Inskeep Shines

I've been waiting since November for NPR to host Jimmy Carter; today they finally got around to bringing him on for an interview. Steve Inskeep gets the nod for this hatchet job on Carter's latest book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. This interview is remarkable for it's complete unwillingness to address the substance (Israeli oppression of Palestinians and land confiscation) of Carter's book and for the fact that every question Inskeep asks is an attack.

Here's how this slam on Carter's book begins (before the interview even starts):
Renee Montagne: "He’s been accused of getting some facts wrong, of mislabeling maps, and slanting the book against Israel."
Steve Inskeep: "Some supporters of Israel were especially unhappy with the title, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. Some members of an advisory board at his Carter Center resigned."

And here are the questions Inskeep asks:

• "Could you just make briefly the best case you can for why apartheid is the right word to use?"
• "Why not just describe that rather than bring in this word that’s freighted with so much history from another place?"
• "Would you describe for us, simply because the book has been criticized for its details, how did you write the book?"
• "Well, you’ve been challenged in your recollections of meetings....it’s been alleged....less reasonable than might actually have been the case. What was your version based on? Did you go back to notes and other documents that you had from the time?"
• "But when you recollect...were you working from your own notes?"
• "Ken Stein...has alleged that his recollection of that meeting is somewhat different."
• "There’s also been some criticism which you addressed this week at Brandeis...a sentence on page 213 of your book...."
• "Has that set you flipping through the pages of the book to see if there’s anything else there that you maybe just wasn’t expressed the way you intended?"
• "You mention you’ve been labeled an anti-Semite. You do use the word apartheid...which defenders of Israel regarded as a label that called into a lot of bad associations...would you agree that kind of labeling is not very productive?"

I don't have any problem with challenging Carter, but Inskeep doesn't even once probe any of the following assertions that Carter makes: "Forced separation within the West Bank…total domination and oppression of Palestinians by the dominant Israeli military," "the horrible oppression and persecution of the Palestinian people," "massive Israeli confiscation of land and colonization of its choice sites," and "the apparently permanent acquisition, confiscation and colonization of choice sites throughout the West Bank." Instead, Inskeep attacks Carter's book with innuendo and second-hand criticism because if he were to address the issue of Israeli oppression and land confiscation, the facts of Israeli injustice would be irrefutable and indefensible.

Oh, and if this slam weren't enough, Inskeep promises that a critic of Carter's book will be interviewed on tomorrow's show. I'll wager that it won't be so hostile.

Targets and Goals

(click on image for source)

On Wednesday morning Steve Inskeep displayed the extent of his woeful ignorance (or stupidity). He was interviewing Mustafa Barghouti, an independent lawmaker in the West Bank city of Ramallah and asked the following question:

"There was a ceasefire in Gaza for months. It expired, as you know, and then Hamas began firing rockets into Israel knowing there might be a harsh Israeli response. Why did Hamas do that?"

One has to love Mr. Barghouti's reply:

"No sir, I think what you have described is the Israeli narrative and it's not correct..."

Barghouti then patiently explained how throughout the ceasefire Israel tightened its total blockade and committed a violent and flagrant violation of the ceasefire toward the end.

Unfortunately, nothing seems to penetrate the pro-IDF bubble in which Inskeep operates. During a discussion with Mike Shuster this morning he says,

"As they begin to run out of new targets to hit...are the Israelis any closer to their goal which is to stop rocket fire from coming out of Gaza into Israel?"

You could spend a lot of time unpacking such a statement. Who says the goal of the Israelis is to stop rocket fire coming out of Gaza? What rockets were driving Israel's ghettoization and utter destruction of a Gaza when rockets weren't being fired?

