JEWISH INFLUENCE IN THE MASS MEDIA Part III

In 1986 Ze'ev Chafets, an American Jew who had moved to Israel, returned for a while to the states to do a book about the American Jewish community; he entitled the resultant volume, Members of the Tribe. Following an AIPAC (the powerful Israel lobbying agency based in Washington DC) organizer who was "hunting Jews" across America, he noted an interesting incident at a Jewish gathering at the Stardust Motel in Moline, Illinois. Chafets writes that a fellow Jew sitting next to him in the audience poked the American-Israeli in the ribs, and then "tapped my copy of the Quad-City Times ("The Midwest's Most Exciting Newspaper") and whispered, 'This is a Jewish newspaper' ... The man was referring to ownership, not content ... Determined to make an impression, the man poked me again. 'See this motel?' he asked. 'It's a Jewish motel.'" [CHAFETS, p. 39]

     In 1999, the chairman of the Newspaper Association of America was Richard Gottlieb. He is also the chairman of Lee Enterprises, based in Davenport, Iowa, which owns 21 newspapers and 16 TV stations across the United States -- from Billings, Montana, to Madison, Wisconsin, to Lincoln, Nebraska. Lloyd Schermer retired as CEO of the company in 1999. A corporate subsidiary, NAPP Systems, constructs printing plates for about 350 newspapers in 30 countries. In Nebraska too, John Gottschalk is the chairman and president of the Omaha World-Herald company. He is also publisher of the Omaha World-Herald. [BATT, J., 3-24-2000]

     In northern California, in the heart of the internationally important high-tech area of Silicon Valley, David Cohen controls an area-wide empire as the Publisher/CEO of the Silicon Valley Community Newspapers (SVCN Inc.). Cohen founded Metro, "Silicon Valley's weekly alternative newspaper." A SVCN subdivision is Metro Newspapers. Metro, in turn , "purchased the Los Gatos Weekly and the more than 100-year old Los Gatos Times-Observer, which were combined as the Los Gatos Weekly Times. In 1991, the company acquired the weekly Saratoga News and the Willow Glen Resident ... In 1993, Metro Newspapers began publishing a newspaper in Cupertino, and acquired its competitor the Cupertino Courier, in 1995. The company founded The Sun in 1993. The most recent addition to the community family was The Campbell Reporter, which began publishing in March, 1999." [CUPERTINO COURIER, 4-11-01]

    In Colorado, Edward Lehman publishes a few small town newspapers, including the Longmont Daily Times-Call, the Loveland Daily Reporter-Herald, and Superior in Lafayette. The executive roster for all these papers includes Edward Lehman at the top, Dean Lehman as president, and Lauren Lehman as vice-president. (Ruth Lehman is the Associate Editor at the Longmont journal).

In 1975, in New Hampshire, journalist Kevin Cash wrote an entire volume criticizing the concentrated media and political power of newspaperman William Loeb. Loeb owned New Hampshire's two major newspapers -- the Manchester Union Leader and the New Hampshire Sunday News, as well as the Vermont Sunday News, and a few smaller New England area papers. Loeb was also in the habit of writing regular editorials in his newspapers. "The truth is," wrote Cash, a former reporter at the Union Leader, "is that [Loeb's papers] are to a large extent monopolistic in nature within the limits of New Hampshire." [CASH, K., p. 3] Loeb was of Jewish heritage (both parents were Jewish); he once published in one of his papers, however, his father's 1906 Episcopal baptismal document, signed by American President Theodore Roosevelt (his father was Roosevelt's executive secretary).

In Pittsburgh, Paul Block (1877-1941) owned the Pittsburgh Evening Sun, the Pittsburgh Morning Post, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, as well as the Toledo Times and Toledo Blade. [GREENBERG, M., p. 53] His sons, William and Paul, also later added television and cable stations to their mini-empire. Elsewhere, "in 1978, the Samuel Horvitz Trust [run by three sons and an employee] owned five monopoly newspapers in Ohio and New York, cable systems in Ohio and Virginia, and construction firms in Ohio, and was a major landowner in Florida." [BAGDIKIAN, p. 42]

In a review of Jewish book publishing in the United States to 1976, Jewish author Charles Madison noted the following Jewish-founded, or purchased, firms (some still exist, some are now defunct, some are absorbed by others):

Simon and Schuster (Richard L. Simon; Max L. Schuster)

Knopf (Alfred A. Knopf)

Random House (Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer)

Pantheon (founded by Kurt and Helen Wolf)

Viking (Harold Guinzburg)

Dover (founded in 1943)

Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux - (The father of Roger Strauss --

president of the publishing company -- was in turn chairman of the

Board of the American Smelting and Refining Company. From

1955-65 Roger was also chairman of the board of American

Grove Press (1947) - which controlled Evergreen Books and the

Basic Books (1952) - Its founder, Arthur Rosenthal, later became

Director of Harvard University Press.

The Free Press (1947) - Its founder, Jeremiah Kaplan, joined Crowell-

Collier, which had acquired MacMillan, as a Vice-President.

Crown Publishers (1936) (headed in later years by Nat Wartels, "a legend in the business") [KRANTZ, J., 2000, p. 250]

International Universities Press

Twayne Publishers (1948)

World Publishing Company (1905)

Frederick Ungar (1941)

Harry Abrams (1950) - mostly art books.

George Braziller (1955)

       Tudor - mostly music books.
       [MADISON, CHARLE;, 1976]

     "One year,' says famous Jewish novelist Judith Krantz in her autobiography,,

     "when I cam back from Paris, I foolishly risked a certain jail sentence by
      bringing for, buttoned into my blouse, a copy of the utterly pornographic
      Rosy Crucifixion by Henry Miller, an erotic masterpiece that Jeremy rented
      out to his friends as twenty-five cents a day. I'm not taking all the credit,
      but eventually he [Jeremy Tarcher] became the first and best publisher of
      New Age books in the United States." [KRANTZ, J., 2000, p. 147]
      [Krantz notes that her novel Mistral "was quickly bought for France by
      Edition Stock, whose publisher, Jean Rosenthal, as it happened had
      translated my other novels into French."] [KRANTZ, J., 2000, p. 313]

In a continuing trajectory of percentage of ownership, by 1968 Roger Kahn noted that "Jews own perhaps half the major book publishing houses: Random House, Simon & Schuster, New American Library, Alfred Knopf, and Atheneum are a few that thrive under the leadership of Jews." [KAHN, R., p. 5] "Owners of new [early to mid-20th century publishing] concerns, "notes Jay Gertzman, "most of them young Jewish men (Horace Liveright, Thomas Seltzer, Ben Huebsch, Max Schuster, Alfred Knopf) had begun to specialize in presenting European writers to an American audience curious about their sexual frankness and Marxist ideas. Established houses, such as Doran, Houghton, Appleton, and Doubleday, did not do so, and some of their executives resented their parvenu colleagues. Modernist writers especially owed their exposure to Jewish firms." [GERTZMAN, J., 2000, p. 114]

