Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Guardian

Showing posts with label Guardian. Show all posts

Monday, February 03, 2014

Even the Guardian's corrections are wrong on SodaStream

From The Guardian's "Corrections and Clarifications" on Monday:

An article about the issue of boycotts of Israel (US and Israel in war of words over boycotts warning, 3 February, ) wrongly stated that SodaStream, an Israeli company, is "based in the West Bank settlement of Ma'ale Adumim, which is built on expropriated Arab land". As we have said before, it is a factory that is based there, not the headquarters of the company. In another story about the issue, which examined the relationship between Oxfam and Scarlett Johansson, we said that the charity was "under pressure from anti-Israel campaigners to sever ties" with the film star. It would be more accurate to describe the activists in the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel as "opposed to settlements" (Oxfam under pressure to drop Johansson over Israeli ties, 30 January, page 23).

You know you're in bad shape when even your corrections are wrong.

The SodaStream factory is not based in Ma'ale Adumim, but in Mishor Adumim nearby.

Peace Now once came out with a report claiming that 86% of Ma'ale Adumim was built on private Arab-owned land. Then they were forced to release a revised report that showed that only 0.5% of Maale Adumim was built on private Arab-owned lands. The Guardian, by saying that the entire Ma'ale Adumin is built on "expropriated Arab land," is lying.

Moreover, all of Mishor Adumim - including the SodaStream factory - is built on state-owned land.

In their second correction, they were right the first time. BDS is against Israel, and the BDS movement explicitly calls to boycott all Israeli goods and cultural events, not settlement goods. (Peter Beinart is the one spearheading the idea of "only" boycotting goods created by Jews in Judea and Samaria.) It is completely wrong to say BDS is only against settlements, and one can only wonder why the Guardian made an incorrect correction.

(h/t Irene)

How Gazans celebrate International Women's Day

Today is the hundredth anniversary of International Women's Day.

Naturally, Palestinian Arabs are celebrating along with the rest of the world. For example, the Guardian published an article about how a Gaza women's advocate marks the day:

Women in Gaza love life as much as other women across the world. Although we lack basic rights, partly due to the blockade and unfair policies, we are strong. We hope the world will pay extra attention so that Gaza's women can help rebuild Palestinian society.

The celebrations have a bit of a different flavor in the Arabic media, however.

Palestine Today marks the occasion by profiling a woman, Mrs. Dadhouh (not sure of her first name), whose main claim to fame is the fact that three of her children were Islamic Jihad terrorists that were killed by Israel.

Mohammad Al Dahdouh was a senior Islamic Jihad member killed in May, 2006. His brother Khalid Al Dahdouh, also known as Abu Walid, was killed three months earlier, and a third brother Ayman was killed in 2005.

Mrs. Dadhouh is, of course, proud of her sons:

I do not regret that three of my children are martyrs; we all must have the Certificate [of martyrdom], and be ready to continue on this path for Palestine and for the redemption of Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque....Palestinian women are willing to sacrifice and give all that they possess for Jerusalem and to walk on the path of the martyrs.

I wonder why the Guardian didn't interview Mrs. Dadhouh?

The Guardian supports continued misery for PalArab "refugees"

Here is another article I wrote for NewsRealBlog, written a couple of weeks ago but that just got published, based on this article in The Guardian.

Excerpt:

To give these people hope that they will one day “return” is an act of cruelty. They have been in limbo for six decades holding on to this false hope that is fed to them by cynical Arab leaders looking to destroy Israel demographically.

This article makes it clear that The Guardian wants them to remain in perpetual misery as well.

This article has a single purpose — to keep the lie that they will one day “return” alive. The Guardian is using these people as pawns, exactly the same way that the Arab leaders have for generations: keeping them in camps as poster children for Israel’s supposed cruelty, with never a mention of the Arab responsibility for maintaining this situation for decades. Their continued misery today translates into a new generation of terrorists tomorrow.

As has been clear for a while, the Guardian wants Israel to disappear. This article is simply one more bullet in their arsenal of lies.

Read the whole thing.

Guardian admits spinning PalPapers quote - but where are the other corrections?

From Just Journalism:

On the first day of The Guardian’s Palestine papers expose, on Monday 24 January, when Palestinian negotiators were attacked as ‘weak’ and ‘craven’, a quote from then foreign minister Tzipi Livni appeared in a box, titled, ‘What they said…’. It read:

‘The Israel policy is to take more and more land day after day and that at the end of the day we’ll say that it is impossible, we already have the land and cannot create the state.’ Tzipi Livni, then Israeli foreign minister

However, the newspaper on Saturday acknowledged that the full quote shows that Livni was characterising the Palestinian perception of Israeli policies, and not the policies themselves. What she actually said was:

‘I understand the sentiments of the Palestinians when they see the settlements being built. The meaning from the Palestinian perspective is that Israel takes more land, that the Palestinian state will be impossible, the Israel policy is to take more and more land day after day and that at the end of the day we’ll say that it is impossible, we already have the land and cannot create the state.’
By cutting the quote to exclude the first part of Tzipi Livni’s sentence, The Guardian portrayed the Israeli politician as brazenly admitting a policy of making a Palestinian state impossible.

That's great, but it is a drop in the bucket of Guardian misquotes from The Palestine Papers, a pattern that can hardly be accidental.

Here are some:

The Guardian headlined an article "Palestinian negotiators accept Jewish state, papers reveal." yet the papers said no such thing. Instead they said that the PLO has no problem with how Israel defines itself, a position they have said publicly, but they would never accept that definition. In fact, they would never accept that there is something called "the Jewish people."

In that same article, they claimed that "Israeli leaders pressed for the highly controversial transfer of some of their own Arab citizens into a future Palestinian state." In reality, the Israeli leaders were saying that they did not want to have villages divided into two states, and the villages should be in one state or another. Moreover, the Guardian misuses the word "transfer" which is usually meant to indicate moving people from their homes.

The same article mischaracterizes Livni a third time by writing

[I]n an extraordinary comment in November 2007, Livni – who briefly had a British arrest warrant issued against her in 2009 over alleged war crimes in Gaza – is recorded as saying: "I was the minister of justice. I am a lawyer ... But I am against law – international law in particular. Law in general."

