PBS Draws Ire Over 9/11 Show

The city’s largest public television station is marking September 11 with a documentary whose Web site is being lambasted by Israelis and American Jewish groups for offering an inaccurate and one-sided history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Web site includes a map portraying all of Israel as “Palestine,” a time line that blames Ariel Sharon for provoking the recent wave of violence by Palestinian Arabs, and links to Web sites of Arab American organizations that have defended groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, which the American government considers terrorist organizations.

Thirteen WNET, the New York City station that is airing the documentary, “Caught in the Crossfire: Arab-Americans in Wartime,” listed it as one of the “programs that offer analysis, comfort, and opportunities to reflect on September 11.”

The flap highlights potential problems for New York and its cultural institutions as they get ready to mark the anniversary of the attacks on New York. Some memorial activities have been criticized as being too “content-less,” avoiding speeches. The Web site at issue here has plenty of content — it’s just biased, critics say. That could put Channel 13 in a delicate position. According to its most recent annual report, it receives $9 million a year in government funding, this at a time when politicians in New York and Washington have been broadly supportive of Israel. According to the station’s tax filings, among the trustees of Channel 13’s parent, the Educational Broadcasting Corporation, are some of the city’s most prominent Jewish leaders, including the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Mortimer Zuckerman; the chairman of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, Morris Offit, and the chairman of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Gershon Kekst.

“It’s basically an embarrassment for a serious network like PBS to be associated with this,” said a former ambassador of Israel at the United Nations, Dore Gold. He called the history of “Palestine” posted on the Web site “atrocious” and said it seemed aimed at belittling the Jewish connection to the land of Israel. A spokesman for the Israeli consulate in New York, Ido Aharoni, said that he had been unable to see the Web site himself, but that based on a description of it, he agreed with Mr. Gold.

The documentary, a look at the lives of three Arab-Americans, is scheduled to air tomorrow at 10 p.m. It is funded in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by a $50,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation from its special September 11 fund, and by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The Evangelical Lutheran Church takes an activist stance on Middle East policy questions; its presiding bishop, Mark Hanson, last week issued a statement opposing American military action against Saddam Hussein.

While Channel 13 is airing the documentary and promoting it in New York, the program and Web site were produced by the Independent Television Service, an arm of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The CPB gets about $342 million a year from the federal government.

The executive producer of “Caught in the Crossfire,” Calvin Skaggs, said the Web site was produced by the Independent Television Service, not by the producers of the film. “There was no offense meant here,” Mr. Skaggs said. He said that the two directors of the documentary are Jewish, and he said the filmmakers had asked the Web site makers to consult with some mainstream Jewish organizations and try to make the history on the site “as accurate as possible.” “I think they did that,” he said. He said no Arab organization had anything to do with the Web site. He said it was difficult to summarize centuries of history in a brief Web page.

The Israelis and Jewish leaders said they had no objection to a documentary on Arab Americans, but said they were taken aback by the history and resources presented on the Web site. The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, called the Web site “a serious hatchet job.”

“This is biased. It reads like it was written by an Arab organization,” Mr. Foxman said. He said there were “half-truths” throughout the history.

The president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein, said, “This phony PBS history of the Arab war against Israel reads as if it were written by Arafat himself. The anti-Israel lies and omissions are so grotesque one can only assume that hatred against Jews and Israel are its basis.”

The associate director of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, Alex Safian, said, “the information presented in the program’s website would be more suited to a Saudi-financed propaganda effort than a serious documentary.” He said congressional leaders may want to ask about the matter before “rubberstamping the next appropriation for PBS.”

“The oil-rich Saudis, after all, can do propaganda on their own, they don’t need the help of U.S. taxpayers,” Mr. Safian said.

A few of the many aspects of the Web site criticized by the Israelis and American Jewish groups:

• Israeli premiers Barak, Netanyahu and Sharon are described, respectively, as a “former military leader,” “hawkish” and a “right-wing politician.” But Yasser Arafat is described as “leader of the movement for a Palestinian state” with no mention of his connections to terrorism.

• The site makes it sound like Jordan did not participate in the 1948 Arab attack on Israel. As Mr. Safian of CAMERA put it: “That would be news to the defenders of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, and those of the Etzion Block — especially the ones executed after they surrendered to the Jordanian Legion. How exactly do the producers think Jordan came to occupy the so-called West Bank?”

• The Web site lists the election of Mr. Netanyahu and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin as setbacks to peace negotiations in the 1990s, but makes no mention of terrorist bombings by Hamas against Israeli civilians.

• The site includes a timeline with an entry for when Mr. Sharon “provokes al-Aqsa intifada.” In fact, Palestinian Arab officials, including Mr. Arafat’s justice minister and communications minister, have acknowledged that the violence was planned by the Arabs weeks before Mr. Sharon’s visit.

• The site says “In 1991 Israeli officials met secretly with a Palestinian delegation in Madrid.” In fact the Madrid peace conference was no secret — it was on the front pages of the world’s newspapers at the time.

• In a section listing “resources” for further study, the sites lists at face value several groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee — that have been widely criticized in the press and by experts as soft on terrorism.

green(I think) Good guess.

