The takeaway from this whole affair is that Palestinians are not worthy of defense. They’re not worthy of inclusion. They’re not worthy to speak. Mainstream media elite figures like Robert Wright and Andrew Sullivan are defending a very safe position: white, Jewish and Israeli voices should have freedom of expression and amplification. That’s nothing new.

Notably Armin Rosen, The Atlantic intern rebuked by Wright for the attack on Mondoweiss, had sharpened his teeth while a student in the Jewish Theological Seminary/Columbia University School of General Studies program. As a budding journalist, Rosen wrote several articles smearing Professor Joseph Massad (and others) and demanding that the university not give Massad tenure.

Aside from the sheer audacity of Rosen to consider himself more qualified than Columbia’s faculty to judge Massad’s scholarly contributions, Rosen recently admitted that he has not read any of Massad’s books except “small parts” of Desiring Arabs which Rosen trashed in one of his articles.

Few came forward to defend Massad’s academic freedom against the public McCarthyite campaign in which Rosen was an enthusiastic participant. Had more people paid attention at the time, no one could be surprised by the “neo-McCarthyite” tactics that Rosen brought with him to The Atlantic.

The illusion of “new media” is simply reproducing old media exclusion when it’s controlled and managed by old media personalities. The same elites simply use new the technology and new forms to extend their control of the parameters of discourse and to exclude actual stakeholders from all discussion and representation.