A genuine journalistic scandal at the New York Times.
The Jerusalem Post's Uri Dan seems to have uncovered a genuine
journalistic scandal at the New York Times. Saturday's Times carried a
front-page story from Jerusalem (link requires registration) on a small
group of Israel military reservists who say they are refusing to serve
in the West Bank and Gaza because "Israel's policies there involved
'dominating, expelling, starving and humiliating an entire people.' "
Dan says the piece amounts to a "grave indictment against Israel, its
government, and army, particularly when, mainly in Western Europe,
anti-Semites are in a hurry to accuse them of war crimes." The
trouble is that the man who wrote the article is anything but a
disinterested observer:
The Times article was written by Joel Greenberg, an
American-Israeli reporter in its Jerusalem bureau.
Greenberg is himself a one-time "resister." An Associated
Press article of November 25, 1984, about the refusal of
Israeli soldiers to serve in Lebanon stated: "And the worst
thing is, we're still there (in Lebanon)," said Sgt. Joel
Greenberg, 28, a Philadelphia-born Israeli who lost his
position as squad leader when he refused to go to
Lebanon. Like the other conscientious objectors, he isn't
sure he will refuse again."
A news release of the Zionist Organization of America
(August 6, 1999) quoted: "Greenberg served a jail term in
1983 for refusing to serve with his army unit in southern
Lebanon [Moment, May 1984]". Greenberg subsequently
became a journalist, and was a staff reporter (1986-90)
for The Jerusalem Post.
Did the editors of The New York Times, who criticize
Israel at every opportunity, know that Greenberg is a
one-time resister?
And if the editors of The New York Times were simply
unaware of their Israeli reporter's involvement in Lebanon
as a resister, they only had to go to their own archives to
find an article written by Thomas Friedman on January 20,
1985, in which he wrote: "You saw Lebanese license
plates in Israel, and that was a big deal," remembers Joel
Greenberg, a graduate student in Middle East studies who
after his first tour of duty in Lebanon became a
conscientious objector to the war and went to jail for
refusing to carry out reserve duty there."
It's actually even worse than Dan makes it out to be, for Greenberg's
piece includes a paragraph on the Lebanon resistance movement
without any disclosure of his involvement in it:
Protests by army reservists after Israel's 1982 invasion of
Lebanon, which Mr. Sharon, as defense minister, took all
the way to Beirut, are widely considered to have
contributed to a subsequent military pullback to southern
Lebanon, from which Israel withdrew two years ago.
Note that "are widely considered"--a classic passive-voice dodge by
which reporters slip their own opinions into purportedly objective
stories. But the problem here isn't just that Greenberg is biased; it's
that he has failed to disclose his own involvement in the story on
which he's reporting.
opinionjournal.com
jpost.com |
