Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

11/29 Links Pt1: Dore Gold: 'Attack on Balfour Declaration part of PA's rejectionist stance'

From Ian:

If the Trump administration implements this policy change, Netanyahu would come under tremendous political pressure from within the Likud and from his right-wing coalition members to advance settlement building not only inside established blocs but also in more isolated areas, something the prime minister has opposed until now.
Netanyahu has consistently supported a negotiated peace that would result in a creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state. This position acknowledges and attempts to solve the demographic threat presented by the Palestinian population if the West Bank were annexed.
Deterioration of the security situation on the West Bank combined with a radical change in US foreign policy vis-avis the Palestinians could, at least in the short-term, undermine Netanyahu’s optimistic forecast for the future. The interim between the end of President Barack Obama’s term and the beginning of Trump’s offers a unique opportunity for Netanyahu to take initiative. To the extent possible, Israel should attempt to stabilize the situation in the West Bank and prevent the infighting within the Fatah.
And if Netanyahu truly believes that only through a two-state solution with the Palestinians will Israel remain both Jewish and democratic, he must make this clear to the Trump administration.

'Attack on Balfour Declaration part of PA's rejectionist stance'

Former Foreign Ministry Director General Dore Gold and Israeli Ambassador to the U.K. Mark Regev were expected to speak in the House of Commons on Tuesday at an event called "Refuting Balfour's Detractors." The event comes 99 years after British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour wrote his historic letter stating that his government views "with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."
In July, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki said the Palestinian Authority would file a lawsuit against the United Kingdom over the 1917 letter, considered a major diplomatic milestone in the history of the Zionist movement.
In the wake of Malki's statement, the pro-Palestinian group Palestinian Return Center launched the "Balfour Apology Campaign" in October at an event held in the House of Lords.
"As the 100th year since the Balfour Declaration approaches, the Palestinian Return Center has decided to relaunch its campaign which started in 2013, called Balfour Apology Campaign, which asks the U.K. government to officially apologize for its past colonial crimes in Palestine," the center said. The center has been accused by Israel of being linked to Hamas, but has denied any ties to the terrorist organization.

IsraellyCool: Know Your History: The Jewish And Arab Reactions To The Partition Plan (NY Times Nov-Dec 1947)

A series where I bring to you news from the newspaper archives and historical documents to debunk common misconceptions about the Middle East conflict.
This post is for dedicated to Roger Waters, who just lamented the fact a palestinian state did not arise from the 1947 UN Partition Plan, without explaining what happened.
We can see what happened by looking at some old New York Times reports from after the UN voted in favor of the plan. The Jewish reaction is one of acceptance of the plan (even though it encompassed way less than our ancestral lands) and unbridled joy, with Chief Rabbi Herzog proclaiming it as “an outstanding epoch of Jewish history” “after a darkness of 2,000 years.”
The Arab reaction? Anger, rejection of the plan…and terrorism in Palestine and overseas, as well as threatening a Holy War. Note also the Arab threat to crusade against the “Jews” – not the “Zionists.”

Times (UK) implies "Jews" want to silence centuries-old call to Muslim prayer

The beginning of the Times of London's coverage of the proposed Israeli law to limit the volume on the Muslim call to prayer shows nothing but anti-Jewish bias:

Ear-splitting loudspeakers are now considered a "call to prayer that has echoed for centuries"?

The rest of the article is nearly as bad:

The Knesset will vote this week on a bill to restrict the use of loudspeakers in mosques, which sound out five times a day. Supporters say it is a quality-of-life issue: the broadcasts are a nuisance, they argue, particularly the pre-dawn call at 4.45am.
Arabs, who make up one fifth of Israel’s population, see it as an attack on their religious freedom. “It’s a populist and racist law, shrouded in excuses,” Amir Badran said at a weekend protest. “They’re trying to delegitimise the Arab public.”

But way towards the end, we find out that the version of the bill that is being voted on will only ban the loudspeakers for the very first call to prayer of the day, and allow the other four:

The bill now under discussion would only apply between 11pm and 7am, only affecting the earliest Muslim call to prayer.

