Earlier this month, CAMERA sent an alert to our members and posted an article on our website regarding Tavis Smiley and his interview with radical anti-Israel activist Miko Peled, which was aired on PBS. During the interview, Peled made several false claims that were not corrected or challenged by his host. Many of our letter-writers wrote to Smiley, as well as to the PBS Ombudsman, Michael Getler.

Getler responded in a column late last week, in which he linked to our article and discussed our critiques. He agreed that Smiley could have challenged Peled more, and that he “could have bounced some of Peled’s most controversial assertions off on his follow-up guest, Rabbi Leder, which Smiley did not do.” Getler also noted that he forwarded CAMERA’s critique to Smiley.

Although Smiley did not respond, he will have hopefully taken the critique under consideration and will think about these issues before bringing similar guests to his show in the future.

In his blog post, Getler also published excerpts from many of the letters that CAMERA members and others sent in. Below are the letters as Getler published them:

The guest, Miko Peled, on the show made so many incorrect assertions that it would take a very long letter to point out all of them. Mr. Smiley, you, as an informed journalist, should have at least questioned, if not corrected, some of them. Peled’s description of Israel as an apartheid state has no basis in fact. In an apartheid state the oppressed do not have recourse to the courts nor do they have equal transit and health opportunities. Patently untrue in Israel.

Describing Israel as a “union between racism and colonialism” ignored the fact that Jews are indigenous to Israel and have been a presence in Jerusalem since 1004 BC! The assertion that Palestinians get only 12 hours a week of water may be true but their water is controlled by the Palestinian Water Authority. Israel has nothing to do with it. These, and many other, statements of Mr. Peled are not surprising in view of his past statements. Minimal research would have shown this. It is necessary to correct these mis-statements to maintain PBS’ claim to journalistic integrity.

Lawrence H. Levine, Pleasantville NY
(Ombudsman’s Note: Peled has likened Israel treatment of Palestinians to apartheid but not on this program.)
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I am writing to protest the content and tone of your [Tavis Smiley’s] interview with Miko Peled on 2/2/17. Miko Peled is well known as an anti-Israel extremist who frequently veers into anti-semitic territory. For example on your show he termed Jewish history a “myth,” denied that Jews have a right to self-determination via a state of their own, and repeatedly libeled Israel’s water policies towards the Palestinians.

Had you been fulfilling your role as a talk show host with some degree of objectivity and concern for the truth, you could have pointed out archeological evidence for Jewish history in Israel which is abundant, including the Western Wall of Solomon’s Temple. You could have pointed out that denying Jews the right to national self-determination essentially meets the U.S. State Department’s definitions of antisemitism. You could have pointed out that Israel supplies Palestinians with twice the water specified in the Oslo Accords, and that Palestinians would have even more water if they stopped refusing hookups to Israeli water infrastructure in their opposition to “normalization,” and stopped refusing to use effluent drip irrigation techniques employed by Israel to conserve water.

Instead you had another guest on, a Rabbi who weakly offered some minor corrections and whose stance seemed to reflect the typically misguided, left-of-center utopian fantasy that Israeli and Palestinian actions have been morally and politically equivalent. In fact Israel has made great concessions of land and rights to Palestinians in search of peace, and has been met with unceasing terrorism and refusals of generous peace offers. This is because the true and only goal of the Palestinians is the destruction of Israel…If your purpose was to provide your listeners with accurate information, you could have corrected or challenged Peled’s falsehoods. You could have had an additional guest on 2/2/17 to forcefully and effectively respond to Peled.

Daniel H. Trigoboff, Ph.D, Williamsville, NY
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I am disturbed about Tavis Smiley’s program with Miko Peled in which Peled made false statements about Israel that went unchallenged by Smiley. Several of these false statements include calling Jewish history a myth, calling Israel an illegitimate state, calling the Haganah a terrorist group even as he justified terrorism against Israelis and perpetuated the falsehoods about the water libel. When PBS knowingly invites radicals to appear on their shows, the host should do their homework and be prepared to aggressively challenge their narratives and false claims. Smiley should announce corrections of Peled’s false statements on his show, particularly the implication that Israel denies water to Palestinians and that the Haganah was a terrorist organization.

