Israelis have taken a beating, but they haven't been beaten...And they dance...

...Supporters of the terrorist cause, whether at the New York Times or the State Department, don't want to see happy Israelis. They want to see frightened Israelis, sobbing Israelis, confused Israelis and hysterical Israelis. They will even settle for angry Israelis. But the last thing they want to see is Israelis who seem indifferent to the torture being inflicted on them.

Daniel Greenfield..
Sultan Knish..
27 May '13..

New York Times bureau chiefs in Jerusalem are expected to set new standards for malicious bias and during his time there, Ethan Bronner was no exception.

A bureau chief anywhere else in the world may be expected to explore the life and color of the city. But in Jerusalem, a New York Times scribe fills the same spot as the bitter goth kid working on the high school paper who is forced to review musicals put on by cheerleaders. What comes out the other end may have a distant resemblance to journalism, but is mostly just gallons of congealed bile.

Ethan Bronner, who has moved up the New York Times totem pole from attacking Israel to attacking America, still visits the old country on occasion and still pens spiteful little pieces about how dumb and shallow the cheerleaders are. The latest Bronner missive sees him attending a wedding and grumbling at how happy everyone seems to be.

At a "raucous wedding", Bronner finds that few people are interested in discussing "the Palestinians or the Arab world on their borders". Instead, "everyone was celebrating". And why wouldn't they be celebrating? It is a wedding. And people at weddings generally don't talk about the people trying to kill them. Average weddings in the United States don't involve detailed discussions of terrorism, even when New York Times reporters are in attendance.

But Bronner's thesis is the same as the one put forward by John Kerry. "People in Israel aren’t waking up every day and wondering if tomorrow there will be peace because there is a sense of security and a sense of accomplishment and of prosperity,” Kerry complained. Israelis are having too many weddings and not suffering enough. The limited autonomy achieved in daily life what the peace process was supposed to.

It's not just about the physical suffering of terrorism. What bothers Bronner is that Israelis aren't conscious of the grievances of their enemies. They don't carry the burden of guilt that comes from knowing that their border controls prevent Hamas from getting the weapons with which they could inflict more death and suffering on Israelis.

The peace process is a myth because its end result was never meant to be peace. Instead it was meant to achieve exactly what it did achieve in the 90s. A state of terror. A way of life that would make every Israeli conscious of the terrorists and their demands all the time. That's not just their plan for Israel. It's their dream for the entire free world. A world liberated from its freedoms.

The left does not set out to solve social problems, but to induce a state of permanent crisis in order to impose a permanent state of insecurity and guilt on the populace. Its solutions always make problems worse because the left views violence as not the problem, but a symptom of the true problem, which is the oppression of the violent by their victims.

The negotiations and concessions were not supposed to bring peace. They were supposed to make Israelis suffer. And through this ritualistic suffering, the descendants of Holocaust survivors would finally understand their burden of guilt to the descendants of the conquerors who had repressed them and ruled over their land for centuries.

Sorry Ethan, But Israelis Have Moved On

...Far from Israel being a Titanic waiting to hit the next iceberg, the changes Bronner describes illustrates that most there have their eyes wide open and are determined not to let their country be sunk by a foolish and blind attachment to a peace process that has no chance of success. Briefly explaining why that is so shouldn’t be too much to ask of a piece that is more than 1,200 words in length.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
26 May '13..

Former New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner returned to the country after a year away and is confounded by the change in the political atmosphere. The journalist takes the temperature of the Jewish state and finds it almost completely disinterested in the issue that drove most of his reporting and, indeed, was the overriding issue in every Israeli election up until the one conducted this past January: the peace process with the Palestinians.

Though a few old political warhorses claim the peace process must remain the country’s priority, most Israelis are having none of it. The guests at a wedding Bronner attended comprising a surprisingly broad cross-section of society had many differences but all were united on one point: they never even mentioned the Palestinians. While Bronner devotes considerable space in his Sunday review column on this situation to explaining why he thinks this is troubling or wrong, he gives short shrift to the reason for it. If, as one of his sources noted to Bronner, “debating the peace process to most Israelis is the equivalent of debating the color of the shirt you will wear when landing on Mars,” then his readers deserve more than a throwaway line about Israelis thinking the Palestinians have no interest in peace.

Presented without even a smidgeon of historical context or even a brief summary of a strategic equation that leads Israelis to think this way makes the widespread indifference to peace negotiations seem callous at best. If Americans are to understand the shift in Israeli politics that led to an election fought on domestic issues or why most there think Secretary of State John Kerry’s effort to revive the peace process is a fool’s errand, then it is incumbent on the Times to lay out the facts about the Palestinians’ consistent rejection of peace offers and the inability of either Fatah or Hamas to recognize a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn.

Journalists rightly complain that it is unfair to expect short articles about complex subjects to encompass the entire history of their topic. But if you are going to write a piece whose sole purpose is to illustrate the fact that the overwhelming majority of Israelis have given up on the peace process for the foreseeable future, you are obligated to give at least a thumbnail sketch of the events that created this consensus.

Rennert - At NY Times, it's always Israel's fault, while Palestinians get a pass

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
05 March '12..

To grasp the particular lens through which the New York Times covers the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one need look no farther than an article by Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner about a minor controversy over an Arab member of Israel's Supreme Court who stood during the singing of "Hatikvah," the national anthem, but did not sing along with the court's other members. ("Anger and Compassion for Arab Justice Who Stays Silent During Zionist Hymn" March 5, page 10.")

