Michael Elkins
| Michael Elkins | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
Meyer Elkins January 22, 1917 New York, USA |
| Died | March 10, 2001 (aged 84) Jerusalem, Israel |
| Occupation | Journalist, broadcaster, and author |
| Employer | |
| Known for |
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| Spouse(s) | Martha Goldstein (marriage dissolved) |
| Children | one son |
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Michael Elkins (born New York, USA, 22 January 1917, died Jerusalem, Israel, 10 March 2001) was an American broadcaster and journalist who worked for the American network, CBS, for the magazine Newsweek and then for 17 years with the BBC. He was the first to report Israel's destruction of Arab air forces on the opening day of the Six-Day War in 1967. CBS did not trust his report and he left.
Elkins was the youngest of three sons of East European Jewish immigrants who made clothes in the sweatshops of the Lower East Side. He was embarrassed that his parents spoke Yiddish and that his father walked ahead of his mother in the street. He excelled at school and educated himself in libraries. He fell in with hoodlums in New York, then moved to the American West Coast as a union organiser before joining his brother Saul to write scripts in Hollywood. He worked in Europe in the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA during the second world war. In 1947 Elkins met Teddy Kollek in New York. Kollek was later mayor of Jerusalem. In 1947 he was organising illegal shipments of arms to the Jewish Haganah in Palestine. Elkins joined in. The FBI discovered his involvement and he and his wife, Martha, fled to Israel. They lived on a kibbutz, then moved a year later to Jerusalem.
Elkins began broadcasting with CBS in the USA in September 1956. He became the network's correspondent in Israel. The previous correspondent said he was returning to the United States because "nothing ever happens in Israel". A month later Britain and France invaded Suez as Israeli tanks moved into Sinai. Elkins was the first to report Israel's destruction of Arab air forces on the first day of the Six Day War. He telephoned CBS but it hesitated to broadcast his story. The BBC ran it. Elkins had come across a politician he knew. The politician directed him to the war-room. Elkins wrote the story but Israeli military censors delayed it. Elkins proposed a deal. He would hold back the story if the censors gave him permission to be the first to broadcast when it was cleared. They agreed. CBS sent him a one-liner: "You alone with Israeli victory. You'd better be right." Elkins visited New York in the autumn and called on CBS. He was congratulated for his scoop. "Get lost," he said. "I resign." He said he didn't want the job if they didn't trust him. The journalist David Sells said:
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Wikipedia