Writer Amos Oz is Non-Wizard at NPR’s On Point

The syndicated National Public Radio (NPR) program On Point has broadcast numerous unbalanced talk shows dealing with the Middle East (examples — here, here, here, here, here and here). Such was the case in the Oct. 31, 2011 broadcast in which host Tom Ashbrook’s guest was Israeli writer Amos Oz, who is touring the United States promoting his new book, Scenes From Village Life.

Near the end of the program, during the call-in segment, listeners heard caller “Daniel’s” anti-Israel polemic:

I believe the mass expulsion of eighty percent of the Palestinian population in 1947, the destruction of 450 villages in Palestinian towns, the continued refusal to come to terms with that legacy is the guilt that is being (indistinct) in that digging [alluding to a metaphor in Oz’s new book] down below the structure of Israel.

Mr. Oz responded:

Well, I don’t believe in original sin. I think in 1947, hundreds of thousands of Arabs were uprooted by the Israelis because there was a massive attack from the Arab world and from the Palestinians aiming at murdering Israel the day it was born. So, if there is an original sin it is divided between the two parties…

While Mr. Oz is correct in characterizing the intent of the Arab world to destroy Israel, he (as well as the caller) is mistaken in asserting that the majority of Arabs who fled in 1947-48 were expelled or “uprooted” by the Israelis.

The comprehensive CAMERA article Palestinian Arab and Jewish Refugees citing authoritative source material, shows that in the wake of Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, the overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arab refugees were not expelled by Israeli forces. But a larger number of refugees, Jews who had resided in Arab countries for many generations, were, in fact, forced to flee their native lands.

The caller’s gross distortion, a canard, regarding “The destruction of 450 villages” — which Mr. Oz did not refute — likewise is not supported by the historical record. In most cases, the villages either were abandoned in 1947 and 1948 by Arabs who fled what became Israel, often to escape the fighting caused by attacks against Jewish villages and towns, first by Palestinian Arab “irregulars” and then by five invading Arab armies, or destroyed in fighting during the war. The CAMERA report cited above describes the circumstances of the abandonment of Arab localities:

The Palestinian leadership and elite set an example for the rest of society by evacuating their towns and villages early during the conflict, usually long before fighting neared their towns, and some even before the civil war [between Arabs and Jews in British Mandatory Palestine] began. (Or, as commander of the Arab Legion John Bagot Glubb put it, “villages were frequently abandoned even before they were threatened by the progress of war.”) This behavior not only shattered the morale of the Palestinian masses, but also, in the words of historian Shabtai Teveth, “amounted to clear — albeit unwritten — instructions to flee Palestine.”

Once again, an NPR program on Israel presents an unrepresentative perspective without challenge, and permits callers to use it as a megaphone for anti-Israel slanders. On Point was “Off Balance.”