#802- NOT In the Newspaper: “Palestinian Refugees from the War that Followed Israel’s Creation”; An Invisible Sign for the Better?

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG:  What are we to make of one longtime Israel-denigrating newspaper seemingly backing off from “Israelis Kills Palestinians” [who were attacking Israelis] headlines, and omitting a “Palestinians Commemorate Displacement by Israel’s Founding” article this year on Sunday, May 15?  Hopefully, that its obsession with us is in remission, but tests will come in the next Hamas round and when the French, recently of the UNESCO no-Temple-Mount resolution, follow through with their “international peace plan.”

This Week NOT In The Inq:  “Palestinian Refugees From The War That Followed Israel’s Creation”; Invisible Sign For The Better?

To those who say that anti-Israel media bias is, like some truly subjective things, “in the eye of the beholder,” I answer with some objective standards:

  1. a) In headlining the deaths of Arab attackers at the hands of the IDF, does the newspaper’s headline state that the Arabs were the attackers, or just blare “Israelis Kill Palestinians”?
  1. b) In describing the events of 1948 (especially on or about May 15 each year), does the paper reference the U.N. partition-rejecting Arab invasion for Israel’s destruction or just blame “Palestinian refugees” on “the war that followed Israel’s creation” with the invading Arab states not even named?
  1. c) When Israel periodically finally responds to endless rocketing of its civilians from Gaza by acting to stop it, does the paper blame Hamas as the aggressor, or howl about “Israel’s invasion of Gaza” and [inevitable] damage to [rocket launcher-infested] civilian places in Gaza?
  1. d) Is the newspaper’s lexicon of Arab-Israeli conflict reporting objective and balanced, or laced with poisoned pejoratives delegitimizing the Jewish homeland of Israel?

Let’s look this May 15th week at some at some encouraging things these days not in the Inq.

[A]  Look, Ma, No Headlines on “Israelis Kill Palestinians” [who were attacking Israelis]

 As recently as six months ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer was running headlines like

“3 Palestinians Slain After Knife Attacks”

(10.18/15) as though they were innocents murdered in revenge, and not, as the Inq’s so-Inq-headlined Washington Post article led: “… three Palestinian attackers wielding knives were shot dead by Israelis ….”

 “Israelis Kill 3 Palestinians”

(10/27/15) , without mentioning that the Inq’s so-Inq-headlined European news agency’s article’s text identified all three as being involved in knife attacks on Israelis.

“Israeli Forces Kill Three Palestinians”

(11/27/15),  without referencing the Inq’s AP article’s text that one “hurled firebombs and stones,” one was “a Palestinian attacker wielding a knife,” and one “was about to throw a firebomb at passing traffic.”

All this, and more, in pointed Inq headline contrast to

“U.S. Educator Dies in Israel”

(10/28/15).  The Inq’s AP article led:  “… died Tuesday after succumbing to wounds sustained in a Palestinian attack on a bus in Jerusalem two weeks ago,” and detailed in paragraph 4: “… died of wounds sustained Oct 14, when two Palestinian men boarded a bus in Jerusalem and began shooting and stabbing passengers.”

But, in what may be good news about news, our same Inq more recently accurately headlined

“2 Palestinians Fatally Stab Israeli in Market” (2/19/16)

Knife-wielding Palestinian Killed (2/22/16)

 “Palestinian Attacks Soldier, Is Killed” (2/27/16)

Since then, more stabbing and other attacks have occurred, but I haven’t seen articles in the Inq on them.

This apparent change appears encouraging, but this is a newspaper that was capable of headlining (4/29/08) as

“Israeli Army Shoots Four Palestinians”

 an AP report that “the Israeli army shot four Palestinian militants who were trying to plant explosives near the Gaza Strip border fence,” quoting Hamas calling them its members “on a jihad mission.”

[B]  Inq,  Sunday, May 15, 2016:  No Sunday Punch re May 15, 1948

Since its inception in 2001, this media watch has railed against Inq et ilk imbalanced portrayal of 1948 as when “Palestinian refugees were displaced by the war that followed Israel’s creation.”

