[Peace-discuss] Zionism is the problem [CORRECTION]

[C. G. Estabrook]

It was in fact "a year ago."

C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> [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/ 
> 
> 
>     ###
>