New York Times-Style Journalism
Stephen Lendman | February 2, 2012
Like other major media scoundrels, New York Times writers, op-ed commentators and editorials fail the test. They’re biased, shameless and irresponsible, especially on issues of war and peace.
Times tradition dates from 1896 when Ochs-Sulzberger family members took control. Thereafter, it’s played the lead print role distorting, censoring, and suppressing truth and full disclosure.
Its shameful record includes:
- supporting wealth and power interests;
- backing corporate interests against popular ones mattering most;
- cheerleading imperial wars;
- ducking major issues like government and corporate crimes, sham elections, America’s duopoly power, an unprecedented wealth gap, and lost civil liberties and social benefits; and
- backing regime change in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Iran and Syria, mindless of international laws prohibiting it.
The record of the “newspaper of record” produces misinformation masquerading as real news, information and opinion. Its slogan “All The News That’s Fit to Print” fails on truth and full disclosure.
Its war against Iran is longstanding. Against Syria, it’s more recent. It promotes regime change in both countries. On January 31, Times writer Rick Gladstone attacked them in his article headlined, “As Syria Wobbles Under Pressure, Iran Feels the Weight of an Alliance,” saying:
Pro-Western anti-Assad insurgents increased “pressure on (him) to step down….” As a result, “his main Middle East supporter, also finds itself under siege, undermining a once-powerful partnership and longtime American foe.”
If Assad falls, “Tehran would lose its conduit for providing military, financial, and logistical support to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.” Both Israeli opposition groups “considered terrorist organizations by Washington, have vast arsenals of rockets and other weapons.”
No evidence corroborates anti-Iran/Syria/Hezbollah/Hamas accusations. Ignored are sovereign country rights, international law, Lebanon’s legitimate Hezbollah-led government, and Hamas’ democratically elected Palestine one.
Neither espouses terrorism. Nor do Iran and Syria. In contrast, Washington and Israel pose grave terror threats. Both are nuclear armed and dangerous. They threaten preemptive strikes against invented threats. Neither has real ones.
Not according to Times-think. It stokes fear to promote conflict and regime change lawlessly.
Numerous articles and opinion pieces promote Washington’s imperial agenda. In 2011, Libya was target one. Before that Afghanistan and Iraq. Now it’s Iran and Syria.
On January 31, Times writer Neil MacFarquhar headlined, “At UN, Pressure Is on Russia for Refusal to Condemn Syria,” saying:
Both sides “skirmished over a draft Security Council resolution proposed by Morocco (serving Washington) that calls for (Assad) to leave power as the first step of a transition toward democracy.”
Ignored were international law issues. Among others, the 1933 Montevideo Convention explicitly prohibits interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. So does the UN Charter.
Nations doing so are criminally culpable. None are more guilty than Washington, Israel, and rogue NATO partners. In contrast, Iran and Syria threaten no one.
Yet MacFarquhar blamed Russia for blocking Security Council actions. In fact, Moscow’s resolute against Washington replicating its Libya model. Various language revisions left considerable wiggle room for war.
Russia’s determined to prevent it. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said “Russia will not support anything that is imposed on Syria.” He firmly opposes anti-Assad resolutions. He called replicating “another Libya” disastrous. China’s view is similar. Both have Security Council veto power. Lavrov promised to use it.
He and others also assailed Syria’s externally generated insurgency. Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr-al Thani spuriously blamed Assad’s “fail(ure) to make any serious effort to cooperate with us.”
The Arab League’s Syrian Observers Report contradicts al Thani. Mission head General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi praised Assad’s cooperation. He also said:
“Regrettably, some observers thought that their visit to Syria was for pleasure. In some instances, experts who were nominated were not qualified for the job, did not have prior experience, and were not able to (fulfill their) responsibility.”
On January 18, Arab League Secretary-General General Nabil Elaraby suspended their mission. He said violence undermined it, dismissing the competence issue al-Dabi raised and reports about about Assad’s cooperation.
He also ignored a “confidential account of the League’s mission.” Turtle Bay obtained it. It shows monitors lacked proper staff and equipment. As a result, their mission was undermined from inception.
On January 30, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov insisted that Security Council members are briefed on its findings. Washington and rogue allies dismissed them out of hand. They call Arab League efforts a failure, saying their report adds nothing new.
One conclusion recommends Arab governments continue mediating for peaceful conflict resolution. Al-Dabi wrote:
“The mission… sensed the acute stress, injustice and oppression endured (by) Syrian citizens. Yet they are convinced that the Syrian crisis must be resolved peacefully, in the Arab context, and not internationalized so that they can live in peace securely, and achieve the desired reforms and changes.”
He also sharply criticized the ineptness and indifference of mission observers. He recommended reinforcing them with 100 more members, “preferabl(y) young with military background(s), 30 armored vehicles, protective vests, vehicle mounted cameras, and night vision binoculars.”
In addition, he said: “It should be stressed (that) performance shortcomings will be addressed and remedied with further practice and guidance, God Willing.”
He stressed no mission mandate for addressing a widening conflict, pitting heavily armed insurgents against Assad’s government. In Homs and Daraa, for example, opposition elements used “thermal bombs and anti-armor missiles” supplied by foreign governments.
Al-Dabi said “The mission was witness to acts of violence against government forces and citizens leading to death and injury of many. A case in point was the attack against a civilian bus which killed eight persons and injured others, including women and children.”
Foreign insurgents were responsible. The Times and other Western media scoundrels quoted monitor Anwar Walek’s reason for quitting the team. He called the mission a “farce,” saying:
“What I saw was a humanitarian disaster. The regime is not just committing one war crime, but a series of crimes against its people. The snipers are everywhere shooting at civilians. People are being kidnapped. Prisoners are being tortured and none were released.”
In response, al-Dabi said “Malek did not leave the hotel for six days and did not go out with the rest of the team into the field giving the excuse that he was sick.”
In other words, he saw nothing and lied. Media scoundrels regurgitated it. It’s standard practice, supporting lawless US imperialism against nonbelligerent countries.
Washington and rogue partners accused Assad of manipulating the monitoring mission to gain time to crush armed insurgents. Al-Dabi disagreed, saying their mission’s vital to Syria’s stability, adding:
“Any termination of the work of the mission after this short term will undermine the positive results – even if incomplete – that have been achieved so far. This may result in complete chaos on the ground (if) parties are neither qualified nor ready for the political process which aims at resolving the Syrian crisis.”
He, Assad, and most Syrians want peaceful resolution. Washington, rogue allies, and major media scoundrels promote war and regime change.
Civilians, of course, always suffer most and have grievously since early 2011. Washington and complicit allies share blame.
Assad’s unfairly condemned for their crimes. Don’t expect NYT writers, op-ed commentaries and editorials to explain. Truth and full disclosure’s not their long suit.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site.
Related articles
- Battle Over Possible UN Resolution on Syria Intensifies – New York Times (nytimes.com)
- Arab Observer Chief Satisfied: “Allegations against Syria Mission Untrue” (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- The Arab League Quits Just When It Is Most Needed in Syria (reason.com)
Arab Observer Chief Satisfied: “Allegations against Syria Mission Untrue”
Al-Manar | February 2, 2012
The head of Syria Arab observer delegation voiced satisfaction with the monitors’ effort on Thursday, stressing there was a campaign against the mission.
“I swear by God, I am fully satisfied with myself and with all those on the mission in Syria,” Sudanese General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi told reporters on a brief return to his homeland.
“There is a campaign against the mission and against the head of the mission and there are some allegations against it, but all of this is untrue,” Dabi said, adding critics did not understand the observers’ role.
The 165 monitors were deployed in December after Syria agreed to an Arab League plan for a halt to the violence, for prisoners to be freed, tanks withdrawn from towns and on the free movement of observers and foreign media.
On Saturday, the Arab League said it was suspending its mission because of an “upsurge in violence”.
Earlier last week the six Gulf Arab states announced they would withdraw their observers because “the bloodshed and killings there continue (and after) the Syrian regime did not comply with implementing the Arab League decisions.” Dabi called it “war” and said he had seen “some evidence of torture”.
He declined comment on talks at the United Nations, which moved closer to agreement on action to halt the regime’s crackdown.
