Pretty much every Secretary of State since the Truman administration has devoted considerable energy to brokering peace between Israelis and Palestinians. None succeeded. In fact, the most recent and ambitious attempt—the Oslo Peace Accords—backfired badly. But there seems to be something about the Secretary of State’s job that forces its occupants to keep on undertaking this Sisyphean labor regardless of whether or not it makes sense.
And so now we have Condoleezza Rice regularly journeying to the Middle East to arrange another peace conference later this year. It is hard to know why she thinks the climate for a breakthrough is propitious now. Hamas, an organization devoted to Israel’s destruction, has taken control of the Gaza Strip, making it what the Israeli government rightly calls a “hostile entity.” Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority (or what remains of it), is an ineffectual figurehead. Syrian President Bashar Assad is working full-time to destroy Lebanese democracy and possibly to acquire nuclear arms. He has shown no interest in negotiating peace. Instead he is working hand in glove with Iran to support Hamas and Hizballah.
Meanwhile, Israel is led by an unpopular prime minister whose toughness has been questioned and who, unlike his immediate predecessor, lacks the credibility to give away land such as the Golan Heights in a bid for “peace.”
Amid such circumstances, it is hardly surprising to see this Washington Post headline recounting Rice’s most recent trip to the Holy Land: “Rice Visit Yields No Commitments On Mideast Talks; Differences Over Agenda Remain Wide.” The only mystery here is why the Secretary of State—an intelligent woman—insists on continuing to engage in such a hopeless endeavor.
Perhaps she has been told that this is what Arab states expect, that the U.S. should go through the motions even if the chances of success are scant. But aren’t there bigger issues than Israel to engage her attention? Perhaps she should be doing more to pressure American allies such as Germany to cut off economic ties with a regime in Iran that has threatened to wipe Israel off the map.
Oh, Noah, there you go again.
This is media you’re writing about. There is such a lack or responsibility it’s amazing (and, frankly, disgusting). But aside from the blogosphere no one really cares, least of all reporters, or if they did, their editors/colleagues would self-correct…eventually.
Also, it’s Israel and Jews you’re writing about. No one in the media cares about them, either.
Double, triple, quadruple standards all apply.
You’re not actually suggesting in your matrix that reporters actually report, are you?
apparently AP now reports that two gaza residents have confirmed the IDF account.
thank you for this. i have been chronicling this war since the start, and watching the wires very closely. the MSM is in a snit because of the EU’s stance, Egypt’s support, the words-only from Iran, and now the about-face by Sarzoky.
the usual pro-Palestinian/anti-Israeli line just isn’t working … oh well.
Grantman: You’re not actually suggesting in your matrix that reporters actually report, are you?
Well, Noah and I do, and sometimes we report together. We’ve worked together in both Israel and Lebanon.
…with any luck, the UN brand will be further sullied by its willing co-option by hamas…
between richard falk, the UN ambulance youtube and this, the UN’s reputation as a ‘good guy’ may be as much under siege as hamas…and, just like hamas, the damage is self-inflicted
Ah yes, Noah Pollak. I remember when he lied and lied and lied again during the election, claiming that CNN had falsified polls showing that his wingnut, John McJerk, has lost the second presidential debate. When Pollak was shown the truth, he just kept on lying. Now he wants to tell us what proper journalists, i.e., Israeli propagandists, ought to do.
Noah, you’re a cheap shyster masquerading as a media critic, which makes you perfectly suited to work for Commentary, a citadel of lying, failed wingnut neocon crooks.
Hamas terrorists who are assigned to sites like the UN school are really no different than suicide bombers.
I LOL’d.
Democrat’s ad hominem would make a fine example in a text on informal logic.
You have every right to call the media to account. The more blatantly the MSM distorts the truth, the more it deserves to be hammered for it.
Thank you.
Wow, democrat! All those talking points straight out of code pink’s diatribe-o-matic…you only missed “bush lied, people died!”. Oh, wait. That one has been publicly discredited, too! Please.
And with each passing day the MSM falls closer to its own destruction. The Trib (Chicago Trib and LA Times) is in bankruptcy. The NY Times is bleeding so much red ink there might not be enough fat to cut to try and stay solvent. Circulations continue to plummet. The internet obviously creates some of this but I had read some reports suggesting their web traffic isn’t so hot either.
While it is sad to consider the demise of the industry and the concerns of a lack of a vibrant free press, the press has no longer performed that function as a check on the government. Enough people have realized this and decided whats the point. Maybe the editors and so called journalists would begin to realize that their business model – cheerleader for one political party and the feeling that they must change the world – is not sustainable. My first reaction – never hire another journalism school major – never promote or place an editor who has a spouse or family member in a significant position in government. Clearly the national TV press is just overpaid faces reading from a teleprompter who are married to high ranking movers and shakers in Washington. The national dailies aren’t much different.
