Perfect timing

In a story on the threat by a German mediator that he will quit if Israel and Hamas do not reach a deal soon on a prisoner exchange, Reuters correspondents Alexander Dziadosz and Ori Lewis suggest:

The United Nations and Western powers hope a succesful swap will open the way to a relaxation of Israel's blockade of Gaza, where 1.5 million Palestinians are dependent on food aid and smuggled goods for daily survival.

Reuters' timing is impeccable as we just ran a story (below) from Palestine Today about Palestinian snipers taking pot shots at Egyptian security forces due to their apparent displeasure with a 7-mile-long subterranean steel wall Egypt is constructing under the Gaza border to prevent smuggling.  In their story, Dziadosz and Lewis cite only "Israel's blockade" -- no mention of Egypt.

Note also, how Dziadosz and Lewis imply that all 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza are dependent on food aid (and smuggled goods).  Apparently, they haven't seen the pics from the market.

The other news

With Reuters correspondents perennially focused on the Israel-Palestinian conflict and violent incidents on the border between Gaza and Israel, it is sometimes easy to forget that Gaza also shares a border (and wall) with Egypt and that that border can be just as dangerous.  Translated from the original Arabic, the Palestine Today news agency reports:

Egyptian security sources said Egyptian security forces came under fire by Palestinian militants for the second time in three days, without the reported casualties among the soldiers.  According to security sources the shots were aimed at Egyptian soldiers fired from a sniper rifle from a high place on the Palestinian side neighborhood Brahmins border area with Egypt.

This is the second incident, which have been targeted by snipers from the Palestinian side of the border forces of Egypt, particularly after the target equipment for installation of the steel wall for three days and suffered five gunshot drilling machine caused the holes, while continuing to drilling equipment and installation of corrugated iron on the Egyptian side of its work under the state of security alert large Security Egyptian-Palestinian border and strengthen the border with more troops and armored vehicles.

The "steel wall" referred to is a 7-mile-long subterranean wall Egypt is building along the border with Gaza to prevent Palestinian smuggling.

Alistair Lyon tries his hand at the Reuters "FACTBOX" format

Reuters "Special Correspondent" Alistair Lyon, who gave us love for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and enmity for Israel, seeks now to alert us to the uncertainties and potential dangers lurking in the Middle East for 2010.

Employing the risible Reuters "FACTBOX" format, Lyon suggests:

Prospects for progress toward peace look bleak, with a weak and divided Palestinian leadership, a hardline rightwing Israeli government and few signs of decisive United States involvement.

The use of pejorative name calling ("hardline rightwing") is a well-recognized propaganda technique intended to instill in the mind of the reader the scorn the writer holds for the subject.  By the same token, Lyon wants his audience to view the Palestinian leadership as "weak".  We wonder if Lyon noticed the Hamas rally on Monday:

True to form, Lyon then blames Israel for the risk of war with Hamas and Hezbollah:

Israel may have bought respite from direct attack from Hamas and Hezbollah with devastating assaults on the Gaza Strip nearly a year ago and Lebanon in 2006, but the risk of violence is high given Palestinian frustration and Israeli settler activity.

Ah yes, Palestinians are "frustrated" while Israeli setters are "active".  The risk of war couldn't possibly have anything to do with the Hamas Mission:

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.

Or the sentiments of Hezbollah's leader:

If [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.

Or the 40,000+ rockets the group now has aimed at Israel in violation of UNSC resolution 1701.

Nah, all of this would be mere speculation as compared to Lyon's "facts".

Can Tom Perry tell the truth?

In one of his "Analysis" pieces -- aka an op-ed -- on PA President Mahmoud Abbas, Reuters' Tom Perry mendaciously suggests:

Abbas has reiterated his opposition to any form of violence -- a stance which puts him at odds with the Hamas Islamist movement and some members of his own Fatah party... For, Abbas, 74, more armed action by the Palestinians is a non-starter.

"Reiterated his opposition to violence"?  "Armed action a non-starter"?  We wonder if Perry is referring to Abbas' rallying cry on the 42nd anniversary of the founding of Fatah:

We have a legitimate right to direct our guns against Israeli occupation.

