Kosher News Burials

I know a place where they write the news just the way your Jewish aunt loves to read it. You want Israel for breakfast, lunch and dinner? You want to kibbitz like you’re in a Likudnik Kibbutz? This is the joint. Looking for a place where you can lounge around like a lizard with a cobra-eating snake like the infamous Sharon of Sabra and Shatila? I know a place on West 43rd Street in the big apple. The joint is owned by the Sulzberger family. What Hebrew National is to sausage, the New York Times is to reporting. It’s a strictly kosher menu. But even the goys come in for a bite of this uniquely American-Jewish ethnic journal. What options do they have, The Daily News?

The New York Times is a marketing marvel. It gets away with advocating Israeli mass murderers like Sharon. So when some outside crime reporter, like our hapless State Department, stumbles on the undeniable evidence of three hundred plus Palestinian bodies that shouldn’t have been used for Israeli target practice, the reporters at the Times always have a pit where they bury what they don’t like to print.

The questions they ask themselves before printing a story is where, who, why and when? Is it good for Israel? So when the government of the United States published its annual review of human rights in 195 countries, including ample details about excessive Israeli force, there was no room for a separate article on the subject. David Sanger, the Times reporter charged with burying this Israeli story, managed to do the nasty duty without including a single quote from the actual document.

First, Sanger needed a place to ditch the story. If you want to bury a story, first bury it in the headline. Isn’t Sanger slick or what? He created a headline, “U.S. Finds Rights Abuses in China, Colombia and Israel” (NYT, 2//27/2001). Then put it on Page A9. Sulzberger would appreciate that. Leading with China, Sanger writes that the report “offered a harsh assessment of how Israel dealt with Palestinian uprisings last year”. So Sanger thinks the folks at state were harsh? Poor little victimized Israel. He then immediately moves on to Colombia. Then back to China.

Sanger did some snooping at very high levels before reporting this story. He managed to find out that Colin L Powell and Condoleezza Rice “had time to review the findings and in a few sensitive chapters, particularly on Israel, to alter some wording”. Does this mean that the Jewish Lobby and the Israeli embassy had screened the report and negotiated with the State Department before releasing it to the public? Later in the article there is this quote from a former Clinton administration official. “The key was Israel” one said, “and there they left the main conclusion, which is that there was excessive force on the Israeli side, and human rights violations on the Palestinian side as well.” The key? What is this? Can these New York Times “grave diggers” stop talking amongst themselves, already? The key to what, the coffin? Dig a deep pit for this story. That same day the Israeli Labor party, led by Shimon Peres, had decided to embrace the war mongering Sharon and set him up as the head of a unity government. The New York Times was very satisfied with this result lauding Sharon for committing to “a broadly centrist course”. So Sharon is now a centrist? Is it time for another bounce on Grandpa Arik’s lap? If this particular foreign war criminal was not Jewish, he would not be allowed a transit visa to Malta. If he was Austrian, he would be doing time. Every time they try to wash this guy, some of the stain sticks to the crew at Sulzberger’s joint. If you work for a paper where the publisher supports a well-documented war criminal just because they happen to share a faith tradition, you should walk. But that kind of intellectual courage would be a miracle on 43rd Street…

For journalistic courage, a New York Times reporter, Seth Mydans, had to travel to Thailand to locate an editor, like Ammat Jongyotying who is unwilling to bow to political corruption, even at the cost of his life. (A Courageous Editor’s Lonely Quest, NYT, 2/27/2001). Well, Seth certainly had no hope of locating courage on 43rd Street. A New York Times journalist is more likely to be promoting repression. They should have an annual prize for the American journalist who did the most to cover up war crimes and promote repression. I nominate Thomas Friedman, Deborah Sontag, David Sanger and Jeff Jacoby from the New York Times Publishing Company. I also throw into the hat every journalist at FOX and CNN and Charles Krauthammer from the Washington Post. The prize will be a syringe of Palestinian blood engraved with the words Todo Por La Causa Zionista! The stands will be made from the Israeli tank shells they fire at Palestinian homes.

