David Makovsky of WINEP, AIPAC’s “education arm,” and the lobby’s point man on selling the Apartheid Wall to the US public, is allowed to run roughshod thru the US media with misinformation in his attempt to sell Israel’s massive land grab. He was one of three “academics” quoted by the NY Times as distancing himself from Carter’s book, saying it was so full of errors it made him cry.

Makovsky first had a piece on Carter in US News and World report, which is practically a house organ of the lobby, published and edited by Mortimer Zuckerman. Between 2001 and 2003, Zuckerman was the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Now he sits on the board of WINEP. Now a similar piece repeating the same mistake has been run in the San Francisco Chronicle. Makovsky claims from that from 2000-2004, Hamas killed 1,000 with suicide bombings in Israel. The actual number of fatalities inside Israel for that time frame, according the UK Guardian, is 272.

It’s important to show Makovsky plays fast and loose with the facts. Makovsky claims that: “it was Hamas that effectively built the barrier by inundating Israel with suicide bombings that claimed an estimated 1,000 lives between 2000 and 2004.” This is a clear error and The Chronicle should make a correction.

So far, requests for corrections by email and two phone calls to the SF Chronicle readers’ representative have gone unanwered.

TAKE ACTION: email SF Chronicle and/or call their readers’ representative to demand a correction:
feedback@sfgate.com,
readerrep@sfchronicle.com,
Dick Rodgers: (415) 777-7870

Email US News: letters@usnews.com

Here is the original correction request to SF Chronicle to serve as a guide:

Dear San Francisco Chronicle,

David Makovsky was quoted in the US media as saying of Jimmy Carter’s new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, “I was just very saddened by it. I just found so many errors.”

While Carter wrote a book of 250 pages, I was saddened that in just one article of 953 words in the Dec. 20 San Francisco Chronicle, David Makovsky made at least one important and glaring factual error, on top of his typical distortions and propaganda. (Carter’s Polemic Will not Help Palestinians by David Makovsky)

Makovsky dramatically overstated the number of deaths caused by Hamas suicide bombings in Israel from 2000-2004. Makovsky wrote that, “it was Hamas that effectively built the barrier by inundating Israel with suicide bombings that claimed an estimated 1,000 lives between 2000 and 2004.” Makovsky thus asserts that Hamas killed 1000 people with suicide bombings in Israel from 2000-2004.

Makovksy is near the truth in terms of the number of people killed by Palestinians from 2000-2004, but he is wrong on all the rest. Not all were killed in Israel, nor by suicide bombings, nor by Hamas.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem carefully documents, individual by individual, that 988 people (642 Israeli civilians, 301 Israeli security forces and 45 foreigners) were killed by Palestinians from September 29, 2000 - December 31, 2004.
http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Casualties.asp

However:

1) Many deaths were in the Occupied Territories, not in Israel: B’Tselem documents that, of those 988 people killed by Palestinians over four years, only 545 were killed in Israel, and the remaining 443 were killed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (545 people killed by Palestinians in Israel = 430 civilian + 83 Israeli security forces + 32 foreigners. 443 people killed in Occupied Territories by Palestinians = 212 civilians + 218 security forces + 13 foreigners http://www.btselem.org/)

2) Not all deaths from suicide bombings: Many people killed by Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories were not killed by suicide bombings. For example, approximately 60 Israelis were killed after September 29, 2000, the beginning of the 2nd intifada, and before the first suicide bombing of the 2nd intifada occurred on March 4, 2001 (http://www.mfa.gov.il/)

According to the Mail and Guardian On-line (see below) a total of 450 Israelis were killed in suicide bombings from October, 2000 - April 9, 2006. Therefore, the majority of Israelis were killed in attacks other than suicide bombings.

3) Other Palestinian factions killed and committed suicide bombings: The April 9, 2006 Mail and Guardian On-line article says, “According to the Israeli army, since October 2000, Hamas carried out 51 suicide attacks, killing 272 Israelis. Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade carried out 34 each, killing 98 and 80 Israelis respectively.” http://www.mg.co.za/
Again, per 1) above, some of Hamas’ 51 suicide attacks, killing 272 Israelis, were not carried out in Israel, but were carried out in the Occupied Territories.

The information above shows clearly that David Makovsky’s claim that 1000 people were killed in Israel from 2000-2004 by Hamas suicide bombings is a glaring factual error. Makovsky’s error should be corrected by the San Francisco Chronicle.

On “Rosner’s Domain,” on the widely-quoted English website of Israel’s paper of record, Ha’aretz, Shmuel Rosner has been up to his usual tricks, invoking such luminaries and experts as Alan Dershowitz, and Martin Peretz of TNR on the question “is Carter an anti-Semite.” Now Rosner has a poll on his blog: “Jimmy Carter’s book calls Israel’s occupation an “apartheid”. Do you think [results as of 7PM EST]:

Carter is right: 40%
It’s a harmless provocation: 3%
Good intentions, bad wording: 13%
Carter meant to harm Israel: 16%
He is actually an anti-Semite: 28%

If you’re confused about what to answer, refer to this quote from a Sept. 13 editorial from Ha’aretz:

…the apartheid regime in the territories remains intact; millions of Palestinians are living without rights, freedom of movement or a livelihood, under the yoke of ongoing Israeli occupation,…[…]

Vote now!

