We couldn't have said it better

(Reuters) - Occupy this: the trash bin. At least, so say students at Michigan's Lake Superior State University who released an annual list of words they deem so misused, overused and cliched they should be banished in the year ahead.

Happy New Year!

Reuters latest propaganda mantra

We define a propaganda mantra as a false, fabricated, or misleading construct appearing repeatedly in a Reuters story so as to drum the notion into the mind of the reader until he or she simply surrenders his or her critical faculty and accepts the propaganda as truth.

Correspondents in Reuters Jerusalem Bureau regularly dream up new entrants in this category and then employ them consistently in and across all stories published by the bureau.  Examples of the many Reuters propaganda mantras can be seen in our right sidebar with counts as to how many times these phrases have appeared in Reuters stories over the last couple of years.

The latest propaganda mantra to insinuate its way into Reuters Middle East coverage appears in a story by correspondent Dan Williams about a Salafi terrorist -- er sorry, "militant" -- killed by the Israeli air force as he was preparing to fire a rocket from Gaza:

Though Hamas echoes Salafi calls for Israel's ultimate destruction, its ambitions are framed within Palestinian nationalism, not al Qaeda-style global jihad, and include a possible ceasefire with the militarily superior Jewish state which, with Egyptian help, has tried to isolate Gaza.

Williams' (unsupported) assertion, i.e., that the goal of Hamas is one of merely achieving a Palestinian state rather than waging a broader war of jihad against non-Muslims so as to reconquer all land that has ever been under Islamic rule, is utterly false.  It is intended to draw a spurious distinction between Hamas and al-Qaeda for naive western audiences so that Williams and his colleagues at Reuters can carry on with their Palestinian advocacy campaign, justifying Palestinian violence under the deliberately misleading banner of "nationalism".

To see that Williams is simply blowing smoke, all one need do is read the Hamas Charter which, in setting out the terror group's mission and strategy, employs the word "jihad" no fewer than 36 times, including this section describing the relationship between Hamas and other jihadists:

Article Twenty-Three: Our Position Vis-a-Vis the Islamic Movements

The Hamas views the other Islamic movements with respect and appreciation. Even when it differs from them in one aspect or another or on one concept or another, it agrees with them in other aspects and concepts. It reads those movements as included in the framework of striving [for the sake of Allah], as long as they hold sound intentions and abide by their devotion to Allah, and as along as their conduct remains within the perimeter of the Islamic circle. All the fighters of Jihad have their reward. The Hamas regards those movements as its stock holders and asks Allah for guidance and integrity of conduct for all. It shall not fail to continue to raise the banner of unity and to exert efforts in order to implement it, [based] upon the [Holy] Book and the [Prophet’s] Tradition. “And hold fast, all of you together, to the cable of Allah, do not separate. And remember Allah’s favor unto you how ye were enemies and He made friendship between your hearts so that ye became as brothers by His grace; and (how) ye were upon the brink of an abyss of fire, and He did save you from it. Thus Allah makes clear His revelations unto you, that happily ye may be guided.” Sura III (Al-’Imran), verse 102.

And this section acknowledging that Hamas is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood (which, like al-Qaeda, advocates for a global caliphate):

Article Two: The Link between Hamas and the Association of Muslim Brothers

The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a world organization, the largest Islamic Movement in the modern era. It is characterized by a profound understanding, by precise notions and by a complete comprehensiveness of all concepts of Islam in all domains of life: views and beliefs, politics and economics, education and society, jurisprudence and rule, indoctrination and teaching, the arts and publications, the hidden and the evident, and all the other domains of life.

Indeed, even the Brotherhood affiliate in Tunisia, the al-Nahda party, boasts of Jerusalem becoming the center of the new caliphate -- once of course, it is conquered by the Palestinians:

Fox guarding henhouse at Thomson Reuters

Our focus here at RMEW is on the day-to-day propaganda appearing in Reuters stories on the Middle East conflict.  As our post on gatekeeping below suggests however, propaganda in journalism doesn't just happen by happenstance.  It's part and parcel of an organized and covert effort by journalists and editors, possibly managing editors, to manipulate audience opinion via systematically biased storytelling, i.e., lies, half-truths, deliberate distortions, omissions, and opinion masquerading as factual reporting.

Ultimately, responsibility for a propaganda campaign rests with senior managers and the Board of Directors for the corporation that employs the journalists who engage in the campaign.  These corporate guardians are charged, by investors and other stakeholder groups, with the task of seeing to it that employees uphold the company's standards and ethical principles.  When these guardians fail in that oversight mission, or worse, when they themselves are complicit in the propaganda campaign, it is left to the shareholders and the market to enforce ethical discipline on the company.

This leads us to an announcement by Thomson Reuters a couple of weeks ago, of the appointment of one Mark Malloch-Brown to the Board of the Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company, an entity purportedly created to safeguard the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.  From the Reuters website:

Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company was established in 1984 when Reuters became a public company. The directors of Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company have a duty to ensure, to the extent possible, that the Trust Principles are complied with.

So who is Mark Malloch-Brown?  He is a Trustee of the Shell [Oil] Foundation, former Vice President of George Soros' multibillion dollar investment vehicle, the Quantum Fund, former Vice Chairman and current Board member of the Soros-founded and funded Open Society Institute, Board member of the similarly Soros-funded International Crisis Group, and previously, Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations under Kofi Annan.

Malloch-Brown, who served as Annan's deputy during the UN Oil-for-Food scandal, also managed the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 requiring the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah following its war with Israel in 2006, something it has utterly failed to do.  Malloch-Brown is an unabashed apologist for both Hezbollah and Iran, infamously suggesting in an interview with the Financial Times, that Hezbollah, which fired thousands of rockets targeting Israeli civilian communities during the war, not be considered a terrorist group and that, in its pursuit of nuclear weapons, Iran merely wants international "respect". 

Finally, Malloch-Brown is an anti-American polemicist, a nation he sees as standing in the way of UN-led internationalism populated by a heartland that is ignorant of the greatness of the United Nations because the country is under the influence of "Rush Limbaugh and Fox News".

This is the man that Thomson Reuters has hand-selected to be a guardian of the corporation's much-vaunted Trust Principles:

[...] That the integrity, independence and freedom from bias of Thomson Reuters shall at all times be fully preserved;
That Thomson Reuters shall supply unbiased and reliable news services to newspapers, news agencies, broadcasters and other media subscribers and to businesses governments, institutions, individuals and others with whom Thomson Reuters has or may have contracts [...]

We're sure.

The Power of the Gatekeeper

Gatekeeping is the power of the managing or lead editor in a media company to determine which stories get published or aired, and which don't.  It's one of the most dynamic, and insidious, tools for disseminating propaganda because by definition, it's a biased process, yet one that leaves little evidence of that bias.  The editor gets to decide which stories, which perspectives, will make the news and have an opportunity to influence audiences.  Other stories, other perspectives, simply never see the light of day.

British attorney Trevor Asserson, now living in Israel, conducted a study of the BBCs gatekeeping role in its production and airing of documentaries on the Middle East conflict:

Asserson checked various BBC TV programs on the Middle East against its commitments under the charter. He analyzed all documentaries on the Middle East shown on BBC 1 and 2 from late June 2002 to 2004. Afterwards, Asserson said that the BBC is conducting “what amounts to something equivalent to a campaign to vilify Israel, broadcasting a documentary critical of Israel every two to three months…88% of documentaries on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict paint either a negative impression of Israel or (in two cases) a positive image of Palestinians.” [...]

Asserson concluded: “BBC’s news reports concerning Israel are distorted by omission, by inclusion, by only giving partial facts, by who is interviewed, and by the background information provided, or lack of it.

Reuters similarly employs heavily ideological gatekeeping in its Middle East reporting in an effort to vilify Israel and lionize the Arabs.  Check our right sidebar entitled, "Reuters Censoring", and you will see scores of important, factual stories vital to any contextualized understanding of the conflict.  Yet, not one of them was covered by Reuters.  Why?

Because they would interfere with Reuters anti-Israel propaganda campaign and concurrent pro-Arab advocacy campaign.

Incidentally, if confronted with this list, we have no doubt Reuters editors would feign indignation and protest their innocence with a claim that they were too busy covering more newsworthy stories.

Yes, we're certain of that.

Fox guarding henhouse

The Arab League has sent a team of "observers" to Syria to monitor the frenzied bloodletting that has resulted in the deaths of over 5,000 people in the country.  With not a hint of irony, Reuters correspondent Mariam Karouny reports:

Sudanese General Mustafa Dabi, who arrived in Damascus on Saturday, is leading a team of observers that will check whether Syria is implementing part of an Arab peace plan requiring it to pull out of civilian areas and put an end to bloodshed.

Is it just us, or does it seem a bit Orwellian that a mission to verify compliance with a peace plan, intended to protect Syrians from slaughter by their government, is being led by a military leader of a country responsible for the genocide of perhaps 400,000 of its own citizens?

Pot, meet kettle

In a story about two suicide bombings in Syria last Friday and the government-run media's heavy focus on the bloodshed for propaganda purposes, Reuters correspondents Alistair Lyon and Erika Solomon demonstrate their practiced understanding of the way media companies employ heavily biased messaging to manipulate audiences: 

State media, often selective in their approach to news, devoted blanket coverage to the bombings, showing graphic footage of the victims and featuring interviews that drove home a single message.

Now, if they could only apply that same insight to their own reporting.

Nidal al-Mughrabi, pathologically incapable of writing a straight story on the Middle East conflict

Reuters correspondent Nidal al-Mughrabi informs us that the leader of terror group Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, is to "embark on a regional tour" of Muslim countries in the Middle East (makes him sound like Justin Bieber, no?).

In a piece of just 363 words, al-Mughrabi manages to insert several key propagandistic phrases intended to demonize Israel and lead readers to believe that territory which has only ever been sovereign to the Jews, is by rights, exclusively Arab:

A Haniyeh aide said he will meet leaders in Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Qatar, Bahrain and Turkey and discuss rebuilding the Gaza Strip which suffered damage during a month-long Israeli offensive in 2008-09.
About 1,400 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, and 13 Israelis were killed in the war which Israel said it launched in order to curb cross-border rocket fire from Palestinian militants.

For al-Mughrabi, whose bio says he has worked and lived in Gaza for 15 years, the Israel-Hamas war in 2008-09 was an "Israeli offensive", which the veteran news correspondent is apparently completely unable to verify was precipitated by (thousands of) rockets fired by Palestinians into Israeli civilian communities.  The cause of the war remains mere hearsay.

Yet, if we are to believe the absurd notion that al-Mughrabi cannot ascertain any independent facts with which to confirm the casus belli and can only accept that which "Israel said", are we also to believe that Israeli officials characterized the firing of rockets into Israeli civilian communities as emanating from Palestinian "militants"?   In other words, if al-Mughrabi is citing Israeli officials, is he citing them accurately?

We challenge al-Mughrabi to produce evidence of an occurrence of Israeli officials referring to Hamas rocket crews as "militants".  He won't be able to of course, because Israelis refer to these groups as terrorists, not militants.

So the 15-year Reuters veteran is apparently not only unable to independently verify events leading to the 2008-09 war between Israel and Hamas, he is also unable to cite faithfully, those who can verify these events.

One thing al-Mughrabi is able to do, is advance an ahistorical, Arab-ethnocentric, and racist fiction intended to suggest that the city of Jerusalem rightfully belongs to the Arabs.

The more secular Fatah movement led by Abbas, holds sway in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Palestinians want both areas for a future state with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital.

There is no "Arab East Jerusalem".  It's a racist epithet formerly used to characterize the eastern portion of Jerusalem as it stood for a mere 19 years following the invasion, conquest, and ethnic cleansing of the Jews from the city by the Arab Legion in 1949.

But the term is used quite deliberately today, nearly a half-century after it became obsolete, by al-Mughrabi and his biased colleagues at Reuters in an effort to manipulate readers into believing that Jerusalem is by rights, by history, or by ethnicity, Arab.

This notion is false; it's propagandistic; and it's a violation of both Reuters Trust Principles and Handbook of Journalism for correspondents to peddle it.

But we know how seriously Reuters takes its ethical commitments to the public.

Reuters interviews rabid Israel-hater in Bethlehem; identifies him reverentially as 'Christian pilgrim'

In a piece of anti-Israel propaganda masquerading as a heartfelt Christmas tale of celebrations in Bethlehem, Reuters correspondents Mustafa Abu Ganeyeh and Allyn Fisher-Ilan set the stage for us:

"We ask the baby of Bethlehem to give us the peace we really need, peace in all the countries of the Middle East. We demand peace in the Holy Land," said Latin Patriarch Fuad al-Tuwal.
The church leader, whose entourage included a man dressed as Santa Claus riding in a jeep, had arrived from Jerusalem earlier after crossing into Bethlehem, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, via an Israeli checkpoint through a towering concrete wall.

No mention of course, of the reason for that checkpoint or "towering concrete wall"; talk of over a thousand people blown to pieces in Palestinian terror attacks would clearly spoil the Christmas cheer.

But it is when Reuters correspondents cherry-pick their interviewees, that the shiny wrap truly comes off the agency's gift for deception:

"Obviously it's very special to be at this place where Jesus was born, as part of a tradition of the Christian church," said Ted Settle, an American pilgrim.

"It's very meaningful to be here with the people of Palestine who have endured so much hardship, to be here where Jesus was raised and taught about justice and peace."

So, who is Ted Settle, an "American pilgrim" who finds it very special to be in Bethlehem with "the people of Palestine"?

Well, Reuters won't tell you this but Ted is a sanctimonious and rabid Israel-hating activist who supports the destruction of the country via terrorism, boycotts, sanctions and divestment:

During the days of Monday and Tuesday, conference attendees participated in excursions that gave a fuller exposure to the oppressive and illegal  “facts on the ground” of the occupation: visits to areas of Bethlehem (one of the facts on the ground constantly imposing its stark presence on the people of Bethlehem and Beit Sahour is the illegal settlement of Har Homa, with its fortress-like high rise condominiums sitting on the top of and extending down the once forested hilltop the Palestinians call Jabal Abu Ghmein) and Hebron on Monday (where a population of less than 500 illegal settlers and close to 2,000 Israeli Occupation Forces control the lives of over 160,000 Palestinians living in  and around Hebron); and on Tuesday, to Jerusalem, including East Jerusalem where the Palestinians and their homes in the Silwan valley are under siege by settlers and the Israeli government [...]

The next day, after a full description of the current Palestinian political scene by Hind Khoury, former Palestinian ambassador to France, we broke out into small groups to discuss and come up with recommendations on six topics:

1.  Theological Justification for our encounter and its concerns.

2.  Pilgrimages – Come, See and Be with the people of Palestine

3.  Prophetic Anger/  God of Now

4.  Church – more than words

5.  Resistance and Solidarity

6.  Creative Resistance – BDS

And lest you believe it a coincidence that Reuters features remarks from someone with this type of background under the guise of a random interview, it's not the first time we've caught them doing so.

The Ghost of Christmas Past

In the run-up to Christmas each year, Reuters is notorious for penning stories that depict hardship and gloom amongst Palestinians living in and around Bethlehem.  And blaming that despondency on -- you guessed it -- Israel.  We commented on several of these stories in 2009, pointing out that Reuters employs its usual holiday bag of propaganda devices, deceit and omissions to maliciously smear the Jewish state.

In 2010 and in the run-up to Christmas this year however, we noticed a marked dearth of such stories written by the usual suspects and we think we have discovered the reason why: a group of Jerusalem-based reporters were so fed-up with the annual insipid ritual, they started a Facebook group called Reporters against whiny christmas stories in Bethlehem:

A rebel group of Jerusalem-based reporters has reacted to the decade-long tradition of Bethlehem holiday stories by refusing to accept any holiday cheer this season.

Refusing editors' requests for "Christmas in the holy land" tales of Palestinian woe and tourist shows, the group has announced it will refrain from filing any articles until an actual news event occurs.

"We are doing this for the good of our readers. Who, if they have any memory whatsoever, will recall that we have written the exact same Bethlehem story for the past four years," said a spokesman for the group. He continued that the decision was also financial, hoping to save the dying newspaper industry the cost of commissioning a new piece when they could just rewrite the previous versions.

One journalist, who asked to remain anonymous, said the rebel group was trying to quell more extreme elements who called for a torching of all olive-wood products made in Bethlehem, and the expelling of shopkeepers who whined excessively.

Merry Christmas to our Christian readers.

Cyveillance accessing, downloading all RMEW pages

Since 7:01 am yesterday, Cyveillance has been systematically accessing and downloading all of our web pages via spiders.  The company bills itself as the "world leader in cyber intelligence" monitoring the internet to provide "advanced warning of company-specific threats", and as this article suggests, engages in surveillance on behalf of many Fortune 50 companies.

Hi guys and welcome!  Say hello to James and Alix for us.

Riddle me this

In a story about Palestinian terror groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad joining the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Reuters correspondent Nidal al-Mughrabi is a bit befuddled:

Hamas has refused to recognize Israel's right to exist or renounce violence, while the PLO has signed interim peace accords with the Jewish state. It was unclear how Hamas would be included in the PLO, given the discrepancy.

Gee, we were wondering the same.  Perhaps it's due to the fact that notwithstanding those "interim peace accords", the PLO maintains its charter to destroy Israel through armed violence.

Nah!  That answer would be too easy.

Fearing the truth will out

Reuters correspondents have a long history of censoring, obfuscating, or simply lying in their reporting so as to advance their personal advocacy agendas, or those of their employer.  Denying, downplaying, distorting, or omitting factual content in their stories is de rigueur.

This can be seen clearly in the agency's coverage of the Iranian nuclear program.

In a Reuters story published yesterday, following US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's dire warning in an interview with CBS that Iran can likely produce a nuclear weapon in about a year, perhaps much less if the country has a hidden facility enriching nuclear fuel, Reuters correspondent Phil Stewart does his level best to undermine Panetta's informed advice:

(Reuters) - How long would Iran need to develop a nuclear weapon if its leaders decided to build one?
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta thinks it could take just under a year, an ever so slightly more narrow timeline than the one-year minimum his predecessor, Robert Gates, put forward.
But nuclear experts are skeptical Tehran could move that quickly and a Pentagon spokesman acknowledged on Tuesday he was not aware of any new intelligence driving Panetta's latest remarks, which aired on U.S. television on Monday evening.

Note how, following a cursory reporting of Panetta's statement, Stewart seeks to immediately discredit it.  "Nuclear experts are skeptical", the agency reporter trumpets as he proceeds to cherry-pick an opinion from the director of a single NGO who characterizes Panetta's forecast as "unlikely".  In a subsequent paragraph, Stewart acknowledges that, unlike the Secretary of Defense, this director has no access to any classified intelligence; yet his uninformed opinion is offered as countervailing evidence that Iran cannot develop a nuclear weapon within a year.

Stewart not only fails to come up with a second "nuclear expert" taking the same line, he neglects to cite the views of many other scientists and military analysts who have corroborated the Defense Secretary's position.  Nor does Stewart mention the recent findings of scientists at the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency, concluding that Iran has:

... carried out the following activities that are relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device:
• Efforts, some successful, to procure nuclear related and dual use equipment and materials by military related individuals and entities (Annex, Sections C.1 and C.2);
• Efforts to develop undeclared pathways for the production of nuclear material (Annex, Section C.3);
• The acquisition of nuclear weapons development information and documentation from a clandestine nuclear supply network (Annex, Section C.4); and
• Work on the development of an indigenous design of a nuclear weapon including the testing of components (Annex, Sections C.5–C.12).

(Note particularly, the finding that Iran has engaged in clandestine efforts to produce nuclear fuel, precisely the caveat issued by Panetta in his explanation of why Iran may be even less than a year away from producing nuclear weapons).

Rather, Stewart seeks to incriminate another party for all the fuss:

Panetta's remarks come at a moment of intense speculation about whether Israel, which sees a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat, may be moving closer to military action to halt a program it says is aimed at building an atomic bomb.

Because according to Reuters, there is no independent evidence that Iran is on the cusp of producing the bomb; this is merely a he said/she said "dispute" between equally credible parties.

Reuters compares Islamists to Republicans

Reuters stable of Middle East reporters has been out in force over the last year, each correspondent taking his respective turn at bat, sanitizing the ideology of the Islamists who have been voted into power in Tunisia and Morocco, and who are on the verge of power in Egypt and Algeria.

The various Islamist groups vying for control of these countries go by different party names and, for the purpose of distinguishing themselves in the eyes of the electorate, emphasize different aspects of the Islamist raison d'etre.  But, like multiple brands of bug killer, while the directions for use may vary, the end result remains the same.  Institutionalized discrimination against women and non-Muslims, capital punishment for open homosexuals, and a genocidal hatred for all things Jewish are what these groups are all about.

Notwithstanding the incontrovertible barbarism inherent in this program, Reuters correspondents continue with their efforts to whitewash the Islamists for gullible western audiences.  Here's the latest irrational comparison from Reuters religion editor Tom Heneghan:

Still, in a Western country, Muslim Brothers [Brotherhood] would be among the staunch social conservatives, something like the evangelical wing of the Republican Party in the United States.

Simply mind-numbing.

Correction:

On November 20, 2011, we posted that Crispian Balmer was no longer Reuters Jerusalem Bureau Chief and had transferred to France.  We based our report on Reuters webpage for Balmer which identified him -- and still identifies him -- as "Chief Correspondent, France".  The same webpage now also identifies Balmer as "bureau chief for Israel and the Palestinian Territories".

Perhaps he commutes.

Allyn Fisher-Ilan: polemicist, propagandist, ventriloquist

Deeply dishonest Reuters correspondent Allyn Fisher-Ilan pens a blistering polemic on Jewish settlers who last week attacked an IDF outpost in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") and allegedly vandalized an abandoned mosque.

In the handful of incidents where she reports, Fisher-Ilan typically refers to Israelis who stage violent demonstrations against the Israeli separation barrier and throw rocks at soldiers (often seriously injuring them) as merely "pro-Palestinian" or with the genteel sobriquet, "leftists".  But in the case of Israelis protesting against the demolition of their homes in the area, engaging in violence indistinguishable from that of Fisher-Ilan's beloved "leftists", the Reuters correspondent is just a bit more, shall we say, vitriolic:

(Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday approved steps to crack down on violent ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers after a rampage at a West Bank military base and torching of a mosque's facade stirred public outrage.
Radical settlers are bent on foiling government efforts to shut down unauthorized outposts they have set up in occupied West Bank territory where Palestinians seek a state, although Israel has continued to expand larger official settlements.  [...]

