We're mere minutes away from tonight's episode of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show, which will focus mostly on the Al-Mabhouh liquidation and its consequences. Media reports have been filled with "analysis" of Israel is coping with an operation that was disastrous on multiple levels. Nobody's really sure exactly what those levels were - and as of today Israel has yet to be officially condemned by anybody that anybody else cares about - but they're obviously there. Because why would international media outlets be writing about them if they didn't actually exist?

So we'll be discussing that for most of the evening, and you can tune in live to ask questions via phone and chatroom, or just pick up the podcast afterward.

Contrary to the preferences of anti-Israel partisans, though, the world doesn't actually stop while they manufacture their petty little anti-Israel tempests in their teacups. Dan Diker will be on for an update on the peace process, kicking off with France's recent stunt and getting into its effects on everything from internal Palestinian politiking to EU/Sunni relations. The second segment gets into the prospects for renewed Israeli/Syrian talks, how they have the potential to threaten Israel, and which are apparently again a thing. And since this still exists there will be the usual overview of Iran at the top of the show.

Other than that, it'll be the usual optimistic mix of great news and sanguine predictions.

References:
* Diplomatic own goals by Israel have set alarm bells ringing [FT]
* Syria urges EU to back Turkish role in peace process [Press TV]
* France wants Middle East peace talks kick-start: PM [Reuters]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Israeli-Arab Peace Process
* Anti-Israel Journalism

I'm trying to find the anti-Israel angle here, ala that Cast Lead HuffPo comment "the narcotic is one thing the Israeli occupiers will allow to get smuggled thru the blockade. No accident, I am sure. Tear down the Apartheid Wall, you Israeli criminals!!" (sic)

Maybe Israel hasn't bombed Hamas's smuggling tunnels because they want to flood Gaza with so many goods that the Palestinians become decadent, neglecting their glorious resistance. Or maybe it's a plot to get them to sink their money into foodstuffs and luxury products, draining resources away from the glorious resistance. It definitely has something to do with the glorious resistance.

Anyway, this is exactly what Auschwitz was like:

Owners of the smuggling tunnels bordering the Gaza Strip and Egypt have been suffering from financial problems due to their tunnels' inactivity, according to Palestinian sources. The reason, it turns out, actually stems from the overall success of smuggling tunnels in Gaza. Hamas has recently set up 'legal' tunnels, which... are used to bring in merchandise intended for sale in markets, such as food products and home appliances. Palestinians believe that the overflow of goods caused a complete smuggling standstill in dozens of underground channels...

The increase in merchandise in Gaza made prices sharply decrease, which seriously reduced the earnings from the 'illegal' smuggling industry... Under Hamas rule, hundreds of underground channels have been dug between Gaza and Egypt. The recent increase in smuggled goods in Gaza caused many factories to renew activity. Overall, if judging by the two most smuggled products - gasoline and cement - tunnel activity has actually caused Gaza to experience an economic reawakening.

"Economic reawakening" is only part of the story. Another part is that, between their tunnels and their Iranian-funded military, Hamas has become the second largest employer in the Gaza Strip (the PA, which pays its employees with the help of Obama's largess on behalf of US taxpayers, is number one). No word on whether Goldstone headscarves are Hamas-sanctioned products, but given these cretins' affinity for his blood libel they at the very least look the other way.

Anyway, I can't remember where I found these pictures. I'd guess either Carl or Elder. They were originally posted to PalToday last November (Google Translate). Again - it looks exactly like a Nazi death camp. The similarities are so eerie that you can't help but marvel at the level-headed objectivity of those "Jews = Nazis" smears so favored by the Islamic world and the Western left.

On one hand, yeah we're losing to a bunch of clowns. On the other hand, admirable message discipline. These tools can't decide on their media strategy for the West - "are we genocidal fanatics who can't be stopped or peace loving victims who must be cared for" - but give them a cloying anti-American fantasy with overtly sexualized blue cat people and they'll focus on it like a laser.

You'll have to go over to the Telegraph for the full picture gallery, but I recommend to your attention pictures #4 and #8. On Zombietime's definitive taxonomy of fauxtography they fall under numero tres, "photographers themselves staging scenes or moving objects, and presenting photos of the set-ups as if they were naturally occurring." I can see an argument for why they might be examples of numero dos, "photographing scenes staged by [the Palestinians] and presenting the images as if they were of authentic spontaneous news events." But honestly I don't think these tools have the wherewithal to frame a shot.

Anyway, here are the Avatar reviews from the single greatest film critic of our generation. If you have some time you should make a point of checking out the rest of the reviews on Red Letter Media. If you don't have a couple hours to spare I wouldn't click through though, since you'll have wasted a couple hours and you didn't have them to spare. You will never be the same. Also, content warning:

H/t goes to SP. Again.

References:
* Filmmaker: You Know Who's A Lot Like Avatar's Na'vi? The Palestinians. [MR]
* Palestinians dressed as the Na'vi from the film Avatar stage a protest against Israel's separation barrier [Telegraph]
* Media Fauxtography Now In Full Swing [MR]
* Reviews [Red Letter Media]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Palestinians
* Media Bias
* Anti-Israel Journalism

Note the time change. We're going on the air 30 minutes early today for scheduling reasons, which gives you just enough time to get comfortable and tune in. Everything else - from where you can find the show to the structure of the segments - should be familiar. You can listen live either via the main Omri Ceren Show page or through the page for today's episode. As always the phone lines will be open and the chat room will be available for questions and comments.

The bulk of today's program revolves around anti-Israel media bias and propaganda. You'd think being the global leader on Haiti would be a public diplomacy boon, but it turns out not so much. Ditto for investigating alleged IDF misdeeds. Ditto for trying to make concessions to West Bank Palestinians. Ditto for minimizing Hamas's exploitation for human shields in Gaza. Instead those either become reasons to attack Israel or - at the very least - they embolden anti-Israel partisans by signaling uncertainty and weakness.

Today's Diker segments deal specifically with the two controversial Israeli investigations into Cast Lead. The first investigation is the one that the IDF just concluded, with its results being handed over to the UN. The second probe is the one that Netanyahu is considering, which would involve another huge and hostile inquiry into the behavior of Israeli soldiers operating under almost impossible conditions. There's a point during the second part of today's interview that's pretty much required listening, where Diker very calmly and very systematically explains the precise degree to which another investigation would be a total disaster.

References:
* The Omri Ceren Show [Blog Talk Radio]
* Incoherent Success [Omri Ceren Show]
* Israel to UN: We launched 150 investigations following Gaza op [YNet]
* Israel 'war crime' probe urged [The Age]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Anti-Israel Journalism
* Cast Lead

The full headline - describing the counterterrorism raid against the murderers of Meir Chai - is "3 Fatah activists killed in Israeli raid." It got picked up by WaPo with exactly that wording and by FOX News as "Israeli Troops Kill 3 Palestinian Activists." FOX has since changed their headline - Google cache has the original - to highlight the three additional Palestinians killed trying to infiltrate from Gaza.

Original AP story:

Israeli soldiers on Saturday shot dead three Palestinians who the military says were involved in a roadside ambush that killed an Israeli settler earlier in the week. The operation in the West Bank city of Nablus targeted three activists of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement. Palestinian witnesses said troops, many of them masked, opened fire while storming the homes of the men.

"Many of them masked," of course, is exactly the kind of detail that experienced anti-Israel agitators like Mohammed Daraghmeh - 5 years and running - know to include. Mere anti-Israel hobbyists take note. It's not enough to write biased headlines and throw in caveats like "the military says." You've also got to make Israeli Jews look dark and menacing.

One of the terrorists tried to use his wife as human shield during the raid. But for the skill of the IDF the headlines would have been about the poor wife and mother who got murdered by Israeli stormtroopers. Cf. the human shields who barricade themselves inside Hamas strongholds. Or in Reuters's parlance, "protesters."

References and related after the jump...

Prove is in quotes because, per the Berekeley professor who launched this hatefest, the decades-old incidents have nothing to do with the Swedish organ theft story. It's a medical ethics disaster - a bunch of messy consent issues and religious sensibilities are involved - but were Palestinians targeted? Scheper-Hughes again: "not by a long shot."

And yet she choose to give succor to mouth-breathing anti-Jewish bigots because - quote - "the symbolism, you know, of taking skin of the population considered to be the enemy, (is) something, just in terms of its symbolic weight, that has to be reconsidered." I'm not sure why she didn't just come out and use the phrase "pound of flesh."

In any case we're officially off on another round of organ theft stories. Iranian Press TV has shifted their ongoing blockbuster coverage of the "international Israeli conspiracy to kidnap children and harvest their organs" from the most recent revelation - "Tel Aviv's plot to import Ukrainian children and harvest their organs" - to Jews who steal Palestinian kids' organs.

Eventually that's going to get boring - these kinds of hateful highs only last so long - and so I'm interested what you guys think next "proven" blood libel will be. That there will be a next one is a given. That's how addicts behave when their buzz wears off. They'll go looking for new evidence of some new imagined Israeli atrocity. When they don't find anything genuine - on account of how it exists only in their feverish imagination - they'll lower their standards for what counts as proof and hold their hatefest anyway. Think of it as not being able to score the good stuff and settling for whatever's available.

I've put up a poll on what you think the next media-legitimized anti-Israel canard is going to be. Justify your vote under this post on the Mere Rhetoric Facebook page, or sound off if you think there's an option I didn't include.

Naturally you'll want to consider why some anti-Israel accusations get traction while other don't. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the tenability of the accusations themselves. Until this recent story broke, "Israeli organ theft" were so untenable that the Swedish reporter who published the original libel was in the process of recanting. But the canards were still in broad circulation. Meanwhile Hamas has been trying to get the world to take notice of Israel's plot to dump aphrodisiac gum on Gaza for a while. They seem pretty convinced it's happening. Thus far no journalist has rushed into that particular investigative breach.

ORIGINAL - Elegant. This morning's breathless AP story all but promises to confirm the organ harvesting blood libel leveled against Israeli Jews last summer. That version had IDF soldiers deliberately killing Palestinians to harvest their organs. This headline screams "Israel harvested organs in '90s without consent." The first few paragraphs of this story all reference that original story. The Berkeley academic behind this story is quoted as saying she leaked the allegations because of that original story.

No wonder the original weasel headline has already morphed into the more explicit "Israel Admits Harvesting Palestinian Organs."

Except it turns out that - at best - the two stories bear only a passing resemblance to each other. One was about IDF soldiers deliberately killing Palestinians for their organs during Cast Lead last year. The other is about pathology work on dead Israelis and Palestinians done through 2000 with what doctors at first thought was family consent. Even this Berkeley Professor, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, admits the two stories are for all intents and purposes distinct. As for the implication in the newest headline about targeting Palestinians, again per Scheper-Hughes: not "by a long shot."

Of course the AP doesn't tell you any of that until the very end, which is where they inform readers that there's still "no evidence" for the Swedish blood libel.

The very end is also where you discover Scheper-Hughes's excuse for publishing what she she must have known would reinforce mouth-breathers quoting from the Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion. She did it, you see, because of "the symbolism, you know... just in terms of its symbolic weight":

Complaints against the institute, where autopsies of dead bodies are performed, at the time of Hiss' dismissal came from relatives of Israeli soldiers and civilians as well as Palestinians. The bodies belonged to people who died from various causes, including diseases, accidents and Israeli-Palestinian violence, but there has been no evidence to back up the claim in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that Israeli soldiers killed Palestinians for their organs. Angry Israeli officials called the report "anti-Semitic."

The academic, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley, said she decided to make the interview public in the wake of the Aftonbladet controversy... Scheper-Hughes said that while Palestinians were "by a long shot" not the only ones affected by the practice in the 1990s, she felt the interview must be made public now because "the symbolism, you know, of taking skin of the population considered to be the enemy, (is) something, just in terms of its symbolic weight, that has to be reconsidered."

Mainstream media outlets will go out of their way to ignore the obvious religious motivations of the Fort Hood shooter. Wouldn't want to reinforce religious stereotypes! Academics will spin elaborate argumentative edifices - sliding from denial to rationalization to justification - to explain why even discussing domestic terrorism smacks of ulterior motives.

First things first: make sure you check out the exclusive Richard Landes interview over on the One Jerusalem audio page. The highlights I played on the air were less than one-third of the total material - academics, it turns out, err on the side of thoroughness - and there are entire categories of questions that you don't get except on the full interview. The extended section on how Stockholm Syndrom is the generous explanation for why journalists carry Hamas's water is especially brutal.

In the meantime you should obviously check out Goldstonereport.org, where they're posting new debunkings on an almost daily basis. It would also behoove you to check out Landes's home blogs Augean Stables and Second Draft. It's really impressive how many different smears human rights organizations can invent without ever straying far from antisemitic canards like water poisoning, child murder, and cabalistic conspiracism. From a certain perspective it almost looks like they might be obsessed!

Now on to some site business. I think I'm going to start lightening up on the incessant Omri Ceren Show reminders and wrap ups. The routine is familiar enough by now: live radio show with news and interview highlights at 2pm on Wednesdays, exclusive full-length interview available at One Jerusalem shortly afterward. Plus MR has been getting a little too process-heavy lately. I'm beginning to worry that all the radio show posts, Watchers Council roundups, and LA event reminders are crowding out more substantive material.

Even worse, they're preventing me from constantly reminding you that micropayment donations are the future of citizen journalism.

So I'm going to try to limit TOCS-related blogging to just one post per week, a teaser on Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning about that week's interview and news segments. I'll trust you guys to remember to grab the full interviews on your own, since those are where the nuance and inside baseball discussions get hashed out. When that doesn't work I'll start dumping reminders into roundups and see if we can't strike a happy balance.

References:
* The Omri Ceren Show on Blog Talk Radio [Official Site]
* AUDIO EXCLUSIVE :: Dr. Richard Landes -- Full Interview! [One Jerusalem]
* Goldstonereport.org
* Augean Stables
* Second Draft

Related Mere Rhetoric Coverage:
* Human Rights
* United Nations
* The Omri Ceren Show

Remember that Hezbollah warehouse / living room from last week where they were very unsafely storing explosives? Having moved everything out after it detonated - an IDF drone caught the entire clean up, video below - Hezbollah's been going out of their way to fabricate evidence of an IDF conspiracy. Today's update involves the discovery of a super-secret explosive laden Zionist spying device. I have no idea what that means, but I put the picture up above and here's caption, both courtesy of the AP's Mohammed Zaatari:

A suspected Israeli spying device is seen in the southern village of Houla, near the border with Israel, Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 18, 2009. Lebanese-Israeli border was rocked by an explosion Saturday night which a Lebanese official said was caused by Israel detonating two Israeli spying devices planted on the outskirts of the Lebanese village of Houla. A third one was set off in the same area by Lebanese troops, the official added. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

Nice to see the media bringing a critical eye to bear on Hezbollah's feverish fantasies. This is in addition to the elaborate mock-up Hezbollah staged and videotaped after the explosion, where they pretended to demonstrate that there were no weapons in the warehouse. It was also dutifully picked up by Reuters, because who can argue with video?

Very convincing. Minus the fact that the explosion happened at night, that Hezbollah sealed off the area afterward, that the IDF video showed a different truck removing weapons, and that UNIFIL stooges were obviously let into the area the next day after the cover-up was finished. But other than that, air tight.

This would be exploding warehouse number two from over the last few months, incidentally:

All these unblinking fabrications beg a pretty fundamental question: who is the show for? Are the Lebanese people really so gullible that they'll nod along with these laughably thin conspiracy theories? And if so shouldn't we stop giving them billions in weapons and logistical training, on the off chance that eventually they'll be fighting one of our allies because they're certifiable? (h/t: Soccer Dad for the spying device, AL for the rest)

References:
* BREAKING: Hezbollah Living Room / Weapons Depot Explodes (Plus: Kills Senior Operative?) [MR]
* Mideast Conflict [Yahoo News]
* Hezbollah says blast footage shows door not rocket [Reuters]
* US Security Assistance To Lebanon Already Being Turned Against Israel [MR]

Previously:
* Great News: UNIFIL Breaking Up Israel's Anti-Hezbollah Spy Rings
* Jimmy Carter Gets His Wish: Hezbollah Has Anti-Aircraft Missiles
* Hezbollah And Neo-Nazis Agree: Pat Oliphant's Anti-Semitic Cartoon Is Exquisite

As promised, here are last week's Council winners. The top post was from Soccer Dad, who pointed out a week ago what Netanyahu was slamming the table about yesterday:

The media likes to boast that they are the "first rough draft of history." Part of that claim is that they are disinterested parties just reporting the facts as they are. Rafael Broch of Just Journalism had an excellent op-ed in Ha'aretz demonstrating the falseness of that claim... And so every Israeli self-defense is subject to a filter, which suggests that each such action might well be a violation worthy of condemnation if not punishment. Consider the other side of the coin. On Friday Israel released twenty female security prisoners in exhange for a video of captured soldier, Gilad Schalit. Schalit has been held for three years and not allowed any visits by the Red Cross. How did the Associated Press orient its story? On the plight of the prisoners!

Also on the subject of media mendacity, the runner up non-Council post was from Jammie Wearing Fool on CBS's attempt to discredit conservative blogs. CBS's demonstrably and embarrassingly failed attempt to discredit conservative blogs. We've now reached a point where the media rushes to defend Obama against "spurious" charges without actually checking whether those charges are spurious. You have to click on the links guys.

Back to Council posts, the runner up post was from Joshuapundit on the sham negotiations in Geneva:

We're not going to discuss 'sanctions', or anything like that with Iran, but we'd like to talk to them one on one about whatever's on their mind if that works out. But of course, we're not insisting or anything like that. We'd really, really like the Iranians to let the IAEA take a peek at their hidden nuclear facility near Qom, (as if the IAEA is going to be able to find its behind with both hands)but we don't insist on it. And we're certainly not going to try to get Iran to comply even by mentioning the prospect of sanctions against them, let alone force. And nothing harsh like any deadlines. Whenever things are all tidied up and it's convenient, El Baradi and the boys will drop by - if that's OK.

On a largely unrelated note, has anyone noticed the Kafkaesque turn domestic law enforcement has taken? The top non-Council post is about the age of opaque law enforcement we've apparently entered. Closer to home, the FTC is defending their new anti-blogger regulations specifically by promising they'll only selectively enforce them. I have yet to go to law school - and while we're on that topic, if you'd be so kind - but I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to work that way.

References and previously after the jump...

Per the blurb on the official group page, each week the members of the Watchers' Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for the week's best post. Not so per that blurb, I am perennially, hopelessly behind on posting Council submissions. Here's last week's full roundup, and I'll post the winners tomorrow. That should allow me to beat this week's submissions by at least a few hours. As always you should go to the full nomination page to get the non-council submissions, some of which are strikingly good.

Joshuapundit has a breakdown of just how stupid you'd have to be to believe that the Geneva talks with Iran are anything but a foot dragging exercise for Iran. Following the Colossus Of Rhodey, though, the answer apparently is exactly as stupid as a journalist. It seems that some of our sophisticated betters have taken to unblinkingly asking "if Israel can have nukes why can't Iran?"

The Colossus Of Rhodey has a pushback of course, but I kind of think it's a pearls before willfully myopic treif kind of situation. When people are making arguments that Israelis should prefer being credibly demonized to being wildly demonized - see my post on Goldstone's daughter - I don't think what they're doing is arguing as much as emoting. The Glittering Eye's staged back and forth on global warming is also to the point here, although Soccer Dad's unpacking of Israel coverage implies that there's a lot more than just stupidity underneath the media's errors.

Some day when people talk when The One's celebrity jumped the shark, the Nobel announcement should figure prominently. But before that happened there was that risible CNN fact check of the SNL skit that caused so many eyerolls. Turns out that spectacle wasn't limited to CNN. Bookworm Room caught it as a media-wide phenomenon. The Liberal Moment distilled to its pathetic Great Leader essence: silly debates and revelatory overreactions about whether Hope and Change is merely great or the greatest. That and, per The Provocateur, corruption big and small.

