Ethan Bronner complains: Israelis too comfortable to worry about 'peace'
Last week, US Secretary of State John FN Kerry claimed that Israelis are
too prosperous to make peace with the 'Palestinians.' Now, former New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner, who is now safely back in the States after taking flack for his son joining the IDF, is saying
essentially the same thing.
Indeed, Israel has never been richer, safer, more culturally productive
or more dynamic. Terrorism is on the wane. Yet the occupation grinds on
next door with little attention to its consequences. Moreover, as the
power balance has shifted from the European elite, Israel has never felt
more Middle Eastern in its popular culture, music and public displays
of religion. Yet it is increasingly cut off from its region, which
despises it perhaps more than ever. Finally, while the secular
bourgeoisie, represented by Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party, has forged an
unexpected alliance with West Bank settlers, represented by Naftali
Bennett’s Habayit Hayehudi Party, aimed at reducing the political power
of the ultra-Orthodox, alarm over the failure to address the Palestinian
problem has grown in a surprising place — among some of the former
princes of the Zionist right wing.
At a Jerusalem cafe one noon, Dan Meridor, the former Likud minister and
son of right-wing Zionist aristocracy, could not stop talking about the
Palestinians.
“It is a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads,” he said. “We are
living on illusions. We must do everything we can on the ground to
increase the separation between us and the Palestinians so that the idea
of one state will go away. But we are doing nothing.”
Mr. Meridor, nursing an American coffee at the cafe near the house his
parents bought many decades ago in the upscale Rehavia neighborhood,
sounded like two other public figures from famous right-wing families —
Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister, and Tzipi Livni,
the justice minister and chief peace negotiator. Both have made a
series of emotional speeches begging Israelis to take the Palestinian
issue seriously. They are getting little traction.
The Israeli left is still there, of course, but in increasingly
insignificant knots. Two Israeli friends in Jaffa, from which tens of
thousands of Palestinians left or were driven out in 1948, have
beautifully renovated a house, even preserving a pre-state lemon tree in
the courtyard. They are friendly with the Arabs who live nearby. Their
children refused military service in protest over the West Bank
occupation. And on the outside of their house they have put up a plaque
noting that until 1948 the structure was the home of the Khader family, a
tiny homage to a destroyed world.
But the family is rare. Mr. Lapid, the rising star of Israeli politics,
is a former television host who agrees that something must be done about
the Palestinians. But in an interview he offers no specifics other than
hoping Mr. Kerry will pressure them to return to the negotiating table
under conditions they have long rejected. Mr. Lapid, who spoke in the
outdoor section of his neighborhood cafe in north Tel Aviv on a fragrant
spring afternoon, was relaxed and buff in his long-sleeved black
T-shirt and black jeans. Well-off Tel Avivians at nearby tables argued
into their iPhones. Mr. Lapid said Israel should not change its
settlement policy to lure the Palestinians to negotiations, nor should
any part of Jerusalem become the capital of the Palestinian state he
says he longs for. He has not reached out to any Palestinian politicians
nor spoken publicly on the issue. As finance minister, he is focused on
closing the government’s deficit.
Mr. Lapid may be a political novice but he knows the public mood. A former senior aide to Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu
agreed, over a Jerusalem lunch of toasted bagels and salad, that most
Israelis considered the peace process irrelevant because they believed
that the Palestinians had no interest in a deal, especially in the
current Middle Eastern context of rising Islamism. “Debating the peace
process to most Israelis is the equivalent of debating the color of the
shirt you will wear when landing on Mars,” he said.
I guess they'd rather we be rolling in the streets in agony over the 'Palestinians' refusal to talk to us. We're not. Any 'negotiation' is going to consist of Israel giving and giving and giving, and the 'Palestinians' taking and taking and taking. We have nothing to gain and everything to lose. Why should we pursue the 'Palestinians' when they want us to give away the whole store in advance?
Labels: Ethan Bronner, John Kerry, New York Times
Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Wednesday, April 25.
1) The road to Arab democracy?
In The Islamist Road to Democracy Reuel Marc Gerecht argues:
We can easily find truly disturbing commentary and actions by members of the Egyptian Brotherhood, or by the Tunisian Rachid Ghannouchi, the intellectual guru behind the ruling Nahda Party. But we can just as easily find words and deeds that ought to make us consider the possibility that these men are neither Ernest Röhm and his fascist Brownshirts nor even religious versions of secular autocrats. Rather, they are cultural hybrids trying to figure out how to combine the best of the West (material progress and the absence of brutality in daily life) without betraying their faith and pride.v We know that in Iran, under theocracy, once die-hard members of the revolutionary elite have become proponents of evermore liberal democracy. Fundamentalists became fundamentalist critics. The Islamic Republic's controlled elections created a powerful appetite for real ones.
In Arab lands, militant Muslims who once espoused violent revolution now back representative government. They do so, in part, because they know how powerful the appeal of democracy is among the faithful. They also do so, as Iraq's Shiite clerics have made clear, because they are certain that free Muslims voting can't do worse than the Westernized dictators before them. Democracy is thus a means to keep Muslims more religious whereas theocracy actually secularizes society.
Gerecht even explains Turkey's - which would seem to be a counterexample to his thesis - growing radicalism as a response to previous liberal governments that persecuted its minorities.
Barry Rubin, though, in The Iraq model: as good at it gets writes:
Of the greatest importance is the fact that Islamist elements have been defeated (in the Sunni case) or held at bay (in the Shia case). Things can certainly get worse but some stability seems to have been achieved at this time.
Another key factor is that Iraq is acting more “normally” as a state by minding its own business. It is not subverting neighbors or trying to take over the Middle East. Iraq also has decent relations with the West. This is a country that is trying to deal with its own problems. And if there is factionalism and corruption, at least it appears to be clear that no force can monopolize power and establish a repressive dictatorship.
Call it chaotic pluralism as an alternative to Islamist dictatorship. And, yes, that appears to be the best that can be expected in those countries not still dominated by traditionalist monarchies. It is certainly preferable to the “Turkish model.” Yet I don’t expect many people in the West to appreciate that point.
Neither Gerecht nor Rubin is discussing a near term political horizon, but just what is the preferable first step on the long road to democracy.
2) Black gold blues
The Iranian oil industry suffered a cyberattack. In Facing Cyberattack, Iranian Officials Disconnect Some Oil Terminals From Internet, Thomas Erdbrink of the New York Times reports:
Iranian officials said the virus attack, which began in earnest on Sunday afternoon, had not affected oil production or exports, because the industry is still primarily mechanical and does not rely on the Internet. Officials said they were disconnecting the oil terminals and possibly some other installations in an effort to combat the virus.
“Fortunately our international oil selling division has not been affected,” said a high-level manager at the Oil Ministry who asked not to be mentioned for security reasons. “There is no panic, but this shows we have shortcomings in our security systems.”
There were some reports that the virus had forced widespread Internet shutdowns. “The ministry has disconnected all oil facilities, operations and even oil rigs from the Internet to prevent this virus from spreading,” said another Oil Ministry official who asked to remain anonymous, because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the attack. “Everybody at the ministry is working overtime to prevent this.” His assertion about the extent of the shutdowns could not be independently verified.
3) Settlements > Hamas?
In Israel Retroactively Legalizes 3 West Bank Settlements, new New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren reports:
But while antisettlement advocates saw it as a significant shift in policy that could undermine the prospects for a two-state solution — and the United States and other foreign governments immediately raised concerns about the move — a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued that it was simply a matter of resolving technical problems such as improper permits and mistakenly building on the wrong hill.
“One can be critical of the Israeli settlement policy, that’s everybody’s right, but you can’t tell me that the Israeli government has built new settlements, and you can’t tell me this is legalizing unauthorized outposts,” said the Netanyahu spokesman, Mark Regev. “These decisions are procedural or technical. They don’t change anything whatsoever on the ground.”
To support her reporting, Rudoren gets two statements from two anti-settlement Israeli organizations, one the Palestinian Authority (“Netanyahu has pushed things to a dead end yet again.” ) and a disapproving statement from the State Department.
Contrast that with Unity Deal Brings Risks for Abbas and Israel, by Ethan Bronner from two months ago.
President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority embraced reconciliation with the Islamist movement Hamas on Monday, agreeing to head a unity government to prepare for elections in the West Bank and Gaza.
His move was welcomed cautiously by a broad range of Palestinians who are fed up with the brutal split at the heart of their national movement. It promised to upend Israeli-Palestinian relations, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning Mr. Abbas that he could have peace with Israel or unity with Hamas, but not both.
Bronner only cites the government of Israel as opposing the deal. The State Department dismissed the unity deal as an "internal matter."
Now these unity deals don't ever seem to work out. However, the differing treatment of these two stories illustrates a disturbing dynamic. "Settlements" are automatically designated an obstacle to peace. Any Palestinian objections to existing or potential settlements are taken at face value - by the media, even by the American government - though it isn't at all clear that the Oslo Accords forbid them.
However, a Fatah-Hamas deal demonstrates a blatant rejection of the premise of the peace process - that the PLO would reject terror. No NGO's who have reporters' attention object to this. The State Department yawns.
In the end the Palestinian Authority's objections and actions are what drives the peace process, not the documents they signed with Israel. As long as Palestinian obstructionism continues to be tolerated and rewarded, there will be no peace.
Labels: Arab democracy, Arab spring, computer virus, Ethan Bronner, Hamas-Fatah reconciliation, Jodi Rudoren, Judea and Samaria, Middle East Media Sampler, outposts, Soccer Dad
Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Wednesday, February 15.
1) New NYT Jerusalem Bureau chief
Ethan Bronner in an e-mail to Politico explains why he's leaving his post as the New York Times bureau chief in Israel:
My son, who is 22, not 21, left the Israeli army a year ago. And I have not been reassigned. I asked to return. It has been 4 years, my parents are in their 90s and I originally promised to stay only three years, both my sons are there, my wife wants to return to her psychoanalytic practice. So we are coming home. I told the paper I wanted to keep writing. The national legal beat was suggested. I happily agreed.
The reason Bronner had to write the e-mail is because this is how the reporter, Dylan Byers originally framed the change:
Bronner's 22-year-old son was* a member of the Israeli Defense Forces, a conflict of interest first raised by the website Electronic Intifada. Shortly thereafter, former public editor Clark Hoyt looked into the matter and found that, despite the 'unerring sense of fairness' mentioned above, Bronner's son's assignment put the bureau chief in a problematic position.
"Bronner is a superb reporter... But, stepping back, this is what I see: The Times sent a reporter overseas to provide disinterested coverage of one of the world’s most intense and potentially explosive conflicts, and now his son has taken up arms for one side," he wrote last February. "Even the most sympathetic reader could reasonably wonder how that would affect the father, especially if shooting broke out."
"I have enormous respect for Bronner and his work, and he has done nothing wrong," he continued. "But this is not about punishment; it is simply a difficult reality. I would find a plum assignment for him somewhere else, at least for the duration of his son’s service in the I.D.F."
Despite Hoyt's recommendation, the paper did not reassign Bronner.
Byers strongly implied - with no proof - that Bronner was being re-assigned on account of his son. By doing so he kept alive the calumny that Bronner was biased on account of his son.
Clark Hoyt, then the public editor of the New York Times was fully complicit in taking the charge of an anti-Israel activist and giving it legitimacy. Byers quoted from the column, Too close to home, Hoyt wrote two years ago.
Was there any objective evidence to support Ali Abunimah's charge? No. For example in an article Israeli Soldiers Convicted of Using Boy as Shield, Bronner reported:
But human rights groups say that the military’s criminal proceedings are insufficient and that Israeli troops carried out a number of atrocities that require outside investigation.
The United Nations Human Rights Council commissioned a South African jurist, Richard Goldstone, to lead an inquiry into the war’s conduct. His report, issued a year ago, said there was compelling evidence of war crimes by both sides. It said that Israel had waged war on Gaza’s civilians and civilian infrastructure in an act of inexcusable collective punishment.
...
The Goldstone report cited four episodes in which Israeli soldiers were said to have used Palestinians as shields, but those were all adults in other parts of Gaza.
The implication here is that despite the convictions, the IDF could or should have done more to investigate reported wrongdoings of its soldiers. Could this, in any way, be construed as favored treatment on account of his son? Absolutely not. Rather than defending the reporter (as opposed to then executive editor Bill Keller who, to his credit, defended Bronner ) Hoyt gave credence to the complaint of an anti-Israel activist, with no evidence to back it up. Hoyt's disgraceful performance showed the anti-Israel crowd that they could effectively challenge the credibility of any reporter.
So with this in mind, when Ali Abuminah tweeted:
This would demonstrate that undocumented charges of anti-Israel activists (who are usually much less civil than CAMERA) carry greater weight with the management of the New York Times than careful critiques of pro-Israel groups.
When I first heard that Ethan Bronner would be the new Israel correspondent for the New York Times four years ago, I had misgivings. Barry Rubin e-mailed me that Bronner would be a huge improvement over the incumbent, Steven Erlanger. Still Prof. Rubin predicted that Bronner would sometimes "bend over backwards" to show that he wasn't too pro-Israel. That would be a pretty good description of Bronner's tenure in Israel. He has been better than most American correspondents in recent years, however he has often reported Israel's critics and enemies much too uncritically.
Bronner was an improvement over Erlanger. Given the intimidation by the anti-Israel crowd and Rudoren's apparent leanings, I have no confidence that she will be an improvement over Bronner.
2) Other than that Beinart was right
Jodi Rudoren recently tweeted an uncritical promotion of yesterday's Roger Cohen column.
The problem with Cohen's column is that it is based on Peter Beinart's recent book and that, as Shmuel Rosner shows, Beinart's central premise is mistaken.
