Israel Seeks Justice, AP Makes Propaganda

Every week I write a column on AP coverage of the Middle East and every week I am appalled anew at the profound and omnipresent bias in the coverage. I am not looking to bash the AP. On the contrary, when I find something fair and balanced I’m extremely pleased. It happens all too rarely

Sometimes it’s the simplest stories that draw one’s attention and linger in one’s memory. So here’s a little 257-word article which well illustrates the problem. You can find many other examples on this blog and at our other site,  [and you cansubscribe to our shorter articles or MERIA Journal there if you would like.]

The article, by Joseph Marks of AP was published May 12. The information is pretty much all taken from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Basically here’s the story: 

“Israeli military police arrested two soldiers as part of an investigation of alleged looting during Israel's invasion of Gaza in January, the military said in a statement Tuesday.

“A newspaper said the two soldiers were suspected of stealing and using a stolen credit card.
The statement said the military prosecution is investigating complaints from human rights groups and lawyers about behavior of Israeli forces during the operation, which was aimed at stopping daily rocket fire at Israel by Palestinian militants.”

Let’s consider what this means. The Israeli government is seriously nvestigating every complaint from groups—many of which are supportive of the Palestinians and even of Hamas and severely critical of Israel in general—to try to discover honestly whether they are accurate. This takes up the time of a limited staff and funding that might be better used elsewhere, but it is an attempt both to maintain standards and to show the world the basic decency of the country.

One would expect, but in vain,  some complementary quotes or language to this effect in such articles.

In one case out of many—not to mention the wild accusations and claims without evidence which has shaped the world’s image of the Gaza war—there is some evidence of wrongdoing, specifically that two soldiers seem to have stolen a credit card and run up a $400 bill on it. They might also have damaged the property of the Palestinian family.

It’s pretty admirable that Israel’s army has tried so hard first to avoid civilian casualties and then to investigate any possible criminal actions during the war. And of course if the evidence so indicates the two soldiers will be tried and if convicted they will be punished. (In comparison, under international pressure, the Palestinian Authority imprisons terrorists who have attacked Israel--but only on charges of damaging Palestinian interests--and often let them quietly out of jail at the first possible opportunity. No scandalized articles or international pressure results from this behavior.)

To its credit, this article, unlike many, at least mentions that there were daily rocket attacks that provoked the war. That is far better than usual. Still, one might expect that it would also add that Hamas rejected the ceasefire, thus making the war inevitable.

But then the article drops in some additional information that really has nothing to do with this specific story:

“At least 1,100 Palestinians were killed during the three-week offensive, many of them civilians.”

Since presumably these two soldiers didn’t kill 1,100 Palestinians, what is that doing here? Moreover, detailed studies are now showing that claims about the casualty figures are seriously misleading. Hundreds of alleged civilians have been shown, using Palestinian media sources, to be gunmen, often members of the Hamas-dominated police or military forces. 

Actually, to be fully accurate, I will add that the article states, according to Haaretz—which is known for emphasizing any possible criticism of Israel and its government—that one alleged killing is being investigated. That’s it, and we are not talking here about what Israel’s government claims but the sum total of specific accusations presented by all human rights’ groups and critics.

Unmentioned are Israeli casualties, both civilian and military, which are much lower than those of Palestinians. But if one is going to mention casualties in a war, why not both sides? The intention, of course, is to give the impression that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Yet to date, no journalist or human rights’ group or pretty much anyone else with any minimal credibility has provided details of any alleged actions that could be described as wrongdoings, much less the massive war crimes often charged.

And presumably, no Hamas soldiers or officials are going to be investigated by the radical Islamist regime. Moreover, there have been credible reports—including from Palestinian sources—of killings, shootings, and beatings of Palestinians who either criticized Hamas or supported its rival, Fatah. These have been publicized in some media but not very much, especially compared to the high visibility and length exposition of accusations against Israel.

But there’s no hint of all of this in the article. Here is the final paragraph:

“An overall inquiry by the military of its own actions during the conflict cleared soldiers of wrongdoing, infuriating human rights and Palestinian groups, who charged that killing civilians was the result of an Israeli policy to use extra firepower in built-up areas to protect the soldiers.”

I have previously analyzed the AP’s coverage of the report and showed how its stories mainly gave massive space to such criticisms and little to anyone explaining or defending the report. 

Moreover, despite these generalized statements intended to discredit the report, again, no specific evidence has been presented. 

But note as well a very interesting point here which even if no other problem with this article existed would show its profound bias. The charge against Israel is made--“extra firepower”--but the Israeli explanation—that Hamas deliberately used civilians as human shields and violated international law by employing hospitals, mosques, and schools as military bases—isn’t even mentioned.

And even aside from this, no opportunity is given to point out that even if this claim were to be proven the alternative would be for Israeli commanders to consciously sacrifice their own soldiers in the hope of reducing casualties on the other side.

