacuating Nuwara, who was hit by a bullet in the chest and died of his wounds soon afterward. But it now turns out that the person seen shooting a rubber bullet in that footage was actually a soldier from the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit who had been sent to document the proceedings.  

The CNN video shows a soldier wearing the green IDF uniform, a different shade than the Border Police uniform. His sleeves are rolled up in a way that cannot be done on Border Police uniforms, and his helmet lacks the plastic shield of Border Police helmets. The footage also shows the Border Police commander at the scene taking the rifle away from the soldier immediately after he fired the rubber bullet. The Border Police had been tasked with controlling the demonstration, with an IDF artillery unit present as back-up.  

The belated revelation that this soldier opened fire during the incident reveals a problem that emerged during the second intifada (2000-05): Specialists from other units - from drivers to dog handlers, violated orders - who were attached to operational forces tasked with containing violent demonstrations or conducting arrests behaving inappropriately.  

The fact that the specialist was not fully subordinate to the operational chain of command in the field makes it harder for field commanders to supervise his activities. Yet he is also far from his regular unit commanders back at base, which means they cannot keep a close eye on him either.

Oh, one other relevant tidbit from Haaretz:

The details of the case are under a military court gag order.

Recently the New York Times Public Editor wrote about Israeli gag orders influencing coverage and how she found it  "troubling that The Times is in the position of waiting for government clearance before deciding to publish."

Did something like that happen here? Or rather was this just a case where the journalists at the Times didn't find the deaths of two Palestinian children a relevant enough story to follow up on, even though they were made privy to insight that should have led them to this story almost a week before Haaretz broke it? Maybe they did ask questions and were told the story is under gag order. If so, did they comply and keep what they knew under wraps?

As I'm writing this, the New York Times has just posted a Reuters story on the matter. But it is odd that a paper like the New York Times would use a wire service to cover a story in a country where they have a bureau and multiple reporters and had a lead 6 days before others got around to publishing it.

I just can't figure out why the Times wouldn't look further into this and would be playing catch up today when they could have been ahead of the pack in getting to the truth of what happened here.

Many questions still remain. The shot fired in the CNN video killed Nadeem Nuwara at 1:45pm. The rifle was the supposedly taken away from what Israel is now saying was an unauthorized shooter. But Mohamed Abu Thaher was shot later at 2:48pm. What happened then? Was the gun given back to him? Was it a different shooter? Why are children being shot with any type of projectile at a moment they pose no threat? Why does the official Israeli story on this continue to change every day?

These are the kinds of questions reporters should be asking about this incident now to get to the bottom of it and dig through what seems to be an Israeli cover up. If there are any reporters out there who want to use this info to chase this story down please do, I'd send it along to the New York Times but, well, I'm not so sure they really want it.

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Wolf Lets Oren Howl at CNN Colleague's Work

Last week CNN stooped to a new low in coverage of Israel/Palestine. Wolf Blitzer, the former AIPAC employee turned host, decided to cover the deaths of two Palestinian teens in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. You'd think this is a step forward until you see how it was done.

Wolf Blitzer and Michael Oren

On his show "Wolf," Blitzer brought on CNN's Ivan Watson, who worked on a package report on the shooting deaths which actually showed the Israeli forces firing a kill shot at Nadeem Nuwara. This footage corroborated the footage from a security camera that was disseminated by Defense for Children International Palestine just days earlier. The DCI video went viral on YouTube amassing over 560,000 views as of this writing.

The segment begins with Watson's package. The very first source quoted in Watson's package was an Israeli military spokesperson. Yet, after the package showing Israeli soldiers firing and killing a Palestinian teen was completed, Blitzer turns to his CNN colleague Watson and asks:

Ivan, a little while ago you spoke with an IDF, an Israel Defense Forces spokesman. What did he say?

I guess Blitzer wanted to make sure viewers heard the official Israeli perspective, even though it was already provided at the very beginning of the clip. So, Watson proceeds to relay the comments of the Israeli military spokesman again. At this point you'd think Blitzer, the former AIPAC employee, was framing the segment with his questions to ensure the Israel perspective on the events overtook any impression the horrifying video had on CNN's viewers. And then Blitzer says:

Ivan, I want you to stand by because Michael Oren is here. He's the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, former spokesman earlier in his career for the Israel Defense Forces as well.

Yup, that's right. Not only do we get an official quote from the Israeli perspective to start the clip, not only is the reporter then asked to repeat the Israeli perspective after the clip, a former Israeli official is brought on to comment about it.

Oren, if you may not know, became a CNN contributor earlier this year. Oren proceeds to dismiss the video by claiming that "we don't know anything" about what happened. He even says the two boys, whose funeral processions and burials were filmed here, may not even be dead and that the entire thing might be staged.

For Oren, it is just as likely or more so that these masses were staged, that these burials were staged, that those corpses were not corpses, that the tears, wails and laments of family and friends were not real, than it is likely for an Israeli soldier to shoot and kill a Palestinian child.

How disgusting a human being must you be to make such a claim? If you have the stomach for it, the entire transcript is here.

This is as blatant as I have ever seen the pro-Israel bias on this network. What you have here is a segment with three CNN employees, two of them, Blitzer and Oren, have very clear and obvious pasts working to support Israel and its image in the United States. Together, these two heap all sorts of skepticism and doubt on the journalism of their very own CNN colleague. If you were confused about what their priorities are, you shouldn't be anymore.

This is Zionism and this, sadly, is CNN.

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Dennis Ross Authors The Same Old Piece

Dennis Ross has an op-ed in today's New York Times on what the Obama administration should do regarding the Middle East "peace process." The piece comes after news that "peace process" envoy Martin Indyk is packing up shop and two Palestinian children were killed by Israeli fire in demonstrations against the occupation. Below are two excerpts:

The alternative to ending the conflict, however, need not be endless conflict. If neither side is capable of ending the violence now, then more limited, but feasible, goals should be adopted. Indeed, in the coming months, both sides and the United States should focus on defusing the conflict and building a bridge to peaceful coexistence.

and...

If the two leaders are unwilling to take these steps, then it is time for Washington to shift its objective to conflict management. A conflict-management approach would not focus on producing formal agreements, which may be too difficult for both sides. Rather, it would concentrate on brokering smaller understandings and getting the two sides to take parallel or coordinated steps that could improve the reality on the ground.

