Pot meet kettle

In a story published on the Reuters website and syndicated to scores of other media outlets, correspondent and kingpin propagandist Tom Perry propagates the notion that Jews living in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") have been setting fire to Palestinian land:

(Reuters) - Scorched hillsides and charred olive groves near Nablus pinpoint the latest acts of arson by hardline Jewish settlers against Palestinians who say they are ever more the victims of such attacks in the West Bank.
"The olive tree is the only source of income for farmers," said Mohammad Zeban, a Palestinian farmer, lamenting the damage inflicted on hundreds of olive trees by a recent fire near the village of Huwara. "They want to annihilate us."

Perry may wish to consult the latest poll of Palestinian Arabs living in the territories to learn whom actually wishes to annihilate whom:

Seventy-two percent [of Palestinians] backed denying the thousands of years of Jewish history in Jerusalem, 62% supported kidnapping IDF soldiers and holding them hostage, and 53% were in favor or teaching songs about hating Jews in Palestinian schools.

When given a quote from the Hamas Charter about the need for battalions from the Arab and Islamic world to defeat the Jews, 80% agreed. Seventy-three percent agreed with a quote from the charter (and a hadith, or tradition ascribed to the prophet Muhammad) about the need to kill Jews hiding behind stones and trees.

And in reality, it is the Palestinian Arabs who have been setting fire to Jewish land:

Residents of various West Bank settlements have found themselves under a new threat recently – arson.

According to a report published by Yedioth Ahronoth Tuesday, more than 20 fires have been maliciously set in West Bank settlements and outposts in the past few weeks.

Defense establishment sources have expressed concern that the area may be facing an "arson intifada," saying Palestinians have foregone hurling rocks and rioting in favor of setting fires near settlements and letting the hot weather and winds do the rest – i.e. feed the blaze as it spreads and threatens communities and wildlife alike.

Police investigators determined that all of the fires were the result of arson and evidence in all cases led to surrounding Arab villages. The Judea and Samaria District Police have recently arrested six suspects.

Mr. Perry, meet Mr. Orwell.

Hat tip: EoZ

Settlers

The term "settler" as it pertains to Jews who live beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines originated with the Mandate for Palestine which stipulated that the Administration:

shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.

The Mandate was adopted by the League of Nations in 1922, grandfathered across to the United Nations, and has never been abrogated.

We introduce this to illustrate the way in which the term "Jewish settler" has been decontextualized and distorted over the years to use as a cudgel against Israel and to trample on absolutely legitimate Jewish rights and aspirations to live in the territories of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank").

Reuters is one of the worst offenders in this line of attack.  Not only is the news agency pathologically obsessed with Jews living beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines (googling "Jeffrey Heller settlements" yields 2,200,000 results), but their correspondents portray even those Jews whose families owned homes and lived in the Old City of Jerusalem for centuries as "settlers".

Take this Reuters story about the dispute over the Holy City:

Jerusalem is a core issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel has annexed East Jerusalem as part of its capital in a move not recognized internationally, and Palestinians want the area as capital of a future state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The conflict has erupted lately into weekly protests by Israelis and Palestinians, mostly in the predominantly Palestinian areas of Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah, where Jewish settlers have been moving in.

Correspondent Allyn Fisher-Ilan artificially bifurcates the city into two based on the Green Line which separated the Israeli and Jordanian armies in 1949 but even the Palestinians today do not officially recognize a distinct city called "East Jerusalem".

And the "Jewish settlers" who are "moving in" to Jerusalem neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah (Shimon HaTzadik) are actually recovering, via petition to the Israel High Court, property titled to their families going back to the Ottoman era -- decades before they were driven out by the Jordanian Arab Legion in 1948-49.

We wonder if Fisher-Ilan would similarly characterize efforts by African-Americans to recover their homes in East St. Louis after being violently purged by whites following the Civil War:

At times, Loewen notes, communities drove out their black residents over a period of months or years by creating an atmosphere of unrelenting hostility, usually accompanied by sporadic threats of violence and brutal police harassment. Often, however, some precipitating event—usually the accusation that a black person had assaulted a white man or raped a white woman—sent the white community into a frenzy. Mobs lynched the accused and then systematically drove all African Americans from their homes, often with only the clothes on their back.

