So, correct me if I am wrong, but Benn is using some anonymous source for this claim?

I have an idea, why didn't Benn just asked Rice? Is the woman not allowed to speak for herself?

Condi Rice has a very difficult job. In fact I would say that there are times when it is damn near impossible. Somehow it seems unfair that people who do not have to live with that kind of pressure constantly second guess everything she does and apparently everything she thinks as well.

Please, Dafydd. I urged you to be calm and judicious in your posts, and now look at where your galloping enthusiasm has led you. Your original post is clearly based on the premise that Aluf Benn was so blinded by his "left-wing bias" that he got a big question entirely wrong, and published a whopping untruth in his newspaper -- a claim you feel competant to make despite the fact you don't know "Aluf from Adam." You then use this shaky premise to beat me around the shoulders and head with. You can't just go around accusing a highly reputable journalist like Aluf Benn with a long track record of getting things like this right of having either made it up or, more generously, having "misheard or misunderstood" his source. He's not a dummy. YOU are the one who needs proof.

The Dan Rather scandal was a scandal because the memos on which Dan Rather relied were proven through careful forensic examination to be fakes, while Rather continued to insist that they were real. Your only basis for asserting that Benn is mistaken here is that you would rather that Benn was a scoundrel or a ninny. His word and reputation are his evidence here -- and that is perfectly normal. Take a look at your newspaper of choice, and you will see that virtually the entire thing consists of one chap you don't know reporting on something that another chap supposedly said -- often without giving the other chap's name. A dirty business, I agree -- and I do try to abstain, on principle, from that kind of journalistic behavior. But the position of radical doubt that you propose is untenable. You don't believe in it yourself. Your behavior here is an example of "logic chopping" (what the Romans called cavillatio), that is, the use of overly subtle, quibbling, confusing arguments in place of direct engagement with the arguments of another.

Because I am a generous being, I will try again to help you out of the dark place into which you have fallen:

1. I believe that Aluf Benn is telling the truth because he has a long record of telling the truth, and this kind of insider political gossip is his specialty. If he got this wrong he'd be in big trouble.

2. The second reason that I believe that Aluf Benn is telling the truth because his remarks fit with Condoleezza Rice's semi-private behavior with journalists and politicians that I have observed first-hand, and also with her prior public remarks. See, for example, this recent speech in which Rice strongly implies the same things that Benn asserts that she has said outright in private: http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/73895.htm

Now, you do raise a valid point when you question how I can both assert that Aluf Benn is a careful reporter known for getting the details right while also asserting that he is guilty of making "incendiary" guesses. The answer is that Aluf Benn is both a newspaper reporter, who reports on diplomatic events, and also a widely read columnist, which is a different kind of job, which often involves being incendiary (a word that does not necessarily imply that what the author writes is false).

Here, Aluf Benn is writing a column, which begins with what he advertizes as a very solid nugget of news on a big subject, and which then proceeds on to a bonfire of columnist-style inflamatory guesswork. I know where the reported fact stops and the guesswork begins because Aluf Benn tells me so himself, by clearly and deliberately inserting words like "guess" and "assume" in the body of his piece -- after dropping his nugget of news in the first paragraph. Perhaps this code is a bit hard to parse if you're not a respected member of the journalistic community like me. But it's not exactly rocket science, either.

Now, if Aluf Benn were asserting something that ran contrary to all of Rice's prior public and private statements, like the idea that she was running down President Bush to her Palestinian or Israeli interlocutors, or believed that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "has a point" when he talks about the Crusader-Zionist conspiracy or the coming of the 13th Mahdi, I might be peeved by the lack of a named source. But given that Benn is only asserting here that Rice in private has said a slightly more pointed version of what Rice has already strongly implied in public, I feel comfortable trusting to Benn's excellent track record as a reporter and my own experience of Rice, combined with the fact that reporters from opposite ends of the Israeli political spectrum have reported that Rice said what Benn reported.

Again, I would urge you to read more carefully before you write such long posts. Benn never reports in his article, nor do I say in my article, that Rice SAID That Abbas is like Martin Luther King. That's one of Benn's GUESSES about what Rice believes. I repeat it in a somewhat mocking way both as an example of how Benn is determined to build a grand castle on his patch of fresh journalistic real estate and also to illustrate the fears of the hard right. Of course, if I had ever heard Rice compare Abbas directly to Martin Luther King I would have reported it myself. My own guess is that Benn is working off the same speech I cite above, in which Rice DOES implicitly compare Abbas to King. But again, who knows.

What led me to write the article in question -- the first straight opinion piece I've written in over ten years -- is because I am personally bothered by Rice's opportunistic remarks, which she has suggested before in public, and which Aluf Benn and David Bedein both assert that she has made recently in private, and which give added credence to a toxic discourse about the racist nature and behavior of the Israeli state that has gained a large number of recent adherents on both the left and the right, from Jimmy Carter to Robert Novak. I wrote the piece for my local Jewish newspaper because I understand the opinions I express, and the emotional basis for those opinions, as belonging to the me who is a member of a particular ethno-cultural-religious community, rather than the sober professional journalist who spends months reporting long magazine features for the Atlantic Monthly and other fine publications. I would have written the piece under a pseudonym, except for the fact that I find that kind of behavior dishonest. Similarly, I am posting here as an ordinary citizen who is urging you to be less prosecutorial in your approach and to read and write with greater care.

I have an idea, why didn't Benn just asked Rice? Is the woman not allowed to speak for herself?

Now, Terrye... that would end all the fun.

As for writing under a Pseudonym, I recommend it. If Aluf Benn had written his column under a different name than the one he uses while writing 'hard news' as a journalist, there would be much less confusion. Of course, if you do that, you cannot use Mr. Benn's reputation as a journalist to add weight to what he says as an incendiary commentator. Personally, I think that would be best.

You could even do it like Steven King does, writing different genres under different names, even though all of his fans know that "Richard Bachman" is really the same guy.

As for whether Ms. Rice thinks that of which she is accused... *sigh*... I suppose we could ask her. If only we knew how to get a hold of her office or something. Anybody have her contact information? Maybe we could get her folks to reply in their blog?

David Samuels:

Please, Dafydd. I urged you to be calm and judicious in your posts...

Well, I certainly hope I'm always calm -- and judicious at least to the extent of my meagre ability.

You can't just go around accusing a highly reputable journalist like Aluf Benn with a long track record of getting things like this right of having either made it up or, more generously, having "misheard or misunderstood" his source. He's not a dummy. YOU are the one who needs proof.

I don't know... I tend to cleave to the school that says the fellow who makes the extraordinary claim ought to be the one who needs -- well, at least a smidgen of proof. Even if he is a highly reputable journalist with a long record.

The Dan Rather scandal was a scandal because the memos on which Dan Rather relied were proven through careful forensic examination to be fakes, while Rather continued to insist that they were real.

Huh. You don't think he had any journalistic duty to authenticate them before broadcasting them far and wide? Well, as I said, I'm not a journalist, and I never went to J-school. Seems peculiar, though; but I'll surely take your word for it.

Take a look at your newspaper of choice, and you will see that virtually the entire thing consists of one chap you don't know reporting on something that another chap supposedly said -- often without giving the other chap's name. A dirty business, I agree -- and I do try to abstain, on principle, from that kind of journalistic behavior.

I believe it; you have high standards. But then why do you defend those folks who don't live up to those standards? I think I like what you do more than what you're willing to tolerate others doing.

And boy, isn't that a switcheroo! Usually it's the other way around, people giving themselves more latitude than they give others.

I feel like asking why you beholdest the mote in thine own eye, and beholdest not the beam in Aluf Benn's.

Because I am a generous being, I will try again to help you out of the dark place into which you have fallen:

Well heck, I'll take all the help I can get!

