that didn't come out
when he was editor.
He knew the paper
had to be even-hand-
ed and that it would
be a joke if its news
coverage was... [as
pro-Israel as] his col-
umn.
"This
intensity
about Israel was al-
ways there. And
when I would speak
to him about my be-
ing shomer Shabbos
[Shabbat observant],
he took an interest in
it that surprised me.
There was always
this Jewish soft spot
in Abe Rosenthal."
For the six months
in 1976 that Mr. Gold-
man was the execu-
tive editor's news
clerk, they had a "very
intense relationship."
He saw a side of Mr.
Rosenthal visible to
few at the Times,
where even the most
jaded, most calloused
reporters feared him.
Instead, the editor
spoke nostalgically with his clerk about his grand-
father, who was a rabbi. When he told Mr. Goldman
he was promoting him to reporter, "I got this spon-
taneous bear hug from this man that so many hat-
ed. There's a very sweet emotional side to him. But
many people here are still afraid of him. When he
walks through the news room, there's a chill or a
thrill.. I get a thrill. To me, he represents a certain
excitement. He left an imprint on this place larger
than any one else's."

out in
his column

is not
especial]
religio us

Rosenthal vs. Everyone

n the last year, about 25 percent of Mr. Rosen-
thal's columns have been about Israel, the
Middle East, Soviet Jews, or anti-Semitism.
He has not been afraid to take on journalis-
tic colleagues, including Pat Buchanan and
syndicated columnists Roland Evans and
Robert Novak.
In September, 1990, for instance, during the
buildup to the Gulf War, Mr. Rosenthal wrote that
Pat Buchanan was an outright anti-Semite. Mr.
Buchanan had called Congress "Israeli-occupied
territory," claimed that only two groups were "beat-
ing the drums for war in the Middle East — the Is-
raeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the

United States," and iden-
tified by name four mem-
bers of this war-mongering
clique: Henry Kissinger,
former assistant secretary
of Defense Richard Perle,
columnist Charles Krauth-
ammer — and A.M. Rosen-
thal.
All were Jews.
Mr. Buchanan, then a
syndicated columnist and
now a GOP presidential
candidate, also wrote that
if the nation went to war,
fighting would be done by
soldierly patriots, with
"names like McAllister,
Murphy, Gonzales, and
Leroy Brown." He did not
name a single Jew.
In his column — which
offended some and deeply
(and, often, privately)
pleased others — Mr.
Rosenthal suggested that
the sort of thoughts com-
ing from Mr. Buchanan
could lead to Auschwitz,
and that they were inten-
tional and deliberate. In a
reversal of Jesus' last
words on the cross, Mr.
Rosenthal prayed, "For-
give them not, Father, for
they know what they did."
Writing about Pat
Buchanan, said Mr.
Rosenthal, "was a very
nasty job. Normally, if you
see a piece of garbage in
the street, you step over
it. You don't step down
into it."
Last November, Mr. Rosenthal accused Wash-
ington-based columnists Evans and Novak of bend-
ing the truth — if not outright fibbing — about Israel's
attack on the U.S. ship Liberty during the 1967 Six-
Day War in which 34 Americans were killed.
The columnists claimed to present new evidence
indicating that Israel's attack was deliberate and
not a mistake, as claimed.
Mr. Rosenthal, who spoke with the ex-Israeli ma-
jor whom Evans and Novak had interviewed, wrote
that the columnists had printed "the reverse" of
what he had told them. Evans and Novak, noted
Mr. Rosenthal, wrote "that their column should
be a warning to President Bush and Secretary of
State James Baker that 'truth is elusive in the
Mideast.' True enough," affirmed Mr. Rosenthal,
"and in Washington, too."
Even old friends are not spared Mr. Rosenthal's

wrath. On Jan. 21, Mr. Rosenthal charged that his
pal of many decades, the conservative guru, William
Buckley, had been too easy on Pat Buchanan in a
lengthy essay on contemporary anti-Semitism that
filled almost the entire December National Review.
"The Buchanan section is so genteel about him,
written with such absence of real censure, with
such contradiction and evasion and is so late and
tortuous that politically and intellectually it destroys
itself — a pity."
"I used to like Buckley even more than I do now,"
Mr. Rosenthal said during the interview. "I think
he's running down."
"Even after that 38,000-word essay?"
"Particularly after that."
By attributing Mr. Buchanan's anti-Jewish com-
ments to an "iconoclastic temperament," said Mr.
Rosenthal, he was "leaning over so far that he's
landing on his tuchas. It's a compliment to be called

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

29

