Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #629, 1/20/13

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@comcast.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #629, 1/20/13

This Week In The Inq: 3 Proofs that Imbalanced Terms Preclude Balanced Coverage
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The Inq ran three Israel articles, the work product of three different mainstream media luminaries – the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and the Los Angeles Times – This Week In The Inq. Beyond relating to Israel, these three different-source news articles, not opinion pieces, had this attribute in common – pervasive use of loaded language uniformly loaded against the Jewish homeland of Israel.

Does that assertion strike you as improbable? Until six hundred twenty-nine weeks ago, it would have struck me as unlikely. But that week, twelve years and a fortnight ago, someone suggested we start a “media watch” in Brith Sholom. Here’s what passed for front-page mainstream Western media Israel news coverage that week in the Inq:

“[Under then-President Clinton’s plan,] Palestinians would have to scale back demands that nearly four million Palestinian refugees and their descendants be able to exercise a right of return to land they fled or were forced to leave in 1948 during the creation of Israel. In exchange, Palestinians would gain . . . .” [Knight-Ridder News Service in Philadelphia Inquirer, 1/4/01, page A1, 6, emphasis added]

Put aside for now the media blaming seemingly exclusively “Palestinians’” displacement on “the creation of Israel.” Reflect on the monstrous misstatement of “nearly four million Palestinian refugees and their descendants.” Palestine’s entire population was less than two million, a good third of it Palestinian Jews. This 1/4/01 Inq K-R article was no aberration. The mainstream media, AP and all, colossally recklessly or worse, carried on about “millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants” for years. The media has stopped saying “millions,” but the media’s regard for Israel, out of which “millions” was at least recklessly born, remains. Consider the Washington Post, the AP and the LA Times’ terminology This Week In The Inq.

Monday: “Palestinian Activists” Build Tent “Village” Where Israel Plans “Settlement”

Start with Monday’s Washington Post article (Inq, Mon. 1/14/13, A6) This Week In The Inq. The 1949 Israel-Jordan armistice agreement stated expressly that the “green line” it drew between the Israeli and Jordanian forces at the ceasefire was dictated exclusively by military considerations without prejudice to either side’s claims to political borders. (See excerpts in attached pps.) This being so, it is imbalanced for the media to call Arabs erecting tents on undeveloped land in E-1 between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim “activists” building a “village,” while calling Israel planning to build homes for Jews there plans for a “settlement.” But that is just what the WP and Inq did, in the very course of calling the Arabs’ tent camp (see last week’s Inq photo in pps) “modeled after” what “Jewish settlers” do.

The WP article’s paragraph 3 described “the Palestinian encampment” as “a new form of grass-roots protest modeled after scores of wildcat outposts set up by Jewish settlers on West Bank hills without government approval.” Paragraph 4 further described “the Palestinian camp” as “a cluster of about 20 tents that protesters called the village of ‘Bab al-Shams’ ….” The Inq captioned its photo: “Israeli police evict a Palestinian from an area near Jerusalem known as E-1. Activists had erected tents in the area in an effort to prevent Israeli settlement construction.”

The article’s last paragraph resurrected the misleading claim about Israel building in E-1 virtually bisecting “the West Bank”: “The United States and European nations said the move would hurt prospects for a contiguous Palestinian state.” There is as much width left to the east of E-1 as between parts of the “green line” and Mediterranean Sea.

And note our standing objections to “the West Bank” and “Palestinian state,” as though Israel and Jordan, both originally part of the post-Ottoman Palestine Mandate, aren’t.

Bottom Line Monday: A 12/12/12 Arutz Sheva article, “E-1 Facts and Fiction,” cites a JCPA study pointing out that under Oslo II “Israel retained powers of zoning and planning” in Area C, including E-1, that “none of the Oslo Agreements prohibited” Israeli building plans there, and that such plans go back many Israeli administrations and many years. And that “Israel has turned a blind eye to most building by Arabs.” Stopping Jews from building “settlements” where Arabs build “villages” summarily awards these disputed areas to the Arabs, in words in the media and facts on the ground.

