Wallwritings

By James M. Wall      

This blog has received more immediate reaction to Is Thomas Friedman a Positive Voice for Peace? You Decide, than any other posting I have written since Wall Writings was launched in April, 2008.

One reader of the blog, unnamed here except as “Faithful Reader”, sent a copy of  that posting to Clark Hoyt, public editor of The New York Times. Hoyt responded to Faithful Reader, who then sent me Hoyt’s response.

I wrote Hoyt and asked his permission to print his note in my blog. He graciously gave that permission and then, just as graciously, told me why I was wrong in my reading of the visit of Thomas Friedman with officials of the Israeli Defense Forces headquarters.

I am reproducing below the exchanges that ensued. I apologize that the posting is longer than usual. I think it important to print all of the exchanges because civil discourse is sadly missing in our culture today. Hoyt’s regular column in The New York Times is a valuable contribution to this conversation, for which Hoyt and the Times should be commended.

We begin with Clark Hoyt’s initial note to Faithful Reader:

I didn’t see this blog post until you passed it along.  I inquired of Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor, because I think it would have been inappropriate for Tom Friedman to give a lecture, as Haaretz reported, to the IDF general staff.  Rosenthal inquired of Friedman, who said he did not give such a lecture.  He did meet with Israeli military officials in his role as a columnist/reporter.  They were sources for him.  He said he learned a lot from them and did not say any more to them in his conversations than was in his columns. I don’t have any intention of addressing a false report. but feel free to share it. . .

Faithful Reader sent me Hoyt’s response, to which I responded with the following email:

In the email you sent to [my Faithful Reader] regarding my Wallwritings.com posting on Thomas Friedman, you told her to feel free to share your response with the friend who shared the blog information with her. . .

You told [Faithful Reader] you considered the Ha’aretz news story to be a false report and for that reason you saw no reason to address the report further.

I would like to be able to share your response in my next posting.  I am not persuaded by Tom Friedman’s response to Andrew Rosenthal. But clearly, Mr. Rosenthal, as Tom’s editor, and you, as public editor, are persuaded.

Let me tell you why . . . I am not persuaded.

Ha’aretz, as you know from reading my posting, was the media source of my blog. In my post, I included links to three other bloggers who read the Ha’aretz story and expressed their concerns about Friedman’s presentation to the IDF officials. I suspect you know their work: Philip Weiss, Helene Cobban, and Richard Silverstein.

Friedman says he “met” with the Israeli military officials as sources. Ha’aretz said he gave them a lecture.  I am not convinced  of the validity of Friedman’s repudiation of the Ha’aretz story.  A journalist often meets with individual officials, but when he speaks to them as a group, and the word is spread that he gave them a “lecture”, it is difficult not to conclude that what took place was a sharing of information gathered in meetings with Palestinian and other Arab leaders that provided Tom Friedman with data for his columns.

It is my conclusion in my posting that Friedman’s writing career, which I document in my posting, has been strongly pro-Israel. In my posting, I link to a column I wrote for the Christian Century magazine in November, 2002. I was the editor of the Christian Century from 1972 through 1999, and in 2002, I was writing still a regular column for the publication.

I have traveled to the region as a journalist since 1973.  If you will read my November 6, 2002, column you will see that it focuses on my concern that Tom Friedman’s writings are harmful to the peace process.

Friedman attempts to refute the Ha’aretz news story which reports on his meeting with the Israeli Defense Forces staff. He maintains as you report in your email, that ” he learned a lot from them and did not say any more to them in his conversations than was in his columns.”

With all due respect, I find that totally unconvincing.  And I am surprised that both you and Andrew Rosenthal are convinced by the argument.

What you choose to do in handling this matter, as editor and public editor, is entirely up to you.  But as a former editor, now a blogger, I believe I owe it to my readers to let them know that  the two of you have chosen to accept Tom Friedman’s refutation of Ha’aretz.  And I want my readers to know that I am not convinced that the refutation is sufficient.

Since I cite three other bloggers in my initial posting, I feel I also owe it to them to share your email response with them. May I have your permission to quote your email in my next posting. With appreciation for all you do for The New York Times.

Clark Hoyt responded to me, as promptly as possible for a person on vacation, with the following email:

Dear Mr. Wall:

Please forgive the delay in this response. I am on vacation and am only occasionally checking e-mail.

