A July 18 Washington Journal call-in segment hosted by Steve Scully about the Malaysian airliner shot down over Ukraine generated several (more than one-fourth the total) calls from anti-Israel phoners, all of whom were indulged by the host. Scully and C-SPAN, the television network he plays a major role in, routinely tolerate if not encourage callers (and sometimes even guests) in on-air defamation of Jews and the Jewish state. This phenomenon, potentially seen by millions of Washington Journal viewers, is a chronic problem.

Scully mishandled the July 18 anti-Israel calls. This was in keeping with his history of media malpractice regarding such calls, especially his blatant collusion with a March 18, 2014 (7:09 AM) serial anti-Israel caller.

On July 18, Scully blatantly encouraged caller “Darrell” a serial anti-Israel caller who ranted, “…Maybe the Palestinians can get some of those missiles to use on Israel, F-16s that are slaughtering Palestinian everyday, not a peep from the media and people like you. Why don’t you do a special on Israel and what they are doing in Palestine?”

Scully agreeably responded: “Well, we have, caller; we brought that up with Shane Harris. It’ll be broadcast on Sunday focusing on the incursion of the Israeli military into Gaza. Did you want to watch that program by the way?” Darrell, seemingly pleased, replied, “What time is that on?”

Eliciting only silence from Scully, two other anti-Israel callers asserted mendaciously, “President Nasser of Egypt said in 1952 that they [the Israelis] do not want peace in Israel” and “I do not know what benefit Israel is getting out of killing innocent people.”

Another caller complained, “Why are we giving Israel $3 billion a year? We’ve been giving it to them for years and years for their military. Why are we doing that?”
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During coverage of the December 10 memorial service for the former South African president, Nelson Mandela, held in Johannesburg, frequent Israel basher and CNN (Cable News Network) personality, Christiane Amanpour reminiscing about Mandela, drew what she thought was a key lesson from Mandela’s leadership applicable to an intractable conflict of today. Not Syria’s civil war, not Iraq’s civil war nor any number of other bloody internecine conflicts, but to the Palestinian Arab conflict with Israel,

… as one who’s covered so much conflict around the world, you can’t help but really, really internalize this notion that without the kind of forgiveness that Mandela was able to exhibit, that’s not just something nice. It’s not just something between, you know, classroom bullies. It is the quintessential element of conflict resolution. It is a political tool. Forgiveness is a political tool to get over what seems to be intractable conflict. I honestly can’t help but think right now about Israel and the Palestinians and any number …

At this point, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo interrupted, interjecting what he thought was an important point, “Israel who doesn’t have leadership here today.” Amanpour attempting to correct Cuomo, claimed that Israel’s president (Shimon Peres) was present but not Prime Minister Netanyahu (but Amanpour erred about Peres since Israel was represented by the speaker of the Knesset [parliament] Yuli Edelstein leading a delegation of five ministers. According to the Jerusalem Post, Netanyahu cited the high security cost of the journey and Peres was sick). “And what does that mean, by the way?,” asked Cuomo. Amanpour didn’t pass up an opportunity to pontificate, falsely likening Israel to apartheid South Africa:

Well, the president is the head of state, and he’s come. But nonetheless, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under so much, you know, pressure these days and probably feels to a great extent that his country is isolated in the same way that apartheid South Africa was isolated.

But this is how you get over those intractable conflicts, by understanding the story of the other, by having a political process of resolution that is not just about domination or zero-sum game. Mandela knew there was no Africa for the blacks if it meant Africa without the whites. It was not possible.

