Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:
ZOA strongly condemns CBS’ “60 Minutes” segment, aired this past Sunday (January 12), which outrageously libeled Israel.
The segment features former State Department officials who (falsely) accuse Israel of “massacring children” and “starving children to death”; blame U.S. “complicity” and “billions of dollars” of arms; and accuse Israel of putting the U.S. at risk.
The 60 Minutes segment fails to mention that its two star former State Department officials – Hala Rharrit and Josh Paul – are tied to anti-Israel hate groups CAIR and DAWN. Rharrit is a speaker at CAIR events and Paul is a senior advisor for DAWN. (Nihad Awad, the leader of Hamas legacy group CAIR and chairman of DAWN, infamously stated that he was happy to see Hamas’ October 7 attacks and that Israel has no right to self-defense.)
The 60 Minutes segment likewise fails to mention Israel’s documented, extraordinary efforts to avoid civilian casualties; or how Hamas officials instruct Gazans to ignore Israeli safety warnings; or Hamas’ longstanding abuse of Gazan children; or how Hamas shoots Gazan civilians who try to escape from serving as Hamas’ human shields. 60 Minutes failed to quote even a single official or expert who would counteract its segment’ libels.
That’s journalistic malpractice as well as vile antisemitism.
The CBS host, Cecilia Vega, also falsely described FBI Director Wray’s testimony in order to try to blame Israel for increasing terror threats in the U.S. Vega claims that “the director of the FBI told Congress the war in Gaza has raised the threat of a terror attack at home.” However, FBI Director Wray’s actual statement was: “We’ve seen the threat of foreign terrorists rise to a whole new level after October 7th.” In other words, terrorists came out of the woodwork after seeing – and perhaps being “inspired” by – Hamas massacre of Jews on October 7. Wray never mentioned the war in Gaza as the cause of raising threat levels in the U.S.
The segment also discounts Israel’s statement that it struck a Hamas tunnel, and instead relies on civilian casualty claims by “Airwars” – an NGO funded by anti-Zionist George Soros’ Open Society Foundations – which in turn, relies on other (probably anti-Israel) NGOs and unreliable “open sources” such as Gazan (Hamas-run) social media. (There is a whole cottage industry of NGOs recycling Hamas’ claims.)
The CBS segment also complains that “deference” is given to Israel’s accounts as to what is taking place. In other words, according to 60 Minutes, everyone should believe Hamas’ propaganda instead of facts from Israel!
Also see CAMERA’s excellent article on additional outrages in the 60 Minutes segment.
The 60 Minute segment concluded with Vega asking, “How does this end?’ and an anti-Israel former State Department official responding, “When Israel says it’s over. Absent intervention from the United States or for someone else to compel or to force a decision– it ends when Netanyahu says it’s over.” In other words, once again, it’s all Israel’s fault.
The correct response to “How does this end?” should have been, “When Hamas and PIJ release the hostages and stop murdering Jews.”
We’d like to know, “How does this libeling of Israel at 60 minutes end?” Here, it’s when CBS says it ends. It’s time for CBS to end their Jew-hatred and Israel-hatred and correct this shameful hit piece. CBS needs to issue a corrective statement and segment, and pull last Sunday’s segment off of wherever it is being rebroadcasted.