Arab ministers will meet February 11 to review the suspended observer mission to Syria.
Related articles
- Arab League Ministers Assess Syria Mission in Cairo Meet (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Russia Slams Halt of Arab Observer Mission in Syria (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Arab League Observers Hold Talks in Homs (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Discord among Arab monitors as Russia warns of Syria intervention (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Iran: This Is What Propaganda Looks Like
By Peter Hart | FAIR | February 1, 2012
Alarmist corporate media coverage of the “threat” from Iran is everywhere, thanks to a Senate appearance yesterday by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
But Clapper said very little in his remarks that would justify the propagandistic coverage we’re seeing. His main point was that Iran could launch attacks if it felt threatened. It is hard to see how this is particularly surprising. Clapper pointed to the alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington D.C. as evidence that Iran seems more eager to assert itself, perhaps even inside the United States. But there were many people who raised serious questions about that rather implausible scenario (which involved hiring a Mexican drug gang to carry out the assassination).
As the Wall Street Journal reported (one of the few corporate outlets I saw pushing back against the official alarmism):
There is still widespread doubt that an alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador was authorized at the highest levels in Tehran, said Karim Sadjadpour, a Middle East analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“If that’s the only data point, I think it’s a stretch to conclude that the regime is now looking to commit acts of terror on U.S. soil,” he said.
That kind of caution was in short supply on the network newscasts. NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams (1/31/12) announced:
Iran’s threat. Not just the nuclear program. Tonight, U.S. intelligence warns Iran may be prepared to strike on American soil.
Williams called Clapper’s testimony a “chilling new assessment about the scope of the threat from Iran.” As correspondent Andrea Mitchell explained, “Experts warn that the U.S. is even more vulnerable than Israel if Iran retaliates or launches a pre-emptive bomb plot…. Soft U.S. targets like embassies throughout the Persian Gulf, and 90,000 American troops in Afghanistan, next door to Iran.”
It wasn’t until the end of Mitchell’s report that any notes of caution were sounded:
Still, intelligence officials told the Senate today they don’t think Iran has taken the final step, deciding to build a bomb. But Israel does think Iran has crossed that red line, and U.S. officials say if attacked, Iran would not hesitate to retaliate against both Israel and the U.S.
So Iran is a substantial threat, though then again it might not even be developing the weapons the U.S. and Israel claim are in the works. And really, the “threat” seems mostly that Iran might be ready to respond to an attack on its country–something virtually any country in the world would do.
But for sheer propaganda value, ABC World News‘ January 31 broadcast would be tough to top.
First, start with alarming graphic:
Then Pentagon correspondent Martha Raddatz announced, “The saber rattling from Iran has been constant.”
Match that with threatening B-roll footage from the enemy country. Weapons on display at a military parade, for instance:
Iran “may be more ready than ever to launch terror attacks in the United States,” Raddatz explained. Cue footage of apparently menacing soldiers:
Don’t forget to show the enemy county’s leader (or, rather, a close approximation) meeting with other Official Enemies. Like this:
And why not one more, while reminding viewers that such figures “have little love for the U.S.”:
It’s important to remember, amidst all this hoopla, that it is U.S. military officials and the president who have regularly threatened that “no options” are “off the table” in dealing with Iran. That is code for using nuclear weapons–and Barack Obama’s latest repetition of that apocalyptic threat got a standing ovation from Congress.
It is hard to argue honestly that the real escalation is coming from the Iranian side. But that’s what propaganda is for.
WASHINGTON’S IRAN DEBATE AND THE “SOFT SIDE” OF REGIME CHANGE
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett | Race for Iran | January 31st, 2012
We have long supported a comprehensive approach to U.S.-Iranian realignment as the only way to put U.S.-Iranian relations on a more productive trajectory. But we do not understand how anyone can think that the Islamic Republic of Iran—any more than the People’s Republic of China—would negotiate its internal political transformation with the United States.
