#746 Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert

To:       Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From:   Jerry Verlin, Editor  (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj:    Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #746, 4/19/15

This Week In The Inq:  Selective Hysteria (When Israel’s Involved) Not On Display

Our Philadelphia Inquirer’s (Inq’s) Israel coverage stands out from its other international news coverage in two major respects:  [a] the Inq’s Israel coverage is permeated with terms and perspectives purveying a partisan narrative of Arab versus Jewish Palestine equities (“1948 creation and founding of Israel” … “Arabs’ displacement by The-War-That-Followed-Israel’s-Creation” … “West Bank” and “East” Jerusalem “Jewish settlers” … “Israel’s 1967 borders” … [Arabs as] “The Palestinians” … etc., etc.); and [b] the Inq’s coverage of conflicts in which Israel’s involved is disproportionate to that of other international conflicts, exaggerating its impact on regional, if not worldwide, peace and stability, and is imbalanced and at-times uniquely emotional.

There was not much on Israel This Week In The Inq, but there was quite a bit on carnage and conflict elsewhere.  Given the near inevitability of armed-by-Iran-to-the-teeth Hezbollah or Hamas having another go at Israel in the not distant future, and the near inevitability of the Inq covering that conflict in the volume, tone and balance with which it has covered, e.g., past Israel-Hamas fighting and “Israel’s raid on an aid flotilla bound for Gaza,” this week let’s quickly summarize a few highlights (so to speak) of that prior Inq coverage, and then compare its volume, tone and balance to that exhibited by the Inq in its conflict coverage this week.

*** “OUTCRY, CRISIS AFTER DEADLY RAID BY ISRAEL”:  That not-quite-calm-and-dispassionate huge A1 Inq-headline led-off a cause célèbre for the Inq that went on and on until the U.N. issued a ruling that Israel’s anti-terror blockade of armaments to rocket-happy Hamas was legal.  That U.N. ruling made page A18 of the Inq.  But the very next day, the Inq was back with above-the-fold on A1: “Turks Oust Top Israeli Diplomat: They Want an Apology for a Raid Last Year.”  Page A18 versus A1?

***  Three days’ headlines of “PEACE TALKS BROKEN OFF OVER ISRAEL’S INCURSION INTO GAZA”:  In February 2008, Hamas dramatically escalated rocket fire at Israeli civilians in both volume and rocket power, bringing the major city of Ashkelon, not just Negev towns like Sderot, into range.  Israeli papers reported:  “Fifty Palestinian Rockets Bombard Israel … Ashkelon Hospital Targeted.” (2/28/08);   “Ashkelon Residents Realize: We’re Just Like Sderot.” (2/28);  “Ten Palestinian Rockets Hit Ashkelon” (2/29).  Haaretz [n.b.] editorialized (2/28):  “The dozens of rockets that were fired Wednesday from Gaza … have placed the I.D.F. on the threshold of a major raid into the Palestinian territory.  Responsibility for the escalation lies entirely with the Palestinian side: the Hamas government.”  The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated (3/3):  “The 122 mm. Grad rockets (also known as Katyushas) fired from Hamas-controlled Gaza against the Israeli city of Ashkelon are a standard military artillery weapon, equipped with a weapons-grade high explosive fragmentation warhead.  The range of the rockets fired against Ashkelon is over 20 km., an upgraded capability which places about a quarter of a million Israeli civilians in constant danger of Hamas attack.”

None of this made news headlines in the Inq.  Its week of headlines focused exclusively on “Israeli-Gazan” fighting in Gaza, and on the media-dubbed “moderate” Abbas righteously suspending peace talks “over Israel’s incursion into Gaza,” as though Israel’s response, not Hamas’ escalation, as even Haaretz recognized, were responsible  – “Mideast Peace Talks Off; Palestinians Suspend Discussions ….” (3/3);  “Abbas Declines to Set Time for Resuming Talks; He Met With Rice, Who Pushed for the Resumption of Negotiations Broken Off over Israel’s Incursion into Gaza” (3/5);  “Mideast Talks Back on Track, Rice Says in Visit to Region; Abbas Had Halted Them After Israel’s Incursion Into Gaza….” (3/6).

***  Last summer’s Israel-Hamas war.  Last week’s BSMW tallied c. seventy July-August Inq articles, with photos almost exclusively of damage in Gaza to the exclusion of intentionally-targeted Israeli civilians rushing with seconds’ warning to shelters, crouching with little kids behind cars on the roadside, lying out in the open, etc.  The Inq adorned even its articles on Israel’s airport being closed and on Israelis fleeing their homes in southern Israel (mis-headlined by the Inq as “Israelis Leaving Gaza Border”) with photos of Gaza.

Now compare the tone and placement of coverage of conflict elsewhere as it appeared this week in the Inq.

***  Doubling of Hundreds of Thousands of Children Fleeing:  Monday, 4/13/15, the Inq reported on a U.N. agency reporting that “the number of children fleeing the Boko Haram insurgency doubled in the past year to about 800,000,” with women and girls being abducted and subjected to sexual abuse.  “Boko Haram’s six-year campaign to impose Islamic law in Nigeria has forced more than 1.5 million people from their homes,” according to another U.N. agency, the report added.

Inq headline?  “Nigeria: More Fleeing Boko Haram.”  But it was more than “more.”  It was the doubling of hundreds of thousands.  And I wasn’t just “people,” as the just general term “more” conveys.  It was children, kids.   Inq placement?  One-paragraph in an A6 “Around the World” news-in-brief squib.

