Jerusalem Post - Tag Search

At first glimpse, the story posted on the Jerusalem Post's Web site yesterday looked like a blockbuster: "Hamas accepts Israel's right to exist."

"Hamas has accepted Israel's right to exist and would be prepared to nullify its charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel," wrote reporter Khaled Abu Toameh. Toameh attributed the declaration, a landmark change in Hamas' decades-old philosophy, to Aziz Dwaik, the elected speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council and the highest ranking member of Hamas in the West Bank.

Sounds legitimate, but some things are just too good to be true. Dwaik repudiated the Post's report within 24 hours, telling the Ma'an News Agency that the story was "inaccurate," and a Hamas representative in Gaza denied Dwaik's statement in an interview (عربي) with Al-Sharq Al-Awset.

The Jerusalem Post picks up on the inconsistency we noted yesterday -- some Israeli officials are okay with Turkey mediating Israeli-Syrian talks, others are not -- and tries to get some clarity. Here's deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon:

Ayalon, asked by The Jerusalem Post to explain the contradictory comments on Monday, said "First of all we want to emphasize that there is no substitute for direct talks. There could be a point where we need assistance, and we could try to bring in any number of countries: Turkey, France or the US. It all depends on the circumstances at the time."

That about clears it up, no?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants a final peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority, not any interim deals, and says that such an agreement will require "courageous leadership," says Jerusalem Post columnist Herb Keinon.

Bibi that PA President Mahmoud Abbas "should not be 'counted out,'" Keinon writes. Forgive my cynicism, but I don't think we're going to get anywhere near "final-status" negotiations without Abbas, and Bibi isn't going to bring Abbas back in unless he freezes settlements.

The Jerusalem Post reports that Israel is planning to send elite ground troops to attack Iran "after December," based on a very questionable report in a French newspaper.

According to the report in Le Canard Enchainé quoted by Israel Radio, Jerusalem has already ordered high-quality combat rations from a French food manufacturer for soldiers serving in elite units and has also asked reservists of these units staying abroad to return to Israel.

It's tempting to dismiss this story outright -- it comes from a satirical newspaper, after all; Le Canard Enchaine means The Chained Duck. But the paper actually has some well-placed sources in the French government, and it does some serious investigative journalism, despite its satirical nature.

Still, this report doesn't quite add up.

I was reading stories in my RSS reader this morning and I noticed a story from the Jerusalem Post headlined 'Iran will blow up the heart of Israel'. Alarming, no?

Turns out the story was a rewrite of an Associated Press item about comments from Mojtaba Zolnour, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative in the Revolutionary Guard. Here's what Zolnour said, taken from the original story.

"Should a single American or Zionist missile land in our country, before the dust settles, Iranian missiles will blow up the heart of Israel," Zolnour was quoted as saying by the state IRNA news agency.

In other words, Zolnour is threatening retaliatory action, not a first strike. The original AP story used the headline Iran to 'blow up the heart of Israel' if attacked. The Jerusalem Post deleted the last two words, which rather changes the meaning of the headline.

We could probably launch a whole new blog focused exclusively on the Goldstone Report.

The big headline today is that the U.N. Security Council will meet for an emergency session, called by Libya, to discuss the report. (We'll put aside the profound irony of the Libyan government advocating for human rights.)

The meeting could go several ways. The Security Council could pass a resolution denouncing the report - unlikely - in which case it would stall. The U.S. could veto a resolution on the report, in which case it would stall.

I just read a short piece on the Jerusalem Post's Web site about I'm Halal, apparently the world's first Muslim-friendly search engine. I can't decide whether to be alarmed by this news.

The Jerusalem Post uncovers an insidious plot:

The J Street political action committee has received tens of thousands of dollars in donations from dozens of Arab and Muslim Americans, as well as from several individuals connected to organizations doing Palestinian and Iranian issues advocacy, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

The article throws scare quotes around J Street's description as a "pro-Israel, pro-peace" group -- and goes on to quote an AIPAC staffer who says the donations from Arabs and Muslims "raise questions" about whether J Street is really pro-Israel.

(It also eventually confesses that these treacherous donations account for "a small fraction" of the group's fundraising -- "several dozen of the [group's] 4,000-5,000 donors.")

To be serious, though, this is the same kind of guilt-by-association smear campaign that's been targeting Human Rights Watch since last month. And in this case I'm not even sure what the guilt is: J Street raises some money from people who pray towards Mecca, and this makes the group... what? A tool of Hamas and Hizballah?

That's what the Jerusalem Post claims: A story this morning says the Iranian regime has killed seven lawyers in Tabriz and Mashhad who were representing protesters detained after the election.

In Tabriz, Iran's fourth-largest city, the bodies of five lawyers were returned to their families earlier this week, the sources said... they were accused of disrupting security and encouraging unethical actions against the regime, and were sentenced to three years each in jail.

Three of them then died from injuries suffered during their detention. They were so badly beaten that their families could barely recognize their faces, this reporter was told.

Hard to say if this report is true. It's based on anonymous sources, and it does seem a little odd that Iranian sources would call an Israeli newspaper -- though if you really want to stick it to the regime, leaking stories to the conservative newspaper in the "Zionist entity" is a good way to do it.

The Jerusalem Post's story on Hillary Clinton's foreign policy address leads with her comments on the "peace process":

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton carefully recalibrated the administration's statements on Israel in a major foreign policy address Wednesday, stressing the need for greater Palestinian and Arab action on the peace process.

Al-Jazeera doesn't say a word (عربي) about those remarks; its lead focuses on what Clinton said about Iran. My rough translation:

U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton said the United States will pursue a dialogue with Iran over its nuclear program, and expressed her regret for how the opposition was crushed after the elections in June.

I suspect Clinton's speech will garner little attention in the Arab world. She spent little time on Israel and Palestine -- about four paragraphs in the printed text -- and most of it was spent calling for "Arab and Palestinian action," as the Jerusalem Post put it. There was little talk of settlements, and not a word about the intransigence of the current Israeli regime.

Around 45 people protested in front of the agricultural ministry in Amman on Sunday, according to the Jerusalem Post. They don't want any fruit or vegetables coming into Jordan from Israel, saying the revenue helps support Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The Post notes that approximately 70 percent of the Jordanian population is of "Syro-Palestinian" descent - so the affinity for the Palestinian cause is obviously strong.