I have no objection to your quoting my response to [Faithful Reader]. However, I would appreciate it if you would also include what I am about to say:

I find it curious and troubling that you choose to believe an unsourced, anonymous report in Haaretz over Mr. Friedman’s version of what happened, and — forgive me — I can’t help suspecting that you are allowing your political views to color your journalistic judgment in this matter. You disapprove of Tom Friedman’s writings and believe he is not helpful to the Middle East peace process. So, when a news organization reports something anonymously that could reflect negatively on him, you choose to believe it. Frankly,and I don’t intend any personal disrespect, I find that irresponsible. If you have evidence that Mr. Friedman is not telling the truth, I would like to see it, and I would be open to persuasion. If you don’t have such independent evidence, I would conclude that you are just choosing to believe what is convenient for you to believe.

I also find it unpersuasive that, because three other bloggers have commented on this anonymous report, it somehow takes on greater significance. This is, in my view, a common weakness in the blogosphere. Unsubstantiated information gets repeated often enough that some people come to the unwarranted conclusion that it must be true.

Best, Clark, Public Editor, The New York Times

I then sent this email to Mr. Hoyt:

Dear Clark:

Thank you for your thoughtful response. It is especially good of you to take your vacation time to consider my letter and to respond in such a gracious manner.

In my next blog posting, I assure you that I will include your response to me. And I thank you for giving me permission to reprint the email you sent to the blog reader who initially called my blog posting to your attention.

May I begin by examining the facts before us.

First, we have my original Wall Writings posting which commented on Thomas Friedman’s visit to the Israel Defense Force headquarters, where he, by his own admission, spoke with his “sources” in that headquarters. Second, we have your note to the reader of my blog, in which you accept Tom Friedman’s version of his meetings with the IDF against the interpretation of the Ha’aretz report.

The original Ha’aretz story provides the following specific information:

“Friedman met personally with IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi during his visit, and spoke to the deputy chief of staff, the head of Military Intelligence, the head of the Home Front Command and the head of the planning branch.”

By my count, Ha’aretz identifies five IDF officials with whom Tom spoke. Ha’aretz describes Tom’s meetings as including a “lecture” to the staff. In your note to the reader of my blog, you insist Tom did not give a “lecture” to the IDF military officials.

You wrote to [Faithful Reader]:

“I inquired of Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor, because I think it would have been inappropriate for Tom Friedman to give a lecture, as Haaretz reported, to the IDF general staff. Rosenthal inquired of Friedman, who said he did not give such a lecture. He did acknowledge that he met with Israeli military officials in his role as a columnist/reporter. They were sources for him. He said he learned a lot from them and did not say any more to them in his conversations than was in his columns.”

As I understand your position, had Tom given a lecture” to the IDF officials, that would have been inappropriate because it would have meant he was acting as a “consultant” to the IDF. Tom acknowledged to Andrew Rosenthal, after you queried Rosenthal, that he had, indeed, met with IDF officials. He said he had “learned a lot” from those conversations. He also assured Rosenthal that he “did not say any more to them in his conversations than was in his columns.”

Tom does not identify the officials with whom he met, although the Ha’aretz story is quite specific in identifying them by name and titles. Ha’aretz may have erred in calling those exchanges a “lecture”, but no one involved questions that Tom Friedman held conversations with IDF officials following his earlier meetings with Palestinian officials.

The issue is not whether Tom gave a “lecture”, but whether his conversations with five top officials in the IDF went beyond that of a columnist gathering information for his columns. I choose to believe those conversations were very helpful to the IDF officials in their own decision-making in dealing with the Palestinian officials.

Clark, I am surprised that you so willingly accept Tom’s word that his conversations with his “sources” did not go beyond what he wrote in his columns. His columns were written for readers of The New York Times. As I read them, I do not find new information that would be of significance to the IDF officials.

I must conclude, to use the term you applied to me, that it is “irresponsible” of you to accept Tom’s word that he repeated only information from his columns in his discussion with the IDF officials. You take his word on this in spite of the fact that you are aware of Tom’s strong affection for the state of Israel, which translates, in my personal opinion, to a lack of affection for those who “threaten”, in his judgment, the well-being of that state.

Tom Friedman is an experienced journalist who knows how to obtain information from friendly “sources”. It is naive, in my opinion, for you to conclude, and for you to expect me to agree, that Tom simply repeated his columns to the IDF officials, no more, no less. It is my opinion that what Tom Friedman brought to the IDF general staff, gleaned from his earlier discussions with Palestinian officials, would be of considerable value to the IDF general staff.

It is not unreasonable to conclude that Tom Friedman is capable of serving as a valuable conduit between Fatah and the IDF. As a friend to Israel, he could be valuable to the IDF by sharing with them his opinions on the thinking and planning of his Palestinian sources. There is considerable data, backed by sources, that Israel and Fatah are partners in resisting actions of Hamas.

It is insulting to have Tom Friedman dismiss his meetings with IDF officials as nothing more than friendly chats with sources. It is also insulting to attack my blog report as irresponsible because it is based on a report from a highly-respected Jerusalem newspaper.

I believe it is the role of the Public Editor to go much further than apparently you chose to go in your examination of the complaint regarding Tom’s meetings at the IDF headquarters, as reported in my blog, and acknowledged by Tom.

I do not know how closely you read my original Wall Writings posting, Is Thomas Friedman a ‘Positive Voice’ for Peace? You Decide, but I would appreciate your looking at it again and paying close attention to my Christian Century column to which I link in the posting. In that column, published November 6, 2002, I concluded that Tom Friedman’s bias toward Israel was not a positive contribution to the peace process..

Finally, Clark, in your note to me I do not feel you reflect a positive attitude toward bloggers. Like many bloggers today, I am new to the format, but also like many bloggers, I bring a history of media experience with me to the writing of my blog. You dismiss the “other three bloggers” I cite in my posting, Helene Cobban, Richard Silverstein and Philip Weiss, as mere “bloggers”. Surely you aware of the journalistic experience they bring to the blogs they currently write. I urge you to read them on a regular basis. They reach a very wide audience that is affecting public debate today.

I think it would be a mistake for you to dismiss, without further public comment, my blog’s complaint against Tom Friedman, and more importantly, since they reach a much larger audience than I do, the complaints lodged by the three other bloggers I cite.

I apologize for imposing further on your vacation time. I expect to post my next blog entry later today.

Within just a few hours, the following exchange took place.  First, Clark wrote to me:

Dear Jim,

Now that we’ve each agreed that the other is irresponsible, let me try to take it down a notch and explain more fully why I think you are pursuing a mistaken path in this case — at least without more first-hand knowledge than you have.

It continues to feel to me as though you are putting 2 and 2 together and getting 22:  Tom Friedman is a friend of Israel, therefore his conversations with IDF officials, in your view, must have some sinister implication beyond the kinds of exchanges that happen all the time between journalists and sources they cultivate for information.  In the case of Friedman,  he is an American and meets frequently with top officials of the U.S. government.  Does that mean he’s doing s something wrong in those instances?  I’ve never met Friedman, but I spent enough of my career in Washington to observe that his global influence is so strong that officials with whom he meets are almost certainly hoping to persuade him of their points of view, in hopes they will be reflected somehow in what he writes.

I find it odd that you use the word “admission” to describe Friedman’s acknowledgment that he met with the IDF officials.  Again, what”s he admitting to?  Meeting with sources?  What’s’ wrong with that?  You “choose to believe” — based on no reporting that you have cited to me — that Friedman was “very helpful” to the IDF officials.  You don’t know that, and nothing in the unsourced Haaretz report confirms that. I’m not even sure what very helpful means in this context and see nothing that reasonably supports a conclusion that Friedman stepped over a journalistic line.

I don’t think Friedman was insulting in his description of his exchanges with the Israelis.  I do see how you could take offense at my use of the word “irresponsible,” and please be assured that I meant no insult and should have expressed my views in better language.

Finally, I mean no disrespect toward bloggers.  I read them frequently and do some of it myself.  The point I was trying to make, obviously not well, was that just because three other bloggers opine on the same anonymous report, it doesn’t make the report true or any more worthy of attention.

Jim, I apologize for any harshness of tone.  This is something I feel strongly about — accepting an anonymous report as true and then reaching damning conclusions from it — but I mean no personal disrespect to you and recognize your considerable journalistic credentials.

Clark

I responded:

Clark,

Thank you for your quick response.  Tom’s “global influence”, as you put it, is certainly strong but it is for precisely that reason that he is so deeply distrusted by those of us for whom the injustices of the Israeli occupation is so overwhelming that we have no alternative but to suspect that in his dealings with this topic his strong feelings for Israel and against the Palestinians affect his reporting and his column writing.

