This Sept. 22, 2026 Op-Ed by CAMERA’s Tamar Sternthal appeared in The Washington Times.
A screenshot of Reuters’ Sept. 5, 2026 coverage of Ambassador Mike Huckabee’s visit to Turmus Ayya
In the Western imagination, the pastoral West Bank village of Turmus Ayya represents iconic small-town America with a soft touch of local Palestinian color.
The community has a carefully crafted image of a “little slice of Americana,” as The Wall Street Journal put it last year. “American dual nationals … have come to retire or to raise families in a place where their dollars go further and it feels like home,” The Journal’s Omar Abdel-Baqui explained. “Many speak English as their go-to language, live in large suburban houses and eat in East Coast-style pizza parlors.”
According to estimates cited by news outlets and local officials, roughly 80% of Turmus Ayya’s residents hold U.S. citizenship. Journalists have uncritically adopted the town’s public relations branding as the Middle America of the Middle East.
“All of the people that I visited with this morning are American,” U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee said Sept. 5 after his solidarity stop at the town, which has been targeted by Israeli extremists. During the visit, the ambassador appeared next to a fluttering American flag.
Yet basic scrutiny of the Palestinian community reveals a very un-American reality. Behind the wholesome veneer of apple pie and Norman Rockwell lies a decidedly pro-terrorist element wholly at odds with American values.
Read the rest of CAMERA’s Op-Ed at The Washington Times.