Chapter Fifteen
ZIONIST INFLUENCE IN THE MEDIA
As historian Richard Stevens notes, Zionists early on learned to exploit the essential nature of the
American political system: that policies can be made and un-made through force of public opinion
and pressure. Procuring influence in the media, both paid and unpaid, has been a key component of
their success.[340]
From early on, the Zionist narrative largely dominated news coverage of the region. A study of
four leading newspapers’ 1917 coverage showed that editorial opinion almost universally favored
the Zionist position.[341] Author Kathleen Christison notes that “editorials and news stories alike
applauded Jewish enterprise, heralding a Jewish return to Palestine as ‘glorious news.’” Other
studies showed the same situation for the 1920s. Christison writes:
“The relatively heavy press coverage is an indicator of the extent of Zionist influence even in this
early period. One scholar has estimated that, as of the mid-1920s, approximately half of all New York
Times articles were placed by press agents, suggesting that U.S. Zionist organizations may have
placed many of the articles on Zionism’s Palestine endeavors.”[342]
At one point when the State Department was trying to convince Israel to allow Palestinian
refugees to return, Secretary of State George Marshall wrote:
“The leaders of Israel would make a grave miscalculation if they thought callous treatment of this
tragic issue could pass unnoted by world opinion.”[343]
Marshall underestimated the ability of Zionists to minimize the information on Palestinian refugees
reaching Americans. A State Department study in March 1949 found the American public was
“unaware of the Palestine refugee problem, since it has not been hammered away at by the press or
radio.”[344]
As author Alfred Lilienthal explained in 1953:
“The capture of the American press by Jewish nationalism was, in fact, incredibly complete.
Magazines as well as newspapers, in news stories as well as editorial columns, gave primarily the
Zionist views of events before, during, and after partition.”[345]
When the Saturday Evening Post published an article by Milton Mayer that criticized Jewish
nationalism (and carried two other articles giving opposing views), Zionists organized what was
probably the worst attack on the Post in its long history.
Zionists inundated the magazine with vitriolic mail, cancelled their subscriptions, and withdrew
their advertising. The Post learned its lesson, later refusing to publish an article that would have
again exposed it to such an onslaught, even though the editor acknowledged that the rejected piece
was a “good and eloquent article.”[346]
This was typical in a campaign in which Zionists exploited sympathy for victimized Jews, and
when this did not sufficiently skew reporting about Palestine, used financial pressure. Lilienthal
writes:
“If voluntary compliance was not ‘understanding’ enough, there was always the matter of Jewish
advertising and circulation. The threat of economic recriminations from Jewish advertisers, combined
with the fact that the fatal label of ‘Anti-Semite’ would be pinned on any editor stepping out of line,
assured fullest press cooperation.”[347]
Author Christison records that from the moment partition was voted by the UN, “the press played a
critical role in building a framework for thinking that would endure for decades.” She writes that
shortly before May 15, 1948, the scheduled beginning of the Jewish State, a total of 24 U.S., British,
and Australian reporters converged on Palestine.
“Virtually all reporting was from the Jewish perspective,” reports Christison. “The journals the
Nation and the New Republic both showed what one scholar calls ‘an overt emotional partiality’
toward the Jews. No item published in either journal was sympathetic to the Arabs, and no
correspondent was stationed in Arab areas of Palestine, although some reporters lived with, and
sometimes fought alongside, Jewish settlers.”[348]
Bookstores were inundated with books espousing the Zionist point of view to enthusiastic press
reviews. Conversely, the few books published that dared to provide a different perspective were
given scathing reviews, when they were reviewed at all.[349]
When Professor Millar Burrows of the Yale School of Divinity, a distinguished scholar and
archaeologist, wrote Palestine Is Our Business, the American Zionist Council distributed a
publication labeling his book “an anti-Semitic opus.”
In fact, Professor Burrows‘ life history showed the opposite. He had been one of the organizers
and Vice-President of the National Committee to Combat Anti-Semitism and had long been active in
the interfaith movement in New Haven.[350]
In his book Burrows wrote, “A terrible wrong has been done to the native people of [Palestine.]