In the 1980s, Crown Books, headed by Robert Haft (who also founded the Trak Auto supply chain), rose to become the third largest bookstore chain with nearly 250 outlets throughout America. At its peak the firm was a national giant with nearly 10,000 employees and valued between $500 million to $1 billion (the company drastically weakened with in-house, intra-family legal feuds between Robert and his father Herbert, a Jewish immigrant from Russia). The Brentano's bookstore chain was also founded by Jewish entrepreneur August Brentano in the late 19th century. Abraham Rosenbach and his brother Philip were used book sellers from 1903 until the 1950s. In 1928, the New Yorker called Abraham "the most famous dealer in rare books." "If Gutenberg [Bible] sales are taken as the measure of a dealer," says Guy Lesser, "Rosenbach would have to be reckoned history's most successful [book dealer], judging by his transactions over ... four decades." [LESSER, G., JAN 2002, p. 48, 46] "Whiskey, cigars, deep-sea fishing, and women (to put the last politely)," adds Lesser, "in roughly that order, after books, seem to have been his passions." [LESSER, G., JAN 2002, p. 48]

Jewish publishers also brought out the inexpensive series for mass appeal, including the Little Leather Library, the Little Blue Books, and the Modern Library (Horace Liveright); Jewish entrepreneurs also initiated the "Book-of-the-Month Club." "As an author and editor, [Mortimer] Adler built a publishing empire on an unlikely foundation: the philosophic system of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. That system influenced his work as compiler of the Great Books of the Western World and as editor of Encyclopedia Britannica." [D'Alessio, F., 6-29-01] In 2001, Michael Ross, the publisher of the World Book Dictionary, removed the verb "jew" (traditionally meaning "beat down in price") from the volume. [LEVINE, S., JUNE/JULY 2001]

Other Jewish book publishers include Westview, Stein and Day, Holmes and Meier, Price Stern Sloan, Lyle Stuart (the founder, Lyle Stuart, was born Lionel Simon), Ottenheimer (a Baltimore publisher with 200 titles a year), and Schocken. In England, Lord George Weidenfeld not only controls a well-known namesake publishing house, he is also chairman of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain. From England, Andre Deutsch's namesake company published Norman Mailer, V.S. Naipaul, Arthur Schlessinger, and other prominent authors. In Canada, Avie Bennett is president of McClelland & Stewart (1992).

By the late 1990s, Golden Books Family Entertainment, "the nation's largest producer of children's books," was headed by Jewish publisher Richard Snyder (who replaced Richard Bernstein). The next four top executives at the firm were also Jewish: Steven Grossman, James Cohen, Ira Gomberg, and Ian Reich. [HOOVER, p. 255]

Alfred Lilienthal, a Jew and lifelong crusader against Zionism and Jewish chauvinism, wrote in 1982 that

"All the leading magazines, ranging from Commentary, Esquire, Ladies

Home Journal, New York Review of Books, New Yorker, and U.S.

News and World Report have Jews in key positions as publishers,

editors, or managing editors. No one is able to criticize Jews -- or

even take Israel to task -- for fear of being out of line with the boss ...

There is [also] the constant overriding concern of the media about losing

advertising ... at times making a mockery of 'freedom' of the press ...

[LILIENTHAL, p. 219] ... It would be futile to list the number of top

Jewish editors and writers across the country. Many of the largest

book publishers, including Knopf, Random House, Holt, Liverwright,

Viking Press, Simon and Schuster, Van Nostrand Reinhold, and

Lyle Stuart are Jewish-owned, directly or by Jewish-controlled

interests (including CBS, RCA, Music Corporation of America

[MCA], Litton's, and Gulf and Western. In other firms such as

Macmillan and Grosset and Dunlap, one will find editors-in-chief or

presidents who are Jewish." [LILIENTHAL, p. 220]

In the same year, Jewish literary agent Bill Adler (formerly the Executive Editor at Playboy when Mike Cohn was Director of Playboy's book division) wrote a volume entitled Inside Publishing. Some of the (Jewish) power people in his New York publishing world included

* Richard Snyder: CEO, president and Chairman of the Board of

Simon & Schuster

* Joni Evans: (Snyder's wife), president of Simon & Schuster subsidiary,

The Linden Press

* Robert Gottleib: President and Editor-in-Chief of Alfred A. Knopf

* Louis Wolfe: President and CEO of Bantam Books

* Marc Jaffe: Editor-in-Chief of Bantam Books

* Hillel Black: Editor-in-Chief at William Morrow

* Nat Wartels: Chairman of Crown Publishers

* Jonathan Segal: Editor-in-Chief of Times Books

* Helen Meyer: President of Dell Publishing)

* Phyllis Grann: Publisher of G.P. Putnam's Sons

* Jim Silberman: President of Summit Books

* Howard Kaminsky: President and Publisher of Warner Books

      Adler's favored choice for assignment as writing "collaborator" with celebrities was Mickey Herskowitz. Herskowitz wrote books for Bette Davis, Dan Rather, Gene Autry, Jimmy the Greek, and others. In the "book packaging" field (where literary agents produce anthology-type volumes commissioned by publishers) Lyle Kenyon Engel was "one of the most prolific book packagers over the years." [ADLER, B., 1982, p. 89]

     Jewish actor Kirk Douglas has written some books about his life; he notes his surprise when he discovered that

      "my editor Ushi was becoming fascinated with Judaism [she eventually converted to it].       Out of the blue, in the fall of 1993, she announced that she was going to Israel. A whole       month in Israel would cost her a mere $950 plane fare, food and lodging included. Could       that be true? Oh yes, but she was doing it through an organization called Volunteers for
      Israel, which basically meant she was going into the Israeli Army for three weeks."       [DOUGLAS, K., 1997, p. 125]

"Any roll call of the most respected and/or powerful figures in the publishing world," wrote Robert C. Christopher in 1989 in a book about the decline of WASP institutions," whether in editorial or executive positions, has to include a sizeable number of Jews; among those who automatically come to mind are Robert Bernstein, Jason Epstein, and Joni Evans at Random House, Richard Snyder and Michael Korda [also author of Power: How to Get It and Success!] at Simon and Schuster, Simon Michael Bessie at Harper and Row, Howard Kaminsky at Hearst and Marc Jaffe at Houghton Mifflin." [CHRISTOPHER, p. 222] "I don't want to sound chauvinistic," said Jason Epstein in 2001, "but [Jewish publishers] were smarter than their gentile colleagues." [GREEN, D., 5-31-01]

Others Jews in positions of power in earlier years (as noted by Martin Greenberg in 1979) included the publisher of Collier's and the Women's Home Companion, founder and editor of the National Guardian, the editor and founder of AB Bookman's Weekly, the editor of the Saturday Review, senior editors at Time, Forbes and Newsweek, the editor of Variety, a member of the Board of Editors for Fortune, the editor-in-chief of Redbook and on and on. [GREENBERG, 1979]

More recently, take, for example, a 1996 report in Advertising Age that noted that Ellen Levine, the editor-in-chief of Good Housekeeping, was having a spat with her publisher, Alan Waxenberg, and that Jerry Kaplan was one of those being considered to replace him. [KELLY, p. 47] In 1994, Barbara Grossman left Simon and Shuster to become the publisher at Viking where Peter Mayer was the Viking Penguin CEO. In the same era, Joni Evans (born Joni Goldfinger) became the head of the Turtle Bay imprint at Random House. Tina Brown, also Jewish, was described by one London newspaper as "the most famous woman editor in the world ... [She is] the worst social climber since Kong lumbered to the top of the Empire State Building." [LANGTON, J.]

