cramer@sun.uucp (Sam Cramer) (01/23/86)
After complaining that I distort his position on Israeli control of American Jewish organizations and Jewish control of the media, Chedley Aouriri goes on to confirm my characterizations. Referring to my paraphrase > In other words: > > 1. The American Jewish organizations are directly controlled by the > Israelis and act against US interests. Chedley states > Your Statement 1 is over stating the case, but is basically true. [Recall that Chedley's original statement was > So are the Israelis: they scramble their lobbies and the american > jewish organizations **(which are under their direct control)** - emphasis mine. I'll leave it up to net.politics readers to decide whether I have accurately paraphrased Mr. Aouriri.] Anyone not preoccupied with antisemitic fantasies of Israel dictating a party line to their slavish servants, the American Jewish community, would have noticed that American Jewish groups often disagree loudly with the government of Israel. For example, during the war in Lebanon, critical statements were issued by the coordinating body of Reform Judaism (by some accounts the largest of the three major Jewish religious groupings). Further, one would have to have been blind to miss the torrent of dissenting letters from major Jewish figures in newspapers such as the "New York Times" and the "Washington Post" during the war. In response to my paraphrasing him as saying that the Jews control the media, Chedley responds > Your statement 2 is an inference many drawed [sic] after reading > and listening to news editorials during the israeli invasion of > Lebanon ... One suspects that Chedley was among those who "drawed" this noxious and false inference. The truth of the matter is that the press was, in general, quite hostile to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Who can forget John Chancellor standing on a balcony in Beirut, declaiming that "what we are dealing with here is an Imperial Israel?" Media hostility to Prime Minister Begin ("rhymes with Fagin", said Time Magazine) was notorious. And have we forgotten about the Time-Sharon libel trial? I'm still waiting for your retraction and apology, Chedley. Sam Cramer sun!cramer