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Israel’s brand rides high on NPR

Melissa Block
Melissa Block

Do you ever feel that you’re having no effect whatsoever on the issue? I had that feeling, listening to two recent pieces on public radio where Israel’s brand was riding high.

First WNYC, the New York public radio station, did a piece on women in the movies that was overtly political, inasmuch as it pressed for greater variety and quantity for women’s roles in film. Host Julianne Welby seemed thrilled by Kristen Meinzer‘s interview with “a very high profile actress,” Scarlett Johansson. The journalists applauded Johansson’s range, which Meinzer said evidences

her box-office bang: People love her, people flock to see her.

Roll tape: Johansson talking about her portrayals of women.

Not everyone loves her! NPR said not a word about the recent SodaStream flap, in which Johansson had to resign from Oxfam because she reps a company that makes seltzer machines in the occupied Palestinian territories. I guess that hasn’t hurt Scarlett Johansson at all, in some quarters.

Then National Public Radio did this piece on an Israeli Palestinian who won a reality TV contest, called Master Chef. Host Melissa Block had a bubble in her voice the whole interview, and the word Arab was said again and again (I count 12 Arabs and Arabics). But no one said the word Palestinian.

Nof Atamna-Ismaeel is the first Israeli Arab to win “Master Chef,” and she’s a microbiologist. She joins me now from Tel-Aviv. Nof, welcome to the program and congratulations….

Nof, I’ve read that you have a dream now, which is to open a Jewish-Arab cooking school. What’s your hope for that cooking school?

Atamna-Ismaeel then said, “I really think that this is the only way that we can solve a little bit of this conflict is by sitting together and trying to talk to each other.”

I’d have little reason to object to this story if NPR did pieces on why many Palestinians are against dialogue, why many oppose “normalization,” and why Palestinians inside Israel are second-class citizens. Or why Palestinians object to being called Arabs– inasmuch as it racializes them and denies their nationality. Or if NPR interviewed Shira Robinson about her new book about Palestinian legal status in Israel, for instance. But that’s just not a story for NPR.

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Always good to know how the US taxpayer dollar is being spent for Israel’s hegemony in the Middle East. Makes one proud to be an American, always remembering USA is 98% non-Jewish.

NPR is too compromised by its fund raising program to do anything politically controversial. Republicans sit on the board of directors, a consequence of the government grant, and act as watch-dogs. They like ‘equal time’ on the issues and of course they want their own issues aired too, so NPR isn’t really the icon of liberalism it once was. Too bad, it’s great in so many ways, but too attached to the Saturday afternoon live Metropolitan Opera. I wish they would just play whatever is in their music library and forget about the high priced accessories.

Looks like AIPAC has been able to poison NPR and make it yet another obedient member of the zionist media. It is disappointing, but not surprising. All it takes is one zionist at the top, and most probably a couple of phone calls from AIPAC.
Now those who trusted NPR will feel the toxic fumes of zionism, as it continues to brainwash more Americans into believing that Israel is faultless, and a victim.

“Do you ever feel that you’re having no effect whatsoever on the issue?”

Behind NPR’s happy-face facade, the structure of public support for Israel is crumbling quickly. On Thursday I sat in on a panel discussion called Peace Between Israelis and Palestinians: What Progress Looks Like at the annual CU Conference on World Affairs. Two of the panelists, Richard Jones and Stuart Schoffman, were Israel supporters and they were calcified, old, stiff, pessimistic defenders of the status quo. Both of them were stuck in the mud of the Oslo years and had nothing to recommend in the way of progress other than to keep talking about talking with the hope that someday things would change for the better. The third panelist was a young Palestinian woman named Suhad Babaa. She was bright, energetic, confident and composed. She was easily the most likeable of the group and she actually had constuctive opinions about “what progress looks like” – supporting BDS, for example.

Following their talks, audience members were invited to ask questions. All of them challenged Israeli policy with their questions which only highlighted the ridgid defensiveness of Jones and Schoffman. Not one audience member stood up to defend Israel.

NPR is still lives in the “dream castle.” Out here in the regions things are changing quickly and NPR will have to adapt sooner rather than later.

Hasbara Central telegraphed the “Israeli Arab Master Chef” punch right here on Mondoweiss a few days ago, when one of their members assigned to this site brought it up.