‘Chicago Hearing’ on Israel and U.S. values, April 18

The Chicago office of the American Friends Service Committee and various allies are organizing a public hearing on on April 18, on the important question, Does U.S. Policy on Israel and Palestine Uphold Our Values?.
Giving testimony will be ICAHD’s Jeff Halper on “Property Rights”, Jad Issac on “Freedom of Movement”, and Cindy Corrie and Amer Shurrab on “Military Aid”.
I am very honored that I’ll be moderating the event. The front-table “listeners” will be: John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, Barbara Ransby of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Rabbi Brant Rosen of Ta’anit Tzedek (Jewish Fast for Gaza), Dr. Zaher Sahloul of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, and Ghada Talhami, professor emerita at Lake Forest College.
The local members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate have also been invited, and of course we hope they’ll all come.
This hearing can be a really important opportunity for everyone, nationwide, to hear about the real situation on the ground in occupied Palestine… from some very significant people who have studied and lived with the situation at first hand.
It will be webcast live through the Hearing website. So if you can’t make it to Chicago on the day, why not organize a listening party in your home town? Hook up your computer to a big screen, break out a bowl or two of hommos, and watch the hearing together. I’m sure it’ll be a great event.
(Big thanks to the AFSC-Chicago folks for organizing it!)

Dan Halutz’s ‘recipe’ for success… against Iran?

Why does it so frequently seem as if members of Israel’s political elite have no shame? Case in point: Dan Halutz, the former IDF chief of staff who was last heard of shuffling off the world stage in January 2007 after the brilliant “campaign” he had designed to bring Lebanon and Hizbullah to their knees the previous summer has been shown (1 and 2) to be be completely flawed…
Oh and also after, lest we forget, considerable criticisms were raised in Israel in the early days of the war about the fact that, just three hours after the incident that provoked that war, Halutz had also sold off his portfolio of investments in Israeli companies…
But now, he’s back!!!!
In an interview with Defense News, Halutz said recently that,

    “In Iran, there’s no need for a ground operation. If there is a case where air power can demonstrate its decisive effect — and I’m not speaking specifically here about the Israeli Air Forces — it’s the Iranian scenario.”

(Hat-tip Jim Lobe, there.)
Sadly, Halutz’s pearls of wisdom are only available in DN’s print edition. So you’ll have to go out and buy it.
Halutz is “back”, in fact, in the context of being out there, in DN and elsewhere, trying to sell his new book. In that context, he gave an interview to DN’s Barbara Opall-Rome in which he had the following reflections on the challenges Israel faces in its war-fighting:

    “The solution to rockets and missiles is to operate in a manner that imposes an unbearable cost to the other side for the enemy and civilians, by way of severely damaging national infrastructure and exacting a price beyond expectations…
    “In this neighborhood, after you’ve tried all other options, you need to act in ways the other side understands. Restraint cannot be part of the vocabulary because the other side views that as a weakness. What they understand if force…
    “If you’re dealing with terrorists and their leaders, you have to cut their heads through constant targeting operations. But if you’re dealing with governments, you need to severely damage the country. No rational leader wants to be held accountable for severe damage to his country… And by severe damage, I mean all infrastructure, bridge by bridge, power station by power station, communications center, airport by airport.”

DN and Opall-Rome also have this from Halutz’s memoirs, about his recollections of the assault against Lebanon in 2006:

    “In meetings of the Cabinet and the Security Cabinet, I wasn’t convincing enough about implementing the plan to attack the national infrastructure of Lebanon. It was a plan I believed in and, in my opinion, its implementation would have lent itself to a clear and sharp response that would have exceeded expectations of the enemy and helped shorten the war fighting.

Oh, the fanatical, militaristic bully as “humanitarian”, there: He tugs at my heartstrings! (Irony alert.)
Before he became IDF chief of staff in 2005, Halutz had already, as air force chief of staff, been a tech-whiz who honed the IAF’s practices of undertaking extra-judicial killings (assassinations) from the air. He had gained renown, when asked how he felt about ending someone’s life through the air force’s stand-off bombing of them from a great distance, by replying,

    if you nevertheless want to know what I feel when I release a bomb, I will tell you: I feel a light bump to the plane as a result of the bomb’s release. A second later it’s gone, and that’s all. That is what I feel.

