#749 Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert

To:       Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From:   Jerry Verlin, Editor  (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj:    Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #749, 5/10/15

But The Inq’s Insulting Cartoon of a Prophet Just Drew a Yawn

There were a couple articles This Week In The Inq that could fill up a pro-Israel media watch, but let’s just whip through them and focus instead on a timely cartoon comparison, including a cartoon recently in the Inq, that I don’t think anyone’s drawn.

Inq headline:  “Israeli Troops Say Gaza Civilians Were Sacrificed”

Tuesday’s Inq (Philly Inquirer, Tue, 5//5/15, A8) ran an across-the-top-of-the-page 5-column headline: “Israeli Troops Say Gaza Civilians Were Sacrificed.”  The article led with charges that “Israeli troops who served in last summer’s Gaza war were ordered to shoot people on sight, shelled homes and reduced neighborhoods to rubble as part of a deliberate policy of force protection that cost the lives of Palestinian civilians.”  The article referenced the IDF saying it investigates “credible claims” [Inq’s article’s quotes] and that the IDF has “asserted” that “Hamas militants” used human shields, fired rockets at Israeli cities and “attacked Israeli forces from within residential areas,” statements that could have been more fairly characterized as facts as opposed to “assertions.”

But a balanced newspaper would have likewise picked up, and likewise headlined across-the-top-of-a-page, what other “Israeli Troops Say,” e.g. Algemeiner’s article Friday: “Israeli Troops Call ‘Breaking the Silence’ Report on Gaza War a ‘Total Lie.’” Or what it reported, Tuesday, the same day that the Inq ran its article, that “former Associated Press reporter Matti Friedman wrote a scathing criticism of the recently issued report from NGO Breaking the Silence on the conduct of Israeli soldiers during last summer’s Gaza war.”  Or, e.g., distinguished diplomat Dore Gold’s JCPA report, also Tuesday, “New ‘Breaking the Silence’ Report Maliciously Defames Israel.”  Truth to tell, the Inq’s eyes light up selectively.

Inq headline: “Settler Homes OKd” in Jerusalem

 

Friday’s Inq (5/08/15, A6) included an “Around the World” AP squib that “Israel is pushing ahead with a Jerusalem construction project” in Ramat Shlomo according to “the settlement watchdog Peace Now,” that has “caused a rift between Israel and the United States.”  The Inq headlined this: “Israel: Settler Homes OKd.”

Jews as diverse in political view as Netanyahu and the American Reform movement’s Rabbi Yoffie agree that Jews are not “settlers” in Jerusalem.  If enough Israeli and Western Jews make unequivocally clear that by us Jews have never been “settlers” in Jerusalem throughout history, Western newspapers that call Jews in historic Jerusalem “settlers” will be seen in the West as propagators of a totally-contested Arab Jerusalem claim.

A Contrast in Cartoons

Much has been written this past week about the Muhammad Cartoon Contest which was attacked a week ago by two Muslim fanatics.  The winning cartoon depicted a rather ferocious-faced prophet Muhammad wielding a sword at a cartoonist and shouting “You Can’t Draw Me!,” and the cartoonist, only whose hand is visible, responding “That’s Why I Draw You.”

We don’t normally delve into the deeper meaning of even snide cartoons, like April First’s in the Inq, but in weeks that feature gunfights at cartoon fests, cartoons’ power both to rouse reaction and to persuade people to viewpoints becomes crystal clear.

So compare the magnitude-of-disrespect, of-insult, if you will, of this prophet Muhammad cartoon with that of the prophet Moses cartoon that the Inq ran April 1.  It showed Moses, standing on one side of the parted Red Sea and Netanyahu completing an Israeli-flag-topped house on the other.  The caption has Moses admonishing, “Bibi!!  Enough with the settlements already!!”

We don’t take offense to the mere depiction of Moses, so go beyond that to the meaning of the message that the cartoonist in each case put into the prophet’s mouth.  Muhammad: “You can’t draw me!”  Moses:  “Jews can’t live in Judea, Samaria or historic core of Jerusalem.”  Moses is the Last Person, not next-to-last-person, in the past 3,000 years who’d have told this to Bibi.

To quote two authoritative works in support:

Deuteronomy 34, 1-4:  “And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho.  And the Lord showed him all the land, even Gilead as far as Dan; and all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, as far as the hinder sea; and the South and the Plain, even the valley of Jericho the city of palm-trees, as far as Zoar.  And the Lord said unto him: ‘This is the land that I swore unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying: I will give it unto thy seed; I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither.’”

Wikipedia:  “Mount Nebo … is an elevated ridge in Jordan, approximately 817 metres (2,680 ft) above sea level, mentioned in the Bible as the place where Moses was granted a view of the Promised Land.  The view from the summit provides a panorama of the Holy Land and, to the north, a more limited view of the River Jordan.  The West Bank city of Jericho is usually visible from the summit, as is Jerusalem on a very clear day.”

What side of Jerusalem?  “East.”  And “the green line,” which the prophet Moses, per the Inq, would have told Bibi made Jews in Judea, Samaria and heart of Jerusalem “settlers”?  Nah, it wouldn’t be drawn yet – and then, as a mere military ceasefire line, expressly not as a border – for longer than three thousand years.

Regards,
Jerry