Yes, NPR is very committed to the facts... LOL!
And this report was pre 9/11...
A Record of Bias
National Public Radio's Coverage
of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
fixnpr.com
September 26 – November 26, 2000
March 27, 2001
Executive Summary
National Public Radio has an Israel problem. The tax-supported network’s coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict has long been marred by a striking anti-Israel tilt, with severe bias, error and lack of balance commonplace. A rigorous analysis of NPR’s broadcasts over a recent two-month period dramatically underscores the network’s skewed approach to covering Israel. Beginning with the outbreak of violence in Israel and the Palestinian Authority areas on September 26, 2000, the analysis examined all of NPR’s major news and interview programs. Although there were, in this period, occasional NPR segments that presented information in a straightforward and balanced way, distorted, erroneous, and biased reports were broadcast on virtually a daily basis, continuing the pattern documented in previous CAMERA studies of the network’s output.
NPR’s partisanship was evident, first of all, in the disproportionate reliance on Arab/Palestinian and pro-Arab speakers compared to Israeli and pro-Israeli speakers. During the two months of study more than 56 percent of the guests were Palestinian/Arab or pro-Arab, and those guests were afforded 77 percent more words than the Israeli/pro-Israeli guests.
NPR bias is apparent also in the chronic amplifying of Palestinian grievances and perspectives in story focus and reporters’ language and in the de-emphasizing or omitting of Israeli concerns. It is evident as well in frequent factual errors portraying Israel in a negative light. Many of these errors were material and egregious, and none were corrected.
Entirely one-sided programs were commonplace, whether devoted to assailing Ariel Sharon as a “war criminal,” to characterizing Israel as a “Jim Crow” nation which should be done away with in its “apartheid” form, or to blaming Israel for excessive violence, anti-American riots in Arab capitals and erosion of a supposed Arab commitment to peace. There was little for which Israel was not held culpable.
At the same time, key information was sharply downplayed or omitted entirely. Never reported was the drumbeat of virulent war-mongering and anti-Israel/anti-Jewish incitement by official Palestinian media that stoked hatred and anger among the Palestinian populace in the weeks preceding the visit by Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. Incitement occurring during the outbreak of rioting was reported briefly and without conveying its continuous ferocity and its central role in the violence.
The unabashed partisanship of NPR reporters was striking, especially on the part of Jennifer Ludden and Kate Seelye, who often presented information as though acting in the service of the Palestinian cause. Notably, as well, Foreign Editor Loren Jenkins has expressed hostile attitudes toward Israel, terming it a colonizer in Jerusalem. He has also, in his own writing, linked Israelis to Nazis. Significantly, Jenkins has regularly appeared at events sponsored by the stridently anti-Israel American-Arab Anti- Discrimination Committee (ADC), and Kate Seelye was for a number of years beginning in the late 1980's the ADC’s Manager of Media Relations.
In recent years Seelye has written for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, in one article accusing Israel of engaging in state-sponsored terrorism. The Washington Report is an extremist magazine which has referred to Jewish supporters of Israel as a “cancer” and as “Israel-firsters,” and has carried ads for Roger Garaudy’s notorious book, The Founding Myths of Israeli Policy, which denies the Holocaust. That NPR would hire a contributor to such a magazine, that it would welcome such extreme partisans, is testament to the network’s own highly partisan agenda.
NPR’s misrepresentation of events is not only a serious violation of ordinary journalistic standards but also of specific criteria under which the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) dispenses tax dollars to networks such as NPR. Federal statute enjoins CPB to grant funds on the condition that National Public Radio provides “strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature.”
NPR is demonstrably not offering “strict adherence to objectivity and balance” in its coverage of the “controversial” and contentious events and issues related to the Arab- Israeli crisis. This breach of the terms under which taxpayer funds are provided should be a matter of concern both to listeners and to Members of Congress.
Quantitative Bias – Disproportionate Weight to Arab/pro-Arab Speakers
In the past, NPR has sought to deflect CAMERA’s criticism of its coverage with the claim that only a few, occasional stories have elicited objections. Although this assertion is false – CAMERA has lodged many detailed complaints about an ongoing pattern of erroneous and distorted reporting – the following quantitative data drawn from CAMERA’s study should dispel any doubt about the pervasiveness and gravity of bias in NPR’s coverage.
