Louis Charbonneau's latest propaganda mantra: US and Israel are "isolated"

Reuters correspondent Louis Charbonneau, who spins and slants the news when he is not outright fabricating it, wants readers to believe that in opposing the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations, the US is isolating itself from the family of nations:

Still, diplomats say Washington remains isolated on the council because of its staunch support for Israel, which the majority of U.N. member states believe has worked hard to sabotage peace talks with the Palestinians. [...]

Highlighting its isolation on the Security Council, Washington cast the sole vote against the settlements resolution. The other 14 members -- including Washington's European allies such as Britain and France -- opposed the United States and Israel and voted for the resolution.

The Europeans agree with Washington that the Palestinian U.N. bid is unwise and are inclined to oppose it. But the Europeans and Americans are far apart on the Middle East issue and diplomats say Washington remains as isolated as ever.

Quite apart from Charbonneau's unsupported and heavily biased assertion that the majority of UN member states believe Israel "has worked hard to sabotage peace talks with the Palestinians", the Reuters reporter seems oblivious to the non sequitur inherent in his claim on the one hand, that the US is isolated on the question of Palestinian statehood and on the other hand, the fact that the Palestinians are unlikely to be able to muster the minimum nine votes needed on the UN Security Council to force a US veto.

In other words, the US is not isolated at all in its stand that bilateral negotiations between the parties are the appropriate and indeed sole way to resolve the conflict.  The entire EU and scores of other countries in the General Assembly take the same view.

Charbonneau however, would much prefer that his readers buy into his fatuous anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda.

Oops! Louis Charbonneau forgets the scare quotes

Reuters correspondents are adept at employing quotation marks to distance themselves from the words of those they cite.  As in... he said it; not me.  In many cases, particularly when Israeli officials speak, Reuters quotation marks take on a more, shall we say, editorial tone.  As in... he said it; don't you believe it!  We call these scare quotes because they're used to express the writer's own mocking skepticism for what is being said by the party cited.

Funny however, that when a Reuters correspondent agrees with the party being cited, no quotation marks at all appear:

(Reuters) - Turkey said on Friday it will seek to prosecute all Israelis responsible for crimes committed during an Israeli raid on a ship bound for the Gaza Strip that killed nine Turks in May 2010.

Note how Charbonneau slyly conveys as fact, the Turkish allegation implicit in its statement, that Israelis committed crimes.  Charbonneau could have much more accurately and responsibly, bracketed the Turkish government statement with quotation marks.  Had the tables been turned and a similar statement been issued by the Israeli government, experience shows Charbonneau would have gone even further, bracketing the word "crimes" to demonstrate his derision for an unproven and questionable allegation.

Wishful reporting?

On Thursday of last week, President Obama proposed that Israel and the Palestinians negotiate a border between them based on mutually-agreed changes to the 1949 Armistice Lines ("1967 borders"), a position not materially different from that of previous U.S. administrations and former Israeli leaders.  Here's how Reuters reported the news:

Egypt's U.N. envoy on Thursday welcomed U.S. President Barack Obama's support for a Palestinian state based on Israel's 1967 borders, though he said it lacked specifics on how to restart peace talks.

-- Louis Charbonneau, May 19, 2011
___________________________ 

He [Obama] called for a deal resulting in two states, Israel and Palestine, sharing the border that existed before Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war.

 -- Jeffrey Heller, May 19, 2011
___________________________

President Barack Obama on Thursday backed a key Palestinian demand on the borders of a future state with Israel as part of his vision for a Middle East peace deal and sought to shape political change convulsing the region. Obama’s proposal — a policy shift that effectively calls for a negotiated Israeli pullback to 1967 borders that existed before it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem ...

-- Matt Spetalnick, May 19, 2011
___________________________

U.S. President Barack Obama’s endorsement of a longstanding Palestinian demand on the borders of their future state sets the stage for what could be a tense meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday ...

-- Jeffrey Heller and Matt Spetalnick, May 19, 2011
___________________________

Israel said the United States “does not understand reality” as its leader arrived in Washington on Friday after President Barack Obama endorsed a longstanding Palestinian demand on borders of a future state ...

-- Jeffrey Heller and Matt Spetalnick, May 20, 2011 
___________________________

Hours before Netanyahu arrived in Washington for talks on Friday, Obama said in a keynote Middle East speech that any future peace deal with Palestinians would have to be based on the borders that existed before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war...

