NPR is in deep trouble: The U.S. Congress has voted to cut federal support for NPR and PBS because of their partisan broadcasts and lack of impartial journalism. Edith Chapin has announced she would be stepping down from her position as NPR editor-in-chief and chief content officer. Nonetheless, NPR’s ideological bias, especially prominent in NPR’s reporting about Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict, remains unchanged. The public radio network continues to offer anti-Israel activists a platform to promote Hamas’ false genocide claim against Israel.
Last week, we wrote about Morning Edition’s featured guest, Brown University professor-activist Omer Bartov, currently on a media campaign to persuade people that Israel’s military campaign against Hamas is actually a genocide of the Palestinian people. This week, British physician-activist Nick Maynard, on a similar media campaign in the UK, was a guest on Morning Edition to further fuel the genocide canard.
Who is Nick Maynard?
Maynard is a gastroenterologist in Oxford, UK who is part of the British-based Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP). That group, despite its self-description as a humanitarian group, has long been criticized for its distorted narratives that vilify and delegitimize the Jewish state under the guise of medical authority. The group is heavily engaged in political activism, focusing on anti-Israel campaigns. NGO Monitor points to its “political analysis, legal declarations, and speculations regarding Israel’s military operations and weaponry” that are far beyond “the scope of any medical expertise it might possess.”
Maynard himself is a longtime anti-Israel activist who declares his bona fides as a “lover of Gaza” committed to spreading “the word” and raising “awareness” of alleged Israeli crimes, with fabrications about a deliberate “war on healthcare” and genocide perpetrated by Israel. He joins forces with the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), part of the terrorist-associated global BDS groups, to advance the genocide blood libel and foment further hatred against the Jewish state.
He is also active on the lecture circuit, rallying Muslim groups and medical groups to denounce Israel. To do so, he works hard to deny the ample evidence of Hamas terrorist leaders and orchestrators operating from hospitals and other civilian strongholds in Gaza.
On the day of the October 7th massacre by Hamas, Maynard tweeted at then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak asking what was happening to Gazans.
His next post following the massacre was one about how the international community must prevent Israel from taking military action in Gaza. He made no mention of Hamas or the largest assault on Jews since the Holocaust that was perpetrated by them. He posted nothing about Hamas’ atrocities or the public threats by Hamas leaders to continue such attacks until the Jewish state no longer exists. In fact, the first public acknowledgement of the massacre and the hostages seized by Hamas came in a letter to the Lancet a month later, co-authored by Maynard. The focus of the letter was to excoriate the journal’s editor-in-chief, Richard Horton, for pointing out that the “disturbing asymmetry of outrage weakens the case of those calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas” and for noting that the “terrorist culture that is projected by Hamas into almost every aspect of life in Gaza” creates “an environment that nurtures and propagates terror.”
In other words, Maynard and his cohorts took exception to the inconvenient facts that stood in the way of their vilification campaign against Israel.
One-Upping Lurid Charges Against the IDF
Earlier, we wrote about physicians who travelled to Gaza with the Palestinian American Medical Association and the active role they’ve taken in the Hamas propaganda war. We revealed their sensationalist allegations to fuel the genocide campaign as ludicrous and inconsistent, for example, their fabricated allegation that Palestinian toddlers are targeted for the kill by expert Israeli sharpshooters.
Maynard was not to be outdone by his American counterparts: His accusations are not merely of Israeli soldiers of targeting children in general, but also of taking aim at specific organs. Recently, he has been active on the media circuit in the UK – The Independent, Channel 4 News, the BBC – to charge IDF soldiers with making a game out of targeting children, deliberately shooting Gazan children in different body parts depending on the day of the week.
NPR Promotes Maynard’s Propaganda
Maynard was invited to NPR to level this preposterous accusation. And to further promote his propaganda, NPR falsely billed him as a “firsthand witness.”
In fact, it becomes quite clear that Maynard has not directly witnessed Israeli soldiers targeting the patients he describes. He has witnessed only their injuries. And, on that basis, he makes the claim:
The Israelis are using commonly these fragmentation bombs, which release many, many thousands of very small metal pieces, which then tear through the body. So I’m operating predominantly on abdominal injuries and some thoracic injuries. And the shrapnel causes the most appalling internal damage, destroying many of the internal organs, so needing very major surgery to repair them. And we’re seeing a particular pattern of injuries whereby particular body parts are being targeted on particular days. So one day we will see mainly abdominal gunshot wounds. Another day we’ll see head gunshot wounds. Another day we’ll see neck gunshot wounds. So there’s a very clear pattern that not just me but all of us have seen in this hospital whereby particular body parts are targeted on particular days.
Israel has categorically denied these outrageous claims. But beyond this, the question arises as to how Maynard has expertise to definitively ascertain the source of the injuries he treats or to know whether they were even inflicted by the IDF.
Indeed, the surgeon gives a rather confused account of the source of the injuries. First he claims they were caused by bombs that “tear through the body,” in other words, they do not target any specific body part. Then he claims they were caused by deliberate gunshots to specific targeted areas. The “fragmentation bombs” charge is meant to show the IDF as guilty of war crimes while the “particular day, particular body parts” accusation is meant to depict Israeli soldiers as barbaric and inhumane, callously treating the murder and wounding of children as a joke or game. It is an inversion of the savagery the Palestinian terror regime inflicted on its Israeli victims.
It is the “particular day, particular body parts” claim that Maynard dwells on:
I think seeing four young teenagers come in in the space of one hour with gunshot wounds to their testicles, which we have never seen before, is beyond coincidence. Seeing as one of my ER doctors did, seeing 12 or more patient – young men, young teenagers coming in with gunshot wounds to the head and neck all at the same time is beyond coincidence. The clustering of symptoms is what makes it so dramatic, and it is something that we at all levels … have all recognized this clustering of injuries.
At the NPR host’s prompting, Maynard then proceeds with yet more fabricated claims against Israel, meant to promote the genocide canard.
I think what we’re witnessing is a very deliberate plan to erase the Gazan population from this land. I do not believe for a minute this is just about destroying Hamas. They are deliberately killing many, many, many thousands of innocent civilians by their withholding of aid and medicines and food. They’re destroying the whole infrastructure of living here. They’re destroying all the hospitals. It’s not just bombing the hospitals. They’re going in and dismantling all the laboratories, dismantling all the dialysis machines. They’ve destroyed the agricultural system. They’ve destroyed the fishing industry. They’re targeting the water sanitation plants. So there’s no doubt in my mind what we are witnessing is a deliberate destruction of the whole infrastructure of living in Gaza with the very clear aim of ethnic cleansing and getting the whole population out of this land.
In throwing out a hodge-podge of accusations, however disputed they are, the propagandist’s hope is that at least some of them will stick.
NPR interviewed no one to refute the propagandist’s charges and no one to provide the counternarrative. But in a pretense of balance, the host read IDF statements denying the charges.
The seven-and-a-half-minute broadcast was comprised primarily of sensationalist allegations of IDF violence against children, recounted dramatically in the voice of someone billed as a firsthand witness. Israel’s perspective in the form of an IDF denial, that was briefly read in the host’s voice, was granted less than a minute.
The question that remains is what was NPR’s “deliberate plan” in providing such an imbalance of views, with the predominant part devoted to a partisan propagandist and his preposterous claims, their implausibility notwithstanding?