The New Yorker On The Raid In Abbottabad
Moon of Alabama | August 2, 2011
Inside a New Yorker piece which tells the official “inside” story of the Bin Laden raid in Abbottabad the U.S. government wants you to know.
There is at least one quite unbelievable detail in it. The SEALs that went in had a translator with them who’s role was to keep locals off during the raid.
A Pakistani-American translator, whom I will call Ahmed, and a dog named Cairo—a Belgian Malinois—were also aboard.
[…]
Not everyone on the team was accustomed to helicopter assaults. Ahmed had been pulled from a desk job for the mission and had never descended a fast rope. He quickly learned the technique.
[…]
As long as everything was cordial, Ahmed would hold curious neighbors at bay.
[…]
Outside the compound’s walls, Ahmed, the translator, patrolled the dirt road in front of bin Laden’s house, as if he were a plainclothes Pakistani police officer. He looked the part, wearing a shalwar kameez atop a flak jacket.
[…]
Eventually, a few curious Pakistanis approached to inquire about the commotion on the other side of the wall. “Go back to your houses,” Ahmed said, in Pashto, as Cairo stood watch. “There is a security operation under way.” The locals went home, none of them suspecting that they had talked to an American. When journalists descended on Bilal Town in the coming days, one resident told a reporter, “I saw soldiers emerging from the helicopters and advancing toward the house. Some of them instructed us in chaste Pashto to turn off the lights and stay inside.”
After 10 years of continuous fighting in Afghanistan the Special Forces do not have an operational Pashto speaker but have to draft a desk jokey? And why was the translator a “chaste Pashto” speaker? The common languages in Pakistan, the lingua franca, are Urdu and English and then there is this fact:
According to the 1998 Census of the 881,000 who resided in the Abbottabad District, Hindko was spoken by 94.26% of the population, followed by Potohari at 2.30%, Pashto at 2.22% and Urdu at 1.05%. Although the first language of most people in the district is Hindko, Urdu is understood and spoken fluently by majority of the residents and commonly used in markets, offices and formal functions. English is widely used in business and education.
If that account in the New Yorker is true it was a major planning mistake and screw up to send a Pashto speaker with the special forces instead of an Urdu speaker. For an important operation planned over months this sounds unbelievable.
There is also this curious wording in New Yorker piece:
Back in Abbottabad, residents of Bilal Town and dozens of journalists converged on bin Laden’s compound, and the morning light clarified some of the confusion from the previous night. Black soot from the detonated Black Hawk charred the wall of the animal pen. Part of the tail hung over the wall. It was clear that a military raid had taken place there. “I’m glad no one was hurt in the crash, but, on the other hand, I’m sort of glad we left the helicopter there,” the special-operations officer said. “It quiets the conspiracy mongers out there and instantly lends credibility. You believe everything else instantly, because there’s a helicopter sitting there.”
Hmm.
Anti-Muslim law enforcement trainer cited by Norway killer rakes in U.S. taxpayer cash
By Alex Kane | July 26, 2011
The U.S. government has strongly denounced the recent massacre by a right-wing extremist in Norway, which killed at least 76 people. But at the same time, sectors of the U.S. government have paid an anti-Muslim activist who helped fuel Anders Behring Breivik’s twisted ideology. Breivik has admitted to being behind the massacre in Norway.
The American Prospect’s Adam Serwer writes:
Walid Shoebat, a “terrorism expert” with a dubious background who was paid by the U.S. government to train law enforcement in counterterrorism, is frequently cited in the manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, the alleged right-wing terrorist who is accused of killing more than 90 people in Oslo last week. Brevik cites Shoebat more than 15 times.
Brevik cites Shoebat to support his arguments that immigration from Muslim countries threatens the West. “This is why the face of Islamic fundamentalism in the West has a façade that Islam is a peaceful religion,” Brevik cites Shoebat as saying, “Because they are waiting to have more Islamic immigrants, they are waiting to increase in number, waiting to increase their political power.”
As I reported here, Shoebat, the subject of a recent CNN report that debunks his purported life story as a former Palestinian terrorist, rakes in U.S. taxpayer cash.
Two months ago, Shoebat delivered a keynote address to law enforcement officers attending a South Dakota conference on homeland security. Shoebat was paid $5,000 for the appearance by the South Dakota Office of Homeland Security–the money coming a federal grant administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
At a similar counter-terrorism event held last year in Las Vegas, Shoebat reportedly told the audience that the way to solve the threat of Islamic extremism was to “kill them…including the children.”
Shoebat is one of many anti-Muslim activists from the United States cited in Breivik’s online manifesto. It’s a disturbing reality that Shoebat’s views on Islam are being funded with federal grants and listened to by law enforcement agencies in the U.S. The revelation that Breivik’s manifesto is laced with citations of Shoebat should be a wake-up call to the U.S. government that Shoebat, and others like him, have no place training law enforcement officers, and should certainly not be taking money from U.S. taxpayers.
Afghanistan: ISAF kills lady doctor along with two relatives
By Mirwais Himat | PAN | July 23, 2011
GHAZNI CITY: NATO-led troops killed a lady doctor along with two family members in the Syedabad district of central Wardak province, the Ghazni Civil Hospital director alleged on Saturday.
