CAMERA Letter Published in Washington Post

Obstacles to Mideast Peace

      In “Pro-Israel, but Pro-Peace?” [op-ed, Oct. 26], Richard Cohen writes that “from the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993 until September 2000, when the Camp David summit came to naught, about 256 Israelis – civilians and soldiers alike – were killed by Palestinian violence . . . . Between Sept. 29, 2000, and September 2004 – four, not eight, years – 1,026 Israelis were killed by Palestinians.” He then argues that “those low fatality figures for the Clinton years were not entirely a coincidence. They were the product of hard [U.S. diplomatic] work.” President Bush, Cohen says, has not been effective “in reducing the violence and bring[ing] about a peaceful solution.”

      In fact, the number of Israelis and foreigners murdered by Palestinian terrorists in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip between 1993 and 2000 was not historically low but high. In the 15 years preceding Oslo, 216 Israeli civilians, security personnel and foreign visitors were murdered by Palestinian terrorists. Post-Oslo, the rate of deadly terrorism more than doubled.

      The primary factor then as now was not who occupied the White House but rather the Palestinian violation of commitments to the peace process. After 1993, the Palestinian Authority trashed its pledges to end anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic incitement in schools, mosques, Palestinian Authority radio, television and newspapers; refused to eradicate the terrorist infrastructure; and would not educate its population for peaceful coexistence.

      After 2000 and the Palestinian rejection of a West Bank and Gaza Strip state in exchange for peace with Israel, the death toll surged again. The problem is not finding American leaders committed to mediating Arab-Israeli peace but finding Palestinian leaders willing and able to make it.

– Eric Rozenman
Washington
The writer is Washington director of the
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East
Reporting in America.

CAMERA ALERT: In NPR Report, Dying With Dignity = Killing Jews?

An October 14th segment on NPR’s “All Things Considered” typifies NPR’s consistent pro-Palestinian news coverage.

Part of a Pattern

In 2000, a two-month CAMERA study of NPR noted that “entirely one-sided programs were commonplace;” that there was “a disproportionate reliance on Arab/Palestinian and pro-Arab speakers compared to Israeli and pro-Israeli speakers;” and a “chronic amplifying of Palestinian grievances and perspectives” which paralleled a de-emphasizing of Israeli concerns. Another three-month study of NPR’s reporting during the period Jan 1 – March 31, 2003 found the same tilt in favor of Arab and pro-Arab views as has been the case in every other time span CAMERA has reviewed.

The skewed Oct. 14, 2004 segment focused on the Palestinian mood in the fifth year of their intifada. Despite serious accusations leveled against Israel in the piece, no Israeli speakers were included among the guests. 

NPR host Robert Siegel immediately set the tone, defining the so-called intifada as an “uprising against Israeli occupation.” This distorted definition of the violence, one espoused by Palestinian advocates, overlooks the fact that much of the violence against Israelis is conducted by groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, whose avowed aim is not an end to “Israeli occupation,” but rather an end to Israel altogether. Furthermore, Palestinian violence was launched in 2000 precisely at the moment Israel offered to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Reporter Julie McCarthy stressed the “disproportionate” nature of the conflict, focusing on Palestinian casualty figures that exceed those on the Israeli side:

For Palestinians, the price of four years of fighting with Israel has been disproportionate. This year, for every Israeli killed, five Palestinians have died. It’s a trend borne out in Israel’s current operation in northern Gaza, where daily funerals are a mixture of militancy and mourning. Some 100 Palestinians have perished. The Israeli army reports that one of its soldiers has been killed.

Since the second intifada erupted in September 2000, approximately 1,000 Israelis have lost their lives; 3,000 Palestinians have been killed. The unequal losses reflect the unequal strength of the two sides. The Palestinians deploy street fighters, suicide bombers and crude Qassam rockets; Israel deploys tanks, helicopter gunships and warplanes.

While McCarthy’s monologue emphasized figures that suggest Palestinians suffer more from the conflict, there was no mention that 79 percent of Israelis killed were non-combatants, compared to 43 percent of Palestinian fatalities that were non-combatants. (Breakdown of fatalities according to International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism figures, Sept. 27, 2000 through May 1, 2004.) The reporter also omitted that 67 percent of Palestinians killed during the current Gaza operation were combatants (Breakdown according to Haaretz, Oct. 17, 2004), and didn’t note that four Israelis, three of them children, were killed in the rocket attacks that prompted Israel’s Gaza operation.

She highlighted that Israel uses warplanes while Palestinians deploy “street fighters,” yet she concealed the fact that because Palestinian “fighters” operate among civilians, Israel regularly forgoes warplanes and instead uses foot-soldiers. That is, Israel exposes its troops to greater harm for the purpose of minimizing collateral damage. This happened, for example, during Israel’s 2002 operation in Jenin. The Jerusalem Post reported on this operation as follows:

As of last night, 23 soldiers had been killed trying to take over the Jenin refugee camp. The IDF has suffered so many losses because it chose to fight the battle on a virtually one-on-one basis, without the benefit of all its advantages in artillery or fighter-bombers. A senior officer said the attack helicopters have also swapped their rockets for TOW missiles, which cause less collateral damage. The reason is the army does not want to cause civilian casualties.(Arieh O’Sullivan, “Soldiers’ deaths won’t affect Defensive Shield,” 4/10/02).

McCarthy graphically described Palestinian casualties:

Gaza surgeons say the nature of the casualties in the past two weeks has been appalling: men decapitated, boys blown to bits, a bullet lodged in the brain of a teen-aged girl.

By contrast, there was no graphic or emotional description of the gruesome effects of Qassam rockets that recently killed 2 young Israeli children and helped spur the Israeli incursion to eliminate rocket factories.

Instead, seven Palestinians expressed their views, often highly critical ones, of Israel. McCarthy translated the words of one woman who claimed that Israel “opened fire” at her family’s house: “I wish that an Israeli family would suffer the same fate as mine.” This declaration, which supports NPR’s opening theme that Israelis don’t suffer as much as Palestinians, is allowed to pass without comment from the reporter.