Bronner's piece, spread over six columns, prominently mentions the outrage on the political right, prompted by Justice Salim Joubran's mute stance during the singing of "Hatikvah." But then, Bronner stirs the pot further, citing an editorial in the far-left newspaper Haaretz, which called for changing the wording of the anthem because it dwells only on Jewish aspirations for a free nation in the land of Zion and Jerusalem.

Yet, despite this brouhaha, Bronner finally concludes that most Israelis took the entire episode in stride and, if anything, gloried in the fact that an Arab sits on Israel's highest court.

So far, OK. But Bronner isn't willing to leave it at that. As far as he's concerned, this little storm brings to the fore the much deeper question of "the nature of Israeli democracy." And, from that perspective, Bronner indeed takes a very gloomy view of the Jewish state. Again relying on Haaretz, he quotes columnist Gideon Levy as despairing over the Jewish state's basic values -- "Among all the speeches (yada, yada, yada) at the new Supreme Court president's inauguration ceremony, it was Joubran's silence that taught us an important lesson: that Israeli democracy is paper-thin and fragile. All it needs to ruin it is one judge who refuses to join the choir." Readers should have no trouble inferring that Bronner shares Levy's dark outlook about Israel.

Tobin - The Real Source of Media Bias on Israel

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
14 February'12..

I have not been the biggest fan of Ethan Bronner of the New York Times. The reportage by Bronner, who spent the last four years as the Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times, was a mixed bag. Though he was clearly a talented reporter who often did some good work highlighting the realities of the Palestinian war on Israel, he was also prone–as virtually every other member of the foreign press corps in Israel–to take Palestinian claims at face value and to omit the context of Palestinian rejectionism from accounts of diplomatic and political encounters there.

Nevertheless, Bronner spent the last two years under constant fire, not so much for his role in the Times’s blatant bias against Israel (for which the editors back in New York were chiefly responsible anyway), but because his son served in the Israel Defense Force. Once the news came out about Bronner’s son serving in the army like most Jewish boys his age in Israel, he was subjected to withering criticism from the pro-Palestinian left as well as a nasty column from Clark Hoyt, the paper’s public editor at the time. Now that Bronner’s leaving the post after a four-year term, the story is being recycled, but the notion that he was compromised by his son’s service is just as absurd today as it was then.

Rennert - NY Times censors violence by Palestinian demonstrators in West Bank

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
23 January '12..

In its Jan. 23 edition, the New York Times runs a human-interest piece by Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner about a Palestinian cameraman filming protests in the West Bank against Israel's security barrier. Conspicuously missing from the article, however, are violent tactics employed by stone-hurling protesters ("From Unyielding Cameraman, an Acclaimed Film" page A6).

The scene is the Palestinian village of Bilin, which has become a weekly venue for rowdy demonstrations against the barrier and a nearby Jewish settlement.

However, with some pro-Palestinian spin, Bronner describes Bilin merely as a "center for Palestinian popular resistance," carefully omitting mention of the violent nature of this "resistance." After all, stones fired by slingshots can be lethal and sometimes they have been - something that apparently is of no interest to Bronner.

Rennert - NY Times exculpates Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas while tarring Netanyahu

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
05 January '12..

Unlike many other media which reported in some detail the meeting of Israeli and Palestinian officials in Jordan on Jan. 3, the New York Times used the occasion to delve into various regional forces that impinge on progress -- or lack thereof -- in the peace process.

In a purported "news" article spread across six columns, Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner sets out to plumb new Mideast realities shaped by the emergence of "political Islam as a potentially transformative force in the region." ("As Israelis and Palestinians Talk, the Rise of Political Islam Alters the Equation" page A6, Jan. 4).

The question, of course, is whether the rise of Islamist parties in Egypt and elsewhere bodes ill or well. What exactly will be the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood and its Gaza offshoot, Hamas?

Bronner resolutely steps forward as bearer of good news. When it comes to political Islam, "there are indications in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco as well as within Hamas itself," he writes, " that it is more pragmatic than when it was merely a force of opposition. Khaled Meshal, the exiled leader of Hamas, has expressed a willingness to work with Mr. Abbas in a far more accommodating way than in the past, especially in the area of using nonviolence to oppose Israel."

To back up this conclusion, Bronner quotes Mahdi Abdul Hadi, director of a Palestinian research group in Jerusalem, who asserts that "there is a historic development by Hamas in the last two months. It is going through the same process as the Muslim Brotherhood elsewhere. The new political Islam is practical and realistic."

CAMERA - Bronner Ignores Quartet's Rejection of Indirect Palestinian Proposal

TS..
CAMERA/Snapshot..
02 January '11..




Ethan Bronner writes in the New York Times today:

The quartet has been trying to bring the Palestinians and Israelis back to direct talks by asking each to submit proposals on borders and security. The Palestinians have submitted their ideas but the Israelis say that if the goal is direct talks, the proposals should be given to the Palestinians once they meet. (Emphasis added.)

But it's not just Israel which says the Palestinians should present their proposals directly to Israel. The quartet (Russian, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations) also says so. As reported in Ha'aretz:

The Palestinians presented the Quartet with two documents relating to the borders of a future Palestinian state and security arrangements with Israel in November, but the Quartet told the Palestinians that the documents would not be passed to the Israelis, according to the official.

