In an April 24, 2005 column, �The Hottest Button: How the Times Covers Israel/Palestine,� The New York Times’ Public Editor Daniel Okrent dismisses the broad international consensus that Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal under international law. (See below for full article.)

The NYT continues to mislead its readers by not telling them that the world judges Israeli settlements to be a clear violation of international law.

Here is a telling excerpt:

“[The New York Times] does not cede definitive authority to other organizations and sources. Last Tuesday, “Israel, on Its Own, is Shaping the Borders of the West Bank,” by Steven Erlanger, angered Michael Brown for its unelaborated statement that Palestinians “argue that all Israeli settlements beyond the green line are illegal.” The Times, Brown believes, is obligated to note that “it’s not just the Palestinians who say it’s illegal, but U.N. Security Council resolutions.

“Ethan Bronner, the paper’s deputy foreign editor, counters: ‘We view ourselves as neutral and unbound by such judgments. We cite them, but we do not live by them.’ He adds, ‘In 1975, when the U.N. General Assembly labeled Zionism as racism, would it have been logical for The Times to repeat that description as fact from then on? Obviously not. We take note of official views, but we don’t adopt them as our own.’”

Note how both Mr. Okrent and Mr. Bronner fail to understand, or simply sidestep, the basic core of Mr. Brown’s complaint: that the Times does NOT take note of official views, especially those of the United Nations. Instead, they conveniently create a straw man — that Mr. Brown wants them to adopt those views as the Times’ — and then proceed to forcefully dismantle it.

Second, Mr. Okrent omits the reality that, in addition to UN Security Council resolutions, the United States government, the International Court of Justice, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem have all stated that Israeli settlements in the West Bank - including East Jerusalem - and the Gaza Strip are illegal according to international law (see citations from each below). Their conclusion is firmly rooted in the Fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits an occupying power from transferring civilians from the occupying power’s territory into the occupied territory, and from creating permanent changes in the occupied territory that are not for the benefit of the occupied population.

Michael Brown of Partners for Peace explained in a phone interview that in addition to raising UN Security Council resolutions with Okrent, Okrent failed to mention that Brown also commented in his main report on the Geneva Conventions and international law, and Human Rights Watch and US government positions against the settlements.

Even the Israeli Supreme Court has stated repeatedly that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are under “belligerent occupation”. The logical conclusion of the Israeli Supreme Court’s judgment is that Israeli settlements on occupied land violate the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Okrent quotes Deputy Foreign Editor Ethan Bronner, who casts doubt on the UN’s credibility by raising the 1975 UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, which said that Zionism is a form of racism. However, General Assembly resolutions are not binding, and UNGA 3379 was not later affirmed by respected human rights groups worldwide or by the International Court of Justice. In contrast, the 1980 UN Security Council Resolution 465, which condemned Israeli settlements as a violation of international law, was supported by the US, is binding and considered law, and has been echoed by human rights organizations around the world.

By failing to acknowledge the broad international consensus that Israeli settlements violate international law, Okrent de facto supports the NYT’s typical, flawed reporting which represents the disagreement over the settlements is simply a “he said, she said” argument between Israelis and Palestinians, devoid of context and with no standards to judge who is right or wrong. In reality, in the case of Israeli settlements, international law and the international community very squarely support the Palestinian position.

Actions:

Write to the NYT at the following addresses:

NYT ombudsman Daniel Okrent — public@nytimes.com
NYT editor — letters@nytimes.com
NYT Foreign Desk Editors — bronnere@nytimes.com, chira@nytimes.com
NYT Reporter Steven Erlanger — erlanger@nytimes.com

1. Tell The New York Times that they are out of step with the reality that most of the world judges all Israeli settlements as a clear violation of international law.

2. Tell NYT Public Editor Daniel Okrent that he and NYT reporters should note in all NYT articles mentioning Israeli settlements that leading human rights groups, governments, the International Court of Justice and the UN Security Council all agree that Israeli settlements in the West Bank - including East Jerusalem - and the Gaza Strip violate international law (see citations from different groups below). Whether the NYT believes it or not, the NYT should cite the international consensus.

