In almost 40 years of studying these issues I’ve never seen a better case study of mass-media bias and knee-jerk narrowness than an aspect of the current flap about what presidential candidate Mitt Romney said during his trip to Israel. I’m going to focus on a single point because it brings this problem into sharp focus.

If you truly understand what you are about to read, I don’t see how you can accord most of the mass media any credibility when it comes to Israel ever again. Briefly, Romney mentioned the gap between the Israeli and Palestinian economies – ironically, he vastly understated the gap – and attributed it to “culture” by which he meant, as Romney has said elsewhere, such things as democracy, individual liberty, free enterprise and the rule of law.

But I’m not talking about Romney here or the media’s critique of him. What is interesting is this: How do you explain the reason why Israel is so much more advanced in terms of economy, technology and living standards? The media generally rejected Romney’s explanation and pretty much all made the same point.

To quote an Associated Press story, that was this: “Comparison of the two economies did not take into account the stifling effect the Israeli occupation has had on the Palestinian economy in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem – areas Israel captured in 1967 where the Palestinians hope to establish a state.

“In the West Bank, Palestinians have only limited selfrule.

Israel controls all border crossings in and out of the territory, and continues to restrict Palestinian trade and movement. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, but has invested much less heavily there than in Jewish West Jerusalem.”

Or, in other words, it’s all Israel’s fault. Yet in choosing to blame Israel, the media generally showed no interest at all in additional factors which are equally, or far more, valid. My point is that only blaming Israel was even considered as a reasonable explanation on this issue – as it is on the failure of the peace process and just about anything else involving Israel-Palestinian matters, and at times, perhaps less true recently, the entire Middle East.

I’m not suggesting that journalists and editors thought through the following list of factors and deliberately decided not to mention them. I think that these things never entered their minds. Yet how can that be? Some of these points require knowledge of the situation on the ground and its history. Still, many should be obvious to those who have read past newspaper accounts or just use logic, not to mention research.

Consider the points made below. You might count them for less, but anyone honest should admit that they add up to a compelling case:

1. The most devastating problem for the Palestinian economy has been the leadership’s refusal to make peace with Israel and to get a state. Most notably, the opportunities thrown away in 1948, 1979, and 2000 doomed both countries to years of suffering, casualties and lower development. Today, in 2012, both Palestinian leaderships –Fatah and Hamas – continue this strategy.

2. Statistics show major advances in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the period of Israeli occupation. A lot of money also came in from Palestinians working in Israel (or to a surprising extent, on the Jewish settlements).

3. The media should be expected to explain why Israel interfered at all, considering by around 1994 almost all West Bank and Gaza Palestinians were under Palestinian rule. The reason, of course, was Palestinian violence against Israel and Israelis. If there had not been such attacks, Israeli forces would not have set foot in Palestinian- ruled areas.

Stability would have encouraged development and foreign investment. There would be no roadblocks. Incidentally, roadblocks and restrictions on travel have changed constantly and at times of relative quiet became almost non-existent. Of course, Israel maintained control of the borders to prevent weapons from coming in.

4. The large transfer of funds (as provided in the Oslo agreement, but PA behavior did not make Israel violate the agreement) from Israel to the PA regarding refunds on customs’ duties and workers’ fringe benefits.

5. The well-documented incompetence and corruption of the Palestinian Authority. For example, there is no reliable body of law that a company could depend on there. Bribes determine who gets contracts. Literally billions of dollars have been stolen and mostly ended up in the European accounts of Palestinian leaders.

6. And where did those billions of dollars come from? They came from foreign donors who showered huge amounts of money on a relatively small population. Yet, even aside from theft, the money was not used productively or to benefit the people.

7. Because of the risks and attacks on Israel, the country stopped admitting Palestinian workers except for a far smaller number. Tens of thousands thus lost lucrative jobs and the PA could not replace these.

8. The unequal status of women in the Palestinian society throws away up to one-half of the potential labor and talent that could otherwise have made a big contribution to development.

9. And then there are the special factors relating to the Gaza Strip. Under the rule of Hamas, a group committing many acts of terror and openly calling for genocide against Israel, the emphasis was not put on economic development but on war-fighting.

The shooting of rockets at Israel created an economic blockade. Note also, however, that Hamas also alienated the Mubarak regime in Egypt which also had no incentive to help it, instituting its own restrictions that were as intense as those of Israel.

10. The Palestinian leadership generally antagonized Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other oil-rich Arab states that were consequently not interested in helping them develop.

11. Finally, compare the Palestinians to the Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians or Lebanese. In those places the excuse of “it’s all Israel’s fault” is hard to sustain, yet the Palestinians have done as well or better than other Arabs who share a very similar political culture.

My main interest here was not so much to present these eleven points but to ask the question: Why is it that these factors were barely mentioned – or not mentioned at all – in the media analyses of Romney’s statement? The answer, of course, is that most of the media is set on the “blame Israel” argument.

Yet even given this point, why is that approach used virtually 100 percent of the time with nothing about the other side of the issue? Often, one suspects there is no interest in presenting anything other than an anti-Israel narrative.

EU institutions do not do God. But for some religious leaders in EU-aspirant countries, member states’ Christian origins are still politically important.

The morning call to prayer at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul means different things to different people.

For Muslims, it is an invitation to muster spiritual energy for the working day. For some Western visitors it is a sign that they are on the edge of an exotic world.

With regular news about Islamic extremism – Spain this week charged two al-Qaeda suspects, Denmark in June charged four Muslims for plotting to murder a cartoonist who made fun of Mohammed – it is a world that many see as hostile to the West.

The voice among the Blue Mosque minarets often belongs to Metin Balci.

When EUobserver spoke to the muezzin and imam at the famous site in a recent interview, he said what some Turkish diplomats privately believe: EU opposition to Turkish membership is based, in part, on Islamophobia.

“What we hear and what they are telling us is that they are not a Christian club. But if you look at their approach to us, then we see and we feel that it is such a club,” Balci said.

The imam’s view of EU-Turkish relations is of two competing civilisations trying to come together.

He noted that Islamic societies in medieval times led Europe in terms of science, women’s rights and even “personal hygiene.”

“The West has the power now. But the history of the world is not 100 years. It is a longer span. Things change … I believe that Islam in the future can take the lead once again,” he said.

He added that EU countries have no moral superiority because colonialists in modern times pillaged Africa and the Middle East.

Quoting South Africa’s bishop Desmond Tutu, he said: “When missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”

Balci’s idea of a “Christian club” is anathema to EU policy.

Despite Vatican lobbying, the EU Treaty does not mention the word “Christian” on any of its 403 pages.

It begins by saying the Union “[draws] inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe.” Later on, it says that any “European state” can join.

When asked by this website what “European” means, the European Commission said it means respect for “universal” values, such as “democracy, equality and the rule of law.”

When commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso recently met religious VIPs, he dutifully invited all kinds of hats: imams, rabbis, bishops and Bahai (an Iranian sect).

The EU is already home to 13 million Muslims, over 1 million Jews and 370 million people who tell polsters they are Christian. Apart from Turkey, two other majority Muslim places – Albania and Kosovo – are in line to join.

For rabbi David Rosen, a leading Jewish thinker, the EU really has left its past behind.

Referring to a 17th century accord between Roman Catholic and Protestant countries, he told this website in a written note in July: “The treaty of Westphalia and the adaptation of Christianity to a world in which a particular denomination did not have absolute power, and ultimately its ability to see this as good for its own needs, facilitated acculturation to diversity, individuality.”
Clash of civilisations?

Rosen believes there is no clash of civilisations, but that there is a clash between antiquity and modernity.

“It is … between the enlightened (who embrace the good things of modernity – science, individual autonomy, human rights) and the reactionary (who feel threatened by those things). The enlightened are those who do not claim a monopoly on truth and the reactionary are those that do,” he said.

“Muslims from ‘Europeanized’ (e.g. Balkan) societies, which can even include some Arab societies (e.g. the educated elite in Morocco), are able to be part of European society as well as anyone else.”

Balci is not alone in thinking that the Union is still more Christian than it says, however.

“With all due respect to the strong presence of Muslims in Europe, I think every single person in Europe thinks that Europe is a Christian continent, not Muslim,” bishop Hovakim Manukyan, an ecumenical officer at the Armenian Apostolic Church, told EUobserver in an interview in May.

Contrasting Armenia to Turkey, he said: “We are also Christian and we have much more in common [with EU member states]. I would say the same about our Christian neighbour Georgia.”

He noted that the old Armenian-Turkish conflict still has a religious side.

When Armenians last year sang mass in Akdamar, in eastern Turkey, Manukyan said that Turkish Muslims held a ritual “against” them in an old Armenian church-turned-mosque in Ani to show who is boss.

The bishop, who used to work with Comece, a Brussels-based Christian lobby, added that Armenian communities in, say, Belgium or France have “fully assimilated,” while Muslims are “a challenge” in terms of integration.

Laying aside the bogeyman of al-Qaeda, Islamic antipathy toward the West is on show in the heart of the EU.

On an everday level, a recent film by a British student in the EU capital documented insults hurled mostly by Arab men at skirt-wearing women in the street.

One EU security expert told this website that the Grand Mosque in the Parc Cinquantenaire in Brussels, next door to Barroso’s headquarters, “has some of the most radical preachers you will hear anywhere in Europe.”

Meanwhile, a few hours by plane from Brussels – in Egypt, Iraq or Syria – the clock is turning backward on the EU’s post-modern values.

The US invasion of Iraq and the Arab Spring have prompted fresh waves of sectarian violence in the home of the world’s oldest Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities.

Up to 1 million Iraqi Christians have fled the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Dozens of Egyptian Copts have been killed since the fall of Hosni Mubarak.

Israel’s EU-and-US-endorsed ethnic cleansing of occupied territories also acts as a “lightning conductor” – in Rosen’s phrase – for anti-Western feeling.
‘Enlightened’ Islam

Going back to Balci in the Blue Mosque, the imam voiced the kind of “enlightened” ideas which Rosen described.

Balci said Turks want to join the EU for the sake of good governance.

“I trust the EU will make decisions about Turkey according to its democratic rules … We would like to join the Union not because we want its money or its technology, but because we would like to have the same democratic system,” he said.

He noted that Muslim societies have their own form of enlightenment, however.

Contrasting the Islamic culture of family values and social welfare to the EU’s economic and technological rat-race, he said: “We have things to take from Europe and things to give to Europe. Europe needs more humanity … Western technology has put a man on the moon. But nobody goes upstairs to the top floor to visit their sick neighbour, to ask if they’re OK.”

He criticised people who say Islam breeds terrorism and puts down women.

“Whoever thinks this should read more history … It is not fair to take Iran or Saudi Arabia as the example of all Islam or of all Arab lands,” he said.

Turning to the Danish cartoon controversy, he said the newspaper was wrong back in 2005 to insult Muslim sensibility.

But he showed his own brand of Islam in saying that Muslims were wrong to react with anger.

Balci noted that Islam follows the teachings of Christian “prophets” – such as Moses, Abraham and Jesus – as well as Mohammed. He quoted Jesus in saying that Muslims should have “turned the other cheek.”

Showing again a gentle face of Islam, when asked by EUobserver what he feels when he sings the morning call to prayer, he answered with humour.

“Mostly, I feel sleepy,” Balci said.

By: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad – Guardian News and Media Limited

As they stood outside the commandeered government building in the town of Mohassen, it was hard to distinguish Abu Khuder’s men from any other brigade in the Syrian civil war, in their combat fatigues, T-shirts and beards.

But these were not average members of the Free Syrian Army. Abu Khuder and his men fight for al-Qaida. They call themselves the ghuraba’a, or “strangers”, after a famous jihadi poem celebrating Osama bin Laden’s time with his followers in the Afghan mountains, and they are one of a number of jihadi organisations establishing a foothold in the east of the country now that the conflict in Syria has stretched well into its second bloody year.

They try to hide their presence. “Some people are worried about carrying the [black] flags,” said Abu Khuder. “They fear America will come and fight us. So we fight in secret. Why give Bashar and the west a pretext?” But their existence is common knowledge in Mohassen. Even passers-by joke with the men about car bombs and IEDs.

