Of all the thousands of reports done by Mike Wallace during his four decades with “60 Minutes,” few brought as much grief to the veteran journalist and those of us who worked with him as those involving Israel. And since it was difficult to write off Mike as an anti-Semite, he was frequently charged instead with being a self-hating Jew.

That accusation, of course, was utterly false — a despicable epithet, often employed by Jewish defenders of Israel to avoid recognizing the unpleasant specific issues raised by its critics. But there is no disputing that Mike, who died April 7 at 93, raised questions few others were willing to ask about some of the basic implications of Israel’s emergence.

Open gallery view Mike Wallace, Co-Editor '60 Minutes', and CBS NEWS Correspondent is pictured in this 2001 CBS photograph. Wallace died at the age of 93, the network said on April 8, 2012. Credit: Reuters

As a producer on “60 Minutes,” I worked with Mike for more than 26 years, and researched, reported and wrote several segments about Israel in which he was the on-camera reporter. Among the first of the pieces we did together was one on the Arabs of Israel that depicted their status as second-class citizens in what was supposed to be a democratic though Jewish state. Others included a story on Israel’s arms sales and a hard-hitting piece on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Read more at the Forward.

