A warped view of history from NPR's "All Things Considered"
5 Things to Look Out for in Media Takes on the Conflict
As someone who writes about history every day, I understand the challenge of telling a story that is memorable, informative, and factually accurate. It always requires picking and choosing what to include and what to leave out, knowing that it’s not possible to cover every angle, fact, and interpretation. Writing about history is hard to get right, even more so when you’re limited by time and page constraints.
But a recent NPR segment of “All Things Considered,” though only about six minutes long, is so devoid of an honest grappling with the Arab-Israeli conflict that this story can’t be classified as a news story. This piece is an excellent example of how the media pushes an incomplete, at times factually false, and dishonest history. Given how influential NPR is, it’s worth looking at what NPR got wrong to show us what to watch for in other media takes.
You can find the transcript of the “All Things Considered” piece here. In this segment, NPR reporter Jackie Northam claims to examine “why Palestinians do not have their own state, and what, if anything, it would take to create one in the future.” Northam and her guests lay the blame almost entirely with Israel, failing to consider important facts that would greatly help listeners better understand current events. Here are a few things that “All Things Considered” gets wrong:
One-sided interpretations accepted as fact
Reporter Jackie Northam begins with a bold statement that Norway, Ireland, and Spain “took a stand for the Palestinians” in recognizing Palestinian statehood, and that this “outraged Israel.” Northam presents as settled fact that such recognition must be beneficial to the Palestinians, and that’s why Israel is outraged. But there is a much more likely explanation: Israel is outraged because, in recognizing Palestinian statehood after October 7, it looks like the European countries are rewarding the Palestinians for rape, murder, and kidnapping, while punishing Israel for trying to respond to a genocidal threat. Instead of holding out statehood as a reward for resolving the conflict, the Europeans have declared themselves for the side that instigated the attack. Perhaps that’s why Israel is angry. But NPR doesn’t consider this.
Revising actual history to ignore inconvenient truths
Northam briefly discusses the years 1947-1949 when Israelis and Arabs fought over the creation of Israel. I realize that in such a short segment it’s particularly difficult to tease apart the differences in the fighting during those years. Jew Oughta Know listeners may be more familiar with the timeline. In November 1947, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into independent Jewish and Arab states — not Palestinian, but Arab. The Jews accepted the plan. The Arabs rejected it, then launched a campaign of violence intended to stop the partition from happening. It was effectively a civil war between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine. Then in May 1948, Israel was formally established and the fighting changed from a civil war to a war over Israeli independence that lasted until 1949.
Instead of stating any of the above history, Northam drops the most stunning line of the whole segment as a summary of the war: “Arab states came to the Palestinians’ aid,” she claims. This is such a profound revision of factual history that it’s hard to believe it’s anything but intentionally downplaying an inconvenient truth. The Arab states didn’t provide “aid,” they invaded Israel in a war of elimination. This was not done on behalf of the Palestinians, but done to destroy the new State of Israel and seize the territory for themselves. Had the Arabs won, there still would not have been a Palestinian state. How could an honest recounting of history possibly leave out this incredibly important fact? The way NPR tells it, we’d be forgiven for thinking that Israel started a war against the Palestinians when in fact it was a defensive war against an Arab invasion.
The Arabs lost the war of ‘48, and that’s why Israel ended up capturing land that was supposed to have been used towards an independent Arab state — a state that Arabs lost in utero when they rejected partition and lost the war they started.
Reducing complex history to a simple story of Israeli land grab
The segment briefly mentions 1967. Northam says, “After the 1967 war, settlers snatched more land, and for decades, the effort to create a Palestinian homeland faded.”
Here NPR offers a version of history that solely blames Israel without considering any actions by the Arabs and Palestinians. Northam doesn’t tell us that the initiating action of the 1967 Six Day War was another Arab effort to eliminate Israel, a war that they again lost. In the process, Israel captured five territories. However, the Arabs refused to negotiate peace in exchange for the return of those territories. In the first few years after the war, a small number of Jews (we’re talking several hundred) did establish new settlements in those territories. These small settlements were mostly on land that itself had been ethnically cleansed of Jews in the 1947-49 war.
It’s true that there was a concerted and controversial effort to settle Jews in these territories, backed by both private individuals and Israeli government officials. That movement grew slowly in the late 1960s and early 70s, before picking up stream in the middle of that decade. Some land was indeed “snatched” in violation of Israeli law. Some land is disputed. Some land is historically Jewish, though widely accepted as being territory necessary for a future Palestinian state. It’s immensely more complex than NPR’s narrative in which the snatching of land meant there was no Palestinian state.
