Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

As earlier with Washington Post [1], America’s other major liberal publication, the New York Times — often called the “world’s most important newspaper” — gets Ethan Bronner, a staunch Zionist, to review Jimmy Carter’s new book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. The result is predictable.

Ethan Bronner, NYT‘s resident Middle-East expert, is known less for his knowledge of the region’s history, politics or people than the ideological zeal with which he defends Israel against all criticism. He gave a rave review to Alan Dershowitz’s famous hoax, The Case for Isarel — the book plagiarized from, of all places, Joan Peters’s discredited forgergy, From Time Immemorial and falsified quotes from famous Israeli historians, such as Benny Morris — whereas Robert Fisk’s magisterial The Great War for Civilization came in for particularly harsh critique, for “railing against Israel and the United States”. Bronner heaps generous praise on Alan Dershowitz, a “liberal” [Dershowitz advocates legalizing torture and randomly blowing up Palestinian homes in response to Palestinian attacks], for reminding readers that contrary to the accounts of the New Historians,  “the history of the Jewish state is an admirable one”. Dershowitz’s book is devoted to “tearing down the position” of “extreme” accusers, such as Noam Chomsky, and is “especially effective” in exposing their “hypocrisy”. The encomiums end with an exhortation for “those seeking to rebut the most scurrilous charges against Israel” to pick up Dershowitz’s book.

Robert Fisk, on the other hand, failed to benefit from Bronner’s magnanimity. Bronner took particularly strong exception to Fisk’s criticism of American style of journalism; by suggesting that his colleagues are “cowering and dishonest”, Fisk has become a “a caricature of himself”. Fisk is “most passionate and least informed about Israel” according to the man who had earlier recommended books that claimed Palestinians didn’t exist. Small wonder then that Bronner was described by the extreme-right Zionist media watch-dog group, CAMERA, as “one of the most fair and informed foreign reporters ever to cover Israel”.

Fisk is also taken to task for challenging the “Barak’s-generous-offer” myth, and describing Israel’s assault on the Occupied territories as a “Colonial War”. Bronner then proceeds to deliver the final coup-de-grâce: if you didn’t think Fisk was bad enough “Osama bin Laden urged Americans last year to listen to his interviews with Fisk because…Fisk was ‘neutral’.”

ISM member and media analyst Patrick O’Connor writes of Bronner:

Bronner has written 18 articles on Israel and Palestine for the Times since July 30, 2000. In them he quoted 1226 words from Israelis, and just 145 words from Palestinians.[5]For example, in the Week in Review on July 30, 2000, after the failure of Camp David, and two months before the outbreak of the 2nd Palestinian intifada which has continued for the last six and half years, Bronner counseled that “no explosion… occurred, nor is chaos expected any time soon.” The peace process’ “positive direction in the long term is clear.”[6]  Bronner quoted 228 words from Israelis and 67 words from a Palestinian in that less than prescient analysis…

In 2003, Bronner wrote a glowing review of The Case for Israel by pro-Israel hatchetman Alan Dershowitz.[8]Assessing Dershowitz’s book, alongside a book by Yaacov Lozowick, Bronner called them “intelligent polemics.” He offered not a single criticism of Dershowitz, saying his book made many “well-argued points,” and Dershowitz “knows how to construct an argument.” He described Dershowitz as a “liberal” “on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” In contrast, Professor Norman Finkelstein devoted an entire book, Beyond Chutzpah, to documenting the errors, fabrications and outright plagiarism in The Case for Israel. “Liberal” Dershowitz defends torture, and suggested Israel destroy entire Palestinian villages in retaliation for suicide bombings.

It’s no surprise then that the news reporting Bronner oversees leans heavily on the Israeli narrative. Searches with Lexis-Nexis Academic identify 935 articles published between December 1, 2004 and November 30, 2006 by the Times correspondents based in Israel/Palestine, Bronner’s area of oversight.[9]Of those, 341 articles (37%) mentioned the word terrorism, 259 (28%) mentioned terrorist, 183 mentioned suicide bombing (20%), and 359 (38%) mentioned Palestinian attack(s).[10]In contrast, only 156 of the 935 articles (17%) included the dominant Palestinian experience of occupation, and 115 articles (12%) mentioned the word occupied.  This overwhelming focus on terrorism, Palestinian attacks and suicide bombings occurred during a two-year period when Israel tightened its siege on Palestinians, sinking Palestinians further into poverty, and Israelis killed 903 Palestinians, approximately half civilians, while Palestinians killed 81 Israelis, 60 of whom were civilians, according to the Israeli human right organization B’Tselem.[11]Palestinians committed eight suicide attacks that resulted in 34 of the 81 Israeli fatalities.[12]

