Timeless news-reading tips in 1973 speech

Publicity and photos from 1973 speech

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Do you remember ’73? Two weeks after President Nixon’s second inauguration, on Feb. 4, 1973, Harry delivered the following speech at a D.C.-area synagogue event. He was 52. After he died, I noticed the audio cassette tape of the speech mixed in with his music collection. It’s valuable now since we have so few recordings from those days. The transcript below is long and conversational, and you can only imagine his tone quite forceful in spots – so typical of Harry. However, much of his advice and his analogies seem timeless. And his humor, well, it’s so Harry, too.   
 

Speaker Introduction

Our speaker today has had a long and distinguished career in the Defense Department. When you consider what has happened in the last 25 years, it’s a remarkable achievement that he’s been able to stay there so long. His subject is an intriguing one: how to read between the lines. He’s going to give us some ideas of what to look for in reading newspapers and magazines. He speaks from a background of tremendous authority. He’s served [as a civilian] with the Air Force for 25 years, but he has also served in the office of the Secretary of Defense as executive agent to prepare news analyses and public opinion trends. He has continued in this work through all his career. I don’t want to take any more time except to tell you that all his remarks will be “operative”. It gives me great pleasure to give you Harry Zubkoff, whose title is civilian chief of the office of research and analysis for the Secretary of the Air Force, and chief of the executive agency for the Department of Defense to prepare analyses and public opinion trends. Mr. Zubkoff …

“How to Read Between the Lines”

I do have to say Dan, when I get an introduction like that I can’t help wishing my parents could have been here, because my father would have really enjoyed it, and my mother would have believed it.

More photos on this page of Harry in the workplace, 1970s

You know the first time you ask somebody to speak, you’re taking a calculated risk. The second time it’s a known risk. I must say I admire you. I just hope you’re not going to be disappointed. It’s like the lady who went into the store for pantyhose. The next day she came back and wanted her money back, and the clerk said, “What’s the matter? Didn’t they come up to your expectations?” And she said, “No, they come up to my knees.” I’m gonna come up to your knees.

What I want to talk about today is the press. And I’m going to try to give you an objective and a factual view, though I must confess, I suffer from the same affliction as the author of that book, “The Unbiased History of the Civil War from the Southern Point of View.”

You see the problem with the press is it’s not unique to this country. I read this little item not long ago about Queen Elizabeth when she went to France recently. She was really shocked to learn about her image as projected in the French press, and she made a count. In the French media, she had been reported as being pregnant on 92 separate occasions. She had suffered 149 accidents; had 9 miscarriages; abdicated 63 times; was on the verge of breaking up with Prince Philip 73 times; on the edge of a nervous breakdown 32 times; and had 27 attempts on her life.

That’s the way the press operates most all the way around the world. But I don’t want to talk about the lies; they’re relatively easy to spot. Like Mark Twain once said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that makes you a fool; it’s what you do know that ain’t so.” And that’s what’s happening.

* * * 

Now the manner in the way the press handles the news these days has been dubbed as “news-think”. News-think is a frame of mind. What the press is trying to do is put news in the paper; whether it’s news or not, everything has to be labeled news. And this is what we have to worry about. It’s not so much that what we read is the real story about what’s going on; it’s whether it’s a story at all. Because the news is filled with non-stories. And the way to make a non-story look like a story is to put a headline on it, a byline, and sometimes a date line. But any of them could have been written within a period of about 20 years.

In fact, we had some research we had to do not long ago comparing some stories about Vietnam with some of the stories about Korea. And would you believe that in 1952 as in 1972, you could not have told the difference between the stories on Korea and the stories on Vietnam? I think some of the newspapers simply lifted some of the stories out and changed a word here and there. So you have to worry about whether something is a story.

* * *

Also they have a great many subtler devices. You take some of the words they use, the headline writers. They use: attack, accuse, hit, denounce, berate. So you don’t just make a comment or two about a city master plan, you assail it. Even if all you did was scratch your head and make a comment, your opponent could have been your best friend, but it’s your opponent who assails you.

Come to think of it, I ran across this poem here, and I gotta read it, talking about somebody saying something. “As any reader knows, a news source can charge, declare, affirm, relate, recall, aver, reiterate; allege conclude, explain, point out, answer, note, retort or shout; rejoin, demand, repeat, reply, ask, expostulate or sigh; blurt, suggest, report, or mumble, add, shoot back, burst out or grumble; whisper, call, assert, or state, vouchsafe, cry, asseverate; snort, recount, harrumph, opine, whimper, simper, wheedle, whine; mutter, murmur, bellow, bray, whinny – and once in a while, say.”

Now the use of those kinds of verbs, you see, all bring out a picture in a reader’s mind. And it’s done on a calculated basis, really. And reporters use the same kind of a thing. For example, a couple guys in downtown Washington exchange shots. It’s reported as a shootout. Then you’ve got a story, you see. If it’s three people, they call it a riot. Then they put the story on the front page. Now, that alone makes it news, whether it’s a story or not, that’s news, it’s on the front page. I think if we could eliminate the front pages, we’d be a lot better off – like eliminating the last car on the railroad train.

* * *

One of the things they do is tagging. And they also do trending and counter-trending. Now tagging consists really of putting an identifying label on something or someone; very prejudicial. And then you identify them from that point on exclusively by that label. For example, they used to say about George McGovern, he was a mackerel, which is a colorless fish with a large mouth. And for this reason, nobody gave him a chance to get the democratic nomination; he got it anyway. Lyndon Johnson, he was power mad. Bobby Kennedy was ruthless. Gene McCarthy was lazy and cool. If the person they’re talking about manages through sheer guts to show another side of his personality, then the news says he’s changed or matured, and that means he’s ready for a new label.

Of course they ran into all kinds of problems with President Nixon, because they couldn’t come up with a label, so they called him the new Nixon. And then every once in a while to take care of those people who didn’t like Nixon, they would say, there’s a flash of the old Nixon. So it was either the new Nixon or the old Nixon depending on whether you liked him or not.

Also this business of labeling, it’s really overdone. They talked about, for example, the Chicago Seven; there was the Gainesville Eight; the Tweduck Four, and all the rest of them. These are prejudicial labels, that’s what they are, and they automatically color your mind. When they had that Oklahoma state prison riot, somebody wrote the Oklahoma State Prison 500. But that one didn’t take hold.

