Washington Times Publishes CAMERA Letters

The Washington Times recently published two CAMERA letters, one correcting two factual errors in a Times news story, and another addressing an inaccurate description of Hamas in a Times Op-Ed.
 
The letters follow:
 

April 7, 2006

Semantics and Mideast peace

Your article “Talks stalled on road to peace” (World, Tuesday) contained two key factual errors:

First, the U.S.-sponsored diplomatic “road map” does not require that Palestinian Arabs disarm their “militants”; rather it requires that they end “violence and terrorism.” If the road map refers to terrorism and not to militants in this context, shouldn’t The Washington Times do likewise?

Second, there never were “original West Bank borders.” The 1949 armistice line originally separated Israel from Jordan. It always was and still is a temporary boundary, not an internationally recognized border.

Borders remain to be established under the terms of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and subsequent documents, such as the “road map,” in a final Arab-Israeli agreement regarding allocation of the territories.

ERIC ROZENMAN
Washington director
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
 

March 16, 2006

Don’t Defend Hamas

Op-Ed columnist Michael Scheuer (“How Bush helps jihadists,” Monday) says President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, members of Congress and others “rejected dealing with the democratically elected Hamas government unless it abandons its pledge to defend Palestine against Israel, presumably a chief reason Palestinians voted for it.”

Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) is not “pledged to defend Palestine against Israel.” Rather, as its charter makes clear, it is pledged to destroy the Jewish state and establish an Islamic theocracy in all of what was the British Mandate of Palestine west of the Jordan River – Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. For example, Hamas’ charter claims that “the land of Palestine has been an Islamic [trust] throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection. No one can renounce it or part of it …”

Further, Hamas is not even “defending” the West Bank and Gaza Strip against Israel. Palestinians rejected Israel’s offer of a state on virtually all the West Bank and Gaza Strip in exchange for peace in 2000 and 2001. That was fine with Hamas because, as its charter makes clear, “the so-called peaceful solutions and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” Again quoting the charter, “our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave …” and is part of “the Chain of Jihad” that goes back to “Holy War” in 1936 (an intifada before the establishment of Israel).

Mr. Scheuer manipulatively substitutes “abandon its pledge to defend Palestine against Israel” for the actual requirement facing a Hamas-led government for U.S. and international aid: a permanent end to terrorist attacks, recognition of Israel’s legitimacy and acceptance of previously negotiated Israeli-Palestinian agreements.

A better headline might have been “How Scheuer helps jihadists.”

ERIC ROZENMAN
Washington director
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America

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