Even with only six minutes, NPR could have explained that another reason why “the effort to create a Palestinian homeland faded” is because the Palestinians rejected every single peace agreement that would have created it. They rejected peace because it would have required them to recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli state — the one thing they had fought against since even before Israel was established. NPR doesn’t want to spare a few seconds to ask whether these were missed opportunities for the Palestinians to establish their own beginnings of a viable state.
NPR completely ignores the history of Arab and Palestinian violence, which in recent decades has accompanied every Palestinian rejection of peace. But “All Things Considered” doesn’t want us listeners to factor that fact into our understanding.
Claiming the peace process failed because of Israel
NPR fails to provide a more complete cause-and-effect analysis for the failure of the 1990s peace process, known as the Oslo Accords. Northam attributes it to the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin was killed by a religious Jewish zealot angry at Rabin for his willingness to make peace with the Palestinians. Rabin’s death certainly contributed to the collapse of the peace process. But the single most important factor was the unrelenting terrorism from Hamas and other Islamist groups from 2000-2005, what became known as the Second Intifada. Hundreds of Israeli civilians were murdered. This campaign of violence soured the Israelis on any prospects for peace. They correctly realized that it wasn’t possible to make peace with people dedicated to their destruction. It was these events that largely turned many Israelis to the right, and helped bring Benjamin Netanyahu to power.
Finally, all the blame lies with Israel and the Palestinians have no real faults of their own
The segment does interview someone who acknowledges that “it’s not all on Israel’s shoulders,” itemizing various ways in which the Palestinians are not “able to behave as a state.” But then the guest declares that it’s arguably “because Israel doesn't let it because there's a conflict.” In other words, the Palestinians’ failings are not their fault.
It’s certainly the case that Israel has its bad policies, and of course, Israel bears responsibility for its own shortcomings. But NPR fails to discuss what, if any, faults might lay with the Palestinians themselves: the incompetent corruption of the Palestinian Authority which governs the West Bank; the tyranny of Hamas, which controls Gaza; the addiction to violence as a means of eliminating Israel from existence; the influence of nefarious outside forces like Iran, and much more. These are all things that we listeners might think are hindrances to Palestinian statehood, but NPR never mentions this. So unless we already knew this (as you do now!), we wouldn’t be able to factor this into our thinking.
“All Things Considered” never got around to actually exploring “what, if anything, it would take to create [a Palestinian state] in the future.” Luckily, Jew Oughta Know did! Check out my three-part series on this question:
Part 1: What Israel needs to change
Part 2: What the Palestinians need to change
Part 3: What the rest of the world needs to change
NPR, though, doesn’t want to examine, even briefly, what the Palestinians need to change to achieve statehood. In refusing to discuss how relentless Arab and Palestinian violence has influenced Israeli decision-making and contributed to the failure of statehood, NPR pushes the same tired narrative of an “oppressive” Israel bullying “innocent” Palestinians. It’s a superficial take that not only fails to educate us, but actually miseducates us by presenting a lopsided tale of Israeli aggression devoid of key historical facts that actually make a huge difference in how we perceive and judge the conflict.
So look out for this kind of spin. A story in which Israel is relentlessly grabbing land for no reason, Arab and Palestinian violence is ignored or minimized, all wars are described as Israel’s responsibility, and the Palestinians never bear any fault for their situation is not giving a fair take on the conflict. Stop reading the article. Turn off the radio. Don’t click on the ads. Email the producers to complain and set the record straight.
NPR claims their mission is to “create a more informed public.” If you listened to this “All Things Considered” episode, you’d come away even less informed than when you began. Mission not accomplished.
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Picture of the Day
Storm clouds gather where the Golan Heights (foreground) meets the Hula Valley in northern Israel, mimicking the current geopolitical situation. This area is under constant attack by Hezbollah from Lebanon (the border region is the background mountains). Tens of thousands of Israelis remain evacuated from their homes, a couple dozen civilians and soldiers have been killed, wildfires from the terror group’s weapons burned large areas, and there is every possibility that this might escalate into all-out war. Israel will need to make a decision soon.
Another great piece, a good correlative to the NY Times and NPR. Thanks.
Thank you.