It’s not something trivial to know Bethlehem isn’t in a non-existent nation - by Jonathan S.Tobin

The game show “Jeopardy!” courted controversy when giving a clue to which there can be no definitive answer as long as the Palestinians reject peace.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
14 January '20..

There’s no escaping controversy any time that Israel or the Palestinians are mentioned. That’s a lesson the producers, writers and star of the long-running “Jeopardy!” television game show learned to their detriment this past week when a clue involving the location of the Church of the Nativity was used in an episode that aired on Jan. 10, though it was taped last fall.

In a category titled “Where’s That Church?” contestants were asked to identify the location of the house of worship that Christians believe to be the birthplace of Jesus. Katie Needle, a retail supervisor from Brooklyn, N.Y., and the show’s defending champion at the time, answered (in the form of a question, as the game’s rules require), “What is Palestine?” But to her surprise, longtime host Alex Trebek told her she was wrong. Another contestant named Jack Maguire countered, “What is Israel?” and won $200 for answering correctly.

The show then went to commercial break, and reportedly, after the producers and chief writer Billy Wisse huddled with Trebek, the question about the Church of the Nativity was eliminated. A new one was substituted, and the show went on with Needle ultimately defending her title. But when the show eventually aired, the deleted sequence mentioning Bethlehem was the one that viewers saw in a mistake that the show says it regrets.

It led to an avalanche of criticism against the game show, Trebek and Wisse (who is the son of Ruth Wisse, the distinguished Jewish scholar and eloquent advocate for Zionism) on social media from critics of Israel who saw it as an example of Zionist propaganda that sought to erase Palestine from the map.

Adding to the storm over the segment is the fact that Needle is actually a supporter of the Palestinian cause and has defended the anti-Semitic Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), while also criticizing Israel and proclaiming “Palestine should be free” on Twitter.

But while Alex Trebek won’t decide the fate of the Middle East, the correct answer to the question he posed isn’t a matter of trivia.

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