Tag Archives: Israel

Names and Narrative: Palestinian Territories/ Israeli Territories

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Summary: Almost every major media outlet refers to the Gaza Strip and the west bank of the Jordan River as “Palestinian Territories”, when in fact, those areas are actually “Israeli territories” and “Palestinian Authority Territories.”

Most places in the world are part-and-parcel of a country.  However, there are situations when a place is administered by a government which has not incorporated the land and assumed full sovereignty.

The United States of America historically had several large territories as the country expanded, including Alaska and Hawaii.  Today, the USA continues to have several territories including:

  • Puerto Rico
  • US Virgin Islands
  • Guam
  • Northern Mariana Islands
  • American Samoa

These territories have some rights and protections of the US government, but not others such as the right to vote.

Israeli Territories and
Palestinian Authority Territories
1995 to Present

It is easy and obvious to understand that there are no “Palestinian Territories”, because there is no such thing as the State of Palestine (as of this writing, in any event).  Most of the area east of the Green Line (EGL/ west bank of the Jordan River, WBJR), is controlled and administered by Israel.

Under the Oslo Accords, EGL was divided into three parts: Areas A, B and C. Area A was handed over to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and it has complete control of that land.  Area C is “Israeli Territory” and is completely controlled by Israel. Area B is a hybrid, which is under the civil administration of the Palestinian Authority, but security control of Israel.

Areas ABC
Breakdown of Areas A, B and C
on the west bank of the Jordan River

Gaza would ostensibly be called “Palestinian Authority Territory”, however, the PA has no control in the area.  The governing party is Hamas, which won elections in 2006 and routed any PA personnel from the region in 2007.  Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

Israeli Territories
1967 to 1995

The Oslo Accords between the State of Israel and the PLO started the process of breaking the Israeli territories into areas with local Palestinian Arab control.  Before the Oslo Accords, all of Gaza and EGL/ west bank of the Jordan River (WBJR) were only Israeli territories.

Israel took control of Gaza from Egypt in June 1967 during the Six Day War.  Egypt had amassed a large army and announced its intention of attacking Israel, so Israel preemptively attacked Egypt and seized Gaza.  In response to Israel’s preemptive attack on Egypt, Jordan attacked Israel from the EGL/WBJR. Jordan lost the region and gave up all claims to the land in 1988.

Jordan and Egyptian Territory
1949 to 1967

In May 1948, the Palestinian Arabs and five Arabs armies attacked Israel as it declared independence from Great Britain. At the end of the war in 1949, Jordan assumed control of much of Judea and Samaria in an area which became known as the “west bank of the Jordan River (WBJR)” in the United Nations, ultimately shortened to the “West Bank”.  Jordan annexed that area in 1950, gave all Arabs living there citizenship and expelled all of the Jews from the area, counter to the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Egypt assumed control of the Gaza Strip, but did not annex the area.

British Territory 1922 to 1948
Ottoman Territory 1517 to 1922

At the end of World War I, the defeated Ottoman Empire was carved up into several areas (including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan) which were administered by the French and British.  The lands currently known as WBJR and Gaza were part-and-parcel of the British Mandate and had no unique laws or characteristics.  Similarly under Ottoman rule for hundreds of years before the British, those areas were neither divided nor distinct.

As detailed above, there are not, nor have there ever been “Palestinian Territories”. Such terminology inherently upgrades the status of the Palestinian Authority and eliminates the legal role and status that Israel has in Areas B and C.

Related First.One.Through articles

Names and Narrative: The West Bank / Judea and Samaria

Nicholas Kristof’s “Arab Land”

The Subtle Discoloration of History: Shuafat

The Legal Israeli Settlements

Ramifications of Ignoring American Antisemitism

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Summary: Despite furious discussions of attacks on blacks in America and of growing anti-Semitism in Europe, an American Jew is over two times more likely to experience a hate crime than an African American or an American Muslim.

 brooklyn attack
Torching of Jewish-owned cars in Brooklyn, NY

The last eighteen months witnessed a terrible spike in hate. In Europe, anti-Semitism filled the streets with riots and shootings in the heart of European capitals. In America, several blacks were killed by police officers which prompted protests and federal investigations into possible police bias. American Muslims protested a growing trend of “Islamophobia” as they feared being targeted due to jihadist terrorism around the world.

Yet the situation for American Jews is rarely discussed, and when it is, it is viewed as generally satisfactory, especially when compared to the rest of the world.

The statistics may surprise you.

Hate Crimes in America

The FBI compiles a list of hate crimes every year. It tracks the nature of the crime, and breaks the attacks into categories by race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability and gender identity. The data is compiled from information gathered from over 15,000 law enforcement agencies around the country.

In 2013, 49.3% of hate crimes were racially motivated, while 20.2% and 16.9% were based on sexual-orientation and religion, respectively. Within the racially motivated crimes, 66.5% were targeted against blacks. For sexual orientation hate crimes, 60.9% were against gays, and for religion-based hate crimes, 60.3% were against Jews.

In total, hate crimes seemed to heavily weigh against blacks, and indeed, crimes against blacks made up one-third of all hate crimes in 2013. However, the black population is significantly larger than other minority groups.

When taking into account that Jews make up only 1.8% of the population of the United States, while gays are roughly 3% and blacks are 13.2% of the population, respectively, the relative frequency of attacks against Jews is much more significant.

There was roughly one anti-Semitic hate crime in the US each year for every 7700 Jews. That compared to an attack against gays for every 10,700 gays and an attack against blacks for every 17,600 African Americans. For Muslims, the rate was one attack per 17,000 Muslims. That means that an average Jew can expect to experience a hate crime at over twice the rate of blacks or Muslims. Jews are the most disproportionately attacked minority in the United States by a significant margin.

Fortunately, hate crimes do not often involve murder.  In 2013, 0.1% of the crimes involved murder and 0.3% were for reported rapes.  Assault (aggravated and simple), intimidation and attacks on property were the typical forms of hate crimes.

Impact on Obama’s World View

Is it possible that the relatively small number of murders that occur in US hate crimes impacts President Obama’s world view?  As Brett Stephens of the Wall Street Journal wrote, “Can there be a rational, negotiable, relatively reasonable bigot? Barack Obama thinks so.”

In May 2015, President Obama had an interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg where they discussed ISIS, Iran and Israel.  Obama clearly stated “that the supreme leader [of Iran] is anti-Semitic ” but he also stated firmly that the Iranian leader would not risk his country’s security in pursuit of such hatred. “At the margins, where the costs are low, they [Iran] may pursue policies based on hatred as opposed to self-interest.  But the costs here are not low, and what we’ve been very clear [about] to the Iranian regime over the past six years is that we will continue to ratchet up the costs, not simply for their anti-Semitism, but also for whatever expansionist ambitions they may have. That’s what the sanctions represent. That’s what the military option I’ve made clear I preserve represents.”

Has Obama’s view of anti-Semitism been colored by the experience in the United States? Does he simply acknowledge that anti-Semitism exists, but that the “costs are low” to both the victim and the abuser?  Brett Stephens wrote convincingly that the Iranian leader’s actions are driven by a fanatical zeal which has shown it does not mind incurring very high costs.  Stephens concluded: “Maybe Mr. Obama doesn’t understand the compelling power of ideology.”