If the article would have led with this fact instead of framing it as an attack of Jews against Muslim human rights, the readers would have gotten a different impression.

The comments on the article indicate that the Times of London has completely ignored the fires in Israel over the past week, but instead chooses to publish this other type of incendiary article.

(h/t Howard S)

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Israel confirms some of the major - and early! - fires were terrorism

Israel's Tax Authority announced that some of the major fires that swept through Israel last week were set deliberately.

Here's their list so far, with dates and times of the fires:

Tal-El, 20.11, 02:00

Zikhron Ya'akov, 22.11, 11:30

Dolev, 22.11, 20:30

Gilon, 23.11, 00:00

Talmon, 23.11, 21:00

Haifa, 24.11, 10:00

Nirit, 24.11, 15:00

Nataf, 25.11, 15:00

Halamish, 25.11, 22:50

The fires didn't make the headlines until last Wednesday November 23, which means that some of the arson was not opportunistic based on the news coverage, but was deliberately planned.

And these were not small fires. The Tal-El fire burned 150 dunams and caused evacuations. The Zichron Yaakov blaze caused injuries, burned houses and caused mass evacuations. The Dolev blaze was 20 meters high.

And of course, the Haifa blazes were gigantic as well.

Officials say roughly one third of the fires were terror attacks.

(h/t Yoel)

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Jimmy Carter wrote yet another tendentious op-ed for, who else, the New York Times.

The first paragraphs show yet again that he is simply a liar.

We do not yet know the policy of the next administration toward Israel and Palestine, but we do know the policy of this administration. It has been President Obama’s aim to support a negotiated end to the conflict based on two states, living side by side in peace.

That prospect is now in grave doubt. I am convinced that the United States can still shape the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before a change in presidents, but time is very short. The simple but vital step this administration must take before its term expires on Jan. 20 is to grant American diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine, as 137 countries have already done, and help it achieve full United Nations membership.

Back in 1978, during my administration, Israel’s prime minister, Menachem Begin, and Egypt’s president, Anwar Sadat, signed the Camp David Accords. That agreement was based on the United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which was passed in the aftermath of the 1967 war. The key words of that resolution were “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East in which every state in the area can live in security,” and the “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.”

The agreement was ratified overwhelmingly by the Parliaments of Egypt and Israel. And those two foundational concepts have been the basis for the policy of the United States government and the international community ever since.

The words "key words" links to a UN publication that also says that there were two main points to the resolution - but not the ones Carter says.

The resolution stipulated that the establishment of a just and lasting peace should include the application of two principles:
✹ Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict; and
✹ Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.

The part that Carter quotes about "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war" was not from the operative part of the resolution, but from the preamble - which has no legal standing. And the part that he ignores is the part that was meant to say that the final borders would be the result of negotiations, not the 1949 armistice lines.

So Carter spins a double lie: one is that he elevates a meaningless preamble phrase to importance it doesn't have, and he ignores the phrase that insists that Israel's neighbors (which do not include the Palestinians, who are not mentioned at all in the resolution) allow Israel to have secure borders, which it most certainly didn't have before 1967. That is why the language doesn't call for Israel to withdraw from all territories - but to create a border that would allow it to be secure from attack, borders that would be negotiated with its neighbors.

Also, the text he links to mentions this fact that he ignores: the PLO strongly rejected UN 242 at the time.

This is what 242 says. The drafters of the resolution from the US and UK are unanimous in this interpretation. Carter, however, pretends that UNSC 242 says that all Israeli communities beyond the artificial 1949 armistice lines - that were never secure nor recognized - are illegal. And he is including the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem! (Carter counts all Jerusalem residents across the Green Line to be living there illegally.)

242 also says that, even if you do recognize a new entity called "Palestine" in part of the territories, that state must acknowledge Israel's right to live in peace. Given that Fatah, which dominates the PLO which controls the Palestinian Authority, explicitly says that violence is an acceptable form of "resistance," clearly Israel's Arab neighbors do not accept that clause that is indeed one of the main parts of 242 that Carter ignores.

There's plenty more that Carter twists in the op-ed, but really, when he lies as far as what the two main points of 242 are, he's already proven to be a liar.

