#762 Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert

To:       Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From:   Jerry Verlin, Editor  (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj:    Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #762, 8/9/15

This Week In The Inq:  Not a Hint It Might Not Have Been Jews

Three news articles this week in the Philadelphia Inquirer (Inq) dealt with the horrendous arson attack in “a Palestinian village” [Washington Post expression this week in the Inq;  note that only Arabs have “villages,” Jews just have “settlements”] last week that that murdered a young Arab child and his father, critically burned other family members, and left graffiti in Hebrew scrawled on the walls.  Israel has expressed profound sorrow and arrested, not specifically for this offense, Israelis associated with violence-espousing groups, but no one – as of this writing – has been arrested or specifically accused of this crime.

There was no hint in any of the Inq’s three articles this week that, despite the Hebrew graffiti, the perpetrators of this murderous arson may not have been Jews.  We’ll look at these articles’ language below.  Yet the plausibility of such a possibility, that these murderous arsonists were Arabs, not Jews, far transcends wishful thinking of naturally horrified Israeli and diaspora Jews.  Many sources, including the Jewish press, have publicly stated these significant inconsistencies with the likelihood of Jewish perpetration, and the Western media should have viewed itself obligated to include them in news articles citing the in-Hebrew graffiti.

Two substantial inconsistencies relate to [1] the physical location and ownership of the two houses targeted, and [2] peculiarities in the in-Hebrew graffiti.

[1]  Location of attacked homes was more consistent with targeting in long-running local family feud than random attack by outsiders:

Commentator Arlene Kushner cited the Facebook comments of a Jew who actually went to the Arab village, Duma, to pay his condolences, but was restricted to being photographed alongside the graffiti and then warned for his safety to “leave fast.”  He cited reports “of an ongoing 18-year feud between two clans in Duma that might be related to the murderous arson.”  He cited “curious aspects”:

“I would start with the fact that the two houses [an empty one was also firebombed] are located in the center of the village, and that in order to get there we had to travel a number of minutes from the entrance. Duma is spread out over a gigantic area, and the houses are situated at the end of a winding road, among fences and yards.
“According to the Duma version, the attackers burnt one house, then saw that it was empty, and so they went to set fire to the next house. The second house is enclosed by a fence, and the windows are covered by a dense lattice; a firebomb cannot be hurled through the windows, and in any event it is very hard to reach the windows behind the fence….”

Kushner, acknowledging that the perpetrators may yet turn out to have been Jews, observed that when terrorists attack a village they typically randomly hit houses close to its periphery.

Arlene then pushed this peculiarity for a random attack on unknown owners’ homes “one step further.”  Two homes were attacked by the arsonists.  One was empty, the owning family having been delayed during an out-of-town visit.  Their last name was the same as that of the family living in the second house; they are in fact cousins.  Is this more suggestive of coincidence in an outsider attack on two random homes than of targeting in an in-town family feud?  And the arsonists torched the back room of one of the houses, where the family typically slept on hot summer nights, a personal family habit presumably unknown to outsider random attackers.

[2]  Peculiarities in the Hebrew graffiti suggest non-familiarity with the language itself and referenced people:  

A Jewish Press article this morning noted that although “the working assumption by most protestors at this point is that the terrorists were Jewish because the graffiti on the wall of the home was written in Hebrew,” yet “due to the content and calligraphic elements of the writing, the ethnicity and identity of the terrorists is not quite that clear.”

Tantalizing, but what are they talking about?

Arlene Kushner put it this way:

Some commentators have taken a close look at that “HaMelech HaMoshiach” graffiti.  Clearly, it suggests, or is deliberately designed to suggest, a “radical religious settler.”  However, this specific term is directly associated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement today. (If you doubt it, Google it and you will see.)  But Chabad – probably the most open and moderate of hassidic groups – is really not likely to be associated with terrorism. Was this term written by a radical religious settler?  Or by an Arab who wrote Hebrew and got his religious groups just a tad mixed up?

A Jewish Press article Thursday on ZOA’s Mort Klein’s doubts on the perpetrators being Jewish cited several instances in which claimed “price tag” attacks by Jews involved “suspicious” vocabulary and syntax.  The article stated:

One of the two graffiti slogans on the walls of the Duma house, stating “Long live the King Messiah,” with a little, slanted crown over the last word, is also questionable, as has been pointed out by some experts.

The choice of the slogan itself, which is decidedly related to the Chabad Chassidic movement, is curious, although it doesn’t rule out the possibility that an “extremist Jew” wrote it.

The handwriting has four suspicious features:

  1. The letter Khaf at the end of Melech was clearly first written as a midword khaf, and then a line was added, to make it a final khaf. It’s an afterthought, possibly by someone who is not well versed in writing Hebrew.
  1. The two letters Heh in the beginning of the second and third words are completely different from one another.
  1. Likewise the two letters Chet in the first and third words.
  1. Likewise the two letters Mem in the second and third words. Again, not being well versed in handwritten Hebrew does not rule out a Jewish perpetrator, but it certainly raises the possibility that they weren’t Jewish.

With that as surrounding circumstances background, let’s look at how the Philadelphia Inquirer, our hometown Inq, for one mainstream Western newspaper, presented the circumstances of this murderous arson attack on Monday, Wednesday and Friday this week to its readers.

***  Monday’s Inq carried a brief “Around the World” squib (Inq, Mon, 8/3/15, A6, Washington Post), “Israel: New Steps Against Violence Urged.”  The squib began by citing Israeli leaders’ proposed measures “to curb ‘Jewish terrorism,’” following a wave of extremist violence, citing specifically [a] the gay pride parade stabbing of a Jewish teen “by a Jewish extremist”; [b] “Jewish settlers clashing with government forces at a West Bank settlement”; and [c] “an arson attack in a Palestinian village that left a toddler burned to death.”

It’s true that unlike the first two of the three instances cited for the Israeli leaders’ “harsh new measures Sunday to curb ‘Jewish terrorism’,” this third example of “an arson attack in a Palestinian village” didn’t literally say “by a Jewish extremist,” as did the first example, or “Jewish settlers,” as did the second, but it’s doubtful that readers would think that perpetrator ethnic identity in that third case explaining “harsh new measures Sunday to curb ‘Jewish terrorism’” is in issue.  The Washington Post and Inq should have made the uncertainty clear.

***  Wednesday’s Inq’s full AP article (Inq, Wed, 8/5/15, A6) likewise closely associated that arson attack with “Jewish terrorism” [this time not putting ‘Jewish terrorism’ in quotes] without literally stating the ethnic identity of who did it.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged “zero tolerance” for Jewish terrorism following two deadly attacks by extremists.  The attack that killed 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh and severely injured his parents [the father has since died] and 4-year-old brother in the West Bank came a day after an anti-gay ultra-Orthodox man stabbed a 16-year-old Israeli girl during a rampage against marchers at Jerusalem’s gay pride parade.

Ask yourself:  Could you conjure a more effective way of attributing “the attack that killed 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh” to Jews, without literally saying so, than by sandwiching it between [a] Israel’s P.M. pledging “’zero tolerance’ for Jewish [emphasis added?] terrorism following two deadly attacks by extremists” and [b] an “an ultra-Orthodox man” stabbing a 16-year-old girl at a parade?  Chalk one up for the AP.

***  Friday’s Inq’s AP article (Inq, Fri, 8/7/15, A2, AP) was about an Arab motorist ramming his car into Israeli soldiers.  AP:

The incident comes as tensions between Israelis and Palestinians are high after the torching of a Palestinian home in the West Bank last week by suspected Jewish extremists ….

What’s in fact suspect here is the AP’s placement of “suspected.”  The article’s sentence leaves no doubt that Jews of some stripe torched the Palestinian Arabs’ home.  The thing that’s only “suspected” here (and that rhetorically), per the AP, is whether those Jews are “extremists.”  What the AP should have written was “the torching of a Palestinian Arab’s home by unknown perpetrators widely suspected to have been Jewish extremists [despite the central location of the house in the village, the torching of the second house of the cousin’s, the 18-year family feud, the misuse of Hebrew, etc., etc.]”   Just an inadvertent misplacement of “suspected” here by amateur wordsmiths?  Don’t bet your bibi.

Regards,
Jerry