So this is the man who is telling us, now, that he wishes the cabinet had allowed him to be even more destructive against Lebanon in 2006, and who tells us that he thinks the U.S. air force (though notably not, this time, the Israeli air force) should implement the same kind of massively destructive campaign against Iran.
He makes Hizbullah Hassan Nasrullah look positively moderate in comparison.
Nasrullah, after all, has proposed only a strictly “lex talionis” kind of campaign, in which an Israeli attack on Beirut’s Hariri International Airport would be replied to with a Hizbullah attack on Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, etc… Whereas Halutz was widely reported, during the 2006 assault on Lebanon, to have vowed that, for every Hizbullah rocket that fell on Haifa, Israel would level ten multi-story buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Aaaah, I guess that these days the guy is only trying to sell a few books.
But that certainly doesn’t mean anyone else has to buy them– either his books, or the horribly destructive, anti-humane, and above all quite counter-productive policy prescriptions that he’s peddling.
He’s arguing that the U.S. air force should launch the same kind of campaign against Iran today that that Israeli air force launched against Lebanon in 2006?
Has he no grasp of human history, or human psychology?
Does he have no idea that in Lebanon, in 2006, the more the Israeli air force bombed the country’s infrastructure, the more the country’s people rallied round Hzibullah?
(As I argued at the time, anyone with any knowledge of what had happened during, for example, the Nazi regime’s Blitzkrieg on London could easily have predicted that this wuld be the case.)
So what on earth does Dan Halutz, or anyone else, imagine would happen in Iran if the USAF tried to follow his prescriptions there?
… People like Halutz should be called out for what they are: fraudulent, petty impostors who have no idea what they’re talking about in politico-strategic terms.
And who, yes, are also, almost certainly, war criminals.

Hillary’s war-drums on Iran; Russia unwilling?

Hillary Clinton was on Capitol Hill today, telling US lawmakers that,

    “Iran has left the international community little choice but to impose greater costs and pressure in the face of its provocative steps… We are now working actively with our partners to prepare and implement new measures to pressure Iran to change its course.”

However, there has all along been considerable doubt whether China will go along with such measures, at the U.N. Then, there’s Russia…
Until today, U.S. spinmeisters had been expressing some confidence that Russia would join the “twist the screws tighter” policy. But today, Xinhua reported from Moscow that,

    Russia will honor a contract to deliver its advanced S-300 air defense systems to Iran after resolving a series of problems, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.

And yesterday, China itself reiterated its calls that the Iranian nuclear-program crisis be addressed through stepped-up diplomacy, not confrontation.
Clinton probably feels herself under some pressure from the success that AIPAC, the very powerful America Israel Public Affairs Committee, has had in its massive, well-funded campaign to get legislators to adopt resolutions mandating unilateral U.S. sanctions on Iran in the event Iran refuses to dance immediately to Uncle Sam’s tune on the nuclear issue.
These resolutions have two harmful effects. They would unilaterally penalize U.S. businesses at a time that businesses elsewhere continue to trade with Iran. And they restrict the administration’s ability to commit fully to the pursuit of foreign policy, which is, of course, a responsibility reserved to the administration under the U.S. Constitution.
But hey, why should AIPAC care about mere inconveniences like that!

What’s been happening in Shu’afat Refugee Camp?

Shu’afat Refugee Camp has the dubious privilege of being the only UN-run Palestinian refugee camp that lies within the boundaries that the Israeli occupation authorities unilaterally drew inside the West Bank, in 1968, for an expanded Municipality of Jerusalem. It is home to some 22,000 Palestinians.
Over the past two weeks, the camp has been the scene of repeated raids by the Israeli security forces, who over this period have reportedly arrested some 92 camp residents.
Maan News has a good round-up of the situation in Shu’afat RC, here.
Israeli officials claim endlessly that under their rule, Jerusalem is “united” and a wonderful place for all its residents. But as the Maan reporter notes,

    The camp is not connected to a public sewage system. The pot-holed streets and the state of general disrepair indicate a lack of municipal services….

