#744 Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert

To:       Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From:   Jerry Verlin, Editor  (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj:    Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #744, 4/5/15

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Friday’s Inq’s AP article portrayed Bibi as standing alone in opposing this week’s Iran nuclear framework deal that’s being “welcomed around the globe.”  The article quoted European, Russian and U.N. leaders praising the deal, but no one other than Bibi opposing it.  But Bibi’s views on the framework Iran deal are neither alone nor extreme.  Nor did Bibi deserve the shot the Inq took at him Wednesday in its editorial cartoon pretending that Moses would have told him that Judea, Samaria and heart of Jerusalem aren’t part of The Promised Land.

This Week In The Inq:  “Netanyahu Condemns Agreement” could have been headlined “AP Condemns Netanyahu”

Not as “Opinion,” not as “Analysis,” but as a straight news article, the Philly Inquirer (Inq) ran a Josef Federman AP piece Friday, 4/3/15, A4, that it headlined

Netanyahu Condemns Agreement

Limits fall short of Israel’s demand that Iranian nuclear program be dismantled

What’s wrong with this news article is not, as is so often a Western media news article on Israel’s fault, a slew of loaded terms, but the picture it paints of Bibi as extreme and alone in voicing opposition to this week’s announced “framework” nuclear deal with Iran.

[a]  Blocking Iran Bomb-Capable Facilities is Not an Exclusively “Israeli” Demand:  The sub-headline cites “Israel’s demand” that the Iranian nuclear program be dismantled, as though preventing Iran from having nuclear facilities capable of conversion into building a bomb were a particularly Israeli concern.  Paragraph 5 reiterated that the framework deal announced this week “falls short of Israeli demands to dismantle the program.”  But as the Washington Post’s February 5 editorial observed, preventing Iran from possessing such infrastructure was originally far broader than an “Israeli” objective. That WP editorial characterized the leading world powers’ negotiations with Iran as “a process that began with the goal of eliminating Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons,” but which “has evolved into a plan to tolerate and temporarily restrict that capability.”

[b]  Bibi has Not Been Opposed to Negotiations Themselves:  Friday’s AP article’s paragraph 2 begins: “Netanyahu, who had been [an] outspoken critic of the world’s negotiations with Iran . . . .”   What Bibi had been outspoken about was not the world conducting negotiations with Iran, but the direction in which those negotiations were heading.  As Bibi had told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish organizations, per their 2/17/15 Daily Alert:

…. I’m not opposed to any deal with Iran.  I’m opposed to a bad deal with Iran.  And I believe this is a very bad deal.  I’m certainly not opposed to negotiations.  On the contrary – no country has a greater interest, a greater stake, in the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear question than does Israel.  But the current proposal will not solve the problem.  It would provide a path for Iran to become a nuclear power…. [emphasis added]

[c]  Article One-Sidedly Quotes Only Leaders Praising Iran Deal:  Paragraph 3 begins: “But with the deal being welcomed around the globe, Netanyahu could have a tough time trying to rally opposition to it ….”  [emphasis added]  This impression of Bibi being alone in his opposition is buttressed by paragraph 10:  “Britain, Germany, France and Italy – all key European allies and all directly or indirectly involved in the negotiations in Switzerland – welcomed the deal.”  Paragraph 13 quotes Russia that the deal “could have a ‘positive influence’ in the region,” and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that it “’paves the way’ for a historic agreement that could ‘contribute to peace and stability in the region.”  Not one world leader, or for that matter, anybody, is quoted in the Inq’s AP article’s 16 paragraphs as agreeing with Bibi.

But if Bibi is alone, it would be only because the “numerous members of Congress, former secretaries of state and officials of allied governments” cited by that late February Washington Post editorial as having major concerns about the emerging Iran deal had been converted into believers by contrast between what was perceived as emerging just a bit more than a month ago and what actually may have emerged this week.

But there are two problems with that.