I would add to that sentiment, that Obama has shown by his (in)actions in the Ukraine that the United States will not stand by obligations to support an ally, and therefore the costs to Iran will be very low. Despite commitments and treaties as outlined in the Budapest Memorandums, the US, United Kingdom and others let Russia invade and annex sections of the Ukraine without any intervention. Does Obama think that the Iranian leader doesn’t read the news?

 

In the United States, anti-Semitism remains in full force. It has remained largely “low cost” (to paraphrase Obama) to both victims and perpetrators thus far.  Under President Obama’s foreign policy, it would appear that Iranian anti-Semitism will only become a “high cost” for Israel.

Related First One Through article:

Netanyahu’s View of Obama: Trust and Consequences

The “Unclean” Jew in the Crosshairs

Delivery of the Fictional Palestinian Keys

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Summary: Imagine perceiving the future when you cannot see the present nor recognize the past.

One of the most famous paintings in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican is by Pietro Perugino, entitled “Christ Handing the Keys of the Kingdom to St. Peter.” The painting itself is notable for several important contributions to the world of art such as displaying three dimensions using linear perspective and a vanishing point. The subject matter is also an interesting metaphor for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today.

keys

The Painting

The subject of the painting reflects the establishment of the role of the pope in Catholicism. Jesus’s handing of the “keys of heaven” to his disciple Peter was considered establishing a connection between earth and the heavenly realm.

The center of the painting focuses on the actual handing of the keys: one key is held by Jesus, while a second key remains dangling in the foreground. The viewer does not really notice two keys, but the single dangling key. From that key, eyes are drawn up towards the open doors of the Temple of Solomon, displayed as an interpretation of the eight-sided Dome of the Rock. This is a metaphor of the connection between the divine to the physical and up again to the divine: the keys connecting Jesus and Peter, and then the dangling key from Peter to the Temple.

In the painting, the Temple of Solomon is sitting on a plaza surrounded by people and triumphal arches of Constantine. It was the emperor Constantine that welcomed Christianity to the Roman Empire in 325CE. While the Temple of Solomon sat in Jerusalem, these arches were in Rome, near the Vatican.  By integrating these themes, Perugino brought Jerusalem to Rome and had Christianity flanking the holy Temple.

 The Metaphor of Keys

Keys are often used as metaphors in art and poetry. Keys are not only tools for gaining access, but connote ownership. The holder of the key is considered both the rightful owner of whatever is locked, and is the sole person who has the means of gaining access to whatever the lock has sealed. In the case of this famous painting, Jesus holds the heavenly key in gold, which is paired with a darker key for Peter. The twining is a partnership bridging heaven and earth, with Peter as the rightful owner of the earthly key. The key itself opens the Temple in Jerusalem, the physical gateway back to heaven.

The brilliance of the painting lies in the suspension of the dark key. Set against a plain background in the center of the painting, a viewer has no choice but to be drawn to it. The key anchors the focus, and the story is built around it.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The Middle East has a long history of using keys, both physical and metaphorical. In 1917, the Mayor of Jerusalem handed over “keys of Jerusalem” to British General Allenby as a sign of surrender, and in 1841, the Ottomans handed the keys to Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem to Jews as a symbol of their control of the holy site. Even today, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has a key that is held by a Muslim family as was the tradition dating back to 1246, even though the church has no religious significance to Islam.

Many Palestinians carry their own physical keys with symbolic messages today: that they are the rightful owners to homes in Israel and are waiting to move there.

keyboy

The skeleton keys are not the actual keys to homes that grandparents abandoned in 1948 while they waited for Arab armies to destroy the nascent Jewish State.  These Palestinian keys are representational of their quest to a “right of return” to homes in Israel. It has become a physical manifestation of their view of themselves as refugees. However, both the keys and status are manufactured.

As detailed in “Palestinian “Refugees” or “SAPs”?” there are only about 30,000 refugees (or more accurately, Internally Displaced Persons) alive from 1948, as refugee status cannot be handed down like an inheritance. Further, a refugee is someone who left a country, not a house. International law covers refugees return to a country, not an abandoned building (and Palestine was never a country).

Regardless, the acting President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, continues to put the “refugees” as a key issue in negotiations with Israelis. He does this with the blessings of the United Nations which is complicit in misleading the Palestinians.

The United Nations not only created a unique agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) separate from the organization that handles all other refugees in the world (UNHCR), but uniquely enables the descendants of Palestinian refugees to get services from the UN.  As elaborated in “Help Refugees: Shut the UNRWA, fund the UNHCR” the staffing of the UNRWA now exceeds the total number of Palestinian refugees.

The larger issue with UNRWA is not their giving extended services to millions of Palestinians who are not refugees, but the UN agency’s active encouragement of Palestinians to seek to move to, and delegitimize Israel.

key doorway
Entryway to UNRWA camp in Bethlehem with a large key atop

Both the United Nations and Palestinians have manufactured a particular narrative:

  • Palestine was an Arab country in 1948
  • Palestinian Arabs were the only indigenous people who had lived there for centuries
  • Jews ethnically cleansed Palestine of its Arab inhabitants
  • Per the points above, Israel is not a legitimate state as the Jews are interlopers who stole the native Arab land

Such story stands in stark contrast to basic facts:

  • Palestine was never an independent country
  • The region and Mandate of Palestine had a mixture of Jews and Arabs, with Jews accounting for over 30% of the population in 1948
  • More Arabs than Jews moved to Palestine under the British Mandate 1922-1948
  • Many Palestinian Arabs were not land owners but tenants in the land
  • Most Arabs fled from their homes in 1948, while they hoped and waited for Arab armies from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Egypt to destroy Israel
  • Israel welcomed non-Jews, giving 160,000 non-Jews citizenship in 1948, in sharp contrast to the Jordanian and Palestinian Arabs who expelled all Jews from Judea and Samaria

As in the painting “Delivery of the Keys,” UNRWA has  handed Palestinians a narrative and claim to Israel: the Arabs are the rightful owners of Israel. The United Nations paints these “refugees” against a bleak background (like the key in the painting) to emphasize their stateless position. The key above the portal at the UNRWA camp is a potent symbol to all Palestinians, that it is through the United Nations that millions of Arabs will migrate to Israel. UNRWA and the Palestinians have established a pairing of keys like Jesus and Peter in the painting above: Palestinian Arabs are the owners of Israel, and the gateway to getting that land is through the United Nations.

The Vanishing Point

The vanishing point is where eyes are drawn to in the horizon.  It is a place where parallel lines converge giving depth to a two dimensional painting.  It is also the point where things become increasingly smaller and faint, disappearing altogether.

In the Perugino painting, the vanishing point is the open door to the Temple of Solomon. It is this worldly portal to the heavens, where man’s prayers ascend to ethereal songs.  The viewer of the painting is pulled to the very spot where the material world melts – indeed, the vanishing point.

Today, a person could look at the artwork with another perspective.

The Temple of Solomon, the most holy place on earth for Jews, is replaced with an Islamic shrine.  The Temple, and Jewish presence has seemingly disappeared.  In this Christian piece of art, the flanking of Constantian arches and Jesus and Peter in the foreground are meant to underscore that the pope and Christianity are the proper pathways to God. Judaism has faded to Islam, and both are replaced by Jesus’s emissary.

