On Tuesday, CBS and NBC used their flagship morning news shows to continue emphasizing their disdain for Israel and the Israeli people, blaming them and the “hardest right government in [their] history” for having “triggered” the latest “cycle of violence” with a “massive...raid” on the “occupied West Bank”.
CBS Mornings again had foreign correspondent Imtiaz Tyab in the region, who touted Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit as an attempt “to, in his words, de-escalate the situation.”
Tyab downplayed the attack on Jews last week and instead blamed their own government because the entire “situation...was really triggered by a massive Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin last week where ten Palestinians were killed.”
“The following day in what’s been described as a, ‘revenge attack,’ a Palestinian gunman opened fire in a synagogue in East Jerusalem, killing seven — or rather, outside a synagogue in East Jerusalem, kicking seven, including six Israelis,” he added.
“Since then,” he explained, “more acts” were “carried out by Palestinians and more raids by Israeli forces in the West Bank, including at least 44 attacks — or, rather, 144 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians there.”
As our Nick Fondacaro wrote yesterday, Tyab has served as the embodiment of the liberal media’s hatred for Israel, again blaming them for the tensions as cooked up by “the most extreme and right-wing” Israeli government “in the country’s history.”
He closed by cheering “mass protests” against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for “its plans to weaken the judiciary, a protest movement that Mr. Blinken appeared to support”.
On NBC’s Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie painted Blinken as having arrived to save the day by “issuing a new call to ease tensions.”
Foreign correspondent Kelly Cobiella also adopted the pro-Palestinian language of referring to the West Bank as “occupied” and said Blinken was “expected to deliver the message that both Palestinian and Israeli leaders need to take steps to stop the cycle of violence.”
Cobiella fretted that Israel has made January “a deadly month for Palestinians in the occupied territories” and took the Palestinian Health Ministry at its word “that more than 30 have been killed, including eight children, mostly in Israeli military raids.”
After Cobiella footnoted the seven Israeli citizens killed last Friday and two injured the next day, Guthrie put the focus back on Blinken: “[H]ow is Secretary of State Blinken navigating all of this?”
Cobiella tried to both-sides the matter by saying “both leaders are complicating matters on the ground” with Netanyahu “leading the hardest right government in Israel’s history” and thus “under pressure...to” implement “hardline measures like expanding settlements and that just infuriates Palestinians.”
“On the Palestinian side, President Abbas is deeply unpopular and has serious credibility issues among Palestinians,” she concluded.
ABC foreign correspondent James Longman had a more nuanced piece on Good Morning America, starting with the fact that they didn’t resort to using the language of terrorists.
Longman said the “huge surge of violence” included “Friday’s terror attack on a synagogue” that “was the deadliest by a Palestinian against Israelis in more than a decade,” which led to an escalation of “Israeli operations in Palestinian communities have killed 35 people in January” that adds up to “the bloodiest January since 2015.”
He added that Blinken “had some vague criticism” Monday “for the new right-wing government here” on both “the conflict” and “the rule of law”.
As for Blinken’s meeting with Abbas, Longman emphasized that “Abbas is losing legitimacy,” adding: “A lot of Palestinians are fed up with him after 18 years in power. It feels like we’re on the road to more violence, not peace.”
Tuesday’s virulent anti-Israel rhetoric was made possible thanks to the help of advertisers such as Ashley Homestore (on CBS) and Neutrogena (on NBC). Follow the links to see their contact information at the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
To see the relevant transcripts from January 31, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).