On Wednesday, radical Jews burnt the facade of a Jerusalem mosque not recently in use and scrawled "Death to the Arabs" on its walls, an assault blamed on a group that has vandalized other Muslim houses of worship over the past two years.

While we don't condone violence or property damage committed by belligerents on either side of this conflict, we just want to point out Fisher-Ilan's willful, skillful, and hypocritical use of propagandistic rhetoric in an effort to manipulate readers to adopt her own patent political ideology.

Note also, how the Reuters correspondent then falsely attributes her employer's propaganda mantra to the Israeli Prime Minister:

Netanyahu said further that he would increase funding for investigations of violence in occupied territory. But he rejected calls to treat Israelis suspected of violence there as "terrorist targets," as Palestinian militants are handled.

Netanyahu did not say, and would likely never refer to the territory as "occupied".  Fisher-Ilan has simply fabricated the citation out of whole cloth.

Tom Perry on the loose

Serial liar and Reuters kingpin propagandist Tom Perry, who clearly has an irresistible fetish for the Palestinian Arabs, rushes in to defend them from the ravages of straight talk.  And his first objective is to repudiate Newt Gingrich's proposition that the Palestinians are part and parcel of the Arab community in the Middle East, rather than a distinct people.

Thus, Perry characterizes or cites others characterizing the Palestinians as a "people" at least three times in his latest turgid piece of propaganda:

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Hamas and Fatah are Palestinian rivals facing the same dilemma: how to justify their role as leaders of the Palestinian people while making little headway in achieving their national goals.  [...]

"What is required is popular action, resisting on the ground," he said. "They must take steps in this direction, or they will be left behind by the Palestinian people."  [...]

And both know good governance will not be enough to satisfy a people seeking independence.

Okay Tom, we get it.  They're a PEOPLE!

Perry then goes on to characterize the genocidal raison d'etre of that people as a "struggle", four times:

With elections overdue, questions over their legitimacy are only likely to increase unless they find a way to galvanise the Palestinians' struggle with Israel.  [...]

But in a region of fast change driven by people power, some believe Fatah and Hamas, untested at the ballot box in six years, could be left behind if they do not come up with new ideas for directing the struggle against Israel.  [...]

The groups struck a new tone at a November 24 meeting in Cairo, where both talked about "popular resistance," a term including protests, boycotts and other non-military means of struggle.  [...]

Hamas and Fatah appear to be struggling to plot a path that doesn't depend on the tools they have long employed in the struggle with Israel.  [...]

That is, when he's not defining their genocidal raison d'etre as "resistance":

While Hamas rockets still fly into Israel from Gaza, the group these days appears more interested in calm than conflict. It remains committed to armed "resistance," but has clamped down on other groups seeking to attack Israel to avoid reprisals.  [...]

"The absence of the peace process and the absence of resistance means they (Hamas and Fatah) do not have political legitimacy," said Hany al-Masri, a political commentator involved in efforts to foster reconciliation between the two.  [...]

These actions generated support for both. But the momentum is fading and having played those cards, the sides have turned to reconciliation, a phrase now heard more often from Palestinian leaders than "resistance" and "peace process."

Tom Perry: where would he be without an Arab teleprompter?

Jonathan Wright explains the fundamental difference between the fundamentalists

Former Reuters Cairo Bureau Chief and long-time Arabist, Jonathan Wright, who has been busy whitewashing the Islamists in Egypt for gullible Western audiences since before the fall of Hosni Mubarak in February, parses for us the critical distinction between the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamists of the Nour party:

Nasser Khodeir, a civil engineer and Brotherhood supporter in the town of Tansa, said Brotherhood members were also Salafi in their beliefs but didn't share the importance Salafis attach to physical appearance, such as clothing and the cut of the beard. Salafis favour robes or trouser cut off above the angle and long beards, usually with the moustache short or shaved off.

Well, now that we know they will be using different barbers and tailors, please note that both the Brotherhood and al-Nour seek the imposition of strict sharia law (as outlined in Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law) and, ultimately, a global caliphate.

Both groups are deeply antisemitic, treat women like chattel, advocate death for homosexuals, despise Western democracy, seek the destruction of Israel, and believe in permanent underclass status for religious minorities in countries where they have power.

Wright won't tell you any of this of course; he's far too lost in translation:

"Reporters of course, they work very fast and they don't think too deeply about what they're doing."

Yes, we've noticed that.

For Reuters, history itself begins in 1967

Scan through almost any Reuters story on the Middle East conflict, particularly one that mentions Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"), and you will likely find Reuters correspondents characterizing that settlement as beginning in 1967, when Israel liberated the territory from Jordanian occupation in a defensive war.

The success of Reuters' long-standing propaganda campaign against the Jews and in favor of the Palestinian Arabs depends critically on deceiving readers into believing, not only that Jewish settlement in the territories is illegal, but that Jews only began living in the area following the Six-Day War in 1967.

Of course, both of these notions are utterly false.  As the Mandate for Palestine, resolved by the League of Nations in 1922, and Articles 79 and 80 of the Charter of the United Nations make clear, Jewish settlement in the territories is not only fully legal in international law, it was originally encouraged by the international community:

The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.

International law never gets cited in a Reuters story because to do so would undermine the agency's mendacious and malicious propaganda campaign targeting the Jews, which seeks nothing less than to facilitate ethnic cleansing of the Jewish community from the territories by swaying public opinion in that direction.

Just as Joseph Goebbels and his Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda sought to influence public opinion so as to facilitate ethnic cleansing of the Jews from Europe.

In addition to a careful censorship of relevant citations of international law, Reuters employs what in propaganda studies is known as historical reconstruction, i.e., fabrication, to falsely depict the Jews as interlopers and colonizers of their own land.  To so portray a people that created and constituted a sovereign state in the area over three millennia ago, rich with culture, language, religious worship, and edifices still in evidence today -- a state that was repeatedly invaded, occupied, and colonized by others (including the Palestinian Arabs) over the last 2,500 years -- is no mean feat.

Reuters seeks to blot out indelible historical and legal Jewish ties to the land by systematically referring to 1967 as the year in which Jews began settling in the territories; hence we see this type of ahistorical and hysterical rhetoric from the keyboards of Reuters journalists like Dan Williams:

The first settlers were viewed by many compatriots as a patriotic vanguard on territory captured in the 1967 Middle East war. But some of their offspring, in the thrall of messianic and supremacist rabbis, combined an ecstatic skullcaps-and-sandals piety with the spurning of secular Israeli rule.

As we noted in a previous post, this handling is reminiscient of the scene in Steven Spielberg's Oscar-winning film Schindler's List where the Nazi commandant Göth addresses the Jews at a concentration camp worksite:

"Today is history. The young will ask with wonder about this day. Today is history and you are a part of it... When, elsewhere, they were footing the blame for the Black Death, Kazimierz the Great, so called, told the Jews they could come to Cracow. They came... They trundled their belongings into this city, they settled, they took hold, they prospered... For six centuries, there has been a Jewish Cracow... By this weekend, those six centuries, they're a rumor. They never happened. Today is history."

Substitute Jerusalem for "Cracow" and thirty-five centuries for "six", and you have a sense of the atrocity Reuters correspondents are contemplating and in which they will be complicit if their propaganda campaign is successful.

Dan Williams does black humor

A classic, from Reuters correspondent Dan Williams:

Israel, which is widely reputed to have the region's only atomic arsenal, sees the makings of a mortal threat in the Islamic republic's uranium enrichment and ballistic missile development, though Tehran denies having hostile designs.

