Last week I post <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_02_22_corner-archive.asp#025706
” target=”_blank”> this item about The New Republic running an article by John R. Bradley formerly of the Arab News. Bradley’s articles have in the past featured some fairly nasty comments about Israel and The New Republic. I’m not quite sure if I stepped in the middle of something or if I started something or a little of both. But my friend Peter Beinart said they took all of this very seriously and he sent me the following by way of an explanation, clarification, etc. It works for me since I trust The New Republic to be a better defender of its own honor than anyone else. That said, their explanation does make Arab journalistic outlets sound even more dicey than I thought:
From the New Republic:
We have decided to continue using John Bradley’s articles because we are convinced that he did not write the phrases in the article posted by AlJazeerahinfo.org (which incidentally is not related to the TV network Al Jazeera.) Bradley says that he did not write the phrases identifying the New Republic as an “ultra-right campaigning American political journal that has long been defined by its crude Zionist agenda” and comparing Nazism to Zionism, but that they were inserted by the AlJazeerah website. He has complained many times to the site, and finally has written to the site and forecefully asked them to remove the article, which they have done. He also has compiled a record of writing fairly about the Middle East, and has published his pieces in a number of prestigious journals, including Prospect, the London Telegraph, the Washington Times, the Economist, Salon, and others. In fact , he resigned from Arab News because the publication published an article that compared yarmulkes to Nazi flags.