* * *

Now there’s this business of trending. Trending occurs when the news media decide that events in some area are moving in a given direction. And then all the information on that subject reinforces the idea of the trend. A good example is the way the news handled youth. In 1967, the youth was moving away from politics. It was a trend. In 1968, they were trending back into politics; in 1969 they were getting out of politics; in 1970, they were getting back in again.

The Cambodian incursion, you may recall, that got the youth back in in full fury. Before you knew it, though, they vanished back into the woodwork. Then they were registering in droves for the 18-year-old vote, and the trend was decisive political influence by the youth, that is, if they bothered to vote. Whether they voted or not, I doubt if it would have made any difference. Incidentally, they didn’t vote.

So, that’s trending. Now, counter-trending, that’s the time-honored, journalistic tradition about a man biting a dog. You see, it’s not news when a dog bites a man, but it’s news when a man bites a dog. So, what happens is, when the public has a certain perception about a trend that’s going on, one way to make a news story is to say that it’s going in the other direction. You deny the original trend, which the newspaper established in the first place. You say the country’s gradually moving to the left. So somebody says the country is moving toward the right. As soon as everyone’s convinced we’re moving toward the right, somebody else puts in we’re moving toward the left again. Well that’s what happens.

So news makes news by contradicting itself. That’s the great trick of the trade.

* * *

I want to give you a few more examples about words. You see it more clearly when you read the sports stories. Of course you have to give the sports reporters lots of sympathy. They have to report day after day the same kind of situation. You can’t hear anybody say, today Washington’s going to play. You can never hear the announcers say that this is a pretty routine game, performers are no better than average. All he’s got to do every Saturday or Sunday afternoon is say what a great football game this is. This is one of the most exciting games he’s seen in years, and he wishes everybody could get to see it. The thing is sports are too dull to read about, so you have to listen to the voice.

Also in sports, all games are tough, every opponent is tough, every win is tough, every loss is tough. All the plays are beautiful. In the [inaudible], they always fire their scores. You never hear about an ugly forward pass; they’re all beautiful forward passes. And did anyone ever hear about a dirty-cut athlete? They’re all clean-cut.

Then journalists also coin new words every now and then, enough to drive you out of your mind. Like simplistic. That’s a journalism word, simplistic. Then there’s finalize, relevant, charisma; and irrelevant is almost as good as relevant. Also, cigars and pipes are simply never smoked, they’re always puffed. Nobody eats sandwiches, they always munch on sandwiches. You never drink a beverage, you always sip a beverage. When King Edward abdicated – some of you are in my generation, you may remember – he used the phrase which has endured and will endure forever: at long last. It means exactly the same thing as at last, you see, but everybody who wants to be fancy says at long last. It will never fall out of the language. That’s because journalists keep repeating it. At long last.

We suffer from cliché-itis. You get words like an in-depth report, an ill-informed source. Anybody ever hear of a semi-final analysis? Or how about a shallow report? Or a poorly informed source? All the sources are well-informed; that’s the name of the game. Nobody calls a spade a spade anymore; it’s now an agricultural implement.

* * *

Now listen to what the newspapers do. From a recent news account: “Last week Henry Kissinger flew to the Middle East to explore the possibilities.” Explore is the key word. “Last week a representative of the Kremlin flew to the Middle East to exploit the growing tensions surrounding the tenuous cease-fire.” Actually the use of these words represents a trap. If you happen to agree with the implications of those two statements I just read, then you think it’s straight reporting. But if you disagree, then you immediately see the bias.

So take a careful look at the words they use in the newspapers. Put yourself in the other guy’s shoes. Try to take the other guy’s point of view. Pretend you’re an Arab. And all the sudden you’ll see all kinds of biased reporting in the paper. The truth is, the newspaper is overwhelmingly pro-Israel, and it’s reflected in the story. We’re happy that they’re pro-Israel. [Audience member says “Not the Post”.] No, not the Post, not Christian Science Monitor, not Newsweek. But most of the papers are pro-Israel.

Anyway, our press is really more sophisticated than the press in the communist countries. They don’t have to use words like lackey, or, the favorite word in the Chinese newspapers is running dog, or the imperialistic war mongers. We’re a little more subtle, but results are still pretty much the same. And a lot of it is not done consciously, which is even worse. Do you remember the incident in that Paris Summit meeting? Well TIME magazine and a lot of the news media described Krushchev – listen to these words: intransigent, belligerent, almost incredible, bellowing like a wounded rogue elephant, intemperate ramblings, diatribe, etc. – all loaded words.

The U.S., on the other hand: replied tartly, asserted coolly, and was stern. You see, the Russians, when they’re not bellowing, they’re dower. A stern American politician is a dower Russian political. Our people make speeches, no matter how boring. But a guy like Castro, he speechifies. Sometimes he speechifies excessively. You can just feel the demagoguery in these words. You don’t have to hear a word about what he said, but you’re automatically turned off by the way the papers report it.

* * *

So the papers are reflecting a bias. They don’t like to say that, they deny it, but it’s there just the same. You know the papers use to talk about the peace demonstrations and the peace movement. What they really meant was the Vietnam War movement – not the same thing at all. And just as an aside, a great many of those peace pushers are now urging the United Sates to help Israel’s war effort. Even to the point of a confrontation with Russia. Well, it’s not that they’re for peace, it’s that they’re very selective in the kinds of wars they want to fight.

The papers were kind of schizoid about the whole thing, too. You see, they tried to give the anti-war people an aura of respectability, the peace movement, but then in the next breadth, they talk about their …

[At this point someone turned over the cassette tape, so they lost a bit of the speech.]

… Florida was not particularly sophisticated – I hope there’s nobody here from Florida. It’s all right to go there for a vacation – but! Listen to Smathers, how he lit into Pepper. [FYI, George Smathers and Claude Pepper were Florida senators in the 1950s and ’60s.] He said, among other things, that Pepper was known around Washington as a shameless extrovert; that he reportedly practiced nepotism with his sister-in-law; that his own sister was once a thespian in New York City. And worst of all, Pepper himself before marriage practiced celibacy. Needless to say, Pepper lost the election. I’d figure he’d lose it again today because you can’t practice celibacy and win an election in 1972.

