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Hasbara - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia(written by Zionists)
Welcome to Hasbara - Israel Reaction Center(Zionist)
hasbara+propaganda
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A reader responds to, "A Case Against Cheney".
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Tricky Dicky Transfer
You can tell Richard Cohen is educated in hasbara techniques.
One is called "transfer", this is where you take prestige and authority from one concept and apply it to another.
In this case, Cohen knows that if he comes out guns blazing in opposition, he'll damage his credibility. Instead, he takes the idea of impeachment and transfers it to "unforgivable".
Another very telling sign, is how he saves the "transfer" for the very end of his propaganda, so it's the last thought the reader is left with, knowing that that is the one that counts, along with the beginning.
Again, in the beginning, Cohen sets us up, another tactic found in the hasbara handbook, where capturing the readers attention is most important. He does this by trying to minimize the alledged crimes of Cheney by comparing them to simple "lies". He reveals why he suggests this in the first paragraph by, "transferring" his argument to Clinton rhetoric in the second.
Cohen is pretty good, looks like we have more then one tricky dicky in the neocon house of Cheney.
In a similar fashion, two can play this game, because we have now transferred Richard's propaganda, to the tactics used by militant zionist propagandists.
The only difference, unlike Richard Cohen, I am being honest about the technique I'm using and telling you the truth.
Related
The Hasbara Playbook
Showing posts with label Washinton Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washinton Post. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Broder: Iraq War is Lost
After attacking Reid over war "is lost" comment, Broder "doubtful" Iraq victory is possible
Summary:
On the April 30 edition of XM Radio's The Bob Edwards Show, Washington Post columnist David Broder asserted that it was "really doubtful" President Bush would be able "to salvage something that would look like a victory in Iraq." Broder made this statement four days after he attacked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) for what he called Reid's "ineptitude," because of, as he wrote in his April 26 Post column, Reid's assertion that the Iraq war "is lost." As Media Matters for America noted, in that column, Broder pointed to Reid's "war is lost" remark to compare him to embattled Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and accuse him of engaging in "inept discussion[s] of the alternatives in Iraq" and of not being "a man who misses many opportunities to put his foot in his mouth." Further, after discussing Democratic strategist Paul Begala's recent column on The Huffington Post, in which he wrote that "Broder, of course, is a gasbag," host Bob Edwards noted, "[W]e're in the world of the blogs and this stuff spreads so fast." Broder responded: "I am not a fan of the blogs, and the blogs are not fans of mine."
As Media Matters has noted, in his April 26 column, Broder asserted that both Reid and Gonzales were "continuing embarrassment[s] thanks to" their "amateurish performance[s]," and he pointed to Gonzales' handling of the controversial dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys and Reid's "war is lost" statement as evidence. In that column, Broder also claimed that "a long list of senators of both parties" is "ready" for Reid's "ineptitude to end" but provided no evidence of any Democrat who holds that position.
But, during his interview with Edwards, Broder himself stated that it "is really doubtful" Bush's "effort to try to salvage something that would look like a victory in Iraq" is "achievable." Broder added that Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, "probably has until August or September to produce something that would be tangible. If he can do it, that would be wonderful, but I think the odds are against him."
Additionally, in response to Edwards' question as to "who's right" in Iraq -- Bush or the Democrats -- Broder noted: "I think public opinion in this country says the Democrats are right." But, in his April 26 column, Broder never mentioned that public opinion supports Reid's assessment that the war "is lost." Further, when Edwards pointed out that the entire Senate Democratic Caucus sent a letter to the editor to the Post "backing" Reid and asked Broder: "Did you get it wrong, or is the Democratic support weaker than they would have us believe?" Broder responded "no" and added with apparent sarcasm:
BRODER: I thought it was terribly moving that 50 Democratic senators, including one who's been hospitalized for months and has not made it to the Senate floor, spontaneously put their names on the letter to you and to The Washington Post, condemning me for what I had said about their leader, Harry Reid. I have never seen such a wonderfully orchestrated outburst in a long time. So, it was -- gotta be impressive testimony that they really want to keep him as their leader.
