The pattern of how news is reported by our media when it comes to either Israel or the west seems to have been established. Report an atrocity, Condemn it, organize protests, demand concessions and then the actual facts come out:
There was just one problem: The story, as etched in people’s minds, was not quite accurate.
Physical evidence and interviews with several eyewitnesses, including a teacher who was in the schoolyard at the time of the shelling, make it clear: While a few people were injured from shrapnel landing inside the white-and-blue-walled UNRWA compound, no one in the compound was killed. The 43 people who died in the incident were all outside, on the street, where all three mortar shells landed.
Stories of one or more shells landing inside the schoolyard were inaccurate.
And then of course comes the yeah buts… How people still fall for it is beyond me.
You might remember Samantha Power who’s views on Israel were a bit of an issue but her statements about the now secretary of state were embarrassing enough to remove her from the campaign. But not embarrassing enough to keep her out of the administration:
Officials familiar with the decision say Obama has tapped Power to be senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council, a job that will require close contact and potential travel with Clinton, who is now secretary of state. NSC staffers often accompany the secretary of state on foreign trips.
Many readers back in 2002 will remember Palestinian allegations of a “Jenin Massacre” which both the U.N. and many journalists hyped. The ensuing investigation, however, showed that there had been no massacre, and that Palestinian claims of casualties were exponentially exaggerated. At a George Soros-funded conference since published in the volume Ethnic Violence and Justice (2003), Power seemed upset that The New York Times had chosen to correct the narrative about Jenin, instead of holding Israel’s feet to the fire over allegations of its human rights violation.
Power is not just assenting to the Israel Lobby view of American foreign policy, but is also arguing that Israel had something to do with the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003–an appalling slander, and a telling one.
Also of note is a recent opinion piece Power wrote for TIME magazine, titled “Rethinking Iran,” the thrust of which rethinking involves the need to engage diplomatically the mullahs and pretend that the Iranian nuclear program is a figment of the paranoid imagination of the Bush administration.
Power has argued that the US should stop financially supporting Israel’s military and instead invest in a Palestinian state, with US forces on the ground to protect it from genocide by Israel. She has also expressed annoyance that the New York Times had admitted there had been no 2002 massacre of Palestinians by Israel in Jenin and condemned Israel for allegedly committing human rights abuses.
A clip on the subject:
And finally Abe Greenwald yesterday on Obama’s moves in general:
It is fascinating watching “progressives” who’ve lectured everyone about the sins of America in supporting dictatorships and oppressive regimes during the Cold War now turn silent when America embraces that same amoral approach when it no longer faces nuclear annihilation.
President Obama is freely willing – in total silence – to work with oppresive regimes and dictators and respect their sovereigny if they unclench their fists against us. Meanwhile, they can use that fist ad libitum, so to speak, against their own people without one word of criticism from the US. Respect, you see, is the new game in town.
Stability isn’t always a good thing. In 1850 “stability” would have been strict enforcement of the Fugitive slave law. In 1954 “Stability” would have been rejecting Brown vs Board of Education since Plessy v Ferguson was established law for nearly 60 years. Stability would have been keeping the Berlin Wall up.
Gotta love this stuff.
Carter 7 Arthur 2 I don’t know if I’m going to have a 10 run mercy rule.
Do I think it will help? Likely not. Do I think the Iranians will use it as a propaganda tool? Likely they will. Do I think that Iran will use this to demand concessions from us? Sure. Do I think that they will use any contacts to stall us while they build their bomb? Without question.
Then why no outrage?
Listen if anyone at all thinks that the president was going to take strong decisive action to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities you have been smoking something, in fact his actions suggest he won’t even support democratic movements in Iran. This is not even slightly a surprise and I don’t get outraged over stuff I already know.
Bush Derangement Syndrome means that the only way we can convince our liberal friends that this stuff won’t work is to let it be tried and fail. It still won’t convince some of them, in fact some may actually want Iran to have the bomb, but it will convince some and until reasonable people on the left get a chance to try things their way they won’t consider the alternative.
And hey anything is possible, maybe it works out.
I’m counting on Israel on this one. They know what is coming down the pike and they aren’t going to consent to become a glowing spot on the Mediterranean Sea just to make the rest of the world happy.
Hey we had an election, you pays your money and you takes your chances.
As usual Israellycool and the Muqata are the places to be. One great example:
UNRWA has gradually adopted a distinctive political viewpoint that favors the Palestinian and Arab narrative of events in the Middle East. In particular, it seems to favor the strain of Palestinian political thought espoused by those who are intent on a “return” to the land that is now Israel. UNRWA’s adoption of any political viewpoint is undesirable, but the one it has chosen to emphasize is especially regrettable. In addition to clashing with the objectives of the United States, this view has detracted from UNRWA’s humanitarian assistance, encouraged Palestinians who favor refighting long-lost wars, discouraged those who favor moving toward peace, and contributed to the scourge of conflicts that have been visited upon Palestinian refugees for decades.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees employs and provides benefits for terrorists and criminals, asserts a former legal adviser to UNRWA who left the organization in 2007. James Lindsay, now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, served as an attorney with the US Justice Department for two decades before leaving to work for UNRWA in 2000.
This stuff is being funded here in the US. I know we are bailing out almost everyone but this takes the cake.
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