The Great Abba Eban
By Ted Belman | 07/11/09 | 08:22 AM EDT | 0 Comments
I can't recommend enough, this 1958 one hour interview of Abba Eban by Mike Wallace.
Once you get by the cigarette commercial, which is a real blast from yesteryear, you will see in the interview, an antisemitic interviewer intent on repeating on national television, in the most watched show in the US, every charge against Israel that the most scurrilous people make, and the brilliant responses from the incomparable Abba Eban, Israel's Ambassador to the UN.
Eban's responses were deftly and well delicately stated. They succeeded in turning all the horrific charges Wallace made into Israel's favour, with dignity and irony, and in so doing showed Wallace up for the antisemite he was.
Wallace continued in his venomous ways and 40 years later broadcasted a one hour program on violence at the Temple Mount which CAMERA covered in Mike Wallace’s Middle East Problem.
In late 1990, Wallace reported on Arab riots on the Temple Mount, in which several thousand people stoned Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall before beleaguered Israeli police shot some rioters in regaining control. He based his report almost exclusively on Palestinian sources, choosing Palestine Liberation Organization mouthpiece Daoud Kuttab as main production consultant, ignored key Israeli sources, took then-Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek’s comments out of context, and spliced in a pre-riot tape of then-Foreign Ministry spokesman Benjamin Netanyahu rather than tape a post-riot interview. Essentially, Wallace’s report reversed the order of events, making it appear that the stone-throwing riot followed the police shooting rather than led to it.
The same mentality Wallace represented is now ensconced in the Whitehouse.
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