Syria’s Useful Israeli Idiots
- 10.24.2007 - 12:21 PMThe Syrian state-run propaganda organ Cham Press published a fake story about Lebanese Member of Parliament Walid Jumblatt’s supposed plan to meet Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in the United States last weekend to coordinate a regime-change in Syria. No Western media organization I know of took this non-story seriously. Israeli media, though, scooped it right up. Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post, and Infolive TV published their own articles about the imaginary meeting between Jumblatt and Barak. None had a source for their story other than the Syrian government’s website.
It goes without saying that Israeli journalists aren’t in cahoots with the Baath Party regime in Damascus. Many Israeli reporters and editors, however, are frankly clueless about Lebanese and Syrian politics.
First of all, it is illegal for a Lebanese citizen to speak to an Israeli citizen no matter where in the world their meeting takes place. Even quietly waving hello to an Israeli on the border is treason.
A significant portion of the Lebanese people sided with Israel during the first Lebanon War in 1982, including Lebanon’s president-elect Bashir Gemayel before he was assassinated. The South Lebanese Army was Israel’s proxy militia in what is now Hizballah-controlled territory, until then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak withdrew Israeli occupation forces from their “security belt” in South Lebanon in 2000. The draconian law is in place precisely to prevent such sympathizers from working with Israelis against Lebanese.
The law is absurd from the West’s point of view, and from the point of view of many Lebanese, too. Lebanon is “the least anti-Israel Arab country in the world,” as Lebanese political consultant and analyst Eli Khoury told me last year. But Lebanon, despite its moderation outside the Hizballah camp, is still under the shadow of the Syrian-Iranian axis, and remains threatened with de facto re-annexation. The reactionary law is still on the books, and even a leader as prominent as Walid Jumblatt dare not break it.
Jumblatt traveled to Washington this past weekend to give a speech at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which you can read here. After Cham Press published its fabricated story, his office phoned the institute to make sure the Israeli Defense Minister would not be attending. He needed to be sure the two could not even run into each other by accident and make Syria’s bogus assertion look true.
Israeli journalists who “reported” this non-story should have noticed that they published a claim that Jumblatt and Barak will meet in the United States after the meeting was supposed to have already happened. Cham Press said the meeting would take place on Sunday, and Israeli media placed the alleged meeting in the future tense the following Monday.
Re-reporting Syrian lies in the Israeli press makes Cham Press look almost legitimate, its lies almost plausible. This should be obvious, but apparently it isn’t. The Damascus regime knows what it is doing and has been using gullible foreign journalists to its advantage for a while now.
“Regime flacks fed New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh outrageous propaganda about how the United States supposedly supported the Fatah al-Islam terrorists in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian camp in Lebanon,” said Tony Badran, a Lebanese research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Then they quoted his New Yorker story to get themselves diplomatically off the hook for their own support of those terrorists in the camp.”
And here we go again. Cham Press now says Israel’s Omedia reported that Jumblatt met with Barak and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in Washington. Cham Press no longer quotes only itself; it quotes Israeli websites as backup. But the only reason Israeli media reported any of this in the first place is the initial false story appearing in Cham Press. Syrian media is still just quoting itself—only now it does so through Israel.
Jumblatt is near or at the top of Syria’s hit list. No Lebanese leader opposes Syrian terrorism and attempts at overlordship in Lebanon as staunchly as he. His pro-Western “March 14” bloc in parliament is already accused of being a “Zionist hand” by Hizballah and the Syrians. He was the second person Syrian ruler Bashar Assad threatened by name shortly before former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 21 others were assassinated by a truck bomb in downtown Beirut. (“I will break Lebanon over your head and Walid Jumblatt’s,” Assad said to Hariri.) As Tony Badran pointed out to me, the Syrian regime has a habit of planting false stories about Lebanese leaders just before dispatching them with car bombs. The idea of Jumblatt meeting with Barak may seem innocent in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but it marks him for death in Lebanon and in Syria.
Syria is at war with both Israel and Lebanon. Journalists who wish to write about a conspiracy between Israel and Lebanon to destroy the regime in Syria need a better source for that story than the manipulative and murderous Syrian state.
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October 24th, 2007 at 1:50 PM
Yes, Haaretz, and the Jerusalem Post too, are capable of the most irresponsible journalism imaginable.
