Penning propaganda can be perplexing

One of the many ways Reuters acts as advocate for the Palestinian Arabs is to risibly grant them authority to appoint the mayor of Jerusalem -- or is that governor?

From the Jihan Abdalla story we commented on below:

"The court clearly sided with the other party, and this proves that the Israeli courts have never been fair to Palestinians," said Adnan Husseini, the Palestinian Authority-appointed mayor of Jerusalem and a member of the extended family.

 And from a Reuters story written by Tom Perry last year:

More investment is crucial to sustaining Palestinian life in East Jerusalem and combating Israel's efforts to deepen its control of the city, said Adnan al-Husseini, the Palestinian Authority-appointed governor of Jerusalem.

Too funny.

Reuters issues appeal to pity for Islamic Jihad member; dehumanizes group's victims

Reuters correspondents frequently write sympathetic human interest stories about Palestinian Arabs -- and almost never do the same about Israeli Jews.

In an often savage Arab war of attrition over the past century which has sought to kill and displace as many Jewish families in the region as possible, the public rarely hears from Reuters about Israeli suffering.  Other than quotes from government officials, maliciously adulterated by Reuters correspondents, Israeli Jews typically remain voiceless, nameless, faceless.  This alone, graphically demonstrates Reuters relentless reporting bias.

This bias can be particularly vile.

Take for example, this Reuters story about a member of the Palestinian terror group, Islamic Jihad, currently held in detention in Israel and on a hunger strike:

Khader Adnan, 33, a member of the Islamic Jihad militant group, has been refusing to eat since mid-December, shortly after his arrest in the occupied West Bank, and has only drunk liquids since then." He is not in good shape. People on a hunger strike for more than 50 days are in real danger. [...]

Randa told Reuters she had visited her husband on Tuesday and that he was shackled to his hospital bed and had lost 35 kg (77 lb). She said his skin was discolored, his hair had fallen out and he had sores around his mouth. "He couldn't pick up our daughter. He has no strength in his arms," she said, adding that he had started to vomit blood.

Reuters of course, barely mentions the bloody history of Islamic Jihad, referring only to the fact that "the group is committed to Israel's destruction and has been involved in numerous attacks on Israeli targets".

Since Reuters refuses to identify or humanize those Israeli "targets", even as the agency identifies and seeks audience sympathy for Adnan and his family, we will provide this information.  Here's a partial list of Israelis (and other nationals) murdered by Islamic Jihad over the years.  (Our apologies to the families of the hundreds of other victims, killed or maimed, not included in the list below):

