The NY Times Magazine’s False Cover Story exposed by Sol Stern
You can count on the New York Times to continually let its readers know how Israel is the guilty party when it comes to finding out why the Israeli-Palestinian peace process fell apart. This time, its readers were given a 4700 word cover article in the paper’s Sunday magazine by Bernard Avishai, who favors the replacement of Israel by what he calls a secular “Hebrew republic” open to all who inhabit its borders, rather than the existing Jewish state. Avishai is also a “peace activist,” although the magazine does not inform his readers of this.
The heart of Avishai’s claim is that a chance recently existed “to end the Israeli occupation and found a Palestinian state.” Its essence took place in 2008 when Ehud Olmert was prime minister of Israel, and he and Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority engaged in two-year long negotiations and made what Avishai calls “far-reaching proposals.” As Avishai relates the story, both sides almost concluded an agreement that would have ended with a Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel. Abbas, he says, “had been most flexible on Israel’s security demands”; Olmert had “conceded to Abbas every major demand Palestinians had made for decades.”
So what happened? You can read Avishai’s article yourself. But the reason this agreement came to naught is simple: Israel backed out! As Avishai writes: “Olmert made his most comprehensive offer to Abbas on Sept.16,2008, the opening day of the General Assembly in New York. Abbas then ‘went silent.’” But it wasn’t his fault. Abbas was ready to resume talks, but corruption charges and the Gaza war distracted him, and he failed to send someone to a talk proposed in Washington by Condoleezza Rice. But he made it clear he was ready to continue negotiations until a settlement took place. Olmert, facing his own problems, did not respond. And then, the Netanyahu government won the Israeli election, and as we all know, the hard-line new PM is opposed to a settlement with the Palestinians.
So, Avishai argues, now is the time for President Obama to use his position to resuscitate peace talks and pick up where Olmert and Abbas left off before it is too late.
The New York Times, in running Avishai’s lead piece, and putting it online as well in its world news section, makes it clear they consider Avishai a journalist who has delivered a major scoop — the first person to present all the previously hidden details of what had ensued and had led to abandonment of the one moment that both sides had come closest to reaching a deal.
The problem is, Avishai’s article is a complete fraud! Thank God for Sol Stern, a journalist who years ago, ironically, used to write from Israel for the NYT as a special reporter, and who himself used to have feature articles in the New York Times Magazine. But that was decades ago, when Stern was on the political left and was an editor of Ramparts magazine. Now he is a conservative working at the Manhattan Institute; the New York Times is not exactly knocking at his door.
Writing today at Jewish Ideas Daily, a relatively new website edited by former Commentary editor-in-chief Neal Kozodoy, Sol Stern demolishes Avishai’s article, and not only makes mincemeat of it, but embarrasses the editors of the magazine for even having run the article in the first place, since, as he proves, there is nothing new in it and, as Stern writes, “what’s new isn’t true.”
What Sol Stern has produced is nothing less than a tour de force. His article should be mandatory reading in journalism schools for how the mainstream media gets things wrong, and especially how what was once the paper of record does so. First, Stern shows that Avishai’s narrative appeared January 27 in a supposed scoop by Ethan Bronner, who wrote that progress towards peace was stopped when the new “hard-line” government of Benjamin Netanyahu took over. Bronner based his article on an interview that none other than Bernard Avishai had conducted with Olmert and Abbas earlier. Now, a short time later, “the paper has twice put its weight behind pieces of copycat journalism that…happen to fortify its own editorial position” on the so-called peace process.
Ron, you can’t humiliate the NYTimes. You can only do so, when the party charged with lying has a conscience.
Do we truly believe that the NYTimes did not know this was a pack of lies? Do we truly believe they cared one whit?
The Daily Duranty is beyond being humiliated, they simply do not care about the truth. They have no honor. They know no shame.
Any fool who reads this paper to obtain the truth and advance their own understanding of important events does neither. It is filled today with horrible people doing horrible things to the truth.
And nobody who loves Israel should have a thing to do with that rag.
The NY Times circulation is down to what, now?
It wouldn’t be the first time the New York Times covered for the PA.
http://soccerdad.baltiblogs.com/archives/2010/10/04/absolving_arafat_ten_years_later.html
I disagree with Ron all the time, but it’s easy to see he is an idealist. He believes in such things as truth and justice, even journalistic integrity. He is really quite admirable.
All of which makes it quite obvious why he was forced to abandon his leftist friends.
I estimate that about 1% of leftists think the same as he does. Phil Donohue is probably one. I could think of another, maybe, if I had a few hours to do some research.
Newsweek sold for a buck, I suspect Time will go for less, and I don’t think you could give the Times away.
