Ethical Indiscretion and Non Reportage of Lethal Threat to Israel

On Sunday, September 21st, 2008, the head of Israel Military Intelligence provided the first official report to the Israeli cabinet that the Israeli intelligence community had come to the definitive conclusion that all diplomatic efforts to stem Iranian development of nuclear weapons had failed and that Iran was, indeed, well on the way to producing its first nuclear weapon.

See: “Iran Has Enough Material To Make A Nuclear Weapon”, Philadelphia Bulletin, 09/22/2008, http://tinyurl.com/4e6np9

JTA, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, did not report the IMI report to the Israeli cabinet, despite its alarming newsworthy significance.

Instead, on Monday, September 22, 2008, JTA featured and distributed an oped penned by the head of Americans for Peace Now, entitled “Engaging in diplomacy with Iran is a sensible, responsible policy”, which advocated the notion that diplomatic negotiations with Iran is posssible.

The APN oped made no reference the seminal report from the day before from Israeli intelligence that all diplomatic efforts with Iran had failed.

The APN oped also failed to disclose that Peace Now receives funds from the German government [along with five other European governments] and that the position of the German government is identical to the APN oped, which is that diplomatic and trade relations with Iran must continue.

Meawhile, JTA distributed the APN oped in time for the Friday/Jewish New Year deadlines of Jewish newspapers in North America.

When the editor of the JTA was asked if he would distributing a counter oped to the tendentious APN oped, his answer was “Perhaps… We’ll see if people want to respond”.

JTA would not answer the question as to why it would not seek out an immediate “right of reply” to an oped which advocates an up beat diplomatic policy to the Hitler of the 21st century, in time for the deadlines of the North American Jewish media.

In other words, JTA refused to act upon the cardinal principle of equal time.

To ad credibility to the APN oped, JTA ran the APN oped contguous to an expensive banner ad on JTA that was paid for by APN

Nothing like giving service to a paying client.

Should such a JTA policy not be challenged?