Last week Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that "pro-Palestinian extremists have sought the head of Ethan Bronner." This is not true. Among those who have pushed for Bronner to be reassigned (not fired) are NYT public editor Clark Hoyt, Alison Weir, Ali Abunimah, and, I believe, MJ Rosenberg and Richard Silverstein. None of them is an extremist
Goldberg’s characterization is a strategic one. He is trying to marginalize a political current that, yes, wants Palestinians to at last have the right of political self-determination. This current has gained power because of his and other establishment reporters’ support for the disastrous Iraq war, and for the Gaza sequel.
"The strategy," Naomi Klein said, with her usual insight, last night in New York at a fundraiser for Jewish Voice for Peace, is "to shame, to embarrass, and to extremize us when we say perfectly reasonable things." Extremize: to force outside the main stream. And Klein tied this silencing strategy into the far-more-threatening Israeli strategy: arresting and detaining Mohammed Othman and Jamal Juma’ and other Palestinian human-rights activists merely for speaking out in Europe.
Well it is no longer working. As Klein pointed out, the work of JVP and the 75 people in that NY apartment last night is to find one another, to build a community, so that we understand that we are not alone, and we are not extremists. "This is a group that cannot be intimidated."
(PS, re Bronner. Myself I want the Times to assign a reporter of Palestinian background to the Jerusalem bureau. It’s an issue of balance. Weir makes the point, here, that there are just too many reporters in Israel with intimate connections to that state.)
