Al-Reuters' moral equivalence

We Israelis get upset because the mainstream media abroad insist on referring to the 'Palestinians' who are constantly trying to murder us as 'militants' rather than terrorists. There are constantly discussions here about how the media won't use "the T word."

Reader Will sent me this link from Turkey's Today's Zaman to show me that the Turks are even worse. If you click through, you will see that the headline reads "Israel and Islamic Jihad trade fire, 10 dead."

But if you look at the byline, you'll see that this didn't come from Zaman's writers. This coarse piece of moral equivalence - replete with mistakes of fact (how many can you find?) - came from al-Reuters, one of the world's largest news agencies.

Aren't you glad you read blogs?

The Times’ Flotilla of Moral Equivalence Jonathan S. Tobin

In today’s Sunday New York Times, Jerusalem Bureau chief Ethan Bronner attempts to unravel what he considers a sea of spin about the Gaza flotilla being organized in Greece. Following the model of moral equivalence that has guided virtually all coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict in recent decades, the conceit of his piece in the paper’s Sunday Review is that both Israel and the flotilla organizers are attempting to manipulate the narrative of the dispute through spin.

Bronner takes a plague on both your houses approach to both sides. Arabs claim Gaza is starving and the flotilla is analogous to Jewish refugee ships that tried to break the British blockade of Palestine in the 1940s. Israelis claim the flotilla is a plot to destroy their country when all it is is a bunch of middle-aged pacifists trying to do good. According to Bronner’s version of events, all are equally wrong and therefore equally responsible not only for the standoff over Gaza but for the worsening of the conflict.

Such a stance allows the Times to assume a pose of Olympian detachment about the war on Israel–something Bronner and the paper clearly thinks is more important than actually telling the truth about the situation.

Gaza needs no humanitarian aid. It doesn’t now, as Bronner concedes, and it didn’t a year ago before the fatal clashes on a similar flotilla led to further easing of restrictions on goods allowed into Hamas-ruled Gaza. The only purpose of the flotilla is political. Breaking the blockade means breaking the international isolation of the Hamas government of Gaza. Doing this strengthens a tyrannical Islamist terrorist movement that governs Gaza with an iron fist. Anyone who aids Hamas in this matter is taking a stand on that group’s ongoing war on Israel via murder and kidnapping. If, as Bronner asserts, Gaza is a “sad and deprived place,” the blame should be laid at the feet of its rulers, not Israel.

Bronner concludes by saying Israelis are misinterpreting the flotilla as “an attack on its essence” rather than mere criticism of government policies. But this charge, in which, unbelievably, besieged democratic Israel is compared to the Soviet Union, is an absurd distortion of the truth.

The Arab analogies to the 1947 Jewish refugee ship Exodus are a specious attempt to steal and distort history. Bronner quotes a leftist Israeli as saying the flotilla is trying to make the same point as those who were trying to thwart British attempts to stifle Zionism. But this is a lie. In 1947, the Jews were fighting for survival, not trying to destroy the Arabs. Hamas, aided by its foreign cheerleaders, is waging war on the one Jewish state in the world in order to replace it with one more Arab majority country. How can anyone view an attempt to aid Hamas as mere political criticism rather than support for that war?

Efforts aimed at delegitimizing Israel through deceitful exercises such as the “aid” flotilla for Gaza are part of this war. The only way to describe reporting that treats Israel’s attempts to defend itself against Hamas and its propaganda as morally equivalent to the assault on the country is exactly the same word Bronner uses to describe the back and forth between the antagonists: mendacity.

According to the LA Times, a terrorist's slitting a Jewish baby's throat is no worse than Israel's building new homes; A fatal Israeli-Palestinian flaw The tragedy of an Israeli family's slaying in the West Bank, and Israel's response to it, are part of a continuing cycle of violence

One of the most depressing characteristics of the dysfunctional Palestinian-Israeli relationship is the self-destructive tit-for-tat mentality that often seems designed to keep the conflict alive rather than to end it.