3. Tell the New York Times that it is highly disingenuous for Okrent and Bronner to attempt to use the non-binding UN General Assembly resolution 3379 on Zionism to de-legitimize the broad international consensus, firmly rooted in the Fourth Geneva Convention, that Israeli settlements violate international law.

For recommendations on language to use when speaking or writing on Israel/Palestine, please go to: http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/language/

Please do feel free to share with us your letters or a summary of your conversation with The NYTimes at info@pmwatch.org.

You can also call us at: (866) DIAL-PMW

Palestine Media Watch
(866) DIAL-PMW
http://www.pmwatch.org/

NOTES:
Quotations on the Illegality of Israeli Settlements

A. The International Court of Justice, Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/idocket/imwp/imwpframe.htm

78. The territories situated between the Green Line (see paragraph 72 above) and the former eastern boundary of Palestine under the Mandate were occupied by Israel in 1967 during the armed conflict between Israel and Jordan. Under customary international law, these were therefore occupied territories in which Israel had the status of occupying Power. Subsequent events in these territories, as described in paragraphs 75 to 77 above, have done nothing to alter this situation. All these territories (including East Jerusalem) remain occupied territories and Israel has continued to have the status of occupying Power.

120. The Court concludes that the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
(including East Jerusalem) have been established in breach of international law.

B. Human Rights Watch, Israel: Bush Should Lay Down the Law on Settlements, April 11, 2005
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/04/11/isrlpa10462.htm

Israel’s policy of encouraging, financing, establishing, and expanding Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories violates two main principles of international humanitarian law, or the laws of war. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a party, states are prohibited from transferring civilians from the occupying power’s territory into the occupied territory, and from creating permanent changes in the occupied territory that are not for the benefit of the occupied population.

�Israel is not only violating international law in expanding its settlements, but also its commitments under the �road map� to freeze them,� said Whitson. �Israel must evacuate its settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in order to uphold its responsibilities as an occupying power.�

C. Amnesty International, Israel/Occupied Territories, Removing Unlawful Settlements in the Occupied Territories: Time to Act, March 23, 2005
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE150212005?open&of=ENG-ISR

However, the evacuation of some 8,000 Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip and from some very sparsely populated settlements in the West Bank must not be allowed to be used by Israel as an opportunity to expand other settlements in the West Bank, where some 400,000 Israelis live in violation of international law.

The international community has long recognized the unlawfulness of the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. UN Security Council Resolution 465 (of 1 March 1980) called on Israel “… to dismantle the existing settlements and in particular to cease, on an urgent basis, the establishment, construction and planning of settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem”.

However, the international community failed to take any measure to implement this resolution. Most Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories were built after this resolution was passed, with the greatest expansion having taken place in the past decade. The establishment and expansion of settlements and related infrastructure in the West Bank is continuing on a daily basis, contrary to Israel’s commitment under the UN-sponsored 2003 Roadmap peace plan. This week the Israeli government confirmed its plan to built 3,500 new settlement houses in the East Jerusalem area of the West Bank.

As well as violating international humanitarian law per se, the implementation of Israel’s settlement policy in the Occupied Territories violates fundamental human rights provisions, including the prohibition of discrimination.

