In this handwringing piece in the Week in Review section of the New York Times, Ethan Bronner speaks of the agony of being the "despised" Greek chorus in the Gaza battle, when there are two contending narratives, neither of which is all right. He brings up the anti-Zionist narrative: "a country born in sin, Israel has built up an aggressive military with help from Washington in the grips of a powerful Jewish lobby" (notice the conflation of moral melodrama, sin, with the factual), then writes:
I wonder: Have you ever reported stuff that calls into question Israel's legitimacy (as this Jew has)? Is that an accurate claim on your part? Have you ever written about the lobby with any real depth? And what do you mean by your "affiliation"? Well, you are Jewish, but don't tell your reader that. And what does that mean--I'm not sure. What does it mean that you are married to an Israeli (as I have reported, but I don't think you ever have)? Do you really-- an intelligent man in your mid-50s, obviously earnestly struggling to maintain professional "objectivity," but with some kind of Jewish life--lack an interior narrative on these questions? Somehow I doubt it. Why not be open? (Phil Weiss)
notice the conflation of moral melodrama, sin, with the factual
I do believe Phil is beginning to get it.
Such a disingenuous piece by Bronner.
Every time I fail to allude to that story — when, for example, I examine Israel’s goals in its Gaza war without implicitly condemning it as a massacre, or write about Israel in ways that do not call into question its legitimacy — I have revealed my affiliation and can no longer be trusted as a reporter.
No Bronner, it is when you and your colleagues repeat Israeli assertions as fact and go out of your way to be skeptical about anything from the Palestinian side. Nobody expects a reporter to call the killing a massacre, unless it is in quotes (or, let's be honest, in Africa, preferably Darfur) but the NYT spent the war just regurgitating Israeli claims, to the point that even in this hand-wringing Bronner begins by calling it Israel's war to end Hamas rockets… failing to note that Israel planned this war a long time ago, that there was next to no rocket fire while the cease-fire held.
…just as no one can mention Israeli atrocities without first condemning Hamas for its "criminal behaviour" (of using firecrackers as a form of resistance against occupation).
Interesting that the real definition of 'melodrama' is the story of someone who remains wholly good and that it is always someone else who is doing you in; hence, the good vs evil aspect of it, or the 'them vs us'.
As Robert Bechtold Heilman wrote in his fabulous book Tragedy And Melodrama (turgid for the first 40 pages then zings) you can only have tragedy in a mature civilization or society. Because tragedy means that you acknowledge your part in that which happens to you. He makes the salient point that you can't have 'Tragedy on Highway 40'. It must be 'Catastrophe' or 'Disaster', because the reporter has no way of knowing whether the dead realized and accepted the part they played in their demise before it happened.
One of Heilman's arguments — and it is just a footnote to his spectacular work — is that this distinction in the language is being lost by our sloppy usage, and thereby our capacity for self-knowledge and self-realization is diminished. He says that by recognizing our stories as melodrama when they are –melodrama is not a pejorative, but a definition of story — we understand implicitly the tale/drama within the context of the 'other' being the cause of our reality, never ourselves.
Tragedy is the opposite; it requires spiritual awareness, more intelligence, and leads to inner growth. It demands something of us. He gave as an example a play in which the main character would be a Nazi SS officer with whom the audience could identify and sympathize, with whom the audience did not feel was the 'other'. Heilman said at the time he wrote the book (70s) that our society was not ready for it yet, that we were too immature and uncomplicated and lacking in depth and communal awareness as a people to accept it.
What Bonner is doing in this piece is playing with his shorthairs, nothing revelatory. He had a deadline to meet. I'm getting as tired of these anguished trips before the Zio mirror as I am with Holocaust movies.
Bronner:
Among Israel’s Jews, there is almost no higher value than Zionism. The word is bathed in a celestial glow, suggesting selflessness and nobility.
I have news for Mr. Bronner. I have a friend, who shall remain nameless, a very famous older American Jew who made aliyah to Israel years ago and left it within four months for the reasons that Mr. Bronner gave as the perception of Zionism in the rest of the Middle East:
An absolutely perfect example of the melodramatic cast of mind:
Or to see it in pictures:
Sorry, the image got cut off:
Here is the original:
link to imagevat.com
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