The Associated Press asserts today that “there is overwhelming skepticism among both Israelis and Palestinians about [Netanyahu’s] ability to actually agree with Abbas on terms. ”

Why is the potential for Israeli and Palestinian agreement cast only in terms of Netanyahu’s ability to agree, and not Abbas’s ability to do so? Perhaps for the same reason that AP considered Israel’s requests for unconditional negotiations, and Palestinian refusal to do so, to reflect an Israeli hard line.

Here is President Obama’s July 6, 2010 demand of the Palestinians to stop inciting their people to hatred and violence against Israelis:

I think it’s very important that the Palestinians not look for excuses for incitement; that they are not engaging in provocative language; that at the international level, they are maintaining a constructive talk, as opposed to looking for opportunities to embarrass Israel.
(From press conference held jointly with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu)

But this demand is ignored by Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority. Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) monitors the incitement. Here are just two of PMW’s recent findings:

• September 10, 2010 (PA TV)

Palestinian Authority television broadcast says Jews praying at Western Wall are “sin and filth.”

• September 9, 2010 (PA newspaper)

A Palestinian Authority newspaper informed its readers that the Palestinian ambassador to Lebanon revealed that the actual Palestinian goal in the current peace talks with Israel is to undermine Israel’s legitimacy in the eyes of the world.

But the American media, focused on the settlement freeze, is oblivious to the Palestinian incitement issue. Apparently the media believes that the expanding of housing facilities constitutes much more of an obstacle to peace than preaching hate and inciting violence.

The American Thinker: Helen Thomas who had a long history of anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish rants as a White House correspondent, gets an award from CAIR [Council on American Islamic Relations]. Thomas, then 89, resigned from Hearst newspapers in June in the wake of video recorded comments she made urging Israeli Jews to “get the hell out of Palestine” … [and] “go back home to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else.” Thomas will receive a lifetime achievement award from CAIR on October 9, 2010.

CAIR has been listed by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in a U.S. government terrorism funding trial. CAIR’s co-founders had ties to an international religious extremist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood. For more on CAIR’s Islamist orientation and activities, including attempted intimidation of critics and Muslim moderates, see CAMERA’s Special Report CAIR: Civil Rights or Extremism?

This award makes perfect sense since Helen Thomas’ anti-Israel maunderings and CAIR’s agenda go hand-in-hand.

Celebrated poet and fiction writer Margaret Atwood, the recipient of the Dan David Prize at Tel Aviv University last May, should stick to the world of fiction. In a Sept. 17 piece in Ha’aretz, Atwood gives a so-called test case to challenge those “entrenched” in their views regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to agree on the following (note: really, she challenges only one side):

What about the Palestinian children of Area C? (Area C, for those witless innocents who have never heard of it, is not that part of the West Bank controlled by the Palestinian Authority, nor is it Gaza, for which Israel now claims no administrative responsibility other than blockading it. Instead it is that part of Palestine entirely occupied and controlled by Israel since 1967. ) According to a 2009 report by Save The Children U.K. called “Life on the Edge,” the rate of malnutrition of the children in Area C is higher even than that in Gaza, and many kids are not only developmentally stunted, but are dying from related illnesses.

Is Israel responsible for this situation? Yes, because it alone controls the Area C Palestinian population’s access to food and its ability to earn a viable living. Is there a “Yes But” that could possibly justify the conditions being imposed on these children? Unless the report is lying, I can’t think of one. Even the most wild-eyed extremist can hardly claim that children under the age of seven are terrorists.

Whether or not the report is lying (a discussion for another post), the 70-page document says nothing about child malnutrition or mortality, either caused by illnesses related to malnutrition, developmental stunting, or otherwise. This is pure invention on the part of Ms. Atwood.

Atwood, like Ha’aretz writer Akiva Eldar before her, injects her own fabrications into a research document. To Ha’aretz‘s credit, Eldar corrected his creative rendition. Will Atwood do the same, or will the fiction-writer get a pass?

