The New York Times has begged readers’ forgiveness for printing a cartoon that supposedly “included anti-Semitic tropes” in its international edition, but no amount of shameless groveling will stop the Israeli weaponization of the “anti-Semitism” smear as it steamrolls America’s once-sacred First Amendment freedoms. This is a crusade to silence all legitimate criticism of a criminal regime, and if the Times has anything to apologize for, it is its complicity in that quest.
The offending cartoon depicts President Donald Trump as a blind man being led by a guide dog with the face of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, identified by a star-of-David collar. It’s unclear what the “anti-Semitic trope” in this case is supposed to be – the collar is arguably necessary to confirm the dog is Netanyahu, and the reader would have to be a political illiterate to interpret that as a stand-in for “all Jews.” The Times’ willingness to slap the “anti-Semitic trope” label on the cartoon regardless should put to rest the ridiculous “anti-Semitic trope” trope that is tirelessly deployed to smother accusations of wrongdoing by Israel or its lobbying organizations inside the US.
Source: The Times of Israel
Netanyahu himself has boasted that Trump acted on his orders when he declared Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization earlier this month, and Trump’s willingness to flout international law to unilaterally “give” the Golan Heights to Netanyahu as a re-election present shocked the world, unsettling even some Zionists who believe the land is rightfully theirs but worry the US’ official declaration will galvanize regional opposition to the occupation. Netanyahu’s last election campaign was arguably based on his ability to “lead” the US president blindly off the edge of a geopolitical cliff. Is he guilty of perpetuating anti-Semitic tropes for bragging about it?
Most papers only apologize when they’ve printed something erroneous. The Times has chosen instead to issue a correction for one of the few accurate depictions of the relationship between Israel and the White House, a glimmer of truth even more notable for its contrast with the paper’s usual disinformation painting Trump as some sort of foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Semite.
The Times’ decision to apologize for this cartoon while remaining silent when a cartoon depicting Trump in a gay love affair with Vladimir Putin was condemned by LGBT readers last year betrays the editorial board’s high moral dudgeon as the most transparent hypocrisy. US media has long smeared Putin’s government as homophobic, yet here they were presenting him half-clothed in a stomach-turning romantic embrace with Trump – a president who, it should be noted, has presided over the deterioration of US-Russia relations to levels not seen since the Cold War. But LGBT Twitter ultimately has little power in society, unlike the Israeli lobby, and the unfavorable depiction of Trump ensured most influential LGBT organizations steered clear of criticizing the cartoon. Outrage has become yet another commodity to be traded, not a genuine response to offense.l
If it’s in a repentant mood, however, the Times could apologize for its one-sided coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – much of it fed to them by The Israel Project, which skews US coverage of the facts on the ground in Israel by supplying American reporters with talking points in order to “neutralize undesired narratives.” From these spinmeisters we get the passive voice used to frame IDF soldiers mowing down unarmed protesters as “clashes occurred” and “Palestinian protesters were killed,” as well as breathless coverage of tunnels, kites, and rocket attacks that rarely seem to hit anyone.
The Times could apologize for its failure to expose the global campaign to redefine “anti-Zionism” as “anti-Semitism,” instead of playing into it by pretending a truthful cartoon is somehow an affront to Jews – as if all Jews support the racist policies of the Israeli government. Indeed, to assume all Jews back the criminal Netanyahu regime in its openly genocidal campaign to eradicate the Palestinians from the few enclaves of the West Bank in which they remain while maintaining an open-air concentration camp in Gaza is wildly anti-Semitic.
The Times could apologize for failing to report on the massive Israeli spying operation – funded, in no small part, by the US taxpayer – targeting American activists on American soil, exposed in detail in the suppressed al-Jazeera documentary “The Lobby,” which leaked last year to deafening silence in the media. Journalist Max Blumenthal actually spoke with a Times journalist who wanted to cover the explosive revelations of the documentary, but no story ever appeared. As Ali Abunimah, founder of the Electronic Intifada, has pointed out, the suppression of the documentary should have been a story in and of itself – and would have, had it involved any other country.
