PBS News Hour Presents Lopsided, Anti-Israel Report on Jenin Raid

Nowhere in the seven-minute report is it mentioned that Israel’s raid in Jenin was aimed at disrupting the activities of terror organizations and thwarting the threat they pose to Israeli civilians and security personnel.

By Chaim Lax, HonestReporting

In PBS News Hour’s report on the recent Israeli counter-terror raid in Jenin, special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen failed to provide her audience with fair and balanced coverage of the operation.

Instead, Molana-Allen chose to almost completely ignore the threat of Palestinian terrorism that emanates from Jenin while simultaneously misrepresenting the nature of the Israeli operation.

Missing Context: Terrorism Absent From PBS Report

Nowhere in the seven-minute report is it mentioned that Israel’s raid in Jenin was aimed at disrupting the activities of the terror organizations that call Jenin home and thwarting the threat posed by these terrorists to Israeli civilians and security personnel in both the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and pre-1967 Israel.

Instead of providing this necessary context, the pitying report largely portrays the residents of Jenin as hapless and innocent victims of Israeli aggression, claiming that the refugee camp is “packed with up to 20,000 civilians at any one time.”

This simplistic portrayal conveniently leaves out the fact that close to 50% of these 20,000 “civilians” identifies with either Hamas or Islamic Jihad, two internationally recognized Palestinian terror organizations.

Keeping in line with the report’s refusal to allow for any mention of Palestinian terrorism, a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the success of the operation was carefully edited so that his repeated mention of terrorism was omitted.

As can be seen from the following portion of Netanyahu’s speech, the report only included one sentence (in bold) while the adjacent sentences that feature the word “terrorist” were excluded.

“We’ve just finished a comprehensive action against the terrorist enclave in Jenin. Jenin was to be a safe haven. It no longer is a safe haven. We operated in a very systemic way, with large forces, in one of the most concentrated and dense areas on the planet. And we were able to attack the terrorists while avoiding civilian casualties, whereas our enemies are committing a double war crime: They target civilians, and they hide behind civilians. And we denied them that possibility while avoiding civilian casualties.”

Only twice in her report does Leila Molana-Allen refer at all to the armed groups that roam freely through the streets of Jenin. Even then, one of these references is misleading as Molana-Allen claims that this Palestinian “resistance” (a euphemism for attacks on both Israeli civilians and security personnel) is against “Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.”

As previously noted by HonestReporting, the claim that the terror groups based in Jenin are solely focused on the “occupation” is absurd as they target Israelis both in the West Bank and pre-1967 Israel and the manifestos of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad refer to the ultimate destruction of Israel.

Similar to her coverage of the recent IDF operation in Jenin, Molana-Allen also fails to provide her audience with a proper context for the Israeli incursion into Jenin two decades ago.

Referring to similarities between the two events, Molana-Allen never once informs her audience that the 2002 Battle of Jenin was part of a larger counter-terrorism campaign aimed at putting an end to the devastating string of suicide bombings and other terror attacks that rocked Israel during the Second Intifada.

Failing to provide the proper context for Israel’s raid, Molana-Allen’s skewed report seeks to whitewash the terror threat posed by Jenin while also smearing Israel’s conduct during the operation.

This latter point is particularly glaring in the way that Molana-Allen describes the Israeli operation.

PBS’ Skewed View of the Israeli Operation in Jenin

Molana-Allen uses several strong descriptors in portraying the Jenin counter-terror raid, including “assault,” “attack,” “devastation” and “destruction.”

Similarly, the report uncritically parrots a UN official’s claim that Israel’s conduct in Jenin may constitute “war crimes.”

Along with such evocative imagery as “missiles began to rain down” and blood being “washed from the floors,” all these descriptors set the tone of an indiscriminate attack by Israeli forces on vulnerable Palestinians, instead of the targeted and methodic operation that it was.

By neglecting to provide the proper context as well as using vivid imagery to create the impression of Israeli ruthlessness and barbarity, Leila Molana-Allen does her audience a disservice by producing a superficial and one-sided report instead of a well-rounded piece of journalism.