Outside the precincts of academia the anti-Israel vitriol that is now mainstream in Europe has been largely absent in America. At the outset of Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 for instance many of Europe’s leading papers reported as fact the Palestinian claims that Israeli soldiers had killed 5 000 Palestinians in Jenin in many cases lining them up against the wall and dispatching them with a single bullet to the head. No major US paper fell for the propaganda. (Even the United Nations investigation established that only 55 Palestinians were killed the large majority armed fighters.)
The recent 60 Minutes segment on Christians in the Holy Land however could almost have been drawn from the European playbook of tendentious anti-Israel propaganda. Host Bob Simon began the segment “The one place in the Middle East where Christians are not suffering from persecution is the Holy Land.” But from there on it was all downhill.
By innuendo and implication Simon sought to wean American Christians from their ardent support for Israel. In one interview he asked directly: Doesn’t Israel recognize that its policies could cost it crucial Christian support?
But he never says precisely what those nefarious Israeli policies are. Viewers are told that Christians today constitute only 18 percent of the population of Bethlehem which was once an overwhelmingly Christian city. Simon then juxtaposes footage of Palestinians (both Muslims and Christians) waiting at checkpoints to travel outside of Bethlehem and an interview with a local Christian family whose apartment directly faces the security wall.
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