By Wikipedia In a recent article on Egypt, Larry Derfner repeats an unoriginal theme when he ascribes to “us” all sorts of values and opinions merely to place…
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Akiva Eldar is an Israeli journalist and author, currently a chief political columnist and editorial writer for the Israeli national daily Ha'aretz. His columns also appear regularly in the Ha'aretz-International Herald Tribune edition, as well as in the Japanese daily Mainichi Shimbun. He lectured at the School of Journalism in Tel Aviv University and is also a consultant at CBS News. Eldar graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he majored in Economics, Political Science and Psychology. After that he served as spokesperson for former Mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek. Then he was reporter and editor at the Israeli Public Radio. Eldar has been with Ha'aretz since 1978, in 1983-1993 he was the diplomatic correspondent for Ha'aretz. In 1993-1996 he served as Ha'aretz United States Bureau Chief and Washington, D.C. correspondent, covering the peace process, Israel-United States relations, American issues and Israel-Diaspora relations. He was a special consultant to Abba Eban's PBS television documentaries on the history of Israel and the Oslo accords. In October 2007 Akiva Eldar has won the annual Eliav-Sartawi award for Middle Eastern journalism, awarded by Search for Common Ground, an international conflict transformation organization, sharing it with Jordanian journalist Salameh Nematt. Nahum Barnea, winner of the Israel Prize, formulated the "Lynch test", which tests the consistency of Israeli journalists. According to Barnea, Eldar did not criticize Arab terrorism, thus failing the lynch test. Eldat, responded in an article, that he "is guilty as charged. " Eldar wrote that "he is on a mission" and cannot write about the Israeli-Arab conflict in an objective and neutral manner. In a response op-ed, Calev Ben-David wrote that if Eldar is not empathetic of the Israelis' concerns, he will do little "to advance the Palestinian cause, as he merely preaches to the converted and makes his own conscience feel cleaner in the process."