Charlestown, MA
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Almost every phrase that came out of Mr. Peled’s mouth had some disinformation that had a single goal: to portray Israel as an illegitimate state based on some mythical story and to portray Israelis as bunch of evil racist white Europeans oppressing indigenous population.

Here few most outrageous lies that I heard in the interview:
1) Jews suddenly showed up few decades ago and took land from the people who lived there forever. FALSE! To say something like that is to disregard well established historic and archaeological facts. Jews have always lived in Israel, despite regular massacres perpetrated against them by Arab Muslims, crusaders, Turks and numerous others. 2) There have never been a Palestinian nation. This nation was invented in 1960’s in Moscow by the Soviets. Those who call themselves “Palestinians” now are in fact a conglomeration of different nationalities, most of which came to the area in the middle of 19th century as migrant workers. The rest settled there between 1948 and 1967 by the Jordanian King in violation of Forth Geneva Convention after Jordan (with the blessing of England) illegally captured West Bank in 1948. 3) Few Bedouins came to Judea from Arabia and are not indigenous people. Israel has always tried to accommodate Bedouins and their lifestyle…Most Bedouins are loyal Israeli citizens.

Valery Tsimmerman, MD
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The Tavis Smiley talk show with Miko Peled is a new low in responsible broadcasting. The selection of Rabbi Steve Leder as an ineffective “balanced view” indicates, at best, a pathetically inept PBS. In light of other broadcasts with overt slants, any thinking person surmises the worst: PBS’s actions are only open-minded to accusation about Israel. PBS open-mindedness has apparently allowed the facts and their brains to fall away – neither are used.

Hillel Hammerman, New York, NY
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On February 2, Tavis Smiley hosted Miko Peled, an extreme anti-Israel activist who has made outrageous statements about Israel and claimed that Jews have no history there. Peled falsely claimed that the Haganah was a terrorist group, but he does not accept the idea that Israeli Jews have any right to defend themselves from real terrorists. Mr. Peled claims he can’t be anti-Semitic because he is Jewish, but he is on record making statements against Jews, and being technically Jewish does not stop someone from hating Jews.

Forest Hills, NY
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In your recent broadcast by T. Smiley, the well-known Mr. Anti-Semite and Anti-anything-Jewish Paled was invited. I know the Freedom of Speech and Right to Expression are very important. But why invite the well-known hater to the program with the moderator who is either badly prepared, or sympathetic to Mr. Paled views, or simply intellectually lazy? And even if Mr. Tavis’s sympathies are with Palestinian Arabs — he has no right to reveal it in his work as Journalist.

Dr. R. Ogulnik
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When you have anti-Semites like Miko Peled on your show why don’t you mention the wise and prescient words of Dr. Martin Luther King JR spoken in December 1967: “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism.” Also why don’t you mention that the Obama State Department stated that it is anti-Semitic to claim you oppose the State of Israel, but not its policies. Your silence when confronted with anti-Semitic drivel raises the issue of whether you agree with the drivel.

Richard Sherman, Margate, FL

To join CAMERA’s letter-writing team, sign up here.

One common narrative in media reports about Israel is that Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid. The Brookings Institution’s Shibley Telhami, for example, made the claim in Newsweek in September (“Is America Giving Too Much Aid to Israel? Key Poll Findings,” September 16, 2016). That same month – the month that the most recent U.S. aid package to Israel was finalized – CNN wrote “the US has made Israel its largest recipient of military assistance for decades…” and the New York Times called Israel “already the largest recipient of American aid…”
(“Largest-ever US military aid package to go to Israel,” and “U.S. Finalizes Deal to Give Israel $38 Billion in Military Aid,” both September 13, 2016).

In the past, CAMERA has been one of the few to question this conventional wisdom. In 2006, CAMERA’s Alex Safian wrote that the costs of U.S. military personnel stationed in Europe and Asia “are gigantic costs that truly dwarf what we spend on aid to Israel.” He noted at the time that Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, in their paper that year lambasting “The Israel Lobby,” ignored the tremendous financial cost of U.S. troops abroad.

