Being Misled By The Major Media

CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) posted an article today about an article that appeared last Wednesday in The Washington Post. The headline of the Washington Post states, “How the Iran deal is good for Israel, according to Israelis who know what they’re talking about.” I will admit that I saw the article, but did not do a story about it because it made no sense to me. I have read enough about the nuclear deal with Iran to understand that there is no way it could be good for Israel.

The CAMERA article explains:

Tharoor first mentions Ami Ayalon, a former head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, and links to a Daily Beast piece entitled “Ex-Intel Chief: Iran Deal Good for Israel.”

Unfortunately for Tharoor (and for Daily Beast commentator Jonathan Alter), Ayalon, who begrudgingly supports the deal because it is “the best plan currently on the table” and because he believes there are no available alternatives, nonetheless has said in no uncertain terms, “I think the deal is bad. It’s not good.”

The article then cites the next expert who approves of the deal:

Tharoor then cites former intelligence chief Efraim Halevy, and strangely links to an Op-Ed Halevy wrote after a framework agreement was finalized in Lausanne last April but before the details of this final deal were agreed upon in Vienna this month. In a more recent (and thus  relevant) Op-Ed, Halevy described what he sees as several strong points in the agreement and concludes that it is “important to hold a profound debate in Israel on whether no agreement is preferable to an agreement which includes components that are crucial for Israel’s security.”

…What he does not say is that the deal signed in Vienna is, as a whole, “good.” In an interview with Israel’s Channel 2, he repeats his call for national debate, and paints a much more equivocal picture: “This is not an agreement that is entirely bad,” Halevy said. “There are positive elements in it.” Later, he added that “this agreement has a number of very good elements for Israel, and there are elements that are not as good.” 

Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israel’s Military Intelligence branch, is the next expert mentioned. He has stated, “This is not a good deal. This a problematic deal. You also could call it a bad deal.”

The next expert mentioned is Meir Dagan, another former Mossad chief, who has not gone on the record about the deal in either direction.

If you were a person who only gets their news from The Washington Post, you would believe that the Iranian nuclear agreement has strong support from some military and security experts in Israel. And you would be very wrong. This is the reason we need organizations like CAMERA and other alternative news sources. Our mainstream media has forgotten how to tell the truth.

If You Hear A Lie Often Enough, You Think It Is The Truth

There is an organization called CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America). Generally speaking, they write letters to American newspapers when the newspapers misreport something about Israel or the Middle East.

The following is from one of their recent internet posts:

January 23, 2015

There Were No Palestine Borders, And No Palestine, in 1967

A story in today’s New York Times print edition, “Obama Not Planning to Meet With Israeli Premier,” written primarily by the newspaper’s Washington bureau, included erroneous and anachronistic language about Israel’s “1967 borders with Palestine.”

In 1967, of course, there was no country, territory, or entity called Palestine.

And the boundary between Israel and the territory in question, what had been the Jordanian-occupied West Bank, was explicitly not regarded as a border. As the 1949 armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan made clear, “The Armistice Demarcation Lines defined in articles V and VI of this Agreement are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto.”

This phrasing helps underscore why CAMERA has long called for newspapers to correct inaccurate references to “1967 borders” (even without explicit references to a pre-1967 entity called “Palestine”) and why we’ve often gotten corrections on the topic. The implication — not often spelled out, though it is in this particular piece — is that there was between 1948 and 1967 a sovereign country between the Green Line and the Jordan River, one that had internationally recognized borders, and one that is therefor the legal sovereign of all land east of the Green Line, whether that be the Jewish Quarter, the consensus settlements of the Etzion block, or beyond.

Readers of this blog might immediately recognize that this isn’t at all true; but the average New York Times reader may not, so the newspaper’s references to 1967 “borders” is likely to lead to substantive geopolitical misunderstanding on the part of its audience.

The New York Times has thanked CAMERA for making it aware of the erroneous language, but has not yet published a correction. We’ll hope to update this space soon with information about a correction.

Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist who became a Christian who supports Israel once stated, “In June 1967, I went to be a Jordanian and woke up a ‘Palestinian.'” As we sit idly by and watch ISIS surround Israel, we need to remember that Israel is the ‘little satan’ and we are the ‘big satan.’ We are next on the list. Knowing the correct history of the region is helpful to understanding what is happening.