One of the reasons we never get the real story about the Middle East situation.
ShunkW
U.S. Media and Israeli Military
All in the Family
Recent exposés revealing that Ethan Bronner, the New
York Times Israel-Palestine bureau chief, has a son in
the Israeli military have caused a storm of controversy
that continues to swirl and generate further revelations.
Many people find such a sign of family partisanship in
an editor covering a foreign conflict troubling – especially
given the Times’ record of Israel-centric journalism.
Times management at first refused to confirm Bronner’s
situation, then refused to comment on it. Finally, public outcry
forced Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt to confront the
problem in a February 7th column.
After bending over backwards to praise the institution
that employs him, Hoyt ultimately opined that Bronner
should be re-assigned to a different sphere of reporting to
avoid the “appearance” of bias. Times Editor Bill Keller
declined to do so, however, instead writing a column calling
Bronner’s connections to Israel valuable because they “supply
a measure of sophistication about Israel and its adversaries
that someone with no connections would lack.”
If such “sophistication” is valuable, the Times’ espoused
commitment to the “impartiality and neutrality of the company's
newsrooms” would seem to require it to have a balancing
editor equally sophisticated about Palestine and its
adversary, but Keller did not address that.
Bronner is far from alone
As it turns out, Bronner’s ties to the Israeli military are
not the rarity one might expect.
• A previous Times bureau chief, Joel Greenberg, before he
was bureau chief but after he was already publishing in
the Times from Israel, actually served in the Israeli army.
• Media pundit and Atlantic staffer Jeffrey Goldberg also
served in the Israeli military; it's unclear when, how, or
even if his military service ended.
• Richard Chesnoff, who has been covering Mideast events
for more than 40 years, had a son serving in the Israeli military
while Chesnoff covered Israel as US News & World
Report's senior foreign correspondent.
• NPR's Linda Gradstein’s husband was an Israeli sniper
and may still be in the Israeli reserves. NPR refuses to disclose
whether Gradstein herself is also an Israeli citizen, as
are her children and husband.
• Mitch Weinstock, national editor for the San Diego Union-
Tribune, served in the Israeli military.
• The New York Times’ other correspondent from the
region, Isabel Kershner, is an Israeli citizen. Israel has universal
compulsory military service, which suggests that
Kershner herself and/or family members may have military
connections. The Times refuses to answer questions
about whether she and/or family members have served or
are currently serving in the Israeli military. Is it possible
that Times Foreign Editor Susan Chira herself has such
connections? The Times refuses to answer.
• Many Associated Press writers and editors are Israeli citizens
or have Israeli families. AP will not reveal how many
of the journalists in its control bureau for the region currently
serve in the Israeli military, how many have served
in the past, and how many have family members with this
connection.
• Similarly, many TV correspondents such as Martin
Fletcher have been Israeli citizens and/or have Israeli families.
Do they have family connections to the Israeli military?
• Time Magazine's bureau chief several years ago became an
Israeli citizen after he had assumed his post. Does he have
relatives in the military?
• CNN's Wolf Blitzer, while not an Israeli citizen, was based
in Israel for many years, wrote a book whitewashing
Israeli spying on the US, and used to work for the Israel
lobby in the US. None of this is divulged to CNN viewers.
www.IfAmericansKnew.org • 202.631.4060
con...@IfAmericansKnew.org
If Americans Knew
By Alison Weir, Executive Director of If Americans Knew, February 25, 2010
• Tikkun's editor Michael Lerner has a son who served in the
Israeli military. While Lerner has been a strong critic of
many Israeli policies, in an interview with Jewish Week,
Lerner explains:
“Having a son in the Israeli army was a manifestation
of my love for Israel, and I assume that having a son
in the Israeli army is a manifestation of Bronner’s love
of Israel."
Lerner goes on to make a fundamental point:
"...there is a difference in my emotional and spiritual
connection to these two sides [Israelis and
Palestinians]. On the one side is my family; on the
other side are decent human beings. I want to support
human beings all over the planet but I have a
special connection to my family. I don’t deny it.”
For a great many of the reporters and editors determining
what Americans learn about Israel-Palestine, Israel is
family.
Jonathan Cook, a British journalist based in Nazareth,
writes of a recent meeting with a Jerusalem based bureau
chief, who explained: “... Bronner’s situation is ‘the rule, not
the exception. I can think of a dozen foreign bureau chiefs,
responsible for covering both Israel and the Palestinians, who
have served in the Israeli army, and another dozen who like
Bronner have kids in the Israeli army.”
Cook writes that the bureau chief explained: “It is common
to hear Western reporters boasting to one another about
their Zionist credentials, their service in the Israeli army or
the loyal service of their children.”
Apparently, intimate ties to Israel are among the many
open secrets in the region that are hidden from the American
public. If, as the news media insist, these ties present no problem
or even, as the Times’ Keller insists, enhance the journalists’
work, why do the news agencies consistently refuse to
admit them?
The reason for media obfuscation
The answer is not complicated.
While Israel may be family for these journalists and editors,
for the vast majority of Americans, Israel is a foreign
country. In survey after survey, Americans say they don’t
wish to “take sides” on this conflict. In other words, the
American public wants full, unfiltered, unslanted coverage.
Quite likely the news media refuse to answer questions
about their journalists’ affiliations because they suspect, accurately,
that the public would be displeased to learn that the
reporters and editors charged with supplying news on a foreign
nation and conflict are, in fact, partisans.
While Keller claims that the New York Times is covering
this conflict “even-handedly,” studies indicate otherwise:
• The Times covers international reports documenting
Israeli human rights abuses at a rate 19 times lower than it
reports on the far smaller number of international reports
documenting Palestinian human rights abuses.
• The Times covers Israeli children’s deaths at rates seven
times greater than they cover Palestinian children’s deaths,
even though there are vastly more of the latter and they
occurred first.
• The Times fails to inform its readers that Israel’s Jewish only
colonies on confiscated Palestinian Christian and
Muslim land are illegal; that its collective punishment of
1.5 million men, women, and children in Gaza is not only
cruel and ruthless, it is also illegal; and that its use of
American weaponry is routinely in violation of American
laws.
• The Times covers the one Israeli (a soldier) held by
Palestinians at a rate incalculably higher than it reports on
the Palestinian men, women, and children – the vast
majority civilians – imprisoned by Israel (currently over
7,000).
• The Times neglects to report that hundreds of Israel’s captives
have never even been charged with a crime and that
those who have were tried in Israeli military courts under
an array of bizarre military statutes that make even the
planting of onions without a permit a criminal offense – a
legal system, if one can call it that, that changes at the
whim of the current military governor ruling over a subject
population; a system in which parents are without
power to protect their children.
• The Times fails to inform its readers that 40 percent of
Palestinian males have been imprisoned by Israel, a statistic
that normally would be considered highly newsworthy,
but that Bronner, Kershner, and Chira apparently feel is
unimportant to report.
Americans, whose elected representatives give Israel
uniquely gargantuan sums of our tax money (a situation also
not covered by the media), want and need all the facts, not
just those that Israel’s family members decree reportable.
We’re not getting them.
http://ifamericansknew.org/media/bronner2.html