Bob Simon & 60 Minutes: Continued Anti-Israel Bias

If Israel only gave back the West Bank, there’d be peace in the Middle East according to 60 Minutes and CBS News. It is historically inaccurate, biased and wrong. The segment which aired tonite blamed Israel across the board – as Bob Simon and 60 Minutes have done for many years.

In 2009, Simon argued that Israel makes peace impossible by building settlements – and he continued that incorrect trend tonite with linkage essentiually stating that because Israel builds in the settlements they shouldn’t be able to protect themselves from terrorist attacks upon innocent civilians.

Tonite’s show’s transcript reads:

Bob Simon: The Americans have already given $270 million dollars.

Ehud Barak: More than this, I believe, along the, yeah.

Bob Simon: And they’re promising just the Iron Dome another $660 million–

Ehud Barak: Yeah. Yeah. $680– probably $211 might be given in the coming fiscal year.

Bob Simon: While the Americans are helping you so much in your defense. Israel goes on building settlements, which is exactly what the Americans don’t want. How does that work, when you’re asking America for help and doing exactly what the Americans don’t want you to do?….How does it work? I mean, right now, Israel has just announced the building of a gigantic settlement project. This is at the same time that the Americans are providing the money for Israel’s most important defense system.

Following this logic as long as Israel builds settlements, America shouldn’t help fund Israel’s defense. Message: Build settlements and you shouldn’t live.

As Michael Oren, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. said tonite: “60 Minutes was right: The Iron Dome missile defense system does not take lives, it saves lives. But 60 Minutes missed the true connection between Iron Dome and settlements: Israel was compelled to build Iron Dome after it uprooted 21 Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip and Hamas took over Gaza and used it to launch thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians.” What does a technological advance which protects innocent people have to do with the settlements?

Simon’s arguments haven’t changed that much. In 1999, Simon described settlements as apartheid: “Demographers predict that, within ten years, Arabs will outnumber Jews in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Without a separate Palestinian state, the Israelis would have three options…They could try ethnic cleansing…they could give the Palestinians the vote…or they could inflict apartheid — have the minority Israelis rule the majority Palestinians. But apartheid regimes don’t have a very long life.”

In that segment, Simon described the Jewish settlements as: “…dominating the lowlands like crusader fortresses. Many are little cities, and none of them existed 40 years ago. The Israelis always take the high ground, sometimes the hills, sometimes the homes. And sometimes, Arabs are occupied inside their own homes.”
Last year, Simon and 60 Minutes aired “Christians of the Holy Land” which attacked Israel for the vanishing Arab Christian population in Israel – ignoring the war that Mulsims wage upon Christians in the Middle East. Oren then said – rightfully – that the story was “a hatchet job.”

In April 2008, Simon interviewed an Israeli Air Force pilot and remarked: “You don’t look like a killer.”

As CEO of 5W Public Relations, through the years have observed many including Aish Hatorah, Camera and editorial after editorial objecting to Bob Simon. Its offensive and awful. The double standard against Israel is sickening – who are they to tell Israel anything?

Just Leave Israel alone.