She made clear that what might have seemed to be a joke was meant more seriously by using the point to argue against international law as one of the terms of reference for the talks and insisting that "Palestinians don't really need international law". The Palestinian negotiators protested about the claim.

In fact she was referring to putting a reference to international law in the Terms of Reference of a joint statement at Annapolis - not saying she was against international law altogether, as the Guardian implies. They also put the "Palestinians don't really need international law" as a Livni quote, when it was a paraphrase in the actual memo, again referring to the joint statement.

Three misquotes in one single article. Three examples of willful deception onthe part of those who read the actual memos. And The Guardian has yet to correct any of them.

The Guardian's whitewash of the Muslim Brotherhood

Last week, The Guardian looked at the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and - surprise! - managed to find that it was not nearly as bad as those ignorant Westerners think:

"There can be no question that genuine democracy must prevail," Mohammad Mursi, a brotherhood spokesman, wrote in an article for Tuesday's Guardian. "While the Muslim Brotherhood is unequivocal regarding its basis in Islamic thought, it rejects any attempt to enforce any ideological line upon the Egyptian people."

Although the Brotherhood appears to have firmly embraced democracy, the means for reconciling that with its religious principles are not entirely clear: the issue of God's sovereignty versus people's sovereignty looks to have been fudged rather than resolved.

The Brotherhood continues to maintain that "Islam is the solution" while at the same time demonstrating a kind of pragmatism that suggests Islam may not be a complete solution after all.

For example?

One example is jizya, the poll tax on non-Muslims, which is clearly prescribed in the Qur'an. The original idea was that non-Muslims, since they did not serve in the military, should pay for their protection by Muslims.

Today, most Muslims regard jizya as obsolete.In order to follow Qur'anic principles strictly, though, it would have to be reinstated. In 1997, the Muslim Brotherhood's Supreme Guide at the time, Mustafa Mashhur, did suggest reintroducing it but, in a country with around 6 million Christians, this caused uproar and the movement later backtracked. For non-Islamist Muslims, jizya presents no great problem: they can justify its abolition on the basis of historicity – that the circumstances in which the tax was imposed no longer exist today. For Islamists, though, this is much more difficult because the words of the Qur'an and the practices of the earliest Muslims form the core of their ideology.

The Muslim Brotherhood wants Egypt to be an Islamic country. The only way that can occur is through democracy. But if it acts too Islamic now, it can never gain the power it craves. So it tactically chooses what to emphasize and what to downplay.

This is not evidence that it believes that "Islam may not be a complete solution after all." It is evidence that they know how to play the game, very well. The Guardian completely misses the point.

The Guardian's misinterpretation gets worse:

Years of repression at the hands of the Egyptian authorities have made the brotherhood more interested in human rights than many might expect from an Islamist organisation. When the European parliament criticised Egypt's record in 2008, the Mubarak regime responded with fury, while Hussein Ibrahim, the brotherhood's parliamentary spokesman, sided with Europe.

"The issue of human rights has become a global language," he said. "Although each country has its own particulars, respect of human rights is now a concern for all peoples" – though he specifically excluded gay rights.

Rather than deploring criticism from abroad, he said, the Egyptian government would do better to improve its human rights record, which would leave less room for foreigners to cause embarrassment.

The Brotherhood's interest in human rights extends in exactly one dimension - human rights for Islamists in Egypt. While the Guardian parenthetically concedes that the Ikhwan would not support human rights for gays, it pointedly ignores the other groups that the Brotherhood does not see as legal equals:

Women
Jews and Christians
Atheists, Hindus and other beliefs that are considered "idol worship"

We have a movement that openly looks upon Muslims as being a higher class than the rest of the world, and that advocates discrimination (or death) against everyone else. And yet The Guardian praises them for their stance on human rights!

Other criticisms of the article can be found at CiFWatch.

Palestine Papers: Arguments about "two states for two peoples"

In the preparation for Annapolis, the Israeli and Palestinian Arab negotiators discussed what a joint statement might look like. Tzipi Livni wanted to say that the end-game is two states for two peoples - and the Palestinian Arabs objected, for reasons that they themselves detailed.

Here are some sections of the discussion:

Tzipi Livni: Two states is the ultimate goal of the process. But also part of the TOR [Terms of Reference document they are drafting.] Each state is the answer to the natural aspirations of its people.

Saeb Erekat: [Raises roadmap language regarding unequivocal duty to accept each state as is. Reads from the roadmap.]

TL: To say the idea that two nation states contradicts the roadmap..…

SE: [But we’ve never denied Israel’s right to define itself.]
If you want to call your state the Jewish State of Israel you can call it what you want. [Notes examples of Iran and Saudi Arabia.]

TL: I said basically that our position is a reference to the fact that each state is an answer to the national aspirations of their people.

Akram Haniyeh: There was an article in Haaretz saying that Palestinians would be stupid if they accept this [i.e. the Jewish state].

TL: Someone wrote the Palestinians?

Ahmed Querei [AA]: I want to say two state solution living side by side in peace security stability and prosperity, Palestinian democratic state independent with sovereignty, viable with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Tal Becker: That’s all? [Sarcastically.]

AA: Yes that’s our position. Two state solution living side by side in peace security stability and prosperity, Palestinian democratic state independent with sovereignty, viable with East Jerusalem as its capital. This is what we want to have. This small sentence.

TL: I just want to say something. ...Our idea is to refer to two states for two peoples. Or two nation states, Palestine and Israel living side by side in peace and security with each state constituting the homeland for its people and the fulfillment of their national aspirations and self determination...

AH: This refers to the Israeli people?

TL: [Visibly angered.] I think that we can use another session – about what it means to be a Jew and that it is more than just a religion. But if you want to take us back to 1947 -- it won’t help. Each state constituting the homeland for its people and the fulfillment of their national aspirations and self determination in their own territory. Israel the state of the Jewish people -- and I would like to emphasize the meaning of “its people” is the Jewish people -- with Jerusalem the united and undivided capital of Israel and of the Jewish people for 3007 years... [The Palestinian team protests.] You asked for it. [AA: We said East Jerusalem!] …and Palestine for the Palestinian people. We did not want to say that there is a “Palestinian people” but we’ve accepted your right to self determination.

