From: Eric Rozenman [[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2011 5:50 PM To: jkaplan@cpb; Kaplan, Joel Cc: ombudsmen Subject: Additional NPR examples for review
October 27, 2011
Joel Kaplan Ombudsman Corporation for Public Broadcasting 401 Ninth Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20005
Dear Joel:
Regarding our e-mails concerning the objectivity and balance statute and additional examples of National Public Radio bias in Arab-Israeli news reporting and commentary, let me suggest you also review the following:
* The September 27 item on NPR’s “The two-way” news blog, by Eyder Peralta with information from the network’s Lourdes Garcia-Navarro in Israel. Speaking of an Israeli decision to approve new residential construction, Garcia-Navarro says “the homes will be built in Gilo, a huge east Jerusalem settlement.”
Here is a July 16, 2009 correction CAMERA obtained from The Washington Post regarding characterization of Gilo, a Jewish neighborhood built on previously undeveloped land in southern Jerusalem:
“A June 26 A-section article referred to Gilo as a Jewish settlement. It is a Jewish neighborhood built on land captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and annexed to Israel as part of Jerusalem's expanded municipal boundaries. The United Nations has not acknowledged the annexation.”
The point is not only about Gilo in isolation, but also to note that when NPR errs or uses unqualified partisan language in its Arab-Israeli coverage, those errors and usages virtually always skew one way, echoing or reinforcing the anti- Israel narrative.
* Garcia-Navarro immediately adds, “The United Nations and the European Union criticized the moved today, restating their position that settlement activity is illegal under international law.” No doubt U.N. and E.U. officials did restate their position. Conspicuously omitted is the Israeli position, that new Jewish communities in the disputed territories not violate international law. Relevant provisions include:
Affirmation by the World War I allies at the San Remo Conference (1920) of Jewish rights in the land of Israel; League of Nations Palestine Mandate, Article 6, which encourages “close Jewish settlement” on the land west of the Jordan River; U.N. Charter Article 80 (the “Palestine article”), which upholds Mandate Article 6; and U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973), which call for negotiations to reach “secure and recognized boundaries” and do not require Israel to relinquish all the territory gained in the Six-Day War.
Rather than parrot conventional wisdom, an NPR more committed to news than narrative might explore whether the United Nations, in particular, is not undermining international law associated with it and its predecessor by its declarations of settlement illegality.
* The September 26 “Morning Edition” interview by David Greene of Turkish Prime Minister Recip Tayyib Erdogan (‘Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan Blasts Syria, Israel”) claims that “relations between the two states [Israel and Turkey] have been spiraling downward since last year, when Israeli commandoes raided a Turkish aid flotilla headed for the Gaza Strip, killing nine Turkish citizens.”
Turkish-Israeli relations were “spiraling downward” before that, out of a policy choice by Erdogan and his AKP party. Erdogan’s infamous tongue-lashing of Israeli President Shimon Peres – “you know very well how to kill” – at the January, 2009 Davos gathering red-flagged already deteriorating ties. Turkey has been reorienting itself from the West to the Arab-Islamic Middle East, at times championing Iran, Hamas and Syria, since Erdogan and his “moderate Islamist” AKP took office in 2002. A year later Turkey denied the United States use of bases for troop movement and supply as part of the American-led coalition invasion of Iraq. After winning re-election in 2007, Erdogan has accelerated an unraveling of Turkish secularism, suppressing opponents in the military and communications media and packing the courts. In this context the Turkish government encouraged or acquiesced in the 2010 Gaza “aid flotilla” – in reality an attempt led by the Islamist Turkish charity IHH, which reportedly has Hamas connections, and the anti-Israel International Solidarity Movement – to break Israel’s legal blockade of the Strip.
Interview questions like “are you prepared to help the United States regain its credibility in the region?” and “has the image of the United States been damaged by opposition to Palestinian statehood” at the United Nations implicitly accept the interviewee’s allegations and invite restatement of them without questioning underlying premises. Maybe U.S. credibility has suffered from malign interpretations (“America is at war with Islam”). Maybe policy trumps image in opposing a unilateral U.N. declaration of Palestinian statehood (a unilateral declaration violates the requirements for a negotiated two-state agreement).