The reporter didn’t ask the woman if she was angry at the terrorists for launching rockets into Israel and causing a shutdown of the entrypoints into Israel and an end to economic development. Nor was she asked how she feels about the Palestinian Authority that encouraged children to become terrorists and spent donor money on bombs instead of improving schools, roads, plumbing infrastructure and/or health clinics.

Terror counter-productive — not immoral

Palestinian politician Haidar Abdul-Shafti and psychiatrist Iyad Sarraj did briefly criticize the terror against Israelis and Arafat’s corrupt mismanagement, but only because the terror has hurt their cause, not because killing Israeli civilians is immoral. They reflected on how it has hurt the Palestinians in world public opinion and has led to violence in their own society. McCarthy did not probe their critical comments and never asked whether, aside from considerations of self-interest, they thought terror was morally wrong in and of itself.

Dr. Sarraj then advanced what turns out to be a central theme of the program:

The principle behind [suicide bombing] is that it is better to die in dignity rather than to live in humiliation and shame.

McCarthy didn’t ask the psychiatrist why murdering Israeli civilians is “dignified.” She didn’t interview any additional psychiatrists, Israeli or otherwise, who might have offered an opposing view of what influences suicide bombers. She didn’t note that Palestinian incitement, societal glorification of suicide bombers, and religious fanaticism are often cited as factors that motivate suicide bombers.

Though NPR listeners are unlikely to hear about these factors, a PBS documentary about suicide bombers reported on incitement and religious fanaticism, presenting a bomb maker who said he wants to kill women and children because “it’s the duty of every Muslim to liberate this land, every inch of it” (Wide Angle: Suicide Bombers, Dir. Tom Roberts, 2004). “Some observers claim that the older, more determined political activists manipulate the younger and more impressionable recruits,” adds the narrator. The testimony of one failed suicide bomber supports this observation. He states:

I already had hatred, and [my recruiters] added to it. They also spoke to me about paradise, where I would get all I want. They encouraged and excited me.

None of this information on the roots of terrorism is provided by NPR, where Palestinians are overwhelmingly exonerated of responsibility and the violence they perpetrate is blamed on Israel.

Camp David Never Happened

Another Palestinian interviewed, diplomat Mahmoud Ajrami, also blames Israel for the continuing violence, saying:

Give us a settlement, a real just compromise, you know, and all these radicals will be isolated in the corner and they will diminish.

Of course, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak did offer a generous compromise at Camp David. As Dennis Ross recounts in his new book, The Missing Peace, the Palestinian leader “said no to everything,” and did not present “a single idea or single serious comment in two weeks”.  This attempt at compromise obviously didn’t “isolate” the “radicals,” but, again and predictably, NPR’s reporter failed to remind listeners of this or to challenge the guest speaker.

In Conclusion

McCarthy ended her segment underscoring the patently inaccurate claim that poverty and loss beget terror (rather than ideology and indoctrination). An unidentified Palestinian says, through a translator:

What do you expect from a people who feel poverty, who lose their children, lose their brothers, their fathers? What do you expect from them who are losing everything?

The answer:

They prefer to die, he says, than to live such a life. Julie McCarthy, NPR News, Gaza.  

To read the transcript of the October14 segment, go to:  http://tinyurl.com/3ovow

New York Times Quneitra Claims Contradicted by Times Own Reporting

The New York Times is the latest media outlet to rehash at face value false Syrian charges that Israel destroyed the town of Quneitra just before returning it to Syria in 1974. Times reporter Neil MacFarquhar (In Long Ruined City, Talk of Lifting the Clouds of War, Oct. 22, 2004) apparently made little effort to fact check the Syrian claims, by, for example, searching his own and other newspaper’s archives to learn the actual history of the town, which Israel first took control of in the 1967 Six Day War, and lost and then retook in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

According to MacFarquhar’s one-sided reporting:

For the last 30 years, the Syrians have used this flattened provincial capital as an open-air monument to Israeli perfidy, hauling virtually every visiting foreign dignitary through the ruins to hear their traditional lament about how the Zionists leveled the city when they withdrew under the 1974 cease-fire terms…

Quneitra, a city straddling the cease-fire line from the October 1973 war, its main arteries interrupted by tangles of barbed wire, has been left largely untouched since the Israelis withdrew. Syria says the Israelis dynamited the town as they went; Israel’s rather unconvincing explanation, given the neatly collapsed symmetry of house after house, is that warfare destroyed the place.

What is “unconvincing” to MacFarquhar, was quite convincing to journalists for the Times and other papers who were there in the 1960’s and 70’s when Syrian shelling of the Israeli- held town was the norm.

For instance, a Los Angeles Times article of June 12, 1967 included a sub-head which referred to Al Koneytra (ie Quneitra) as the “ruins of [a] captured town.” The article reported that “Al Koneytra was a town of smoldering ruins. Heavily armed convoys patrolled the debris-covered streets,” and “Life was at a virtual standstill, with all shops closed or wrecked.” This damage, obviously the result of the just-concluded war, occurred a full seven years before Israel’s supposed spiteful bulldozing of the town.

Soon after the war, Syria began regularly shelling Quneitra. For instance, a New York Times dispatch of June 25, 1970, headlined “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.”

And a Times story on September 2, 1972 referred to the one inhabited street in the town and Israeli soldiers training “a block or two of ruins away.” Yet another Times story, this one on November 26, 1972, was headlined “Syria Shells Israeli Bases in Occupied Golan Heights,” and reported Damascus radio’s announcement that Syrian artillery had shelled “Kafr Naffakh and El Quneitra.”

On October 11, 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, another Times report told of a Moroccan brigade joining Syrian forces “in an attack on El Quneitra.” And in an article on October 21, 1973, the Times reported that while the UN observation station in the town had survived the war intact, Quneitra itself was “a bombed-out military town the Syrians lost to the Israelis …”

Finally, a report in the British Times newspaper of April 5, 1974 referred to Quneitra as “the ruined capital of the Heights.”

The Syrians claim, and MacFarquhar dutifully reports, that the Israelis destroyed Quneitra out of spite just before returning it to Syria. How do MacFarquhar and his editors explain these numerous contemporaneous reports in the Times and other newspapers indicating that years before the handover the town was a smoldering ruin as a direct result of warfare, including Syrian shelling?

