CBS Article is Not Objective on Israel’s Security Barrier

A CBS article about the opening of subversive grafittist Banksy’s new hotel in Bethlehem demonstrates how a journalist can slant a controversial topic. Entitled “Banksy’s ‘hotel with the worst view’ opens in Bethlehem,” the article by Jerusalem-based reporter Robert Berger describes Israel’s security barrier, in his own words, as “Israel’s separation wall.”

This is neither the objective nor the accurate way of describing the controversial barrier, of which 90% is not a wall, but a fence. This is the term used by Palestinians and their supporters to refer to the barrier. And the reporter adopts it as his own.

Berger later refers to “security barrier” – in quotation marks – as a term used by Israelis to describe what the reporter himself terms “the wall. ” So why does he not similarly attribute the term “Israel’s separation wall” to Palestinians?

The reporter in his own words

With a play on words on the luxury Waldorf Astoria chain, this place is called the Walled Off Hotel, because it was built almost immediately next to Israel’s separation wall in the Palestinian-ruled city where Jesus Christ was born. [emphasis added]

The reporter attributing a claim

The Israeli government built the wall, or “security barrier” as the Israelis call it, more than a decade ago after a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings, with the aim of preventing terrorists from entering Israel. For the Palestinians, it’s a bleak symbol of Israeli occupation and what many consider apartheid. [emphasis added]

And while he reports Israel’s “aim” in building the barrier, Berger does not bother to mention its success in drastically reducing the number of terrorist attacks and Israelis killed. The number of terrorist attacks decreased by over 90%, and the numbers of Israelis wounded and murdered declined by 85% and 70% respectively, since the barrier was erected. Indeed, an Islamic Jihad leader acknowledged in an Arabic TV interview that the barrier created an obstacle to carrying out the terrorist group’s attacks.

In the same vein, the reporter cynically portrays Israel’s concern for the safety of its citizens by not allowing them to enter Palestinian-run areas as mere allegation:

Israel has banned its citizens from visiting Bethlehem and other Palestinian-controlled areas, purportedly due to fears for their safety. [emphasis added]

What he avoids mentioning is that the Israeli army policy preventing its citizens and tour guides from entering territories under the Palestinian Authority began in late 2000, in the wake of the kidnappings, murders and mutilation of the hapless Israelis who had wandered into Palestinian-controlled neighborhoods (Area A).

Perhaps the most horrifying example was the case of two IDF reservists who inadvertently entered Ramallah on October 13, 2000 and were brutally lynched by a frenzied mob. The bloody incident was caught on film by an Italian journalist. Israelis who witnessed this on television were shocked by the sheer barbarity of the attack and the realization of the danger inherent in entering these neighborhoods. While the Israeli Ministry of Defense gradually began to allow Arab Israelis to visit Area A cities after the second intifada ended, the Palestinian Authority continues to incite against Israeli Jews, and nearly 15 years after the Ramallah lynching, a PA parliament member honored the perpetrators’ families with plaques of honor. Israeli Jews are therefore still barred from entering this area.