Dina Kraft has been a friend of mine for more than a decade, and a colleague as well. She also paid me probably the highest compliment I could earn by calling me her mentor, although her talent exceeds mine.
Philip Weiss is a provocateur of little intellectual consequence. He throws bombs at Israel, at its defenders and at Jews in general.
He should be of no consequence whatsoever, but because he has tapped into a deep and toxic wellspring of anti-Jewish hatred, he has accrued considerable influence. He has become an address for those who would attack Jews. Jews aren’t pristine, no group of people is, and Jewish individuals, like individuals born into any background, can err. So occasionally, Mondoweiss gets an interesting hit, and generates interest, and gets cited on reputable websites that should know better.
And now Philip, whom I would prefer to ignore, has attacked Dina, and I am compelled to respond.
There is a utility here, though, because an analysis of Weiss’ attack reveals more about him than it does Dina (it reveals nothing at all about Dina) and suggests that real journalists who quote Weiss might start considering the source.
Weiss frames his attack within his longstanding complaint that the Times employs, well, too many Jews.
The Times has begun publishing stories from Israel by Dina Kraft, who has been a correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. (Here’s a story of hers from the Jewish Journal last year). I’m sure she’s a pro, but I’m told by someone who’s met her that she feels a deep commitment to the state of Israel.
Okay:
— The Times has been publishing Dina since 2005, if not before. Boker tov, Phil.
— "I’m sure she’s a pro." Geebus, thanks Mistah Weiss, suh. She’s risked her life up and down Africa while you were sucking your thumb in whatever groovy Brooklyn hangout you haunt. Yes, she’s a pro.
— "I’m told by someone who’s met her" — I’ve called Weiss and his acolytes Stalinists before, and then later wondered if I wasn’t capitulating to my own anger and sliding into invective. I’ve given myself a day to think about this, and it’s an apt descriptive. Weiss wants to intimidate Jewish journalists. One way to do this is to insinuate that he is keeping tabs on them, tabs that are beyond their control. In other words, he is not just watching what they write, but whom they meet and what they say in friendly conversation.
— "She feels a deep commitment to the state of Israel." I’m not even sure what this means — by virtue of living there? Consider, though, what this says not about Dina, but about Weiss. I’ve reported for the AP from London, and had friends who have reported from Paris, Rome and other cities that are considered plum. The journalists are drawn to these cities because they have an affection for the nations: They grew up Anglo or Franco-philes, they were succoured on the Beatles or Monty Python or Asterix, they arrive speaking fluent French, Italian, Spanish, etc. They churn out feature after feature about why they love the country they’ve chosen — a colleague who got London told me he had a checklist of idols he wanted to interview, starting with John Cleese, and he got through all of them during his stint there. Many of these correspondents marry locals, have kids, and stay for the duration.
You don’t commit to living for 3 years to the end of your life in a place you hate.
Yet when it comes to covering these nations’ underbelly, none of these reporters have stinted, from repression in Northern Ireland, to the depredations of France’s continuing effective occupation of chunks of West Africa. The same is true of Dina, who wrote an unflinching series for us last year about illegal settlement and its enablers.
So the sin in Dina’s case is not that she has a "deep commitment" to Israel, but any practical commitment to it at all — that she speaks its language, that she resides there, that she pays its taxes, argues with its vendors, prepares its dishes. The sin for Weiss, really, is that Israel exists.
Next:
Just look at Dina Kraft’s last story on unbreakable relations between Israel and Turkey. It sounds like everything’s hunkydory. And notice there’s not a Palestinian in sight in the article.
This argues that Dina’s story enables a pro-Israel agenda. One could also argue that it undoes an agenda advanced by Liebermanites in Israel who would like nothing better than to dismantle the relationship with Turkey.
But both these arguments — that it makes things look good for Israel, that it makes Israel’s government seem not as tough as it talks — are specious. What the story does is what newspaper editors often ask us reporters to do: Test an emerging conventional wisdom against the realities. There is an emerging consensus that Israel and Turkey are done for, but that is belied by the depth of the relationship, and by its breadth across the Turkish and Israeli establishments, including the business communities and the military and diplomatic corps. It might one day come to a full rupture, but not as soon as some pundits would have it.
That’s what’s called reporting.
And what would a Palestinian be doing in a story about Turkish-Israel relations? Accusing Dina of ignoring Palestinians … well, let this story, and what it said about Gazans and the 2009 war, speak for itself.