You identify a reporter’s conversation with U.S. military officials to be the same as an American reporter’s conversations with Israeli officials. Does this not imply that Israel is to be seen as an extension of the Pentagon? I don’t think you want to say that.

I used the term “admission” in connection with Tom’s response to Rosenthal because he was being questioned as to what was behind the Ha’aretz story. Would “acknowledged” have been better? Perhaps so. What he was acknowledging was that he did, indeed, meet with sources in the IDF.

Tom’s record in this arena is so clearly pro-Israel that I find it puzzling that you are unable to concede that he would share more with the IDF officials than he might, for example, with Hamas, Fatah or Syrian officials? If we are to be accurate in our reporting, we must view all our sources with the same suspicious eye.

I used the word “insulting” in connection with Tom’s description of his talks with the IDF because I am insulted that you would think I am so naive and impressed with Tom’s “global influence”, that I would accept without question, his description of his dealings with the IDF.

I do not find your words harsh. You say yourself that you feel strongly about what you call “anonymous” sources. I use harsh language when Israel is allowed by the American media–of which the Times is the queen–to misuse language that suits the Israeli narrative while either distorting or ignoring the Palestinian narrative. Do you know how long it took to get Nakba into the Times? You have been the Public Editor long enough to know how angry it makes those of us who grieve over the injustices of the Occupation to keep reading the Israeli perspective in the Times and other American media.

I continue to be offended that you use the words “anonymous” and “false” reports when referring to the Ha’aretz story. A reporter gives the names of five IDF officials and he reports that Tom talked to them. What more sourcing do you need? Ha’aretz is, after all, a respected Jerusalem newspaper. Does Tom Friedman have sources that will support his contention that he limited his comments to the IDF to his columns?

With your permission I will add this exchange to the posting. Jim

This prompted one final response from Clark, with which I will end the posting, giving him the final word.

Thanks, Jim. By all means, add it.

I don’t in any way think I am implying that Israel is an extension of the Pentagon. I am merely making the point that a reporter talks to officials of many government’s, including his own, and there is nothing untoward about the mere fact of talking with them. In fact, it is his job.

As for Haaretz, I do accept Tom Friedman’s word that he didn’t give a “lecture” to the IDF, and there is nothing in the published report that substantiates its assertion that he did. I therefore view the report with a great deal of skepticism.

I think we’ve pretty well exhausted this one, but I appreciate your interest and hearing from you — and your civility in asking for permission to use our exchanges. Not everyone does that. Best, Clark

Thus endeth, for the moment at least, a civil exchange with The New York Times on the IDF and Thomas Friedman.

The picture above is a copy of the July 19, 2009 issue of The New York Times.  It is from the Wikipedia website for The New York Times.

by James M. Wall

Thomas Friedman is the Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent and columnist for the New York Times. So what, in the name of all that is sacred in media land, are we to make of this news item that appeared August 12 in Ha’aretz:

Senior New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman gave a lecture last week to a number of members of the IDF General Staff. He spoke to them about his impressions of his recent visits to Arab countries.

Friedman visited Israel and the territories last week and published a two-part column on the situation in the territories after most IDF checkpoints were removed and Palestinian security forces moved in.

Friedman met personally with IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi during his visit, and spoke to the deputy chief of staff, the head of Military Intelligence, the head of the Home Front Command and the head of the planning branch.

Helene Cobban, a veteran of Middle East journalism, was furious. Cobban was a long time Middle East correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. In her blog, Just World News,  she wrote:

Someone tell me why anyone should consider this guy a “neutral observer” of matters Middle Eastern?

Someone tell me whether him behaving like this is quite okay by the New York Times— sort of par for the course for the way they expect their very handsomely [paid] columnists to behave?

Someone tell me why anyone in the rest of the Middle East would even agree to meet with this guy, given that he sees his role as being a snoop for the Israeli generals?

Richard Silverstein is a tad more sardonic on his blog, Tikun Olam:

Now here I thought Tom “Terrific” Friedman was the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for the N.Y. Times. Little did I know he’s carrying on a nice little consulting business on the side giving lectures to the IDF staff and passing on intelligence information to them he gleaned from visits to Arab states.

Silverstein also wonders when the Times’ ombundsman, Clark Hoyt, and Friedman’s editors,  will explain to his readers how this doesn’t violate the paper’s ethics rules.”