Shlomo Atzmon, 60, of Lod

Kinneret Cohen, 14, of Jerusalem

Shimon Dahan, 27, of Herzliya

Emil Gorbman, 54, of Jerusalem

Dr. Shelley Volokov Halpenny, 32, of Vancouver, Canada

Rita Susan Levin, 39, of Philadelphia, United States

Tova Maimon, 19, of Or Yehuda

Nahum Mizrahi, 63, of Tel Aviv

Isaac Na'im, 47, of Holon

Esther Na'im, 45, of Holon

Matityahu Gershon Resnik, 25, of Givat Haim

Mordechai Rosenberg, 50, of Sha'arei Tikva

Fern Rykiss, 17, of Winnipeg, Canada

Ya'akov Shapira, 73, of Jerusalem

Shaul Chai Tzur, 21, of Netanya

Miriam Tzerafi, 41, of Jerusalem

Vered Mordechai, 13, of Afula

Asher Attia, 48, of Afula

Maya Elharar, 17, of Afula

Ilana Schreiber, 45, from Kibbutz Nir David

Meirav Ben-Moshe, 16, of Afula

Ayala Vahaba, 40, from Afula

Fadiya Shalabi, 25, of Iksal

Ahuva Cohen Onalla, 37, of Afula

Yehazkel Sapir, 36, of Kfar Sava

Yotam Rahat, 31, of Tel-Aviv

Elad Dror, 24, of Kibbutz Nahshon

David Ben-Zino, 20, of Ashdod

Adi Rosen, 20, of moshav Bitzaron

Yuval Tuvya, 22, of Jerusalem

Anan Kadur, 24, of Daliyat al-Karmel

Damian Rosovski, 20, of Kadima

Yehiel Sharvit, 21, of Haifa

Yaron Blum, 20, of Jerusalem

Maya Kopstein, 19, of Jerusalem

Daniel Tzikuashvili, 19, of Jerusalem

Avi Salto, 19, of Rishon Lezion

Rafael Mizrahi, 19, of Ramat Gan

Eran Gueta, 20, of Ashkelon

Soli Mizrahi, 18, of Ramat Gan

David Hasson, 18, of Ashkelon

Amir Hirschenson, 18, of Jerusalem

Gilad Gal-On, 18, of Herzliya

Ilie Dagan, 18, of Kochav Yair

Eitan Peretz, 18, of Nahariya

Eyal Levy, 20, of Ashdod

Yaniv Weiser, 18, of Givatay

Shabtai Mahpud, 34, of moshav Tnuvot

Giora Balash, 60, from São Paulo, Brazil

Zvika Golombek, 26, from Karmiel

Shoshana Yehudit (Judy) Greenbaum, 31, from Passaic, New Jersey, USA

Tehila Maoz, 18, from Jerusalem

Frieda Mendelsohn, 62, from Jerusalem

Michal Raziel, 16, from Jerusalem

Malka Chana (Malki) Roth, 15, from Jerusalem

Mordechai Schijveschuurder, 43, from Neria

Tzira Schijveschuurder, 41, from Neria

Ra'aya Schijveschuurder, 14, from Neria

Avraham Yitzhak Schijveschuurder, 4, from Neria

Hemda Schijveschuurder, 2, from Neria

Lily Shimashvili, 33, from Jerusalem

Tamara Shimashvili, 8, from Jerusalem

Yocheved Shoshan, 10, from Jerusalem

Samuel Miloshevsky, 45, of Herzliya

Yehiav Elshad, 28, of Tel Aviv

Inbal Weiss, 22, of Zichron Ya'akov

Mogus Mahento, 65, of Holon

Bella Schneider, 53, of Hadera

Alon Goldenberg, 28, of Tel Aviv

Aharon Revivo, 19, of Afula

Shimon Edri, 20, of Pardes Hanna-Karkur

Mikhael Altfiro, 19, of Pardes Hanna-Karkur

Meir Fahima, 40, of Hadera

Keren Franco, 18, of Kiryat Yam

Noa Shlomo, 18, of Nahariya

Shlomi Ben-Haim, 26, of Kiryat Yam

Nir Danieli, 24, of Kiryat Ata

Ze'ev Henik, 24, of Karmiel

Michael Weissman, 21, of Kiryat Yam

Shimon Stelkol, 34, of Kiryat Yam

Avinoam Alafia, 26, of Kiryat Ata

Liron Avitan, 19, of Hadera

Avraham Barzilai, 19, of Netanya

Dennis Blumin, 20, of Hadera

Eliran Buskila, 21, of Hadera

Zvi Gelberd, 20 of Hadera

Violetta Hizgayev, 20, of Hadera

Ganadi Issakov, 21, of Hadera

Sariel Katz, 21, of Netanya

Vladimir Morari, 19, of Hadera

Yigal Nedipur, 22, of Netanya

Dotan Reisel, 22, of Hadera

David Stanislavksy, 23, of Netanya

Sivan Wiener, 19, of Holon

Zion Agmon, 50, of Hadera

Adi Dahan, 17, of Afula

Shimon Timsit, 35, of Tel-Aviv

Eliyahu Timsit, 32, of Sderot

Sharon Tubol, 19, of Arad

Aiman Sharuf, 20, of Isfiya

Nir Nahum, 20, of Carmiel

Eliezer Moskovitch, 40, of Petah Tikva

Ilona Hanukayev, 20, of Hadera

Liat Ben-Ami, 20, of Haifa

Esther Pesachov, 19, of Givat Olga

Ofra Burger, 56, of Hod Hasharon

Iris Lavi, 68, of Netanya

Suad Jaber, 23, of Taibe

Indelou Ashati, 54, of Hadera

Anat Shimshon, 33, of Ra'anana

Osnat Abramov, 16, of Holon

Sergei Shavchuk, 35, of Afula

Mazal Orkobi, 20, of Azor

Mordechai Evioni, 52, of Holon

Moshe (Maurice) Aharfi, 60, of Tel-Aviv

Igor Zobokov, 32, of Bat Yam

Lilya Zibstein, 33, of Haifa

Amiram Zmora, 55, of Holon

Meir Haim, 74, of Azor

Hannah Haimov, 53, of Tel Aviv

Boris Tepalshvili, 51, of Yehud

Sapira Shoshana Yulzari-Yaffe, 46, of Bat Yam

Ramin Nasibov, 25, of Tel-Aviv

Ilanit Peled, 32, of Azor

Andrei Friedman, 30, of Tel-Aviv

Avi Kotzer, 43, of Bat Yam

Viktor Shebayev, 62, of Holon

Ion (Nelu) Nicolae, 34, of Romania

Mihai Sabau, 38, of Romania

Li Peizhong, 41, of China

Steven Arthur Cromwell, 43, of Ghana

Krassimir Mitkov Angelov, 32, of Bulgaria

Ivan Gaptoniak, 46, of Ukraine

Guo Aiping, 47, of China

Zhang Minmin, 50, of China

Nir Regev, 25, of Nahariya

Zvi Bahat, 35, of Haifa

Mark Biano, 29, of Haifa

Naomi Biano, 25, of Haifa

Hana Francis, 39, of Fassuta

Sharbal Matar, 23, of Fassuta

Mutanus Karkabi, 31, of Haifa

Osama Najar, 28, of Haifa

Irena Sofrin, 38, of Kiryat Bialik

Lydia Zilberstein, 56, of Haifa

George Matar, 58, of Haifa

Ze'ev Almog, 71, of Haifa

Ruth Almog, 70, of Haifa

Moshe Almog, 43, of Haifa

Tomer Almog, 9, of Haifa

Assaf Staier, 11, of Haifa

Brurua Zer-Aviv, 59, of Kibbutz Yagur

Bezalel Zer-Aviv, 30, of Kibbutz Yagur

Keren Zer-Aviv, 29, of Kibbutz Yagur

Liran Zer-Aviv, 4, of Kibbutz Yagur

Noya Zer-Aviv, 1, of Kibbutz Yagur

Rachel Ben Abu, 16, of Tel Aviv

Nofar Horowitz, 16, of Tel Aviv

Julia Voloshin, 31, of Netanya

Anya Lifshitz, 50, of Netanya

Moshe Maor Jan, 21, of Tel Aviv

Michael Koifman, 68, of Hadera

Perahiya Makhlouf, 53, of Hadera

Sabiha Nissim, 66, of moshav Ahituv

Jamil Mohammed Ka'adan, 48, of Baqa al-Gharbiyye

Ya'akov Rahmani, 68, of Hadera

Genia Poleis, 66, of Hadera

Larissa Grishchenko, 39, of Hadera

Daniel Golani, 45, of Nahariya

Alexandra Garmitzky, 65, of Netanya

Haim Amram, 26, of Netanya

Keinan Tsuami, 20, of Petah Tikva

Elia Rosen, 38, of Bat Hefer

Philip Balhasan, 45, of Ashdod

Rozalia Beseneyi, 48, of Romania

Piroşca Boda 50, of Romania

