Jodi Rudorens parting gift to Israel

An Israeli settlement is seen in the background as Palestinians hold a prayer service in protest of Israels
plans to build a wall cutting off the Cremisan monastery and agricultural land from a Bethlehem-area
village, February 2013.
Ryan Rodrick BeilerActiveStills

Maureen Clare Murphy-2 December 2015

The reporting produced during Jodi Rudorens nearly four-year tenure as New York
Times Jerusalem bureau chief was never exactly sober.
But Rudoren makes no attempt to conceal her intoxication with Zionism in this weeks

feature on a groundbreaking project at an Israeli university in the occupied West Bank that
aims to use DNA testing to identify and recreate ancient wines drunk by the likes of King
David and Jesus Christ.
In her puff piece celebrating Israeli wine culture, Rudoren doesnt let Ariel
Universitys pariah status get in the way of an opportunity to make Israels violent settlement
colony enterprise boutique wineries! more palatable.
(On HuffPostLive Rudoren said she had been fascinated with the wine story for years, and
that she thought it would bring new audiences to the issue, because it appeals to foodies and
wine lovers.)
Rudoren does give lip service to Palestinian objections to Israels appropriation of indigenous
varietals. The export director of the Cremisan winery, run out of the Salesian monastery,
sniped its criticism in an email to Rudoren, she writes, since only verbs with a violent
connotation may be used regarding Palestinians.
But she makes no mention of the imminent threat posed by Israeli colonization of the West
Bank valley where Cremisans grapes are grown.
Whitewashing occupation

With the context of violent military occupation and colonization glossed over, this latest
attempt to exploit history and archaeology to bolster modern Zionists claims to Palestinian
land is instead presented as a novel startup venture.
Its primary bankroller is the Jewish National Fund, the quasi-state agency actively
displacing Palestinians for the benefit of Israeli settlers like those profiled by Rudoren. But
the Times reporter only euphemistically states that the group has helped transform Israels
agricultural landscape.
After Mondoweiss highlighted this whitewashing of the Jewish National Funds role in the
ethnic cleansing of Palestine in its critique of her story, Rudoren whined on HuffPostLive,
Thats background thats not really relevant to the story.
It surely wasnt an angle emphasized by ISRAEL21c, the PR firm that seems to have pitched
the story to her.
Journalist Max Blumenthal pointed out on Twitter that Rudorens piece was strikingly similar
to one put out by ISRAEL21c a few days earlier:

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Follow
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One is pro-Israel PR by hasbara outfit @ISRAEL21C. The other is the same proIsrael PR by @Rudoren of the @nytimes.
11:40 PM - 1 Dec 2015

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bureau chief seems intent on being remembered as Israels most reliable stenographer in the
countrys foreign press corps.

Rudorens recent achievements include a glowing profile of Ayelet Shaked, the Netanyahu
governments justice minister and rising star of Israels far right.
In July 2014, Shaked infamously endorsed a call for the slaughter of Palestinian mothers who
give birth to little snakes.
The following day, a Palestinian teen was kidnapped and burned alive by a group seeking to
avenge the deaths of three Israelis found murdered in the West Bank. They were encouraged
by the incitement of Israels top leadership which was largely ignored by The New York Times.
The newspaper has continued to demonstrate a lack of curiosity regarding the rallies and
marches of Israelis calling for death to the Arabs and the burning of their villages.
Deference to the Israeli government is also evident in Rudorens report on the growing
Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, in which she parrots racist
Israeli rhetoric that the movements call for refugee rights amounts to a demographic death
warrant for the Jewish state.
And she actively undermined a human rights group working to hold Israel accountable for its
wholesale slaughter of more than 2,200 Palestinians in Gaza last year.

Rudoren also voluntarily complied with Israeli gag orders on multiple occasions, displaying
a willingness to comply with government censorship that even the Times public
editor described as troubling.
Last year, when she was was under fire for uncritically repeating an Israeli police chiefs
justification for thenearly fatal beating of a Palestinian American teenager, candid video
produced by Rudorens husband emerged, revealing not only the couples Israel-centric
outlook, but also the insular, ethnocentric environment in which they had embedded
themselves, basking in the exclusively Jewish culture of West Jerusalem, as Max
Blumethal reported for The Electronic Intifada.
Blumenthal noted that Rudorens husband had recently appeared as a parody of a clueless
Jewish-American tourist in an advertisement for The Event Aliya Expo, an Israeli-government
supported fair promoting Jews-only immigration to Israel.
Meanwhile, Blumenthal added, Rudorens bureau is staffed by researchers and editors with
close links to Israels Zionist elite, such as Isabel Kershner, a Jewish Israeli who is married to
Hirsh Goodman, a writer and former consultant for the Israeli military-linked Institute for
National Security Studies.
Conflicts of interest

Such conflicts of interest are nothing new for The New York Times Jerusalem bureau.
As Blumenthal noted, Rudorens predecessor, Ethan Bronner, had a son in the Israeli
military at the time that he was bureau chief.
Bronner also hired Lone Star PR, one of Israels top publicity firms, to book paid lectures for
him at the same time that the firm pitched stories to him.
Bronner is now an editor for Bloomberg news.
And where will Rudoren land now that shes leaving Jerusalem?
Shes been rewarded with a position as deputy of the Times international desk.
Lets hope that her successor doesnt follow Rudorens example by beginning their tenure with
a rosy tour of Israels settlements, glass of wine in hand.
Posted by Thavam