The New York Times has an important editorial today about cab drivers using their cell phones. A terrible trend for the upper-middle-class readers of the Times!
Still no editorial about the Judge Goldstone report that says the people of Gaza are being persecuted. Says James North (who commented along these lines earlier): "The blackout continues. No news story, no followup, no analysis. No editorial–though they found room for an editorial notebook the other day about apple picking in upstate New York.
"And I’m not telling them what their opinion should be. But I want them to have an opinion about this important report. Though I can guess what it would be."
Are you shocked?
"No. I’m not shocked. But I’m surprised. And I’m not that easily surprised."
I believe the Times is avoiding this subject–apart from the small op-ed from Landau the other day– because it is so important, it is a hammer blow. It is as Richard Falk has said, a historic contribution to the Palestinian struggle for justice. And any effort to weasel about that fact ala the Obama administration, or try and counter Judge Goldstone’s factual assertions, well, it would be transparent.
These are Mondo times in which we live. A story of huge international significance is too hot to handle for “the newspaper of record.” Jay Leno made a telling joke about the NYT on his new show the other night. Said that the NY Times had just announced good news, that more people were reading the news than ever before. “The bad news was that I read about it on the Internet.”
The blackout of the Goldstone UN report continues on Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Ed Show etc. Maybe they will tell continue to tell us for the thousandth time that Joe Wilson yelled “you lie” during President Obama health care speech
Yeah, it will be “you lie” or another sicko murder case that will have people on the whodunit trail…Maybe another politician’s affair will come out.
Oh wait.. we’ve got John Edwards about to perform his song and dance…
Did you hear Amy Goodman’s interview with Professor Norman Finkelstein on the Goldstone Report?
link to democracynow.org
“NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: The report found that the Palestinians were guilty of war crimes because of its indiscriminate and intentional firing on civilians in Israel. I’m not trying to make any apologies, but I want to get the facts right. The Goldstone report, like the Amnesty report and the others, you have to look carefully at the proportions. About nine-tenths—literally, about nine-tenths of the Goldstone report, like the Dugard report, like the Amnesty report, about nine-tenths was devoted to Israeli war crimes; about one-tenth was devoted to Palestinian war crimes. And you have to understand why, because you have to look at the comparable damage. The ratio of killings was about a hundred to one: about—exactly thirteen on the Israeli side, about fourteen hundred on the Palestinian side. If you look at the damage, the damage is actually quite astonishing. Israel just systematically blasted everything in sight and reduced it to rubble, whereas on the Israeli side they say that several houses were damaged and one was almost completely destroyed. So if you look at the facts, the facts on the ground, the proportions in the reports, including the Goldstone report, are correct. It’s about ten to one.
And that’s why yesterday’s—or today’s headline in the New York Times is so misleading. It’s like a Pravda headline. It says the Goldstone report finds both sides guilty of war crimes. Well, that’s technically true, but an accurate headline would have read, “Goldstone reports Israel guilty of massive war crimes and also faults Hamas.” That’s what a true headline would have read. ”
Norman points out how this report
“NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: I personally don’t think that’s yet going to go very far, because the US has effective power to block it.
What’s significant about the report, in my opinion, and what’s significant about what happened in Gaza, I think it marks a major turning point. It’s like the Sharpville massacre in South Africa. Now, Sharpville is not Soweto, but Sharpville was a turning point. Richard Goldstone is a liberal. Richard Goldstone is very supportive of Israel. And it’s now marking the breakup of liberal Jewish support for Israel. And as we both know and as all of your listeners know, Jews are overwhelmingly liberal in their sentiment. Seventy-nine percent of Jews in the last election voted for Obama. And what you’re seeing now is the breakup of Jewish support for Israel.
You saw during the Gaza massacre you had some of the old-timers like Alan Dershowitz, Michael Walzer, characters—Martin Peretz, characters like that, you know, kind of comical figures coming out supporting Israel. But if you looked at the younger Jewish—the younger Jewish constituency—bloggers like Matt Yglesias, Glenn Greenwald and so forth—they all opposed the Gaza massacre from almost like day one or day two. And then you had significant defections, like Andrew Sullivan, who—not Jewish, but still a significant figure, who also came out against the Gaza massacre.
So I think now what you’re seeing, especially with the Goldstone report, especially with his stature, especially because he’s Jewish, especially because he’s a liberal, what it’s signaling now, is the breakup of Jewish support and liberal support—and those are basically the same thing—the breakup of liberal Jewish support for Israel. “
Not an editorial, but the NYT reported on Israel’s rejection of the Goldstone report a couple days ago here. Very insightful. That is, it made very good use of such insights as Gerald Steinberg’s, president of NGO Monitor—except, the Times correspondents (Isabel Kershner is the lead here) identify him as “a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University and a leading force in Israel against what some here consider the politicized nature of human rights discourse.” He’s the leading force, and you are definitely the avid follower, aren’t you? Elsewhere, Steinberg and others are referred to as “experts”. The piece was focused on Israeli opinion, not that Palestinian opinions matter anyway.
The can’t hide from it forever. I remember during the Lebannon invasion in 2006, the New York Times was asleep at the wheel. Is this a coincidence? I thought it’s the most liberal paper out there? Shame, shame :(
I saw an article on HuffPost this morning by Phil.
link to huffingtonpost.com
The NYT has always been a cowardly establishment paper, with intermittent moments when they’d step out of that role. But they never leave it for long. When the Obama Administration dissed Goldstone’s report, that was enough for the NYT. They don’t have to take it seriously, at least not for now.