IASPS

Quarterly Report
Spring 2001

Comments of the President

By Robert J. Loewenberg

Take the NBN Cure

Only minutes after submitting my column for this edition of our Quarterly -- it was about an editorial in the Wall Street Journal and an op-ed by William Safire in the New York Times, both calling (wisely but unrealistically) for Israel to make use of its war option in the present tragic circumstances in which Israel has effectively foreclosed this option -- I clicked onto our site. What I found there forced me to put that column aside.

I found three of the most extraordinary NBNs we've ever had up there for showing you why, if you're still among those who read the newspapers without making the "antidote" called www.iasps.org an everyday practice, you are not getting the news, the "news" is getting you.

The first two NBNs are about Goldman Sachs, the other is about Egypt's apparent decision to stop selling gas to Israel. In these stories it is the newspaper in question, Ha'aretz, that is in the "News Behind the News.''

Now, we all know the news is Left biased. But unless you're reading the NBNs on the site (now getting 200,000 plus "hits" per month) you can't see how you're being used.

And so when you saw or heard about the news story in late May that Israel's Finance Minister Silvan Shalom (featured on the front page of our last Quarterly) was publicly humiliated by Goldman Sachs -- "Shalom Flops in NY, Says Goldman Sachs'' -- you might have wondered. Is Israel's first ever pro-market finance minister going to turn out even worse than his socialist predecessors?

If you'd taken your daily dose of NBNs at www.iasps.org you'd have known right away that a scam was in progress -- even before a later, second NBN appeared noting an apology made by Goldman Sachs, again published in Ha'aretz. This second NBN is the one that prompted me to put my original column aside and write this one.

Who is Flopping?

Consider the first NBN about the "Shalom Flops in NY, Says Goldman Sachs" story that appeared in Ha'aretz, May 27, 2001. There were two things about this story. The first was what was reported in Ha'aretz. What was reported was, after the humiliating headline -- "Shalom Flops in NY, Says Goldman Sachs'' -- the story of how a 33-year-old financial analyst whose name is Daniel Tenengauzer had made a command decision to castigate the Israeli finance minister.

His decision reported straight-faced in Ha'aretz was said to be based on an analysis that could not readily be called professional, but which seemed to be almost a practical joke. Goldman Sachs is after all a well respected firm; for example it is the home of the former U.S. secretary of the Treasury, Bob Rubin.

Here is what Goldman Sachs analyst Daniel Tenengauzer said was what was really worrying him, justifying Ha'aretz to print its headline, "Shalom Flops.''

Mr. Tenengauzer, as reported in the Hebrew edition of Ha'aretz, had based his negative judgments of Mr. Shalom and Israel in part on the following reasoning. He noted that Mr. Sharon, the prime minister, had acted in a "hasty and not democratic [manner in his]...decision to use F-16s [!!]" This decision, "taken by himself ....will hurt the way the financial world views Israel....You have to understand the use of an F-16 has economic meaning."

Is it possible, you ask? But then you might not have asked this question at all if you'd read only the English version of Ha'aretz. The explanation by Ha'aretz of Mr. Tenengauzer's decision does not appear in the English edition, only (and at some length) in the Hebrew edition. Why is this? There is no need or perhaps point to speculate about an answer.

Who is Apologizing?

As you would have seen from our second NBN, it's where Ha'aretz printed Mr. Tenengauzer's reasons for what Ha'aretz printed in both stories that makes all the difference. It printed the reasons in Hebrew, and only the fact of Goldman Sachs humiliating the government in English.

Thus Ha'aretz, Israel's New York Times, two newspapers that print only the news that's fit to print for the sake of Jewish socialists and statists, was in cahoots with a Clintonite at Goldman Sachs to embarrass the Likud government (something it doesn't need help to do) and to cast doubts upon markets in Israel. The second NBN, in sum, suggests that Ha'aretz, not just Goldman Sachs, owes an apology.

Who is Missing?

The third NBN that prompted me to put my original column aside was again about an Ha'aretz news story. On June 5 this paper reported, again straight-faced, that Egypt is threatening to cut gas sales to Israel. But the main thing that Ha'aretz didn't do was to take note of the comments of Necdet Pamir of Turkey who spoke at an IASPS conference on oil and water in Jerusalem May 30 (see cover story) in which the option of buying Caspian gas was presented as Israel's preferred option.

Israel's press is among the most deeply biased in the world. It is, as a sympathetic Wall Street Journal Europe editor Rob Pollack said with apparent shock some years back, unrelievedly far Left. Thus, like its more powerful model the New York Times, it bends the meaning of news. In particular it does this by choosing items to report, which, reported straight, would be transparent for larger matters with a tendency to offer alternative policies to the ones of statism and socialism.

The Flip Side

The game, as in the three NBNs here, is to "flip" these stories, first to cloud the transparency but mainly to shut out the alternatives.

Exactly discussion of such alternatives is what the opposition cannot raise directly -- for the fact that the press controls this discussion and makes such alternatives beyond the pale as extremism of various kinds.

So see the alternatives. Read the NBNs on the site every day. www.iasps.org