Search Results for 'bbc bias israel' ↓

I’m not particularly interested in political bias in the media—it’s impossible to prove, and, as we see in the endless arguments over Obama vs. Clinton, it is an absurdity to claim that the media has a “liberal” bias, since both candidates are (nominally) liberal.

What I am interested in, though, is the editorial judgment that resulted in the following: a story about General Petraeus, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton that is illustrated by a photograph of Barack Obama basking in the glow of the photographers’ flashes.

Here’s the picture:

Here’s the story:

Hearings Rife With Political Overtones

The war in Iraq collided with White House ambitions in a politically ripe hearing room on Capitol Hill Tuesday as two would-be commanders-in-chief — Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain – swooped in from the campaign trail to question the top American commander in Baghdad, Gen. David H. Petraeus, and to make veiled attacks on each other.

A third potential commander-in-chief, Senator Barack Obama, was set to duel with General Petraeus later today

Was the editor afraid that we’d be so swept away by McCain’s and Clinton’s words that we’d forget all about Obama for the one minute that it took us to read the article?

Gotcha!

In the food section. A feature about hummus and “Little Israel” (a heretofore unknown settlement nestled in the heart of hipsterdom in NYC). Not one Arab hummus place is listed. There isn’t even an attempt to be even-handed:

In fact, a growing culinary Little Israel, in pockets throughout the East and West Village, offers the flavors of home to the estimated half-million Israelis in the New York metropolitan area — edible comforts that are ever more poignant now that their region is torn by violence.

“Every Israeli in New York has family, friends, loved ones back home,” said David H. Dorfman, director of media affairs at the Israeli Consulate in New York. “Food is a way of connecting. We’re really lucky in New York to have real Israeli food. I’m sure a lot of Israelis have been indulging.”

I am shocked and deeply distressed!

There is no better falafel in New York than what you get at Mamoun’s (Arab).

Hoomoos Asli (Israeli) isn’t even mentioned. What are they, chopped eggplant?

The Beeb started an editors’ blog and opened it up to comments…and now the floodgates have opened about the BBC’s Middle East coverage (which I discussed here).

The accusations of a deeply ingrained pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli bias from the network’s reporters far outnumber the supportive comments. And the latter are as revealing as the former. Both sides detect the bias. Some are happy to hear it, because they feel it gives the Palestinians a fair shake. Most—by a great majority—are not: because the network isn’t reporting the facts but rather its bias.
If this story starts to get more play, editor Jon Williams may end up regretting how he sets the scene—explaining that the BBC maintains a “permanent presence” in Gaza and so it suffers along with the Palestininans whenever they suffer:

Two nights ago, Israeli forces bombed the only power station in Gaza, knocking out power to thousands of homes and offices. Anyone who’s had a fuse blow knows the inconvenience when the lights go out. But factor in 35 degree temperatures, the need for air conditioning, and the loss of water pumping and communications networks, and you begin to have some idea of the difficulties facing everyone living and working in the Gaza strip.

The BBC is the only Western broadcaster to maintain a permanent presence in Gaza. It’s on days like this that the expertise of people like correspondent Alan Johnston comes into its own. He and his colleagues from the BBC’s Arabic Service live close to our bureau in Gaza City, enabling them to draw on the context – and contacts – gleaned from literally living the story.

Then he gets to the heart of the matter: the BBC’s sensitive use of language:

As ever in reporting the Middle East, language – and the choice of words – is incredibly important. Was the soldier kidnapped or captured, were the Hamas politicians arrested or detained?

Our credibility is undermined by the careless use of words which carry value judgements. Our job is to remain objective. By doing so, I hope we allow our audiences on radio and television to make their own assessment of the story. So we try to stick to the facts – civilians are “kidnapped”, Cpl Shalit was “captured”; since troops don’t usually make “arrests”, the politicians were “detained”. Doubtless some will disagree. But that’s, in essence, the heart of the story – two competing narratives.

Commenter after commenter pointed out the abject hypocrisy of this casual, offhand explanation by Williams. For example:

Civilians are “kidnapped”‘? According to who? Why not soldiers?

I would accept your explanation for the use of words were it not for this:

“Iraq general kidnapped in Baghdad”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4411335.stm

Why was the word OK in that instance and not this?

And this:

“Seized Israeli settler found dead”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5125256.stm

Why “seized” and not “kidnapped” there?

Read the entire exchange here. It’s well worth it.

Me, I agree with this guy:

Guys – nobody is asking you to get it 100% right 100% of the time. You can’t. The problem is that I, myself — a strong supporter of peace who believes that the Palestinians should have a state that includes the WB, who is no fan of settlers or settlements, who doesn’t buy PR from either side, but who finds value in both Israeli and Arab news sources — still find that BBC reports about Israel CONSISTENTLY warp reality, excusing terrorism and demonizing Israel. And it’s not your vocabulary. It is clearly plain and simple bias on the part of your reporters.

I find it irritating that I rarely if ever gain any new insights from you about the Israeli or Palestinian situation — just this tired, slanted stuff. Guys, I learn interesting things from Lebanon’s Daily Star, from Yedioth Aharonoth, from Haaretz, and from Asharq al-Awsat. But from the BBC, with its permanent Gaza bureau, I mostly hear propaganda.[emphasis added]

In a report on CNN earlier today, the reporter (I think it was John Roberts) mentioned the circumstances of one rocket attack in northern Israel (I think it was in Haifa). In the course of his report, he noted in passing (one rocket passed through several layers of concrete) that Israelis are required to have bomb shelters.

I’ve searched Google News for more information about this and found only a handful of relevant mentions. Here’s one:

Nahariyans who have stayed in the town are feeling anxious and claustrophobic. Houses built since the mid-1990s have mandatory, reinforced “safe rooms,” so residents go there when air-raid sirens wail.

Others have to make use of the town’s more than 160 municipal shelters.

Here’s another:

Intel has moved employees in Haifa, which is located about 20 miles south of the Lebanese border, into a bomb shelter equipped with Wi-Fi, an Intel Israel representative told Reuters.

This would seem to be a salient piece of context for reporting on the ground in Israel, no? I mean, this is a liberal democracy where it is “normal” to have a bomb shelter in your home, or for your branch office, because your safety can come down to that.

How do we measure “proportionality” in such a context and in such a neighborhood as the Middle East? And why has everyone in the MSM jumped on the “Israel used disproportionate force” angle without reporting this element of the story?

The real bias of the talking-head media culture is ignorance and lack of intellectual curiosity.

Even for someone who knows that television news organizations are woefully lacking in overseas facilities (not to mention basic knowledge about the areas they “cover,” which makes them susceptible to manipulation by our enemies for propaganda purposes), the emptiness of the reporting, the lack of context, the absence of explanation of basic facts about the region, the conflict, the history, the potential impact on American concerns—i.e., the stakes—is shocking.

The MSM was caught with its pants down and has no idea how to handle this story. They’re so wrapped up in being “fair and balanced,” careful to allow Hezbollah press officers to have their say, that they are failing utterly to tell basics of the story: who? what? why? where? when?

The scrambling to get up to speed by pundits and bloggers is painful to behold, too.

Ever since professor-pundit Eric Alterman published it in April 2002, I’ve been wondering if anyone else noticed his enemies’ list of those American journalists who were not sufficiently anti-Israel.

Alterman’s chest-pounding performance went largely unnoticed. Except, one might argue, by then-Harvard president Larry Summers, who in September 2002 talked about a worrisome trend : anti-Semitism on the American left:

But where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.

Some have speculated that Summers’s laying down that gauntlet eventually led to his recent unceremonious departure from Harvard.

Well, now we know that other “someones” noticed Eric Alterman’s 2002 research on the “pro-Israel bias” of the media–Professors John Mearshimer and Stephen Walt, who cite some of Alterman’s findings in their just-published “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.”

Nothing infotaining in there, I’m afraid. The piece is an all-encompassing “realist” critique of every argument that could possibly be made in favor of Israel–including the moral one that led to its founding: the decimation of European Jewry in the Holocaust and the need for a homeland for the world’s remaining Jews. (It was a crime against the resident Palestinians.)

The good professors posit that support for Israel is the primary cause of many U.S. national security woes, and they make a cold-blooded case for cutting Israel loose. But their primary aim is to expose the nefarious Lobby that makes all this possible: AIPAC.