Tallying bias: speakers, word count, skewed language
A survey of 188 National Public Radio transcripts of major news and interview programs, covering all such programs that touch on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict or directly relevant subjects from September 26, 2000 through November 26, 2000 and drawn from the NEXIS news database, underscores the network’s sharp tilt toward Palestinian/Arab perspectives. The programs reviewed include Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, Fresh Air, Weekend All Things Considered, Weekend Edition Saturday and Weekend Edition Sunday.
• More speakers and far more air time for Arab/pro-Arab views
Of a total of 350 speakers appearing on the network in these segments during the period of the study, not including NPR’s own journalists, 197 were Palestinian/Arab or pro-Arab while only 153 were Israeli or pro-Israeli.
The Palestinian/Arab and pro-Arab speakers were also given substantially more opportunity to express their views. They were afforded 36,272 words spoken while Israeli or pro-Israeli perspectives were given only 20,476.
That is to say, Palestinian/Arab and pro-Arab speakers enjoyed 77% more prominence.
It should be noted that although a number of the Israeli speakers heard on NPR in the period of this study are known to be harsh critics of Israel, their views sometimes mirroring those of the Palestinians, all were included under the “Israeli” category. (One exception was American-born Allegra Pacheco, an Israeli citizen who campaigns for the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state. She was included among the pro-Arab count.) Aside from Bassam Eid, there were no Palestinian critics of the Palestinian Authority comparable to the numerous Israeli critics of Israel.
• More “Arab-only” than “Israeli-only” programs; more time for Arab speakers
There was significant imbalance in the number of programs in which only Palestinian/Arab or pro-Arab speakers were presented as compared to those including only Israeli or pro-Israeli speakers.
There were 41 segments in which only Palestinian/Arab or pro-Arab speakers were heard and just 24 programs in which only Israeli or pro-Israeli speakers were heard.
More striking still, in these 65 segments the Palestinian/Arab and pro-Arab speakers were afforded 18,321 words spoken on the air, while the Israeli and pro-Israel speakers were given just 4,934.
That is, there were nearly twice as many segments that included only Palestinian/Arab or pro-Arab speakers as compared to Israeli or pro-Israeli-only segments, and the Arab-only speakers were given almost four times as many words (371% more).
Quantitative bias matched by qualitative bias
• Pejorative language applied disproportionately to Israelis
Ariel Sharon was labeled “hard-line” or “right-wing” 24 times, and others associated with the Israeli opposition were similarly labeled another 11 times. But Yasir Arafat was never labeled hard-line or right-wing, nor was Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin. Yassin, the head of an organization avowedly opposed to the existence of Israel and responsible for terrorist bombings against Israeli civilians, was identified simply as a “spiritual leader.”
Marwan Barghouti, head of the Palestinian Tanzim gunmen who has orchestrated much of the violence, is never once labeled “hard-line” for his admitted fomenting of attacks on Israelis. NPR calls him the “main organizer of the street protests.”
• Palestinians/Arabs more “frustrated” than Israelis
Palestinians or other Arabs were described by NPR reporters or guest speakers as “frustrated” 16 times, while Israelis were only said to have such feelings 4 times.
Factual Errors - Examples
Perhaps the most dramatic evidence of National Public Radio’s anti-Israel bias is seen in the inaccurate stories and assertions that are a frequent element of its coverage. Unlike other media outlets which regularly correct their errors in Middle East coverage – such as the New York Times and the Boston Globe – NPR rarely does so.
• On October 9, NPR’s Jennifer Ludden reported at face value and in detail the claims of Palestinians that Jewish settlers had tortured, murdered and mutilated a Palestinian (click here for the full transcript). Ludden presents Osama Nizar, then embellishes his account:
Nizar: ..And the settlers killed one of the Palestinian young men there and amputated his hand and leg. Then they burned him and threw him away in the street.
Ludden: The man had broken bones and a smashed skull. Israeli police suggested he’d been killed by Israeli soldiers, but eyewitnesses said it was Jewish settlers. The torture and murder outraged Palestinian leaders.
Ludden’s statement that “Israeli police” identified “Israeli soldiers” as the perpetrators of the alleged atrocity is nonsensical and false. Israeli military officials said the man, Issam Judeh Hamed, was killed in a car accident north of Ramallah.
