Yes, Sherri Mandell, For Journalists, We are Just Pawns

Koby Mandell

My story isn't as horrific as the one that Sherri Mandell tells:

How Brian Williams (and Tom Brokaw) betrayed my family
Read more: How Brian Williams (and Tom Brokaw) betrayed my family | Sherri Mandell | The Blogs | The Times of Israel http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/how-brian-williams-and-tom-brokaw-betrayed-my-family/#ixzz3RHVEAygE Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | How Brian Williams (and Tom Brokaw) Betrayed My Family

Just in case you've forgotten or just don't know who Sherri Mandell is, she is the mother of Koby Mandell, HaY"ad, who was brutally murdered, along with a friend, by Arab terrorists one day when they were hiking near their homes in Tekoa.

There's a line in her article that hit me like a deja vu hammer. Brian Williams asked Mandell and her husband if they had a gun. When they answered in the affirmative, Williams requested that they bring the gun so he could photograph them with it.

About thirty years ago, one day, someone, actually a handful of people knocked on our door. I was home with four out of our five children.

"Hello, we're from time ink."
"Time ink? I thought to myself. What's that."
I must have looked rather confused, because they quickly said:
"TIME Magazine."

Then I understood.

They came in to the small crowded house we lived in at the time. And they asked me questions. After three years in Shiloh I was pretty experienced in handling journalists, though I looked more like a harried housewife amateur.

Among the benign ordinary questions they asked, suddenly they asked if we had a gun.

"Yes," I answered.
"Can you show it to us?"

I had visions of a photograph of me with a gun and a baby on the cover of TIME Magazine. I may have an ego, but I also have common sense. Such a photo would not be good at all in terms of Hasbara, Israel's and more specifically Jews of YESHA's information campaign.

"I don't know where it is," was my reply.

A couple of weeks later I saw the article in the magazine. I wasn't mentioned at all. I consider it a draw. They couldn't find any way to make me look bad, so they left me out of their article.