There are a lot of details in this new study, and a lot to chew on, but the bottom line is what most readers care about, and it is quite clear: “In all four pairs of surveys under analysis, the overall level of emotional attachment to Israel increased between Time 1 (a survey conducted in the 1990s) and Time 2 (a survey conducted in the 2000s)”. It didn’t decrease – that’s what one would expect if there’s “distancing” – but rather increased. The authors state it plainly: “there is no evidence of declining attachment across the generations” as “the available evidence suggests increased attachment between the early 1990s and mid-2000s for the American Jewish population as a whole and increased attachment over the lifecycle for individual American Jews (in particular as they aged into mid-life). The evidence does not show decline from the older to the younger generations during the period 1990-2005”.
While I don't agree with everything he writes, Rabbi David Wolpe takes issue with Beinart's self-importance:
Beinart’s email represents what is wrong with the debate: It is smug in its dismissal of Israel’s leadership and grandiose in presenting one view as the sole salvation of that beleaguered nation’s honor. Peter Beinart raises crucial, abiding issues. Then he compares those who take a different view to racist destroyers of democracy. This is not debate. This is not dialogue. This is demagoguery. He is better than this and we must be too. In Pirke Avoth, Avtalion warns sages to be careful with their words. The warning applies to those who are not sages, as well.
3) How to bash Bashar
Recently Barry Rubin wrote in What to do about Syria:
But to return to the question of what the West or world should do: Listen to the democratic opposition. It wants two things, obviously taken from the Iraqi case: a no-fly zone for Syrian military aircraft and the creation of a safe zone — presumably near the Turkish border — for refugees, fugitives, and the Free Syrian Army.
When I mention the “no-fly” zone to people they ask, “But the Syrian air force isn’t bombing the rebels, right? So what good is this?” The answer is that we’re not talking about fighters or bombers but about helicopter gunships and transport planes. With Syria rushing troops around the country to counter the uprisings, the point is to make it harder for them to do so.
If any plan is going to be considered for intervention this one seems to be the best starting point. Its virtues and shortcomings should be thoroughly discussed so as to decide whether this is a good thing to do. This would be preferable to the current debate that lurches between total passivity and adventurous intervention.
(Soner Cagaptay made a similar argument, but based on Bosnia.)
In the new online publication Times of Israel (h/t Avraham F), edited by former Jerusalem Post editor, David Horovitz, Ehud Ya'ari makes some suggestions for Israel, Taking Sides:
- Israel should — and it is definitely not impossible — establish quiet channels to some different factions and personae amongst the fragmented opposition groupings. Having maintained for years contacts with quite a few of them, I have reached the conclusion that unlike Egypt or Tunisia, Syria is not necessarily destined to fall under a Moslem Brotherhood regime, although Islamists are certainly key players in the current uprising.
- Using its long-standing contacts to the Druze community, Israel could try to encourage the inhabitants of Suweida Province (The Druze Mountain) in Southern Syria to throw their lot against Assad. So far the Druze have been hesitant to pick sides, but once they do, it will have an enormous impact on the attitude of other important minorities — Christians, Kurds, Ismailis, Circassians.
- Israeli intelligence agencies possess huge amounts of detailed quality data on the Assad killing machine — they know who gives orders to whom and how; they know what the instructions are and how are they carried out. This is information that is highly incriminating and embarrassing to Assad. Some of these treasures can be leaked without risking valuable intelligence assets. Remember the famous telephone conversation between President Nasser of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan which was made public by the IDF during the 1967 war? There are many buyers for good stuff — let us start unclassifying a few samples and passing them to the proper non-Israeli media outlets!
In Like Father, Like Son, Thomas Friedman writes:
I don’t know what is sufficient to persuade Assad to cede power to a national unity government, but I know what is necessary: He has to lose the two most important props holding up his regime. One is the support of China, Iran and Russia. There, the U.N., the European Union and Arab and Muslim countries need to keep calling out Moscow, Beijing and Iran for supporting Assad’s mass killing of unarmed civilians. China, Iran and Russia don’t care about U.S. condemnation, but they might care about the rest of the world’s.
The other prop, though, can only be removed by Syrians. The still-fractious Syrian opposition has to find a way to unify itself and also reach out to the Alawites, as well as Syria’s Christian and Sunni merchants, and guarantee that their interests will be secure in a new Syria so they give up on Assad. Without that, nothing good will come of any of this. The more the Syrian opposition demonstrates to itself, to all Syrians and to the world that it is about creating a pluralistic Syria — where everyone is treated as an equal citizen — the weaker Assad will be and the more likely that a post-Assad Syria will have chance at stability and decency. The more the Syrian opposition remains fractured, the stronger Assad will be, the more some Syrians will cling to him out of fear of chaos and the more he will get away with Hama Rules.
Compared to the other suggestions, Friedman's seems generic rather than informed. Friedman also ignores any military intervention placing his full faith in diplomacy.
I note with satisfaction David Horovitz's return to the media. While Soccer Dad was comparing correspondents at the
Times, he might also have favorably compared Horovitz - who was a fair and balanced editor in chief at the
Jerusalem Post - to Horovitz's successor, Steve Linde, who has made some questionable decisions in his thus-far-brief tenure.
Labels: David Horovitz, Ethan Bronner, Jodi Rudoren, Middle East Media Sampler, New York Times, Soccer Dad, Steve Linde, Syrian uprising
Even reporters can't be completely neutral
An
interesting comment on departing New York Times bureau chief Ethan Bronner by Jonathan Tobin (Hat Tip:
Stephen D).
Hoyt took the position, as did many cheerleaders for the Palestinians, that: “The Times sent a reporter overseas to provide disinterested coverage of one of the world’s most intense and potentially explosive conflicts, and now his son has taken up arms for one side.”
The problem with this formulation is the assumption that the Times ought to regard an ongoing war to extinguish the life of the Jewish state with complete objectivity. But that is no more reasonable than to expect any American journalist with relatives in the U.S. military to have no opinions or stake in attacks on the United States or its forces abroad. While news reporters ought not to take part in partisan politics or advocacy on issues related to their beats, the notion that they should take no position on wars between Western democracy and Islamist terrorists extends rules about objectivity beyond reason. Those who are neutral about the idea that it is okay to single out the one Jewish state in the world for destruction should be accused of a far worse sin than a lack of complete objectivity.
Just as American reporters can and do report stories that can put the government and/or the U.S. military in a bad light while still acting as loyal citizens of this country, so, too, can any person living in Israel report honestly while not choosing to remain completely aloof from that country’s war of survival. Having a son in the IDF did not make Bronner a stooge of the Israeli government.
Indeed.
Labels: Ethan Bronner, New York Times
Ethan Bronner returning to US, Jodi (Wilgoren) Rudoren to become Jerusalem bureau chief
New York Times correspondent Ethan Bronner, who was
nearly reassigned two years ago because his son was serving in the IDF at the time, is returning to the United States to become the Legal Affairs correspondent at the Times' national desk. Jodi (Wilgoren) Rudoren will be taking his place.
Contrary to some earlier reports, Bronner was not removed because of his son's service in the IDF.
Bronner asked for a reassignment.
UPDATE: Bronner adds, via email:My son, who is 22, not 21, left the Israeli army a year ago. And I have not been reassigned. I asked to return. It has been 4 years, my parents are in their 90s and I originally promised to stay only three years, both my sons are there, my wife wants to return to her psychoanalytic practice. So we are coming home. I told the paper I wanted to keep writing. The national legal beat was suggested. I happily agreed.