-- Crispian Balmer, May 20, 2011
____________________________

Why did so many Reuters correspondents get it so wrong?  Because they heard what they wanted to hear and could so barely contain their gushing enthusiasm over what they perceived as a dramatic change in U.S. policy, one favorable to their precious Palestinians, they published a string of stories repeatedly misrepresenting Obama's words.

If Thomson Reuters were true to its Trust Principles, all of the above would be joining former Reuters Jerusalem Bureau Chief, Alastair Macdonald, at his desk job in London.

Execrable card stacking

The last we visited with Reuters correspondent Louis Charbonneau, he was fabricating a statement by President Barack Obama to the effect that "Israeli settlements in territories it captured in a 1967 war are illegal".  Obama had not said this.

Charbonneau returns with a story about U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urging Israel to continue transferring tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority despite its new unity pact with Hamas, the terrorist group formally committed in word and deed to the annihilation of a U.N. member state (Israel) and the murder of every Jew in the region.

Does Charbonneau report any of the above so as to provide context for Israel's decision to freeze money transfers to the Palestinian government?  No.  He withholds all of that essential detail in favor of 12 lonely words:

Israel has condemned the unity pact as a "tremendous blow to peace."

Why is that Louis?  We haven't a clue.

Reuters misrepresents Obama

In our post just below, we noted the way Reuters correspondents regularly fabricate so as to advance their personal, and perhaps as well, corporate political agenda.  Central to the media giant's efforts to assign ownership of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") and Jerusalem to the Arabs has been to deliberately and regularly mischaracterize Jewish settlements there as "illegal".  Consistent with international law as resolved by both the League of Nations and United Nations, Jewish settlements anywhere west of the Jordan River are in fact, fully legal.

Reuters correspondents clearly believe however, that by repeatedly drumming into the minds of their readers, in story after story, and in various incantations, an utterly false message, i.e., Jewish settlements are "illegal", they will win the day in the forum of public opinion.

Mohammed Assadi, Louis Charbonneau, Crispian Balmer, Douglas Hamilton and editor Peter Graff have another go on the fabrication carousel with this false citation:

Obama, who has said Israeli settlements in territories it captured in a 1967 war are illegal and unhelpful to the peace process, is opposed to a U.N. move that in Washington's view could shatter hopes of reviving the stalled talks.

So, has President Obama ever publicly asserted that the settlements are "illegal"?  No.  And of course, this is deliberately the case because Obama, advised by scores of international lawyers and State Department officials, knows very well that the settlements are, as noted above, entirely legal.  To assert otherwise, in a speech or other public forum, would be to contravene international law.

If only Reuters correspondents had as much respect for their own code.

Louis Charbonneau continues to prevaricate

Last month, we caught Reuters correspondent Louis Charbonneau in a lie when he asserted that the Quartet -- the US, EU, Russia and the UN -- had characterized Israeli settlements as "illegal".  Now that the United Nations Security Council has also spoken on the matter, failing to carry a Palestinian-advanced draft resolution declaring the settlements illegal, Charbonneau resorts to Plan B: characterize the land on which Jewish settlements are built as "Palestinian":

(Reuters) - The United States on Friday vetoed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements on Palestinian land after the Palestinians refused a compromise offer from Washington.

In fact of course, the land in question is not Palestinian at all but a combination of private land legally purchased by Jews and public lands formerly illegally occupied by Jordan.  The national status of the territories remains officially unallocated.  But this is simply too much for those like Charbonneau who fancy themselves the final arbiters of international law and seek to use the bully pulpit of the largest media agency in the world to advance their personal politics.

Charbonneau then repeats the tired canard that:

U.N. diplomats say the Palestinian Authority, which has been trying to defend itself against critics who accuse it of caving in to the Americans and Israelis during peace talks, was eager to show that it can stand up to Washington.

Oh yes, one can certainly see that the Palestinians caved in to the Israelis during peace talks by utterly refusing, as they have for nearly a century, to acknowledge a nation-state for the Jewish people.