Anyone who follows the news is familiar with how this cycle works. It might begin with a Palestinian child dying while stopped at an Israeli army checkpoint on his way to the hospital. In response, an enraged Palestinian shoots into a crowd of Israeli soldiers at a bus stop. To show that it will not tolerate such behavior, an Israeli army helicopter then fires a missile into an apartment building in Gaza, targeting militants but killing civilians as well, after which outraged Palestinians fire a rocket into Israel, which in turn leads the Israelis to tighten whatever embargo or travel restrictions or security rules are in place at the moment. That increases Palestinian rage still further.

Needless to say, the cycle doesn't end there but continues until, after a while, it becomes completely impossible to say with any authority who began the hostilities or to distinguish actions from reactions.

We're currently witnessing the cycle in real time. On Saturday, five members of an Israeli family living in the West Bank settlement of Itamar, near the Palestinian city of Nablus, were killed, including an 11-year-old boy, a 4-year-old boy and an infant girl, presumably by Palestinian militants. In response to this brutal tragedy, the Israeli government announced that it would build 500 more houses in existing settlements in the West Bank. Interior Minister Eli Yishai said Sunday that 500 was not enough and that Israel should build 1,000 new homes for every Israeli who is killed there.

Which is worse — stabbing children to death or building new houses in West Bank settlements? The answer is obvious. But that's not the point. The point is that no matter how abhorrent the murders are, it serves no purpose to aggravate the provocation that led to them in the first place. How will building more houses for Israelis in the midst of the West Bank, in settlements that are almost universally acknowledged to violate international law, do anything other than keep the crisis going? Answer: It won't.

Terrorist violence is unacceptable, period. Palestinian leaders should say so, clearly and publicly. The murder of children is especially disheartening and reprehensible, and the Itamar killers, whoever they are, should be hunted down and punished.

But at the same time, the Israeli government should be in the business of calming tensions, not stoking them, and of removing obstacles to peace rather than constructing them. Instead, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be using last week's killings to appease the powerful, pro-settlement forces in his government.

If the conflict is to be resolved, the cycle must end. But for that to happen, both sides must put peace ahead of politics.

LA Times: Settlements Provoke Baby Killing

The inhuman act of slitting the throats of a three-month old baby, two small children and their parents defies any understanding or justification for any political cause. But not for the LA Times, which contends that the brutal murder of the Fogel family are part of an ongoing “cycle of violence”:

We’re currently witnessing the cycle in real time. On Saturday, five members of an Israeli family living in the West Bank settlement of Itamar, near the Palestinian city of Nablus, were killed, including an 11-year-old boy, a 4-year-old boy and an infant girl, presumably by Palestinian militants. In response to this brutal tragedy, the Israeli government announced that it would build 500 more houses in existing settlements in the West Bank. Interior Minister Eli Yishai said Sunday that 500 was not enough and that Israel should build 1,000 new homes for every Israeli who is killed there.


Which is worse — stabbing children to death or building new houses in West Bank settlements? The answer is obvious. But that’s not the point. The point is that no matter how abhorrent the murders are, it serves no purpose to aggravate the provocation that led to them in the first place.

So according to the LA Times, baby killing  is a natural response to an Israeli provocation, in this case the act of building houses. Is this any different to the vicious rhetoric of Hamas, which justified the murders?
The LA Times asks:

How will building more houses for Israelis in the midst of the West Bank, in settlements that are almost universally acknowledged to violate international law, do anything other than keep the crisis going? Answer: It won’t.

Perhaps the LA Times should be asking how the butchering of babies, which is universally condemned, will do anything other than keep the crisis going? But instead, the paper cares little for placing responsibility for Palestinian actions on the Palestinians themselves let alone dealing with the very real issue of incitement in the Palestinian media and education system.
As for the claim that this brutal act is simply part of a “cycle of violence”, this is a charge that has been employed on a regular basis by lazy media that cannot differentiate between Palestinian terror, Israeli self-defense or non-violent acts of building homes. The Jerusalem Post eloquently debunked this as far back as 2008:

In truth, however, there is no cycle of violence. There is no spiral of attack and counter-attack relentlessly unfolding here.


What we have, rather, on the one hand, is a sovereign nation’s desperate effort to live in its homeland, seek peace with those of its neighbors who will partner it, and defend itself against those who seek its destruction. And, on the other, we have the forces of militant Islam, firing rockets across Israel’s sovereign borders, murdering Israelis wherever they can be found vulnerable, indoctrinating their people with a vicious intolerance of Jewish historical rights in this region, and simultaneously spreading a perverted interpretation of Islam that purports to require each and every believer to carry out personal jihad in the name of God against the infidels – be they Jews, Christians or unbelieving Muslims.

