The Truth about Jerusalem’s City of David – The Lies about Silwan - by Nadav Shragai

...it appears that, as in the case of the Temple Mount compound, the acrimony and slander concerning the City of David stem in part from the inability of the inciters to deal with the Jewish past of the site, which is adjacent to the heart of Jerusalem – the Temple Mount. At a time when Palestinians are rewriting the history of Jerusalem – both the Jewish and the Muslim history – and trying to prove that they were in the city before the Jews were (despite what modern research tells us), the City of David is for them another item in their large fabric of denial of any Jewish tie to Jerusalem, its sites, and its holy places.

Nadav Shragai..
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs..
Institute for Contemporary Affairs #624..
July '19..

On July 1, 2019, a photo of the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, and U.S. envoy, Jason Greenblatt, striking a thin and symbolic wall with a sledgehammer – a wall built to separate two parts of the ancient Pilgrimage Road – became the headline of the whole event.

This is one of the most sensational archaeological discoveries to be made in Jerusalem since Israel’s establishment. On this road, which was remarkably preserved under the ashes of the Roman destruction, many thousands of Jews – according to the historical descriptions – walked in Second Temple times after a ritual bath in the Shiloah Pool about 700 meters from the Temple Mount.

Over the past five years, Israeli archaeologists have uncovered 350 meters of this road including numerous artifacts that bring back to life the last battle in Jerusalem, about 2,000 years ago, between the Jewish rebels and the Romans.

Friedman attended the dedication ceremony not only to express recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the City of David area, but also to admire a magnificent archaeological endeavor of the Israel Antiquities Authority, replete with discoveries and finds. Although this enterprise was dedicated by Israel on June 30, it began more than a hundred years ago at a site excavated by non-Israeli archaeologists, at a time when the State of Israel did not exist and Jerusalem was under Muslim rule.

Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority, closely supervised by safety engineers (in line with the world’s strictest standards), have been searching for or excavating the Pilgrimage Road – mistakenly known as the Herodian Road – only since the beginning of the 2000s. But they and the Antiquities Authority are not the first to look for this road or excavate it. They were preceded in the period of Jordanian rule by the British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon, who uncovered the more northern parts of the Pilgrimage Road and also warned that the City of David should be excavated hastily before the Jordanians paved a road there – which is indeed what they eventually did. Kenyon was preceded by an archaeological research delegation during the period of the British Mandate. And this delegation was preceded at the end of the nineteenth century, in the time of Ottoman rule, by the archaeologists Jones Bliss and Archibald Dickie.

Before discussing the many discoveries from the new excavation, we first need to disprove the allegation that it endangers the homes of the residents of the Arab neighborhood of Silwan.

(Continue to Full Article)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Surprise! Obama and Media Call for Segregation in Israel

...Can the Israeli prime minister possibly–assuming he even wants to comply with the American president’s order–intervene to overturn a legal sale because it was made from an Arab to a Jew? What on earth could Obama be expecting here? That Israel be the one Western country to legally restrict Jewish property rights? In the year 2014? In Jerusalem? Does the president even understand what he’s asking here? The safe bet is generally to answer such questions in the negative: no, Obama does not understand what he’s saying.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
06 October '14..

The most concerning aspect to the periodic arguments between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is not that they fight, but what they fight about. No one expects a disagreement about how to approach the Iranian nuclear program not to raise the temperature a bit; it’s something many Israelis consider an existential threat and it would shift the balance of power in global politics further away from the West while isolating Israel even more. If the two are going to argue, in other words, argue over something important.

But you can tell the relationship is really on the rocks by the fights the Obama administration chooses to pick, most recently on two issues: Jewish construction in Givat Hamatos, a Jerusalem community just over the green line, and the private sale of existing homes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan from Arabs to Jews. The case of Givat Hamatos is standard fare for fights over settlements: although the Obama administration is wrong here (as usual), it’s a petty but classic fight to pick for American officials looking to take potshots at Israel. (Though the optics of telling black Ethiopian immigrants they must live in substandard housing is not the Obama administration’s proudest moment, to be sure.)

The Givat Hamatos tiff, therefore, doesn’t speak well of Obama, but doesn’t really break any new ground. That’s not true of Silwan. Obama’s objection to a Jew legally buying a home from an Arab in Jerusalem is nothing less than ethnic segregationism, and press secretary Josh Earnest’s classification of such a home as an “occupation” is the kind of pro-Palestinian propaganda the parroting of which is, quite frankly, evidence of a level of surpassing ignorance shocking even for the Obama administration. (Discrimination which the New York Times endorsed as well.) On that note, this nugget from an earlier Times of Israel story about the controversy jumps out:

When asked about Netanyahu’s allegations that the US was telling Jews that they could not buy houses in the Arab East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, which several Jewish families moved into earlier the week, Psaki did not clarify Washington’s position regarding the Ir David group’s independent purchase of Arab-owned houses there.

Instead, Psaki said that there were questions involving building permits and construction — an answer that seemed to address the municipality’s involvement in Givat Hamatos rather than the private initiative in Silwan.

It wasn’t clear that Jen Psaki even knew what she was being asked about. The degree to which this administration’s advisors and spokesmen are uninformed about issues on which they pronounce judgment is simply incredible.

Fabricating Palestinian History: The Battle over Silwan

Shaul Bartal..
Middle East Quarterly..
Summer 2012..

On August 26, 2010, a violent clash broke out between Jewish and Arab residents of Silwan, a predominantly Muslim village outside the southern end of the walled Old City of Jerusalem. The name derives from the biblical "Shiloah" and its subsequently Graecized "Siloam."

On the face of it, the sparring that erupted over a gate built illegally by Arab residents may seem like a miniature version of the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians over who controls the Holy Land. But reducing the struggle to a mere real estate dispute misses a critical point in understanding the persistence of the larger conflict. For the battle of Silwan is a microcosm of a larger fight, one in which one side, the Palestinian, seeks to erase the existence of the other—not merely through traditional armed conflict but also by rewriting history.

(Read full "Fabricating Palestinian History: The Battle over Silwan")

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.
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More celebrating

Frimet/Arnold Roth
This Ongoing War
15 May '11

http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com/2011/05/15-may-11-more-celebrating.html

Hat-tip to Jameel from muqata.blogspot.com for alerting us to a four-minute-long video of yesterday's Nakba-ready rock-throwing party in Silwan, a neighbourhood a few minutes' drive from where we live in Jerusalem. In the background, you hear local children shouting throughout the video "Allahu Akbar", an expression of their aspiration for peaceful relations along secular, democratic, live-and-let-live lines, as received from their parents, teachers and religious leaders.



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Post-Christmas Morning In Silwan

Honest Reporting/Backspin
27 December '10

After seeing this AFP/Getty photo (via IsraellyCool), my first impression was that the photographer in the foreground was likely to get hit by a recoiling slingshot strap. Such is post-Christmas in Silwan.

But on closer look, the slingshot seems too small; the other kid clutching a rock in the background looks more likely to hit any Israeli policemen. At least the mask is an age-appropriate size.

A photographer take photos of Palestinian youth using a slingshot during minor clashes which erupt in the East Jerusalem's Silwan neighborhood on December 26, 2010, as Israeli police increased security in the area to avoid clashes following a municipality order to evict a Palestinian family from their house.

What kind of deliveries is Santa making in eastern Jerusalem?

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CBS "60 Minutes" Joins the Arab Propaganda Bandwagon on Jerusalem

Ricki Hollander
CAMERA Media Analysis
20 October '10

One of the main obstacles in previous peace-making efforts has been Arab unwillingness to accept Israel as a Jewish state and Muslim denial of Judaism's historical and religious ties to Jerusalem. U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross complained that during the July 2000 negotiations at Camp David, Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat's only contribution was his refusal to acknowledge Jewish ties to Jerusalem, claiming the Jewish Temple never existed there.

When talks resumed in Taba later that year, the Israelis agreed to full Palestinian sovereignty on the Temple Mount, but requested Palestinians acknowledge the sacredness of the place to Judaism. They refused. (See "The Battle Over Jerusalem and the Temple Mount") Moreover, Palestinian leaders not only deny the existence of Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem, they falsely allege that Jews are trying to takeover or destroy Muslim holy sites there. In that way, they follow the lead of Jerusalem Mufti and Nazi sympathizer Haj al Amin Husseini who so successfully incited anti-Jewish rioting in the1920's by making his battle cry "Defend Muslim Holy Sites."