Failure to fact-check the derangement of Mohamed ElBaradei

Continuing with our analysis of Reuters public relations piece for Egyptian wannabe leader Mohamed ElBaradei, Reuters correspondent Louis Charbonneau uncritically quotes the former IAEA chief in his assessment of relations between Egypt and Israel:

He added that relations between Egypt and Israel constituted an imperfect peace and could be improved.
"It's a pseudo peace," he said. "You cannot even publish an Arab book in Israel. You cannot have an Israeli book published in Cairo. That is a very narrow definition of what you call peace."

The claim that Israel does not allow the publication or distribution of books by Arab authors or in the Arabic language is utterly false.  Up to 2009, it was illegal to import into Israel books printed in Syria or Lebanon (not Egypt) due to the official state of war with these countries.  A bill introduced by the Israeli Parliament that year ended this British Mandate-era law.

Egypt however, does appear to have an issue with Israeli books:

Over his career, [Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk] Hosni has accumulated a long record of opposing exchanges with Israel, repeatedly saying normalization must await resolution of the Palestinian issue and warning that opening up to Jewish culture would be dangerous for Egypt. But his most notorious sally came in May last year, when he told an Islamist member of the Egyptian parliament that he would personally burn any Israeli books found in Egyptian libraries.

An "imperfect peace" indeed.

Airbrushing Mohamed ElBaradei

In the same biographical piece on Mohamed ElBaradei discussed below, Reuters correspondent Louis Charbonneau explains why Western powers, particularly Israel, were frequently at odds with the former IAEA chief:

One of those disagreements concerned the Israeli bombing in September 2007 of what U.S. and Israeli officials said was a nascent nuclear reactor in Syria built with the help of North Korea. One former IAEA official said ElBaradei "went through the roof" when he found out about the Israeli strike against the facility, which Syria says was not a nuclear reactor.
Another diplomat said ElBaradei took the Israeli action as a "personal attack against him" and a "vote of no-confidence" because the Israelis decided to bomb the facility rather than ask the IAEA to confront Syria and inspect the site.
"The Israelis decided that ElBaradei could not be trusted to do anything about it so they chose to act pre-emptively and solve the problem," the diplomat said.
Two years later, in September 2009, Israel and France suggested that ElBaradei was sitting on IAEA findings that pointed more concretely to a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program. ElBaradei angrily denied any such cover-up. The Israeli ambassador to the IAEA made clear his disapproval of the outgoing IAEA chief and conspicuously left his seat empty during a closed-door gathering of agency member states who took turns heaping praise on ElBaradei for his 12 years at the nuclear watchdog.

Charbonneau assumes a disinterested stance on the contention between ElBaradei and Israel and fails to inform readers that Syria is still stonewalling the United Nations and new IAEA chief, Yukiya Amano, in their efforts to investigate the site bombed by Israel -- at which significant traces of man-made uranium had been detected.

Charbonneau also fails to disclose to his audience that just weeks after the accusation by Israel and France that ElBaradei had covered-up evidence of Iran's nuclear weapons program, it was revealed publicly that ElBaradei and the IAEA had indeed known for many months that Iran had the data to build a nuclear bomb and had tested an advanced nuclear warhead design:

While the analysis represents the judgment of the nuclear agency’s senior staff, a struggle has erupted in recent months over whether to make it public. The dispute pits the agency’s departing director, Mohamed ElBaradei, against his own staff and against foreign governments eager to intensify pressure on Iran.

Apparently Charbonneau didn't feel that information would assist readers in their assessment of whether "Mohamed ElBaradei's time has arrived".

How is this thing unlike the others?

In a lengthy and mostly flattering profile piece on Mohamed ElBaradei, who is keen to lead the next Egyptian government, Reuters correspondent and amnesiac Louis Charbonneau suggests that Western powers do not trust the former IAEA chief due to his attempts to undermine efforts to pressure Iraq and Iran to relinquish their nuclear programs:

But Washington and Tel Aviv are deeply suspicious of the 68-year-old. They along with other allies were frustrated by what they said were blatant attempts by ElBaradei -- who ran the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1997 to 2009 -- to undermine their efforts to ratchet up the pressure on Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion and later on Iran over its suspected nuclear arms program [...]

ElBaradei also has critics in Washington, Israel, London, Berlin and Paris who have not forgotten their frustration at what they describe as his attempts to undermine their drive to ratchet up the pressure on Iran over a nuclear program they fear is intended to develop weapons capability but Tehran says is for peaceful energy purposes only.

