So Just Who is Sheera Frenkel?

Something caught my ear in Sheera Frenkel's vacuous piece on the Palestinian Papers this morning. Discussing effect of the Palestinian Papers on Saeb Erekat, Frenkel says,

"Erekat says he resigned in disgrace, because of leaks someone in his own office provided to Al-Jazeera, the popular Arabic satellite news channel. Thousands of documents - nicknamed the Palileaks - revealed much about the peace talks over the last decade."

"Palileaks"? I'm a bit of a news junkie and follow developments in the Middle East, but I have never seen or heard the Palestine Papers described as the "Palileaks." I thought maybe I had missed something and did a Google search on the term. The results are quite interesting: almost all of them are pro-Zionist sources. The first two are telling: The Jerusalem Post (that Frenkel has written for) and the an article from CBN (the far-right Christian Broadcasting Network). Interestingly if you search "Palileaks" on Al-Jazeera or The Guardian (the two press outlets that actually released the Papers) you get nothing.

Sheera Frenkel has done some pretty awful reporting from Israel, and I want to know who this reporter is - you know, the basics: her education, what jobs has she held, has she done internships, etc. NPR has no bio on her, and I still haven't found anything substantive online, except that she has written for the Christian Science Monitor, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of London, and McClatchy. I did turn up two interesting bits on Frenkel: she has an article on the Christian-Zionist Frontline Israel website and in the PDF brochure from a Crossing Borders Media Conference, August 2007, in Bonn, she is identified as being from California and an Israeli citizen (which seems relevant for a reporter covering the Israel/Palestine conflict).

If anyone finds a legitimate and relevant bio of Sheera Frenkel and can send it to me, I'll post it here. Until then I'll drop a line to the Ombudsman and request that NPR at least provide the basics on Frenkel who is a frequent contributor.

As a postscript, I should note that back on January 25th, I posted on NPR's distorted coverage of the Palestinian Papers back when they were released. A few days later Lourdes Garcia-Navarro did a decent piece that looked at the Palestinian negotiators' disappointment in the Obama administration as revealed in the papers. But that's it, and the critiques of my first post remain valid: NPR has been mute on the major revelation of the Papers: the utter sham of the entire "peace process" which has only furthered the violent US-supported Israeli policy of colonizing the Occupied Territories and destroying the possibility of any meaningful Palestinian state.

Listen Up Dummy

On Monday's ATC, Peres talks through Bob Siegel as this duo tries to drum up the fear factor regarding Iran. I loved this part in which Peres shares his political wisdom completely unchallenged:

"Political parties know that politics is based on compromises. Religious parties are uncompromising and that's the trouble with ___________________ ....they are so HOLY that they feel they have the right to kill other people...they are putting their own people in power. They've divided the Palestinian people. They invited an attack upon Gaza. They produce bloodshed..."

Only a complete dummy would miss the irony of Peres' description of the settler-friendly government of Israel Hamas.

Tristan Who?

(Click on photo to see the actual graphic in context)

How about NPR's stellar coverage of the Israeli attack on US citizen Tristan Anderson? Click the graphic below to see for yourself.



Coming 6 years after the murder of Rachel Corrie, I guess one shouldn't be surprised. As Mondoweiss points out, this is typical for the US press - but, really, with the videotaped evidence of the unprovoked attack and with ABC and even the AP covering it, you might think it would get a mention. Oh, but wait, unlike the Rachel Corrie killing, which NPR did cover, the US State Department hasn't cleared the way for our intrepid NPR journalists by calling for a probe first.

If It Walks Like a Hawk, Talks Like a Hawk and Acts Like a Hawk , Then It Must Be...a Dove!

Worse than worthless. How else can one sum up NPR's coverage of the Israel - Palestine conflict?

Yesterday morning first featured Michele Kelemen redelivering Secretary of State Clinton's talking points (Hamas is a terrorist organization, blah, blah, blah, Hamas has to renounce violence, blah, blah, blah, US is giving tons of money to Gaza, blah, blah, etc.). OK, so she's accompanying Clinton on the trip, what else can you expect from NPR?

