It sometimes seems that we Jews – and that includes even the pragmatic, unapologetic, politically conservative among us – vacillate between extremes. On the one hand, many of us profess reflexive distrust of everyone – individuals, corporations, governments – regarding their feelings toward Jews and Israel.
To be sure, such blanket generalizations – which typically begin with ”ALL goyim” – though perhaps overly simplistic, are largely justified by our long, sad history of betrayal, ingratitude and oppression at the hands of successive nations which we mistakenly called home. Okay.
But then there’s the proverbial other hand, which is that when confronted with a specific, obvious real-life instance of the aforementioned anti-Jewish bias, many of the same Jews are reluctant, not only to make waves but even to make the slightest change in their habits, if only to announce to the world that we recognize the bias, deplore it, and will not tolerate it.
Hence, for every Jew who joined the recent one-week boycott of The New York Times – a boycott that only required its adherents to forgo home delivery for a week – there were countless individuals who, though claiming to be upset by the Times’s shocking hostility to Israel, couldn’t be bothered to buy it at a newsstand for even a few days. That upset they weren’t!
With this in mind, I think the following is yet one more significant example of the growing acceptance, and dissemination, in mainstream circles of even the most brazenly biased ”perspectives” on the Mideast situation:
DATELINE: 12/25/02
WINS (“You Give Us 22 Minutes, We Give You the World”), that friendly AM radio station famous for its incredibly superficial news reports, happens to feature, on weekends and holidays, a one-minute “commentary” ? a vaguely moral/ethical “sermon” given by (in rotation) a nun, a minister or a rabbi. The message is, of course, preceded by the usual disclaimer that the station does not necessarily agree with the viewpoint about to be expressed.
On various occasions of late, the nun, Sister Camille D’Arienzo, has crossed a very clear line from ethical advice to pointed political diatribe, spouting off rather barbed critiques of President Bush’s policies, among other things. It’s quite an eye-opener, on an early Sunday morning, to hear such partisan political pseudo-commentary on a news station that’s not generally recognized as blatantly politically inclined ? and coming from a nun, yet!
The good Sister is not only fiercely opposed to capital punishment for even the most heinous crimes, and to, in her words, ”an American president bent on waging war with Iraq”; she also weeps for – surprise! – the “poor babies of Palestine.” (For the hopelessly uninformed among us, that would be the Arab babies whom heartless Israeli soldiers brutalize on a regular basis.)
On this particular morning, Christmas Day, Sister Camille was given the honor of conveying to WINS’s wide audience some inspirational message on hopes and resolutions for peace on earth, which Christians believe the day represents. She chose instead to prattle on for the duration of her air-time about why establishing a “sovereign Palestinian state” is the answer to the quest for world peace.
A state of their own, for a people who overwhelmingly approve of, and educate their children to become, suicide bombers. Yes, friends, when a Palestinian flag flies over Jerusalem, then and only then will there be peace on earth for all of us, Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. The conflict in the Middle East is the cause of all the misery in the world today. It must be true ? after all, Sister Camille, that kindly religious woman on the radio, said so.
And, after all, WINS, the ever-reliable station that invites us to tune in for concise news ”two, three, even four times a day,” sees fit to give this hateful woman a forum for her anti-U.S. and anti-Israel views.
It’s all very well to have a disclaimer, but by allowing someone to express such blatantly political – not to mention morally questionable and offensive ? views, in a forum that is clearly intended to be non-partisan and inspirational, the powers that be at WINS have forfeited the right to “take no responsibility for the views expressed…” It’s their station and their responsibility.
We should take the time to let WINS know that we are not amused, and not asleep, even on Sunday and holiday mornings.
(WINS: Telephone 212-315-7080. Fax 212-489-7034. E-mail: [email protected])