I watched
this report from
60 Minutes on CBS, and I expected a fair and well-rounded news story, but to my surprise I found an anti-Israel smear piece instead. For example, the reporter Bob Simon asserts that Israel has a few options to choose from including ethnic cleansing and "apartheid." He describes Israel as dominating the lowlands like "Crusaders," (sounding like an al Qaeda spokesman, and didn't the Crusaders slaughter the Jews as well as Muslims?), and he claims Jews get more water than Palestinians — all of these statements are outrageous and refutable. The language and terms used are not objective at all; in fact, they are merely the tendentious talking points of extremists and anti-Zionists. They are composed of negative propaganda including anti-Israel slogans and libelous myths that vilify the Jewish state.
First of all, a little background: Recently, CBS has been reporting that Israel may have been using a "banned weapon" — white phosphorous — despite the Israeli government's insistence that its use was “legal according to international law..." More on this
HERE. In the mean time, they've been largely ignoring well-documented Hamas crimes like its use of civilians as human shields. See
HERE.
In 2003,
The Jerusalem Post referred to a Bob Simon CBS piece on the security fence as “manipulative and shaky on key factual assertions.” See
HERE. Apparently, Simon only commiserates with Palestinians and not with Jews. Jewish victims are curiously absent, for the only Jews featured are treated like villains. Palestinian victims are extolled and terrorists and their supporters are exonerated.
In his most recent piece, Simon doesn’t question Dr. Mustafa Barghouti when he refers to the Israeli security fence as a “wall” (it's mostly a fence) or when he claims they are already living under “apartheid." Simon concludes the following about Israel:
... They could try ethnic cleansing, drive the Palestinians out of the West Bank, or they could give the Palestinians the vote. That would be the democratic option but it would mean the end of the Jewish state. Or they could try apartheid — have the minority Israelis rule the majority Palestinians, but apartheid regimes don't have a very long life.
He appropriates the language Barghouti uses without questioning it, without exploring the true sense of the word apartheid, although it isn't anything like the original meaning of apartheid in South Africa. There's no clarification about the term. Apparently, Simon is not aware that calling Israel an "apartheid state" is a slogan used by pro-Palestinian propagandists to deligitimize Israel. More
HERE. They similarly use terms like “Nazi State” and make inappropriate Holocaust comparisons.
Irwin Cotler remarked:
[...] if everything is another Holocaust, then nothing is — and the Holocaust itself becomes nothing as well.
No recent event makes this more clear than the inflammatory misuse of Holocaust comparisons to describe the conflict in Gaza, in a dual demonizing indictment.
More
HERE.
George Orwell wrote that the English language "becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." Bob Simon and his cohorts who describe Israel as an "apartheid" state have lost all sense of the meaning of this word. Such a comparison like comparing Gaza to a Nazi concentration camp is ignorant at best. At worst, it's deceitful. And it totally obfuscates the truth and reality.
Bob Simon makes these mistakes with terms and language because he's got a one-sided view of things. Is his mind is tinged with anti-Semitism? Are his sympathies entrenched with the Palestinian cause or does he stand with those who bash Israel? One can only speculate. Why else would Simon fail to mention anything about the effectiveness of the barrier against Palestinian attacks, and why no explanation of the need for checkpoints and the security in order to protect Israeli citizens? These integral points are ignored!
The point is there is no balanced reporting in Simon's piece. No objective analysis. Just Simon's view of things. He's narrowed Israel's predicament down to a few nefarious options. Israeli security operations are portrayed as wanton bullying because there is no terror threat in Simon's eyes. The IDF is shown indiscriminately and arbitrarily taking over a Palestinian home. Context is thrown out the window. We are told this is routine. No Israeli official is sought for comment on it.
Honest Reporting points out that Simon claims that "'Moderate Israelis who deplore the occupation used to believe passionately in a two-state solution.' Yet, to illustrate this point, he interviews Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli who has long advocated a one-state solution and considers Israel to be worse than '
apartheid' South Africa. Is this representative of the Israeli mainstream?” Lost too is the fact that most Israelis
are so-called "moderates" and the majority favour a two state solution as long as the Palestinians don't threaten Israel's security as they have from Gaza.
Simon's
60 Minutes report also focuses on Daniella Weiss, introduced as a representative of the settler side, but as
Ynet News reported over a month ago (
HERE) she has been castigated by the mainstream settler movement. Here again, Simon has selected another character from the fringe of Israeli society to highlight. Essentially, they found a fringe figure of the minority of Israeli citizens. This is a gross misrepresentation.
The truth is Simon’s piece tries to make Israel look bad. That's the pretense. It's not just about the settlements being an obstacle to peace. It's really a setup to vilify Israel.
Incidentally, about Simon's claim that Israel is denying Palestinians fair share of the water: Israel is at the forefront of irrigation and agriculture and allows water to all. The Palestinian side of the fence lacking vegetation and/or the Palestinians being denied water is a canard. More
HERE. Sparse vegetation and/or lack of irrigation on the Palestinian side may be a result of their own societal norms or lifestyles or the misplaced priorities of their own government; there is no Israeli policy preventing Palestinians from planting trees and shrubs and no system devised to stop the flow of water to Palestinian homes, as suggested.
You may ask how a mainstream media conglomerate like CBS could get it so wrong. In 2001, Journalist Bernard Goldberg exposed the bias at CBS in his book "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News."
"Look, Bernie," CBS News President Andrew Heyward told him, "of course there's a liberal bias in the news. All the networks tilt left." More about this
HERE.
It so happens that today most people on the left are Israel bashers, many are opposed to Israel's existence and most of the derogatory propaganda comes from the left.
The same pervasive bias in the
60 Minutes Bob Simon piece is what motivated them to use a fake document to try to influence the outcome of the 2004 American election against George Bush, and as a result of the manipulation, Dan Rather and company had to apologize and were forced to resign in ignominy. It's symptomatic of what ails the mainstream media today. More
HERE. So if you think
60 Minutes’ journalism is good, you should think again and consider alternative news sources. CBS has proven itself to be biased against Israel and seems incapable of applying standard journalistic principles of accuracy and fairness when it comes to reporting on Israeli-Palestinian issues.
