#745 Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert

To:       Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From:   Jerry Verlin, Editor  (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj:    Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #745, 4/12/15

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG:  In July and August last year, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran about 70 articles on the Israel-Hamas war.  Following ISIS’ invasion last week of the “Palestinian refugee camp” in Yarmouk, Syria, near Damascus, the remaining residents have come under living conditions even harsher than the Syrian government had been inflicting on them.  But that got far from commensurate coverage This Week In The Inq.

What You Can Read Into What You Couldn’t See This Week In The Inq

If you followed the Philadelphia Inquirer’s (Inq’s) coverage of the Israel-Hamas war last summer, you had to be struck by both its extent and one-sidedness.

Almost all of the Inq’s many photos focused on damage in Gaza, hardly any on intentionally-targeted Israeli civilians continually running with seconds warning to shelters, with many not making it, crouching beside cars on the roadside, covering their heads with their hands lying out in the open, etc.  Article after article claimed the “vast majority” of casualties in Gaza were civilians.  The Inq headlined “tens of thousands flee homes in Gaza” but, for an article on tens of thousands of Israelis fleeing their homes inside southern Israel, the Inq headlined vaguely “Israelis Leaving Gaza Border,” and accompanying that article with a photo of damage in Gaza.

As for the extent of the Inq’s saturation coverage of last summer’s Israel-Hamas war, here’s a count of the number of Inq articles I clipped for each week’s July-August BSMW issue:

BSMW #705, 7/6/14:  2 Israel-Hamas war articles, 31 paragraphs

BSMW #706, 7/13/14:  7 articles, 117 paragraphs

BSMW #707, 7/20/14:  17 articles, 264 paragraphs

BSMW #708, 7/27/14:   16 articles, 224 paragraphs

BSMW #709, 8/3/14:  14 articles, 211 paragraphs

BSMW #710, 8/10/14:  10 articles, 151 paragraphs

BSMW #711, 8/17/14:  7 articles, 96 paragraphs

BSMW #712-13, 8/24/14:  6 articles, 76 paragraphs

BSMW #712-13, 8/31/14:  10 articles, 110 paragraphs

Now here’s a sampling of what’s been written this week, not in the Inq, on what’s happening this week in Yarmouk:

Israel Hayom, Thursday, 4/9/15, by “The Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff”:

When hundreds of Islamic State militants muscled into the Yarmouk refugee camp last week and planted their black flags amid the charred, blown-out buildings, it was the latest trial for the remaining Palestinians who for two years had endured a suffocating government siege, starvation and disease.

The dire situation in the camp appears certain to deteriorate as the extremist group looks to consolidate its hold and establish a presence near the heart of the Syrian capital….

Israel Hayom Thursday, crediting Reuters:

“The situation is catastrophic.  There is barely food and water, and the only functioning hospital has long run out of medication,” said a resident of the camp ….

Heavy clashes continued in the camp ….

At least 18 civilians, including a humanitarian worker and a 12-year-old, have been killed in Yarmouk in the past week since Islamic State attacked, Amnesty International said….

“For civilians still trapped in Yarmouk, life is an agonizing struggle for survival.  After enduring a crippling two-year-long-government-imposed siege, now they are pinned down by sniper fire, fearing for their lives, as shelling and aerial attacks escalate,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty’s deputy Middle East and North Africa director.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters the situation remains “extremely tense” for the 18,000 men, women and children trapped in the camp without safe access to water, food and basic health care….

So how much attention did Syria’s Yarmouk “Palestinian refugee camp” receive This Week In The Inq?  One paragraph, Monday (4/6/15, A4), in an “Around the World” news-in-brief squib, not even Inq-headlined as relating to “Palestinians”:

Syria:  Civilians Flee Fighting

Hundreds of civilians have fled a Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus, Syria, during a raging battle between Islamic State fighters and Ansar Bayt al Maqdis, a rival Palestinian faction, a monitoring group said Sunday.  Hundreds of others remain trapped in the Yarmouk camp, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.  At least 26 people have been killed since the fighting started there Wednesday.  The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees has called for an immediate stop to the fighting to allow delivery of humanitarian aid.

This is not exactly something new.  A Guardian article about it this morning (more about which anon) had at the foot of its internet version links to “related content,” including:

*  “How Yarmouk refugee camp became the worst place in Syria”

*  “Lebanon accused of turning away some Palestinian Syrian refugees”

*  “Yarmouk refugees tell of brutal treatment at the hands of Syrians”

*  “Besieged and terrified – and the food is about to run out for Damascus refugees”

*  “Queue for food in Syria’s Yarmouk camp shows desperation of refugees”

*  “Inside the hellhole of Yarmouk, the refugee camp that shames the world”

*  “Syrian refugees flee to the relative safety of Gaza”

The Inq’s lack of interest in waxing hysterical over Palestinian Arabs’ treatment at fellow Arabs’ hands is hardly unique to the Inq.  This morning’s Guardian headlined its article

The Refugees of Yarmouk Deserve Better Than Silence

When Israel wages war on Palestinians, we speak out.  But they are dying, right now, at the hands of an Arab regime

To be sure, we Israel supporters don’t see who’s waging war on whom in the Arab-Israeli conflict in the same way as this Guardian article’s author, but he is right in observing the contrast in attention paid to Palestinian Arabs’ travails depending upon who’s their opponent.  And also in posing a “let’s be honest” test that can fairly be posed to itself by an Inq:

Those who try to use the tragedy of Yarmouk to excuse or downplay Israel’s 48-year occupation of Palestine should be ashamed of themselves. But what of the rest of us?  Can we afford to stay in our deep slumber, occasionally awakening to lavishly condemn only Israel?  Let’s be honest: how different, how vocal and passionate, would our reaction be if the people besieging Yarmouk were wearing the uniforms of the IDF?

But those who “should be ashamed of themselves” aren’t the Jews, and Christians, who believe, as does the Levy Commission Report, that Jews’ presence anywhere in the Jewish homeland of Israel is not “occupation,” but those who hold the descendants of Arabs who left Palestine well over a half-century ago in apartheid isolation to perpetuate the Arab war against homeland Jews, and Western media members that wax hysterical over the plight of what are still called “Palestinian refugees” only when Jews can be blamed.

And to put that great “Nakba” of 1948 – in which more Middle-eastern Jews left vast Muslim lands for Israel than Arabs, largely at invading Arabs’ urging, left what became tiny Israel, not that you’ll read much about that in the media – into actual historical perspective, here’s this very morning’s Inq (Sunday, 4/12/15, A19, AP) on the 1971 separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan:

Bangladesh blames Pakistani soldiers and local collaborators for the deaths of 3 million people during the nine-month war for independence from Pakistan.  An estimated 200,000 women were raped and about 10 million people fled to refugee camps in neighboring India.

Bottom line:  Anyone who came away from the Inq’s imbalanced obsessive coverage of last summer’s Israel-Hamas war thinking that our hometown Inq has a soft spot for Palestinian Arabs should think again.  It has a hard spot for Israel.

Regards,
Jerry