The intensive media coverage of the West Bank and Gaza creates the impression that the Palestinians experience unusually harsh levels of deprivation. Data collected by the United Nations has consistently shown for many years that the Palestinians, who benefit from enormous amounts of foreign aid as well as benefiting from close access to Israeli health services, are healthier and live longer than most of the people in the Middle East. A chart published by London’s Daily Mail citing the CIA World Factbook (which uses UN data) shows the longevity rankings of different states and entities.

The West Bank at #90 ranks near the top of the Middle East region, ahead of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and most of the North African states. Even Gaza at #110, routinely portrayed in the media as suffering deprivation due to Israeli measures, experiences greater longevity at 74.16 years than neighboring Egypt at 72.93 years. Interestingly, most of these states rank well ahead of Russia and other former East bloc states.

Palestinians in the West Bank have greater longevity (and other favorable health metrics) than the majority of the world’s population and yet have been among the largest recipients of humanitarian aid in the world for two decades.

There has been quite a bit of coverage of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas asking the United Nations General Assembly to recognize a Palestinian state. But the media has focused mostly on the political angle: which nations will support this gambit and which nations will not support it. There has been coverage of the fact that the GA will almost certainly vote to approve and likely by a landslide. However, scant attention has been paid to the fact that “Palestine” does not qualify for statehood under international law. Other than CAMERA’s backgrounder, we could find only one blog post on the subject.

According to article 4 of the United Nations charter membership is reserved for states (and “peace loving” states at that, but that’s a whole other story). But Abbas is asking for “non-member state” status. This would presumably make it easier for “Palestine” to join the International Criminal Court with the intention of bringing cases against Israeli leaders. (This could backfire, of course, since Palestinian leaders would also be subject to the ICC – see “peace loving” above.)

The question remains, however, does “Palestine” qualify as a state? Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States provides the internationally recognized criteria of statehood:

The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government; and d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

Does “Palestine” have a permanent population? If so, why do Palestinian leaders frequently demand that residents be allowed to become citizens of another state, Israel?

Does “Palestine” have a defined territory? According to article 17 of the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, signed by Israeli and Palestinian leaders, the Palestinian Legislative Council does NOT have jurisdiction over “issues that will be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations: Jerusalem, settlements, specified military locations, Palestinian refugees, borders, foreign relations and Israelis”. No jurisdiction over borders? No defined territory.

Does “Palestine” have a government? You could argue it has two: one government in areas of the West Bank and one in Gaza. And they don’t even get along with each other. That’s not an effective government by any stretch of the imagination.

Does “Palestine” have the capacity to enter into relations with other states? Again, not under the Interim Agreement. Article 9, paragraph 5-a states clearly:

…[T]he [Palestinian Legislative] Council will not have powers and responsibilities in the sphere of foreign relations, which sphere includes the establishment abroad of embassies, consulates or other types of foreign missions and posts or permitting their establishment in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, the appointment of or admission of diplomatic and consular staff, and the exercise of diplomatic functions.

So on all four counts, “Palestine” does not qualify as a state and hence cannot be recognized as such by the United Nations General Assembly. But then, as Abba Eban said, “If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the Earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.”

No permanent population, no defined territory, no effective government, no capacity to conduct foreign relations, and yet… no coverage either!

(For a more complete and legally authoritative review of this subject, click here.)

Here’s another important story you haven’t heard. A prominent Egyptian journalist, Amr Adeeb, known for his criticism of the regime led by President Mohammed Morsi, has fled his homeland and moved to London.

Once in London, he told his viewers that he fled the country after receiving death threats.

The story, which has been mentioned a number of times on Twitter, and has been highlighted by Michael Armanious, a Coptic Christian activist living in the U.S., has yet to receive any coverage in U.S. newspapers.

Egypt seems to be descending further and further into Islamism. Coptic Christians are not safe, nor are journalists who speak out against the regime.

Which mainstream media outlet in the West will be the first to tell their viewers about Adeeb’s flight from Egypt?

Will anyone in the West cover this story?

A touching account by a young IDF soldier serving with COGAT – Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories – underscores what agenda-driven journalists miss in casting Israel as allegedly seeking to inflict deprivation on Gazans. Nira Lee helps assure truckloads of supplies enter Gaza – when the convoys aren’t attacked by Hamas. She also sees up close the efforts to spare civilian casualties:

In my position, I see the surgical airstrikes, and spend many hours with the UN, ICRC, and NGO officers reviewing maps to help identify, and avoid, striking civilian sites. One of our pilots who saw a rocket aimed at Israel aborted his mission when he saw children nearby — putting his own civilians at risk to save Gazans. At the end of the day, what these “disproportionate numbers” show is how we in Israel protect our children with elaborate shelters and missile defense systems, whereas the terror groups in Gaza hide behind theirs, using them as human shields in order to win a cynical media war.

BBC Watch, an affiliate of CAMERA, reports:

The BBC’s Jon Donnison, together with the head of the BBC Jerusalem Bureau and head of the Foreign Press Association, Paul Danahar, has been summoned by the Government Press Office in Israel to a hearing this coming Wednesday (November 28th) on the subject of Donnison’s Tweet of a picture of a child casualty from Syria as though it were from Gaza – as first publicised by BBC Watch on November 19th 2012.

