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Reporting for Duty With Britain’s Israel-hating Mob
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More in Forward ForumThe first thing I did after I started working as a staff reporter at the London-based Jewish Chronicle was to join the National Union of Journalists. Those dependable union reps, I was told, would safeguard my every interest.
Holding on to that belief has become rather hard, now that the organization I had considered my ally in the effort to uphold informed and intelligent discussion in British society has taken its place at the front of the slogan-yelling, Israel-hating mob.
Earlier this month the National Union of Journalists voted to boycott Israeli goods. Some 40,000 journalists, including those on all the United Kingdom’s leading publications and channels, are meant to abide by the ban. The union is also committed to pressuring for “a boycott of Israeli goods similar to those boycotts in the struggles against apartheid South Africa, led by trade unions… to demand sanctions to be imposed on Israel by the British government and the United Nations.”
Already a range of unions, representing all sorts of trades and professions, have sacrificed nuance for the sake of cheap polemics. It seemed we had reached rock bottom when unions of teachers and academics, the people responsible for the education of our society, jumped on the bandwagon. But the tirade against accuracy has reached new levels if we journalists — the people who control the flow of information — are joining in.
The advancement by the National Union of Journalists of this black-and-white understanding of the Middle East conflict — this absurd notion that Israel is the absolute baddy of the Middle East and the Palestinians the fair innocents — is especially obtuse at a time when one of our own, the BBC’s Alan Johnston, is being held hostage by a Palestinian group.
I was inspired toward a career in the media by the notion, gleaned in no small part from union publicity, that if the entire world were to be swayed by misinformation, Britain’s journalists would to the very last steadfastly uphold the precedence of facts over prejudice.
I grew up in a home where BBC radio was switched on after Shabbat and stayed on until Friday afternoon. These journalists, my parents explained as we listened, had long offered a lifeline of information via the World Service to people in controlled regimes who had no other media except one-sided propaganda. To judge by the National Union of Journalists boycott, today’s British journalists are more interested in disseminating their own biased views than in serving as their antidote.
The British media is a precarious place. We journalists are constantly battling with bosses over pay and conditions. Generally speaking, you have to be mad not to be in the union. But surely it is equally mad to give money and allegiance to an organization that is now publicly committed to lambasting Israel, a country to which I have ties of faith, culture and family.
British Jewish journalists like myself now find ourselves in a rather awkward position. If we remain in the union, we will be called traitors by our communities. If we quit the union, we will be labeled scabs by our union colleagues, as well as leave ourselves without workplace protections.
Whatever choices we make, our ability — and that of other fair-minded reporters — to push for fair coverage of the Middle East is irreparably damaged. The might of the National Union of Journalists, which should be reserved for work-related matters like fair pay, now sanctions a particular “truth” about the Middle East.
Loyal members will feel an obligation to promote this truth through any means at their disposal, including the editorial process. To interfere with this will be to question your solidarity to the union.
Newsrooms may well cease to be places where competing truths are considered and navigated with the aim of providing balanced information to the public, and become places where a single union-approved truth will be propagated. The ultimate losers in such an outcome, of course, are the readers, listeners and viewers of the British media.
As a group of prominent London Jews recently pointed out in a letter to the BBC, this boycott calls into doubt the ability of “journalists who are also [National Union of Journalists] members to report accurately and impartially on matters relating to Israel and the Middle East.”
In fact, the Middle East is just the tip of the iceberg. If the community of British journalists can be bought so cheaply by the lure of fitting in with the latest prejudiced fad, who can trust what they have to say about the rest of the world?
Nathan Jeffay is a regular contributor and former staff writer at the London-based Jewish Chronicle.
Comments
Nathan's a good journalist, I know his work well. But I find the naivete he displays in this comment piece extraordinary. The bottom line is that any union that is affiliated to the TUC (Trades Union Congress) is institutionally biased against Israel. I dread to think about the tens of thousands of pounds that is spent on union members' behalf on ideologically motivated campaigns against Israel and any other bogey that the Left-wing activists who dominate union positions consider worthy of attack. As Nathan nearly points out, this is at the expense of legitimate lobbying, campaigning and research on less glamorous issues that are actually pertinent to union members' interests. The Jewish establishment in the UK argues that it's better to be in the union and argue the case. But why should sincere, committed Jews have to give their money to those who - in spirit at least - support Jew killers just for the sake of winning a vote that should never have been taken in the first place? Rather, Jewish and non-Jewish journalists who are interested in fairness, truth and moderation should leave the NUJ and, if necessary, set up their own organisation. Maybe they'll inspire people in other unions to scrutinese more carefully how their dues are spent.
The action of the British union certainly does much to explain the BBC's biased coverage of Israel. Sir, I think you must resign, and use any extra time or money--as paltry as these may be--towards efforts to free your colleague, Alan Johnston. In sympathy, Wendy Leibowitz, a pro-union member who knows where to draw the line
Mr. Jeffay's article about the National Union of Journalists confirms the old addage "the more things change, the more they stay the same". Only a mindless idiot or a full fledge Anti-Semite could condemn Israel at this point. By rehashing the past and debating the current situation serves absolutely no purpose. As an American Jew with a more acute sense of history than most I can only conclude that this is just the latest round of Anti-Semitism plaguing Europe starting with Constantine around 310 C.E. and culminating with the holocaust. By the way, not to step on anyone's toes, Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israel are synonomous. We all have our naive, short sighted and simplistic idiots within our ranks. But that small but conspicuous collection of so-called Anti-Zionist Jews only make themselves look foolish when attempting to distinguish between the two. They simultaneously provide the hard core hate mongers with cover while exposing themselves for who they are, mindless morons.
