Category: Media

T. Friedman “sharing” with and “lecturing” IDF general staff

Thanks to Haaretz’s Anshel Pfeffer for telling us about Tom’s recent lecture gig with the IDF general staff. (HT: As’ad Abu-Khalil.)
Pfeffer writes,

    Friedman gave a lecture last week to a number of members of the IDF General Staff. He spoke to them about his impressions of his recent visits to Arab countries.
    Friedman visited Israel and the territories last week and published a two-part column on the situation in the territories after most IDF checkpoints were removed and Palestinian security forces moved in.
    Friedman met personally with IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi during his visit, and spoke to the deputy chief of staff, the head of Military Intelligence, the head of the Home Front Command and the head of the planning branch.

Someone tell me why anyone should consider this guy a “neutral observer” of matters Middle Eastern?
Someone tell me whether him behaving like this is quite okay by the New York Times– sort of par for the course for the way they expect their very handsomely columnists to behave?
Someone tell me why anyone in the rest of the Middle East would even agree to meet with this guy, given that he sees his role as being a snoop for the Israeli generals?
(Also, just as a point of fact, I think Pfeffer is quite incorrect to write that “most” IDF checkpoints have been removed from the occupied territories– just as he/she is incorrect to leave out the term “occupied” in that designation.)

WaPo bows cravenly to pro-Israel lobby

On Thursday, the WaPo published the following, completely craven “Correction”:

    — A June 26 A-section article referred to Gilo as a Jewish settlement. It is a Jewish neighborhood built on land captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and annexed to Israel as part of Jerusalem’s expanded municipal boundaries. The United Nations has not acknowledged the annexation.

So the WaPo quite simply endorses whatever Israel says is the case??
It is not just the UN that has failed to “acknowledge” the annexation/Anschluss of East Jerusalem to Israel. The United States has never either “acknowledged” or– more to the point– supported the view that east Jerusalem is part of Israel, either. And neither have just about all the other countries of the world (except, um, Micronesia… )
The International Court Of Justice, when it issued its 2004 ruling on Israel’s Apartheid Barrier, came out unequivocally against the idea that Israel could unilaterally annex any part of the land occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem.
So why does the WaPo endorse Israel’s Anschluss of East Jerusalem (and Gilo)? What kind of back-stage campaign was waged between June 26 and july 16 to “persuade” the ailing newsrag to do this?
This plunge in standards is all on a par with publisher/heiress Katharine Weymouth’s shameless pimping of her newsroom.
But still, we should all send the paper letters of strong protest at this latest debacle.

Newsweek gives us the scoop…

… in the form of the whole (PDF) text of the “Not for distribution or publication” real Hasbara Handbook from “The Israel Project”.
For anyone who’s followed the various interventions of Israel’s ever-eager army of international hasbaristas (propagandists) here or elsewhere, the actual handbook for their efforts that’s produced by TIP makes hilarious reading.
My main take on the portions I’ve read of the 116-page tome– full name “The Israel Project’s 2009 GLOBAL LANGUAGE DICTIONARY”– is that the authors seem fully aware they have new challenges to face in trying to justify Israel’s actions to (predominantly) a US audience. Hence, such advice as (p.7) “Don’t pretend that Israel is without mistakes or fault.”
Their reasoning for the advice they give on p.12 not to talk about religion is also interesting:

    Americans who see the bible as their sourcebook on foreign affairs are already supporters of Israel. Religious fundamentalists are Israel’s “Amen Choir” and they make up approximately one-fourth of the American public and Israel’s strongest friends in the world. However, some of those who are most likely to believe that Israel is a religious state are most hostile towards Israel (“they’re just as extreme as those religious Arab countries they criticize”). Unfortunately, virtually any discussion of religion will only reinforce this perception.
    Therefore, even the mention of the word “Jew” is many Israel contexts is going to elicit a negative reaction—and the defense of Israel as a “Jewish State” or “Zionist State” will be received quite poorly. This may be hard for the Jewish community to accept but this is how most Americans and Europeans feel.

These people are fairly smart in the way they advise their supporters to work to bend the public discourse in a pro-Israel direction.
Anyway, big thanks to the friends at Newsweek who brought us this gem.

Adieu (au revoir?) Bernhard and Moon of Alabama

I was so busy babysitting my grand-daughter and doing other family business last week that I completely missed the sad announcement from the German blogger Bernhard that after five years of often unequaled commentary he is shutting down his blog Moon of Alabama.
B had told us a short while back that he was considering this move which, he said, he is making for mainly financial reasons. But he is doing one last favor for readers. He has made up a three-CD set of the entire archive of both MoA and its linked precursor blog Whiskey Bar.
You can find out how to get one of these, here.
B was always a completely clear-eyed observer of the tragi-criminal policies the Bush administration pursued in the Middle East and far beyond. He displayed a sure grasp of global Realpolitik. For example, the work he did analyzing the crisis of supply lines that the US military has been suffering in Afghanistan, and the fact that this would inevitably lead to increasing US reliance on Russia, was cutting-edge stuff, certainly in the English-language media. (Try doing a “Google site search” on his site for the keyword Tajikistan, and you’ll see what I mean.)
He was also really good at skewering the pretensions of– and rigorously questioning the methodology and objectivity of– US-based “human rights” organizations when this needed doing. E.g., in his coverage of the way Human Rights Watch used quite unacceptable methodology to accuse Russia of having used cluster bombs in the recent Ossetia war.
Plus, he had a great grasp of international economics and its effects on global balances…
What can I say?
I told B in a recent email that he is one of my “blogging super-heroes.” He still is. Maybe he’ll come back to the blogosphere in some way in the future.
But I also told him that even blogging super-heroes need to have a life, and to take of their own needs, financial, emotional, or whatever.
So the very best to you, B, in whatever you now turn your attentions to. And the moment you come onto the WWW in any form, if I’m still around be sure to let me know!
And now, I need to go and buy one of his CD sets…

US MSM and Latin America

Our South African friend Dominic has sent me links to two important articles about the MSM’s atrociously poor– both negligent and biased– handling of some of the important stories out of Latin America.
The first was this May 1 piece by Mark Weisbrot, about the recent re-election of Ecuador’s left-leaning President Rafael Correa.
The second is this piece by Dan Beeton about the failure of the MSM to give anything like adequate coverage to the threats that Bolivia’s indigenous-culture Pres. Evo Morales faces from noticeably racist (settlerist) rightwingers in some parts of the country.
I wish I had time to write more. But thanks, Dominic, for sending me these pieces.

NYT interviews Meshaal

Today’s NYT carries an important (though unfortunately severely truncated) account of an interview that Taghreed al-Khodary had with Khaled Meshaal in Damascus recently.
Meshaal spelled out more clearly than ever before that he does not consider the “Charter” promulgated by Hamas when it was founded in 1987 to be a currently operational document. He also specified the length of the term– ten years– that he judged a “long-term” hudna, or truce, with Israel should have.
When I interviewed Meshaal in January 2008 I asked him about the length of the hudna he envisaged. He said “We do not talk about the number of years. Sheikh Ahmad Yassin spoke about ten years.”
This is an important question, because if there is a point of convergence between Hamas’s ‘hudna” proposal and the two-state outcome being promoted (in two slightly different forms) by the US and the Arab League, this would hinge on the term of the hudna being either extremely lengthy, or unspecified.
For Meshaal now to endorse Yassin’s ten-year-term proposal is a small retreat from the “constructive ambiguity” on this issue that he expressed in January 2008.
Still, laying out a ten-year term for it could well be an opening position for Hamas that, in negotiations, they might be prepared to extend.
Anyway, the other conditions that he specified for a hudna will probably be even harder for Hamas and its future negotiating partners to reach agreement on than the hudna’s term.
Worth noting from Khodary’s account of the interview: her judgment that he “gave off an air of serene self-confidence. Also, this quote that she used:

    “I promise the American administration and the international community that we will be part of the solution, period.”

A little more on the NYT and the way the piece was presented, below.
Here is the points of substance in what he told her:
1. On the Hamas Charter:

    [H]e urged outsiders to ignore the Hamas charter, which calls for the obliteration of Israel through jihad and cites as fact the infamous anti-Semitic forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Mr. Meshal did not offer to revoke the charter, but said it was 20 years old, adding, “We are shaped by our experiences.”

