Tag Archive for 'New York Times'

Friedman asks America to do to Israel what it has never done

Published on 15 March 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Everybody’s favourite American supporter of bombing civilians to freedom, Thomas Friedman, writes in yesterday’s New York Times that the rift between America and Israel is serious.

I’ll believe this when Israel’s colonisation program actually decreases. Until then, it’s cheap rhetoric, at best:

I am a big Joe Biden fan. The vice president is an indefatigable defender of U.S. interests abroad. So it pains me to say that on his recent trip to Israel, when Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s government rubbed his nose in some new housing plans for contested East Jerusalem, the vice president missed a chance to send a powerful public signal: He should have snapped his notebook shut, gotten right back on Air Force Two, flown home and left the following scribbled note behind: “Message from America to the Israeli government: Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. And right now, you’re driving drunk. You think you can embarrass your only true ally in the world, to satisfy some domestic political need, with no consequences? You have lost total contact with reality. Call us when you’re serious. We need to focus on building our country.”

I think that — rather than fuming and making up — would have sent a very useful message for two reasons. First, what the Israelis did played right into a question a lot of people are asking about the Obama team: how tough are these guys? The last thing the president needs, at a time when he is facing down Iran and China — not to mention Congress — is to look like America’s most dependent ally can push him around.

And second, Israel needs a wake-up call. Continuing to build settlements in the West Bank, and even housing in disputed East Jerusalem, is sheer madness. Yasir Arafat accepted that Jewish suburbs there would be under Israeli sovereignty in any peace deal that would also make Arab parts of East Jerusalem the Palestinian capital. Israel’s planned housing expansion now raises questions about whether Israel will ever be willing to concede a Palestinian capital in Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem — a big problem.

Mass murder in Sri Lanka is an inconvenience for the New York Times travel section

Published on 14 March 2010 in General. 2 Comments Tags: , .

Back in January the New York Times featured Sri Lanka as its top travel destination of the year. An odd choice, considering the country is a police state and stands accused of murdering tens of thousands of its Tamil minority.

Not to worry, just enjoy a nice cocktail on a beach recently cleared of mines and bodies.

Now, the Times continues its tone-deaf journey, more fully featuring the island and while acknowledging the recent troubles simply sails onto recommending nice holiday spots:

The wounds are still fresh, as The New York Times found out after listing Sri Lanka as its top travel destination for 2010 (as the author of the entry, my e-mail in-box was bombarded with angry letters). The anger stemmed from the brutal way in which the Sri Lankan military ended the war last May. By some estimates, about 7,000 civilians, and possibly thousands more, were killed during the final battle. Hundreds of thousands were put in camps. The government remains in the awkward position of defending itself against accusations of war crimes while also trying to open up the country to foreign investors and vacationers.

…

But it is the country’s tranquil beauty that draws most visitors. “You don’t need to do a great deal to have the good life here,” said Ivan Robinson, a British real estate developer who refurbished a colonial manor in the south. “The rivers are full of fish. Fruit falls off trees.” Water buffalo graze beside Buddhist stupas. Elephants roam freely. And innkeepers warn guests to keep their windows closed to avoid pickpockets — not people, but monkeys swinging from the trees.

Then there are Sri Lanka’s famed beaches, crescent-shaped coves of white sand framed by colorful bungalows and bamboo groves. An unintended consequence of the war is the coastline’s lack of development. You can stroll past beat-up outrigger boats, which look like showpieces from a maritime museum, and past fishermen on wooden stilts. Or hike inland to discover hideaway guesthouses carved from old gem merchants’ homes, with mango gardens and infinity pools tucked into their courtyards.

New York Times prefers to view the Middle East as a balanced tiff between two old mates

Published on 12 March 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

The New York Times editorialises about the Middle East with its usual “he said/she said” mentality. Both the Israelis and Palestinians must work towards peace but why the hell should anybody in the Middle East see America and Barack Obama as anything other than a nearly unquestioning friend of Israel?

Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. used rare and decidedly undiplomatic language on Tuesday to upbraid Israel after it announced plans to build 1,600 new housing units in a Jewish neighborhood of East Jerusalem. “I condemn the decision. …,” he said in a statement.

The Obama administration is understandably furious. Mr. Biden was in Israel working to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The word came after he had spent the day vowing the United States’ “absolute, total and unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security.”

Aides say Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was blindsided by the announcement from Israel’s Interior Ministry, led by the leader of right-wing Shas Party. But he didn’t disavow the plan. And it is hard to see the timing as anything but a slap in the face to Washington.

There were conflicting reports on whether the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, would go ahead with “proximity talks” — in which George Mitchell, the Middle East envoy for the United States, is supposed to shuttle between Jerusalem and the West Bank in hopes of making enough progress to revive direct negotiations on a two-state solution. Mr. Abbas should stick with the talks.

President Obama seriously miscalculated last year when he insisted that Israel impose a full stop on all new settlement building, only to have Mr. Netanyahu refuse. The goal was — and is — just. The Palestinians are legitimately fearful that the more Israel builds in the West Bank or East Jerusalem the less likely it is to ever negotiate away any disputed territory. A settlement freeze could well have jump-started serious negotiations.

But one of the basic rules of diplomacy is that American presidents never publicly insist on something they aren’t sure of getting — at least not without a backup plan. By the time Mr. Netanyahu finally acceded to a 10-month partial halt that exempted Jerusalem, the Palestinians felt so burned that the peace effort collapsed.

It must be noted that Mr. Obama and Mr. Mitchell also failed to persuade Arab leaders to agree to make any gestures to Israel in return for a settlement freeze.

The Obama administration worked hard to get Mr. Abbas to agree to renewed talks, arguing that more stalemate was not in the Palestinians’ interest. And it made some rare headway with Arab leaders, persuading them to endorse the American proposal for talks — giving Mr. Abbas needed political cover. Suggestions that Arab leaders might now renege on that support are worrisome.

Mr. Mitchell will have to keep working all sides to move this ahead. He must continue to press Israel on the settlements issue. And if Israel is to make real concessions, it will need more than gestures from the Arab states.

