Letter From Jerusalem: Farewell to National Palestine Radio
By Arlynn Nellhaus

Yasser Arafat (Nobel Prize photo)

As I prepared for my flight to Israel, I realized that I was saying farewell to National Palestine Radio .. oops, I mean National Public Radio.

Well, for all the Palestinian publicity, all the Palestinian sympathy, all the distortions of Israel, NPR might as well be an out-and-out offically designated spokesman for the Palestinians. Just like the former American Consul in Jerusalem, who now does in fact officially speak for the PLO. And whom NPR often interviews. (We always thought something was fishy, from the way we were treated when we had to do business with him at the American consulate.)

One of the last NPR programs I heard before I turned off the world in a Manhattan hospital during March and April was an interview by Ivan Watson. It was of a Ramallah woman who had some 60 Israeli soldiers billeted in her house.

One houseguest rattles me. But sixty? In what had to be a large house, the Israel Defense Forces soldiers were kept upstairs while the family stayed in the basement. In his interview, Watson pushed and pushed for the woman to say that her family was treated terribly and to make disparaging comments about the Israeli soldiers.

She didn't.

She said that her family got everything it wanted, they simply had to ask.

Disappointment filled Watson's voice. His tone said, "Drat."

I was reminded of the novel, Beirut Blues by the Lebanese author Hanan Al-Shaykh. It takes place during the Beirut civil war and Israel's Lebanon invasion in the 1980s. The main character's ancestral home, where her parents live, is in Southern Lebanon. She writes of Arab militia groups who terrorize her elderly parents by stealing, insulting, threatening violence and more. Then Israeli soldiers show up. Shaykh writes how gentlemanly they behaved and how much respect they showed her family.

At that same point in real history, Palestinians laughed at Israeli soldiers. They said they weren't real men.

Why?

Because they didn't rape.  I guess in Palestinian eyes, rapists are real men. Think about what that means.

One of the last NPR broadcasts I was able to catch, before leaving for Jerusalem, was again by Watson.  This time he interviewed a Palestinian man working illegally in Jerusalem. The man lived about 20 miles away. With various roadblocks, it took him some 5 rides and hours to get home. Watson presented the man's difficulties with the utmost sympathy. But that worker got home.

Not so Dr. Shmuel Gillis, a Hadassah Hospital hematologist and oncologist. The Israeli also usually arrived home late, after long, long hospital hours. He devoted much of his work to Arab patients often afflicted with the blood diseases that have concentrated among them.

But one night, Dr. Gillis, 42, didn't arrive home at all.

A Palestinian shot him dead as he was driving home. He was the father of five.

This 50-year-old Palestinian, also the father of several children, does arrive home safely, even if late. But he said at the end of the interview, "If this continues, I, too, will become a terrorist."

Did he say he believed in compromise?  That "they get some and we get some and live side-by-side with what we get?" Did he ever say he wanted peace?

No, just to become a terrorist and kill innocent people. Perhaps more people like Dr. Gillis.  Watson left the man's comment in the air, as if justifying it. It sounded to me as if Watson's teeth would break before he would convey something that doesn't damn Israel. Never did he attempt educate his listeners, by noting, for example, that the Palestinians brought their hardships on themselves -- by starting this "cycle of violence."

And far from Watson to point out that the words "responsibility" or "compromise" seem not to exist in the Arab language. It became clear to me that all those NPR listeners who think they are getting information are instead getting sheer anti-Israel propaganda.

How long this has been going on, I don't know. But it was blatant as early as 1987, when John Hockenberry was the NPR reporter in Jerusalem. That was the time of the first Intifada. Then, Hockenberry would interview some nine Palestinians. They got their say on NPR. And there was no questioning the validity of what they said, no matter how absurd their claims. No checking of charges against against verifiable, empirical facts.

Not much has changed, Hockenberry's stories sounded just like the media's recent acceptance of the Palestinians' hoax of an Israeli-committed "Jenin massacre." When it came to Israelis, Hockenberry would interview someone like Knesset member Yossi (If we hug a Palestinian, he will love us) Sarid. So NPR listeners received skewed and misleading views of what actually was happening in Israel, and certainly of most Israelis' views.

It appears that NPR listeners, who consider themselves educated, liberal and knowledgeable, are deluding themselves if they believe NPR is giving them the news reporting from the Middle East. (To learn more about errors and distortions in the media's coverage of Israel, check out HonestReporting.com or Camera.org.)

Thankfully, there are alternative sources of information.  It is not too hard to find out the truth about what is happening in Israel. Somehow the Wall Street Journal, and columnists like the Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer manage to understand the situation. Anyone who wants to full coverage what is going on can call up the Jerusalem Post, 24/7, or check out weblogs like Instapundit.com.  And, to find out what the Arab world really is saying -- definitely not what they can say to gullible reporters from NPR -- check the Middle East Media Research Institute website (and be sure to look up the item about Arab psychiatrists).

At the end of my hospital stay, I realized that NPR listeners are being duped, lied to, as well as manipulated, and many of them don't even realize it.  What's worse, NPR listeners feel they are so intelligent, so elite, so special, so knowledgeable, and so superior, just for listening to NPR.

I know that feeling. I used to be one of them.

(Editor's note: Nellhaus is not alone. Boston NPR station WBUR-FM has lost over a million dollars, according to this story, from former underwriters concerned about the network's anti-Israel propaganda.)

Arlynn Nellhaus, a former reporter for the Denver Post, lives in Denver and Jerusalem.