Moshe Phillips is national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel (www.AFSI.org), a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.
The Associated Press has reporters stationed throughout the Middle East, so how is it that they still can't get the most basic facts about Israel and the Palestinian Authority right?
This time the AP issued a news article on January 6 stating that “some 3 million Palestinians live in the 'West Bank' under Israeli military rule.” No, they don't. Fully 98% of the Palestinian Arab residents of those areas live under the military rule of the Palestinian Authority and its security forces. The Israeli governor and the military administration of those territories departed back in 1995. That's a long time for the AP to mislead the readers of its articles.
The Palestinian Authority runs the courts, police, unions, media, schools, and everything else that makes up daily life—including elections, on the rare occasions they are permitted. PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas is now entering the 20th year of his four year term. It is Abbas and his security forces, not the Israelis, who are ruling the Palestinian Arabs now living in Judea and Samaria.
Let's take a deeper look: Judea and Samaria was, under the terms of the Oslo II Accords agreement, organized into three areas and Area A is under Palestinian Authority administrative as well as police control. Area A constitutes about 18% of the land of Judea and Samaria. But what's important to note here is that Area A is by far the most densely populated of the three areas.
Area A includes eight Palestinian Arab cities. This list includes Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, Qalqilya, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jericho and well over two thirds of Hebron. There are zero Israeli families living in Area A and there are no Israeli neighborhoods there.
Let's get back to the Associated Press. About itself the agency states "For over 175 years, The Associated Press has been a trusted, independent source for fast, accurate and unbiased reporting." That accuracy seems to not apply to Israel.
What is the effect of having the reporters and editors utilizing a false narrative of an Israeli military occupation? Why do it?
There are three effects:
1. It makes Israelis look mean. That fits the simplistic narrative to which the far too many journalists generally adhere, that Israel is the bad guy and the Palestinian Arabs are the good guys
2. It justifies Palestinian Arab violence. If the Arabs are subjected to an inherently unjust military occupation, then violent resistance is seen by many as justified. That is not to say that the AP supports violence, only that its journalists may see Palestinian Arab violence against Israel as rooted in a right to resort to force.
3. It advances the agenda. By generating sympathy for the Palestinian Arabs and making the status quo seem unfair, inventing a fake “occupation” advances the policy position that the many journalists, publishers and editors at media outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post advocate: the creation of a Palestinian Arab state (hostile by definition) in Israel’s backyard.
Slanting the news to promote a political position may be effective propaganda, but it is bad journalism.
The AP is a nonprofit organization. On its website's fundraising page they claim "Your donation will help The Associated Press continue its mission to advance the power of fact-based journalism." If that claim is to be true the AP needs to get its facts right about Israel.