Reuters Biased Mideast Coverage

From James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal:

"Jewish Settlers Rampage Through West Bank Village," reads the Reuters headline, but the story is rather less sensationalistic in describing what provoked the riot:

Dozens of Israelis from a Jewish settlement where a Palestinian killed a youth last week rampaged on Wednesday through a West Bank Arab village, smashing car windows and damaging homes, residents and medics said.

"Killed a youth"? You have to read all the way down to the eighth paragraph to get a more vivid description:

Last Thursday, a Palestinian wielding an axe killed a 13-year-old youngster and wounded a boy, aged seven, in Bat Ayin. The attacker, who was not identified, fled.

We wondered how Reuters covered that incident at the time, so we dug up this dispatch, whose headline is "Palestinians Kill Israeli in West Bank Settlement: Police"--a good deal more anodyne than the "rampage" one:

A Palestinian with an axe and a knife killed a 13-year-old Israeli boy and wounded a seven-year-old boy in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Thursday, two days after a right-wing government took power.

That would be a right-wing government in Israel. Apparently in Reuterville, taking an ax to the neighbor boys is a perfectly natural thing to do when they elect a right-wing government.

Anti-Semitism On Parade

From Abe Greenwald in Commentary:

Today’s Washington Post runs a Pat Oliphant cartoon (above) portraying the state of Israel as a headless jackbooted soldier, marching with sword thrust forward, and pushing a Star of David whose shark’s mouth is gaining on a Gazan mother and child.
To call the Washington Post’s decision to run unadulterated Nazi-inspired anti-Semitism a crisis of judgment is to relegate the incident to a headline-grabbing class of occasional sensitivity lapses. To speak of apologies, hurt feelings, and free speech is to invite “debate” where there is no moral ambiguity. To contextualize by adducing Oliphant’s previous forays into sensation is to miss the point entirely. The cartoon can only be understood as heralding a new popular acceptance of Jew-hatred: the capstone of all that talk about anti-Semitism being “on the rise around the world.”
The acceptance of anti-Semitism moves quickly, in tandem with the ambitions of anti-Semites. Today in America, this means a new forum where a number of hate-filled isolationists can collude with self-righteous liberals to erase entirely the line between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitic fervor. Until recently, suspect critics of Israel made an effort (however unconvincing) to draw distinctions between their objections to Israeli policy and rank Jew-hatred. The cartoon in today’s Washington Post aspires to unify the two phenomena for all to see

Iran Goes Nuclear

From Herb Keinon in The Jerusalem Post:
In a chilling indication that Iran's arms program is advancing steadily, Israel acknowledged for the first time that Teheran had mastered the technology to make a nuclear bomb on the same day that the Iranians announced they had successfully tested a new air-to-surface missile.
Iran has "crossed the technological threshold," and its attainment of nuclear military capability is now a matter of "incorporating the goal of producing an atomic bomb into its strategy," OC Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin told the cabinet on Sunday.
"Iran is continuing to amass hundreds of kilograms of low-enriched uranium, and it hopes to exploit the dialogue with the West and Washington to advance toward the production of an atomic bomb," he said.
Yadlin said the Islamic republic hoped to use the expected dialogue with the Obama administration to buy time to procure the amount of high-enriched uranium needed to build a bomb.
"Iran's plan for the continuation of its nuclear program while simultaneously holding talks with the new administration in Washington is being received with caution in the Middle East," the intelligence chief said. "The moderates are worried that this approach will come at their expense and will be used by the radical axis to continue to carry out terror activities and rearm. In contrast, those in the radical axis are saying that despite the change in the Americans' stance, they will continue to act against them."
Yadlin's assessment brought him into line with a similar assessment made last week by Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said Teheran had enough fissile material to build a bomb now.

