She paid far more attention to Israeli critics, including Arab Knesset member Ahmad Tibi, who labeled Israel a “Judocracy.” For obvious reasons, he neglected to mention any Arab state whose parliament includes Jewish members (probably because there are none).
Responding to Tibi’s falsehood, a perceptive reader noted (December 1) what the Times preferred to ignore: if the Jewish and democratic state of Israel is fiction, then Tibi would not be an elected member of the Knesset.
The next day the Timeseditorial board weighed in with a predictable polemic entitled “Israel Narrows Its Democracy.” Labeling the Israeli Cabinet vote “heartbreaking,” it preposterously identified the Basic Law proposal with “the systematic denial of full rights to minorities” that had for so long characterized the treatment of African-Americans in the American South. (At least it did not mention South Africa.)
In any form, it continued, the Israeli proposal should be defeated because it would either be useless or “it would seriously antagonize an already seething Arab minority and erode Israel’s standing among democratic nations.”
“In this time of high tensions and violence between Jews and Arabs” in Israel, Timeseditors added, “any measure that claims a pre-eminent status for Jews” – in a Jewish state, no less – “can only add fuel to the fire.”
Citing the “grievous legacies created when a government diminishes the rights of its people,” the editorial self-righteously concluded, “we know this is not the path that Israel should take.”
Arab and Muslim states, however, were not admonished to protect the rights of their remaining Jews, barely enough in most countries to form a minyan. Somehow the repeated assertion by the Palestinian Authority that not a single Jew would ever be permitted to live in “Palestine” continued to escape Timeseditorial notice.
Marching in lockstep with her editorial board, Jerusalem Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren, whose coverage of the Gaza war last summer set new parameters for biased Times journalism toward Israel, also chimed in (December 8). Palestinian citizens, she noted, found the Cabinet proposal “offensive” because their “relatives…fled or were expelled in 1948.”
Not a word, however, about desperate Holocaust survivors and Middle Eastern Jews (exceeding Palestinian refugees in number) who fled to Israel to find safety in a Jewish state.
As Rudoren regretfully noted, “leaders of the Jewish diaspora” found the proposal “embarrassing” and even “dangerous.” In particular, she cited the “outpouring of outrage from American Jews.” Why the outrage? Surely because the Basic Law proposal might embarrass American Jewish liberals terrified of guilt by association with the Jewish state. That fear, a fundamental precept of anti-Zionism in The New York Times,has been embedded in its Sulzberger publishing dynasty for eighty years.
Even The Wall Street Journal, normally in Israel’s corner, welcomed critics of the Israeli Cabinet decision on its Opinion page (December 1). David Ellenson, Reform rabbi and chancellor of Hebrew Union College, and historian Deborah Lipstadt collaborated in expressing their “alarm” over the Cabinet proposal. To be sure, it evoked “sadness” among those (the authors conspicuous among them) who preen about their identity as “staunch supporters – indeed lovers – of the state of Israel,” which is “central to our own self-understanding and identity as Jews.”
With fickle friends like these, however, Israel hardly needs enemies.
Ellenson and Lipstadt asserted that the Israeli proposal “betrays the most fundamental principles enshrined in the Israeli Declaration of Independence.” To the contrary: Israel’s founding text explicitly proclaimed the establishment of “a Jewish state.” They also expressed concern lest the bill “inflame” Israeli Arab citizens – who at least enjoy the right to express their criticism of government policy that few Arab or Muslim states permit to their own Judenrein populations.
