In last week’s issue of the Great Neck News, you published my Letter to the Editor that was written to clarify the participation of various Great Neck residents who organized the successful “Stop Iran Rally,” held on July 22 in Times Square, which protested America’s “deal” with Iran.
After enumerating the names of the rally’s principal organizers, I peripherally credited two ZOA summer interns for their participation.
Yet, incredulously, you titled my letter: “ZOA Played Big Role in Iran Deal Protest.”
My letter neither implicitly nor explicitly contained anything remotely close to the message of the title that you assigned to my letter. Even a third grader in the New York City public school system would recognize that such a title had absolutely no connection to the words expressed in my letter.
Only when I read your editorial on the adjacent page, expressing your disappointment with the local elected Democratic leadership’s letter imploring senators Schumer and Gillibrand to vote against the deal, did I realize your purposeful attempt to try to discredit the rally and its organizers.
In the middle of your editorial, you include a paragraph that contained three consecutive falsehoods: “500 Great Neck residents led a protest against the nuclear agreement in Times Square organized by members of the ultraconservative Zionist Organization of America, which has conducted several rallies with Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. He of the comment that the Iran deal will march the Israelis ‘to the door of the oven’.”
As your own reporter, Adam Lidgett, wrote in the July 31 edition, quoting Jeff Wiesenfeld, one of the rally organizers, “More then 500 Great Neck residents were among the estimated 13,000 people who attended (not “led”) the “Stop Iran Rally.”
You need to tighten up your language and include statements that are factual.
Secondly, the protest rally was organized by over 100 participating groups, both Jewish and Christian, bi-partisan in nature, and included conservative and liberal speakers, including a Muslim, who was formerly anti-Israel.
To verify this statement, one can simply Google the “Stop Iran Rally” poster which lists the names of the more than 20 speakers and names and logos of the more than 100 sponsoring organizations.
For you to write that the protest was organized by the “ultra conservative ZOA” (which we were very proud to have as a sponsor), is a deliberate mischaracterization of the organizers and the protest rally itself.
Your own reporter, Adam Lidgett, wrote an extensive article about the rally and mentioned several participating groups, but never even mentioned the ZOA once.
My letter to the editor barely mentioned the ZOA, yet you chose to wantonly exaggerate the ZOA’s role by erroneously entitling my letter and highlighting them.
Finally, I can assure you that the ZOA has never conducted any rally (much less”several rallies”) with Republican Presidential candidate, Gov. Mike Huckabee, although I am sure that they would be mutually honored to do so.
I am a close personal friend of Gov. Huckabee and have brought him to Israel on four separate occasions, together with my fellow activist, Dr. Joe Frager.
Moreover, his remarks about the Iranian deal marching the Israelis to the “door of the oven,” are right on target.
If the Great Neck News wants their editorials to be believable and respected, they must cease to contain outright falsehoods.
It is one thing to be creative. It is quite another to simply create “facts” that are not true. Just ask Brian Williams.
Dr. Paul Brody
Great Neck Estates
