Crusading for Israel in a Way Some Say Is Misguided - NYTimes.com:
Text of my letter sent to the NY Times "Public Editor' (i.e., their ombudsman) regarding Rudoren's piece:
My problem with this article concerns the weighting and choice of subjects that Ms. Rudoren chooses to attack in the Israeli-Palestrinian conflict, as evidenced by this article.
I don't have a bone to pick one way or another for Ms. Leitner, the Israeli anti-terrorism "lawfare" lawyer profiled in this article. In my opinion, lawyers everywhere bring cases in court that are either political in nature or shouldn't be brought at all, make a lot of money from this litigation, and yet represent people with legitimate grievances to be heard. I also am aware that there are many non-profit NGO's in Israel that purport to be indigenous and therefore somehow more justified in their criticism of the Israeli government, but which are supported by EU and other outside monies, making the people managing those non-profits fairly well-off -- not to speak of the kleptocrats in the PA who have become rich on outside monies, are within the NY Times' journalistic purview, and whose Swiss bank accounts I do not recall ever having been mentioned in any of your reports, though well-acknowledged on all sides.
Against that background -- and the bringing of the case against Israel by the PA in the ICC (more lawfare), I find your treatment unfair of Ms. Leitner -- who after all IS chasing terrorist killers of innocent people, as Ms. Rudoren begrudgingly admits. Why has she not talked about the houses (or more likely, Tel Aviv penthouses) that left-wing Israeli NGO heads live in, derived from the largesse of their European government and other sponsors? For that matter, when was the last time the NYT critically went after ANY plaintiff's counsel in the US or anywhere else when they took their traditional 25-33% contingency fee (after all, Ms. Leitner has supposedly collected $150 million in her cases -- what DOES she deserve to charge in those cases before being criticized by you)? Finally, in terms of the criticism of subcontracting litigation once initiated to others, what large case counsel does NOT subcontract out a portion of their cases, particularly where licensing or local expertise might be an issue, while they work at finding new cases?
In summary, this simply read like a reputational kill piece to me, with information most likely spoon-fed to Ms. Rudoren by Ms. Leitner's ideological enemies. But that would be OK, if some of the statements were put in the context I refer to above, and if Ms. Rudoren wrote with the same vigor about "the other side" -- which she does not. Until the NY Times applies the same level of critical analysis to all sides in your reporting, it will be stained by the appearance of bias and double standard.
Respectfully, Robert Blum