Marcel Cohen, 73, of Nice, France

Ariel Darhi, 31, of Bat Yam

Victor Erez, 60, of Givatayim

Binyamin Haputa, 47, of Lod

David Shaulov, 29, of Holon

Lily Yunes, 43, of Oranit

Lior Anidzar, 26, of Tel Aviv

Daniel Wultz, 16, of Weston, Florida, USA

Our understanding is that the above individuals will be, as is apparently the case with Islamic Jihad member Khader Adnan, unable to pick up their daughters.

Reuters reporter who called for ethnic cleansing of Jews, still working for Reuters

Reuters correspondent Maayan Lubell, whose name appears on a petition calling for Jews to be ethnically cleansed from the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"), is still working for Reuters and still reporting from the agency's Jerusalem Bureau.

In a story on the Israeli government filing charges against five persons for breaking into an army base and damaging property, Lubell assumes the role of arbiter in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on the final status of the territories and awards them to... the Palestinians:

(Reuters) - Israel charged five Jewish settlers on Sunday with orchestrating a riot in an army base in the West Bank in a bid to foil plans to dismantle illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Quelle surprise!

Reuters marks Palestinian nationalism beginning in 1834; Jewish nationalism in 1947

Reuters quotes Newt Gingrich, as interviewed by The Jewish Channel:

"I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it's tragic"

Gingrich's statement is of course, entirely accurate: the Palestinians are indeed part of the community of 350 million Arabs of the Middle East, identical to that population in terms of ethnic origin, religion, language, and culture.  There aren't any genetic or ethnographic distinctions to be drawn between the Arabs of Ramallah and the Arabs of Damascus for example.  And this is readily admitted by the Palestinians themselves.

For Reuters correspondents however, stating the obvious when it comes to their pet Palestinians is a bit like chumming red meat in shark-infested waters and Steve Holland predictably takes the bait:

(Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich thrust himself into controversy on Friday by declaring that the Palestinians are an "invented" people who want to destroy Israel. [...]

Most historians mark the start of Palestinian Arab nationalist sentiment in 1834, when Arab residents of the Palestinian region revolted against Ottoman rule.
Israel, founded amid the 1948 Arab-Israel war, took shape along the lines of a 1947 U.N. plan for ethnic partition of the then-British ruled territory of Palestine which Arabs rejected.

Holland offers no citations to support his claim on the origins of Palestinian nationalism and in fact, misrepresents the nature of the Arab revolt in 1834 which was inspired not by nationalist fervor, but by resistance to conscription in the Ottoman-Egyptian military.

What really makes the 1834 revolt significant in terms of motivating a people to seek sovereignty, is that it marked widespread Palestinian Arab pogroms against the Jewish communities in Jerusalem and the Eastern Galilee.  Temporarily absent the protections afforded by Ottoman rule, Jewish property was looted and Jews were beaten to death in the streets.

Holland ignores this inconvenient history along with the realities of more than three thousand years of Jewish sovereignty in the land, the Balfour declaration in 1917 calling for a modern Jewish state in Palestine, and the Palestine Mandate resolved by the League of Nations in 1922 confirming Balfour.  Rather, the Reuters correspondent leaps to the United Nations partition plan in 1947 and juxtaposes this historically recent event with the historically reconstructed Arab revolt in 1834 to suggest that Palestinian nationalism is actually older than Jewish nationalism.  A very neat trick.

Holland then completes his dubious tale with this whopper:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has long forsworn violence against Israel as a means to secure an independent state, pinning his hopes first on negotiations and more recently on a unilateral bid for statehood via the United Nations.

As we've noted too many times to recount, Abbas has made clear (in Arabic) that his regime's partial suspension of terror against Israeli civilians is merely tactical and temporary and may resume anytime  it once again becomes opportune.

Racists at Reuters still refer to "Arab East Jerusalem"; no mention of why the city was Arab between 1948 & 1967

Palestinian Arabs who are not residents of Jerusalem are restricted from riding Israeli buses into the city.  This policy, to protect passengers from the scourge of Arab bus-bombing that killed hundreds of Israelis, foreign tourists and workers during the last Palestinian terror war, was challenged yesterday by a handful of Palestinians referring to themselves with the Orwellian catachresis "freedom riders".

Reuters correspondent Jihan Abdalla, who barely mentions the reason for the travel restrictions, nevertheless gives full voice to the protesters:

"My message is that Israel conducts a racist regime," said protester Badi Dweik before he was dragged off the bus by police at Hizme checkpoint north of Jerusalem.
Dweik said he had been barred from nearby Jerusalem for 12 years while settlers could travel freely to and from the Holy City. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 war and annexed it as its capital, a move not recognised abroad.

The supreme irony of course, is that Abdalla employs the racist epithet, "Arab East Jerusalem", to describe the city as it was sometimes referred to between 1948 and 1967, a period during which Jews were ethnically cleansed from Jerusalem by the Arabs, barred from living, working, praying in, or visiting the city.