Got that? Both sides, Ross argues, aren't moving thus the U.S. should take a long-term conflict management approach. The paragraphs seem consistent, which is what you would expect in a single op-ed piece. Except the thing is, these paragraphs are from two different Ross op-eds, basically arguing the same thing. The time in between? Thirteen years. In these thirteen years Israel has killed thousands of Palestinians, built thousands of new homes for Israeli colonists and probably received close to 40 billion dollars in aid from the government Ross is advising. And yet Ross' advice is unchanged; kick the can down the road and manage the conflict.

Seriously, why does anyone listen to this guy? Why does the New York Times publish these tired and recycled ideas on the most prestigious opinion page around? Are we merely trying to find out how many different ways Ross can write, "The Peace Process is Dead, Long Live the Peace Process" in 800 words?

The readers of the New York Times deserve better than this. Policy makers in the U.S. government deserve better than to get the same outdated advice that has failed time and again. Most of all, Palestinians deserve better than the suggestion that their fundamental freedoms should be put on hold as long as the U.S. finds it inconvenient to do anything but "conflict management."

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A Pattern of Nakba Passivity at the New York Times

Last week I wrote about the use of the passive voice in describing the Nakba in the New York Times. This device allows for a sense of ambiguity as to who did what and specifically, who destroyed Palestinian villages.

However, on May 16th this is how Jodi Rudoren described it:

After two young Palestinian men were killed Thursday by Israeli security forces during a demonstration commemorating the Nakba — Arabic for “catastrophe,” and the word used to describe Israel’s destruction of Palestinian villages as it became a state in 1948 — two Israeli journalists said they were nearly “lynched” by a Palestinian mob.

Wow, that is progress. Now the reader is actually being told who destroyed the Palestinian villages: Israel. But before you get too excited, just four days later and in the next reference of the Nakba in the New York Times Rudoren writes:

The deaths occurred on Nakba Day, in which Palestinians commemorate the destruction of scores of Arab villages around the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.

So we are back to the passive voice and ambiguity. Is hiding and obscuring the Israeli role in the destruction of Palestinian villages and the creation of the Palestinian refugee crisis just the default way the New York Times writes about the Nakba? If one looks back they find that with rare exception, Israel's role in the destruction of the villages and refugee creation in Nakba descriptions is rarely every mentioned.

Here is Isabel Kershner in 2013:

Palestinians refer to the events of 1948 as al-Nakba, Arabic for “the catastrophe.” About 700,000 Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes during the Arab-Israeli war over the foundation of Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were later displaced by the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, some becoming refugees twice over. Tens of thousands have recently been displaced again, reliving the trauma, because of the civil war raging in Syria.

Kershner in 2012:

The two sides had seemed intent on reaching a deal before Tuesday, when the Palestinians commemorate the “nakba,” or catastrophe, on the anniversary of Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948. The war that followed the declaration led to the flight or expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and the day is traditionally observed with protest marches.

Kershner in 2011:

That echoed the conditions that led to the violence on May 15, the day Palestinians mark as the “nakba,” or catastrophe, of Israel’s establishment in 1948.

Ethan Bronner in 2011(a) (b) & (c)

The occasion was Nakba Day, when Palestinians mark Israel’s creation and mourn the expulsion and flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948. 

Tensions were high in East Jerusalem on Saturday as hundreds of Palestinians buried a 17-year-old demonstrator and preparations were under way for rallies on Sunday to mark the founding of Israel 63 years ago, an event that Palestinians call the “nakba,” Arabic for catastrophe. 

The first is known as “the Nakba bill,” in reference to the Arabic word for “catastrophe” commonly used by Arabs to describe the birth of Israel in 1948. Arabs who are Israeli citizens often commemorate Israeli independence by noting their losses — the destruction of hundreds of villages and the exile of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

Robert Mackey in 2011

It shows Palestinian protesters rallying at the border near the Lebanese town of Maroun al-Ras to mark the anniversary of what they call the “nakba” or the “catastrophe” of Israel’s founding and the loss of their homes. 

Isabel Kershner in 2010

Israeli Jews describe the houses of Ein Hod as “abandoned” Arab properties. But for Arabs, 1948 was the “nakba,” Arabic for “catastrophe,” and they consider the houses stolen.  

Ethan Bronner in 2008

On Thursday, which is Independence Day, thousands will gather in their former villages to protest what they have come to call the “nakba,” or catastrophe, meaning Israel’s birth. 

Steven Erlanger in 2007

Dahbour was 2 when his family fled Haifa into exile in 1948. “I’m the generation of the nakba,” he told me recently — the “catastrophe,” as Palestinians refer to the establishment of Israel and their own flight or expulsion. 

Greg Myre in 2005

Also on Sunday, Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip marched to mark the 57th anniversary of the founding of Israel, a day the Palestinians call "al nakba," or "the catastrophe." 

Steven Erlanger in 2004

The Palestinians refer to the Israeli victory over the Arab nations in 1948 as al nakba, or the catastrophe, when many of them became refugees. 

James Bennet in 2004

For Palestinians the scenes broadcast Sunday and Monday of refugees carrying mattresses and clothes as they streamed from the camp recalled images of the Nakba, or catastrophe, when some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were forced from their homes during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. 

So this begs the question, what does Nakba day actually commemorate and what exactly is the Nakba? This is something of a complicated question. Primarily the Nakba describes a historical event or a series of historical events around 1947-1949. But the Nakba is not only in the past but ongoing as well. To this day Palestinians are being forced out of homes, living in refugee camps and having land expropriated by Israel. It is both a part of the past and present.

But the year 1948 is the most significant transition period in the modern history of the native peoples of Palestine. This is primarily the historical moment commemorated on Nakba day. It is when more than two thirds of the native inhabitants of Palestine became refugees and forced into exile.

This occurred in various ways and stages. In some cases, people were expelled by the Israeli state and/or its militias. In some cases, people were massacred by the Israeli state and/or its militias. In some cases, people fled and were forced into perpetual exile when the Israeli state subsequently destroyed their homes, expropriated their land and assets and barred them from returning. But in all cases, regardless of the various reasons for flight, the Israeli state played a central role in the experience of both individual and collective dispossession Palestinians call the Nakba.

So why does the New York Times systematically obscure that when writing about it?





h/t Patrick Conners who brought this pattern to my attention

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Israel, Passive Aggression & the New York Times

Arab villages were destroyed. The state of Israel destroyed Arab villages.

Do you see the difference there? The first sentence is in the passive voice and absent of any agency. Who destroyed the villages? We are not told in the first sentence. All we are told is that the villages "were destroyed." The second sentence does not suffer from this ambiguity. It makes clear who the active agent is, in this case, the state of Israel, and that it "destroyed Arab villages."

The difference seems simple and straightforward enough. For the purpose of clarity, you'd think that in writing about such a matter, a journalist would choose the second sentence to make perfectly clear to the reader who did what and to what that act was done. That isn't the case with the New York Times' Jodi Rudoren.

Last week, on May 8th, we posted about how the New York Times failed to cover two significant stories happening during Israeli holidays. One was the mass gathering and Nakba commemoration in Lubya and the other was the release of the iNakba app by Zochrot. Well, Jodi Rudoren eventually wrote about the iNakba story for the New York Times (although to the best of my knowledge it did not appear in print in the U.S. edition but only in the International New York Times and online). What struck me about the story was the linguistic acrobatics that were employed in what can only be understood as an attempt to hide Israeli agency.

Jodi writes: "I saw scores of villages destroyed or abandoned as Israel became a state 66 years ago" and "The app provides details like the date in 1948 each village was occupied, by which military brigade, and Jewish settlements before and since."

Scores of villages destroyed? Destroyed by whom? The date each village was occupied? Occupied by whom? By which military brigade? Which military?

Unless the reader is familiar with the history, they are not told the answers to these questions. Why go to this extent to hide Israeli agency? As far as the reader is told, these events occurred "as Israel became a state" but what the Israeli state has to do with these events isn't made clear. The fact of the matter is, and this really isn't a disputed fact either, the Israeli state engaged in a massive campaign of destroying structures in these villages during and after the war. This was done to ensure the refugees would have no homes to return to. It was, in effect, the enforcement of ethnic cleansing.

We've written in the past about how the New York Times's present day Nakba narratives in news stories does not even correspond with its reporting from the time. Yesterday morning, two Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire at demonstrations in Beitunia on Nakba day. When events like this occur on Nakba day, as they did in the Ethan Bronner piece discussed in the link above, some description of Nakba day and what it means are usually included in the reporting. By the afternoon, there was no reporting in the New York Times of the events so I asked on Twitter whether they will be covering it. Jodi Rudoren responded:

Well, Jodi delivered on her promise. Again she writes in this story about what Nakba day is:

Two young Palestinian men were killed Thursday in clashes with Israeli security forces during a demonstration for Nakba Day, which commemorates the destruction of Arab villages in battles that led to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

Don't read that too many times, you might get dizzy. She later writes, "Palestinian leaders made speeches about never relinquishing the rights of millions of refugees and their descendants to return to the land where the destroyed villages stood."

Do you see a pattern yet? Why does Jodi constantly write about this subject in ways that avoid describing Israeli agency in the events? Did these villages destroy themselves? No. Nor were the villages destroyed in "battles." Certainly many of the villages came under attack or were the sites of battles, some even suffered significant damage, but the destruction of the homes to the point of leveling happened for the most part after the villages were depopulated. In many cases, refugee flight occurred during bombardment or even in fear of oncoming bombardment, but the razing of structures to the ground was done systematically afterwards.

Someone wrote recently that when it comes to writing on this topic, "the danger is writing so defensively — to avoid skewering by one side or the other — that regular readers have to suffer through stilted sentences and tit-for-tat terminology." Or even worse, they may not even learn pertinent information.

Jodi should take heed of this warning and apply it as she writes about the Nakba. Say things plainly. Israel destroyed these villages. Was that so hard?

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Explaining Max Fisher's Missing Maps

Over at Vox, blogger Max Fisher has a post up entitled "40 Maps That Explain the Middle East." If such a title makes you cringe, you are not alone. Often these types of posts which attempt to provide context do more to obscure reality and explain the creator's biases more than anything else. I am not going to dwell on each map. I won't claim to know enough about the nuanced political and historical geography in every one of these maps to offer a detailed critique here. However, one thing I do know very well is the nuanced political and historical geography of Palestine and particularly the events around the Nakba. These events are supposedly represented by map number 16 on Max's "explanatory" list entitled "Israel's 1947 founding and the 1948 Israeli-Arab War." Here is the narrative and graphic Fisher provides:

The first thing worth pointing out, and it may not be clear at the initial glance, is that the three panel image is not an original image from a singular source. Rather it is a combination of two sources. The map on the left is from PASSIA and it is a fairly standard representation of the 1947 partition plan. The two panels to the right of that come from Le Monde Diplomatique by Philippe Rekacewicz. These are the original maps which Fisher seems to have borrowed from. How he uses them and what he changes are enlightening. The original maps have a legend in French which Fisher omits and replaces with a heading he created. The first of the two Le Monde maps have the caption "Territory still held by the Israelis after the Arab attack in June 1948." Fisher changes this to simply "June 1948: Arab armies invade."

There is so much wrong here in Fisher's presentation that it is hard to know where to start. Let's try chronologically. First, we are presented with three maps, one from November 1947 and then we jump to June 1948. What happened in the months in between? What were the positions of the sides during that time and why is Fisher not explaining that? Second, in his attempt to simplify (or obfuscate depending on how much credit you want to give him) by jettisoning the French legend and providing his own heading, Fisher gets a very basic historical fact wrong. Arab army movement into Palestine did not happen in June of 1948, it happened in May.

You may be wondering why the French legend refers to "territory still held" by the Israelis. That is because Israeli conquest operations to extend their positions and grab as much land as possible began well before the Arab armies invaded. But it seems Max doesn't want you to know that or failed remarkably to explain it.

The narrative the Max adds to the spliced map is also misleading and reveals his biases. He writes:

...these are the borders that the United Nations demarcated in 1947 for a Jewish state and an Arab state, in what had been British-controlled territory. The Palestinians fought the deal, and in 1948 the Arab states of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria invaded. The middle map shows, in green, how far they pushed back the Jewish armies. The right-hand map shows how the war ended: with an Israeli counterattack that pushed into the orange territory, and with Israel claiming that as its new national borders. The green is what was left for Palestinians.