But Greene’s interview does not begin inform listeners about the underlying reality of Turkish-Israel relations or the transformation of Turkey under Erdogan. It does, as the audio posted at www.npr.org
* On September 15, in “Changing Middle East Leaves Israel Feeling Isolated,” Garcia-Navarro echoes Greene’s error in claiming that “Israel’s trouble with Turkey began last year when Israeli commandoes killed nine Turkish citizens on a ship ....” However, she more accurately notes that the ship “was part of a flotilla trying to break Israel’s sea blockade of the Gaza Strip. At least it is no longer an “aid flotilla.”
But Garcia-Navarro also states that “the Arab uprisings have given the Arab public a voice, and they are using it. And what many of them are saying is that they are angry at the continued occupation of Arab territory.” Here again NPR language parrots the Palestinian-Arab narrative regarding Israel’s “continued occupation of Arab territory.” So ingrained is this viewpoint in network coverage that cognitive dissonance might result if listeners were reminded: a) Israel gained the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in a war of self-defense in 1967 and retained them in a similar war in 1973; b) It remains the legitimate military occupational authority pending a negotiated settlement according to U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and subsequent related accords, including the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement; and c) Its presence is somewhat analogous to that of the World War II allies in post- war Germany, except that the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem are not and have not been the territory of any sovereign state, their status is disputed and so subject to negotiations and that Israel and the Jewish people, as noted above, have strong and recognized claims in them.
In addition, Garcia-Navarro’s one-dimensional explanation of Arab anger at Israel omits a pervasive, underlying factor: antisemitism. As University of Maryland Prof. Jeffrey Herf, among others, has pointed out (Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, Yale University Press, 2009), what began as a war-time expedient for the Third Reich in attempting to subvert Allied influence in the Middle East now echoes widely in anti-Jewish, anti-Israel claims made by parties both secular and Islamist. Middle East Media Research Institute (www.memri.org
A program repeatedly displaying NPR’s “stacked deck” approach to and resultant bias in Arab-Israeli coverage is “The Diane Rehm Show.”
* May 27, 2011, “Friday News Roundup - Hour 2” “The Diane Rehm Show” (aired daily on more than 150 NPR members stations). Guests: Nadia Bilbassy of Middle East Broadcast Center (MBC), an Arab news and entertainment channel; Moises Naim of El Pais newspaper (Spanish, recurrent anti-Israel slant) and James Kitfield of National Journal.
Rehm asked Bilbassy, who is originally from the Gaza Strip, “Why did President Obama decide to do this now [re-launch the Israeli-Palestinian peace effort]?” Bilbassy replied: “For one reason, he wanted to stop the Palestinians from going to the UN General Assembly in September and trying to get that board to recognize their right to have a state” and she characteristically blamed Israel for lack of progress in peace efforts and then said:
“And don’t forget, he's [President Obama] coming into election and we know where the donors come from. So – and this contributed – some people even think that Prime Minister Netanyahu invented [the controversy] to make Obama look really bad.”
This reference to “we know where the donors come from” sounds like an allusion to the canard of “Jewish money” illicitly influencing American politics. Whether it was or not, it was allowed to stand unchallenged. Bilbassy, speaking of Jewish Israelis living on Jewish-owned land in the ancient heartland of the Jewish people, Judea and Samaria (renamed the West Bank by Jordan after its occupation in 1948), also claimed without challenge:
“According to the fourth Geneva Convention, no occupying power has the right to move its citizen to an occupied land and settle them there.”
As CAMERA has noted, “the U.S. government, as well as others, presently hold the view that the settlements are not illegal and that the extent of Israeli withdrawal from the territories is subject to negotiation. There is no international law, including the fourth Geneva Convention, that prohibits Israel from building settlements. More than a year after Israel gained control of the territories as the result of an act of self-defense in 1967, Jews moved there of their own volition because of the historical and religious connection they felt, in some places reestablishing Jewish communities that had been destroyed in 1948 by Arab aggression. Arabs continue to live in these territories and their population continues to grow rapidly.” No Arabs were compelled to move from the West Bank by Israel, and Israel compelled no Israeli citizens to move into it; the fourth Geneva Convention – which applies only to sovereign territory of independent states – does not apply. But listeners to NPR’s “Diane Rehm Show” would never know that.