In England, in 1998 the (London) Daily Telegraph noted Gail Reubuck, "daughter of affluent Baltic Jewish immigrants," as "the most powerful figure in British publishing," and "recently voted Publisher of the Year." [CAMPBELL, p. D4] Another example is Richard Malina who started out as a lawyer for Grosset and Dunlap. By 1985 he was the President of the publishing division of Doubleday; in 1987 he became the Executive Director and Publisher of the Jewish Publication Society. [GODFREY, p. 2]

A mere random look at a few 1998 issues of Publishers Weekly evidenced the following items: Al Silverman retired as "Editor-at-large" at Penguin. He was also the former publisher and editor-at-large at Viking, and chairman and CEO of the Book of the Month Club. Mark Lieberman was the Executive Vice President of Cahner's Publishing Company, which publishes Publishers Weekly where Sybil Steinberg was the Senior Editor for Fiction. Jane Friedman was the CEO and president of HarperCollins. Martha Levin was named the new Vice President and editor-in-chief at Hyperion (moving over from a position as Senior Vice President at Doubleday. Lucianne Goldberg was noted as the literary agent for Linda Tripp (who exposed the President Clinton-Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. Goldberg -- formerly Steinberger -- is the wife of Sid Goldberg, former editor of the North American Newspaper Alliance, and later vice president of United Media, a syndicator of news stories. One of Lucianne's own novels is Madame Cleo's Girls, a "frothy tale about three high-class prostitutes.' [HUBBARD, p. 111]) The Bantam Doubleday Dell International CEO in 1998 was Stephen Rubin. The president and editor-in-chief of Summit Books was still Jim Silberman. Marc Jaffe was publisher of his own imprint at Houghton Mifflin. Others afforded news making mention in the Publishers Weekly issues were Jonathan Karp, an editor at Random House, Esther Newberg, an agent at ICM; and agents Daniel Greenberg and Al Zuckerman of James Levine Communications. The Horowitz-Rae book manufacturing company was also noted as sold.

Such Jewish prominence today is all over the map. Michael Hoffman is the Executive Director of Aperture, probably the most influential "art" photography journal and book publisher. Michael Hirschorn is editor of Spin, "the bible of alternative music." Alan Light is Editor-in-Chief of Vibe magazine. George Hirsch is the vice-president and publisher of Runner's World. Nat Lehrman was the publisher of Playboy. (Richard Rosenzweig was Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's personal Executive Assistant, Bobbi Arnstein his personal secretary, and Howard Shapiro his chief legal counsel. By the 1990s, Shapiro was third in command of the Playboy empire, behind only Hefner and his daughter). Peter Bart is Editor-in-Chief at Variety. Michael Solomon was named editor of Premiere in 2000. Lesley Seymour is the editor of Redbook. Merle Ginsberg is the Entertainment Editor for Women's Wear Daily. David Bauer is one of the Executive Editors at Sports Illustrated. David Fine is SI's photography editor. Todd Gold recently left the editorship of People magazine to found a company with fellow Jew Adam Werbach, recently stepped down as the president of the Sierra Club.

Milton Esterow is the publisher and editor of both ArtNews and Antiques World. He is also co-editor and founder of the American Art Journal. Jonathan Steinberg -- son of notorious corporate raider Saul Steinberg -- publishes Individual Investor magazine. Steven Brill founded American Lawyer and a media watchdog journal called Brill's Content (editor-in-chief: David Kuhn, formerly executive editor of Talk magazine), and the Court TV program on television. (A rival, Peoples' Court, features presiding Jewish judge Jerry Sheindlen and commentating attorney Harry Levin. Another court TV program, Judge Judy, features Jerry Sheindlin's wife, Judy, at the helm.) For years Jerry Finkelstein published the New York Law Journal. Janice Kaplan is the Executive Producer of TV Guide Television. Jane Goldman is the Executive Editor of California Lawyer. Rae Anne Marsh is the managing editor of Arizona Corridors Magazine. Steven Cohn edits the Media Industry Newsletter. Rachel Newman edits Country Living. David Klinghoffer is the literary editor of the National Review. Debbie Rosenberg is the Managing Editor of Biography. Robert Epstein is the Editor-in-Chief of Psychology Today. Adam Garfinkle is the Executive Editor of the National Interest. Michael Berman co-founded George magazine. Baltimore's Style magazine is owned by the Baltimore Jewish Times. Michael Gewanda became the editor of Time (Australia) in 1993. Peter Newman edited Canada's prominent weekly magazine, Maclean's. Peter Eisenman was "the father of two architectural publications of note, Oppositions and Skyline." [ARONSON, S., 1983, p. 303] And on and on and on.

"White and Jewish," Ben Burns (originally Bernstein) even "made a career in black journalism, editing the Chicago Defender and helping found Ebony magazine." [GROSSMAN, p. C1] He also edited Sepia, "a white-owned magazine for blacks." [ZALLER, p. 30] A more recent black-based magazine is the musical "hip-hop" The Source; by the mid-1990s it boasted a newsstand circulation larger than Rolling Stone. The Source "speaks to young black males," noted USA Today, "in a language they can understand. More than 60% of its readers are African-Americans. Over 80% are under age 25." Featuring "shock covers" and articles like the one about bulletproof vest clothing fashions to ward off "a 44 magnum at close range," the publisher of The Source, Peter Mays, is also Jewish. [HOROVITZ, p. 1B] In 1998, Elinor Ruth Tatum became the publisher of her father's newspaper, the Amsterdam News, New York City's oldest and largest African-American newspaper. Ms. Tatum's father is Black; her mother is Jewish. [JET, p. 32]

