Washington Post launches campaign to oust Moran
Press Action
Sunday, March 16, 2003
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/hand03162003/
By Mark Hand
We’ve known for a long time where the Washington Post’s news desk stands on the U.S. government policy of inflicting terror and destruction around the world and the policy of offering support to other nations that do the same. Sadly, more evidence of the Post’s support for the policy continues to pile up. If a potential news story slants toward support for U.S. military pillaging and rampaging, then Post news editors will be more inclined to place that story on its front page. If the news diverges from the newspaper’s agenda, then there’s a good chance Post editors won’t even assign a reporter to cover the story.
It’s been almost a week since the Post ran a story on its front page about Virginia Congressman Jim Moran telling a Town Hall gathering in Reston, Va., that the Jewish community’s strong support for an attack on Iraq is what’s driving Bush administration policy in the region. “If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this,” Moran reportedly told the audience, which was the second gathering Moran has convened to discuss the Bush administration’s planned attack on Iraq.
Contrast the Post’s decision to place the news story about Moran’s alleged anti-Semitic comments on the front page with its news desk’s decision last month to ignore completely Moran’s first town hall meeting, in which the vast majority of the attendees were antiwar. At this Feb. 10 meeting, which I attended, Moran declared himself a Zionist who supports the concept of a Jewish state and the right of Israel to protect its borders. These don’t sound like the words of an anti-Semite or someone opposed to Israel.
At the same meeting, Moran spoke of the history of the Middle East and how the current feudal regimes in the region work in the U.S. government’s favor. “Democracy would be dangerous from an American interest,” Moran said. I found this concept offensive but didn’t race back to my desk to write about how Moran is anti-Muslim because he believes dictatorships in the region are preferable to rule by the people. It would have been inaccurate to jump to that conclusion about Moran’s views on Muslims based on this one comment.
When I contacted Post ombudsman Michael Gelter about a Post reporter being missing in action at the first meeting, he wrote back saying he agreed that the Post’s news desk should have had a reporter there. In his subsequent ombudsman column, Getler wrote: “The BBC covered the event, along with C-SPAN, the Los Angeles Times and other media, but there were no Washington Post reporters there. … Post readers, properly in my view, complained of ‘substandard news judgment’ by the Metro section in failing to cover the meeting, as one put it.”
Despite Getler’s admonishment, the Post continues its practice of not covering these important town hall gatherings. For its recent string of stories on Moran’s comments, the Post has relied on the reporting of a community newspaper called the Reston Connection for the comments Moran allegedly made at the meeting. Apparently, Getler does not hold as much sway at the Post as some have given him credit for in the past.
Since his comments were published in the Reston Connection, Jewish organizations have condemned Moran, according to the Post, for what they say are anti-Semitic remarks.
Do we have another Cynthia McKinney situation brewing in the Washington, D.C., suburbs? No, probably not. Moran has offered an apology for what he said at the Reston meeting. On Friday, though, Moran relinquished his whip position in the House Democratic Caucus under pressure from fellow Democrats. A couple of Democrats in his district, Fairfax County Chairwoman Katherine Hanley and state Sen. Leslie Byrne, a former member of Congress from Virginia, have said they may consider challenging Moran’s in next year’s Democratic primary.
Moran, however, holds a firm political base in northern Virginia and would probably be able to withstand a lengthy assault by the Washington Post, Jewish groups and others inclined to use his statements to further their political agendas. When I went to vote last Tuesday morning in a special local election here in Arlington County, Va., which is part of Moran’s district, I had a brief conversation with Mike Clancy, Republican candidate for county board, who gleefully noted the latest charges against Moran on the front page of the Post. Although Clancy lost Tuesday’s election, the Republican Party in northern Virginia certainly will try to get some mileage out of the Post’s campaign against Moran.
McKinney, who has been a much stronger critic of the policies of the U.S. empire than the centrist Moran, had a more tenuous hold on her seat in Georgia and was ripe for knocking off by Jewish groups and fellow Democrats when she voiced opposition to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
The Washington Post’s columnists also are getting into the act. Its Metro columnist, Marc Fisher, already is calling Moran unfit for public office. In his column Tuesday, Fisher wrote, “What we have here is a United States congressman endorsing and spreading one of the oldest and most pernicious myths in the annals of ethnic hatred: It’s those all-powerful Jews.”
