WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Our indefatigable media watcher CAMERA just got CNN to correct what it had called an Israeli “outpost” to an Israeli “settlement.” But given that to most of the world “Israeli settlement” is a Dirty Word, mockingly contrasted to nearby “Palestinian town, village, neighborhood,” we ourselves have to stop saying “settlement.”
“Outpost” Corrected to “Settlement”; But, Sorry, We Shouldn’t Consider That Correction Enough
I wrote awhile back in one of these twenty years’ worth of weekly emails that CAMERA’s Andrea Levin is one of my heroes. She is that because of all us disciples of David Bar-Illan, late editor of the Jerusalem Post and its ground-breaking “Eye On The Media” column, which insistently made the case that the mainstream media was biased against Israel and that Jews should stand up against that, it was Andrea who early on most effectively got across to us American Jews that Bar-Illan was right. You think that’s self-evident? Recall the editorial Jonathan Tobin, then editor of Philadelphia’s community-owned Jewish Exponent, felt compelled to write way back then, “Media Bias: It’s Real.”
But, hero-shmero, that doesn’t mean CAMERA and I always see eye-to-eye. Some of you may recall a difference we had re CAMERA’s suggested correction of the LA Times’ reference to “Israel and Palestine,” the latter, CAMERA noting, not being a sovereign state. In our BSMW #911 of 7/8/18, “This Week: ‘… and Sometimes I have Doubts of Thee,’” I disagreed with CAMERA’s suggested replacements for “Palestine” – that the LA Times should have said instead “Israel and the West Bank“ or “the Palestinian territories.” I declined to concede parts of the land of Israel, Palestine west of the Jordan, as “Palestinian,” and said we should call it not “West Bank” but Judea-Samaria. CAMERA replied that “Judea and Samaria” is an historically justified term, but used only by “a very minute fraction of the world population” and that suggestions that the media use it would “end up in the editor’s trash box.” I replied that that very minute fraction of the world population is us, and that the more an historically justified place name that we use differs from that which the rest of the world uses, the more important it is that we use it.
This week, CAMERA and I differ again. CAMERA (11/17/20, “CNN Corrects on Israel’s Capital, West Bank Settlement”) says CNN
“misidentified the Israeli West Bank settlement of Psagot as an ‘outpost.’”
True, there’s a difference between an Israeli “settlement” and an “outpost.” CAMERA:
“… ‘outposts’ is the term for small, unsanctioned communities that have sprung up in the West Bank over the last 20 years. Unlike settlements, they are not recognized or authorized by Israel even though many are close to existing settlements.”
CAMERA complained to CNN and reported this as the result:
“In response to communication from CAMERA, CNN commendably removed the erroneous reference to Psagot as an ‘outpost,’ accurately replacing it with ‘settlement.’” Furthermore, the editors appended the following clarification to the bottom of the article: ‘Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify that Psagot is an Israeli settlement.’”
The problem with all this is that to most of the world, “settlement,” in the context of Israel, is a dirty word, and an “outpost” is just an outhouse of a settlement. Indeed, in this very posting, CAMERA criticized CNN for having failed to clarify in a different broadcast that “the view that Israeli settlements are considered illegal under international law is disputed.”
It doesn’t matter, Gentle Reader of this rant of mine #1035, whether you voted for Biden or Trump, whether you’re for or against “the two-state solution.” It doesn’t matter whether Psagot in Judea-Samaria, or Givat Hamatos in Jerusalem (see, e.g., JNS this week, 11/19/20, “Analysis: The Usual Suspects Against Jewish Construction in Jerusalem”) is an “outpost” or “settlement.” To most of the world, they’re “illegal under international law.” As Netanyahu, quoted in that just cited JNS article, put it, Givat Hamatos is not a “settlement” but a “neighborhood in Jerusalem.” But we must not stop with Jerusalem. Jewish communities in Judea-Samaria aren’t “settlements” either, and they’re in Judea-Samaria, not in “the West Bank,” a term designed by Jordan in 1950 to disassociate places in the Jewish national home, recognized as such in the Palestine Mandate, from Jews.
I’ve cited numerous examples in these emails that began as a “media watch” of the mainstream American media reveling in mockingly contrasting “Israeli settlements” with nearby “Palestinian neighborhoods, towns, villages,” often in the same sentence. It is self-disrespecting dhimmitude to meekly avert our eyes from this, and from all the other anti-Jewish homeland pejoratives in the MSM’s loaded lexicon. Don’t. Go look on our related website, www.factsonisrael.com, at our pages titled “Toxic Terms” and “Dirty Words.”