AA: Why is it different?

TL: I didn’t ask for something that relates to my own self. I didn’t ask for recognizing something that is the internal decision of Israel. Israel can do so, it is a sovereign state. [We want you to recognize it.] The whole idea of the conflict is … the entire point is the establishment of the Jewish state. And yet we still have a conflict between us. We used to think it is because the Jews and the Arabs… but now the Palestinians… we used to say that we have no right to define the Palestinian people as a people. They can define it themselves. In 1947 it was between Jews and Arabs, and then [at that point the purpose] from the Israeli side to [was] say that the Palestinians are Arabs and not [Palestinians – it was an excuse not to create a Palestinian state. We'’ve passed that point in time and I'’m not going to raise it. The whole conflict between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is not the idea of creating a democratic state that is viable etc. It is to divide it into two.] For each state to create its own problem. Then we can ask ourselves is it viable, what is the nature of the two states. In order to end the conflict we have to say that this is the basis. I know that your problem is saying this is problematic because of the refugees. During the final status negotiations we will have an answer to the refugees. You know my position. Even having a Jewish state -- it doesn’t say anything about your demands. …. Without it, why should we create a Palestinian state?

...There is something that is shorter. I can read something with different wording:
That the ultimate goal is constituting the homeland for the Jewish people and the Palestinian people respectively, and the fulfillment of their national aspirations and self determination in their own territory.

The joint declaration at Annapolis did not include any wording about the Jewish people, but afterwards President Bush said "The [final peace] settlement will establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people just as Israel is the homeland for the Jewish people...The United States will keep its strong commitment to the security of the State of Israel and its existence as a homeland for the Jewish people."

By the way, the Guardian definitely saw this memo, because it was the one that they and Al Jazeera misquoted as saying that Livni said she was against international law. (She didn't.)

Palestine Papers: Jews legally own land in the territories

Here's another EoZ scoop that the Guardian could have broken - but decided not to.

In another bombshell document that the Guardian and Al Jazeera did not believe is newsworthy, in 2008 the PLO wrote a paper describing the legal rights of Jews to lands that they owned prior to 1948.

The intent was to have a position ready in case Israel brought the issue up in negotiations. It was not presented to Israel.

It is astonishing to read paragraphs like these from the PLO:

Jews who owned land have the right to have their land restored to them or to be compensated, if restitution is not materially possible. Jews are entitled to compensation for other material and non-material losses, including lost profits, lost income, etc. caused by their displacement and dispossession.

Of course, they hold this position because they do not want to appear hypocritical with their demands from Israel. (The PLO also includes an annex to list legal arguments that Jews do not have any rights to the land anymore, in case they need to use those arguments publicly.)

Some of the parts are fascinating. For example, it describes (and implicitly supports) the bigoted British policy of severely restricting the rights of Jews - and only Jews - to buy land before 1948:

In 1940, in response to Arab concerns regarding Jewish land ownership in Palestine, the British introduced restrictions on land transfers to Jews. Pursuant to the Palestine (Amendment) Order-in-Council of 25 May 1939, the High Commissioner was authorized to prohibit and regulate land transfers.23 Acting on these powers, the High Commissioner adopted the Land Transfer Regulations, 1940, which established three zones: Zone A (16,680 km2), where land could generally not be transferred except to Palestinian Arabs; Zone B (8,348 km2), where land transfers from Arabs to Jews required permission that was generally withheld; and land outside Zones A and B (1,292 km2), which could be freely transferred.24 According to the hand-drawn map annexed to the Regulations, what became Gaza and the West Bank was entirely Zone A, meaning that land transfers to Jews were, with few exceptions, prohibited.25 Britain apparently repealed these Regulations upon the termination of its Mandate (12 May 1948).26

Between 1948 and 1967, Jordan and Egypt essentially confiscated Jewish-owned land, against international humanitarian law:

The Custodian [of Enemy Property] held and administered Jewish-owned in the West Bank until 1967 according to the Trading with the Enemy Ordinance (as opposed to administering the land like absentee property according to the powers and rules of IHL).38 Some of these assets were used by the Custodian for public purposes, such as the establishment of refugee camps, the rehabilitation of refugees, and the setting up of army camps and marketplaces. In other cases, the property was leased to private individuals, who used the land for agricultural, commercial or residential purposes, depending on its characteristics.

...
By the Order Providing Regulations for the Administration of Jews’ Property in the Areas Subject to the Control of the Egyptian Forces in Palestine, No. 25 (issued in 1948, published in 1950), Egypt appointed a Director General to administer property owned by Jews who fled in 1948. The Director General used the parcels for public projects, including refugee camps for Palestine Arabs, or leased them for private uses.41

Finally, the document describes some specific lands indisputably owned by Jews - even according to the Palestinian Arabs.

[L]and located on Mount Scopus...was purchased from a British national in 1916. Boris Goldberg, a member of Lovers of Zion, paid for the land and took title in his name.51 He gifted the land to the JNF, which gave a 999-year lease to Hebrew University.52 Additional land was purchased on Mount Scopus from Raghib al-Nashashibi, Mayor of Jerusalem, and was used for the Hebrew University. Hadassah Hospital was also built on land purchased on Mount Scopus.53

...By 1946, the JNF acquired 72,300 dunums in the Gaza district, which encompassed more than present-day Gaza.

In 1930, a Jewish farmer from Rehovot, Tuvia Miller, bought 262 dunums of land in Dayr al-Balah in the Gaza sub-district. Miller eventually sold his land to the JNF in the early 1940s. The JNF then allowed settlers from the religious Ha-Poel ha-Mizrahi movement to build the kibbutz of Kfar Darom on the land in October 1946. They abandoned the kibbutz in June 1948.59

Stein reports a purchase of 4,048 dunums in Huj (Gaza sub-district) in 1935 but does not indicate the identity of the Jewish purchaser.60 Note, however, that the Palestine Partition Commission reported that, by 1938, only 3,300 dunums in Gaza were owned by Jews.61

In 1941, 6,373 dunums were purchased by the JNF around Gaza City, though it is unknown whether the purchase was permissible under the Land Transfer Regulations 1940.

