Journal

This has been going on for months,
and they just can’t get their story straight.

[A flyer on this can be downloaded at www.ifamericansknew.org/download/MichRadio.pdf – people in Michigan are encouraged to distribute it widely!]

[Michigan Radio is the NPR affiliate in southeastern Michigan. To learn more about NPR’s pro-Israel bias read FAIR’s excellent analysis, “The Illusion of Balance,” in which they discovered that NPR had reported on almost 90% of Israeli children’s deaths and only 20% of Palestinian children’s deaths.]

Last fall the Flint chapter of our organization, which provides facts on Israel-Palestine, contacted Michigan Radio about becoming a sponsor of the station. (This consists of giving the station $1,000, and in return they air a number of spots announcing your organization and additional information.)

This was moving forward, until suddenly the Michigan Radio representative emailed that they would not allow us to be a sponsor. (They did eventually allow a different organization to sponsor an announcement for us, but this group was not allowed to include our organization’s name in their spot).

When we asked why Michigan Radio would not allow our organization to be an “underwriter” (their term for sponsors), their representative sent an email claiming that this would violate their guidelines, quoting the following paragraph:

“Michigan Radio reserves the right to refuse any request for underwriting that would violate an FCC rule or policy, violate station policies or adversely affect the reputation or financial condition of the station. No announcements will be aired on behalf of political organizations, political candidates or their committees, or that express a view on issues of public importance or interest or religious belief.”

The fact is, however, that we are a 501c3 educational organization. We do not lobby, endorse candidates, or take stands on bills before Congress. Our mission is to educate the American public on issues of significance that are unreported, underreported, or misreported in the American media.

Michigan Radio’s rationale that we are “too political” is quite a stretch given that among the station’s underwriters are numerous sponsors that advocate for various causes.

One of their sponsors, for example, is the Jewish Federation of Detroit, whose website proclaims that it “advocates for Israel.”

Nevertheless, this same claim, that If Americans knew was “too political” to be a sponsor was also given to their own news department when an editor inquired about it.

I tried to contact Michigan Radio to clarify the situation.  However, no one was ever “available,” a situation that continues today. I left numerous voice mails and sent emails to a wide variety of individuals, all to no avail. I graduated from the University of Michigan many years ago, as did my mother before me. I had remembered a civility that I’m sad to find appears to have disappeared.

Finally, when I realized that Michigan Radio management had evidently decreed that no one was to talk to me, our organization  finally issued a public announcement describing what was going on. 

The public is given a different story

Soon, Michigan Radio, which was then in full fundraising mode (though it refuses to take our money), began to receive numerous emails and phone calls from individuals telling the station that they would not donate because of Michigan’ Radio’s censorship of If Americans Knew.

Finally, the station was forced to give a response. Director of Development Larry Jonas (most likely at the direction of Michigan Radio head Steve Schram) finally began to send out an official reply to emails on this matter. (Oddly, he never sent this to us. In fact, Jonas has yet to respond to my email and phone messages; a mode of behavior shared by the station’s entire development staff).  

Perhaps realizing that Michigan Radio’s original objection was insufficiently defensible, Jonas instead claimed a different rationale , writing to the public:

“This issue has been miscast by Ms. Weir… Michigan Radio was initially contacted by a gentleman in the Flint area who indicated that he was interested in establishing an underwriting schedule of announcements that would include information about Ms. Weir’s talk. The gentleman initially asked that the sponsorship be attributed to an organization to which he appeared to have no apparent affiliation. Michigan Radio is required by FCC rules to identify the sponsoring entity in an underwriting announcement and not a third party. For that and other reasons, we were concerned that accepting the sponsorship may put us afoul of FCC regulations.”

However, the reality is that although there was originally confusion over this, the gentleman did, indeed, represent our organization, and had a letter from us stating that fact. If Michigan Radio had questions about this, all they needed to do was return my calls.

Members of the public remained outraged at Michigan Radio’s behavior  and  the phone calls and email complaints continued.

Finally, Director Schram telephoned me. Also on the phone was Rick Fitzgerald, from the University of Michigan Office of Public Affairs. Schram told me that they were now willing “to consider” a sponsorship from us. I told him the likely content of such a spot – basically, what we had requested before – and he agreed “to consider it.”

I said that I would submit this before the end of the day, and he replied that he would respond quickly. I asked that this be by the end of the week, and he agreed that he would respond “soon.”

It is now almost five months later and I have yet to receive a response. I have phoned Mr. Schram and emailed him repeatedly. I have phoned numerous others at the station. I phoned Mr. Fitzgerald, who explained that Mr. Schram had only said he would reply “soon,” he didn’t say when.

It occurs to me that Mr. Schram again needs to hear from others. If you oppose censorship, believe that publicly sponsored radio should not discriminate, and affirm the importance of a “free marketplace of ideas” – or if you simply dislike arrogant rudeness by powerful organizations – please contact Michigan Radio: 888-258-9866, michigan.radio@umich.edu – 535 W William St, Suite 110, Ann Arbor, MI 48103,

if you’d like to know what it is about If Americans Knew that Mr. Schram doesn’t want Michiganders to know, please come to my upcoming presentations. Appropriately enough, they are on “Israel-Palestine: What the Media Leave Out”

Thursday March 25th, 7 pm, Washtenaw Community College, ML 101 (Morris Laurence Bldg.) 

Saturday March 27th, 2 pm (tentative time),as part of the Michigan Social Justice Conference, Hutchins Hall, UM Law School

Sunday March 28th, 1 pm, 1st Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 1400 Ann Arbor-Saline Rd.

Download flyer to distribute so that others learn the facts about Michigan Radio.

Previous entries about Michigan Radio:

Michigan Radio’s Censorship of If Americans Knew

Still waiting for Michigan Radio response

NPR affiliate Michigan Radio caves!

The above header was definitely premature. How naive i was. And how much I’ve learned about Stephen Schram and the situation in Ann Arbor.

Update: Monday, March 29, 2010 at 6:00AM

Henry Norr has just written an excellent analysis on NPR:

When it comes to E Jerusalem, ‘NPR’ misleads and misinforms

It’s been almost two weeks since I wrote to National Public Radio’s senior Washington editor, Ron Elving, and to the network’s ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, to ask why Elving used an Israeli formulation – “disputed” area – to characterize East Jerusalem, instead of calling it “occupied,” the term used by the U.S. government, the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and virtually every other international body. So far, neither has replied.

While I wait, I’ve spent some time looking a little more deeply into NPR’s coverage of East Jerusalem since Israel’s announcement of plans to build 1,600 new housing units there put the area in the spotlight. The network posts transcripts of all its stories, interviews, and talk shows on the Middle East (and nowadays most other stories, too) on its website, and it has a pretty good search engine, so it wasn’t hard to review all 22 broadcasts that have discussed East Jerusalem since the controversy exploded. (NPR doesn’t transcribe its hourly headlines, so they’re not included. Neither are the Associated Press reports and Foreign Policy articles it posts on its website but doesn’t read over the air.)

Here’s some of what I found anyone depending on NPR for information about the issue would have gathered about East Jerusalem:

1. It’s part of Israel’s capital. Regular listeners have heard Jerusalem described that way in at least eight stories. In five of those cases the city was called Israel’s “undivided capital;” once the phrase was “unified capital.”  When NPR’s reporters say it (as opposed to when they’re quoting Netanyahu or Michael Oren, for example), they scrupulously precede these phrases with something like “the Israelis have proclaimed” or “Israel considers” the whole city their capital. But since NPR reporters hardly ever even hint that anyone except the Palestinians disputes this claim, these are essentially throw-away words. (The closest they come to questioning the Israel position is the statement, which I found in two stories, that “The international community believes that the final status of the city should only be determined through negotiations.”)

2. Israel has a deep historical claim to all of Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s assertion in his AIPAC speech that “The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago” was quoted in three separate stories. Twice listeners have been told that Israelis consider the city – implicitly the whole thing – just as much theirs as Tel Aviv.  On “Talk of the Nation” they heard an Israeli analyst explain that no government would agree to a construction freeze because Jerusalem is “the heart and soul of the Jewish people.”  Weekend news analyst James Fallows informed listeners that the Israeli public considers the government’s East Jerusalem policy “necessary for their survival.”

3. Ramat Shlomo, the East Jerusalem settlement where the government plans to add the 1,600 new units, is an idyllic “neighborhood” (a word NPR reporters have used at least eight times in this context) or “community” on a hilltop. It’s “tranquil” or even “very tranquil,” full of pious Jews who “focus on their religious studies and pay little attention to the outside world.” Their only problem is that they have large families and therefore “housing needs;” this “housing crunch” explains the government’s decision to build the 1,600 units.

4. As for the Palestinians, including the roughly 250,000 who live in East Jerusalem, they are presented to NPR listeners not as people whose roots in Jerusalem go back millennia – who, legally, own East Jerusalem – but as people who, for some unexplained reason, lay claim to what Israel has: they “want” East Jerusalem, they “claim” it, they “hope” it will be part of their “future state,” they “aspire” to make it their capital. In the meantime, unlike the “unfazed” Jewish residents of Ramat Shlomo, they can barely contain their emotions: they are “angry,” “frustrated,” “incensed.” Some of them even think Israel wants to push them out of the city, but the Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem is promptly called upon to dismiss this charge, and he’s given the last word.

Now some things NPR listeners have not been told about Jerusalem since the controversy flared :

1. Except Israel, no government in the world, even the U.S., recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Not a single country, even the U.S., has an embassy there. Under the U.N.’s 1947 partition plan, it was not to be part of Israel at all, but a separate entity – a “corpus separatum” – under U.N. administration.

2. In legal terms, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory by the United States government, the United Nations, the European Union, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the International Court of Justice, including even the American judge who was the one holdout when the ICJ in 2004 ruled the separation Wall in East Jerusalem and the West Bank illegal. (In fairness, weekend host Guy Raz noted in passing on March 13 that East Jerusalem is “an area Israel has occupied since 1967,” and in one report Garcia-Navarro said that Ramat Shlomo is “on land captured by Israel during the 1967 war.”)

3. Under international law (specifically, the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention) occupying powers are clearly prohibited from transferring their civilians into such territories.

4. The “international community” has repeatedly and forcefully rejected Israel’s claim to East Jerusalem. In the aftermath of Israel’s seizure of the area as well (as the rest of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights) during the 1967 war, the U.N. Security Council, including the U.S., adopted several resolutions reaffirming that “acquisition of territory by military conquest is inadmissible” In 1971 Security Council Resolution 298, adopted with U.S. support, declared that “al1 legislative and administrative actions taken by Israel to change the status of the: City of Jerusalem, including expropriation of land and properties, transfer of populations and legislation aimed at the incorporation of the occupied section, are totally invalid and cannot change that status.”.In 1980, when Israel adopted the “Jerusalem Law,” through which it attempted to formalize its annexation of East Jerusalem and surrounding areas and to declare the city its “”eternal and indivisible” capital, Security Council Resolution 478 said the law’s adoption constituted “a violation of international law” and “a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East,” declared it “null and void,” and asserted that it “must be rescinded forthwith.” (This resolution was adopted by a vote of 14-0; the U.S. abstained but declined to use its veto power.)

5. In recent days U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has on at least two occasions declared publicly that  East Jerusalem, like the West Bank, is occupied territory and that Israel’s settlement expansion plans are “unacceptable.”  “Let us be clear,” he said on March 20. “All settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory and must be stopped.” NPR has completely ignored Ban’s statements on these issues.

6. The 1,600 Jewish housing units planned for Ramat Shlomo are only a small part of Israel’s plans to “Judaize” East Jerusalem. Ha’aretz and other reputable sources reported on March 11 that some 50,000 new housing units in East Jerusalem are in various stages of the Israeli planning and permitting process. Coming on the heels of the Biden visit and the flap about the 1,600 units, this report got wide circulation around the world. NPR hasn’t mentioned it.

7. Much of the Israeli settlement construction in East Jerusalem is organized and financed by ultra-right-wing Zionist organizations such as Elad and Ateret Cohanim, which openly proclaim their intention to evict Jerusalem’s Palestinians. These groups are funded largely by tax-deductible donations from American Jews, most notably Miami doctor and bingo billionaire Irving Moskowitz. Yet NPR has never once – not just this month, but never, as far back as its archives go – mentioned Irving Moskowitz or Ateret Cohanim; Elad was mentioned only once, last September, as the funder of archaeological digs in the Silwan section of East Jerusalem – which host Robert Siegel referred to only as “the City of David,” the patently ideological name the Zionists recently bestowed upon the area.

Likewise, NPR has never reported on the recent expulsions of Palestinian families from homes built for them in the 1950s by the U.N. in the Sheikh Jarrah section of East Jerusalem – nor on the growing non-violent movement that’s brought thousands of Palestinians and Israelis together to protest these evictions.

8. Even as it repeats Netanyahu’s assertion that “the Jewish people” were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, NPR has not raised any question or qualification about this claim. If ancient history is to be considered grounds for sovereignty, there are several issues that deserve attention: Many mainstream archaeologists doubt that there was such a thing as a Jewish people or even a Jewish religion 3,000 years. Whoever may have been building there 3,000 years ago, today’s Palestinians have a considerably stronger claim to be their descendants than Ashkenazi Jews like Netanyahu. As Juan Cole has recently pointed out, Jews have ruled Jerusalem for only a few brief moments in its history; Muslims have ruled the city and done most of the building there over the last 1,500 years. 

9. If the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are angry and frustrated, one reason is because Israel treats them like second- or third-class citizens – except that they’re not even citizens. They can’t vote in national elections, and they’re not entitled to Israeli passports. They’re prohibited from engaging in political activity, and Israel has repeatedly barred celebrations of their national culture. Thousands of them have had their Jerusalem residency rights revoked for such “offenses” as spending too much time outside the city. If a Jerusalem Palestinian marries someone from elsewhere in the occupied territories – even from, say, Bethlehem or Ramallah, which are just a few miles away – they’re not permitted to live together, either in Jerusalem or in the territories.

Meanwhile, social and economic conditions in East Jerusalem are miserable and rapidly deteriorating, in part because the giant separation wall Israel has built within and around East Jerusalem cuts the area off from the rest of the Palestinian population and economy. 68.4 percent of the population of East Jerusalem live below the poverty line, yet only 22 percent receive any government social services. While the Palestinians make up 32 percent of Jerusalem’s total population, and the municipality collects around 30 percent of its tax revenue from them, less than ten percent of the municipal budget is spent on services for them. The municipality spends four times as much per pupil on primary schools in West Jerusalem as in East Jerusalem, which suffers from a drastic shortage of classrooms. Entire Palestinian neighborhoods are not connected to a sewage system and do not have paved roads or sidewalks. Almost 90 percent of the city’s sewage pipes, roads, and sidewalks are found in the western part of the city. West Jerusalem has 1,000 public parks, East Jerusalem has 45. West Jerusalem has 34 swimming pools, East Jerusalem has three. West Jerusalem has 26 libraries, East Jerusalem has two. West Jerusalem has 531 sports facilities, East Jerusalem has 33. And so on.

 As for housing, NPR somehow hasn’t noticed that the Palestinians too have large families and suffer from a “housing crunch” far more drastic than that afflicting Ramat Shlomo. While the government works overtime to develop plans for additional Jewish settlement construction in East Jerusalem, it’s all but impossible for Palestinians to get construction permits, and if they build anyway, they’re at constant risk of having their homes demolished. (All Things Considered did run a reasonably good report by Lourdes Garcia-Navarro last November about “allegations” by East Jerusalem Palestinians that Israel is “intensifying a campaign to evict them from their homes.”)

10. NPR found time this month for a long story about an Israeli tariff that’s threatening the business of an Illinois company that exports carp for gefilte fish, but the last time the network’s listeners heard that Israel receives $3 billion a year in U.S. aid was when Stephen Walt mentioned it in a July 2006 interview. This month, even as debate about U.S. relations with Israel has boiled up, the network’s news shows haven’t bothered to mention U.S. aid at all. (The subject has come up briefly on Talk of the Nation – once mentioned by guest Ted Koppel, once in a quote from Gideon Levy read by host Neal Conan, and once when a caller from California observed that for $10 million a day, “You would think that would buy us a little more influence than it does” – to which Conan responded “Well, part of that is the billion dollars that we promised both to Israel and to Egypt, that’s included in the peace agreement that got those two people to recognize each other, which is a benefit that I think everybody can agree on.”)

Below is Stephen Sniegoski’s informative article:

Government investigations of controversial events are invariably whitewashes to protect the government and eliminate the truth.  So it is to a large degree with Britain’s Iraq Inquiry,  which Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced on  June 15,  2009 for the stated purpose of identifying lessons that can be learned from the Iraq conflict. The Iraq Inquiry was officially launched on July 30,  2009 but did not begin its deliberations until  November. It is  being run by a committee of five persons chaired by Sir John Chilcot, and thus is commonly dubbed the Chilcot Inquiry.

The Inquiry Committee is stacked against truth since one of the five members of the committee, Sir Lawrence Freedman was a foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair and another member, Martin Gilbert (Churchill’s biographer) is very pro-Israel and idealizes Tony Blair as a great leader.  But  despite the fact that the board was stacked against truth, some element of truth has been able to seep through. And recently it has been reported in the mainstream  press in the UK and even in the US that testimony at the Inquiry revealed that Blair and Bush had agreed upon military action against Iraq as early as April 2002 though this decision on war was never revealed to the US people or to Congress. In fact, the October 11, 2002 Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq did not expressly spell out war and President Bush claimed at that time that it was not a mandate for war but could be used to bring about a solution by peaceful means.

Barely mentioned in the mainstream US or UK media, however, were statements made by Tony Blair in his testimony before the Inquiry referring  to the involvement of Israel in the decision for war.  This is brought out in a piece by Stephen M. Walt, the co-author along with John J. Mearsheimer of the bombshell work, “The Israel Lobby.”   Walt points out that Blair stated that in his meeting with Bush in Crawford, Texas in April 2002 the issue of Israel loomed large:

http://tinyurl.com/yachex3

“As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this.”

Walt points out: “Notice that Blair is not saying that Israel dreamed up the idea of attacking Iraq or that Bush was bent on war solely to benefit Israel or even to appease the Israel lobby here at home.  But Blair is acknowledging that concerns about Israel were part of the equation, and that the Israeli government was being actively consulted in the planning for the war.

“Blair’s comments fit neatly with the argument we make about the lobby and Iraq. Specifically, Professor Mearsheimer and I made it clear in our article and especially in our book that the idea of invading Iraq originated in the United States with the neoconservatives, and not with the Israeli government. But as the neoconservative pundit Max Boot once put it, steadfast support for Israel is ‘a key tenet of neoconservatism.’ Prominent neo-conservatives occupied important positions in the Bush administration, and in the aftermath of 9/11, they played a major role in persuading Bush and Cheney to back a war against Iraq, which they had been advocating since the late 1990s. We also pointed out that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and other Israeli officials were initially skeptical of this scheme, because they wanted the U.S. to focus on Iran, not Iraq. However, they became enthusiastic supporters of the idea of invading Iraq once the Bush administration made it clear to them that Iraq was just the first step in a broader campaign of ‘regional transformation’ that would eventually include Iran.”

So, in short, Blair did reveal an Israel connection to the war, that the official gatekeepers of the US (and UK) media have sought to deny, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  It should be pointed out, however,  that even Walt tends to downplay somewhat the actual extent of the Israel connection.  For while it was the  neocons who from the late 1990s onward pushed the strategic plan to first attack Iraq before moving on to Iran and Israel’s other Middle East adversaries,  their entire plan paralleled earlier schemes developed in Israel, especially by the Likudniks (e.g. Oded Yinon), to destabilize Israel’s enemies by war, starting with a  war on Iraq.  In short, the neocons were hardly original and the overall destabilization through war strategy originated in Israel for the purpose of advancing Israeli geostrategic interests.

Now the Sharon government  did see Iran as its fundamental enemy, but it is not completely certain to what degree Walt is correct in saying: “Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and other Israeli officials were initially skeptical of this [neocon] scheme, because they wanted the U.S. to focus on Iran, not Iraq.”  Most studies on Israeli Cabinets going back to Ben-Gurion have indicated differences of opinion regarding exactly what foreign policy strategies to pursue.   Ben-Gurion supposedly used the saying: “Two Jews, three opinions.”  With this in mind, I would think that some Israelis in high places probably subscribed to the neocon Iraq war position from the beginning, especially since they would know (even if they relied solely on what the neocons said publicly) that Iran would be a future target.  And some Israelis did push the neocon line at a very early date, as I bring out in “The Transparent Cabal.” For example, Rafi Eitan, former head of Mossad who had engineered the capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, echoed the neocon line  in September 2001  by claiming that  Saddam was the “mastermind” of the 9/11 attacks. (TC, p. 146)  And Walt illustrates that by June 2002, after the supposed Crawford agreement, leading Israeli officials were actively pushing for an attack.  It is difficult to see evidence of previous opposition to the neocon agenda.  It would really seem that if there had been a strong preference to attack Iran, Israeli officials would not have so quickly gotten on the bandwagon for war on Iraq.

Walt acknowledges that the supporters of Israel will continue to make an effort to suppress the truth about the role of Israel and its supporters in bringing about the war on Iraq but Walt  does not think it will work. Walt writes: “This campaign won’t work, however, because too many people already know that Israel and the lobby were cheerleaders for the war and with the passage of time, more and more evidence of their influence on the decision for war will leak out. The situation is analogous to what happened with the events surrounding the infamous Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964. The Johnson administration could dissemble and cover its tracks for a few years, but eventually the real story got out, as will happen with Iraq.”

Obviously, the analogy with the attempted Vietnam cover-up is totally fallacious and one would think that Walt would recognize this.  In regard to Vietnam, much, if not most of the media establishment, became opposed to the war by the tail end of the 1960s and the mainstream media (and the academic community) was quite willing to present any information to discredit the war.  In contrast, the willingness to mention pro-Israel involvement in the war on Iraq is virtually non-existent in the mainstream media.

Walt actually concedes the mainstream media’s ability to cover-up the Israel issue   but holds that the “internet and the blogosphere is allowing the word to spread.  Thankfully, we no longer have to rely on the mainstream media to get the story straight.”

This faith in the internet is overrated.  People in important positions know it is not career enhancing to quote the non-PC items from the Internet.  And while the number of individuals who peruse the Internet is large, the number who actually read material critical of Israel and its lobby is rather small. Mostly, the critics of the Israel lobby are preaching to the choir, not making new converts.

Most Americans still get their news from the mainstream media (including mainstream Internet sites) and thus don’t really know much  about the role of Israel and its lobby in influencing US policy.  In short, the impact of the Internet dissidents on Israel is rather meager.  Again, this is  quite a contrast to the impact of the Vietnam war dissenters, who by the end of the 1960s had their views publicized in the mainstream media.  While numerous elected officials opposed the Vietnam war, only a very rare elected official will ever dare mention the role of Israel’s supporters in influencing US policy, and usually those officials are about to retire (e.g., Senator Fritz Hollings)  or later recant (e.g., Congressman  Jim Moran).

Perhaps an even more serious phenomenon is the fear of the  critics of the Israel lobby to identify with others who express similar views on the grounds that such an association will lead to charges of anti-Semitism.  This observation is based on personal experience concerning the virtual disregard of my book, “The Transparent Cabal,” by anti-war outlets that dare to mention  the Israel lobby.  Now, my book is far from a best seller but it has sales equal to  those of many academic works and it has been praised by a number of individuals of some stature.  Yet a significant number of individuals who deal with the Israel lobby topic refuse to mention my work  and this includes Mearsheimer and Walt.  As a matter of fact,  most of these individuals will not even refer to my book in private correspondence.  Now my work on the neocons and their connection to Israel is more extensively documented than any other work on the subject and thus provides solid proof for a number of often disputed points.    If there are errors in my work it would seem reasonable that others should simply mention them.  If I am too harsh toward the neocons or Israel, this could be mentioned too. But instead of being criticized for any faults, my book is treated with silence. This is difficult to explain when it is done by anti-war critics of the Israel lobby,  but  I guess that when taboo issues are involved the possibility of getting into  trouble causes people with something to lose  to be exceedingly cautious in  being identified with writers lacking mainstream sanction.

I don’t think that I am alone in being ignored in this manner.  So if even people such as Mearsheimer and Walt shy away from non-PC authors or from books lacking the imprimatur of big name publishers, it is hard to see how  any significant number of people will gain an understanding of the power of the Israel lobby.  

Returning to the Chilcot Inquiry, I must mention that the issue of Israel and its supporters has already been touched upon in England and largely silenced with the charge of anti-Semitism. On November 22, 2009, as the Inquiry was preparing to convene, a former British ambassador, Oliver Miles, wrote an article in “The Independent” newspaper expressing concern at the fact that two out of the five members of the Inquiry Committee, Martin Gilbert and Lawrence Freedman, were “strong supporters of Tony Blair and/or the Iraq war”. He also pointed out that both Gilbert and Freedman were Jewish, and that Gilbert was a very strong Zionist. http://tinyurl.com/yz6q55f  

Writing in “The Independent” on November 28 and December 12, columnist Richard Ingrams wondered whether the Zionists’ links to the Iraq invasion would be brushed aside. His  comments on this issue on December 12  included a  favorable reference  to  my book—“The Transparent Cabal.” (“Richard Ingrams’s Week: Ian Fleming’s creations are preferable to reality,”  December 12, 2009, http://tinyurl.com/yb4p7ms  )

After these contentions,  a number of other commentators from the mainstream media, along with Inquiry Committee member Martin Gilbert,  trotted  out the lethal charge of anti-Semitism,  implying that any allegation  that Jews, including very pro-Zionist Jews such as Martin Gilbert, might be naturally biased toward the Jewish state was an example of heinous anti-Semitism.  Of course, the potential accusation of anti-Semitism also would ward off  any investigation of pro-Zionist influence on war policy in Britain or the United States.

On January 31, I wrote a letter on this subject to “The Independent,” which a friend, James Morris,  graciously put forth the effort (making a number of telephone calls) to submit for me.  I  thought that because of  Ingrams’ reference to my book in “The Independent,” that newspaper might be willing to allow me to point out that my book provides extensive evidence of the pro-Israel neoconservatives’ influence in bringing about the US war on Iraq.  In my letter,  I pointed out that this evidence made it necessary for the Inquiry to engage in an investigation of that charge and to not simply dismiss it as conspiratorial anti-Semitism.  Perhaps not surprisingly, my effort failed as the editor replied that the newspaper did not publish “plugs” for books—my reference to the evidence in “The Transparent Cabal” being written off as simply a book “plug.”  Of course, this response  presented me with a something of a Catch-22 situation since my book provides the  necessary proof for  the neocon/Israel role in the war on Iraq, which the media luminaries charging anti-Semitism were claiming was obviously untrue.  Although “The Independent” refused to run my letter in the print addition, it was allowed to be placed among the online comments—along with myriads of other comments by readers.

The stated purpose of the Chilcot Inquiry is to  learn lessons  from the Iraq conflict.  Obviously the ignoring, or even downplaying, of the role of Israel and its sympathizers will prevent the fundamental lesson from being learned.  And it is this lesson that needs to be learned immediately since the Israel and its supporters are the main factor pushing for war on Iran.  The hand of Israel is even more explicit in the build-up for war on Iran than it had been in the war on Iraq.  In fact, the expressed justifications for war on Iran  usually only involve Israel and Jews—allegations about Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial, “wiping Israel off the map,” aiding terrorists against Israel.  In fact, most of the expressed reasons for the US to take a militant  line against Iran have little to do with any particular danger to the United States.  Despite the obvious role of Israel and its supporters in the move toward war on Iran, however,  it is still taboo to claim that the war would be fought for the interests of Israel not the United States.  Most likely, with the new revelations limited largely to the Bush administration’s early decision for war, the view of the war will only be revised to the extent that it will be seen as resulting from the aberrant views of Bush and Blair, and perhaps Cheney.  The role of Israel and its lobby will remain largely unknown.  And no connection will be made between the motivation for the war on Iraq and the build-up for the war on Iran, which will continue to be driven by Israel and its lobby unimpeded by  any significant criticism.

