Reuters: PR agency for serial killers?

Imagine for a moment, a media company in the late 19th century hired to handle public relations for Jack the Ripper.  What could the agency say to smooth over the heinous, irredeemably violent nature of the serial killer?

"His surgical style suggests he is a capable doctor and well-educated".  "He recognizes that times are changing and he must change with them".  "He has not tried to murder anyone in nearly three weeks".  "He has offered to consult with other serial killers on decisions of who is next to be butchered".  "He has agreed to limit his activities to East London".  "He is moving his office to Dubai". 

So it goes with that peddler of malodorous balms, Reuters Jerusalem Bureau Chief Crispian Balmer (curly-haired perfume peddler), in a risible piece intended to makeover the public image of the terrorist group Hamas:

(Reuters) - The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has felt the political winds shift across the Middle East and is bending with them, making peace with its secular rival Fatah and trying to cool its conflict with Israel.
Israel has ridiculed the idea that the Hamas leopard can ever change its spots, but analysts poring over a recent slew of interviews from the movement's senior leaders believe change is under way, wrought by upheaval across the Arab world.
Despite the fact it looks secure in its coastal stronghold, the Gaza Strip, Hamas last month reached out to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who governs in the West Bank, and agreed to a surprise unity deal to end years of fierce feuding.
By doing so, Hamas effectively renewed its commitment to a ceasefire with Israel. No mortars or missiles have been fired out of Gaza since the accord was announced on April 27 -- a rare period of calm on one of the region's most dangerous borders.
Hamas has also conspicuously failed to provide wholehearted support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who faces the worst civil unrest of his 11-year rule, despite the fact that he has harbored the Islamist group leadership for a decade.
The chilly relations have raised speculation that Hamas might move its main regional office out of Damascus, which would take the group further out of Shi'ite Iran's orbit. It would strengthen ties with administrations that have good relations with the West, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt.
Growing signs that the Islamist group is considering moving out first originated in the Saudi-owned pan-Arab al-Hayat daily, which cited unnamed Palestinian sources for its report.
"I think Hamas is serious this time. It is taking a chance and wants to be given a chance," said political analyst Hani Habib, who lives in Hamas-controlled Gaza [...]  "Concerning bin Laden, everyone knows Hamas has differences with al Qaeda ... especially (its) operations targeting civilians," Hamas leader in exile Khaled Meshaal told France 24 TV.
Meshaal has given more interviews in the past several weeks than he has done in the past several years, apparently eager to show the world exactly where Hamas stands on Middle East peace.
Although he stopped short of recognizing Israel, he repeatedly stated that he wanted to establish a Palestinian state along pre-war, 1967 borders, implicitly suggesting that Hamas was ready to accommodate the reality of Israel.
He also said that he would henceforth consult with more moderate Palestinian factions over how to confront Israel, suggesting that he would no longer attack without consensus.
Another Hamas official, Sami Abou Zuhri, told Le Monde daily that observers should not focus on Hamas's uncompromising 1988 charter, but rather judge the group on the words of its leaders. 

Let's cite again, one of Balmer's assertions above to illustrate the chicanery with which Reuters goes about its public relations duties:

Although he [Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal] stopped short of recognizing Israel, he repeatedly stated that he wanted to establish a Palestinian state along pre-war, 1967 borders, implicitly suggesting that Hamas was ready to accommodate the reality of Israel.

Meshaal has not said anything in his interviews with Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, nor any other media organization which even remotely suggests that "Hamas was ready to accommodate the reality of Israel".  This is a complete figment of Balmer's imagination, or fabrication, that the Reuters Bureau Chief wishes his readership to mindlessly swallow.

Here's what Meshaal actually said (as reported by Reuters on May 8th, 2011):

Meshaal said the international community must pressure Israel to recognize the Palestinians, not the other way around.
"Israel needs pressure. It is an occupier that would not get out by conviction or through dialogue," Meshaal said, adding that Egypt was only able to enter into peace talks with the Jewish state after the 1973 Middle East war.
"What is needed today ... is to have resistance in all forms, armed and public ones," he said adding that he intends to try to persuade Fatah to adopt his approach to force Israel to end its occupation. "Any occupier in the world never retreats voluntarily ... It only retreats under pressure and force."

And at the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation shindig on May 4th, 2011:

"Our aim is to establish a free and completely sovereign Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, whose capital is Jerusalem, without any settlers [Jews] and without giving up a single inch of land and without giving up on the right of return (of Palestinian refugees)," Meshaal told a ceremony in Egypt to endorse a reconciliation deal between Hamas and Fatah movement.

