New York City (September 25) – “The news media too often hand the microphone to prominent Jews who defame Israel and expect to have their opinions taken at face value because of their personal background,”
said Andrea Levin, executive director of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. “Little or no effort is made to check the factual basis of their accusations.”
CAMERA intends to help rectify the problem, beginning with a conference on “Israel’s Jewish Defamers: The Media Dimension,” from noon to 5 p.m., Sunday, October 21, at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York
City. “We’ll explore the nature, prevalence, and roots of the phenomenon and how it underscores the necessity of accurate, objective Middle East news coverage and well-informed discussion of the issues
involved,” Levin added.
The conference features a panel discussion on “Jewish Defamation of Israel: Roots, Rationales and Ramifications.” Participants will include novelist, essayist, critic and poet Cynthia Ozick; Indiana University
Prof. Alvin Rosenfeld – author of the influential 2006 essay “Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism” – and Kenneth Levin, Harvard Medical School clinical psychiatry instructor and author of the 2005 book, The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege. Washington University Prof. Edward Alexander, author of The Jewish Idea and Its Enemies, will moderate the discussion.
Other presentations include Andrea Levin’s “Israel’s Ha’aretz Newspaper: the Global Impact of Local Bias,” and CAMERA Associate Director Alex Safian’s “The New York and London Reviews of Books: Elite
Journals Fostering Elite Bias.”
A letter-writing workshop, “How To Write Effective Letters and Get Published!” led by Lee Green, director of CAMERA’s more than 5,000-member national letter writing teams, will run from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
“We think this conference is most timely,” Levin said. “Jewish defamation of Israel contributes powerfully – intentionally or unintentionally —- to the anti-Israel and ultimately anti-Jewish psychological war being waged in the Middle East, on college campuses, and in the news media. Exposure, as always, is the best medicine.”
Registration for CAMERA members is $30; for non-members, $40; and $10 for students. Registration includes light refreshments. Registration for the Letter-Writing Workshop is $12 and includes a light dinner. To register, send name, mailing address, e-mail and telephone number to conference@camera.org, or call 1 888 736-3672.
CAMERA, the Boston-based news media monitoring organization, has 55,000 members in the United States and a dozen other countries. It is a non-partisan educational organization upholding journalistic standards
of accuracy and objectivity. CAMERA is not aligned with any political party and does not take policy positions.
