WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: This week, we look back through the anti-Israel pejoratives we picked up in our weekly alerts during this year’s first quarter. What struck us, and we think will strike you, is the relentlessness of the media’s purveying of a set of imbalanced expressions each of which contributes to a consistent imbalanced picture of Arabs (“The Palestinians”) as indigenous natives and of Jews as outsiders, even in the heart of Jerusalem.
Delegitimization by a Thousand Cuts: The Mainstream Media’s Relentless Mainstreaming of Poisonous Anti-Israel Pejoratives in the First Quarter of 2017
An occasional news article using imbalanced terminology may not merit contesting. But when the mainstream Western media relentlessly reiterates the same loaded terms and expressions, pounding them home into Western public perception as balanced factual presentations of current events and history, they become accepted as factual presentations if they go uncontested.
Look back with me through the imbalanced mainstream media terminology this weekly media watch picked up during this year’s first quarter, and see if you see, like me, a relentless pounding home of a pet set of consistently Jewish homeland-delegitimizing pejoratives cooperatively and cumulatively painting a false portrayal of respective Jewish and Arab homeland rights. (seeing-red added throughout)
*** In a 1/15/17 article quoting the French foreign minister that it’s vital to focus on “the 1967 borders” framework of negotiations and resolutions of the U.N., the BBC framed for readers the Arab and Jewish sides’ respective equities in contested Judea-Samaria and Jerusalem thusly:
“Palestinians fiercely object to Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem …”
What’s wrong with this: When the media quotes an Israeli saying “Judea and Samaria,” names in use for thousands of years, it appends (see below) “he used the biblical name for the West Bank.” Is less demanded when the media quotes a European calling the perilous-to-Israel 1949 exclusively-military ceasefire lines “the 1967 borders,” as though they were agreed permanent international borders? And “occupied” is contested, as should be “settlement activity … West Bank … East Jerusalem,” and “Palestinian” as referencing exclusively Arabs.
*** The AP, 1/23/17 referenced Netanyahu “gearing up plans to expand settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem” and “Israeli hardline leaders” pushing for “aggressive action in the occupied West Bank.”
*** AP, 1/25/17, led: “Israel said Tuesday it approved 2,500 new settler homes in the West Bank ….” It referred to “the West Bank” and “East Jerusalem” as areas “captured by Israel in the 1967 war.” And it referred to Israel as having just “approved nearly 600 settler homes in East Jerusalem.”
What’s wrong with this: The Jewish people has 3,000 years direct connection with “East Jerusalem” and “the West Bank” prior to their “capture by Israel in 1967.” And Jews of most stripes (Rabbi Yoffie and Netanyahu among them) object to calling Jews in Jerusalem “settlers.”
*** The Times of Israel, 2/3/17, quoted a “settlements” spokesperson: “Nothing is more natural and morally just that Jews building in Judea,” but immediately followed this up with: “Netanyahu on Wednesday announced plans for the establishment of a new West Bank settlement” (which it noted as “the first new one to be built in some 25 years”), but followed this up with: “Settlements in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem are viewed by nearly all the international community as illegal under international law.” [These guys are on our side.]
*** A 2/5/17 Commentary article correctly cited Pres. Bush’s 2004 statement to Sharon that “it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final-status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949,” but followed this lucidity up with: “This language was an acceptance of the reality that the most populous Israeli settlements beyond the pre-1967 borders would certainly remain in Israeli hands at the end of any successful peace negotiation with the Palestinians.” [And these guys are on our side too.]
*** AP, 2/6/17, quoted an Israeli cabinet minister referencing “Judea and Samaria,” and then explained that he’d used “a biblical name for the West Bank.”
What’s wrong with this: “Judea and Samaria” are indeed Hebrew-origin biblical names, but they remained in use all through the Judaea-to-Israel foreign rule centuries, and were used by the U.N. in its partition resolution in 1947: “The boundary of the hill country of Samaria and Judea starts on the Jordan River ….”
*** AP, 2/7/17: “The Palestinians claim the West Bank and East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as parts of a future state.” The article characterized President Trump as being “perceived as sympathetic to Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.” It also reported, as though referring to what’s uncontested fact, that during Netanyahu’s visit with British PM May at Downing Street, a “small group of protesters” there called for “an end to Israel’s 50-year occupation of Palestinian lands.”
What’s wrong with this: This is not the AP citing the protesters saying “Israel’s 50-year occupation of Palestinian lands.” This the AP saying “Israel’s 50-year occupation of Palestinian lands.” The term “occupied” is contested, many Israelis putting it: “You can’t be an ‘occupier’ in your own home.” “Contested” is balanced, lacking the homeland equity question-begging connotation of Israeli “occupation of Palestinian lands.”
*** The 2/14/17 New York Times carried a “settler’s” op-ed offering alternatives to “the two-state solution.” The NYT accompanied this op-ed with a photo captioned: “An Israeli settlement in front of an Arab village in Amona, West Bank.”
*** The Washington Post, 2/16/17, correctly characterized the U.S.-promulgated “two-state solution” as “two states for two peoples, living side by side in peace and security,” but followed this up with a top Palestinian negotiator singing its praises and warning against undermining it, without telling readers the Palestinian Authority has never accepted “two states for two peoples,” but has expressly rejected it. Senior PA ‘negotiator’ Nabil Sha’atha; “The story of ‘two states for two peoples’ means that there will be a Jewish people over there and a Palestinian people here. We will never accept this.”
Other gems in this Washington Post article: “Currently, Palestinians in the West Bank live under an almost 50-year military occupation.” And: “Republican and Democratic presidents have backed a future Palestinian state on West Bank land that is now mostly under Israeli military occupation.”
*** A 3/7/17 AP article directly quoted an Israeli official using the place names “Judea and Samaria.” The AP followed this direct quote with this explanation:
“Judea and Samaria is the biblical term for the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek the West Bank as the heartland of a future state, a position that has wide international backing.”
Earlier in the article, the AP referred to “the occupied West Bank,” and further on it directly quoted an Arab-Israeli in the Knesset using the expression “the 1967 borders,” without appending an AP explanation that they are really just 1949 military ceasefire lines.
*** The AP, 3/12/17, characterized President Trump as having “adopted a more lenient approach to Israel’s building settlements in territory claimed by the Palestinians.” And, just before this, the AP said of Trump:
“… he’s considering moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which the Palestinians seek as the capital of their future state ….”
What’s wrong with this: It’s partly our fault for gratuitously surrendering Jewish equity in “Palestinian,” but Israel “building settlements” in Palestine territory “claimed by the Palestinians” suggests to readers rather starkly who are the indigenous Palestine natives and who the outsiders. And the U.S. embassy move would be to “west” Jerusalem, not to the “East” Jerusalem “Palestinians” claim for their capital.
*** Eight times in the eight paragraphs of the AP’s 3/27/17 Israel article, it said “settler” or “settlers” or “settlements,” including “settlement construction in east Jerusalem.” It said: “Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians seek all three areas for a future independent state.”
How much of the world have we convinced that that sliver of land between the Jordan and Sea, including Judea, Samaria and heart of Jerusalem, is the land of Israel, the never-relinquished historic homeland of the Jews, and not the “Palestine” [a name thought up by the Romans as a renaming of Judaea to disassociate it from Jews] of “the Palestinians”?
Be honest, and acknowledge, not much.
What we need to do is not plead with the media to stop saying “West Bank,” etc.. etc., but to make plain to the world that in saying “West Bank,” etc., etc., the media is parroting imbalanced anti-Israel expressions that are completely contested by us.