The "right of return" would of course, involve the settlement of nearly 5 million Palestinian Arabs in Israel and the demographic destruction of the state.  Note also Meshaal's reference to "Jerusalem" -- not East Jerusalem, nor Arab East Jerusalem, nor any other rhetorical fiction Reuters correspondents consistently employ to conceal the fact that the Palestinians demand Israel surrender the city of Jerusalem for a Palestinian capital and ethnically cleanse all Jews from the area.  And if Israel doesn't comply?  "Resistance in all forms, armed and public ones".

Crispian Balmer: always willing to take on the task of defending the indefensible.

UPDATE MAY 15TH, 2011: In a rare example of forthcoming reporting, Balmer's colleague Douglas Hamilton grudgingly acknowledges what has long been obvious to the rest of us:

But Islamist Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and which last month sealed a surprise reconciliation pact with its bitter rival Fatah, issued a warning that Palestinians would accept nothing less than return to all lands lost in 1948.

Spokesman Taher Al-Nono praised the "crowds we have seen in Palestine, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon" as evidence of "imminent victory and return to the original homes as promised by God."

In an apparent contradiction of suggestions that Hamas might ditch its rejection of Israel's right to exist, he said there was no alternative to recovering all land lost in 1948.

Libel by omission

The last we visited with Reuters correspondents Nidal al-Mughrabi and Allyn Fisher-Ilan, they were serving as apologists for Hamas' attempted murder of Israeli school children and groping for words to conceal the fact that over six hundred Palestinian rockets and mortars have been fired into Israel since the end of the Gaza war in 2009.

In another story published on Tuesday, al-Mughrabi and Fisher-Ilan take Israel to task for closing the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Gaza:

(Reuters) - Israel kept a commercial crossing with Hamas-ruled Gaza shut for a seventh day Tuesday although a truce had stopped cross-border fighting, and a UN official said he was "extremely worried" essential supplies may run out.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which provides aid to more than two thirds of Gaza's population of 1.5 million, said 172 truckloads of oil, sugar and flour were waiting to cross into the impoverished coastal territory.
Israel said it shut the crossings a week ago during a violent flare-up when Hamas militants fired an anti-tank rocket at a school bus, critically wounding an Israeli teen-ager, and Israel retaliated with air raids, killing 19 Palestinians.
The violence has subsided since Egyptian and UN mediators achieved an informal truce Sunday.
Israel has not yet reopened the terminal because of concern about security, an Israeli official said, adding that individual humanitarian cases were allowed into Israel at a separate crossing.
Christopher Gunness, an UNRWA spokesman, said he was "extremely worried" the commercial crossing at Kerem Shalom might not reopen before the Jewish Passover holiday begins on Monday evening, a time when Israel often shuts its crossings with Palestinian territories, citing security concerns.
The relief agency generally aims to send about 20 truckloads of sugar, flour, oil and school lunches into Gaza daily, and has only enough of these supplies stored in the territory to last until the end of the month, Gunness said.

Al-Mughrabi and Fisher-Ilan are attempting to suggest here that Israel is putting the population in Gaza at risk by keeping the border closed and doing so unreasonably since "a truce had stopped cross-border fighting" and "the violence has subsided since Egyptian and UN mediators achieved an informal truce Sunday".  Going unreported however, is this tidbit:

At 6 o'clock Sunday morning 4/10/2011, the artillery unit of the Al-Quds Brigades shot 4 80 mm mortar shells toward the site "Karm Abu Salem," [Kerem Shalom] located east of the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where shells hit their targets precisely, leading to the interruption of electricity to most parts of the site and spreading a state of confusion the soldiers present inside.

Which might explain why Israel has prudently maintained the closure.

Following another suggestion by al-Mughrabi and Fisher-Ilan that "sugar, flour, oil and school lunches" will run out at the end of the month unless the Kerem Shalom crossing is opened, the two Reuters correspondents tell us:

The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said 150 types of basic medicines were lacking in the territory and that a cooking gas shortage also loomed.

The suggestion here of course, that Israel is also responsible for the lack of medicines in Gaza.

