A commentary headlined “Is Zionism Past its Expiry Date?” by Patrick Martin, which appeared Feb. 20 in the online edition of the Globe and Mail, is a textbook example of an anti-Israel polemic. Quite apart from its questionable content however, perhaps its most egregious quality is the devious, indirect manner by which its content finds the page, so to speak.
Space does not allow an adequate parsing of the commentary. Indeed, it could form the basis of a seminar on how to detect an oblique, anti-Israel rebuke. But it’s important for readers – not only supporters of Israel – to recognize some of the arch devices typically used by an author or speaker intent on doing indirectly what he or she will not attempt directly.
The drive-by smear: At the very outset, i.e., in the third paragraph, the author seemingly innocuously and gratuitously mentions the “Zionism-as-a-form-of-racism” resolution passed by the UN General Assembly in 1975 to support an entirely subjective, insupportable proposition that “not since 1975… has the subject [Zionism] been so hotly contested.” The statement is absurd on its face. Anyone who follows the unceasing, myriad public debates in and about Israel would know this. The nature of an evolving Zionism is constantly discussed in Israel, and especially so during general elections. Worse, inexplicable and deeply troubling is the fact the author fails to mention anywhere in the subsequent text that the General Assembly actually revoked that scurrilous resolution in 1991.
Non-representative sources: The four politicians on whose views the author primarily relies to illustrate his thesis – Hanin Zoabi, Avigdor Liberman, Naftali Bennett and Avraham Burg – are decidedly not from the mainstream of the Israeli electorate. The author also quotes a Tel Aviv University professor who criticizes the very name of the newly combined Labor-Hatnua party list, the Zionist Camp. He does so by again repeating the “racist” invective in a clearly implied reference to Zionism.
Partial truths and omitted contexts: The author cites the attempt to disqualify Zoabi from standing for election to make a point about today’s Zionist advocates. He fails to provide the context for this effort, namely her outrageously hostile behaviour toward the state. Nor does he mention that in the past, Jewish candidates, too, due to their extremist actions, have been barred from standing for election. The author presents extreme positions – and in the case of Burg’s point of view, entirely marginal to the vast majority of Jews in Israel – as normative ones in reference to the debate about Zionism.
The provocative headline. It is unlikely the author was involved in writing the piece’s headline. However, it effectively illustrates the wily bias prevalent against the Jewish state. Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish People. Of the 193 member states of United Nations General Assembly, only one is Jewish. Why, of all nationalisms, must this one still justify its existence?
The early, unqualified association in the article between Zionism and racism and the subsequent extremist proof texts the author cites in reference to that association leave one suspecting that the intent of the piece was to once again re-plant that crooked flag of “Zionism-equals-racism” in the mental terrain of the genuinely unaware and/or smugly pleased anti-Israel reader.
The currency of a newspaper is its credibility. Whether readers believe in a newspaper rests upon far more than the accuracy of the facts in its stories. We all understand that errors of fact or other mistakes can creep into a work in any number of unintended ways.
Credibility, rather, rests on a far more substantial base than “mere” accuracy. It rests upon perceived integrity. Integrity, of course, is a broad concept, but we would all agree that it encompasses, at the very least, honesty, fairness, ethical treatment and an overall loyalty to principles of truthfulness. The Globe and Mail’s Feb. 20 commentary encompasses none of those qualities. Unfortunately, it shakes one’s belief in the newspaper’s integrity.