In dismissing the Democratic caucus' stated support of Reid, Broder again failed to provide any evidence to back up the claim he made in his column -- that there is a "long list of senators of both parties who are ready for these two [Reid and Gonzales] springtime exhibitions of ineptitude to end."
From the April 30 edition of XM Public Radio's The Bob Edwards Show:
EDWARDS: And what constituencies need to be pleased by these negotiations?
BRODER: Well, there are a whole variety of them. The Democrats have -- are being pushed by the anti-war wing of their party, which gets stronger, probably, every day. The president is -- still has the backing of most Republicans, who say that they support his effort to try to salvage something that would look like a victory in Iraq -- whether that's achievable is really doubtful.
EDWARDS: The president says timetables are defeatist. Democrats say that continuing the war just amplifies past mistakes at great cost. Who's right?
BRODER: Well, I think public opinion in this country says the Democrats are right. When Gen. Patraeus was here in Washington this past week, he was making the case that they are still something that is worthwhile doing in Iraq. And he has more troops still coming in the next two months to try to achieve something that would look like progress, at least in Baghdad and Anbar Province. He probably has until August or September to produce something that would be tangible. If he can do it, that would be wonderful, but I think the odds are against him.
EDWARDS: Tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of "Mission Accomplished," and there is grumbling that Iraq is not comparable to Vietnam because it might end up being more damaging. Think so?
[...]
EDWARDS: And you lit up our mailbox this past week with your criticism of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. You said he was a loose cannon who's risking continued Democratic support. The Democratic Caucus in the Senate signed a letter backing him. Did you get it wrong, or is the Democratic support weaker than they would have us believe?
BRODER: No, I thought it was terribly moving that 50 Democratic senators, including one who's been hospitalized for months and has not made it to the Senate floor, spontaneously put their names on the letter to you and to The Washington Post, condemning me for what I had said about their leader, Harry Reid. I have never seen such a wonderfully orchestrated outburst in a long time. So, it was -- gotta be impressive testimony that they really want to keep him as their leader.
EDWARDS: Democratic strategist Paul Begala called you a "gasbag."
BRODER: Well, he's got the credentials to do that. I -- Begala has been after me ever since --
EDWARDS: What are you saying? It takes a gasbag to know a gasbag?
BRODER: No, no, no, no, no. But he, ever since he worked in the Clinton White House, he's been on my case. And, I think I'm just going to have to learn to live with Paul Begala's criticism.
EDWARDS: Is this just another day in the life of a political columnist?
BRODER: Right, exactly.
EDWARDS: Well, it seems to me it's more difficult these days. I wonder if you think that's a good thing or a bad thing.
BRODER: You know, if you're doing political commentary, as I guess I'm doing these days for you and for the Post, you learn that you have to accept the idea that you're going to be a target for people who you criticize -- and that's fine. Begala is in an interesting position because, like a few others, he's been on both sides of the street.
He's been a political operative, and now he is quote, unquote "a commentator" -- and I think that's fine. If you accept that he has credentials to be a commentator after having carried the water for Democrats for many years, that's for -- it's a free country.
EDWARDS: But now we're in the world of the blogs and this stuff spreads so fast.
BRODER: I know, and I am not a fan of the blogs, and the blogs are not fans of mine, and we can live with that tension as well. What I like about the world today is that people can have an audience without having to be cleared by anybody, and it's a great thing for this country that people can express their views.
— J.M.
Posted to the web on Monday April 30, 2007 at 3:04 PM EST
Broder: Iraq War is Lost
After attacking Reid over war "is lost" comment, Broder "doubtful" Iraq victory is possible
Summary:
On the April 30 edition of XM Radio's The Bob Edwards Show, Washington Post columnist David Broder asserted that it was "really doubtful" President Bush would be able "to salvage something that would look like a victory in Iraq." Broder made this statement four days after he attacked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) for what he called Reid's "ineptitude," because of, as he wrote in his April 26 Post column, Reid's assertion that the Iraq war "is lost." As Media Matters for America noted, in that column, Broder pointed to Reid's "war is lost" remark to compare him to embattled Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and accuse him of engaging in "inept discussion[s] of the alternatives in Iraq" and of not being "a man who misses many opportunities to put his foot in his mouth." Further, after discussing Democratic strategist Paul Begala's recent column on The Huffington Post, in which he wrote that "Broder, of course, is a gasbag," host Bob Edwards noted, "[W]e're in the world of the blogs and this stuff spreads so fast." Broder responded: "I am not a fan of the blogs, and the blogs are not fans of mine."
