NY Times Insinuates Against Israel Lobby

NY TIMES INSINUATES AGAINST ISRAEL LOBBY 16492 – Shulman

Charles W. Freeman, Jr., has withdrawn his name from nomination for “a
top intelligence post.” He claimed to be the “victim of a concerted
campaign by what he called the “Israel lobby.’”

“Mr. Freeman has long been critical of Israel, with a bluntness that
American officials rarely voice in public about a staunch American
ally. In 2000, he warned that, “left to its own devices, the Israeli
establishment will make decisions that harm Israelis, threaten all
associated with them, and enrage those who are not.”

“The critics who led the effort to derail Mr. Freeman argued that such
views reflected a bias that could not be tolerated in someone who, as
chairman of the National Intelligence Council, would have overseen the
production of what are supposed to be policy-neutral intelligence
assessments destined for the president’s desk.”

Sen. Schumer “…said that Mr. Freeman showed an ‘irrational hatred of
Israel’…”
Another critic suggested that Freeman’s views are as if from the Saudi
Foreign Ministry, to which he once was ambassador.

His defenders suggest that the criticism was just political, and that
one is not allowed to criticize US support for Israel.

To avoid criticism over his other choices of aides, candidate Obama
distanced himself from Mr. “Brzezinski, the national security adviser
under Pres. Jimmy Carter, who has sometimes been critical of Israel.”

“As head of the Middle East Policy Council, he [Freeman] was a
frequent critic of policy toward Israel. In a speech in 2005, he said
that “as long as the US continues unconditionally to provide the
subsidies and political protection that make the Israeli occupation
and the high-handed and self-defeating policies it engenders possible,
there is little, if any, reason to hope that anything resembling the
former peace process can be resurrected.” (Mark Mazzetti & Helene
Cooper, NY Times, 3/12, A1). (See below for ZOA statement of
Freeman’s record.)

This article omits key facts that would correct the false judgments it
quotes. It pulls its punches against Freeman, leaving him almost a
reasonable and sympathetic character. It leaves an misimpression of
censorship against mere criticism of some Israeli policies. Here is
how.

To be sure, the Times’ usual non-sequential reporting tends to obscure
the story. But as too often to seem coincidental, the paper often
leaves the best argument for Israel to the end paragraphs, which many
readers never reach. Mr. Freeman has made some antagonistic
statements about Israel, reflecting extreme bias and poor
understanding. The first statements of his quoted in the article were
mild. That makes him really seem persecuted. The last statement
reveals more of his antipathy towards Israel.

That antipathy refutes his contention, one shared by antisemites and
the anti-Zionist NY Times (which does not give “full disclosure” about
its own, traditional bias against Jewish sovereignty), that a mere
criticism of some Israeli policy is censored by the Israel lobby.
Something is made to seem wrong with Israel having a lobby but not
Greece, whose lobby once was powerful, nor the Arab lobby, which
remains powerful, more so than the Israel lobby that can’t stop arms
shipments going to the Arabs, etc.. Another double standard against
the Jews.

Freeman’s nostalgia for the “former peace process” tips us off about
the poor quality his intelligence reports would have been, based as
they are on bias. What they called “peace process” was a one-way
series of concessions to the Arabs, who never ceased their bigotry and
terrorism. They exploited the concessions to make war. The
concessions were leading Israel to insecure borders and other
weaknesses. Since the Arabs retained their belligerency, not only
were further concessions futile, they were foolish.

“Peace process” is a euphemism for Arafat’s Phased Plan for the
Conquest of Israel. It was phony.

Let me alert you to a major propaganda technique by the Times and by
the biased officials it defends. Almost all the criticism is of
Israel. That is suspicious. It indicates bias. Almost the only
criticism of the Arabs is when their intransigence or their aggression
hinders the State Department’s anti-Zionist diplomacy just as that
diplomacy has cowed Israel’s leaders into being amenable to it. But
rarely does those critics of Israel criticize the Arabs, who, after
all, are anti-American, genocidal, and part of the global jihad
against civilization. A genuinely pro-American policy would be to
help our ally defeat the jihadists, just as the US needs to do in
Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc..

