A week ago we posted an important story (related by Felice Gelman) about two rabbis whose Op-Ed on Gaza was supposed to go online in an hour's time at a major newspaper last Hanukah when the authors were presented with a lot of Israeli-tilted questions about the piece. And the piece never ran.
Readers, some rabbis are very brave! Rabbi Brant Rosen got in touch with us to say that the piece was his and Alissa Wise's. And Wise agreed that we could use her name, too. Below, Rosen offers the piece, and then the newspaper's edits! Maybe the editor in question will offer his or her story about the censorship next?
Alissa Wise and I were the rabbis in question.
For the record, here’s the article that never saw the light of day. Not seasonally appropriate any more, but hopefully still relevant.
The paper was the Washington Post (the online “On Faith” section). [The edits follow the piece] I rejected these edits and offered links to substantiate my original claims. Things got stalemated, and by this point Hanukah was over, so it never ran in the end.
Light a Candle for Gaza
By Rabbi Brant Rosen and Rabbi Alissa WiseOn the morning of December 27, 2008, the sixth day of Hanukkah, Israel initiated a massive military assault against Gaza with “Operation Cast Lead.” The name of the operation was a reference to a popular Hanukkah song written by the venerated Israeli poet Chaim Nachman Bialik: “My teacher gave a dreidel to me/A dreidel of cast lead.”
When Israel’s military actions ended on January 18, some 1,400 Palestinians had been killed. Among the dead were hundreds of unarmed civilians, including over 300 children.
Personal testimonies from the Palestinians who lived through Cast Lead in Gaza indicate the profoundly tragic consequences of Israel’s military assault. Here is one such account – excerpted from Amnesty International’s 2009 Report, “Operation Cast Lead: 22 Days of Death and Destruction”:
After Sabah’s house was shelled I ran over there. She was on fire and was holding her baby girl Shahed, who was completely burned. Her husband and some of the children were dead and others were burning. Ambulances could not come because the area was surrounded by the Israeli army… We drove toward the nearest hospital, Kamal ‘Adwan hospital…On the way to al-‘Atatrah Square we saw Israeli soldiers and stopped, and suddenly, the soldiers shot at us. My son Matar and Muhammad-Hikmat were killed.
This Hanukkah, how will we Jews choose to commemorate a legacy such as this? Many of us will invariably retreat behind a veil of defensiveness, claiming Israel’s action was an appropriate, commensurate response to the threat posed by Hamas. Some of us might be troubled, but choose to look away from the hard and painful reality of this bloodshed. Still others may simply allow Gaza to become subsumed by the sheer volume of world crises that seem to call out for our attention.
This Hanukkah, however, we are asking the Jewish community to light a candle for Gaza.
After all, this is the season in which we rededicate our determination to create light amidst the darkness. And quite frankly, the time is long overdue for the American Jewish community to shine a light on the dark truth of “Operation Cast Lead.”
Indeed, we have been deeply complicit in keeping this truth away from the light of day. Two years later, Israel still refuses to conduct a credible, transparent and independent investigation of its actions in Gaza. The sole attempt at such a proper investigation, the Goldstone Report, was successfully blackballed and eventually quashed under a campaign spearheaded by the Israeli and the US governments – and largely supported by the American Jewish establishment.
This Hanukkah, we would also do well to shine a light on the larger context of the reality in Gaza. We cannot forget that Israel’s military assault occurred in the midst of a crushing blockade that Israel has imposed upon Gaza since January 2006.
As a result of this collective punishment:
- 80% of the Gazan population is dependent on international aid.
- 61% of the population is food insecure.
- The unemployment rate is approximately 39%, one of the highest in the world.
- Power outages usually last 4-6 hours a day and often longer.
- 60% of the population receives running water only once every 4 or 5 days, for 6-8 hours.
- 50 to 80 million liters of untreated or partially treated sewage are released into the sea every day.
- Approximately 90% of water supplied to Gaza residents is not suitable for drinking and is contaminated with salt and nitrates.
- 78% of homes with major damages from Operation Cast Lead have not been rebuilt.