Substitute "Jewish" for "black" and "Arab" for "white" in the above paragraph and you will have an historically faithful account of the insecurity, pogroms, and ethnic cleansing suffered by Jews at the hands of Arabs in the city of Hebron during the 1920s and in Jerusalem, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

So before Reuters correspondents deploy the term "settler" as a pejorative to suggest that Jews are moving into "Palestinian areas", they should be quite sure who lived in those homes and who populated those communities prior to the Palestinian Arabs.

                                 The Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, 1870

Obfuscate and omit

Louis Charbonneau of Reuters uses the occasion of a briefing by Michael Williams (UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon and formerly Ban Ki-moon's personal representative to the Palestine Liberation Organization) to mischaracterize the war between Israel and Lebanon in 2006 and the current state of belligerence between the parties:

Exchanges of threats between Israel and neighboring Lebanon "have generated concerns of a renewed confrontation," Michael Williams told reporters after briefing the 15-nation Security Council on compliance with resolution 1701, which called for an end to Israel's war against Hezbollah in the summer of 2006.

Actually, UNSC Resolution 1701 has a slightly different take on ownership of the war: 

Expressing its utmost concern at the continuing escalation of hostilities in Lebanon and in Israel since Hizbollah’s attack on Israel on 12 July 2006, which has already caused hundreds of deaths and injuries on both sides, extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons

It's not until 13 paragraphs down in his story that Charbonneau graciously offers readers some background on the cause of the war and in inimitable Reuters' fashion, the presentation obfuscates the facts and is patently biased:

The 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah broke out after the group captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. Some 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, were killed and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, died.

As UNSC 1701 makes clear, the war did not simply "break out".  Hezbollah precipitated it when the group killed 8 Israeli soldiers and launched Katyusha rockets at Israeli border communities.  And note Charbonneau's cagey handling of the death count: Lebanese were "killed"; Israelis "died".  The latter apparently due to natural causes.

Charbonneau happily disseminates Arab propaganda:

Lebanese and Syrian officials have been accusing Israel of pushing for a new war in the Middle East against the backdrop of an Iranian nuclear program that Israel considers a threat to its very survival.

While failing to cite the many instances of overt and not-so-veiled threats against Israel coming from all quarters.

And the Reuters' correspondent parrots Iranian dissembling:

Iran rejects Israeli and Western allegations that its nuclear program is a covert plan to acquire an atomic weapons capability. The oil-producing nation says its nuclear ambitions are limited to the peaceful generation of electricity.

While failing to note the latest United Nations' IAEA finding that Iran is indeed pursuing a nuclear warhead.

More Orwellian inversion

In our post from last Thursday, we noted how Reuters has been presenting a series of stories of late which attempt to build a case that Israel is banging the drums of war in the Middle East while Iran, Syria, and Lebanon are defensively "warning" Israel off the warpath.  Reuters correspondent Yara Bayoumy (with help from Allyn Fisher-Ilan) continues in that vein with a story on yesterday's video-linked speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.  Note the headline:

Hezbollah warns Israel over future war

Nothing threatening here; just a friendly warning that if Israel hits Beirut, Hezbollah will hit Tel Aviv.  All very defensive, you see.  Bayoumy then goes on to describe the events which led up to the last war between Israel and Hezbollah and the war itself:

Hezbollah fought against Israel in a 34-day war in 2006 after the group captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.  Some 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, were killed and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, died... Israel pounded Beirut's southern suburbs as well as mainly Shi'ite southern Lebanon where Hezbollah maintains a stronghold and from which Israel withdrew in 2000... Israeli bombing also hit bridges, roads, airport runways, ports, factories, power and water networks, and military installations, and the eastern Bekaa Valley.

