CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield, anchor for “The Legal View” news program, attempted to equate fringe Jewish terrorist acts against Muslims with widespread, indiscriminatory Islamic terrorism against all civilians worldwide. United with Israel activists protested to CNN for allowing her to single out rare acts of violence by Jews.
Background
CNN anchor Ashleigh Banfield had Jeffrey Lord, former White House political director, on her show during which they discussed Donald Trump’s call to temporarily ban all Muslims entry to the US. Banfield used an example of rare, past acts of Jewish terrorism in the 80s by a small, fringe Jewish group to try and prove her point.
Banfield argues, “If you supplant the word ‘Jews’ for ‘Muslims’ in a lot of the rhetoric that we have this morning, I think people would find it sort of cringe-worthy and reminiscent of a really ugly time in our history. Imagine a customs and border patrol agent, Jeffrey, asking someone, ‘Are you a Jew?’ How would that go over?”
Lord replies, “Ashley, look, first of all, there are no Jews that are coming in here to destroy America. We have a problem and saying we don’t have a problem is suicidal…”
Banfield interrupts and reads from a previously-prepared document that purports to show that there have been Jewish terrorist attacks against Americans. She quotes from a testimony given to Congress by John Pistole, former Administrator of the TSA and a former Deputy Director of the FBI. “Pistole appeared before Congress in 2004 and he testified that in a period of 1980-1985 there were 18 terror attacks in the US committed by Jews. There have been Jewish terrorist attacks! Should we therefore ask no Jews to please apply for a visa?”
Update
The fact is, rare acts of Jewish terrorism cannot be compared with widespread and continuing acts of Muslim terrorism! And the fact that CNN provided such information for her interview suggests the news network, which has a proven history of biased reporting on Israel and Jews, is scraping the bottom of the barrel to find any information it can to use against Jews.
We asked our supporters to help us complain to CNN over its cheap attempt to portray a rare case of Jewish terrorism from the 80s as a common phenomenon that exists today. Banfield’s ridiculous argument only added to the preposterous attempt to create widespread Jewish terrorism when there is, in fact, very little.
United with Israel supporters flooded CNN with complaints and the biased news outlet clearly got the message.
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