Spot on.

From the article: "Yet this is more than made up for by the space given for Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat to explain his side's position:

"We want an agreement to end the [Israeli] occupation and establish an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.""

This is the other annoying aspect about many media reports. As above, they quote leaders like Erekat saying that they want a state with Jerusalem as its capital etc.

However, the media never takes such comments and THEN report that the Palestinians were offered EXACTLY THIS in 2000 (i.e. a Palestinian state in approximately 95% of the West Bank, all of Gaza and a capital in East Jerusalem), except Yasser Arafat refused this offer.

Why is it that much of the media never picks up on such comments? Is it too much to ask that journalists know some basic history? I guess it must be.

Posted by: S Perry at September 5, 2008 7:41 AM

Of course, this article would be even more fun if Mr Rubin were to take the bull by the horns and attempt a little deconstruction of his own, in the interests not of falsehood but of strict historical truth.

Imagine how the article would have read if, instead of writing [noun] 'Palestinians' and [adjective] 'Palestinian' in 9 cases out of 10 Mr Rubin had written 'local Arabs' or 'local Arab Muslims' [noun phrase] or 'local Arab' or 'local Arab Muslim' [adjectival phrase]; and if he had mostly written 'Judea and Samaria' rather than 'West Bank'.

I said 'nine cases out of 10' because when reporting direct speech one must report what people said, verbatim, whether you think the terms they used were correct or not. So if an Israeli official who has insensibly absorbed the Arab Muslim propaganda barrage talks about 'Palestinians' and 'West Bank' one must, sadly, grit one's teeth and report it, because that is what he said. However, subsequent discussion and comment can always add the correct terminology.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at September 5, 2008 8:23 AM

To this excellent article, and others like it that may follow -- requiring, of course, a great deal of mental stamina, and a certain implacability -- something else can be added, something over-arching that goes beyond the viciousness (see Robert Fisk, see Barbara Plett) or laziness or parti-pris banality, and fixed phrases and fossilized thoughts, of the journalists who never quite manage to see what is staring them in the face, never undertake the kind of study that might make their reports more than mere (tendentious) reports, but help explain things (Islam is in the minds and hearts of men, Islam cannot be seen, so those who report on it have to learn about it, not assume that they can "learn about it" from just being around Muslims and taking what they tell a reporter at face value). There is no depth to them, no connecting of the dots. Apparently one becomes a journalist without having to pass an examination in anything, and too often, one is sent first here, for a few years, and then there, and the training of journalists, the demands made -- or rather that failed to be made -- on them either by their employers, or by the public, or by fellow journalists, all has created the situation one endures today. It is not only to be found in the atrocious coverage of the Arab Muslim war on Israel, with everything devoid of context, lacking in historical sense, and often revealing a tendentiousness that is by now such a given, that those who complain are in turn ignored, despite the sobriety of detail that they offer to justify such complains. As the article above suggests, almost no reporting by the major wire services (such as AP, or the even more outrageous Reuters) even attempts to present anything about the non-stop[ war being made on Israel, and the balance of forces (and seeing that Israelis are currently more powerful than either the Gazan Arabs or the "West Bank" Arabs, and being content with that optical illusion, reflects both unthinkingness, and an out-of-context cruelty that has become unendurable to readers who, thanks to their own reading, and to the Internet, (and to such sites as this one, or to MEMRI) know a good deal more than the average reader.

Those people know what Israel endures. Some of them know not only the history and purpose of the Mandate for Palestine, but know about the other League of Nations' Mandates, know about when the "Palestinian people" were invented and why, know about the Arab attempts to suppress all non-Muslim and non-Arab peoples in the Middle East and North Africa, understand what the word "Jihad" means and, what's more, understand that the instruments of Jihad have now been deployed all over the Western world, and threaten the countries and civilization of Western Europe -- which is to say, threaten us, in North America -- in a way that they never could before, and that if there were even the most minimally adequate reporting on the Lesser Jihad against Israel, and on the attempt by Israelis to defend themselves (with so little understandig by so many) against an unceasingly hostile enemy, this would help to alert non-Muslims as to the general problem of the world-wide Jihad, that is the world-wide effort, or duty, imposed on Muslims, to engage directly or indirectely in a "struggle" to push back the boundaries of Dar al-Islam, to remove every obstacle (and the greatest of these obstacles are the American Constitution, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) to the spread, and then to the dominance, of Islam.