But the chronic shortages in Gaza are actually due to the ongoing conflict between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority:

The World Health Organization (WHO) is negotiating with the two Palestinian health authorities to reach a long-term agreement that would end chronic drug shortages, which affect patients first.
The lack of cooperation between the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and authorities in the Gaza Strip harms the Gaza health system. For example, a strike was called in 2008 in the Gaza public hospital system. The health facilities estimated that 50 – 80% of health workers -- trapped in the conflict of interests between the two "competing" health authorities – observed the strike.

Al-Mughrabi and Fisher-Ilan show us it's much easier to libel Israelis than to report the facts.

Reuters plays down the power of the Muslim Brotherhood

In addition to sanitizing the image of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood so as to make the group more palatable to Western audiences, Reuters is now engaged in a campaign to minimize the role and importance of the group in the upheaval taking place in Egypt and the wider Middle East.

In an "Analysis" of the situation, Reuters correspondent William Maclean proposes this whopper non sequitur:

The involvement of youths, secularists and the educated middle class gave the lie to any notion that Islamists were at the vanguard of opposition forces in the Arab world.

Notwithstanding the incoherent suggestion that youths and educated middle class cannot also be Islamists (Reuters has already noted that many Brotherhood members are indeed both educated and middle class), Maclean is simply wrong that the Muslim Brotherhood or Islamists generally, are not leading the opposition forces in Egypt or the Arab Middle East.  In a lengthy briefing from last November which in many ways foreshadowed and may largely account for the intensity of the insurrection, AlJazeera wrote:

Still, it is impossible to predict what would happen if, despite Egyptians' reputation for political lethargy, opposition groups managed to put tens of thousands of followers into the streets of Cairo to protest what many expect will be an attempted handover of power to Mubarak's son, Gamal. 

The key to any roadblock on the path to such "republarchy" lies with the Muslim Brotherhood, the world's most influential Islamist movement and far and away the largest and best-organised counterweight to Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP).  Change in Egypt, for better or worse, does not materialise without the Brothers. 

When former International Atomic Energy Agency chief and Nobel Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei - the great hope of Egypt's secular leftists - returned home this year and launched a petition drive to demand the government lift its most onerous national security laws and reform electoral practices, his National Association for Change gathered 106,661 signatures in support by early September.  The Muslim Brotherhood came up with more than 650,000. 

The Brotherhood has 88 seats in parliament, compared to the 34 politicians representing all other non-NDP parties. 

Protest groups such as the Egyptian Movement for Change, or Kifaya, which became a Western media darling during the 2005 election, rely on the Brotherhood to put thousands of supporters into the streets.

Yet with Egypt's November 28 parliamentary elections approaching, the Brotherhood finds itself in flux.

Long repressed by authorities and still technically outlawed, the group is coming off a landmark five-year term in which it served as the largest-ever minority bloc in Egypt's short multi-party political history and the loudest critic of Mubarak's 30-year authoritarian rule.

And though Reuters would have us believe otherwise, the Brotherhood continues to well exercise its power.

Douglas Hamilton refers readers to boycott Israel website

In a story that attempts to conflate Israel with apartheid South Africa while feigning impartial news reporting, Reuters correspondent Douglas Hamilton suggests that those boycotting Israel in an effort to delegitimize the country are doing so with "increasing effect".  Hamilton's evidence for the success of the movement?

Carlos Santana, Gil Scott Heron, Elvis Costello, Gorillaz Sound System, the Klaxons, the Pixies, Faithless, Leftfield, Tindersticks, Meg Ryan and film director Mike Leigh have all decided not to go to Israel in recent months.

While Israel can probably survive absent the "Sneaky Feelings" Costello, Hamilton decides to lend a hand to the boycott effort by using his platform as a reporter for the largest news agency in the world to refer readers to one of the boycott advocacy websites.  We kid you not.  If this isn't enough to get Hamilton terminated for a material breach of the Reuters Trust Principles, we don't know what will.

Hamilton suggests that Israelis believe the world is biased against them, and that this belief is irrational, and to "prove" his point, he cites an Israeli television show which parodies Israeli claims of global antisemitism.  Gee, we have no idea where Jews would get the impression that antisemitism is endemic or that this manifests today in irrational hatred of Israel.

All of this is reminiscient of an exchange we had with Hamilton back in July of 2009 after he wrote a nearly hysterical piece accusing Benjamin Netanyahu of "disingenuousness" in a speech which took to task, the hypocrisy and antisemitism of those (like Hamilton) who would prevent Jews from living in Jerusalem.  We noted in an email reply to Hamilton that whereas Reuters apparently doesn't have a problem with British pensioners building condominiums in Gibraltar or the Turkish government providing housing for its citizens in Cyprus, his outrage over Jews living in their 3,500-year-old capital, supported by international law, does smack of double-standards.

