When Israeli settlers recently went on a rampage in Hebron against their Palestinian neighbors, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert condemned the violence as a “pogrom,” and it was denounced by many Jewish organizations.
But the umbrella organization that pretends to represent the whole community — the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (COP) — pretended it never happened.
The COP didn’t deem the incident important enough to mention in its Daily Alert news brief sent to thousands of Jewish community leaders, activists and anyone interested in Israel.
It may have been the top news story in all the Israeli media and covered around the world for several days, but it didn’t show up on the web pages of COP or the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, which prepares the Daily Alert.
Nothing new in that. For years the Daily Alert has largely ignored news unfavorable to the increasingly violent settler movement.
That reflects the ideology of the Jerusalem Center, which is run by Amb. Dore Gold, a protégé of Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, and the COP, which is run by the Likud-leaning Malcolm Hoenlein, a strong supporter of the settlers.
The publication is billed as offering “a broad perspective on security issues,” but when it comes to the settlers, it tells only one side of the story. The ideologically driven report misses no opportunity to portray Arabs in a negative light.
In case you only read the Daily Alert and missed the story, here’s what happened, according to news media reports:
On Dec. 11, Defense Minister Ehud Barak sent 100 police special forces to enforce a High Court decision calling for the eviction of militant settlers illegally occupying a house in the West Bank city of Hebron. Two security officers were wounded. One had acid sprayed in his face by a settler.
What happened next would have made the Cossacks of tsarist Russia proud.
Enraged settlers took out their anger on their Palestinian neighbors, burning their fields and olive groves, stoning cars, firing indiscriminately and wounding three, vandalizing homes, farms, businesses and even cemeteries.
One Palestinian family was driven from its home by masked men, beaten and terrorized while hundreds of Jewish residents from nearby Kiryat Arba stood around watching and cheering as the house was destroyed. It took more than an hour for security forces to show up.
“I thought they were going to lynch those people,” said Ha’aretz reporter Avi Issacharoff, who called it “a pogrom in the worst sense of the word.”
One settler was arrested after being filmed by an Israeli human rights group shooting at Palestinians. One man was wounded.
None of this was important enough to show up in the Daily Alert in the issues following these incidents (prior to this writing), but prominent play was given to COP’s call for President Bush to pardon convicted but unrepentant spy Jonathan Pollard, a right wing cause célèbre.
This “slant by omission,” one regular reader wrote to COP, “undermines the creditability and usefulness of the Daily Alert.” Hoenlein said he agreed and had told the editors the story should have been covered, but it wasn’t.
Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg called the Hebron settlers “a threat to Israel and to Zionism” and “a disgrace to Judaism.”
Olmert said, “The sight of Jews firing at innocent Palestinians has no other name than pogrom. I am ashamed that Jews could do such a thing.” Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann echoed his views.
Olmert instituted a zero-tolerance policy against settler violence and ordered the army to crack down on violators. Security forces fear the violence will spread, targeting peace activists in Israel (one was wounded in a bomb attack in September) and possibly spark another Intifada.
So far in 2008, there have been some 700 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians and Israeli soldiers, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.
One result of the spreading violence is continued erosion of public support inside Israel and in the Jewish community here for the settlers, notwithstanding cheerleaders like COP and the Jerusalem Center.
Leading Jewish organizations condemned the settler violence, but not all, according to JTA. The Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Americans for Peace Now, Ameinu, J Street and the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center denounced the attacks.
The Zionist Organization of America, on the other hand, recently opened an office in the disputed building in support of settler claims and sent out an appeal in support of the squatters.
The National Council of Young Israel accused the Israeli government of a “despicable act of cowardice.” The Orthodox Union was conspicuously silent.
The institutionalized bias reflected in the Daily Alert would be understandable in the newsletter of a single organization like the OU or ZOA.
But in the umbrella group that claims to represent the broad spectrum of the American Jewish community, it points to leaders gravely out of touch with Jewish majorities in this country and Israel, and who do not understand the difference between information and propaganda.
Douglas M. Bloomfield is a Washington, D.C.-based syndicated columnist and a former chief lobbyist for AIPAC.
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