MJ Rosenberg lands on the Bronner story and says that the son’s decision reflects the family’s devotion to Israel, and puts a huge question under Bronner’s objectivity. He draws the most important lesson from the drama, a lesson that is very heartening indeed:
Suddenly the New York Times feels the need to deal with its critics who argue that an intense attachment to Israel obscures objective judgement on the Middle East.
This is new. Until very recently the assumption was that the Israeli position was, by definition, the neutral, disinterested position.
Read any Tom Friedman column on the Middle East. The underlying assumption of any Friedman column is that if it’s good for Israel, it’s good for America. It’s right.
This is truly a door-opener, and a new world. We’re coming in. I repeat that this drama will not end without Bronner’s reassignment (but executive editor Bill Keller is dug in) or the addition of an Arab-American or Palestinian reporter to the Times’ (West) Jerusalem bureau. Or this idea from public editor Dan Okrent writing on the issue–"The Hottest Button"–four years ago, and making a reasonable suggestion. Four years have passed; and the Times has not done the right thing.
It [claimed objectivity] is limited by geography. The Times, like virtually every American news organization, maintains its bureau in West Jerusalem. Its reporters and their families shop in the same markets, walk the same streets and sit in the same cafes that have long been at risk of terrorist attack. Some advocates of the Palestinian cause call this "structural geographic bias."
If the reporters lived in Gaza or Ramallah, this argument goes, they would feel exposed to the daily struggles and dangers of life behind Palestinian lines and would presumably become more empathetic toward the Palestinians.
I don’t know about empathy, but I do know that the angle of vision determines what you see. A reporter based in secular, Europeanized Tel Aviv would experience an Israel vastly different from one living in Jerusalem; a reporter with a home in Ramallah would most likely find an entirely different world. The Times ought to give it a try.
Jerusalem is 16km from Ramallah. This is the distance I travel in twenty minutes, every week, on the back of a motorcycle, to Dapa, the port village on this island, to do shopping.
Tel Aviv to Ramallah is rather further.
45-55 minutes via the motorway excluding traffic at the entrance of either metropolitan area, which depending on time of day can add an hour. Crossing the checkpoint from the Palestinian governed part of the West Bank to the Israeli part on the return trip can vary from a few minutes to over an hour depending on whether you have proper paperwork and what the security preparedness is (as in long lines with Bush’s visit to Jerusalem and Ramallah).
link to answers.yahoo.com
Richard, “on the back of a motorcycle”? What is holding you back? Get trained and certified (shouldn’t take more than a week-end) and get your own bike.
Just because so much of the world suffers so horribly doesn’t mean you can’t spend a few minutes in the trancendant joy of counter-steering.
Mooser – on a small island, with mostly very bad unpaved roads, there is no point in having a car or bike, because there’s nowhere much to go. The local transport system is by habal-habal, extended-pillion bikes that can take up to six small local passengers (I’ve seen 8), or one big one. The name means ‘Makin’ Bacon’ (pig copulation) because the passengers have to sit very intimately to fit onto the damned things.
The major point of my post was to show the very, very small distances in Israel and the West Bank, and the timing of 20 minutes from Ramallah to Jerusalem was theoretical; no Palestinian could expect to do the trip in under an hour or two, while I can travel the same distance (and so could a known foreign reporter) in no time. My average speed of 48km/hr (30mph) is not exactly flying along (and this road is actually paved for its whole length). Last rainy season we had to disembark from bikes to take a canoe across the flooded parts of it.
You live in Dapa, Philippines? Wow. The reach of Mondoweiss is truly amazing.
Part of Bronner’s son’s motivation to join the IDF, like so many American emigres to Israel, is to act out his white racist fantasies. It makes you wonder what kind of home life Ethan Bronner provided to his son that encouraged such thinking.
Are you suggesting that Bronner’s son, and many American emigres to Israel, approve of David Duke, for example? If not, what do you mean by “white racist fantasies?”
