In a recent interview with Peter Beinart, MSNBC’s Joy Reid and her anti-Zionist guest were able to pack a 7-minute segment full of false and misleading statements about Israel, the West Bank and the Palestinians.
Throughout, Reid and Beinart demonize the Jewish state, misrepresent the reality in the West Bank & Gaza and whitewash Palestinian terrorism.
Apartheid, Jim Crow & Other Anti-Israel Libels
From start to finish, Beinart continuously misrepresents the nature of Israel’s presence in the West Bank by terming it “Apartheid” and comparing it to Jim Crow America.
In order to make his case, Beinart points to the fact that Israelis in the West Bank enjoy the rights that come with Israeli citizenship while Palestinians in the West Bank do not share those same rights.
However, Beinart conveniently leaves out the fact that the majority of Palestinians in the West Bank are governed by the Palestinian Authority and their rights are therefore derived from the PA.
Thus, in order to make his comparisons to Apartheid South Africa and Jim Crow America seem realistic, Beinart is forced to misrepresent the truth about the administration of the West Bank.
Skewing the Facts in the West Bank and Gaza
When it comes to the West Bank and Gaza, Joy Reid makes a number of misleading claims about the facts on the ground.
In the middle of the segment, Reid presents a convoluted map of the West Bank to make it seem that the disputed territory is being devoured by Israeli settlements, security zones and nature preserves.
Reid concludes with the claim that in the West Bank, the “Palestinians have almost nothing left.”
Despite the map’s imagery, this is a misleading representation of reality.
Reid fails to inform her audience that under the Oslo Accords, which were negotiated between Israel and the Palestinians, the PA has full civil control over 40% of the West Bank, that settlements currently take up less than 10% of West Bank land and that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live in the area assigned to Israel by the Accords.
Thus, the claim that “Palestinians have almost nothing left” is simply untrue.
How do you see Israel's presence in the West Bank?
The fundamental ABC's of the West Bank aren't that simple. "Occupied" or not, there's more to it than meets the eye. pic.twitter.com/N4ixTt8nTv
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 9, 2023
In her depiction of Gaza, Reid falsely claims that it is an “open-air prison” and uses the example of Palestinian fishermen in order to illustrate her point.
According to Reid (and another one of her maps), Gazans cannot fish “because if they go a certain amount, they get shot.”
However, this is a misleading take on a complicated story. The audience is never informed that Israel’s sea blockade is due to the threat posed by Gaza’s Hamas rulers and that Gazans regularly use the open part of the Mediterranean Sea for fishing, swimming and other activities.
In fact, according to an investigation by CAMERA in late 2022, the catch of Gazan fishermen has gradually increased since 2007.
Once again, Reid mispresents the facts on the ground in order to defame Israel in the eyes of her audience.
Whitewashing & Justifying Palestinian Terrorism
In her closing remarks, Joy Reid makes one of her most egregious statements: “And people are throwing rocks and fighting back because they don’t know what else to do.”
In just one sentence, Reid not only whitewashes Palestinian terrorism but even seems to justify it.
Contrary to her idealized portrayal of Palestinians “fighting back” by throwing rocks, Palestinian violence is characterized by shootings, bombings, stabbings and car-rammings against both Israeli civilians and security forces in the West Bank and pre-1967 Israel.
In addition, Reid’s claim that the violence is being perpetrated by desperate people with limited options is an overt simplification that does not take into account the rejectionist nature of Palestinian terror groups, the hundreds of millions of dollars that are provided by Iran to support this ongoing wave of violence and the historic existence of Palestinian terrorism during periods of peace negotiations.
Further, desperation is not a legitimate justification for the use of violence against civilians.
Thus, Reid’s words are a dangerous distortion of reality as they not only mislead the audience but seek to vindicate the Palestinian violence that has terrorized innocent Israeli civilians for the past year and a half.
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