2. On the Obama administration:

    Regarding President Obama, Mr. Meshal said, “His language is different and positive,” but he expressed unhappiness about Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, saying hers “is a language that reflects the old administration policies.”

3. On the two-state solution:

    “We are with a state on the 1967 borders, based on a long-term truce. This includes East Jerusalem, the dismantling of settlements and the right of return of the Palestinian refugees.” Asked what “long-term” meant, he said 10 years.

4. On recognition of Israel, as demanded of Hamas by the US and the Quartet and requested of it by some pro-US Arab leaders:

    He repeated that he would not recognize Israel, saying to fellow Arab leaders, “There is only one enemy in the region, and that is Israel.”
    … Mr. Meshal said the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and Mr. Abbas had granted such recognition, but to no avail. “Did that recognition lead to an end of the occupation? It’s just a pretext by the United States and Israel to escape dealing with the real issue and to throw the ball into the Arab and Palestinian court,” he said.

5. On the firing of rockets against Israel from Gaza, as undertaken by Hamas and other Palestinian groups– (the article notes that in April only six rockets and mortar rounds were fired at Israel, many fewer than over the previous three months)–

    Mr. Meshal made an effort to show that Hamas was in control of its militants as well as those of other groups, saying: “Not firing the rockets currently is part of an evaluation from the movement which serves the Palestinians’ interest. After all, the firing is a method, not a goal. Resistance is a legitimate right, but practicing such a right comes under an evaluation by the movement’s leaders.”
    He said his group was eager for a cease-fire with Israel and for a deal that would return an Israeli soldier it is holding captive, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, in exchange for many Palestinian prisoners.

6. On Hamas’s relationship with Iran:

    “Iran’s support to us is not conditioned. No one controls or affects our policies.”

7. On whether Hamas wants to bring strict Muslim law to Gaza and the West Bank:

    [H]e said no. “The priority is ending the occupation and achieving the national project,” Mr. Meshal said. “As for the nature of the state, it’s to be determined by the people. It will never be imposed upon them.”

Meshaal was recently elected to his fourth four-year term term as head of the Hamas political bureau.
Over the past 13 years Israel has undertaken repeated, often very brutal, attempts to decapitate Hamas, primarily by undertaking large numbers of assassinations. In 2004 Israel succeeded in killing the organization’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and then in short order after that the man named to succeed him in Gaza, Abdel-Aziz al-Rantisi. Scores of other top Hamas leaders have been assassinated by Israel over the years, including during the recent war in Gaza; and other attempts high-level assassinations have been atempted, but failed. A 1997 attempt by Mossad to posion Meshaal himself was foiled by his security guards in Amman, Jordan.
But Hamas has always laid a lot of stress on training and supporting the emergence of new generations of leaders. In this way, despite all Israel’s decapitation efforts, the organization has always generated new leaders. It has also gained ans maintained an impressive degree of internal organizational integrity and discipline.
The US-favored Fateh is, by contrast, riven with internal splits and a deeply embedded culture of corruption and clientilism. That culture has only further been fueled by the huge amounts of money the US has poured into it in recent years. As a result of its internal weaknesses, jealousies, and resentments, Fateh has been unable to decide how or where to hold a meeting of its leading body, the General Conference, since 1989; and its internal organization has, in effect, broken down.
It is admirable that Meshaal agreed to give this interview to the NYT. It is probably true, as the article says, that he has not given an interview to a US news organization in the past year. But the NYT is beng worryingly self-referential if they don’t recognize the importance of the interviews he has given to media based in other countries, including over recent months, including the very substantial ones given in March to the Australian Paul McGeough, and to a group of Italian correspondents– as well, of course, as the numerous interviews he has given to Arabic and other non-western media.
By not recognizing the existence, let alone the importance, of these other interviews, they are quite unable to put his words into any kind of context and note, “This is new; this is slightly different; this shows a bit more flexibility; this shows less; etc.” It makes their whole article much less valuable than it should have been.
Their handling of the interview is troubling in other ways, too.
Khodary writes, with a Damascus deadline, that he gave her “a five-hour interview… spread over two days” But they only publish a very few short extracts from the interview. What I have reproduced above is just about all they published.
So what about the rest of what was said in the interview? What about the nuance and context one could gain from that?
(Also, a question of equity: If they’d gotten an exclusive interview with, say, Netanyahu, would they have been as stingy with the word-length as they have been here? I think not!)
Memo to the NYT: Please publish the whole interview for us, as soon as you can. This is an important document.
I wonder if, before sharing the whole interview with their readers, they may have shared it with people in the US or other governments? I certainly hope not. But we all need to see it.
Another point. Why on earth do they need to put Ethan Bronner onto the byline, in addition to Khodary? At the bottom of the page, it says, “Taghreed El-Khodary reported from Damascus, and Ethan Bronner from Jerusalem.” So he wasn’t even in Damascus with her! (Making his inclusion in the main, Damascus-datelined byline quite mendacious.)
The only possible factual input Bronner had into the article is in this sentence: “In April, only six rockets and mortar rounds were fired at Israel from Gaza, which is run by Hamas, a marked change from the previous three months, when dozens were shot, according to the Israeli military.” That by no means justifies his inclusion into the byline. Besides, it is information that I am sure Khodary could just as easily have gotten from the Israeli military herself. She didn’t need Bronner to get it for her.
There is a nasty whiff of racism in the way the piece has been presented: it’s as though the NYT editors judge that something is a little suspect if it comes “only” under the byline of someone with an Arabic-sounding name, and without the endorsement of some big white bwana.
I have definitely seen this with the reporting they do from Baghdad, too– just about all of which, in some stories, is very evidently based on reporting done by their Iraqi reporters, but which very frequently also has the western bwana’s name on the byline, too.
Still, it is better that the NYT has this interview, rather than not having it.
But give us the whole text! Please!