After January 20, we will have another ex-president who will have free rein to make up anti-Israel lies in op-ed pages.

The New York Times yet again shows that it allows anti-Israel op-ed writers to not be subject to basic fact checks.

(h/t David B)

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Arab cartoon calls for more torchings in Israel (update)

Unfortunately I don't know what the source is; this came from a Twitter account that translates Arabic news into Hebrew.

(h/t Yenta)

UPDATE: It was drawn by Jew-hating Omayya Joha, whom I have discussed before (h/t Bob Knot)

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11/28 Links Pt2: International NGOs: The new feudalism; Norway, the West’s most anti-Semitic country

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: International NGOs: The new feudalism

Recently a man named Sherzad Mosa walked into a bar in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region of Iraq, and was surprised to overhear a woman describe it as an “NGO bar.” Mosa wondered on Facebook why hundreds of thousands of refugees are living in the Kurdish region, and “kids and women” are suffering while “200 NGOs have more than 1,600 foreign people working for them and they are getting paid more than $10,000 per month and staying in the best hotels?” Others commented on his thread that NGO workers were driving around in brand new vehicles and spending just a few hours with refugees and then driving back to their hotels.
What these men had seen was only a small piece of a new kind of feudalism that involves governments, NGOs, international organizations and to a lesser extent media and academics.
Trying to quantify the extent of it is like the parable of the elephant in the room.
Everyone is touching one part of the feudal empire, but unable to see the whole of it.
Working in the Palestinian territories I came across these kinds of NGO employees and members of UN and EU government staffs over the years. Their fleets of SUVs plied the streets and their workers made ten times the local salaries. On their own they joked about the job they were doing. One German working on Palestinian election issues admitted it was all a financial windfall. There would never be elections, he said, “but I make great money here and get a resume builder.” A man we met who had a political science degree had somehow become a “security expert” for an international organization, giving “assessments” about threats in Gaza. Organizations such as the “Temporary International Presence in Hebron” are not temporary, existing for decades and paying salaries to Europeans who spend their weekends, as evidenced by their vehicles, enjoying themselves at Jerusalem or Tel Aviv bars. The new colonials call themselves “internationals.”

Horror and carnage in the Middle East – in historic context

With major battles taking place in Gaza, on April 6, 1917, the eve of Passover, the Turks ordered the expulsion of approximately 8,000 – 10,000 Jews from Jaffa and Tel Aviv.
An estimated 20 percent of the expelled died from hunger and contagious diseases.
On October 31, 1917, Australian light horsemen captured Beersheba, opening the way for Jerusalem’s capture in December 1917. At the major Turkish base in Beersheba, scores of Jewish forced laborers were employed by the Turks in construction, milling, tailoring, railroad work, cutting wood, and as teamsters. They fled as the Australians and British approached. Many others died from disease, flash floods and British aerial attacks.
It was at this point of history that the Balfour Declaration was declared on November 2, 1917. And on December 9, 1917, the British army liberated Jerusalem.
In 1918, even after the liberation, poverty was still crushing.
The first British military governor, Roland Storrs, reported finding “many ladies of doubtful reputation [presumably not all Jewish]... On our entry into Jerusalem we had found no less than 500 such women living in a special quarter.” Thousands of orphans were living in the streets.
For the indigenous Jews of the Holy Land, Arthur Balfour was no less a hero and savior than British commander Edmund Allenby. When Balfour toured the Jewish communities in Palestine in 1925, he was tumultuously received by appreciative throngs of Jews who had survived hardships and punishments of truly biblical proportions.
Whatever the intent, the Balfour Declaration was a humanitarian proclamation as much as a political/diplomatic announcement.