Successive Israeli governments, out of the ignorance, and possibly out of a desire not to be truthful with the Israeli public about the never-ending nature of the war being made on them (but such a calculation is wrong; the salutary effect of learning a dismal truth, and then girding one's national loins to deal with that situation, and to represent the conflict truthfully to those who would impose their idiotic and Islam-ignoring "solutions" to what is an insoluble, but perfectly manageable problem -- that is the course Israel, and all who wish her well, snhould be urging.

And while it is always pleasing to find an example of an educated or advanced Muslim (or Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only Muslim) --a Kuwaiti or Qatari law dean here, a Saudi who having been educated in Britain mocks his own imams and the Al-Saud, and the alliance of convenience between the most fanatical Muslim clergy and the most worldly, corrupt, and thieving of ruling families -- no one in the West should confuse these occasional heartening examples of intelligence and moral sense with what those who take their Islam deeply to heart (who will always greatly outnumber the handful of advanced souls), will always think, and that is that any Infidel nation-state that exists on land once possessed by Muslims, or still worse, exsisting now practically within Dar al-Islam, must be destroyed, sooner or later, and the land returned to Muslim rule. While ultimately the whole world must be made a place where Islam dominates, on the To-Do List of Muslims, the lands once ruled by Musliims have priority.

Unless this is understood -- and it isn't hard, it's not elementary particle physics, nor molecular biology, after all -- andunless the reporters reporting on the Middle East or other largely Muslim areas are forced, by their employers or by the mockery of readers, to learn about Islam, then coverage of the "Arab-Israeli dispute" or, put much more tendentiously and sinisterly, "Israel/Palestine" (which reifies a non-existent state), will continue to appall the well-informed.

It is amazing to realize that reporters are sent to the Middle East without having been asked to really study, and give evidence of such successful study, of the area, in detail, ahead of time. Like the Bush Administration, that after several years, and a trillion dollars or so, began to figure out that there were Sunnis and Shi'a in Iraq, and that there was a lot more about Iraq and about Muslim attitudes and behavior (and much more learning is soon going to have to be accomplished, as the Shi'a inexorably take control, and the Kurds refuse what is offered them, and the Sunni Arabs, no longer fighting Al Qaeda, turn their hostile attention both to (largely Sunni) Kurds and to the Shi'a Arabs.

Familiarity with Islam means familiarity with the texts and tenets of Islam. That does not mean simply flipping through a Qur'an. It means reading, re-reading, the Qur'an, and the most relevant (and "authentic") Hadith, and becoming familiar with the major events in the life of Muhammad, and the role of Muhammad in the lives of Muslims today. It means a study of Islamic conquest, and the subjugation, by Muslim Arabs, and the disappearance, or quasi-disappearance, or continued persistent survival, of the many and various peoples who once lived in the Middle East and North Africa. It means learning the history as well of the Ottoman Empire, of the League of Nations' Mandate system, of the real -- not the false-- history of the area, and in the case of the Arab claims made against Israel, having a good knowledge of the legal, moral, and historic claims of the Jews, which in turn requires a good knowledge not only of what has happened in the area since May 1948, but what happened in the 1920s and 1930s under the Mandate, and indeed, a good knowledge of immigration, and demographic trends, in the area, from the 19th century on, when the "ruin" and "desolation" and "emptiness" of the area was reported by every Western traveller who included the Holy Land in his itinerary during trips abroad. And such preparation -- journalism needs standards, and only the well-prepared should be sent on such assignments, requiring knowledge of all kinds --emographic, cadastral, political, military, of those parts of the Ottoman Empire that later were assigned to the Mandate for Palestine.

Any reporter who has not thoroughly familiarized himself with what is in the minds of men -- in the minds of, for example, smooth-talking endlessly mendacious Saeb Erekat, or in the mind of Mahmoud No-one-here-but-us-accountants Abbas, fresh from meeting-and-greeting that great hero, Samir Kuntar -- has no right, no intellectual and therefore no moral right, to report on either the Gazan Arabs, or the "West Bank" Arabs, or what divides (and what unites) the Fast Jihadists of Hamas who now rule the former, and the Slow Jihadists of Fatah wno attempt to rule the latter.

