The curly-haired perfume peddler has another go

The last time we visited Reuters correspondent Crispian (curly-haired) Balmer (peddler of aromatic resins), he was exhausting the "D" entries in his thesaurus in an effort to sell us on the notion that the Palestinians are positively desperate for their own state -- even as he failed to acknowledge the simple truth that the Palestinians could have their purportedly longed-for state tomorrow if they would only accept UN resolution 181 which formally created a Palestinian Arab state and a Jewish state 63 years ago.

Balmer now tries his hand at some "analysis", Reuters parlance for an op-ed, dredging up a host of Reuters boilerplate propaganda in the process.  Focusing on the question of whether Israel's relationship with the United States is on the rocks, Balmer cites the reaction of Palestinian Arabs and Middle East diplomats to the incentives reportedly promised to the Israelis in exchange for their agreement to extend a building moratorium in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"):

The Palestinians scoff at the idea that the United States might be losing its ardor for Israel, saying the U.S. promise of inducements, including $3 billion worth of fighter jets, is evidence of the Jewish state's privileged status in Washington.
The enticements have also raised eyebrows in the United States, with analysts doubting the wisdom of offering Israel incentives to get it to introduce a temporary halt to settlement building that is deemed to be illegal by the World Court.

Note how Balmer tosses in as a red herring, the opinion of the World Court, something the analysts he cites do not actually mention and an opinion that is entirely advisory and therefore non-binding on the issue of the legality of Jewish settlements (League of Nations and United Nations resolutions permit Jews to settle anywhere in the original Palestine Mandate).

Balmer then rehashes the argument made back in April by his colleague at Reuters, Bernd Debusmann, that resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict is essential to American military interests in the Middle East and beyond:

At a deeper level, the on-going sense of uncertainty in Israeli circles is fueled by evolving U.S. military objectives.
General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, launched a debate in March when he said that Israeli-Palestinian tensions had had an "enormous" impact in the Muslim world where his troops were based.
Petraeus said the Middle East peace process had to keep moving forward to help the U.S. military position -- an assertion quickly challenged by Israeli rightists who denied any such linkage.
His stance explains why Obama has put enormous emphasis on restarting the stalled peace talks despite obvious pessimism on both the Palestinian and Israeli side, not to mention at home.

As we noted at the time, Debusmann conveniently omitted several items Patraeus indicated were far more critical to American interests than resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict, including for example, preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons which as we now know, thanks to WikiLeaks, has also been the priority for the Arabs themselves.

Moreover, Obama had been pushing madly for a Palestinian state long before Patraeus filed his report in March of this year (Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas was the first foreign leader Obama phoned after taking office, and pressure from the White House to freeze Jewish settlements began publicly in May of 2009).  Thus, Balmer's suggested linkage between Patraeus' testimony and Obama's obsessive drive for a Palestinian state is specious.

The larger point, that US-Israeli relations may be suffering, is clear enough but the reason is also clear: this is the first American administration in over 40 years that has held peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Arabs hostage to an Israeli concession to completely halt building in its capital city.  A strategy that has failed to bring a Palestinian state and simultaneously alienated 97 percent of the Israeli public.

Now, that's something to fret about.

The opinions expressed are his own

When it comes to the Middle East conflict, Arabist and Reuters columnist Bernd Debusmann has a nasty habit of both cherry-picking and blatantly misrepresenting history.  In his latest effort to demonize and paint the Jewish state as a "liability" to US interests, Debusmann focuses on American aid to Israel (a favorite talisman for the anti-Israel crowd) with the suggestion that whereas reducing this sum might work as a lever to get Israel to "behave", cuts are unlikely to occur due to Congressional support for the Jewish state and of course, the all-powerful Israel lobby.  To produce a cogent argument, Debusmann needs to establish first that Israel is indeed a liability to the US and here he turns to remarks by General David Patraeus:

Or is lack of progress on making peace with the Palestinians turning Israel into a liability for its long-term benefactor. In March, in written testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Central Command chief General David Petraeus, listed "insufficient progress towards a comprehensive Middle East peace" as number five on a list of 15 threats to U.S. national security.

Debusmann doesn't cite of course, numbers 1 through 4 on Patraeus' threat list which include, in priority sequence, the Islamic insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the pursuit of nuclear weapons and terrorism sponsoring activities of Iran, the situation in Iraq, and anarchy in Yemen.  Nor does Debusmann mention that at a subsequent press conference, Patraeus called attention to these threats and noted that they included, "a whole bunch of extremist organizations, some of which by the way deny Israel’s right to exist.  There’s a country that has a nuclear program who denies that the Holocaust took place.”

In fact, although all of the situations identified by Patraeus as national security threats are occurring in countries that are hostile to Israel, none of the issues are directly related to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs and none would resolve if the Israeli-Arab conflict were to magically end tomorrow.

Indeed, in a subsequent letter to Congressman Buck McKeon, who had asked for further clarification of his views on Israel, Patraeus wrote:

the issues that keep us up at night are not Israeli-Palestinian relations but rather “militant groups, hostile states, and weapons of mass destruction," along with "the instability in South Asia, the activities and policies of the Iranian regime, the situation in Iraq and the growth of al-Qaeda [in the Arabian Peninsula] in Yemen.”

Debusmann attempts to quantify his view that Israel is a liability to the US by facilely summing foreign aid contributions to Israel over the last 60 years:

Since the end of the Second World War, Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid, according to the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of Congress. Since 1985, aid to Israel has run at around $3 billion a year, a sizable sum for a country with a population roughly equal to that of New York City.   

But Debusmann would make a lousy accountant for while he glances back at Israel as a presumed liability on America's balance sheet, he fails to account for Israel's ongoing value as an asset to the US.  From an article appearing in BusinessWeek this month:

Under the 2010 U.S. budget, about $75 billion, $65 billion and $3.25 billion will be spent on military operations and aid in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan during this fiscal year, respectively. Israel will receive $3 billion, in military aid only. There is no economic aid to Israel, other than loan guarantees that continue to be repaid in full and on time...

First, it’s important to remember that about 70 percent of the $3 billion aid must be used by Israel to purchase American military equipment. This provides real support for U.S. high- tech defense jobs and contributes to maintaining our industrial base. This helps the U.S. stay at the very top in the manufacturing of our own cutting-edge military munitions, aircraft, vehicles, missiles and virtually every defensive and offensive weapon in the U.S. arsenal -- with the added contribution of Israel’s renowned technical know-how.

Second, the U.S. and Israel are jointly developing state- of-the-art missile defense capabilities in the David’s Sling and Arrow 3 systems. These two technologies build on the already successful Arrow 2, jointly developed by our two countries, which is already providing missile defense security to Israel and U.S. civilians and ground troops throughout the region. The knowledge the U.S. gains from these efforts also has a positive multiplier effect on applications to other U.S. military and non-military uses and U.S. jobs.

Third, given Israel’s strategic location on the Mediterranean, with access to the Red Sea and other vital international shipping and military lanes of commerce and traffic, it is critically important to the U.S. that Israel continues to serve as a port of call for our troops, ships, aircraft and intelligence operations.

Israel also has permitted the U.S. to stockpile arms, fuel, munitions and other supplies on its soil to be accessed whenever America needs them in the region.

Fourth, America’s special relationship with Israel provides the U.S. with real-time, minute-to-minute access to one of the best intelligence services in the world: Israel’s. With Israeli agents gathering intelligence and taking action throughout the Middle East and, literally, around the world, regarding al- Qaeda, Hezbollah, Iran and Hamas, among others, the U.S. receives invaluable information about anti-U.S. and terrorist organizations and regimes.

