Media Analyst Blasts Christiane Amanpour For ‘Obscene’ Comparison Between Israel And Assad Regime

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — A journalist and research analyst at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), has called out television host Christiane Amanpour after she implied on her television program there is a comparison between the actions of Israel and those of the Syrian regime.

The analyst, David Litman, was referring to an interview Amanpour had conducted with Dror Moreh, the Israeli director of “The Corridors of Power” a documentary about how America has responded to modern forms of genocide and war crimes as the only superpower. The conversation led to a discussion of the Holocaust, Ukraine, Bosnia, Kosovo and Syria.

Toward the end, Amanpour asked Moreh:

You are an Israeli. I don’t know whether you were in Israel at the time, but you said that this red line in the neighboring country of Syria, where all these atrocities were being committed really, really made you angry and upset. Many will want to know, you know, do you feel equally angry about the horrible situation that’s going on in your own country, and the human rights attacks, killings of Palestinians. Obviously, we know Israelis are also attacked, but what is your perspective, as an Israeli given the whole “never again” paradigm in which you place this investigation?

Litman presented the facts before blasting Amanpour for comparing a regime attacking its own citizens to Israel’s attempts to defend against terror.

Litman wrote that “The United Nations estimates that in ten years of conflict in Syria, over 306,000 civilians (not including combatants) have been killed, or about 30,000 a year.

“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed in total from December 1987 (the start of the First Intifada) to May 2021 approximately 14,000 Israeli and Palestinian lives, including both civilians and combatants. That’s about 400 per year, which includes particularly deadly periods like the Second Intifada and the various wars and operations against Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

“Put another way, the Syrian civil war cost more than twice as many lives in a single year – without even counting combatants – as have been killed in 34 years of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Litman added that Amanpour’s comparison was “morally obscene and dripping with partisan framing” since the Syrian regime had targeted its own civilians, barrel bombing hospitals and dropping chemical weapons on civilian areas. Israel sought as much as possible to protect civilians even from enemy regions where rockets were being fired at its own civilians. Moreover Amanpour mentions “killing of Palestinians” without referring to the Israelis murdered in cold blood by terrorists.

Litman explained that “of the 31 Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists last year, 27 of them (87%) were civilians who were deliberately targeted. These deaths came amidst a significant growth of terrorist activity in the West Bank. According to a tracker maintained by the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, there were 796 Palestinian terror attacks between March and December 2022.” By contrast, most of the 167 Palestinians killed during this period were involved in terror activity against Israel.

Litman concluded that “While one may legitimately debate the appropriateness of specific Israeli policies and practices, there is simply no comparison, both statistically and morally, between Israel and Bashar al-Assad’s regime. By glibly attempting to make the comparison, Amanpour once again demonstrates that she places her contempt for the Jewish state over her commitment to honesty.”