Robert Mackey Responds

We’ve posted here a handful of times about commentary by Robert Mackey, and on Friday, after hours, the New York Times blogger visited Snapshots to respond. (We published that response in full below. You can see it in context, and with his other comments, here.)

In a statement that came awfully close to being an admission of bias, Mackey wrote,

The blog posts I wrote for The Times that you take as evidence of a bias against Israel were almost all based on the writings of Israeli bloggers and activists who object to some of the country’s policies but do so as concerned citizens.

That’s the thing. His blog entries about the Arab-Israeli conflict are overwhelmingly devoted to criticism of Israel — criticism that is often harsh, often unfair, and always debatable.

And this penchant for anti-Israel commentary on The Lede, his blog, pushes aside other facets of the debate. Mainstream Israeli voices are virtually silenced. Mackey leaves little room for commentary that’s more understanding of Israel challenges. He leaves little room for criticism of the Palestinian Authority.

It means, for example, that Mackey will promote a video meant to show Israeli callousness in arresting a young Palestinian, but won’t let on that the video actually shows Israeli police urging the boy’s mother accompany him, while a Palestinian man commands her not to get in and pulls her away from the vehicle. When the Israel Press Council acknowledged this, and ruled that a journalist who claimed the video showed police preventing the mother from boarding the police van was being “untruthful,” there wasn’t a peep from Mackey.

In his comments on CAMERA’s blog, Mackey insisted that he is “fair-minded,” and implied that therefore his output shouldn’t be subject to scrutiny. “You might want to think about that before attacking fair-minded, responsible people like me,” he wrote.

Let’s ignore this peculiar idea that those who see themselves as “fair-minded” shouldn’t be challenged, and instead focus on Mackey’s claim of fairness. What, exactly, is fair about comparing the Turkish Islamists who attacked, stabbed and pummeled Israeli soldiers while sailing to the defense of Hamas, a violent and openly anti-Semitic group, to the Jewish Holocaust survivors on the Exodus?

What, exactly, is fair about slurring the pro-Israel advocacy group Fuel for Truth as “an anti-Palestinian group”? (Mackey describes the virulently anti-Israel International Solidarity Movement, whose leaders have called suicide bombings “noble,” as nothing more than “pro-Palestinian,” and dubs Noam Chomsky as someone who merely “has been critical of Israel.”)

And since Mackey implies, absurdly, that by criticizing his output we are trying to “silence” him and his sources — “What sort of a society do you think you will have when you succeed in silencing or driving away any citizen who dares to criticize their own government?,” he writes — does the above quote mean he is trying to silence Fuel for Truth? And when, in his comments here, he hysterically charges CAMERA with “inciting hatred of me,” is he not, by his own standards, trying to silence CAMERA?

Mackey’s record speaks for itself. He might truly think that he’s saving Israel by turning his blog over to one-sided discourse about the country. But in the end, one-sided discourse is… well, one-sided discourse.

Mackey’s comment is published in full after the break.

Eventually, you might understand that this sort of hysterical attack on anyone who reports anything that might be taken as criticism of Israeli government policies – even Israeli citizens – is doing your cause no good at all. Many people who object to Israeli policies, particularly those that are seen as reckless by some Israeli citizens, are in fact most interested not in hurting the country, but in keeping its most fanatical leaders from wounding it.

The blog posts I wrote for The Times that you take as evidence of a bias against Israel were almost all based on the writings of Israeli bloggers and activists who object to some of the country’s policies but do so as concerned citizens. You might want to think about that before attacking fair-minded, responsible people like me. What sort of a society do you think you will have when you succeed in silencing or driving away any citizen who dares to criticize their own government?

I grew up partly in Northern Ireland during ‘the troubles,’ and worked in Bosnia during the war there, so I am well aware of the damage caused to the world by ultra-nationalists who are blind to anything but what is good for their group. In the end, it does no one any good.