Unfortunately for the increasingly erratic Hamilton, the "BDS" (boycott, divestment, sanctions) campaign against Israel is not going particularly well.  However, the movement does have the potential to damage the country and as there is no comparable BDS campaign against Turkey, China, Russia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia or many other countries which, unlike Israel, are actually engaged in gross human rights violations, political and religious oppression, and illegal occupations of neighboring states, one has to admire Hamilton's towering chutzpah in mocking Israelis who feel that boycott efforts singling out the one Jewish state do indeed reflect antisemitism.

Is the Nazi calling the kettle black?

Formulated by Mike Godwin in 1990 following his observation that all online discussions inevitably degenerate into comparisons with the Nazis, Godwin's Law has become a popular adage in the internet age.  Simply stated, the rule suggests that as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

The same may be said of Reuters online reporting of the Middle East conflict.

The news agency is so maniacally obsessed with demonizing Israel and their correspondents pen so many patently anti-Zionist stories every month, it was inevitable that something off their wire would ultimately draw an explicit comparison between the Jewish state and Nazi Germany.

In a story on Israel's decision to establish a facility to house some of the more than 35,000 mainly-African migrants that have entered the country illegally in the last few years, Reuters bows to Godwin:

In a country sensitive to comparisons with Nazi concentration camps where Jews were killed, officials insisted the camp would be open. But they did not say how often the migrants assigned there would be allowed to come and go.

Unbelievable.  There is of course, absolutely no rational parallel between the holding facility Israel is contemplating and the Nazi concentration camps where Jews were systematically exterminated but Reuters editors Douglas Hamilton and Mark Heinrich nevertheless implant an odious suggestion linking the two.

Interestingly, Hamilton, who is of German extract and has previously demonstrated his singular contempt for Jews, reacted to a comment critical of one of his stories for Reuters in 2009 by wildly accusing the commenter of claiming he (Hamilton) was antisemitic.  Hamilton's accusation was false but the rabid hostility to Jewish nationalism on display in his stories over the last 16 months suggests that he is indeed antisemitic and his knee-jerk reaction to criticism, a reflection that he knows it.

Palestinian public relations, courtesy of Tom Perry

If Reuters were true to its lofty Trust Principles and Handbook of Journalism, it would have long ago canned correspondent Tom Perry for his perennial gross violations of the same.

In a story on the Palestine Liberation Organization demanding a "map" of the international borders Israel and the US would like the Palestinians to recognize, Perry employs the propaganda technique of innuendo all the while flouting the Reuters Handbook with unnamed sources, loaded language, a lack of fairness, and the use of euphemisms:

He [Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu] said it would be a "trust-building step," while some Palestinian and Israeli commentators questioned whether the proposal was only a ploy to try to shift blame onto the Palestinians should the peace process collapse. 

The Palestinians ruled out the idea -- something they see as a major concession that would be tantamount to political suicide for a leadership whose credibility has already been badly damaged by the failure of past peace talks.

Note how Perry slyly incorporates anonymous "Palestinian and Israeli commentators" to serve as a beard for what amounts to his own suggestion that Netanyahu is operating in bad faith.  Perry then speaks on behalf of the Palestinians by characterizing what would be their recognition of Israel as a Jewish state -- resolved by the United Nations over sixty years ago -- as a "major concession" while omitting any balanced reference to Israel's unilateral and unprecedented concession to freeze Jewish building in the disputed territories.

Perry recycles his previously-employed euphemistic language to obfuscate Palestinian President Abbas' conditions for negotiations:

Abed Rabbo's demand for a map echoed Abbas's call for clear terms of reference for the peace talks.

As we noted at the time, Abbas' "clear terms of reference" for peace talks consisted of the demand that Israel concede, in advance of those talks, a Palestinian state on all land beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines.

Finally, Perry reports that Israel had in fact, provided the Palestinians with a map delineating borders during negotiations with Netanyahu's predecessor, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert:

Netanyahu's predecessor as prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has said he showed Abbas a map offering him 93.5 to 93.7 percent of the West Bank, with the difference made up by a proposed land swap of 5.8 percent and a safe-passage corridor between the territory and the Gaza Strip.