Yet this is precisely what Trita Parsi argues in his new book, A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy With Iran, blending distorted treatments of both Iranian politics and Obama’s Iran policy into a deeply misleading and agenda-driven account. In the aftermath of the Islamic Republic’s 2009 presidential election (which Parsi assured us, and continues to assure his readers, was “fraudulent”), Parsi was one of the most publicly prominent voices calling on the Obama Administration to take a “tactical pause” from diplomacy (which had not yet commenced). He advocated for such a pause because, he told large numbers of television viewers and Op Ed readers, the Islamic Republic was on the verge of collapse.
Well, here we are, almost three years later. The Islamic Republic is still here. Parsi, for his part, has returned to advocating U.S. engagement with Iran—but only if the Islamic Republic’s internal politics and “human rights situation” are a central part of the agenda. And the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), the advocacy group headed by Parsi, tells us on its website that the goal of U.S. engagement should be “a world in which the United States and a democratic Iran”—no mention of the Islamic Republic—“enjoy peaceful, cooperative relations.”
Make no mistake: this is neoconservatism without guns, effectively indistinguishable from the position of Michael Ledeen, who parts from other neoconservatives to side with Parsi and NIAC in opposing military action against Iran, but is ideologically committed to regime change there.
In a war-fevered environment, a book like Parsi’s can make a difference. Recall, in this regard, the impact just a decade ago of Ken Pollack’s The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, which helped to legitimate Democratic support for George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq—and which was dead wrong, analytically and empirically, in all of its major arguments. To be sure, Parsi’s book is not written as a case for war against Iran, something that Parsi says he does not want. But, like Pollack, Parsi advances baseless evidence and agenda-driven analysis. And, in the same way that Pollack’s work helped pave the way for invading Iraq, Parsi’s book—by reinforcing conventional wisdom about Iranian politics and Obama’s Iran policy and counseling bad policy, raises the risk of another disastrous war in the Middle East.
Because Pollack, like Parsi, is not considered a neoconservative hawk, his book did not get the critical scrutiny it should have before the U.S. went to war. Although we like Trita Parsi personally, we are compelled to say what we think is so fundamentally wrong and dangerous about his book. Therefore, we have just published an extended review of A Single Roll of the Dice in Boston Review. Our essay, entitled “The Soft Side of Regime Change: Trita Parsi’s A Single Roll of the Dice”, is available online, by clicking here. We would encourage those interested in posting comments to also do so directly on the Boston Review site; there is a place to do so at the bottom of our article.
Related articles
- Iran’s Soft Power Strategy: Why Iran Does Not Want A Nuclear Weapon (disquietreservations.blogspot.com)
Pentagon Budgets and Fuzzy Math
By Peter Hart – FAIR – 01/27/2012
By the tone of some of the media coverage, you might have thought Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced a plan to slash military spending yesterday. On the front page of USA Today (1/27/12), under the headline “Panetta Backs Far Leaner Military,” readers learn in the first paragraph:
The Pentagon’s new plan to cut Defense spending means a reduction of 100,000 troops, the retiring of ships and planes and closing of bases–moves that the Defense secretary said would not compromise security.
The piece quotes critics of the cuts like Sen. Joe Lieberman and an analyst at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. And the article talks about the most commonly cited figure of $487 billion in cuts over 10 years. As economist Dean Baker writes about such coverage–“Military Budget Cuts: Denominator Please”–there is no way people can assess the significance of what sounds like a lot of money if they don’t know how much the Pentagon is planning to spend over the same 1o-year period–roughly $8 trillion.
The PBS NewsHour did little to clarify the issue. The broadcast began with Jeffrey Brown announcing, “The Pentagon today outlined almost half a trillion dollars in budget cuts that would shrink the size of the U.S. military by trimming ground forces, retiring ships and planes, and delaying some new weapons.” PBS aired clips from Republicans Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich denouncing the budget cuts, and then interviewed a Pentagon official.
Even coverage of the Pentagon’s new “austerity” that managed to include some helpful context didn’t make things very clear. “The Pentagon took the first major step toward shrinking its budget after a decade of war” was how a New York Times story by Elisabeth Bumiller (1/27/12) begins. In the fourth paragraph, readers found this:
Even though the Defense Department has been called on to find $259 billion in cuts in the next five years–and $487 billion over the decade–its base budget (not counting the costs of Afghanistan or other wars) will rise to $567 billion by 2017. But when adjusted for inflation, the increases are small enough that they will amount to a slight cut of 1.6 percent of the Pentagon’s base budget over the next five years.
