{"id":10027,"date":"2009-08-24T11:25:49","date_gmt":"2009-08-24T19:25:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=10027"},"modified":"2009-08-24T11:25:49","modified_gmt":"2009-08-24T19:25:49","slug":"remembering-sidney-zion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=10027","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Sidney Zion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jason Maoz writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Sidney Zion, who died earlier this month at age 75, didn’t start out to be a writer, and he might never have become one if not for the 1962-63 newspaper strike – the longest in the city’s history and one that affected all the local dailies.<\/p>\n

In December 1962, Zion was a 29-year-old New Jersey lawyer. That month, he contributed a piece to a parody edition of the New York Post. The faux newspaper, called the New York Pest, sold well at otherwise empty newsstands.<\/p>\n

The article mimicked the style of legendary columnist Murray Kempton, and Post publisher Dorothy Schiff, far from being offended, offered Zion a job at the real paper.<\/p>\n

Zion would spend the rest of his life as a journalist – first as a reporter with the Post and then The New York Times, and later as a prolific freelance contributor to a wide array of publications and a columnist for the New York Post and the New York Daily News.<\/p>\n

Too much the iconoclast to pigeonhole politically, Zion nevertheless was a man whose instincts inclined leftward on most issues. But – and here is the great anomaly – on the Middle East he was virtually alone among secular journalists in proclaiming a historical narrative that was long the purview of Revisionist Zionists and anathema to mainstream Jewish liberals – namely, that it was the Irgun that blew the British out of Palestine while Ben-Gurion’s Jewish Agency worked with the occupiers.<\/p>\n

"Leave it to my Jews," Zion wrote upon the election of Menachem Begin in 1977. "They make a revolution and twenty-nine years later the leader of the revolution comes to power. First the collaborators, then the revolutionaries. The Hebrews don’t just learn it backwards, they do it backwards…."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jason Maoz writes: Sidney Zion, who died earlier this month at age 75, didn’t start out to be a writer, and he might never have become one if not for the 1962-63 newspaper strike – the longest in the city’s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,85],"tags":[18591,18592,18593,18589,1742,18590],"class_list":["post-10027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-israel","category-jason-maoz","tag-freelance-contributor","tag-historical-narrative","tag-jersey-lawyer","tag-murray-kempton","tag-new-york-daily-news","tag-sidney-zion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t