Now that there has been so much controversy over the fact that the son of the New York Times‘ Israel-Palestine bureau chief is serving in the Israeli army, more is starting to come out about other major journalists who had/have their own intimate connections to the IDF.

Jewish Week reports that a previous Times bureau chief, Joel Greenberg, “before he was Jerusalem bureau chief but after he was already having bylines in the Times from Israel, actually served in the IDF.”

Richard Chesnoff admits: “I’ve been covering and writing about Mideast events for more than 40 years. And like Bronner, I had a son serving in the Israeli army during part of the 14 years I covered both Israel and the Arab world as US News & World Report‘s senior foreign correspondent.” (I wonder if he disclosed this to readers at the time.)

As I’ve noted previously and featured in a video, Atlantic Monthly‘s Jeffrey Goldberg served in the Israeli military himself; it’s unclear when/if his military service ended.

NPR’s Linda Gradstein’s husband was an IDF sniper and may still be in the reserves. I don’t know whether Gradstein herself is also an Israeli citizen, as are her children and husband.

About five or six years ago I learned that the national editor for the San Diego Union-Tribune was an Israeli citizen who had served in the Israeli millitary.

Given that many of the journalists for American media are actually Israeli citizens, connections to the Israeli military may be quite common. Perhaps Bronner is the rule, not the exception.

Several years ago I was told by an American editor that Time Magazine’s bureau chief had made aliyah after he had assumed his post. (Making aliyah means “ascending” to Israeli citizenship.)

So far, despite promises that they would get back to me the Times has still not answered my questions about Times correspondent Isabel Kershner, a naturalized Israeli citizen originally from Britain. Did she ever serve in the IDF herself? Have any of her relatives? Are any relatives currently serving in Israeli forces?

(Others may wish to ask the New York Times foreign desk these questions as well: email foreign@nytimes.com or phone the main number, 212-556-1234, and ask for the foreign desk.)

Similarly, I wonder how many of AP’s editors are Israeli or have Israeli families? How many serve or served in the Israeli military or have family members with this connection?

How many TV correspondents? I remember looking into this a few years ago and being surprised at how many had Israeli families, and in some casees were Israelis themselves; NBC’s Martin Fletcher is a case in point. It’s hard to imagine that he doesn’t have Israeli military connections among his family members.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was based in Israel for many years, wrote a book whitewashing Israeli spying on the US, and used to work for the Israel lobby.

It’s interesting to learn that Tikkun’s Rabbi Michael Lerner, whose criticisms of Israeli human rights violations and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza have been powerful but who continues to support Israeli state discrimination, has also had a son in the military. In an interview with Jewish Week Lerner is quoted as saying: “Having a son in the Israeli army was a manifestation of my love for Israel, and I assume that having a son in the Israeli army is a manifestation of Bronner’s love of Israel.”

Lerner goes on to make an interesting point:  

“…there is a difference in my emotional and spiritual connection to these two sides [Israelis and Palestinians]. On the one side is my family; on the other side are decent human beings. I want to support human beings all over the planet but I have a special connection to my family. I don’t deny it.”

To me, the fact that so many major journalists have such ties to Israel is an extraordinary and disturbing situation. Israel is a foreign country. Most Americans want full, unbiased reporting about it and its numerous violent conflicts, invasions, and occupations. Yet, we have a pattern in which journalists for American media have intimate military connections to one side of these conflicts. As Lerner notes – Israel is, literally, family.

Naturally, we know that there are journalists with potential bias on many subjects who transcend such bias and give us excellent journalism. However, it is foolish to assume that this is always the case – especially since the reporting on Israel-Palestine is so consistently Israel-centric.

I believe that these close connections to Israel should always be divulged to the public. I also believe that our news agencies should either do a better job of hiring journalists without such connections, or should hire journalists with opposite connections to balance this Israel-heavy situation.

Of course, given the ownership and management of US media, and the considerable clout of pro-Israel advertisers and well-funded lobbying groups, I realize that such a change is highly unlikely.

Sadly, media critics, with the exception of Project Censored and FAIR, seem very timid about taking this on. No doubt they’re minimally informed on Israel-Palestine itself, while being fully informed on where where the power lies in this country and the damage that criticism of Israel can do to journalistic careers.

Therefore, I believe it is critical that the rest of us work to make this bias known to more American citizens, whose tax money is going to Israel in such uniquely massive proportions.

To help in this effort, people can put on events, write letters to the editor, tell others about If Americans Knew, distribute cards, factsheets, booklets and DVDs, and join our email list.

It’s up to us.

Update: Saturday, 20 March 2010 at 10:19 AM

After this blog entry I looked into this even more and decided to write an article about it, US Mediia and Israeli Military: All in the Family, which was published by CounterPunch and ZNet. The situation turned out to be even worse than I had thought – which is so often the case with Israel-related subjects.

We have also made a hard-copy version for people to download and distribute. It’s important that this situation be exposed!

Ethan Bronner on Gaza: Investigative Journalism or IDF Stenography?

Currently, the New York Times has only one bureau to cover Israel-Palestine. This is in Israel and its chief editor, Ethan Bronner, consistently shows Israeli bias, as I’ve noted in a number of previous postings (even apart from the fact that his son has recently entered the Israeli military). The Times‘ other major correspondent, Isabel Kershner, is an Israeli citizen.

New York Times Editor Bill Keller, in defending his decision to retain Bronner as their bureau chief despite Bronner’s conflict of interest and profoundly flawed track record, writes that he feels Bronner’s intimate family ties with Israel “supply a measure of sophistication about Israel and its adversaries.”

If the Times actually does want full, unbiased reporting on this region (there is little to indicate this, but let’s imagine it is so), it is essential that the Times also have bureaus in the Palestinian Territories; ideally, one in the West Bank and one in Gaza, headed by people with equal “sophistication” about Palestine and its adversaries.

Fortunately for the Times, a journalist with an excellent track record for journalism in the area and, no doubt, considerable “sophistication,” is now available. Jared Malsin, a Jewish-American 2007 Yale graduate, was until recently the chief English editor at Ma’an News, the largest independent news organization in the West Bank and an excellent source of news.

Apparently because of this, Malsin was recently denied re-entry by Israel, incarcerated for about a week, and deported by Israeli authorities.

I suggest that the Times now explore hiring Malsin or someone else with equivalent knowledge and skills to head up a West Bank bureau. While I realize that some in the Israeli government might attempt to prevent Malsin from assuming this post, I expect that the Times, unlike Ma’an, has the connections and the clout to overcome an Israeli attempt to censor their hirees. If Israel attempted to do this, I would hope the Times would consider it front-page news, and that the editorial page would comment on it, as well.

If Malsin has already taken a position elsewhere, I suspect that he could recommend other informed and skilled individuals for this position. I would be delighted to assist the Times in such a search and would be happy to suggest numerous people who could direct them to excellent candidates for such a position.

Others may wish to suggest this to Mr. Keller as well. After all, the Times ethics guidelines state: “In keeping with its solemn responsibilities under the First Amendment, our company strives to maintain the highest standard of journalistic ethics” and maintains, “our goal is to cover the news impartially.”

How better to fulfill their solemn responsibility to report the news impartially than to have bureaus in both Israel AND in Palestine, staffed with people either with no close connections to either society, or by people with equally deep connections to both?

(Of course, Malsin, as far as I’m aware, has no familial connections to Palestinian society and much more fits into the first category; in that respect, he doesn’t even come close to balancing Bronner. I am suggesting Malsin because of his track record at Ma’an; however, there are Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans who would also be excellent, perhaps even superior choices. My main point is to begin the discussion.)

In the meantime, until the Times follows its own ethics guidelines, I suggest that people who wish to be well-informed on Israel-Palestine turn to Ma’an News, the International Middle East Media Center (less well-funded than Ma’an but also an excellent source of information), and our own news blog. A valuable monthly resource is the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

As the Times rarely tells readers, Americans are major funders of Israel. We’d better know how it’s using our money.

#

Mr Keller can be reached at

executive-editor@nytimes.com
212.556.1234

*

FYI: A new discussion of Bronner by Lysandra Ohrstrom at Huffington is well worth reading

As I predicted, the New York Times management is ignoring evidence of Ethan Bronner’s Israel-centric reporting and is, so far, keeping him on as their Jerusalem bureau chief.

Editor Bill Keller explains in a blog posting that the Times‘ “rulebook leaves us wide latitude,” that they’re not going “to capitulate to the more savage partisans,” and that they’re not even going to listen to their own ombudsman, Readers Representative Clark Hoyt, who, in a column to be published in tomorrow’s paper, recommends moving Bronner:

But, stepping back [Clark writes], this is what I see: The Times sent a reporter overseas to provide disinterested coverage of one of the world’s most intense and potentially explosive conflicts, and now his son has taken up arms for one side. Even the most sympathetic reader could reasonably wonder how that would affect the father, especially if shooting broke out.

…this is not about punishment; it is simply a difficult reality. I would find a plum assignment for him somewhere else, at least for the duration of his son’s service in the I.D.F.

Keller claims, referring to Hoyt’s column, “…everyone you interviewed for your column concurs that Ethan Bronner is fully capable of continuing to cover his beat fairly.”

Actually, Hoyt, who perhaps due to lack of personal expertise in the region praises Bronner’s “excellent track record,” references only three interviews with people concerning Bronner’s work (other than with Keller himself): one was quoted significantly out of context and the other two were former Times‘ journalists.

Keller neglects to mention that in his column Clark writes that he had heard from 400 readers, “…many of them convinced that Bronner could not continue in his current assignment,” and who, quite likely, would have given a substantially different assessment of Bronner’s work if Clark had bothered to interview them.

Interestingly, Clark reports that Bronner had told him that his son “joined in late December for roughly a year of training and six months of active duty before he returns to the United States for college.” Normally, Israeli soldiers are required to serve in the Israeli reserves for decades. Did Bronner fail to inform Mr. Clark of this fact? Or did Mr. Clark choose not to inform readers of it?

Not surprisingly, the Times again chooses to ignore our studies demonstrating the Times‘ distortion on this issue. Similarly, there is no mention of the excellent book “Israel-Palestine on Record: How the New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East,” co-authored by distinguished Princeton Emeritus Professor Richard Falk detailing the Times‘ flawed coverage.

Apparently, Mr. Keller is unconcerned that skewed Times‘ coverage enables tragic and profoundly destructive US policies, destroying thousands of lives. Unlike Mr. Keller, some of us care. I wonder if we’re the “savage partisans” to whom he refers.

Clark writes, “Nobody at The Times wants to give in to what they see as relentlessly unfair criticism of the paper’s Middle East coverage by people hostile to objective reporting.”

While it’s true that Bronner himself talks of “narratives,” and Israel partisans oppose objective reporting,  I personally have been pleading for it for many years. The Times, sadly, seems to have little interest in giving it to us on Israel-Palestine.

Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive of Haiti told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Jan. 27th that there had been reports of child trafficking and organ trafficking in Haiti…

CNN news report on this – “Traffickers targeting Haiti’s children, human organs, PM says”

(CNN) — Trafficking of children and human organs is occurring in the aftermath of the earthquake that devastated parts of Haiti, killed more than 150,000 people, and left many children orphans, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said Wednesday.

“There is organ trafficking for children and other persons also, because they need all types of organs,” Bellerive said in an exclusive interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour….

It’s not difficult to predict that the Times will refuse to acknowledge Bronner’s conflict of interest, despite the paper’s own ethics guidelines and journalism ethics in general, which state: “Even the appearance of obligation or conflict of interest should be avoided.”

It is sad that places like the Times so often violate the noble sentiments proclaimed in a multitude of journalistic ethics statements, and that mainstream critics so rarely call them on it when the violations concern Israel-Palestine.

Several websites have posted valuable discussions of Bronner’s conflict of interest and analyses of his work.

I. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) issued an alert about the Times refusal to confirm or deny the information about Bronner’s son and describing previous problems with Bronner’s reporting:

Does NYT’s Top Israel Reporter Have a Son in the IDF? Foreign editor treats potential conflict as none of our business

The New York Times refuses to confirm or deny a report that its Jerusalem bureau chief, Ethan Bronner, has a child who is an enlisted member of the Israeli Defense Force–even though such a relationship would pose a serious conflict of interest.

…The decisions of Bronner’s son, however, are not the issue. What the Times needs to ask itself is whether it expects that its bureau chief has the normal human feelings about matters of life or death concerning one’s child.

Might he feel hostility, for example, when interviewing members of organizations who were trying to kill his son? When the IDF goes into battle, might he be rooting for the side for which his son is risking his life? Certainly such issues would be taken very seriously if a Times reporter had a child who belonged to a military force that was engaged in hostilities with the IDF; indeed, there’s little doubt that a reporter in that position would not be allowed to continue to cover the Mideast conflict.

Having a conflict of interest, it should be stressed, is not the same thing as producing slanted journalism; rather, it means that a journalist has outside motivations that are strongly at odds with his or her journalistic responsibilities. That a journalist has been “scrupulously fair” in the past does not excuse an ongoing conflict of interest; journalists should not be placed in a position where they have to ignore the well-being of their family in order to do their job, nor should readers be expected to trust that they can do so.

That said, Bronner’s reporting has been repeatedly criticized by FAIR for what would appear to be a bias toward the Israeli government.

Previous FAIR commentaries on Bronner’s Israel-centric reporting are:

Get Carter: NY Times punishes an ex-president for criticizing Israel

If you wonder why New York Times editors were allowing such unethical journalism and shoddy commentary, you might examine the work of Ethan Bronner, the Middle East editor at the Times, who personally contributed to the paper’s skewed coverage of Carter’s book.