But people really do react in a peculiar way to words, and the newspapers take advantage of it. Now this is the tragic part of it, because people ought to know better. You see the world is not what we think it is. I mean everybody views the world based on his own background, his own education and experience. Everybody reacts to the information he hears and reads and sees. But most of all, of all the ways to see what’s going on in the world, we depend, of course, on the media to furnish us with all the information.

I’ll tell ya, for those of us like me who have been associated with the military departments for a long time, we simply do not recognize some of the information about the military presented in the media. It’s distorted; at least to us it’s distorted. The individual facts seem true enough, but often, equally significant facts which would cast a different light on a situation are not mentioned. And, I’m sure you all know that the papers are full of one-sided, unfavorable stories about defense. And the same information keeps appearing in the papers. Like one of the great myths: defense spending keeps going up and up and up. And no matter how many times or who says that it’s going down, it makes no impression because it’s not repeated. 

* * *

I often wonder, is the problem with me or is the problem with the media? I think it’s with the media. I did a little research. You know, we’re being educated by the media, mostly television these days. The educators are estimating that by the time a child goes to kindergarten, he has watched over 4,000 hours of commercial TV. That’s a lot of commercial TV, and that’s a lot of mistaken impressions that kid gets. By the time a kid graduates from high school, he’s watched 15,000 more hours of commercial TV. By that time he’s through, he’s had it, he’s brainwashed.

This mass media education is called, it’s a highly specialized thing called modern propaganda. Now modern propaganda, you see, is different from the ancient propaganda. Modern propaganda is not lies or tall tales so much; it’s based on facts. It operates with all kinds of truths, and half-truths, and limited truths, and truths taken out of context. One way to characterize propaganda is what I’m telling you today. If the result of this talk is that you read your newspapers more carefully and apply some discrimination and thought to what you read, I will have been successful in getting across some modern propaganda to you, because propaganda provokes a little action.

* * *

There’s a guy in France at the University of Bordeaux who’s generally considered one of the experts in propaganda. His name is Jacques Ellul. He said that in order for propaganda to work, it has to be aimed at educated people. And he says that intellectuals are actually the most vulnerable to modern propaganda. Why? A lot of us pride ourselves on being intellectuals. Well the reason is because intellectuals absorb the largest amount of second-hand, unverifiable information. Further, they have a compelling need to have an opinion on every important question of our time.

All of us know everything there is to know about anything. How many of you say, “Do you know about this?” and their answer is “I don’t know”? No. They all know something. So they all have opinions. And they’re the most easily influenced to have opinions because they consider themselves – all of them – capable of judging for themselves. That’s a great fallacy, we can all judge for ourselves.

So all you see under the influence of propaganda, all these drives that we have, they – unclear, often without any objective – sometimes become powerful, direct, precise. Propaganda gives us the objectives, organizes our traits into a system, freezes us into a mold. Any prejudices we have are going to be hardened by the propaganda. You see, we’re told that we’re right in harboring these prejudices. So then we find our reasons and justifications. And the stronger the conflicts in any society, the stronger the prejudices. And propaganda intensifies these conflicts, intensifies the conflicts.

* * *

So we see a lot of irrationality brought about by propaganda. For example, something that I call the doomsday irrationality goes like this: The world is in terrible shape. We’re dying of pollution. The air, the water – in another 20 years it won’t be fit to breathe, or drink.

I happened to grow up on the shores of Lake Erie. I’ve been reading about Lake Erie being a dead lake. They’ve got me convinced, Lake Erie is a dead lake. I was in Buffalo just a couple months ago. Looked in the paper and found that this year in Lake Erie was the biggest fishing take ever in history. The truth is it all went into gefilte fish, Lake Erie white fish. But that wasn’t in any paper except the Buffalo paper, and it was a trade paper at that. All the other papers are saying Lake Erie is dead. Not only that, we went out to a beach on Lake Erie and went swimming and the water was beautiful. And Lake Erie is supposed to be so polluted according to the papers that it’s worth your life, like going into the Potomac.

Another one of the irrationalities (I’ll be glad to argue with all the environmentalists), the irrationality about DDT – I’ll be glad to talk to you about that. Then there’s the love-hate syndrome. Love among the youth, anyway; you love everybody, except you hate the pigs; you hate the authorities and you hate the establishment – and you hate the military industrial complex. Which is another irrationality. I don’t know what the military industrial complex is. I’ve been living in the military all my life practically. I think it’s a myth! The establishment is a myth. What the heck is the establishment? All of us are the establishment – that’s what everybody is. You know it’s the image of a monolithic, impenetrable, inhuman being that controls our lives, and it’s capable of controlling our lives and nobody can change it! There’s no such thing. What’s the corporate state? Does anybody know what the corporate state is?

Another one of the great myths today is that we’re rapidly running out of energy. This one hits home because energy is in the paper today – we’re rapidly running out of energy. It just isn’t so. There are all kinds of statistics around to prove it isn’t so. There is a great powerful motive on the part of some element to want to push the line that it is true. The motive is money of course.

Well anyway, propaganda, it’s a phenomenon, and you have to recognize it. You have to learn to recognize it.

There’s another myth that technology causes more deaths. Everybody’s heard that one. Actually technology does not cause more deaths. Every one of us is going to die only once. We’re not immortal. So there aren’t going to be any more deaths from technology. What it does is maybe shift the statistics a little bit. Because you take the percentage of people who are killed by automobiles; it’s been going up since the beginning of the century. You can say that the technological development of the automobile brought about some earlier life terminations for some people, but it remains that the overall average life span since the beginning of this century has increased from about 47 to 70 years. And largely, if not entirely, because of technology. Technology doesn’t bring about deaths, it extends life.

* * *

Trouble is, once one of these myths or prejudices take hold, it’s very, very difficult to dislodge it. In fact, I don’t think it’s possible. You have to wait for a new generation. That’s what they have to do in Israel, wait for the next generation.

What we have to do is attack these myths before they gain a foothold. And the only way I know of to attack them is to read with some discernment.

One of the things I often do – do you ever read the newspaper and you get so furious about what you’re reading and you’re writing a letter to the editor in your head – a blistering, long letter to the editor. It never gets written, it never gets sent, but it’s good psychologically to work on it. I think we ought to write more letters to the editor. We ought to not just walk around with the letters in our head, but put them down on paper and send them out.