D. B’Tselem, Land Expropriation and Settlements
http://www.btselem.org/English/Settlements/
Since 1967, Israel has established in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip 152 settlements that have been recognized by the Interior Ministry. In addition, dozens of outposts of varying size have been established. Some of these outposts are settlements for all intents and purposes, but the Interior Ministry has not recognized them as such….
In that the very establishment of the settlements is illegal, and in light of the human rights violations resulting from the existence of the settlements, B�Tselem demands that Israel evacuate the settlements. The action must be done in a way that respects the settlers� human rights, including the payment of compensation.
East Jerusalem, B’Tselem
http://www.btselem.org/english/Jerusalem/Index.asp
East Jerusalem is occupied territory. Therefore, it is subject, as is the rest of the West Bank, to the provisions of international humanitarian law that relate to occupied territory. The annexation of East Jerusalem breaches international law, which prohibits unilateral annexation. For this reason, the international community, including the United States, does not recognize the annexation of East Jerusalem.
E. The United States Government
�Our position on settlements, I think, has been very consistent, very clear. The secretary expressed it not too long ago. He said settlement activity has severely undermined Palestinian trust and hope, preempts and prejudges the outcome of negotiations, and in doing so, cripples chances for real peace and prosperity. The U.S. has long opposed settlement activity and, consistent with the report of the Mitchell Committee, settlement activity must stop.� Mr. Richard Boucher, U.S. Department of State Daily Press Briefing — November 25, 2002
“U.S. Policy toward the establishment of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories is unequivocal and has long been a matter of public record. We consider it to be contrary to international law and an impediment to the successful conclusion of the Middle East peace process�s Article 49, paragraph 6, of the Fourth Geneva Convention is, in my judgment, and has been in judgment of each of the legal advisors of the State Department for many, many years, to be. . .that [settlements] are illegal and that [the Convention] applies to the territories.� Secretary of State Cyrus Vance before House Committee on Foreign Affairs — March 21, 1980
�Substantial resettlement of the Israeli civilian population in occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, is illegal under the convention and cannot be considered to have prejudged the outcome of future negotiations between the parties on the locations of the borders of states by the Middle East. Indeed, the presence of these settlements is seen by my government as an obstacle to the success of the negotiations for a just and final peace between Israel and its neighbors.� William Scranton, US Ambassador to the United Nations, UN Security Council — March 23, 1976
F. The Israeli Supreme Court, As Cited by the PLO Negotiation Affairs Department
http://www.nad-plo.org/inner.php?view=facts_others_f23p
As early as 1979, the Israeli Supreme Court stated: �This is a situation of belligerency and the status of [Israel] with respect to the occupied territory is that of an Occupying Power.� In 2002, the Israeli Supreme Court held yet again that the West Bank and Gaza Strip �are subject to a belligerent occupation by the State of Israel.� In June, 2004, the Israeli Supreme Court reaffirmed that �since 1967, Israel has been holding [the West Bank] in belligerent occupation.� [11]

[9] 606 Il. H.C. 78, Ayub, et al. v. Minister of Defense, et al. (The Beth Case); 610 Il. H.C. 78, Matawa et al. v. Minister of Defense, et al. (The Bekaot Case), reprinted in Antoine Bouvier and Marco Sassoli, How Does Law Protect in War? Cases, Documents and Teaching Materials on Contemporary Practice in International Humanitarian Law, International Committee of the Red Cross, pps. 812-817, Geneva, 1999, hereinafter , ICRC 1999.

[10] Adjuri v. IDF Commander, 7015 Il. H.C. 02, 7019 Il. H.C. 02 (2002).

[11] Beit Sourik Village Council v. Commander of the IDF Forces in the West Bank, 2056 Il. H.C. 04 at 1 (2004).

===========

The Hottest Button: How The Times Covers Israel and Palestine
By DANIEL OKRENT
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/weekinreview/24okrent.html?hp

Published: April 24, 2005

Let me offer two statements about this paper’s coverage of the conflict in the Middle East. First: I find the correspondents at The Times to be honest and committed journalists. Second: The Times today is the gold standard as far as setting out in precise language the perspectives of the parties, the contents of resolutions, the terms of international conventions.

