International Herald Tribune Demolishes the Facts

When New York Times reporter Jayson Blair resigned amid controversy in May 2003, the Gray Lady sought to put its house in order by cutting down on factual errors. Evidently that new focus on accountability and accuracy has yet to rub off on the International Herald Tribune, which is owned by the Times and publishes material by its reporters and columnists.

 

On May 8, the Tribune printed a guest column by Cesar Chelala, an international public health consultant, entitled “Stop demolishing Palestinian homes: A way forward for Israel.” The column contains a number of material factual errors. For example, he claims:

 

 

Israeli soldiers are now demolishing whole towns and subdivisions. This is the case of Nazlat Issa in the West Bank and Rafah in Gaza. Demolitions are also carried out in Israel itself, such as a housing development in the Palestinian town of Kafr Kassem. The only accusation against the homeowners is that they lacked a building permit, which in any case is unattainable.

But a Jan. 22, 2003 article by New York Times correspondent James Bennet refutes Chelala’s claim that Israel’s demolitions in Nazlat Issa amounted to a “whole town” or even a “subdivision.” His report, entitled “Israel Destroys Arabs’ Shops in West Bank,” describes the commercial area of Nazlat Issa which was demolished as nothing more than “a ramshackle mall of corrugated metal sheds,”–hardly what one could consider a “town” or “subdivision.” Contrary to Chelala’s suggestion, no homes were even affected.

 

As far as Rafah is concerned, the number of homes that were demolished there in January 2002 is disputed. It is certainly not true, however, that the “only accusation against the homeowners is that they lacked a building permit.” Israel charged that these structures were being used for illegal arms smuggling from Egypt. (See, for example, AFP, Jan. 14, 2002).

 

Moreover, the claim that Israeli Arabs cannot obtain building permits is blatantly false. For example, according to Dr. Rimon Joubran, the Israeli Arab head of the District Town Planning and Building Commission for the largely Arab Bekaat Beit HaCarem district in northern Israel, in the 1994-96 period, the Arab towns of Sajar, Nahaf, Majdel Crum and Bana applied for 696 permits, 577 of which were approved (tables provided by District Town Planning and Building Commission Center for Strategic Planning and Economic Research). And in the 1997-2000 period, the number of permits that these towns were granted doubled. At an approval rate of 82.9 percent, how can building permits for Israeli Arabs be described as “unattainable”?

 

In eastern Jerusalem, another part of Israel with a large Arab population, the average number of permits issued to Arabs each year in the last five years is 183 (Charles Kohn, Principal City Planner, Department of Policy Planning, Jerusalem Municipality, as cited in Illegal Construction in Jerusalem: A Variation on an Alarming Global Phenomenon, Justus Reid Weiner, p. 158).

 

In addition, the International Herald Tribune ignored requests that Mr. Chelala provide any specific information about the alleged demolition of a housing development in Kafr Kassem. Lexis-Nexis searches did not turn up any reports about such an incident. However, CAMERA did find a United Press International report which stated:

 

 

An Israel Lands Administration spokeswoman told UPI they were planning to establish thousands of housing units [for Arabs] in Israeli-Arab villages such as Kafr Kassem northeast of Tel Aviv and Fureidis south of Haifa (July 7, 2002).

In addition, the Jerusalem Post reports that as part of a highway project, landowners in Kafr Kassem received compensation for expropriated land (Oct. 31, 2001).

 

Mr. Chelala also makes wildly inaccurate statements concerning water in the region. First, he writes: “80 percent of the West Bank’s water goes into Israel and the settlements.” He is most likely referring to the Western and Northeastern Aquifers of the Mountain Aquifer system, both of which straddle the Green Line which separates Israel from the West Bank. Most of the stored water in these aquifers, however, is under pre-1967 Israel, making it easily accessible only in Israel. Thus, even in the 1950s, Israel used 95 percent of the Western Aquifer’s water, and 82 percent of the Northeastern Aquifer’s water. Today, Israel’s share of these aquifers has declined to 83 percent and 80 percent, respectively (Eyal Benvenisti and Haim Gvirtzman, “Harnessing International Law to Determine Israeli-Palestinian Water Rights: The Mountain Aquifer,” National Resources Journal, Summer 1993). In other words, under Israeli administration the Palestinian share of these aquifers has actually increased. Moreover, Israel pumps over 40 MCM (million cubic meters) of water per year from sources within Israel over the Green Line for West Bank Palestinians (Gvirtzman, private communication, Dec. 8, 1998). Ramallah, for example, receives more than 5 MCM per year from Israeli sources according to the Arab water company, Jerusalem Water Undertaking (www.jwu.org).

 

Second, Mr. Chelala is wrong to report that “Palestinians cannot drill for water without Israeli permission and are not even allowed to build reservoirs to collect rain water.” More than 95 percent of Palestinians live in Area A, under the rule of the Palestinian Authority (PA). It is the PA which grants or does not grant permission for its Palestinians to drill wells or collect rain water. Israel simply has no say in that matter.

 

Finally, the Tribune did not respond to requests that Mr. Chelala substantiate his claims that since 1967, Israel has uprooted 500,000 olive trees. Given his other erroneous “facts,” it seems that editors ought to have taken seriously fact-checking here as well.

 

While New York Times editors were undertaking extensive investigations into possible factual errors over the years by their former employee, their colleagues at the International Herald Tribune refused to respond to the factual errors that CAMERA documented.

LA Times Demonizes Israeli PM

Over the last couple of days, the Los Angeles Times news coverage of Ariel Sharon’s views on the U.S.-backed “road map” and his Cabinet’s approval of the plan unfairly characterized the prime minister and contained several other examples of bias.

 

Demonizing Sharon

 

* In her May 26 article entitled “Israel OKs U.S.-Backed Peace Plan,” Megan Stack and Rebecca Trounson write of Sharon: “A war veteran famously ruthless in battle, a man they call the Bulldozer and the father of the Jewish settlement enterprise, the uncompromising Sharon is an improbable peace broker.”

 

This one-sided, editorialized, and erroneous portrayal of Sharon is exacerbated by a photo caption accompanying the story, which reads: “The uncompromising Sharon is an improbable peace broker.”

 

* Similarly, the same day, in another story, in providing “context” for Sharon’s backing of the peace plan, Times reporters Maher Abukhater and Rebecca Trounson, find this information pertinent:

 

 

Sharon, who served as Israel’s defense minister during the 1982 war in Lebanon, was later found indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian refugees at the hands of Israeli-allied Lebanese militias. Many Palestinians also dislike and fear him for his role in expanding Jewish settlements on occupied Arab lands. (“Palestinian View Is Mostly Skeptical,” May 26)

Apparently, in the minds of Abukhater, Trounson and Stack, the fact that in 1982, as Minister of Defense, Sharon was responsible for the dismantling of the first Israeli civilian settlements ever to be evacuated was not relevant context. He oversaw the dismantling of Yamit and Ophira, where some Israelis had resided for more than a decade.

 

Also, contrary to the Times’ image of Sharon as “uncompromising” and “an improbable peace broker,” the Israeli prime minister was, in fact, supportive of multiple peace agreements with Arab neighbors, starting with the 1979 Camp David Peace Accords with Egypt, which he helped negotiate as a minister of the Begin government. In 1994, as opposition leader, Sharon supported the accords with Jordan, and later on, as a minister under Netanyahu, he strengthened the accords with Jordan by, for example, arranging for increased water transfers. Moreover, in 1998, as Foreign Minister, Sharon accompanied Prime Minister Netanyahu to the Wye River talks as chief negotiator. As a result of these talks, 13 percent of territories in Area C (under full Israeli control) were transferred to the Palestinian Authority and another 14.2 percent of lands in Area B (Israeli military control and Palestinian civil control) were transferred to full PA control.

