Journey to Jerusalem

[yankeedoodle]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNHPLpktQzo

Grace Halsell's book almost wasn't published

A similarly courageous woman who suffered a similar fate was Grace Halsell – another top journalist you've probably never heard about.

A preeminent journalist who had authored several acclaimed books on diverse social issues, Halsell travelled to Israel in 1980 and wrote a powerful and moving book about what she found there – including Israel's torture of Palestinians.

She later reported about the media censorship she encountered when she tried to get the information to the American public:
"On a trip to Washington, DC, I hand-delivered a letter to Frank Mankiewicz, then head of the public radio station WETA. I explained I had taped interviews with Palestinians who had been brutally tortured. And I'd make them available to him. I got no reply. I made several phone calls. Eventually I was put through to a public relations person, a Ms. Cohen, who said my letter had been lost. I wrote again. In time I began to realize what I hadn't known: had it been Jews who were strung up and tortured, it would be news. But interviews with tortured Arabs were "lost" at WETA."

Halsell described the difficulty in getting her book published:

The day the book was scheduled to be published, I went to visit MacMillan's. Checking in at a reception desk, I spotted Griffin across a room, cleaning out his desk. His secretary Margie came to greet me. In tears, she whispered for me to meet her in the ladies room. When we were alone, she confided, "He's been fired." She indicated it was because he had signed a contract for a book that was sympathetic to Palestinians. Griffin, she said, had no time to see me.

Later, I met with another MacMillan official, William Curry. "I was told to take your manuscript to the Israeli Embassy, to let them read it for mistakes," he told me. "They were not pleased. They asked me, 'You are not going to publish this book, are you?' I asked, 'Were there mistakes?' 'Not mistakes as such. But it shouldn't be published. It's anti-Israel.'"

Halsell's book was eventually published, but it largely ended her writing for the New York Times. In 1996 an Israeli journalist told her:

"We believe with absolute certitude that right now, with the White House in our hands, the Senate in our hands and The New York Times in our hands, the lives of others do not count the same way as our own."

https://israelpalestinenews.org/hedges-taibbi-greenwald-discuss-anti-trump-censorship-reminiscent-of-dorothy-thompson/