Mr. Biden said on Wednesday that the administration would hold both Israelis and Palestinians “accountable for any statements or actions that inflame tensions or prejudice the outcome of talks.” That would be a very important start. We also hope that if progress lags, the administration will be ready to put forward its own proposals on the central issues of borders, refugees, security and the future of Jerusalem.

Mr. Obama has another chance to move the peace process forward. This time he has to get it right.

Friedman welcomes Iraqi democracy…glosses over the deaths

Published on 11 March 2010 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

Earth to the New York Times and Thomas Friedman. Backing an invasion of Iraq requires responsibility, not more platitudes. Of course, when you’re not doing the fighting, wars seem so noble:

Former President George W. Bush’s gut instinct that this region craved and needed democracy was always right. It should have and could have been pursued with much better planning and execution. This war has been extraordinarily painful and costly. But democracy was never going to have a virgin birth in a place like Iraq, which has never known any such thing.

Some argue that nothing that happens in Iraq will ever justify the costs. Historians will sort that out. Personally, at this stage, I only care about one thing: that the outcome in Iraq be positive enough and forward-looking enough that those who have actually paid the price — in lost loved ones or injured bodies, in broken homes or broken lives, be they Iraqis or Americans or Brits — see Iraq evolve into something that will enable them to say that whatever the cost, it has given freedom and decent government to people who had none.

Name me a company that isn’t trying to make serious money in Tehran

Published on 7 March 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

It’s like Iraq’s Oil for Food program all over again. This New York Times article is fascinating yet one wonders if any examples can be given of the corporate world not colluding with dictatorships in the name of making profits:

The federal government has awarded more than $107 billion in contract payments, grants and other benefits over the past decade to foreign and multinational American companies while they were doing business in Iran, despite Washington’s efforts to discourage investment there, records show.

That includes nearly $15 billion paid to companies that defied American sanctions law by making large investments that helped Iran develop its vast oil and gas reserves.

For years, the United States has been pressing other nations to join its efforts to squeeze the Iranian economy, in hopes of reining in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Now, with the nuclear standoff hardening and Iran rebuffing American diplomatic outreach, the Obama administration is trying to win a tough new round of United Nations sanctions.

But a New York Times analysis of federal records, company reports and other documents shows that both the Obama and Bush administrations have sent mixed messages to the corporate world when it comes to doing business in Iran, rewarding companies whose commercial interests conflict with American security goals.

Violence is a means and an end: an interview with Mark Danner

Published on 2 March 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

My latest article for New Matilda is an interview with leading American reporter Mark Danner:

Leading US journalist Mark Danner calls a spade a spade and examines the political value of violence in this exclusive interview with Antony Loewenstein

Mark Danner has some unusual characteristics for a mainstream US journalist.

He has published in some of America’s finest literary journals and is an irregular contributor to the New Yorker and New York Review of Books. Yet despite his impeccable media establishment credentials he remains entirely capable of critiquing its failures.

In an exclusive interview with newmatilda.com last week, Danner covered a lot of ground. He is haunted by his country’s use, abuse and boasting of torture on “enemy combatants” and the inability or unwillingness of Obama to challenge the criminality of the Bush years.

I raised with him the roughly 700 military bases or outposts across the world that Washington acknowledges it operates, according to American historian Chalmers Johnson. When I asked Danner what the US needs them for, he spoke with a frankness unusual in a mainstream journalist about the way the media avoids using words “empire” and “imperialism” to describe America’s role in the world.

“People don’t want to use that kind of terminology because they’ll get placed on the Left. It is viewed as an inherent denunciation of American policy. To talk about empire, you’re automatically Noam Chomsky, you’re making a point about hegemony but I don’t see it like that. The United States has imperial visions and responsibilities and that’s just a fact. It obviously works differently to the Roman Empire or the British Empire.

“But the US worldwide has interests and it controls the sea-lanes. The American navy is absolutely unparalleled in the world and nobody rivals this power. There is no other worldwide navy, though the Soviets tried to build one and failed. That’s what empires do — they keep the sea-lanes clear. China is building a blue-water navy but it’s generally thought that Beijing wants to construct a ‘string of pearls’ — military bases from China to Africa because at this stage their foreign policy is primarily focused on securing resources.”

Danner was in town last week to give a talk at Sydney University, and to promote his most recent book, Stripping Bare the Body. During his talk Danner challenged the core beliefs of the American-led battle against terrorism by outlining the wide gulf between reality and rhetoric. He cited President Barack Obama’s “eloquent address” in Cairo last June that articulated the importance of reframing the relationship between the West and the Muslim world.

But Washington seemed to ignore the contradictions of an African-American president talking about democracy and human rights while still wholeheartedly backing dictatorships in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. Both Saudi Arabia and Egypt are key targets for al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. Danner observes that while such inconsistencies might escape the mainstream Western voter, they are at the very centre of the way people in non-Western countries see US behaviour. Obama’s seeming endorsement of the policies of client states such as these — or at least no public moves to condemn their brutality — plays directly into the hands of those who point to America as the great hypocrite.

In that context, Danner argued that the Muslim Brotherhood gaining influence in Egypt through democratic elections should be cautiously welcomed and a “salutary” lesson for a super-power long used to backing anti-democratic forces.

He argued that after one year in office, Obama would get a failing grade on the project of completely ending torture and closing Guantanamo Bay. More ominously, lamented Danner, many polls find a majority of Americans now believe that torture is necessary to keep the homeland safe from terrorist attack. “Fear is now a permanent feature of American life”, Danner said.

He reminded the audience that the filibuster technique, ruthlessly used by the Republicans in the last 12 months to block Democrat-led initiatives in Congress, had an ironic history. “It used to be something Democrats used to block civil rights legislation to allow African-Americans to vote”, Danner explained, “and today the same tool is being used by the Republicans against a African-American President.” He wasn’t optimistic that this political gridlock would be broken anytime soon.