Just so everyone is clear about the New York Times campaign to sell Sharon by demonizing his victims, one must read another article. There is this little sentence about the Taliban’s “pure Mohammadan state”. Now, that is a terminology that they know is very insulting to Muslims. Make, no mistake, 43rd Street has the largest cluster of bigots and racists in the American publishing trade. They breed them to hate in New York.

I don’t see how any American, Jewish or otherwise, can support an exclusionary Jewish State that the Zionists have been advocating for nearly a century. We don’t even allow restrictive zoning covenants in this country. These are the same guys that get bent out of shape when they see a nativity scene on public grounds. I also don’t understand any journalist who would cover up foreign war criminals. Israel is currently conducting one of the only belligerent foreign occupations on the planet. And the New York Times is always willing to pitch in to vilify the victims and pave the way for more lethal “unity government” repression.

The “liberal” New York Jew exists only in Jewish fiction and Jewish movies. American Jews were silent about Israel’s relationship with Apartheid South Africa. They have excused and applauded every Israeli crime against the Palestinians. Voices of dissension in the Jewish community are cast aside, humiliated and shunned. The Jewish powerhouses in the media have created a sound proof arena where Arab and Muslim Americans are prevented from voicing their opinions on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. This has to be longest running act of deception in the history of journalism.

That kind of intense deception cannot withstand an ounce of dissension. The biggest New York Times stories are about to happen. It will take a few of their journalist breaking the “code of silence” to reveal the recruiting tactics used to get a monolithic rigidly pro-Israeli view to dominate both their newsroom and editorial rooms. Do they hire just based on faith? It does seem to be that almost all their journalist, especially those covering the Middle East and Washington, are Jewish. How did that come to pass in one of America’s most diverse cities? OK, if it is just going to be Jewish writers and editors, well why not identify it properly as an ethnic paper? It can be re-named the Jewish Times of New York. That would be a little more honest, although I suspect the content would remain as tainted as ever. It’s hard to leave that kind of legacy behind in the information age. The old gray lady needs a new wardrobe. I recommend a hooker’s outfit and a lower profile.

Perhaps the New York Times, due to the liability of extensive tainted archives on this subject matter, has decided that coming clean on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict would do irreparable damage to their vaunted trade name. Half its journalists could be easily implicated, and even the ones writing the garden section on Sunday know the score. Or maybe they just want to write what their constituency wants to read. No, this is just too systematic and precise an operation. This thing is run like a, Mossad opera,tion. My gut ,feel is that they are Arab-haters, because the Palestinians didn’t just up and disappear to make room for “ancient Brooklyn Hebrews with Polish and Russian faces” returning to their land in Nablus and Jaffa and East Jerusalem. They hate the Palestinians, because against all odds, including their abysmal leadership, they have tenaciously clung on to the land of their ancestors. The New York Times is that rare municipal paper in the world today that stills adheres to an ideology. It is institutionally ingrained with a putrid morality that demands every Times journalist sell the party line on Israel. If flouting journalistic ethics is the price to be paid, then ethics be damned.

I write this without reservation. The journalists at the New York Times are accomplices to murder, in much the same way that Pravda Journalists assisted Stalin and his henchmen. They and Sulzberger are accomplices to land grabs from an innocent pastoral people. It takes craven cowardice and treason to force-feed lies to the American public about the continued daily repression of the four million Palestinians still living in Palestine and disallowing the return of millions of others. To accomplish this task they have not failed to take every opportunity to malign all those of Arab heritage and Islamic faith, including American-Arabs and the American Muslim community.

Those of us, who are acutely aware of this insidious campaign by the likes of Sulzberger, must be ready to defend ourselves and challenges The New York Times Publishing Company, The Washington Post Company, and the five networks, by every legal means available. We must explore their discriminatory hiring practices. We must challenge them to stop selling defective merchandise that is faulty by design and does not shy from inciting racial hatred and religious bigotry. We need new faces at our newspapers, more diversified news sources and a few journalists who still care about ethics and truth and the American way. Enough already with kosher news burials.