Or it could just be that he attended an Israeli high school and wanted to do what all his friends were doing, or what Israeli society primes its young men and women to do – all the more so if he attended an “elite” school. I don’t know the extent of the Bronner family’s integration into Israeli society.
That sounds more plausible to me.
Is plausible Shmuel, even though this might be the primary motivation (to follow the crowd, etc.), it still does not dismiss the activity from “white racist fantasies,” or should i say realities? It does not matter what the son or the father might have planned, it matters what the IDF is involved in deeply and daily with regard to the Palestinians.
Ergo, it would not matter if I joined the US forces for the adventure or the education (benefits), that is, it does not matter to the US forces. Either way I may end up on the front line in Iraq and Afghanistan in a murderous colonial exercise. Certainly not to engage in a so-called “war on terror,” just like the IDF is not primarily about defending Israel but carrying out the designs of the state.
to act out his white racist fantasies
there are lots of possibilities. if he is looking towards a future in politics or business he might think it is helpful. i have never understood why it is a sign of anti semitism to talk about dual loyalty when showing a devotion to israel is practically required for political longevity these days. how much more loyalty can one show than joining the military of a foreign country? obviously many american zionists are loyal to israel, that goes without saying and sometimes it’s worn like a badge of honor.
I really don’t think Jr. is the problem. This is about his dad and his dad’s employer.
Maybe Mom has a bit of influence on the intrepid journalist’s objective take on all things
happening in Israel and its occupied lands? And, yes, Dad’s not working for
the Toledo (Ohio) Blade after all.
i wasn’t arguing jr’s ‘the problem’ wrt the topic. i was responding to what les said and my comments were directed at possibilities of why the son might join the idf, aside from racist fantasies or doing what your friends are doing. i don’t know if the kid plans on staying in israel but i do know there are many benefits to citizenship open to those serve vs not and i imagine to certain segments of american society serving in the idf is considered a plus as well.
Sorry if I sounded overly critical, annie. There are lots of reasons kids go into the army in Israel – those who have a choice that is (as Bronner Sr. implied aboout his son). I have a niece and a nephew in the army right now. I would have been enormously proud of them had they refused to serve, but I really can’t blame them. I can only hope they don’t do anything particularly horrible during their service. The only real issue here, beyond Israeli militarism in general, is one of biased media coverage and conflict of interest.
The kid’s problem is that he is an American citizen who joined a foreign army when his own country is involved in two wars, and crying out for troops. The kid’s a traitor in American military terms.
So the traitor’s father works as Bureau Chief for the most respected paper in the USA for a decade and comes up with some ferkaktah story that he and he alone is sufficient to assure he can maintain objectivity — what if war with Iran broke out? — and his editor in NYC goes along with it, even though the following are the ethics rules of the august newspaper:
link to nytco.com
Imagine if all those kids who volunteer for the US Army & Marines instead
joined the military force of whatever foreign country they most ethnically identify with? Why, we’d have to reinstate conscription. BTW, US males commit a crime if they do not register with the US Selective Service. There’s a notice of same in every US post office. It’s always interesting to see which laws on the books get enforced, and which do not.
You can infer a great deal about the dad’s loyalties from the fact that he brought up his kid in a way that led to him joining the IDF.
that’s ok shmuel, i just thought maybe you missed my meaning.
i wouldn’t go so far as citizen accusing one of being a traitor for serving in a foreign army (as long as we weren’t at war with them) but it seems absurd to accuse people of anti semitism by pointing out the implication of dual loyalty.
it seem weird our governments policy is to freeze settlement growth and bronner’s son may end up serving as security for settlement expansion.
That’s easy Citizen, they’re called terrorists — look at the Somalis who went to fight in the civil war (if only it had been Spain!)
link to csmonitor.com
Annie, it’s a sign of anti semitism to even question in public the notion that the USA and Israel may not always have the same interests or values. I HEART Israel is the only T-shirt available. But you know that…
i know, it’s crazy. hopefully it won’t always be like this.
I know this one family very well. They are progressive without a racist bone in their body. Their oldest son had some severe social adjustment problems (undiagnosed but it looked a little like autism). He developed a terrible paranoia about pogroms happening hear in the US, moved to Israel and joined the IDF. He was as much of a misfit there as here and eventually returned. No reasonable person can blame the family for the choices he made.
But no one is blaming the Bronners. We’re just asking Ethan Bronner to recuse himself.
Ahmed I was replying to It makes you wonder what kind of home life Ethan Bronner provided to his son that encouraged such thinking.
That implies blame.
“No reasonable person can blame the family for the choices he made.”
Not after he becomes an adult.
Witty’s boy, of course, will never give up chabad. Life-long commitment, there.
I guess he finds peace in the incessant rituals, sort of like a pious Catholic mom murmuring with her rosary every night?
I think we need Phil’s take on Leon W’s attack on Andrew Sullivan…
Norman Finklestein on Ethan Bronner:
Finkelstein’s comments were slimy, misrepresentative, on Bronner and on Dershowitz.
The book “The Case for Israel” was important for its themes that were at least significantly accurate, even if there were holes (some large ones) in the documentation and support. The appreciation for the work, is appreciation of the articulation of the themes, particularly the willingness of the left to single out Israel for exagerated criticism. It deserves a great deal, but not blindly.
The Times does have a correspondent in Gaza, and Bronner himself spent 10 days in Gaza, and wrote insightful commentary during that time, that was not rah rah pro-Israel. It also definitely was not conforming to the leftist “Gazans are starving” theme.
Phil didn’t get to Gaza for another five months.
Themes? What themes? I’m looking forward to your review of Dersh’s book.
Please do so. I have Beyond Chutzpah here, so it shouldn’t difficult to counter your bullshit.
shouldn’t be difficult*
“Themes? What themes? I’m looking forward to your review of Dersh’s book.”
I wouldn’t be to hopeful about Witty answering this question. I suspect that like the Goldstone report, Witty hasn’t even read Dersh’s book and is going on second hand accounts from others.
“particularly the willingness of the left to single out Israel for exagerated criticism”
Its a real phenomena, that constructs a prejudice, repeated and repeated.
There’s a good reason that many people single out Israel for special criticism. It’s not just that Israel demands special favors. And it’s not even that it’s the right thing to do, given Israel’s stranglehold on American foreign policy in the Mid-East. Israel is perhaps the only country in the world that could wreck America’s future in a single afternoon.
All it would have to do is is what it has already repeatedly threatened to do, which is to say, bomb Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.
This would initiate a Mid-East war in which Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping. The United States would enter the war in support of Israel (with the rest of the world on the other side). Oil would soar to $300 a barrel. The US economy would collapse, putting this country in a depression from which it would not recover for an entire generation.
So I agree that Israel gets special criticism. But the reason is that Israel is a loose cannon and, if someone doesn’t restrain it, it’s going to shoot the US in the foot.
I see that RW’s pretense of being a “liberal” is slipping. The hunger of Gaza is now a “leftist” lie.
the leftist “Gazans are starving” theme.
as compared to the ‘israel diet’ theme? sometimes you’re a real douche bag witty. have you checked out gaza mathematics? these are idf numbers.
appreciation of the articulation of the themes, particularly the willingness of the left to single out Israel for exagerated criticism.
oh yawn. willingness? as if there was ever a reluctance? that theme has been articulated ad nauseum every which way. it’s the talking pt d’jour.. that poor little israel is picked on and the crimes are exaggerated. israel defender’s appreciation extends to any and all supporters even the christian fanatics. but dershowitz’s “articulation”? oh my. make that a double yawn.
oh my, reading comprehension. i thought witty was expanding on dershowitz’s willingness. rest assured the willingness of the left is being attacked on a daily basis. there’s an army of campus watchers looming lest our youth get infected.
