Before Ha’aretz and the Jerusalem Post woke up to the New York Times corrections, which first appeared last week, about E-1 construction, Ma’ariv‘s Ben-Dror Yemini noted Friday:

. . . Israel is not exempt from criticism. The continuation of construction in Judea and Samaria portrays Israel as sabotaging every chance for peace. That is Israel’s weak point. It would have been possible to accept a substantial part of that building and/or expansion were Israel to say to the Palestinians: We are ready to talk with you on the basis of the Clinton plan, which was and remains the basis for any settlement [solution], so long as there is a chance of a settlement. There are two proposals from that time period. Ehud Barak’s Camp David offer, and a later proposal known as the Clinton plan. Indeed, Dennis Ross refuted the Palestinian claims regarding Barak’s Camp David offer, according to which the proposal did not allow for a contiguous state, but rather cantons. Ross displayed the map, and clarified that the offer was generous, and that it gave the Palestinians 91 percent of the West Bank. The E1 territory was included in the remaining 9 percent. Also according to the Clinton plan, as depicted in the map in Ross’s book, Area E1 appears to lie on the Israeli side of the dividing line. And still, the plan gives the Palestinians 95 percent of the land in Judea and Samaria, and, at the same time, the vast majority of settlements remain on the Israeli side. Contrary to the myth which has gained widespread traction in international media outlets, construction in E1 does not bisect the West Bank (and thanks to Presspectiva for clarifying the matter). [Presspectiva is CAMERA’s Hebrew site.] And construction does not destroy the possibility of a two state solution. That was what was published in, for example, the New York Times, which following communication with CAMERA, published a correction. (CAMERA’s translation)

Appearing on Ha’aretz‘s home page

Today, the Web sites of Ha’aretz and Jerusalem Post cover the New York Times corrections, prompted by CAMERA, noting that E-1 construction, between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim, would not cut the West Bank in half, and would not cut off Bethlehem and Ramallah from Jerusalem.

The first print correction (which also was posted online) appeared Dec. 8, and we noted it on CAMERA’s Web site Dec. 10. Another more detailed correction, dated Dec. 7, appeared online Dec. 10, and we posted it to CAMERA’s Web site that day. It appeared in print only today.

The media has been in a tizzy about potential Israeli construction of several thousand housing units on the outskirts of Jerusalem in an area known as “the E-1 corridor.” Coverage has included two error-laden New York Times stories, columns by Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman, numerous op-Eds and an editorial. The Los Angeles Times ran multiple articles and an editorial that played fast and loose with the facts, Agence France-Presse misreported the story as did National Public Radio. Other media similarly either mangled the facts or, at the very least, flogged the story to death.

It’s not a new story, either. CAMERA reported on the same misinformation in the media in 2005. While The New York Times made two corrections, prompted by CAMERA, the relentless focus on potential E-1 construction has been notable. And not a shovel has hit the ground yet.

The same cannot be said for the huge and numerous construction projects completed and underway in the truly occupied, once-independent state of Tibet.

On page 17, The Times ran an article about the dozens of recent self-immolations in Tibet protesting Chinese occupation but this article does not mention the construction at all. (The newspaper did publish an op-Ed about Tibet in which the writer describes asking for directions at a construction site.) There was a Times blog post which included a number of photographs of Tibet along with text saying that the region is changing and is basically… uglier. But there is nothing in the pages of the Grey Lady about the massive Chinese construction in Tibet that comes close to the reproach reserved for proposed Israeli construction in Jerusalem and Jerusalem’s suburbs.

What about other media coverage of Chinese construction in Tibet? Virtual silence. Although Reuters reported that thousands took to the streets of New York City protesting Chinese occupation of Tibet, there was not a word about the construction.
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Hate crimes reported to U.S. law enforcement agencies declined six percent from 2010 to 2011, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s annual statistics. The 6,222 reported hate crimes were the fewest since 1994.

“Nearly half of hate crimes reported in 2011 were racially motivated,” The Baltimore Sun noted (“U.S. hate crimes decline,” December 11). Religious bias accounted for nearly one-fifth of the total. “Thirteen percent of the 936 religious bias crimes were anti-Islamic, but the large majority [63.2] were anti-Semitic in nature.”

Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin (“Right Turn,” “Hate-crime incidents down,” December 11) asserted that the total number of religious hate crimes, for a nation of more than 310 million people, “is tiny.”