We've shown before how this common Nakba narrative simply doesn't jive with history. The same thing is going on here. Max has boiled down the events of this period to a few sentences & key facts he thinks the reader really needs to know. He tells you the Palestinians "fought" the partition plan but doesn't tell you why. Apparently, all you need to know about this is that the Palestinians are rejectionists. Then he tells you the Arab states invaded (which happened in May 1948 though he gets it wrong and says June) but doesn't tell you anything about what happened between the partition plan and the Arab armies entering Palestine. Apparently, all you need to know about this is that the Arabs are a war-like people. Then he tells you the Arabs "pushed back" the Jewish armies, after which Israel launched a "counterattack." Apparently, all you need to know about this is that the Zionists were on the defensive here. To "push back" the Jewish armies, as Max claims, would require the Arab regular forces to actually take back from the Jewish armies land that they had come to hold. But what Max doesn't tell you is that in the vast majority of the land, the Arab armies entered parts of Palestine that had yet to be conquered by the Zionist forces. They overwhelmingly filled vacuums. Most interaction was at the margins. The notion that they "pushed back" the Jewish armies just isn't true. In fact, in many areas, the Zionist forces continued conquest operations into areas the Arab armies had filled. The overall trajectory of this war from the beginning, was a largely uninterrupted Zionist pushing of Arabs out of Palestine, not the other way around.

Perhaps the most important point here is what happened between the partition plan and the Arab invasion. This is what Fisher doesn't tell the reader at all. What happened during this period is the creation of a massive number of Palestinian refugees. All the major cities of Palestine including Yaffa and Haifa were depopulated of their Palestinian Arab inhabitants PRIOR to May 15th, 1948. By excluding this information, misrepresenting other information, and just getting basic facts wrong Fisher provides more propaganda than actual context.

The best maps that I have come across of these events are presented below (click to enlarge and zoom in, there is lots of detail). This eight-panel map set by Salman Abu Sitta details the stage-by-stage progression of Israeli military operations from November 1947 through April 1949. It also helpfully lists the total number of refugees created, the number of depopulated villages and the number of dunams occupied at each stage of the war.

Needless to say, it shows us something Fisher either can't or doesn't want to. Perhaps many of the other maps in his list are accurate and helpful but if he approached those representations with the same sloppiness or outright bias involved with map number 16, then they are probably equally worthless.

Seriously Max, you've got some explaining to do. Actually, never mind, you've explained enough.

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Are Israeli Apartheid Laws Affecting US Media?

Given the recent statement made by Secretary Kerry about apartheid and Israel and the subsequent walk back, there was a great deal of discussion around the issue in the mainstream media in the last 48 hours.

You'd think the media might want to speak to some Palestinians, you know, those people suffering from the very system in question here, whatever you want to call it. It would be odd, for example, for network news shows to talk about racism without talking to people of color or talking about misogyny without talking to any women. Well, let me revise this, this would be odd in most places but Fox News, where we've come to expect such things.

But other mainstream media outlets probably wouldn't do something like that with topics like racism in the U.S. or misogyny in corporate America. Certainly not without knowing justified outrage would follow. But when it comes to Palestine, Palestinians and discussing the system of Israeli apartheid that oppresses them, the U.S. mainstream is cooperating in the repression of their voices.

Which guests were brought on yesterday to talk about this issue? Well, CNN's Wolf Blitzer, himself a former AIPAC spokesperson, brought on Josh Rogin. Rogin was the reporter that first wrote about Kerry's remarks. Rogin tells Blitzer that Kerry believes in the racist notion that Palestinians, by their very existence, are an existential threat to Israel. This is the kind of casual racism that rarely gets challenged when it comes to Palestinians and, sure enough, Blitzer did not challenge it either. As far as I can tell, that was it for CNN's coverage of this topic with guests. We've looked into CNN's abject bias when it comes to guest selection in the past so this certainly isn't a new trend.

Well, what about MSNBC, the supposedly progressive mainstream network? Surely while we've come to expect that FOX is a lost cause when it comes to a fair presentation of this issue and CNN is probably too busy these days still looking for the missing Malaysian plane to contact any Palestinian guests, MSNBC must do better, right?

MSNBC's "Hardball" with Chris Matthews and "All In" with Chris Hayes did cover a spectrum of views by bringing on different guests to talk about Israel and apartheid. Unfortunately that spectrum ranged from Zionist left to Zionist right. Palestinians need not apply.

On "Hardball," viewers were treated to Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the pro-Israel organization J Street and a supporter of imposed perpetual Jewish majoritarianism.

 

Viewers of "All In" with Chris Hayes got to hear from Josh Block, "former" AIPAC spokesperson and head of the right-wing pro-Israel group the Israel Project.

 

Thanks, MSNBC for covering a wide range of narrow views.

Why are Palestinians absent from the discussion in the U.S. mainstream on issues that impact them negatively and acutely? Lean in folks and get a good look, you might be left wondering whether Israeli apartheid laws are in effect in the U.S. mainstream media preventing access for Palestinians there too.  

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The New York Times and the Peace Process Blame Game

Well folks, April 29th is finally here and you know that must mean two things 1) The deadline for the 9-month US-mediated peace talks convened last summer has arrived and 2) The New York Times has published its definitive write-up of why the talks failed.

The New York Times article, unimaginatively entitled "Arc of a Failed Deal: How Nine Months of Mideast Talks Ended in Disarray" leaves much to be desired. However, if the measure of an article is whether or not it tells you everything you need to know in the lede, well, this one passes the test:

There were late-night video conferences with Secretary of State John Kerry, including one from beneath mosquito netting in an Indonesian hotel. Mr. Kerry met a total of 34 times with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, and about twice that with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

Once you get past the lousy attempt at romanticism in the first sentence -the kind of writing that suggest the authors are simply trying too hard - the second tells you more about US-mediation of the peace process and why it perpetually fails than anything else you will read in the rest of the piece. US mediation of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks is about Washington conferring with the Israelis about how to best support their positions.

But the most revealing part of the article is not about what it tells us about Israel, Palestine or Washington but rather what it tells us about the New York Times' coverage of the entire issue. As you get to the end of the piece and the chronology that brings us to today, we are treated to this hogwash:

As the March 29 deadline approached for releasing the final prisoners, a lingering problem re-emerged. Mr. Kerry had allowed the Palestinians to believe Arab-Israeli citizens would be among those freed without securing such a commitment from Mr. Netanyahu. The Israelis said no one would be let go unless talks were extended.