 

Partisan Language

 

* Once again, the Los Angeles Times employs the partisan language of “Palestinian uprising to end the Israeli occupation” (Stack and Trounson, May 26). Until the Palestinians launched their uprising in September 2000, nearly 100 percent of the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza lived under their own government–the Palestinian Authority–and thus could not have been described as living under “occupation.” Moreover, at the Camp David talks, which preceded the uprising by a couple of months, and at the Taba negotiations a few months later, Israel offered to withdraw from all of Gaza and from almost the entire West Bank. Arafat could have achieved statehood peacefully at the time, but instead he rejected the offer, without even putting forward a counter-offer, and he chose to launch the uprising.

 

*As noted above, the disputed territories of the West Bank and Gaza were inaccurately described as “occupied Arab lands.”

 

Suffering From Amnesia

 

*In the Abukhater and Trounson article about Palestinians’ reactions to the Israeli move, the Los Angeles Times allows a Palestinian student to erase Camp David and Taba from history. They report without noting the misinformation:

 

Ahmad Abu Sabae, a student at Al Quds University, laughed derisively at the notion of Sharon pushing for a renewed peace process with the Palestinians. Even the left-leaning Labor Party, which helped produce the Oslo peace accords, had not ended Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands, he said. [emphasis added]
“What did we get from Israel after 10 years of Oslo?” asked Sabae, 23. ‘Nothing. Look where we are today. Do you think Sharon, the worst of all the Israeli leaders, is going to be more generous to us than [Yitzhak] Rabin and [Shimon] Peres? They are all the same. Let us not fool ourselves anymore.”

 

Notice that Ehud Barak is conspicuously absent from Abu Sabae’s recall of Israeli leaders. He was the Labor Party Prime Minister who proposed a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and an almost 100 percent withdrawal from the West Bank, or in other words, an end to “Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands.” It was the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, not an Israeli prime minister, who scuttled thatprospect. It was irresponsible of the Times to not remind readers of Barak’s offer at Camp David.

 

Biased Sub-Headline

 

* The subheadline for the Stack article “Israel OKs U.S.-Backed Peace Plan” is: “While the government votes to accept the creation of a Palestinian state, it sets conditions that are likely to complicate the process.” Neither this headline, nor any other Los Angeles Times headline in recent memory makes clear that the Palestinians are also setting conditions “likely to complicate the process.” For example, the Palestinian demand for a “right of return” for Palestinians refugees and their millions of descendants to live in Israel-proper is a non-starter.

New York Times Refuses to Report the Straight Facts

Despite dramatic public exposure of the  New York Times’ questionable policies in handling repeated deceptions by one of its reporters, the newspaper has again misled its readers, this time about the terms of the “Road Map.” Instead of reporting the actual terms of the peace plan drawn up by the “Quartet” (United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia), the Times has injected its own language.

 

In his May 12, 2003 article about Colin Powell’s meetings with Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas (“Powell Consults 2 Premiers on Mideast Peace”), correspondent Steven Weisman misrepresented the terms of the road map proposed by the “Quartet.” Weisman wrote:

 

Among the other issues discussed today was the future of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. The peace plan calls for their dismantling, a point reiterated in recent days by Mr. Powell.

 

The road map does not call for the “dismantling” of the settlements (developed towns, villages and communities.) It calls only for the dismantling of outposts established since March 2001, and a freeze on new building. According to the text of the roadmap released by the U.S. State Department on April 30, 2003, the requirements of the Government of Israel vis-a-vis settlements are as follows:

 

-GOI (Government of Israel) immediately dismantles settlement outposts erected since March 2001.
-Consistent with the Mitchell Report, GOI freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).

 

The premise of Weisman’s article — that the Israeli prime minister would  not comply — was based on the erroneous assumption that complete settlement dismantlement is required by the road map.

 

CAMERA contacted the foreign desk of the the New York Times to urge an immediate correction but were told that Mr. Weisman maintained that his assertion was correct as the permanent status agreement calls for an end to “the occupation that began in 1967.” He based this on the following passage of the “roadmap,” as released by the U.S. State Department:

 

Parties reach final and comprehensive permanent status agreement that ends the Israel-Palestinian conflict in 2005, through a settlement negotiated between the parties based on UNSCR 242, 338, and 1397, that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and includes an agreed, just, fair, and realistic solution to the refugee issue, and a negotiated resolution on the status of Jerusalem that takes into account the political and religious concerns of both sides, and protects the religious interests of Jews, Christians, and Muslims worldwide, and fulfills the vision of two states, Israel and sovereign, independent, democratic and viable Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security. (emphasis added)

 

Nowhere, however, does the road map talk of a complete withdrawal to the 1967 borders, nor does it refer to Jewish presence in the territories being eradicated. According to the document, the future of the Jewish settlements is to be negotiated at the Second International Conference convened by the Quartet at the beginning of 2004 in order to:

 

endorse agreement reached on an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and formally to launch a process with the active, sustained, and operational support of the Quartet, leading to a final, permanent status resolution in 2005, including on borders, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements. . .

 

If, as the article suggests, the outcome of the negotiated resolution on borders and settlements is already known now, what then is the point of the Second International Conference?

 

The New York Times itself has published corrections of its erroneous characterizations of UN Security Council Resolution 242 on occasions, clarifying that the UN document requires Israel to withdraw from “territories” to “secure and recognized borders,” not from “the territories” or “all the territories” captured in the 1967 Six-Day War. Final borders are to be determined by negotiation.

 

Rather than acknowledge that he was substituting his own view of the outcome of negotiations for the actual terms of the document, the New York Times correspondent repeated his deceptive road map language in a front page article on May 21, 2003 (“Bush Weighs Mideast Trip as Peace Plan Ebbs”).

 

Describing a helicopter trip Sharon took with Stephen Hadley and Abrams, Weisman reported:

 

In fact, the officials said, the helicopter trip was partly intended for them to get a bird’s eye view of Jewish settlements to see which ones would eventually be frozen or even dismanted as part of the peace negotiations. The peace plan calls implicitly for settlements to be dismantled as part of a final settlement, its drafters say. (emphasis added)

 

This time, the reporter tried to qualify the erroneous statements by vaguely attributing intent to nameless “drafters” although the terms of the road map were explicitly stated.

 

Unlike other media outlets which immediately corrected similar errors about the road map, the New York Times compounded their deception by publishing the following paragraph, billed as a “correction” on May 23, 2003 :

 

A front-page article on May 12 about Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, his talks in Jerusalem and the Bush administration’s efforts to bring peace to the Middle East referred imprecisely to the peace plan drawn up by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia. The plan, known to diplomats as the road map, is understood by its authors and by Israel and the Palestinians to entail the eventual dismantling of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. But that understanding is not stated explicitly.

 

The New York Times‘ refusal to report the facts straight can only serve to mislead its readers.

Los Angeles Times Report on Kuneitra’s Destruction Refuted By Earlier Coverage

In an article May 1 entitled “Syria Still Mourns Land Lost to Israel,” Los Angeles Times correspondent Azadeh Moaveni made false assertions about Israeli actions in the Golan Heights town of Kuneitra during the 1970s which are refuted by the paper’s own coverage from that time period. Highlighting the reporter’s misinformation, the article’s sub-headline reads: “A ghost town destroyed by the Israeli army stands as a bitter symbol of the Golan Heights. Syrians say they want every inch back” (emphasis added).