The efforts to delegitimize Israel's claim to Jerusalem have generally been limited to Arab and Muslim leaders, but recently, international media outlets have jumped on board to support them. The latest one to join the fray is Lesley Stahl of CBS News's "60 Minutes" in an October 17th segment entitled "Controversy in Jerusalem: The City Of David."

Ms. Stahl did not apparently bother to engage in serious journalism, the kind that involves research and fact-checking. She simply followed the playbook of Time Magazine, the Economist, and BBC's "Panorama" with a "paint-by-numbers" exercise calling on the same cast of characters, repeating the same distorted claims and reading from the same overall script. Echoing colleagues at the aforementioned media outlets, Ms. Stahl demonstrated how to promote Arab political propaganda with shoddy and partisan journalism:

(Read full analysis)

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'Palestinian' children being encouraged to participate in terrorism ... by Jerusalem police

Israel Matzav
14 October '10

You will recall last Friday's attack on David Be'eri and his 13-year old son as they drove through the streets of Jerusalem. At least two of the main perpetrators of that attack were children under the age of 12. Dealing with the fallout of that attack seems to be giving the Israeli authorities apoplexy.

The headline of this article says that the police are going to hold the parents responsible for violent acts - including stone-throwing - perpetrated by children under the age of 12. But if you read the article, you will see that in fact, nothing of the sort can be done. All the authorities are doing is wringing their hands in frustration. And the result is that children under the age of 12 are getting a free pass to perpetrate terror attacks.

“We will not arrest the parents, because that would be problematic, but we do want to make them be responsible for their kids,” explained Shmuel Ben-Ruby, the Jerusalem Police District spokesman.

The police are able to punish children between the ages of 12-18 for stone throwing, but have difficultly stopping children under 12, the age of “criminal responsibility.”

(Read full post)

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Another Ambush In Silwan--More Stones Thrown

Daled Amos
12 October '10

Well They'll stone you when you are all alone
They'll stone you when you are walking home
They'll stone you and then say they're all brave
They'll stone you when you're send down in your grave

But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned 

Bob Dylan, Everybody Must Get Stoned

The stone-throwing continues in Silwan:

A minivan carrying members of the Knesset's State Control Committee returning from a tour of the east Jerusalem Silwan neighborhood was stoned by Arabs Tuesday.

A large rock hit the front window of the vehicle, but no one was injured. Border Guard troops who were securing the area were informed and dispersed the attackers.

The incident took place while Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch visited the east Jerusalem neighborhoods of Silwan and Issawiya in response to the recent escalation in stone-throwing.

(Read full post)

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Tadmit Center calls for National Press Office to suspend the Press Cards

Tadmit Center calls for National Press Office to suspend the Press Cards of the Journalists who participated in preplanned lynch and stoning of David Be'eri last week.

IMRA
12 October '10

tadmit@haforum.org.il

Tadmit, the Organization for the Strengthening of Democracy in the Israeli Media, applied to Danny Seaman, Director of the National Press Office demanding that they suspend the Press Cards of the reporters and photographers who were present at the ambush and stoning of David Be'eri on Friday.

A letter was sent to the Israeli Press Counsel as well, requesting an investigation into the behavior of journalists at ambush site, who did nothing to prevent the violent events and did not offer assistance to the injured, as stipulated in paragraph 13a of the journalists Code of Ethics.

It is obvious that the event on Friday was organized and staged.

The reporters were invited to photograph a planned violent event, in which lives were to be endangered.

In the footage, the children and youths participating prepared for the violence by taking off their shirts and covering up their faces with them. They had stones prepared to hurl at passing drivers.

Participation of the press in a planned violent event is questionably a criminal offense which should be investigated by the Israeli police.

This cannot be called "media coverage".

This event is a cynical misuse of Israeli democracy and of the freedom of the press available in Israel.

Tadmit calls upon the national press office to suspend the press cards not only of the photographers and reporters who participated in the events this past Friday, but of the media agencies that sent them.

Tadmit director, Chanie Luz: "The victims of the lynch (a father and son), as well as the minor child sent by irresponsible adults to hurt innocent drivers, were a hair's breadth away from being killed in the ambush.

We are talking about a well planned media event, intended for use in the propaganda war against the State of Israel and its citizens.

The National Press Office must promptly take action to uproot from the media elements who take advantage of Israeli freedom of the press to agitate, stage riots and jeopardize human life."