The Detroit News is both published and edited by Marc Silverman. Howard Kleinberg was, until recently, the editor of the Miami News. Martin Baron edits the Boston Globe. Phil Bronstein is the executive editor of the San Francisco Examiner and the second Jewish husband of non-Jewish actress Sharon Stone (his father was a former director of the Los Angeles Jewish Federation). (Michael de Young, also Jewish, founded the rival San Francisco Chronicle). Jeff Cohen became the Houston Chronicle chief editor in 2002. Tom Rosenstiel is the director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. ABC's Peggy Wehmeyer, a self-described Protestant, born of a Jewish mother, is "the only network correspondent specializing in religious and spiritual issues." [SHISTER, G., 9-11-99, p. G2] At least half of the ten members (Jonathan Alter, Howard Fineman, Michael Isikoff, Debra Rosenberg, and Ron Haviv) of Newsweek's "political team" covering the 2000 American presidential campaign were of Jewish heritage. [NEWSWEEK, 11-20-2000, p. 4] And if you want to write regularly for editor Steve Wasserman's Los Angeles Times Book Review, and you're not Jewish, the odds are heavily against you. His stable of "Contributing Writers" is Anthony Day, Michael Frank, Jonathan Kirsch, Jonathan Levi, Suzie Linfield, Suzanne Mantell, and Benjamin Schwarz. Politically conservative commentator David Horowitz would argue that you'd have to be left-wing too, noting that:

"I knew Wasserman as a former Berkeley radical and protégé, in

the 1960s, of a Times contributing editor, Bob Scheer ... After the

1960s, Scheer had ingratiated himself with Hollywood's Bolsheviks,

married a top editor at the Los Angeles Times, and become a figure

of influence in the paper's hierarchy, which enabled him to secure

Wasserman his job." [HOROWITZ, D., 1999, p. 189]

Longtime media critic for the Los Angeles Times has been Howard Rosenberg. In a 1991 column he wrote that

"The mail is coming in about my column endorsing KCET's recent

presentation of the controversial film 'Stop the Church,' and nearly

all of it is critical and angry. Most writers accused me of being

rather a fence sitter and biased against Catholicism. Some note that

I am Jewish." [ROSENBERG, H., 9-16-91, p. F1]

The Washington Post media reporter is another Jewish Howard, this one Kurtz. Until his death in 1997, across the continent, Herb Caen was for fifty years a "legendary San Francisco columnist" and the city's "most beloved institution." [SCHEER, R., 2-4-97, p. B7; DOUGAN, M., 2-7-97, p. A1] Looking back into earlier years, Dennis McDougal singles out (Jewish columnists) Joyce Haber (of the Los Angeles Times) and Irv Kupcinet (of the Chicago Sun-Times) as prominent media loyal public supporters/defenders of Hollywood lawyer/mobster Sidney Korshak. [MCDOUGAL, p. 396]

In 2000, journalist Katherine Ross wrote about the case of fellow journalist Lynn Hirschberg:

"She is the premier chronicler of the entertainment elite for

the New York Times Magazine ... On the beat for almost 20

years, Hirschberg stands at the nexus of the Los Angeles

entertainment and New York publishing worlds ... Hirschberg's

pieces almost always deify or demonize. 'She can make your

career,' says publicist Bumble Ward." [ROSMAN, K., 5-2000]

Hirschberg started out with help from David Rosenthal, "then the assistant manager at Rolling Stone and now the publisher of Simon and Schuster's adult-trade division." "Hirschberg," adds reporter Ross,

"doesn't just profile and befriend the powerful. Like most other

successful operators, she is savvy at facilitating business deals

for friends that will leave those friends in her debt. In 1993, for

example, Hirschberg brokered a Time magazine cover story about

her then close friend, the producer Scott Rudin, written by her

friend Philip Weiss ... [Also] consider her close alliance with

Peter Kaplan, the editor of the New York Observer, a weekly

newspaper popular in New York's media circles. Kaplan and

Hirschberg have never worked together, but their friendship

has benefited both." [ROSMAN, K., 5-2000]

All these people are Jewish.

Does all this massive Jewish predominance in the mass media, internationally, and their collective sense of destiny in history; upper echelon cliques; widespread allegiance to Israel; intense sense of collective community; concerted economic and ideological pressures to encourage pro-Israel/Jewish views; the systematic political pressures and omnipresent lobbying maneuvers of the Anti-Defamation League, the American Israel Political Action Committee, the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee; and many other multi-million dollar lobbying groups whose fundamental purpose is to control information about Jews and Israel, mean nothing, as so many Jews insist? Let us take but one aspect of the systematic censorship throughout American culture by the Jewish community: the state of Israel. This is what Paul Findley, for twenty-three years a United States Congressman from Illinois had to say about his book that described the Jewish-American lobby for Israel in America, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby (the book was eventually published by a small publisher, Lawrence Hill, and made the Washington Post's ten top books list for nine weeks):

"My quest for a publisher began in March 1983 and was predictably

long and frustrating. Declining to represent me, New York literary agent

Alexander Wylie forecast with prophetic vision that no major United

States publisher would accept my book. He wrote, 'It's a sad state of

affairs.' Bruce Lee of William Morrow and Company called my

manuscript ‘outstanding,’ but his company concluded that publishing it

'would cause trouble in the house and outside' and decided against

'taking the heat.' Robert Loomis of Random House called it an

'important book' but reported that the firm's leadership decided the

theme was 'too sensitive.' Twenty other publishers said no." [FINDLEY,

When in 1986 Israeli defector Mordechai Vanunu had his photographic evidence of the inside of Israel's nuclear weapons plant published in England, it should have been a major news story. Jerry Oplinger, a former White House aide, was amazed at how little attention the mass media gave it, saying: "I couldn't believe those guys. There was nothing [significant] in the [New York] Times, [Washington] Post, and Wall Street Journal. Everybody in the arms control business was amazed that there was nothing. To me and my close friends, it was really discouraging." [HERSH, p. 308]

In the London Independent, in 1998 Robert Fisk wrote an entire article about the mass media's systematic bias and censorship of stories relating to Israel. Among the Fisk's list of outrages, is the fact that

"the New York Times ... ran a syndicated account from an Israeli paper

of an Israeli soldier's life in Qana before the massacre [when Israeli

troops fired a missile into an Arab ambulance in Lebanon]: but the New

York Times deleted a paragraph about how the Israeli troops had stolen

cars from their Lebanese owners and looted houses -- thus even

censoring the Israeli press ... History continues to be short-changed in

the American media ... Academics may one day decide how deeply the

American public has been misled by the persistent bias of the US media,

and the degree to which this has led them to support US policies which

may destroy America's prestige in the Middle East." [FISK, p. 14]

Norman Finkelstein, a well-known Jewish critic of Israel, tabulated the articles about torture in the Middle East in the New York Times between 1981 and 1991. He found over 80 articles -- 26 articles about torture in Iran, 15 in Turkey, 14 in Iraq and 8 in Egypt. "Consider how the case of Israel was treated," he wrote,

