A Newsletter With An Eye On Political Media from The American Prospect
 ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

View this email in your browser

A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA

The Times Goes AWOL on Amnesty and 'Apartheid'

'Apartheid' is how an Amnesty International report last week
characterized Israeli rule. Every group under the sun reacted, but there
was no story in the Times.

On February 1, Amnesty International released a 278-page report
,
boasting 1,559 footnotes, accusing Israel of the "crime of
apartheid." It followed a report published in 2021 by the New
York-based Human Rights Watch

(213 pages, 866 footnotes), and the much shorter, unfootnoted ones by
the Israeli human rights organizations B'Tselem
,
based in Jerusalem (also in 2021), and the Tel Aviv-based Yesh Din

from 2020. There is a great deal to argue about in these reports,
including the truths they contain (or do not) and the way they use the
word "apartheid."

I do not plan to try to adjudicate the argument here, but I do need to
point out that while the new Amnesty International report has been
extensively commented upon by the Israeli government, the U.S.
government, "pro-Israel" groups, "pro-peace" groups,
"pro-Palestinian" groups, and other human rights organizations, if
you get your news from The New York Times exclusively, you would be
entirely ignorant of its existence. Not a word about the report has
appeared-not even a Bret Stephens denunciation! I was so shocked by
this silence that-intrepid reporter that I am-I emailed both the
Times international editor, Michael Slackman, and Jerusalem bureau chief
Patrick Kingsley, to ask about this weird decision. I received no
response.

This is amazing. After all, The Times is not only America's paper of
record, it is also the hometown paper of America's (secular) Jews.
("I love the Times like it was my child or my parent," explains
Miriam Nessler in Paul Rudnick's 2020 play Coastal Elites. "On the
census, when they ask for religion, I don't put Jewish, I put The New
York Times.") When former Times Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren
took the job as editor of the Forward in 2019, she told Ben Smith-a
Forward alumnus-that she hoped to make it the "Jewish New York
Times." His reply: "But The New York Times is already the Jewish New
York Times."

Former Israeli government spokesman Zev Chafets once explained that
within the Israeli government attention was paid to the Times
correspondent first, with whoever was the U.S. ambassador at the time
following closely behind. The paper had "primacy'' because "if
it was in the Times it was automatically going to be everywhere
else.'' (You will have to read my book We Are Not One: A History of
America's Fight Over Israel, when it comes out this fall, if you want
sources for those quotes.)

Because the Amnesty report was circulated before it was publicly
released, Israel and its allies in the U.S. were able to get a jump on
it. Israel initially tried to get Amnesty not to publish it, because it
was, allegedly, "false, biased, and antisemitic
."
Its foreign ministry issued a statement insisting Amnesty was "just
another radical organization which echoes propaganda, without seriously
checking the facts," and that it "echoes the same lies shared by
terrorist organizations." The Israelis also insisted that Amnesty was
endangering Jews all over the world. The Anti-Defamation League echoed
this and said the report "likely will lead to intensified antisemitism
around the world
."

An extremely rare joint statement

was issued by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations, AIPAC, the ADL, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish
Federations of North America, and B'nai B'rith International calling
the report an "unbalanced, inaccurate, and incomplete review" that
"inexplicably focuses on one aim: to demonize and delegitimize the
Jewish and democratic State of Israel." As to our government, State
Department spokesman Ned Price declared, "We reject the view that
Israel's actions constitute apartheid."

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, found the report quite
compelling, finding it

to be "a detailed affirmation of the cruel reality of entrenched
racism, exclusion, oppression, colonialism, apartheid, and attempted
erasure that the Palestinian people have endured since the Nakba." And
14 Israeli human rights organizations-both Jewish and Arab-while not
endorsing the details of the report itself, condemned

the attacks on Amnesty, also in a rare joint signed statement. "Many
of the most pre-eminent scholars of Jewish life, history and persecution
have warned that the struggle against antisemitism in the world is being
weakened by the unbearable, inaccurate and instrumentalized use to which
the antisemitism accusation is lodged for political ends, in order to
avoid debate about Israel's oppressive policies towards the
Palestinians." Caught in the middle were liberal Jewish groups that
treat Israel's actions critically, but see the word "apartheid" as
political poison. This was the gist of the statements I saw from J
Street, Ameinu, T'ruah, Americans for Peace Now, New York Jewish
Agenda, and many others.

A few points:

1) The debate in the U.S. about Israel and "apartheid" is almost
always a game of whataboutism that leads directly to a discussion of
whether Israel is, or is not, South Africa. Each of these reports,
including Amnesty's, ties the word "apartheid" to its definition
in the 1988 Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court
, which
reads: "inhumane acts" undertaken "in the context of an
institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one
racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with
the intention of maintaining that regime." But almost all anyone ever
hears or talks about when the word is used in the context of Israeli
policy is "South Africa."