Dr. Ismayee Ibrahimzai told Pajhwok Afghan News that Dr. Aqila Hekmat, in charge of the maternity ward, her 18-year-old son and nephew were killed late on Friday, when ISAF soldiers fired at their vehicle.
The doctor’s husband was injured in the shooting near the Sheikhabad area on the Kabul-Kandahar highway, Ibrahimzai said, adding the incident happened after an ISAF convoy struck a roadside bomb.
Aqila Hekmat’s vehicle came under fire from ISAF while moving from the main road to a subway. Ibrahimzai said Public Health Directorate staff and Ghazni-based doctors, saddened by her death, had urged an investigation into the incident.
Col. Zarawar Zahid, Ghazni police chief, denounced the incident as shocking, saying they would jointly investigate the murder with Maidan Wardak officials.
Shahidullah Shahid, the governor’s spokesman, also condemned the killing of Dr. Hekmat and her relatives. He quoted unnamed ISAF officials as saying that they came under fire from the Taliban after their vehicle struck the roadside bomb.
Aqila was killed in the exchange of fire, the spokesman said, adding that it was not yet clear who had killed the lady doctor.
But a statement from the NATO-led force said the incident caused no civilian casualties. An ISAF combat outpost observed a car moving in its direction and the soldiers signalled it to stop.
“When it continued travelling towards the combat outpost, the gunner fired one bullet into the engine block. The vehicle stopped and the incident resulted in one civilian wounded, who was immediately treated at ISAF medical facilities.”
A member of the family, Syed Abdullah Walizai, said the incident occurred in the Zirni area of Shneez Valley. ISAF forces started indiscriminate fire on passengers after the explosion, killing three of a family and wounding two others, he claimed.
The threshold for a terrorism expert must be very low
By Benjamin Doherty – The Electronic Intifada – 07/23/2011
Immediately after news of the bombing of government buildings in Norway’s capital Oslo, the Internet buzzed with speculation about who might have done it and why. Most speculation focused on so-called Islamist militancy and Muslims. The urge to speculate after grave events is understandable, but the focus of speculation, its amplification through social media, its legitimization in mainstream media, and the privilege granted to so-called experts is a common pattern…
From the “experts” to The New York Times
The New York Times originally reported:
A terror group, Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami, or the Helpers of the Global Jihad, issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, according to Will McCants, a terrorism analyst at C.N.A., a research institute that studies terrorism.
In later editions, the story was revised to read:
Initial reports focused on the possibility of Islamic militants, in particular Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami, or Helpers of the Global Jihad, cited by some analysts as claiming responsibility for the attacks. American officials said the group was previously unknown and might not even exist.
The source is Will McCants, adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University. On his website he describes himself as formerly “Senior Adviser for Countering Violent Extremism at the U.S. Department of State, program manager of the Minerva Initiative at the Department of Defense, and fellow at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center.” This morning, he posted “Alleged Claim for Oslo Attacks” on his blog Jihadica:
This was posted by Abu Sulayman al-Nasir to the Arabic jihadi forum, Shmukh, around 10:30am EST (thread 118187). Shmukh is the main forum for Arabic-speaking jihadis who support al-Qaeda. Since the thread is now inaccessible (either locked or taken down), I am posting it here. I don’t have time at the moment to translate the whole thing but I translated the most important bits on twitter.
The Shmukh [no kidding] web site is not accessible to just anyone, so he is the primary source for this claim. McCants stated from the beginning that the claim had been removed or hidden, and on Twitter he even cast doubt on whether it was a claim of responsibility at all.
@will_mccants
Will McCants This is not necessarily a claim of responsibility. Could just be forum user blowing hot air. forum members also confused abt who this guy is
Jul 22 via webFavoriteRetweetReply
Will McCants For those asking, the “claim” from the Helpers of the Global Jihad was posted to Shmukh, the most elite jihadi forum (it’s in Arabic)
Jul 22 via webFavoriteRetweetReply
Will McCants @leialya it is a password protected forum. you won’t be able to access it without password. www.shamikh1.info
Jul 22 via webFavoriteRetweetReply
McCants later reported that the claim of responsibility was retracted by the author “Abu Sulayman al-Nasir.” Furthermore, according to McCants, the moderator of this forum declared that speculation about the attack would be prohibited because the contents of the forum were appearing in mainstream media. It does seem more than a little bit odd that genuine “jihadis” would post on a closed forum that a former US official and “counterterrorism expert” openly writes about infiltrating.
It’s too bad McCants didn’t exercise the caution and restraint that he says the forum moderator did.
All of this comes only from Will McCants. In his original post, he named the source and identified the organization (in Arabic) but provided no context. Did he know who the author Abu Sulayman al-Nasir was? Had he heard of this group Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami before? These are the kinds of answers a “terrorism expert” should provide.
How media amplified a false claim
The media also failed. They reported on the claims McCants disseminated because his position and perceived expertise gave these claims credibility. Would The New York Times have required multiple sources and independent confirmation of the existence of the posting and its contents if it had not come from someone with McCants’ supposedly solid credentials?
For hours after McCants posted the update that the claim of responsibility was retracted, BBC, the New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post were still promoting information originally sourced from him. The news was carried around the world and became the main story line in much of the initial coverage.
The threshold for a terrorism expert must be very low…
Speculation hurts real people
A crucial absence in everyone’s concept of “terrorism expertise” is insight into the functioning of this knowledge in a sensationalistic, reckless media and political environment where Islamophobia is the norm. Even the Christian President of the United States is routinely suspected of being Muslim as if it were a crime, and accused of sympathy with Islamist “radicals” and “terrorists.”
Disseminating false, unverifiable information should be a blemish on McCants’ credibility, but what is more likely is that his failure will harm other communities elsewhere before it harms his career.
As the scale of the catastrophe to strike Norway was revealed, we also learned that Anders Behring Breivik, the only suspect to be arrested in the attack, had a history of disseminating anti-Muslim and xenophobic ideas on the Internet, and cited approvingly none other than Daniel Pipes, a notorious Islamophobe, Bush administration appointee to the United States Institute of Peace and self-described “terrorism expert.”
Anonymous Soldiers as Medical Experts? Only when the NYT covers Israel killing a Palestinian
By Alex Kane | Extra! | April 2011
This article was originally published in the April 2011 issue of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s Extra! magazine. It was only recently put online.
U.S. media coverage of the death of Jawaher Abu Rahmah reflected how the corporate press routinely covers high-profile civilian deaths caused by Israel. The Israeli government, it seems, can count on U.S. media to print its anonymous claims—no matter how baseless.
Two days after Abu Rahmah, a Palestinian woman from the West Bank village of Bil’in, died from tear-gas inhalation during a December 31 demonstration against the separation wall, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) went into spin mode. Anonymous “senior officers” in the Israeli army pushed a number of theories about her death—Abu Rahmah wasn’t at the demonstration, she had cancer, it may have been an “honor killing” and more—that the Israeli press dutifully reported. Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf (+972 Magazine, 1/4/11), who was actually present at the Bil’in demonstration, described these claims as “half-truths and lies.”
U.S. corporate media also used anonymous Israeli military sources to cast doubt on the 36-year-old Abu Rahmah’s killing. In the New York Times (1/5/11), reporter Isabel Kershner characterized the story as a “debate” with “clashing narratives.” Though she noted that the IDF claims were all anonymous while the Palestinian claims were “backed by medical documents,” Kershner went on to give roughly equal time to both arguments.
Among the IDF’s anonymous claims were that they “had never heard of tear gas killing anyone in the open” and that Abu Rahmah may have had “some pre-existing ailment that, alone or compounded by the tear gas, caused her death.” Why anonymous military officials should be treated as experts on medical questions was never explained.
The Washington Post (1/6/11) similarly stated that anonymous military officials “suggested that an existing medical condition might have contributed to 36-year-old Jawaher Abu Rahmah’s death.” The Los Angeles Times’ only brief mention of the case (1/3/11) explained, “Since tear gas is typically nonlethal, it remained unclear whether soldiers used excessive amounts or whether the woman had health problems that contributed to her reaction.”
But the IDF claims were contradicted by extensive eyewitness reports from other protesters, Israeli journalists from +972 Magazine and the family of Abu Rahmah. In a January 4 statement put together by the Popular Struggle Coordina-tion Committee, Abu Rahmah’s mother said her daughter “was not sick with cancer, nor did she have any other illness, and she was not asthmatic,” while the director of the health center that treated Abu Rahmah stated that she “died from lung failure that was caused by tear gas inhalation, leading to a heart attack.”
Furthermore, the claim printed in the New York Times that the IDF “had never heard of tear gas killing anyone in the open”—boosted by Kershner’s own claim that the gas “can be lethal in closed environments but is considered nonlethal in the open air”—was belied by a Ha’aretz report (1/7/11) that noted that a 2004 study conducted by the IDF found that “a high concentration of the gas in a given location could cause serious or even lethal harm.” In fact, a toddler living in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan had died from tear gas just a few months prior to Abu Rahmah’s death (Ma’an News Agency, 9/24/10).
Kershner wrote that the IDF “routinely fires CS tear gas against the protesters to keep them away from the barrier and to disperse stone-throwing youths.” She didn’t mention that the wall has been ruled to be illegal under international law, according to an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (7/9/04); as Human Rights Watch has noted (3/5/10), “85 percent of the barrier’s route lies inside the West Bank, separating Palestinian residents from their lands, restricting their movement, and in some places effectively confiscating occupied territory.”
Moreover, Kershner’s wording seemed to imply that the Israeli army was simply responding to stones being hurled. But as Sheizaf’s eyewitness report stated, “the tear gas was fired by the IDF well before the march got even close to the fence.” Sheizaf wrote that at these demonstrations, “when stone-throwing does occur, it usually begins after the army disperses the march…. As for the soldiers, they are standing on the hill, heavily protected, and the stones normally pose no real danger for them.”
The coverage of Abu Rahmah’s death recalls how corporate media treated the killings of nine civilians by Israeli commandos aboard a Gaza-bound aid flotilla. As Peter Hart wrote in Extra! (7/10), “much of the U.S. media coverage has been remarkably unskeptical of Israel’s account of events and their context.” It appears that half a year later, little has changed.
Alex Kane is a freelance journalist and blogger based in New York City (alexbkane.wordpress.com). He can be followed on Twitter @alexbkane.
Finding Order in the Orwellian Chaos
By Eric Blair | Activist Post | April 10, 2011
It has become nearly impossible to determine the “truth” in our increasingly chaotic world. Reality is seemingly being twisted and flipped on its head in this rapid unfolding of multi-front crises. The world is facing a new world war in the Arab world, nuclear holocaust from the Fukushima meltdown, total economic collapse/takeover, and a stunning rise in the cost of essential commodities.
In each case, the public is being told directly the opposite of basic human understanding. In fact, it’s so blatant that it appears to be a test to see how fast and far the collective human psyche can be warped. George Orwell would be impressed with the level of doublespeak manipulation that has taken place concerning these recent catastrophic events.
War is now classified as a humanitarian action. Nuclear radiation is now good for your health. Private and government financial collapse is the fault of the taxpayer. And the price for food and oil are dependent on gambling, not actual supply and demand.
Never before, that I and others can recall, have we been hit with so many crises at once with previously unacceptable explanations coming from the people’s supposed leaders. The U.S. president can now put American soldiers into combat and spend tax dollars on war without even consulting the citizens’ elected officials. The EPA can autocratically adjust acceptable radiation levels for human health despite all evidence to the contrary. The private bankers can demand bailouts and austerity cuts from an already ailing population who had nothing to do with their debts. The price of food and oil are allowed to be determined in Wall Street’s casino at the expense of humanity. And we’re being told it’s for our own good, our personal safety, and our economic security.
This insane warping of morals and common sense can only occur under the direction of a force which requires mass confusion and a compromise in human morality to accomplish an unpopular agenda. A force whose motto is “Order Out of Chaos.” A force whose deliberate purpose for creating such calamitous situations is more consolidated control. And clearly, it’s a force with great access to the mainstream media megaphone to propagate their desired reaction to these crises.
What’s different about these events compared to the past is their size, scope, and coalescence at the same time. What David Icke refers to as the “Totalitarian Tiptoe” in his explanation of the establishment’s creeping tyranny through problem-reaction-solution engineering of crises, has seemingly turned into the “Last Leap.” In other words, it can’t be more obvious that we’re quickly moving toward a malevolent global dictatorship with or without the acceptance of the masses. Yet, efforts to defuse and desensitize the population with morally-conflicting messaging appear to be intensifying.
In order to induce hypnosis, a hypnotist must overload the participant’s mind with unknown “message units” to trigger the primitive survival instincts of “fight, flight, or play dead.” As the mind attempts to interpret these foreign message units it becomes overwhelmed. The hypnotist then senses the peak of the overload and releases the subject to flee-and-play-dead with the command to “sleep.” However, it is likely that the participant would have chosen this path regardless of the command, because the participant began the process in a relaxed position and, as a domesticated animal, has certain preconditioning to escape to flight when overwhelmed.
Once in this state of message unit overload, the part of the mind required for critical thinking is defused and the subject is willing to accept nearly any suggestion — as comically seen in stage hypnosis shows. During this stage show by the elite, we have witnessed rabid anti-war liberals turn into lapdogs for preemptive killing. We’ve witnessed health community officials promote a variety of poisons as normal. And we’ve witnessed free market economists promote monopoly cartels as genuine capitalism.
Accepted knowns are remarkably easy to manipulate using suggestive messaging, especially if attached to a strong emotional response like fear. Make no mistake, this method is a well-understood science; being human, we are all certainly susceptible to these manipulative techniques. So how do we keep our moral bearings during this calculated onslaught of reprogramming?
First, we must recognize when fear, which is the most powerful of emotional triggers, is being used to influence our perception of a given policy, or reality in general. We must not allow ourselves to feel the fear, but instead recognize it as the tool of control that it is. Once mastered, you will notice other less-potent emotional triggers being aimed at convincing your mind to accept unknowns. You will be amazed at how many of your peers fall for it and will desperately try to argue that the fear justifies some inhumane action.
Secondly, it seems wise to drop our perceived meaning of all labels like Democrat or Republican, or capitalism or communism, etc. And we must stop rooting for a team or blindly following a leader based on certain labels. For example, does an aggressive war become righteous if a Democrat with a Peace Prize launches it? Or even if religious leaders promote its cause? Don’t be blinded by mindless groupthink that is often directed by authority in all its forms. Think for yourself.
Ultimately, we must narrowly focus our compass toward the core human beliefs of peace, love, and liberty. When our bias is always being pulled by those forces, we are less likely to be led off course. Believers in peace cannot possibly justify violence unless a direct threat requires immediate self-defense; and only then as a last resort. Believers in love respect their neighbors as equals and would never stand for injustices perpetrated against them — socially, economically, environmentally etc. Believers in liberty would rather die as a consequence of their own decisions than have their essential freedom confined by authority. Significantly, when our compass is dialed into these human principles, we’ll typically find ourselves in a polar conflict with the establishment version of events and desired solutions. These extreme opposite forces allow us to see the real agenda more clearly.
Recognizing the game that is being played for our minds allows us to filter out previously unknown message units as trash so that they never bring about an overload. It allows you to live a life of your own accord. And that is the key to transforming the prevailing system. In other words, we can’t defeat this powerful negative force by playing into their reality. We must, individually, live by our principles even when others frown upon it. Don’t worry, the others will break their trance eventually, as the manufactured anger to justify war, engineered hatred of their neighbors, and the constant bombardment of injustices upon them will eventually grow old. And you, as one living example of purity, will disprove a thousand lies.
New York Times stands by Ethan Bronner’s Facebook fabrications
By Ali Abunimah – The Electronic Intifada – 07/13/2011
Ethan Bronner(Flickr)
The New York Times has told The Electronic Intifada it stands fully behind an article by its Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner despite compelling evidence that the article contains fabrications, misleading statements, and gross exaggerations.
In a series of emails between The Electronic Intifada and The New York Times foreign editor Susan Chira, the newspaper defended the article and denied that any corrections or clarifications were required. This is despite the fact that additional data presented by The Electronic Intifada shows that the central premise of the article is false.
In a 9 July article, Bronner profiled a Facebook page called YaLa – Young Leaders. The article suggested that an “enthusiastic” response to the page from thousands of people all over the Arab world indicated an upsurge of interest in coexistence with Israelis that brought to mind the “Facebook-driven revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.”
On 10 July, The Electronic Intifada cast severe doubts on many aspects of Bronner’s story.
Not only is there no evidence of a groundswell of interest in online dialogue between Israelis and Arabs, there is substantial evidence to contradict Bronner’s narrative. Additional data collected by The Electronic Intifada and presented to The New York Times found that only a handful of Facebook users had anything more than a cursory relationship with the page before Bronner’s article appeared.
Moreover, The New York Times did not respond to a direct question as to whether it believed a key anecdote in Bronner’s story, after The Electronic Intifada published evidence suggesting it is false.
This post lays out the key issues we asked The New York Times about, analyzes its responses and presents new evidence contradicting Bronner’s central narrative.
How many “active users” does the YaLa – Young Leaders Facebook page have and what does that mean?
In his article, Bronner claimed that the YaLa – Young Leaders Facebook page:
has had 91,000 views in its first month. Of its 22,500 active users, 60 percent are Arabs – mostly Palestinians, followed by Egyptians, Jordanians, Tunisians, Moroccans, Lebanese and Saudis.
The Electronic Intifada asked The New York Times for the source of this information and to define what constituted an “active user.”
We also presented The New York Times with a study we did of every post and comment on the YaLa – Young Leaders page’s Wall from 4 May through 9 July (the full study is included at the end of this post).
The study found that in total there were 146 Facebook users who made a total of 519 posts/comments on the Wall. Eighty-six of these users (58%) made only a single post/comment and another 25 (17%) made 2 comments/posts. So 75% of active users made only 1 or 2 comments or posts.
The top ten most active commenters/posters accounted for 51% of the posts/comments (265 out of 519). The most active poster/commenter was the Yala – Young Leaders page owner, while Hamze Awawde and Moad Arqoub were the third and fourth most prolific. They, along with two other top ten users were quoted in Bronner’s article.
In contrast to the claims of broad participation from across the Arab world, we found only two Facebook users who identified themselves as coming from an Arab country other than Palestine – both from Egypt. One made a single comment, and the other a small handful. Neither were among the top ten users.
In response to these data, foreign editor Susan Chira wrote:
Despite your own study, we believe the article remains factually correct. You assert that the only way to participate in a Facebook page is to “like” it. However, Facebook users can engage with a page in multiple ways, including commenting on a status update, liking a post, and other ways without “liking” the page, according to Facebook and to my colleagues who have been administrators of Facebook pages. That activity is described in the article as monthly active users. Mr. Savir shared the Facebook data with us so we could verify it, and the data does in fact substantiate our description of the monthly active users. Your own research is predicated on the “like” metric, so it does not obviate the statistic we use.
Chira did not share with The Electronic Intifada the data she says was shown to The New York Times by Uri Savir, the former Israeli diplomat and director of the Peres Center for Peace who founded the page.
Chira’s claim that Facebook users can “engage with a page” without first “liking” it (becoming a fan) was simply incorrect.
This is important because on 9 July, the YaLa – Younger Leaders page had only about 3,000 fans. It has more than doubled since then as a result of publicity from Bronner’s article.
In a follow-up, Chira acknowledged that in fact a Facebook user must “like” a page before she can post/comment on the Wall. However, Chira insisted:
it is incorrect to say Facebook users cannot see a Wall without LIKING a page or other parts of the page, including applications. It is also incorrect to say users cannot comment or share posts from a Facebook page that they do not LIKE. Users can comment and share a status update/post from a Facebook page – onto their own Facebook page – without LIKING the page.
Can’t see the forest for the trees
At this point The New York Times has completely lost sight of the forest for the trees. Let’s remind ourselves of the main thrust of Bronner’s narrative:
over the past month, the Facebook page has surprised those involved by the enthusiasm it has generated, suggesting that the Facebook-driven revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt may offer guidance for coexistence efforts as well.
Called Facebook.com/yalaYL, the site, created by a former Israeli diplomat and unambiguous about its links to Israel, has had 91,000 views in its first month. Of its 22,500 active users, 60 percent are Arabs – mostly Palestinians, followed by Egyptians, Jordanians, Tunisians, Moroccans, Lebanese and Saudis.
What any reasonable person would understand from this is that the “enthusiasm” for the page is comparable in scope and significance to “the Facebook-driven revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.”
But the only evidence cited for this is the “active user” number of 22,500 which any reasonable reader would understand to mean that thousands of people had flocked to the page to take part in the kind of discussions snippets of which Bronner quoted.
But that’s just not a true picture. An actual examination of the human interactions on the YaLa – Young Leaders Facebook page indicates that only a tiny handful of people have had anything more than a cursory interaction with the page.