Let others give this the fisking it deserves. I will simply note that the professors’ logic skills are called into question by the first assertion they choose to footnote and the text of that citation:

…Other special interest groups have managed to skew U.S. foreign policy in directions they favored, but no lobby has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. and Israeli interests are essential identical. (1)

Here’s the opener of footnote 1:

Indeed, the mere existence of the Lobby suggests that unconditional support for Israel is not in the American national interest. If it was, one would not need an organized special interest group to bring it about [emphasis added]. But because Israel is a strategic and moral liability, it takes relentless political pressure to keep U.S. support intact.

Uh-huh. By this logic, every “special interest group”–i.e., lobby–is proposing something against the American national interest.

Right?

Or is it only the Lobby?

Disproportionate Response

The criticism that Israel is using a “disproportionate response” to the kidnappings of its soldiers is an attempt to morally disarm Israel and make Israel out to be a bully.

coxandforkum.com 

It’s called European Friends of Israel, and its goal is to emulate AIPAC:

Several pro-Israel European Union parliament members who were recently joined by a number of Jewish businessmen sponsoring their activity have decided to institutionalize their endeavor in order to boost cooperation between pro-Israel parliamentarians throughout the continent and help in improving Israel’s image there.

Well, good luck with that!

But I salute the effort.

There’s no doubt that you’re part of the West:

Nicholas Sarkozy, who’s looking to lead France one day soon, is on a charm offensive in America. While here, he’s undertaking a novel mission: he’s trying to get cozy with American Jews.

Among those attending a meeting with him on Monday were

the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Harold Tanner, the chairman of the policy council of the World Jewish Congress, Rabbi Israel Singer; the president of the American Jewish Congress, Jack Rosen, and officials from the American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League.

Curiously, Sarkozy thought this was an excellent forum in which he could give American Jews advice for Israel. (Why not go to Israel and hand out his advice there? I wonder).

Here it is:

Sarkozy declared that Israel was the victim of aggression but managed to lose the image war, so that the idea of Israelis as victims was replaced by pictures of dead Lebanese children.

“Israel must pay more attention to its international image. If Israel has a terrible international image, it cannot exclusively be the fault of everyone else,” the minister stressed.

Israel should explore the possibility of talks with Syria in order to effect a split between Damascus and Tehran, he said.

And Israel should be “more proactive,” he said. “When you are small, you must be swift.”

He advised Israel “never to be the aggressor, and never to be caught standing still.”

The Man Who Would Be President of France apparently thinks that Israel is engaged in a permanent boxing match—when he’s not thinking that it’s in a sob-sister contest with its enemies, that is.

You wouldn’t know it from the MSM—I haven’t seen this report anywhere on cable (but I pretty much stick to CNN and MSNBC and avoid Fox)—so I was surprised to come across this report in the Washington Post:

With Israel intensifying its air and artillery attacks on Lebanon and warning of a protracted war, the Senate yesterday unanimously passed a bipartisan resolution endorsing Israel’s military campaign and condemning Hezbollah and its two backers, Iran and Syria. A few hours earlier, Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) delivered his most strident defense of Israel since the conflict erupted a week ago. The House is expected to pass a similarly pro-Israel resolution today.

“Strident defense of Israel”? I guess the writer, Jim VanderHei, disapproves.

One commenter at Tapped, home of the pundit who feared opening the blogospheric can of worms that is Israel, contributed his share of stridency:

The vote in support of Israel was 410 to 8. FOUR HUNDRED TEN to EIGHT in support of actions that are not only counterprodutive but also immoral. I tend to resist those who talk about AIPAC’s stranglehold on political opinion and the power of pro-Israel money but how else to explain this vote? And please, don’t tell me that the US has “special” relationship with Israel. I want to find out who those brave eight were. Barbara Lee? Ron Paul?

I didn’t think I’d see the day when I’d hold Congress in higher regard than I hold my fellow “liberals,” but that day has come.

So, yeah, it’s all about the election.

In other news, though, Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, the best tealeaf reader to come out of Israel in the last few decades, was telling it like it is on Tuesday:

 Olmert Hints Jerusalem Division Is Inevitable

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert signaled on Tuesday Israel might have no choice but to share Jerusalem with the Palestinians in a peace deal, citing international pressure for compromise over the holy city.