As Media Matters has noted, in his April 26 column, Broder asserted that both Reid and Gonzales were "continuing embarrassment[s] thanks to" their "amateurish performance[s]," and he pointed to Gonzales' handling of the controversial dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys and Reid's "war is lost" statement as evidence. In that column, Broder also claimed that "a long list of senators of both parties" is "ready" for Reid's "ineptitude to end" but provided no evidence of any Democrat who holds that position.
But, during his interview with Edwards, Broder himself stated that it "is really doubtful" Bush's "effort to try to salvage something that would look like a victory in Iraq" is "achievable." Broder added that Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, "probably has until August or September to produce something that would be tangible. If he can do it, that would be wonderful, but I think the odds are against him."
Additionally, in response to Edwards' question as to "who's right" in Iraq -- Bush or the Democrats -- Broder noted: "I think public opinion in this country says the Democrats are right." But, in his April 26 column, Broder never mentioned that public opinion supports Reid's assessment that the war "is lost." Further, when Edwards pointed out that the entire Senate Democratic Caucus sent a letter to the editor to the Post "backing" Reid and asked Broder: "Did you get it wrong, or is the Democratic support weaker than they would have us believe?" Broder responded "no" and added with apparent sarcasm:
BRODER: I thought it was terribly moving that 50 Democratic senators, including one who's been hospitalized for months and has not made it to the Senate floor, spontaneously put their names on the letter to you and to The Washington Post, condemning me for what I had said about their leader, Harry Reid. I have never seen such a wonderfully orchestrated outburst in a long time. So, it was -- gotta be impressive testimony that they really want to keep him as their leader.
In dismissing the Democratic caucus' stated support of Reid, Broder again failed to provide any evidence to back up the claim he made in his column -- that there is a "long list of senators of both parties who are ready for these two [Reid and Gonzales] springtime exhibitions of ineptitude to end."
From the April 30 edition of XM Public Radio's The Bob Edwards Show:
EDWARDS: And what constituencies need to be pleased by these negotiations?
BRODER: Well, there are a whole variety of them. The Democrats have -- are being pushed by the anti-war wing of their party, which gets stronger, probably, every day. The president is -- still has the backing of most Republicans, who say that they support his effort to try to salvage something that would look like a victory in Iraq -- whether that's achievable is really doubtful.
EDWARDS: The president says timetables are defeatist. Democrats say that continuing the war just amplifies past mistakes at great cost. Who's right?
BRODER: Well, I think public opinion in this country says the Democrats are right. When Gen. Patraeus was here in Washington this past week, he was making the case that they are still something that is worthwhile doing in Iraq. And he has more troops still coming in the next two months to try to achieve something that would look like progress, at least in Baghdad and Anbar Province. He probably has until August or September to produce something that would be tangible. If he can do it, that would be wonderful, but I think the odds are against him.
EDWARDS: Tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of "Mission Accomplished," and there is grumbling that Iraq is not comparable to Vietnam because it might end up being more damaging. Think so?
[...]
EDWARDS: And you lit up our mailbox this past week with your criticism of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. You said he was a loose cannon who's risking continued Democratic support. The Democratic Caucus in the Senate signed a letter backing him. Did you get it wrong, or is the Democratic support weaker than they would have us believe?
BRODER: No, I thought it was terribly moving that 50 Democratic senators, including one who's been hospitalized for months and has not made it to the Senate floor, spontaneously put their names on the letter to you and to The Washington Post, condemning me for what I had said about their leader, Harry Reid. I have never seen such a wonderfully orchestrated outburst in a long time. So, it was -- gotta be impressive testimony that they really want to keep him as their leader.
EDWARDS: Democratic strategist Paul Begala called you a "gasbag."
BRODER: Well, he's got the credentials to do that. I -- Begala has been after me ever since --
EDWARDS: What are you saying? It takes a gasbag to know a gasbag?
