The NYT: From Israel Left's Delusion to Palestinian Agitprop

What Would Abe Rosenthal Say About the NYT Today?

Jack Engelhard, author of “The Bathsheba Deadline” and “Indecent Proposal”, as well as the award-winning memoir of his experiences as a Jewish refugee from Europe, has decided to make public a private exchange of letters he had with the world-famous and brilliant former New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal.
Rosenthal faced up to the mistake of New York Times' minimization during WWII of the slaughter of the Jews of Europe in an editorial in 1996. He admitted that the daily wrote about what was happening to Jews on inner pages.  He regretted that error deeply and worried about the state of israel.

Engelhard's decision to release the letters to Israel National News for publication followed the recent op-ed by PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas published by the New York Times.

"So what else is new when, upon reading the paper Tuesday, May 17, here’s Mahmoud Abbas getting himself published as an op-ed contributor," Engelhard wrote in an opinion published by INN. "This is like Al Capone getting to tell his side of the story, or Josef Mengele giving advice in the Journal of the American Medical Association."

Abbas NYT piece effectively buried the Oslo Accords, upon whose ratification Roshenthal famously said, "The signing of these accords proves the anti-semites wrong - Jews aren't smarter than other people."

The Gray Lady's decison to give Abbas a bully-pulpit, and its skewed reporting of Itamar massacre, Nakba, and Obama's Cairo speeches, makes one wonder what Rosenthal, a 56 year veteran of the New York times (1943-1999) and 1960 Pulitzer Prize winner for international reporting, would say about her were he alive today.

It was this question that led Engelhard to release these never before letters. INN believes they speak for themselves. The then-editor of the New York Times saw Israel in a different light than the paper does today.

You can read Engelhard's long letter at the link. I am including here Rosenthal's reply that shows how obvious it was to him that Oslo was a delusion of the Israeli left:

From A.M. Rosenthal, The New York Times, June 21, 1994

Dear Mr. Engelhard,

I am grateful to you for writing to me. I know what is in your heart because much of it is in mine. I have written about it and I do not now know whether I should continue to do so, whether it is of any use.

I probably will. No doubt about it – the Israelis can do as they wish with their security. Still I think the fact that they are not getting the story of the real risk from their leaders, that history is being so terribly distorted, compels people like us to speak out.

Did you see where Mr. Rabin said that Israel bleeds because it is an occupying power? And all these years I believed that Israel bleeds because, as her leaders used to understand, the Arab nations would give her no peace, no acceptance.

Sincerely, A.M. Rosenthal