Israel Defense Force Colonel Gal Hirsh was further quoted in the Guardian newspaper (10/10) saying the Palestinian murder/torture charge “is a lie like so many lies. This is part of the cynical behavior of the Palestinian side.” He said he had “asked the Palestinians to join us and to make a combined investigation, and to send the body to one of our pathologists to check whether their claims are right. But they did not allow us to see the body... They took it to Ramallah.”
Other reporters noted that the Palestinians chose to exploit the condition of the victim’s body. Larry Kaplow in the Austin American-Statesman (10/10) wrote:
Palestinian television repeatedly showed pictures of the charred and mutilated body, which drove more [Palestinians] into the streets. This catapulted a large crowd toward a confrontation with the Israeli troops at a junction between Israeli and Palestinian territories.
While other media outlets made clear the Palestinian claims were unconfirmed, Ludden adopted them outright, adding that: “The torture and murder outraged Palestinian leaders.”
FACT: Physicians for Human Rights, a group often critical of Israel, investigated the Judeh death in detail and publicly concluded that it was the result of a car accident and there was no evidence of torture or mutilation.
NPR never corrected the incendiary false story.
In the same October 9 program, Ludden made brief mention of the discovery of the body of a rabbi, saying only: “Police said he’d been shot Saturday by Palestinians.” The murdered rabbi, Hillel Lieberman, had, in fact, been kidnaped on the way to rescue Torah scrolls at Joseph’s Tomb and his bullet-riddled body was found in a cave.
Biased use of language is apparent in the segment’s referring to Palestinians who “lob stones at an Israeli military outpost,” while characterizing Jews as engaged in “mob-style aggression” when they throw rocks and damage Arab property. The daily rock-throwing by Palestinians is never characterized as “mob-style aggression.” Similarly, Ludden refers to Palestinians reacting to the alleged murder of Issam Judeh with “intensified emotions,” while Jews are said to react to the murder of Rabbi Lieberman with “attitudes” that “hardened.”
• On October 1, Ludden stated:
You’ve got this Goliath of an Israeli army with guns. In some places yesterday they used armored tanks. There were battle helicopters buzzing overhead. At one point in the Gaza Strip yesterday, Israeli soldiers fired an anti-tank missile. All this directed at young kids with stones.
FACT: None of the Israeli weaponry cited had been “directed at young kids with stones.” At that point, the tanks had not fired a shot at anyone, but were positioned as a deterrent. The helicopters had been brought to help rescue an Israeli who had been shot by Palestinians during their assault on Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus and was trapped and bleeding to death. The anti-tank missile was used against Palestinian snipers firing at Israelis from high-rise buildings at the Netzarim junction in Gaza.
Ludden’s inaccurate statements were contradicted by fellow reporter Linda Gradstein in an October 4 report in which Gradstein describes Israel firing helicopter gunships at buildings harboring Palestinian gunmen, not at “young kids with stones.”
On October 5, Ludden herself states: “Armored tanks have moved into key hot spots, though spokesmen say they’re meant to intimidate and have not opened fire. Perhaps most controversial, helicopter gunships have repeatedly shot guided rockets next to the besieged Israeli army post at Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip.”
On October 8, Gradstein reported, “And for the first time since the latest clashes began, in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Israel fired machine guns mounted on tanks.”
NPR has not corrected the inaccurate October 1 report.
• In another segment on October 1, Ludden stated that “helicopter gunships fired on crowds in the Gaza Strip.”
FACT: This is inaccurate. If helicopter gunships had fired on crowds, there would have been hundreds of casualties. The gunships, as noted, were firing at snipers in multi-story buildings.
NPR has not corrected this additional October 1 error.
• On October 31, Ludden reported that “nearly all those killed in the past month have been Palestinian civilians armed only with stones.” She made the same assertion on November 17, when she said of the victims, “most have been civilians armed only with stones.”
FACT: Ludden has no way of knowing what percentage of those killed were “armed only with stones.” Among the rioters have also been men shooting guns and hurling fire bombs. Nor does she report that Palestinian gunmen shoot from within the ranks of unarmed youth, drawing return fire from Israelis.
NPR has not corrected these errors from October 31 and November 17.
