#829 11/20/16 – This Week in the Philadelphia Inquirer: [Breitbart head] Bannon Draws Allegations of Anti-Semitism Over Inflammatory Articles

 

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG:  Along with many other papers, my hometown Philly Inquirer this week ran a big article on claims that newly-appointed Trump chief-advisor Bannon and his news agency, Breitbart, are “anti-Semitic” because of “inflammatory” articles they have run.  The mainstream media should look in a mirror.

This Week in the Philadelphia Inquirer:  “[Breitbart head] Bannon Draws Allegations of Anti-Semitism Over Inflammatory Articles”

The Philadelphia Inquirer (Inq) this week (Tuesday, 11/15/16) ran this banner headline over a McClatchy news service article across the top of its front page:

“For Trump Pick, Swift Blowback

“Bannon draws allegations of anti-Semitism over inflammatory articles”

Many other papers carried similar stories.  A couple days later, I gave up virtually clipping the wave of angry responses to this national story citing claims that Breitbart Media and its head, Steve Bannon, who led Trump’s successful presidential campaign, are “anti-Semitic.”  One such response, with repeated examples showing the contrary to be true, that I’d commend to your attention is ZOA’s press release Monday, the day before the Inq ran its so-headlined McClatchy piece, that asked in its sub-headline:

“Would Pro-Israel Stalwarts/Trump advisors Gingrich, Giuliani, Pence, Kushner, Friedman, Greenblatt, Adelson Allow an Anti-Semite on Board?”

But, given that what I’ve written here now for some 829 weeks is a media watch, not a political watch, let’s dwell this week on that Philly Inquirer sub-headline on Tuesday that allegations of anti-Semitism by news sources can arise from its running inflammatory articles.  As a test case, let’s take, from the annals of those 829 weeks, instances of that newspaper, the Philly Inquirer, running highly misleading articles defaming the Jewish homeland of Israel in two fundamental ways – delegitimization and in its defense against terror.

Of late, the Philadelphia Inquirer, which once had its own, only-such-place-in-the-world, critical-of-Israel, Jerusalem Bureau, has not focused on Israel, and its recent headlines of Israel responding to terror attacks have been balanced.  But this was not always so.  If going back in the past is fair use against Bannon and Breitbart, so too for the MSM and the Inq.

“Millions of Palestinian Refugees and Their Descendants” from “Israel’s Creation”

“Brith Sholom Media Watch” Alert #1 (a little chutzpah there, not knowing if there’d be #2) , January 7, 2001, greeted the new millennium by quoting an inflammatory mischaracterization of Israel’s attainment of independence.  Here’s how BSMW began #1:

This past week, the philadelphia inquirer told its readers in a Knight Ridder News Service news story that under President Clinton’s plan, “Palestinians would have to scale back demands that nearly four million Palestinian refugees and their descendants be able to exercise a right of return to land they fled or were forced to leave in 1948 during the creation of Israel. In exchange, Palestinians would gain . . . .” (Thurs., 1/4/01, article on page 1 and 16)

. . . . It would be difficult to conceive of a more monstrous misstatement of history. “Four million Palestinian refugees” did not flee. Some six to eight hundred thousand [and in retrospect that is likely too high] left (matched by an unmentioned equivalent number of Jews from Arab lands). They did not leave because of “the creation of Israel,” but in circumstances which the inquirer likewise chose not to mention. The UN had voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab-majority states. The Jews accepted, but in an attempt to seize all of Palestine and “drive the Jews into the sea,” the Arabs rejected partition with violence and a seven-nation invasion. Israel survived, and absorbed the Jewish refugees. Egypt and Jordan seized what could have become Arab Palestine in 1948, and along with other Arab states kept the Arab refugees in camps ever since.

Last week’s article was not an aberration. See inquirer, July 17 [2000]: “[the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is] a conflict that was born in 1948, when Palestinians were displaced to create the Jewish state . . . “; inquirer, May 31: “Lebanon is home to 350,000 Palestinian refugees, forced from their homes by the creation of Israel in 1948 and by the 1967 Middle East War.”

That same month, the Inquirer printed “four million Palestinian refugees and the descendants of those who fled their homes in 1948” (1/9/01, Knight-Ridder); “millions of refugees and their families” (1/10/01, AP); “millions of refugees and their families” (1/12/01, AP); “millions of refugees” (1/14/01, AP); “millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants” (1/21/01, AP).  And this continued at lower intensity thereafter.

In fairness to the Inquirer, in 2003, following lengthy correspondence with me, it acknowledged in a foreign staff research memo that “Mr. Verlin is right in saying that there weren’t millions of refugees from the 1948 war,” and acknowledged that it hadn’t always been sufficiently clear on the matter.  (In 2004, following a campaign by CAMERA against the mainstream media’s “millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants,” the New York Times, for one, acknowledged that it had referred to the Palestinian Arab refugee count “imprecisely.”)

But, ask yourself, how much lasting damage to Western public perception of respective Jewish and Arab Palestine equities was done by “millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants” from “when Palestinians were displaced to create the Jewish state”?  “Inflammatory”?

Israel’s Defense Against Terror

Three telling examples of inflammatory Inq misportrayal of Israeli responses to terror:

[1]  On June 19 and 20, 2002, the Philly Inquirer headlined two consecutive days of Palestinian Arab bombings of Jerusalem city buses, murdering 25 and wounding 85 Israeli civilians.  On the second day, the Inq headlined

“Jerusalem Hit Again – and Militants Promise More”

“ – and MILITANTS Promise More.”  Inflammatory, in failing to call “more-promising” two-days-in-a-row civilian bus-bombing terrorists terrorists.  Two weeks later, the ZOA and Brith Sholom staged a protest demonstration in front of the Inquirer’s then offices on Broad Street.  It featured three speakers, including me squeezed in between the Philly ZOA president and the one and only Herb Denenberg.  I began:

We’re here today because mass murderers who pack bombs with nails, screws, rat poison and hate, to murder and maim as many men, women and children as they possibly can, in buses, restaurants, shopping malls, discos, pool halls, parks and a Bat Mitzvah and a Passover seder, aren’t militants, anytime, anywhere.  They’re terrorists, every time, everywhere….

(I went on about there not being “millions” of Arab refugees from the 1948 war, etc.)

[2]  How’s this for a non-inflammatory Inq headline on Israelis defending themselves against terror?  An Inq 4/29/08 AP article reported: “The Israeli army shot four Palestinian militants who were trying to plant explosives near the Gaza Strip border fence.”  It quoted Hamas calling them its members who were “on a jihad mission.”  (emphasis added)  The Inq headlined:

“Israeli Army Shoots Four Palestinians”

There’s a whole section of similarly non-inflammatory Inq headlines over the years in Lee’s and my book, Pressing Israel: Media Bias Exposed From A-to-Z:  “H – Headlines: Not Always What Happened.”

[3]  In late February, 2008, Hamas escalated from lobbing “homemade” rockets at Sderot to firing what Israel identified as 122 mm Grad rockets, “a standard military artillery weapon, equipped with a weapons-grade high explosive fragmentation warhead,” at the Israeli city of Ashkelon.  Israel called this escalation “an upgraded capability which places about a quarter of a million Israeli civilians in constant danger of Hamas attack.”    The Conf. of Presidents Daily Alerts were loaded with Israeli papers’ articles like

Thursday, 2/28: “Fifty Palestinian Rockets Bombard Israel, Israeli Killed at Sapir College, Ashkelon Hospital Targeted.”

Thursday, 2/28:  “Ashkelon Residents Realize: We’re Just Like Sderot.”

Thursday, 2/28:  Editorial in Ha-aretz [!]:  “The dozens of rockets that were fired Wednesday from Gaza – one of which killed Roni Yihye – have placed the IDF on the threshold of a major raid into the Palestinian territory.  Responsibility for the escalation lies entirely with the Palestinian side: the Hamas government.”

Friday, 2/29:  “Ten Palestinian Rockets Hit Ashkelon”

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s week of headlines mentioned “Hamas escalation” and “Ashkelon” NOT AT ALL.  What its headlines did mention (emphasis added) was

Inq headline, Thursday, 2/28/06, A16, AP:  “ISRAELIS, GAZANS SWAP FIRE; DEATH ON BOTH SIDES”; sub-head:  “The Bloodshed Heightened Fears of a New Wave of Violence.  Rice to Visit the Region Next Week.”

Inq headline, Friday, 2/29/08, A16, AP:  “VIOLENCE ESCALATES; ISRAELI SAYS GAZA ACTION IS OPTION”;  sub-head:  “The Defense Chief Hinted at an Invasion as Rocket Attacks and Air Strikes Intensified”

Inq headline, Saturday, 3/1/08, A3, NYTimes:  “LESS VIOLENCE IN ISRAELI, GAZA CLASHES”

Inq headline, Sunday, 3/2/08, A1, LATimes:  “DOZENS KILLED IN ISRAELI TROOP ACTION IN GAZA”, inset sub-head: “Civilians Also Killed in Hunt for Militants Firing Rockets.”

Inq headline, Monday, 3/3/08, A1, AP:  “MIDEAST PEACE TALKS OFF”; sub-head: “Palestinians Suspend Discussions; Israel Vows to Keep Up Gaza Attacks.  Condoleeza Rice is Due in the Region This Week.”

Inq headline, Tuesday, 3/4/08, A1, NYTimes: “ISRAELIS EXIT GAZA; HAMAS SEES GAIN”; sub-head: “Amid the Losses, It Claimed a Hezbollah Resistance Model.”

Inq headline, Wednesday, 3/5/08, A3, NYTimes:  “ABBAS DECLINES TO SET TIME FOR RESUMING TALKS”; sub-head:  “He Met With Rice, Who Pushed for the Resumption of Negotiations Broken Off Over Israel’s Incursion into Gaza.

Inq headline, Thursday, 3/6/08, A2, LATimes:  “MIDEAST TALKS BACK ON TRACK, RICE SAYS IN VISIT TO REGION; Abbas Had Halted Them After Israel’s Incursion Into Gaza.  No Date For a Restart was Announced.”

“Inflammatory,” in headlining Israel as the attacker [compare even Haaretz], with Abbas (of Fatah, PLO and PA) righteously suspending peace talks “over Israel’s [unexplained] incursion into Gaza”?

Our mainstream media should stand in front of a mirror, holding up Tuesday’s Inq with its headline, “Bannon draws allegations of anti-Semitism over inflammatory articles,” and ask itself whether the rightful subject of that headline is Breitbart and Bannon, or itself.