 

 

Moaveni reports: “A once-vibrant crossroads between Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, Kuneitra was home to 20,000 Syrians before Israel occupied it in 1967 during the Arab-Israeli war. Israeli forces pulled out after the 1973 war, but not before bulldozing and dynamiting nearly every building in the village.”

 

 

In fact, as a review of the news coverage of the time shows, the town was in ruins due to fighting during and after the 1967 war, and was destroyed before Israel turned it over to the Syrians in 1974. On June 12, 1967, the Los Angeles Times ran an Associated Press story about Kuneitra entitled “Commandos of Syria Clash with Israelis: Skirmish Comes as U.N. Team Discusses Cease-Fire in Ruins of Captured Town” (emphasis added). Thus, the two Los Angeles Times headlines — one from 1967 and one from 2003 — are contradictory. According to the first, Kuneitra was in ruins as a result of the Six Day War in 1967, some seven years before the date which the 2003 headline claims is when Israel destroyed the town.

 

 

Furthermore, the 1967 story details: “El Koneytra was a town of smoldering ruins. Heavily armed convoys patrolled the debris-covered streets, automatic weapons trained on windows and doorways . . . . Life was at a virtual standstill with all shops closed or wrecked.” Thus, this damage, obviously the result of the just-concluded war, occured a full seven years before Israel’s supposed malicious destruction of the town.

 

 

Kuneitra, which fell into Israeli hands as a result of the 1967 war, continued to come under Syrian fire after that war. For example, a June 25, 1970 dispatch entitled “Fighting Flares in Golan Heights as Syrian Tanks Attack Israelis” reported that Syria had shelled Israeli positions in the Golan for three hours, hitting “El Quneitra, Nahal Gesher and Ein Zivan.” Likewise, a Sept. 2, 1972 New York Times story referred to the one inhabited street in the village and noted that Israeli soldiers were training “a block or two of ruins away.” A few months later, the New York Times again covered Kuneitra, reporting Damascus radio’s announcement that Syrian artillery had shelled “Kafr Naffakh and El Quneitra” (“Syria Shells Israeli Bases in Occupied Golan Heights,” Nov. 26, 1972).

 

 

The Syrian bombardment of Kuneitra continued through the 1973 war. The New York Times reported Oct. 11, 1973 that a Moroccan brigade joined Syrian forces “in an attack on El Quneitra.” And the paper reported Oct. 21, 1973 that the United Nations observation post in the town had survived the war intact, though Kuneitra itself was “a bombed-out military town the Syrians lost to the Israel. . .”

 

 

So, if Kuneitra was already in ruins from the 1967 war, and the Syrian assault against the town continued through the 1973 war, how can Israel be blamed for destroying the town in 1974? Unfortunately, Los Angeles Times reporter John Daniszewski leveled the same false charge on April 2, 2000 (“Displaced Syrians Long to Return to the Golan Heights”). Not only did editors not rectify the problem at the time, they are now exacerbating the problem by printing Moaveni’s flawed report.

 

 

Population revisions?

 

A Los Angeles Times report from the era also contradicts the figure that Moaveni provides for Kuneitra’s pre-1967 war population, which he sets at 20,000. On June 30, 1967, the Times ran a UPI story which puts that figure at a fraction of Moaveni’s estimate: “The town of Kuneitra, 50 miles southwest of Damascus, is on the high Syrian plateau. It had a population of 5,000 to 6,000, but now only 250 or so remain.”

 

 

Internal Contradiction

 

Besides being discredited by earlier Times reports, Moaveni’s article suffers from an internal contradiction about the Syrian position vis-a-vis peace with Israel. In consecutive sentences, he writes:

 

 

 

Syria has refused to make a peace with Israel, unlike Egypt and Jordan, before a comprehensive end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The 2000 talks reportedly faltered over Israel’s insistence on denying Syria access to the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee along the Golan Heights.

 

Which one is it? Did talks fall apart due to Israel’s refusal to cede the Galilee’s shore, or because Syria refused to make peace with Israel prior to a resolution of the Palestinian issue? Put differently, would peace have descended on the region had Israel only given up the shore? Or, was Israel’s decision on the Galilee irrelevant, since Syria had decided that peace with Israel was out of the question before a settlement with the Palestinians?

 

Response from the Times

 

In response to these points about Kuneitra, the Los Angeles Times cited a 1974 report commissioned by the United Nations to investigate the cause of the town’s destruction. The investigation found Israel responsible for the damage, and the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution condemning “Israel’s deliberate destruction and devastation of the town of Quneitra as a grave breach of the Geneva Convention . . . “

 

 

The report, however, must be afforded little if any credibility given that its author, Edward Gruner, was reporting under a major conflict of interest. He and his firm Gruner Brothers had extensive and ongoing business relations in Egypt, Iraq and even Syria (!) (see page 37 of his report), and was thus on the payroll of these governments. Gruner’s business interests surely would had suffered had he published a report that exonerated his client’s enemy.

 

 

Gruner failed to consult a single Israeli source or official during his survey (page 35). And, the Gruner report aside, what is one to make of the newspaper accounts which predate and contradict the report? The Los Angeles Times has not attempted to answer this conundrum, leaving the door open for yet more erroneous future reports on Kuneitra’s destruction.

Road Map Corrections

With past Israeli-Palestinian peace plans, the media tended to minimize or ignore Palestinian obligations while highlighting or exaggerating Israeli obligations. Intense media attention is now being paid to the recently released Middle East “road map” and similar errors are already creeping into the coverage.

 

For instance, on May 16, Wall Street Journal correspondent Guy Chazan erroneously reported:

 

 

Mr. Sharon has said Israel has 15 reservations about the plan, and won’t carry out one of its key requirements–dismantling Jewish settlements on land occupied by Israel since 1967–in the foreseeable future:.

 

In fact, the document does not call on Israel to dismantle “Jewish settlements on land occupied since 1967.” Rather, the plan stipulates:

 

 

+ GOI [Government of Israel] dismantles settlement outposts erected since March 2001.
+ Consistent with the Mitchell Report, GOI freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).

After CAMERA contacted the Journal, the paper commendably issued the following correction:

 

 

THE “ROAD MAP” plan backed by the U.S. requires the government of Israel to freeze all settlement activity and dismantle settlement outposts erected since March 2001. An International page article Friday incorrectly stated that the plan requires Israel to dismantle Jewish settlements on land occupied by Israel since 1967.

The Los Angeles Times also printed serious errors about Israel’s obligations as spelled out by the plan. On May 1, in an article entitled “Sponsors Quietly Unfold “˜Road Map for the Mideast,’ ” correspondent Henry Chu erroneously reported:

 

 

The plan is a timetable for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and end its settlements while Palestinians are to curb violence against Israel.

Likewise, with his colleague Ruth Morris, Chu incorrectly stated the next day:

 

 

The document calls on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and end its settlements.

CAMERA contacted the Los Angeles Times on Friday regarding Chu’s “road map” errors. On Saturday, the paper ran the following correction:

 

 

Middle East “road map” — Recent articles, including one in Friday’s Section A, stated that the Middle East peace initiative calls on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and end its settlements. The document calls on Israel to withdraw from Palestinian areas occupied after Sept. 28, 2000. The plan also calls on Israel to dismantle settlement outposts erected since March 2001 and freeze all settlement activity.

