Behind the Headlines Bonnie and Clyde Journalism

Two nationally syndicated columnists charged this week that there exists what amounts to a conspiracy by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the worldwide Jewish press to defame an ambassador and to manipulate the fears and emotions of the Jewish people. This view was expressed Monday in a column written by Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. The column began by stating that “A worldwide campaign to paint the Egyptian ambassador to the United States as publicly advocating ‘extermination’ of all traces of ‘Judaism’ in the Middle East shows the dangerous intensity of the propaganda battle now being waged by militant friends of Israel following collapse of the U.S.-Israeli-Egyptian peace effort.”

The ambassador referred to is Ashraf Ghorbal and the alleged campaign has been conducted, according to the columnists, by the JTA and “the worldwide Jewish press–small weeklies and dailies devoted to Jewish affairs with heavy emphasis on Israel….”

Evans and Novak wrote that “On April 1, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency bureau in Buenos Aires transmitted a long section of the alleged interview–which had been published weeks before–on its main trunk wire, extending worldwide. That wire copy was immediately published in the specialized Jewish press.” In addition, the columnists note, in England “the respected Manchester Guardian also published a large portion of the alleged interview, but on April 10 carried a full retraction ‘for running a piece of black propaganda’ which, the newspaper said, was obtained from ‘an Israeli source'(that was) impeccable.”

Indeed, Evans and Novak continue, “so widely has the allegation against Ambassador Ashraf Ghorbal been spread by the worldwide Jewish press…that it was actually discussed at Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s final session with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in Jerusalem last month.”

KISSINGER-RABIN TALKS ABOUT ARTICLE

This was a remarkable achievement, if, indeed this was discussed last month. The final session between Kissinger and Rabin was March 23. The article by JTA was not transmitted until April 1, as the columnists themselves noted. Perhaps the real scoop here is not that Kissinger and Rabin discussed the alleged Ghorbal interview but that Kissinger somehow remained in Israel nine days after he returned to Washington, a gian feat even for the Secretary, but then, no mean feat for Evans and Novak, either.

But giving the columnists wide latitude, perhaps Rabin and Kissinger did have the article before it was released by the JTA. The article appeared in the Buenos Aires periodical, Marchar (To March) at least a month earlier. A check, however, indicated that it had not been picked up earlier by any other journal or newspaper outside Israel and that some of the Israeli papers had only limited excerpts of the Marchar article by mid-March. The Jerusalem Post first published a large segment of the “alleged” interview in its March 28 issue, five days after Rabin and Kissinger reportedly discussed it. Evans and Novak did not indicate in their column how the two diplomats had gotten hold of the interview–whether through the Israeli press or directly through Marchar.

Even assuming that Rabin and Kissinger had seen the full Marchar report and not just limited excerpts, a top Israeli source told the JTA yesterday that the Ghorbal story was not raised during the talks. The only possibility, the source noted, was that Rabin mentioned it during private breakfasts with Kissinger at which no one else was present. But, the source added, he does not know of any such discussions at those meetings either.

Evans and Novak, in their column, stated: ”The defamation of Ghorbal is cruel and tragic, both to responsible Jewish leaders and to Ghorbal himself. Without any effort to check the accuracy of the inflammatory report in Marchar, a publication the Argentine ambassador says is ‘practically unknown outside extreme nationalistic groups,’ the understandable emotions and fears of thousands of Jews have been manipulated in the rising crescendo of the propaganda battle.”

FACTS AND CIRCUMSTANCES

The facts about the interview and the circumstances surrounding it are quite different from what Evans and Novak depict it. In addition, a number of vital questions still remain to be answered. questions which the columnists either did not ask or, if they did ask, did not report.

A copy of Marchar which was sent to the JTA yesterday shows that it is undated and identified only as issue number seven, 1975. It has a centerfold layout of the article titled “Arabs and Jews,” with a number of photographs, including four showing Ghorbal and Patricio Kelly, the editor of the paper who allegedly interviewed Ghorbal. One picture shows the envoy and Kelly shaking hands, another shows them sitting on a couch and smiling. another shows Ghorbal gesticulating with Kelly looking on, and the fourth shows the two men in what appears to be a conversation.

A fifth photo shows Alejandro Orfila, the Argentine Ambassador to the U.S., and Kelly with broad grins on their faces. Kelly had asked a photographer to be present during his meeting with Ghorbal on Jan. 13 in Washington where the “alleged” interview took place.

QUESTIONS STILL NOT ANSWERED

If, as Orfila maintains, the magazine is practically unknown, why did he agree to help set up the interview? If Kelly is not a responsible journalist, as Ghorbal and Orfila now contend, why, again, did Ghorbal submit to the interview and photographs? If Ghorbal did not know at the time about Kelly or the nature of his publication, why didn’t Orfila alert him to this?

