Another Tack: Been betrayed before

So what if the 'Times' played up Peace Now's allegations and devoted an entire broadsheet to them?

By SARAH HONIG
The time-tried truism that the more things change the more they stay the same is gallingly vindicated with unpitying recurrence. There's no let-up. Just last week we were treated to yet another dog-and-pony show, courtesy of Israel's ignoble species of ultra-leftist self-loathing Jews and The New York Times, whose history is replete with the most pathological of Jewish self-hate syndromes. Last week Peace Now produced one more great snitching extravaganza, which failed to surprise. Neither did the Times's obliging resonation thereof. Peace Now rushed to squeal to the entire waiting world that most of Israel's settlements in Judea and Samaria, including whole Jerusalem metropolitan area neighborhoods, were constructed on "usurped Arab private property." Never mind that most of the info is brazenly fraudulent (in part relying on the fact that Arabs continue to claim lands they sold to Jews for exorbitant prices). Never mind that the world, Jew-baiting and hostile to the Jewish state's self-preservation, awaits such calumny with insatiable carnivorous craving. Never mind that the history of how Shimon Peres and his Labor government, for instance, approved the construction of Ariel in 1977 is hardly as pressing as current life-and-death ordeals of survival besetting Israel. Nothing whatever new here. Peace Now's ideological forebears were every bit as callous to the plight of existentially vulnerable Jews, even on the eve of their bleakest hours, as the Holocaust loomed and darkened our horizons. And just at that time, and even during the subsequent most monstrously deliberate and systematic bloodletting the world has known, the assimilationist Jewish owners of the Times engaged in an unconscionable cover-up and/or diminishment of the slaughter and of the identity of its victims. So what if the Times saw fit to play up Peace Now's allegations and devote no less than an entire broadsheet to them? It again outrageously distorted the criteria of newsworthiness - with the particular relish it reserves for knocking the Jewish national cause. What was, unfortunately, remains what is. Thus the alacrity to sell out and inform on one's co-nationals has always typified this country's Left - from the Communists egging on the Mufti's genocidal pro-Nazi henchmen between 1936-39, to the (hunting) saison against Revisionist underground fighters (in the IZL and Lehi), who were turned over to Mandatory authorities for long prison terms or even executions. But the lesser-known and perhaps most distressing episode in the Left's shameful annals was its campaign against "illegal" immigrants just prior to WWII, when the ground already burned under European Jewry's feet. The Left-dominated Jewish Agency was charged by the British with distributing the paltry number of "certificates" (immigration permits), which it allocated with unabashed bias, essentially barring "undesirables," i.e. political rivals. Those determined not to be impeded by discrimination had to resort to various "illegal" options to reach these shores, including the exploitation of bogus student and tourist visas, as well as fictitious marriages to fortunate certificate holders. All above "illegals" became prey in what would become known as the "hunt." British police conducted raids and the Left avidly collaborated with spot checks on buses, cafes, lodgings and workplaces. While sparing no hyperbole to denounce the "illegals" for supposedly jeopardizing the entire Zionist endeavor, left-wingers edged towards identification with inimical Arab perceptions. It's a psychological process not far removed from that of their progeny and torchbearers today, who increasingly subscribe to the enemy's point of view. They besmirch their own country, omitting to mention that we aren't the greedy French in Africa, presumptuous Brits in India or even expansionist Americans in Texas. Our so-called "territories" are literally home both in terms of geographical proximity and historical pertinence. Failure to acknowledge this is tantamount to accepting Arab portrayals of Jews as foreign interlopers, which more sensitive local leftist souls have already done and with whom the Times habitually concurs. It'd take a thick volume to scrutinize the Times's sordid underreporting and minimizing of the Holocaust. Journalist and academician Laurel Leff produced just such an exemplary volume last year, Buried by the Times, an engrossing examination of a great newspaper's abject moral failure, given its unparalleled opinion-molder prominence. "The Times's coverage," Leff concludes her extraordinarily exhaustive analysis, "mattered because other bystanders…took cues from the Times." Yet in the end "the Times helped drown out the last cry from the abyss." During all of WWII it saw fit to publish only two lead editorials on Jewish issues. One, on January 22, 1942, was an acerbic attack on demands for all-Jewish military units under British auspices (which were eventually created as the Jewish Brigade). While the extermination of Jews continued unabated, the Times's indignation was spent on preventing the formation of "a Zionist army." In February 1942 the rickety illegal immigrant ship Struma sank after the British refused to let its refugees enter Eretz Yisrael. All but one of its 768 passengers perished. The Times gave it four bland paragraphs on an inside page. The New York Post and Mirror and The Washington Post judged the horror deserved editorial condemnation. Contrast that with the Times's earlier front-page treatment for the capsizing of another "illegal" vessel, the Patria, whose tragedy was caused by a miscalculated Hagana effort to disable the ship's engines so the British couldn't move it from Haifa port. The Times's scale of values was unmistakable - a story that embarrassed the Zionists won pride of place; the one that highlighted Jewish misfortune and embarrassed Zionism's foes was downplayed. It's still oppressively so nowadays. The Times's collusion with Peace Now is nothing unexpected. Been there. Seen that. Been betrayed before. Been disgusted to the gills.