"Except for a brief period under [Israeli] Prime Minister Begin,

torture was practiced continuously from the early 1970s against

Palestinian detainees ... [The Times] has probably devoted as much

space to coverage of Israel [on other matters] as the entire Arab

world combined. Yet for the full decade under consideration

(1981-91), the Times found space for only five items on Israeli

torture of Palestinian detainees ... Not once did the Times even hint

at the not trivial fact that Israel's torture of Palestinian detainees in

the Occupied Territories is 'virtually institutionalized' (Amnesty

International) and 'systematic and routine' (B'Tselem)." [an Israeli

human rights organization] [FINKELSTEIN, 1996, p. 67]

In 1982 the Times' Foreign Correspondent to Israel, Thomas Friedman (also Jewish) ran into trouble with his Jewish superiors for telling the truth about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Friedman filed a report with his employers about the "indiscriminate" bombing of the Arab community there. New York Times editors censored the adjective. Friedman "then sat down and wrote one of the most indicting messages the Times ever received from a correspondent, that his editors were 'afraid to tell our readers' about Israel's 'apparent aim of terrorizing its [Beirut] civilian population ... I am filled with profound sadness by what I have learned in the past afternoon about my newspaper.'" [GOULDEN, p. 323] Friedman was immediately called back to the states and warned that "if you ever pull a stunt like that again, you are fired. Understand?" [GOULDEN, p. 323]

In 1994, the Jerusalem Post noted another case of Jewish lobbying-censorship of the American mass media, this time of the work of Time magazine reporter Murray Gart:

"Time was planning to publish a list of Israeli agents in Washington

submitted by the Mossad to the CIA. [Howard] Teicher's name [a Jewish

National Security Agency adviser] was purportedly on the list. Time

never ran the story, the editors pulled it out of the magazine virtually

      at the last minute." [RODAN, S., 1994, p. 18]

     Thomas Kiernan notes the case of non-Jewish mogul Rupert Murdoch, so beholding [ sic ] to the Jews who helped him get a foothold in the world of international mass media:

     "[ABC head Leonard] Goldenson's personality and lectures thus had the effect of
     sharpening Murdoch's sympathy toward Israel. As a result, his Australian papers
     took a decidedly pro-Israel tone during the early 1960s -- a fact that didn't please
    his surrogates in the top editorial chairs. The eventual resignation of Douglas Brass
     as editor for the Sydney Mirror, for instance, is said by some in Murdoch's organization
     to have come about over that issue ..." [KIERNAN, T., 1986, p. 78]

     In a discussion of the reportage at Murdoch's New York Post, Kiernan observes

     "I was witness to some of the Post's coverage of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon
      in the summer of 1982 and of the subsequent siege of Beirut. Throughout that
      period, the paper was without a single reporter on the scene, yet its stories were
      laced with unattributed 'eye-witness' descriptions of Arab atrocities and Israeli
      heroics, many of them invented in its New York newsroom." [KIERNAN, T.,
      1986, p. 262]

     In May 2001, during the latest Palestinian intifada (uprising) against Israeli rule, the Anti-Defamation League announced that their recent survey showed that "56 percent of major newspaper editorials took a strong pro-Israel stance." [TEITELBAUM, S., 5-25-01] This was despite the fact that representatives of organizations as diverse as Amnesty International, the European Union, the Red Cross, and YMCA were criticizing, and often condemning, the brutal policies of the Israeli state. Incredibly, even as most of those who headed press organizations were emphatically pro-Israel, Howard Goller, chairman of the Foreign Press Association, publicly complained that "twenty foreign correspondents in the West Bank and Gaza have been shot at and hit [by Israeli troops] with live ammunition or rubber coated-bullets since the start of the intifada ... Worse still, he says, the Israeli government is refusing to deal with the matter." [HAUSMAN, T., 5-25-01]

Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman note the case of British author David Irving, who faced the destruction of his decades-old writing career when he started addressing the Jewish community critically:

"After Irving testified for the defense in ["Holocaust denier" Ernest]

Zundel's 1988 'free speech' trial in Canada, various governments filed

notices of entry denial and deportation against him. As he recounts

on his Web page, his publishing firm, Focal Point, has received

notices from the bookstores in England canceling distribution of

[his book] Hitler's Wars and other titles. 'Following complaints from

valued customers we no longer feel able to stock this title,' read one

notice from a Sheffield bookstore in July 1992. Also in the same year,

the director of Media House Publications in Johannesburg, South

Africa, informed Irving that with regard to Hitler's War, "I don't

want any copies on our premises. We have had some incidents

already. Many of our book buyers are Jewish. It is much easier

for [my staff] now to say, 'We don't stock the book.'" [SHERMER/

GROBMAN, 2000, p. 50]

Filmmaker Tom Hayes calls the mass media's wall of censorship surrounding the state of Israel "the Information Blockade." This systematic censorship is important in keeping Americans ignorant about the truths concerning Israel, including the details of the staggering sums of money -- approximately $78 billion -- American taxpayers have funneled to that other country (instead of to themselves) since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, [APAS, p. 106] let alone the myriad of moral injustices perpetuated upon others by the Jewish nation. [See later chapter] Arthur Hays-Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times, noted the behind-the-scenes economic intrigues and mass media power of pro-Israel Jews as early as 1946:

"I dislike the coercive methods of Zionists in this country who have not

hesitated to use economic means to silence persons who have different

views." [LILIENTHAL, p. 124]

Those who would like to criticize Israel, notes Jewish French scholar Maxime Rodinson, "remain silent, either because they are not in a position to write or speak publicly, or because they fear the reactions of their immediate environment or the broader public. I understand them very well. Moreover, publishers, newspaper editors, and radio and television producers, also tend to be afraid to let them speak; they suffer constant blackmail from Judeo-centrists." [RODINSON, p. 15]

Ze'ev Chafets notes a 1979 article that got past the censors in Newsweek; it read:

"With the help of American Jews in and out of government, Mossad

[Israel's intelligence agency] looks for any softening in U.S. support

and tries to get technical intelligence the Administration is unwilling to

The normal chorus of Jewish complaint and pressure to censor any similar future statement was soon to follow. As Chafets observes, "the editor of Newsweek later admitted that Newsweek's insinuation that American Jews are disloyal to the United States 'reflects an anti-Semitic stereotype' and informed the Anti-Defamation League that 'we have engaged in some consciousness raising on this subject and I do not expect a recurrence.' The letter to the ADL was signed by the magazine's editor-in-chief: Lester Bernstein [also Jewish]." [CHAFETS, p. 281]

Also in the 1970s, CBS news commentator Jeffrey St. John made a similar mistake about speaking openly of Jewish dual loyalty on the radio program "Spectrum." He had the courage to observe that

"American public opinion is shaped largely by a pro-Israeli viewpoint.