After that four minute-plus State Department summary what does NPR offer? Who would you go to for expert analysis? How about someone who has "has advised six American Secretaries of State." Yep, NPR serves up the stale ideas of Aaron David Miller - again. Miller has a way with words that only a six Secretary of State big league hitter could have. Here he is explaining Netanyahu:

"He's an ideologue; there's no question - leaning and ensconced in the right. But he's also capable of tremendous pragmatism...the history of peacemaking in Israel has really been a history dominated by the right or the center right. It's really a question in Israel of doves talking the talk, and hawks walking the walk. The right in Israel has been capable of actually making agreements with the Arabs and actually delivering on them."

Miller mentions Netanyahu's negotiations with Arafat at the Wye River and the Hebron withdrawal. Throughout the interview, Linda Wertheimer just nods along like a bobblehead. I think she forgot to see how the actual settlement policies went under Netanyahu back when he was Prime Minister. Nothing about what that great Hebron concession really meant for Palestinians. Nothing about Netanyahu's provocations that even an editor from the rightist WINEP takes note of. Nothing about Netanyahu's Jerusalem expansionist efforts.

It would be hard to do more pro-Likud, pro-Zionist coverage of the Palestine conflict. That someone on an NPR news report can claim in all seriousness - with no challenge from the the NPR host - that a person with such far-right and low ethical standards as Netanyahu is in fact the real pragmatist and the real peacemaker says far more about NPR's current orientation than it does about anything actually happening on the ground in Israel and Palestine.

Get Chavez

FAIR has an illuminating study recently published showing the huge disparity in US Newspaper coverage of human rights in Venezuela and Colombia over the past 10 years. Their findings show that in spite of Colombia having an "appalling" human rights record - horrific compared to Venezuela's shortcomings - the US press coverage focuses almost exclusively on Venezuela and Hugo Chavez. Like the US Newspapers, NPR has a thing about focusing on Venezuela and Chavez and their main man for such assignments is Juan Forero.

Forero - always happy to push the State Department or CIA narrative on Latin America - is on this morning to portray the Chavez government as dangerously antisemitic.

Forero notes that despite Chavez' denunciation of the recent synagogue vandalism "questions are being raised over whether the government's recent language against Israel is creating a climate of hate. In January Chavez broke relations with Israel over that country's military strikes against Gaza. He called Israel's actions genocidal and expelled Israeli diplomats." Of course Forero doesn't note that Israel's violent actions against Palestinians fit the legal definition of genocide: "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

Forero purports that Chavez's remarks have had "an aggressive tone" "that borders on antisemitic." Forero sneers that in the past Chavez claimed the 2002 coup against him was "hatched by the CIA and Israel's secret service Mossad" and "claimed the gunmen that day were Jewish." Now what kind of nutbar would claim Israel's involvement in genocidal and rightwing Latin American governments. He also fails to mention that a prominent Venezuelan rabbi was present with the coup leaders in the immediate aftermath of the coup.

Forero closes his piece with this chestnut: Andreas (a Holocaust survivor) "knew exactly what the ramifications were. He's a Romanian Jew who survived the Holocaust and then came to Venezuela..." Ah yes, the Chavez denunciations of Israel's slaughter of Palestinians caused the antisemitic attack on the synagogue and it's like Kristalnacht all over again!

The Big Bad Left

If you are a supposed leftist, and you want to get on NPR, you better be ready to bash the left and say something pro-Zionist. On Saturday morning, Scott Simon talks to France's Bernard-Henri Levy, who Simon describes as "probably his country's best-known public intellectual" (You might be forgiven for wondering when NPR News took an interest in public intellectuals!) One reason Simon is talking to Levy is because - according to Simon - Levy "says the left has too often become apologists for tyrants and bigotry - antisemitism to be blunt about it."