Neither of these comments is my own. The first is a direct quotation from Michael F. Brown, executive director of Partners for Peace, an organization that seeks, it says, “to end the occupation of the Palestinian territories.” The second comes from Andrea Levin, president and executive director of the Committee for Accurate Middle East Reporting in America, the muscular pro-Zionist media monitor. With partisans on each side offering respectful appraisal in place of vituperation and threat, you would think that we had reached a milestone moment in The Times’s coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

You would be wrong. Less temperate groups on each side find The Times guilty of felonies ranging from outright dishonesty to complicity in the deaths of civilians. A group called the Orthodox Caucus has led boycotts of The Times for “simply not telling the truth.” I have met with representatives of If Americans Knew, an organization that says The Times conscientiously reports on the deaths of Israeli children but ignores the deaths of Palestinian children - children, they say, usually “shot in the head or chest” by the Israeli soldiers.

On the edges, rage and accusation prevail; nearer the middle, more reasoned critics still find much to criticize. Michael Brown and Andrea Levin can cite chapter, verse, sentence and punctuation mark. They watch this paper with a truly awesome vigilance.

It’s this simple: An article about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot appear in The Times without eliciting instant and intense response. A photograph of a grieving mother is considered a provocation, an interview with a radical on either side is deemed willful propaganda. Detailed studies of column inches devoted to one or another subject arrive weekly. One reader, Leo Rennert of Bethesda, Md., has written to me 164 times (as of Friday) over the past 17 months to comment on the Middle East coverage. His messages are seldom love letters.

On this issue, love letters are as common as compromise, and The Times’s exoneration from charges of bias is as likely as an imminent peace.

After reading thousands of criticisms (as well as insults, accusations and threats) of The Times’s Middle East coverage, I’m still waiting for one reader to say the paper has ever been unfair in a way that was damaging to both sides. Given the frequency of articles on the subject, it would be hard to imagine that such a piece has not been published. In fact, I’ve seen a few myself. But to see them, I have had to suppress my own feelings about what is happening in Israel and Palestine.

I can’t say I’m very good at it. How could I be - how could anyone be - when considering a conflict so deep, so unabating, so riddled with pain? Who can be dispassionate about an endless tragedy?

This doesn’t exonerate The Times, nor does the fact that criticism comes from each side suggest that the paper’s doing something right. But no one who tries to walk down the middle of a road during a firefight could possibly emerge unscathed.

Critics will say The Times attempts nothing of the sort, that it has thrown in its lot with one side in the conflict. But let’s keep motive out of this discussion. Neither you nor I know what the motives of the editors might be. Nor should their motives even matter. We can judge them only on what they do.

Some things The Times does and does not do (apart from having extremely opinionated opinion pages, which color the way the rest of the paper is read but are not the issue under discussion today):

It does not provide history lessons. A report on an assassination attempt on a Hamas leader in Gaza that kills nearby innocents will most likely mention the immediate provocation - perhaps a Palestinian attack on an Israeli settlement. But, says the angered reader, what about the murderous assault that provoked the settlement attack? And, says his aggrieved counterpart on the other side, what about the ambush that preceded the assault? And so on back to the first intifada, and then to 1973 and 1967 and 1956 and 1948 - an endless chain of regression and recrimination and pain that cannot be represented in a year, much less in a single dispatch in a single day.

It eschews passion. If your cause needs good publicity - as both the Palestinians and the Israelis definitely do - conventional news story tropes can only be infuriating: bland recitations of presumed facts followed by challenges to those facts, assertions by spokesmen instantly countered by opposing spokesmen. The paper’s seeming reluctance, for instance, to report evidence of incitement to racial or religious hatred derives in part, I believe, from a subconscious effort to stick to the noninflammatory middle and to keep things civil, even when civility leaked out of the conflict long ago.

But partisans desire heat. Detachment itself becomes suspect. If you are not with us, you are therefore against us.

It makes selections. For people on either side who see the conflict as a life-and-death issue - as it certainly is - the Middle East is the only story that matters. Each day’s reports in The Times are tiny fragments of a tragic epic. Yes, there were demonstrations against settler relocation this morning, but how can you ignore the afternoon’s additional construction on the West Bank barrier? Or, I know you gave my version of events yesterday, but why are you presenting only the other side’s version today?

