I’ve just learned that following my talk on the Wesleyan campus some weeks ago, the Argus published a news report on my speech containing several errors and a number of somewhat defamatory letters to the editor. I will attempt to correct as many errors as space permits.
The Argus report (“Speaker claims American news media exhibits a pro-Israel bias,” Tom Beckwith, Oct. 31) contains an alleged direct quote from the trailer I showed for my upcoming documentary and another statement supposedly in it. This is perplexing, since neither of these is in the trailer. I urge readers to view the trailer for themselves, to see what it actually contained: www.ifamericansknew.org/videos.
The Argus states: “When responding to questions regarding how it would be possible for an entire nation’s news media to unanimously ignore the Palestinian perspective, she produced a PowerPoint slide quoting Joel Bleifuss, reporter for ‘In These Times.’ ‘The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history,’ Bleifuss was quoted as saying.”
This contains two puzzling mistakes. First, the purported question is incorrect. The questioner actually asked for further information on a point I had made that Israel was a significant factor in sending the US to war with Iraq. Second, the source for my quote was not “In These Times,” as the Argus states, but the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, April 4, 2003. This source is written in large letters at the top of the PowerPoint slide the Argus reporter claims to have seen.
The article I quoted from is by Israeli journalist Ari Shavit and can be read at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=280279&contrassID=2&subContrassID=14&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y Nowhere in my entire talk do I ever even mention “In These Times” or its writer. I hope Argus editors will investigate how reporter Tom Beckwith came up with this odd fabrication.
Beckwith reports that “much of the audience was skeptical,” but fails to report that much of the audience consisted of students from Kol Israel, a pro-Israel advocacy group. Beckwith then reports only negative comments about my talk, but seems to have missed the students who came up to me afterwards praising it.
A few letters to the editor question the statistics in my talk and on our website, www.ifamericansknew.org. I urge people to investigate these for themselves. Some complain that using statistics in discussing this issue is inappropriate. I strongly disagree. I believe that we need more evidence and fewer allegations. The fact that the press is reporting Israeli deaths at rates ranging up to 13 times greater (and in some categories even higher) than Palestinian deaths is extremely troubling. Because of this massive distortion and omission (documented, in addition to our own organization, by Seth Ackerman at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR] and by Stanford Journalism Professor John McManus), few people know that in the present uprising, 82 Palestinian children were killed before a single Israeli child was killed and before a single suicide bombing occurred. Very few people know that in 2004, 8 Israeli children and 179 Palestinian children were killed—in fact, many people believe the pattern to be the opposite. (One letter-writer complains that I use the word “children” for those up to seventeen years old. This is an odd objection, since this is the international definition of child, is standard usage, and since, in my talk and on our website, this age range is noted. Moreover, this term is used for both populations – for example, the first Israeli child killed by Palestinians, which I mention above, was sixteen years old. To learn more about these tragic deaths among both populations, most of them far below seventeen years old, go to www.rememberthesechildren.org .
Several critics challenge my history and allege that the 1948 war began with the “invasion of Arab armies” upon Israel’s declaration of nationhood on May 15th. While this is a widely disseminated myth, the fact is that the fighting had already begun, and Zionist forces had already occupied most of the Palestinian cities before a single Arab army had joined the conflict: Tiberias on April 19, 1948, Haifa on April 22, Jaffa on April 28, the Arab quarters in the New City of Jerusalem on April 30, Beisan on May 8, Safad on May 10 and Acre on May 14, 1948. The Israeli massacre of Palestinian villagers in Deir Yassin occurred on April 9. Moreover, once Arab armies finally entered the war on the side of the greatly outnumbered Palestinians (their combined numbers, still, however, smaller than the Israeli forces) their battles were fought on land that the UN had proposed be a Palestinian state. There was no “invasion.”
At least one writer claims I am “anti-Semitic,” basing this accusation on the claim that I conflate “Jew and Israeli.” Despite the fact that the Israeli government and many Jewish Israelis conflate the two (therefore making them anti-Semitic?), I do not.
Calling someone anti-Semitic is a despicable slur, and yet one that is commonly made against those who speak honestly about Israel-Palestine. (Jewish analysts are called “self-hating.”) It is an attempt to silence critics, and is being used so frequently and inappropriately that, sadly, people throughout the country are increasingly rolling their eyes at this epithet. It is extremely disturbing to see “Wolf” being cried far too often.
A correspondent writing that I “disrespected” her, complains about “the painful letter that [I] wrote to the entire Palestinian people from Americans in general.” Actually, the letter I read was the opposite – it was addressed to Americans and was from me. This is the entire point of the letter, and it is hard to understand how this complainant could misrepresent it so thoroughly. Moreover, while I am sorry that she felt that I was impolite to her and to her Israeli family (I had no idea that she had an Israeli family and did not refer to it); other students told me they felt I had answered her (and other members of Kol Israel) with patience and civility.
Despite the above errors and attacks (and the many other inaccuracies I am without time to address), I am glad to see the Israeli-Palestinian issue being reported and discussed in the Argus. This is an extremely important subject and it is essential that all Americans – not only those who grew up in pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian households – examine it thoroughly. Therefore, I would be pleased to return to the Wesleyan campus for a moderated debate on this issue. Sadly, however, I suspect that pro-Israel students and faculty on campus will attempt to veto such a free marketplace of ideas. I hope I am wrong.
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