What's a nuclear-tipped missile between friends?

CAUTION: Extremely loud noise can be hazardous to your mental health

Reporting on remarks by Israeli President Shimon Peres published in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Reuters correspondent Allyn Fisher-Ilan characterizes NGOs, funded by foreign governments and dedicated to the destruction of Israel, as -- wait for it.... "dovish".

By contrast, the Yisrael Beiteinu party, which has introduced legislation similar to that existing in Germany, France and Belgium to ban public loudspeakers from being used to broadcast pre-dawn religious chants at levels that can reach 120-130 decibels, is labeled by Fisher-Ilan as "far-right".

Proving once again, that electronic amplification at high enough levels does indeed kill brain cells.

Reuters reports on Palestinian flag raising at UNESCO, forgets a little something

In a story on UNESCO raising the Palestinian flag at a Paris ceremony signifying entry of the ersatz state of "Palestine" into the cultural organization, Reuters correspondent John Irish describes the purported rationale for the Palestinian application:

Some 50 diplomatic guests watched as Abbas lifted the flag to the Palestinian national anthem and said he hoped UNESCO's move was the beginning of international recognition for Palestine. The Palestinian national anthem played as a morning of biting wind and rain gave way to a burst of sunshine.
"It is moving to see our flag raised and for it to be flying in this beautiful city of Paris among all the other states. This bodes well for Palestine becoming a member of other international institutions," Abbas said.
"We hope we will have one independent state in the future that will live side by side with Israel," he said.

Oops!  Apparently, Abbas forgot to include the ever-present obligatory modifier, "side by side in peace with Israel".  An oversight, we're sure.

And Irish fails to mention the genuine reason the Palestinians wish to be a part of UNESCO: so they can prevent Jews from praying at holy sites which they (the Palestinians) will likely control.

Irish does however, attempt to characterize and isolate Israel and the United States as the (only) two nations opposed to the Palestinian attempt to gain statehood without negotiating a peace treaty:

The UNESCO vote was a diplomatic victory for Abbas, who in the absence of peace talks with the Jewish state has pushed for recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations, a move opposed by Israel and the United States. [...]

Israel and its main ally the United States insist that only a peace treaty can establish a universally recognized Palestinian state. But the Palestinians say they have been patient through 20 years of futile talks. [...]

Abbas, who still wants a U.N. Security Council vote on a resolution for a Palestinian state even though it is destined to fail because of a U.S. veto, was to meet President Nicolas Sarkozy later Tuesday.

That the Palestinians haven't a hope in hell of winning the requisite nine votes in the UN Security Council due to opposition from other nations, like Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Bosnia and Colombia, fails to warrant a mention by Irish. 

Nor does the fact that the entire European Union has come out against Palestinian unilateralism, appear to be in Irish's notebook.

As an anti-Israel propagandist, it's always most effective to frame the contest as one of: Israel and America versus The World.

Reconstructing the godfather of terrorism

In what is without a doubt, the most mendacious, twisted, selective, ahistorical tripe from a Reuters correspondent ever to leap from the page, Andrew Hammond, whose bio indicates he was formerly in charge of Reuters Saudi operation (surprise!), reconstructs the image of Yasser Arafat for us based on a new documentary.

The public image of Arafat, the godfather of modern terrorism, inspired by his Nazi-collaborating uncle Husseini, an unrepentant Jew-hater, pathological liar, and committed to the destruction of Israel right through his dying days from sexually-transmitted disease, is miraculously rehabilitated by Hammond with his fatuous review of the film by British director Richard Symons, just screened in -- where else?  Dubai.

We have to run to an appointment but let's take a quick look at Hammond's account of the life of Arafat as seen through his eyes and reportedly, that of director Symons:

DUBAI, Dec 12 Reuters) - Associates of Yasser Arafat offer personal recollections in a documentary screened in Dubai this week on his search for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal that descended into violence and failed to lead to a Palestinian state. [...]

Arafat was depicted by his Israeli and U.S. detractors as an obstacle to bringing the peace talks to a resolution and who sought to take advantage of the violence of the Palestinian uprising which followed the breakdown of critical talks in 2000.

There's that passive voice Reuters has mastered in its propaganda on the Middle East; the peace deal "descended into violence" -- no active agent required.  And Arafat is merely "depicted" by his "detractors" as someone who "sought to take advantage" of Palestinian violence.

Apparently, Hammond, who has years of experience working in the Middle East and has purportedly written two books on the Arabs, is unaware of the admission by a Palestinian official that the terror war launched against Israeli civilians in 2000 was masterminded by Arafat and his cronies.

Rather, Hammond wants us to see the cuddly side of Arafat: 

Nasser al-Kidwa, a nephew who is now Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, recounts Arafat's gloom after Rabin's death. Kidwa found a quiet, dejected figure when he visited Arafat in his office several days later.
"Before leaving I said something to the effect of 'why are you so upset? Okay Rabin was an important leader, but Peres is coming and Peres has an even better position than Rabin'," he remembers in one of the film's most poignant sections.
"He didn't answer me, but he gave me that look that obviously meant that I didn't understand anything. And I didn't, he was right, clearly."

And the Reuters correspondent is quite clear who he believes is responsible for there being no peace between Israel and the Palestinians:

Shimon Peres lost the subsequent 1996 election to Likud leader Benyamin Netanyahu, signaling a shift to the right in Israeli politics and a stagnation in the peace process that has lasted to this day.

Right... Israel elects a strong leader to fight a relentless Palestinian terror war which has taken the lives of over 1,000 Israeli men, women, and children; a Palestinian state is conceded; the Palestinians refuse to even negotiate on the contours of this state; but Netanyahu and rightist politics in Israel are to blame for the stagnation of the peace process.

Finally, Hammond introduces a bit of levity into this tragedy:

Shunned by Washington and besieged by Israel in his Ramallah compound, Arafat died as the uprising was winding down. His widow is in tears as she recalls those final days.

Yeah, his widow, who would have liked to abscond with the billions of dollars in Western aid Arafat stole during his reign, is in tears.

Must have missed the Gucci sale in Paris.

Litotes of the day

In a story about Israel replacing its ambassador to Egypt this week, following the near lynching of the last ambassador by an Egyptian mob in September, Reuters correspondents Edmund Blair and Ori Lewis demonstrate their genteel sensibilities:

Many Egyptians view Israel, which signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979 after four wars between the two countries, with hostility. Anti-Israeli sentiment, muted before President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in February, has become more vocal.

Uh-huh:

Reuters Tom Perry weighs in over Gingrich remarks

In a post earlier today, we noted the mendacity with which Reuters correspondent Steve Holland responded to Newt Gingrich's remarks about the Palestinians being one with the Arab community in the Middle East.  Now it's the turn of Reuters kingpin propagandist Tom Perry, who parrots interviews Palestinian official Saeb Erekat:

Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official, described his [Gingrich's] comments in an interview as "despicable." Hanan Ashrawi, another top official, said Gingrich's "very racist comments" showed he was "incapable of holding public office."
"This is the lowest point of thinking anyone can reach," Erekat, a close advisor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, told Reuters. Such comments served only to "increase the cycle of violence," he added.
"What is the cause of violence, war in this region? Denial, denying people their religion, their existence, and now he is denying our existence," said Erekat, for years a leading figure in peace talks aimed at the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

How ironic that a man proven to be a pathological liar, one who has served under two Palestinian regimes that have systematically denied Jewish historical and religious connections to the holy land, ancient culture and relics, and sovereign rights mandated by international law, is now pontificating about the conflict being due to a denial of religious rights and recognition of the Palestinian Arabs.