Furthermore, no reporter who covers Kurdistan in the north of Iraq, or Darfur, or Algeria and Morocco, and who fails to comprehend that not only is Jihad to be waged on non-Muslims, but because Islam is a natural vehicle for Arab supremacism, the Arabs have no difficulty at all in denying linguistic and cultural rights, and then political and economic rights as well, even to non-Arab Muslims. But you have not read, in the regular, and too-obviously failing press, the slightest hint of this Arab supremacism, or how Islam turns out to be its perfect vehicle, even as it pretends to be a "universalist" faith with equal treatment for all Muslims.

Nor is there any note taken, by our intrepid but ill-prepared (because ill-educated) reporters and columnists, of how the resentment of non-Arab Muslims toward Arab Muslims and their most successful imperialism -- islamization leads to arabization -- and how among the most advanced non-Arab Muslims this Arab supremacism within Islam is dimly beginning to be recognized, and might usefully be encouraged, in order to diminish the appeal of Islam to targets of Da'wa, and to diminish the appeal of Islam to at least some of the 80% of the world's Muslims who are not Arab.

And no one assigned to "cover Israel and the 'Palestinians'" should be uncurious about such things as when the very idea of a "Palestinian people" was invented, and why. No one sent to the Middle East should be a deep believer in that concept prompted by ARAMCO's decades of propaganda, "the Arab World." They should have attempted to find out about the treatment of Copts, Maronites, Assyrians and Chaldeans, and many other groupos (why does the King of Jordan have Circassian guards? Why did Hafez al-Assad so trust his court contingent of Armenian guards? Why did Christians form the household staff for Saddam Hussein? What exactly prompted the ideology of Ba'athism, and why did it succeed only in two places -- Syria and Iraq? These are the kind of things that the mediocre reporters cannot answer, and have no idea why the inability to answer such questions fatally points up their lack of understanding that, in turn, makes them into nothing but the merest reporters, and reporters who cannot see behind the most obvious surface of things, and have no context, no understanding, no ability to convey the meaning or the sense of things, or how the dots connect, because they themselves are inferior, at this point, in such understanding, to a small but growing part of their audience.

And as that audience becomes, through self-education, ever more knowledgeable about Islam -- the gorilla, the King Kong, in the room -- so grows, pari passu, contempt for the thin and tendentious gruel that is offered up, by AP, by Reuters, by Agence France Presse, by the BBC, by The New Duranty Times and The Bandar Beacon, by [your local newspaper here].

Posted by: Hugh at September 5, 2008 8:31 AM

Aside from the personal motives or characteristics (laziness, bias, group-think weakness) of journalists who repeatedly err on the side of the Islamic or Arab side, there may be more powerful influences at work on the organizations themselves. Wouldn't it be illuminating to know the identities of the major investors in organizations like AP, Reuters, CNN?
To be better informed about the financial interests behind them?

Posted by: Alphabeta at September 5, 2008 9:01 AM

S Perry

never mind about asking foreign correspondents to read weighty historical tomes.

They might learn quite a lot just from two classic pieces of reporting: Martha Gellhorn's lengthy article "The Arabs of Palestine", published in Atlantic Monthly in 1961 and now readable online; and "From Cairo to Damascus", by undercover reporter 'John Roy Carlson', first published in 1951.

Carlson, descendant of Armenian refugees from Muslim violence, was right on the spot during the War of Independence in 1948; mostly among the Arab Muslims, assiduously observing while posing as pro-Arab/ pro-Muslim/ pro-Nazi; though he also wafts himself across the front lines into the Jewish side of besieged Jerusalem and stays there for a while, to find out what things were like there.

There is a footnote, in his account of the war, on pages 234-235 of the first (1951) edition of his book, which makes mincemeat of what is now the Received Arab Muslim Narrative of that war. And he should know: for he was there. He saw it happening, and heard about it from people who had seen it. Just the first paragraph is priceless:

"This flight-psychosis, which prevailed among the Arabs, and ultimately resulted in the frantic exodus of many Moslems and Christians, is a difficult phenomenon to explain. It was a mass hysteria induced by poor morale and by fear of revenge and retribution for the Arab massacres and lootings from 1920 on".

