Effort by the Jewish Community Relations Council to prevent the majority of viewers from viewing

"Palestine Is Still The Issue"

From: Steve Berley <sberley@jcrc.org>

Reply-To: sberley@jcrc.org

Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 15:23:21 -0400 (EDT)

Immediate Action Needed:

Prevent Pro-Palestinian Propaganda on KQED Channel 9!

KQED is getting hundreds of calls and emails urging them to broadcast the documentary Palestine is Still the Issue by John Pilger.

We need your help to encourage KQED to air fair and balanced materials, rather than propaganda materials such as this, as outline below.

Contact KQED and voice your opposition to this "documentary"

Scott Dwyer, Program Director

415 553 2218 sdwyer@kqed.org

John Boland, Chief Content Officer

415 553 2820 jboland@kqed.org

Place the text into the e-mail; do not send attachments and please also copy as a BCC to: sberley@jcrc.org

Talking Points:

Note: Rewrite these in your own words. Do not simply cut and paste.

Important: This is not about bashing KQED! It is about educating them on why this "documentary" is inappropriate for broadcast.

Remember: Teach Don't Preach

When contact KQED, please consider including these topics:

- This is pure propaganda not objective reporting.

- Pilger has a 25 year record of openly supporting the Palestinian cause and makes scant effort at being impartial in his reporting.

- Pilger made this "documentary" while iin the employment of Carlton Television. Michael Green, Carlton's Chairman, strongly criticized this piece as "factually incorrect, historically incorrect," and a "tragedy for Israel so far as accuracy is concerned."

- Pilger suggests that the victims of teerror are morally equivalent to the terrorist, and asserts that killing a terrorist before he can murder is also "terrorism."

- Pilger aggressively attempts to re-wriite history, to the extent that in describing the background of the conflict, he omits the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

See: http://pilger.carlton.com/palestine/background1

- Pliger compares Israel's treatment of its Arab citizens to apartheid in South Africa. However, he fails to mention that Israeli Arabs have far more freedom of speech and media than those in PA controlled areas. Additionally, he forgets to mention that Israel long ago granted all Arab citizens the right to vote - including women - something extremely rare in the Arab world, even today.

- Pilger decries the inconvenience of IDDF checkpoints, but fails to mention that the checkpoints were set up as a response to terrorism.

- Pilger selectively omits mentioning thhe equal number of Jewish refugees who fled from Arab countries, and settled in Israel.

- Operation Defensive Shield is portrayeed as a deliberate attempt to vandalize and destroy Palestinian culture; no mention is made of the wave of suicide bombings that forced Israel to defend itself.

- Pilger suggests that Israel systematiccally murders Palestinians, claiming that 90% of Palestinians killed are civilians. In fact, scholarly studies show that in the last two years of violence, 39% of Palestinian deaths are "non-combatant"

- Pilger claims that "For much of their resistance, the Palestinians have fought back courageously with slingshots." However, he omits reference to the Hebron riots of 1929 when 67 Jews were slaughtered. Or the period of 1951-55, when more than 3,000 armed attacks were launched against Israeli civilians, resulting in the deaths of 922 Israelis and foreign tourists. Or the Oslo period (1993-2000), when 300 Israelis were murdered by Palestinian terrorists. (To cite a few of the many historical examples.)

- Pilger complains that Israel is being heavily supplied by America, but he selectively omits mention that America gives billions of dollars annually to Arab countries such as Egypt and Jordan.

For more information see:

http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/critiques/Pilger_Pilfers_the_Truth.asp

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