• On November 27, Linda Gradstein reported: “Israel today eased restrictions on Gaza as good will gesture for Ramadan, allowing food and gasoline to enter the area for the first time in more than a week.”
FACT: Israel had not prevented food (or medicine) from reaching Gaza. The Associated Press also investigated this question and stated that Israel did not prevent food deliveries. Nevertheless, NPR claims their sources corroborate the report.
NPR has not corrected this error.
• On October 9, in a commonplace NPR distortion, reporter Kate Seelye misrepresented the facts about the Chebaa Farms area on the Lebanon/Golan border, where three Israeli soldiers were kidnaped by Hezbollah. She and a guest speaker say:
Seelye: Israel refused to hand over the Chebaa Farms when it withdrew its forces from the rest of Southern Lebanon last May, but Lebanon insists the area is an integral part of its territory.
Nizar Hamzeh: ... basically Chebaa Farm is an occupied territory, and there is a right, basically, for them, and it’s a legitimate right, from their views, to launch operations into the Chebaa Farm...
• On November 26, NPR’s Linda Gradstein repeated the distortion, referring to the Chebaa Farms as “a disputed border area” and stating:
Israel says it captured the Chebaa Farms from Syria in the 1967 War, but Lebanon claims the territory and says that therefore Israel’s withdrawal from South Lebanon is incomplete.
FACT: The United Nations, hardly a pro-Israel partisan, monitored closely Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon, including the Chebaa Farms area, and certified it as complete. NPR, however, repeatedly omits the UN verification of Israel’s position, presenting the issue as open to legal debate.
NPR has not corrected these distortions.
• On September 28, Ludden erroneously stated that, “Sharon’s orchestrated tour challenges a delicate status quo that’s held since Israel seized control of East Jerusalem’s holy sites in 1967.”
FACT: The “status quo” permits Jews and Israelis to visit the Mount. Sharon’s visit did not challenge the status quo; it conformed to it. Moreover, Sharon had visited on numerous occasions previously.
NPR has never corrected this misinformation regarding the Temple Mount.
• On October 2, Linda Gradstein said, “Palestinian official Faisal Husseini says it’s up to Israel to fulfill agreements it has signed and that means withdrawing from almost all of the occupied West Bank.”
FACT: Israel has not signed an agreement stipulating “withdrawing from almost all of the occupied West Bank.”
NPR has not corrected this misrepresentation.
• On October 15, NPR’s Mike Shuster in a Talk of the Nation segment made numerous inaccurate and misleading statements about the Temple Mount. It is notable that his garbled explanation was broadcast not in the first hours or days of the crisis, but two weeks after the visit of Ariel Sharon. Jennifer Ludden had made a similar error about policies regarding Jewish access to the Temple Mount on September 28. Shuster said:
...when [Ariel Sharon] decided that he would go and put his feet on the Temple Mount, he was also breaking a tradition.
Since 1967, when the Israeli army seized the Temple Mount during the Six-Day War, despite the fact that it is in Israeli hands, the Israeli government has allowed Muslim clergy and a Muslim administration to take care of things for the Temple Mount, and there has been a tacit agreement among Israeli politicians not to go up there... When Israeli leaders go there, it challenges the Muslim view of this and it challenges a kind of uneasy coexistence that has prevailed there for 33 years. And Sharon broke that at a very tense moment...
FACT: Shuster’s assertions are wrong. When Ariel Sharon “put his feet on the Temple Mount” he was reaffirming, not breaking, a tradition. He, like many others, had visited before.
The “tacit agreement” has been that the Waqf has a free hand to administer Muslim religious sites and activity without Israeli interference, but that Israelis, including politicians, have the right to visit the Temple Mount. What Shuster fails to convey too is the singular forbearance evinced by the Jews in this policy toward the Temple Mount. They have, in effect, foregone active religious presence at the holiest site in Judaism in order to preserve peaceful relations with the Muslims whose shrines are built atop the ancient temples.
In the same October 15 segment, Shuster makes additional inaccurate statements. He tells listeners:
...The plaza itself is the site of two very important ancient mosques. And at the base, there’s the Western Wall, which is one of the holiest of Jewish holy sites. The Jews believe that – the Jews say that the Temple Mount was the site of two ancient temples in the Jewish tradition that had been destroyed at various stages in ancient Jewish history.
