World yawns over Middle East conflict; Reuters panics

In a nearly hysterical op-ed loaded with dire warnings and hyperbole, Reuters Bureau Chief Alastair Macdonald frets that the Israel-Palestinian conflict may be losing its audience.  That would obviously be bad for business at Reuters' Middle East bureau so Macdonald launches his arsenal of rhetorical WMDs to recapture our attention:

Here on the ground in this Belgium-size bit of Mediterranean coast a new war is raging, so far of words...

Their [Israelis who do not support "the two-state solution"] critics warn of "rivers of blood" in an "apartheid Israel" made international pariah if the two-state option dies.

Palestinians, too, are sounding more apocalyptic. 

He [Abbas] also warned this week that his people may turn to more violence if they are thwarted.

Yet time for agreement, many officials and diplomats concur, may be running out as frustration breeds radicalism all round.

Along the way, Macdonald reveals his own radical anti-Israel colors referring to Jewish "colonization" of Judea and Samaria and misrepresenting the particulars of previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements ("the partition goal enshrined in the 1993 Oslo accords") as well as getting the basic demography of the region wrong ("Israel controls a whole territory where Arabs may soon outnumber Jews").

But what really seems to panic Macdonald is the loss of global interest in the conflict:

As world attention wanes, perhaps with the lack of televised bloodshed and the glacial pace of U.S. President Barack Obama's efforts to get the sides back to even "proximity talks", Israelis and Palestinians are watching anxiously to see whether the 20-year-old "peace process" will now live, or die.

Well, there's always agitprop to increase circulation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In a nearly hysterical pitch, Hamilton parrots Palestinian claims:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Israel Supreme Court rules in favor of Jew; Palestinian advocates at Reuters hysterical

Following years of appeals and legal delays, the Israel Supreme Court finally awarded Yehya Gureish (a Yemen-born Jew) possession of his home in Jerusalem. There's only one problem: an Arab family had been squatting there and pursuant to a court order, has now been evicted. And you know what that means: shrieks of "ethnic cleansing!" from the Palestinian advocates at Reuters. Parroting Palestinian claims, Reuters' Douglas Hamilton writes the eviction is part of:

... a systematic campaign to drive them [Arabs] out and strengthen Israel's hold on all of Jerusalem.

And of course, to buttress Reuters' self-appointed legal authority to decide who has sovereignty over the eastern portion of the city, Hamilton employs the racist characterization, "Arab East Jerusalem".

As for the Jews who live in eastern Jerusalem or whose families have roots there from over a century ago -- before being subjected to genuine ethnic cleansing by the Arab Legion in 1948 (see photos) -- well, for Reuters they are clearly interlopers "settlers" who have no rights.

Hamilton then goes on to parrot another canard, that "Palestinians have little chance of winning property cases in Israeli courts", and "a fair hearing is impossible to obtain". Hamilton should read the news more often.

So we wonder, does a Mizrahi (Semitic) Jew who holds legitimate title to property located in eastern Jerusalem which has been in his family for generations have the right to possession of his home? If not, why not? Because he is Israeli? Because he is Jewish? If the former, would he be entitled to his property if he renounced his Israeli citizenship? If the latter, would he be entitled to his property if he converted to Islam?

We're sure Douglas Hamilton and the legal scholars at Reuters have the answers.