Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #635, 3/3/13

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@comcast.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #635, 3/3/13

This Week In The Inq: Daily Reporting’s Little Digs
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This morning, Lee and I gave our Pressing Israel: Media Bias Exposed From A-To-Z Powerpoint presentation to a synagogue’s Israel Advocacy group. Among our points is that truly balanced reporting won’t come until the loaded lexicon – all of it – is successfully challenged. Our hometown Philly Inquirer (“Inq”) ran five Israel stories (3 AP, 2 Washington Post) this past week in the Inq. Imbalanced language seeped into each. Come take a look.

AP in Inq, Sunday – “Jewish settlers” vs. “Palestinian villagers”:

The Inq began this week with an AP In-the-World squib, “Clashes Erupt in West Bank” (Inq, Sun, 2/24/13, A5, AP). If we really believe that what the U.N. itself in 1947 called “the hill country of Samaria and Judea” is disputed territory to which the Jewish homeland of Israel has real and substantial historical and militarily strategic claims, then we can’t passively acquiesce in the media lacing news reports of violence between that territory’s disputants with terms treating that dispute as decided against us.

All four paragraphs of last Sunday’s little AP squib did this. Paragraph 1, the most egregiously tilted, led off:

Clashes erupted Saturday in the West Bank where Jewish settlers shot two Palestinian demonstrators in the northern village of Kusra, an Israeli military official and Palestinian residents said.

What if, instead of contrasting “Jewish settlers” with “Palestinian residents” of a “village” in “the West Bank,” the AP had written of “clashes between residents of Jewish and Arab villages in Samaria”?

AP in Inq, Monday – “Hard-line Netanyahu”… “Israel reoccupying West Bank”:

The Inq’s AP article Monday (2/25/13, A2, “Palestinian Death in Israeli Custody Sets Off Clashes”) outrageously included “the recent reelection of hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu” among reasons listed by the AP which “seem to have created fertile ground for a third Palestinian revolt.” As we’ve documented in this media watch and in Lee’s and my book, Bibi is NOT hard-line compared to the leaders Palestinian Arabs have elected themselves – Fatah’s Abbas and those Wonderful Folks from Hamas who brought Israel years of almost daily rockets from Gaza. In a sentence: Bibi, who put in a 10-month building freeze, calls for talks with no pre-conditions and has agreed to two-states-for-two-peoples, which is how the U.S. defines the Two-State Solution, while Abbas demands that only Arabs can build in disputed areas, including Jerusalem, demands impossible talks’ pre-conditions, and proclaims “We shall never recognize a Jewish state.” The media calls Abbas “moderate,” not “hard-line.”

Monday’s Inq AP article goes on to report that the second uprising broke out in 2000, “after failed talks on a final peace deal,” without stating that the talks failed because Arafat rejected Barak offering him almost all that the Palestinian Arabs demanded. In any case, the AP characterizes that uprising as “Israel reoccupying the West Bank after bombings and shootings.” How about, “after bombings and shootings of civilian Jews in Israel by Arabs, Israel strengthened its military presence in disputed Judea-Samaria”?

Washington Post in Inq Wednesday – “Militants Fire Rocket At Israel”

The Inq’s 4-paragraph Washington Post In-the-World squib Wednesday (Inq, 2/27/13, A20) led:

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday fired a rocket into Israel for the first time since a ceasefire reached three months ago ended an Israeli offensive against the militant Islamist group Hamas, police said.

First of all, this Grad [identified as such in paragraph 3] military rocket wasn’t fired impersonally “into Israel,” “at Israel,” as the Inq’s AP article and Inq’s own headline impersonally put it. It was fired at civilian men, women and kids in and near Ashkelon [identified as the target in paragraph 3].

And people who “claim responsibility” [AP and Inq-speak for “credit”] for firing big battlefield rockets at civilians in cities are terrorists, not “militants,” period. Paragraph 2 identified those “militants” here:

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, claimed responsibility….

