By Richard Behar, with Gabriel Davis

Part One

In late June, we received an inquiry from Simon Plosker, the managing editor of an organization named HonestReporting (HR), whose mandate is “Defending Israel From Media Bias.”

Mr. Plosker asked if we knew how best to reach Stephen Adler, the President and Editor-in-Chief of Reuters, in order to send him a complaint.

By way of background, Thomson Reuters is the world’s largest international multimedia news agency; in 2008 it purchased the London-based Reuters Group, which has been in operation since the 1850s. The wire service boasts nearly 2,500 journalists in about 200 locations worldwide, as well as more than 2.5 million print stories in 16 languages published in the year 2015 alone.

In today’s struggling print-media industry, those are staggering numbers – rivaled only by the likes of Reuters’ nearest competitors, Associated Press (AP) and Agence France-Press (AFP). As such, the importance and impact of Reuters cannot be overstated, and there’s hardly a major newspaper worth its salt that isn’t one of its customers. It bills itself “the world’s most trusted news organization” and boasts of a “reputation for speed, impartiality and insight.”

Moreover, it dedicates itself to upholding the Thompson Reuters Trust Principles, which call for “freedom from bias in the gathering and dissemination of information and news.”

Mr. Plosker’s beef pertained to a series of tweets by a British journalist named Luke Baker , who in July 2014 became Reuters’ bureau chief in Jerusalem. In that role, he oversees a 60-strong multimedia team covering Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Given the immense global reach of Reuters, Mr. Baker is one of the most powerful and influential foreign journalists (undoubtedly among the Top 10) in what is one of the world’s top hotspots.

Mr. Plosker wished to direct Mr. Adler’s attention to a post on the HR website that criticized seven tweets made by Mr. Baker. The pro-Israel media watchdog group believes that the tweets are evidence of “open disdain and dislike for Israel” — in violation of the wire service’s Trust Principles.

(We address those specific tweets below in our Q&A. But first, we hope Mideast Dig readers will find this lengthy introduction to be of some value.)

Mr. Baker has been at Reuters since 1999, just four years after getting his BA from the University of North Carolina. Over his career, he’s reported for the wire service from Italy, Iraq, the UK, Brussels and other countries.

He is a prolific tweeter, and often spoiling for a fight. He’s dispatched 7,907 tweets since he joined the online social networking service in 2012, and has roughly 18,100 followers. In contrast, the feed of Josef Federman — AP’s bureau chief in Jerusalem — shows 1,231 tweets and 1,213 followers. None of Mr. Federman’s tweets seem to be opinionated, let alone controversial or contentious.

Mr. Baker also served from until recently as the chairperson of Israel’s Foreign Press Association, which claims nearly 500 members from the media outlets that cover Israel and the Palestinian territories. In that capacity, he spoke in February before a panel of Israel’s parliament (Knesset) that was convened to examine the issue of media bias against Israel. He drafted a statement on behalf of the FPA, which referred to the hearing as akin to “witch-hunts.” Mr. Baker sweepingly declared — with no exceptions — that “I don’t see lack of balance in the foreign press… The claims of bias in reporting are annoying. If there are mistakes, they are corrected as soon as possible. I reject the claim of lack of balance.”

We’ve never communicated with Mr. Baker, until he rejected our request three days ago to discuss the claims against him by HonestReporting. (Reuters executives also declined.) Mr. Baker’s unwillingness to engage on these subjects with his professional peers is disheartening, particularly since he zestfully clashes swords on Twitter with pro-Israel activists.

While I [Behar] know Reuters’ chief Steve Adler professionally, I nonetheless suggested to HR’s Mr. Plosker that he instead direct his complaint to Alix Freedman, who I also know. Since 2011, she has served as Reuters’ Global Editor, Ethics and Standards. “I would contact Alix and be sure to tell her I recommended it,” I wrote him. “She will take you seriously. I have great respect for her from her WSJ days.”

Indeed, Ms. Freedman, during a lengthy career at the Wall Street Journal, had proven herself to be one of the world’s best investigative business reporters. (Among her journalism awards was the Pulitzer Prize, the highest honor in the newspaper industry.)

I was confident she would give Mr. Plosker a fair hearing, and a fair response.