Over Jerusalem Day 2015, the vanishing point added an additional dimension.

The current pope, Pope Francis, canonized two nuns who were born in the holy land in the 1840s, while it was part of the Ottoman Empire. One nun was born in Jerusalem and another was born in the Galilee.  Yet the pope decided to refer to these nuns as “Palestinians,” not Ottomans and not Israeli (while the status of Jerusalem is under debate, the only people that consider the Galilee part of Palestine are Hamas-supporters who seek the destruction of Israel).  If one chooses to be generous and argue that the region was called Palestine in the 1840s, does the pope refer to people from regions like the Sahara (Saharans?), the Rockies (Rockies?) or Patagonia (Patagonians?), or does he call them Libyans, Americans and Chileans?

Is the pope seeking a new replacement theology, where not only has the Vatican replaced Jerusalem as the center of divine revelation, but history itself can be updated? Is Israel being supplanted today the way the painting at the Vatican shows Judaism being replaced?

The news media has certainly rallied to such vision.  The New York Times decided to cover the celebrations of Jerusalem Day on May 17, 2015 from a purely Arab point of view.  The day in which Israelis celebrate the reunification of their holiest city from which they were expelled and barred from reentry was characterized as a moment of protest. The atrocities committed by Jordanian and Palestinian Arabs during 1949-1967 vanished and this year’s celebration was mocked.

The Times questioned the very essence of Israeli rights to Jerusalem as it quoted a Palestinian man ““How would you feel if somebody marched through your living room, without your permission?””  Whose house is this anyway?

 

A Vanishing Point has interesting features: our eyes are drawn there; but the subject matter blurs and disappears.

The world’s attention is focused on the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Jews and Palestinian Arabs are focused on Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.  As they do, Palestinians grab hold of the dangling key and Israelis don’t see the golden key in their hand. Everyone wonders what the future will bring and ventures predictions as they gaze into the distance.

And as they do so, all reality disappears.

Related First One Through articles:

In Israel, Everybody’s New

The Holocaust and the Nakba

The Arguments over Jerusalem

“Arab” Land

Cause and Effect: Making Gaza

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Summary: The media frequently touches on the suffering that takes place in Gaza. Yet, the depth of their coverage of Arab misery never approaches any level of analysis on the root cause for the Israeli-Arab conflict.

 

The Atlantic published an article on May 2, 2015 called “Gaza is Hell” (all in quotes) which described the miserable living conditions of Arabs living in Gaza. The 2000-word article covered the area and quoted the residents, but never scratched the surface of the underlying cause of the residents’ misery.

atlanticmay2
The Atlantic magazine,
May 2015

The problem in the coverage was in five key areas, long ignored by the media and politicians.

  1. Hamas isn’t “resisting” Israel. It wants to destroy Israel.
  2. Palestinian Arabs never ruled Gaza until 2005.
  3. Israel’s wars with Gaza have all been defensive.
  4. There are no “refugees” in Gaza.
  5. Much of the Gazan misery is self-inflicted.

The Atlantic article did not fall victim to a sixth category, which is actually a subset of lie #5: Hamas is the democratically-elected choice of Palestinian Arabs.

 HAMAS’S MISSION

Hamas’ mission is very clear for any literate individual: the complete destruction of Israel. It lays out its goal repeatedly in its 1988 Charter, the most antisemitic charter of any governing body in the world, including the Nazi party when it took power in 1933.

For those who cannot read (former US President Jimmy Carter?) there are dozens of recent videos from Hamas officials which call for the murder of Jews and destruction of Israel.

Yet, The Atlantic echoes soft lies in its piece stating that “Hamas’s rhetoric is all about resistance,” and “Hamas advocates militant resistance to Israel.” Nope. Resistance means opposing a force. Hamas is the force that seeks jihad and the total destruction of Israel. Any statement that says that Hamas is a resistance movement, inherently makes the argument that the basic existence of the State of Israel is an active force against Palestinians.

GAZA’S FIRST INDEPENDENCE and
ISRAEL’S DEFENSIVE WARS

The mutant siblings of lie #1 that Gazans are “resisting” Israel, are lie #2, that Palestinians have always been self-governing in a country of their own, and lie #3, that Gazans just want to live in peace alongside Israel but Israel continues to attack it.

Alice Su, the author of The Atlantic article is based in Jordan, a country that is over 50% Palestinian Arab. That country, like Gaza, was part of the 1922 British Mandate from the League of Nations. Before the British ruled Gaza, the Ottoman Turks were in charge, and after the British came the Egyptians. None of these rulers made it into Su’s description which starts a historical background of Gaza in 1967: “Gaza, which was under Israeli occupation from 1967 until 2005”. With some additional background, it would have been clear to any reader that Gaza was never ruled by local Arabs (the Ottomans were Muslims but not Arabs), and it has only been since Israel left the territory in 2005 that Gazans have ruled over themselves.

Additionally, the various wars that Israel fought against the Arabs including 1948 and 1967 were defensive wars against several Arab countries (including the Arabs in Gaza). The more recent wars from Gaza were also defensive, in response to Hamas’s rocket attacks, terror tunnels and abduction and murder of Israeli teenagers. Yet Su stated that “Israel has also launched three military operations in Gaza since the Hamas takeover,” which suggested that Israel was the aggressor, which it was not.

Arab amnesia repeats itself today, as Su writes about a Gazan: “They keep asking him why the Israelis bombed them. “I tell them, ‘Naseeb. This is our fate,’”  The Gazan assumed a completely passive stance in the conflict and Su did not educate the reader about: the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers; the rockets fired from Gaza into Israel; and the terror tunnels Hamas dug into Israel to kidnap Israelis.

It was only eight paragraphs later that Su brought up the tunnels: “Israel has restricted imports of key building materials like cement and steel, out of concern that they’ll be used to build tunnels and facilitate terrorist activity.”  Such concern looks out-of-place without any history regarding the Hamas tunnels which were used for terrorist activities.  The Israeli ground invasion into Gaza in 2014 was specifically to destroy those tunnels.

To underscore the point of misdirecting the reader, consider the title of the Atlantic article.  It comes from a resident of Gaza. ““Gaza is hell,” 20-year-old Ahmad told me in Shejaiya, one of the worst-hit neighborhoods in Gaza City.”

Shejaiya was the neighborhood with the greatest number of terror tunnels, many coming straight from people’s homes. That is why the Israelis concentrated its efforts on the neighborhood in a defensive action.

Why did The Atlantic run an article with a headline quote from a man who was part of the terrorist infrastructure?  Why did it deliberately mislead readers into thinking these people were merely passive homeowners who were bombed indiscriminately by Israel?

REFUGEES IN THEIR HOME

Su’s article describes refugees and refugee camps in Gaza. Now that Gaza is not occupied by Israel, Egypt, the British or anyone else, these people cannot be considered “refugees” since these “Palestinian Arabs” are living in “Palestine” run by themselves.

The refugee myth has continued to compound itself as this misnomer is incorrect on additional levels.  Refugee status cannot be handed down like inheritance through the generations.  Refugees can only be from a country, not a house or region.

