Rabbi Leo Dee, who had threatened a $1.3 million lawsuit against CNN for mischaracterizing the murder of his wife and two daughters, is seeking “reconciliation” with CNN international anchor Christiane Amanpour.
In statement provided to the Journal through a representative, Dee also said he hopes to set up a meeting with Warner Brothers Discovery Chairman and CEO David Zaslav.
Dee reiterated in his statement that at a May 21 event at The Carlebach Shul in New York, he announced that he was considering a $1.3 billion against CNN after Amanpour falsely described the murder of his wife and two daughters in a terror attack as a “shoot-out.” The following evening, Amanpour issued an on-air apology.
“Many in the media are reporting that I rejected her apology outright and some are saying in my name that I plan to continue with my lawsuit, all of which requires clarification,” Dee said in the statement. “I am grateful to Christiane for her apology. It takes courage for a renowned journalist to admit before a global audience that they had uttered such a dishonorable falsehood. But as a grieving husband and father, I must state emphatically that it did not go far enough.”
Dee pointed out that Amanpour said in her apology that she should have referred to the terror attack as a “shooting” rather than a “shoot-out.” “The word ‘shooting’ remains callous when describing a deliberate act of terror that annihilated half our family,” Dee said. “It’s like saying that the victims of 9/11 died in a fire rather than in barbarous act of mass murder perpetrated by al-Qaeda at the Twin Towers.”
Dee added that as a rabbi, he has always sought “peace, harmony and reconciliation” and hopes “to have the same with Christiane Amanpour and CNN. A lawsuit is only necessary when two parties have an unbridgeable divide and one refuses to right a grotesque wrong…But why does it really take the threat of a lawsuit on my part to alert one of the world’s premier news organizations that their reporting of Israel over decades has consistently minimized Israeli suffering?” Dee asked. “Why does it take the threat of legal action to have CNN wake up to the moral equivalency they so often employ between Jewish victims of terror and the terrorist regime perpetrators who are committed to another holocaust of the Jews?”
Dee said he is in the process of scheduling an in-person meeting with Zaslav in New York, calling a Zaslav “a moral man dedicated to the memory of the six million Jewish martyrs” after Zaslav recently participated in March of the Living alongside CNN journalists Wolf Blitzer and Dana Bash, both of whom are Jewish and are the offspring of Holocaust survivors.
“I hope to bring my concerns to [Zaslav] about CNN’s reporting, not just about my own family but about the people of Israel in general, and the more than 100 million Arab slaves in regimes around the middle east that have no freedom of speech, of religion or of voting,” Dee said. “Much as my surviving children need me at their side every moment of every day and night, I am prepared to make a short journey to New York to have this meeting and seek to reconcile my differences with CNN outside a court of law, provided that they are amenable to fair and accurate reporting on Israel and the many decent Arabs in the Middle East.”
Dee concluded his statement by saying that Jews and Arabs are “cousins” who can live in peace, “but the Hamas terrorists, funded by Iran, who murdered my family in cold blood are an abomination to humanity, Islam, and the cause of shalom.”
“These terror regimes with no human rights are the SOLE CAUSE of the sad enslavement of over 100 million good and kind Muslims in the Middle East,” the rabbi added. “We need a worldwide movement to end this injustice and they will require the aid of Israel, the only free country in the middle east to establish free democratic regimes once they topple Hamas, Hezbollah and the evil leadership of Iran and Syria. Israel is the best friend of those 100 million Arabs and we will be showing them that very soon.
“I appeal to Mr. Zaslav and CNN’s sense of decency and humanity to simply report the truth about the State of Israel, the only free democracy in the region, and to support the establishment of the same democratic freedoms and security for over 100 million Arabs that Americans and Europeans take for granted as part of their daily lives.”
