May 10, 2002

"The New York Times - And The Other News Factories"

Hundreds of thousands came to salute Israel and more importantly to confirm solidarity with its leaders and its citizens, but the New York Times laid a pall over this moment in our history.  Rather than portraying an extraordinary manifestation in support of Israel's necessary action, the Times defaced its one photograph mounted high on its front page with a singular Arab propagandistic poster.  America's most respected newspaper succumbed to unprecedented depths of corrupt journalism. People of all faiths applauded along New York's Fifth Avenue crying for justice for the worlds' most maligned country.  The liberal New York Times surrendered to Arab despotism and autocracy.  

New York was not the only venue where demonstration of great support for Israel took place.  Thousands gathered in and outside the great Baron Hirsch Synagogue in Memphis, Tennessee, the Congregation I proudly served as Rabbi for the past twenty-eight years.  There are about ten thousand Jews in the city known among other things as the center of the Christian Bible Belt and many of its leaders enthusiastically joined in an unswerving commitment to stand by Israel in this hour of crisis.  I felt an emotional tremor in the audience as I rose to address them.  Here in America's heartland, where Jews are a small minority, the Commercial Appeal, the midsouth's most prestigious newspaper unlike the Times, devoted prominent space on its front page but in Jewish New York, the "paper of record" could only tell us about the hateful Arab poster.
President Bush is fully aware that a great majority of Americans see through deception, a prejudice in most American news media.  They can't be fooled.

Americans know that the killers who invaded our shores on September 11 were made of the same stock as Yasser Arafat.  Homicide bombers in Tel Aviv, Netanya and Jerusalem are the same crazed murderers as those who shed innocent blood in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington.

Americans have a penchant for justice and truth and they are not buying the media's attempt to make Israel the victim into a terrorist, and Arafat's terroristic marauders into a national liberation movement.  

Tragically, the Palestinians are led by a gang of thieves and liars.  Arafat, their teacher, though honored by the Pope and greeted as a head of state in most world capitals would be rejected for membership in the Mafia for fear of being dishonored.

Where is the professionalism at the Times, CNN and the other news networks?  A journalist demeans his profession when personal prejudices rather than objective coverage emanates from his pen.  Anti-Semitism and Jewish self-hatred can be blinding.  The Jenin chapter is an example.  Reporters were running to Jenin as if it were the last place on earth.  They thought they had the real thing.  Jews would be caught in the commission of a Nazi-type massacre.  Arab propagandists were telling anyone who would listen "Jews killed five hundred innocent civilians."  The media harlots were chasing old ladies, little boys and anyone who would describe what the Israeli "terrorists" perpetrated.  And Kofi Annan was sending investigators to corroborate and support this newest blood libel against Jews.  Annan called off the investigation ostensibly because Israel did not cooperate, another big lie.

Approximately thirty Arabs died in Jenin and more than 20 Israeli soldiers lost their lives because Israel would not do what America did in Kabul. Rather than bombing the city from the air and killing hundreds, if not thousands of women and children, Israel sent its young men into urban warfare, the most treacherous battleground.  Jenin is the sight of the most compassionate battle ever fought by an army.  Out of Jenin came twenty-eight suicide bombers.  President Bush committed on September 11 to war against terrorists and the countries that harbor them and he sent bombers to every city and village in Afghanistan.  He is morally justified but Israel took the highest moral road in the annals of history.  This is "news fit to print" but you didn't read it in the Times, nor did you hear it on televised newscasts.  Americans are calling the bluff at the "news factories" where news is manufactured and truth denied.

Shabbat Shalom