Israel said its three-week offensive was intended to change the reality in the south. Since January, when the military campaign ended, the rocket fire has significantly fallen off and residents here are trying to accustom themselves to a kind of normalcy amid the lingering uncertainty and fear.

This recycles the myth that rocket fire was a constant barrage until the war changed all that-- a point Kershner makes more explicitly later:

According to the Israeli military, some 3,300 rockets and mortar shells were launched from Gaza at southern Israel in 2008, compared with fewer than 300 since the end of the war.

This is highly misleading; much of that rocket fire came at the end of the year-- after the invasion and bombing of Gaza was underway. In fact, a  negotiated peace prevailed for much of the middle of 2008--which is something that you would have learned if you were a careful reader of the New York Times. Right before the invasion, the paper (12/19/08) reported that much of 2008 was quiet:

Israeli and United Nations figures show that while more than 300 rockets were fired into Israel in May, 10 to 20 were fired in July, depending on who was counting and whether mortar rounds were included. In August, 10 to 30 were fired, and in September, 5 to 10.

Rocket fire increased significantly in November after Israel attacked a Hamas tunnel and killed six militants. For a graphic understanding of the rate of rocket/mortar fire, see this (which is based on Israeli figures).

The more natural lesson to draw is that negotiations work better than violence. This is apparently not what the New York Times wants you to believe,  though they did once report that reality. Perhaps it was an accident.

The term "even-handed" is the problem that Israel has with the conclusions in the report. Your criticism of Israel seems so much harsher than that of the Palestinians. Why is that?

CBS News (9/9/09), summarizing a report by Israel's leading human rights group:

Well over half of nearly 1,400 Palestinians killed in Israel's Gaza war were civilians, including 252 children younger than 16, a leading Israeli human rights groups said Wednesday, challenging Israel's claim that most of the dead were militants.... The Israeli rights group B'Tselem on Wednesday published figures it said were compiled in months of research, including visits to families of victims. It said 1,387 Gazans were killed, including 773 civilians and 330 combatants. Thirteen Israelis also died, including four civilians.

So why would the U.N. be more interested in the war crimes that killed nearly 200 times as many people? Thanks to Ifill and the NewsHour for challenging this strange moral reasoning.

Obama claimed they have a "common birthday wish"--for a "real healthcare reform bill"--but Thomas is not in favor of Obama's plan, she's for single-payer.

Last week I bumped into Helen Thomas at her stomping ground, Mama Ayesha's restaurant in Washington, D.C., and she stressed the single-payer failure on the part of Obama.

I asked her if I was right, that Obama hadn't called on her since his first news conference. Yes, she confirmed. He's had five news conferences since and not a single question from her.

And why would that be? Well, "at his first news conference, she asked about Obama's buildup in Afghanistan and Pakistan and about Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal," but "Obama declined to 'speculate' about the existence of such an arsenal."

Husseini asserts that reporters "should be asking Obama: Why are you refusing to take Thomas' questions? Why are you refusing to acknowledge the existence of Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal?"

But then, Husseini makes a habit of asking exactly such questions so doggedly ignored by his corporate counterparts.

Identically, if Israel wants to be free of what it and some of its U.S. supporters call "interference" from the Obama administration, that's very easy to achieve: Israel can stop asking for tens of billions of dollars of American taxpayer money, huge amounts of military and weapons supplies for its various wars, and unyielding American diplomatic protection at the U.N. But as long as Israel remains dependent on the U.S. in countless ways, then Obama not only has the right--but he has the obligation--to demand that Israel cease activities which harm U.S. interests.

Continuing settlement expansions that the entire world recognizes as illegal--what Time's Joe Klein accurately calls "taking territory that the rest of the world, without exception, considers Palestinian"--clearly harms U.S. interests in all sorts of ways, as Obama himself has concluded. He would be abdicating one of his primary responsibilities in foreign policy--maximizing U.S. national security rather than those of other countries--if he failed to demand that Israel cease this activity and if he failed to use U.S. leverage to compel compliance with those demands.

Writing that "Israelis are taking Obama's pressure quite seriously, as are many of his Israel-centric supporters in the U.S," Greenwald encourages "those who want Obama to continue to depart from the Bush administration’s blind support for Israeli actions" to "continue to make themselves heard, since those who desire a continuation of that blind Israeli support certainly intend to"--and we all know which group is sure to get unquestioning encouragement from the big U.S. outlets...

According to the Times report, this will involve tearing down some Palestinian homes around the city, while at the same time cleaning up other areas and putting up "new signs and displays that point out significant points of Jewish history."

Bronner and Kershner explain the different reactions to these moves:

The parts of the city that are being developed were captured in the 1967 Middle East war, but their annexation by Israel was never recognized abroad.

At the same time, there is a battle for historical legitimacy. As part of the effort, archaeologists are finding indisputable evidence of ancient Jewish life here. Yet Palestinian officials and institutions tend to dismiss the finds as part of an effort to build a Zionist history here.

In other words, while the Israeli narrative that guides the government plan focuses largely-- although not exclusively--on Jewish history and links to the land, the Palestinian narrative heightens tensions, pushing the Israelis into a greater confrontational stance.

Well, those Palestinians are always angry about something.

Apparently tearing down buildings is focusing on "history," while downplaying archeology is "heightening tensions." Good to know.

(h/t Angry Arab)

To recap: On February 19, Laura Rozen reported on Foreign Policy's website that Freeman, who is known for his realist foreign policy views and colorful character, had been appointed by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair to head the NIC. Within hours, Steve Rosen, formerly of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, had sounded the alarm on the grounds that Freeman is too sympathetic to Saudi Arabia and too hostile to Israel. Over the next two-and-a-half weeks, Freeman's critics pressed their case, adding to the complaints about his views on the Middle East allegations that he is unduly accommodating to China's leadership. Along the way, an inspector general began an investigation of Freeman's financial ties to foreign governments, and Freeman's supporters launched a counteroffensive. And, on Tuesday, as the campaign against him was gaining traction on Capitol Hill, Freeman withdrew from the position, blasting the "Israel Lobby" on his way out the door.

That's a lot of information, almost all of it from blogs or other Web publications. The Times did not address the controversy once until after Freeman withdrew, publishing a brief article by Mark Mazzetti in Wednesday's paper, and a front-page follow-up by Mazzetti and Helene Cooper on Thursday. The reticence of major newspapers--and especially the Times--about the story while it was unfolding was noticed, and criticized, by both pro- and anti-Freeman advocates.

Marx additionally notes that the Washington Post, being "the Times's big legacy-media competition on foreign policy stories, was also slow to cover the story, though it jumped in a day earlier than the Times--i.e., before Freeman withdrew."