When Newsweek’s Joseph Gedeon produced a short documentary video, he was at least open about his intentions if this tweet is anything to go by.
Palestinian voices are rarely heard on mainstream media. Watch @YousefMunayyer explain history from the side you don’t hear about in this short documentary I produced for @Newsweek https://t.co/NIAteo7fhF
— Joseph Gedeon (@JGedeon1) December 24, 2017
The claim that “Palestinian voices are rarely heard on mainstream media” is highly dubious to say the least. As for the “history” in the video, a viewing of the four and a half minutes shows it to be nothing more than blatant historical revisionism and Palestinian propaganda.
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While Gedeon is open on Twitter that the video is one-sided, the video itself is presented not as opinion but as fact. Without any context, the video (available on YouTube and in the tweet below) is embedded in Israel-related stories on Newsweek and International Business Times content, including most recently the unrelated story of Israel’s interception of an Iranian drone.
Distorting History
As for the content of the video itself, we get a good idea of its trajectory in the opening seconds when it frames the conflict as having “started 100 years ago when the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917.”
And who gets to explain the Balfour Declaration and the subsequent history of the region? One Dr. Yousef Munayyer, the Executive Director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, an organization described by NGO Monitor as a “leader and mobilizer” of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns.
Cue a narrative that erases thousands of years of Jewish history and connections to the land of Israel, instead presenting the Balfour Declaration’s promise to create a Jewish national home as an act of colonialism. History itself is erased as Munayyer jumps from 1917 to the 1947 UN Partition Plan. This is particularly convenient as it enables Munayyer to omit the fact that Transjordan had been separated from the original Mandatory Palestine by this time to become an independent Arab state, while claiming that the majority of the land had been given away to the Jews.
“Zionist Militia Conquest Operations”
That the local Arab population launched a civil war to destroy the Jewish population is also conveniently forgotten. Instead, there are “conquest operations on the part of the Zionist militias that resulted in the depopulation and destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages.”
No mention of the subsequent invasion of five Arab armies as Israel declared independence in May 1948. Instead, according to Munayyer, it was this process of Zionist “conquest operations” that created the Palestinian refugee problem rather than the result of a war that was started by the Arab side.
Bizarrely, Munayyer claims that the Americans and the world withdrew their support for the Partition Plan and the Jews “realized that at that point they had to create a state by force.” Yet the plan was passed in favor by 72% of those members of the UN, including the US, on November 29, 1947.
The Map That Lies
We are then presented with a misleading map that begins in 1946.
As Elder of Ziyon has pointed out on numerous occasions, while the white areas were land privately owned by Jews, the land in green was not privately owned by Arabs and the map falsely implies that pre-1948 Palestine was an entirely Arab country with no Jews and no Jewish land ownership.
As the map moves to 1947, it shows the areas allocated under the Partition Plan but fails to mention that this was never implemented – because of the Arab rejection of the plan.
The map scrolls through to 1967 giving the false impression that the Jewish area is continuously increasing year by year during that period. Of course, there were no actual territorial changes from 1948-67 until the Six-Day War. And, unsurprisingly, there is no mention as to why Israel’s territory increased – the result of a war of self-defense.
More Misrepresentations
We are then treated to more lies from Munayyer who claims that Israel “denies to the people living under occupation a right to vote.” No mention that Palestinians have continuously been denied their right to vote in Palestinian elections… by the Palestinian Authority.
According to Munayyer, Israel treats “Palestinians living in Israel as second-class citizens.” No mention of the Arab politicians, judges, doctors, university students and even soldiers who enjoy equal rights under Israeli law.
Munayyer concludes the video by saying:
So what you have since 1967 is essentially a one-state reality, where there is something of an apartheid system, where one group is privileged over another whose rights are denied.
In short, viewers have been treated to what is essentially a Palestinian propaganda video and a free promo for one of the leaders of the BDS movement.
It defies belief that something of this nature could be published, without context, on a mainstream media site. There is the potential for this video to be embedded in any future Israel-related stories on both the Newsweek and IBT sites. Until Newsweek Media Group acknowledges that this form of advocacy journalism is unacceptable on its websites, this blatant historical revisionism and propaganda may keep appearing.
Please ask Newsweek Media Group to decommission the video by scrolling to the bottom of this page, clicking on the Contact Us button and selecting “Editorial Complaints,” remembering to include this YouTube link to the video – https://youtu.be/5KDjPBAGcYY
