Journalistic malpractice: Washington Post suggests Abbas doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist

Phil Weiss and James North 

The other day the Washington Post ran this readers’ poll (for which we can’t find the link):

Today’s Opinions poll

Is President Obama overestimating Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’s willingness to recognize Israel’s right to exist?
Yes
73%
No
27%
11692 people have taken this poll.

This poll is completely deceptive. In the most significant compromise in the history of the conflict, in 1988, the Palestine Liberation Organization accepted Israel’s right to exist within secure borders. It reaffirmed this acceptance in the declaration of the Oslo principles in 1993, with the famous handshake on the White House lawn.

That is a fait accompli; and if 73 percent of Washington Post readers are ignorant, it is surely because the newspaper is misleading them. The Post is purposely conflating that long-ago demand by Israel, that Palestinians met, with the latest demand by Israel, that Palestine recognize Israel as a Jewish state, a trap set by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu so that the failure of the current talks will be blamed on the Palestinians, not the Israelis, who will not return to the pre-67 borders and give up their colonies inside the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.

It is often said that Yasser Arafat was the only Palestinian leader who could effect such a compromise, who had the ability to bring Palestinian opinion to favor an overwhelming compromise on land and likely negotiations over the right of return.

Those days are now over, and the Oslo agreement is in serious jeopardy because of Israeli intransigence. The Post is readying American opinion– to blame the Palestinians.

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/03/journalistic-malpractice-washington.html