Israel Critic Rami Khouri is Upstaged by an NPR Listener

National Public Radio, as in the April 10, 2012 broadcast of the Talk of the Nation call-in show, persists in relying on Lebanon-based journalist Rami Khouri as a guest on discussion shows in which he frequently conveys misinformation about Israel and the Middle East. CAMERA has detailed Khouri’s tendency to snipe at Israel here, here and here.

According to Harvard University,“Rami George Khouri is a Palestinian-Jordanian and U.S. citizen whose family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth. He is director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. His journalistic work includes writing books and an internationally syndicated column, and he also serves as editor at large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper.”

But Khouri’s patrons including Harvard University (Belfer Center), American University of Beirut, PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, as well as NPR, take no public notice of his false equivalence, lumping Israeli behavior – essentially that of self-defense – with that of anti-democratic Arab/Islamic regimes that threaten their neighbors and repress their own citizens.

Khouri’s slanted perspective on the Jewish state often echoes institutional Arab anti-Israel propaganda. Examples are his Daily Star commentaries in 2012 on March 21 and March 10.

Early in the April 10 thirty-minute discussion of the turmoil in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, Khouri, while downplaying the issues of enmity between Sunni and Shia Muslims and – Muslim antagonism toward the Christian Arab minority, declares that the Arab uprisings are about wanting “to have something closer to Belgium or Switzerland or even the United States, where people can more or less live a decent life knowing that there’s a single standard of law that applies to everybody.” This despite popular support and voter turn out for Islamists and, as in Libya, where public opinion surveys show a majority more interested in Islamic rule than democracy.

At the discussion’s midpoint, Khouri aims his customary defamation dart at Israel in listing those he alleges are responsible for conditions causing the uprisings: “It’s not only the Arabs who need to be accountable but foreign armies that invade the region, occupation forces like the Israelis and others, the Iranians, the Turks…”

Khouri added, “An overwhelming majority of Syrians want this regime to change” and suggested that the promise of the new leaders emerging in Syria and elsewhere – to respect human rights of all citizens – can be relied upon.

But Khouri is upstaged by a woman calling from Pennsylvania offering a far different perspective:

I’m a Syrian-American. I grew up in the United States. My parents decided to leave Syria when Hafez al-Assad was in power. Of course the heir apparent was always his son Basil. It was not Bashar. Basil was killed. And then when Bashar came into power, my parents decided to move back to Syria. We are Christians. I have to say that we had a nice life. I had been going back and forth every holiday to celebrate. In Syria we have friends who are of all ethnic backgrounds – Alawites, Shia, Muslims, Sunni Muslims, Armenians in the north. I have to say that we’ve had freedom of religion. And things actually have been quite good under Bashar al-Assad.

I’m afraid of what’s going to happen afterwards. The people in the streets are Islamists and we don’t want an Islamic country. It’s now a secular government. Yes, it’s not perfect but the curse of the Middle East is its rulers, unfortunately. I’ll tell you whatever is going to come after him is going to be far much worse. Look at what’s happening in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood said they’d never float a candidate for president. Now, they’re doing it. They will always go back on their words. It’s a shame but it’s true. But the majority that I know – and I know a lot of people in Damascus – are just hunkered down in their houses right now, and they’re afraid to go in the streets, but they’re supporting Bashar al-Assad.

Host Neal Conan noted that “The record for Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities has not always been happy as these regimes have changed in many Arab states.”

Khouri countered, only slightly backing off his previous assurance of the reliability of Islamist public declarations of respect for human rights:

Well, we haven’t really had many experiences with regime changes and what the caller is saying is correct to a certain extent where you do have a lot of people who support the regime. Some of them feel that a different regime might actually not give everyone the same opportunities. But the problem is that, like in Iraq, it was the same thing. You had Christians who could do everything they want – Jews, Christians. And I’m a Christian myself and – but the fact is that an overwhelming majority of the entire population had no real civil rights or political rights or equal opportunity and there was massive deterioration in quality, in economic access to resources and job opportunities … About the Islamists taking over, one of the things we have to really follow very closely to what they are saying – including the Muslim Brothers in Syria who have made some statements – they are all coming out now with very clear statements about their commitment to secular governments. These are Muslim people – the majority of Arabs are Muslims like the majority of Americans are Christians – but they recognize the rights of people who are different minorities and they are committed to a secular government. And this is something that has to be monitored very, very closely.

(Click here to listen to the entire discussion).

Khouri’s projection that Islamists like those in Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood are committed to secular government and minority rights is untested and quite possibly, like his chronic sniping at Israel, unfounded. His claim that Iraqi Jews – forced out decades ago – and Iraqi Christians, who in large numbers have fled post-Saddam Hussein intimidation and murder by Muslim Iraqis “could do everything they want” is nonsensical. Nevertheless, he remains a popular resource for NPR and others.

Khouri can be contacted at [email protected] and NPR can be contacted here.