I know of no other army in the world that would act in this way—I am talking about reasonable margins and not carpet bombing or other measures which Western countries have done in similar circumstances. 

But I am aware of a case in which Israel did risk and lose soldiers due to an overly conscientious caution. It was in Jenin during the second intifada. And Israel’s reward for this strategy of going house to house with infantrymen rather than use artillery or tanks—at the cost of three dozen casualties—was to be falsely accused of waging a massacre on the basis of no evidence and to be vilified worldwide. 

So, as in many AP articles, the intention is to make Israel look bad, to whitewash its enemies, to magnify their arguments and to muzzle any response. Day after day, week after week, this pattern prevails.

If an AP journalist or editor insists that their coverage is fair or balanced please laugh in his face.

Earl Krugel, A Man For The People

Earl Krugel, though a hero to many, was in certain  ways, just a gentle, down to earth American.

He loved his wife Lola, and doted on his Grandchildren.

When I spoke to him while he was imprisoned in MDC-LA, he never complained about the brutalizing conditions.

Irv Rubin spoke extensively about it, he said, "Prison is the most mind-numbing punishment ever devised by man."

The JDL never really recovered from the loss of these two brave men.

In my opinion, not to be contentious, but if I were the leader of JDL I would feel the need to delve into the death of Earl Krugel, how the system, apparently allowed or even encourage his murder.

Earl had a handle on what it meant to use violence.

"Only in extreme circumstances," he said, and only as a last resort.

He probably saved the lives of at least some Jews in California, who, at the time were being attacked by Arab   students .

After his courageous actions became known, the leader of the Arab militant comunity in California said "We are afraid."

They stopped attacking Jews.

The video below, I offer on behalf of my dear friend, who lives in my heart and mind, and in the hearts of many freedom loving Jews and Gentiles:

Video By Michael Blackburn, Sr

Does PA Really Want a State?

by Yehudah Lev Kay

An editorial in the latest issue of the prestigious Atlantic Monthly posits that the Palestinian Authority may never have a state because it does not want one.
Writer Robert Kaplan claims that statelessness has more appeal to the PA than statehood.
Kaplan’s ideas are based on a recent study by John Hopkins professor Jakub Grygiel in which he claims that in the modern era, technologies have given minority groups more power to communicate and commit violent acts without the need for a formal state. He claims that the lack of a state, rather than being a detriment, enables the group to maintain its extremist views while avoiding the complicated task of governing. Grygiel cites as a case in point the Hizbullah terrorist group.
"Though probably capable of taking over the weak central government of Lebanon, Hizbullah has preferred to maintain its sub-state role, thereby limiting its responsibility and hence its vulnerability to attacks," he writes.
"Having a state would most likely weaken the ability of Hizbullah to attack Israel, whose military forces could find easy targets."
"Statelessness provides impunity from the retaliatory actions of a powerful state," Grygiel points out, in one of the main thrusts of his study.Hamas, once it gained independence from Israel, faced exactly the problem Hizbullah chooses to avoid, according to Kaplan. "It was the very quasi-statehood achieved by Hamas in...Gaza...that made it easier for Israel to bomb it," he explains.
The implications for the Palestinian Authority are just as clear. "Statehood would mean openly compromising with Israel," he writes. "Better the glory of victimhood … As a stateless people, Palestinians can lob rockets into Israel, but not be wholly blamed in the eyes of the international community. Statehood would, perforce, put an end to such license."As proof that the Palestinian Authority prefers to remain stateless, Kaplan points out that although former Prime Minister Ehud Barak made vast concessions to late PA Chairman Yasir Arafat at Camp David in 2000, the PA leader chose not to compromise.
As Kaplan explains, Arafat "may have seen that as a more morally and emotionally satisfying conclusion to a life of statelessness than that of making the unenchanting concessions association with achieving statehood."