At the most generous, these people can be considered descendants of “internally displaced” people from the region of Palestine which was occupied for centuries until 2005. Yet Su used the term refugee several times:

“a refugee camp initially built to shelter 9,000 out of the 750,000 Palestinians who became refugees when Israel was established in 1948. More than half a century later, the camp hosts more than 21,000 refugees,”

The description above elegantly covers many soft lies: the ones mentioned above, and that Arabs became refugees when they actively launched a war to destroy Israel; they were not passive “when Israel was established in 1948.”

SELF-INFLICTED MISERY

Su did get several things right, such as “Gaza remains in ruins.” But why?

Su pointed out that “Hamas, the Islamic militant group that governs Gaza… since the organization defeated the PLO-affiliated Fatah party in Palestinian elections in 2006.” Hamas was chosen by the Palestinians in 2006 and polls continue to show Palestinians favoring Hamas should elections ever be held again. The various quotes of Arabs on the street in Su’s article affirm that view: “Another college student said she’d lost faith in politics, but would vote for Hamas if an election were held now.”

Yet Su would have you believe that Gazans are simply passive victims in the situation. That position is encapsulated in her article: “Those who survived last summer’s war are trapped in 360 square kilometers of trauma and contradiction, choking on war and blockade, disillusioned with the Palestinian leadership and disempowered by the aid community. They sit without jobs, relief, or means of rebuilding, waiting for things to change.” Untrue.

  • The Palestinians voted for Hamas, well aware of its charter and calls to destroy Israel. The fact that Palestinians are “disillusioned” with their leadership is only because Hamas hasn’t been successful in their genocidal mission.
  • The phrase “disempowered by the aid community” is strange but Su’s meaning becomes clear when she later writes that foreign aid is slow in coming “because donors are put off by the political deadlock between Palestinian parties.”  A Lie. The aid is being held up until there are guarantees that Hamas will not have access to the funds as it is a terrorist organization.

The catalyst for war is Hamas.

  • If Gazans would turn away from Hamas, there would be no blockade.
  • If Gazans did not allow Hamas to build terror tunnels in their houses, the neighborhood would not get demolished.
  • If Hamas were disbanded and outlawed, foreign aid would flow into Gaza for rebuilding.
  • If Hamas would not attack Israel, there would be peace.

The simple cause-and-effect of the situation in Gaza is about the people’s support of a genocidal anti-Semitic regime.  But writing about such reality would make it harder to sympathize with the picture laid before readers in The Atlantic.

Scarier still, is the support for the insidious paring: Hamas with a nuclear Iran. That is what keeps the hopes of Gazans alive under the shade of complicit countries and malevolent media.

Related FirstOneThrough article:

The Death of Civilians; the Three Shades of Sorrow

Actions and Adjectives: Cluster Bombs

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Summary: When it comes to reporting on the death of civilians, it is interesting to review how and when some media outlets choose to simply report facts, rather than delve into critical reporting. Here is a comparison of the New York Times discussion of cluster bombs being used by Syria and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Remarkably, the party that is lambasted the most in the articles is Israel.

 Actions and Adjectives

The “Actions and Adjectives” series discusses the media’s use of language. Oftentimes, the press chooses to be fairly clinical in describing a situation, while at other times, it chooses to direct (or redirect) the conversation in a particular fashion.

For an example, an article can have different ways of describing a car crash:

  1. “Three people died in a car crash,” is purely factual.
  2. “Three people were killed in a car crash when a teenager crashed his car into oncoming traffic,” provides more color about the incident, giving an account of how the crash happened.
  3. “Three innocent people were killed when an irate teenager plowed his car into oncoming traffic after the teen had a big fight with his girlfriend,” takes the article to an entirely different place.

While all of the sentences are factual, the third description does two significant things:

  • It gets the reader to be more engaged- “innocent people were killed” by an “irate teenager,” phraseology gets the reader more excited and angry.
  • Further, the conversation moves the reader away from the victims, towards the driver. The reader is intentionally led towards possible motivation and background which caused the incident. Most likely, a more detailed description of the driver and his relationship would follow in the article. Should the balance of the article focus on teenage relationships, the headline would unlikely be about the car crash; the accident was there solely as a tool to delve into the main focus, which in this example, is the potential danger and ramifications of teenage love.

With that general overview about word choice and focus, consider the New York Times description of the use cluster bombs by Syria and Saudi Arabia.

Cluster Bombs Used by Saudi Arabia

On May 3, 2015, the New York Times published a piece entitled “Saudi-led Group Said to Use Cluster Bombs in Yemen“. The 14 -paragraph article showed up at the bottom of page 10 and discussed a report by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) which concluded that Saudi Arabia used cluster bombs on at least two occasions. No casualty figures were supplied.

Saudi Arabia cluster bombs

The article made clear that “cluster munitions, which are banned by much of the world, though not by the United States, Saudi Arabia or Yemen,… pose a long-term danger to civilians because of the unexploded bomblets they leave behind.” The article included a single condemnation of KSA for its use of the weapons: “Saudi Arabia has come under growing international criticism for the high civilian death toll during its aerial campaign, which has been carried out over more than five weeks alongside a coalition of Arab states and with intelligence and logistical support from the United States. More than 1,000 people have been killed in fighting since late March, when Saudis said their military was intervening to roll back gains by the Houthis, a Shiite rebel group that had captured large parts of Yemen and forced the president, supported by Saudi Arabia, into exile.”

These sentences may look unremarkable on their own, but consider what was actually written and the direction of the article as a whole:

  • It was clear that the parties that engaged in the use of the cluster bombs had not signed onto the treaty barring their usage
  • The “unexploded bomblets” were left behind by the cluster bombs, not by the Saudis which were a step removed
  • KSA was portrayed in a negative manner only a single time in the article: “growing international criticism”
  • The aerial campaign was described as having wide support from a “coalition” which included “support from the United States”
  • A rationale was given for the KSA military attack- to “roll back” a “rebel group”

The article stayed roughly true to the HRW report. This was in very stark comparison to an article in the New York Times published on August 28, 2014 called “Heavy Use of Banned Cluster Bombs Reported in Syria”

Cluster Bombs Used by Syria

In September, FirstOneThrough wrote a detailed analysis of the August 2014 article which outlined how the story about Syria’s use of cluster bombs ended up becoming harsh a critique of Israel. Below is some added comparisons to this week’s NYT article.

The 2014 article had a single negative comment for Syria’s use of cluster bombs, attributed to a HRW lawyer: “This year’s use of cluster munitions shows that while these weapons have been banned by most countries of the world, some actors still flout international opinion and standards,” Mary Wareham, the advocacy director of Human Rights Watch’s arms division,” in a statement that did not specifically mention Syria.

However, the Times did heap condemnation many times upon Israel, even though it was presumably not the focus of the article.  The author, Rick Gladstone, redirected the timely article about Syria towards Israel’s use of the cluster bombs eight years earlier.

 “Israel-Lebanon conflict that triggered global outrage and contributed to the establishment of the ban convention. Israel’s military was widely criticized at home and abroad for its heavy cluster-bomb use in Lebanon,”

Gladstone’s 16-paragraph article mentioned Israel in six of the paragraphs. In almost each case, Israel was lambasted.