The likely answer is that they didn’t even know of these reports because they neglected to check their paper’s own archives.

Perhaps it’s not much of a surprise that they neglected to check other important aspects of the story as well, such as Syria’s supposed plans to rebuild Quneitra and allow its former residents to return. According to MacFarquhar’s report:

“In general, it is a good faith measure, especially since we are rebuilding a city while some of our territory remains under occupation,” said Medhat al-Saleh, a former member of the Syrian Parliament who spent 12 years in Israeli prisons for fighting its control over the Golan. “It is a way of showing that we are being honest when we say that peace is our strategic option, but at the same time we will not abandon one inch of the Golan.”

This is a “good faith measure” by Syria? In fact, the 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel mandated that Syria allow its residents to return to Quneitra; Syria has been in violation of that agreement ever since it was signed. (Israel believed that if Quneitra were repopulated the chances of another Syrian attack would be lessened.)

Specifically, paragraph B(1) of the Separation of Forces Agreement Between Israel and Syria (May 31, 1974) required that:

All territory east of Line A will be under Syrian administration, and the Syrian civilians will return to this territory.

To this day, as even MacFarquhar’s story makes clear, Syrian civilians have not been allowed by their government to return to Quneitra.

In addition, it is somewhat disingenuous for the Times reporter to refer in the paragraph above to Medhat al-Saleh as spending “12 years in Israeli prisons for fighting its control over the Golan.” One could carry out such a fight peacefully or violently, and by not indicating which, MacFarquhar implies to many readers the former. In fact, according to a Financial Times story al-Saleh’s efforts were decidedly violent:

Mr el Saleh comes from Majdal Shams, a town on the edge of the occupied area. In 1985, four years after Israel annexed the Golan, he became a member of a secret group that raided Israeli arms stores and planted mines on the roads patrolled by the Israeli army. His activities cost him 12 years in an Israeli jail. Once released, he fled to Damascus (Oct. 7, 1999).

Times readers deserve and expect accurate and fair reporting – in this case Neil MacFarquhar delivered neither.

---

Note: For more details on Quneitra, including an analysis of the UN report on the destruction of the town, click here.

Kudos to CNN’s Newsnight for Touching Report on Iraqi Jews

CNN’s Newsnight on Oct. 20 aired a poignant segment on the rescue of elderly and destitute Iraqi Jews who had been largely forgotten by the outside world until they were visited and helped by Rachel Zelon, a senior official of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Traveling to Iraq, Zelon used hand drawn maps to find the remaining Jews and to offer them resettlement in Israel. As host Aaron Brown noted, Iraq’s Jewish community which 50 years ago had been quite large (he gave the number 500,000, but the actual number was probably closer to 150,000), was now down to about 35 people.

The segment focused on Sasson, a frail 90 year-old, afflicted with cataracts and barely able to cope in his airless room, and Regina, also elderly and suffering from curvature of the spine so severe that she could barely walk. Both eventually accepted Zelon’s offer to move to Israel.

Zelon even made the difficult journey to the southern Iraqi city of Basra to find Salima, who lived there alone, apparently looked after by members of a local church. Basra was once home to a thriving Jewish community – now Salima was one of the few Jews left.

As recounted by Zelon:

We drove to an old section of Basra and pulled up in front of a house. There was this little tiny old lady. And she invited us in. And we sat down on some stones in this courtyard. And she looked at me. And she said, who are you? And I looked at her and said, I’m Jewish. And I’m here to take you home. And she said, I thought everyone had forgotten about me. And I said, no. We just couldn’t get to you. But now I’m here. And she said, my nieces and nephew and sisters and brothers, they all went to Israel and they live there. And I wanted to go. But I didn’t know how to get there. And I said, we’ll take you there.

The segment ended with this moving story, again recounted by Zelon:

A few months after Sasson got to Israel, I happened to be in Israel again. And I went to visit him in the home for the aged that he was living in. He had put on 20 pounds. And his hair was long. It was so wonderful to see him. And we were sitting there. And we were talking at this table in the home. And, all of a sudden, a telephone starts to ring.

And we’re looking around trying to find a telephone. And Sasson reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cell phone and says, hello? And it was just the most wonderful thing. It sort of was like, oh, this really was worthwhile. This — we did good here.

CNN and Newsnight host Aaron Brown are to be commended for their sensitive portrayal of Iraq’s dwindling and destitute Jewish community, and for exposing to a wider audience the impressive rescue efforts of Rachel Zelon and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

Just as important, the segment showed the real Israel – willingly opening its doors to elderly, destitute people who literally had nowhere else to go. Even the greatest democracy in the world, the United States, would have been unlikely to accept these impoverished Jews, but Israel, a Jewish and democratic state, did.

The complete transcript of the segment can be acccessed here – scroll about two-thirds of the way down the page.

WASHINGTON POST-WATCH: Big News–But Only For the Post

Alone among large U.S. dailies, the Washington Post‘s October 19 edition gave prominent play to a report from Human Rights Watch. The New York City-based organization alleged that home demolitions by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip during the four years of the “al-Aksa intifada” far exceeded military requirements.

“Israeli Demolitions Deemed Excessive; Gaza Tactic Violated Law, Report Asserts,” a 632- word article by Washington Post correspondent Molly Moore, covers all six columns atop a World News section. It includes a large, color photograph of a newly-homeless Arab man, standing in front of demolished buildings.

A Nexis search showed the Duluth News-Tribune covering the Human Rights Watch report in a four sentence brief and the Record (Bergen County, N.J.) as a six sentence brief.

Almost all other American newspapers ignored the HRW study. The October 19 New York Times, for example, did not run a story on it, but did publish a background feature headlined “Jerusalem Journal: Home of 3 Faiths, Rubbing One Another the Wrong Way,” by foreign correspondent Steven Erlanger. Perhaps one reason the HRW report didn’t strike Times‘ reporters and editors as important news might have been that the organization’s knee-jerk criticism of Israel – and virtual silence on chronic Palestinian Arab violation of international law and Israeli human rights – is predictable.

