In 1986 Ze'ev Chafets, an American
Jew who had moved to Israel, returned for a while to the states to do a
book about the American Jewish community; he entitled the resultant
volume, Members of the Tribe. Following an AIPAC (the powerful
Israel lobbying agency based in Washington DC) organizer who was
"hunting Jews" across America, he noted an interesting incident at a
Jewish gathering at the Stardust Motel in Moline, Illinois. Chafets
writes that a fellow Jew sitting next to him in the audience poked the
American-Israeli in the ribs, and then "tapped my copy of the
Quad-City Times ("The Midwest's Most Exciting Newspaper") and
whispered, 'This is a Jewish newspaper' ... The man was referring to
ownership, not content ... Determined to make an impression, the man
poked me again. 'See this motel?' he asked. 'It's a Jewish motel.'" [CHAFETS,
p. 39]
In 1999, the chairman of the
Newspaper Association of America was Richard Gottlieb. He is also
the chairman of Lee Enterprises, based in Davenport, Iowa, which
owns 21 newspapers and 16 TV stations across the United States -- from
Billings, Montana, to Madison, Wisconsin, to Lincoln, Nebraska. Lloyd
Schermer retired as CEO of the company in 1999. A corporate subsidiary,
NAPP Systems, constructs printing plates for about 350 newspapers
in 30 countries. In Nebraska too, John Gottschalk is the chairman and
president of the Omaha World-Herald company. He is also publisher
of the Omaha World-Herald. [BATT, J., 3-24-2000]
In northern California, in the heart of the internationally
important high-tech area of Silicon Valley, David Cohen controls an
area-wide empire as the Publisher/CEO of the Silicon Valley Community
Newspapers (SVCN Inc.). Cohen founded Metro, "Silicon
Valley's weekly alternative newspaper." A SVCN subdivision is Metro
Newspapers. Metro, in turn , "purchased the Los Gatos
Weekly and the more than 100-year old Los Gatos Times-Observer,
which were combined as the Los Gatos Weekly Times. In 1991, the
company acquired the weekly Saratoga News and the Willow Glen
Resident ... In 1993, Metro Newspapers began publishing a
newspaper in Cupertino, and acquired its competitor the Cupertino
Courier, in 1995. The company founded The Sun in 1993. The
most recent addition to the community family was The Campbell
Reporter, which began publishing in March, 1999." [CUEPERTINO
COURIER, 4-11-01]
In Colorado, Edward Lehman publishes a few small town newspapers,
including the Longmont Daily Times-Call, the Loveland Daily
Reporter-Herald, and Superior in Lafayette. The executive
roster for all these papers includes Edward Lehman at the top, Dean
Lehman as president, and Lauren Lehman as vice-president. (Ruth Lehman
is the Associate Editor at the Longmont journal).
In 1975, in New Hampshire, journalist
Kevin Cash wrote an entire volume criticizing the concentrated media and
political power of newspaperman William Loeb. Loeb owned New Hampshire's
two major newspapers -- the Manchester Union Leader and the
New Hampshire Sunday News, as well as the Vermont Sunday News,
and a few smaller New England area papers. Loeb was also in the habit of
writing regular editorials in his newspapers. "The truth is," wrote
Cash, a former reporter at the Union Leader, "is that [Loeb's
papers] are to a large extent monopolistic in nature within the limits
of New Hampshire." [CASH, K., p. 3] Loeb was of Jewish heritage (both
parents were Jewish); he once published in one of his papers, however,
his father's 1906 Episcopal baptismal document, signed by American
President Theodore Roosevelt (his father was Roosevelt's executive
secretary).
In Pittsburgh, Paul Block (1877-1941)
owned the Pittsburgh Evening Sun, the Pittsburgh Morning Post,
and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, as well as the Toledo Times
and Toledo Blade. [GREENBERG, M., p. 53] His sons, William and
Paul, also later added television and cable stations to their
mini-empire. Elsewhere, "in 1978, the Samuel Horvitz Trust [run by three
sons and an employee] owned five monopoly newspapers in Ohio and New
York, cable systems in Ohio and Virginia, and construction firms in
Ohio, and was a major landowner in Florida." [BAGDIKIAN, p. 42]
In a review of Jewish book
publishing in the United States to 1976, Jewish author Charles Madison
noted the following Jewish-founded, or purchased, firms (some still
exist, some are now defunct, some are absorbed by others):
Simon and Schuster (Richard
L. Simon; Max L. Schuster)
Knopf (Alfred A. Knopf)
Random House (Bennett Cerf
and Donald Klopfer)
Pantheon (founded by Kurt
and Helen Wolf)
Viking (Harold Guinzburg)
Dover (founded in 1943)
Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux
- (The father of Roger Strauss --
president of the publishing
company -- was in turn chairman of the
Board of the American
Smelting and Refining Company. From
1955-65 Roger was also
chairman of the board of American
Judaism magazine).
Grove Press (1947) - which
controlled Evergreen Books and the
Evergreen Review.
Praeger (1950)
Basic Books (1952) - Its
founder, Arthur Rosenthal, later became
Director of Harvard
University Press.
The Free Press (1947) - Its
founder, Jeremiah Kaplan, joined Crowell-
Collier, which had acquired
MacMillan, as a Vice-President.
Atheneum (1959)
Crown Publishers
(1936) (headed in later years by Nat Wartels, "a legend in the
business") [KRANTZ, J., 2000, p. 250]
Academic Press
International Universities Press
Twayne Publishers (1948)
World Publishing Company
(1905)
Frederick Ungar (1941)
Harry Abrams (1950) - mostly
art books.
George Braziller (1955)
Tudor - mostly music books.
[MADISON, CHARLE;, 1976]
"One year,' says famous Jewish novelist Judith Krantz in her
autobiography,,
"when I cam back from Paris, I foolishly risked a certain jail
sentence by
bringing for, buttoned into my blouse, a copy of the utterly
pornographic
Rosy Crucifixion by Henry Miller, an erotic masterpiece
that Jeremy rented
out to his friends as twenty-five cents a day. I'm not taking all
the credit,
but eventually he [Jeremy Tarcher] became the first and
best publisher of
New Age books in the United States." [KRANTZ, J., 2000, p. 147]
[Krantz notes that her novel Mistral "was quickly bought for
France by
Edition Stock, whose publisher, Jean Rosenthal, as it
happened had
translated my other novels into French."] [KRANTZ, J., 2000, p.
313]
In a continuing trajectory of
percentage of ownership, by 1968 Roger Kahn noted that "Jews own perhaps
half the major book publishing houses: Random House, Simon &
Schuster, New American Library, Alfred Knopf, and
Atheneum are a few that thrive under the leadership of Jews." [KAHN,
R., p. 5] "Owners of new [early to mid-20th century publishing]
concerns, "notes Jay Gertzman, "most of them young Jewish men (Horace
Liveright, Thomas Seltzer, Ben Huebsch, Max Schuster, Alfred Knopf) had
begun to specialize in presenting European writers to an American
audience curious about their sexual frankness and Marxist ideas.