And thirdly, that ceasefire referred to in paragraph 1 didn’t end “an Israeli offensive against the militant Islamist group Hamas.” It ended Israel’s military response against terrorists inundating Israel with rockets from Hamas-governed Gaza aimed at Israeli men, women and kids. It’s an outrage to call Israel’s response against terrorists rocketing its civilians in cities “an Israeli offensive,” as though Israel were the aggressor.

AP in Inq Wednesday – “Spying against an ally”… U.S. Jews’ “suspected dual loyalties”:

Also Wednesday, the Inq ran an AP piece (Inq, Wed, 2/27/13, A11, “Israel To Ask Obama To Free Spy”) about Israeli President Peres planning to ask President Obama to free Jonathan Pollard when Obama visits Israel this spring. The article’s last paragraph:

The Pollard affair is enmeshed in highly fraught issues. One is the very idea of spying against an ally – especially a country’s primary patron. Another is the delicate issue of suspected dual loyalty among American Jews, and their own concerns about being seen in such a light.

“Spying against an ally” flies in the face of what we understand Pollard did – pass information to Israel that America had about Israel’s sworn Arab enemies’ capabilities to bring about their avowed goal of Israel’s destruction. “Dual loyalty among American Jews” suggests conflicting allegiances to two countries which are not allies, inconsistent with the AP’s preceding sentence castigating Israel for “spying against an ally.” The Americans with conflicting allegiances are those seeking to end an alliance advantageous to both the U.S. and Israel out of prejudice against the Jewish state.

Washington Post in Inq Saturday – “Zionism” and “Mideast Peace”:

Finally, the Inq ran a Washington Post article Saturday (Inq, Sat 3/2/13, “Kerry Chastises Leader of Turkey Over Remark”). Turkey’s PM had said: “Just as with Zionism, anti-Semitism and fascism, it has become necessary to view Islamophobia as a crime against humanity.”

Before addressing the company that “Zionism” keeps in that statement by the Turk PM, reflect for a minute on a statement attributed to Sec. Kerry in the article’s lead, attributing to him a comment that the Turk’s “Zionism” remarks “complicate efforts to forge Mideast peace.” That term, “Mideast peace,” suggests that solving the Arab-Israeli conflict will spread a blanket of peace all over that region mired in brutal multi-layered warfare. It puts unrealistic pressure on Israel. It’s unclear from this article whether the expression “Mideast peace” is Kerry’s or the Washington Post’s, but the conflict between Arabs and Israel should be referenced as “the Arab-Israeli conflict,” not, too broadly, “the Mideast conflict,” or, too narrowly, “the Israeli-Palestinian” (or slightly better, “Israeli-Palestinian Arab”) conflict.

But the fundamental problem with this news article is the misperception it purveys about “Zionism.” Our enemies call Israel “the Zionist entity,” as though the Jewish connection with Israel dates from the late 19th century-begun Zionist movement (except for those who call Israel “created” and “founded” in 1948). As Katz pointed out in “Battleground” (p. 97):

Modern Zionism did indeed start the count of waves of immigration after 1882, but only the frame and the capacity for organization were new: The living movement to the land had never ceased.

Restricting the Jewish connection to the three-millennia Jewish homeland to 19th century “Zionism” is the parallel misperception of calling the Arabs who are connected to Palestine “the Palestinians,” as though the land were aboriginally theirs. Both of these parallel misperceptions have to be fought.

The bottom line is that it all has to be fought – the entire loaded daily reporting lexicon delegitimizing the Jewish homeland of Israel, from media contrast of “Jewish settlers” with “Palestinian residents of villages in the West Bank” to “hard-line” Bibi versus [“moderate”] Abbas, to Israel “occupying the West Bank,” to “militants” firing rockets “at Israel” following “Israel’s offensive against Hamas,” to Israel “spying against an ally” with its “suspected dual loyalty among American Jews,” to the Jewish homeland dating from “Zionism” and to Arab-Israeli peace as “Mideast peace,” to cite just those imbalanced expressions that made it This Week In the Inq.

Regards,
Jerry