So the “first major step” in cutting the military budget… isn’t really a cut?
A Washington Post piece by Craig Whitlock (1/27/12) had a more accurate lead–“The Pentagon budget will shrink slightly next year”– but later tries to make a 1 percent cut sound more significant: “While the difference may sound small, it represents a new era of austerity for the Defense Department.”
To make matters even more confusing, the Post points out later that
Although the defense budget will decline next year, to $525 billion from this year’s $531 billion, under Obama’s current projections it will inch upward in constant dollars between 1 percent and 2 percent annually thereafter.
Kudos to Nancy Yousef of McClatchy for writing a piece (1/26/12) that took a different tack. Under the headline “Defense Budget Plan Doesn’t Cut as Deeply as Pentagon Says,” Yousef led with this:
Pentagon officials on Thursday announced the outlines of what they called a pared-down defense budget, but their request would increase baseline spending beyond the projected end of the war in Afghanistan, even as they plan to reduce ground forces.
To Yousef, the Pentagon was ” employing a definition of the term ‘reduction’ that may be popular in Washington but is unconventional anywhere else.”
And activist/writer David Swanson pointed out that the first question at Panetta’s briefing got right at this question of whether the cuts are really cut. From the transcript:
Mr. Secretary, you talked a little bit on this, but over the next 10 years, do you see any other year than this year where the actual spending will go down from year to year? And just to the American public more broadly, how do you sort of explain what appears to be contradictory, as you talk about, repeatedly, this $500 billion in cuts in a Defense Department budget that is actually going to be increasing over time?
Panetta’s answer:
Yeah, I think the simplest way to say this is that under the budget that was submitted in the past, we had a projected growth level for the Defense budget. And that growth would’ve provided for almost $500 billion in growth. And we had obviously dedicated that to a number of plans and projects that we would have. That’s gotta be cut, and that’s a real cut in terms of what our projected growth would be.
See the new release from the Institute for Public Accuracy for more of the context largely missing from the Pentagon budget coverage.
Related articles
- Humans Lose, Robots Win in New Defense Budget (wired.com)
Lying About the Harlem Protest Against Obama
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford | January 24, 2012
Last Thursday’s demonstration, in New York’s Harlem, against President Obama’s foreign and domestic policies was a great success, with about 400 protesters massed across the street from an Obama fundraiser at the Apollo Theater. But, you would not know that from reading the Daily Kos or In These Times, or from watching Democracy Now! That’s because these outfits represent the left flank of Obama’s apologists and protectors, whose self-assigned job is to perpetuate the fantasy that the First Black President is not a servant of Wall Street and the Pentagon. These publications and programs are also in thrall to another fantasy: that they have some kind of entree or influence with the Obama administration, when in fact, this White House is an annex of finance capital.
Nellie Bailey, the veteran Harlem organizer and member of Occupy Harlem, has already set the record straight: that this was a Black-led demonstration called for by Occupy Harlem, which enlisted the support of the larger Occupy Movement, Stop Stop-and-Frisk, MoveOn, the Black Is Back Coalition, and other progressive organizations. The turnout was larger than even the organizers had hoped, and heavily Black and Latino. But Democracy Now!, whose politics has undergone a palpable turn to the right during Obama’s time in office, told its audience that only about 100 people protested, when in reality, the MoveOn section of the demonstration alone approached that number. In this sense, Democracy Now! is worse than the police at reporting demonstrations it doesn’t support.
Daily Kos, which often behaves like an arm of the administration, published the rantings of someone calling himself Brooklyn Bad Boy, who admits he isn’t a “fan of street protests” but goes ballistic over the effrontery of protesting Obama. He claims the demonstrators ignore the pro-banker policies of Republican candidates. But then, the Brooklyn Bad Boy doesn’t show up at too many demonstrations, by his own admission, so how would he know? No matter, his pro-Obama stance qualifies for space on Daily Kos.