1. I believe that Aluf Benn is telling the truth because he has a long record of telling the truth, and this kind of insider political gossip is his specialty. If he got this wrong he'd be in big trouble.

Terrye's got a reasonable point: Did Benn ever contact Condoleezza Rice to ask her whether she actually said that? Or if not, what she said that might have been misinterpreted that way?

Seems only fair, somehow, before accusing someone of saying what amounts to a pretty astonishing expression of antisemitism -- whether she was sincere or not.

2. The second reason that I believe that Aluf Benn is telling the truth because his remarks fit with Condoleezza Rice's semi-private behavior with journalists and politicians that I have observed first-hand, and also with her prior public remarks. See, for example, this recent speech in which Rice strongly implies the same things that Benn asserts that she has said outright in private.

Well, we kind of already dealt with that in the first post linked above. You appear to have linked the same speech that I quoted from and analyzed at some length five days ago... and as I wrote at that time:

But what "themes" does Scott mean? The theme in the previous attack was that Rice thinks Mahmoud Abbas is like Martin Luther King; but this theme is that she still has hope that rationality can prevail and a peaceful Palestinian state could eventually emerge.

First, I don't know about you guys, but those seem awfully different "themes" to me. But second, what of Scott's characterization that the passage "likened the Palestinian struggle to the American struggle for independence and to the American civil rights movement"? There is no question she compares them; but "compare" needn't mean "equate." I can compare elections in Iran to elections in the United States without likening them or saying they're the same.

In the sense that, if such a peaceful Palestinian state comes into being, it might be seen as something that "seemed impossible" right up until it "seemed inevitable," such a circumstance would be very much like the United States; but that's a far cry from saying Yassir Arafat was like George Washington or that Mahmoud Abbas is like Martin Luther King. I can say that many people thought it would have been impossible for the United States to lose a war (or a peace) to primitive North Vietnam; but by the time it happened, it sure seemed inevitable to me. Yet surely this doesn't mean I equate Ho Chi Minh to George Washington or even Martin Luther King, jr.

Like Anne Frank in her last days, Condoleezza Rice still has hope in the future and in people. What is Scott Johnson's hope? Does he not hope that the Palestinians can eventually come to their senses?

You may disagree; perhaps you think to say that one still has hope is pretty much the same as saying that Mahmoud Abbas is like Martin Luther King. But I did actually deal with it -- head on, no cavillatioic gallivanting about.

Here, Aluf Benn is writing a column, which begins with what he advertizes as a very solid nugget of news on a big subject, and which then proceeds on to a bonfire of columnist-style inflamatory guesswork.

Maybe it's just me, but "a guy told me she said this" seems an awfully small nugget. Especially when he won't even tell us what guy it was. Sounds strangely like the sorts of stories we're used to from our own homegrown variety of leftists.

Now, if Aluf Benn were asserting something that ran contrary to all of Rice's prior public and private statements...

I've really been trying; honest, I have. But I just can't bring to mind any previously reported public or private statement of hers where she said that Dr. King was like unto the bloodthirsty head of a terrorist organization.

My own guess is that Benn is working off the same speech I cite above, in which Rice DOES implicitly compare Abbas to King.

Let's let our audience be the judge. Here is what Condoleezza Rice said about Abbas and King:

I know that sometimes a Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel must seem like a very distant dream. But I know too, as a student of international history, that there are so many things that once seemed impossible that, after they happened, simply seemed inevitable. I've read over the last summer the biographies of America's Founding Fathers. By all rights, America, the United States of America, should never have come into being. We should never have survived our civil war. I should never have grown up in segregated Birmingham, Alabama to become the Secretary of State of the United States of America.

And yet, time and time again, whether in Europe or in Asia or even in parts of Africa, states that no one thought would come into being, and certainly not peacefully and democratically, did. And then looking back on them, we wonder why did anyone ever doubt that it was possible.

I know the commitment of the Palestinian people to a better future. I know firsthand the commitment of President Abbas and moderate Palestinians to that future. And I know the commitment of the people in this room and of the American Task Force on Palestine that one day indeed there will be a Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel.

I realize that the word "implicitly" allows for a great deal of wiggle room; but I hope you'll grant that it's a bit thick to say that she "implicitly compare[d] Abbas to King" -- when in fact, she never even mentioned Martin Luther King. Or civil rights. Or Jim Crow, or desegregation, or integration.

The closest I could find was what I quoted above -- and as I analyzed last week, this only finds analogy in the fact that such a movement (which she doesn't mention) seemed impossible until it seemed inevitable... and Rice hopes that the same will ultimately be said about a peaceful Palestinian state.

Is that the jumping-off point of Mr. Benn, when he writes:

When Condoleezza Rice talks about the establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel, she sees in her mind's eye the struggle of African Americans for equal rights, which culminated in the period of her Alabama childhood.

Rice is very aware of political sensitivity, and avoids making such comparisons in public speeches and interviews, where she keeps to the official list of talking points. But in private, she talks about the [The sentence trails off here in the original.]

Incidentally, those two paragraphs are the very beginning of Benn's Haaretz article... and I don't see nary a "guess" or "assume" preceding them.

Maybe the editor accidentally snipped them off (as he appears to have circumsized the end of Benn's second graf); but as it stands, it sure appears to me to be a flat assertion that Rice equates the Palestinians with blacks in the Jim-Crow South, peacefully marching for their civil rights.

Nor do I see any "guesses" or "assumes" in this passage, a few grafs later:

Now, Rice is comparing Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayad, to Martin Luther King. Abbas is committed to the struggle for Palestinian independence, and like Abbas he is opposed to terror and violence. Just as Tony Blair, the Quartet envoy and former British prime minister, compares the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tothe conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, so does Rice recall the struggle for civil rights in the United States when she speaks about the Palestinian boy who needs new hope instead of aspiring to commit a suicide attack.

Rather, that seems prettly explicitly to state that Rice equates the two -- and even though Benn waffles on what exactly he was told she said, he clearly implies that it was something egregious enough that he can offer the paragraph above as a summary of her actual words.

Similarly, I am posting here as an ordinary citizen who is urging you to be less prosecutorial in your approach and to read and write with greater care.

Well, I'll have a go at it; but I'm afraid that my full supply of tact is insufficient to the task!

I do find it rather ironic that you chastise me for being careless in my reading and writing -- in a post about Aluf Benn announcing that Rice thinks Mahmoud Abbas and Martin Luther King are equivalent... on the unimpeachable basis that some anonymous guy told Benn that Rice said something more or less like that.

Dafydd

Great points Dafydd. As a philosophy major and a lawyer I really enjoy it when you take sloppy thinkers to task.

It's been fun exchanging umbrella-blows with you Daffyd. I must get back to my day job in order to feed my family, but here is the passage in question from the third (sorry, I know I said "second") paragraph of Benn's article:

"One can GUESS that the settlements, the checkpoints and the separation fences created by Israel on the West Bank bring back unpleasant memories of Jim Crow racial separation in the South."

That's when Benn starts guessing.

Two more quick points:

1. One place where we differ is your idea that the statements that Benn attributes to Rice are so unlikely or outrageous. They are not. While I have never heard Rice say "Abbas is just like Martin Luther King," she clearly does not think of him as a terrorist. When I asked her about him directly she always recited some version of the same formula: "He is a good man. He is against violence. He is interested in peace."

2. Again, I must caution you to be fair in argument: You credit me in both your previous posts with making a clear distinction between what Rice SAID and what Rice BELIEVES. I clearly don't think Rice's actual state of mind is relevant here, or that she actually confuses Abbas and Martin Luther King.