But in an illustration of the propaganda technique of card stacking, Perry fails to mention that despite that map and an extraordinary settlement offer from Olmert, Abbas and the Palestinians walked away from peace with Israel.

Afforded this information, readers might come away with a greater understanding of why this conflict, and its resolution, are not about "maps".

"Foreign experts", "analysts", and "security sources"

In its Handbook of Journalism, Reuters specifically forbids its reporters from quoting "analysts" and notes that quotes from anonymous sources are the weakest as they cannot be independently verified.  This advice doesn't dissuade correspondent Dan Williams from building a purely speculative case for Israel's involvement in the reported appearance of the Stuxnet computer worm at Iran's nuclear reactor:

Israel's pursuit of options for sabotaging the core computers of foes like Iran, along with mechanisms to protect its own sensitive systems, were unveiled last year by the military intelligence chief, Major-General Amos Yadlin...

Disclosures that a sophisticated computer worm, Stuxnet, was uncovered at the Bushehr atomic reactor and may have burrowed deeper into Iran's nuclear programme prompted foreign experts to suggest the Israelis were responsible.  

Israel has declined to comment on any specific operations. Analysts say cyber capabilities offer it a stealthy alternative to the air strikes that it has long been expected to launch against Iran but which would face enormous operational hurdles as well as the risk of triggering regional war.

According to security sources, over the last two years the military intelligence branch, which specialises in wiretaps, satellite imaging and other electronic espionage, has set up a dedicated cyber warfare unit staffed by conscripts and officers.

Now, we have no idea whether Israel had a hand in the introduction of Stuxnet.  There has been no hard evidence (actually, no evidence at all) put forward by Iran, any other government, or the press that would implicate the Israelis.  Clearly, there are many other nations running sophisticated intelligence and electronic espionage networks which engage in this type of activity.  And many of these governments have openly declared their opposition to Iran's nuclear program.  Yet, note how Williams employs a series of unnamed sources, red herrings, and innuendo to lead the reader from a report on the introduction of information security technology last year to the foregone conclusion that Israel was behind Stuxnet.

A "stealthy alternative" to real journalism.

The latest Reuters propaganda mantra

Repetition is a propaganda device designed to:

drum the message into the target audience's subconscious by repeating keywords or phrases over and over until resistance to the message weakens. The target audience eventually accepts the message often without even realizing it. Adolph Hitler emphasized the need for repetition in propaganda.

This technique forms one of the cornerstones of Reuters Middle East reporting.  As an example, a phrase like "occupied West Bank" -- which reflects a biased political view and violates the Reuters Trust Principles and Handbook of Journalism -- has appeared in over 1,600 Reuters stories over the last couple of years. 1,600.

The latest propagandistic phrasing to be adopted by Reuters and repeated in scores of stories on its website goes something like this:

The settlements are on territory captured by Israeli forces from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war and are deemed by the World Court to be illegal, a finding disputed by Israel.

As we noted here, the reference to the World Court is irrelevant to the question of the legality of Jewish settlements as the court's rulings are merely advisory and non-binding.  One could just as well argue that settlements are illegal because the Organization of the Islamic Conference deems them so.  In fact, Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria are entirely legal as per international law enshrined in the UN-adopted and never-abrogated Mandate for Palestine:

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.

Reuters truncated characterization of the settlements as being "on territory captured by Israeli forces from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war" reflects an attempt by the news agency to suggest that the land properly belonged to the Jordanian Arabs which of course, is not accurate.  Jordan invaded and conquered this portion of the Palestine Mandate during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and its occupation of the area was never recognized internationally.  Jordan then ethnically cleansed the territory -- including the eastern portion of Jerusalem -- of all Jews living there.

With these key omissions, Reuters is willfully distorting the historical record.  By repeating the distorted message in scores of stories, the agency is demonstrating its intent to compel its audience to accept, uncritically, a propagandistic mantra.

Reuters still confused about Iranian support for Hamas

In a story on Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling on the Palestinians to continue warring against Israel until, "Jerusalem [is liberated] from the dirt of the Zionist occupation", Reuters correspondent Parisa Hafezi continues to get it wrong on the extent to which Iran has supported the terror group Hamas:

Washington accuses Iran of sponsoring terrorism by arming and financing those organizations. Iran says it provides moral support to the Islamist militant groups.

Note how the wily Hafezi follows an accusation by the US that Iran is arming and financing Hamas with the non sequitur, "Iran says it provides moral support to the Islamist militant groups".  Of course, that moral support does not preclude arming and financing but as written, it suggests a denial.

As we noted back in June, both Iran and Hamas have publicly admitted to the former bankrolling the latter.  And we know that Iranian missiles have ended up in the Hamas arsenal because they have also ended up exploded in Israeli communities.

Propaganda 101

With hundreds of comments and reams of supporting evidence we've posted since August of last year, it should be apparent to any balanced observer that Reuters is emphatically not an independent and impartial reporter of news in the Middle East.  On the contrary, the agency is very much a partisan in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, promoting a highly tendentious view of that conflict, and employing a host of rhetorical devices including propaganda and logical fallacies to advance its view and influence its audience to adopt the same perspective.  This level of advocacy journalism is both wholly unethical for a professional news organization and a violation of the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Part and parcel of Reuters advocacy journalism efforts on behalf of the Palestinians is image-making.  That is, creating and promoting a public image for an individual or people that is consistent with an agenda of deliberately shaping public perceptions.

Over the last few weeks, as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has consistently refused to enter into direct peace talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, correspondents in Reuters Jerusalem Bureau have systematically sought to portray Abbas as a leader who is "wary of walking into a trap", "doubtful" of Netanyahu's desire to "make an offer the Palestinians can accept", and someone who simply wishes to establish a "clear agenda" for talks before committing.  We've demonstrated -- by quoting Abbas directly -- that his reluctance to enter into talks is actually due to his insistence that Israel be coerced to accept a Palestinian state on all territory beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines.  And that this capitulatory concession by Israel be agreed prior to the start of any direct talks.  Reuters has repeatedly failed to report on this essential fact. 

In the last couple of days, the busy little propagandists in Reuters Jerusalem Bureau led by writers like Douglas Hamilton, have been attempting to suggest that the Quartet proclaimed on March 19th, 2010, that a Palestinian state be created "on the basis of the borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war".  In fact, here is what that statement from the Quartet actually said:

Reaffirming the fundamental principles laid down in its statement in Trieste on June 26, 2009, the Quartet welcomes the readiness to launch proximity talks between Israel and the Palestinians. The Quartet emphasizes that the circumstances which made it possible to agree to launch the proximity talks be respected. The proximity talks are an important step toward the resumption, without pre-conditions, of direct bilateral negotiations that resolve all final status issues as previously agreed by the parties. The Quartet believes these negotiations should lead to a settlement, negotiated between the parties within 24 months, that ends the occupation which began in 1967 and results in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors. The Quartet reiterates that Arab-Israeli peace and the establishment of a peaceful state of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza is in the fundamental interests of the parties, of all the states in the region, and of the international community. In this regard, the Quartet calls on all states to support dialogue between the parties.

Note the affirmation of talks "without pre-conditions" and reference only to a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.  There is absolutely no call by the Quartet for that state to be based on the borders that existed before the 1967 war.  (Indeed, there are no such borders; there are only armistice lines drawn on a map in green ink by world powers which served to separate Israeli and Jordanian armed forces in 1949).  Reuters has fabricated a demand which was never issued.

It is easy to see where Reuters is going with all of this.  First, portray Abbas as a reasonable leader who simply wishes to establish an agenda for direct talks but is doubtful of Netanyahu's good will.  Then, manufacture expectations for talks and falsely assign these expectations to world powers.  Finally, if and when Abbas rejects direct talks, apologize for him and lay the blame on Netanyahu because he failed to meet the fabricated expectations.

This, from a news agency which asserts that it is "dedicated to uphold the Trust Principles and to preserving its independence, integrity and freedom from bias in the gathering and dissemination of information and news."

Weasels at Reuters still struggling to blame Israel for border clash

In an update to the Reuters story noted in our previous post, Reuters writes:

A Lebanese army official said the military had had prior notice of Israel's planned activity but it had been agreed on condition that it took place under UNIFIL's supervision, adding that said the Israelis had gone ahead without this.

So, there is no dispute that both UNIFIL and the Lebanese army had been notified of the maintenance work in advance.  Given that UNIFIL is based on the Lebanese side of the border, how exactly would routine maintenance on the Israeli side of the border be under UNIFIL "supervision"?  Moreover, the photographic evidence demonstrates that UNIFIL soldiers were embedded with the Lebanese army and carefully observing the Israeli maintenance activity at the time of the attack.

Reuters then sneaks in a suggestion:

The UNIFIL statement did not say whether the Israeli army had coordinated with the peacekeepers.

No, and it didn't say whether Castro had Kennedy killed either.  The UNIFIL statement speaks for itself; it didn't say whether the Israeli army had coordinated with the peacekeepers because the assertion that this had been agreed (or was required) has no basis in reality.  It is simply a red herring tossed in by the Lebanese army to draw attention away from its own culpability.

And Reuters of course, happily takes the bait and feeds it to its readers.

Reuters, the image-makers

Reuters is currently engaged in a heavy image-making effort to recast Hamas as something other than the jihadi terror group it clearly is.  There was another attack on a UNRWA summer camp in Gaza today by "masked Palestinian gunmen" and although reportedly, no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, Reuters recycles its broken boilerplate from previous stories to suggest the perpetrators were other than Hamasniks:

Fundamentalist Muslims, or Salafis -- whose agenda of global or holy war against the West conflicts with Hamas's nationalist goals -- have stepped up attacks in the Gaza Strip over the past several months, targeting Hamas security men and offices.

As we've noted in previous posts, Hamas "nationalist goals" are very much aligned with those of Islamic jihadists around the world.  An offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas makes its goals clear in Article Nine of its Charter:

Motives and Objectives
Hamas finds itself at a period of time when Islam has waned away from the reality of life. For this reason, the checks and balances have been upset, concepts have become confused, and values have been transformed; evil has prevailed, oppression and obscurity have reigned; cowards have turned tigers, homelands have been usurped, people have been uprooted and are wandering all over the globe. The state of truth has disappeared and was replaced by the state of evil. Nothing has remained in its right place, for when Islam is removed from the scene, everything changes. These are the motives. As to the objectives: discarding the evil, crushing it and defeating it, so that truth may prevail, homelands revert [to their owners], calls for prayer be heard from their mosques, announcing the reinstitution of the Muslim state. Thus, people and things will revert to their true place.

Thus, Hamas seeks not only the reconquest of the entire Mandate of Palestine (Israel), but also the return of all territories to their previous Muslim "owners", e.g., Moorish Spain.  Further, Hamas wants to see the reconstitution of a global Islamic state -- the Caliphate -- under Sharia law, precisely the mission of Osama bin Laden and the global jihadist movement:

Bin Laden himself spoke of ensuring that "the pious caliphate will start from Afghanistan." His chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, also dreamed of re-establishing the caliphate, for then, he wrote, "history would make a new turn, God willing, in the opposite direction against the empire of the United States and the world's Jewish government." Another Al-Qaeda leader, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, publishes a magazine that has declared "Due to the blessings of jihad, America's countdown has begun. It will declare defeat soon," to be followed by the creation of a caliphate.

It is simply hogwash to assert, as Reuters does, that Hamas has limited nationalist goals at odds with global holy war against the West.

Reuters' Macdonald pens his swan song; biased to the end

Psychologists who study cognition and learning tell us that the capacity to learn, to adapt, to change ones' view generally declines as we age.  By the time we're in our forties and fifties, many individuals unfortunately settle into a pattern of sclerotic thinking.  Perhaps this is what's afflicting recently dethroned Reuters Bureau Chief Alastair Macdonald.

In his swan song piece for the news agency, Macdonald pens a poignant tale of walls and broken bridges (both physical and metaphorical) between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs:

From the minefields of Israel's frontlines with Syria and Lebanon to the fortified fences around the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- much in this month's headlines -- to the walls, old and new, of Jerusalem, physical barriers shape the lives of the 12 million people cut off here in what was once called Palestine.

Yes, it was once called "Palestine" -- actually "Provincia Syria Palaestina", assigned that title by the Roman Emperor Hadrian in 135 AD following the Bar Kochba revolt by the Jews.  This renaming, in a deliberate effort to blot out the Jewish connection to the land which had previously been known as "Provincia Judaea" -- and before that, simply "Judaea".  How ironic that two-thousand years later, another European employs his position as Regional Chief of the most powerful news agency in the world to attempt the same abrogation.

Characterizing the differences between Gaza and Israel, Macdonald writes:

Normally, these days, it's a peaceful place, teeming with wildlife, a brief buffer zone between Gaza, an Arab city going backwards on donkey carts and embargoed scarcities, and the neat farms, hi-tech factories and shopping malls of southern Israel.

Yes, we've noticed those "embargoed scarcities" in the shops.

