Douglas Hamilton dons his Sherlock Holmes cap

Arabs are killing Jews again and Reuters correspondent Douglas Hamilton is simply shocked that Hamas would enable the attacks:

Hamas's armed wing, Izz el-Deen al-Qassam, said in a statement it took "full responsibility for the heroic operation in Hebron."

Its claim confounded recent Hamas signals that it would deter militants from resuming attacks on Israel of the sort that triggered the Jewish state's military assault of the winter of 2008-09 in which 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.

We noted yesterday that Hamas had promised a new war against Israel so today's terror attack should come as no surprise to anyone.  Notwithstanding, Hamilton does his level best to confuse readers on culpability for the attack with this tortured bit of circular reasoning from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas:

Abbas said the Highway 60 attack "cannot be considered an act of resistance after Hamas itself has stopped resistance from the Gaza Strip and gone after those who carry it out."

Following which, Hamilton plays Holmes and chases the red herring:

This opened the question of who authorised the killings, and whether Hamas was united behind the attack or was now divided.

Because there is always another front group in an endless stream of front groups for Reuters to blame rather than hold the Palestinians to account for their open hostility to coexistence with the Jews.

Hamilton then repeats the same bit of rhetorical legerdemain deployed by his colleague Tom Perry yesterday:

Tuesday's attack was the most lethal in the West Bank in four years, the army said. In a Palestinian uprising from 2000 to 2007, some 540 Israelis were killed in suicide bomb attacks and more than 4,000 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces.

As we noted, more than double that number of Israelis were killed when all means of terror attacks are included.  Hamilton is clearly more Shyster than Sherlock.

Anatomy of a lie

Reuters' correspondents like Jeffrey Heller have been writing on the Middle East conflict for years.  Their technique and boilerplate have been honed to perpetuate particular myths that form a part of the Reuters' advocacy agenda consistent with the Arab agenda.  Take for example, the following logical fallacy: 

1) Jerusalem is part of the "West Bank".
2) The West Bank is "occupied" land.
3) "Occupied" land is synonymous with Palestinian land.
Therefore,
4) Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian land.

This fallacy is a form of begging the question/circular reasoning where the conclusion, while following logically, is based on faulty premises intended to lead inexorably to the conclusion (implicitly embedded in the premises) which the writer wishes the reader to reach.

Here is how Heller constructs his logical fallacy in a story appearing on the Reuters website today.  He begins by telling us that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu intends to announce a formal plan to limit settlement construction for 10 months:

Netanyahu's offer will exclude areas of the West Bank that Israel annexed to its Jerusalem municipality after capturing the territory in a 1967 war, the sources said.

Note how Heller slyly slips in his first faulty premise, i.e., areas annexed to Jerusalem constitute a part of the West Bank.  In fact, Jewish communities formally annexed by Israel, like Gilo for example, are geographically adjacent to the western part of Jerusalem and sit atop land purchased by Jews prior to WWII.  Indeed, this land was owned by Jews even before the Jordanians labeled the area the "West Bank" following their invasion and ethnic cleansing of Jewish communities in 1948.

Heller then proceeds with his second faulty premise, i.e., the West Bank is occupied land:

That would fall short of a Palestinian demand that Netanyahu freeze settlement on all occupied land before peace negotiations, suspended since December, can resume.

As we noted here, the term "occupied" is drawn from the Fourth Geneva Convention which applies only to land formerly part of a sovereign state and contracting party to the Conventions -- neither of which pertains to the West Bank.

The third faulty premise, i.e., "occupied" land is synonymous with Palestinian land, is introduced in the form of a quote by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, cited by Heller fully and uncritically:

We do not believe we can restart the negotiations with them [Israel] while they are continuing building in our territories, Abbas said. [italics, ours]

Note the absence of scare quotes -- frequently employed by Reuters correspondents to express their skepticism or disdain for Israeli positions -- around Abbas' assertion of the territories as Palestinian.  In other words, Reuters plainly accepts Abbas' assertion that the territories belong to the Palestinian Arabs.  In reality, as per international law, the territories remain formally unallocated.

Having guilefully embedded three false premises, Heller leads the reader to the only "logical" conclusion: Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian land.  If there were any doubt, Heller pastes in a bit of standard Reuters' boilerplate:

Some 500,000 Jews live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem alongside 2.7 million Palestinians. The settlements, Palestinians fear, could deny them a viable state.

Mission accomplished, Jeffrey.

Stack that deck!

In the first line of a story appearing today, the racists at Reuters tell us:

Israeli authorities demolished two Palestinian homes near Arab East Jerusalem on Tuesday, ignoring international concern about the practice.

Reuters frequently deploys the racially-loaded fiction, "Arab East Jerusalem", in an effort to demarcate the area and assign title to the Arabs. And by adopting the Arab historical narrative associated with the land, Reuters offers succor to the Palestinians in their claim to all of Israel as Arab territory.

Reuters then goes on to cite the Head of the UN Human Rights Council as calling for a halt to house demolitions in "East Jerusalem". This is the UN body "responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe", constituted by exemplary states like Jordan where Palestinian Arabs have been stripped of their residency and Jews are forbidden to own property, as well as Saudi Arabia where Jews are banned.

Reuters also quotes Adnan al-Husseini (identified as the Palestinian-appointed "governor of Jerusalem" but actually the PA adviser on Jerusalem affairs) insisting that the UN Security Council intervene to stop these "criminal actions". This, from someone who demands that the Western Wall of the Jewish Temple be under Muslim control -- obviously a thoughtful and authoritative source on matters of international law.

Finally, in a prominent example of the propaganda techniques of card stacking and appeal to pity, Reuters reports:

Statistics in a U.N. report published in May showed that 1,500 demolition orders issued by the Jerusalem municipality were pending for Palestinian dwellings built without permits. The report said that if the orders were implemented, about 9,000 Palestinians would be displaced.

What Reuters does not report is that over the last few years, Palestinian Arabs have built 6,000 homes in Jerusalem without permits and that as per a study at the time, the majority of illegal structures demolished between 1995 and 2001 were in the Jewish sector.

Just the usual oversight, we're sure.

More Reuters errata

In the article discussed just below, Jeffrey Heller continues in the fine Reuters tradition of misrepresenting the obligations of the warring parties as specified in the Road Map:

"Netanyahu, who holds further talks on the settlement issue later this week with U.S. envoy George Mitchell, has resisted a total freeze stipulated by a U.S.-backed 2003 peace "road map" that also commits the Palestinians to reining in militants."

See our criticism of Reuters' handling of this crucial point in Reuters' broken boilerplate.

Heller also awards the Arabs sovereignty over the eastern portion of Jerusalem with a factually incorrect and racially-loaded epithet:

"Some 300,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and another 200,000 in Arab East Jerusalem..."

See our post: Reuters continues to advocate for evicted Palestinian squatters.