Established houses, such as Doran, Houghton, Appleton, and Doubleday,
did not do so, and some of their executives resented their parvenu
colleagues. Modernist writers especially owed their exposure to Jewish
firms." [GERTZMAN, J., 2000, p. 114]
In the 1980s, Crown Books,
headed by Robert Haft (who also founded the Trak Auto supply
chain), rose to become the third largest bookstore chain with nearly 250
outlets throughout America. At its peak the firm was a national giant
with nearly 10,000 employees and valued between $500 million to $1
billion (the company drastically weakened with in-house, intra-family
legal feuds between Robert and his father Herbert, a Jewish immigrant
from Russia). The Brentano's bookstore chain was also founded by
Jewish entrepreneur August Brentano in the late 19th century. Abraham
Rosenbach and his brother Philip were used book sellers from 1903 until
the 1950s. In 1928, the New Yorker called Abraham "the most
famous dealer in rare books." "If Gutenberg [Bible] sales are taken as
the measure of a dealer," says Guy Lesser, "Rosenbach would have to be
reckoned history's most successful [book dealer], judging by his
transactions over ... four decades." [LESSER, G., JAN 2002, p. 48, 46]
"Whiskey, cigars, deep-sea fishing, and women (to put the last
politely)," adds Lesser, "in roughly that order, after books, seem to
have been his passions." [LESSER, G., JAN 2002, p. 48]
Jewish publishers also brought out
the inexpensive series for mass appeal, including the Little Leather
Library, the Little Blue Books, and the Modern Library (Horace
Liveright); Jewish entrepreneurs also initiated the "Book-of-the-Month
Club." "As an author and editor, [Mortimer] Adler built a publishing
empire on an unlikely foundation: the philosophic system of Aristotle
and St. Thomas Aquinas. That system influenced his work as compiler of
the Great Books of the Western World and as editor of
Encyclopedia Britannica." [D'Alessio, F., 6-29-01] In 2001, Michael
Ross, the publisher of the World Book Dictionary, removed the verb "jew"
(traditionally meaning "beat down in price") from the volume. [LEVINE,
S., JUNE/JULY 2001]
Other Jewish book publishers include Westview, Stein and
Day, Holmes and Meier, Price Stern Sloan, Lyle
Stuart (the founder, Lyle Stuart, was born Lionel Simon),
Ottenheimer (a Baltimore publisher with 200 titles a year), and
Schocken. In England, Lord George Weidenfeld not only
controls a well-known namesake publishing house, he is also chairman of
the Zionist Federation of Great Britain. From England, Andre Deutsch's
namesake company published Norman Mailer, V.S. Naipaul, Arthur
Schlesinger, and other prominent authors. In Canada, Avie Bennett is
president of McClelland & Stewart (1992).
By the late 1990s, Golden Books
Family Entertainment, "the nation's largest producer of children's
books," was headed by Jewish publisher Richard Snyder (who replaced
Richard Bernstein). The next four top executives at the firm were also
Jewish: Steven Grossman, James Cohen, Ira Gomberg, and Ian Reich.
[HOOVER, p. 255]
Alfred Lilienthal, a Jew and
lifelong crusader against Zionism and Jewish chauvinism, wrote in 1982
that
"All the leading magazines, ranging
from Commentary, Esquire, Ladies
Home Journal, New
York Review of Books, New Yorker, and U.S.
News and World Report have
Jews in key positions as publishers,
editors, or managing editors. No
one is able to criticize Jews -- or
even take Israel to task -- for fear
of being out of line with the boss ...
There is [also] the constant
overriding concern of the media about losing
advertising ... at times making a
mockery of 'freedom' of the press ...
[LILIENTHAL, p. 219] ... It would be
futile to list the number of top
Jewish editors and writers across
the country. Many of the largest
book publishers, including Knopf,
Random House, Holt, Liverwright,
Viking Press, Simon and
Schuster, Van Nostrand Reinhold, and
Lyle Stuart are Jewish-owned,
directly or by Jewish-controlled
interests (including CBS,
RCA, Music Corporation of America
[MCA], Litton's, and
Gulf and Western. In other firms such as
Macmillan and Grosset and
Dunlap, one will find editors-in-chief or
presidents who are Jewish."
[LILIENTHAL, p. 220]
In the same year, Jewish literary
agent Bill Adler (formerly the Executive Editor at Playboy when
Mike Cohn was Director of Playboy's book division) wrote a volume
entitled Inside Publishing. Some of the (Jewish) power people in
his New York publishing world included
* Richard Snyder: CEO, president and
Chairman of the Board of
Simon & Schuster
* Joni Evans: (Snyder's wife),
president of Simon & Schuster subsidiary,
The Linden Press
* Robert Gottleib: President and
Editor-in-Chief of Alfred A. Knopf
* Louis Wolfe: President and CEO of
Bantam Books
* Marc Jaffe: Editor-in-Chief of
Bantam Books
* Hillel Black: Editor-in-Chief at
William Morrow
* Nat Wartels: Chairman of Crown
Publishers
* Jonathan Segal: Editor-in-Chief of
Times Books
* Helen Meyer: President of Dell
Publishing)
* Phyllis Grann: Publisher of G.P.
Putnam's Sons
* Jim Silberman: President of
Summit Books
* Howard Kaminsky: President and
Publisher of Warner Books
[ADLER, B., 1982]
Adler's favored choice for
assignment as writing "collaborator" with celebrities was Mickey
Herskowitz. Herskowitz wrote books for Bette Davis, Dan Rather, Gene
Autry, Jimmy the Greek, and others. In the "book packaging" field (where
literary agents produce anthology-type volumes commissioned by
publishers) Lyle Kenyon Engel was "one of the most prolific book
packagers over the years." [ADLER, B., 1982, p. 89]
Jewish actor Kirk Douglas has written some books about his
life; he notes his surprise when he discovered that
"my editor Ushi was becoming fascinated with Judaism [she
eventually converted to it].
Out of the blue, in the fall of 1993,
she announced that she was going to Israel. A whole
month in
Israel would cost her a mere $950 plane fare, food and lodging included.
Could
that be true? Oh yes, but she was doing it through an
organization called Volunteers for
Israel, which basically meant she was going into the Israeli Army
for three weeks."
[DOUGLAS, K., 1997, p. 125]
"Any roll call of the most
respected and/or powerful figures in the publishing world," wrote Robert
C. Christopher in 1989 in a book about the decline of WASP
institutions," whether in editorial or executive positions, has to
include a sizeable number of Jews; among those who automatically come to
mind are Robert Bernstein, Jason Epstein, and Joni Evans at Random
House, Richard Snyder and Michael Korda [also author of Power:
How to Get It and Success!] at Simon and Schuster,
Simon Michael Bessie at Harper and Row, Howard Kaminsky at
Hearst and Marc Jaffe at Houghton Mifflin." [CHRISTOPHER, p.
222] "I don't want to sound chauvinistic," said Jason Epstein in 2001,
"but [Jewish publishers] were smarter than their gentile colleagues."
[GREEN, D., 5-31-01]
Others Jews in positions of power in
earlier years (as noted by Martin Greenberg in 1979) included the
publisher of Collier's and the Women's Home Companion,
founder and editor of the National Guardian, the editor and
founder of AB Bookman's Weekly, the editor of the Saturday
Review, senior editors at Time, Forbes and Newsweek,
the editor of Variety, a member of the Board of Editors for
Fortune, the editor-in-chief of Redbook and on and on.
[GREENBERG, 1979]
More recently, take, for example, a
1996 report in Advertising Age that noted that Ellen Levine, the
editor-in-chief of Good Housekeeping, was having a spat with her
publisher, Alan Waxenberg, and that Jerry Kaplan was one of those being
considered to replace him. [KELLY, p. 47] In 1994, Barbara Grossman left
Simon and Shuster to become the publisher at Viking where
Peter Mayer was the Viking Penguin CEO. In the same era, Joni
Evans (born Joni Goldfinger) became the head of the Turtle Bay
imprint at Random House. Tina Brown, also Jewish, was described
by one London newspaper as "the most famous woman editor in the world
... [She is] the worst social climber since Kong lumbered to the top of
the Empire State Building." [LANGTON, J.]
In England, in 1998 the (London)
Daily Telegraph noted Gail Reubuck, "daughter of affluent Baltic
Jewish immigrants," as "the most powerful figure in British publishing,"
and "recently voted Publisher of the Year." [CAMPBELL, p. D4] Another
example is Richard Malina who started out as a lawyer for Grosset and
Dunlap. By 1985 he was the President of the publishing division of
Doubleday; in 1987 he became the Executive Director and Publisher
of the Jewish Publication Society. [GODFREY, p. 2]
A mere random look at a few 1998
issues of Publishers Weekly evidenced the following items: Al
Silverman retired as "Editor-at-large" at Penguin. He was also
the former publisher and editor-at-large at Viking, and chairman
and CEO of the Book of the Month Club. Mark Lieberman was
the Executive Vice President of Cahner's Publishing Company,
which publishes Publishers Weekly where Sybil Steinberg was the
Senior Editor for Fiction. Jane Friedman was the CEO and
president of HarperCollins. Martha Levin was named the new Vice
President and editor-in-chief at Hyperion (moving over from a
position as Senior Vice President at Doubleday. Lucianne Goldberg
was noted as the literary agent for Linda Tripp (who exposed the
President Clinton-Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. Goldberg -- formerly
Steinberger -- is the wife of Sid Goldberg, former editor of the
North American Newspaper Alliance, and later vice president of
United Media, a syndicator of news stories. One of Lucianne's own
novels is Madame Cleo's Girls, a "frothy tale about three
high-class prostitutes.' [HUBBARD, p. 111]) The Bantam Doubleday
Dell International CEO in 1998 was Stephen Rubin. The president and
editor-in-chief of Summit Books was still Jim Silberman. Marc
Jaffe was publisher of his own imprint at Houghton Mifflin.