Far from being a beltway analyst, commenting on events from the safety of the US, much of Danner’s fame stems from his influential first-hand coverage of conflicts outside the US and of the effects of his country’s foreign policy. As well, his work has dealt frequently with the seeming inability of the corporate press to report honestly on conflicts and trauma both near and far from America. “The verdict since 9/11 is quite mixed”, he told me. “What the press did in the run-up to the Iraq war was a terrible job. One of the mitigating reasons for that was that the Bush administration chose to make its case [over Iraq] on intelligence grounds and put journalists in the position of being seals, wanting fish. The ones who clapped most agreeably, such as Judith Miller at the New York Times, got the biggest fish. Intelligence stories depend on leaks. Secondly, the political elites essentially closed ranks over the invasion.”

Danner argues that the Iraq invasion potentially hurt the Democrats more than the Republicans, as the so-called “Left” didn’t want to be seen as being on the wrong side of history. “Anybody on the Democratic side who thought they might be President in 2004, such as Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, all supported the war; it was the smart vote, in part because of what happened after the earlier Iraq conflict in 1991 when Democrats opposed a very popular war.”

Violence as a catalyst for action is something that Danner looks at in a variety of ways in his book. As he says, “for leaders in a democracy, charged with crafting a foreign policy that can attract consensus or at least acquiescence, the instinctual power exerted by the spectacle of violence is a reality to be managed and sometimes feared.”

And that’s a dynamic that has certainly applied to the rapacious relationship between the US and a place in which Danner did some of his most powerful early journalism: Haiti. In the aftermath of the recent earthquake, Danner wrote in the New York Times that the country needed a serious and long-term commitment from Washington to build a “new Haiti”, but not of the militaristic kind: “Haitians have grown up in a certain kind of struggle for individuality and for power, and the country has proved itself able to absorb the ardent attentions of outsiders who, as often as not, remain blissfully unaware of their own contributions to what Haiti is. Like the ruined bridges strewn across the countryside — one of the few traces of the Marines and their occupation nearly a century ago — these attentions tend to begin in evangelical zeal and to leave little lasting behind.”

Events have brought Haiti back to attention in the most unfortunate way. But it is hard to see a lot of hope for the US altering the way it goes about its business there or elsewhere. In one of the most telling passages in Stripping Bare the Body, Danner describes another US intervention in Haiti, this time during Clinon pesidency: “The Americans, exerting their overwhelming power to reshape the politics of a tiny immiserated land, failed disastrously in Haiti. They underestimated the nationalist response that would accompany their every move, blundering about like a watchmaker blinded by his own shadow.”

And to anyone who has watched the US in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, that’s a description that sounds tragically familiar.

Can Zionists report fairly for the Times on matters of Palestinian importance?

Published on 2 March 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

A fine piece of analysis by Middle East correspondent Jonathan Cook:

A recent assignment had me covering Israel’s presumed links to the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh; it provoked some more thoughts about the New York Times reporter Ethan Bronner, the Jerusalem bureau chief at the center of a controversy since it was revealed last month that his son is serving in the Israeli army.

Despite mounting pressure to replace Bronner, the NYT’s editors have so far refused to consider that he might be facing a conflict of interest or that it would be wise to post him elsewhere.

Last week, when suspicion for the assassination in Dubai started to fall on Israel’s Mossad, a newspaper editor e-mailed to ask if I could ring up my “Israeli security contacts” for fresh leads. It was a reminder that Western correspondents in Israel are expected to have such contacts. The point was underlined later the same day when I spoke with a left-wing Israeli academic to get his take on Mabhouh’s killing

I had turned to this Ashkenazi professor because he counts many veterans of the Israeli security services as friends. At the end of the interview, I asked him if he had any suggestions for people in the security services I might speak with. He replied: “Talk to Ethan [pronounced Eitan] Bronner. He has excellent contacts.” Miss-hearing “Eitan”, I asked how I could reach this expert on the veiled world of the Israeli security establishment. Was he employed at the professor’s university? “No, ring the New York Times bureau,” he responded incredulously. Oh, that Eitan.

A more interesting question than whether Bronner is now facing a conflict of interest over his son serving in the Israeli army, is whether the NYT reporter was facing such a conflict long before the latest revelations surfaced. Could it be that it is actually incumbent on Bronner, as the NYT’s bureau chief, to have such a conflict of interest?

Consider this: The NYT has a regular response when it comes to turning a blind eye to reporters with conflicts of interest in Israel – aside, I mean, from the issue of the reporters’ ethnic identification or nationality. For example, I am reminded of a recent predecessor of Bronner’s at the Jerusalem bureau – an Israeli Jew – who managed to do regular service in the Israeli army reserves even while he was covering the Second Intifada. I am pretty sure his bosses knew of this, but, as with Bronner, did not think there were grounds for taking action.

Shortly after I wrote my first article on the Bronner issue, pointing out that most Western coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict is shaped by Jewish and Israeli journalists and that Palestinian voices are almost entirely excluded, a Jerusalem-based bureau chief asked to meet. Over a coffee he congratulated me, adding: “I’d be fired if I wrote something like that.”

This reporter, who, unlike me, spends lots of time with the main press corps in Jerusalem, then made some interesting points. He wishes to remain anonymous but agreed to my passing on his observations. He calls Bronner’s situation “the rule, not the exception,” adding: “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.”

He added that it is very 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. “Comments like that are very common at Foreign Press Association gatherings [in Israel] among the senior, agenda-setting, elite journalists.”

My informant is highly critical of what is going on among the Jerusalem press corps, even though he admits the same charges could be levelled against him. “I’m Jewish, married to an Israeli and like almost all Western journalists live in Jewish West Jerusalem. In my free time I hang out in cafes and bars with Jewish Israelis chatting in Hebrew. For the Jewish sabbath and Jewish holidays I often get together with a bunch of Western journalists. While it would be convenient to think otherwise, there is no question that this deep personal integration into Israeli society informs our overall understanding and coverage of the place in a way quite different from a journalist who lived in Ramallah or Gaza and whose personal life was more embedded in Palestinian society.”

And now he gets to the crunch: “The degree to which Bronner’s personal life, like that of most lead journalists here, is integrated into Israeli society, makes him an excellent candidate to cover Israeli political life, cultural shifts and intellectual life. The problem is that Bronner is also expected to be his paper’s lead voice on Palestinian political life, cultural shifts and intellectual life, all in a society he has almost no connection to, deep knowledge of or even the ability to directly communicate with.

