A fascinating squabble over CNN senior correspondent Andrea Koppel is beginning to make the email rounds. It concerns allegations that the Israeli Defense Force has conducted a slaughter of civilians in the Jenin refugee camp. The reliably anti-Israel and pro-terrorism newspaper, the Independent, is running hard with the story today. The New York Times version is harrowing but doesn’t find evidence of anything but collateral civilian deaths. Still, It seems Andrea Koppel knew for sure there was an Israeli massacre as early as last Sunday. Here’s an email from an Israel-sympathizer who had an encounter with Koppel last week:
I am attending the Israel Venture Association annual conference in Tel Aviv and was introduced to Andrea Koppel from CNN as we were waiting for Prime Minister Sharon and Secretary of State Powell to finish their discussion Sunday evening at our hotel.
While we were chatting, an American-born Israeli joined us to tell Andrea about his perception of media distortion in that the press that stresses moral equivalence between Israeli civilian deaths caused by Palestinian terror and Palestinian civilian deaths caused by Israeli military actions. He argued that Israel has tried to engage in a peace process since Camp David and has been double-crossed over and over by the Palestinian Authority. Further, he argued the civilian deaths caused by Palestinians are intentional, whereas the deaths caused by Israel are mostly the tragic, unintentional results caused by Israel trying to defend itself.
Andrea replied, “So when Israeli soldiers slaughter civilians in Jenin, that is not equivalent?”
Israeli: “What are your sources? Were you in Jenin? How exactly do you
know there was a slaughter?”
Andrea: “I just spoke with my colleagues who were there, and they told me of the slaughter.”
Israeli: “Did they actually see the shooting, the bodies?”
Andrea: “Palestinians told us about the slaughter.”
Israeli: “And you believe them without evidence. Could they possibly be
lying and distorting facts?”
Andrea: “Oh, so now they are all just lying??”
The Israeli became emotional in describing that his children are afraid, his friends have been murdered, and if this goes on, “We could lose our lives or we could lose our country.”
Andrea, “Yes, you will lose your country.”
At this point, I interrupted the two of them and asked Andrea Koppel,
“Did I just hear you correctly– that you believe the current crisis will lead to the destruction of the State of Israel?”
Andrea: “Yes, I believe we are now seeing the beginning of the end of Israel.”
Koppel and Walter Isaacson have denied the gist of this account, and insist that Koppel didn’t use the word ‘slaughter.’ The man present continues to insist that was precisely the word she used, and that she clearly predicted the demise of Israel. I wasn’t there. I have no way to prove which party is lying. But when you see Andrea Koppel on television, ‘reporting’ on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it seems to me you should be aware of this alleged exchange.
HOW CONSERVATIVES UNDERMINE MARRIAGE: Terrific piece by Jon Rauch in the current Atlantic, fast becoming indispensable reading under the guidance of David Bradley and Mike Kelly. He points out how the stalemate on equal marriage rights for straights and gays has had an unintended effect: more and more localities, cities, states and companies are setting up pseudo-marital arrangements for gays, which can be and are extended to heterosexuals. So domestic partnerships, civil unions, and other “ABM” (Anything But Marriage) relationships are being codified by society. By blocking gay marriage, social conservatives are busy helping create a plethora of pseudo-marital institutions that really are undermining marriage. Hence the big jump in ‘unmarried partners’ in the Census. If the Bush administration really wanted tio support marriage, they would back gay marriage as the critical institution to prevent its decline into irrelevancy. But they don’t; they can’t; they won’t. They’d rather see marriage undermined across the culture than get over their hostility to treating gay relationships as equally beneficial as straight ones. This is perverse in the extreme. “Can you imagine social conservatives telling any other group to cohabit rather than marry?” Rauch poignantly asks. “Can you imagine them saying, ‘The young men of America’s inner cities won’t take marriage as seriously as they should, so let’s encourage them to shack up with their girlfriends’?… Someday conservatives will look back and wonder why they undermined marriage in an effort to keep homosexuals out.” Yes, Jon. Someday they surely will.
MY ONCE AND PRESENT BOSS: Marty Peretz endured a lot of name-calling in the 1980s and 1990s for his skepticism about the ability and will of Palestinian leaders to deliver on their occasional public endorsements of ‘peace.’ For Marty’s troubles, he’s been all but banned from NPR, described routinely as a Zionist fanatic, and barely gets coverage in the mainstream media without some reference to his allegedly ‘reflexive’ support for Israel (to borrow Eric Alterman’s latest euphemism for the old dual loyalty smear). What a shock that a committed Jew might actually care about Zion! I’ve had my differences with Marty over the years (who hasn’t?) but I never doubted the sincerity of his faith in Israel or wavered in admiring – yes, admiring – him for it. And you know what? Leaving all matters of loyalty, politics, or whatever out of it, he’s also been right. He got it – early and perceptively. When I had the task of editing his magazine for five and a half years, people often asked me how I put up with all the pro-Israel material. Put up with it? I eagerly endorsed it. Occasionally, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to add more dissent, but for the most part I found TNR’s coverage to be exemplary of what a committed political magazine should publish. Which brings me to recommend Marty’s latest diarist – one of countless that he has written in defense of his beloved Zion. He makes two sharp points: that the European intelligentsia that so often frets about the death penalty in America has apparently no qualms about the PA’s public lynchings of suspected collaborators in the last few weeks. In fact, I haven’t even seen a photograph in the press of these victims of Arafat’s police state. Marty’s also smart in pointing out how those early stories about Israeli draft-resisters have not been followed by similarly prominent stories about how more Israelis are volunteering for service now than the draft requires. That’s a sea-change, an important sign of the atmosphere in Israel, and yet barely covered. Why not?
CORRECTION: A couple of readers say my attribution of the remark, “I may have lost my faith. I haven’t lost my mind,” with respect to joining the Church of England after leaving the Roman church is incorrect. It was James Joyce, not Evelyn Waugh. If any of you have the exact quote (from “Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man,” perhaps) I’d be grateful for it.
YOU SWELTERING? Trust me – after doing a six hour tech rehearsal in leather pants in this heat, you’re not the only one. So here’s an old article from Newsweek in 1975 that might cheer you up, if you’re convinced it’s global warming. If you’re not, or if you’re not sure, what be
tter reason for joining the book club this month and reading the most provocative discussion of the subject in years – Bjorn Lomborg’s book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist”? There’s still plenty of time to read the book before the May 4 discussion starts – with me, Bjorn and other andrewsullivan.com readers. So buy the book today and get a grip on the weather.
MEDIA BIAS WATCH: Check out Patrick Tyler’s “News Analysis” in the New York Times today. A classic piece of anti-Bush spin, with the major quotes attributed to a former Clinton official and the Egyptian ambassador all arguing that the last week’s impasse in the Middle East is yet another blow to the administration. Tyler also manages to bring Venezuala into it. Not a single nod to anyone who believes the current crisis is no threat to the war on terror. That, after all, would not be New York Times ‘analysis.’ It would be objective journalism.
THE TERRORIST BISHOP: Along with protecting sexual abusers of children, the current hierarchy of the Catholic church is also adept at sheltering terrorists and their supporters. The terror-loving bishop Oriana Falaci referred to recently, is Bishop Hilarion Capucci, 77, the Greek Catholic Archbishop of Jerusalem. Capucci, once imprisoned for arms smuggling for the PLO, is a big fan of the regimes in Iraq and Iran, and has visited both countries, telling Tehran IRIB television that “the Muslim people of Iran are revolutionary standard-bearers of humanitarian and moral values.” He’s also high on Saddam’s Iraq. Less than two years ago, he visited that country and praised it for financially aiding Palestinian terror in Gaza and the West Bank. You see the “culture of life” means barring Catholic couples from using contraception, but not preventing Catholic bishops from supporting sending teenage girls on suicidal murder missions.
SO I ASKED FOR IT: Here’s an email responding to my challenge yesterday to come up with a serious defense of our marijuana laws:
Many of the very same people who celebrate the remarkable reduction in New York crime through the Guiliani/Bratton “zero tolerance” policy on all crimes somehow reject this same sort of reasoning when it comes to drug policy, particularly in regard to the decriminalisation of marijuana. The Netherlands is usually cited as the model for decriminalisation but the Dutch experiment is in reality a disaster. It has turned Holland into the drug baron of the West with all of the attendant rise in crime implied by the retention of this policy; its young people are now the biggest users in Europe of cocaine and ecstasy; use of heroin and cannabis has risen and there has been an explosion of drug-related crime.
Here’s a successful alternative that transcends the liberalisation policy of the Netherlands and the bogus and corrupt war on drugs pursued in the United States. It’s the Swedish solution. In Sweden, where a mere 9% have tried drugs compared with Britain’s 34%, drug use is kept low through tough enforcement and prevention policies. In the 1960s Sweden decriminalized amphetamines and produced an epidemic. It has since reverted to its tough approach. It does not just enforce fines for possession and prison for large-scale possession and supply. It has criminalized drug use itself. The police test the blood and urine of suspected users, and if they come up positive they are fined. If teachers suspect that pupils have taken drugs, they call in the police and social workers. Against this background, treatment and drug education policies work because all the signals are pointing in the same direction.
But law enforcement relies on popular consent and that is precisely what the present campaign is intended to undermine. Promoted by organizations backed by unlimited funds to pump out propaganda, it is capturing the gullible, the opportunistic, the malign and those for whom it would be a grave social embarrassment for their drug-puffing, pill-popping children to gain a criminal record. By contrast, when have you ever seen a serious study of Sweden’s success in this area?
Sorry, I’m still unconvinced. The problem with the Dutch example is that it’s a small country in a large continent. It’s almost inevitable if one place – with open access to the rest of Europe – legalizes dope, while the rest don’t, it could still become a haven for drug-criminals across Europe. A continent-wide liberalization of marijuana laws in the U.S. would not attract the same problems. As for Sweden, how can a free society tolerate mandatory drug-testing of ‘suspected users’? As for the amphetamines example, it doesn’t follow that legalizing pot would be as harmful. Even anti-marijuana advocates concede that addiction is far less likely with pot than with speed or, God help us, crystal meth. It also seems to me that legalization of the relatively harmless cannabis – far from undermining all drug laws – could actually help restore some confidence in a legal system that currently makes no distinctions of any profound kind between drugs that really do harm and those that don’t. Lets have the best of both worlds: legalization of soft drugs and a zero tolerance policy for the rest? Anyway, that’s my take. Any further refutations?
The Dish 