CNN, AP, Reuters, NPR, WaPo, LAT Embrace "Nakba" Narratives and Pally-ganda
Apparently the "Nakba" just happened for no reason, inventing massacres is okay if you say Israel did it, the Jews are blocking Arabs from democracy, and more from our dying legacy media.
A major shoutout must go out to CAMERA and Honest Reporting for their impressive work in fighting the media’s attempts to delegitimize and lie about Israel, and holding them to account.
Associated Press Extensively Covers The Nakba, Without Mentioning The War That Led To It
In its May 14 and 15 coverage of the “Nakba,” or the Palestinians’ “original ‘catastrophe,’” the Associated Press focused on the event's narrative of Palestinian suffering while omitting crucial historical facts and context. The wire agency detailed “the 76th year of their mass expulsion from what is now Israel, an event that is at the core of their national struggle,” but did not mention the precipitating factor: the war initiated by five Arab armies and the local Arab population in a failed attempt to destroy the nascent Jewish state (“Palestinians mark 76 years of dispossession as a potentially even larger catastrophe unfolds in Gaza,” Joseph Krauss, May 14).
The following day, another extensive AP story titled “Palestinians across the Middle East mark their original ‘catastrophe’ with eyes on the war in Gaza” similarly failed to acknowledge the concerted Arab effort to eliminate the newly established Jewish state. The report selectively stated, “The Nakba, Arabic for ‘catastrophe,’ refers to the 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel before and during the war surrounding its creation in 1948,” without any mention of the joint military campaign against Israel.
By focusing solely on the Palestinian perspective and not addressing the broader context of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the Associated Press continues its one-sided view of history, and long running bias and feud against the world’s only Jewish state.
Reuters Inflates 1948 Refugees By Millions
In a May 15 article on increasing Iranian aggression in the region, Reuters erroneously inflated the number of Palestinian refugees who fled to Jordan after the 1948 war (“Jordan foils arms plot as kingdom caught in Iran-Israel shadow war”):
"Most of [King Abdullah’s] 11 million people are of Palestinian origin because Jordan took in millions of Palestinian refugees fleeing their homeland in the turbulent years following the founding of Israel."
The total number of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war, who spread across the Middle East and beyond, did not reach one million. As Reuters recently reported, approximately 700,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees following the failed Arab war to annihilate Israel in 1948 – not millions. Only about half of these 700,000 ended up in Jordan. (The Arabic version of the same story on the thwarted weapons smuggling does not contain the “millions” error.) In other words, Jordan took in about 350,000 Palestinian refugees (280,000 from the West Bank and 70,000 from the East Bank), not “millions”, according to a 1949 research survey.
CNN Publishes Nakba Propaganda, Repeats Genocide Lie, And Platforms Antisemite
CNN recently published an articled centered around the Palestinians experience since 1948, and included sympathetic interview with Mohammad Zarqa, an 88-year-old Palestinian from Ein Karem, now living in New Jersey, who told the reporter, “We will never stop wanting to return.” The article portrayed the Palestinians as innocent stateless victims of Israeli aggression.
Palestinian leaders have rejected statehood offers in 2000, 2008, 2014, and 2020, partly because these offers did not address the refugee issue in a way that would transform Israel into a Muslim-majority state. The refugee issue dates back to 1948 when Arab leaders refused to accept the partition of Mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, a fact omitted in CNN’s coverage by Alaa Elassar.
The demand for the return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel remains a major obstacle in peace talks. Jewish refugees expelled from Arab countries in 1948 have since integrated into Israeli society, unlike Palestinian refugees who maintain their status and aspirations of return.
In comparison, the 1947 India-Pakistan partition displaced 15 million people, and post-World War II Europe saw mass expulsions. Despite this, Elassar describes the Palestinians as the “world’s longest-standing protracted refugee crisis,” ignoring these other events.
Elassar's article, while not labeled as opinion, relies heavily on personal recollections from decades ago, presenting a one-sided narrative. This is evident in her recounting of the Deir Yassin events of 1948, a story contested by various sources, including CAMERA and the BBC series “Israel and the Arabs: the 50 Year Conflict,” which suggest that the atrocities were exaggerated by Arab leaders to incite panic.