Battle over Balfour Declaration heats up... 99 years after it was issued

A month after a Palestinian group met in Britain’s House of Lords with the aim of burying the Balfour Declaration, an Israeli group on Tuesday will take to a room in the House of Commons to praise it.
Dore Gold, the head of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and up until a month ago the Foreign Ministry’s director-general, will hold a meeting titled “Refuting Balfour’s Detractors” to provide a high-profile response to Palestinian efforts to get a British apology, or even to extract compensation, for the November 1917 declaration that paved the way for the Jewish state.
Rather than take the affirmative step of recognizing the Jewish right to a nation-state in Israel, Gold said, the Palestinians are “doing the exact opposite by denying actively the very request for a Jewish homeland.”
On October 25, the Palestinian Return Center held a symposium in the House of Lords it trumpeted as the “launch of the Balfour Apology Campaign,” aimed at getting a British apology for the Balfour Declaration, which it described as “an historical breach against the aspirations of the people of Palestine” that “shattered its hopes for freedom and self determination.”
Gold said he will prove at Tuesday’s meeting that the Palestinian Return Center is a Hamas entity.

EoZTV: "Open-air prison camp" hosting high-tech expo this week

The latest EoZTV:

This week marks the annual ExpoTech show, showing Palestinian high-tech ventures, being held simultaneously in Ramallah and Gaza City.

Here are some photos from last year's show in Gaza:

Look at all the starving children!

I found two of the exhibitors interesting, the Amassi Group and Jawal Sons:

Both of them prominently display the Hewlett-Packard logo in their booths.

HP, of course, is one of the targets of the BDS boycott. Apparently, in Gaza, being an HP partner is not considered a liability.

And this week happens to be the week that HP is specifically targeted for boycott by BDS!

There is nothing wrong with such an expo - in fact, I wish Gaza high tech companies all the success they can have, especially in finding the type of work that can be done remotely for clients worldwide, like coding mobile applications. It is a shortcoming of the PA and Gaza governments that such ventures have not been a key part of their economic policy. Instead, they skew their economies towards the hundreds of NGOs that bring tons of money that do not create any actual products.

Those very NGOs are the ones who are most against showing these types of images, because they can't raise money for Gaza when people see Gazan schoolkids attending a high-tech expo instead of playing in rubble that purposefully hasn't been cleared two years after a war.

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Ali Abunimah is pining for a pineless Palestine (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

In a recent post on the “Pine libel,” EoZ focused on a commentary by the notorious antisemite Gilad Atzmon who described the forest fires raging in many parts of Israel last week as nature’s revenge against evil Zionist efforts “to make Palestine look like Europe” by planting supposedly non-native pine trees. Well, as EoZ showed, pines are native to the region – which kind of ruins Atzmon’s triumphant conclusion: “Like the pine tree, Zionism, Israel and the Israeli are foreign to the region.”

But Atzmon’s ignorant screed wasn’t even original: the claim that Zionists planted pines “to make Palestine look like Europe” is rather popular among anti-Israel activists, and can e.g. also be found in a lengthy Electronic Intifada (EI) article from 2010, where Max Blumenthal gloated about the devastating Carmel fire: “the nonindigenous trees of the JNF were poorly suited to the environment in Palestine” and “go up like tinder in the dry heat.” Inevitably, Blumenthal later recycled the EI article for “Goliath,” his book-length demonization of Israel.

With the fires raging in Israel last week, Ali Abunimah promptly promoted Blumenthal’s 2010 article again, emphasizing the claim that the “Zionist regime planted forests to erase traces of Palestinians.”

In another tweet, Abunimah opined that “Israel’s use of ‘forest planting’ of ill-suitied[sic!] tree species to conquer Palestinian land is root cause of the fires.” He linked to a JTA article which he apparently hadn’t really read: the article didn’t say that Israel had planted “ill-suited tree species,” but on the contrary quoted the JNF’s director of forest management as praising “these pioneering pines” for doing “a wonderful job for the first generation.” The article also explicitly mentioned the “Aleppo pine, also known as the Jerusalem pine” – so Abunimah, who after all claims to be Palestinian, could have noticed that the pine wasn’t named for a European location…

But Abunimah insisted that “Fires in ‘Israel’ are caused by planting of non-native pines by European settlers and disastrous Zionist land mismanagement;” and he even mocked Jack Mendel, a journalist for the British Jewish News: “‘journalist’ @mendelpol thinks I made up the facts about Zionist colonizer filling Palestine with highly flammable non native pines.”

