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July 22, 2007
Where Is the Moral Outrage?
While the Los Angeles Times now accepts Op-Eds from indicted Hamas terrorists, editors also find space for rabbis representing an organization that works for tolerance. Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center react with well justified moral outrage to the Los Angeles Times' decision to print an Op-Ed by a Hamas leader. The pair writes:
Let's be clear: This issue is not about giving ink to Hamas' views. Their statements and actions deserve real-time coverage, just the way the statements and actions of Hitler and Stalin received coverage by the most prestigious newspapers in the world's most important democracy. But such people do not deserve the status of a sagely byline, because that destroys the distinction between honorable men and women bound by basic principles of humanity and the despots and terrorists eager to destroy those values.
If the criteria is simply because "it is an important story," then would the editors have welcomed articles by Auschwitz's Dr. Josef Mengele justifying his gruesome medical experiments, or by the Virginia Tech killer explaining why he committed mass murder? Of course, newspapers have the right and responsibility to inform their readers about dictators and purveyors of terror. But they don't have the right to bestow editorial credibility on those bent on genocide.
The Times has yet to set the record straight on Abu Marzook's multiple falsehoods which require correction. Stay tuned.
Posted by TS at July 22, 2007 07:11 AM
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