Did fighting lead to Israel’s creation? And do Palestinian refugees have a "right to return"? One might think so from the New York Times’ March 26th article on the subject by reporter Hassan Fattah.
Do Palestinians who fled Israel in 1948, and their descendants, have a legal or moral right to return to their former homes in Israel? Is it true that most other refugees around the world have already exercised such rights of repatriation?
Many media accounts have misrepresented the "final status" issues that are now the subject of intensive negotiations at Camp David, often distorting Oslo, UN resolutions, the demographics and history of Jerusalem, and Middle East history in general.
Reuters errs that "Jordan took in millions of Palestinian refugees" following the 1948 war. But the total number of Palestinian Arab refugees from that war was 700,000, and only about half of them went to Jordan.
AP's selective coverage of the 'Nakba,' the defining event of the Palestinian national struggle, embodies the core fault of international media coverage: erasing Palestinian agency. AP accounts ignore the Arab war to eliminate the nascent Jewish state.
UPDATED: Reuters commendably corrects after erroneously reporting that most residents of the Gaza Strip live in refugee camps. According to the UN, around 25 percent reside in refugee camps.
CAMERA last night elicited a commendable on the air correction of the previous week's PBS "NewsHour Weekend" edition which had grossly inflated the number of Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon and overstated the percentage of the registered refugees living in refugee camps.
While the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine is grappling with a serious funding shortfall, the controversial organization enjoys vast marketing and public relations resources, drawing on the support of sympathetic journalists. PBS' NewsHour is the latest media outlet to join the campaign.
"UNRWA is extraordinary–with an amazing cadre of educators and staff that need support" is the message of what is essentially a Forbes fundraising appeal for the U.N. agency. Don't expect to read anything about anti-Israel incitement in schools, perpetuation of the conflict or mismanagement.
CAMERA prompts a forthright, thorough correction after Deutsche Welle erroneously reported that UN Resolution 194 "guaranteed" the Palestinian "right of return." The General Assembly resolution is a suggestion, not a guarantee, conditions return on refugees willing to live at peace with their neighbors, and places return on equal footing with resettlement and compensation.
In response to communication from CAMERA, Voice of America deletes a video which grossly overstated the number of refugees in the Gaza Strip suffering from poverty and unemployment. The June 12 VOA Extremism Watch video cited five million refugees facing these difficulties, more than double the territory's entire population.
The Times' assertion that Haifa's Arab citizens "were forced to leave or escaped" in 1948 is belied by the paper's own coverage from that time. Even the Gray Lady's own archives pose no obstacle to the paper's manipulation in the name of ideology.
Did fighting lead to Israel’s creation? And do Palestinian refugees have a "right to return"? One might think so from the New York Times’ March 26th article on the subject by reporter Hassan Fattah. 
