#805 6/5/16 This Week Out-of-Place in a Prominent Pro-Israel Op-Ed: Language Our Enemies Religiously Use

 

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG:  This week again, a stalwart defender of Israel gratuitously employed Jewish homeland-delegitimizing terms in a prominent article defending that homeland.  Tired of cursing the darkness?  So come light a candle with us.

This Week Out-of-Place in a Prominent Pro-Israel Op-ed:  Language Our Enemies Religiously Use

Last week’s BSMW #804 quoted a Middle East Forum article ably arguing that Israel’s new defense minister is not “ultra-nationalist,” which much of the mainstream media has contended, but holds views “squarely rooted in principles that most Israelis accept and make good sense.”  Still, our #804 took issue with some of the terms used in that article – including “West Bank settlement” and “the 1967 borders” – that carry Jewish homeland delegitimizing connotations, which explains why our adversaries use them religiously.  (I emailed the author, offering to run his response to #804 in this week’s #805, but received no reply.)

Again this week, as most weeks, a prominent article by a stalwart Israel defender likewise contained expressions denigrating Jewish connection to the homeland of Jews.

But first, look at Arutz Sheva (Sun, 6/5/16, “Abbas Demands Jerusalem on ‘Naksa [sic, the “1967 setback” sequel to the “1948 setback’s” ‘Nakba’] Day’”) this morning, quoting the latest peace pronouncements of Abbas.  It quotes him as not accepting “anything less than a full end to the Israeli occupation which began in the June 1967 war,” including “the establishment of an independent sovereign Palestinian state whose capital is east Jerusalem on the ’67 borders.”  (emphasis added)  Abbas added: “The Palestinian side refuses any attempt to change the Arab initiative, as was decided upon in the Arab summit of 2002,” which called, inter alia, for Israel’s complete withdrawal to what Arutz Sheva refreshingly accurately called “the 1949 Armistice lines.” (emphasis added)  [BTW, ever seen His Moderateness Mr. Abbas called “ultra-nationalist” in the MSM?]

And take a quick look to at how Reuters on Thursday (6/2/16, “US Not Bringing Specific Proposals to Middle East Peace Talks in Paris”) characterized Palestinian Arabs’ complaint:

The Palestinians say Israeli settlement expansion denies them a viable state they seek in the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip and a capital in Arab East Jerusalem.  (emphasis added)

That was not a direct quote of Abbas.  It was Reuters’ own words – “the occupied West Bank . . . Arab East Jerusalem” – describing the areas claimed by Palestinian Arabs.

Now consider superb Israel defender Charles Krauthammer’s column Thursday (6/2/16) in the Washington Post, “Lovable Bernie Whacks Israel,” in which he wrote that convention platforms over time record a political party’s trajectory.  This, wrote Krauthammer, is what makes Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ platform committee picks of two activists who, the New York Times reported, “vowed to upend what they see as the party’s lopsided support of Israel,” so “stunning.”  Krauthammer wrote that one of Sanders’ picks contends “occupation is unconscionable oppression and that until Israel abandons it, Israel deserves to be treated like apartheid South Africa.”

This is “logically and morally perverse,” Krauthammer wrote, because Israel “terminated its occupation and evacuated Gaza,” with bad results, and “is now being asked – pressured – to repeat that same disaster on the West Bank,” adjacent to Israel’s heart.

Krauthammer’s point is that not-taken-seriously Sanders’ platform committee picks “show he does take certain things quite seriously, like undermining the U.S.-Israeli relationship.”  The point for us, though, is not what the Democratic Party or even what the United States and Israel should do.  The point for us is that when Israel is attacked for “occupying the West Bank,” advocates for Israel should not concede that what was called “Judea and Samaria” – Hebrew-origin names – for three millennia is “the West Bank,” coined by actually-occupying Jordan in 1950 to disassociate the land of Israel’s hill-country heartland from Jews, or that Jewish presence there is “occupation” – the claim debunked by the Levy Commission report.

Is saying “It’s Judea-Samaria, not ‘the West Bank,’ and homeland Jewish presence there is not ‘occupation,’” not more effective, not to say self-respecting, than saying, “Well, we ended our occupation of Gaza, and that didn’t work out so well, so we’re reluctant just now to end our occupation of the West Bank”?

***  Does it disappoint you that stalwart outspoken defenders of Israel gratuitously use terms intentionally designed to delegitimize Jewish presence in Israel?

***  If an organized concerted effort were commenced to enlist grassroots Israel supporters in making the case that we hurt our own cause by ourselves using terms that were designed by their designers to delegitimize us, would you enlist in that effort by, e.g., receiving periodic emails and on occasion responding in your own words to the Israel advocate gratuitously using such terms?

Such an effort is in the initial throes of being organized.  Becoming part is as simple as saying jverlin1234.  (Ok, @verizon.net)