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Sept. 16, 2011
From the Post to +972
Larry Derfner’s views have found a new editor.
SAMUEL SOKOL
The Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, a nonprofit legal aide society affiliated with Israel’s settlement movement, has requested that State Prosecutor Yehuda Weinstein investigate recently terminated Jerusalem Post columnist Larry Derfner for allegedly encouraging terrorism against Israeli civilians.
Debate regarding the nature of a free press erupted following Derfner’s termination, due to a post on his personal blog calling the recent triple terror attack in Eilat “justified.”
The issue of Derfner’s remarks spread through the Internet, propelled by conservative Israeli bloggers, and led to what Derfner claimed were “hundreds of notices of cancellations of subscription[s]” sent to Post editor Steve Linde. Within hours, the news of Derfner’s severance was picked up by the AFP and JTA wire services and published in major newspapers around the globe.
Following the Eilat attack, in which eight Israelis were killed, Derfner wrote that the violence had been “justified” and that “Palestinians have the right to resist [the occupation] – to use violence against Israelis, even to kill Israelis.” Because of his statements – which were reported on the website of Hezbollah-controlled satellite network Al-Manar, as well as by Palestinian media outlets Ma’an and Al-Quds – the forum is pursuing legal action against him.
The forum has alleged that Derfner “expressed in no uncertain terms the legitimacy and justification of that massacre and [other] terrorist acts committed by Palestinians against Israeli civilians.” His comments, they have claimed, constitute “serious violations of the prohibition of support and encouragement of terrorism and of incitement to terrorist acts and the murder of Israelis.”
The forum cited a 1948 ordinance on the prevention of terror, which outlaws the “publication of praise, sympathy or a cry for help or support of a terrorist organization, or an act that reveals identification with or sympathy for the terrorist organization.”
However, several media figures in the West Bank have indicated that they were not aware of Derfner’s statements and that they were not of concern to most Palestinians.
Fadi Abu Sada, editor-in-chief of the independent Palestine News Network, said he is “sure that [the Palestinians] are not aware of what happened in the Jerusalem Post,” stating that he “didn’t hear about that” himself. Palestinians are much more concerned about Israel’s social-justice protests and the upcoming Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations, he said.
Chief Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib also stated that he was not familiar with the matter and that there would be no official comment coming out of Ramallah. However, he added, “You may get reactions coming from unofficial levels here.”
Despite an apology posted after the eruption of public outrage in Israel, Derfner was unable to mend fences at the Post and retain his position.
In his apology, the frequently controversial commentator, who had provided a left-leaning counterpoint to such Post columnists as Caroline Glick and Isi Leibler, wrote that he meant “to show that I wasn’t ‘for’ terrorism, that, while I thought the occupation justified it, that didn’t mean I supported it. But I see now that the distance from ‘justified’ to ‘support’ is way, way too short, and I am as far away as anybody can be from supporting attacks on Israel and Israelis. I don’t want to write obscenity about Israel. I didn’t mean to, and I deeply regret it.”
Derfner explained that what bothers him “is not that I got fired, but that I’m not being given the opportunity to fill in the picture that’s been so distorted” and that “the parts of the picture being obscured or outright hidden would show that, while I misspoke myself harmfully, my intent was not to support, endorse, advocate, encourage or call for terror against Israelis, but to end it.”
Derfner’s apology was described as unacceptable by Linde, who wrote in his column that “the substance of Derfner’s apology itself was not convincing. He used ludicrous logic to defend his position, repeating the same obscene sentiments that made many readers sick to their stomachs in the first place.”
Dimi Reider, writing in the left-leaning Internet magazine +972, was one of the first media figures who came to Derfner’s defence, following the announcement on Derfner’s blog of his impending termination.
“Larry’s dismissal is made all the more obscene,” Reider wrote, “by virtue of the light it sheds on the egregious double-standard that [a] once-professional publication now employs in regard to conservative versus liberal opinion; I say that as someone who fondly remembers the fairly conservative op-ed editor of my own time at the Post soliciting op-ed pieces he openly disagreed with.”
Jameel Rashid, a pseudonymous Israeli blogger who was largely responsible for the public backlash against Derfner, disagreed with Reider, writing on his Muqata website that “the Jerusalem Post made a business decision when they decided that keeping Larry Derfner on staff was hurting their bottom line rather than helping it (or even keeping it neutral). While unpopular for a while among certain circles, his expressed opinions weren’t far enough along, until now, to ‘provoke’ a wholesale instinctual community self-defence reaction.”
Continued Rashid, “One might ask, where are the limits of free speech? But then, no one has actually taken Derfner’s free speech away. He has merely been removed from standing up on someone else’s private soapbox.”
Conservative Israeli commentator Barry Rubin came to Derfner’s defence, stating that “all too often nowadays the response to disagreement is to try to destroy people on the other side of the argument, to delegitimize them with name-calling, and to silence them. That’s not the way democratic debate is supposed to work. If you think someone is wrong, then answer the substance of the statements being made.” Derfner, Rubin opined, should have been “debated, not fired.”
Ruminating on the controversy, Derfner told the New York Times’ Lede Blog that he “knew that what [he] was writing was shocking.” He wrote, “I wanted it to be shocking, that was my whole point. I thought that shocking the Israeli public, not by my little blog alone, but as a strategy for the left, might shake people out of their paralysis. It was sort of a reckless, blind conviction, now I see that that’s one of the dangers, if not the danger of a personal blog: no editor.”
Continuing on this theme, Derfner took a short hiatus from blogging while looking for a new editor.
“This affair hasn’t changed my political opinions, but it has my journalistic opinions,” Derfner explained. “I now enthusiastically embrace the ‘two-journalist solution, with the writer and the editor working side by side in peace and security.’”
Within days of his announcement, Derfner’s column was picked up by +972, named after the country code used to dial Israel from abroad. His columns will now go through editorial review at +972 before being cross-posted on his own blog.
In his first published article since being fired that did not deal with his controversial statements about the Eilat terror attack, Derfner discussed the recent espionage case against
Israeli-American Shamai Leibowitz, who allegedly passed classified federal transcripts of intercepted Israeli embassy communications to former Derfner blogging collaborator Richard Silverstein.
Samuel Sokol is the Jerusalem-based Middle East correspondent for Zman magazine and the Five Towns Jewish Times, and news director at Koleinu, a newspaper serving English-speaking communities in Israel. He has reported from all over Israel and from areas under Palestinian Authority control.
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