Yet The New York Times insists that the fact that some Facebook users could have shared YouTube videos, photos or other innocuous posts of the kind that dominate the YaLa page to their own personal pages is sufficient to support the claim that there is a groundswell of Arab interest and participation in a project “unambiguous about its links to Israel” worthy of a full write-up on its august pages.
At the same time the newspaper ignores the actually observable human interactions that completely contradict this narrative.
Are Bronner’s lead paragraphs true?
In its original critique of Bronner’s article, this blog cast doubt on the story Bronner told in his lead:
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Moad Arqoub, a Palestinian graduate student, was bouncing around the Internet the other day and came across a site that surprised and attracted him. It was a Facebook page where Israelis and Palestinians and other Arabs were talking about everything at once: the prospects of peace, of course, but also soccer, photography and music.”
“I joined immediately because right now, without a peace process and with Israelis and Palestinians physically separated, it is really important for us to be interacting without barriers,” Mr. Arqoub said as he sat at an outdoor cafe in this Palestinian city.
The story is not credible because Arqoub was one of the earliest posters/commenters on the page soon after its official launch, and Arqoub already personally knew the other Palestinian closely involved in the site, Hamze Awawde. Both Arqoub and Awawde, as The Electronic Intifada reported, had met through their involvement an in Israeli organization called MEPEACE.
The Electronic Intifada asked The New York Times if Arqoub or Awawde were administrators or closely involved with the project, and this question:
Do you believe the story in Bronner’s lede that Arqoub was simply “bouncing around on the Internet the other day” and serendipitously happened upon this page?
Chira did not give a direct response to the latter question. However, she wrote:
On your … point about the origins and affiliations of the people Mr. Bronner quoted, I asked him to go back both to Mr. Savir and to each of the people he interviewed and check whether any of them were officially affiliated with the site or had any role in setting it up. The answer from all of them is no. The people interviewed are indeed active in interacting with the site, but they have no official role, according to Mr. Savir, Mr. Awade and Mr. Arqoub. Nor did the article state that Mr. Awade and Mr. Arqoub “were brought together by the page.” It said they are both Palestinians who have had an interest in coexistance efforts before.
Chira did not say if The New York Times examined the strong evidence that both Awawde and Arqoub were de facto administrators and representatives of the YaLa initiative in an “unofficial” capacity, nor what their relationship was with the page’s founders prior to its launch.
Nor do we know who actually administers the page if it is not Awawde or Arqoub. Savir, while the figurehead for the project, has no postings under his name.
Given the fact that the story about how Arqoub came across the site “the other day” is almost certainly false – and Chira would not stand by it – it seems extraordinary that The New York Times would rely on the word of the same sources and decline to carry out any fact-checking of its own.
Another important question Chira should ask Bronner – assuming she hasn’t: how did Bronner come upon this story? Who fed it to him?
Ignoring the grassroots, watering the astroturf
The Electronic Intifada asked in its initial posting on Bronner’s story and in the correspondence with Chira why Bronner would promote this marginal Facebook page with a small handful of active participants and ignore the real groundswell of Palestinians and Arabs who oppose “dialogue” initiatives aimed at normalizing Israel’s relations with the Arab world.
Just last week, for example, the Egyptian Independent Union Federation issued a statement of solidarity with the Palestinian people that pledged to “reject any form of normal relations” with Israel, including gas supply agreements, and confirmed the trade union federation’s support for the Palestinian-led campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).
Chira wrote:
in response to your objection that we failed to note the context that there are Palestinians who object to this kind of contact, the article does state, “At a time when Arabs generally shun contact with Israelis, those on the site speak openly about their desire to learn more about one another.”
Does Chira really think that noting in passing that “there are Palestinians” who object, while hyping and exaggerating a trivial dialogue initiative, substitutes for real reporting on why Palestinians overwhelmingly oppose such initiatives, and allowing them to explain their critiques and analyses?
Why does this matter?
The highly misleading narrative and dubious factual claims in Bronner’s article on the YaLa-Young Leaders Facebook page constitute serious journalistic malpractice. But instead of acknowledging this, The New York Times has dug in to defend this bogus story come what may.
Perhaps this is because acknowledging any error on the part of Bronner – or his editors – would force the newspaper to reckon with Bronner’s blatant and even more significant biases.
In January 2010, The Electronic Intifada revealed that Bronner had a serious conflict of interest: his son had enlisted in the Israeli army.
Clark Hoyt, the Public Editor of The New York Times at the time agreed with us and urged that Bronner be reassigned. The newspaper did not take their colleague’s advice.
Since then, Hoyt has sadly been proven right that the question of Palestine is simply “too close to home” for Bronner.
Last May, as Palestinians marked the 63rd anniversary of their expulsion from Palestine – the Nakba – Bronner presented a highly skewed version of history, a common Israeli propaganda refrain:
After Israel declared independence on May 15, 1948, armies from neighboring Arab states attacked the new nation; during the war that followed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes by Israeli forces.
As The Electronic Intifada reported, Bronner omitted the crucial fact that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes by Zionist militias in the months before 15 May 1948 and the intervention of Arab armies – a fact that completely changes many people’s understanding of what occurred.
In an important analysis, Youssef Munayyer, executive director of The Palestine Center, showed that Bronner’s skewed reporting about the Nakba contradicted even the Times’ own contemporaneous reports from 1948.
