Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Anti-Semitism in New York Radio?

According to David Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee, the New York-based radio station, WQXR-FM, refused to air a 60-second advertisement dealing with the terror experienced by the residents of the Israeli town of Sderot.

WQXR-FM is owned by The New York Times.

Mr. Harris explained that the station's general manager, Tom Bartunek, said "several elements of the spot are outside our bounds of acceptability," whatever that means.

Bartunek further said that the ad "runs the risk of raising anxiety in a misleading way." He believes that to say, as the ad does, that rockets fall on Sderot "day or night" might be "misleading, at least to the degree that reasonable people might be troubled by the absence of any acknowledgement of reciprocal Israeli military actions."

In addition, Bartunek claimed the ad did not live up to the station's "guidelines! for decorum."

Let's see if we can figure this out. Hamas shoots rockets at any time, day or night, into the town of Sderot. The people of Sderot live in constant fear and often have only seconds to find shelter before a rocket destroys a home or school, or child, or ...

Mr. Bartunek, who is also the president of New York Times radio, thinks it is misleading to air an ad that says that. He thinks that because the ad does not explain how Israel sometimes fights back, it is "outside ... [the] bounds of acceptability." And it somehow disturbs the station's "decorum."

Methinks Mr. Bartunek is full of it and trying to cover up, with truly a truly pitiful rationale, his own anti-Semitism.

Not a hell of a lot changes over the years.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It boggles my mind that in New York City there are not enough Jews, and well meaning non Jews, to protest very loudly about the failure of the media to tell the world of the daily rockets into a peaceful, civilian city inside Israel by terrorists from Gaza.
Why is the unilateral giving up of Gaza, which is much more than a gesture, not covered as the indicator of the failure of the land for peace theory! Everyone seems to think it will create a peaceful world all over the planet, including Tibet and all of Africa?
What if Israel reacted with over 4000 rockets into downtown Gaza, which would be the equivalent of what the Gazans have done to Sderot since Gaza got back its land? The Bible says an eye for an eye; it’s in the beginning books of the St. James version of the Bible.
I think that Israel should act like every other sovereign nation and wage war against any that invade its territory or attack its people. I am an equal opportunity war monger when it comes to national survival.
Bob Poris

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