Macdonald could of course, also compare the current state of Gaza, embargoed because it is under the rule of a totalitarian and openly genocidal regime, with that of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") where a more tolerant and ostensibly concordant regime (aided by Israeli and Western-trained Palestinian security forces) oversees some of those same neat farms and shopping malls.

Continuing:

Inside the Old City's gates, Ottoman-era Quarters -- Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Armenian -- map communal rivalries still alive today. Small battlefields marked by razor wire, flags and hurled garbage show where Israelis are settling in Arab areas.

Macdonald refers to Israelis [Jews] "settling" in "Arab areas" with the connotation that this is provocative or somehow inequitable.  Reuters never seems to be able to explain to readers why Arab-majority neighborhoods should be expunged of Jews while Arabs are free to live in any predominantly Jewish city in Israel.  Those progressive European sensibilities appear to vanish where Jewish human and civil rights are involved.

Then comes the loaded language:

The most visible wall is the new one that snakes around greater Jerusalem -- protecting it, Israel says, from suicide bombers while cutting them off from their families, according to Palestinians.

They [the Palestinians] complain, too, that the barrier penning them into the West Bank is a frontier in one direction only. Half a million Israelis live there, in an archipelago of hilltop settlements, their red, pitched roofs an image of contrast to Arab villages.

Please Alastair, tell us with which side you personally sympathize; we simply can't tell from your use of metaphor.

Finally, in what appears to be a reference to our work and that of other watchers:

Yet there are images that stay with me of those who reach over the walls. I've seen it in the Reuters journalists I worked with. Their professionalism is blind to being Palestinian or Israeli, even if partisan critics from all sides question that.

Note that in not one of our nearly 300 posts criticizing Reuters pro-Palestinian bias and easily recognizable propaganda have we ever suggested that their correspondents' partisanship or lack of professionalism is a reflection of whether they are Palestinian or Israeli.  Indeed, it is often the bureau's Israeli reporters that are the worst offenders.

Macdonald seeks to defend his colleagues in the face of overwhelming evidence of bias based on imagined claims of ethnic or national chauvinism but the truth is, Reuters bias transcends the race or religion of the writer.  At its core, the bias is rooted in personal ideology and then institutionalized.  It represents a fatal transgression of the Reuters Trust Principles and the agency's Handbook of Journalism and as such, should be addressed at the highest levels promptly.

Propaganda and the use of metaphor

One of the ways the propagandist induces the reader to adopt her view is to use strongly suggestive language.  In the guise of simply describing a thing or event, the propagandist employs a metaphor which reflects her subjective evaluation and instills an emotional bias in the mind of the reader.

An illustration of this technique can be seen in Reuters recurring description of the Israeli security barrier:

Beit Iksa is not enclosed by the Israeli barrier that snakes through the West Bank, making it a transit point for many seeking to enter illegally for work.

Continuing in that tradition with a story focusing on the possibility that Israel will permit armed Palestinian police to patrol additional towns in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"), Reuters correspondent Allyn Fisher-Ilan offers a bit of history:

Under accords following a landmark 1993 interim peace deal, Israel carved up the West Bank into three zones, one where Palestinian police could be armed, another where security was a joint task with Israel, and an area in which Israeli forces remained solely in charge.

Whereas in an example of neutral reporting, the word "divided" would clearly do, Fisher-Ilan has a very specific image of Israel to peddle to her audience: 

And note, the 1993 Oslo Accords and accompanying administrative divisions in the territories were negotiated between and freely agreed by both parties, Israel and the Palestinians, based on demographics, the location of sensitive religious sites, and security considerations.  The Palestinians were sitting at the same Thanksgiving table when the butterball was apportioned.

Egypt kills Palestinian smugglers; Reuters blames Israel and the US

There are conflicting reports of precisely how the tunnel smugglers died (AP indicates poison gas was used; Reuters reports a bomb was detonated underground) but four Palestinians were killed by Egyptian security forces yesterday.  However, in the second paragraph of its story, Reuters points the finger at who it considers the real culprits:

Under pressure from Israel and the United States, Egypt has tried to stem the secret passages from its Sinai peninsula, which have allowed Palestinians in Gaza to import weapons and commercial goods in defiance of an Israeli-led blockade.

And later in the article:

Many Egyptians sympathise with the Palestinians and the Hamas Islamists who rule Gaza and refuse to forswear violence againt [sic] the Jewish state.

The insinuation being of course, that in killing Palestinian smugglers, the Egyptians are only doing Israel's bidding.