It is kind of funny to hear this critique in the US where one would be happy to have a strong "left" to critique in the first place, and where uber-Zionism is a prerequisite to being heard at all in mainstream political discourse. But the realities of the US empire aren't about to get in the way of distortion. Here are a few excerpts from Levy:

• "You have more and more liberals who say, 'Come on, wait a minute. Human rights in America, okay. Human rights in Europe, okay. But if you pretend to apply human rights for example to Arab countries, then - wait a minute - it is a colonial attitude, it is a neo-imperialist way of imposing a way of thinking..." [What US leftists decry insisting on human rights for Arab countries?]

• "You have a lot of liberals today, who before taking the party of the victims, first ask who is the executioner, and more precisely, would by any chance, America been involved in this execution, in this bloodbath. If America is involved, then they take the party of the victims. If America is not involved, if it is not the guiltiness, the fault of America - they care less." [No, what you have are activists who are more disturbed by human rights abuses that their tax dollars are supporting and who rightly question the argument that US military intervention has ever favored human rights improvements.]

• "...the only way to make antisemitism sayable and hearable...give sort of fake legitimacy is to mold it in the argumentation, the obsessions in the phrases of the liberal left. For example, antiZionism....I criticize Israel more than anybody...but antiZionism is something else. To be antiZionist is like to be anti-Francist or anti-Germanist as if you had the right to conclude from the faults...that France should not exist at all..." [Honestly, it's sad to see this sloppy logic passing as intellectualism. Yes, anyone would be anti-Francist or anti-Germanist if being ethnically French or German were a condition for citizenship and basic rights for anyone residing in France or Germany respectively.]

Don't look for a thoughtful look at Zionism on NPR. The arguments for and against Zionism are quite entangled, while the actual practice of Zionism in Israel is quiet blatantly racist and violent.

Bordering on the Criminal

Ollie's coming to the White House, and one can only wonder what nice mess he and Bush will put the world in. You might think the focus would be on what these warmongers might be planning for Iran, or on the complicity of the US in Israel's ongoing flouting of international law. NPR instead focuses on the domestic corruption charges facing Olmert (important enough) and manages to slip in "expert" opinions on the "peace" process from a Zionist extremist.

Eric Westervelt is selling this story from Jerusalem. Of Olmert we learn that "critics said he badly mismanaged Israel's 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon." Yep, killing over a thousand civilians and dropping a million cluster bombs is definitely what I'd call "mismanagement." Only when Olmert's sleazy conduct regarding bribes and payoff is brought up does he come in for moral condemnation. From political scientist Rubin Hazan Hebrew University, we learn that Olmert's corruption "borders on the criminal."

The most maddening part of the story is when Westervelt talks about the death march of the "peace" process: "Olmert's trip to the US...and a meeting Wednesday with President Bush will focus on US initiated peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. The talks were going nowhere, even before Olmert's latest crisis says political studies professor Gerald Steinberg of Bar Elan University....Bush's promise for a settlement within a year: 'It was always oversold, the hype, the constant visits of the Secretary of State, the President himself, those things are way overstretching what the traffic will bear.'"

NPR presents Gerald Steinberg as just a "political studies professor." Let's consider a few of the kindly professor's statements and activities:

• On Israel's 60th anniversary: "The primary goal of Zionism was and remains the re-establishment of sovereignty and self-determination for the Jewish people in our homeland. In addition to fulfilling the 2,000-year-old desire to return to Eretz Yisrael."

• He attacks human rights groups such as B'tselem because they "take down every Palestinian complaint at face value and write inflammable reports castigating Israel as the aggressor. They do so by leaving out essential context..." And those really "radical" Israeli Arab groups "poison any reasonable dialogue by demonizing Israel, for example by drawing parallels to the apartheid regime."
• Steinberg also runs a "monitoring" group to keep an eye on extremist NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
  

Could you even dream of someone so partisan for Palestinian radicalism as this fellow is for Zionist radicalism being presented blandly as a professor? Not a chance.

