Weekend long read

Our weekly round-up of Middle East background reading.

1) At the Tablet, Tony Badran discusses the US Secretary of State’s recent visit to Lebanon.

“As the military confrontation between Iran and its regional proxies on one hand, and Israel on the other hand, heats up, Lebanon has emerged as the nerve center of the Iranian camp. On the eve of Tillerson’s visit, Lebanon hosted Akram al-Kaabi, the leader of an Iraqi militia which operates under the command of Iran’s Qods Force. From Beirut, al-Kaabi stated his group would fight Israel alongside Hezbollah in a future war. The presence of al-Kaabi in Lebanon—his terrorist comrade Qais al-Khazali had dropped by late last year—underscored Lebanon’s role as a hub for Iran’s regional terrorist assets.”

2) The Times of Israel carries an excerpt from Ben Dror Yemini’s latest book – now available in English.

“We must admit that there is no chance for peace in the foreseeable future.

It’s not that the solution is complicated. Despite the disagreements, despite the fantasy of mass Return, and despite the isolated settlements, there are clear parameters for peace. Bill Clinton presented them in late 2000; the Geneva plan presented a similar plan in 2002; Ehud Olmert repeated it, with semantic changes, in 2008; John Kerry introduced two versions with almost the same parameters in 2014. Even the Arab initiative, if we take away the fantasy of mass Return, could have been the basis for an agreement.

Although the parameters are known, peace cannot be achieved.”

3) The ITIC has published a report titled “Palestinian Terrorism: Analysis of 2017 and Forecast for 2018” (full version available in Hebrew here).

“Mahmoud Abbas, the PA and Fatah continue their indirect encouragement of popular terrorism and the shaheed cult in general in various ways. That includes speeches and public declarations issued by senior figures, glorifying the Palestinians who carry out attacks, providing political and media support for popular terrorism, the participation of senior PA and Fatah figures at the funerals held for terrorists killed while carrying out attacks, paying condolence calls to the families of terrorists who were killed, naming streets, institutions and town squares for shaheeds and providing financial support to the families of shaheeds and prisoners.”

4) Professor Richard Landes has produced a video overview of BBC and CNN coverage of UNSC resolution 2334.

“I have, over the past year, slowly put together a video using my archive of recordings of BBC Global and CNN International’s news broadcasts. It portrays a mindset among journalism that has them “in the name of the ‘whole world’,” misinforming the whole world by reciting Palestinian war propaganda as news. “Everybody knows it’s Israel’s fault” that there’s no peace settlement.

Among other violations of journalistic principles of presenting the relevant evidence, I indict the MSTVNM (mainstream TV news media) for not letting their audiences know what Palestinian leaders – both PA and Hamas – say in Arabic, thus compounding the misdirection involved in highlighting and affirming what Palestinian spokespeople say in English.”

Related Articles:

A border dispute BBC audiences know nothing about

 

More from Hadar Sela
Comparing the BBC’s coverage of two tragic stories from Gaza
Seventeen months ago the BBC gave extensive coverage to the story of...
Read More
Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *