Editorial board buys into propaganda, should apologize

By Yoav Peled

Your special letter from the editor on July 15 only added insult
to injury. Would it be too much to expect, with the education you
receive at UCLA, you acquire a small measure of respect and
humility? You have a lot of Chutzpah to accuse a “significant
number of readers” of “confusing the difference between
news coverage and editorial” just because many of us happen
to think your July 8 editorial was an outrageous piece of
journalism.

And thanks for the condescending lecture about the difference
between an editorial and news reporting. Let me assure you most of
those included in the “influx of responses” to these
pieces, and I humbly count myself among them, have forgotten more
about quality journalism than you may ever learn.

Clearly your “divestment” editorial is at best based
on gross misinformation and a juvenile desire to be with the
“in crowd” at the university. At worst, it is a vicious
anti-Israeli diatribe based on deep anti-Semitism.

The last comment of your special letter is the most outrageous
and an exact repetition of what all of us objected to in the
original editorial: lumping the Israelis and other victims of Arab
terror with the perpetrators, and assigning an equal measure of
guilt to both.

This is the precise meaning of your statement “the board
did not support violence by either side of the conflict.” I
wonder what position the board would have taken during World War
II? Divest from any investments in U.S., British or Australian
companies together with German, Japanese and Italian ones because
both sides use violence? I have a sneaking suspicion your
predecessors at the Daily Bruin in the ’40s took a much wiser
and fairer position.

And, as always, the most absurd statement has been saved for
last. In order to project the appearance of (misplaced)
evenhandedness, which is immoral and unjust under the
circumstances, the board states that, had there been a Palestinian
state, the board would support divestment there too. But since
there is no such state, only the victim is punished while the
perpetrator goes unscathed. The very creative and quite resourceful
editorial board is unable to come up with a proper punishment for
the Palestinian Authority.

Ladies and gentlemen of the editorial board, permit me a little
lecture. It is OK, really, to err from time to time. The worst part
of it is the persistent refusal, in the face of facts and reality,
to admit a mistake, correct it and learn from it.

Respectable members of the media have done so numerous times and
survived. Organizations like CNN, ABC, CBS, New York Times, NPR and
even the Los Angeles Times have been led astray by the powerful
Arab propaganda machine, and admitted and corrected mistakes. Yes,
even the chronically anti-Israel UN, the European Union and Amnesty
International admitted recently the Palestinian propaganda about a
“massacre” in Jenin was just that: a propaganda lie.
They went further, conceding homicide bombers and other terrorist
acts against civilians constitute war crimes and crimes against
humanity, whether they are committed in New York, Nairobi, Tel Aviv
or Jerusalem. Nothing can justify, excuse and explain such acts.
Pure and simple.

It would be much more respectable of you to say, “Sorry,
we goofed on this one, we’ll try to do better in the future.
Mostly, we’ll try to study the topic in depth before
expressing an opinion, or else stay out of it.”