***  Hammering, Bulldozing and Blowing-up 3,200 Year-Old Antiquities, “Horrifying” UN: Also Monday, the Inq reported on a video released by ISIS showing that its “militants hammered, bulldozed, and ultimately blew up” parts of a 13th century BCE Assyrian city, attacks that “horrified” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who’d last month labeled such destruction as this “a war crime.”  Why such hammering, bulldozing and blowing up?  One speaker on the video explains:  “God has honored us in the Islamic State to remove all these idols and statues worshipped instead of Allah in the past days.”

Inq headline? Ho-hum, “Destruction of Nimrud on Video.”  Can you picture an Inq not headlining active voice “IDF Hammers, Bulldozes, Blows-Up” a place, instead of colorless “Destruction on Video,” if gifted by the AP with an article leading that Israel “… hammered, bulldozed and ultimately blew-up” a place?  Inq placement? A11.

***  Among Bloodiest Starts to Afghan Spring Fighting Season in Years: Wednesday, 4/15/15, the Inq reported on “hundreds of foreign extremists fleeing a months-long Pakistani military offensive and seeking sanctuary in Afghanistan, bolstering the ranks of Taliban factions and triggering one of the bloodiest starts to the spring fighting season in years….” [emphasis added]

Inq headline and sub-head?  “Afghans Feel Spillover from Pakistan Fight; The beheadings of eight soldiers are blamed on a wave of foreign insurgents.”  “Afghans Feel Spillover”?  They “felt the spillover” all right, right in the neck.   Inq placement of this bloodiest start to Afghan fighting season in years?  A8.

***  Car Bomber, Gunmen Attack Education and Oil Ministries, Murdering 10:  Also Wednesday, the Inq reported that al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab, which “has waged attacks for years in Somalia in a campaign to impose strict Islamic rule,” launched a car bomb and gunmen attack on a government building housing education and oil ministries, killing 10.  The article added that “education offices in Somalia have been attacked before,” that 2011 car bomb attack had killed 70 people.

Inq headline?  “Attack on Somalia Office Kills 10.”  It wasn’t just an “office,” but an

education office, a young people-mindset-molding office, an office type appreciated by al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab, if not by the Inq.  Inq placement?  A13.

***  “Italian ships have saved nearly 10,000 since Friday.”  That startling news, that the Italian coast guard had rescued nearly 10,000 [!] North African migrants floundering in the Mediterranean in the past week, was sentence 2 of an Inq’s photo caption Thursday, on page A8 of the Inq.  Paragraph 5 of the Inq’s A8 AP article quoted the Italian navy calling this “an unprecedented rate in such a short period.”  The article’s lede was that 400 migrants had just died in a shipwreck that the AP lede called “one of the deadliest such tragedies in the last decade.”  Paragraph 2 reported that the U.N. refugee agency “expressed shock at the scale of the deaths,” and that “the International Organization for Migration maintained that the situation had reached ‘crisis proportions.’”

Inq headline?  “As Losses Rise At Sea, Warnings of a Crisis.”  “Losses Rise At Sea” hardly purveys 400 drowned in one of the deadliest such tragedies in the last decade, and things have gone a little further than “Warnings of a Crisis,” don’t you think?   Compare the dispassionate tone of the Inq’s headline on these 400 migrants’ death at sea – “Losses Rise At Sea” – to its “Outcry, Crisis” over 9 Hamas-aiding activists’ deaths in fighting at sea with lawful IDF boarders.   Inq placement Thursday?  A8.

***  Saudi Arabia “Brushes Off” U.N. Claim of “Unusually High Civilian Casualties”:  Also Thursday, the Inq reported that the U.N. is claiming that the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen has “caused an unusually high number of civilian casualties” and is calling “for greater care in targeting” the Houthi rebels.  In the words of the Inq’s McClatchy report, the Saudi envoy to the U.S. “brushed off” these claims.

Inq headline?  “Yemen: Saudi Envoy Rejects Casualty Claims.”  Inq placement?  “Around the World” squib, A8.  Now, envision an Inq deciding what to do with a wire service news article that Israel’s U.S. envoy had just “brushed off calls by U.N. officials and rights groups for greater care in targeting” because it “had caused an unusually high number of civilian casualties.”  You can bet your bibi the Inq wouldn’t have run it, headlined as simply “Israeli Envoy Rejects Casualty Claims,” buried in the day’s “Around the World” squibs back on A8.

Could the Inq this week top this discrepancy Thursday between minimizing Saudis “brushing off” UN “unusually high number of civilian casualties” claims versus its repeated “the vast majority” of last summer’s Gaza casualties being “civilian”?  I think maybe on Friday it did.

***  Inq, Friday, 4/17/15, “Around the World” news squibs, A6.  Squib 4 of 4, beginning to end:

Syria: Chlorine-attack Witness

U.N. Security Council members were moved to tears Thursday as the first witness to the latest suspected chlorine attacks in Syria emerged from the country to give a graphic account of dying children.  A Syrian doctor who treated victims from a half-dozen attacks, Mohamed Tennari, was helped out of the country by the United States, which arranged for the briefing.  He showed a video of a suspected attack March 16 in his town of Sarmin in Idlib province, with images of three children, ages 1 through 3, dying despite attempts to resuscitate them. – AP

“Around the World” news-in-brief squib, A6.

The great damage the Inq et ilk do to the Jewish homeland and its supporters by both distorting and blowing out of all international news coverage proportion coverage of conflict in which Israel’s involved is to poison public perceptions of the Jewish homeland of Israel.  Am I exaggerating, or do polls say the people of Europe, the heartland of Christendom and Western civilization, already regard Israel as the worst threat to peace of all places on earth?

Regards,
Jerry