At CJR, Max Blumenthal has published an incisive piece of reporting showing that Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner is represented by an Israeli speakers bureau called Lone Star Communications that has rightwing bonafides, and that Bronner has several times reported on Lone Star’s clients. The Times issued a pro forma defense of Bronner, that it respects his professionalism and impartiality. Say, remember when the Times publicly rebuked contributor Daniel Ming for going to pro-Palestinian rallies when he was writing about Jewish Voice for Peace for the newspaper? Bronner had a son in the Israeli army, too. Does his enmeshment in Israeli society ever cross a line for the Times?

In early 2009, [Charley]Levine supplemented Lone Star’s operation by establishing a speakers bureau designed to arrange paid lectures for major media figures in Israel. His first speaker was Bronner, who he described in an e-mail to CJR as “a nominal friend and a terrific journalist.” Levine rounded out his roster of speakers with eight well-known Israeli media figures, including Haim Yavin, “founding father of Israel television news”; David Baker, “senior foreign press coordinator of the Israeli prime minister’s office—under four prime ministers”; and Amiel Ungar, “well-known spokesman of the settler movement in Judea and Samaria.” The speakers bureau section of the Lone Star site is illustrated with a photo of Levine and Bronner arm-in-arm….

Bronner says he does not share what he described as “Charley Levine’s rightist politics.” According to Levine’s bio on Lone Star’s website, he lives in a “suburb of Jerusalem.” That “suburb” is, in fact, the Jewish mega-settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, which cuts deep into the West Bank. “I see myself as a mainstream Israeli who believes first and foremost in the Zionist mission of the state of Israel, in free enterprise, in the rule of law, and in the twin democratic and Jewish pillars of this nation,” Levine wrote in an e-mail.

Levine’s client roster includes people and organizations identified with the Israeli political center, like Kadima USA. But Levine has not shied away from promoting people like Dov Hikind, a New York State Assemblyman and acolyte of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose terrorism-linked Kach Party is banned inside Israel. Another Lone Star client, Danny Danon, a member of the Knesset, argued this May in The New York Times’s op-ed section that Israel should annex large sections of the West Bank in response to the Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations. Lone Star handled publicity during a visit to Israel for longshot Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, who said at one point during his campaign that he supported loyalty oaths for Muslims seeking to serve in his administration. Lone Star coordinated the media for Glenn Beck’s recent “Restoring Courage” rally in Jerusalem. Beck is listed as a client. …

Among other Lone Star Communications clients that Bronner has covered or mentioned in the period since he joined Lone Star’s speaker’s bureau are The Israel Project, on September 4, 2009; NGO Monitor, on April 4, 2011; and Danny Danon, a conservative member of the Knesset, on May 20, 2011. He also did a piece on The Jewish National Fund—which Levine says is not on retainer, but which Lone Star has done occasional projects for—on March 12, 2009.