#843 – 2/265/17 – A New Weapon in Confronting Anti-Israel Media Bias: You

 

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG:  There’ve been lots of efforts at organizing ordinary folks to enter the fray in confronting anti-Israel media bias – e.g., letter-writing groups that ask participants to respond to the particular facts in particular stories.  We propose an approach that’s a little different – responding to biased terminology in which the facts of news stories are reported. We’re putting together a “dirty words” checklist for media watchers to use.  What have we got?  Come and see.

A New Weapon in Confronting Anti-Israel Media Bias:  You

A non-profit formed last year, FactsOnIsrael.com, Inc., in which I’m involved, is up to something with a hands-on, if armchair, role in it for balanced-reporting-on-Israel-seeking media watchers like you.

We want to put into your hands a checklist –

“Dirty Words – Anti-Israel Pejoratives in Mainstream Media Israel Reporting”

– we now have in draft form.  It has some three dozen, for openers, imbalanced media reporting-on-Israel expressions you may well come upon in reading mainstream western media news reporting and commentary on Israel.  Each checklist item has three elements – the imbalanced expression, brief comment, and a corresponding balanced expression which should have been used.

The checklist and, when available, a background supplement with fuller discussion and balanced and imbalanced reporting citations on each checklist item, may help you in spotting imbalanced reporting-on-Israel instances and responding personally to them.

Example Case:  “Judea and Samaria” as “the Biblical Name for the West Bank”

Let’s trace one point of mainstream media misreporting on Israel in 2015 and 2016, its repeatedly telling Western readers that “Judea and Samaria” is “the biblical name for the West Bank,” suggesting to readers that “West Bank,” not the Hebrew-origin names for the land of Israel’s hill country heartland, has been the name in use since biblical times.

In a truly stellar “Words Matter” editorial back on 1/10/15, the Jerusalem Post minced no words about what is “absurd” about the term “West Bank.”  It wrote that Jordan adopted “West Bank” in the 1950’s “in an attempt to legitimize its illegal occupation of the region as the result of its aggression in 1948,” that before then, “the British Mandatory authorities commonly referred to the area as Judea and Samaria” [as had maps and journals through the centuries, and the U.N. in 1947].  The JPost editorial asked “what happened to Judea and Samaria … the Roman occupiers’ Latinized translation of the biblical Hebrew names Yehuda and Shomron … ignored by the world’s media?”

***  Washington Post, 3/2/15 (Philly Inquirer, A1, 6):  “Judea and Samaria are the biblical names for today’s West Bank.”

***  Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), commenting on the GOP platform’s Israel plank recognizing “Judea and Samaria as integral parts of the indigenous Jewish homeland,” in the Jerusalem Post, 6/23/16:

“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 ….”

***  Times of Israel, 10/6/16, in referencing Israeli Minister Shaked stating “I think we need to build in Judah [sic] and Samaria,” unhelpfully appended that she was “using the biblical term for the West Bank.”

“West Bank” vs. “Judea and Samaria” is not a semantic distinction.  The terms aren’t synonyms, but antonyms.  The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs’ Dan Diker made this difference clear in the 12/22/15 Jerusalem Post, in discussing the significance of the EU’s charming rule on labeling products made by Jews in Judea-Samaria.  Diker:

… By forcing a distinction between Palestinian products labeled as emanating from the “West Bank or Palestine” and Israeli products emanating from “Israeli settlements,” the EU is granting a legal and moral status to the Palestinian Authority that it in fact does not have, and by extension annulling any Israeli rights over land claimed by the nation-state of the Jewish people – what Jews and hundreds of millions of Christians have known historically as Judea and Samaria.

So here’s a draft version of the forthcoming checklist’s item on the media calling “Judea and Samaria” the “biblical name” for “the West Bank”:

“Judea and Samaria, the Biblical Name for The West Bank”

The media repeatedly presents this characterization of the Hebrew-origin names “Judea and Samaria” to readers, to create the impression in western readers’ minds that “West Bank” has been the post-biblical era name.  But all through the long, dark centuries of foreign rule between Jewish Judaea’s destruction by Rome and modern Israel’s attainment of independence as the land’s next native state, “Judaea and Samaria” remained in use, as documented in maps and journals. The United Nations’ own partition resolution in 1947, referred, not to “the West Bank,” but to “Samaria and Judea”:  “The boundary of the hill country of Samaria and Judea starts on the Jordan River ….”  Say rather:  Judea and Samaria, the Hebrew-origin names that remained in use until invading Jordan renamed them as “West Bank” in 1950.

Draft Checklist’s “Dirty Words” Items; Can You Suggest Any More?

 In the checklist, each of these imbalanced expressions is followed by brief comments and a suggested balanced-reporting alternative.

 Re: The 1948 War and its Aftermath

“UN Sought to Partition Palestine into Palestinian and Jewish States”

“1948 Creation of Israel, Founding of Israel”

“Israel was Created Because of the Holocaust”

“The Nakba [Catastrophe] of Israel’s Creation”

“The War that Followed Israel’s Creation”

“Palestinian Refugees of War that Followed Israel’s Creation”

“The Palestinian Refugee Issue”

“Palestinian Refugee Camp”

“Millions of Palestinian Refugees and Their Descendants”

Re: The 1967 War and its Aftermath

“Captured/Seized by Israel in 1967”

“Occupied Territories, Palestinian Territories, Occupied Palestinian Territories”

“West Bank”

“Judea and Samaria, the Biblical Name for the West Bank”

“East Jerusalem, Arab East Jerusalem, Israeli-Occupied East Jerusalem”

“East Jerusalem and West Bank Jewish Settlements”

Re: The “Peace Process”

“Israel’s 1967 Borders”

“Israel’s 1967 Borders as the Basis for the ‘Two-State Solution’”

“Palestinians Accept and Israel Rejects the ‘Two-State Solution’”

“Israel’s Demand for Jewish State Recognition is New Stumbling Block”

“’Right’ of Return”

Re: Ongoing Conflict and Terrorism

“Rockets Fired At Israel, Into Israel”

“Attacks and Actions on Israel’s Borders/Periphery”

“IDF Retaliation for Arab Attacks on Civilians”

“Suicide Bombers and Militants”

“Suspected Militants”

“Hamas [or its like] is ‘Considered’ a Terrorist Group”

“Israeli ‘Said’ the Term ‘Militants’”

“Roadmap Called on Palestinians to Rein-in Militants”

Re: Whose Land is This, Anyway?

“Palestine’s Arabs are ‘The Palestinians’”

“Zionist Entity, Colonial Entity, Because-of-the-Holocaust’ Entity”

“Ultra-Nationalists’ Greater Israel”

“al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, and Rachel’s Tomb and Patriarch Cave as Mosques”

Well, that’s our draft list of repeatedly used expressions through which the media misleads readers in the course of its reporting on Israel.  If you have others to contribute, let me know.  We hope to have a list up on our website soon.