“The world that is friendly to Israel … that really supports Israel, when it speaks of the future, it speaks of Israel in terms of the ‘67 borders. It speaks of the division of Jerusalem,” Olmert said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.

Olmert was telling it like it is again on Friday, with a twist:

 [Olmert] conceded that settlement construction continued. “There is a certain contradiction in this between what we’re actually seeing and what we ourselves promised,” Mr. Olmert said.

But he cited a letter by President Bush to the Israeli government in 2004 in which Mr. Bush said that in the American view, final borders should reflect the realities of existing population centers. The letter “renders flexible to a degree what is written in the road map,” Mr. Olmert said. …

Mr. Olmert also praised Mr. Bush, saying that no other American president had been as “systematically and consistently” supportive of Israel.

But Israelis need to understand, Mr. Olmert went on, that the part of the world that is “friendly to Israel,” including the United States, “speaks of Israel in terms of the ‘67 borders. It speaks of the division of Jerusalem.”

What other conclusion is to be drawn from this?

A number of European states are refusing to allow El Al cargo planes carrying Israel Defense Forces equipment from stopover landings in their airports.

The refusal came from states considered friendly with Israel, including Britain, Germany and Italy, according to Captain Etai Regev, the chairman of El Al’s pilots’ union. 

I am reminded of the Norwegian flaming anti-Semite Jostein Gaarder’s complaint about Israel’s “disgusting weapons” as well as his warning that Israel has forfeited its rights:

It was historically and morally necessary for the Jews to get their own home. However, the State of Israel, with its unscrupulous art of war and its disgusting weapons, has massacred its own legitimacy. It has systematically flaunted International Law, international conventions, and countless UN resolutions and can no longer expect protection from the same. It has carpet bombed the recognition of the world. But fear not! The Tribulation will soon be over. The State of Israel has seen its Soweto.

There is a sickness in Europe, and it is hurting the Israelis. Moreover, it is not helping the Palestinians—if this indeed is its aim.

When Jews defend themselves with weapons, the world doesn’t like it. When Jews send a clear message that they will not allow themselves to be threatened once again with extermination, the world punishes them. The world prefers to see Jews as powerless victims. If the world continues on its present path, perhaps they will get their wish.
The UN leads the campaign to punish Israel and make it a pariah nation:

The United Nations on Wednesday described as “shocking and immoral” the fact that Israel dropped well over 90 per cent of its cluster munitions in Lebanon during the last three days of the conflict – when it was already clear there would be a cessation of hostilities.

I’m still waiting for the UN, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch to condemn Hezbollah and Hamas.

So says the hysterical Richard Cohen in the Washington Post, in the first (current) case of a Jewish pundit desperately trying to feed Israeli Jews to the crocodile in the hope that he will be eaten last.

It’s hard to pick out just one passage to quote, because there are so many extreme statements. I’ll go with this:

There is no point in condemning Hezbollah. Zealots are not amenable to reason. And there’s not much point, either, in condemning Hamas. It is a fetid, anti-Semitic outfit whose organizing principle is hatred of Israel. There is, though, a point in cautioning Israel to exercise restraint — not for the sake of its enemies but for itself. Whatever happens, Israel must not use its military might to win back what it has already chosen to lose: the buffer zone in southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip itself.

Cohen’s precious advice is for the Israelis to withdraw and hunker down.

The smart choice is to pull back to defensible — but hardly impervious — borders. That includes getting out of most of the West Bank — and waiting (and hoping) that history will get distracted and move on to something else. This will take some time, and in the meantime terrorism and rocket attacks will continue.

Let someone else fisk this. It’s way past my bedtime.

The debate about the power of the Israel lobby was scheduled to take place tonight at Cooper Union. I just didn’t feel like going. I’ve posted about Walt and Mearsheimer’s paper more than about any other subject—or so it seems from the list below.

I put together the list for my own benefit: to see the arc of my thoughts on the subject. They haven’t change much. Following is a list of posts, in chronological order, that explain why I think Walt and Mearsheimer deserve nothing but contempt.
March 18

March 20

March 26

March 30

April 1

April 3

April 5

April 12

April 19

April 24

May 24

July 24

September 1

September 13

September 18

That is the phrase used in the totalitarian fantasy written by one “Hanyost,” a poster at Daily Kos, to describe the sovereign nation of Israel.

Why the US can impose a one-state solution on Israel-Palestine

by Hanyost

Wed Aug 09, 2006 at 05:45:19 AM PDT

In my diary of yesterday, I proposed that our party support the creation of a single secular democracy in the area now controlled by Israel, and I was impressed by the quality of responses. Based on this tiny sample of 100 or so Democrats, I’m thinking that maybe the average Democratic voter might be open to taking a more impartial role in the Middle East – and thus making our country less of an object of hatred by Muslims everywhere.

The most common objections to such a proposal is that the two sides hate each other too much to stop the killing and that outside forces, like the USA, cannot impose a solution.

However, I think that the US, as the prime, and virtually the only, supplier for the Israeli Defense Force for the past many decades has the capacity to force a settlement simply by cutting off that support.
…What I am proposing for discussion is that our party break with this decades-old policy and formally announce that we will no longer provide any military aid to Israel so long as that government refuses to work toward the one-state solution which I proposed in a previous blog. Even a return to the pre-1967 borders would not be sufficient, since that still allows Israel to keep the indigenous peoples of the area in subjection.

I should be used to it by now, but it’s still mind-boggling that this poster, with an extremist agenda—one that might find favor with Hezbollah or Hamas—finds a home (and feels at home) among super-partisan Democrats, who today celebrated the defeat of Joe Lieberman, while the Big Pharaoh, an Egyptian blogger I read every day, went out of his way to mention that Joe Lieberman is one of his favorite senators.

The hoped-for breakthrough I wrote about earlier today (here and here) has been announced, and the way I’m reading it, Israel accepted it because in addition to a cease-fire, there’s an implicit recognition of Israel by Hamas (at least that’s why I would have accepted it if I were the Israelis: it’s good enough as the basis for a negotiation, and it may be all they’ll ever get as far as recognition from Hamas is concerned).
Here’s the bottom line:

we [all the Palestinian factions, in a signed document] agreed on the national accord to establish a Palestinian state, with the June 4, 1967 borders,”

The story is all over the wires. Here’s how the Jerusalem Post leads:

Israel accepted a Palestinian cease-fire to go in effect Sunday morning, and will stop military operations in Gaza in return for an end to all Palestinian violence, including rocket fire, tunneling, and suicide bombers, the Prime Minister’s Office announced Saturday night.

The dramatic announcement followed a telephone conversation between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

I am deeply suspicious of Meshaal, who is beholden to both Syria and Iran, so this isn’t exactly a building block to peace—which fanatic Islamists don’t want anyway, because then they won’t have Israel to kick around anymore.

Let’s hope that this very fragile agreement holds, and that it doesn’t inspire certain players (Iran, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda, for starters) to derail it.

I will be very, very curious to read the stories behind this very dramatic turn of events, which follows on the heels of the Gemayel assassination in Lebanon.

And I will be curious to see the reaction of the diehard politicos, talking heads, pundits, and bloggers on both sides of this conflict—all of whom tend to lag behind events when they comment, because too many of them lead with their ideology.

That is the question Soledad O’Brien, co-anchor of CNN’S American Morning, just asked Governor Bill Richardson. Her concern, as she mentioned, is that the United States can’t be a broker for peace if it takes the side of one of the players. Also lurking in the background but unstated is the notion that taking Israel’s side makes the United States even more unpopular than it already is, and makes us vulnerable to more terrorism and instability at home.

The question needs to be asked, and the debate needs to be out in the open, because a recent poll indicated that while a solid majority of Americans—56%—backs Israel, nearly 40% of Americans don’t back either “side.” (I can’t find a link but will provide one when I do. Today’s Christian Science Monitor claims, without substantiation, that “there are already signs that the public is ambivalent toward US involvement in the conflict.”)

I would submit that this reflects American uneasiness about Israel’s uneasy, often violent relationship with the Palestinians. The current conflict, however, is between Israel and a global, militarized terrorist organization: Hezbollah.

So, no, we are not making a mistake by backing Israel.

One righteous Brit captures Israel’s challenge, and echoes David Mamet’s point about the world being attached to what he calls “imaginary Jews”:

A surprising number of British people – especially the super-creepy British Jews who recently signed a treacherous letter to the press distancing themselves from Israel’s actions – seem to think Israel should exist not as a real, imperfect country full of real, imperfect people led by real, imperfect leaders, but as some sort of collective kosher Mater Dolorosa, there to provide a selfless, suffering example to the rest of us.

Fight back, and the outside world reacts with the revulsion of a man seeing his sainted grandmother drunk and offering sailors outside. Even (especially?) anti-Semites and enemies of Israel are shameless in recycling the legends of “brave little Israel” – I’m thinking of David and Goliath here – and basically believe that each IDF member should go into battle against the assembled hordes of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah armed with nothing but a slingshot apiece. Failing that, this tiny country must embark on a suicidal act of self-sacrifice in the face of murderous, genocidal hatred,

The secretary general of the United Nations accused Israel of deliberately targeting a UN post and killing four peacekeepers.

In a statement issued at UN headquarters in New York, Mr Annan said: “I am shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli defence forces of a UN observer post in southern Lebanon.

“This co-ordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long-established and clearly marked UN post at Khiyam occurred despite personal assurances given to me by prime minister Ehud Olmert that UN positions would be spared Israeli fire,” Mr Annan added.

The Israeli ambassador to the United Nations responded:

“I am shocked and deeply distressed by the hasty statement of the secretary general, insinuating that Israel has deliberately targeted the U.N. post,” Gillerman said in a statement. “I am surprised at these premature and erroneous assertions made by the secretary general, who while demanding an investigation, has already issued its conclusions.”

Are you a blogger who feels insecure about criticizing Israel? Let Jewish bloggers lead the way through the land mines, says Matthew Yglesias as he hastens down the Jewish Lobby Is Too Powerful path blazed by Professors Walt and Mearsheimer (whom I first blasted here, in a post in which I also discussed Lawrence Summers’s fall 2002 warning about the rise of a new anti-Semitism on the American left):

I know lots of liberals and talk to them. The number of rank-and-file liberal people who agree with the sorts of things Democrats have been saying about this is vanishingly small. And, indeed, what Israel is doing is certainly incompatible with the general liberal outlook on use of force questions. The Democrats aren’t expressing a mainstream liberal view of the situation, they bowing [sic] to pressure from the Lobby That Must Not Be Named. If we heard more from liberal bloggers, we’d be hearing commentary that ranged from somewhat critical to very critical.

I see this stance, first, as a big political problem for Yglesias’s “mainstream liberals,” because “what Israel is doing” is fighting a militarized Islamist terrorist organization. There is no such thing as a politically correct amount of force to use against people sworn to your destruction. The simple people who watch TV are way ahead of the “mainstream liberal” bloggers who opine (or don’t opine) about this.
This is not your father’s Middle East “cycle of violence.” The only people who don’t seem to get it are the silent bloggers of the left.

Leon Wieseltier—who is no stranger to disputes about this very issue—has great insight into this phenomenon:

“[Bloggers] are not in the complexity business on any issue. Maybe the problem is not complexity but complication — the way in which sympathy with Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah, and therefore with the use of force, might complicate their lives in progressiveland, where they live.”

Status anxiety, of course. What else?

Too bad that in certain circles you have to criticize Israel in order to enjoy status.

Read the lament of Orna Shimoni, the mother of a fallen soldier and one of the founders of the Israeli peace movement Four Mothers, which eventually spurred Israel to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000:

“This is an existential war. A war over our actual lives. For a long time I have had this feeling: What will happen if one day the IDF comes down with a virus? Nothing serious, the flu. But even with the flu and a temperature of 40 degrees Celsius and no strength, you can’t do anything. So what will happen if the IDF gets the flu? If all our soldiers have a temperature of 40 degrees.

“Today I know what will happen: there will be a slaughter here. We will not be in the sea, because we will simply be slaughtered. Not one person from the nation of Israel will remain. If the IDF comes down with a virus, no one will defend us, including our friends in the United States. So I feel that despite the terrible pain, this war is just and necessary to protect our lives. And I think that even when we remove hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in Lebanon, that is not only right, it is also moral. Because I do not want them to be killed in our shelling. But we have to shell. And we have to fight. Because this time, it’s not over the security zone [in southern Lebanon], this time it is over our lives.

“That’s why it makes me so angry to see the extreme left now demonstrating and breaking the consensus. Because the left is me. Shulamit Aloni is me. And the extreme left says that even now, even after we withdrew to the last centimeter in Lebanon and even after we withdrew to the last centimeter in Gaza, we are to blame. And to say something like that, is to say that we are to blame because we live here and not in Uganda. And then the extreme left is actually saying that we are to blame until we are in the sea. Because they will not accept us in Uganda, you know. Or in the United States, or in France. So the extreme left is now giving me a certain feeling of hatred. Because then, too, no one cared what happened to the Jews. No one prevented slaughter. And today I’m undergoing an experience of slaughter. More than ever before, I know that if the IDF comes down with a virus, the next day the State of Israel will not exist.”

Read the whole thing.

I was waiting to see how long it would take for criticism of Israel to bubble to the surface in the information war over the current crisis. Here it is, and it consists of the word disporportionate in all its variations [emphasis added in all quotes].
Naturally, the UN is one of the first out of the gate, according to UPI:

The United Nations’ relief chief says Israel’s targeting of a Gaza strip power station is counter to international law and disproportionately affects civilians.

Jan Egeland, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said Thursday that without access to power and humanitarian aid, the situation in the Gaza Strip could become catastrophic within days, with a “massive increase” in deaths.

Left-liberal Steve Clemons of the Washington Note:

Israel is demonstrating profound immaturity with its behavior, though I support the importance of negotiating and even pursuing its kidnapped soldier. However, despite its regional superpower status, Israel is showing that it tilts too easily towards responses far disproportionate to any sane or reasonable action. While Israel radicalizes Palestininans and many Arabs in the region with this behavior, it needs to know that it is eroding American support for its behavior and position.

Arab American Institute president James Zogby:

AAI President James Zogby called on the Bush administration to demand that Israel halt the systematic destruction of Palestinian infrastructure and allow diplomacy to resolve the issue of the captured Israeli soldier.

“Will Israel never learn?” Zogby asked in a press release. “The use of disproportionate power in acts of collective punishment that display callous disregard for the suffering of hundreds of thousands of innocents will never create peace.

The Los Angeles Times clarifies the problem:

It isn’t that the world questions Israelis’ right to feel frustrated, or to retaliate. It is simply that we cringe at the sight of a disproportionate response that could undermine prospects of ending the cycle of violence.

Israel is powerful—it is disproportionately powerful militarily to its enemies. However, in this asymmetric war, its many enemies have a disproportionate amount of sympathy from those who “cringe” at a show of force.

More evidence that American liberals cannot deal with the use of power and force (as I wrote here). Me, I think they’d better start dealing with it.

The BBC reports that

rival Palestinian political factions Fatah and Hamas have reached agreement on a common political strategy to try to end a damaging power struggle.

However, the British taxpayer-funded television network, whose motto is “Nation Shall Speak Peace unto Nation,” wants to reassure you that the war will continue to the bitter end, because Hamas will never give up the fight to do away with Israel and the Israelis.

The BBC’s James Reynolds in Gaza says that the central point of the joint manifesto is the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Traditionally that is one half of a two-state solution, but the existing drafts of the deal make no mention of the second half of this solution – the state of Israel.

This omission is deliberate, our correspondent says.

While some have argued that this means Hamas tacitly accepts Israel’s right to exist, it is becoming clear that that is not how Hamas sees it.

Hamas negotiators have told the BBC that the entire state of Israel has been built on occupied Palestinian land.

They believe that a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza is a first step – not a final step.

They believe that future generations of Palestinians will reclaim all their historic homeland. And that, in the end, there will be no room for what is now the Jewish state of Israel, our correspondent says.

As the watchdog for Middle East reporting CAMERA noted in October 2001, the BBC worked hard after 9/11 to insinuate that there was a causal link between those attacks and the situation between Israel and the Palestinians. They noted that the BBC

has a global audience of well over 150 million people, with the Web site, TV and radio broadcasts delivering commentary and analysis to the world round the clock. It is, therefore, significant that throughout its coverage of the [9/11] terror attacks and their aftermath, the BBC has, in effect, played the role of PR agent for the Palestinians and the Arab world, echoing their anti-Israel line and doing damage control for the Palestinians’ tarnished image.