WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: The media’s misuse of “peaceful protesters” came as no surprise to those of us who remember its euphemizing of Israeli civilian-murdering Palestinian Arab terrorists as “militants.” An indictment of the media, yes, but no less an indictment of American Jews who avert our eyes from anti-Israel media bias, and couple that with calling on Israel to succumb to a “1967 borders two-state solution.”
The Media’s “Peaceful Protesters” Predecessors – “Palestinian Militants”
Probably you saw on TV network “news” this year the mainstream media reporter standing out there on some American city’s downtown main street, mob-looted stores burning behind him, on-the-scene reporting on the latest “mostly peaceful protesters’ protest.” That wasn’t a first for our esteemed Fourth Estate in America. There’s a precedent.
Front Page Headline: “ – And Militants Promise More”
On Thursday, June 20, 2002, the Philadelphia Inquirer (Inq), for one, headlined on its front page the second of two consecutive days’ mass-murder bombings of downtown Jerusalem municipal buses, murdering 25 and maiming 85 Israeli bus passengers. Front page headline of the Inq:
“Jerusalem Hit Again – and Militants Promise More”
Shortly thereafter, Friday, July 12, a stand-up local Jewish group, the Philly District of the ZOA, led a peaceful anti-Israel media bias protest on the sidewalk of premises known to me as “the Inq’s Dark Tower on Callowhill Street (May It Crumble Into a Parking Lot).” The Philly ZOA sandwiched me in between Len Getz, its chapter president, and the incomparable Herb Denenberg, as the third speaker. Noting that June 20 hadn’t been first time the Inq had euphemized mass-murderers of Israeli civilians in that manner, I led off my shouted remarks:
“We’re here today because mass murderers who pack bombs with nails, screws, rat poison and hate, to murder and maim as many men, women and children as they possibly can, in buses, restaurants, shopping malls, discos, pool halls, parks and a Bat Mitzvah and a Passover seder, aren’t militants, anytime, anywhere. They’re terrorists, every time, everywhere.”
Media: Road Map Calls For “Reining In Militants”
Remember the celebrated “Road Map”? Here’s how it used forms of “terror” and “militancy”:
“Phase I: Ending Terror and Violence. Normalizing Palestinian Life, and Building Palestinian Institutions – Present [4/30/03] to May 2003:
“. . . . .Palestinians declare an unequivocal end to violence and terrorism and undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks on Israelis anywhere.
“Rebuilt and refocused Palestinian Authority security apparatus begins sustained, targeted, and effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure. This includes commencing confiscation of illegal weapons and consolidation of security authority, free of association with terror and corruption.” [emphasis added]
See “militants” or “militancy” in there? Neither did the folks who wrote the “Road Map.” But “ending terror” and “dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure” is not how the mainstream media, including my hometown Inq, persistently portrayed the “Road Map.” E.g.,
*** Inq sub-headline 9/28/03, A16: “The road map to peace calls for militants to be reined in. . . .”
*** Inq, 2/7/04, A3, AP, “road map calls for Palestinians to rein in militants.”
*** Inq, 9/18/03, AP: duty to “…disarm the militants, as required by the road map”
*** Inq, 11/13/03, K-R’s Nelson as Inq: A “key” road map provision is “the disarming and dismantling of Palestinian militant groups”
*** Inq, 12/18/03, AP: The road map “calls on the Palestinians to dismantle militant groups.”
[emphasis added] Note that this is not just the Inq, but its ubiquitous wire services saying this.
The Inq’s Mr. Matza’s Insertion of “Militants”
There’s a sequel to that demonstration we had on the Inq’s sidewalk that hot summer day in 2002. That June 20 second-day bus bombing article that the Inq headlined “ – And Militants Promise More” had been penned by the Inq’s Jerusalem [only such place in the world] bureau chief, Michael Matza. In the course of it, he replaced a word in a direct quote of an Israeli spokesman with the bracketed word “[militants].” This led to an email exchange between Mr. Matza and me.
“Dear Mr. Matza:
“Last Thursday, you substituted “[militants]” for another word in a direct quotation of Israeli government spokesman Ranaan Gissin: ‘Given the fact that the Palestinian Authority is doing nothing . . . we have to deploy our forces in such a way that [militants] won’t be able to leave their launching pad.’
“I’m a long time Inquirer reader. Please email me the word Mr. Gissin actually used.
“Jerome Verlin
“Dear Mr. Verlin,
“The word Mr. Gissin used in his quote was ‘they.’ Because the word ‘they’ would have been unclear, we substituted the word ‘militants’ and placed it in brackets to accurately convey Mr. Gissin’s meaning.
“Sincerely,
“Michael Matza
“Dear Mr. Matza,
“Thanks very much for your email supplying the word [‘they’] actually used by Mr. Gissin. To be perfectly frank, I’d suspected he’d used a different word, also beginning with ‘T’. To that extent, I did you injustice.
“However, still to be perfectly frank, I do not think that your putting the word ‘militants’ in brackets did in fact ‘accurately convey Mr. Gissin’s meaning.’ You’re doubtless aware that American Jewish and Christian supporters of Israel, including in Philadelphia, are actively protesting, inter alia, the media’s own misuse of ‘militants’ to describe the mass murderers who pack non-homemade bombs with nails, screws, rat poison and hate, to cause as much death, permanent injury, pain and disfigurement to civilians, including children and infants, as they possibly can. Within the last two weeks, your own newspaper headlined the second of the two consecutive days’ Jerusalem mass murder bomb senders as ‘militants – who promise more.’
“What you did, Mr. Matza, was to go beyond that and stuff the media’s word ‘militants’ into a direct quote of an Israeli official, as though he’d have used it. Would Sharon’s spokesman really have used it? If not, it was not Mr. Gissin’s meaning that you accurately conveyed to your readers. Am I wrong?
“Jerry Verlin”
I didn’t hear further from the Inq’s Mr. Matza.
Where We Come Out
Yes, all this media misuse of “militants” is an indictment of the American media. But, along with all the other misdeeds of the media in mis-reporting on our Jewish homeland of Israel, our passive acquiescence in it through our averting our eyes from it is no less an indictment of us, American Jewry. I read this week that an Israeli MK has proposed giving Diaspora Jewry an official voice in Israeli affairs. By me, this is the most unwise proposal by a homeland Jew in the past three thousand years. E.g., the American Reform and Conservative movements, the organized religious movements of the large majority of American Jews, et al not just expressly support halving our Jewish homeland of Israel through a “two-state solution” with Palestinian Arabs who are already the majority in more than three-quarters of Palestine, Jordan, but expressed that support in a self-disrespecting manner – by calling Israel’s possible application of sovereignty in Judea-Samaria as “annexation” in “the West Bank” and mis-describing the 1949 Israel-Jordan military ceasefire lines, expressly declared in their defining document not to be political borders, as Israel’s “1967 borders.”
American Jews: Stand up against the mainstream American media’s anti-Israel imbalance, and stand down from telling the government and citizenry of the sovereign state of Israel in our homeland, e.g., what its sovereign borders should be.