Two recent headlines in a Wisconsin newspaper may be difficult for you to stomach: “Israel no longer has the right to exist” and “In defense of October 7th.”
After Rabbi Noah Chertkoff asked The Lakeland Times in Minocqua, Wisconsin, to do better, and after the Chronicle contacted the newspaper for comment, publisher Gregg Walker said it is phasing out both the columnist, Ted Rall, and the provider of his columns, Creators Syndicate.
Chertkoff, spiritual leader for Congregation Shalom in Fox Point, is calling for news editors to be “guardians of integrity and moral boundaries,” after the national syndication service and the Wisconsin newspaper published the columns with the disturbing headlines.
“I don’t want to limit freedom of speech,” Chertkoff said. “But I also think that newspapers have the right and responsibility to make good choices.”
The national columnist Ted Rall authored the two opinion pieces in recent weeks, “Israel no longer has the right to exist,” and “In defense of October 7th.” Both were credited to Creators Syndicate, a service that provides content to local newspapers nationwide, including the Lakeland Times in Minocqua, Wisconsin, which ran both pieces.
“It may sound a little bit idealistic, but I would call for the editors to be guardians of integrity, truth and moral boundaries, and if they really want their newspaper to be a platform for vigorous debate, then they should do so without legitimizing lies or excusing terror,” Chertkoff said.
Creators Syndicate did not respond to Chronicle requests for comment.
But Walker did respond for The Lakeland Times. He said his newspaper would turn to a different source for syndicated content, and that local newspapers sometimes “cycle through” content. He said he would like to have more state of Wisconsin content, if possible. Walker said his newspaper publishes a variety of opinions that he may disagree with, and he disagrees with the Rall columns.
“You wouldn’t see someone printing a defense of Sept. 11 or the Oklahoma City bombing,” Chertkoff said, in an interview with the Chronicle before Walker said he was phasing out Creators Syndicate. “This is not about critiquing Israeli policy. I think we know, people find any reason to critique national governments, both their own and others. It’s a difference when you are calling for the elimination of a state and justifying terrorist acts against civilians.”
“Israel no longer has a right to exist” was published in the Lakeland Times on Aug. 8. The article states that Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, is a “terminally ill society.”
Rall writes in the piece that historically, societies would kill or banish problematic people to restore calm, and that “Israel is a witch.” He added: “Sometimes a country becomes so troublesome to its neighbors that the global community determines that it, like an alleged witch, must be excised.”
After Chertkoff became aware of the piece, he wrote a letter to the editor raising “falsehoods” and the promotion of a “dehumanizing” and “destructive” narrative in the article. The newspaper ran his letter in its Aug. 22 edition, on the same page as another Rall piece, “In defense of Oct. 7.”
The “In defense of Oct. 7” piece does say “civilian non-combatants are never legitimate targets,” but only after favorable discussion regarding the attacks that targeted civilians, killed more than 1,000 people, and included the rape, torture, and abduction of ordinary people as hostages. Rall concludes that “October 7th was a good idea with poor execution,” and the idea of resistance was “noble, justified and necessary.” His article claims that Israel “let the October 7th attack happen,” linking to a New York Times piece about security and intelligence failures.
Editors, Chertkoff said, should check the facts in the articles they publish. Chertkoff said that “sweeping claims about casualty figures” in Gaza and an allegation that Israel “installed” a new ruler in Syria are both factually unsupported.
In his letter to The Lakeland Times, the rabbi wrote that the first article “asserted that Israel has ‘intentionally slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians’ in Gaza, an accusation wildly out of step with casualty figures from credible, independent sources, and unsupported by evidence …. We can and should debate histories and hold nations accountable for injustice. But calling for the elimination of the only homeland of a historically persecuted people is something else entirely.”
Rall has a long history as a provocative political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist. In July 2015, the Los Angeles Times published a “note to readers” stating that Rall had been dropped from the paper, because of allegations regarding the accuracy of his writing.
Chertkoff’s letter to The Lakeland Times asked for the newspaper to review editorial standards, retract the “right to exist” column, and end its relationship with Rall. The Lakeland Times ran a response in print, arguing that it is offering a forum for opinion. Afterward, when contacted by the Chronicle, Walker said the paper will “phase out” Creators Syndicate and its Ted Rall column.
“Editors, when working with syndicates, they are curators, right?” said Chertkoff, in an interview before Walker said he was phasing out the column. “And I understand that they want to create some legitimate debate in the public square. But there are also lines that they should draw between critique and legitimizing terror, or before the denial of a right to exist.”
“When you think about hate speech and you think about the limits to freedom of speech that exist in the United States, usually we draw the line at calls to harm people.”
Thinking about what Chertkoff wrote in his letter to the editor, Walker said: “I respect the rabbi’s opinion 100 percent. I agree with him.”
He also noted that his newspaper ran an editorial supporting Israel in the Israel-Hamas war, which argued: “Pro-Hamas demonstrators seek to dismantle not just a homeland for Jews but one of the only authentic democracies remaining in the world. Along the way they hope to exterminate an entire people.”
The Nov. 23, 2023, opinion piece was co-authored by Walker, and he said he still supports what he wrote. The piece included: “Let us all remember, as many in our own nation clamor for a ceasefire, that a ceasefire is nothing but a call for Israeli surrender.”
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