Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #738, 2/22/15

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #738, 2/22/15

TR This Week In The Inq: “Bibi Wants to Make Sure Obama Doesn’t Ink Nuclear Deal with Tehran. Any Nuclear Deal.” [not exactly]

Yes, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s house foreign affairs columnist, Trudy Rubin, authors a multi-times-per-week opinion column expressing her “Worldview,” and, yes, that worldview is entitled to be different from mine. But in arguing Thursday (Inq, Thu, 2/19/15, ed page A16, “Worldview: Bibi, Boehner Playing Games”) that in a “stunning breach of protocol,” Israel’s prime minister used “unprecedented means to do an end run around the White House” by having “schemed with Republican House Speaker John Boehner” to address a joint session of Congress on the pending Iran deal, Thursday’s Inq Worldview column went beyond expressing opinion based on a fair statement of facts.

Ms. Rubin led off:

Bibi Netanyahu wants to make sure President Obama doesn’t ink a nuclear deal with Tehran. Any nuclear deal.

Beyond being illogical – Why would Israel, of all nations, object to an international agreement effectively preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons? –, claiming that Israel’s prime minister is “scheming” to use “unprecedented means” in a “stunning breach of protocol” to prevent any Iran nuclear deal is not supported by the factual record. Per the transcript provided by the Prime Minister’s Office [extracted in the Conf. of Presidents’ of Major American Jewish Organizations’ Tuesday 2/17 Daily Alert], here’s what Bibi told that distinguished Conference of Presidents Monday [emphasis added]:

…. 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….

Perhaps, were Israel’s prime minister alone in challenging the wisdom of the world in signing off on the pending Iran deal, his objection could be fairly construed as applicable to “any” deal. But Bibi is not alone. The Washington Post’s 2/5/15 editorial cited “numerous members of Congress, former secretaries of state and officials of allied governments” as all raising major concerns about the pending Iran deal, which that editorial characterized as the fruit of “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.”

Is the Washington Post’s a fair characterization? Ms. Rubin’s Worldview column on Thursday: “The goal: to ensure it would take Iran at least one year [emphasis added] to produce enough nuclear material for a single weapon, should it decide to cheat.”

And you can add two more – surprising at first blush, but only at first blush – groups to that not-Bibi-only collection of pending-deal questioners. Fox News on Sunday, quoting the Wall Street Journal on Friday:

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….

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?]

The second group that’s at-first-blush surprisingly aligned with Bibi on the unwisdom of the pending Iran deal was referenced in a Times of Israel op-ed this morning by its editor, David Horovitz, former editor of the Jerusalem Post:

The looming deal is similarly inexplicable to the political rivals of Netanyahu who are campaigning to oust him in general elections on March 17. “I’m worried about a bad deal as well,” Isaac Herzog, the center-left Zionist Union leader who is Netanyahu’s leading challenger, said in a CNN interview on Friday.

The great disservice Ms. Rubin did all of her readers, not just Bibi-backers like me, on Thursday was to tee off with inaccurately bashing a “scheming” Bibi as opposed to “any” nuclear deal with Iran, not with a reasoned discussion of what she herself called in mid-article “the heart of the matter: the different perspectives between Israel [n.b., not just “Bibi”] and the United States [excluding, as the Washington Post put it, at least “numerous members of Congress, former secretaries of state”] on how to deal with Iran.”

A Second Mischaracterization of Bibi to Boot

Midway in her Thursday column, Ms. Rubin quotes Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea characterizing Netanyahu as seeing his Congressional speech as “an ideal forum” for him “to promote his campaign against Iran,” and that “for Netanyahu, the issue of the nuclearization of Iran is almost an obsession.”

Talk about obsessions, it’s the other way around. It’s Iran that’s obsessed with Israel’s destruction, publicly at that, and as echoed by “the slogan” (AP, 2/6/15) of their Houthi protégés in Yemen: “Death to America, Death to Israel, a Curse on the Jews [have they ever seen a Jew?] and Victory to Islam.” Bibi is Israel’s prime minister. How’s he supposed to react to the world signing on to Iran becoming a year away from building a bomb big enough to make a big dent in a place the size of New Jersey?

And, btw, the Fars News Agency had an article Tuesday headlined: “Minister: Iran to Speed Up Space Program.” Don’t sell these guys short. The FARS article stated that earlier this month Iran had used an Iranian-made rocket to put its fourth Iranian-made satellite into orbit. Ask yourself what they’re aiming at – Jupiter or Jerusalem?

Israel, for one, is taking Iran’s nuclear energy and linked missile advances seriously. Aviation Week & Space Technology – Defense Technology Edition article lede Tuesday: “Iran’s linked development of nuclear energy and surface-to-surface missiles is motivating multiple missile defense programs, including most of Israel’s work ….”

And, finally, here’s a www.reuters.com headline on Thursday, the same day the Inq’s Ms. Rubin was characterizing Bibi as regarding Iran’s nuclearization as “almost an obsession”. Reuters headline: “Iran Still Stalling U.N. Nuclear Inquiry as Deal Deadline Looms: IAEA.” Is it any wonder that Times of Israel headlined this morning:

Netanyahu ‘Astonished’ Over Continuing Nuclear Talks

PM pans US-led ongoing negotiations in light of IAEA report that Tehran is hiding military components of nuke program

?

Regards.
Jerry

PS: Lee and I gave our media bias Powerpoint talk one morning this week to a meeting of Jewish community leaders in Delaware. I showed slides and spoke for about twenty minutes. Then Lee showed slides and spoke for about twenty minutes. Then we answered, endeavored to answer, a number of questions. Then someone asked, “but can you sum all of this up in a couple of sentences?” While you stand on one leg: The mainstream Western media portrays Israel through a lexicon of loaded and prejudicially misleading terms and expressions some of which we ourselves foolishly use. That Israel’s prime minister is an irrationally-Iran-obsessed hard-line schemer out “to promote his campaign against Iran” by speaking to Congress – when Western media focus ought to be on the merits or not of many competent critics’ concerns with the Iran deal – is one of them. J