Bibi clearly wants a situation where the US will back an Israeli refusal to continue negotiations, and Hamas joining a unity government gives him that. But in the longer run, that strategy might well backfire and, ironically, offer the best hope we have left for a peaceful resolution that both sides can live with.

I know this week I’ve stepped a bit outside of my usual space, and there is much to say about what is going on right now with Israel, Iran, Palestine, the US, the neoconservatives, and all the other cheery subjects I usually write about.

Well, I’ll be taking a couple of days off to enjoy the weekend and hopefully watch my beloved New York Giants pound the  stuffing out of the New England Patriots this Sunday. And then, I’ll be back to Middle East writing. Unless something just grabs my attention again.

That was an example of one way media distortion happens. Today, we saw another, this time from the left side of the political spectrum.

Nancy Brinker, founder of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation

As I’m sure everyone out there is aware, the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Foundation had passed new regulations governing its grant process that would have ended its funding for Planned Parenthood. The ensuing outcry made them reverse their decision.

A great victory right? Well, yes, it was, but you would not know it if you read this Huffington Post article by Laura Basset. The headline reads: “Susan G. Komen Reverses Planned Parenthood Decision, Does Not Promise To Renew Grants.”

Sounds like not much of a victory at all, right? It certainly led some friends of mine to question the big win, and it led The Daily Kos to just about toss the whole thing out the window and call it a defeat.

Nonsense. This was every bit the victory it seems to be.

The issue for the HuffPo and Kos (really Greg Sargent at the Washington Post, whose article was mostly just echoed at Kos), is that there is no guarantee that Planned Parenthood will get its funding renewed at the next funding cycle.

Well, yeah. There isn’t. Guess what? There wasn’t such a guarantee before.

Grants are made, renewed, discontinued for all sorts of reasons. No grant is simply assumed to be renewed. If a foundation commits in writing to funding a program or organization till the end of time, fine. Otherwise, everyone has to go through the renewal process.

Sometimes there are political reasons that a foundation does not renew a grant. More often, there is simply a decision to use the limited resources at hand elsewhere, perhaps to start up a new organization or help one that is in more dire need than the one it had been funding.

That’s all there is here. That’s all there ever was. The status quo ante has been restored which is all Planned Parenthood ever wanted.

I don’t know if this is simply an example of lazy reporting by Basset and Sargent or if one or both of them wanted to make sure people didn’t get complacent about this issue. But in either case, they are misinforming their readers.

Planned Parenthood is under ongoing siege. Anti-choice members of Congress are leaving no stone unturned in their efforts to find an excuse to cut off federal funding for PP. And foundations like Komen may receive lots of money from people and organizations that are pro-choice, but they receive funding from anti-choice people too (being against abortion but wishing to support breast cancer research are obviously not mutually exclusive).

So, Komen, like every other (with a handful of exceptions) foundation and non-profit organization wants to keep getting funded from as broad a base that supports its mission as it can. And that means the politics over this are going to continue, both inside and outside of Komen.

I can’t say I’m too upset if the shaded reporting on this motivates people to stay alert and on their guard about funding for Planned Parenthood and the protection of a woman’s right to decide what happens with her own body.

Nonetheless, I think that can be accomplished without misleading readers and distorting the actual events. Komen completely reversed itself here. They went back to where they had been, and expecting them to promise to renew Planned Parenthood’s grants in perpetuity, or even for the next cycle, outside of whatever approval process the

Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood

foundation has is simply ridiculous.

That’s why it was really a great victory. As Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood said: “We are enormously grateful that the Komen Foundation has clarified its grantmaking criteria, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Komen partners, leaders, and volunteers. What these past few days have demonstrated is the deep resolve all Americans share in the fight against cancer, and we are proud to be a leading source for women seeking preventive care.”

Richards has been around the block, both in politics and the non-profit world, a few times. She is not being fooled by an insincere apology meant to save the face of the Komen Foundation. She is also aware that the long term battle to keep, and hopefully expand, Planned Parenthood’s funding is far from over, and that this was nothing more than a defensive victory.

But a victory it was. Basset and Sargent need to recognize that, and certainly need to avoid misleading their readers about that important fact. Motivate them to redouble their efforts, which must indeed happen, in a more helpful way, please.

For a more reality-based report that addresses the serious questions that remain about Komen and its ongoing relationship with Planned Parenthood, check out this piece from Think Progress.

