Last Sunday I went to the CAMERA conference on "Jewish defamers of Israel" and it took me a day or two to recognize what the news was: a speech in which CAMERA president Andrea Levin said that the pro-Israel lobbying group has "an unwritten contract" with the American media to watch their step when writing about Israel. Having listened to my recording of the event, I wanted to set out Levin’s comments in full.
Levin’s speech was about Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper whose bleak portrayal of the occupation has helped to brief the world on the horrifying conditions there. Levin said that after Haaretz ran an opinion column describing the separate roads in the West Bank as "apartheid" roads, CAMERA members wrote letters to Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken saying this was a false charge. She then read from Schocken’s responses. In one he said "the term ‘roads for Jews only,’ which may be mathematically incorrect, is fine with me.. because it describes the true nature and purpose of the roads." In another reply, Schocken wrote, "Your legalistic response is exactly the type that is used to blur reality, rather than clarify it. It is utterly ridiculous not to call these roads apartheid roads because the entire presence of Jews in the Occupied Territories is of an apartheid nature…"
This was distressing, Levin said, because Haaretz calls itself "the New York Times of Israel." The audience groaned and jeered.
Levin said, "The fact is, you know, we may be unhappy with the New York Times from time to time, and we at CAMERA have been, but I have to say we are fortunate. The American media is much, much more geared to understanding that there is an unwritten contract between them and us, and that is, that things should be factually accurate, and we get corrections all the time. Those corrections are very meaningful sometimes. We can prevent the repetition of serious errors… So there is that give and take here in the States."
Someone in the audience asked if the Israeli government couldn’t take action. "Good question," Levin said. "Many many times we have urged in regard to American coverage– to really, really serious defamatory reports in the American media–we have urged the Israel government, whether it was the IDF or some other components of officialdom, to be involved. Times that we thought that legal actions could be taken." But evidently that couldn’t happen in Israel, where they have a "very free press."
Wow. An Israel lobbyist turns over some of her cards! Urging the Israeli government to take legal action against American publications over controversial reports? An unwritten contract with the American media not to say apartheid? A give-and-take with the New York Times?
Amos Schocken’s lordly indifference to this sort of bullying makes me proud to be a Jew; his is the unassailable authority of a journalist who says what he says because he believes it, and will not be moved…
P.S. A few days ago I blogged about Jerome Slater’s article contrasting Haaretz’s coverage of the occupation and the New York Times’s coverage. Slater argues that the Israel lobby is not the cause of the difference in coverage. I think he’s wrong, for any number of reasons. Certainly he has not heard Levin describe her activities.
Related posts:
- The Israel Lobby Targets Haaretz
- Will CAMERA Supply ‘Context’ at Its ‘Jewish Defamers’ Conference This Weekend?
- Shocker: Haaretz Editor Urged Sec’y Rice to ‘Rape’ Israel
- Haaretz Strikes Again; Condi Likens Palestinians to Southern Blacks
- Mearsheimer: Walt and I welcome a debate on the lobby with the director of the American Jewish Comittee
{ 32 comments }
Do you really want to defend Schocken so vigorously? CAMERA apparently pointed out that Ha'aretz referred to certain roads as roads for "Jews only," and that this is incorrect, because the roads are for Israeli citizens, and not for Arab residents of the West Bank. There are well over a million non-Jewish Israeli citizens. In other words, what Ha'aretz wrote is false. Instead of issuing a correction, Schocken argues, in effect, we'd rather call them Jews-only roads because it suits are broader political agenda. This sort of thing just feeds CAMERA's agenda, and you're foolish to be proud of it.
I also thank Shocken for his courage and personal integrity.
Haaretz is a balanced newspaper. Ironically, many that post on this blog regard Haaretz as subject to ridicule if not censorship for permitting "right-wing" journalists to have columns.
A column or an editorial or an op-ed is that, an opinion. Like in US newspapers, columns express a variety of opinions, a wide variety.
Haaretz is not the New York Times of Israel though. Its articles tend to be shorter, and contain less context.
The audience though similarly to American audience, responds to headlines, moreso than subtleties of content in the articles themselves.
"CAMERA apparently pointed out that Ha'aretz referred to certain roads as roads for "Jews only," and that this is incorrect, because the roads are for Israeli citizens, and not for Arab residents of the West Bank."