CAMERA Op-Ed: CNN’s Compromise

CNN executive Eason Jordan’s dramatic acknowledgment in a New York Times op-ed (“The News We Kept to Ourselves,” April 11, 2003) that for more than a decade his network concealed gruesome information about Saddam Hussein’s regime lifts the rock a notch off the dark underside of media collaboration with barbarous dictators.

Yet, according to former CNN reporter Peter Collins writing in the Washington Times (April 15, 2003), Jordan’s piece failed to convey the appeasement and fawning that marked network policies toward the Iraqi leadership. Collins tells of being instructed in 1993 by former CNN President Tom Johnson, under whom much of this activity apparently occurred, to repeat on the air “verbatim” the self-serving talking points of an Iraqi “Information minister” in order to advance the network’s chances for a personal interview with Saddam. When Collins shortly afterwards broadcast a story skeptical of Iraqi claims that Americans were bombing “innocent Iraqi farmers,” he was told by veteran CNN reporter Brent Sadler that the story “was not helpful.” Sadler wanted that interview with the Iraqi dictator.

The Jordan disclosures have prompted speculation about the conduct of CNN in other dictatorships where the network maintains bureaus, such as Cuba. A study by the Virginia-based Media Research Center found the network has given Fidel Castro a platform to promote his views unchallenged. According to the center, “just seven of 212 stories focused on the regimes’ treatment of dissidents; only four stories concerned themselves with the lack of democracy; and only two stories spotlighted the intimidation of journalists.”

That is to say, the practices employed in Baghdad characterize CNN’s kowtowing to dictators elsewhere. This extends to the autocratic regimes throughout the Arab Middle East, now being serviced by a recently launched CNN Arabic language division.

It is hardly surprising, then, that with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict CNN exhibits a tendency to prefer formulations agreeable to Arab leaders while minimizing realities that might offend. Thus, on the very day Eason Jordan unburdened himself, CNN analyst Bill Schneider declared “…there could be a fresh start [in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations], but only if President Bush decides to push for a peace deal, which means pushing Israel.” (Emphasis added) The notion that “pushing Israel” is the key reflects, of course, the Arab perspective, not the Israeli or American one, which sees reform of a corrupt and terror-promoting Palestinian Authority as the central task.

Nor are such CNN observations unusual. Shortly after Schneider’s comments, CNN anchorwoman Paula Zahn questioned Arab journalist Hisham Milhem about Arab-Israeli peace and its supposed role in placating anti-American sentiment in the Arab “street.” Milhem promptly responded: “…if you’re talking about people who need liberation, need liberation more than the Iraqis, they are the Palestinians, who are under tremendous occupation, brutal, Draconian occupation.”

The CNN host thanked Milhem, without a hint of disagreement that Israel’s conduct is worse than that of Saddam Hussein’s, and without challenging his one-sided criticism of the United States.

In contrast, in a segment that followed with Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas, Zahn was full of critical challenge, saying Milhem had “made it very clear that the Arab street will only have confidence in the United States and this coalition if there is some kind of peace forged between the Palestinians and Israelis.” She added for good measure: “And another point that he’s made in the past that he didn’t say tonight is the building of settlements has got to stop. Will it?”

When Pinkas replied, specifying that Israel has shown itself prepared to dismantle settlements in some areas in the context of real peace, Zahn asked: “What else is Israel ready to bend on? If there is this area of compromise… what else are you talking about, besides stopping the settlements?”

This snapshot of CNN’s coverage is indicative of certain distorted premises that apparently underpin the network’s take on the Middle East. Chief among these is the belief that Israel bears the onus for bringing peace and thereby softening Arab enmity toward America; that Israeli concessions, whether on settlements or on other issues, are the solution.

Notably, competitor FoxNews reports very differently, presenting Arab rejection of Israel’s rightful existence in the region as fundamental to the conflict. It gives serious, repeated attention to the ferocious, even genocidal, anti-Semitic propaganda generated, for example, in Palestinian and Saudi media, mosques and textbooks. CNN omits most of this.

Fox News has no bureau in Baghdad, Damascus or Havana, but the network is pummeling CNN in viewer ratings. There seems little question that the price paid in seeking to ingratiate oneself with dictators and medieval princes is not only an undeniable ethical one, but a practical one, borne out in CNN’s trailing a newcomer that readily reports essential, unpleasant truths.

Origianlly published in Jerusalem Post on May 9, 2003.

Lopsided NPR News from Peter Kenyon

Once again, National Public Radio has focused lopsided
coverage on Palestinian civilians unintentionally killed during an Israeli
incursion into Gaza, minimizing the responsibility of Palestinian gunmen in
deliberately endangering their own civilians, while giving only perfunctory
coverage to Israeli civilians targeted for death by an Arab suicide bomber.

 

*** First, on May 4, anchorwoman Liane Hansen introduced a
report with Peter Kenyon by setting up a false symmetry:

 

. . . even as the
[road map] plan was being made public last week, more blood was spilled on both
sides. Israeli civilians were killed in Tel Aviv, and Palestinian civilians
were killed in the Gaza Strip.

 

Kenyon continued:

 

Hours before
Mahmoud Abbas’ first speech as Palestinian prime minister, in which he called
for an end to violence, missiles from an Israeli helicopter killed two
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Hours after the release of the road map,
Israeli blood and body parts were again spattered across a Tel Aviv sidewalk as
a suicide bomber killed himself and three others at a bar along the city’s
seafront.

 

The contrived “balance,” however, ends here. The
remainder of the report focuses on the Palestinian deaths in Gaza, including
that of a two-year-old boy, with not a word about the suicide bombing until
Kenyon’s closing statement. Kenyon’s emotive coverage of the Palestinian deaths
— which included both fighters and civilians despite the fact that NPR
framed the story only in terms of civilians killed — included touching
commentary from relatives of those killed — a cousin and the grieving
father of the little boy.

 

Ismael, the cousin of the three Abu Hin brothers, Hamas
members who were targeted by Israel, stressed the innocence of the Gaza
neighbors:

 

Innocent people,
innocent children, they were scared. Believe me, many children were, I mean,
crying out of fear.

 

The two-year-old’s father is quoted:

 

The blood was
everywhere. His mother screamed. I run in. I carried him. I was just carrying
him, seeing the blood, seeing the hole in his head, and I was knowing this is
the end.

 

**** The report also covers the funeral procession for 12 of
the Palestinians killed in the incursion. In contrast, NPR never covered, in
this report or any other, the funerals for the three Israelis killed at a Tel
Aviv nightclub. (NPR said those murders were the work of Hamas and the Al Aqsa
Martyrs Brigades, the latter termed a “militant offshoot” of Arafat’s
Fatah faction — though the group is designated a terrorist organization by
the State Department.) Nor did NPR include, here or elsewhere, comments from
the relatives of slain Israelis about the innocence and suffering of their
loved ones.

 

In describing the fighting scene where Israeli soldiers
battled it out with the Abu Hin brothers, Kenyon observes that
“shockingly, there’s even a large splotch [of blood] on the ceiling.”
In contrast, when Linda Gradstein reported on the wreckage from the Tel Aviv
bombing in a April 30 report, her language was matter of fact, and did not note
that the devastation was “shocking.”