“The presumption that this is possible is neither fair to Bronner nor to his readers, and it’s really a shame that Western media executives don’t see the value in an Arabic-speaking bureau chief living in Ramallah and setting the agenda for the news coming out of the Palestinian territories.”

All true. But I think there is a deeper lesson from the Bronner affair.

Editors who prefer to appoint Jews and Israelis to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are probably making a rational choice in news terms – even if they would never dare admit their reasoning. The media assign someone to the Jerusalem bureau because they want as much access as possible to the inner sanctums of power in a self-declared Jewish state. They believe – and they are right – that doors open if their reporter is a Jew, or better still an Israeli Jew, who has proved his or her commitment to Israel by marrying an Israeli, by serving in the army or having a child in the army, and by speaking fluent Hebrew, a language all but useless outside this small state.

Yes, Ethan Bronner is “the rule,” as my informant notes, because any other kind of journalist – the goyim, as many Israelis dismiss non-Jews – will only ever be able to scratch at the surface of Israel’s military-political-industrial edifice. The Bronners have access to power, they can talk to the officials who matter, because those same officials trust that high-powered Jewish and Israeli reporters belong in the Israeli consensus. They may be critical of the occupation, but they can be trusted to pull their punches. If they ever failed to do so, they would be ejected from the inner sanctum and a paper like the NYT would be forced to replace them with someone more cooperative.

When in later years, these Jerusalem bureau chiefs retire from the field of battle and are promoted to the rank of armchair general back at media HQ – when they become a Thomas Friedman paid to pontificate regularly on the conflict – they can be trusted to talk to those same high-placed officials, explaining their viewpoint and defending it. That is why you will not read anything in the NYT questioning the idea that Israel is a democratic state or see coverage suggesting that Israel is acting in bad faith in the peace process.

I do not want here to suggest there is anything unique about this relationship of almost utter dependence. To a degree, this is how most specialists in the mainstream media operate. Think of the local crime reporter. How effective would he be (and it is invariably a he) if he alienated the senior police officers who provide the inside information he needs for his regular supply of stories? Might he not prefer to turn a blind eye to a scoop revealing that one of his main informants is taking bribes, if publishing such a story would lose him his “access” and his posting? This is a simple cost-benefit analysis made both by the reporter and the editors who assign him that almost always favors the powerful over the weak, the interests of the journalist over the reader.

And so it is with Israel. Like the crime reporter, our Jerusalem bureau chief needs his “access” more than he needs the occasional scoop that would sabotage his relationship with official sources. But more so than the crime reporter, many of these bureau chiefs also identify with Israel and its goals because they have an Israeli spouse and children. They not only live on one side of a bitter national conflict but actively participate in defending that side through service in its military.

This is a conflict of interest of the highest order. It is also the reason why they are there in the first place.

Iraq in 2010

Published on 25 February 2010 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

One of America’s finest journalists, Nir Rosen – fearless, intense and unafraid to embed with the “enemy” – writes that Iraq is not likely to descend back into chaos (but the West has still created a sick experiment in post-dictatorship development, something welcomed by the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman):

It’s been frustrating to read the latest hysteria about sectarianism returning to Iraq, the threat of a new civil war looming, or even the notion that Iraq is “unraveling.” I left Iraq today after an intense mission on behalf of Refugees International. My colleague Elizabeth Campbell and I traveled comfortably and easily throughout Baghdad, Salahedin, Diyala and Babil. We were out among Iraqis until well into the night every day, often in remote villages, traveling in a normal Toyota Corolla. Our main hassle was traffic and having to go through a thousand security checkpoints a day.

…

From the beginning of the occupation the US government and media focused too much on elite level politics and on events in the Green Zone, neglecting the Iraqi people, the “street,” neighborhoods, villages, mosques. They were too slow to recognize the growing resistance to the occupation, too slow to recognize that there was a civil war and now perhaps for the same reason many are worried that there is a “new” sectarianism or a new threat of civil war. The US military is not on the streets and cannot accurately perceive Iraq, and journalists are busy covering the elections and the debaathification controversy, but not reporting enough from outside Baghdad, or even inside Baghdad.

Iraqis on the street are no longer scared of rival militias so much, or of being exterminated and they no longer have as much support for the religious parties. Maliki is still perceived by many to be not very sectarian and not very religious, and more of a “nationalist.” Another thing people would notice if they focused on “the street” is that the militias are finished, the Awakening Groups/SOIs are finished, so violence is limited to assassinations with silencers and sticky bombs and the occasional spectacular terrorist attack — all manageable and not strategically important, even if tragic. Politicians might be talking the sectarian talk but Iraqis have grown very cynical.

The means and methods of killing Israeli enemies (and who who admire them)

Published on 24 February 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Mossad’s supposedly legendary ability to murder so-called “enemies” is praised by many Jews but simply shows the illegality of Israeli actions.

The recent killing in Dubai of a Hamas operative – according to former New York Times journalist and Iraq WMD story-teller Judith Miller, this was Israel’s third attempt – alerted the world to such methods once again (although an Israeli minister is now saying that the murder in Dubai wasn’t actually murder. Really.)

This account in the London Independent of Israel’s tracking and 2008 killing of Hizbollah leader Imad Mughniyeh is a remarkble story:

On Saturday morning, 2 February 2008, a man emerged from the U-Bahn, the city’s railway system, and stood outside the subway exit on the Kurfürstendamm, Berlin’s elegant shopping quarter. He had started his journey in one of the eastern suburbs of the city and its purpose was contained in the briefcase he carried. A car pulled up, the driver opened the passenger door and together they drove off.

Who the man was and what he had been asked to do was known, apart from the driver, to only Meir Dagan and a handful of senior Mossad officers in Tel Aviv. They had patiently waited for the car’s passenger to obtain what they wanted.

Six months before, the driver introduced himself to the man as Reuben. It was not his real name: like all other details about his identity, it remained in a secure room where the names of all current katsas [field agents] were kept in Mossad headquarters. A few days ago, the man had left a message at one of the agreed dead letter-boxes, which Reuben regularly checked, to the effect that he was ready to deliver what he had been asked to provide in return for a substantial sum of euros, half as a down payment, the balance on delivery of what was now in his briefcase.

