Hatchet Job On Israel By 60 Minutes

By Findalis

ACTION ALERT

From Stand With Us

On Sunday, April 22, CBS` "60 Minutes" ran a shockingly biased episode, "Christians of the Holy Land" by Bob Simon. Even the always diplomatic Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren called the show a "hatchet job" on Israel.  You can watch the program here.

Ambassador Oren was right. Simon only paid lip service to the violent persecution and flight of ancient Christian communities throughout the region which is the real historical tragedy unfolding in the Middle East. Instead, incomprehensibly, he chose to bash Israel, the only Middle Eastern country that protects Christians. The program scapegoated and demonized Israel, distorting reality to blame Israel`s security measures -- the fence and checkpoints -- for the suffering of Palestinian Christians. Simon interviewed biased and sometimes anti-Semitic sources, treating them as legitimate.  He asked leading questions.  He dismissed the real reasons for the plight and flight of Palestinian Christians: persecution by Palestinian Islamists and the Palestinian Authority. His shoddy, irresponsible research produced propaganda, not journalism. This dangerous misinformation stokes anti-Israel prejudice and bigotry, shifting public attention away from the forces that are imperiling the survival of Christian communities in the Palestinian Authority and throughout the region.

Write to CBS executives.  Demand that CBS offer an apology, and give equal time to correct the misinformation and anti-Semitic innuendos.

WRITE, E-MAIL, OR PHONE THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS, AND BE SURE TO BLIND COPY INFO@STANDWITHUS.COM IN YOUR E-MAILS.

"60 Minutes"
Jeffrey Fager - Chairman of CBS News, Executive Producer of 60 Minutes
524 West 57th Street, 9th Floor
New York, NY 10019-2930

E-mail:60m@cbsnews.com
Phone: 212.975.2006

Bill Owens - Executive Editor of "60 Minutes"
E-mail:bowens@cbsnews.com
Phone: 212.975.7685

CBS News

524 W. 57th Street
New York, New York 10019

Feedback E-mail: weekend@cbsnews.com
Phone: (212) 975-3247 (Leave a message at the tone.)

SAMPLE LETTER:

Dear _______,

We were shocked by the shoddy journalism in your April 22nd "60 Minutes" piece, "Christians of the Holy Land." We urge you to run a corrective piece and publicly apologize for the piece`s irresponsible inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and bias. Bob Simon either unwittingly or intentionally promoted hostility toward Israel and anti-Semitic views. In a pattern that he has repeated in the past, Simon interviewed biased sources and treated them as legitimate. He asked leading questions. More disturbing, he ignored and effectively belittled the real threats to beleaguered Christians, which come from rising Islamist persecution throughout the region and in Gaza and the West Bank. Instead, he focused on the one country in the Middle East that firmly protects the rights of Christians. If allowed to stand uncorrected, this program will have misinformed the public and irreparably damaged the reputation of "60 Minutes," which will no longer be considered a reliable news source.

Sincerely,
Your Name

SELECTED DETAILS ON MISLEADING AND ANTI-SEMITIC INNUENDOS IN "CHRISTIANS OF THE HOLY LAND"

Despite the program`s claims, Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians` rights are fully protected and where the Christian population has grown instead of declined in the last 64 years.

• Israel`s Christian population grew from 34,000 in 1948 to 154,000 in 2012.
• Israel has fostered a positive environment for Christians, most evidenced by official recognition of 10 Christian denominations and by Israel`s distribution of free Christmas trees every year at Christmas time.

Christians have been emigrating from the Holy Land in a two-century-long trend, not because of Israel and the security policies -- the barrier and checkpoints -- it was forced to implement in just the last 10 years.

• Major emigration occurred in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In some cases, emigrant Christian Palestinian communities grew larger than their communities of origin in the Holy Land.

• During Jordanian control (1948-1967), Jerusalem`s Christian population dropped from 29,000 in 1944 to 11,000 in 1961. In Bethlehem, 75 percent of the population was Christian in 1947; in 1967, the percentage had dropped to 46 percent.

The program interviewed one businessman only to deny the real problem facing Christians: rising hostility and persecution by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestinian Islamist groups. Why didn`t the program mention any of the following?