I am simply willing to take as fact that Rice SAID some version of the things that Benn reports that she said -- because Benn is a very reputable reporter with great sources, and because the remarks he reports fit with Rice's prior public and semi-private remarks. You are not willing to trust Benn's report -- not because you have any particular reason to doubt him, it seems, but on the general principle that you don't trust reporting unless the reporter names his source. While I share your dislike for reporting based on unnamed sources, I am enough of a member of my profession to accept it as the norm especially when dealing with this kind of higher-echelon gossip, and to use my professional knowledge of the reporter and his or her subject in order to evaluate the likely truth of the report. On both counts, this report rings true to me.

And now, I must bid you and your learned readers adieu.

The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the - Web Reconnaissance for 11/08/2007 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.

David Samuels:

And you're welcome to return anytime to set the record straight! It's been wonderful having your input.

I think you more or less make my point for me:

It's been fun exchanging umbrella-blows with you Daffyd [sic]. I must get back to my day job in order to feed my family, but here is the passage in question from the third (sorry, I know I said "second") paragraph of Benn's article:

"One can GUESS that the settlements, the checkpoints and the separation fences created by Israel on the West Bank bring back unpleasant memories of Jim Crow racial separation in the South."

That's when Benn starts guessing.

But if that's the point where he "starts guessing," then what precedes that is not, in your opinion, a mere guess; that's the factual reporting part.

Here is what precedes that paragraph (as I noted above):

When Condoleezza Rice talks about the establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel, she sees in her mind's eye the struggle of African Americans for equal rights, which culminated in the period of her Alabama childhood.

Rice is very aware of political sensitivity, and avoids making such comparisons in public speeches and interviews, where she keeps to the official list of talking points. But in private, she talks about the [The sentence trails off here in the original.]

There is also no indication that the word "guess" applies to anything other than the paragraph it's found in; that paragraph is clearly more "guess-like" than those that succeed it. And a couple grafs after the "guess" paragraph, this is what Benn writes:

Now, Rice is comparing Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayad, to Martin Luther King. Abbas is committed to the struggle for Palestinian independence, and like Abbas he is opposed to terror and violence. Just as Tony Blair, the Quartet envoy and former British prime minister, compares the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tothe conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, so does Rice recall the struggle for civil rights in the United States when she speaks about the Palestinian boy who needs new hope instead of aspiring to commit a suicide attack.

That use of the word "now," which begins this paragraph, means "this is what she is doing now." "Now" is meant to distinguish from then, from what she has said previously; it serves no other purpose in the sentence... and we should assume that Benn is a master of the English language and doesn't use words carelessly or indiscriminately.

This cannot refer to some mere guess on Benn's part; it can only refer to new intelligence from his double-secret source. It can only refer to what that source told Benn that Rice said in private... the part that got elided from the paragraph by either Benn or his editor. (And oddly, never corrected.)

So neither flat statement bracketing the "guess" paragraph is meant to be considered a mere guess on Benn's part; as written, both are meant to be taken as reportorial fact... not Benn's speculation.

Again, I urge readers simply to read the original, very short Haaretz article and see which of us is more on-target: What parts of that story are clearly identified as guesswork -- and what parts are offered as verified fact?

1. One place where we differ is your idea that the statements that Benn attributes to Rice are so unlikely or outrageous. They are not. While I have never heard Rice say "Abbas is just like Martin Luther King," she clearly does not think of him as a terrorist. When I asked her about him directly she always recited some version of the same formula: "He is a good man. He is against violence. He is interested in peace."

...Which is simply "the official list of talking points," as Benn put it. What I find outrageous is the idea that a women with Condoleezza Rice's specific background would ever compare Abbas to King -- with or without meaning it. It's as outrageous as a Jew who actually lived in Germany in the 1930s calling today's Republicans "Nazis"... having seen the real thing, it's unlikely in the extreme that such a person would confuse mere conservatism with Naziism.

I am highly skeptical that, having grown up in the real segregated South, Dr. Rice would confuse someone like Mahmoud Abbas with Martin Luther King -- or even agree to say it if President Bush told her to.

You are not willing to trust Benn's report -- not because you have any particular reason to doubt him, it seems, but on the general principle that you don't trust reporting unless the reporter names his source.