Some notes from UNESCO klatch, Doha

I got into the hotel at 1:30 a.m. last night, grabbed five hours sleep, wrote my presentation for the conference I’m at, which is jointly hosted by UNESCO and the Doha Center for Media Freedom, then have been in the conference all day. Haven’t seen much of Doha except driving through town late last night and a glimpse into the Gulf from my hotel room this morning.
We’ve had some excellent presentations, including most notably from veteran South African journo Allister Sparks. He described the current state of political discourse inside his country as “robust and passionate”, and noted that the turnout in the country’s recent election was 77.3%.
He spoke about South Africa’s deep and multi-layered multiculturalism “with eleven official languages and about the same number of religions”, and its legacies of so much violence and pain and wounding as a result of centuries of colonialism and decades of apartheid. He said he is opposed to “political correctness”, and strongly supports frankness; he called for “robust journalistic independence.”
He identified a particular problem with “cultural conformity”, in which journos come to think like and share the worldview of a small circle of contacts, often people with power, access to whom they guard jealously. The prime examples he gave of this came from the US: the behavior of the MSM press in the US in “parrotting” th administration’s accusations about WMDs… Also, Brian Ross’s uncritical use of the original, waterboardng-excusing interview with John Kiriakou; the US MSM’s pussyfooting around the semantics of calling the Israeli Wall a “separation barrier”; and its whole treatment of Hamas.
“So there’s a total communications breakdown on the issue of greatest concern to peace in the region.”
Guess he doesn’t read my stuff. Well, I’m not publishing much in the MSM any more…
Qatar is such a strange place. (Okay, what I’ve seen of it.) They have this Doha Center for Media Freedom that’s doing some very constructive and gutsy things around the world– but the press here is almost completely unfree. Just about all the work here, as in the other princedoms up and down this shore of the Gulf, is done by imported contract labor, which gives the whole place an uncomfortable, apartheid-y feel.
I see that Steve Clemons traveled here today– he’s going to another conference here, organized by Steve Spiegel of UCLA.
(Steve C. had a short post on his blog about Qatar a few minutes ago, but it’s just been taken down. Interesting…. It’s still on my RSS reader, but I won’t publish it if he doesn’t want to. Yes, there is a laudable desire not to say anything critical about one’s hosts. But where, I wonder, does that cross the line into engaging in “cultural conformity” with hosts who are engaging in some practices of, I think, justifiable concern?)
My main fascination with the Qataris is not because they have scads of money. It’s not because they manage the amazing trick of longterm hosting of both Al-Jazeera and important nodes and elements of the US military’s presence in the Gulf. It’s not because they have bought and installed little boutique versions of several big-name US universities… No, it’s because they’ve been doing some very imaginative and constructive things diplomatically to reduce tensions in the Middle East. Including, most laudably, brokering Lebanon’s Doha Agreement of last May.
In addition, they have been patiently trying to help Hamas break out of the Egyptian-imposed attempts to keep it isolated.
Also, I have to say that Al-Jazeera’s smashing of the near-total domination the “west” used to exercise over the global information/discourse environment has been an amazing achievement. AJE’s managing director, Waddah Khanfar, spoke this afternoon about their media ethics, approach to newsgathering, and stress on empowering the best field reporters they can find. I thought it was a great presentation, and goes a long way to explaining AJE’s success.
… I will have to write up my notes for the presentation I gave at a later date. I also want to write up some notes from the good discussion I had with Fleming Rose, the Danish editor who published the “Prophet” cartoons. I think neither of us persuaded the other to change her/his mind, but it was a good conversation, anyway.

