Professor Alan Dershowitz is doing damage control on the Rick Sanchez controversy. Sanchez is, of course, the CNN anchor who got fired for making pointed comments on the Jewish control of the media. Dershowitz takes the familiar line that although many in the media are Jewish, that these are merely individuals who represent no tribal agenda. Jews are "diverse" in their thinking, like everyone else. There is certainly no pro-Israel lobby controlling the news, or so the good professor asserts. One might begin by noting that this apologetic is very similar to "explanations" of the Jewish Communist charge. Yes, there were a lot of Jews involved in Communism in the pre-World War Two days. But those were non-Jewish Jews who had repudiated their Judaism. They were in no way representative of the majority of the world's Jews.
Professor Dershowitz makes much of Jewish critics of Israel in the media. But they are only a tiny minority. The vast majority of the media's Jews strongly support Israel. Perhaps Professor Dershowitz has heard of Israel Asper and his son Leonard, who founded the Cam West chain of newspapers in Canada? It has always been official policy at Cam West to forbid any criticism of Israel in Asper owned newspapers. Such criticism is a firing offense. That the New York Times once upon a day opposed Zionism is about as relevant as the fact that Jewish scholars like Alan Weinstein and Harvey Klehr have been busy confirming the charges of Joseph McCarthy regarding Communist infiltration of the United States. Jewish dislike of McCarthy remains a known fact, just like Jewish media support of the state of Israel remains a known fact.
Alan Dershowitz, in short, is disingenuous. He wishes the reader to believe that Jewish support or lack of support for Israel is a matter of individual differences of opinion, rather like disputes between conservatives and liberals. To see that this is not so one need merely look at the small minority of Jewish organizations that oppose Zionism and Israel, such as Jews For Justice in the Middle East and the American Council For Judaism, versus the infinitely greater number of Jewish organizations that support Israel, such as AIPAC, the World Zionist Organization, Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress and many others. The difference in funding of these organizations is probably about 99-1 in favor of the pro-Zionist organizations. If there is no deliberate pro-Zionist Jewish cabal in the media, as Professor Dershowitz pretends, then the omission of certain information on the evening news is rather difficult to explain. In all the propaganda about Arab terrorism, the terrorist background of the state of Israel is rarely, if ever, mentioned. Thus, there is no mention of the Zionist terror against the British mandate administration that included, among other things, the bombing of the King David Hotel, the assassination of Lord Walter Moyle, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, the break out at Acre prison, the hanging of the British sergeants, Clifford Martin and Mervin Pace and the booby trapping of their bodies and the assassination of the United Nations mediator Count Folk Bernadotte and French Colonel Serot, among other incidents. Nor is there any discussion of the deliberate attack on the U.S. intelligence ship "Liberty" during the 1967 war. Such consistency of suppression of information detrimental to Israel's interests belies Professor Dershowitz's pretense that there is no Jewish cabal in the media.
It would be idle to extend the proof of Jewish agendas in the media by bringing up the extreme pro-Communism of the media in the 1930's. The Jewish enthusiasm for the workers paradise in the Depression decade was just as pronounced as the Jewish enthusiasm for Israel in the media today. But Professor Dershowitz, already irate over allegations of pro-Israeli control in the media, would erupt in volcanic fury if the well documented Yiddish Communist press of long ago were brought into the discussion.
Alan Dershowitz is exercising damage control. He knows full well that, as in the case of Rick Sanchez, more and more people are noticing the Jewish media strangle hold and are speaking out against it. Deshowitz cannot deny the Jewish prominence in the media; he can only try to deny the implications as best he can. His effort is understandable; his conclusions cannot be sustained by the facts.
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