" If You Don’t Do This, You Are Professionally Ostracized": A journalist on anti-Israel bias

Ring any bells, Jon Donnison?

'....Over time, I came to realize that to be considered a successful journalist by the Western media, a journalist must stick to an acceptable script. In the Middle East, this means portraying Israel and the Jews as the bad guys, and the Palestinians and the PA as the good guys. If you don’t do this, you are professionally ostracized.

.... I saw journalists depict the easiest stories to tell without digging any deeper into the facts behind the conflict. There were various reasons for this—lack of time, money, and resources; ignorance and pressure from editors....

Beyond this, however, I found that some stories carried with them an inherent dislike for the Jewish state and the Jewish people. I’m not speaking about most of the Western media. But a few conversations with journalists do come to mind in which it was obvious that the motivation for their stories was anti-Semitism. What’s scary is that these stories inevitably play a major role in shaping foreign policy toward Israel.

Of course, every news outlet, newspaper, or magazine has an agenda. There is no such thing as an unbiased journalist. We bring our experiences, interactions with people, and our emotions to bear on every story and situation. This is inevitable. Biases will always exist. But we still have a responsibility to uncover and portray the truth to the best of our ability. Admitting to our biases does not mean we should submit to them. [This goes double for publicly-funded public broadcasters like the BBC, whose charters obligate them to impartiality.]

I admit that, at times, I questioned my perception of the situation in Israel. Was I missing something? I felt like I must be doing something wrong, because my views didn’t fit into the framework presented by the Western media.... And the Western media’s view of Israel is a status quo that needs to be questioned.

There is another reason why Western journalists must begin to question their biases and their conduct toward Israel: Their failure do so is pushing peace further away. For example, the Western media feeds the corruption of the Palestinian Authority. If journalists really want to help change things for the better, they should have the courage to criticize the Palestinians and their government.

Got that, Jezza?

They should report on human rights violations committed by the PA (and Hamas). They should tell the world about incitement again Jews and Israelis in PA-controlled media, as well as mosques and schools. They should report on the television shows that teach Palestinian children to hate Jews. They should share the stories of Palestinians who want to speak out against their leaders, but are afraid to do so for fear of imprisonment or death. Give Palestinians a real voice. Putting all the blame on Israel will never change the fate of the Palestinian people.

In fact, just like the PA, the Western media exploits the Palestinians. They use them in order to get the award-winning story their editors want. What the Palestinians do not realize is that these journalists don’t care about the Palestinians. They interview a few people in Ramallah about their struggles, take some emotional photos, and then head back to the comfort of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. As a result, decades of pro-Palestinian bias has changed nothing.

.... As a journalist myself, it pains me to see how bias, unprofessionalism, laziness, ego, and sometimes outright racism influences coverage of Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians. These failures are not only a violation of journalistic ethics, they make peace less likely and embolden Israel’s enemies, and the enemies of democracy around the world.

People ask me a lot if I am pro-Israel. Am I pro-Israel? If supporting democracy and the search for truth it permits means that I am pro-Israel, then, yes, I am.'

Those are extracts from a suberb indictment of journalistic bias against Israel, entitled 'Yes, Journalists Choose Sides in a Conflict—and Often for the Worst Reasons' by Israel-based journalist Zenobia Davji, herself of Parsee heritage.  The entire piece must be read.

And since her article inevitably reminded me of the BBC, here's a recent Memri.org video of Al Beeb's very good friend "Bari" Atwan, speaking late last year in Beirut:

David Singer: Hamas Humiliates & Manipulates World Media

"Gaza – Hamas Humiliates and Manipulates World Media" is the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

A report that a family of 11 died in an Israeli air strike in Gaza has turned out to be false – further fuelling the unprecedented furore caused by the Tel Aviv based Foreign Press Association (FPA) issuing the following statement on 11 August slamming Hamas for its treatment of journalists during the current conflict:

'The FPA protests in the strongest terms the blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza over the past month.

The international media are not advocacy organisations and cannot be prevented from reporting by means of threats or pressure, thereby denying their readers and viewers an objective picture from the ground.

In several cases, foreign reporters working in Gaza have been harassed, threatened or questioned over stories or information they have reported through their news media or by means of social media.