Or perhaps Perry is characterizing the Fatah platform endorsed by Abbas and adopted at the party Congress in August which reaffirmed the Fatah Constitution:

Armed public revolution is the inevitable method to liberating Palestine. (Article 17)

Armed struggle is a strategy and not a tactic, and the Palestinian Arab People's armed revolution is a decisive factor in the liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence, and this struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated.  (Article 19)

Nah, Perry must be referring to the new and improved Mahmoud Abbas, seen here calmly reconciled to a Jewish state:



Perry suggests:

When he [Abbas] took over after Yasser Arafat's death in 2004, one of his first steps was to rein in militants still fighting the second Intifada, or uprising.

Apparently, that was before Abbas signed a law approving the payment of stipends to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

But despite Abbas having "hit a dead end" in peace talks with Israel, Perry quotes Palestinian political analyst Hani Masri:

I don't think there will ever be a president as moderate as Abu Mazen.

We think Masri and Perry may have inadvertently stumbled upon the truth here.

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".

More broken boilerplate

Residing somewhere on the Reuters Middle East server, lies a word processing file saved as anti-Israelpropaganda.docx -- or so we imagine.  It's the only way to explain the pernicious boilerplate appearing in scores of Reuters' stories, like for example, this:     

Ideological divides run deep in Israel, especially over the future of some 500,000 Jews who live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas captured in a 1967 war which Palestinians want for a viable future state.

Now, we understand the value of boilerplate for a writer under pressure to meet a daily deadline.  We just think Reuters ought to inspect the veracity of that boilerplate before repeating it and selling it on to hundreds of other news publications.  For the reality is, a large majority of Israelis support settlement construction in the disputed territories and two-thirds either oppose any evacuation of Jewish settlements in a final peace deal or say only a small number of communities should be dismantled.  Moreover, 85 percent of Israelis oppose dividing Jerusalem in exchange for peace with the Palestinians.

Not much of an "ideological divide" there.

More photos Reuters won't show you

Continuing with our series of photos which Reuters will never publish, the magazine Palestine Today reminds us of the relentless incitement to violence seen in Gaza with pics of a well-attended rally and apparent award ceremony orchestrated by the Islamic Jihad on behalf of Palestinian "martyrs".  Note the toddlers in the audience.

Reuters ever the apologists for Arab terror

Allyn Fisher-Ilan of Reuters reports:

A Jewish settler woman was stabbed and wounded on a roadside in the occupied West Bank in what Israeli police said on Sunday was an attack by a Palestinian militant. There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the assault late on Saturday night near the city of Bethlehem and a settlement bloc known as Gush Etzion, which occurred after a mosque was vandalised elsewhere in the West Bank.

First, note what has become a pejorative characterization, "settler woman", to describe the victim.  This represents the first step in Reuters' efforts to justify the terror act.  After all, as a "settler", she obviously had it coming to her.  (We suppose Fisher-Ilan was being generous in not referring to the woman as a virulent settler woman).

Secondly, in reporting the location of the attack, note the reference to "the occupied West Bank".  This is the next step in Reuters' defense of attempted murder: tag the scene of the crime as a place where, in Reuters' view, the victim had no right to be (a bus stop at the Gush Etzion junction).  Yes, if only the Jews would cease in their provocative acts, i.e.,  agree to be ethnically cleansed from their homes in the territories, all would be well.

Next comes Reuters' attempt to sanitize the nature of the attack by misquoting sources: Israeli officials did not refer to the perpetrator as a Palestinian "militant" but rather, as a terror operative.  When it comes to serving as apologists for Arab terror, writers for Reuters can be relied upon to deliberately distort the Israeli perspective, in violation of the Reuters Handbook of Journalism.

Finally, note Fisher-Ilan's suggestion that the terror attack "occurred after a mosque was vandalised elsewhere in the West Bank."  Yes, three days after.  For Reuters, murderous Arab violence is always viewed as a direct (and reasonable) response to Jewish provocation.

This is news?

With apparent alarm, Ori Lewis of Reuters reports:

The population of Jewish settlements in the West Bank could grow by 10,000 in the coming year despite a declared "freeze" on Israeli building in the occupied territory, an Israeli cabinet minister said.

Well, yes.  As the building freeze agreed by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called for the well-publicized completion of 3,000 housing units already approved and in some stage of completion, one might expect that with an average family size of 3.7 people, the Jewish population in the territories would increase by about 10,000.

We wonder why Reuters is not calling attention to (illegal) Arab building in the territories.

Then, there are those anonymous "critics" again:

Despite settler protests, some Israeli critics of Netanyahu's gesture have called the freeze a sham.

Reuters still citing the radical fringe, we see.