They were photos of Imad Mughniyeh. After Osama bin Laden, he was the world’s most-wanted terrorist.

New York Times Jerusalem reporter remains a story (as it should)

Published on 21 February 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

The story of New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner having a son now enlisted in the IDF continues to cause angst across the world.

This Al-Jazeera report outlines the issues and provides evidence for the prosecution, namely that Bronner’s reporting is inherently more sympathetic to the Zionist line:

The Times itself has followed up the story with another comment by the Public Editor and some letters:

I believe the need for Ethan Bronner’s reassignment is clear. Could you imagine if the Jerusalem bureau chief of any major media source was the father of a Palestinian militant? It’s a nonstarter, and it’s common sense.

If a media source actually aspires to be unbiased, not just the voice of a popular liberal narrative, then the need for reassignment and a serious examination of policy are self-evident.

JERRY MAROGIL

Grand Rapids, Mich., Feb. 7, 2010

The Public Editor Clark Hoyt argues:

…There is a huge difference between being a Jewish reporter covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and being a reporter whose son has enlisted in the Israeli military. For one thing, as the letter from Ira Glunts illustrates, there is no unanimity among Jews about Israel. To suggest otherwise is to buy into stereotypes. Good reporters bring their life stories to their work and learn both to mine them for material and to correct for bias. But having a son take up arms in a foreign fight you are covering — any fight — creates intolerable pressures and appearances, in my view. I would have said the same thing if The Times had had a reporter in Northern Ireland with a son in the British military there — or fighting with the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

I tend to agree with Hoyt on this point. Bronner’s religion isn’t the issue here but his perspective. Being a Zionist is also fine but it must be fairly balanced with reports by individuals not so heavily invested in the Zionist project.

How to make a film in the Warsaw Ghetto

Published on 20 February 2010 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , .

The New York Times reports on the just finished Sundance Film Festival and highlights the growing fascination with the documentary form. What is truth is always a key question:

Documentaries are hot stuff at festivals like Sundance and sometimes at the art house too, even as the discussion of their relationship to the truth often lags behind. This became clear after watching a lineup of documentaries at Sundance that also included “A Film Unfinished,” an investigation into an incomplete Nazi propaganda movie that’s sometimes mistakenly labeled a documentary, and which was shot in the Warsaw ghetto in May 1942, the year before the uprising. The director Yael Hersonski, using generous clips from the Nazi movie and excerpts from diaries written by ghetto inhabitants, illustrates how the original footage was carefully staged, as evident by multiple takes of some scenes. In one section a healthy-looking woman walks past two pitiful waifs with apparent indifference, and then she does so again.

Over the decades excerpts from this and other similar ghetto movies have been used in well-intended documentaries about the Holocaust, which invests them with a level of factuality they cannot support. These images don’t reveal the whole reality of Jewish life in the ghetto during the war; they show how the Nazi propaganda machine wanted Jewish life to be immortalized. As the historian Lucy Dawidowicz once pointed out about a 1960s British film that used such visuals, there were no Nazi films about the secret ghetto schools, libraries and political organizations and none about the “valiant men and women, boys and girls” who fought in the uprising.

Ms. Hersonski’s documentary demolishes the truth claims of those Nazi images. To an extent, it is the ineluctable weight of the Holocaust that allows her to engage such questions at all. The issue of truth, unless Michael Moore is in the vicinity, is often left off the table when it comes to discussions about documentary cinema, perhaps because critics don’t have the time, resources or inclination for the requisite fact-checking or because the issue is at odds with our postmodern age, in which the truth is said to be conditional. Part of what is so gratifying about “A Film Unfinished,” which is often painful to watch, is its ethical insistence that there are true things in the world, and that it is necessary for us to know them.

Calling all Jews, please help us sell the vibrant state of Israel

Published on 19 February 2010 in Israel. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Israel’s liberals have become politically invisible. The country is therefore increasingly run by the right and far-right. Hooray for them.

In light of the Jewish state’s shocking global image (aside from the political elites who love its plucky nature and war against Palestinians), the Israeli government has a wonderful idea (it’s truly hard to read this and not laugh):

The Israeli government, deeply worried about the country’s declining international image, began a campaign on Wednesday to turn every Israeli — and ultimately every Jew — into a traveling public relations agent.

With a Web site backed by an advertising blitz, the Information and Diaspora Affairs Ministry began issuing Hebrew-language pamphlets to passengers on Israeli airlines and offering coaching courses to groups heading abroad. The message: “Are you fed up with the way we are portrayed around the world? You can change the picture.”

The information minister, Yuli Edelstein, said in a statement that a poll he had commissioned found that 91 percent of Israelis believed that their country had a poor image and that the vast majority wanted to play a role in improving it.

“To counter the big money invested by Arab states in propaganda against Israel, we have to mobilize our human capital, meaning the residents of Israel,” Mr. Edelstein said.

The new Web site presents a conservative interpretation of the issues over which Israel is most often criticized abroad — its settlements in the West Bank and its treatment of Palestinians, including the war in Gaza a year ago. But it also seeks to puncture what the ministry considers common myths about Israel — that it is a big and primitive country, that its food consists of little more than hummus and falafel, and that Israelis as a group do not seek peace.

…

One main message of the campaign is that Israel is a technically advanced and diverse society and that its government policies are not the source of regional conflict. It notes that a number of important agricultural breakthroughs have occurred here, including drip irrigation and the development of the cherry tomato.

Yep, the wonders of the juicy tomato will really make the world forget about occupation of Palestine.

UPDATE: Just read the response by Americans for Peace Now to this latest initiative :

Unfortunately, what the Ministry of Information offers its amateur ambassadors in the way of explaining Israel’s complex challenges is appalling. It’s a collection of half-truths (if not worse), which in most cases do not address the real, piercing questions that Israeli strategists have to deal with.

Astonishingly, there is nothing about a two-state solution. Israel’s goal, in terms of its relations with the Palestinians, is depicted as “coexistence,” yes, coexistence of Palestinians and Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

There isn’t even recognition that the West Bank is occupied. The discourse in Israel about the West Bank is depicted as evolving around Judea and Samaria’s “strategic value and the question of its being vital to Israel’s security.” C’mon!