The real story here, though, is not about Weiss’ treatment of Dina, but of how he has endangered another writer for the Times, Taghreed el-Khodary. This is how he begins his attack on Dina:
Last week we noted that a first-rate reporter, Taghreed El-Khodary, left the New York Times because she felt that its reputation was "tainted" by the fact that Jerusalem correspondent Ethan Bronner’s son had joined the Israeli army.
This is, first of all, a hoot — not so long ago, in another one of a series of posts and tweets on Bronner and his son, Weiss didn’t seem to know El-Khodary existed.
But let’s see what El-Khodary actually said. (Weiss links not to her comments, but to a posting of Alex Kane, one of his acolytes.)
If I want to talk about the American media, I’m sorry that I left Gaza, but my bureau chief’s son joined the Israeli army and I felt like it’s not wise of me. I don’t want to risk losing my sources that I have been establishing for many, many years. It’s a very sensitive issue, as you all know, not only that, but it’s also risky and you have many small groups who would like revenge and I can be a great person to get a hold of. It’s very sensitive and I was really disappointed that they took this decision but they understand why I left. Of course, I miss the place, but I feel good that I left it at this time.
(snip)
When it comes to the issue of — I have succeeded to be considered a very critical journalist on the ground, and I don’t want to lose that. If Ethan’s son joined the Israeli army, OK it’s his issue. If The New York Times decided to keep him there, ok, they took a decision. But I took a decision too. I mean, you’re not going to report this. It’s fine, but it’s not a new story, it’s old now. And I decided, because I don’t want to lose my sources, and I don’t want to lose my life, and I don’t want him to lose his life, so it’s as simple as that. So, I came out with that decision because it’s important to keep my sources. It’s a challenge, and I don’t want to lose it. I don’t want to be tainted like ‘the one who writes for someone that has a son in the army’ – I don’t want, I don’t need that. Already there are many challenges around you and you don’t want to add another one. It’s not worth it.
It’s not exactly clear what El-Khodary thinks of the propriety of a New York Times correspondent having a son in the Israeli army; but what clearly exercises her is the danger it poses to her, and to Bronner as well. When she speaks elsewhere in her address to the Palestine Center of being "tainted" — referring to whether a reporter has any past association with Hamas or Fatah — she doesn’t mean the association objectively taints; she means that one side perceives the other as "tainted" and will not deal with the reporter, which she clearly thinks is objectionable.
Now, three things:
— Bronner is not the first foreign correspondent to have children in the Israeli army, not by a long shot. I’m not gonna be one of Weiss’ informers and name names, but there are stacks of folks whose writings have been admired by the left over the years who have personal ties to Israel. (And to Palestine, for that matter.)
So something changed.
— I reported in Taliban-run Afghanistan in 1996. I didn’t exactly extend my hand to interviewees and say, "Hey, I’m from Israel," but I did make where I was from clear to my handlers. This was Taliban-land; my handlers were unsettled by plenty, but not by my Israeliness. It invoked a shrug. In my interviews with clerics and politicians, much was said about the decadence of the West, about American nefariousness, there was a lot of weird ranting about gays — but nothing about the overweening influence of Jews or Zionists. Not a word.
On my way out of Kabul, overnighting in Islamabad, I was listening to an English language radio call-in show. A young guy called in from the streets, where he was tooling around with his buddies. He was visiting — he was Pakistan-born, but raised in Arizona. He said he had a good joke, and related a stupid "Jews are cheap" Jewish American Princess joke. The call-in host was utterly baffled.
Six years later Daniel Pearl was murdered in Pakistan because he was Jewish. People asked me, "Why would he go there?" (I knew him, in passing, in London — he was a very kind and generous journalist.) I would tell them, because there was no sign of anything like this happening before it happened.
Something changed.
What was it? Well, two of his kidnappers, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, were discontents exposed to the West — Sheikh was born and raised in Britain, Mohammed spent three years in North Carolina — and, undoubtedly, its toxic narratives about Jews.
Discontent is a self-abasement: The discontented embrace their perceived oppressor’s myths of power as a means of explaining their own powerlessness.
There is no more potent myth of power in the West than that attached to the Jews.
— When did it become dangerous to be a reporter in Gaza with any tie to Israel? Not in my day reporting from there. When did the utterly normative status of Ethan Bronner’s son become an issue?
Who made it an issue?
Philip Weiss certainly spurred it forward.
So let’s add it up:
— An American blogger helps introduce into the narrative the notion that a reporter with Israel ties is transgressive;
— The conspiracy-ravenous political culture in Hamas embraces this notion, literally with a vengeance;
— Because of this, a Palestinian reporter fears for her life, and for her boss’s life;
— Same American blogger thinks this is a good thing.