{In other words: the Arab Muslims were afraid that the principle 'Be Done By as You Did' would be applied to them; afraid, at long long last, of Consequences. As things turned out, they got off lightly - dda}.

Carlson goes on: 'Arab leaders - particularly in the Mufti's Arab Higher Committee - urged residents to clear the fighting areas, promising them that Palestine would be cleared of Jews within thirty days after the Mandate ended. After the Jews had been pushed into the sea, Arab leaders said, Palestinians could return to their homes and at the same time share in Jewish booty. They implied that those who refused to leave were pro-Zionist; *such people were threatened with reprisals* {my emphasis added - dda}.

'In contrast, I [Carlson] know of instances where the Jews begged the Arabs, particularly the Christian elements, to remain, guaranteeing their safety and full respect for property. These Christians, however, joined the fleeing Moslems, *fearing the promised retribution following the promised Arab victory* {my emphasis - dda}.

'As an instance, the Armenians, who had always got along well with Arab and Jew alike, joined the panicky Moslems, horror-stricken by the memory of the Turkish massacres".

And here is a passage from chapter 20, 'Philadelphia in Jordan', which one wishes might have been read by journalists some years ago, before they covered the Muslim takeover in Gaza.

Carlson went to the shore of the Dead Sea, and saw "the huge plant of Palestine Potash Ltd (a once highly profitable British corporation owned jointly by English and Jewish capital, which converted the fabulous mineral wealth of the Dead Sea into common salt, bromides, and chlorides...

"Photographing as I went along, I saw, with Torkom [an Arab? Armenian? refugee from Jerusalem] a sight that sickened me. The huge plant, stretching over many acres, with its generators, transformers, pumps, and a thousand and one irreplaceable items of machinery - transported at tremendous cost from England and the United States - was systematically being looted and destroyed: building by building, machine by machine, board by board.

" Hundreds of Arab scavengers...had already stripped away most of the vital working parts, and were now tearing at the corrugated tin, pipes, wire, boards and small machines. What they could not take apart they smashed with sledge hammers. Instead of utilizing the giant plant, or at least expropriating some of the equipment for constructive purposes - in a land so desperately in need of lumber, glass, ironwork and all else that was in such abundance here - *they were destroying everything, ruthlessly, cold-bloodedly, insanely* {my emphasis added - dda}.

"The plant already looked like a miniature Hiroshima, minus the ravages of fire. And this wanton destruction was more or less officially sanctioned by Trans-Jordan officials. A dozen Arab Legion guards were on hand to keep law and order among the looters."

Carlson observes the vicious Arab vandalism of the plant and houses of a former Jewish settlement (Beth Harava), right down to one last detail: 'unable to rip off the toilet bowl, the Arabs had broken it in half'.

He concludes, 'Torkom and I silently hitch-hiked back to Jericho on a huge truck laden with plunder. Our scavenger friends drove straight to the bazaar and began to sell their loot as junk - which was what they had made out of the once valuable machinery and equipment."

That was in 1948. Fast forward to Gaza 58 years later for a full action replay exhibiting precisely the same total contempt for the complex work of the human hand and mind, an identical fiendish, yes, demonic glee in destruction for the sake of destruction. A journalist who had read Carlson's account of the Arab Muslim looting of the Palestine Potash factory, might have known what to expect of the Muslims in Gaza.

A modern journalist would do well, also, to learn from the detachment and intelligent scepticism with which Gellhorn and Carlson greet the tall tales they are told by their Arab Muslim interviewees. Gellhorn, indeed, dubbed such tall tales 'mad hattery'.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at September 5, 2008 9:15 AM

dumbledoresarmy

Thanks for your post. I haven't read those reports and look forward to reading them. Much obliged.

If only there were more reporters like them.

Posted by: S Perry at September 5, 2008 9:28 AM

I call the media "corrupt" for writing articles which completely misrepresent the truth. I know that the word "corrupt" is not the right word in many cases but I do not know a better word to use for those reporters who are the product of the "selection" process within the journalism schools and media organizations of today.

They have willful ignorance of the facts and have no regard for obtaining the truth. They operate as part of an increasingly monopolistic media. These people go largely unnoticed during times of peace, but in times of war (and WMD's) they are likely to get a lot of good peace loving people killed. They are becoming dangerous to the public.

