#933 12/9/18 – Acres of Diatribes In Our Own Backyard

This Week:  Acres of Diatribes In Our Own Backyard

What with world-wide rental listings firm Airbnb delisting rental sites in Judea-Samaria, but only if they’re owned by Jews, the U.N. General Assembly failing to condemn Hamas rocketing of Israeli civilians by the required margin and adopting six anti-Israel resolutions, including one referring to the Temple Mount solely by its Muslim name of al-Har Sharif, etc., etc., there’s evidence aplenty of anti-Israel campaigns’ global reach.

Where to begin fighting back?   The environmentalists have a slogan that helps:  “Think globally, act locally.”  Taking Philadelphia, where I live, as offering “act locally” opportunities, my hometown paper, the Inquirer (Inq), has reported both of these two particular current Israel coverage issues – Israel vs. Hamas and Temple Mount naming – with anti-Israel imbalance.

Israeli Army Shoots Palestinians”:  A classic egregious instance of imbalanced Inquirer headlining of Israeli army-Gaza terrorist fighting was this brief news article of April 29, 2008, in which the AP reported “the Israeli army shot four Palestinian militants who were trying to plant explosives near the Gaza border fence,” and quoted Hamas calling them its members “on a jihad mission.”  The Inquirer headlined this article: “Israeli Army Shoots Four Palestinians.”

Fast-forward a decade.  This spring, displaced from my house to a hotel by a fire, I cancelled my home delivery subscription to the Inquirer.  I didn’t renew it when I came back, but this fall the Inq included me, which I appreciated, in a six-weeks home delivery Sunday Inquirer sample, following which they sent me this week a “We hope you enjoyed your Sundays’ sample, so how about subscribing now” flyer.  I wrote them a letter as follows:

December 4, 2018

Circulation Marketing

Philadelphia Media Network

PO Box 13718

Philadelphia PA 19101-9566

Dear Sir:

I’d like to give you one reason I’m not accepting your discounted Inquirer subscription offer in the flyer I just received titled “We Hope You Enjoyed Your Sample” (btw, the Sunday sample only came once).

I believe it was Saturday, Oct 27, that your paper ran an AP story by Fares Akram the Inquirer headlined “FIVE PALESTINIANS ARE SHOT DEAD BY ISRAELI FORCES,” to which it appended the sub-headline “Militants later fired several rockets into southern Israel.”

This article which you so headlined and sub-headlined included this paragraph:

“Thousands of Palestinians gathered at five locations along the boundary, burning tires and throwing rocks, grenades and firebombs at Israeli troops who respond with tear gas and occasional live fire.”   [emphasis added]

Israeli forces did not shoot dead five of these people because they were “five Palestinians,” but because they were in an assaulting mob, some of whom crossed the border fence, that was “throwing rocks, grenades and firebombs at Israeli troops” defending that border fence and the Israeli civilians behind it.  (Dore Gold has stated that on occasion Hamas has provided its “protestors” with directions to Jewish communities.)  Because any honestly-reporting newspaper would have headlined provocation for soldiers shooting people if provocation was present, your zero-context-conveying headline made it appear that Israel’s army shot five “Palestinians” sans provocation, perhaps at random.  In pointed contrast, your sub-headline, “Militants LATER fired several rockets into southern Israel,” did provide context for these “militants’” actions.

I wish that this headlining incident were an anomaly, but you and I know that it isn’t.

Very truly yours,

Jerome R. Verlin

“What’s Behind the Green Door”

On July 15, 2017, the Times of Israel and Philly Inquirer both printed the same AP photo of two armed Israeli policemen standing guard in front of a large green metal door.  Times of Israel captioned this photo:

“Israeli border police officers stand guard at the entrance to the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem’s Old City.  Friday July 14, 2017 (AP/Mahmoud Illean)”  (emphasis added)

On that same day, the Philadelphia Inquirer captioned this same photo:

“Israeli border police officers stand guard at the Al Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem.  Mahmoud Illean/AP”  (emphasis added)

By me, this Inq Muslim-name-only naming of what has been known in the West as the Temple Mount for millennia is a sell-out by the Philadelphia Inquirer of western civilization, Christian along with Jewish heritage and tradition.  But the Inq isn’t alone.  In 2016, CAMERA did an analysis, “Mapping Changes in Terminology Used by BBC to Describe the Temple Mount,” in which it observed that the BBC’s naming convention had morphed from a balanced “known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, and to Jews [and Christians?] as Temple Mount” (9/29/04) to imbalanced “Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque compound, known to Jews as Temple Mount” (5/11/14).

So, if “Think globally, act locally” strikes you as a practical way to stand up for our Jewish homeland in these darkening days of global assault on it, look around close to home.  You’re liable to find acres of diatribes in your own backyard.