A few days ago, an editorial cartoon appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer that made lovers of truth blink and gasp.
The cartoon, by Tony Auth, showed Palestinian Arabs fenced in by a giant Star of David.
The outcry (essentially, no terrorism, no fence) came by way of numerous letters to the editor, but an eye-popping response appeared in David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com. In an article titled "Nazi Imagery Goes Mainstream", authors Ricki Hollander and Cynthia Lttleman prove that there is indeed nothing new under the yellow sun of journalism. One frame in this article shows Auth's 2003 rendition of Arabs trapped inside a giant Star of David; another shows Europe trapped inside a giant Star of David. This was drawn back in the 1930s by Josef Plank, Nazidom's leading cartoonist. Here again, a reader had to blink and gasp to tell them apart.
Are we talking anti-Semitism or just plain ignorance?
Back in the ?70s and part of the ?80s, I wrote op-ed columns for the same Inquirer. My beat, however, was "local" and humor, and besides, Israel was not that much in the news. Not like today.
Years after I left, I returned one day with an offer to write a piece on Morton Klein. Mort was not yet leader of ZOA (Zionist Organization of America), but was already known as a strong voice for Israel. Back in my day, the Inquirer was still a club of polite ladies and gentlemen. This time, I recognized nobody and nobody recognized me. The building was practically the same, but not the people. The people were different, very different.
I was shuffled from department to department until I landed in Features. I had already secured approval from the Top Guy, so the editor assigned to my project had no choice but to get me started -- and that's what she did. She kept on getting me started, over and over again, until it became obvious that this woman was not going to let this article go through, not counting how many times she made me rewrite the piece. Her main complaint was that it was too pro-Israel.
"What about the other side?" she demanded.
So I got the other side, but she wanted more and more of the other side, until the piece was practically all about the other side. Mort Klein would have disappeared completely had I moved along according to this editor's commands.
In the end, the whole thing was dropped, and months later someone else, a staffer, profiled Mort, and as I remember it, Mort lost and the other side won.
So what's going on today, in general, is no big surprise. I was especially taken by a defensive comment from an Inquirer editor in reference to the Auth cartoon. This person allegedly said that Auth depicted a valid "interpretation of a situation." But here's what really hit home: a further remark from David Horowitz's website that, according to the Inquirer editor, Auth's opinion is "one shared by others on the newspaper staff."
This sounds awfully familiar. Readers may recall the Oxford Incident of a few months ago, when Professor Andrew Wilkie rejected Israeli student Amit Duvshani because he was... well... Israeli.
Wilkie added this: "As you may be aware, I am not the only U.K. scientist with these views."
Is all this anti-Semitism? Ordinarily yes, but to be charitable, I choose to believe that plain ignorance breathes alongside anti-Semitism.
Like the time when I was editor at KYW all-news radio in Philadelphia. This was one of those moments when Easter and Passover arrived practically the same day. On his way to the microphone, my top-Ivy-League-educated anchor handed me his copy, which read, partly, as follows: "Today, the world's one billion Christians and 300 million Jews..."
I fell down laughing and, when I recovered, said that I corrected that typo.
"What typo?" said my Main Man.
I said, "Three hundred million Jews? Are you kidding? Barely fifteen million."
My Guy insisted that I must be wrong... Yes, 300 million Jews.
"Check the Almanac," I said, which he did, shaking his head in disbelief.
"How could I have been that ignorant?" he said.
That may be something for Auth and the Inquirer to consider for themselves.
The cartoon, by Tony Auth, showed Palestinian Arabs fenced in by a giant Star of David.
The outcry (essentially, no terrorism, no fence) came by way of numerous letters to the editor, but an eye-popping response appeared in David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com. In an article titled "Nazi Imagery Goes Mainstream", authors Ricki Hollander and Cynthia Lttleman prove that there is indeed nothing new under the yellow sun of journalism. One frame in this article shows Auth's 2003 rendition of Arabs trapped inside a giant Star of David; another shows Europe trapped inside a giant Star of David. This was drawn back in the 1930s by Josef Plank, Nazidom's leading cartoonist. Here again, a reader had to blink and gasp to tell them apart.
Are we talking anti-Semitism or just plain ignorance?
Back in the ?70s and part of the ?80s, I wrote op-ed columns for the same Inquirer. My beat, however, was "local" and humor, and besides, Israel was not that much in the news. Not like today.
Years after I left, I returned one day with an offer to write a piece on Morton Klein. Mort was not yet leader of ZOA (Zionist Organization of America), but was already known as a strong voice for Israel. Back in my day, the Inquirer was still a club of polite ladies and gentlemen. This time, I recognized nobody and nobody recognized me. The building was practically the same, but not the people. The people were different, very different.
I was shuffled from department to department until I landed in Features. I had already secured approval from the Top Guy, so the editor assigned to my project had no choice but to get me started -- and that's what she did. She kept on getting me started, over and over again, until it became obvious that this woman was not going to let this article go through, not counting how many times she made me rewrite the piece. Her main complaint was that it was too pro-Israel.
"What about the other side?" she demanded.
So I got the other side, but she wanted more and more of the other side, until the piece was practically all about the other side. Mort Klein would have disappeared completely had I moved along according to this editor's commands.
In the end, the whole thing was dropped, and months later someone else, a staffer, profiled Mort, and as I remember it, Mort lost and the other side won.
So what's going on today, in general, is no big surprise. I was especially taken by a defensive comment from an Inquirer editor in reference to the Auth cartoon. This person allegedly said that Auth depicted a valid "interpretation of a situation." But here's what really hit home: a further remark from David Horowitz's website that, according to the Inquirer editor, Auth's opinion is "one shared by others on the newspaper staff."
This sounds awfully familiar. Readers may recall the Oxford Incident of a few months ago, when Professor Andrew Wilkie rejected Israeli student Amit Duvshani because he was... well... Israeli.
Wilkie added this: "As you may be aware, I am not the only U.K. scientist with these views."
Is all this anti-Semitism? Ordinarily yes, but to be charitable, I choose to believe that plain ignorance breathes alongside anti-Semitism.
Like the time when I was editor at KYW all-news radio in Philadelphia. This was one of those moments when Easter and Passover arrived practically the same day. On his way to the microphone, my top-Ivy-League-educated anchor handed me his copy, which read, partly, as follows: "Today, the world's one billion Christians and 300 million Jews..."
I fell down laughing and, when I recovered, said that I corrected that typo.
"What typo?" said my Main Man.
I said, "Three hundred million Jews? Are you kidding? Barely fifteen million."
My Guy insisted that I must be wrong... Yes, 300 million Jews.
"Check the Almanac," I said, which he did, shaking his head in disbelief.
"How could I have been that ignorant?" he said.
That may be something for Auth and the Inquirer to consider for themselves.