Along the way, Perry demonstrates why he is Reuters #1 propagandist and a serious liability to the company's (failing) reputation for truth and accuracy in its reporting:

The 1948 war erupted after Arab states rejected a U.N. plan that would have divided British mandate-ruled Palestine into Arab and Jewish states.

The 1948 war did not "erupt"; it was launched as a declared war of annihilation by five Arab states and contingents from two others against a nascent Israel.

Perry again:

While Hamas remains committed to armed "resistance" and will not recognize Israel, the Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah states that only peaceful means can deliver Palestinian statehood and its security forces cooperate with Israel.

Hamas is not committed to "armed resistance"; it is committed to the liquidation of Israel and the genocide of the Jewish people.  And as we demonstrated earlier, the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas is merely tactically and temporarily refraining from violence in its effort to wrestle land away from Israel.

Perry is quite adept at giving voice to Palestinian Arab howls of "racism" and "ethnic cleansing" but apparently incapable of reporting the reality of Palestinian racism and ethnic cleansing aimed at the Jews.

Reuters marks Palestinian nationalism beginning in 1834; Jewish nationalism in 1947

Reuters quotes Newt Gingrich, as interviewed by The Jewish Channel:

"I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it's tragic"

Gingrich's statement is of course, entirely accurate: the Palestinians are indeed part of the community of 350 million Arabs of the Middle East, identical to that population in terms of ethnic origin, religion, language, and culture.  There aren't any genetic or ethnographic distinctions to be drawn between the Arabs of Ramallah and the Arabs of Damascus for example.  And this is readily admitted by the Palestinians themselves.

For Reuters correspondents however, stating the obvious when it comes to their pet Palestinians is a bit like chumming red meat in shark-infested waters and Steve Holland predictably takes the bait:

(Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich thrust himself into controversy on Friday by declaring that the Palestinians are an "invented" people who want to destroy Israel. [...]

Most historians mark the start of Palestinian Arab nationalist sentiment in 1834, when Arab residents of the Palestinian region revolted against Ottoman rule.
Israel, founded amid the 1948 Arab-Israel war, took shape along the lines of a 1947 U.N. plan for ethnic partition of the then-British ruled territory of Palestine which Arabs rejected.

Holland offers no citations to support his claim on the origins of Palestinian nationalism and in fact, misrepresents the nature of the Arab revolt in 1834 which was inspired not by nationalist fervor, but by resistance to conscription in the Ottoman-Egyptian military.

What really makes the 1834 revolt significant in terms of motivating a people to seek sovereignty, is that it marked widespread Palestinian Arab pogroms against the Jewish communities in Jerusalem and the Eastern Galilee.  Temporarily absent the protections afforded by Ottoman rule, Jewish property was looted and Jews were beaten to death in the streets.

Holland ignores this inconvenient history along with the realities of more than three thousand years of Jewish sovereignty in the land, the Balfour declaration in 1917 calling for a modern Jewish state in Palestine, and the Palestine Mandate resolved by the League of Nations in 1922 confirming Balfour.  Rather, the Reuters correspondent leaps to the United Nations partition plan in 1947 and juxtaposes this historically recent event with the historically reconstructed Arab revolt in 1834 to suggest that Palestinian nationalism is actually older than Jewish nationalism.  A very neat trick.

Holland then completes his dubious tale with this whopper:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has long forsworn violence against Israel as a means to secure an independent state, pinning his hopes first on negotiations and more recently on a unilateral bid for statehood via the United Nations.

As we've noted too many times to recount, Abbas has made clear (in Arabic) that his regime's partial suspension of terror against Israeli civilians is merely tactical and temporary and may resume anytime  it once again becomes opportune.

Pure Reuters; pure propaganda

Reuters is infamous for its fauxtography (fabricated, doctored, or staged photos) intended for propaganda purposes.

Yesterday, the Israeli air force killed a Hamas operative and a member of Palestinian President Abbas' al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.  Here are the pertinent details from a Reuters story:

(Reuters) - An Israeli air strike killed two Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip Thursday and Palestinians in the territory fired rockets deep into southern Israel in the latest round of cross-border violence.In Tel Aviv, an Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed an air strike had been carried out. She said the two men killed in the incident had been planning an attack on Israeli civilians and soldiers along Israel's border with Egypt's Sinai peninsula.  [...]
"(They) were affiliated with a terrorist squad that intended to attack Israeli civilians and soldiers via the western border," an army statement said.
Hamas, an Islamist group sworn to Israel's destruction, has ruled the blockaded Gaza Strip since 2007, while President Mahmoud Abbas's Western-backed Palestinian Authority remains dominant in the occupied West Bank.
The army statement said that Essam had been involved in planning a suicide bombing in the southern Israeli resort of Eilat in 2007 in which three Israeli civilians were killed, and a number of other attacks, some of which had been stopped.
Essam was a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Abbas's Fatah movement, group officials said. The Hamas said Sobhi was affiliated with its own armed wing.

Reuters runs a photograph with the story.  Does the news agency show us the wrecked car from the scene?  A file picture of the two Palestinian terrorists?  A photo of damage caused by several of the hundreds of Palestinian rockets fired into Israel this year?  No.  Reuters employs the appeal to pity propaganda technique to suck its audience into sympathy with a mass murderer.

Check it out.

Reuters still lying about Palestinian terror attacks

In a story about a military clash between the Islamic Jihad and Israel in the Gaza Strip, Reuters correspondents Nidal al-Mughrabi and Dan Williams continue to embarrass themselves with this false and utterly ridiculous assertion:

Islamic Jihad at times is allied with Gaza's Hamas rulers but the group has chafed at recent efforts by the more powerful faction to impose de facto truces across the coastal territory.

There have been over 700 rockets and mortars fired into Israeli civilian communities by Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups in Gaza in 2011.  Hamas openly claims responsibility for many of these attacks.

Reuters, de facto liars.

Reuters: Israel unpredictable belligerent

In yet another in its epic series of anti-Israel polemics, Reuters correspondents Mark Hosenball and Phil Stewart work the ropes in an attempt to portray Israel as an unpredictable belligerent, poised to stir up trouble for the United States, the region, and world economies by unilaterally attacking Iran without seeking permission from the Obama administration:

Bruce Riedel, a former senior CIA expert on the Middle East who has advised Obama, said, "Israel has a long history of conducting military operations from Baghdad to Tunis without giving Washington advance notice."
Riedel said the White House wants to send Israel a strong message that the United States does not expect to be blindsided by its ally. "Obama wants Bibi to understand unequivocally he does not want a repeat performance in Iran," he said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by his nickname.
The Obama administration suspects that Israeli leaders have marked out for themselves certain "red lines" related to Iranian nuclear progress which could trigger Israeli military action if they are crossed, one U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
But Obama administration policymakers are plagued by a "sense of opacity" in their understanding of where the Israeli red lines are drawn, the official added.
Two other U.S. officials, also speaking on condition they not be named, said Washington is deeply concerned Israel, unconvinced sanctions and diplomatic pressure will halt Iran's nuclear program, could eventually decide to take action on its own.

While painting Israel as a kind of loose cannon, Hosenball and Stewart manage to evade mentioning even once, across almost 900 words of blather, Iran's many threats to see Israel annihilated or the United Nations IAEA report which has concluded that Iran is on the threshold of obtaining the means to deliver on those threats.

It's as if the two Reuters correspondents had just woken up one morning to find a furtive and petulant Israel capriciously contemplating war.

To gather a sense of the debilitating effects of this type of propaganda campaign orchestrated by the world's largest news agency, have a look at the reader comments below the story.