We are also aware that Hamas is trying to put in place a “vetting” procedure that would, in effect, allow for the blacklisting of specific journalists. Such a procedure is vehemently opposed by the FPA.' 

The FPA has also been mildly critical of Israel as this release on 23 July indicated:

“The FPA strongly condemns deliberate official and unofficial incitement against journalists working to cover the current warfare under very difficult circumstances as well as forcible attempts to prevent journalists and TV crews from carrying out their news assignments. While we do not condone the use of invective by any side, outright attacks on journalists are absolutely unacceptable.

On Tuesday, IDF forces aimed live fire at the Al Jazeera offices in Gaza City. The offices are on the 11th floor of a known commercial centre. The IDF apologised claiming it was in error and said they would investigate the incident.

Also Tuesday, FPA member Firas Khatib of BBC Arabic was physically attacked and abused in the midst of a live feed on the Israeli side of the border. “

The FPA numbers some 480 members representing TV, radio, photojournalists and print media from 32 countries including Australia, Qatar, Brazil, Norway, China , USA. Austria, Dubai, Russia, Japan, Finland, South Africa, Denmark and Germany, Turkey, the UAE and the United Kingdom.
It represents amongst others Le Monde, the New York Times, Reuters, the Guangming Daily, CBS Television, the Associated Press, Der Spiegel, the BBC, Danish Broadcasting Corp. and Bloomberg News. On its website, the FPA lists Australian journalists Matt Brown (ABC) and John Lyons (The Australian) as members. Paul T. Jørgensen of Norway’s TV2 states that:

“several foreign journalists have been kicked out of Gaza because Hamas does not like what they wrote or said. We have received strict orders that if we record that Hamas fires rockets or that they shoot, we will face serious problems and be expelled from Gaza"

 Alan Johnson reported in the Telegraph:

* The Wall Street Journal's Nick Casey posted a photo of a Hamas spokesman being interviewed from a room in the hospital along with this tweet: "You have to wonder (with) the shelling how patients at Shifa hospital feel as Hamas uses it as a safe place to see media." After "a flood of online threats", the tweet was deleted.

* John Reed of the Financial Times was reportedly threatened after he tweeted about rockets being fired from the same hospital.” Yet Jodi Rudoren, Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times – who was not in Gaza – tweeted:

“Every reporter I've met who was in Gaza during war says this Israeli/now FPA narrative of Hamas harassment is nonsense”

It was a strange remark to make considering the above claims – and having regard to the following comment reportedly made by New York Times vice president for corporate communications Eileen Murphy that the newspaper’s team in Gaza did not photograph any rocket launches, sent only “two very distant, poor quality images that were captioned Hamas fighters” and “hasn’t even seen anyone carrying a gun”.

Even more intriguing, Rudoren’s deputy at the New York Times – Isabel Kershner – was one of the FPA board members who approved the condemnatory statement. How could two colleagues from the same newspaper observing the same sequence of events come to such different conclusions?

British freelancer Harry Fear said he was asked to leave Gaza by three plainclothes Hamas officials at Al-Shifa Hospital – apparently for referring to rocket launches near his hotel. He reportedly said he did not feel any intimidation or interference. Some reporters however reportedly received death threats. Sometimes, cameras were smashed. Reporters were prevented from filming anti-Hamas demonstrations where more than 20 Palestinians were shot dead by Hamas gunmen.

Evidence of Hamas controlling the flow of news is obvious in its failure to allow the media to:

1. independently determine, separate and verify the number of civilian and Hamas deaths

2. photograph any Hamas forces launching rockets from residential areas or civilians being used as human shields.

A BBC investigation has uncovered photos of dead children from earlier conflicts being passed off as casualties in the current conflict – being fed to gullible reporters to send around the World to even more gullible target audiences.

Why would reporters keep going back into Gaza to be so humiliated by Hamas?

They are certainly not reporting what is actually happening.

Maybe they should stay out of Gaza and let Hamas do its own media releases.

The media barons would certainly save a lot of money.

Media Cover Up: The Gaza Savagery That Does Not Meet Our Gaze

Beaten and tortured by Hamas: Asma Al-Ghoul

Remember how days elapsed before the violent sexual assault on Lara Logan, reporting for an American television station from Tahrir Square, was brought (and then only reluctantly) to public attention by Al Beeb and the rest of the we-love-to-pick-on-Israel gang?  Well, it seems that despicable acts of savagery by Hamas towards female Palestinian journalists in Gaza have gone largely unreported in the mainstream media.