Settlements? They are not the question, according to the Hasbara Ministry, and, anyway, Judea and Samaria are the land of the Bible; Jews were there first. So asserts the web site.

How about Israel’s future as a democratic state if the occupation of the West Bank continues? The Israeli hasbara volunteer is advised to argue that the demographic balance is actually a myth because the current numbers of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians – as well as the forecasts – are inflated. Seriously!

The Palestinian’s right for independence and statehood? The site advises the hasbara ambassador to argue that first the Palestinians have to stop inciting to violence against Israel. Then we’ll see about peace.

Where is the Tea Party movement going?

Published on 18 February 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

A fascinating New York Times feature about the Tea Party movement in the US. To ignore it is foolish but we shouldn’t be under any illusion why growing anger exists in the US. Race, the economy, disillusionment and fear. A toxic mix:

Pam Stout wakes each morning, turns on Fox News, grabs coffee and an Atkins bar, and hits the computer. She is the hub of a rapidly expanding and highly viral political network, keeping a running correspondence with her 400 members in Sandpoint, state and national Tea Party leaders and other conservative activists.

Mrs. Stout forwards along petitions to impeach Mr. Obama; petitions to audit the Federal Reserve; petitions to support Sarah Palin; appeals urging defiance of any federal law requiring health insurance; and on and on.

Meanwhile, she and her husband are studying the Constitution line by line. She has the Congressional switchboard programmed into her cellphone. “I just signed up for a Twitter class,” said Mrs. Stout, 66, laughing at the improbability of it all.

Yet for all her efforts, Mrs. Stout is gripped by a sense that it may be too little too late. Yes, there have been victories — including polls showing support for the Tea Party movement — but in her view none of it has diminished the fundamental threat of tyranny, a point underscored by Mr. Obama’s drive to pass a health care overhaul.

She and her members are becoming convinced that rallies alone will not save the Republic. They are searching for some larger answer, she said. They are also waiting for a leader, someone capable of uniting their rebellion, someone like Ms. Palin, who made Sandpoint one of the final stops on her book tour and who has announced plans to attend a series of high-profile Tea Party events in the next few months.

“We need to really decide where we’re going to go,” Mrs. Stout said.

These questions of strategy, direction and leadership were clearly on the minds of Mrs. Stout’s members at a recent monthly meeting.

Their task seemed endless, almost overwhelming, especially with only $517 in their Tea Party bank account. There were rallies against illegal immigration to attend. There was a coming lecture about the hoax of global warming. There were shooting classes to schedule, and tips to share about the right survival food.

The group struggled fitfully for direction. Maybe they should start vetting candidates. Someone mentioned boycotting ABC, CBS, NBC and MSNBC. Maybe they should do more recruiting.

“How do you keep on fighting?” Mrs. Stout asked in exasperation.

Lenore Generaux, a local wildlife artist, had an idea: They should raise money for Freedom Force, a group that says it wants to “reclaim America via the Patriot movement.” The group is trying to unite the Tea Parties and other groups to form a powerful “Patriot lobby.” One goal is to build a “Patriot war chest” big enough to take control of the Republican Party.

Not long ago, Mrs. Stout sent an e-mail message to her members under the subject line: “Revolution.” It linked to an article by Greg Evensen, a leader in the militia movement, titled “The Anatomy of an American Revolution,” that listed “grievances” he said “would justify a declaration of war against any criminal enterprise including that which is killing our nation from Washington, D.C.”

Mrs. Stout said she has begun to contemplate the possibility of “another civil war.” It is her deepest fear, she said. Yet she believes the stakes are that high. Basic freedoms are threatened, she said. Economic collapse, food shortages and civil unrest all seem imminent.

“I don’t see us being the ones to start it, but I would give up my life for my country,” Mrs. Stout said.

She paused, considering her next words.

“Peaceful means,” she continued, “are the best way of going about it. But sometimes you are not given a choice.”

The New York Times has at least one vaguely honest writer on Israel/Palestine

Published on 12 February 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

New York Times columnist Roger Cohen is one of the better mainstream American commentators on the Middle East. Though unbelievably mild and seemingly unwilling to suggest Washington do anything to pressure Israel apart from harsh words (like that’s going to work), his latest piece continues the admirable trend:

For over a century now, Zionism and Arab nationalism have failed to find an accommodation in the Holy Land. Both movements attempted to fill the space left by collapsed empire, and it has been left to the quasi-empire, the United States, to try to coax them to peaceful coexistence. The attempt has failed.

President Barack Obama came to office more than a year ago promising new thinking, outreach to the Muslim world, and relentless focus on Israel-Palestine. But nice speeches have given way to sullen stalemate. I am told Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have a zero-chemistry relationship.

Domestic U.S. politics constrain innovative thought — even open debate — on the process without end that is the peace search. As Aaron David Miller, who long labored in the trenches of that process, once observed, the United States ends up as “Israel’s lawyer” rather than an honest broker. The upside for an American congressman in speaking out for Palestine is nonexistent.

I don’t see these constraints shifting much, but the need for Obama to honor his election promise grows. The conflict gnaws at U.S. security, eats away at whatever remote possibility of a two-state solution is left, clouds Israel’s future, scatters Palestinians and devours every attempt to bridge the West and Islam.

Here’s what I believe. Centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust created a moral imperative for a Jewish homeland, Israel, and demand of America that it safeguard that nation in the breach.

But past persecution of the Jews cannot be a license to subjugate another people, the Palestinians. Nor can the solemn U.S. promise to stand by Israel be a blank check to the Jewish state when its policies undermine stated American aims.

…

The U.S. objective is a two-state peace. But day by day, square meter by square meter, the physical space for the second state, Palestine, is disappearing. Can the Gaza sardine can and fractured labyrinth of the West Bank now be seen as anything but a grotesque caricature of a putative state? America has allowed this self-defeating process to advance to near irreversibility.

In fact, it has helped fund it. The settlements are expensive, as is the security fence (hated “separation wall” to the Palestinians) that is itself an annexation mechanism. According to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service, U.S. aid to Israel totaled $28.9 billion over the past decade, a sum that dwarfs aid to any other nation and amounts to four times the total gross domestic product of Haiti.