Ben Dunkelman in 1948

following orders” was not supposed to be an excuse.

Reality never measures up to ideals, and it is just as hard for Israeli soldiers to defy orders as it is for any other. This was true in 1948 and, as we have seen in the many reports from B’Tselem and the extensive testimonies of Israeli veterans that Shovrim Shtika(Breaking the Silence) has published, it is at least as true today.

But Bernard Avishai, in his latest blog piece, reminded me of the story of Ben Dunkelman, who refused to carry out an order to violate an agreement the IDF had made with the Arab citizens of Nazareth and expel those citizens from the territory the fledgling state held at the time. In the end, Dunkelman’s refusal spared Nazareth’s population from expulsion.

Avishai recounts the story with some important context, and you should check out his rendering. For this space, here is the Wikipedia summary, which gives you the basics of what happened.

In his autobiography, called Dual Allegiance,^[3] Dunkelman tells the story of how, between July 8 and 18, 1948 during Operation Dekel, he led the 7th Brigade and its supporting units as it moved to capture the town of Nazareth. Nazareth surrendered after little more than token resistance. The surrender was formalized in a written agreement, where the town leaders accepted to cease hostilities in return for solemn promises from the Israeli officers, including Dunkelman, that no harm would come to the civilians of the town.

Shortly following the capture, Dunkelman received orders from General Chaim Laskov to expel the civilian population in the town, but he refused to implement these orders. The Israeli journalist and translator Peretz Kidron, with whom Dunkelman collaborated in writing Dual Allegiance, reproduced his record of Dunkelman’s account of the capture of Nazareth in a book chapter entitled “Truth Whereby Nations Live”:

[less than a day later] Haim Laskov [came] to me with astounding orders: Nazareth’s civilian population was to be evacuated! I was shocked and horrified. I told him I would do nothing of the sort -in view of our promises to safeguard the city’s people, such a move would be both superfluous and harmful. I reminded him that scarcely a day earlier, he and I, as representatives of the Israeli army, had signed the surrender document in which we solemnly pledged to do nothing to harm the city or its population. When Haim saw that I refused to obey the order, he left.

A scarce 12 hours after Dunkelman had refused to expel the inhabitants of Nazareth, Laskov had appointed another officer as military governor.

Two days after the second truce came into effect, the Seventh Brigade was ordered to withdraw from Nazareth. Avraham Yaffe, who had commanded the 13th battalion in the assault on the city, now reported to me with orders from Moshe Carmel to take over from me as its military governor. I complied with the order, but only after Avraham had given me his word of honour that he would do nothing to harm or displace the Arab population. [....] I felt sure that [the order to withdraw from Nazareth] had been given because of my defiance of the evacuation order.

Dunkelman’s defiance of the evacuation order forced Laskov to attempt to obtain sanction from a higher level. However, David Ben-Gurion finally vetoed the order.The Arab inhabitants in Nazareth were never forced to evacuate.

Would that the IDF had many more Ben Dunkelmans, then and now. For that matter, every army should use him as the model of a soldier.

The Prime Minister’s Office said that the conversation with Clinton lasted 45 minutes, and quoted Netanyahu as saying, “Israel is interested in continuous talks with the Palestinians while preserving the security interests of Israeli citizens.”

No doubt, there was some clumsy wording here, but doesn’t that sound an awful lot like Bibi is saying he wants endless negotiations while continuing to go about his business as usual?

Just sayin’…

I just received an e-mail news alert from the Washington Post. The headline reads: “News Alert: U.S. deficit to top $1 trillion for 4th year in a row.”

Sounds like that bungling president is not handling our economy very well, doesn’t it?

But then, I read the story.

It starts off by echoing the headline, but then comes to the relevant facts:

The federal budget deficit will top $1 trillion for a fourth straight year, congressional budget analysts said Tuesday in a report that predicts a nearly $1.1 trillion gap between government spending and tax collections for 2012.

That figure is the smallest – both in nominal terms and as a percentage of the economy – since the Great Recession began taking a heavy toll on the federal budget in 2009.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that the deficit would continue to fall, dropping sharply in 2013 and throughout the remainder of the decade if policymakers follow through with major changes in both tax policy and government spending now on the books.