What Khamenei really said. (text)

To hear the rolling US corporate media refrain, US President Obama’s extraordinary NowRuz day message to Iran was dismissed, rejected, rebuffed, and trashed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in a speech delivered yesterday in Mashhad, Iran. See, for examples, the Fox, MSNBC, Washington Post, Voice of America, variations on the theme .
The Associated Press, the source for much of the negative reporting, even carried a commentary characterizing the rebuff as illustrating Iran’s “mindset.”
So say we all? Deja vu to 2003? Kool-aid anyone?
Not quite. At Reuters, a very different headline read: “Iran Sets Terms for US Ties,” and similarly, at the French News Agency (AFP): “Iran ready to change if US leads way.”
Ignored in most US media reports about Iran’s reactions was this rather positive comment from Iran’s foreign minister, as reported by the Iranian news agency:

Concerning US President Barack Obama’s message to Iranians on the occasion of Nowroz, Mottaki said,” We are glad that Nowroz has been a source for friendship and we are pleased that Nowroz message is a message for coexistence, peace and friendship for the whole world.”

In the extension here, see the full text of Khamenei’s remarks in English as pertain to ties to America. (Translation provided late today by BBC/OSC — the latter being the valuable US government “open source center” service.) Underlining highlights are my own.
For commentary, consider Farideh Farhi’s excellent analysis.
For my own part, Khamenei’s speech covers the standard list of Iran’s grievances with the US since the revolution, some old, some ongoing, like still frozen assets and the perceived US support of various “bandit” and “dise\integrating” forces around Iran’s periphery….

Continue reading “What Khamenei really said. (text)”

A good one-stop shop for Palestinian-Israeli news

… is this info-packed and well-organized and portal page provided by Xinhua. Notice the tabs across the top, then scroll down to where the contents of these categories are also helpfully listed and linked to, in two asymmetrical columns, in reverse-chrono order.
The offerings include breaking news stories as well as some informative Backgrounders and News Analysis.
This Backgrounder, published January 4, presented some really pertinent and useful information about the extreme lethality of Israel’s various military ops against Gaza since the “withdrawal” in September 2005. Including that,

    More than 400 Palestinians, many of them civilians, were killed during operations Summer Rains and Autumn Clouds.
    From Feb. 27 to March 3, 2008, Israel launched Operation Hot Winter in Gaza, during which over 120 Palestinians were killed.

I didn’t see helpful background info like that made available in any US newspapers in recent months– or ever. There, the major meme that has been endlessly propagated has been that the siege of Gaza was the “only” hostile act Israel has undertaken against Gaza since it “generously” withdrew its forces and settlers from the Strip in 2005… And that then it was those “congenitally violence-prone” Palestinians who quite gratuitously started launching lethal rockets against southern Israel…
(Of course, the siege has itself also been responsible for hundreds of Palestinian deaths, and considerable amounts of other suffering. But the US MSM seldom mention that, either.)
This piece of news analysis on the whole Fayyad/PA-PM question, written for Xinhua by by Saud Abu Ramadan and published on the site today, is particularly informative and helpful.
He writes,

    Palestinian sources close to the dialogue said there are three candidates for the post of prime minister. They are the famous business man Monib el-Masri, the Hamas-supported independent lawmaker Jamal al-Khodari and resigning prime minister of the caretaker government Salam Fayyad.

