The New York Times today makes a rare, if highly obfuscatory, reference to the fact that Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian territory continues despite nearly unanimous international consensus, expressed annually via the United Nations General Assembly.

As a FAIR media advisory recently pointed out, international law is largely missing from U.S. media reporting on Israeli actions. However, the New York Times article goes further than mere omission, echoing the Israeli government's position that international law is "anti-Israel":

Describing some of the abiding challenges, Israeli officials note that the same 21 anti-Israel resolutions are passed by an automatic majority in the General Assembly every year. "That is before we've done anything," one official said.

When white phosphorus was used by Saddam Hussein, the weapon was identified by U.S. intelligence as a "chemical weapon."

The New York Times (3/22/95) seemed to concur; In an article noting that white phosphorus was technically classified as an "incendiary weapon," the paper nonetheless described it as one of "the worst chemical weapons" in existence: a "waxy substance [that] adheres to flesh, and when it is exposed to air, it bursts into flame."

As Seth Ackerman observed in an article for FAIR's magazine Extra! (3/4/06), in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, "U.S. media vividly evoked the cruel effects" of such unconventional weapons used by Hussein's regime.

The Times' reporting on Israel's recent use of white phosphorus in Gaza has taken quite a different tone. Yesterday, for instance, the New York Times described white phosphorus as "an obscurant used in military conflicts that can be dangerous for civilians under certain circumstances."

As Ackerman's article documented, newspapers like the Times have long exhibited a very different standards when it comes to U.S. and Israeli use of the substance that was considered one of "the worst chemical weapons" in the days when it was known as part of Saddam Hussein's arsenal.

However, today, the Times' double standards on white phosphorus faced a curious challenge. As the fallout over Israel's documented use of white phosphorus in the shelling of the U.N. compound yesterday continued to make world headlines, the Israeli police's alleged that Hamas had fired a white phosphorus shell at Israel.

The New York Times responded with an unusually long explanation of both the incendiary substance's acceptable and unacceptable applications:

White phosphorus is a standard, legal weapon in armies, long used as a way to light up an area or to create a thick white smoke screen to obscure troop movements. While using it against civilians, or in an area where many civilians are likely to be affected, can be a violation of international law, Israel has denied using the substance improperly. On Wednesday, Hamas fired a phosphorus mortar shell into Israel, but no one was hurt.

Chris Matthews reacting Bush's speech (as transcribed by the right-wing Media Research Center):

The idea that we have some brand new neo-conservative ideology of freedom that's going to bring peace over in that part of the world is not true, and he's still selling it, and that's the tragedy of the last eight years.

The very same Chris Matthews, reacting to a Saddam Hussein statue being pulled down in Baghdad (4/9/03):

We're all neo-cons now.

Posting his letter to the New York Times on FAIR Blog, FAIR activist bpb points out that not only is Thomas Friedman claiming that terrorism works, he's making up evidence to claim that terrorism works:

There is no evidence for Thomas Friedman's contention that after Israel's 2006 war with Hizballah, "Lebanese civilians, in anguish, said to Hezbollah: 'What were you thinking? Look what destruction you have visited on your own community! For what? For whom?'" In fact, in the month following the war, a public opinion poll conducted in Lebanon confirmed the opposite: that Lebanese public opinion strongly favored Hizballah.

According to a poll conducted by Information International from August 22 to August 27, 2006, 57 percent of respondents "supported" Hizballah's kidnappings of Israeli soldiers, which initiated the conflict. According to the same poll, 79 percent of respondents rated the performance of Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah as "good/great." These numbers are noteworthy not only because they disprove Friedman's claim, but because they also represent a relative uniformity of opinion across Lebanon's notoriously divided populace.

Furthermore, even in mid-October 2006, months after the war's end, a poll conducted in Lebanon by the Center for Strategic Studies found that 78 percent of respondents believed that Israel would have attacked Lebanon "whether Hizbollah captured the Israeli soldiers or not," thus signifying that a large majority of Lebanese were unwilling to place blame on Hizballah.

Based on these numbers, it is easy to see that Thomas Friedman is rewriting history in order to justify his current support of Israel's war on Palestinian civilians. It is remarkable that he seems to have assumed that his claims could not be fact-checked in this age of ubiquitous polling.

Continuing their persecution of the press--and taking a page from U.S. military tactics--Israel's military has expanded from regular civilian targets to attacking another United Nations compound and "a building housing several media organizations." Amy Goodman's Democracy Now has the story (1/15/09) featuring a real-life U.N. representative and, even rarer in U.S. media, an actual Palestinian in Gaza City.

Dean Baker knocks down (Beat the Press, 1/15/09) the logic behind the already specious alarm about supposedly overpaid autoworkers:

The Washington Post has repeatedly editorialized that auto workers at the Big Three companies should be forced to take pay cuts because they earn $57,000 a year, which is more than workers get at the foreign-owned plants in the United States. Consistent with this editorial position, the paper has an article today about efforts to lower the compensation packages of union workers.

The Post has virtually ignored the much larger gap between executive compensation at the Big Three and at the transplants. While top executives at Japanese manufacturers like Toyota only earn around $2 million a year, executives at the Big Three can earn 10 times this amount.

To Baker's eyes, "this would seem to be a reasonable focus for those concerned about making the U.S. industry competitive."

Read the FAIR Action Alert: "ABC's Overpaid Autoworkers" (12/5/08)

Anti-Muslim xenophobe Steve Emerson recently made another appearance on Fox News--this time to bash Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) for daring to go to Mecca for the annual Hajj pilgrimage. Think Progress' Ali Frick quotes (1/9/09) the FoxNews.com passage containing their only source:

But Ellison, the only Muslim in Congress, is coming under fire for his ties to the Muslim American Society, which one terrorism expert called "the Muslim equivalent of the neo-Nazi party."

"It is the de facto arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S.," said Steven Emerson, director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. "The agenda of the MAS is to … impose Islamic law in the U.S., to undermine U.S. counterterrorism policy." […]

Emerson said Ellison’s embrace of MAS was an attempt to legitimize the group, which he called out of the mainstream. "It's very troubling that he is trying to project an image of moderation, but he is tied to these radical groups," Emerson told FoxNews.com.

Never mind that, as Frick notes, "the Minnesota Independent pointed out [that] MAS 'has earned the respect of the Minnesota Council of Churches, the St. Paul Police Department and former Vice President Walter Mondale.'"

Read the FAIR magazine Extra!: "Steven Emerson's Crusade: Why Is a Journalist Pushing Questionable Stories from Behind the Scenes?" (1-2/99) by John F. Sugg

Independent journalist Justin Podur has some advice (Dissident Voice, 1/9/09) for his fellow Canadians: "Today, if you want to have the first idea what is happening in Israel/Palestine (or most of the rest of the world), the best thing to do would be to turn [national Canadian media] off completely."

A friend of mine, Brooks Kind, spent some time going through the least biased of the Canadian media, CBC radio, over the past two weeks. He found that the CBC suppressed crucial facts, presented an unrepresentative spectrum of opinion, and falsified the historical record. The suppressions and omissions are in the service of the perspective of the U.S. and Israeli governments (and Canadian politicians), but they are no less false for that. With the reminder that I am picking on the CBC not because it is the worst, but because it is by far the best.

Given that "the days when Canadians would be stuck listening to local radio, picking up the local print newspaper, or watching local television packaged by Canadian media corporations for their consumption are over," Podur has a stern reminder for traditional media in his country: "There is, for the time being, media choice. And given the choice, on Israel/Palestine, it would be foolish to turn to the Canadian media."

What's the Matter With Kansas Author Thomas Frank tells (Wall Street Journal, 1/14/09) exactly why he thinks "centrism finds an enthusiastic audience in Washington":

because it appeals naturally to the Beltway journalistic mindset, with its professional prohibition against coming down solidly on one side or the other of any question. Splitting the difference is a way of life in this cynical town. To hear politicians insist that it is also the way of the statesman, I suspect, gives journalists a secret thrill.

Yet what the Beltway centrist characteristically longs for is not so much to transcend politics but to close off debate on the grounds that he--and the vast silent middle for which he stands--knows beyond question what is to be done.

A key example given is Washington Post pundit Sebastian Mallaby's opinion that "blaming deregulation for the financial mess is misguided. But it is dangerous, too." Why you ask? Not for any actual economic reasons, but "because one of the big challenges for the next president will be to defend markets against the inevitable backlash that follows this crisis"--and just coincidentally threatens to rock the very boat Mallaby has such a comfortable seat in.

Listen to the FAIR radio show CounterSpin: "Thomas Frank on 'The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule'" (8/22/08)

Critic Mark Howard catches (News Corpse, 1/13/09) new Fox hire Glenn Beck spouting more of his "fabulist" views: "On his radio program, Beck spun a tale of McCarthyistic intrigue that slammed President-elect Barack Obama, his designated climate change adviser Carol Browner and environmentalism in general." Beck's evidence?: "Browner's association with the Global Warming initiatives of an organization called Socialist International, is proof that Obama intends to impose a left-wing dictatorship in America":

Where Beck goes completely off the cognitive cliff is when he asserts that…"almost everyone who does believe in global warming is a socialist. I mean, believes in man-made global warming that now can be fixed and reversed or whatever. And we've got the tools to fix it. Almost everybody who says, 'I've got a plan to fix it' is a socialist."

Global Warming believers like George Bush, John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Newt Gingrich may take umbrage at being called socialists. Beck is also tagging 71 percent of the American people as socialists, including about half of Republicans (Rep:49 percent / Dem: 84 percent /c Ind: 75 percent).

