Some around here are just shocked, shocked at the transparently pro-Israel propaganda masquerading as journalism in The Atlantic… but it seems to me this pub has been a tool of Israel’s Ministry of Disinformation for years.
For instance, let’s go back to David Samuels’ September 2005 cover story about how Yasser Arafat (and not Zionist militias/the U.S.-backed Israeli military) somehow "destroyed" Palestine.
Joseph Glatzer might point out that DJ Samuels is in Da House, spinning us some of the greatest Zionist hits for the ladies. For example, check out the opening paragraph:
The war for Jerusalem that began after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s failed peace offer at Camp David in the summer of 2000 has become the subject of legends and fables, each one of which is colored in the distinctive shades of the political spectrum from which it emerged: Yasir Arafat tried to control the violence. Arafat was behind the violence. Arafat was the target of the violence, which he deflected onto the Israelis. Depending on which day of the week it was, any combination of these statements might have been true.
So according to Samuels, there are legends and myths, but they’re all about Palestinian violence.
Serious reporting had debunked the myth of Barak’s peace offer a year before Samuels published, but Samuels speaks of the "offer" as if it were an incontrovertible fact. Sharon’s intentional provocation, and Israel’s brutal crushing of an uprising that in its first weeks was largely non-violent or at most armed with non-lethal weapons (stones), is of course not mentioned.
Another mega-hit, really I’d call this the all time Platinum smash hit Zionist propaganda chart-topper: the Palestinians/Arafat are the source of all the violence in the Middle East.
After Arafat died, on November 11, 2004, there were some who believed that the chaos and violence that he had brought with him to the Palestinian territories might follow him to the grave, and that peace between Israelis and Palestinians might finally be at hand.
Some believed? Who exactly? Certainly not the Palestinians suffering under the brutality of occupation. Anyway, this kind of argument seems indistinguishable from what someone at CAMERA (an Israel propaganda outfit) might have faxed Samuels as a suggestion for his article. The chaos and violence in the territories are the fault of, and originate from…Arafat! Never say the words "military occupation," "house demolitions," "ethnic cleansing," "land confiscation," or "illegal wall."
The article mucks into a detailed discussion of Arafat’s alleged corruption and cronyism. I can’t say whether or not that stuff is true. But who cares, really? If The Atlantic had run a 12-page story about the true causes of the destruction of Palestine, then perhaps it would be fair to also run an exposé of Palestinian Authority corruption. But the magazine’s front cover headline, "How Arafat Destroyed Palestine," is part of that other time-worn classic Zionist hit, The Palestinians Are To Blame for Their Own Suffering.
The Atlantic should be reporting the reality, the facts, international law… If the mainstream media reported that story, on a regular basis, perhaps lockstep support for Israel’s suicidal project of military conquest and descent into fascism wouldn’t be so easy for the U.S. Congress to support. But thank goodness we have magazines like The Atlantic, to help indoctrinate the American public and ensure the billions of military aid continue to flow.
P.S. – Who remembers the 2004 scene when Jon Stewart confronted the Crossfire bloviators and asked them why they were hurting America? I’d like to do the same with mainstream editors: Why are you hurting Palestinians? Israelis? Americans? Iranians?
P.P.S. – Here’s Samuels on the same topic as Goldberg, why Israel will attack Iran. An example of his blinders:
The key fact of the American-Israeli alliance that most commentators seem eager to elide is that Israel is America’s leading ally in the Middle East because it is the most powerful country in the Middle East.
Eager to elide? How can you be so righteous about elisions when your reporting on "the destruction of Palestine" contains so many of them? And in this particular example, U.S. support for Israel has nothing to do with the pro-Israel Lobby and conservative Jewish donors? Since when has the mainstream media reported on either?