This piece of reportage gives some strong indications that camp residents have a pretty well-organized “committee against the wall and settlements”, led by someone identified only as “Al-Munasiq” (the co-ordinator).
Regarding the Wall, just look at the red (Wall) line on this map from Ir Amim, to see how the Wall’s designers pushed a huge bulge in the Wall spreading west, so that though Shu’afat camp is part of the Jerusalem Municipality (the blue line), still they have been pushed outside the Apartheid Wall.
Ir Amim also notes here that, Shu’afat camp,

    has the distinction of being the only location where the three main issues at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian overlap: refugees, security, and Jerusalem.

Well, they should add to that, borders, as well!
Also of significance from the Maan report:

    All of the camp’s approximately 22,000 residents hold Israeli IDs [the ones that were given to all Jerusalem residents, though they do not confer citizenship], but the wall’s boundaries have “killed daily life,” [Al-Munasiq] said. The camp lacks schools, has no hospitals. Employment is scarce and poverty is on the rise. UNWRA says overcrowding in the camp is a significant issue.
    “We can’t even bury our people here,” Al-Munasiq said. “They wanted to teach us a lesson but, thankfully, that lesson has not been learned.”

Tel Aviv municipality supports racist ‘chastity’ patrols

Tel Aviv is often portrayed by Israeli hasbaristas as a hip, modern, and very liberal kind of place. So why do we learn now, from Dimi Reider, that the city is putting money into a program to “treat” young Jewish women who date and/or marry Arab men?
Petty apartheid, anyone?
Reider translates a Hebrew-original article by Moria Ben Yossef in Zman Tel-Aviv that tells us the municipality is putting around $66,000 into a program to locate and “treat” up to 120 of these allegedly “troubled” young women under 22.
The program was reportedly advocated primarily by council member Benjamin Babyouf of the Shas Party.
Ben Yossef quotes a Shas activist as saying,

    “It’s happening across the country and in Tel Aviv, too, but it’s particularly rife in Jaffa and the south of the city, where the population is more diverse.. They [go] out hunting for girls… we’re talking about local Arabs and Arabs from villages coming to Tel Aviv for work. At first they shower them with love and money, they spoil them, and then they take them back to their village – usually after getting married… ”

Actually, I see two things happening here. One is the municipality giving funding to an effort aimed at enforcing “racial purity” and blocking (gasp!) dating and sexual liaisons that cross national/religious lines.
The other is the municipality supporting the efforts of members of a tightknit and socially conservative community– in this case, the Bukharan Jewish community– to control the sexual activities of its own young women members.
When this happens in Muslim societies, rights activists in the west immediately (and imho, rightly) issue loud protests. So when will we hear them do so in this case?
Reider tells us that in Israel itself, the head of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, ACRI, has already publicly criticized the measure. That’s great.

Essays by HC in ‘Boston Review’, since 2001

Nearly all these articles contain considerable
amounts of material from interviews and other information gained during
on-the-spot reporting trips, as well as analysis and reflections:

Fareed Zakaria calls it right on Iran, Israel

Thank goodness for Fareed Zakaria’s voice of sanity on Iran, at the WaPo today!
Zakaria strongly criticizes Sarah Palin and those many other influential voices in the US who are now baying louder than ever for a U.S. (or Israeli) military strike on Iran.
A military strike, he writes,

    would most likely delay the Iranian program by only a few years. And then there are the political consequences. The regime would gain support as ordinary Iranians rally around the flag… The regime would foment and fund violence from Afghanistan to Iraq and across the Persian Gulf. The price of oil would skyrocket — which, ironically, would help Tehran pay for all these operations.
    It is important to recognize the magnitude of what people like Palin are advocating. The United States is being asked to launch a military invasion of a state that poses no imminent threat to America, without sanction from any international body and with few governments willing to publicly endorse such an action. Al-Qaeda and its ilk would present it as the third American invasion of a Muslim nation in a decade, proof positive that the United States is engaged in a war of civilizations. Moderate Arab states and Muslim governments everywhere would be on the defensive. And as Washington has surely come to realize, wars unleash forces that cannot be predicted or controlled…