Others afforded news making mention in the Publishers Weekly
issues were Jonathan Karp, an editor at Random House, Esther
Newberg, an agent at ICM; and agents Daniel Greenberg and Al
Zuckerman of James Levine Communications. The Horowitz-Rae
book manufacturing company was also noted as sold.
Such Jewish prominence today is all
over the map. Michael Hoffman is the Executive Director of Aperture,
probably the most influential "art" photography journal and book
publisher. Michael Hirschorn is editor of Spin, "the bible of
alternative music." Alan Light is Editor-in-Chief of Vibe
magazine. George Hirsch is the vice-president and publisher of
Runner's World. Nat Lehrman was the publisher of Playboy.
(Richard Rosenzweig was Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's personal
Executive Assistant, Bobbi Arnstein his personal secretary, and Howard
Shapiro his chief legal counsel. By the 1990s, Shapiro was third in
command of the Playboy empire, behind only Hefner and his daughter).
Peter Bart is Editor-in-Chief at Variety. Michael Solomon was
named editor of Premiere in 2000. Lesley Seymour is the editor of
Redbook. Merle Ginsberg is the Entertainment Editor for
Women's Wear Daily. David Bauer is one of the Executive Editors at
Sports Illustrated. David Fine is SI's photography editor. Todd
Gold recently left the editorship of People magazine to found a
company with fellow Jew Adam Werbach, recently stepped down as the
president of the Sierra Club.
Milton Esterow is the publisher and
editor of both ArtNews and Antiques World. He is also
co-editor and founder of the American Art Journal. Jonathan
Steinberg -- son of notorious corporate raider Saul Steinberg --
publishes Individual Investor magazine. Steven Brill founded
American Lawyer and a media watchdog journal called Brill's
Content (editor-in-chief: David Kuhn, formerly executive editor of
Talk magazine), and the Court TV program on television. (A
rival, Peoples' Court, features presiding Jewish judge Jerry
Sheindlin and commentating attorney Harry Levin. Another court TV
program, Judge Judy, features Jerry Sheindlin's wife, Judy, at
the helm.) For years Jerry Finkelstein published the New York Law
Journal. Janice Kaplan is the Executive Producer of TV Guide
Television. Jane Goldman is the Executive Editor of California
Lawyer. Rae Anne Marsh is the managing editor of Arizona
Corridors Magazine. Steven Cohn edits the Media Industry
Newsletter. Rachel Newman edits Country Living. David
Klinghoffer is the literary editor of the National Review. Debbie
Rosenberg is the Managing Editor of Biography. Robert Epstein is
the Editor-in-Chief of Psychology Today. Adam Garfinkle is the
Executive Editor of the National Interest. Michael Berman
co-founded George magazine. Baltimore's Style magazine is
owned by the Baltimore Jewish Times. Michael Gewanda became the
editor of Time (Australia) in 1993. Peter Newman edited Canada's
prominent weekly magazine, Maclean's. Peter Eisenman was "the
father of two architectural publications of note, Oppositions and
Skyline." [ARONSON, S., 1983, p. 303] And on and on and on.
"White and Jewish," Ben Burns
(originally Bernstein) even "made a career in black journalism, editing
the Chicago Defender and helping found Ebony magazine."
[GROSSMAN, p. C1] He also edited Sepia, "a white-owned magazine
for blacks." [ZALLER, p. 30] A more recent black-based magazine is the
musical "hip-hop" The Source; by the mid-1990s it boasted a
newsstand circulation larger than Rolling Stone. The Source
"speaks to young black males," noted USA Today, "in a language
they can understand. More than 60% of its readers are African-Americans.
Over 80% are under age 25." Featuring "shock covers" and articles like
the one about bulletproof vest clothing fashions to ward off "a 44
magnum at close range," the publisher of The Source, Peter Mays,
is also Jewish. [HOROVITZ, p. 1B] In 1998, Elinor Ruth Tatum became the
publisher of her father's newspaper, the Amsterdam News, New York
City's oldest and largest African-American newspaper. Ms. Tatum's father
is Black; her mother is Jewish. [JET, p. 32]
The Detroit News is both
published and edited by Marc Silverman. Howard Kleinberg was, until
recently, the editor of the Miami News. Martin Baron edits the
Boston Globe. Phil Bronstein is the executive editor of the San
Francisco Examiner and the second Jewish husband of non-Jewish
actress Sharon Stone (his father was a former director of the Los
Angeles Jewish Federation). (Michael de Young, also Jewish, founded the
rival San Francisco Chronicle). Jeff Cohen became the Houston
Chronicle chief editor in 2002. Tom Rosenstiel is the director of the
Project for Excellence in Journalism. ABC's Peggy Wehmeyer, a
self-described Protestant, born of a Jewish mother, is "the only network
correspondent specializing in religious and spiritual issues." [SHISTER,
G., 9-11-99, p. G2] At least half of the ten members (Jonathan Alter,
Howard Fineman, Michael Isikoff, Debra Rosenberg, and Ron Haviv) of
Newsweek's "political team" covering the 2000 American presidential
campaign were of Jewish heritage. [NEWSWEEK, 11-20-2000, p. 4] And if
you want to write regularly for editor Steve Wasserman's Los Angeles
Times Book Review, and you're not Jewish, the odds are heavily
against you. His stable of "Contributing Writers" is Anthony Day,
Michael Frank, Jonathan Kirsch, Jonathan Levi, Suzie Linfield, Suzanne
Mantell, and Benjamin Schwarz. Politically conservative commentator
David Horowitz would argue that you'd have to be left-wing too, noting
that:
"I knew Wasserman as a former
Berkeley radical and protégé, in
the 1960s, of a Times
contributing editor, Bob Scheer ... After the
1960s, Scheer had ingratiated himself
with Hollywood's bolsheviks,
married a top editor at the Los
Angeles Times, and become a figure
of influence in the paper's
hierarchy, which enabled him to secure
Wasserman his job." [HOROWITZ, D.,
1999, p. 189]
Longtime media critic for the Los
Angeles Times has been Howard Rosenberg. In a 1991 column he wrote
that
"The mail is coming in about my
column endorsing KCET's recent
presentation of the controversial
film 'Stop the Church,' and nearly
all of it is critical and angry. Most
writers accused me of being
rather a fence sitter and biased
against Catholicism. Some note that
I am Jewish." [ROSENBERG, H.,
9-16-91, p. F1]
The Washington Post media
reporter is another Jewish Howard, this one Kurtz. Until his death in
1997, across the continent, Herb Caen was for fifty years a "legendary
San Francisco columnist" and the city's "most beloved institution."
[SCHEER, R., 2-4-97, p. B7; DOUGAN, M., 2-7-97, p. A1] Looking back into
earlier years, Dennis McDougal singles out (Jewish columnists) Joyce
Haber (of the Los Angeles Times) and Irv Kupcinet (of the
Chicago Sun-Times) as prominent media loyal public
supporters/defenders of Hollywood lawyer/mobster Sidney Korshak.
[MCDOUGAL, p. 396]
In 2000, journalist Katherine Ross
wrote about the case of fellow journalist Lynn Hirschberg:
"She is the premier chronicler of the
entertainment elite for
the New York Times Magazine
... On the beat for almost 20
years, Hirschberg stands at the nexus
of the Los Angeles
entertainment and New York publishing
worlds ... Hirschberg's
pieces almost always deify or
demonize. 'She can make your
career,' says publicist Bumble Ward."
[ROSMAN, K., 5-2000]
Hirschberg started out with help from
David Rosenthal, "then the assistant manager at Rolling Stone and
now the publisher of Simon and Schuster's adult-trade division."
