During the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour interviewed senior U.N. official Tom Fletcher. She set the anti-Israel tone with her opening line.
“It may feel like the suffering and the atrocities in Gaza have faded from view,” she began. The assertive use of “atrocities” exposes her activist zeal and personal indictment and conviction of Israel’s conduct instead of displaying journalistic professionalism.
Then Amanpour turned to her guest, also known for particularly egregious displays of prioritizing activism against Israel over humanitarian professionalism, asking him about the current situation in Gaza. Fletcher responded:
The situation in Gaza continues to be completely bleak for Palestinians living there. And look, in the last year, we’ve been able to scale up, particularly food. That’s been the biggest improvement from when we would have spoken here outside the United Nations a year ago. So, there are some improvements there. But all of us, the United Nations, the Palestinian leadership, the Board of Peace, we’re all frustrated that we haven’t gone further.
He went on to list what the United Nations needs to do in Gaza, from delivering tents to clearing the rubble.
Fletcher then dodged Amanpour’s question about why the work wasn’t moving faster, responding that “the obstacle is that the process is not moving fast enough through the phases.” Amanpour pushed, “Why not?” He dodged again, saying, “we’re still in this frustrating situation that we can’t bring in everything we need to bring in.”
Unsatisfied that Fletcher had not named a culprit, Amanpour again pushed Fletcher, “But who’s saying that you can’t? Why can’t you?” Fletcher finally gave in, saying that “Israel is the occupying partner,” before turning to the improvements in Gaza over the past year.
Amanpour finally got the answer she wanted, but it was an incomplete answer. That is because she did not ask the right questions.
It is true that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) prevent the delivery of certain goods into Gaza. Notably, Amanpour’s journalistic zeal to pursue answers ended before inquiring as to why the IDF does this.
The “postwar” reality in Gaza is one where a terrorist organization, Hamas, continues to operate against the IDF, seeks Israel’s destruction, and is still in control of parts of the territory. This is quite unlike the usual “postwar” realities, like in Germany after World War II and Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003.
Hamas is infamous for and prolific at rerouting humanitarian aid to fuel its own war machine. According to the Washington Post, it “would take control of trucks carrying high-demand goods like flour, which could sell for up to $30 for a kilogram, and steal fuel meant for aid groups.” Therefore, disinterested in the well-being of Gazans is Hamas, which will dig up existing infrastructure, like water pipes, to use them to manufacture rockets. So brazen is Hamas that it will even film itself and boast about such actions.
One can disagree with Israel’s policy of not allowing concrete to be brought into Gaza. But any intellectually honest disagreement must contend with Israel’s justification: that Hamas has diverted enormous amounts of concrete meant for civilian reconstruction in order to build its terror tunnels underneath civilian areas. Simply ignoring this reality isn’t professional journalism; it’s propaganda.
Unfortunately, Amanpour has a long record of prioritizing such one-sided propaganda over engaging in honest journalism.
Tom Fletcher and the United Nations are entitled to their frustration with the IDF. Their missions do not exactly align. Both sides are also operating in an environment with no real historical precedents and are learning as they go. But Amanpour never engaged with the misaligned institutional imperatives.
Examining these challenges will help find solutions to them, which will in turn boost the conditions of Gazans. But Amanpour does not seem interested in helping Palestinians. She appears invested in getting her guests to attack Israel.
But give it to Amanpour. It is a major accomplishment when you manage to be the person most hostile toward Israel in the presence of a U.N. bureaucrat.