Summing Up 21 Years: History Is What the Mass of the People Believe It Is; the Inq’s Version Must Not Go Unchallenged
This week’s #1092 (21 x 52) completes 21 years of this weekly emailed Brith Sholom Media Watch (“BSMW”), which, at Dr. Goldblatt’s suggestion, I began, as then chair of our then almost century-old fraternal order’s “Israel Activities Committee,” the first Sunday of the current millennium, January 7, 2001.
Here’s how I sum up the significance of what I’ve observed and weekly commented upon, lo, these twenty-one years. Historians are wrong in their Ivy Tower conceit that “history is what historians say it is.” In the real world, history is what the mass of the world’s people believe that it is.
In the Arab-Jewish Palestine conflict’s case, a slew of misperceptions and Jewish homeland-delegitimizing pejoratives permeating public discourse, not least news reporting, poison public perception of Jewish right to the land of Israel, not limited to the “disputed” core territories of historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria.
Perhaps this can be clearly seen through highlighting BSMW’s chronicling of my hometown paper’s, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s (“Inq’s”), Israel coverage, including on occasion interaction with it.
“Millions of Palestinian Refugees and Their Descendants from Israel’s Creation”
In BSMW #1 that first Sunday of January 2001, I quoted from the front page of the Inq that under then President Clinton’s peace plan
“… Palestinians would have to scale back demands that nearly four million Palestinian refugees and their descendants be able to exercise a right of return to land they fled or were forced to leave in 1948 during the creation of Israel. In exchange, Palestinians would gain . . . .” (Knight-Ridder, 1/4/01, 1, 16)
I told those charter BSMW subscribers why this was grossly misleading: [a] “Four million” Palestinian Arabs did not leave Israel in 1948. Palestine’s entire population was less than two million, a good third of it Jews. Not all the Arabs lived in the part that became Israel, and not all of them left. Some half-million left. [b] Arabs didn’t leave “during the creation of Israel,” but in an Arab invasion for Israel’s destruction following Arab rejection of western Palestine’s partition between its Arabs and its Jews. [c] More indigenously Middle-eastern Jews, about whom the media, not just in this article, was silent, were displaced from vast Arab and other Muslim lands in that war and its aftermath than Arabs left tiny Israel. [d] Israel absorbed these Middle-eastern Jews, whose descendants today form over half of Israel’s population, while Arab “hosts,” including in Palestine itself, have kept these Arabs’ descendants in UN-supported “refugee camps.” I told those charter BSMW subscribers that countering such monstrously misleading statements in the American media was the duty of us grassroots American Jews.
“Palestinian Settlements” – Oops!
The Philly Inquirer of Saturday, 3/16/02 carried this revealing “Clearing the Record”:
“In an Inquirer article Thursday [3/14/02] on President Bush’s news conference, the words “Palestinian settlements” were used in reference to attacks by the Israeli military in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The attacks were directed at Palestinian towns and refugee camps.” (emphasis added)
Actually, Israel’s “attacks” were directed “at” terrorists in those “Palestinian towns” and Arab “refugee camps” from the 1948 war, but the point here is instant retraction by the less-than-zealously-Zionist Inq of inadvertently associating Palestinian Arabs with “settlements.”
What the Inq et ilk do label as “settlers” and “settlements” with a vengeance is Jewish presence an inch over the 1949 Israel-Jordan ceasefire lines, including in the heart of Jerusalem. E.g., ten times in a 3/15/04 Inq Knight-Ridder article on Jews attempting “to reestablish a Jewish presence in what had been a Yemenite Jewish village in the Silwan neighborhood [of Jerusalem] until Arab riots in the 1920’s and ‘30’s drove the Jewish residents out” (emphasis added) the article called those Jerusalem Jewish community-reestablishing Jews “settlers.”
