NY Times again discards facts in anti-Israel editorial

From yesterday's NYT:

In what has become a depressingly familiar routine, Israel has given final approval for construction of 2,610 housing units in geographically sensitive parts of East Jerusalem that will make it harder, maybe impossible, to reach a two-state solution with the Palestinians.

The timing of the decision, which came shortly before a meeting on Wednesday between President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, also seems familiar: another in a string of calculated embarrassments that over the years have undermined American efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. These decisions inevitably raise tensions between Israel and its main ally, and did so again this week.

Funny: Peace Now, who the New York Times relies on for its information, characterized the decision in December 2012 as "final approval." How many "final approvals" does Peace Now count for every plan? Hard to day, but they pretend that every single stage in the process - sometimes as many as 8 - is a dire emergency.

As far as the New York Times' description of the ad about the development as being deliberately timed to happen right before Netanyahu's trip to the US, the ad was placed on September 24, as can be seen in the photo, in a relatively low-circulation newspaper. The timing and method was clearly not meant to discomfort the White House.

On the other hand, Peace Now didn't say a word about this until October. In other words, it sat on the information in order to embarrass the head of the state that it is supposedly loves so much.

The New York Times is ascribing malice to Israel, when in fact it is Peace Now that is acting maliciously.

Building those units in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Givat Hamatos would create a continuum of Jewish settlements, blocking Palestinian neighborhoods in South Jerusalem from Bethlehem and the rest of the West Bank where Palestinians hope to establish a state.

Again, the Times is relying on Peace Now's assertions without checking the facts.

Here is their map:

Wow, Givat Hamatos goes right next to Gilo!

Now look at Honest Reporting's map:

Hold on - there is a significant chunk of Arab neighborhood Beit Safafa in the way, which ensures no contiguity between Givat Hamatos and Gilo. How can that be?

For one thing, Peace Now is discounting the fact that about one third of the housing in this plan is being given to residents of Beit Safafa - earmarked for Arabs! I'm not sure which portion, but clearly Peace Now does not want the world to know that 900 or so of these "settlement units" under this plan - and illustrated by them - are in fact Arab.

For another, the Peace Now map includes all phases of the Givat Hamatos plan, including those that were not approved yet.

It is clear that Peace Now is engaging in large scale deception, all in order to get people like clueless NYT editors to swallow their lies.

When a nine-month, American-led effort on an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal collapsed in April, American officials put a lot of the blame on Israel for barging ahead with settlements that undermine trust and shrink the land available for a Palestinian state.

One more time: Jewish settlements have taken up virtually no new land since 1990. They still take up less than 1.5% of the land across the Green Line - just as they did before Oslo.

This is again a basic fact that has been turned on its head by crusaders like Peace Now and believed completely by the supposedly fact-based media like the New York Times. (Israel shares the blame for not calling out these lies more forcefully.)