FACT: There is one mosque, not two, on the Mount. (The Dome of the Rock, sometimes inaccurately referred to as the Mosque of Omar, is a Mashhad, a shrine for pilgrims, rather than a mosque.) Shuster’s language in characterizing Jewish claims is also notable: “Jews say” and “Jews believe” that the temples existed in “Jewish tradition.”
Again on October 15, Shuster stated inaccurately:
[The Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif are] ... at the center of both the Jewish faith and the Muslim faith.
FACT: The Temple Mount is at the center of Judaism, but Mecca is at the center of the Muslim faith, evidenced most dramatically by its being the site of Islamic pilgrimage. Jerusalem is only the site of Jewish and Christian pilgrimage. Noteworthy in this regard is that from 1948 to 1967, when the Temple Mount was controlled by Jordan, not one foreign Arab head of state visited it.
NPR has not corrected these erroneous assertions.
One-sided, pro-Palestinian segments
Beyond the issue of factual errors is the problem of NPR’s frequent broadcast of egregiously one-sided, biased segments essentially advocating Palestinian/Arab positions. NPR has continuously blurred Arab responsibility for the violence, failing to report that “clashes” have erupted because Arab mobs seek out Israeli soldiers and civilians and assault them. Instead, the focus has been on Arab complaints against Israel for “excessive force.” NPR interviews Arab shopkeepers, doctors, professors, protesters and others who denounce Israel as brutal and inhuman. In many such segments Israeli voices are excluded entirely. To list but a few examples from the CAMERA study:
1) The network reported only once at the beginning of the recent rioting in September that stepped-up violence against Israelis had actually preceded Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount. Reports thereafter blamed Sharon continuously, with one entire segment devoted to Rashid Khalidi’s excoriating the Israeli general without any balancing view (October 2). The network never reported the official Israeli position, stated emphatically by Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami, that Sharon was entitled to visit the Temple Mount and that this was no cause for violence.
2) On October 7, Kate Seelye reported from Lebanon on the ferment in the Arab world over the Israeli-Palestinian violence. The segment was entirely one-sided, presenting the views of Arabs such as Khalil Nasserin who said the Israelis “don’t have a heart. They kill young people who are 11 and 12.” A “Lebanese political analyst” deplored Israel’s allegedly “eating away at what’s left of Palestinian territories in the West Bank particularly, and Gaza, and a year to year, month by month treatment of the Palestinian population in inhuman ways and denying them their dignity and the rights of human beings.” Seelye does not mention that Palestinians have gained, not lost, territory, nor does she provide any response to the litany of other distorted charges. No Israeli voice was included.
3) October 8 was emblematic of the extreme bias by NPR. On the eve of Yom Kippur, eight separate stories on the crisis were broadcast:
From Lebanon, Kate Seelye interviewed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who justified kidnaping Israeli soldiers by insisting that he merely wanted his “people” to be “liberated” from Israeli prisons. An Arab mother lamented the loss of her son but said he had “died on the path to Jerusalem.” No Israeli voice was included.
Jennifer Ludden reported from Hebron, where Arabs described being “frustrated” and an Arab doctor accused Israel of “a massacre of Palestinians.” No Israeli voice was included.
NPR’S Jacki Lyden, reporting from Washington, D.C., interviewed Arabs at an anti-Israel rally. They warn Jews, “not to transmit (sic) your suffering into torture and harassment and oppression for others.” Lyden asked one demonstrator what she would tell Jews on Yom Kippur. She responded: “I tell them to have conscience and to leave the Arab people in peace in their own homes and not to give them hard time and kick them and kill them, kill the innocent people.” No Israeli or Jewish voice was included.
Rami Khoury reported from Amman, Jordan. He rationalized the ransacking of Joseph’s Tomb saying “... It’s not fair to take an incident like that, isolated, and try to give it political implications, but you have to see this in a wider context that the Palestinians were so outraged by what had happened to them at the hands of the Israeli army over the last 10 days...” No Israeli voice was included.