They won’t fuss at Friedman unless the objections expand beyond the passionate core of bloggers for whom Friedman is a constant irritant. Friedman’s perspective has never been a secret to the Times.  Why correct him now for sharing with the Occupiers information he gained from the Occupied and their Arab neighbors?

Friedman was 15 years old when he first went to Israel. It was a trip, he writes in his first book, that “changed my life”. Man, did it ever.

Philip Weiss went back to that first book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, which Friedman wrote while he was serving as the Times Middle East correspondent.  One revealing item from Weiss: As a  high school senior young Tom “was giving lectures to his Minnesota classmates on Israel’s righteous tactics in the (four-year-old) Six Day War.”

For Friedman, then and now, reality in the Middle East is based solely on what is good for Israel. Such a passion is understandable in a 15-year-old.  It is a disaster in a professional journalist.

I was not surprised to learn that Friedman felt right at home lecturing the Israeli Defense Forces general staff.  I have long had my suspicions.

On November 4, 2002,  the Christian Century magazine, published a column I wrote under the title, “Prison of Hope”. The column focused on the damage I believed Friedman’s pro-Israel journalism was doing in the region.

In 2002, it should have been obvious to anyone who actually ventured into Gaza and the West Bank and talked with those who suffered under the Occupation, that Friedman was tightly locked into Israel’s narrative. He thought he knew the Palestinian narrative. But he only knew the words.  He did not know the music.

It was clear to me that Friedman saw the sufferings of an entire Palestinian population the way Southern Whites once viewed racial segregation: We will be good to you “Negroes” so long as you accept that we are the masters in this land.

Here are excerpts from my 2002 Christian Century column:

On the ground in Jerusalem, one can see how much [New York Times] columnist Thomas Friedman overlooks. Friedman, the premier media commentator in the U.S. on foreign affairs, would have us believe that–as a liberal Jewish thinker–he doesn’t think Israel should hold on to occupied lands, and he will indeed say that settlements in occupied lands are a bad thing.

But in fact he is not against all settlements–only against the “ideological” settlements in isolated pockets of the West Bank and Gaza. For him, the Israeli settlements in Gilo, Har Homa and Ma’ale Adummim (all built on land confiscated from Palestinians) are not really settlements; they are Israeli neighborhoods that conveniently surround the city of Jerusalem.

Friedman’s perspective haunted me as I traveled recently in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, talked with Palestinians who live under occupation, and met with Jewish officials who are a party to that occupation.

I thought about Friedman’s influence as my colleagues and I drove through a settlement [Ma’ale Adummin] with its swimming pool, shopping mall (Ace Hardware and Burger King signs prominently displayed), green lawns and palm trees transplanted from Palestinian farms.

I often receive copies of Friedman columns from readers who praise him as an American Jewish writer who is a voice for peace.  I don’t think he is a positive voice in the debate. On the contrary, he symbolizes what is wrong with American liberal thinking on this topic. Friedman is a voice of liberal political and media leaders who are intimidated and controlled by the propaganda machine of the American Jewish lobby in Washington. . . .

Defenders of Friedman would argue that he is a columnist, entitled to his strong opinions.  Which is certainly true.  But the hypocrisy in Friedman’s approach is that he begs the reader to accept him as someone who is genuinely concerned for the Palestinian people. Unfortunately, too many people believe him.

Consider the two columns he wrote for the Times before he briefed the IDF general staff.

Under the paternalistic heading, “Free Marriage Counseling”, Friedman began with one of his tortured metaphors, positing Israel and the U.S. as a married couple having “one of their marital spats they have had over the years”. Friedman assures us he knows “both families”.

Friedman claims to know both spatters, but he has a special fondness for Israel. This produces a myopia that guarantees failure.

The U.S., he writes, “is working on a deal whereby Israel would agree to a real moratorium on settlement building, Palestinians would uproot terrorists and the Arab states would begin to normalize relations — with visas for Israelis, trade missions, media visits and landing rights for El Al. If the president can pull this off, it would be good for everyone.”

Good for everyone? Friedman likes President Obama’s idea of a construction halt. He views a construction halt as a noble gesture. He fails to see that a construction halt is an insulting band aid over Israel’s real construction sins, settlements that have become cities of 40,000 people.

