Israel Matzav

He couldn't get this published in a US mainstream media?

I'm posting this article to show you the kind of blatant lies that pass in the Arab world - even in the English language.

It's an article by James Zogby, the founder of the (supposedly 'moderate') Arab American Institute. Presumably, even the New York Times would not touch this, because it stands in such diametric opposition to the facts.... Let's just use one of Zogby's claims to illustrate. Okay - two. It's hard to unravel one lie from another.

I was reminded of just how annoying it could be to hear this "little fib" earlier this week when I read an interview which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave to The Jerusalem Post. At one point in the exchange, the interviewer pressed Netanyahu on whether or not he would consider agreeing to a new "settlement freeze" in order help restart peace negotiations with the Palestinians. Netanyahu's response was a short, but telling: "I think we already gave at the office".

...

I can almost imagine his mental processes at work: "No one stops me, Benjamin Netanyahu. In the 1990's, I was elected prime minister on a platform that promised to end the Oslo peace process, and I did it. I was forced by president Clinton to go to talks at the Wye River Plantation and forced to sign an agreement with the Palestinians. But I beat them all, because I refused to implement what I signed. I was told by Clinton not to destroy Jabal Abul Ghanaim, the last green hill between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. And now on that hill stands Har Homa, a city of 18,000 settlers, with more due to come. All those settlements the US once called "illegitimate" and the EU called "illegal" are now called "accepted realities" by them."

"Then came my second term as Prime Minister and a new US president who told me to freeze settlements. After dithering a bit, I pretended to agree (even while I continued to build). And I got away with it. "

Zogby is claiming that Netanyahu had agreed to destroy Jabal Abul Ghanaim - now known as Har Homa - as part of the Wye River Memorandum. That's impossible. Construction on Har Homa began in March 1997. The Wye River Memorandum was signed on October 23, 1998 and approved by the Knesset on November 15, 1998. Netanyahu never agreed to stop building Har Homa or to flatten the last hill between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. And by the way, the land on which Har Homa sits was purchased by Jews in the 1940's and confiscated and occupied by Jordan from 1948-67. Plans for Har Homa were originally approved in 1991.

Another lie in those few paragraphs above is the claim that Netanyahu continued to build in the 'settlements' during the 'settlement freeze' he implemented from November 2009 to September 2010. He did not. This is a September 1, 2010 JPost article by Tova Lazaroff.

For the second quarter in a row, there were almost no new housing starts in the West Bank settlements, according to numbers released Tuesday by the Central Bureau of Statistics.

The report of what is an historic absence of housing starts in Judea and Samaria comes on the eve of the start of direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. It is the first such meeting since talks broke down in December 2008. Halting settlement construction has been one of the key demands Palestinians have made of Israel.

Initially, when the CBS reported its first quarter statistics at the end of May, its data showed no housing starts for the first quarter of this year. Since then the CBS has adjusted the numbers slightly, as it often does. Based on the new data there were only two new housing starts from January to March of this year. From April to June, the CBS reported only three new housing starts.

Overall, according to the CBS, there were a total of five new housing starts in the first two quarters of 2010, during which time the 10-month moratorium on such activity was in place.

The number marks a sharp contrast from the 673 new starts that occurred in that same period last year when there was no moratorium.

The dramatic drop to almost zero housing starts runs counter to the trend in the rest of the country, which saw a 17 percent increase in housing starts during that time.

Separately, there was also a drop of 12 percent in the number of new apartments which were completed in West Bank settlements in the first two quarters of 2010, even though there was only a two percent decrease country wide during that same time.

So Mr. Zogby is a liar. The Gulf Daily News doesn't fact check. And even the New York Times finds some news unfit to print.

Labels: Arab American Institute, James Zogby, lies

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:42 AM