I just read a commentary piece on the current Israeli bombardment of Gaza on the European Council for Foreign Relations (ECFR) website here.
It struck me as the usual "expert analysis" cynical non-story, kind of like a classic football commentary. You'd never know from reading this commentary that as opposed to two sides in a football game this is a real war with political decisions made, international laws broken, including war crimes and acts of genocide. I can easily picture a similar coverage of the Nazi invasion of the Warsaw ghetto in 1944(?) in which the 'analyst' (obviously not a Levy in that case!) describes in casual analyst language ("bet on this outcome", or "bedding down ...") the difficulties faced by the Nazi side who would clearly prefer to use their superior airpower rather than lose valuable German soldiers, while the Jewish resistance, as Levy so flippantly puts it, "has no winning card to play".
But what is the position of the author, Daniel Levy, in all this? I'll probably be accused of anti-semitism but I did notice the Jewish name on a byline analysing a conflict in which the Jewish state is deeply involved so I had a look on the web. My suspicions were confirmed: a man deeply anchored in the Jewish state establishment: army service, government advisor, leader of International Jewish organisation. All perfectly honourable activities. However, it beggars belief that the ECFR would consider such a person a credibly impartial analyst of the savage conflict in which Jewish Israel is the main player. Never mind the many real anti-semites who would dismiss any of Mr Levy's analysis; what about the millions of educated progressive Europeans who think that Mr Levy's position is simply not credible? Impartiality in political analysis should be like justice: not just done, but seen to be done. I suspect if the ecfr would let itself be completely compromised by a powerful interest group in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is probably similarly compromised in many other similarly fractious issues and thus is without credibility.
Better off with your Daily Mail, your Torygraph or your Irish Times. They may be massively biased in one direction but the editorial bias is at least transparent.
p.s. I note the Irish directors of ecfr: a bunch of right-wing politicians, an academic who made her name trashing anti-EU referendum campaigns and a career bureaucrat. How statist can you get?
It struck me as the usual "expert analysis" cynical non-story, kind of like a classic football commentary. You'd never know from reading this commentary that as opposed to two sides in a football game this is a real war with political decisions made, international laws broken, including war crimes and acts of genocide. I can easily picture a similar coverage of the Nazi invasion of the Warsaw ghetto in 1944(?) in which the 'analyst' (obviously not a Levy in that case!) describes in casual analyst language ("bet on this outcome", or "bedding down ...") the difficulties faced by the Nazi side who would clearly prefer to use their superior airpower rather than lose valuable German soldiers, while the Jewish resistance, as Levy so flippantly puts it, "has no winning card to play".
But what is the position of the author, Daniel Levy, in all this? I'll probably be accused of anti-semitism but I did notice the Jewish name on a byline analysing a conflict in which the Jewish state is deeply involved so I had a look on the web. My suspicions were confirmed: a man deeply anchored in the Jewish state establishment: army service, government advisor, leader of International Jewish organisation. All perfectly honourable activities. However, it beggars belief that the ECFR would consider such a person a credibly impartial analyst of the savage conflict in which Jewish Israel is the main player. Never mind the many real anti-semites who would dismiss any of Mr Levy's analysis; what about the millions of educated progressive Europeans who think that Mr Levy's position is simply not credible? Impartiality in political analysis should be like justice: not just done, but seen to be done. I suspect if the ecfr would let itself be completely compromised by a powerful interest group in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is probably similarly compromised in many other similarly fractious issues and thus is without credibility.
Better off with your Daily Mail, your Torygraph or your Irish Times. They may be massively biased in one direction but the editorial bias is at least transparent.
p.s. I note the Irish directors of ecfr: a bunch of right-wing politicians, an academic who made her name trashing anti-EU referendum campaigns and a career bureaucrat. How statist can you get?
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