WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: We American Jews are engaged today in a struggle for the hearts and minds of Americans. We have to recognize and triage the narratives asserted against us, and counter the most delegitimizing with the facts of our claim to our people’s homeland.
… But Some Toxic Terms are More Toxic Than Others
A lot of American Jews reacted in shocked outrage this week as much of the mainstream Western media (“MSM”) et ilk called the Hamas terrorists who just perpetrated a Holocaust-level pogrom in southern Israel mere “militants.” We indeed should have been outraged, but not surprised. The MSM has long called terrorists who prey on Israeli civilians “militants.” And some American Jews have answered back.
E.g., the Philadelphia Inquirer on June 20, 2002, bold-face headlined at the top of its front page the second of two consecutive days’ municipal bus bombings killing 25 and wounding 85 Israeli civilian men, women and children
“Jerusalem Hit Again – And Militants Promise More”
Three weeks later, July 12 of that year, members of three grassroots Jewish organizations stood on the sidewalk of the Inq’s then Dark Tower on Callowhill Street (May It Have Crumbled into a Parking Lot) in outraged protest of a long line of Inq and its wire services’ anti-Israel imbalances, including that “Militants Promise More” headline after two consecutive days’ Jerusalem bus bombings.
Three of these groups’ leaders addressed the assembled protesters in the Inq editor’s presence. One of them (me) began his bullhorn-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….”
It was a hot July noon, and I do not know whether my recitation of this litany of as-of-then recent Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians got through to Inq then-editor Lundy, but I told him afterwards I respected his having stood out there for an hour on his hot sun-drenched shadeless sidewalk listening to Herb Denenberg, Len Getz and me hurling outrage at his employer.
The sobering truth though is that calling terrorists “militants” is far from the most destructive damage the mainstream media routinely inflicts upon our Jewish homeland of Israel. Reasonably objective Americans can figure out from not necessarily MSM current headlines like
“Witness: Children Were Tortured In Front of Their Parents, Parents In Front of Their Children … Eyes Gouged Out, Fingers Chopped Off….” (Geller Report, 10/19/23)
“Docs on Slain Terrorists Show Hamas Plan To Target Children; The Islamist Marauders Were Instructed ‘To Kill as Many People as Possible’ in Elementary Schools and a Youth Center” (JNS, 10/15/23)
that the perpetrators of such depravity are terrorists, not merely “militants.”
We’re in a battle for the hearts and minds of Americans. The main narrative that is being thrown up against us is that Israel is “occupying” the Palestine homeland of “the Palestinians” in “the West Bank,” “East” Jerusalem and Gaza, and that except for those places these Palestinian Arabs are homeless.
Every time you see that Dirty Word/Toxic Term “occupied,” you have to erupt against it. It inundates MSM Israel-Arab reporting, wire services, on-the-street newspapers, TV news programming, all of it. Give former Israeli PM Bennett credit: CNN’s Amanpour used the term “occupied” in his presence. He objected. “It’s an international term, Mr. Bennett.” “I know, and I still object to it.”
What’s scariest is that the United States is party to this. It’s not just the Biden administration’s support of “the two-state solution,” which in calling for “two states along the 1967 [1949] lines with mutually agreed territorial swaps” denies any Jewish homeland equity whatever beyond the old defunct 1949 ceasefire lines, which were never among the Holy Land’s holy places, having been expressly declared in their defining document to be military ceasefire lines only, not international borders. It’s that the U.S. not just abstained on but seems to have fomented UNSC 2334, declaring that the United Nations will not recognize any changes to the 1949 lines not agreed by the parties.
Take a look on a map at those snaking-through-Israel 1949 Israel-Jordan ceasefire lines. Locate Latrun, Radar Hill and those other places on the narrow hill-dominated Jerusalem corridor, at the nine-mile width a bit further north, at the Judea-Samaria ridge overlooking the lowland coastal plain. And count out historic Jerusalem.
But it’s not effective for us to claim, using ourselves the media’s and enemies’ delegitimizing-of-us pejoratives, that western Palestine beyond the 1949 lines is “disputed,” that “Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem aren’t ‘illegal’.”
We have to affirmatively make the case to Americans
[1] that by history and international treaty (the Palestine Mandate) Palestine west of the Jordan River, the land of Israel, is Ours; and
[2] that Palestinian Arabs are the majority population of Jordan, sitting on 78% of Mandated Palestine, and are the entire population of a second part of Palestine, Gaza. And in addition to these Palestine places they were also offered under the Trump peace plan an autonomous sans security control area of Judea-Samaria larger than where they presently mostly live.
We have to affirmatively argue that Jewish (and Christian) biblical history happened, that our Temple Mount (which the Inq calls a “mosque”) is still physically present, that we never fully left or abandoned our homeland (see, e.g., Verlin, Israel 3000 Years: The Jewish People’s 3000 Year Presence in Palestine”), that the League of Nations’ Mandate, endorsed by the UN, recognized western Palestine as the Jewish national home, that Jerusalem has had a renewed Jewish majority since 1800’s Turkish rule, that foreign Arabs ruled Palestine only between 638 and 1099, and that “the Palestinians” have never ruled Palestine ever.
And stop saying “West Bank … East Jerusalem … Jewish settlements [vs. Palestinian towns, villages, neighborhoods] … Palestinian territories … occupied territories … occupied Palestinian territories,” etc. And even stop saying “militants.”