Actually, I think Zakaria doesn’t make the case as strongly as he could. He makes no mention at all of international law or Just War theory, for example. Both those extremely weighty bodies of thinking– along with common sense– proclaim a strong injunction against the launching of wars that are not “justified” by rock-solid bodies of evidence. Just War theory also requires an extensive calculation of the expected costs and benefits of any war, as well as a determination that all non-violent options have been exhausted.
Indeed, by not clearly naming the launching of a military strike as an act of war, Zakaria muddies the waters considerably.
A military attack against another state is indeed an act of war. And any such an act thereby provides every justification needed under international law for the state that is attacked to counter-attack. An Iranian counter-attack against the numerous U.S. military facilities, and their supply lines, that are currently strung out in very vulnerable ways along Iran’s eastern, western, and southern (sea) boundaries would not just be “the fomenting of violence”, as Zakaria describes it. They would also be acts of war.
So the U.S. would indeed find itself enmeshed in a third war in distant Asia. And this time, unlike in Afghanistan in 2001 or in Iraq in 2003, it would be at war against a capable, intact state that has significant networks of allies and trading partners amongst the other states in the United Nations.
So it is not just that “Al-Qaeda and its ilk would present it as the third American invasion of a Muslim nation in a decade”… This would actually be the third war the U.S. has launched against a Muslim country in a decade.
So Zakaria is significantly down-pedaling the enormity of what an unprovoked and unjustified “military strike” against Iran would actually be, and would be seen as, by the vast preponderance of the international community.
Nonetheless, his column redeems itself if only for the calm, matter-of-fact way he refers to the long-existing reality of Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
He writes,

    An Iran with nuclear weapons would be dangerous and destabilizing, though I am not as convinced as some that it would automatically force Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey to go nuclear as well. If Israel’s large nuclear arsenal has not made Egypt seek its own nukes — even though that country has fought and lost three wars with Israel — it is unclear to me why an Iranian bomb would.

Brilliant! He gives us a helpful reminder that, indeed, Israel really is the only state in the region that has any nuclear weapons– but he inserts that reminder as a sub-clause into his counter to the oft-cited “argument” about the expected proliferatory effects of Iran acquiring any kind of nuclear-weapons capability.
Israel’s large, existing, and very powerful nuclear arsenal is always the elephant in the room of any discussion in the U.S. about nuclear weapons in the Middle East. In just about every area of discourse in the U.S. power elite– both inside and outside government– there is nearly always a complete taboo on mentioning it, or taking it into any account at all.
So huge kudos to Zakaria for mentioning it. (And yes, the argument he made there about the prospects for onward proliferation is a good one.)
He also makes a very solid argument that– contra all those who say there is something uniquely disturbing about the prospect of the ‘mad mullahs of Tehran’ getting a nuclear weapon– in fact, Iran’s clerical elite is “canny (and ruthlessly pragmatic)” … and therefore, subject to the same calculi of deterrence as any other state power.
So how long will it be till the war-mongers start baying for Zakaria’s blood, as well, I wonder?

Turkish IHH foundation plans new siege-busting project for Gaza

Turkey’s IHH humanitarian-aid foundation has now announced a plan to help lead a 20-ship siege-busting project for Gaza, to take place most likely in April. The project is called Noah’s Ark, and will set sail from a port in Turkey.
IHH President Bülent Yıldırım said,

    We are planning to go to Gaza with a fleet of 20 ships to be set up in an international organization probably in April 2010… The cargo ships will carry Israeli-embargoed building materials, generators, medication, medical equipment and educational materials. The passenger ships to accompany the cargo ships will carry journalists, human rights advocates, activists and lawmakers from various countries.”

IHH is planning to contribute five ships to the flotilla. I believe contacts are underway with other organizations to contribute the other ships.
This is a great project. Turkey’s moderate-Islamist (A.K. Party) government and many Turkish people and NGOs have all played a great role in supporting the people of Gaza through their many recent woes.

More questions about Mossad’s Dubai debacle

Israeli military analyst Ronen Bergman had an interesting contribution in yesterday’s WSJ about the almost-certainly-Mossad killing of Hamas operative Muhammad al-Mabhuh in Dubai last month. (HT: Phil Weiss.)
It’s true, Bergman seemed clearly to be condoning the concept of Israeli hit squads roaming the earth, killing whomsoever they please in a completely lawless (= extra-judicial) way.
But he did also ask these questions:

    did Mabhouh constitute an immediate threat? Was eliminating him worth violating international law and risking the ire of so many states at a time when the international community seems to have finally gotten serious on Iran?
    … [S]uch acts need to be extremely rare. In the case of Israel, such operations require the explicit approval of the prime minister, and they are authorized only after the political risks are carefully weighed. In the case of Dubai, it seems that this did not occur. Either the risks were not explained to Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, or he made a serious miscalculation.