BRODER: No, no, no, no, no. But he, ever since he worked in the Clinton White House, he's been on my case. And, I think I'm just going to have to learn to live with Paul Begala's criticism.
EDWARDS: Is this just another day in the life of a political columnist?
BRODER: Right, exactly.
EDWARDS: Well, it seems to me it's more difficult these days. I wonder if you think that's a good thing or a bad thing.
BRODER: You know, if you're doing political commentary, as I guess I'm doing these days for you and for the Post, you learn that you have to accept the idea that you're going to be a target for people who you criticize -- and that's fine. Begala is in an interesting position because, like a few others, he's been on both sides of the street.
He's been a political operative, and now he is quote, unquote "a commentator" -- and I think that's fine. If you accept that he has credentials to be a commentator after having carried the water for Democrats for many years, that's for -- it's a free country.
EDWARDS: But now we're in the world of the blogs and this stuff spreads so fast.
BRODER: I know, and I am not a fan of the blogs, and the blogs are not fans of mine, and we can live with that tension as well. What I like about the world today is that people can have an audience without having to be cleared by anybody, and it's a great thing for this country that people can express their views.
— J.M.
Posted to the web on Monday April 30, 2007 at 3:04 PM EST
Thursday, April 19, 2007
The Media in the Mud: Broder Gets Real
By David S. Broder
Thursday, April 19, 2007; A27
It pales in comparison to the carnage and loss of life this week at Virginia Tech. But last week the tattered reputation of journalism in this country saw severe damage. The role of the media in the phony Duke lacrosse rape story and the Don Imus firing left large parts of the so-called establishment press embarrassed and besmirched.
The Imus story involved the worse offense, for it was wholly gratuitous. CBS Radio and MSNBC fired the millionaire talk-show host only after criticism of his foul-mouthed assault on the Rutgers women's basketball team mounted and advertisers canceled their contracts. It showed no courage on the part of those organizations, which had put up with similar slurs for years and counted themselves lucky to have such a moneymaking act in their stable.
I had never heard Imus's broadcast, because I am a longtime fan of NPR's "Morning Edition," which is on at the same time. I was stunned to learn how many of the journalists I admire had been regular guests on the program. Many are now having a hard time explaining their association.
It turned out that many of them had heard Imus ridicule and insult women, gays, African Americans, Hispanics, Jews, Catholics and others. Some had been targets of his unfunny slurs and came back for more.
Their rationalizations are lame. Some said the "jokes" were just part of his exaggerated way of speaking, so they didn't take them seriously. Others said they found him a savvy, insightful interviewer, and they appreciated the time he gave them to express their thoughts. And some were honest enough to say that they valued his big audience, especially when they were promoting their books.
These are weak excuses for journalists' participation in this continuing offense to civility. Jokes are not jokes when they wound and humiliate. The claim that Imus's slanders were the price they had to pay in return for his providing a forum for their ideas doesn't wash. Big-name newspaper, magazine and TV journalists have no trouble finding places where they can voice their thoughts.
The simple lesson, which some stubbornly are not acknowledging, is that when professional journalists lend their credibility to entertainers or others whose standards are far lower than those of the news organizations for which those journalists work, they not only damage their credibility but also diminish the standards they are supposed to embody.
The Duke story -- the supposed gang-rape of a black woman by three white lacrosse players -- is more complex. The woman turned out to be unreliable, and the prosecutor persisted despite weaknesses in the case and even withheld evidence in order to bring charges. Now the charges have been dismissed, leaving the accused students to try to repair their reputations.
Rereading some of the coverage of the case is a painful journey into journalistic excess -- and one-sidedness. Early on, before charges had even been filed, Selena Roberts, a fine sportswriter at the New York Times, wrote that "players have been forced to give up their DNA, but to the dismay of investigators, none have come forward to reveal an eyewitness account." The reason, she said, is that "the stigma as a traitor -- and the threat of repercussion and isolation -- is more powerful than the instinct to do what's right, a pattern perpetuated on every level of sports, from prep to pro."
The real reason, it turns out, was that the rape story was concocted and the lacrosse players were telling the truth when they said no such crime occurred.
