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.”