Elassar’s coverage of recent events is also skewed. She claims the International Court of Justice said it’s “plausible” Israel is committing genocide, a statement CNN has corrected multiple times. Her reporting on Israel’s actions in Gaza post-October 7, 2023, following Hamas’s attack, omits crucial details, such as the 15,000 Hamas fighters killed and the context of the ongoing conflict.
Though CNN later removed the false genocide claim, they replaced it with a quote from Francesca Albanese, well known for her anti-Israel bias and antisemitic comments. This substitution clearly worsened the article’s accuracy and impartiality.
The Washington Post Editorial Board Says the Joos Are Blocking The Arabs From Democracy
Karen Attiah and Shadi Hamid are on the Washington Post’s Editorial Board, and are virulent anti-Israel online activists. There is plenty of material for their nuttiest takes, but this conspiratorial brain fart is a doozy:
NPR Doesn’t Push Back on Ahistorical Propaganda
In a recent interview on NPR, Brown University Professor of Palestinian Studies Beshara Doumani offered a heavily biased and inaccurate perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Doumani, who previously served as president of Birzeit University, has been associated with an increase in radical activities on campus, including support for Hamas and glorification of terrorist attacks.
At Brown University, Doumani focuses on promoting an agenda that portrays Jews as settler-colonialists who took over Palestinian land. His program at Brown aims to decolonize and globalize Palestinian studies, often discrediting the Jewish historical connection to the land.
NPR’s Here & Now hosted Doumani to discuss the anniversary of Israel’s establishment as the Nakba, presenting him as an authority on the subject. Host Deepa Fernandes introduced the segment by stating that Palestinians were expelled to create the State of Israel, omitting the fact that five Arab armies launched a war against Israel in 1948. This war, not Israeli actions, led to the majority of Palestinian displacements.
Doumani reinforced this narrative by describing 1948 as part of an ongoing colonization process. He claimed this process involves replacing Palestinians with Jewish immigrants, expropriating land, and denying Palestinian rights. His account ignores the Jewish historical presence in the land and the sovereignty they held in various periods.
Fernandes’ questioning further promoted this biased view, suggesting that the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza is part of an ongoing Nakba. Doumani expanded on this, misleadingly portraying Israel’s defensive actions as part of a deliberate expulsion plan and misrepresenting the Right of Return as enshrined in international law.
In reality, many of Doumani’s claims are extremely dubious. Historical evidence, including accounts from 1948, contradicts the notion of a widespread, deliberate expulsion of Palestinians by Israeli forces. Additionally, incidents like the alleged Deir Yassin massacre have been disputed by various sources, highlighting exaggerations and fabrications used for propaganda.
Overall, the interview with Doumani, amplified by NPR’s platform, presented a historically distorted view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and purposefully spread misleading narratives. NPR has a long running problem with Israel (NPR’S Pro-Hamas, Anti-Israel Narrative Part I and Part II, by CAMERA)- maybe their shoddy and biased ‘journalism’ is why they’ve seen a 40% drop in annual sponsorship support and public disdain?
Los Angeles Times Trumpets Hamas’s Claim They Accepted Deal, Instead of Reporting They Made Up Their Own
CAMERA prompted correction of a Los Angeles Times article which inaccurately reported that “Hamas had accepted terms of a cease-fire.” As the U.S. State Department made explicitly clear: “Hamas did not accept a ceasefire proposal.”
In the May 18 digital article, “Inside a Gaza hospital: A Los Angeles doctor’s story,” Thomas Curwen misleadingly reported:
A week into the two-week rotation – on May 6 – came news that Hamas had accepted the terms of a cease-fire proposed by Egyptian and Qatari mediators. Abdelfattah recalled the celebration – children singing, fireworks – but within an hour, explosions in the distance could be heard. The bombing was continuing. There was no cease-fire.
While Hamas did indeed issue an announcement May 6 claiming to accept a ceasefire, and many media outlets uncritically parroted the Hamas claim as fact, the terror organization in no way agreed to the proposal. Instead, they made up their own unrealistic proposal filled with items Israel would never agree to, and let the Western media do their propaganda work for them.