From what I saw and read of the Dems’ debate last night, Israel/Palestine was not mentioned. The blackout continues. Indeed, the only reference I’ve seen in presidential politics to what I consider the most important issue the country faces was a Ron Paul supporter outside the Reagan Library the other day holding up a "No More Wars for Israel" poster. And Ron Paul raised more money than any other Republican in the last quarter, feeding off a groundswell of Iraq-borne alienation.
Where is the mainstream media and why are they afraid of this issue?
Today I’d point to a notable exception: Nick Goldberg, editor of the LA Times Op-ed page, who in an interview by the Jewish Journal, described Israel/Palestine as the most controversial subject he deals with, but said that doesn’t scare him off. He gets more letters from the pro-Israel crowd than anybody else (it’s called the Israel lobby) and yet he runs pieces by Khaled Mashal of Hamas and Walt and Mearsheimer and speaks openly of the "Nakba," the ethnic-cleansing of 1948.
From the interview:
Journal: Is this the hottest issue of all your many different issues?
NG: I think at most big papers in the country, the issue of
Israel is the most controversial subject there is. In Los Angeles, the
issue of the Armenian Genocide is very controversial. The war in Iraq
is controversial. But there’s no question — when we run pieces on
Israel and Palestine we’ll get a huge reaction…We get far
more letters from people supportive of Israel writing in, either to
agree with something we wrote or to attack something we wrote. There
are no question that letters come much more heavily from Jews that from
Arabs, from pro-Israel people than anti-Israel people.JJ: If Adolf Hitler came to you and wanted to publish something on your opinion pages, would you publish him?"
NG: That’s a hard question. Some things are so offensive, so wrongheaded,
so racist, that we wouldn’t publish them. We do have certain standards.
But at the same time, we try to err on the side of publishing rather
than not publishing. If I got a piece in tomorrow from Osama bin Laden,
chances are I’d publish it. If I had received a piece from Saddam
Hussein in the run-up to the Iraq War, I’d have published that. I think
it’s important for readers to hear all different sides.It’s important for people in the United States to know what Hamas
thinks, or to know what Hamas says; when Hamas won an election in Gaza
we took that seriously, and we wanted to know what the new prime
minister had to say about it. And we published a piece he wrote about
what could be expected in the months and years ahead.JJ: Do you think there is an objective truth when it comes to the Middle East or it’s just a difference of opinion?
NG: There is certainly truth when it comes to the facts, and
there is truth when it comes to the history, and it’s very, very
difficult sometimes to find out what that truth is. It’s the job of
reporters and historians to try to dig as deeply as they can to try to
get to that truth. But the Middle East is so emotional that the subject
is so emotional and there’s so much bitterness and so much history and
so much anger that it’s hard to cut through to the facts and you have
to look at it through this prism of opinion.In this issue more than others there’s a really valuable role for
opinion pieces to play. And you can really learn a lot from opinions.
It’s very unusual for Jews and Israelis to think about what’s gone on
that part of the world from a Palestinian point of view. [Emphasis mine] I think it’s
hard for the Palestinians to understand what they look at as "The
Nakba," and to see the Jewish experience. …What I found is that many people are much too closed-minded to read
pieces by others who they don’t agree with. But we keep publishing
them.
Goldberg says his own views of Israel/Palestine are "immaterial" to his job. I’m not buying: There is something inherently liberal and universalist in Goldberg’s comments that I sense is more tolerable in the new world of California than it is in establishment east-coast opinion pages, calcified by power.
And then, too, Goldberg lived for several years in the 90s in Israel. He knows how alive the Israeli press is on these issues. Why can’t we have that here?