Note that whereas Charbonneau specifically refers to the capitals of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Iran, he willfully errs in identifying, and subsequently omits, the capital of Israel: Jerusalem.  This is not the first time Reuters has taken it upon itself to decide the capital city of the Jewish state.

Mendacity, thy name is Reuters

In a story on Arab nations submitting a draft resolution which asks the UN Security Council to condemn Israeli settlements in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"), Reuters correspondent Louis Charbonneau asserts the following:

The draft uses language that the so-called Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators -- the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- have used in previous statements on settlements.
It says that "Israeli settlements established in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, are illegal and constitute a major obstacle to the achievement of a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.

So, has the Quartet ever issued a statement declaring settlements in the territories "illegal"?  The answer is no.  And the reason, is that per League of Nations and United Nations Security Council resolutions, Jewish settlements anywhere west of the Jordan River in the original Mandate are entirely legal.

Charbonneau is lying -- and this isn't the first time.

Reuters quite sure on Israeli UNSC violations. On Lebanese violations, agency hasn't a clue

In a story on the Lebanese prime minister meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to urge the UN to pressure Israel on a variety of fronts, mendacious Reuters correspondent Louis Charbonneau is sufficiently confident of Israeli violations of UNSC resolution 1701 to cite them as such, but apparently completely in the dark about Lebanon's violations of the same:

In a one-hour meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a New York hotel, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri insisted on the "full implementation of U.N. Security Council resolution 1701," a member of Hariri's delegation told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
U.N. Security Council resolution 1701 halted hostilities in the Israeli-Hezbollah war in 2006 and banned all unauthorized weapons between the Litani River and the Blue Line, the U.N.-monitored border between Israel and Lebanon.
It also called on Israel to halt unauthorized flights over Lebanese territory, though the United Nations says the Jewish state regularly sends aircraft over Lebanon.

Note how Charbonneau accurately cites UNSC 1701 but is mute on whether Lebanon is actually abiding by the resolution.  Charbonneau seems to have forgotten his own report from a year ago on the discovery by UN peacekeepers of hundreds of pounds of explosives just within the Lebanon border with Israel as well as scores of other reports documenting the tens of thousands of missiles supplied to Hezbollah in violation of UNSC resolution 1701, UNSC resolution 1559, and UNSC resolution 1680.

Charbonneau apparently suffers from the same infirmity of selective amnesia as his colleagues at Reuters.  Must be something in the water cooler.

And another Big Lie

In addition to the canard of "food insecurity" in Gaza, Reuters continues to push the lie that the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara in the flotilla was carrying "aid" for the Palestinians.  We've repeatedly debunked this disinformation each time Reuters republishes it but regrettably, the agency persists:

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the formation of a four-member panel of inquiry last week into the raid at sea in which Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists after boarding their vessel, which was attempting to bring aid to the Gaza Strip.

Again, there was no aid whatsoever on the Mavi Marmara.  Louis Charbonneau can offer no evidence to the contrary because he is lying.

Reuters: Bush gave unconditional love to Israel; Obama loves ya' almost as much

In a previous post, we noted Reuters United Nations correspondent, Louis Charbonneau's tendency to obfuscate and omit essential details associated with the Israel-Lebanon/Hezbollah war in 2006 and UN Security Council Resolution 1701 which effectively ended it.

In a story today, Charbonneau suggests that the Obama White House "no longer provides automatic support for Israel at the UN" -- unlike the Bush presidency:

Under Obama, the United States seeks to reclaim its role as an impartial Middle East peace broker which critics say it lost during the previous administration of George W. Bush.

Charbonneau quotes Marina Ottaway, director of the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to make his point:

"Israel became used to unconditional support of the United States during eight years of the Bush administration."

Reuters, other anti-Israel press, and left-wing commentators frequently issue this charge but is it accurate?