And targets? Since when do mosques, police stations, homes, and thousands of wounded and killed civilians count as "targets"? The whole of Schuster and Inskeep's talk is riddled with the use of the "target" euphemism and claims based solely on Israeli Defense Forces statements:

• Inkseep: "Israeli jets struck multiple targets including the Palestinian Parliament building in Gaza City. Israeli naval forces also fired at targets inside the territory."
• Shuster: "Israeli airstrikes on tunnels...where Israel says Hamas has been smuggling in weapons....the Israelis targeted what they called a weapons manufacturing and storage facility in central Gaza. The Israeli navy has gotten into the operation with ships off the coast hitting Hamas coastal outposts and rocket launching spots according to the Israeli Defense Force....500 sorties by warplanes against targets in Gaza...hundreds more carried out by helicopter...looks like Israel is beginning to run out of new targets to hit."

Shuster and Inskeep aren't the only ones at NPR using the vague "target" language. I hear about "Hamas targets" almost anytime I catch one of NPR's hourly updates. Why not just state the fact that the whole of Gaza is being targeted by both bombardment and the blockade of basic necessities such as food, fuel and medicine?

Inskeep Squeaks

If you missed Steve Inskeep's interview with President Ahmadinejad of Iran on Wednesday morning, brace yourself.

First Inskeep (like the rest of the mainstream media - with the exception of, say, Larry King!) continues the the debunked allegation that Ahmadinejad wants to "wipe Israel off the map." He says, "You have spoken about wiping countries off the map...." and "As you know Mr. President, you are known in much of the world - and not only in the United States - as the man who wants to wipe Israel off the map. Are you?"

Ahmadinejad actually answers the question, and in doing so asserts the right of Palestinians to vote on how they want to be ruled - which he believes would lead to the dissolution of Israel as a Zionist state. This mention of elections prompts Inskeep to attack on Iran's presidential elections. He correctly and critically notes that Iranian candidates had to be approved by Iran's conservative Council of Guardians. From this critique he goes on to claim that in the US election for president "anyone may put his name on the ballot in the United States." That's pretty funny! He then mocks the eight choices for president that Iranians had, saying "...eight people and the political spectrum from about here to here - and I'm holding my fingers an inch apart..."

Inskeep obviously doesn't have a clue about who ran for Iranian president back in 2005. If he did, he would have noticed quite a diverse spectrum of ideology among the candidates. Ahmadinejad correctly notes that the US presidential election offers an even narrower range of ideological choices and he challenges Inskeep (fingers and all) by asking, "Why do you assume that your system is better than everybody else's?"

Caught red-handed (or red fingered in this case) Inskeep squawks, "I assume nothing Mr. President. I ask questions." The scariest part is that I think he actually believes this is true...

Numbing

Trying to make sense out of the Israel/Palestine conflict by listening to NPR is a hopeless challenge. Take Steve Inskeep's report this morning. Describing the IDF attack on Gaza Inskeep says, "Israel continues it military moves in and around the Gaza Strip and all these moves came after an Israeli soldier was captured." I know memory is short in the US, I think we can stretch it back further than this past Sunday morning. The Israeli assault didn't begin after the capture of the soldier. In fact the past several weeks have seen heavy Israeli military action against Gaza which have killed many civilians--the most infamous being the family picnicking on the beach. It also fails to contextualize the conflict in which Israel blatantly colonizes the occupied territories (take a look at the maps if you doubt this) and -- according to Human Rights Watch -- holds approximately eight thousand Palestinian political and security prisoners and more than six hundred Palestinians under administrative detention (detention without trial or charge, which can be indefinitely renewed). NPR and the US mainstream press in general consistently downplay (or completely ignore) Israel's violations of international law.

Speaking to Inskeep, Linda Gradstein does at least mention that Palestinians in the West Bank are angry because Israel has hit civilian infrastructure in Gaza...which she notes leaves about 700,000 inhabitants without electricity and many without water (which is likely to lead to sickness and death for children and the infirm). Does Inskeep ask more about this targeting of civilians? No, but he does remind us that "the other side" has escalated the conflict by killing the captured settler. The crime of killing a captured belligerent is a terrible deed--a war crime in fact, but it was not carried out by a sovereign government and in no way compares to the nearly forty years of assaults on the Palestinians or the current overwhelming use of force being inflicted on them.

