14-Aug-18: Chasing (some) terrorists in Jordan

Image Source: Twitter account of Jordan's royal court

A significant clash between the forces of the king and what are being called a terrorist force happened on Saturday across the valley from us over in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

It all started, as far as we know, with an explosion at a Jordanian music festival on Friday. First reports - like this one from an English-language Arab source, were careful to tiptoe around the possibility of terror:

A vehicle belonging to the Jordanian gendarmerie was hit by an explosion on Friday evening, leaving one sergeant dead and wounding six other security personnel, an official at the General Directorate of the Gendarmerie has said. The blast happened just outside the capital Amman, where the unit was tasked with guarding a cultural festival held in the western outskirt of the city. Local news media quoted government sources denying the blast was linked to terrorism, however, investigations are continuing... Local media quoted security sources as saying that "a gas bomb exploded near the fuel tank, causing the explosion of the vehicle". The Fuheis festival is an annually held event in Jordan and is considered the second largest festival in the country after the Jerash Festival... Fuheis is a Christian-majority town, around 20km northwest of the capital Amman. [The New Arab (UK), August 11, 2018]

Pretty soon, the story got darker: turns out it was a bomb that 

was planted under a police vehicle providing security at [the festival]... No group immediately took responsibility... Prime Minister Omar Razzaz portrayed Friday's bombing as a "terrorist attack"... Jordan is a close Western ally in a turbulent region, and has largely been spared from the conflicts in neighboring Syria and Iraq. However, the kingdom has also been targeted by Islamic militants, both domestic and foreign who have carried out a series of attacks... [Associated Press]

Fuheis (or Fuhais or Al Fuheis) is about 20 kilometers north-west of the capital Amman. The Fuheis Festival has been held annually for the past 25 years and is considered Jordan's second-largest cultural festival. Wikipedia says the town has 20,000 residents, 60% of them Greek Orthodox Christians. It's in the Wadi Shueib (Valley of Jethro) area, between Salt and Amman.

A place with a historical heritage ["Is Al-Salt Set to be Jordan’s Next UNESCO World Heritage Site?"] Salt, also called Al-Salt, happens to be where the security forces made up of "special forces", police and the army carried out a raid on Saturday. And where things seem to have gotten badly out of control. Salt had 97,000 inhabitants in 2006: 65% of them are Muslim and the remainder Christians.

Image Source: Where the ISIS people had their base - till Sunday

Newly appointed government spokeswoman Jumana Ghneimat said the security forces we just mentioned were pursuing a "terrorist cell". Here's a summary of what Agence France-Presse reported ["4 security force members, 3 'terrorists' killed in Jordan raid"] on Sunday:

• Quoting not its own reporters but the Jordanian government, it says: "Four members of the Jordanian security forces and three "terrorists" have been killed during a raid on a militant hideout after an officer died in a bomb blast near the capital..."
• Making clear Jordan now tied the raid to what had happened in Fuheis on Friday, it said "Five suspects were also arrested during Saturday's raid in connection with the home-made bomb that exploded under a patrol car at a music festival."
• According to Ms Ghneimat, "The suspects refused to surrender and opened heavy fire toward a joint security force". They "blew up the building in which they were hiding, and which they had booby-trapped earlier".
• The three security forces who were killed died in the shootout with the gunmen. A fourth died later of his injuries.
• The bodies of three terrorists (AFP puts that word in quotation marks) were found in the rubble of the exploded building as were some automatic weapons. Five militants (AFP's word) were arrested in the operation.
• AFP quotes "medical sources" saying 11 people "were wounded during the raid, including members of the security forces and civilians who were residents of the building where the militants were hiding". They included women and children. The AFP report has no details of who thhey were, their ages, or the extent of their injuries.
• Now this interesting direct quote based on something said by a "security official who asked not to be named": "All the terrorists who were killed or arrested were Jordanians and residents of Salt."
• The king, Abdullah II, is quoted saying Jordan would "strike mercilessly and forcefully" against whoever they are blaming which is not yet specified. "This cowardly terrorist act, and any act that targets the security of Jordan, will only add to our unity, strength and determination to wipe out terrorism and its criminal gangs". 
• And this intriguing comment from the recently appointed (see "New Jordanian cabinet has fresh faces but same old problems", The National, June 14, 2018) prime minister Omar al-Razzaz: Jordan will "not be complacent in the hunt for terrorists".

How firmly does King Abdullah actually run things in the kingdom? You get a sense of this from a recent comment by the sober and generally respected Deutschewelle news service:

Since the king calls the shots on all policy issues, it is unclear what mandate Razzaz will have to take measures to pacify the protesters ["Jordan's king appoints Omar Razzaz as new prime minister to defuse protests", DW, June 5, 2018]

On the other hand, how well that's going can be surmised by how many prime ministers the king has appointed and then replaced. Since he was crowned on June 9, 1999, Abdullah II has hired and fired 12 prime ministers, not including the new man, Mr Razzaz. They have served, on average, for less than a year and a half each. (We did the calculations from public records.) The economy is perhaps the most visible sign of how much of a challenge Jordan's managerial class have on their hands: see "'We simply can't take this': Jordanians vow to continue protests after PM resigns" [Middle East Eye, June 5, 2018]

Monday night brought this update:

Jordan said Monday that a terror cell targeted in a deadly weekend raid by security forces was composed of supporters of the Islamic State terror group and shared its extremist views. Saturday’s raid, during which three jihadists were killed and five arrested, revealed that they were preparing a series of attacks in Jordan, Interior Minister Samir Mubaideen said... The suspects “were not part of an organization but followed its takfiri (Sunni Muslim extremist) ideology and supported Daesh... All of them were Jordanians... The raid also foiled other plots to carry out a series of terrorist operations against security installations and public gatherings,” he said. ["Jordan says jihadists killed in raid were Islamic State supporters", AFP, August 14, 2018]

Reuters added:

• Also quoting al-Mobaideen, it says the "militants... did not belong to a specific group but subscribed to Islamic State ideology... There were plots to wage a series of terror attacks that sought security points and popular gatherings. We know the targets but we won’t tell them so people won’t get terrified”... 
• [T]here were no signs so far they had foreign links, Mobaideen said, refusing to give names of suspects. “The investigations are secret and ongoing,” he told a news conference
• Alongside automatic weapons in the suspect’s possession, the authorities found a location where chemical ingredients for manufacturing explosives were buried, Mobaideen added.
• The militant cell was recently set up and there were indications its members had embraced radical ideology. “What is dangerous is that these new recruits are more impulsive than those with experience in executing operations that harm Jordan’s security,” [head of the Gendarmerie] Hawatmeh told reporters.
• "Intelligence officials and some experts believe widening social disparities and a perception of official corruption are fuelling a rise in radicalization among disaffected youths in a country with high unemployment and growing poverty."

A report from a Palestinian Arab source ["Jordanian King Abdullah II vows to eliminate terrorism", Ma'an News Agency, August 12, 2018] datelined Amman says:

The Jordanian King Abdullah II released a statement on Sunday, vowed to end the existence of terrorism, following a deadly terror attack in the town of al-Salt, Jordan. [He] stressed that this cowardly act of terrorism and any action aimed at the security of Jordan "will only increase unity, strength, and determination to eradicate terrorism and its criminal gangs."

What's actually going on behind the official statements and media releases? It's genuinely hard to know. Jordan doesn't have a free and enquiring media and much of what emanates from official sources is spin. A Jordan Times article yesterday shows (probably inadvertently) how that works:

Spokesperson of the Ministry of Political and Parliamentary Affairs Sami Mahasneh told The Jordan Times over the phone that a meeting with the minister and heads of political parties had been concluded with "unanimous agreement upon the government’s media strategy". He announced that a new platform dubbed “It’s Your Right to Know” is being developed by the government to issue around-the-clock news, which he said "will hopefully put an end to all false news and deal with sensitive ones in a delicate manner"...
Bayan Tal, senior advisor at the Jordan Media Institute, told The Jordan Times that this approach is "indeed noticeable" in the new Razzaz government. "There is a gap of trust between the government and the citizens when it comes to news. This is a result of the past governments’ way of dealing with the media and it is what leads citizens to often turn to rumours or unofficial news outlets for information, rather than the government's press release, as proven by studies,” Tal said... The competition between news agencies should not push them to commit immoral and disgraceful acts just to get views, likes, and comments, as those are “not the values of a true journalist”... ["Officials warn against false news ‘igniting national fear’", Jordan Times, August 13, 2018]

We actually do have things to say about how the "values of a true journalist" operate in Jordan. See

• 27-Apr-18: If it really means to tackle radicalism, the Kingdom of Jordan should extradite Ahlam Tamimi to the US
• 23-Jan-15: What's said in London stays in London: Jordan's now-you-see-it-now-you-don't war on terror
• 10-Dec-14: In the Arab world's most promising new journalism school, a passion for murder and hatred

and especially

• 11-Dec-14: Is it newsworthy when journalists make a terror-addicted murdering colleague their role-model?

Now seems like a perfect time for the Jordanians to show how firmly they oppose Islamist terror by handing high-profile Islamist terrorist and Jordanian media celebrity Ahlam Tamimi over to US law enforcement authorities as they are obliged to do under the 1995 Extradition Treaty between the two countries.

22-Jun-18: Jordan's king heading back to Washington. Is extradition on the agenda?

White House - April 5, 2017 [Image Source: Video]

From AFP last night

AMMAN, Jordan — Jordan’s King Abdullah II set off for the United States on Thursday for talks with US President Donald Trump on Middle East issues including the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the palace said. Accompanied by his wife Rania, the monarch is also scheduled to meet with senior officials from the Trump administration and members of Congress, the palace said in a statement. His meeting with Trump is expected to take place at the White House on Monday. The White House said in a statement that they would “discuss issues of mutual concern, including terrorism, the threat from Iran and the crisis in Syria, and working towards a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.” ["Jordan king heads to US to discuss peace plan with Trump", June 21, 2018]

Reuters says President Donald Trump "will welcome King Abdullah of Jordan to the White House on June 25", quoting the White House announcement.

Trump has hosted Abdullah at least three previous times since becoming president:

• On February 2, 2017 in Washington DC on the sidelines of the National Prayer Breakfast ["Jordan's King Abdullah to be first Arab world leader to visit Donald Trump", The Independent UK] During the same visit, Abdullah met with Vice President Mike Pence, Defense Secretary James Mattis and senior members of Congress.
• April 5, 2017 at the White House, including a full formal press joint conference [YouTube]
• September 20, 2017 at a New York City hotel [White House press release]

They seem to have developed some chemistry. Perhaps, if one or the other is listening, even a common language. 

Was the subject of the fugitive Jordan-resident terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, whom Jordan is obliged under its 1995 Extradition Treaty to send to the Washington DC, publicly mentioned at any of their previous get-togethers. As far as we know, no. (See "09-Feb-18: Acting slowly in Jordan and the United States?")

Is this deeply disturbing in terms of the determination of the US to defeat violent extremism - the State Department's preferred term for terrorism? Certainly. (See "18-Feb-15: Countering Vacuous Euphemisms").

Since Tamimi, who boasts of killing Israeli children of whom one is our daughter Malki, is an unrepentant Hamas agent who hosted a terrorism-inciting television program in Amman for a worldwide Arabic-speaking audience for five years, and benefits from extraordinary protection from King Abdullah, it's strange to us to note that "issues of mutual concern, including terrorism" are on the agenda.

So can we assume Tamimi's extradition is going to be discussed?

18-Apr-17: In Gaza, a decade of darkness and a never-ending blame-game

Image Source

Times must be getting really tough down there in the Gaza Strip now that one of the most highly publicized of the plagues traditionally blamed on the "Zionist entity" has become (not for the first time) the subject of bitter mutual accusations between the two rival Palestinian Arab statelets - the PLO-controlled PA, and the Islamist thugocracy of Hamas.

Below is an extract from an Albawaba news report ["Gaza thrown into darkness as Hamas-Fatah spat worsens"] datelined April 16, 2017. (Albawaba is based in Jordan, with offices in Dubai, and calls itself "the largest independent producer and distributor of content in the Middle East... providing first-rate coverage of the Middle East from a local perspective.")

