WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: We grassroots American Jews can and must act in the face of “pro-Palestinian” demonstrations and actions. We must stress to our political parties the importance to both countries and to the West of continued strong US support for Israel. And we must recognize the reality that mainstream media bias can’t be ended by emails “to the editor” by us and organizations, but must be answered by competitor papers and other means of getting our people’s homeland’s case across to the public.
Two Tasks RIGHT NOW for Grassroots American Jews
You Who are Dems, Stay in the Party and Take On Israel’s Opponents
A number of years ago, it seemed to me things had reached a low point at which we ordinary grassroots citizens could no longer just sit back and watch. I went directly to the Chairman of my township Republican Party and bluntly announced “I’d like to help.” “Volunteers normally work through our committee people,” he answered. “Who sent you directly to me?” “Barack Obama.” “You’re in.” But I don’t ask you to do what I did.
Ok, I’m GOP, pro-Trump, believe in our country’s borders, not fighting crime by defunding police, and all that, but what’s scariest today for all us American Jews is that after the pogrom of October 7 and all the “pro-Palestinian” protests that have followed, our President, Mr. Biden, still supports “the Two-State Solution,” the fatal-to-Israel turning over to “a Palestinian state” Israel’s defensible Judea-Samaria hill country heartland and even historic Jerusalem – “the 1967 [i.e., 1949] ceasefire lines with mutually agreed territorial swaps” (and see UNSC 2334).
E.g., Jewish Voice, this morning, 11/26/23, Biden Says Hostage Deal Has ‘Gone Well,’ Still Pushes for Two-State Solution; Jonathan Tobin, JNS, Monday, 11/20/23, Biden’s Dangerous Palestinian State Fantasy; Jewish Press, last Sunday, 11/19/23, Biden’s Dream of a ‘Two-State Solution’ is Israel’s Nightmare. Here’s Why.
If you don’t grasp the existential peril to our Jewish homeland of restoring the 1949 ceasefire lines, look at a 3-D map like Mark Langfan’s of Palestine west of the Jordan. Locate Latrun and Radar Hill dominating the narrow Jerusalem corridor, the 9-miles-wide lowland stretch further north, etc. Read a book about these places’ significance and ferocious battles for them in the 1948 and 1967 wars. Netanel Lorch’s Edge of the Sword is the definitive work on Israel’s War of Independence, but Abraham Rabinovich’s Genesis 1948 is an also thorough but more gripping read. Steven Pressfield’s The Lion’s Gate is my highly recommended Six Day War read.
Compounding Biden’s and the US State Department’s – “The State Department tweeted on Nov. 4 that it views the two-state solution as ‘the only viable path,’” (JNS, 11/8/23, US Wants Gaza Under Palestinian Authority) – obsession with “Two-States” is the pressure being brought on the administration to weaken support for Israel by anti-Zionist Jews and Muslim and Arab Democratic Party wings. See NPR, last Sunday, 11/19/23, As Democrats Stay Divided on Israel, Jewish Voters Face Politically Uncertain Future:
“Jay Saper is with Jewish Voice for Peace, a group which describes itself as ‘anti-Zionist.’
“’If [Biden] is hoping to inspire young people to turn out to the polls, he cannot further support the Israeli military at this time,’ Saper said. ‘We who are in the streets, who are raising our voices, will have to be withholding our votes from the president, if he continues not to call for a ceasefire.’
“Biden is also facing pressure from Muslim and Arab leaders, who’ve also warned they will withhold support from candidates who back Israel’s continued war against Hamas ….”
And then of course there’s “the Squad” and those who view Israel like them.
So here’s my plea to my fellow grassroots American Jews who are of the Democratic Party persuasion: Stay in the Dems and make clear that grassroots American Jews are a Democratic Party faction whose polling place presence and financial contributions are likewise not to be taken for granted, and that bipartisan support for our Jewish homeland of Israel is in both America’s and Israel’s. and even in Western civilizational, interest.
Mainstream Media’s Anti-Israel Bias Can’t Be Fixed, From Now On Only Fought
Late in December 2000, Dr. Mike Goldblatt, a leader of the ZOA (and himself a fugitive from my fraternal order Brith Sholom), suggested to me, then chair of that Order’s “Israel” committee, “Start a media watch in Brith Sholom.” The first Sunday of January 2001, we issued “Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #1,” taking on anti-Israel media bias, to thirty intrepid fraternal brothers and sisters braving the cold to attend the Order’s quarterly Board of Governors meeting.
These weekly emails, for years now posted on our related website, www.factsonisrael.com, have grown in subscribership and expanded in subject scope since, but one thing hasn’t changed. I’m a longtime fan of fairness-to-Israel media watchdogs, CAMERA and Honest Reporting, but if you check in periodically on their websites what you’ll see, for all their excellent efforts in obtaining corrections to imbalances (a Philly Inquirer (“Inq”) editor once euphemized such to me as “inaccuracies”), is that they go on and on unabated. But continue to support CAMERA and Honest Reporting, albeit that their efforts, while indispensably necessary, are alas insufficient.
I’ll give you one media bias example, typical AP-speak on 10/26/23, Palestinian Activist is Expelled by Israeli Forces From His Home in a Volatile West Bank City, characterizing
“… the situation in the occupied West Bank since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war nearly three weeks ago, after a brutal rampage by Hamas gunmen from Gaza ….”
Where to begin?
[a] “West Bank”: First of all, we should object to the mainstream western media (“MSM”) exclusively referring to what by us is Judea and Samaria, an integral part of our Jewish homeland, the land of Israel, Palestine west of the Jordan, as “the West Bank.” The MSM, when it condescends to mention the area’s Hebrew-origin names, “Judea and Samaria,” grossly misleadingly relegates these original names to “the biblical names for the West Bank.” On the contrary, these original names, “Judea and Samaria” remained in use all through the centuries, including by the United Nations itself in 1947: “The boundary of the hill country of Samaria and Judea starts on the Jordan River ….” The invader [nee Trans-] Jordan in 1950 rechristened Judea and Samaria as “the West Bank” for the same reason the Romans had renamed Judaea as “Palestine” eighteen hundred years earlier – to disassociate what had been Jewish from Jews.
A few years ago, I criticized CAMERA’s use of “West Bank.” It replied, in a sense correctly, that any communication it made to the media using “Judea and Samaria,” which is historically correct but used by only “a very minute fraction of the world’s population,” would inevitably end up on the editor’s room’s floor. I put this CAMERA response in that week’s BSMW Alert (#912, 7/15/18), adding “but that very minute world population fraction is us” and “the more an historically justified place name that we use differs from the name that the media and most of the rest of the world use, the more important it is that we use it.”
[b] “Occupied”: If the MSM exclusively saying “West Bank” is its taking sides against us, the more so is its characterization of that “West Bank” as Israeli “occupied.” As former Israeli PM Bennett pithily puts it, “you can’t be an ‘occupier’ in your own home.” We claim Judea and Samaria as ours, and we have the Palestine Mandate and three millennia thrice-sovereign Jewish presence there to back us up. Palestinian Arabs have never ruled Palestine ever, and foreign Arabs only (most of the time) between 638 and 1099. Today’s Israel is the land of Israel’s next native state after Roman-destroyed Jewish Judaea.
[c] “Outbreak” of war occurred “After” pogrom: The hell it did. That war was broken out by that invasion pogrom.
[d] “Brutal Rampage”: The hell it was. It was a 1200-people-slaughtering in the cruelest of manners, full-fledged Holocaust-level pogrom – mercilessly murdering mostly civilians, raping and then murdering females of all ages, beheading babies and even baking a baby to boot.
[e] “by Hamas gunmen”: The hell they were. Hamas-run Gaza is a world-desired “Palestinian state” de facto if not de jure. It has an army. See, e.g., JNS 11/20/23, Some 10 Out of 24 Hamas Battalions ‘Significantly Damaged.’ It painstakingly planned that invasion, including intelligence gathered by Palestinians granted work permits in Israel, as documents retrieved by Israel reveal. And these Hamas soldiers weren’t alone. No less vicious Gaza civilians went along and joined in.
The ubiquitous Associated Press isn’t alone. Go look at CAMERA’s and Honest Reporting’s websites for more. Perpetrators alas include almost all MSM sources.
So what do we do? It’s not enough just not to subscribe to AP et ilk-carrying newspapers like the Philadelphia Inquirer. It would be good to subscribe to their competitors, but here’s how I began BSMW #440 of 6/7/09:
“A calamity befell all Philadelphians this week, though I fear too few will see it as such. The Bulletin, our region’s daily broadsheet alternative to the Inq, abruptly ceased publication. . . .”
It is a shanda on an American city the size of Philadelphia that it has only one on-the-street, in-your-driveway daily newspaper. But there you are. Should a Bulletin re-arise to compete with it, we must not let it fail. I think that backed by consumers a second paper could succeed in getting advertisers to split their ad purchases. But in the absence of an AP-free daily paper in places like Philly, aggrieved readers like Israel’s supporters should at least let AP et ilk-carrying papers’ advertisers know of the grave imbalances that their ads are financing the purveying of to American publics. But beyond that, in our daily contacts with others, we must use every channel to make clear to people the historical justice of, to use Bibi’s expression, Israel’s Place Among the Nations. And in doing so, avoid using the media’s Jewish homeland-delegitimizing expressions. See Toxic Terms and Dirty Words pages, and Video “Ten Misleading Media Expressions” on our website, www.factsonisrael.com.
Bottom Line
If you’re a Democrat, stay in your party and make the case to its elected officials that our Jewish community is among the Democratic Party’s most loyal factions, residing in key states and voting and contributing way over its weight, but America must stand by Israel, and we can’t be taken for granted. And let AP et ilk-carrying newspapers’ advertisers know what their ads are financing their newspapers’ purveying, and use every opportunity to make our people’s homeland’s case to our fellow Americans.