An ABC-TV documentary on Palestinian life in the West Bank, which was telecast last Thursday night, was denounced here by a spokesman for the Israel Consulate as “entirely unbalanced” and that it presented “gross distortions of history and of the current situation in Judaea and Samaria.”
Consul Shmuel Moyal, the Consultate press attache, also charged that the documentary, broadcast on the ABC-TV “20/20” news magazine program under the title, “Under the Israeli Thumb,” “illustrates a deliberate effort to present this complex and sensitive issue in a biased and one-sided manner.”
The program depicted Israel as a relentless occupier and the Palestinian as the victim of Israeli brutality. Using Norwegian and Canadian film clips, the program shows Palestinian school girls being gunned down by members of the Israeli forces on the West Bank, as well as other acts of brutality. During the 16-minute documentary, only one Israeli is presented, a settler who claims title to disputed land. But the ABC crew which went to the West Bank to film the documentary did not get a view from the Israeli Military Government there.
Last spring “20/20” profiled the Palestine Liberation Organization and won a Torch of Liberty Award from the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith for “showing the PLO as a danger to Israelis and democracy throughout the world.” According to one press report, ABC was apparently under tremendous pressure from Arab countries for the PLO report, which they considered as very damaging.
SAYS ABC PROMISED A BALANCED STUDY
According to The Los Angeles Times staff writer Peter Boyer, Moyal said he visited “20/20” executive producer Av Westin several weeks ago to tell him that the network was expected to give a balanced story and that Westin assured Moyal that he would. Westin was quoted as saying that “in the continuing coverage by the ABC news division, I would say the Israelis get the preponderance of coverage.”
ABC reportedly tried to include Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon in the documentary, but according to Westin, “Sharon did not want to be intercut with the Palestinians” and ABC “skipped the interview.”
Stanhope Gould, who produced the “20/20” segment, was quoted by Boyer as saying that “balance isn’t always just a matter of what you do in one story.” He asserted it was easy to overlook “Israeli oppression” and to “think of the West Bank in absolute terms.” Gould added that “until people understand it, emotionally, I mean, I think it’s going to be very difficult to get things moving.”
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