When reporters are willing to report and get out of the pockets of media pressure groups – and Mr. Totten seems the exception not the rule – then maybe the readership will return.
Noah: Thank you for pointing this out about Hamas and their use of schools. It makes perfect sense and it’s been a common tactic of the Jihadists for many years in other countries too. Not only are the journalists irresponsible, but the editors who write the screaming headlines are almost worse. Most Americans just see the headlines. In my opinion, the print-media newspapers are disgraceful, abhorrent, and have done our country and economy irreparable harm. How have they helped ruin our economy? By NEVER sticking up for Capitalism and by reporting economic news like the illiterates on that subject that they are. And by not researching Obama’s history of hatred for our somewhat mild form of Capitalism. That’s how. We are screwed with this guy, BHO-FDR.
I propose another metric: if you know a place is a school and you bomb it anyway, you should be tried for war crimes or crimes against humanity. Regardless of whether a few ragtag militants are holed up inside. There are children in a school. If you bomb a school, you will kill children. Seems pretty obvious except for the perennial apologists…
—Noah, you’re a cheap shyster masquerading as a media critic,
What about the school, the demolitions, the you-tube?
On the other hand, so many gazans are illiterate.
To (not so) LogicMan:
Logical fallacies, of two types:
Begging the Question
Begging the Question is a fallacy in which the premises include the claim that the conclusion is true or (directly or indirectly) assume that the conclusion is true. This sort of “reasoning” typically has the following form.
Premises in which the truth of the conclusion is claimed or the truth of the conclusion is assumed (either directly or indirectly).
Claim C (the conclusion) is true.
This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because simply assuming that the conclusion is true (directly or indirectly) in the premises does not constitute evidence for that conclusion. Obviously, simply assuming a claim is true does not serve as evidence for that claim. This is especially clear in particularly blatant cases: “X is true. The evidence for this claim is that X is true.”
Description of Straw Man
The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of “reasoning” has the following pattern:
Person A has position X.
Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
Person B attacks position Y.
Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.
This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.
Some cases of question begging are fairly blatant, while others can be extremely subtle. Your’s isn’t exactly what I would call subtle. More like propaganda.
Totten
I have read your blog for years and you did a great job. Lately though, you are on some crusade. I am surprised by the virulence and lack of nuance of your current stance. Maybe Commentary and the like pay you too much and it has affected your judgment? Sorry if you find this insulting, that is not the intention. I mean, most people respond to incentives, even the pure and straight.
I may be mistaken, but I don’t believe the IDF is claiming that the footage is from the same school…
Warren
Your big words are meaningless obfuscation and you didn’t connect them to my post because you can’t. Every verb I used is completely objective and not open to subjective interpretation, distortion, exaggeration or ‘propaganda’: ‘know’, ‘bomb’, ‘kill’. These are all binary, you know something or you don’t know it. You bomb or you don’t bomb etc… Or is the statement ‘there are children in a school’ that you find questionable? I thought it was a safe statement. There is even a word for it, “schoolchildren”, they call them.
LogicMan – Is your name supposed to be some form of irony?
Setting: two-weeks into a war where the enemy is shelling the crap out of your puny scrap of land.
You wake up in the morning and think, “Gee, what a beautiful time to trundle the kidlings off to school while the wife and I huddle in the bomb shelter.”
Yeah, the Palis are too stupid to breathe AND they hate their children.
I propose this metric: If you can’t create a simple syllogism that isn’t laughable (I’m trying to be polite), you shouldn’t call yourself Logicman.
Other places you might not want to send your kids during open conflict:
– soccor fields
– grocery stores
– post office
– outside
– the front line (oh, wait…the Palis do that all the time, but maybe they shoudn’t)
-any place that isn’t as deep and far away from the fighting as you can get them
In short, my dear friend, the moment “a few ragtag militants” show up at my child’s school, my children will not be in said school…and those militants will face my wrath long before they face fire from a foreign power.
For the record, I’d rather be called a perennial apologist than whatever it is that you are.
mvantony:
I like your thinking; I’ve always said it would be a neat experiment to teach a class on logic and logical fallacies using the op-ed page of a typical liberal daily newspaper as the text.
Well, yesterday’s Detroit Free Press had a story on the Gaza war with an unremarkable headline and the subheadline” “20 Palestinians Kids Killed.” Unfortunately the sub-headline isn’t present in the on-line version.
I noted the choice of words–not “children” or “civilians” but “kids.” Whose heart would not be affected at the idea of a score of innocent children dying at the hands of the Israelis?
The Free Press might have had similar headlines about Israeli children cowering in fear in Sderot or Israeli children being murdered in their homes and on their buses during the last intifada, complete with pictures of mourning relatives. I don’t recall any but it might just be my faulty memory.