When we finally get through this Moment, by the by, Rhymes With Right has a reminder that we'll have to deal with the left's disenfranchisment of our troops. See Right Truth on what they and our intelligence services have been doing on counter terrorism.

Finally, freedom of speech in an age of Muslim sensitivity: The Razor's take on Kurt Westergaard's appearance at Yale is not a particularly flattering account of our hallowed academic halls. Westergaard isn't the only old school small-l liberal who's recently come in for ugly harassment on the Yale campus, incidentally. If someone lives in New Haven and wants to collect a couple fliers for me, please hit me up by email. There's a black and white faucet logo I'd like to talk to you about.

References and previously after the jump...

Alternative MR headline: "Oh Please:"

Girl, 15, seeks justice for Gaza in world court (AFP) - Aug 31, 2009 - THE HAGUE -- A 15-year-old Palestinian girl who says Israeli troops killed her father and two siblings in Gaza in January, sought justice from the International Criminal Court on Monday. "I am here to lodge a complaint against the occupying army," Amira Alqerem told journalists in The Hague, seven months after her family was killed in an early-morning assault in the Tal Al Hawa neighbourhood that also left her severely injured. "I hope this complaint will succeed because it is the truth," the soft-spoken teenager said, seated next to her lawyer on his way to the ICC to file the complaint with the office of the prosecutor...

ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo announced in February he had begun a "preliminary analysis" of alleged crimes committed by Israel during the Gaza offensive... Amira, meanwhile, is undergoing physical and psychological rehabilitation in France. "I am doing this for all the children of Gaza," she said through an interpreter. "I want to do something to change the situation."

The headline for this oh-so-conveniently timed ICC prosecution, as it appeared on the blog of anti-Zionist activist Kawther Salam: "A Palestinian Child Against Israel at The ICC." Which means that an unedited blogger writing for a froth mouthed audience still managed to be less incendiary than the AFP hack who penned this crap agitprop.

As for the timing: putting aside the cringe-inducingly brutal and ongoing shreddings of the Goldstone Report, I don't think the specific charges were ever meant to be taken seriously. They were meant to create a sense of Israeli brutality, so that if any particular one was debunked anti-Israel partisans could slide to the next. And if all the smears were eventually debunked? Well, the effort that would take would be paradoxical lady-doth-protest-too-much proof of the charges in the first place. Elegant.

The Goldstone Report, the anti-Israel motions at the UN launch, this ICC nonsense, the impending collapse of the peace process, pressure on Israel's nuclear arsenal - these are a cascade of ad hoc and foggy accusations that amount to a drip drip drip erosion of Israel's diplomatic and public positions. They're meant to set up a global anti-Israel boycott effort over the next few months, the first stirrings of which are already under way:

British trade unions approved a boycott against importing goods produced in some Israeli settlements. The boycott was approved Thursday by the Trade Union Congress at its annual conference. The congress also called for an end to arms trading with Israel and for disinvestment from some Israeli companies. According to the London Times online, the unions had considered a comprehensive boycott of consumer goods produced in Israel but reconsidered following "frantic behind-the-scenes negotiations." The statement approved by the delegates read: "To increase the pressure for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories and the removal of the separation wall and illegal settlements, we will support a boycott of those goods and agricultural products that originate in illegal settlements through developing an effective, targeted consumer-led boycott campaign."

It's weird though: when Israel withdrew from Gaza you actually saw boycott calls increase, as if anti-Israel sharks smelled blood in the water. It's almost as if the shrill histrionics over the "Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories" are just a pretext for opposition to Israel that comes from a much uglier place (h/t: Richard Landes for the Salam post).

References and previously after the jump...

At first this was going to be a "look how biased the AP is" post, since the very first AFP report on the incident recognized that there was cross-border provocation...

... and the AP report, filed about 20 minutes later, very much did not:

But then I went back to the AFP article to screencap the timestamp - Yahoo's RSS feed served up the original AFP article at 10:57pm PST and the orginal AP article at 11:18pm PST - but the post had already been changed to mesh it with the AP's characterizations:

Now the very last line of the rewritten AFP post reminded readers that "army radio initially said the Israelis had returned fire after the Egyptian shot at them." So if you were thinking "I wonder if there's something going on here other than Israeli soldiers taking potshots at an Arab police officer, something that perhaps explains why the Egyptians aren't screaming their heads off" - well, if you're one of the less than 5% of readers who get to the end of an article you'd get a hint that there might be more. Which of course there is:

IDF troops shot and wounded an Egyptian border policeman overnight Sunday after the man cocked his weapon at them along the Israeli-Egyptian border. The incident occurred near Eilat when a routine patrol identified an armed figure moving near the border. When the troops challenged the man, he cocked his weapon, prompting the soldiers to open fire, the army said. The soldiers realized it was an Egyptian policeman only after the shooting, the military said.

Let's say you're an AP or AFP editor and that, since your early days as an idealistic undergraduate cub reporter speaking truth to power, you and most of the people in your political community have been inclined to blame Israel for Middle East violence. Fair enough. This story comes over the wire, you see the initial army radio report, then the correction, then the final Israeli version. And you unilaterally conclude that the confusion means the Israelis are flat out lying.

Don't you still put in a line like "Israeli sources denied that the shooting was unprovoked but declined to give more information pending a joint Israeli-Egyptian investigation"? Just on the off-chance that the region's most professional army wasn't just randomly making shit up? It might be a small chance, but just to hedge your bets...?

Good few weeks for the AP though. Between this story and that description of "Jewish extremists" scuffling with "Muslim residents," they're really demonstrating why people are so attached to trustworthy and objective legacy media outlets.

References:
* Firefight on Israeli-Egyptian border: army radio [AFP]
* Israeli soldiers shoot Egyptian policeman [AP]
* Israeli soldiers shoot at Egyptian policeman [AFP]
* Troops wound Egyptian border guard [JPost]
* AP Photo Labels Jews as Extremists, Muslims as Residents [CAMERA]

Previously:
* AP: British Diplomat Who Screamed For Israel To Be Wiped Out Was "Criticizing Israel's Conduct" (Plus: British Anti-Semitism Now Kind Of An Everyday Thing)
* AP Caption Of The Day: "Israel Will Not Heed Obama's Powerful Appeal"
* AP: US Pressuring Jews Who Live In "Traditionally Arab East Jerusalem" [MR]

I guess it's technically true, if by "traditionally" you mean "the 19 years in all of recorded history when the Jordanians managed to temporarily cleanse Jews from the Old City." By any other definition, though, this is vulgar anti-Jewish propaganda:

To help restart peace talks, the U.S. has been pressing Israel to halt all construction in settlements built on captured land claimed by the Palestinians. Some 280,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, in addition to 180,000 residents living in Jewish neighborhoods built in traditionally Arab east Jerusalem. The Palestinians seek to establish an independent state that includes the West Bank, with east Jerusalem as their capital... A growing number of Israeli officials have expressed surprise and dissatisfaction over the American pressure. At a meeting with Israel's defense minister, Mitchell tried to soothe the concerns. "Our governments are friends and allies," he said. "These are discussions among friends."

And that's before we even get to the part where "land claimed by the Palestinians" still includes all of Israel as a matter of the black letter doctrine that Fatah leaders intend to enforce via unending warfare.

I'm also a little worried about Mitchell's new "these are discussions among friends" formulation. I hope it doesn't signal the end of the administration's oh-so-delicate "tough love" rhetoric. Then I might never get to use my line about how only abusive husbands and fathers talk about slapping around people for their own good.

References:
* Netanyahu To Obama: Actually, We're Going To Keep Letting Jews Build Homes In Jerusalem [MR]
* Envoy: US favors overall Mideast peace accord [AP]
* Obama's Anti-Israel Posture Undermining The Peace Process, Hardening Palestinian Demands [MR]
* "Moderate" Palestinians Hold Conference, Demand Endless Warfare Against Israel [MR]

Previously:
* Palestinian Witnesses: Of Course Hamas Fired Mortars From UN School
* AP Caption Of The Day: "Israel Will Not Heed Obama's Powerful Appeal"
* AP: British Diplomat Who Screamed For Israel To Be Wiped Out Was "Criticizing Israel's Conduct" (Plus: British Anti-Semitism Now Kind Of An Everyday Thing)

From the people who mused skeptically about the "real connection" between Hamas and Iran, another a pitch-perfect example of an awful anti-Israel argument trotted out in a tone of obnoxious pseudo-sophistication. Apparently, judging by the tone of the piece, you'd have to be an idiot to disagree:

Israel's Ban Of 'Catastrophe' To Describe Its Birth Ridiculed. Palestinians have for decades referred to the creation of Israel in 1948 as al Nakba, the "catastrophe" since it resulted in many Palestinians losing their land and villages and the creation of millions of refugees. Now the conservative-led Israeli government has decreed a ban of the term in official, government-sanctioned textbooks provided to Israeli schoolchildren. The Israeli government's position is that the nation of the world tend not to refer to their founding as a "catastrophe." It's a point is well taken.

On the other hand, American textbooks, for instance, have in modern times noted that the settling of North America by Europeans had disastrous consequences for indigenous peoples. Indeed, the previous Israeli government approved a formulation in Israeli textbooks in which the Palestinian use of nakba was acknowledged while at the same time 1948 was also called the year of Israeli independence.

The obvious distinction being that Native Americans don't regularly use depictions of those "disastrous consequences" as justifications for genocidal campaigns meant to eradicate European descendants who live in North America. Native American Congressmen don't hold commemorative ceremonies around those "disastrous consequences" where they advocate the end of the United States. There are no Native American "Disastrous Consequences" Days where brainwashed children march through the streets screaming for war.

And those, as the academics say, are the kinds of distinction that makes a difference. Or at least academics would say that if this wasn't a story about Israel.

At times like this I like to remember what Nancy Pelosi says: the government really needs to step in and regulate radio. There just aren't enough liberal voices on the airwaves (h/t: BtB).

UPDATE: MR reader DD, who has something of a reputation for efficiently evaluating numbers, catches a blatant falsehood piled on top of the obnoxious faux sophistication. Of course the number of Arab refugees who made way for incoming Arab armies was significantly below "millions." The standard number is usually around 600,000 give/take.

The only way it reaches "millions" is if you also count the refugees' third, fourth, and fifth generation descendants. That would make the 1948 Arabs the only population in the history of the planet who claimed their great, great, great grandchildren as "refugees." And no, "well the UN does it" is no excuse.

References:
* Iranian Mullahs Wringing Their Hands As IDF Dismantles Hamas's Army (Plus: NPR Wonders About "Real Connection" Between Iran And Hamas) [MR]
* Israel's Ban Of 'Catastrophe' To Decribe Its Birth Ridiculed [NPR]
* Israeli-Arab Fifth Column Watch - Israeli-Arab MK Mourns Creation Of Israel [MR]
* Palestine is ours, cry children on 'Nakba Day' [JPost]
* CNSNews.com Speaker Pelosi Backs Senate Amendment to Regulate Talk Radio [CNS]

Previously:
* CNN Spends Evening Searching For Democrat Who Can Explain Why Anti-Palin Smears Don't Reek Of Sexism. Fails. (Plus: Guess When "Shrill" Used To Be Sexist)
* Smug Liberal Sophistication Undisturbed By Decades Of Disastrously Wrong Domestic And International Predictions
* NPR In Denial About Sexism On the Left, Gets MR Exactly Wrong On Jeri Thompson

The last time Ali Abunimah graced the august pages of the Grey Lady, he was expressing limited satisfaction with Obama's ongoing efforts to detonate the US-Israel alliance. That was a few weeks ago.

But this tool has been all over the NYT for years. In 2001 he was writing op-eds describing Israeli actions as "relentless and without mercy." In 2002 the NYT was publishing his letters outlining "Palestinian Rights." In 2008 he was contributing quotes about Obama's pragmatism, which he'd learned about over the many years of friendship that the two had shared.

There's a reason the NYT keeps going back to Abunimah. It's because he's such a reasonable and levelheaded guy:

Accusing the Jewish state of "genocide," an anti-Israel Palestinian activist once commended by President Obama has predicted the end of Israel, which, he boasted, is "within reach, in our lifetimes." In a piece earlier this month titled, "Why Israel won't survive," Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada, a pro-Palestinian online publication, accused Israel of war crimes and gloated, "Now, the other pillar of Israeli power - Western support and complicity - is starting to crack. We must do all we can to push it over." "It is Israel as a Zionist state, not Palestine or the Palestinian people, that cannot survive this attempted genocide. Its problem is legitimacy, or rather a profound and irreversible lack of it," wrote Abunimah.

That fantasy about Israel losing Western support has been a central eliminationist trope in the Middle East for decades. In fairness to Abunimah, he can be excused for thinking that it's actually true this time (h/t: MR reader CB).

References and previously after the jump...

The last time Ali Abunimah graced the august pages of the Grey Lady, he was expressing limited satisfaction with Obama's ongoing efforts to detonate the US-Israel alliance. That was a few weeks ago.

But this tool has been all over the NYT for years. In 2001 he was writing op-eds describing Israeli actions as "relentless and without mercy." In 2002 the NYT was publishing his letters outlining "Palestinian Rights." In 2008 he was contributing quotes about Obama's pragmatism, which he'd learned about over the many years of friendship that the two had shared.

There's a reason the NYT keeps going back to Abunimah. It's because he's such a reasonable and levelheaded guy:

Accusing the Jewish state of "genocide," an anti-Israel Palestinian activist once commended by President Obama has predicted the end of Israel, which, he boasted, is "within reach, in our lifetimes." In a piece earlier this month titled, "Why Israel won't survive," Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada, a pro-Palestinian online publication, accused Israel of war crimes and gloated, "Now, the other pillar of Israeli power - Western support and complicity - is starting to crack. We must do all we can to push it over." "It is Israel as a Zionist state, not Palestine or the Palestinian people, that cannot survive this attempted genocide. Its problem is legitimacy, or rather a profound and irreversible lack of it," wrote Abunimah.

That fantasy about Israel losing Western support has been a central eliminationist trope in the Middle East for decades. In fairness to Abunimah, he can be excused for thinking that it's actually true this time (h/t: MR reader CB).

References and previously after the jump...

Oh please:

Palestinians pray during Friday prayers as the Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim is seen in the background, on a hilltop next to the West Bank Jewish settlement of Qedar, Friday, June 5, 2009. Israel will not heed US President Barack Obama's powerful appeal to halt all settlement activity on lands the Palestinians claim for a future state, officials said Friday. The government plans to allow construction inside existing West Bank settlements to accommodate for growing families, said the officials, explaining a position that looks sure to cause a serious policy clash with the United States. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)

The call is to halt activity even on territory that the Palestinians don't seriously claim for a future state, unless you think that their claims have suddenly expanded to include most of Israel - which, in fairness, they may have. And a serious policy clash is at least a couple rungs below "sure," with both the US and Israel stepping back even though Obama's demands are far to the left of the Israeli political spectrum. But other than that this is a really concise and defensible caption and not at all filled with pro-Obama, anti-Israel agitprop.

Plus the photo kind of sucked, even before I blew it up to fit at the top. (h/t: Boker Tov Boulder).

References and previously after the jump...

The disappointing part about this boilerplate isn't that it's false. It is definitely true, though not exactly shocking. The really sad thing is that Helen Cooper couldn't find a better source for these banalities than this anti-Israel nutjob. Hey Helen - Stephen_Walt@ksg.harvard.edu. Seriously:

"Hillary Clinton's statement was notable because the language was stronger than we've heard in years," said Ali Abunimah, the co-founder of ElectronicIntifada, a Web site that analyzes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "And clearer than we've heard in years. But the burden of proof is still on them. If it's just going to be strong statements, that's not enough." Administration officials have not said whether there is an "or else" attached to their demand for a settlement freeze. Mr. Obama said Thursday that it was not yet time for that. "In my conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu, I was very clear of the need to stop settlements, stop the building of outposts," he said. "I think we don't have a moment to lose, but I don't make decisions based on a conversation we just had last week."

If Electronic Intifada is "a Web site that analyzes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" then Stormfront is "a web site that analyzes American race relations." Though where else would the NYT find experts to describe Hamas rockets as "effective" and "successful" while demonizing Israeli reactions? Except everywhere:

The NYT today features two articles about Israel's war against Hamas that are rather revealing. One is Striking Deep Into Israel, Hamas Employs an Upgraded Rocket Arsenal, and the second is In Dense Gaza, Civilians Suffer They are revealing both for what they say and don't say as well as their juxtaposition. In the first, the reporter describes the efforts Hamas has made to upgrade its arsenal to threaten (and attack) Israel... first paragraph quoted first starts with describing Hamas's limitations and then tells us that the terrorist group has come up with "an effective strategy."... the Times gets an expert who claims that all the Israseli attacks are now "punitive."

Sometimes I wonder "how could a journalist and several layers of editors not notice there's something wrong with the phrase 'the Palestinian government in 1938?'" And then I'm like, "oh, probably for the same reason that they tried to suffocate the Freeman scandal by starving it of oxygen." (h/t: Anne Lieberman)

References:
* Israeli Officials: Hey, It's Almost As If Obama's Trying To Detonate The US-Israeli Relationship [MR]
* ELECTRONIC INTIFADA (EI) [Discover The Networks]
* Nyt: hamas upgrades = success / israel defends = disaster [Soccer Dad]
* The New York Times On 'The 1938 Palestinian Government' [Daled Amos]
* NYT gets the big Freeman scoop! [Hot Air]

Previously:
* New York Times Mourns Loss of Beautiful and Delicate Flower Who Happened to Also Be Palestinian Suicide Bomber
* New York Times Comments on Israel, Hilarity Ensues
* Fun with the New York Times Editorial Process (Don't Push/Leave Incomplete/Old Drafts Online Edition)

Hey - when Javier Solana was in Gaza yesterday...

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana visited Gaza Friday for the first time since Hamas violently took over the territory. Solana's tour comes amid a flurry of talks on an Israel-Hamas truce, reconciliation between Palestinian factions and donations for the territory's reconstruction... "I came to express solidarity with the people of Gaza and to tell them that we will be helping them in the reconstruction process," Solana said, standing at the ruins of the American International School of Gaza, destroyed during the IDF's recent counter-terror operation.

... do you think he got a look at the Palestinian soldiers who hit an Israeli school with a Grad rocket:

Palestinian in the Gaza Strip fired at least five projectiles at southern Israel on Saturday morning, with a Grad-type rocket hitting an Asheklon school. No one was wounded in the attack, as the school was closed, though a number of residents were treated for shock. Another Grad rocket landed in an open area just outside the city. In the latest attack, a Kassam rocket struck an open area in the Eshkol region, causing no casualties or damage... On Friday, Gazans fired a Kassam that hit an open area in the Sdot Negev region. No one was wounded and no damage was caused by the rocket launched from northern Gaza.

Because that's the kind of thing that an international diplomat of good will would want to pass on to Israel, the sovereign UN member that was the victim of the attack. And of the other 100+ rocket and missile attacks that have - in the AFP's words - "strained a fragile month-old ceasefire:"

Palestinian militants in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip fired five rockets at Israel on Saturday, according to the Israeli military, further straining a fragile month-old ceasefire.. Palestinian militants have fired more than 100 rockets and mortar rounds at Israel since the fragile January 18 truce that ended Israel's massive military offensive on Gaza, which killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.

In other news, diplomats suspect that Hamas has renewed smuggling Grad rockets into Gaza despite the State Department's promise to help stop that. I hope those rumors turn out to be overblown!

References:
* Javier Solana makes trip to Gaza Strip [JPost]
* School damaged in Grad-type rocket attack on Ashkelon [JPost]
* Five Gaza rockets strike Israel: military [AFP]
* 'Hamas has smuggled anti-aircraft missiles, Grad rockets since Gaza op' [JPost]
* Israel To Call Unilateral Ceasefire, Declare Partial Victory (Plus: Has Operation Cast Lead Achieved Anything?) [MR]

Previously:
* Hamas Launches More Rockets At Israeli Civilians, Accuses Israeli Politicians Of Being "Terrorists"
* Unilateral Israeli Ceasefire Going Exactly As Expected
* Hamas Fires 50+ Rockets Since Cast Lead, Obama And Europe Cozy Up To Hamas

Oh please:

A British official says a U.K. diplomat has been suspended following his arrest for an alleged anti-Semitic rant in a London gym... He allegedly used foul language and criticized Israel's conduct during the conflict in Gaza and allegedly made an offensive comment about Judaism. Merron says the police investigation continues.

