Joshuah Bearman

A Schande

The Forward, or as my grandfather used to refer to his beloved yiddish edition, Forverts, makes the case against Israel's press blackout of the Gaza incursion:

Two days after the military campaign began, the Israeli financial newspaper Globes published a highly critical summary of the domestic news coverage. It described in stark terms the dead civilians, destroyed infrastructure and harsh living conditions in Gaza, pointing out that none of these images are shown on Israeli television. Instead, Israelis see “military correspondents standing against a background of smoke pillars on a distant horizon, and reporters standing on deserted streets in the southern cities.” The article’s conclusion was withering: “The Israeli media is acting as a de facto army spokesman.” As the Gaza campaign nears the two-week mark, this pattern has held true.

Israelis pride themselves on being the only democracy in the Middle East. Yet they have willingly suspended democratic principles, such as the rule of law — in the case of the Supreme Court ruling on admitting foreign reporters to Gaza — and freedom of the press. Given the limited, controlled coverage of the army’s operation in Gaza, Israelis simply do not have sufficient first-hand information, in their own language, about what is really happening there. How, then, can they judge the moral stakes of this war?

What My Grandpa Thinks About Billy Mitchell

Grandpa's ninety-three. The dude was born in Fargo a few decades after the Dakotas became states. He can vaguely recall celebrations at the end of the Great War -- I mean World War I. And god love him, he sat down in his leather chair in Sun City, Arizona, and made his way through my 8,000-word Harper's epic on Billy Mitchell and the metaphysics of Ms. Pac Man. Then he left me this message:

If you can't understand the audio, his take was:

Joshuah, I read your letter, and I'll be the first to tell you -- if you'd have written it in Chinese, I wouldn't have understood it any better.

P.s. From last halloween: