The details of US President Donald Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” economic plan to jump start the Palestinian and regional economies has been publicly released ahead of a Bahrain Conference. Anyone can read on the White House website where $50 billion of investment is supposed to go.
Much of the criticism of the plan, including from the Palestinians, surrounds the fact that the plan only deals with economics and not the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The details of a political plan apparently in the works for later in the year have not yet been released.
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But the Foreign Editor of South Africa’s Independent Media, Shannon Ebrahim knows better. While most other mainstream media outlets were commenting on the actual contents of the Trump economic plan and the forthcoming Bahrain Conference, Ebrahim was making it up as she went along based on a clear hatred towards Israel.
According to her:
Under the deal, Palestinians will be squeezed into a tinier fraction of historic Palestine, from 22% (the Green line of 1967) to a meagre 12%, where they will be confined to cantons or Bantustans, stripped of water, resources, the right to a military or any real sovereignty.
The equivalent of bantustans will be surrounded by Israeli settlements. Settlements will no longer be illegal.
The plan kills any notion of a Palestinian state, but formalises the Zionist dream of a Greater Israel, containing self-governing cantons of Palestinians who will not have equal rights to Israelis. The sophisticated system of apartheid will be further perfected.
Within the context of this Greater Israel, Palestinians will be allowed to work only outside their cantons in low-paying jobs in agriculture and construction, and will have to pay Israel for its military protection.
No doubt Israel will continue to collect Palestinian tax and customs revenue, and withhold it as a form of punishment against those living in the cantons.
Israel will easily impose economic blockade on the Palestinian encampments as it has with Gaza for many years, starving them into submission.
The vision is beginning to look like a far worse version of apartheid South Africa, where there is one country but with masses of inhabitants who are disenfranchised, not accorded basic or equal rights, and living under the heavy hand of oppression and exploitation.
We could add more of this hateful rant but you probably get the picture by now.
Related reading: The False Israel-Apartheid Libel
It’s one thing to write anti-Israel hate speech based on nothing more than one’s own misguided and warped opinion. It’s another to claim that this opinion is based on fact – in this case a fully open US plan that anyone and everyone can see for themselves.
The Independent Media’s own Press Code in its clause on accuracy, states:
When publishing opinions, Independent Media shall require that the opinions are based on fact and are honestly held.
Maybe Shannon Ebrahim believes what she writes but her opinions are certainly not based on fact. In this case, attempting to invent parts of a US plan that don’t actually exist is a breach of the Press Code.
That the Foreign Editor of a mainstream media outlet could write such an opinion piece isn’t only unprofessional. It’s embarrassing.
We’ve submitted a complaint to Independent Media and ask that you do the same through its online feedback form.
UPDATE
Since the publication of this post, the story was covered by the South African Jewish Report with considerable input from HonestReporting.
Shannon Ebrahim responded with another vicious opinion piece that appeared in a number of South African printed editions belonging to the Independent Media stable of titles under the headline “Prosperity for Palestine in return for permanent occupation.”
It now appears online under a different headline. Ebrahim used the opening paragraphs to attack HonestReporting and its Managing Editor Simon Plosker. Following an official complaint, inaccurate background details concerning Plosker’s employment history (which is openly available for any journalist to find) have been corrected.
A serious and entirely false charge currently remains:
Plosker’s “Honest Reporting” were so desperate that they sent their article to all the contacts on my LinkedIn account, suggesting a rather sophisticated smear campaign.
HonestReporting is a transparent organization. When we critique media outlets or individual journalists, we do so publicly, including on our website, Facebook and Twitter. We have never, nor would we, engage in a “rather sophisticated smear campaign” on LinkedIn. Ebrahim has no evidence that we sent anything to all of her LinkedIn contacts because it simply never happened.
We have demanded a retraction and an apology from Independent Media.