Technically he said that Israelis should be "wiped off the face of the Earth" and was physically unable to stop shouting "fucking Israelis, fucking Jews." But why let details get in the way of writing "allegedly" over and over again? It's not like calling for the destruction of Israel is outside the spectrum of acceptable British public discourse:

Here's the ever delightful Azzam Tamimi watched by George Galloway in London "Today we are all Hamas", "Israel has dug his grave", "That Embassy there will one day be a Palestinian Embassy" (So no return to 1967 borders but the destruction of Israel?)... Here's George Galloway's "speech" from the same rally calling on the crowd to "shut down the Israel shops in those shopping centres, selling stolen goods grown on stolen land". Is all Israel "stolen land"? "We hope the great people of Egypt will have risen up and swept away the dictator Hosni Mubarek" How welcome will George Galloway be in Egypt now?

This is a country where public intellectuals take the existence of subversive Jewish cabals as a simple matter of fact:

A top British scientist drew fire from American Jewish organizations on Monday, after remarking that the American Jewish lobby is "monopolizing American foreign policy." Professor Richard Dawkins, a leading evolutionary biologist at Oxford University, was quoted by the British Guardian newspaper as saying last week: "When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told - religious Jews anyway - than atheists and (yet they) more or less monopolize American foreign policy as far as many people can see. So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place."

This isn't the Walt-Mearsheimer-Duke move, where you spin a conspiracy fantasy as a pretext for anti-Semitic cant. It's even more basic: anti-Jewish conspiracy theories are just everyday in Britain. They're part of the collective pool of cultural facts and resources. They're what there is.

British newspapers are printing anti-Semitic cartoons that are so vulgar that the State Department calls them out. London playwrights - when they're not creating new anti-Jewish plays - are actually innovating on Dickens's anti-Jewish Fagin depiction.

Make anti-Semitic tropes respectable enough, of course, and the inevitable result is open pathological hatred. So London street protesters have taken to depicting "The Jew" eating babies:

They don't actually say that the animals were deliberately killed by Israeli soldiers, mostly on account of how that would make no sense. That's just their plain implication:

Hundreds of Palestinian schoolchildren used to come to the Gaza Zoo every week, but not now. Tanks rolled through the area during the Israeli offensive. Much of the zoo was badly damaged, most of the animals died. Cage after cage lies empty. Ostrich feathers are strewn close to a crater in the ground, beside the mangled steel bars of what was the birds' pen. The remains of a camel lie inside its former enclosure. "Some were killed in air strikes," says the zoo's manager, Emad Qassim, "but some of the animals were shot dead." "Thank God our two lions survived, but we used to have over 400 animals and birds, now there are just 10 left." Many of the animals died of starvation. The zookeepers say that for more than two weeks, Zeitoun, the southern suburb of Gaza City where the zoo is located, was simply too dangerous to access because of the presence of troops and tanks.

Before we get to anything else: what happened sucks. Full stop. Those poor animals were trembling in locked cages, terrified out of their minds by the nearby explosions. No one was around to take care of them. They were starving and confused. That just sucks.

But it's a lie to imply that the area was too dangerous to access. Israel's daily 3 hour ceasefires were implemented precisely to make sure that civilians could get critical business done. And it's dishonest to imply that the animals were killed by Israeli troops. The Israelis were the ones who carefully de-mined the park after Hamas soldiers turned it into a booby-trapped warzone:

As for the idyllic "Palestinian schoolchildren used to come to the Gaza Zoo every week" - come on:

That's before we get to the part of the BBC article entitled "Perseverance and trauma." No it's not about the Israeli civilians who stoically coped with rocket barrages for eight years. It's about the Gaza archaeological museum, which has existed for about a year.

Almost difficult to understand why the BBC has spent over 200,000 pounds of taxpayer money in their ongoing battle to suppress the Balen report detailing their anti-Israel bias. In fairness to them - and as BBC head Mark Thompson explained - they have to be pro-Islam.

Less sarcastically, I'm genuinely glad to hear that the Gaza zoo recovered the lions that had been kidnapped by Gaza criminal gangs. Small mercies I guess.

References and previously after the jump...

About 10% of Israelis for Labor, a center-left praty that wants a Palestinian state. About 23% of Israelis voted for Kadima, a center party that wants a Palestinian state. Another 22% voted for Likud, a center-right party led by a guy who wants a unity government with Labor and Kadima. The Washington Post's conclusion? Israel has politically regressed to intransigence and radicalism. Obviously:

Israel's election last week propelled the country back in time to a political era when the parliament was sharply divided between parties that favored or opposed a two-state settlement with Palestinians. As in the 1980s, the right has the upper hand: Likud party leader Binyamin Netanyahu appears to have the best chance to become prime minister, even though his party finished second behind the centrist Kadima. Americans who remember Mr. Netanyahu's last stint as prime minister in the 1990s -- and there are several in the Obama administration who were working on Mideast policy then -- have to be concerned that he would repeat his strategy of seeking to delay or undermine all peace negotiations with the Palestinians. He might also press for Israeli or American military action against Iran, and he has promised to "topple" and "uproot" Hamas from the Gaza Strip.

This is a neat trick. If you're a democratically elected Israeli Prime Minister, the Washington Post publicly worries about your "strategy of seeking to delay or undermine all peace negotiations." If you're a democratically elected Hamas Prime Minister, the Washington Post lets you publish propaganda in their newspaper. Balance!

I'm not saying that Washington Post reporters abandoned all pretense of professionalism and cheered for Obama because they're the kind of people who reflexively blame Israel for Palestinian intransigence. But I would be willing to defend that they abandoned all pretense of professionalism and cheered for Obama and they're the kind of people who reflexively blame Israel for Palestinian intransigence.

Not that it matters, but I'm still waiting for all those "Hamas rocket fire radicalizes Israelis" headlines from major media outlets. This shouldn't be too hard. Just take every article ever written about how Israeli self-defense maneuvers radicalize the gentle little lambs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, reverse the names, and publish. What's the holdup?

References:
* Israel's Step Backward [Washington Post]
* Uhh... When Did the Washington Post Start Letting Terrorists Publish Propaganda?
* Surprise: Crowd cheers for Obama at Washington Post building; Flashback: WaPo reporter noted cheering in 2005 [Hot Air]

Previously:
* Obligatory Post About WaPo's "Israel Should Lift Its Gaza Blockade" Editorial
* Sophisticated Washington Post Debunking Of Terrorism Lacks Something In The Way Of Not Being Smugly Banal
* Top 10 Stupid Media Tricks From Week 1 Of Operation Cast Lead

And by "Israeli brinkmanship" they explicitly mean "Israel's refusal to give Hamas everything they want":

Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is mounting a last-ditch effort to free a captured Israeli soldier by blocking an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire in the Gaza Strip until Hamas agrees to release him. Whether Olmert's brinkmanship can produce a breakthrough in the few weeks he has left depends on Israel making difficult concessions that could bolster Hamas, and on the Islamist group taking a gamble on the Jewish state keeping its word. Many diplomats are skeptical all the pieces will fall in place. Hamas has no faith that Israel, which is about to change governments, will abide by commitments under the proposed ceasefire, mainly to keep Gaza's border crossings open, if captured soldier Gilad Shalit is freed. Wary of taking steps it believes would bestow legitimacy on Hamas, Israel has refused to provide guarantees and has rebuffed a proposal for the U.N. to monitor the compliance of both sides, according to diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Last month Reuters said that a truce was being stymied because Israel wanted it too much. This month it's Israel's fault because Israel doesn't want it enough. Where to even begin with these tools?

(1) I like how the overarching assumption is that Shalit's fate is incidental to hostilities that went hot when Hamas kidnapped Shalit. Why not just be clear and say that Israel is blocking a truce because they're insisting that Hamas abide by a truce?

(2) When I say that 15 years of structurally asymmetric negotiations have created a habit of thought where manifestly disproportionate expectations seem balanced, I'm talking about sentences like: "... depends on Israel making difficult concessions that could bolster Hamas and on the Islamist group taking a gamble on the Jewish state keeping its word." Don't get distracted by the "sneaky Jews" undertone. The important part is the ostensible balance between Israel making concessions and Hamas psychologically coping with those concessions. Poor babies. I hope it's not overwhelmingly traumatic for them!

(3) Israel doesn't trust the UN to monitor Hamas's compliance? Really? Do you think that's because UNIFIL has leaked Israeli intel to Hezbollah and done less than nothing to stop them from rearming? Or do you think it's because the UN always seems to abandon its monitoring agreements when it's most convenient for Israel's enemies? Or do you think it's because UN personnel in the Gaza Strip have - within the last few months - unblinkingly denied Hamas war crimes so they could shamelessly lie about Israel violating the ceasefire? Could be any of them I guess.

(4) Israel is also wary of trusting Gaza Palestinians to abide by a post-election ceasefire because Gaza Palestinians have said that they have no intention of abiding by a post-election ceasefire. I wonder how that got left out.

Last paragraph of this abortion of an article:

Under that six-month deal, Israel was supposed to let 30 percent more goods into the Gaza Strip. Citing Israel's failure to do so, Hamas pulled out of the deal and renewed cross-border rocket fire, triggering last month's war.

I've been trying to come up with a sarcastic way to insert the link about how Hamas never stopped their rocket fire, which is what caused Israel to periodically and temporarily shut down the crossings. But fuck it. (h/t: MR reader Jerry)

References and previously after the jump...

What the hell? Is there something in the water today?

President Obama's ambition to move quickly on Israeli-Palestinian peace suffered a significant setback yesterday with the rightward shift apparent in nearly complete Israeli election results, analysts said. While the centrist Kadima party appeared to eke out a victory, the right-wing Likud party more than doubled its seats and an ultra-nationalist party made big gains, increasing the prospect that a government uninterested in peace talks will emerge from the post-election efforts to form a governing coalition. Even if Tzipi Livni, the head of Kadima who has vowed to negotiate peace with the Palestinians, manages to cobble together a coalition after weeks of negotiations, many experts predict she will be hamstrung by her coalition partners. "You are going to have a very wobbly, dysfunctional, survival-minded coalition in Israel," said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator.

Three quick things:

(1) I assume that the "survival-minded" approach he's denigrating refers to the stability of the coalition and not to the "we would prefer not to get nuked" thing. Although at this point...

(2) Where are my "Palestinian attacks radicalized Israeli voters" headlines?

(3) Remember when Hamas won the 2006 elections and media outlets went to laughably absurd lengths to deny that it was a reflection of Palestinian intransigence? Because the best explanation for an election in which a radicalized public elected radicals had nothing to do with radicalism. Obviously. But for some reason I haven't seen any long articles theorizing that Israeli voters shifted right because of the multiple Kadima and Labor scandals. Weird, that.

Oh - and the rest of the article had what Soccer Dad is describing as "the worst paragraph in post-Israeli election analysis." Figures.

References:
* In Israeli Vote Results, A Setback for Obama [WaPo]
* NYT: Israel Is Kind Of Undermining Obama's Diplomacy, Isn't It? [MR]
* The Less Than Compelling "Hamas Wasn't Elected Because of the Whole Palestinians Hate Jews Thing" Argument [MR]
* Mere Rhetoric Evaluates Palestinian Opinion Poll, Walks Away Unsurprised [MR]
* The worst paragraph in post-israeli election analysis [Soccer Dad]

Previously:
* UN Imposes Collective Punishment On Gaza Population In Response To Hamas Crimes, Suspends Humanitarian Shipments
* British Watchdog's Report: BBC Coverage Less Than Impartial
* Now They're Using Hospital Rooms As Torture Chambers

I'm surprised it took them this long to file the story. Maybe Brzezinski has really sloppy handwriting:

But there is no question a new dynamic is afoot, one that seems likely to become even more complicated after today's election in Israel is settled. If the government that emerges is even more determined to end the Iranian nuclear program by any means necessary, Mr. Obama may find himself trying to negotiate with one of America's most determined adversaries while restraining one of its closest allies. "I could draw you a scenario in which this new combination of players leads to the first real talks with Iran in three decades," one of the key players on the issue for President Obama said last week, declining to speak on the record because the new administration has not even named its team, much less its strategy. "And I could draw you one in which the first big foreign crisis of the Obama presidency is a really nasty confrontation, either because the Israelis strike or because we won't let them."... It's almost inconceivable, some of Mr. Obama's aides acknowledge, that the Iranians will be willing to give up everything needed to produce a weapon. And it is hard to imagine that the Israelis will settle for anything less.

Nice to see that "hovering around the CSIS watercooler" is now a sufficient qualification for "being a key player" in the Obama administration. I don't mind that they're making the argument. It's true, after all, that the Israelis will be unhappy when Obama's delusions about how Bush didn't try diplomacy allow Iran to run out the clock. What's obnoxious is the air of consideration and expertise - as if this hasn't been the utterly predictable Walt and Mearsheimer-esque line since before the election.

Although - again - the Israelis genuinely will be pretty pissed. And the Obama administration really is doing everything possible to allow Iran to run out the clock. So might as well dust off the story, print it up, and get back to making aggressively stupid Obama-Lincoln comparisons.

References:
* On Washington - Iranian Overture Might Complicate Relations With Israel [NYT]
* Brzezinski: Israeli Campaign Against Iran Will Detonate US-Israel Relations [MR]
* Confirmed: Obama Surrogates Were Negotiating With Iran And Syria During Election (Plus: Results Thus Far A Little Short Of Spectacular) (UPDATE: Just How Many Delegations Did Obama Send To Assad?) [MR]
* Obama Figures Out The Real Problem With Iranian Nuclearization (Plus: Obama's Foreign Policy Kneejerks Provide Excellent Illustration Of Exactly How He'd Screw Israel) [MR]
* Olmert says no Israeli government would let Iran get nukes [Reuters]
* Biden Threatens Iran (Kidding) [LGF]
* Historians: Lincoln might have supported the stimulus, or something [Hot Air]

Previously:
* State Dept Rushing To Apologize To Iran
* Iran: Surprise, We've Got Working Ballistic Missiles [Video]
* Iran: Yes, We've Got a Working Nuclear Reactor. No, We Won't Meet With Obama To Talk About It.

I actually think this is a good thing. I assume the mullahs will put them up in some swanky hotel, perhaps instilling in them the valuable "civilian buildings are for sleeping not storing weapons" lesson that most non-cretins just instinctively know. And even if that doesn't happen, at least they'll get a good night's sleep. Those long nights in their bunker under Shifia Hospital - cowering from the IDF - couldn't have been too restful.

In any case - Hamas failed to down any Israeli planes or blow up any Israeli tanks so now they're off to Tehran to explain. Or, if you believe the eye-roll inducing Reuters writeup from Khaled Yacoub Oweis, it's a victory lap:

A high-level delegation from Hamas arrived in Tehran early on Sunday as part of a regional push to reinforce support for the Palestinian group after the Israeli invasion of Gaza, a Hamas official said... Hamas was in close contact with Iran, its main backer along with Syria, during the 22-day Israeli offensive against Gaza, which was halted last month, with the two sides declaring separate ceasefires.

Hamas views the war as resulting in regional diplomatic gains for the group... The group has kept a line open with Cairo, which is mediating a deal for a more solid truce that tries to meet Israel's demands for stopping arms flows into Gaza and Hamas's demands for lifting the blockade. Hamas regards the blockade, which damaged Gaza's economy and further impoverished the majority of the territory's population, as a form of illegal collective punishments and cited it as a reason for not renewing a previous ceasefire for Israel in December.

I'm assuming that this Oweis guy is a bit of a cub. A more experienced hack would've known how to write about Hamas's vaunted "diplomatic gains" - in the aftermath of Israel's ostensible "collective punishments" - without resorting to tired tricks like "Hamas views" and "Hamas regards." That's just lazy. Or he'd at least have buried an "Israeli officials consider..." sentence at the bottom - for plausible deniability if nothing else. And that's before we even get to that part about how Iran provides material and diplomatic support to Hamas. What will NPR think?

Tool.

References:
* Hamas head in Tehran to meet Iranian leaders [Reuters]
* Iranian Mullahs Wringing Their Hands As IDF Dismantles Hamas's Army (Plus: NPR Wonders About "Real Connection" Between Iran And Hamas) [MR]

Previously:
* Hamas Victory - Now Can We Start Worrying About Iran?
* Hamas Already Rebuilding Tunnels For The Weapons That Iran Is Already Sending
* Ceasefire Would Allow Iran To Rearm Hamas Within Weeks

One of the more elegant instances of rank media bias from the last few days. The headline: "Israel rebuffs 'temporary' Gaza truce." The story:

Israel said on Wednesday it would not agree to a temporary ceasefire in the Gaza Strip that Hamas could use to rearm, underscoring the gap between the two sides in Egyptian-brokered talks. Hamas has rejected an open-ended truce, seeking instead a more limited six-month agreement that could be renewed, according to Arab diplomats. "Israel will not accept a situation where Hamas gets a temporary period of quiet just to rearm and regroup and that ends with further rocket barrages on Israel," said Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. "Israel seeks a durable quiet that contains a total absence of hostile fire from Gaza into Israel and a working mechanism to prevent Hamas from rearming," Regev added after Olmert met Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defence Minister Ehud Barak.

Now you might think that a more appropriate headline would've been something like "Israel pushes for durable truce" or "Hamas rejects long-term truce." But that would violate the longstanding Reuters policy of implying that Israel's insistence on genuine peace is violent warmongering.

For what it's worth: The Egyptians have made it pretty clear to Hamas that their continued intransigence will end with Israel dismantling them. Some Hamas leaders even seem to know that. They have the opportunity right now to accept a nudge-wink truce that Israeli defense officials admit will allow them to rearm potentially within weeks:

Hamas will not agree to stop smuggling weaponry into the Gaza Strip under a new cease-fire with Israel, and the deployment of US military engineers along the Gaza-Egypt border will likely be incapable of stopping them, defense officials say... One of the options being considered is deployment of an American military engineering force along the Philadelphi Corridor to assist the Egyptians in stopping the smuggling... According to Israeli estimates, there were around 300 active smuggling tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor before Operation Cast Lead. Some 100 have been destroyed [as of last week] by the IAF. Despite the attacks, the IDF believes Hamas is still trying to smuggle new weaponry into Gaza via the tunnels throughout Rafah.

But - as of this morning - Hamas is still Hamas:

Hamas's top political chief rejected Israel's conditions for a Gaza cease-fire and demanded an immediate opening of the besieged territory's borders, taking a tough line Friday as he asked Arab countries to back him by cutting off any ties with Israel. Mashaal sought Arab support in a strongly worded address to the summit, insisting Hamas cannot stop fighting until border crossings into the Gaza Strip are opened. "We will not accept Israel's conditions for a cease-fire," Mashaal told the summit. He said Hamas demands that "the aggression stop," Israeli troops withdraw and crossings into Gaza be opened immediately.

This is the exact same thing they've been saying all week. But UN Secretary General Ban's take on the situation is that the problem is "Israel's political will." Obviously. Because Israel is "rebuffing" truces. Obviously.

References and previously after the jump...

Wow. Really?

On January 9, 2009, Bill Moyers presented his thoughts on the Gaza situation. In it he (apparently) couldn't resist connecting it to biblical issues. And in doing so, he revealed an appalling, and for someone steeped in biblical interpretation, inexcusably vicious reading of the texts. From Bill Moyers's transcript: "What we are seeing in Gaza is the latest battle in the oldest family quarrel on record. Open your Bible: the sons of the patriarch Abraham become Arab and Jew. Go to the Book of Deuteronomy. When the ancient Israelites entered Canaan their leaders urged violence against its inhabitants. The very Moses who had brought down the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' now proclaimed, 'You must destroy completely all the places where the nations have served their gods. You must tear down their altars, smash their pillars, cut down their sacred poles, set fire to the carved images of their gods, and wipe out their name from that place.' So God-soaked violence became genetically coded.

