Editor's Notes: Danny Seaman’s farewell voyage

The departing head of the Government Press Office lets it all out.

David Horovitz
Editor's Notes/JPost
05 November '10

Winding up a torrid decade as director of the Government Press Office, Danny Seaman has plainly decided to give vent to years of pent-up frustration.

In this interview, during which he spoke for more than an hour and a half in rapid-fire English, he loosed off passionate criticism in all directions: At a misguided government bureaucracy that threatens to doom the GPO into irrelevancy. At the failure of some in officialdom to back him when he defended Israel against what he considered dire media misrepresentation. At Israel’s surrender of many of its own historical claims and rights. At some local journalists who bolster the delegitimization of Israel. At the Palestinian manipulation of the foreign press. And, most of all, at parts of the foreign press itself, which he depicts variously as unconscionably ignorant, disinclined to appreciate fundamental truths about Israel’s best features, incompetent and sometimes downright immoral.

Is the departing Seaman a heroic advocate for Israel who is being shamefully and counter-productively treated by his foolish, short-sighted, lily-livered bosses? Or should someone so candid and opinionated never have been entrusted with the ultra-delicate task of liaising with the international media?

By the end of this interview, which I have condensed of necessity and edited to clarify Seaman’s central arguments, his verbal onslaught may have divided readers as to whether he was a rare asset or crippling liability in a job he evidently loved. But very few, I suspect, will be unmoved. Excerpts:

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