Eric Alterman just spent ten days in Israel and produced an article for The Nation titled “As Israel Drifts Further to the Right, Haaretz Remains a Beacon of Hope.” His angle is that the Israeli newspaper and the center-left are unable to counter the rightwing forces of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which are “slowly and systematically undermining” Israeli democracy.
The forecast, therefore, is bleak. All the more reason to raise a glass to Haaretz, which remains a lonely light unto the journalistic nations even as Israel descends, tragically, more deeply into darkness
Alterman wasted the trip:
–He states against the evidence that the security fence worked.
In terms of security, Israelis remain uneasy about frequent “lone-wolf intifada” attacks, most recently the horrific stabbing murder of a sleeping 13-year-old girl on June 30. But the “security fence” (or “apartheid wall,” as some call it) has ended the threat of large-scale suicide bombings.
–He says nothing about Israel’s extrajudicial executions of alleged Palestinian assailants.
–He glosses quickly over the Moshe Ya’alon/military uprising against Netanyahu, providing no sense of its importance.
Netanyahu appears to have overreached in attacking the (somewhat) sacred institution of the military by forcing out the respected and highly critical defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon, and appointing the inexperienced far-right ideologue Avigdor Lieberman….
There is no reference to fascism charges made by everyone from Moshe Ya’alon to now Yitzhak Herzog. There is no reference to General Yair Golan’s assertion that Israeli political culture is similar to Nazi Germany. And no reference to the murdering medic, whose execution of a Palestinian lying incapacitated on the ground in occupied Hebron in March led to that crisis.
–There is no mention at all of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), even to attack it. BDS is obviously the bugaboo of the Netanyahu government. Netanyahu and his American friends denounce it all the time. Both the Republican and Democratic Parties repudiate BDS in their platforms, and Alterman has opposed it on earlier occasions.
Alterman, who has openly taken Israel’s side in the conflict, has spent his career as the media vizier at The Nation effectively dissecting the U.S. press. When is he going to start dissecting the American mainstream media coverage of Israel, which is its greatest flaw?
” There is no reference to General Yair Golan’s assertion that Israeli political culture is similar to Nazi Germany”
Heil Weiss. Heil North.
You guys got the title of the article wrong. It’s supposed to read: Eric Alterman is a waste.
This is interesting. I’m not surprised that Eric would validate the obscene wall that Nazi Netanyahu built. I believe it was on Off Guardian that the subject of comprised Left media came up. The Nation was mentioned and I added my view that I lost my affection for The Nation years ago when I realized that it’s position that the Democratic Party will save us from the Republicans was awful. And I remember being particularly soured on a few writers there, including Eric. I don’t remember exactly what it was. Mother Jones is another alt media org that I sadly no longer trust to be a people’s champion, since discovering that it has both disappeared my pro Brexit comments (I’m not rightwing) and blocked me (http://bit.ly/29KOYrW). The darkness is still spreading and it’s deep. Stay human humans.