On May 31, Ms. Freedman sent a formal 75-word email to Mr. Plosker, stating that Reuters takes his concerns “seriously,” that it is committed to its Trust Principles “to telling all sides and taking none” – and that it strives to be “tonally neutral on all our platforms.” She added: “I want to emphasize that we are proud of the accuracy and fairness of our coverage from Israel which Luke Baker oversees.”

Mr. Plosker, as we know, sees it differently: “Baker is not only the bureau chief of one of the main wire services, he also occupies a position of influence in the FPA [as a board member], even though he’s no longer running it,” he tells Mideast Dig. “But more than that, this is someone who makes no secret of his antipathy towards Israel on his own personal Twitter feed and elsewhere, and that cannot do anything but influence his reporting.” Moreover, he points out, “so many papers are getting their stuff from the wire services [i.e. Reuters, AP, AFP] because they don’t have the money to have their own people overseas.”

I told Mr. Plosker that I was disappointed in Ms. Freedman’s response to him, and that I would reach out to her. Given Reuter’s size and her important role, maybe she’s inundated with complaints — some viable, but most of them perhaps not — on any number of topics related to any number of bureaus. Or perhaps she didn’t see an upside in engaging in any detail with a pro-anything advocacy group in the Middle East.

I left Ms. Freedman a voicemail, stating that I was “surprised” by her response to Mr. Plosker and found it “pro forma” — as in a letter provided to outsiders as a courtesy to satisfy minimum requirements. I said the subject intrigues me enough to consider writing about it for the Dig. I told her that I found some, but not all, of HR’s complaints to be “pretty strong and compelling.”

I added: “Can we talk maybe off-record, and down the road maybe on-record on something? Maybe I’m off-base and, if I am, I want to hear it.” But I was quite clear in my message to her that I felt “some of the stuff is disturbing for a Reuters guy.”

When we connected, Ms. Freedman and I spoke for about ten minutes, part of it spent just catching up with one another on life and work — as it’s been many years since we met or talked. And then I got down to business. I again asked for an off-record ‘reality check.’ She declined the offer, and I respected that.

While I have my own views of Luke Baker’s tweets, I still wanted that reality check. So I reached out to Gene Foreman — a member of Mideast Dig’s advisory board and a former editor with a distinguished career in the news business. I asked him to opine on the specific Baker tweets that had been brought to Ms. Freedman’s attention.

Mr. Foreman is the author of “The Ethical Journalist: Making Responsible Decisions in the Pursuit of News,” a 2009 textbook that was described as a “GPS for sound decision-making” by James Naughton, the retired president of The Poynter Institute — home of the highly-regarded PolitiFact fact-checking operation. Gene Roberts, a former Executive Editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Managing Editor of the New York Times, has called Mr. Foreman’s book “the definitive work on journalism ethics and practices” that “should be a basic text in every school of journalism.” (A second edition was published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2015.)

Mr. Foreman joined the faculty of Penn State University’s College of Communications in 1998 after retiring from the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he managed newsroom operations for more than 25 years under various titles — Managing Editor, Executive Editor and Deputy Editor. During his tenure, the newspaper won 18 Pulitzer Prizes.

His 41 years in newspaper journalism included serving as Managing Editor of the Pine Bluff (Ark.) Commercial and the Arkansas Democrat in Little Rock; and as the senior editor in charge of news and copy desks at Newsday. Mr. Foreman served as president of the Associated Press Managing Editors in 1990 and was a board member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors from 1995 to 1998.

Herewith, our Ten Questions For Gene Foreman:

1. Gene, before we get into the nuts and bolts of the seven tweets in question, what’s your overall conclusion about Mr. Baker?

I would like to be clear that I am not trying to evaluate Luke Baker’s overall performance as a reporter and bureau chief. I respect Reuters and assume that Mr. Baker is a capable journalist whose reporting is fair and accurate. In this matter, I’ve been asked by your nonpartisan, non-advocacy organization to give my professional opinion about certain tweets he has sent.

With those caveats, I am concerned that Mr. Baker is making a mistake by indulging in commentary. I think his credibility as an impartial reporter is undermined by several of the tweets you brought to my attention. In the last decade, news organizations have issued guidelines on journalists’ use of social media. These guidelines reassert the long-standing, long-accepted rule in journalism that straight-news reporters do not publicly discuss their opinions of events and people they cover — or of controversial issues whether they cover them or not. In its Handbook of Journalism, Reuters says avoiding opinions in the news is a fundamental principle that generates trust in Reuters.