The government of Palestine estimated a population of 3,540 Jews in the Gaza sub-district at the end of 1946. Information has not been found on the circumstances under which these Jews departed from Gaza in 1948.

There were Jewish settlements north of Jerusalem called Atarot and Neve Yaakov, which were evacuated in 1948.65

A settlement called Bet Haarava, and Palestine Potash, Ltd., both located at the northern end of the Dead Sea, were situated on miri land leased by the government of Palestine and were evacuated in 1948.66

During the 1920s and 1930s, individual Jews and two Jewish-owned realty companies, Zikhron David and El Hahar, bought land in the hills around Hebron.67 Notwithstanding (and, actually, because of) the Land Transfer Regulations, 1940, which placed nearly all of the West Bank in Zone A, the JNF began purchasing land around Hebron in 1940. It acquired about 8,400 dunums by 1947, some of which was purchased from individual Jews and from Zikhron David and El Hahar. The settlements established on this land were called Kfar Etzion, Masuot Yitzhak, Ein Tzurim and Revadim. The JNF circumvented the prohibition on acquisition of land by Jews by creating front companies. Most of the Jewish-owned land around Hebron was held, as of 1948, by the JNF rather than by individual Jewish owners.68

Some 16,000 dunums of land were purchased by Jews before 1948 in the Etzion Bloc and Beit Hadassah.69

Himnuta bought land near Jericho and present-day Ma’ale Adumim. The funding in urban areas usually came from state coffers, while the purchase of agricultural land was paid for by the JNF.70

During the British mandate, the government of Palestine leased miri land on a long-term basis (50 or 100 years) to Jewish settlement organisations.71

By 1948, the concentrations of lands owned by Jews were in the old Jewish quarters of Jerusalem and Hebron, on the periphery of Jerusalem, and in the Tul-Karem region and the Gaza Strip.72

* Apparently, 80% of Har Homa’s [Jabal Abu Ghneim’s] land is Jewish land purchased in the forties and before.73

The JNF lost land in the Dheisheh refugee camp in the West Bank as well, and this matter has been postponed for the eventual [peace] talks for over a decade.

Now, why wouldn't The Guardian or its partner Al Jazeera want to write about a paper that details Jewish legal rights to lands in the territories?

Could it be that these "news" organizations are more interested in manipulating the news rather than reporting it?

This paper doesn't merely hurt the PLO, as most of the papers that made The Guardian's pages were intended to do, but the entire Palestinian Arab national movement - and that's a big taboo in the newsroom of The Guardian. (Not to mention the inconvenient fact that Great Britain made laws specifically banning land sales to people based merely on their religion. Slightly embarrassing, no?)

This is one of the Palestine Papers stories they wanted to remain buried.

(Other Palestine Papers scoops here.)

Palestine Papers: PA trying to get rid of Netanyahu

Here is another theme of the "Palestine Papers" that The Guardian did not believe is newsworthy: The PA is using the negotiations - and refusal to negotiate - as a way to get rid of Netanyahu and to bring back Livni.

When Netanyahu first started forming a government, Saeb Erekat tried to use his supposed intransigence as a weapon to get the US to go against him. From a February 27, 2009 meeting with George Mitchell:

It seems they are moving towards a government with 65 seats. Livni told Netanyahu her conditions for coalition: two states and political negotiations. AM [Abu Mazen/Mahmoud Abbas] cannot demand less than Livni. We want to continue the political process and negotiations. We are committed to that. But if Israel doesn’t recognize the two-state solution and continues settlements, it will be the last nail in AM’s coffin if we send him to negotiate.

...If Netanyahu forms a government with a party that has 15 seats, with an official platform of ethnic cleansing and expulsion of Muslims and Christians who are Israeli citizens … if Barack Obama wants a policy of reconciliation with the Muslim and Arab world … with your kids dying all over the region.

You have a choice. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. You have either the cost-free way: pressure us to negotiate, which means AM negotiating with Netanyahu under continuing settlement and without recognition – this would be the last nail in AM’s coffin, or you have another choice: take the Annapolis statement: two states, and negotiations over all core issues. If the Israeli government doesn’t include in its mandate the two-states and negotiating on all issues including Jerusalem … [hands GM paper submitted to the EU via the Czechs] We are committed to peace and negotiations for two states, but we won’t engage without this.

Netanyahu will go to President Obama and tell him “Iran.” He will say he is committed. Then he will build settlements in E1 and elsewhere – like he did in Har Homa. You cannot be expected to demand less of Netanyahu than what Livni demanded.

In a later meeting with the Negotiations Support Unit, Erekat talks a little more frankly about his strategy with to split Obama from Netanyahu and get him to wholeheartedly take the Palestinian Arab side.

Hamas is a tool for Netanyahu, he is counting on them to stay the course. And Hamas is counting on Netanyahu to stay the course. Netanyahu’s only card is Palestinian division, and also Ahmadinejad. Everyone can see how Israel is using Ahmadinejad’s comments. Ahamadinjed should be saying we want to add Palestine to the map, not removing Israel from the map. He doesn’t serve our cause with his holocaust denials.

As far as contact with Israel, its business as usual. I talk with Amos Gilad and other generals. Uzi Arad and I mutually do not want to meet with each other. I want to wait to see what they present to Obama. Netanyahu is saying he doesn’t want a two state solution. It is not us who are saying we don’t want to negotiate. Anyone who says they don’t recognize the two-state solution rejects final status negotiations. The question everyone should be asking Netanyahu is, “will you talk about Jerusalem, refugees, etc., Yes or No?”
...
Azem Bichara: There is lots of buildup to Netanyahu’s meeting with Obama, how can we help with that? Should we write an Op-ed before AM’s meeting outlining our ideas?

SE: Do one in my name. Prepare for me a good press conference after AM’s meeting. We need to issue a statement right after Netanyahu’s meeting.

Alex Kouttab: Do you have any concrete idea of what Netanyahu is going to propose to Obama?

SE: He is going to say “we will remove road blocks, outposts, etc. but if a settler child needs a new bathroom, we will build it.” But he will continue to build E1 and demolish homes. He is a master of ambiguity.

At this point, the PA's main card with the US has been their conviction that Netanyahu was going to remain publicly against a two-state solution.

Then Netanyahu publicly said he would support a two-state solution under specific conditions.

