#867 – This Week: What’s the Role of a “Jewish Exponent”?

 

This Week:  What’s the Role of a “Jewish Exponent”?

“Exponent – 1: one who expounds or promotes (principles, etc.)” – Webster

Philadelphia’s Jewish Exponent is one of a number of Jewish community-owned community newspapers in the U.S.  Last week, it published a letter by a prominent community member criticizing the Exponent for not focusing on news events in Israel and giving members of our community a more balanced perspective on Israel than the mainstream media provides. It’s a point I’ve taken up, during the years of this media watch and before, with three previous editors of my hometown community-owned Exponent.

My concern has always been that both members of an ethnic community and that area’s general citizenry see an ethnic community’s newspaper, and not least one calling itself that community’s “Exponent,” as that community’s voice on matters of special concern to it, in a Jewish community’s case attacks upon the fulfillment in our lifetime of the dream of generations for the Jewish homeland’s renewed independence.

The first target of my wrath on the subject, occasioned by an Exponent cover utterly irrelevant to critical events occurring that week in Israel, was Exponent editor Buddy Korn, who’d previously been the director of CAMERA’s then-branch in Philadelphia and back in 1988 had co-led a CAMERA-ZOA-Brith Sholom imbalanced Israel-coverage protest on the sidewalk of the Philadelphia Inquirer’s then Dark Tower on Callowhill Street in which, as a lay Brith Sholom member, I had participated.

My letter years later to Exponent editor Buddy began:

      “Left to themselves, the Inquirers of the media will continue to run roughshod over Middle East history to Israel’s great detriment in the continuing struggle between the Jews and Arabs of Palestine.  In Philadelphia, our Philadelphia Jewish Exponent is all that stands in the way of our Philadelphia Inquirer having the field to itself. . . .”

In the early years of this century, and of this media watch, I had the honor and privilege to serve as executive vice-president and then president of the century-old Philadelphia-based men’s and women’s fraternal order Brith Sholom.  As Brith Sholom’s then representative on the Jewish Community Relations Council, which met in the community’s clubhouse on Arch Street, where the Exponent is headquartered, I had repeated contact with then-editor Jonathan Tobin.  At the time, the Philadelphia Inquirer was regularly telling readers through its wire service news articles of “millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants from Israel’s creation” and had headlined two consecutive days’ of terror-bombings of men, women and children-filled Jerusalem city buses as “… – and Militants Promise More.”  I lost no opportunity to tell Editor Tobin that his Job in the Jews was to be at the Inquirer’s throat like a werewolf.

He didn’t accompany us in July of 2002 on our second visit to the Inq’s Dark Tower’s sidewalk, where, as one of the protest’s three speakers, I began my remarks:

     “We’re here today because mass murderers who pack bombs with nails, screws, rat poison and hate, to murder and maim as many men, women and children as they possibly can in buses, restaurants, shopping malls, discos, pool halls, parks and a Bat Mitzvah and a Passover seder aren’t ‘militants’ anytime, anywhere.  They’re terrorists, every time, everywhere. . . .”

I added we were also there because there hadn’t been “millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants from Israel’s creation,” but a partition-rejecting Arab invasion for Israel’s destruction, creating more Israel-absorbed Jewish refugees from Arab lands than Arabs left tiny Israel.  (In fairness to Mr. Tobin, he did do, and handsomely, an Exponent article on Brith Sholom’s one hundredth anniversary, in exchange for my mere promise to leave him alone for ninety-nine years.)

Ok, I stood many times in front of a mirror imagining myself saying to next-Exponent-Editor Lisa that her Job In The Jews was to be at the Philadelphia Inquirer’s throat like a werewolf.  I couldn’t do it without smiling.  But Lisa did, gamely, have lunch at a kosher Chinese restaurant downtown with the local ZOA’s leadership, at which we each got to contribute one line to her indigestion.  I said: “When a community’s general newspaper disparages Israel, it reflects not just on that Jewish community’s right-wingers like me, but on that entire Jewish community.  Our community’s Federation, Board of Rabbis, Exponent should be in the van in standing up against that paper’s Israel disparagement.”

So I will put this week to our Philadelphia Jewish Exponent’s now editor, a Rabbi in the Chabad, along with being a journalist, that both our Jewish community and Philadelphia’s general community see our Exponent as our community’s voice on matters of particular concern to our community, that foremost among these is fair and balanced portrayal of Israel, not least in the media, of which the Exponent is part, where Israel is still taking a beating.