Let's Talk About the Nazis

By Barry Rubin


Today is the day for the commemoration of the Shoah, of the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators from many countries.
This membrance can be no more timely than today of all the days since the end of World War Two.The following article is dedicated to learning those lessons.Comparing contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis is increasingly commonplace. --U.S. State Department report on antisemitism, 2007.
Let's talk about the Nazis. There should have already been more than enough discussion about this in the more than half-century since Adolf Hitler's bunker fell in 1945.
There have been hundreds and thousands of books, articles, speeches, and so on about what is commonly known as the Holocaust.
But apparently it hasn't been enough, or well enough understood. The Nazis were not just mean people.
They had an explicit doctrine of being superior human beings and of the Jews and others (especially Slavs and non-white peoples, except for their ally, Japan,) of being sub-humans who should be wiped out.
Homosexuals and Gypsies would all be killed. Germany would rule the world.This does not resemble Zionism.
To put it bluntly, Zionism as an ideology has absolutely no interest in the world as a whole. It focuses only on building a Jewish state in the land of Israel. It has no interest in defining any other group of people, no global perspective.
It has never even argued that Jews are better but only that Jews are a people with the same rights as other peoples.
The concept is on asserting Jewish equality, not superiority.There is, however, an ideology which does have a lot in common with Nazism, though there are also, of course, differences. Radical Islamism claims that other religions are inferior, that the people who hold them are evil, that Jews and Christians are evil, and that Islam should rule the world. The Hamas Charter quotes a source on this point: "You are the best community that has been raised up for mankind....Ignominy shall be their portion" of non-Muslims unless they convert to Islam."If it doesn't seek the extinction of all Jews in the world--and many Islamists increasingly speak in these terms--at a minimum it favors the elimination of at least half (those in Israel) and the large part of the other half that supports Israel.
The Hamas Charter says that only by killing all the Jews can the messianic era come and that Jews are the cause of all the world's problems. Oh, yes, and it also calls Israel a "Nazi-like society.
"Mind you, these are the people controlling the Gaza Strip, firing rockets daily at Israel, teaching their children by television and in the classroom that killing Jews is their highest duty and honor, sending gunmen to murder Jewish students deliberately, and then celebrating that fact.Let's return, however, to the original and self-described Nazis to get a sense of what it means to have a Nazi policy.
My father's family comes from the village of Dolhinov which was in Poland, a few miles from the Russian border. Most of the inhabitants were Jews.
By 1941, there were nearly 5,000 Jews there, about half of them refugees from the part of Poland already under German rule. On June 22, 1941, the Germans invaded the USSR and they entered Dolhinov six days later.
No one in Dolhinov had a gun. No one fired a single shot at a German soldier.What was the Nazi policy? All the Jews were forced into a ghetto. On March 3, 1942, the Germans murdered the rabbi and 22 other men. On March 28, about 800 Jews were killed.
Between April 29 and May 1, all the rest of the Jewish inhabitants, except for a few who were kept temporarily as workers, were shot and thrown into a big ditch.
The rest were murdered on May 21. Of 5,000 Jews then living into town, 96 percent were killed deliberately and systematically.
And if the Nazis had their way it would have been 100 percent.
The only survivors were about 200 people who had fled into the forest, wandered for days, and finally had the luck to meet up with a Red Army patrol. They were taken to safety in Siberia for the rest of the war. Virtually all of them came to Israel, where they rebuilt their lives.
Today, these people and their descendants have the privilege of being compared to the Nazis by large parts of the world, including many who enjoy privileged lives in democratic countries.
This is my great aunt's family on my grandfather's side. Haya Doba Rubin, her husband Aharon Perlmutter, and their two sons, Haim who was 12 years old and Jacob who was 10 years old were murdered.
No survivors.
This is my great uncle's family on my grandmother's side. Samuel Grosbein married Rivka Markman and they had two children, Leah Rivka Markman, 18 years old, and Lev Markman, 23 years old. All of them were murdered on the same day.
No survivors.
Here is the family of my great aunt on my grandmother's side. Rahel Grosbein married Yirimayahu Dimenshtein and they had two children, Moshe, 21 years old and Tova, 16 years old.
The first three were murdered on the same day.
Only Tova survived because she had fled into the forest.

That is what a Nazi policy is like.
Multiply that by six million for the Jews alone and more for the Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals, and others.Let's compare this with a conventional Western democratic war-fighting policy. The goal here is to defeat the enemy army but it has been permissible to strike against the economy and infrastructure as well.
There is no intent to kill civilians but they may be hit by accident. During World War Two, U.S. and British warplanes engaged in carpet bombing of German and Japanese cities as well as factories where civilian workers were employed. Tens of thousands of French civilians were killed in raids on occupied France.
To my knowledge, no Allied soldiers were punished for killing civilians by accident or through carelessness.
Nobody was court-martialed for shooting prisoners.
Israeli policy is far more careful to avoid injuring civilians.
Most airstrikes are against specific buildings or even individual automobiles. Civilian bystanders have been killed yet far fewer proportionately than has been true for, say, the U.S. or French armies. Soldiers have been tried and punished for actions which, at least in the recent past, would have been ignored in Western armies.
There is no instance I know of in which Israeli units opened unlimited fire on a crowd, even when rocks were being thrown or shots fired against them.
Individual targets were picked out. Unarmed people were killed but not deliberately and in small numbers. If Israelis were as their enemies picture them to be, there would be hundreds of Palestinians killed in a single day, tens of thousands in a year.
Thus, even if Israel has been held to a double standard, its record has been better than that of even Western counterparts. Only by lying about that record--the norm in the Arabic-speaking world and all-to-common in the Western one--can it be made to seem terrible.We need only remember what the Nazis believed and did, what Israelis believe and do, and what their enemies believe and do. It should not be so hard to understand the distinctions.
Barry Rubin is writing a book about the history and the extinction of his family's town, Dolhinov, Poland.