In the spring of 2008, in anticipation of my hometown Inq’s looming coverage of Israel’s sixtieth anniversary of its independence, we called upon BSMW readers to join in a letter, backed by a 60-page dossier of misreporting citations, to the Inq’s publishers, calling upon it

[1]  to cease referring to the Jewish homeland’s reattainment of sovereign independence as Israel’s 1948 “creation” and “founding,” as though artificial and out-of-the-blue;

[2]  to cease referring to the U.N.-partition-rejecting multi-nation 1948 Arab invasion for Israel’s destruction as “the war that followed Israel’s creation,” without the invading Arab states so much as named;

[3]  to cease referring to Arab refugees of that war started by that invasion, who were encouraged to leave by the invaders, as “Palestinian refugees of the war that followed Israel’s creation”; and

[4]  to start referring, with equal frequency and prominence, to the greater number of mostly Israel-absorbed indigenously Middle Eastern Jewish refugees who fled vast Arab and other Muslim lands in the 1948 war and its wake than Arabs left tiny Israel.

Some hundred and fifty BSMW readers joined in that letter, which did not receive a formal response, but here’s what Philly Inquirer Staff Writer Michael Matza, formerly head of the Inq’s late unlamented only-such-place-in-the-world Jerusalem Bureau, wrote on page 1 of the Inq, 5/8/08, as described in that week’s BSMW #384, modestly titled by us “One Matza Piece Does Not Make a Seder”:

 It’s not everyday that an Inquirer Staff Writer Matza piece beginning on page A1 of the Inq

***  refers to 1948 as when “Israel gained its independence from the British, “ instead of to “Israel’s’ creation” or “founding” in “1948” as though out of the blue;

***  refers to “the United Nations partition vote” and to “1947 when the United Nations adopted the partition plan,” as opposed to the “1948 creation” or “founding of Israel”;

***  and refers to multiple Arab nations’ partition-rejecting Palestine invasion intent on Israel’s destruction, not pointedly as “the war that followed Israel’s creation” without those Arab invaders so much as named, but as “when the armies of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Iraq invaded the land Israel claimed as its home.”

     Indeed, it wasn’t until this Thursday’s (5/8/08, A1, 6) Inq article’s very last paragraph that Matza reverted to “the creation of Israel and war that followed.”

Since then, of course, there have been, e.g., AP in Inq, 5/16/14 (A4): “Palestinians marched in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to commemorate their displacement in the Mideast war over Israel’s 1948 creation,” but today, Sunday, May 15, 2016, the “Nakba” – the “catastrophe” of Arab failure to perpetrate a second Holocaust three years after the end of the first – did not appear in the Inq on Israel Independence Day in the western calendar.  (But there is, of course, Monday, May 16, tomorrow.)

[C]  Israel as the Aggressor in Responding to Rockets from Gaza

 The inevitable next Israel-Hamas war will likely get the same mainstream Western media “the vast majority of Palestinian casualties are civilian” coverage that previous “war in Gaza” rounds have received in the West’s Inqs, which had such a devastating, if hopefully brief, impact on the perceptions of U.S. presidential candidate Sanders.  Against that, let’s store away for future citation how the Jerusalem Post quoted former President Clinton on Saturday this week:  “Hamas is really smart.  When they decide to rocket Israel, they insinuate themselves in the hospitals, in the schools, in the highly populous areas.”

[D]  The Loaded Lexicon of Poisoned Pejoratives

I argued last week that “West Bank” isn’t a synonym for “Judea-Samaria,” but an antonym.  As long as we ourselves use language less balanced toward the Jewish homeland than the United Nations itself used in 1947 – it called Judea-Samaria “the hill country of Samaria and Judea”; it called the two states into which it planned to partition Palestine “the Jewish State’ and “the Arab State,” not “the Jewish State” and “the Palestinian State”; and it called Palestine’s Jews and its Arabs “the two Palestinian peoples” – we are effectively estopped from blaming the media for reporting on Israel using Jewish homeland delegitimizing pejoratives.

 

So, in sum, what are we to make of the absence of “Israelis Kill Palestinians” [who were attacking Israelis] headlines, and of May 15 “Nakba” commemoration of “Palestinians’ displacement by Israel’s founding” This Week In The Inq?

Hopefully, the Inq’s obsession with the Jewish homeland of Israel is in remission.  A this-year “Nakba” test will come tomorrow, May 16, and a “vast majority of Palestinian casualties are civilian” test will come when Hamas rocketing of civilians in Israel next becomes intolerable.  Another “peace process” test will come when the French, so recently of the UNESCO resolution selling out Jewish (and Christian) Temple Mount equity down to the al-Buraq Wall Plaza, follow through on their “peace plan.”

What we can do in the meantime is clean up our own language, and bone up on our historical and legal claims to the Jewish homeland of Israel, including on Jews’ continuous three-millennia homeland-claiming presence “in spite of every discouragement” in the land in which the State of Israel is the next native state after Jewish Judaea.