 

*** In her introduction to the report, Liane Hansen says:
“NPR’s Peter Kenyon has this report on the recent violence and its effect
on hopes for the latest peace effort.” However, only Palestinian opinions
are included on how the latest violence will effect peace efforts. Not a single
Israeli was asked about the ongoing Palestinian terrorism against civilians, or
if they are hopeful that Abu Mazen would make a concerted effort to dismantle
the terrorist infrastructure and the pervasive incitement that foments the
terror.

 

*** Kenyon obscures Palestinian responsibility for exposing
civilians to danger. He reports that “family members here agree and
confirm that the [Israeli] soldiers asked the brothers to surrender peacefully,
but they were determined to fight to the death.” He does not convey what,
for example, a Boston Globe story (excerpts below) did about how Israel
tried to protect civilians and how the Abu Hin brothers and other gunmen
deliberately fought among women and children, placing them in the middle of a
firefight.

 

Also, while NPR suggests Israeli use of heavy firepower, the
Globe gives context by reporting the involvement of heavily armed
Palestinians and the discovery of a weapons cache.

 

BOSTON GLOBE, May 2:

 

The battle in Gaza
City began about 2 a.m. yesterday, when Israeli forces moved into the poor,
crowded Shajaya neighborhood and encircled a block of 20 houses inhabited by
the Abu Hin clan. Israeli military sources and Palestinian witnesses said the
soldiers called for Abu Hin and his brothers to surrender. When they refused
and began firing, the Israelis called for women, children, and noncombatants to
come out.

Simultaneously, calls issued
from mosques around the city for armed men to support the Abu Hin clan against
the Israelis. As noncombatants were leaving the Abu Hin block, scores of
Palestinians armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons arrived
and began fighting with the Israelis, making further evacuation of
noncombatants impossible, according to Samir Hito, a reporter for the
Palestinian newspaper Al Hayat al Jadeeda…

An Israeli military source,
speaking on condition of anonymity, said that large amounts of weapons,
ammunition, and explosives were found in the house where the Abu Hin brothers
made their last stand.

 

The transcripts appear below.

 

NPR May 4, 2003

Weekend Edition Sunday (12:00 PM EST)

 

LIANE HANSEN, host: Secretary of State Powell plans to
return to the Middle East later this month. He’ll visit Jerusalem and Ramallah
for talks with Israelis and Palestinians on the road map for peace. But even as
the plan was being made public last week, more blood was spilled on both sides.
Israeli civilians were killed in Tel Aviv, and Palestinian civilians were
killed in the Gaza Strip. NPR’s Peter Kenyon has this report on the recent
violence and its effect on hopes for the latest peace effort.

 

PETER KENYON reporting: Hours before Mahmoud Abbas’ first
speech as Palestinian prime minister, in which he called for and end to
violence, missiles from an Israeli helicopter killed two Palestinians in the
Gaza Strip. Hours after the release of the road map, Israeli blood and body
parts were again spattered across a Tel Aviv sidewalk as a suicide bomber
killed himself and three others at a bar along the city’s seafront.

 

KENYON: The Israeli army’s response focused on this street
in Soja Iya in the eastern Gaza Strip, where an earth-mover was cleaning up
rubble on Friday. Mofat Sahd , who lost a cousin in the incursion, says he
heard sounds from the street around 2 that morning, and came down to see
Israeli military jeeps heading toward the Abu Hin family’s house down the
street.

 

MOFAT SAHD: (translated) Then there were cross-fire
shootings on both sides and one hour later, tanks did arrive. Two jeeps were
tailing–crashed because of the rubble and because of heavy shooting around and
then the helicopters start to appear. And from that moment, the war started in
the area.

 

KENYON: The army says the three wanted Abu Hin brothers,
Yusef, Mahmud and Ayman, were members of the Hamas military wing. Family
members here agree and confirm that the soldiers asked the brothers to
surrender peacefully, but they were determined to fight to the death.

 

In this second-story room, the destruction suggests the use
of massive firepower. Windows and doors are blown out by tank shells. In one
corner, flowers have been placed over a large pool of blood. More blood is
spattered on the walls, up a large armoire. Shockingly, there’s even a large
splotch on the ceiling. A 25-year-old cousin named Ismael says everyone
expected the brothers to fight, but no one anticipated that a huge gun battle
would rage all morning and into the afternoon.

 

ISMAEL: Believe me, even I didn’t go to the toilet. I sit
at home, I mean, pissing in the basket. Believe me, I’m not being killed.
Innocent people, innocent children, they were scared. Believe me, many children
were, I mean, crying out of fear.

 

KENYON: Another major battle was taking place out on the
streets, and that’s where most of the civilians appear to have died. On another
street blocks from the Abu Hin house, Ahmed Ayad was calling his four children
to stay away from the windows because Israeli snipers were firing from one of
the tallest buildings in the neighborhood. And his wife had just taken their
two-year-old boy Amer into the bedroom when he heard her scream as an M-16
bullet crashed into one side of the child’s skull and out the other.

 

AHMED AYAD: (translated) The blood was everywhere. His
mother screamed. I run in. I carried him. I was just carrying him, seeing the
blood, seeing the hole in his head, and I was knowing this is the end.

 

KENYON: Ayad was an iron worker in Israel before the
intifada. He wants peace so he can support his family again. But he says if
this is how Israel responds to the road map for peace and the new Palestinian
government, the future holds nothing but more tears and bloodshed.

 

(Sound of funeral procession)

 

KENYON: At Friday’s raucous funeral procession for the 12
Palestinians killed in the Soja Iyaa incursion, Hamas and Al Aqsa Brigade
leaders swore never to disarm. Hamas’ aging founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, said
the Palestinian people have no faith in their new prime minister, Mahmoud
Abbas.

 

SHEIKH AHMED YASSIN, Hamas leader: (speaking Arabic)

 

KENYON: “This new government is the face of Israel and
America,’ said Yassin. ‘It will not succeed and the road map will also fail,
just like the Mitchell plan, the Oslo Accords and other such plans.’

 

The new Palestinian prime minister is expected to seek a
ceasefire with Hamas and the other factions rather than a forced disarmament. A
senior Palestinian intelligence officer in Gaza City says if illegal weapons
are displayed on the street, they will be seized, but there will be no attempt
to go house to house to confiscate weapons. But even that relatively
non-confrontational course angers many Gazans. Mahmoud Al-Shia says Abbas has
no choice.

 

MAHMOUD AL-SHIA: And to know the only thing which is
respectful for him to do, to resign; unless we’ll understand him that he’s
going to implement the policy which Israel try to limit yesterday; he is going
to continue it. If he doesn’t want to continue it, the best thing for our
support — to resign.

 

KENYON: These are the images that accompanied the release
of the road map last week: Israeli families sobbing at the funerals of the Tel
Aviv bombing victims and Ahmed Ayad carrying his dying baby boy down a Gaza
street. These are the images Secretary of State Powell will be asking people to
look beyond as he struggles to get another peace effort off the ground. Peter
Kenyon, NPR News, Gaza.

 

NPR April 30, 2003

Morning Edition (10:00 AM EST)

 

BOB EDWARDS, host:

 

A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up today at the
entrance to a popular pub in Tel Aviv next door to the American Embassy. Three
patrons were killed, 35 wounded in the attack. Two Palestinian organizations
have claimed responsibility. NPR’s Linda Gradstein reports from Tel Aviv.

 

LINDA GRADSTEIN: Keyboard player Barry Gilbert was on the
small stage at the back of Mike’s Place, absorbed in the blues number he was
playing for the pub’s open mike night.