Israel, in Friedman’s view, longs for normal relations with Arabs, complete with “visas for Israelis, trade missions, media visits and landing rights for El Al.” Landing rights for El Al in Beirut and Damascus? Landing rights for El Al before refugee return, destruction of the Wall, and the end of home demolitions and stifling checkpoints.

Landing rights for El Al before family reunions for Palestinians? Landing rights for El Al before food and medicine is allowed to flow easily into Gaza? Visas for Israelis to travel to Beirut before visas for Palestinians to travel between Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Ramallah and Jenin?

Friedman wants to be taken seriously as an economic analyst. In a second column written before he briefed the IFD generals, Friedman tells his readers about a new Arab Human Development report, which worries about the lack of security in Arab states:

. . .[The report was] triggered by a desire to find out why the obstacles to human development in the Arab world have “proved so stubborn.” What the roughly 100 Arab authors of the 2009 study concluded was that too many Arab citizens today lack “human security — the kind of material and moral foundation that secures lives, livelihoods and an acceptable quality of life for the majority.” A sense of personal security — economic, political and social — “is a prerequisite for human development, and its widespread absence in Arab countries has held back their progress.”

Which army has deprived the Palestinian Arabs of their “sense of personal security” and “held back their progress”?  Could it be the army run by the same generals Friedman briefed after his talks with Arab leaders?

It is the IDF general staff, now fully briefed by Friedman, that is maintaining what the Times‘ current Middle East correspondent Ethan Bronner described recently as a “tight embargo” of Gaza.  Is the embargo designed to give Palestinians a “sense of personal security”? Hardly. According to Bronner, the embargo has two purposes:

Israel continues a tight embargo on goods entering Gaza, partly as pressure to get back a kidnapped soldier held there for three years and partly to increase the gap in living standards with the West Bank. The idea is that once the Fatah-run West Bank is secure and better off and Gaza remains stagnated and mired in poverty, Palestinians in both places will support Fatah and its negotiated approach.

Hear that, Thomas Friedman? Gaza is under a tight embargo run by your IDF friends for two reasons:

To force Hamas to release an Israeli prisoner and, to force the entire civilian population of Gaza to suffer until their government (Hamas) is shown to be inferior to the Fatah government of the West Bank.

Friedman chooses to forget that Hamas won the legislative election and its army defeated the Israeli-U.S. backed Fatah army. The next step? Lock the civilian population inside prison walls and apply pressure until Israel, like a cruel parent, gets what it wants.

Friedman must believe that the parent has an obligation to beat a child until he or she yields to parental orders. In a televised interview with Charlie Rose, Friedman told Rose the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq was a good thing.

This is the same Friedman who agrees with his Israeli friends that pushing for a “normalcy” for Israelis, is a good thing for the Middle East. A “normalcy” that is, that includes landing rights for El Al in all the Arab capitals.

Has it has come to this: Landing rights for El Al in exchange for our everlasting souls?

Photo above of Thomas Friedman is from Wikipedia.

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FRIDAY UPDATE:

The ceremony proceeded at the White House Wednesday without any interference.  Mary Robinson was one of 16 recipients of the 2009 Presidential Medal of Honor. The effort to “Freeman” Robinson, failed.  Read here what President Obama said about Robinson.

Wednesday Update:

Mary Robinson is scheduled to receive the Presidential Medal of Honor in Washington today. So far, there is no indication that the campaign to “Freeman” (see below) the Irish-born peace activist will have any impact on the ceremony.  Watch to see how the event is covered by Main Stream Media. Thus far, MSNBC’s lineup of liberal news stars has ignored the “Freeman” attacks on Robinson.

One alert reader of this blog (see below) points out that “Freeman” attacks are not confined to the U.S. The Jerusalem Post reports that strong criticism has been been raised by German Jewish organizations against German President Horst Köhler, who presented the Federal Cross of Merit, first class – the country’s most prestigious award, to noted Israeli human rights attorney Felicia Langer. A long time critic of Israel’s harsh treatment of Palestinians, Langer, 79,  moved to Germany in 1990.

Before her retirement, Langer devoted her career to defending Palestinians she believed to be wrongly accused by Israeli occupation authorities. She often compared Israel’s occupation to the white apartheid rule in South Africa. Ms. Langer received her award on August 6.

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by James M. Wall

During a “private” Tel Aviv conversation, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu was reported to have denounced Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod as “self-hating Jews”. Israeli officials immediately denied that the prime minister threw that ugly epithet at the two officials.