(Source: Amnesty International USA Web Log, 11/29/10)
link to blog.amnestyusa.orgDespite Israel’s claims to the contrary, its blockade remains very much in force. According to highly detailed research conducted by the Israeli NGO Gisha, Israel consistently lets through less than half of the required truckloads of essential goods mandated by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Just weeks ago, European Union foreign policy chief Lady Catherine Ashton, speaking on behalf of all EU foreign ministers commented, “At the present time, we think that what’s happened with Gaza is unsatisfactory, the volume of goods is not increasing as significantly as it needs to.”
The most tangible way we can light a candle for Gaza is to support those who refuse to allow this crisis to remain the darkness. The most courageous example: the movement of civilian flotillas that seek to break the blockade with symbolic humanitarian cargo. The most recent flotilla tragically gained international attention last May when the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara was seized by Israeli commandos in a raid that left eight unarmed Turkish citizens and one Turkish-American citizen dead. (A recent report on the assault by a UN fact-finding mission said Israeli soldiers used “lethal force” in a “widespread and arbitrary manner, which caused an unnecessarily large number of persons to be killed or seriously injured,” and “carried out extralegal, arbitrary and summary executions prohibited by international human rights law.”)
Despite this tragedy (or perhaps because of it), the flotilla movement is growing steadily. Here in the US, a group of peace activists is seeking to add the first American boat, “The Audacity of Hope,” which they intend to launch next spring as part of an international flotilla from over a dozen European, Asian and North American countries.
The US Boat to Gaza organizing statement asserts:
“The Audacity of Hope” will be a passenger ship with approximately 40-60 Americans on board including a 4-5 member crew and a small number of press and media professionals. We will not carry more than symbolic cargo: just as the students who sat in at Woolworth counters in the 1960s were not doing so because they wanted lunch, our voyage will be an act of civil disobedience and non-violent challenge to an illegal blockade rather than a mission to import humanitarian cargo. By the same token, one of our objectives will be to transport two Gazan graduate students who have been invited to visit and speak at a US university, but who have been prevented from leaving Gaza by the Israeli and Egyptian governments. Additionally, we plan to bring out Gazan products, which “Stand for Justice” is purchasing from a Gazan company.
For those who seek justice in Gaza, the courageous activists who are willing to put their own bodies on the line are immensely deserving of our support.
On Hanukkah, the festival that enshrines the ongoing human struggle for freedom, the season that seeks to shed light on the dark places of our world, it is time for us to stand in solidarity with all who are oppressed.
It is time for us to light a candle for Gaza.
Now here are the edits that Rabbi Rosen says he was asked for:
On the morning of December 27, 2008, the sixth day of Hanukkah, Israel initiated responded to Hamas rocket fire and military weapon stockpiling with a massive military assault against in Gaza with named "Operation Cast Lead." The name of the operation was a reference to a popular Hanukkah song written by the venerated Israeli poet Chaim Nachman Bialik: "My teacher gave a dreidel to me/A dreidel of cast lead."
When Israel's military actions ended on January 18, some 1,400 Palestinians had been killed, according to some estimates. Among the dead were hundreds of more than 700 Hamas fighters, but also hundreds of unarmed civilians, including over more than 300 children.
Personal testimonies testimonials from the Palestinians who lived through Cast Lead in Gaza indicate the profoundly tragic consequences of Israel's military assault. Here is one such account - excerpted from Amnesty International's 2009 Report, "Operation Cast Lead: 22 Days of Death and Destruction":
After Sabah's house was shelled I ran over there. She was on fire and was holding her baby girl Shahed, who was completely burned. Her husband and some of the children were dead and others were burning. Ambulances could not come because the area was surrounded by the Israeli army... We drove toward the nearest hospital, Kamal 'Adwan hospital...On the way to al-'Atatrah Square we saw Israeli soldiers and stopped, and suddenly, the soldiers shot at us. My son Matar and Muhammad-Hikmat were killed.
This Hanukkah, how will we Jews choose to commemorate a legacy such as this? Many of us will invariably retreat behind a veil of defensiveness, claiming Israel's action was an appropriate, commensurate response to the threat posed by Hamas and that the high number of deaths were a consequence of Hamas using human shields. Some of us might be troubled, but choose to look away from the hard and painful reality of this bloodshed. Still others may simply allow Gaza to become subsumed by the sheer volume of world crises that seem to call out for our attention.