The Times was not alone. In The Post, reporter Lynne Duke wrote a story that began: "She was black, they were white, and race and sex were in the air. But whatever actually happened that March 13 night at Duke University -- both the reported rape and its surrounding details are hotly disputed -- it appears at least that the disturbing historic script of the sexual abuse of black women was playing out inside that lacrosse team house party."
It was playing out, too, in the pages of newsmagazines and in newspaper columns and editorials, all with the usual brief mention that no one had yet been convicted. But the claims of innocence that were made from the beginning were given little weight.
Now we know better. But how often do we have to relearn the lesson that leaks from prosecutors can be biased and unfair?
When will we start to think about the people who are hurt by our coverage? And when will we take our responsibilities seriously?
Saturday, January 20, 2007
President Carter accused of anti-Semitism
PMWATCH - January 20, 2007 -- The campaign to demonize, silence, and make an example of former President Jimmy Carter for daring to write a book that points out that Palestinians are living in a state worse than South African Apartheid, continues unabated.
Predictably enough, the attacks have now shifted from wild accusations that Mr. Carter is turning a blind eye to terrorism to insinuations that he is a latent anti-Semite, with the attacks clearly heading towards open accusations that President Carter is indeed anti-Semitic and an equal of David Duke.
The op-ed below, published today in the Washington Post, is the latest offering from this vicious campaign to destroy the reputation of a man who has for decades enjoyed the respect and admiration of many people across the spectrum of political opinion.
The writer casts President Carter as willfully ignoring Jewish suffering and minimizing the Holocaust. Evidence that the man has repeatedly demonstrated through his words and deeds that he deeply cares for the establishment of peace for both Jews and non-Jews in the Holy Land and that he is not anti-Semitic, is not only dismissed off-hand but used as evidence that along the way, something must have gone terribly wrong with the former president.
Sure, the writer mentions in passing, President Carter "signed the legislation creating the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum." But instead of taking that piece of evidence as reason to pause and reconsider the validity of her accusations, she flips reality over its head and uses that fact as more reason to be perplexed about Mr. Carter's intentions.
Such attacks will continue and will have their intended effect unless we mobilize, one letter to the editor at a time, to counter them.
Please take a few moments to read the op-ed below and to write a letter to the editor.
Letters must be 250 words and can be sent to:
letters@washpost.com
Please include your name, address and telephone number when you email your letter to the Washington Post.
For tips on writing letters, go to:
http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/tools/T_WritingLetters.asp
Please also feel free to share with us your letters or a summary of
your conversations with editors at letters@pmwatch.org
You can also call us at: (866) DIAL-PMW.
Palestine Media Watch
info@pmwatch.org
(866) DIAL-PMW
http://www.pmwatch.org/
URL
==============================================================
Jimmy Carter's Jewish Problem
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/19/AR2007011901541_pf.html
By Deborah Lipstadt
Saturday, January 20, 2007; A23
It is hard to criticize an icon. Jimmy Carter's humanitarian work has saved countless lives. Yet his life has also been shaped by the Bible, where the Hebrew prophets taught us to speak truth to power. So I write.
Carter's book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," while exceptionally sensitive to Palestinian suffering, ignores a legacy of mistreatment, expulsion and murder committed against Jews. It trivializes the murder of Israelis. Now, facing a storm of criticism, he has relied on anti-Semitic stereotypes in defense.
One cannot ignore the Holocaust's impact on Jewish identity and the history of the Middle East conflict. When an Ahmadinejad or Hamas threatens to destroy Israel, Jews have historical precedent to believe them. Jimmy Carter either does not understand this or considers it irrelevant.
His book, which dwells on the Palestinian refugee experience, makes two fleeting references to the Holocaust. The book contains a detailed chronology of major developments necessary for the reader to understand the current situation in the Middle East. Remarkably, there is nothing listed between 1939 and 1947. Nitpickers might say that the Holocaust did not happen in the region. However, this event sealed in the minds of almost all the world's people then the need for the Jewish people to have a Jewish state in their ancestral homeland. Carter never discusses the Jewish refugees who were prevented from entering Palestine before and after the war. One of Israel's first acts upon declaring statehood was to send ships to take those people "home."
