There was an unwritten rule against discussing KPFA while I was still getting air-time, that is until 1993. It was broken, unknowingly by the director of the Third World Dept. who interviewed me one Saturday night for two hours on the subject, and she heard about it from then General Manager David Salniker afterwards. When she further suggested that I be invited on the air to comment on election results, she was told, emphatically, no. When I organized a protest at the Israeli Consulate in 1985 to protest Israel's collaboration with South Africa and its role as a surrogate for the US in Central America (a protest that drew nearly 700 people) and was interviewed by the late Mama O'Shea, a KPFA talk show host, and had not intended to talk about Zionism, a caller, in defense of Israel, raised the subject, and I, understandably, offered my opinion on that subject. After the show Salniker accused Mama of having been "duped" by me. On another occasion, when Prof. Joel Beinin of Stanford, whose parents live in Herzliya in Israel, but who is a critic of its policies, was being interviewed by Morning Show host Philip Maldari, Beinin, in reply to a question from Maldari, suggested that to properly answer the question, it was necessary to go bakc into the history of zionism. "Uh, oh," said Maldari. "I don't think we'd better go down that road." I have never heard the subject discussed on KPFA since that time, and Beinin, in subsequent interviews never brought it up again. Salniker, by the way, is as much responsible for the present crisis at Pacifica Radio as any could be. He was the one who hired Pat Scott as the station's General Manager, then had her promoted to Executive Director where she was instrumental in the final firing of Bill Mandel from the KPFA airways and who suggested that Mary Francis Berry be selected as the chair of the Pacifica Board in 1997. Berry, of course, is the one who has orchestrated the attack on KPFA and Pacifi, shutting down the station last summer and hiring armed guards from Atlanta to keep people off the property. Getting back to Salniker, he also was responsible for a Strategy for National Programming introduced in December 1992 which essentially has led to Pacifica's becoming a lightweight clone of NPR. Today, he heads the Tides Foundation which last year laundered $30 million from the Pew Charitable Trust. So one might draw the conclusion that the effects of actions of Zionists acting in behalf of Israel from within our ranks are not limited to that issue. Jeff Blankfort > Date: Fri, 06 Oct 2000 16:35:39 -0700 > From: William M Mandel <wmmmandel@earthlink.net> > Subject: Re: [sixties-l] teeny tiny protests on Sproul Steps > > > SNIP. > When I said on Pacifica'a air in 1967 that Israel did not necessarily have all > justice on its side in that year's Six-Day War, KPFK and WBAI, which had carried > me without interruption from the day the former was founded and, in the latter > case, even before it was given to Pacifica, took me off the air. Listener protest > got me back on again (which is why I haven't given up this time, after five years > off KPFA). > For christ's sake, the issue is not the ownership of a hill, but of a country. > Hezbollah and Hamas are significant because two generations of young people have > grown up knowing nothing but occupation. And there is no worse political > provocateur on earth than Ariel Sharon, who is responsible for the massacres at > Sabra and Shatillah, and earlier ones, and went to that hill last week not as a > private citizen but with a bodyguard of cops who forcibly cleared people away. > > William Mandel >
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 10/09/00 EDT