The media revels in pointedly contrasting Jewish “settlements” with nearby “Palestinian towns, villages, neighborhoods.” E.g., Inq photo caption of 6/16/14: “Israeli soldiers search the West Bank village of Beit Einun, near Hebron. They were looking for three teenagers who went missing near a settlement.” (Emphasis added a little)
Jerusalem Buses Blown Up Two Days in a Row – “And Militants Promise More”
On June 20, 2002, the Inq 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, July 12, the Philly District of the ZOA led a media bias protest on the then sidewalk of, to me, “the Inq’s Dark Tower on Callowhill Street (May It Crumble Into a Parking Lot).” Philly ZOA prexy Len Getz, the incomparable Herb Denenberg and I were the three speakers. 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 ….”
“Still to be Perfectly Frank”: How the Inq’s Michael Matza Became “Mickey Militant”
For years, the Inq’s Michael Matza was chief of the Inq’s only-such-place-in-the-world Jerusalem Bureau. Around the time of that 2002 sidewalk protest, here’s how Mr. Matza acquired the nom-de-guerre “Mickey Militant”:
“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”
“Not Millions of Refugees from 1948 War …The Inquirer At Times Has Been Too Inexact”
Here’s how I garnered an Inq foreign staff research memo commencing “Mr. Verlin is right in saying there are not millions of refugees from the 1948 war” and that “the Inquirer has at times been too inexact in its use of language to state the number of people involved.”
When Inq Editor Lundy addressed the Jewish Community Relations Council at the Jewish community’s clubhouse on Arch Street, we JCRC reps each got to ask Mr. Lundy one question. I asked “How can you keep printing ‘millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants,’ when Palestine’s entire 1948 population was less than two million, a good third of it Jews?” He gave me an evasive answer, saying he didn’t have the facts before him, but agreed I could pursue the issue with him by letter, which I did. He responded by thanking me for writing to him about Middle East refugees. I replied that to receive such a response, I didn’t need to seek his leave to write him a letter, I only needed a stamp. He then bequeathed me to then Foreign Editor Warwick, who shouldn’t have asked me for “further specifics,” which led to that foreign staff research memo which Warwick commissioned and honorably sent me, “Mr. Verlin is right ….”
Years later, my co-author Lee of Pressing Israel: Media Bias Exposed From A-to-Z, wheedled us ten minutes to address the Board of Directors of the Federation of Jewish Agencies of Philadelphia. What would you tell them if they gave you five minutes? I told them that in their very building I’d commenced a confrontation with the Inq that had resulted in an Inq acknowledgement that “Mr. Verlin is right” that there hadn’t been “millions” of Arab refugees from the ’48 war and that the Inq had been “at times too inexact” about that. Then I asked them, “So who’s Mr. Verlin?” Just a grassroots Jew in Philadelphia. The Inq should have said: “The Federation is right, the Board of Rabbis is right, the Jewish Exponent is right ….” It’s what I’d told Lisa when she was Exponent editor: “When a city’s public newspaper disparages Israel, it’s disparaging all the city’s Jews, not just right-wingers like me.”
“… Creation of Israel and War that Followed”
When local businessman Brian Tierney owned the Inq, BSMW UPS’d him a 60-page dossier, endorsed by over a hundred Philadelphians, protesting the Inq’s incessant misattributing Arabs displaced by the 1948 Arab invasion for Israel’s destruction following its declaration of independence to “the creation of Israel and war that followed.”
We received no acknowledgement, but a Staff Writer Matza-bylined article shortly appeared in the Inq referring to 1948 as when “Israel gained its independence from the British” following “the United Nations partition vote,” and “when the armies of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Iraq invaded the land Israel claimed as its home.” It was everything we asked for, excepting for Mr. Matza’s signature final paragraph sign-off, referencing “the creation of Israel and war that followed.” Touche.
“Israeli Army Shoots Palestinians” but “Israeli Factory Guards Die”
Sometimes a paper’s disdain for one side of a conflict can be seen not in long house staff writer articles but in the headlines it fashions to wire service squibs in “News in Brief.” Here’s a pair of gems in the Inq.
A 4/29/08 Inq AP squib reported: “The Israeli army shot four Palestinian militants [n.b.] who were trying to plant explosives near the Gaza Strip border fence,” and quoted Hamas calling them its members “on a jihad mission.” Inq headline: “Israeli Army Shoots Four Palestinians.”
