. The Jewish Press is not alone is presenting a slant that is not helpful to the Jewish people and the Jewish Land, Israel. A Hamodia post used an AP news service that did not go into detail why Jews disliked Mary Robinson. You call that objective journalism????? Maybe an outcry from Hamodia and the Jewish Press widely circulated religious Jewish Papers, could have alerted Obama that honoring Mary Robinson deeply offends majority of Jews especially if Jews understand the role she played at Durban. While the News was still fresh, Jewish activism might have made a difference. However, Hamodia did not report what happened at Durban and Robinson's role and their readership who only wants "kosher news" had no clue about Mary Robinson's antisemitic connection to Durban and naturally didn't respond.
There are many important stories in the news. I am sure Obama has done many wonderful things in his life. He might act or be a wonderful father and husband and a paper can choose to have these positive images of him on the front cover. Every news article has a slant. One news headline can be "
" and that 92 percent of American Democrat Jews favor Obama and that there was nearly unanimous approval of Obama's efforts according to a survey of 500 self-identified Democrats with a margin of error plus minus 4% as was in the front page headline of the Jewish Press, Friday August 21, 2009. The Jewish Press could have chosen a different headline that reads "
" and that only 7 percent of Israeli Jews believe that Obama is pro Israel and that 60 percent believe that Obama can not be trusted to take Israel security into account and safeguard them in his diplomatic efforts. (Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research as reported in Arutz 7 and published by 5Times Jewish Times August 14, 2009 page 57 in article headlined
by Gil Ronen, Arutz7. The poll surveyed 512 people and has a margin of error of 4.5 percent) Perhaps both headlines are accurate and important yet they send 2 very different messages. It seems to me that the
One can be an "objective journalist" and at the same time be a soldier in the War of the Media. There is a Media War going on and Jewish Media unfortunately is fighting for the wrong side. Saying that Obama is a favorite of Jews (who will take notice that the headline says Jewish Democrats and not simply Jews?) does not send the message that Jews are concerned under the Obama Administration about the security threat to Israel.
Reporting the News carries with it a moral and social responsibility. .
Unfortunately it deeply pains one like myself, who was made to feel isolated and a minority by this headline, to read that 92 percent of Democratic Jews couldn't care less about Israel's security since apparently they are still "in love" with Obama.
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Women in Green <wfit2@womeningreen.org> Date: Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 2:29 AM
Subject: No second thoughts by Jonathan Tobin
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No second thoughts
August 18, 2009
Jonathan Tobin, THE JERUSALEM POST
When asked about whether US President Barack Obama was rethinking his
decision to give Mary Robinson his nation's highest civilian award, a
spokesman for the White House was quoted as saying that the president
"had no second thoughts" about giving the former Irish president the
Presidential Medal of Freedom. Indeed, the ceremony went off without a
hitch and nary a discouraging word as Robinson and 15 other less
controversial recipients got their medals amid a blizzard of
presidential praise.
Obama lauded Robinson, the woman who presided over the United Nation's
anti-Semitic hate fest at the 2001 Durban Conference on racism, as "an
advocate for the hungry and the hunted, the forgotten and the
ignored," and ignored the widespread criticism of the honoree from a
wide range of Jewish groups as well as some members of Congress.
Robinson is a longtime foe of the Jewish state and even today holds
the post of honorary president of Oxfam, an NGO that gained publicity
last week for firing actress Kirstin Davis of Sex and the City fame as
its spokeswoman because she also represents Ahava, whose Dead Sea
cosmetics are considered off-limits by Israel-haters.
Though the dustup over Robinson cast something of a shadow on an event
that is almost always non-controversial (because the White House
generally eliminates questionable candidates), the dispute did not
generate a great deal of publicity. It was Robinson's good fortune
that the weeks leading up to the ceremony were dominated by a divisive
national debate over health care reform.
Even Obama's most virulent critics on the right were too preoccupied
with the debate over the president's massive expansion of government
power for it to register much of an impact on the nation's political
Richter scale.
BUT FRIENDS of Israel, especially those Jewish Democrats who have been
doing their best to ignore the White House's increasingly belligerent
tone toward the Jewish state, would do well to note what happened with
Robinson. Obama honored a virulent enemy of Israel, someone who bore a
great deal of responsibility for Durban, one of the most disgraceful
episodes in the history of an institution - the UN - that is no
stranger to disgrace. And he has gotten away with it with hardly a
scratch on his reputation.
Though some will dismiss this incident as a minor mistake that will
soon be forgotten, the main lesson to be learned here may not be the
one about presidential award nominations needing to be more thoroughly
vetted. Rather, it may be that as much as this was an unforced error
on the part of the White House, what Obama and his advisers may take
away from this incident is how easily they were able to dismiss a
nearly universal Jewish dismay.
In the weeks to come, the president and his foreign-policy team are
said to be preparing what we are told is a new Middle East peace plan.
The upshot of this exercise may be some sort of peace conference
doomed to certain failure because neither of the two leading
Palestinian factions - the supposedly more moderate Fatah that runs
the Palestinian Authority and the Islamist terrorists of Hamas - have
any real interest in a peace deal with Israel.
As Robert Malley, the former Clinton administration staffer who is a
prominent critic of Israel, wrote in The New York Times last week, for
either group "to accept Israel as a Jewish state would legitimize the
Zionist enterprise that brought about their tragedy. It would render
the Palestinian national struggle at best meaningless, at worst
criminal." Thus, the only possible purpose of the Obama initiative
will be to attempt again to bludgeon Israel into making concessions to
Palestinians that are uninterested in peace.
THE ADMINISTRATION is also still committed to "engagement" with Iran's
despotic Islamist regime and continues to appear uninterested in any
serious effort to stop Teheran from gaining nuclear capability. Though
both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert
Gates have talked about giving the Iranians until after the General
Assembly of the United Nations meets this fall before attempting to
organize more stringent sanctions, this is not a credible stance since
such efforts will not only be undermined by lackluster European
support and open opposition from China and Russia, they will almost
certainly be too late to stop Teheran's nuclear timetable.
On both these issues, despite their hopes that Obama may ultimately
step back from a full-throttle battle, the pro-Israel community may
soon find itself looking into the business end of a White House
propaganda machine that will feel confident about dismissing concerns
about Israel's security in much the same way that they have trashed
opponents of their health care plan.
There are those who take the point of view that the willingness of
mainstream groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and others to
allow any daylight to be seen between themselves and the White House
on the Robinson affair is a sign that Jewish spines are stiffening in
response to Obama's attitude on Jewish security issues. But that
strikes me as over-optimistic at best since left-wing groups with
growing clout among administration circles, such as J Street,
dutifully supported the president on the issue. So long as his leftist
base sticks with him, it's doubtful that the president will worry
about support from mainstream liberals who are loathe to make common
cause with Obama's critics.
Though they may have been surprised that any major Jewish groups had
the chutzpah to oppose the president even on this issue, the
nonchalance with which Obama and his apologists road roughshod over
any opposition to the award may well have taught the White House that
they can get away with anything.
There may have been some who thought Robinson's award would prove to
be Obama's Bitburg moment - a symbolic episode that forever tarnished
Ronald Reagan's reputation even among his most ardent Jewish
supporters. But while Reagan paid a heavy price for offending Jewish
sensibilities by honoring dead SS members at a German cemetery, Obama
escaped from the Robinson award with few scars and little media
attention to the story.
Far from serving as a warning to the White House to tread carefully in
the future when it comes to Israel or the Jews, Mary Robinson's medal
may turn out instead to be a trial run for far worse outrages yet to
come from this president.
The writer is executive editor of Commentary Magazine where he
contributes to its blog Contentions at
www.commentarymagazine.com --
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