Posted by: Spot on at September 5, 2008 10:25 AM

A journalist who had read Carlson's account of the Arab Muslim looting of the Palestine Potash factory, might have known what to expect of the Muslims in Gaza.

by dumbledoresarmy

But would he? Fifty-eight years had passed between the two events. The Arabs had lost (how many - 5?) several wars. A new generation that had grown up in the Cold War was in charge. Wouldn't many people say we can't judge the children by the actions of their fathers?

And what if journalists everywhere had accurately predicted the outcome of an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza? Would it have made a difference? What if all our leaders were thoroughly versed in the history of the region and understood the consequences of withdrawal? Were the Israelis supposed to stay in Gaza indefinitely just to prevent Arabs from destroying their own economy?
Israel couldn't annex Gaza without endangering its Jewish majority and it wasn't prepared to expel the Gazans. Even knowing the consequences, did Israel have any choice but to leave?

Posted by: PMK at September 5, 2008 11:31 AM

Thanks dumbledoresarmy

I've downloaded Gellhorn's essay and there's an Adobe version of John Roy Carlson's Cairo to Damascus available which I"m also downloading.

Posted by: jewcat at September 5, 2008 7:26 PM

Great post DDA. Jewcat, re the PDF version of "From Cairo to Damascus", can you please post a link?

Thank you,

ABS
لن استسلم

Posted by: Drewbenstein at September 6, 2008 7:26 AM

ABS -- here's the link you requested:

http://spitfirelist.com/Books/carlson01.pdf

Posted by: jewcat at September 6, 2008 7:58 AM

Thank you Jewcat!

Posted by: Drewbenstein at September 6, 2008 8:41 AM

As regards Gellhorn and Carlson: after reading the Moorehead biography of Gellhorn, which includes intriguing little snippets from Gellhorn's correspondence and raw notes (1960s-1970s) concerning the Arab Muslims and Israel, and after reading Carlson's casual reference to the fact that he hitchhiked the length and breadth of Israel just after the end of the 1948 war, and took 'hundreds of photographs', it occurs to me that there are two massive and potentially revolutionary projects awaiting some enterprising scholar/ researcher in the area of Modern History and/or Journalism.

To wit: 1. convince the relevant person/ persons/ organisations to permit them to produce what scholars call a 'diplomatic' edition of ALL of Gellhorn's raw notes, complete, as originally written, straight from the notebook/ diary, concerning the Arabs and Israel (judging from the fragments Moorehead included in the bio., I would LOVE to read the whole of Gellhorn's observations of the immediate aftermath of the Six Day War) combined with photographs, relevant letters, and published articles.

2. Find out whether the original negatives of all those masses of photos Carlson took 1948-1950 in Egypt, Jordan, Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, Israel, Lebanon and Syria are still archived somewhere; and publish the lot. Two fat volumes of pictures of people and places: 1. Israel and the Jews 1948-1950 2. Egypt, Jordan [which at that time included Arab-occupied Judea, Samaria, and Old City Jerusalem], Lebanon and Syria, 1948-1950.

Where possible, for pictures of places, do a matching picture of the same place today and set it alongside Carlson's historic shot.

Then digitise it and dump it all online somewhere.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at September 6, 2008 6:10 PM

DDA;

A worthy project to be sure! Any ideas on how to begin? Possibly "Carlson" has living family with access to said negatives?

Great idea!

Regards,

ABS

لن استسلم

Posted by: Drewbenstein at September 6, 2008 7:48 PM

Drewbenstein -

glad you like the idea.

I don't have the qualifications, resources or access to attempt it myself (being a mere unwaged housewife on the other side of the world).

I'm just raising the possibility here in case there is somebody, reading this, who is in a position to try. Hugh and some others here have 'contacts' in academe and perhaps could point someone in the right direction.

From Moorehead's biography of Gellhorn, I know that Gellhorn's papers are lodged in a library in the USA.

'Carlson' (1909-1991) was Armenian, Arthur Derounian - 'John Roy Carlson' was an assumed name. He had children and grandchildren who should be alive today, and they or the Armenian community in America should know what happened to his papers, negatives and suchlike.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at September 7, 2008 6:53 AM

Spot on, the word politically correct is the word you are looking for. The media is corrupt or politcally correct - both term bear the same meaning unfortunately.

Posted by: American at September 8, 2008 10:19 AM