You'd think that some of those outlets, being so politically correct in general, would be chomping at the bit to report abuses against women. But there are two very good reasons for the veil of silence - an exclusivist fixation with demonising Israel and a paralysing fear of Hamas reprisal.

Professor Phyllis Chesler notes that in recent weeks

"at least eight Muslim Palestinian female journalists were physically beaten with clubs, iron chairs, and fists, stabbed and tortured with electric shocks by male Hamas security forces in the Gaza Strip.  Their cell phones, laptops, documents and cameras were confiscated.  They were also arrested.  Some were forced to sign a document "pledging not to cover such events [the Facebook-arranged pro-unity rallies demanding an end to factional in-fighting between Hamas and Fatah] again"'.

Although this does not bode well for women's rights in what Professor Chesler terms "the increasingly well-organized Islamist Middle East" her main point in drawing attention to this "male-on-female atrocity in Gaza" is that only a few journalists, who happen to include two Israelis, reported it.

'The mainstream media does not really care about what happens to Arabs, Muslims, or Palestinians," she continues,

'not even when they are fellow or sister journalists, women, and feminists.  The media only cares when and if Israelis are allegedly the perpetrators, the murderers, the checkpoint "humiliators."  Even when Israelis kill an armed Iranian-backed Palestinian member of Hamas in self-defense, even when the Israelis accidentally, with no malice aforethought, kill a British journalist or an Amrican "activist," the Israelis are not only blamed - films, plays, and documentaries are made about the "martyred" American Rachel Corrie or the "martyred" British filmmaker James Miller or British "anti-war" activist Tom Hurndall.  Countless demonstrations have been held.  In Miller's case the British government insisted on an investigation, and his family brought a civil lawsuit against an Israeli soldier.

The media was all over this even though an investigation strongly suggested that James Miller was killed by Palestinians "from the direction of the populated Rafah."  Although people know that Palestinians routinely hide behind civilian hostages, deliberately target Israeli civilians, especially children, create their own "martyrs" (the Muhammad al-Dura case as well as the Rachel Corrie case immediately come to mind) - nevertheless, the media refuses to hold Palestinians accountable and refuses to believe that Israelis are innocent. The media knows full well that they will be killed or not allowed to "report" in Palestinian areas if they publish anything negative, anything true.  By now, this habit is ingrained.'

To read more:
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/04/01/arab-spring-male-on-female-atrocity-in-gaza-disappeared-by-the-western-media/

Pollard on Palileaks and Sacerdoti on Israel, the PA, and Current Middle East Developments

Full marks to Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard for his robust denunciation, in the 27 January issue of his paper, of the despicable way in which the Guardian spun the leaked memos by PA negotiators with Israel that comprise the so-called “Palestine Papers”.

‘The Guardian's behaviour this week, even by its own often disreputable standards over Israel, has been simply shocking,’ Mr Pollard writes, inter alia.

‘Not presented them so much as lobbed them, doused with petrol, into a tinderbox – and hoped for a result....

What is very wrong is the way the paper chose to present its story: the distortions, the bias, the agenda, the spin and the breathtaking arrogance of its handing down instructions to the Palestinians of how they should behave. Make no mistake: the Guardian's presentation was, as David Landau puts it, "intended to poison the Palestinians against their leaders". And to poison the world against Israel....The Guardian crossed a line this week. It has not practised journalism but rather hardcore political activism, playing with people's lives.’

See the entire editorial here: http://www.thejc.com/blogpost/guardians-shame

And here’s Jonathan Sacerdoti, executive director of the UK Zionist Federation, in a discussion with Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee, London-based Palestinian editor Abdel Bari Atwan, and others on BBC News 24's "Dateline London" programme today. 

(Hat tip: Jonathan Hoffman)

On the Wings of Ignorance about Israel

“Symbolic of the political problems that impact the environment is that when Israel sought to designate the Palestine sunbird (Cinnyris osea) as its national bird, it had to be pointed out that it was already the official bird of Palestine,” opines a travel writer on her blog (which I’m not going to link to on principle!).  “Both have issued stamps depicting this lovely little bird. It seems that Israel wants everything that would be Palestine’s: as much of its land as it can pepper with settlements, control of its water, control of the Palestinian people to move about their land  –  and now, their national bird.”

