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Thursday, January 31 2008Blurring the Distinctions
AP coverage of the Winograd report continues the MSM’s tricky casualty figures: The commission did not pull punches in describing the failures of Olmert's government during the 34-day conflict that, according to official figures from both sides, killed between 1,035 and 1,191 Lebanese civilians and combatants, in addition to 119 Israeli soldiers and 40 civilians. Lebanese civilians and combatants are reported in a single figure while the Israeli numbers presented as two separate figures. That's probably because Hezbollah successfully blurred the line between civilians and combatants. But AP can't say that, can they? Finnish Newspaper Plagiarizes Neo-Nazi Screed
Tundra Tabloid blows the lid. (Hat tip: Solomonia) Must Be A Zionist Plot
Israeli authorities fear that along with the new influx of livestock will come a wave of diseases not indigenous to Gaza, among them foot-and-mouth disease and the avian flu that are known to exist in Egypt. Because of the proximity between Gaza's population to Israeli towns, the diseases could easily spread into Israel. Must be one of those Zionist plots I'm never privvy to. Think Again
If you don't think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rhetoric represents dangerous demagoguery, think again. "Forget It"
See Robin Shepherd's take on the Winograd report, Gaza, and Israel's critics: Yesterday's publication of the Winograd report into Israel's prosecution of the 2006 campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon provides a new opportunity for commentators to demonstrate their capacity for sober, balanced analysis. They will note the criticisms directed against Ehud Olmert, Israel's Prime Minister, while lauding the report as a display of democratic accountability unthinkable in any other country in the Middle East. Never failing to see the bigger picture, they will carefully weigh the options faced by a democracy under fire from some of the dangerous people on the planet. Pause Button
We're pausing, all to briefly, to enjoy an uncommon event: a beautiful blanket of snow. Images from YNet News and Reuters. Jerusalem
Wednesday, January 30 2008January 30 Links
A Modest Proposal For Mideast Peace Terror in Space A Visit To a Gaza Rocket Factory The Assault on Israel's Right to Self-Defense The Gaza Breakout What Would We Do Without Mark Steel?
The problem for the media is that people escaping for bread, diesel and fags are spoiling Israel's strategy, so that can't be celebrated, as that would appear biased. It's as if, after Comic Relief night, the BBC had to have an evening in favour of starvation in the interests of being neutral. Steel's analogy: Hamas as Moses and -- by implication -- Israelis as latter day Pharoahs, utterly fails. • Egypt enslaved the Jews. Steel's Israeli pharoahs disengaged from Gaza. • The enslaved Jews posed no security threat to their Egyptian taskmasters. The Palestinians fire rockets daily at their Israeli "taskmasters." • The Jews left Egypt, someone else's homeland, for freedom in their own homeland. The Palestinians are already in Gaza, and they've governed themselves since 2005. Will Charlton Heston play Mahmoud Zahar in the movie too? Hamas Liberating Egyptian Territory?
From the Jerusalem Post: The Egyptians have also foiled an attempt by Hamas members to raise Palestinian and Hamas flags on top of several government institutions in Sinai's Rafah and el-Arish. A "Tel Aviv" Response
It's nice to see this Wall St. Journal correction after an update on Qassam fire reported that "Tel Aviv responded with air and ground fire . . ." The recent decision to respond to Gaza militants firing rockets into southern Israel was made by the Israeli government in Jerusalem. A World-Wide item Friday incorrectly said the response was from Tel Aviv, which is where Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak had met with some of his military leaders. As a reader pointed out to the WSJ, the original wording reinforces the belief that Jerusalem is not the legitimate capital of Israel. "Prejudice With a Halo"
Nova Scotia Chronicle Herald's Paul Schneidereit describes the UN's Israel bash (pun intended) as "prejudice with a halo." Another Canadian columnist, Toronto Star's Anna Morgan also recently weighed in. MSM on Jewish Refugees: Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Before the return of President Bush from his trip to the Middle East, I asked about this of Deputy White House Press Secretary Tony Fratto at the daily news briefing: Related reading: Point of No Return Tuesday, January 29 2008Half-Baked Stats
Although Gaza daily requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent. But Martin Kramer astutely points out: You don't need to be a math genius to figure out that if Gaza has a population of 1.5 million, as the authors also note, then 680,000 tons of flour a day come out to almost half a ton of flour per Gazan, per day. What other half-baked stats are the MSM accepting as canon? (Hat tip: Daled Amos) Tribute to a Terrorist