ELDER OF ZIYON: Stephen Walt's disgusting moral equivalence on Itamar

The sickness of the Left:

To say that I am appalled by the brutal murder of an Israeli family in the West Bank settlement of Itamar (near Nablus) is an understatement.

OK, he is appalled. Why? 

Israel's occupation of the West Bank is universally recognized as a violation of international law and depends on force, intimidation, and violence, but there is no justification for anyone to take the lives of an entire family in this way. No good can possibly come from such asenseless act -- not for Palestinians, not for Israelis, and not for anyone else -- and it should be universally condemned.

To Walt, the self-styled realist, the massacre of the Fogels is simply a counterproductive method of protest. He cannot bring himself to say that the murders are immoral, or sickening, or reflective of constant Palestinian Arab incitement to hate and murder. He cannot be bothered to mention the names of the victims. He cannot even make a passing mention of a baby girl whose throat was slashed in her crib. 

And Walt cannot stop himself from implying that the settlers deserved it for somehow being "illegal" before he even pretends to condemn their murder, which, he implied, might have been justified if they were killed in a less brutal manner. Like maybe a suicide bombing that was a little less personal.

Now that Walt got his perfunctory "condemnation" out of the way, he can get to what he really wants to condemn, and what he cynically uses the Itamar massacre to hang his own sick hate on:

But while we are at it, we should not spare the other parties who have helped create and perpetuate the circumstances where such crimes are likely to occur. 

Let us therefore condemn every Israeli government since 1967, for actively promoting the illegal effort to colonize these lands.

Let us condemn those Palestinian leaders who have glorified violence in the past or who continue to do so today.

Let us condemn the settlers themselves, some of whom routinely use violence to intimidate the Palestinians who live in the lands they covet.

Let us condemn Israel's policy of targeted assassinations and thewar crimes it has committed in Gaza and Lebanon.

Let us condemn the hypocrisy of governments throughout the Arab world, who mouth solidarity with the Palestinians yet do little to improve their lives or advance the goal of an independent Palestinian state.

Let us condemn the craven passivity of U.S. politicians, whose deference to the Israel lobby has enabled the occupation for more than four decades, squandered the opportunity afforded by the Oslo Accords, and undermined efforts to create a viable Palestinian state.

Let us condemn the misguided fervor of Christian Zionists, who turn a blind eye to injustice against the Palestinians in the belief that it will hasten the "end times" tomorrow.

Let us condemn the cynicism of the Netanyahu government, which used this latest tragedy to announce the construction of 500 more housing units in the Occupied Territories.

Walt is pretending to be even-handed in his condemnations, but in the end you can see that his real priority is to condemn the victims themselves for "perpetuate the circumstances where such crimes are likely to occur." 

And the real sickness of Walt can be seen in the original title of his disgusting piece. While it is now called "On the murders at Itamar," from the title bar we can see that he originally titled it "Who is to blame for the killings at Itamar?"

And here is the root of Walt's reprehensible worldview. Because he truly believes that the Israelis and the Jews who voluntarily choose to live in their own historic homeland are to blame for their own deaths, and that Arab terrorism is a natural reaction to Israeli actions. Which is exactly what Islamic Jihad says.

Because not once does he condemn the actual terror groups themselves for their own actions. Not once.

Walt's piece proves beyond any doubt that the left does not have any empathy for the Fogels, and not the least desire to consider them human beings. Their murders are, to Walt and his "blame Israel" compatriots, nothing more than a prop to hang another excuse to bash Israel.

