The disappearing line between fantasy and reality

Reuters correspondent and propagandist Douglas Hamilton lives in a fantasy world.

In this world, a reporter can write absolutely anything, no matter how mendacious or utterly absurd, and the public will buy it, unreservedly.  Moreover, there will never be any consequences for the reporter arising from his or her assiduous use of propaganda because the reporter's employer assumes the roles of accomplice and alibi in the string of lies and distortions perpetrated by the reporter.

Regrettably, we erred in our first sentence.

Reuters correspondent and propagandist Douglas Hamilton lives in the real world.

But there are major obstacles to overcome, chiefly that Hamas is still formally pledged to the destruction of Israel whereas the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Fatah and the Palestinian Authority - all headed by Abbas - recognise the Jewish state and have interim "roadmap" accords with it.

None of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Fatah or the Palestinian Authority recognize the Jewish state.  Indeed, notwithstanding the fact that these groups demand a Palestinian Muslim state, ethnically cleansed of Jews, they adamantly refuse to ever accept a Jewish sovereign in their midst.

This is the lie of the "two-state solution".  This is the lie of peace and reconciliation with a deeply racist and totalitarian Arab regime.

And this is the lie that Reuters is an independent news agency with its reporters committed to holding accuracy sacrosanct, guarding against putting their opinion in a news story, and striving for balance and freedom from bias.

A fantasy world that has become all-too real.

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.

Tom Perry lifts his pen; count the lies

It's another day and another deceit for Reuters propagandist Tom Perry who offers us his unique brand of "analysis" on the current state of Middle East peacemaking as orchestrated by the Quartet (Russia, the EU, the UN, and the US).  So, let's see where Perry seeks to mislead his audience this time:

The immediate obstacle [in the way of negotiations] is the standoff over Israel's expansion of Jewish settlements on the land where the Palestinians aim to found an independent state. World powers view the settlement as illegal under international law.

Er, no.  The immediate obstacle is the utter refusal of the Palestinians to engage in good faith peace talks without dictating the outcome of those talks by obtaining in advance of them, extraordinary unilateral concessions from Israel in the form of, 1) a termination of Jewish settlements on land promised to the Jews in resolutions adopted by the League of Nations and United Nations, and 2) a commitment by Israel to accept a Judenrein Palestinian Arab state on all land, including Jerusalem, liberated by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

And "world powers", like the United States, emphatically do not view Jewish settlements on this land as illegal in international law.  Indeed, as noted above, Jewish settlements in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") are entirely legal in international law.

In Israel, there has been a swing to the political right, a shift helped by the last Palestinian uprising. Add to that the fact that half a million Israelis have now settled in the would-be Palestine, and hopes for a deal seem far fetched.

Ah yes, that euphemistic and nebulous Palestinian "uprising", aka the Palestinian terror war, that killed over 1,000 Israelis in suicide bombings and shootings.  A bit more journalistic transparency in this respect might enable readers to better apprehend the reasons behind that "swing to the political right" in Israel.

Perry's reference to "would-be Palestine" includes the city of Jerusalem, a city built by the Jews over three-thousand years ago and only ever sovereign to the Jewish nation.  Jerusalem, a city where Jews maintained a community despite successive waves of invasion, conquest and occupation until 1967 when it was finally liberated from Arab colonization that had sought to obliterate any Jewish connection to the land and its holy sites.

The deal [to exchange Israeli Gilad Shalit for over 1,000 Hamas terrorists] disheartened Palestinian leaders in the West Bank who, unlike Hamas, oppose armed conflict with Israel and believe peace talks are the way to end the conflict.

This is a double bald-faced lie from Perry.  First, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas celebrated the release of the Hamas prisoners by paying them stipends.  Secondly, as we've noted dozens of times, Abbas, his Fatah party, and the PLO remain committed in word and deed to the destruction of Israel via armed violence.

A [Jewish] settlement freeze was a requirement of a 2003 peace plan, drawn up by the Quartet and known as the road map for peace.
"If the Quartet is going to play any credible role, it must really be able to enforce the terms of reference, and the compliance with these terms of reference, particularly those that have led to an agreed text, like the road map," said Nabil Shaath, a veteran Palestinian official.

No mention by either Shaath or Perry of Palestinian obligations under the Road Map, like disarming and dismantling all terrorist infrastructure, something the Palestinians have completely failed to do.

Alastair Macdonald, historical revisionist (part II)

Continuing with our analysis of Alastair Macdonald's propagandistic "timeline" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and efforts to achieve peace:

1988 - After a year of Intifada (uprising), exiled PLO leader Yasser Arafat, acknowledged as speaking for Palestinians, renounces terrorism and accepts Israel's right to exist. He also that year unilaterally declared Palestinian independence. Since then, more than a hundred countries have recognised Palestine despite the fact it has no defined borders.

In an attempt to sanitize the PLO-orchestrated attempt to kill Jews and produce anarchy in Israel, Macdonald parrots the Arab-ethnocentric and euphemistic term "uprising", actually a mistranslation of the Arabic word intifasza, or "revolt", to describe this period of street violence and terror attacks.  The former Reuters Bureau Chief also fails to indicate anywhere in his piece that while Arafat nominally repudiated terrorism in 1988 in an effort to persuade the US to include him in negotiations, he was the architect, along with Hamas, of nearly all Palestinian terror campaigns waged against Israel in subsequent years.

2003 - "Road map" for peace -- drafted by the Middle East Quartet, comprising the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia -- binds both sides to curbing violence and Israel to halting Jewish settlement on occupied land.

The Road Map doesn't simply bind both sides to "curbing violence"; it obligates the Palestinians to disarm and dismantle all terrorist infrastructure, something they have utterly failed to do.

2005 - After Arafat's death in 2004, Mahmoud Abbas elected Palestinian president. Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pulls settlers and troops out of the Gaza Strip.
2006 - Hamas wins Palestinian parliamentary election, forms government that is boycotted by Israel and Western powers.
2007 - Citing fears of U.S.-backed plan to oust Hamas from government, Islamists seize control in Gaza from Abbas's forces. Months later, Bush brings Abbas and Sharon's successor Ehud Olmert together at Annapolis to launch new bid for peace deal.
December 2008 - After a year of desultory talks, Abbas quits negotiations when Olmert launches offensive on Hamas-run Gaza.

No mention whatsoever, of the more than 10,000 rockets and mortars launched by Hamas into Israeli civilian communities during this period which led to Israel's "offensive" in the Gaza Strip in 2008.

And Abbas did not quit negotiations following "desultory" talks or because of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza; he refused yet another settlement offer from the Israeli government resulting from those talks, an event which occurred months prior to the war.

TO BE CONTINUED

UN doesn't recognize Palestinian state -- but Reuters does

Hezbollah handmaiden and Reuters correspondent Alistair Lyon makes clear that whereas the United Nations views the territories of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"), including the city of Jerusalem, as, literally, no man's land, he and his behemoth media company consider it Palestinian land:

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asks the United Nations on Friday to recognise a state for his people, even though Israel still occupies its territory and the United States has vowed to veto the move.

And it doesn't get any better.  Lyon's propaganda piece follows the Palestinian Arab narrative to the letter, censors essential historical detail, and is shamelessly loaded with fabrications, half-truths, and distortions.  Let's take a look:

His [Palestinian President Abbas] appeal to the council reflects a loss of faith after 20 years of failed peace talks sponsored by the United States, Israel's main ally, and alarm at relentless Israeli settlement expansion that is eating into the land Palestinians want for a state.