Steve Inskeep reporting for the IDF--oops--NPR

After a mediocre report from Linda Gradstein and a lopsidedly pro-Israel report from Eric Westervelt this morning on the escalating violence between Israel and Palestinians, Steve Inskeep asks Eric Westervelt, the reporter on the ground, "Do the Israelis have any other options here [to stop the rocket attacks from Gaza into Sderot]?" Westervelt goes on to answer that the main options are commando raids or a full invasion to establish "buffer zones." Nothing is mentioned about Israel's options of stopping the use of airstrikes, artillery barrages, illegal imprisonment and assasinations, or of using backdoor-diplomacy to maintain the 16 month old ceasefire, etc. He mentions that there are politcal/military risks for Israel in an invasion, while barely mentioning the horrors that such an invasion would visit on the civilians of Gaza. Once again NPR shows that its coverage of the Israel's actions in the occupied zones and the armed conflict between the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Palestinians will always at its core be from the Israeli military's viewpoint. This is too bad, not only because it is poor journalism that fails to address the historical, moral, and legal aspects of the conflict-- but it also fails to cover the the wide range of opinions that exist among Israeli's themselves.

Worse Than Worthless on AIPAC

A few complaints about Steve Inskeep's talk with Dennis Ross on AIPAC. During the interview Inskeep asks, "Why do you think it is that large swaths of the world look at US policy toward Israel and say the US is just overly devoted to Israel, has overlooked so many things that in the point of view of many Arabs are terrible things that Israelis have done and that this is a huge liability for the United States." This is inexcusably sloppy and distorted. Notice how Inskeep inserts the qualifying statement "in the point of view of many Arabs" to imply 1) that there is no objective standard by which to judge US-backed Israeli actions over the years, and that 2) only Arabs have any objections to Israeli actions. Inskeep is wrong on both points. Israeli actions since 1967 have ruthlessly and flagrantly defied international law (see Wikipedia's entry on this, or browse the resources on the Foundation for Middle East Peace website). As for his second point Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and BT'selem from Israel hardly qualify as an Arab point of view! Instead of the unsupported statement of "terrible things that Israelis have done," Inskeep/NPR could have done a few minutes of research and simply mentioned a few of the documented acts that the vast majority of the world finds so objectionable.

A few last notes about this interview. Though this piece is presented as a rebuttal to the Walt/Mearsheimer interview yesterday (see post below), NPR fails to noted that though Walt/Mearsheimer are scholars with no connection to AIPAC or any pro-Palestinian lobby, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy that Ross is with has close ties to AIPAC! I also found it fascinating that though Ross is supposed to dismiss the idea that AIPAC has undue influence on US foreign policy regarding the Middle East he does say that "its weight is mostly felt on the congress" where it has "considerable influence," including the election of members and is a "significant force on the hill." He also makes a slip of the tongue that is quite telling: when asked if he ever met with AIPAC while working for Bush I and Clinton he says yes, but "with American groups as well" (critics of AIPAC have frequently requested that it be registered as an agent of a foreign government).

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)

Making Up News and Numbers

Steve Inskeep continues his dismal performance on NPR this morning. In reporting on the ceasefire in Lebanon and northern Israel he sums up the horror show of the last month by stating, "34 days of warfare have devastated much of south Lebanon, left northern Israel in shambles – about 900 people have been killed." This is so incredibly biased and sloppy that it deserves mention. First, the Israeli airforce has devastated ALL of Lebanon not just much of the south [consider this BBC assessment after just two weeks of the air assault]. Then to contextually balance this with the statement about "northern Israel in shambles" is grotesque [again let me emphasize that I consider Hezbollah's rocket attacks on Israeli civilian cities a war crime and if we lived in a world with any semblance of justice Nasrallah and Olmert (and the entire military leadership of Israel) would be cellmates in the Hague right about now.] Lastly, where does Inskeep get the figure of 900 people from? I recall 900 being bandied about a week or so ago--and each day since then there have been many more killings of civilians and - of course - combatants. For better information on casualties I'd suggest these sites at Wikipedia or About.com.