Bullshit Witty, complete bullshit, I personally have read both Dershowitz’s book and Finkelstein’s. You have to be a dunce not to see that it was lifted whole cloth including even ellipses (Dershowitz, A Case For Israel), from what is know to be a fraud in the academic community without question – Peters, From Time Immemorial. So, ostensibly (because Dershowitz said he wrote it), he is not only a plagiarist, but someone who lifts hoax’s. Totally irreparable damage to any serious conversation about the conflict, and anyone who praises it (Dershowitz book) is a dunce (I find most “experts” today worthy of sitting with dunce caps in corners on this subject) or a totally disingenuous.
The question of Gazans relative welfare is an important one, one that Bronner articulated in March, four months before Phil.
Phil chose to comment at that time on what irritated him, rather than on what he agreed with and gathered insight and stimulation to further question.
Hatchets. Maybe the appearance of conflict of interest is significant enough for the Times to change. It does have a reputation of independance to preserve, much as an accountant needs to maintain both the substance and the appearance of independance.
Phil does too though.
Yeah right, Witty, you’re about as independent as Moody’s on the worth of stock. You’re very much a part of the problem the whole USA is now paying for.
From Angry Arab News Service (Phil, add him to the blogroll!):
link to angryarab.blogspot.com
This evening Bronner is speaking in Santa Barbara. Perhaps someone can ask him about this reporting.
Well, that will really help Taghreed’s career, being reported as dissing her bureau chief to a radically dissenting blog.
Amazing Witty, that’s all you got out of that statement, that Taghreed dissed her boss. How dare she bite the hand that fed her! And forget about making her Jerusalem bureau chief!
It also definitely was not conforming to the leftist “Gazans are starving” theme.
Theme? “leftist “Gazans are starving” theme?” You callow, jejune, cruel human being.
Israel: End Gaza’s Humanitarian Crisis at Once
link to hrw.org
And the UN:
link to ochaopt.org
Nothing penetrates Witty’s ziocaine cloud. Yet he feels we should all always remember The Shoah. Humanity is not so one-sided:
link to globalresearch.ca
Dick Witty’s defending the slimy Dershowitz. Gee, what a surprise. Pray tell, Dicky, what were Dershie’s “significantly accurate” and important themes? You didn’t name them. Why not? I suggest readers go here to get a tiny taste of Dershie’s pattern–don’t forget to read the comments too:
link to thehasbarabuster.blogspot.com
What’s worse than taking the adversarial process of US law (which assumes an unbiased judge, or jury), but only taking one side, and pretending it’s objective?
We should take the Bronner boy’s enlistment in the Israeli army as an expression of solidarity with his mother and a public rejection of his father, a self hating Jew.
why? where do you come up w/this stuff?
They issue it at Troll Central.
I would like to think this comment is sarcastic.
Sarcasm… Zionism….
…sometimes its hard to tell the difference. I’m guessing rabid Zionism in this case.
I love my friends Hannah Arendt
Looking at this situation from a down to earth perspective; is Bronner now “embedded” in the IDF?
I always felt that the Bush administration’s move of embedding reporters in specific units skewed the reporting from Iraq.
How can a reporter be objective having lived with the someone; become familiar with their beliefs, attitudes, habits, the whole person, even their family…not just the soldier ? It must become a relationship like that of two very close friends; brother and brother; father and son….wait, that sounds familiar.
Conflict of interest? Bias? loss of objectivity? Bronner is able to rise above them? Does he also walk on water?
Gosh, do you think that if any soldier in the unit read something he didn’t like he could blow your head off has any bearing on it?
Gee Mooser, nothing like tossing out a smoky turd, eh? Why don’t you actually address Seeingformlyself’ s comment?
American guilt might be limited by noting that the UK and Euro press seems to be no less restricted to an essentially Israeli point of view. You rightly say that the result is partiality. Another effect is to make the Palestinian world not only alien but obscure: we can find out, if we wish to, about the intricate factionalism of Israeli politics but it’s near impossible to find out how factions and ideologies are faring on the Palestinian side of the fence, I should say wall.
I’m off for a couple of weeks to Panama, where there are said both still to be traces of old-fashioned can’t-join-our-club anti-Semitism and growing Israeli influence.
“old-fashioned can’t-join-our-club anti-Semitism and growing Israeli influence.”
Two things that actually work very well together.
Yep, you got that right. Born in the same bed. Too bad for the whole world.
The Bronner case made BBC World too. I picked up parts of a discussion. AbuKhalil took part in a discussion and I think Hoyt was there too. The moderator tried to limit the discussion to whether Bronner’s son being in the IDF would cause problems with his reporting, but the discussion broadened and enough arguments were put forward. Someone used the symmetry argument, what if one of the Iranian reporters would have a son that enlisted in some part of the Iranian army, maybe it was republican guards. The moderator as well as Hoyt used the argument that Bronner must be doing right since many people claim he’s anti-Israel. This keeps popping up. It’s a journalist’s favorite.
I believe that Keller wants to restrict the issue to whether Bronner’s son’s enlistment would cause a conflict of interest, while most critics react to the fact as a symptom of where Bronner’s stands. Hoyt, in using the concept “appearance of conflict of interest” is all over the spectrum. Here’s what Rosenberg says :reflects the family’s devotion to Israel.
For Keller I think a key word now is containment.
LOL. Everyone know that the NYT would never give a Palestinian, USA born or not, a job reporting on the Middle East. It’s that simple.
The BBC, much like CNN, tends to engage in, as you said, “containment”, i.e. damage control. They don’t ignore the story altogether, but instead reframe it so as to put their own spin on it.
link to youtube.com
It’s interesting that the red herring “_______ has become so repressive a regime…” is quite popular. It works in regard to Afghanistan and it works on Iran.
If domestic repression is cause for attacking any country, then how come the US, the beacon of freedom that it is, has yet to attack Israel? What about attacking Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Texas?
It seems Hillary was abducted years ago by Bill’s goon squads and now we’re left with a Hillary on strings, an empty shell, played like a marionette by AIPAC puppeteers.
Check out what is going on over at the Seminal when anyone writes an opposing view about Congressman Grayson over at Firedoglake. You get threatened or called ‘an anti semite
The Story That No One Will Tell
By: Alan Grayson Tuesday February 9, 2010 11:37 am
link to seminal.firedoglake.com
I posted Phillips’ article about Rep Grayson. Here is the response
RBG February 9th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
40
In response to Leen @ 38 (show text)
Actually, I’m trying to let people talk about the various positions of Rep. Grayson without obsessing about one single issue.
replyReply
RBG February 9th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
44
In response to Leen @ 42 (show text)
I said four hours ago that you’d made your point.
What more do I need to say?
replyReply
Loo Hoo. February 9th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
45
In response to mgloraine @ 43 (show text)
You deserve some whining rights. I admire your gumption.
replyReply
RBG February 9th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
46
In response to BillWalker @ 41 (show text)
I’m going to make a feeble attempt to stop trashing the good congressman’s thread.
If you’d like to read my reply, it will be in this this thread.
replyReply
Blutodog February 9th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
47
In response to bluebutterfly @ 25 (show text)
I never said I wasn’t pro-Israel. It wasn’t about me. It’s about Grayson. I don’t think his being pro-Israel makes him a bad guy like many of u obviously do.
This is why Grayson came to FDL///Seminal. He is losing to Kucinich in the progressive contest. And he should lose
link to fdlaction.firedoglake.com
Kucinich Blows Grayson Out Of #1 Spot, Now Ahead by 11,000+ Votes in FDL Fire Dog Contest
Go over and vote for Kucinich. He is a progressive across the board.
Phillip wondering if you would be willing to go over and ask Grayson some tough questions. I may be close to getting banned because of questioning RBG the moderator with an agenda. Shutting down certain debates
link to seminal.firedoglake.com
The question of Gazans relative welfare is an important one, one that Bronner articulated in March, four months before Phil.
Exactly. Let’s not forget that it was thanks to Bronner’s reporting that the US public learned about the hardships suffered by Gazans, which led to the nationwide demonstrations against the Israeli policy that eventually put an end to the siege of the strip.
That’s why we need compassion, not anger.
Hasbara Buster
RP, Hasbara Buster forgot his snark tags