Whv did Ghorbal wait until he was alerted to the JTA story after it appeared April 1 to issue a denial of statements attributed to him in Marchar when the article appeared weeks before in that publication? Is it possible that the Egyptian Embassy in Buenos Aires was unaware of the article either in Marchar or the Israeli press? Why didn’t Evans and Novak also contact Kelly to find out his side of the story? The JTA sought to locate Kelly but was informed in Buenos Aires that he and his magazine “went underground” not long after the article appeared. According to one report Kelly has been arrested but the source did not know on what charge.

In fact, Orfila sent a letter to Ghorbal dated March 31. In it he wrote: “After receiving your telephone call on Friday, March 28th, I immediately sought and obtained information from Buenos Aires concerning the article you mentioned by Mr. Patricia Kelly. I was very much distressed by your comments on the inaccuracies reflected in this article.

“As you know, upon his arrival in Washington. Mr. Kelly requested a meeting with you through this Embassy. According to conversations with him, he wanted to prepare an analysis on the Mid-East situation. Since the printing of his evaluation of this meeting, it has become obvious that not only were your thoughts and positions not reflected correctly, but concepts were expressed that were not even discussed during this meeting. This is of course, the gravest error that any reporter can make. Certainly, his qualifications as a reporter are now totally discredited….

“Despite all other repercussions of this incident, I am at least happy to report that this article was printed in a publication practically unknown in Argentina outside of extreme nationalistic groups. We have made an inquiry into other journals and have come to the conclusion that nothing else was published. Nevertheless, I do want to express my deepest apologies again for this most unfortunate incident and to reassure you of the regret that I feel in the fact that one of my countrymen misrepresented your concepts in the interview which you so generously granted.”

The letter is extremely instructive in that Orfila did not characterize Kelly in any way except to say that his qualifications as a reporter are “now” totally discredited, his reference to an interview Ghorbal “so generously granted,” that Ghorbal’s thoughts and position were not “reflected correctly” and that “concepts” were expressed that were not discussed at the meeting.

What makes this instructive and interesting is that Ghorbal, in a letter dated April 4 in replying to Orfila’s letter, stated that Kelly “did not stay more than two minutes” and that all Ghorbal said during that time was “that the Egyptian people hold a great friendship for the Argentine people and that I was happy to visit in 1963 the beautiful city of Bueno (sic) Aires.”

SOMETHING DOESN’T SEEM TO SQUARE

This does not seem to square with Orfila’s allusion to an “interview” nor to “thoughts and positions not reflected correctly.” If Kelly really did not stay for more than two minutes this could hardly, even by stretching a point, be considered an “interview,” nor was there any time for concepts and thoughts to be expressed.

In letters written to several people who had inquired of Ghorbal about the Kelly article, the Egyptian envoy noted that “I am bewildered how the words I have spoken could become the words that he published. It is obvious, therefore, that Mr. Kelly has relied on a fertile imagination inventing a whole interview which is totally contrary to my views and philosophy and those of my government.”

If Evans and Novak had checked with JTA they would have found out that JTA first obtained the story of the interview from one of its correspondents in Israel on March 17. It was not used then because it was incomplete both with reference to substantial excerpts from the interview and the circumstances surrounding it.

Instead, the JTA asked its Buenos Aires correspondent to transmit either a translation of the article or to mail the article to New York for translation. He wired back to say that JTA’s Montreal correspondent was in the city and that he would transmit a translation upon his arrival back to Montreal. He wired the translated article from Montreal to New York on March 28 but the JTA once again held it up for further clarification.

It was then that a message arrived from Buenos Aires that Kelly and Marchar had disappeared from the scene. By then the article had appeared in Israel and the JTA released it in New York in its Daily News Bulletin on April 2. Until that time there had been no public denials from Ghorbal. Copies of the letters between Ghorbal and Orfila were sent to JTA in New York on April 7 by a Jewish reader of the Daily News Bulletin who described himself as a friend of Ghorbal. Subsequently, discussions were held between Joseph Polakoff. JTA’s Washington bureau chief, and Ghorbal and Orfila on the Kelly article. Polakoff s account appeared in the April 20 issue of the Bulletin.

CONSPIRACY CHARGE BASELESS

In their zeal to make points. Evans and Novak scattered journalistic machine gun fire over the lot, wounding facts, missing the target and maiming reality. Their allegation of a conspiracy by the worldwide Jewish press is as baseless as it is vile and malicious. Their charge impugns the integrity of the press and implies that it is a mere handmaiden of an unnamed agent manipulating the media to some nefarious end.

The contrary is true. The Jewish media expressed a genuine concern about the fate of Israel and the Jewish people, a concern based on very real political developments in the Middle East. By publishing the “alleged” interview the press tried to alert Jews everywhere to real and potential dangers. Certainly alerting journalism is more honorable than Bonnie and Clyde reporting.