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.
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