Now, the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies has reexamined this claim. Professor Hillel Frisch has written:

The response to the charge [that, at $3.1B per year, Israel is the largest recipient of US military aid] is simple: Israel is not even a major beneficiary of American military aid. The numerical figure reflects official direct US military aid, but is almost meaningless compared to the real costs and benefits of US military aid – which include, above all, American boots on the ground in the host states.

There are 150,500 American troops stationed in seventy countries around the globe. This costs the American taxpayer an annual $US85-100 billion, according to David Vine, a professor at American University and author of a book on the subject. In other words, 800-1,000 American soldiers stationed abroad represent US$565-665 million of aid to the country in which they are located.

Once the real costs are calculated, the largest aid recipient is revealed to be Japan, where 48,828 US military personnel are stationed. This translates into a US military aid package of over US$27 billion (calculated according to Vine’s lower estimation). Germany, with 37,704 US troops on its soil, receives aid equivalent to around US$21 billion; South Korea, with 27,553 US troops, receives over US$15 billion; and Italy receives at least US$6 billion.

The post-World War II agreement between the U.S. and Japan, pursuant to which the U.S. stations troops there, includes a “U.S. pledge to defend Japan in the event of an attack.” It wasn’t until 2015 that the agreement was updated to permit Japan to come to the aid of the U.S. or other allies. It’s clear, therefore, that Japan directly benefits from U.S. troops stationed in its country, at U.S. taxpayer expense.

As Professor Frisch explained, the in-kind military aid given to many nations around the world, including Kuwait, Qatar, and the Baltic states, puts U.S. service members on the line. In contrast, the cash aid given to Israel puts no U.S. service members in danger.

A January 28 piece about the city of Hebron in The Atlantic by Zach Dorfman contains a few errors and omissions, some more egregious than others, but also includes an unusual moment of honesty about the settlements there.

The most glaring omission in the piece comes after Dorfman details the Oslo II agreement, including that in that agreement, “Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) formally agreed to the terms an independent Palestinian state [sic] by 1999.” He omits, however, that such a state was offered to, and rejected by, the Palestinians three times. While it’s unfortunately commonplace for journalists to ignore Israeli peace offers, in this case the omission is particularly bad because the implication is that Israel agreed to Palestinian independence and then reneged on that agreement, when in fact it was the Palestinians’ own leaders that turned down statehood.

Another issue is Dorfman’s statement that “Jews believe the Temple Mount, where the mosque now stands, is where the two great Jewish temples were once located.” The statement that “Jews believe” that the Temple Mount is the location of the two ancient Jewish Temples implies that this is something that is legitimately in question, something that can be subjectively believed or not. In fact, as CAMERA has noted in the past, there is ample archeological evidence of the Temples, and there are “no credible scholars who question the existence of the two temples or who deny that they stood somewhere on the Temple Mount.”

Turning to Hebron, the main topic of the article, Dorfman recounts that he “asked a senior Israeli military official … about the IDF’s efforts to prevent violence by settlers against Hebron’s Palestinian community.” He ignores, however, the spates of violence against Hebron’s Jewish community that ensued particularly after the signing of the Hebron Protocol in 1997 and in the early 2000’s when Shuhada Street was briefly reopened. This is especially notable because Dorfman discusses both Shuhada Street and the Hebron Protocol in some detail.

Dorfman makes a basic error when he asserts that Jewish settlers returned to Hebron in 1979. In fact, Jews returned to Hebron to reconstitute the ancient community there almost immediately after the Six-Day War, on the eve of Passover in 1968. (Dorfman may possibly be conflating the 1968 event, in which Jews checked in to a Hebron hotel and initially refused to leave, eventually establishing the adjacent town of Kiryat Arba, with the 1979 establishment of the Committee of the Jewish Community of Hebron.)

