#757 Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert

To:       Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From:   Jerry Verlin, Editor  (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj:    Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #757, 7/5/15

This Week In The World:  “Violations of International Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Including East Jerusalem”

The Times of Israel on Friday printed the full text of this week’s UNHRC resolution on which the great democracies of Europe – England, France, Germany – put their hecksher, affirmative vote, stamp of approval.  For the benefit of any who labor under the delusion that just because this document referred to “the Gaza conflict” twelve times in its three pages that it’s just about Gaza, here’s how the august international institution that perpetrated this Resolution titled it:

Ensuring Accountability and Justice for All Violations of International Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem

But what’s the “media watch” relevance?  The document is a triumph of acceptance of, inter alia, Western media-pushed “Palestinian narrative” perspective and terminology.  As private persons, where we can have an effect is in ourselves rejecting and then publicly contesting these Jewish homeland-delegitimizing terms and perspectives the Western media spreads.

In that context, let’s take a closer look at this Resolution, which merely just starts with “Gaza.”

The Gaza Conflict”:  Begin with presuming that any term the UN uses in reference to the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine is prima facie slanted against us, and this goes a dozen times for an expression the UN uses a dozen times in three pages.

The UN’s own report that’s the starting point for this week’s UNHRC resolution states that while Israel carried out more than 6,000 air strikes in Gaza, “Hamas fired 4,881 rockets and 1,753 mortars toward Israel.”   So it wasn’t just a conflict in “Gaza,” and pro-Israel Western media watchers should contest media characterization of last summer’s Israel-Hamas war as “the conflict in Gaza.”

Civilian Casualty Count:  This week’s UNHRC resolution states as fact “the killing of 1,462 Palestinian civilians, including 551 children and 299 women, and six Israeli civilians.”  The nations that voted for this week’s UNHRC resolution, including England, Germany and France, had before them Israel’s recent report challenging in detail the UN report’s calculation.  Yet the Israeli report was completely ignored and the UN report, which the resolution called an “independent commission of inquiry,” accepted as Gospel.

Palestine”:  “Palestine,” which the Romans came up with to disassociate Judaea from Jews, is not inherently a dirty-word. Authors of celebrated pro-Israel books – James Parkes, Joan Peters, Samuel Katz – weren’t afraid to put “Palestine” in their works’ sub-titles. It only becomes a dirty-word when we allow it to be used, sans protest, with exclusive reference to Arabs.  Now here’s this week’s UNHRC resolution’s preamble: “… Noting the accession by Palestine [as though it were a State] to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on 2 January 2015.”  [Nice touch here by “The Palestinians.”]

Putting “an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967”:   Preamble again:  “Stressing the urgency of achieving without delay an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967.”

And, finally, over and over [emphasis added, but not by much]:

Resolution title: “Ensuring Accountability and Justice For All Violations of international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” [how highly precise a title for a Resolution supposedly adopting what the Resolution called an “independent commission of inquiry on the 2014 Gaza conflict.”

Preamble paragraph:  “… the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, which is applicable to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”

Preamble paragraph:   “Deploring the non-cooperation by Israel with the independent commission of inquiry on the 2014 Gaza conflict and the refusal to grant access to or to cooperate with the international human rights bodies seeking to investigate alleged violations of international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”

Operative paragraph 6:  “[The Human Rights Council] Calls upon all States to promote compliance with human rights obligations and all High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to respect, and to ensure respect for, international humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem ….”

This is the august United Nations institution that has not just censured Israel more times than any other nation on Earth, but more times than every other nation on Earth put together.  And this week, Germany, France and England all endorsed this latest addendum.

So, how we doin’, guys, in the media news coverage and other public perceptions wars?

Back in BSMW #364 in 2007, I opined that a “silver lining” in Hamas’ takeover of Gaza might be that the media wouldn’t cut Hamas as much slack in taking on the Jewish homeland as it did the “moderate” Abbas.  I wasn’t just wrong about the media, but the world, including not just Arabs and other Muslims sworn to destroy us, but, e.g., Germany, England and France.

So, now what?  I’ve long felt that what Israel’s new deputy foreign minister said recently – that making our case that the land of Israel is Jewish land – is what Israel must do.  It might start by adopting the Levy report that Jewish presence in Judea-Samaria is not “occupation,” and building alongside Yad Vashem, as part of visiting foreign dignitaries’ (and publics’) tours, a museum dedicated to showing Jews’ continuous homeland presence for three thousand years, and that modern Israel, capital Jerusalem, is the land of Israel’s next native state following Jerusalem-capitaled Jewish Judaea.

And us, here in the U.S.?  I think we have to get serious about not ourselves using the Western media’s anti-Israel loaded lexicon, and getting Jewish leaders and pundits to stop, and then challenge the Western media’s use of it.

Have a great U.S. Independence holiday weekend.

Regards,
Jerry