Predictably, that irony is lost on Abdalla and Reuters.

                            Jews being driven from Jerusalem by the Arab Legion

Ori Lewis portrays Israelis as scornful conquerors, refers to Gazan Arabs as "indigenous population"

In a story about a stage performance by an Israeli troupe depicting the Hamas-Israeli war in 2008 (characterized by Reuters as "Israel's offensive") and the death of a Gazan Arab's daughters and niece from a tank shell directed at two Hamas operatives on the roof of their house, Reuters correspondent Ori Lewis describes the play's enactment of alleged events following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war:

The turning point in the 75-minute performance came about two-thirds through when Naomi described the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel defeated its Arab neighbors and captured large tracts of territory from them.
She enacted scenes of a bus tour to the Gaza Strip, typical of the day, by triumphant Israeli civilians who visited areas of the "newly acquired" lands, and their disdainful treatment of the indigenous population.

Note how Lewis portrays the Israelis, who had just survived a war against the combined armies and resources of 11 Arab states along with the Palestine Liberation Organization, as triumphalist and rapacious, having conquered the territory of the "indigenous population".

That Israel rejected annexation of those "newly acquired lands" and offered numerous times to return Gaza to the Egyptians, or that Jewish communities in Gaza predate Palestinian Arab settlement there by centuries, is willfully omitted by Lewis.

Those realities would, after all, distract from Reuters' carefully staged tale of Israel as brutish occupier and the Palestinian Arabs as innocent victims.

A reader reply to Reuters

When we were kids, network television stations would occasionally broadcast an editorial on some current and controversial issue.  The editorial was clearly identified as such and the station would subsequently broadcast a responsible reply from someone in the community who disagreed with the position of the station editors.

As Reuters regularly demonstrates, those days are over.  Not only is there no line space provided for formal replies to Reuters many editorials and opinion pieces on the Middle East conflict, Reuters is not even transparent enough to acknowledge that the vast majority of stories published on its websites and syndicated to hundreds of newspapers and media outlets around the world are, in fact, opinion pieces.  Indeed, they reflect the deeply-held ideological views of the Reuters correspondents, editors, and likely, managing editors, responsible for those stories.

The Elder of Ziyon website posted today, a video produced by British polemicist Pat Condell entitled "The Great Palestinian Lie".  Condell's views are controversial, and this video is no exception, but then again, at least with Condell, the audience knows it is getting opinion -- not opinion masquerading as news.  That marks a refreshing difference with Reuters.

Reuters journalist circulates email calling for Palestinian state

From the "oops!" department, Reuters journalist Svebor Kranjc responded to an email issued by the European Jewish Congress (EJC) opposing the Palestinian statehood bid with an email of his own:

“I am going to support it!... You have your state but you don't want others to have their state. So sad...”

The Jerusalem Post story doesn't indicate how many recipients were on Kranjc's email list.

The EJC responded by complaining to Reuters:

“We call upon Reuters, one of the oldest news agencies in the world and one that has a reputation for fair and balanced news, to remove employees who bring a political agenda into their work in journalism and media, and in their professional relations."

Apparently, the EJC hasn't visited our website -- nor read any of Tom Perry's stories.

Reuters Tom Perry hearts the Palestinians

Reuters correspondent Tom Perry, who appears to be moving through Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' seven stages of grief over the impending death of the Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations, has graduated from anger and depression on to hope and acceptance:

(Reuters) - Palestinians expressed a mix of pride and wary anticipation on Friday as their president prepared to present an application for United Nations membership for the state of Palestine in the face of fierce opposition from the United States and Israel.  Flags and portraits of the late Yasser Arafat and President Mahmoud Abbas draped buildings in a central Ramallah square where Palestinians awaited the live broadcast of a speech by Abbas [...]

President Barack Obama has warned the United States would exercise its U.N. veto power to prevent a Palestinian state being declared by the 15-member Security Council.
Backing Israel's insistence the two sides must resume suspended negotiations, Obama this week said there can be "no shortcut" to a Middle East peace that attempts to circumvent a treaty between the Palestinians and Israel.

Perry has so completely lost his integrity (not to mention his mind) as an independent reporter, he adopts the loaded Palestinian term for the Israel Defense Forces:   

There was no sign of organised Palestinian violence in the West Bank as feared by some Israelis, worried Israel's opposition to the biggest Palestinian diplomatic initiative in years could trigger clashes with occupation security forces.

He then parrots Palestinian canards:

Palestinians say they have been patient during 20 years of peace talks that have yielded nothing, while Israel's occupation continues and Jewish settlements grow on West Bank land.

Yielded nothing but a concession by various Israeli governments, including the present one, to accept a second Palestinian state on land promised to the Jews if the Palestinian Arabs will only accept a Jewish state on the land that remains and agree to live in peace.  A condition apparently beyond Perry's "patient" Palestinians.

And there has been absolutely no lateral growth of Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") in years.  Israel continues to suppress Jewish building in the territories in the hope, perhaps futile, that the Palestinians will ultimately come to demonstrate the same fervor for co-existence they currently display for terror and lawfare.

UN doesn't recognize Palestinian state -- but Reuters does

Hezbollah handmaiden and Reuters correspondent Alistair Lyon makes clear that whereas the United Nations views the territories of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"), including the city of Jerusalem, as, literally, no man's land, he and his behemoth media company consider it Palestinian land:

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asks the United Nations on Friday to recognise a state for his people, even though Israel still occupies its territory and the United States has vowed to veto the move.