A guiding principle of Israel is that never again will persecuted Jews be left with no place to go. Israel's ideal of Jewish refuge is enshrined in laws that grant immediate citizenship to any Jew who requests it. A Jew, for purposes of this law, is anyone who, had that person lived in Nazi Germany, would have been stripped of citizenship by the Nuremberg Laws.
Compare Carter's approach with that of Rashid Khalidi, head of Columbia University's Middle East Institute and a professor of Arab studies there. His recent book "The Iron Cage" contains more than a dozen references to the seminal place the Holocaust and anti-Semitism hold in the Israeli worldview. This from a Palestinian who does not cast himself as an evenhanded negotiator.
In contrast, by almost ignoring the Holocaust, Carter gives inadvertent comfort to those who deny its importance or even its historical reality, in part because it helps them deny Israel's right to exist. This from the president who signed the legislation creating the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Carter's minimization of the Holocaust is compounded by his recent behavior. On MSNBC in December, he described conditions for Palestinians as "one of the worst examples of human rights deprivation" in the world. When the interviewer asked "Worse than Rwanda?" Carter said that he did not want to discuss the "ancient history" of Rwanda.
To give Carter the benefit of the doubt, let's say that he meant an ongoing crisis. Is the Palestinians' situation equivalent to Darfur, which our own government has branded genocide?
Carter has repeatedly fallen back -- possibly unconsciously -- on traditional anti-Semitic canards. In the Los Angeles Times last month, he declared it"politically suicide" for a politician to advocate a "balanced position" on the crisis. On Al-Jazeera TV, he dismissed the critique of his book by declaring that "most of the condemnations of my book came from Jewish-American organizations." Jeffrey Goldberg, who lambasted the book in The Post last month, writes for the New Yorker. Ethan Bronner, who in the New York Times called the book "a distortion," is the Times' deputy foreign editor. Slate's Michael Kinsley declared it "moronic." Dennis Ross, who was chief negotiator on the conflict in the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, described the book as a rewriting and misrepresentation of history. Alan Dershowitz teaches at Harvard and Ken Stein at Emory. Both have criticized the book. Because of the book's inaccuracies and imbalance and Carter's subsequent behavior, 14 members of the Carter Center's Board of Councilors have resigned -- many in anguish because they so respect Carter's other work. All are Jews. Does that invalidate their criticism -- and mine -- or render us representatives of Jewish organizations?
On CNN, Carter bemoaned the "tremendous intimidation in our country that has silenced" the media. Carter has appeared on C-SPAN, "Larry King Live" and "Meet the Press," among many shows. When a caller to C-SPAN accused Carter of anti-Semitism, the host cut him off. Who's being silenced?
Perhaps unused to being criticized, Carter reflexively fell back on this kind of innuendo about Jewish control of the media and government. Even if unconscious, such stereotyping from a man of his stature is noteworthy. When David Duke spouts it, I yawn. When Jimmy Carter does, I shudder.
Others can enumerate the many factual errors in this book. A man who has done much good and who wants to bring peace has not only failed to move the process forward but has given refuge to scoundrels.
The writer teaches at Emory University. Her latest book is "History on Trial: My Day in Court With David Irving."
---
View all comments that have been posted about this article.
"you may have proven Carter's point"
Predictably enough, the attacks have now shifted from wild accusations that Mr. Carter is turning a blind eye to terrorism to insinuations that he is a latent anti-Semite, with the attacks clearly heading towards open accusations that President Carter is indeed anti-Semitic and an equal of David Duke.
The op-ed below, published today in the Washington Post, is the latest offering from this vicious campaign to destroy the reputation of a man who has for decades enjoyed the respect and admiration of many people across the spectrum of political opinion.
The writer casts President Carter as willfully ignoring Jewish suffering and minimizing the Holocaust. Evidence that the man has repeatedly demonstrated through his words and deeds that he deeply cares for the establishment of peace for both Jews and non-Jews in the Holy Land and that he is not anti-Semitic, is not only dismissed off-hand but used as evidence that along the way, something must have gone terribly wrong with the former president.
