Does the NY Times factcheck op-eds?

On Aug. 2, the New York Times published an op-ed arguing that Arabs do not care much about Palestinians -- and that this is a good thing, especially for Palestinians. But the argument relied on a "poll" of the Arab world that does not exist. The piece, by historian Efraim Karsh, intended to show that the "conventional wisdom" about the Israel-Palestine conflict -- that Arabs "are so passionate about the Palestine problem" -- is wrong. His main evidence is this: "What, then, are we to make of a recent survey for the Al Arabiya television network finding that a staggering 71 percent of the Arabic respondents have no interest in the Palestinian/Israeli peace talks?" But the "survey" was actually a website readers' poll, the kind one might find on many news websites -- and the kind of thing no one would take as a serious expression of public sentiment on any issue. Even this largely meaningless data was misrepresented by Karsh, as he conflated concern about "the Palestine problem" with interest in "Palestinian/Israeli peace talks." As James Zogby of the Arab-American Institute (Huffington Post, 8/2/10) pointed out: The actual question makes no mention of "Palestine" or "Palestinians." Rather, it asks respondents about their level of interest in the "Middle East peace process" -- to which 71 percent indicate "no interest." Given the lack of results and the repeated disappointments and frustrations experienced during just the last two decades of the so-called "Middle East peace process," this lack of interest displayed by respondents in the Al Arabiya website question is hardly surprising.