"Hirschberg," adds reporter Ross,
"doesn't just profile and befriend
the powerful. Like most other
successful operators, she is savvy at
facilitating business deals
for friends that will leave those
friends in her debt. In 1993, for
example, Hirschberg brokered a
Time magazine cover story about
her then close friend, the producer
Scott Rudin, written by her
friend Philip Weiss ... [Also]
consider her close alliance with
Peter Kaplan, the editor of the
New York Observer, a weekly
newspaper popular in New York's media
circles. Kaplan and
Hirschberg have never worked
together, but their friendship
has benefited both." [ROSMAN, K.,
5-2000]
All these people are Jewish.
Does all this massive Jewish
predominance in the mass media, internationally, and their
collective sense of destiny in history; upper echelon cliques;
widespread allegiance to Israel; intense sense of collective community;
concerted economic and ideological pressures to encourage
pro-Israel/Jewish views; the systematic political pressures and
omnipresent lobbying maneuvers of the Anti-Defamation League, the
American Israel Political Action Committee, the American Jewish
Congress, the American Jewish Committee; and many other multi-million
dollar lobbying groups whose fundamental purpose is to control
information about Jews and Israel, mean nothing, as so
many Jews insist? Let us take but one aspect of the systematic
censorship throughout American culture by the Jewish community: the
state of Israel. This is what Paul Findley, for twenty-three years a
United States Congressman from Illinois had to say about his book that
described the Jewish-American lobby for Israel in America, They Dare
to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby (the
book was eventually published by a small publisher, Lawrence Hill, and
made the Washington Post's ten top books list for nine weeks):
"My quest for a publisher began in
March 1983 and was predictably
long and frustrating. Declining to
represent me, New York literary agent
Alexander Wylie forecast with
prophetic vision that no major United
States publisher would accept my
book. He wrote, 'It's a sad state of
affairs.' Bruce Lee of William
Morrow and Company called my
manuscript ‘outstanding,’ but his
company concluded that publishing it
'would cause trouble in the house
and outside' and decided against
'taking the heat.' Robert Loomis of
Random House called it an
'important book' but reported that
the firm's leadership decided the
theme was 'too sensitive.' Twenty
other publishers said no." [FINDLEY,
THEY, p. viii]
When in 1986 Israeli defector
Mordechai Vanunu had his photographic evidence of the inside of Israel's
nuclear weapons plant published in England, it should have been a major
news story. Jerry Oplinger, a former White House aide, was amazed at how
little attention the mass media gave it, saying: "I couldn't believe
those guys. There was nothing [significant] in the [New York] Times,
[Washington] Post, and Wall Street Journal. Everybody in
the arms control business was amazed that there was nothing. To me and
my close friends, it was really discouraging." [HERSH, p. 308]
In the London Independent,
in 1998 Robert Fisk wrote an entire article about the mass media's
systematic bias and censorship of stories relating to Israel. Among the
Fisk's list of outrages, is the fact that
"the New York Times ... ran a
syndicated account from an Israeli paper
of an Israeli soldier's life in
Qana before the massacre [when Israeli
troops fired a missile into an Arab
ambulance in Lebanon]: but the New
York Times deleted a
paragraph about how the Israeli troops had stolen
cars from their Lebanese owners and
looted houses -- thus even
censoring the Israeli press ...
History continues to be short-changed in
the American media ... Academics
may one day decide how deeply the
American public has been misled by
the persistent bias of the US media,
and the degree to which this has
led them to support US policies which
may destroy America's prestige in
the Middle East." [FISK, p. 14]
Norman Finkelstein, a well-known
Jewish critic of Israel, tabulated the articles about torture in the
Middle East in the New York Times between 1981 and 1991. He found
over 80 articles -- 26 articles about torture in Iran, 15 in Turkey, 14
in Iraq and 8 in Egypt. "Consider how the case of Israel was treated,"
he wrote,
"Except for a brief period under
[Israeli] Prime Minister Begin,
torture was practiced continuously
from the early 1970s against
Palestinian detainees ... [The
Times] has probably devoted as much
space to coverage of Israel [on
other matters] as the entire Arab
world combined. Yet for the full
decade under consideration
(1981-91), the Times found space for
only five items on Israeli
torture of Palestinian detainees ...
Not once did the Times even hint
at the not trivial fact that
Israel's torture of Palestinian detainees in
the Occupied Territories is
'virtually institutionalized' (Amnesty
International) and 'systematic and
routine' (B'Tselem)." [an Israeli
human rights organization]
[FINKELSTEIN, 1996, p. 67]
In 1982 the Times' Foreign
Correspondent to Israel, Thomas Friedman (also Jewish) ran into trouble
with his Jewish superiors for telling the truth about the Israeli
invasion of Lebanon. Friedman filed a report with his employers about
the "indiscriminate" bombing of the Arab community there. New York
Times editors censored the adjective. Friedman "then sat down and
wrote one of the most indicting messages the Times ever received
from a correspondent, that his editors were 'afraid to tell our readers'
about Israel's 'apparent aim of terrorizing its [Beirut] civilian
population ... I am filled with profound sadness by what I have learned
in the past afternoon about my newspaper.'" [GOULDEN, p. 323] Friedman
was immediately called back to the states and warned that "if you ever
pull a stunt like that again, you are fired. Understand?" [GOULDEN, p.
323]
In 1994, the Jerusalem Post
noted another case of Jewish lobbying-censorship of the American mass
media, this time of the work of Time magazine reporter Murray
Gart:
"Time was planning to publish
a list of Israeli agents in Washington
submitted by the Mossad to the CIA.
[Howard] Teicher's name [a Jewish
National Security Agency adviser]
was purportedly on the list. Time
never ran the story, the editors
pulled it out of the magazine virtually
at the last minute." [RODAN, S.,
1994, p. 18]
Thomas Kiernan notes the case of non-Jewish mogul Rupert Murdoch,
so beholding to the Jews who helped him get a foothold in the world of
international mass media:
"[ABC head Leonard] Goldenson's personality and lectures thus had
the effect of
sharpening Murdoch's sympathy toward Israel. As a result, his
Australian papers
took a decidedly pro-Israel tone during the early 1960s -- a fact
that didn't please
his surrogates in the top editorial chairs. The eventual
resignation of Douglas Brass
as editor for the Sydney Mirror, for instance, is said by
some in Murdoch's organization
to have come about over that issue ..." [KIERNAN, T., 1986, p. 78]
In a discussion of the reportage at Murdoch's New York Post,
Kiernan observes
"I was witness to some of the Post's coverage of the Israeli
invasion of Lebanon
in the summer of 1982 and of the subsequent siege of Beirut.
Throughout that
period, the paper was without a single reporter on the scene, yet
its stories were
laced with un-attributed 'eye-witness' descriptions of Arab
atrocities and Israeli
heroics, many of them invented in its New York newsroom."
[KIERNAN, T.,
1986, p. 262]
In May 2001, during the latest Palestinian intifada (uprising)
against Israeli rule, the Anti-Defamation League announced that their
recent survey showed that "56 percent of major newspaper editorials took
a strong pro-Israel stance." [TEITELBAUM, S., 5-25-01] This was despite
the fact that representatives of organizations as diverse as Amnesty
International, the European Union, the Red Cross, and YMCA were
criticizing, and often condemning, the brutal policies of the Israeli
state. Incredibly, even as most of those who headed press organizations
were emphatically pro-Israel, Howard Goller, chairman of the Foreign
Press Association, publicly complained that "twenty foreign
correspondents in the West Bank and Gaza have been shot at and hit [by
Israeli troops] with live ammunition or rubber coated-bullets since the
start of the intifada ... Worse still, he says, the Israeli government
is refusing to deal with the matter." [HAUSMAN, T., 5-25-01]
Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman
note the case of British author David Irving, who faced the destruction
of his decades-old writing career when he started addressing the Jewish
community critically:
"After Irving testified for the
defense in ["Holocaust denier" Ernest]
Zundel's 1988 'free speech' trial in
Canada, various governments filed
notices of entry denial and
deportation against him. As he recounts
on his Web page, his publishing firm,
Focal Point, has received
notices from the bookstores in
England canceling distribution of
[his book] Hitler's Wars and
other titles. 'Following complaints from
valued customers we no longer feel
able to stock this title,' read one
notice from a Sheffield bookstore in
July 1992. Also in the same year,
the director of Media House
Publications in Johannesburg, South
Africa, informed Irving that with
regard to Hitler's War, "I don't
want any copies on our premises. We
have had some incidents
already. Many of our book buyers are
Jewish. It is much easier
for [my staff] now to say, 'We don't
stock the book.'" [SHERMER/
GROBMAN, 2000, p. 50]
Filmmaker Tom Hayes calls the mass
media's wall of censorship surrounding the state of Israel "the
Information Blockade." This systematic censorship is important in
keeping Americans ignorant about the truths concerning Israel, including
the details of the staggering sums of money -- approximately $78
billion -- American taxpayers have funneled to that other country
(instead of to themselves) since the creation of the Jewish state in
1948, [APAS, p. 106] let alone the myriad of moral injustices
perpetuated upon others by the Jewish nation. [See later chapter]
Arthur Hays-Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times,
noted the behind-the-scenes economic intrigues and mass media power of
pro-Israel Jews as early as 1946:
"I dislike the coercive methods of
Zionists in this country who have not
hesitated to use economic means to
silence persons who have different
views." [LILIENTHAL, p. 124]
Those who would like to criticize
Israel, notes Jewish French scholar Maxime Rodinson, "remain silent,
either because they are not in a position to write or speak publicly, or
because they fear the reactions of their immediate environment or the
broader public. I understand them very well. Moreover, publishers,
newspaper editors, and radio and television producers, also tend to be
afraid to let them speak; they suffer constant blackmail from
Judeo-centrists." [RODINSON, p. 15]
Ze'ev Chafets notes a 1979 article
that got past the censors in Newsweek; it read:
"With the help of American Jews in
and out of government, Mossad
[Israel's intelligence agency]
looks for any softening in U.S. support
and tries to get technical
intelligence the Administration is unwilling to
give to Israel."