This dilemma is aggravated by the way certain events force themselves into the newspaper. Violence trumps virtually everything else. If you are covering a debate and a terror bomb detonates two blocks away, you race to the bombing site. Terrorists have a horrifying way of influencing news coverage, but it works.

It does not cede definitive authority to other organizations and sources. Last Tuesday, “Israel, on Its Own, Is Shaping the Borders of the West Bank,” by Steven Erlanger, angered Michael Brown for its unelaborated statement that Palestinians “argue that all Israeli settlements beyond the green line are illegal.” The Times, Brown believes, is obligated to note that “it’s not just the Palestinians who say it’s illegal, but U.N. Security Council resolutions.”

Ethan Bronner, the paper’s deputy foreign editor, counters:”We view ourselves as neutral and unbound by such judgments. We cite them, but we do not live by them.” He adds, “In 1975, when the U.N. General Assembly labeled Zionism as racism, would it have been logical for The Times to repeat that description as fact from then on? Obviously not. We take note of official views, but we don’t adopt them as our own.”

Nor does the paper accept as authoritative the reporting of others. A common criticism I receive is built around “proof” of something The Times has not itself reported. Frequently such evidence is drawn from openly partisan sources, and when I cite to critics contrary evidence provided by Times reporters, that evidence is in turn dismissed as partisan. The representatives of If Americans Knew earnestly believe that the information they presented to me about the killing of Palestinian children to be “simple objective criteria.” But I don’t think any of us can be objective about our own claimed objectivity.

It is limited by geography. The Times, like virtually every American news organization, maintains its bureau in West Jerusalem. Its reporters and their families shop in the same markets, walk the same streets and sit in the same cafes that have long been at risk of terrorist attack. Some advocates of the Palestinian cause call this “structural geographic bias.”

If the reporters lived in Gaza or Ramallah, this argument goes, they would feel exposed to the daily struggles and dangers of life behind Palestinian lines and would presumably become more empathetic toward the Palestinians.

I don’t know about empathy, but I do know that the angle of vision determines what you see. A reporter based in secular, Europeanized Tel Aviv would experience an Israel vastly different from one living in Jerusalem; a reporter with a home in Ramallah would most likely find an entirely different world. The Times ought to give it a try.

It’s only a newspaper. It eventually comes to this: Journalism itself is inadequate to tell this story. Like recorded music, which is only a facsimile of music, journalism is a substitute, a stand-in. It’s what we call on when we can’t know something firsthand. It’s not reality, but a version of reality, and both daily deadlines and limited space make even the best journalism a reductionist version of reality.

In preparing to write this article, my conversations with Michael Brown and Andrea Levin, with various other parties of interest and with The Times’s editors consumed hours. My e-mail encounters with readers have consumed months. To all who would assert that squeezing what I’ve drawn from this research into these few paragraphs has stripped the many arguments of their nuance or robbed them of their power, I have no rebuttal. The more important and complicated an issue, or the closer it is to the edge of life and death and the future of nations, the less likely its essences can be distilled by that wholly inadequate but absolutely necessary servant, daily journalism.

�

A postscript:

During my research, representatives of If Americans Knew expressed the belief that unless the paper assigned equal numbers of Muslim and Jewish reporters to cover the conflict, Jewish reporters should be kept off the beat.

I find this profoundly offensive, but not nearly as repellent as a calumny that has popped up in my e-mail with lamentable frequency - the charge that The Times is anti-Semitic. Even if you stipulate that The Times’s reporters and editors favor the Palestinian cause (something I am not remotely prepared to do), this is an astonishing debasement. If reporting that is sympathetic to Palestinians, or antipathetic to Israelis, is anti-Semitism, what is real anti-Semitism? What word do you have left for conscious discrimination, or open hatred, or acts of intentional, ethnically motivated violence?

The Times may be - is - imperfect. It is not anti-Semitic. Calling it that defames the accuser far more than it does the accused.

The public editor serves as the readers’ representative. His opinions and conclusions are his own. His column appears at least twice monthly in this section.

[source: pmwatch]