Well, if Abunimah had bothered to read the JTA article he linked to so helpfully, he would know that his “non-native pines” are named after the now so unfortunate Syrian town of Aleppo, and he could actually also have learned something about “land mismanagement”:

“For centuries the area was covered in a patchwork of squat, dense low-lying forest, especially in the native woodland areas of the Carmel, Galilee and the Judean hills. But by the time the early Zionist settlers arrived, much of the forestland had been depleted, used over the years as firewood, building material, grazing land for goats and sheep, and even train tracks in the Ottoman era.”

Let me also add that I don’t think anyone would ever accuse Abunimah of making up facts – his record is clear: he’s always making up lies about the “Zionist colonizer.” As it happens, this time the lies he made up exposed his lack of knowledge about the historic Palestine that he claims as his homeland.

But since Abunimah is the son of a high-ranking Jordanian diplomat and presumably sometimes goes to visit his family in Jordan, I have a suggestion: next time he visits, he could plan a family excursion to the Dibeen Forest Reserve, a “pristine pine-oak habitat” which is said to feature “Aleppo pines” that “are some of the oldest and largest in the Kingdom.” According to one travel guide, it’s rather small but nevertheless “a nice destination for peace and quiet” – how about it, Ali Abunimah? To get into the mood, you could check out the relevant page at “Magic Jordan,” which notes that Dibeen forest includes the “indigenous Aleppo pine” and “is representative of the wilderness that once covered a large part of north-western Jordan.”

Admittedly, the site’s photo gallery offers some views of the reserve that look just like those places in Israel that monstrously evil Zionists transformed from barren hills to “little Switzerlands” – and it’s a depressing thought that some people might wish for it all to burn down just because it doesn’t fit their ignorant ideals of a pristinely barren Palestine.

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11/28 Links Pt1: Abbas: A Record of Rejectionism; Israel’s Terror Fires; Politicizing Israeli Wildfires

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: The 'Wall of Shame'

"The equation facing the Palestinian factions is clear: Hand over the terrorists and there will be no wall. The Palestinians have proven that they are unable to take security matters into their own hands in this camp." — Lebanese security official.
These anti-Palestinian practices are regularly ignored by the international community, including mainstream media and human rights organizations, whose obsession with Israel blinds them to Arab injustice. A story without an anti-Israel angle is not a story, as far as they are concerned
Typically, Western journalists and human rights activists do not even bother to report or document cases of Arab mistreatment of Arabs. This abandonment of professional standards is why apartheid laws targeting Palestinians in several Arab countries are still unknown to the international community.
The Lebanese authorities also say that they decided to build the wall after discovering several tunnels in the vicinity of Ain al-Hilweh, used to smuggle weapons and terrorists into and out of the camp.
The new wall will not solve the real problem -- namely the failure to absorb the refugees and grant them citizenship. Palestinians living in Arab countries are denied citizenship (with the exception of Jordan) and a host of basic rights.

JPost Editorial: Fires and Hezbollah

In the past few days the nation has faced one of the worst brushfires in its history. Nearly a thousand hectares of forests and rural areas have been destroyed in Zichron Ya’acov, Neveh Shalom, Modi’in, Neveh Ilan and Nataf. Tens of thousands were evacuated from their homes in the Haifa area alone.
Israel’s under-staffed firefighting forces have been battling day and night to stop the flames from spreading.
Firefighters and equipment from abroad have provided important backup. In times of natural disaster – even when many of the fires seem to have been the result of arson – nations come together. Israelis received help from Palestinians and Turks as though the political differences that normally taint relations did not exist.
Thankfully, as of this writing there have not been any casualties. This is a testament to the success of firefighters and other rapid response teams.
However, the fires provide an opportunity to reflect on the dangers of a very different scenario.

325 Foreign Nationals Came to Israel to Fight Fires

The media may have hailed the arrival of the Supertanker from the United States, but the heads of Israel's Fire & Rescue Authority said Sunday there is no need for the massive firefighting aircraft at present.
The Supertanker landed in Israel on Friday night, but was only put to use on Saturday in the Jerusalem Mountains area, over Nataf.

It took to the air again on Sunday afternoon, but found itself circling idly over the sea near Zikhron Ya'akov and the Haifa Bay area after all of the major fires had already been put out.
While acting Fire Commissioner Shimon Ben-Ner said there was no need for the Supertanker, the aircraft is operated directly by the Israel Police and it is the police that will eventually decide whether or not to use it.
On Saturday, police demanded to use the firefighting aircraft in the forests that border Highway 1, while the Fire & Rescue Authority determined there was no operational need for it. Eventually, despite disagreements between the two emergency services, the Supertanker was used to help extinguish areas that were still on fire near Nataf.
The massive firefighting aircraft, which reached Israel after firefighters had already gained control over the fires in Haifa, was one of 21 planes that took to the sky to help put out the blazes that plagued Israel last week.
In total, some 325 foreign nationals participated in firefighting efforts.

According to Al Akhbar, a newspaper close to Hezbollah, the military leaders of Hezbollah met with Russian military leaders in Lebanon for the first time. From Now Lebanon:

Hezbollah military officials have held their first ever direct meeting with their Russian counterparts in a landmark sitdown that tackled the Aleppo front, according to a daily close to the powerful Lebanese militant organization.

“Less than a week ago, Aleppo witnessed the first direct meeting between Hezbollah field commanders and Russian army officers,” Al-Akhbar reported Thursday.

The Lebanese daily said that the gathering “came at the request of the Russians” who were impressed by Hezbollah’s military performance during the “Battle of Martyr Abu Omar Saraqeb,” a failed rebel offensive launched in late October against regime positions in western Aleppo.

This report, if true, combined with the news of the Hezbollah military parade recently on Syrian soil, gives the impression that Hezbollah has transformed from a terror group to a conventional military force.

A Lebanese writer, Hussain Abdul-Hussain, thinks this is a good thing, at least for Lebanon:

The significance of a militia turning into an army is substantial. If Hezbollah sticks to such a format, it means that the party will lose its ability to fight asymmetric wars, and will be forced to engage in regular army-to-army battles. This means that Hezbollah will lose its ability to blend in with non-combatants, or launch its offensive from civilian neighborhoods. After all, tanks and artillery do not really fit in small streets and cannot be hidden behind bushes.

If Hezbollah’s militia sticks to its new setup as a conventional army, then the party will have to calculate its wars more carefully. Hezbollah already avoids battle with Israel after Tel Aviv announced its Dahiyeh (Suburb) Doctrine and razed large areas of Beirut’s southern suburbs, as well as Shiite villages in the south in the 2006 War. Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of neighborhoods containing Hezbollah and its supporters exacted a heavy toll on the party, and have forced it to avoid further wars with the Israelis, despite all the bravado from Hezbollah’s leaders.

With an army instead of a militia, Hezbollah will have to fight its future wars with Israel out in the open, which should be good news for Shiite non-combatants and the Lebanese at large, who lost a considerable chunk of their infrastructure, such as bridges, that Israel destroyed to hinder the movement of the party’s invisible fighters in 2006.

Now that Hezbollah’s fighters are visible, Israel will have less reason to hit Lebanon, and will instead engage Hezbollah in head-to-head combat, which Hezbollah says they are not shying from this time, arguing that in any future war with Israel, the party’s fighters will not sit back and defend, but might pressure the Israeli north, attempting to win and hold territory.

This is way too rosy a viewpoint. Just because Hezbollah is acting like a regular army in Lebanon doesn't mean it has the desire to act that way against Israel. After all, the tactic of using human shields is worthless against the rebel forces in Syria.

Entire communities in southern Lebanon have been turned into hiding places for thousands of rockets among homes and schools. Hezbollah is not going to move them into easily identified silos in the countryside any time soon.

In short, Hezbollah's perceived advantage against Israel is entirely based on its dismissal of the rules of war, which incidentally it also ignores in Syria. It is beyond wishful thinking to believe that the terror group will behave any more morally with tanks than without them.

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Here is an amazing indictment of the New York Times' culture of deciding what is news and what isn't, from former employee Michael Cieply:

For starters, it’s important to accept that the New York Times has always — or at least for many decades — been a far more editor-driven, and self-conscious, publication than many of those with which it competes. Historically, the Los Angeles Times, where I worked twice, for instance, was a reporter-driven, bottom-up newspaper. Most editors wanted to know, every day, before the first morning meeting: “What are you hearing? What have you got?”

It was a shock on arriving at the New York Times in 2004, as the paper’s movie editor, to realize that its editorial dynamic was essentially the reverse. By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line.

Reality usually had a way of intervening. But I knew one senior reporter who would play solitaire on his computer in the mornings, waiting for his editors to come through with marching orders. Once, in the Los Angeles bureau, I listened to a visiting National staff reporter tell a contact, more or less: “My editor needs someone to say such-and-such, could you say that?”

The bigger shock came on being told, at least twice, by Times editors who were describing the paper’s daily Page One meeting: “We set the agenda for the country in that room.”

Having lived at one time or another in small-town Pennsylvania, some lower-rung Detroit suburbs, San Francisco, Oakland, Tulsa and, now, Santa Monica, I could only think, well, “Wow.” This is a very large country. I couldn’t even find a copy of the Times on a stop in college town Durham, N.C. To believe the national agenda was being set in a conference room in a headquarters on Manhattan’s Times Square required a very special mind-set indeed.

Inside the Times building, then and now, a great deal of the conversation is about the Times. In any institution, shop-talk is inevitable. But the navel-gazing seemed more intense at the Times, where too many journalists spent too much time decoding the paper’s ways, and too little figuring out the world at large.

We've seen this happen many times. With Israel, the narrative drives the stories, not the facts. And in the case of the Middle East, the NYT narrative is indeed what drives too many politicians and pundits in other media outlets to slavishly follow the Gray Lady's lead.

The narrative is of a far-right Likud government which has no interest in negotiations and of a moderate and pragmatic Palestinian leadership that is frustrated by Israeli intransigence. The narrative is where Jews who want to live on their ancestral lands are considered the biggest obstacle to peace while the terror attacks that occur every day have nothing to do with incitement by the Palestinian leaders in the media and in their school curricula, which is almost never reported.

And this is just the news desk. The editorial page is much worse, and consistently shows an anti-Israel slant, with anti-Israel op-eds outnumbering pro-Israel op-eds by a ratio of 5-1 most months.

True, middle America couldn't care less about the NYT narrative, as the last election showed. But the power brokers in Washington and New York indeed believe that the Times "sets the agenda" and they happily play their part in following it. It blew up in their faces on Election Day but there is little indication that the soul-searching at the NYT is going to be extended to its foreign news coverage, where the editors still create the narrative and the reporters still follow.

(h/t Yaacov Lozowick)

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The English edition of Jordan's Ammon News reported on Sunday:

The Civil Defence Department said that it had participated in fighting brush fires that swept large areas in Israel and the occupied West Bank after the Jordanian government received an official request for help this morning.

It said in a statement that the contribution is part of the humanitarian regional effort in which a number of countries, including Egypt, Turkey and the Palestinian National Authority, took part alongside other world nations. It added that the fires fall within the category of natural disasters.

That last sentence was clearly meant to head off criticism of the being "normalization" with Israel, saying that this goes beyond politics.

On the Ammon News Facebook page in Arabic, the comments from Jordanians to this story were quite mixed.

The first reaction was against the aid, saying that Israel and Jews were burning Palestinian identity in the land and that the fires were divine retribution.

The second pointed out that Israelis reacted strongly against Jordan for sponsoring the UNESCO resolution on the Temple Mount, yet Jordan needs to be smart. When Israel asks for aid, it suffers embarrassment, and by Jordan giving help it puts Jordan at a moral advantage in any future negotiations.

One person justified the aid as good training for Jordanian firefighters.

This woman was puzzled:

Another said, simply, "Allah burn all Israelis and Jews in the world."

Yet another asked "What is the problem?" and the following commenter said that Jordan acted 100% properly.

This was all a big contrast to the reactions to the Jordanian gas deal with Israel, where practically everyone who wrote about it publicly was against the deal even though the government supported it.

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