It is a sad state of affairs when being a "concerned liberal" means being outraged that the "insensitive" Jews in Israel refuse to let the Arabs slaughter them.
This is an excellent piece. It reminds me of my not altogether dissimilar experience as a dues-paying member of the (U.S.) National Book Critics Circle. The anti-Israel bias of the organization's blog (and its President, who, among other things, used the blog for seemingly relentless promotion of Jimmy Carter's ahistorical book), not to mention the reaction(s) that ensued when I voiced my disapproval, led me to resign from that organization.
SINCE THE HATRED EXPRESSED BY BRITISH UNIONS CAN BE FOUND WORLD-WIDE -EVEN AMONG PARTS OF THE EXTREME PEACE MOVEMENT IN THE DEMOCRAT PARTY, ONE WOULD THINK MORE THOUGHT WOULD BE GIVEN AS TO HOW THIS HAS COME ABOUT! WHAT THE ARABS ARE DOING TO MUSLIM BLACK AFRICANS IN DARFUR OR THE SUNNIS AND SHIITES ARE DOING TO EACH OTHER IN IRAQ; IN PAKISTAN; IN LEBONEN; ETC, SHOWS REAL BARBARIANS DOING THEIR THING. AFTER THE SIX DAY WAR, FRENCH REPORTERS WERE SEARCHING FOR ALL THE ARAB WOMEN REPORTEDLY "RAPED" BY BY THE IDF. WHEN THE FRENCH FOUND NONE, THEY SAID: "AND THE IDF CALL THEMSELVES SOLDIERS!" JEWS ARE NOT BARBARIANS, BUT JEW-HATERS SEEM TO ONLY GET THEIR "JOLLIES" BY FINDING ANY BAD THEY CAN REPORT ABOUT WORLD JEWRY. EVEN "PEACE MARCHES" ALLOW MASKED ARABS TO JOIN THEIR MARCH AND INCLUDE DIATRIBES AGAINST ISRAEL TO BE FILLED WITH THE DIATRIBES AGAINST AMERICA! THIS IS THE WORLD WE LIVE IN! OLMERT IS INCOMPETENT AND USELESS IN THIS MATTER. THE DIASPORA NEEDS BETTER LEADERSHIP AND SUPPORT TO HELP US DEFEND OUR PEOPLE. 6 MILLION DIED IN THE HOLOCAUST; IRAN WANTS TO KILL ANOTHER 6 MILLION IN ISRAEL. WE NUMBERED 18 MILLION WORLDWIDE IN THE THIRTIES; AND ABOUT 12 MILLION TODAY! IT IS ONLY THE YOUNG WHO CAN FIGHT BACK. MANY OF THE ELDERLY ARE STILL IN SHOCK OVER THE HEZZOLLAH WAR LAST SUMMER! AND THE MIDDLE AGE PEOPLE CARE FIRST AND FOREMOST ABOUT THEIR JOBS AND KIDS. LIVING NEAR SALEM, ON BOSTON'S NORTH SHORE, IT IS A GOOD FEELING TO SEE THE EVANGELICAL CHURCHES WITH BIG SIGNS STATING THEIR SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL. TEN OR TWENTY YEARS AGO, WHEN ENTERING SALEM CENTER, THERE WAS A SO-CALLED "POLISH FREEDOM FIGHTER" WITH A BIG SIGN DENOUNCING JEWS IN THE MOST VITRIOLIC WORDS! I WILL CLOSE BY SAYING THAT NATHAN JEFFAY DOES NOT SEEM TO HAVE A PLAN OF ACTION TO SUGGEST, NOR DO I. I JUST KNOW THAT AMERICAN JEWS ARE BEING MURDERED BY MUSLIMS (LIKE THE MEETING OF FIVE JEWISH WOMEN BEING SHOT UP BY A MUSLIM MAN LAST SUMMER IN SEATTLE). WE HEAR NOTHING ABOUT THE OUTCOME! IN GREATER BOSTON, OUR LEADERSHIP SEEMS MORE INTERESTED IN BEFRIENDING MUSLIMS ACCUSED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF IMMIGRATION CRIMES OR FRAUD, THAN IN SUPPORTING THOSE MEDIA AND JEWS WHO POINTED OUT THE CRIMINAL ACTIONS BY MUSLIM IMANS. WE HAVE NO RESPECTED LEADRS TO TURN TO AND HELP US FIGHT BACK! IF IRAN DESTROYS ISRAEL, THE WORLD WILL NOT CARE. THEY WILL SAY ISRAEL WAS ASKING FOR IT; JUST LIKE THE WORLD SAYS THE USA WAS LOOKING FOR 911.
I noticed that you have an article about Zionists suppressing a Jewish campus paper calling itself "Jewish independent voices."
Well, you will be happy to hear that in Britain a group by that name has been egging on Professors and Journalist unions to boycott Israel.
Ironically, these independent "Jewish voices" are those of people like Mike Leigh (nee Lieberman) who had never before identified with the Jewish community.
It’s only when it comes to hating Israel that some assimilated Jews decided to call themselves Jews. It's just a ruse. They use the label to ward off accusations of anti-Semitism.
I wonder how many of the students on the campus "Jewish" paper identified themselves as Jews before they joined the paper.
Thank goodness the Jewish community decided not to fund such trash.