Richard Landes has an extensive writeup about the blood-soaked history of this particular smear. And while it's now as egregious as Carter's musings about how "Israeli authorities" treat the Palestinians just like they treated Jesus - it's still not the kind of thing you'd want to let pass without an obligatory "nice to see American tax dollars going to good use." It's probably only a matter of time All Things Considered starts showcasing David Duke-parroting leftists.

UPDATE - Just for the record: in between explications on the bloody legacy of Moses, sentences like "Israel misses no opportunity to humiliate the Palestinians," and dishonest characterizations of Israel's "we're not committing any war crimes" YouTube films as "boasting of [the IDF's] might" - Moyers did find the time to mention that "a radical stream of Islam now seeks to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth." Nice of him to mention that.

References:
* Bill Moyers reflects on Middle East violence [PBS]
* Just what is genetically coded in the history of Judaism? Bill Moyers' Wretched Failure [The Augean Stables]
* Is Jimmy Carter Just An Old-Fashioned Christian Fundamentalist, Anti-Semitic Bigot? [MR]
* Top US Communication Listserv: Hey, How About Some Anti-Israel David Duke Pamphlets? [MR]

Previously:
* Just A Reminder: Arab Media Is A Cesspool Of Genocidal Anti-Semitic Incitement
* Noted Theologian And Geopolitical Theorist Roseanne Barr: "The Jewish Soul Is Tortured... The Destruction Of Israeli Jews Is Assured"
* British Muslims Doing Their Best To Cleanse Britain Of Jews

Hamas accepted a ceasefire!
Hamas accepted a ceasefire!
Hamas accepted a ceasefire!

Well actually Spain is denying the report while Hamas officials are insisting that they won't give up their tunnels, that they still have reservations, and that any ceasefire would have to proceed in a way that would straightforwardly endanger Israeli soldiers and civilians:

Deputy Chairman of Hamas Political Bureau Moussa Abu Marzouk told the al-Arabiya television network earlier Wednesday that the IDF must hold its fire before it pulls out from the Strip. "Israel did not abide by any of the previous truce's conditions, and therefore there must be a short and pre-defined period between each stage, that would allow us to evaluate the situation and agree to move on to the next stage," he explained.

But wouldn't it be cool if reality was the opposite of all that?

References:
* Hamas agrees to Gaza truce, Israel reply awaited: official [AFP]
* Proposal emerges for 10-day cease-fire in Gaza [AP]
* Hamas Calls for Weeklong Cease-fire, Israeli Withdrawal [Bloomberg]
* Hamas ceasefire report incorrect-Spanish formin [Reuters]
* Hamas says will reject ceasefires that would 'harm resistance' [YNet]
* Hamas rep says group has reservations on Egypt truce [YNet]
* Report: Hamas agrees to ceasefire in Gaza [YNet]

Previously:
* MSM Division Of Labor: NYT Provides The Misleading Anti-Israel Headlines, Hamas Stringers Provide The Fake Pictures
* Turkey: Allah Will Personally Wipe Out Israel
* Memo To Hamas Apologists: Tel Aviv Is More "Densely Packed" Than Gaza

I don't have much to say about the Guardian's report that Obama plans to talk to Hamas beyond what I already scribbled out in the Hot Air comments section: yes Obama will end up engaging Hamas in some form unless Israel physically dismantles them; no the Guardian doesn't have any new information about this; yes the Guardian made up their "anonymous sources" just like they make up their "anonymous sources" for their routine "neocons are about to attack Iran" stories. It's like when DEBKA cites "security sources" in a story about how Palestinian forces are using US security assistance for terrorism. Stunningly insightful. And if all that wasn't already obvious, here's uber-insider Steve Rosen to tell you that the Guardian story is bogus.

None of this is to suggest that Obama isn't going to detonate the US-Israel relationship. Wednesday's announcement that John Brennan will get a senior NSC post confirms that Obama will take a soft line on Iran. That puts him on a collisions course with Israel that anti-Israel foreign policy experts are already preparing to escalate into a full-blown diplomatic meltdown. Meanwhile his neutral "concern" about Gaza - coupled with his ominous warning that "on January 20, you'll hear [from him] directly" as he "immediately" launches his Middle East engagement program - reveals what was underneath his earlier ominous silence.

And even if there weren't fundamental sources of tension: the latest polls show that Israelis are poised to elect a Likud-led government while the President-Elect is someone who once smeared "pro-Likud approaches" to Middle East policymaking. The inevitable friction has already become a commonplace in Israeli political discourse. So yeah, I think there may be some diplomatic and interpersonal problems.

But nonetheless, on this particular point, the Guardian is basically making shit up.

References and previously after the jump...

Tel Aviv's population density: 7,533 people per square kilometer. Gaza's population density: 4,118 people per square kilometer. Almost double.

Tel Aviv is one of the most vibrant cities in the world, the secular heart of a country where everything from art to technology to genuine tolerance is a part of everyday life. Gaza is a swamp of resentful conspiracy mongering where the ills of daily life - objectively limited as they are - are excused by reference to scheming Jewish forces.

The artistic and military sensibilities of secular Israelis are deeply oriented towards peace. Gaza's cultural products are more likely to embrace century-old genocidal violence:

Partial transcript:

Following are excerpts from speeches by Arab Islamic leaders expressing solidarity with Gaza, which aired on Al-Manar and Al-Aqsa TV, December 3 and 5, 2008. Sheik Himam Sa'id, Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan: Oh noble Gaza, raise your head high. You have made the Muslims raise their heads high. And you, people of Hebron - you are now waging a war against the Jews. You are well-versed in this. We saw how, on a day in 1929, you slaughtered the Jews in Hebron. Today, slaughter them on the land of Hebron. Kill them in Palestine. Arise, oh people of Palestine, all the people of Palestine - arise in defense of your Al-Aqsa Mosque, arise in defense of Nablus and Hebron. Arise and face the [PA] Preventive Security forces. Fear them not, for they are rabbits. They are wolves, so fear them not, oh lions.

I wonder if these two dynamics - the cultural divergence on one hand and the hatred gap on the other - are in any way related.

References:
* Video: Hamas Pretty Psyched About Using Qassams To "Send Israeli Civilians To Hell" [MR]
* Gay Anti-Israel Movements Very Sophisticated Indeed [MR]
* Breathless HuffPo Headline About Gazans Eating Grass Contradicted By Rest Of Headline, Linked Picture, Reality (Plus: Anti-Semitic Comments Ensue Anyway) [MR]
* Zionist Rappers Sing About Peace, Stopping Holy War [Video] [MR]
* Israeli Soldiers Kick Back In A Bus Station, Jam About Peace [Videos] [MR]
* 'Slaughter Jews like in 1929, blow yourselves up in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv' [Israel Matzav]

Previously:
* Hamas Heavily Armed, Skeptical About Israeli Commitment To Self-Defense
* Hamas Leaders Spent Last Month Bragging About War, Mocking Israeli Restraint
* Hamas Seems Pretty Serious About The Whole "Divine Victory Over The Jews" Thing (Plus: Jimmy Carter's Pro-Hamas Propaganda Seems Rather Untenable)

Obligatory not in the usual sense of "everybody's going to blog this so here it is." More "someone's got to blog this and it got assigned to me." Seriously. There was a cabal meeting last Thursday. First we discussed how we were going to deal with Iranian TV for blowing the lid off our Mumbai terrorist assault. That took a while. Then we split this week's editorials. Half of us get to write them and then the other half have to respond. Anyway, long story short, I drew the short straw. Screwed again.

For reasons that will soon become obvious I'm starting - as the theater kids are wont to say - in media res. Mere Rhetoric, Dec. 22, 2008:

Things could get very interesting electorally if a Gaza operation succeeds. Which is why the faux sophisticated media frame will be "Israeli politicians are killing innocent Gazans to get elected." That's not technically "accurate" as such - the ceasefire just expired last week and Israel is only doing what any other country would've done months ago. And it wouldn't be unseemly even if it was - democratic elections are supposed to focus politicians' minds on things they're supposed to do. But why let that get in the way of a good blood libel?

Washington Post, Dec. 23, 2008:

Hamas may have calculated poorly. Israel is in the midst of a heated election campaign, and its two leading candidates are taking a predictably hawkish tack: Both promised over the weekend to "topple" the Hamas government. With the United States in the middle of a presidential transition, Israeli military action against Hamas is unlikely to prompt a significant response from Washington.

For. Fuck's. Sake. In how many different ways can two sentences of asinine intellectual strutting be egregiously wrong? First point: the presidential transition actually makes it more likely that Israeli military action will prompt a negative US response. Iran would inevitably "warn Israel" against attacking Hamas, complete with vague insinuations about "radiation" and "incitement." That's what they did during Lebanon II and that's what they do every time Israel is about to take on one of their proxies. The impression would be that Israel is knocking out Obama's diplomatic knees before he even takes office. In State Department parlance: Israeli self-defense measures would be "unhelpful" insofar as they would fail to take due "consideration" of "the morning after." Which is exactly why American diplomats have gone out of their way to pressure Israel not to undertake any pre-Obama action against Hamas.

Second point: yes it's "predictable" that Benjamin Netanyahu would vow to dismantle Hamas "in the midst of a heated election campaign." It's also "predictable" that Benjamin Netanyahu would vow to dismantle Hamas "in the aftermath of an election." Or "during breakfast." Or "when he's awake." That's his position. It has nothing to do with the election. As for Livni: she's been an anti-Hamas hawk within Kadima since she got into the government. She's fundamentally a moderate in that she believes that the way to secure a Palestinian state is to bolster Fatah. But she ends up being classified as a relative hawk because she thinks that bolstering Fatah requires dismantling Hamas. Again - nothing to do with the election per se.

Third point: Israeli electoral dynamics actually complicate the possibility of a Gaza invasion. Barak is standing in the way of a large-scale operation precisely because of the election. That's his gamble: grab the bulk of the peacenik left while letting Likud and Kadima split the center-right. And even in general – "heated election campaigns" are as likely to produce Israeli concessions as Israeli military action. The sitting government often tries to demonstrate that its diplomatic programs are paying off dividends. That's why Israeli political instability are accompanied by frantic peace gambits: Taba, Sharon's Syria overtures, etc.

And that's just two sentences from the middle of this masterpiece of faux sophistication. After the jump, the whole article top-down.

So that's that's how it happened:

A Reuters mistranslation of remarks by Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai this morning has triggered an international news libel against Israel. Among the news outlets jumping on the bandwagon are those that have previously been accused of deliberately attempting to stir up anti-Semitism through false and inflammatory coverage of Israel...
Reuters: Israel minister warns Palestinians of "shoah"
The BBC: Israel warns of Gaza ‘holocaust’
The Guardian: Israeli minister warns of Palestinian ‘holocaust’
The Times (of London): Israel threatens to unleash ‘holocaust’ in Gaza
In fact Vilnai said this morning in off-the-cuff remarks made on Israel Radio that: "The more the Qassam rocket fire [on Israeli civilians] intensifies and increases its range, the Palestinians are bringing upon themselves a bigger disaster because we will use all our might to defend ourselves." Vilnai used the word "shoah" (meaning disaster), which Reuters mistranslated as "Holocaust," which is "HaShoah" in Hebrew. It is like confusing a "white house" with "The White House."

This is coming from the news organization that is willing to use the "terrorist" label for only one of the parties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - want to guess which one? Interesting how academics, media sources, and foreign policy elites will go out of their way to interpret, reinterpret, and re-reinterpret statements like "Israel should be wiped off the map" as anything but what it obviously means - with the result coincidentally being anti-Israel. But then they'll go out of their way to deliberately misinterpret Israeli politicians - with the result coincidentally being anti-Israel. And by interesting, we mean predictable.

References:
* Reuters mistake triggers Israel “Holocaust” libel [Tom Gross] [NRO Corner]
* Beit Hanoun Meme Watch - (8) "Israeli Terrorism" - Want To Guess Who Reuters Is Willing To Label A Terrorist? [MR]
* The Denial of the Obvious By Reference to the Irrelevant: Center-Left Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics [MR]

Previously:
* International Media: "But Saadat is a Grandfather!" Also, BBC Tells Demonstrable Lie About Past Kidnappings, Makes Up Conspiracy Theory, and Says "Foreigners mostly live harmoniously among the Palestinian population"
* Massive And Peaceful Gaza Protest Neither Massive Nor Peaceful
* Reuters Coverage Of Iran's Holocaust Conference: Sigh

Only at an anti-Israel human rights hatefest could somebody be so hysterically self-righteous in the context of being so annoyingly stupid:

"There is one other place in the world where apartheid is still [alive], which is in Palestine," Bishara said in a video address to the Israeli Apartheid Week conference in Canada... The former MK allegedly transferred to Hizbullah information, predictions, assessments and recommendations about the political echelon, the IDF and the Israeli public during the war. In addition to supplying information to a Hizbullah intelligence agent, Bishara... received detailed missions from Hizbullah, which he carried out. He is suspected of assisting the enemy in a time of war; maintaining contact with a foreign agent; passing information to an enemy; money laundering and terrorist financing... Bishara praised Hizbullah for its performance against the IDF during the Second Lebanon War... Bishara maintains that he is a victim of political persecution.

Of course he does. And the LAT is willing to publish his vicious anti-Israel snarling - not that it matters, since the rest of the far left liberal press gleefully passes on his propaganda even when he doesn't personally write it. No one seems to care that it's an elected member of the Israeli government - elected because Israel is the opposite of an apartheid country and because Arabs are full citizens of the state - who's complaining about apartheid. Because why let things like nouns get in the way of anti-Israel demonization?

References:
* Bishara: Establishment of Israel 'armed robbery' [JPost]
* LA Times Gives Traitor Azmi Bishara An Op-Ed To Lie About His Treason [MR]
* The Nation Comments on the Middle East Situation [MR]

Previously:
* Israeli-Arab Fifth Column Watch - Israeli-Arab MK Mourns Creation Of Israel
* Israeli-Arab Fifth Column Watch - The Enemy Of Israel's Enemy Is Their... Enemy?
* Israeli-Arab Fifth Column Watch - Conflicted Loyalty To Hezbollah Edition

Original: Wait. If the Palestinians have declared that any compromise on Jerusalem is quite literally treason...

The Hamas-dominated Palestinian Legislative Council is pushing through a bill that would make it illegal to make any concessions on Jerusalem. The bill, which passed its first reading on Thursday, also defines such concessions as a crime of high treason. Presented by Hamas legislator Ahmed Abu Halbiyeh on behalf of two parliamentary committees - the judicial committee and the committee for Jerusalem affairs - the bill is expected to pass in second and third readings in the coming days... However, many Fatah legislators have made it known that they too support the law, which states that Jerusalem is a Palestinian, Arab and Islamic city and that it is totally forbidden to give up or conduct negotiations about any part of the city.

... then how could Blair possibly believe that there's a just around the corner?

A deal on Palestinian statehood by the end of next year is realistic but a fully functioning state will take longer, Middle East envoy Tony Blair said in an interview on Thursday. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed in Annapolis, Maryland last week to try to reach a peace treaty creating a Palestinian state by the end of 2008, although doubts remain over the plan's viability. "I think a negotiated settlement is possible in 2008," Blair told France 24 television. But he added: "It will take some time for that negotiated settlement to be put in place fully." Political negotiations could be concluded next year but work had to be done to transform the Palestinian areas from territories into a working state, he said.

Oh.

We do love how Western diplomats say that "both sides" need to make "painful concessions." As if the Palestinians are actually giving up something that they already have or could ever get on their own. The Israelis are expected to give up land and their stubborn insistence on bringing to justice people who have been engaged in a genocidal campaign of murder against their civilians for decades. The Palestinians are expected to give up their decade-long genocidal campaign of murder, in exchange for which they get amnesty for their past crimes and a whole lot of land that they never could have gotten themselves or from their Arab brothers. How painful.

Update: One of the Reuters pictures of the year, shamelessly ganked from this post at Boker Tov Boulder. The caption reads: "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas R and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal stand in front of the black stone inside the Kaaba in the Grand Mosque in Mecca, early February 9, 2007. (REUTERS/Suhaib Salem)"

Were we you, we would be expecting to see this as a slightly cropped headline pic pretty often from now on. Not because of the homo-eroticism - which we could honestly give a fuck about - but because two people who are this close are not going to come to blows when the alternative is to turn their guns on Jews. Cf. the time in January when Abbas begged the Palestinians to stop killing each other and instead turn their guns on Jews.

References:
* PLC passes law to make any concessions on J'lem illegal [JPost]
* Blair: Deal on Palestinian state possible in 2008 [Ha'aretz]
* Blair: Israelis Need To Make "Psychological Shift" By Giving Up Stubborn Insistence On History, Experience, Reality [MR]

Previously:
* Fatah: We're Going To Use Our New US And Russian-Supplied Weapons To Fight With Hamas Against Israel (Plus: Hamas Upgrades, Stockpiles Their Qassams)
* State Department Gets Bright Idea: Let's Screw Israel Even More By Bundling Syria Into The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process
* Tuesday Headline Link Dump - Palestinians Set Peace Process Conditions And The Israeli Right Implodes (Plus: There May Be No One We Do Not Hate)

Apparently our desperate pleas not to leave bomb-like things in public places are falling on deaf ears:

The [LAPD] Bomb Squad was deployed to the University Village after two fake clusters of dynamite were found in a car Monday. The fake explosives were found to be part of a suicide bomber Halloween costume belonging to an Army recruiter working at the shopping center... A 911 call at about 12:45 p.m. reported a suspicious object inside the vehicle in the middle of the parking lot, officials said. The initial officer responding to the scene called the bomb squad, which opened the car door with a slim jim after visually identifying the objects as fake explosives... "In this day and age, if you look suspicious with wires sticking out of your backpack, first responders are taught to take a head shot," Chu said. "First responders have to take these things very seriously." The devices in question were two clusters of red cardboard tubes attached to hemp string and covered in black tape - an apparent faux-dynamite accessory to the car owner's Halloween costume.

In a photo obtained by the Daily Trojan, the owner of the vehicle, whose identity was not released by LAPD, is seen wearing a suicide bomber costume at a party, with the two dynamite clusters strapped to his chest functioning as beer holders. Other costume accessories visible in both the backseat of the car and the photo included a loose, white and purple body-length garment and a scarf-like headdress. "In my opinion, he was going a little strong with a Halloween costume that looked like a Muslim [terrorist]," Chu said... LAPD Sgt. Ed Clark said he was upset so many resources were devoted to a look-alike prop for a Halloween costume. "Use common sense and don't be stupid," he said. "Don't use [costume props] that appear dangerous and could cause a public commotion."

This is after that idiot in Boston almost got herself capped by wearing something with wires and batteries to an airport (smart). Here's a quick tip about how not to get killed by security personnel: don't act like the kind of person who security personnel are supposed to kill first and ask questions about later. It does seem relatively straightforward when said so directly, and yet for some reason there are still those among us begging to be removed from the gene pool for abject stupidity.

References:
* A Polite Request From MR: Can Everyone Please Stop LeavingThings That Look Like Bombs In Public? [MR]
* Costume causes bomb scare outside Superior [Daily Trojan]
* Liberal Tech Blogger: "Since When Did A Circuit Board On A Sweatshirt Look Like A Bomb" [MR]

Previously:
* Public Security In Los Angeles Sucks Disgracefully
* Black Death Breaks Out In Los Angeles
* Some Real Emergency Response In Los Angeles

Picture and caption shamelessly lifted from Israel Matzav. The caption reads "Palestinian boys play with new plastic toy guns bought for the celebration of Eid al-Fitr marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, Saturday, Oct 13, 2007. (AP Photo/Mohammed Ballas)":

What's better: the fact that the guns are obviously real or that the excuse for the "toy" guns is that they're in celebration of "the holy month of Ramadan"? Lots of religions celebrate their holiest holidays by giving kids guns and having them pretend to hunt people down through back alleyways. The Quakers in Pennsylvania, for instance, have a wonderful tradition going back centuries that's just like that.

Also because jihad is about self-overcoming. The Democratic party told us so.

References:
* 'Palestinian' child abuse [Israel Matzav]

Previously:
* UN: "Distractions" Are Causing Gaza Students To Flunk Math And Arabic [Videos]
* Little Girl On Lebanon TV: "In the Name Of Allah, Oh Arabs Oh Muslims Beat the Drums Of Jihad" [Video]
* Fox Picks Up the I Want To Be A Sucide Bomber Like Mommy Video [Videos]

This week's manufactured Media Matters scandal is now online. The Jewish blogs and Democratic organizations are all over it. And wow, it is totally fucking retarded. It combines the best elements of liberal sophistication: the banality of multiculturalist tolerance, the humorlessness of scolding identity politics, and the blubbering of righteous indignation. It's the shallow beginning and the myopic end of the belief gap. Liberals take their own fashionable, spineless disattachment from the world - "believing too much in something is so unsophisticated." They follow it to its logical conclusion of vapid multiculturalism, where asserting passionate belief is an attack on some incredibly fragile Other - "believing too much in something is intolerant." And then when they have to deal with a normal, healthy person of faith, their self-righteous myopia triggers everything from shocked offense to a mindboggling inability to even understand what's at stake.

It's a tic with these people. "Tolerance" is everything from a catechistic defense mechanism to an empty catchphrase attached to anything liberals like (antonym: "neoconservative"). They can't help themselves. Witness the elegant example of Deutsch's confusion at the very beginning of the Media Matters transcript. He's just asked what Ann Coulter's perfect America looks like. She's naturally launched into a discussion of politics, because for conservatives life is about the give and take of government and social tension. No, no - Deutsch wants to talk about feelings:

DEUTSCH: No, no, no, I don't want -- I'm not talking about politically the landscape. What would our -- would we be safer? Would people be happier? Would they be more --
COULTER: We would be a lot safer.
DEUTSCH: Would there be more tolerance? Would there be -- would women be happier, would the races get along better? The Ann Coulter subscription -- prescription. What -- tell me what would be different in our fabric of country, because --
COULTER: Well, all of those things.
DEUTSCH: -- I can give -- I can give you an argument there would be more divisiveness, that there would be more hate --

By now Coulter's figured out exactly what Deutsche is and exactly where the conversation is going to end up. Fragile beliefs lead to defensive people lead to social programs to "protect" everybody from anything that might offend them. The result is the suffocating fog of multiculturalist political correctness. So by the middle of the interview Coulter having a good time with Deutsch - but she's still got a genuine point. And that's the intuitive observation that, rather than being in tension with one another, genuine religious tolerance actually requires strong belief. This is certainly where some of the best Jewish theologians have been ending up. It also has the benefit of making sense - if someone's confident in their beliefs, they don't take it as an attack when someone else is also confident in their own beliefs. Disagreement is not tantamount to aggression and insult.

We've got the longest block quote after the jump, and after that we've got some random hunches about what could be driving all the seemingly disconnected but eerily related manufactured scandals. And by "random hunches" we mean "the NJDC press release".

Shiites militias cooperate with Sunni thugs to murder Sunni politicians. It's the Jews' fault:

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah claimed on Friday that Israel was behind the assassination of Lebanese politicians and urged feuding parties to agree on who should become president in order to end the country's crisis. "Israel is the one who is carrying out the killings in Lebanon. It wants to stir discord and internal fighting in Lebanon," he said at a rally to commemorate Jerusalem Day in Beirut's southern suburbs. The Western-backed ruling majority in Lebanon has blamed Syria for attacks against anti-Damascus Lebanese figures since October 2004. Syria, the main backer of the Hezbollah-led Lebanese opposition, denies the accusations.

Now of course the critical question is: does anyone actually believe that? And if not, why is he going through the motions of saying it? Is his anti-Semitism really just that pathological that he can't help but publicly accuse Israel of literally every evil on earth? Jews spreading Bird Flu all over the world - that makes some sense. But killing anti-Syrian MPs? That's just crazy talk.

This is old, incidentally, but we keep forgetting to post it. Behold the standard that all future "What About All The Good Things Hezbollah Does?" media stories must be judged against:

United Nations peacekeepers were creating havoc. Soldiers from the Fijian contingent were paying fisherman $10 a piece for the turtles, a delicacy in their native archipelago, until Miss Khalil convinced a sympathetic UN general to put a stop to the practice... Hezbollah has proven itself a friend of the sea turtle, declaring its half of the beach a protected area. Amal has steadfastly refused. "It's not that I'm a fan of Hezbollah, but they have been good to the turtles," said Miss Khalil. In the Mediterranean, the turtles face daunting obstacles. Fodder for predators and threatened by humans, only one in every 1,000 will survive and return to the same seashore to reproduce 25 years later.

They even have a picture of one of the really cute baby turtles that Hezbollah's insane quest to destroy Israel has helped save. Of course they do.

References:
* Hezbollah chief accuses Israel of Lebanon killings [AFP]
* Bird Flu: Another Israeli weapon? [Simply Jews]
* Hezbollah on hand to help baby sea turtles [Telegraph]

Previously:
* UN Peacekeepers Begged Hezbollah to Stop Using Them As Human Shields. UN, LA Times Blame Israel Anyway.
* Hezbollah Ally, Iranian Proxy Mahdi Army Presents Major Problem For Post-Surge Scenarios
* State Department, UN Make Things Up To Coerce Israeli Concessions, Scapegoat Israel When Plans Fail (Plus: Hezbollah Now Openly Bragging About Using Civilian Human Shields)

In the various reports about Iran threatening to murder tens of thousands of Israeli civilians if anyone attacks them - because what could be more natural than that, right? - the AP's Ali Akbar Dareini drops in their gorgeous little example of anti-Israel weasel journalism:

Technically true since like a dozen Iranian civilians probably constitute "many" and they're certainly "in the region." But still: bullshit. Name 3 countries in the region - presumably the kind of thing that a journalist describing "the region" would be talking about - who would be against Israeli taking out Iran's nuclear facilities? Hint: you can't use any of the Sunni countries because their ministers all but wink and say the words "nudge nudge" whenever they talk about how their has to be a peaceful solution to Iranian nuclearization. So the goal is to name three Arab countries that aren't Sunni. Go.

References:
* Iranian: Retaliation if Israel Attacks [AP]

Previously:
* Global Media Suddenly All Over This Darfur Thing - Turns Out, It's Israel's Fault
* AP's Ibrahim Barzak Publishes Least Subtle anti-Israel bias Yet
* European Media Bias - Really?

All those headlines about Israel bombing Syria? Yeah, no:

(1) You might think that all of the headlines about Israel bombing Syria are based on the earlier statement that Shaaban clarified. Except that the AFP article includes the Shaaban quote about how Israel didn't bomb Syria - and then has the headline "Syria returns fire after Israeli war planes bomb territory". Outstanding work. The "returns fire" part is particularly impressive - without it, the reader might not realize that the whole thing is a Cycle Of Violence (tm)

(2) Blaming Israel for attacking Syria is particularly important if you're gearing up to blame Israel for Iran's attempts to turn this incident into a war. Not sayin', just sayin'.

(3) After the jump, the LA Times. Sigh. The LA Times.

Dishonest cycle of violence implications? Check. Implacably anti-Israel Gaza Occupation Fetish? Check. Weird scare quotes meant to randomly undermine even minor Israeli claims? Check check. And there's even a relatively new technique - and a reasonably clever one - buried deep in the article.

Disgraceful:

Now if you read just these first two paragraphs - which is all that 95 percent of people read - you'd think that the IDF invaded Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip and killed 10 Palestinians. That, of course, is the opposite of true.

There was a battle in Khan Younis. Four Palestinians died there. Then, in an extensively planned operation in a totally different part of the Gaza Strip, a team of Palestinians crashed through the Gaza fence - which puts them outside of Gaza inside of Israel - in a kidnapping attempt on an Israeli army base. Now you'd think that any reporter of Barzak's experience would know how to dishonestly provide himself with plausible deniability by explaining those distinctions below - the kind of move that would make the first paragraphs "technically true but totally dishonest". But even here - amazingly - the story still manages to wobble from weasel to liar. Proof after the jump that they just don't even care any more.

Earlier this week we got a chance to work a little bit with Noam Bedein, the founder and director of the Sderot Media Center. This is the only group working to bring the reality faced by Sderot residents - the constant Palestinian Qassam attacks aimed indiscriminately at civilians - to the world. If you see a video of 6 year olds running from their sandboxes at the sound of a Red Alert, that's because one of Bedein's teams recorded it. If you hear about an interview conducted with a family that lost their house to a direct hit, that's because one of Bedein's people was there within a few minutes of the attack. The pictures above were taken by him, and the Center webpage has hundreds more along with film. In between documenting the effects of Palestinian terrorism and war crimes, they also do what they can to make life a little more bearable, from directly assisting families to putting on events to providing therapy for children.

And they're slowly starting to get results. One of their more dramatic videos - children at a group therapy session that's interrupted by a Red Alert and falling Qassams - recently made the jump into the MSM. More materially, a lot of people think that the new shelters announced for Sderot this morning are the result of pressure brought to bear on the government by the SMC's work. But the Palestinians are still managing to get at Israeli schoolchildren with rockets:

It's hard to actually visualize just how bad things have gotten without seeing some of Bedein's presentations. You see kids playing, then they hear the siren, then you watch them have 15 seconds to run for shelter. And then you see how little kids have been taught to count down from 10 and yell in song so that they don't have to hear the rockets exploding. And that's before the footage of mothers screaming and children breaking down as they try to find each other in the aftermath of a full on bombing.

When Israel finally invades the Gaza Strip to stop the Qassams - as any other country would have done months if not years ago - the world will invent an Israeli "atrocity" to scream about for a month. Then that "atrocity" will go from 40 "murdered" to 1 dead - as it did in Lebanon - or from "hundreds of civilian casualties" to dozens of dead fighters - as it did in Jenin. All that's inevitable.

But in between, there will probably be a few hundred people who will see the SMC's videos and suddenly understand why Israel had to go into Gaza and be genuinely impressed by the care that the IDF takes to maintain its status as the most moral army in the world. And in the meantime, the group is doing what it can to promote public dialogue outside of Sderot and help the families and children inside the besieged town. The SMC's page for making tax deductible donations is here.

References:
* Sderot Media Center
* Sderot to get 15 new protective shelters [JPost]
* Sderot schools launch strike [YNet]

Previously:
* BREAKING: Major Injuries In Sderot Rocket Barrage. Children Wounded As Rockets Score Direct Hits On School and Home.
* Islamic Jihad Rocket Hits House, Narrowly Misses Pre-School
* Campaign To Save Sderot Bakeries, Families

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers
* Israpundit

Allah reports that there are to be house parties held throughout the land in celebration. MR will even be holding our own house party in support of the campaign. Except by "house" we mean "bar" and by "party" we mean "tab". But it will be in support of the campaign - upon that you can rely.

Hey, what do you think the odds are that the AP writeup included a drive-by slam at Jeri Thompson? Answer: Yes:

"Consternation about the active role of Thompson's wife, Jeri."
"Consternation about the active role of Thompson's wife, Jeri."
Where have we seen that line before?

Oh yeah, earlier this week when the AP used the exact same line to trash Jeri. This isn't scandalous or anything, but it does show a certain degree of total mind boggling laziness on the part of AP hacks. If you're going to try to get a meme to congeal, the least you can do is not use the exact. same. line. We're not asking for objectivity here. Just a little effort.

Seriously - this line was so obviously a poorly written awkward smear that we bolded it the last time that the AP dropped it into their "news reporting". And now they did it again - because apparently no anti-Republican smear is too ham fisted to use just once.

References:
* Report: Fred plans to announce plans to announce — on September 6th; Update: Confirmed [Hot Air]
* Thompson to Announce Bid Sept. 6 [AP via Forbers]
* Fake Fred! Campaign Launch Video Hits YouTube - Complete With Charming "He's A Nazi" Clip [MR]

Previously:
* Stupid Journalism Tricks: The NYT's Atttack On Jeri Thompson Is Sexist Even Though They Quoted Other People
* NPR In Denial About Sexism On the Left, Gets MR Exactly Wrong On Jeri Thompson
* Meet Jeri Thompson, the Powerful Republican Consultant That Grassroots Liberals Will Be Attacking As A Bimbo

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

Wrap your mind around this: the NYT is actually not burying the lede on the IAEA's report of massive Iranian advancement in the development of weapons-grade nuclear material. Of course, just about everybody else has found an anti-American, pro-Iranian spin in the report: "yeah, but they're slowing down the new ways that they're violating UN resolutions". But for some reason, not the NYT. Wonders never cease:

Then they go on to say that the rate of increase is slowing, which they understand is not particularly comforting. If Iran keeps slowing down in how fast they're violating UN sanctions, they might almost not be building any more centrifuges after they reach 25,000 or so! super!

But compare the NYT's take - which does nothing except point out that Iran is continuing to engage in activities that violate UN sanctions, but is violating them in new ways more slowly - with the reports from other MSM sources:

AP: UN agency hails Iran's nuclear progress
PRNewswire: Latest Report From IAEA on Iran: a Reason to Ratchet Down Threatening Rhetoric
IHT: U.S. and ElBaradei at odds over Iran's nuclear program
Fars: IAEA Report Dismisses US Charges against Iran

The Fars report is expected of course. But it's still kind of eerie on how the spin from most Western media sources exactly matches the spin of the Iranian state-controlled press. And by "eerie" we mean "predictable."

Then again, does the AP really count as "Western" any more?

UPDATE: The NYT is getting all kinds of "credit where it's due" accolades from the center-right blogosphere this morning. Eh. Must be a Friday.

References:
* Iran Expanding Its Nuclear Program, Agency Reports [NYT]

Previously:
* Are You Kidding?!?! AP Coverage Of Israeli Hit On Hamas Terrorists Is Frustrating.
* AP: IDF Murders Civilian Who Innocently Wandered Up To His Roof In the Middle Of A Firefight
* Associated Press: "We are all Hezbollah" is Not Anti-Israel

Cross-posted to:
* Israpundit

Two things. One: remember when Comedy Central wouldn't allow Matt and Trey to show a cartoon of Mohammad and everybody was like "this is an example of creeping sharia" and then it turned out that much of the media ended up self-censoring even the most benign Islam-related jokes? And how that last part was right now? Two: turns out, they really just hate Family Guy:

Manatees with idea balls, by the by, may be the funniest thing in the history of television. We will gladly defend that assertion.

References:
* Video: Steyn on the Opus non-controversy and “creeping shari’a” [Hot Air]
* Cartoon Wars (Exclusive [IGN]

Previously:
* This Will Not Be Our Last Bow
* PBS Documentary Controversy Demonstrates Why Bipartisan Screams Of Bias Do Not Mean That A Program Is Balanced. Or Wasn't Hijacked By Soft Islamists.
* Sephardic Rabbi Inadvertently Becomes Metaphor for Clash of Civilizations. Not in a Good Way.

We try to keep the discourse on this blog relatively elevated. But no:

Sigh.

References:
* U.S. military regrets giving Afghans 'blasphemous' balls [Ha'aretz]

Previously:
* It Turns Out, There IS A Way For Israeli Drivers To Suck More. Literally.
* Quick Roundup of Things That International Political Islam Has Accomplished Today
* Israeli Ambassador Found Naked, Drunk, Bound, and Gagged

Suddenly - 200,000 deaths later - global media outlets are all abuzz with the atrocities being committed in Darfur. And wouldn't you know it, it's Israel's fault that people are getting killed:

There still appears to be some confusion about what exactly is going on in Darfur - some sort of violence that seemingly came out of nowhere apparently. Just some folks fighting, ya know? Certainly no religious motive for the massacres.

Although - the Sydney Morning Herald does mention a certain Abrahamic religion four times, including in the lede. But that religion isn't Islam. Want to take a guess what religion it is? The religion that they drop four times in association with the massacres in Darfur? Come on, guess. You'll never guess.

Never mind that the truth of this debate is that most of the refugees are economic refugees. When there's an anti-Israel angle to be had - especially if it can be used in some way to blame Jews for the violence perpetuated in the name of a certain other religion - then you can be quite sure that global media outlets will find it.

We're thinking of trying to convince the UN and global media outlets that the Jews are secretly behind Iran's nuclear program. That thing would get shut down in a week. (h/t: Deb)

References:
* News results: [Google News]
* Israel deports Sudanese refugees [SMH]
* Sudanese refugees fear deportation [JPost]

Previously:
* Boston Globe Notices UN Is Not Entirely Fair To Israel (Plus: Lebanese Muslims Pissed That Even Israel Is More Humane Than Syria) [Video]
* The Significance Of the Pope's Visit To Turkey - Not That Much, Actually
* At This Point, Journalists Are Literally Just Going Through The Motions Of Covering Up Their Bias

Of course it is:

No matter what side you're on, you have to appreciate the sheer elegance of using a phrase like "Israel cites attempts by Palestinians to attack" the roadblocks - as if, you know, of course the evil Zionists would say something like that. It's an every so slightly inaccurate way to describe what's really going on - which is that Hamas outright declared that they will kill thousands of Palestinians by bombing the hell out of the crossings if Israel opens them. Why would Hamas openly threaten to kill thousands of their own civilians? Partly because they're confident that the AP will report it - with an air of skepticism - as " Israel, which cites attempts by Palestinian militants to attack them."

You can also file this article whereever you keep your collection of AP stories that mention the lack of food in Gaza but forget to mention that Hamas has banned Israeli produce.

References:
* Gaza power station halts electricity supply due to fuel shortage [Ha'aretz]
* Hamas Blocks Israeli Food Shipments, Intentionally Starves Gaza Civilians To Create A Humanitarian Disaster - Again! [MR]
* UN And "Gaza Businessmen" Agree: It's Israel's Fault That Hamas Has Intentionally Created A Humanitarian Disaster In the Gaza Strip By Blocking Food and Medical Shipments [MR]

Previously:
* Palestinians Reject Israeli Humanitarian Efforts - Easier to Demonize Israel That Way
* Vulgar Palestinian Propaganda Succeeds with International Media - Again!
* Would Palestinian Officials Intentionally Starve Palestinian Civilians Just So They Could Demonize Israel? We Think They Would...

The IDF is finally beginning to consider doing the minimum to respond to months of rocket fire against Israeli schools and hospitals. There is a brutal firefight going on in the Gaza Strip right now. Israeli soldiers are being engaged by Hamas soldiers and Islamic Jihad terrorists who are armed with weapons that have shockingly - shockingly - slipped into the Strip in the last month or so. A single airstrike took out six Islamic Jihad members - these are not random terrorists firing from the inside of windows. These are organized armed units firing rockets and automatic weapons at armed Israeli units.

And then there's this innocent civilian. According to the AP, he just happened to wander onto his roof - where snipers hang out - at the time of the firefight. He was then gunned down by heartless Zionists:

You think he was up there fixing his satellite dish or something?

We're even more impressed by the AFP version of events, which fails to mention that this undoubtedly innocent man just happened to be on a rooftop during a firefight. AFP stringer Sakher Abu El Oun gallantly limits himself to merely noting that, you know, those Israelis - they kill civilians.

UPDATE: Well, look what made it into the JPost rewrite of the AP story that somehow failed to get into either the main AP or AFP versions:

Wonder how that slipped through.

References:
* 4 Palestinians Killed in Israeli Raid
* Six Palestinians killed in Israeli Gaza incursion

Previously:
* AP Headline and Lede: Syrian War Against Israel Would Be "Resistance"
* AP: Poor, Downtrodden Palestinians Leaving Their Beloved Homeland
* Associated Press: "We are all Hezbollah" is Not Anti-Israel

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers
* Israpundit

This book reviewer - handpicked by heaven knows who to provide an unbiased review of a book by the equally unbiased senior editor of Le Monde - isn't actually saying that it was an ethnic cleansing. She's just favorably quoting the book:

This is dishonest to the point where it strains charity. Egypt didn't need to attack - they had already committed an act of war by closing off the Straits between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean to Israeli shipping. This is exactly like Hezbollah kidnapping Israeli soldiers and then saying "well OK, but we're done for now" - and then complaining when Israel retaliates. Except it's worse than that, because it was clear that Egypt was going to attack - that's why Nasser expelled the UN peacekeepers who were providing a buffer zone in Sinai. Honestly, are these people are just allowed to make stuff up now?

Then, after the point where everyone stops reading, there's some stuff about how the Palestinians might be bad too - before returning to blaming Israel for everything. When we say "everything", we mean it quite literally - including the "failure of the peace process, which [the author] attributes to an Israeli tendency to view politics exclusively through the prism of security." That's funny - no one who was actually at Camp David remembers it that way - they all say it was Arafat's fault.

Then again, if your goal is to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish State, you probably see things a little differently. Even things that you didn't technically "see". Or read anything "true" about. Still - Beirut writer Rayyan al-Shawaf thinks that you should read this book. Shocking, no?

References:
* Fervent plea for fresh start in Israel's Palestinian policy [SF Chron]
* Oh Look - Another American Intelligence Chief Blames Arafat For the Collapse Of the Peace Process [MR]

Previously:
* The Saudi Peace Initiative: A Discrete Way to Destroy Israel, Based on an Ethical Lie
* Arab Children Talk About the Right Of Return: Palestine Will "Regain Its Land From the Enemy, Israel" [Video]
* Decades Of Internationally Sanctioned Vicious Resentment Have Turned Inward

Meryl points out that it must have taken an almost inhuman act of will for the AP not to blame Israel, and we suppose baby steps are to be applauded. This is still confusing drivel:

That's in the second paragraph, which is where many of the people who didn't stop reading after the lede stop reading. The bottom of the next paragraph, however, has this little tidbit:

Which kind of begs the question: if Gaza's Christians have been living in peace with Hamas, what's been causing the steady flight? It's not the "occupation of Gaza" that, contrary to implications and slips by media outlets, doesn't actually "exist" in "reality".

The truth, of course, is that Gaza Christians have been getting firebombed for months if not years. And they're certainly not going to the West Bank, because they've been getting firebombed there too. In fact, as far back as 2005 Christians were already complaining about organizing anti-Christian violence in Palestinian areas.

Which makes this next part about a mythical Muslim-Christian Palestinian convergence that's been derailed particularly stupid:

We kind of think that the "secular Palestinian state" ship left the port when the Palestinians started electing radical Islamists who sought to impose sharia in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But maybe there's a nuance we're missing.

References:
* AP notices Gaza's Christians are in danger, does not blame Israel [Yourish]
* Convent Damage Unsettles Gaza Christians [ABC]
* BBC Slips, Proves Liberal Gaza Occupation Fetish [MR]
* Gaza Internet Cafes and Christian Bookstore Bombed - No One Knows Who Did It! [MR]
* Video: Palestinian Christians Being Attacked, Firebombed Out Of The West Bank (Bonus: Sharia Law In the Palestinian Constitution) [MR]
* Few, Isolated Palestinian Muslims Apparently Hate Christians Too [MR]

Previously:
* Hamas Takeover Triggers Open Attacks On Christians In Gaza
* Oh No! Not the "All Religions Are Violent" Argument!
* Hamas Popularity Growing. Overwhelming Number Of Palestinians Want Elections. Hmmm.

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers
* Israpundit

We wish we could just invent things that make no sense and get them treated as "our side" of the story. "MR today claimed to be the best-read blog on the planet, but other bloggers cast doubt on that claim". That would be awesome. But alas, we're not Palestinians:

Naturally, this is a lie. All the Palestinians killed in the firefight were gunmen. Now why would we believe Israel and not the Palestinians? Mostly because we're able to ask questions like "hey, how would a 12 year old end up in the no-man's land next to the Gaza fence?" Unless he was actually one of the gunmen, which isn't exactly unheard of.

It is nice to see that the international media is paying attention to Gaza civilians though. For some reason that phrase hasn't come up much in the last two weeks - apparently no civilians in Gaza were getting killed during that time, huh?

Oh - and it's also nice to see that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades still have some fight left in them. Not enough to prevent Hamas from rolling over them, killing their leaders and dragging their bodies through the streets, and destroying their schools and homes. But enough to try to kill Israelis.

References:
* 11 killed in Israeli raids on Gaza [Daily Star]
* 'Gaza gunmen fighting IDF out of frustration' [YNet]

Previously:
* Hamas Trying To Turn Gaza Into A Humanitarian Disaster - They're Stopping Gazans From Getting Medical Aid
* Like Hezbollah, Hamas Uses Children As Human Shields
* This Summer's War In Gaza - Hamas Wastes No Time In Launching Rockets, Igniting War

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

You'd like to believe that if reporters are being physically threatened into presenting a particular message - well, you'd hope that they would find a way to push back. At the very least, one would expect that journalists would do something other than wholeheartedly embrace the thugs who are threatening and attacking them. But as we've known for decades - and has CAMERA just got done explaining today - reporters physically coerced by Israel's Arab enemies end up endorsing and passing on those enemies' anti-Israel propaganda. Whether its through confiscating cameras, attacking reporters, or taking hostages - everyone from the PLO to Hezbollah has managed to control the press coming out of south Lebanon.

There's almost certainly going to be some kind of conflict in Southern Lebanon this summer, and you can be quite sure that the press will do their level best to match the mendacity with which they approached last summer's war. Prof. Marvin Kalb explains how Hezbollah simply outclassed - both institutionally and through violence - the self-appointed gatekeepers of the wold's information stream:

Had Palestinian thugs managed to grab two or three more cameras on 9/11, the world would never have known about Palestinians dancing in the streets. Had Iraq not been liberated from Saddam Hussein, we never would have known how CNN suppressed knowledge of torture rooms and mass murders. Just imagine what we'll know about Hezbollah after the next war ends.

Not that actual suppression of news matters. There are literally photographs and satellite pictures of Hezbollah using roadblocks to trap civilian human shields and firing at Israel from civilian areas - and Salon still published an article praising and admiring Hezbollah for keeping civilians out of the conflict. So honestly, we're not sure why Hezbollah even bothers suppressing the news anyway.

References:
* Hamas May Be Suppressing the News -- So What's New? [CAMERA]
* How Hezbollah Manipulated The World [DsuperJew / YouTube]
* Hezbollah Unit in Tyre Trapping Civilians To Use As Human Shields [MR]
* Exclusive IDF Videos Show Hezbollah Shelling Israel From Civilian Areas [MR]
* Here's the Thing About the Anti-Israel Media: They Lie - Hezbollah Hides Among Civilians Edition [MR]

Previously:
* Siniora Asks International Media to Transmit Pictures of Israeli Atrocities. Which Is Kind of Like Asking Us to Keep Making Fun of Carter.
* Hezbollah Probably Lost the War, But They May Never Have Been In It To Win
* Hezbollah Threatens Tel Aviv - MR Gives You Tomorrow’s Pro-Hezbollah Media Spin Today

This wouldn't even qualify for a post, except that every week we read a story about how Israelis are totally demoralized. As a meme, it has an especially pronounced habit of bubbling to the surface whenever Israelis are actually rallying around the flag (see, inter alia, Beit Hanoun). So for what it's worth - and to give us a place to link to when this comes up in the future - it's simply not true:

We wouldn't say that people who write about demoralized and depressed Israelis are necessarily lying. We prefer "under-informed".

References:
* Beit Hanoun Meme Watch - (6) "Israelis Demoralized and Blaming Themselves" - Actually, No They're Not [MR]
* Survey shows most Israelis are happy [JPost]

Previously:
* Picture You Won't See on CNN
* At This Point, Journalists Are Literally Just Going Through The Motions Of Covering Up Their Bias
* European Media Bias - Really?

Cross-posted to:
* Israpundit

Color us shocked and amazed that the LA Times would hand over their op-ed page to a terrorist enabling traitor. This right here? This is us being shocked. And amazed:

Poll - Rank the following hypothetical scenarios in order of awesomeness:
(1) that the LA Times approached Bishara because they really wanted to be a propaganda bullhorn for terrorist enabling traitors
(2) that Bishara was thinking to himself "what major US paper is most likely to let me turn it into a terrorist bullhorn for my terrorist enabling treason" and the answer he came up with was the LA Times?

We don't know why they didn't just follow routine LAT practice and let Laura King write up this anti-Israel propaganda as a news report. She could even do that clever thing where journalists smuggle in their bias by quoting lunatics they agree with ("but some Palestinians say" - no one ever catches that). Maybe she missed her filing deadline because it took extra time to translate her article from the original Arabic on the pamphlet.

Bonus poll - Rank the following actual events in order of awesomeness:
(1) The LAT giving their paper to Azmi Bishara to justify his treason
(2) TIME giving their magazine to Tariq Ramadan to slander the Pope
(3) The WaPo giving their paper to Ismail Haniyeh to lie about his genocidal lunacy

(h/t: MR reader Jason)

References:
* Why Israel is after me [LAT]
* Staying Neutral the Los Angeles Times Way [MR]
* Egyptian Sandmonkey Takes Exception To TIME's Embrace Of Tariq Ramadan [MR]
* Uhh... When Did the Washington Post Start Letting Terrorists Publish Propaganda? [MR]

Previously:
* LA Times: What About All the Good Things Islamists Do?
* LA Times Bias
* I Wish I Had An LA Times Subscription, So I Could Cancel It

Cross-posted to:
* Israpundit
* The Astute Bloggers

Our coverage of the anti-Papal riots was nominated for Best (Post) Series in the JIBs, but there were too many posts for them to index. MR published a series of 11 posts about media coverage of the Beit Hanoun incident. These posts traced the anti-Israel bias in various journalistic memes and tactics. Those posts are categorized and indexed below:

(Intro) Beit Hanoun Meme Watch
(1) "Rage and Tears" - Apparently Theats Of Genocide Are OK If You're Really Upset
(2) "The Palestinians Are Really Pissed Off" - And The NYT Will Publish Death Porn To Prove It
(3) Stupid Headline Tricks - Hey Listen, Calling It A "Massacre" Is Still Bias, Even If You Think You're Being Clever By Quoting Someone
(4) "The al-Athamnah Family" - If You Make The Tragedy Seem Really Personal, Then People Will Really Get Outraged
(Interlude) Convergence of Bias - With This Simple Formula, You Too Can Produce Solid Anti-Israel Journalism
(5) "World Indifference" - We Learned About That Indifference From Every Major Newspaper On The Planet
(6) "Israelis Demoralized and Blaming Themselves" - Actually, No They're Not
(7) "Palestinian Unity (Government / Suicide Bombings / Whatever) Is Israel's Fault" - LIARS
(8) "Israeli Terrorism" - Want To Guess Who Reuters Is Willing To Label A Terrorist?
(9) "It's All About Olmert's Domestic Political Situation" - Predictable Bias Is Real Bias

A little totally justified triumphalism from one of the more important media watchdogs:

Few things are as depressing as Middle East media coverage. Small victories.

References:
* Five Years on the Front Lines - HonestReporting.com

Previously:
* Here's the Thing About the Anti-Israel Media: They Lie - Visual Version
* International Media: "Israel" is "Gaza"
* European Media Bias - Really?

Update (11:40 PST):
We don't have the energy to fisk the article line by line, but you know who did? Meryl. Natch.

Original:
The Associated Press has published yet another article about how maybe just possibly Hamas is moderating:

We have neither the time nor the energy to fisk this line by line, so here's a speech from last year by Hamas head Khaled Mashal. The article claims that everyone in Hamas has changed their mind - that no one is calling for the elimination of Israel, so Hamas should be embraced by the international community. So if you think Mashal can ever see his way to accepting Israel, you're free to agree. You're also a blistering idiot:

He dedicates his life to personally humiliating and degrading Jews as Muslims flood Israel and commit massacres. He intends to do this by sowing propaganda domestically and internationally in order to confuse Israelis and undermine Israel's leadership. Good to see that the AP is paying attention.

Then again. Maybe the AP is right to pass on blatantly propagandist quotes. After all, Arafat started off as an unrepentant terrorist, and he ended up a peacemaker, right... Terrorist sympathizing useful idiots.

References:
* Are Hamas's claims of moderation a ploy?

Previously:
* Jimmy Carter: Hamas Made Up of "So-Called Terrorists"
* NYT, LAT: Hamas Popularity is Israel's Fault
* So This Is What Hamas Means By "Respecting Past Agreements" (Bonus: AP's Ibrahim Barzak Whitewashing Palestinian Terrorism Again?)

Did you know that TIME has a Middle East blog? Did you know that it sucks:

Yeah. That's what's going to stand in the way of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. Because if there were no Jewish settlers in Homesh, the Palestinians would stop trying to kill Jews.

What's that you say? Homesh has been abandoned for two years and the Palestinians have still been killing Jews? Well fuck.

References:
* The Middle East
Olmert's Hilltop Heachache

Previously:
* US, EU Stand Firm On Boycott. Except They Don't. And Except There Is No Boycott.
* So This Is What Hamas Means By "Respecting Past Agreements" (Bonus: AP's Ibrahim Barzak Whitewashing Palestinian Terrorism Again?)
* What Do Meryl Yourish and A Genocidal Iranian Lunatic Have In Common? [Video]

Arabs head to Saudi summit to endorse Mideast peace:

Except that "just solution" is the full embrace of the Right of Return, which means allowing Israel to be invaded by three million of the most radicalized and anti-Semitic lunatics on the planet. Of course, you wouldn't know that from Wafa Amr's article since the actual details of the "just solution" that the Arab world is proposing is mysteriously left out.

Funny, that.

References:
* Arabs head to Saudi summit to endorse Mideast peace

Previously:
* Reuters Anti-Israel Demonization Now Just Silly: Israeli Jews Persecuting Palestinian Christians. Muslim Palestinians, On the Other Hand, Have Persecuted Nobody and Burned No Churches
* Reuters Publishes State Department Leak: US Attack On Iran Would Be All-Out War
* Reuters Anti-Israel Absurdity Watch - "Being A Human Shield" Is A "Protest"

This should probably be an update to this morning's post on Hamas's terrorist attack. But this "respecting past agreements" thing needs its own post.

The whole "respecting past agreements" thing is absurd to begin with. What does it even mean to "respect" a treaty? Respect is something that you give to Kobe Bryant's superhuman basketball skills. It's not something you give to legally binding obligations that have significance under international law. You don't respect treaties, you adhere to them. Your mood doesn't count in international jurisprudence - it's not like Israel gets to embrace the mere fancy of giving away land.

But even if it was OK for Hamas to obey the spirit but not the letter of agreements (which it isn't), they're not even doing that. Last week when the Palestinians were trying to convince everyone that they should be allowed to break all their treaties, this is how they were characterizing "respect":

That was a hell of a street protest on the tips of those rockets that fell this morning. But we have no doubt that when this was originally written, liberal sophisticates everywhere nodded at Ibrahim Barzak's nuance - and clicked their tongues about how dense and myopic conservatives are.

"Maintaining and expanding" the truce. Indeed.

This isn't the first time that Barzak has gotten caught a bit of an inaccuracy because of how messy time and reality can be. A couple years ago he described a homicidal suicide attack as a revenge attack for Israeli military actions. Except the suicide video was recorded a day before the Israeli actions that it was supposedly a revenge for. Opps.

PS - Apologies for the hackneyed Kobe example at the beginning. The only non-sports example we could think of involved the phrase "the morning after" - and except on Wednesdays this is a family blog, so no go.

References:
* Hamas Celebrates Unity Government, Diplomatic Thaw With Brazen Terrorism Against Israelis
* Kobe Bryant Is the Best Clutch Player In the NBA [MR]
* New Palestinian cabinet announced
* Email of the Day: Suicide Bombing Was Not Act of Revenge [MR]

Previously:
* AP Bias Alert Level: Obvious (Grandma Suicide Bomber Edition)
* AP Headline and Lede: Syrian War Against Israel Would Be "Resistance"
* AP: It's A Cycle Of Violence. Except the Palestinians Keep Restarting the Cycle

[Cross-posted to Israpundit]

We're just getting so sick of it:

So we were reading this lede on JPost, and we thought "wait, that's weird - this just equated Holocaust denial with a vague Israeli distrust of Arab towns... and then they referred to a belief held by over a quarter of the population as 'radical'... what the hell, is this an AP story or something?" So we scrolled back up to the top and it turns out that - surprisingly - this actually is a contribution to Middle East knowledge courtesy of the Associated Press. Neat.

And honestly, we're not sure what the hell that nonsense about "avoiding entering Arab towns" is all about. We call bullshit on the implication that Israelis driving through the north would not stop at a gas station or eat at a restaurant because it's in a Druze village. And you know what? Let's have a show of hands from our Israeli readers - when you want good humus, are you more likely to "avoid" or "enthusiastically rush" to Humus Said in the (very Arab) town of Akko. Be honest - we know that at least a couple of you live in Karmiel, so we'll know if you're lying. Yeah, that's what we thought.

That you, AP, for making the Israeli-Arab situation easier to understand.

References:
* '28percent of Israel's Arabs deny Holocaust' [JPost]

Previously:
* Arab Fifth Column Watch - Treason's Just Another Word for Anti-Zionism
* Arab Fifth Column Watch - Israel Shouldn't Lock Up Terrorists Edition
* Arab Fifth Column Watch - Labor MK Refuses Pledge of Allegiance

[Cross-posted to The Astute Bloggers]

Oh please:

You know... we remember a time when biased journalists had to be talented. They had to take some time to carefully wrap their agendas up in misdirection and plausible deniability, subtly combining their gatekeeping functions with delicate framing. They couldn't just make things up that are totally incoherently stupid. Because when they did that, people would say things like "wait - that was totally incoherently stupid - what could possibly be going on here?" But not any more. Now journalists can write Christian leaders deny that there's any religious persecution of Christians by Palestinian Muslims.

Here's a Christian leader complaining about religious persecution from the Palestinian Muslim majority. Here are a couple more. Christian churches are being undermined with impunity, Christian villages are being attacked on the thinnest pretexts, and Christian rights are being vitiated by encroaching sharia. Meanwhile, Palestinian TV is broadcasting sermons calling on Palestinians to rise up against Christians.

But there's no religious persecution from Palestinian Muslims. And Christians are fleeing the West Bank because of Israeli Jews. Obviously.

References:
* Misery tempts Palestinian Christians to flee
* Video: Palestinian Christians Being Attacked, Firebombed Out Of The West Bank (Bonus: Sharia Law In the Palestinian Constitution) [MR]
* Yes, the Pope Is Catholic - Either You Believe 'The Pope Made Them Attack Churches' Or You Know History [MR]

Previously:
* Reuters Gives Advice: Want To Dampen Muslim Extremism? Support People Who Want To Commit Genocide.
* Reuters Anti-Israel Absurdity Watch - "Being A Human Shield" Is A "Protest"
* Reuters Misleads Readers About Hamas's Treaty Obligations, Misses Everything That's Important About Israeli-Palestinian Peacemaking

The UN long ago stopped trying to be objective. Now they've stopped trying to even pretend to be objective. And yet supposedly, we're supposed to care when the UN condemns Israel:

Now of course, this is kind of redundant - Israel is a multi-ethnic democracy, and the Israeli High Court makes sure that discrimination is remedied. Here's what we're wondering though: do you think that Saudi Arabia or Iran were condemned by the UN this week, even though they have those inconvenient "if you convert to Judaism we'll kill you" laws? We're guessing no.

And just in time, the LA Times has published an opinion demonizing Israel and valorizing Islamic resistance to the Jewish state. The article is full of transparent stupidity and manifest ignorance - Hamas doesn't have to recognize Israel because it's not a real government... even though the entire point of Oslo was that the Palestinians would get the status of a real government if they made peace with Israel, etc. But there are two parts that are awesome:

(1) The geopolitical nonsense spouted as informed opinion is excellent evidence that, no matter what's happening in the rest of the academy, English professors still feel entitled to pass off liberal catechisms as sophistication

(2) The writer accuses the LA Times of being too pro-Israel. Seriously. This is just like AQ criticizing Hamas for not being radical enough - and thereby making Hamas seem like centrists. Writing that the LA Times needs to be more pro-Palestinian so that they'll become balanced is shameless in ways that words have barely been invented to describe.

References:
* UN committee: Israel should let Palestinians return to their land [Ha'aretz]
* Why does The Times recognize Israel's 'right to exist'? [LA Times]

Previously:
* LA Times Forgets To Mention Fatah's Responsibility For Today's Suicide Bombing
* NYT, LAT: Hamas Popularity is Israel's Fault
* Do They Just Get To Make Things Up Now?

Move along folks. Nothing to see here except an unremitting pattern of anti-Jewish desecration:

If we could speak directly to the Jewish settlers in Hebron for a second: we don't really like most of you. We're sure that there are some nice folks among you. And obviously if you're a reader you're a man or woman (but likely a man) of discriminating tastes. But on the whole, most of what we hear about you makes us think you're kind of crazy. Also, you seem a little bigoted. Not like "you oppose Islamofascism so leftists call you bigoted" bigoted. Like many of you seem to really dislike Arab schoolchildren - and on the whole, we here at MR are pro-school children.

That said - it's interesting to see what kind of religious desecration triggers global riots that the left rushes to "understand" and "empathize with" (e.g. cartoons), and what kind of religious desecration registers nary a blip on the radar of global media organizations (e.g. real desecration of sacred Jewish objects). It's not a matter of saying "well if the settlers weren't there, this wouldn't have happened" - the fact is that this did happen, and all of the explanations that people make for Muslim anti-Jewish bigotry are just so many pretexts.

What - you think if the settlers weren't there the Arabs of Hebron wouldn't desecrate holy Jewish objects? Are you stupid?

PS - memo to those readers (which is none of you, we'd guess) who believe that "it's not any particular fundamentalism that's the problem, it's fundamentalism in general". That's actually not true. Muslim fundamentalists regularly destroy Jewish holy objects because their religious authorities sanction it. Jewish fundamentalists are prohibited from damaging mosques by Israel's Chief Rabbi, who - as you might have guessed by the title - carries not a little bit of religious authority. How about this? You're not allowed to spout this idiocy again until you find a Muslim cleric of similar authority who has issued fatwas against desecrating Jewish synagogues.

References:
* Hevron Jewish Religious Items Desecrated For 3rd Time This Month [Arutz Sheva]
* Press relieves Palestinian family in Hebron [YNet]
* Joseph's Tomb [Wikipedia]
* Israeli Chief Rabbi Issues Edict Against Any Jew Who Damages Mosques [MR]

Previously:
* Koran Riots Seem A Little Hypocritical
* Hamas Synagogue Desecration Continues
* The LA Times: "Islam gets concessions; infidels get conquered." Ummm... Wow

You know how you can read something in a newspaper lede and - without knowing anything about the context or the writer - how you can know that something's wrong? Like there's a word that clangs loudly to the ground because it doesn't fit - something that's obviously a hamfisted attempt to frame the story in a particular way? And you can't believe that somebody thought they were being subtle when they wrote it - but it's more aggravating because you just know that they were pleased with themselves. Like the hack who inserted the word "kingpin" into this Reuters lede:

Well that's funny. We've never heard Reuters refer to any political leader as a "kingpin" before. That's a word that they usually seem to prefer for Israeli drug lords and Jewish producers. Never ever ever ever ever for political leaders. And Mohammed Dahlan isn't just any political leader. He's a member of the Palestinian parliament and the presumptive favorite to lead Fatah after Palestinian President Abbas exits the stage. In a story about Hamas thugs fighting Fatah thugs, why would you smear Dahlan of all people?

Dahlan is the closest thing you get to a moderate among Palestinian leaders. Which is to say that while he does occasionally throw around vicious anti-Semitic blood libels (although not enough to reach positions of power in the UN), he is also at least arguably open to recognizing Israel. He's so much a Palestinian centrist that he's regularly vilified as an Israeli-American agent by the Arab media and Hamas. Hamas, in fact, has been trying to kill him for a while.

Why - of all the Palestinian leaders - would you want to frame the story to make Dahlan look like the instigator? We're not ready to declare that this journalist is deliberately trying to make readers view Hamas sympathetically or to minimize Hamas's role for the chaos. But we will point out that Dahlan - who this journalist smeared - is arguably the lead Fatah figure working to undermine the Hamas government.

And so of course the author is Reuters propagandist Nidal al-Mughrabi. We're thinking of adding tags to MR just so we can keep track of this jagoff. Here he is:

* Misleading readers about Hamas's violation of international law
* Being vaguely celebratory about the ambush of Israel soldiers
* Doting on an arch-terrorist that Israel brought justice to
* Defending human shields by calling them protesters
* Calling rockets falling on Israeli schoolhouses a ceasefire (usual warnings apply about how everybody was doing that)

So yeah, that's the guy reporting on Israel for The International Wire That's Still Better Than AP. "Fatah kingpin" indeed. Seriously, who writes that? Who even thinks that's OK?

Previously: http://www.mererhetoric.com/archives/11272895.html, Reuters Pretends That History Is What Reuters Would Like History To Be, Reuters Has No Idea What's Going on in Israel

Tough to know who's behind the leaks and why. But here you go:

The "destabilize the Middle East for years" part makes it sound like your typical, anti-Administration State Department leak (hey, that would be a first!) But this could also be an Administration leak to turn up the pressure on Iran. Either way, it's nonsense - the US simply does not have the boots to launch a full scale war against Iran.

Bonus: the bottom of the article discusses the centrality of oil - and of oil prices - to the rudimentary Iranian economy. If Saudi Arabia really does what they've been threatening - amp up production and crash oil prices - then things could get quite interesting indeed.

Previously: Turns Out, Iran Won't Stop Developing The Nukes That They Really, Really Want, Iran Sanctions Blah Blah Blah, OneJerusalem.org Conference Call with Senator Rick Santorum

You have to admit though, Reuters stringer Nidal al-Mughrabi is definitely getting more subtle. In May 2004, was all but openly celebrating Palestinian ambushes of Israelis. By March 2006, he had learned to be a little more careful, and stuck to raising sympathy for Palestinian terrorists by referring to them with vaguely doting affection. Within the last couple of months he's become almost professional, limiting most of his bias to tried and true mainstream anti-Israel rhetoric - things like referring to Palestinian human shields as "protesters" and declaring that Palestinians firing at Israeli schoolhouses was part of a "ceasefire" (although in fairness, just about everyone was doing that last one).

And now he and Reuters have taken the last step toward really good and efficient anti-Israel journalism - the "technically true but totally misleading fact" approach to misinforming readers about the Middle East situation:

Why is this so misleading? Because the agreements were not just signed with the PLO - they were signed with the PLO leaders who were the elected representatives running the Palestinian Authority, which is the elected Palestinian government. The obligations are not incumbent upon the PLO - they're incumbent upon whoever happens to be running the Palestinian government at the time. This would be like saying that the Soviet Union signed "various arms control agreements" with "the Democratic Party". Well yes, in a way that's true if there was a Democratic President - but the whole point is that this President was acting in the name of the United States, and future Presidents were bound by those treaties.

Why is this so important? Because the entire problem of land-for-peace is that Israel gives up something tangible, and in return a couple of Palestinians (let's call them the PLO) - whom the international community insists "speak for the Palestinian people" - promise to make peace. But then a bunch of other Palestinians (let's call them Hamas) exploit Israel's concessions - releasing prisoners, withdrawing from territory, etc - to murder more Israelis. And then the first group of Palestinians comes back and demands more concessions, in order to somehow placate the second group. They move the goalposts, demanding ever more tangible concessions in return for the intangible peace that they're supposed to deliver on.

Hamas refusing to recognize their treaty obligations is merely the most recent method of moving the goalposts. Now - after all that Israel has given up and been promised - the Palestinian government, which is bound by international agreements, is officially unwilling to live up to its promises. This is a qualitatively new demonstration of how useless land-for-peace is, since it demonstrates that the Palestinians don't really have a government - what they have are a bunch of armed gangs that take turns pretending to act like a government. If Israel can't rely on the idea that concessions in 2005 will matter in 2006 if there's a change in government, then giving up tangible resources becomes worse than reckless - it becomes the very definition of useless.

Nidal al-Mughrabi's mysterious failure to mention that the interim agreements were with the Palestinian government, which Hamas is supposed to be leading after an ostensibly orderly and democratic election, helps to hide that fact.

Previously: Moving The Goalposts On Israel's Withdrawal From Lebanon, Moving the Goalposts on Israel's International Obligations, Moving the Goalposts on Israel's Withdrawal From Gaza

Yeah, whatever:

More interesting is the AP picture and caption that's attached to this story:

The Bush administration intervened to prevent Israel from going after Hezbollah because they thought that it would destabilize the Lebanese government and unfairly target the Lebanese people - both of which were ostensibly being held hostage against their will by Hezbollah. Seems like somebody misread the electoral situation on the ground - somebody who almost certainly still has their job at the State Department's Lebanon desk (you'd have figured the whole thing about "Hezbollah being part of the Lebanese government" would have tipped somebody off to the group's popular support - but apparently diplomats are more nuanced than that).

Oh, and for what it's worth - most of the MSM refuses to use the word "terrorist" even when it comes directly from a statement and when they offset it with quotes. But a Hezbollah declaration of victory? Let's get that in the caption right away!

Previously: AP Headline and Lede: Syrian War Against Israel Would Be "Resistance", AP: Poor, Downtrodden Palestinians Leaving Their Beloved Homeland, UN Building Hit in Lebanon. UN, AP blame Israel. Yawn.

Hey, do you think that Reuters deliberately put a shamefully bad picture of the Pope on the wires...

... or do you think that this just slipped through the vaunted multiple layers of editorial control that they're so well-known for? Or maybe they didn't have a single other picture to run (what? did they fire their Photoshop guy?)

UPDATE: Actually, screw it. Say what you want about the Pope. From this point on, he's dead to us. " Don't worship technology" - what kind of craziness is that?

Previously: Global Jihadists Will Take Any Excuse To Kill Infidels, Mere Rhetoric Really Likes the Pope, Yes, the Pope Is Catholic - His Argument vs. Hitchens's Straw-Version of His Argument (Plus, We Ask Hitch To Come Home)

You'll forgive us some unseemly schadenfreude, but it's the LA Times:

Wartzman was part of the staff awarded the Pulitzer in 2004 for the LAT's Walmart investigation. We actually have no idea what his stance on Israel is, or how his leaving will effect the LAT's editorial line (guesses: left of center; not at all). But that's no excuse not to point out that the Los Angeles Times's Middle East coverage is beneath reproach.

Previously: Mona Gable, HuffPo Blogger And LA Times Contributor, Is A Shrill And Hysterical Idiot, What Bad Anti-Israel Argument Will the LA Times Come Up With Today?, At This Point, Journalists Are Literally Just Going Through The Motions Of Covering Up Their Bias

AP writer Sarah El Deeb does her best to pull your heartstrings about the awful situation that the Palestinians have brought on themselves by voting in a terrorist government and then starting a war with Israel. Yeah, seriously, we're crying on the inside:

We're actually being kind of unfair to Ms. El Deeb. This is a pretty well-balanced article, with the exceptions of the "homeland" headline and snarky reference to the "the fenced-in strip". In fact, reading it again, we feel almost guilty about maybe laying it on a little too thick in our own hed. But it's the Associated Press, so can you ever really be too sarcastic about their anti-Israel bias? You might not now what anti-Israel nonsense they're up to today, but they certainly do.

Bonus question: if Sharon's "take Gaza and choke on it" strategy turns out to have been a moderate succeed in the medium term, do we get refunds on the hours upon hours of time we spent answering angry emails?

Previously: Associated Press: "We are all Hezbollah" is Not Anti-Israel, AP Headline and Lede: Syrian War Against Israel Would Be "Resistance", The AP Lede On the Lebanon Tribunal Is Rank Bias

Kneejerk exaggeration in the form of moral equivalence. Check.
Accusations of Bush administration shadiness where anyone who's not a total moron can tell that things were totally above board. Check.
Blindingly obvious contradictions and logical incoherence? Check.

And that's just the first four paragraphs.

First of all, Bush banned photos out of respect for the families. So that they didn't have to see their son's coffins on TV. We would say that "even smart leftists agree with that", but it's not something you agree or disagree with - it's the terms of the debate. The entire dispute is about balancing the "public's right to know" with "respect for the families". This woman is not even in the dialogue. She's just pulling things out of thin air and expecting her audience to overlook the fact that there is no connection from one sentence to the next. Just a series of idiotic accusations that sound properly leftist.

Speaking of idiotic accusations - "some secret database"? Yeah, the list of soon to be graduating high school students is soooo secret. The only people who have access to it are the US federal government, every college in America, most testing bureaus in America, and any several commercial high school honors societies. She'll understand that next year when her son starts getting letters in the mail from every second-tier college in America next year. Assuming that she can produce offspring capable of matriculating, which at this point we're kind of skeptical about.

Holy shit this woman pisses us off.

And that's before we get to a letter offering her son the chance to serve his country being equivalent to a mail bomb. Rarely do you see dumb liberalism so nakedly on display.

Incidentally, one of top posts at the HuffPo this morning: Nathan Gardels about how Jimmy Carter is "taking on Israel's apartheid policies" Mind you, even Carter admits - in his own damn mistitled book - that Israel's policies are precisely not like South African apartheid. They might just become that way, maybe someday. And yet here we have an ostensibly educated and rational person acting like he hasn't even read the book, but he's just agreeing with it because it's anti-Israel.

No, but really. The traditional alliance between American Jews and the political left is working out great. Lets do it for half-century.

Previously: Jews Now Being Blamed by Media for Harassing Nonexistent, Modern-Day Joseph and Mary, Note to Liberals: You're Not Smarter Than Everyone Else. Really., Even the Funny Liberals (Implicitly) Lie About Israel

This is a pretty brutal lede, and good on the New York Times for not trying all that hard to be objective about Holocaust denial:

They could have pointed out - as Anne Applebaum did in the WaPo - that Iran actually barred scholars who wanted to argue that the Holocaust happened. But there's only so much you can expect from non-bloggers, even well-meaning one.

Previously: The Denial of the Obvious By Reference to the Irrelevant: Center-Left Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics, Linking Zionism to the Holocaust - Not Just Offensive, But Also Stupid, Elie Wiesel Isn't Really That Naive

Reuters hired someone who used the phrase "Jewish rabbis" in the second paragraph of the story (as opposed to all other kinds of rabbis), so you know that this is going to be good. First quote that Parisa Hafezi provides is from an apologist for the regime. Obviously, the first quote is from an apologist. Because who else would it come from?

In honor of finals week, we're going to close this post with a multiple choice form. Without looking it up in your textbook, what abuse of logic and semantics is on display? Is it:

(a) the bandwagon effect
(b) the genetic fallacy
(c) the problem of being a total effing idiot and saying that the conference is not about denying the Holocaust but only about letting thinkers express themselves... express themselves about how the Holocaust didn't happen!

UPDATE: It's been pointed out to us that we failed to note that the "Jewish rabbis" being referenced are self-hating Neturei Karta Jews. Truth be told, we assumed that was obvious - the only Jews the Iranians seem to like are the self-hating kind. But nonetheless - duly noted.

UPDATE 2: Memo to LGF commenters who are arguing otherwise: unfortunately, the Neturei Karta rabbis are in fact Jewish. Judaism is not something you can lose just by hating Jews (again, unfortunately). As much as we sometimes wish that Jews could be easily ex-communicated by a central authority, that's simply not the case. Short of conversion, if you're born a Jew then you stay Jewish.

UPDATE 3: In other words, "Jewish rabbis" remains a redundant and stupid phrase.

Previously: Iran Anti-Holocaust Conference - Pervasiveness as Legitimation, Iran To Rule: Was There A Holocaust?, Linking Zionism to the Holocaust - Not Just Offensive, But Also Stupid

We'll add our name to the list of pro-Western bloggers who have recently noticed that they seem to be writing the same thing over and over. This isn't happening because we keep writing about different things in the same boring way (cf. Blaming Bush For Everything, Leftist Strategy Of). It's because the same things keep happening over and over again. Let's call this one the December 2006 Saudi Initiative, to distinguish it from the September 2006 Saudi Initiative - which was itself distinct from the Mid-2005 Saudi Initiative:

The name is different, but the part about destroying Israel remains the same:

But hey, at least Olmert's on board. Because apparently in his mind, he has the political capital to push through a negotiated settlement that will effectively wipe Israel off the map. And the international media will be on board, because it's another way to screw Israel.

Previously: Palestinian Civil War Non-Watch, Hey Gals, Check This Out - Saudi Companies Block Cell Phone Voting for Arab Reality Show, Hey Gals, Check This Out - Saudi Arabia Discovers Women Need To Eat Food

Oh, it's true:

You know, it's a good thing that most people read past the headline of a story, otherwise millions of Americans would be getting the idea that this is some kind of popular uprising, as opposed to a terrorist-led foreign-orchestrated coup attempted.

Except, of course, the vast majority of people never get past the headline of a story. So they are getting that impression. Falsely, as it turns out.

Previously: Reuters Gives Advice: Want To Dampen Muslim Extremism? Support People Who Want To Commit Genocide., Reuters Gives Advice: Want To Dampen Muslim Extremism? Support People Who Want To Commit Genocide., Reuters Not Even Trying Any More

Folks, we can't take it any more. We just. Can't Take. It. Any. More:

NO. That's JUST NOT TRUE. It is FALSE. The AP is NOT BEING HONEST. Reuters reported that there was plenty (almost a dozens' worth of) "Palestinian rocket fire into Israel". Hell, the AP themselves reported on the tons of Palestinian rockets that have been fired on Israeli schools and hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect:

And all of this in an effort to make it seem like Israel is the one that's endangering the ceasefire by killing the people who are trying to ruin the ceasefire. Brilliant! If we keep this up, we can blame Israel for everything. See how neat and tidy that is?

Previously: Israel Can't Go After Terrorists, But Hamas Is Allowed To Call For Genocide, Damascus Embassy Attack Update Thread (Bumped) - The AP Is Amusing, Associated Press: "We are all Hezbollah" is Not Anti-Israel

Yowsers:

And thus are turning points in public discourse made.

Previously: What An Idiot, Idiots, Things That Don't Meaningfully Exist: Divisions Among Arab Terrorists, Divisions Within the Arab Public, and Unicorns

Lebanon has just taken a historic step to remove the shackles of Syrian influence in their country. They have approved a UN tribunal to investigate the Hariri murder - this despite a campaign designed to destroy the cabinet by literally murdering so many members that it would have to dissolve itself. What's the Associated Press headline and lede?

Yeah, because that's the significant and salient part of the story. That the "US-backed government" is pushing the country "toward a new danger point". That's the take-away that you want the 90-plus percent of people who never get past the first paragraph to get.

Soviet papers were more subtle.

Previously: Associated Press: "We are all Hezbollah" is Not Anti-Israel, Stark Contrasts Watch - Israel Can't Go After Terrorists, But Hamas Is Allowed To Call For Genocide, AP Headline and Lede: Syrian War Against Israel Would Be "Resistance"

Oh, the poor dear:

Hey, you know what matriarchs who lost grandsons haven't turned into murderous lunatics? Every. Single. Israeli. Grandmother. who's lost a grandson to Palestinian viciousness.

Ah - not only was she a suicide bomber this week, but last week she was a voluntary human shield. What a charming woman. Definitely a worthy target for journalistic fawning.