Fifth, imagine the additional terrible cost in U.S. blood, and the hundreds of billions more of American taxpayer dollars, if Saddam Hussein had developed nuclear weapons, or if Syria possessed them.

Then remember that it was Israel that destroyed the almost- completed nuclear reactor at Osirak, Iraq, in 1981 and Syria’s nuclear facility under construction at Deir-ez-Zor in 2007.

And think about the many operations that Israel’s Defense Forces and intelligence agents have undertaken to foil, slow and disrupt Iran’s efforts to develop a nuclear weapons capability. A nuclear-armed Iran would threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans in the region, all of Iran’s Arab neighbors, the world’s largest oil supplies and those who rely on that oil. It also would provide anti-U.S. terrorists with access to the most lethal Iranian technology and probably set off a nuclear arms race in the region.

For about 2 percent of what the U.S. spends in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan this year, Americans can take pride in the return on our investment in aid to Israel.

And whereas Debusmann focuses obsessively on US aid to Israel as an instrument of foreign policy, he omits any mention of the more than $50 billion in petrodollars the Wahhabi Saudis collect annually from American consumers.  $50 billion that goes, in part, to funding the militant Islamist movements and terrorist facilitation that appear on General Patraeus' list of national security threats and led to the deaths of 3,000 Americans on 9/11.  $50 billion that finances Arab largess to former government officials, academic chairs, and journalists who lobby, advocate, and generally carry water for the Arab states at the epicenter of those threats. 

All facts to consider while Debusmann is doing his "wishful thinking" about the US cutting off foreign assistance to Israel.

Selective amnesia, Part III

Continuing with our analysis of Reuters' mendacious "Timeline: Path to new Israel-Palestinian talks", we move into the last two decades of events Reuters considers key to understanding the history of the Middle East conflict.

1988 - After a year of Intifada (uprising), exiled PLO leader Yasser Arafat, widely acknowledged as speaking for Palestinians, renounces "terrorism" and accepts Israel's right to exist.

As is their custom when referring to Palestinian violence, writers for Reuters bracket the word terrorism in scarequotes so as to express their scorn for the notion that suicide bombings in Israeli restaurants and discotheques could reasonably be classed as, "the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes" (definition of terrorism from our desktop dictionary).  Reuters has no difficulty however, employing the term terrorism in unqualified fashion when citing references to Israeli actions.  This asymmetric handling betrays Reuters partisanship in the conflict and also represents a violation of the Reuters Handbook of Journalism.

Reuters continues:

2003 - U.S. President George W. Bush sponsors the "road map to peace," binding both sides to curbing violence and Israel to halting Jewish settlement on occupied land.

The Road Map does not simply bind both sides to curbing violence.  It specifically stipulates that:

Palestinians declare an unequivocal end to violence and terrorism and undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks on Israelis anywhere.
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. 

Needless to say, the Palestinians have failed or refused to comply with nearly all of the above.

Reuters then completely mischaracterizes the nature and outcome of negotiations between former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas:

December 2008 - After year of desultory talking, Abbas quits negotiations when Olmert launches offensive on Hamas-run Gaza.

Apparently, Reuters correspondent Bernd Debusmann and Bureau Chief Alastair Macdonald were catching some winks when Olmert offered Abbas 97 percent of the West Bank (also, Judea and Samaria) during these "desultory" negotiations.  And talks effectively ended when Abbas refused the offer -- not as a result of the war in Gaza.

Finally:

March 5 - Conscious of Palestinian public frustration, Abbas accuses Israel of trying to sabotage peace process by provoking protests at flashpoint Jerusalem mosque. Dozens hurt in clashes.

We examine Reuters distorted reporting and dissemination of Abbas' agitprop here.

Selective amnesia, Part II

In yesterday's post, we noted how Reuters' omission of essential historical detail in its "Timeline: Path to new Israel-Palestinian talks" leaves readers misinformed while facilitating the lie that in 1948, Israel was left with 78 percent of the "land [Palestine Mandate]".