Whether Bibi used the term or not is not the issue. What is important is that someone in Israel’s ruling circles wanted the “self-hating Jew” term out there. The term fits into the campaign to undercut Barack Obama’s credentials as a friend of Israel.

The strategy is obvious. Hard right Israeli Zionists, and their American neocon Zionist colleagues (HRZs, for short), spend considerable energy intimidating western civilization into believing any negative criticism of Israeli policies is, in the case of non Jews, a sign of latent or overt anti-semitism,  or in the case of Jews, a sure sign that the guilty party is a “self hating Jew”.

With even the slightest hint that an anti-semite or self-hating Jew has been sighted, the culprit must be revealed and punished. The higher profile of the offending culprit, the more vicious the attacks.

The latest sighting involves two high-ranking White House officials, Emanuel and Axelrod, neither of whom are even remotely “self-hating Jews”. The ludicrous charge against two men I have known for more than three decades, was thrown at them because they are close to Obama. The Jewish online Forward has the sordid details on how the attacks unfolded.  

Five months ago, in Febuary, just weeks after Obama’s inauguration,  the radar screen set up by the HRZs, detected a potential threat to Israel’s security when Charles Freeman was chosen to serve as Obama’s Director of the National Intelligence Council, the high-level interagency group that prepares evaluations for the president and other senior officials.

Before the Main Stream Media (MSM)  bothered to notice, Freeman, an experienced foreign policy expert with an impeccable record was hit with a firestorm of deceptive, fraudulent and vicious attacks on his record of public service.

After Freeman withdrew his nomination he was strongly defended by Washington Post columnist David Broder, who wrote that Freeman’s withdrawal was “the country’s loss”.

I wrote a series of postings on Freeman’s ordeal at the time, two of which are available here and here. A longer version of those postings is available here.

Which brings us to Mary Robinson, the most recent target of the HRZ zeal that eliminated Freeman from the Obama team.

On July 30, President Obama named Mary Robinson as one of 16 recipients of America’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The awards are scheduled to be presented at a White House ceremony Wednesday night, August 12.

Mary Robinson, is one of the Elders, the group of world leaders initially formed by South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. A former president of Ireland and a former UN human rights official, Robinson now lives in New York City, where she is currently the President of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative.

Her full resume is available on the Elders page. The Realizing Rights web site sums up her current assignments:

Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders, Vice President of the Club of Madrid, honorary President of Oxfam International, Member of the Vaccine Fund Board of Directors and member of the Leadership Council the UN Global Coalition on Women and AIDS. She is a Professor of Practice at Columbia University and member of the Advisory Board of the Earth Institute, and Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria.

Bear in mind that Robinson is being honored with the Presidential Medal. She is not being nominated to hold a position in the Obama Administration.  It would be inconceivable for the White House to withdraw Robinson’s name from the list of Medal of Freedom winners. But this has not stopped the HRZ attacks.

The HRZs are not likely to pull a Freeman on Mary Robinson, but they are determined to smear her and her supporters. Time is short, but already they have secured some friendly U.S. media attention for their smear attacks. The Chicago Tribune, for example, marching, as usual, to the beat of AIPAC’s spin, runs a story which begins:

Jewish congressional members and lobbying groups are protesting President Obama’s decision to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former Irish leader Mary Robinson, who they say has a long record of harshly criticizing Israel.

The award pronouncement prompted the first criticism of Obama by the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a group he courted during last year’s campaign. Jewish groups in the U.S. have been largely supportive of the president. But the Robinson award is the latest in a series of recent disagreements with Obama, and some Jewish leaders are growing skeptical of his commitment to Israel.

The attack machine used against Charles Freeman was not the same as the one now pursuing Mary Robinson. AIPAC pretended to stay out of the Freeman affair. But now the “all powerful” lobby group smears Robinson for her role as the UN Human Rights Commission chair and her “criticism” of Israel’s actions against Palestinians.

It is hard to escape the feeling that AIPAC  hauled out some of its congressional minions just to darken Robinson’s big day.  What AIPAC really did, however, was reveal the decline of fire power in its paranoia arsenal by attacking a woman with a distinguished record who fully deserves to be one of the honorees this Wednesday.

The White House announcement of the awards puts them into perspective:

The Medal of Freedom is awarded to individuals who make an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.

