Television viewers with any awareness of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict have become accustomed to seeing it misrepresented by inaccurate reporting and distorted images which convey the impression that Israel is at once the oppressor of blameless Arabs, the major obstacle to regional, if not indeed world, peace, and the insatiable and arrogant recipient of unprecedented American largesse. Yet even some of the most jaded of such viewers were shocked by a program entitled The Israeli Connection which first ran on CNN on April 20, 1991 and was subsequently re-broadcast over and over again.

This program, produced by CNN’s Special Assignment Unit, and running nearly a full half-hour, purports to examine the “extraordinary relationship” between the United States and Israel since 1948. Instead, it expounds what can only be described as an Arab propagandist’s view of the salient issues.

“Tension” between the United States and Israel is the leitmotif of the piece—tension repeatedly said to result in the post-Gulf War era from increasing American disapproval of Israel’s dereliction in the peace process, repression of the Palestinians, and inordinate financial demands. At the outset the CNN reporter, Mark Feldstein (whose observations were written in collaboration with the producer, Kathy Slobogin), tells the viewer:

Until now, the United States and Israel have maintained their unique alliance. Israel has received billions of dollars in aid, and has wielded an influence over Congressmen and Presidents enjoyed by no other nation. The [Gulf] war drew the two countries closer together against a common enemy, but now that enemy has retreated and formerly unthinkable questions are beginning to emerge. With its new ties to the Arab states, can the U.S. continue to tolerate Israel’s hard line in this search for peace? Does the relationship still serve American interests?

The unabashedly hostile editorializing in these opening comments is striking. Whether Israel is “hard line in this search for peace” is not a question to be explored; it is a statement uttered as factual background to the ensuing interviews, with “hardline” understood to be a negative and reprehensible posture. The reference to billions of dollars given Israel is not qualified by noting either the urgent security concerns prompting aid requests or the reciprocal benefits Israel provides America as an ally and friend, benefits consistently attested to by myriad American political and military leaders. Nor is any mention made of intransigent Arab rejectionism toward Israel.

As at the beginning, so at the end of the program, Israel and Israel alone is held responsible by Feldstein for the lack of movement on peace, for regional instability, and for the endangering of its friendship with the United States:

The Gulf conflict is over now, but another, older conflict remains. For 43 years, the special relationship between Israel and the United States has endured, but how much longer it will do so may well depend on Israel’s willingness to do what it has so far refused: change the status quo. Until that happens, the aftermath of this war may only be a prelude to the next.

Omitted is the refusal of the Arab states (with the sole exception of Egypt) to recognize Israel’s right to exist; omitted is Arab sponsorship of terrorism against Israel; omitted are all the calls by Israel for negotiations and a changing of the status quo before 1967 and even more afterward; omitted is the alacrity with which Israel changed the status quo when Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat offered peace.

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In building the case that Israel bears all blame, CNN traces a lamentable and longstanding pattern of malfeasance on the part of the Jewish state vis-à-vis its Arab neighbors. Even the flight of Holocaust survivors to Mandatory Palestine is treated as a provocation:

But Israel had to fight to survive, attacked by Arabs who had lived there for centuries who resented the new wave of Jews.

This is a particularly insidious distortion of the historical record. There is not so much as a hint here that at the moment of its birth Israel was attacked not just by Arabs resident in the newly-founded state, but by armies from six Arab nations: Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the second phrase of the statement sows the notion of dispossession by the Jews: if Arabs attacked, it was because they had lived for centuries there and were being usurped. Not at this point and not at any other in the program does the reporter tell the audience that Jews have lived in Israel continuously for more than 3,000 years, and that in Jerusalem in particular, in every census taken in recent centuries, Jews were either a plurality or an outright majority.

Feldstein also neglects to inform his viewers that the Arab population declined under Ottoman misrule, as many fled the poverty and banditry in what is now Israel. He does not explain that a great in-migration of Arabs and other Muslims (from all parts of the Turkish empire, North Africa, Persia, and the Balkans) occurred later, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and that it was largely stimulated by the economic improvements and opportunities wrought by Zionism. He leaves the impression that, while suffering Jews may have flocked to refuge in Mandatory Palestine at the time of World War II, Arabs, who alone were native to the area, were understandably opposed—and provoked.

Feldstein reinforces the theme of Israel’s culpability in a misleading characterization of the aftermath of the Six-Day War:

But there was another bitter legacy of Israel’s victory: the fate of Palestinians living on land Israel had captured—the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights. Israeli occupation became a wedge in the special relationship, the first crack in America’s moral commitment to Israel.

Never having informed his viewers that the Six-Day War was prompted by aggressive Arab military moves accompanied by threats to “drive the Jews into the sea,” Feldstein implies that the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights was a moral error and a source of conflict with the United States, with the suggestion that Israel had workable alternatives. In reality, the U.S. recognized the defensive posture of Israel in occupying the territories and accepted the position (spelled out in UN Resolution 242) that Israel should hold onto them until the Arabs were prepared to make peace.

Camp David prompts yet another mischaracterization of the historical record. Feldstein:

In 1978, President Carter finally broke through the Arab-Israeli deadlock. The Camp David accord brought peace between Israel and Egypt. It also held the promise of progress on Palestinian autonomy. The cost to the U.S.: a $3 billion bonus to Israel, $2 billion to Egypt. To this day Camp David remains the last major breakthrough in the search for peace in the Middle East. The promise of progress for the Palestinians was never met, and the tension between the U.S. and Israel never resolved.

In Feldstein’s version, all credit is due President Carter and the United States, with Israel simply garnering a financial windfall while at the same time exacerbating tensions in refusing to deliver “progress for the Palestinians.”

But here again essential points are omitted: first, that Camp David’s success hinged fundamentally on Israel’s action in relinquishing to Egypt 90 percent of the land taken in the Six-Day War, including oil fields and air bases, land which had for twenty years been used by Egypt as military zones and staging areas for attacks on Israel; and second, that the so-called “bonus” to Israel was funding to help defray the costs of withdrawal from the Sinai and the repositioning of forces in the Negev. Furthermore, though the United States offered the assistance in outright grants, Prime Minister Menachem Begin insisted on Israel’s repaying it.

The CNN commentary also excludes the Palestinians’ rejection of the Camp David accords, their renunciation of Sadat, and their rejoicing when he was later assassinated.

One more variation on the theme that Israel’s handling of the Palestinians has made it seem “a nation of oppressors” is Feldstein’s allustion to the Sabra and Shatila massacre:

Hundreds of Palestinian women and children were massacred by Lebanese militiamen with the complicity of the Israel army.

This reckless description is wrong on two counts. To begin with, the overwhelming majority of the dead were male (of 460, 35 were women and children), and they included Lebanese, Syrians, Iranians, Pakistanis, and Algerians, as well as Palestinians. Secondly, the Kahan commission, established by Israel to investigate, found evidence of negligence by Israel in not anticipating and acting to forestall revenge killings by Christians against Muslims, but no evidence supporting the very different charge of “complicity.”

If Feldstein and his co-authors were truly concerned about the welfare of Palestinians and with providing an accurate picture of the region, they might have commented on the irony that many more Palestinians and Lebanese have since massacred one another in these very same camps, with little coverage by the media or attention from other nations.

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Aiding and abetting Feldstein in drawing up his relentless indictment of Israel are the “experts” he chooses to interview. One of them, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Robert Neumann, blames Israel not only for the Palestinian problem, but for the instability of Arab regimes:

If nothing happens, if the Palestinian people continue to get more and more desperate, then every Arab regime, those on our side particularly, will be undermined.

Graham Fuller, identified as a senior Middle East analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, endorses the same notions:

The longer we’re associated, directly or indirectly, with an intransigent Israeli approach to the Palestinian problem, the less effective we are going to be in the Middle East.

