I’m informed that before the Daily Planet in Berkeley came under boycott pressure for publishing articles critical of Israel, a story picked up in the NYT, the Coastal Post in Bolinas suffered. A free news monthly in Marin County, the Coastal Post regularly criticizes Israel. Almost as much as we do! But the paper’s been under incredible financial pressure. You’ll see that the pressure got to Whole Foods.
Here’s the Point Reyes Light’s coverage of the campaign:
After the May issue, newspaper thefts intensified. Craig Slater, the Coastal Post’s distributor, said issues were stolen from approximately 20 locations. At a food store in Fairfax alone, thousands of papers went missing.
In July 2008, Dr. Michael Franzblau, a West Marin resident, went before the city council in San Rafael and unsuccessfully lobbied to have the Coastal Post removed from City Hall. In his testimony, Franzblau called the newspaper’s editorial policy anti-Zionist and Anti-Semitic.
In the Coastal Post’s November 2008 issue, Dr. Edward W. Miller, a columnist who writes regularly on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, told of the newspaper’s woes. The Coastal Post had lost a third of its advertisers and 10 to 12 distribution locations as a result of individuals calling and writing advertisers to stop placing ads.
Whole Foods in Mill Valley pulled the May issue after customers complained. One of the company’s spokespersons said the location presently did not offer the Coastal Post.
The mounting advertising losses caused a financial crisis in late 2008. In a typical year, the paper’s expenses amounted to approximately $20,000. [Publisher Don] Deane estimated the paper had lost at least $14,000 in ad revenue.
“Losing the advertising really put us in the hole,” he said.
And why wasn’t this analysis in the Times piece on the Berkeley Daily Planet:
Both Deane and the Coastal Post have been labeled both anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic, raising questions about the difference between the terms and whether the paper and its publisher deserve either label….
“Anti-Semitism has absolutely nothing to do with criticism of Israel, even the most virulent criticism of Israel,” said Joel Beinin, the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History at Stanford University. “Anti-Semitism is disparaging the Jews as a people. It is a blanket condemnation.”
Related posts:
- Desperation: Canadian newspaper likens Naomi Klein to…. Goebbels
- The third rail shrugs (Washington Post publishes Walt on Israel lobby)
- At last, Israel lobby is becoming fair game for journalistic investigation
- conspiracy theory, or Rube Goldberg device: the lobby in action
- conspiracy theory, or Rube Goldberg device: the lobby in action
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RE: “Another California newspaper targeted by Israel lobby because of heretical statements”
MY COMMENT: They have succeeded in so intimidating the mainstream media (including NPR/PBS) that virtually no criticism of Israel appears in it. Consequently, they are now going after the ‘alternative’ media.
SEE: “ADL, YouTube launch partnership to fight video abuse”, By Max Socol, “Jerusalem Post”, 12/15/08
(excerpts) The Anti-Defamation League announced Sunday its recent expansion into the world of YouTube, the on-line video-sharing site.
The US-based advocacy group has officially partnered with the digital mediapowerhouse in an effort to combat hate speech and other forms of abuse.
As the largest Web-video hub, YouTube relies primarily on its users to hunt down and delete inappropriate content, or to ban abusive members. While the extent of the ADL’s role in that process is not yet known, the organization has already made a place for itself in YouTube’s new “Abuse and Safety Center,” where users are given advice directly from the ADL on how to confront hate speech…
…YouTube’s community guidelines define hate speech as “content that promotes hatred against members of a protected group” – a religious or ethnic minority, for example – without discussing the question of intent.
It is not clear what role, if any, the ADL will have in reshaping YouTube policy in this regard. As of now, the ADL appears merely to be supplementing YouTube’s current abuse-protection measures…
RE: “They have succeeded in so intimidating the mainstream media (including NPR/PBS) that virtually no criticism of Israel appears in it. – DICKERSON3870
ALSO SEE: ” San Francisco Chronicle Fires Reporter For Attending Peace Protest”, by Amy Goodman and Henry Norr, 04/24/03
(excerpt)…NORR: …And then there was another thing last summer I wrote in my technology column. I wrote a column about a $2 billion dollar, state of the art, high-tech factory that Intel owns in Israel. I wrote about the history of the land that that factory is on and about the Palestinian villagers that were there before. It’s a complicated story, but it happens that that land was subject to some special legal agreement. There were just two villages but the Israeli government had signed a treaty, an international agreement, protecting the rights and property of the Palestinians who lived there back in 1948 for historical reasons. And then of course, almost immediately after they signed the agreement, they proceeded to do what they did elsewhere in Palestine: chase and terrorize the local residents out of their villages. They eventually converted that area into what they call an economic-development zone.