Dorfman also claims that the December passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 “reaffirm[ed] long-standing international consensus: that Israel’s settlement-building in the territories it has occupied since 1967 is illegal under international law.” He then adds parenthetically that “[h]istorically, U.S. officials have massaged the issue by calling settlements ‘obstacles to peace’ and refrained from explicitly referencing their illegality.” In fact, however, it is Dorfman that is “massaging” the issue. As CAMERA has shown repeatedly, successive US administrations have not considered the settlements illegal. And his description of then-Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech following that vote as “largely recapitulating U.S. policy,” is contradicted by the Washington Post’s fact-checker.

At the same time, Dorfman includes some history that is rarely discussed. He writes that Hebron was home to a Jewish community for centuries, and that the community persisted until a bloody 1929 pogrom in which a “mob of Arabs traveled house-to-house, killing 67 Jews and wounding scores, wiping out the city’s Jewish community.” He includes a witness’s account of one incident of more recent, fatal violence perpetrated against the Jews of Hebron. He also includes the information that Hebron, the site of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, is a holy city to Jews.

Most notable, however, is the very rare acknowledgement of the real reason that withdrawal of the IDF would necessitate removal of the Jewish settlers. He writes:

In any future peace deal, the IDF would likely be required to uproot over 75,000 Jews from the West Bank, some of them religious ideologues, from their homes near some of the holiest places in their faith. In this equation, the settlers of Hebron seem unlikely to voluntarily quit their second-holiest site. This is the paradox: The Jews of Hebron cannot leave, but neither can they stay. If the IDF withdraws—as it must under any future peace deal—the radical settlers of Hebron and elsewhere could face another massacre, another 1929.

In contrast, no journalists appear to have questioned then-Secretary Kerry’s claim in his December 28 sunset speech about Israel and the Palestinian territories that:

Now, you may hear from advocates that the settlements are not an obstacle to peace because the settlers that don’t want to leave can just stay in Palestine like the Arab Israelis who live in Israel. But that misses a critical point, my friends; the Arab Israelis are citizens of Israel, subject to Israel’s law. Does anyone here really believe that the settlers will agree to submit to Palestinian law in Palestine?

The question of whether Kerry had any basis for the claim that Jews would be unwilling to live under Palestinian law, or the question of whether such an assumed unwillingness to live under Palestinian sovereignty was really what would prevent them from doing so, doesn’t seem to have been addressed in the mainstream media. Though Dorfman still ignores statements by Palestinian leadership that Israelis won’t be permitted to stay in a future state, he deserves credit for the candid admission that it is not Jews’ willingness to live under Palestinian sovereignty that causes a problem. Rather, what complicates efforts at partition is the danger to any Jews that would stay behind in such a deal.

After CAMERA researcher Gilead Ini highlighted the New York Times’ double standard with respect to Israel in an article in The Tower, letter-writer D. Lubinsky sent the following to that newspaper:

Dear NY Times,

In recent articles you refer to “occupied Palestinian territory” rather than “disputed land” or even “occupied West Bank.” Why does the Times use such distorted terms against Israel and no other country?

You don’t talk of Kashmir as “occupied Pakistani territory” or “occupied Cyprus” or “occupied Cypriot territory” for the Turkish controlled part of the island, nor use analogous terms on Tibet, Kurdistan, Western Sahara …

How long will it take the NY Times to stop its singling out of Israel? There never was a Palestinian state in the West Bank and when Jordan controlled that land till 1967, it did not talk of it as Palestinian territory. Moreover, Israel conquered it in a war of survival, and was prepared to hand it over to Palestinian leadership, if the latter were only prepared to agree to a peace that would end the conflict and allow a permanent Israel with definite boundaries.

In no other conflict, is so much bias directed at the party that was repeatedly attacked (namely Israel) over vitally strategic land, conquered in a war of survival, and that, if handed to implacable foes, would lead not to peace, but to more attacks – as stated openly by Palestinian leaders. How long will it take the NY Times to live up to a semblance of fairness?

