The Thief’s Case – Moon of Alabama

November 21, 2006

The Thief’s Case

An easy one: What is wrong with this NYT headline and the lede?

Israeli Map Says West Bank Posts Sit on Arab Land

An Israeli advocacy group, using maps and figures leaked from inside the government, says that 39 percent of the land held by Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is privately owned by Palestinians.

So what is wrong here? Of course all of the West Bank "posts" sit on Arab Land. All that land is owned by the Palestinian people.

As an occupation power Israel has no legal right to annex or appropriate any land there. It did not own any land there before 1967 and does not now. Down in the article the point is made, though in a very twisted way:

Much of the world also considers Israeli settlements on occupied land to be illegal under international law. International law requires an occupying power to protect private property, and Israel has always asserted that it does not take land without legal justification.

"Much of the world" is indeed everybody but Israel. I do not know of any country that has acknowledged any legality of the land grab. The UN certainly has not done so.

International law requires the occupation power to respect ALL property, not only private one. There is no legal justification for the occupation power to build settlements – none, zero – whatever some Israeli kangaroo court might say. It simply does not have jurisdiction about that question.

The NYT is very much shilling for the Israeli government here. Oh, there is bit wrong about the settlements, but only about 39%. The majority is fine and legal and will not be given up anyway.

That is not reporting, but arguing the thief’s case: "I did take the car away, but only the wheels were private property. The rest should not be judged."

Update (thanks bea): The Peace Now report is here (pdf).

Posted by b on November 21, 2006 at 07:08 UTC | Permalink

Comments

This world is not straight. By crooked paths do nations claw their way to whatever perch they hold. Raw power rules the roost, deceit determines most outcomes, sly and slick is the norm. The long knives come out when any weakness reveals itself. The ten score of nations on Earth are like a council of thieves, all pointing pistols at one another. This is a warlord’s world, ruled by men not laws. Laws are only there to permit one party to cry, “Uncle!” when death and destruction are imminent, when the moment comes to keep life by giving up property.
The Old Grey Lady is a warlord’s whore, and the grandmother of whores worldwide. In this article she is just hiking up her satined skirts after another journalistic quickie, and striking a statuesque pose for the benefit of whatever sailor boy next passes by. The traffic is steady as believers in sweetness and light come to her for motherly advice and consolation, for wisdom and noble views, only to leave her at length as suspicious and darkened souls, cynics entire ever after, having seen her at work in her incestuous chamber, having seen her wraiths of thrice-wrapped lies wandering in the sunlight, having met her orphaned spawn in all the places she pretends are not there.

Posted by: Antifa | Nov 21 2006 11:32 utc | 1

b:
The NYTimes is and has been the paper of record for The Israel Lobby for as long as I can remember. I read it everyday for thirty-seven years, although I stopped about a year ago since, with the internet, it is no longer necessary to read any one paper, and the NYTimes has so fouled itself since the young Sulzberger took it over that I cannot bring myself to read it any longer. The Wen Ho Lee frame-up was the tip off that the paper was no longer aiming at what it once ostensibly aspired to be.
Just as Ariel Sharon and the Likud were and are intent upon creating “facts on the ground” in Palestine so too the NYTimes is creating and has created “facts in the minds” of many, many Americans who still respect its reputation. And the ripple effect of the NYTimes is real. I used to watch “news” reported first in the NYTimes show up in other “lesser” papers days and then weeks later, depending upon how closely they surfed the waves.
The organization is now utterly dishonest. It was a major part of the neocon cabal that brought about the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the open embrace of aggression by the United States. The people at the NYTimes would be the first to look down their noses at the Hearst papers and their reputation for “Yellow Journalism” but in fact they are at least as responsible for US aggression in Iraq as Hearst and Pullitzer were for US aggression in Cuba and the Philippines. How fitting their reporters got “Pullitzer” prizes. You cannot try a newpaper or columnists or pundits for War Crimes so most of the people most responsible for pushing the US to war in the Middle East will never be brought to trial.
Back on topic, the people who open the NYTimes everyday and have done so for years have accepted the “fact” that “nothing can be done” for the “poor Palestinians” in great measure due to the NYTimes creation of that “fact” in their minds. And people further away from the source have had their brains washed by the second and third order waves to the same cumulative effect.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Nov 21 2006 11:46 utc | 2