And when someone suggests we should begin changing our policy,

as an American oil executive did recently, the pro-Israel propaganda

machine is America crucifies him in public ... Emotions, not reason,

govern our policy towards Israel ... The issue is whether you are

an American first and a Jew second and if forced to choose, which

commands your loyalty first." [LILIENTHAL, 1983, p. 450]

St. John was gone from CBS soon afterwards. Likewise, CBS newscaster Eric Severeid took heavy Jewish lobbying heat in 1975 for daring to say that "A growing number of American Jews are ... torn in a soul-searching internal debate as to just where their loyalties should lie and how far they should go in honoring them." [LILIENTHAL, 1983, p. 449]

In 1994 after rejections from numerous publishers, John Sack, a respected Jewish journalist for Esquire and other magazines for nearly 40 years, managed to get his manuscript (An Eye for an Eye, about the "vengeful" Jewish heads of post-World War II concentration camps for Germans and Poles) published by Basic Books. (The book was originally commissioned with a $25,000 advance by the Henry Holt publishing company. When Sack's final manuscript was completed, it was abandoned by the firm). "Major U.S. newspapers and publishers," noted the Associated Press, "shied away from the manuscript before Basic Books finally put out the English edition in 1993." [BAJACK, INTERNET] The editor for the volume at Basic Books, Steve Fraser, noted that

"We concluded it ought not to be suppressed -- which is what was

happening. I take my vocation as a publisher seriously enough to feel

that it is my responsibility to publish something that's important even

if the rest of the industry is afraid to do that." [WIENER, p. 24]

Terry McDonnell, one of Sack's editors at Esquire, was one of those refusing to publish any of the investigators articles about the Jewish commandants of concentration camps. "[Other publishers are] scared," he told Sack. "And I'm scared too." [LOMBARDI, p. 18]

Sack had researched the facts of the volume for seven years. "Although Sack's facts were not disputed," notes the Associated Press, "the book was slammed as sadistic sensationalism in a review by powerful German [Jewish] critic Elke Geisel, whose seething polemic called it 'vile docudrama' and 'a gift to neo-Nazis.'" "[Sack's book] is the greatest filth," added Ralph Giordano, a German Jewish writer who never read the book in question, " ... [it is a] vulgar artistic fetish." [AP, INTERNET] (Press censorship about Jewish history even occurs in Poland, presumably because the new capitalist state must seek so much western/Jewish economic aid in rebuilding their nation. In 1994 the Gazeta Wyboroza, one of Poland's most-widely read newspapers, covered an investigation of fifteen former officers of the Office of State Security [Poland's communist secret police]. "The paper is avoiding any mention of Jews," notes Jewish journalist Carol Oppenheim. "I think there is widespread opinion of the dominance of Jews in the Communist Party," said Michael Cichy, the cultural editor of the paper, "but mention of this in the Polish press is taboo." [OPPENHEIM, p. 39]

In response to Jewish outrage that such truthful information be published, the new head (Viktor Niemann) of the publishing house that printed Sack's book in German, R. Piper, decided to destroy all 6,000 copies in its warehouses. "It was the fourth time," notes the Associated Press, "that Sack's story ... had been bought by a publisher who subsequently decided against printing." [BAJACK, INTERNET] "It is tragic," wrote Sack in response to his German publisher's actions, "that 'An Eye for an Eye' is not being published in Germany now and that Germans have nowhere to learn the truth." [SACK, p. A18]

When the TV news show 60 Minutes investigated one of the Jewish subjects of Sack's book, Shlomo Morel, Sack's broader story "looked as if it might take off," said Carol Oppenheim, "and it sent shock waves through the Jewish community." "A feature by '60 Minutes' that backed up Sack seemed to promise major attention and at least minor bestsellerdom," noted the Washington Post, "but the rest of the media either attacked or ignored the book. The general tenor was summoned up in Miami Jewish Week: "Do me a favor -- don't read this book." [STREITFIELD, p. D4]

In 1994, John Lombardi wrote a disturbing article for New York magazine about the Sack story and the massive censorship surrounding it. Lombardi called his piece "The Book They Dare Not Review: An Inconvenient Holocaust Story." Lombardi formerly worked at Advance Publication's GQ magazine, the periodical that had initially paid Sack $20,000 to research and write about the Jewish concentration camp overseers, only -- after the article had been typeset -- to quietly kill it.

The most venomous attack on Sack's book came from the New Republic (owned by avidly pro-Israel publisher Martin Peretz). Sack wrote a point by point rebuttal to their review, but the magazine refused to publish any of it in their Letters to the Editor section. "But," noted the Nation, "the magazine made the remarkable decision to sell him ad space to run it ($525 for five column inches). The ad was typeset, but the magazine then chose to reject it." [WIENER, p. 287] Leon Wieseltier, the Jewish literary editor of the New Republic, was even quoted as saying, "I'm not embarrassed to say that as part of my job of policing the culture, I felt that the sooner we stopped this book, the better.... It's one of the stupidest books I ever read, and I frankly resolved to do as much damage as I could." [LOMBARDI, p 18] Elan Steinberg, spokeswoman for the World Jewish Congress impugned the veracity of Sack's dozens of interviews with Jewish (and other) eyewitnesses to Jewish-created atrocities, saying: "You cannot rely on witnesses ... [because] you're insulting the memory of 6 million [Jewish Holocaust] martyrs." [LOMBARD, p. 18]

In 1997, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC suddenly cancelled a lecture by Sack about his book and his findings therein. "The invitation to give your lecture was issued without my knowledge," wrote Director Walter Reich to the Eye for an Eye author, "Having had the opportunity to examine the matter, I have determined that holding the presentation would not be compatible with the Museum's programs." [STREITFIELD, p. D1] In turn, Sack decided to rent (for $301) a room at the nearby National Press Club to discuss his book and the censorship around it. There is no record in the major national computer research database of America's newspapers that Sack's press conference was ever reported upon.

"It would be tempting to simply dismiss this painful book as the work of an anti-Semitic crackpot, as many have," wrote Jewish author Carol Oppenheim, "The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Time have ignored An Eye for An Eye [i.e., not reviewed it]. But John Sack is a noted journalist with some forty years experience. His work on the Vietnam War is studied in college classes. And he is also a Jew." [OPPENHEIM, p. 39]

And what are we to make of the case of Victor Ostrovsky, former Mossad agent and author of 1990's By Way of Deception, an expose of the international workings of the Israeli Mossad organization? Although Israel managed to briefly, and literally, ban his book in America through the American courts, the censorship was soon lifted. [See earlier discussion] "We will get to him by other means, we will break him economically," the head of the Mossad, Israel's CIA, then told the Israeli media. "I'm now convinced," wrote Ostrovsky in 1997, "that I am the target of a broad collusion between elements of the Israel government and their gofers, mostly in the American Jewish community ... My second book was ignored ... A speaker's bureau in Toronto, which seldom had trouble arranging speaking engagements with student and other groups eager to have me as a speaker, found that the engagements were cancelled before I could appear." [OSTROVSKY, 1997]

When Ostrovsky appeared on Canadian national television, Yosef Lapid, the former chief of Israeli television, declared on the same show, via satellite from the Jewish state, that Ostrovsky's assassination by the Mossad could cause diplomatic problems now that he lived in Canada, but "I hope that there would be a decent Jew in Canada who would do the job for us."