It's always a work of art when Reuters correspondents speak for the Palestinians.  The failed peace talks Lyon refers to began life as the Declaration of Principles, or Oslo Accords, in the early 1990s and the United States had no hand in them.  It was actually the Fafo Institute in Norway, with its Director Terje Rød-Larsen, that brought Israeli officials and the Palestine Liberation Organization together in an effort to resolve the conflict.  Those Accords, which the Palestinians have violated repeatedly and are now formally annulling with their application for statehood at the UN, fully permitted, consistent with international law, Jewish settlements in the disputed territories.

Lyon continues:

So Abbas, a moderate politician opposed to violence, sees no alternative but recourse to the United Nations, although Israeli and U.S. politicians have threatened financial reprisals that could cripple his Palestinian Authority.

As we noted in our post yesterday, whereas Reuters continues to peddle the canard that Abbas is opposed to violence, the facts say otherwise.  Abbas makes clear in his interviews and speeches, particularly in Arabic, that the Palestinian suspension of violence is tactical and temporary and that terrorism may be reprised any time it once again becomes opportune.

The United Nations partitioned Palestine in 1947, but Arab states rejected that and declared war on the new state of Israel, which then captured more territory than it had been allotted under the U.N. plan and dispossessed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, who became refugees.

With his selective and heavily biased historical excerpt, Lyon wants readers to believe that it was Israel which "dispossessed" the Palestinian Arabs when in reality, it was the leaders of those Arab states that declared war on Israel and also encouraged the local Arab population to clear the way for their armies.  Proof of this lies in the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who remained in their homes in 1948 and who are today, along with their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, full citizens of the state of Israel.

Two decades after Israel seized the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East war, the Palestine Liberation Organisation effectively reduced its demands to a state on those territories.

This is a complete fabrication.  The PLO has never formally rescinded its charter to obliterate Israel and replace the Jewish state, in its entirety, with a Palestinian Arab state.  Indeed, Article 9 of that document makes clear precisely what that "moderate politician opposed to violence", Mahmoud Abbas, is really up to:   

Article 9: Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. Thus it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase. The Palestinian Arab people assert their absolute determination and firm resolution to continue their armed struggle and to work for an armed popular revolution for the liberation of their country and their return to it. They also assert their right to normal life in Palestine and to exercise their right to self-determination and sovereignty over it.

Reuters recycles Palestinian propaganda on Bethlehem

Recycling a message issued three weeks ago by correspondent Erika Solomon, Reuters runs a story today castigating Israel for the security barrier in the city of Bethlehem.  In her previous story, Solomon interviews a "tourist" (actually a professional fund-raiser and political activist for the Palestinians) who denigrates the barrier as "an indicator of how many steps back we've taken [in the peace process]".

In the rehashed material today, Mustafa Abu Ganeyeh -- with help from Solomon and Douglas Hamilton -- writes:

In a message to remind the world of the barrier's existence, the Palestine Liberation Organisation said the wall symbolizes a "Christmas without hope" for the ancient city, where normal life is fragmented and stifled by Israel's security measures.

This is rich.  Reuters quotes the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) lamenting for a Christmas holiday and blaming Israel for "fragmenting" and "stifling" normal life.  Might this be the same PLO formerly led by that infamous Christmas elf Yasser Arafat, responsible for ordering hundreds of terrorist attacks in Israel and abroad killing and maiming thousands of people?

Or perhaps Reuters is referring to the PLO which, in its other guise as the Palestinian Authority, governs much of Judea and Samaria ("West Bank") and has been allowing the systematic persecution of Christians in Bethlehem and the disputed territories since taking control in 1994.

Reuters quotes Samir Hazboun, head of Bethlehem's Chamber of Commerce and Industry:

How can we promote Bethlehem as a holy tourism site while it is surrounded by an ugly concrete wall?

We have some free Christmas decorative advice for Hazboun: hang mistletoe.

UPDATE Christmas Eve: In a poignant editorial appearing in today's Wall Street Journal, Daniel Schwammenthal offers us further insight into the suffering of Christians at the hands of Muslims in Gaza and yes, Bethlehem:

But even here in Jesus' birthplace, which is under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Christians live on a knife's edge. Mr. Khoury tells me that Muslims often stand in front of the gate of the Bible College and read from the Quran to intimidate Christian students. Other Muslims like to roll out their prayer rugs right in Manger Square... Christians have only recently begun to talk about how Muslim gangs simply come and take possession of Christian-owned land while the Palestinian security services, almost exclusively staffed by Muslims, stand by. Mr. Qumsieh's own home was firebombed three years ago. The perpetrators were never caught.

Ah yes, it's those Israeli security measures which are"stifling" normal life in the Holy Land.

Tom Perry chooses his words carefully

In previous posts here and here, we noted how Reuters correspondent Tom Perry misrepresents the facts on the Middle East conflict and sanitizes Palestinian Arab efforts to murder Israelis.

In a story today with the headline, "Abbas gives terms for resuming stalled peace talks", Perry writes:

Unlike Abbas and the PLO, who are ready to negotiate a treaty with Israel, Hamas remains committed to armed struggle against the Jewish state (italics, ours).

Quite apart from the unsupported and dubious assertion that Abbas and the PLO are keen to negotiate a peace settlement with Israel, note how Perry adopts the euphemistic language of the early Marxist revolutionaries, subsequent "liberation" movements like the ANC in South Africa and IRA in Northern Ireland to characterize the nature and aims of Hamas.  In fact, from its Charter, here is what Hamas is committed to:

This is the Charter of the Islamic Resistance (Hamas) which will reveal its face, unveil its identity, state its position, clarify its purpose, discuss its hopes, call for support to its cause and reinforcement, and for joining its ranks. For our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave, so much so that it will need all the loyal efforts we can wield, to be followed by further steps and reinforced by successive battalions from the multifarious Arab and Islamic world, until the enemies are defeated and Allah’s victory prevails. Thus we shall perceive them approaching in the horizon, and this will be known before long: “Allah has decreed: Lo! I very shall conquer, I and my messenger, lo! Allah is strong, almighty.”

And their rationale:

Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims.

And to be clear on Hamas' somewhat more extensive objectives than suggested by Perry's guileful use of the term "armed struggle", a reminder: 

But even if the links have become distant from each other, and even if the obstacles erected by those who revolve in the Zionist orbit, aiming at obstructing the road before the Jihad fighters, have rendered the pursuance of Jihad impossible; nevertheless, the Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!

Oh yes, "armed struggle".

Peace talks impasse: Reuters absolves Palestinians

When someone has the power to do something but chooses not to and then abdicates responsibility for his decision, we may hear him say he "cannot" when the truth is, he will not.

"I cannot get up in the morning."
"I cannot stop overeating."
"I cannot stop beating my wife."

You get the idea.

In our previous post, Reuters blames Israel for talks impasse, we noted that while Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly offered to resume peace talks with the Palestinians, PA president Mahmoud Abbas has refused, adopting as an excuse, Israel's decision to resist a complete moratorium on settlement-building. Reuters of course, sides with Abbas.

In an article today, Jeffrey Heller of Reuters continues as apologist for the Palestinians:

"The settlement issue is a major obstacle in the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process... Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said peace talks suspended since December and which Washington seeks to restart, cannot resume without a [settlement] freeze."

There's that slippery "cannot" again.

Now imagine if Netanyahu refused to engage in negotiations and similarly abdicated responsibility for his rejectionism. "Peace talks cannot resume without...

... Arab governments agreeing to cease their funding of illegal construction in Jerusalem.

... Arab governments agreeing to end their boycott of Israel.

... Arab governments agreeing to full diplomatic relations with Israel.

... The Palestinian Authority dismantling all terrorist infrastructure.

... The Palestinian Authority ending all incitement against Israel.

... The PLO and Fatah renouncing their Charters to liquidate Israel."

Would Reuters uncritically adopt and promote Israel's rationale for refusing negotiations? Somehow, we think not.