Reuters correspondents on the edge of their seats to determine if murder of Jewish children is racist or "political"

Following the shooting at a Jewish school in Toulouse France this morning which killed a rabbi and his two young children, another child, and left many others wounded, Reuters reports with a curious twist:

With the attacker still on the loose, police stepped up a manhunt in the city of a million people in southwestern France and prosecutors opened anti-terrorism investigations, although it was not clear whether the motive was political or racist.

How might the deliberate targeting and slaughter of Jewish children be other than racist?

Well, if the raison d'etre of the news agency for which you work is to rationalize all terror and hate crimes targeting Jews worldwide as an aggrieved and understandable response to perceived injustices committed by the Jewish state of Israel, it stands to reason that you will wait to see if perhaps an Arab, an Iranian-national, or a Muslim generally, was responsible for the attack.

If so, you can always seek to mitigate the despicable nature of the crime by claiming that the motive was political.

If you happen to have been born Jewish, like Jeffrey Heller or Maayan Lubell, you can also deceive yourself into believing that Jews are not being targeted for merely being Jewish, but for the political policies of successive Israeli governments.

This is an essential defense mechanism if you're going to work at Reuters.

Advocate for ethnic cleansing of the Jews still working for Reuters

Reuters correspondent Maayan Lubell, who personally advocates for the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from their homes and property in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") reports on an agreement between the Israeli government and residents of the community of Migron for the latter to relocate to another settlement nearby:

(Reuters) - Jewish settlers signed an agreement with the Israeli government on Sunday to leave the biggest illegal outpost in the occupied West Bank and move to a nearby site after months of negotiations to avoid their forced removal.

In a relatively brief piece of 463 words, Lubell manages to demonstrate her inane logic, quotes as an authoritative source on Jewish settlements a political group convicted in court of libeling settlers, and asserts one of the most pernicious lies surrounding the Middle East conflict.

Let's begin with Lubell's logic (or lack thereof).  She writes:

The long dispute over Migron has revealed a contradiction at the heart of the Jewish state - despite publicly endorsing the notion of an independent Palestinian nation, successive Israeli governments have nurtured settlements on the very land that the Palestinians claim as theirs.

There is no contradiction between endorsement by successive Israeli governments of a Palestinian Arab state in the territories and the support and protection of Jewish communities in the area.  Jews are the aboriginal people on the land and lived there for centuries before being ethnically cleansed by the Arab Legion under the command of Transjordan in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.  In the modern era, much of the land was purchased and titled to individual Jews who were subsequently chased off or killed by marauding Arabs.

Notwithstanding this history of persecution and expulsion at the hands of the Arabs, most Israeli Jews are willing to accept a 22nd Arab state on public and private Jewish land in the territories, but not if it means further ethnic cleansing of their communities.  Since Jewish settlements reside on a mere 2 percent of total land in the area, it is utterly absurd (and utterly racist) for Lubell to suggest that Jews living there must be removed for a Palestinian state to come into being.

But that is the inane logic of the radical left in Israel.

Lubell then gives full voice to Peace Now on the matter:

A spokeswoman for the anti-settlement advocacy group Peace Now called the agreement "a disgrace".
"This agreement is no less than a disgrace. The government of Israel is actually saying 'We will not evict Migron, we will not do what the Supreme Court told us. And we will give in to any settlers' threat ... It sends a message that Israel (does not want) peace (and will) build more settlements," Peace Now's Hagit Ofran said.

What Lubell conceals from her readers is that Peace Now is not simply an "anti-settlement advocacy group" but a fringe organization convicted of publishing false and defamatory information about Jews living in the territories.

Seeking comment from Peace Now on the rights of Jews to live in Judea and Samaria would be like seeking comment from the Ku Klux Klan on the rights of African-Americans to live in Mississippi.

But such is the institutional mindset of Reuters correspondents.

Finally, Lubell perpetuates a piece of pernicious propaganda by asserting that:

While the United Nations deems all Jewish settlements in the region to be illegal, Israel backs 120 official settlements, home to about 310,000 people.

In fact, Jewish settlements in the territories are entirely legal in international law per the League of Nations adoption of the San Remo Agreement and Article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

Maayan Lubell is a racist and bald-faced liar.

The question is:

Why is she still employed at a public company committed in writing to a policy of integrity, independence and freedom from bias?

