Location: Deconstruction
Benjamin Netanyahu 'turning Israel into a dictatorship'
The Telegraph
By: Adrian Blomfield
15th November 2011
Members of the Kadima, the principal opposition party, waved black flags to mourn the "death of democracy" after Israel's parliament, the Knesset, passed two bills that will tilt the balance of the country's Supreme Court sharply to the right.
The legislators involved in the protest had their flags confiscated before being expelled from the Knesset's chamber at the orders of the speaker.
The passage of the bills has prompted outrage among many Israeli politicians who see them as an assault on the independence of the judiciary, one that would undermine the country's cherished democratic foundations.
Tzipi Livni, the leader of the opposition, accused Mr Netanyahu of an "attempt to transform Israeli into a type of dictatorship," while her Kadima party claimed that the legislation represented the "gravest" challenge to democracy since the establishment of the state in 1948.
15th November 2011
Members of the Kadima, the principal opposition party, waved black flags to mourn the "death of democracy" after Israel's parliament, the Knesset, passed two bills that will tilt the balance of the country's Supreme Court sharply to the right.
The legislators involved in the protest had their flags confiscated before being expelled from the Knesset's chamber at the orders of the speaker.
The passage of the bills has prompted outrage among many Israeli politicians who see them as an assault on the independence of the judiciary, one that would undermine the country's cherished democratic foundations.
Tzipi Livni, the leader of the opposition, accused Mr Netanyahu of an "attempt to transform Israeli into a type of dictatorship," while her Kadima party claimed that the legislation represented the "gravest" challenge to democracy since the establishment of the state in 1948.
Under the legislation, which must go through two further readings before becoming law, legal obstacles preventing a conservative judge, Asher Grunis, from becoming president of the Supreme Court would be lifted.>>> Click here to continue
DECONSTRUCTION:
The Telegraph article entitled "Benjamin Netanyahu 'turning Israel into a dictatorship'" (Adrian Blomfield, Nov. 15, 2011) offers a special, even noteworthy. case of anti-Israel media bias. Already in the headline, the article flouts basic journalistic norms, quoting the main political opponent (Tzipi Livni party head Kadima) of the article's primary subject (Prime Minister Netanyahu) without providing any attribution whatsoever.
Further, in a blunt effort to drive home a political point, Blomfield actually misquotes Livni who, by his own attribution within the article, had in reality said the Knesset bills in question are Netanyahu's own "attempt" to turn Israel in a type of dictatorship -- a distinctly different import than the one created by the misquoted headline, which implies that Israel is already on the road to becoming a dictatorship.
It's a stretch for any journalist to use an unattributed quotation in a headline and, moreover, to misquote the speaker who made it in the first place. There has to be a strong motivation to commit both a technical and ethical error of this kind. And indeed there is.
Throughout the body of the Telegraph article, Blomfield makes further unattributed comments and factual errors, all of which move in the direction of vilifying policies of the current Israeli governing coalition. Blomfield says, for instance, that
The passage of the bills has prompted outrage among many Israeli politicians who see them as an assault on the independence of the judiciary, one that would undermine the country's cherished democratic foundations.
Yet he offers not a single source to substantiate this claim. Doubtless there is no shortage of politicians in and out of the Knesset who would express such a sentiment, which raises the question as to why Blomfield chose not to follow journalistic protocols by putting one or more of them on record.
But the meat of Blomfield's polemic comes in claims about Israel's position regarding the Palestinians and the territories. He says, "All Jewish settlements built on territory considered Palestinian are regarded as illegal under international law..." This is patently untrue. U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 calls for "Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict."
The drafters of the resolution specifically omitted the word "all" (as in withdrawal from "all territories") because, "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial," according to Lord Caradon who was Britain's representative to the UN at the time, and played a role in creating the language of the resolution.
Similarly, American Ambassador Goldberg, who led the U.S. delegation to the UN at the time, said: "The notable omissions-which were not accidental-in regard to withdrawal are the words 'the' or 'all' and 'the June 5, 1967 lines'....the resolution speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal."
The notion that "all Jewish settlements" are illegal under international law is a notion of the journalist's own making. And the fact that he might find it a resaonsble claim that any ethnic-religious group should be kept out of any state, area or land is also telling.
Blomfield also distorts President Bush's Roadmap for Peace, a 2003 agreement that called for mutual, in-parallel concessions by Israel and the Palestinians. Blomfield says that, "Under the terms of the Bush-era Roadmap, Israel pledged to dismantle outposts and to freeze all settlement construction but Mr. Netanyahu has declined to do either and has pressed for the legalisation of outposts."
However, the entire operating principle of the Roadmap was the notion of tying concessions to each other. Settlement freezes, a part of Phase I of the roadmap (a phase that was to be completed by the end of 2003), were tied to the dismantlement of the Palestinian terror apparatus and Palestinian political reform. With a steady stream of rockets being fired on Israeli population centers; bus bombings still occurring on a periodic basis; and a dual Palestinian government that includes Hamas (and excludes regular elections), it's hard to see how Blomfield could construe these conditions as being met.
In any event, the Telegraph has presented its readers with a slovenly, unjournalistic "news" article that represents the very worst of the category. We recommend that given its breach of journalistic standards, its errors and its outright bias it be revisited and revised -- or simply removed.
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