[JTA] Eric Fingerhut - President Obama told Jewish leaders in a July meeting that Israel needs to "engage in serious self-reflection." Israel's new U.S. ambassador was "summoned" to the State Department to be lectured about Israel's building settlements in Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called two top aides to Obama "self-hating Jews." All of these reports appeared in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz. And they've all been disputed or denied by the principals involved. Yoram Peri, director of the Gildenhorn Center for Israeli Studies at the University of Maryland, attributed the problematic reporting to "the serious decline in the level of Israeli media." Today's Internet-driven news culture and the financial difficulties facing newspapers have contributed to a tabloidization of the news in Israel, Peri said. Stories that inaccurately portray the situation "are simply bumps in the road," said White House spokesman Tommy Vietor.
2009-09-07 08:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive