I’ve been reading the NY Times for a long time. My father did before me. I read every article published there about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and often write about them here. I have a long and deep respect for the wonderful reporting that has come out of Israel in its pages. Steven Erlanger, the Jerusalem bureau chief, has, until now, been in that august tradition that included David Shipler, (the early) Tom Friedman, Deborah Sontag, James Bennett and Serge Schmemann. But he really let himself and his predecessors down today.
He wrote a terribly imbalanced story about incitement against Jews fomented by Hamas, which practically gave over his article to promote the views of propaganda outfits like MEMRI and Palestine Media Watch. In doing so, Erlanger touted them as if they were dispassionate, professionally competent observers of the Arab media. Nothing could farther from the truth. This sentence in particular is problematic:
Along with Mr. Marcus’s group, the Middle East Media Research Institute, or Memri, also monitors the Arabic media. But no one disputes their translations…
How can a journalist writing for as distinguished a newspaper as the Times make such a statement? For one, Brian Whitaker, an editor of The Guardian’s Comment is Free blog, has written regularly about MEMRI’s distorted translations of Arab media–translations which are designed more to prove ideological points rather than provide an well-grounded, proportionate picture of what the media is actually saying. These are a few of the columns he’s written over the years:
Selective MEMRI
Yigal Carmon-Brian Whitaker Debate
Arabic Under Fire
Arabsats Get the MEMRI Treatment
And Whitaker is not the only one. Any Google search would uncover multiple reputable media critiques of MEMRI and Palestine Media Watch.
Several images accompany the story including one with this caption:
In a play staged at a Gaza cultural center this month, a Palestinian farmer pulls his dead child from a house bombed by Israel.
I have no idea about the content of this play, but why would such a work be seen as an impermissible expression of anti-Jewish incitement? Are Gazans not allowed to dramatize their suffering as peoples of most other nations of the world do? Personally, I think Erlanger and his editors really lost their way on this story.
Let me take a slight detour by acknowledging there is hate and incitement against Israelis and Jews in Gaza. Hamas is an organization riddled with anti-Semitic attitudes. This is real. This is troubling. It is rightly written about in the Times and condemned by all who support tolerance and respect between both peoples and religions. But the grievous problem with Erlanger’s story is that he completely omits any context for it.
Why do Gazans hate Israelis and Jews? Could it possibly have a wee bit to do with Israel’s strangulation of the Gaza Strip and the privation that this has caused for the 1.5 million people who live there? If Steven Erlanger lived on handouts, couldn’t afford to feed his family, couldn’t get any medical treatment if his children became ill, couldn’t leave his home to travel anywhere for business or pleasure, and was treated as the enemy by an occupying power–might he not harbor deep hatred for those he blamed for such treatment? Might his hatred possibly even be irrational, prejudiced and grossly distorted? I don’t know. That’s for Erlanger to say. But if he’s honest and recognized human frailties shared by many of us, he might acknowledge this as a distinct possibility.
Erlanger also commits a sin of omission. He bangs on the incessant drumbeat of Muslim hate without acknowledging a problem as deeply troubling on the Israeli side: Jewish incitement against Arabs. I know something about this subject since I’ve just published a Comment is Free essay on it. There is a long tradition within Israel of such hatred against Israel’s perceived Arab enemies. And it is more than just words. It is hatred that has led to violence. Haaretz reported this week that a prominent Israeli Orthodox rabbi called for the children of Palestinians who murder Israelis to be hung from trees. Not the murderers, but their CHILDREN!
Erlanger somehow believes that this phenomenon is less pressing, less prevalent and less problematic than the hatred he wrote about in Gaza’s mosques. I beg to disagree. Such incitement led to the assassination of an Israeli prime minister who many serious analysts believe would have succeeded in resolving the I-P conflict had he lived. Jewish hate is no less poisonous and deadly than Muslim hate. Discount it at your peril.
I want to make clear that my purpose here is not to minimize or justify Palestinian hate. It is to point out that hate is not a one-way street, as Erlanger implies. It is a two-way street. And as long as journalism like this passes for fair and balanced, no one will be able to address the problems and divisions keeping both sides apart in order to bridge them.