That sure sounds like a much less stressful assignment than being here.
Rudoren (whose maiden name I included because many more people - including me - will remember her by that name) will start here in April. I note that the bio I just linked says that she grew up in Newton, Mass. (my home town). A look at her Facebook page shows the rabbi of one of the two synagogues into which my synagogue split as one of her friends, so my hunch is probably right - we went to the same synagogue growing up and I remember her father quite well. Small world.
Labels: Ethan Bronner, Jodi Rudoren, New York Times
The New York Times tries to save Channel 10
Some of you may recall that about a month ago, LATMA had a skit whose theme was that
Channel 10 is too big to fail. It is perhaps indicative of the level of interest the
Times and other Leftist media take in the minutiae of this country that the
Times has now devoted a
two-column, front page story to the plight of Channel 10, Israel's commercial cable channel, which owes millions of dollars to the government which it apparently has no intention of paying. Why is the
Times so interested?
Leo Rennert explains.
The Times is pulling out all the stops to mount a rescue operation in support of Channel 10 with a two-column, front-page article by Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner, replete with dire warnings that democracy and a free press hang in the balance ("Israeli TV Station's Struggle Reflects a Wider Political War" front page, December 27).
Which is laughable once you take into account the fact that Israel's extensive, journalistic gamut leans heavily to the left and, if anything, it is conservative viewpoints which more often than not get shortchanged in the press.
Channel 10 has not spared Netanyahu. It has published exposes of some of his lavish travels to Paris, London and New York before he became prime minister -- with bills paid by wealthy friends. But now, Channel 10 is unable to pay off an $11 million debt owed on taxes and to a regulatory agency. A parliamentary committee, with a majority of government coalition parties, has refused to extend the payment deadline for another year.
The irony is that Netanyahu in previous years intervened twice in support of Channel 10, hoping to expand the marketplace of ideas and debate. But Channel 10's pugnacious exposes of Bibi seem to have turned the wheel -- the prime minister is suing for libel, and one of the station's owners, billionaire Ronald Lauder apparently won't dig deeper into his deep pockets, and the largest shareholder, Yossi Meiman, an Israeli political liberal, made an unfortunate investment in a gas pipeline from Egypt, which keeps getting blown up by terrorists in the Sinai.
To Bronner, all this leaves a very distressing picture of the right scoring points against the left in Israel's culture wars.
The only other independent Israeli TV station, Channel 2, he notes, also faces economic woes, leaving Netanyahu with supposedly strong influence over other media outlets -- state-owned Channel 1, State Radio and a widely distributed, free-of-charge newspaper, Israel Today, bankrolled by a Bibi friend, U.S. casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.
But that's hardly a fair, objective way of tallying the political media and cultural score in Israel. Bronner conveniently omits a bevy of imposing counterweights that tip the scales the other way to the left -- the most widely read newspaper, Yedioth Ahronot, and far-left Haaretz, the favorite source for quotes in the western press, including the New York Times. To say nothing of Israel's left-leaning theater and literary world, and a big slice of academe.
The Socialist Internationale sure sticks together, doesn't it? I suspect we'll be hearing from President Obama about this soon.
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Channel 10, Ethan Bronner, New York Times
Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Friday, October 28 (sorry - I missed this earlier).
1) A brief history of prisoner releases While the trade of 1047 Palestinian prisoners wasn't, strictly speaking, a prisoner release, Ethan Bronner of the New York Times wrote, when he reported that a deal had been reached:
He said he had told his negotiators to hold the talks “under the guidelines important to Israel: the need to bring Gilad home and the need to keep Israel’s citizens safe.” For Palestinians, the plight of thousands of their sons in Israeli prisons has been equally traumatic, and the possibility of their release drew enormous attention.
First of all the equivalence between Shalit and the Palestinians released is outrageous. Among other things the Palestinians currently in Israeli jails were convicted of crimes, of varying severity up to multiple counts of murder. Still Bronner asserted that the incarceration Palestinian prisoners in Israel was "traumatic," so the question is how did this "plight" come to be. In
Annex VII of the Israeli Palestinian Interim Agreement (Oslo II) the conditions for prisoner releases were specified.
2. The following categories of detainees and/or prisoners will be included in the abovementioned releases: a. all female detainees and prisoners shall be released in the first stage of release; b. persons who have served more than two thirds of their sentence; c. detainees and/or prisoners charged with or imprisoned for security offenses not involving fatality or serious injury; d. detainees and/or prisoners charged with or convicted of non-security criminal offenses; and e. citizens of Arab countries being held in Israel pending implementation of orders for their deportation.
3. Detainees and prisoners from among the categories detailed in this paragraph, who meet the criteria set out in paragraph 2 above, are being considered by Israel to be eligible for release: a. prisoners and/or detainees aged 50 years and above; b. prisoners and/or detainees under 18 years of age; c. prisoners who have been imprisoned for 10 years or more; and d. sick and unhealthy prisoners and/or detainees.
Note especially items 2b) and 2c). In 1995, Israel had only recently declared the PLO not to be a terrorist organization since Arafat had made a declaration (albeit an insincere one) renouncing terrorism as a tactic. There were still people in jail who had been arrested for belonging to Fatah. It was mainly these people that prisoner releases were meant to free. So what happened a few years later when then (and now, current) Prime Minister Netanyahu followed these terms to the letter? Arafat
incited riots against Israel!
With every day, until the relative calm of today, the unrest has gained momentum, threatening the Israeli-Palestinian peace effort. In response to the violence, the Israelis have frozen the land-for-security plan, and it appears increasingly unlikely that they will carry out the second of three withdrawals from the West Bank as scheduled by Dec. 18. And with every day, the prisoner issue has assumed greater importance. Some youths are referring to the riots as ''the prisoners' intifada,'' evoking the Palestinian uprising of 1987-1993. The anniversary of that uprising's outbreak will be celebrated on Wednesday. Israeli officials have seized on the label to paint the unrest as a breakdown of the peace effort.
Further reporting showed little outrage over this violence.
Lee Hockstader of the Washington Post reported:
When Israel released the first batch of 250 last month, the Palestinians were outraged that they included 150 common criminals. The deal, said Arafat and his aides, was for political prisoners to be freed. Surely they did not bargain for days at Wye for the liberation of car thieves, said Ahmed Tibi, a Palestinian spokesman. Not so, said Netanyahu, and the State Department concurred: Nowhere in the agreement does it specify that the freed detainees be political prisoners. But the American stance has done nothing to defuse the anger among Palestinians, for whom the issue of prisoners is visceral. This weekend, it burst into the open with demonstrations throughout the West Bank, which were put down by Israeli troops firing lethal rubber-coated bullets and tear gas. The scenes of the wounded being carted off, bloodied and grimacing in pain, were reminiscent of the Palestinian uprising that ended six years ago. At the same time, hundreds of the prisoners began a hunger strike that was joined by some of their families.