Mr. Kerry dangled the prospect of freeing Jonathan J. Pollard, the American convicted of spying for Israel, despite White House reservations. But on April 1, even as Mr. Netanyahu was gathering votes for the new deal, an old tender for 708 apartments in East Jerusalem’s Gilo, was republished. Soon Mr. Abbas was on television signing documents to join the international conventions.  

Still they kept talking. Negotiators barely slept for three weeks. Last Tuesday, the latest package was presented at a meeting variously described as “serious,” “positive” and “excellent.”  

“We had ups and downs: One day if you would ask me I would tell you it’s going to happen, the next day I would tell you it’s not going to happen,” one Israeli said. That Tuesday, he added, “we felt maybe we are going to make it. They asked, ‘Let’s meet the next day.’ ”  

But the next day, Palestine Liberation Organization leaders held hands aloft with those from Hamas. Israel immediately canceled the scheduled negotiating session, and 24 hours later, froze talks indefinitely.

You got that? The Kerry-led peace process, we are told by the authors and an Israeli (no Palestinians), was on the verge of a breakthrough until BAM, the Hamas-PLO deal happened and that's how the cookie jar crumbled, or, as Secretary Kerry put it about a month ago, POOF.

What parallel universe to Jodi Rudoren and Isabel Kershner live in to see things this way?

One has to wonder whether people living in that parallel universe get the New York Times because if they do, they too would be surprised by this narrative. According to the text above, "last Tuesday" (April 22) there was serious hope for a break through. Well, someone ought to tell Jodi Rudoren and Isabel Kershner about the status of talks that Jodi Rudoren and Isabel Kershner were reporting just last Tuesday.

Here is what Jodi Rudoren was reporting about the status of the talks on April 22:

At the beginning of the Passover holiday last week, an Israeli police commander was fatally shot as he and his family drove to a Seder in a West Bank settlement. The day after his funeral, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met for several hours trying to reach an agreement to extend American-brokered peace negotiations past the April 29 deadline. The negotiators are expected to reconvene this week, amid renewed threats by Palestinian leaders that they might dissolve the Palestinian Authority, forcing Israel to take responsibility for its residents.  

Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for the State Department, warned Monday against “that type of extreme step.” Noting that the United States had contributed “millions of dollars” to help build Palestinian institutions, she said a dissolution of the authority “would obviously have very serious implications for our relationship, including our assistance going forward.”

Here is what Isabel Kershner reported about the status of the talks on April 22:

The threat to dissolve the authority was seen by Israeli and Palestinian experts alike as brinkmanship on Mr. Abbas’s part, reflecting both how wide the gulf remains between the Palestinians’ and Israelis’ positions in the negotiations and the difficulty of the last-ditch effort to extend them beyond April 29.  

The peace talks, which began last summer, have been on the verge of collapse since late March, when Israel missed a deadline for releasing a fourth group of Palestinian prisoners. The Palestinian side responded by applying to join 15 international treaties and conventions in defiance of Israel.

"Extreme steps", "serious implications", "how wide the gulf remains", "last-ditch effort", "verge of collapse", that was the language around April 22nd to describe the state of the process as reported by the same New York Times journalists who now want you to believe - ONE WEEK LATER - that they were actually on the cusp of a breakthrough.....until the Hamas-PLO deal.

The article that was written today was meant to be a definitive one. One that sets a narrative about what transpired and who is to blame. It was not written last night but has been in the works for some time. The New York Times misrepresented reality by bringing this article to conclusion in this way, leaving readers with the impression that if not for this one Palestinian move, things would have worked out quite differently. There is a lot more reported in the piece about this comment or that, this stance or that, this announcement or that, over the 9-month period. But when the reader gets to the end of the chronology, they are lead to believe the blame lies squarely on the Palestinians for the failure.

Frankly, to attempt this sort of thing the New York Times has to take its readers for idiots. Who's going to notice, they must think? Perhaps people that read your own newspaper and your own reporting by the same reporters reporting this story.

I've raised many concerns about bias in the New York Times before, and recently the public editor at the New York Times took up some of them. This is yet another indication of the New York Times and its reporters in Israel carrying water for an Israeli government that simply can not afford to be blamed for the failure of peace talks even though anyone with half a brain can see that's the case.

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The Painstakingly Slow Evolution of Roger Cohen

Roger Cohen is catching on. Slowly, ever so painfully slowly, but still it seems to be happening. Today Cohen blasts through one of the oft told myths in the Liberal Zionist narrative. But, staying true to Liberal Zionist form, he fails to prescribe the obvious and necessary solutions to the problem he identifies.

Cohen addresses the "myth" that the Israeli occupation is unsustainable. This myth is central in Liberal Zionist lore. Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street Founder and President writes in his book "Our voice must speak the truth as loudly and clearly as possible: The present path that the state of Israel is on is unsustainable."

But Cohen writes: "It is time to retire the unsustainability nostrum. Facile and inaccurate, it distracts from the inconvenient truth of Israel’s sustainable success..." Later, "that 'point' of unmanageability is a vanishing one. Permanent occupation is what several ministers in Netanyahu’s coalition government advocate. Backed by the evidence, they are certain it can be managed. They are right."

If this sounds familiar to some of you, you may have come across my comments at a Middle East Policy Council panel last fall where I discuss the three most problematic myths in our discourse on Israel/Palestine. The myth of unsustainable occupation was one of them:

Indeed, in 2011, President Obama said about Israel, quote, “precisely because of our friendship, it is important that we tell the truth. The status quo is unsustainable. The dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation.” The same was uttered by his then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

If anything has been sustainable in the turbulent Middle East for the last half-century, longer than Mubarak and longer than Gadhafi, it has been Israel’s occupation. Sure, nothing is sustainable forever. At one point, I suppose, the Grand Canyon was just a river. But it’s particularly disingenuous to hear this language from the very officials who are crafting policy to ensure that the status quo remains sustainable.  

As I’ve already discussed, not only is the Israeli occupation sustainable, it is profitable. Indeed, Israel has done almost all it can to ensure the occupation persists for generations by carving up the West Bank with colonies and entrenching its presence there.