He also wrote this:

    the real, and so far unappreciated, achievement in this affair belongs to the Dubai police, who were able to integrate all the evidence at their disposal into one clear picture and do so with remarkable speed.
    Whoever sent the hit squad to Dubai was not aware that the police and security services had such advanced capabilities at the ready. The investigators managed to put together still and video shots taken in seven different locations and place them on a single timeline together with the cellphone records of the individuals in the footage. Doing this requires sharp analysis and advanced computer skills, and computerized intelligence systems able to cross check information from various sources.
    How did the Dubai police manage all this? Did they have help? For now, it remains a mystery. But in any case, misjudging the ability of the Dubai authorities so spectacularly is evidence of a serious intelligence failure on the part of the organization that sent out the squad.

Personally, I would say that putting together video and stills footage from surveillance cameras doesn’t seem like a terrifically tough job. I mean, they’re all time-coded anyway.
I think what the Mossad people misread was not the capability of the Dubai police but their intentions, namely, their willingness to investigate this crime quickly and with an apparently high degree of honesty and thoroughness.
I think the Israelis– from Netanyahu on down– most likely assumed that, regardless of what the capabilities of the Dubai police were, the Dubai authorities would be happy to bumble or cloud the investigation in an attempt to keep their undoubted continuing links with Israel untouched by the affair.
That was also the key mistake of arrogance that Netanyahu made when he authorized the Mossad’s 1997 assassination attempt against Khaled Meshaal in Amman, remember. On both occasions, it seems to me, Netanyahu and his security advisers, committed not one but two serious mistakes of arrogance:

    1. In both cases there was probably an assumption that Mossad ‘tradecraft’ was of a high enough caliber that these agents– who turned out to be Keystone Cops type assassins, in the event– could perform their task undetected.
    2. In both cases, there was also an assumption that, even if evidence about these assassins’ doings and identities should emerge, the local government would be happy to sweep the whole affair under the rug in the interest of keeping its relations with Israel and its western backers in good order.

Of course, there is also an underlying arrogance in all such cases, too. Namely, that it’s quite okay to go round the world killing anyone you want just based on some suspicion of something.
But back to #2 above. In the case of Jordan 1997, Netanyahu and his advisers seriously under-estimated the willingness of King Hussein to kick up a huge fuss when the bumbling would-be killers’ antics came to light. Yes, Hussein doubtless valued the relationships he had with the Israeli government (and its US backers) at the time. But he was also subject to non-trivial internal pressures from Hamas– an organization with which, anyway, he had had a lengthy previous relationship.
Netanyahu seemed not to understand that, back in 1997. And he seemed not understand this time round that, for all the services that Dubai offers to the western governments and their armies of consumers– and doubtless also to Israel as well, in many respects– nevertheless its government also has a longstanding relationship with Iran as a key entrepot for that country’s traders, and government leaders also have a great degree of sympathy for Hamas.
Also, Dubai’s whole reputation as a ‘free-wheeling entrepot’ type of place, like Singapore or whatever, depends on its being able to safety and security to all kinds of visitors from other countries. Having the Israelis violate this norm is not something that any of the city-state’s managers would be happy about, at all.
Netanyahu and his people seem also to have mis-forecast the responses of two other actors in this drama: the western governments, especially the British government, and those Israeli citizens of European origin whose identities the Mossad blithely chose to steal/forge, and whose names are therefore now about to be posted on every Interpol warning around the world.
Previously, those Israeli citizens could have been expected to comply with a kind of nationalist vow of omerta about the fact of the identity theft. But now, it seems, no. Some of them have been outspoken in their criticism of the security agencies misuse of their identities. That’s new. And another significant aspect of this case.