2. Are you seeing a lot of this problem with social media in the mainstream journalism business? Is it out of control?

As a retired editor of the 20th century, I never had to deal with tweets, for good or ill. I’m on record in my book as being enthusiastic about the opportunities that the Internet offers to journalism. To address tweets specifically, I recognize that they enable reporters to disseminate breaking news instantly and to promote their stories by providing links.

But Twitter has to be handled carefully. I see problems on two levels: First, the emphasis on speed can mean that reporters feel pressured to skip steps in verification and to tweet news without an editor’s review. Both of these factors exponentially increase the possibility of error. Second, and this is the problem we are dealing with here, Twitter’s opinion culture and its impulsive nature can induce reporters to express opinions that they have no business expressing.

As for other social media, such as Facebook, working journalists have to make sure their posts do not express inappropriate opinions. They may think they can compartmentalize their professional and personal personas, but the public sees them as journalists 24-7.

3. Let’s move through the seven tweets in question. In the first example that HonestReporting sent to Reuters, Mr. Baker tweeted in February [see screenshot above]: “Continuing the idiocy of Israeli security, I was just told to strip for a search leaving Gaza.” (For emphasis, he added the press unit of Israel’s military as a specific recipient of his tweet.) I don’t know what prompted the search, but “continuing the idiocy” strikes us as bias against Israel’s government. Most foreign reporters will tell you that the primary reason they are dispatched to Israel is to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So Israeli security is clearly a major part of their mandate. “Continuing the idiocy” suggests that Israel is doing nothing right when it comes to the nation’s security. What’s your take?

Incidentally, nine days later, Mr. Baker claimed that Hamas detained him — but he didn’t refer to it as “continuing the idiocy of Hamas’ security.” He simply tweeted that he was “Briefly taken in for polite questions.”

In tweeting about the strip search, using the phrase “the idiocy of Israeli security” suggests bias. It is natural that he would be angry about having to undergo a humiliating experience, especially since he is a recognized journalist working for a reputable news service. But he has to keep his cool. The matter should have been addressed by Reuters through appropriate channels.

I don’t see anything wrong with the tweets about his questioning by Hamas’ security, because they were factual. However, as you suggest, a comparison of the difference in tone in the tweets in the two episodes could hand ammunition to someone predisposed to think Mr. Baker is biased against the Israeli government.

4. In June of 2015, Mr. Baker tweeted: “Israel’s foreign ministry produced a bizarre video mocking the foreign press. Here’s the response.” The response he included was a link to a complaint by Israel’s Foreign Press Association, which he chaired at the time. The 50-second-long video had indeed satirized the coverage by most of the foreign press of the 2014 Israel-Hamas war. I agree with the ministry that many major foreign news outlets deserve to be chastised for their coverage [note our exposé, The Media Intifada; as well as Associated Mess.] However, I’m not troubled — as HonestReporting is — by Mr. Baker’s use of the word “bizarre” here. Frankly, it was a very strange, silly animated video that the ministry has since removed. What do you think?

“Bizarre” could be viewed as biased in this context. Why not show that the video is bizarre rather than tell the audience that it is? I suggest a neutral tweet linking to a detailed analysis of the video.

5. Mr. Baker’s next tweet in question, which he made regarding that same Foreign Ministry video, was: “If Israel’s diplomats want to be taken seriously, they’ll have to do better than mocking the press.” We find this tweet very disturbing because of how broad his attack is. It suggests to us that Mr. Baker doesn’t take any Israeli diplomats seriously. After all, it could have been just as easy for him to have written: “If some of Israel’s diplomats…..”

Readers of the tweet could easily conclude that Mr. Baker doesn’t take Israeli diplomats seriously. Those readers would likely include diplomats whom he will be dealing with as a reporter.

6. In January, Mr. Baker attacked an award-winning (and very brave) Arab Israeli journalist named Khaled Abu Toameh who had written an article accusing the foreign press of bias against Israel. The tweet read: “Oh, dear, Khaled Abu Toameh trots out every silly anecdote that even foreign journos tell one another as a joke.”

I see this as another example of misuse of Twitter, a medium that, by its brevity, does not lend itself to analysis. What we are left with is a generalization and a dismissive one at that.