2) But the South African example is pretty much the entire argument of
the BDS movement when you ask its supporters just how they expect
Israeli Jews to turn their country over to their hated enemies, as if
including such existential national repurposing is an iron rule of
declared international boycotts, regardless of the vast differences
between the two. You can see its power in this piece co-authored by one
of the movement's founders
.
Israel's hard-line defenders, on the other hand, almost always insist
that to even bring up the apartheid charge-even when tied to the ICC
definition rather than the South African example-makes one an
antisemite (oh, and by the way, the Arabs are worse
).

3) The very same people who insist that it's antisemitic to use the
word "apartheid" for Israel insist that it is also antisemitic for
people to boycott products from the West Bank, because the West Bank is
part of Israel-which, ironically, confirms the allegation of
apartheid, because the West Bank is obviously run on the basis of
discrimination against the population based on their nationality.

4) In Israel, the word "apartheid" is not at all the taboo it is
here. Back in 2018, Caroline Morganti wrote in Haaretz

that that newspaper's editorial board had already compared current
Israeli policy in the West Bank to apartheid
at least 13 times since 2006
.
Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken wrote an article called "Apartheid,"
and so did many others. In Yedioth Ahronoth, former Cabinet minister
Yossi Paritzky wrote an op-ed, "Our Apartheid State
." Back in
2008, former Cabinet minister Yossi Sarid wrote
,
"What acts like apartheid, is run like apartheid and harasses like
apartheid, is not a duck-it is apartheid." And former education
minister and Israel Prize laureate Shulamit Aloni said
that Israel
"practices a distinct and even violent form of apartheid against the
native Palestinian population in the West Bank."

Centrist and even right-wing Israeli politicians have also used the
phrase, and many have used the term as a warning to Israel to change its
ways. The list includes: Shin Bet directors Yuval Diskin and Ami Ayalon;
former prime ministers Ehud Barak
,
Ehud Olmert
,
and Yitzhak Rabin
;
Israel's current president, Isaac Herzog
,
and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni
.
Morganti notes, "Even Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely (Likud),
known for her support for annexing the West Bank and desire to see an
Israeli flag over the Temple Mount, said in 2013
, 'Continuation of
the status quo ... [and] over time, the State of Israel will truly
become an apartheid state.'" And in December of last year,
Israel's most famous living writer, David Grossman, said
,
"Maybe it should no longer be called an 'occupation,' but there
are much harsher names, like 'apartheid,' for example."

[link removed]

Odds and Ends

My friend Todd Gitlin died this past week. Here
is the
appreciation I wrote of both his friendship and his contribution to
American culture, politics, and intellectual life.

I would not call Jason Epstein
,
who also died last week, a "friend." But he was a great man-and
his interest in my work was my ticket to getting an agent and then my
first book contract back in 1989, even though I did not end up signing
with him at Random House, though I probably should have. (I picked the
wrong agent, alas.) Whatever. Even without having edited yours truly,
his contributions to American literary culture are so monumental as to
resist measurement.

Wednesday was apparently National Bagels and Lox Day
: I have strong
mixed feelings, both positive and negative, about Noam Chomsky, but if
you were looking for more reasons to distrust him, there's this:
According to the author Maya Arad
,
at MIT, if you met Chomsky in the afternoon, "he would take out some
frozen bagel he'd brought from home and put it on the radiator to
thaw, and then fill it with some processed cheese, and have some
mass-produced kind of cookie for dessert. And it would simply make me
sad."

We are a bit long again today, but here

is some wonderful stuff from Austin City Limits' recent awards
ceremony; see especially the part honoring Lucinda Williams. And here
is an amazing ACL lineup from a previous
awards ceremony, doing "Not Fade Away," marred only by the
undeserved musical prominence of Jeff Bridges amidst all this genuine
musical talent. Finally, here is 2:27 of
loveliness from Linda Ronstadt circa 1967.

See you next week.

~ ERIC ALTERMAN

Become A Member of The American Prospect Today!

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn
College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 11 books, most
recently Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie-and Why Trump Is Worse
(Basic, 2020). Previously, he wrote The Nation's "Liberal Media"
column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman

[link removed]

CLICK TO SHARE THIS NEWSLETTER:

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

To receive this newsletter directly in your inbox, click here to
subscribe.

 

YOUR TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION SUPPORTS INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM

The American Prospect, Inc.
1225 I Street NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC xxxxxx
United States
To opt out of American Prospect membership messaging, click here.

To manage your newsletter preferences, click here.

To unsubscribe from all American Prospect emails, including newsletters,
click here.

Copyright (C) 2021 The American Prospect. All rights reserved.
_________________

Sent to [email protected]

Unsubscribe:
[link removed]

The American Prospect, Inc., 1225 I Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC xxxxxx, United States