The New York Times on November 21 and 24 devoted two full-length news articles to the question of how Israel uses torture. On Friday, Human Rights Watch issued a 50-page report which found that Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority engages in the "routine use of torture." The Associated Press moved a full news article on the report; so did the Jerusalem Post. The New York Times routinely covers Human Rights Watch reports. And it covers torture, when Israel does it. But the Human Rights Watch report on the Palestinian Authority seems not fit to print.
Bollinger: The New York Times reports today, under the headline, "University of Michigan Won't Cooperate in Federal Canvass," that "The University of Michigan's police force has refused to help the federal government in its effort to interview thousands of foreign students and others in the United States on temporary visas." The Times article quotes a spokeswoman for the university but never mentions the name of the university president, Lee Bollinger, who is scheduled to take over next year as the president of Columbia University. That would seem to be an interesting angle for a newspaper based in Columbia's hometown of New York to pursue: what role, if any, did Mr. Bollinger play in the decision to refuse to assist the federal effort? And how do the Columbia trustees who hired him feel about that?
Israel and Iraq: A front-page article in today's New York Times reports, "In the interview, Mr. Armitage said the administration was sensitive to concerns among the European and Arab allies that forcing a military confrontation with Iraq could sunder the antiterror coalition and possibly harm efforts to negotiate a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians." The Times news article -- and for that matter, Mr. Armitage -- treat this argument about Iraq and the Israel-Palestinian negotiations as if it is credible. The newspaper even made the argument itself in a Monday, November 26 editorial on Iraq, writing, " War in Iraq would also undermine whatever possibility now exists for damping violence between Israelis and Palestinians and restarting efforts toward a lasting peace. . . . Moving militarily against Iraq now would hobble America's power as a Mideast peacemaker." Well, since Mr. Armitage and the Times news department are now echoing and displaying their sensitivity to the editorial's faulty reasoning, Smartertimes.com will repeat what it said on Monday:
"This stands in utter contradiction to the historical reality. In fact America's last war in Iraq, from 1990 to 1991, is what made it possible to convene the October 30, 1991, Madrid peace conference, which was the starting point for America's current peacemaking efforts in the Middle East. Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization had sided with Iraq, and the defeat of Iraq left Mr. Arafat in a weakened position with respect to his usual Arab patrons. He was thus forced to the bargaining table.
"Rather than hobbling America's power as a peacemaker, a successful American war against Iraq might well strengthen it. It would do so not merely by strengthening America's prestige at the bargaining table, but by directly eliminating at its source a cause of the violence between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. As reported by the Washington Post, Saddam Hussein's regime has been awarding $10,000 'martyr payments' as an incentive to the parents of Palestinian Arabs who die attacking Israel. As reported yesterday by the Associated Press in Amman, Jordanian authorities arrested an Iraqi truck driver, Jaafar Mansoor Ali, 45, who authorities said was trying to smuggle 40 hand grenades from Iraq to the Palestinian territories. As reported yesterday in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, Israeli authorities recently arrested 15 Palestinians who were trained and financed by Iraq and who planned 'spectacular' terror attacks at Ben-Gurion International Airport, in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem. It's rare for this sort of information to make it into the news section of the New York Times -- one has to subscribe to Iraq News or read other newspapers to find out about it."