 The bird’s not flightless – its habitat is not confined to “Palestine”. In fact, it gets as far as Africa. Yet big bad Israel has stolen it. Go figure!

For me, that claim in the top paragraph is symbolic of the widespread ignorance about the history of the land the Romans dubbed “Palestine”, an ignorance that informs and propels the present-day trend towards the delegitimisation of Israel.

This was brought home to me yesterday morning, when a neighbour of mine – who is certainly not in the delegitimiser camp, but confesses to “sitting on the fence” owing to lack of knowledge about “who’s right and who’s wrong, Israel or the Palestinians” – told me that although she’d regularly attended Christian Sunday School, and had studied “Religious Instruction” for her A levels and remembered that there had been two kingdoms, Israel and Judah, she’s none too familiar with the history of the area after biblical times. She hadn’t realized, until I mentioned it, that the name Palestine came from Philistia, and was imposed on Judea by the Romans as a way of emphasizing to the Jews that their land was well and truly conquered.

If a person like that confesses to being confused and ignorant, I thought to myself, what hope for those who have hardly if ever opened a Bible in their lives.

Once upon a time, owing first to King Henry VIII’s policy of placing the Bible in English translation in every parish in England, and the Bible in Welsh in every parish in Wales, Englishmen and Welshmen grew up with a close acquaintanceship with the travails and triumphs of biblical Israel. This process intensified after the publication – 400 years ago this year – of the King James version, with the glorious inspirational language that has become part of Britain’s literary inheritance.

Foreign travellers and settlers – among them the Bohemian scholar Dr Abraham Benisch, an important figure in the nineteenth-century Jewish press in England, marvelled at the Bible’s centrality in the minds of ordinary English folk. I’ve said it before, and most likely I’ll say it again – the impact of the Bible influenced a philosemitic strand among the British, one that was not invariably tied up with missionary activity. We see it in the decision of Cromwell and the Puritans formally to admit Jews to England in 1656. We see it in the decision of Lloyd George and his Cabinet to promulgate the Balfour Declaration.

Today, the Christian faith is in crisis. School assemblies (compulsory for all children whose families adhered, at least nominally, to the Established Church) at which Christian hymns were sung and biblical passages read are a thing of Britain’s past. Many children have absolutely no knowledge of the history of the “Holy Land” whatsoever

Indeed, they have almost no knowledge of the history of their own country, without which they can hardly be expected to make informed decisions.  But their EU masters prefer things that way.

 And so, they’re ripe for indoctrination, learning as they do from dodgy media reports that (thanks to the infiltration of West-hating lefties imbued with pro-PLO propaganda) control the agenda, and in the post-Apartheid area in South Africa peddle Israel (that bastion of the Western values they so despise) as the world’s number one baddie.

Thus we have shrill-voiced youths barely out of short trousers chanting the obscenity that begins “From the River to the Sea ...” ignorant of the facts of the region and the conflict, screaming their support for genocidal antisemitic Hamas, and holding signs that they seem to think depict a once-sovereign country called Palestine that was snatched by those pesky "Zionists", but which were in reality designed by Jews in the Yishuv, not by the so-called “Palestinians” who back then were known, like their brethren outside the Mandate, as Arabs.

 And thus we have ads like this one that’s appeared in the London Daily Mail (a rightwing populist newspaper but no true friend to Israel), touting a tour of the “Holyland” it’s arranged, managing to omit the dread word “Israel” altogether, and using as the symbol of the land’s sanctity, not a Jewish or a Christian symbol but a Muslim one.

(Hat tip: http://zalmi.blogspot.com/2011/01/daily-mail-joins-boycott.html)

Cowardice? Malice? Ignorance? Who, in today’s climate, can know for sure?

