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Middle East Tag

Posted by David Gerstman on November 05, 2013 0 Comments
We have noted degree to which America's media, including Thomas Erdbrink, the Tehran bureau chief for the New York Times, tells us that the most vicious anti-American statements from Iran are really expressions of admiration. Check out a few of Erdbrink's recent tweets. https://twitter.com/ThomasErdbrink/status/397332815559151616 https://twitter.com/ThomasErdbrink/status/397332340931706880 Erdbrink calls Jalili a hardliner. But in a recent article he reported on Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei as not being a hardliner:
With talks over Iran’s nuclear program set to resume in Geneva this week, both sides engaged in a bit of public diplomacy Sunday: Iran’s supreme leader moved to quiet hard-liners in his country by expressing support for his negotiating team, while the chief American negotiator reiterated in an Israeli television interview that “no deal is better than a bad deal.” The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds Iran’s final word on the nuclear talks, told a group of students here that he was not optimistic the negotiations would succeed, but he also sent a negative message to the conservative clerics and military commanders who in recent weeks have attacked the diplomatic initiative.

Posted by David Gerstman on November 04, 2013 4 Comments
As we've noted earlier, much of the media is obsessed with settlements, intent on portraying them as the main obstacle to peace. There's a tendency on the other side to take one of the most outrageous examples of Palestinian behavior and dismiss it. As Professor Jacobson noted last week, Israel, in order to entice the Palestinians to negotiate for a state of their own offered to release 104 prisoners from jail. These aren't just prisoners. Most, if not all, are remorseless murderers who are treated as heroes by all segments of Palestinian society, including their leaders. Jonathan Tobin made an apt observation about this phenomenon:
One group of people was happy as murderers went free while others wept. But the gulf here is more than emotional or merely, as the Times seemed to describe it, a difficult process that is part of the price Israel must pay for the chance of peace. In fact, the “emotional gulf” is indicative of a vast cultural divide between these two peoples that explains more about the absence of peace than any lecture about history, borders, or refugees. Simply put, so long as the Palestinians honor murderers, there is no reason to believe they are willing to end the conflict.
Consider the way the New York Times in the article cited by Tobin portrayed the Israeli reaction to the prisoner release:
In Israel, where the returnees are widely viewed as terrorists, the release on Tuesday, like the one in August, has stirred protests and anguish. Many said it was too heavy a price to pay for entering negotiations with no guarantee of a peace accord.
"[W]idely viewed?!?!" This statement is incredible. It's not only in Israel that they are "viewed as terrorists," but by definition. Only in the crazy New York Times worldview is the definition of terrorists subjective.

Posted by David Gerstman on November 03, 2013 10 Comments
To read through recent news reports one could assume that the biggest obstacle to Palestinian Israeli peace are "settlements." To cement that impression the New York Times published an article, 1,500 Units to Be Added in Settlement, Israel Says. The caption of a photograph directly beneath the headline reads:
A Palestinian construction worker at a building site on Wednesday in the Ramat Shlomo settlement in East Jerusalem.
If there is an official "East Jerusalem," I am unaware of it, but perhaps the paper meant "east Jerusalem." However if you read down a few paragraphs you learn:
The 1,500 new apartments are to be added to Ramat Shlomo, a largely religious neighborhood of 20,000 on the city’s northern edge. They were originally announced during a 2010 visit to Jerusalem by Vice President Joseph R. Biden, causing a diplomatic crisis that dampened Israel’s relationship with the White House and Europe for months.
So actually, Ramat Shlomo isn't in the city's east but in its north (or northeast) and it's not a settlement but a neighborhood. And while the announcement led to a major diplomatic blowup, it was of the administration's making. The Vice-President, Secretary of State and President could have remained silent. Everyone expects sections of Jerusalem, even those illegally occupied by Jordan from 1948 to 1967 to be part of Israel in any final agreement with the Palestinians. The announcement had occurred during an Israeli ban on settlement building outside of Jerusalem. That settlement ban brought about no serious negotiations. (The PA returned to the table only a few weeks before the end of the freeze and, when the freeze expired, walked away.) If settlement freezes were so important to the Palestinians, why didn't they negotiate then? So "settlements" provide a convenient excuse for a Palestinian refusal to negotiate or concede anything to Israel. But should they?

Posted by David Gerstman on August 25, 2013 34 Comments

Mideast Media Sampler - 08/25/2013 - When is a red line not a red line? When there's no precedent....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 06, 2012 9 Comments

In February 2011, Roger Cohen of The NY Times demanded that we abandon the phrase "the Arab Street" as a relic of the past which no longer applied, even as crowds in Tunisia surged around a Synagogue shouting ""Jews, remember Khyabar, the army of Mohammed is returning"": Cohen further asserted...

Posted by Joel Engel on September 20, 2012 10 Comments

Nothing to see here, move along. The head of the U.S. National Counter-Terrorism Center told lawmakers on Wednesday that the deadly attack on Sept. 11 that claimed the lives of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three aides was a "terrorist" strike. But the official, Matt Olsen,...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 18, 2012 21 Comments

It is plainly obvious that we have not been getting straight answers from Obama officials about what they knew and when they knew it about the dangers facing our consulate in Benghazi and throughout the region. It may be deception, or they may be so incompetent they...

Posted by Anne Segal on September 14, 2012 27 Comments

Violence continues to erupt across the Middle East and North Africa today following the attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya on September 11 that killed the ambassador and three others Americans. An interactive map of the violence is available from National Journal detailing where and what is...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 13, 2012 82 Comments

An American Ambassador and three American security guards were butchered, anti-American riots broke out across the Middle East, a U.S. Embassy both before and after being stormed issued apologies for the exercise of our constitutional rights, our Secretary of State practically prostrated herself, the President had...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 12, 2012 84 Comments

Multiple news agencies are reporting that the U.S. Ambassador to Libya and three others were killed in a rocket attack on their vehicle (although reports as to where he was at the time conflict).  The State Department has not confirmed as of this writing.  (Update...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 30, 2012 29 Comments

The cycle of perpetual outrage and victimhood continues. Mitt Romney pointed out something obvious, that Israel has a record of economic success unmatched by those under Palestinian Authority control, attributing it to cultural and other factors: "As you come here and you see the GDP per capita,...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 27, 2012 5 Comments

Its case for a separate state is as good as if not better than the Palestinians since it was its own entity prior to French colonial rule. Via JPost: For Ferhat Mehenni, Israel is an ideal partner and friend for Kabylie, a geographic sliver of Algeria’s northern...

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