WaPo’s hate propaganda against Syria

Today, the WaPo had an editorial filled with inaccuracies about Syria’s record and just oozing pure venom for the Syrian government.
The title is, “Don’t expect progress from talking to Syria.”
I’m still trying to figure out why editorial page editor Fred Hiatt feels obliged to publish such hate-filled, inaccurate, and incendiary garbage.
Here are just a few of the notable inaccuracies in this screed:

    “Having carried out a campaign of political murder in Lebanon, including the killing of a prime minister for which he has yet to be held accountable, Mr. Assad continues to insist on a veto over the Lebanese government… “

The truth here:
(1) No-one has yet been able to substantiate the many accusations that hostile forces have made against Pres. Bashar al-Asad regarding the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafiq Hariri. This, despite the involvement of scores of highly-paid international investigators in the commission that was jointly established by the UN and the Lebanese government to investigate the affair and the Hague-based Special tribunal that was the successor to the commission. Last April, in fact, the Hague tribunal ordered that four pro-Syrian figures who had been high-ranking officers in the Lebanese security forces pup until the assassination should be freed from jail, given the paucity of evidence against them.
(2) Meanwhile, in response to the demands that rose loudly in Lebanon after the Hariri killing that Syria should withdraw the security forces it had kept in Lebanon since 1976 (when they went in at the behest of Washington), Asad did indeed withdraw all Syria’s troops from Lebanon within the couple of months right after the killing. Then, in October 2008, Syria formally recognized Lebanon’s independence for the first time ever. (All previous Syrian governments, including the most pro-western of them, had always, ever since Syria was established as a separate country in the 1920s, claimed that Lebanon was a part of it.) After Syria’s recognition of Lebanon’s independence, the two countries exchanged ambassadors.
(3) Last December, Lebanese PM Saad al-Hariri made a state visit to Damascus, where he held talks with Asad. Hariri is a very pro-western politician, and the son of the slain former premier. Haaretz reported that Hariri told a press conference held in the Lebanese embassy in Damascus that,

    I saw all positive signals from President Assad in all issues and we agreed on opening a new phase in our relations… The talks were excellent and frank… It all depends on the future….We want to build a future that serves the interests of the two countries.

Ah, but Fred Hiatt claims he “knows better” about the state of Syrian-Lebanese relations than Hariri does??
… More Hiatt:

    “[Asad] continues to facilitate massive illegal shipments of Iranian arms to Hezbollah, dangerously setting the stage for another war with Israel, and to host the most hard-line elements of the Hamas leadership. He continues to harbor exiled leaders of Saddam Hussein’s regime and to allow suicide bombers to flow into Iraq for use by al-Qaeda… He has promised to check suicide bombers bound for Iraq but has never done so… “

Where to begin with all this nonsense?
(1) Lebanon is a sovereign country that has the right to defend itself against Israel’s daily continuing incursions and provocations in the way it judges best. Thus far, its government has decided to do so in conjunction with Hizbullah’s paramilitary capabilities. If someone wants to prevent another war between Israel and Lebanon, wouldn’t they be advised to call on Israel to stop its incessant violations of the border between the two countries? Ah, but not Hiatt…
(2) Hamas’s over-all leadership is indeed headquartered in Damascus. But all who study the organization carefully (though not Fred Hiatt) recognize that the Damascus-based leaders range from the middle to the more flexible end of the (anyway narrow) spectrum of opinion in the organization’s leading ranks. They are a moderating influence within Hamas– and very, very far from being “the most hard-line elements.”
(3) On the accusations about Damascus’s policies with respect to Iraq– where is the evidence for the claims Hiatt makes?? In the talks I had with officials in Damascus last year, it was clear that cooperation with Washington against the threat they judged that they both jointly faced from any renewed descent into chaos in Iraq was the single greatest motivator the Syrian government had for improving its relations with Washington. What evidence does Hiatt have that might outweigh the evidence I and numerous others have gathered on this question?
… So why do I even both spending time trying to correct the many gross inaccuracies included in this text? Because despite its many, many shortcomings, the WaPo is still a very influential newspaper in Washington DC, and in political circles throughout this country. Most people in the U.S. political elite don’t have the time to study carefully the actions and record of this or that foreign country… So they might well be inclined to “take the word” of a WaPo editorial regarding whether engagement with the current Syrian government is a worthwhile venture or not.
But why has the WaPo departed so hugely from the standards of accuracy and truth-telling that it once used to uphold?
That, I don’t feel qualified to answer. But the paper should certainly be held to account for these inaccuracies– and for the escalatory, war-mongering kind of atmosphere that they tend to feed.