#912 7/15/18 – This Week: A Conversation with CAMERA

This Week:  A Conversation with CAMERA

In last week’s #911, I took issue with a position taken by an organization – CAMERA, The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America – that I greatly respect.  CAMERA had criticized the Los Angeles Times’ use in multiple articles of the expression “Israel and Palestine.”  The corrections CAMERA suggested and obtained included “the Israeli government and the Palestinians … Israel and the West Bank … [Israel and] the Palestinian territories.”

I took exception to the suggested corrections, saying:

     “The case we must make is that undivided Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria are intrinsic parts of the Jewish homeland, the land of Israel, and aren’t “Palestinian territories”; that “Israel and the West Bank . . . Israel and Palestine” aren’t two separate places; that Palestinian Arabs aren’t “the Palestinians”; that “Palestine” is not a dirty word, but references the historic homeland of the Jews; and that the Palestinian Arab state of “the two-state solution” is Palestinian Arab-majority, 78% of the Palestine Mandate, Jordan.”

I sent a copy of last week’s #911 to CAMERA and said that if it cared to express a reply to our readers we’d run it this week.  Tamar Sternthal, Director of CAMERA’s Israel Office, sent us this, requesting we publish it:

     “In his July 8 Media Watch column, Jerome Verlin takes issue with CAMERA for having prompted yet another Los Angeles Times correction after that media outlet incorrectly once again used the term ‘Palestine’ to refer land beyond the pre-1967 Green Line.

     “Regarding the corrected language – (‘Palestinians,” ‘the West Bank’ or ‘the Palestinian territories’) – Verlin avers that this terminology is not ‘helpful and persuasive in making our case that the land of Israel, Palestine west of the Jordan, including Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem.’

     “Verlin differs with CAMERA’s approach because he does not share our mission. CAMERA’s mission is to ensure that media outlets adhere to journalistic codes of conduct, thereby ensuring more professional and ultimately fair and accurate coverage of Israel.

     “CAMERA researchers play by the same rules as media outlets, a strategy making it impossible for media outlets to ignore or dismiss us. ‘Palestine,’ preferred by pro-Palestinian elements, is not acceptable terminology according to mainstream media style and usage. By the same token, ‘Judea and Samaria,’ preferred by some pro-Israel elements, is also not consistent with mainstream media practice.

     “Use of the terminology Judea and Samaria is historically justified. Nevertheless, the insistence that mainstream media outlets adopt a term which is used by only a very minute fraction of the world population, and which ignores the political reality for some 40 percent of the West Bank in which Palestinians rule themselves, guarantees irrelevance. An emailed request for use of the nomenclature ‘Judea and Samaria’ will immediately end up in the editor’s trash box.”

I replied:

“Hi, Tamar,

     “Thanks Very Much for your detailed reply to my references to CAMERA in our last week’s media watch #911.  We’ll include your reply in our #912 this weekend, and I’ll email you a copy.

     “Obsessed as I’ve been for decades over the media’s participation in delegitimizing the Jewish people’s homeland of Israel, I greatly respect those in the lead in contending against misreporting on Israel, principally CAMERA of course, and its people with whom I’ve had contact, including Andrea, Gilead Ini and you.

     “Andrea and I agreed in a conversation we had years ago that, as you put it, our ‘missions’ are different.  I would have us ordinary Jews use historically justified Jewish homeland-consistent terminology – e.g., ‘Judea and Samaria’ (which btw the UN used in 1947), and the more contrasted it is to what the media and the rest of the world today uses, the more important it is that we use it.

     “Wild-eyed fanatic on this that I am, I appreciate realistically soberly that considerations for CAMERA are different, but I would nudge you gently toward homeland-consistent terminology to the extent you can get away with it.

“Best,

“Jerry”

CAMERA may well be correct that only “a very minute fraction of the world population” uses the Jewish-origin name “Judea and Samaria,” but that very minute world population fraction is us, the homeland people that, with clear historical and international treaty validation, claims this area, along with Jerusalem, as intrinsic part of its homeland.  The old 1967-obliterated, 1949 Israel-Jordan military ceasefire lines, lovingly called by the media “Israel’s 1967 borders,” aren’t among the holy land’s holy places.  And the name “West Bank” was invented, post-invasion, in 1950 by Jordan for the same reason that the Romans, post-invasion, renamed Judaea as “Palestine,” to replace a time-honored Jewish name with a non-Jewish one.  I stand on what I told CAMERA:  the more an historically justified place name that we use differs from the name that the media and most of the rest of the world use, the more important it is that we use it. 

CAMERA continues that “the political reality for some 40 percent of the West Bank in which Palestinians rule themselves, guarantees irrelevance,” at least in that 40 percent, of the Jewish name “Judea-Samaria.”  But it’s Oslo and its 40 percent, and even 242’s “the,” that have become irrelevant.  E.g., the UN last year, in 2334, drew no legal area A, B, C niceties distinctions:  “1.  Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity ….”

The political reality for much of the world today is, as the UN put it in 2334, that every inch of western Palestine beyond the 1949 ceasefire lines is “Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem.”  If we don’t say “Judea and Samaria,” and not “West Bank,” now, when shall we say it?

I agree with CAMERA that “an emailed request for use of the nomenclature ‘Judea and Samaria’ will immediately end up in the editor’s trash box.”   But we should not put our own hechsher on “West Bank.”  We need to draw distinctions, as vividly as we can, between historically justified names that we use and the Jewish homeland-delegitimizing names that the media and much of the world use.  I’ve heard the argument, not from CAMERA, that “if we don’t use ‘West Bank,’ the media won’t print our letters and articles.”  But what if the Black clergy had said, “If we don’t ride in the back of the bus, it won’t take us to where we need to be going.”