JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

The Times on Israel at 60

By Uriel Heilman · May 19, 2008

Sunday’s New York Times marks Israel’s 60th birthday with four Op-Eds about the Jewish state.

Thomas Friedman writes that the whispering campaign to stoke Jewish fears about Barack Obama is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the U.S. president in supporting Israel and promoting a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Jeffrey Goldberg, who recently interviewed Obama for The Atlantic, draws on his conversations with Ehud Olmert for a story in that same magazine to argue that American Jews are the monkey wrench in the peace process. He throws the U.S. Jewish organizational world some bones – “The people of AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents are well meaning,” he writes – but, echoing the arguments of the new left-wing, pro-Israel lobbying group J Street, Goldberg writes that being pro-Israel sometimes means saying no to Jewish settlement in the West Bank and yes to a Palestinian state.

In her essay, Ruth Gruber recall the stateless Holocaust refugees for whom Israel’s establishment was a godsend.

And in the obligatory “Nakba” piece, Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury ponders the “catastrophe” of Israel’s existence for the Palestinian Arabs. While an eloquent expression of Arab sentiment about Israel, Khoury ignores the nakba of the last 60 years: the Arab world’s insistence on keeping the Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war homeless and disenfranchised, outsiders even after it became obvious they would never return to their homes in the Jewish state.

The Times’ coverage Sunday also included an insightful, amusing and depressing Reporter’s Notebook by Sheryl Gay Stolberg about President Bush’s Middle East tour. Turns out he doesn’t quite understand why Arabs and Jews don’t dance together.

On Monday, the Times added another a feature about how Israeli artists are undergoing a rare flowering, gaining international recognition for works that make universal statements about very Israeli phenomena.

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Hasbara 2.0 (beware of bugs)

By Ami Eden · May 14, 2008

Several recent stories shine a light on the challenges and opportunities of the new YouTube-era environment that Israel and its advocates are operating in.

Ha’aretz has a report today on the Israeli Consulate in New York arranging to have videos played on the jumbo screens in Times Square of celebrities sending Independence Day greetings.

“We’re aware of the influence that [the celebrities] filmed in the clip have on so many people around the world,” said Asi Shariv, Israel’s Consul General in New York. “Their connection with Israel is an important part of our efforts to tell the Israeli story to a young, Western audience that does not take an interest in the [Mideast] conflict.”

Of course, all sides have access to video and the means to distribute it on the Internet. For example, Ha’aretz also is reporting that on Tuesday the human rights group B’Tselem unveiled video footage showing an Israeli soldier “firing a rubber-coated bullet at an Israeli protester at close range, during a protest against the separation fence in Bil’in two months ago.”

“The shooting,” according to Ha’aretz, “appears to violate IDF regulations, which state that rubber bullets may be fired from no closer than 40 meters.”

And, of course, plenty of video of the incident in question is up on YouTube.

This video has a quick shot at the end of the wounded Israeli protester on a stretcher…

And then there are user-generated Web sites like Wikipedia, where a well-coordinated stealth campaign can tilt seemingly unbiased information one way or the other. The problem is that Internet-based campaigns coordinated via e-mail leave a paper trail – a point hammered home by Gershom Gorenberg’s recent column in the American Prospect about pro-Palestinian activists exposing an alleged attempt by CAMERA to train supporters to infiltrate and influence the Wikipedia editing process.

2 Comments | Share This | Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Media, video

Don’t throw away your NYT!

By Ami Eden · April 30, 2008

The New York Times had a touching article Wednesday about the story of how a Torah made it from Auschwitz to the Central Synagogue on 55th & Lex. Only one problem: In the photo of the scroll, God’s name (that’s the ”Tetragrammaton," for all you academic types) is clearly visible – which, according to Jewish law, means that people can’t throw away their Metro sections. Recycling is also out. Check with the local rabbi for the closest Genizah.

So much for making fun of the photo from the recent NYT travel story about nude vacations (check out the woman, back-left).

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Jews fit to print

By Ami Eden · April 14, 2008

Zev Chafets says Israel shouldn’t be counting on the United States to take care of Iran.

Daphne Merkin visits the Kabbalah Center.

Peter Steinfels takes a look at the Haggadah.

The boom in Passover food products.

The Ethicist weighs in on whether someone should rat out a fellow employee who makes up fake Jewish holidays to get off of work.

A profile of comedian Irwin Corey’s journey from the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum to the Friars Club.

Happy 75th birthday Mr. Roth.

A look at what has gone wrong with Sheldon Adleson’s plan to help the Republicans win in 2008.