Sure, the writer mentions in passing, President Carter "signed the legislation creating the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum." But instead of taking that piece of evidence as reason to pause and reconsider the validity of her accusations, she flips reality over its head and uses that fact as more reason to be perplexed about Mr. Carter's intentions.
Such attacks will continue and will have their intended effect unless we mobilize, one letter to the editor at a time, to counter them.
Please take a few moments to read the op-ed below and to write a letter to the editor.
Letters must be 250 words and can be sent to:
letters@washpost.com
Please include your name, address and telephone number when you email your letter to the Washington Post.
For tips on writing letters, go to:
http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/tools/T_WritingLetters.asp
Please also feel free to share with us your letters or a summary of
your conversations with editors at letters@pmwatch.org
You can also call us at: (866) DIAL-PMW.
Palestine Media Watch
info@pmwatch.org
(866) DIAL-PMW
http://www.pmwatch.org/
URL
==============================================================
Jimmy Carter's Jewish Problem
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/19/AR2007011901541_pf.html
By Deborah Lipstadt
Saturday, January 20, 2007; A23
It is hard to criticize an icon. Jimmy Carter's humanitarian work has saved countless lives. Yet his life has also been shaped by the Bible, where the Hebrew prophets taught us to speak truth to power. So I write.
Carter's book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," while exceptionally sensitive to Palestinian suffering, ignores a legacy of mistreatment, expulsion and murder committed against Jews. It trivializes the murder of Israelis. Now, facing a storm of criticism, he has relied on anti-Semitic stereotypes in defense.
One cannot ignore the Holocaust's impact on Jewish identity and the history of the Middle East conflict. When an Ahmadinejad or Hamas threatens to destroy Israel, Jews have historical precedent to believe them. Jimmy Carter either does not understand this or considers it irrelevant.
His book, which dwells on the Palestinian refugee experience, makes two fleeting references to the Holocaust. The book contains a detailed chronology of major developments necessary for the reader to understand the current situation in the Middle East. Remarkably, there is nothing listed between 1939 and 1947. Nitpickers might say that the Holocaust did not happen in the region. However, this event sealed in the minds of almost all the world's people then the need for the Jewish people to have a Jewish state in their ancestral homeland. Carter never discusses the Jewish refugees who were prevented from entering Palestine before and after the war. One of Israel's first acts upon declaring statehood was to send ships to take those people "home."
A guiding principle of Israel is that never again will persecuted Jews be left with no place to go. Israel's ideal of Jewish refuge is enshrined in laws that grant immediate citizenship to any Jew who requests it. A Jew, for purposes of this law, is anyone who, had that person lived in Nazi Germany, would have been stripped of citizenship by the Nuremberg Laws.
Compare Carter's approach with that of Rashid Khalidi, head of Columbia University's Middle East Institute and a professor of Arab studies there. His recent book "The Iron Cage" contains more than a dozen references to the seminal place the Holocaust and anti-Semitism hold in the Israeli worldview. This from a Palestinian who does not cast himself as an evenhanded negotiator.
In contrast, by almost ignoring the Holocaust, Carter gives inadvertent comfort to those who deny its importance or even its historical reality, in part because it helps them deny Israel's right to exist. This from the president who signed the legislation creating the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Carter's minimization of the Holocaust is compounded by his recent behavior. On MSNBC in December, he described conditions for Palestinians as "one of the worst examples of human rights deprivation" in the world. When the interviewer asked "Worse than Rwanda?" Carter said that he did not want to discuss the "ancient history" of Rwanda.
To give Carter the benefit of the doubt, let's say that he meant an ongoing crisis. Is the Palestinians' situation equivalent to Darfur, which our own government has branded genocide?
Carter has repeatedly fallen back -- possibly unconsciously -- on traditional anti-Semitic canards. In the Los Angeles Times last month, he declared it"politically suicide" for a politician to advocate a "balanced position" on the crisis. On Al-Jazeera TV, he dismissed the critique of his book by declaring that "most of the condemnations of my book came from Jewish-American organizations." Jeffrey Goldberg, who lambasted the book in The Post last month, writes for the New Yorker. Ethan Bronner, who in the New York Times called the book "a distortion," is the Times' deputy foreign editor. Slate's Michael Kinsley declared it "moronic." Dennis Ross, who was chief negotiator on the conflict in the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, described the book as a rewriting and misrepresentation of history. Alan Dershowitz teaches at Harvard and Ken Stein at Emory. Both have criticized the book. Because of the book's inaccuracies and imbalance and Carter's subsequent behavior, 14 members of the Carter Center's Board of Councilors have resigned -- many in anguish because they so respect Carter's other work. All are Jews. Does that invalidate their criticism -- and mine -- or render us representatives of Jewish organizations?
