#887 12/31/17 – This Week: ‘Occupation’ in the News, but don’t focus only on that

A Personal Note

On a late December day in the year 2000, Dr. Goldblatt of the ZOA (a fugitive from the Philadelphia-based century-old men’s and women’s fraternal order Brith Sholom) suggested to me, then chairman of that Order’s “Israel” committee: “Start a media watch in Brith Sholom.”  That led to this introduction in what, with some sense of chutzpah, I titled “Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #1”:

     “The ‘Brith Sholom Media Watch’ came into being this morning [Sunday, Jan. 7, 2001], at the regular meeting of Brith Sholom’s Board of Governors. At this critical moment, members of our Community must speak out against mischaracterizations in our local media poisoning the public’s mind against Israel. If not us, the grassroots Community members organized into grassroots groups like Brith Sholom, then who, and if not now, when? Also, responding to these misstatements, as opposed to averting our eyes and ears, is a matter of individual and Community self-respect.”

This Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #887 that you’re reading marks the completion of seventeen years of weekly [ok, with a now-and-again two-weeks’ “combined” issue, courtesy of bass and walleye in Canadian lakes and birds and beaches in Cape May]  “Alerts,” directing grassroots attention to mainstream media and other delegitimization of the Jewish homeland of Israel.  [The media watch is now also posted weekly on the website, www.factsonisrael.com (go take a look at the lots of stuff on there), of a non-profit of which I’m one of the organizers – the story of that one of these days.]

I hope to keep the weekly media watch going into an eighteenth year, but I would like to pause for a moment here at this year-end point to express my appreciation for the encouragement I’ve received in emails over 17 years from You-Who-Put-Up-With-Me-Weekly, and from recipients of forwarding (thanks) by subscribers. These email senders have been mostly fellow residents of the Philadelphia Inquirer’s domain, but also fellow media watchers as far away as Florida and California, a Jew on the Dark Continent [Europe], and Israelis, including a rabbi-archeologist in the Old City dedicated to “Education Through Archeology,” a Jerusalem journalist with a hard-hitting website, a university professor in the Negev who wrote a biography of historian Parkes who wrote, insightfully, that the ever-present Yishuv wrote the Zionists’ real title deeds,  husband-wife “settlers” in the Samarian hills (on a clear day they can see the Mediterranean, how’s that for “Greater Israel”?), and, most unexpectedly, a guide on the Golan.   Thank you all.

Of the “unsubscribe” emails I’ve received over these years, a fair number were worded “The media will never change, so spend more time with the walleyes and stop beating your head against the wall.”  These lost (to-me) souls misunderstood.  In the first paragraph of Alert #1, I didn’t plead with the media to change (though that would be nice).  I pleaded with us to “speak out against mischaracterizations” in the media and elsewhere poisoning the public’s mind against Israel.

The most effective way, I believe, for us to do that is to start with the words we ourselves use.  One of those words we ourselves must shun, included in the focus of this week’s media watch below, is a question-begging term much focused upon in commentary on Israel this week, “occupation.”  But it is ineffective to pick out particular terms.  What has to be jettisoned altogether is the complete loaded lexicon of poisoned pejoratives – for a start, not just “occupation” but that “occupation’s” where and how – in the “West Bank” by “Jewish settlers.”

So on to media watch Alert #887, but take my word for it first that it says someplace in the Talmud (or ought to) that “He who has not tasted Walleye, freshly caught [e.g., on a Canadian lake] by himself, his son and his grandson [all three of us caught one that morning – remarkable], has Truly Not Tasted Fish.”

This Week:  “Occupation” in the News – But Don’t Focus Only on That

I have to confess my frustration.  Even when the leaders and pundits on our side rightly raise objection to an Israel-delegitimizing term in the loaded lexicon of poisoned pejoratives, they themselves use other Israel-delegitimizing terms in that loaded lexicon in the very course of raising their objection.  Take U.S. Ambassador to Israel Friedman’s well-taken objection to the State Department using “occupied territories,” much commented upon this week by our pundits.

