Key Takeaways:
- Sky News’ Adam Parsons asked U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee if he takes “personal responsibility” for settler attacks, tying that question to Huckabee’s use of the term “Judea and Samaria.”
- In doing so, Parsons delegitimized the use of the ancient name for the region, turning those who use it into “violent extremists.”
- Parsons’ responses to HonestReporting on X reveal a superficial understanding of the region as well as an activist approach to his journalism.
Over the weekend, Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, visited the West Bank town of Turmus Ayya as a solidarity trip in the face of repeated attacks by extremist Israeli settlers in the area.
During a press conference while on the tour of the Ramallah-area town, Huckabee was confronted by Sky News’ Jerusalem correspondent, Adam Parsons, about his use of the term “Judea and Samaria” to refer to the West Bank.
In his pointed question, Parsons asserted that “Judea and Samaria” is not the term used by the rest of the world or the Palestinians in the region and that some feel Huckabee’s use of the ancient term for the area is “empowering violent settlers.” Parsons ended his question by asking the American ambassador if he takes “personal responsibility” for attacks that have occurred in the area.
Later on in the segment, Parsons referred to Huckabee’s “preference for the Bible over international law.”
What Parsons did in his brief question to the American ambassador is implicitly delegitimize the Jewish connection to the area currently known as the West Bank / Judea and Samaria and undermine the right of people to refer to the area by its ancient Biblical name.
To be clear, Adam Parsons is free to refer to the area in any way that he would like. No one is opposed to his referring to the region as the “West Bank.”
However, Parsons went beyond merely referring to the area as the West Bank in his question to Ambassador Huckabee. He turned the ancient Biblical term for the region into an extremist codeword, claiming that its very use empowers those who commit violence. In making such a claim, Parsons disregarded thousands of years of Jewish connection to the land and cast all those who wish to refer to the region by its indigenous name as violent extremists.
Following Sky News’ publishing the video of Parsons’ aggressive questioning of the U.S. ambassador, HonestReporting posted on X (formerly Twitter) a critique of how the question was framed.
Minutes later, Parsons responded to our initial criticism, opening a back-and-forth that lasted a few hours. Some of his assertions throughout this exchange give a peek into how he views the region and his role as a journalist.
In his opening response, Parsons claimed that he referred to the area as the “West Bank” because that is “the internationally recognised name, as adopted by every government other than Israel, as well as the UN and other international bodies.” He then went on to state that “typically we refer to regions by their modern name, not by the names they were known as thousand of years ago.” A couple posts later, Parsons claimed that his questioning of the American ambassador was against HonestReporting’s “preconceptions,” casting doubt upon the accuracy of the term “Judea and Samaria.”
By this response, Parsons betrays his superficial understanding of the region, not taking into account the fact that the region continued to be referred to as “Judea and Samaria” in some form long after the Bible was finalized, including by the British Mandate and the U.N. Partition Plan of 1947. This is not a “preconception” by an advocacy organization but an established historical fact.
Thus, Parsons’ insistence that the West Bank is the only correct way to refer to the region is partisan and ahistorical.
A little later in the exchange, Parsons claimed that the role of the journalist is to keep the “powerful to account.” As noted by one X user, there is an inherent contradiction in Parsons’ stance. He claims to ask hard-hitting questions of those in power but then relies on the groupthink of the world to legitimize the use of the term “West Bank” while delegitimizing the use of the term “Judea and Samaria.”
As well, later in his Sky News report, Parsons interviewed the spokesperson for Turmus Ayya, allowing him to make his claims with no journalistic pushback whatsoever. Does Parsons believe that if someone is perceived as lacking power they can make any claim they want without any needing to back up their statements?
At one point in the report, an ATV and a motorcycle driven by two settlers from a nearby community drive by and the town’s spokesperson says that their goal is to intimidate the residents. Parsons accepts this as fact and lets this claim go unchallenged.
However, this might not be the full story. Based on an X post by an Israeli settler who was filmed driving near the American ambassador during his visit and was portrayed as a “dangerous and threatening” settler, he was actually performing a security check based on the large number of cars that were congregated in an area that has seen Palestinian attacks in the past.
Perhaps he is the same person that Adam Parsons saw drive by and was told was intimidating the town’s Palestinian residents. Perhaps not. But we’ll never know exactly what was happening, due to Parsons’ uncritical acceptance of the Palestinian narrative.
Adam Parsons likes to say that he’s performing his journalistic duty by keeping the “powerful to account” and that his reporting is “impartial.” While admirable qualities, are these actually what drive him in his reporting? Does he hold all sides to account or only those he ideologically opposes? Does his personal bias color his reporting? If so, is Adam Parsons more of a journalist or an activist with a microphone?
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© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