Karma Nabulsi praises terror leader George Habash in The Guardian. See HonestReporting UK's latest communique: Tribute to a Terrorist. Putting the Kibosh on Habash
. . . this revolutionary of a bygone area, founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, virtuoso rhetorician, with his charismatic grin, perpetual cigarette and black leather jacket . . . The only people enjoying this eulogy are a handful of stodgy and increasingly irrelevent old men in Mahmoud Abbas' Muqata headquarters. Monday, January 28 2008Special Report: The Hamas Propaganda War
How the MSM handed Hamas a PR victory. Find out in HonestReporting's Special Report: The Hamas Propaganda War The Wrong Cover Story
Dry Bones on what's in and out of the news:
Caught In the Act: BBC Regurgitates Old News
The primary difference between the two versions: the BBC tacks onto the end a few comments from an Israeli police official and an unidentified mother whose son was killed in a rocket attack. The fact that the Times' article was syndicated by World News & Features is irrelevant. The BBC's January 26 date suggests that Martin's encounter with Palestinian rocketeer Abu Haroun was recent. Its pure laziness on the BBC's part. • Why is the BBC regurgitating old stories with a new date? Could they not be bothered to update their coverage? • Why is the Beeb seemingly ready with fresh content when it comes to negative coverage of Israel? • What other so-called "original" stories are the Beeb rehashing? • Is this the kind of journalism that deserves to be supported by public license fee money? Sunday, January 27 2008A Model of "Resistance"
Soon afterwards George Habash formed the PFLP. The group's inaugural statement said that, "the only language which the enemy understands is that of revolutionary violence". Habash and the PFLP are best known for hijacking four planes to Dawson's Field, in Jordan, in September, 1970. An attempt to hijack a fifth plane, from El Al, was foiled. It's a story of real resistance: Pilot Uri Bar-Lev's. If only the BBC would use him as its model. Meanwhile, Down Under . . .
We're talking about The Age and the New Zealand Herald. Sinai Observers Vulnerable?
Are multi-national forces in the Sinai now vulnerable to Islamic terror? Caption Quest
When Hamas was trying to score media points with a self-induced blackout, Time magazine bought in. Here's the photo (by Reuters) in question:
Here was the caption Time first published: Blackout: The Israeli embargo has left the Gaza Strip without electricity. The Palestinian Parliament was forced to meet by candlelight on Tuesday night. Unfortunately, there was one small problem: The meeting took place during the day. As we already blogged, Hamas closed the curtains, the candles were lit, and only then was the press invited into the room. Moreover, Reuters' original caption didn't indicate that the meeting took place at night: Palestinian lawmakers attend a parliament session in candlelight during a power cut in Gaza January 22, 2008. Israel agreed to allow some fuel, medicine and food into the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Tuesday, at least temporarily easing a blockade that has plunged much of the territory into darkness and sparked international protests. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA) Time has since changed the caption: The Israeli embargo has left the Gaza Strip without electricity. To emphasize its plight the Palestinian Parliament met by candlelight on Tuesday. (Hat tip: PJM) AP's "Breathtaking Speed"
Abu Uday, a 23-year-old member of the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, said in an interview yesterday that the initial reason they weakened the border fence was to ambush Israeli tanks if and when they ever moved to reoccupy southern Gaza. So how can AP spin the border breach as a spontaneous reaction to the cycle of Israeli-Palestinian violence? The current border crisis developed at breathtaking speed, typical of Gaza's volatility. Nobody topples an international border fence with "breathtaking speed." UPDATE Jan. 27: The Daily Telegraph makes the same mistake: The wall fell after a nearly week-long Israeli blockade of fuel and humanitarian aid into Gaza, a response to a week of heavy qassam rocket attacks on Israeli towns after Israeli air strikes killed the son of a senior Hamas leader and 18 other people. Revisiting the Gaza Beach Affair
Second Draft takes on the Gaza Beach affair. How Hamas Won the P.R. Battle
. . . a classic example not only of Israeli bureaucratic buffoonery, but a sad indication that not much has been learned and implemented since the Second Lebanon War exposed how dire the need is for a unified communications apparatus as a tool in fighting modern wars. . . . Palestinians Prove Robert Frost Correct
