Soccer Dad

9 years later, still covering for arafat

Commenter Sassinfras claims that Yasser Arafat begged Ehud Barak when they met at Barak's apartment, not to allow Ariel Sharon to visit the Temple Mount in late September 2000. This is a dubious claim.

Deborah Sontag initially reported on the meeting:

It was just a little suburban dinner party, nothing fancy. The host and his guest of honor cracked jokes. They strolled in the garden for an intimate chat. And then the host kissed his guest goodbye, walked him to a waiting Israeli military helicopter and waved as the guest, wearing his trademark kaffiyeh, flew back to Gaza City.

A senior adviser to Yasir Arafat said the late-night supper, at Prime Minister Ehud Barak's private home in Kochav Yair on Monday, was the single best meeting ever between the Palestinian and Israeli leaders.

The adviser, Nabil Shaath, said today that it had been ''very cordial,'' even congenial. He noted that the two men had walked together to the balcony twice -- ''and both came back.''

A week later, Sontag started her article like this:

Last week, Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, were having a garden party, breaking pita bread and trading jokes in the yard of Mr. Barak's private suburban home in Israel.

Only when she was leaving the Jerusalem desk, did Sontag write this:

All this behind-the-scenes movement was reflected in the atmosphere at that dinner party at Mr. Barak's home. The prime minister, who had refused to talk directly to the Palestinian leader at Camp David, now courted him. Mr. Ben-Ami, then foreign minister, said he left the dinner and told his wife that Mr. Barak -- whom he describes as ''deaf to cultural nuance'' -- was so intent on forging a peace agreement that he was willing to change ''not only his policies but his personality.''

But Palestinians drove away from that dinner with something else on their minds -- Mr. Sharon's coming visit to what Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary and Jews know as the Temple Mount. Mr. Arafat said in an interview that he huddled on the balcony with Mr. Barak and implored him to block Mr. Sharon's plans. But Mr. Barak's government perceived the planned visit by Mr. Sharon, then the opposition leader, as solely an internal Israeli political matter, specifically as an attempt to divert attention from the expected return to political life by a right-wing rival -- Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister.

Does that sound like "joking" and "cordial?" No, Sontag willfully committed fraud here. This claim of Arafat's that he begged Barak to prevent Ariel Sharon from visiting the Temple Mount did not comport with her contemporaneous reporting. As she was preparing to leave her prestigious post, she needed a "nuanced" report that showed her sophistication that challenged assumptions that Arafat was the bad guy who rejected peace. More accurately it demonstrated sophistry. She was party to rewriting history in order to absolve a terrorist from blame he so richly deserved. That's not journalism.

There are three other data points to keep in mind.

1) Ha'aretz reported in mid-August 2000 (via IMRA) that Arafat was granting "extended vacations" to leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Over the past several weeks, the Palestinian Authority has granted extended
vacation leaves to dozens of jailed Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists, among
them militants who were involved in serious terror attacks against Israel.

Israeli military authorities view the return of the Palestinian "revolving
door" with mounting concern.

2) The first fatality of the Aqsa intifada David Biri was killed prior to Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount.

3) Dennis Ross reported the following (via It's Almost Supernatural)

I bid good-bye to the Palestinians at about 4pm. Two hours later Dani Yatom called me and said Israel had hard evidence that the PA were planning massive, violent demonstrations throughout the West Bank the next morning, ostensibly a response to the Sharon visit.

Dani was very clear: This would be a disaster.[...] Through their own channels the Israelis had sent messages to Arafat about the planned violence and there had been no response; it was up to us to persuade Arafat to prevent the violence.

Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount did not spark spontaneous violence. The violence orechstrated by Arafat took off the next day.There were plenty of credulous reporters and peace processors who chose to gloss over the evidence that Arafat had instigated the violence. But there's no getting around this reality.

Sassinfras can continue to make his counter factual claims because much of the media was negligent in reporting what really happened. The media were aided and abetted by professional peace processors who generally are unwilling to admit that their fundamental assumptions about peace - starting with their belief that Arafat had changed - were dead wrong.

Crossposted on Yourish.