Reuters carries the propaganda flag for the Palestinian team

In a story about four Arabs -- from Cairo, Jerusalem, and Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") -- preparing to compete in the London Olympics, Reuters correspondent Nidal al-Mughrabi, employs the agency's favorite racist propaganda mantra:

GAZA, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Gaza runner Bahaa al-Farra treads carefully, braving the elements and potholed roads ravaged by years of conflict between Palestinian militants and the Israeli army, as he prepares to race at the London Olympics.
The 19-year-old trains for three hours a day in Gaza's Yarmouk soccer stadium, along the dusty streets and on the beach in well worn trainers that were donated to the Palestine Olympic Committee by wealthy Gulf state, Qatar.
Palestinian athletes complain of a paucity of financial support at home and a lack of vital equipment and coaches that are crucial for success and to nurture talented youth, but by competing in London, a national dream will be realised.
The Gaza Strip is a narrow coastal enclave in the eastern Mediterranean that borders on Israel and Egypt and which Palestinians want as part of a future state along with the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem.

Al-Mughrabi, whom we recently caught lying again about Palestinian violence, seeks here to drum into the minds of his audience members, the notion that Jerusalem belongs to the Arabs.

Jerusalem, a city founded and built by the Jewish people over three thousand years ago; a city with a majority Jewish population in the modern era from 1840; and a city branded with the racist epithet, Arab East Jerusalem for a mere 19 years after the area was ethnically cleansed of its ancient Jewish community by the Arab Legion in 1948, is expediently daubed with the same racist brushstroke by al-Mughrabi so as to irrationally and unethically persuade readers that the city is by rights or title, Arab. 

This is one sick media company.

AEJ

From a Reuters story about the Palestinian Arabs blaming (who else?) Israel for their own refusal to continue with peace talks:

Palestinians blame Israel for exploratory talks' [sic]

Previous peace negotiations collapsed in late 2010 with the Palestinians demanding that Israel suspend settlement building in the occupied West Bank, including Arab East Jerusalem.

Uh-huh.

Positioning propaganda

Reuters correspondents Ali Sawaftah and Sami Aboudi inform us that Israeli-Palestinian talks ended with no progress this week.  And the purported reason for that failure, according to the Palestinians, is positioned prominently in the third paragraph of the story:

"The Israelis brought nothing new in these meetings," said one Palestinian official familiar with the talks. "We are now going to assess our options and will consult our brothers in the Arab League on February 4."

As for the Israeli position on the stalemate... uh, well, readers have to wait until paragraphs 10 through 12 in the story to obtain that bit of information.  And when it is finally dosed by Reuters, it's laced with propaganda:

Peace talks foundered in late 2010 with Palestinians demanding that Israel suspend settlement building in the occupied West Bank, including Arab East Jerusalem.
Abbas also demanded that Israel agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state on all lands occupied in the 1967 Middle East war before resuming negotiations.
Israel has rejected both demands and said it was ready to resume negotiations immediately with no preconditions.

So you see, the Palestinian Arabs are merely demanding that Israel suspend settlement building on their land, which is obviously their land because after all, it's "occupied" and includes "Arab East Jerusalem", the racist fiction perpetuated by Reuters in over 500 stories since 2007 and beyond.

Racists@Reuters

Following and notwithstanding the victory of the Union in the American Civil War and abolition of slavery, predominantly White cities in the United States sought to expel their African-American residents through the use of terror, i.e., physical threats and attacks, and legal and economic coercion, i.e., preventing Blacks from renting or buying homes in the area.  The result was what was known as Sundown Towns, cities that were ethnically cleansed of their African-American communities.  (The term refers to the openly expressed edict that no black people were allowed after dark).

For similar overtly racist reasons, Jews were expelled from the eastern part of Jerusalem by the Arabs following the invasion and occupation of the city by the Jordanian-led Arab Legion in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.  Thousands of Jewish families were driven out, their property confiscated, their homes and synagogues looted and torched.

A holy city, originally founded and built by the Jews and where a Jewish community had survived for centuries despite successive waves of conquest and colonization, Jerusalem had been ethnically cleansed of its Jewish population and culture within weeks.

It was at that point, that the Old City of Jerusalem and its surrounds first became known, cynically, as Arab East Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was liberated and reunified by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and the 19 years of racial and religious exclusion at the hands of the Arabs came to an end.  Jews, and those of all religio-ethnic backgrounds, were able to once again live, work, and pray in any part of the city.  Today, Jews compose over 40 percent of the population of the eastern portion of Jerusalem.