Predictable and tainted: the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs’ NGO Monitor (www.ngo-monitor.org) said HRW’s report lacks credibility and reflects other organizational “publications related to Israeli security actions … consisting of political and ideological clailms, unsupported “˜military assessments,’and denunciations that downplay the context of terrorism.”

Of overseas English-language newspapers, only England’s Guardian and Independent – and the Belfast Telegraph, reprinting The Independent‘s story – gave HRW’s charges much play. Not surprising, since the Independent and Guardian‘s Arab-Israeli coverage often depicts Israelis in the worst possible light, Palestinian Arabs in the best.

The Washington Post article does include rebuttal from Israeli foreign ministry and military spokesmen. But, filled with statistics from HRW and the U.N.’s Relief and Works Agency – whose director recently said he had no doubt that members of Hamas (the terrorist Islamic Resistance Movement) worked for UNRWA – it avoids the fundamental point:

Had the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian Arabs themselves accepted peace and the “two-state solution” offered them by Israel and the United States in 2000 rather than launching their war of terrorism, there would have been no Israeli home demolitions in the Gaza Strip.

The Post needs to do better than echo unreliable sources and practicing pack journalism with The Independent and The Guardian. A news brief – like those in The Duluth News-Tribune and Bergen County Record – would have been an improvement.

For the Record: The “T” Word Again

In its October 4 news story, “Alleged Leader of ETA Is Captured in France,” the Washington Post reported the capture of a suspected leader of “the armed Basque separatist group.” That description in the lead paragraph of an article by special correspondent Pamela Rolfe, is supplemented by this final paragraph:

“ETA is classified as a terrorist group by the Spanish Government, the European Union, and the U.S. State Department.”

But in “10 More Palestinians Killed in Gaza Blitz; Assault Targets Missile Attacks, Israeli Officials Say,” on October 2, “Israeli Attacks Kill 11 Palestinian Fighters; Army Attempts to Carve Out Buffer Zone in Gaza Strip Halt to Rocket Strikes” on October 3 and “Sharon Vows to Stay in Gaza Until Threat to Israel Is Ended” on October 4, the Post continued its practice of withholding from readers the fact that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – all mentioned in the articles – are listed by Israel and by the United States as terrorist organizations.

CAMERA ALERT: Geyer Gets It Wrong, Again

Syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer fell into disrepute in May of 2002 after citing in her  column:

1) a bogus defamatory quotation (“I control America”) supposedly made by Ariel Sharon, and

2) a false claim that she had seen ads for Israel that portrayed Arabs as dogs.

Unfortunately, even after her shoddy journalism was exposed, her columns continue to be syndicated around the country.

On Oct. 14, 2004, the Boston Globe and other newspapers published a Geyer column which, without substantiation, slandered Sharon as “the man who abhors Palestinians.” She argued that Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza is a “trick” somehow aimed at “forcing all the Palestinians to Jordan.” In her fanciful scenario, the U.S. House of Representatives is a slave to the “Israeli lobby,” President Bush is “clay in the hands of master strategic sculptor Sharon,” and Americans are simply “gullible.” (Geyer’s full column below)

Many of Geyer’s accusations are built around highly selective quotations from – or utter distortions of – an interview with Sharon’s adviser, Dov Weissglas.

Geyer’s False Claim (Part I)

Geyer stated:

In one of those moments when someone speaks out of truthfulness, from a need to boast about one’s cleverness, or simply because he forgot where he was that day, the senior aide to Prime Minister Sharon told the premier Israeli daily, Haaretz, that the goal of Sharon’s much-touted ‘Gaza plan’ of supposed withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers was actually devised to halt for good the ‘road map’ toward Palestinian statehood. It was a trick to make the gullible Americans believe that their precious road map was being implemented.

She provided the following sentence from Weissglas’ interview to prop up her claim:

The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process,  Weissglas said.

But Weissglas never told Haaretz that the withdrawal was “devised to halt for good the ‘road map,'” nor did he suggest such a thing. Weissglas’s quote was taken out of context.

What Weissglas really said

During the interview, Weissglas explained that Israel, along with the U.S., “reached the sad conclusion that there is no one to talk to, no one to negotiate with” on the Palestinian side because their leadership had consistently broken their “most solemn promises” to the U.S. and Israel. “Hence the disengagement plan,” he said.

Weissglas elaborated:

[Sharon] understood that in the Palestinian case the majority has no control over the minority. . .. He understood that Palestinian terrorism is in part not national at all, but religious. Therefore, granting national satisfaction will not solve the problem of this terrorism. This is the basis of his approach that first of all the terrorism must be eradicated and only then can we advance in the national direction. Not to give a political slice in return for a slice of stopping terrorism, but to insist that the swamp of terrorism be drained before a political process begins.

For this reason, the U.S. and Israel decided the Palestinians must end terrorism before negotiations begin. “What’s important is the formula that asserts that the eradication of terrorism precedes the start of the political process,” Weissglas noted. This principle, he said, was the main achievement of the “road map” peace plan.

According to Weissglas, Israel was pushed to the disengagement idea because the Palestinians were not fulfilling their obligations under the road map. With the road map stalled, he explained, Sharon realized Israel would be pressured to negotiate even while the terrorism continued and that the principle calling for an immediate stop to Palestinian violence would be “annulled.”

Weissglas continued:

And with the annulment of that principle, Israel would find itself negotiating with terrorism. And because once such negotiations start it’s very difficult to stop them, the result would be a Palestinian state with terrorism . . .

The disengagement plan is the preservative of the sequence principle. It is the bottle of formaldehyde within which you place the president’s formula so that it will be preserved for a very lengthy period. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde.

Clearly, the point made in the interview was that Israel is withdrawing from Gaza in order to avoid negotiating with the Palestinians while they espouse terrorism, and thus to avoid formation of a Palestinian state that engages in terrorism. It is the Palestinians who have abandoned the road map, Weissglas said, and the Gaza withdrawal, by putting the ball firmly in Palestinians’ court to end terror, will preserve the road map’s principles.

But Geyer didn’t cite any of these comments, all which contradict her false thesis.