This comparatively good news contradicts claims, like those made previously by CAIR and others that following al Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States has experienced a wave of “Islamophobia.” (See, for example, CAMERA’s Special Report, “The Council on American Islamic Relations: Civil Rights, or Extremism?” page 9). If the statistics reported to the FBI are representative, then regardless of war in Afghanistan (and recently Iraq) and terrorism and attempted terrorism by Muslim extremists at home, America remains a pretty tolerant place.

The approval given by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to build new homes for residents of greater Jerusalem in the disputed E1 area has provoked a storm of outrage among German commentators in the English language version of Der Spiegel Online. Netanyahu’s decision, coming shortly after the Palestinian Authority’s successful effort to win a vote for statehood in the United Nations General Assembly, generated harsh recriminations from prominent German news sources.

Der Spiegel reports on Dec. 4 that “German commentators say it is time to get tough with Israeli premier Netanyahu.” The Financial Times Deutschland writes,

One can only encourage the [German] chancellor to use Netanyahu’s planned construction of settlements in the West Bank as an opportunity to take the hardliner to task. Because what Netanyahu is planning makes a two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians impossible.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung goes further, stating,

… Israel’s settlements on Palestinian land are a violation of international law, against which the Palestinians could take action within the framework of the United Nations… The prime minister is provoking both the Palestinians and the international community.

The newspaper apparently rejects the official interpretation of UN Security Council Resolution 242, that defines the territory as “disputed” not “occupied”. This would mean that Israel was building on land of undetermined ownership, not Palestinian land. The UN resolution also establishes the firm precedent that the status of the territory would only be changed through negotiations, something the Palestinian Authority has turned its back on by going to the UN General Assembly. Furthermore, Israel took possession of the land from an illegal occupier, Jordan. In this regard, international jurist, Stephen Schwebel wrote:

Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title. (“What Weight to Conquest,” American Journal of International Law, 64 (1970))

The United States shares the interpretation of Resolution 242 framers concerning the disposition of the territories and also does not deem Israeli settlements as illegal, despite objecting to their expansion as being unhelpful to making peace. The German newspapers apparently have agreed upon their own interpretation of international law, most likely supporting their view with subsequent UN General Assembly resolutions that carry no legal weight.

The Suddeutsche Zeitung shares the Frankfurter newspaper’s interpretation of the UN resolution and offers a stern rebuke, writing,

… Even though international law forbids the settlement of the Jewish population on Palestinian land occupied since 1967, around half a million Israelis live there now. Breaking the law has long since become routine — and has even become a ritual with which every Palestinian transgression is punished. But this time, Israel hasn’t just punished the Palestinians — it has defied the whole world.

And Die Welt offers veiled threatening language,

Israel should acknowledge that the international community wants to find a two-state solution in the Middle East to finally put an end to the long-lasting conflict. The question is no longer whether, but how that will be accomplished.

Israeli settlement in the West Bank is held to be illegal by these newspapers, evidence that they view non-binding resolutions as having superceded UN Security Council Resolution 242 and reject the opinions of notable jurists who find Israeli settlements consistent with the requirements of international law.

The Palestinian decision to forego negotiations and seek statehood without making peace does not anger these commentators as much as Netanyahu’s decision to build homes in contentious territory. The German commentators express fury at Netanyahu’s actions. By holding Netanyahu’s decision to build homes, not the Palestinian decision to circumvent the peace process, as defying the world’s desire for Middle East peace, they display a bias that for some invokes the spectre of an old, chilling, sentiment that might be summed up as “the Israelis are our misfortune.”

Frédéric Kanouté.

Frédéric Kanouté’s anti-Israel soccer petition is shrinking.

Maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise — if the text of the petition is inaccurate, why wouldn’t many of the signatures be, too?

Initial news stories claimed 62 players signed the petition. But then Didier Drogba and Yohan Cabaye, whose names originally appeared on the statement, announced that they didn’t actually sign it.

Yesterday, we counted 59 names Kanouté’s petition page — we didn’t get a screen shot — suggesting that a third player’s name was added without permission.

And as of this writing, there are 52 names.

The following ten “signatories” apparently never signed, and perhaps never even saw, the petition, as their names have been removed from the list of 62 purported signatories:

André Ayew, Olympique de Marseille (France)
Jordan Ayew, Olympique de Marseille (France)
Yohan Cabaye, Newcastle United (UK)
Soulaymane Diawara, Olympique de Marseille (France)
Didier Drogba, Shanghaï Shenhua (China)
Rod Fanni, Olympique de Marseille (France)
Charles Kaboré, Olympique de Marseille (France)
Anthony Le Tallec, AJ Auxerre (France)
Steve Mandanda, Olympique de Marseille (France)
Arnold Mvuemba, Olympique Lyonnais (France)

Details here.

