Tom Perry still peddling lie that Mahmoud Abbas committed to peace

Serial liar and Reuters propagandist Tom Perry still wants his readers to believe that, unlike Hamas, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is committed to peace with Israel:

Abbas strongly opposes any form of violence by the Palestinians and his security forces in the West Bank cooperate with Israeli security forces.

This is a running propaganda mantra appearing in scores of Perry's stories, one that is completely uncoupled from reality.  Here's Mahmoud Abbas, speaking to the Jordanian paper, al-Dustur, three years ago:

“At this present juncture, I am opposed to armed struggle because we cannot succeed in it, but maybe in the future things will be different.”

And here's Abbas offering Palestinian support for an Arab declaration of war against Israel just a few months ago:

"I have said more than once that if the Arabs want war - we are with them."

Having lied about Palestinian tactical goals, Perry then lies about Palestinian strategic goals:

But peace talks with Israel have, by his [Abbas] own admission, hit a dead end while Jewish settlements continue to expand in the West Bank, consuming territory seen by Palestinians as central to their goal of a viable state.

First, Jewish settlements have definitively not continued to expand in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"), "consuming territory".  Other than a handful of tiny outposts disclaimed and frequently destroyed by the Israeli government, settlements have not expanded laterally in many years.

Secondly, the Palestinian goal, often admitted in Arabic and occasionally in English, is not a "viable state" but a Judenrein one (ethnically cleansed of Jews), as a stepping stone to the demographic conquest (destruction) of Israel.

Perry further misleads readers with the notion that Abbas' attempt to wrestle away Israeli-won land, including the city of Jerusalem, by breaching the Oslo Peace Accords and applying for statehood to the UN reflects a "peaceful" approach to settling the conflict:

"Abbas made the most peaceful move you can imagine: going to the United Nations. And yet he got this brutal political response by Israel and the United States," the Palestinian official said. "That's also a negative message to the public about the productivity of this peaceful approach."

Then, there's the obligatory propaganda on the 2008-09 Gaza War between Hamas and Israel:

That war had a lopsided outcome in favor of Israel. Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed while 13 Israelis lost their lives.

So, approximately 1,400 Palestinians (over 700 of which were Hamas terrorists) were "killed", while 13 Israelis "lost their lives" -- undoubtedly due to tripping over their shoelaces while running toward shelters to escape the thousands of Hamas rockets raining down on them.

Perry finishes up by citing, uncritically, an official employing the Palestinian euphemism for the eradication of Israel:

"I think the prisoner swap comes at a good time. It reaffirms the power of resistance at a time when all Palestinian groups are adopting non-violent resistance," he said.

Sure, all Palestinian groups are adopting non-violent resistance.

Perry really ought to cut down on the Arab Kool-Aid.

Reuters draws moral equivalence between slaughter of Fogel family and Israeli attempts to identify murderers

A year ago, we would have perhaps begun this post with an expression of dismay in response to the zeal with which Reuters correspondents seek to demonize Israel and the deeply dishonest manner in which they go about it.  No longer.  After covering nearly 600 Reuters stories on the Middle East conflict and documenting the agency's compulsive contempt for truth and decency, nothing surprises us anymore.

So it is with a story written by Reuters correspondent Mohammed Assadi and edited by Jerusalem Bureau Chief Crispian Balmer on Israel's ongoing investigation into the murder of the Fogel family on March 11th.

Assadi, a proven liar and patent propagandist for the Palestinian Arabs, and Balmer, who could not bring himself to characterize the recent Jerusalem bus bombing as terrorism (though even the Palestinian Prime Minister described it as such), attempt to draw a moral equivalence between the unspeakable butchering of the Fogel family and attempts to discover the identity of the murderers.

(Reuters) - Israeli troops briefly detained about 100 women in the West Bank early on Thursday as part of an ongoing investigation into the murder last month of a young Jewish settler family, locals said.  The women, many of them seized with their husbands, were released after police took their fingerprints and DNA samples [...]

Israeli officials blamed Palestinians for the murders. No Palestinian group had claimed responsibility and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has described the killing as inhumane.
Israeli investigators have repeatedly descended on Awarta since the killing and the head of the village council, Qais Awwad, said troops entered houses overnight, taking away women aged between 20 to 80 in armored trucks to a detention center.