So even though Cohen successfully identifies the same problem I pointed out, here is where Cohen fails spectacularly. While he identifies that the occupation is very much sustainable, he fails to put the proper blame on Washington for its support of Israel, without which the sustainability of occupation would be in serious jeopardy.  This is a slippery slope for a Liberal Zionist. Liberal Zionists constantly tell us that ending the occupation is in Israel's interest, but if the status quo is sustainable and Israel is secure and thriving, then what would motivate it to change its behavior in occupied Palestine - behavior that even Liberal Zionists identify as morally reprehensible? Not much.

Which is why the next logical step, a step Liberal Zionists generally don't take, is a call for the necessary pressure to change the Israeli decision calculus. So does Cohen call for an end to US military, economic and/or diplomatic support for Israel which helps make the status quo sustainable? Does he call for sanctions on Israel until it complies with international law? Nope. He merely concludes that majorities on both sides must determine "that painful compromise in the name of a better future is preferable to manageable conflict."

But what changes need to take place to get Israelis to prefer making the necessary concessions instead of not making them and enjoying the status quo he only paragraphs earlier identified as sustainable?

Cohen doesn't say. Maybe he will in a column 2 to 3 years from now. And why rush anyway Roger? The status quo is, as we both note, sustainable. Its just a few more years of millions of Palestinians living under the jack-boot of Israeli occupation. If this hasn't driven you to urgency after several decades, what's a couple more years. I'm sure you will might get around to it at some point.

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A Tale of Two Articles: Wonderwater vs Watergate

In the daily universe of what is opinion writing and reporting on Israel/Palestine in the English language press, today offered an interesting juxtaposition. Both the New York Times and an Israeli daily ran stories about water and its availability in the region.

One piece lauded Israel for its ingenuity, mentioned nothing about occupation and the theft of Palestinian water resources and depicted Israel as the generous benefactor of Palestinian water. Here is an excerpt:

Because of geography and hydrology, the Palestinians’ water future is closely tied to Israel’s. In just the few years of Hamas control of Gaza, the water supply there has been polluted, and though no solution to its coming water crisis is likely without an Israeli role, Hamas has refused to cooperate with Israel. 

The Palestinians in the West Bank already receive much of their water from Israel’s national water utility and, sovereignty and symbolism aside, neither a two-state solution nor a continuation of the status quo will change that. Given their proximity to Israel, the Palestinians are likely to be among the few Arab winners in the water race. 

The other piece was far more critical of Israel and accurately described the way in which Israel exploits Palestinian water resources properly contextualizing the situation in Occupation. The author writes:

So here are the facts:  

 * Israel doesn’t give water to the Palestinians. Rather, it sells it to them at full price.  

 * The Palestinians would not have been forced to buy water from Israel if it were not an occupying power which controls their natural resource, and if it were not for the Oslo II Accords, which limit the volume of water they can produce, as well as the development and maintenance of their water infrastructure.  

 * This 1995 interim agreement was supposed to lead to a permanent arrangement after five years. The Palestinian negotiators deluded themselves that they would gain sovereignty and thus control over their water resources. The Palestinians were the weak, desperate, easily tempted side and sloppy when it came to details. Therefore, in that agreement Israel imposed a scandalously uneven, humiliating and infuriating division of the water resources of the West Bank.  

 * The division is based on the volume of water Palestinians produced and consumed on the eve of the deal. The Palestinians were allotted 118 million cubic meters (mcm) per year from three aquifers via drilling, agricultural wells, springs and precipitation. Pay attention, Rino Tzror: the same deal allotted Israel 483 mcm annually from the same resources (and it has also exceeded this limit in some years). In other words, some 20 percent goes to the Palestinians living in the West Bank, and about 80 percent goes to Israelis – on both sides of the Green Line – who also enjoy resources from the rest of the country.  

 Why should Palestinians agree to pay for desalinated water from Israel, which constantly robs them of the water flowing under their feet?

Now, can you guess which appeared in the New York Times and which in the Israeli daily?


UPDATE*: It seems Seth Siegel, the author of the NY Times puff piece on Israel and water scarcity who was identified in the article as "a founder of Beanstalk, a brand-licensing agency, and of Sixpoint Partners, an investment bank" is also....drum-roll.....an AIPAC board member. Why did the NYT omit this very relevant part of his bio in the author description?

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Israel/Gaza Cease-Fire Dynamics Breakdown

For months we have been tracking Israeli cease-fire violations in Gaza. In November of 2012, a cease-fire agreement was brokered by Egypt between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Previous cease-fire agreements, like the one brokered by Egypt in June of 2008 were shattered by extrajudicial assassinations carried out by Israel. The biggest question after the cease-fire agreement, as I made clear here, was who would hold Israel to account for cease-fire violations? Egypt was not going to play this role. The U.S. was not going to play this role. So effectively, Israel could fire into Gaza without accountability, provoke a reaction and then claim self-defense. Of course this has been similar to what we have seen in the past as we displayed here, here, and here.

So what has been happening since the cease-fire? In anticipation of similar trends, we began tracking Israeli cease-fire violations shortly after the agreement was reached. We have an ongoing list here. The media predictably continued to ignore Israeli cease-fire violations, which is why it was even more important to catalog them. If another massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza began, Israel would surely use the pretext of "self-defense" to fend off any international criticism and the mainstream media's failure to cover these cease-fire violations would have provided and supported the Israeli narrative needed to make war. Thus, we not only tracked Israeli cease-fire violations, but we also tracked if and how these violations were being covered in the mainstream. More on that later.

The chart below depicts a few things; Israeli cease-fire violations, Palestinian projectile launches and Palestinian casualties that resulted from Israeli cease-fire violations week by week of the cease-fire through January 2014. A few notes on the data; first, we refer to "projectiles" because there are different types of projectiles that are deployed, not all are "rockets" and thus "rockets" alone, the preferred parlance of the Israeli state, isn't an accurate descriptor. Additionally, we are not focusing on each individual piece of ordinance but rather on events. So if one projectile is launched or two are launched together, these are the same event. Likewise, we don't count each individual piece of ordinance Israel deploys in an airstrike wherein it routinely drops several bombs in a singular event. If we did, the number of Israeli violations would surely be much, much higher. For example, the Israeli human rights group B'tselem, citing the Israeli Shin Bet, notes that nearly 14,000 projectiles were fired from Gaza from 2005 to 2013. UN OCHA noted that Israel fired about the same number of artillery shells into Gaza......in 2006 alone. Lastly, the Shin Bet keeps numbers on Palestinian fire from Gaza but does not differentiate between fire at Israeli targets that have entered Gaza vs. those outside it. Also, it does not have data available at the week level, only the month level. Even using their numbers for Palestinian fire though, Israeli violations outnumber them nearly two to one.

