Violence Rises as Israel and Hamas Trade Blows

This "blow trading" has resulted in 18 deaths, all in Gaza--roughly half civilians and half militants. On the Israeli side, one boy was seriously injured. The Times account tells us:

The Israeli military said that if civilians were hit, it was because militants shot from among them.

But the deaths on Friday of 19-year-old Nidal Qudeh, who was studying to be a medical secretary, and her mother, Najah, 40, outside the southeastern city of Khan Yunis did not fit that pattern, witnesses said.

It would be difficult to imagine how to present such fighting as somehow "balanced," but the Times manages to pull it off.

In a story in today's Times (4/11/11), Isabel Kershner presents the timeline of the current violence, which--as is often the case--we're told began with an attack from the Palestinian side:

The most recent escalation began when the military wing of Hamas fired a Kornet antitank missile at the school bus from a distance of about two miles. It was the first time the group used an advanced, laser-guided weapon against a civilian target.

To make things more confusing, the very next paragraph would seem to undermine that:

Hamas said the attack was meant to avenge Israel's killing of three of the group's militants on April 2, an act that Hamas said violated an earlier cease-fire.

That would suggest that the "escalation" did not begin with a Hamas attack, but with an Israeli attack that broke a week-long cease-fire. But, as FAIR once pointed out, "In U.S. Media, Palestinians Attack, Israel Retaliates."

The use of unidentified sources is reserved for situations in which the newspaper could not otherwise print information it considers reliable and newsworthy. When we use such sources, we accept an obligation not only to convince a reader of their reliability but also to convey what we can learn of their motivation--as much as we can supply to let a reader know whether the sources have a clear point of view on the issue under discussion.

The rules also stipulate:

• "We will not use anonymous sourcing when sources we can name are readily available."
• "We do not grant anonymity to people who use it as cover for a personal or partisan attack."
• "Anonymity should not be invoked for a trivial comment, or to make an unremarkable comment appear portentous."

With that, example No. 1 comes from a piece about the effect of the leaked Palestine papers on future negotiations:

Another top Israeli official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the big question for him was whether the revelations would make the Palestinians more timid in future negotiations because of public indignation. He said they seemed to be walking away from their concessions since they were revealed.

Alternatively, the official said, the opposite could be true--the Palestinian public could get used to the kind of concessions needed for a deal now that they were in the open, and that would ease future talks.

So things could turn out one way, or the other way. What a revelation.

In another piece on the political upheaval in Lebanon, we get this:

"We are concerned about Iranian domination of Lebanon through its proxy, Hezbollah," said an Israeli official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the situation in Beirut was not yet clear.

Presumably said official will speak on the record once things in Lebanon are "clear."

Of greater concern, though, is the charge that Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy. This is often treated as a fact in U.S. media discussions, though a few months ago (10/17/10) an expert on such matters wrote this letter to the Times (see bold):

To the Editor:

Joe Klein, in his review of A Privilege to Die, by Thanassis Cambanis ("The Hezbollah Project," October 3), says Mr. Cambanis fails "to put Lebanese Hezbollah in the context of Iran's larger terrorist network." However, Mr. Cambanis is correct in his presentation; the idea that Hezbollah today has a place in Iran's "larger terrorist network" is ill-informed. Hezbollah has not been under Iranian political or military control for nearly a decade. It is now an organization operating on its own recognizance, although it continues to receive a fraction of its operating funds from Iran--much of it in the form of religious charitable contributions from its Shia brethren.

WILLIAM O. BEEMAN
Minneapolis
The writer is a professor and the chairman of the anthropology department at the University of Minnesota.

When she attempts to contextualize the "peace talks," Kershner throws in this misleading history:

Mr. Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert made a far-reaching proposal in late 2008 to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. It included an Israeli withdrawal from 93.5 percent of the West Bank, with land swaps and a safe route for Palestinian travel between Gaza and the West Bank making up the other 6.5 percent of the land area that Israel won in 1967.

The notion that Mahmoud Abbas rejected a generous offer in 2008 is a commonly heard media trope: Jackson Diehl (Washington Post, 5/29/09) called the proposal a "a generous outline for Palestinian statehood," and the Post's editorial board described it as a "far-reaching peace offer" (11/5/09).

But the proposal was only "generous" or "far-reaching" from the official Israeli perspective. The Olmert plan (Newsweek, 6/13/09) would have had Israel annex illegal settlement blocs as well as reject the Palestinian "right of return," a position firmly grounded in international law. The “far-reaching” proposal actually would have required Palestinians to give away rights guaranteed to them, and would create a series of Palestinian islands surrounded by Israeli settlements.

Kershner also omits important context about Olmert's term as Prime Minister that would make it understandable as to why Palestinians did not act immediately on the proposal (Mondoweiss, 7/17/2009):

-While Olmert held final-status negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas (between the Annapolis Conference in November 2007 and the end of his term), there was a 43% increase in construction-starts in settlements.

-During Olmert's term as prime minister, 4,560 new housing units were constructed in settlements and 1,523 new tenders were issued for new housing units.

-Almost 1,500 new housing units were constructed east of the separation barrier (not in settlement blocs).

-Some 560 new structures were built in illegal outposts during Olmert's term.

-None of the illegal outposts in the West Bank were removed during Olmert's term.

In addition, Olmert's offer kept the majority of Israeli settlements and infrastructure in the West Bank, and would have resulted in permanent apartheid in the West Bank.

Kershner's reading of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is really nothing new. Looking back at the failed Camp David talks in 2000, the U.S. press repeatedly referred to the Israeli offer in similarly glowing terms, even though that proposal, too, would have made impossible a contiguous Palestinian state and had no basis in international law (Extra!, 07-08/02, NormanFinkelstein.com).

Other news accounts presented misleading context about the circumstances leading to Israel's blockade. [Isabel] Kershner (New York Times, 6/1/10) stressed that "Israel had vowed not to let the flotilla reach the shores of Gaza, where Hamas, an organization sworn to Israel's destruction, took over by force in 2007." The Associated Press (6/1/10) reported that "Israel and Egypt sealed Gaza's borders after Hamas overran the territory in 2007, wresting control from Abbas-loyal forces"--the latter a reference to Fatah forces affiliated with Mahmoud Abbas.

Both accounts ignore the fact that Hamas won Palestinian elections in 2006, which led the United States and Israel to step up existing economic restrictions on Gaza. An attempt to stoke a civil war in Gaza by arming Fatah militants--reported extensively by David Rose in Vanity Fair (4/08)--backfired, and Hamas prevailed (Extra!, 9-10/07).

Today (6/4/10), the New York Times printed this correction:

An article on Tuesday about the deadly Israeli naval commando raid on an aid flotilla that had attempted to defy Israel's blockade of Gaza referred incompletely to the governance of Gaza by Hamas, the militant group that opposes Israel’s existence. While Hamas took over Gaza by force in 2007, as the article said, the group’s representatives had won elections there in January 2006, defeating the more moderate rival Palestinian group Fatah. Subsequent tensions between Hamas and Fatah forces in Gaza led to open fighting, and Hamas routed Fatah from Gaza in June 2007.