A coalition of prominent members of the conservative movement and Jewish community on Wednesday sent a letter to CBS News protesting the network’s insistence that its employees avoid referring to Jerusalem as being in Israel.
The letter, organized by former Vice President Mike Pence’s group Advancing American Freedom, said CBS’s instruction “defies reason” and its “decision to deny the reality of Jerusalem as being in Israel makes no sense.”
Signatories include leaders of Jewish groups such as Matthew Brooks of the Republican Jewish Coalition and Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America. Prominent non-Jewish heads of conservative organizations including Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Penny Nancy of Concerned Women for America also signed on.
The Free Press revealed that CBS’s senior director of standards and practices, Mark Memmott, sent an email to all CBS employees telling them to “be careful with some terms when we talk or write about the news” from Israel and Gaza, cautioning employees to not refer to Jerusalem as being in Israel.
“Yes, the U.S. embassy is there and the Trump administration recognized it as being Israel’s capital. But its status is disputed,” Memmott added. “The status of Jerusalem goes to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel regards Jerusalem as its ‘eternal and undivided’ capital, while the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem—occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war—as the capital of a future state.”
As the letter notes, the United States has recognized Israel as Jerusalem’s capital since 1995.
“Most recently, the Trump-Pence Administration moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in May of 2018 and reiterated that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, despite the widespread belief that it could not be done,” the letter states.
The coalition concludes by requesting a meeting with CBS officials to “understand your organization’s policy of denying that Jerusalem is in Israel.”
The letter comes amid the outlet being under fire for several controversies including its CBS Mornings host Tony Dokoupil being castigated for giving tough questions to woke activist Ta-Nehisi Coates. He was coached about his “tone of voice, phrasing and body language” in the interview when meeting with CBS officials, reported the New York Times.
The network has also been in hot water for its widely accused deceptive editing of a Vice President Kamala Harris interview on their 60 Minutes program. A poll shows bipartisan 85% of voters want the full transcript to be released.
Other prominent signatories include Joel Griffith of Young Jewish Conservatives, Duvi Honig of the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce, Lisa B. Nelson of the American Legislative Exchange Council, Maureen Blum of Catholics Count, Shoshana Bryen of the Jewish Policy Center, and Clifford May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
