{"id":68694,"date":"2019-03-22T17:05:43","date_gmt":"2019-03-22T15:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=68694"},"modified":"2019-03-21T08:19:22","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T06:19:22","slug":"28-05-38","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=68694","title":{"rendered":"Journalism\u2019s Longest War: The New York Times Versus Zionism and Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Journalism\u2019s Longest War: The New York Times Versus Zionism and Israel<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Professor Edward Alexande<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Professor Edward Alexander<\/strong><\/em><\/span> is professor emeritus of English at University of Washington. His most recent book is Jews Against Themselves.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

It has long been a commonplace that\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>, America\u2019s \u201cnewspaper of record,\u201d which flaunts the motto \u201cAll the News that\u2019s Fit to Print,\u201d failed to report the two greatest mass crimes of the twentieth century: Nazi Germany\u2019s destruction of European Jewry and the Soviet Union\u2019s murder of millions of Ukrainians. As Jerold Auerbach, professor emeritus of history at Wellesley College, tells the story of the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0from its late 19th century beginnings under the guidance of publisher Adolph S. Ochs of Tennessee up to the present day \u2014 a prodigious work of historical scholarship and critical analysis \u2014 the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u2019 two abiding principles (almost dogmas) during this \u201cBiblical\u201d tenure of 120 years have been Reform Judaism and American patriotism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both Ochs\u2019 religious commitment and his unswerving America First loyalty were dogmatic, and excluded sympathy with the Zionist movement. The two opposed forces came to prominence simultaneously: Theodor Herzl published\u00a0The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Problem<\/em>\u00a0in 1897, just six months before Ochs purchased the\u00a0Times<\/em>, then in desperate financial straits.<\/span><\/p>\n

He aimed to make it not only a financial success but \u201ca model American newspaper for fairness, cleanliness, independence, and enterprise.\u201d Ochs was also determined to keep the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0from either appearing as or being a Jewish newspaper; and to this end he took such measures, whenever possible, as hiding writers\u2019 Jewish names behind initials. Writers named Abraham had bylines only with the initial \u201cA.\u201d Not until 1976 would the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0have a Jewish editorial page editor, Max Frankel, who later confessed that he was \u201cmuch more deeply devoted to Israel than I dared to assert.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ochs\u2019 commitment to Reform Judaism, it should be noted, went very deep, and it entailed unrelenting opposition to Zionism or even to the notion of a Jewish people that transcended national boundaries. A Jew with American citizenship was in his view an American not only \u201cfirst\u201d but entirely and exclusively. He would provocatively ask American Zionists whether they would fight for America or for (a conjectural) Jewish state should the two countries go to war. He was a devout America Firster.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rarely did Ochs and his newspaper come to the defense even of persecuted American Jews, and when they did they came to regret it. Lawyer Louis Marshall persuaded Ochs to rally the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0in defense of Leo Frank, framed in 1913 for the rape and murder of teenager Mary Phagan. But when a Georgia paper accused the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0of \u201cJewish propaganda,\u201d Ochs vowed never again to support a public cause, \u201ccertainly not one involving Jews.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Auerbach shows how the Ochs-Sulzberger\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0and the Reform Movement \u2014 led by anti-Zionist zealots like Judah Magnes and groups like the American Council for Judaism \u2014 formed a kind of interlocking directorate that turned a cold shoulder to Jews coming under Nazi rule. He demonstrates how the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u2019 emphasis on \u201cuniversalism\u201d extended to concealment of Hitler\u2019s destruction of European Jewry, by now the subject of Deborah Lipstadt\u2019s\u00a0Beyond Belief<\/em>(1986) and Laurel Leff\u2019s\u00a0Buried By the Times<\/em>\u00a0(2005). Nor were the Nazis the sole beneficiaries of the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u2018 universalism. The paper\u2019s Moscow bureau chief Walter Duranty depicted Soviet Odessa as a place \u201cfar more conducive to Russian Jewry than \u2026 Palestine itself.\u201d (Duranty\u2019s rank dishonesty is now better known for his apologetics on behalf of Stalin and the dictator\u2019s decimation of the\u00a0Ukrainians.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Jews desperately needing rescue from Europe and escape to the United States or Palestine found no support from the\u00a0Times<\/em>. Reform Jews were largely content with an American president who would not even allow the pre-Hitler quotas for Jewish immigrants to be filled. The intensity of Reform Judaism\u2019s Ochs-Sulzberger rejection of Jewish peoplehood makes it in Auerbach\u2019s view the key not only to the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u2019 past suppression of the truth about the destruction of European Jewry but also to its enduring anti-Zionist editorial advocacy and its unrelenting \u201cBlame Israel First\u201d principle of interpreting Israel\u2019s constant burden of peril.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBlame Israel First: 2002-2006\u201d is a title chapter, one of a dozen built upon the scaffolding set up for the years from 1896 through 1948, when\u00a0Israel\u00a0was created, and used to encapsulate particular themes. Among them are: \u201cConquest and Occupation: 1960-79\u201d;\u00a0 \u201cArabs and Jews: 1979-84\u201d; \u201cMoral Equivalence: 1984-1988\u201d (devoted entirely to Thomas Friedman); \u201cOccupation Cruelty: 1988-89\u201d; \u201cIllusions of Peace: 1990-1996\u201d; \u201cRealities of Conflict: 1996-2001.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

