Why does a Chicago Tribune news story about a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) divestment campaign against Israel read like a press release issued by the Church itself?

Because, Tribune staff reporter Manya A. Brachear used chunks of the Church's August 5th press release as her news report; Brachear lifted, near verbatim, two entire paragraphs of the press release, including its partisan language and inaccurate information...

There are no “settlers-only-roads” in the territories (or, for that matter, in pre-1967 Israel). This is a common media distortion. In fact, foreigners, non-settler Israelis (including Arabs), and Palestinians with appropriate security clearance are free to use any road. Since the violent uprising against Israel, during which Palestinian vehicles were used in driveby shootings of Israelis, there have been restrictions of vehicles with Palestinian license plates on certain roads.

...If you set out to create a program to ward off peace, it would be hard to come up with one more promising than this.

The policy will worsen Israel's already ingrained security anxieties, which make the Jewish state deeply chary of deals that might increase its vulnerability. And the policy will feed Palestinian delusions that others will produce a state for them without the Palestinians themselves ever having to accept the permanence of Israel as part of the deal.

The focus on Israel offends history and justice. Israel has been trying to cut a deal with the Arabs since it was created by the United Nations in 1948 and was immediately attacked by the surrounding Arab states out to kill it a-borning.

Israel wound up in the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 when Israel's Arab neighbors, in the Six-Day War, were defeated in their next attempt to destroy Israel. In the aftermath, Israel agreed to a U.N.-sponsored formula by which it would return land in exchange for peace.

The Arab states wouldn't hear of it and instead bankrolled and egged on Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Liberation Organization, which rejected negotiations and enshrined armed struggle as the only legitimate means to form a Palestinian state...