The "Jews only" roads connect Jewish settlements in the occupied territories (which do not allow Israeli Arab citizens to live there) with each other and with Israel within the Green Line. Israeli Arab citizens don't go to the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, so to claim that these roads aren't de facto "Jewish only" is to engage in speciousness. But that's par for the course at CAMERA.
From former Knesset member Shulamit Aloni:
"If that were not enough, the generals commanding the region frequently issue further orders, regulations, instructions and rules (let us not forget: they are the lords of the land). By now they have requisitioned further lands for the purpose of constructing "Jewish only" roads. Wonderful roads, wide roads, well-paved roads, brightly lit at night–all that on stolen land. When a Palestinian drives on such a road, his vehicle is confiscated and he is sent on his way.
On one occasion I witnessed such an encounter between a driver and a soldier who was taking down the details before confiscating the vehicle and sending its owner away. "Why?" I asked the soldier. "It's an order–this is a Jews-only road", he replied. I inquired as to where was the sign indicating this fact and instructing [other] drivers not to use it. His answer was nothing short of amazing. "It is his responsibility to know it, and besides, what do you want us to do, put up a sign here and let some antisemitic reporter or journalist take a photo so he that can show the world that Apartheid exists here?"
From: "Indeed, there is apartheid in Israel" http://files.tikkun.org/current/article.php?story=20070105080344465
From RW – Haaretz as a tabloid with a tabloid short attention span audience. Brilliant! The pro-establishment Ze'ev Schiff, Haaretz's military correspondent, would be amused to be so categorized.
As for the hysteria that emanates from the pronouncement of the utterly accurate A-word, here is the self-debauchery of Jewish ethics in a nutshell.
We have this monster that we are honour-bound by tribal affinity to defend, so we have to magically make it disappear by linguistic deformation.
Except that those who still have their head on straight and are still benefiting from their education, continue to use words appropriate to the subjects that those words evolved to connote.
Uri Davis, with impeccable credentials, wrote a tightly argued and evidenced book on the subject. The lobby excoriates Carter for pointing out the obvious, yet Davis' book is ignored.
Can this joke go on for much longer?
I thank Philip Weiss for his mention of my article comparing the NYT with Haaretz. However, while certainly striking, I don't think that Levin's boast about an "unwritten contract" with the U.S. media is sufficient evidence of the power of the Israel Lobby over the media, at least as much as claimed by Mearsheimer and Walt. There is much that is right about M/W, but they overstate their case. I will be writing a long analysis of their book.
I thank Philip Weiss for his mention of my article comparing the NYT with Haaretz. However, while certainly striking, I don't think that Levin's boast about an "unwritten contract" with the U.S. media is sufficient evidence of the power of the Israel Lobby over the media, at least as much as claimed by Mearsheimer and Walt. There is much that is right about M/W, but they overstate their case. I will be writing a long analysis of their book.
I thank Philip Weiss for his mention of my article comparing the NYT with Haaretz. However, while certainly striking, I don't think that Levin's boast about an "unwritten contract" with the U.S. media is sufficient evidence of the power of the Israel Lobby over the media, at least as much as claimed by Mearsheimer and Walt. There is much that is right about M/W, but they overstate their case. I will be writing a long analysis of their book.
Actually, M&W's claims for the powers of the lobby within the media are rather tepid. They don't go into statistics of ownership and management. I look forward to your article.
Really the ironies accumulate, don't they?
In my lifetime any sign with "Jews only" on it would have been considered antisemitic, somehow connected with wearing yellow stars and such.
Here in Spain, Yad Vashem just won the Prince of Asturias Prize and we are all being told to "never forget", but as to the case of the occupied territories we are being told to "never remember".
Professor Slater,
You should read "Intifada Hits the Headlines" and "The Suppression of Guilt" by Daniel Dor, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University. Basically, Dor argues that the Israeli media has adopted a nationalistic outlook since 2000 and that even with a liberal newspaper like Haaretz,critical reporting like Amira Hass & Gideon Levy tends to relegated to the back pages. A portion of Dor's book is available at:
http://www.pij.org/details.php?id=38
I wish the US had a main stream newpaper as honest and capable of looking at ourselves as Haaretz does with Israel.
If we did things would be different here and in Israel.
I find that the jewish american population that supports israeli zionisms lunacies would be up in arms if america would perpetrate any of those same lunacies here…so while in america they insist that this nation practice inclusivity and fairness for minorities and religions, they mainatain that israel can do what they please, for this, that, and any other cockamamey reason that happens to cross their duplicitous moral reasoning mind at the moment of excusing israel for their actions.
they are deluded and sadly mistaken, and on the wrong side of history on this issue, as is camera and aipac and the american christian zionist crusaders against islam. All these are historically and morally on the wrong side of this issue.
some of these naive comments about aipac and israeli lobby power in the states are either to be ridiculed for their naivette or laughed at for their inability to deal with the evident.
visit http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=1288
What really happened at Oxford
Finkelstein comments:
Insofar as the lies about what happened at the Oxford Union are getting more and more appalling, I have very reluctantly decided to post the email from the President of the Oxford Union disinviting me.
From: Luke.Tryl[at]magd.ox.ac.uk
To: normangf[at]hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Debate
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:38:31 +0100
Dear Dr Finkelstein,
I hope that you are well, I'm so sorry for the confusion about the debate. There was an organisational difficulty at my end and my secretary hadn't seen your emails.
I would appreciate it if you could keep this bit between you and I. Many people expressed concern that the debate as it stood was imbalanced and people felt that as someone who had apparently expressed anti-zionist sentiments that you might not be appropriate for this debate. I tried to convince them otherwise but was accused of putting forward an imbalanced debate and various groups put pressure on me. I received numerous emails attacking the debate and Alan Dershowitz threatened to write an Oped attacking the Union. What is more he apparently attacked me personally in a televised lecture to Yale.
I hope that you understand my position, this is not ideal and I would be happy to welcome you as an individual speaker to the Union in a forthcoming term. I know that the President-Elect Emily Partington would be keen to host you in Hilary. I just did not want to see the debate compromised and given the Irving Griffin Controversy I couldn't fight a battle on all fronts.
Best wishes
Luke.
The disinvitation to Finkelstein is not a fantasy but the kind of fact that is going on in universities in the US and Britain. No one is "exaggerating" or "overstating" how universities are under attack by pro-Israeli political pressure groups. Call it a "lobby," call it "networks," call it whatever you wish. As Tony Judt put it, what makes the Israeli lobby distinctive compared to other lobbies such as the NRA is that it denies it is a lobby and that it works to induce self-censorship in people who know better. In the US, less than 2% of the population is Jewish, so the sentimentality surrounding Israel's occupation has something to do with gentile complicity. I'm not just talking about Christian Zionist but secular gentile complicity, especially among liberals and leftists. It is the formers' hypocrisy that is most troubling. On the other, it is also most transparent and lacks integrity of the kind that's easy to finger.
Here's Ghada Karmi's piece on the treatment of Finkelstein at the Oxford Union–
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ghada_karmi/2007/10/intellectual_terrorism.html
Yeah and look at what they did to poor Watson for speaking his mind.
what i really find most interesting in all of this is how unaware most of the liberal jewish community in america is about the political undercurrent rushing just beneath the surface of their daily lives.
The neocons along with aipac and all the uberzionist terrorists operate in the name of jews in america in defense of israel, but not with the complicity of this community, who would probably cringe at the emotions that these zionists machinations might elicit from the nation in which they live.
eerily similar to the political machinations by the zionist before and during the second war in europe.
Did Silverstein piss off the shit list people again. Why isn't his blog working.
"eerily similar to the political machinations by the zionist before and during the second war in europe."
Before, during and after.
W&M started their book this way:
"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted"
-Bertrand Russell
To warn americans about the need to get "something invested in thinking that there's something debatable about…" anything you take for granted.
By the way, Evanj, you've produced one of the best definitions ever of the Witty imperative:
"We have this monster that we are honour-bound by tribal affinity to defend, so we have to magically make it disappear by linguistic deformation."
I prefer, we have a confusing monster constructed of hotheadedness (Islamicist, neo-Zionist, militant Palestinian nationalists, militant flavor of leftists, American neo-fascists) that we need to see clearly.