Egyptian security forces caught 20 Palestinians in Sinai overnight Saturday in possession of explosives and electronic devices which would have enabled them to listen in to the Egyptian forces' communications networks. But it's Israel's fault: During a debate in the Egyptian Parliament in Cairo on Saturday night, several parliamentarians said that Israel was behind the crisis since it wanted to settle the Gazans in Sinai. Good fences really do make good neighbors. Saturday, January 26 2008The State of the Fuel "Crisis"
This from Dion Nissenbaum: Israel is pumping in some fuel for Gaza's only power plant and offering some diesel, but Palestinians are actually refusing to accept the small shipments of diesel to protest Israel's policies. Some "crisis" this is turning out to be. New Anger Over Balen Report Cover Up
The Daily Mail writes: Mr Sugar, a commercial solicitor from Putney, South-West London, could now seek to take his case to the House of Lords. The Beeb has spent an estimated £250,000 in licence-fee to cover up the report. At Open Secrets, a BBC blog addressing FOI issues, Martin Rosenbaum once described the knotty issue like this: And now that people have started asking me whether I am a functional journalist or a strategic journalist, I have decided the safest thing to do is just look puzzled. That seems to work so far. This Is Poverty?
AP describes the Palestinians' recent shopping spree: Rami Abdou, an economic analyst, estimated that Gazans spent $130 million in less than two days, a princely sum for the poverty-stricken territory. Toronto Star Gives Fuel To Hamas Propaganda Machine
Was the Toronto Star duped into fueling the Hamas propaganda machine? See HonestReporting Canada's latest communique: Toronto Star Gives Fuel To Hamas Propaganda Machine Thursday, January 24 2008RSF Condemns Attack on Israeli TV Crew
Reporters Without Borders finally condemned the attack on an Israeli TV crew working at Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha adjacent to the Gaza border. The crew from Israel's Channel 2 was shot at by a sniper firing from Gaza. Watch the dramatic footage under fire. Five Out Takes You Might Have Missed
Washington Post on one family's reunion: Along one teeming road in the Egyptian part of Rafah, a Hamas security official who had been stranded on Egypt's side of the border since June -- fearing arrest by Israel during a crossing if he tried to return -- met his mother and sisters in the surging crowd. "Eight months I haven't seen him!" his mother exclaimed after a flurry of hugging and kissing. Noah Pollak on Egypt’s role: Egypt has been hoisted with its own petard, and it is really quite enjoyable to see from a strategic perspective. Hamas probably blew up the border fence with explosives that Egypt allowed it to smuggle into Gaza. Heh. Daily Telegraph reporter Tim Butcher gets too curious about one man's shopping spree: Fertiliser, broken down into half bags for lugging through the many tunnels that arms smugglers normally use for delivery into Gaza, was to be seen as it was manhandled overland.
While starvation has not been a problem there – most of the strip's residents receive food aid from the UN – it's proved a powerful idea in the propaganda war over Gaza's fate.
Those Palestinians unfortunate enough to live in camps in Lebanon, for example, are not utterly deprived of rights, and dependent on UN aid, because of Israeli policy alone. Pan-Arab policy also dictates that the Palestinians should live in absolute hardship, lest they decide to play into the hands of Israel, by abandoning the struggle and quietly assimilating and getting on with their lives. . . . WashPost Gets It
This staff-ed shows the Washington Post sees right through Hamas' PR games: Hamas took advantage of the blockade first by arranging for sympathetic Arab media to document the "humanitarian crisis," then by daring Egypt to use force against Palestinian civilians portrayed as Israel's victims. Its ultimate goal, stated publicly yesterday by Damascus-based leader Khaled Meshal, is to force Egypt to permanently reopen the border in cooperation with Hamas; that would greatly diminish Israel's ability to respond to rocket attacks with economic sanctions, and it would undermine the rival Palestinian leadership of Mahmoud Abbas. Confirmed: Darkness Staged for Media
On at least two occasions this week, Hamas staged scenes of darkness as part of its campaign to end the political and economic sanctions against the Gaza Strip, Palestinian journalists said Wednesday. Hamas is just as capable of causing the widespread blackouts for the same reason. Today's Poison Pen
From ArabCartoon.net, via Memri:
Related reading: Israel Likened to Nazis in Political Cartoons Wednesday, January 23 2008Hamas Coordinating Events With Al-Jazeera?