When the Jerusalem bureau chief was confronted about this by the current public editor, Arthur Brisbane, “Mr. Bronner responded that space was limited in a short story and he wasn’t trying to recite the full history.”
So Bronner’s idea of reporting is to make sure to fill up his word allotment with information that supports Israel’s official narrative while omitting facts that are central to Palestinian history and present-day claims.
Bronner’s latest piece of shoddy journalism not only reminds us of his own inability to see the situation from outside the cozy corner of West Jerusalem, ethnically-cleansed of Palestinians, that he inhabits, but indicates that he is aided and abetted by editors who will apparently put up with any absurd claim or outright falsehood.
Public Editor Arthur Brisbane revealed a truth when he wrote:
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in short, is the third rail of New York Times journalism. Touch it and burn.
Conclusion
We can conclude from this analysis that YaLa-Young Leaders was not a remarkably active or popular Facebook page.
The Electronic Intifada’s Facebook page (which has more than 13,000 fans), for example, has been as or much more active even without any celebrity endorsements of the kind this page received even prior to Bronner’s article. Moreover, interactions of the kind on the YaLa page show no remarkable level of dialogue or anything that deviates from the typical comments sections found on thousands of websites and Facebook pages (I would argue that the Wall of my personal Facebook account was probably a more active a forum for discussion including between Arabs and Israelis!).
Many of the posts on the page are messages of support/congratulations that appear to have been solicited from organizations and minor celebrities. All, except perhaps the one from Mahmoud Abbas, are Israeli. There’s no evidence of any Arab organizational buy-in.
There is nothing here that suggests thousands of “active users” nor anything that can be matched in reality to Bronner’s description which invokes the spirit of mass action of the Arab uprisings. Nor is there any evidence of participation or buy-in from beyond a small handful of Israelis and Palestinians.
Here’s what Bronner wrote:
“But over the past month, the Facebook page has surprised those involved by the enthusiasm it has generated, suggesting that the Facebook-driven revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt may offer guidance for coexistence efforts as well.”
“Called Facebook.com/yalaYL, the site, created by a former Israeli diplomat and unambiguous about its links to Israel, has had 91,000 views in its first month. Of its 22,500 active users, 60 percent are Arabs — mostly Palestinians, followed by Egyptians, Jordanians, Tunisians, Moroccans, Lebanese and Saudis.”
This is a completely misleading description, which has generated an entirely false public perception of this page.
Israeli propaganda festival finds few fans in Milan
Stephanie Westbrook | The Electronic Intifada | 14 July 2011
For ten days in June, Milan was the site of a promotional event aimed at presenting “the other side of Israel,” in the words of the Israeli Ambassador to Italy Gideon Meir. Known as “Unexpected Israel,” the event was sponsored by both the Italian and Israeli governments, along with local city and provincial authorities.
When details of the event were first announced in December 2010, it was projected to cost 2.5 million euros ($3.6 million US) and to include a 900-square-meter plexiglass pavilion featuring Israeli technological and cultural wonders in Piazza Duomo, Milan’s main square. In the end, Piazza Duomo hosted nothing more than a small multimedia installation: 15 amplified pedestals spouting classics of Israeli hasbara (propaganda) to the few visitors who dared enter the fenced-off, heavily guarded area.
A pedestal dedicated to agriculture boasted, “For thousands of years, this was an arid, barren land, mostly desert. In just sixty years, Israel transformed the desert into an agricultural miracle,” giving credence to the idea that no agriculture — and by implication, no people — existed in the land before the creation of the State of Israel.
The installation on water also talked of transforming “an arid land into a fertile paradise.” There was no mention that this transformation was made possible through water stolen from Palestinians or that Palestinian access to their own water supplies was severely restricted. In the water-rich West Bank region of the Jordan Valley, in what should be a “fertile paradise” for the Palestinians, the land is occupied by the Israeli military: 44 percent has been designated closed military zones and 50 percent has been appropriated by 37 illegal Israeli settlements and plantations, according to a report by the Ma’an Development Center (“Report: Eye on the Jordan Valley,” 2010 [PDF]).
The Ma’an Development Center released another report on the water crisis in the Jordan Valley. They state that since 1967, Israel has blocked Palestinian access to 162 water wells (“Report: Draining Away: The water and sanitation crisis in the Jordan Valley“ [PDF]).
This is happening while the approximately 9,000 settlers in the Jordan Valley consume one-quarter of the resources used annually by all 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank, according to statistics from Human Rights Watch (“Separate and Unequal,” 19 December 2010).
The tourism and Holy Land pedestal installations quietly ventured beyond Israel’s boundaries to include Bethlehem, Jericho and Qumran, without ever mentioning that these sites are in the occupied West Bank.
Celebrities used to sell Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv was presented as a non-stop, fun-loving, multicultural city with a “vibrant and classy” gay scene, a city “that loves you just as you are.” Video clips of performances in Tel Aviv by international stars such as Madonna and Paul McCartney were used to present Israel as a normal western-style country, confirming that artists who choose to ignore the Palestinian call for a cultural boycott of Israel become its unofficial ambassadors.
Representatives of nearly fifty Israeli companies, along with 150 Italian entrepreneurs, attended the Italian-Israeli Business Forum held at the Milan Stock Exchange, together with the Israeli minister of industry, the Italian undersecretary for economic development and the presidents of the Lombardy region and Milan province. More than 400 bilateral business-to-business meetings were organized in the afternoon, divided into four sectors: water technologies, security, medical and new media.