Actually, Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade was reported, by both the Washington Post and The Guardian, to have taken responsibility for the attack.

But the despicable journalistic chicanery in this story, which reflects Assadi and Balmer's lack of professional integrity as well as their irrationality, centers on the employ of a quote from one of the Palestinian women taken in for fingerprinting:

Sumayyah Shurrab, 30, said she had to take her 11-month old child with her. After fingerprint and DNA checks she was taken back to Awarta.
"They told me they wanted to compare them with finger prints they found in the settlement," she said.
"This was a very inhuman act," she added.

Got that? The fingerprinting and DNA check of a suspect in the mass murder of a family is an "inhuman act".  Whereas the mass murder itself is... er, according to Reuters citing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, merely "inhumane".

But it gets worse.  Abbas didn't say the murders were "inhumane".  He said they were "inhuman":

“This act was abominable, inhuman and immoral,” Mr. Abbas said in a rare interview with Israel Radio that was conducted in Arabic.

So Reuters has deliberately misquoted the Palestinian President in order to minimize the universally-recognized barbaric nature of the crime while featuring a quote from a suspect to suggest that it is the investigative practices that are actually barbaric.

A truly Orwellian inversion brought to you by the immoral media company more Palestinian than the Palestinians.

Reuters handles public relations for Palestinians

In an example of appalling bias and selective reporting known in propaganda studies as card stacking, Reuters correspondent Dan Williams rushes in to provide PR for Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas as he feigns horror at the slaughter of a Jewish family over the weekend:

(Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday the killing of a Jewish settler couple and three of their children was "inhuman," telling Israel he was determined to help catch those responsible.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had complained that Abbas's administration insufficiently condemned the attack and even encouraged such bloodshed through "incitement" in official Palestinian forums.
"This was inhuman and immoral. We deplore this incident, without a doubt. It is an abomination," Abbas told Israel Radio.
"I can't imagine a four-month-old child murdered," he said, speaking in Arabic. "Children, of all things ... Any person who has a sense of humanity would be pained and driven to tears by such sights."

At the same time Abbas was crying crocodile tears for the children who had their throats cut, his political party was officially celebrating the murder of 37 Israelis, including 13 children, with the naming of a town square after the Palestinian terrorist who led the attack in 1978.

Two years ago, Abbas personally congratulated the family of Palestinian Samir Kuntar for his release in a prisoner exchange with Israel.  Kuntar murdered three Israelis including a father and his 4-year-old daughter whose skull Kuntar had crushed with the butt of a gun.

While Williams is quick to parrot Abbas' purported sympathy for murdered children, the Reuters correspondent is oddly silent on Abbas' long record of sympathy for Palestinian child-murderers.

The myth of the two-state solution

Erika Solomon of Reuters reports on Israel's efforts to call attention to ongoing Palestinian incitement to violence, a violation of the latter's obligations under the Road Map peace plan.  Solomon writes:

Fatah, the dominant force behind the Palestinian Authority, calls its legislative body the "Revolutionary Council." Its charter still does not recognize Israel, even as its leaders promote a two-state solution and peace with the Jewish state.

On its surface, this statement appears relatively even-handed but is Solomon's assertion that Fatah's leaders "promote a two-state solution and peace with the Jewish state" actually true?

At a celebration to honor Yasser Arafat's memory in 2007, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas:

urged a throng of 50,000 Palestinians to re-aim their guns at the “occupation” (i.e., Israel) instead of turning them on each other: “Fatah,” he promised, “will not give up our principles and we have said that rifles should be directed against the occupation.... We have a legitimate right to direct our guns against Israeli occupation....”

Those "principles" Abbas insists Fatah will never surrender call for:

armed struggle until the Zionist entity is wiped out and Palestine is liberated.

Not exactly the two-state Shangri-La to which Solomon suggests the Palestinian leadership is committed.