For Reuters however, that cynical, ahistorical, and racist reference to Arab East Jerusalem persists:

(Reuters) - Israel's government broke all its settlement-building records in 2011, diminishing prospects for establishing a viable Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Israel's anti-settlement activist group "Peace Now" said Tuesday.
The group's annual report on building in Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank - land the Palestinians want for a future state along with the Gaza Strip - showed that despite international calls to halt construction, thousands of new homes were being built.

The repeated use of the misnomer "Arab East Jerusalem" by Reuters correspondents is of course, quite deliberate, intended to dismiss over three-thousand years of Jewish life, history, religious connection and sovereignty over the city, and with the stroke of a pen (or the click of a keyboard), assign ownership of Jerusalem to the Arabs who have sworn to once again ethnically cleanse of Jews, any land they obtain through violence or negotiations.

This is not merely advocacy journalism, in and of itself a serious violation of the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles and Handbook of Journalism.  It is reprehensible and racist propaganda that reflects a deeply sick and twisted worldview and an epic failure of corporate governance at one of the largest news agencies in the world, which, by not correcting the failure, implicitly endorses it.

Nidal al-Mughrabi, pathologically incapable of writing a straight story on the Middle East conflict

Reuters correspondent Nidal al-Mughrabi informs us that the leader of terror group Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, is to "embark on a regional tour" of Muslim countries in the Middle East (makes him sound like Justin Bieber, no?).

In a piece of just 363 words, al-Mughrabi manages to insert several key propagandistic phrases intended to demonize Israel and lead readers to believe that territory which has only ever been sovereign to the Jews, is by rights, exclusively Arab:

A Haniyeh aide said he will meet leaders in Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Qatar, Bahrain and Turkey and discuss rebuilding the Gaza Strip which suffered damage during a month-long Israeli offensive in 2008-09.
About 1,400 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, and 13 Israelis were killed in the war which Israel said it launched in order to curb cross-border rocket fire from Palestinian militants.

For al-Mughrabi, whose bio says he has worked and lived in Gaza for 15 years, the Israel-Hamas war in 2008-09 was an "Israeli offensive", which the veteran news correspondent is apparently completely unable to verify was precipitated by (thousands of) rockets fired by Palestinians into Israeli civilian communities.  The cause of the war remains mere hearsay.

Yet, if we are to believe the absurd notion that al-Mughrabi cannot ascertain any independent facts with which to confirm the casus belli and can only accept that which "Israel said", are we also to believe that Israeli officials characterized the firing of rockets into Israeli civilian communities as emanating from Palestinian "militants"?   In other words, if al-Mughrabi is citing Israeli officials, is he citing them accurately?

We challenge al-Mughrabi to produce evidence of an occurrence of Israeli officials referring to Hamas rocket crews as "militants".  He won't be able to of course, because Israelis refer to these groups as terrorists, not militants.

So the 15-year Reuters veteran is apparently not only unable to independently verify events leading to the 2008-09 war between Israel and Hamas, he is also unable to cite faithfully, those who can verify these events.

One thing al-Mughrabi is able to do, is advance an ahistorical, Arab-ethnocentric, and racist fiction intended to suggest that the city of Jerusalem rightfully belongs to the Arabs.

The more secular Fatah movement led by Abbas, holds sway in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Palestinians want both areas for a future state with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital.

There is no "Arab East Jerusalem".  It's a racist epithet formerly used to characterize the eastern portion of Jerusalem as it stood for a mere 19 years following the invasion, conquest, and ethnic cleansing of the Jews from the city by the Arab Legion in 1949.

But the term is used quite deliberately today, nearly a half-century after it became obsolete, by al-Mughrabi and his biased colleagues at Reuters in an effort to manipulate readers into believing that Jerusalem is by rights, by history, or by ethnicity, Arab.

This notion is false; it's propagandistic; and it's a violation of both Reuters Trust Principles and Handbook of Journalism for correspondents to peddle it.

But we know how seriously Reuters takes its ethical commitments to the public.

Reuters Tom Perry weighs in over Gingrich remarks

In a post earlier today, we noted the mendacity with which Reuters correspondent Steve Holland responded to Newt Gingrich's remarks about the Palestinians being one with the Arab community in the Middle East.  Now it's the turn of Reuters kingpin propagandist Tom Perry, who parrots interviews Palestinian official Saeb Erekat:

Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official, described his [Gingrich's] comments in an interview as "despicable." Hanan Ashrawi, another top official, said Gingrich's "very racist comments" showed he was "incapable of holding public office."
"This is the lowest point of thinking anyone can reach," Erekat, a close advisor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, told Reuters. Such comments served only to "increase the cycle of violence," he added.
"What is the cause of violence, war in this region? Denial, denying people their religion, their existence, and now he is denying our existence," said Erekat, for years a leading figure in peace talks aimed at the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

How ironic that a man proven to be a pathological liar, one who has served under two Palestinian regimes that have systematically denied Jewish historical and religious connections to the holy land, ancient culture and relics, and sovereign rights mandated by international law, is now pontificating about the conflict being due to a denial of religious rights and recognition of the Palestinian Arabs.

Along the way, Perry demonstrates why he is Reuters #1 propagandist and a serious liability to the company's (failing) reputation for truth and accuracy in its reporting:

The 1948 war erupted after Arab states rejected a U.N. plan that would have divided British mandate-ruled Palestine into Arab and Jewish states.

The 1948 war did not "erupt"; it was launched as a declared war of annihilation by five Arab states and contingents from two others against a nascent Israel.

Perry again:

While Hamas remains committed to armed "resistance" and will not recognize Israel, the Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah states that only peaceful means can deliver Palestinian statehood and its security forces cooperate with Israel.

Hamas is not committed to "armed resistance"; it is committed to the liquidation of Israel and the genocide of the Jewish people.  And as we demonstrated earlier, the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas is merely tactically and temporarily refraining from violence in its effort to wrestle land away from Israel.

Perry is quite adept at giving voice to Palestinian Arab howls of "racism" and "ethnic cleansing" but apparently incapable of reporting the reality of Palestinian racism and ethnic cleansing aimed at the Jews.

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

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

Yesterday, we wrote about the many canards and obfuscations appearing in a September 8th op-ed ("Analysis" in Reuters parlance) written by Jerusalem Bureau Chief Crispian Balmer.  We noted for example, Balmer's selective omission of any reference to the 10-month settlement moratorium conceded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a good-faith but futile effort to bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table.  Rather, Balmer refers only to Netanyahu's subsequent decline to extend the settlement freeze and then asserts that U.S. President Barack Obama was "deeply frustrated" by this decision, leading to frosty relations between Obama and Netanyahu.

As it happens, The New York Times just published a piece on the even icier relationship between Obama and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas which notes that the two have not spoken since February when Abbas failed to heed Obama's advice not to pursue an anti-Israel resolution at the United Nations.  Balmer, it seems, only plays relationship counselor when Israel is the jilted party.

In a follow-up editorial of September 9th, "Turkey to complicate life for Israel, but avoid war", Balmer continues with his liberal use of canards and propaganda devices in an effort to advance, in the domain of public opinion, the interests of Israel's enemies.  Writing about the recent threat by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to provide a military escort for any future flotilla to Gaza, Balmer reports:

Indicating there is no imminent danger of a clash, the charity that organised last year's convoy to the Gaza Strip said on Friday it had no plans for now for another flotilla.

In his previous editorial, Balmer attempted to conceal the hostile nature of the Turkish flotilla which sought to breach the Israeli naval embargo of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip by referring to it innocuously as "an aid flotilla" and here, he continues in that vein by characterizing the flotilla sponsor as a charity.  That "charity", the Turkish Islamist group, İnsani Yardım Vakfı (IHH), has documented ties to terror groups around the world, having raised funds for many of them.  Balmer, intent on sanitizing the group's public image, fails to mention this.

Moving on to a discussion of the threat to Israel's newfound offshore gas fields implicit in a Turkish naval presence in the area, Balmer writes:

Israel has sought to play down the diplomatic crisis, with officials pointing out that the two countries had already overcome previous rows, such as in 1980 when Turkey curbed ties to protest at Israel's annexation of Arab East Jerusalem.

The use of the phase Arab East Jerusalem is both ahistorical and racist, referring to the eastern portion of the city of Jerusalem as it was known for only 19 years, of its 3,000-year history, following the invasion, occupation, and ethnic cleansing of the Jewish population by the Arab Legion in 1948.  Balmer is employing a propaganda device here known as historical reconstruction, i.e., a fabrication, in an attempt to assign ownership of Jerusalem, in the minds of his readers, to the Arabs and suggest that Israel was usurping Arab land in 1967 when it liberated the city or in 1980 when it formally annexed it.

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

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.

Racists at Reuters at it again

Oh my.  If we had a penny for every time the Reuters Jerusalem crew attempted to assign ownership of Jerusalem to the Arabs via use of the propagandistic, anachronistic and racist misnomer, Arab East Jerusalem, we'd be wealthy beyond our dreams:

Western-backed Abbas holds sway in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Palestinians want both territories for a future state with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital.

