CNN has really done it this time. In a three hour special on religious extremism CNN allocated one hour each to Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. They equate the legal Jewish settlers in Judea to al-Qaeda and American Jews who support Israel to Islamist sympathizers. In the Christian hour Christiane Amanpour tries to alert the audience to the dangers of those scary Evangelicals. Even a Liberal American Jew from Philadelphia couldn’t help but notice the political correctness run amok.

Though present-day Jews and Christians are not all saints, there is no getting around the fact that neither of those religions has sprouted a contemporary movement aimed at world domination to be achieved by terror and war. That honor is reserved for the Muslim faith, among whose adherents Islamist terror movements have found a home in the mainstream of its culture.

NOT ALL Muslims are Islamists. Most American Muslims are nothing of the kind. But the notion that supporters of al-Qaida, Hizbullah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other assorted anti-Western and anti-Jewish terror movements are a tiny minority in the Arab and Muslim world is a delusion.

However, in this age of political correctness to single out one group for the sins of a large number of its members is considered unfair and perhaps even racist. So, instead, we are asked to pretend that there is an intrinsic connection, or even symmetry, between Christian, Jewish and Muslim extremists.

That was exactly the premise of a widely heralded three-part series on CNN last week. Titled God’s Holy Warriors and fronted by famed international correspondent Christiane Amanpour, it was a tryptich across the globe to highlight the danger from Jewish, Muslim and Christian extremists, who are all given the same treatment and air-time in the guise of even-handedness.

Thus, by its very structure of equating the three different situations, the series was nothing short of a brazen lie.

Though all parts of the series were problematic, the first, devoted to the threat from extremist Jewish settlers and the entire network of support for the State of Israel in the US, was as classic an example of a dishonest piece of biased programming as anything that has been broadcast on a major network.

Though a tiny fraction of the settlement movement, which itself commands the support of only a fraction of Israelis, has committed isolated acts of violence, the notion that this group is in any way analogous to al-Qaida is nothing short of bizarre. If anything, Jewish settlers and ordinary Israelis living inside the pre-1967 borders have themselves been the victims of the intolerance, fanaticism and violence of their Muslim neighbors.

Even worse, the show seemingly accepts the discredited canard of Israeli and American Jewish control of American foreign policy put forth by such risible figures as former president Jimmy Carter and academic John Mearsheimer, whose views were treated with respect rather than journalistic skepticism.

As such, the worldwide news network lent itself to a line of argument that has rightly been termed a modern intellectual justification for anti-Semitism.

EXTREMIST MUSLIMS are a genuine threat to both peace and the West; while most settlers are no threat to anyone and are, if anything, among the primary victims of Muslim terror.

As for Evangelical Christians, who were the targets of Amanpour’s third program, most American Jews may disagree with most of their political positions but, to date, they have launched no terror attacks, nor do they plan any. Any analogy between them and Islamists is the figment of Amanpour’s fevered imagination. If anything, their main sin, in the eyes of many Western apologists for the Islamists, seems to be their support for Jewish victims of Arab terror.