Examining the question, and questioner

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This article was published 25/11/2023 (692 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“This contains the single stupidest, most venal and egregiously malicious question I have ever heard.” Rabbi David Wolpe — Harvard Divinity School

The Jewish scholar is describing a slice of an interview on a British TV network, Sky News. London-based journalist Kay Burley was questioning Eylon Levy, a spokesperson for the government of Israel.

You may choose to believe that the rabbi’s opinion has a biased foundation because of his commitment to his heritage and faith. But you need to know it’s never wise to leap to conclusions in the very first paragraph of a column.

You are owed an opportunity to read and reflect on the question triggering the rabbinical response.

Burley was interviewing an Israeli government spokesperson: “I was speaking to a hostage negotiator this morning and he made the comparison between the 50 hostages Hamas promised to release as opposed to the 150 Palestinian prisoners that Israel has said that it will release. He made the comparison between the numbers and the fact that does not Israel think that Palestinian lives are valued as highly as Israeli lives?”

While you ponder that question, and I would encourage you to read it more than once, let me offer you another data point from a deal that Israel negotiated 12 years ago for the release of only one hostage. Israel exchanged 1,027 Hamas prisoners, for one captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.

Shalit had been held captive by Hamas for more than five years. Nobody needs to doubt that Israel would have preferred to give up only one prisoner for the return of Shalit. But in the end, Hamas would not release Shalit unless Israel delivered a ratio of 1,027-1. In the current situation, the ratio is three to one.

How can the Sky News anchor make the argument that these exchanges prove that Israel is guilty of placing a higher value on Israeli life? The math should inform the Sky News anchor that Hamas is the party demanding the sky-high ratio.

This isn’t about Israel wanting to dump a trainload of Palestinian prisoners. Hamas has leverage and they’re using it.

In his criticism of the British journalist, the rabbi used the words stupid, venal and malicious. Of those three adjectives, the first one is the easiest to defend, because the objective math works against the journalist. A jury of 12 reasonable people would likely agree the question was a dim bulb.

But was it venal? The territory for that accusation is muddy. Is there evidence that the journalist was corrupted with money?

That would be necessary to meet the most basic definition of venal. If one wants to give the word some elasticity, one could say the journalist was corrupted by an anti-Israel bias.

But one needs evidence beyond this interview to draw such a conclusion. It’s important to separate the person from the question. Just because the question may lack intellectual rigour doesn’t mean the questioner is a stupid person. So it’s natural for any critic to search for for motivation.

Reasonable people might agree or disagree that the journalist’s interview must have been corrupted by something — if not money, it could have been bias. But if venal is a difficult hill to climb, it’s not nearly as onerous as the third adjective asserted by the rabbi — malicious.

Malice is easy to pronounce, but difficult to prosecute in the court of public opinion.

And it’s an even heavier burden in the court of law.

Don’t have to take it from me. Watch the 1981 classic film, Absence of Malice with Paul Newman and Sally Field.

He plays the victim of a journalistic hatchet job. She plays the journalist.

I’ve interviewed many a law professor, including some at the Harvard campus where Rabbi Wolpe is based.

None of the academics opened my eyes on the subject of malice like the movie. I will never forget the scene where the libel lawyer, played by John Harkins, tells the journalist that while it’s true that she smeared an innocent man, it would only be a legal problem for the newspaper if it knew the story was false before publishing it.

So there was no malice, leaving the injured party without a leg to stand on.

“We may say whatever we want about Mr. Gallagher. He’s powerless to do us harm.”

Kay Burley of Sky News may be replacing the words “Mr. Gallagher” with Israel.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster. charles@charlesadler.com