I was astonished when they only recently dredged up a non-story on the USS Liberty. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/909552.html It did not bring news or shed light. It brought confusion and restored life to old delusions. It was the opposite of journalism. It is incredible how unprofessional and foolish those editors can be, most particularly in Haaretz.
October 24th, 2007 at 6:45 PM
Haaretz is a despicable newspaper. It is run by people who have a deep dislike of Israel and a strong affinity to the “real”, European culture. I sometimes feel as if the old European anti-semitism is the guiding principle behind their thinking. They have endless contempt for everything that smells of religion or jewish tradition.
I remember reading once a long article in Haaretz comparing the glorious death of Dietrich Bonhoffer - who was incarcerated in Berlin and wrote long philosophical letters to his fiancee from his prison cell until he was executed just days before the end of Hitler - and the inglorious death of the Jews who died nameless in the gas chambers and the killing fields.
They have almost daily reports on the terrible oppression and injustice inflicted by Israel on the Palestinians. Hamas? A creation of Israeli intelligence. Arafat? A patriotic palestinian and a man of peace.
The strangest thing of all is that many Israelis read it and take it seriously.
October 24th, 2007 at 10:00 PM
For NaCl and Mr Rosset above–It’s a shame that in a small country with freedom of the press in Israel’s predicament, that the Press is owned by foreign interests. Haaretz even has a relationship with the NY Times.
It is too bad about Conrad Black. The Jerusalem Post was a very good publication under his ownership.
October 25th, 2007 at 10:35 AM
Perhaps I’m missing something here.
I can’t see where the reporting about better ties between Israel and members of Lebanon’s political elite, whether such reports come from “planted” Syrian sources or otherwise, could possibly cause more harm than good to the [presumed] desired goal of hastening the exit of Syria/Iran /Hizbullah from the sovereign state of Lebanon.
Where is the problem in Israel [and others] making it quite clear that we stand absolutely, and one hundred percent with and behind ALL the forces now striving for a free Lebanon, whether they are mobilised from the Druze, Christian, Sunni or even Amal quarters, so long as their vision is that of a “free Lebanon”, finally released from the killing grip of Hizbullah and its Syrian/Iranian masters?
It should have been and should, still, for example, be made abundantly clear, to as wide an audience as possible, why the planned, next democratic election in Lebanon, was rendered impossible, or at least delayed, through the deliberate assassination of those “free Lebanon” legislators who would have ensured a majority vote against the Syrian/Iranian/Hizbullah terror system which they now seek to impose on Lebanon?
If the whole over-reaction [in my view] to the alleged Cham Press story lies in regard to how the Israeli media [mis]reported on a possible meeting between Jumblatt and Barak ,I fail to see the great evil, or risk in their having done so.
In the first instance, as regards Jumblatt’s personal safety, he seems to have been a whole lot more successful in that department than any number of his hapless fellow Lebanese, thus far. Secondly, Jumblatt is known to harbour very strong anti-Israeli[and American,at least initially] sentiments, so that he can hardly be seen as a Zionist stooge ,or puppet, in the larger Lebanese context.He should, therefore, be able to ensure both his own personal safety ,as well as the image of “independence” which he currently portrays in Lebanese politics
The point I am trying to make is that it is in everyone’s interests, as far as I can tell, that Lebanese Democrats, of whatever persuasion, who now strive so hard, and at such great cost to obtain their independence, be OPENLY seen to be making common cause with whoever [including Israeli, French and American supporters] since it was this form of mass organization and solidarity, and through a transparent display of such forces, wherever present, that in my view, underlay the initial successes of the nascent “free Lebanon” movement, firstly against the Syrian occupation and, thereafter, against the “state-within-a-state” aspirations of Hizballh and its Iranian Masters.
Let’s then, see many more overt “pro-free Lebanon” demonsrations from within and without, rather than create an impression that this is some form of “underground”, surreptitious movement being hatched againt a sovereign or legitimate Lebanese authority!
October 29th, 2007 at 8:38 PM
Michael,
I know you from your reporting over at your blog.
Do you feel comfortable with the level of the comments here? They seem unable to respect Haaretz and JPost, which may be wrong some times but are mostly responsible outlets, and that’s because of purely ideological reasons. Yet the media they’d favor were wrong thousands of times, esp. re: Iraq.
Commentary online seems more an ideological reservation and less a space for honest debate.