Ken Burns has a Palestine problem

For the past five months, in interviews and press releases about his upcoming documentary, filmmaker Ken Burns has claimed that the Roosevelt administration “accepted more refugees than any other sovereign nation” during the Nazi era.

That phrase, “sovereign nation,” struck us as odd. Ordinarily, one would say, “than any other country.” Why emphasize the word “sovereign”?

Now Burns has let the cat out of the bag. Apparently responding to criticism of his handling of the immigration statistics, Burns admitted to an interviewer from The Daily Beast on September 4 that he has been using the term “sovereign nation” to distinguish from the fact that “people escaped to other places, like Palestine.”

Why is Burns trying to disqualify Palestine from the conversation? Why resort to a technicality about sovereignty to try to push Palestine out of the discussion?