BBC and NYT Had No Time to Mourn French Jews
BBC and NYT Had No Time to Mourn French Jews

Shame on The New York Times. Shame on the BBC and shame on Jon Stewart. History will remember them as fiddling while Paris burned.

For the moment, kudos to Charlie Hebdo for going on, and for my part in fearless journalism, I offer heroic Editor Jay Garfield on these pages. Integrity first, whatever the risk. Nothing is more dangerous than a misleading press and a misinformed public. Empires fall when news is corrupted.

Even as the four innocent Parisians from the Islamic slaughter were being laid to rest in Jerusalem, the Times saw fit to print an obscene piece of drivel from a so-called young Israeli whose deranged discontent the paper gladly published because it was Monday – and The New York Times must keep to its schedule of Israel bashing at least once a week.

The New York Times must keep to its schedule of Israel bashing at least once a week.
There is no stopping the Times even to pause for a moment in respect for the dead.

The piece ran with the headline “Why I Won’t Serve Israel,” under a byline from someone allegedly named Moriel Rothman-Zecker.

Nobody knows this punk but as for the Times versus Israel, any punk will do.

And I say alleged because as noted earlier, I suspect that all these different bylines in the Times are actually written by one person, probably Tom Friedman.

If you want Israel demonized on paper, Tom Friedman is your man.

If you want Israel demonized over the airwaves, the BBC is your place.

Others have called attention to a BBC ambush that took place during the Paris rally that drew more than a million. I happened to catch the moment when reporter Tim Wilcox singled out a woman for her reaction. As camera and microphone zoomed in, she must have expected a simple answer to a simple question.

She could not have been ready for a political browbeating. She expressed the fear that the 1930s were happening all over again. Yes, anti-Semitism.

The lady is no professional at this game, so we watched her being stung and stunned as this pro, Tim Wilcox, insisted that she answer for the poor Palestinians “who suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well.” I forget what she said to this, if anything. I could only share her nausea and trembling.

I wished I were there instead. I wondered if I would be nimble enough to set the man straight. Doubtful, as I too am a stranger to the spotlight, an amateur.

Whatever the occasion, like the Times, the BBC manages to get its message across.

So does Jon Stewart. Jimmy Carter was his guest.

His take on bloodied Paris? Same as the BBC’s. He blamed it on the Palestinian conflict. He blamed it on the Jews. Stewart nodded in deferential agreement.

If we are to believe that Europe is suddenly awake to the Islamist peril, we turn back to the BBC and watch HARDLINE’s Stephen Sackur hectoring Israel’s Yehuda Glick, a “West Bank” rabbi who’d been shot by Arab terrorists when he ascended the Temple Mount. 

Glick’s point was tolerance. Sackur’s point was intolerance. The Jews must know their place.

This was another case of an amateur to the spotlight being badgered by a professional broadcast bully.

More on this perhaps next time as we find bullying to be the preferred BBC and European tactic in dealing with Jews and the Jewish State – and in case anyone believes that a rally changes anything, or that overnight the world has come to its senses.

Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the novelist, the inside-the-newsroom tell-all thriller, The Bathsheba Deadline. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Website: www.jackengelhard.com