The New York Times and its Zionist blind spot

Published on 8 February 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

The issue of New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, Ethan Bronner, and the now confirmed state of his son in the IDF, is causing waves across the web.

The paper’s Public Editor comments:

There are so many considerations swirling around this case: Bronner is a superb reporter. Nobody at The Times wants to give in to what they see as relentlessly unfair criticism of the paper’s Middle East coverage by people hostile to objective reporting. It doesn’t seem fair to hold a father accountable for the decision of an adult son.

But, stepping back, this is what I see: The Times sent a reporter overseas to provide disinterested coverage of one of the world’s most intense and potentially explosive conflicts, and now his son has taken up arms for one side. Even the most sympathetic reader could reasonably wonder how that would affect the father, especially if shooting broke out.

I have enormous respect for Bronner and his work, and he has done nothing wrong. But this is not about punishment; it is simply a difficult reality. I would find a plum assignment for him somewhere else, at least for the duration of his son’s service in the I.D.F.

The paper’s editor, Bill Keller, has a different take and it’s odd (he doesn’t see the need for Bronner to excuse himself from reporting on Israeli-led wars while his son possibly fights in those wars):

Readers, like reporters, bring their own lives to the newspaper. Sometimes, when these readers are unshakeably convinced of something, they bring blinding prejudice and a tendency to see what they want to see. As you well know, nowhere is that so true as in Israel and the neighboring Palestinian lands. If we send a Jewish correspondent to Jerusalem, the zealots on one side will accuse him of being a Zionist and on the other side of being a self-loathing Jew, and then they will parse every word he writes to find the phrase that confirms what they already believe while overlooking all evidence to the contrary. So to prevent any appearance of bias, would you say we should not send Jewish reporters to Israel? If so, what about assigning Jewish reporters to countries hostile to Israel? What about reporters married to Jews? Married to Israelis? Married to Arabs? Married to evangelical Christians? (They also have some strong views on the Holy Land.) What about reporters who have close friends in Israel? Ethical judgments that start from prejudice lead pretty quickly to absurdity, and pandering to zealots means cheating readers who genuinely seek to be informed.

This line from Keller to the Public Editor reveals the problem:

Keller said that if Israel launched a new assault into Gaza and Bronner’s son were a foot soldier, “I don’t think I’d have any problem with Ethan covering the conflict.” It would be a tougher call if the son rose to a commanding role, he said, and if the son’s unit were accused of wrongdoing, Keller said he thought he would assign another reporter.

As Richard Silverstein notes, this ignores a key concern:

Israel conducts yet another war on Gaza in which Bronner’s son serves & the former can still remain objective and unconflicted?  The only eventuality that would cause Bronner to substitute another reporter (but not rotate Bronner out of Israel) would be an accusation of war crimes against the son’s unit and then only if the son were an officer?  And I’ve got news for Keller: the last Gaza war involved virtually all Israeli units engaging in savage acts that Goldstone has characterized as possible war crimes.  What the Times’ senior editor does not understand about Israel and its military strategy is that it has become all-out war against military and civilian targets.  And this is a global doctrine for the entire army.  It’s not a question of a rogue unit here or there.

Bronner’s friend Bernard Avishai is offended even by the concept of moving Bronner to another round:

If Bronner had been found to be ignoring compelling questions, or cooking the evidence in some sly way, you would have the right to explore his state of mind: whether some pay-off or family loyalty explains his lapses. But what if there are no obvious lapses? Why go ad hominem when there is no rationale for this? The sophomoric revelation that “we all have biases”–worse, that biases come from determined psychological states, explicable by families, or class, or tribe, etc.–is not enough to discredit arguments or the person who makes them. One son of a factory owner turns out Richard Arkwright; another turns out Fredrick Engels. I don’t mean to be melodramatic, but transferring Bronner from Jerusalem for his son’s decisions borrows from the same grotesque epistemology with which people were transferred to the Gulag for their son’s decisions.

The message from Mondoweiss is clear: The ‘Times’ now owes it to its readers to assign an Arab-American reporter to Jerusalem

Personally speaking, the issue here isn’t so much Bronner or his ethics (though they aren’t irrelevant.) It’s the kind of focus the Times gives to the Israeli/Zionist perspective. Where are the anti-Zionist Jewish journalists? Would they even be considered? Of course not. Or the Palestinian writers? I remember asking Bronner directly in Israel last year why the paper didn’t employ more Palestinian journalists. He said they did and they would. Well, they aren’t bureau chiefs like Bronner. And we all know why.

America watches China pass it by on the road to development

Published on 1 February 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

It’s hard not to read this story from yesterday’s New York Times and conclude that the journalist and paper are internally petrified that the place of America in the world is decreasing, its influence waning:

China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.

China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.

These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.

New York Times needs to come clean on journalist’s conflicts

Published on 28 January 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

The question of New York Times Jerusalem chief Ethan Bronner and whether his son is in the IDF is thrashed out by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting:

The decisions of Bronner’s son, however, are not the issue. What the Times needs to ask itself is whether it expects that its bureau chief has the normal human feelings about matters of life or death concerning one’s child.

Might he feel hostility, for example, when interviewing members of organizations who were trying to kill his son? When the IDF goes into battle, might he be rooting for the side for which his son is risking his life? Certainly such issues would be taken very seriously if a Times reporter had a child who belonged to a military force that was engaged in hostilities with the IDF; indeed, there’s little doubt that a reporter in that position would not be allowed to continue to cover the Mideast conflict.

Having a conflict of interest, it should be stressed, is not the same thing as producing slanted journalism; rather, it means that a journalist has outside motivations that are strongly at odds with his or her journalistic responsibilities. That a journalist has been “scrupulously fair” in the past does not excuse an ongoing conflict of interest; journalists should not be placed in a position where they have to ignore the well-being of their family in order to do their job, nor should readers be expected to trust that they can do so.