Quartet representatives told Saeb Erekat, head of the Palestinian negotiating team, that the proposals he presented were not relevant, because they had not been presented in direct talks with Israel, the official said.

“We continue to call for a direct exchange between the parties, starting with the preparatory meeting that leads to a presentation of proposals on territory and security. And that objective has not been met, but we're continuing to work towards that,” the official said.

The Americans have expressed displeasure with the Palestinians in part because of their refusal to engage in face-to-face talks with Israel. The Obama administration sees the Palestinian strategy of presenting proposals to the Quartet without engaging in direct talks as an attempt to change the rules of the game.

Link: http://blog.camera.org/archives/2012/01/bronner_ignores_quarters_view.html


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CAMERA - Ethan Bronner and Facts Too Good to Check

Alex Safian, PhD
CAMERA Media Analysis
18 December '11

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=35&x_article=2169

Leave it to the New York Times to simply take the word of any Palestinian who tells a tale of woe that puts Israel in a bad light; apparently such stories are simply too good to check. This time the occasion was the release of 550 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, the second group of prisoners released as part of the deal freeing the abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Ethan Bronner’s report, Israel Frees Palestinians in 2nd Stage of Exchange, named only one of the Palestinian prisoners being released, Izzedine Abu Sneineh, who, readers are told, was arrested three years ago at the age of 15 for “throwing stones and hanging Palestinian flags from telephone poles.” Here is the full passage about the young miscreant:

Sarah Abu Sneineh came with her family to greet her grandson Izzedine Abu Sneineh, who was arrested three years ago at age 15 for throwing stones and hanging Palestinian flags from telephone poles.

“He was just a schoolkid when he was arrested,” she said as she waited for him outside the tomb of Yasir Arafat. “We want him to go back to school. Only education is the way forward.”

Now, as should be obvious to Bronner and his editors, if Israel really imprisoned Palestinian children merely for putting up flags or throwing stones, there would be tens of thousands of Palestinian children in Israeli jails, instead of less than two hundred. Whatever young Abu Sneineh did, it had to involve something much more serious than what Bronner reported.

In fact, it is not hard to find out what he did – the Israeli Prison Service on Dec. 14 published a full list of all the prisoners about to be released. The English press release on the IPS website states that:

Rennert - NY Times goes to war against all Jewish settlers

Leo Rennert
American Thinker
15 December '11

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/12/ny_times_goes_to_war_against_all_jewish_settlers.html

In the last several days, several dozen violent Jewish radical settlers have gone on rampages in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, assaulting an Israeli military base and a military commander, slashing police car tires, defacing and setting on fire a disused mosque -- all in apparent protest against the planned dismantling of illegal outposts.

Prime Minister Netanyahu immediately ordered a massive crackdown, including long-term detention and military trials for suspected offenders. He also gave the Israeli military the right to make arrests, rather than rely entirely on the police, and increased the number of security forces and the number of radical settlers banned from the West Bank.

But Netanyahu also drew a sharp distinction between an estimated 50 or so violence-bent settlers and the 300,000 law-abiding Jewish residents in the West Bank -- a position which the New York Times could not countenance.

Instead, the Times uses the violence perpetrated by a small group of miscreants to launch an all-out indictment of all settlers and all settlements, lumping them under the rubric of what it deems a misbegotten Israeli "occupation" of West Bank lands that must be reserved for a Palestinian state.

"Around the world, it is the abuse of Palestinians under Israeli occupation that draws anger," writes Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner in a Dec. 15 article ("Israeli Leader Sets Curbs on Settlers For Violence" page A6).

Rennert - NY Times sheds more tears for Palestinian terrorist killers than for Giilad Schalit

Leo Rennert
American Thinker
18 October '11

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/10/ny_times_sheds_more_tears_for_palestinian_terrorist_killers_than_for_giilad_schalit.html

The New York Times, in its Oct. 18 edition, runs an article by Mideast correspondent Stephen Farrell and Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner about preparations in Israel and in Gaza on the eve of the release of Gilad Schalit, the abducted Israeli soldier held by Hamas for more than five years, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners ("Israel and Palestinians Prepare to Swap Prisoners" page A8).

Setting the scene for the prisoner swap, the article tells Times readers that "the Tuesday handover will end five years in captivity for the Israeli soldier, Staff Sgt. Gilad Schalit; hundreds of the Palestinians have been held much longer."

It's an odious, invidious, amoral comparison between Schalit and Palestinian terrorists -- as if the only thing that matters is the lengths of their captivities. But this phony comparison doesn't hold. The real news is in the glaring contrast between Schalit, a soldier serving in an army held to high standards in dealing with civilians, and Palestinians who deliberately set out to kill as many civilians as possible.

Nowhere in the article do Farrell and Bronner point out that the Palestinians who "have been held much longer" than Schalit include bloodthirsty barbarians sentenced to lengthy prison terms for such atrocities as the lynching of two Israeli soldiers with the perpetrator proudly displaying his blood-soaked hands to an applauding mob, or the bombing of a Jerusalem pizzeria which killed 15 Israelis, or the attack on a Tel Aviv nightclub that claimed 21 lives, or the massacre of 29 Jews at a Passover seder in Netanya.