Allison Kilkenny’s In These Times article was the most insidious example of a hit-piece. She offered no crowd estimate, but made reference to a “handful” of Occupy Wall Street activists, thus belittling the turnout. Much worse, Kilkenny highlighted the uninvited presence of a few Lyndon LaRouche supporters in order to tar the whole demonstration – as if Occupy Harlem can dictate who shows up on the street. Then Kilkenny – a white woman – argues that white people from Occupy Wall Street should have stayed away from Harlem, on the grounds that their presence did not take “into account the city’s tense race relations” and the fierce gentrification of the neighborhood – gentrification fueled by Wall Street bankers.
As Occupy Harlem’s Nellie Bailey writes, Kilkenny is talking like old school southern white racists, accusing whites in Occupy Wall Street of being “outside agitators.” Kilkenny doesn’t think Black progressives have the right to ask white and Latino progressives to attend Black-led demonstrations in Black neighborhoods. She wants a segregated Occupy Wall Street movement, in which Blacks that oppose Obama’s corporate policies would get no meaningful solidarity from whites in the movement. Or, maybe she’ll just say anything to avoid confronting the corporate president.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
Zionist fabrications, smears intensify ahead of Penn BDS conference
Does this look like “incitement” to you?
By Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada | January 24, 2012
In the run-up to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) conference at the University of Pennsylvania in early February, at which I will be spearking, the defamation and fabrication machines of anti-Palestinian groups have gone into over-drive.
In December, StandWithUS attempted to smear me as an “anti-Semite” with fabricated quotes.
And just yesterday, my colleague Ben White was subjected to prominent smears that he is an “anti-Semite” in the Israeli press. That in turn is part of an escalating campaign against human rights and equality champion Haneen Zoabi.
The latest smear against me comes in a column by Emily Schrader in The College Fix which slyly accuses me of “incitement to violence against Israelis.” Schrader is identified only as “a senior at the University of Southern California.” Here’s what Schrader writes:
Among the presenters scheduled to speak are Palestinian human rights attorney Noura Erakat, Jewish-American author Anna Baltzer, and the keynote speaker, co-founder of Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah. Abunimah in particular is highly controversial, having repeatedly condemned a two-state solution, and having gone on record with comments that sound a great deal like incitement to violence against Israelis.
In 2002 he told the Washington Post, “If Israel is going to maintain a military occupation over millions of people by nothing but brute force, then no power on earth is going to stop some of these occupied people responding in kind. The only way to end the violence is to end the occupation.”
It is assumed that by “occupied territories” Abunimah is referring to the land acquired by Israel in the 1967 war. But he ignores the fact that there were a remarkable number of terror attacks against the Jewish state prior to Israel’s acquisition of the “occupied” territories.
This quote is taken from the transcript of online chat I did with Washington Post readers on 8 May 2002, at the height of the second Intifada. It makes me chuckle to think that the writer had to go back ten years to find a quote that she could distort into a smear. Seriously Emily, 2002?
Here’s the first exchange in the transcript:
Minneapolis, Minn.: Don’t suicide bombers prevent any prospect peace process from being successful?
Islam forbids suicide – then why do suicide bombers commit this act in the name of religion?
Ali Abunimah: I think that all violence against innocent civilians diminishes the prospects of peace, and this is certainly true of suicide bombings like the one we just saw. Such bombings are horrific and need to stop. What we need to add however is that most of the violence directed against innocent civilians has come from Israel. While several hundred innocent Israelis have been killed by Palestinians, five times as many innocent Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces. Israel says that this is merely an “accident” and that it is acting in self-defense. Every human rights group that has examined Israel’s actions, however, has found very deliberate targeting of civilians, wanton and deliberate use of force, and other grave abuses, such as torture. We will never know the full truth of what happened in Jenin because Israel blocked the UN Security Council-mandated inquiry, but both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch found evidence of Israeli war crimes. All of this Israeli violence which is designed to maintain Israel’s military occupation of 3.5 million Palestinians is what is provoking and producing the violence. As long as Israeli chooses violence as its only way of addressing the Palestinians, then there will always be some Palestinians who choose violence in response. The only way to break this devastating cycle is a political process that quickly ends Israel’s occupation and gives the Palestinians their freedom.
Does that sound like “incitement” to you? If you read through the rest of the transcript let me know if you find anything else that fits the description.