So, actually, Obama has been reducing the deficit despite the need for a massive amount of funds to bail out the many “too big to fail” financial institutions and for job creation. But to discover that rather pertinent fact, one has to read past both the headline and the first paragraph, something most readers don’t do.

The Washington Post has been steadily moving to the right for years, so this comes as no surprise. But as an object lesson in how mainstream media manages to report the facts, without lying, while at the same time completely misinforming its readers, I don’t think you’d find a starker example.

UPDATE: Turns out, the Post actually changed the lede in the article. It was reported on at the bsom blog here.

The piece was very important, and certainly controversial. My friends at +972 Magazine published a critique of it here, from a guest blogger named Rafael Frankel. With all due respect to +972, that critique was a very poor one. They graciously agreed to publish my own rebuttal to Frankel’s piece, and you can read that here.

Since Perry’s piece is, as I said, both important and controversial, it certainly should be critiqued. Hopefully it will get the serious treatment it deserves, not the poor and biased examination Frankel gave it.

First, I think it’s clear that the RNC absolutely has no idea what they actually said. They do not understand the implications of their resolution and that it would mean either the end of Israel as a Jewish state or would necessitate the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank.

Second, several readers, at this site and in other places, have raised the issue of whether one of the “whereas” clauses mitigates the call for a single state. That clause reads:

“WHEREAS, the Nation of Israel declared its independent control and governance of said lands on May 14, 1948, with the goal of re-establishing their God-given lands as a homeland for the Jewish people; “

The clause refers to Israel’s declaration of independence and sovereignty, but it bears no relation to any piece of land. On that date, there were no lines drawn. What would become the Green Line was not in existence in any sense–the Green Line is the line drawn by the armistice declared in 1949 (various agreements were signed with neighboring countries from February to July of that year to end the fighting).

On May 14, 1948, the Yishuv (which would become Israel the next day) did not have control of the Upper Galilee, or large portions of the Negev, but did have control of areas of the West bank which it would soon lose.

In short, that date is meaningless in terms of limiting the amount of land being referred to. The Yishuv/Israeli leadership was still seeking ways to maximize the territory under its control, as is well documented, and certainly cannot be argued to refer to anything that remotely corresponds to Israel’s recognized borders today.

Moreover, the enormous flood of biblical references belies any such limits. One of the things that fuels the extremism of religious Zionism today is the fact that the real cradle of Jewish history, as viewed through a biblical lens, is the West Bank. It’s not Haifa or Tel Aviv; it’s Khevron (Hebron), Shechem (Nablus), Jericho and East Jerusalem.

And the RNC itself makes it clear that the “whereas” clause in question does not limit Israel to the Green Line. The “resolved” clause that is so controversial states:

“… recognizing that Israel is neither an attacking force nor an occupier of the lands of others; and that peace can be afforded the region only through a united Israel governed under one law for all people.”

Israel is not occupying Palestinian lands, according to the RNC and peace can only come with a united Israel. Well, there is no question of dis-uniting Israel within the Green Line, so what can they possibly be referring to?

No, try as one might, there is no question that this is a call for Israeli annexation of the West Bank. The text leaves no room for any other interpretation. Indeed, the particular passage from Leviticus that they cite in this context, and which was quoted by Mik Moore in comments on my post earlier, shows that they envision absorbing the Palestinians on the land, not realizing that this will mean Jews will become a minority in Israel as a result. It refers to laws governing non-Jews in Israel.

And, I’ll reiterate, the citing of Israel’s declaration of independence in no way limits the land being referred to. Israeli forces at that time were still reaching well into the West Bank, and important chunks of what would soon become Israel were still under Palestinian control on May 14, 1948.

Of course, the RNC does not understand what they are advocating. But they do understand that they are advocating Israeli control of the West Bank–they simply don’t realize what that implies. In reality, if they were actually able to pursue this as policy, they would not back off the Israeli control of the land; they would more likely advocate for the expulsion of the bulk of the Palestinians because God gave the land to the Jews.

There simply is no reasonable reading of this text that can come to any conclusion other than the RNC calling for Israel’s permanent and full control of the West Bank. A “united Israel” is meant to stand in contrast with dividing the holy land between Israel and the Palestinians.

ONE MORE UPDATE: It should be noted that this resolution, which was brought by South Carolina’s representative to the RNC’s national meeting, is a virtual clone of one that South Carolina’s GOP passed last year. You can see a report on that here. The SC resolution can be seen here.