Indeed, so ready was Al-Jazeera with live coverage of candle-bearing Palestinian children and immediate reaction from across the Arab world, that Israeli officials said Tuesday they strongly suspect the Arab news network had coordinated its coverage in advance with the Hamas leadership. Who would suspect Al-Jazeera of having an agenda with Israel? Border Breach Planned For Weeks
They had apparently been planning the attack for weeks. With the knowledge of locals, militants had spent weeks methodically using blow torches to cut along the bottom of the 30-foot-tall corrugated iron wall along the Egyptian border. The breach wasn't a spontaneous event. As I pointed out earlier today, the timing of this comes too soon after Gaza's blackouts. A coincidence? UPDATE Jan. 24: A Palestinian guard told the Times of London he saw people surreptitiously working to undermine the wall "for months." Asked whether he had reported it to the government, he replied: "It was the government that was doing this. Who would I report it to?" A Palestinian journalist also confirmed for Nissenbaum that Hamas was behind the breach: Freelance Palestinian journalist Zuhair Najar said he was in Rafah a week ago working on a story about the network of smuggling tunnels under the border (used to get weapons in and militants out) when he saw militants doing some work on the iron fence. . . . "Spurred On By TV Footage"
Still, the international outcry over Israel's ban of fuel shipments to Gaza — spurred on by TV footage of Palestinian children huddled in the darkness and hospitals struggling to treat medical emergencies — prompted Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Monday to lift the fuel ban, and allow in medicine, supplies of cooking gas and a week's supply of fuel to run the power plant that feeds electricity to hospitals and sewage and water pumping stations. Related reading: MSM's Latest Victim: Egypt? AFP's Eastern Standard
Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski has given the okay for the construction of 7,300 new homes in occupied Arab east Jerusalem . . . . • As Dore Gold explains, repeated references to “occupation” serve Palestinian interests by justifying terror, leave no room for territorial compromise, and deny Israeli claims to the land. “Disputed” would be a more neutral term. • The term “Arab” implies that parts of Jerusalem are inherently “Arab.” At least AFP didn't capitalize the word "east," which would suggest a proper noun and a municipal entity existing independently of the city known as Jerusalem. January 23 Links
Canada Expected to Back Out of UN Racism Conference Top EU Official: Gaza Siege Not a War Crime 'Wartime' In Israeli Border Town BBC Doesn't Deny HR Report Findings
Will the BBC address the results of HR's analysis? See HonestReporting's latest communique: BBC Doesn't Deny HR Report Findings MSM's Latest Victim: Egypt?
Thanks to the weapons smuggling, the Palestinians probably had the capability of destroying two-thirds of the border wall for awhile, only needing to shift world sympathy to pull it off. After two days of the MSM's sympathetic images of people in blacked-out Gaza, it becomes harder for Egypt to intervene against a breach of its own border. Palestinians Breach Border, Flood Egypt
After Palestinians detonated holes in the wall along the Gaza-Egyptian border, thousands flooded across to stock up on fuel, food, cigarettes and heaven knows what else. Reuters noted the following: Egyptian riot police sent to reinforce the border mainly stood aside and let the Palestinians through, witnesses said. Developing . . . . Tuesday, January 22 2008Palestinians Fire On News Crew
YouTubed this afternoon: Palestinian snipers open fire on Channel 2 news crew. A Mideast Lesson For Greenway
Boston Globe columnist H.D.S. Greenway peddles the old myth that Hezbollah was created to simply resist Israel's presence in southern Lebanon: The Israeli invasion of Lebanon spawned a far more dangerous and implacable foe than the PLO had ever been. Hezbollah is an organization that had not previously existed, and would never have existed had it not been for Israel's occupation. AFP Bans Wiki, Facebook As Sources
Wikipedia and Facebook are useful for research, but relying on either as a "source" is risky. I hope other papers follow AFP's action. (Hat tip: Micropersuasion) BBC Doesn't Deny HR Report Findings
Will the BBC address the results of HR's analysis? Read more at HonestReporting UK's latest communique: BBC Doesn't Deny HR Report Findings Gaza's "Occupying Power"
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