Wolf Blitzer Worked for Two Outlets Run by AIPAC Founder

As of late, Wolf Blitzer is legendary as a primetime anchor on CNN’s “The Scenario Room.” Many years in the past, nevertheless, when Blitzer was far much less recognized, the founder and longtime director of the controversial America Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, mentioned that he and Blitzer had “a really shut and intimate friendship.” The professional-Israel lobbyist known as Blitzer “certainly one of my proteges.” The connection apparently led Blitzer to, early in his profession, work concurrently as a journalist and an advocate doing what amounted to propaganda. By the requirements of at the moment’s journalism ethics, the 2 jobs would elevate critical questions.

One of many jobs, in the course of the Nineteen Seventies, was as Washington correspondent for the Jerusalem Put up, an unbiased newspaper in Israel. The opposite was enhancing publications that have been joined on the hip with AIPAC. The Israeli authorities reportedly used Blitzer’s two hats to launch a stealth assault on Breira, an American Jewish group that had lately gained fame for criticizing Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians; Breira folded quickly after. One historian has linked its demise to AIPAC’s subsequent stress to quash crucial American dialogue about Israeli coverage. Blitzer’s twin roles counsel that he helped to stifle the dialog.

Requested concerning the propriety of overlaying the Center East in the course of the Nineteen Seventies as a reporter for unbiased media, and concurrently working for a person well-known as a pacesetter of AIPAC and lobbyist for the Israeli authorities, CNN spokesperson Dylan-Rose Geerlings wrote in an electronic mail, “Within the Nineteen Seventies as a younger journalist in his 20s, Wolf reported extensively on the Center East. Wolf could be very happy with his reporting from that point and all through his lengthy and distinguished profession.”

“Wolf’s work as an editor for ‘The Close to East Report’ and ‘Myths and Details’ practically 50 years in the past isn’t new info,” Geerlings mentioned. “The Jerusalem Put up, his employer on the time, knew of and accredited of Wolf taking over the extra position.”

Zvika Klein, the editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Put up, mentioned, “The Jerusalem Put up is now owned by a distinct firm and the earlier editor in chief whom I’ve requested had no recollection of this challenge.”

The 2 AIPAC-linked publications that Blitzer labored for have been the weekly Close to East Report and the occasional booklet “Myths and Details: A Concise File of the Arab-Israeli Battle.” Each have been began and run for years by Isaiah L. “Si” Kenen, a well-known lobbyist and diplomat for Israel, and AIPAC’s founder and longtime director till he stepped down from its management in early 1975.

By the point Kenen retired from AIPAC, Blitzer had been working for 2 years for the Jerusalem Put up. He was additionally affiliate editor on the Close to East Report whereas Kenen was nonetheless publishing it. In the meantime, AIPAC’s new government director, Morris Amitay, was a contributing editor. And even after retiring from AIPAC, Kenen was nonetheless serving to the group to distribute Close to East Report back to AIPAC’s 1000’s of members and to public officers.

Kenen liked Blitzer. In a letter he wrote to an editor on the Jewish Chronicle, in London, Kenen agreed to report on Washington for the Chronicle, and added that he wished to do the work with assist from Blitzer. After describing how shut he and Blitzer have been and the way Blitzer was his protege, Kenen urged that the 2 might produce articles as a workforce. “In truth,” Kenen wrote, he and Blitzer “might go to work collectively regularly and I’d be the beneficiary of his skilled reporting.”

In 1976, Blitzer took over full editorship of the Close to East Report. He would maintain that publish for 2 years. He additionally was editor of the 1976 “Myths and Details” — additionally a Kenen product. Among the many gadgets that Blitzer’s version listed as “myths”: “Acquisition of territory by pressure is inadmissible,” and “Israel has no proper to carry on to the Golan Heights” — each propositions that run athwart of the premise of worldwide legislation, and its particular utility by the U.N. to the Arab–Israeli battle.

The 1976 challenge of “Myths and Details” edited by Blitzer has a canopy that illustrates the doubtful contentions. It exhibits a map of the Center East and North Africa in purple. Israel stands aside in daring white, with a top level view that encompasses the Egyptian Sinai, Syrian Golan Heights, and Palestinian territories of the West Financial institution, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, which had been occupied by Israel in 1967. On the time of Blitzer’s journal cowl, all of these territories have been seeing Israeli settlement exercise in contravention of worldwide legislation.

Close to East Report, nonetheless edited by Blitzer in 1977, ran a prolonged article defending the legality of the West Financial institution settlements.

The latter declare implied tacit endorsement of the Zionist non secular proper’s aim to annex the territories that Israel had occupied within the 1967 Arab–Israeli conflict. “Myths and Details,” beneath Blitzer’s editorship, additional argued that Israel couldn’t relinquish the Golan Heights as a result of it was “an space essential for the protection of Israel’s settlements.”

Close to East Report, nonetheless edited by Blitzer in 1977, ran a prolonged article defending the legality of the West Financial institution settlements, that are thought-about unlawful by worldwide legislation and each nation on the earth other than Israel and the U.S. (The latter shifted to this stance in the course of the Trump administration.)

One other piece, with a decidedly celebratory tone, famous {that a} Dallas evangelical pastor, a previous president of the Southern Baptist Conference, introduced Israel with a scroll proclaiming robust help from the U.S. evangelical Christian group for Israel. In accordance with the article, the pastor mentioned that his help was “fulfilling God’s teachings, which promised the Land of Israel to the Jewish folks.”

Blitzer left Close to East Report on the finish of 1977. Later, in 1985, he authored a ebook primarily based on his Center East journalism, “Between Washington to Jerusalem: A Reporter’s Pocket book.” It opens with a veritable resume of the venues the place he had labored or been printed: from the Jerusalem Put up to the New York Occasions to the Jewish Chronicle, and plenty of extra. However the ebook by no means mentions his AIPAC-related work. It does approvingly quote a former AIPAC functionary who known as the group “attractive.”