Reuters: no Jews allowed

At the 2009 World Economic Forum, Caroline Drees, formerly Reuters Middle East Editor and now Managing Editor for the Middle East and Africa, hosted a symposium entitled "Race for an Audience; Media in the Middle East".  On the symposium panel were media executives and analysts from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, and Dubai.  Note that although the symposium did not specifically reference the Arab media, Drees' panel contained no Israeli industry executives or analysts.

According to this interview with Qatar Today in 2010, Drees has lived in the Arab Middle East for over 25 years:

“I have greatly enjoyed discovering the complex fabric of this diverse region,” she said. “Since my first taste of the Arab world when my family moved to Sudan in 1986, I've been lucky enough to work and travel in most Arab countries, learning about the history, heritage and culture of places from Morocco to the Arabian Peninsula.” She also notes the Middle Eastern countries as being “extremely hospitable with a wide variety of great food.”
On her stint in running editorial operations through some difficult times both in Gaza and Tehran, Drees says, “One of the fantastic things about working for Reuters is the people. We have excellent reporting teams in both Gaza and Tehran, and their work during these momentous stories was outstanding. Many other media outlets struggled to report on these events because they weren't present on the ground. But Reuters has reporters based in Gaza and Tehran – and throughout the Middle East – all the time, so we are able to tell the world first-hand about the unfolding news. We were there long before, during and after these events, allowing us to bring true expertise to bear. Thanks to our hard-working and courageous reporters, we were able to give our subscribers news with unparalleled insight and free from bias, in line with the Reuters Trust Principles.

Needless to say, our nearly 600 posts over the last two years evidence a very different type of "news" product delivered to Reuters subscribers than that described by Drees.

Moreover, by virtue of her senior management positions with Reuters in the Middle East, Drees is perhaps most singularly responsible for Reuters correspondents' abject failure to uphold the Reuters Trust Principles and refusal to comply with the agency's Handbook of Journalism in their reporting on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Given her quarter-century living and working in Arab countries and the cultural insularity, racial and religious intolerance endemic to that region, we're frankly not surprised Drees chose not to invite an Israeli to participate in the panel discussion.

Let's just be very clear on Reuters' policy of apartheid.

Racist Allyn Fisher-Ilan at it again

From a story by Reuters racist Allyn Fisher-Ilan:

The Palestinians want a state covering all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with Arab East Jerusalem as their capital and a settlement of the refugee issue. They have declined comment on the initiative, saying they want to see its text first.

For the umpteenth time, there is no such place as "Arab East Jerusalem", and reference to it is ahistorical, biased, and racist.  The eastern part of the city of Jerusalem was designated such by the Jordanian-led Arab Legion in 1949 following its invasion, conquest and ethnic cleansing of the area of Jews.  This status lasted a mere 19 years of a municipal history spanning over three-thousand years during which time Jews founded the city, built its roads and Temples, and constituted its majority religio-ethnic community for centuries before the arrival of colonizing Arabs.

Fisher-Ilan is peddling a propaganda mantra here in an unethical attempt to influence her readers to accept the false notion that Jerusalem belongs to the Arabs.

In so doing, she's violating her firm's corporate governance charter, endorsing the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Jerusalem, and betraying her hardcore racism.

Jewish Jerusalem before and after ethnic cleansing by the Arab Legion.

Serial liar and racist Tom Perry back from his holiday

Reuters correspondent Tom Perry is back from an extended holiday and obviously feeling reinvigorated, he returns to his long tradition of lies and racism targeting the Jews of Israel.  In a story about Arab businessmen investing in Jerusalem, Perry sycophantically parrots Reuters' deep-pocketed Arab clientele, referring to the eastern portion of Jerusalem, the Old City where Jews were ethnically cleansed by the Arab Legion following Israel's War of Independence in 1948, with the ahistorical and racist misnomer "Arab East Jerusalem".  This, in a transparent bid to displace and reassign ownership of Jerusalem, a city built by the Jews and only ever sovereign to a Jewish state, to the descendants of Arab invaders and colonizers.

Perry next compares the business and economic climate in the Palestinian capital of Ramallah with that of Jerusalem:

For many, it has been easier to invest in Ramallah, the nearby West Bank city governed by the Palestinian Authority. Lower taxes and cheaper labor add to the business case. Ramallah is booming, thanks largely to Western donor support.  By contrast, economic life in East Jerusalem's walled old city and nearby Arab districts, home to some 350,000 Palestinians, has been suffocated by the impact of the barrier built by Israel during the last Intifada, or uprising.