Just three days before that, a brief 4/26/08 Inq AP article reported that two Israeli factory guards had been shot dead by a Palestinian Arab whom “a spokesman for Islamic Jihad” said had snuck into Israel and reached the plant in a border industrial zone in which “Israeli factories employ Palestinians.” Inq headline: “Two Israeli Factory Guards Die.” (A week later the Inq disappointed me. A news squib reported a rocket from Gaza killed an Israeli civilian mowing his lawn. The Inq headlined something factual. I’d expected: “Israeli Gardening Enthusiast Dies.”)
“Mosque Visits Resume”
The delegitimizing of Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in the Jewish homeland’s holiest place, is a gravest of assaults on Jewish belief, and is getting worse now. In recent years the mainstream media has gone from [1] printing the Mount’s western and Muslim names in parallel to [2] printing the Muslim name as the accepted name with a rustic reference to how the site is known to the Jews (see CAMERA 2016 BBC study), to [3] printing the Mount’s Muslim name period, to [4] extending the “third holiest Islamic site” mantle from the Al-Aqsa Mosque itself at the Mount’s southern end to the entirety of the Mount as “Islam’s third holiest mosque.” Our Inq has been in the van in [3] and, in 2021, in [4].
On July 15, 2017, both Times of Israel and the Philadelphia Inquirer published the same AP photo of two Jewish policemen standing guard before an entrance to the Temple Mount. TOI captioned that photo
“Israel border police officers stand guard at the entrance to the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, Friday, July 14, 2017. (AP/Mahmoud Illean)” [emphasis added]
Philadelphia’s Inq captioned that photo
“Israeli Border Police officers stand guard at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem. Mahmoud Illean / AP” [emphasis added]
On May 23, 2021, Israel reopened the Temple Mount to access by Jews after having closed it to them due to Muslim violence. A May 23 Jerusalem Post article, “Temple Mount Reopens to Jews After Weeks of Clashes and Unrest,” was accompanied by a photo of Jews peacefully walking on the plaza of the Mount, with the Dome of the Rock in the background.
The Philadelphia Inquirer didn’t report it that way. On May 24, it headlined
“Mosque Visits Resume”
“A holy site in Jerusalem reopened to Jewish visitors”
Above this headline, the Inq ran a photo showing Arabs, one at least seemingly throwing a stone, confronting Israeli police two days before on the plaza with the Dome in the background. The Inq captioned this photo
“Palestinians clash with Israeli police at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound Friday. On Sunday, a group of 250 Jews visited the mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.” [emphasis added]
“Mosque visits” didn’t “resume”; they’d never been suspended for Muslims. And it wasn’t “mosque visits,” but entire Temple Mount visits, that Israel had suspended temporarily for Jews. And on the Mount’s reopening to them, Jews ascended the Mount, our people’s holiest site, not into a building that’s a religious site of another people’s religion. For the Philadelphia Inquirer to call Jews ascending the Temple Mount their having “visited the mosque, the third holiest site in Islam,” is doing the Inq’s previous calling of what’s been known in the West as “the Temple Mount” for millennia “the Al-Aqsa mosque compound” one better. This time the Inq extended both the name “Al Aqsa mosque” and that mosque’s Muslim “third holiest” status to the entire Temple Mount compound. It would be difficult to conceive of a more delegitimizing delegitimization of the highest holy site of the Jews.
Summing Up Summing Up
This is of course a sampling, but even as such it’s an indictment – not just of the Inq, but of us for diverting our eyes and not vigorously challenging all this. I hope to continue in 2022 what BSMW has been up to lately – trying to enlist grassroots American Jews as “Word Warriors” challenging the loaded lexicon of Jewish homeland-delegitimizing pejoratives we ourselves, Diaspora Jews and Israelis, too often use while wondering why the UN General Assembly votes 160-0 against us, with a handful of abstentions. To all of You Who Put Up With Me Weekly, best wishes for a healthy and happy New Year. I deeply appreciate your support and encouragement.