Gaza was plunged into darkness late Friday as the territory's Hamas-run power authority cut electricity across the besieged enclave in protest against the Palestinian Authority. Hamas, who control Gaza, and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, have for years blamed each other for an electricity crisis in the besieged coastal enclave.
Gaza's power alternates on eight-hour cycles, with those who can afford it using generators in the down times.
On Friday, Gaza's power authority cut electricity in the coastal territory from 7 pm until 11 pm in protest against the PA's recent decision to cut public sector salaries for Gaza employees and tax disputes over the import of fuel. The PA responded by saying Hamas was attempting to create a "new crisis" in Gaza, according to Ma’an News Agency.
Earlier in April, a decision by the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority to impose pay cuts on its civil servants in Gaza sparked widespread anger. Tens of thousands took to the streets in Gaza to protest the 30-percent pay cut, with demonstrators calling on PA president Mahmoud Abbas to sack his government. The PA says it was forced into the move because its budget has been hit by falling foreign aid. PA salaries in the West Bank, however, remained untouched.
Gaza's sole power plant is on the verge of shutting down as Qatari and Turkish fuel supplies run out. Gazan authorities have no other choice than to buy additional fuel from the PA, but say recent tax hikes make it unaffordable.
In January, thousands of Gazans took the streets to protest chronic power shortages in one of the largest unauthorised protests in Gaza since Hamas took power in 2007. Hamas security forces quickly suppressed the demonstration and blocked journalists from filming. A day earlier, a local comedian was arrested for making a satirical video criticising power cuts. "There is no work, no (border) crossing points, no food, no water and also no electricity," Adel al-Mashwakhi said in the video clip, which amassed over 250,000 views.

But with that explanation, be assured dear readers that there is no Palestinian Arab that cannot - by hook, crook or outright fabrication - be blamed on the Zionists. Here's how the Albawaba piece ends:

In 2015, the United Nations warned that Gaza could become uninhabitable by 2020 if current political and economic trends caused by Israeli policies continue.

From our 2008 post: We wondered then whether the Reuters
photographer, depicting Gazan legislators working
by candle-light as clearly-visible daylight is shut out
by curtains, had a moron for an editor. [Image Source] 

To put that last claim into some perspective, please take a look at some relevant earlier posts of ours: "05-Mar-17: What Gaza's Pal Arabs think about the electricity problems in Gaza"; "30-Apr-15: What Gaza's oppressed know that reporters don't, and why it matters"; "28-Oct-12: What lies behind ongoing efforts to paint Gaza as a region under Israeli siege?"; and from nearly a decade ago when Hamas' silly games were not so different from today's: "10-Feb-08: The lies that pictures can tell".

That 2008 post, replete with some very revealing news photographs that tried to pin serious malfeasance on Israelis for "cheating" the Gazans of electric power, is worth going back to review.

Whatever has changed in the world of the Palestinian Arabs, one aspect has not: they continue to live in the dark, shutting out the light by whatever means and relying on the great news factories of the world to magnify and spread their baseless fury at Israel.

UPDATE Thursday April 20, 2017: The capacity of the two Palestinian Arab statelets - PLO/Fatah/PA and Hamas - to ride roughshod over the welfare of the people whose lives they dominate is a reality that gets almost no serious media attention. A report today by Avi Issacharoff, Times of Israel's Middle East analyst, updating the dire situation in Gaza ["Gaza hospitals on verge of blackout amid energy crisis"] says:

Hospitals in the Gaza Strip could face blackouts within days as an energy crisis continues to throttle power supplies in the Palestinian enclave. Israel and Palestinian officials estimated Thursday that hospitals would finish their reserve fuel for generators within 48-72 hours. On Sunday Gaza’s only functioning power station stopped working after running out of fuel. The crisis was compounded by a technical fault shutting down a power line between Egypt and Gaza that had provided over six hours of electricity a day. Gazans now have just four hours of electricity, followed by 12-hour blackouts, down from two eight-hour periods of electricity a day when the plant is operating normally and supplies are coming in from outside the enclave... On Wednesday, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov called on Palestinian leaders to put aside their internal squabbles and solve the energy crisis.

And who cares? Certainly not the people who control the people.

08-Apr-17: Swedes struggle to understand Stockholm vehicle-ramming killings

Stockholm aftermath [Image Source]

In Sweden, flags are flying at half-mast today (Saturday) to express shared grief at the killings of four innocent and unsuspecting people yesterday afternoon. Fifteen more were injured.

Around 3:00 pm Friday, a stolen beer-delivery truck driven by a masked man hurtled directly into a crowd of shoppers on Stockholm's busiest shopping street, Drottninggatan, before ploughing into the side of the Åhléns mall. The truck caught fire and the driver fled on foot, eventually trying to get onto a subway and then a bus, evidently bleeding all the way according to this Swedish news report.

All the while, the city was in lock-down; public transport was shut down and the city center was paralyzed by police and security forces activity. Swedish government offices, situated a block from Drottninggatan, approximately 700 meters from where the attack took place, were evacuated [Aftonbladet].

The Swedish authorities are, naturally enough, calling it a terrorist attack.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, a 39-year-old man from Uzbekistan was arrested after a police operation in Märsta, a suburb of Stockholm near Arlanda airport. Swedish public broadcaster SVT said a second man, linked to the first, was arrested later in the northern suburb Hjulsta. Writing about the main suspect, Aftonbladet says:

In his social media accounts the man has expressed positive views of the terror organisation IS, and also ”liked” a picture on Facebook of bloody victims taken seconds after the explosion at the Boston Marathon in April 2013. One of the man’s acquaintances..: ”He has four children and works in construction... He never speaks about politics or religion, the only thing he talks abut is getting more work so that he can send more money to his family”...

A Reuters report from Saturday afternoon says:

"Nothing indicates that we have the wrong person, on the contrary, suspicions have strengthened as the investigation has progressed," Dan Eliasson, head of Sweden's national police, told a news conference on Saturday. The man, detained on Friday night on terrorism charges after the attack in the heart of the capital, appeared to have acted alone but "we still cannot rule out that more people are involved," he said... Police did not name the detainee, but said he was from the central Asian republic of Uzbekistan and that he had seemed peripheral in intelligence reports. "We received intelligence last year, but we did not see any links to extremist circles," Sapo security police chief Anders Thornberg said. Eliasson said there were "clear similarities" to an attack last month in London in which six people died, including the assailant who drove a hired car into pedestrians on a bridge. Vehicles have also been used as weapons in Nice and Berlin in the past year in attacks claimed by Islamic State.

Daily Mail UK, quoting Swedish media reports, says today that police investigating the attack have arrested six more suspects after three were bundled out of a car and police raided a property 12 miles from the attack scene.

Saturday evening the police stopped a car on the island of Kungsholmen, a central part of Stockholm, and detained three persons in connection to the attack. Police had to smash the window on the driver’s side of the car and at least two of the persons in the car were wrestled to the ground by police wearing plainclothes. [Aftonbladet, April 8, 2017]

The loss of life in the attack could easily have been much greater. Bomb disposal experts are reported to have found an improvised explosive device packed into a suitcase inside the hijacked beer truck. In Daily Mail's words:

The discovery of the bomb points to a planned terror attack rather than an opportunistic attack. It is not known why the IED failed to detonate. 

