"60 Minutes" Libels Jews And Israel

It's no secret that a great many informed people hold CBS News in contempt because of their many instances of unprofessionalism, bias and misinformation. The CBS news show "60 Minutes" has always been particularly egregious in this regard and the absolute garbage - there really is no other word for it - contained in the two segments above on Israel and the Palestinians are simply rife with misrepresentation, conscious ommissions and outright falsehood.

The idea here was obviously to demonize Israel as an occupier of the poor Palestinians, held hostage by those fanatic 'settlers'.

It makes me wonder...after ethnically cleansing Jews from their homes in East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria in 1948, the Arabs who lived there 19 years before Israel took over in 1967 are still regarded by people like this 'broadcast journalist' Robert G. Anderson as the permanent rightful residents, while people like those evil fanatic Jews are still regarded as 'settlers' after 42 years!

The words 'occupation' and 'apartheid' are freely used throughout the segment, which is ironic considering that Anderson freely admits in the opening moments of part 1 that the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria (AKA the West Bank) are a 'problem' for the Arabs "because they can't have a state with a bunch of Israeli settlers all over it."

That's right...Israel has a 20% Arab population with full legal rights while the Palestinians do not want to tolerate even a single Jew in the territory they occupy, yet Israel is the apartheid state!

Here are just a few things "Sixty Minutes" decided you didn't need to know:

*The segment makes heavy use of interviews with Mustafa Barghouti, who is identified as a 'doctor, and a former Palestinian presidential candidate.' There's no mention of his ties to his cousin, Marwan Barghouti, who was convicted in an Israeli court and is currently in jail for five life terms for masterminding the murder of Israeli civilians. Mustafa Barghouti was also tied to Arafat and the murders committed by Fatah's al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade during the intifada but was not charged, largely because he left Israeli jurisdiction. And in part 2, the interviewer dramatizes the plight of this man who is not an Israeli citizen and who has ties to terrorism being denied a residence permit in Jerusalem when he tried to return after leaving voluntarily.

*Anderson makes mention of the 'seperate roads only Israelis can use' without mentioning that the reason those roads had to be constructed is because the Palestinians would shoot at Israeli civilian vehicles traveling on them and murder the occupants of any car they managed to stop - man, woman or child.

He does the same thing regarding Israel's security barrier and the checkpoints, emphasizing how it 'infuriates Palestinians' but totally leaving out any mention of why the barrier and the checkpoints were necessary in the first place..to stop the Palestinian's homicidal assaults on Israeli civilians.

*Anderson makes much of the Israeli destruction of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem, but barely mentions that the homes were built without permits, without any deference to the legal building codes, were sometimes put up on land the Palestinians involved didn't own and and actually constituted a safety hazard both to the residents and the surrounding structures. He also has an extended segment on Israeli troops 'occupying' a home ( which is exactly how he refers to it) to do surveillance with barely a mention of why it might be necessary, and no mention of the fact that without the IDF's security in Judea and Samaria, Mahmoud Abbas likely wouldn't stay in power a week.

The entire piece makes no mention of the horrendous war Arafat unleashed on Israel's civilians or gives the Palestinians any responsibility for their present plight. For instance, it refers to the Israelis 'invading Gaza' without any mention of the rocket and mortar barrages on Israel that made it necessary.

Anderson never mentions the war between Hamas and Fatah as any kind of obstacle to a peaceful settlement; in fact he never mentions Hamas at all, or the fact that the Palestinians voted for a genocidal organization like Hamas overwhelmingly. Of course, elections have consequences for everyone but the Palestinians, in the view of Mr. Anderson and people like him.

Speaking of elections, Anderson makes a point of mentioning how many 'decent Israelis' agree with his point of view, and tossing in what amounts to a commercial for Tzipi Livni in part 2. The polls of course would seem to disagree with him, but if a center right government that refuses to commit national suicide gets into power in a couple of weeks, it would seem that to Anderson that will be just just another manifestation of how wicked and racist those Jews are...because that's exactly how he presents them, and how the uninformed viewer is intended to perceive them.

Anderson also mouths the nonsense that the Arabs will outnumber the Jews in Israel in a generation, something that most reputable demographers laugh out loud at. In pre-1967 Israel, the Arab population ( which includes the Druse and the Bedouins, who despise the Palestinians and serve in the IDF with pride)the ratio of Jews to Arabs is consistent at 5 to one, or 20%, exactly what it was in 1948 after Israel's War of Independence. In Judea and Samaria, where the so-called 'settlers' live, even the Jerusalem Communications Ceneter, a Palestinian think thank admits that the Palestinians have been exaggerating their numbers for years ( largely because their aid is figured on a per capita basis)and the Jewish birthrate there has more than kept up with the Palestinians.

Based on the idea that the Arabs will outnumber the Jews in Israel shortly, Anderson practically salivates as he finishes up with what he thinks are the three options for Israel, "all of them bad" if the Israelis don't force those wicked settlers to leave homes they lived in for decades. He sees the choices as ethnic cleansing, what he refers to as 'the democratic solution' which will allow the Arabs to take over Israel, evict the Jews and turn all of Israel in Hamastan, or "apartheid"...and then segues to an interview segment with Mustafah Barghouti in which Bargouti asserts that the 'apartheid' is already in place.

Of course, there's a fourth solution, unlikely though it is. The Palestinians could suddenly wake up and realize that they've been used as dupes by the entire Arab world, purge the murderers from their midst and realize that the only way a Palestinian state is likely to be economically and politically viable is with a close and friendly relationship with the Jews of Israel. I put the odds on that as slim and none, especially with enablers like Robert G. Anderson ginning up the works and feeding them the fantasy that one day the Arabs will conquer and massacre the Jews.

That means that either the Palestinians will continue as they are for a few more years until the West gets tired of paying the freight, or the Jews will simply get tired of their murderous ways and drive them over the borders after another abortive war once Hamas takes over the way Jordan did in 1970.

In his own twisted way, Anderson provides his own answer in the ending, featuring the one sane Israeli Jew he bothered to interview, Daniela White. She bends down, grabs a handfull of the soil of Israel and tells him "This is what's important...to hold strong to the soil of the Holy Land."

People like Daniela White are not going to be moved an inch.Nor should they. If Israel can share its country with Arabs, why should any land given to the Palestinians be required to be Jew free, as though they were a cancer? When one swallows the racist notion that Jews should not be allowed to live in Hebron or Gush Etzion strictly because they're Jews, it's not much of a stretch to extend that kind of restriction to Tel Aviv or Haifa for the same reason.Or to London, Paris or New York City, for that matter.

As for Robert G. Anderson and this travesty of journalism, it's indicative of a mindset curent in a number of circles nowadays that goes something like this:If those stubborn Jews would just give in and move on, those cwaa-zy Arabs will leave the rest of us alone.

Recent history has already proven what a delusion that kind of appeasement is.