THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIII, Issue # 7, January 5, 2011
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE MIDDLE EAST: TWO BLOGS BY DANIEL PIPES
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
MEDIA DISTORTION ABOUT ISRAEL: THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA MISLEADS, EVEN AS IT INFORMS ON THE SUBJECT
OF ISRAEL. *** THE ARAB WORLD & INNOVATION IN TERRORISM: THE AREA WHERE ARABS SEEM MOST ADEPT AT
INNOVATION IS TERRORISM. AIRPLANE HIJACKINGS, SUICIDE BOMBINGS, & MEGA-TERRORISM ARE AMONG THEIR CLAIMS
TO ORIGINALITY.
FULL STORY ACCOUNTS:
I. MEDIA DISTORTION ABOUT ISRAEL: ONE EXAMPLE
By Daniel Pipes
January 4, 2011
Mark Lavie, a long-time Associated Press reporter in Israel, should know a thing or two about the politics in that
country. But he wrote, in a January 3, 2011, Associated Press article, "Israel's Labor: We'll Quit if No Progress to
Peace," about tensions in the coalition of political parties governing Israel, stating:
"An exit by Labor, a moderate party sitting uncomfortably
alongside hawks in the ruling coalition, could undermine
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's parliamentary
majority and force an election. That would sideline
Mideast peace efforts for months."
These two sentences contain much loaded language ("moderate," "peace efforts") but what's really noteworthy is that
Lavie writes later in the same article:
"Even if Netanyahu loses Labor's 13 seats, his
parliamentary majority would remain intact, though
barely. Counting Netanyahu's own Likud Party, the
five hawkish parties in his coalition have 61 seats in
the 120-seat parliament, a tiny majority, even if Labor
leaves."
Not only does Lavie contradict himself here – would the government fall or not? – but he makes multiple other errors. For
starters, he fails to mention that:
Netanyahu could invite the National Union, a right-wing party with four seats, into the coalition.
Narrow coalitions are the rule in Israeli politics and large coalitions like Netanyahu's are the exception.
Coaltions of 61 have been stable for years in the past.
Yitzhak Rabin passed the Oslo Accords in 1993 with just 61 votes.
Kadima, the largest party in the Knesset, broke from Likud; Netanyahu could potentially split Kadima and pick up
another 10 seats.
Were new elections to take place, polling strongly suggests that Likud and affiliated parties would gain seats. Here is a
sample poll, from December 5, 2010, with current parliamentary seats in brackets:
32 [27] Likud
26 [28] Kadima
18 [15] Yisrael Beiteinu
08 [13] Labor
09 [11] Shas
05 [05] Yahadut Hatorah
03 [03] Jewish Home/NRP
02 [03] Meretz
04 [04] National Union
03 [00] Centrist party headed by Yair Lapid
10 [11] Arab parties
Doing the arithmetic, the coalition parties that now control 61 seats would, if these figures come true, control 67 seats
in a new Knesset.
Comments:
(1)The mainstream media, even the once-reliable Associated Press, misleads, even as it informs on the subject
of Israel.
(2) Fortunately, there's CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, and
HonestReporting.com on the case of biased, incompetent, and dishonest journalism.
----------------------------------------------------------
II THE ARAB WORLD: INCUBATOR OF INNOVATION IN TERRORISM
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
December 29, 2010 (Updated January 4, 2011)
It's been a very long time since Arabic-speaking peoples brought benefit to humanity by, say, developing new medicines
and technology or advancing democracy and human rights.
Indeed, the area where the Arabophones seem most adept at innovation would be terrorism. Airplane hijackings, suicide
bombings, and mega-terrorism are among their claims to originality.
And now comes the wave of suicide bombers. Note the news from Iraq, "3 Suicide Bombers Used to Kill Tenacious Iraqi
Cop," concerning the assassination of Police Commander Lieutenant Colonel Shamil al-Jabouri by al-Qaida:
As al-Jabouri slept Wednesday morning on a couch in his office, three men wearing police uniforms over vests laden
with explosives slipped through an opening in the blast walls surrounding the compound where his building stood,
police said.
Police manning one of at least four observation towers surrounding the compound shot one of the attackers in a yard
and his vest exploded. Under the cover of that blast, police said, the other two suicide bombers charged about 100 yards
(90 meters) and made it into al-Jabouri's single-story building.
They detonated their vests simultaneously -- one at the door of al-Jabouri's office -- killing the Commander instantly and
injuring a policeman sleeping in a trailer nearby. The two blasts brought the whole building down, burying the slain
Commander under the rubble, police said.
Comment:
The effectiveness of this cruel new tactic makes it likely to be repeated, and not just in Arabic-speaking countries, either.
© Daniel Pipes 2010
Originally Published in Daniel Pipes Mailing List, January 4-5, 2011
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
http://www.danielpipes.org/2011/01/media-distortion-about-israel-one-example
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/12/the-arab-world-incubator-of-innovation-in
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The News & Entertainment Media: Political & Ideological Bias
Israel & the Arabs -- The Israeli-Arab Conflict
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
The Middle East & the Problem of Iraq
Page Two
Page One
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Islamism & Jihadism -- Radical Islam & Islamic Terrorism
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is Founder and Director of the Middle East Forum,
Publisher of Middle East Quarterly,
Founder of Campus Watch, Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, a
signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a former
adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the U.S. Committee for a Free
Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and Technology, and a
former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of
Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for National Review Online, Front Page
Magazine, the New York Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and
developments in the Middle East have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington
Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network
television, as well as at universities and think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the
U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately
twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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