Letter to the Daily Beast

To The Editor of the Daily Beast,                                                                                                                                                    09/04/2010

I clicked the dailybeast.com icon tucked safely on my bookmark toolbar today to find the number one ticket item on the homepage “Bibi Snubs Obama” followed with a disingenuous paragraph that’s content can in no way be construed as a “snub” but the choice of a leader not wishing to be subjugated to further pariah status when the Turks and Egyptians intend on making Israel the spotlight of a conference that is supposed to deal with rogue nations and terrorist supporting regimes getting the bomb i.e. Iran.

The fact that Prime Minister Netanyahu hasn’t uttered an unkind word since his Whitehouse humiliation nor announced any dramatic shift in policy should temper a news organ that wishes to express news and not attempt to make it. Though this isn’t first the time I have disagreed with some of the coolness displayed to Israel in your editorials, and often I have been at odds at your overall Israeli-Palestinian narrative found in some of the snapshot journalism you generate on the topic. It is understandable, given the rampant propaganda coming out on this subject and accepted by the mainstream media. But what is not understandable is in the “news” section, not the editorial part of your publication, is providing headlines shaped to frame a political slant. What is unconscionable is that a website supposedly in place to provide honest reporting, has instead honed its news to fit a anti-Netanyahu game-framing agenda that clearly wishes to fan the flames and aggravate public opinion in its direction.

Israel is by no means perfect, but neither are we, it is a democracy that has been a reliable ally for decades, and it has been consistently subjected by this current administrations to unprecedented impoliteness and immense diplomatic pressure. This, at a point in the narrative, that has seen the failures of Oslo, Disengagement, and Livni Shelf-Agreement, but yet the ball is somehow in Israel’s court. The point is that Netanyahu has in no fashion served to snub the president by not showing up to an ambush, but not  according to your headlines. Rather the Daily Beast is cheaply selling such an impression that only indicts your website as yet another anti-Israel pusher, that  in open day light peddles its positions, with nuance and caution. Forms may be different but its engineered content very much the same But with today’s insipid headline here’s one less click to add to your traffic.

Sincerely,