Notwithstanding this post and similar comments from others on the scene, Andrew Sullivan still adheres to the view that it’s mostly the Jooos fault.
“…activists masquerading as reporters.” But you’re repeating yourself.
Michael – that comment was directed to the MSM, not you or Noah. I’ve been reading you for years and know that you and Noah traveled and worked together a number of times. You’re one of the best in the biz. Sorry if my attempt at sarcasm failed.
The problem may be with the editors who decide how to title the reports. A journalist can write an article that does have all the facts, but (as far as I know) it’s up to the editor to decide how to title it. They can say “Israelis hit UN school in Gaza: 30 killed” or they can say “Hamas rigs school with explosives in battle with Israeli forces”
From a quick search of news.google, it appears that the majority of editors chose option A.
There’s mounting evidence that the IDF explanation is a lie.
Should a “responsible journalist” take the word of the heirs of Deir Yassin, the slaughter of the Egyptian prisoners in Sinai, the Liberty, Shatila/Sabra, and Qana? I think not.
Messed up the html. Sorry about that.
Haaretz here.
Fisk here..
LogicMan: Let’s assume for argument’s sake that those “rag-tag militants” (a dishonest rhetorical device intended to deceive readers into thinking that combatants with weapons are not dangerous) launch a mortar or rocket that strikes a house in Israel, killing the inhabitants. Are you asserting that Israel should refrain from retaliating?
Logic Man doesn’t understand what a war crime is and how you structure the rules to prevent them. In his world the use of human shields is to be encouraged, because he wants it to be made an effective tactic, instead of rendered ineffective, and therefore stop it from happening.
Grumpy Old Man lives in a delusional world where Robert Fisk has any credibility.
LogicMan,
I’m willing to accept the premise that (MY) “… big words are meaningless obfuscation”, when you admit you are ignorant!
You don’t have to admit that you have never actually studied logic, logical processes or know the meaning of the word “logic”. It becomes painfully obvious in your posts.
The term “war crime” has a specific meaning. You might try looking the meaning up.
For instance, using civilians as human shields is a war crime. Responding to mortar fire or destroying an arms cache in a school building is not.
As the majority of the MSM are University BRAINWASHED, left wing, PC, anti Semitic, Moonbats its no wonder you get the type of reporting we constantly see. The Mohammedan apologists posting here also follow this same logic process completely ignoring the fact that Hamas has been sending rockets against INNOCENT Israeli civilians for YEARS and that it was Hamas who would not continue the truce. Instead they increased their rocket fire note I said INCREASED not started again because they NEVER stopped. Truces are for pussies and gullible PC Governments not for the Holy Warriors of Mohammad.
Also Hamas publicly stated that they would use their OWN civilians as Human Shields and at least in this they keep their word. Also the Hamas charter says they will NEVER recognise Israel’s right to exist and in fact they want to DESTROY it completely. Now lets talk about your ‘moral equivalence’ Logicman.
Propaganda – Why?…because icecream has no bones. If a tree falls in the forest and there are no reporters there to cover it, then there was no tree and the Jooos are preventing the media from doing there job! …or there WAS a tree and the Jooos knocked it over with a D-9 in a deranged attempt to squish cute little squirrels and bunnies…and orphans.
Sorry, I relent. I can’t think of a single reason why the IDF wouldn’t let a corps of worlwide journalists, who by their every word and action have shown themselves to be allied with the enemies of Israel and civilization, stroll through their lines and walk into their line of fire…effectively becoming human shields.
Please, where is the evidence that the school was rigged with explosives? It’s being reported as fact, but I don’t see where the story has come from.
Please be aware that I am generally on the side of the Israelis in this matter, but I can’t support the propagation of falsehoods in the details.
Hoover-
I can’t swear anything about the particular school under discussion, but I’ve seen some of the YouTube video showing IDF bombing of targets: first you see the explosion from the bomb itself, then secondary explosions from weapons and ammo stored there.
The Palestinians ARE known for storing weapons and ammunition in mosques and “civilian” police stations; I have no problem believing they also store explosives at schools and hospitals. Their belief seems to be that they win either way: either the school/hospital/highrise-apartment will be spared from retaliation for humanitarian reasons (so their arms caches remain available), or the IDF retaliatory bombing destroys the cache, and the Palestinian PR groups have a field day publicizing the “monstrous inhumanity” of Israel in “targeting civilian infrastructure”.
(By the way, so far the Palestinians have not shown any restraint in “targeting civilians” in Israel.)
(A second aside: I understand the Israelis have been TELEPHONING the civilians in a given target area to “Get out now”; this allows people about 10 minutes to flee but it’s not sufficient time to move the military equipment that’s the actual target.)