  • In the 2015 article, KSA had “growing international criticism” while in 2014, Israel had “global outrage” and was “widely criticized” and many other uses of such critical language for Israel, including “insane and monstrous”  and “completely immoral.” Syria was not condemned by name.
  • In 2015, KSA fought against “the Houthis, a Shiite rebel group,”  However, in the 2014 article, Hezbollah, a Shiite army that is considered a terrorist group by the United States, was mentioned only once while “Israel-Lebanon” was used repeatedly.
  • The 2015 article articulated the reason KSA waged its aerial campaign; the 2014 article did not describe Hezbollah’s firing rockets into Israel and blowing up military vehicles which initiated the war.

 

As evidenced in this week’s KSA article on cluster bombs, the Times can write an article about the current news when it desires. It has also shown that it is deft at inflaming passion and redirecting an article towards Israel, as it did in August 27, 2014.  Why did the New York Times report on cluster bombs in such a different manner?

In August 2014, Israel and Hamas had just ended a bloody war in which the New York Times covered Israel as an evil, murderous aggressor against civilians.  The story of cluster bombs in Syria served as an excuse to continue to portray Israel as indifferent to the lives of civilians in a war.  The choice of critical adjectives and adverbs such as “insane,”  “monstrous” and “immoral” for Israel were meant as permanent monikers.

Other questions arise when reviewing the two cluster bomb -articles:

  • Why does the New York Times goes out of its way to portray Saudi Arabia as an ally of the United States that receives “support” but does not do the same for Israel?
  • Why was the United States’ usage of cluster bombs in 2009 buried at the bottom of the 2015 article, and the thousands that the US dropped in Vietnam mentioned in passing in the 2014 article?

Articles do not just convey facts. They tell a story that the editors want you to follow and believe. What do you believe?

Related First One Through articles:

Every Picture Tells a Story- Whitewashing the World (except Israel) 

New York Times Talking Turkey

 

International-Domestic Abuse: Obama and Netanyahu

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Summary: The relationship between Israel and the United States is not one between peers. While the United States is a super-power that protects Israel in many ways, Obama’s use of its dominant position has led to an abusive relationship based on control.

 

In an ideal relationship, parties treat each other with mutual respect and care. Close and special relationships, such as marriage, are especially intimate due to their exclusive nature. When such a relationship turns, and one party chooses to assert control over the other, that physical or psychological trauma is referred to as “domestic abuse.”

DOMESTIC ABUSE

Domestic abuse is a phenomenon that has a long sad history. It typically happens when a husband/boyfriend uses his power (money or physical size) to intimidate and harm his partner. As described in a blog:

“Domestic violence and abuse are used for one purpose and one purpose only: to gain and maintain total control over you. An abuser doesn’t “play fair.” Abusers use fear, guilt, shame, and intimidation to wear you down and keep you under his or her thumb. Your abuser may also threaten you, hurt you, or hurt those around you.”

The aspect of control through intimidation is a key component of domestic abuse. One party is effectively threatened to comply with the wishes of the dominant party. The independent will is crushed with the threats of or actual violence (active or passive) or from withholding a needed or cherished item. The abused partner has nowhere to turn, as it is reliant on the abuser.

The dynamic can be seen between countries as well. The historic special relationship between the United States and Israel, has devolved into such an abusive relationship.

Intimacy

The bond between the US and Israel is unique in many respects.

The relationship is not just one of shared values, but Israel relies on the US in several key areas:

  • Trade: The US is Israel’s largest export partner (over 2.5x number two UK)
  • Military edge: The US gives Israel $3 billion of military aid each year
  • Protection at the UN: The US protects Israel at the United Nations Security Council, often as the sole vote to protect the country from condemnation

The three aspects of Israel’s heavy reliance on the United States have come under pressure over the last few years: the BDS movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions) has attempted to hurt trade; a nuclear Iran would create an imbalance for Israel’s security; and the protective US shield at the United Nations is being threatened.

obama scorn bibi

OBAMA-NETANYAHU
INTERNATIONAL-DOMESTIC ABUSE

A natural relationship built on shared values, now more closely resembles an abuser-victim dynamic, as Obama increasingly asserted his powerful influence over Israel:

  • In 2010, Obama gave Netanyahu a series of demands to get the Israel-Palestinian talks moving including freezing settlements. Obama walked out of the meeting and left Netanyahu to stew. Israeli newspapers described the shame and weakness of Netanyahu. Netanyahu complied with Obama’s demand.
  • In 2011, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Obama had an exchange where they called Netanyahu “a liar” and terrible person with whom to deal.
  • In 2012, the Obama administration removed all of the supporting clauses for Israeli positions from the Democratic platform that had been there for years (Hamas is a terrorist state; Palestinian “refugees” would be relocated to Palestine, not Israel; future borders would not follow the 1949 Armistice Lines; Jerusalem is the united capital of Israel).
  • In 2013, while Iran threatened to destroy Israel, Obama entered into negotiations with the Iranians, preventing Israel from taking any actions against Iran’s nuclear program.
  • In 2013, Obama declined the invitation to address the Israeli Knesset. Instead he addressed a group of students at the same time stating his desire to speak to the Israeli people, as if the democratically elected parliament was not representative of Israelis. Consider the depth of the insult to Israel, as Obama spoke to the Egyptian parliament (in 2009) as representatives of Egypt.
  • In 2013 the Obama administration demanded Israel release Palestinian terrorists convicted of murder. Nothing was asked from the Palestinians. Netanyahu complied.
  • In 2014, when Israeli three teenagers were killed, Obama asked Israel to act with “restraint.” However, when two American journalists were killed by ISIS, Obama went to war.
  • In 2014, members of the Obama administration chose to disparage Netanyahu, calling him a “chickensh*t”
  • In 2015, Obama snubbed Netanyahu at his address to a joint session of Congress, and got 58 Democratic members of Congress to walk out as well.
  • In 2015, Obama is enabling Iran to become a nuclear state. Iran has repeatedly threatened to destroy Israel, and Obama has refused to sell Israel the required defensive weaponry such as bunker busters.
  • Most recently, Obama has threatened to withhold his United Nations vote to protect Israel.

The last two actions taken by Obama are particularly frightening to Israel’s Netanyahu.

Nuclear Iran: Enabling Iran to obtain nuclear weapons is a direct existential threat to Israel. Iran has threatened to destroy Israel and has a long history of supporting terrorist groups that attack Israel (Hezbollah and Hamas) with weapons and financing. With the government of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, the country becomes an existential threat, its proxy armies become an enormous threat, and the ability for Israel to attack Iran is significantly weakened.

Further, Iran becoming a nuclear state would create an arms race in the region, as other enemies of Israel like Saudi Arabia will also seek to obtain nuclear weapons.

Withholding UN vote: The United States has used its vote on the United Nations Security Council to protect Israel from a wide range of actions including premature Palestinian statehood and harsh economic sanctions.  If Obama follows through with this threat to move away from Israel, Israel would come under tremendous financial and security pressure.

CONGRESS TO ISRAEL’S RESCUE

Congress has taken note of the terrible trend in Obama’s actions and has taken steps to protect Israel.