Potentially, this exceptional and unusual step on the part of the GPO could lead to Donnison’s Press Credentials being revoked, which would make it very difficult indeed for him to work in the region.

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The Israel daily Ma’ariv cited CAMERA and BBC Watch, an independent project of CAMERA, in an article Friday (Nov. 23) about Hamas propaganda. Relevant excerpts of the article, by Sarah Leibovitz-Dar, follow (CAMERA’s translation). Referring to the case of four-year-old Mahmoud Sadallah, whose death was falsely blamed on Israel, Dar writes:

CAMERA, an American organization which monitors inaccuracies in American media coverage of the Middle East, quickly sent complaints to the American media outlets which alleged that Sadallah was a victim of an Israeli strike. The organization reports on its Web site that after contacting editors, the Reuters news agency refiled the item which stated that the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which documents the names of victims killed in Israeli attacks, does not list Sadallah. CNN reporters who spoke with Sadallah’s relatives speculated whether an errant Palestinian rocket killed him, and even reported that CNN’s crew in Gaza says it saw two such rockets passing overhead, apparently fired not far from where the boy lived.

Leibovitz-Dar wrote about BBC Watch’s work on BBC reporter Jon Donnison who tweeted a photograph of a Syrian victim whom he said was a Palestinian in Gaza:
(more…)

In a column ironically about “[c]hildren get[ting] used by politicians all the time” (“Turning a child’s tears into war propaganda“), Ha’aretz‘s Anshel Pfeffer repeats the falsehood that an Israeli air strike killed 4-year-old Mahmoud Sadallah – even though this falsehood has been debunked and corrected for a week now. Pfeffer writes:

. . . . Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, during his visit on Friday to Gaza, posed for a joint photograph with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, holding together the body of a dead baby boy killed in an Israeli air strike.

For the benefit of those who missed it, Pfeffer among them, here is Reuters’ correction from a whole week ago, making clear that an Israeli air strike did not kill this boy:

Friday (Nov. 22), the same day that Pfeffer falsely blamed Israel for Sadallah’s death, Ha’aretz sent the following appeal to subscribers:

If Pfeffer’s piece is representative of Ha’aretz “best analyses,” it’s no wonder management finds itself among the media outlets with financial difficulties.

Stay tuned for news of a Ha’aretz correction.

One of the AFP photos, not corrected, falsely attributing four-year-old Mahmoud Sadallah’s death to an Israeli air strike

In his Nov. 23 Washington Post article “Photographs of Gaza conflict bring acccusations of media bias,” Paul Farhi cites CAMERA’s Eric Rozenman:

What’s more, the asymmetrical nature of the conflict — pitting Israel’s modern and well-equipped army against irregular fighters — produces its own image imbalance, said Eric Rozenman, Washington director of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), a watchdog group that has been critical of news portrayals of Israeli actions.

Israel’s missile-defense system and shelters limit the number of casualties from rocket attacks, which results in fewer photos of Israeli suffering to balance the emotionally charged images of death and injury on the other side, he noted. At the same time, Israel’s modern weaponry produces “a telegenic disproportion” that feeds the Israel-as-aggressor framing. “A big fireball coming up from an F-16 strike on a mosque” makes a more shocking picture than scattered rocket fire from the other side, he said. . . .

CAMERA last week criticized Western news organizations for their handling of another series of potent images depicting the death of a 4-year-old Palestinian boy in a Gaza hospital.

Wire services moved photos of the child — limp and lifeless in the arms of various adults — with captions that indicated he had died in an Israeli airstrike near his home. CNN aired video of the scene at the hospital as the child’s body was carried by a doctor and held by a senior Hamas leader and Egyptian prime minister Hisham Kandil in front of a jostling media pack. Reporter Sara Sidner called the child “another victim of an airstrike.”

Except it appears he wasn’t. Subsequent reporting by media organizations indicated that the child more likely died as a result of an errant rocket launched from within Gaza. In effect, the photos may have revealed the opposite of what they purported to show — that the child’s death was inflicted by Palestinian sources, not Israeli.

Reuters, which had circulated the photos, quickly issued a clarification saying the cause of the boy’s death was in dispute. CNN cast doubt on its initial reporting, too, saying the incident could have been caused by “the misfire of a Hamas rocket intended for Israel.”

Some news organizations, including The Post, declined to publish the photos because they suggested exploitation — and ma­nipu­la­tion of tragedy.

“Every single alarm went off in my head when I saw them,” Golon said. “They looked like a media event around a dead child. They should not be parading this child’s body around for PR purposes.”

For more on Mahmoud Sadallah, whose death was falsely attributed to an Israeli air strike, see here and here.

The latest from Cif Watch:

Guardian Associate Editor Seumas Milne just published an essay at ‘Comment is Free’ brimming with anger at Israel, and crowing about the glory of Hamas “resistance”.

In ‘Palestinians have the right to defend themselves‘, Nov. 20, Milne lashes out at Western leaders who have dared to proclaim that Israel has every “right to defend itself”, mocks reports by the “western media echo[ing] Israel’s claim that its assault is in retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks”, and condemns Netanyahu for “unleash[ing] a new round of bloodletting” which he attributes, naturally, to the upcoming Israeli elections.

Read CiF Watch’s entire post here.