CBS is determined to redraw Israel’s map, facts be damned
“A map, any map, is a sort of mirror, reflecting the ideas and worldviews of its creators — the people of its time,” observed Israel’s National Library, reflecting on medieval Christian maps depicting Jerusalem in the center of the world.
What, then, does CBS News’ creative cartography with respect to Israel say about the network’s ideas and worldviews regarding the Jewish state?
In August, a CBS News memo regarding the Jewish state’s capital city instructed all employees: “Do not refer to [Jerusalem] as being in Israel.”
This week, the media giant further chipped away at Israeli territory.
“Damari, who is 28, and Steinbrecher, who is 31, were taken from the same kibbutz, which is a settlement,” anchor Errol Barnett’s intoned in a special report on January 19, covering the release of the three Israeli hostages Emily Damari, Doron Steinbrecher and Romi Gonen.
Damari and Steinbrecher’s home, Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where they were brutally kidnapped on October 7, 2023, is not a settlement. The kibbutz is located well within internationally recognized Israeli territory. It is nowhere near the disputed West Bank.
In anti-Israel Arabic language discourse frequently delegitimize internationally recognized Israeli territory as “settlements,” signaling that the place — i.e., Israel itself — is supposedly a violation of international law which should be obliterated.
Among the numerous media outlets that have corrected themselves, after erroneously delegitimizing communities sitting on internationally-recognized Israeli territory as settlements, are France24 (Arabic), the BBC (Arabic, dozens of times since October 7), Deutsche Welle (Arabic), Reuters (Arabic), Euronews (Arabic), Agence France Presse (English), and earlier (2017), The New York Times.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas’s Nukba forces and it allies in other terror organizations, along with civilians from the Gaza Strip, unleashed an orgy of murder, kinocide, rape, kidnapping, torture, and maiming not on settlements in the disputed West Bank, but on internationally-recognized Israeli territory.
Kibbutz Kfar Aza, home to a strong contingent of peace activists, lost some 10 percent of its population on October 7, 2023, with 62 murdered and 19 kidnapped. The October 7 massacre targeting Kfar Aza and other communities within internationally recognized Israeli territory was an assault on Israel within any boundaries, an effort to erase Israel from the map entirely.
As Hamas’s Ghazi Hamad openly acknowledged just weeks after October 7th:
Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country, because it constitutes a security, military, and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation, and must be finished. We are not ashamed to say this, with full force.…
We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again. The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight. Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it. We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.… The occupation must come to an end.
Hamad’s exchange with his LBC TV (Lebanon) interviewer continued:
News anchor: “Occupation where? In the Gaza Strip?”
Hamad: “No, I am talking about all the Palestinian lands.”
News anchor: Does that mean the annihilation of Israel?
Hamad: Yes, of course.…The existence of Israel is illogical. The existence of Israel is what causes all that pain, blood, and tears. It is Israel, not us. We are the victims of the occupation. Period. Therefore, nobody should blame us for the things we do. On October 7, October 10, October 1,000,000 – everything we do is justified. [All translations by MEMRI.]
While we can only speculate on Barnett’s intentions behind his mischaracterization of Kfar Aza, the injurious outcomes speak for themselves. The misreporting not only shrinks Israel’s internationally recognized territory. It also obscures Hamas’s genocidal commitment to wipe Israel entirely off the map.