My definition of free speech stops pretty much literally at a fake fire in a real theater, so, Philip Weiss should expectorate his viscera to his heart’s content, until 120. Go for it.
That doesn’t absolve those who relay his toxicity from acknowledging it. This is what I’d like to see noted every time one of his insights reverberates through the new media: Philip Weiss hates …
(Not Jews. Okay, not only Jews.)
… Journalists. And he makes it a more dangerous world for us.
Incidentally, El-Khodary’s talk at the Palestine Center was brave. I’ve cut and pasted some of her remarks — about the importance of a reporter living the story, and about the importance of reporting the Israeli side to the conflict — below the jump.
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I mean, first the narratives. I mean, you have to get both narratives, but from the narrative you will understand. If the Palestinians manage to get their narrative clearly out, that’s a successful story. And of course, you have the Israelis with their narrative, and you cannot ignore it. You cannot. You know, it’s as simple as that. You always want to understand what’s their issue when it comes to anything. Once you ignore it, you lose. You lose a lot. Nobody will read you. You will lose [an] audience in a way. And really, you need to be very fair. I’m not talking about being objective here, because I don’t think it exists, because everybody has something. But we have to be fair. And to be fair is to come out with both narratives very clearly, with colors, with really reality on the ground. And that’s why it’s important for journalists to be on the ground, to come out with the narrative that is based on the ground, not based on an agenda that is here or there. So it’s stronger that way.
When it comes to the issue of – I have succeeded to be considered a very critical journalist on the ground, and I don’t want to lose that. If Ethan’s son joined the Israeli army, OK it’s his issue. If The New York Times decided to keep him there, ok, they took a decision. But I took a decision too. I mean, you’re not going to report this. It’s fine, but it’s not a new story, it’s old now. And I decided, because I don’t want to lose my sources, and I don’t want to lose my life, and I don’t want him to lose his life, so it’s as simple as that. So, I came out with that decision because it’s important to keep my sources. It’s a challenge, and I don’t want to lose it. I don’t want to be tainted like ‘the one who writes for someone that has a son in the army’ – I don’t want, I don’t need that. Already there are many challenges around you and you don’t want to add another one. It’s not worth it.
(snip)
I think The New York Times is doing a good job, if I compare it to others – if you want me to compare it to CNN or FOX. I’m sorry, but when it comes to European media, it’s completely different, I would say. But I think The New York Times has been doing a good job, and we did get the story out. And we really succeeded to get the story of Gaza during the war out, and it was really great reporting, and I didn’t do one single mistake when it comes to facts.(snip)During the war, I was attacked by many Jewish Americans, many Arabs, and you know Arabs are like ‘how come you work for The New York Times?’ I mean, excuse me, but if you want to reach the people here, you need to work for such medium and its very important you cannot just let it…and I would disagree, I think The New York Times and other American media, they did cover the settlement stories. The New York Times did stories on the settlers, and The New York Times did stories on the war. But what’s missing is more of it, more depth maybe, more reporting – not just one story and just move on, you know, that’s the thing. When it comes to Gaza, more reporting is needed. And I agree with that.(snip)On living a story:Definitely as a Palestinian, it is an advantage because you understand the issue very well and you are living it. You are not outside the place and then you are sent [in] from time to time. I think one of the advantages when a reporter is living the story it adds a lot. Sometimes it has, of course, its advantages because you become part of it. It can affect you, definitely. So, one of the advantages is to be a Palestinian and to live the story. I recommend to journalists, even if they are foreigners, they have to live where they are covering. Not just to be sent from time to time. One of the advantages is if you are not belonging [to a faction], because the sad part, when it comes to many Palestinian journalists, they belong to a faction. They have a history. In the past, they used to belong to that faction or that faction, so they will be always tainted as this person belongs to that. Let me give an example. If you are a journalist known to be Fateh in the past, [the] Hamas people will never trust you and vice versa. That’s the story. And luckily I’ve never belonged to any political faction and that’s why I feel strong on the ground talking and reaching everyone. Disadvantages; for journalists, exposure is the key. They have to be exposed and I think the more they [are] exposed to other elements of the story, it makes a difference. The sad part is, now you have Gaza completely separated from the West Bank. Imagine you are a Gazan journalist and you are just based in Gaza and you cannot see the other story that is the West Bank. And of course the Israelis don’t let someone like me, who worked for The New York Times, [to] even work. They gave me a hard time and that’s also another challenge. Being a Palestinian journalist, even if you work for Reuters or AP [Associated Press] or The New York Times, Israel will never give you access to the West Bank or to Israel.
