Reuters handles PR for the Muslim Brotherhood

Reuters correspondent Andrew Quinn reports on a charm offensive by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, designed to win over American politicians.

Recall, the Brotherhood is committed to implementing Sharia law in Egypt, is deeply antisemitic, encourages Muslim men to treat women like chattel, advocates death for homosexuals, despises Western democracy, seeks the destruction of Israel, and believes in permanent underclass status for religious minorities.

So how does Quinn characterize the group?

The Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in 1928 and seeks to promote its conservative vision of Islam in society, has made dramatic gains since a popular uprising toppled President Hosni Mubarak last year and launched Egypt on an unpredictable political course.

Then, there's this reassuring news:

The FJP candidate, Khairat al-Shater, said in comments reported on Wednesday that introducing sharia law would be his "first and final objective," but the FJP group in Washington sought to dismissed fears this meant they aimed to establish an Islamic theocracy.

And this amusing piece of sophistry:

Abdul Mawgoud Dardery, an FJP lawmaker from Luxor, said the party was dedicated to the principle of a "civil state" and the objectives of sharia law rather than its specific practice.

Leading to this inadvertently hilarious juxtaposition:

The FJP team took pains to appear both reasonable and flexible during their Washington visit, quoting both from the Koran and from the U.S. self-help manual "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," and depicting themselves as the true heirs of the uprising in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

All reported on by Quinn with absolutely no background or critical insight on the Brotherhood, its fanatical founder, its dogma, or its, shall we say, less politically correct spokesmen.

"Conservative".

A lesson in propaganda

Reporting on a large-scale, five-day air raid drill in Israel to prepare for the eventuality of Iranian-backed rocket attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah, Reuters correspondent Allyn Fisher-Ilan wants her readers to know:

Iran denies its uranium enrichment programme is a quest for nuclear arms and says it is purely for power. Israel is widely believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal.

Note what has occurred here.  Employing the common propaganda technique of repetition, Fisher-Ilan parrots Iran's long-standing and risible claim that it is enriching uranium (to levels which far exceed the 3-4 percent needed to generate electricity) "purely for power".  She then juxtaposes Iran's denial with the strong suggestion -- employing the bandwagon fallacy -- that Israel has nuclear weapons.  The focus of suspicion is thus neatly shifted from Iran to Israel.

Fisher-Ilan writes:

Iran's nuclear ambitions, which the West and Israel believe are aimed at building atomic weapons...

thus singling out Israel and the amorphous "West" as credulous while making no mention that the United Nations nuclear watchdog IAEA has drawn the same conclusion.

All in a day's work for the propagandists at Reuters.

Reuters reports on Hamas' violations of human rights; devotes nearly half of story to drawing comparisons with Israel

It's a rare occasion when Reuters pens a story on the systematic oppression and human rights violations endemic in Hamas-controlled Gaza.  With articles issued by the Associated Press and other agencies this week on Hamas dumping bullet-riddled bodies and demolishing dozens of Palestinian homes in Gaza, Reuters apparently felt compelled to report on these abuses.  Still, in a story of just over 300 words on the house demolitions, correspondent Nidal al-Mughrabi manages to divert nearly half of his content to stale and skewed comparisons with Israeli practices when it controlled the Strip:

Israeli forces often carried out home demolitions in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, along the Egyptian border, during a Palestinian uprising that began in 2000, saying the dwellings provided cover for militants.

That Israel leveled houses in Gaza is of course, where the similarity with Hamas' current abomination ends.  In the former instance, Israel was, as al-Mughrabi alludes, defending against Palestinian smuggling of lethal weaponry via tunnels strategically constructed under civilian structures so as to thwart those defensive actions.  In the latter case, Hamas is... well, being Hamas.

Al-Mughrabi then wishes to relitigate the death seven years ago of Rachel Corrie:

A U.S. pro-Palestinian activist, Rachel Corrie, was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer there in 2003 while protesting against Israeli demolitions.

Corrie was a member of the terrorist-enabling International Solidarity Movement and was killed, not while "protesting" but rather while protecting Hamas' weapons smuggling tunnels.

Egypt kills Palestinian smugglers; Reuters blames Israel and the US

There are conflicting reports of precisely how the tunnel smugglers died (AP indicates poison gas was used; Reuters reports a bomb was detonated underground) but four Palestinians were killed by Egyptian security forces yesterday.  However, in the second paragraph of its story, Reuters points the finger at who it considers the real culprits:

Under pressure from Israel and the United States, Egypt has tried to stem the secret passages from its Sinai peninsula, which have allowed Palestinians in Gaza to import weapons and commercial goods in defiance of an Israeli-led blockade.

And later in the article:

Many Egyptians sympathise with the Palestinians and the Hamas Islamists who rule Gaza and refuse to forswear violence againt [sic] the Jewish state.

The insinuation being of course, that in killing Palestinian smugglers, the Egyptians are only doing Israel's bidding.