Reuters, systematically dumbing down the planet.

The Muslim Brotherhood unmasked

Contrary to the "free of bias" pleadings found in its mission statement and handbook of journalistic standards, Reuters is an ideologically-driven organization.  The agency's correspondents and editors harbor deeply-held political views and objectives that manifest daily in their stories, published on the Reuters website and syndicated to hundreds of other news outlets worldwide.

As it has done for decades on behalf of the Palestinian Arabs, Reuters is now engaged in a public relations campaign, designed to promote the image and interests of the Islamists in Egypt while masking the true and, by any civilized standard, deplorable nature of these groups.

In recent days, we've highlighted a sample of Reuters stories that employ propaganda in the form of card stacking, euphemisms, and red herrings intended to conceal and sanitize the intrinsic barbarism and expansionist goals of the Salafists and Muslim Brotherhood.  Thanks to a translation by Palestinian Media Watch of the book, Jihad Is the Way, written by Mustafa Mashhur, the official leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt between 1996-2002 (a period during which Reuters never fails to remind us the Brotherhood had renounced violence), we can glimpse the true face of these movements:

"...the Islamic Ummah [nation]... can regain its power and be liberated and assume its rightful position which was intended by Allah, as the most exalted nation among men, as the teachers of humanity..."
- "...know your status, and believe firmly that you are the masters of the world, even if your enemies desire your degradation..."
- "It should be known that Jihad and preparation towards Jihad are not only for the purpose of fending-off assaults and attacks of Allah's enemies from Muslims, but are also for the purpose of realizing the great task of establishing an Islamic state and strengthening the religion and spreading it around the world..."
- "...Jihad for Allah is not limited to the specific region of the Islamic countries, since the Muslim homeland is one and is not divided, and the banner of Jihad has already been raised in some of its parts, and it shall continue to be raised, with the help of Allah, until every inch of the land of Islam will be liberated, the State of Islam will be established,..."

"Then comes the power of arms and weapons,... and this is the role of Jihad."
- "Jihad is a religious public duty... incumbent upon the Islamic nation, and is a personal duty to fend off the infidels' attack on the nation..."
- "And the youth should know that the problems of the Islamic world, such as Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea, or the Philippines, are not issues of territories and nations, but of faith and religion. They are problems of Islam and the Muslims, and they can be resolved neither by negotiation nor by recognizing the enemy's right to the Islamic land he stole. Rather, the only option is Jihad for Allah, and this is why Jihad is the way."
- "The symbol of the [Muslim] Brotherhood is the book of Allah [the Quran] between two swords. The swords symbolize Jihad and the force that protects the truth represented in Allah's book."
- "...that is, go out to battle, oh believers, young and old, by foot or with animal, under all circumstances and conditions..."

Read it all.  Reuters obviously hasn't.

Reuters broken record -- broken record -- broken record

Reuters frequently fails to reset the propaganda switch, even when the news passes it by.  Take for example, this story by correspondent Jeremy Laurence about a news conference yesterday where a senior official with the US State Department noted that a failure of diplomatic sanctions against Iran will inevitably bring pressure for "a different kind of solution".  Laurence writes:

The United States and Israel have not ruled out military action against Iran's nuclear facilities if diplomacy fails to resolve a dispute over a programme they suspect is aimed at developing atomic weapons.

Iran denies it is seeking nuclear weapons and says it would respond to any strike by attacking Israel and U.S. interests in the Gulf.

Not a word about the most recent report from the United Nations IAEA, the independent atomic energy watchdog, that concluded Iran has carried out numerous activities relevant to the development of a nuclear bomb.

After all, that would confirm the "suspicions" of the United States and Israel and elevate the "dispute" to the status of something much more -- much more -- much more.

Facts just twist the truth around

Reuters runs one of its fatuous "factbox" series to educate us on the policies of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, and correspondent Shaimaa Fayed parrots the following absurd non sequitur with absolutely no criticism and no hint of irony:

FJP [Freedom and Justice Party] and Brotherhood officials say they want to build a modern, democratic state based on Islamic sharia law.

A "modern, democratic state" built on a political and legal system 1,400 years-old where religious minorities are subject to systematic discrimination and women are treated as chattel.

But it gets worse:

The Muslim Brotherhood is a vociferous critic of Israel. Although it long ago renounced violence as a means to bring change in Egypt, it says those facing occupation have the right to "resist by all means." The Palestinian militant group Hamas sees the Brotherhood as a spiritual leader.

As a reminder, here's what that "vociferous critic" recently had to say about the Jewish citizens of Israel:

A Muslim Brotherhood rally in Cairo's most prominent mosque Friday turned into a venomous anti-Israel protest, with attendants vowing to "one day kill all Jews".

For Reuters correspondents, facts apparently just won't do what they want them to.

Islamists are "softly-spoken", "pragmatic", "conservative". So says Reuters

The extent to which the Reuters Middle East crew will go to provide public relations for, and polish the image of, the most retrograde political movement this century, is truly astonishing.  Bordering on unintended satire, Reuters correspondent Tom Perry writes about the Salafi movement, which has just won 20-30 percent of the vote in the first round of Egyptian elections:

The indications so far are heartening for Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, a Salafi planning to run for the presidency in a June election. He sees the results as "a map" of how young Egyptians going to the polls for the first time had voted.
"There's no doubt this is pleasing," said the softly-spoken lawyer-and-politician with a long, grey beard, wearing a suit and tie in an interview on Egyptian television on Thursday. 

Voters had realised the Islamists' discourse was "logical and reasonable", he said, at the same time outlining a conservative view typical of the Salafis.

He said men and women should be segregated at work and displays of public affection must stop. There must also be a halt of the sale and production of alcohol.
As in Saudi Arabia, Salafis would want to bar women and Christians from executive posts. They might also ban "un-Islamic" art and literature, as well as mixed beach bathing.  [...]

"I believe they can bring change," said Mohammed Hussein, 30, who works in commerce, explaining why he voted for the Nour Party in the city of Alexandria, where Salafi banners urge women to wear the Islamic veil. "It is a party that loves religion."
Hussein's enthusiasm for the group is the result of years of listening to Salafi clerics in the mosque. Across the Middle East, the mosque has provided Islamists with a platform for politics denied to secular parties now trying to regroup.

Political platforms like this:

Reuters whitewash of the Muslim Brotherhood continues

It's only 267 miles as the crow flies between Ramallah and Cairo, and Reuters correspondent Tom Perry, whose beat has shifted from the former to the latter, proves that's just a stone's throw away when it comes to transmitting Arab propaganda.

And with the Muslim Brotherhood on the verge of power in Egypt, Perry is busy cleaning up the image of the group for western consumption:

Headed by doctors, engineers and teachers, the Brotherhood's slogan is "Islam is the solution." Yet it talks the same language as other reformists when it comes to the need for democracy, an independent judiciary and social justice in Egypt.

Actually, the Brotherhood's slogan is, “Allah is our objective, the Prophet is our leader, the Koran is our law, Jihad is our way, and dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. Allahu-akbar!”.

That chilling manifesto has been carefully concealed in the run-up to elections in Egypt but remains the Islamist group's raison d'etre.

And note how Perry attempts to bring respectability to the Brotherhood by asserting it is headed by "doctors, engineers and teachers".  This is of course, irrelevant to the group's extremist agenda nor can one forget that the Nazi Party in Germany was also led by many in upstanding professions.

Perry then parrots the Brotherhood's feigned rejection of violence:

Though the Brotherhood disavowed violence in Egypt in the 1970s, state suspicions lingered over its goals. 