This Hanukkah, however, we are asking the Jewish community to light a candle for Gaza.
After all, this is the season in which we rededicate our determination to create light amidst the darkness. And quite frankly, the time is long overdue for the American Jewish community to shine a light on the dark truth of "Operation Cast Lead."
Indeed, we have been deeply complicit in keeping this truth away from the light of day
I expected some stupid corrections when I started to read this post, but those were truly stunning. Evidently in the pages of the Washington Post you can’t criticize Israel”s actions in Gaza unless you first accept virtually every false claim made on their behalf.
The fact that an operation planned for months had a name referring to Hanukkah and then eventually was carried out during Hanukkah strongly suggests that the timing also had long been planned, so that the attack would take place in the interregnum between the U.S. presidential election and the inauguration of the new president (and also a couple of months before the Israeli elections).
Yes.
Seems like ages ago that many expected president-elect Obama to actually say something about Gaza, and were disappointed and surprised when he didn’t.
Who on earth would feel surprise now?
Yeah, that was the tell, that and his appointments of Biden, Rahm, and Hilary… and Ross, and so on…
See below in regards to planning, and it was planned not so much to coincide with Hanukkah but rather with the interval between US presidents, I believe…and that happened to coincide with Hanukkah.
bijou is correct. The Israeli attack that destroyed the ceasefire took place on 4 November when US media was entirely focused on our presidential election. Hamas retaliations occurred later when US media was back into normal mode and they were thus spun as having attacked first, unprovoked.
RE: “the rabbis’ piece the Washington Post refused to publish without major changes”
MY SNARK: The Weymouth/Hiatt Washington Post is not really that different from the Murdoch/Ailes Fox News!
SEE: Katharine Weymouth Steps in It Again, By Jack Shafer, Slate, 09/15/09
A Washington Post piece gets spiked after its publisher expresses a preference for happier stories.
LINK – link to slate.com
P.S. Jennifer Rubin is Fred Hiatt’s Glenn Beck!
ALSO SEE: Katharine the Second Begins Reign at Washington Post, By John Koblin, New York Observer, 07/15/08
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to observer.com
AND SEE: Washington Post cancels lobbyist event amid uproar, by Mike Allen & Michael Calderone, Politico, 07/03/09
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to politico.com
LASTLY SEE: Amazing Story Of Why Washington Post Is So Weirdly Neocon, By M.J. Rosenberg, TPM Cafe, 09/20/10
SOURCE – link to tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com
Thanks to MJ for finding the New York mag piece on Breindel! This is deep inside it, from the account of Breindel’s time at Harvard: “He was mysterious,” says classmate Philip Weiss, who writes for the New York Observer. “He was sophisticated, he had a private life, he had girlfriends. And he had people who loved him. There were many people who were fiercely attached to him.”
Hey, Phil, we think you’re sophisticated! You have people who love you, and are fiercely attached to you!
i’ll second that helena!
You’re too generous to the Washington Post. The Washington Post is not really that different from Der Stürmer.
I can only admire the two rabbis, as I do the wonderful Uri Avnery. Now that we see how quickly the UNSC can act against a brutal Arab leader, but cannot even have a mild rebuke of Israel’s illegal acts because of the USA’s support of any Israeli government action, no matter how cruel and unfair, it seems peace is impossible. US citizens, afflicted with media like the WP and NYT, are unable or unwilling to make fair judgments, and it is not the fault of the Jewish population of the USA, but extreme Zionists in high places and their disproportionate influence.
Obviously, WaPo is edited from Israel.
what sleeze.
notice they had to get this zinger in at the end. Kind of wrap it up the closure.
and that the high number of deaths were a consequence of Hamas using human shields
It’s the hallmark of cheap journalism.
On the one hand the Washington Post peddles the human shields explanation as though it were a fact, and on the other hand refer to the 1400 figure (of Palestinians killed) as “according to some estimates”.
When the content puts Israel in a positive light, it’s a certainty, when it reflects badly on Israel, it’s unverifiable, iffy.