The CNN reporter lets these charges stand without a single challenging question. Hence viewers are not reminded that addressing the Palestinian problem will not in any way address the real destabilizing factors in the region: authoritarian, semi-feudal dictatorships; widespread poverty; rampant Arab human-rights abuses; crushing population growth; religious intolerance; and so on. Nor are characterizations of Israel as “intransigent” offset either by a more balanced look at Israel’s concerns or by reminders of the intractable positions of Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the PLO.¹

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To endorse his allegation that “Israel’s commitment to democracy has come into question,” and that there has been a “shift in its moral standing,” Feldstein turns to Charles Percy, identified as the “former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman” and “a critic of U.S. policy toward Israel.” But “critic” does not quite define Percy’s frequently expressed and venomous attitudes toward Israel, and certainly does not convey the focus of the ex-Senator’s Arab-centered activities. Ironically, while it is Percy’s contention that Israel promotes its own interests to the detriment of the United States, his own unswerving agenda seems singularly guided by allegiance to Arab interests. For Percy is, if not an actual lobbyist for the Arabs, heavily involved in advocacy of Arab interests. He sits on the board of the American-Arab Affairs Council, to which he is also a contributor. He is chairman of the board and president of the Hariri Foundation USA, which he co-founded with a Saudi financier. He holds an advisory-council position in the Arab-American Business and Professional Association.

From this uniquely objective vantage point, Percy declares:

How can you say, “Well, let’s support Israel because they’re a democracy” when there is no democracy for two million Palestinians under their control in the occupied territories.

Needless to say, Feldstein does not interject relevant observations for his audience, such as that any change in the status of the territories requires, according to UN Resolutions 242 and 338, steps by Arab states toward peace, not unilateral action by Israel. Nor does Feldstein remind his viewers that bringing full “democracy” to the territories—that is, giving the occupants of the territories the political rights of Israeli citizens—would involve Israeli annexation of those territories, a move overwhelmingly opposed by the Palestinians and the international community, as well as by the vast majority of Israelis.

Professor Stanley Hoffmann of Harvard, another inveterate “critic” of Israel, is also heard on the morality question. In response to Feldstein’s depiction of the intifada—“So far Israeli soldiers have killed more than 700 Palestinians. Thousands more have been wounded. Has Israel now forfeited its moral high ground?”—Hoffmann says:

I’m afraid Israel has become what it certainly did not want to be, which is an ordinary nation. Ordinary nations use force to preserve positions. In the long run, occupying a territory whose population does not want to be occupied is a very corrosive and morally dangerous thing to do.

As before, the charge is leveled that Israel, the occupier, has made immoral choices, and summoned to testify are those individuals with long records of hostility toward the Jewish state.

These same speakers argue that Israel has become a political liability to the United States due to its intransigence in the peace process and that its American supporters, especially the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), are a detriment to this country. George Ball, identified as a former presidential adviser and a “sharp critic of the pro-Israel lobby,” is brought in to charge: “They’re effective in a very narrow way, a way that pays no attention to the larger interest of the United States.”

Ball, it should be remembered, is a man whose thinking on the subject of Israel borders consistently on the irrational. For example, in a recent op-ed column in the Boston Globe, he strongly urged the U.S. to curb arms sales to Middle East countries in the post-Gulf War era, while simultaneously castigating AIPAC for opposing arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The only operative logic in this position is an abiding animosity toward Israel. In 1985—to cite only one of many hysterical accusations Ball has hurled over the years—he held Israel singlehandedly responsible for undermining America’s ability to bring about world peace: “The pro-Israel U.S. policy in the Middle East [has been] the reason behind the steady deterioration of the American role in leading the world toward peace.”

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To be sure, in a show of balance, Feldstein does interview spokesmen sympathetic to Israel. Yet with a single exception, they are not allowed to respond to the sweeping charges leveled against Israel by Feldstein himself or his other guests. Congressman Charles Schumer’s excerpt focuses on the lack of positive feeling for Israel within the present administration; the historian Howard Sachar dwells on how much better relations with Israel were in the past; Henry Kissinger reminisces about his shuttle diplomacy as Secretary of State; Abba Eban’s contribution is a vignette about his emotion at the founding of Israel.