And by the way, that nefarious sounding Socialist International group happens to be "a worldwide enterprise that includes in its membership the ruling Labour Party in Great Britain and the center-left New Democratic Party of Canada."

Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery provides (Progressive, 1/11/09) the following "description that would now appear in the history books--if the Germans had won the war":

Nearly 70 years ago, in the course of World War II, a heinous crime was committed in the city of Leningrad. For more than a thousand days, a gang of extremists called "the Red Army" held the millions of the town's inhabitants hostage and provoked retaliation from the German Wehrmacht from inside the population centers. The Germans had no alternative but to bomb and shell the population and to impose a total blockade, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands.

Some time before that, a similar crime was committed in England. The Churchill gang hid among the population of London, misusing the millions of citizens as a human shield. The Germans were compelled to send their Luftwaffe and reluctantly reduce the city to ruins. They called it the Blitz.

If you find this "absurd," Avnery argues it is no more so than "daily descriptions in our media, which are being repeated ad nauseam," of the official Israel contention that "Hamas terrorists use the inhabitants of Gaza as 'hostages' and exploit the women and children as 'human shields,'" and therefore "leave us no alternative but to carry out massive bombardments, in which, to our deep sorrow, thousands of women, children and unarmed men are killed and injured."

Read the FAIR Media Advisory: "International Law Seldom Newsworthy in Gaza War: Israeli Justifications Often Cited Uncritically" (1/13/09)

National Public Radio watchdog Mytwords describes his horror (NPR Check, 1/11/09) at listening while "NPR struggles mightily to convince listeners that there is some grand, noble 'legacy' that will exist when the Bush administration leaves the White House":

Today was a shameless homage to George W. Bush as the "normal, regular guy." Yeah, Bush is such a likable guy! Linda Wertheimer's slavish [Weekend Edition Sunday] send-up of Bush is notable for its lack of any serious, critical voices; instead Wertheimer turns to a friend of Bush, and an administration insider, and a charmed reporter clucking about George:

• "Dan Bartlett works in Austin now, but he was a close White House aide for seven years."
• "Cox Newspapers' Ken Herman, who has covered Bush for years, says the president prefers a quiet life."
• "Don Evans, secretary of commerce in the president's first term and a friend of 40 years, says that act [quitting abusing alcohol] demonstrated the president's commitment to his family and to the Bush family's belief in public service."

Mytwords concludes that "even if Bush were a likable character, it doesn't matter a whit.  Likability is an utterly worthless measure of a leader's behavior as characters like Stalin, Idi Amin and Milosevic among others have proven."

Harper's Ken Silverstein is again bucking the media that condemned him for actually investigating U.S. lobbyists for foreign dictatorships--this time contrasting (1/8/09) how, "if the U.S. government deems a country to be a hostile state, the American media will devote significant time and energy reporting on that country's political and economic problems" with the fact that "if you're on our side, and especially if you're providing us with oil, you can get away with murder (literally)":

Today's Washington Post has yet another op-ed piece about the terrible human rights situation in Zimbabwe ("A Cancer Called Mugabe"). That follows up on an opinion piece last month from Richard Cohen of the Post, who essentially called for the United States to assassinate Mugabe with a predator drone. And shortly before that, on November 30, the Post ran a lengthy piece on Zimbabwe titled, "Land of Broken Trust; Though Widespread Brutality Has Ebbed in Zimbabwe, Political Violence Simmers and Threatens to Reignite."

I did a Nexis search cross-referencing the words "Zimbabwe" and "human rights." That search turned up 66 stories in the Washington Post, 122 stories in the New York Times, and 55 stories in the Los Angeles Times. I also did a search cross-referencing the words "Equatorial Guinea" and "human rights." Equatorial Guinea is the small African state friendly to the United States, the third-largest producer of oil in sub-Saharan Africa, and home to billions of dollars in American oil company investments. It's led by regime even worse than Mugabe's, but because it's on our side the American media can't be bothered covering the country.

Considering that "that second Nexis search turned up four stories in the Washington Post (none of which were actually about the human rights situation in Equatorial Guinea, but mentioned the country only in passing), and no stories at all in the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times," Silverstein explains that this "means that in the last month alone, the Washington Post has written three more stories about the admittedly wretched state of affairs in Zimbabwe than have been written about the appalling human rights situation in Equatorial Guinea in the past year by America’s three leading newspapers."

In the wake of NY Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman's call today for terrorism against Palestinian civilians in Gaza, a new FAIR Action Alert is calling on the Times to clarify whether this column meets the paper's standards.

You can post copies of your letters to the New York Times in the comments section below. Please remember that letters that maintain a civil tone are most effective.

The pundit panel from Sunday's broadcast of ABC's This Week, introduced by the host:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS : And I am here for The Roundtable with George Will as always, Tom Friedman of the New York Times, former Speaker Newt Gingrich and Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal.