Jake Tapper spreads hatred of Palestinians

Michael F. Brown Media Watch 1 June 2021

Man with tie converses

Jake Tapper continues to convey an anti-Palestinian message as a CNN anchor.

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CNN’s Jake Tapper made an unexpected and bewildering claim on 20 May that felt straight out of the McCarthy era. He failed only to wave a list of names in the air.

Support for genocide and support for equal rights are very different things. Tapper, however, appears to be conflating support for equal rights with genocide.

In an interview with CNN analyst Gloria Borger, he asserted, “We can’t overstate that he [Joe Biden] was under pressure from, not just the far left progressives like Rashida Tlaib and other progressives who I think it’s questionable even if they think Israel has a right to exist, but more moderate senators like Tim Kaine, even like Chuck Schumer, people who traditionally support Israel, who didn’t want to watch again as Israel conducted air strikes on Gaza in a way that these Democrats perceived to be disproportionate.”

Yes, it’s striking that Kaine and Schumer aren’t clamoring for further Israeli bombing of Gaza.

But who are the unnamed progressives in Congress who Tapper suggests may not support Israel’s “right to exist”?

I have asked the CNN anchor which progressives he had in mind. There has been no response.

Tapper doesn’t seem to be speaking exclusively of Tlaib, who is on record supporting one state with equal rights for all. In any event, that simply means she doesn’t think Israel has a right to exist as an apartheid state.

That’s not an unusual perspective. After all, few are willing to go on record today claiming South Africa had a right to exist as an apartheid state.

Tapper clearly thinks politicians can be damaged by his existential claims. But times are changing and it’s increasingly questionable to think that Americans support Israel’s supposed right to exist as an apartheid state.

Either a correction or a clarification is in order. What evidence does Tapper have and what was he trying to say?

More from Jake Tapper

Days before his comment, Tapper retweeted an appearance of Congressman Ritchie Torres on the House floor. There, Torres had inveighed against Phara Souffrant Forrest (without specifically naming her), a member of the New York State Assembly, for a tweet which showed a map of what she described as historic Palestine covered with flowers.

First Souffrant used the hashtag “#FreePalestine” and then 18 hours later noted: “This is a map of historic Palestine.”

She then cited the recent Human Rights Watch report on Israel’s practice of apartheid and said that “the reality on the ground is apartheid.”

She added, “We need to make sure that our tax dollars don’t support the oppression of any peoples.”

The Anti-Defamation League of New York and New Jersey misrepresented her effort to call for equal rights for all between the river and the sea by labeling the tweet “incendiary and outrageous” before falsely claiming that she was “denying” Jewish history there.

Tali Goldsheft, director of communications at Americans for Ben-Gurion University, tweeted, “As your constituent, I’d like to know where is your apology for tweeting a call for genocide.”

She then claimed Israel doesn’t practice apartheid, despite evidence provided for decades by Palestinians and more recently by Human Rights Watch and Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

Tapper has amplified anti-Palestinian hate and downplayed Israel’s employment of apartheid. I don’t believe he retweeted Torres to educate people, but because he supports the congressman’s anti-Palestinian misrepresentations.

Souffrant eventually removed the tweet under pressure from deniers of Israeli apartheid.

Emily Wilder

Meanwhile, right-wing cancel culture was in full swing and getting results with the Associated Press’ firing of the newly hired Emily Wilder.

Wilder was recently a member of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace while at Stanford University. Canary Mission, a secretive pro-Israel group, kept an intimidation dossier on her in hopes that her job prospects – and that of hundreds of other students – would be impeded by their documentation and misrepresentations of her Palestine-related human rights work.

The Washington Post reports that she started her new job on 3 May and was fired just 16 days later, supposedly for violating AP’s social media policy.

On 16 May she tweeted: “‘Objectivity’ feels fickle when the basic terms we use to report news implicitly stake a claim.”

She added: “Using ‘Israel’ but never ‘Palestine,’ or ‘war’ but not ‘siege and occupation’ are political choices – yet media make those exact choices all the time without being flagged as biased.”

In short, she was fired because of a campaign against her and because her bosses didn’t like their biases and racism being called out even in a critique not directed specifically at AP. Those AP leaders have faced significant dissent from AP journalists since the decision.

This sort of truth-telling and courage may no longer have a place in the world of mainstream journalism, but other groups will likely be leaping at the chance to hire someone who put principle over job security so early in her career.

For years I had a colleague who warned that college students were terrified to be too public, either because they feared the consequences if they traveled through Israeli security at Ben Gurion airport or because they feared ending up on Canary Mission’s hit list and being denied a job as a consequence.

That colleague was right.

Emily Wilder wasn’t intimidated, but AP has provided another reason for student concern.

Look, too, at CNN. Jake Tapper has frozen out a prominent East Coast Palestinian from appearing on his program despite the expertise of the individual.

Marc Lamont Hill was fired by CNN for speaking up for equal rights for all between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea while Rick Santorum got a job at CNN in 2017 despite his having said in 2011: “All the people that live in the West Bank are Israelis. They are not Palestinians. There is no Palestinian. This is Israeli land.”

Santorum’s contract was finally terminated by CNN in recent days on account of his saying of European settlers in the US that “we birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here.”

He then added that “there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”

Rick Santorum’s departure took a long time and doesn’t appear to have been Palestine-related. Marc Lamont Hill and Emily Wilder, however, were quickly ousted.

Free speech connected to Palestinian equal rights remains in short supply in mainstream US media.

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Frank Dallas replied on

No country enjoys an abstract right to exist. That's not how the international order works. Functioning States ( we should call them functioning societies, because the State is not essential to social functioning) are recognised as such. North Korea for example. Who's jumping up and down shouting: "North Korea has the right to exist" ? Who says "North Korea has the right to defend itself"? As a matter of fact, it has more right than Israel has to defend its siege of Gaza, occupation of the WB and racist oppression. Whence derives the recognition of functioning societies? From international law. Those who come to equity must come with clean hands. Israel can't invoke international law in its defence when it refuses to abide by it. Each time we hear: "Israel has the right to exist" what is being claimed is the bogus abstract right. What should be said is Israel has the legal right to be recognised as a functioning society. Just like North Korea. But who wants to live in North Korea? And the fact it has the legal right to exist doesn't prevent criticism or, indeed, the argument that Korea would be better as a single, democratic society of equal rights. What is always in play is Israeli exceptionalism founded on the assumption of Jewish (Zionist) superiority itself founded on the claim that God gave Palestine to Abraham (who didn't exist) some 3,000 years ago. Racism based on messianic entitlement. That has no right to exist. It's nonsense. There is one humanity. Jews are not superior. The equality of our human endowment is a fact.

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ِAbdulaziz Albataa replied on

The Arab Peace plan is for Israel to withdraw to June 4, 1967 boarder and and all the Arab countries including the Palestinians will recognize Israel and have normal relation in in economic and social interactions. Israel refused to accept the Arab plan for peace. Now it occupies all Palestine and Golan Heights.

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Paul replied on

"Santorum’s contract was finally terminated by CNN in recent days on account of his saying of European settlers in the US that “we birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here.”

Zionists say this ALL the time about Palestine without any consequences, even though it is a lie.

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Paul replied on

Terrific piece. Israel is fully integrated into US/NATO and the only country in ME to possess nuclear weapons. In addition to financial support (circa $3.8 billion annually from US taxpayers), Israel relies on US global power for diplomatic support and shielding from international criticism; US has vetoed at least 53 UNSC resolutions critical of Israel, and blocked the UNSC from condemning Israel’s recent attacks on Gaza. The quid pro quo is that Israel functions as a US stooge/military platform in the ME and central to American power projection in the region. Six large corporations-, ATT, Comcast, CBS, Disney, Newscorp, Viacom control ~90% of US ‘news’ media and serve as a ‘ministry of propaganda’, promoting policies which maintain US global power and increase corporate power and profits. Not surprisingly, virtually all MSM outlets- WaPo, paper of record (NYT), AP, CNN, etc. are fully supportive of the Zionist project, including stealing Palestinian land and water resources, development of ‘settlements’ on occupied territory and attacks on Palestinian families in Gaza and worshipers at the Al Aqsa Mosque on Temple Mount. As Emily Wilder learned, media outlets such as AP will not tolerate any questioning or criticism of the pillars of US global power- the strongest military in the world and maintaining the dollar the worlds reserve currency. Any deviation from this script gets you fired. In 1996, investigative reporter Gary Webb published a series of articles entitled ‘’Dark Alliance’ in the San Jose Mercury News, linking the crack cocaine trade in LA with the Nicaraguan Contra rebels and CIA. Not surprisingly, Webb’s story was met with outrage by MSM outlets such as the LA Times. Webb committed suicide in 2004. Not surprising, high level talking heads such as Jake Tapper are little more than whores for the Pentagon and State Department.

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john m costello replied on

This article gets perilously close to the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which is just one more example of why that and even the US State Dept definitions are incredible proscriptions of our 1st Amendments rights. The same rights most trumpeted by the "libertarian", "conservative", populist whack jobs on the right, who whine continuously about the politically correct, cancel culture, Maoist Left, who're taking theirs away, so they can steal their votes and ultimately take their guns away.
So if I may accept Brown's torch, I would add that not since Walter Cronkite, has a TV news anchor been so closely identified with a network brand as Wolfe Blitzer. And I think Jake's little more than an ambitious guy who would love Wolfe's job and would do or say anything to inherit it and he knows just what to say.

Michael F. Brown

Michael F. Brown is an independent journalist. His work and views have appeared in The International Herald Tribune, TheNation.com, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The News & Observer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Washington Post and elsewhere.