There’s another interesting statistic: 0.1 newspaper space is to the letters to the editor’s column. Over 35 percent of the readers read the letters to the editor’s column – the biggest percent of readers for any one subject. Why won’t the newspapers expand the letters to the editor’s column? Ask them. [Audience comments inaudible]

* * *

We all know what’s wrong with newspapers; deep down in our minds we know. The thing I want to say about these newspapers, though, if you get the impression from my criticism that I completely disagree with newspapers, it’s wrong. Frankly I think we have a pretty good press in the United States. The problem is you have to learn how to read it. Everybody thinks the television and movie image of our presses, these honest and fearless reporters always going out after the story, searching for the truth and writing it against all odds, and all that – well that’s not what newspapers are all about. Only once in a while is there something like that. I think the Watergate story is one of the most unusual developments of American journalism history, really. But it’s an exception, it’s not the norm.

And another thing, the opinion pages – Outlook in the Washington Post – or the New York Times opinion section. These sections are closed in a way to any other viewpoint but the current, fashionable, intellectual conceit. And people who try to put in different points of view are seldom, seldom successful.

But anyway, you get these newspaper stories and you think they’re trying to get the truth, and you look at every story and you think you’re getting a picture of the truth. Well it’s not so. What you have to do, you have to look at the newspaper as a whole. It’s a whole conglomeration of stories. Collectively, all these stories give you an impression of what’s going on the world, what’s going on in the country, what’s going on in the city. We live in a dynamic world, a shifting world, everything’s moving, everything’s changing. The press is like an impressionist painting; you get too close to look at details, they don’t mean anything. You have to step back and get the whole picture. Then you get a feel for what’s going on.

It’s like when you look down through water, and you know how light is refracted, the refraction of light and water, when you’re trying to judge the size and shape of something under the water. Well, the water corresponds to all the preconceptions through which the news always travels. And reporters, you see, they acquire these preconceptions. They learn by experience the kinds of stories that never get into the papers, the kinds of stories that never make the six o’clock news on television. And so they learn to color their stories so they will get in the papers, maybe even give them a byline. Maybe they will get on TV, give them an extra bonus of fifty dollars. They learn to tell which people are news and which are not news. Most of us are not news. That’s because we lead normal lives. You want to get in the newspaper? Kill your neighbor.

* * * 

Incidentally, I want you to know that when Agnew started talking about the media, and he was so critical, it didn’t surprise me; I’ve always felt that way. Where I differ with Agnew of course is his interpretation of objectivity. He’s like the guy who says there’s a terrible disease called cancer; the cause of it is international Zionism. So get rid of international Zionism, you won’t have cancer anymore. Of course it’s silly, but that’s the way it was.

I agree that the press needs criticism, but it also is a pretty good institution, if you look at it the right way. Just don’t have great expectations. Look at it for your impressions. And if you want to read and find the prejudices, just read the verbs, read the adjectives.

Actually newspapers do a better job than TV; TV gives you only headlines. They give you pictures, most of which are – unless it’s an actual news event taking place at the moment – most of them are distorted. They simply can’t put on the same kind of deep report that the printed press can give you. You see, news magazines, they emphasize a snappy style. Everything’s got to be snappy in a news magazine, cut short – they’re giving you all the news in a week, let’s say. Not true, but it’s news just by virtue they put it in the magazine. Lots of non-stories. All the serious books – the monthlies, the quarterlies, the semi-annuals – every one of them is a captive of a different point of view. Some of them are good if you happen to agree with their point of view. A lot of people only read the things they agree with. I always wonder about that. If you want to keep up with your prejudices, you have to read the other guy’s points of view.

The only thing that could be better in terms of the press is books, and the only trouble with books is that they come too late. Good interpretive books have been written, but by the time they get published, their interpretations have been overtaken by events. You know the first really good analysis of the campus unrest we were having a couple years ago, came out around the time the students were going back to school, started worrying about their grades, and about the jobs, and about their futures. And the new left – what’s happened to the new left? Anybody hear about the new left lately, in all the headlines about a year ago? They went right [audience says the same], right.

* * * 

Well the thing is nothing stays still long enough for a leisurely examination. Unless it stays on the front pages for months on end – and the only thing that’s been on the front pages for months on end is Watergate. Of course, everybody’s saturated with Watergate, and it’s left an incredible impression on our minds. Now, I ask you, if President Nixon were genuinely innocent of the whole business, do you think he will ever, ever be judged innocent by the people. No. I don’t know whether he is or not. (Erase that tape.) [Audience laughter]

Everybody remember the stories about the secret bombing in Cambodia that broke a few months ago? I want to tell you about the newspapers, about secret bombing. We did a research project on it. I had some very bright, young, summer students with me this summer, and they took this on as a project, when the newspaper stories came out about secret bombing in December 1969 and January 1970. These kids went back through the papers for those days. And, they found literally – literally I say – hundreds and hundreds of stories about the bombing in Cambodia back in 1969 or ’70. There was no secret bombing. I don’t know why they called it a secret bombing! [Audience comments inaudible] Nevertheless, if it was a secret I would hate to see something that was out in the open.

Anyway, you don’t read the newspaper stories. I’ll tell you what really happened. People weren’t aware, didn’t realize the implications of what they were reading. But you can get a sense of where we are and where we’re going if you look at the whole paper. And you try to relate all these seemingly unrelated bits and pieces of information that you read about. You get it. You’ll get the idea. Papers don’t spell out everything that’s going on. They provide a lot undigested information, and you gotta do a lot of mental work yourself in order to figure out what’s going on. I’ll tell ya another thing. Anyone who reads the paper shouldn’t be surprised at that secret bombing.

 * * *

But here’s another one. Everybody these last couple of weeks was surprised. Europe generally did not support the United States, did not support Israel, did not support the United States in its efforts to resupply Israel. And everybody got furious, everybody got surprised. I don’t see why we should’ve been surprised. We could have been disappointed, sure, but not surprised because the papers for the last year or two have been full of stories about the European energy problems.

Everybody knows that 80 to 85 percent of European oil comes from the Arab countries. Where do you think their interests lie, with Israel or with their own economic well-being? If they lose that oil, the whole continent’s economy goes down the drain. Who do you think they’re gonna support? Their selves or Israel? In fact, economic considerations are the prime motivating forces for all nations. And don’t ever delude yourself that that’s not true.

