#889 1/14/18 – Looking Back Through the Weekly Media Watches of 2017 – What Happened [to borrow a phrase] that Mattered, and What are Their Implications for 2018

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Throughout the year I collect the weekly media watches in a Word doc.  At year-end, I look back through it and try to pick out – beyond the media calling Judea-Samaria “West Bank,” etc. – happenings that seem at year-end to have been significant and to have consequences in the new year.  Here are my choices for 2017.

Looking Back Through The Weekly Media Watches of 2017 – What Happened [to borrow a phrase] that Mattered, and What Are Their Implications for 2018

A weekly fairness-to-Israel media watch captures more than the mainstream media (MSM) saying “1967 borders” when it should have said “1949 ceasefire lines,” or contrasting “Jewish settlements” and “Palestinian villages” in the same sentence, or belittling the Jewish claim to historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria, intrinsic core parts of the Jewish homeland of Israel, as covetous Jews claiming a “Greater Israel,” etc.  At year-end, we can look back and see what was significant that year and has coming-year implications.  This mid-January week, let’s look back at events noted in 2017’s media watches and try to see a few in broader context. (I’ll email the 2017 Word doc to anyone interested.)

2334 vs. Trump on Jerusalem

What struck me strongly in this 2017 look-back was the stark contrast in world reaction to world leaders’ particular statements on Israel made at the beginning versus at the end of last year.

In a carefully-worded statement toward year-end, President Trump said out loud what had been physical fact for the past seventy years, that the State of Israel’s capital is situated in the city of Jerusalem.  He put in that statement:

  “We are not taking a position on any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty IN Jerusalem ….” (emphasis added)

The world’s diplomats, world media, the United Nations Security Council, the United Nations General Assembly, etc., etc., all went berserk:  “The President of the United States is taking sides on an issue to be determined in peace process negotiations!”

[OK, during the election campaign, I’d chalked up candidate Trump’s campaign promises to do that very thing to, well, it’s the Republicans turn to lie to us about moving the embassy.  (I think now the State Department will move the embassy – when the Messiah comes, or the Mexicans pay for it, whichever comes earlier.)]

Now compare both the scope of the President’s statement, and hullabaloo over it, with the scope and non-hysteria over the U.N. Security Council’s [non-binding] Resolution 2334 at the end of 2016.  This did take a position – 14-zip with the U.S. abstaining – on final status issues, “West Bank” and Jerusalem equities.  The U.N. Security Council:

“1.   Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace;

“2.   Reiterates its demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and that it fully respect all of its legal obligations in this regard;

“3.   Underlines that it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations; ….” [emphasis added, a little]

Now, that’s taking peace-process issues positions (and, btw, spitting, including by abstention, on 242 in the bargain).  The hypocrisy of voters and supporters of this U.N. resolution who criticize Trump’s Jerusalem statement is breathtaking.

But beyond what President Trump actually did in 2017, i.e., recognize a reality and initiate a process to move the embassy someday to Jerusalem, he broke a sacrosanct taboo.   Much may flow from this precedent in 2018 and beyond.

Dr. Palestine and Dr. Palestine’s Monster

If President Trump, in saying out loud that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, while most of the world pretends that it’s Tel Aviv, and Hamas thinks it’s Sderot, was a newcomer to international diplomacy saying undiplomatically that the emperor was wearing no clothes, another unclothed international institution increasingly coming in for sartorial critique is UNRWA.  The U.N., this Dr. Palestine with its permanent structural condemnation of Israel, did not create UNRWA to deal with the problem of “Palestinian refugees.”  It created UNRWA to perpetuate the Arab conflict with Israel.  And, in turning some 500,000 Palestinian Arab refugees, most of whom never left Palestine, thanks to UNRWA’s unique bestowal of hereditary “Palestinian refugee” status, into now some five million, all claiming their “Right of Return,” the U.N. has created Dr. Palestine’s Monster.  Mazel tov!

A January 2017 edition of our media watch quoted a JNS news article citing a study of UNRWA:

“According to a new report from Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, textbooks used in schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) removed references to Jewish municipalities in Israel, described Zionism as a foreign “colonial movement” and denied the historical and religious connections between Jews and Israel.”  [emphasis added]

Jerusalem journalist David Bedein, among others, has exposed much about UNRWA, including in an inspired-title analysis, “Where Has All The Flour Gone?”, and has several UNRWA-related articles on his site, israelbehindthenews, right now.  This week (1/11/18), Liat Collins wrote in the Jerusalem Post that “if after 70 years UNRWA really needs to distribute food to those under its auspices, it has clearly failed at even its most basic task of providing meaningful relief.”

My guess is 2018 may see a Rule Against Perpetuities discussed and perhaps even begun to be applied to the unique hereditary status of “Palestinian Refugee” in the hallowed halls of the U.N.

Making Our Case in The West

Our media watch noted that the Jerusalem Post ran an article on 10/6/17 that Iranian-controlled mosques in Europe have been proclaiming an easily understood catchy phrase to Europeans:  “Palestine is the home of the Palestinians.”

I think there is a two-part answer to that: Palestinian Arabs aren’t exclusively “THE Palestinians,” and they have 78% of the Palestine Mandate – Jordan.

I do not think that the Jewish homeland of Israel can securely survive in the Middle East if it is nine-miles-wide in the critical lowland middle, or that it can spiritually survive deprived of historic Jerusalem.

The 2017 “Jordan is Palestine” conference likewise dared to challenge a sacrosanct concept – the “Two State Solution” (which Palestinian Arabs have never accepted in its only, U.S.-held, conception as “two states for two peoples”), and would replace it with those two states being Israel and Jordan.

As for “Palestine Is The Home of The Palestinians,” which resonates with people in the West, the answer I see is we Jews taking back Jewish equity in “Palestine” and “Palestinian.”  Naïve and preposterous?  We used to have it, just as Judea and Samaria were “Judea and Samaria” for thousands of years before becoming “West Bank,” and the 1949 ceasefire lines were 1949 ceasefire lines before they became “Israel’s 1967 borders.”

In the struggle for people’s minds in the West, we have to acknowledge that the people we’re trying to reach have neither time nor temperament for lengthy detailed historical and legal presentations, even where valid, as with “242 doesn’t say ‘the.’”  The Arab side understands this – q.e.d. “Palestine and Palestinian … settlements versus villages … 1967 borders … West Bank,” and, most tellingly, “occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem,” as the U.N. charmingly puts it.  We have to wake up and make some 2018 New Year’s Resolutions.