He had.
From his new perch in Goa, India, Gutkin writes a “news and entertainment weekly,” Goa Streets.
Gutkin addressed some of Friedman’s accusations in two blog entries. Both were written after the Tablet article, but before the one in the Atlantic, a part of which was the focus of The Jewish Press story.
What does come through in Gutkin’s responses, both explicitly and implicitly, is a hostility to Israel and a deep and abiding hatred of what he sees as the central story of the Arab-Israeli conflict: the “Occupation.”
After all the sturm und drang, readers will have to conclude whether there was an AP ban on using Gerald Steinberg and NGO-Monitor’s materials around the time of Operation Cast Lead, as a means of critiquing NGOs critical of Israel, as Matti Friedman claimed and as AP’s director of media relations denies.
Nothing about any alleged ban was put in writing, at least nothing those who claim the ban existed were able to produce.
But the evidence produced by those who deny the ban doesn’t hold up.