The awardees were chosen for their work as agents of change.  Among their many accomplishments in fields ranging from sports and art to science and medicine to politics and public policy, these men and women have changed the world for the better.  They have blazed trails and broken down barriers.  They have discovered new theories, launched new initiatives, and opened minds to new possibilities.

Joining Robinson among the honorees, presuming the AIPAC “protests” fail, are 15 other luminaries:

Harvey Milk, the San Francisco supervisor who led an early movement for gay rights in public life and was assassinated; the late Republican congressman Jack Kemp, a onetime pro football standout; ailing Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts; the Rev. Joseph Lowery, American civil rights activist; Desmond Tutu, the South African archbishop and Nobel laureate; tennis star Billie Jean King; first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court, retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor; actor Sidney Poitier,singer Chita Rivera; British cosmologist Stephen Hawking; Nancy Goodman Brinker, founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a breast cancer grass-roots organization; Dr. Pedro Jose Greer Jr., founder of an agency that provides medical care to more than 10,000 homeless patients a year in Miami; Joseph Medicine Crow, the last living Plains Indian war chief and author of major works in Native American history and culture; Dr. Janet Davison Rowley, an American human geneticist internationally renowned for her work on leukemia and lymphoma; and Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner who has provided loans to help millions of people fight poverty by starting businesses.

A sample of the blog attacks against Mary Robinson is ugly to behold, but instructive as to the level of discourse to which the HRZ has descended. Here is Ed Lasky, writing for The American Thinker, evoking Nazi Germany in his tirade:

President Barack Obama’s decision to bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Mary Robinson, who headed a United Nation Commission that condoned suicide bombing against Israelis and who also was in charge of the Durban Conference Against Racism that became an anti-Semitic hate-fest reminiscent of Nazi Germany (and that the United States and Israel boycotted, to Robinson’s consternation), has elicited some measure of controversy.

Michael Rubin weighs in on the American Enterprise Institute blog:

Robinson is a poor choice to receive the President (cq) Medal of Freedom. She may have dedicated her career to human rights, but she is also responsible for accelerating the politicization of that field and the growth of moral equivalency. She was a headline-seeker, rather than a sincere devotee of causes. Her stewardship of the Durban conference was atrocious and single-handedly blessed the resurgence of anti-Semitism. . .

Abraham Foxman, one of the HRZs best known generals, is quoted on Powerline, a conservative website which features U.S. and Israeli flags on its home page.

[Robinson] issued distorted and detrimental reports on the conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and blamed Israel for the outbreak of Palestinian violence – the Second Intifada. As the convener of the 2001 U.N. World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, she allowed the process to be hijacked to promote the delegitimizing of Israel and pronouncements of hateful anti-Jewish canards, such as “Zionism is racism.” She failed miserably in her leadership role, opting to join the anti-Israel forces rather than temper them. . .

There is more out there in the blogosphere, nasty and distorted cannon fodder to inspire the MSM, like the Chicago Tribune, to treat the Robinson award as “controversial”.

It is not controversial, except in the HRZ circle of influence that thrives on hate language, distortions, and character assassinations. Fortunately, that circle is growing smaller, which could explain why its methods are even more obnoxious and ugly.

On the up side, it is an encouraging sign that, as a Jewish news agency reports, several Israeli human rights organizations wrote to President Obama to endorse his decision to award Mary Robinson the Medal of Honor.

The final word on Mary Robinson and the HRZs must come, however, from Robinson.  After reading criticisms of her career, she talked to The Irish Times:

Former President Mary Robinson has described as “unjust and unwarranted” criticism from American pro-Israel groups of President Barack Obama’s award to her of the medal of freedom, the highest civilian award in the US.

Mrs Robinson, who will receive the award with 16 others at a White House ceremony next week, told The Irish Times that she was “hurt and dismayed” by accusations that she had shown a consistent bias against Israel and failed to prevent anti-Semitic declarations at an anti-racism summit in Durban in 2001.

“I have made it absolutely clear and I’ve been totally consistent on this, that human rights is not on the side of either the Israelis or the Palestinians – it’s on the side of both,” she said.

“If you’re a human rights person, you have to be fair, you have to be unbiased when you’re addressing situations of human rights violations. That’s the pledge of my life and that’s what I live by.”

The picture above of Mary Robinson is from the Realizing Rights web site; picture of David Axelrod is by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images