The normal chorus of Jewish
complaint and pressure to censor any similar future statement was soon
to follow. As Chafets observes, "the editor of Newsweek later
admitted that Newsweek's insinuation that American Jews are
disloyal to the United States 'reflects an anti-Semitic stereotype' and
informed the Anti-Defamation League that 'we have engaged in some
consciousness raising on this subject and I do not expect a recurrence.'
The letter to the ADL was signed by the magazine's editor-in-chief:
Lester Bernstein [also Jewish]." [CHAFETS, p. 281]
Also in the 1970s, CBS news
commentator Jeffrey St. John made a similar mistake about speaking
openly of Jewish dual loyalty on the radio program "Spectrum." He had
the courage to observe that
"American public opinion is shaped
largely by a pro-Israeli viewpoint.
And when someone suggests we should
begin changing our policy,
as an American oil executive did
recently, the pro-Israel propaganda
machine in America crucifies him in
public ... Emotions, not reason,
govern our policy towards Israel ...
The issue is whether you are
an American first and a Jew second
and if forced to choose, which
commands your loyalty first."
[LILIENTHAL, 1983, p. 450]
St. John was gone from CBS
soon afterwards. Likewise, CBS newscaster Eric Severeid took
heavy Jewish lobbying heat in 1975 for daring to say that "A growing
number of American Jews are ... torn in a soul-searching internal debate
as to just where their loyalties should lie and how far they should go
in honoring them." [LILIENTHAL, 1983, p. 449]
In 1994 after rejections from
numerous publishers, John Sack, a respected Jewish journalist for
Esquire and other magazines for nearly 40 years, managed to get his
manuscript (An Eye for an Eye, about the "vengeful" Jewish heads
of post-World War II concentration camps for Germans and Poles)
published by Basic Books. (The book was originally commissioned with a
$25,000 advance by the Henry Holt publishing company. When Sack's final
manuscript was completed, it was abandoned by the firm). "Major U.S.
newspapers and publishers," noted the Associated Press, "shied
away from the manuscript before Basic Books finally put out the English
edition in 1993." [BAJACK, INTERNET] The editor for the volume at Basic
Books, Steve Fraser, noted that
"We concluded it ought not to be
suppressed -- which is what was
happening. I take my vocation as a
publisher seriously enough to feel
that it is my responsibility to
publish something that's important even
if the rest of the industry is
afraid to do that." [WIENER, p. 24]
Terry McDonnell, one of Sack's
editors at Esquire, was one of those refusing to publish any of
the investigators articles about the Jewish commandants of concentration
camps. "[Other publishers are] scared," he told Sack. "And I'm scared
too." [LOMBARDI, p. 18]
Sack had researched the facts of the
volume for seven years. "Although Sack's facts were not disputed," notes
the Associated Press, "the book was slammed as sadistic
sensationalism in a review by powerful German [Jewish] critic Elke
Geisel, whose seething polemic called it 'vile docudrama' and 'a gift to
neo-Nazis.'" "[Sack's book] is the greatest filth," added Ralph
Giordano, a German Jewish writer who never read the book in question, "
... [it is a] vulgar artistic fetish." [AP, INTERNET] (Press censorship
about Jewish history even occurs in Poland, presumably because the new
capitalist state must seek so much western/Jewish economic aid in
rebuilding their nation. In 1994 the Gazeta Wyboroza, one of
Poland's most-widely read newspapers, covered an investigation of
fifteen former officers of the Office of State Security [Poland's
communist secret police]. "The paper is avoiding any mention of Jews,"
notes Jewish journalist Carol Oppenheim. "I think there is widespread
opinion of the dominance of Jews in the Communist Party," said Michael
Cichy, the cultural editor of the paper, "but mention of this in the
Polish press is taboo." [OPPENHEIM, p. 39]
In response to Jewish outrage that
such truthful information be published, the new head (Viktor Niemann) of
the publishing house that printed Sack's book in German, R. Piper,
decided to destroy all 6,000 copies in its warehouses. "It was the
fourth time," notes the Associated Press, "that Sack's story ...
had been bought by a publisher who subsequently decided against
printing." [BAJACK, INTERNET] "It is tragic," wrote Sack in response to
his German publisher's actions, "that 'An Eye for an Eye' is not
being published in Germany now and that Germans have nowhere to learn
the truth." [SACK, p. A18]
When the TV news show 60 Minutes
investigated one of the Jewish subjects of Sack's book, Shlomo Morel,
Sack's broader story "looked as if it might take off," said Carol
Oppenheim, "and it sent shock waves through the Jewish community." "A
feature by '60 Minutes' that backed up Sack seemed to promise
major attention and at least minor bestsellerdom," noted the
Washington Post, "but the rest of the media either attacked or
ignored the book. The general tenor was summoned up in Miami Jewish
Week: "Do me a favor -- don't read this book." [STREITFIELD, p. D4]
In 1994, John Lombardi wrote a
disturbing article for New York magazine about the Sack story and
the massive censorship surrounding it. Lombardi called his piece "The
Book They Dare Not Review: An Inconvenient Holocaust Story." Lombardi
formerly worked at Advance Publication's GQ magazine, the
periodical that had initially paid Sack $20,000 to research and write
about the Jewish concentration camp overseers, only -- after the article
had been typeset -- to quietly kill it.
The most venomous attack on Sack's
book came from the New Republic (owned by avidly pro-Israel
publisher Martin Peretz). Sack wrote a point by point rebuttal to their
review, but the magazine refused to publish any of it in their Letters
to the Editor section. "But," noted the Nation, "the magazine
made the remarkable decision to sell him ad space to run it ($525 for
five column inches). The ad was typeset, but the magazine then chose to
reject it." [WIENER, p. 287] Leon Wieseltier, the Jewish literary
editor of the New Republic, was even quoted as saying, "I'm not
embarrassed to say that as part of my job of policing the culture, I
felt that the sooner we stopped this book, the better.... It's one of
the stupidest books I ever read, and I frankly resolved to do as much
damage as I could." [LOMBARDI, p 18] Elan Steinberg, spokeswoman for the
World Jewish Congress impugned the veracity of Sack's dozens of
interviews with Jewish (and other) eyewitnesses to Jewish-created
atrocities, saying: "You cannot rely on witnesses ... [because] you're
insulting the memory of 6 million [Jewish Holocaust] martyrs." [LOMBARD,
p. 18]
In 1997, the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington DC suddenly cancelled a lecture by Sack
about his book and his findings therein. "The invitation to give your
lecture was issued without my knowledge," wrote Director Walter Reich to
the Eye for an Eye author, "Having had the opportunity to examine
the matter, I have determined that holding the presentation would not be
compatible with the Museum's programs." [STREITFIELD, p. D1] In turn,
Sack decided to rent (for $301) a room at the nearby National Press Club
to discuss his book and the censorship around it. There is no record in
the major national computer research database of America's newspapers
that Sack's press conference was ever reported upon.
"It would be tempting to simply
dismiss this painful book as the work of an anti-Semitic crackpot, as
many have," wrote Jewish author Carol Oppenheim, "The New York Times,
the Washington Post, and Time have ignored An Eye for
An Eye [i.e., not reviewed it]. But John Sack is a noted journalist
with some forty years experience. His work on the Vietnam War is studied
in college classes. And he is also a Jew." [OPPENHEIM, p. 39]
And what are we to make of the case
of Victor Ostrovsky, former Mossad agent and author of 1990's By Way
of Deception, an expose of the international workings of the Israeli
Mossad organization? Although Israel managed to briefly, and
literally, ban his book in America through the American courts, the
censorship was soon lifted. [See earlier discussion] "We will get to him
by other means, we will break him economically," the head of the Mossad,
Israel's CIA, then told the Israeli media. "I'm now convinced," wrote
Ostrovsky in 1997, "that I am the target of a broad collusion between
elements of the Israel government and their gofers, mostly in the
American Jewish community ... My second book was ignored ... A speaker's
bureau in Toronto, which seldom had trouble arranging speaking
engagements with student and other groups eager to have me as a speaker,
found that the engagements were cancelled before I could appear."
[OSTROVSKY, 1997]
When Ostrovsky appeared on Canadian
national television, Yosef Lapid, the former chief of Israeli
television, declared on the same show, via satellite from the Jewish
state, that Ostrovsky's assassination by the Mossad could cause
diplomatic problems now that he lived in Canada, but "I hope that there
would be a decent Jew in Canada who would do the job for us."
Ostrovsky was later stunned that no
North American media outcry rose against this call for his assassination
on live public television. (Recall, in contradistinction, the mass media
outcry against Iran's death sentence on author Salmon Rushdie. Iran, of
course, is a declared arch-enemy of Zionism. And what, one wonders,
would happen to a former president of CBS who called for murder?) But
Lapid? Nothing. A reporter from USA Today interviewed Ostrovsky
about Lapid's public threat and planned to write a story about it, but,
"while I was still in his office," laments Ostrovsky, "his editor told
him by telephone to kill the article." "The same people," wrote the
former Mossad agent, "who presumably would praise someone from the CIA
or the U.S. armed forces who exposed serious wrongdoing in those
institutions were now hard at work to smother my criticisms of an
intelligence agency for a foreign country that, to put it as charitably
as possible, does not have America's best interests at heart."
Eventually he sought to sue the man
who called for the call to kill him, but Ostrovsky's lawyer soon bailed
out, explaining "that the safety of his staff would clearly be
jeopardized if he proceeded." Soon thereafter, Ostrovsky had financial
problems with both his publishers, HarperCollins and, in Canada,
Stoddart. His agent suddenly refused to return his calls and in
due time his "house burned to the ground. The fire marshal's report
declared it arson." In 1997, Washington publisher Regnery backed
out of a plan to publish his next book, already listed in its upcoming
books catalogue. "It suddenly occurred to me," Ostrovsky wrote,
"for the first time, that the forces
of racism, bigotry and apartheid
may win, even here in North America.
In calling out, finally, for help,
I
suddenly fear that I will only be
shouting into the wind. To all who
believe that 'it can't happen here,'
I say beware. It is immensely
satisfying to take a stand and speak
out against coercion and tyranny.
But ... although your friends
cherish you, they may choose to do it
from a distance." [OSTROVSKY, V.,
1997, p. 37, 84-85]
In another case of covert
censorship, in 1996 the London Sunday Telegraph took note of an
unusual article by American Jewish journalist Philip Weiss:
"A studied silence has greeted the
cover story in the normally
scrupulously liberal New York
magazine which claims that Jews
in America wield so much power and
influence that they need no
longer fear the shadow of
anti-Semitism. The magazine refuses to
discuss the article, as apparently
does the author, Philip Weiss ...
The weekly must have known it was
inviting trouble. Even the cover
seemed a calculated risk: a
photograph of the American flag with
some of its stars replaced by the
Star of David. American magazines
rarely confront the issue of Jewish
influence so directly.... Richard
Goldstein, a columnist for the
Village Voice, has already remarked
that the fact Jews have achieved so
much influence despite the anti-
Semitic views of many Americans is
'less a paradox than a time-bomb.'
The irony, of course, is that the
issue is one that has been privately
discussed among Jews for decades."
[LANGTON, p. 24]
In another censorial case, 1989 BBC
reporter Alan Hart complained that United States publishers were afraid
to publish his less-than-condemning book about PLO leader Yassar Arafat
because they "privately feared a backlash from supporters of Israel."
The volume, Arafat: A Political Biography, had already appeared
in three editions in Great Britain -- first published five years
earlier. Over 40 American publishers had passed on publishing Hart's
work until Indiana University Press decided to do it. In a formal
statement, the university publisher remarked that it was "not unaware
that some form of self-censorship might have been the cause" for the
lack of American publisher interest. [ABRAMS, G., 6-19-89, p. 5, 1]
In 1996 the Christian Science
Monitor noted the attack upon a famous Catholic cleric in France,
headlining its article: "Cleric's Comments Ignite the Fury of French
media." The origin of this controversy stems from a book by Roger
Garaudy: The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics. Garaudy, as
noted earlier, wrote this volume that criticized Israel, Zionism, and
the Holocaust as Judeo-centric propaganda; it has been effectively
banned in France. The author, an 82-year old former Resistance fighter
against the Nazis, was also once a Communist member of the French
parliament (expelled from the party in 1970 for criticizing the Soviet
invasion of Czechoslovakia) and later a convert to Islam. He was fined
$20,000 by a French court for writing his book, which, declared the
court, "questions all Jews, not only Israelis ... Far from merely
criticizing Zionism ... Roger Garaudy embarked on a virulent and
systematic questioning of crimes against humanity against the Jewish
community." [ROSENBERG, C., 2-27-98]
The Christian Science Monitor
noted that Garaudy's book was available in only one bookstore in Paris,
and it was not possible to even order the work in many of the others.
The Monitor also noted that most of the critics of the book have
not read it and that "Garaudy's book does not deny that millions of Jews
were murdered by the Nazis." "A "prominent jurist," Francois Terre,
called the 1990 Gayssot Law (that "makes it a criminal offense to
challenge the facts of the Holocaust") totalitarian: It was "a law that
kills historical research and dishonors France ... Even politicians who
oppose the law have been reluctant to speak out against it." [CHADDOCK,
G., 7-25-96, p. 5]
The Catholic cleric Abbe Pierre fell
into the controversy surrounding the book soon after. Pierre, noted the
Washington Post, was "France's most admired man ... For five
decades [he] ranked consistently at the top of the popularity polls in
France for his defense of the downtrodden. As a champion of street
people and a former activist in the anti-Nazi resistance, Abbe Pierre
commanded universal respect and unrivaled media coverage." [RANDALL, J.,
p. 7-3-96, p. A27] Pierre's activities in the French underground also
included smuggling Jews to safety. He is the founder the Emmaus
foundation, 350 centers around the world for the homeless and poor.
The cleric's problems began when he
publicly came out in support of Garaudy. Knowing the author for fifty
years, Pierre attested to his integrity. "I think the average
Frenchman," said Pierre, "will say with relief the taboo [about how the
Holocaust may be examined] is over. You will no longer be called
anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic for saying a Jew sings out of tune."
[RANDALL, J., 7-3-96, p. A27] Unfortunately for Abbe Pierre, however,
not understanding the power of such forces against such an open comment,
this was a gross miscalculation.
The 83-year old cleric was barraged
with critical attack from all sides -- from the French media, civil
rights groups, and eventually -- seeking to assuage vociferous Jewish
complaint -- the Church itself. France's chief rabbi called Pierre's
words those of an anti-Semite. The president of the Jewish Consistory of
France declared that: "[Abbe's] continuous support of Roger Garaudy is
unacceptable." [PHILLIPS, I., 5-39-96, p. 13] Under an avalanche of
criticism, Pierre took refuge in a monastery in Italy. For a while the
old cleric continued to defend his position, digging himself deeper into
controversy, noting that Jewish suffering was only part of the calamity
of World War II. He also "said that according to the Bible, the Jews
committed a genocide comparable with the Shoah when they entered
Palestine 12 or 11 centuries before Christ." Addressing Zionism, he
called it "a world conspiracy," that it was "based in the United States
with world ramifications," and he implored people to have "the honesty
to look at the truth." Zionism, said the cleric, "want[s] the empire
promised to Abraham. And this movement is plotting worldwide for that."
[AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, 6-17-96] [See later chapters for discussions of
Zionism]
The attacks upon Frances national
"saint," suddenly fallen, continued. Months later a British newspaper
noted that "it is clear that the debate left him traumatized. His
conversation [now] is scattered with references to his friendship, help
towards, and empathy, with the Jews." [FINANCIAL TIMES, 6-21-97] The
Washington Post's reporter Jonathan Randall ended his report on
Pierre with a suggestion of senility in the old man. Quoting Charles
DeGaulle, Randall concluded his piece, saying: "Old age is a shipwreck."
[RANDALL, J., p. 7-3-96, p. A27]
Overwhelmed by the attacks against
him, Pierre finally publicly surrendered. "The attacks of which I have
been targeted have been beyond all measure," he said. "I have greatly
suffered." [PHILLIPS, I., 5-30-96, p. 13] He announced that "I have
decided to retract my statement, and to bow entirely to the sole opinion
of the experts of the Church," also adding that his comments had been
"exploited by elements who dangerously toy with the anti-Semitic,
neo-fascist, and neo-Nazi currents that I have fought and will always
fight against." [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 7-23-96]
A controversy of a somewhat related
vein occurred in Montreal, Canada, a year before the Abbe Pierre story.
A prominent Canadian Jewish lawyer, Julius Grey, faced an avalanche of
Jewish condemnation and outrage when he freely noted in a lecture at
John Abbott College that "I think the Holocaust and anti-Semitism is
being used by some elements and Israel and the Jewish community to keep
people in the fold. What is happening is a fake alarmist mentality,
because there is effectively no anti-Semitism in North America ...
[Modern teaching about the Holocaust] is turning it into a political
incident. Each ethnic group creates its own martyrology, that we're good
and kind and we've been mistreated." [CHERNEY, 4-25-95]
Response to Grey's comments was
overwhelming in the Jewish community. Mike Cohn of the Canadian Jewish
Congress told a reporter that "in the many years I've been at the
congress, I don't remember getting this many phone calls from irate
members of the community." [CHERNEY, 4-26-95] In the flurry of
subsequent editorials about the controversy, one non-Jewish commentator
noted that "the effect of the reaction to Grey's remarks could be to
intimidate, to stifle open debate, to chill free expression. For after
seeing what happened to Grey, others may think twice about expressing
unconventional opinions and ideas." [MACPHERSON, D. p. B3] The original
(Montreal) Gazette reporter who reported the Grey story later
wondered in a later article about "the rush to discredit and silence
Julius Grey ... [Does] a writer need ... a special license to deal with
the Holocaust, or a lawyer need to get permission from the community's
institutions to talk about it ... Could that ... silence dissent?"
[CHERNEY, E., 4-29-95, p. B6]
Elsewhere, in the more personal
realm, when Tom Bower sought to publish his unauthorized and highly
critical biography of Robert Maxwell, the British Jewish media baron
invoked litigation involving at least twelve lawyers, a number of
accountants, and two private detectives in researching Bower's
background. Failing in the courts to stop the book, Maxwell's army of
censors intimidated -- by economic threats and intimidating legal
innuendoes -- much of England's publishing world. Wholesale book
distributors and most British bookshops knuckled under to Maxwell's
power, and didn't carry the book. The mogul even bought a paperback
company that held the rights to Bower's pending volume in order to
effectively censor it. [BOWER, p. ix-x]
In 1997, in a story about Jewish
South African mogul Sol Kerzner, the New York Times noted that:
"In an early test of press freedom
under South Africa's new
constitution, a well-known
international casino magnate has
delayed the publication of a book
about him and is trying to
ban it. The book, 'Kerzner
Unauthorized' ... profiles Sol Kerzner
[who] made his fortune operating
[casinos] under apartheid in
south Africa's black
‘homeland’.... [He] has threatened to sue
local newspapers if they excerpted
it. As a result, a major Sunday
newspaper withheld publication of
an excerpt from the book."
[MCNEIL, p. A3]
The author of the Kerzner volume,
Allan Greenblo, is credible; he is himself the CEO of two major South
African publications -- the Business Day and the Financial
Mail. (Perhaps he himself is Jewish?)
Jewish author Steven Weinberg (author
of Armand Hammer: The Untold Story) was even sued by corrupt
Jewish mogul Armand Hammer. "After The Untold Story was published
in England, Armand filed the most expensive libel action in British
history, suing Weinberg on 157 counts of defamation." [BLUMAY, C., 1992,
p. 449]
In 1988, yet another Jewish business
mogul family (Canada's Reichmanns, at the time owners of the largest
real estate empire on earth) sought to censor the truth about their
past. The (Montreal) Gazette notes that:
"These are dangerous waters for any
journalist. In 1988, Toronto Life
magazine was hit with a $102
million libel suit for publishing an article
by freelance writer Elaine Dewar
which investigates [patriarch] Samuel
Reichmann's murky past as an egg
dealer in pre-war Austria and then
as a currency speculator in wartime
Tangiers. Toronto Life's eventual
apology and out-of-court settlement
suggested that 'libel chill' can be
an effective deterrent for any
wealthy family seeking to keep a curtain
of privacy around itself."
[HADEKEL, p. I]
In the same realm, as microcosm for
the whole problem of censorship and self-censorship in the mass media
world, in reviewing Jewish Hollywood mogul Michael Ovitz at the peak of
his power, Robert Slater noted that
"As the most powerful person in
[Hollywood], Ovitz had the power,
if he chose, to use it in order to
punish any critic who went public by
denying him or her all access to his
stable of stars. The mere possibility
that he exact such punishment was
enough to silence his critics ... No
Ovitz critic was willing to speak
out either on or off the record."
[SLATER, p. 202]
In August 1992, John H. Richardson, a
senior writer at Premiere magazine in Los Angeles, finished a
story about Jewish madam Heidi Fleiss and her drug and prostitution ring
in the Hollywood community. The entertainment magazine, dependent upon
cooperation with the movie world for its very existence, decided against
publishing the piece. The Entertainment Weekly also developed an
article about the story, but threats of legal action from attorneys for
Columbia executive Michael Nathanson killed the story. The
Hollywood Reporter also had an article about Fleiss too; this too
was aborted when Nathanson threatened to "destroy [each reporter's]
reputation" if the story was published. [KENNEDY, D., 8-20-93]
Reporter Dan Moldea experienced a
similar situation when he dared to write an expose (published in 1986)
about mogul Lew Wasserman at MCA. Moldea who has written about
crime for over twenty years (including books about the murder of Bobby
Kennedy, the Teamsters Union, and corruption in professional sports),
noted that "Writing Dark Victory [about Wasserman] was the only
time I ever really feared for my career. I felt raw power coming at me
like a rifle shot." [MCDOUGAL, p. x] "Moldea," notes Dennis McDougal,
"maintains that he was followed and his phone lines tapped during the
year he worked on the book. He is certain that Lew Wasserman targeted
him for harassment." [MCDOUGAL, p. x]
Los Angeles Times reporter
Bill Knoedelseder also faced blatant censorship when he tried to write
about the Wasserman-MCA-Mafia world, which extended to powerful
influences in the Reagan White House (Wasserman was Reagan's Hollywood
agent). The reporter, notes Dennis McDougal,
"changed his mind about his
newspaper's independence.... Somewhere
in plusher, upper reaches of the
Times, beyond the hard scrabble
cubicles of the newsroom, Lew was
enjoying lunch with the newspaper's
executives ... Knoedelseder's stories
about MCA and the derailed Mob
probe [at Los Angeles City Hall]
began to get rejected regularly by his
editors. He was instructed to switch
interests and write about something
other than MCA for a change.
Before the year was out, stories about
MCA and the Mob ceased to
appear in the paper at all, and Bill
Knoedelseder quit his job at the
Times." [MCDOUGAL, p. 468]
In 2000, Los Angeles Times
reporter, Kim Murphy, a 17-year veteran newswoman, wrote some articles
about the community of "Holocaust Deniers" and alleged right wing
political groups that led to many Jews "accusing the Times of
legitimizing the views of anti-Semites." The first article addressed
controversial British historian David Irving who had attempted to, in
effect, sue the international Jewish lobby that had destroyed his
writing career. Murphy's attempts at objectivity rankled a lot of Jews
and the reporter soon found herself under fire. "The story outraged
members of the Los Angeles Jewish community," notes Eric Umansky, "The
controversy even found its way into the Times newsroom." At close
quarters, fellow Los Angeles Times reporter Alan Abramson, of
course Jewish, decried Murphy's work, as did another Jewish newsman,
David Lauter, the Times religion reporter, who said, "Kim is a
very good reporter. But I think she screwed up on this particular
subject." The Times' executive editor, Leo Wolinsky, also Jewish,
"signed off on Murphy's second story after asking her to quote more
sources critical of Irving." Murphy publicly defended herself, insisting
that
"The Holocaust was horrible, "[but]
it's my profound belief that
there are no questions that can't be
asked. This is an issue of
political correctness. There are just
certain things you are not
allowed to say, even in this
country." [UMANSKY, E., 9-2000]
During the era of the 1980s Savings
and Loan scandals across America, Wall Street Journal reporter
Charles McCoy was set to run an article about the Federal Home Loan Bank
Board's questionable decision to allow J. Livingston Kosberg's First
Texas Savings and Loan (fourth largest in Texas) to acquire
Gibraltar Savings (the state's largest S&L whose principal investor
was Saul Steinberg). Connected to the deal was yet another influential
Jewish entrepreneur, Robert Strauss, former chairman of the Democratic
National Party and head of the Jimmy Carter campaign against Ronald
Reagan. Reporter Martin Meyer notes that
"In my presence [Strauss] chewed
reporter McCoy out on the telephone
for a quarter of an hour, informing
him that he (Strauss) was close to
Warren Phillips [also Jewish], CEO of
Dow Jones, and thus McCoy's
employer, and Strauss would have his
ass if there was stuff in the story
of which Strauss disapproved ... [So]
McCoy wrote carefully, and you
had to know what the numbers [in his
story] implied to know what the
story said." [MEYER, M., p. 14]
"The deal shouldn't have been
approved at all...," remarks Meyer, "First Texas was a sinking
ship, losing money on its lending operations ... [But] with Strauss on
one side and [Jewish junk bond manipulator Michael] Milken on the other,
the Bank Board was completely surrounded by political influence ...
First Gibraltar's star board member was [also] Strauss' son, Richard
(who was further blessed in Dallas by his aunt, the mayor)." [MEYER, M.,
p. 13-14]
In 1992, director/actor Woody Allen
faced public embarrassment when actress Mia Farrow (who had a common law
relationship with him for many years; she was also once married to
Jewish conductor Andre Previn) accused Allen of having an affair with
one of their teenage adopted daughters, and that he had repeatedly
sexually molested another daughter, a young child. Criminal charges,
however, were another story. Allen conceded, and defended, his sexual
relationship with the older daughter but denied any other incidents with
others. Paul Williams, the New York Child Welfare worker on the case,
noted that
"based [on the child's] demeanor and
her responses to my questions,
and my conversations with the
caseworker in Connecticut, and
my experiences from interviewing
hundreds of children who have
been abused, I concluded that abuse
did occur and that there was
a prima facie cause to
commence family-court proceedings against
Woody Allen. Then the barriers came
down. There came a litany of
reasons why we should not go forward.
My superior said that Woody
Allen is 'an influential person,' she
talked about his films, and his
'position.' As more evidence came
through interviews, I insisted that
the case should have been filed.
Managers at the Child Welfare Agency
responded that 'pressure [to drop the
case] is coming all the way from
the mayor's office [Jewish mayor: Ed
Koch]." [FARROW, p. 311]
The case was dropped. A child
custody trial featured Allen represented by six different law firms.
[FARROW, p. 316] Later, the Connecticut state attorney, Frank Maco,
announced that "probable cause" for Allen's arrest existed, but that by
then Farrow had decided a public trial would be extremely detrimental to
the abused child. [FARROW, p. 329]
In 1997 Peter Watson's sensational
expose of the systemic corruption within the Sotheby art auction house
(headed by Jewish real estate mogul Alfred Taubman) "sparked scandalous
headlines on both sides of the Atlantic when it was released in
Britain." [NY POST, 2-2-98] "Now that [the book] has finally arrived [in
America]," noted the New York Post, "the press doesn't seem to be
showing much interest. So far, only the weekly New York Observer
has reviewed it -- and even that is going Sotheby's way." [NY POST,
2-2-98] The American publisher of the book, Random House (owned
by Jewish mogul Si Newhouse) backed its publication up three times and
revised part of the European version. The Post suggested that
"Sotheby is getting kid glove treatment thanks to Alfred Taubman getting
a favor from Random House owner Si Newhouse -- an avid collector known
to spend millions at auctions." [NEW YORK POST, 2-2-98, p. 12]
In 1999, independent journalist and
art critic Hector Feliciano found himself facing a $1.8 million lawsuit
at the hands of the (Jewish) Wildenstein family (Daniel, Alec, and Guy).
Feliciano had dared to write about the family's clandestine art dealings
with the Nazis during Hitler's looting of Jewish-owned art treasures.
"They're suing me," said Feliciano, "so that other journalists will
think twice about writing about them." [GOLDBERG, J. J., 6-18-99, p. 14]
Dissident ("self-hating") Jews too
are not immune from enforced censorship about public criticism of their
community. British reporters Christopher Reed and Eleanor Mills note a
well known case in Hollywood:
"An example of Tinseltown shyness
about criticism of Jews is Budd
Schulberg's book What Makes Sammy
Run? Now 82, he wrote the
classic about a ruthlessly ambitious
Hollywood type called Sammy Glick,
in 1941. Five attempts to film it
have failed. After reading the book,
MGM studio chief Louis Mayer said
Schulberg should be deported.
It was pointed out that the author
was not only born in America, he
was the son of the head of
Paramount." [He was also Jewish] [REED, p.
2]
"The charge of anti-Semitism was laid
on the book," notes the Los Angeles Times, "although Schulberg
pointed out that all of Sammy's victims were Jewish too ... These days,
Schulberg fears that What Makes Sammy Run? has become what he
calls 'a handbook for yuppies.' 'It's a new handle on Sammy," Schulberg
says, "Sammy's credo of success at all costs and it doesn't matter how
you get there makes the book seem not truly merely entertaining but a
Bible of sorts." [CHAMPLIN, p. F1] (Along the same censorial lines, in
1963, Jewish cinema verite documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles'
unforgiving film about Hollywood producer Joe Levine evoked such anger
in the Hollywood community that "members of the Oscar screening society
reportedly found 'Showman' so anti-Semitic that they watched only five
minutes before walking out." [JEW JR LA, 1-16-98, p. 26] (Levine, notes
Thomas Hoving, "earned his millions by buying nonentities such as the
Italian Hercules films starring Steve Reeves and Godzilla,
the Japanese monster movie, and hyping them shamelessly." [HOVING, T.,
1993, p. 396]
Jewish singer Eddie Fisher recalls
wanting to play the lead acting role in What Makes Sammy Run? "I
had several meetings with Lew Wasserman, then the president of MCA,"
Fisher says,
"the talent agency that represented me. I wanted to play the lead,
an aggressive
producer named Sammy Glick, maybe the ultimate Jewish hustler. I
knew a lot of
real Sammy Glicks and I felt confident that was a character I could
play.
Wasserman decided Sammy Glick was 'too Jewish, too negative.' He
hated the
concept and did not want the picture made. I think he decided it
was bad for
the Jews." [FISHER, E., 1999, p. 90]
Angry reaction by the Jewish
community to members of their own depicting such Jewish "success
stories" is not uncommon. The (Montreal) Gazette noted Mordechai
Richler as one of Canada's best known writers, but
"caustic, controversial, and often
crude ... [Richler's novel] Dudley Kravitz
remains the best-selling of Richler's
works. A comic extravaganza of a
coming-of-age novel, it tells the
story of a 'scheming little bastard,' a
coarse, driven, young Jew determined
to make something of himself at