Blood Libel in the Garden State

Tuesday April 23, 2002 04:11

by Claudia Winkler - Managing Editor of Weekly Standard

America the only pro Israeli country has its share of Islamic Fundamentalist anti semites located on the American college campuses.

The student newspaper at Rutgers runs some disgusting "facts"--and doesn't allow readers to respond.

ON APRIL 5 the Daily Targum, campus newspaper of Rutgers University, published a front-page report on a pro-Palestinian student rally. It quoted one protester, a fourth-year pharmacy student, as claiming that the media portray Palestinians as terrorists, "but when the Israeli government went into an all-female hospital and randomly selected 30 women, called them terrorists and executed them, you don't hear about it." She added, "We must educate where the media has failed."

Now, no one would look to student demonstrators for dispassionate scrupulousness about facts--or expect student editors to exercise infallible judgment. Still, it's disappointing that the Daily Targum, while willing to recycle this unsourced allegation of atrocity, has thus far failed to publish any of the responses it received.

One reply, submitted by Leslie Fishbein, associate professor of American Studies and Jewish Studies, placed the hospital allegation in the context of the fantastic lies circulating in the Middle Eastern press, both ancient libels and current fabrications--you know, the real attacker of the World Trade Center was Israel.

"These false charges," wrote Fishbein, "have fueled anti-Semitic instances worldwide, leading to the torching of synagogues and the beatings of innocent Jews. They also detract from the sympathy Israel deserves for the terrorist outrages that Palestinian homicide bombers have committed upon an equally innocent civilian population. The Daily Targum has no right to publish unsubstantiated lies that can promote anti-Semitism and that can corrupt its readers' understanding of the current violence in the Mideast."

You'd have thought it couldn't do the Targum's readers any harm to be exposed to Prof. Fishbein's point of view.

Rutgers, of course, is not alone in being the site of strident pro-Palestinian rallies. The University of Michigan and campuses in the San Francisco Bay Area have been especially active. The Associated Press reports that at Berkeley "in recent weeks, vandals heaved a cinder block through a window of a campus Jewish center and scrawled anti-Semitic obscenities, and Jewish students say they've been pelted with eggs while leaving services."

Not all of this is new. Jeffrey Ross, director of the department of campus and higher education affairs at the Anti-Defamation League, recalls hearing an Arab student inform a campus forum last year that Israeli soldiers are trained to shoot Palestinians' eyes out--and regularly do so.

Come to think of it, that episode took place at Montclair State University, not far from Rutgers. Maybe there's a story here for some enterprising campus journalist: How about tracking down where the Muslim student activists of northern New Jersey are getting their "facts" about what goes on in the Middle East?

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Comments (1 of 1)

Lousy paper and even worse critique

by Sean Marquis

Tue Apr 23, 2002 23:07

lesmarquis at ziplip dot com

I went to school at Rutgers Universtiy and lived in New Brunswick (where the school is located) for twelve years.
The Daily Targum acts just as any other US mainstream paper - everything is reported in a vaccuum, a critical eye is rarely cast at anything and more often than not this works for the benefit of officialdom.
I haven't heard the "hospital" story, so I can't verify or denounce it.

But...
What Claudia Winkler's "Weekly Standard" article does is also quite typical of the US media: denounce Palestinian claims of Israeli wrongdoing as factitious and therefore "anti-Semitic"; by virtue of this argument, Winkler implies that Israeli atrocities against Palestinians don't occur - [they do - atrocities happen on both sides, Winkler doesn't admit it though].

Winkler even does a great spin job of linking "pro-Palestinian rallies" and violence, thereby furthering her claims:

"Rutgers, of course, is not alone in being the site of strident pro-Palestinian rallies. The University of Michigan and campuses in the San Francisco Bay Area have been especially active. The Associated Press reports that at Berkeley 'in recent weeks, vandals heaved a cinder block through a window of a campus Jewish center and scrawled anti-Semitic obscenities, and Jewish students say they've been pelted with eggs while leaving services.'"

By writing in such a way, Winkler implies that "pro-Palestinian" sentiment on college campuses necessarily devolves into "anti-Semitic" activity such as attacking people and acts of vandalism. Gee, Winkler isn't trying to manipulate anyone here, is she?

As far as the Daily Targum not printing comments about the article, it's possible, I don't live there anymore, so I wouldn't know.

In trying to prove media carelessness and manipulation, Winkler engages in some of her own.

Cheers, Sean

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Blood Libel in the Garden State

Comments (1 of 1)