A look at some of the Israeli companies participating reveals direct ties with the occupation and violations of international law.
Triple-T Ltd provides wastewater treatment services to Israeli settlements built illegally in the West Bank (see “the company’s website”) and ARI Flow is based in the occupied Golan Heights.
According to Who Profits? — a project of the Coalition of Women for Peace in Israel — Magar S3 provides security systems along 150 kilometers of Israel’s wall in the West Bank as well as eight Israeli settlements (“Magal security systems”).
J Gordon Consulting Engineers designed the security systems for Nafha prison, where 94 percent of the incarcerated are Palestinian political prisoners (see its website, “Main activities, by region: Israel”).
Athena GS3 was founded by Shabtai Shavit, a former head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, and boasts a team of “security experts from the Israeli elite intervention units” such as commandos and Navy Seals. Naval commando units carried out the attacks on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in May last year, killing nine activists, and have been trained to intercept the current second flotilla.
Netanyahu: Israel has no “better friend” than Berlusconi
As “Unexpected Israel” got underway in Milan, an Israeli-Italian intergovernmental summit was taking place in Rome. Prime Ministers Silvio Berlusconi and Benjamin Netanyahu, along with eight ministers from each country, signed nine bilateral agreements. In the joint statement, Berlusconi also reaffirmed “the Italian government’s firm opposition to any form of delegitimization or boycotts against Israel (“Vertice Intergovernativo Italo-Israeliano,” 13 June 2011).
Among the bilateral agreements, the ministries of foreign affairs from both countries undertook to evaluate exchange programs for young diplomats, public figures and journalists, as well as intensifying youth exchange programs “with the scope of creating friendships among the younger generations of both countries.”
The ministries of education agreed to create a teacher-training program in Holocaust education, with Italian high school teachers taking part in courses at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial center in Jerusalem.
On 13 June, during a joint press conference in Rome, Berlusconi affirmed: “We have always been and will always be on your side because Israel is the only true democracy in the entire region.” Netanyahu, stating that Israel has “no better friend,” also noted that the bilateral agreements were “not merely technical agreements, they are a bond, a growing bond in modern times, in the beginning of the 21st century between the people of Italy and the people of Israel” (“Press Conference with PM Netanyahu and Italian PM Berlusconi,” Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 14 June 2011).
While Israel endeavored to salvage its image and bond with Italian private industry and public institutions, activists took to the streets in Milan to give visibility to what “Unexpected Israel” tried so desperately to conceal. As Piero Maestri of the campaign group No to the Israeli Occupation of Milan asked, “Would anyone have accepted an event called ‘Unexpected South Africa’ while [Nelson] Mandela was still in prison?”
On Friday, 11 June, just before the official events began, activists dressed in white marched to Piazza Duomo behind a banner that read “322 children killed: Unexpected Israel” and read aloud the names of each child killed in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip in the winter of 2008-09.
A daily presence was maintained at the entrance to the multimedia installation in Piazza Duomo, where an alternative version of “Unexpected Israel” postcards were distributed, including images of the Nakba (the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland in 1948), racist t-shirts worn by Israeli soldiers, the destruction in Gaza and graffiti in the West Bank city of Hebron that reads “Arabs to the gas chambers.” Posters for the protests showing the Duomo — Milan’s cathedral — behind Israel’s wall were found throughout the city’s center.
Ambassador Meir soon learned he could not walk the streets of Milan without being challenged. As he walked from Piazza Duomo, surrounded by Italian police officers, an activist managed to slowly work her way into the crowd and confront Meir with photos of demolished houses in Silwan, occupied East Jerusalem. Another unfurled a banner reading “Stop Agrexco: Boycott the Fruit of Israeli Apartheid” behind Meir as he spoke to the television cameras inside the multimedia installation.
Unexpected gift for Agrexco
On Friday, 17 June, an “unexpected gift” was delivered to the Italian headquarters of the Israeli produce exporter Agrexco in Milan. Activists from the Stop Agrexco campaign, which calls for a boycott of the company, delivered baskets of rotten fruit symbolizing Palestinian agricultural products rotting at Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank (“VIDEO: BDS action against the Agrexco headquarters in Milan, Italy,” 25 June 2011).
On Saturday, 18 June, thousands filled the streets of Milan, arriving from Rome, Florence, Bologna and Turin, for a protest march followed by a concert by Gaza rappers DARG Team.
And as “Unexpected Israel” came to a close on 22 June, a replica of the Stefano Chiarini, the Italian boat that is taking part in the second Freedom Flotilla, arrived on the square. In the form of a child’s boat made of newspapers — fitting for the boat carrying the name of the late Italian journalist and Palestine solidarity activist — the three-meter replica “sailed” around the talking pedestals, the megaphone of the protesters drowning out the propaganda.
The ten-day event, while securing the support of Berlusconi’s government and those Italian firms willing to do business with an apartheid state, did little to win the hearts and minds of the people of Milan. Once again — in contrast to the cowardice of governments and institutions — it was a grassroots movement that mobilized to hold Israel accountable for its violations of human rights and international law.
Stephanie Westbrook is a US citizen who has been living in Rome, Italy since 1991. She is active in the peace and social justice movements in Italy. She can be reached at steph AT webfabbrica DOT com.
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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.
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