And it doesn't get any better.  Lyon's propaganda piece follows the Palestinian Arab narrative to the letter, censors essential historical detail, and is shamelessly loaded with fabrications, half-truths, and distortions.  Let's take a look:

His [Palestinian President Abbas] appeal to the council reflects a loss of faith after 20 years of failed peace talks sponsored by the United States, Israel's main ally, and alarm at relentless Israeli settlement expansion that is eating into the land Palestinians want for a state.

It's always a work of art when Reuters correspondents speak for the Palestinians.  The failed peace talks Lyon refers to began life as the Declaration of Principles, or Oslo Accords, in the early 1990s and the United States had no hand in them.  It was actually the Fafo Institute in Norway, with its Director Terje Rød-Larsen, that brought Israeli officials and the Palestine Liberation Organization together in an effort to resolve the conflict.  Those Accords, which the Palestinians have violated repeatedly and are now formally annulling with their application for statehood at the UN, fully permitted, consistent with international law, Jewish settlements in the disputed territories.

Lyon continues:

So Abbas, a moderate politician opposed to violence, sees no alternative but recourse to the United Nations, although Israeli and U.S. politicians have threatened financial reprisals that could cripple his Palestinian Authority.

As we noted in our post yesterday, whereas Reuters continues to peddle the canard that Abbas is opposed to violence, the facts say otherwise.  Abbas makes clear in his interviews and speeches, particularly in Arabic, that the Palestinian suspension of violence is tactical and temporary and that terrorism may be reprised any time it once again becomes opportune.

The United Nations partitioned Palestine in 1947, but Arab states rejected that and declared war on the new state of Israel, which then captured more territory than it had been allotted under the U.N. plan and dispossessed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, who became refugees.

With his selective and heavily biased historical excerpt, Lyon wants readers to believe that it was Israel which "dispossessed" the Palestinian Arabs when in reality, it was the leaders of those Arab states that declared war on Israel and also encouraged the local Arab population to clear the way for their armies.  Proof of this lies in the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who remained in their homes in 1948 and who are today, along with their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, full citizens of the state of Israel.

Two decades after Israel seized the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East war, the Palestine Liberation Organisation effectively reduced its demands to a state on those territories.

This is a complete fabrication.  The PLO has never formally rescinded its charter to obliterate Israel and replace the Jewish state, in its entirety, with a Palestinian Arab state.  Indeed, Article 9 of that document makes clear precisely what that "moderate politician opposed to violence", Mahmoud Abbas, is really up to:   

Article 9: Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. Thus it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase. The Palestinian Arab people assert their absolute determination and firm resolution to continue their armed struggle and to work for an armed popular revolution for the liberation of their country and their return to it. They also assert their right to normal life in Palestine and to exercise their right to self-determination and sovereignty over it.

Tom Perry hysterical over Obama's decision to block Palestinian statehood bid

Reuters kingpin propagandist Tom Perry, who hasn't written a straight story on the Middle East conflict since he joined the agency's Jerusalem/Ramallah bureaus in 2009, rants and raves about President Obama's decision to block the Palestinian application for statehood at the United Nations:

Frustration with U.S. policy is one of the main reasons behind Abbas' U.N. initiative. Palestinian officials have presented it as an attempt to break the U.S. monopoly over Middle East peace diplomacy by involving other powers.
U.S. policy toward the Middle East conflict has long appeared pro-Israel to Palestinians. By far the weaker party in the negotiations, the Palestinians were always dependent on Washington's help to get their own state in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
President George H.W. Bush is remembered as the last U.S. leader to exert serious pressure on Israel when he temporarily withheld loan guarantees to press the Israelis for a freeze on settlement building. But that was 20 years ago, at the very outset of a peace process now widely seen as a failure.
Exasperation with Obama is compounded by the high hopes Palestinians harbored early on in his presidency that he too was ready to get tough on Israel.
He initially called on Israel to halt settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to smooth peace negotiations. But he then backed off, leaving Abbas in the lurch.

Perry and his pet Palestinians are "frustrated" with U.S. policy.  They want to "involve other powers".  They see the U.S. as "pro-Israel".  They are the "weaker party" and "dependent".  They want only "the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and 'East' Jerusalem" for their state.  They are "exasperated" with Obama who left Palestinian President Abbas "in the lurch" and want Obama to "get tough" with Israel.

Every word in Perry's screed postures for the Palestinians.  Almost every assertion is myopically-focused on Palestinian demands at the expense of legitimate Israeli concerns.  Many of Perry's claims are pure fabrications.  And the Reuters "journalist" deliberately withholds any excerpts from Obama's speech at the United Nations where the President suggested (oh, the humanity!) that the parties actually negotiate an equitable settlement and peace deal that will result in the state the Palestinians purportedly wail for.

We don't usually lobby for or predict internal changes at Reuters.  We simply report on their correspondents' many errors, systematic bias, and use of propaganda devices to unethically influence their readers.  However, we will make a forecast here: within 12 months, Tom Perry will no longer be working for Reuters Jerusalem/Ramallah bureaus.  He will have either followed in the footsteps of former Bureau Chief Alastair Macdonald, who was sent packing to a desk job in London as a result of a doctored photo scandal under his watch, or he will be hitting the streets in Ramallah, soliciting the various Palestinian papers for a columnist position.

We're sure he'll do well.

Goebbels protege Alistair Lyon speaks for the Palestinians

Reuters "special correspondent" Alistair Lyon, who frequently forgets he is supposed to be reporting the news rather than providing propaganda and public relations for the Arabs, quotes President Obama's impassioned plea at the United Nations:

"Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the U.N.," he said. "Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians -- not us -- who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them: on borders and security; on refugees and Jerusalem."

