When dead people are more important than a living country

Back in July, an Arab man, Sabba Kashur was convicted of rape for lying that he was a Jewish man in order to convince a young woman to sleep with him.

Details of the case were really irrelevant, various media outlets took great pleasure in trumpeting this case and allowing an opinion written by Gideon Levy – a man whose hatred for his own country – to shape their coverage.

Most did not follow the responsible course of the Volokh Conspiracy, which noted that a) in America there is such a concept of “rape by deception” and that b) Israeli courts had used the same charge against Jewish men in the past.

However last week more news came out about the case. Last week, Yaacov Lozowick, amplifying original work by Victor Shikhman noted that the “rape by deception” charge was a plea bargain in a case where a very real rape occurred and that a conviction was unlikely. Yaacov wrote that it’s Time to demand retractions.

The incident was mentioned by David Rothkopf who blogs at Foreign Policy, a website belonging to the Washington Post. Rothkopf mocked the conviction and took Kashur’s story at face value. I sent off an e-mail to Rothkopf and he has not responded. Nor has he as yet published a retraction. I checked Rothkopf’s most recent posts, going back more than a week and searched Foreign Policy for “Kashur.”

The New York Times anti-Israel blogger, Robert Mackey, who blogs at “The Lede,” was very happy to pick up the story too. He devoted close to half of his post to publishing Levy’s slander against his own country without even bothering to do any research to suggest Levy’s basic premise was wrong.

I wrote to the new public editor of the New York Times, Arthur Brisbane. Unlike in the past, I didn’t even receive an automated e-mail saying that my e-mail was received.

I do find it interesting that today, Brisbane’s concern is not about the slander of a living country, but whether the Times noticed that its obituaries do not acknowledge enough women dying. May I congratulate Mr. Brisbane for displaying the same exquisite sense of the news as his predecessors Byron Calame and Clark Hoyt. When it comes to the Middle East we know that those sharp public editors of the New York Times are there to stamp out any whiff of unprofessional journalism that would present Israel unfairly to its readers.

But Mackey’s offense isn’t merely one of omission; for he has recently added two more posts on Israel, both of which were advocating – with no opposition – a “one state solution” for Israel, which would effectively mean the end of a Jewish state of Israel.

One could conclude that Mackey’s position is that Israel is such a racist state that the only cure is to remove its uniquely Jewish character and integrate, not just Fatah but even the genocidal Hamas into its government.

Apparently such beliefs don’t bother public editor Brisbane. But at least he could ask Mackey to follow up his story about Sabbar Kashur. Opinions might be beyond Brisbane’s purview, but surely fact are not. Especially if one is concerned with equality for the dead.

David Bernstein concluded:

Put it this way: if you read a blog that gave this story an anti-Israel spin and you don’t see a correction in the next day or two, you can cross it off your credibility list.

Nearly a week has passed since the true nature of the case was revealed. In other words, Mackey should not be considered credible. Nor, at this point, should Arthur Brisbane.

UPDATE: Media Backspin has a few exceptions.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.