Israeli abuses of Palestinian rights are even harder to find than Israeli occupation in New York Times news reports. Over two years, the Times used the word illegal (as defined by international law or Israeli law) in just 55 articles to describe Israeli offenses against Palestinians[13](5.9%).  International law relating to Israel/Palestine was mentioned in only 14[14]of 935 articles (1.5%),[15]the Geneva Conventions in one article (0.1%),[16]collective punishment in 12 articles (1.3%), right of return for Palestinian refugees in 14 articles (1.5%), discrimination against Palestinians in four articles[17](0.4%), and apartheid in three articles (0.4%). Though settlement(s) were mentioned in 318 articles (34%), as noted above, they were infrequently described as “illegal.” Settlement expansion and settlement growth appeared in just six articles each[18](0.6%). Even Palestinian poverty and unemployment were mentioned in only 13 and 18 articles respectively.[19]

In short, the entire Palestinian experience is marginalized in New York Times news reports from Israel/Palestine. The words and concepts that Palestinians continually invoke to describe their lives, including apartheid, are almost never found in the Times.

Bronner now turns his attention to Jimmy Carter who is faulted for his “distortion” in presenting a “narrative that is unsympathetic to Israel” since he calls the 29-foot-high wall … a wall! [a designation used by the International Court of Justice] and identifying its real purpose: “acquisition of land”. Although he admits the wall “does indeed take land from the Palestinians”, it is, nevertheless, a “misrepresentation”. The fabled Gaza Withdrawal, which has left 1.3 million Palestinians encircled and starved, gets the obligatory mention, with the obvious implication that anyone not acknowledging the Jewish State’s magnanimity in this regard is clearly a “Rip van Winke” with “an awfully narrow perspective”. But Bronner is magnanimous; unlike the ADL, he absolves Carter of the charge of “anti-Semitism”.

Chiding the “narrowness” of Carter’s view, Bronner points to Carter’s religious focus evident in the anecdote that sets up the first chapter, where Carter expressed his impressions to Golda Meir about the secular nature of her government. As the Jewish State has often used biblical texts to justify its existence, it is odd that Bronner should take issue with someone expressing surprise at the excessively secular character of its government.

Following is Patrick O’Connor’s thorough analysis of Bronner’s treatment of Carter’s book:

In his review, Bronner constructs a deceptive sense of balance by rejecting both sides’ more controversial positions. He writes that Carter’s use of “apartheid with its false echo of the racist policies of the old South Africa” constitutes “overstatement” that “hardly adds up to anti-Semitism.”…

Yet Bronner still minimizes Palestinians’ “endless humiliations” by devoting just two sentences to them…Bronner avoids addressing Carter’s central argument, that Israel’s refusal to fully withdraw from the Occupied Territories is the main obstacle to a negotiated settlement.

Palestinians would be justifiably outraged to learn that their continued daily hardships are “yesterday’s story.” Mirroring elements of the arguments of Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, Bronner seems to see “today’s story” as radical Islam and terrorism…One can only imagine the hysterics that would have arisen at the Times had Carter not ignored the right of return of Palestinian refugees and Israel’s discrimination against its Palestinian citizens…

Jimmy Carter claims that Americans are poorly informed about Israel/Palestine in part because “the major newspapers and magazines” exercise “self-restraint” in their reporting. Therefore, anything other than denial of Carter’s thesis by the Times would constitute an admission of its own failure.

Despite a facade of balance and moderate positions, Ethan Bonner’s review of Jimmy Carter’s book represents yet another example of the mainstream US media’s willful blindness on Israel/Palestine. Bronner wields the Times’ power in a bid to restrict acceptable discourse on Israel/Palestine by hiding the Palestinian experience from the American public.

For more on the subject, Norman Finkelstein’s insights on Democracy Now are invaluable.

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[1] Washington Post had Carter’s book reviewed by former Israeli soldier Jeffrey Goldberg.