How the Media Cracks Down on Critics of Israel
JVL Introduction
In this article in Current Affairs Nathan J. Robinson tells a story which really beggars belief.
He had a regular column the Guardian US, writing generally about US politics. He has never written about Israel.
Then last December he wrote two sarcastic linked tweets, in which he made a joke about Israel and US arms expenditure.
It really was a joke, but the same day he received a noted from John Mulholland, editor in chief of the Guardian US (whom he had never been in touch with before) expressing concern about the tweets.
Robinson immediately deleted the tweets and apologised and was thanked for his swift action and his thoughtful response.
Since then he has never been commissioned to write another article for the Guardian…
This article was originally published by Current Affairs on Wed 10 Feb 2021. Read the original here.
How the Media Cracks Down on Critics of Israel
I was fired as a newspaper columnist after I joked about U.S. military aid to Israel on social media.
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The Groaniad is too refined to be compared with the Voelkischer Beobachter. Perhaps Das Schwarze Corps – theoretical monthly of the SS, whose regular readership as well as whose writers included a disproportionately high proportion of Doctors of Philosophy (including Joseph Goebbels himself) would be a more accurate comparator. But to be fair to the SS, they didn’t, unlike the ‘most progressive news source in the USA’, conceal their vicious racism.
What does that say about the Groaniad’s READERSHIP, though? YOU and ME. …The Groaniad long ago showed that its slogan ‘comment is free’ was and is a barefaced lie. How do we follow David Graeber’s lead en masse?
After subscribing to the Guardian for more than half a century, my wife and I gave up on it over its relentless irrational onslaught on Jeremy Corbyn.
Excellent article by Nathan. Sad loss to a newspaper that is increasingly known to now heavily censor its journalists, and comment where Israel is concerned.
A major consequence is that Israel gets away with, and operates more and more, as if it has impunity in occupied Palestine. In the current climate outlets like JVL and writers like Nathan are worth their weight in gold!
Recent decisions by the ICC and B’Tselem give hope.
Follow the money. There is no honest journalism anymore. The ‘truth’ is what the owners say it is.
You are right – criticize Israel and lose your position. This ruthless equation extends well beyond columnists and includes straightforward reporting which is routinely censored, including apparently, self-censorship. Eg. David Sanger at the NYT reported at length about Anne Neuberger, Biden’s new cyber security guru at the NSC, yet Sanger managed to avoid reporting that she and her family had made a half billion dollar contribution to AIPAC. Same news avoidance in the Washington Post’s Neuberger story as well as at the Israel-loyal Associated Press, which apparently reported nothing. I live in Maryland and get zero constituent services from either US senator or my member of Congress, when inquiring about US favoritism displayed toward Israel. I am dead to these office holders. Which suggests, if Israel and AIPAC continue to win every single skirmish with every single voter, our Democracy is dead, too.
Re. My 13th February 2021 comment, permit me to add a link to the excellent piece by David Corn in MOTHER JONES, which provides details @ Biden’s cybersecurity appointee, Anne Neuberger, and her family’s gift of half a billion dollars to the American lobby group, AIPAC.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/01/top-biden-cybersecurity-aide-donated-over-500000-to-aipac-while-an-nsa-official/
I stopped buying the Guardian in August 2014 after it published an advert from Elie Wiesel about Palestinians which allegedly even the Times would not touch. I wrote a long letter to the then editor, Alan Rusbridger but never got a reply. Read the Morning Star!