In 2008, Abbas:

revealed that his current feint at negotiations with Israel is — like his mentor Arafat’s similar tactics — a strategic pause at best. He explained to a Jordanian newspaper that he was not pursuing “the armed struggle” at “this present juncture” only “because we can’t succeed in it.” He was quick to add, though, that “maybe in the future things will be different.”

More recently, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu declared that any peace settlement with the Palestinian Arabs must entail acceptance by the Palestinians of Israel as a Jewish state.  Here's a video clip of Abbas' position on the matter:



Given the Charters of Fatah and the PLO as well as Mahmoud Abbas' continuing truculence and refusal to accept Israel as a Jewish sovereign (as called-for in the UN Partition Plan), what basis we wonder, does Erika Solomon have for asserting that Palestinian leaders "promote a two-state solution and peace with the Jewish state"?

Reuters continues to run interference for Mahmoud Abbas

Reuters continues to peddle the fiction that PA President Mahmoud Abbas:

... broke off negotiations with the previous Israeli government in December 2008 in protest at its offensive in the Gaza Strip

As we've noted several times, Reuters' own stories from the period reveal that the Palestinian Authority had effectively terminated negotiations with Israel in the Fall of 2008 (prior to the Gaza war) following 1) Abbas' refusal of Ehud Olmert's offer of 97% of Judea and Samaria (also, the "West Bank"), 2) an unrequited demand by the PA that the Quartet guarantee that negotiations result in a Palestinian state along the 1949 Armistice Lines including the eastern part of Jerusalem, and 3) imminent elections in Israel.

Far from "protesting" Israel's defensive operation in Gaza, Abbas almost certainly supported and cooperated with Israel in the effort to rid the region of Hamas.

Israeli soldier killed by PA officer/Fatah member; Reuters suggests killer is a "renegade"

As we have documented a number of times, Fatah -- PA President Mahmoud Abbas' party -- remains committed in word and deed to armed violence if it doesn't get all of its demands met in negotiations with Israel.  So why would Reuters consider the latest Fatah-linked murder of an Israeli an anomaly?

Some Israelis say Abbas's forces cannot be trusted to prevent attacks on Jews, especially by renegade Fatah members [italics, ours]

Abbas makes demands and misrepresents the facts; Reuters parrots

In a story on the latest demands by PA President Mahmoud Abbas for restarting peace talks with Israel, Reuters correspondent Dave Graham writes:

Abbas said Israel would need to accept its June 1967 borders as the basis for any land swaps.

Graham uncritically paraphrases Abbas in referring to the "1967 borders" but in reality of course, there are no 1967 borders.  There are only armistice lines drawn on a map in green ink in 1949 (hence, the "Green Line") which represent the geographical divide between the Israeli army and the Arab Legion where fighting halted during Israel's War of Independence.  This line served to separate opposing forces until the Jordanian Army attacked Israel in the subsequent 1967 War.  In short, the 1949 armistice lines have never been recognized as an international border.

Graham leaps from uncritically paraphrasing Abbas to uncritically parroting him in the very next sentence:

"These are not preconditions, they are requirements in the road map. If they are not prepared to do that, it means they don't want a political solution," he told the newspaper.

In fact, the Road Map peace plan -- which has long been a dead letter -- does not require Israel "to accept its June 1967 borders" or more accurately, the 1949 armistice lines.  What the Road Map actually stipulates (in Phase III) is this:

Second international conference: Convened by Quartet, in consultation with the parties, at beginning of 2004 to endorse agreement reached on an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and formally to launch a process with the active, sustained, and operational support of the Quartet, leading to a final, permanent status resolution in 2005, including on borders, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements; and, to support progress toward a comprehensive Middle East settlement between Israel and Lebanon and Israel and Syria, to be achieved as soon as possible. 

In other words, provisional borders between Israel and a nascent Palestinian state were to be negotiated and agreed between the parties and subsequently endorsed at an international conference hosted by the Quartet at which time the matter of permanent borders would be taken up along with the issues of Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, and progress towards peace agreements between Israel and Lebanon, Israel and Syria.

A reality quite different than the false assertion issued by Abbas and parroted blindly by Reuters.