Moving along the Timeline, Reuters correspondent Bernd Debusmann and Bureau Chief Alastair Macdonald continue with the publication of outright falsehoods: 

1967 - In what it calls pre-emptive strikes on Arab states, Israeli forces seize rest of British-mandate Palestine, taking West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan and Gaza Strip from Egypt. Israel captures Golan Heights from Syria.

Israel did not (and did not claim to) preemptively attack Jordan, Syria, nor any of the other Arab states that contributed troops and arms to the Six-Day War in 1967.  Only the Egyptian air force was initially struck by Israel following Egypt's casus belli when it closed the Straits of Tiran, expelled UN peacekeeping forces from the Sinai Peninsula, and massed 1,000 tanks and nearly 100,000 soldiers on the Israeli border.  Jordan entered the war by shelling Jewish communities in Jerusalem, and Syria did the same -- along with air raids -- in northern Israel.

Having misrepresented the relative proportion of Palestine controlled by Israel in 1948, it is a short order for Debusmann and Macdonald to assert this bald-faced lie:

[In 1967] Israeli forces seize rest of British-mandate Palestine

Of course if Israel had "seized" the rest of British-mandate Palestine, she would have controlled all of Jordan!  Apparently, neither history nor geography is Reuters strong suit.

On to the modern era tomorrow...

Selective amnesia, Part I

In the right-hand column of our homepage, we highlight a quote from Sir Harold Evans, a brilliant British journalist with a long, distinguished career and former editor of The Sunday Times of London:

Propaganda is persuading people to make up their minds while withholding some of the facts from them.

Indeed, selective reporting is an indispensable component in the Propagandist's toolkit, enabling him or her to lead the reader to a conclusion that has been determined in advance by the writer.  By omitting or obscuring key information in a story that would otherwise facilitate a more complete understanding of events and independent analysis, the Propagandist hopes to drive us to adopt, in uncritical fashion, his point of view.

Take for example, the "Timeline", prepared by Reuters' correspondent Bernd Debusmann (with reporting by Bureau Chief Alastair Macdonald), covering important historical dates in the Arab-Israeli conflict:

Here are key dates on the path to this point:  

1897 - European Jews in Zionist movement declare goal of creating a Jewish state in Ottoman Turkish-ruled Palestine.

1917 - British forces take Palestine from collapsing Ottoman empire in World War One. British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour declares support for Jewish "national home" there.

1945 - Revelation of Nazi Holocaust and new Jewish migration to Palestine bolster Western support for creating Jewish state.

1948 - Britain quits and great powers recognize Israel as U.N. partition plan dissolves in war that leaves Jewish state on 78 percent of land and half of Palestine's Arabs as refugees.

While a 600-word primer cannot possibly do justice to a topic as complex as the Middle East conflict, Debusmann omits a vast reservoir of essential historical detail, the absence of which substantially distorts the record and gives lie to his event summary for 1948.

Although Zionism as an organized political movement arose in Europe in the 19th century, Debusmann makes no mention of the millions of Jews in diaspora -- including some 900,000 Jews living in Arab countries -- who for centuries, had longed for restoration of the ancient Jewish home in and around Jerusalem. Debusmann's note only of "European Jews" is in keeping with the Arab and Reuters narrative of Israel as a product of European colonialism.

Debusmann then leaps from 1917 to 1945, omitting the seminal event of 1922 when Britain reneged on the original terms of the Palestine Mandate (which had called for a Jewish national home and "close settlement of the land" by Jews) simultaneously lopping off 78 percent of the territory and handing it to the Hashemite Arabs as a gift for their support in the war against the Ottoman Empire while banning Jewish immigration there.  That territory -- Jordan today -- has a population which is over 60 percent Palestinian Arab and forbids Jews to reside or own land in the country.