Perry is lying here, inflating the Arab population of greater Jerusalem by 40 percent and asserting that the economy in the eastern portion of the city has been "suffocated" by the security fence, built by Israel to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from reaching the civilian population.  In fact, Jewish districts in eastern Jerusalem lag the country in economic growth as well and the percentage of Arab households with employed persons (76.1%) is actually higher than that of Jewish households (66.8%).  The relatively high rate of unemployment and poverty in Jerusalem is due to a multitude of complex factors, not the least of which is the large Haredi population in the city, 70 percent of whom choose religious studies over work.  And of course, if the Palestinian Arabs wish for Israel to remove the security barrier, they simply have to choose peace over terror.

Having embraced the Arab-designated name for the eastern portion of Jerusalem in violation of the Reuters Handbook of Journalism, Perry then embraces Adnan al-Husseini as the "Palestinian Authority-appointed governor of Jerusalem":

"Jerusalem should not just be the focus of songs and poetry. Today, Jerusalem is about work. People who want to protect Jerusalem must work in it. Israel is working hand over fist and putting in billions. The Arab nation must spend more," he said.

Al-Husseini is actually not the "governor" of Jerusalem, but rather Palestinian president-for-life Mahmoud Abbas' adviser on Jerusalem affairs.  And although Perry uncritically parrots Husseini suggesting that only Israel is investing heavily in Jerusalem, in fact, the "Arab nation" is quite active in that regard, having poured hundreds of million of dollars into illegal construction.

Every trick in the book

In a story on Israel's announcement of homes to be built in the community of Pisgat Zeev, Reuters correspondent Ori Lewis incorporates a variety of propaganda devices, deceptions, apologetics, racism -- oh, and a libelous information source -- to damn Israel in the minds of readers:

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel on Wednesday revealed plans to build new homes on West Bank land it has annexed as part of its Jerusalem boundaries, a move likely to further hamper any resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians.

Lewis repeatedly violates the Reuters Handbook of Journalism in this piece by referring to the last unallocated portion of the original Palestine Mandate with its Arab-designated term, "West Bank" while failing to balance this with Israel's appellation for the disputed territory, Judea and Samaria.  He then goes a step further by employing the ahistorical and racist term, "Arab East Jerusalem", to describe the eastern portion of the city of Jerusalem abutting the community of Pisgat Zeev.

Lewis then scoffs:

Pisgat Zeev, founded 25 years ago, is one of its largest Jewish "neighbourhoods," as Israel refers to it, with some 50,000 inhabitants.

because Israel doesn't accept Reuters' utterly bizarre view that a community of 50,000 people living on land adjoining Jerusalem, an area the archeological record shows was a producer of wine and oil for use in the Jewish Temple in the city, is anything other than, (gracious!), a neighborhood.

Lewis continues:

Israel has insisted that building in the urban areas it annexed to Jerusalem following their capture in a 1967 Middle East war were never included in the freeze.

Why cast doubt with use of the heavily biased term "insisted"?  It's a matter of record that Israel's unilateral concession to halt residential building in Judea and Samaria was never going to include communities like Pisgat Zeev.

Of course, Reuters is always happy to cite the ostensibly neutral but in reality, wickedly libelous "rights group" Peace Now to serve up an unsupported allegation:

A spokeswoman for the Israeli rights group Peace Now, which monitors Jewish settlement building, has estimated that settlers hold some 13,000 construction permits throughout the West Bank issued before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the 10-month freeze a year ago.

And as we noted in our post just below, somehow, someway, Israel is always to blame for the Palestinian failure to make peace:

Netanyahu announced the freeze to coax Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas into direct talks but these ground to a halt after Israel refused to extend it despite diplomatic pressure from its main U.S. ally.

No mention that it took nine and a half months of the ten-month freeze for Abbas to finally agree to come into the negotiating tent and only two weeks later for him to pack up the tent.

Racism rampant@Reuters

As we've noted dozens of times, Reuters correspondents have an obvious and odious agenda which manifests relentlessly in their stories on the Middle East conflict.  That agenda is to use the bully pulpit as the largest news agency in the world to advance Palestinian Arab interests by delegitimizing Israel and Jewish claims to the city of Jerusalem and surrounding territory.