If Jewish Voters Knew

From Jennifer Rubin in Commentary:

Had the public (and specifically Jewish voters, who voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama) known that Obama would appoint the Saudi-funded, Israel-bashing, analytically-disabled Chas Freeman (pictured) to a key national security position, I wonder if he would have cleared the bar of acceptability for commander-in-chief. But the appointment has indeed occurred. (And would human rights activists have thought twice about electing a president who picked some who declared that the Chinese’s biggest mistake with regard to the Tienanmen Square massacre was “the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud”?)
And as for those friends of Israel on the left who looked Obama in the eye and got a sense of his soul, do they join in on Marty Pertez’s mea culpa? Well, it does appear that Obama appointed someone "who is quintessentially an insult to the patriotism of some [sic] many of his supporters.” Moreover, we have placed someone in a key national security role whose analysis was purchased by the House of Saud and whose contribution to Middle East discourse includes such gems as: “For its part, Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians; it strives instead to pacify them. Palestinian retaliation against this policy is as likely to be directed against Israel’s American backers as against Israel itself.” (Remarks to the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs, May 24, 2007)
Some enterprising White House reporter might start asking whether the president had any qualms about Freeman’s views and why his financial relationship with a foreign power shouldn’t raise grave concerns about Freeman’s independence and, in turn, the president’s judgment in selecting him.

Jewish Leaders Blast Hillary

From Marcia Kramer at CBS News:
In a swift about face from her views as New York's senator, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now hammering Israel over its treatment of Palestinians in Gaza. As first lady, Clinton raised eyebrows when she kissed Suha Arafat.
Since she was then seeking a Senate seat the resulting brouhaha caused her to "re-think" her positions. "I'm a very strong supporter of Israel," Clinton said on Feb. 17.
On Thursday, as secretary of state she had yet another about face in the form of angry messages demanding Israel speed up aid to Gaza. Jewish leaders are furious. "I am very surprised, frankly, at this statement from the United States government and from the secretary of state," New York Daily News publisher Mortimer Zuckerman said.
"I liked her a lot more as a senator from New York," Assemblyman Dov Hikind, D-Brooklyn, said. "Now, I wonder as I used to wonder who the real Hillary Clinton is."
Clinton's decision to hammer Israel comes as the Clintons and President Barack Obama are planning to give the Palestinians $900 million toward the rebuilding of Gaza in the wake of the Israeli offensive that was sparked by Hamas rocket fire.
"We are working across the government to see what our approach will be," Clinton said.
"I don't believe that we should be in a position at this point to do anything to strengthen Hamas," Zuckerman said. "We surely know what Hamas stands for as I say they are the forward battalions of Iran."
For some, Clinton's change of position is upsetting. "I feel it's unfortunate that they don't continue the policy of the Bush administration, which was much more pro-Israel," said Akiva Homnick of Jerusalem. "I happen to have a lot of family who live in Israel and I feel, personally, when you are dealing with people who are very strong against you, you have to stand up to them," said Tami Davudoff of Kew Gardens. "Hillary had Mrs. Arafat here and she invited Mrs. Arafat for lunch when she was the first lady," added Babak Chafe of Great Neck. "She is pro-Palestinian 100 percent, really. Of course, we always knew it."
"The easy way to make a peace agreement is to pressure Israel because you can't pressure the Arabs," said Solomon Loewi of Monsey, N.Y.
All this could lead to a chilly reception when Mrs. Clinton arrives in the Middle East next week. The new U.S. envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, arrived in Israel on Thursday with a mission to inject new life into peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israel: It's Bibi!

From David Horovitz in the Jerusalem Post:
For all the confusion prompted by the near parity of Kadima and the Likud in Tuesday's election, and even before the final adjustments necessitated by Thursday's tally of soldiers' votes and the complex surplus-vote distribution system, one of the most critical pieces of arithmetic is straightforward.
And it shows that notwithstanding Kadima's victory claims, and its leader Tzipi Livni's insistence that the people of Israel have given her their backing, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu can reasonably hope to build a narrow coalition majority with "natural" allies, and she cannot.
This puts Netanyahu firmly in the driver's seat on the road to becoming prime minister. And it places Livni - though she led her party to far greater success than some of its own optimists had anticipated and thus cemented her leadership hold - in the back seat. He can probably block her; she probably can't block him.