The Washington Post‘s coverage of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress included “Top 10 Applause Lines From Netanyahu’s Speech.”
Reading the lead stories on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress about Iran in five prominent US papers—the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today (all 3/3/15)—what was most striking was what was left out of these articles.
None of them mentioned, for example, that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. Surely this is relevant when a foreign leader says that it needs the United States’ help to stop a rival state from obtaining nuclear weapons: The omission of the obvious phrase “of its own” changes the story entirely.
Another thing largely left out of the story is the fact that Iran has consistently maintained that it has no interest in building a nuclear weapon. There was one direct statement of this in the five stories—the New York Times‘ reference to “Iran’s nuclear program, which [Iranian] officials have insisted is only for civilian uses.” The Washington Post alluded to the fact that Iran denies that it has a nuclear weapons program, referring to “a program the West has long suspected is aimed at building weapons,” Iran’s “stated nuclear energy goals” and “the suspect Iranian program.” Elsewhere the military nature of Iran’s nuclear research was taken for granted, as when the LA Times said that the issue under discussion was “how to deal with the threat of Iran’s nuclear program.”
Entirely absent from these articles was the fact that not only does Iran deny wanting to make a nuclear bomb, the intelligence agencies of the United States (New York Times, 2/24/12) and Israel (Guardian, 2/23/15) also doubt that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program. Surely this is relevant to a report on the Israeli prime minister engaging in a public debate with the US president on how best to stop this quite possibly nonexistent program.
To accompany its text account of Netanyahu’s speech, the Wall Street Journal had a video discussion with even less contest.
Instead, these articles generally seemed content to cover the subject as a debate between Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama, perhaps with some congressmembers thrown in—as if these were the “both sides” that needed to be covered in order to give a complete picture of the controversy. When Iranian officials were quoted for a few lines in these pieces—which some neglected to do altogether—it seemed an afterthought, despite the fact that Netanyahu’s speech was mainly a long litany of allegations and threats against their country.
(Though I’m confining my analysis to what seemed to be the most prominent and comprehensive article on the speech on each paper’s website, it’s worth mentioning that the New York Times‘ website featured a piece by Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Gholamali Khoshroo, rebutting Netanyahu’s speech. Reading it one is struck by how different the news pieces would read if Iran’s perspective on Iran’s nuclear program were given equal weight with Israel’s and the US’s views.)
None of these news articles mentioned the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, signed by both the United States and Iran but not by Israel, which guarantees “the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.”
The New York Times‘ caption quoted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ““This regime will always be an enemy of America.” That regime got 36 words of rebuttal in the nearly 1,500-word article.
One article—the New York Times‘—had a reference to Netanyahu’s decades-long record of making false nuclear predictions about Israel’s enemies. And even that was framed in partisan terms: Netanyahu “did not succeed in mollifying all Democrats, who recalled a history of what they deemed doomsday messages by him.” A reporter, of course, could look up Netayahu’s previous projections to see if they came true or not—as Murtaza Hussain of the Intercept (3/2/15) did—but holding officials accountable for what they have said in the past is not something an “objective” journalist is likely to do.
Another striking omission from these articles, about a speech in which Netanyahu talked about Iran’s “aggression in the region and in the world,” were words like “Palestine,” “Palestinian,” “occupation” or “Gaza”; none of these came up in any of the five articles. USA Today headlined its piece “Netanyahu: Stop Iran’s ‘March of Conquest'”—as though it were Iran, not Israel, that has conquered, occupied and in some cases annexed its neighbors’ territory.
Missing from this piece is any mention that Israel’s own Mossad directly contradicted (in a leaked paper) the notion that Iran is taking steps to make nuclear weapons. Why?
I have to say this post lacks context. I’ll try to highlight the main ones:
1. Israel “allegedly” has Nuclear weapons but this article seems to state it as fact. Most foreign agencies estimate they are narrow tactical missiles. Even so, it’s important to add that point – allegedly. The context of having that capability is from the late 50’s when the project began, Israel was surrounded by enemies seeking to destroy it. Even now the enemy armies outnumber Israel 12:1 at the most optimistic estimate.
2. Of course Iran denies wanting to make a Nuclear bomb. So do most smaller regimes, North Korea is a perfect example. The evidence even according to the U.N is that Uranium enrichment is being primed to a much higher percentage than needed for civilian research. Most installations are military, not civilian. The constant attempts by the regime to conceal their research is further indication that this is not just for pure medical and civilian research.
3. Regarding the “false accusations”, over time since those warnings, international pressure has slowed the Iranians down quite a few years but even at a slowed down pace, eventually they will get one.
4. The Iranian threat in itself is not so much of a threat to Israel as it is to the region. The moment the world allows one none-democratic islamic regime to have Nuclear ability, so will the other countries neighboring it in an effort to have a response, Saudi Arabia would be the first to also demand this ability, Jordan most likely (they already have a civilian peaceful Nuclear plant and you don’t see concern about them) etc. As the whole region arms itself and in context to the Arab spring and instability, what do you think will happen next?
Very good article. It points out several, important omissions from corporate media coverage of the Netanyahu speech.