Reasonable readers of the Post could make the argument that Marc Fisher is unfit to continue serving as a Post columnist. Aside from working as a Clinton/Bush regime mouthpiece when he comments on world issues, Fisher in December was forced to issue a retraction of his claim in a Dec. 3 column that author Norman Finkelstein is a writer “celebrated by neo-Nazi groups for his Holocaust revisionism.” In his apology for labeling Finkelstein a Holocaust revisionist, Fisher said he “did not intend to suggest that.”
Now we have Fisher attacking Moran for a comment that doesn’t require an apology at all. Fellow Post columnist Richard Cohen, weighed in on the contrivance later in the week, disagreeing with Fisher. Cohen suggested that Moran’s comments showed a lack of judgment. “That’s not a firing offense. It was merely offensive, Cohen wrote.
Certainly, American Jews do not hold one view on whether the U.S. government should launch a terrorist strike on Iraq, no more than American Catholics do. Many of the top anti-slaughter voices in the United States are Jewish. And many smaller Jewish groups are publicly denouncing the insanity of Bush’s policy.
But it’s no secret that many U.S. Jewish groups support a U.S. invasion of Iraq. This fact has been chronicled in many places. Certainly, no major U.S. Jewish organization has taken a stand against the belligerent U.S. stance toward Iraq. Are the American-Israeli Political Action Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations actively demonstrating their opposition to a U.S. war against Iraq? Not that I’ve noticed. Are they instead supporting a war against Iraq? Not outright. These groups have been careful to confine their comments on the Iraq issue in the context of the potential harm that Iraq could pose to Israel if the U.S. military were to stage an attack.
But, as has been reportedly widely, many of the Bush administration officials behind the planned terror attacks on Iraq are staunch supporters of Israel and have been welcome guests of AIPAC. In the March 1, 2003 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Kathleen and Bill
Christison contend that the most critical factor directing U.S. policymaking is a group of Israeli loyalists.
“Neither Christian fundamentalist support for Israel nor oil calculations would carry the weight in administration councils that they do without the pivotal input of those loyalists, who clearly know how to play to the Christian fanatics and undoubtedly also know that their own and Israel’s bread is buttered by the oil interests of people like Bush and Cheney,” Kathleen and Bill Christison write. “This is where loyalty to Israel by government officials colors and influences U.S. policymaking in ways that are extremely dangerous.”
These staunch supporters of Israel in the Bush administration certainly are receiving strong support from certain segments of the U.S. Jewish community, including AIPAC.
Is Moran correct in saying that the Bush administration would not be going after Iraq if not for the strong support of the Jewish community? It’s not a clear-cut case, given that oil, the military/industrial lobby and regional hegemony also play a strong role in U.S. government policies in the Middle East. Even if he’s not standing on firm ground in his argument, there’s absolutely nothing anti-Semitic with Moran making that argument. Jewish groups in the United States are extremely influential, especially regarding Israel. Jewish groups in the United States continue to support the monstrous regime of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has announced his full support for the Bush administration’s planned terror campaign against Iraq.
Instead of apologies from Moran, it should be Israel’s apologists in the United States who should be asking for forgiveness for supporting a brutal and despicable apartheid state. Through political lobbying and financial support, they are the ones who are helping to support the terrorist policies of Israel. Look at what’s happening to alleged financial supporters of Palestinian groups deemed “terrorists” by the U.S. government. Federal government thugs are rounding these folks up, filing bogus charges and locking them up for years after staging show trials.
At the same time, we have criminal financiers in the U.S. Congress who never fail to pass a resolution or bill throwing more of our tax money to Israel.
In its coverage of the Moran affair, Post reporters quote several members of Congress, who expressed shock and disdain over Moran’s comments. Ari Fleischer, the spokesman for the Bush junta, had the nerve to call Moran’s comments “shocking,” “wrong” and “inappropriate.” These comments flow from the mouth of the chief spokesman for a regime that British people recently surveyed found more dangerous than Saddam Hussein’s.
The Democratic Party’s pathetic leader in the Senate, Tom Daschle, told the Post that Moran’s comments were “unfounded, baseless and ‘totally out of line comments’ beneath congressional standards.”
Moran came up with the perfect response when asked by the Post about mending his relationship with Jewish groups following his remarks at the town hall meeting. “I don’t know if I’ll be given the opportunity. I think they need to do a whole lot of venting before they start listening.”