Lyon then has the temerity to answer Obama on behalf of the Palestinians:

However, it is the failure of 20 years of U.S.-brokered negotiations that has driven [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas to take his quest for a state to the United Nations -- a ploy that could embarrass the United States by forcing it to protect its Israeli ally against the tide of world opinion.

The failure of 20 years of U.S.-brokered negotiations?  Far more likely it is the failure of 64 years of Palestinian rejectionism, wars, and terrorism intended to expel the Jews from the Middle East that has "driven" Abbas to this act of supreme farce.

Crispian Balmer goes to bat; count the canards (part I)

Last year following one of Reuters many doctored photo scandals associated with its coverage of the Middle East conflict, the media behemoth sent its Jerusalem Bureau Chief, Alastair Macdonald, packing to a desk job in London.  Macdonald was subsequently replaced by Crispian Balmer, who has already distinguished himself as, incredible as it may seem, more anti-Israel and agenda-driven than his predecessor.

In a pair of op-eds ("Analysis" in Reuters parlance) published on the 8th and 9th of September respectively, Balmer writes about the new regional dangers facing Israel due to increasing tensions with Egypt following the fall of the Mubarak regime and hostility emanating from the Erdogan government in Turkey.

Balmer's stories are replete with obvious canards, insidious propaganda devices, and racist epithets designed to peddle his editorial agenda and dupe readers into embracing his anti-Israel narrative.  In his story, "Israel faces perfect storm in shifting region" for example, Balmer writes:

Israel is the only country in the Middle East assumed to have a nuclear arsenal. Along with Western powers, it believes Iran is seeking an atomic capability, something Tehran denies.

It is not simply Israel and Western powers that believe, based on the evidence, that Iran is seeking "an atomic capability" (Balmer's euphemism for nuclear weapons), but the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as well that has repeatedly advanced this view.  On most other matters, Reuters correspondents worship at the altar of the United Nations as the ultimate symbol of transnational accord but in the matter of the august body's case against Iran, Reuters is conspicuously silent.  This, to deliberately frame the dispute over Iran's nuclear program as merely a "he said/she said" between Iran and the West, with no objective findings.

Balmer then employs the lather-rinse-repeat sophistry Reuters has been embedding in its stories for over a year now to conceal the hostile nature of the Turkish flotilla trying to run the Israeli maritime embargo of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip:

Turkey was the first Muslim state to recognize Israel, in 1949, but relations nosedived last year when Israeli commandos boarded an aid flotilla challenging a naval blockade of the Palestinian enclave Gaza, killing nine Turks in ensuing clashes.

As we've noted too many times to recount, there was no "aid" on board the Mavi Marmara, where the violence occurred.  Reuters repeated reference to an "aid flotilla", "aid ship", or other such contrivance is deliberately misleading and intended to elicit reader sympathy for the Turkish Islamists manning the ship who, the Palmer report concluded, specifically sought conflict and fought furiously with metal bars, slingshots, chains, staves, and guns in an attempt to lynch Israeli marines, many of whom were seriously injured.

Balmer predictably mentions none of this.

Shifting to a discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Balmer suggests, and employs the assistance of an Israeli academic to second the idea that much of Israel's security dilemma stems from its alleged "failure to articulate a coherent Palestinian policy".  Given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's many public statements since taking office, accepting and specifically outlining his view of the contours of a Palestinian state, and continuing Palestinian rejection of bilateral peace talks to negotiate those contours, it is simply not credible for Balmer (or an academic) to assert an Israeli diplomatic failure to articulate policy on the matter, short of utter surrender -- which likely is what Balmer would wish to hear.

Here too, there is an attempt to obfuscate the historical record:

Diplomats in Jerusalem have said the Obama administration was deeply frustrated by Israel's refusal to freeze settlement building in the West Bank as a way to kick start peace talks.

Balmer fails to mention that Israel did in fact, freeze Jewish settlement building in Judea and Samara (the "West Bank") for ten months in an effort to bring the Palestinian Arabs back to the negotiating table.  Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas dallied for nine and a half of those ten months, refusing to talk and making it impossible to progress on a peace deal.

Part II on Balmer's canards tomorrow.

Glen Beck comes to Israel; Jeffrey Heller rubs his propagandistic palms together

Reuters Jerusalem Bureau correspondents are personally committed to doing what they can to encourage the demonization, isolation, and eradication of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.  So, a visit to the country by a pro-Israel media figure, a Christian with a popular following of tens of millions of people, is perceived by the Reuters crew as both a threat to their agenda as well as an irresistible opportunity for propaganda.

So it goes with Reuters Editor-in-Charge Jeffrey Heller who reports on Glen Beck's rally adjacent to the Western Wall, a remnant of the Herodian Jewish Temple in Old Jerusalem:

But Beck's visit to Israel, where he was accompanied by evangelical Christian preachers, has been followed with trepidation by American Jewish critics, Israeli left-wing activists and Arab legislators who cautioned that he could stoke tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.
"In Israel you can find people who will stand against incredible odds, against the entire tide of global opinion, just because it's right, just because it's good and just because it's true," Beck told an adoring audience of some 1,700 that included leaders of Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank as well as right-wing Israeli politicians.