7. Next up is a tweet by Mr. Baker in late May that reads: “Seizing land and building settlements is good for Palestinian, Israel tells high court. Chutzpah, anyone?” Mr. Baker included a photo of an Israeli newspaper story that bore those words as its headline (sans the “chutzpah sentence). The HonestReporting group complained to Reuters that his use of the word ‘chutzpah’ – Yiddish for ‘audacity’ — is a “blatant perpetuation of racial and religious stereotypes.” Gene, I’m okay with Mr. Baker’s use of this word. Jews and non-Jews alike use many Yiddish words today. There’s even a term for it: Yinglish. Among them: Oy vey; klutz; nosh; shtick; chutzpah. Perhaps a bigger question is whether Mr. Baker’s Jerusalem bureau can now properly cover this legal case?

Reuters’ readers deserve a fair, detailed news story on the Israeli argument before the court. Under Reuters’ “freedom from bias” guidelines, the reporter would not be allowed to inject his opinion into that report. Why, then, should he make that pronouncement in a tweet? (I object to “chutzpah” here only in the sense that it expresses the reporter’s opinion.)

8. In a tweet last October, Mr. Baker writes: “Footage in Ramallah shows undercover Israeli policemen throwing stones at Israeli forces and inciting Palestinian youth to do the same.” He included a link to that footage, which had been taken by a photographer from rival wire service AFP. I examined the video repeatedly. I studied the clothing of every man in the video — the four undercover security officers who eventually drew their guns or apprehended the protesters, as well as the clothing of those who actually tossed rocks. I could not find a single Israeli officer who tossed a stone. Moreover, a tweet by the AFP photographer read simply: “The agents had arrived after the clashes had started and had been among the protesters for a while before making themselves known… The agents — be they Jews, Druze, Israeli Arabs or Bedouins — all speak Arabic and physically look like the demonstrators.”

Mr. Baker’s tweet influenced coverage by major news outlets, such as the Washington Post and Al Jazeera. To its credit, the Post (which had embedded Mr. Baker’s tweet in an article) issued a correction — amending its wording that the undercover operatives had “possibly instigated the clashes” to “had participated in the clashes.”

This tweet could illustrate the problem of inaccurate reporting via Twitter. Mr. Baker’s tweet says the undercover police threw stones; your inspection of the video finds otherwise. Reuters should investigate; the news service should be concerned that all of its reporting is accurate, irrespective of delivery medium. An error on Twitter is as much of an error as one in a news story.

9. In the final tweet in question [see screenshot above], Mr. Baker declares: “Israel’s far-right Jewish nut jobs, now flying an ISIS-style pirate flag, complete with yarmulke.” I’m not especially vexed by it, as this seems like a pretty good definition of any group that would fly an ISIS-style flag. However, maybe it’s not appropriate for a Reuters bureau chief to say? What’s your feeling?

If a reporter wrote “far-right Jewish nut jobs” in a news story, an editor would take it out. A tweet is just another way of distributing the news, subject to the same rules about reporters’ opinions.

10. Wrapping up, what if anything should Reuters do about Mr. Baker here?

Mr. Baker’s editor should talk with him about the tweets. I envision this as a respectful conversation between serious journalists. The editor should emphasize that certain of his tweets might be damaging his own reporting and that of his Reuters colleagues. The editor should hear him out, but ultimately he would be expected to observe Reuters policy on impartial reporting in all media.

In my textbook, I underscore that an essential component of being fair is appearing to be fair. Reporters have traditionally exercised restraint about expressing their opinions. Although social media may encourage a different mindset, journalists have to resist joining the opinion free-for-all on the Internet. What news consumers desperately need is reporting they can rely on.

This is especially important when reporters are working in a highly charged atmosphere. I can’t imagine a more contentious place to report than from Jerusalem, where everybody is looking for evidence of bias. That is all the more reason to be scrupulous in posting on social media.

*****************

At the end of the day, perhaps it needs to be asked whether Mr. Baker should be running such an important bureau for Reuters. We don’t know that answer, at least not yet. A review of the articles that are being produced by him and his bureau should definitely be done, and Mideast Dig will be publishing an analysis of them in our Part 2.