Apart from the asymmetrical use of weasel-words to describe the Israelis who "died" (while the Lebanese were "killed"), notice anything missing from Bayoumy's otherwise detailed account? How about the eight Israeli soldiers killed by Hezbollah when the other two soldiers were "captured"?  Or the Katyusha rockets fired by Hezbollah at Israeli border communities at the time of the initial attack.  Or the 4,000 rockets Hezbollah launched at Israeli communities during the course of the war.  The thousands of Israeli homes taking direct hits; the 300,000 residents displaced; and the more than one million Israelis forced to live in bomb shelters for weeks.   Bayoumy is conspicuously silent on these details.

So does Reuters -- with guileful wording and selective omission -- seek to portray Israel as warmonger and the Arab states and terrorist militias as rational actors responding defensively to threats against them.

Orwellian inversion

In a series of articles over the last two weeks, Reuters reports on saber-rattling by Syria, Lebanon, and Iran against Israel.  Only, Reuters spins the facts a bit differently.  Note the handling of the headlines in the following three stories:

Israel pushing Middle East to war: Syria's Assad

Lebanon warns of "dangerous" situation with Israel

Ahmadinejad warns Israel against any military move

All very "defensive" on behalf of Syria, Lebanon, and Iran, yes?

Then there's this headline:

Netanyahu assures Syria after Israeli FM's threat

Well, at least Netanyahu was assuring after that "threat".

Despite years of transparent, savage calls to annihilate Israel by Syria:

Our forces are now entirely ready not only to repulse the aggression, but to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland. The Syrian army, with its finger on the trigger, is united....I, as a military man, believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation.  (Hafez Assad; 1967)

 Hezbollah in Lebanon:

If they go from Shebaa, we won't stop fighting them. ... Our goal is to liberate the 1948 borders of Palestine, ... The Jews who survive this war of liberation can go back to Germany or wherever they came from.  (Hassan Ezzedin; 2002)

The Iranian regime:

Israel must be wiped off the map (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010...)

Reuters would have us believe that it is Israel which is the aggressor in the region and banging the drums of war.

Reminds us of the handicraft of another media titan.

Reuters' reversal of reality

In a story appearing on the Reuters' website today, Sylvia Westall reports on a non-binding resolution passed by the UN nuclear assembly urging closer scrutiny of Israel's nuclear program. Pakistan and India, which like Israel are non-signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, are not included in the measure nor is Iran -- currently under UNSC sanctions for refusing to terminate its uranium enrichment program. Only Israel is singled out for special treatment.

Near the end of the article, Westall makes this stunning assertion:

Arab diplomats point to an imbalance of power in the Middle East caused by unchecked Israeli might and say it breeds instability and spurs others to seek mass-destruction weapons.

Apparently, this is not a direct quote so Westall is either paraphrasing the Arab position or summarizing her own view. In either case, the notion is stated uncritically as fact when in reality, it is pure nonsense.

As documented in the CIA World FactBook, while Israel is sixth in military expenditures as a percentage of GDP, the five countries which precede her and thirteen of the top twenty countries in the table are Arab and/or Muslim. Eleven of these countries do not recognize Israel as a state and several are officially at war with Israel. This includes of course, Saudi Arabia, which alone, spends two to three times more on weapons than does Israel.

Arab troops outnumber that of the Israel Defense Forces by a conservative factor of 20:1. As the US has increasingly supplied technologically advanced weapons to the Saudis and Egyptians while Russia has done the same for Iran and Syria, Israel's traditional qualitative military advantage has also been eroded.

That Israel has defied the odds by emerging victorious in all previous wars with the Arabs may have led to the perception of the country as a comparative military giant but that is no excuse for Reuters to parrot ludicrous Arab propaganda or to disseminate its own.  If there is an "imbalance of power" in the Middle East, the advantage in troops, materiel, natural resources, and money lies clearly with the Arabs.  And Iran is not seeking weapons of mass destruction because Israel's military strength "breeds instability".  Iran is inherently unstable and is seeking WMDs to achieve its goal of eradicating a Jewish sovereign.