In the Times article, the only "news" about the released Palestinian prisoners is the length of their stay behind bars in Israeli prisons. Otherwise, total silence about the horrors they perpetrated and for which they drew such lengthy sentences.
Nor does the Times see fit to remind its readers that during their imprisonment, Palestinian terrorists could communicate with relatives, take advanced courses and stay in touch with the outside world, while Schalit was held incommunicado, totally cut off from the world, with Hamas even refusing to let the Red Cross visit him. In fact, his family didn't know whether he was even still alive.

No, the entire article is penned in antiseptic fashion to spare readers the real depravities to which these Palestinian prisoners sank. All that matters to Farrell and Bronner is the fact that hundreds of Palestinian prisoners were "held much longer" than Schalit -- an expurgated narrative propagated by Palestinian leaders of all stripes who go on to celebrate such hard-core terrorists as heroic role models for new generations of Palestinians.

Leo Rennet is a former White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief of McClatchy Newspapers


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Tobin - Who’s Committing West Bank Violence?

Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary/Contentions
25 September '11



http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/09/25/west-bank-violence-palestinians-settlers/#more-769230

To listen to some reporters and commentators, the only violence in the West Bank in recent years are attacks against Arabs by maniacal right-wing Jewish settlers. That was the conceit of a New York Times feature published on Friday — the same day Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas delivered his request for statehood at the United Nations. According to Ethan Bronner’s report, Israel’s main worry wasn’t about Palestinian terror but an escalation of settler violence. The story depicted the settlers as being out-of-control and having no respect for innocent Palestinians.

However, as Friday’s lethal attack on a Jewish vehicle in the West Bank proved, the belief violence on the West Bank is a one-way street is simply untrue. Settler violence is wrong, but the notion it is unprovoked or Jews are more likely to attack Arabs in the territory is an absurd distortion of the truth.

Yet that is exactly the impression Bronner’s story left about the situation in the West Bank. In this telling, the Jews living in settlements are giving the Israeli government nightmares because they are liable to attack peaceful Arab protesters with lethal force in the coming weeks. Even more worrisome is their propensity to launch “price tag” assaults on Arab persons or property, including mosques. Such attacks are routinely portrayed as a radical Jewish tactic designed to intimidate their neighbors as part of a plot, as the Palestinians allege, to “steal” their land.

Rennert - NY Times views Israel darkly as a 'populist ethno-religious state' (like Turkey)

Leo Rennert
American Thinker
20 September '11

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/09/ny_times_views_israel_darkly_as_a_populist_ethno-religious_state_like_turkey.html

The New York Times has a long history of antipathy to the establishment and existence of a Jewish state, but what most rankles the Times is when Israeli voters hand the reins of power to the right-of-center Likud Party, currently under the leadership of Prime Minister Netanyahu. In fact, among liberals whose world views have been shaped by reading Times "news" articles and editorials, Likud has become a downright dirty word.

This visceral dislike of the Likud is vividly illustrated by the Times' Jerusalem bureau chief, Ethan Bronner, in a Sunday, Sept. 18, "news analysis," titled "Israel and Turkey, Foes and Much Alike."

Bronner draws a Turkey-Israel parallel, depicting them as two countries which have gone through similar political shifts -- from "aggressively secular societies run by Westernized elites to populist ethno-religious states" with more hawkish, religious orientations.

For Turkey, Bronner dates this seismic shift to 2002 when Prime Minister Erdogan and his Islamist party took power, ending the Western-oriented legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.

For Israel, Bronner uses 1977 as the sharp dividing line between the Western-like, secular dominance of the Labor Party, starting with David Ben-Gurion in 1948, and the assumption of power by Likud three decades later..

Since 1977, as far as Bronner is concerned, Israel has come out of the light into the darkness, first with Menachem Begin's victory at the polls in 1977 and now, of course, with the Likud-led coalition of Netanyahu. Israel for the last three-decades-plus, he writes, has been inflicted by a "central and growing role of religious nationalism." And this, of course, accounts for Israel's supposedly hard-line diplomatic stance vis a vis the Palestinians. Or so Bronner would have Times readers believe.

His thesis, however, doesn't hold water -- not for Turkey, and certainly not for Israel.

Rennert - NY Times regurgitates Mahmoud Abbas' propaganda lies

Leo Rennert
American Thinker
06 September '11

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/09/ny_times_regurgitates_mahmoud_abbas_propaganda_lies.html

On Sept. 5, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas invited 20 left-wing Israeli intellectuals to his office in Ramallah. Abbas' Israeli guests, in opposition to their own government, proceeded to urge him to go to the UN and seek a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. Journalists were invited to cover the meeting, reports Ethan Bronner, the Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times, who dutifully accompanied the group. ("Abbas Affirms Palestinian Bid for U.N. Membership," Sept. 6, page A6).

Bronner, in a four-column spread, uncritically passes on to Times readers Abbas's claims that his UN bid is in sync with getting to direct negotiations with Israel, that he is committed to a two-state solution and that his goal is for a "Palestinian state and Israel to live in peace and security next to one another."

"We don't want to delegitimize Israel," Abbas tells his guests. "We want to legitimize ourselves. We are going to complain that as Palestinians we have been under occupation for 63 years"

At this point, any reporter worth his salt might break in and ask Abbas a couple of pertinent questions, such as:

--"President Abbas, how can you say that you're not delegitimizing Israel when you teach Palestinian children that 'Palestine' includes all of Israel, when you keep glorifying as holy martyrs suicide bombers, and when even your supposed two-state plan would strip the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest shrine, from Israel?"