Many years later, in the 90s, Intel happened to choose it as the site for this state-of-the-art fancy factory. So I wrote about that kind of as a metaphor perhaps, for Israel’s so-called first-world high-tech economy and the foundations it sits on. Needless to say I actually I got a tremendous amount of support. I was amazed. Most of the email I got about the column was supportive and appreciative. But the local pro-Israeli Zionist lobby was outraged and the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco, which is kind of the cheerleader coordinator for those forces apparently, was outraged and, I found out later because nobody at the Chronicle told me, but apparently they came and demanded an immediate meeting to object to my column…
ENTIRE TRANSCRIPT – http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0424-04.htm
RE: “ADL, YouTube launch partnership to fight video abuse”, By Max Socol, “Jerusalem Post”, 12/15/08
MY COMMENT : I neglected to include the link to the entire article.
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1228728196431&pagename=JPArticle/ShowFull
SEE ALSO: “Anti-Defamation League joins YouTube to fight online hate”, By Haaretz Service, 07/31/09
LINK – http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1046428.html
AND SEE: “Haitham Sabbah – YouTube Partners with MOSSAD – ADL”, 12/12/08, Palestine Think Tank
LINK – http://palestinethinktank.com/2008/12/12/youtube-partners-with-mossad-adl/
Dickerson, dude, this is another example of “cutting the grass” in America. Bully every paper that dares to discuss the I/P conflict with a tilt toward the Palestinians.
Just wait until Foxy Abe Foxman manages to push through new “hate speech” legislation that will make everyone on the Mondoweiss website criminally liable. Coming soon to an AIPAC-controlled Congressman near you.
It looks like the hate crimes bill is merely waiting for the eager Obama’s signature:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/us/politics/23hate.html?scp=5&sq=&st=nyt
Makes me wonder why he has not signed it yet. Mulling over those glass cathedral
tent Christians’ vote, the one’s who think the provisions of the bill could easily be used to go after pastors who rail against homosexuality? Oscar, is right, the bill
as worded can be used to go after Phil and Adam, and a lot of regular commenters on this site.
That bill criminalizes as hate crimes, certain crimes that involve gender and sexual orientation. Nowhere in the bill does it in any way, shape, or form criminalize anti-Zionist or anti-Israeli thought, writings, or behavior.
They hate us for our freedom.
Yep, what fool has any reason to think they hate us for our foreign policy in the middle east? Just because that’s what the WTC attackers said in ‘93 and ‘01?
Right. They hate us for our freedoms. So we’re supposed to hate them for hating our freedoms, is that the premise? Clash of civilizations. Brought to you by the Office of Special Plans.
Who did you think I was referring to there?
What is the article about?
It’s true, the famous Bush catchphrase is yet another Zionist projection. The Israel Lobby hates us for our freedom.
Where is a billionaire when one is needed?
Billions for settlements, but not a few crummy thousand bucks for freedom of speech.
Free speech actually isn’t free in the United States. Just ask the Supreme Court.
Here’s a recent article that addresses the mental illness afflicting Israel, the USA regime,
and Dick Witty, and the latest batch of hasbara agents regularly commenting on this site:
http://www.truthout.org/1114097
Naturally it appeared in the Israeli media, not Uncle Sam’s.
BTW, didn’t Phil once work for the Observer; and did it basically tell Phil he wasn’t wanted? And so now, Trump’s little girl is a converted Zionist? Who said assimilation is a silent holocaust; seems more like a security blanket for Israel.
RE: “a recent article that addresses the mental illness afflicting Israel, the USA regime” – http://www.truthout.org/1114097 ( Israel’s “Pathology” – by: Ira Chernus, 11/14/09, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
MY COMMENTS: Thanks. I had missed this excellent article by Chernus, although I remember reading at least one of Henry Siegman’s commentaries regarding Israel’s “pathology” in the U.K. press (LRB, Independent or Guardian).