The internet leads coverage of Israel’s East Jerusalem cleansing

Published on 26 January 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

The Jerusalem Post explains why the growing public protests over Sheikh Jarrah have been helped greatly by the web (and ironically, the failure of the Western press to adequately report an issue a few kilometres from their offices):

Social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, along with a slew of blogs, are playing an increasing role in the growing participation of young Israelis in protest rallies in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, activists and journalists familiar with the situation there told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

Activists and journalists both described a situation in which protesters were relying on the Internet to try and affect change on the ground and raise awareness of the arrests made during demonstrations in the neighborhood.

“It’s all Facebook, e-mails and Twitter,” said Didi Remez, a human rights activist, who has become noticeably involved in the Sheikh Jarrah protests as of late. Remez was arrested during a protest there last Friday.

Remez also said that distant audiences, like American Jews, who might be deprived of Sheikh Jarrah coverage due to the mainstream media’s lack of interest, were instead staying abreast of the situation via social networking sites.

“The American media is for some reason refusing to cover this,” he said. “Even though it’s becoming a major issue in Israel. And still, despite that, there’s a lot of awareness [of this issue] among Jewish Americans, the reason being that they are increasingly connected through Facebook, Twitter, blogs and so on.”

“They’re getting information on this without The New York Times,” Remez continued. “So, something that hasn’t been covered at all by the [American] mainstream media, is still getting coverage through new media, and I think that’s a statement about the decline of the mainstream media and maybe a larger comment on the shift away from it.”

Can the New York Times fairly see the Middle East when the IDF is front and centre?

Published on 26 January 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

In July 2009 I spoke to New York Times Jerusalem correspondent Ethan Bronner who told me, when asked, that he did not have any children serving in the IDF.

According to Electronic Intifada, this may have changed:

The New York Times has all but confirmed to The Electronic Intifada (EI) that the son of its Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner was recently inducted into the Israeli army.

Over the weekend, EI received a tip suggesting this had been the case and wrote to Bronner to ask him to confirm or deny the information and to seek his opinion on whether, if true, he thought it would be a conflict of interest.

Susan Chira, the foreign editor of The New York Times wrote in an email to The Electronic Intifada this morning:

“Ethan Bronner referred your query to me, the foreign editor. Here is my comment: Mr. Bronner’s son is a young adult who makes his own decisions. At The Times, we have found Mr. Bronner’s coverage to be scrupulously fair and we are confident that will continue to be the case.”

The Electronic Intifada also wrote to Clark Hoyt, the public editor of The New York Times, to confirm the information and ask for an opinion on whether this constituted a conflict of interest, but had yet to receive a response.

Bronner, as bureau chief, has primary responsibility for his paper’s reporting on all aspects of the Palestine/Israel conflict, and on the Israeli army, whose official name is the “Israel Defense Forces.”

On 23 January, Bronner published a lengthy article on Israel’s efforts to refute allegations contained in the UN-commissioned Goldstone report of war crimes and crimes against humanity during its attack on Gaza last winter (“Israel Poised to Challenge a UN Report on Gaza“).

As’ad AbuKhalil, a frequent critic of Bronner’s coverage, blogged in response that “The New York Times devoted more space to Israeli and Zionist criticisms of the Goldstone report than to the [content of the] report itself” (The Angry Arab News Service, “Ethan Bronner’s propaganda services, 25 January 2010)

Bronner’s pro-Israeli bias reporting on Israel’s attack on Gaza last year was also criticized by the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) (See “NYT and the Perils of Mideast ‘Balance’,” 4 February 2009).

The New York Times’ own “Company policy on Ethics in Journalism” acknowledges that the activities of a journalist’s family member may constitute a conflict of interest. It includes as an example, “A brother or a daughter in a high-profile job on Wall Street might produce the appearance of conflict for a business reporter or editor.” Such conflicts may on occasion require the staff member “to withdraw from certain coverage.”

After Israel’s invasion of Gaza last winter, Israeli military censors banned local media from printing the names of individual officers who participated in the attack for fear that this could assist international efforts to bring war crimes suspects to justice. This followed the publication of a number of soldiers’ personal testimonies in the Israeli press describing atrocities they had seen committed by the Israeli army in Gaza.

The Times’ treatment of Bronner sets an interesting precedent. Would the newspaper’s policy be the same if a reporter in its Jerusalem bureau had an immediate family member who faced Bronner’s son across the battlefield, as a member of a Palestinian or Lebanese resistance organization?

It would appear that despite the highly sensitive nature of Palestine/Israel coverage, and the very high personal stakes for Bronner and his son that could result from full and open coverage of the Israeli army’s abuses of Palestinians, The New York Times does not consider this situation to be a problematic case. It had not even disclosed the situation to its readers — until now.

New York Times continues to shield Americans from Mid-east truth

Published on 12 January 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

How much longer must we suffer through this nonsense?

Here’s David Brooks in the New York Times, writing about the wonderful technology in Israel and its inspiration to the world. With growing amount of information getting out that shows Israel is an oppressive nation, Zionist propagandists, especially in the US, need to ramp up the talking points:

Jews are a famously accomplished group. They make up 0.2 percent of the world population, but 54 percent of the world chess champions, 27 percent of the Nobel physics laureates and 31 percent of the medicine laureates.

Jews make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, but 21 percent of the Ivy League student bodies, 26 percent of the Kennedy Center honorees, 37 percent of the Academy Award-winning directors, 38 percent of those on a recent Business Week list of leading philanthropists, 51 percent of the Pulitzer Prize winners for nonfiction.

In his book, “The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement,” Steven L. Pease lists some of the explanations people have given for this record of achievement. The Jewish faith encourages a belief in progress and personal accountability. It is learning-based, not rite-based.

Most Jews gave up or were forced to give up farming in the Middle Ages; their descendents have been living off of their wits ever since. They have often migrated, with a migrant’s ambition and drive. They have congregated around global crossroads and have benefited from the creative tension endemic in such places.

No single explanation can account for the record of Jewish achievement. The odd thing is that Israel has not traditionally been strongest where the Jews in the Diaspora were strongest. Instead of research and commerce, Israelis were forced to devote their energies to fighting and politics.

…

Israel’s technological success is the fruition of the Zionist dream. The country was not founded so stray settlers could sit among thousands of angry Palestinians in Hebron. It was founded so Jews would have a safe place to come together and create things for the world.