Ostrovsky was later stunned that no North American media outcry rose against this call for his assassination on live public television. (Recall, in contradistinction, the mass media outcry against Iran's death sentence on author Salmon Rushdie. Iran, of course, is a declared arch-enemy of Zionism. And what, one wonders, would happen to a former president of CBS who called for murder?) But Lapid? Nothing. A reporter from USA Today interviewed Ostrovsky about Lapid's public threat and planned to write a story about it, but, "while I was still in his office," laments Ostrovsky, "his editor told him by telephone to kill the article." "The same people," wrote the former Mossad agent, "who presumably would praise someone from the CIA or the U.S. armed forces who exposed serious wrongdoing in those institutions were now hard at work to smother my criticisms of an intelligence agency for a foreign country that, to put it as charitably as possible, does not have America's best interests at heart."

Eventually he sought to sue the man who called for the call to kill him, but Ostrovsky's lawyer soon bailed out, explaining "that the safety of his staff would clearly be jeopardized if he proceeded." Soon thereafter, Ostrovsky had financial problems with both his publishers, HarperCollins and, in Canada, Stoddart. His agent suddenly refused to return his calls and in due time his "house burned to the ground. The fire marshal's report declared it arson." In 1997, Washington publisher Regnery backed out of a plan to publish his next book, already listed in its upcoming books catalogue. "It suddenly occurred to me," Ostrovsky wrote,

"for the first time, that the forces of racism, bigotry and apartheid

may win, even here in North America. In calling out, finally, for help,

I suddenly fear that I may only be shouting into the wind. To all who

believe that 'it can't happen here,' I say beware. It is immensely

satisfying to take a stand and speak out against coercion and tyranny.

But ... although your friends cherish you, they may choose to do it

from a distance." [OSTROVSKY, V., 1997, p. 37, 84-85]

In another case of covert censorship, in 1996 the London Sunday Telegraph took note of an unusual article by American Jewish journalist Philip Weiss:

"A studied silence has greeted the cover story in the normally

scrupulously liberal New York magazine which claims that Jews

in America wield so much power and influence that they need no

longer fear the shadow of anti-Semitism. The magazine refuses to

discuss the article, as apparently does the author, Philip Weiss ...

The weekly must have known it was inviting trouble. Even the cover

seemed a calculated risk: a photograph of the American flag with

some of its stars replaced by the Star of David. American magazines

rarely confront the issue of Jewish influence so directly.... Richard

Goldstein, a columnist for the Village Voice, has already remarked

that the fact Jews have achieved so much influence despite the anti-

Semitic views of many Americans is 'less a paradox than a timebomb.'

The irony, of course, is that the issue is one that has been privately

discussed among Jews for decades." [LANGTON, p. 24]

In another censorial case, 1989 BBC reporter Alan Hart complained that United States publishers were afraid to publish his less-than-condemning book about PLO leader Yassar Arafat because they "privately feared a backlash from supporters of Israel." The volume, Arafat: A Political Biography, had already appeared in three editions in Great Britain -- first published five years earlier. Over 40 American publishers had passed on publishing Hart's work until Indiana University Press decided to do it. In a formal statement, the university publisher remarked that it was "not unaware that some form of self-censorship might have been the cause" for the lack of American publisher interest. [ABRAMS, G., 6-19-89, p. 5, 1]

In 1996 the Christian Science Monitor noted the attack upon a famous Catholic cleric in France, headlining its article: "Cleric's Comments Ignite the Fury of French media." The origin of this controversy stems from a book by Roger Garaudy: The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics. Garaudy, as noted earlier, wrote this volume that criticized Israel, Zionism, and the Holocaust as Judeo-centric propaganda; it has been effectively banned in France. The author, an 82-year old former Resistance fighter against the Nazis, was also once a Communist member of the French parliament (expelled from the party in 1970 for criticizing the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia) and later a convert to Islam. He was fined $20,000 by a French court for writing his book, which, declared the court, "questions all Jews, not only Israelis ... Far from merely criticizing Zionism ... Roger Garaudy embarked on a virulent and systematic questioning of crimes against humanity against the Jewish community." [ROSENBERG, C., 2-27-98]

The Christian Science Monitor noted that Garaudy's book was available in only one bookstore in Paris, and it was not possible to even order the work in many of the others. The Monitor also noted that most of the critics of the book have not read it and that "Garaudy's book does not deny that millions of Jews were murdered by the Nazis." "A "prominent jurist," Francois Terre, called the 1990 Gayssot Law (that "makes it a criminal offense to challenge the facts of the Holocaust") totalitarian: It was "a law that kills historical research and dishonors France ... Even politicians who oppose the law have been reluctant to speak out against it." [CHADDOCK, G., 7-25-96, p. 5]

The Catholic cleric Abbe Pierre fell into the controversy surrounding the book soon after. Pierre, noted the Washington Post, was "France's most admired man ... For five decades [he] ranked consistently at the top of the popularity polls in France for his defense of the downtrodden. As a champion of street people and a former activist in the anti-Nazi resistance, Abbe Pierre commanded universal respect and unrivaled media coverage." [RANDALL, J., p. 7-3-96, p. A27] Pierre's activities in the French underground also included smuggling Jews to safety. He is the founder the Emmaus foundation, 350 centers around the world for the homeless and poor.

The cleric's problems began when he publicly came out in support of Garaudy. Knowing the author for fifty years, Pierre attested to his integrity. "I think the average Frenchman," said Pierre, "will say with relief the taboo [about how the Holocaust may be examined] is over. You will no longer be called anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic for saying a Jew sings out of tune." [RANDALL, J., 7-3-96, p. A27] Unfortunately for Abbe Pierre, however, not understanding the power of such forces against such an open comment, this was a gross miscalculation.