Their primary technique in furthering that agenda is propaganda, which Smith (1989) defines as any conscious attempt "to influence the beliefs of an individual or group, guided by a predetermined end and characterized by the systematic use of irrational and often unethical techniques of persuasion".

Central to Reuters' efforts in this respect is to persuade its readers to accept the notion that Jerusalem is, was, and rightfully always should be, an Arab city.  And the most direct way to accomplish this is to hypnotically suggest Arab ownership by employing an epithet, repeatedly, when referring to the city.  As in Arab East Jerusalem.

That term originated following the Israeli-Arab war in 1947-48 and the Arab Legion's ethnic cleansing of the entire Jewish community from the city of Jerusalem.  A community whose ancestors founded the city over three thousand years ago, built its walls, roads, and Temples.  A community that represented the majority religio-ethnic group in the city from at least the 1840s in the modern era.  And a community that was forcefully pushed out, homes gutted, synagogues destroyed, and cemeteries desecrated.  All perpetrated by the Arabs to whom Reuters now attempts to grant ownership of the city.

In repeatedly referring to "Arab East Jerusalem", Reuters correspondents are thus endorsing ethnic cleansing of the Jewish community between 1948 and 1967 (the latter year in which Israel liberated the city following the Six-Day War).  Further, they are engaging in a willful deception -- a racist, willful deception -- to lead readers to believe that the eastern part of Jerusalem is by rights or tradition, exclusively Arab when in fact, this was only the case for a period of 19 years of a history stretching over three millennium. 

Now imagine the public outcry if a Reuters correspondent referred today to Rosewood Florida as "Caucasiantown"or identified Tulsa Oklahoma as "White South Tulsa" decades after African-Americans returned to their homes in these cities following violent riots and expulsion in the 20th century.

How long would that correspondent retain his Reuters press credentials?

The racists at Reuters

Yesterday, we noted Reuters use of the racist epithet, "Arab East Jerusalem" in two stories on Israel's announced planning of apartments in the Jerusalem suburbs of Har Homa and Ramot.  By characterizing the Old City of Jerusalem and its surrounds as "Arab", Reuters correspondents are adopting an ethnocentric vantage point in violation of the agency's social responsibility commitment and demonstrating their deep hostility for Jewish rights and claims.

As we've discussed previously, use of the epithet "Arab East Jerusalem" is akin to characterizing American communities which were ethnically cleansed of African-Americans following the Civil War as "Caucasianland" or referring to the Chicago Southside as "Negroidville".  It's ahistorical, deeply offensive, and patently racist. 

We stand witness to Reuters' racist, habitual, and damaging ethical lapses which continue to go uncorrected and unpunished by Reuters editors or Thomson Reuters executives even as the agency is able, via an immense customer base, to propagate its pernicious propaganda globally. 

Allyn Fisher-Ilan obfuscates religious significance, lies about history and resorts to racism

In a story about a visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem by Israeli Parliamentarian Danny Danon, Reuters correspondent Allyn Fisher-Ilan mangles religious and historical significance, revives an old canard, and parrots a racist trope.  She writes:

Under armed police escort, Danny Danon, a deputy parliament speaker, toured the site of an ancient Jewish temple, a plaza home to the al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam's holiest sites, and said he thought Jews should be permitted freer access there... Danon told reporters at the nearby Western Wall, Judaism's holiest prayer site...

Fisher-Ilan attempts here to belittle the religious significance of the Temple Mount for Jews (the site of King Solomon's Temple and the second Herodian Temple) by referring to the shrine with a common noun while she identifies and venerates the Muslim shrine atop the same ground.  This of course, to delegitimize Israeli claims to the area while fostering Arab claims to the same.  And it is the Temple Mount, not the Western Wall, which is Judaism's holiest prayer site -- even if Jews are frequently prevented from praying there due to Muslim "sensibilities".

Fisher-Ilan continues:

Past visits by senior Israeli officials to the site at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute have sparked violence, notably in 2000 when a visit by Ariel Sharon, then an opposition leader, set off a Palestinian uprising and years of bloodshed.

As we have documented many times, this is a canard which even the Palestinians have corrected but Reuters republishes the lie ad nauseam so as to absolve the Palestinians for their terror war which was actually planned months in advance of Sharon's visit and killed over 1,000 Israeli civilians.

Then comes the racist trope:

Israel considers Jerusalem as its capital including Arab East Jerusalem, which it captured in a 1967 war and annexed in a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as capital of a future state.

Again, as we've noted many, many times, the term "Arab East Jerusalem" originated with the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from their communities in the eastern part of Jerusalem by the Jordanian-commanded Arab Legion in 1948.  Prior to this extirpation, the Jews had a continuous presence in the Old City for three millennia and in the modern era, were the majority religio-ethnic population from the middle of the 19th century.  Thus, Fisher-Ilan's use of the term "Arab East Jerusalem" is racist, ahistorical, and endorses that act of ethnic cleansing.

Jewish families evacuating the Old City of Jerusalem through Zion's Gate. June 1948. John Phillips, LIFE Magazine.

Palestinian public relations

If Reuters correspondents Douglas Hamilton and Ali Sawafta are not already being paid to handle PR for the Palestinian Arabs, PA President Mahmoud Abbas should seriously consider signing them up for the role.

In a pure public relations play laden with errors of commission, errors of omission, outright falsehoods, and the parroting of Palestinian positions and propaganda, Hamilton and Sawafta apologize for Palestinian rejectionism on peace talks -- a tactic employed by Reuters since Israel first offered direct negotiations shortly after Benjamin Netanyahu took power in 2009.  At the time, Reuters ran dozens of stories arguing that peace talks "could not proceed" (as if it were an immutable law of physics) until Israel was coerced to halt all construction in Judea and Samaria, aka the "West Bank".  The truth of course, was that the Palestinians simply refused to enter into talks.  But Reuters correspondents could not bring themselves to report that reality.

Now, following eight months during which time Israel has suspended building in all disputed areas including a de facto freeze on new residential construction for Jews in Jerusalem, the Palestinians continue to reject peace talks with Israel and Reuters continues to apologize for them:

U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu want direct talks soon on a Middle East peace treaty, but Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is wary of walking into a trap.

Note that the Palestinian President is not being quoted here, nor even paraphrased; Hamilton and Sawafta are actually representing and doing the talking for Abbas.  And keep in mind that this story isn't identified as an op-ed or "Analysis" (as Reuters opinion pieces are by policy, deceptively labeled); rather, the material is astonishingly presented as straight news.

Further details of Palestinian recalcitrance and further Reuters' apologies for that recalcitrance follow:

The Palestinians note they have had a "peace process" for the best part of 17 years, yet remain under Israeli occupation.

They say they have cooperated with three U.S. presidents with differing levels of commitment to the process, but with the same result. So they are wary of being pushed into a negotiation where they can be made to look like rejectionists.

No, they wouldn't want to look like rejectionists, particularly after they have rejected every offer of nationhood facilitated by those three US presidencies including the most recent package presented by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert consisting of a Palestinian state with all of Gaza, 97 percent of the West Bank, Arab neighborhoods in the eastern part of Jerusalem, and a nominal "right of return" for Palestinian refugees.  It was Abbas' rejection of this near capitulatory offer as well as unrequited Palestinian demands for further concessions from both Israel and the Quartet that led to the de facto end of negotiations in 2008 -- not the Gaza war as Reuters' correspondents now suggest.

Next, Hamilton and Sawafta blatantly misrepresent the data appearing in a report issued by B'Tselem:

A report this week by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem says more than 300,000 Israelis now live on 42 percent of the West Bank land where the Palestinians want to establish their future country in a "two-state solution" with Israel.

This is false.  The study acknowledges that Jewish communities reside upon only 1 percent of land in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank").  There is an allegation that due to the classification of territory in the West Bank as state land, 42 percent of it is controlled by Jewish councils.  But even this claim has been rejected by the Chairman of the Council of Jewish Communities who puts the figure at 9 percent.

Hamilton and Sawafta then quote? paraphrase? parrot? fabricate? an assertion by Abbas' aide Nabil Abu Rdainah:

In talks mediated by former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice the Israelis acknowledged that occupied land means the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Arab East Jerusalem, the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley, Abu Rdainah said.

Note the absence of quotation marks with the attribution only tacked on at the end, so as to give the assertion greater authority.  Hamilton frequently deploys these type of rhetorical tricks to empower Palestinian claims.  And the assertion is actually false.  Israel does not consider Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"), any part of Jerusalem or Gaza "occupied".  And only the racists at Reuters and the Arabs themselves refer to the eastern part of Jerusalem as "Arab East Jerusalem".

Hamilton and Sawafta really should consider giving up their day jobs at Reuters and joining Nabil Abu Rdainah as official spokesmen for the Palestinian Authority.  They would be infinitely more suited to the role.