#780 Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert

To:       Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From:   Jerry Verlin, Editor  (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj:    Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #780, 12/13/15

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG:  Our Philadelphia Inquirer (Inq) ran a one-sided photo caption this week, omitting that “settlers” who “took over” an “East” Jerusalem building from “evicted Palestinian families” had done so at the end of 7-years’ litigation during which they had offered the Arabs substantial compensation which some of them accepted.  But the great damage done was in the MSM’s contrast, in Jerusalem, of “Palestinians” versus “settlers.”

This Week In The Inq:  “East” Jerusalem Building “Taken Over By Settlers After Palestinian Families Were Evicted”  [There’s a bit more to the story]

There are several things to notice about the Philadelphia Inquirer’s  Inq-captioned photo that it chose to accompany its AP article, “Netanyahu Rejects ‘Binational’ Remarks” on Monday (Inq, Mon, 12/7/15, A13) this week in the Inq.  That Inq photo caption ran:

An Israeli flag hangs on a building, in the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem, that was taken over by settlers after Palestinian families were evicted.   Mahmoud Illean/AP

[1]  There’s a Bit More to the Photo’s Story than Appears in the Caption:  There’s a bit more to this Inq photo caption’s story than that “Palestinian families were evicted” and the building “was taken over by settlers,”  as though the whole thing occurred in one night.

[a]  The eviction came after the Palestinian Arab families, the Abu Nab clan, “lost a lengthy [7-year] legal battle over the ownership of the building” (Haaretz news article, 10/19/15, see [2] below re this 10/19 date).   (The one-story property had been a Yemenite synagogue before Jews were evicted from that part of Jerusalem in the many-Jews-murdered Arab Jerusalem riots of 1929.)

[b]  “Half of the structure was taken over by settlers two [now four] months ago, after the [Israeli plaintiff] NGO reached an agreement with some family members to leave willingly in return for compensation.”  (Haaretz, 10/19/15).

[c]  “Two [now ten] weeks ago the rest of the Abu Nab clan who live in the other half of the building got an eviction notice, after they refused offers of compensation to move.”  (Haaretz, 10/19/15).  One internet source, Mondoweiss.net, quoted an Abu Nab clan member that “up until the eviction settlers offered him nearly $800,000 for the home.”

The Inq’s photo caption this week – “taken over by settlers after Palestinian families were evicted” – conveys to Inq readers no sense whatever that they were not summarily evicted, but at the conclusion of seven years’ litigation in which they participated, that some of the clan had left “willingly in return for compensation,” and that the holdouts had been offered high six-figure compensation “up until the [post-litigation] eviction.”   The Inq’s omissions made the Inq’s photo caption misleading in the extreme.

[2]  Non-current Photo Not Marked as “File”:  This very photo that graced the Inq’s news article Monday 12/7 this week was also published the day before, 12/6, on “NewsOK” on the internet, above the caption:

“FILE – In this Monday, Oct. 19, 2015, file photo, an Israeli flag hangs of the wall of a building that was taken over by Israeli settlers after Palestinian families were evicted in the Silwan neighborhood of east Jerusalem. . . . (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean, File)

The only differences are [a] the Inq capitalized the ‘e’ in “East Jerusalem,” and [b] left off “File.”  (The 10/19 AP photo relates to the 10/19 post-litigation Arabs’ eviction from the old synagogue building that was the subject of the Haaretz news article on that date.)

[3]  The Photo’s Story was Not Part of Monday’s News Article:  No reference to the old synagogue building depicted in the 10/19 AP photo appeared in the news article with which the Inq adorned it this week.

Monday’s AP article began, as the Inq’s headline reflected, with Kerry warning that Israel, “through its continued West Bank occupation,” risks becoming a “’binational state,’” and Netanyahu rejecting that warning.  It went on that “despite Netanyahu’s pledges” of seeking peace, “Jewish settlement of the West Bank continues apace, while confusion over his true intensions grows by the day.”  The article then went on to report on the “wave of stabbings and other attacks by Palestinian individuals, now in its third month,” citing two instances Sunday, one of a man who stabbed several Israelis and one of a man who “crashed his car into two young people walking on a sidewalk in Jerusalem” and then stabbed a police officer, both before being killed.  The article ended with both sides’ views of “the current spate of violence,” Israel claiming Palestinian Arab incitement and Palestinian Arabs claiming frustration over failed talks and not getting statehood.

More balanced and relevant than a one-sidedly captioned file photo of what the Inq seems to view as “[Arab] East” Jerusalem block-busting by Jews would have been, e.g., photos of civilian Jewish victims of these Arab attacks, of Kerry warning of Israel’s looming “bi-national” fate, or of Bibi rejecting that warning, all actually referenced in the Inq’s AP article.

[4]  Inq et ilk Photo Caption Language Purveys Contested Arab Jerusalem Claim:  What really matters runs deeper than that the Inq’s and other news disseminators’ October and December captions to this AP October photo left out its origins as a Jerusalem synagogue, left out that the Jews had been forced out in murderous riots , left out that the Arabs’ eviction had come at the end of seven years’ litigation in which they participated, and left out that the Jews “taking over” had offered the Arabs large compensation, some of whom accepted it, leaving willingly (Haaretz’ term).

What really matters is the loaded lexicon of poisoned pejoratives through which the mainstream Western media (“MSM”), as here, purveys the fundamental struggle between Jews and Arabs over historic Jerusalem.

Jews adamantly reject that Jews are “settlers” in any part of Jerusalem, including the historical core of the nineteenth century-on Jewish majority city that the MSM insistently labels “East.”

Pitting “Jewish settlers” versus “Palestinians” in the contest for Jerusalem is a long-standing anti-Jewish imbalance of our hometown Inq.  E.g.:  BSMW #170 back in 2004 cited an Inquirer Staff Writer article by then owner Knight Ridder reporter Nelson.  Headlined “Arrival of Jewish Settlers Spurs Clash in Jerusalem,” this Inq Staff Writer article (Inq, 4/1/04, A2), using the slurs “settlers” and “settlements,” rubbed in ten times as “settlers” Jews, who, like the Jews referenced in this Monday’s Inq’s caption to its October AP photo, were seeking to restore Jewish presence in portions of Israel’s capital city from which Jews had been evicted in Arab riots.  Inq article:

The settlers intended to reestablish a Jewish presence in what had been a Yemenite Jewish village in the Silwan neighborhood until Arab riots in the 1920’s and ‘30’s drove the Jewish residents out.

Look again at our Inq’s photo caption on Monday:

An Israeli flag hangs on a building, in the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem, that was taken over by settlers after Palestinian families were evicted.

As with that Inq 2004 headline – “Arrival of Jewish Settlers Spurs Clash in Jerusalem” – a decade ago, it was a Western media contrast of “Palestinian” versus “Jewish settler’” rights in “East” Jerusalem that the Inq et ilk purveyed to Western readers this Hannukah week.

I would have you Gentle Readers contest all of the Western media’s misleading expressions – e.g., Israel’s “continued West Bank occupation” and “Jewish settlement of the West Bank continues apace, while confusion over his [Netanyahu’s] true intentions grows by the day” [this was in a news article, folks] Monday this week in the Inq –, but even a loaded-lexicon-lasher like me would be hard-pressed to cite one doing more damage to us all, conservatives like me and liberals like some of you, in Americans’ eyes than the MSM insistently dismissing Jews in historic Jerusalem as  “Jewish settlers.”

Regards,
Jerry