The oldest and one of the largest pro-Israel groups in the country is urging American Jews to call their congressmen and demand they de-fund NPR following the release of an undercover video showing two National Public Radio (NPR) executives agreeing as men pretending to be members of a Muslim Brotherhood front group lament “Zionist” control of U.S. media.
“Jews do kind of control the media or, I mean, certainly the Zionists and the people who have the interests in swaying media coverage toward a favorable direction of Israel,” said the man pretending to be Brotherhood representative, Ibrahim Kassam, as Ron Schiller, NPR Foundation president, nods in agreement.
When one of the men jokes about how pro-Palestine NPR’s news coverage is, the station executives laugh and smile.
“The Palestinian viewpoint — since NPR is one of the few places that has the courage to really present it — there is kind of a joke, we used to call it National Palestine Radio,” says the man posing as Kassam. Schiller laughs, concurring, and Betsy Liley, NPR’s director of institutional giving, replies: “That’s good, I like that.”
Schiller boasts that while the Zionists have heavy influence over newspapers, he has not found too much Jewish influence at NPR.
Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America was shocked.
“It is really frightening when the then-head of NPR agrees with this type of anti-Semitic nonsense — especially when this is a publicly funded organization and gets a large amount of funds from the Jews,” Klein told The Daily Caller. “We really need to get this out to Jews that they have to complain about this to their congressmen, cut public funding, and the Jews should stop giving.”
On Monday it was announced that Schiller is leaving NPR to become director of the Aspen Institute Arts Program and Harman-Eisner Artist-in-Residence Program in Aspen, Colo.
The Anti-Defamation League was not prepared to offer comment immediately.
Check back for updates as they become available.