Oh-oh, Reuters is interpreting surveys again

Reuters correspondents are notoriously inept at accurately conveying the results of polls taken by various think tanks on issues pertaining to the Middle East conflict.  Or perhaps they're just notoriously skilled at card stacking.  In either event, the media giant can be relied upon to play up those poll results which bolster its own worldview and downplay or ignore those results which undermine the same.

Reuters reports today on a poll by the New America Foundation (NAF) where 1,000 Israelis were asked a series of questions about the conflict, their feelings towards key players like Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and their views on a variety of possible outcomes surrounding the peace process.

Reuters leads with:

U.S. President Barack Obama has a higher approval rating among Israelis than is widely believed, undercutting arguments he has lost Israeli public support for new peace efforts, a poll said on Thursday.

Given that other polls indicate only 4% -- 6% of the Israeli public see Obama's policies as pro-Israel, almost any improvement over figures in the cellar would be applauded by the pro-Obama crowd.  But there are serious problems associated with both the NAF survey methodology and the way Reuters reports the results.

First off, while the NAF survey doesn't tell us how they selected their respondents, we do know that of 1,000 people interviewed, 160 were Israeli Arabs.  This demographic group is likely to have a very different perspective on US Middle East policy than that of Israeli Jews.  Yet sentiments of the former are conflated with sentiments of the latter, almost certainly skewing putative support for Obama upward.

Secondly, while the NAF poll suggests that 41% of Israelis rate their feelings toward Obama as "warm", 55% say that he does not support Israel, 54% say that he does not share their values, and 43% say that he is naive.  Not exactly the vote of confidence Reuters suggests in their lead.  So we see that while a portion of the Israeli public may generally like Obama (in a warm and fuzzy way), they clearly do not identify with him nor do they believe that he can be relied upon to protect Israeli lives and interests.  Thus, while Israelis may show "support and solid backing for a possible future U.S.-brokered peace deal with the Palestinians", it ain't with Obama at the helm.

Futher, Reuters fails to mention that 55% of Israeli respondents don't believe that Fatah is capable of enforcing a peace agreement if one were signed and -- get this -- 82% of Jewish Israelis think it likely that, "the Palestinians will not be able to control the extremists on their side who will continue to launch attacks on Israel".  Ouch!  We can certainly understand why Reuters would omit those unpleasantries.

Reuters continues to liken Jewish settlers to disease

In a previous post, we noted Reuters use of the word virulence -- an obvious allusion to disease -- to describe Jewish settlers.  Here's how Reuters captions a photo of the Jewish settlement of Maskiot appearing on its AlertNet website yesterday:

Jewish settlers walk in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Maskiot in this May 18, 2009 file photo. Perched on a grassy slope on the western Jordan Valley, Maskiot overlooks Jordan from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, home to 2.5 million Palestinians who oppose the presence of settlers who have spread among them over the past 30 years.

Can one imagine Reuters ever deploying similarly odious language to describe Arab populations within Israel?  For example:

Arab settlers walk in the Israeli Arab settlement of Umm al-Fahm in this May 18, 2009 file photo. Perched on a grassy slope on a mountain ridge, Umm al-Fahm overlooks the Menashe Region from Arab-occupied Israel, home to 6 million Jews who oppose the presence of Arabs who have spread among them over the past 30 years.

Somehow, we don't think we'll be seeing that rhetoric anytime soon on Reuters' website.

Reuters assumes its readers are blind or stupid

Writers and editors for Reuters frequently bend themselves out of shape to heap blame on Israel even when it is pitifully obvious that the Palestinians or Arab states are due the criticism.

In a story today drawn from an article appearing in the newspaper Ha'aretz, Reuters reports that Egypt is building an underground wall to block Palestinian smuggling tunnels.  Reuters writes:

Israeli daily Haaretz reported Egypt was installing an underground metal wall about 20 to 30 metres (70-100 feet) deep along the short border strip where Palestinians have dug a warren of tunnels to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

As in nearly all of its other stories on Palestinian smuggling tunnels, Reuters refers only to the "Israeli blockade" of Gaza.  While the last paragraph of the story indicates that Egypt "controls" the southern border of the strip, there is no explicit mention of the obvious: Egypt is blockading Gaza.  To admit this would be to admit that, 1) there is an alternative route (other than from Israel) for goods to pass into Gaza, and 2) Egypt frequently prohibits the entry of those goods.  Either of these admissions would distract from the Reuters anti-Israel narrative, i.e, Israel is responsible for what hardship exists in Gaza.

Can't have that.