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The rise of the suicide protests

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
12 October '10

David Be'eri is either much admired or much hated, depending on how you feel about Israel and Jewish heritage. Be'eri is the founder and head of the Ir David Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to excavating, preserving and developing biblical Jerusalem, the City of David.

When Be'eri began his project in 1986, the City of David, located just opposite the Old City, was in shambles. Former excavations were hidden beneath heaps of garbage and debris.

Owing to his efforts, today the City of David is one of Israel's most beloved tourist attractions. Some 500,000 tourists visit the site each year. Seventeen archaeological excavations have been undertaken there or are currently ongoing. Annual archaeological conferences at the site attract leading scholars from all over the world.

One of the keys to Be'eri's success has been the close relations he has cultivated with the local Arabs. Hundreds of local Arabs have worked in the City of David on the various excavations.

But in the past few months, beginning around the time the Obama administration began pressuring Israel to curb its sovereignty in Jerusalem, things have begun to change. Leftist groups including Peace Now, Ir Amim, B'Tselem, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Rabbis for Human Rights, and Emek Shaveh have begun organizing frequent protests.

According to Udi Ragones, the spokesman for Ir David, the various leftist groups collaborate openly with two Arab groups that have been formed over the past year: Silwannet and the Wadi Hilweh Information Center. Peace Now's Hagit Ofran is often seen working with Jawad Sayam from the information center. One of the information center's employees also works for Emek Shaveh, an organization of anti-Zionist archaeologists.

OVER THE past month, what began as non-violent protests against Ir David turned violent. A month ago, anti-Israel activists set several cars ablaze. Local Arabs who work with the Ir David Foundation began receiving threats. The car of one such Arab was set on fire.

(Read full story)

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MSM, Stone Throwers Collude and Collide In Silwan

How did so many photographers happen to be in the right place at the time?

Honest Reporting
Media Critique
October '10






Press photographers showed their true colors on Friday, colluding with Palestinian rock-throwers in Silwan.

The results: Photographers walked away with graphic photos and video footage. Imran Mansur, age 11, was left with a broken leg; Israel was smeared as the images rapidly hit the news stream.

(While) The Guardian published an AFP/Getty Images photo with the following tip for photographers, nothing could be further from the truth:

The photographer, Ilia Yefimovich, is in the right place at the right time and captures this dramatic scene using a large depth of field and fast shutter speed.

But Yefimovich wasn't the only photographer who simply got lucky. The incident was also captured by the Associated Press, the European Pressphoto Agency and Al Jazeera, among other news services. How did everyone manage to be in "the right place at the right time?"

HonestReporting put the question to David Katz, veteran photographer and imagery advisor. He offered four reasons why he was sure the incident was set up, with collusion between the rock-throwers and the photographers.

(Read full critique)

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Press cards to be suspended?

Israel Matzav
11 October '10

Tadmit, a watchdog group, has asked the government press office to suspend the credentials of reporters and cameramen who were lying in wait when David Beeri and his son were attacked by stonethrowers on Friday. Reportedly, one of those present was a photographer for the Israeli website Walla.

Tadmit, the Center for Strengthening Democracy in Israel Media, contacted GPO Head Daniel Seaman Sunday and demanded that he take immediate action against the journalists who were present at the violent event.

The NGO also wrote the Press Council and demanded that it launch an inquiry into the behavior of the journalists. It noted that the Council's Code of Ethics specifies that “the moral and legal obligation... to give assistance to a person who is in grave and immediate danger of losing life or limb, also applies to a journalist during his journalistic activity.”

(Read full post)

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Palestinians ambush Jews with rocks and photographers (Video)

MiddleEastNewsWatch
10 October '10
H/T Elder of Ziyon

(Again) Palestinians stone throwers ambush Jews with rocks and photographers in Silwan east Jerusalem trying to stage a hit and run accident. Channel 2 interviews and gets first hand experience while on location.



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Mohammed Dura - Redux: Another Attempt at a Blood Libel against Israel?

Lenny Ben-David
I*Consult
11 October '10

The film clip showing an Israeli car hitting two Arab children in Silwan on Friday was horrifying. No one can sit quietly and indifferently while children - any children - are hurt before your eyes. Thank God the children survived and were not seriously injured.