Thus, Debusmann's event summary for 1948 suggesting that Israel retained the bulk of the land is mendacious; indeed it is the Palestinian Arabs who today reside on over 78 percent of the Palestine Mandate, in addition to those Arabs living in Israel.

Along the way to 1948, Debusmann conveniently forgets decades of violent Arab rejection of a Jewish sovereign including events which followed the British Peel Commission call in 1937 for partition of what remained of the Palestine Mandate and of course, the 1948 war which Debusmann refers to in a nondescript passive voice ("U.N. partition plan dissolves in war") making no mention of the declared aim by invading Arab armies to annihilate newborn Israel.

Absent these essential details, it is impossible for readers to fully appreciate the historical context of the conflict -- particularly unyielding Arab hostility to a Jewish state in the region -- and therefore to apprehend the "path to new Israel-Palestinian talks" advertised in Reuters' headline.  But of course, facilitating reader understanding is not Reuters' objective.

Debusmann shills for J Street, Walt and Mearsheimer

In a column appearing yesterday, Reuters' Bernd Debusmann promotes the new political lobby group J Street as an alternative to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and parrots the discredited claims of "political scientists" Walt and Mearsheimer to prop up his contention that support for Israel in the US Congress is due to AIPAC's "stranglehold":

Thanks largely to the enormous influence of AIPAC, which calls itself "America's pro-Israel lobby," criticism of Israel has been rare in Congress;

Debusmann's evidence for his assertion is...? [Silence] After all, it couldn't possibly be that the overwhelming support for Israel in the representative political body of the US is due to the overwhelming support for Israel in the US body politic? Nah, that would be just too facile for Debusmann's "analysis".

Debusmann then goes on to parrot another popular canard:

debate of U.S. policies towards the largest recipient [Israel] of U.S. economic and military aid even rarer.

According to the US Census Bureau, Israel placed tenth in US foreign economic aid in 2006 (the most recent year reporting), behind Iraq, Egypt and Jordan amongst others. Nice try, Bernd.

Israel was second in military assistance behind Iraq and of the approximately $2.3 billion provided, by law more than 70% of that money must be spent in the US, used to purchase military equipment from American firms and thus, directly benefiting the US economy.

For comparison, Egypt received almost $1.3 billion in arms from the US, and Saudi Arabia (which recycles just a small portion of the over $50 billion in petrodollars it collects from American consumers annually) will be spending over $2 billion on US weapons systems this year while it also benefits from de facto American defense guarantees. Debusmann has no comment on the power of the Arab lobby in the US.

Debusmann then tries to paint J Street as even-handed in its positions on the Middle East conflict:

J Street reacted to last December's Israeli attack on Gaza by criticising Hamas for raining rockets on Israeli civilians and Israel for punishing 1.5 million Gazans for the actions of extremists.

Here is what J Street actually wrote at the time:

Neither Israelis nor Palestinians have a monopoly on right or wrong. While there is nothing “right” in raining rockets on Israeli families or dispatching suicide bombers, there is nothing “right” in punishing a million and a half already-suffering Gazans for the actions of the extremists among them. And there is nothing to be gained from debating which injustice is greater or came first.

It was this absurd amorality, the incapacity or unwillingness on the part of J Street to distinguish between Palestinian efforts to murder Israeli civilians and Israeli actions to put a stop to those efforts that Rabbi Eric Yoffie was responding to when he called J Street "morally deficient".

Debusmann goes on to tout J Street as having successfully put to rest any doubt about their appeal to a select audience:

Still, the mood at J Street was upbeat. One of the reasons: an attendance that convincingly ended arguments whether there was an appetite for a left-wing organisation that shuns the reflexive Israel-right-or-wrong attitude of the established lobbies.

We would not disagree that J Street will have little difficulty attracting many (though not all) left-wing acolytes who, like the organization's Directors, are proponents of moral relativism. Unfortunately for J Street and Reuters, that list no longer includes others with the power to advance their anti-Israel agenda.