Seeking some insights into Mr. Baker, we reached out to Uri Dromi, who founded and runs the Jerusalem Press Club, where journalists network, attend press conferences, and dine with Israeli newsmakers. In the 1990s, Mr. Dromi served as spokesman of the Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres center-left governments. “Baker is a serious journalist, and I think he tries to run a serious shop here” says Dromi, who knows him personally. “But the problem is — and it’s not only Reuters, it’s leading papers, both American and European — they come to our briefings and I can tell you from the questions and from talks I have with them, they really think that Israel is wrong. ‘Israel is wrong in what it’s doing.’ And it’s ‘Now let’s tell you a story that fits this framework.’”

Mr. Dromi adds: “Not only Reuters but also AP, in certain ways they reflect positions of governments. Reuters reflects not necessarily the British government [Reuters was historically based in London, but opened a New York City headquarters in 2001], but I think the European point of view. And in the question of who is to blame for the problems in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel always comes up as the one who is more to blame.”

Similarly, Micky Rosenfeld deals often with bias in the foreign media. He’s worked since 2005 as the foreign press spokesman for the Israel Police, and before that served eight years as a combat officer in a counter-terrorism unit. Asked specifically about Mr. Baker’s flawed tweet regarding police in the footage of the riot [see Question #8 above], Mr. Rosenfeld tells the Dig: “We know what goes on at Reuters, with the chief of the bureau. He puts out a lot of tweets which have all different types of implications, and it’s not something which we haven’t come across before.”

That view is echoed by Khaled Abu Toameh, the prominent Arab Israeli journalist who Mr. Baker insulted in a tweet [see Question #6 above]. In response, Mr. Toameh tweeted: “Gone are the days when Reuters in Israel was run by serious, experienced and credible bureau chiefs who brought respect to journalism.”

Aside from the seven tweets that Gene Foreman reviewed, there are other questionable tweets by Luke Baker. Some have been challenged by HonestReporting and similar activist groups — and all of them are easily obtainable by Ms. Freedman and other Reuters executives to anatomize for themselves.

They could begin with a recent incident, dubbed “Pool-Gate” by Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief Yaakov Katz. Two days ago, a Jewish newspaper in America (Algemeiner) discovered that Mr. Baker had deleted a controversial tweet he had posted a week earlier.

[Warning: Poolgate is a somewhat convoluted matter, but it’s worth trying to follow.]

On June 28, Reuters reporter Mustafa Abu Ganeya (one of Mr. Baker’s staffers) wrote a piece about a 22-year-old Palestinian swimmer from a town near Bethlehem who was planning to compete in the Rio Olympics — despite being “hampered” by the lack of an Olympic-sized pool in the West Bank to train in. “Use of superior Israeli facilities and training partners in nearby Jerusalem where there are several Olympic-sized pools and many swimmers, has not been possible due to the long-standing conflict with Israel,” wrote Mr. Abu Ganeya, vaguely and without elaborating.

Pro-Israel advocates saw that sentence as implying that Israel is to blame for the young swimmer’s dilemma. After all, couldn’t the Israeli government help the athlete out here? The Reuters story prompted an olympic-sized (and rather ugly) Twitter feud between Mr. Baker, several pro-Israel advocates, and other journalists. The main focus of the debate concerned (believe it or not) the varying measurements of existing pools in the West Bank. All but lost in the punch-up was the fact that, according to the IDF, the swimmer (her name is Mary Al-Atrash) would have received a permit to train in Israel, but never applied for one — a fact that Reuters didn’t include or explore in the story.

Moreover, if Ms. Al-Atrash chose not to practice in Israel, she could have trained in Jordan — a few hours’ drive from Bethlehem. (After all, athletes from the tiny Maldives trained this year in Botswana.) More importantly, Mr. Baker and his Reuters staffers surely know that Palestinians control huge parts of the West Bank — meaning that Palestinians could have built an O-sized pool by themselves.

Would Israel forbid its construction? “There is not even a remote possibility that Israel would oppose building a pool of any size,” a former Israeli Foreign Ministry official tells Mideast Dig. “And building such a facility in ‘Area A or B’ [roughly 60% of the West Bank] does not require an Israeli permit. In fact, Reuters never actually says that Israel prevents Palestinians from building pools. It just insinuates that the situation is because of the conflict, and the reader is invited to fill in the blanks.”