As we suggested above, the anti-Israel echo chamber that is Reuters' Jerusalem Bureau, is directly threatened by any popular force which brings an alternative view to light so the latter must be scoffed at lest it gain traction upon Reuters' own political advocacy.  Heller's mocking characterization of Beck's audience as "adoring" (would Heller use the same term to describe those acolytes attending left-wing rallies led by, say, Bill Maher?) as well as his use of the propaganda mantra, "occupied West Bank", in violation of the Reuters Handbook of Journalism, well illustrates our point.

Heller then rummages through the Reuters rubbish bin of other tired and discredited propaganda devices:

A Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000 after then-Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the compound, which houses Islam's al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock shrine and where two biblical Jewish temples once stood [...]. 
Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its capital, a claim that is not recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem, annexed by Israel after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, as the capital of a state they aspire to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel withdrew settlers from Gaza in 2005.

Employing the fallacy of post hoc erg propter hoc, Heller slyly suggests that the Palestinian terror war ("uprising") commencing in 2000 was due to Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, a canard we have debunked dozens of times.  He then sanctifies the location where Beck spoke as an Islamic holy place while downplaying its supreme religious and historical significance to Jews by referring to Solomon and Herod's Temples with the anonymous, "two biblical temples" (small "t").

The Reuters editor also artificially bifurcates the city of Jerusalem into two, with "East Jerusalem", the area of Jerusalem containing nearly all of Judaism's holy relics, cited as that demanded by Palestinian Arabs for their capital.  In fact, the Palestinians do not bother themselves with such sophistry, acknowledging that they seek, simply and completely, the city of Jerusalem (as well as all of Israel) as their sovereign territory.

Heller reports that President Barack Obama proposed that any peace deal with the Palestinians "be based on pre-1967 borders", something Obama actually did not say, nor would he have, given that Israel had no recognized borders with the Arab states at that time.  

And Heller refers to left-wing billionaire George Soros sympathetically as a "Holocaust survivor", when Soros has admitted publicly that he collaborated with the Nazis and had no problem, no guilt about it.

All in all, a rare show of solidarity for a beleaguered people by a media giant, but a typical day at the office for Jeffrey Heller.

Jeffrey Heller still fabricating geography, still ignoring history

Imagine picking up a copy of The New York Times this morning and reading, "German Chancellor Angela Merkel okays 1,600 settler homes for East Germany".

Wha??

That's right; a country with a distinctive tribal history dating back over two millennia, and a nation-state for much of that period, forcibly divided during a handful of years following the invasion and illegal occupation by another state, is still being bifurcated and anachronistically referred to as separate countries by a major media company.

But it's not the New York Times engaging in this deception.  It's not Berlin being divided.  And it's not Germans being characterized as colonizers in their own country.

It's Reuters Editor-in-Charge Jeffrey Heller who eats, sleeps, and dreams about Jews who choose to exercise their right in international law to live in the eastern portion of Jerusalem.

Wake up Jeffrey.

 Jewish Jerusalem prior to and following looting and destruction by the Arab Legion in 1948.

What Reuters doesn't want you to know

Hat tip: EoZ

One year on, Reuters still lying about Mavi Marmara

In May of last year, İnsani Yardım Vakfı (IHH), a Turkish Islamist NGO with ties to various terror groups, sponsored and manned a flotilla to Gaza with the intention of defeating the Israeli weapons embargo of the Hamas-run territory.  The ship where the majority of IHH operatives were based, the Mavi Marmara, became the scene of a violent confrontation between Israeli naval commandos attempting to board the ship and passengers armed with knives, iron rods, and by some reports, pistols.  Following the incident and seizure of the Mavi Marmara, an inspection of the cargo hold revealed no humanitarian aid on board the ship.

In story after story on the incident last year, Reuters falsely characterized the Mavi Marmara as an "aid ship".  One year on, the agency is still doing so:

(Reuters) - Democratic governments cannot stop their citizens launching another pro-Palestinian flotilla to Gaza, Turkey's foreign minister said on Monday, a year after the storming of an aid ship by Israeli marines.

This, of course, is not accidental.  Reuters is attempting here, via deployment of the propaganda techniques of historical reconstruction, i.e., fabrication, and repetition, to implant in the minds of its readers the false notion that the Mavi Marmara was carrying humanitarian aid to the Palestinian Arabs.  In fact, as we noted above, it was chartered with the specific task of breaking a legal sea blockade so as to facilitate the flow of arms to the genocidal Islamists running Gaza.

Allyn Fisher-Ilan uses her 3D decoder glasses to reveal Obama's secret message

In his speech on the Middle East yesterday, President Obama used the word "occupation" twice:

"For Palestinians, it has meant suffering the humiliation of occupation, and never living in a nation of their own."

"The dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation."

Note that the President of the United States (and former President of the Harvard Law Review) was careful not to indicate whose land was under occupation.  The reason being of course, that the sovereign status of the territories is officially in dispute and subject to negotiation.  Individually, both Jews and Arabs own land in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank").

Note also that Obama specifically delineated the Palestinians as "never living in a nation of their own".  So much for the notion that their "country" was taken away from them with the Nakba of 1948.

So whose land, exactly, is under occupation?

The Arabs believe, and want the world to believe, that the Jews are illegally possessing their land.  To "prove" their case, they frequently display their house keys.  The Jews, on the other hand, hold the original title deed and modern rights to settle in the land. Those rights have been paid for many times over in blood, treasure, and toil.

The Arabs, on the other hand, have Reuters:

Obama's blunt language about the need to find an end to Israel's occupation of Arab land looked certain to be the crunch issue in his talks with Netanyahu.

Language so blunt, it was invisible to everyone but Reuters.