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Senator Lindsay Graham with Israeli PM Netanyahu

In April 2015, the Senate passed a bill making it difficult for any company to do business with a company or country that supported BDS of Israel.

Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner invited Netanyahu to address Congress about the Iran nuclear negotiations. That speech launched the momentum for a role for Congress in the Iranian nuclear program negotiations.

It is difficult for Congress to take direct actions against the president’s policies at the United Nations, as he controls the vote. However, Congress controls funding of the United Nations as well as the Palestinian Authority. Senator Lindsay Graham has stated his intention to use the power of the purse to prevent unilateral UN actions against Israel. “Any effort by the French, the Jordanians or anyone to avoid direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians over the peace process, anyone who tries to take this [resolution] to the U.N. Security Council, there will be a violent backlash by the Congress that could include suspending funding to the United Nations,” Graham said.

All three issues on which Israel relies on the United States are under threat by Obama, and only the US Congress is attempting to ameliorate the situation.

If Israel’s neighbors did not threaten to destroy the country both directly and indirectly, perhaps Israel would not feel alarmed.

If Israel were not surrounded by an Arab winter inferno, perhaps its fears would not be so immediate.

If Israel had many allies in the world, perhaps the abusive relationship between Obama and Netanyahu would not be as upsetting and painful.

However, the realities are different.  As such, Netanyahu has turned to Congress to become Israel’s domestic violence hotline .  What a sad state of affairs.

Related First One Through articles:

Israel is a Small Country

Israel cannot afford to be smug about its security

Obama not concerned about timeliness of Israel’s security

Israel Lends a Hand, Again

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Summary: The Israeli military and civilians come to the aid of people around the world in times of need – even to countries that do not recognize its right to exist.

On April 25, 2015, an enormous earthquake shook Nepal, killing over 5,000 people. Within 48 hours, Israel sent a delegation of medical personnel to help aid in the recovery efforts and treating survivors.

By April 28, Israel had deployed 260 people to Nepal. The entire rest of the world deployed 276 people.

ShaareZedek Nepal
Israelis embark to aid victims of Nepal earthquake,
April 2015

The Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem is playing a leading role as it has on various emergency missions such as in the Philippines (2009), Haiti (2010) and Japan (2011).  The personnel include:

  • Prof. Jonathan Halevy- Director General, Expert in Internal Medicine
  • Dr. Ofer Merin – Deputy Director General and Director of Trauma Services
  • Dr. Tamar Lachish  – Director of Infectious Diseases Unit
  • Dr. Sefi Mendelowitz – Department of Pediatrics
  • Dr. Avi Alpert – Department of Emergency Medicine
  • Prof. Amos Peyser – Director, Department of Orthopedics
  • Dr. Giora Weiser – Pediatric Emergency Department
  • Dr. Harel Arzi – Spine Unit
  • Deganit Kovliner – Nurse, Department of Emergency Medicine

These efforts are a continuation of the emergency medicine that was spear-headed by Dr. David Applebaum.  Dr. Applebaum ran the Shaare Zedek emergency room for many years introducing new methods of managing crises, an expertise developed during the Second Intifada. On the second anniversary of the 9/11/01 attacks, Dr. Applebaum came to New York City to help train American doctors in large scale emergency response. He then flew home to Jerusalem for his daughter’s wedding the next day.  That night, as the two of them had dinner together at a cafe, they were both killed in a terrorist bombing.

There is a famous saying that many Christians use from the book of Mark “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”  The original text is actually from the Old Testament (Leviticus 19:18):

“‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people,
but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.“

A musical tribute to the volunteers in Israel who even come to the aid of countries which do not recognize Israel’s right to exist, and the memory of Dr. David Applebaum:

“In the many decades that I have been privileged to serve as a physician as well as an IDF officer, I can honestly say that I have never felt this degree of anticipation as for what awaits us in Nepal. While I know it will be a challenging professional and personal experience, we hope it will bring significant relief to those in need and offer a sense of pride for the important role that the IDF and the State of Israel can offer others in this time of need.”

-Professor Jonathan Halevy,
as he awaited the team’s departure from Ben Gurion Airport

Every Picture Tells a Story- Whitewashing the World (except Israel)

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Summary: The New York Times continued to minimize pictures of attacks on civilians and assassinations around the world by burying small pictures deep inside its paper. The precious front page ink was only reserved for portrayals of Israel as the aggressor.

 

The Every Picture Tells a Story series reviewed media’s deliberate use of pictures to tell a story to its readers. It is a story that conveyed Israel committing gross atrocities, uniquely in the world:

  • “Every Picture Tells a Story, Don’t it?” reviewed the New York Times’ use (and lack) of pictures of the three murdered Israeli teenagers in the summer of 2014 on the front page of its newspaper, while showing the Arab family whose son was killed.
  • “Every Picture Tells a Story, the Bibi Monster” reviewed how the NYT showed a large color picture of a Palestinian Arab teenager injured by Israeli police on its front page, while small pictures of mass murders in Kenya, Uganda and Yemen were found inside the paper. Further, pictures of Israeli PM Netanyahu repeatedly showed up next to pictures of injured Arabs, while no member of the Palestinian Authority or Hamas ever made it to the front pages during the entire Operation Protective Edge.
  • “The New York Times Buried Pictures” analyzed the puzzling lack of exposure of the Hamas terror tunnels from Gaza into Israel, which were the primary reasons for the Israeli ground offensive into Gaza.
  • “The New York Times 2014 Picture of the Year” wrapped up these observations, noting that the New York Times used large color photographs on its cover page of injured Palestinian Arabs repeatedly – on July 11, 14, 17, 21, 22, 24 and 29 – while continuing to hide pictures of Palestinian Arab aggression, and attacks in conflicts around the world.

THE WORLD

The Times continued preference for ignoring mass killings and assassinations in the world continued into 2015.

During a week of April 2015, world governments and terrorists killed hundreds of people. Not one incident merited a front page picture in the Times:

These articles were found buried in the paper. The associated pictures were relatively small and several were in black and white. No picture showed the victims injured or hurt.

This is not a new phenomenon. The Times often minimizes attacks that occur in the MENA (Middle East/ North Africa) region.  The exception to the rule, is if Israel is the attacker.

ISRAEL

Natan Sharansky, a famous Jewish refusenik who was jailed in Russia for trying to move to Israel, developed a three part “3D test” to determine anti-Semitism: Double standards; Demonization; and Delegitimization. Many liberals disagree with this approach and feel that double standards do not convey anti-Semitism. The liberal argument is that Israel should not be held to the same standards as Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Kenya, Saudi Arabia and the many countries in the Middle East, let alone terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Shabab. As Israel is a modern progressive country, the standards should be more akin to the USA or Western Europe. But that argument falls flat in general, and in particular, regarding the New York Times coverage of Israel.

DOUBLE STANDARDS

First, the situations are not remotely comparable. The US and Western Europe do not sit in the middle of the Middle East, surrounded by a combination of: war; terrorist groups operating freely; countries and entities that threaten to destroy their countries; and constant attacks on its citizens. It is easy to be judgmental while lunching in Luxembourg. However, Israel is forced to fight and defend itself repeatedly because of the volatile neighborhood and hostile attitude of its neighbors.

