’A New York Times reporter in Israel is invariably called an anti-Semite or self-hating Jew’
Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/west-of-eden/.premium-1.568875
Clyde Haberman recounts the time a member of Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations – “A president of something or other,” as he puts it – got up and said: “Every morning when I read you, I get sick to my stomach."
“Your health is everything,” the veteran New York Times journalist responded. “You should stop reading."
It is a rare moment of ire in Haberman’s otherwise bemused reflections, over lunch in Manhattan, on his 37 years at the Times and on the four years he spent in the early 1990’s as the paper’s correspondent in Jerusalem. “As if I’m not a human being,” he snarls. “As if I don’t have feelings, so you can call me a no-good, self-hating anti-Semite (several expletives deleted) straight to my face.”
Haberman, 68, has just parted ways with the Times, much to the regret of legions of fans of the smart New York City columns that he’s written for the past 18 years. Before that he reported for the Times on several major and historic national and international news stories, from Japan to Jerusalem, from the fall of Saddam to the fall of communism, and was also the Times’ bureau chief in Tokyo and Rome.
But his stint in Israel during the tumultuous days of the Oslo Accords was undoubtedly special for the Orthodox-born-and-raised Haberman, in more ways than one.
“Throughout my career,” he says, “I’ve had my fair share of “you’re an idiot” letters, but many more letters of praise as well. Israel is the only assignment I ever had in which in four years I never once got a letter that said “nice job.” If I would have gotten one, I would have had it embossed and put it on a wall, like a business does with the first dollar bill it makes.”
This, he says, is the lot of most New York Times’ reporters in Israel, as well as other prominent American journalists who have agreed to an Israel posting. I ask whether sending a Jewish reporter is hence a good or bad idea. “All other things being equal,” he replies, “it is probably better to send a non-Jew rather than a Jew – just as I would probably prefer to send a non-Indian to India. It’s better to avoid that extra component.”
