Jeff Blankfort responds to the Israel Project's poll of Americans' love for Israel:
judge to what extent they have imbibed the propaganda dished out by the
mainstream media and the questions are constructed so that the
parameters of the possible responses fit within a desired outcome, e.g,
the acceptance of the bombing of Iran. As for the low percentage in favor of the Palestinians, that should be no surprise since the media which is either Zionist
controlled or Zionist influenced is totally loaded in Israel's favor,
whether it is on the op ed pages of the NY Times, Washington Post,or Boston Globe, whose columnists are syndicated all over the country, or from the talking heads on every network or cable news show, or NPR.
You'll recall that Bill Graham told Richard Nixon
that when he was re-elected, he should destroy "the Jewish stranglehold
on the media." "Do you really think that?," tricky Dick replied. When
Graham responded in the affirmative, Nixon said,"So do I," but you
can't talk about (as I generally recall the exchange). When the tape
was revealed and he was accused of Aunty Semitism, Graham wept and
asked forgiveness while the deceased Nixon resisted all attempts at
resurrection. There was no public figure
who, at least publicly, suggested that these two men were certainly in
a position to know who runs the media although I am sure there were
many who nodded in agreement. At that point I took it upon myself to
make a list of Jews in the media based on what I already knew and from
what I read in the Forward and the business pages of the NY Times. I
quickly had a list of four pages and then gave up. The proof of a
Jewish presence at every level of every facet of the media proved quite
overwhelming and while most of the Jews working in these positions are
not hard-core Zionists
and some not Zionists at all, and probably came to journalism as you
and I have (I used to work for the LA Examiner), they know on which
side their bread is buttered. When it comes to the media, the
Palestinians and consequently, truth, don't stand a chance.
I generally agree with Blankfort–having made similar observations myself–but I also think the analysis is a little mechanistic. I like to think that love of Israel is a mood of orthodox thinking that has been thrown down over the Establishment like a blanket, and that the edge of the blanket are now pulling away, and the mood can change. My sense of Jews in the media, and yes we are a predominant group, is that most of them have gone along docilely with their more virulent cousins, they are sheep, and they are waiting for the mood to change. Even David Remnick at the New Yorker is in this category, I bet.
Also, I don't think we should underestimate the effect on American Zionism of the Iraq war. Though I don't know history, I once read that the Catholic clerical presence in the French establishment was shocked and broken by the Dreyfus affair, and I believe the Iraq war is having the same effect on our Establishment. The neocons are now gone, or going. Their only slightly less virulent cousins, the neolibs, are going to be all over Obama's braintrust, but they will have to share the space with realists and even some closet progressives. But I'm a cockeyed optimist.
