Former Vice President Spiro Agnew defended his right to criticize Israel while denying he was anti-Semitic. “I’m entitled to my opinion without being followed around by the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League and being accused of being a higot,” he said in an interview on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America” show. “I could be wrong, but I’m not a bigot.”
The ADL charged Agnew last week with taking over a tax-exempt foundation, Education for Democracy, for the purpose of organizing a movement to reflect his anti-Israel, pro-Arab views.
Victor Gold, Agnew’s press secretary when he was Vice President, appearing on the same program last Thursday, took issue with an article published by the foundation’s newsletter which criticized the United States for not going along with a United Nations General Assembly vote that Gold said “would have affectively abolished and done away with Israel.”
Agnew said he agreed that the article was “a biased piece.” But he added, “What I am defending myself against is a charge of anti-Semitism, not the fact that I may be biased — not even the fact that I may be wrong in my opinion.
Agnew repeated his charge that the major American news media “favors the Israeli position and does not in a balanced way present the other equities.” However, he agreed that major newspapers were now becoming “a little more objective.” Agnew said he was not charging a conspiracy in the media. “I say that the American people have been routinely exposed to quite a lot of pro-Israeli propaganda.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