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Dave Marash: Why I quite Al Jazeera English

By Ami Eden · April 14, 2008

Al Jazeera English’s respected Jewish American anchor tells the Columbia Journalism Review why he quit the network:

It’s been a gradual process, and defining it all, is that with corporate encouragement, over the first two years of the channel’s existence, I have made myself effectively the American face of the channel and vouched for its credibility and value. And over the last seventeen months there have been several changes at the channel which put things on the air that, frankly, I could not vouch for. If I had just been another employee I might have just dropped my head and let it all wash over, because it is the nature of our business that every place you workoccasionally does things that embarrass you. But I felt an extra measure of responsibility.

Now, as anchor, I was in position to vouch for at least half of the material that went on air because I got to speak it and I could edit it on the fly if I felt that there were any inaccuracies or imbalances in it. But when the proposal was made that I leave the anchor chair [he was informed of this in December and his last day as anchor was March 13] and become a sort of heavy correspondent, I knew that I would never be able to have the kind of editorial input or control that would put me in a position to honestly vouch for anything. Furthermore, when I was taken off that meant that there were zero American accents in any of the presenter roles at Al Jazeera. And it occurred to me that this was just one part of a series of decisions that diminished editorial input from the United States. It got to the point where I feel that in a globe where Al Jazeera sets a very, very high reporting standard, and a very, very high standard for both numerical and qualitative and authentic staffing, that the United States was becoming a serious exception to their role, and a place where the journalism did not measure up to the standards that were set almost everywhere else by Al Jazeera English’s very fine reporting.

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The most biased cable news host in the world…

By Ami Eden · April 4, 2008

Perhaps the highlight of Keith Olbermann’s weeklong fifth anniversary celebration of his MSNBC show “Countdown” has been his back-and-forth with Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.

Olbermann kicked off his big week on Monday by naming Rendell, a big-time Hillary booster, the day’s worst person in the world and suggesting that he might be an idiot. Rendell’s crime? Suggesting that Olberman’s favorite punching bag, Fox News, has been the most balanced of all the cable networks in covering the Democratic primary race.

Then the other day, Rendell shot back, asking one reporter if Olbermann ”gets checks from the Obama campaign.”

Put aside the fact that Olbermann’s rant on Monday didn’t really speak to Rendell’s assertion that Clinton and Obama get balanced, if not fair, coverage on Fox. Olbermann might want to check in with NBC’s resident Yiddishist, Brian Williams, about the meaning of chutzpah.

Whether or not Fox (Olbermann prefers “Fixed") News deserves the “most balanced” distinction, what’s indisputable is that Olbermann now presides over the most one-sided anti-Hillary show on all three major cable news networks. These days Olbermann arguably spends more time bashing Clinton than either President Bush or John McCain. And he basically never has a harsh word to say about Barack Obama.

The issue isn’t accuracy: Olbermann hits Clinton hard, but usually above the belt. The problem (if one chooses to see it that way) is that he only goes after one of the two Democratic front-runners. Again, to borrow the Fox paradigm, Olbermann is fair, but not balanced: When the Clinton campaign finds itself under fire, Olbermann sees it as his job to pour on the gasoline; when Obama is feeling the heat, Olbermann moves to put out the flames.

Looking past the hypocrisy issue, is there anything wrong – in the increasingly opinionated world of cable news – with the blatantly anti-Clinton tone of Olberman’s show?

To be honest, I never had much of a problem with his choosing-sides approach when the target was the president. After all, the media is supposed to be keeping watch on the White House, and with so many mainstream outlets falling down on the job, and conservative hosts playing apologist and cheerleader, Olbermann has played an important role.

But now it feels different. In the Obama-Clinton race, Olbermann isn’t checking power – he’s trying to swing the election. And, while liberal attacks on John McCain and conservative attacks on the two leading Dems certainly fall into the same category, playing favorites during the primary season is taking opinionated mainstream journalism to a new high/low. Now we’re not only going to have liberal and conservative shows/networks, we’re going to have them for individual candidates on each side of the aisle? Are there enough shows to go around?

All that said, the real issue isn’t Olbermann, but his role in MSNBC’s overall election coverage and the supporting cast of journalists from ostensibly unbiased media outlets that frequent his show. Olbermann isn’t just a guy with a show – he often plays co-host during debate and election night coverage. To be fair, he does a fairly decent job of toning it down and playing it less crooked in these settings. But, still, why is a blatantly anti-Clinton host sharing the point at a network that still claims to aspire to some standard of balance and objectivity?

