Right wing media watch dog group’s conference on “Israel’s Jewish Defamers.” “The CAMERA people are losing and they know it.”. So said Cecilie Sarasky of Muzzlewatch.
CAMERA is the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, which is an interesting title given that its focus appears to be all about criticizing news reports that are critical of Israel and redirecting them back into a Zionist propaganda frame of reference. This organization is all about stifling leaks in the censorship blanket concerning Israel that pervades the US media. The above conference was held a few days ago.
Cecile Surasky of Muzzlewatch filed this report on this group:
Philip Weiss and Tony Karon both chime in and Ben Harris at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency provides excellent coverage, while I offer my own personal observation below.
We told you about the CAMERA’s Israel’s Defamers conference.
They used to call Jewish critics of Israeli human rights violations self-haters. Now the new term is “Israel’s Defamers.” It works. It rhymes with self-haters. And it allows a notoriously right wing Jewish media watchdog group, CAMERA, to demonize and blacklist an entirely different group of Jews, those who speak the radical notion that Israel must treat Palestinians as full human beings if it ever, ever wants to see peace or security.
CAMERA chief gadfly and keynoter Andrea Levin will have plenty to talk about when she takes on the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, which provides often remarkable coverage of life under occupation. Recently, their chief Palestinian affairs writer Danny Rubinstein caused a big stir in the UK when he refused to back off from using the word “apartheid” to describe the situation in Israel and the territories.
Enemy number one? The respected Israeli paper Ha’aretz. Harris reports:
In her opening remarks, [CAMERA director Andrea] Levin insisted that it is not criticism that is at issue, but defamation, which, when coming from Jews, is afforded added potency. She singled out Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper, one of the country’s most respected news sources and — through its English-language edition and Web site — a chief source of media perspective on Israel abroad. Levin accused the paper of printing outright lies and failing to issue corrections, even when the mistakes are pointed out.
David Landau, Ha’aretz’s editor-in-chief, refused — “as a matter of policy and principle” — to respond to the substance of Levin’s criticisms because they came from CAMERA, an organization that he dismissed as “Mcarthyite.”
“I advise your readers to relate to CAMERA’s tendentious statements and comments with the same measure of skepticism,” Landau said, “and to read Ha’aretz.com and draw their own conclusions as to the veracity of our reporting and the contribution of our op-ed columns to honest and caring debate within Israel and the Jewish world.”
Weiss observed:
The most important statement Levin made was that she gets the brushoff from Amos Schocken, the Haaretz publisher, but with the American media, “there is an unwritten contract between them and us.” (Verbatim transcript to come later, when I have a little time…) An unwritten contract: to be fair to Israel, to print CAMERA members’ letters, to pick up the phone.
Isn’t that amazing and scandalous? Levin is explaining why there is a free debate in Israel and not here. Because of the lobby and its “unwritten contract.” Because U.S. support is crucial to Israel’s existence. And so Americans, who supposedly so love the Middle East democracy that they support it out of the goodness of their hearts, must not read the news from Israel.
Enemy number 2? Rabbi Michael Lerner. Harris continues:
The real heat at the conference came later, with a tour de force from celebrated author Cynthia Ozick, whose presentation, “Reflections on Apostasy,” vilified Jews who appear to identify with the enemies of the Jewish people. Ozick reserved particular vitriol for Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the left-wing journal Tikkun and a frequent critic of Israel.
After ridiculing him as a “garrulous mime,” questioning the validity of his rabbinical ordination, and slapping him with a flurry of unflattering adjectives — chaotic, disorganized, self-contradictory, puerile, and unbearably long-winded, to name but a few — Ozick accused the yarmulke-wearing rabbi of providing Jewish sanction to some of Israel’s most implacable foes.
My impression after a few years of blogging for Palestine is that liberal Jewish human rights activists are leading the way in attempting to resolve this modern day crisis of values. There is quite a difference between right wing and left wing views of Israel’s behavior toward the Palestinians. Perhaps Uri Avnery summed it up best by contrasting James Wolfensohn, the humanitarian and ex-US envoy to Israel, and Paul Wolfowicz, the Neocon planner of the Iraq invasion, in their work in the Middle East. One is a follower of Judaic principles, the other, an ethnocentric Zionist who values the rights of one group over another.