Criticism certainly isn’t censored in the Times, which, instead,
minimizes coverage of Israeli defenses against such criticism. The
last quotation of Freeman begins to show that what he calls specific
criticism really is part of the Western drive to appease jihad and
render Israel defenseless, by taking up the Arab side and disregarding
Jewish claims to the Territories and need for secure borders.

Let us distinguish between criticism of Israel based on facts, logic,
law, and ethics, and criticism based on prejudice. Let us distinguish
between criticism of some policy here or there, and criticism that
would undermine Israel’s survival. Freeman’s and the Times’ are based
on prejudice against Israel and its survival. To add insult to
injury, the Times pretends that its criticism of Israel is in the
national interest both of Israel and of the US.

No, that criticism would take from Israel and give to the Arab
aggressors, leaving Israel non-viable and with indefensible borders
(as I’ve discussed in many articles). The first result of this would
be to boost jihad morale and power. The second result would be to get
Israel destroyed. The result of that would be to deprive the US of a
strong ally and to enable jihadists to consolidate their region
against the US.

Freeman’s final statement hints at a warped anti-Zionist record, which
is not suitable for a national security adviser to the President.
Therefore, the earlier defense of him, as being the victim of
politics, is misleading. A misleading statement should not be allowed
to stand unchallenged. Readers would have to peruse the whole
article, to find, at the end, the Freeman statement that hints that
the criticism of him is what is reasonable, not his criticism of
Israel.

To allege that Jimmie Carter “has sometimes been critical of Israel”
is extreme journalistic distortion. Carter devotes books to
deliberately false claims against Israel so defamatory as to support
efforts to dismantle or destroy the Jewish state. Carter raves. His
book reviewers don’t. The Times’ understatement is disgracefully
deceptive. What an insight that gives into the paper’s own bias!

Many former US diplomats who served in Arab states retire to serve
Arab states. A Saudi prince boasted that while in the US employ,
those diplomats and their successors learn to accommodate to Saudi
views, to they can retire to cushy jobs. In other words, S. Arabia
indirectly but consciously bribes the State Dept.. That’s a serious
subversion, which the Times, ostensibly pro-American, should be
exposing. We should be questioning how pro-American is the State
Dept., due to its biased agenda and its short-sightedness.

On the other hand, there is a type of criticism of Israel that is
censored. One almost never finds it in the Times. That criticism is
Jewish nationalist or patriotic Israeli. That criticism finds that
the rulers of Israel have defeatist policies and oppress their own,
Jewish people. Thus the real censorship is of views from Jews loyal
to the US and Israel, who see Israel’s policies as appeasement of the
Arabs and of the State Dept. and as leading to Israel’s demise.

I criticize Israeli policies the dissident way. I criticize its
failure to enforce the law against Arab rioting, land seizure, illegal
building, illegal immigration, destruction of ancient Jewish artifacts
on the Temple Mount. I criticize its preferences for Arab college and
civil service admission, its subsidies on Arab non-citizen residents
of Jerusalem and its arrests of Israelis who criticize those
policies.

What do the Times and State Dept. say Israel should do about illegal
Arab building? They say Israel should ignore it. Case closed!

ZOA STATEMENT OF FREEMAN’S RECORD

These are just the most clearcut examples. The Middle Eastern Policy
Council is endowed by S. Arabia and lobbies for the Arabs. [Thus
Freeman part of the Arab lobby, has a conflict of interest that the
newspaper failed to advise readers of.]

The Council published favorably the anti-Jewish Mearsheimer-Walt tract
[that takes up the old antisemitic cry that the Jews are too
powerful].

Freeman blamed 9/11 and assaults on US forces on US support for
Israel. [He exaggerates that support, which rather than being
“total,” really is mostly non-stop criticism of Israeli self-defense,
efforts to take land from the Jews and give it to the Arabs, and
subsidy of Arab terrorists.] He blames on Israel “brutal oppression”
of the Arabs in the Territories (IMRA, 3/11).

I know of brutal Arab attacks on Jews, but those who criticize Israel
as treating Arabs brutally do not document it. That’s because it is
not brutal. On the other hand, the Times rarely publicizes P.A. Arab
indoctrination in brutality.
.

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