It is hard to be more superficial. If the Arabs in general and Palestinian Arabs in particular had been interested in “getting over this intractable conflict” with Israel, the Israel-Egyptian and Israeli-Jordanian peace treaties would have grown from just semi-secret military-to-military cooperation to the anticipated economic, cultural and social exchanges. But these the Egyptian and Jordanian public largely rejected. As for Palestinian leadership, it violated most provisions of the Oslo accords, including the anti-incitement and anti-terrorism clauses, from the beginning. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s calls for a negotiated two-state solution have been met by a Palestinian Authority leadership that rejects Amanpour’s “Mandelaism” about “understanding the story of the other;” it adamantly refuses to recognize Israel as the Jewish state. Her unfounded and tendentious speculation that Netanyahu “probably feels his country is isolated the same way apartheid South Africa was isolated” pushes the “apartheid Israel” canard while ignoring that it has been Palestinian leaders who’ve insisted on “not a single Jew” in any new “Palestine.”

So, Amanpour is up to her old and obvious tricks smearing Israel and Jews just as she infamously did in a 2009 CNN special, “Generation Islam.” CAMERA showed that report as manipulative, falsely implying that the villains were not the Islamists who rule Gaza, teaching hatred of Christians and Jews, and attacking Israeli civilians with suicide bombers and thousands of rockets. Instead, for Amanpour, the aggressors were the Jews of Israel, for supposedly oppressing the Palestinian Arabs. Meanwhile she did not mention the hate indoctrination Hamas specializes in.

So, Amanpour remains Amanpour, a real-life cable television version of the film farce “Anchorman 2’s” Ron Burgundy character. However, she continues ponderous and misleading rather than the fictional Burgundy’s fluff and slapstick. Perhaps Amanpour is destined never to understand the news about Israel and Jews she claims to report.

The good news is that Al-Jazeera America (AJAM), a television news network that started broadcasting on Aug. 20, 2013 financed by the oil-rich Arab state of Qatar (pictured above is chief of state Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani), so far has been superior to the satellite-cable news channels and over-the-air networks in terms of substantive news reports and analyses. This is especially so concerning those dealing with the Middle East. The bad news is the same: Al-Jazeera America’s coverage appears to be deeper than that of its TV competitors, meaning Islamist inspired anti-American, anti-Israel propaganda might subtly or otherwise creep in to what the new channel offers American viewers.

In fact, this has already happened as reported by CAMERA here and here. These examples suggest a continuation of the type of sometimes blatant, sometimes more subtle anti-Israel propaganda film aired by AJAM’s predecessor and sister network Al-Jazeera English.

The seemingly superior news coverage can be attributed largely to these factors:
• A number of skilled experienced hosts and a large roster of skilled, experienced on-site correspondents reporting and conducting interviews.
• News reports not interrupted or foreshortened by having to give way to frequent and at times lengthy commercials as is the case with the other news networks.

As we’ve noted previously, Al-Jazeera should be asked to answer this question: Why would Qatar’s rulers – who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to launch Al-Jazeera America – want to compete with other American cable networks such as CNN, Fox News and MSNBC and over-the-air networks including ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS? To give Americans yet another choice for television news, or to gain a platform for Qatari foreign policy?

Hummus (the word has a few alternative English spellings) is a popular food dip or spread made from cooked, mashed chickpeas generally blended with tahini (a thick paste made of ground sesame seeds), olive oil, lemon juice, salt and garlic. Hummus originated in the Middle East and the word itself comes from either the Arabic word for chickpea or the contemporary Hebrew word for chickpea.

Whose hummus?

An otherwise mouth-watering (includes full color photos), apparently innocuous article,“Jerusalem’s Hottest Hummus,” in the Wall Street Journal’s weekend Sept. 21-22, 2013 edition (Adventure & Travel section), contains this little gem of a paragraph by the article’s author, Nicolas Brulliard, an independent journalist based in Jerusalem:

Of course, in this region every cultural marker is a point of contention in some respect. Israel, a nation of Jewish immigrants who bring along their own culinary traditions, has adopted hummus as a de facto national dish. Many Palestinians view that development as yet another example of colonial overreach.

Brulliard’s (colonial overreach) last sentence above is gratuitous. Europeans eat a lot of potatoes, which originated in the New World of the Western Hemisphere. Are the chips of British fish ‘n chips “imperialist”? Palestinian and other Arabs have availed themselves of many Israeli innovations, including a variety of irrigation techniques. Do Israelis complain of “misappropriation”? Why mention “colonial overreach” here, especially when modern Jewish settlement in Israel marks not a colonial entrprise but an indigenous people’s return?

One notes that the author has previously made snide jabs at Israel; for example, here where he wrote, “Livni has long been viewed as an honest and principled political figure – somewhat of an oddity in Israel’s political landscape …” Further, his writings don’t seem to contain such innuendo aimed at Arabs or others.

As to the charge that Israelis unjustifiably claim hummus as a national dish, another example of colonialism, nonsense!

Hummus had been common food for at least the more than half of the Israeli population (and their Israeli-born descendants) that arrived from Arab countries in large numbers beginning in 1948-49. These Jews may have lost their homes and neighborhoods when forced to flee by their fellow (Muslim Arab) countrymen but they didn’t lose their taste for their beloved native hummus.

Mr. Brulliard, there’s plenty of fuel stoking the anti-Israel propaganda fire without adding hummus, which, in fact, burns poorly if at all. B’te avon! (Good appetite!).

Palestinian Journalist Daoud Kuttab, who uses reasonable sounding language to promote an erroneous Palestinian line (see, e.g., here and here), appeared on the July 28, 2013 edition of CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” to discuss the latest negotiations between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs. Zakaria, who had interviewed Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States earlier in the program, enabled Kuttab’s anti-Israel propaganda as he has done previously (see, e.g, here and here).

At the outset, Kuttab, replying to Zakaria, opined that the factors prompting the Palestinian Authority to participate in a new round of negotiations with the Israelis were mainly the persistence of Secretary of State Kerry and President Obama – but also the fact that the European Union declared the “settlements not part of Israel.” But the E.U. anti-settlement position is political rather than legal since international law supports the legitimacy of settlements, anti-Israeli propaganda and the latest European Union sanctions against them notwithstanding.

Characteristically, Zakaria prompts but does not scrutinize any of Kuttab’s questionable assertions, including:

KUTTAB: The Palestinian citizens of Israel are not Jewish and so by declaring Israel a Jewish state, I think it’s a slap to fellow Palestinians who are living in Nazareth or in Haifa or in the Negev. So, it’s an emotional issue and actually – the feeling is that it would add to the discrimination against citizens of Israel who are not Jewish.

[…]

The Jewish people are respected by the Palestinians, by the Islamic faith. There’s no problem with the Jewish people. The question is whether the state of Israel is a state for its citizens or a particular religious group and I think this is where the problem is.

[…]

The [Palestinian Arab] right of return, I think, has to be divided into two parts. The recognition that there is a historical and moral right for Palestinians to return and Israel needs to accept responsibility for the creation of the refugee problem.

[…]

ZAKARIA: What about the question of Hamas? Here you have still Hamas ruling the Gaza Strip. They do not recognize Israel’s right to exist … Isn’t that a problem?

KUTTAB: I don’t believe the Hamas issue is a problem. Hamas has already agreed with the PLO that the PLO should represent the Palestinians in negotiations. They’ve also agreed with the PLO that there should be some kind of a referendum where all Palestinians vote on the package deal that will be agreed upon between Israel and the PLO…. On the Hamas side, they might say a few things against it, but at the end of the day most Palestinians, by polls, have shown that they are in support of a two-state solution.

Refuting Kuttab’s distortions and falsehoods:
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Palestinian Legislative Council member Hanan Ashrawi, a fluent English speaker with a high news media profile, is a veteran anti-Israel propagandist who habitually shades when she does not shred the truth (see, e.g., here and here).

Ashrawi appeared on Christiane Amanpour’s July 23 CNN International show on TV to discuss the position of President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority in negotiations soon to take place. An Israeli spokesperson, Tzipi Livni, Israeli minister responsible for negotiating with the PA had appeared with Amanpour the day before. Transcripts for the appearances of Ashrawi and Livni are available.