In fact, although the Bush administration largely supported Israel in its war against Palestinian terrorism, this wasn't always the case.  For example, as Robert O. Freedman notes:

External events also had a significant influence on U.S. policy-making, primarily in the area of pressuring Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians. Thus, after 9/11, when the U.S. was trying to forge a worldwide coalition, including Muslims, to confront al-Qaeda, Israel was pressured into resuming negotiations with the Palestinians even though Palestinian attacks on Israelis had not ceased. Thus, following a string of Palestinian suicide attacks in March-April 2002, when Israel reoccupied the major cities of the West Bank, Bush, fearing an Arab backlash that would hinder his efforts to confront Iraq, urged Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian cities "without delay." A similar U.S. motive appeared to underlie the U.S. decision to abstain on, rather than veto, a September 2002 UN Security Council resolution calling on Israel to lift the siege of Arafat's compound following another series of Palestinian suicide bombings.

So, political and diplomatic support for Israel during the Bush presidency were very much conditional, with the US willing to abstain on anti-Israel UN resolutions (which, absent a US veto, it knew would pass) and willing to pressure Israel for concessions when Bush felt he needed to appease Arab powers.

Moreover, Reuters and its "go-to" analysts frequently fail to mention that Bush was the first US President to formally call for a Palestinian state and subsequently submit the Road Map peace plan to the UN Security Council excluding 14 key reservations advanced by Israel.  Although the Bush administration promised to "fully and seriously address" these reservations, most were ultimately ignored, including Israel's insistence that full performance be required as a condition for progress between phases and the request that the Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.

As putative evidence of the Obama administration's support for Israel at the UN, Charbonneau suggests that Obama has "pushed hard" to win Security Council agreement on a new round of sanctions against Iran, but the Reuters correspondent is silent on Obama's efforts to water down those sanctions with exemptions for China and Russia.

Charbonneau also cites as evidence of Obama's ostensible good will, the White House's criticism of the UN NPT declaration calling for Israel -- not Iran, North Korea, Pakistan or India -- to submit to inspections of its nuclear activities -- after Obama had hypocritically supported and endorsed the very same declaration.

Finally, Charbonneau suggests:

Outside the United Nations, analysts say Obama tried to ease strains with Netanyahu after tensions spiked earlier this year over Jewish settlement construction on occupied Palestinian land.

No evidence is offered for this assertion but the line immediately following provides an amusing non sequitur:

He coaxed Israel into indirect talks with the Palestinians, his biggest tangible achievement in Middle East diplomacy.

Yes, we're certain Netanyahu found that coaxing to "ease strains" with Obama.

Obfuscate and omit

Louis Charbonneau of Reuters uses the occasion of a briefing by Michael Williams (UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon and formerly Ban Ki-moon's personal representative to the Palestine Liberation Organization) to mischaracterize the war between Israel and Lebanon in 2006 and the current state of belligerence between the parties:

Exchanges of threats between Israel and neighboring Lebanon "have generated concerns of a renewed confrontation," Michael Williams told reporters after briefing the 15-nation Security Council on compliance with resolution 1701, which called for an end to Israel's war against Hezbollah in the summer of 2006.

Actually, UNSC Resolution 1701 has a slightly different take on ownership of the war: 

Expressing its utmost concern at the continuing escalation of hostilities in Lebanon and in Israel since Hizbollah’s attack on Israel on 12 July 2006, which has already caused hundreds of deaths and injuries on both sides, extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons

It's not until 13 paragraphs down in his story that Charbonneau graciously offers readers some background on the cause of the war and in inimitable Reuters' fashion, the presentation obfuscates the facts and is patently biased:

The 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah broke out after the group captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. Some 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, were killed and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, died.

As UNSC 1701 makes clear, the war did not simply "break out".  Hezbollah precipitated it when the group killed 8 Israeli soldiers and launched Katyusha rockets at Israeli border communities.  And note Charbonneau's cagey handling of the death count: Lebanese were "killed"; Israelis "died".  The latter apparently due to natural causes.

Charbonneau happily disseminates Arab propaganda:

Lebanese and Syrian officials have been accusing Israel of pushing for a new war in the Middle East against the backdrop of an Iranian nuclear program that Israel considers a threat to its very survival.

While failing to cite the many instances of overt and not-so-veiled threats against Israel coming from all quarters.

And the Reuters' correspondent parrots Iranian dissembling:

Iran rejects Israeli and Western allegations that its nuclear program is a covert plan to acquire an atomic weapons capability. The oil-producing nation says its nuclear ambitions are limited to the peaceful generation of electricity.

While failing to note the latest United Nations' IAEA finding that Iran is indeed pursuing a nuclear warhead.