Oh, but I prefer to see other things more clearly, for example let me reproduce this comment from Joachim in his own blog:
"Now that we have access to Soviet archives, there is no question that ethnic Ashkenazim were up to their eyeballs in ethnic cleansing, mass murder and genocide well before WW2 started. One of the first groups targeted by ethnic Ashkenazi Soviet officials were Russian Germans simply for having been competitors to ethnic Ashkenazim for the same economic niche."
Now let me quote Evanj again:
"We have this monster that we are honour-bound by tribal affinity to defend, so we have to magically make it disappear by linguistic deformation."
How many monsters have disapeared by tribal affinity inspired linguistic deformation? I believe most of the english written version of history is a big case of magical disapearance. Time will tell and time is approaching fast.
Hard to know what you want to see clearly.
How does one see clearly?
By incorporating the multiple sources of information one has access to into an integrated understanding of multiple forces, influences, interests.
Any demonization is easily recognizable as contrived.
This story from Le Figaro is something American readers would find interesting, you might think. Not front page stuff perhaps, but surely worthy of a mention. Any bets that it will be covered?
"The influential French daily Le Figaro last week revealed that the French leader once worked for — and perhaps still does, it hinted — Israeli intelligence as a sayan (Hebrew for helper), one of the thousands of Jewish citizens of countries other than Israel who cooperate with the katsas (Mossad case-officers).
"A letter dispatched to French police officials late last winter — long before the presidential election but somehow kept secret — revealed that Sarkozy was recruited as an Israeli spy. The French police is currently investigating documents concerning Sarkozy's alleged espionage activities on behalf of Mossad, which Le Figaro claims dated as far back as 1983. According to the author of the message, in 1978, Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin ordered the infiltration of the French ruling Gaullist Party, Union pour un Mouvement Populaire."
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/868/in2.htm
just so as not to be seen as demonizing anything related to jewish zionist history.
these orthodox judaics tell the tale of deceit and treachery better than anyone i could think of.
http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/antisemitism/holocaust/holocaustmillions.cfm
The narrow-mindedness of the Sarkozy narrative is of little value in the pursuit of true understanding.
Sarkozy is not an agent, or, better: We are all agents, agents of multiple strands of influence in multiple contexts.
I am the agent of multiple forces, multiple loyalties, and multiple pre-fab Zionist rationalizations. (Multiple because should one fail, to be without any is most disconcerting, especially in this sea of hotheaded, demonizing viciousness.)
France should not consider the Islamists benign and benevolent, and Iran may not be as far from nuclear weapons as every single knowledgeable person insists.
Nice, Apologist, but I don't think Richard is going to get it. :)
You guys talk to yourselves well?
How utterly horrible that the U.S. media might have an unwritten contract "that things should be factually accurate." Actually, much of this contract is WRITTEN, in various journalistic codes of ethics. I can't believe the Israel Lobby was controlling America even in May 1922, when the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science discussed the Canons of Ethics adopted by some newspaper editors, or the following year when the Annals published the Canons of Journalism, an early code of ethics that has since been emulated by the Society of Professional Journalists, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Associated Press Managing Editors, and many others.
Henry Ford was so right about the Jews!
Yes, I'm being facetious. Henry Ford was an anti-Semite. And by the way, the "a word" that no one dare utter is not "apartheid," but "anti-Semite." Apparently some think that anti-Semitism is an invention of the Israel lobby. Never mind that some of the comments on this blog are clearly anti-Jewish.
On the Finkelstein note, I wonder if the footsoldiers of academic freedom who are convinced that the nefarious lobby silences speakers are concerned at all by the silencing of pro-Israel voices. Asaf Romerowski was booted from a panel at the University of Delaware. Benjamin Netanyahu's attempt to speak at Concordia University a few years back resulted in a riot, broken windows, and the abuse of students who wanted to hear what he had to say. Daniel Pipes was disinvited by Baltimore Collegetown. Et cetera. Of course, I don't imagine that matters to many of the commenters on this blog, who are clearly quite adept at selectively covering their eyes to see only what they want to see — an evil Israel and blameless Palestinians.
"Baltimore Collegetown"?
Baltimore Collegetown. (Try google.)
The American media is much, much more geared to understanding that there is an unwritten contract between them and us, and that is, that things should be factually accurate, and we get corrections all the time. Those corrections are very meaningful sometimes. We can prevent the repetition of serious errors… So there is that give and take here in the States."
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