Israel Matzav

Unbelievable: Christiane Amanpour to host series on history of Israel

In a move that's likely to offend Jews and Christians everywhere, ABC News has selected Christiane Amanpour to host a series on the history of Israel (Hat Tip: Captain.H).

To have a woman who has trashed both the Jews of Israel and the Christians of the West – while simultaneously covering for Islamic terrorists – give her perspective on the Holy Land is insulting and offensive. As reported here, Amanpour trashed Christians in a series she created called God's Warriors:

When she covered a very conservative Christian ministry, stating that the ministry had rules forbidding the wearing of short skirts and prohibitions regarding dating, Amanpour purred that this made her think of "totalitarian regimes." The pastor demurred, acknowledging that short skirts distracted men, and then came the kicker: Amanpour responded, "But, Ron, that's what the Taliban said. They kept women in their house, because men couldn't be trusted around them." That’s Amanpour to the core, equating a peaceful Christian ministry with a murderous group of terrorists who slaughtered 3000 Americans.

And don’t get her started on Israel, as Andrea Levin of CAMERA noted:

But it's Israeli settlements, in the Amanpour script, that are the great enemy of mankind and all those with any link to them, however indirect, whether Christian or Jewish, secular or religious, are part of a putatively evil nexus. This dark alliance is said to include Jewish fundraisers stumping the U.S. for money ('defiance of international law comes dressed in diamonds') and Jewish organizations with an alleged stranglehold on Congress. 

Throughout, Amanpour hammers the claim that Jewish settlements violate international law and she seeks to paint this position as a universally accepted view with a lopsided parade of like-minded commentators. Yet apart from any judgement about the political advisability of building or not building settlements, many legal scholars argue these communities are, in fact, legal and do not violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention as the detractors claim. Such experts include Meir Shamgar, former Israeli Supreme Court Justice, internationally renowned legal scholar Professor Julius Stone and Former Under Secretary of State Eugene Rostow, among others. But not one scholar of this viewpoint is given voice in a two-hour feature largely devoted to decrying settlements and their residents.

Also consistent with Amanpour's propaganda-style use of images and editing is her grossly misrepresenting American presidential views of settlement legalities. A video clip shows former UN Ambassador William Scranton saying: 'Substantial resettlement of the Israeli civilian population in occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, is illegal.' Amanpour then declares: "Ever since, American presidents both Democrat and Republican have spoken from virtually the same script."



The next image is Ronald Reagan making a tangential comment framed as agreeing with Scranton. But Reagan explicitly did not speak from the same script. "As to the West Bank," he said in a February 1981 New York Times story, "I believe the settlements there, I disagreed when the previous [Carter] Administration referred to them as illegal, they're not illegal."

… Numerous other falsehoods and distortions mar the production. Amanpour declares bizarrely that "the 40-year tug of war over Jerusalem began when Israel bulldozed the Arab neighborhood next to the Western Wall and built a plaza where Jews now pray." Obviously, the modern battle over Jerusalem 'began' 60 years ago when the Arabs attacked in 1948 to destroy the newborn state of Israel, seizing the eastern side of Jerusalem, including the Jewish quarter of the old city. Every Jew was expelled or killed and all synagogues destroyed. Thereafter for 19 years, no Jew could pray at the Western Wall and Christians had limited access to their holy sites.

Amanpour has railed against Jewish settlements to this day.

Read the whole thing. 

I wonder whether the Obama reeducation team will force all the kiddies to watch it.

Labels: ABC News, anti-Israel media bias, anti-Israel obsession, Christiane Amanpour, history lesson

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:07 AM