This put the Palestinian Arabs on the defensive:

Dr. Mohammad Shtayyeh
1) AM must deliver a speech and he should use the opportunity of the graduation of the Arab American University in Jenin to deliver it from there.

2) We need to have a diplomatic campaign across the world to explain what was misleading
and false in BN’s speech and what our positions are.

3) We have to give BN a hard time in the international arena.

4) We need to summon the Consuls General and brief them so they will deliver the message
to (their) respective capitals before BN goes to Europe.

5) We must not give the impression that we are dealing with this Israeli government. This is a very wise decision. Limit interactions to a minimum and to the most urgent. We need to
focus our time away from negotiations and on our internal affairs.

We don’t need a spokesperson, we need a media machine. We want to launch this campaign
– not have the journalists come to us or wait for us. We have to think of our objective: What
is the purpose of this? A) isolate BN, B) make him resign, or C) or make him change his
position.

Erekat to George Mitchell, October 20, 2009, shows the PA's new intransigent position regarding Netanyahu:

Either they are partners – 67 border, swaps – anything short of that, that’s it. This is a defining moment for the government. Don’t listen to him [BN]. He’s dead, if he has no engagement with us.

And then the next day:

[Erekat]: We cannot have resumption of negotiations with this government. We will punish Netanyahu. He can’t survive without a process with us. We won’t give him leverage of taking us for a ride and continuing settlements while we negotiate. Am I clear, David? This is the decision of the leadership – the PLO executive committee and the Fatah central committee. They won’t allow it. Period. Finito.

David Hale: Your staying in this position means no direct negotiations.

SE: No direct negotiations if there is no freeze and an exclusion of Jerusalem.

DH: So what do you propose?

SE: I know what I’m talking about and I see where things are heading. ... So no Palestinian decision-making body will change this position on the freeze. Not after Goldstone.

... We're also in touch with Israelis and Jewish groups – not [just] J street or just the Labour party. We don’t see Netanyahu as the end of the world – the Lieberman/Netanyahu cabinet. If we go for negotiations with them we will kill the others.

There's a lot more in that last memo that we will get to soon.

(h/t Kramerica)

Palestine Papers: PA says "refugees" must be resettled in Arab states

I found where Al Jazeera put all of the "Palestine Papers" and, in response to the Guardian's absurd assertion that they have already published everything that is newsworthy, here is exhibit A showing otherwise:

On July 2, 2008, the PA produced a "talking points" memo about how the so-called "refugee" problem would ultimately be solved. Presumably this was meant to be used in negotiations with the US and Israel. But by its nature, it is not an off-the-cuff comment of negotiators floating trial balloons to the other side, but an official (if unpublished) position of the PA.

First of all, the PA makes it very clear that they do not want to be the place that some 7 million "refugees" will move to live:

The viability of the future Palestinian State is closely linked to the evolution of the Palestinian population that will live within the future State’s borders. In this regard, the terms of a settlement of the Palestinian refugee issue and the number of Palestinian refugees who will be offered to resettle or return to the future State of Palestine is a core parameter required to assess the viability of that State.

The resettlement/return of refugee communities touches numerous issues such as housing availabilities, access to water, education and social services, employment opportunities, infrastructure, environment etc. The ability of the Palestinian State to meet refugee needs and ensure an efficient functioning of these services will ultimately determine its viability.

Unlike Israel in 1948, which opened its doors to Jews all over the world even though it was severely restricted in resources and cash, the PA is not going to start an open-door policy. In other words, they don't seem to care nearly as much about their fellow "Palestinians" living in stateless misery as Israel does about Jews.

While the PA will still insist on the theoretical "right to return," it recognizes realistically that other Arab states are going to have to offer citizenship:

The Palestinian/Arab peace proposal regarding Palestinian refugees is to find a “just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UNGA resolution 194”. The goal is to reach a multilateral solution that will be accepted by all parties. For the resolution to be a success, Israel, host States (Jordan, Syria, Lebanon) and third countries will have to offer attractive options to refugees. Therefore, the viability of the Palestinian State also greatly relies on the ability of these stakeholders and the international community to provide with concrete relocation options to Palestinian refugees.

All of this is obvious, but the PA is publicly silent on the issue. Instead of laying the framework to get these Arab countries to gear up for their ultimate naturalization of their Palestinian Arab population, the PA's public position has been the opposite of what this paper states.

In fact, only a few months earlier, Mahmoud Abbas told The Daily Star of Lebanon:

"We would not accept any settlements that would lead to a demographic change in Lebanon. This is totally unacceptable ... We won't accept a settlement that obliges Lebanon to naturalize even one Palestinian."

It is impossible to believe that Mahmoud Abbas was not aware of the contents of this talking points memo. Which means that either he was lying to the Lebanese, or he was lying to the Americans.

Either way, it shows that he is a liar.

Guardian defends its "Palestine Papers" coverage

In the Jewish Chronicle, the Guardian defends itself against the accusations that their coverage of the Palestine Papers was biased and anti-Israel.

I think the record speaks for itself - the Guardian and Al Jazeera misinterpreted and misrepresented the papers to put Israel in the worst possible light, and they weren't above lying to do so.

But I found this part of their defense curious:

Examining the haul of 1600 documents, there were a number of passages that the Guardian's team of reporters agreed are highly significant.

These included the offer by Palestinian negotiators – in the context of an overall peace agreement – that Israel would annex all but one of the settlements in East Jerusalem. PLO negotiators also agreed to a remarkably low number of returning refugees.

These are two of the stories we ran, and almost a week after the rest of the world's media gained access to the documents – all of which are now publicly available – no one has found a major story that we missed. We were led, in other words, by the source material. It is no surprise that the majority of the stories concern the PLO, as most of the documents come from the PLO's negotiations unit.

I've been searching for the entire set of documents since the story broke. At the Guardian website, only 26 of the documents are available - no new ones since January 26th. I similarly cannot find a list of all the documents at Al Jazeera.

So the Guardian is claiming that they only highlighted the papers that are newsworthy, and they bring as proof that no one else has found any newsworthy papers - when they can't be found!

I would prefer to decide for myself what is newsworthy, thank you very much. (I've been doing that with Wikileaks.) Let the Guardian put all 1600 documents on their site and then we can truly decide.