The Perfectly Calibrated Renee Montagne

Who but a death worshiping Bushista would ask the following question during an interview about Jimmy Carter's negotiations with Hamas:

"Could though, at this point in time, the Bush administration argue that former President Carter may have upset THE carefully calibrated approaches to Hamas that are being made?"

That was Renee Montagne's query for her guest, Robert Malley, director of the International Crisis Group's Middle East and North Africa program and member of the new group JStreet. Consider how easily she could have asked, "Might the Bush administration claim that Carter's trip undermines its policy?" But, my God, to call it "THE [Montagne's emphasis, not mine] carefully calibrated approaches."

Oh, but maybe I'm overreacting. Perhaps she's referring to the "carefully calibrated" diet restrictions US, Israel, and Europe are imposing on Gaza, or those measured and careful surgical strikes that the US/Israel is using to try to bring peace to Gaza (I mean, who takes Amnesty International seriously anyway?). Really, with all this careful calibration, what's the worst that could happen to those stubborn Gazans?

To his credit Malley answers, "Unfortunately there's not much to upset, because there's not much good happening so I'm not sure what it could be undermining..." In other words, "I'm not sure what the hell you're talking about..."

Israeli Violence Equals Human Rights

Yesterday on ATC Brian Naylor reported on the passing of Rep. Tom Lantos. He states the following with no awareness of the bitter contradictions:

"His experiences with persecution made Lantos the Congressman an eloquent advocate for human rights and a staunch defender of Israel."

By "defender of Israel," he doesn't mean a humane, complex loyalty to the idea of a just state of Israel (as one might find in Tikkun or in a person of integrity such as Amira Hass) - he means the lethal, racist, US-style, AIPAC Zionism that Lantos championed. It's astounding that a reporter could, with a straight face, link "advocate of human rights" with "staunch defender of Israel" in the same sentence and expect to be taken seriously.

Later in the report Naylor says that Speaker of the House Pelosi described Lantos as "shining a light on dark corners of oppression." Apparently just some corners...

Genocide Lite

On Wednesday's ATC Robert Siegel introduces Westervelt's report on Israel's plans for speeding up its genocide against the 1.2 million Gazans by saying, "Angered by Palestinian rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip, Israel today turned up the pressure on the militant Islamist group Hamas...cutting off fuel and other vital supplies." So now depriving 1.2 million ghettoized civilians of the basic necessities of life is "turning up the pressure."

I Lie with a Little Help from My Friends

Man o' man, what a load of bunk Sec. of State Rice dumps into the compliant lap of NPR voice Michele Norris. Here's a few of the tidbits that Rice served up in the course of this love fest:

1. "The second intifada had been begun by Yasser Arafat."
2. "...Yasser Arafat was dealing with Iran to bring weapons in to the Palestinian territories."
3. "Palestinians have elected a man in Mahmoud Abbas and a prime minister, now, in Salam Fayad...."
4. "It's very hard to imagine a partner for peace that refuses to renounce violence and refuses to recognize the right of the other partner to even exist...."
5. "And we saw what Hamas did in Gaza, when they threw people off of buildings and then knelt to pray."

A journalist might have a few comments on these remarks. For example Norris might have said:

#1 - That is an extreme oversimplification Sec. Rice and shows that you accept completely the Israeli-Zionist version of events which calls into question the "honest broker" image you try to portray. Many credit Israeli brutality and Ariel Sharon's armed visit to the Temple Mount with sparking that Intifada."

#2 - Your claim about Iranian weapons and Arafat was never proven and again completely accepts the IDF version.

#3 - Fayad was not elected but appointed by Abbas, whose government a majority of
Palestinians rejected in the January 2006 elections that Hamas won.

#4 - But Israel refuses to renounce indiscriminate violence and collective punishment and the Likud party of Ariel Sharon who you strongly supported declares all of Palestine for Israel in its charter.

#5 - You certainly do embellish the violence of Hamas while ignoring the Fatah crimes during the time you are referring to - and of course you never mention the atrocities of the Israeli military against Palestinians which go back for decades.