Rennert - NY Times sanitizes, rationalizes terror attack at Tel Aviv nightclub

Leo Rennert
American Thinker
30 August '11

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/08/ny_times_sanitizes_rationalizes_terror_attack_at_tel_aviv_nightclub.html

In the early Monday morning hours, a Palestinian terrorist commandeered a taxi in Tel Aviv, drove it to a packed nightclub and ran over several policemen before coming to a halt and stabbing several bystanders. As he repeatedly stabbed Israelis, the terrorist shouted in Arabic, "God is great."

But that's not exactly how the New York Times is reporting this terrorist rampage in the heart of Israel.

In a dispatch posted on the Times' website, Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner is ever so careful not to impute any terrorist impulses to this bloody-minded terrorist. In fact, Bronner bends over backwards to rationalize what may have prompted him to aim for a nightclub packed with a thousand teens at an end-of-summer celebration.

In his lead paragraph, Bronner reports that "a Palestinian man from the occupied West Bank wounded eight Israelis early Monday...."

Note that the attack was not carried out by a "terrorist" on a murderous rampage. It was a "Palestinian man" -- a neat euphemism to hide his terrorist tactics.

Also, Bronner hints that there may be a good and sufficient reason for his repeated use of a lethal knife -- after all, this "Palestinian man" hails from the "occupied West Bank." That immediately puts Israel -- not the terrorist -- in the dock.

According to Bronner, Israel is an "occupier" and thus has no business in the West Bank because presumably that's Palestinian territory. But that's not the case. There never was a sovereign Palestine that somehow has been displaced by the Israeli "occupier." At most the terrorist's Nablus home is in "disputed" territory -- the Palestinians may claim it for a future state, but that doesn't give them a recognized right of possession. If anything, Israel's claims are much stronger.

But none of this bothers or interests Bronner. By appending the "occupier" label on Israel, he provides a rationalization for the attacker's bloody motives.

Thus, Bronner proceeds to write about the "Tel Aviv attack" and about "the man accused of mounting the attack." Anything to avoid use of the T-for-terrorist word in writing about this terrorist attack. In Bronner parlance, the terrorist is not a terrorist and Nablus is not "disputed" territory but in Israeli "occupied" Palestine. His is a semantic attack on Israel, with an apologia of Palestinian terrorism

It's not that the T-word is totally absent from Bronner's dispatch. He writes about Israel stepping up security against "terrorist" attacks and that "terror" attacks were relatively common during the Palestinian intifada but rare in Tel Aviv in recent years. But that's all in the abstract. It's when an actual terrorist rampage stares him in the face that he feels compelled to avert his eyes.

Thus, a specific terrorist attack in the heart of Tel Aviv by a fully committed terrorist still can't be reported as such in the pages of the New York Times.

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Rennert - NY Times shafts Israel -- A Tale of Two Articles

Leo Rennert
American Thinker
12 August '11

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/08/ny_times_shafts_israel_--_a_tale_of_two_articles.html

In its Aug. 12 edition, the New York Times runs two articles that tell worlds about the paper's highly selective and frequently biased reporting about Israel.

Let's being with a piece about Israeli government approval of construction of a 1,600-apartment complex in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish Orthodox neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem. ("East Jerusalem Is Approved For Building Of New Homes" by Rick Gladstone, page A4).

Predictably, Gladstone starts out by declaring that this "could undercut American efforts to salvage long-stalled Middle East peace talks."

Gladstone then moves on to denunciations of the project by political opposition groups, by Peace Now and by Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians' minister of propaganda who can always be relied on to supply a snappy anti-Israel comment.

Piling it on, Gladstone then devotes a couple of additional paragraphs to objections from the Obama administration, quoting a comment by a State Department spokeswoman that "unilateral action of this kind works against our efforts to get folks back to the table."

And for good measure, Gladstone also recalls that when the project was first announced in March during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden, it led to a rift between Israel and the Obama administration.

All well and good. But in view of all this hammering of Israel, where is Israel's actual response? Don't fundamental journalistic standards of fairness and even-handedness require that readers also be informed about the Israeli government's views for proceeding with additional housing units in a Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem?

Gladstone, apparently aware that his extensive Israel-bashing piece might raise a few eyebrows, proceeds to use a familiar journalistic CYA ploy that presumes to present the other side and makes his piece kosher..

"Israel," he writes "has argued that any two-state solution with the Palestinians will involve holding on to areas like Ramat Shlomo, so that in its view, building there for its citizens should not affect talks."

And where does this appear in his article? It's Paragraph 12 in a 12-paragraph article. Not exactly a sterling example of balanced reporting. While Erekat is given center stage for his fulminations that the Israeli government is "committed to investing in occupation rather than peace," there are no corresponding quotes from Israel's interior minister, who gave the green light for the project, or from Jerusalem's mayor for that matter. One would think their views would be at least as relevant as Erekat's -- and should get the same play.

Gladstone's article also is marred by an interesting omission about the position of the Obama administration. There is no mention of White House press secretary Jay Carney's remark that the administration is seeking to discourage unilateral actions by BOTH sides -- giving equal weight to its opposition to Jewish housing construction in eastern Jerusalem and to Mahmoud Abbas's move to seek unilateral endorsement of Palestinian statehood by the UN. Gladstone conveniently selects a State Department comment that only bashes Israel. With him, the Palestinian Authority gets off scot free.