Take a little country like Iceland. Iceland depends on cod, fishing, that’s the major economic of Iceland’s economy. So they extend their territorial waters out to 50 miles. Well, England and Denmark and West Germany also fish in those waters, and they also need those fish. You know, Iceland has five ships in the Navy. They took on the British Navy, the West Germany Navy, the Denmark Navy. They shot at them, they boarded their boats, they arrested their people! They’re ready to go to war; you think they could win a war with England or with anybody? They can’t win any war! But you scratch them where it hurts economically and they’re gonna go to war! Everybody knows that. Yet, when that was in the papers, everybody was surprised because Iceland is fighting for its fish. They shouldn’t have been surprised. It was all in the newspapers long before they started.

I’ll tell ya, if I were an Arab oil-producing nation, I’d be worried. Because the colder Europe gets this winter, the more chances are that Europe is going to take some direct action. So don’t be surprised, because it’s in the papers. Incidentally, the secretary general of NATO has said that they consider the cut-off of oil a hostile act. Now what does that mean? That’s a cause for war, of course.

* * *

Well, I don’t want to take up too much time. I just want to tell you this. I got two things to tell you before you start clapping.

You see, the newspapers are good, as I say, for telling you the trends, where we’re going, how we’re gonna get there maybe. They put out early warnings. But it’s like, you know the coal miners used to take a canary down into the shaft to smell the gas. If the canary died, then the coal miners got out fast. Well, that’s what the newspapers are for. They’ll give you the trends, they’ll give you the tip-offs to what’s gonna happen. All you have to do is think about them, be aware of the implications. Everything that affects society and that affects the world is gonna be in the press.

You know, Will Rogers once said, “All I know is what I read in the papers.” And that’s true. I say amen to that. Just no better way to know what’s going on in the world than to read the papers. So start reading and start clipping.

Copyright 2017, Elaine Blackman

The media and lies in the Middle East

Author Harry M. Zubkoff

When I read Harry’s old articles, my mind inevitably goes to our current events, and I imagine how he would feel today. In March 1991, he drafted a comment to a long-time journalist friend, titled “Whom Did We Fight?”, about the war in Iraq. A month later (and after several more essays on the subject), he wrote an article simply titled “Lies” in his computer files. Both reveal exactly how he felt at the time.


March 31, 1991 
Whom Did We Fight?                    

The notion that we were not at war with the Iraqi people, or that we never had anything against the Iraqi people but only against their government, seems to me patently absurd. The President and various members of the Administration, as well as members of the Congress, have said it on a number of occasions, though, on the face of it, it is neither true nor honest. It is repeated, I suspect, as a sop to the sensibilities of people who are not willing to countenance a war against any country but can accept the notion of a war against a nasty government. Certainly Saddam Hussein and company are as nasty as you can get, but how do you distinguish between a people and its government?

The fact is, we conducted a war against the people of Iraq, a people who by all accounts seemed fully supportive of Saddam Hussein and his policies. The people of Iraq cheered at the takeover of Kuwait. The people of Iraq, represented by their men in the uniform of their country, displayed an order of savagery and bestiality toward the people of Kuwait seldom seen in human affairs. All the television scenes showing the crowds of Iraqis (and Jordanians and Palestinians) demonstrating in support of Hussein cannot be dismissed as pure propaganda. They supported him, they loved him, and we fought a war against them and him.

Since he lost the war, some of his people have turned against him, but only some. If they all rose up against him he would be out by sundown. As it is, he continues to have enough support and enough power to remain in office. If he is thrown out, it is more likely to be by someone close to him, rather than by a popular uprising against him. And if he remains in power, we will continue to wage a war against the people of Iraq, even if it’s only an economic “sanction” war. 

Let’s face it, the “government” of Iraq did not suffer as the people of Iraq suffered from this war. The people paid the price, not the leaders. If there are any lessons to be drawn from this war, one of them, for us, is surely this, that we cannot wage a war against an individual or a government alone – that all wars are waged against peoples. For the people of other countries that are governed by self-appointed despots, they should surely be thinking about exercising a greater measure of control over their governments, their policies and their destinies. 


April 27, 1991
Lies

Saddam Hussein may or may not be another Adolf Hitler, but in at least one respect he has taken an important page from Hitler’s book: A lie, repeated often enough, no matter how big or how absurd, will eventually come to be accepted as truth. We Americans naively believe that a lie can be countered with the truth, and that truth will inevitably win out over lies in the minds of rational people; but that’s a Western idea that has no bearing in the Middle East.

There are two aspects to the spread of lies that are especially baffling to a Western observer: one is the propensity of seemingly intelligent and rational young Jordanian and Palestinian men and women to believe Iraq’s lies; the other, and even more baffling, is the attitude of Western media reporters, interviewers and pundits who, upon hearing the most outrageous lies expressed, accept them and publish them without challenge.

The whole world, outside of the Middle East, knows that Iraq launched more than three dozen SCUD missiles at Israeli population centers in a vain attempt to draw Israel into the Gulf War. The whole world also knows that the United States made an extraordinary diplomatic effort to persuade Israel to stay out of the war, for fear that Israel’s entry would have destroyed the coalition arrayed against Iraq.

In retrospect, it’s hard to understand that fear, since the entire Arab world already believed not only that Israel was deeply engaged in the actual fighting, but also that Israel had instigated the war in the first place. Early in the bombing campaign, before the ground war started, the Iraqi News Agency claimed that dozens of Israeli aircraft and pilots were flying bombing and strafing missions against Iraq out of Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Baghdad also reported that “hundreds” of the coalition’s aircraft were shot down during the first two weeks. In fact, during the first week, Saddam announced that Tel Aviv had been turned into a crematorium, while the Iraqi News Agency reported that the Israelis had suffered thousands of casualties in the SCUD attacks and that Tel Aviv was now a “ghost town”.

Throughout the Arab world, and particularly in Jordan, there was great joy and dancing in the streets at this bit of news. In Jordan, the Amman newspaper reported that Israel was using Palestinians as “human shields” against Iraqi missile attacks, while the fact that Iraq was using Western hostages as human shields was not mentioned. At the same time, Palestinians being interviewed by Western journalists were claiming that Israel was somehow diverting incoming SCUDs to fall on Arab villages in the West Bank. Some Palestinians even charged that Israel itself was launching all those missiles against Tel Aviv as part of a propaganda ploy to whip up war fever in the U.S. by making Iraq look like a villain.

All this may sound ludicrous to most Americans, but there is ample evidence that it is widely believed, not only in the Middle East, but in the Arab-American community in the U.S., as well. A group of Jordanians, interviewed by Ted Koppel, asserted that a great many Israeli planes were flying bombing missions out of Saudi Arabia against civilian targets in Iraq. The Iraqi Ambassador to the United Nations said the same thing in an interview and even declared that proof of this claim would be presented at the proper time. And, in addition to Israeli aircraft flying against Iraq, Yassir Arafat reported from Jordan that the cruise missiles hitting Baghdad were coming out of Israel.

To top it all off, the reason why Saddam pulled his forces out of Kuwait was because the U.S. threatened to use nuclear weapons against him, according to the Algerian newspaper, widely read in the Arab world. Moreover, the coalition forces, suffering from close to 200,000 casualties at the hands of Iraqi troops, had to seek a cease fire or succumb to inevitable and humiliating defeat. And if any of this sounds too absurd to take seriously, there is now – even now, at this late date – the widespread belief in the Middle East that Saddam faced up to the West and emerged triumphant. Now, having defeated the coalition forces, he is reasserting control over his own country with the kind of savagery that has marked his career from the beginning, and which no one in that part of the world seems willing to condemn, least of all Yassir Arafat or King Hussein of Jordan.

Truth in the Middle East is irrelevant. People there will believe what they want to believe. In a way, that’s understandable. Far less understandable is the seeming willingness of Western journalists to allow such lies to go unchallenged and, in fact, to add credence to them by reporting and thus further disseminating them.

Copyright 2016, Elaine Blackman

Israeli settlements are not an obstacle to peace

Harry in 2009

My dad would have turned 95 today. To commemorate his birthday, he surely would have chosen to post an article he wrote about Israel – so strong in his heart. Harry’s Israel-themed newsletter articles from years past are absolutely still relevant. He wrote this one in 2009. Feel free to share and discuss it with your family and friends. 


Are the Israeli settlements an obstacle to peace? Are they illegal, that is, in the sense that they violate international law as stated in the Geneva Convention? You don’t have to be an expert in international law or a “Philadelphia” lawyer to know that the answer is no. It is only in a world in which the United Nations contains a majority of nations with majority Muslim populations who, together with the 22 Arab countries of the Middle East and Africa, are virulently anti-Semitic, that they are considered illegal. But this is a question that lawyers and judges can argue over ad infinitum. The world consensus will always come out against Israel and it is futile to counter with logic and precedent against hatred and bigotry.

The provisions of the Geneva Convention adopted after WWII prohibit the forcible transfer of any part of the population of one state to the territory of another state which has been occupied as a result of war. This is the principle on which the critics of Israel denounce the settlements as illegal. But this principle was intended to protect local populations from displacement, as the Soviets and Germans had done with forced transfers of Poles, Czechs and Hungarians during the war. The Geneva Convention does not prohibit individuals and groups from moving to land which is not and was not part of a “state” and is not privately owned by any individual. In that sense, Israelis moving to and establishing settlements is voluntary, not forced, and those settlements are not meant to displace anyone living there – and they don’t.

The charge that the settlements are illegal cannot be justified legally and can only be regarded as political, but, as with any lie, it has been repeated so often and so widely that it has come to be accepted as truth. What is true is that the so-called occupied territories, which is the West Bank, is not part of any other state but is simply land over which there are competing claims. Jordan occupied it for a while but never claimed it or annexed it, and it came under Israeli control as a result of a war of self-defense. Israel has a valid claim to this land and, if the Arabs of that area feel they have a valid claim, too, these claims can be resolved by negotiation. Throughout the world, competing territorial claims have been resolved by war, with the victor making the final decision. Israel is the only country in history which, having won the war, must negotiate with the defeated enemy to resolve a land dispute. The problem is that there is no international court of law and justice that can be described as fair and impartial to hear the legal arguments.  

The question remains: Are the settlements an obstacle to peace between the Israelis and the Arabs? There is no evidence to support the claim that they are. In fact, all the evidence refutes it. Before the settlements existed, the Arabs were unwilling to make peace with Israel. It is the very existence of the state of Israel that is the obstacle to peace. Even before the state of Israel existed, the Arabs were unwilling to live in peace with the Jewish residents of the British Mandate in Palestine. We can go into that history in another article, but for now, let’s stick to the present.

The President of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has stated that any new peace negotiations can only be conducted if the Israelis stop building settlements in the Palestinian territories. But what exactly are the Palestinian territories? They claim all the land, every inch of what the Unite Nations set aside for them when it partitioned one quarter of the Palestine Mandate into two parts, the smaller part for the Jews and the larger part for the Arabs. (Three quarters of the Mandate area had already been given to the Arabs for their own state, now known as Jordan.) The Arabs immediately went to war to eliminate the Jewish state, and lost part of their original parcel in their defeat. Now they want it back, despite their defeat in the war they started, and they still refuse to recognize the state of Israel. Can anyone seriously believe that the settlements have anything to do with it? In any case, in various agreements between Arabs and Jews, the question of the settlements was to be left for discussion in the final status negotiations. It was also agreed that the Arabs would have no jurisdiction regarding the settlements until the conclusion of a permanent Status agreement. It is important to note that all the settlements in the Sinai were uprooted and their residents relocated when Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel.  

Even if the Israelis were to stop building or even adding on to settlements, what do the Arabs offer in return? Would they recognize Israel’s right to exist? Sign a peace treaty? They have offered nothing. Meanwhile, Arab building continues and accelerates. For example, a new housing project is proceeding in Ramallah, which is planned to house some 10,000 people. And thousands of Arabs are moving into Jewish sections of Jerusalem, though the Arabs object strenuously when the Jews move into the Arab sections. There are more than a million Arabs living in Israel, some 20 percent of the population, enjoying all the rights and benefits of citizenship. It is a cliche, but it is also true, that the Israeli Arabs enjoy greater freedom and opportunity than they have in any of the Arab countries of the Middle East. The Arabs of Palestine, on the other hand, want no Jews in their territories and condemn the settlements as intruding on their land.

In Gaza, for example, the Israelis decided not only to stop building new settlements but to remove their existing settlements entirely, forcibly removing all the settlers and relocating them in other parts of the country. Did peace ensue? Hardly. Instead, an unceasing rain of rocket and mortar fire followed from Gaza into the cities and towns of southern Israel – more than 12,000 over an eight-year period, before Israel finally decided to retaliate. Did the UN condemn the ceaseless rocket fire from Gaza into civilian communities in Israel? No. But it condemned Israel for finally fighting back in an effort to stop the bombardment. In the face of this evidence, how can anyone seriously claim that the settlements are an obstacle to peace?

Also on the topic of Israeli settlement and building is his article “The Jerusalem Affair”, posted here in April 2016.

Copyright 2016
Elaine Blackman

The Jewish People’s struggle toward independence

Harry Zubkoff, eternally photogenic

One year ago, I began this blog to honor my father’s memory and stay connected with his family and friends, far and wide. Because Israel was near and dear to his heart, today, on Israel’s Independence Day (Yom Ha’atzmaut), I’m sharing two articles Harry wrote for his synagogue newsletter. He was 88 when he filed the original computer documents, dated January and March 2010. Most of us have never seen these articles, and some of us are learning lessons in Jewish history.

The relationships between the Jews and the Arabs in the Middle East did not start with the establishment of the State of Israel. Long before Israel came into existence in 1948, the Arabs were opposed to the growing presence of Jews in the area, known as Palestine. While Jews had been coming to Palestine in small numbers for the past 2,000 years, the numbers started increasing in the late 1800s, when oppression of Jews in Eastern Europe stimulated emigration to Palestine as one of the few places open to them.

When Theodore Herzl organized the Zionist movement into a formal, recognized group and convened the first Zionist Congress in 1897, emigration of Jews from Europe to Palestine picked up speed. Those Jews returning to Palestine were already talking about establishing a Jewish homeland there either under Turkish or German rule. Early in the 20th century, the Jews established a number of farming communities, most notably at Petach Tikvah, Rishon Letzion and other locations. They also started building a new city, Tel Aviv, just north of Jaffa. As the Jews built new facilities in Palestine, increasing numbers of Arabs came into the area, seeking to share in the new prosperity and opportunity provided by Jewish enterprise. By the time WWI started in 1914, there were about 600,000 Arabs and 100,000 Jews in Palestine.

The First World War put a stop to everything. It was hard on both the Jews and the Arabs of Palestine with outbreaks of disease, both cholera and typhus, affecting both populations. An Ottoman military government ruled the area and was detested by Jews and Arabs alike. The Ottoman Empire joined with Germany and Austria-Hungary against the Allies during the war, and many Jews fled the area to avoid being drafted into the Turkish army. A small group of Jews, however, organized an underground unit that provided critical intelligence information to the British which helped their invasion effort. Their help was but one of many reasons why Britain endorsed the concept of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. At the same time Britain also promised the Arabs a state in the area in return for an Arab revolt against the Ottomans led by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia). 

In the spring of 1920, and again a year later in 1921, and eight years later in the summer of 1929, Arabs, who opposed the idea of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, organized simultaneous violent riots and pogroms against the Jews in a number of locations – Jaffa, Haifa, Hebron and Jerusalem. Throughout the decade of the 1920s, other sporadic acts of violence by Arabs against the Jews took place, but never rising to the level of riots or pogroms. As a result, the Jews organized a self-defense force, the Haganah, since the British did nothing to protect them. A major instigator of violence against the Jews was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the foremost Arab religious leader, who later in the 1930s became a Nazi collaborator.  

In the late 1920s and through the 1930s, Arab antagonism to the Jews increased dramatically. They claimed that Jewish immigration and their land purchases, though legitimate, were displacing and dispossessing Arabs, even though all the economic indicators showed that the Arabs were benefiting from Jewish investment in the area. In fact, the Arab standard of living in Palestine was higher than in any other area of the Middle East, and Arabs were flocking there in record numbers to share in the prosperity engendered by the Jews.

Anti-Jewish violence was fueled by lies which the Arabs trot out periodically, even to this day, that the Jews were planning to build a Synagogue at the Wailing Wall, and thereby encroach upon the Temple Mount compound and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The technique of telling lies about the Jews in order to incite violence against them was perfected and expanded by Joseph Goebbels. As Minster of “Propaganda and Enlightenment” for the German Third Reich, Goebbels made lying about the Jews into an art form. “If you tell a lie big enough,” he said, “and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Thus, the Germans came to believe that the Jews were sub-human and perpetrated the greatest atrocity in human history, and the best documented mass-murder rampage. The Third Reich was obliterated in World War II, but the technique of lying about Jews to incite violence against them lives on in the Arab world and in some European states, as well. 

A public opinion survey taken in Europe just a few years ago disclosed that Europeans view Israel as the greatest threat to world peace. This kind of public attitude is a direct result of lies repeated relentlessly about Israel’s attempts to defend itself against incessant attacks by Palestinians and other Arabs. The most outrageous lies are told about the Jews: for example, a British report stated that Jews were killing Palestinians in order to harvest their vital organs; a Norwegian report stated that Jews were killing Christian children in order to use their blood to bake matzah, etc. The reporters involved disregard the tenets of their own profession – a search for truth and verification. Indeed, when confronted with questions, they declare that they do not know what is true, only what they are told. In Arab schools today, children are taught from earliest childhood to hate Jews and that their highest goal is to kill Jews and become martyrs. In Arab newspapers Jews are insulted and derided every day so that the Arab “man in the street” is conditioned to hate all Jews everywhere.   

Despite Arab objections and British obstacles, Jewish immigration increased substantially in the 1930s as the Germans tightened the persecution screws and Eastern European countries did the same. The pivotal point came in 1936 when widespread riots took place, which were dubbed the Arab Revolt or, in some media reports, the Great Uprising. Fully half of the 5,000 residents of the Jewish quarter in Old Jerusalem were forced to flee and the few Jews remaining in Hebron after the killings of 1929 were also evacuated. The Arabs were not only warring against the Jews, but against the British, as well, and as many as a thousand or more Arabs were killed in the fighting. 

In the aftermath, the Peel Commission of 1937 came up with a plan to partition the remaining Mandate area into a small Jewish state and a much larger Arab state. (Remember, more than three quarters of the original Palestine Mandate had already been given to the Arabs for their state, now called Jordan.) Meanwhile, in a further response to the riots, the British began restricting immigration of Jews, despite the growing evidence that Germany had embarked on a program of killing all the Jews of Europe. These restrictions culminated in the British White Paper, issued in 1939, which limited the number of Jewish immigrants into Palestine to 15,000 a year for five years, after which any additional immigration would be subject to Arab approval. In effect, this meant no more would be allowed, a situation which was intolerable to the Jewish people, especially in view of Germany’s inexorable move toward a policy of genocide against them.

