#901 4/29/18 – JPost This Morning: “Amnesty International Renews Call for Arms Embargo Against Israel”

JPost This Morning:  “Amnesty International Renews Call for Arms Embargo Against Israel”

A decade ago, I voiced in this media watch a hope that the world and mainstream media would not give “militant” Hamas, which had just evicted Abbas’ Fatah from Gaza – partly by throwing people to their deaths from rooftops, conduct in which “moderate” Fatah also engaged (see, e.g., AP in Philadelphia Inquirer, 6/12/07, A2) – the same pass in preventing violence against Israel from Gaza that they had shamefully given Abbas.

Alas, I was wrong, as exemplified by a Jerusalem Post article this morning on Amnesty International calling for an arms embargo against Israel for “killing and wounding of civilians demonstrating in Gaza … despite the fact that they don’t pose any immediate threat.”

There is, of course, an Israeli side to the story.  A Michael Levin opinion article on FoxNews.com Wednesday said that some of the participants in this weekly-staged “Great March of Return” staged by Hamas, a relentless cross-border tunnel-digging terrorist organization sworn to Israel’s destruction, attacked the border fence “with explosives, firebombs and other means,” citing the AP.  But Levin also cites “the latest round of headlines condemning Israel for using ‘disproportionate’ force against civilians.”  Levin:  “The reality is that the masses of Palestinians remaining a safe distance from the border are a cover for the armed terrorists seeking to crash through the fence each Friday and attack Israeli communities less than a mile from Gaza.”

The upshot here is that the media and world in general don’t blame Hamas any more for the anti-Israel violence now than they blamed Abbas and Fatah when they were in charge.

Take a quick look back at the media view of Abbas and the “Road Map.”  The U.S.-promulgated Road Map charged Abbas’ Palestinian Authority with undertaking “visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks on Israelis anywhere,” beginning “sustained, targeted, and effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure,” including “commencing confiscation of illegal weapons and consolidation of security authority, free of association with terror and corruption.”  [emphasis added]

But the media replaced the Road Map’s “terror” with “militant.”  E.g., Knight-Ridder (KR), 1/13/03 (Philly Inquirer), calling a “key” road map provision to be “the disarming and dismantling of Palestinian MILITANT groups”; AP, 12/18/03 (Philly Inquirer), stating that the road map “calls on the Palestinians to dismantle MILITANT groups.”  [emphasis added]

And the media went beyond euphemizing “terror” as “militancy.”  It purveyed to world publics the PA’s obligations under the Road Map as merely “Israeli and U.S. demands,” and explaining that Abbas was “hoping” to “persuade extremists to lay down their weapons.”  E.g.:

***  KR, 5/7/05, Philly Inquirer (Inq): “Abbas has resisted ISRAELI AND U.S. [not Road Map] pressure to deal forcibly with Hamas, hoping instead to PERSUADE extremists to lay down their weapons and pursue negotiations rather than violence as a means of achieving a Palestinian state.”;

***  AP, 6/11/05 (Inq):  “ISRAEL [not the Road Map] has demanded Abbas crack down on the groups that sponsored years of suicide bombings and other attacks against Israelis, but the Palestinian leader has PREFERRED to try to PERSUADE the groups to refrain from violence.”;

***  AP, 6/21/05 (Inq): “ISRAEL [not the Road Map] says progress depends on the Palestinian Authority first reining in extremists, and gives Abbas low marks in that area.  The Palestinian leader has CHOSEN PERSUASION OVER CONFRONTATION in his bid to sway his main rival, the Islamic group Hamas – a strategy Israel denounces as naïve and destined to fail. . . .  Abbas has ruled out such a crackdown, saying it would start a civil war.  His policy of using NEGOTIATION AND PERSUASION, rather than force, to stop attacks has achieved mixed results.”

So I voiced hope in #364 of this media watch back in 2007, when Hamas had finished throwing “moderate” Fatah people off Gaza roofs, that the media would hold this “militant” group exercising Gaza control to a stronger than “negotiation and persuasion” standard in preventing anti-Israel violence from Gaza.

But it didn’t work that way, did it?  See, e.g., “the latest round of headlines condemning Israel for using ‘disproportionate’ force against civilians” referenced in Wednesday’s FoxNews Levin piece, and  Amnesty International, per JPost this morning, calling for an arms embargo against Israel for “killing and wounding of civilians demonstrating in Gaza … despite the fact that they don’t pose any immediate threat.”