Second, the New York Times uses a double standard for the US and its allies. The paper does not treat the war effort of the US and Europe which have opted to fight battles thousands of miles from their borders, in the same manner as Israel fighting to defend itself. The NYT never posted a picture of President Obama next to the victims of a drone strike (which the president actually authorized) as it does with PM Netanyahu (for general military actions). It does not show pictures of civilians killed by US troops. It minimizes the pictures of terrorists killed by the US and its allies, using small black and white photos in the middle of the newspaper, rather than large color photographs on the front page as it does for Israel.

DEMONIZATION

Third, the NYT and many liberals do not only use double standards, but demonize and delegitimize Israel as well. The unique focus on how Israel defends itself is one thing (double standards). Uniquely showing pictures of injured Palestinian Arab victims alongside pictures of Israeli leaders and weaponry is demonization.

Simply compare the natural human reaction of looking at a small headshot picture of an al Qaeda leader (accompanied by an article that the United States killed the person), to a collage of pictures of injured and killed Palestinian civilians alongside pictures of Israeli military personnel and another of the Israeli Prime Minister. A person would likely skip the article buried in the paper that only has a head shot. But the large color collage of pictures on the front page delivers a biased story that is impossible to ignore: that the Israeli government is responsible for sending its army to kill civilians.

Further, consider opening the pages of paper and seeing a smoke trail coming from Gaza (the closest the Times came to showing Hamas militants firing weapons). The accompanying article refers to the people in Gaza providing a “counterpunch,” making the group appear as the victims instead of the party that initiated the fight.

20140718_103800

Imagine if the Times had shown pictures of the missiles Israel used to “tap” the roof of targeted homes to let the occupants know that a real explosive was coming so they could flee. Imagine the Times showed pictures of the thousands of leaflets that Israel dropped on certain neighborhoods urging residents to leave an upcoming battle zone.  Imagine pictures of Arabs holding cellphones far from the military action, because they received calls from Israel to move to safety.

You would need to imagine such images, because the Times does not print them.

DELIGITIMIZATION

The defensive nature of Israel’s war against Hamas was delegitimzed by the Times because the paper did show pictures of Hamas leaders, nor its tunnels and weaponry. Without the clear imagery of the three slain Israeli teenagers and Hamas terror tunnels which were the causes for the war, the reader was left with an impression that it was a war of choice for Israel.  Cover page pictures of injured Palestinians were coupled with articles under the headline “Confrontation in Gaza” as opposed to “War FROM Gaza,” left the reader with the incorrect conclusion that Israel as the big belligerent party.

The Times 2014 war coverage failed on all parts of the “3D Test” for anti-Semitism.

 

Now, in 2015, the Times photo editor has taken time off since Israel is not at war.

Attacks around the world continue to be buried inside the paper. Without images of Israel as the aggressor, more neutral and natural images cover the paper, such as shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, earthquakes and volcanoes.

 

The New York Times tried to defend its coverage of Israel as balanced. By going through the effort of explaining itself, it has at least realized that the accusation of double standards for Israel is indeed anti-Semitism, which is a better than many liberal pundits. It stil

It is time that everyone join the effort of pointing out to the Times its 3D failures, rather than just a handful of outlets like CAMERA, Honest Reporting, StandWithUs and FirstOneThrough.

From Promised Land to Promised Home

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Summary: God is the original Zionist.

Judaism is a unique religion in many respects:

  • Every other religion is based primarily on faith. Judaism is based primarily on lineage.
  • Every other religion is based on belief. Judaism is based on action.
  • Every other religion is not geographically-bound. Judaism is tied to the land of Israel.

The Old Testament has 613 commandments for Jews to observe. Many of those can only be kept inside the land of Israel. Those commandments relate to the sanctity of the land, as God promised the land to Abraham and the generations after him.

shmita
Observing “Shmita” only in Israel
(photo: FirstOneThrough)

Promised Land

The Bible has three sets of promises of the land of Israel for the Jewish people. The first set is God’s original promise to Abraham:

  • “The Lord appeared to Abram and said ‘To your descendants I will give this land’” (Genesis 12:7)

The book of Genesis repeats the promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob several times where the land is presented as “an everlasting possession” for the generations to come. (Genesis 17:8).

DSC_0258
The Western Galilee
(photo: FirstOneThrough)

Promised Return to the Land

The second set of promises related to the return to Israel from slavery in Egypt. That promise is slightly different than the original promise to the Jewish forefathers:

  • The land is described as being a good land “flowing with milk and honey”
  • The land is occupied by others, by the “Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite.” (Genesis 3:8)

Hundreds of years earlier, God just told Abraham to go “to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1) without any description of the location or nature of the land.  At the point of the exodus from Egypt, God promised not only freedom from slavery, but to a land of great quality.  Presumably, the land was so good, that others had now moved there while the Jews were trapped in Egypt.  However, God promised to “drive them [the others] out” (Exodus 23:30) and that the Jews will ultimately possess it.

cows
Cows in the Golan 
(photo: FirstOneThrough)

 Promised Home

The Old Testament ends with yet a third promise: a return from the diaspora to the land of Israel, to their home.

  • The promise includes an ingathering of exiles from “the four quarters of the Earth” (Isaiah 11:12)
  • Israel is no longer only described as simply being a good land, an inhabited land or the land of the Jewish forebears. The land is described as belonging to the people of Israel. The prophets repeatedly describe that God will “bring you home again to your own land” (Jeremiah 29:14)

Home. A place that is established and well-known. That doesn’t require a list of directions of how to get there, nor many adjectives.

It is a place where a people grows up and lives. It is a place of life events, both happy and sad. Where families celebrate, quarrel and mourn. A place with family history and history to be made.

Home is where “house rules” apply; where the house decides what is allowed and denied. It decides what is in the best interest of its inhabitants. It is the safe space where a family comes to find sanctuary from the world at large.

Home is always home, even when people have been away. But especially when they come back.

 DSC_1067
Jerusalem’s Old City
(photo: FirstOneThrough)

A music video about God’s promises of the land of Israel to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to become a home for the Jewish people.

Finding Mr. Right-Wing

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Summary: US President Obama seemed fixed on select comments from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an effort to portray the Israeli leader as a right-wing extremist who is a regional threat to peace. Not the Iranians who seek nuclear weapons. Not the Palestinians who support Jihad.

 

Many articles have been published about US President Obama’s bizarre focus on select statements from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu in the heat of elections. Articles point out the hypocrisy of Obama who himself made many statements during his elections from which he later back-tracked. Obama is also duplicitous in ignoring Iran’s chants of “Death to America” in the middle of nuclear negotiations.

How and why are some statements glossed over while Obama gives others great attention?

Obama is using Netanyahu as the straw man for the Iranian nuclear talks and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Obama has orchestrated a narrative where Netanyahu is the belligerent, right-wing, war-mongering leader, and not the Iranians or Palestinians.

IRANIAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS

  • The Concern: A right-wing, global sponsor of terrorism which has publicly and repeatedly declared its desire to destroy the United States and Israel is being allowed to develop nuclear weapons under Obama’s negotiations
  • The Israeli Position: Don’t threaten to destroy us; don’t have arms to carry out your threat; we will protect ourselves, as needed. We will make peace with you, if possible, on terms that do not undermine our security or viability.
  • The Obama position: Israel is a right-wing, war-chanting, racist country that doesn’t believe in a negotiated solution. The Iranians are-who-they-are and this is the best we can expect from them, and the best deal that can be achieved at this time.

Obama has said throughout his presidency that Iran should not get nuclear weapons and that he will make sure that they cannot get such weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). However, he has softened his tone and position significantly and acquiesced that Iran will be able to keep various plants and operations to make such weaponry. He believes that Iran has already advanced too far in its knowledge and infrastructure. Further, he thinks the rest of the P5+1 parties in the negotiations will not go along with a sanctions to enforce a better deal. Therefore, he capitulates to the Iranians as Brett Stephens of the Wall Street Journal wrote.

But why trash Netanyahu?

The Israeli Prime Minister believes the contemplated deal is a fiasco and has made his opinion known. He made clear that the deal assures the Iranians protection from attack while it continues to advance its nuclear research and development. The contemplated deal is not a nuclear deal, but simply a basis for the US to establish a new relationship with Iran and China. This same Iran, that threatens to destroy the US and Israel while it hangs gays in the streets. The same China, that executed three times the number of people as the rest of the world combined in 2014.

Netanyahu’s chant that “the emperor has no clothes” makes it hard for Obama to sell the failure. Obama has no response to tough questions about the nature of the deal, or about the nature of Iran itself. As such, he has enlisted his party hacks to skewer Netanyahu to draw attention away from the failure to keep his promises about Iran.

Obama and liberal loyalists have attempted to paint Israel as the right-wing fanatical country, not Iran. They portray Netanyahu as a hard-liner, not Iranian President Hassan Rouhani who is described as a moderate trying to fight his own Iranian “hard-liners”. Netanyahu is described as a “racist“, while Rouhani is described as a “relative moderate“.

These characterizations are both an inversion of the truth and a red herring. But it serves to rally Obama’s liberal base in selling the Iranian non-nuclear deal: a right-wing fanatic (to them it has become Israel) is attacking a liberal country (magically, this has become Iran). Obama’s media minions mystically transformed the threat of the terrorist state of Iran being granted WMDs under Obama, to the right-wing rogue state of Israel attempting to block the moderate Iranians establishing ties with America. The deal’s numerous failures are ignored and the focus is diverted onto Netanyahu.

ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT

  • The Concern: The most anti-Semitic people in the world that has repeatedly gone to war to destroy Israel, continue to seek its destruction. A straw man without the people’s support nor power to enforce a peace deal, is labeled as a “moderate” for only seeking an end to the conflict on terms that undermine Israel’s peace and viability.
  • The Israeli Position: Don’t threaten to destroy us; don’t have arms to carry out your threat; we will protect ourselves, as needed. We will make peace with you, if possible, on terms that do not undermine our security or viability
  • The Obama position: Israel is a right-wing, war-chanting, racist country that doesn’t believe in negotiations. The Palestinians are-who-they-are and Israel cannot wait forever for the Palestinians to become moderate.

Obama made a specific calculation to build bridges to the Muslim world which he felt were damaged under President George W Bush. He began his presidency with an international trip to Egypt where he gave his famous “New Beginning” speech to the parliament in Cairo. (He did not use the opportunity of being in the region to visit Israel). Indeed, when he finally came to Israel in 2013, he snubbed Netanyahu’s invitation to address the Israeli parliament and instead used that time to speak to select Israeli students that support his weltanschauung.

When it came to America’s involvement in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, Obama dictated various terms and conditions upon Netanyahu which had never been instituted in any of the various peace talks between the parties. It included a ten month freeze on constructing new homes east of the Green Line (EGL) and releasing dozens of convicted Palestinian terrorists. Netanyahu did both. These actions were on top of his handing control of EGL cities like Hebron to the Palestinians.

So why trash Netanyahu?

The Obama administration has not been able to extract a single concession from the Palestinians. They pushed to join the ICC against US wishes. The sought membership in UN agencies against US wishes. And they have spent the last several years continuing on a path that undermines any chance for peace with the Jewish State:

  • Inciting violence against Israel
  • Repeated wars against Israel
  • Insisting on a “right of return” for people who are not refugees, but “SAPs” (Stateless Arabs from Palestine) who are children and grandchildren of Arabs who sought the destruction of Israel
  • Never agreeing to recognize Israel as a Jewish State
  • Declaring a new Palestinian state must be free of Jews
  • Stating that no peace deal would happen without the eastern half of Jerusalem as a capital

Obama concluded that the Palestinians are forever stubborn and he has minimal influence over their actions.  He therefore feels he must exert greater pressure on Israel.

That left Obama in the uncomfortable position of pressuring its ally which has the strong support of the American people over an antisemitic people that preach Israel’s destruction. He concluded that the best way to convince the American people was to invert reality and portray the Palestinians as desperate moderates who only seek peace, and the Israelis as belligerent racist occupiers.  His left-wing megaphones were happy to pick up the line.

The New York Times has called the Palestinians “desperate” and full of “discontent” about their situation. They are constantly labeled victims (consider the coverage of “The War in Gaza” as opposed to “The War FROM Gaza“). The injured Palestinians in the 2014 conflict were covered on the front page of the Times for many days (consider that no pictures of the three murdered Israeli teenagers or victims of Saudi attacks in Yemen, US drone attacks, Boko Haram, al-Shabab and others have ever appeared on the front page).

Conversely, Netanyahu is portrayed as being racist and opposing peace.  His election night get-out-the-vote comment about Arabs was described as racist, even though he had an Arab on the Likud ticket. His comment about the unlikelihood of a two state peace deal in light of the Palestinian positions and Arab Spring were painted as anti-peace by the Obama administration, even though Netanyahu has repeatedly stated his support and has taken actions towards a two-state solution.

Obama’s team attacks Netanyahu in an effort to extract greater concessions from Israel, because of its failure to extract anything from the Palestinians. It attempts to force a peace treaty that offers no peace for Israel. It is an attempt to further US relationship with the Arab world.

 

Netanyahu has become the convenient scapegoat for Obama’s failure to negotiate with Islamic Iran and the Palestinian Arabs. In the case of Iran, Netanyahu is a diversion from the terrible deal. He is a straw man that the only alternative to his bad deal is a call for war rather than a better deal.  In regard to the Palestinians, Obama is attempting to portray the straw man Abbas as a real moderate negotiating partner by disparaging Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s refusal to engage in a bad/false treaty is portrayed by Obama as anti-peace.

Six years ago, US citizens hoped Obama’s outreach to the Arab and Islamic world would create an opportunity to advance global peace.  Instead, Obama continues to undermine global peace to foster a better relationship with the Arab and Islamic world.

Sources:

Obama on Abbas March 2014: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/03/17/remarks-president-obama-and-president-abbas-palestinian-authority?v=1362363401000%3F

Related First One Through articles:

Germany 1933, Gaza 2014

Recent Abbas comment on the Holocaust https://firstonethrough.wordpress.com/2014/05/19/frightening-new-york-times-42714-article-on-mahmoud-abbas-shifts-on-holocaust/