• The PA declared Islam its official religion, committed to Sharia law, and does not offer civil protection to other religions.  A few weeks ago, the PA declared that the First Baptist Church of Bethlehem is illegitimate.
• Christians in the West Bank have been victims of repeated persecution, violence, and rape. In 2005, Palestinian Christians, including Fr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, custodian of the Holy Land, documented 93 incidents of abuse and violence by the "Islamic fundamentalist Mafia" against Christians.
• Christians face intimidation, brutality, theft of their property and boycotts of their businesses.
• The PA Ministry of Information reported in 1997 that "any Muslim who [converts to Christianity] or declares becoming an unbeliever is committing a major sin punishable by capital punishment."
• Christian history is denied by Palestinian Muslims, including Yassir Arafat`s and the recently retired Mufti of Jerusalem who claim that the Jewish Temple never existed in Jerusalem.
• The Christian population in Gaza has plummeted from 2,500 to under 1,000 because of persecution by Hamas.

Simon implied that Israel`s policies and the fence are harming the West Bank`s economy.

• In fact, the terrorist war known as the Second Intifada, not Israel, is what harmed the West Bank`s economy.
• As the PA has tried to control terrorist groups, Israel has been able to relax its counter-terrorism measures, bringing the PA extraordinary economic growth of 8 percent per year in the last three years.

Simon interviewed only biased sources -- and did not bother to investigate whether many Christians were afraid to speak out of fear of endangering themselves and their families.

• Simon did not interview clergy and ordinary Christians who might have had the courage to speak up, such as Rev. Steve Khourani of the First Baptist Church of Bethlehem; Samir Qumsiyeh of Bethlehem, director of the Catholic radio Station; or the Christian leaders who signed the 2005 document detailing the PA`s persecution of Christians.

Simon asked leading questions to provoke answers that fit his political agenda.

• Simon asked the woman who lived near the security barrier, "How can you live like this?" The barrier may be unpleasant, but his very question suggested it is unjustifiable and intolerable, and he got the answer he wanted.
• When the woman said she wouldn`t move but would stay and "fight," he never asked what she meant by "fight" or why she didn`t instead say she wanted to seek peaceful coexistence so the barrier could be removed. Instead, he stoked the sense that the barrier was intolerable and her reaction understandable -- even though her anger betrayed why the barrier is necessary.

Simon interviewed and promoted anti-Semitic sources.

• Mitri Raheb, the main pastor he interviewed, is well known for promoting replacement theology which Vatican II condemned as a prime source of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.
• Raheb delegitimizes Israel and the right of the Jewish state to exist.
• Simon uncritically promoted the Kairos Document though it has been exposed as using high-minded rhetoric to camouflage the authors` sinister motives -- delegitimization of Israel, opposition to the existence of the Jewish state, and calls for boycott and divestment from Israel.

Simon engaged in anti-Semitic innuendos.

• Simon claimed that Israel treats Christians well and wants to promote good Christian-Jewish relations because of the money it gets from Christian tourism.
• In fact, Israel protects Christians, not for tourism dollars -- an anti-Semitic "Shylock" innuendo -- but because those are Israel`s values.

FACT SHEET -- Read more about the persecution of Christians by the Palestinian Authority here.

This is just one part of a greater whole to demonize Israel and the Jewish people.  Both Jeffrey Fager and Bill Owens should change their names to Joseph Goebbels.  For they are just continuing the work that he started.

Call, Write, Boycott the network.  If this is allowed to continue on, the next step will be worse.

Rush to eBay

Originally posted at Right Truth



What do you think?

CNN: Are All God’s Warriors Equivalent?

This is a continuing series of articles concerning the left’s attack on traditional American cultural values. Regardless of how you feel about religion, you have to admit that the left has been fairly successful in its attempts to infiltrate many of our cherished institutions – including our religious institutions. What the left can’t infiltrate, they are willing to mock and to marginalize by attempting to engender fear primarily against Christians and Jews.

Now that bastion of leftist ideology, CNN, has managed to lump Christian and Jewish conservatives into the same “warrior” pot with Islamists.

This is an excerpt from last Thursday’s article, “Is Your Church a Secret Sanctuary?”

. . .The growth of leftist Christianity within Catholicism, Mainline Protestantism, and even among Evangelical Christians, is a frightening phenomena that has received scant attention. Last week’s news of the arrest and deportation of the Sanctuary movement’s spokesperson, Elvira Arellano, highlights not only the strength of the left within urban churches, but Marxist Christianity (or Liberation Theology) is a fast-growing evolution of heretical Christianity effecting every little congregation is the U.S. . .

Here are some excerpts from reviews of CNN’s latest special, God’s Warriors:

“CNN’s Master Plan: Part One” by By Phyllis Chesler

. . . After watching Amanpour’s segment on the Jews, I was disheartened and outraged. How long will people have to suffer Big Lies on our screens and be forced to react defensively, only after the fact? How much Saudi money might really be involved in CNN’s series? In addition to bin Talal, we do know that the Saudis have been buying up shares in the Western media, (UPI for example), influencing curriculum on campuses, and in some instances, buying certain journalists outright. (There is a scandal about this still under wraps in Europe right now. Stay tuned for an update). . .