The
LA Times reported:
Arafat, in a meeting this week, asked Clinton to resolve the dispute, according to Ahmed Tibi, a senior advisor to Arafat. Tibi accused the Israeli government of misleading the Palestinians on the releases and of deceptively padding the release rosters with car thieves and other common criminals. Of about 2,100 Palestinian "political prisoners," Tibi said, about 300 killed Israelis and an additional 1,000 are members of Hamas or similar militant Islamic organizations and not eligible for release. That would leave at least 700 supporters of Fatah and other pro-Arafat organizations who Tibi said should be freed. "These are the soldiers of Yasser Arafat," Tibi said. The Israeli government disputes those figures, however, saying that only 200 or so inmates meet the criteria for release.
Note that neither report includes the important detail that Arafat was changing the deal from what was written in Oslo. Two weeks later in an op-ed Peter Edelman of Americans for Peace Now
complained:
Why is the latest peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians in danger when both sides started off largely meeting the terms of their commitments? As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatens to delay implementation of the Wye memorandum for the umpteenth time, it's clear that mere compliance with the letter of the accord is not enough. The agreement is threatened because the deep distrust that evolved between the two sides over the past few years did not dissipate when Netanyahu and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat signed the deal. Almost from the moment he returned to Israel from the Wye summit, Netanyahu has antagonized the Palestinians as well as his American allies. Until the Israeli government changes its attitude, it will be difficult to resolve issues that have evolved outside the text of the agreement, much less move forward to productive final status negotiations.
Later on Edelman apportions blame to Arafat too, but of course his main target was Netanyahu. Charles Krauthammer, as usual,
observed something important:
The administration did, in the famous "Note for the Record" requiring the Palestinians to end anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic incitement, to change the Palestinian charter to eliminate clauses rejecting Israel's existence, to reduce the size of the Palestinian police, etc. Every single one of these promises remained a dead letter. How do we know? Because they reappear--as Palestinian commitments--in the Wye accord negotiated 21 months later. This time, said the State Department, we really mean it: Israel will get these reciprocal gestures--in return for another 13 percent of the land. Indeed, the U.S. proposed a three-stage deal so that Israel would not be stiffed again. Rather than withdrawing in one chunk--as it did in Hebron, then finding that the Palestinians, land in hand, simply ignored their obligations--Israel would give up 2 percent first, then wait for Palestinian compliance; then another 5 percent, with a pause for Palestinian compliance; then a final 6 percent.
Contrary to Edelman's false charge (later in the op-ed) that Netanyahu had delayed withdrawals outside of the framework of Wye, Krauthammer points out that the stages were an essential part of Wye. What's important about this incident is how it demonstrated a trend of Palestinian demands becoming etched in stone - regardless of what was actually agreed to. Netanyahu
once again found himself cast as the bad guy for insisting the agreements meant something. One footnote to this prisoner story is this report, a month later:
Arafat Releases Prisoners to Mark Holiday; Israel Protests Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat released 54 jailed prisoners, including members of the Islamic militant group Hamas and other opposition organizations, to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. A Palestinian police spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said those freed included both criminals and political detainees, among them some low-level members of the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Leading Hamas figure Abdel Aziz Rantissi and Islamic Jihad leader Abdullah Shami were not among those released. ... Israel called the move a "violation" of agreements.
The prisoner release was a pretty clear violation of Arafat's commitment at Wye to fight terror, and the LA Times puts violation in scare quotes! The Israel Project has a
list of prisoner releases that Israel has undertaken as of 2008.
2) $110,000 a month The New York Times offers a rofile of one of the released prisoners,
Making the Uneasy Transition From Prisoner to Celebrity Mr. Taqatqa, 38, was among the first group of 477 Palestinian prisoners freed in return for an Israeli tank soldier, Sgt. First Class Gilad Shalit, captured five years ago when Hamas militants crossed through a tunnel to raid an Israeli military base. Mr. Taqatqa had served 18 years of a life sentence in an Israeli prison, with a lot of time spent in solitary. While Sergeant Shalit has remained largely out of public view, Mr. Taqatqa and many of the other freed Palestinian prisoners are living in the full glare of near constant publicity. The transition and unceasing attention have made Mr. Taqatqa a bit uneasy as he tries to learn to deal not only with freedom but also with the unfamiliar trappings of modern life, like cellphones and laptop computers. “He still feels that he is in prison; he does not believe that he is out,” a sister, Zeinab, said during one evening visit to a family friend’s house. She has come to Gaza to help him find a wife.
The profile shows a man who may really want to do something with his life, other than terrorism. There was a fascinating detail in the article.
He is among 60 former prisoners living at Gaza’s newest hotel, Al Mashtal, which looks out over the Mediterranean seafront. Featuring marble floors, palm trees and a swimming pool, it would not look out of place anywhere along the Mediterranean and usually charges $140 a night. Hamas is paying $110,000 per month to house the prisoners until they find homes.
For an impoverished government in an impoverished region, $110,000 sounds like quite a lot. And of course, Taqatqa has a computer and a cellphone. Gaza is not, apparently, the
portrait of poverty that many like to paint. But if Mohammed Musa Taqatqa is interested in moving beyond the violence, other recently released terrorists are not so inclined.
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/3156.htm Muhammad Abu Ataya: I was arrested for being a member of the Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, and for killing traitors and spies, and killing traitors and spies, as well as going after the herd of settlers and the Israeli army. Interviewer: Brother Muhammad, as you regain your freedom, you carry the gun of the rebel, the gun of the fighter, and you wear the fatigues of the Al-Qassam Brigades, even though Netanyahu warned that any released prisoner rejoining the resistance would be severely punished. Muhammad Abu Ataya: He can make as many warning as he likes. His warning and threats will not deter us from continuing the journey of resistance, on which we embarked decades ago.
and
http://www.memri.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/815/3157.htm Interviewer: If you could go back in time, would you carry out such a large-scale attack? Ahlam Tamimi: Of course. I do not regret what happened. Absolutely not. This is the path. I dedicated myself to Jihad for the sake of Allah, and Allah granted me success. You know how many casualties there were [in the 2001 attack on the Sbarro pizzeria]. This was made possible by Allah. Do you want me to denounce what I did? That's out of the question. I would do it again today, and in the same manner.
As I wrote yesterday, these terrorists are honored not for the time spent in Israeli jails but for their efforts to kill Jews. And it's
not just Hamas that supports these efforts, the
"moderate" Abbas does too. There will be no peace until terrorism is no longer rewarded by the Palestinians.
Labels: Ahlam Tamimi, Ethan Bronner, Middle East Media Sampler, Soccer Dad, terrorists for Gilad trade, Wye Accords
Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Sunday, October 16.
1) Closer to free
In 2003 Thomas Friedman wrote The Reality Principle which began: Have you noticed how often Israel kills a Hamas activist and the victim is described by Israelis as ''a senior Hamas official'' or a ''key operative''? This has led me to wonder: How many senior Hamas officials could there be? We're not talking about I.B.M. here. We're talking about a ragtag terrorist group. By now Israel should have killed off the entire Hamas leadership twice. Unless what is happening is something else, something I call Palestinian math: Israel kills one Hamas operative and three others volunteer to take his place, in which case what Israel is doing is actually self-destructive.
