No one is coming out of this story looking good. Not the reporters and the editors of the News of the World newspaper, who hired a private detective to “hack” into the mobile phone messages of the subjects of their investigations – actors, celebrities, footballers, but also families who lost soldiers in wars and victims of murder. Certainly not the top brass of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, who pushed the Sunday tabloid into the murky depths of the journalism swamp, chasing down sensationalist headlines and higher sales.

The power of the News International empire – which in Britain controls not just the tabloid with the biggest circulation, The Sun, but also “institutional” papers The Times and Sunday Times, as well as the BSkyB satellite television channels – was so extensive that, when the police caught a glimpse of the phone hacking affair more than five years ago, a decision was made that there were more important issues to investigate.

Pfeffer’s piece was yanked off the Haaretz English website after less than 24 hours, where many older pieces often linger for days, even weeks. Equally noteworthy is that  the article is now very difficult  to locate in the Haaretz archives. Querying the Haaretz website search box for “Murdoch” or “Pfeffer,” the default “sort by relevance” results bury Pfeffer’s article about Murdoch, which can be located easily only if searching by date.

Haaretz‘s generally slipshod archiving of its published articles is irritating to researchers and writers, and is particularly unfortunate for a newspaper whose English language edition is published in coordination with the International Herald Tribune. The most interesting and provocative articles seem to be most difficult to find and to have the shortest shelf life, sometimes vanishing in a matter of hours. (This author learned long ago to print out any item  of interest appearing on the Haaretz site before it disappeared.)

Israel’s other English language news sites thus far have been offering no original commentary about Murdoch, and providing only reports or brief excerpts from wire service coverage. Curiously, neither Pfeffer nor the wire service reports point out that Murdoch is considered staunchly “pro-Israel.” In the past two years, Murdoch has been an honoree of at least two prominent  pro-Israel groups in the U.S..

On March 4, 2009, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) presented Murdoch with its “National Human Relations Award.” (This author posted this detail in a reader comment to Pfeffer’s piece that Haaretz chose not to publish just prior to the article’s disappearance,  and also pointed it out in an e-mail to Pfeffer himself, to which he has not replied.) Speaking at the AJC awards dinner, Murdoch refuted the widely-believed myth that he himself  is Jewish, but took the opportunity to reiterate and endorse some other myths prevalent in the Jewish community:

In Europe, men and woman who bear the tattoos of concentration camps today look out on a continent where Jewish lives and Jewish property are under attack – and public debate is poisoned by an anti-Semitism we thought had been dispatched to history’s dustbin.

In Iran, we see a regime that backs Hezbollah and Hamas now on course to acquire a nuclear weapon.

In India, we see Islamic terrorists single out the Mumbai Jewish Center in a well-planned and well-coordinated attack that looks like it could be a test run for similar attacks in similar cities around the world.

On the first point, Murdoch ignored the inconvenient truth that the resurgence of European anti-Semitism has proceeded in tandem with European Islamophobia. Less than six months before Murdoch received his AJC award, the 2008 Pew Survey of Global Attitudes had revealed that Islamophia and anti-Semitism were both on the rise in Europe. As Ian Traynor of the Guardian noted at the time, “The survey found that suspicion of Muslims in Europe was considerably higher than hostility to Jews, but that the increase in antisemitism had taken place much more rapidly.” The rise in European anti-Semitism is a byproduct of Islamophobia at least as much as (and perhaps more than) it is a consequence of it.

Debate over whether or not Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon receives ample coverage on this blog and elsewhere, and elaboration of this issue would be a digression from the topic at hand. Suffice it to say that Murdoch (or any other speaker) could not, and would not dare to, address a Jewish group, particularly one that devotes so much of its abundant resources to anti-Iran rhetoric as AJC, without invoking “the Iranian threat.”

Murdoch’s mention of the attack on the Chabad House in Mumbai, India strongly implied  that the Jewish house of workshop had been singled out for an Islamist terrorist attack. At least 150 people were killed and hundreds more injured in a series of coordinated terrorist attacks Nov. 26-28, 2008, on a crowded train station, two luxury hotels popular with foreign tourists, a hospital and several other crowded Mumbai sites, with the Chabad House an apparent afterthought. The initial Fox News report did not even refer to the Chabad House as having been a target. Murdoch’s AJC speech also didn’t mention that Mumbai has nine synagogues attended almost exclusively by locals, which were not attacked; the only one targeted by the terrorists was the Chabad center, which was both run and frequented by foreigner visitors from Israel and Western countries.

Not to be outdone, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) chose Murdoch as the recipient of its “International Leadership Award” on Oct. 13, 2010, which was presented to him by ADL Director Abraham Foxman:

“I have come to know the man, not his image,” Mr. Foxman said in presenting the award to Mr. Murdoch.  “I learned that he cared deeply about the safety and security of Israel.  I learned that he was as distressed as I was about efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state, to hold it to a double standard, and to seek its demise by some.”

In his acceptance speech (reproduced in full by the arch-neoconservative Weekly Standard, which Murdoch’s NewsCorp had helped to get off the ground and had run at a loss for 14 years before selling it in 2009 to Philip Anschutz), Murdoch blamed anti-Semitism on Muslims, and leftists for the “soft war” being waged against Israel, conflating criticism with armed assault:

Now the war has entered a new phase.  This is the soft war that seeks to isolate Israel by delegitimizing it. The battleground is everywhere:  the media … multinational organizations … NGOs.

In this war, the aim is to make Israel a pariah.

The result is the curious situation we have today:  Israel becomes increasingly ostracized, while Iran – a nation that has made no secret of wishing Israel’s destruction – pursues nuclear weapons loudly, proudly, and without apparent fear of rebuke.

Israel “ostracized” by the media? Criticism of Israel as the latest manifestation of  terrorism? Iran pursuing nuclear weapons without fear of rebuke? Murdoch ought to have spent a bit more time reading his competitors. Israeli policies and perspectives receive largely deferential treatment by western international wire services that are still dominant in global news flows — and, of course, the US new media.

Murdoch also used the occasion to take a swipe at US President Barack Obama:

I was pleased to hear the State Department’s spokesman clarify America’s position yesterday. He said that the United States recognizes “the special nature of the Israeli state. It is a state for the Jewish people.”

This is an important message to send to the Middle East. When people see, for example, a Jewish prime minister treated badly by an American president, they see a more isolated Jewish state. That only encourages those who favor the gun over those who favor negotiation.

Obama’s alleged mistreatment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was another myth purveyed by Murdoch-owned news media. Fox News fueled the hysteria about Obama “insulting” Netanyahu by conversing with him on the telephone on June 9, 2009 while his  legs were stretched out on his White House desk, revealing the soles of his shoes, at which an Arab might take umbrage. (Since neither Obama nor Netanyahu is Arab, it was unclear why this was considered to be of any relevance.) Accompanying the article was a photo released by the White House, showing Obama at ease while communicating with the Israeli Prime Minister.

All this has apparently earned Murdoch and his empire the unswerving loyalty of Israelis and the major institutions of the “Israel Lobby” here in the U.S. Last February, a group of 400 American rabbis objected to the Holocaust terminology used and misused by then-Fox News Channel commentator Glenn Beck. In an open letter published in the Wall Street Journal and the Forward, the rabbis appealed to Murdoch to sanction Beck and Fox News Chair Roger Ailes. The Jerusalem Post depicted  American Jews as critical of the rabbis, rather than of Beck, Ailes or Murdoch. JP quoted the  ADL’s  Foxman as saying that he found the rabbis’ public stance  against Beck and Ailes to be bizarre: “They’re not our enemy, and they are certainly not Holocaust deniers.”

A new accusation by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown asserts the Murdoch media empire may have used known criminals to conduct  illicit surveillance activities such as hacking and wiretapping in order to obtain personal information. Heartlessly shoddy and amazingly under-handed (and illegal; not to say, immoral) journalistic practices at his news sites? Who cares, as long as he’s “good for Israel”? And if Murdoch is “good for Israel,” they’d all best shut up about him.

It was Eli who first noticed Thomas Joscelyn’s piece on the Weekly Standard website Dec 27 in which he mocked Obama’s claim that Guantanamo was “probably the number one recruitment tool that is used by these jihadist organizations.”

In his post, entitled “Gitmo is Not Al Qaeda’s ‘Number One Recruitment Tool,’ Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), performed a quantitative analysis of key words that appeared in the “translations of 34 messages and interviews dlievered by top al Qaeda leaders operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri, since January 2009.” Guantanamo, he found, was “mentioned in only 3 of the 34 messages. The other 31 messages contain no reference to Guantanamo.” Within those three messages, Guantanamo was mentioned a mere seven times, according to Joscelyn’s findings.

To show just how ignorant or misleading Obama was, Joscelyn naturally went on to compare that paltry total with the number of other key words used during the period:

“By way of comparison, all of the following keywords are mentioned far more frequently: Israel/Israeli/Israelis (98 mentions), Jew/Jews (129), Zionist(s) (94), Palestine/Palestinian (200), Gaza (131), and Crusader(s) (322). (Note: Zionist is often paired with Crusader in al Qaeda’s rhetoric.)

“Naturally, al Qaeda’s leaders also focus on the wars in Afghanistan (333 mentions) and Iraq (157). Pakistan (331), which is home to the jihadist hydra, is featured prominently, too. Al Qaeda has designs on each of these three nations and implores willing recruits to fight America and her allies there. Keywords related to other jihadist hotspots also feature more prominently than Gitmo, including Somalia (67 mentions), Yemen (18) and Chechnya (15).”

So compelling were Joscelyn’s little survey and conclusions that Karl Rove gleefully devoted his weekly column in the Wall Street Journal to it — “Gitmo Is Not A Recruiting Tool for Terrorists” on Dec 29. [It was published in the Dec 30 print edition.] Here’s his triumphant conclusion about Joscelyn’s findings:

[T]he president is wrong to assign such importance to Gitmo and, by implication, to suggest it would be a major setback to al Qaeda were he to close it, as he promised but failed to do by the end of his first year in office. Shuttering the facility would not take the wind out of terrorism, in part because it is not, and never has been, its ‘No. 1 recruitment tool.’

So, assuming that Joscelyn’s hypothesis and Rove’s assertion make sense — that there must be some correlation between key words used by al Qaeda leaders (in Afghanistan and Pakistan) in their public pronouncements and what they believe are the issues that are most likely to rally their intended audience behind them (and assuming that Joscelyn’s methodology for data collection and keyword analysis was sound), what can we conclude?

It seems we can safely say that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is seen by al Qaeda leaders as their “number one recruitment tool.” Indeed, taken together, “Israel/Israelis,” “Jew/Jews,” “Zionist(s),” “Palestine/Palestinian,” and “Gaza” account were mentioned an astonishing 652 times in 34 messages: that’s virtually twice as many times as “Afghanistan” or “Pakistan” which, given their geographic proximity to the al Qaeda leaders who are sending these messages, is quite remarkable.

But let’s be more conservative. As Joscelyn noted, “Zionist” was often paired with Crusader in al Qaeda’s rhetoric” and thus may not have anything directly to do with the Israel-Palestinian conflict per se. Similarly, “Jew/Jewish” is not necessarily relevant, either, so let’s delete those two keywords from the data set as well. Nonetheless, even if we confine our count to “Israel/Israelis,” “Palestine/Palestinian,” and “Gaza” — all of which are more likely to refer to the Israel-Palestinian conflict — we come up with 429 mentions, or some 25 percent more than runner-up “Afghanistan”!

Of course, this linkage between Islamist extremism and the Israel-Palestinian conflict is something that real scholars — and the military brass, most famously last March in testimony by Gen. David Petraeus when he was still CENTCOM chief — have long maintained. But it also a linkage that neo-conservatives, in particular, have repeatedly and strenuously denied. Take what Abe Foxman wrote in the Jerusalem Post shortly after Petraeus’ remark last spring as just one of a legion of examples: “The notion that al-Qaida’s hatred of America ….or the ongoing threat of extremist terrorist groups in the region is based on Israel’s announcement of building apartments [in East Jerusalem] is absurd on its face and smacks of scapegoating.”

But let’s go back to the logic behind Rove’s argument that if Gitmo were “the No. 1 recruitment toll” for al Qaeda, “then Al Qaeda leaders would emphasize it in their manifestos, statements and Internet postings, mentioning it early, frequently and at length.” Well, if that doesn’t apply to Gitmo, it seems to apply in spades to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, suggesting — again, using Rove’s logic — that resolving the conflict could “take the wind out of terrorism…”

Of course, Rove doesn’t go down the road, even if his logic points in that direction. Instead, he reverts to a tired neo-conservative mantra: “It is the combination of a fierce, unquenchable hatred for the U.S. and a profound sense of grievance against the modern world that helps Islamists to draw recruits,” he insists. Of course, the notion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may contribute importantly to that sense of grievance doesn’t occur to him, despite all of the evidence he recites from Jocelyn’s little study.

In regards to Iran, toward the start of the discussion Sheen brought up the non-violent strategy of targeted boycotts to oppose, among other things, Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territory. Foxman, exposing his hypocrisies, replies (with my emphasis):

I’m opposed to boycotts, period. I think boycotts hurt the wrong people, do not achieve their aims. They’re counterproductive. I’m not aware of any boycott — except for the boycott against South Africa — that has worked. And even there, it hurt innocent people…

So I’m opposed to boycotts, and I’m certainly opposed to boycotts whether against the whole state of Israel or segments of the state of Israel. We basically have a policy of being opposed to boycotts.

[Question from Sheen about whether Foxman's opposition is moral deficiencies or tactical inefficacy of the strategy.]

Well, the moral reason is boycotts basically hurt the wrong people, and there are innocent victims of the boycotts. There’s the same question about sanctions, whether sanctions work. … On a principled stance, we are opposed to boycotts.

Watch the video, starting from 16:40:

While Foxman says he doesn’t support visiting the morally reprehensible collective punishment of boycotts on Israelis, he has no qualms about using them to attack ordinary Iranians in an effort to force the country’s leadership to change its mind. This is exactly what Foxman did when the ADL whole-heartedly backed various sanctions packages — which he admits are plagued by the same moral quandaries as boycotts — against the Islamic Republic.

Here’s an ADL statement, co-issued by Foxman on June 9, welcoming UN sanctions against Iran (my bold again):

The world can live without Iranian oil exports, but the regime can’t. Empty oil tankers bypassing Iran on their way to fill up at Saudi, Kuwaiti and Emirati ports will concentrate the minds of Iran’s leaders unlike any action we can take short of war.

Foxman again, on June 17, celebrating EU sanctions against Iran that targeted that nation’s oil and natural gas sectors as well as finance and trade. His statement  — a de facto endorsement of collective punishment of Iranians in order affect change in the Iran’s leadership — was issued despite the well-known fact that the leadership is notoriously obstinate:

While the impact on Iran’s finances will be in the future, these sanctions should impact the regime’s decision-making today.

The leadership of the Iranian opposition is unequivocally opposed to broad-based U.S. sanctions against Iran — both Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi have said as much, as have some exiles close to the Green movement like Hooman Majd. Even New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, whose writing shows that he is certainly no fan of the Islamic Republic’s leadership, is opposed to sanctions.

Foxman is always accusing critics of Israel of singling out the Jewish state. In this case, it turns out Foxman is the Israeli exceptionalist, period.

Mr. Abraham Foxman
National Director
Anti-Defamation League
823 United Nations Plaza
New York, NY 10017

August 4, 2010

Dear Mr. Foxman:

Enclosed please find all ADL address labels your office has ever sent to me in the hope of receiving a contribution.

After the Anti Defamation League’s opposition to the construction of the Park 51 community center complex (usually, if inaccurately, refered to as the “ground zero mosque”), I cannot imagine ever again using an address sticker with my name on it that associates the ADL with “Diversity,” “Tolerance” or “Acceptance.”   I also  have no desire to see my name associated with that of the ADL, even on an envelope paying my electric bill that no one will bother looking at.

Furthermore, I hereby request that I be expunged from your mailing lists and databases.  I also revoke the permission you may have thought you had to give or sell these names to any person or organization.

I note that, in the wake of the approval of the Park 51 project by the relevant authorities, you have backed off somewhat. And I appreciate the fact that you apparently will not be joining Rev. Pat Robertson in the perpetuation of this exercise in histrionic bigotry. Nonetheless, you went much too far in stirring up and fueling Jewish paranoia, lending your voice to the din of intolerance generated by the right wing media and exploited by right wing politicians.

Since you like to collect and retell anecdotes about holocaust survivors and their sensitivities, let me share one with you.  Some months ago I took my mother to a synagogoue in Delray Beach, FL, to say kaddish [the memorial prayer for the dead] for my father on the anniversary of his passing, in a congregation made up primarily of elderly Jews.

At one non-crucial point in the service, I needed to use the ladies’ room. Not surprisingly, I wasn’t the only one who had this idea, and I had to wait behind a couple of elderly women.  When I was first in the queue, I saw a trembling arthritic woman who had just washed her hands struggling to get  a paper towel out of the dispenser so she could dry them. I took  3 or 4 steps toward her and got her a towel.

At the very moment I did so, two stalls became available. The two women waiting behind me promptly swooped into them. I resumed waiting for the next vacancy.  Two more women entered and got behind me.

At this point, another woman came into the ladies’ room.  She immediately came over to me, rolled up the sleeve of her sweater, revealing the concentration camp number tattooed on her wrist, held it up to me, and whined, “I hate standing in lines.”

I stared at her,  shrugged, and then, ignoring her, went into the first available stall.

How could I be so lacking in “sensitivity”?  First,  three women waiting to use three toilets is a queue, not a “line” like one would have found at a concentration camp in Nazi Germany.   Second of all, had the woman  simply said, “This is really an emergency!” because she had a bladder control issue, most likely I would have graciously let her in ahead of me. Had I noticed that she had any difficulty standing or walking, I would voluntarily have yielded my place to her without her even asking.

But  her waving her wrist in my face had exactly the opposite reaction than what she had hoped for.  Instead of feeling sorry for her, I was disgusted.  How dare she cheapen and insult the holocaust by using the tattoo on  her arm in this way?

Mr. Foxman, without pressing the analogy too far, I had a very similar response when  I read your argument against the Cordoba Institute’s plans to build a center in lower Manhattan.  Yes, you’re a holocaust survivor, and  you claim to be protecting the “sensitivities” of 9/11 survivors, whom you equate with holocaust survivors.

But in doing so you put yourself, and the  American Jewish community you claim to speak for, in a very similar position to the whining woman in the ladies’ room:  rolling up her sleeve,  as she most likely has been doing for the past sixty some-odd years, showing off the number on her arm, and using it manipulatively.

I’m really glad ADL lost this round to Mayor Bloomberg and the relevant New York city authorities.  I’m also grateful that rabbis like Marc Schneier, Irwin Kula, Joshua Stanton and numerous others spoke out in favor of Park 51′s being built.

And now you can take my ADL Diversity, Tolerance and Acceptance address labels and stick them wherever you like.

Sincerely,
Dr. Marsha B. Cohen

UPDATE: Fareed Zakaria, of CNN and Newsweek, has written to Foxman,   returning the Hubert Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize he was awarded by the ADL in 2005.  “You are choosing to use your immense prestige to take a side that is utterly opposed to the animating purpose of your organization,” Zakaria wrote in the letter,  published in Newsweek. “Your own statements subsequently, asserting that we must honor the feelings of victims even if irrational or bigoted, made matters worse.”  Zakaria returned both  his plaque and a $10,000 honorarium.