Who is behind this?
Schrader it turns out, learns from the best. Here she endorses the “Israel Advocacy Mission” of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a group founded and run by the fanatically Islamophobic Pastor John Hagee.
Oh, and Schrader apparently works for notorious quote fabricators StandWithUs.
Why do they do it?
It has become more and more clear that as the message is getting out that BDS is a tactic to help bring about universal human rights, it is very difficult for anti-Palestinian groups to defame us using the standard stereotypes of violent, angry terrorists that Israel has relied on for so long.
So increasingly pro-Israel advocates must resort to outright fabrications and laughable distortions in the hope that if a lie is repeated enough it will become the truth.
But the amateurish way these lies and fabrications are done and the speed with which they are exposed only discredits their authors and strengthens us.
Related articles
- Right-wing attack group caught fabricating quotes in effort to smear critics of Israel (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Israeli Consul General wants to rescue US town from ‘foreign’ influence (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Olympia Food Co-op fights back against Israel-backed anti-boycott lawsuit (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- In blow to Israel, French BDS activists acquitted of crime in calling for boycott (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Featured Video
From Anthrax to Iraq
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Review
New paperback: Butchered by “Healthcare”
Lies are Unbekoming | October 20, 2026
Butchered by “Healthcare” is Robert Yoho’s plain-spoken account of how American medicine stopped being a profession and became an industry. 341 pages. Over a thousand references. Thirty-eight chapters.
“Screening Tests Are Useless”, on tests that find diseases that would never have hurt you. “The FDA Protects the Big Drug Companies”, on an agency funded by the companies it regulates. “The Journals’ Sins Are the Editors’ Sins”, on ghostwritten studies and captured peer review. “Opioids and ‘Pain Management’”, on how a generation was prescribed its way into addiction. “Prozac and Relatives” and “Antipsychotics Are Disastrous”, on what psychiatry does to adults and children. “Surgery: Money Before Patients”. “Failed Cancer Treatments”. “Futile CPR and Overprescribing”. “Billing Scams & Specialty Warfare”. “Hospitals Are Sharks”. Each with a Patient Tips section at the end on how to survive it.
If you have ever walked out of a doctor’s office with a prescription you didn’t ask for, or watched a parent put through a treatment that made them worse, this is the book you want on your shelf before the next appointment. … Full review
Butchered by “Healthcare” is available on Lulu now.
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Iraq shuts key border crossing with Iran under US pressure: Report
- Undersea Internet cables could be targeted in retaliation for attacks on Iran: IRGC deputy chief
- EU sending ‘biased’ observers to interfere in Serbian election – president
- White House envoy declares kinetic action against Yemen ‘fruitless’
- Ukraine deployed thousands of microdrones in Iraqi Kurdistan: Tasnim
- Iran calls for emergency UNSC meeting over Trump’s ‘brazen’ bomb talk, Israeli threats
- Iranian sources reveal details of Russia-China Hormuz proposal
- Plan for more US-Israel integration puts our military tech at risk
- Another Round Against Iran Will Break What Is Left of the Gulf
- SVR Report on Ukraine’s Mexican Drug Gang Links Could Pressure Zelensky, Won’t Change US Policy
- If Americans Knew
- Christiane Amanpour exits CNN with a legacy shaped by the debate over Israel
- Israel’s war on Iran is the final move in a decades-old strategy
- Israel Denies Entry to French Journalist, U.S. Researcher Amid Rise in Entry Denials
- Gaza’s hospitals are running out of life-saving fuel – Daily Update
- Mysterious bot accounts reportedly spread fake ‘man on the street’ videos for Michigan Senate candidate
- Israeli Defense Minister Katz Says Over 60 Lebanon Villages Have Been Destroyed
- Why Is Israel Running TV Ads in Iowa Ahead of the Midterms?
- Hind Rajab’s Alleged Killer Is in the United States. HRF Demands His Arrest.
- US Officials Face Fresh Pressure After Another American ‘Brutalized’ by Israeli Settlers in West Bank
- Israel-Backed Palestinian Militias Terrorize Displaced Families in Gaza
- No Tricks Zone
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
