Wolf Blitzer Cut His Teeth Doing Journalism for AIPAC-Linked Propaganda Outlets

These days, Wolf Blitzer is famous as a primetime anchor on CNN’s “The Situation Room.” Decades ago, however, when Blitzer was far less known, the founder and longtime director of the controversial America Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, said that he and Blitzer had “a very close and intimate friendship.” The pro-Israel lobbyist called Blitzer “one of my proteges.” The relationship apparently led Blitzer to, early in his career, work simultaneously as a journalist and an advocate doing what amounted to propaganda. By the standards of today’s journalism ethics, the two jobs would raise serious questions.

One of the jobs, during the 1970s, was as Washington correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, an independent newspaper in Israel. The other was editing publications that were joined at the hip with AIPAC. The Israeli government reportedly used Blitzer’s two hats to launch a stealth attack on Breira, an American Jewish group that had recently gained fame for criticizing Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians; Breira folded soon after. One historian has linked its demise to AIPAC’s subsequent pressure to quash critical American discussion about Israeli policy. Blitzer’s dual roles suggest that he helped to stifle the conversation.

Asked about the propriety of covering the Middle East during the 1970s as a reporter for independent media, and simultaneously working for a man famous as a leader of AIPAC and lobbyist for the Israeli government, CNN spokesperson Dylan-Rose Geerlings wrote in an email, “In the 1970s as a young journalist in his 20s, Wolf reported extensively on the Middle East. Wolf is very proud of his reporting from that time and throughout his long and distinguished career.”

“Wolf’s work as an editor for ‘The Near East Report’ and ‘Myths and Facts’ nearly 50 years ago is not new information,” Geerlings said. “The Jerusalem Post, his employer at the time, knew of and approved of Wolf taking on the additional role.”

Zvika Klein, the editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, said, “The Jerusalem Post is now owned by a different company and the previous editor in chief whom I’ve asked had no recollection of this issue.”

The two AIPAC-linked publications that Blitzer worked for were the weekly Near East Report and the occasional booklet “Myths and Facts: A Concise Record of the Arab-Israeli Conflict.” Both were started and run for years by Isaiah L. “Si” Kenen, a famous lobbyist and diplomat for Israel, and AIPAC’s founder and longtime director until he stepped down from its leadership in early 1975.

By the time Kenen retired from AIPAC, Blitzer had been working for two years for the Jerusalem Post. He was also associate editor at the Near East Report while Kenen was still publishing it. Meanwhile, AIPAC’s new executive director, Morris Amitay, was a contributing editor. And even after retiring from AIPAC, Kenen was still helping the group to distribute Near East Report to AIPAC’s thousands of members and to public officials.

Kenen loved Blitzer. In a letter he wrote to an editor at the Jewish Chronicle, in London, Kenen agreed to report on Washington for the Chronicle, and added that he wanted to do the work with help from Blitzer. After describing how close he and Blitzer were and how Blitzer was his protege, Kenen suggested that the two could produce articles as a team. “In fact,” Kenen wrote, he and Blitzer “could go to work together frequently and I would be the beneficiary of his expert reporting.”

In 1976, Blitzer took over full editorship of the Near East Report. He would hold that post for two years. He also was editor of the 1976 “Myths and Facts” — also a Kenen product. Among the items that Blitzer’s edition listed as “myths”: “Acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible,” and “Israel has no right to hold on to the Golan Heights” — both propositions that run athwart of the premise of international law, and its specific application by the U.N. to the Arab–Israeli conflict.

The 1976 issue of “Myths and Facts” edited by Blitzer has a cover that illustrates the dubious contentions. It shows a map of the Middle East and North Africa in red. Israel stands apart in bold white, with an outline that encompasses the Egyptian Sinai, Syrian Golan Heights, and Palestinian territories of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, which had been occupied by Israel in 1967. At the time of Blitzer’s magazine cover, all of those territories were seeing Israeli settlement activity in contravention of international law.

Near East Report, still edited by Blitzer in 1977, ran a lengthy article defending the legality of the West Bank settlements.

The latter claim implied tacit endorsement of the Zionist religious right’s goal to annex the territories that Israel had occupied in the 1967 Arab–Israeli war. “Myths and Facts,” under Blitzer’s editorship, further argued that Israel couldn’t relinquish the Golan Heights because it was “an area crucial for the safety of Israel’s settlements.”

Near East Report, still edited by Blitzer in 1977, ran a lengthy article defending the legality of the West Bank settlements, which are considered illegal by international law and every country in the world apart from Israel and the U.S. (The latter shifted to this stance during the Trump administration.)

Another piece, with a decidedly celebratory tone, noted that a Dallas evangelical pastor, a past president of the Southern Baptist Convention, presented Israel with a scroll proclaiming strong support from the U.S. evangelical Christian community for Israel. According to the article, the pastor said that his support was “fulfilling God’s teachings, which promised the Land of Israel to the Jewish people.”

Blitzer left Near East Report at the end of 1977. Later, in 1985, he authored a book based on his Middle East journalism, “Between Washington to Jerusalem: A Reporter’s Notebook.” It opens with a veritable resume of the venues where he had worked or been published: from the Jerusalem Post to the New York Times to the Jewish Chronicle, and many more. But the book never mentions his AIPAC-related work. It does approvingly quote a former AIPAC functionary who called the organization “sexy.”

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