Tom Perry slipping in assertions which have no basis in reality

An assertion:

is commonly used in advertising and modern propaganda. An assertion is an enthusiastic or energetic statement presented as a fact, although it is not necessarily true. They often imply that the statement requires no explanation or back up, but that it should merely be accepted without question.

In a story on the arrest of Mohammed Khatib for his role in organizing illegal and violent protests in Israel, Reuters correspondent Tom Perry writes:

The Fatah party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who opposes violence against Israel, wants more "popular resistance" against Israeli occupation and West Bank settlement policies.

This is not the first time Perry has issued the completely unsubstantiated assertion that Abbas (and Fatah) opposes violence.  Where is Perry's evidence for this notion?  He has none to offer.  In fact, Abbas has consistently voiced support (in Arabic) for Palestinian violence aimed at Israel:

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

Fatah dictates the same in both its Constitution and decrees:

Another resolution stated that Fatah will not give up the armed struggle until all the descendants of those claiming to be of Palestinian Arab origin can live inside Israel.

Perry is keen to disseminate unsupported assertions but conspicuously silent on matters of record.

More Reuters errata

 Reuters' Ari Rabinovitch tells us:

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been stalled since late 2008 when Israel launched a three-week assault on Gaza in which 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.

No.  Peace talks have been stalled since two months earlier when PA President Mahmoud Abbas walked away from the table after refusing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's extraordinary offer of 97 percent of the West Bank (also, Judea and Samaria) for a Palestinian state and the PA unsuccessfully bid to have the Quartet dictate that a Palestinian state be established on the 1949 armistice lines with "East Jerusalem" as its capital.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has insisted Israel completely stop settlement building in occupied land before the talks can resume, and has rejected a temporary construction freeze ordered by Israel in November as insufficient.

No.  Abbas has insisted that Israel stop building on all land beyond the 1949 armistice lines, including private land that had been owned by Jews going back to before 1949.

Reuters misleads (again) on the cause of suspended peace talks

In a previous post, we noted Reuters erroneous assertion that peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel under former PM Ehud Olmert had broken down as a result of the Gaza War last January.  We linked to two previous Reuters articles and a Wall Street Journal story demonstrating that in fact, the PA led by its President, Mahmoud Abbas, had effectively terminated negotiations with Israel as early as the Fall of 2008 following Abbas' refusal to accept Olmert's offer of a Palestinian state on 97 percent of the West Bank (also, Judea and Samaria) and the PA's inability to persuade the Quartet to specify that a Palestinian state be established on all territory beyond the 1949 armistice lines with the eastern part of Jerusalem as its capital.

In a story appearing on its website today, Reuters' Allyn Fisher-Ilan repeats the canard:

Abbas suspended talks with Netanyahu's predecessor over the Gaza war. 

As demonstrated above, this is a false reading of the historical record; the Gaza War was not the precipitating factor leading to a collapse in talks between the parties.  Negotiations had failed well before the war and it is likely that Abbas even supported and cooperated with Israeli efforts to end Hamas rule in Gaza.

Reuters latest "FACTBOX" riddled with inaccuracies, propaganda

Yes, it's time for another FALLACYBOX "FACTBOX" from Reuters which fancies anything it writes under this presumptuous banner will go unchallenged.  This time, the topic is Israel-Palestinian peace talks which Reuters asserts have been "stalled since a three-week Gaza war in which 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed".  Reuters is suggesting here that the war (and by implication Israel) is to blame for the failure (or suspension) of negotiations between the parties and injects one of its many boilerplate references to the disparate number of casualties to drive home its point.  

In reality of course, peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians were effectively dead months prior to the war following PA President Abbas' rejection of Israeli PM Olmert's offer of 97 percent of the "West Bank" (also, Judea and Samaria) and the right of return for thousands of Palestinians to Israel because in Abbas' words, "the [negotiating] gaps were wide".  

The Palestinians also wanted the Quartet to issue a formal statement that a Palestinian state be "set up on 1967-occupied lands with East Jerusalem as its capital" and to "present this statement to the new U.S. administration to pursue the peace process from there", which of course, did not occur.