Douglas Hamilton cites Israel-hating radical leftist in "FACTBOX"

In our previous post, we noted Reuters' use of its "FACTBOX" format to further its Palestinian advocacy agenda under the guise of providing its audience with the facts on Jewish settlements.

Douglas Hamilton surpasses himself in another "FACTBOX" appearing today entitled, "Where does the Middle East peace process stand?"  Quoting an anonymous "Israeli left-wing commentator" on the raison d'etre of the settlement freeze announced by Israel, Hamilton writes:

[the commentator] says the freeze is a masquerade to appease U.S. President Barak Obama and put the onus for the stalled peace process on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The commentator cited by Hamilton is none other than Gideon Levy, writer for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz.  How do we know this?  Well, another Reuters correspondent, Allyn Fisher-Ilan, parroted the same suggestion by Levy in a story on Sunday.

For those unfamiliar with Levy, Spiegel Magazine describes him as Israel's "most radical [leftist] commentator" and reports that:

With the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000 and the accompanying suicide attacks in Israeli cities... Subscribers [to Ha'aretz] began to abandon the paper in droves. The most common reason given by readers who canceled their subscriptions was one journalist, Gideon Levy

For a newspaper with a nearly exclusive leftist readership, Levy's output was clearly too odious for even the most extreme elements in Israeli society.  And from a Levy story appearing in Ha'aretz in 2004, here's an illustration of why:

At the same time, their state [Israel] continues to strengthen the settlements, which are the major obstacle to the attainment of peace with the Palestinians, which alone can put an end to the firing of rockets at Sderot.

Note that Levy is attempting to justify the thousands of rockets fired by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza into Israeli border communities -- a situation which continues to this day despite the removal of every single settlement from Gaza in 2005.   Not only is Levy's stance morally reprehensible, it has been proven dead wrong.

Yet for Douglas Hamilton and Reuters, amongst all the genuine experts whose views on the Middle East conflict could have been cited, it is the "wisdom" of Gideon Levy which merits inclusion in a "FACTBOX".

Remind us again of Reuters self-proclaimed "freedom from bias".

For Reuters, facts just twist the truth around

In November, Reuters published one of its infamous "FACTBOX" series on Jewish settlements loaded with falsehoods, unsupported assertions, and logical fallacies.  Concomitant with a story by Tom Perry which we will examine in another post, Reuters reruns the "FACTBOX" today with adjustments which drive the material deeper into the realm of pro-Palestinian propaganda and demonstrates Reuters' willful disregard for the truth.

In November for example, Reuters suggested:

Israel dismisses international findings that the communities it has been building since the 1980s in the West Bank, on land occupied by the Israeli military since 1967, constitute a violation of international law.

At the time, we noted the unsupported reference to "international findings" and demonstrated that contrary to Reuters' assertion, Jewish communities in the territories are entirely legal as per League of Nations and United Nations resolutions.

In today's edition, Reuters goes further:

Israel dismisses international findings that the communities it has been building since the 1980s in the West Bank, on Palestinian land occupied by the Israeli military since 1967, constitute a violation of international law.

The territory is now not only inappropriately referred to as "occupied", it has been magically transformed into "Palestinian land".  As in the case of Jerusalem, Reuters fancies itself Arbiter of final status issues between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, ignores Jewish rights to the land, and awards Title to the Arabs.  All under the guise of offering its readers the "facts".

Breathtaking journalistic integrity!

Reuters Fisher-Ilan alludes to Jewish settlers as disease

In its Handbook of Journalism, Reuters prescribes a rigorous set of reporting standards for its correspondents.  The code is laudable for its attempt to encourage journalists to, as Reuters puts it, "fulfil the highest aspirations of our profession – to search for and report the truth, fairly, honestly and unfailingly".

Regrettably, as evidenced on our site, Reuters correspondents frequently fail spectacularly in this mission.

In a story yesterday about Jewish settlers protesting against the construction freeze called by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Allyn Fisher-Ilan strikes a cynical pose with respect to both the raison d'etre of the freeze and its longevity:

For some skeptics, the virulence of the settlers' response may only bolster Netanyahu's argument to U.S. President Barack Obama that he is taking domestic political risks for the sake of making peace -- and that he dare not make greater concessions.

Note Fisher-Ilan's use of the word virulence to describe the behavior of Jewish settlers.  Our desktop dictionary defines virulence as "the quality or state of being virulent", with virulent defined as "actively poisonous; intensely noxious".  The term is a derivation of course, of the word virus.  Now, there are a multitude of adjectives Fisher-Ilan could have selected to describe the disobedient (and at times criminal) behavior of Jewish settlers in response to the building freeze, but she specifically chose an extremely provocative and dehumanizing term bringing to mind the action of a dangerous microbe.

By comparison, we cannot recall and could not find in an online search, Reuters' use of the word virulence to describe the behavior of Palestinian Arabs during even the most horrific and widespread episodes of violence against Israeli civilians.  Adjectives like resistance -- a word the Arabs use to describe and rationalize their violent acts -- are extremely common in Reuters' stories however.  Ironically, the word resistance also refers to the human body's ability to defend against disease.

Are we making too much of a single word?  If it were just this instance of indecorous language, perhaps we could be accused of being too harsh on Reuters.  Judged by the weight of corroborative evidence appearing elsewhere on our site however, we believe this to be another illustration of extreme prejudice on the part of Reuters writers and editors and a violation of both their Handbook of Journalism and the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

More photos Reuters won't show you

In a previous post, we linked to the Palestine Today website bringing you scenes of Palestinian life in Gaza which Reuters with their 70+ journalists in the area (the number appears to have declined recently -- must be the recession in the publishing industry) never seem to witness.

Here are some new pics of "starving" and "impoverished" Palestinians returning to Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with a few goodies and catching a ride home in the local Mercedes Benz taxis:

The other news

On Tuesday, we highlighted a Reuters story where writer Erika Solomon sees the glass half-empty with respect to economic gains in Bethlehem since Binyamin Netanyahu became Israeli Prime Minister.  On a visit to the cities of Nablus and Hebron, Tom Gross sees things a bit differently:

As I sat in the plush office of Ahmad Aweidah, the suave British-educated banker who heads the Palestinian Securities Exchange, he told me that the Nablus stock market was the second best-performing in the world so far in 2009, after Shanghai. (Aweidah's office looks directly across from the palatial residence of Palestinian billionaire Munib al-Masri, the wealthiest man in the West Bank.)  Later I met Bashir al-Shakah, director of Nablus's gleaming new cinema, where four of the latest Hollywood hits were playing that day. Most movies were sold out, he noted, proudly adding that the venue had already hosted a film festival since it opened in June.  Wandering around downtown Nablus the shops and restaurants I saw were full. There were plenty of expensive cars on the streets. Indeed I counted considerably more BMWs and Mercedes than I've seen, for example, in downtown Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

The shops and restaurants were also full when I visited Hebron recently, and I was surprised to see villas comparable in size to those on the Cote d'Azur or Bel Air had sprung up on the hills around the city. Life is even better in Ramallah, where it is difficult to get a table in a good restaurant. New apartment buildings, banks, brokerage firms, luxury car dealerships and health clubs are to be seen. In Qalqilya, another West Bank city that was previously a hotbed of terrorists and bomb-makers, the first ever strawberry crop is being harvested in time to cash in on the lucrative Christmas markets in Europe. Local Palestinian farmers have been trained by Israeli agriculture experts and Israel supplied them with irrigation equipment and pesticides.

Cheer up, Erika; life is good.

Douglas Hamilton demonizes Israel for same residency policy in effect across Europe

There's a war raging in the Middle East but it's only rarely a shooting war between the Arabs and Israel.  Most of the time, it's a propaganda war being waged by news agencies like Reuters against Israel.  Our site is devoted to exposing this rabid propaganda and calling attention to Reuters' serial violations of its own Handbook of Journalism and the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

In a notable example of anti-Israel propaganda, Reuters' correspondent Douglas Hamilton, citing an Israeli "rights group", writes that:

Israel stripped Palestinians of Jerusalem residency status last year at a faster rate than at any time in the history of the Jewish state

The reason for this "stripping" of residency?  Well, it is only in the 17th paragraph of a 19-paragraph story that Hamilton finally discloses:

Palestinians in East Jerusalem have permanent resident status but Israeli law says it may be revoked if they spend more than seven consecutive years outside Israel, or take foreign residence or citizenship.

Oh, how demonic!  Permanent residency status may be revoked if an individual (the law does not discriminate between Arab and Jew) lives abroad for more than seven consecutive years or receives foreign residency.  We're sure the irony is lost on Doug Hamilton that many countries on his home continent of Europe have similar or much more draconian policies when it comes to terminating the residency of those who leave the state for an extended period.  In France for example, it's two years.