First, per the transcript of NPR’s Weekend Edition’s opening words yesterday, it’s less than perfectly clear what, if anything, did emerge this week:

This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. Scott Simon is away. I’m Linda Wertheimer. It’s been two days since Iran and six world powers reached agreement in principle on most of the major elements of a nuclear accord. Iranian and American officials are busy selling the deal back home, but it does seem as if they’re talking about two different agreements. NPR’s Peter Kenyon says much of this can be put down to domestic political needs, but it also suggests a difficult road ahead to a final agreement.  [emphasis added]

Second, on the same page, A4, of Friday’s Inq as its “Netanyahu Condemns Agreement” article, is the continuation from page A1 of the Inq’s Washington Post “Iran Agrees to Nuclear Outline” article, containing this paragraph on one of the terms “officials said” had been agreed upon:

The limitations would produce a one-year “breakout” period, meaning it would take Iran a full year to build up enough material for one nuclear warhead, compared with current estimates of two to three months, officials said.

So it appears unlikely that February’s deal opponents concerned about Iran keeping the technologies needed to produce nuclear weapons got religion this week from the maybe-deal’s extension of that breakout period from two-three months to a year.  Here’s Fox News on February 22 quoting the Wall Street Journal of February 19:

Arab governments are privately expressing their concern to Washington about the emerging terms of a potential deal aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program, according to Arab and U.S. officials involved in the deliberations….

The major Sunni states, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, have said that a final agreement could allow Shiite-dominated Iran, their regional rival, to keep the technologies needed to produce nuclear weapons…. [emphasis added]

Arab officials said a deal would likely drive Saudi Arabia, for one, to try to quickly match Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

“At this stage, we prefer a collapse of the diplomatic process to a bad deal,” said an Arab official who has discussed Iran with the Obama administration and Saudi Arabia in recent weeks.  [Sounds like Bibi, nu?]

[d]  Article Ignores Arab States’ Concerns on Deal Enhancing Iran’s Mideast Havoc-Generating Resources:  A further thing on which Israel and Sunni Arab states agree, though they seek very different things from it, is that the scope of the world powers-Iran deal is too narrow.  Bibi is reported to want the deal to include Iranian recognition of “Israel’s right to exist.”  [I would that he had put it as Iranian recognition “of the land of Israel, including Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, as the Jewish people’s homeland for the past three thousand years, acknowledged by San Remo and the Palestine Mandate,” but the U.S. has rejected including even “right to exist” in this world deal with a nascent nuclear power a year away from a bomb to destroy a small state the destruction of which that nascent nuclear power declares to be “non-negotiable.”]

But the media coverage balance point is that Israel is not alone in faulting, if you will, “condemning,” this week’s framework agreement in treating the nuclear agreement with Iran in a vacuum, as though it has no impact on Iran’s impact on the region.

Thursday’s Wall Street Journal had a news article by its news reporters headlined

Arab Reaction to Iran Nuclear Agreement Reflects Region’s Sharp Divide

Sunnis see the deal as reflecting U.S, weakness, Shiites Iranian ascendancy

Yet, Friday’s Inq’s AP article – “Netanyahu Condemns Agreement” – makes no mention, this very week that America’s Sunni Arab somewhat-allies – Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, etc. – are forming an army to take on Shiite Iran’s proxies in Yemen and have already dispatched plans and ships to that front, that opposition beyond Bibi’s opposition exists in the Mideast to a sanctions-easing deal with Iran inevitably increasing its Mideast havoc-raising resources.

Misleading Editorial Cartoon

Wednesday, April 1’s Inq editorial cartoon pictures Moses leading the Israelites across a divided Red Sea in the midst of which appears on the dry land a half-built house with an Israeli flag, with Moses complaining “Bibi!!  Enough with the settlements, already!!”

I guess the Inq’s cartoonist doesn’t remember that when Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan into the Promised Land, among the first places contested was what’s today’s “West Bank” town of Jericho.

The answer to this cartoon and to U.S. governmental officials’ addresses to American Jewish groups that “the occupation must end” is for us to stop calling Jewish presence in Judea, Samaria and heart of Jerusalem “settlements,” which concedes their claimed illegitimacy, and allows the media, including our beloved hometown Inq, to gleefully contrast such “Jewish settlements” against nearby “Palestinian neighborhoods, towns and villages.”  My own guess is that that’s the advice that Moses, who led us to the borders of the Promised Land, not to “the green line,” would have given to Bibi.

Regards,
Jerry