Typical weasel journalism. WaPo hits another low.
One would like to know when the name “Cast Lead” was first mentioned in any document or in public. If the name was chosen before the Israeli attack (which Palestinians responded to by the rocket attack which Israelis chose to designate as a justification for “Cast Lead”), then we would know that the entire detestable business was planned — and Israel’s truce-breaking provocation made — in advance and for execution in Hanukkah. I hope that detail does come out.
This has all been covered already – Cast Lead was clearly planned in advance.
Cast Lead: What Did the IDF think would happen in Gaza?
And some more:
War of Choice – Steve Niva in Foreign Policy in Focus (reprinted on antiwar.com)
Avi Shlaim: How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe – The Guardian
Why Israel went to war in Gaza – Chris McGreal, The Observer
Among others.
Thanks, Bijou. Now I can locate in my computer and properly tag the mofo.
You are most welcome.
There is a site that compiled a lot of this stuff during the war – useful:
gazasiege.org
Pabelmont,
Don’t have time to scour my files. It DID come out in an Israeli paper as officially acknowledged that Operation Cast Lead was planned even before the June 2008 ceasefire. This news was reported in April or May 2009.
Before that, Haaretz published this, which Mondoweiss carried under the philipweiss.org URL. From my RSS feed:
“Haaretz says that Gaza assault was planned months ago”
January 23, 2009 8:36:09 PM PST
link to haaretz.com
Rabbi Brant Rosen and Rabbi Alissa Wise. Moral giants.
I too admire the rabbis, but I think that this points to so many Jews who are moral midgets keeping their mouths shut when they are aware of what is going on. The rabbis are merely doing the right thing.
Doing the right thing when one has to pay even a very small personal price is hard for most people. I have no doubt Rabbi’s Rosen and Wise pay a very high one for their public stance and think ‘moral giants’ is an appropriate appellation.
I agree.
It might be that you are young. In the sixties the Vietnam War was a “BIG DEAL”. My father didn’t talk to me for 15 years after I protested the war. It is probably not an exact analogy but families were torn apart by this.. … Like I said I admire the rabbis for doing what should be or needs to be done.
I often wonder how the Israeli slant so consistently gets applied in the US media.
This explains it.
They shove canned text into the stories
“responded to Hamas rocket fire and military weapon stockpiling”
‘according to some estimates’
‘and that the high number of deaths were a consequence of Hamas using human shields.’
I wonder who the editor was who made the changes?
“I wonder who the editor was who made the changes?”
The whole thing reeks of shadowy figures sitting behind enormous desks and quietly passing hints to their minions. Said minions then convert the hints to detailed instructions and give some hapless editor the job of carrying them out.
Yes, I imagine there is some Master Style sheet or manual — The Zionist Manual of Allowed Phraseology for Journalists or something, since the same types of crapola seem to constantly “find their way” into all stories… what we need is a whistleblower journalist to come forward and explain how it works.
You are not wrong.
I don’t have a link and vaguely remember that it may have been Robert Fisk who wrote about the allowed and forbidden phrases when covering I/P conflict.
What stuck in my mind was the imperative that the illegal settlements in occupied East Jerusalem must be referred to with a folksy name of “Jewish neighbourhoods in Jerusalem”.
Thanks, Rabbis. It’s morally relevant to see what they attempted to do.
___________________________
Everybody,
Just for shits and grins, you gotta read this takedown of A.G. Sulzberger Jr, the scion of the NYT publishing family, now working as a reporter in anticipation of his taking over the paper. No wonder Frank Rich is leaving.
Jason Linkins at HuffPo:
link to huffingtonpost.com
Linkins quotes this delicious quote from a reporter who calls out for the NYT and the rest of the MSM for its shoddy coverage of Wisconsin.
This is how the Israel lobby manages to create reality out of thin air, it makes sure that the US media repeatedly puts out the same pre-approved propaganda — if the LA Times and the NY Times print the same spin, then it must be true.
It’s no wonder that the BBC, CNN, NPR, the AP and Reuters tend to frame anti-Israel incidents as fact while framing anti-Palestinian incidents as “Palestinians claim….” or “Palestinians say….”