These themes, inevitably, overlap from chapter to chapter, but all chapters serve to demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0editors, columnists, and reporters have displayed \u2014 how should one put it? \u2014 a striking lack of compassion toward Jews. This harshness is enough to make one wonder why so many American Jews judge Judaism by\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0standards rather than the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0by the standards of Judaism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chapters dealing with the interminable question of the disputed \u201cterritories\u201d also have in common a logical absurdity, obvious yet barely mentioned in the paper. From 1948-67 the Arabs had complete, unfettered control of the territories, theirs to do with whatever they liked; and what they liked was not the creation of a new Palestinian state, but a convenient site from which to launch terrorist attacks against Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Auerbach demonstrates how Anthony Lewis and Thomas Friedman, perhaps more consistently than all other\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0regulars obsessed with Israel, have been addicted to a double standard in judging the adversaries in the Arab-Israeli conflict. They believe that the more unfairly Israel is treated by\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>, the better off it (and everybody else) will be. An irreverent reader of the paper long ago nominated Lewis for the Pete Rose Journalism Award in recognition of his having written 44 consecutive columns on the Arab-Israeli conflict that laid all blame for its continuation on the intransigence and brutality of the Jews, adding that even a Joe DiMaggio award (56 consecutive \u201chits\u201d against Israel) might be insufficient recognition of consistency in depicting the Jewish state as a breeding ground for fanatics.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lewis typically deplored Israeli actions not merely because they hurt Arabs. He deplored them because they \u201ccannot serve the spirit of Israel, or its true security.\u201d Like Brutus brooding over the misdeeds of his beloved Caesar, Lewis persuaded himself that \u201cin the spirit of men there is no blood.\u201d He was therefore not tremendously perturbed by the prospect that it may be difficult to come by Israel\u2019s spirit without dismembering the Jewish state.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d Lewis wrote, \u201cthere is a double standard. From its birth Israel asked to be judged as a light among nations.\u201d Of course, this preposterous assertion reveals total ignorance of the Zionist movement, which rejected Jewish chosenness and sought to normalize Jewish existence as a member of the family of nations, treated neither better nor worse than others. Lewis\u2019 formulation was sinister in suggesting that Israel has no right to exist unless and until it is perfect.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thomas Friedman has been on the same track. In his book\u00a0From Beirut to Jerusalem<\/em>, he recounts a moment of revelation in London while reading the\u00a0International Herald Tribune<\/em>. The day\u2019s paper had spread over four columns on its front page a photo of \u201can Israeli soldier not beating, not killing, but grabbing a Palestinian.\u201d When he sought out the story behind the photo, he found only a two-paragraph item on page two. The rude blare on page one had blotted out, among other small troubles in the Islamic world, that day\u2019s slaughter of several thousand people in the Iran-Iraq war.<\/span><\/p>\n

What, Friedman wondered, explained this \u201clack of proportion?\u201d His answer was that \u201cthis unique double dimension\u201d is attributable to \u201cthe historical and religious movements to which Israel is connected in Western eyes.\u201d So that\u2019s the explanation of the relentless obsessive lashing of Israel by him and his colleagues at the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0and elsewhere? He continues: \u201cWhat the West expected from the Jews of the past, it expects from Israel today.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Can this be the same \u201cWest\u201d that for centuries, far from seeing Jews as carriers of prophetic morality, hounded and persecuted them because they had murdered or continued stubbornly to \u201cdeny\u201d the Son of God; the West whose secular leaders first told the Jews that they couldn\u2019t continue to practice Judaism in Europe, then that they couldn\u2019t continue to live in Europe, and then that they couldn\u2019t continue to live? Is this what Friedman learned about European and Jewish history in the suburban Minneapolis high school he attended?<\/span><\/p>\n

recommended by: Leon Rozenbaum<\/strong><\/span><\/em>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Of course, as Auerbach amply demonstrates in this remarkable and magisterial book, Friedman and Lewis and their like have not been telling the truth about Western expectations of the Jews. Here is a Philip Roth character, an ignorant lout to be sure, on this subject: \u201cThe fellows who say to you, \u2018I expect more of the Jews,\u2019 don\u2019t believe them. They expect less. What they are really saying is, \u2018Okay, we know you\u2019re a bunch of ravenous bastards and given half the chance you\u2019d eat up half the world. \u2026 We know all these things about you, and so we\u2019re going to get you now. And how? Every time you make a move, we\u2019re going to say, \u201cBut we expect more of Jews, Jews are supposed to behave better.\u201d\u2019\u2026 I would have thought that it was the non-Jews whose behavior could stand a little improvement.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In slightly less colorful language, Auerbach\u2019s study of the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0conveys a similar message, along with the recognition, generally absent from the paper, that the establishment of the State of Israel just a few years after the destruction of European Jewry was one of history\u2019s great affirmations of life over death.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Edward\u00a0Alexander<\/strong>\u00a0is professor emeritus of English at University of Washington. His most recent book is\u00a0<\/em>Jews Against Themselves.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Journalism\u2019s Longest War: The New York Times Versus Zionism and Israel Professor Edward Alexande Professor Edward Alexander is professor emeritus of English at University of Washington. His most recent book is Jews Against Themselves. It has long been a commonplace that\u00a0The New York Times, America\u2019s \u201cnewspaper of record,\u201d which flaunts the motto \u201cAll the News […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68694"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68694"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68728,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68694\/revisions\/68728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}