CAMERA - The New York Times' Bronner Advocates for Fringe Group, Censors Mainstream Concerns

by Ricki Hollander, Gilead Ini
CAMERA Media Analysis
27 July '11



http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=35&x_article=2091

The New York Times' Ethan Bronner has once again provided a platform for a fringe extremist Israeli group to air its views unchallenged ("Where Politics Are Complex, Simple Joys at the Beach", New York Times, July 27, 2011). The reporter's July 27 article is, in effect, an advertisement for a radical organization which calls itself "We Will Not Obey," whose purpose is to illegally smuggle Palestinian women into Israel. The story's simplistic message is that the Palestinians have been deprived of the joys of swimming in the sea by harsh Israeli policies, and the noble Israeli organization is affording them this experience.

The article alternates between the group's shrill criticism of Israel's security policy and its members' ludicrous moral preening, interspersed with mawkish descriptions of the Palestinian women's innocent joy after a life of alleged privations.

Beginning with a depiction of Palestinians finally enjoying themselves after being deprived of freedom by an unfair Israel, Bronner promotes the actions of the Israeli group, granting its members nearly a quarter of the article to express in their own words condemnation of Israel and self-congratulatory praise for themselves and their radical agenda. One of the organization's members even goes so far as to compare Israel to Nazi Germany, and herself to those who tried to resist Nazi crimes:

"What we are doing here will not change the situation," said Hanna Rubinstein, who traveled to Tel Aviv from Haifa to take part. "But it is one more activity to oppose the occupation. One day in the future, people will ask, like they did of the Germans: 'Did you know?' And I will be able to say, 'I knew. And I acted.'"

It is not only the extreme words of the group that is disturbing; it is that they put out false information, and that the reporter does not bother to challenge it. An Israeli newspaper advertisement by the group is quoted extensively. (In Israel, the group has to pay for such advertising. The New York Times gives it to them here for free.) The ad alleges that Israel's Law of Entry "allows every Israeli and every Jew to move freely in all regions between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River while depriving Palestinians of this same right."

In fact, the law says no such thing. Current restrictions on freedom of movement apply both to Palestinians and Israeli Jews and are a direct result of the security threat presented to Israel and Israeli citizens. Both Palestinians and Israelis had complete freedom of movement "between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River" until after the first intifada, when Palestinian violence against Israelis began to rise. Today, Israeli Jews are barred from entering Palestinian Authority-controlled areas of the West Bank, while Palestinians are issued permits to cross Israel's pre-67 boundaries. So the advertisement is simply false.

Tobin - The Most Foolish Story About Israel Ever Published in The New York Times

Jonathan Tobin
Commentary/Contentions
20 July '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/07/20/the-most-foolish-story-about-israel-ever-published-in-the-new-york-times/

It is an old cliché that for journalists history is what happened the day before yesterday. Ancient history is what happened last week. No better example of this axiom can be found than in today’s New York Times story about various protests going on in Israel. The conceit of Ethan Bronner’s feature is that the wave of protest movements that spread across the Arab world this year has had some influence on the Jewish state. According to Bronner, Israelis have been inspired by their counterparts in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria to demonstrate against their government’s economic policies.

The foolishness and sheer ignorance of the country’s history of protest movements is staggering. Not only is there no analogy or even the faintest connection between Arab efforts to overthrow authoritarian tyrants, the idea Israelis needed Arab inspiration to generate protests against the government of the day is simply absurd.

Anyone who has spent even a small amount of time in Israel can tell you that street demonstrations, protest tents or movements based on dissatisfaction with the status quo is not only not an innovation, it is a staple of the country’s political culture. I can say from personal experience that in my visits to the Knesset or the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem during the past decades, I am hard pressed to remember a time when there weren’t protests of some sort going on. If it wasn’t Ethiopian immigrants wanting the government to bring their relatives left behind to Israel, it was the families of prisoners of war, victims of terror, the elderly or the poor.

While this year’s Knesset dustup over the price of cottage cheese may have been unusual, the notion of protest marches and demonstrations about the economy or unemployment is not. There have been many marches in past years from the Negev and various other places to Jerusalem highlighting economic issues. The only difference today, as Bronner rightly notes, is Israel’s economy is more prosperous than ever, and the economic stewardship of the Netanyahu government is widely perceived as sound.

But the main point here is not to debate the justice of contemporary Israeli economic protests. It is to point out an all too obvious fact about the country the Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief seems to have missed. The political culture of Israel is inherently anarchic. Israel is not Prussia. Protests, strikes and all forms of public disagreements there are not exceptional, they are ordinary. The “new consumer protest culture” is merely a variation on one of the country’s oldest themes. Moreover, the notion that a nation in which cynicism about politics and politicians is as deeply ingrained as it is in Israel and where public respect for the rules is so scant has anything to learn from the fledgling Arab attempts to hold their rulers accountable is laughable. While the Times has run many far more damaging and fundamentally misleading articles about Israel, I doubt they’ve ever published a piece as foolish as this one.

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Levin - Bronner's Flotilla Bias

Andrea Levin
CAMERA Media Analysis
10 July '11



http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=35&x_article=2082

The New York Times seems less and less concerned about factual coverage of Israel, as Ethan Bronner’s July 3, 2010 column titled “Setting Sail on Gaza’s Sea of Spin” underscores.