I’ve been intrigued in recent months to see the considerable upgrading of Xinhua’s Middle East offerings in general. An increasing number of their stories seem to be directly reported by their own reporters, though they will also (as nearly everyone does) repackage significant stories from elsewhere. But either way, it looks to me that Xinhua is now establishing itself as a major player in the information-provision business in the Middle east.
What this also indicates is that the Chinese powers that be have devoted considerable budget, forethought and human resources to upgrading their country’s information-gathering capacities in the Middle East. Xinhua is a news agency, sure. But it a state-owned news agency, whose operations require real resources. So the involvement of the Chinese state/CCP in launching this info-gathering operation– which may well be running in parallel with other kinds of info-gathering operation– seems to signify a real commitment by Beijing to becoming, over time, a significant and above all sure-footed actor in the Middle East, who is no longer reliant on the information and analysis of other info-providers who are not so directly under their own supervision and standards of quality control.
Interesting…
But one further plea to the colleagues at Xinhua: Please, could you attach an RSS feed to your great Palestine-Israel page???

US opinionators fazed by rise of Israeli right?

Normally, the opinionators of the NYT and other mainstream US media are quick to express their views of every small development in the Israeli-Arab arena. However, the resounding success won by the rightist parties in Tuesday’s general election in Israel left these nabobs uncharacteristically speechless.
What, no pronunciamento from the NYT editorial board today on this latest big development in the land they so love and admire? No word from liberal op-ed icons Nick Christof or Roger Cohen in their contributions today?
Over at the WaPo, similarly, no opinions are expressed. On Israel. Though the editors do take the opportunity to gin up a bit more hostility to Hugo Chavez, over the campaign he has launched to challenge his country’s Jewish citizens to “declare themselves” in opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza.
So when can we hope that the WaPo will publicly take Israel’s new kingmaker, Avigdor Lieberman, to task for his many racist and bullying utterances against Palestinians and Arabs? When might we see the NYT’s editors calling out Leiberman as the thug he is, and calling forthrightly for using all elements of US power to secure an international-law-based “land for peace” settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict?
I guess we’d have to wait a long time, in the case of these two venerable pillars of US opinion-making. They like to project an image of themselves as generally “liberal”. But whenever that conflicts with the bedrock support that their owners and lead editors all subscribe to, of any government at all in Israel, then it’s the (veneer of) liberalism that gives way.
I imagine that right now, the leading opinionators at both papers are desperately trying to figure out a way to express themselves on the latest developments in Israel that can somehow reconcile their now starkly competing desires to (a) appear “liberal” and (b) support Israel.
Note that in “opinionators” I am not referring here to known rightwing pro-Israeli op-ed writers like Charles Krauthammer, Bill Cristol, etc. They of course will find ways to explain how “reasonable” both Netanyahu and Lieberman are; and how it is that supporting those ghastly right and ultra-right pols will actually “serve America’s interests in the war on terror”, etc etc. What they write will be mildly interesting… But what I’m most interested in is how the influential people who actually run these and other powerful MSM outlets, and who like to project themselves as “liberal” but hate to criticize Israel publicly, will express them on the latest Israeli election results.
One meme I’m predicting: That the rise of Lieberman and and Netanyahu can somehow (like the suffering of Gaza’s people) all be blamed on Hamas…
For my part, I think that much more of the rise of bellophilia in Israel in general, and of the right and ultra-right parties in particular, can be attributed to many decades of US policies that have given ways too much indulgence to the bellophilic and settlerist sensibilities in the Israeli body politic, abandoning key international and domestic law principles along the way.
That’s what we now need to focus on turning round. And it starts with telling some long-muted truths about the disturbing development of a new fascism in Israel.