According to Associated Press:

The prime minister urged citizens to "get through this" and strolled through the streets of the capital to chat with residents... [But] many in Sweden were shocked by the attack, questioning whether Swedish society — considered democratic and egalitarian — had failed in some way.

BBC points out that

Sweden is believed to have the highest number of Islamic State group fighters per capita in Europe. About 140 of the 300 who went to Syria and Iraq have since returned, leaving the authorities to grapple with how best to reintegrate them into society.

Developing.

05-Mar-17: What Gaza's Pal Arabs think about the electricity problems in Gaza

Seeking an energy solution in chilly, dark Gaza, January 2017
[Image Source: Aljazeera]

Buried deep inside an opinion poll report just published by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre is a real nugget.

JMCC's website says [here] the Ramallah-based organization was

established in 1988 by a group of Palestinian journalists and researchers seeking to provide information on what was happening in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Every few months, it publishes public opinion polls. The one we are discussing in this post was released for publication four days ago, on March 1, 2017. The next most recent one came out on October 9, 2016 - five months earlier.

To understand the context of what we're about to say, consider these recent news reports:

• Gaza Strip - Anger is growing among Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip as the narrow coastal enclave's electricity crisis deepens. An estimated 10,000 Palestinians flooded the streets in Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza last week, after more than a week of lengthy power cuts. In many parts of Gaza, residents received only three hours of electricity at a time, punctuated by 12-hour blackouts. Protesters expressed anger at Israel's blockade, and at the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority and Hamas authorities in Gaza. Demanding a solution to the power cuts, some demonstrators clashed with security forces. Speaking to local media on Monday, Gaza's Interior Ministry spokesman Iyad al-Buzm said that protesters arrested for "creating chaos" had been released after an agreement between various political factions. Nearly two million Palestinians in Gaza have endured electricity shortages since Israel, with the help of Egypt, imposed a suffocating blockade on the territory a decade ago. The electricity crisis has been exacerbated since Israel's 51-day war on Gaza in 2014, during which the main power plant was targeted and damaged by Israeli forces... ["Protests erupt in Gaza as electricity crisis deepens", Aljazeera, January 21, 2017]
• Gaza requires 450-500 MegaWatts of power a day but is receiving barely a third of that. About 30 MW produced by its own ageing power plant, 30 MW imported from Egypt and 120 MW supplied from Israel... For weeks, Gazans have been making do with less than half their usual electricity supply - barely a few hours a day - with no sign of the shortages alleviating anytime soon, fuelling distress and frustration among the population... [S]ince late last year, there have been only three or four hours of electricity a day in total. The costs of running generators have spiralled. People are trying to light and heat their homes with candles or by burning scrap wood. Families wake in the middle of the night, when the power sometimes comes on, to take showers or wash clothes. "We live like rats," said Mazen Abu Reyala, an unemployed fisherman and father of five, sitting around a primitive stove that he uses to warm his house... ["Energy crisis leaves Gaza with barely four hours of power a day", Reuters, January 12, 2017]
• ["Gaza electricity crisis: Hamas breaks up protest", BBC. January 13, 2017]
• ["Israel cannot shirk its responsibility for Gaza’s electricity crisis", B'Tselem (far-left Israeli protest group), January 16, 2017]

Now consider the results of JMCC's rather inadequately named "Poll No. 89 - February 2017 - Gender, Equality and Politics" In the full text version of its analysis, it touches on Gazan anger at those responsible for the electric power power fiasco that is making hard lives even more stressful. And it gives numbers:

Source: JMCC Poll Number 89 (published March 1, 2017) [Online here]

Interesting. Look at the "Gaza" column, which reflects the opinions of the direct victims of the Hamas regime, those closest to the problem and suffering the most. Half of them lay the blame not at the feet of the Israelis but at the doorstep of their lords, masters and oppressors, the Islamist ideologues of Hamas.

When did you ever read or hear that via conventional news channels?

Notice also that Palestinian Arabs living far from Gaza (the column headed "West Bank") and who have essentially no first-hand knowledge or experience of living under the Hamas regime are twice as sure as their Gazan brethren (who do) that Israel is to blame.

Also interesting: if you read JMCC's poll summary (as distinct from the detailed report), there's not a word in it about the electricity crisis. Check for yourself; the summary report is online here. We're certain most reporters and their editors didn't bother to delve into the details. The summary met their needs. And so they missed a serious insight. And so did the consumers of their news.

Our friends over at the excellent Israellycool noticed something else funny/outrageous about social media coverage of the Gazan electricity screw-up. In "B’Tselem Caught In Malicious (And Dumb) Lie" (February 28, 2017), Israellycool's moving spirit, Aussie Dave, published a heart-tugging photo of an attractive young "medical student in Gaza [who] studies by the light of a battery-powered lamp... How does life without electricity, 90 minutes from Tel-Aviv, look like?" The photo and the accompanying text had been published by the ever-enthusiastic campaigners at B'Tselem.

Leaving aside the clumsy English (they have higher priorities at B'Tselem), if you take a close look at the "battery-powered" lamp, you quickly notice - unless you're as obsessed with simplistic anti-Israel narratives as B'Tselem's lot are - that it's not. The lamp is plugged into a wall power socket.

(And remember this earlier Gazan attempt [here] from 2008 at pulling the shades over people's eyes? Reuters played a central role in that scam too.)

Truth is often boring and shaded in grey. But that doesn't exonerate any of us from seeking it - even in the dark and the gloom. And that's especially true of the ladies and gentlemen of the news-reporting industry.

14-Dec-16: Kenya, one way or another, clarifies its stance in the face of Iranian terror

The arrested Iranians with their Kenyan driver, in the dock of the court and
in handcuffs in a December 3, 2016 Reuters photo [Source] 

Remember what we wrote here about the latest round of Iranian terrorism in East Africa? It's here: "02-Dec-16: Kenya, seeking Iranian oil and gas, learns again that it's getting a very different Iranian export". Towards the end, we offered this unwanted advice to the authorities in Nairobi:

Not to sound rude, but how well do the Kenyan authorities understand what it means to pursue counter-terror co-operation with the Islamic Republic of Iran? We have had our doubts in the past (see "24-Jul-15: Terror here? 'Ridiculous' say Kenyans, deploying their largest ever security blanket" and "16-May-14: More jihadist killings in East Africa today" and "27-Sep-13: Freeing terrorists and the Nairobi massacre"). If the US State Department doesn't return their calls (and the State Department knows a lot about Iranian terror even if they don't always own up to it), the Kenyans could go searching on the web. A good starting point might be "Iran and state-sponsored terrorism" from Wikipedia.

Turns out they didn't pay any attention to our advice on this, which in the circumstances is a real pity. A syndicated Reuters report from December 2, 2016, already conveyed a sense what might be ahead ["Iran urges Kenya to free two Iranians facing terrorism charges: Tasnim", Reuters].

Then the "semi-official" Iranian media chimed in.

Iran's Ambassador to Nairobi Hadi Farajvand announced that the country's mission is seriously pursuing freedom of the two detained Iranian nationals in Kenya, stressing that the media ballyhoos on the case are aimed at distorting the good relations between the two countries... The Iranian foreign ministry said that the two Iranians, namely Abdolhossein Safayee and Seyed Nasrollah Ebrahimi, who are lawyers and university instructors, are now in Nairobi as lawyers of the families of two Iranian prisoners in Kenya to probe into the case of the inmates and provide them with legal advice... Farajvand voiced deep regret over releasing such "baseless" media reports, and said they are merely aimed at destroying the friendly and growing ties between Tehran and Nairobi. He also expressed the hope that given the fact that the two Iranian nationals are prominent lawyers, the process to pursue the case would not be affected by the ballyhoos of ill-wishers and the two lawyers would be freed soon through good interaction between the Kenyan government and judiciary... Kenyan Ambassador to Tehran was invited to Iran Foreign Ministry on Thursday evening to be informed of Tehran's protest. "Tehran asked the Kenyan party to seriously look into the issue, while emphasizing prompt release of the two Iranian citizens," he added. [FARS News, December 3, 2016]

In Kenya, the local media expressed it very much more bluntly:

The Iranian government on Friday ordered the Kenyan government to set free two of its nationals arrested by the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit... [Iran] rubbished the terrorism link saying that the two were government lawyers on an official assignment. [A Kenyan news site, December 3, 2016 - archived by us in case the source disappears]

So having been ordered by the Islamic Republic, here's what happened in Nairobi today:

Kenyan court has ordered the deportation of two Iranian men who were accused of plotting an attack on the Israeli embassy in the capital, Nairobi. A court order issued Wednesday said an agreement had been reached between prosecutors and the Iranian Embassy leading to the termination of criminal charges and deportation. The suspects, Sayed Nasrollah Ebrahim and Abdolhosein Gholi Safaee, had been in custody since November 29, when they were arrested outside the Israeli Embassy with video footage of the facility. They had been traveling in an Iranian diplomatic car after visiting a prison where they saw two other Iranians who have been jailed for 15 years on terrorism charges, according to prosecutors. They were charged with collecting information to facilitate a terrorist act. Iranian agents have been suspected in attacks or thwarted attacks around the globe in recent years, including in Azerbaijan, Thailand and India. Most of the plots had Israeli targets. ["Kenya drops charges, deports Iranians thought plotting attack on Israelis", Associated Press via Times of Israel, December 14, 2016]

Sounds to us like a serious and regretable Kenyan mistake. Meanwhile on a completely unrelated subject:

Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan, while speaking at a conference in Tehran, said that were President-Elect Trump to withdraw from the Iranian nuclear “deal” signed by the Obama administration, Iran would destroy the State of Israel... ["Iran threatens to destroy Israel - again", Washington Times, December 12, 2016]

17-May-16: The snark at Reuters

If your Twitter account name incorporated the name of one of the world's most influential news syndication agencies as Luke Baker's does (he's a Reuters bureau chief), would you choose to unleash your snarky (and in our personal view, your unacceptably unprofessional) sensibilities in order to comment on Middle East events this way?

Source: Twitter

15-Feb-16: Weaponizing of Pal Arab children goes on as major news media pretend not to see

"Israel shoots dead..." is the entire message
Today's Melbourne Age [source]

A tragedy is being made worse by those who report it. Or better: fail to accurately report it.

Those of us following with horror the ongoing and escalating weaponization of children by the Palestinian Arab leadership will not be surprised to find corners of the mainstream media for whom the telling of the events entails a reflexive laying of principal blame at the feet of the Israelis.

Reuters, for instance.

Here [link] is how a syndicated report they issued on Sunday night [link] is being megaphoned via news channels across the global news landscape today. It's their take on the violence and bloodletting we reported here yesterday ["15-Feb-16: Capping a long day of extreme violence, an Arab-on-Israeli shooting attack in Jerusalem", and "14-Feb-16: Sunday bloody Sunday"]. But at a deeper and more worrying level, it's an instance of agit-prop packaged up to advance a shallow, misleading and eventually dangerous re-telling of the Palestinian Arab descent into self-destruction.

Reuters professional editors and reporters - along with most of the editors at the news channels who syndicate their stories - manage not to even notice (or pretend not to) how most of yesterday's Arab-on-Israeli shootings and stabbings were done by children. The words child and children are completely absent. This takes determination and, to an extent, talent.

By looking away from the real story - the indoctrination of yet another generation of hope-deprived youngsters and equipping them with the zeal and self-negation that it takes to kill and be killed - ensures more deaths and injuries of children in the days to come. The toll is already far too great.

Click for some of our previous posts about the astonishing ways Pal Arab society relates to children's lives - not only its own, as we as bereaved parents of a murdered child know, but especially its own.

How great if the Reuters people would take to heart some words we quoted here a few months back [20-Oct-15: Children and what a soulless society can do to them]. An acclaimed leader of oppressed people who understood how this works said:

 "There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children." - Nelson Mandela 1918-2013, addressing the launch of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, Pretoria, South Africa, May 8, 1995 [source]

28-Jun-15: Terror: now you see it, now you don't

The aftermath of the terrorist massacre in the Kuwaiti mosque [Image Source]

A killer, motivated by ideological passions, enters a house of worship and launches a frenzied attack that results in a great deal of spilled blood, numerous deaths of the faithful, and devastated families.

It's terrorism, right? Well, that depends on who's doing the editing.

Terror attacks in Kuwait, France and Tunisia echo Isis methods | The Guardian, June 26, 2015

Headline says it all.

Five Israelis killed in deadly attack on Jerusalem synagogue | The Guardian, November 18, 2014

The murders of unarmed Jewish worshipers are described as a "frenzied assault", the most lethal incident in the city (Jerusalem) in years. But the word 'terror' appears only when it's part of a direct quotation from comments made by two people: an eye-witness and the US Secretary of State.

