By Phyllis Chesler
Dear Readers:
It occurs to me that I ought to have a running commentary on the anti-Israel bias in the contemporary New York Times. It is my home town newspaper and I do read it everyday. Sharing rather than silently swallowing my frustration will be an excellent tonic, and good for my blood pressure.
In today’s edition (May 15th), here is how the Gray Lady summarizes what happened in Israel yesterday.
by Cinnamon Stillwell*
It isn’t often that characters based on the field of Middle East studies show up in current fiction, but the novels of author Daniel Silva are an exception. The last three novels of his series featuring Israeli secret agent/art restorer Gabriel Allon explore the intersection of Middle East studies and international intrigue.
By Phyllis Chesler
In the former Yugoslavia, men were not usually gang-raped. Many were tortured, and many were genocidally slaughtered. This happened on President Clinton’s watch and it took a long time and a great deal of persuasion before Clinton allowed America to become militarily involved. Europe did not come to the aid of its immediate neighbor. No Arab or Muslim country came to the aid of their Muslim brethren trapped in this treacherous war-zone.
The public and repeated gang-rapes of both girls and women had become a weapon of war and was no longer merely a “spoil of war.”
by David J. Rusin*
The debate over the trajectory of the Western sociopolitical system and its strained relations with Islam is the most pivotal of our time, as approaches decided upon today will impact billions not yet born. Two prelates in the ever more fractious Church of England provide a microcosm of this discourse.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali have emerged as central combatants in the dispute between two fundamentally opposed models of social organization: multiculturalism and universalism. The former bestows equal standing upon different cultures in the public square. The latter bestows equal standing upon individuals who wield a common set of rights and responsibilities. Which system prevails will ultimately determine the level of danger that homegrown Islamists pose to Britain, Europe, and the broader West.
By Andrew L. Jaffee
Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper, leader of one of the world’s greatest liberal democracies, has the courage to stem the politically-correct tide, and to stand squarely in support of Israel. In a speech commemorating the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel, he said that the Jewish State, “is a tribute to the unquenchable human aspiration for freedom, and a testament to the indomitable spirit of the Jewish people.” In comments made the same week on a Toronto radio station, he said that the current fad of anti-Israel sentiment boils down to nothing but anti-Semitism. I encourage you to read the excerpts shown below, and to follow the links to read the full text of Harper’s courageous statements.
By Phyllis Chesler
For fifteen years, (1993-2008), Charlie Bernhaut of Americans for a Safe Israel has been sending Open Letters to the staff at the New York Times. Charlie loves Jewish cantorial music and Jewish jokes. He is an amiable, sociable man. So, what has driven him to launch such a lonely, one-man crusade?
I doubt he can stop himself. Perhaps the Biblical bush burned for him too, perhaps, like Moses, he could not refuse the mission–which consists of documenting and protesting the newspaper’s contemporary “use of photographs to prejudice their readers against Israel.” He was at this long before CAMERA, MEMRI, or HonestReporting saw the same burning bush. The Times has never acknowledged Bernhaut’s letters–nor have the Jewish media and organizations who also received copies.
By Phyllis Chesler (Written with the help of Fern Sidman)
As a child, my mother took me to the Radio City Music Hall to see the dazzling, long-limbed Rockettes dance. For decades, the Music Hall symbolized glitzy entertainment, New York style. Radio City was also where I went when I was interviewed on NBC and when I dined at the Big Band-era Rainbow Room, a 65th floor precursor to and survivor of the World Trade Center’s Windows on the World. The Rainbow Room also has windows that look out onto the immediate world.
On Wednesday evening, May 7th, Jews around the world celebrated the miraculous 60th anniversary of the birth of Israel as a modern state. In New York City, an historic extravaganza took place at Radio City Music Hall. An attempt to Palestinianize this Art Deco palace also took place. It failed, it did not interrupt the considerable joy within but still, the Haters are everywhere, there is no event they do not picket.
by Ilan Pappé
Oneworld Publications, 2006. 256 pp. $27.50
Book review by Seth J. Frantzman*
Among many Israeli academics and Western revisionists, it has become fashionable to examine Israel’s war of independence from an Arab perspective in which Jews were the aggressors and Arabs the victims.[1] This trend began in 1989 with works by Ben-Gurion University professor Benny Morris[2] and Oxford University professor Avi Shlaim,[3] and developed further with the writings of the late Hebrew University anthropologist Baruch Kimmerling,[4] Neve Gordon[5] at Ben-Gurion University, and Meron Benvenisti,[6] a political scientist who served as deputy mayor of Jerusalem between 1971 and 1978.
by R. John Matthies*
When is it appropriate to critique the policies of private enterprise? Private institutions are clearly permitted to carry out their business in a manner appropriate to their market, so long as they operate within the boundaries of the law. However, these institutions – commercial, educational, or the media – also play a major societal role, and hence carry great responsibility. For this reason, the practice of criticizing these institutions is an established tradition, as illustrated by book reviews, theater criticism, Hollywood gossip columns, sports talk, consumer reports, and others. Acknowledging that the critique of private institutions is different from the sort directed at government, we engage private sector entities in consideration of the influence they peddle and (indirect) power they wield.
By Andrew L. Jaffee
In an excellent editorial published today, the Washington Post’s op-ed staff joined Barack Obama in harshly criticizing former President Jimmy Carter for meeting with Hamas terrorists, and for advocating that “someone” engage in diplomacy with a group sworn to the destruction of Israel:
… [Hamas foreign minister] Mr. Zahar lauds Mr. Carter for the “welcome tonic” of saying that no peace process can succeed “unless we are sitting at the negotiating table and without any preconditions.” Yet Mr. Zahar has his own preconditions: Before any peace process can “take even its first tiny step,” he says, Israel must withdraw to the 1967 borders and evacuate Jerusalem while preparing for the “return of millions of refugees.” In fact, as Mr. Zahar makes clear, Hamas is not at all interested in a negotiated peace with the Jewish state, whose existence it refuses to accept: “Our fight to redress the material crimes of 1948 is scarcely begun,” he concludes. …
By Barry Rubin
The Middle East today is driven by five big conflicts: Among states for power; the Iran-Syria alliance’s war on everyone else; the struggle between Arab nationalists and Islamists to control each country, and the Sunni-Shia and Arab-Israeli conflicts.
No wonder there’s so much turmoil.
by Michael Rubin*
As Iraqis marked five years since Baghdad’s fall on April 9, Democrats — including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — grilled Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Before the testimony, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned Gen. Petraeus and Mr. Crocker to avoid undue optimism: “We have to know the real ground truths of what is happening there [in Iraq], not put a shine on events.”
Among Democrats, it is conventional wisdom that the Bush administration rushed to war, botched planning and ignored dissent. “Whether out of hubris or incompetence,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid explained, “the president and his men willfully ignored the experts and sent our troops to battle unprepared for the consequences.”
By Andrew L. Jaffee
Jimmy Carter once again has demonstrated his strident anti-Israel bias, stating this weekend that, “I think someone should be meeting with Hamas to see what we can do to encourage them to be cooperative and to find out what their attitude is.” This is Hamas’ attitude, as collected from its own TV broadcasts by PMW:
My message to the loathed Jews is that there is no god but Allah, we will chase you everywhere! We are a [Palestinian] nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of Jews. We will not leave you alone until we have quenched our thirst with your blood, and our children’s thirst with your blood. We will not leave until you leave the Muslim countries.
Is Carter naive enough to think that a terrorist group like Hamas will change its stripes to spots and become a genuine peace partner for Israel? Or is his bias against Israel so strong that he is willing to overlook the fact that Hamas’ “founding charter commits the group to the destruction of Israel, the replacement of the PA [Palestinian Authority] with an Islamist state on the West Bank and Gaza, and to raising ‘the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine’ [including Israel]?”
by Mary Madigan*
The poster advertising New York University’s “Academic Freedom in the Age of Permanent Warfare” conference featured a scolding Statue of Liberty pointing an accusatory finger and stating: “YOU! Stop Asking Questions. You’re Either With US or You’re With the TERRORISTS!”
The speakers and attendees gathered around the pastry-laden table at NYU’s new Frederic Ewen Academic Freedom Center last week didn’t appear to be oppressed or under attack. But once they wiped the sugar from their mouths and stood up to speak, they assured the audience that they were, in fact, victims in an “age of permanent warfare.”
By Barry Rubin
It’s hard to satirize a lot of media coverage about Israel and the Arab-Israeli or Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. The truly dreadful stuff is in the details, the small stories and big assumptions on which they are based, rather than in any "scoops" or blockbuster articles.
There are basically two types of such articles. In one, the author’s basic and extreme political bias comes out clearly. The writer is consciously determined to slam Israel. This happens more often in large elements of the European press and in Reuters.
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