One could go on and on. Not only does Norris never challenge the outright lies and slanted versions of Rice, she even lobs a whopper herself:"with groups that mean to do us harm — with Hamas...." Do us harm? Interesting that Hamas has never committed a documented terrorist act against the US and even worked to free the BBC's Alan Johnson.

Unfortunately, the whole interview is premised on the ridiculous notion that the Bush administration has not been engaged in the Israel/Palestine conflict. Not engaged? As the links above show, they've thrown the full weight of US military, diplomatic and economic support behind the Israeli government since coming to office - and that is very different than being "disengaged."

Defending the Bully

Listening to NPR's coverage of the Middle East, I always have this image in my mind of a bully killing and beating up his victims, and if one of the victims tries something desperate (such as attacking the perpetrator) there is a barrage of criticism excoriating the victim for being irresponsible and using violence.

If you listen to today's coverage on the situation in the Occupied Territories, you'd never know that Israel has been killing Palestinian civilians at will, stealing Palestinian lands, building colonial settlements on occupied land, etc. The Israeli occupation and destruction of Palestinian society is never even mentioned. It's truly surreal.

Here's how the Sunday Weekend Edition breaks down:

• First, a report from Zionist sympathizer Linda Gradstein covers the appointed cabinet of AbuMazen in the West Bank. We hear how Israeli Prime Minister Olmert "will provide food and medicine to Gaza" and that he considers the "new cabinet without Hamas in the West Bank could be a partner to peace."

• Next it's on to Dennis Ross from the neocon, AIPAC-founded WINEP. Ross never gets challenged on his "analysis" of the situation in which he states that "the first challenge is for the US to stop weaponry from reaching Hamas...because if longer range rockets are fired into Israel...the Israelis will feel obliged to do something"(!). His advice to the current administration is "to focus its attention is on the following kinds of priorities"- 1.) Work to make the West Bank a model of success. 2.) Shine a spotlight on the Egyptians because they're letting weapons into Gaza. Ah yes, the old "model of success" approach - just like in Iraq! And the Egyptians - that was a new one for me. I kept wondering when he might meekly mention all those Israeli settlements carving up the West Bank. Lastly he chimes in with how he would advise Bush on his upcoming meeting with Olmert: "...let’s focus together on what is really the crux of the problem right now – the crux of the matter – and it is a competition between Fatah and Hamas."

• Lastly we hear from Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland who is also with the Brookings Institute (them again!). Supposedly he is going to talk about the "Arab perceptions" of what is going on. The best he can do is insist that whatever approach the US and its allies take will have to include not just the West Bank, but Gaza too. However, there is no condemnation of the US-Israeli policies or actions in the region (which is a strange omission if we are supposedly going to hear "Arab" perceptions.)
  

Who's Right to Exist Is It Anyway?

This morning Inskeep was talking to Paul Salem of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut about the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. They were discussing how the refugees were not integrated into Lebanese society for a variety of reasons and Inskeep said, "Can I just ask, is part of the reason the camps stay there and stay there because if Palestinians were integrated into normal life in Lebanon or somewhere else, um, it might be seen as an acknowledgment that__________."

a. "...their hopes for dignity and justice have been crushed."
b. "...their dreams of a state and genuine homeland are buried beneath Israeli settlements."
c. "...the world has turned its back on the just claims of Palestinians for return or compensation."

Given Israel's campaign of destroying Palestinian society and its continued occupation, colonization and theft of Palestinian land you might expect a person of compassion and integrity to make such a statement - but hey, this is Steve Inskeep, and here's what he says,

"...it might be seen as an acknowledgment that Israel has a right to exist, and is going to stay there."

Imagine that, Palestinians won't surrender to "ethnic cleansing" because it would acknowledge Israel's "right to exist." Only in the upside down world of NPR can you get such mangled logic. I've commented before on this nonsense about Israel's "right to exist." Here it is again. Fortunately, Paul Salem is not a loyal tool of Israeli propaganda and explains that there are complex and tragic reasons why the refugees in Lebanon are so isolated.

(graphic from B'Tselem)