Early Saturday morning, on Shabbat and on a Jewish holiday, Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel and attacked Israeli civilians in kibbutzim and in towns, killing and capturing women, children, and the elderly. By early afternoon that day in the US, over a hundred people had already been reported killed and dozens taken hostage (deaths tolls continued to rise afterwards). As horrific videos of the attack circulated on social media, at about 2PM Eastern time that day, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour chose to allow Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian Authority ambassador the UK, to blame the attack on Israel and to compare it to Israel’s self-defense with almost no pushback.
At the start of segment, Zomlot had to be prodded to even condemn the attack on Israeli civilians in the most mild terms. After being asked three times, he said, “the loss of civilian life is tragic on all sides and what is happening is extremely worrying and very tragic, as we speak the loss of life, you’ve counted 70 Israeli deaths, there is more than 200 Palestinian deaths so far, more than 1,600 entire residential compounds are being wiped out. This is a war crime committed by Israel.” (It was not clear what he meant by “1,600 residential compounds.”)
He continued:
Israel knew this was coming their way. We, the national movement of Palestine, the PLO, have found a different path 30 years ago. We have committed to what the world asked us, recognize Israel, commit to negotiations and non violence, and to international legitimacy and resolution. Israel was expected to do one thing only, roll back its occupation, stop its colonial settlement expansion. Not one day it did so, killing the prospects of the two state solution. And the world was expected to do one thing, Christiane, uphold international law equally on everybody, on Ukraine, on Palestine. And the world fails to do that. No accountability. Now every single political avenue is blocked, every single legal avenue for us is blocked, like the international court of justice.
Of course, not one word of the above was true. The Palestinian Authority continues to pay salaries to terrorists who murder Israeli civilians, and the Palestinian Authority, not Israel, is the entity that has blocked the two-state solution by rejecting every single offer of independence that was made to it. Nor is there any moral equivalence between intentional attacks that target civilians and unintentional civilian casualties that result from self-defense. But CNN’s Amanpour responded simply: “I want to know what happens now. There’s a war that Israel has declared after Palestinian militants, who I don’t think are your friends, Hamas is not a supporter of the Palestinian Authority, there’s a war, and as you say, there’s going to be a massive escalation.”
Unbelievably, Zomlot then said:
There is a war, you see, we’re having this conversation because Israelis have seen what they have seen today, but my people see this every day. Every single day. Palestinians are targeted, killed, arrested, rounded, their land is confiscated, their holy places are desecrated, not only Muslims, but Christians. You have been following what is happening at Al Aqsa mosque and in our Christian churches, the spitting on Christian worshippers. Our people have been seeing apartheid being enforced on them over the last years and the land is being taken and the hope for a political solution that will fulfill the rights is dissipating. This is what we need to discuss.
What Israelis saw that day was innocent children and teenagers and the elderly being carted off as prisoners of war, and a dead body of a woman being paraded in the street as a trophy. Comparing this to any defensive action taken by the IDF is despicable. What did Amanpour say to this calumny? She said, “I know.”
Amanpour knew very well who she was bringing on as a guest. CAMERA-UK has been exposing Zomlot’s deceitfulness for years. The interview continued for another six minutes, but didn’t get any better.
At this urgent hour we need the absolute maximum professionalism of the media in presenting the facts and telling the full story. That such blatant propaganda should be allowed on a mainstream news outlet at a time of such an unprecedented and barbaric attack on Israel defies belief.