Along similar lines, why are the Washington Post and Newsweek willing to pimp out their reporters to a show that is so one-sided? Sure, in print Dana Milbank and Howard Fineman might aspire to play it straight, but Olbermann’s consistently anti-Clinton line of questioning effectively turns them (and their publications) into pawns in his political crusade.

5 Comments | Share This | 2008 Election, Media

David Landau: Did you ever think the press may have a point about Israel?

By Ami Eden · March 13, 2008

At the closing session of the of London Jewish Book Week, outgoing Ha’aretz editor David Landau suggested that instead of spending so much energy criticizing the media, pro-Israel activists should be asking if the press has a point when it puts forward comparisons to apartheid.

Listen to the audio clip or read an account of the talk (which also involved Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger).

Landau has generated plenty of controversy this year, by reportedly telling the U.S. secretary of state that Israel wants to be ”raped” and boasting at a conference in Russia that his newspaper had ”wittingly soft-pedaled” alleged corruption by Israeli political leaders who were pushing the peace process.

1 Comment | Share This | Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Media

Jews Fit to Print: Rough welcome for Shoah survivors, Nintendo Nazis, Tovah in a nutshell, no shabbo

By Ami Eden · March 10, 2008

There’s been plenty of Jewish news the past few days over at the New York Times (and that’s before you even get to the Israel coverage) ...

SURVIVING AMERICA (Nina Bernstein):

They came to New York as “displaced persons” in the early 1950s, Jewish refugees who had survived the Holocaust. Today, in film and story, such survivors are treated with a kind of awe, and their arrival in America is considered a happy ending. But a very different picture, with an oddly contemporary twist, emerges from the yellowing pages of social service records now being rescued from oblivion at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan.

The files, from a major Jewish resettlement agency that handled tens of thousands of cases, show that many of these refugees walked a gantlet of resistance and distrust: disapproval of their lack of English and need for health care, threats of deportation, and agency rules shaped by a suspicion of freeloading. ...

NINTENDO NAZI (Sridhar Pappu):

Last month, when a 21-year-old British video game developer named Luc Bernard posted a description on his blog of a Holocaust-themed game he is writing that describes how the Nazis tortured children, the reaction was swift and visceral.

“Disgusting concept. Some people have no shame,” wrote one video game blog reader. Another called it “pretty creepy.”

The game, called Imagination Is the Only Escape, apparently will not be distributed within the United States. It casts players in the role of a young boy in eastern France during the German occupation who seeks escape from real-life horror through a fantasy world. ...

NUTS FOR TOVAH (Stephen Holden):

Tovah Feldshuh brings to cabaret the same relentless drive that propels her recurring character, Danielle Melnick, on “Law & Order.” Win or lose, Danielle, a defense lawyer usually on the wrong side of a case, fights with such belligerent gusto that the mention of her name provokes a shudder by the prosecution.

The same drive propels Ms. Feldshuh’s new act, “Tovah in a Nutshell!,” at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency. The show, which runs through Saturday, consists largely of character comedy sketches with musical adornment. Mostly Ms. Feldshuh impersonates familiar urban types, including a rapper, a Latina Miss Subway and Muffy, a socialite disdainfully surveying her fellow passengers on underground rapid transit. ...

NO SHABBOS SHOPPING (Linda F. Burghardt):

For Elizabeth Allen, it started when she needed a box of nails on a recent Saturday and the Great Neck hardware store she had patronized for years was closed. It hit Bruce Kerievsky when he went to his favorite barbershop in the Old Village and found it shuttered. For Jean Pierce, it was finding the neighborhood liquor store with the great selection of kosher wines closed.

Three Saturdays, three Great Neck stories, one worry: Is Great Neck going the way of Cedarhurst and seeing business shut down on the Jewish Sabbath? ...

BLACK HATS (Giannia Cipriano):

Take the D train to 55th Street in central Brooklyn, and you feel as if you have set foot in a different world.

The station sits at the junction of New Utrecht Avenue, 13th Avenue and 55th Street in the heart of Borough Park, home to a quarter-million Orthodox Jews, one of the largest concentrations of Jews outside Israel. To travel to Borough Park is to journey through both space and time. ...

STOLEN SUFFERING (Daniel Mendelsohn):

Last Monday, I heard about an orphaned Jewish girl who trekked 2,000 miles from Belgium to Ukraine, surviving the Warsaw ghetto, murdering a German officer, and — most “amazing” of all — taking refuge in forests where she was protected by kindly wolves.

