The Relationship Between Antisemitism and Criticism of Israel
We begin with charges of antisemitism leveled by Israel’s PM Netanyahu against Australia’s PM who was booed at a memorial service yesterday, blaming him for the Bondi Beach massacre because Australia recognized Palestine. We will discuss the relationship of antisemitism to criticism of Israel with Lincoln Mitchell, who teaches in the School of International and Public Affairs and the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. He has written numerous books and articles about international affairs, American politics and baseball. His 9th book Three Years our Mayor: George Moscone and the Making of Modern San Francisco is out now, published by the University of Nevada Press. He is the author of the popular Substack Kibitzing with Lincoln where his recent article is “The Antisemitic Murders at Bondi Beach.”
The CBS News Editor Appointed by the Ellisons Spikes a 60 Minutes Segment to Re-edit a More Trump-Friendly Version
Then we look into the spiking of a segment of CBS’s 60 Minutes that was supposed to be aired last night but was held back by the new editor appointed by the Ellisons, Bari Weiss, who wants to re-edit the segment on El Salvador’s brutal prison to include Stephen Miller. Joining us is Ben Armbruster, the managing editor of Responsible Statecraft who has more than a decade of experience working at the intersection of politics, foreign policy, and media. He previously held senior editorial and management positions at Media Matters, ThinkProgress, ReThink Media, and Win Without War, and we discuss his latest article at Responsible Statecraft, “Bari Weiss just handed Trump a ‘kill switch’ for news it doesn’t like.”
Ariel Dorfman From Chile on the Election of a Far-Right President Who Will Free Pinochet’s Murderers, Torturers and Kidnappers
Then finally we go to Santiago, Chile to speak with Ariel Dorfman, a Chilean-American author whose award-winning books in many genres have been published in more than fifty languages and his plays performed in more than a hundred countries. Among his works are the plays Death and the Maiden and Purgatorio, the novels Widows and Konfidenz, and the memoirs Heading South, Looking North and Feeding on Dreams. A prominent human rights activist, he worked as press and cultural advisor to Salvador Allende’s chief of staff in the final months before the 1973 military coup, and later spent many years in exile. He is an Emeritus Professor of Literature at Duke University, and his latest novels are The Suicide Museum and Allegro which imagines Mozart as a detective investigating Bach. We will discuss his article at the New York Times, “Chile’s Election Is More Than Just a Swerve to the Right.”
Background Briefing offers an educational approach to providing information in an era of “fake news.”