UPDATE: Found them. I'll see if there is anything else newsworthy.

No new "Palestine Papers" since Wednesday

Why have The Guardian and Al Jazeera stopped releasing any new memos since Wednesday?

ElderToons: How the Guardian thinks

References:

Honest Reporting

Robin Shepherd

More Guardian lies about "Palestine Papers"

The Guardian writes:

Palestinian negotiators accept Jewish state, papers reveal

But did they?

Read on:

Palestinian negotiators privately accepted Israel's demand that it define itself as a Jewish state, the leaked papers reveal, while Israeli leaders pressed for the highly controversial transfer of some of their own Arab citizens into a future Palestinian state as part of a land-swap deal.

[B]ehind closed doors in November 2007, Erekat told Tzipi Livni, the then Israeli foreign minister and now opposition leader: "If you want to call your state the Jewish state of Israel you can call it what you want," comparing it to Iran and Saudi Arabia's definition of themselves as Islamic or Arab.

Erekat's quote continues on in the actual memo, "This is their issue, not mine."

The Guardian is purposefully mischaracterizing what Erekat said. He's even said the exact same thing in public! Israel, he says, can define itself as it wishes, but the Palestinian Arabs will not accept it.

So he was not in any way accepting Israel as a Jewish state, unlike how the Guardian phrases it.

The Guardian also tries to spin Livni as wanting to "transfer" Arabs:

The-then Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, repeatedly pressed in 2007-08 for the "transfer" of some of Israel's own Arab citizens into a future Palestinian state as part of a land-swap deal that would exchange Palestinian villages now in Israel for Jewish settlements in the West Bank

What did the Israelis really say?

Tzipi Livni: We have this problem with Raja in Lebanon. Terje Larsen put the blue line to cut the village in two. [This needs to be addressed.] We decided not to cut the village. It was a mistake. The problem now – those living on Lebanese soil are Israeli citizens.

Udi Dekel: Barka, Barta il Sharqiya, Barta il [Garbiya], Betil, Beit Safafa…

Ahmed Qurei: This will be difficult. All Arabs in Israel will be against us.

Tal Becker: We will need to address it some how. Divided. All Palestinian. All Israeli.

Tzipi Livni: We will need to address it one way or another.

Ahmed Qurei: Of course – it is in borders and territory.

Livni was saying that it is unacceptable to have villages divided arbitrarily, and what a nightmare it is for Ghajar in Lebanon. She, and Tal Becker, are saying that the villages should be in one state or another, not to continue to be divided. She is not advocating "transfer" in the way that the term is used, as ethnic cleansing. Since there would be land swaps anyway, this was an idea she floated, and that the PLO rejected out of hand. (Which indicates how much they want "Palestine" to be the state of "Palestinians.")

Al Jazeera is even worse.

From reading the memos it is clear that both sides were just floating ideas, looking for reactions, trying to get an idea of how the other side thinks about a variety of issues. The talks are very informal. To characterize them on either side as saying that "one side offered this" and "one side rejected that" is ridiculous; the memos reveal (from the Palestinian Arab perspective) the mindset of the players and which "red lines"are pinker than others, but one cannot conclude from them that anything was really up for grabs.

The Guardian, the PalArabs, Israel and the truth

The divergence between how the Guardian is spinning the Palestine Papers release and how the actual leaders of the Palestinian Arabs are reacting teaches us volumes.

So while the Guardian decries supposed Palestinian Arab weakness in recognizing what every sane person does, that Israel will never give up the major Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem...

Palestinian concessions roll on. The Israeli settlements around East Jerusalem? Sold, two years ago...

..the Palestinian Arabs are decrying the idea that they would even consider compromise. Erekat:

In the past few hours, a number of reports have surfaced regarding our positions in our negotiations with Israel, many of which have misrepresented our positions, taking statements and facts out of context.

Other allegations circulated in the media have been patently false. But any accurate representation of our positions will show that we have consistently stood by our people’s basic rights and international legal principles.

Indeed, our position has been the same for the past 19 years of negotiations: We seek to establish a sovereign and independent Palestinian state along the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital and to reach a just solution to the refugee issue based on their international legal rights, including those set out in UNGA 194.

Even though many ideas have been discussed by the two sides as part of the normal negotiations process, including some we could never agree to, we have consistently said any proposed agreement would have to gain popular support through a national referendum.

No agreement will be signed without the approval of the Palestinian people.

And Mahmoud Abbas is even saying that any hint of flexibility in the leaked documents actually reflect Israeli positions, not PalArab positions!

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Monday that leaked Palestinian negotiation documents deliberately confuse the positions of either side, according to Reuters.

"There was an intentional mix-up. I have seen them [Al-Jazeera] present things as Palestinian but in fact they were Israeli... This is therefore intentional," Abbas said in Cairo.

PLO executive committee member Yasser Abed Rabbo, who was in the negotiations, echoes his pride at Palestinian Arab intransigence:

We did not agree to any proposal regarding east Jerusalem. The only position to which we adhere is Abbas' position that east Jerusalem, according to the 67 borders, belongs to us.

So we are left with two possibilities. Either the Palestinian Arabs were the flexible parties and Israel the intransigent ones, which means that Abbas, Abed Rabbo and Erekat are lying now, or Israel was always the more flexible party and the Guardian is lying now.

We also see from the Guardian's screed that the newspaper is not interested in a real peace, but in forcing Israel to make all the concessions and rewarding the Palestinian Arabs for their decades of terror and refusal to accept Israel as a reality.

Of course, while some details about what Tzipi Livni offered might raise an eyebrow or two, everything Israel has said about the negotiations has been very consistent through the years, and consistent with what the leaks say. The Israeli leadership has repeated the mantra often enough: "We will have to make painful compromises for peace."

Those words about compromise were never uttered by any Palestinian Arab leader or negotiator, because the entire idea of compromise is foreign to them. Especially when they have cheerleaders like the Guardian ready to support their intransigence (and insult the very idea of compromise.) Behind closed doors, perhaps, they float an idea or two, but they can rest assured that their people who they themselves have indoctrinated to hate will reject any plans they pretended to accept to make the US happy.