Big Goals

Yesterday on ATC Michelle Norris stated "President Bush today sought to revive Mideast peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders." And then this morning Steve Inskeep reminds us that "All the setbacks of his Presidency have not stopped President Bush from declaring big goals. His latest is an effort for Middle East Peace. " Man, I didn't realize what a peacenik Bush was!

NPR has been making a lot of hay out of this latest Bush "proposal" for Israel/Palestine. What is sad is how mercilessly NPR limits the range of viewpoints on the Israel/Palestine issue, and how devoid of facts the reports are.

Yesterday featured Don Gonyea doing his typical parrot routine of restating Bush's words as if that somehow gives them more substance - and so we get:

• "On the hopeful side, the President pointed to Palestinian elections and the selection of the moderate, Mahmoud Abbas, as the Palestinian President."
• "Palestinians now face a choice between the moderates in President Abbas' government and Hamas...a group devoted to murder."

OK, and what about dissenting views? Gonyea says that "Critics have long accused the Bush White House of not being engaged early enough and aggressively enough in the Israel-Palestinian conflict." Well, that is vague and pretty darn easy on an administration that is shot through with Likudnik neocons (also see these resources). And as usual the one "critic" we do hear from is an insider (adviser to six Secretaries of State) , Aaron David Miller of the Woodrow Wilson International Center. Criticism of Israel's terror and violence is absent, but Goneya says, "Miller notes that the best opportunity for success may have already passed. Iran and Syria are greater obstacles than they were five years ago. And he says Hamas and Hezbollah had grown in stature as well."

On this morning's report from Michelle Kelemen Miller is back and Paul Pillar is also consulted. Pillar is a critic of the Bush administration, BUT not of overall US policy in Palestine. No surprise there; he is a veteran of US intelligence operations.

My gripe with NPR is not that they interview these people. They offer valuable information about US government perspectives and policies, but where are critics of the whole arc of US policy in the region? For that you'll have to go to places like Electronic Intifada or the information rich site If Americans Knew.

Lethally Lazy

Sometimes NPR news is surreally strange. Today Morning Edition had the briefest little bit about Sec. Rice being asked by a House committee about a missed opportunity for the US to diplomatically engage with an Iranian peace proposal back in 2003. I've been complaining for awhile (11/16/06, 9/8/06, and 8/26/06) about the utter lack of coverage that NPR has given to this "missed chance to talk to Iran" as Steve Inskeep put it. It was far more than that, it was an opportunity to address and settle the issues of security in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine - along with the nuclear threat to the Middle East -- in other words it was HUGE.

Here's the text of the report as read by Inskeep:

"A House committee asked Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice if the US missed a chance to talk with Iran. Rice seemed to tell NPR last year that she knew of an Iranian proposal from 2003, 'What the Iranians wanted earlier was to be one on one with the United States so that this could be about the United States and Iran.' The fax from Iran listed a series of objectives for talks including possible recognition of Israel. Rice denied seeing it. Other US officials have said they do remember that Iranian proposal from 2003."

This deserves a little scrutiny. First, as I've mentioned above, "missed chance to talk" hardly conveys the significance of the Iranian offer and the subsequent US refusal to even consider it. Second, when Inskeep said Rice "seemed to tell NPR" about this I found myself scratching my head--I sure didn't remember such a thing. So I listened to the June 2, 2006 NPR report this Rice quote came from, and it has nothing to do with the 2003 proposal. It is only about Iran wanting to deal one-on-one with the US regarding the nuclear issue (as opposed to the multi-national confrontation Iran was facing at that time).