Prejudicing Public Opinion against Israel – Al Beeb and the History Channel

With its loathsome left-liberal bias against the interests of Britain, the United States, and the West in general, the BBC has long dealt in half-truthes and distortions where reportage and (all too often gratuitous and unwarranted) commentary regarding Israel and "Palestine" is concerned. But it seems that, sadly, the History Channel, which puts out so many fascinating and popular programmes, can’t be trusted for scrupulous accuracy or fairness either. The following, courtesy of J-Wire, is by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer. It’s entitled "Palestine – the BBC and the History Channel Bias Distort Debate"  (I've added illustrations of anti-Israel demos in London and the USA).

The BBC and the History Channel stand accused of denigrating Israel by the use of factually incorrect statements or misleading and deceptive statements that are factually correct but only tell half the story. Take this gem from the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11988018:

"Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the 1967 war. It withdrew its troops from Gaza in 2005."

No mention is made of the fact that Israel also simultaneously evacuated all 8000 Jewish civilians who had been living there as well. Was the omission of the words "and 8000 Jewish civilians" due to space constraints?

The BBC did not have to mention that such evacuation was done unilaterally to advance the peace process, such evacuation was subsequently followed by a Hamas takeover of Gaza that threatens any further progress in peacefully ending the conflict and that the civilian population of Israel has been subjected to incessant and indiscriminate rocket attacks from Gaza ever since the evacuation was completed.

However – failing to mention those 8000 civilians in this news item as part of Israel’s pull out from Gaza can only be viewed as an attempt to downgrade the extent and significance of Israel’s withdrawal.

The History Channel’s release http://www.history.com/this-day-in.../un-votes-for-partition-of-palestine for one of its programmes illustrates a similar bias that is ugly in its contemplation.

Consider these statements:

"Despite strong Arab opposition, the United Nations votes for the partition of Palestine and the creation of an independent Jewish state"

No mention is made of the fact that the UN also voted for the creation of an independent Arab State.  Again the inclusion of just nine words "and an independent Arab state which the Arabs rejected" would have clearly indicated that the UN had not only offered the Jews a state but also offered the Arabs one as well – which the Arabs rejected.

The failure to insert those missing words carries the innuendo that only the Jews were offered a state in 1947 but the Arabs missed out and begs the question – isn’t it time the UN now rectified that injustice in 2010?

"The modern conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine dates back to the 1910s, when both groups laid claim to the British-controlled territory"

Actually the conflict had started about thirty years earlier – so that chunk of history is either unknown to the History Channel’s researchers or was deliberately overlooked.

The territory was not "British-controlled" until the conclusion of World War 1. It was part of the Ottoman Empire until then. 

Pity the poor students who use this material in their projects – and their teachers – who rely on this material as being accurate and reliable.

"The native Palestinian Arabs sought to stem Jewish immigration and set up a secular Palestinian state"

Really? Are the history buffs at the History Channel unaware of the following facts*?

"The three main political organizations in Palestine-the Arab Club, the Literary Club, and the Muslim-Christian Association (the lack of mention of Palestine in their names is revealing) — all worked for union with Syria. The first two went farthest, calling outright for rule by Prince Faysal. Amin al-Husayni was president of the Arab Club; the extremism which later made him notorious as the leader of Palestinian separatism (and an ally of Hitler) already showed itself in 1920, when he instigated riots for union with Syria. A member of the Arab Club, Kamil al-Budayri, co-edited from September 1919 the newspaper Suriya al-Janubiya (“Southern Syria”) which advocated Palestine’s incorporation into Greater Syria.

Even the Muslim-Christian Association, an organization of traditional leaders-men who expected to rule if Palestine became independent-demanded incorporation in Greater Syria. Its president insisted that “Palestine or Southern Syria-an integral part of the one and indivisible Syria-must not in any case or for any pretext be detached.” The Muslim-Christian Association held a Congress in early 1919 to draw up demands for the Paris Peace Conference. It declared that Palestine, a “part of Arab Syria,” is permanently connected to Syria through “national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic, and geographical bonds,” and resolved that “Southern Syria or Palestine should not be separated from the independent Arab Syrian government.” Musa Kazim al-Husayni, Head of the Jerusalem Town Council (in effect, mayor) told a Zionist interlocutor in October 1919: “We demand no separation from Syria.” The slogan heard everywhere in 1918-19 was “Unity, Unity, From the Taurus [mountains in Turkey] to Rafah [in Gaza], Unity, Unity."