(For more on media distortion of the Weissglas interview, see previous CAMERA article. )

Geyer’s false claim (part 2)

Pursuing her “Israel controls America” theme, Geyer suggested that Weissglas bragged “with barely disguised satisfaction” about his power to “get Washington to rubber-stamp everything Israel wanted to do.”

To support this, she cited a comment Weissglas’ made to Haaretz that the Israeli plan has “a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.”

This proves, Geyer argued, that the House of Representatives is “always in thrall to the Israeli lobby.”

But again, Geyer didn’t provide the full picture.

What Weissglas really said

In fact, the interviewer specifically asked Weissglas if he was “the one who prompted the Americans to adopt a political policy” similar to that of Israel.

Weissglas refuted this. He replied:

The Americans were here for four months in 2003. Through [assistant secretary of state] John Wolf they were involved in the process in the most intimate way. Wolf reported directly to Rice. Those four months had tremendous pedagogical value. The Americans saw for themselves what the Palestinians’ most solemn promises really meant. They saw the Palestinians’ detailed working plans and their splendid diagrams and they saw how nothing came of it. Nothing. Zero. When you add to that the trauma of September 11 and their understanding that Islamic terrorism is indivisible, you understand that they reached their conclusions by themselves. They didn’t need us to understand what it’s all about.

Geyer, however, is more interested in making her point than in providing the facts.

Full text of October 14, 2004 Geyer column: .

WASHINGTON — For the last three years, one crucial question about the Middle East has lurked just under the surface of events: Has Ariel Sharon changed his spots?

Is it possible, people of good (and not so good) will asked repeatedly, that the man who abhors Palestinians, who continually repeats, “There IS a Palestinian state – it is Jordan,” could now be willing to tolerate some kind of Palestinian state? That is what he has been telling the world and, more important, the all-believing Bush administration.

When I asked him three years ago on a Council on Foreign Relations video hookup between Washington and Jerusalem whether he still believed that Jordan was “the Palestinian state,” he hemmed and hawed, did not deny it, and said only that “the world has changed.” (Which, I suppose, no one could really argue with.)

And then this week, it became utterly clear. In one of those moments when someone speaks out of truthfulness, from a need to boast about one’s cleverness, or simply because he forgot where he was that day, the senior aide to Prime Minister Sharon told the premier Israeli daily, Haaretz,
that the goal of Sharon’s much-touted “Gaza Plan” of supposed withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers was actually devised to halt for good the “road map” toward Palestinian statehood. It was a trick that made the gullible Americans believe their precious road map was being implemented.

“The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process,” Dov Weisglass, who had been the prime minister’s point man in negotiations with the Bush administration and remains Sharon’s lawyer and close friend, told Haaretz. “Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda.”

Then the prime minister’s friend spoke with barely disguised satisfaction about how he had been able to get Washington to rubber-stamp everything Israel wanted to do. “And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress,” he continued. “What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns.”

The Sharon plan to withdraw from Gaza has frozen the entire Israeli-Palestinian peace process and guarantees that Israel will never have to remove at least 80 percent of its settlers from the occupied West Bank. Most Americans might know that President Bush, who seems to be clay in the hands of master strategic sculptor Sharon, gave the Israeli leader his go-ahead on the plan because he has never remotely understood the inner machinations of the Middle East; but most Americans would not know that the U.S. House of Representatives, always in thrall to the Israeli lobby, passed a resolution 400-to-9 applauding Sharon’s “Gaza withdrawal plan.”

Meanwhile, in the real world … The brutal daily Israeli strikes into Gaza, a miserable stretch of land only 30 by 10 miles and housing more than a million impoverished Palestinians, are causing untold misery – and are done in America’s name. As Americans for Peace Now reports, the settlements are being expanded, and not, as Sharon says, frozen. The United Nations reports that more than 85 percent of the barrier wall that Sharon is building is being constructed inside the West Bank, thus systematically taking over Palestinian lands. In Gaza and on the West Bank, as the corrupt and hapless Palestinian Authority falls apart of its own stupidity and voraciousness, it’s no surprise that young Palestinians are flocking to the radical Islamic Hamas. And the bombings of the hotels in Taba on the Sinai last week took place in a section controlled securely by the Egyptian security forces – are they now being infiltrated as well?

The moderate Israeli left is enraged. Labor leader Shimon Peres had supported the supposed Gaza pull-out, believing it was real. Respected leftist critic Yossi Beilin called the Weisglass comments “frightening” and said they showed a rare moment of truth and revealed Mr. Sharon’s dangerous intentions. The White House said not much at all.

To Jordan’s King Abdullah, it is no secret that Ariel Sharon dreams of forcing all the Palestinians to Jordan, and Abdullah is putting up barriers against it. News reports indicate that, as the thermometer of the Middle East heats up, some of the 11 Syrian intelligence services may be aiding in turning the Hashemite-ruled Jordan into a Palestinian state. Foreign correspondent Arnaud de Borchgrave just reported that the young king has “put the Syrian regime on notice. Cease and desist or a military confrontation comes next.”

De Borchgrave summed up in his column for United Press International: “The Palestinian-Israeli peace process is stillborn, erected as it was on the erroneous assumption that Sharon had changed his mind and was now in favor of a Palestinian state. The cascade of illusory assumptions about the Iraqi war has also been swept away.”

The only possible way to turn the whole thing about at this minutes-to-midnight moment would involve serious pressure on Sharon from an American administration — and that is not going to come from either of our impotent political parties. Instead, more nihilistic violence will be acted out before our eyes – the end of the Palestinian dream, but only the beginning of the Palestinian nightmare.

LA Times Slants Israel’s Gaza Mission

An October 17 Los Angeles Times article by Laura King and Fayed Abu Shammalah, “Palestinians Return to Scenes of Ruin,” follows the pattern typical for slanted reports on Israeli military operations against Palestinian terrorists and their infrastructure:

• Open with emotional scenes of suffering Palestinians, use figures and quotations from “human rights” organizations, the UN and/or Palestinian sources, all of which are routinely anti-Israel and prone to propaganda rather than facts.

• Don’t include the very different figures cited by Israeli officials.

• Then, bury deep inside the article a dry, unemotional, cursory mention of the terror attack against Israeli civilians that provoked the Israeli military operation.

