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October 27, 2009
Ha'aretz Keeps Up J Street Promotional Beat
Here is today's installment of Ha'aretz's daily J Street promotional beat. Ha'aretz has avoided all of the tough questions about J Street, and consistently berates Ambassador Michael Oren for not engaging the "pro-Israel lobby." Today's article then goes on to quote confab participant "Angela Godfrey-Goldstein of the Israel Committee Against House Demolitions," failing to mention that ICAHD director Jeff Halper calls for a one state solution.
Other "reporting" today in the service of bolstering J Street include two photographs (one small one on the front page and a huge one of page 2) of a man holding up a sign that says "J St Nazis." The caption reads: "Bob Kunst of Shalom International protesting J Street in Washington yesterday, across from where the lobby's first national conference was held." The article also contains a paragraph about Kunst's one-man protest, thereby giving prominent coverage to a J Street critic who uses extremist language without articulating any intelligent argument. By giving Kunst highly visible coverage and ignoring critics who have raised serious concerns of substance, Ha'aretz attempts to paint any criticism of the organization as unfounded.
One of the points raised by serious critics involves Jim Gerstein, who Ha'aretz reporter Natasha Mozgovaya today identifies as "[p]ollster and political adviser." It is no surprise that Gerstein is repeatedly quoted in favor of J Street, both in today's Ha'aretz and in many other media reports. He is afterall a former J Street vice president who happens also to carry out polls for the organization, a conflict of interest you won't read about in Ha'aretz.
Furthermore, it is extremely hypocritical of Ha'aretz to fault Ambassador Oren for failing to engage J Street, when Ha'aretz itself has been known to take an anti-dialogue stand, refusing to respond to CAMERA's concerns about the accuracy of its some of its reports.
Posted by TS at October 27, 2009 04:23 AM
Comments
Jeff Halper isn't calling for a one-state solution, you've got it wrong. He says, like many, that the two-state solution can't be accessed now because of settlement expansion. So he's saying we have to think of the alternatives, but it's the Palestinians' prerogative to say what they want, not ours to tell them what they should have.
Posted by: Angela Godfrey-Goldstein at October 27, 2009 06:39 PM
Angela,
I refer you to Jeff Halper's statements:
* "A Jewish state has proven politically, and in the end, morally, untenable." (Halper's presentation to the UN's International Conference on Civil Society in Support of the Palestinian People, Sept. 5, 2003)
* At a UN conference on “Civil Society in Support of the Palestinian People�? in September 2003, Jeff Halper lectured on “One State: Preparing for a post Road-Map struggle against apartheid�? where he claimed that “[t]he "two-state" solution envisioned by all Israeli governments since 1967...is simply unacceptable"…"The stage is thus set for the next phase of the struggle for a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: an international campaign for a single state"…"our slogan in the post-road map period will be that of the South Africans' struggle against apartheid: One Person, One Vote.�? (“One State: Preparing for a post Road-Map struggle against apartheid,�? Jeff Halper at UN, New York, September 5, 2003, fromoccupiedpalestine.org)
* “I think it is impossible to have a Jewish state. I think we have to start talking about Israel and not a Jewish state. Either there is a two-state solution, a state of Israel for all its citizens -- including Palestinian Israelis -- and a real Palestinian state, or a one-state solution in which we all live together in one democratic country. Those are the options.�? (“Jeff Halper in Gaza: ‘We are the oppressors’,�? Rami Almeghari, Electronic Intifada, September 1, 2008)
Posted by: TS at October 28, 2009 03:50 AM
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