Ethan Bronner has a piece in the Times today called "Israel Is Wary of Calm Days that May End in Turmoil." It’s about how Israel is having a calm, prosperous summer, but is wary of what lies ahead. Maybe Arab violence…
Most of this article could have been written by AIPAC or by the IDF information office, My friend James North says. "He doesn’t go to Gaza to see how they’re living now. They might be fearing other attacks. If anyone faces large scale attacks there, it’s the Palestinians." I often point out that Bronner is married to an Israeli. This piece is too deeply immersed in Israeli consciousness. The Times should struggle to break free of these confinements.
And worse: Does Bronner ever feel a need to write about this: “Israeli School Apartheid,” by Jonathan Cook, Counterpunch, 8/10/09
An Arab couple whose one-year-old daughter was expelled from an Israeli day-care center on her first day are suing a Jewish mother for damages, accusing her of racist incitement against their child.
Maysa and Shuaa Zuabi, from the village of Sulam in northern Israel, launched the court action last week saying they had been "shocked and humiliated" when the center’s owner told them that six Jewish parents had demanded their daughter’s removal because she is an Arab.
Imagine the Bronner of the Deep South. Plantation life is fine, but many fear an uprising…
(Thanks to Nancy Kricorian and Helen Schiff)
one could possibly accept this pr if it was an opinion piece but it is not!! it may as well be a paid advertizement by aipac of the idf!
“The Times should struggle to break free of these confinements.”
The Times learned nothing from its slanted Iraqi coverage other than how to apologize via its Public Editor. Maybe the coming pay-per-article will inform them, as one person buys, and the rest of us deride. Apropos of nothing but it seems related, read “Recapping the Twilight Zone Media.”
link to pulsemedia.org
How different is this from the school busing issue in the USA back in the day? All the congress people and government officials were in favor of busing, while they sent their own kids to private schools, all the while dissing the working class white families as bigots? It’s been decades now, where the working class whites and their children have had to deal with this. Next topic: payday loans.
I had always believed that the NY Times had an enlightened view of Israel — its bias in support was always there but there was an attempt to urge Israel in a rational direction. I was wrong. There can be little doubt about their primary loyalties. If not openly, but in deed, they are guided by the zionist vision. Their support for the Iraq war is otherwise incomprehensible. I suspect, their stated support for two states is just a facade, they must realize that the ‘peace process’ they support is a charade designed to cover annexation of the West Bank. This Bronner character is just a more transparent aspect of this zionist loyalty.
They’ve been trying for a century. At first they refused to get involved in the Leo Frank case. They were an American paper, not a Jewish one. Then they reconsidered. They always do. BTW Gay Talese’s The Kingdom And The Power talks about how hard the NYT tries not to appear particularly Jewish.
The article was about the Hezbollah buildup, and tensions between Hamas and Fatah.
It doesn’t seem far-fetched or biased, or irrelevant to me.
What specifically did you disagree with?
It was heavily biased in the Israeli direction for most of the article, but in the last several paragraphs he balanced it with a more critical viewpoint, or that’s how it came across to me. I’m normally very critical of the NYT coverage and its pro-Israeli bias, but in this case I thought Bronner managed to be balanced, though he waited until near the end to do this.
In contrast, I observe that that is Bronner’s NORM.
Its always necessary to read further than headlines and lead paragraphs.
I always read the full article when it is about the I/P conflict and some days they are better than others.
For instance, this part near the end was good–
“Israel continues a tight embargo on goods entering Gaza, partly as pressure to get back a kidnapped soldier held there for three years and partly to increase the gap in living standards with the West Bank. The idea is that once the Fatah-run West Bank is secure and better off and Gaza remains stagnated and mired in poverty, Palestinians in both places will support Fatah and its negotiated approach.
And while some Fatah leaders are not unhappy with this policy, West Bank leaders are wary of cooperating — or being seen to cooperate.
“We don’t want to make it seem like we are helping to make the occupation work better,” said Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, in an interview. “We want an end to Israeli incursions in our cities as well.”
There’s a sharp contrast between Bronner’s reporting and , say, Thomas Friedman’s propaganda in the above paragraphs. Friedman didn’t mention in his recent columns glorifying Israel’s policy of allowing more economic growth in the West Bank that Israel is deliberately impoverishing the people in Gaza to provide a contrast. The contrast is very much in Bronner’s favor as far as intellectual honesty is concerned. Of course, measuring oneself against Friedman isn’t setting a high standard in that department, but anyway, I think Bronner did okay here.
“There’s a sharp contrast between Bronner’s reporting and , say, Thomas Friedman’s propaganda in the above paragraphs. ”
My own writing needs more clarity. The paragraphs I quoted are Bronner’s–the Friedman propaganda I’m referring to is not. It’s the columns he wrote a week or two ago about the Palestinians and he doesn’t mention the cynical policy of making Gazans suffer so that Hamas looks bad compared to Fatah. (IMO Hamas is making itself look bad to many Palestinians already, in various ways, as does Fatah, but Friedman typically leaves out the darkest and ugliest facets of Israeli policy.)
Ethan Bronner’s piece subtly misleads the reader. This is typical of most New York Times articles and photos on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. The photo of an Israeli relaxing on the beach and the article about Israeli’s feeling a bit calm now but wonder what is coming is in direct conflict with daily life for Palestinians whether they are Israelis living in Tel Aviv or living in Gaza or the West Bank. The article gives the impression that life is calmer for everyone. This is typical of this kind of journalism that plays the false equation card that both sides are equal. Life for Palestinians is still check points, bulldozed houses (even inside Israel, Arab kids expelled from public schools because they are Arab and on and on.
Another good example was a recent article about settlements with the photo of a child and a ,small shack. Why not show US Americans the common settlement of True Value Hardware stores, green grass and swimming pools.
When the Times equates a few qassam rockets, home made and not much accuracy, with one of the largest military in the world , more F-16 planes than anyone and an illegal nuclear power is absurd.
I wonder if the Times will bother with the story about the schools in Petah Tikvah refusing to enroll Ethiopian students.
What should we expect from the NY Times? I still do the crossword puzzles. Their views on so many parts of the world are warped, esp Israel and Venezuela. They are not at all trusted by me. Remember Judith Miller……….