#808 6/26/16 This Week in Both Parties: Talking the Plank

 

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG:  Both the Democrats and the Republicans are wrestling these days with what to say about Israel and Arabs in their July conventions’ platform planks.  Some imbalanced terms appeared in news articles on both parties’ platforms this week.  Party activists may find it a timely time to chime in.

This Week in Both Parties:  Talking the Plank

Democrats

For those who think the Democratic Party’s Israel platform plank has been resolved in a draft that “reflects Clinton’s views,” after “the committee defeated an amendment led by Zogby that would have called for providing Palestinians with ‘an end to occupation and illegal settlements’” (AP in Philadelphia Inquirer (Inq) this morning, Sunday, 6/26/16, A6, emphasis added), rethinking, alas, is in order.

The Jerusalem Post this morning headlined on line:

“Sanders Signals Fight Over Israel in DNC Platform Not Finished”

JPost this morning:  “According to an Associated Press report, the initial meeting ended with a compromise to include reference to Palestinian rights, but without any use of the terms ‘settlement activity’ or ‘occupation.’”  The JPost article stated that Sanders, in an interview, “did not push back against the characterization that he ‘lost’ his battle to alter language on Israel and the Palestinians in the Democratic Party Platform on Sunday.”  Apparently, Sanders regards the compromise excluding “occupation” as a “loss.”  The article quoted Sanders: “We lost some very important fights.  We’re going to take that fight to Orlando, where the entire committee meets in two weeks.”  (One glimmer of hope may be that the article went on that Sanders then listed a string of platform priorities “without reiterating his policies on Middle East peace.” But then perhaps his priority on that goes without saying.)

On Friday, 6/24/16, the JPost carried a Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) article on a statement released by J Street, “the liberal Middle East policy group that favors including  language sympathetic to Palestinians and Israelis in the platform.”  That Friday JTA article quoted two delegates, Ellison and Gutierrez, appointed by Sanders and Clinton, respectively, that “Israelis today live in fear of acts of terror” and “Palestinians struggle under an unjust occupation.”

A couple weeks ago, I asked those of you so inclined to join an informal group that would contact advocates not ill-disposed toward Israel who unfortunately use terms delegitimizing the Jewish homeland of Israel.  I did not envision a main U.S. political party as potentially falling into that class, but those of you who are Democrats and have contacts within that party’s apparatus that would hear your concerns might contact them to prevent totally contested “occupation,” not to say, “unjust occupation,” from ending up in the platform.

By me, Ellison’s and Gutierrez’s statement is not “even-handed” (not that in today’s not “even-handed” world, American political parties’ platform planks on the Jewish homeland should be “even-handed.”)   Even-handed would be:  “Jewish civilians should not be stabbed, shot and car-rammed by Arabs, and Arab civilians should not be stabbed, shot and car-rammed by Jews,” not that Jews should be free from terror and “Palestinians should be free from unjust occupation.”

GOP

But all of us have a bone to pick, over an article on the Republican platform, with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) in the JPost.  This JTA article Thursday, 6/23/16, on efforts by a Jewish Republican group to get the GOP platform to include

“We recognize an undivided Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and Judea and Samaria as integral parts of the indigenous Jewish homeland”

garnered this explanation in the very next paragraph by the JTA:

“Judea and Samaria are the biblical names commonly used in Israel to designate the West Bank, an area where Israel has expanded Jewish settlement over the decades ….”

I emailed this letter-to-the-editor to the Jerusalem Post:

Thursday’s Jerusalem Post’s JTA article, “Jewish PAC to Press Republicans to call West Bank ‘Jewish Homeland’” contained a grossly misleading expression by the JTA: “Judea and Samaria are the biblical names commonly used in Israel to designate the West Bank, an area where Israel has expanded Jewish settlement over the decades ….”

On the contrary, the biblical names Judea and Samaria remained in use all through the post-biblical centuries, including by the United Nations itself in its partition resolution in 1947:  “The boundary of the hill country of Samaria and Judea begins on the Jordan River ….”

“West Bank” was invented by Jordan in 1950 for the same reason the Romans renamed Judaea as Palestine – to disassociate the Jewish homeland from Jews.

The Jerusalem Post should not use Jewish news agencies that purvey misperceptions like this.