Then came the subtext: The children were part of a gang attacking the driver with rocks, and rocks can most definitely kill. The boys, emboldened by some militant organizer, covered their faces to avoid identification and arrest. There's no doubt of their intention and premeditation. The driver was David Be'eri, a leader of the Jewish residents in Silwan. Be'eri's son was in the car.

The story and YouTube clip spread around the world in nanoseconds. Arab witnesses charged that the "settler" deliberately ran down the children.

But, I've now watched the clip scene-by-scene and in some parts frame-by-frame, and there's a deeper, even sinister, subtext.

Most viewers focus on the victims. It's natural. They don't notice at least seven still photographers in addition to the video cameraman. With the exception of one photographer standing across the street, all the others filmed the scene from the same vantage point at the bottom of the hill. There could have been more. I identify the photographers as:

(Read full post)

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Security guard blamed for east Jerusalem riots

Just Journalism
23 September 5771

Just Journalism reported yesterday on the BBC online coverage of the violence in East Jerusalem, which started after a security guard shot and killed a Palestinian man. The BBC’s initial account ignored Israeli reports that ‘the guard encountered a preplanned ambush which put his life in danger, prompting him to open fire’ (Ynet), and even an updated version concentrated on tensions caused by settler activity, rather than emphasizing the trigger incident. The broadsheet coverage today has similarly downplayed the initial incident.

Articles in The Guardian, The Financial Times and The Independent gave the story great attention, whilst in The Times, the report on the violence was absorbed into coverage of the peace talks. Notably, the three broadsheets that wrote articles just on the violence failed to give credence to the Israeli reports of the shootings.

(Read full article)

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Why We Don’t Have Peace

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
23 September '10

Here’s how it works in the Middle East. An Israeli security guard travels through a section of the nation’s capital (no, dear liberals, East Jerusalem is not a “settlement”). Palestinians set upon him, throwing stones and Molotov cocktails. Afraid for his life, the guard shoots in self defense, killing one assailant. (”The guard, fearing for his life, allegedly opened fire with his personal firearm at a group of rock throwers and killed a resident. Police found two knives and screwdriver on the body of the victim, who had a previous criminal history and was known to police.”) The Palestinians commence a riot, injuring innocent Israelis. The world blames Israel.

Here’s the Palestinian mindset, displaying all its splendid victimology. The residents complain that the assailants should have been “warned” (before of after the Molotov cocktails rained down?) .Everyone gets into the act:

There’s going to be a huge mess in Silwan, something big will happen. They killed a man, what should I do, be quiet? What about his family, his little kids?” asked another neighbor of the victim, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of police reprisal.

(Read full post)

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The truth about the Yemenite village of Silwan

The 19th century settlement of Yemenite Jews in Silwan was

established on a bare hillside outside the walls of Jerusalem

(Photo reproduced with help from Robert Avrech of Seraphic Secret)

Bataween
Point of No Return
06 July '10

The Observer is helping to spread the myth that Jews and Arabs lived happily together in the Jerusalem village of Silwan. In its obituary of 4 July 2010 of the PLO terrorist Abu Daoud, it wrote:

Mohammed Daoud Oudeh was born in the Silwan quarter of east Jerusalem, where he claimed to have mixed happily with Yemeni Jews. He taught mathematics and physics to Palestinian schoolchildren and qualified as a lawyer. He remained in Silwan until Jerusalem was occupied by Israel during the June 1967 war. Moving to Amman, he joined the Palestine Liberation Organisation, then followed a training course in Cairo to help form the PLO security apparatus in 1968.

But Abu Daoud would have been born after the last of the Yemenite Jews of Silwan had been advised to evacuate the village by the British, following bloody disturbances during the Arab revolt and Arab attacks in 1921 and 1929. The Elder of Zion blog explodes the myth that Arabs mixed happily with Yemenite Jews, quoting this Wikipedia entry:

"In 1884, the Yemenites moved into new stone houses at the south end of the Arab village, built for them by a Jewish charity called Ezrat Niddahim. This settlement was called Kfar Hashiloach or the Yemenite Village. Construction costs were kept low by using the Shiloach as a water source instead of digging cisterns. An early 20th century travel guide writes: In the “village of Silwan, east of Kidron … some of the fellah dwellings [are] old sepulchers hewn in the rocks. During late years a great extension of the village southward has sprung up, owing to the settlement here of a colony of poor Jews from Yemen, etc. many of whom have built homes on the steep hillside just above and east of Bir Eyyub,”[15] The Yemenite Jews living in Silwan were evacuated on advice of the British authorities in 1938, during the Arab revolt.[16] After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Silwan was annexed by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.[17] It remained under Jordanian occupation until 1967, when Israel captured the Old City and surrounding region. "

Elder of Zion rightly asks why the 19 years of Jordanian occupation give Arabs a greater right to Silwan than the 140 years when Jews lived on the site.

