If you want to understand the liberal media's behavior on Israel/Palestine, this is an important post. In it, a powerful editor admits that his views of the conflict are far more left than you'd ever know from his broadcast. He is self-censoring, or being censored (the difference is not significant).
The pro-Israel group CAMERA featured this first. It is a dialogue last February at the University of Colorado's "Given Institute" in Aspen between NPR foreign correspondent Anne Garrels and NPR senior foreign editor Loren Jenkins. CAMERA transcribed the tape; so I will let them frame it. Then I will comment afterward, along with Jeff Blankfort, who sent it along:
In reviewing a range of issues, Jenkins turned to explaining the deadlock in the Middle East which, predictably, he attributed to Israel alone. He said:
Israel has taken total control and colonized the West Bank — the occupied territories — to such an extent it's unimaginable that you would see a two-state solution at any time in the immediate future or even longer cause they've transformed the situation on the ground with settlements, roads that only Israelis can drive on and the Palestinians are forced to take dirt roads on the side so there — what was once a unified state or territory occupied by Israel since 1967 — is now almost already become colonized by Israel, and it's very hard to imagine that can be resolved when Obama tries. I mean certainly… he's just appointed George Mitchell as a new mediator who's going to go and talk about a peace process, but I don't think there is a peace process. And what one can expect is more conflict and more war.
At least one member of the audience was troubled by the distorted and erroneous characterization of the Arab-Israeli conflict [reader, remember that I'm letting CAMERA do the framing…] and concerned about the significance of such views being espoused by NPR's influential editor. He rose to pose a question to Jenkins, saying:
I do have a question — this may not sound like a question — but I just heard Loren Jenkins pretty much lay at the feet of Israel and its settlers, the entire blame for the impossibility of settling the dispute between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And it seems to me, that ignores the fact that the settlements have been a subject that has been discussed a great deal in the treaty negotiations and that the treaty that's been on the table for years now — since President Clinton — at the end of the peace talks — at the end of the Oslo agreement — at the end of 2000 — had in there that the Israelis would have three groups of settlements that would be agreed — that would stay with the center of Israel or part of Israel and that the Israelis would give an equal amount of land to the Palestinians.
And that the Israeli army would have to fight their own settlers and get them out of there. And they have done that in the past. It ignores, also, that the reason for these separate roads — and these separations you spoke of — was that the Palestinians were bringing bombs in to blow up night clubs and kill kids at pizzerias and various places like that. And little by little these checkpoints and separations [crowd murmering, interruption by podium]. Okay, I'll get to my question.
Anne Garrels interrupted the questioner with:
"I think we know your question!" The questioner persisted:
"My question frankly is — that if this kind of anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic news is called even-handed (interrupted) — if it’s called even-handed (interrupted) — if it’s called even-handed, why the heck should I give you any money?"
Jenkins shot back:
But if you want to go back to it, there is no treaty. There were negotiations between Israel, the U.S. and the Palestinians and it was never signed — it fell apart — it doesn't exist. Every time the U.S. government has asked Israel to help move the peace process along by shutting down construction of settlements, Israel has turned around within the course of a week or two, and signed more construction contracts. There are now 300,000 settlers in the West Bank which has changed the nature of it. It can never be turned over — it can never be another state. It'll be part of Israel. It'll be part of a colonized part of Israel.
(attempted interruption by questioner)
Jenkins continued:
Israel pulled out of Gaza because it was so hard to rule. (indistinct). As we've just seen, Israel has used Gaza as a bombing target practice and killed — for every Israeli killed, the Israelis killed 100 Palestinians. I'm sorry — if you look at the balance of that fight…That Gaza has been created — which is amazing that it was created by a Jewish state — that created the biggest ghetto we've known in society. A million and a half people surrounded — they're not allowed to cross the border — they're not allowed to have a livelihood — they're not allowed to trade abroad, are kept bound in — in this miserable place — and they are all going to be turned into Palestinian terrorists because they have nothing else to do. They have no outlook for life [interrupted by smattering of clapping].
Comments: 1, Jenkins is obviously what I call a "secret sharer," he shares my view of the situation, that the colonizer is chiefly to blame for Palestinian statelessness (along with American Jewish bodies, for their blind support of the colonizer, which no he doesn't get into). And he lets it go on public radio in Aspen. Many of these secret sharers are commonsensical Americans who are angered at the unfair treatment of Palestinians–they were promised a state 61 years ago and Kosovo and Pakistan and Uzbekistan and your momma have all gotten a state since, and no Arab state in Palestine– and angered that they have to suppress their opinions. You can see that anger in Jenkins, his flaring at the anti-Semite stuff.
2, The only question that remains after reading Jenkins's unbosoming, which the thugs of CAMERA wants him fired for doing, is, Why isn't this on NPR? Why isn't the honest description of colonization and apartheid on NPR? And it isn't on NPR. You have the senior foreign editor expressing highly-sensible views of the matter; and they are not to be found on NPR except in the interstices. Why, why o oracle?
Blankfort wisely points at the questioner who plans to blackmail NPR for Jenkins's views:
"This may explain why the critical coverage from Israel/Palestine has been
almost nil in the last couple of months and why there has been no
report of the highjacking of the Spirit of Humanity or the imprisonment
of Cynthia McKinney and the Irish Nobel Laureate. Several years ago,
CAMERA launched an attack against WBUR, the NPR station in Boston,
claiming it was pro-Palestinian and its campaign cost the station a
million dollars in lost underwriting. [Weiss: Are you sure about that number, Jeff?] I wish it was conjecture, here it is. And here [from the venerable Geneva Overholser.]"
I would add 2 factors: Media Culture, and Money. Media culture means that Jews, including me, are all over the media for whatever reason and most Jews have an unreconstructed view of Israel/Palestine. I wonder how plain Jenkins is about these ideas with Ellen Weiss, the NPR vice president for news who is married to Rabbi David Saperstein, who supported the Gaza massacre, or Daniel Schorr, whose views of the PLO are motheaten. Saperstein and Schorr influence Jewish identity far more than I do. Second, as Blankfort says: Money is huge in this conversation, Jewish money, which composes over half of Democratic Party giving and probably the lion's share of NPR's too. Jewish identity is still based largely on Israel. That is changing, witness the tabernacle that J Street and IPF and Peace Now have built in the desert. But until Jewish identity is untangled from the militarist colonialist project in the Middle East, many of our sharers will stay secret.
