What Elisheva Goldberg Thinks of Me

I'm a

power-house activist

That's what Elisheva Goldberg wrote of me.

She attended the annual general meeting of the Friends of Israel's Media Watch.  I'm Vice-Chairman.

Goldberg published it as "The Dubious Successes of Israel's Media Watch" at Peter Beinart's Open Zion.

What bothers her about IMW is, and I quote:

- ostensible lack of vim and vigor
- their success comes from their willingness to consider the long haul.
- Their scrutiny of the Israel Broadcasting Association (IBA) has always been meticulous, and while their criticism is not terribly sharp, it is certainly sharply felt
- despite crude logic in order to advance a far-right agenda, IMW manages to be operational and successful.
- these guys have a bone to pick.
- they’ve been on the inside of a battle to get the blatantly racist, Caroline Glick-run satire show Latma (“slap in the face” in Arabic) on Israeli public television
- They have argued for better internal hasbara,
- Of the guests, almost all were in their 60s. One gentleman came in with a walker 
- Pollak himself clearly has an agenda

As for the rest of the post, besides the sniping, the petulant commentary, her cynical ignorance, the nastiness towards older people (isn't that post-modern racism?), all she does is disagree with IMW's views.

She does not prove we are factually wrong.

Or that we misinterpret the laws regarding media bias.

Or the principles of media critiquing.

That Peter Beinart published this is testament to his journalism values, or lack thereof.

My first reaction is in this comment I left there:

Elisheva, 

Accept my apologies that I could not greet you personally. You should have introduced yourself. I may be right-of-center but I do not physically harm ideological adversaries.

As for the content, I am still digesting it. However, sorry for being successful. Sorry for taking my civil liberties and democratic rights seriously enough to actually try to utilize my freedom of expression, and assembly and even my power-house activism. Sorry for being able to forge contacts and coordination with political figures. Sorry that the Jerusalem Post asked us to return and publish (no payment received by the way. do you get paid by Peter?) a weekly column of media comment. Sorry for setting up a website that forces news ombudsmen to be responsible for their decisions that for the first time are made public. Sorry for being effective in pointing out media bias.

Sorry for being us. Oh, we have only one paid staff (you really shouild learn the basics of journalism. Ask. Inquire. Don't assume).

Okay, so I'm not really sorry. But it's erev Yom Kippur and one of us, Elisheva, should be sorry. So, I'll be the gentleman, and I'll be sorry (and laughing all the way to the fulfillment of Zionism).


Oh, I forgot.

As International Relations Analyst and Editor at Molad: The Center for the Renewal of Israeli Democracy, you must be strictly neutral, non-political, center-of-the road and without any radical, left-wing, liberal, progressive prejudices at all and in the least.

Right? Oh, sorry. Correct?

Elisheva, it seems is in her mid-20s, Migdal Oz-educated (women's section of Yeshivat Har Etzion), from Seattle and her background is modern orthodox synagogue membership.  Her family, I have been informed, is not leftist-oriented but pro-AIPAC.  But she has "saved" herself by aligning with one of the weirdest politicians in Israel - Avrum Burg (who I know well).

Taking advantage of his wife's birth location, he asked and received French citizenship.  He has an odd Hitler-fixation of some sort which, I admit, I am still trying to dully comprehend although I doubt whether all is clear to Avrum either.

In other words, her words are but poison-dipped arrows, and not very sharp either, launched in favor of the neo-neutral-Zionism that is all the rage of "liberals" and "progressives" who are tired of being accused by Arabs and by their academic and social peers of calumnies disguised as propaganda and seeking a way out, turn on those who are still faithful to the basics of the return of the Jewish people to its homeland and who refuse to ignore the immorality that drives "Palestinianism", its disinventivity apparatus and its true violent nature and character.

As for media criticism, she knows even less.  So I'll stop here.

If Ms. Goldberg is a prime example of the new Zionism propounded by Beinart and pushed by Burg, either you can laugh or cry but for it all, it's a shame.

^

Burg's Bottle and Beinart's Bandwagon

I have been sent by several followers the op-ed by Avrum Burg in The UK Independent entitled, "Even I – an Israeli – think settlement goods are not kosher"  He is decribed there as

Avraham Burg was Speaker of the Knesset (1999-2003) and Chairman of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization

Odd that they ignore his demonstratively seeking French citizenship, exploiting his wife's birth nationality,  caused controversy by comparing Israel to 1930s Germany, calling for the repeal of the Law of Return, and pushing for Israel no longer to be called a Jewish state. And that he seeks to become reinvolved in party politics with a 50% Arab -50% Jewish list, claiming "Israel is becoming a nationalist, fundamentalist, theocratic state, which is the unholy triangle.”