Hamilton exploits this bit of melodrama to launch a hatchet job on Israeli policies in Jerusalem replete with the usual mischaracterizations, errors of omission, and pernicious canards.  For example, Hamilton writes:

The United Nations, the United States and the European have criticized Israel's policies in Jerusalem, which include the eviction of Palestinians from homes whose ownership they cannot prove...

Hamilton attempts to paint these evictions as nefarious acts but of course, the reason these Palestinian Arabs "cannot prove" ownership of the homes from which they have been evicted (a marginal number) is because ownership has been definitively proven before the Israel Supreme Court by Jewish families with Title to the properties going back generations.  For Hamilton and Reuters, justice in a liberal democracy is anathema if it conflicts with their pro-Palestinian agenda.

In a nearly hysterical pitch, Hamilton parrots Palestinian claims:

The Palestinians say Israel's aim is to get rid of as many Palestinian residents as possible from East Jerusalem, to reduce their presence in its eastern districts and undermine the claim to half of the Holy City as capital of their future state.

And Hamilton cites a Haaretz article which ostensibly quotes an EU report which purportedly claims:

the Israeli-run municipality was depriving Palestinians of needed building permits...

Note that Hamilton is feeding readers a completely unsubstantiated third-hand claim while failing to provide any balance from an Israeli perspective.  For example, just two weeks ago, the paper Arutz Sheva reported:

The Jerusalem Municipality is plowing ahead with plans for construction of more than 5,000 housing units in Arab neighborhoods. These include the following:

• A master plan for the Tel Adasa neighborhood in northern Jerusalem, where 2,000 new housing units are planned.
• A master plan for the Arab a-Sawahara area for a new housing compound with 2,500 units that is currently being prepared for discussion at the local council and district council levels.
• A master plan for the Dir el-Amud and Al-Muntar areas in Beit Safafa in southeastern Jerusalem, currently in advanced planning stages.
• A construction plan for 172 housing units and public buildings at the Jabal Mukabar neighborhood, which has completed the mandatory waiting period and will soon come up for additional discussion and approval in the district council.
  

If Israel is trying to "get rid of as many Palestinian residents as possible from East Jerusalem", she's obviously doing a lousy job of it.  For Reuters however, facts are an inconvenient thing.

Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them 

-- lyrics from "Crosseyed and Painless", Talking Heads

Reuters dissembles for the Saudis

International sanctions have apparently not dented Iran's hopes of joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) by 2017.  However, there's one small catch: WTO rules require member states to abandon any boycotts they maintain against fellow member states.  And Israel, which Iran refuses to refer to by name (when not threatening her with obliteration), is a member of the WTO.  So when reporters asked the Iranian Commerce Minister whether Iran would be willing to drop its boycott of Israel to gain admittance into the WTO, he "declined to say".

Reuters then asserts:

Saudi Arabia dropped its boycott of Israel when it joined the WTO in 2005.

In fact, while the Saudis may have agreed to drop their boycott of Israel, it is more restrictive than ever:

A review of US Commerce Department data conducted by the Post found that the number of boycott-related and restrictive trade-practice requests received by American companies from Saudi Arabia has increased in each of the past two years, rising from 42 in 2006 to 65 in 2007 to 74 in 2008, signifying a jump of more than 76 percent.  The bulk of these requests were related to the companies' or products' relationship to Israel. Typically, Saudi officials ask foreign suppliers to affirm that any goods exported to the desert kingdom are not manufactured in Israel and do not contain any Israeli-made components... The Commerce Department figures reflect only those requests that have been officially reported to the US government.

Reuters really ought to catch up with the news.

Jeffrey Heller still suffering nightmares about Jewish property restored

In a story today about Jewish settlers challenging Israeli building inspectors in Kiryat Arba, Reuters' Jeffrey Heller and Allyn Fisher-Ilan hang an extreme left turn to this unrelated detour:

In East Jerusalem, scuffles erupted between Jewish settlers and Palestinians as the settlers cleaned part of a home an Israeli court has awarded them in what Palestinians say is part of a campaign to drive them out of the city. [italics, ours]

As we noted here and here, the homes in Jerusalem have been legally titled to the Jewish families, often for generations, and have been restored to their rightful owners by the Israel Supreme Court following years of legal battles.