Amanpour is worse than all the others (writers mainly) who have been blasting Judaism and Christianity but mainly in order to be able to also blast, but in a lesser way, Islam. The thesis is that we are all guilty, all to blame, that each religion is clannish, “different,” its texts support violence, its extreme followers are but a handful, nothing for the world to worry about.

These are all false assumptions and outright lies.

From Camera

CNN's "God's Warriors," hosted by Christiane Amanpour, is a three-part series intended to examine the growing role of religious fundamentalism in today's world. Unfortunately, the first program in the series, "God's Jewish Warriors," is one of the most grossly distorted programs to appear on mainstream American television in many years. It is false in its basic premise, established in the opening scene in which Jewish (and Christian) religious fervency is equated with that of Muslims heard endorsing "martyrdom," or suicide-killing. . . .

From Yid With Lid

Pamela of Atlas Shrugs calls Christiane Amanpour -Christiane I'm-a-whore. After the past week I would suggest to Pamela that her description doesn't go far enough in describing the CNN "reporter." She created a three part series "God's Warriors"which was supposed to examine three different religions and their relationship with Israel and she managed to attack Israel with each one.

I wonder what her motivation was---a gift for her Muslim father, . . .

By the end of her third and final segment we are meant to fear and loathe the Christian conservative right far more than we are meant to fear or loathe Amanpour's Amadinejad whom --incredibly--she never accuses of funding Hezbollah's terrorist work abroad. . .

From an article on History News Network by Timothy R. Furnish (He is the proprietor of http://www.mahdiwatch.org/.)

On Thursday, August 23, CNN went after “God’s Christian Warriors.” Let me state at the outset, in the name of full disclosure, that while I am a rather conservative Christian, I am in no way, shape or form an evangelical or “fundamentalist” Christian (yes, my liberal readers, there IS a difference).

Amanpour began by observing that “religion has exploded as a political force” in the last 30 years but blames it on the Religious Right: “[Jerry] Falwell thrust religion into politics.” Has Christiane, or any producer or editor at CNN, never had a class in American history? Religion has been part and parcel of American politics going back to the founding of the Republic, as Jon Meacham demonstrates in his recent book American Gospel. Many Americans who don’t work at CNN know that the 19th century fight to emancipate black American slaves was led by the churches. And even within Amanpour’s lifetime, we have had the example of the civil rights struggle—incubated in black and white churches and led, more often than not, by ministers. How she gets away with stating on TV that Falwell religionized politics is beyond me. . .

Why does CNN seem obsessed with equating Christian fundamentalists with Muslim ones? Despite some surface simlarities, the two are quite different. But for CNN, as for much of the mainstream media, ANY strong religious belief is ipso facto frightening and irrational.

From an article from >Documentary Videos by Rabbi Marvin Hier, Founder and Dean, Simon Wiesenthal Center

A day prior to the airing of Christiane Amanpour's six-hour CNN documentary entitled God's Warriors, I was one of four clergymen to be a guest on Larry King Live to discuss the issue of fundamentalism in today's world. The interview on Larry King was pre-recorded in mid-July and none of the participants had seen the six-hour documentary because it was still being edited. Now that I have seen it, I sent the following critique to the producers of God's Warriors. . . .

An article from B’NAI ELIM by Michael Devolin, B'nai Elim Canada

. . I'm sure CNN is so very proud of Amanpour's anti-Israel, anti-Judaism diatribe. Of course, her "moral equivalency" is standard for CNN and their self-aggrandizing, cowardly journalists. Heaven forbid they should point out that Jews do not blow themselves up in German and Austrian restaurants for the sins of the Holocaust and the Crusades. Heaven forbid they should reveal, as did Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her book Infidel, that "Violent jihad is a historical constant in Islam." Heaven forbid they should expose the fact that Muslim zealots in the 21st century behead journalists and aid-workers simply because those journalists and aid-workers are Christians and Jews and therefore do not measure up to the Prophet Mohammed and the glory of the Koran. CNN and their effete journalists like Christiane Amanpour (all her war correspondence notwithstanding) are incapable of making such veridical contradistinctions simply because they have long ago made the obsequious choice to feed the masses with palatable slander, even though the masses, as history has so often exposed, often howl for anti-Jewish slander.