D. Lubinsky

After CAMERA researchers highlighted the fact that an AFP reporter doubles as a Fatah politician, one of our letter-writers, Daniel H. Trigoboff, Ph.D., sent the following letter to AFP:

To The Editor,

A central policy of Agence France-Presse reads, “Truth, impartiality and plurality are Agence France-Presse’s golden rules. These values guarantee rigorous, verified news, free from political or commercial influence.” Unfortunately in your employment of Nasser Abu Baker, you are in violation of your own policy. This is because in addition to reporting on Palestinian affairs for you, he was a candidate for the Fatah Council, and leads a campaign to boycott Israel.

Therefore the chances his reports will be impartial and free from political bias are precisely zero. This has been reflected in numerous slanted, inaccurate, and anti-Israel falsehoods in his articles for AFP on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Abu Baker has also advocated boycotting Israeli reporters, in inflammatory propaganda which has compromised their safety. As a result few Israeli reporters have safe access to Palestinian areas, which are therefore insufficiently covered in the media.

Employing Abu Baker as your reporter makes a mockery of AFP policy, and contaminates AFP news coverage with fanatical anti-Israel bias. The French Resistance journalists who founded AFP in 1944, in service of journalism uncontaminated by tyranny, would surely disapprove of Abu Baker’s status in your organization. So will anyone else who values even a shred of journalistic ethics.

Daniel H. Trigoboff, Ph.D.

Since the “knife intifada,” as it’s become known, began in the fall of 2015, we’ve been hearing the narrative that says that “Palestinian despair” or “Palestinian frustration” over Israel’s military administration of the West Bank is the cause. As CAMERA and CAMERA’s affiliate BBC Watch have noted before, this is a PLO-endorsed talking point. Yet, it’s been adopted by the mainstream American media.

Last month, for example, at the Washington Post, William Booth wrote that “the year-long wave of Palestinian violence against Israeli soldiers and civilians has been carried out mostly by teenagers armed with knives or adults who use their families’ cars to ram into pedestrians. Palestinians are frustrated by the almost 50-year military occupation and motivated by personal, religious and nationalist reasons to attack Israelis.”

In July, after two deadly attacks in the West Bank – the stabbing to death of Hallel Yaffa Ariel and the shooting of Rabbi Michael Mark – the New York Times wrote, “the recent attacks by Palestinians have been fueled in part by incendiary posts on social media and by militant groups urging more violence. But they also reflect growing despair by young Palestinians in particular over lives constrained by Israel’s decades-long military occupation and their own rudderless leadership.” Although the article did quote Israeli government officials blaming incitement, this sentence was in the reporter’s voice.

The month prior, after a shooting at a Tel Aviv café killed four Israelis, Rory Jones at the Wall Street Journal wrote, “The shooting reflected the despair young Palestinians feel over the lack of concrete steps toward establishing a Palestinian state, relatives of the men said.”

So fixated on this myth are they, that when actual evidence is uncovered to contradict this version of events, the media can’t even see it.

Last week David Bedein of the Israel Resource News Agency discussed the results of a review of 240 Palestinian children’s textbooks used in 400 UNRWA schools, including in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, as well as in Gaza. According to the Jerusalem Post, he found that the books “prepar[e] … children for war.”

The Post reported that Bedein found, for example, “a math word problem asking students to use variables, including the number of Jews killed during the first and second intifadas,” as well as this poem:

Hearing [weapons] clash is pleasant to my ear
And the flow of blood gladdens my soul
As well as a body thrown upon the ground
Skirmished over by the desert predator
By your life! This is the death of men
And whoever asks for a noble death – this is it!”

These books, moreover, have been approved by the US government.

“In all the books you have right of return and armed struggle being taught. Even in math books,” the Jerusalem Post quoted Bedein saying. Another scholar who worked on the study, Dr. Arnon Groiss, told the Post that the books, including books on history, geography, Islamic education, and language exercises, “encourage violent struggle for the liberation of Palestine, which they consider all of Israel – including Haifa and Jaffa – and the right of return….”

None of the above-mentioned news outlets have seen fit to prominently cover Bedein’s findings — findings that undermine their narrative. Is it any wonder that the media finds itself in crisis of late?