There really is no comparison between Israel's capacity to destroy and the combined capacity of all the factions in Gaza. The point here is to understand how the events relate to each other, what leads to escalation, and how this effects the durability of the cease-fire agreement.

[Click to Enlarge]

As you can see from the chart, Israeli cease-fire violations have been persistent throughout and have routinely resulted in Palestinian injuries and deaths. Palestinian launches have been rare and sporadic and occurred almost always after successive instances of Israeli cease-fire violations. You can see a steady escalation from around week 48 and onward. This corresponds with mid-December during which Israel committed several cease-fire violations resulting in multiple Palestinian casualties. There was no Palestinian projectile fire in the two weeks prior to these Israeli violations which inflicted high causalities. This means that this week was the escalation point and it was Israel doing the escalating. You can see that the following weeks continue to feature exchanges that included high Palestinian casualties. You may wonder why you don't see Israeli casualties from Palestinian projectile fire depicted on this chart, that is because as afar as I can tell, there weren't any during this period.

So how have these cease-fire dynamics been covered? We've tracked New York Times coverage of the cease-fire during this period. The New York Times is representative of the mainstream and extremely important for shaping public discourse on events and thus an important window into broader mainstream coverage. The Times also has multiple reporters covering these events including a bureau in Jerusalem and a correspondent in Gaza. Finally, we simply can't track everything so the Times, with its easily searchable history, is an effective example to use.

Of the nearly 120 Israeli cease-fire violations during this period the New York Times reported on 17 of them. Additionally, most of these stories (eleven) came either during the first week of the cease-fire, when the issue was still fresh in readers' minds, or since the escalation on December 20th. That means for the bulk of this period, during which Israel committed 87 cease-fire violations and causing some 91 Palestinian casualties over nearly a one year period there were only six stories on the topic. This represents a systematic failure to cover Israeli cease-fire violations.

Making matters worse is the way events are covered in the rare instances they are covered. In most cases, Israeli actions are described as a response to Palestinian actions. So while most Israeli cease-fire violations are not covered at all, those that are are explained as justified retaliation. Thus the reader is completely misled about the dynamics of fire, why the cease-fire is threatened and exactly what is going on in and around Gaza.

The biggest challenge to the cease-fire agreement is persistent Israeli violation and the lack of any accountability for them. The politics of the Gaza Strip are complex. Israel says it wants Hamas to control projectile fire from other factions and yet it persistently violates the truce putting Hamas in a position of having to defend Israel's violations. By targeting groups other than Hamas and by expecting Hamas to crack down on their responses, Israel is playing a dangerous and deadly game of divide and conquer in Gaza that will likely lead to the unraveling of the cease-fire. Once again, Israel has proven security is not its aim, subjugation is.

For more on this topic, I highly recommend a new report by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) on Israeli fire into Gaza.

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The Whitewashing of Ariel Sharon

It was inevitable, I suppose. The legacy of Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli Prime Minister who died recently after years in a coma, was the subject of much debate and conversation in the Israel/Palestine discourse this week. Some mainstream American media outlets did a particularly poor job, however, in characterizing the life of the man.

My thoughts on Ariel Sharon, for those who might not have already guessed, are here. It is fair to say that in general, Palestinians view Ariel Sharon negatively and, frankly, as a war criminal. But it would be unfair to say that only Palestinians view him in this way, as if Ariel Sharon's legacy was just some other endless point of debate between irreconcilable Israeli and Palestinian narratives. In fact, anyone characterizing points of debate in this way is probably just to afraid to take an objective stance.

In reality, those authoring critical pieces of Sharon's legacy have come from a variety of different backgrounds. The New Yorker carried a post by Raja Shahada and another by Bernard Avishai. Max Blumenthal's piece in the Nation was also stellar, as was Rashid Khalidi's piece for Foreign Policy and Daniel Levy's piece for Al Jazeera America. Sara Leah Whitson from Human Rights Watch made an important contribution as well. There were many more that got it right. The bottom line is Sharon was responsible for some pretty heinous things in his life that included massacres of civilians and the massacre of the peace process through settlement expansion.

Unfortunately, many others failed to get the story right and among them are some of the most mainstream outlets for what is considered serious conversation in the United States. Two particularly egregious examples are The New York Times and The Charlie Rose Show.

 

The New York Times ran an obituary on Ariel Sharon and a number of opinion pieces all by Israelis (as of now I am not aware that they have run a Palestinian voice on Sharon). Here are a few key gems from the obituary and some notes:

"he stunned Israel and the world in 2005 with a Nixon-to-China reversal and withdrew all Israeli settlers and troops from Gaza. He then abandoned his Likud Party and formed a centrist movement called Kadima focused on further territorial withdrawal and a Palestinian state next door." 

The problem with this narrative is that there is no objective evidence proving that Sharon's intention with the unilateral disengagement of Gaza was benevolent. We do however, thanks to the very same New York Times, have this tidbit that Mr. Bronner chose not to include in his obituary from Mr. Sharon's key aide:

''The significance of our disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process,'' Mr. Weisglass was quoted as saying in Haaretz, a liberal daily often critical of Mr. Sharon's government. ''It supplies the formaldehyde necessary so there is no political process with Palestinians.''  

 ''When you freeze the process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state,'' Mr. Weisglass added. ''Effectively, this whole package called a Palestinian state, with all it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda.''

Why wouldn't Bronner include that? Also, there is that other inconvenient truth for Bronner's narrative. Sharon was perhaps the most pro-colonization Israeli leader ever. I am not only talking about the 1970s and 1980s but all the way through Sharon's premiership. He presided over the single largest period of expansion in the Israeli settler population, some 75,000, since the Menachem Begin era. That bit of info also didn't make it into Bronner's obit. Of course, if it did, it would be hard to reconcile with the unsubstantiated claim that Sharon intended to leave the West Bank to create a Palestinian state.  It gets worse in the obit (emphasis added):

 "The massacre provoked international outrage, and many Israelis, already despondent that the “48-hour” Lebanon incursion had turned into a lengthy military and geopolitical adventure, were outraged. There were furious calls for Mr. Sharon’s resignation. 

Mr. Sharon and Mr. Begin said this was intolerable slander. As Mr. Begin said, using the Hebrew word for non-Jews, “Goyim kill goyim, and they blame the Jews.” Nonetheless, even Mr. Begin started to distance himself from Mr. Sharon, whose political demise began to seem inevitable. 

The government established an official investigation of the massacre, led by Israel’s chief justice, Yitzhak Kahan. The investigating committee absolved Mr. Sharon of direct responsibility, but said he should have anticipated that sending enraged militiamen of the Phalange into Palestinian neighborhoods right after the assassination of the group’s leader amounted to an invitation to carnage. The committee recommended his resignation. 

Time magazine reported that Mr. Sharon had actually urged the Gemayel family to have its troops take revenge on the Palestinians for the death of Mr. Gemayel. The magazine said Mr. Sharon made this point during his condolence visit to the family. It claimed further that a secret appendix to the Kahan Commission report made this clear. 

Mr. Sharon sued Time for libel and won a partial victory in Federal District Court in New York. The court found that the secret appendix, which contained names of Israeli intelligence officers, included no assertion by Mr. Sharon of the need for Phalangist revenge. But it ruled that Mr. Sharon had not been libeled because he could not prove “malice” on the magazine’s part." 

Bronner tells us about Sabra and Shatila toward the very end of a 4,000+ word piece. He presents it in a way where the facts, and Sharon's role in the events are disputed. He sets up a dichotomy between an official Israeli Government investigation and a US libel lawsuit, as if those two could ever be on equal standing as authorities on actions taken by the Israeli military. He also says that "the investigating committee absolved Mr. Sharon of direct responsibility", which is very odd since the actual committee's report says (emphasis added):

We have found, as has been detailed in this report, that the Minister of Defense [Sharon] bears personal responsibility. In our opinion, it is fitting that the Minister of Defense draw the appropriate personal conclusions arising out of the defects revealed with regard to the manner in which he discharged the duties of his office - and if necessary, that the Prime Minister consider whether he should exercise his authority under Section 21-A(a) of the Basic Law: the Government, according to which "the Prime Minister may, after informing the Cabinet of his intention to do so, remove a minister from office.

Why does Bronner tell us that the committee report says one thing when it fact it said the opposite? The entire treatment of Ariel Sharon's history of war crimes in his obituary in the New York Times is poorly done, to say the least, and there are several signs suggesting that the reporter intentionally downplays Sharon's war crimes.

It is important to remember that many questions have been raised about Bronner's objectivity, in part because his son was serving in the Israeli military as he was reporting about it. That and the public editor of the New York Times saw fit to argue that this conflict of interest should have led editors to take Bronner off the Israel beat. Why editors today saw fit to have him write the obituary is another question all together.

Still another question is what is going through the minds of the bookers and producers at the Charlie Rose show when they were putting together their "appreciation of Ariel Sharon"? Of course, who does Charlie Rose have on to discuss Sharon's legacy? Ethan Bronner. Who else? Jeffrey Goldberg, the journalist who left for Israel after college in the US to volunteer in the Israeli military as a prison guard during the first intifada.

Is there no one out there without connections to the Israeli military, the very same military that Ariel Sharon committed war crimes while working for, that can objectively discuss the man's legacy? ANYONE?

The discussion that ensues is everything you'd expect and less. Our helpful interns have transcribed the segment from last night.

Goldberg calls Sharon "Israel’s greatest warrior hero" , "the sort of tank commander that any Prime Minister would want to have in his corner at a really stressful moment", "the greatest reckless general Israel had" , "the boldest" , "he was all energy and that energy was always moved forward" , "he wanted to make sure that you were comfortable, that you were happy" . Then, and this is the kicker,in the rare moment of describing Sharon's barbarism, Goldberg descends into some orientalist drivel. "Ariel Sharon was very Middle Eastern" Goldberg said as he likened the trait of ruthlessness to region, "and I don’t mean that in sort of an enlightened way. "

Yeah, no kidding.

Bronner, for his part, calls Sharon "ruthlessly pragmatic" , "Charming certainly, but a difficult guy who wanted to do it his way" and "a funny guy".

Funny? I'm sure the victims at Sabra and Shatila didn't find him funny. Of course Sabra and Shatila was not mentioned at all in the discussion around Charlie Rose's table. And, even though Bronner mentioned Sharon's involvement in the Commando Unit 101, whose members he described as "very bright, very capable young people doing these very daring acts" , he never mentions Sharon's likely earliest war crime as a leader of that unit, the massacre at Qibya. After the Goldberg & Bronner Sharon love fest, the rest of the show featured old interviews with Sharon himself.

What kind of war criminals get this lionizing treatment? The kind, it seems, that get away with it.

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Michael Oren to CNN, Making the Lopsided Worse

The Jerusalem Post has this item. Michael Oren, the former American who renounced his citizenship to represent the State of Israel as its Ambassador to Washington, is now joining CNN as an analyst and contributor. His tenure as ambassador ended this fall after having served 4 years. More from the Jerusalem Post:

Oren, who now lives in Tel Aviv, told the Jerusalem Post that he saw the position as an opportunity to give "balanced but insightful commentary on pressing Israeli and Middle East issues." He said that what made CNN attractive was that it not only has a large domestic US audience, but has a strong an international reach as well. "In terms of getting the message across, it is quite a large and diverse audience," he said.

Balanced? Please. Oren is a former official representative of Israel and in his writings since leaving the Embassy has continued to voice pro-Israel messaging. No doubt he will continue to do so on CNN. So who exactly would he balance out?

In 2012, I did an analysis of CNN coverage of Israel's week long bombardment campaign of Gaza. Israeli official spokespeople were interviewed more than twice as often as Palestinian official spokespeople. I'd encourage you to read that entire post for more.

And can you guess who was the most often occurring guest during that period? Michael Oren.

This travesty parading as journalism, is CNN.

Here is an example of some of Ambassador Oren's "insightful commentary" on 60 Minutes (about 11 minutes in)

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