“Imagine that this had been an undercover documentary revealing supposed Russian interference, or Iranian interference…in US policy, and powerful groups had gone to work to suppress its broadcast and it had leaked out. Just that element of it – the suppression and the leak – should be front page news in the Washington Post and the New York Times,” he told Chris Hedges, whose RT program was the closest thing to mainstream coverage the documentary received in the US.
The Times instead chooses to cover up the actions of groups like the Israel on Campus Coalition as they surveil and smear pro-Palestinian activists – college students, professors, and others sympathetic to Israel’s sworn enemy – using a strategy the ICC’s executive director Jacob Baime admits is based on US General Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq. “The Lobby” revealed that agents working for the Israeli government infiltrate pro-Palestinian, pro-peace groups using fake social media accounts and report their findings back to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a shocking fact that none of the organizations named in the film have disputed. A foreign government operating a military-style surveillance network to target and smear American citizens in their own country – for nothing more than exercising their freedom of speech – gets a pass from the Times, but a cartoon showing Trump’s blind loyalty to Israel for what it is must be condemned.
It’s tough to electrify an outrage mob based on a story that wasn’t printed, but the Times’ failure to address the very real threat to Americans exercising their free speech – a threat all the more dire because it is funded by US tax dollars to the tune of $3.8 billion per year – merits at least a full-page apology. Compounding the insult is a domestic economic crisis, with many American cities facing record homelessness, skyrocketing cost of living, a dearth of secure employment and an excess of exploitative “gig economy” temp work, and a rapidly-disappearing social safety net. Israel is a wealthy country, as Netanyahu often boasts, a successful country. Only a truly blind government could continue to fork over such enormous sums of money while Americans languish in poverty.
“The anti-Semitism smear is not what it used to be,” one lobbyist laments to al-Jazeera’s hidden camera-equipped reporter. Perhaps this is why the state of Florida has advanced a bill to criminalize “anti-Semitism,” now broadly redefined to include “alleging myths…that Jews control the media, economy, government, or other institutions.” The bill passed the House unanimously, the one holdout bullied into submission when she voiced concerns about its incompatibility with the First Amendment, yet to point out – as AIPAC does – that this bipartisan approval exists because the Israeli lobby has influence over both parties, or that this influence can make or break a candidate, is about to become illegal. When even a milquetoast like Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke has stuck his neck out to call Netanyahu a racist – and he receives more money from the Israeli lobby than most of his House colleagues – the Times should be ashamed of itself for pushing the fiction that criticism of Israel and its iron grip on the US government is equivalent to anti-Semitism.
The Times’ own article about its apology quotes an interview with the “guilty” party, Portuguese cartoonist Antonio Moreira Antunes, from the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack, when four cartoonists and the magazine’s editor were murdered, supposedly for printing an offensive cartoon. There is a definite parallel with the Zionist outrage mobs calling for Antunes’ head – figuratively, if not yet literally; many are unsatisfied with the Times’ apology and insist Antunes suffer for his insolence by losing his job, if not his life. Antunes, in the interview, called his job “a profession of risk,” but states “there is no other option but to defend freedom of expression.”
The New York Times, and everyone else who demanded they apologize for a truthful cartoon while ignoring their failure to oppose genuine bigotry in the Netanyahu regime and supporters of Zionism, clearly do not agree that freedom of expression is worth defending. A press that cannot even defend itself does not deserve to be called “free.”
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Helen Buyniski‘s work has been published at RT, Global Research, Progressive Radio Network, and Veterans Today, among other outlets. A journalist and photographer based in New York City, Helen has a BA in Journalism from New School University and also studied at Columbia University and New York University. Find more of her work at http://www.helenofdestroy.com and http://medium.com/@helen.buyniski, or follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