Previously: Moderate Fatah Party Announces Moderate All-Women Suicide Bombers Unit, Palestinian Tech Innovation: New And Better Suicide Belts So Women Can Blow Up Hospitals, Palestinian Mother Becomes Terrorist

Mediabistro catches LA Times writer Jocelyn Stewart going all terrorist-apologist about Black Panther hijacker William Lee Brent:

Most people would mention the part about shooting police officers in the cause of fomenting a race war before the part about free breakfast programs for children. Because, you see, lots of people seek to feed hungry kids - but not many people go around shooting police officers in the cause of fomenting race wars. So in a very crude, explaining-this-to-second-graders kind of way, the part about the police and race wars and stuff is more significant. So it should be mentioned first, because it's the part that matters.

But we only get to true weasle art in the next paragraph, with the "acts that many also considered criminal". Well yes, in a very technical way, that's true: many people do consider shooting police officers criminal. But the phrasing leaves open the possibility that there are also reasonable people who don't consider those acts criminal. Hell, it implies that those people exist. Which is kind of dishonest, because they don't.

The rest of the obit is all about how he didn't kill that many other people, and about how his sister suffered while he was in Cuba because "Brent was her only sibling". Don't bother reading it - it's saccharine, sentimentalized tripe that could only get published in a world where journalists have allowed romanticized, thuggish anti-Americanism replace ethics. It's like we're being punished because thousands of hand-wringing, soppy, liberal arts chicks never fulfilled their dream of banging Che Guevara.

Previously:
Israeli Flag Is Offensive, Bush=Hitler Poster Not So Much, Then There Was the Time Che Spoke At the UN, They Still Want Every Revolutionary To Be Che

Second-rate Reuters propaganda mouthpiece Nidal al-Mughrabi is starting to just get silly:

"Several hundred Palestinians barricad[ing] themselves inside" the house of a terrorist as voluntary civilian human shields = "protest". Everyone got that? Good.

Past al-Mughrabi hits include delebrating the killing of six Israeli soldiers and whipping up sympathy for Palestinian mass-murderer Saadat. We think that he's completing with Shams Odeh for how absurd Reuters can make it's anti-Israel journalism.

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]

Previously: Reuters Gives Advice: Want To Dampen Muslim Extremism? Support People Who Want To Commit Genocide., MSM: It's Israel's Fault We Made Things Up, Beit Hanoun Meme Watch

The Los Angeles Times continues to demonstrate why it is suffering one of the worst sustained circulation drops in the history of US media. Ken Ellingwood reporting on the deadly rocket barrage that is falling on Israeli schools and hospitals in Sderot:

That's some fine reporting right there. The very first paragraph sets up the "Israel is overreacting" meme, telling you that this death is an anomaly (as if that makes it OK). Then the second sentence tells you - again - that the rockets have rarely killed anybody (in case you forgot that "Israel is overreacting").

Then a little lower, you get told that Israel said that the shells went off course. That's true - an investigation did yield that as the explanation for the shell that struck the apartment building. But Israel ALSO said that the Palestinian terrorists who were launching the missiles were at fault, because they were the ones hiding in civilian areas. So an accurate reporter would leave the reader with the information that:

(1) The Palestinians were firing rockets at Israeli towns from densely packed Palestinian neighborhoods
(2) When Israel tried to stop the Palestinians from firing rockets at Israeli towns, they accidentally hit a different apartment building than the one that the Palestinians were hiding in
(3) The Palestinians retaliated for this by... firing rockets at Israeli towns from densely packed Palestinian neighborhoods

Instead, Ken Ellingwood and the LA Times give readers all of that information, except the part about how the accident was caused by Palestinians firing rockets from densely packed Palestinian neighborhoods and how they're returning to firing rockets from densely packed Palestinian neighborhoods. So in other words, all the information except the relevant background and the information that would allow the reader to predict where the story is going in the next few days.

But the anti-Israel overreaction meme? That part got through loud and clear.

And the both-sides-at-fault cycle of violence meme? That part gets implied too.

Full and accurate information, though, seems a little beyond what can be expected.

Previously:
They Really Do Just Make Things Up, Beit Hanun Meme Watch - (2) "The Palestinians Are Really Pissed Off" - And The NYT Will Publish Death Porn To Prove It, Beit Hanun Meme Watch - (Interlude) Convergence of Bias - With This Simple Formula, You Too Can Produce Solid Anti-Israel Journalism

If you spend any amount of time listening to some of the more self-important and dishonest critics of Israel dotting the intellectual landscape, you'll soon pick up on a common and dumb trick that a lot of them use. It goes something like this: they'll say something that's obviously untrue and sounds startlingly like an anti-Semitic slur - "Israelis are poisoning Palestinian ground water" is a decent example. Then they'll kind of step back and bravely assert "now, I just know that I'm going to be labeled an anti-Semite for saying that". And they love nothing better for you reasonably say "yeah, actually, that is kind of anti-Semitic - it's not true, so I wonder why you'd say that" - it will send them into fits of triumphant, self-declared martyrdom about how they're "being censored" and how you're "using accusations of anti-Semitism to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel".

Now the proper answer to this is: "of course you knew I was going to accuse you of anti-Semitism - you were being anti-Semitic!" Just because doing X predictably solicits response Y doesn't mean that response Y is somehow inappropriate. It may mean that X is so obvious that anyone can tell in advance what anyone else's reaction will be.

But. But...

If we can tell you in advance what you're going to say about us no matter what we do, then there's a problem. Because then it means that your reaction isn't coming as a result of our actions, but is based on something else - maybe predispositions, ideology, prejudices, etc.

So you can tell when accusations of anti-Semitism really are being used to stifle criticism of Israel (and this does happen, although pretty rarely), because the accusation will be the same no matter how reasonable the criticism. If the effect seems to happen no matter what the cause, then the real cause has to be something else entirely. In this way, being able to predict people's reactions to certain events - especially if these predictions happen before the events have even taken shape - is one way to suggest that something is amiss.

On October 6, we wrote about the Hezbollah-like army that Hamas was assembling in the Gaza Strip:

Then on October 31 we were even more convinced that something like this was inevitable, that few if any outlets would mention how Hamas made it inevitable, and that Israel would be blamed. We even added a little wrinkle about how Israel's legitimate campaign to root out rocket platforms in Gaza would be denied - we guessed that sophisticates would spin stories about how Olmert was attacking Palestinian civilians to shore up his political power in the wake of Lebanon II.

Sigh:

It's not necessarily bad to react the same way to the same situation. But when you're reacting the same way to every situation but passing it off as careful, contextual analysis - well, then you just might be biased.

And if this post isn't sufficient to demonstrate that the media is using weasel tactics to demonize Israel, tactics ranging from somewhat subtle to brutally obvious, then you would be well-considered to check out any of the 8 posts below. And if they're not enough to strongly suggest ingrained bias bordering on institutional discrimination, you might want to ask yourself if maybe you're working just a little too hard to deny the obvious. And if so, why.

Previously: Telegraph Publishes Demonstrably False, Vicious Anti-Israel Libel As Fact - USS Liberty Edition,
Anti-Semites: Israel Had Prior Knowledge of the Jordan Bombings, Arab Paranoia Watch II: Crazy Terrorist With AIDS Dies? Blame Jews!

This story could have gone under the Stupid Headline Tricks post. But the bias in both form and content is just so mindbending that it deserves its own post. Here's Reuter's headline so you can get a taste of where this is going:

You'll recall that there was a scandal a while back, where Reuters asked subscribers to remove the Reuters byline from stories that they altered to include the word "terrorist", because "we don't use emotive words when labeling".

Anyway, after the headline the rest is predictable. And by predictable, we mean that the next two paragraphs use the word terrorism to describe Israel three times:

Oh, but there's the Reuters editorial policy has an exception for not labeling terrorists if you're using a quote. Of course it has an exception for that! How else could they use their It's Not Bias If You Quote Someone Else trick if they didn't have an exception allowing them to use any kind of quote they want?

So it's not bias to call Israelis terrorists four times before the second paragraph is done - because it's a quote? Who choose to use the quote for the headline? Who choose to use a gigantic extended quote for the first two paragraphs?

Oh, and we're sure that if we checked, we'd find plenty of headlines where Reuters used quotes from Israeli sources in their headlines to identify Palestinians as terrorists. We're sure that happens ALL THE TIME.

All. The. Time.

Previously: Chinese Support for Hamas - Not So Much Blindingly Hypocritical as Confidently Unworried, Actually, Israel IS At War With the Palestinian People, Reuters and AP Won't Use "Terrorist" Label Even As Quote From Syrian Official

Unapologetic, shameless liars. They really just making it up as they go along.

Financial Times headline and meme:

AP headline and lede:

Not even a single shred of shame. Check out the dates:

To quote Ms. Coulter, talking to liberals is much more fun now that we have Lexis-Nexis. Ditto for Google News.

But don't let that distract you. Because, you see, the story is kind of true in a very meta-sense. The Palestinians have found a renewed sense of unity and purpose. They're now all back to agreeing that mass murder is totally awesome:

So everywhere, the news is that the accident has ushered in a new age of Palestinian unity. The problem is that the only place where it's true is about Palestinian unity regarding suicide bombings - and there's really only so many times (two or three weeks, max) where you can remind people that the Palestinians solve their problems with suicide bombings. So how do you emphasize that Israel's mis-targeting caused Palestinian unity without mentioning that it's "unity" over genocide? Easy: find something else that Beit Hanoun caused unity about.

These stories choose to transmit the new-found sense of Israeli-caused unity in the context of government negotiations. Now you might think that this would be a problem for them, since that's "actually true" or "how history worked" or "something that makes sense". In the real world, the tragedy caused Hamas to suspend unity talks, not resume tem. Implying the otherwise is "a lie".

But if you look very carefully, you'll notice that the writers don't ACTUALLY write that the attack led to the unity talks. They just make a headline that says "Palestinians show renewed consensus after Gaza killings" - two definitely true things. They didn't force you to think that one thing was the cause of the other. It's just that you let the universal structure of grammar and language trick you into assuming cause and effect between two events that are described as being one right after the other. It's not the headline writer's fault you were sloppy, so don't go talking about bias or anything. If you've got complaints, address them with whatever deity, teleological force, or evolutionary dynamic you think created language and grammar.

Previously:
Why Everyone Knows That "Contacts Aimed at Moderating Hamas" Are a Joke and How Russia Doesn't Care,
The Less Than Compelling "Hamas Wasn't Elected Because of the Whole Palestinians Hate Jews Thing" Argument, Tell Us, President Abbas, How Can We Help You Today?

In the least subtle version, the meme is getting spread this way:

It's rare to actually find the entire argument all brought together in one story. More often, you can watch it getting spread around in more disjointed, fill-in-the-blanks-for-yourself form:

Israelis offering peace talks (because they know the Palestinians are going to justifiably attack them)

Israelis apologize (because it was their fault)

Israelis admit mistake (see? told you it was their fault)

Israelis will reevaluate shelling rocket-launching terrorists in Gaza (because they now know that it's wrong)

Each flavor has numerous examples.

Incidentally, it's kind of weird that it's news that Israel apologized for accidentally killing civilians who got caught in a cross-fire. Of course Israel apologized - you'd have to think that they were totally barbarians to think that they might not (rather than, say, one of the most progressive and technologically advanced countries on the planet). This helps explain why their characterizations of Israel sound like "lies". It's not that they hate Israel - it's that they're totally effing clueless about Israel. Now, they're totally clueless because they hate Israel, assume the worst, and don't bother to ever read anything that might challenge that - but that's a subtly different dynamic, now isn't it?

Anyway, the implication is that the Israelis are in a downward spiral of demoralization and self-blame, agreeing with the world's moral condemnation and getting ready to give up their fight. Except that's the opposite of true:

But hey, wouldn't it be nice if Israelis were as stupid as the rest of the world, and couldn't understand that when human shields die the moral blame should go to the people who used them as human shields?

The only Israelis actually blaming Israel MORALLY for this accident are the Arab members of Israeli's parliament (that the evil apartheid regime allows to make laws, vote on budgets, and generally be lawmakers - because all apartheid regimes are like that). Anyway, yeah - the Arab MKs. They're the only ones who are really blaming Israel, since everyone else is pretty certain that this is why they beg the Palestinians not to commit war crimes by using human shields. Why don't the Israeli-Arab MKs see things the same, relatively obvious, way? Could it be because they're traitors looking for a justification for their treason? Or maybe because they're traitors and want to undermine Israel in this time of controversy? Or perhaps because they're traitors and don't care about lying? Who knows. There could be a lot of reasons. At a minimum, they're traitors and should not count as "Israelis joining the rest of the world in condemning the attack" or whatever the most popular phrase is on Google News right now.

Previously: Vulgar Palestinian Propaganda Succeeds with International Media - Again!, International Media: "But Saadat is a Grandfather!" Also, BBC Tells Demonstrable Lie About Past Kidnappings, Makes Up Conspiracy Theory, and Says "Foreigners mostly live harmoniously among the Palestinian population", Even the Funny Liberals (Implicitly) Lie About Israel

You know, we'd be more sympathetic to these pathos-soaked declarations of how the world is ignoring the Palestinians...

... if we didn't first find it in the effing BBC. World indifference to Palestinian suffering? It took like 20 minutes for the UN to pass a resolution condemning the Israeli action (answering our question: what does it take to get condemned in the UN General Assembly for killing civilians? Apparently, the answer is "it has to be unintentional". Also "the victims have to not be Jewish", but that's a seperate post).

Of all the memes, indifference may not be the most frustrating one. But it is probably the most obviously stupid:

As a comparison, the total number of stories on Rumsfeld's resignation is clocking in at below 2,500. Probably because it wasn't as significant as the news that launching rockets at Israeli schools from the middle of densely-packed urban areas puts those areas' residents in the line of fire.

Previously: Palestinians Commit Several War Crimes in Just a Few Hours. Instead of Reporting That, Reuters Publishes Gripping Tale of Glorious Palestinian Martyrdom (and We're Not Even Exaggerating About That...), Like Hezbollah, Hamas Uses Children As Human Shields, Video of Palestinian Gunmen and Women Committing War Crimes

We're almost half-way done with today's posts on the tricks of the anti-Israeli journalistic trade. Here's the thing about most of these dishonest weasel tactics - they're neither subtle nor sophisticated. It's just pathos-soaked propaganda. In some ways, it's just formulaic, cookie-cutter stuff: a biased opinion-as-quote here, a personal detail about the victim there. So far this morning, we've talked about the following memes and tactics:

(1) Rage and Tears - The Palestinians are sad, but they're also genocidal. The Israelis made them that way.

(2) No Seriously, The Palestinians Are Really Pissed Off - Pictures of dead babies in the interests of showing just how much rage and how many tears there are.

(3) Stupid Headline Tricks - Got an opinion you want to express as news? Do it in a quote!

(4) The al-Athamnah Family - If you personalize one side and keep the other anonymous, it doesn't matter who's really at fault. The personalized side gets sympathy, and everything else follows.

For the rest of the day, we've got stuff about double standards, faux-sophistication with a purpose, and demonstrably false descriptions of Israeli reactions. All of these posts deal with how journalists generate plausible deniability and cling to "neutrality", all the while deliberately framing their stories in anti-Israel ways. But there's a reason why the examples are in the context of memes - of the phrases and ideas that are getting circulated.

The tricks aren't the things that are doing the damage. We can point out how and when a quote smuggles in a journalist's real opinion - but it's the content of the quote that's doing the anti-Israel propaganda work. And - more importantly - the way that memes spread means that it's the content that goes out and digs into the public consciousness. The weasel tactics are just how the meme gets off the ground - they're the tools and evidence of bias, but it's the bias itself that's the real concern. It's the spread of the disgusting omissions and implicit suggestions that is of concern - that the Palestinian thirst for genocide is somehow as natural as mourning for a dead wife, that barbaric mistreatment of dead babies is just something that people will do when they're angry, or that there was a tragedy and people should focus on that instead of thinking about how it happened. They spread and then they condence into little clusters of anti-Israel incitement and propaganda, where shockingly barbaric image meets shamelessly biased text:

"Weeping in anguish and screaming for revenge". Don't pay attention to how those two things are actually kind of different from each other, and that in your personal experience people who weep in anguish don't usually scream for revenge. Just focus on all the crying people. And the dead baby in the center.

Previously: Ignoring Inconvenient Facts, Palestinian Civil Society Watch - Just Wait Till They Try to Open a DMV!, Israeli Arab Girl Victim of Honor Killing

Not much analysis or substance about this meme - relatively straightforward bias expressed and transmitted in double standards. But it's such a standard media go-to that we can't justify leaving it out of a catalog on the different ways that the media is whipping up hysteria today. Critics have long commented that journalistic accounts of Arab-Israeli violence try to make the deaths of Palestinians personal by providing names and details, while keeping the identity of Israeli victims anonymous. It's Writing 101, but that doesn't make it ineffective. So of course it's all over accounts of what happened in Biet Hanun:

WaPo lede:

UPI:

The AP even managed to sneak the family's name into a photo caption.

Again, old trick - it's even been troted out for MSM Lebanon coverage. But as with some of the other tried and true tactics that the media is pulling out of the shed, there seems to be a certain lack of concern and shame this time around.

Now the great thing about being an anti-Israel hack is that you can mix and match your tricks. The job never gets boring. So for instance, you can take this "generate sympathy only for one side" tactic and combine it with the death porn fetish that we discussed earlier this morning. Mix them together and what do you get?

AP propaganda gold:

Not to worry - the AP archives are filled with TONS of equivalent pictures from the aftermaths of cafe and bus bombings. We can't track any down just this minute, but we're sure that they're there...

Previously: MR - Ahead Of The Curve on the Muslim Hypocrisy Beat, Think That This Will Be How It's Framed?,
Israel's Chris Hitchens

Ah yes. The clever trick where a journalist publishes their own opinion as objective news by quoting "what people are saying about the news" (that is, by finding a quote they agree with or just making up an "anonymous" one). It's not opinion journalism and it's certainly not bias - it's just good reporting.

Now, of course there are usually some imbalances. One might point out that it's a little unfair to quote both sides equally, because the Israelis are often trying to be self-critical and the Palestinians are nearly always out of their minds batshit crazy. Also, the ordering seems consistently imbalanced - Palestinian quotes are often in the headlines while the Israeli quotes are stuck in the middle with something like "... but, under attack, Israeli officials said...". But since both sides have quotes, there's supposedly no bias.

OK, so obviously those excuses are stupid and obviously the journalists are trying to demonize Israel. These techniques are used day in and day out in articles about Israel - this is nothing new? Well, yes and no. Obviously, the techniques are routine. So routine that we cracked a joke about them offhandedly in an earlier post - they've become tropes rather than fodder for fisking, because they're just so obvious that you can't believe that journalists still think that they're being subtle.

But there is something a little unique about the kinds of Palestinian quotes that are being thrown into headlines right now. We wrote at the beginning of the morning about the unusual degrees of freedom that journalists are allowing themselves this morning. Given a story that's "closer to truth than usual", journalists are going the extra mile in their headlines:

Syria condemns Israeli "massacre" in Gaza (Reuters)

Abbas, Haniya condemn Israeli 'massacre' (AFP)

FM Gul Condemns Israel over 'Massacre' of 18 Palestinians (Zaman)

FWIW, there are hundreds of Arab and Muslim newspapers with those headlines. But if the world doesn't expect them not to demand genocide as the price for Israel accidentally killing Hamas human shields, then us pointing out that they're biased seems a little beside the point.

To some extent, these obvious violations of neutrality - and, for what it's worth, fairness or reasonability - are the only option that journalists really have. Every other day of the year, they're demonizing Israel in ways either disproportionate to what they're reporting on or on account of wild-eyed Palestinian make-believe Jenin massacres. So now that there really are a lot of dead civilians involved, they have to take an extra step to somehow distinguish this story of an Israeli "massacre" from all the other stories of Israeli "massacres" - not that accidental deaths from cross-fires usually count as "massacres", but the fact that the number of dead civilians isn't totally made up calls for an escalation in anti-Israel story writing.

Previously: BBC On Pope Benedict - Weasel Quote Someone Else Trick, Weasel Words Mean Never Having To Observe That Hezbollah Commits War Crimes, "Everyone Knows" (Something Totally False About Israel) Weasel Quote Someone Else Trick