• Include a token comment from an Israeli source, try to make it about Israeli political posturing rather than the need for – or the accomplishments of – the military mission.

• Make no mention of the efforts Israel took to shield civilians from harm.

• Omit context regarding situations where civilians were killed.

• Leave out information about Israeli property damaged by the Kassam rockets and don’t bother to get any quotations from Israeli families in nearby communities who have been terrorized by the frequent rocket attacks.

• Don’t follow up on the families of those Israelis killed by the Palestinian rocket attacks.

• Include sympathetic photos of Palestinian civilians suffering, and if a photo of Israelis must be included, try to make it one of Israeli soldiers with weapons, the heavier the better.

Israel Claims Majority of Palestinians Killed Were Terrorists

Since King and Shammalah followed this formula for slanted reporting, they failed to inform readers that Israeli sources have quite a different figure for the number of terrorists killed. The article notes:

More than 110 Palestinians were killed in the incursion…The Islamic militant group Hamas said Saturday that about 40 of the dead were members of its military wing.

Since there are more terror groups in Gaza than just Hamas, to cite only the figure of 40 is quite deceptive. No other terror group is mentioned as having lost members, even though daily IDF reports, surely available to the reporters, sometimes mention Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terrorists being killed. Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz estimates that of the 120 Palestinians killed during Operation Days of Penitence, 70 of them were terrorists.

Laura King’s failure to note Israel’s estimate is odd, considering that just three days earlier, she was more careful to present both side’s claims and was fully aware that Israel believes that most of the Palestinians killed were combatants. King wrote:

The two sides dispute the breakdown of combatant and civilian casualties, with Israel saying that nearly all the dead were fighters. Palestinians and human rights groups say nearly 20 children were among those slain.” (“Israeli Officer Suspended in Girl’s Shooting”, Oct 14, LA Times)

What other key context was missing from King and Shammalah’s Oct 17 article? The substantial challenges and accomplishments of Israel’s military operation.

Information from the IDF (available on the IDF website on October 15) relates that:

IDF forces are operating already 2 weeks in the Northern Gaza Strip in an operation, ‘Days of Atonement’ in order to reduce the launching of Kassam rockets… So far…IDF forces thwarted eight Kassam rocket launches, eight attempts to launch anti-tank rockets, and 12 attempts to lay explosive charges. Meanwhile,terrorists launched 14 Kassam rockets at the western Negev, over 20 anti-tank rockets were employed and about 7 charges were set off at IDF forces .” ( http://tinyurl.com/56nuz )

And take a look at what else is left out of the October 17 article, info readily available from the Foreign Ministry:

From October 14, 2004 Israeline:

Gaza raid will proceed in order to prevent Israeli casualties… IDF officers…noted that Operation Days of Penitence is achieving its goals and that dozens of members of terrorist organizations, belonging to nine rocket-launching cells, have been killed. Moreover, they noted that due to the operation, terrorists launching Qassam rockets have been forced to retreat. They also said that the number of rockets launched has decreased significantly, and that the level of accuracy has been greatly diminished.

In other news, five Palestinians were killed today, two of them members of Hamas, in Israel Air Force missile strikes in the Gaza Strip. According to the IDF, troops targeted terrorists who had been planting explosives.

From October 15, 2004 Israeline:

Meanwhile, five terrorists, including three Hamas and two Al-Aksa Brigades operatives, were killed overnight in IAF air strikes in Gaza, Ma’ariv reported.

In the LA Times’October 17 version of the military operation, there was no danger to the Israeli soldiers, no one trying to blow up their tanks, and Israel’s overriding mission was not to stop rocket attacks against its civilian population, but to wantonly destroy Palestinian homes and kill Palestinians to appear strong to help Prime Minister Sharon’s political agenda.

King or Shammalah fail to explain why it is so difficult for Israeli soldiers to completely avoid harming civilians, especially children. Even in Laura King’sOctober 14th article specifically about the death of a teenage girl, she provides no overall context regarding Palestinian children and teenagers increasingly getting involved in combat and terrorism. A recent report by Palestinian Media Watch gives a fuller picture:

PMW’s report on children in combat support roles

Through classroom lessons, mosque sermons, and music videos shown repeatedly on Palestinian TV, Palestinian children are taught that it is their duty to help “the resistance,” the terrorists, and to be on the frontlines.

As noted in a October 17, 2004, PMW report, “Palestinian children in combat support roles ; Behavior mirrors teachings in PA schoolbooks and popular culture” by Itamar Marcus & Barbara Crook:

In spite of family members’ warnings, groups of children are spreading around the [Gaza] camp, both to pass on information to the resistance and to bring them water .(from Palestinian newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 11, 2004)

The PMW report explains that:

According to tradition, while Muhammad and his companion Abu Bakr hid in a cave, Abu Bakr’s young daughter aided them by passing them information about the enemy and giving them water. The [Palestinian] schoolbook teaches children to see themselves in similar roles with such language as: “Asma, Abu Bakr’s daughter, was my age when she played a role…” and immediately asks the question: “What role can I play in order to support the national resistance movement against the occupier and colonialist?” (History of the Arabs and Muslims, 6th grade, p. 34, translated by CMIP)

The children take these lessons to heart and follow them. According to an October 15th IDF report, Palestinian children were seen surrounding a rocket launcher and even moving it (knowing that Israeli soldiers are loathe to shoot children, thereby possibly allowing the rocket launcher to be used instead of destroyed):

During IDF activity today (Friday) in the southern Gaza Strip to reduce launching of Qassam rockets, several Palestinians surrounded by children were identified by the forces with a Qassam launcher. The forces fired warning shots and the group fled leaving the launcher behind. Shortly after, the children were seen carrying the launcher to a different launching spot and the group which earlier fled tried once again to launch a Qassam. The forces fired again warning shots and the launching attempt was thwarted.

LA Times’ reporters and others should report more fairly and fully about Israeli military operations and include context about Palestinian children being callously encouraged by their teachers and leaders to place themselves in the line of fire.

