Four Columns Wide At The Boston Globe

Marty Peretz
The New Republic
25 May'10

The Globe often uses its news columns to reinforce its editorial page. As you know, the slowly expiring daily is hostile to Israel—very hostile. And its hostility is sustained by its simplicity, which is even more simple than that of its papa paper, The New York Times. All Israel has to do is vacate the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the lion will lie down with the lamb. Or the lamb with the lion. Just as they did, I suppose, when Israel left Gaza.

On Monday, under a four-column photo, the Globe ran a four-column headline: “Brandeis commencement draws protesters.” Actually, I hardly know a commencement that is not punctuated by a protest. But this one was a tiny protest, as the first sentence in the story admits: “...about 20 students protested the college’s choice for its keynote speaker, Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States.” Now, Michael is, more or less, “family.” He is a great historian: His two best-selling books, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (called “the authoritative chronicle of the [Six-Day] war” by The Atlantic) and the more recent Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present (which Newsweek said “will shape our thinking about America and the Middle East for years”), should be required reading for any student of the Middle East.

And, before he gave up his American citizenship to become American envoy to Israel, he was a frequent contributor to our pages. He is also a friend, a very good friend.

Now about the “20 students.”

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