"Beginning in 1929, Arabs and Jews openly fought in Palestine"

Staggeringly the History Channel seems to be unaware of the 1920 riots which saw four Arabs and five Jews killed, while 216 Jews were wounded – 18 critically – and 23 Arabs wounded – one critically.

"Radical Jewish groups employed terrorism against British forces in Palestine"

Since when is fighting the armed forces of your adversary – not its civilians – described as "terrorism"? The History Channel’s biased slip is surely on display for all to see.

"At the end of World War II, in 1945, the United States took up the Zionist cause"

The United States had taken up the Zionist cause on 30 June 1922 when both Houses of Congress unanimously endorsed the Mandate for Palestine.

On 21 September 1922 President Warren Harding signed the joint resolution of approval to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine

"The Jews were to possess more than half of Palestine…"

It is a pity the History Channel could not have added: "more than 70% of which was the arid and sparsely populated Negev Desert"

"The Palestinian Arabs, aided by volunteers from other countries, fought the Zionist forces"

Strange that the History Channel should be unaware that these “volunteers” comprised the “Arab Liberation Army” set up in Damascus under the command of Fawzi Kaukji. Seven of these detachments with a strength of about 5000 had made their way into Palestine by March 1948. They were divided into four commands.

"The next day, forces from Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq invaded"

Oops – the History Channel forgot to include Saudi Arabia – a small oversight.

The History Channel then has the gall to state at the end of this outrageous release:

"Fact Check. We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us! "

Creating myth instead of stating fact is one of the greatest impediments to securing a resolution of the conflict between the Arabs and Jews.

The next time you watch the History Channel (if you ever do so again) – don’t take what you hear and see as the truth. There are apparently a lot of dunderheads employed there or – perhaps more insidiously – persons deliberately bent on misleading the public.

[*From Daniel Pipes, “Palestine for the Syrians?”, Commentary, December 1986, which begins:

‘During a meeting with leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1976, Syrian President Hafiz al-Asad referred to Palestine as a region of Syria, as Southern Syria. He then went on to tell the Palestinians: "You do not represent Palestine as much as we do. Do not forget one thing: there is no Palestinian people, no Palestinian entity, there is only Syria! You are an integral part of the Syrian people and Palestine is an integral part of Syria. Therefore it is we, the Syrian authorities, who are the real representatives of the Palestinian people."

Although unusually candid, this outburst exemplifies a long tradition of Syrian politics, and one that has gained increasing importance in recent years. The Asad government presents itself as not just an Arab state protecting the rights of the Palestinians but as the rightful ruler of the land that Israel controls. According to this view, the existing republic of Syria is but a truncated part of the Syrian lands; accordingly, the government in Damascus has a duty to unite all Syrian regions, including Palestine, under its control.

The growth in Syrian military capabilities in recent years makes these ambitions a major source of instability throughout the Levant. Indeed, the Syrian claim to "Southern Syria" has become central to the Arab-Israeli conflict; Syrian has become not only Israel's principal opponent, but also the PLO's. Damascus is likely to retain this role for many years, certainly as long as Hafiz al-Asad lives, and probably longer.

When Asad uses the term Southern Syria, he implicitly harks back to the old meaning of the name "Syria." Historically, "Syria" (Suriya or Sham in Arabic) refers to a region far larger than the Syrian Arab Republic of today. At a minimum, historic Syria stretches from Anatolia to Egypt, and from Iraq to the Mediterranean Sea. In terms of today's political geography, it comprises all of four states-Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon-as well as the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and substantial portions of southeastern Turkey. To distinguish this territory from the present Syrian state, it is known as Greater Syria.

Until 1920, Syria meant Greater Syria to everyone, European and Middle Easterner alike; For example, an early nineteenth-century Egyptian historian, 'Abd ar-Rahman al-Jabarti, referred to the inhabitants of El Arish in the Sinai Peninsula as Syrians. Palestine was called Southern Syria first in French, then in other languages, including Arabic. The 1840 Convention of London called the area around Akko "the southern part of Syria" and the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (published in 1911) explains that Palestine "may be said generally to denote the southern third of the province of Syria." These examples could be multiplied a thousand-fold.’] For the full article see http://www.danielpipes.org/174/palestine-for-the-syrians