In a transparent effort to belittle the authority of the ruling, Heller and Fisher-Ilan refer only to "an Israeli court" award -- rather than the Supreme Court -- and mischaracterize the Jewish owners as "settlers".  They then offer up an appeal to authority with a quote from UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon:

"Provocative actions such as these create inevitable tensions, undermine trust, often have tragic human consequences and make resuming negotiations and achieving a two state solution more difficult"

The fact is, the Court order is entirely justified within the framework of a liberal democracy.  And we wonder: would Ban ki-Moon or Jeffrey Heller or Allyn Fisher-Ilan allow squatters to usurp their homes and property so as to avoid "tensions"?  Somehow, we think not.

In the interest of full disclosure

Reuters correspondent Erika Solomon has previously demonstrated both an inattention to facts and a penchant for anti-Israel propaganda.  In a story today which has been picked up by newspapers around the world including the New York Times, Solomon writes of holiday malaise in Bethlehem due to a lack of "big-spending" foreign tourists.  Although Solomon acknowledges that Israel's "right-wing" prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has removed checkpoints and facilitated freedom of movement for Palestinians in the West Bank (also, Judea and Samaria) resulting in local economic growth of 7 percent this year, the thrust of her story is that things are just "not like the good old days" before the Palestinian intifada (violent uprising).

Solomon specifically targets the Israeli security barrier between Jerusalem and Bethlehem as the culprit responsible for spoiling the Christmas cheer:

The two cities are divided by just a few kilometres (miles) but also an Israeli wall that complicates the journey.

Indeed, Solomon devotes 6 paragraphs to this notion in which she interviews a "foreigner", Protestant Minister Doris Warrell, who laments that:

"I have a clear impression that the Israeli government would prefer that I not come here"

And that on a "very different trip to Bethlehem in 1994":

"People were happy and celebrating. There was a checkpoint, but you didn't have this huge visual impediment," she said, in reference to the West Bank barrier... As someone who wants peace for both Palestinians and Israelis, to see that wall there is just an indicator of how many steps back we've taken."

What Solomon fails to mention is that Warrell is not just another foreign tourist who happened to be on a shopping trip to Bethlehem on the lucky day when Solomon was interviewing.  Warrell lived near Bethlehem between 1994 and 1995 and is a professional fundraiser and political activist for "Palestine".  While there is nothing untoward in this role, we think readers are entitled to this information when assessing whether Warrell's comments are those of a neutral observer.

Note also, Solomon's meager sotto voce handling of Israel's rationale for the security barrier:

Israel says the barrier has largely succeeded in reducing violence. [10 words]

As compared to her loquacious parroting of the Palestinian line:

Palestinians, backed by a ruling from the World Court, see its construction on occupied West Bank territory as a land grab and a tool to consolidate Israeli control of Jerusalem. [30 words]

In fact, that "huge visual impediment" has saved countless lives.  Comparing the situation today with events prior to construction:

On Feb. 22, 2004, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades dispatched Muhammed Za'ul from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. He detonated a bomb strapped to his body on Egged bus No. 14A in Jerusalem, killing eight and wounding more than 60; 11 of them were high school students,

We have no nostalgia for the "cheer" of Christmas past.

Palestinians handing out sweets in celebration of a successful suicide bombing in Jerusalem.

Reuters blames Israel for Islamic terrorism on all fronts

Reuters publishes op-eds which -- though this is difficult to believe -- are more heavily biased and laden with propaganda than their usual "news" stories.  The media giant labels these op-eds "Analysis" so when you see that word emblazoned at the top of Reuters' webpage, it's generally advisable to prepare for the most extreme examples of one-sided claptrap a writer can possibly dream up.

Alistair Lyon, whose recent stories we have commented on here, here, and here now shifts his propaganda machine to Jordan where he leads with:

Jordanians share Palestinian despondency on peace

Ah yes, everyone is despondent that there is no peace in the Middle East except it seems, the Israelis.  (We cannot recall the last time Reuters did a story where they interviewed ordinary run-of-the-mill Israelis in Tel Aviv or Haifa about their aspirations for the region.  Must be challenging for one of Reuters' 100+ correspondents in the area to get to the coast).

Lyon runs through the litany of standard Reuters boilerplate banalities to portray that Arab "despondency".  There's despair:

Outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip, despair at the failure of years of U.S.-led Middle East peacemaking...

And feelings of futility:

Even those who once backed the "peace process" now view it as futile.

And of course, the ubiquitous Arab humiliation:

President Barack Obama's failure to secure his own demand that Israel stop building settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is seen here as a humiliating sign...

And desperation:

Jordanian politicians acknowledge that such a move is likely to be doomed to failure but sympathise with the desperation...

And according to Nawaf Tell, a Foreign Ministry official heading the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan:

"The frustration, the disappointment, was biggest with Jordan."

Well of course it was, since Jordan sits on land representing 78% of the original Palestine Mandate and has a population which is 60-70% Palestinian Arab.  You can bet that Jordanian government officials, who clearly do not want more Palestinians in their 89,000 square kilometers of territory (Israel possesses 22,000 sq km), will be disappointed in any outcome that prevents them from expelling the Palestinian Arabs that currently reside in the country.

And since:

"The Palestinians are cornered," said Taher al-Masri, a former Jordanian prime minister of Palestinian origin...

And according to Reuters' Lyon:

Israel has no interest in trading land for peace, only in endless negotiations that will buy it more time to tighten its grip on East Jerusalem and the West Bank...

There must also be the perennial Arab threat of violence:

"But with this Israeli government it is difficult. It is the perfect recipe for violence and deadlock in the peace process."

And the completely unsupported assertion that:

Perceived injustice to the Palestinians also fuels Islamic militancy as far away as Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Because after all, there is just so much evidence that the Pashtuns in Afghanistan fighting to overthrow the Karzai government are doing so on behalf of the Palestinian Arabs.

And finally, the utterly absurd conclusion:

"Every Arab leader has been telling the world, start with the Palestinian question and even terrorism can be contained."

Since it is common knowledge that Islamic jihad only dates back to 1967 when Israel recovered the territories from Jordan.

Why is this thing unlike the other?

In previous posts, we note Reuters repeated use of the racist misnomer "Arab East Jerusalem" to describe the eastern portion of the city.  The term originated over the period 1949 -- 1967 following the Arab Legion's conquest of the area and accompanying ethnic cleansing of thousands of Jews living there.  Today, approximately 42% of the population of the eastern part of the city is Jewish, yet Reuters continues to refer to the area with an inaccurate, anachronistic, and racist tag in a transparent effort to assign Title to the Arabs.

In a story on protests by secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews over the question of whether Israeli businesses should be allowed to open on the Jewish sabbath, Reuters writes:

Police said there was no violence as hundreds marched in the predominantly Jewish western part of Jerusalem...

Note the different treatment: there are significantly more Jews living in the eastern part of Jerusalem than there are Arabs living in the western part of Jerusalem yet Reuters refers to the former as "Arab East Jerusalem" and the latter as the "predominantly Jewish western part of Jerusalem".

Paging Dean Wright, we believe you have a problem. 


Photos published in Life Magazine in 1948 of Jewish Jerusalem
prior to, and following ethnic cleansing by the Arab Legion.

Photos Reuters will never show you

In previous posts, we have noted how Reuters cynically deploys photos which support the media company's Palestinian advocacy agenda; specifically, photos intended to elicit pity, photos which omit essential content or context, and photos that are incongruous with their capitions.

One of the recurring themes in Reuters reporting on the Middle East conflict is the hardship faced by Gazans purportedly due to the war with Israel in January and the ongoing embargo on certain products due to Israeli concerns that Palestinian terror groups will co-opt these for war materiel.  Readers are often treated to photos and stories of food shortages, closed businesses, and general deprivation.

Thanks to the Palestine Today website, we thought you might enjoy a few current scenes of "deprived" Gaza which Reuters (with their 100+ reporters and photographers in the area) have apparently missed .

In addition to the obvious abundance of food, clothes, and shoppers, note the use of items like digital scales, microwave ovens, and commercial refrigerators.

"Latest News Pictures"

Our lead above is how Reuters identifies current news photos on its website.  Reuters is well-known for employing photographs as a propaganda tool and captions which are incongruous with the accompanying photo.  Here, Reuters features a photograph of children playing in Gaza with the caption:

Palestinian children play in front of houses, destroyed during the three-week offensive Israel launched last December, on the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha in the northern Gaza Strip November 27, 2009. Muslims around the world celebrate Eid al-Adha to mark the end of the haj by slaughtering sheep, goats, cows and camels to commemorate Prophet Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail on God's command.

Note the non sequitur in the first sentence and the incongruity between the photo and the newsworthy subject of the caption which is the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.  The Gaza war took place nearly a year ago and is entirely unrelated to the topical portion of the caption.  Yet Reuters writers and editors deliberately conflate the two in an effort to sustain attention on the war and thus, advance their Palestinian advocacy agenda.