 

BARRY GILBERT (musician): About halfway through the song, I
just saw a big orange flash, sort of like a lot of light coming towards me, so
I just ducked basically, and I felt a blast, and then the place was covered in
smoke. Everybody started to just scream, and I ran outside to see what was
going on. There was a lot of people lying on the floor very, very badly
injured.

 

GRADSTEIN: One of those badly injured was the security
guard, who prevented the bomber’s entry into the pub. Two others injured in the
attack were tourists, one from the US and one from France. Mike’s Place
attracted a regular clientele of young Israelis and expatriate Brits and
Americans who liked jazz. Many of the customers knew each other.

 

(Sound of sweeping)

 

GRADSTEIN: As soon as the wounded had been taken to
hospitals, cleaning crews began sweeping up the debris of the explosion. The
blast blew the white metal doors at the entrance apart, shattering the windows
and leaving the entrance a pile of twisted metal struts. The neighboring US
Embassy, separated from the pub by a black metal fence, was not damaged.
Several hours after the explosion, co-owner Asaf Ganzman stood in shock,
surveying the wreckage of his bar.

 

ASAF GANZMAN (co-owner, Mike’s Place): We were doing pretty
well, and we had security, and we felt pretty safe next to the American
Embassy. We felt extra safe because even the people in the American Embassy
told us that they’re allowed to go only to like a few hundred meters from the
embassy because that’s safe, and this is one of the places. But I guess nowhere
is safe.

 

GRADSTEIN: Israeli police spokesman Gil Kleiman said the
security forces receive constant warnings of planned suicide bombings and
cannot stop all of them.

 

GIL KLEIMAN (Israeli Police Spokesman): We have had, as
you’ve known, a lot of successes, and we’ve been saying this for three years.
This is not something that’s new, that there is no hermetic ability to seal the
country, especially Tel Aviv, a beachfront area, and across from the beach,
pubs. There’s no way to do that. People were here for a jazz and blues night, a
young crowd in their 20s. There’s no way you can close all that down.

 

GRADSTEIN: Two Palestinian organizations, Hamas and the Al
Aqsa Martyr Brigades, said they planned the attack jointly to avenge the death
of an Al Aqsa member recently killed in Nablus by Israeli troops. The Al Aqsa
Brigades, a militant offshoot from Arafat’s Fatah movement, said the bombing
was meant as a message to the new Palestinian government, headed by Prime
Minister Mahmoud Abbas, that nobody can disarm the resistance movements without
a political solution. Hours earlier in a speech to the Palestinian Legislature,
Abbas had called for an end to terrorism and pledged to collect illegal
weapons. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman David Saranga, says the suicide
bombing is a challenge to Abbas’ new government.

 

DAVID SARANGA (Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman): We don’t
think the Palestinian Authority can talk peace during the day and not combat
terrorism during the night. The international community will judge the new
government of the Palestinian Authority according to performance and not
according to declarations.

 

GRADSTEIN: Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat said
the Palestinian Authority condemns the death of all civilians, Israelis and
Palestinians. Linda Gradstein, NPR News, Tel Aviv.

When Moore is Less at the Washington Post

Correspondent Molly Moore’s often problematic coverage of Israeli-Palestinian news is highlighted by her dispatch, “A Leader’s Conflicting Impulses; Palestinian Is Known for Strong Views, but Shuns Confrontation,” page one, The Washington Post, May 10.

 

Omissions

 

1) Moore leads her portrait of the new Palestinian Authority prime minister this way:

 

 

At a closed-door meeting of political activists in the Gaza Strip last fall, during a period of repeated Palestinian suicide bombings and attacks against Israelis, Mahmoud Abbas, then the number two official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, voiced unusual criticism of the militant groups carrying out the attacks. [emphasis added]

Moore omits key details:

 

1.  Abbas (“Abu Mazen”) was not meeting with “political activists” but representatives of groups including Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement), and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, identified by the United States government as terrorist organizations.

 

2.  The “armed conflict” Moore paraphrases Abbas as referring to, carried out by what she terms “militant groups,” was primarily terrorism against civilians committed by terrorists, not military operations against the Israeli army.

 

A page one Post article by John Mintz, headlined “FBI Focus Increases On Hamas, Hezbollah,” in the May 8 edition, describes Hamas as a terrorist organization in the first paragraph. It also notes that the U.S. government “has designated [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] a terrorist group because of its suicide bombings of Israelis.” But Moore neither identifies the groups by name nor uses the words terrorism or terrorist.

 

2) Moore writes that Abbas “believed Palestinians made a major error when they turned to suicide bombings and other armed attacks on Israelis in their frustration with Israel’s continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” [emphasis added]

 

Moore omits the key chronology: The Palestinian Arabs “turned to suicide bombings and other armed attacks” within months of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat’s pledge in 1993 to then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to resolve all conflicts through peaceful negotiations. Rabin required that promise to start the Oslo process. The past 31 months of intensified Palestinian attacks on Israelis began in September 2000, two months after Arafat and the Palestinian Authority rejected Israel’s offer of a state on 95 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, at a time when Israel occupied no Palestinian cities.

 

Moore omits consideration that Abbas’ objection to recent terrorism is on tactical grounds, not moral. She does not mention his reported offer of cabinet posts to Hamas.

 

3) Moore mentions Abbas’ book about the Oslo negotiations, Through Secret Channels. She also notes that he earned “a doctorate in history from Moscow’s Oriental College.” However, Moore omits another key detail: Abbas wrote an earlier book minimizing if not denying the Holocaust. The 1983 publication, The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and the Zionist Movement, was based on Abbas’ doctoral dissertation.

 

4) Moore writes that  “in the late 1950s …. Abbas assisted Arafat in founding the Fatah movement. Before becoming prime minister, Abbas was the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee.”

 

Moore fails to mention that Fatah, largest of the more than half-a-dozen groups that formed the PLO in 1964, was — like its partners — a terrorist organization. Nor does she inform readers that Fatah is a reverse Arabic acronym for the Movement for the Total Liberation of Palestine and originally claimed all of British Mandatory Palestine, including Israel, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

 

5) Moore quotes former Israeli negotiator Yossi Beilin that “for those who believe Arafat is extremist and here (Abbas) is a moderate Palestinian it will be easy to make peace with, forget it.”

 

Moore omits an allegation by Mohammed Daoud Oudeh (“Abu Daoud”), planner of the PLO’s 1972 Munich Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes. According to Abu Daoud, “Abu Mazen was the financier of our operation,” although he did not know the details (Sports Illustrated, Aug. 26, 2002).

 

6) Moore writes that Abbas “was born in 1935 in Safed …. Now a part of northeastern Israel, Safed then was a mostly Palestinian town under the control of the British mandate ….”

 

Moore uses inappropriate terminology here. Before 1948 (when the new Jewish state took the name Israel), the adjective “Palestinian” referred exclusively to things Jewish, such as the Palestine Philharmonic, the Palestine National Fund and The Palestine Post. Arabs of the region, who thought of themselves largely as south Syrians, to the extent they applied any national-geographic term to themselves, shunned the label “Palestinian” as one associated with the Zionist movement.

 

7) Moore asserts, without attribution, that “in 1948, after the creation of Israel, [Safed’s] estimated 10,000 Palestinian residents were forced to flee.”

 

Moore omits that Safed’s Arab majority fled after Arab gunmen lost a battle with the defenders of the town’s Jewish minority. Had Arab leaders not rejected the U.N. partition plan, and had they not waged war against the new Jewish state, Safed’s Arabs would not have felt compelled to flee.