The exception is Steven Spiegel of UCLA, who is given three sentences to rebut the allegation that Israel is now a political liability to the United States:

Many people talk about how Israel’s on the sidelines, but the Israelis are critical to the United States. Number one, they’re our, kind of, reserve quarterback—they’re there. And the most important factor is that Israel is an island of democracy and stability in a highly unstable region.

But Feldstein immediately challenges Spiegel’s assertion, something he does at no time in reaction to any criticism of Israel.

This points to the foremost problem in programs like The Israeli Connection, which is the partisan role of the reporter, who functions as something akin to a prosecutor in a kangaroo court, backed up by known adversaries of the defendant. Feldstein’s commentary suggests a calculated effort to advance a political agenda, even at the cost of subverting the professional integrity of the network.

Indeed, The Israeli Connection presents not just snippets of inaccurate history and disparate allegations by public figures, but a fully coherent landscape of falsehood. In this portrayal, Israel formerly elicited sympathy because of the Holocaust, but no longer. For it has now been unmasked as a nation of morally corrupt occupiers, having first displaced the original inhabitants of Palestine and then expanded into the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem. It is intransigent and defiant toward its American benefactor; it operates manipulatively within the American political system through its supporters. In this landscape, there is no Arab terrorism, no Arab rejectionism, no Arab boycott, no Arab anti-Semitism, no Arab despotism, no Arab intolerance of any non-Arab or non-Muslim group in what is considered the pan-Arab domain, whether that group be Jews, Kurds, Christians, Druze, blacks, or Berbers.

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But does it all really matter? How much damage is done by programs like The Israeli Connection to public understanding of Middle East realities?

Some argue that the judgment of the American public is fundamentally astute and that those viewers who follow the Middle East will recognize the claptrap of trendy dogma, error, and exaggeration and will understand the real issues well enough. According to this thinking, the steady stream of distorted information on commercial and public networks as well as in the print media is negligible in its impact on people’s perceptions and is offset by a sufficient quantity of accurate information. The same thinking would have it that while the cause of the Palestinians, if not the Arabs in general, may have impressed itself sympathetically upon many Americans, the deep bond with Israel is unshakably sound.

Such an assessment may have served in the past, during periods of less intense and less distorted coverage, but it overlooks the almost inevitably cumulative effect of misinformation on public perception and sentiment (which ultimately shape public policy). Moreover, the powerful effects of continual media bias must be considered in the context of disturbing trends in other sectors of the society. The egregious anti-Israel bias in popular magazines, student texts, professional journals, campus newspapers, and many other publications reinforces the drumbeat of coverage in the mass media.

The Society of Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi, asserts in its Code of Ethics: “We believe in public enlightenment as the forerunner of justice.” In their tendentious and fallacious coverage, their dereliction of responsibility to serve public enlightenment, The Israeli Connection, and the many other programs like it, ultimately thwart the development of informed policies and the pursuit of justice in the Middle East.

¹ An even more incredible version of the myth that the Palestinian problem is the main source of instability in the region was purveyed by ABC's popular anchorman, Peter Jennings, on World News Tonight (December 12, 1990), where he explained to millions of viewers that “Defeating Iraq does not solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem, which already destabilizes the whole region.” Thus, in the midst of a massive inter-Arab conflict, triggering the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Egyptians, Jordanians, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Kuwaitis, Yemenis, Palestinians, Europeans, and Americans, provoking global upheaval in economic markets, forcing the mobilization of an unprecedented multinational military force at a cost of billions of dollars, and entailing unknown numbers of potential war casualties, Jennings wanted his public to believe that the Israeli-Palestinian issue was the real source of trouble in the Arab world. Nor did he serve his viewers honestly in alleging that that issue was, even prior to the Gulf crisis, the root of instability. In the past four decades more than a dozen inter-Arab conflicts, none of which involved Israel, have cost at least two million casualties. Were Israel to vanish off the map, inter-Arab violence would continue unabated.