*****

Beginning in the mid-1930s and throughout the World War II period from 1939 to 1945, the Arab leadership in Palestine maintained ever stronger ties with the Nazi government in Germany. The wartime cooperation was exemplified by a “fatwa” (religious edict) issued by the Arab religious authority in Palestine for a holy war against England in May 1941. In a meeting with Adolf Hitler in 1941, Amin al-Husayni, leader of the Supreme Muslim Council in Palestine, discussed Britain’s endorsement of establishing a Jewish national home in Palestine. Hitler promised him that he would eliminate the Jews from Palestine after Germany won the war in Europe. During the war, Amin al-Husayni served with the Nazis in the Waffen SS in Bosnia. 

Meanwhile, the Jews of Palestine organized a 5,000-man Brigade, which served with the British Army during the war in Europe. After the war, the Brigade succeeded in spiriting thousands of survivors of the Holocaust, the remnants of Europe’s Jewish population, out of that forsaken continent and smuggling them into Palestine, under the noses of the British, who had steadfastly refused to allow Jewish immigration. At the same time, the Jewish leaders in Palestine, the Yishuv, as it was known, decided to make a major effort to bring the Jewish refugees into Palestine. They organized a huge illegal immigration enterprise using small boats and operating in total secrecy. Many were intercepted by the British and detained in makeshift prison camps on the island of Cyprus, but even so, during 1946 and 1947, some 70,000 European Jewish refugees were smuggled into Palestine. 

As details of the full dimensions of the tragic slaughter of the Jews of Europe by the Nazis in pursuit of a “final solution” emerged, it had a major impact on public opinion around the world and inspired additional support for the Zionist cause. And Britain, which had restricted every attempt to bring Jewish refugees to the area, finally decided to return its Palestine Mandate to the newly organized United Nations. 

The UN recommended that the Palestine Mandate be split into three parts – a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a separate area to include Jerusalem and Bethlehem under UN control. Neither side liked this partition plan, but the Jewish Agency, the de-facto government of the Jews, accepted it and campaigned for it. The Arabs rejected it.

All the Arab leaders in the Arab League objected in principle to the right of the Jews to an independent state in Palestine. But the UN General Assembly voted for the Partition on Nov. 9, 1947, with 33 countries in favor, 13 opposed, and 10 abstaining. The official partition was scheduled to take effect as soon as the British withdrew from the area, on May 15, 1948.
   
Almost as soon as the UN Partition vote was announced, the Arabs started carrying out attacks against the Jewish population. The consulates of countries that had voted in favor of the Plan were attacked, bombs and Molotov cocktails were thrown at shops and cafes, synagogues were set afire and many businesses looted.

With the British withdrawing, there was no force responsible for maintaining law and order. In December 1947 and January 1948, more than 1,000 people had been killed and 2,000 wounded. By the end of March 1948, more than 2,000 dead and 4,000 wounded. 

On May 14, the day before the British Mandate expired, David Ben-Gurion announced to the world that the State of Israel had been established in accordance with the UN Partition Plan. As required by the UN’s resolution, Israel agreed to ensure that all its inhabitants would enjoy equal social and political rights, regardless of race, religion or gender.

You can find several other articles about Israel in previous posts on this blog.

Copyright 2016
Elaine Blackman

Back to basics – a lesson on Israel’s independence

Harry and Jeanette sightseeing in Israel, 1972

My dad always followed events in Israel, and he practiced what he preached: He read, listened to, watched, and analyzed every news source possible. When it came to Israel, Harry spoke with authority. In 2011, at 88 years old, he wrote this article for his synagogue newsletter. 


At the end of the War of Independence in 1948, when Israel’s neighbors had tried unsuccessfully to wipe the new country off the map, the parties to the conflict, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, signed an armistice agreement with Israel that set up interim demarcation lines pending the establishment of permanent borders to be negotiated. These lines were not based on any geographic formation or demographic consideration. They simply marked where the respective forces were deployed when the cease-fire was declared by the UN Security Council Resolution 62 on November 16, 1948. The lines were drawn on the map that accompanied the Armistice Agreement with a green marker pen, so it became known as the “Green Line”.

Let’s be clear about this. The Security Council stressed the temporary nature of the armistice lines and that permanent peace would necessitate establishing permanent borders that would be different from the armistice lines. Permanent borders were never established because the Arabs steadfastly refused to negotiate. So the armistice lines remained in effect until the “Six Day War” of 1967, when the Arabs once again tried to wipe Israel off the map.

This time, the Arabs lost everything they had gained in the 1948 war—and then some, including the entire West Bank and Jerusalem. Yet Israel, it has been said, is the only country in history which, having won a war started against it, has to sue for peace. The Arabs, on the other hand, having lost three major wars against Israel, are now pursuing their goal of eradicating Israel by means other than war. 

A new phrase has now entered the vocabulary—delegitimization. So, while declaring that Israel is an illegitimate state, thrust upon the world by the colonial powers and other such nonsense, the Arabs are now talking of establishing a Palestinian state using the 1967 borders, ignoring the fact that there never were any 1967 borders, and even the temporary armistice lines of 1948 were nullified by the war they started and lost in 1967. Forgotten, too, is the fact that they could have had another state by accepting the UN Partition Plan in 1948, as the Israelis did. They could also have had another state several times over the past sixty-two years but chose not to do so, and there is no reason to take seriously any unilateral declaration of statehood now.

Meanwhile, a revolutionary fervor is sweeping through the Arab countries of the Middle East, exposing the hypocrisy of those who have been claiming all these years that the root of terror and unrest is the unresolved conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. What the Arabs want is what peoples everywhere want—freedom from their oppressors. If I may paraphrase Winnie the Pooh—they have met the enemy and they is them.

When my parents left to vacation in Israel in 1972, I got a ride from my New Jersey college to the NYC airport to bid them farewell. (Imagine traveling in a suit and tie these days!) At home they played Israeli music, and these classics became two of my favorites: Yerushalayim Shel Zahav and Erev Shel Shoshanim