Perhaps the Palestinian Authority didn’t think it necessary to expend public funds for an O-pool, and private contractors saw no profit in doing so? Reuters doesn’t say. Maybe generous donors could not be found to fund one? Reuters doesn’t say. Instead, many readers are left wondering if what was at play here was simply what Jerusalem Press Club’s Mr. Drori told us earlier: That journalists at Reuters and many other foreign media outlets all-too-often begin their reporting with the assumption that Israel must somehow be to blame.

Last week, Mr. Baker was asked on Twitter (by a pro-Israel anonymous blogger called Elder Of Ziyon) how he could justify the statement in the Reuters story that training in an Israel O-pool “has not been possible because of the conflict.” Mr. Baker responded: “The conflict is the responsibility of both Israel and the Palestinians, who have opposed letting athletes train in Israel.” Mr. Baker subsequently deleted that tweet. Was he worried about upsetting Palestinian officials with his suggestion that they may have hampered the swimmer’s ability to train in Israel? We just don’t know.

Back in May, Mr. Baker went after HonestReporting. He tweeted: “It’s amusing when a pressure group breaks its own rules to criticize foreign media for imbalance.” He linked the tweet to a short video on the HR website regarding the problem of anti-Israel media bias. In another tweet, he had accused HR of being “strangely one-sided.”

But HonestReporting is not a media outlet like Reuters, nor does it pretend to be comprised of traditional journalists. Launched in 2006, the group’s mission has always been to track and reveal anti-Israel media bias — and not pro-Israel media bias as a ‘balance.’ At one point, Mr. Baker grew tired of the matter and (temporarily) ‘blocked’ HR on Twitter. Asked if Mr. Baker may have felt bombarded by HR, Mr. Plosker says, “We definitely didn’t bombard him. And in this case he started the spat.”

As for our own efforts to communicate with Luke Baker, the Reuters Handbook of Journalism advises its staffers that “If you think you can deal with the complaint immediately yourself, do.” In this case, the bureau chief declined to field any questions, but wrote “you are welcome to get in touch with Thomson Reuters’ PR team in New York, lead by Abbe Serphos.”

Perhaps all roads lead to the PR department. Following my conversation with ethics chief Alix Freedman in late June, I wrote to her to ask if she’d be comfortable providing a quote on why she didn’t address any of the specific points raised by HonestReporting. She didn’t respond, but two days later I heard from Ms. Serphos, who welcomed questions. I sent six:

May I interview Alix on-the-record on the matter? May I know why Reuters chose not to respond to any specific examples raised by HonestReporting? May I receive responses from Reuters to questions that I have about specific tweets? (If so, then I will send them shortly.) Alix wrote to HonestReporting on May 31 to express Reuters’ pride in the accuracy and fairness of its coverage from Israel which Baker oversees. Does Reuters stand by that statement? Would Reuters elaborate at all on it? Has Reuters discussed the subject of Baker’s tweets with him? Could you provide me the exact date that Luke became bureau chief in Jerusalem?

Unfortunately, the 433-character response we received was barely more than 3x the maximum that Twitter allows per tweet:

Hi, Rich. Please attribute the following statement to Alix Freedman, Global Editor, Ethics and Standards, Reuters: Under the Trust Principles, Reuters is committed to telling all sides and taking none. We understand that readers are sensitive to any hint of bias or unfairness in news coverage of the Middle East. Reuters is proud of the accuracy and fairness of our reporting from Israel which Luke Baker oversees. Best regards, Abbe

The Reuters Handbook for Journalists states: “Everything we do as Reuters journalists has to be independent, free from bias and executed with the utmost integrity. Responding promptly and properly to complaints that we have not been accurate, balanced or ethical can also avoid what could become costly legal problems, or widespread bad publicity. We also now increasingly deal with the public at large.”

So why would these Reuters executives, when asked serious questions by their media peers, choose to batten down the hatches? The answer, we fear, is that they simply can’t defend Mr. Baker’s tweets with anything more than a bromide.

Please be sure to tune in for Part Two of our analysis of the work of Luke Baker and the Reuters’ Jerusalem bureau.

—Richard Behar is the Editor of Mideast Dig. Gabriel Davis worked as a summer intern (Reporter-Researcher). Susan Radlauer provided research assistance.

The Mideast Dig, Inc. is a Rule 501(c)3 nonprofit organization under the U.S. tax code. All donations are tax-deductible.