Israel's position towards compromise has been vindicated. The Abbas regime's intransigence has been verified. And the only side that has nothing to hide is Israel.

Not that the Guardian would ever admit that.

Palestine Papers, day 2: PLO reactions

It is a new day and there are a lot more reactions to the publication of the so-called "Palestine Papers" by Al Jazeera.

I will not go so far as some are to dismiss them as forgeries. There are too many details and too many documents. The Guardian claims that they have been authenticated, and while I am no fan of the Guardian they have incentive to validate them - newspapers do not want to be known to fall for hoaxes like the fake Howard Hughes diaries. The downside for the Guardian is simply too great to think that they did not make a good effort to prove that they are really minutes of meetings from the Palestinian Arab side.

I do believe that the papers reflect the PLO viewpoint of the negotiations, and in many details they might be at odds with the Israeli or American interpretations of those same meetings. We have seen many times that the two sides simply speak different languages.

Another important point to remember is that the PLO knows its own political roadblocks far better than the Israelis or Americans do. While America will push the PLO to make concessions - and the PLO cannot stand up to the US in private the way they proudly do in public - the Arabs know very well that some of the concessions will simply not fly; not for their people and not for the Arab League. They could pretend to put forth supposed peace plans secure in the knowledge that there is no real political way to push them through,and then they can go back to the Americans and say that the "Palestinian street" has tied their hands; they must ask for a few dozen more concessions and put the ball back in Israel's court.

While every Israeli leader across the political spectrum has been relatively honest with the people about the needs for "painful compromises for peace," the PA and PLO never did that. So it is really amusing to see how they are reacting to the release.

Saeb Erekat says that "Al-Jazeera's information is full of distortions and fraud."

Ahmed Qureia, one of the PLO leaders who was involved in the negotiations, said that these were "fabrications" and that Al Jazeera was working for Zionist interests by releasing them.

Qureia is quoted in one of the papers as discussing the Kadima primaries with Tzipi Livni, and telling her "I would vote for you." It can't be good for his career to say nice things to the person who was foreign minister during Operation Cast Lead!

Yasser Abed Rabbo, another member of the PLO Executive Committee, is going further and slamming Qatar (al-Jazeera's home) for being behind the leaks. He is demanding that the Emir of Qatar come clean on his own contacts with Israel and Iran, and says that Al Jazeera would never have done this without the Emir's pushing them to.

Abed Rabbo's statements, incidentally, indicate that the Palestinian Arab (West Bank) media wouldn't publish anything big without the approval of the PA and PLO!

Finally, one can expect that the leakers will be looking over their shoulders for quite a while, hoping that no bullets are heading their way. They are the ones that had the real agenda, and there are only so many people who should have had access to these documents.

(See also Noah Pollak's analysis. Also in Commentary, a good piece by Emanuele Ottolenghi.)

Dishonest Reporter Awards released

Honest Reporting has released its annual "Dishonest Reporter" rewards, noting the worst anti-Israel bias throughout the year in the press.

Highlights include:

Reuters for having so many reporters on the scene before a routine Israeli tree-cutting operation on the Lebanese border - almost as if they knew that the LAF was going to start shooting and killing Israeli soldiers.

The Guardian for similarly claiming to be "at the right place at the right time" with a gaggle of other reporters who were waiting for Arab youths to throw stones at Jewish-owned cars in Jerusalem.

Paul McKeough for his biased and lying article on the Mavi Marmara - that received a prestigious award.

And Time Magazine for their cover story, "Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace."

Read the whole thing.

Saeb Erekat's lies in CiF

Saeb Erekat, that Palestinian Arab negotiator who the West feels is so moderate because he wears suits and not army fatigues, has once again called for the destruction of Israel - this time in the pages of the Guardian's Comment is Free column.

He couches his demand to the end of the Jewish state in terms of the specious arguments that descendants of Palestinian Arabs who fled in 1948 have a "right to return" to the homes of their ancestors.

Here are some of his lies:

Israel's own admission as a member to the United Nations was contingent on its adherence to the principles of UNGA 194, something it proceeded to disregard once membership was granted.

While the resolution granting Israel's membership in the UN mentions UNGA 194, in no way does it say that it is contingent on it:

Recalling its resolutions of 29 November 1947 and 11 December 1948 and taking note of the declarations and explanations made by the representative of the Government of Israel before the Ad Hoc Political Committee in respect of the implementation of the said resolutions,

The General Assembly,

Acting in discharge of its functions under Article 4 of the Charter and rule 125 of its rules of procedure,

1. Decides that Israel is a peace loving State which accepts the obligations contained in the Charter and is able and willing to carry out those obligations;

2. Decides to admit Israel to membership in the United Nations.

While I cannot find the specific "declarations and explanations" noted at the moment, Israel's interpretation of 194 at the time was clear - no "return" of Arab refugees could be contemplated until there was a comprehensive peace and until the Arabs who return were willing to "live at peace with their neighbours", a UNGA 194 condition that was never met. The idea that Israel's admittance was somehow conditional is clearly a blatant lie.

The lies continue. Erekat says that "Palestinian refugees [are] the oldest and largest refugee community in the world today." The fact is that the vast majority are not refugees, but descendants of refugees, and that designation was created for them by UNRWA for practical reasons as a working definition but not as a legal definition. If they are legal refugees, then so are hundreds of millions of other people.

The lies continue:

The fact that Israel bears responsibility for the creation of the refugees is beyond argument. Even if the state still claims amnesia for its deeds, Israeli historians have debunked the traditional Zionist mythology and shown how Zionist leaders prior to 1948 formulated plans to displace the indigenous Palestinian population in order to create a Jewish majority state.

While there is a tiny amount of truth to this - plans are created for a lot of situations - there was no actual implementation of any such plans. The vast majority of Palestinian Arabs fled out of fear, not from force; their leaders fled early quite voluntarily leaving the masses without any anchor in the land. They fled because they thought that their Arab neighbors would allow them to resettle or stay until the Jews would be destroyed, but their fleeing showed that their attachment to the land was far more tenuous than the Jews who had no choice but to stay and fight, or die.

The lies continue:

Resolution 194 must provide the basis for a settlement to the refugee issue.