Nakba Quackba

The last we visited with Reuters "special correspondent" Alistair Lyon, he was misrepresenting former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and libeling Israel.  Today, he reappears with a human interest story about those Palestinian Arabs living in Lebanon and their yearning to "return" to their "homeland":

(Reuters) - Like the crowds of Palestinian refugees who rattled Israel's border fences this week, Subhia Loubani yearns to return to the homeland she had to flee when the Jewish state was created in 1948.
Even though, unlike most of them, she has a brand-new house.
Loubani, 72, received a key last month to one of the first few homes built by UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, in north Lebanon's Nahr al-Bared camp, which was utterly destroyed in fighting nearly four years ago.
Still, she said, given a chance, "I'd leave the house and go to Palestine, my country. I can't forget Palestine."
Sunday's border protests, in which Israeli gunfire killed at least 13 people, were a reminder that the plight of 4.5 million Palestinian refugees, often ignored in interim peace deals, lies at the core of an Arab conflict with Israel that has reverberated across the Middle East and beyond for decades.

Of course, there has not ever been a country called "Palestine" and the overwhelming majority of the 4.5 million "refugees" to which Lyon refers have never stepped foot in the territory in which their grandparents and great-grandparents may have resided for two years between June 1946 and May 1948 (the official UNRWA definition of a Palestinian refugee).  But hey, the Arabs and their acolytes at Reuters never let the facts get in the way of a good ole appeal to pity:

"When I left Nahr al-Bared, I felt I was leaving Palestine again," said the elderly widow, recalling that collective trauma known to Palestinians as the Nakba, or national catastrophe, whose anniversary was marked by the border rallies on May 15.
Loubani, only four years old in 1948, says her father had carried her from the village of Saasaa across the frontier into nearby Lebanon and a future of blasted dreams and despair.
The word nakba also springs easily to the lips of Jihad Awad, 49, a shoe-seller among the first refugees to be rehoused. "There's no worse catastrophe than this," he said of his family's flight from Nahr al-Bared and their wrecked home.

Note that at 49 years of age, Jihad Awad was not born until fourteen years after the Arabs living in the territory fled following the advice of those like Azzam Pasha, secretary-general of the Arab League, who in preparation for the 1948 invasion of Israel notoriously boasted:

"This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the crusades".

Try as they may, Alistair and Jihad will not win any sympathy from us.

Arabists@Reuters

After perhaps two to three decades of churning out anti-Israeli propaganda, is it possible to hold out hope that Reuters might ever break the addiction and take an honest, even-handed approach in its Middle East reporting?

No.

Consider the latest piece from Palestinian parrot and Reuters correspondent Matt Spetalnick.  Speculating upon Barack Obama's upcoming speech on US Middle East policy, and in violation of the Reuters Handbook of Journalism, Spetalnick takes an entirely Arab-ethnocentric perspective on the Israeli-Arab conflict:

By laying out his own vision for a "reset" with the region, Obama aims to counter criticism that he has been slow and inconsistent in dealing with an unprecedented wave of popular revolts that have upended decades of U.S. Mideast policy. But even as he reaches out to a wider Arab audience, he is likely to disappoint many with what will be left out -- fresh U.S. proposals for breaking the impasse between Israel and the Palestinians and getting them back to negotiations.
Clashes on Sunday on Israel's borders, where Israeli troops killed at least 13 Palestinian protesters, underscored the depth of Arab frustration over the decades-old conflict, which remains a central preoccupation in the region.

Spetalnick uses the catachresis "protesters" to willfully mislead readers into believing that the Arab mobs, bused to the Syrian, Lebanese, and Gazan borders with Israel and encouraged to rush and infiltrate those borders, were simply "protesters" in deep "frustration" unable to cope with their "preoccupation" over the conflict.  Spetalnick is so programmed to toe the Arab line, he completely ignores any Israeli preoccupation associated with being a country 9 miles wide at the neck, one that has barely survived multiple wars of annihilation waged against it by its Arab neighbors, and whose civilian population is under daily threat of terrorist attacks.

That's what we mean when we write that Reuters is in perpetual violation of its Trust Principles and Handbook of Journalism promising "freedom from bias".

Spetalnick continues along this same vein with implicit jibes directed at former U.S. President George Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: 

Obama raised Arab expectations for a more active and even-handed U.S. role when he took office but the mood soured when he backed down from confronting Israel over settlement building in the occupied West Bank. His unmet pledge to shut the prison at Guantanamo also has drawn Muslim criticism.
While Obama is expected to recommit broadly to seeking Israeli-Palestinian peace in his speech and during talks with Netanyahu on Friday, there are no plans to seek major Israeli concessions for now. Nor has the right-wing Israeli leader given any sign concessions would be forthcoming.

Spetalnick again ignores any perspective other than that of the Arabs: the United States under Bush was not "active" or "even-handed" in its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict; Israel must be "confronted" over Jewish settlements in the "occupied West Bank"; all attention is on "the right-wing" Netanyahu to make concessions, etc.

There is no mention that George Bush was the first U.S. President to publicly call for a Palestinian state and to encourage democratic elections in the territories (which brought Hamas to power); no mention that Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") are entirely legal in international law; no mention that it has been Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who has consistently refused to make any concessions or even to engage in unconditional peace talks with Israel.

Spetalnick and Reuters are simply not constitutionally able to take an honest, even-handed approach in their Middle East reporting.  Constitutionally unable to "take no side; tell all sides".  Constitutionally unable to honor their Trust Principles or their Handbook.