On CNN, Carter bemoaned the "tremendous intimidation in our country that has silenced" the media. Carter has appeared on C-SPAN, "Larry King Live" and "Meet the Press," among many shows. When a caller to C-SPAN accused Carter of anti-Semitism, the host cut him off. Who's being silenced?
Perhaps unused to being criticized, Carter reflexively fell back on this kind of innuendo about Jewish control of the media and government. Even if unconscious, such stereotyping from a man of his stature is noteworthy. When David Duke spouts it, I yawn. When Jimmy Carter does, I shudder.
Others can enumerate the many factual errors in this book. A man who has done much good and who wants to bring peace has not only failed to move the process forward but has given refuge to scoundrels.
The writer teaches at Emory University. Her latest book is "History on Trial: My Day in Court With David Irving."
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"you may have proven Carter's point"
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Washinton Post praises Pinochet: Torture and dictatorship work!
A Dictator's Double Standard
Augusto Pinochet tortured and murdered. His legacy is Latin America's most successful country.
Augusto Pinochet tortured and murdered. His legacy is Latin America's most successful country.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006; A26
AUGUSTO PINOCHET, who died Sunday at the age of 91, has been vilified for three decades in and outside of Chile, the South American country he ruled for 17 years. For some he was the epitome of an evil dictator. That was partly because he helped to overthrow, with U.S. support, an elected president considered saintly by the international left: socialist Salvador Allende, whose responsibility for creating the conditions for the 1973 coup is usually overlooked. Mr. Pinochet was brutal: More than 3,000 people were killed by his government and tens of thousands tortured, mostly in his first three years. Thousands of others spent years in exile.
One prominent opponent, Orlando Letelier, was assassinated by a car bomb on Washington's Sheridan Circle in 1976 -- one of the most notable acts of terrorism in this city's history. Mr. Pinochet, meanwhile, enriched himself, stashing millions in foreign bank accounts -- including Riggs Bank, a Washington institution that was brought down, in part, by the revelation of that business. His death forestalled a belated but richly deserved trial in Chile.
It's hard not to notice, however, that the evil dictator leaves behind the most successful country in Latin America. In the past 15 years, Chile's economy has grown at twice the regional average, and its poverty rate has been halved. It's leaving behind the developing world, where all of its neighbors remain mired. It also has a vibrant democracy. Earlier this year it elected another socialist president, Michelle Bachelet, who suffered persecution during the Pinochet years.
Like it or not, Mr. Pinochet had something to do with this success. To the dismay of every economic minister in Latin America, he introduced the free-market policies that produced the Chilean economic miracle -- and that not even Allende's socialist successors have dared reverse. He also accepted a transition to democracy, stepping down peacefully in 1990 after losing a referendum.
By way of contrast, Fidel Castro -- Mr. Pinochet's nemesis and a hero to many in Latin America and beyond -- will leave behind an economically ruined and freedomless country with his approaching death. Mr. Castro also killed and exiled thousands. But even when it became obvious that his communist economic system had impoverished his country, he refused to abandon that system: He spent the last years of his rule reversing a partial liberalization. To the end he also imprisoned or persecuted anyone who suggested Cubans could benefit from freedom of speech or the right to vote.
The contrast between Cuba and Chile more than 30 years after Mr. Pinochet's coup is a reminder of a famous essay written by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the provocative and energetic scholar and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who died Thursday. In "Dictatorships and Double Standards," a work that caught the eye of President Ronald Reagan, Ms. Kirkpatrick argued that right-wing dictators such as Mr. Pinochet were ultimately less malign than communist rulers, in part because their regimes were more likely to pave the way for liberal democracies. She, too, was vilified by the left. Yet by now it should be obvious: She was right.
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