Tuesday: Israeli Election: “Centrist moderates” vs. “Especially Hawkish Hardliners”

The Inq’s AP article Tuesday (Inq, Tue. 1/15/13, A6), on Israel’s election this Tuesday, Jan. 22, led off (par. 1) with “centrist activists” versus “a hard-line bloc” led by Netanyahu. Par. 2 had “the moderate camp’s only chance” being heavy turnout of “moderate, secular voters” pitted against the “ideologically motivated hard-liners,” and cited “experts” as calling this “the surest way to take on the government’s handling of major issues such as stalled peacemaking with the Palestinians,” as though it’s Bibi, who has constantly called for talks with no preconditions, and not not-so-moderate-himself Abbas, with his suicidal for Israel pre-conditions, who has caused those talks to be stalled. Par. 3 cited polls whacking up the Knesset’s 120 seats between Bibi “and his traditional right-wing and religious allies” and the “centrist and Arab parties.” Are there no Jewish left-wing parties? Par. 7: “Netanyahu’s Likud Party has fielded an especially hawkish slate of candidates who reject concessions to the Palestinians.” What about “Palestinians’” concessions to Israel? On “’67 borders”? On Israel-ending “right of return”? Par. 8: “Reflecting his hawkish line Monday, Netanyahu told Israel’s Channel 2 TV that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas does not want to negotiate.” “Negotiating’s” not demanding impossible unilateral pre-negotiations concessions. Not bad for a 9-paragraph article ending that “The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem,” as though those place names were names known to history.

Bottom Line Tuesday: A double-whammy here. First, Israelis who decline at this time to make [more] concessions to Palestinian Arabs, even the “moderates” among whom have made and offer to make no concessions to Israel, refusing even to recognize Israel as the homeland of Jews, are not “especially hawkish hard-liners,” and Israelis willing to make more unilateral concessions aren’t “centrist moderates.” Second, this painting of Bibi and Likud as extreme hard-liners, while in separate articles calling Abbas “moderate,” paints Abbas as more moderate than Bibi, whereas the actual facts are the reverse.

Thursday: “Israel Announces New Settlement-Building”

Eight times in its ten paragraphs Thursday’s Inq Los Angeles Times article (Inq, Thu. 1/17/13, A2) used “settlements,” plus in the Inq’s headline and Inq photo caption. Imagine if it had said ten times “communities.” It also repeatedly used “West Bank,” and while citing the Israeli Housing Minister that the announced housing was for “natural growth,” went on to cite the Labor Party, the Meretz Party and Peace Now. Denying natural growth, not creating new communities or expanding existing communities’ boundaries, is a slow strangulation of the frozen communities.

The term “settlement,” the JCPA study cited above observed, conjures up images of “the Wild West,” citing the contrast to the actual “city of Maaleh Adumim, home to more than 40,000 Jews.” More like an actual settlement is the tent camp pitched by Arabs in E-1.

Bottom line Thursday: The JCPA study put it this way: “A Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria, as well as in many areas of Jerusalem, is assumed by foreign media to be illegal because that is what the U.S. State Dept. has determined for years. The claim is based on arguments that Israel ‘occupied’ the land, most of which actually was occupied – by Jordan – without a United Nations mandate before seven Arab countries failed in their attempt to annihilate Israel in the Six=Day War in 1967.”

Bottom Line This Week: Time for us to cease and desist from ourselves using these self-disrespecting, self-delegitimizing terms. At the least, this will align the media, in its continuing usage of them, with the Jewish homeland’s enemies’ deliberate word choices. This change has to begin with the Jewish grassroots and Jewish media watchers. Just as did demanding, and ultimately getting, an end to “millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants.”

Regards,
Jerry