(Chernus excerpt) … The Jewish Israeli body politic is diseased, that one man writes, because it has not adjusted to the Jews’ reentry into history with a state of their own. Too many Jews are still stuck in the ancient feeling of powerlessness and victimhood.
Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told Israelis that their country is militarily powerful, and neither friendless nor at risk. They should therefore stop thinking and acting like victims. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, says that the whole world is against Israel and that Israelis are at risk of another Holocaust. That message of Jewish weakness and victimhood appeals to enough voters to keep him in power.
Gripped by such unrealistic fears, Israelis refuse Obama’s call to stop expanding settlements and start compromising for peace. Israel’s resistance to Obama’s serious peace effort has been called “nothing less than pathological.”…
…But who would write such a fierce attack, calling Israelis sick with “victimhood”? Some anti-Semitic apologist for Israel’s enemies? Nope. It’s Henry Siegman, who spent sixteen years as executive director of the American Jewish Congress, one of the most powerful and respected mainstream organizations in the US Jewish community. With his vast experience inside the Israeli and American Jewish communities, he knows that the evidence to support his diagnosis is everywhere.
Just look at the front page of any Israeli newspaper on any given day, where a surprising percentage of the stories answer the same central question: Who is threatening / hating / vilifying Israel and the Jews today? Iran, with its supposedly terrifying nuclear threat, continues to make the front page nearly every day. And Israel remains obsessed with its fear of the Goldstone Report – written by an eminent Zionist jurist who has now been magically transformed into an “enemy of Israel” – when the rest of the world has long since forgotten it…
SIOURCE – http://www.truthout.org/1114097
RE: Israel’s “pathology”
ALSO SEE: “World powers demand Iran mothball nuclear site”, By Mark Heinrich, REUTERS, 11/26/09
(relevant excerpt) …The Washington Post reported on Wednesday U.S. officials had persuaded Beijing that big power unity to rein in Iran was now indispensable because Israel saw Iran’s nuclear drive as an “existential” threat that could lead to a Middle East war, stopping Iranian oil exports crucial to China’s booming economy…
[In other words, delusional, paranoid 'Israel the Psycho' (who refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) sees Iran's nuclear program (legal, allowed and inspected under the non-proliferation treaty as signed by Iran) as an "existential threat" and will quite possibly bomb it; thereby setting off a Middle East war and stopping Iranian oil exports crucial to the economies of the industrialized countries (excepting perhaps Israel who has been allocated a portion of the U.S. Strategic Oil Reserves by the U. S. Congress). So everybody had better do whatever it takes to mollify the delusional, paranoid 'Israel the Psycho'; no matter that other courses of action might make a lot more sense to the more rational nations of the world. This is normally called "enabling"! Remember Chamberlain's "peace in our time"?]
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE5AP1CP20091126
Man, it’s like dealing with a retarded relative that refuses to take its medication.
That was wrong. Apologies.
Apology accepted! What’s needed is an intervention, but this country’s domestic politics prohibit it as to Israel.
Here’s another – Shulamit Aloni, 81 year old former MK
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3812366,00.html
RE: “Here’s another…” – potsherd
AND ANOTHER: “OpEdNews – Article: The Obama Puppet — The world’s least powerful man”, By Paul Craig Roberts, 12/01/09
(excerpts) It didn’t take the Israel Lobby very long to bring President Obama to heel regarding his prohibition against further illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Obama discovered that a mere American president is powerless when confronted by the Israel Lobby and that the United States simply is not allowed a Middle East policy separate from Israel’s….
…The US invasion of Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with American national interests. It had to do with armaments profits and with eliminating an obstacle to Israeli territorial expansion. The cost of the war, aside from the $3 trillion, was over 4,000 dead Americans, over 30,000 wounded and maimed Americans, tens of thousands of broken American marriages and lost careers, one million dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, and a destroyed country.
All of this was done for the profits of the military/security complex and to make paranoid Israel, armed with 200 nuclear weapons, feel “secure.”(my emphasis)….