As far as the fax in question, this morning's report makes it's existence seem like a vague "he said, she said" case. In fact if you look at this Washington Post article you'll see that it is very real and that Sec. Rice is a flat out liar (as if that's a surprise). Finally NPR's report thoroughly minimizes the importance of the Iranian offer; it was far more than a "series of objectives" and "possible recognition of Israel." This article from the American Prospect conveys the scope of the proposal and the tragedy of the US rebuff. The implications of such a policy are that the US and Israeli governments at that time had no desire for a real peace settlement - and in fact wanted to purse policies of military confrontation and domination. (This was in May 2003, just after the quick "victory" over the Iraqi army and the toppling of Saddam Hussein after all.)

Of course by pretending that NPR news had covered this story in the past (and producing the misleading soundbite to prove it), NPR is attempting to let itself off the hook for it's biased, lazy, and virtually nonexistent coverage of this important chapter of US foreign policy.

(The image came from the following site.)

Accomplices

(source of original image)

Friday Morning two busy little spin bodies (h/t to War on War Off ) were busy on NPR:

• Steve Inskeep: "And here's what raises the question of how Israel intends to finish the operation. The bombing was intended to stop Palestinian rocket fire into Israel and despite hundreds of bombing runs those rockets are still arriving."

• Mike Shuster: "First Israel hit military targets - buildings tunnels and bases used by the security forces of Hamas..."

If a war crimes trial is ever held for the Israeli leadership that launched this "operation" on "military targets" I hope they save two seats in the docket for Shuster and Inskeep.

The Company You Keep

Steve Inskeep followed up yesterday's hostile interview of Jimmy Carter by hosting Emory University history professor Kenneth W. Stein, a critic of Carter's book. In some ways the interview proves the validity of Carter's stated goal - encouraging debate on Israel's land confiscation and human rights atrocities against the Palestinians. Stein is unable to refute the allegations made by Carter against the Israeli government, and when asked about the use of the term apartheid, he is reduced to claiming that just because Israeli policy is in every respect like apartheid it shouldn't be called that (he says just because it looks, walks, quacks and smells like a duck doesn't make it a duck!)

Inskeep instead continues quibbling about Carter's meeting with Assad of Syria in the 1980s and whether his account of it makes the Israelis appear less flexible than the Syrians (as if this is the heart of the book's argument). Stein's weak argument against the book is that it doesn't blame Palestinians enough for corrupt Palestinian leadership and for terrorist acts against Israel, however, he in no way can counter the assertion that Israel is a gross abuser of Palestinian rights and has illegally seized and annexed Palestinian land. In fact he admits that it is true.

What I find significant in this report how blandly it is mentioned that Stein has published a rebuttal to Carter's book in the Middle East Quarterly (and they provide this link to the article). This deserves far more attention. What NPR doesn't tell us is the nasty little organization of extremist Likudnik neocons that runs the Middle East Quarterly - The Middle East Forum. The director of this bunch of smear artists and bigots is the vitriolic Daniel Pipes. That a history professor would want his "work" to appear in such a disreputable forum is indicative of the lack of integrity of his attack on Carter's book - and NPR's neglect in identifying the bias of the Middle East Forum indicates where their sympathies lie.

Hoisted by His Own Petard

Steve Inskeep arriving at the airport in far away Tehran had a big insight:

"I regretted abandoning them [three books about Iran] as soon as my turn came in line, because my bags weren't searched after all. That's the genius of certain governments: They get you to censor yourself."

Oh my God! Imagine censoring yourself so as not to offend those in power!

• Media Bloodhound notes that NPR's own On the Media bemoaned the utter lack of coverage regarding the Russell Tice bombshell revelation that journalists have been the targets of NSA spying. Gladstone might want to start her critique right at home!
• This past Sunday night BBC radio was constantly headlining Amnesty International's denunciation of Hamas and Israeli war crimes and its stunning call for an arms embargo against Israel. Here's NPR's coverage of this story.
• On Monday Binyam Mohamed, victim of extraordinary rendition and horrendous torture at the hands of the US and friends, was released back to the UK. And NPR's coverage?