Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called PA President Mahmoud Abbas out for “blatantly distorting known historical facts” in his falsehood-ridden New York Times Op-Ed. More unusual is his release of a signed response to the Op-Ed, pointing out Abbas’ distortions. Sources in the Israeli prime minister’s office sum up Abbas’ Op-Ed strategy as follows:

One can only conclude from this article that Abbas has decided to turn his back on even pretending to be walking the road of peace, and instead chose the strategy of setting up a Palestinian state and then using this improved position to wage a diplomatic and legal war against Israel.

A May 9 On Point discussion, “The Fatah-Hamas Deal,” was not evenhanded. Instead of a debate between David Horovitz, Jerusalem Post Editor-in-Chief, and Sari Nusseibeh, President and professor of philosophy at Al-Quds University of Jerusalem, the program was a lopsided presentation of the Israeli and Palestinian positions: Mr. Horovitz was limited to seven minutes of air time while Mr. Nusseibeh, who followed him, was allotted 38 minutes. That’s more than a 5 to 1 air-time ratio for the Palestinian position versus the Israeli position.

Horovitz, expressing a mainstream Israeli viewpoint, noted the improbability of obtaining a viable peace deal with a Palestinian partnership that includes Hamas, who is committed (according to its charter,
statements and actions) to destroying Israel. Nusseibeh presented the viewpoint that Israel should not oppose the Fatah-Hamas union. He disingenuously equated Israeli right wing parties with Hamas:

Just as in Israel where you have opposition parties that do not believe in real peace or compromises with the Palestinians, certainly it is possible also to have people on the Palestinian side that share the same kind of sentiments but in the opposite direction.

One small matter is overlooked here: Israeli parties rejecting the viability of peace with Palestinians don’t terrorize their Arab neighbors with hundreds of rocket attacks.

Host Tom Ashbrook is no stranger to providing unbalanced Middle East On Point discussions as CAMERA has documented here, here, here and here.

Ashbrook and On Point can be contacted or e-mailed at [email protected]

While Mahmoud Abbas was busy rewriting 1948 history in the New York Times yesterday, another, lesser-known, Arab public figure was apparently peddling his bobe-mayse in Ha’aretz . In a “Head to Head” interview with Eli Ashkenazi, Salman Fakherldeen, the public relations officer of Al-Marsad, the Arab Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Golan, refers to the “Nakba Day” infiltrations into Majdal Shams, and recalls:

It was as if the clock turned back, to 1948. I remember the village then full of refugees expelled from their homes, walking in the opposite direction, toward where their children and grandchildren came from on Sunday. I can really hear the echo of past history.

A powerful image, and a powerful memory. It apparently moved Ha’aretz editors, who selected it for a pull quote:

There’s just one problem. The events of 1948 transpired 63 years ago. According to the article, Salman Fakherldeen is 57. The first sentence reads:

Salman Fakherldeen, 57, of Majdal Shams, is the public relations officer of Al-Marsad, the Arab Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Golan.

As we see it, there are three possible explanations for this conundrum.

1) Ha’aretz misreported his age. At the very minimum, how old would Mr. Fakherldeen have to be to so clearly remember events of 63 years ago? Probably around 67. Is this the image of a man closing in on his 70s?

2) He is recalling memories from a past life.

3) He is fabricating.

(See here for another personal 1948 conundrum.)

MEMRI has captured a video of a 92-year-old woman calling for the massacre of Jews in Hebron. Speaking to a reporter from Al Aqsa TV on the Jordanian border on May 13, she brags that her father brought some booty home from Hebron after the 1929 massacre. For this woman, those were the good ol’ days.

Writing in Ha’aretz about Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent speech, columnist Akiva Eldar complains that

the truly important things were those not said in the speech. Netanyahu did not let the magic number that all of the world’s leaders expected to hear cross his lips: 1967. The key to the negotiating room is Israeli recognition of the borders of the fourth of June 1967.

This may fairly describe the Palestinian negotiating position. But in fact there was no international border on June 4, 1967. The line between Israel and the Jordanian-occupied West Bank in place then was the armistice line from 1949. And the drafters of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 have repeatedly made clear that the Security Council does not regard it as a “border” to which Israel should return.

For example, British UN representative Lord Caradon had explained:

It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of 4 June 1967 because those positions were undesirable and artificial. After all, they were just the places the soldiers of each side happened to be the day the fighting stopped in 1948. They were just armistice lines. That’s why we didn’t demand that the Israelis return to them and I think we were right not to …

It’s not particularly surprising that Mahmoud Abbas, often dubbed “moderate” by the media (as opposed, for instance, to the “hawkish” Netanyahu), would fabricate about the past, contradicting a clear historical record.

Moreover, given the direction of the New York Times coverage in recent months, it’s no longer even surprising that the paper would allow Abbas to fabricate in its pages. It’s not surprising, but it’s also not excusable.

Details here.

On Monday, or “Nakba Day,” when thousands of Syrians gathered at the Israeli border, and more than 100 infiltrated Israel, another news story unfolded within Syria. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, and many other media outlets, such as AFP, Reuters, CNN, and the Washington Post, a mass grave containing the bodies of at least 40 anti-government protesters was uncovered. The Los Angeles Times reported:

A mass grave allegedly filled with the bodies of as many as 40 antigovernment protesters killed by Syrian forces was discovered Monday near the southern city of Dara, where an uprising began two months ago, according to activists and accounts from others.

Video posted to the Internet showed men wearing protective gear and operating backhoes digging up bodies in an area called Zemla Mohammad Sari Hill, southeast of Dara. The dead included women and children. Some of the video was gruesome, showing mangled, decomposing and half-clothed corpses. . . .Activists said the bodies included those identified by relatives as Abdulrazaq Abdulaziz Abazeid and four of his children, who disappeared in the recent wave of protests against the Assad family’s 41-year rule.

Abazeid’s wife suffered a fatal heart attack Monday after learning of the deaths of her husband and children, according to Radwan Ziadeh, director of the Syria-based Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies.

“We don’t know how many people exactly are in the grave,” Ziadeh said in a telephone interview from Washington. “According to two sources, maybe 40 people were in there. The victims had gunshot wounds, and some of the bodies were without limbs.”

The New York Times’ failure to report the grave’s discovery — whether intentional or not — speaks volumes about the Gray Lady’s obsession with Israel.

This YouTube purports to show the digging up the Daraa grave. (CAMERA has not verified its authenticity.) Warning, this is not easy to watch.

New York Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner just can’t help himself. He’s writing about Netanyahu’s ideas for a future Palestinian state, so he has to work in the term “hawkish.” Today he writes:

Days before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to meet with President Obama, he laid out his principles Monday for accepting a Palestinian state, showing greater flexibility on territory but still pursuing a far more hawkish approach than any Palestinian leader is likely to accept.

As Elder of Ziyon notes:

Netanyahu has proposed something very close to the Clinton parameters of 2001 (the major exceptions being the recognition of Israel as the “Jewish state,” and possibly parts of Jerusalem.) But when a Likud leader proposes a compromise that gets utterly rejected by Palestinian Arabs without even a counter-offer, it is Israel that is regarded as being intransigent and “hawkish.”

Recall, also, that it is Abbas who is refusing to hold talks, not Netanyahu.

By any yardstick, it is Abbas who is being “hawkish.” But that doesn’t fit into the NYT meme of Israel being the guilty party in negotiations.

Even Ha’aretz, hardly a fan of Netanyahu, gets it right. Yossi Verter, in “Dove masquerading as a hawk,” writes:

He spoke of preserving the settlement blocs, i.e. returning to the 1967 borders with slight adjustments. He also announced Israel would maintain “a military presence,” rather than sovereignty, along the Jordan River. By this he adopted Dan Meridor’s formula and Ehud Barak’s position. These two have been urging him for two years to make such statements.

This was undoubtedly Netanyahu’s most dovish speech this term. More dovish even than the Bar-Ilan speech of two years ago. But it was accompanied with a host of rightist mannerisms, aggressive and pessimistic statements and belligerent body language. It was a dove masquerading as a hawk.

An insightful analysis by Bronner’s colleague Anthony Shadid undercuts Bronner’s contention that the rally was “inspired by recent popular protests around the Arab world.” Shadid writes:

Few questioned the sincerity of the Palestinian refugees who flocked to the border; the day that marks Israel’s creation remains a searing date in the Palestinian psyche, and they cited the upheavals of the Arab Spring as inspiration. But as is often the case in modern Arab politics, they may have found themselves in a more cynical conflict that involves power, survival and deterrence and in which, to varying degrees, Iran, Israel, Turkey and the United States have a stake in the survival of a government that is bereft of legitimacy except as a force for a notion of stability.

“It’s a message by the Syrian government for Israel and the international community: If you continue the pressure on us, we will ignite the front with Israel,” said Radwan Ziadeh, a Syrian dissident and visiting scholar at George Washington University. . . .

Mr. Ziadeh, citing informants in Damascus, said at least four buses were seen Saturday leaving two camps where factions most loyal to Syria exert control.

“For 40 years, the Syrians have very effectively prevented infiltration, which shows that the Syrians have their hand on the faucet,” said Yoni Ben-Menachem, an Israeli analyst. “This also demonstrates the unwillingness of both Israel and the U.S. to see the removal of Bashar Assad” — as long as he keeps the border with Israel quiet.

The online version of the article is accompanied by this interesting photo and caption:

A student fleeing unrest in Syria was greeted by relatives after crossing over into Israel last week

Note to Roger Cohen: Bring on the Kushner Quotes

Roger Cohen weighs in on the Tony Kushner brouhaha, noting that “a trustee called Jeffrey Wisenfeld . . . suggests Kushner is an ‘extremist’ opponent of Israel.”

Instead of letting readers decide for themselves whether or not Kushner is an extremist, by citing Kushner’s own words (calling Israel a “mistake,” blaming “the existence of Israel” for “world peril,” and accusing the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing), Cohen gives his own gloss of the author’s views:

For anyone familiar with the Judt saga, Kushner’s travails have a familiar ring. He’s interested in historical facts, which include Palestinians being driven from their homes in 1948; he’s appalled by the ongoing Israeli settlement policy and is a board member of an organization that has supported boycotting West Bank settlements (although Kushner told me he’s against a boycott); he’s mused about one state.

It’s not that Roger Cohen isn’t familiar with concept of citing quotes concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He did find one quote, that of trustee Wiesenfeld, about whom he wrote:

Wiesenfeld, by the way, is not sure Palestinians are human given that they “worship death for their children.”

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