Here’s the entirety of one of his entries; I’ve made bold his baffling commentary on a comment that Benjamin Netanyahu has already firmly repudiated:
Malkin Award Nominee
18 MAR 2010 03:22 PM
"When there is an anti-Semitic president in the United States, it is a test for us and we have to say: We will not concede. We are a nation dating back 4,000 years, and you in a year or two will be long forgotten. Who will remember you? But Jerusalem will dwell on forever," – Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother-in-law Dr. Hagai Ben-Artzi in an interview with Army Radio.
Army Radio? Not good. But it’s only a matter of time, I have learned, between anyone actually criticizing the policies of Israel and being deemed a you-know-what.
Israel Army Radio is an independent radio network funded by the army. Just like the BBC is funded by the British government, the ABC funded by the Australian government, the CBC funded by the Canadian government.
Of course, Israel has a similar civilian network, Kol Yisrael — but some of the nations I just cited also maintain independent military broadcasts. (I remember picking up a Cyprus-based branch of British armed forces radio when I lived in Jerusalem.)
Army Radio (or Galei Tzahal) was established simply as a means of keeping soldiers informed, through call-ups. It evolved into a forum for more youthful broadcasts (as opposed to a Kol Yisrael that was through the 1990s insistently stodgy) and by the 1970s it had its own, separate news corps, which became a training ground for Israel’s best and brightest young reporters.
In that capacity, it has produced legions of fearless, unyielding journalists who refuse to let their government — or army — off the hook, whatever the circumstances, among them (and I’m rattling off only by memory here) my friend Nathan Guttman, currently at the Forward, and Ilana Dayan, Israel’s best and bravest muckraker. One of its current hosts, Razi Barkai, is, because of his adversarial interviews with government officials, an Israeli version of the "liberal media" whipping boy for conservatives.
Galei Tzahal’s independence was made manifest during the 1982 Lebanon war when one of its broadcasters called the invasion a "plonter," a mess, a mistake; Ariel Sharon exercised what he thought was his prerogative to sack the broadcaster. He was proved wrong, and the broadcaster was reinstated.
So I’m not sure what’s "not good" about any of this, and I will deem Sullivan something others have deemed him for rushing a little too quickly to virtual print: "excitable."
Dude, get an editor.