Bronner begins his “news analysis” piece by comparing the latest Gaza flotilla, led by radical anti-Israel extremists and terrorist groups, with the efforts of Holocaust survivors in pre-state Israel to breach the British blockade onboard the Exodus. The outrageous, false analogy is cast, in the familiar trope of The Times, as the viewpoint of “some” unnamed persons who “see a parallel.” Of course, all kinds of bogus parallels are seen by people; journalists and their editors aren’t obliged to give them credence in print.

But many Times reports rely on a ping-pong-like juxtaposition of Israeli versus Palestinian views, a template that ostensibly presents balance but more often ends up as a device to inject inaccurate claims and to avoid the facts. Similarly, Bronner sees “almost everything” in the flotilla controversy as “a parable for something else, part of an unstated effort to recast the Israeli-Palestinian narrative in extreme terms.”

What all this circumlocution amounts to is the reporter laboring to soften the reality, which is that, manifestly, there is one “extreme” dimension of the “Israeli-Palestinian narrative,” and, more specifically, of the recent flotilla “narrative.” That dimension is the flotilla’s Muslim Brotherhood leadership in the guise of Muhammad Sawhalha, and the Brotherhood’s Gazan arm, Hamas, an organization that seeks the annihilation of Israel and of all Jews – as openly expressed in its charter, public statements and the training of its youth.

The facts are clear and available; the Islamist component of the latest flotilla is documented. But The Times has never mentioned Sawalha or done any in-depth look at the “extreme” Islamist and terror-related underpinnings of the flotilla. Bronner makes passing comment near the close of his article to the “Turkish group, I.H.H which helps sponsor” the flotillas and has ties to Hamas. But the reference suggests the journalist hasn’t bothered with homework. As widely reported, I.H.H. is essentially uninvolved in this flotilla, its major vessel having dropped out.

Nor does Bronner touch on a noteworthy account in the Dutch press, which revealed that all Dutch journalists and activists had left a flotilla vessel on the island of Corfu when they witnessed the arrival last week of Amin Abou Rashed, a well-known Dutch Hamas leader. Flotilla leaders also include Huwaida Arraf and Adam Shapiro, International Solidarity Movement founders, the latter of whom recently called for global attack on Israel and termed the flotilla movement part of the third Intifada. But Bronner ignores the ISM radicals too.

And though he says the likelihood of violence “does not seem farfetched,” that declarative statement appears near the close of his piece. In contrast, Bronner opens with the sardonic observation, via reference to unnamed commentators, that “the Israeli authorities portray the organizers as violent Islamists when most are middle-aged European pacifists.” While all but omitting Islamist, particularly Hamas, involvement in the flotilla – and any reference to Hamas’s genocidal agenda or its decade of rocket assaults on Israel – the reporter offers warmly sympathetic statements about Gaza.

Noting that Israel is “quick to say that Gaza is well provided for and doesn’t need any flotilla,” he is quick to interject “Gaza remains a deeply sad and deprived place.” He also quotes, and mislabels, a favored NGO, Gisha, a pro-Palestinian group that engages in apartheid rhetoric about Israel. Bronner calls it simply “a human rights group focused on Gaza,” omitting its extreme political tilt. Gisha is cited saying the focus on humanitarian aid is “infuriating and misleading” because progress there distracts from other “sweeping restrictions” on Palestinians.

But beyond the usual devices of Times misdirection and distortion, the opening Exodus theme is what grabs the reader. Bronner returns to it at length, claiming it supports “a certain political and public relations strategy.” An Israeli professor is quoted as saying Palestinians hope via the flotilla to give Gazans a greater hand in defining their own fate as the Exodus had done for Jews. But that same professor, M.M. Silver, has also written: “Such comparisons are, to Israelis, invidious, and they completely undermine faith in "land-for-peace" diplomacy. As they see it, their country conceded land, and then received not peace, but rather missile attacks, insulting Holocaust analogies, and shrill war crime accusations.”

The thrust of Bronner’s work here and in nearly daily dispatches conveys a seemingly irrepressible impulse to mute and distort the openly-expressed aims of the Palestinians themselves with regard to Israel, to focus instead on indictments of the Jewish state and to belittle Israeli concerns. The disparagement is echoed in the bizarre use of, for instance, the word “scuffle” to characterize the attacks on Israelis during the 2010 flotilla crisis. Soldiers were beaten unconscious, stabbed and thrown off an upper deck, prompting an extensive, violent exchange in which nine flotilla members were killed. (In a previous story, Bronner termed the violent clash a “tussle” – suggesting, say, a pillow fight.)

Bronner’s title alludes to competing Israeli and Palestinian “spin” regarding the flotilla. Ironically, if “spin” means seeking to shape perception of events regardless of facts, Hamas and its allies’ flotilla gambit is matched in this endeavor by the fact-anemic “narratives” of the Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief himself.

This column was originally published in The American Thinker on July 10, 2011.

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Leo Rennert - NY Times likens pro-Hamas Audacity of Hope vessel with 1947 Jewish refugees ship, the Exodus

Leo Rennert
American Thinker
03 July '11

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/07/ny_times_likens_pro-hamas_audacity_of_hope_vessel_with_1947_jewish_refugees_ship_the_exodus.html

In its Sunday, July 3, edition, the New York Times, runs a lengthy article by Jerusalem Bureau chief Ethan Bronner about the pro-Palestinian flotilla's attempt to breach Israel's sea blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza. ("Setting Sail on Gaza's Sea of Spin," page 3 Sunday Review).

While Bronner goes into some detail about how Israel and the Palestinians are trying to spin this event to their advantage, his article's main attempt is to endow the flotilla and its propagandist crews and passengers with a big dose of historical legitimacy.

To understand his purpose, one need go no further than the first sentence of his article -- "Some see a parallel with the Exodus, the ship filled with Jewish refugees that tried to break the British blockade of Palestinian in 1947 and helped sway world opinion toward Zionism."

To further hammer home his dubious analogy between a pro-Palestinian propaganda ship and the refugee-laden "Exodus," Bronner's story is illustrated by two photos -- one pictures the U.S. flotilla vessel, Audacity of Hope, with a banner reading "To Gaza With Love," and the other an archival photograph of the Exodus.

Bronner is clearly enamored with his phony linkage of a flotilla with anti-Israel provocateurs on a propaganda voyage to buck up Hamas, and the Exodus with its bedraggled Holocaust survivors striving mightily to reach the Promised Land against insuperable odds.

"The Exodus analogy," Bronner writes, "supports a certain political and public relations strategy. In July, 1947, when Britain ruled Palestine and the number of Jews allowed in was severely limited, the ship with 4,500 Jewish refugees from Europe, tried to get through British forces boarded it, killed three people, wounded dozens and essentially destroyed the ship as it listed in Haifa harbor. The British ultimately sent the passengers to Hamburg."

Bronner then provides an Israeli historian, M.M. Silver, to back up his flotilla-Exodus analogy -- "Palestinian forces are trying to make the same point through the flotilla, that Israel has no right to control the fate of Palestinians."

I beg to differ.

The refugees aboard the Exodus were not well-off activists intent on staging a propaganda coup. They had just barely survived the Holocaust and were trying to reach Palestine -- a right accorded them by Britain's Balfour Declaration, the League of Nations, the U.S. Congress and, in the same year, the United Nations. On the other hand, the passengers aboard the pro-Palestinian flotilla are well-off, middle-class activists engaged in political theater seeking to undermine Israel's right of self-defense again a terrorist foe, Hamas, with its avowed genocidal agenda against Jews.

Jews aboard the Exodus were trying to exercise their historic right to go home against the British who blocked their path. In contrast there is nobody today barring the way home for the flotilla's pasengers..

For the suffering refugees, the Exodus was a real odyssey -- not a synthetic concoction like the one staged by the flotilla's organizers.

To try to link the two tells worlds about the anti-Israel agenda of Bronner and the New York Times.

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Tobin - The Times’ Flotilla of Moral Equivalence

Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary/Contentions
03 July '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/07/03/the-times%E2%80%99-flotilla-of-moral-equivalence/

In today’s Sunday New York Times, Jerusalem Bureau chief Ethan Bronner attempts to unravel what he considers a sea of spin about the Gaza flotilla being organized in Greece. Following the model of moral equivalence that has guided virtually all coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict in recent decades, the conceit of his piece in the paper’s Sunday Review is that both Israel and the flotilla organizers are attempting to manipulate the narrative of the dispute through spin.

Bronner takes a plague on both your houses approach to both sides. Arabs claim Gaza is starving and the flotilla is analogous to Jewish refugee ships that tried to break the British blockade of Palestine in the 1940s. Israelis claim the flotilla is a plot to destroy their country when all it is is a bunch of middle-aged pacifists trying to do good. According to Bronner’s version of events, all are equally wrong and therefore equally responsible not only for the standoff over Gaza but for the worsening of the conflict.

Such a stance allows the Times to assume a pose of Olympian detachment about the war on Israel–something Bronner and the paper clearly thinks is more important than actually telling the truth about the situation.

Gaza needs no humanitarian aid. It doesn’t now, as Bronner concedes, and it didn’t a year ago before the fatal clashes on a similar flotilla led to further easing of restrictions on goods allowed into Hamas-ruled Gaza. The only purpose of the flotilla is political. Breaking the blockade means breaking the international isolation of the Hamas government of Gaza. Doing this strengthens a tyrannical Islamist terrorist movement that governs Gaza with an iron fist. Anyone who aids Hamas in this matter is taking a stand on that group’s ongoing war on Israel via murder and kidnapping. If, as Bronner asserts, Gaza is a “sad and deprived place,” the blame should be laid at the feet of its rulers, not Israel.

Bronner concludes by saying Israelis are misinterpreting the flotilla as “an attack on its essence” rather than mere criticism of government policies. But this charge, in which, unbelievably, besieged democratic Israel is compared to the Soviet Union, is an absurd distortion of the truth.

The Arab analogies to the 1947 Jewish refugee ship Exodus are a specious attempt to steal and distort history. Bronner quotes a leftist Israeli as saying the flotilla is trying to make the same point as those who were trying to thwart British attempts to stifle Zionism. But this is a lie. In 1947, the Jews were fighting for survival, not trying to destroy the Arabs. Hamas, aided by its foreign cheerleaders, is waging war on the one Jewish state in the world in order to replace it with one more Arab majority country. How can anyone view an attempt to aid Hamas as mere political criticism rather than support for that war?

Efforts aimed at delegitimizing Israel through deceitful exercises such as the “aid” flotilla for Gaza are part of this war. The only way to describe reporting that treats Israel’s attempts to defend itself against Hamas and its propaganda as morally equivalent to the assault on the country is exactly the same word Bronner uses to describe the back and forth between the antagonists: mendacity.

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