#751 Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert

To:       Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From:   Jerry Verlin, Editor
Subj:    Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #751, 5/24/15

This Week In The Inq:  “Dual Bus Plan” Article Typically One-Sided

Thursday this week (5/21/15, A24), the Philly Inquirer (Inq) ran a Washington Post article reporting that the Israeli government had cancelled a plan to use separate bus lines for Jews and Arabs in Judea-Samaria “within hours of being announced Wednesday after critics likened the program to apartheid.”

Neither the Washington Post nor the Inq can be faulted for telling Western publics that critics, including a quoted Israeli critic, “likened the program to apartheid.”  The article quoted “a lawmaker from the left-wing Meretz party” who “said: ‘Racist segregation has another name: apartheid.’”

Where the Washington Post and Inq can and should be faulted is, first, in the language their article used to characterize Jews and Arabs in Judea and Samaria, which presents Jews there as outsiders, “residents of West Bank settlements viewed as illegal by many of the world’s governments,” and then, more broadly, in the article’s failure to place the incendiary accusation it reported in balanced context.

Friday’s Conf. of Presidents’ Daily Alert carried squibs of two articles addressing this latest “apartheid” canard, one of which pointed out the full extent to which Israeli Arabs are part of Israeli citizenry, both as ordinary citizens and in leadership roles.  This article by someone who’d spent a quarter-century as a South Africa journalist, and has now been for 17 years an Israeli, concludes: “Put simply, there is no comparison between Israel and apartheid.”

The other Daily Alert excerpted article places this specific separation in the context of Palestinian Arab treatment of Jews – “outside Palestinian towns are signs banning Israelis from entering,” though in practice Israeli Arabs “can enter freely” and “only Jews are barred entry.”  This article concludes: “Will an Israeli Arab get on a bus designated for Israelis?  Of course, he will.  In other words, we are not talking about racial segregation but about security segregation on the backdrop of a 100-year conflict.”

What the Washington Post and Inq wrongfully left out of Thursday’s news article is that Israel’s plan for separate buses for Jews and Arabs was limited to an area in which Arabs practice exclusion of Jews, and that while Israel’s plan, based on security not racism, for two separate bus lines was immediately withdrawn, the Arab towns’ signs banning Israelis, meaning Jewish Israelis, from entering are still there.

But all this is secondary.

The primary culprit for this misleading reporting is us – not just the left-wing Jewish lawmaker  who spat out “racist segregation” and “apartheid” and got himself appreciatively quoted for that – but all of us who gratuitously denigrate the rightfulness of our own people’s presence in a key integral part of our own people’s homeland.

Example:  Thursday’s Inq’s Washington Post article quoted Isaac Herzog, Bibi’s opponent in the recent Israeli election, that “separating Palestinians and Jews on public transport” is unnecessary and “would fan flames of hatred toward Israel around the world.”

Focus on Mr. Herzog’s characterization of the two peoples resident in the area that would have been served by the two separate bus lines as “Palestinians and Jews.”  This plays into the hands of those who see “Palestinians” as Palestine’s natives and “Jews” as “settlers,” a characterization used repeatedly in Thursday’s Inq’s Washington Post article.  There is no substitute for we ourselves making the case that Jews are at least [indeed, far beyond “at least”] as at home in the land of Israel – even if you call it Palestine – as are Arabs.

“Palestine” is not a dirty word, as I quoted Begin last week pointing out – “simply the name given over the centuries by non-Jews to the country of the Jews.”  It becomes a dirty word only when we ourselves gratuitously handover complete equity in it to Arabs.

Thursday’s Inq’s Washington Post article went on to call Israel’s Jewish Home party “ultra-nationalist.”  This is the same MSM that repeatedly calls Mahmoud Abbas of a Palestinian Authority that, as we quoted Itamar Marcus last week, habitually draws maps of Palestine, sans Israel, as totally belonging to Arabs, as “moderate.”  All in the name of balanced reporting.

There was some good news this week on the internet about a new Israeli group called the Hallelu Foundation which has a video that says all the bad-mouthing of Israel is not because the whole world has gone anti-Semitic, but because “we really suck at explaining what’s really going on here.”  If you google them, you’ll get to banner: “This is the Real Israel – Not What the Media Says!”  We can go beyond wishing these self-respecting people Good Luck.  We can stop mouthing the Israel-delegitimizing terms the media says.

Regards,
Jerry