My recent piece “NPR’s Bias against Israel” demonstrating how National Public Radio repeatedly promoted Arab propaganda line by distorting facts or ignoring them, and drew many responses. Most felt that a warning about NPR’s success in defaming Israel, especially among inexperienced, “idealistic” university students, was long overdue.
But even more instructive, perhaps, were the few angry responses I received from avid NPR listeners who identify strongly with the station’s message and who are convinced that NPR stance against Israel is justified.
One of these listeners even suggested a comparison between Israel’s oppressive occupation of the Arabs and Nazi “oppression”. And indeed it is easy to see how NPR listeners would jump to such a conclusion. NPR regularly presents Israelis as brutal oppressors, and Israel as a gratuitous and arbitrary occupying power. NPR seldom explains how the conflict really came about as a result of the habitual use of violence by Arab leadership, how 6 million Israelis are still threatened by an Arab world with over 100 million people in 22 militant dictatorships.
But let’s look at a sample letter and see what anti-Israeli frame of mind NPR promotes. The listener, Dr. Phil Brewer writes:
“Let’s see, how many illegal Jewish settlements are there in Gaza and the West Bank? How many more illegal settlements and settlers are there than ten years ago? Five years ago, One year ago? How many homes a month is the Israeli Army demolishing this year?
Are you not ashamed to write about the “constantly repeated falsehood of Arab propagandists and their many media advocates that Israel is guilty of ‘stealing’ ‘Palestinian lands?’ ” The only falsehood I see is your denial of the reality of the situation.
Oh, I get it.
The Palestinians aren’t really human beings. They don’t have the right to anything. They’ve only been living on “your” land for several centuries. Now you’re back, it’s time for them to go.
Funny, another group of people was saying about the same thing about 60 years ago. It’s certainly better to be the oppressor instead of the oppressed. Or is it?
Okay, okay, maybe I misunderstood. Fine. Just tell me this: When someone goes to a farm that a family has owned for countless generations, bulldozes the house, the olive trees, the vineyard, makes the inhabitants leave, then builds a new house, a road, and a security perimeter for another family, just what is that called? In my language it’s called theft. What language do you speak?”
Here is my response to Dr. Brewer:
I am not surprised that as a NPR listener you are probably not aware of certain facts: The Arab Israeli conflict is not about territory or occupation it is about racist jingoistic Arab dictators not wanting any Jews living in what they consider holy Moslem territory.
After receiving Jordan, the Palestinians were offered a second independent state in 1948 and in 1999. Twice their leadership refused to accept a state, preferring to wage a war with the express aim of destroying “the Zionist entity” and throwing its Jewish inhabitants into the sea.
Palestinians waged war against Israel, and employed terrorism, before the 1967 conquest of the West Bank, and after the Oslo agreement freed most of them from Israeli occupation. The Hamas and other Arab radicals say openly that even if Israel withdrew to the 1967 borders they would still continue to attack it until the whole land of Palestine was free of Jews.
You have appointed yourself prosecutor, judge and executioner, but this does not make your statement about the illegality of settlements truthful. I invite you to study the history of the Versailles peace conference where a deal was struck whereby the Arabs received 99% of former Ottoman territories with the understanding that 1% will become a national Jewish home. The Arabs took the 99% and then reneged on the deal.
You make severe accusations about Israelis going to Arab farms, destroying them and taking them over. I hope you can cite one concrete instance where this has happened. And spare me please the lies of Arab propagandists. Just cite facts. Where did it happen and when?
The fact is that to this day, 93% of the land mass west of the Jordan is empty and government owned. There is room for many more people there. All Israeli settlements, which occupy less than three percent of “the West Bank”, were constructed on such empty lands. They displaced very few Arabs. Could you tell me what is wrong in Israelis living in disputed areas of the West bank, while more than one million Arabs are living among the Jews in land that belongs to Israel? Only bigots cannot tolerate others among them.
I leave you to deal with your own conscience regarding the not so subtle allusion you made to what happened sixty years ago, trying to draw a really dastardly comparison between one of the most horrendous atrocities in history and the Palestinian predicament, mostly self inflicted.
I invite you to consider the proposition that there is a better way to deal with the true tragedy of the Palestinian people than by supporting dictatorships, the terrorists and criminals that call themselves the Palestinian Authority, people who have inflicted infinitely more harm and suffering on the Palestinians than anyone else ever would or could, though this is apparently not reported by NPR.”
Well, there you are, one listener describing it best, how NPR poisons the American mind.
