First we have this expert, Michael Scheuer, who the New York Times often uses for his expertise on Middle East issues:
Israel is not only an unnecessary and self-made liability for the United States, it is an untreated and spreading cancer on our domestic politics, foreign policy, and national security.
The Times search engine shows Michael Scheuer’s name appearing over 2300 times in the paper.
Now we have another “expert’ that the Times routinely uses to “explain” the Middle East to Americans. From the Weekly Standard:
Professor Juan Cole, in a rant against the influence of the Israel Lobby on American foreign policy, suggests that progressives set up an alternative to the nefarious influence peddlers who promote the interests of the Zionist regime at the expense of the American people. The name he suggests for this new organization: The America First Public Affairs Committee.
There is another parallel between Juan Cole and Father Coughlin. Not only do both promote anti-Semitic canards but both also dismissed concerns about the threat of genocidal adversaries who threatened not only Jews but Western civilization. Juan Cole, for example, was the “expert” used by the New York Times to dismiss the idea that Mahmoud Ahmadinajed meant what he said when he called for the destruction of Israel and America.
This was not ambitious enough for the current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who boasts of his plans to destroy America and Israel. In widely reported remarks, he called for Israel to be wiped “off the face of the earth”. Even media outlets distinctly unfavorable to Israel reported this boast. Less frequently quoted remarks from the same speech called for the destruction of America. However, alone among major and minor media outlets, the Times displayed an unseemly alacrity in ignoring the clear meaning of his remarks and has been promoting the view that this destruction was not what Ahamdinejad advocated.
The paper, in an article that ran in its influential Sunday edition, presented an almost delusional benign view of Ahamdinejad’s words that virtually no one accepts (even groups with a history of animosity towards Israel): Ahmadinejad is merely calling for “regime change” in Israel. Somehow, the image of Ahamdinejad espousing the ouster of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert does not ring true. Who did the Times find to validate its absurd view?
I reiterate, why can’t the New York Times find Middle East experts who don’t have a visceral loathing for Israel and Jews and who don’t promote anti-Semitic canards?
