Jeff Blankfort calls this Jewish McCarthyism, and I'm hard pressed to deny it. After Gaza–yes, Gaza changed everything–a Bay Area pro-Israel guy called Jim Sinkinson made a collection of angry letters re Israel published in the Berkeley Daily Planet and brought them around to advertisers, to demonstrate the “shocking pattern of anti-Semitism and Israel-bashing,” as he put it.
The Daily Planet freaked. To its credit, it ran an editorial titled an open letter to advertisers and readers, and called Sinkinson’s actions a “campaign of intimidation” that
included “pressuring advertisers to withdraw their support” and
“accusing the paper of anti-Semitism.”
Having been in the press throughout similar wars, I can tell you that pressure campaigns have a real effect. Writers lose work over this kind of stuff. The discourse narrows. Now, the reporter whose coverage I have glossed, Amanda Pazornik of the Jewish publication J. Weekly, wrote a piece rationalizing this in tribal terms. If you're in the tribal bubble you do rationalize this stuff. It got rationalized at Columbia University, too, when it was professors getting monitored.
And the bottom line is, Americans can't learn about the most important foreign policy issue in the Middle East. Pazornik:
Sinkinson’s argument struck a chord with those wanting to see the Daily
Planet use discretion with regard to its opinion and commentary pieces,
and letters to the editor.
Just the opposite happened in the
Daily Planet. Its open letter sparked an endless stream of letters to
the editor, praising the independent newspaper for taking a stand
against Sinkinson.
Personally, I’m a firm believer in the
First Amendment. I wouldn’t be able to do my job as a journalist
without it. But it is my Jewish identity that takes precedence when
analyzing this situation.
