#832 12/11/16 – This Week By the AP: “Illegal or Illegitimate Settlements”

 

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG:  Following contact by CAMERA, as we referenced last week, the AP recently corrected its statement that the U.S. considers “Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank” to be “illegal” to being “illegitimate” and “an obstacle to peace.”  This week, the AP stated, partly ambiguously: “The United States and most of the international community consider settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to be illegal or illegitimate and obstacles to peace.”  Cute.

This Week by the AP:  ‘Illegal or Illegitimate Settlements’

Last week’s media watch #831 referenced the recent go-round by CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, and the ubiquitous Associated Press on proper characterization of the official U.S. position on “Israeli settlements in the West Bank.”  The AP took the next swing this week.

Here’s how we explained rounds 1, 2 and 3 – the AP’s original statement, CAMERA’s objection to it, and the AP’s clarification – at the foot of our #831 last week:

US Views “Settlements” as “Illegitimate,” Not “Illegal”

Friday’s Daily Alert still wasn’t done.  It carried a reference to the truly wonderful organization CAMERA garnering an AP correction to an article in which it had referred to “Israel’s West Bank settlement construction, which the U.S. and much of the international community view as illegal and an obstacle to peace.”

This is the AP’s correction following contact from CAMERA:

“JERUSALEM (AP) – In a story Nov. 16 about Israel’s settlement policy, The Associated Press reported erroneously that the United States considers Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank to be illegal.  While the United States opposes settlement construction, it does not take a position on its legality.  Instead, it says that settlements are ‘illegitimate,’ ‘corrosive to the cause of peace’ and ‘raise serious questions about Israel’s ultimate commitment to a peaceful negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.’  Most of the international community views the settlements as illegal.”

On Wednesday this week (12/7/16), the Philadelphia Inquirer (A5), and many other papers carried an AP article, which the Inq headlined as “Kushner Family Gives to Jewish Settler Groups,” detailing the president-elect’s son-in-law’s family foundation’s support of “Jewish settlement organizations in the West Bank.”

Doubtless taking into account its latest go-round with CAMERA, the AP this week put the U.S. official position on “Israeli West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements” in this ambiguous way:

     The United States and most of the international community consider settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to be illegal or illegitimate and obstacles to peace.  [emphasis added]

Touché.  Now AP readers can take their pick whether the U.S. regards Israeli “settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to be illegal or illegitimate,” but there is no AP ambiguity whether the U.S. officially regards them as “obstacles to peace.”

But take a step back from all this.

In the Q&A sessions following Lee’s and my Powerpoint slide-illustrated talk on anti-Israel media bias (which Lee says we’ve by now given to synagogue men’s clubs and other groups some 75 times – I remember at least the ones at the Christian groups, at the cigar club, and at The House That Mort Built), we occasionally get asked whether we’re redundantly duplicating the wonderful work done by HonestReporting and CAMERA.  We tell them we’re not, which this latest CAMERA-AP go-round exemplifies.

The accurate-reporting issue here was whether as a matter of fact the AP was correct in telling readers that the U.S. officially regards “Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem” as “illegal.”  After contact by CAMERA, the AP agreed with CAMERA that it does not, that it regards them as “illegitimate.”

But there are fundamental issues here that go beyond matters of “fact.”  Whether one refers to the regions in question as “Judea and Samaria” or as “the West Bank,” and as part of the city of Jerusalem, with its renewed Jewish majority since pre-Zionist 1800’s Ottoman times, or as capital-E “East Jerusalem,” is rather telling of one’s personal opinion on respective Jewish and Arab ownership equity rights.  But place-name choices are matters of personal preference, of choice, not cold hard fact.

The thrust of our “Powerpoint” talk is that it is self-disrespecting and counter-productive for the Jewish homeland’s supporters ourselves to mouth terms designed to delegitimize that very homeland.

***  “Judea and Samaria” aren’t just biblical names, which the mainstream media has called them (e.g., NY Times, 10/3/10), but the names used throughout history, including   by the United Nations in its partition resolution of 1947: “… the hill country of Samaria and Judea ….”  Jordan invented “West Bank” in 1950.

***  “East” Jerusalem existed as a separate place from invading Jordan’s capture of it in 1948 until its ouster by Israel in 1967, a less than two-decades period ended five decades ago.

***  “Settlements” today is a dirty-word, and Israeli and Diaspora Jews should stop using it to refer to Jewish communities in Judea-Samaria, and especially to Jewish neighborhoods across the old 1949 lines in Jerusalem.

THIS is the language that appeared in this Wednesday’s just 12-paragraphs AP article:

… Jewish settlement organizations in the West Bank … settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem … settlements … West Bank settlement … the Jewish settler movement … West Bank settlements … West Bank settlement … West Bank settlement groups

Another AP gem thrown in:  “The Palestinians seek both territories [“West Bank” and “East Jerusalem”], captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, for their hoped-for state.”  There are 3,000 years Jewish homeland history preceding that AP dating of Jewish connection to Judea-Samaria and Jerusalem to “1967.”

Another gem put AP-quotes around “the false notion” but not “occupier” in

The Republican Party’s platform rejected “the false notion” that Israel is an occupier ….

No, the mainstream media is not going to change its terminology and perspective of Arab-Israeli conflict reporting.  What we grassroots supporters of the Jewish homeland of Israel CAN do, by cleaning up our own vocabulary and leaning on Jewish spokespersons and journalists to do so, is draw a vivid contrast between the pejorative-laden terminology and perspective used in common by our homeland’s foes and the media versus objective and historically-grounded perspectives and terms.

 

 

PS: Go to the Videos page of our website, www.factsonisrael.com, and view, e.g., “10 Misleading Expressions,” and on the home page click the link to “Lee Bender – Guest on Cindy’s Corner Radio Program, December 7, 2016.”