The boys in the cave; Murder by stoning, death by shrapnel: the fallacy of moral equivalence. By Charles Krauthammer, May 2001

On May 9, two 14-year-old Israeli boys who had been playing hooky from school and hiking on the West Bank were found in a cave battered to death and mutilated.
In Western news reports, this horror was not permitted to stand alone. It was routinely coupled with a recent Palestinian death.
"The deaths came two days after a 4-month-old Palestinian baby girl was killed by Israeli tank fire and further roiled emotions in a week of spiraling violence that neither side seems able to control," reported the New York Times the next day.
The coupling was invariable. "The deaths of children have enraged both sides," reported USA Today.
Or as CNN summarized it, "In a region seemingly numb to violence, the deaths of both Palestinian and Israeli youngsters has struck nerves on both sides of the conflict."
Both sides. Tragedy all around. The presumption of moral equivalence between these two events and, by implication, between the two sides is by now entirely characteristic of the Western view of the fighting. And it is entirely wrong. Consider these two incidents.
The Israeli firings in Gaza were not, as the reader might presume, unprovoked. Israeli tanks did not gratuitously go hunting for babies in Gaza. Israelis had been attacked by mortar rounds fired from Palestinian territory. Israel was trying to silence the mortars.
If, say, Zapatista guerrillas were launching mortars into San Diego, is it conceivable that the U.S. Army would not cross into Tijuana to silence them?
Clearly, what happened in Gaza was the inadvertent death of an infant in the urban warfare the Palestinians launched eight months ago. Such deaths happen in every instance of urban warfare, from the post-Normandy fighting in the villages of France in World War II to the more recent NATO bombing of Serbia.
There is a difference, an immense moral difference, between this kind of unintentional death and what happened to those two Israeli boys. It is the difference between tragedy and infamy.
From the 1972 Munich massacre of Israel's Olympic athletes to the suicide bombers of today, the world has long since grown accustomed to Palestinian terrorism. But even terrorism - the deliberate murder of innocents - pales beside what happened to those two boys. Terrorism at least has a perverse logic: It is murder as a means to some political end. What happened in that cave was murder as an end in itself.
These boys were not targets. They were not deliberately sought out by a terrorist on a mission. The most chilling part of this story is that the boys were merely chanced upon. And then were torn to pieces.
Last year, two Israeli reservists lost their way and strayed into Ramallah, where they were lynched by a frenzied mob. The Palestinians then made up the story that the Israelis were suspected undercover agents.
What could the story be this week? Fourteen-year-old boys are neither spies nor soldiers. Yet they were bludgeoned to death with stones, their blood then dabbed on the walls of the cave.
This is not war. This is not even terrorism. This is bloodlust. It is savagery so grotesque that it might not have been believed had we not all seen that picture last fall on the cover of Time of the Palestinian, having just beaten to death the two Israeli reservists in Ramallah, exultantly holding out his blood-stained hands to the crowd in a gesture of triumph.
People are not born with bloodlust. They learn it. It is no mystery where the Palestinians have learned it.
For years Arafat's mini-police-state has been feeding his people the rawest Jew-hatred since the Third Reich. In television, radio, newspapers, and textbooks, Arafat has created the psychic infrastructure that sustains his endless war on Israel - and gives us the barbarism in the cave.
"I hate the Israelis," declared Palestinian first lady Suha Arafat only two weeks ago. That hatred is in the air Palestinians breathe. A few days later, Syrian president Bashar Assad - in the presence of the pope, no less - accused the Jews of trying "to kill the principle of religions in the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ and in the same way with which they tried to kill the Prophet Muhammad."
His defense minister then said on television:
"When I see a Jew before me, I kill him. If every Arab did this, it would be the end of the Jews."
This is not from crackpots. This is not from the political fringes. This is from the highest level of the leadership among Israel's neighbors. Keep that up for years, and you have raised a generation prepared - no, designed - to bathe in the blood of 14-year-old boys.

When practiced during the Cold War, moral equivalence (between East and West) was a form of moral obtuseness. As practiced today in the Middle East, it remains so. The plain fact is that Israelis are not raised on bloodlust. They are not taught to hate Arabs.
On the contrary. On the 50th anniversary of independence, Israel TV produced a historical series so sympathetic to the Palestinians as to raise the question whether Israel had taken sympathy to the point of self-flagellation.
When Baruch Goldstein committed a massacre of Palestinians in Hebron, he was vilified by every major leader in Israel. His name became anathema to Jews everywhere.
When the "Engineer," the terrorist behind a string of deadly suicide bombings, was assassinated, Arafat declared him a martyr and national hero.
When that child in Gaza was accidentally killed by Israeli gunfire, Prime Minister Sharon immediately expressed his regrets and apologized.
What of the lynching of the two boys? Utter silence from Yasser Arafat.