Bronner began his book review of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (Times, 1/7/07) by writing, “This is a strange little book about the Arab/Israeli conflict from a major public figure.” It was “largely unsympathetic to Israel” and a “distortion” of Israel’s policies, because “broader regional developments” that are presumably exculpatory of Israel’s conduct “go largely unexamined”–namely Al-Qaeda, “the nuclear ambitions of Iran” and “the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan.” The relevance of any of these phenomena to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, which is the focus of Carter’s book, was not explained by Bronner’s review.

Carter, according to Bronner, also is guilty of “distortion” because “hollow statements by Israel’s enemies are presented without comment.” Bronner was referring to Hafez al-Assad, the late president of Syria, who, according to Bronner, “is quoted for an entire section, offering harsh impressions of Israel.” Carter actually provided an extended summary of his conversations with Assad, including a few brief quotes; he put this material in context by saying he thought it would “be helpful to summarize the past involvement and assessments of the leaders of Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia concerning their potential involvement in possible solutions” to the Israel/Palestine conflict. Bronner apparently was offended that Carter would present such Arab views of the conflict.

Bronner also claimed that Carter, speaking of the separation wall between Israel and the Palestinian West Bank, wrote that its “driving purpose” is “the acquisition of land” and “not to stop suicide bombers and other violent attacks.” Bronner misrepresented Carter’s views in this instance, since Carter was talking about Israel’s overall policy toward the Palestinians (which includes the wall), and not the wall by itself. Here is the relevant passage from Carter’s book:

Israeli leaders[‘]…presumption is that an encircling barrier will finally resolve the Palestinian problem. Utilizing their political and military dominance, they are imposing a system of partial withdrawal, encapsulation and apartheid on the Muslim and Christian citizens of the occupied territories. The driving purpose for the forced separation of the two peoples is unlike that in South Africa–not racism, but the acquisition of land.

Contrary to Bronner’s rendition, Carter in fact acknowledged the security aspects of the wall in his book, but also accurately noted that much of it is built on Palestinian land, and thus illegally situates large areas of Palestinian land on the Israeli side of the wall.

While arguing that “settling the Israel question” for “radical leaders of the Muslim world” means “eliminating Israel,” Bronner ignored the radical and even mainstream elements in Israel who hold similar views toward Palestinians (Jerusalem Post, 9/11/06; TheNation.com, 12/14/06).

Though one would never know this by reading the New York Times’ coverage of Jimmy Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid was in essence an appeal to Israel, the Palestinians, the Arab world and the United States to resolve the conflict peacefully by recognizing the legitimate rights of both Israel and the Palestinians. Perhaps it was for those reasons that the New York Times, given its overall coverage of the conflict–which favors Israel’s rights over Palestinian rights–would attack the former president with unsubstantiated and utterly implausible charges of plagiarism.

The ‘Right to Exist’ as an Arab IsraeliU.S. papers of record regularly erase Israel’s Palestinian citizens

New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner, in the largest and most extensive story purporting to catch the Israeli mood … claimed …that “voices of dissent in this country have been rare….Israel, which is sometimes a fractured, bickering society, has turned in the past couple of weeks into a paradigm of unity and mutual support.”

Bronner referred to “polls [that] have shown nearly 90 percent support for the war thus far,” though he did not cite any poll in particular. That unsourced figure—a statistical unlikelihood in a country that is 20 percent Palestinian—was repeated by anti-Islam propagandist Daniel Pipes (FAIR Report: Meet the Smearcasters, 10/08), who specifically mentioned the Times when he cited the figure on Al Jazeera English’s Riz Khan (January 13, 2009).

In a more realistic—and verifiable—reading of Israel’s ethnic diversity, a Tel Aviv University poll (1/4–6/09) found that although 94 percent of Jewish Israelis favored the operation, only 81 percent of the overall population did—meaning a majority of Palestinian and other non-Jewish Israelis were opposed.

Bonner’s confused interpretation of Israeli opinion continued even when he mentioned Arab Israelis. He claimed that “antiwar rallies here have struggled to draw 1,000 participants,” yet some 10 paragraphs later wrote that “the largest demonstration against the war so far, with some 6,000 participants, was organized by an Arab political party”…

The “6,000” figure itself is a vast undercount of any of a series of demonstrations that had been held in predominantly Palestinian towns in Israel…. An Agence France-Presse article (1/17/09) claimed the protests drew 100,000 people, while Al Jazeera English (1/3/09) placed the number at 150,000. Sakhnin’s mayor called the demonstrations “the biggest procession in the history of the Palestinian people in Israel”… To Bronner, mysteriously, these much larger Arab demonstrations don’t seem to count as antiwar rallies.

Remarkably, the paper did not mention the Israeli Knesset’s vote to ban Arab parties from the upcoming national elections…until after Israel declared a unilateral cease-fire.

‘Tensions’ and ‘History’in Jerusalem

The New York Times’ Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner (5/10/09) wrote about the Israeli government’s $100 million development plan in Jerusalem: [Bronner and Kershner state:] “In other words, while the Israeli narrative that guides the government plan focuses largely—although not exclusively—on Jewish history and links to the land, the Palestinian narrative heightens tensions, pushing the Israelis into a greater confrontational stance.”

Apparently in that battle for legitimacy, tearing down your opponents’ homes is focusing on “history,” while downplaying archeology is “heightening tensions.”

II.  Richard Silverstein at Tikkun Olam has written a number of excellent analyses on Bronner’s flawed reports; these are useful to read.

In “Bronner Fetes Tel Aviv’s 100th Anniversary” he concludes:

I don’t think Bronner is aware of any of this.  Or if he is he dismisses it with a sharp wave of the hand as ideological histrionics.  What he does not understand is that until he can absorb Ash’s and Rotbard’s point of view into his narrative, he cannot properly apprehend the subject before him.  It remains a light and airy thing lacking in historical knowledge and social nuance.

1909 is a convenient fiction adopted by Tel Aviv’s white Israelis and now embraced by the country’s foreign ministry in its campaign to prettify Israel’s image via homages like the one at the Toronto Film Festival.  And just as the Tel Aviv celebration at TIFF masks Israel’s crimes in Gaza, it also masks the city’s real, complex and troubled history.

In his posting “Bronner’s Mischaracterization of Hamas Continues,” Silverstein notes:

Not an article Ethan Bronner writes goes by without the obligatory claim that Hamas is dedicated to Israel’s destruction…

…In fact, many Israeli political, military and intelligence analysts concede that Hamas’ acceptance of a hudna is a tacit acceptance of Israel’s existence.

In fact, no senior leader of Hamas for several years has put forward the incrementalist notion that it may accept a hudna as a creeping process leading to Israel’s destruction and absorption into Palestine…

It’s long past time for Bronner to get with the program and acknowledge the myriad interviews of senior Hamas officials like Khaled Meshaal and others who have documented the moderating of the movement’s positions on these matters.  Let’s put it plain and simple for him: Hamas currently does not reject Israel’s right to exist nor is it committed to its destruction… The fact that Bronner stays stuck in the past is yet another proof that his reporting is neither careful nor balanced.