Those like Erlanger who allow you to believe that only one side are to blame in causing this bloody mess of a conflict are doing a deep disservice to truth and history. Both sides are wrong. Both sides are imperfect. Both sides hate. Both sides must acknowledge their errors and turn away from them in a mutual compromise.
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Comment is Free, Wikipedia, and Why Blogs ‘Don’t Get No Respect’
Monday, April 28th, 2008Some of you may know that the English newspaper, The Guardian, is expanding its coverage of the U.S. It’s website has a global reach and now has a significant portion of its readers here in this country. As part of this expansion, Comment is Free, the Guardian’s daily blog about politics and international affairs will be adding a U.S. section come June.
The Washington DC editor asked me if I would contribute a weekly column to CiF. This is really a dream come true for me. When you first start blogging as I did in 2003, you sometimes feel like you’re shouting down a dark hole and all you hear in reply is your own echo. It’s gratifying when the mainstream media validates the value of your work.
In addition, there is still a significant percentage of people who look down their noses at political blogs as a reliable research source of information or opinion. Usually those people are the ones who disagree with your views to begin with and their dismissiveness tends to confirm their opinions in a loop of circular reasoning. I appreciate the Guardian granting its imprimatur to my work. It goes some ways toward combating this prejudice.
A perfect example of this is Wikipedia, the world’s largest source of online research. It has a deeply confusing attitude toward blogs as sources for Wikipedia articles. Generally, they are frowned upon as unreliable since they are self-published sources, a definite no-no in the Wikipedia world. However, if you are a genuine expert in the field you write about, then blogs can be accepted as sources:
But it seems up to the blogger and Wikipedia members to sort out whether you are an expert or not. If you consider yourself an expert, and even if your blog presents original research on a topic, if another member disagrees they can remove your links at will and quote you irrelevant chapter and verse to “justify” their actions.
In my case, there are several members who have campaigned to remove references to my blog (read my Talk page) in Wikipedia articles arguing that by linking to my blog I’ve created a conflict of interest. Given that the conflict of interest rules were created mainly to prevent commercial entities from either promoting themselves or tearing down their rivals, they aren’t relevant to my situation. They also argue that despite my background in the field about which I write, since I am not a professional journalist, author, or academic, my contributions are not trustworthy and not disinterested. Considering that Wikipedia exists online and exploits all the opportunities that the web offers to disseminate knowledge, I find it ironic that it’s standards are so conventional. Either you write a book, newspaper or magazine article, or academic journal article if you wish to be an acceptable source. Write a blog and you’re chopped liver.
A senior Wikipedia editor I respect recently wrote to me about a phenomenon called “wikilawyering,” a tendency, as the online encyclopedia grows ever larger and more complicated, to parse the rules to an incredibly fine degree. In Talmudic interpretation it’s known as pilpul or in English ‘casuistry.’ He examined the work of my opponents and told me that it was such an example. I’m hoping to be working with him and other sympathetic Wikipedia members to figure out how serious political blogs can be treated with more respect within the Wikipedia universe.
And should anyone reading this edit Wikipedia articles, I’d welcome my work being referenced and linked there.
Though the pay at CiF isn’t much, at least I am getting paid. I remember a hilarious story Calvin Trillin wrote I believe in the New Yorker about a nice lunch The Nation’s editor treated him to over a discussion of his becoming a contributing writer. Trillin relates jocularly that the fee for his pieces was to be “in the low three figures.” But three figures is better than no figures.
My English friend, Michael Furmanovsky wrote to me saying: “You should be proud to be contributing to the best newspaper in the world.” As a dyed in the wool NY Times reader I find it difficult to transfer that title to The Guardian. But the truth is that the Times has nowhere near the diversity of political opinion in its pages that The Guardian does. This is proven by the fact that it is The Guardian and not the Times which has developed Comment is Free, a terrific means of integrating the best of the blog world into mainstream media.
The Guardian truly lets a thousand flowers bloom. The Times seems to specialize in a limited and carefully selected number of hot-house flowers. It’s a different journalistic philosophy and while I value both–as a writer I’m especially grateful for The Guardian’s approach.
I want to continue encouraging readers to provide story ideas to me along with links and any other background information that is necessary to write it.
Tags: blogs, comment-is-free, the-guardian
Posted in Blogs-Tech-Science, Mideast Peace | 4 Comments »