The blame for what has happened must be distributed among all concerned, including ourselves. Our
own interests, both as Americans and as Christians, are endangered. The interests of the Jewish
people also have suffered. And we can still do something about it.”[351]
Burrows emphasized: “This is a question of the most immediate and vital concern to many
hundreds of thousands of living people. It is an issue on which one concerned with right and wrong
must take a position and try to do something.”[352]
Burrows wrote that imposing a Jewish state on Palestine violated the principle of self-
determination, and noted that the “right of a majority of the people of a country to choose their own
government would hardly be questioned in any other instance.”[353]
Burrows criticized what he termed “pro-Zionist” writing and pointed out that a “quite different
view of the situation would emerge if the word ‘resistance‘ were used” when describing Palestinian
and Arab fighting in 1948.[354] He wrote that the “plan for Palestine advocated by the Arabs was a
democracy with freedom of religion and complete separation of religion and the State, as in this
country.”[355]
Burrows also discussed religious aspects, stating: “One thing is certain. Nothing that is essentially
unjust or contrary to the Spirit of Christ can be the will of God. Let him who speaks of the fulfillment
of prophecy remember Jer. 22:13: ‘Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness’...”[356]
In his conclusion, Burrows stated: “All the Arab refugees who want to return to their homes must
be allowed and helped to do so, and must be restored to their own villages, houses, and farms or
places of business, with adequate compensation from the Government of Israel for destruction and
damage.”[357]
He also stated: “Homes must be found in this country or elsewhere for Jews desiring to become
citizens of other countries than Israel, and their religious, civic, social, and economic rights must be
guaranteed.”[358]
In their onslaught against him, Zionists accused Burrows of “careless writing, disjointed reporting
and extremely biased observation.”[359]
Another author who described the misery of Palestinian refugees (as well as Jewish suffering in
Israel), Willie Snow Ethridge, was similarly attacked by pro-Israel reviewers. When she was invited
to address the Maryland Teachers Association and chose to speak on her book, Journey to
Jerusalem, she was told she must speak on a different subject. The secretary of the association
explained that so much pressure had been brought on him that he would lose his job if she didn’t
change to another topic.[360]
Still another was the eminent dean of Barnard College, Virginia Gildersleeve, a highly
distinguished personage with impeccable credentials as a humanitarian. When she wrote that
Palestinian refugees should be allowed to return to their homes, a campaign was launched against her,
labeling her a Christian “anti-Semite.”[361]
Gildersleeve, who had been instrumental in drafting the Preamble to the U.N. Charter and had
taken a leading role in creating the U.N. Human Rights Commission, later devoted herself to working
for human rights in the Middle East.[362] She testified before Congressional committees and lobbied
President Truman, to no avail.[363] In her memoir, she attributed such failures to “the Zionist control
of the media of communication.”[364]
Chapter Sixteen
DOROTHY THOMPSON, PLAYED BY KATHARINE HEPBURN
& LAUREN BACALL
America’s most famous female journalist of the time also attempted valiantly, but unsuccessfully,
to tell Americans about Palestinian refugees.
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Dorothy Thompson was “one of the most famous
journalists of the 20th Century.”[365]
Thompson‘s column was in newspapers all over the country, and her radio program listened to by
tens of millions of Americans. She had been married to one of America’s most famous novelists,
graced the cover of Time magazine, been profiled by America’s top magazines and was so well-
known that “Woman of the Year,” a Hollywood movie featuring Kathryn Hepburn and Spencer
Tracey and a Broadway play starring Lauren Bacall, were based on her.[366]
She had been the first journalist to be expelled by Adolph Hitler and had raised the alarm against
the Nazis long ahead of most other journalists. She had originally supported Zionism, but then after
the war had visited the region in person. She began to speak about Palestinian refugees, narrated a
documentary about their plight[367], and condemned Jewish terrorism.
Thompson was viciously attacked in an orchestrated campaign of what she termed “career
assassination and character assassination.” She wrote: “It has been boundless, going into my personal
life.” She wrote of this organized attack:
“…when letter after letter is couched in almost identical phraseology I do not think the authors
have been gifted with telepathy.”[368]
She was dropped by the New York Post, whose editor Ted Thackrey, and his wife, Dorothy Schiff,
were said by other Post editors to be “very close to the Irgun and Menachem Begin.” Begin, the
Irgunists, the Stern Gang and other Zionist organizations had, according to one commentator,
“inordinate access” to the Post’s editorial board.[369]
(Dorothy Schiff, granddaughter of financier Jacob Schiff and owner of the Post, later divorced
Thackrey and married Rudolf Sonneborn.[370])
Thompson‘s mail was filled with ferocious accusations that she was “anti-Semitic” for
publicizing Zionist cruelties. One such correspondent told her that her “filthy incitements to pogroms”
would not be tolerated by New York’s Jews.[371]
Before long, her column and radio programs, her speaking engagements, and her fame were all
gone. Today, she has largely been erased from history.[372]
In the coming decades, other Americans were similarly written out of history, forced out of office,
their lives and careers destroyed; history was distorted, re-written, erased; bigotry promoted,
supremacy disguised, facts replaced by fraud.
Very few people know this history. The excellent books that document it are largely out of print,
their facts and very existence virtually unknown to the vast majority of Americans, even those who
focus on the Middle East. Instead, false theories have been promulgated, mendacious analyses
promoted, chosen authors celebrated, others assigned to oblivion.
George Orwell once wrote: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present
controls the past.”[373]
Perhaps by rediscovering the past, we’ll gain control of the present, and save the future.
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