The problem is that this story is a lie: recounted in a 1997 international bestseller by Misha Levy Defonseca, it was exposed last week as a total fabrication — no trekking, no Warsaw, no murder, no wolves. (No Jews, either: the author, whose real name is Monique De Wael, is Roman Catholic.)…

[In this case] a comparatively privileged person has appropriated the real traumas suffered by real people for her own benefit – a boon to the career and the bank account, but more interestingly, judging from the authors’ comments, a kind of psychological gratification, too. … Ms. De Wael has similarly referred to a longing to be part of the group to which she did not, emphatically, belong: “I felt different. It’s true that, since forever, I felt Jewish and later in life could come to terms with myself by being welcomed by part of this community.” ("Felt Jewish” is repellent: real Jewish children were being murdered however they may have felt.) ...

REMEMBERING RABBI SEGAL (Dennis Hevesi):

Rabbi Zev Segal, who as president of one of the most influential Orthodox Jewish organizations in the country in the 1960s clashed with leaders of what he called “more liberal Jewish alternatives,” but who also worked with Conservative and Reform Jews on social issues, died Wednesday in Jersey City, N.J. He was 91 and lived in Manhattan.

Rabbi Segal was found dead after the car he was driving plunged into the Hackensack River as it turned onto a dead-end street beneath the Pulaski Skyway. The Hudson County prosecutor, Edward J. De Fazio, ruling out foul play, said on Thursday that several cars had driven into the river at that spot in the past.

From 1968 to 1971, Rabbi Segal was president of the Rabbinical Council of America, which represents about 1,000 Orthodox rabbis in 14 countries. He had been a vice president of the group for 10 years. ...

0 Comments | Share This | Culture, Media, Orthodox, Religion, Shoah

Commentary’s way of saying thank you…

By Ami Eden · February 26, 2008

Remember how happy you were to get the football alarm clock with your subscription to Sports Illustrated? Now Commentary is offering something even better…

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Publisher

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AJC to Cable networks: Say no to immigrant bashers

By Ami Eden · February 15, 2008

We still can’t believe that Abe Foxman and Lou Dobbs won’t say anything about the CNN host’s recent bashing of the ADL (these aren’t exactly guys you associate with “no comment").

But American Jewish Committee is now wading into the debate, with a statement criticizing some of the guests on Dobbs’ program and other cable shows:

AJC Appeals to Cable TV Executives to End Airing of Anti-Immigrant Hate

February 15, 2008 – New York – The American Jewish Committee is urging the heads of major cable television networks to ensure that the background of certain so-called immigration experts appearing on news shows is revealed to the viewing audience.

“It is inappropriate and offensive for major television programs to provide a microphone to individuals and organizations that promote hate, espouse vigilantism, white supremacy, or even violence in the immigration debate,” AJC General Counsel Jeffrey Sinensky wrote in a letter to the heads of CNN, FOX and MSNBC.

“There is no excuse for television talk show hosts and commentators failing to investigate the backgrounds of the people they invite on their shows to speak on the issue of immigration.”

The AJC letter was delivered today to Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide; Roger Ailes, chairman and CEO of FOX News Corporation; and Phil Griffin, executive-in-charge of MSNBC. AJC has partnered with the National Council of La Raza and its “We Can Stop the Hate” campaign launched recently to counter the increasing rhetoric on the airwaves that already has caused a rise in hate crimes against Latinos.

AJC pointed out specifically that Lou Dobbs Tonight, The O’Reilly Factor, and MSNBC News Live offer national platforms to spokespeople who represent known vigilante or hate-promoting groups, including Jim Gilchrist and Chris Simcox of the Minuteman Project and Dan Stein of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

They regularly appear on news programs as anti-immigration “expert commentators” and pundits.  “Rarely is their status as a representative of a vigilante group or one that promotes hate acknowledged or challenged. Rarely do they face anyone with an opposing viewpoint,” said Sinensky.

In addition, the AJC letter noted that spokespeople espousing vigilantism and fear regularly appear on nightly news programs. They often speak in code, calling immigrants “criminals,” “an army of invaders,” and “diseased”; and children born to immigrants are referred to as “anchor babies.” Many talk show hosts and commentators parrot this hate speech on their broadcasts.

“Hate speech has no legitimate role in the media. History has shown repeatedly that it can be the precursor to violence,” said Sinensky. “Issues such as immigration can be explored legitimately and thoroughly without demonizing an entire group of people.”

AJC, the oldest human relations organization in the U.S., has been a longstanding advocate for fair and open immigration, and a strong supporter of comprehensive immigration reform.

0 Comments | Share This | immigration, Media