4) An October 9 exchange between NPR host Bob Edwards and Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian “political analyst” much favored and frequently heard on NPR, offers a representative instance of the indulgent interview treatment Arab speakers receive. Edwards asked, among other things: “The Palestinians say Israel has used excessive force against the rioters. Today Barak said he’d use all available means against Palestinians. What effect is that likely to have?” Edwards then gave his guest a further chance to denounce Israel, asking: “...the UN Security Council approved a resolution citing Israel for the excessive use of force. The United States abstained from that vote. Has there been any reaction from Palestinians?” Khatib replied to the “questions” by accusing Israel of “continuous killing,” and of “brutal reaction” and more. There was not a hint in the broadcast of Palestinian responsibility for the violence. No Israeli voice was included.
5) On October 12, the day of the lynching of two Israeli reserve soldiers in Ramallah, Jennifer Ludden interviewed Palestinians in Khan Yunis refugee camp. She allowed a Palestinian woman named Mariam to make unsubstantiated claims that her father was murdered in 1967 by Israel and her grandfather by a soldier in 1956. The charges were unquestioned by the NPR reporter. No Israeli voice was included.
6) The day after the lynching, Friday the 13th, NPR aired stories which included Israelis, as well as three Arab-only segments. One with Rami Khouri denounced America for how it “has behaved over the last 30 years” with regard to the Middle East conflict and attacked Israel for its “encirclement and bombardment” and “humiliation” of the Palestinians. No Israeli voice was included.
In another segment, NPR host Robert Siegel lobbed softball questions to Salameh Nematt about the difficulties of Arab states in the face of events in Israel. Nematt agreed that it’s difficult for Jordan because of “Israeli violence against the Palestinians.” No Israeli voice was included.
A story that opened with a Palestinian funeral presented a variety of accusations against Israel. PA official Imad Falouji denounced Israel for allegedly not negotiating “in good faith.” When an Arab child showed admiration for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Falouji blamed Israel, declaring, “Israel has lost another generation of Palestinians.” NPR reporter Jennifer Ludden did not remind listeners that it is the Palestinians themselves who are indoctrinating new generations, deliberately and systematically teaching hatred of Jews and rejection of Israel – in schools, summer camps and official media. No Israeli voice was included.
7) An October 19th report underscored the extreme partisanship, even propagandistic tendencies, of some NPR reporters. It included an interview with Palestinians Jonathan Kuttab and Ghassan Khatib who deplored Israeli policy and conduct. Jennifer Ludden elaborated on their charges, using extreme anti-Israel rhetoric. She claimed “an ever-expanding network of bypass roads to access the settlements has carved the West Bank into disconnected Bantustans.” No Israeli voices were included.
8) An October 22nd segment with NPR’s Kate Seelye was representative of the network’s chronic whitewashing of anti-Israel terrorist groups. Reporting on the increased popularity of Hezbollah in the wake of the violence in Israel and the PA areas, Seelye said “frustrated” Palestinians were “turning for inspiration to the resistance group” that had ejected Israel from Lebanon. She interviewed an Arab who spoke repeatedly of the “frustration” of the Arabs, and of Hezbollah recruiting “for the cause of Jerusalem.” Seelye never reported that Hezbollah is on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups, nor did she explain what Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah means by the “cause of Jerusalem.” He has made his goals abundantly clear, as he did, for example, in January 2000:
When we speak about Jerusalem, we don’t want anyone to misunderstand. We do not mean East Jerusalem. We do not mean Holy Jerusalem...We do not mean Jerusalem, the city. When we say Jerusalem, we speak of it as a symbol of all Palestine and the entire nation that is under assault by the scheme of global arrogance and Zionism that throughout the past 50 years has been implemented on our land.... Israel is a cancerous, usurping entity without legitimacy or legal character.
No Israeli voices were included in the report.
9) On October 23, Jennifer Ludden reported from the Arab neighborhood of Beit Jala about the anxiety of residents there facing retaliatory fire from Israel in response to Palestinian gunman shooting at the Jewish neighborhood of Gilo. Cast almost entirely from the personal view of the Arabs, the segment gave only cursory reference to the Arabs’ provocation. Repeating as fact Arab terminology for Gilo, Ludden called the neighborhood “a settlement built in occupied East Jerusalem.” She did not tell listeners that most of the land on which Gilo is built was seized by the Jordanians in 1948 for an army camp because of its strategic heights. After Jordan attacked Israel in 1967, Israel captured the camp and the uninhabitated Jordanian state land became Israeli state land. (Israel Kimhi, Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies)
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