The bias of the NYT aside (which, in my view, is totally unsurprising since it is so longstanding), this is a stunning report that should be carefully studied by anyone who is interested in this problem. The Haaretz piece on the report includes a link to a PDF of the original. I strongly encourage anyone who is interested in understanding how Israel has operated in the West Bank to read the original report in full. The report is stunning, not for its conclusions, which do not surprise anyone who has been involved in studying the issue of settlement in the West Bank over time, as I have. Rather, it is stunning because the data came from the archives of the government itself, and are therefore indisputable.
Unfortunately, I think it is fairly likely that the reaction from the world at large is likely to be a predicable yawn. But still, the facts will have been established for some future use, and that is extremely important.

Posted by: Bea | Nov 21 2006 13:59 utc | 3

Bea says Unfortunately, I think it is fairly likely that the reaction from the world at large is likely to be a predicable yawn.
They are yawning at Iraq………….. also.. keep the blog alive.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 21 2006 14:15 utc | 4

Bea:
Well of course right about the “longstandingness” of it all. And I’m sure that b did not see his original post as a revelation either.
There was an observation once made about crimes and broken windows. The idea was that if you don’t fix the windows when they’re first broken, more follow and then it gets so bad that broken windows seem the least of your problems so you just come to accept them and they in turn become a sign that lawlessness is tolerated and endemic.
That same thing might be said about the moral torpitude in the US. No says anything about the “broken windows” at the NYTimes because after all they’re a Jewish newspaper and it’s understandable that they might try to ameliorate the increasingly brutal behavior of the Israelis in Palestine. Until now it is so bad as to be uttery intolerable but everyone has come to accept the Israeli behavior in Palestine and considers it behavior that is endemic to and somehow acceptable on the part of the Israelis. And now the NYTimes is not “making it up” anymore but commenting on a real “factual” matter… because we never called them on it forty years ago because the “poor Jews” had been treated so badly so recently, and now it seems so understandable that they would brook no nonsense with any opposition to what their, well… not really “kosher”, occupation of Palestine.
You’re right that it’s long since time! But better late than never. There’s no “statute of limitations” on genocide. If we cannot even throw off the imaginary yoke put upon our ideas by ourselves at the behest of the NYTimes then how will we ever throw of the yoke of imperial occupation in Iraq and Palestine?

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Nov 21 2006 15:23 utc | 5

only slightly OT:
Indian immigrants: Israel is our home
Fifty members of Bnei Menashe tribe arrive in Israel Tuesday
11.21.06….Sara Menashe, 78, arrived in Israel from India on Tuesday with 49 other members of the Bnei Menashe tribe.
“I am happy to be finally in the Land of Israel. Since I was a child they told me about the family’s dream to immigrate to Israel,” said the new immigrant.
Y net news
Of course, 50 is a cute anecdote. When the colonies in Gaza were dismantled, with much publicity, surprisingly some 100s of Bnei were discovered. They were trucked to the West Bank.
The real number is far higher but still small. They were converted in situ, until the Indians objected, now they are flown to Tel Aviv – the conversion is done at the airport!
Allright, if it is not reported by the NY Times or Fox or Conspiracy Planet, it ain’t so.
Desperation.

Posted by: Noirette | Nov 21 2006 21:22 utc | 6

“Bnei Menashe is one of 10 Israeli tribes who were exiled by the Assyrians 2,700 years ago.”
This is just so ridiculous a statement if I ever read one…
These people surely look like your average Israeli, really. Yes, obviously. I mean, you’d make genetic comparison of them and Sepharadic Jew, you just couldn’t see the slightest difference – contrary, for instance, to what genetic comparison with local Palestinians, which would be vastly difference and would show that they have nothing in common. Oh, wait…
Damn, they’re really desperate if they’re now trying to pick people in India.

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Nov 22 2006 8:14 utc | 7

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