Yet another proof of this is a recent profile he wrote about the weekly Bilin demonstrations at the Separation Wall.  He interviewed IDF officers and peace activists about their respective views of both the Wall and the demonstrations.  But curiously, he noted the IDF claim that 170 soldiers had been wounded over time there (part of the claim that the demonstrators are not non-violent peace activists, but violent hoodlums).  But Bronner somehow forgot to mention the Palestinian casualties at the Wall, which include one murdered Palestinian and one American left in a vegetative state by IDF fire in the past four months alone.  Altogether, 19 Palestinians have been killed during demonstrations against the Wall.  Why wasn’t this fact even whispered in Bronner’s article?  Because he wanted his readers to focus on the flesh wounds suffered by Israeli soldiers when a few odd rocks are thrown their way by young Palestinians who violate the discipline invoked during these protests?  Why did Ethan Bronner forget Palestinian suffering?

III. Two graduates from Northwestern’s school of journalism discussed the kind of potential problems a journalist in Bronner’s situation would have. They also noted previous flaws in Bronner’s reports:

Gregg and I have previously critiqued some of Bronner’s writing in casual, off-site conversations, though for reasons that had nothing to do with his son.

We were concerned in early June, just before President Obama’s Cairo speech to the Muslim world, when the Times ran an extremely thinly sourced story by Bronner that quoted an undefined number of anonymous “senior Israeli officials” who complained that Obama’s call for a settlement freeze violated pacts that Israel had made with the Bush administration.

To rebut the anonymous Israelis’ complaint, Bronner used two Bush administration officials — they were anonymous as well. Bronner’s two on-the-record sources were Dov Weissglas, a former aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and Elliot Abrams, a former deputy national security adviser for President George W. Bush. Both Abrams and Weissglass had published op-eds that Bronner relied on for his story; he appeared to have actually interviewed only Weissglas.

At the end of June, Bronner’s anonymous Israeli sources struck again in a piece that appeared to be aimed at spinning the settlement freeze debate ahead of an Israeli-American meeting on the issue. This was Bronner’s lede: “Israel would be open to a complete freeze of settlement building in the West Bank for three to six months as part of a broad Middle East peace endeavor that included a Palestinian agreement to negotiate an end to the conflict and confidence-building steps by major Arab nations, senior Israeli officials said Sunday.”

Three grafs later, Bronner wrote: “While such an offer falls short of President Obama’s demand that Israel halt all settlement building now, it is the most forthcoming response that senior Israeli officials have given to date and suggests that American pressure is having some effect.”

Obama wound up winning a slightly longer, though still extremely qualified settlement freeze. But the Israeli offer described in the June 29 article, which Bronner presented in a positive light, still looks like a pittance in retrospect.

Update on Saturday, February 6, 2010 at 2:56PM

My article on this topic, “NYT’s Israel Editor’s Sticky Situation: Ethan Bronner’s Conflict with Impartiality was published yesterday by CounterPunch. It’s also posted on the If Americans Knew website.

New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner, who is embroiled in an ethics controversy (see below), is about to embark on a small speaking tour on college campuses. People may wish to raise Bronner’s ethics violations at these and future venues.

The New York Times ethics guidelines state that a family member’s actions and position can raise conflict of interest problems that require a journalist to be assigned to a different news area. As an example, the Times‘ notes that a daughter in a high position on Wall Street could cause a conflict-of-interest problem for a business editor.

Bronner’s son has just entered the Israeli military, creating just such a serious conflict-of-interest problem.

The Times guidelines state: ” Where the conflict with our impartiality seems minimal, top news executives may consider matters case by case, but they should be exceedingly cautious before permitting an exception.”

I agree – especially when the conflict with impartiality is far from “minimal.” I find it difficult to believe that a father will view those with whom his son is fighting with complete objectivity… that he will view military engagements in which his son may be involved with impartiality. 

It would be one thing if Bronner were a columnist, his prejudices and affiliations fully disclosed, his attachments trumpeted – and balanced by another columnist with differing views and connections.

But he is not. He is a bureau chief charged with giving readers the full, unslanted news. The Times, in explaining the reason for its ethics policy, states: “Our fundamental purpose is to protect the impartiality and neutrality of the company’s newsrooms and the integrity of their news reports.”

It is time for the newspaper to do so in its foreign bureau; Bronner should be moved to an assignment where he is not reporting on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It’s disturbing that Foreign Editor Susan Chira has refused to address Bronner’s conflict with impartiality, particularly given the Times‘ record of distorted reporting on this issue. We suggest that the Times‘ investigate whether she, also, has a conflict with impartiality on this subject.

In 2005 we undertook a statistical study of the Times’ coverage of Israeli and Palestinian deaths and discovered that the newspaper had reported on Israeli children’s deaths at a rate over seven times greater than Palestinian children’s deaths.

Other analysts have also found highly flawed reporting, including an excellent book by Richard Falk and Howard Friel: “Israel-Palestine on Record: How the New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East.”

When Bronner debated Friel on this topic, we are told that he dismissed Friel’s objections, stating that the New York Times is a business, and that it reports how and what it wishes.

Given this viewpoint, it is odd to find announcements for his upcoming talks on college campuses stating that Bronner will address such concepts as “fairness” and “balance.”

The announcements also state that Bronner will “explore the challenges faced by a journalist covering two distinctly opposing narratives.” The announcements fail to reveal his intimate connection to one.

Moreover, I find Bronner’s “two narratives” approach to Israel-Palestine strange. The reality is that there are objective facts to obtain and report.

In this case, the reality is that the Israeli army, the fourth most powerful on earth, is, in the words of Israeli soldiers, ‘dominating, expelling, starving and humiliating an entire people.’

And Mr. Bronner’s son has just signed on.

Update on Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 7:11AM

Several websites have posted discussions of Bronner’s conflict of interest and analyses of his work.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) issued an alert about the Times refusal to confirm or deny the information about Bronner’s son and describing previous problems with Bronner’s reporting:

Does NYT’s Top Israel Reporter Have a Son in the IDF? Foreign editor treats potential conflict as none of our business

The New York Times refuses to confirm or deny a report that its Jerusalem bureau chief, Ethan Bronner, has a child who is an enlisted member of the Israeli Defense Force–even though such a relationship would pose a serious conflict of interest.

…The decisions of Bronner’s son, however, are not the issue. What the Times needs to ask itself is whether it expects that its bureau chief has the normal human feelings about matters of life or death concerning one’s child.

Might he feel hostility, for example, when interviewing members of organizations who were trying to kill his son? When the IDF goes into battle, might he be rooting for the side for which his son is risking his life? Certainly such issues would be taken very seriously if a Times reporter had a child who belonged to a military force that was engaged in hostilities with the IDF; indeed, there’s little doubt that a reporter in that position would not be allowed to continue to cover the Mideast conflict.

Having a conflict of interest, it should be stressed, is not the same thing as producing slanted journalism; rather, it means that a journalist has outside motivations that are strongly at odds with his or her journalistic responsibilities. That a journalist has been “scrupulously fair” in the past does not excuse an ongoing conflict of interest; journalists should not be placed in a position where they have to ignore the well-being of their family in order to do their job, nor should readers be expected to trust that they can do so.

That said, Bronner’s reporting has been repeatedly criticized by FAIR for what would appear to be a bias toward the Israeli government.