http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=203&x_article=1651

I am not surprised to see antisemitism portrayed by the Guardian as

- an issue of concern to Jews but not troubling in itself;

- a danger to the reputation of a paper, the danger occurring because there is the potential to offend a large volume of its readers.

Incidentally, how does the Guardian know what religion the readers of the NYT profess, if any?

piece in Sunday’s U.K. Guardian takes a belated look at the controversy surrounding New York Times columnist Roger Cohen and his columns about Iran, Jews in Iran and Israel. The piece reports:

‘A row has broken out over allegations of antisemitism at the New York Times, America’s most vaunted name in journalism and a newspaper with a large Jewish readership.

The storm centres on a column about Jews in Iran written by New York Times journalist Roger Cohen and a cartoon attacking the recent war in Gaza.

The newspaper, and Cohen in particular, has been accused of being too critical of Israel and an apologist for Iran and its leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.’

In typical British fashion, the Guardian gets the point about criticism of Israel wrong.

Contrary to what some Britons may think, there is no invisible, forbidden line in America when it comes to criticism of Israel that, when crossed, becomes certifiable anti-Semitism. Reasonable people can argue about what constitutes anti-Semitism, and whether certain criticisms of Israel fit the bill.

I’m not sure what other critics of Cohen have been saying to the New York Times, but my problem with his columns isn’t his criticism of Israel (or anti-Semitism) but his bad journalism. Cohen has the right to criticize Israel — as do I, you or anybody else. The problem isn’t that Cohen has criticized Israel too much, crossing some unspoken line, but that he’s simply been wrong or duplicitous in what he has written about Israel, Iran and Iranian Jews….”

read the rest here:

http://blogs.jta.org/telegraph/article/2009/03/30/1004093/clarifying-the-debate-about-roger-cohen

Great analysis. I hear so many Iranians, of various political stripes, ask me: “Why are we risking our security and wasting our money on the Palestinians? What do they have to do with us?”

But I also know there is a good chunk of my compatriots who’ve been fooled by the regime’s propaganda into hating Israel, or else they go along with the IRI party line because the regime subsidizes their daily life in one way or another.

That said, it isn’t the case that the average Iranian wakes up every morning saying to herself, “Hopefully today will bring another victory for us against the Zionists!” So the best chance of Israel “winning” the war would be for the Iranian people to make it clear to their regime that enmity towards the Jewish state does not put food on the table, does not allow their recent graduate to find a job, does not make them more free, etc.