Four years later Elder of Ziyon celebrated a great anniversary: In the three years prior to Yassin's death, approximately 800 Israelis were killed in terror actions. In the three years since, that number has plummeted to about 110.
And in 2001 Daniel Pipes wrote Arafat's Suicide Factory: Convincing healthy individuals to blow themselves up is obviously not easy, but requires ideas and institutions. The process begins with the Palestinian Authority (PA) inculcating two things into its population, starting with the children: a hatred of Jews and a love of death. School curricula, camp activities, TV programming and religious indoctrination all portray Israelis in a Nazi-style way, as sub-human being worthy of killing; and then deprecate the instinct for self-preservation, telling impressionable young people that sacrificing their lives is the most noble of all goals.
Putting the arguments of Pipes and EoZ together, we can conclude that certain individuals are skilled at organizing terror and recruiting terrorists. Not all "senior members" of Hamas have the same skills. Those like Yassin (or his short lived successor Rantisi) had charisma and excellent recruiting skills. Had Israel abided by Friedman's "reality" principle they would have left them alone. Experience shows that Israel acted properly in self defense. I believe that this is what Israel was referring to by "symbols." (h/t Meryl) The main breakthrough came in July. After five years of negotiations, Hamas forwarded a letter to Israel in which, for the first time, it outlined its final terms for a prisoner swap for Gilad Schalit. Three months earlier, David Meidan, a former senior Mossad operative, had been appointed chief mediator to the Schalit talks by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Upon receiving the letter, he immediately got to work. The first indication that Hamas was willing to ease up its demands came fairly quickly. After studying the letter and seeing the names of Tanzim chief Marwan Barghouti, PFLP chief Ahmed Sadat and some top Hamas terrorists, Meidan immediately made clear that these people – the so-called “symbols” of Palestinian terror – would not be released. Surprisingly, Hamas did not say no.
This background is interesting also, because it appears that it was Hamas that wanted to deal. Why would that be? Last week the Christian Science Monitor reported Hamas popularity hits a new low after opposing UN statehood bid (h/t Honest Reporting) Of the many complaints in Gaza, one has become a popular refrain: the increasing taxes levied by Hamas. Fathi Abu Gamar, a gas station owner in Jabaliya refugee camp, readily joins the chorus: The Islamist movement that rules this tiny coastal territory takes more than half his revenue from gas sales, he says, leaving him with a tiny profit. But he quickly becomes quiet when a man, whom neighbors identify as a Hamas informer, begins hovering nearby, listening intently. Above him, the green flags of Hamas flutter in the strong sea breeze. Like Hamas's popularity, they are faded and tattered. Hamas has been steadily losing support among Gaza's 1.6 million residents after winning elections in 2006 and violently ousting its secular rival, Fatah, the following year.
Already in July, when the contact about these negotiations was reportedly made, the PA efforts at getting their statehood bid at the UN was getting attention as a result Hamas was largely out of the news. With increasing friction with the population in Gaza as the CSM noted later: A joke circulating the territory posits that the reason Hamas's armed wing, Al Qassam Brigades, has stopped firing rockets at Israel is that the fighters' jeeps lack air conditioning. Residents tell stories of Hamas officials who used to drive modest cars now sporting luxury vehicles, and Gazans like Mr. Gamar, the gas station owner, complain the government is reaching into their pockets in every way it can.
getting prisoners released, would make Hamas relevant, especially if Abbas's efforts were vetoed: But the decision wasn't made only out of anger. Many Gazans see reconciliation as the real battleground and say Hamas made a tactical decision, calculating that if Abbas came back without UN recognition, Hamas's position in reconciliation negotiations would be stronger. That would give it more leverage on issues that are still to be decided, such as whether its armed wing would be forced to turn in its weapons.
It appears that Hamas settled for somewhat less than it might have otherwise demanded, for its own political calculations, which isn't making everyone happy. (h/t Meryl) Palestinian sources told the newspaper Asharq al-Awsat that Hamas officials were shocked that senior operatives in the organization's military wing, including Hassan Salama, Abdullah Barghouti, Abbas a-Sayed and Ibrahim Hamed will not be among the released. The sources said that several senior operatives have cancelled their speeches on the matter, and a joint press conference that was supposed to be held by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades and the Popular Resistance Committee on Wednesday was called off.
2) Don't let her go
If planners and organizers of terror attacks - as opposed to the perpetrators - ought not to be released, the Roth family makes a convincing case that Sbarro planner, Ahlam Tamimi ought not to be included in the scheduled release. After all, several months ago my husband and I sent him a letter detailing the crimes of which Tamimi was convicted and pleading with him to refuse to release her.
In that letter, we reminded him that she is generally described mistakenly as the “driver” or “helper”. We noted that she was actually the planner and engineer of the attack. She personally transported the 10 kg bomb concealed in a guitar case in a taxi from Ramallah to Jerusalem, met up with Al Masri, the suicide bomber, and handed him the case.
The two then walked together, disguised as tourists, to the center of the city. They stopped at the target Tamimi had selected. She instructed Al Masri to wait fifteen minutes before detonating the explosives. She wanted him to give her enough time to escape the scene safely, she explained later.
3) What was he thinking?
The other day PM Netanyahu said the following, regarding the deal with Hamas to release Gilad Shalit: Mr. Netanyahu, whose cabinet voted 26 to 3 in favor of the prisoner swap, said he felt it important to move on the deal now, given what he called the “storms” in the Middle East. “With everything that is happening in Egypt and the region, I don’t know if the future would have allowed us to get a better deal — or any deal at all for that matter,” he said. “This is a window of opportunity that might have been missed.”
In truth we won't know all of Netanyahu's calculations. As noted above it appears that Hamas had a reason for making the deal. Netanyahu likely benefits politically. The Jerusalem Post report cited above makes another observation: The same week that the letter was sent by Hamas, the Egyptian mediator – a deputy of Intelligence Minister Murad Muwafi – renewed his activity. In Israel, Cairo’s renewed interest in the Schalit issue was understood as a result of a number of elements. First, the interim military-run government in Egypt wanted to show the world that while the country appears to be in disarray and on the verge of governmental collapse, this is not the case. Instead, by mediating the Schalit deal, Egypt was able to show that it still is a player with major regional influence. The second reason is more internal and has to do with Egypt’s concern with Hamas, but even more so with its founding father – the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is expected to gain significant political power in the upcoming elections. By striking a deal with Hamas, Egypt gains some political influence over what happens in the Gaza Strip.
I wonder if there's another side to this. Might Netanyahu have thought that an opportunity to let Egypt's interim government show that it is not powerless help him dealing with a country that is likely to be more outwardly hostile to Israel in the near future? Note the following story from today. (h/t The Israel Project) Egypt intercepted Libyan surface-to-air missiles bound for Gaza, according to media reports over the weekend. Cairo arrested five smuggling cells over the last few months as they were ferrying the weapons towards Gaza. The reports suggested Gaza-based terrorists struck a deal for the weapons with Libyan contacts.
Like I wrote, we won't know all the considerations that went into this decision. Some aspects are troubling: the freeing of terrorists and strengthening Hamas. Others such as keeping a working relationship with Egypt seem to work towards Israel's benefit.
4) The advantage of having a historian as an ambassador
There's a brilliant op-ed by Ambassador Michael Oren in the Washington Post, Israel does not stand alone Isolation, of course, is not automatically symptomatic of bad policies. Britain was isolated fighting the Nazis at the start of World War II. Union forces were isolated early in the Civil War, as was the Continental Army at Valley Forge. “It is better to be alone than in bad company,” wrote the young George Washington. That maxim is especially apt for the Middle East today, where one of the least-isolated states, backed by both Iran and Iraq and effectively immune to United Nations sanctions, is Syria.
Israel, in fact, is significantly less isolated than at many times in its history. Before the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel faced a belligerent Egypt and Jordan and a hostile Soviet bloc, Greece, India and China — all without strategic ties with the United States. Today, Israel has peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan; excellent relations with the nations of Eastern Europe as well as Greece, India and China; and an unbreakable alliance with America. Many democracies, including Canada, Italy and the Czech Republic, stand staunchly with us. Israel has more legations abroad than ever before and recently joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which comprises the most globally integrated countries. Indeed, Egypt and Germany mediated the upcoming release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been held hostage by Hamas for five years. Israel is not responsible for the upheavals in the Arab world or for the lack of freedom that triggered them. Israelis did not elect Turkey’s Islamic-minded government or urge Syria’s army to fire on its citizens. Conversely, no change in Israeli policies can alter the historic processes transforming the region. Still, some commentators claim that, by refusing to freeze settlement construction on the West Bank and insisting on defensible borders and security guarantees, Israel isolates itself.
This goes against the vast majority of New York Times op-eds and editorials over the past few weeks, which portrays Israeli isolation as a fault of Israel. Ambassador Oren then lays blame at the feet of PA President Abbas (and implicitly at the New York Times for publishing him): As Abbas wrote in the New York Times in May, the Palestinian attempt to declare a state without making peace with Israel was about “internationalization of the conflict . . . to pursue claims against Israel” in the United Nations, not about settlements.
Related thoughts from Israel Matzav.
5) Two about Israel and Shalit
Ethan Bronner has two articles about how Israel relates to the hopefully impending release of Gilad Shalit. One is a general article A Yearning for Solidarity Complicates Public Life, Israelis Say: In trying to understand why Israel is scheduled to start trading more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners on Tuesday for the return of just one Israeli soldier held by Hamas for the past five years, it is worth recalling that within Israel, certainly within its Jewish majority, the notion of a stranger is remote. When Israelis say they view the seized soldier, Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit, as their own son, they mean it. It is the melding of private and public spheres, the unwillingness to distinguish between what is good for the state and what is good for the individual that is seen by many here as Israel’s greatest strength — but by others as its greatest weakness.
While the first part of the article is a pretty fair assessment of Israeli society, I was less pleased by the second part, which associated the protests for Sgt. Shalit's release with the tent protests of this past summer. (The tent protests largely propelled by the left-wing NIF, seem closer to the current union supported "Occupy Wall Street" protests in the U.S.) Bronner, interestingly quotes Israeli columnist, Nahum Barnea as approving the deal. Yedioth Ahronot has not (yet) published that column on the Ynet website. While searching for the article I found a two year old article by Barnea that seemed to go in the other direction. The unwritten contract between a State and its troops says that the soldier pledges to risk his life for it, and that the State pledges not to risk his life in vain and do everything possible to free him from captivity. The contract does not say this should be done “at all costs.” And it also doesn’t say something else: That a soldier is a child, a helpless creature, and that safeguarding his life is the essence and is more important than the military mission and the lives of the civilians the soldier is supposed to defend. The State is always bad. The soldier is always a victim. These are new insights that stem from unhealthy processes Israeli society has undergone in recent years. They constitute the crossing of a red line.
The other article, was much better, focused mainly on two families, the Roths and the Waxmans, In Israel, Swap Touches Old Wounds (h/t Lynn): “This deal is a disaster,” he said of the exchange for the Israeli soldier, Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit, as he sat with his wife, Frimet, on the balcony of their Jerusalem apartment. “Some of these people will go back to murdering. They pose an existential threat to all of us.” Blocks away, Esther and Yehuda Wachsman were absorbing similar news — that a man who took part in murdering their son, Nachshon, in 1994 was to be freed for Sergeant Shalit. By cruel coincidence, it was the anniversary of the killing — Oct. 14. But Mrs. Wachsman had a different response. “I’m willing to pay the price for another woman’s son to come home and end the agony,” Mrs. Wachsman said, sitting near a corner of her living room devoted to Nachshon’s memory. “Our hurt will never go away, but I just hope and pray with all my heart that Gilad comes home healthy in body and soul.”
I don't think I need to tell you all again how I feel about this deal. But I will tell you that I took the family for a day trip today (which is why there have been no posts for the last seven hours - in fact, everything you saw until now was posted last night) to an amusement and water park that was specially set aside for religious people (think Great Adventure on a much smaller scale for those within a 3-hour drive of there). There was a concert and the artist kept talking about how Gilad is coming home. We were far enough away that this was just background noise or my blood might have started to boil. It's not just how much my heart goes out to Arnold and Frimet Roth and people like them who have lost children, G-d forbid. It's how scared I am of the prospect that these terrorists could renew the terror war within our cities that has largely been dormant for the last seven years. All those things that Soccer Dad writes about people like Ahmed Yassin being charismatic have been said not only about Marwan Barghouti and Ahmed Saadat, but also about Ahlam Tamimi - the planner of the Sbarro massacre - and Amna Mona (who lured a 16-year old Israeli to his death - she's in some of the videos I showed on Saturday night) and many of the others being released.
But 69% of Israelis favor this deal, despite the fact that
62% believe it will worsen our security.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Ahlam Tamimi, Binyamin Netanyahu, diplomatic isolation, Ethan Bronner, Fatah, Gilad Shalit, Hamas, Malki Roth, Michael Oren, Middle East Media Sampler, Nahum Barnea, Sbarro terror attack, Soccer Dad
The New York Times bows to political correctness
And you never thought the
New York Times would slam one of their own. Well, they have, but for the wrong reasons.
A week ago, I wrote a post criticizing
self-hating Jew Max Blumenthal for writing an article in the Columbia Journalism Review castigating
New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner (pictured) for alleged improprieties relating to speaking engagements. For that piece, Blumenthal referred to me as an '
anonymous Israeli extremist.' (I expect to be called an extremist by people who get drunken kids to ham it up for the camera so that he can present them as '
extremists').
Incredibly, the Sunday
Times says that their own reporter did nothing wrong, but
it doesn't look right.
A close examination of the facts leads me to conclude that the case for an actual conflict of interest is slender. But the appearance of a conflict clearly exists, and that is a problem in and of itself. The Times’s “Ethical Journalism” guidelines state that staff members “may not accept anything that could be construed as a payment for favorable coverage or as an inducement to alter or forgo unfavorable coverage.”
Mr. Bronner has now severed his ties to the public relations firm. “In my view, it is all about appearances,” he told me. “I am not denying they matter. There is nothing of an actual conflict.”