Reuters then writes:

Peace talks never resumed after the war Israel said it launched to stop rocket fire by militants from the Islamist Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Here, Reuters attempts to disparage the obvious casus belli for the war by framing it as "Israel said" while substituting their own sanitized term "militants" for Israel's clearly stated reference to "terrorists". 

While Reuters labors to report Israel's objectives in simple declarative fashion, the agency has no similar difficulty conveying putative Palestinian goals: 

At issue in the dispute is a Palestinian quest for statehood in territory Israel captured in a 1967 war, with a capital in Jerusalem...

Following 40+ years of Palestinian rejectionism on this point, including the most recent rejection by Abbas noted above, one would think Reuters would be somewhat more circumspect in reporting this as fact.

Reuters continues:

[Jerusalem] a city Israel sees as its capital and has widened to include east Jerusalem and West Bank land, moves never recognized internationally.

This is a bit like saying the UK has widened London to include Buckingham Palace.  The eastern portion of Jerusalem encompasses the Old City of Jerusalem and thus, is Jerusalem.

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.

Reuters runs interference for Palestinians

In a story appearing on its website this morning, Reuters reports that Israeli Environment Minister Gilad Erdan told Israel radio that if the Palestinians were to unilaterally declare a state, Israel:

should also consider ... passing a law to annex some of the settlements

For the Palestinian mercenaries advocates at Reuters, this suggestion amounts to a declaration of war by Israel so they assemble an army of 5 writers and an editor to defend and advise the Palestinian Arabs.

While talk of unilateral actions on both sides could easily be avoided were PA President Mahmoud Abbas to accept Israel's offer of unconditional negotiations, he has steadfastly refused.  Reuters however, cannot bear to acknowledge Palestinian intransigence so their correspondents twist themselves into knots in an effort to relieve the Palestinians of responsibility:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said negotiations cannot resume until Israel halts settlement expansion.

There's that prickly "cannot" again -- a bit like insisting one cannot pay his taxes because the local IRS office is too far away.  For Reuters, the Palestinians are never accountable for their own behavior.

Reuters is then good enough to advise the Palestinians on how they might go about achieving statehood:

Recent examples suggest they might take the same route as Israel's founders in 1947 and simply seek U.N. support for a resolution calling for statehood, which is what East Timor did to become the first new state of the 21st century in 2002.

We wonder: if the Palestinians chose this route and in response, Israel annexed the settlements around Jerusalem and chased the remaining Arabs off the land as the Arab Legion did to the Jews living in Jerusalem in 1948, would Reuters spend the next 60 years referring to the area as "Jewish East Jerusalem" (as they currently refer to the area with the racist epithet "Arab East Jerusalem")?  Somehow, we think not.

As an alternative path to statehood, Reuters suggests:

Or they might declare independence without going to the U.N. as Kosovo did when it became the world's newest state in 2008, knowing it could not win Security Council endorsement because of a threatened Russian veto, but would receive quick recognition by most NATO and European Union governments.

Reuters fails to inform its readers that the Palestinians declared a state over twenty years ago but owing to the fact that they did not control the territory they claimed (some of the land was actually in Israel proper), the effort went nowhere.  Moreover, and with great irony, the Palestinians relied on UN resolution 181 to affirm their "state" which they had always rejected as it provided the legal basis for the state of Israel.

Apparently, neither the Palestinians nor Reuters believe that sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Reuters' doors of perception

In a story appearing on their website today, Reuters characterizes Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, respectively:

A moderate supported by the West, Abbas accused Washington of retreating from its demand for a freeze on Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank before peace talks resume.

Israeli officials say Netanyahu wants to avoid interfering in Palestinian politics. But some commentators say the right-wing Israeli may be deliberately ignoring Abbas's threat, seeing it as just another bid to press Israel to halt settlement construction.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, himself a settler heading an ultranationalist party, said he did not take Abbas's threat seriously.

Note the skewed political tagging of the three leaders and see our post just below about Mahmoud Abbas for a sense of Reuters' altered perception of reality.