Terrorist Attacks in France, Tunisia and Kuwait Kill Dozens | New York Times, June 26, 2015

Headline says it all

Israel Shaken by 5 Deaths in Synagogue Assault | New York Times, June 26, 2015

Terrorism not mentioned. The attackers are termed "assailants", the massacre is an "attack" and an "assault". The savagery is framed as part of "the rising religious dimension of the spate of violence, which has been attributed mainly to a struggle over the very site the victims were praying toward". Does the reporter see the victims as part of that "spate"? Were the men at prayer involved in a "struggle"? Are any Israelis to be considered outside that struggle? 

Fatal Friday: Scores dead after France, Tunisia & Kuwait hit by terrorist attacks | rt.com (Russia), June 26, 2015

Headline says it all

3 US & 1 UK rabbis killed, 7 injured in attack at Jerusalem synagogue | rt.com again, November 18, 2014

Two "assailants" attacked worshipers (knives, axes, pistol) in a Jerusalem synagogue. "Spokeswoman Luba Samri described the incident as a "terrorist attack."" But other than as part of a quote from the police, terror goes unmentioned... except in the URL of the article itself, which suggests someone with more brains than political correctness realized what the massacre in Jerusalem actually stood for, but was then editorially over-ruled.

Friday’s Three Terror Attacks Might Not Be Connected—and That’s Even Scarier | Time Magazine, June 26, 2015

"A bloody assault in Tunisia, a decapitation in France and a suicide bombing in Kuwait are part of the horrifying new normal of terrorism"

Fears of Religious Conflict After Synagogue Killings | Time Magazine, November 18, 2014

Ilene Prusher/Jerusalem @ileneprusher  Updated: Nov. 18, 2014 5:34 PM

Terrorism is never mentioned other than as part of someone's quoted words. "Tuesday’s attack in a crowded synagogue where worshippers has just begun their morning prayers is the most serious attack in recent weeks. Both Israelis and Palestinians noted the choice of target and the skyrocketing tensions over Jerusalem’s holy sites – the Temple Mount or Noble Sanctuary houses the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and has the Western Wall at its base. Many expressed concerns that this may be morphing into a religious war more than a struggle over land."

And finally for a sense of the rhetorical acrobatics that this issue brings out in people, a commentary published by Reuters last week in the wake of a massacre at a South Carolina house of worship:

Why the South Carolina shooting suspect should not be called a terrorist | Reuters - Masha Gessen, June 23, 2015

Was the massacre of nine people at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina an act of terrorism? Almost certainly, yes. Does this mean we should be calling the suspect... a terrorist, and prosecuting him as one? Probably not…

True to Reuters policy, its editors manage to tell the story of Friday's massacre in the Kuwait mosque as well as the November 2014 massacre in the Jerusalem synagogue with no mention of terror in either case. So does this mean we are closer to a solution? Are we better off this way? Is there anything we can learn from this? Stay tuned.

The aftermath of the terrorist massacre in the Jerusalem synagogue [Image Source]

27-Mar-15: What a person can do with water is both less and more than most people think

They know most people will never bother to check the facts behind
the allegations [Image Source: A March 23, 2015 RT article]

We live in a country where water is a key enabler, and limiter, of habitation and success. Israel's approach to storing, treating, transporting, recycling and desalinating water is admired throughout the civilized world. It's a heroic aspect of Israel's unique history, and one of the most significant reasons why resource-poor postage-stamp-sized Israel does so well in so many different ways.

A Reuters syndicated report ["Fighters target vital water plants across Middle East: Red Cross"] published this past Wednesday seemed to be dealing with the way terrorists, who by definition, respect no red lines, are targeting water supply resources. "Militants", it says, using a common euphemism for terrorists, "in Syria, Iraq and Gaza have also used access to water and electricity supplies as "tactical weapons or as bargaining chips," the ICRC said in a report."

Reuters then seizes on an instance to prove the point:

Gaza's only power plant was damaged during the 2014 war between Israel and Palestinian militants. The Gaza Company for Generating Electricity said an Israeli tank shell hit the main fuel tanks, taking out almost all capacity.

Electricity is vital to the effective management of water. So if "an Israeli tank" eliminated the capacity of the regime now ruling Gaza, Israel stands behind Gaza's water crisis. Right? No, not at all right, and understanding the real reasons why Gaza is chronically out of electric power is essential to making sense of allegations like the one we just saw. (We will come back to it here another time.)

Published to coincide with World Water Day 2015 this past Sunday (March 22), a report by NGO Monitor (online here) looks closely at the exploitation of water-centric issues as part of the multidimensional political warfare campaign that target Israel. Entitled "Water Myths and Facts: NGOs and the Destructive Water Campaign Against Israel", the report illustrates a fundamental truth about anti-Israel activism, expressed by its head, Prof Gerald Steinberg:

"Water is a regional issue, and one that, with close cooperation between all parties, can ensure equitable, maximal access to clean and safe water and help create a more peaceful environment... Unfortunately, NGOs would rather politicize this issue and demonize Israel than improve Palestinian access to clean water."

Some examples of how:

• A coalition of NGOs  and UN organizations called EWASH (the lengthy membership list is here) opposed an EU-funded desalination project in Gaza that would improve water supply to the suffering inhabitants of the teeming, Hamas-dominated region. Why? Because the project would "accommodate the occupation" and "legitimize Israeli actions." Let the Gazans stay thirsty.
• Constant and widespread repetition of one core claim - that Israel's hostility to Hamas "prevents Gaza's children from having normal opportunities...to drink clean water". In reality, Gaza's water problems stem from poor maintenance of water and sewage facilities by the ruling power, Hamas. As an unabashedly terrorist organization, Hamas' terrorist infrastructure and warfare requirements chronically take precedence over investing in their people. The neglect of vital civilian infrastructures is the inescapable result. But it's actually much worse than that. Since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1992, the management of Gaza's water sector has been entirely in Palestinian hands, while Israel provides millions of cubic meters of water annually as those signed agreements require. The incessant Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli civilians have (astonishingly) not changed the reality that Israel continues to live up to the obligations agreed in the Oslo Accords. Even while under rocket from the people at the far end of the pipeline, Israeli water authority personnel repair and maintain the water supply to Gaza under the most stressful conditions.
• Water gets lost in badly run systems no matter where in the world the bad management happens. This is mostly caused by leakage, spoilage, evaporation and inadequate delivery mechanisms (normally underground pipes). In the Gaza, those losses run at more than 40% of available supply. In the towns and villages under PA control, losses are around 33%. In Israel, it's less than a tenth of that.
• Allegations are made that Mekorot, Israel's national water authority, gains from "Israeli control over a Palestinian captive market under occupation." So the claim is made that "Mekorot applies discriminatory water prices, charging Palestinians higher rates than Israelis”. (Click here to see this truthfulness-challenged assertion on the Who Profits website where it has been doing damage since 2013.) It's back-to-front wrong. The NGO-Monitor report shows how Mekorot sold water to the PA and Gaza in 2013 at a loss by honoring a set price contract to the Arabs. In reality, the price they pay is not more but in fact less than a third of what Israelis pay their own supplier. If Israel's aim is to make unjustified profits, it's an odd way to do it.
• Another constant refrain: the Palestinian Arabs are prevented from creating a better water system because the Israelis make this hard for them. The reality, which depends on understanding treaties, agreements and opaque Palestinian Arab conduct (which most anti-Israel activists and a large part of their audience don't bother to do), is that water projects that have gotten all the necessary authorizations, including those needed from the Israeli side, and for which funding is available, routinely fail to deliver the goods because of conflict within the Palestinian Arab world, and the heavy lobbying of Palestinian sectoral interests, notably their agricultural sector.
• And sometimes the attacks on Israel focus not on inadequate supplies of water but on too much of it. We took a close look at the beginning of March at how irresponsible, unprofessional and agenda-driven reporting from some of the world's largest creators of it can produce outrageous lies like the one claiming Israel uses an aggressive open-the-flood-gates strategy to drown the children of Gaza. It's here ["01-Mar-15: Facts, dam facts, and non-factual inventions aimed at the gullible"]

Foreign aid to the Palestinian Arabs is a notorious black hole. Somehow, the fact that they receive more money per capita than any other segment of mankind has in history keeps bumping up against their reality: photos of bedraggled mothers and children dragging gerry-cans among the rubble of bombed homes. Where did all that foreign cash go? Why do they still not have water or sewerage or reliable supplies of electric power?

Sadly, the process of painting Israel as the boogey-man of the Arab world pays dividends for the advocates of boycotts and sticking a finger in Israel's eye. The Dutch water company Vitens, the largest in its home market, canceled an agreement in December 2013 to collaborate with Mekorot. The Dutch Foreign Affairs Ministry played an anti-Israel role in the affair. ACEA, an Italian water corporation, signed a co-operation agreement with Mekorot in December 2013 [source] which included provisions where Mekorot would play a role in under-resourced regions of Italy; ACEA came under heavy pressure to break it almost immediately. 

At the same time, cooperation agreements exist among, and deliver benefits to, Israelis, Palestinians, and Jordanians. as they should. 

But in the hands of single-minded politically-motivated NGOs, water is a weapon of mass destruction. In many respects, those anti-Israel campaigns, involving high-profile non-governmental organizations, parrot the Palestinian Authority's political agenda, and that of Hamas. In addition to EWASH, they include Al Haq, Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), BADIL, Coalition of Women for Peace/Who Profits, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, United Civilians for Peace (an umbrella group comprising Dutch NGOs ICCO, Oxfam Novib, IKV Pax Christi), Cordaid) and others.

The blame game is played in creative ways by the political activists who purport to be standing up for Palestinian Arab water rights. It's effective, as we noted, until people start looking close at the facts. Israel provides significant amounts of its own water, for instance, to supply the Palestinian Arabs and not the reverse as claimed by the hostile activist NGOs. Unfortunately, the facts - as the Reuters report at the top of this post shows - are inadequate to the task of defeating fact-free or fact-light political agitation.

As with so many other aspects of the disdain and demonization that Israel experiences in international relations, what bothers the hostile side has very little to do with Palestinian suffering. What they cannot abide is Israel's success. There's a name for the sort of activism.

UPDATE April 5, 2015: We are pleased that readers in Poland now have access to a Polish version of this post, kindly translated by the noted Polish author Malgorzata Koraszewska (not for the first time - many thanks!) and posted at http://www.listyznaszegosadu.pl/notatki/problem-z-woda-w-kranach-i-w-propagandzie. Dziękuję bardzo za życzliwość!

05-Sep-14: How much does it really matter if the news reporting from here is done wrong?

Murdered journalist Steven Sotloff

Over at Israellycool.com, Brian of London comments on the oddly unprofessional - and, in our view, morally bankrupt - journalistic practice of calling people who decapitate human prisoners "militants" and "fighters".

His anger is provoked by this past week's news coverage of the cold-blooded murder of a captive journalist, Steven J. Sotloff. If you pay close to attention to news reporting from the Middle East, you don't need much more persuading to see how the editors at Associated Press routinely engage in this idiotic "we wouldn't want to take sides" silliness, preferring to use pseudo-neutral names for people whose actions fully qualify them to be called terrorist savages.

But AP is far from alone in the practice, and it has some exceptionally shabby history. For instance (h/t Richard Landes - and please check out his most recent essay) some readers might remember an incident a decade ago involving one of the other global news syndication giants ["Reuters Asks a Chain to Remove Its Bylines", New York Times, September 20, 2004]:

...Reuters has asked Canada's largest newspaper chain to remove its writers' names from some articles. The dispute centers on a policy adopted earlier this year by CanWest Global Communications - the publisher of 13 daily newspapers including The National Post in Toronto and The Calgary Herald, which both use Reuters dispatches - to substitute the word "terrorist" in articles for terms like "insurgents" and "rebels."

This became an issue because Associated Press had just put out a report that spoke of several Palestinian Arabs killed by IDF action as "fugitives". At the Canadian papers, they had changed "fugitives" to "terrorists".

The NY Times piece at the time quoted a senior Reuters manager, David A. Schlesinger, saying there was a reason to prefer those soft-and-gushy descriptors so beloved by far-away editors:

"My goal is to protect our reporters and protect our editorial integrity..." [and] he was concerned that changes like those made at CanWest could lead to "confusion" about what Reuters is reporting and possibly endanger its reporters in volatile areas or situations... "If a paper wants to change our copy that way, we would be more comfortable if they remove the byline."

At CanWest, they had harsh words for the Reuters policy and its implications:

Reuters' rejection of his company's definition of terrorism undermined journalistic principles. "If you're couching language to protect people, are you telling the truth?" asked Mr. Anderson, who is also editor in chief of The Ottawa Citizen. "I understand their motives. But issues like this are why newspapers have editors." Mr. Anderson said the central definition in the policy was that "terrorism is the deliberate targeting of civilians in pursuit of a political goal."