The matter revolves around Mr. Bronner’s engagement, beginning in 2009, with Lone Star Communications, a firm operated by Charley Levine, a prominent public relations executive in Israel. Mr. Levine added a speakers bureau to his firm that year, and Mr. Bronner signed on to be represented by him.
The core of Mr. Blumenthal’s critique was that Mr. Levine is a figure of the Israeli right, who counsels prominent Zionists and serves as a reservist in the Israeli Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Unit. Mr. Blumenthal, a writing fellow at the Nation Institute, said it was improper of Mr. Bronner to have a business relationship with Mr. Levine while covering stories that Lone Star promoted.
In The Columbia Journalism Review article, Mr. Blumenthal never explicitly accused Mr. Bronner of providing favorable coverage as a quid pro quo for receiving speaking engagements from Mr. Levine’s firm. He objected that Mr. Bronner “takes paid speaking engagements from a firm that also pitches him stories.” Elsewhere in the article, he wrote: “On the one hand, it might be hard to cover Israel without stumbling across Lone Star’s many clients. On the other, however, that might be a good reason not to have a business relationship with the firm.”
As I noted in my original post, everyone who writes gets pitched stories. I get pitched stories and I will bet that Ethan Bronner gets pitched more stories and better stories than I do. But the standard they are espousing is unrealistic. If Bronner is not going to talk to people who do reserve duty in the army, he can't talk to anyone under the age of 45 who isn't a draft dodger. The army is part of our society. How is Bronner supposed to cover it without taking stories from our reservists?
But to see just how much of a tempest in a teapot this is, look at the story that Blumenthal pitched to the
Times.
Mr. Blumenthal’s article enumerated six cases in which Mr. Bronner had written about, or at least mentioned, Lone Star clients. Mr. Bronner walked me through those cases. Of the six, he said, only one involved an instance in which he had received a pitch from Lone Star and, on that basis, decided to write about it. The article concerned the Jewish National Fund and was about a fortified play area for children in the Israeli border town of Sderot.
In the rest of the cases except one, he said, he did not receive a pitch from Lone Star and was unaware that the story involved a Lone Star client. The exception involved Danny Danon, a conservative member of the Israeli Parliament. Mr. Bronner said he has covered Mr. Danon but the coverage decisions were influenced not by Lone Star but by the prominence of Mr. Danon, who is deputy speaker of Parliament and chairman of World Likud.
What a terrible thing - Bronner wrote a story about Sderot, which, except
according to Abu Mazen and Co. is not even 'disputed territory.'
/sarc
The fact that the Columbia Journalism Review would publish Blumenthal's piece in the first place speaks volumes to the bereft state of American Journalism and of Bir Zeit on the Hudson.
As to the
Times, we've known for a long time that their
ethics are crooked.
Labels: Charley Levine, Columbia Journalism Review, Ethan Bronner, Lone Star Media, Max Blumenthal, New York Times
Conflict of interest?
Self-hating Jew Max Blumenthal accuses New York Times bureau chief Ethan Bronner of a
conflict of interest for accepting speaking engagements from one of the largest PR agencies in Israel.
In 2009, Bronner, who has run the bureau since March 2008, joined the speakers bureau of one of Israel’s top public relations firms, Lone Star Communications. Lone Star arranges speaking dates for Bronner and takes 10 to 15 percent of his fee. At the same time, Lone Star pitches Bronner stories.
Bronner says his speaking relationship with Lone Star is minimal, non-exclusive, and “not a very active one”—some half a dozen speeches out of seventy-five or so he’s given over the last three and a half years to nonprofit groups. His speaking fees, he says, are low, and “My public speaking reflects my newspaper writing—it is reportorial, analytical, and non-adversarial—and fully in keeping with New York Times ethical guidelines,” Bronner wrote in a response to interview questions. The Times backs him up. To Bronner’s responses,“We would add only that his speaking appearances for nonprofit groups all conform to Times ethics guidelines, and that we have complete confidence in his professionalism and impartiality,” Eileen Murphy, the Times’s vice president of corporate communications, wrote in an e-mail.
Still, the quantity of Bronner’s speeches and the quality of his news coverage are not at question, only that he takes paid speaking engagements from a firm that also pitches him stories. Complicating the arrangement is the fact that Lone Star has a fairly clear ideological bent, and that Bronner has reported on a handful of the firm’s PR clients—this in a bureau where every nuance is scrutinized. And a reader of the Times’s ethics guidelines might come to a different conclusion about what they say about such an arrangement.
Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill. The speaking engagement about which Blumenthal goes on to complain happened before the speakers' bureau was ever formed.
Lone Star in turn arranged an exclusive tour for Bronner. “The feeling was the Times was the most serious periodical who could run the story who could generate serious publicity and generate fundraising from the get-go,” Willner said. “And so the feeling was that if it was a New York Times story, it was worth its weight in gold.” Bronner published an October 30, 2008 feature in the Times that examined the historical and political controversies surrounding the dig. Dozens of media outlets also covered the excavation and, within days, the project at Khirbet Qeiyafa had gathered so much attention that the comedian Seth Meyers joked about the dig in a bit on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update.”
And one look at the speakers Blumenthal lists (and one has to wonder whom else he is leaving out) shows that they represent a cross-section of Israeli political views. In early 2009, Levine supplemented Lone Star’s operation by establishing a
speakers bureau designed to arrange paid lectures for major media figures in Israel.
His first speaker was Bronner, who he described in an e-mail to CJR as “a nominal friend and a terrific journalist.” Levine rounded out his roster of speakers with eight well-known Israeli media figures, including Haim Yavin, “founding father of Israel television news”; David Baker, “senior foreign press coordinator of the Israeli prime minister’s office—under four prime ministers”; and Amiel Ungar, “well-known spokesman of the settler movement in Judea and Samaria.” The speakers bureau section of the Lone Star site is illustrated with a photo of Levine and Bronner arm-in-arm.
Haim Yavin is
known as a Leftist politically, and if David Baker served four Prime Ministers, you can bet that they were not Menachem Begin, Yitzchak Shamir, Ariel Sharon and Binyamin Netanyahu - and even that would be a stretch to count Sharon is a Rightist.
Moreover, anyone who writes gets stories pitched to them. I get stories pitched to me in emails all the time, and I'm sure Ethan Bronner gets a lot more of them (and a lot better ones) than I do.
Bronner says he gets several dozen story pitches a week, and only a few come through Lone Star. “Hearing from Lone Star impresses me no more than hearing from any other pitch source,” he wrote in an e-mail. “I look at the journalistic potential in the context of what else I am working on and try to act accordingly.” Since Bronner joined Lone Star’s speakers bureau, he has mentioned or written about Lone Star PR clients in at least five stories.
Blumenthal goes on smear Levine and Lone Star - if you're interested
read the whole thing. But here's the key: There's a lot to complain about in the New York Times' coverage of Israel. And the fact that there is a lot to complain about shows - if nothing else - that Ethan Bronner is definitely not in the pocket of the Israeli Right as Max Blumenthal would have you believe.
Labels: Ethan Bronner, New York Times