Arlene Kushner, among many others, reported on Thursday (12/28/17):  “It has made news here [Israel] that US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman recently asked the State Department to cease using the term ‘occupation’ to describe Israel’s presence in Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem.”  Arlene added:  “The State Department was not exactly receptive.”  Big surprise there, but what bothered me was what Amb. Friedman (kudos for his objection to “occupation”) had himself said, as quoted by Arlene, in an earlier Israeli website interview:

“I think the settlements are part of Israel ….”

“The idea [behind UN 242] was that Israel would be entitled to secure borders.  The existing borders, the 1967 borders, were viewed by everybody as not secure, so Israel would retain a meaningful portion of the ‘West Bank’ ….”

“I think the settlers view themselves as Israelis and Israel views the settlers as Israelis.”  [emphasis added]

Contesters of the term “occupation” go to great lengths to cite the 1949 Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement as expressly defining the “green line” as a military ceasefire line only, expressly not an international border, and it is thus counter-productive for Amb. Friedman to have used the expression “the existing borders, the 1967 borders.”  Nor, I think, though we don’t seem to make a tsimmis enough of it, that the term “settlers,” which Amb. Friedman also used, is helpful.  The one time my hometown paper, the Philly Inquirer, used “settlements” years ago in reference to Arabs, not Jews, it instantly withdrew it in a “clearing the record.”

It appears from Arlene’s quotes of the Israeli website interview quote above, and from other accounts of that interview, that those quote marks around “West Bank” were Amb. Friedman’s.  But Gary Willig, on INN Thursday, criticized even that, if it were so, as well as the ambassador’s reference to “borders”:

“Friedman should also, since he’s a fluent Hebrew speaker, be able to say Yehuda VeShomron.  And certainly he should never use the term ‘borders’ when referring to the ‘1967 ceasefire’ lines, which both sides agreed that they were not a border and would have no influence on the real border, when that was agreed on.”

Jonathan Tobin’s JNS article Thursday on Friedman’s “occupied territories” dispute with the State Department acknowledged that “West Bank,” the term Tobin himself uses, “is itself geographic nonsense, a relic of the illegal Jordanian occupation ….”, but also said:

 “To call the territories Judea and Samaria is also a political statement, just like ‘occupied territories,’ that indicates siding with the idea that Israelis have a right to be there,”

I’m a fan of Jonathan’s, but I don’t think so.  To call the territories “Judea and Samaria” is simply to call them what they were called all through the centuries.  When the United Nations in its Palestine partition resolution in 1947 wrote “The boundary of the hill country of Samaria and Judea starts on the Jordan River,” it awarded most of that territory not to the Jews, but the Arabs.  That calling Judea “Judea” associates it with Jews is historical fact, certainly not “just like” calling Judea and Samaria “occupied territories,” or even the name conjured to break that association, “West Bank.”

My biggest disagreement, disappointment, with our own best people this year was this summer with CAMERA.  National Geographic had defined “the Levant” as “the region encompassing much of modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine.”  CAMERA properly objected to this calling of “Palestine” an Arab state west of the Jordan. My beef was with CAMERA’s suggested solution:

“References to a modern ‘Palestine’ in the West Bank and Gaza are inaccurate and those areas should be referred to as ‘Palestinian territories,’ or simply the West Bank and Gaza. . . .”

Martin Sherman’s commentary Thursday (busy day for pro-Israel commentators, Thursday) on the UN votes on President Trump’s Jerusalem statement, narrowly limited though the President’s statement was, harshly took the Israeli government to task for not having invested more in making its homeland, including Jerusalem, case to the world.  He called for immediate Israeli government action.

But there’s a role here as well for individual Jewish and Christian supporters of the Jewish homeland of Israel, both public spokespersons and just plain Christians (Sherman worriedly alluded to lesser support among younger Evangelical Christians) and Jews.  STOP USING THE DIRTY WORDS – ALL OF THEM.  On our website, www.factsonisrael.com, you’ll find a “Dirty Words” list, “Toxic Terms,” and “A-Z Facts,” videos of our “Ten Misleading Expressions” and other Powerpoint talks, articles’ links, and very much more.

Our grassroots’ task is not to get the media to change (the State Department will willingly move the Embassy first), but to make clear to publics in the West that in using terms like “occupied Palestinian territories” and the rest, the media and others are adopting anti-Jewish homeland pejoratives to which we vehemently object.

Best wishes for 2018.