To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@comcast.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #631, 2/3/13
This Week: Terminology’s Role in “Israel’s Standing in Friendly Capitals Sliding”
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Two Israeli newspaper news articles referenced in this Friday’s Conference of Presidents’ Daily Alert, and a December article linked in one of them as “related,” reveal how our own foolish use of Jewish homeland-delegitimizing terms lays the language foundation for international condemnation of Israeli “settlement” actions, not only in “the West Bank” but in parts of Jerusalem, as illegitimate.
A Herb Keinon “Analysis” article in this week’s Jerusalem Post (“Analysis: UNHRC Probe Ups Anti-Israel Atmosphere,” 2/1/13) stated:
“Senior diplomatic officials in Jerusalem are increasingly expressing concern that the country’s standing in friendly capitals in Europe and even in Washington is sliding, and that the continuous condemnations and defeats in the international arena are taking a toll.”
You don’t have to buy what Keinon suggests – that Israel should initiate some kind of “diplomatic motion,” maybe “some kind of settlement freeze [emphasis added throughout],” to “alter the perception” that it’s Israel, not Abbas, blocking a return to peace talks – to accept the reality of Jewish homeland problems in “friendly capitals.” On the contrary, the “diplomatic motion” that’s needed is for we ourselves to cease using, and then demand that the media cease using, the very Israel-delegitimizing terms in which these continuous condemnations are written.
Keinon’s Jerusalem Post article this week suggested “the possibility of some kind of settlement freeze, perhaps outside east Jerusalem and the main settlement blocks.” Gratuitously conceding that Jewish presence in these places is “settlements” opens the door to others demanding that Israel vacate them, not as a peace talks’ quid pro quo, but because Jews have no claims there whatsoever. Such was precisely the demand made by India, South Africa and Brazil as quoted in a December Keinon Jerusalem Post article (“14 UNSC Members Slam Settlement Plans; US Mum,” 12/19/12), linked in this week’s Keinon article as “related.” These non-Arab, non-Muslim countries demanded
“not only must settlement construction be frozen, but that ‘settlements must be dismantled and the occupation end,’ not as a concession to be made in the course of negotiations,’ but rather as ‘an obligation under various (Security Council) resolutions and international law.’”
Western Europe views “east Jerusalem” as in “the West Bank.” Dec. 19, 2012, Keinon JP article:
“France, Britain, Germany and Portugal issued a joint statement, which was read out after a meeting on the Middle East in the Security Council. It said the countries were ‘extremely concerned by, and strongly opposed, the plans by Israel to expand settlement construction in the West Bank, including in east Jerusalem.’”
And here’s the lede of a Thursday Times of Israel article (“UN Panel, for First Time, Backs Boycott of Settlement Products,” 1/31/13) cited in Friday’s Daily Alert:
“A United Nations fact-finding mission into the Israeli settlement enterprise appears to promote an international boycott of goods produced by Israeli Jews in the West Bank, in what would be the first time the organization officially backed such a call.
“The mission, which conducted its probe from Jordan since Israel did not let its members enter Israel or the Palestinian territories, issued a scathing report Thursday, lambasting Israel for intentionally breaking international law and systematically violating human rights of Palestinian men, women and children in order to drive them away from their lands.”
This Israeli newspaper article this week went on to state, without embodying an on-the-merits answer by Israel:
“Virtually the entire international community – including the United States – agrees that Israeli settlements beyond the pre-1967 lines violate the 1949 Geneva Conventions and are thus illegal under international law.”
Is there an Israel-and-Jewish-people answer to such condemnations? The JCPA’s Alan Baker gave a strong one just the preceding week in an opinion piece in the American newspaper USA Today (“Israeli Settlements’ Legal Basis: Opposing View,” 1/23/13). Baker began:
“The oft-used term ‘occupied Palestinian territories’ has no basis whatsoever in law or fact. The territories are neither occupied nor are they Palestinian. No legal determination has ever been made as to their sovereignty, and by agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, they are no more than ‘disputed’ pending a negotiated solution, with both sides claiming rights to the territory.”
Baker went on that “Israel has solid legal and historic rights to the territory,” citing the Jewish people’s indigenous presence in the region “for more than 3,000 years,” Balfour, San Remo, the Mandate and UN Charter. Oslo did not prohibit Israel “building settlements in those parts of the territory agreed upon as remaining under Israel’s control,” and that they’re built on public land “in full accordance with the norms of international law regarding the use of land in disputed situations.”
“Furthermore, the prohibition of mass transfer of populations to occupied territory as set out in the 1949 Geneva Convention is not applicable, and was never intended to apply to Israel’s settlement policy. It was drafted to prevent the mass transfers as carried out by the Nazis in World War II.”
But none of this means anything so long as we ourselves use terms, bold-faced above, that our own media, the Jerusalem Post and Times of Israel, used themselves, not in direct quotes, this week – “settlement freeze … east Jerusalem … settlement blocks … settlement construction … settlement enterprise … the West Bank … the Palestinian territories … Israeli settlements.”
At the heart of all this is something Israel’s Amb. Baker said without elaboration last week, that the Jewish people have been an indigenous people to the region for longer than 3,000 years. To the same effect is what Dr. Weitzmann, not the most undiplomatic of Zionists, said in his time to the British: that the Jews were living in the land of Israel including Jerusalem when London was a swamp. In this week’s attached PowerPoint, A631.pps, I lay out the content strructure of the first book that I wrote, “Israel 3000 Years,” documenting what historian James Parkes correctly assessed – that the Yishuv’s tenacious presence all through the centuries, in spite of every discouragement, wrote the Zionists’ “real title deeds.” Go to my esteemed non-vanity publisher’s website, www.pavilionpress.com, and satisfy yourself that the presence of Jews, of all peoples, in Jerusalem and the hill-country heartland of Israel – what the United Nations itself in 1947 called by its Hebrew-origin names, “the hill country of Samaria and Judea,” not “the West Bank” – is not that of strangers, of “settlers.”
Regards,
Jerry