Resolution 194 was a General Assembly resolution, not legally binding. It also required that the Jerusalem area be under UN control - something ignored by Arabs. It does not specify only Arab refugees - in its language, Jews should have been allowed to return to their homes in the Old City and Gush Etzion and elsewhere - a provision rejected by Arabs even today. The entire resolution has no legal validity whatsoever in any peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, as Israel argued in 1999:

The letters of invitation to the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991 and the Oslo Agreements signed between Israel and the PLO expressly provide that permanent status negotiations are to be based on Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973). No other United Nations resolution is cited. The Palestinians have thus affirmed that a permanent solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be achieved by a negotiated settlement in West Bank and Gaza Strip territory that is the subject of those Security Council resolutions.

Other provisions of UNGA 194 were roundly ignored by the Arabs as well, such as free access to holy places. It is the Arab actions no less than anyone else that made 194 irrelevant.

Erekat's final lie is that masses of so-called refugees flooding Israel "will lead to a lasting peace." On the contrary, it would lead to the kind of internal terrorism that Palestine suffered before Israel was established, where thousands of people were slaughtered while Jews were a minority.

The entire issue is a ruse meant to destroy the Jewish state, and when the most "moderate" Palestinian Arab leaders are still publicly calling to dismantle Israel by demographic means, it shows that their stated desire for a two-state solution with both states living side by side in peace is an utter sham.

This article also proves that Palestinian Arab rejectionism is not merely a tactical move to improve their negotiating position, but an absolute rejection of Israel as anything other than yet another Arab state. This is the mainstream position of so-called "moderate" Palestinian Arabs, not a fringe extremist position. If the West is serious about a real peace - something that seems literally impossible given such intransigence - it needs to insist that Palestinian Arab leaders admit, publicly, that Israel is not where descendants of Palestinian Arabs who fled in 1948 will live and that they need to be absorbed in Arab countries instead of being the victims of institutional discrimination in every single Arab country as they are today.

That is the issue that Erekat and his ilk studiously avoid mentioning, and it proves beyond all doubt that they do not give a damn about their people but rather want to continue using them as pawns in their six-decade old, single-minded goal of destroying Israel.

CiFWatch takes apart The Guardian's Harriet Sherwood

CiFWatch has a masterful piece that looks at the six month anniversary of The Guardian's Harriet Sherwood reporting from Israel, and seeing if she is meeting her own stated standards of objectivity and going beyond the wire-service coverage to find the deeper stories.

The results aren't pretty:

The entire article is worth reading.

While you are at it, last week CiFWatch published a fantastic flotilla parody which I tweeted and commenters linked to, and if you haven't read it yet you are missing out.

Nice takedown of a takedown of UNRWA

Not all criticism of UNRWA comes from the perspective of the damage it does to Palestinian Arabs. Sometimes, as in a recent Comment is Free piece in the Guardian, the criticism comes because it helps stop Palestinian Arab terror.

The Kieron Monks piece starts off okay:

"Peace Starts Here" is the slogan adopted by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to promote its work in the Palestinian territories. But why does peace "start here"? Why not 60 years ago when UNRWA began its work with Palestinian refugees? Or 60 years in the future, when we will still be debating the same problems if the aid models do not change.

The timing of Chris Gunness's recent article about the UN agency's work was unfortunate, coinciding with strikes by UNRWA employees, which have paralysed essential services in the West Bank's 18 refugee camps. The laudable initiatives Gunness mentioned – health centres, schools, food for hardship cases – ground to a halt without his agency's patronage.

That's not sustainable development; it's a permanent life-support system. Neither is it sustainable for UNRWA, which had been forced to slash its services because of budget deficits even before the strikes began.

Palestine is one of the world's largest beneficiaries of foreign aid, receiving over $3bn (£1.9bn) annually (not including the budget of UNRWA itself). Yet a quarter of the West Bank population remains food-insecure and half of all Palestinians live below the poverty line.

If relief work is failing, economic development is even more worrying. Prime minister Salam Fayyad told the Annual Capital Forum that Palestine's GDP grew 9% in the past year, but as a former IMF representative he should know that the gains are hollow. In 2009, over 60% of Palestine's gross national income, and almost 100% of government expenditure, came from aid.

But then we start to see his real agenda:

The Palestinian Authority, which receives over $2bn annually, is answerable not to Palestinians, but to its donors. The aid-management structure in Palestine is innately political. At the top level, the ad hoc liaison committee, members include the United States and Israel. The impact of foreign interests can be clearly seen in PA budgets that allocate 10 times more money to security – suppressing resistance to the occupation – than to agriculture, which could be the backbone of the Palestinian economy.

Whoa! He is saying that the PA shouldn't be stopping terrorism; in fact he is implying that terrorism is a good thing!

The rest of the piece makes this clear - Monks' problem with UNRWA (and the PA) is not that they are hurting those they pretend to help, but that they are helping Israel! And so is the rest of the world when they fund these NGOs! It's a conspiracy meant to keep the Palestinian Arabs enslaved forever! Bwahahaha!

Adam Levick at CiFWatch does a very nice job at finding out that Monk's motivations are a bit suspect. Very much worth reading.

Guardian excises Jews from Bible story

A great pickup by Omri from Mere Rhetoric (via email), quoting The Guardian:

Religious tourists in Europe already have the Vatican, Lourdes and Fatima. But the developers behind an amusement park proposed for Mallorca believe they need the attraction of the Holy Land – the continent's very first Christian theme park.

The €10m development is to be built on seven hectares (17 acres) that include the former municipal rubbish dump at Capdepera, in the north of the island, if the plans presented to the town hall come to fruition.

The park will offer visitors everything from the last supper to "live resurrections" in a rolling programme of shows repeated through the day.

...With a cast of extras in the costumes of Romans and early Palestinians, the park advertises itself as "a place where everyone can learn about the origins of spirituality".

Yes, Jesus and his neighbors were all "early Palestinians" who gave the world the origins of spirituality. I guess that the Jewish imperialist dogs only invaded the area around 1948 to unfairly punish the innocent native Palestinian descendants of Jesus' disciples.

But, to be fair, I'm pretty sure that the Guardian would consider Judas to be a Jew.

UPDATE: Melanie Phillips comments on this as well.