#763 Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert

To:       Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From:   Jerry Verlin, Editor  (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj:    Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #763, 8/16/15

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG:  Ok, You-Who-Put-Up-With-Me-Weekly, it’s only Thursday, so I jumped the gun a couple days on #763, which you’d expect in your inbox on Sunday.  This weekend – kids and grandkids along – we’re off to the shore where we’ve all rented a house for two weeks.  Likely, there won’t be a BSMW next week, so let me leave those of you who’ve already been to the shore or wherever with what has long seemed to me the bottom line in contending against anti-Israel media bias. 

We must reject the lexicon – loaded, all of it – in which the media purveys the Arab-Jewish conflict to Western publics.  The good news – which Lee and I illustrate with a Charlton Heston slide in our “Media Bias From A-to-Z” Powerpoint presentation – is that these loaded words weren’t Written In Stone three thousand years ago, but are post-Israel independence creations.   The language in the United Nations’ own 1947 partition resolution, shortly pre-dating today’s loaded terms’ introduction, is a starting-point for evaluating how grievously far we’ve allowed the terminology of Arab-Jewish conflict reporting to be twisted against us.  Come see.

Job #1 in Fighting Anti-Israel Media Bias:  Rejecting the Terminology of Arab-Jewish Conflict Reporting

Media Myth:  “The U.N. sought to partition Palestine between Palestinians and Jews”

 

Now, that sounds fair and balanced, doesn’t it?  Partitioning Palestine between Palestinians and Jews is akin to partitioning Philadelphia between Philadelphians and Jews, Pennsylvania between Pennsylvanians and Jews, the sometimes-planet Pluto between Plutonians and Jews, anyplace between natives exclusively bearing the name of that place and outsiders.

Here’s the mainstream media (“MSM”) “describing” the U.N. partition resolution:

AP, 2/28/09:  “separate Jewish and Palestinian states,” Philadelphia Inquirer (Inq) headlined as “separate states for Palestinians and Jews”

AP, 3/16/08,  “… envisioned Jewish and Palestinian states”

McClatchy, 5/8/08:  “proposed separate Jewish and Palestinian states”

Now, here’s what the U.N. really said (over and over and over), not Palestine’s partition into “Palestinian and Jewish States” but into “Arab and Jewish States.”

“Independent Arab and Jewish States … the Arab State, the Jewish State … Arab and Jewish States … Arab and Jewish States … the Arab and Jewish States … the Arab and Jewish Provisional Councils of Government … the Arab and Jewish States” [and many more times]

And:  Did the U.N. refer to Palestine’s Arabs as “Palestinians”?  Yes, it did, but it referred to Palestine’s Jews as “Palestinians” too:

“… the peaceful development of the mutual relations between the two Palestinian peoples throughout the Holy Land” [emphasis added]

And, btw, when the MSM misportrays Israel demanding “Jewish” state recognition as a “new stumbling block to Mideast peace talks,” as in Philadelphia Inquirer headline 10/24/10:

“A New Stumbling Block to Mideast Peace Talks; Israel Presses Palestinians to Recognize ‘Jewish’ State” you can quote the U.N. that Jewish state recognition is neither new nor a stumbling block, but what the U.N.’s 1947 Palestine partition resolution was half about.

So how far have we meekly and passively let the terminology slide, to our great detriment, since the United Nations’ own terminology of 1947?  Shamefully far!

Media Myth:  “‘Judea-Samaria’” is the ‘biblical’ term for ‘the West Bank’”

 

E.g., New York Times (Bronner), quoting Netanyahu, 10/3/10:

“‘Everyone knows that restrained and moderate building in Judea and Samaria in the coming year will not affect the peace map at all,’ he [Bibi] said, according to the [Israeli] officials, using the biblical term for the West Bank.”  [emphasis added]

 

Here’s the term the U.N. used in CE 1947:

“The boundary of the hill country of Samaria and Judea starts on the Jordan River …. [emphasis added]

“Judea and Samaria” as “the biblical term”?  Indeed, but not just the biblical term.  The term used throughout history.

Amb. Yoram Ettinger, Israel Hayom, 12/16/11:

“In April 1950, the Jordanian occupation renamed Judea/Samaria as ‘the West Bank’ to assert Jordanian rule and to expunge Jewish connection to the cradle of Jewish history.  Until 1950, all official Ottoman, British and prior records referred to ‘Judea and Samaria’ and not to the ‘West Bank.’”

In my first book, Israel 3000 Years: The Jewish People’s 3000 Presence in Palestine, I quote a Christian pilgrim, one Saewulf, who came in 1102, on the heels of the Crusaders.  He wrote:

“On this side of the Jordan is the region called Judea, as far as the sea.”

When you accost Jews, including some of our otherwise most able advocates, who use “West Bank” in making the case of our homeland, some of them will sheepishly smile and tell you “the battle over ‘West Bank’ has long been lost, and I’m not going to fight it.”  Some seem to wear “West Bank” on their shirt sleeve, even their shoulder.  They should ask themselves, So how well are we doing out there in the world, guys, making the case of our homeland?

The Jewish homeland delegitimizing terms cynically replacing the historical terms the U.N. itself used in 1947 – “West Bank,” in place of the U.N.’s “Samaria and Judea”;  “Palestinian and Jewish States,” in place of the U.N.’s “Arab and Jewish States”;  Arabs as “the Palestinians” in place of the U.N. calling Palestine’s Jews and Arabs “the two Palestinian peoples” – are but the tip of the iceberg of the Jewish homeland delegitimizing lexicon in which the mainstream Western media revels.

Some “unsubscribe” emails I get resignedly say “the media will never change, so give it up.”  What we can do is make vividly clear to people in the West that in parroting Arab propagandists’ terms – “West Bank, Palestinian and Jewish States, the Palestinians” – and all the rest – “Israel’s 1948 creation and founding, ‘Palestinian’ refugees of the war that followed Israel’s creation [without the invading Arab states that started that war even named, and as if there weren’t Jewish refugees of that war], Israel’s ‘1967 borders’, Jewish settlements [in pointed contradistinction to ‘Palestinian’ villages and neighborhoods in ‘the West Bank’ and ‘East’ Jerusalem, etc, etc” – the mainstream Western media is not reporting the Arab-Jewish conflict objectively, but endeavoring to poison Westerners’ perceptions against the Jewish homeland of Israel.

But how can we credibly draw such a contrast between the media’s and the historically accurate terms without ourselves smiling when we ourselves mouth these very Jewish-homeland-delegitimizing terms and phrases?

Regards,
Jerry

P.S Over the last couple years, my co-author of Pressing Israel: Media Bias Exposed From A-to-Z, Lee Bender, and I have given our Powerpoint presentation to Lee says fifty-some groups (I’ve lost count) – synagogue, church, school, fraternal groups, a wonderfully smoke and bourbon-infested cigar club, and other groups.  We make no charge for our talk, just offering of our books at a ‘book signing’ discounted price afterwards.  (Disclosure: In Amazon’s used books section, those that we signed go for less than the ones that we didn’t.)  If your group is planning its program schedule for the fall and beyond, consider our Powerpoint on media bias.  Jverlin1234@verizon.net