A man with guts

Long time readers of this blog will probably recall that I'm not much of a fan of NY Times' columnist Nicholas Kristof. In fact, I don't think I've even mentioned his name for over a year. But, you have to give credit where credit is due. The guy is either stupid (which I doubt) or he has incredible guts. Here's the beginning of his column in today's Times:

Democrats are railing at just about everything President Bush does, with one prominent exception: Mr. Bush’s crushing embrace of Israel.

There is no serious political debate among either Democrats or Republicans about our policy toward Israelis and Palestinians. And that silence harms America, Middle East peace prospects and Israel itself.

Within Israel, you hear vitriolic debates in politics and the news media about the use of force and the occupation of Palestinian territories. Yet no major American candidate is willing today to be half as critical of hard-line Israeli government policies as, say, Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper.

Three years ago, Israel’s minister of justice spoke publicly of photos of an elderly Palestinian woman beside the ruins of her home, after it had been destroyed by the Israeli army. He said that they reminded him of his own grandmother, who had been dispossessed by the Nazis. Can you imagine an American cabinet secretary ever saying such a thing?

One reason for the void is that American politicians have learned to muzzle themselves. In the run-up to the 2004 Democratic primaries, Howard Dean said he favored an “even-handed role” for the U.S. — and was blasted for being hostile to Israel. Likewise, Barack Obama has been scolded for daring to say: “Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people.” In contrast, Hillary Rodham Clinton has safely refused to show an inch of daylight between herself and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

A second reason may be that American politicians just don’t get it. King Abdullah of Jordan spoke to Congress this month and observed: “The wellspring of regional division, the source of resentment and frustration far beyond, is the denial of justice and peace in Palestine.” Though widely criticized, King Abdullah was exactly right: from Morocco to Yemen to Sudan, the Palestinian cause arouses ordinary people in coffee shops more than almost anything else.

Now, believe me, you don't get away with saying things like this in a paper as prominent and prestigious as the NY Times without being innundated with an organized campaign of criticism, inuendo, personal attacks, and even death threats. I'm sure the letter writing campaign is already afoot. There has probably already been a delegation of wealthy Jewish leaders to Sulzberger's office to complain and demand a retraction and an apology (and probably Kristof's head on a platter to boot). If they haven't reached him yet, it's because he's not in his office today.

Kristof will be labeled an anti-semite and anti-Jew and will probably be accused of every form of perversion know to man, from pedophilia to wife-beating. It's the model for "Swift-Boating."

Here's an example from as far back as 1982, as explained by Paul Findley in his book They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby (Lawrence Hill & Co., 1985):

During the summer of 1982, Minneapolis columnist Richard Broderick devoted several installments of his "Mediawatch" column - a weekly feature on media coverage - to exposing ... inequities in American media coverage of the Israeli invasion (of Lebanon). Among his findings:

Tapes purportedly of [Yasser] Arafat's 'bunker' and 'PLO military headquarters' being bombed aired over and over again while tape of civilian casualties wound up on the edit room floor....

As Israeli ground forces swept through Southern Lebanon, the American press continued to employ the euphemism 'incursion' to describe what was clearly an invasion.

In local newspaper coverage, Broderick found:

While Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were being killed by the thousands, the Minneapolis Star and Tribune ran a front-page photo of an Israeli mother mourning her dead son.

Later that same day, another photo showed a group of men bound and squatting in a barbed-wire enclosure guarded by Israeli soldiers. The caption described the scene as a group of 'suspected Palestinians' captured by Israeli forces. Simply being Palestinian, the caption implied, was sufficient cause to be rounded up.

... While such examples of bias are distubing, still more so are the consequences suffered by the journalist who publicized them. Soon after the "Mediawatch" columns on Israel ran in the Twin Cities Reader, movie distributors of Minneapolis - who collectively represent the largest single source of advertising for the paper - began telephoning editor Deb Hopp with threats of permanently removing their advertising as a result of the Broderick column. Hopp mollified them by agreeing to print, unedited, the thousand-word reply to the offending column. Contrary to usual policy, Broderick was not allowed to respond to this rebuttal.

... [Later] Senator Boschwitz, upset at seeing this information [reagrding a subsequent Broderick article on the influence of AIPAC] made public, castigated Hopp and Broderick in a lengthy telephone call. Three weeks later, Broderick was informed that his services would no longer be needed at the Twin Cities Reader.

This is fairly typical of what happens to reporters who stray too far from the line in America. In fact, it's among the less egregious. In one case, a reporter was forced to surrender his job, sell his home and move his family elsewhere in the face of threats of violence to his children.