If the event eight days ago in Highland Park had been a Hollywood movie, it could have been named “Showdown at Misperception Gap.”
Along with three Tribune colleagues, I went on the evening of Feb. 20 to North Suburban Synagogue Beth El for a “town meeting” with members of the congregation on the newspaper’s coverage and commentary on Israel and the Middle East.
By now it has been widely reported that many members of the Chicagoland Jewish community have been upset with the Tribune over what they feel is an anti-Israel bias. This upset has been manifested in demonstrations in front of Tribune Tower, letter-writing campaigns and organized subscription cancellations.
(Indeed, so troubled by this putative bias was one businessman that he contributed money for an academic study of the issue. The results of the study have been shared with Tribune editors on a confidential basis, but for reasons not explained publicly the sponsoring organization has chosen so far not to make them public.)
The Highland Park event was the second of its kind, the first having taken place in early November at Congregation B’nai Jehoshua Beth Elohim in Glenview. In both cases, the meetings were initiated by congregation members who felt that dialogue was preferable to divorce.
But if the crowds at both gatherings were passionate, that in Highland Park was substantially smaller than the one in Glenview–no more than 200 people, probably closer to 100. It also was, at least in tone, more vitriolic.
Questions covered the waterfront of issues: the use and non-use of “the T-word,” terrorism; my characterization in a column of Ariel Sharon’s role in the Sabra and Shatila massacres; the selection, sizing and placement of pictures, and many others.
What struck me most forcefully in the exercise was that, in a very real sense, we stand on opposite sides of a vast gap or gulf in our perceptions of the personalities and situations in the Middle East.
But the greatest gap is in our perceptions of what a newspaper is supposed to be and do, especially on its newsgathering and presenting side. Call it objectivity, fairness or something else, the ideal to which a paper ought to aspire is to give an account of the news that an unbiased observer would recognize as true and honest if thrust into the situation himself or herself.
By that standard, I am convinced, the Tribune has nothing to apologize for in its Middle East coverage and a great deal to be proud of.
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One hesitates to rejoice at the death of any person, but it was impossible not to feel a frisson of excitement at the news last Friday that Jonas Savimbi, the Angolan rebel leader, had been killed in battle.
Finally, Angola may have a chance at peace and its luckless, put-upon people may have a chance at economic development and something approaching normal lives.
Son of a railroad stationmaster and holder of a Swiss doctorate in politics, Savimbi began fighting for Angola’s independence from Portuguese colonialists in the 1960s. When the Portuguese gave up and withdrew in 1975, he began fighting with two rivals for leadership of the independent nation.
More out of convenience than conviction, he cast himself as a pro-Western supporter of capitalism. In the late 1980s he became a darling of the American right and accepted aid for his UNITA rebel movement from the apartheid South African government.
In 1991, he and President Jose Eduardo dos Santos concluded a deal aimed at ending Savimbi’s insurgency and bringing peace to Angola. But in 1992, after he lost the first round of balloting in national elections, Savimbi rallied his troops again and returned to the bush.
His legacy: villages full of men, women and children missing limbs, the result of land mines employed in his eternal war, and stories of spectacularly brutal eliminations of loyal aides who for some reason fell under his suspicion.
Like Lucifer in John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” he was brilliant and charismatic. But, he believed, better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
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E-mail: dwycliff@tribune.com