DEC. 7 UPDATE: Following communication from CAMERA staff, CNN has corrected and clarified inaccurate claims that a soccer star signed on to an inaccurate anti-Israel petition.

Burak Bekdil, a columnist for the Turkish Hurriyet Daily News, has had enough of the Hamas victory celebration over the recent hostilities with Israel and its claim to “love death more than they love life.” In his column “Is Hamas real or a bad joke“, Bekdil surmises,

Hamas’ rhetoric stinks of death, nothing but death – indiscriminate death. Be it “our” death or “the enemy’s.” And it never metamorphoses into something more humane, something less nihilist.

Bekdil calls out Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh for his hypocrisy:

Mr. Haniyeh claims that “with every [Israeli] attack we grow stronger.” Since “Muslims don’t cheat or lie,” one cannot help but wonder if the Israeli Defense Forces are secretly conspiring for Hamas’ jihad. If what Mr. Haniyeh says is true, why do the willing subscribers of the Palestinian cause across the world, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, complain of Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Hamas targets? They should instead welcome every attack, thinking every attack will strengthen Hamas. Is that too cruel to say? Ask Mr. Haniyeh.

Bekdil also delves into the Hamas Charter, a document the mainstream media in the U.S. and Europe tend to shy away from discussing or dismiss as no longer relevant when questioned about it. Bekdil writes,

But Hamas can be amusing too. Its charter is must-read fun. My favorite section is the one which states: “The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, ‘O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’”

Other pearls of humanity include holding Jews responsible for a wide range of events and disasters going as far back in history as the French Revolution. The Hamas covenant also provides justification for fighting and killing Jews, without distinction of “whether they are in Israel or elsewhere.”

One can only wish that influential Western news organizations like The New York Times and the BBC would show the same boldness and integrity as Bekdil in addressing the declarations of Hamas leaders and prominent supporters.

A few days ago, we posted a map demonstrating that Israeli development in the so-called E-1 corridor between Ma’aleh Adumim and Jerusalem doesn’t preclude a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank — certainly no more than a Palestinian state in the West Bank would make Israel itself noncontiguous.

Below is another map showing the same thing. This map was drawn up by Dennis Ross, Bill Clinton’s chief negotiator during the Camp David peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, for Ross’s book The Missing Peace. The map represents Clinton’s peace proposal, which was rejected by Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat.

The map clearly shows the E-1 area under Israeli control and a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank.

So although Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd in today’s New York Times both repeat the mantra that Israeli building would (in Friedman’s words) “sever any possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state,” this is simply not true. The development of E-1 might impact Palestinian demands about the contours of a future state. It might impact the sides’ conflicting claims on Jerusalem. But whatever the pros and cons, it does not prevent a contiguous Palestinian state, and it certainly does not prevent a viable Palestinian state.

A map illustrating President Clinton’s proposals at Camp David, from Dennis Ross’s The Missing Peace.

Captions for a series of Reuters photos yesterday featuring a Gaza soccer field hit last month in an Israeli airstrike ignore the widely noted IDF report that the field was used as a rocket-launching site. Some of the photos and captions follow:

A Palestinian girl looks at a soccer stadium, which witnesses said was destroyed in an Israeli air strike during an eight-day conflict, in Gaza City December 4, 2012. Eight days of Israeli air strikes on Gaza and cross-border Palestinian rocket attacks ended in an Egyptian-brokered truce agreement last month, calling on Israel to ease restrictions on the territory. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem (GAZA – Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST)

A soccer stadium, which witnesses said was destroyed in an Israeli air strike during an eight-day conflict, is seen in Gaza City December 4, 2012. Eight days of Israeli air strikes on Gaza and cross-border Palestinian rocket attacks ended in an Egyptian-brokered truce agreement last month, calling on Israel to ease restrictions on the territory. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem (GAZA – Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST)

One of the photos, and its tendentious caption, is featured at the MSNBC Photo blog.

CiF Watch, a CAMERA affiliate, has compiled many of the sources noting that IDF report that Hamas launched rockets towards Tel Aviv and Jerusalem from the stadium.

IDF graphic