Also missing is the fact the United States is in violation of the NPT Treaty. It contains this provision:
“Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”
The U.S. government is NOT planning our own disarmament. Our plan is to modernize our nuclear arsenal. That plan is in the 2014 QDR. The QDR summary says:
“Nuclear Deterrence. We will continue to invest in modernizing our essential nuclear delivery systems; warning, command and control; and, in collaboration with the Department of Energy, nuclear weapons and supporting infrastructure.”
(See the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review. The system won’t allow me to put in a link to the PDF summary.)
This means we are in deliberate breach of the NPT—a ratified treaty. Article 6 (2) of our Constitution states that “treaties made” are the “supreme law of the land.”
But the system design has no means of enforcing treaties when the national government violates them. And we, the American people, do not discuss, let alone implement the inalienable, inherent collective right of the people to “alter or abolish” our government, and to institute new government, via the standard procedures for amending the Constitution of initiative-and-referendum and/or convention-and-referendum. Until Americans wake up politically to this right, the plutocratic, militaristic tyranny of corporate Americanism will continue, along with its threat to destroy global civilization. A new, democratic Americanism is possible, but only if Americans wake up to our sovereignty, and implement the obvious procedures for exercising it.
What is missing from Mr. Naureckas’s article is the basic background information that Jim already knows, but the credulous public who follows the lead of the Israeli propaganda machine and its US corporate state co-conspirators (Democrat and Republican) appears to lack.
Iran’s democratically elected government of 1951 was subverted and ultimately overthrown, in 1953, by the CIA and others working at the behest of British oil concerns angry at the efforts of the new government to nationalize oil. How would US citizens feel about a country that interfered with its domestic life, deposing and imprisoning, for life, the elected chief executive (Prime Minister/President), while adding insult to injury by imposing the son of a hated and discredited tyrant, the Shah, as an unelected despot?
The most recent invasion by Iran of another country occurred in 1798. Israel has invaded 1798 countries in the last 67 years.
The sanctions imposed by the US on Iran resulted in the deaths of thousands, much as similar sanctions in Iraq. Done to us, what would we think?
The world now hates and fears the US. Perhaps, they just envy us our freedom.
This barbaric, wolflike & infanticidal regime of #Israel which spares no crime has no cure but to be annihilated. 7/23/14 #HandsOffAlAqsa
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) November 8, 2014
In late August, Iran said it was stepping up efforts to arm West Bank Palestinians for battle against Israel, with Basij militia chief Mohammad Reza Naqdi saying the move would lead to Israel’s annihilation, Iran’s Fars news agency reported.
“Arming the West Bank has started and weapons will be supplied to the people of this region,” Naqdi, who heads the nationwide paramilitary network, said.
“The Zionists should know that the next war won’t be confined to the present borders and the Mujahedeen will push them back,” he added. Naqdi claimed that much of Hamas’s arsenal, training and technical knowhow in the recent conflict with Israel was supplied by Iran.
Remind me, who elected this guy? Sounds like a peacelover to me.
To add to the history left out of the coverage, as sumarized by Jim and added to by Steve (4th comment) — after we overthrew Mossadegh in 1953 and installed the Shah, we took in that hated dictator when the Iranians finally overthrew him, 26 years later, and they retaliated by taking U.S. hostages. So the Reagan folks cynically worked out a deal with Iran to delay releasing them (so Carter couldn’t take the credit) until Reagan had won the election in 1980. Then the Reagan folks secretly sold Iran arms without telling Congress, then gave Iraq chemical weapons in their war with Iran (the very same weapons we later accused Saddam Hussein of using against the Kurds when we invaded Iraq).
In recent years, besides our painful sanctions, we’ve used cyber warfare against them (the Stuxnet worm) and condoned Israeli assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. What has Iran done to us? It’s not for nothing that they call us the “Great Satan”.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu has been saying Iran is days away from a bomb since 1992, and everytime he’s asked about settling with the Palestinians he uses the Iran threat as a subject-changer.
Another thing that the press could have mentioned is that when an actual possibility existed in the early 90’s of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement after Prime Minister Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands, Netanyahu relentlessly agitated against it until, after an Israeli extremist finally assassinated Rabin, Rabin’s widow said Netanyahu had her husband’s blood on his hands. This is the hero to whom genuflecting Congresspeople gave 50 standing ovations as he tried to send us into another war in the middle east, as he’d done in 2002 with Iraq.
Also missing is the fact that the Israeli Air Force attacked a U.S. Naval ship , and killed at least 34 Americans , and wounded many more. Israeli naval vessels also attacked and used torpedoes.
It was insulting and disrespectful for the leader of Israel to come to the U.S. without the invitation of our president , and criticize the U.S. and the other countries that are trying to preserve peace in the world instead of agitating for war. This is from a country that has received billions of American taxpayers money for many years.
The U.S. and other nations have been involved in at least 3 wars , and several military actions in the middle east. I can’t recall Israel ever supplying any troops or their Air Force flying any missions in these actions . When are they going to step up, instead of blaming the U.S?
Thank you
Diane Rehm show, the day after the speech, featured four guests – all who would likely describe themselves as Zionists. At least, that’s how they sounded to me. My question is, if the issue is Iran then where is the Iranian voice in our democratic press?