At this point, no one is much surprised by the right-wing skew of Shmuel Rosner’s coverage of Israeli politics as Haaretz’s Washington correspondent. But his Israel Factor campaign coverage hit a new low with this headline for today’s column. If you look inside at the column you’ll only be partially relieved to note that the panel Rosner appointed to rate the presidential candidates pro-Israel bona fides mostly dismisses the claim that Obama is pro-Palestinian. I say “mostly” because the score was 2.5 out of 5 meaning someone on the panel attributed at least some credibility to the charge.
But other questions about Obama rate disturbing responses. The panel only rated this statement 3.5:
There is a ‘constant virulent campaign’ against Obama regarding his position on Israel.
Here is how Rosner characterized the panel’s vote:
Six of the panelists believe this statement to be true, but not all of them strongly. Of the two who gave this statement a score of 1 or 2 – meaning they do not at all believe it – one of them believes Obama is overstating the degree to which there is such campaign. The other one told me that he found many of the allegations against Obama to have a kernel of truth in them.
To a statement that is patently true to any reasonable Jewish observer (and a story reported as credible by all the major Jewish media including Haaretz), two panelists don’t believe it at all and one of those (no doubt Dore Gold) actually believes the smear campaign. Some of the other six don’t believe strongly in the proposition that Obama is being smeared.
I think you’ve just heard everything you needed to know about how useful the Israel Factor is as a yardstick of anything serious related to juding the Israel policy of the various presidential campaigns.
In regard to Obama’s view of Palestinians, here is an article about a visit he made to a Palestinian village in Northern Israel. I do not claim it “proves” anything. However, I feel his statements to AIPAC describing this visit are as, at least, as instructive as a campaign sound bite.
Warning: If you do not like to read anything negative about Obama, you may not want to read this.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12401
God forbid anyone should think or say anything negative about the new wundercandidate and hope of the future!
Oh, oh…it seems Jonah Goldberg just slipped one by:
From Myth of Camelot: [ed., link removed per comment rules]
“The legitimacy of Obama’s coronation as our new “photogenic redeemer” (a phrase historian Douglas Brinkley used to describe John F. Kennedy Jr.), rests on cloud-castle platitudes about hope and unity, lacking even the slightest ballast of realism. It’s political divinization [sic], not policy detail. But what else would you expect from a party that has become a civic religion?”
Ah, I see we have an admirer of the National Review among us. Aren’t you in the wrong part of the blogosphere? Shouldn’t you me cuddling with Michelle Malkin or Ann Coulter instead of slumming over here?
Obama is lighter than Oprah, just a little more corrupt than her.
Dump him!
Just analyze his confused life: atheist, Muslim, Catholic, agnostic, Baptist.
I would like, he remained atheist.
You’ve added some new claims into the mix which even the Obama haters haven’t introduced: Catholic? Where did that come from?
If Obama is spiritually confused then I’d guess that many if not most Americans go through very similar types of spiritual confusion. Spiritual searching is something to be commended & not condemned. It shows your small mindedness & not his.
No one here is ever taken seriously for spouting charges w. no evidence as you do (about alleged corruption).
I have always been struck by the fact that the ‘proper journalists’ at Haaretz carefully avoid mentioning the fact that Mr Rosner has been parachuted on top of them, with his brightly coloured canopy prominently featured on every web page. I personally believe that those who claim the Israeli press (and by this they invariably mean, Haaretz) to be freer than the Anglo-American press fail to realise that all stories with military content are censored line by line as a routine measure by what could be described as ’embedded military sub-editors’. Of course, this theory is unprovable because the ‘proper journalists’ cannot speak of it – being, as I said, censored …
as if in reply to the above theory, that (e.g.) haaretz is full of military censors playing the role of sub-editors, here is a very interesting article by an insider from israeli journalism saying that they don’t need any such external censors, they censor themselves:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n05/print/mend01_.html
Rowan: The Azmi Bishara affair made me realize just how powerful Israeli military censorship was & just how tepid was Israeli journalism’s response to it. They’re essentially powerless to buck it unlike journalism here where you at least have strong First Amendment protections which the courts tend to respect if a case is taken to them.
I find it a bit ironic that this ‘line-by-line military censorship’ I claim to have detected in Haaretz is only visible THERE, because only THERE are there journalists who make frequent attempts to circumvent it. Other papers (like the JPost) don’t NEED ‘line-by-line military censorship’ because they really have internalised the security state’s defensive values.
Anyway, I am learning Hebrew, without the help of any real-world Jewish teachers, using an audio package designed for the families of US diplomats. I do not expect to find the Hebrew-language press markedly more frank and honest than the English-language press, but I do think that a sensitivity to Hebrew nuance may help me to ‘read between the lines’ more often.
I taught myself Israeli contemporary Hebrew in part by reading Haaretz in Hebrew every day while I was a student at the Hebrew U. I think the Hebrew version gives you a more nuanced & fuller picture of what’s going on. The English online version is severely truncated because they simply don’t have as much space (or ability to translate) as in the print editions.
I dare say space is a consideration, though up until a couple of years ago the canadian arab anti discrimination league ran a web page of translations from the hebrew press – including haaretz – that were more bizarre than anything normally seen in english.
The language can only be read in its modern vowel-less form if you already know basic hebrew from the bible and the prayer-book, though, you might as well admit it!
For me, having done two terms with a written textbook, and being quite able to carry on through it by myself, the pronunciation was going to be the biggest problem, and that is where this US State Dept audio course is such a boon. I don’t think many people know of it, but it is actually available free on-line:
http://fsi-language-courses.com/default.aspx
I studied Hebrew in Hebrew school from the age of 9. But I never really learned the language proficiently till I went to Israel. Immersion helps immensely. But I guess general familiarity with the vowel-less Torah text does help somewhat in reading modern Hebrew.