Ha’aretz’s Gideon Levy Exports Misinformation, Bad Journalism

CAMERA does not usually respond to inaccurate reports in the Israeli press. However, a July 18 report by Ha’aretz opinion writer Gideon Levy (“If it were the reverse”), reprinted July 30 in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles (“If the Situation Were Reversed”), merited a response due to its multiple errors, in addition to its reprint in an American newspaper.

There were numerous errors in the column, both substantive and incidental. The following is a list of the former.

1) Levy claims that Golda Meir “said that after what the Nazis did to us, we can do whatever we want.” No such quote was found on Lexis-Nexis or the Internet. When CAMERA requested a source from Levy, he acknowledged in an Aug. 12 email that he had none. He said, “therefore we dropped the quotation in the original version in Hebrew and by mistake it was printed in the English version.”

2) Arguing that Israelis are utterly indifferent to Palestinian suffering, he cites the killing of Ibrahim Halfalla, an elderly Palestinian in Gaza, and claims that Yediot Achronot “didn’t bother to run the story at all.” In fact, Yediot deplored the killing in a hard-hitting editorial July 14, which stated:

The army acted according to regulations and in line with these regulations an elderly paralyzed Palestinian lost his life in his house. This is not the first time that civilians have died under the ruins of their homes. . . .We will defeat terrorism. Perhaps so, but we will lose something much bigger than this. Something inside us has been extinguished. We are losing the battle for our face. . .

This sort of searching self-criticism, which is common in Israeli society and virtually absent in Palestinian culture, completely undermines Levy’s greater point.

3) Levy claims that “our Education Ministry announces that it will not permit Arabs to attend Jewish schools in Haifa. . .” In private communication with CAMERA, Bracha Brill, spokeswomen for the Ministry of Education for the Haifa District, said that this is nonsense. First of all, the decision of whether particular students can attend particular schools is the responsibility of the Municipality, not the Education Ministry. In addition, Brill provided the following background information: Haifa’s Arab population is 60 percent Christian. The majority of Arab students in Haifa go to private schools run by churches, which are high-level competitive schools. Only 30 percent of Haifa’s Arab students attend the state schools. There are four state-run Arabic schools in Haifa, ranging from elementary to high school. In contrast, the Hebrew public schools are much more numerous, so enrollment in those schools is based on location.

In the six months preceding August, parents of students at the Arabic public schools have lobbied for many improvements in their children’s program. During the course of their campaign, some parents said they wanted to send their children to the local (Hebrew) schools. Six parents came to the Municipality and submitted requests for improvements at the Arabic public schools, which included things like English classes at a younger age, a longer school day for elementary age kids, etc. After a process of negotiations, the Municipality agreed to the improvements and everyone concerned was satisfied. Apparently, once the improvements were agreed upon, the parents who previously wanted to send their kids to the Hebrew public schools preferred to keep their kids in the Arabic public schools.

Finally, as aforementioned, it is the Municipality which determines who attends what school. However, decisions may be appealed to the Education Ministry. Brill, the Education Ministry spokeswoman, said the head of the Ministry had said that if the Municipality wanted to allow scores of Arabs to attend the Hebrew public schools, the Ministry would uphold the decision. The Ministry would overturn the decision ONLY IF the ENTIRE population of Arab students chose to join the Hebrew public schools because such a mass change would require new infrastructure. But, the point was moot, since the Arab parents achieved the improvements they sought and did not pursue transferring their kids to the Hebrew public schools.

Despite numerous emails and phone calls to Peter Hirshberg, editor of Ha’aretz‘s English Web site, Ha’aretz has not corrected Levy’s outright errors and distortions. As for Rob Eshman, editor of the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, he had repeatedly promised to address the errors but failed to do so.

CAMERA Letter Published in Boston Globe

OCTOBER 17, 2004

 

Clarification of adviser’s statement

 

THE GLOBE’S Oct. 13 editorial (“Unguarded on Gaza”) about comments by Ariel Sharon’s advisor, Dov Weisglass, drastically misrepresented his interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz.

 

Weisglass recapped the long established Israeli and American position, which states that there will be no negotiating with the Palestinians — until such time as their leadership abandons terror. In line with President Bush’s formula for peace expressed on June 24, 2002, Weisglass explained, Israel insists that “the swamp of terrorism be drained before a political process begins.”

 

Because this abandoning of terror does not seem forthcoming and because the continuation of Palestinian terror has stalled the road map, Weisglass added, a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is necessary to “preserve” this vision for a peaceful Palestinian state. “The disengagement plan is the bottle of formaldehyde within which you place the president’s formula so that it will be preserved for a very lengthy period.”

 

In claiming that Weisglass asserted that “the true aim of Sharon’s plan to withdraw from Gaza is to freeze the peace process embodied in the road map endorsed by…Bush,” the Globe editorial distorted completely the crux of Weisglass’ comments.

 

GILEAD INI
COMMITTEE FOR ACCURACY IN
MIDDLE EAST REPORTING IN
AMERICA
Boston

Selective Quotes Distort Intent of Sharon’s Gaza Withdrawal

In his interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz, Dov Weissglas, a close advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was asked about Israel’s decision to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. According to American media coverage of this interview, Weissglas suggested that Ariel Sharon’s true intention in planning the Gaza disengagement is to freeze the peace process and prevent a Palestinian state. However, this was not his message at all; his words were taken out of context.

The misleading account of the interview stems from an Oct. 6 Haaretz article, a “teaser” promoting the publication of the full interview on Oct. 8. The “teaser” revealed a few selected quotes, and carried the sensational headline, “Top PM aide: Gaza plan aims to freeze the peace process.” Though the article made clear that the full interview would appear on Friday, Oct. 8, American newspapers on Oct. 7 followed Haaretz‘s lead, proclaiming that Sharon’s advisor had finally admitted the Gaza disengagement was aimed at sidestepping negotiations and obstructing formation of a Palestinian state. Weissglas protested that his words had been taken out of context, and some newspapers did make note of this – but they left it as a matter of doubt.

Upon publication of the full interview in Haaretz, it became clear that the newspaper’s teaser, and the American media coverage, did not at all reflect the substance of the interview. None of the journalists, however, informed their readers that Weissglas’ comments had indeed been taken out of context.