Cheat-Seeking Missiles says:

Christiane Amanpour, that pinnacle of tolerance and objectivity, is going to spend three nights this week looking at what she calls God's Warriors. No, not the jihadists who are killing thousands of innocents every year -- although they are in the six-hour special -- but also "God's Jewish warriors" and "God's Christian warriors."She uses those phrases throughout the preview clips, and it's disgusting. There's hardly a Christian alive who would call an abortion clinic bomber "God's warrior," nor do Jews use "Jewish warrior" to describe the few in Israeli society who resort to a little terrorism in the face of an overwhelming terrorist threat. . .

God’s Warriors

CNN



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How to win a war, seriously

Originally Posted at Right Truth

What's the secret to winning a war these days? Get the media to shut up. Throw them a piece of raw meat and get them off the trail and onto something else.

And something does have to happen. What I think has to happen is another war. What saved us from defeat in Afghanistan was Iraq. The MSM didn't have time to create a defeat. With the media focus on Iraq Afghanistan had four years to stabilize a government. Every leftist I know believes Afghanistan is a defeat, but the American public doesn't know that, so the Afghans don't know that, so in fact they putter along and are doing fairly well.

Iraq though, constantly, every night, is a "defeat". and so it may become a defeat in fact as Americans get tired of hearing the dismal drone every night and so just want to get out so it will stop. (We could fight a decent war if we could just get Americans to play bingo rather than watch CBS.) There is one way just as good as bingo and that's to attack Iran. An attack is always kind of fun, and it's different, it's a break from the drone. Initially at least Americans would support it, most Americans, and it certainly would lead to discussion. And initially it would be successful and possibly useful.

I do think we're moving that way. I would settle for a little bit of "hot pursuit".

And in Iraq we could use something akin to hot pursuit. Democracy comes through the barrel of a gun. All governments are formed with the gun, and I do hope the administration is getting tired of Maliki pussyfooting with al-Sadr. "This is democracy, we were elected. Sadr is my ally and I protect him." Sorry. An armed militia not controlled by a national government is not democracy. It's a dangerously disruptive faction and the antithesis of centralized democratic government and has got to go. (emphasis mine, read it all here)

The above was written by a genius, a genius I tell you, (ha) at Wannagetaburger blog. He/she suggests that perhaps a confrontation with Iran in the near future may be just what Iraq needs. There are rumors of a confrontation with Iran in the near future.

Resa Laru Kirkland, a/k/a War Chick, tackles the 'rumors' that are out there, and explains how we know which ones are true and which ones are lies:

I suppose the wisdom in dealing with rumors is knowing when they're worthy of a second look and when they should be disregarded. Fortunately for us, we have an even easier way of determining truth from fiction: Is the Hippy Press reporting it?

If the answer is "yes," you can be sure it's a lie. If the answer is "no," therein lies the reality they are desperate to deny.

She gives a perfectly good example. The Left reports that 'the only one's joining our military are these "18 year old "poor" kids who have no other choice in life but to join." The MSM keeps printing this over and over .. thus it is a lie. The truth is these are grown men/women, between the ages of 27 - 39, who believe in our President and support the war on terror, are highly educated and left profitable jobs to join the military. War Chick says:

This is true, because it passes the Hippy Press test; they aren't touching it. Why? Isn't it apparent? If they lose the "poor, minority, immature young men" angle, it calls into question all of their other fundamental beliefs.. [snip]

The times the Hippy Press supports America, Israel, or those fighting for our freedoms are so rare they are rendered useless. If we refuse to fight, we choose slavery. No nation has ever survived once it refused to back its own beliefs. If we ignore the bubbling rumors now, we'll pay attention only when it's too late; such has been the unfortunate tendency of mankind.

There are truths and absolutes in life, black and white, rights and wrongs.

If all of the Arabs put down their arms, there will be no more war. If all of the Jews put down their arms, there will be no more Jews.-- David Ha'ivri

No more Jews, no more soldiers, no more America. That is exactly what the hippies want. In the name of peace they will welcome slavery and bow before evil. They have created the only thing more foul than Islam and communism--wretched capitulation and acceptance of subservience to those who take glee in oppression.

They must be stopped--not the terrorists, but those who excuse them and enable them to murder at will, with no accountability whatsoever.

Pass it on... this rumor is right.

The rumor? America and/or Israel will attack Iran in the next few months. 'Now we are getting 21,500 more troops, 3 carrier battle groups, and offensive ops in Somalia ... throw in the Iranian officers we've captured, and something smells like sulfur.'

Look out Mahmoud. Maybe that smell of sulfur at the United Nations was not Bush after all, or even Chavez, perhaps it was a portent of you.