F A I R

Action Alert

Flirting With Fascism on CNN Headline News
Host Glenn Beck threatens Muslims with concentration camps

12/5/06

The New York Times (12/4/06), profiling new CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck, called him “brash” and “opinionated,” with an “unfiltered approach.” The conservative talk-radio host-turned-cable news announcer, the paper reported, “take[s] credit for saying what others are feeling but are afraid to say.”

The Times mentioned one of the things Beck has said recently, to newly elected U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a Muslim: “Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.” But as press critic Eric Alterman pointed out (Altercation, 12/4/06), as offensive as that question is, it doesn’t begin to suggest the poisonousness of Beck’s rhetoric about Muslims.

On his August 10 radio show, distributed by Clear Channel’s Premiere Radio Networks, Beck told listeners, “The world is on the brink of World War III,” then issued this warning:

All you Muslims who have sat on your frickin’ hands the whole time and have not been marching in the streets and have not been saying, ‘Hey, you know what? There are good Muslims and bad Muslims. We need to be the first ones in the recruitment office lining up to shoot the bad Muslims in the head.’ I’m telling you, with God as my witness… human beings are not strong enough, unfortunately, to restrain themselves from putting up razor wire and putting you on one side of it. When things—when people become hungry, when people see that their way of life is on the edge of being over, they will put razor wire up and just based on the way you look or just based on your religion, they will round you up. Is that wrong? Oh my gosh, it is Nazi, World War II wrong, but society has proved it time and time again: It will happen.

On September 5, Beck took the same message to his CNN Headline News audience, declaring, “In 10 years, Muslims and Arabs will be looking through a razor wire fence at the West.” He explained:

Since 9/11, Americans have gotten so fed up with the “yes, but” Muslims. The “yes, but” Muslims are the ones who show up on talkshows and in the media and say, “Yes, terrorism is bad, but”—and then they go through a list of reasons on why we should try and sympathize with people who fly planes into buildings…. If, God forbid, there’s another attack, we won’t have anymore patience for the “yes, buts.” The Muslim community better find a spokesman who isn’t a “yes, but” Muslim. They shouldn’t even understand the word “but,” because if they don’t, when things heat up, the profiling will only get worse, and the razor wire will be coming.

Beck went on to say:

You want the profiling to stop? Then, here’s an idea. Stop murdering innocent people. Stop excusing the people who do. You do that for a while, and I guarantee you won’t have any more problems at the airports. Stop blowing stuff up and the world just might be your oyster. Otherwise, it’s going to be like that movie, The Siege. You remember that movie? The Muslims will see the West through razor wire if things don’t change.

He concluded:

Look, I’m not saying all Arabs and Muslims are anti-American. Far from it. We should get to know these people and embrace the good Muslims, and eliminate the bad ones. Here’s what I don’t know. I don’t know if the Muslim community will ever step to the plate like the Japanese-American community did during World War II. You know, it was absolutely disgraceful how we rounded innocent people up then and, sadly, history has a way of repeating itself no matter how grotesque that history might be. The Muslim community can prevent this if they act now.

When Beck is talking about “razor wire,” he’s talking about concentration camps—in the original sense of the word, places where masses of people are imprisoned “just based on the way you look or just based on your religion.” Despite his (perfectly accurate) observation that such camps are “Nazi, World War II wrong,” comparable to the “absolutely disgraceful” wartime interment of Japanese-Americans, Beck is clearly using the threat of such camps to coerce Muslims into behavior he approves of, like volunteering “to shoot the bad Muslims in the head.”

Since the overwhelming majority of U.S. Muslims are neither “murdering innocent people” nor “excusing the people who do,” there’s really nothing that they can do to avert Beck’s threat that “the razor wire will be coming.” And Beck is explicit that there’s nothing non-Muslims can do to avoid locking Muslims up en masse.

The New York Times, in its profile about Beck, refers to his criticism of the animated film Happy Feet, but fails to mention that he uses his Headline News slot to issue threats that he himself compares to Nazi behavior. For the Times, CNN’s decision to give Beck a TV show is a “success,” because he “has increased the ratings in his 7 p.m. time period 60 percent among all viewers, and 84 percent among viewers aged 25 to 54.”

The Times article quoted CNN executive Kenneth Jautz as saying that the network did not take Beck’s politics into account when it hired him. “We did not set out to have anyone from any particular view fronting these shows,” he said. In fact, CNN hired Beck knowing that the host’s repertoire included hateful attacks–the Hurricane Katrina refugees seen on TV and the father of a terrorism victim were both “scumbags” (Mediamatters.org, 5/17/04, 9/9/05)–as well as a disturbing preoccupation with violence: Beck has told his listeners that he was praying for a gruesome death for Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich (3/6/03), and that he was fantasizing about strangling filmmaker Michael Moore to death (5/17/05). As FAIR predicted (FAIR Action Alert, 1/18/06), Beck has not changed his repellent tune simply because he’s been hired by a major media outlet.