In the interview, published in full by Haaretz Friday Magazine (Oct. 8, “The big freeze”), Weissglas (also spelled “Weisglass”) recounted a long established Israeli decision to delay negotiations with the Palestinians until such time that their leadership abandons terror. He said withdrawing from the Gaza Strip would enable this delay, because it would put the onus on the Palestinians to end violence.

Summary of Full Interview

Weissglas explained that Israel, along with the U.S., “reached the sad conclusion that there is no one to talk to, no one to negotiate with” on the Palestinian side. This conclusion was reached “after years of thinking otherwise. After years of attempts at dialogue.” Over the years, the Palestinian leadership had consistently broken their “most solemn promises” to the U.S. and Israel. “Hence the disengagement plan,” he said.

Weissglas elaborated:

[Sharon] understood that in the Palestinian case the majority has no control over the minority. . .. He understood that Palestinian terrorism is in part not national at all, but religious. Therefore, granting national satisfaction will not solve the problem of this terrorism. This is the basis of his approach that first of all the terrorism must be eradicated and only then can we advance in the national direction. Not to give a political slice in return for a slice of stopping terrorism, but to insist that the swamp of terrorism be drained before a political process begins. [emphasis added]

For this reason, the U.S. and Israel decided the Palestinians must end terrorism before negotiations begin. “What’s important is the formula that asserts that the eradication of terrorism precedes the start of the political process,” Weissglas noted. This principle, he said, was the main achievement of the “road map” peace plan.

According to Weissglas, Israel was pushed to the disengagement idea because the Palestinians were not fulfilling their obligations under the “road map”. With the “road map” stalled, he explained, Sharon realized Israel would be pressured to negotiate even while the terrorism continued and that the principle calling for an immediate stop to Palestinian violence would be “annulled.” Weissglas continued:

And with the annulment of that principle, Israel would find itself negotiating with terrorism. And because once such negotiations start it’s very difficult to stop them, the result would be a Palestinian state with terrorism
…

The disengagement plan is the preservative of the sequence principle. It is the bottle of formaldehyde within which you place the president’s formula so that it will be preserved for a very lengthy period. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. [emphasis added]

Clearly, the point made in the interview was that Israel’s intent in withdrawing from Gaza is to avoid negotiating with a leadership that espouses terrorism, and thus to avoid formation of a Palestinian state that engages in terrorism. Far from abandoning the two state solution or the “road map,” Weissglas believes that by putting the ball firmly in Palestinians’ court, the withdrawal will secure the “road map” formula that terror must end before negotiations are restarted.

Media’s Coverage

Amazingly, these comments made by Weissglas were neither cited in the Haaretz teaser, nor by the American media.

News reports and editorials provided only selected comments Weissglas had made elaborating on the concept he had put forth. Removed from their context, these quotes wrongly suggest that Israel’s withdrawal was simply a trick to avoid peace. For example, Haaretz – and the American newspapers – used the following quote without its context: “The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process.” When isolated from Weissglas’ preface, this quote implies Israel has nefarious intentions.

Even though Weissglas told Israel Radio later that day that Haaretz had taken his comments out of context, the U.S. media nonetheless used only the quotes from the misleading teaser.

Headlines trumpeted:

* “Sharon aide: Gaza plan seeks to ‘freeze’ Palestinian statehood; ‘The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process,’ said a senior diplomatic adviser. Many were angered” (Philadelphia Inquirer, 10/7).

* “Sharon aid says goal of Gaza Plan is to halt Road Map; Key Adviser: Israel got U.S. Blessing” (Washington Post, 10/7).

* “Israeli aide hints that Gaza exit would freeze peace plan; A Sharon adviser’s comments raise doubts about Palestinian statehood” (New York Times, 10/7).

* “Israeli talks of delaying peace process; Gaza pullout seen easing pressure” (Boston Globe, 10/7).

By valuing sensationalism over accuracy in its teaser, Haaretz practiced irresponsible journalism. Still, the newspaper eventually provided the full interview, allowing its readers to draw their own conclusions. American readers were not afforded that opportunity. The U.S. newspapers repeated the same faulty message without ever presenting the full context of Weissglas’ words.

Washington Post

John Ward Anderson neither waited for the full interview nor clarified that his report was based on partial quotes, stating only that the article was based on “an interview published Wednesday [Oct. 6].” He also misquoted Weissglas when paraphrasing:

Weisglass. . . said the U.S.-backed peace plan called the “road map” is dead. (10/7)

No such comment was made.

New York Times

Greg Myre of the New York Times simply stated:

Israel’s proposed withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is intended to put the issue of Palestinian statehood on indefinite hold, a close aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in an interview that was published Wednesday. (10/7)

Boston Globe

Dan Ephron misled readers as well:

The top adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in unusually candid remarks published yesterday that Israel’s plan to withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza Strip was really meant to ‘remove indefinitely from our agenda’ the viability of a peace process or a Palestinian state. (10/7)

Ephron further deceived readers by insisting that neither Sharon nor Weisglass “disputed the accuracy of the long Haaretz interview, which will be published in full tomorrow.”

True, Weisglass did not dispute the accuracy of the full interview, but he did emphasize that the excerpts – on which Ephron apparently based his article – were taken out of context and twisted the meaning of his comments.

The L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune and Philadelphia Inquirer similarly propagated the misinformation by reporting only the partial quotes from the teaser, and none of the quotes from the full article. They did briefly note that Weissglas said his words were taken out of context.

Editorials

Newspaper editorials went even further, using partial quotes to implicate Israel as the obstacle to peace.

An editorial in the Baltimore Sun (“The real Gaza plan,” 10/8), citing only the misleading quotes from the teaser, proclaimed: “Israel’s plan to unilaterally withdraw troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip has been unmasked as a subterfuge.”

The Boston Globe editorial on the subject (“Unguarded on Gaza,” 10/13) stated that “the true aim of Sharon’s plan to withdraw from Gaza is to freeze the peace process embodied in the “road map” endorsed by President Bush, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations.”

The Globe did acknowledge in its conclusion that “the war between Palestinians and Israel must end before [the] negotiations begin.” However, this idea was presented as a contradiction to Weissglas’ words, when in fact it was exactly his point.