 

Molly Moore is one of The Washington Post’s two Jerusalem-based correspondents. Unfortunately, “A Leader’s Conflicting Impulses” fits the pattern of her Arab-Israeli coverage, biased by omission in favor of Palestinian claims.

 

The Moore article appears below.

 

**********************************************

 

A Leader’s Conflicting Impulses

 

By Molly Moore
JERUSALEM, May 9 — At a closed-door meeting of political activists in the Gaza Strip last fall, during a period of repeated Palestinian suicide bombings and attacks against Israelis, Mahmoud Abbas, then the number two official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, voiced unusual criticism of the militant groups carrying out the attacks.

 

They had turned a popular uprising into an armed conflict, he said, leading to the “complete destruction of everything we built.”

 

A decade earlier, after he signed the Oslo peace accordsas the Palestinians’ chief negotiator with Israel, Abbas became so frustrated with the authoritarian ways of his boss, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, that he withdrew from active politics and didn’t speak to Arafat for months, according to colleagues and news accounts at the time.

 

These two episodes shed light on the contradictory impulses of Abbas, the new Palestinian prime minister who has spent decades working behind the scenes of Palestinian politics and is now being cast into the most public and confrontational role of his career. Abbas, 68, popularly known as Abu Mazen, is facing conflicting expectations and pressures at the outset of another diplomatic initiative by the United States and others to end 31 months of violence between Israel and the Palestinians.

 

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and President Bush have expressed hope that the ascension of Abbas to the new office will enhance chances for negotiation by diluting Arafat’s power. This weekend, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will try to relaunch peace talks by meeting with Sharon and Abbas, but not Arafat.

 

Abbas made it clear, even before he took over as prime minister latelast month, that he believed Palestinians made a major error when they turned to suicide bombings and other armed attacks on Israelis in their frustration with Israel’s continued occupation of the West Bankand Gaza Strip. In large measure, this stand was what made him attractive to Sharon and Bush.

 

But a cross section of his associates say Abbas remains under pressure from a defiant Arafat, who has been chafing at the efforts to marginalize him. Abbas has a personality that is not as volcanic as Arafat’s, they say. But he is not as flexible as the United States and others might want him to be on broader issues, particularly concerning Palestinians’ right to a state, and he is less likely to try tocountermand Arafat than they might hope, the associates say.

 

“Nobody who is really informed about the situation in the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian street will say Abu Mazen is in power instead of Yasser Arafat,” said Ahmad Tibi, an Israeli Arab politician who worked closely with Abbas during previous peace efforts. He said that in recent days Abbas has told him and others: “Yasser Arafat is my president. He nominated me. He can nominate others. I respect his presidency and his position as the symbol for the Palestinian people.”

 

“He’s a non-political politician,” said Yossi Beilin, who has spent countless days as Abbas’s counterpart in every major Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiation of the past decade. “He doesn’t have elbows. He’s nonconfrontational.”

 

But Beilin added, “For those who believe Arafat is extremist and here [Abbas] is a moderate Palestinian it will be easy to make peace with, forget it.”

 

Arafat was pushed into accepting a prime minister by international mediators as well as other Palestinian leaders eager to improve relations with the United States. He has fought some of Abbas’s most basic requests for change. In return for promotions for three of his longtime political associates within the new cabinet, Arafat agreed to allow Abbas to appoint his own security minister, one of the most critical positions. But in recent days Arafat has balked at Abbas’s efforts to transfer most authority for security operations.

 

Abbas did not grant a request for an interview, but told reporters from Palestinian newspapers this week that “differences of viewpoints occur constantly, and even over simple issues,” between him and Arafat and other Palestinian officials. He added, however, that overall, he considers his working relationship with Arafat to be “excellent.”

 

Over the years, Abbas has developed a pattern of temporarily walking away from situations he found too frustrating, rather than engaging in fierce battle, according to those who have worked with him, making some colleagues wonder whether he will stick with the current job if matters become too confrontational.

 

When President Bill Clinton sequestered Israeli and Palestinian peace negotiators on the wooded grounds of the Camp David presidential retreat three years ago, Abbas, one of the Palestinians’ main negotiators, left during one of the most intense periods to attend his son’s wedding in the West Bank city of Ramallah. He was the only participant, other than Clinton himself, who was allowed to leave the compound.

 

But it was not Abbas’s departure that troubled some of his partners.

 

According to Beilin, U.S. and Israeli participants were baffled by what they called his apparent “diffidence” to the entire process. “You could immediately see it in his eyes,” said Beilin, who negotiated for Israel at Camp David.

 

In his years of working with Abbas, Beilin said, “if you had disputes, he would go to Morocco or Qatar or Jordan. Sometimes he would go to Moscow. He would be incommunicado. I couldn’t reach him. . . .He would disappear.”

 

Several times during discussions involving Arafat and international mediators over the new prime minister’s position, Abbas reportedly threatened to quit the process and not accept the nomination even if offered.

 

In his book about the Oslo peace accords, “Through Secret Channels,” Abbas conceded he used the threat to resign as head of the Palestinian negotiating team as a ploy to spur floundering negotiations. Abbas also made clear in his book that he delighted in the covert process of the Oslo accords that kept U.S. officials, Israeli intelligence agencies and the world’s news media in the dark during nine months of clandestine meetings between Palestinians and Israelis in Norway.

 

Abbas said he managed the smallest details to guarantee the secrecy of the meetings, including passing out cash to the Palestinian participants and telling them to make airplane reservations that ensured none of them would cross paths in the same airports to or from the meetings.

 

Associates of Abbas said they worry that a man who is so much more comfortable in the erudite atmosphere of policymakingthan in the rowdy, unpredictable world of personal politics could jeopardize his chances for success in his new, more public position.

 

“He’s never worked gaining support from the people,” said one prominent member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. “He just wants to discuss high policy.”

 

Abbas has a professorial air in demeanor and appearance, favoring conservative business suits and sporting a carefully clipped mustache in contrast to Arafat’s trademark olive green battle jackets, kaffiyeh and stubble. Abbas is said to be a voracious reader and a meticulous note-taker who records details of meetings at the end of the day at his home office. And he is intensely private in his personal life, according to associates. He eats most meals at home with his family and frequently shuts off callers who disturb him while he is playing with his grandchildren, colleagues said.

 

He is an aficionado of Arab music and movies and can “go back to the ’40s and tell you who acted and sang in any movie,” said Saeb Erekat, a longtime Palestinian negotiator.

 

Abbas’s personal history is inextricably woven into the Palestinian history of the last half-century. Abbas assisted Arafat in foundingthe Fatah movement. Before becoming prime minister, Abbas was the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee.

 

He was born in 1935 in the town of Safed, about six miles from the Syrian border. Now a part of northeastern Israel, Safed then was a mostly Palestinian town under the control of the British mandate over Palestine. In those days, Safed was famous for its cheese produced from sheep’s milk. Abbas’s father owned a flock of sheep and was among the town’s prominent cheese merchants. He also sold nuts and vegetables from a small shop beneath the family’s apartment on the edge of Safed’s boisterous wholesale market.

 

In 1948, after the creation of Israel, the town’s estimated 10,000 Palestinian residents were forced to flee. Abbas, then 13, and his family left their home and their shop with all the belongings they could tote. His family first sought refuge in Damascus, whereAbbas spent his teenage years. He earned a law degree from the University of Damascus and, later, a doctorate in history from Moscow’s Oriental College.

