Just What America Needs Most: Two More Zionist Publications

By Kurt Holden

ABC's hour-long Sunday morning news discussion show, "This Week With David Brinkley," is an otherwise relaxing opportunity to see one of the slyist U.S. media Zionists in action. The suave and ever cautious Brinkley, who has aged with exceeding grace and still writes his own material, keeps his religion, if any, and his Middle East sympathies to himself.

However, his son, Joel Brinkley, who covered Israel for the New York Times for a period, did not. After he and his Israeli journalist wife, Sabra Chartrand, reported a blatantly distorted Israeli government-manufactured version of the 1990 Haram Al Sharif massacre in which Israeli police and border police killed at least 17 Muslims and wounded 400 with no losses of their own, a California journalism professor showed them videotapes taken from several parts of the city that demonstrated it was an unprovoked police attack on crowds of Muslim young people who had assembled to protect the shrine from a group of Israeli religious fanatics (the Temple Mount Faithful) who had vowed to tear it down. However, neither Brinkley nor Chartrand ever wrote a recantation of the fabrication, nor did the Times ever acknowledge its two correspondents had been totally duped by the Israeli government.

It is only when the elder Brinkley hushes Sam Donaldson, a media talking head with a conscience, or quickly changes the subject when anyone brings up an awkward point about Israel, that you begin to see why the American public is so woefully misinformed about its aggressive "strategic ally." On April 30, however, with the discussion of the Oklahoma City bombing no longer focused on shadowy "Middle Eastern terrorism" but rather on made-in-America extremism, Brinkley asked an incredibly naive question. Why in the world do these groups all expound "right-wing views?" he said. Isn't there anyone on the left who wants to be heard?

"The left already has the Washington Post, the New York Times" and plenty of others, replied George Will. "Why would they need to be heard?" It was a typically snappy comeback from the conservative Will, who guaranteed his place as a syndicated columnist and television talking head by making himself into the most articulate non-Jewish American spokesman for Israel. He also made a pile of money doing it through speaking fees from Jewish groups.

Predictably, with the American Jewish community now split so badly over the peace process, Will is almost as cautious as David Brinkley about getting into matters Israeli. Never mind what he thinks, it's what they, his divided Jewish patrons, think that matters, and until they get together again, you see him consciously resisting the urge to voice all sorts of bright thoughts about the Middle East that pop into his nimble brain.

Two May news items brought his sarcastic remark to mind. It seems that America is about to get two new publications, each backed by multi-millionaires. And what do they have in commmon—both with each other and with most of the rest of the mainstream press? They're both pro-Zionist!

Before you ask, "why in the world...," let us tell you why.

The first impending journalistic birth announced was that of Standard, a totally new weekly magazine to be owned by Australian-born worldwide media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who's been an American citizen for about the same length of time as Australian-born U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk, whose naturalization was fast-tracked so that he could become senior Middle East policy adviser in the Clinton White House. However, unlike Indyk, Murdoch is neither Jewish nor a former employee of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel's principal Washington, DC lobby. Murdoch was naturalized so that he wouldn't run into problems about foreign ownership as he moved from the British and European media scene into the United States.

The fact that there is a new non-Jewish U.S. media mogul might be big news, except for one thing. As far as his editorial policies toward Israel and the Middle East are concerned, you wouldn't know the difference. He learned long ago that the only way he was going to be allowed at the head media table was to be a friend of Israel. Perhaps aside from allowing a little more diversity among the columnists on some of the local mastheads in his daily newspaper chain, you won't get any more or any fewer "true lies" about Israel in Murdoch papers than in the Hearst, Newhouse or New York Times chains.

So, is there another reason for Standard, other than to get Murdoch into the U.S. weekly journal of opinion field? Of course. The reason is to try again for a "neo-conservative" takeover of the Republican Party. Failure of the first attempt was formalized by the recent retirement of Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, who finally quit after the American Jewish Committee refused to continue paying most of the bills for a monthly magazine whose circulation supposedly was stuck between 20,000 and 30,000.

For the latest neo-conservative attempt, even the names are the same. According to an article by Kim Masters in the May 1 Washington Post, the idea for the magazine was hatched by John Podhoretz, a nephew of Norman Podhoretz and television critic at the New York Post, and William Kristol, the son of neo-conservative guru Irving Kristol, at the Utopia coffee shop on Amsterdam Avenue in New York last October.

Kristol the younger is the "Republican Party strategist" who became chief of staff for Vice President Dan Quayle and, in our opinion, helped him transform himself from an uncomplicated (perhaps too uncomplicated) fresh-faced Midwestern senator into someone trying to talk like those "establishment elites" that people in the Midwest want to take up arms to defend themselves against. Kristol, who is so clever that he's been pretty much unemployed ever since Quayle went back to Indiana, has now decided to see if he can remake the Republican Party as thoroughly as he remade Dan Quayle. He'll be editor and Podhoretz the younger will be his deputy.

Helping these heirs to neo-conservatism as executive editor will be Fred Barnes of the New Republic. For Barnes, being the magazine's shabbos goy (a non-Jew hired to do weekly necessary chores like turning on and off the lights in an Orthodox Jewish home so that its Jewish occupants won't have to violate the Sabbath) will involve no career change. He has been a senior editor at the New Republic for many years. It's not a bad place to work unless you have ideas of your own about the Middle East. The New Republic, once a weekly with impeccable liberal credentials, was purchased many years ago by Martin Peretz, heir to millions, who is a certifiable lunatic when it comes to Israel.

It was he who founded and edited Ramparts, the New Left symbol of the campus revolution of the late 1960s. He gleefully exposed CIA secrets for starters, and then went after all establishment "targets of opportunity"—except one! Not a critical word was ever published about Israel. It became a question of conscience for his staff, particularly since it was at this time that the intention of Israel not to trade the lands seized in 1967 for peace with the Arabs became increasingly obvious, and a subject of hot debate within Israel itself. Finally the staff held a meeting and voted to run an objective article about Israel. Peretz got quick revenge. He just walked out of the Ramparts office, never to return, and bought the New Republic. Unfortunately, in the land of the free (if they're advertisers) and the home of the brave (unless they're writers), no U.S. journal of opinion can function long without a sponsor, so Ramparts is long gone with the revolutionary winds, and the New Republic endures, even without many paying subscribers. In short, Fred Barnes should feel right at home at Standard.

The other new Zionist publication? It's Forward, a New York Jewish weekly that is going to go daily, thanks to millionaire investor Michael H. Steinhardt, 54, a key financial backer of the Democratic Party and co-chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council. Actually, the newspaper has ancient and honorable lineage, having been founded in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily, Forwerts, for new immigrants in New York. Its circulation reached 250,000 but has declined to 8,000 as has the use of Yiddish. Five years ago the English-language weekly version was established and chief editor Seth Lipsky, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and editor, claims it now has 16,000 circulation.

"Steinhardt manages about $3 billion in investment funds, specializing in the rapid buying and short-selling of stocks," according to Jay Matthews of the Washington Post. Steinhardt therefore can be candid about his goals: "I have committed a great deal of time, energy and money toward the objective of keeping non-Orthodox Jews in America Jewish through the generations," he said, according to the Post. He said a daily newspaper with the same small but influential national coverage achieved by Forward' s weekly version would help achieve that goal.