The Opinionator blog at the NY Times has defended the newspaper's hasbara tagteam of Goldberg and Friedman (when you want even more diversity, you get to read Bill Kristol) by singling out a post here that attacked the pair and calling me the winner of "the vitriol award." We love the attention, but I didn't write it. Adam Horowitz did. (A, Get your facts straight.)
Adam is one of the most fairminded people I've ever met, and mildmannered. His passion on this issue reflects the fact that this is a great crisis for the Jewish spirit and for the fate of Israel and Palestine, and the Times has run mostly pap on its opinion page, including Goldberg's warmed-over ooga booga stuff about Hamas, thereby giving Americans very little sense of the true crisis. The reality is that many reliable voices, from Mearsheimer to Chomsky to Robert Simon to Yitzhak Laor to Tariq Ali, are telling us that the 2-state solution is dead. If so, it means that the hope many people had of bringing an end to the violence is further away. The Palestinians are likely to suffer far more in days to come than the Israelis. This has happened thru American indifference to Israeli expansion and brutality. If "vitriol" is a way of sniggering at criticism of massacres, vitriol your guts out, we will not go away.
Also, I'd note that we've repeatedly criticized the Times here in the last few days. Lately for suppressing stringer Taghreed El-Khodary's views and for the fact, which I have made too little of, that the two reporters in the Times Jerusalem bureau, Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner, are both married to Israelis. And I think they're both Jewish. Is that an appropriate degree of distance, for the most important newspaper in the world, from a foreign society that is up to its ankles in blood? Of course not. (See, Herbert L. Matthews.)
I would also note that the Times has announced a readers' dialogue with El-Khodary on Monday. This is great news. I applaud the Times for setting this up, and look forward to El-Khodary sharing her unique perspective with Americans. This is a crisis. We need all the help we can get!
