New hires often come with prejudices against Israel fully formed before they even start their job.
National Public Radio’s bias against Israel has been a nearly daily thing since the Hamas-led terrorist invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Critics of the media outlet have rightly spoken out repeatedly against its slanted coverage, such as the continuous use of casualty figures issued by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry as fact and without explaining to its audience that Hamas controls this information. What has gone largely unexamined is NPR’s blaming Israel for its supposed inability to access the Gaza Strip during the war.
In September, NPR proudly reported on its charging the Israel Defense Forces with crimes, and at the same time, pressured Israel to allow more journalists into Gaza, knowing full well that these news people would be placed in danger.
One of the statements that it signed onto read: “We demand the protection of Palestinian journalists and an end to the impunity for crimes perpetrated by the Israeli army against them in the Gaza Strip. We demand the foreign press be granted independent access to the Gaza Strip.”
The palpable hypocrisy when it comes to Israel and hostility to Israel was displayed by NPR once again earlier this month with its story headlined, “Our Correspondent Is Finally Allowed Into Gaza.”
It seems like NPR wants to see more news people in the Palestinian enclave so that it can have more stories about journalists who are casualties.
Its audio report on Nov. 5 was introduced on its website this way: “During two years of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.”
To me, this sums up NPR’s failure to cover accurately. Hamas is not labeled as the terrorist group that it is. Hamas and Israel are portrayed as two equal nations in conflict, rather than the true story of a nation at war against terrorism. The 2023 Hamas invasion of Israel is left out, so that Israel’s presence in Gaza has zero context.
Far too much of its reporting follows these same patterns.
Problematic examples could, and probably should, fill more than one book. For now, just one more fact should be related: Journalists that NPR hires often come with prejudices against Israel fully formed before they even start their job.
Al Jazeera is state-owned and funded by the government of Qatar through its Qatar Media Corporation.
In October, NPR audiences were exposed to an especially anti-Israel interview feature about its own staffer, a former Al Jazeera employee named Jane Arraf. She complains about “the fact that Palestinians don’t have a homeland,” as if she were an opinion writer or pundit, and not someone who poses as a news reporter.
Included among the outrageous statements that Arraf made in her October interview were that “Israel has restricted aid (to Gaza) for months,” and that she “was standing on the ruins of a demolished village that overlooks Israel, and it was demolished by the Israeli army after the ceasefire with Lebanon last year because they want to depopulate those border villages.”
How does Arraf know what was behind the IDF’s supposed actions in this village? Did she ask the Israeli military? And why did she fail to mention the name of the village?
NPR can and must do better. Its audiences deserve truth.
Moshe Phillips is the national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel (www.AFSI.org), a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.
** This article was originally published on JNS.org but shared with us by the author