Livni’s strongest remark involving Palestinian Arabs was still mild: “The whole idea is to build trust and confidence and not to enter into this blame game that we used to have in the last years.” But Ashrawi, characteristically bending truth into the great Palestinian pretzel, wasn’t as diplomatic and non-combative, let alone accurate. Here’s a sampling:

Settlement activities are illegal. Annexing and stealing land which is not your own is illegal.

[…]

We have specific U.N. resolutions, particularly 194, dealing with the Palestinian refugees’ right of return. We have the Arab initiative that, in a sense, places the whole issue of refugees in a regional context, which is important, because most of the Palestinian refugees are in neighboring Arab countries.

This is a source of instability. It’s a source of tremendous pain throughout the region. And this needs to be resolved in a just and legal manner. So the Arab Peace Initiative talks about a just and agreed-upon solution to the Palestinian refugee question. We are not going to say we will start negotiations by violating international law, relinquishing the rights of the refugees. We have already given up 78 percent of historical Palestine, on which Israel was established. That is a major and painful compromise.

Amanpour failed to challenge any of Ashrawi’s distortions and falsehoods:
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Iran’s Press TV spews anti-American propaganda directed by the country’s fanatical Islamist leaders. To them, America remains “the great satan,” and Israel, which they vow to annihilate, the “little satan.” James Morris’ involvement with Press TV includes these reports which can be viewed here and here.

C-SPAN’s daily three-hour call-in show Washington Journal almost always has the welcome mat out for anti-Israel, antisemitic polemist James Morris (not to be confused with the famous opera singer of the same name). CAMERA has been tracking Morris’ 65 C-SPAN phone-ins since his Dec. 13, 2008 call in which he accuses Chabad Lubavitch, an utterly non-aggressive, Orthodox Jewish movement, of a blood libel and implies that the terrorist murders – the victims were tortured first – of six people in 2008 at the Mumbai Chabad Center was justified; falsely alleges that Israel oppressed Palestinian Arabs; and blames the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on U.S. support of Israel, when bin Laden’s primary objective has been expulsion of the United States and the West from Arab lands; and praises Iran’s Press TV. C-SPAN’s host and guest ignored all this (Washington Journal hosts almost always indulge Morris, allowing him to exceed the “one-call-per-30-days” rule and ignoring his occasional and obvious fake accents).

Morris’ most recent (May 27, 2013) phone-in, giving his name as “Tony,” occurred during a segment whose topic was “Employment for returning veterans.” In it he freely defamed Israel and U.S. Senator John McCain (Ariz.), former Republican Party nominee for the presidency.

Among Morris’ calls propagandizing for Iran’s leaders (which include defamation of America and Israel) are those from Sep. 19, 2012; Aug. 11, 2012; Mar. 9, 2012; and Jan. 10, 2012 that can be viewed here, here, here, and here.

C-SPAN’s Co-CEOs are Susan Swain ([email protected]) and Rob Kennedy ([email protected]). C-SPAN can be contacted at 202-737-3220, 877-662-7726, [email protected], [email protected]., twitter.com@cspanwj, facebook.com/CSPAN.

For the 12-month period ending May 13, 2013, anti-Israel Middle East commentator and former CIA staffer Michael Scheuer made a total of nine appearances on live national TV. All of the appearances were on Fox News Channel or its sister network, Fox Business Network.

Scheuer invariably includes Israel when listing his villains – as he did on Fox’s “Happening Now” on April 24, 2013 in providing his analysis of the April 15th Boston Marathon bombing:

… the young men who bombed Boston… their activities are a response to our support for the Saudi tyranny, our invasion of Iraq, our support for the Israelis [emphasis added]. Most recently Mr. Obama has invaded two Muslim countries, Mali and Libya.

Never one to be burdened by factual evidence, Scheuer is not reliable here either. The older of the two Chechnyan-American brothers who perpetrated the Boston bombing, openly disdained what he labeled the immorality of American society. News reports so far do not cite Tamerlan Tsarnaev ever mentioning Israel. They do suggest that he seemed to have been influenced by a Sunni Islamic radicalism which emphasizes the requirement for a world-controlling Islamic caliphate. The other major strain of Islamic radicalism is Iran’s Shi’ite version requiring actions to hasten, including by acts of destruction and chaos, the coming of the mahdi, Shiite Islam’s messiah (the 12th Imam.)

Scheuer earned a Ph.D. in British Empire-U.S.-Canada-U.K. relations from the University of Manitoba. His credentials as an expert on the Middle East were examined by The Weekly Standard:

In any event, given the wholly irrelevant nature of Scheuer’s doctoral research — his dissertation traced the comings and goings of an obscure Canadian diplomat in the years before World War II — assigning him to run the [CIA] bin Laden section [1996 to 1999] … can be taken as a symbol of the entrenched neglect of Islamic terrorism within the agency.

Scheuer’s bin Laden unit had utterly failed to find, kill, capture or stop bin Laden from attacking the United States. In 2004 he left the agency after writing the book “Imperial Hubris,” first published anonymously. As historian and syndicated columnist Victor Davis Hanson wrote,

Once Scheuer was publicly identified, the world could examine what he had to say on various topics. People weren’t impressed — especially by Scheuer’s assertions in interviews that Osama bin laden shouldn’t be identified as a terrorist, and the Holocaust Museum in Washington was a means to make Americans feel guilty about the Holocaust.

Scheuer has been out of government nine years. He has written or said little in that time to burnish what were previously thin credentials as a Middle East expert, his CIA posting notwithstanding. He also seems to be obsessed negatively with the Jewish state and its supporters, repeatedly making false generalizations. Why is Fox so hospitable to Scheuer when he has so thoroughly discredited himself by his antisemitic bias and loony Middle East comments on TV and in other venues?

It’s time for the network to upgrade in this regard. The less Scheuer, the more informative the conversation.

For C-SPAN’s popular Washington Journal, a daily three-hour public affairs call-in broadcast, deception is generally in the air when comment is made about Israel (which is often). CAMERA has documented this chronic problem for several years in the feature C-SPAN Watch at CAMERA’s Website. Millions of viewers (C-SPAN claims 28 million weekly viewers) are subjected to a steady dose of anti-Israel distortions and falsehoods which are rarely challenged. Recent examples:

• Guest Said Arikat (March 24 broadcast), Washington bureau chief for the Palestinian Arab daily newspaper al-Quds, blamed others for Hamas’ belligerency (such as firing thousands of mortar shells and rockets into the Jewish state), saying that after coming to power in Gaza, Hamas was “immediately … isolated. That is not a situation which is conducive to good governance and begot the hostility between Israel and Hamas.”

No mention was made of Hamas’ pledge in its charter to the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people or the hundreds of Israelis murdered by Hamas terrorists, which “begot” Israeli hostility. Likewise, no mention of Hamas’ rejection of “the quartet’s” (the United States, Russia, United Nations and European Union) requirement for diplomatic contact: recognition of Israel’s legitimacy, ending anti-Israeli terrorism, and agreeing to uphold previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements. Typically, the Washington Journal host failed to point out either fundamental omission. Likewise, the host should have properly identified guest’s newspaper as being associated with the Palestinian Authority so that viewers would have context to interpret his allegations.

• Complaining about Israeli security measures in the West Bank (which are aimed at protecting the civilian population from terrorists intent on murder and mayhem), guest Arikat claimed that there are “something like 700 checkpoints.” However, the U.N. OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs occupied Palestinian territory) report (page 32) indicates that there are 86 permanent Israeli checkpoints (June 2012). But apparently on C-SPAN there’s no need to quibble about the difference between 700 and 86 when Israel is targeted for negative comment. Likewise, there’s no need to show the obvious parallel to security checkpoints in the United States at airports, government installations and border crossings which, while causing inconvenience or even discomfort, also are aimed in large part at protecting the civilian population against terrorists.

• A caller’s (March 21) inflammatory claim “I think we spend more money per capita on the citizens of Israel than we do on American citizens” is unchallenged although it is clearly, and wildly, exaggerated. In fact, federal domestic per capita spending aimed at benefiting Americans is many times greater than per capita foreign aid to all nations combined.

Israel is the only country defamed on a regular basis on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal broadcasts where Jews and other supporters of Israel are the only groups routinely targeted on air by bigots and conspiracy theorists. Cable television viewers should e-mail, call or write cable service providers and urge them to call for an end to indulgence of anti-Jewish, anti-Israel prejudice by Washington Journal. Keep in mind that a portion of your cable fees supports C-SPAN. For details, visit C-SPAN Watch.

The ABC network has failed thus far to respond to CAMERA’s request for a correction to a misleading news brief about Israel building “new settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem, on land considered to belong to the Palestinians.” The brief was read by “Good Morning America” (GMA) news anchor Ron Claiborne on Dec. 1, 2012.

This is the body of CAMERA’s letter to ABC/GMA:

I am writing on behalf of CAMERA concerning a misleading news brief aired at 7:05 AM on the ABC GMA broadcast of Saturday, Dec. 1, 2012:

RON CLAIBORNE: “The U.S. is criticizing Israel’s decision to build new barriers to a potential peace deal. Israel says it will build new settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem, on land considered to belong to the Palestinians. The announcement was a quick response to the United Nations vote to recognize Palestine as a non-member observer state.”

An accurate phrasing of this news brief would be:

“Following the U.N. General Assembly vote to recognize ‘Palestine’ as a non-member observer state, Israel’s government announced plans to construct 3000 housing units in the West Bank and in Israel’s capital of Jerusalem. The U.S. is criticizing this decision. The West Bank is in dispute as is a part of Jerusalem. These areas are considered by the Palestinians as part of their hoped-for future state.”

In fact, while some argue that Jewish communities in the West Bank and in part of eastern Jerusalem are a hindrance to peace, it is erroneous to assert that they are “on land considered to belong to the Palestinians” since this implies that a sovereign Palestinian Arab state existed at some time in the past in the land that is at issue. But there never has been a sovereign Arab state in Palestine or Israel. Moreover, basic international law in this case, the League of Nations’ Palestine Mandate, Article 6, calls for “close Jewish settlement” on the land west of the Jordan River. Article 6 is incorporated by Article 80 of the U.N. Charter, sometimes referred to as “the Palestine article.” The United States endorsed the mandate, including Article 6, in the 1924 Anglo-American Convention.

The West Bank is not sovereign territory of any country, but rather land disputed by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Part of Jerusalem (which has never been the capital of any nation except Israel) and the West Bank were illegally occupied by Jordan from 1948 to 1967, when Israel took control as a result of successful self-defense in the 1967 Six-Day War. As Eugene Rostow, a co-author of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 (1967), the keystone of all subsequent successful Arab-Israeli negotiations pointed out, 242 does not require complete Israeli withdrawal. Rather, the status of the territory, to which Jews as well as Arabs have legitimate claims, is to be resolved in negotiations as called for in the resolution and by U.N. Security Council Resolution 338 (1973). Meanwhile, Jewish villages and towns built in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria, the ancient homeland of the Jewish people) since 1967 are no more illegal than areas built since then in previously existing Arab villages and towns.

We urge ABC to correct the misleading news brief of Dec. 1, 2012.

Thank you in advance for your follow up on this matter.

Media entities often mislead the public on the matter of “settlements” failing to recognize that the opposition to Jewish communities in Jerusalem and the West Bank can only be legitimately made on political grounds; to do otherwise is legally without basis.

Should a response be forthcoming from ABC, it will be posted here.