In any case, he writes in The Independent

...Since 2009, the United Kingdom has been taking measures...to ensure that settlement products...that have been produced in the occupied Palestinian territories – are no longer labelled as "made in Israel"...several European member states now appear ready to follow...these measures act in Israel's interest. They do so because they take steps that defend and reinforce the Green Line, the pre-1967 border between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.The Green Line is of decisive importance to achieving Middle East peace.

 

Why is the Green Line important?  Well, its existence will not "prevent the establishment of an independent Palestinian state". If we preserve the Green Line, the very idea of an Arab Palestine is kept alive.

 

Of course, there exists another option: that if the Green Line is returned, and that is the essence of the Oslo Accords -  "The two sides view the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a single territorial unit, the integrity and status of which will be preserved during the interim period... The two sides agree that West Bank and Gaza Strip territory, except for issues that will be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations, will come under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Council in a phased manner,"- as per the Israel-Palestinian Interim Agreement, Article XI, Sub-paragraphs 1 & 2 what might and probably develop is an existential threat and, at the very least, the return to Raanan, Kfar Saba, Jerusalem, etc. the dangerous and murderous security situtation that was the lot of those locations and their inhabitants before 1967.  The record of the Palestinian Authority up until now, almost 20 years since the Spetember 1993 signing of the Declaration of Principles.

Burg should know, by the by, that the DOP signed explicitly notes that

permanent status issues, such as Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security arrangements and borders are to be excluded from the interim arrangements and that the outcome of the permanent status talks should not be prejudged or preempted by the interim arrangements.

 

His boycott call, joining in his semantics the Beinart Bandwagon, actually doesn't align with the spirit of the peace agreements so far signed.

But Burg goes one step further:

 

It should long have been clear to every Israeli that...anything beyond the line is something else: undemocratic, illegal, not normative. Not ours.

Not "ours".  "Not"?  Shiloh is not ours?  Hebron?  In what sense?  It isn't part of the Jewish homeland?  It shouldn't be part?  No Jew should live there?  Is he boycotting, more than the products of our labors - in agriculture, industry, science, social projects - everything that is a link between Judea and Samaria and Israel/Israelis?

 

Burg continues in his extremism:

It is not anti-Semitic and not anti-Israel to convey these messages. On the contrary: the settlers, the conquerors and their political allies – including Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel – are the real enemies of Israel's future...Colonising Palestinian land across the Green Line...generates fanatic, nationalistic, fundamentalist and anti-democratic energies that threaten all civilised Israeli foundations...With international help, we must return these demons to their bottles...

I wonder from what bottle Burg has been imbibing.

^

Israeli-Turned-Frenchman Burg Turns Anti-Zionist

Avrum Burg's new book is now translated into English and he gets a big push from the NYTimes although Ethan Bronner does quote those who bash it:

Ari Shavit, a writer for the newspaper Haaretz, said to him in an interview when the book was published here: “Your book is anti-Israel in the deepest sense. It is a book from which loathing of Israeliness emanates.”

and

Tom Segev, for example, a left-wing historian and Haaretz columnist, said in a review that the book was “one of the most spaced-out and in-your-face books this country has seen in many years.”

Response to Burg

In Haaretz Magazine:-

There is something irksome in Avraham Burg's liberalism. It is an intolerant, trampling liberalism, which is contemptuous of its ideological rivals and refuses to allow them even the right to take part in the discussion in which it slanders them. All well and good, but before the collective uprising against Burg's remarks and the ugly, hysterical wave of attacks that will assuredly ensue (and this is precisely the violence which Burg attributes to the Israeli public), would it not be worthwhile to look at the article and identify in it a number of legitimate warnings?

The violence in the public and personal discourse, the media hysteria and the "closeout sale" of humanistic values on the grounds that others are bent on our destruction - are these not phenomena which we, the public, would do well to reflect on? Let us examine what Burg said calmly and judiciously, and extract some benefit from it.

Ari Shavit did his work well, and exposed some of the less Zen Buddhist aspects in the sparkling personality of someone who has crowned himself the paragon of justice on earth. Our task now is to look unflinchingly at our turgid image as reflected in Burg's comments, and to understand that, yes, we have plenty to think about.

Noam Morahi, Tel Aviv

Citoyen Avraham Le Burg

Maariv reported today that Avraham Burg, former Labor MK and Speaker of the Knesset, was spotted voting in the French national elections yesterday (Shabbat? No, sorry, it was a Sunday voting day).

Turns out he is a French citizen since 2006, through his wife who is the daughter of a notorious liberal, progressive Jew.

C'est la vie!

And in case you don't believe me, here's the scanned article:-