Saturday, May 02, 2009

The New York Times justifies spying for Israel

You have to read and deconstruct the text of this small article in the New York Times about the two alleged spies for Israel. Notice how the language is used (in an unusually editorializing fashion) to justify the principle of spying for Israel: "From the beginning, the case against the lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was highly unusual. The two, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, were charged under the World War I-era Espionage Act, accused of improperly providing to their colleagues, journalists and Israeli diplomats sensitive information they had acquired by speaking with American policy makers." And then it says: "The case would have been the first prosecution under the espionage law in which no documents were involved and in which the defendants were not officials who provided the information, but the private citizens who received it from them in conversations. While Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman trafficked in facts, ideas and rumor, they had done so with the full awareness of officials in the United States and Israel, who found they often helped lubricate the wheels of decision-making between two close, but sometimes quarrelsome, friends." I don't recall ever reading a "news article" in the New York Times in which there was as much editorializing. But then again: this hit close to home, as the cliche goes.