According to Abu Khuder, his men are working closely with the military council that commands the Free Syrian Army brigades in the region. “We meet almost every day,” he said. “We have clear instructions from our [al-Qaida] leadership that if the FSA need our help we should give it. We help them with IEDs and car bombs. Our main talent is in the bombing operations.” Abu Khuder’s men had a lot of experience in bomb-making from Iraq and elsewhere, he added.

Abu Khuder spoke later at length. He reclined on a pile of cushions in a house in Mohassen, resting his left arm which had been hit by a sniper’s bullet and was wrapped in plaster and bandages. Four teenage boys kneeled in a tight crescent in front of him, craning their necks and listening with awe. Other villagers in the room looked uneasy.

Abu Khuder had been an officer in a mechanised Syrian border force called the Camel Corps when he took up arms against the regime. He fought the security forces with a pistol and a light hunting rifle, gaining a reputation as one of the bravest and most ruthless men in Deir el-Zour province and helped to form one of the first FSA battalions.

He soon became disillusioned with what he saw as the rebel army’s disorganisation and inability to strike at the regime, however. He illustrated this by describing an attempt to attack the government garrison in Mohassen. Fortified in a former textile factory behind concrete walls, sand bags, machine-gun turrets and armoured vehicles, the garrison was immune to the rebels’ puny attempt at assault.

“When we attacked the base with the FSA we tried everything and failed,” said Abu Khuder. “Even with around 200 men attacking from multiple fronts they couldn’t injure a single government soldier and instead wasted 1.5m Syrian pounds [£14,500] on firing ammunition at the walls.”

Then a group of devout and disciplined Islamist fighters in the nearby village offered to help. They summoned an expert from Damascus and after two days of work handed Abu Khuder their token of friendship: a truck rigged with two tonnes of explosives.

Two men drove the truck close to the gate of the base and detonated it remotely. The explosion was so large, Abu Khuder said, that windows and metal shutters were blown hundreds of metres, trees were ripped up by their roots and a huge crater was left in the middle of the road.

The next day the army left and the town of Mohassen was free.

“The car bomb cost us 100,000 Syrian pounds and fewer than 10 people were involved [in the operation],” he said. “Within two days of the bomb expert arriving we had it ready. We didn’t waste a single bullet.

“Al-Qaida has experience in these military activities and it knows how to deal with it.”

After the bombing, Abu Khuder split with the FSA and pledged allegiance to al-Qaida’s organisation in Syria, the Jabhat al Nusra or Solidarity Front. He let his beard grow and adopted the religious rhetoric of a jihadi, becoming a commander of one their battalions.

“The Free Syrian Army has no rules and no military or religious order. Everything happens chaotically,” he said. “Al-Qaida has a law that no one, not even the emir, can break.

“The FSA lacks the ability to plan and lacks military experience. That is what [al-Qaida] can bring. They have an organisation that all countries have acknowledged.

“In the beginning there were very few. Now, mashallah, there are immigrants joining us and bringing their experience,” he told the gathered people. “Men from Yemen, Saudi, Iraq and Jordan. Yemenis are the best in their religion and discipline and the Iraqis are the worst in everything – even in religion.”

At this, one man in the room – an activist in his mid-30s who did not want to be named – said: “So what are you trying to do, Abu Khuder? Are you going to start cutting off hands and make us like Saudi? Is this why we are fighting a revolution?”

“[Al-Qaida’s] goal is establishing an Islamic state and not a Syrian state,” he replied. “Those who fear the organisation fear the implementation of Allah’s jurisdiction. If you don’t commit sins there is nothing to fear.”
Religious rhetoric

Religious and sectarian rhetoric has taken a leading role in the Syrian revolution from the early days. This is partly because of the need for outside funding and weapons, which are coming through well-established Muslim networks, and partly because religion provides a useful rallying cry for fighters, with promises of martyrdom and redemption.

Almost every rebel brigade has adopted a Sunni religious name with rhetoric exalting jihad and martyrdom, even when the brigades are run by secular commanders and manned by fighters who barely pray.

“Religion is a major rallying force in this revolution – look at Ara’our [a rabid sectarian preacher], he is hysterical and we don’t like him but he offers unquestionable support to the fighters and they need it,” the activist said later.

Another FSA commander in Deir el-Zour city explained the role of religion in the uprising: “Religion is the best way to impose discipline. Even if the fighter is not religious he can’t disobey a religious order in battle.”

Al-Qaida has existed in this parched region of eastern Syria, where the desert and the tribes straddle the border with Iraq, for almost a decade.

During the years of American occupation of Iraq, Deir el-Zour became the gateway through which thousands of foreign jihadis flooded to fight the holy war. Many senior insurgents took refuge from American and Iraqi government raids in the villages and deserts of Deir el-Zour.

Osama, a young jihadi from Abu Khuder’s unit with a kind smile, was 17 in 2003 when the Americans invaded Iraq, he said. He ran away from home and joined the thousands of other Syrians who crossed the porous border and went to fight. Like most of those volunteers, at first he was inspired by a mixture of nationalistic and tribal allegiances, but later religion became his sole motivation.

After returning to Syria he drifted closer to the jihadi ideology. It was dangerous then, and some of his friends were imprisoned by the regime, which for years played a double game, allowing jihadis to filter across the borders to fight the Americans while at the same time keeping them tightly under control at home.

In the first months of the Syrian uprising, he joined the protesters in the street, and when some of his relatives were killed he defected and joined the Free Syrian Army.

“I decided to join the others,” he said. “But then I became very disappointed with the FSA. When they fought they were great, but then most of the time they sat in their rooms doing nothing but smoke and gossip and chat on Skype.”

Fed up with his commanders’ bickering and fighting over money, he turned to another fighting group based in the village of Shahail, 50 miles west of Mohassen, which has become the de facto capital of al-Qaida in Deir el-Zour. More than 20 of its young men were killed in Iraq. In Shahail the al-Qaida fighters drive around in white SUVs with al-Qaida flags fluttering.

The group there was led by a pious man. He knew a couple of them from his time in Iraq. One day, the group’s leader – a Saudi who covered his hair with a red scarf and carried a small Kalashnikov, in the style of Bin Laden – visited Mohassen. He gave a long sermon during the funeral of a local commander, telling the audience how jihad was the only way to lead a revolution against the infidel regime of Bashar al-Assad, and how they, the Syrians, were not only victims of the regime but also of the hypocrisy of the west, which refused to help them.

“They were committed,” said Osama. “They obeyed their leader and never argued. In the FSA, if you have 10 people they usually split and form three groups.” The jihadis, by contrast, used their time “in useful things, even the chores are divided equally”.

Osama joined the group. “He [the Saudi] is a very good man, he spends his days teaching us. You ask him anything and he will answer you with verses from the Qur’an, you want to read the Qur’an you can read. You want to study bomb-making he will teach you.”

In the pre-revolutionary days when the regime was strong it would take a year to recruit someone to the secret cause of jihad. “Now, thanks to God, we are working in the open and many people are joining in,” said Osama.

In Shahail we interviewed Saleem Abu Yassir, a village elder and the commander of the local FSA brigade. He sat in a room filled with tribal fighters and machine-guns. The relationship with al-Qaida had been very difficult, he said, with the jihadis being secretive and despising the FSA and even calling them infidel secularists. But now they had opened up, co-operating with other rebel groups.

“Are they good fighters?” he threw the question rhetorically into the room. “Yes, they are, but they have a problem with executions. They capture a soldier and they put a pistol to his head and shoot him. We have religious courts and we have to try people before executing them. This abundance of killing is what we fear. We fear they are trying to bring us back to the days of Iraq and we have seen what that achieved.”

Osama had told me that his group was very cautious about not repeating the Iraq experience – “they admit they made a lot of mistakes in Iraq and they are keen to avoid it”, he said – but others, including a young doctor working for the revolution, were not convinced. The opposition needed to admit Al-Qaida were among them, and be on their guard.

“Who kidnapped the foreign engineers who worked in the nearby oilfield?” he asked. “They have better financing than the FSA and we have to admit they are here.

“They are stealing the revolution from us and they are working for the day that comes after.”