Yes Avi, and surely you notice how Israeli victims of violence are always given a name, a face, and a human context (more often than not with a photo on the front page), while slain Palestinians are just “gunmen” or “militants” or just “slain” or “man” (invariably never with an image and in some paragraph buried on page 13 or so) — as far removed from their humanity as possible….There are so many many examples of ways the story is twisted using language that one could write a book about it.
There are two excellent books on this subject that I can think of off the top of my head. “Bad news from Israel” and “More bad news from Israel” both by the Glasgow university media group. They are both available from amazon, although they primarily deal with Uk news programming the imbalanced language usage, which is meticulously detailed, is prevalent across all western media. Check them out!
This is just a notice that CSPA2 is showing Congress folks making short speeches about the Middle East Peace Process for 3 hours now (5-8PM EST)–JStreet hosting. After listening to a couple speeches–it’s clear the Palestinian plight is at least getting a little notice & “there’s more than one way to be pro-Israel.”
Well, the good news is articles like this would seem to make it impossible to be an anti-semite, I think. “Truth to power”. Very refreshing. Though I would still like to see the actors in this case be severely spanked. Who will save us from these spoiled children?
Tumta
Wow, this is a stunning example of the kind of hasbara Frank Luntz concocted for The Israel Project. This is the mentality of the MSM, and how we’re spoon fed hasbaric pablum by Fred Hiatt’s high school newspaper version of the once great Washington Post.
They’re (the famous ‘they’) gunning for Junior who’s going to run the NYT over his shoddy reporting. Maybe when they’re done slicing him apart — and thank you, Glenn Greenwald, too — they can take a look at fancy-pants running WaPo.
How interesting and revealing those ‘corrections’ are. No attempt at objectivity, no interest in sources or facts, no effort to do anything remotely resembling journalism as we used to know it. Just a mind-numbing slavish piece of propaganda insertion, substantially altering the tone of the piece and making its original deeply felt and humble appeal to conscience an absurd jumble of contradictory and superficial sanctimony. In fact, just the sort of routine, superficial and callous attitude that the neocons display on a daily basis. Well done to the rabbis for exposing the corruption of the press.
protectisraelprotectisraelprotectisraelprotectisraelprotectisrael
protectisraelprotectisraelprotectisraelprotectisraelprotectisrael
protectisraelprotectisraelprotectisraelprotectisraelprotectisrael
protectisraelprotectisraelprotectisraelprotectisraelprotectisrael
protectisraelprotectisraelprotectisraelprotectisraelprotectisrael
protectisraelprotectisraelprotectisraelprotectisraelprotectisrael
protectisraelprotectisraelprotectisraelprotectisraelprotectisrael
protectisraelprotectisraelprotectisraelprotectisrael….
that’s what that editor was doing.
Well done to the rabbis for exposing the corruption of the press.
Yes. May I say it again: thank you.
Phil, Adam: you should put out a quiet APB that Mondoweiss will print these sorts of things in future, and welcomes them. To keep a record.
Our very own WikiWeiss!!!!!! (WikiLeaksWeiss?)
LOL
MondoLeaks
If Rabbis were censored to this extent, imagine what Gentiles go through on the same topics. That’s a 2% bottleneck I don’t like, and it is affecting my civic right to know what my government is doing, and what it is basing its decisions on.
Guess I’m just gonna’ have to buy that new iPad2 so I can carry Al-Jazeera around with me. ;-)
Good point (about the relative censorship…)
Rabbis Rosen and Wise have spoken truth to power and perhaps put themselves at some risk in the process. They exemplify the moral courage and personal decency to which all (Jew and Gentile) should aspire.
They exemplify the moral courage and personal decency to which all (Jew and Gentile) should aspire.
There are a lot of gentiles who ‘aspire’; they can’t even get as far as the editorial desk these days…and when gentile careers are destroyed, nuclear-bombed, for saying a smidgeon of what Phil and Adam can say on this site, you know there is some serious imbalance. All I can say is thank god for the Internet because without it, bottling up all that frustration at being dismissed or destroyed could have had major societal implications by now.