In the latest example of the ongoing Palestinian incitement emanating from Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority comes via a Palestinian dance troupe performing on the government-controlled PA TV, singing, “pull the trigger. . . redeem the country.” Once again, the media double standard is still in effect, ignoring the institutionalized Palestinian incitement propagated by a government now in peace talks with Israel, while highlighting the occasional instance of Israeli incitement, rejected by the Israeli leadership.

View the PA TV here, courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch:

Imagine you are a headline writer for the Associated Press, and you’re handed a story that starts as follows:

Militants launched mortar shells into Israel and Israeli jets bombed targets in Gaza on Wednesday, just as Israeli and Palestinian leaders held peace talks in Jerusalem with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Gaza militants opposed to peace with Israel have threatened to derail the fledgling negotiations, and the Israeli military said eight mortars and one rocket hit Israel by mid-afternoon on the day of the talks the highest daily total since March 2009. There were no injuries.

Israeli warplanes responded by bombing a smuggling tunnel along the Gaza-Egypt border, the military said. Hamas officials said one person was killed and four wounded.

What headline would you choose in order to best convey the crux of the story? “Palestinians Attack Prompts Israeli Retaliation”? Maybe “Gaza Militants Spark Fighting During Peace Talks”? Or “Gaza Tunnel Bombed After 8 Mortars Fall in Israel”? All of the above would be fair.

But for much of today, the title that showed up on countless websites carrying AP stories told only of Israeli violence during negotiations: “Israeli Aircraft Strike Gaza as Leaders Convene.”

The title was eventually changed to the more fair, but still imprecise, “Amid Peace Talks, Gaza Shells and Israel Air Raids.”

In a Los Angeles Times Op-Ed today, Michael Oren refutes Time Magazine’s claim that Israelis, distracted by a strong economy, don’t care about peace.

The top story in The Washington Times’ September 14 “Geopolitics” pages? “250 tons of building supplies get into Gaza”. The Associated Press dispatch reported that “the largest shipment of raw materials” into the Gaza Strip since Israel’s late May raid on a blockade-running flotilla would allow improvement of Gaza City’s sewage treatment plant. This will enable it “to process all waste and halt the dumping” of untreated sewage into the Mediterranean Sea.

The top story in The Washington Post’s September 14 “The World” pages? “West Bank settlement town thrust into debate; Some Israelis question the future of Ariel as peace talks move forward.” This report, by Post special correspondent Joel Greenberg, focused on the West Bank as “occupied” rather than disputed territory and erroneously asserted that “Ariel and its adjacent industrial zone pose a challenge to the vision of a geographically contiguous Palestinian state — the goal of renewed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians ….”

Renewed Arab-Israeli negotiations aim at a “two-state solution” that will provide Israel with secure and recognized borders alongside a new Palestinian Arab state that drops all belligerent claims. Ariel, anticipated by many as one of the large settlement blocs to be incorporated within Israel’s borders in a negotiated agreement, lies to the west of the main north-south West Bank road and does not break the territory’s contiguity.

Maybe “250 tons of building supplies get into Gaza” was not the most important breaking news for a daily paper’s “World News” section on September 14. The Wall Street Journal, perhaps not surprisingly, thought it was “E.U., China in Showdown over Tariffs.” But for The Washington Post, which led its “The World” pages on September 8 with “Ultra-Orthodox turn back clock; Early end to daylight saving time for Yom Kippur fast sparks debate over party’s power,” also written by Greenberg, Jews, especially Israelis portrayed as problematic, are global news leaders. If not daily, then weekly.

Writing in the Commentary blog, Daniel Gordis weighs in the Time Magazine controversy:

The German word Salonfähig doesn’t have a precise English translation. The closest English can do is something along the lines of “acceptable in polite society.” Salonfähig came to mind when I got my first look at the outrageous cover of this week’s Time magazine. Against a light blue background is a Star of David composed of white daisies. “Blue and white” brought to you by Time. But in the middle of the star, in stark black letters, lies the title of this week’s cover story: “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace.”

Here we are in the middle of peace negotiations that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, insisted upon, and to which the president of the Palestinian Authority, Abu Mazen, had to be dragged, and Time writes about “why Israel doesn’t care about peace.” Is there no limit to the Israel-bashing that now passes for serious conversion in polite society?