 

He married another refugee from his home town and moved to Qatar. He worked as an elementary school teacher, then as a personnel director for a government ministry in Qatar. He had three sons — Mazen, Yasser and Tareq — and in the custom of many Arabs, took the name of his eldest son, Mazen, as his nickname, becoming Abu Mazen, or father of Mazen. In what associates saidwas one of the greatest tragedies of Abbas’s life, Mazen died last year of a heart attack at age 43.

 

In the late 1950s, Abbas joined a group of passionate young Palestinians who founded the Fatah movement under Arafat’s leadership. Throughout half a century, Abbas has held leadership roles in Fatah and the PLO.

 

According to Beilin, the Israeli peace negotiator, Abbas and Arafathave few substantive differences in their views of a Palestinian state or Palestinian rights.

 

In a glimpse of the introspection into which he frequently retreats, Abbas wrote that he spent most of a 10 1/2-hour flight between Tunis and Washington alone, separate from the rest of the Palestinian delegation, as he prepared for the signing of the Oslo accords.

 

“Would what we were about to do open the gates of a future for us or shut them?” Abbas wrote that he pondered. “Had we forfeited the people’s rights or preserved them? . . . And what would history say about us?”

Starbucks

CAMERA is frequently questioned about the veracity of urban legends circulating on the internet and elsewhere. The following is an example of one of the many rumors that have surfaced since September 11, 2001. For more on urban myths, check out http://www.snopes.com.

 

RUMOR:
Starbucks closed its outlets in Israel because the corporation is anti-Israel.

 

AS SEEN ON THE INTERNET 2003:
This article is 100% true. For verification, or to voice your opinion of their decision, you can call starbuck’s international at: 1-800-STARBUC
PLEASE READ THE ARTICLE BELOW AND THEN PASS THIS ON….
It is time for all Americans to boycott Starbucks Coffee

Spread the word on this. They are stopping business relations with Israel, because like so many companies, people, and leaders in the world, they do not have the moral values or courage needed to do otherwise. Add this to the fact that Starbucks does tons of business in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, as well as other radical Arab countries who are working to destroy America. Where they will not pull out of and it makes it clear their stand is with the enemies of Israel and of America. Standing is something that takes moral value and courage today. And their stand indicates the lack of quality of their product. Starbucks has chosen. NOW is the time for us to choose to boycott. Let’s call on everyone we can to boycott Starbucks. Spread the word. Read the article below:

[deleted text of “Starbucks Pulls Out of Israel,” a 12 April 2003 Associated Press article by Helen Jung] .

 

TRUTH:
While Starbucks did close its stores in Israel, it did so for business, not political, reasons. According to Barbara Mikkelson of snopes.com, “the most likely reasons for the retreat were Starbucks’ difficulties in dealing with its Israeli partner and the underperformance of their six stores.” For more information, see Mikkelson’s full article at http://www.snopes.com/politics/israel/starbucks.asp .

Seven-Month Headlines Study Reveals Severe Imbalance

A recent seven-month CAMERA study of the Los Angeles Times‘ headlines concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reveals a striking difference in the way the paper describes Israeli actions as opposed to Palestinian actions.

 

 

The study, covering the period June 1, 2002 to Dec. 31, 2002, looked at headlines for all news stories–including briefs, wire stories and features–in which one side acted, or threatened to act, against the other. Each relevant story was assigned to one or more categories: Palestinians taking specific action and being explicitly identified; Palestinians taking specific action but not being explicitly identified; Israelis taking action and being explicitly identified; and Israelis taking specific action but not being explicitly identified.

 

 

Remarkably, when Israelis acted against Palestinians they were named almost twice as often as when Palestinians acted against Israelis.

Thus, out of 144 cases in which Israelis acted against Palestinians, they were explicitly identified 97 times, or 67.4 percent of the time. In contrast, out of 86 cases in which Palestinians acted against Israelis, they were named just 33 times, or 38.4 percent of the time.

 

 

In November, CAMERA contacted the Los Angeles Times with similar concerns about headlines which ran at the time. A representative of the paper responded that “the purpose of headlines is to fit in as much information as possible. Headlines are notoriously finite and naturally favor shorter over long.” However, most of the paper’s headlines concerning the Mideast conflict are long and rather detailed. Moreover, when Palestinians are the victims of Israeli-perpetrated action, there appears to be little space problem–they are usually named. Out of 144 headlines in which Israel is acting against Palestinians, the word “Palestinian(s)” is used to identify the victims more than half the time (54.2 percent). (It should be noted that this statistic does not include cases in which the victims are identified as “Hamas,” “Arafat,” and other terms referring to the Palestinian category.)

 

 

Because Los Angeles Times headlines tend to be long (the study gave equal weight to headlines and sub-headlines), many of them described more than one action. In some cases, one side perpetrated multiple actions, and in other examples each side committed one or more acts. Because of the length and complexity of some headlines, there were cases requiring judgment calls as to whether they qualified in the named or unnamed categories. Nevertheless, such instances were relatively few and an unambiguous disparity is apparent in the Times’ treatment of actions on the two sides.

 

 

In considering what constituted named actions, “Jewish settlers” are counted as identified Israelis. Similarly, “Hamas” and “Islamic Jihad” are considered identified Palestinians. Plain “settlers,” however, is not counted as named Israelis. Also, “Gunmen,” “militant,” “troops,” “soldier,” and “army” are included in the unnamed categories. Named leaders on each side, such as “Sharon” and “Arafat,” are included in the named categories.

 

 

The study included cases in which Israel restricted the activities of foreign supporters of the Palestinians, or of international organizations such as the United Nations assisting Palestinians. The study did not include cases in which there is not enough information to determine who is responsible for the action. Usually, examples of this situation include Palestinians killed under disputed circumstances. The study also discounted historical violence between the two sides, such as Abu Nidal terrorist attacks from the 1970s and the Black September attack against the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

 

 

! One particularly striking finding was that even though nearly 30 headlines address Palestinian suicide bombings targeting Israelis, only once does the phrase vPalestinian suicide bomber” appear. In this lone case, the bomber was the perceived victim. That July 11 headline reads: “In Israeli Lab, Some of Dead Get No Rest: What to do about the remains of Palestinian suicide bombers poses a vexing problem as bodies go unclaimed by relatives.”

 

! Almost always, headlines about Palestinian suicide bombings are elliptical as to who perpetrated the mass murder. Examples of these typical euphemisms are “Bus Blast Kills 14,” “Bus Explosion Kills 10,” “Bombing Aboard Bus Kills,” and “Suicide Blast Injures 5.” Specifically, CAMERA examined all headlines in which multiple casualties (injuries and/or deaths) were inflicted by one side against the other. When Palestinians inflicted mass (three or more) casualties among Israelis, they were identified only six times out of a total of 27 cases, or 22.2 percent of the time. In contrast, when Israelis inflicted mass casualties among Palestinians, they were identified 54.5 percent of the time, or 12 out of 22 cases.

 

 

! The most egregious headline which failed to identify the Palestinian perpetrator was “14 Killed in Israeli Bus Attack: More than 55 people are injured when a vehicle explodes, creating a wall of flames. The suicide assault is the deadliest in four months.” Not only does this headline fail to identify the perpetrator as Palestinian, it also suggests Israel was the perpetrator of the attack against its own people!

 

 

! In contrast to the muting of “Palestinian” action, Israel was routinely said to “Crack down,” “Attack,” “Advance,” “Thrust,” “Launch,” “Shut Out,” “Threaten,” “Raid,” “Capture,” “Hunt” and so on.