What shocks me is that given Jews invented psychoanalysis, why haven’t the right-wing extremist pro-Israeli thugs understood, or been made to understand, the net effect and consequences (to come) from their treatment of people (Jewish and Gentile) who are trying to tell the truth? When you delegitimize others at the same time as you claim yourself as a victim of delegitimization, or kill others while you claim you are being killed, or accuse others of horrors while you claim the right to commit horrors yourself for whatever reason, you are committing psychic murder. Why don’t the geniuses who created psychoanalysis understand the far greater consequences of this? The kids coming up seem to, and they don’t perceive this more advanced awareness, this consciousness, as weakness (which it isn’t).
I idly wonder what it would take to place this as an ad at WaPo, corrections and all.
:giggle:
I gave up WaPo just after the start of Operation Cast Lead when it published a totally disgusting Op Ed that basically said that the Gazans were only getting what they deserved. In that light, I’d expect nothing different than their actions in editing the text by Rabbis Brant and Wise. One sign of an empire in decline is that it starts to spin and believe in a fantasy.
I’d recommend not reading either WaPo or NYT since they’re incorrigible. Others – such as BBC and NPR – we should seek to correct when they display bias.
Just in the last ten years or so have I become aware of how biased both the NY Times and WaPo were when it came to Israel. I attributed the change to them. But that was probably not right. I just finished “Einstein on Israel and Zionism: His Provocative Ideas About the Middle East ” where the case is unambiguously made that Einstein was opposed to the formation of Israel as a Jewish state. He clearly advocated for a binational state. He thought Shamir and Begin were the equivalent of the Italian Brownshirts in no uncertain terms.
The last chapter describes Einstein’s obituary in the NY Times. They unabashedly distort Einstein’s views on Israel and present him as a Zionist supporter of a jewish national state. The NY Times, apparently was, if not openly, then deceptively propagandizing for Israel from at least 1948.
May I suggest Al Jazeera English might be a very suitable replacement?
I am speechless….
“and that the high number of deaths were a consequence of Hamas using human shields” WTF, I guess whichever paper it was, it didn’t read the Goldstone Report.
” 1,400 Palestinians had been killed, according to some estimates.” They could go on the B’Tselem website and actually read the names of thepalestinians killed by Israeli security forcesduring Operation Dreidel.
” Among the dead were hundreds of more than 700 Hamas fighters…”
Really?? According to B’Tselem, of the 1,396 Palestinians massacred, 763 Palestinians were killed who did not partake in the hostilities, 32 Palestinians where it could not be determined if they were part of the hostilities or not, 2 Palestinians killed that were the target of an operation, 351 Palestinians who took part in the hostilities and 248 Palestinian policemen killed within a police station. Hundreds of more than 700?????
These people actually call themselves journalists?
thank you to the Rabbis.
this is just the tip of the iceberg and is nothing new (see Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land documentary where Alison Weir talks about the filters). this is a stark example of a filter. i’ve experienced this on NPR i have called in several times and the screener will tell you what the radio program wants you to say. i’m naughty though and don’t play by their rules.
seconded, at least for news about the middle east. Weak on the Antipodes.
I spent some time mediating on and reading about Chanukah this year; at the wrong time, but OK. It is a sweet, low key celebration, and dear god, at least no reindeer are harmed in its production. It is celebrated as a rebellion against the Greeks. On current histories, it appears that actually it was a tawdry civil war between traditionalists and modernists wanting to adopt greek customs, with Antiochus standing well clear. Lots of unpleasant things were done, forced circumcision, and the usual.
If we look at what Israel has become, I wonder if perhaps the ‘wrong’ side won? The bits of Israel that I think most of us admire, the partial democracy, the hunger for technical innovation are very old school Greek. The bits that are loathsome, the rabbi’s who call for nonjews to be killed, the uzi armed settlers, the segregated buses, the attacks on the rainbow front, are very very Maccabee.
To what extent was the Maccabee rebellion tied in with international politics of the time? If memory serves, Jacques Attali’s Les juifs takes the view that the Hellenizers supported the Seleucid kingdom, whereas the Maccabees supported Egypt (by then allied with Rome,) which was contesting control of Palestine with the Seleucids during the Hellenistic period.