I recently watched a NYT delivery man pull up in front of me, open the back door of his station wagon, grab papers from his stack, and leave the door open as he made deliveries to various stores and cafes in the block. He clearly had no fear of anyone stealing the papers.
Ron – When I saw the cover of the magazine, I thought to myself, it is a probably a pack of lies to make Israel look bad, so I eschewed reading it. Thanks for confirming my suspicions.
The truth is the NYTimes is irrelevant. Like an old woman who thinks she can still cash in on her long faded looks, paints her face, and draws nothing but pity from onlookers. Dimwits like Avishai, Friedman and the like do not have the intellectual honesty to admit their ” land for peace ” thesis has been proven false. They hang on, bleating, trying to prove they have something to say long after the cows have left the barn. We build and battle and raise our children while the liberals wallow in deviant sex and sow the seeds of their own destruction. So narrow minded and full of self importance they are that that they can’t see G-ds handwriting on the wall.
I usually gauge a news organization based upon how they handle the topics where I have additional knowledge and/or background information. The New York Times continues to fail miserably. Ever since the Jayson Blair scandal, I have been suspicious. And with each passing year, my suspicions grow deeper.
These days I do not regard the newspaper as a credible, independent source. I may still read an article here or there but my skeptic meter remains pegged on maximum for anything they assert.
This is truly sad. They were once a paragon of Journalism. No longer.
So what else is new?
even if Abbas signed a treaty (WHICH I DON’T THINK HE EVER WOULD) it would not be honoured by other Palestinians .
they (the Palestinians) want the whole thing ..all the land and no Jews.
I wonder why we are not being honest with ourselves re Israel. It is currently on a precipice and it’s security has never been more threatened except at it’s founding. To it’s North is Lebanon, controlled by Hezbollah, on it’s territory in it’s middle is the West Bank occupied by its enemies, and to its south in the Gaza strip.
Clearly the formation of any Palestinian state would be a catastrophe. The Radical left has been pushing for this for years. Their dream, thankfully frustrated in the past has, to now, practically evaded them. The left has never been closer, and Israel has never been, potentially, more encircled by its worst enemies.
I wonder if the recent polls showing that 80% of Egyptians want an end to the Camp David plans, is an inherent sign of anti-Israeli sentiment, or – I think more likely – anti-Palestinian sentiment. After all, if a new Palestine state, aka an new embolden Palestine state, borders Israel, also borders Egypt.
With a bit of aggression and cojones, Israel should do the following, or at least work on setting it in motion
1. Abrogate Camp David accords
2. Announce an end to negotiations with Palestinians
3. Work with Egypt, Jordan and Syria (who don’t want the Palestinians either and who are threatened by the left/socialist/Islamic movements) to shatter the Palestinians and scatter them to the winds, take back Gaza Strip and West Bank, defeat the Iranian government, throw Hezbollah out of Lebanon and either absorb the territories thus vacated or arrange something with their allies in Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Or establish a free Lebanon and a free Iran.
“I wonder why we are not being honest with ourselves re Israel. It is currently on a precipice and it’s security has never been more threatened except at it’s founding. To it’s North is Lebanon, controlled by Hezbollah, on it’s territory in it’s middle is the West Bank occupied by its enemies,” …
Should be its. “It’s,” with an apostrophe, denotes a contraction of “it is.”
“… and to its south in the Gaza strip.” Correct.
Thatisall.
“…the West Bank occupied by its enemies….”
Yes, sadly, sometimes Israel can be its own worst enemy.
“…the Palestinian refugees and their myriad descendants…”
Oh, if only! (A myriad is 10,000.)
I’ve argued for years that the Palestinians long ago painted themselves into a corner, from which they cannot possibly extricate themselves without help. They have made terror and unreasonable demands their only tactic for the Palestinian state they say they want. If a Palestinian leader were ever to realize that renouncing violence (and meaning it!) would get him that state in record time, the leader would be denounced as a traitor and a collaborator, and a new hard-line leader would take his place.
In short, peace is not possible with the Palestinians as they are today. I heartily wish it were otherwise.
One day, the Palestinians will realize that their best treatment, by far, has been by Israel. Nobody — not the Jordanians, nor the Lebanese, nor the Egyptians, nor the Syrians, nor anyone else in the Middle East who claims to care about them — has treated the Palestinians as well as Israel has. (Does that make Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians beyond reproach? Of course not. It does, however, put the Palestinians in the position of repeatedly trying to bite the Israeli hand that feeds them.) Contrariwise, one day the Palestinians will realize that the worst enemy in their short history was Yasser Arafat, the man who taught them to raise their children to be human bombs.
I do not expect that day to come any time soon… nor do I see any good ways to get there from here.
