[Peace-discuss] Zionism is the problem

[C. G. Estabrook]

[From a month ago. --CGE]

	Los Angeles Times counters charges of anti-Israel bias
	Posted on February 8 2008 by Cecilie Surasky

CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, is 
taking out full page ads in Los Angeles newspapers charging the Los Angeles 
Times with anti-Israel bias. Besides what they call “unbalanced” op-eds, they 
also accuse the Times of utilizing Nazi imagery. LA Times op-ed editor Nicholas 
Goldberg defends the charges in an interview with the Jewish Journal this week. 
(The Los Angeles Times has long been targeted by protesters over their coverage 
of Israel. In 2002, some 1,000 readers participated in a one-day boycott to 
protest their “anti-Israel” stance, part of a nationwide effort that focused on 
other supposedly anti-Israel newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and the 
Washington Post. )

Goldberg told the Los Angeles Jewish Journal that living in Jerusalem and 
covering the region as a reporter from 1995-1998 meant he “emerged with a more 
sophisticated and nuanced viewpoint.”

"I do feel that the way the region is covered, and especially the way the 
conflict is covered in the opinion pages in America, has generally been very 
narrow compared to what you read in Israel. If you read Ha’aretz, if you see the 
Arab newspapers — if you see Al Ahram in Cairo — you will be exposed to points 
of view that you don’t hear in the United States. One of the things I decided 
when I became Op-Ed editor is that I would like to bring a broader range of 
viewpoints on the Middle East to the page. I’ve tried to do that."

As to CAMERA’s charges:

JJ: CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, 
published advertisements alleging that you put out 50 percent more pro-Arab 
Op-Eds than pro-Israel Op-Eds in a 19-month period and that your pages are biased.

NG: I think their numbers are misleading. They took a bizarre time period of 19 
months for some reason ending last July, and they left off a number of pieces 
that we’ve run on the Op-Ed page that didn’t seem to help their cause.

I went back and I looked at the pieces that we’ve run in the last year and a 
half, and what I found was that about 30 pieces we ran were highly supportive of 
Israel, from people on the right or people who were defenders of the Israeli 
government like Alan Dershowitz, Michael Oren, Max Boot, Natan Sharanksy, Moshe 
Ya’alon, Yossi Klein Halevi and Zev Chefets. I also found a handful of pieces 
that were pretty centrist, for example, by American diplomats writing about the 
future of the peace process.

Then I found about 30 pieces that were critical of Israel. But these 30 pieces 
weren’t “pro-Arab,” as CAMERA would want you to think: 17 of those came from 
Jews or Israelis who are Zionists, who are pro-Israel, but who are in some way 
critical of Israel. Of the remaining writers, there’s a small number that a 
group like CAMERA would say are terribly offensive. For instance, we’ve 
published Jimmy Carter; John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who wrote “The Israel 
Lobby”; UCLA professor Saree Makdisi; and on two occasions we published 
representatives of Hamas.

That’s my count, and it’s quite different from theirs. My count shows a balance.

And the cartoon?

NG: They said it echoes Nazi imagery. I would say that’s an unfortunate 
coincidence — but that’s all it is. We’re not Nazis here at the Los Angeles 
Times; we’re not anti-Semites. The fact is that before the State of Israel was 
created, the use of the Star of David in an illustration like that was meant to 
represent “the Jews.” Today the Jewish star, which sits on the Israeli flag, is 
used by illustrators not just as a religious symbol, but as a national symbol. 
That’s what it was meant to represent in this case. The illustration was about 
American politicians feeling pressure to support Israeli policies, which was 
what the piece was about.

I don’t think the illustration was anti-Semitic or Nazi-like

http://www.muzzlewatch.com/2008/02/08/los-angeles-times-counters-charges-of-anti-israel-bias/

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