Reuters publishes "FACTBOX" on Mahmoud Abbas; omits a few salient facts

When an individual, country, or event has been making recent news, Reuters will often publish what it headlines as a "FACTBOX" providing what it deems as important biographical and/or background info on the subject. With President Mahmoud Abbas threatening to quit his leadership role in the Palestinian Authority, Reuters seeks to enlighten us with "key facts" on Abbas' early life, political career, and accomplishments. We learn for example, that:

Also known by his nickname Abu Mazen, Abbas, 74, is a veteran of the Palestinian struggle for statehood.

The notion of Palestinian "struggle" has little to do of course, with the desire for statehood but is actually an Arab Muslim euphemism for the effort to exterminate the Jewish people:

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.

-- Fatah Constitution

Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah's victory is realised.

-- Hamas Charter

And "nickname" in Reuters' parlance is a euphemism for a nom de guerre, which together with the effort to eradicate a Jewish national presence in the Middle East more accurately encapsulates Abbas' lifetime endeavors including:

1) writing a doctoral thesis denying the Holocaust and claiming collaboration between Zionists and the Nazis,
2) financing of the Palestinian terrorist attack and murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics,
3) refusing, as per his obligations under the RoadMap, to end incitement against Israel and Jews,
4) calling for the continuation of armed violence against Israel until the Palestinians get everything they want.

None of this very pertinent information is provided by Reuters in its sanitized bio of Abbas.

By contrast, here's how Reuters characterizes Israeli FM Avigdor Lieberman with the same "FACTBOX" format:

Israel's next foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has rung alarm bells abroad with his policy toward Israel's Arab citizens

Lieberman, leader of the far-right Yisrael Beitenu party...

The Soviet-born ultranationalist...

He questions the loyalties of Israel's Arab citizens and his anti-Arab rhetoric has won a large following beyond his Russian-speaking base. He once suggested Egypt's Aswan Dam might be bombed and last year he said the president of Israel's Arab peace partner could "go to hell".

Note the scaremongering, negative stereotyping, and inclusion of misleading and out-of-context quotations which Reuters scrupulously avoids in its comparatively glowing portrait of Abbas.

We think Reuters ought to spend some time reflecting on the transparent bias in its biographical reporting and in the spirit of journalistic integrity, consider conforming to the rules and regulations spelled out in its own Handbook of Journalism.

More broken boilerplate

In a post on October 23, we noted how Reuters' Alistair Lyon paints Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as intemperate and intransigent in his negotiating position while the Palestinian position is presented as rational and reasonable. That view is obviously so entrenched at Reuters, they decide to recycle it today:

Netanyahu has, with evident distaste, bowed to U.S. pressure to talk of negotiating the creation of a Palestinian state, but only if it is demilitarized and if Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Here's a video of Netanyahu speaking at Bar Ilan University on June 14, 2009 where he called for a Palestinian state (begin 8:27):



The spitting and nausea is obvious, yes?

Now compare with PA President Mahmoud Abbas speaking to the Palestinian Youth Parliament on April 27, 2009:



Cool and conciliatory, yes?

Just just peace

In a story today on a rare public appearance and speech by PA President Mahmoud Abbas before his constituency, Reuters' Douglas Hamilton is apparently disheartened that Abbas has not done more for the Palestinian Arabs:

"But Abbas may have left it very late. During his tenure there has been no progress toward a just peace with Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state."

Well, no progress aside from the extraordinary offer made to Abbas by former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert. From the linked WaPo article:

In our meeting Wednesday, Abbas acknowledged that Olmert had shown him a map proposing a Palestinian state on 97 percent of the West Bank -- though he complained that the Israeli leader refused to give him a copy of the plan. He confirmed that Olmert "accepted the principle" of the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees -- something no previous Israeli prime minister had done -- and offered to resettle thousands in Israel. In all, Olmert's peace offer was more generous to the Palestinians than either that of Bush or Bill Clinton; it's almost impossible to imagine Obama, or any Israeli government, going further. Abbas turned it down. "The gaps were wide," he said.

We agree that Abbas may have left it very late; we're just curious how Douglas Hamilton would define a "just peace" and what place his characterization has in a "take no side" news story.

The Heller dessert topping

Following the numerous errors of commission and errors of omission which went into his cake-baking effort earlier today, Reuters' Jeffrey Heller seeks to ice his cake with a report on Binyamin Netanyahu's policy speech at the opening session of the Israeli parliament.

After quoting Netanyahu as saying:

"There is no alternative to Palestinian leaders showing courage by recognizing the Jewish state. This has been and remains the true key to peace",

Heller retorts on behalf of the Palestinian Arabs with:

"He [Netanyahu] made no mention of a main issue holding up a return to talks on Palestinian statehood -- building in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank that Palestinians say must stop in accordance with a 2003 peace "road map."

While Heller takes note of that which he believes was conspicuously missing from Netanyahu's comments, we take note of what was conspicuously missing from Heller's editorial, namely, that the Palestinian Arabs have failed to meet their commitments under the same Road Map plan. As a reminder, the Road Map stipulates that at the outset of Phase I:

All official Palestinian institutions end incitement against Israel,

and

Rebuilt and refocused Palestinian Authority security apparatus begins sustained, targeted, and effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure. This includes commencing confiscation of illegal weapons and consolidation of security authority, free of association with terror and corruption.

Not only has the above not occurred but at its most recent party congress, PA President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party officially endorsed the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades as the "military wing" of the party. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is a terrorist group designated as such by the US, Europe, and Canada.

Heller also continues to insist (on behalf of the Palestinians) that Jewish settlement-building is "holding up" peace talks but as we noted the obvious here, the decision on whether or not to return to negotiations rests entirely with Mahmoud Abbas. No one and no thing is preventing him from doing so.

If it's the weekend, there must be a football match

Once again, Reuters writers resort to banal labeling of, natch, only Israeli leaders. In a report today which cites Egyptian President Mubarak urging Israel to enter into "final status" negotiations with the Palestinians, Reuters' Alastair Sharp writes:

"Netanyahu, a right-winger who took office in March, has made clear he does not wish to repeat any such offers that Olmert may have made."

No similar tagging (in fact, no political tagging at all) is attached to either Mubarak or PA President Mahmoud Abbas, both of whom are mentioned several times in the story. Yet, Abbas' status as a political reactionary is plain to see with his refusal to enter into peace negotiations with Israel failing an end to all building in the disputed territories (including the eastern portion of Jerusalem) and apparently, a new demand that:

"Israel must honor agreements on borders and Jerusalem that he [Abbas] says its previous government made in talks last year."

Oh my; intransigence and further demands from that political "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas.

In future, Reuters may wish to think about leveling the playing field in their match reporting.

Missing ingredients

Compare this paragraph:

To all but the terminally obtuse, the chances of a deal right now are about zero. Even if Obama could deliver a freeze on Israeli settlement building in the West Bank that Abbas has again demanded and Netanyahu has again refused, Miller says, the fact remains that the Palestinian national movement is divided and Israel "still doesn't know what price it's prepared to pay" for peace,

with this one:

To all but the interminably obtuse, the prospects of a conflict-ending solution between this Israeli government and this Palestinian Authority are slim to none. And the way to get there (if there is a way) isn’t through the confidence-building measures that the administration has pursued since the spring. Even if Obama were to succeed in delivering these (a partial settlements freeze and partial normalization by the Arabs toward Israel), it would likely have little effect on the galactic task at hand: negotiating an agreement on borders, security, Jerusalem and refugees between a divided Palestinian national movement (a Palestinian Humpty Dumpty, really) and an Israel that still doesn’t know what price it’s prepared to pay to end its conflict with the Palestinians.

The first paragraph was written by Reuters' Douglas Hamilton paraphrasing Aaron David Miller in Politico. (Hamilton doesn't link). The second is drawn from Miller's original piece. While the theme of Reuters' story is the pessimism surrounding the ostensible failure of early round discussions between Abbas, Obama and Netanyahu, notice that Hamilton chooses to omit the portion of the Miller quote which argues that even if it were possible for the parties in power to end the conflict (which Miller doubts), Obama's demand for a settlement freeze is not the way to Oz.

Miller's point is that the issue of Jewish settlements is actually inconsequential (we would say a red herring) in achieving a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Which, while Reuters has been elsewise pounding the table here, here, here, and here, is exactly what Netanyahu has been saying all along.