The 83-year old cleric was barraged with critical attack from all sides -- from the French media, civil rights groups, and eventually -- seeking to assuage vociferous Jewish complaint -- the Church itself. France's chief rabbi called Pierre's words those of an anti-Semite. The president of the Jewish Consistory of France declared that: "[Abbe's] continuous support of Roger Garaudy is unacceptable." [PHILLIPS, I., 5-39-96, p. 13] Under an avalanche of criticism, Pierre took refuge in a monastery in Italy. For a while the old cleric continued to defend his position, digging himself deeper into controversy, noting that Jewish suffering was only part of the calamity of World War II. He also "said that according to the Bible, the Jews committed a genocide comparable with the Shoah when they entered Palestine 12 or 11 centuries before Christ." Addressing Zionism, he called it "a world conspiracy," that it was "based in the United States with world ramifications," and he implored people to have "the honesty to look at the truth." Zionism, said the cleric, "want[s] the empire promised to Abraham. And this movement is plotting worldwide for that." [AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, 6-17-96] [See later chapters for discussions of Zionism]

The attacks upon Frances national "saint," suddenly fallen, continued. Months later a British newspaper noted that "it is clear that the debate left him traumatized. His conversation [now] is scattered with references to his friendship, help towards, and empathy, with the Jews." [FINANCIAL TIMES, 6-21-97] The Washington Post's reporter Jonathan Randall ended his report on Pierre with a suggestion of senility in the old man. Quoting Charles DeGaulle, Randall concluded his piece, saying: "Old age is a shipwreck." [RANDALL, J., p. 7-3-96, p. A27]

Overwhelmed by the attacks against him, Pierre finally publicly surrendered. "The attacks of which I have been targeted have been beyond all measure," he said. "I have greatly suffered." [PHILLIPS, I., 5-30-96, p. 13] He announced that "I have decided to retract my statement, and to bow entirely to the sole opinion of the experts of the Church," also adding that his comments had been "exploited by elements who dangerously toy with the anti-Semitic, neo-fascist, and neo-Nazi currents that I have fought and will always fight against." [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 7-23-96]

A controversy of a somewhat related vein occurred in Montreal, Canada, a year before the Abbe Pierre story. A prominent Canadian Jewish lawyer, Julius Grey, faced an avalanche of Jewish condemnation and outrage when he freely noted in a lecture at John Abbott College that "I think the Holocaust and anti-Semitism is being used by some elements and Israel and the Jewish community to keep people in the fold. What is happening is a fake alarmist mentality, because there is effectively no anti-Semitism in North America ... [Modern teaching about the Holocaust] is turning it into a political incident. Each ethnic group creates its own martyrology, that we're good and kind and we've been mistreated." [CHERNEY, 4-25-95]

Response to Grey's comments was overwhelming in the Jewish community. Mike Cohn of the Canadian Jewish Congress told a reporter that "in the many years I've been at the congress, I don't remember getting this many phone calls from irate members of the community." [CHERNEY, 4-26-95] In the flurry of subsequent editorials about the controversy, one non-Jewish commentator noted that "the effect of the reaction to Grey's remarks could be to intimidate, to stifle open debate, to chill free expression. For after seeing what happened to Grey, others may think twice about expressing unconventional opinions and ideas." [MACPHERSON, D. p. B3] The original (Montreal) Gazette reporter who reported the Grey story later wondered in a later article about "the rush to discredit and silence Julius Grey ... [Does] a writer need ... a special license to deal with the Holocaust, or a lawyer need to get permission from the community's institutions to talk about it ... Could that ... silence dissent?" [CHERNEY, E., 4-29-95, p. B6]

Elsewhere, in the more personal realm, when Tom Bower sought to publish his unauthorized and highly critical biography of Robert Maxwell, the British Jewish media baron invoked litigation involving at least twelve lawyers, a number of accountants, and two private detectives in researching Bower's background. Failing in the courts to stop the book, Maxwell's army of censors intimidated -- by economic threats and intimidating legal innuendoes -- much of England's publishing world. Wholesale book distributors and most British bookshops knuckled under to Maxwell's power, and didn't carry the book. The mogul even bought a paperback company that held the rights to Bower's pending volume in order to effectively censor it. [BOWER, p. ix-x]

In 1997, in a story about Jewish South African mogul Sol Kerzner, the New York Times noted that:

"In an early test of press freedom under South Africa's new

constitution, a well-known international casino magnate has

delayed the publication of a book about him and is trying to

ban it. The book, 'Kerzner Unauthorized' ... profiles Sol Kerzner

[who] made his fortune operating [casinos] under apartheid in

south Africa's black ‘homeland’.... [He] has threatened to sue

local newspapers if they excerpted it. As a result, a major Sunday

newspaper withheld publication of an excerpt from the book."

The author of the Kerzner volume, Allan Greenblo, is credible; he is himself the CEO of two major South African publications -- the Business Day and the Financial Mail. (Perhaps he himself is Jewish?)

Jewish author Steven Weinberg (author of Armand Hammer: The Untold Story) was even sued by corrupt Jewish mogul Armand Hammer. "After The Untold Story was published in England, Armand filed the most expensive libel action in British history, suing Weinberg on 157 counts of defamation." [BLUMAY, C., 1992, p. 449]

In 1988, yet another Jewish business mogul family (Canada's Reichmanns, at the time owners of the largest real estate empire on earth) sought to censor the truth about their past. The (Montreal) Gazette notes that:

"These are dangerous waters for any journalist. In 1988, Toronto Life

magazine was hit with a $102 million libel suit for publishing an article

by freelance writer Elaine Dewar which investigates [patriarch] Samuel

Reichmann's murky past as an egg dealer in pre-war Austria and then

as a currency speculator in wartime Tangiers. Toronto Life's eventual

apology and out-of-court settlement suggested that 'libel chill' can be

an effective deterrent for any wealthy family seeking to keep a curtain

of privacy around itself." [HADEKEL, p. I]

In the same realm, as microcosm for the whole problem of censorship and self-censorship in the mass media world, in reviewing Jewish Hollywood mogul Michael Ovitz at the peak of his power, Robert Slater noted that

"As the most powerful person in [Hollywood], Ovitz had the power,

if he chose, to use it in order to punish any critic who went public by

denying him or her all access to his stable of stars. The mere possibility

that he exact such punishment was enough to silence his critics ... No

Ovitz critic was willing to speak out either on or off the record."

In August 1992, John H. Richardson, a senior writer at Premiere magazine in Los Angeles, finished a story about Jewish madam Heidi Fleiss and her drug and prostitution ring in the Hollywood community. The entertainment magazine, dependent upon cooperation with the movie world for its very existence, decided against publishing the piece. The Entertainment Weekly also developed an article about the story, but threats of legal action from attorneys for Columbia executive Michael Nathanson killed the story. The Hollywood Reporter also had an article about Fleiss too; this too was aborted when Nathanson threatened to "destroy [each reporter's] reputation" if the story was published. [KENNEDY, D., 8-20-93]

Reporter Dan Moldea experienced a similar situation when he dared to write an expose (published in 1986) about mogul Lew Wasserman at MCA. Moldea who has written about crime for over twenty years (including books about the murder of Bobby Kennedy, the Teamsters Union, and corruption in professional sports), noted that "Writing Dark Victory [about Wasserman] was the only time I ever really feared for my career. I felt raw power coming at me like a rifle shot." [MCDOUGAL, p. x] "Moldea," notes Dennis McDougal, "maintains that he was followed and his phone lines tapped during the year he worked on the book. He is certain that Lew Wasserman targeted him for harassment." [MCDOUGAL, p. x]