Perhaps the reason "state suspicions lingered over its goals" is because the Brotherhood was implicated in the assassination of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981 and the terrorist attack in 1997 which killed 62 tourists in Luxor.

To soothe western fears over what the Brotherhood has in mind for Egypt, Perry interviews one of its members:

Ali Khafagi, a 28-year-old Brotherhood activist, says fears about the group are overblown. A member since high school, he describes the Brotherhood as "very moderate and open minded."
"The Brotherhood's goal is to end corruption and start reform and economic development and that is what attracted many of its supporters to join it including myself," he said.
Khafagi dismissed talk about the Brotherhood banning alcohol or forcing women to wear headscarves if it came to power.
"That could only be done by a mad group and the Brotherhood is not a mad group, but a decent logical group with a good understanding of the Egyptian people and Islam," he added.

A good understanding of Islam.  Indeed.

Reuters still downplaying IAEA report on Iran's nuclear weapons program

In our post on November 8, 2011 following the release of the latest United Nations IAEA report on Iran's nuclear weapons program, we noted Reuters long-standing efforts to downplay overwhelming evidence of that program and asked whether the news agency would continue in that vein, notwithstanding the IAEAs damning findings.  Robin Pomeroy, Reuters man in Iran, provides the answer to our question:

Britain last week banned all its financial institutions from any dealings with Iran, including its central bank, after a report by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency suggested Iran may have worked on developing a nuclear arsenal.

The IAEA report "suggested" Iran "may have" worked on developing a nuclear arsenal??

Er, no.  Here's a key section of the report:

The information indicates that Iran has carried out the following activities that are relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device:
• Efforts, some successful, to procure nuclear related and dual use equipment and materials by military related individuals and entities (Annex, Sections C.1 and C.2);
• Efforts to develop undeclared pathways for the production of nuclear material (Annex, Section C.3);
• The acquisition of nuclear weapons development information and documentation from a clandestine nuclear supply network (Annex, Section C.4); and
• Work on the development of an indigenous design of a nuclear weapon including the testing of components (Annex, Sections C.5–C.12).

Nice try though, Robin.

Former UNIFIL official refers to Israeli communities targeted by Lebanese rockets as "settlements"

Reuters interviewed Timur Goksel, a former UNIFIL official and "security analyst", about the rockets fired into Israel today from Lebanon.  Here's what Goksel had to say:

This looks more serious. The type of rocket and apparent targeting of settlements suggests they were not noisemakers, they actually hit something and didn't mind causing casualties. This one could have caused huge mayhem.

The area hit by the rockets is in the western Galilee of Israel.

But then, the Arabs and their acolytes consider all of Israel to be a "settlement".

The "Freedom & Justice" Party unmasked

Elder of Ziyon calls our attention to the written election platform of the Muslim Brotherhood -- er, the "Freedom and Justice" party in Egypt which includes:

Affirming the right of the Palestinian people to liberate their land, and highlighting the duty of governments and peoples of Arab and Muslim countries, especially Egypt, to aid and support the Palestinian people and the Palestinian resistance against the Zionist usurpers of their homeland.

There's that dang euphemism for bus bombings again.

Reuters on the other hand, continues to assert that the Brotherhood has renounced violence.

Did a Reuters journalist sign petition calling on Israeli soldiers not to serve in the territories and to "evacuate" Jewish settlements?

A few days ago, a visitor left a comment drawing our attention to an Israeli online petition calling on IDF soldiers not to serve in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") and for Israel to "evacuate" (a euphemism for ethnic cleansing) Jews living there.  The name appearing as signature number 40016 on the petition is "Maayan Lubell".  Coincidentally, Maayan Lubell is also the name of one of Reuters Jerusalem Bureau correspondents.   

That Lubell has amply demonstrated her anti-Israel bona fides in story after story she has written for Reuters; focusing exclusively on a handful of incidents of alleged Jewish vandalism while entirely ignoring hundreds of Palestinian Arab terror attacks against Jews; attempting to conceal the fact that it was only in defense of his own life that a Jewish settler had shot two Palestinians; and lying about the nature of the Turkish flotilla last year where Israeli marines were nearly lynched.

In its Handbook of Journalism, Reuters asserts that it asks all staff to "park" their politics at the door.  Many Reuters correspondents however, much prefer to parade their politics.  The question is, given Reuters much ballyhooed commitment to freedom from bias, why do agency managers put up with it?

Reuters turkey stuffed with fatuous assertions

In an op-ed dressed as "analysis" so Reuters can sell the turkey to other media outlets, correspondent Peter Graff stuffs the bird with one of Reuters most ludicrous assertions yet:

(Reuters) - Iran's nuclear standoff with the West has led to much harsher words and new economic sanctions, but Tehran has yet to cross the red lines that would prompt Israel or the United States to contemplate military action.

Does Graff actually want readers to believe that Israel and the United States are not preparing for military action against Iran?  Does Graff think Israel will wait until Iran has tested a nuclear device before attacking Iran's nuclear facilities?  Does he seriously believe the odds for such an attack haven't jumped with the release of the latest UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran's nuclear program?  

We wonder if Graff has even read the IAEA report.  Here are a few of its choice findings:

Since 2002, the Agency has become increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile, about which the Agency has regularly received new information. [...]

The Agency [IAEA] is still awaiting a substantive response from Iran to Agency requests for further information in relation to announcements made by Iran concerning the construction of ten new uranium enrichment facilities, the sites for five of which, according to Iran, have been decided, and the construction of one of which was to have begun by the end of the last Iranian year (20 March 2011) or the start of this Iranian year.  [...]

Contrary to the relevant resolutions of the Board of Governors and the Security Council, Iran has not suspended work on all heavy water related projects...

Since its visit to the Heavy Water Production Plant (HWPP) on 17 August 2011, the Agency, in a letter to Iran dated 20 October 2011, requested further access to HWPP. The Agency has yet to receive a reply to that letter, and is again relying on satellite imagery to monitor the status of HWPP.  Based on recent images, the HWPP appears to be in operation. [...]

In resolution 1929 (2010), the Security Council reaffirmed Iran’s obligations to take the steps required by the Board of Governors in its resolutions GOV/2006/14 and GOV/2009/82, and to cooperate fully with the Agency on all outstanding issues, particularly those which give rise to concerns about the possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme, including by providing access without delay to all sites, equipment, persons and documents requested by the Agency. Since August 2008, Iran has not engaged with the Agency in any substantive way on this matter. [...]

The information indicates that Iran has carried out the following activities that are relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device:
• Efforts, some successful, to procure nuclear related and dual use equipment and materials by military related individuals and entities (Annex, Sections C.1 and C.2);
• Efforts to develop undeclared pathways for the production of nuclear material (Annex, Section C.3);
• The acquisition of nuclear weapons development information and documentation from a clandestine nuclear supply network (Annex, Section C.4); and
• Work on the development of an indigenous design of a nuclear weapon including the testing of components (Annex, Sections C.5–C.12).

So while Graff acknowledges that:

Some media coverage has suggested a new Middle East war could be coming, if the leadership of Israel decides that it cannot tolerate a nuclear bomb in the hands of a state committed to its destruction.

the Reuters correspondent nevertheless digs up a British "defense analyst" to patronize Israel:

"Up until now, President Bush and President Obama have said don't do it [take military action against Iran]. That's been documented," he said. "This is the multi-billion dollar question: are the Israelis misguided and impulsive enough not to ask the Americans for permission?

Are the Israelis "misguided" and "impulsive" enough to defend themselves in the face of a catastrophic risk to their existence if Obama fails to give them "permission"?

Gobble gobble.