#778 Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert

To:       Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From:   Jerry Verlin, Editor  (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj:    Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #778, 11/29/15

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG:  Not a day went by this busy week that the Arab-Jewish conflict was not in the Inq.  Its headlines Friday and Saturday of Israelis killing “Palestinians” with no reason given were particularly one-sided, but even the Inq’s sources’ news article text, which described specific instances as attacks by Arabs on Jews, described the general scene in directionless “wave of violence” terms.  And the AP’s underlying reference to “Palestinian frustration over Israeli occupation” goes beyond “explaining” the violence.  It’s a question-begging one-sided news article characterization of basic Palestine equities that has to be fought.

This Week In The Inq:  “Israeli Forces Kill Three Palestinians … 2 Palestinians Shot”  [There’s a bit more to the stories]

***  This Friday’s Philadelphia Inquirer  (Inq, Fri, 11/27/15, A2) headlined

Israeli Forces Kill Three Palestinians

There was a little more to the story than that marauding trigger-happy Israeli soldiers randomly singled out and mowed down three peaceable folks whose involvement in the situation was no more than their being “Palestinian.”

Per the Inq’s AP article text:  In the first of the three incidents Palestinian Arabs “hurled firebombs and stones at the troops” as they searched an Arab village for assailants (paragraph 2).  In the second, near Nablus, “Israeli border guards shot and killed a Palestinian attacker wielding a knife” (par. 4). The third was killed in clashes with soldiers near Hebron.  “The Israeli military said the Palestinian was about to throw a firebomb at passing traffic” (par. 7).

“… hurled firebombs and stones at the troops … attacker wielding a knife … about to throw a firebomb at passing traffic.”  Was any sense whatever of this conveyed to the public by the Inq’s one-sided headline “Israeli Forces Kill Three Palestinians”?

***  The next day, Saturday (Inq, Sat, 11/28/15, A6, AP) the Inq headlined a single paragraph AP squib

West Bank: 2 Palestinians Shot

Seems like they were just standing there minding their own business.  But they weren’t.  AP lede:

Israeli troops shot and killed two Palestinians after they rammed their cars into soldiers in separate West Bank attacks Friday.  At least eight soldiers were injured.

Would not a headline “2 Arabs Ramming Cars into Israeli Soldiers Shot by Troops” have conveyed to Inq readers a more balanced sense of what actually happened than did “2 Palestinians Shot”?

***  Last Sunday’s (Inq, Sun, 11/22/15, A6) Inq passively headlined an AP squib

Israel: 4 Wounded in Stabbings

The AP article actively led: “An assailant stabbed and wounded four Israelis, including a 13-year-old girl, in southern Israel on Saturday before fleeing….”  The escaped attacker was not positively identified as Arab, though the police reasonably said “the stabbing attacks appeared to be ideologically driven, rather than criminal.”  But the identities of the stabbing victims were known, and the Inq should have headlined them as such:  “Attacker Stabs 4 Israelis,” rather than “4 [unidentified victims] Wounded in Stabbings.”

***  In a more balanced interlude Thursday (Inq, Thu, 11/26/15, A5), the Inq’s headline did  more accurately reflect its AP article’s lede.  Inq:

Israelis Kill Palestinian Attacker

Inq AP article lede: “A Palestinian assailant was shot and killed by Israeli forces after stabbing and seriously wounding an Israeli soldier in the West Bank ….”  Still, it would have been refreshing to have seen Thursday a headline not leading “Israelis Kill ..,” but reflecting the actual sequence of the events, e.g., “Palestinian Attacks Israeli Soldier, Killed by Troops.”

***   But it was Monday’s (Inq, Mon, 11/23/15, A9) Inq headline that expressly stated the impression that the Inq et ilk purvey:

Violence Roils West Bank on Eve of Visit by Kerry

Sub-head: “An Israeli and 3 Palestinians died in separate incidents.”

Here’s the extent to which the AP’s article text supported the Inq’s headline “Violence Roils” instead of headline stating where the violence was coming from:  First incident:  “… a Palestinian woman attacked her with a knife … stabbed numerous times in the head, chest, and the area of the heart … died despite attempts by medics to save her ….”  Second incident:  “a female assailant pulled out a knife and began approaching civilians.”  Third incident:  “… a Palestinian driving a taxi cab tried to run over Israelis … after crashing his car, he emerged with a knife and tried to stab people….”  Ah, yes, directionless “Violence Roils.”

And even though the Inq’s news article providers’ article text used terms like “stabbing attacks” (Tuesday) , “Palestinian assailant” (Thursday), “Palestinian attacker” (Friday), “rammed their cars into soldiers” (Saturday), in describing the specific attacks, those wire service articles themselves fell back into “violence roils” equivalents in describing the overall scene:

* AP, Sunday:  “… a two-month spree of violence”

* AP, Monday:  “… flare-up of violence … two-month wave of violence”

* WP, Tuesday:  “The latest round of violence …”

* AP, Thursday:  “… an unrelenting, two-month wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence”

* AP, Friday:  “ … a two-month wave of violence”

Compare against this week’s Inq’s stream of Sunday-Monday-Tuesday-Thursday-Friday article text collection of “spree of violence … flare-up of violence, wave of violence … round of violence … wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence … wave of violence” one lone pointedly accurate Washington Post description of the violence in its article in this Wednesday’s Inq:  “the wave of stabbings, shootings and vehicular assaults ….”

Still, our Inq’s own headlines Friday, “Israeli Forces Kill Three Palestinians,” and Saturday, “2 Palestinians Shot,” take the one-sided reporting prize for going beyond portraying this “wave of stabbings, shootings and vehicular assaults” as a directionless “wave of violence” to portraying Israelis killing (less than peaceable) people with no headlined connection to being killed beyond being “Palestinian.”

And underlying it all is Western media begging of the basic question of legitimacy of Palestine presence.  The AP this week in the Inq Thursday repeated MSM news reporting on numerous occasions:  “The Palestinians say the violence is rooted in frustration over nearly a half century of Israeli occupation and lack of hope for obtaining independence.”  We cannot acquiesce in this question-begging mainstream Western media framing of the long conflict between Arabs and Jews.  This requires of us two things: making the legal and historical case of the land of Israel, i.e., Palestine west of the Jordan, including Judea, Samaria and historic Jerusalem, as the Jewish people’s national home; and ourselves abandoning our own self-denigrating use of the poisoned pejoratives – not just “occupation,” but all of them – that delegitimize the land of Israel as the Jewish people’s national home.

Regards,
Jerry