And unfortunately, the Palestinians have offered Israel NOTHING that is anywhere near as good as the status quo, bad as that is. (This article does a good job of explaining why that is.) So the status quo will continue. This will be true no matter how many American Presidents think they have an original approach to the problem, and no matter who the Nobel Committee chooses to honor for doing nothing to advance the cause of peace.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
Nice work Ron. The NY Times is the Helen Thomas of news papers. Thanks for helping to expose the old rag to the light of the truth. There’s no fixing old tired and broke.
Figuring out the Times’ stance on Israel has been easy for the past 34 years, and it’s true for many others on the American left. To them, Israel lost its soul in 1977 when Labor’s 29-year period of running the nation ended and Likud and Begin took over. It was the socialist domestic policies of Labor that endeared it and Israel to the Times and to other liberals in America. To them, Likud is the Republican Party and Netanyahu might as well be George W. Bush.
So when Likud leads the coalition running Israel, it might as well be Texas, Kansas or Utah to the people across from the Port Authority on Eighth Avenue. Without a government supporting liberal domestic policies and the American left’s Middle East foreign policy beliefs, the Times sees no reason to support Israel (and the same dynamic led to the Clinton White House sanctioning James Carvelle to go to Israel in 1999 to run Ehud Barak’s campaign, so that Israel would have a more liberal government and Clinton a more plyant leader to agree to a treat with Arafat and win Clinton the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama’s already got one of those, but if the Israelis would just elect a leader who would give in to Hamas and add some more government control to the economy, the Times would love them as they did a generation ago).
I suppose there’s still value in exposing the Times’s duplicity and bias, but I for one have given up the tedious task. Better to ignore them or simply show disdain, then wait patiently for the creaky old battle axe to slip below the waves.
Also check out Rubin Reports from a few weeks ago that discusses the false accusations regarding the Olmert talks and Professor Barry Rubin’s periodic analyses of various NY Times articles and reporters who fail to meet elementary standards of journalism or demonstrate no comprehension of the Middle East.
The NYT has become the Sunset Blvd. of print – ugly, old, delusional and still craving attention.
Norma Desmond: “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”
The NYT has no real cred left in Middle East diplomacy, not even with Ehud Barak or the Israeli left. Sheridan’s questions in the penultimate para are germane—the Palestinians are either too screwed up ['we forgot we go to Amman today'] or simply burdened with mala fides.
Barry Rubin is always good at following up on the silly journalistic unforced errors committed by pseudo-journalists on the left [tautological & redundant, I know].
Stern: “Avishai simply accepts at face value Abbas’s transparently self-serving claim that the reasons the negotiation with Olmert didn’t continue after September 2008 were the start of the Gaza war and his good friend Olmert’s preoccupation with his legal troubles. In other words, it was Israel’s fault.”
Radosh: ‘The truth is, as Stern shows, that this is “pure hokum.” The Gaza war was not on Israel’s horizon until three months after the final Olmert-Abbas meeting.’
Avishai clearly states that “the Gaza border was heating up” during the final meeting between Olmert and Abbas, and that “negotiations were not formally suspended until January, after Israel attacked in Gaza.”
The NYTimes has to be exposed over and over until every serious person interested in the news understands that they are not credible.
The Times has a long sordid record going back decades, but at least years ago there were some bright spots to offset the rest, people like Safire and AM Rosenthal. Today, there is no one with integrity there. Just Thomas Friedman who thinks the world sits in suspended animation awaiting his unmatchable prescient thoughts and Bronner and Kristof who carry water for their boss’s political agenda.
For the NYT it’s not about a new story but new history – the long tested tool and weapon of the left. This is nothing but revisionism happening in front of our eyes.
Soon enough the left and “Palestinians” will start regurgitating this story until some people will believe that this is the truth in which point Obama will make a speech at some country (hostile to Israel, of course) and put the blame squarely on Israel’s shoulders. To the NYT that will be mission accomplished.
I have great admiration for the jews who defend the small State of Israel, their ancient land. And I despise the apostates who defiled it, lying and twisting the truth and using the NYT to spread them.
to solve the israeli palestinian conflict the israeli nation established in 1948 will have to become an israeli republic with a written constitution this plus the recognition that the ancient jewish religion is not applicable thus an isolated israel cannot and will never function in the region as the israeli mosad chief once said to a deaf israeli crowd if we do not intergrate into the region this experiment is useless am lo levadad ishkon a nation can not dwell a lone is the solution mr stern who used to be a friend of mine thinks that the political solution is am levadad ishkon a nation stands alone both stern and avishai who knew my mentor peter bergson know well that his idea of an israeli republic goes back to the holocaust days the fact that israel did not write a constitution is only hurting itself