(Read full story)

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Media-backed Violence and Twisted History

Yisrael Medad
My Right Word
26 April '10

Isabel Kershner has a report in the New York Times on the Kach march through Ir David/Silwan:-

Israeli Rightists Stir Tensions in East Jerusalem

A small group of ultra-right-wing Israelis marched through a volatile neighborhood of East Jerusalem on Sunday, arousing passions over the future of the contested city as an American envoy wrapped up an inconclusive three-day visit aimed at getting peace talks under way.

I will return to that "arousing passions" in a moment but let me deal with another element in her story.

She writes (and the foreign desk editor approved for publication as we media monitors should know that many keyboards a story make) that the marchers proceeded:-

...through the Wadi Hilwe section of Silwan, a predominantly Arab neighborhood. Wadi Hilwe sits on what Jews believe to be the ruins of the biblical City of David, in the shadow of the Temple Mount, or the Noble Sanctuary, a site holy to both Muslims and Jews. In recent years a Jewish settler group has sponsored excavations in the area and acquired property that is now populated by hundreds of Jews.

Anyone who knows the area knows that Ms. Kershner (or Mrs. Hirsh Goodman) is really splitting geographical hairs on that. A "section" within a "neighborhood"? Sounds as if its another district of "Palestine".

But more importantly, many non-Jews also believe that the location is David's City and there are quite provable and firm scientific elements of evidence to that claim.

(Read full post)

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A Bronner Botch - It's All in a Name

Yisrael Medad
My Right Word
26 February '10

Ethan Bronner displays the subtle bias that permeates our media reality - even if unintended - when on the issue of eastern Jerusalem he writes:-

no utterance escapes politics. All labels and names here are contested. The mayor calls the neighborhood not by its Arabic name of Al Bustan but by a Hebrew one — Gan Hamelech, or the King’s Garden, a reference to the spot some believe King David wrote psalms

Ethan, Bustan in Arabic means Garden or Orchard. The Arabs are foreigners, and have been since 638, and are occupiers, turning Jewish land into what they wish you and other to supposedly consider as Arab land since time immemorial". Hebrew came first.

You see, the Arabs "borrowed" not only the name but the history of the Jews there. It's not even a contest.

(Read full post)
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On the Lookout for Bias at NPR

Steven Stotsky
CAMERA Media Analysis
31 December 09

National Public Radio's (NPR) news coverage of the Middle East often leaves the impression that Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Jerusalem is the main obstacle to an accord between Israel and the Palestinians. Meanwhile the unrelenting villification of Jews by Arab media, religious leaders and government institutions remains a largely taboo subject at the public network. During the Second Intifada, NPR's coverage had become so unbalanced that it prompted a flood of complaints from members of the Jewish community, who traditionally were staunch supporters of the public network. CAMERA produced numerous studies documenting the tilted coverage and ran full-page ads calling attention to the issue. The blatantly one-sided reporting diminished in the face of sustained public protest and NPR began to provide more balanced coverage, including more segments highlighting facets of Israeli life separate from the grinding conflict with the Palestinians. But recent examples make clear, the temptation to revert to old habits is ever-present and the need for constant vigilance in holding NPR accountable remains.

Again, NPR (falsely) blames Israel for housing discrimination

An All Things Considered segment by NPR's Jerusalem bureau chief, Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, on Nov. 26, 2009, describes the eviction of Palestinian families from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. In a familiar scenario, a Palestinian spokesman's allegations are amplified by a human rights organization and an oft-quoted Israeli activist. Token balance is supplied by including a brief statement by an Israeli official that fails to address the specific charges leveled. Genuine balance could be provided by Israeli experts who have studied the problem, but they are not called upon. The story promotes the charge that Israel uses discriminatory practices to uproot Arabs from their neighborhoods in East Jerusalem in order to establish a stronger Jewish presence. Garcia-Navarro generalizes a specific dispute over the demolition of illegally built homes into the accusation of a broad pattern of Israeli discrimination.