SOURCE – http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Obama-Puppet–The-wo-by-Paul-Craig-Roberts-091201-447.html
Citizen,
That article is a must-read for everyone on this board:
Israel’s “Pathology”
Saturday 14 November 2009
by: Ira Chernus, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
The statement that there is no criticism of Israeli policies and practices in the media, is a ludicrous statement.
Even in the repeated Bronner reports are criticisms of Israel’s policies, and definitions of consequences on civilians from those policies.
Certainly in Haaretz and other Israeli papers (mainstream media) there is MUCH criticism of Israeli policies and practices.
It is entirely unrealistic, undesirable, that mainstream press adopt the language of radical dissent.
Maybe there should be incrementally more criticism of Israeli policies, but thats as far as it goes.
A well-constructed documentary film on long-term and recently Israeli/Palestinian history would speak more.
I don’t think you grasp the enormity of Operation Cast Lead. It is the enormous turd in our punch bowl. I might not ever go away. It will come under a chapter on smiting in a later testament.
“It is entirely unrealistic, undesirable, that mainstream press adopt the language of radical dissent.”
Radical dissent consists in playing down and ignoring obvious atrocities committed by Israel on a regular basis. The measuring rod is not and will never be allowing these things to go unnoticed or with barely a mention, as if they were the “norm” of “the way things are supposed to be.”
So I object strongly to your radical dissent, and the continuous defense of the indefensible. I apply the same measuring rod to everyone, and if Israel wishes to wear the mantle of “state” it receives the same condemnation and criticism for its atrocities. It should have entered the arena of stiff penalties and sanctions years ago, however, since the USA insists on this radical dissent from normal relations it has now become the province of the people and we will expose it with vigor and see to it that the process of BDS is applied with clear intention.
Witty, you have no clue about the history of journalism, nor it’s purpose in a republic. It’s called The Fourth Estate for a reason.
Dissent, radical or otherwise and which itself would be dependent on whether the other Estates are listening, is essential and part of the job.
The Fourth Estate is often called the fourth arm of government for that reason. Politesse has absolutely nothing to do with it, neither does your notion of some sliding scale: incrementally more criticism of Israeli policies, but thats as far as it goes.
Your view of journalism is like that of Walter Lippmann, who thought average folk were too stupid or consumed with their lives to understand policy, so journalists were interpreters of policy. Lippmann was beloved by government leaders for this reason.
John Dewey thought the masses could understand if given the unvarnished facts. He said that journalists should be the watchdogs for the public, ferret out what they need to know, and peel back coverups and corruption. Most American now expect the same.
Nixon thought the publication of The Pentagon Papers in 1971 was an absolute act of radical dissent on the part of the NYT. Instead, it was their last act of courage.
“…as if the whole world hated them and were out to destroy their Jewish state.” Good link Citizen, the whole world does not have to destroy the “Jewish state,” it is doing a fine job of running toward its own destruction.
Yep, almost finished. What’s 6% growth a year.
All stolen from Palestinians, of course but hey, who’s counting?
A country where over half the teenagers don’t even qualify to graduate from high school doesn’t need enemies.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1130099.html
Another myth about Israel breaks up on the shoals of actual statistical data, huh.
Israel is dumbing down the Jews.
Why do we always dismiss what are opponent is saying as mere propaganda?
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2009-09/14/content_8689129.htm
Why did the 9/11 commission bury their own findings about the self-confessed motives
of the terrorists? As to both the 93 and 01 attacks on the WTC? And why didn’t the USA MSM reveal those motives, and why do they still keep mum? Not important, I guess.
FROM THE NYT ARTICLE ON THE “Daily Planet” in Berkeley
“We think that Ms. O’Malley is addicted to anti-Israel expression just as an alcoholic is to drinking,” Jim Sinkinson, who has led the campaign to discourage advertisers, wrote in an e-mail message. He is the publisher of Infocom Group, a media relations company. “If she wants to serve and please the East Bay Jewish community, she would be safer avoiding the subject entirely.” (my emphasis)
MY COMMENT: Who the hell does this Mr Sinkinson think he is? Ahmadinejad? Himmler?
The American Jewish version of the Stasi, sounds more like.
Joel Beinin’s definition of anti-semitism is no different than Yehuda Bauer’s, who heads up Yad Vashem The Holocaust History Museum in Israel.
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