* May 23, 2011, “The Diane Rehm Show” provided another anti-Israel stacked deck. The program was titled “President Obama, the Middle East, and the Arab Spring.” Rehm provided a platform for the anti-Israel rhetoric of Hisham Melhem, a journalist for Arab newspapers and television. Melhem took advantage of his opportunity, criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu unprofessionally way:
"Look, this is Netanyahu. We know where Netanyahu comes from… President Bill Clinton … used the f-word [in the 1990s]." Melhem warned: "If the Israelis don't withdraw and allow a Palestinian state, in 20 years -- let me tell you something in terms of demography -- the majority of people who live in what is today Jordan, what is today West Bank and Gaza and Israel itself will be Palestinians. So you can kiss your Jewish state goodbye in that sense. It's going to be ipso facto bi-national state, whether you like it or not. And engaging in ethnic cleansing today is not going to be easy."
Melhem’s premise of a Middle East demographic doomsday scenario where Arabs will greatly out-populate Jews, like his other assertions, was accepted without question. Jordan, an independent country east of the Jordan River, on 77 percent of the original Palestine Mandate lands and with a majority Palestinian Arab population, has nothing to do with Israeli-Palestinian demography west of the Jordan River. In any case, an important challenge to Melhem’s doomsday scenario was ignored (“[According to] United Nations’ population forecasts: At constant fertility, Israel will have more young people by the end of this century than either Turkey or Iran, and more than Germany, Italy or Spain...[and] if present trends continue, Israel will be able to field the largest land army in the Middle East.”). At least one detailed study finds Palestinian Arab population and fertility rates over-estimated while Israeli Jewish fertility rates in the past decade have risen, in contrast with those of most developed countries ( http://blog.camera.org/archives/2009/10/jewisharab_fertility_gap_close.html ).
Further, Rehm’s guest misleadingly claims that Israel, rather than Palestinian refusal to negotiate directly, blocks a two-state solution.
No one represented Israeli views. The other guests were Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, which falsely presents itself as a pro-Israel organization (see, for example, http://blog.camera.org/archives/2009/08/the_scoop_on_j_streets_pollste.html); Lisa Anderson, president of American University in Cairo; and David Sanger, New York Times Middle East reporter.
* April 7, 2011, NPR’s “The Diane Rehm Show” featured “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in a New Arab World.” It was, as are many Rehm segments having to do with Israel, unbalanced and unobjective. Panelists were James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, pro-Arab activist; Aaron David Miller, former State Department Arab-Israeli negotiator; and Greg Myre, an NPR editor. Miller is well- versed and not anti-Israel, but he does not represent Israel or advocate official Israeli positions. A reading of the transcript of the hour-long discussion shows a relatively uniform, unquestioned point of view. Zogby’s pro-Palestinian, anti- Israeli assertions were not directly challenged by fellow panelists or Rehm.
She provides a banal, misleading characterization of Palestinian tactics: “The Palestinians have been waiting and pushing and waiting and hoping. Is what’s happening in the Arab world going to give them the opening they need to push further?” No hint that Palestinian leadership rejected, the first two times with the terror war of the second intifada, Israeli-U.S. and Israeli offers of a two- state solution in exchange for peace with Israel as a Jewish state in 2000, 2001 and 2008.
Zogby charges “there were crimes before the Gaza war in 2008 and there have been crimes by Israel since the Gaza war. And [U.N. inquiry commission chair Richard] Goldstone’s retraction of one single point in this does not nullify Israel’s behavior or its responsibility for what it’s done to the people of Gaza.”
No hint that Goldstone’s retraction was of the U.N. inquiry’s central libel against Israel, that it targeted civilians in the December 2008 - January 2009 “Operation Cast Lead” against Hamas and affiliated terrorist in the Gaza Strip. No hint that Gaza had been used as a base from which to fire thousands of mortars and rockets at Israeli targets, actual war crimes. No hint that the people of Gaza elected Hamas in 2006.
I hope you find these additional examples helpful. To make clear, CAMERA does not charge that every NPR segment dealing with Arab-Israeli news or commentary is biased in an anti-Israel manner. Rather, an anti-Israel, pro-Arab bias recurs chronically in such coverage, highlighted by implicit acceptance of “the Palestinian narrative” and its language and by “stacking the deck” when it comes to sources, speakers and viewpoints. While this would be objectionable in the private news media, it is unacceptable and essentially illegal in publicly-funded media.
Thanks again for your interest. Please don’t hesitate to contact me or CAMERA’s Boston headquarters (617 789-3672).
Sincerely, Eric (202) 626-0042