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The New York Times and Another N-word

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Last Sunday the New York Times provided a package of four articles on Israel, ostensibly to mark the country’s 60th birthday. I didn’t blog about the articles then, and maybe I should have.

But on the other hand, in this week’s Jewish Week Jonathan Mark has done such an impressive job tying all four pieces together–with some other commentary on how Israel is portrayed in the international press–that you’re probably better off reading his views than mine.

It’s not that I agree completely with Mark–I wouldn’t come down quite so hard on Jeffrey Goldberg, for instance, but then Goldberg has probably earned my eternal approval with his book, Prisoners. But Mark sure points out a lot of things worth noting. For instance, on the matter of Elias Khoury’s piece on Israel as “nakba”:

Sophisticated readers of the Times are by now so familiar with the idea that Israel’s birth is someone else’s “catastrophe” (nakba in Arabic) that nakba needn’t be translated anymore when it appears in a headline.

The Times considers the use of [Barack] Obama’s middle name, or the mention of his father’s religion, to be an unacceptable “smear,” but somehow it is not toxic or an unacceptable smear to allow nakba, with all its implications, to be used in a headline about the Jewish state. Racism is as real as Khoury’s anti-Zionism but on Martin Luther King day the Times wouldn’t give a segregationist a column to explain why civil rights was a “catastrophe,” with that other n-word in the headline.

Of course, nakba is used casually in the Arab world an in academic, just as that other n-word was once used casually in Alabama, and now nakba is normalized; Israel can reasonably be seen as catastrophic. If you’re charting Israel’s delegitiization, chart this: The Times, from 1948-1970, never used nakba once; it’s been used 40 times since 1998.

To read Mark’s full text, click here.

This Week In Jerusalem

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Somewhat belatedly, I’m reading all about the first International Writers Festival in Jerusalem, which took place this past Monday-Thursday (May 12-15). And I’m wishing I’d been there.

You can read some of the press coverage here, here, and, in tandem with coverage of a similar event taking place to celebrate Palestinian literature, here.

Of course, all “boycott” talk I’ve found so far has to do with urges to boycott the Israeli-planned festival, not the Palestinian one (and I’m not going to do the proponents of that cause any favors by linking to anything explaining their “reasoning”). It seems that Nadine Gordimer, in particular, was the target of appeals urging her to cancel her participation. Kudos to Ms. Gordimer for resisting the pressure.

Censorship?

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

I’ve often been chagrined by the ample discourse on the supposed suppression of anti-Israel discourse. It’s amazing how much press time–and how many book sales–critics of Israel can get while they’re complaining about how they aren’t allowed to speak or publish or express themselves. It’s infuriating.

So, as David Harris notes, it is indeed worth watching and thinking about what happens when the shoe is on the other foot. Somehow, I suspect certain voices otherwise prone to crying “censorship!” will be conspicuously silent. And anyone who speaks up in favor of disseminating a pro-Israel message will be accused of being a “rightist,” a “neocon,” or some other pejorative sobriquet.