David Samuels, I would have taken Benn's report far more seriously if even he himself had claimed to have heard her make the odious comparison! For that to be false requires a level of mendacity that would be beyond Aluf Benn, I believe... which means I would conclude that he honestly believed he heard her say that -- and that therefore, she had some 'splainin to do.

But of course, he makes no such claim. And you're right... I'm not impressed by someone saying 'some guy told me that Condi Rice said something that I'll characterize as an outrageous comparison; but I won't tell you who told me -- or even what, exactly, she is supposed to have said!'

There are too many unknowns in that equation for me to swallow Benn's conclusions... even if he is a journalist.

But I have, in the past, frequently been accused of being too skeptical for my own good; and perhaps I'm doing your profession an injustice by not taking Benn's unsupported word for it that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is willing to make vile, antisemitic comparisons for political purposes.

Dafydd

Dear Dafydd, I know I claimed to have a a day job, but you are tireless, even if your logic is a bit too choppy and strict for the workaday practice of journalism.

In brief

1. What precedes the word GUESS is clearly intended by Benn to be taken as fact. That is the premise of my original article and of all my subsequent posts here on your blog. For you to present this in CAPS as YOUR discovery is silly.

2. The paragraph containing the word GUESS is clearly meant to distinguish itself from the two preceding paragraphs, by virtue of the content having been clearly labeled as a GUESS, rather than fact, yes?

So, then, you reasonably ask -- why do I assume that everything that follows is therefore also a guess?

For three reasons:

1. Once a reporter starts "guessing," and clearly distinguishes his guesses from fact, I feel much more comfortable labeling everything that follows as a guess, too, unless the reporter clearly tells me otherwise.

2. Given the anonymous nature of the sourcing, I am trying to be fair to Rice by treating Benn's assertions as restrictively as possible without arguing that he made the whole thing up out of whole cloth -- which seems very, very unlikely.

3. Benn's language in the Abbas/King paragraph that you cite is quite slippery, in a way that seems much more like a "guess" to me than a second quote from his super-secret source. He uses the phrase "is comparing," and then proceeds to take talking points from Rice's public statements to illustrate the comparison that Rice is supposedly making. The word "Now" is entirely consistent with using Rice's public statements as his source, since the remarks he quotes from -- including the example of the Palestinian boy -- are taken verbatim from recent speeches.

Given the absence of any additional evidence, what this suggests to me as a journalist is that the comparison to which Benn is referring is simply implicit in the publicly-available remarks he quotes. He never cites his source again here -- which is what journalists do if they have a source, even when that source is anonymous. I therefore see no reason to assume from what Benn wrote that he is doing anything other than fleshing out his single tidbit with more of the guesswork that began in the third paragraph of his piece.

Again, one place we seem to disagree is the idea that Rice's remarks, as reported by Benn (who writes in Hebrew, by the way, not English), are so awful, so heinous, that she could never, ever have made them. To me, they seem like so much normal (if to my mind, insidious) diplomatic malarky. Rice uses her childhood and the fact of her blackness all the time in a deliberate and highly tactical way. Just as with her actual feelings about the Palestinian national cause, I have no reason to believe that Condoleezza Rice has ANY personal feelings about Martin Luther King. It's just not relevant here.

I hope this helps you in your hour of need. I agree that it would be better if Aluf Benn had heard Rice's remarks himself . . ..

. . . which is quite possible, by the way, given the fact that he regularly sees her when she comes to Jerusalem, and that the form he uses to describe her remarks would allow for the possibility that he is quoting things she said directly to him and/or other reporters, in an off-the-record setting, like a dinner, for example.

David Samuels:

Yes, I am aware that the official language of Israel is Hebrew. But the English-language translation is on the official Haaretz site... and I have been assuming all along that Aluf Benn probably does his own translation. Many intellectual Israelis speak English as well as Hebrew: English is the lingua franca of the world.

On all other points, I stand on my previous argument.

Dafydd

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