Grants Authorized 2001: January - October

Conservation and Sustainable Development
Latin America and the Insular Caribbean
Inter-Regional
Climate Change
Asia-Pacific
Africa
Global Challenges
Human Rights
Human Rights in Mexico, Nigeria and Russia
Other
Initiative in the Russian Federation and the Post-Soviet States
Special Project Grants
Universities and Scholarly Infrastructure
International Peace and Security
Disarmament and International Cooperation
Improving Science, Technology and Security Policy
Regional Security in Sub-Saharan Africa
U.S.-Russia Relations
Population and Reproductive Health
International
Brazil
India
Mexico
Nigeria
Task Groups
Africa
Research and Writing

Conservation and Sustainable Development

LATIN AMERICA AND THE INSULAR CARIBBEAN

Academia Nacional de Ciencias de Bolivia, La Paz, Bolivia
$80,000 for the development of environmental policies to improve the management of biological diversity in Bolivia (over two years).

Alianza Regional para Politicas de Conservacion en America Latina y el Caribe, San Jose, Costa Rica
$200,000 for efforts to implement private conservation at priority sites in the ecological corridor of the Americas.

Amazon Alliance for Indigenous and Traditional Peoples of the Amazon Basin, Washington, D.C.
$150,000 for efforts to improve the implementation of environmental and indigenous rights in the Andean-Amazon region (over three years).

Amazon Conservation Association, Washington, D.C.
$450,000 for a research and training program on the conservation of freshwater ecosystems in the tropical Andes (over three years).

Amazon Conservation Team, Arlington, Massachusetts
$50,000 toward the development of an integrated strategy for biological and cultural conservation in the Colombian Andes.

BirdLife International, Cambridge, United Kingdom
$250,000 in support of the Important Bird Area program in the Insular Caribbean (over three years).

Caribbean Natural Resources Institute, Vieux Fort, Saint Lucia
$350,000 in support of capacity building efforts directed to conservation organizations in the Caribbean (over three years).

Centro de Derecho Ambiental y de los Recursos Naturales, San Pedro, Costa Rica
$50,000 to implement private conservation at priority sites in the Americas (over three years).

Field Museum, Chicago, Illinois
$350,000 in support of rapid biological inventories and science-based conservation action in four key sites in Cuba (over three years).

Fundación Peruana para la Conservación de la Naturaleza, Lima, Peru
$185,000 to design and implement community-based fisheries management plans in Peru's Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve (over three years).

Instituto del Bien Común, Lima, Peru
$180,000 for the conservation and management of aquatic biodiversity in Peru's Pachitea River basin (over three years).

Nature Conservancy, Latin America and Caribbean Division, Arlington, Virginia
$390,000 to build local capacity and develop best practices for forest and watershed conservation in Jamaica and the Dominican Republic (over three years).

New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York
$300,000 in support of a satellite version of the Virtual Herbarium in the Greater Antilles (over three years).

Society for Conservation Biology, Gainesville, Florida
$20,000 in support of a professional collaboration between the U.S. and Cuban conservation communities.

Universidad Metropolitana, Instituto de Educación Ambiental, San Juan, Puerto Rico
$180,000 to create a conservation and sustainable development plan for Ciénaga de Zapata ecosystem in Cuba (over three years).

University of Florida, College of Law, Gainesville, Florida
$100,000 in support of an environmental law program and conservation clinic for Latin America and the Caribbean (over three years).

World Wildlife Fund, Washington, D.C.
$180,000 to complete the biodiversity vision for the flooded forest ecoregion and to implement conservation measures in the Abanico del Pastaza watershed in northeastern Peru (over two years).

World Wildlife Fund-Canada, Toronto, Canada
$270,000 in support of the conservation of the Cuchillas del Toa region in eastern Cuba (over three years).

INTER-REGIONAL

Bellagio Forum for Sustainable Development, Osnabruck, Germany
$30,000 for a program to train journalists in high-quality environmental reporting.

Conservation International, Washington, D.C.
$25,000,000 to support the creation of the Critical Ecosystems Partnership Fund (over five years).

University of Pretoria, Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy in Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
$80,000 in support of a postgraduate program on environmental economics and policy in eastern and southern Africa.

World Conservation Union, Gland, Switzerland
$150,000 in support of planning for the World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Center for Clean Air Policy, Washington, D.C.
$75,000 in support of a state roundtable on global climate change (over two years).

Environmental Defense Fund, Washington, D.C.
$300,000 in support of a collaborative effort to maintain momentum for strong U.S. action and international cooperation to address global warming (over two years).

Environmental Law and Policy Center of the Midwest, Chicago, Illinois
$150,000 in support of a global warming initiative in the Midwest (over two years).

Natural Resources Defense Council, Washington, D.C.
$300,000 in support of a collaborative effort to maintain momentum for strong U.S. action and international cooperation to address global warming (over two years).

Union of Concerned Scientists, Cambridge, Massachusetts
$300,000 in support of a collaborative effort to maintain momentum for strong U.S. action and international cooperation to address global warming (over two years).

World Resources Institute, Washington, D.C.
$300,000 in support of a collaborative effort to maintain momentum for strong U.S. action and international cooperation to address global warming (over two years).

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.