Answer from the English-language Jerusalem Post: Yes, anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli. Answer from the Economist: No in thunder. A torrid debate between the two publications has just been published in the Israeli daily which on July 4 led off with an indictment of the globally influential London weekly as guilty of an "aggressively pro-Palestinian bias" in its coverage of the Middle East and for its circulation of an "anti-Semitic canard."
In turn, the Economist (highly profitable worldwide circulation of 838,000) did something unusual. Normally aloof from critics, the magazine's foreign editor, Peter David, this time replied with a sharp repudiation of the charges leveled against it by the Jerusalem Post's editor-in-chief, Bret Stephens. The debate closed with a counter-rebuttal by the Israeli newspaper.
... The Economist has long been anti-Israel and pro-Palestine, sometimes sounding like an Arafat PR flack. Most Economist editorials and articles are usually written in what sounds a reasonable manner so one is inclined to nod one's head in semi-agreement and skip to the next page. But not when it comes to Israel and the PLO.
Mr. Stephens, who has done a content analysis of the magazine over the years, pointed out an incredible error made by the Economist during the Yom Kippur war: "Egyptians remember that it was Mr. Sharon who flouted a cease-fire during the 1973 war, counterattacking across the Suez Canal to turn Egypt's initial success into near-defeat."
That's a real howler since Mr. Sharon crossed the canal at the height of the war on Oct. 16, six days before the cease-fire on Oct. 22. The Economist has an almost visceral dislike of Mr. Sharon who, it has written, represents Israel's "uglier face," is a calculating liar, a "snake-oil salesman" whose modus operandi is "calculated brutality." His election as prime minister demonstrated that the Israelis were in a "Bolshie mood."
To my mind the most damaging quote from an Economist editorial written last April sounds as if it could have been written by Susan Sontag, an apologist for the Twin Towers destruction. Said the Economist: "Yet Palestine does not fit the September 11th template. For this is terrorism harnessed to a deserving cause: the independent statehood that America itself has taken pains to say it supports."
In his reply to the Jerusalem Post, Peter David, who describes the Stephens article as a smear, argues that the above quote was taken out of context and he provides the full text. I'm afraid the full text does not explain away the cold meaning of "terrorism harnessed to a deserving cause."
Mr. David's rebuttal is tactical. He deals with only one of the many citations from Economist articles on the assumption that if the Jerusalem Post article is wrong on one point, all its other points would be in doubt. The tactic doesn't work.
Beichman cites George Orwell's 1945 essay on antisemitism in England and suggests that since then, little has changed:
... On Oct. 7, 2000, The Economist wrote: "Israel is a superior country with superior people: Its talents are above the ordinary. But it has to abate its greed for other people's land."
Mr. Sharon's predecessor, Ehud Barak, at the last Camp David negotiation offered Yasser Arafat nearly all the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the return of at least 150,000 Palestinian refugees to Israel. Mr. Arafat turned it down and instead instigated the now two-year-old Intifada. "Abate its greed for other people's land"? Peter David, please note.
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