The same NY Times piece gives the Associated Press view which is no less fatally flawed than that of Reuters:

"We do not endorse changes that make an A.P. story unbalanced, unfair or inaccurate."

Which prompted the Canadian editors to explain that calling terrorists by idiotically mild names and using other

"...euphemisms merely serves to apply a misleading gloss of political correctness. And we believe we owe it to our readers to remove it before they see their newspaper every morning."

The tragedy of Steven Sotloff is another reminder that journalism attracts courageous, risk-taking individuals who are ready to put everything they have on the line to ensure the truth of what is happening out there reaches consumers of the news.

The tragedy of the moral decay on display throughout the news reporting industry is that so few of us get to see or understand the issues for the simple reason that those causing it are the very same people as those responsible for being objective about it. And objective is certainly not what they are. Couple that with how Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (among others) routinely, with no evident compunctions, intimidate news reporters, photographers and their editors and the capacity for causing serious harm is clear. Members of the working media, lacking any string push-back from their editors and owners back home and far from the dangerous streets and villages, quicly learn how to get on, get by and stay safe.

Lynch mob exulting in the murder of two unarmed
Israeli men inside a Palestinian Arab police station
in Ramallah, October 2000

Here's another illustration - quite a famous one, though surprisingly not well known among ordinary consumers of the media's products - from the early weeks of the Arafat War, sometimes misleadingly called the Second Intifadeh.

In October 2000, a television news crew from Italy captured extremely graphic footage of a Palestinian Arab lynch mob dismembering and killing two Israeli reservists who had lost their way and driven into Ramallah, just on the northern edge of Jerusalem. The video goes to air, and its images travel quickly and widely, conveying a horrifying picture of mob barbarism. They also substantiate Israel's bitter complaints that the Palestinian police not only failed to protect the two men - who were murdered while in police custody in the PA's Ramallah police station - but also sought to prevent other journalists from filming the mob.

Comes along Ricardo Cristiano, deputy chief of the local media bureau of RAI, Italy's national media network and owned by the government. Evidently pursuing a corporate mission from his Rome-based masters, Cristiano writes an open letter of obsequious apology to Arafat [English version here] that is published in Al Hayat al Jadida, a PA house organ.

Writing in his network's name, he delivers a "Special Clarification" addressed to "My dear friends in Palestine"

We congratulate you and think that it is our duty to put you in the picture (of the events) of what happened on October 12 in Ramallah. One of the private Italian television stations which competes with us (and not the official Italian television station RAI) filmed the events; that station filmed the events. Afterwards Israeli Television broadcast the pictures, as taken from one of the Italian stations, and thus the public impression was created as if we (RAI) took these pictures. We emphasize to all of you that the events did not happen this way, because we always respect (will continue to respect) the journalistic procedures with the Palestinian Authority for (journalistic) work in Palestine and we are credible in our precise work. We thank you for your trust, and you can be sure that this is not our way of acting. We do not (will not) do such a thing. Please accept our dear blessings. [Source]

More offensive and frightening than the message itself by far is the equanimity with which it is greeted by RAI's colleagues and competitors in the news business. Apologize to the Palestinian Arabs for revealing some of the pathology that characterizes its life? Sure, no sweat, got to stay close to events and report the news, right? But (to remind us of the Canadian story above) is it the truth?

Fast forward now to the latest chapter of this ongoing war and the seven weeks of rocket attacks from Gaza and what's changed?

As Matti Friedman explains in a well-documented and compelling analysis "An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth | A former AP correspondent explains how and why reporters get Israel so wrong, and why it matters" [Tablet, August 256, 2014], not much. And certainly not enough.

The lasting importance of this summer’s war, I believe, doesn’t lie in the war itself. It lies instead in the way the war has been described and responded to abroad, and the way this has laid bare the resurgence of an old, twisted pattern of thought and its migration from the margins to the mainstream of Western discourse—namely, a hostile obsession with Jews. The key to understanding this resurgence is not to be found among jihadi webmasters, basement conspiracy theorists, or radical activists. It is instead to be found first among the educated and respectable people who populate the international news industry; decent people, many of them, and some of them my former colleagues. ["An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth"]

As the title says, Friedman spent some years working inside Associated Press. This is a long piece by magazine standards. But it's filled with the kind of well-framed nuggets that people sickened by media dishonesty and lethal journalism - the sort that leads to people having their heads cut off, for instance - find stunningly illuminating.

One small example of a nugget:

It is not coincidence that the few journalists who have documented Hamas fighters and rocket launches in civilian areas this summer were generally not, as you might expect, from the large news organizations with big and permanent Gaza operations. They were mostly scrappy, peripheral, and newly arrived players—a Finn, an Indian crew, a few others. 

Each of those is an instance that we covered here: the Indian news report, an Italian reporter and the Finnish reporter, and others. But Friedman offers much more. Then under the sub-heading "Who Cares If the World Gets the Israel Story Wrong?", he gets to an especially crucial point, and expresses what we have tried to do for some years now:

Understanding what happened in Gaza this summer means understanding Hezbollah in Lebanon, the rise of the Sunni jihadis in Syria and Iraq, and the long tentacles of Iran. It requires figuring out why countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia now see themselves as closer to Israel than to Hamas. Above all, it requires us to understand what is clear to nearly everyone in the Middle East: The ascendant force in our part of the world is not democracy or modernity. It is rather an empowered strain of Islam that assumes different and sometimes conflicting forms, and that is willing to employ extreme violence in a quest to unite the region under its control and confront the West. Those who grasp this fact will be able to look around and connect the dots. Israel is not an idea, a symbol of good or evil, or a litmus test for liberal opinion at dinner parties. It is a small country in a scary part of the world that is getting scarier. It should be reported as critically as any other place, and understood in context and in proportion. Israel is not one of the most important stories in the world, or even in the Middle East; whatever the outcome in this region in the next decade, it will have as much to do with Israel as World War II had to do with Spain. Israel is a speck on the map—a sideshow that happens to carry an unusual emotional charge.

And ends with this:

Journalists engage in these fantasies at the cost of their credibility and that of their profession. And, as Orwell would tell us, the world entertains fantasies at its peril.

Or in simpler terms: a large part of the damage caused in those conflicts in which the reporting is done by people with ideological concerns on their minds is not on the battlefields but in the editing suites and the media conference rooms, and in people's homes far from the rockets and the tunnels.