Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #637

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@comcast.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #637

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Lee and I gave three Powerpoint talks on our book, Pressing Israel: Media Bias Exposed From A-to-Z, between last Sunday and today. We’ve now given 14. Our pitch is that reporting on Israel is laced with loaded terms disparaging Israel, and that many of these strike at the very legitimacy of the Jewish people’s homeland link. In the Q & A, a number of attendees who’ve stayed awake express their frustration at trying to get across in a few sentences the strength of the Jewish homeland claim to Christians and even Jews unfamiliar with our case.

First, don’t argue the legitimacy of “Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank,” which the media delights in contrasting with “Palestinian residents” of nearby “neighborhoods, towns and villages.” It’s Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria, not “East Jerusalem” and “the West Bank,” and Jews there are residents of communities too.

Second, make clear that Israel wasn’t “created and founded” in “1948,” as the media puts it, but is the natural fruition into statehood of the Jewish people’s unbroken three-millennia homeland-claiming presence in the land, and elsewhere in the Mideast.

Reclaiming Our Heritage: Fighting the Media Myth of Jews as Aliens in Their Homeland
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We don’t wade all the way through the media’s misleading terms “from A to Z” in these talks, but highlight a few “smoking guns” – media misportrayals of the terminology that was actually used in key historical documents, the U.N.’s 1947 Palestine partition resolution, the 1949 Israel-Jordan armistice agreement, and President Bush’s 2003 “road map to a two-state solution.”

*** “The West Bank”: The U.N.’s 1947 partition resolution didn’t refer to “the West Bank,” the term the media incessantly uses, but to “the hill country of Samaria and Judea,” Hebrew-origin names linking the Jewish people to their homeland’s heartland. Despite media relegation of “Judea and Samaria” to “the biblical terms for the West Bank,” those Jewish-linked names remained in actual use, even by Turkey and Britain, through the mid-20th century.

*** “Palestinian and Jewish States”: Nor did that U.N. resolution, #181, partition the place called Palestine into “Palestinian and Jewish” states, as the media has misquoted that resolution. Over and over, resolution #181 uses “the Arab State” and “the Jewish State.” Partitioning Palestine between its Arab and Jewish populations into Arab and Jewish states is one thing. Partitioning “Palestine” between “Palestinians” and someone else conveys something different.

*** “The Palestinians”: How did U.N. resolution #181 use the term “Palestinian”? It didn’t reference Palestine’s Arabs as “the Palestinians.” The Palestine partition resolution expressed hope for peace between “the two Palestinian peoples.”

*** “Israel’s 1967 Borders”: The 1949 Israel-Jordan armistice agreement called the “green line” drawn in that document an exclusively military ceasefire line, expressly stating that the armistice “shall in no way prejudice the rights, claims and positions of either Party hereto in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine question, the provisions of the Agreement being dictated exclusively by military considerations.” Even as a military ceasefire line, the “green line” [drawn with a green marker] it drew between the Israeli and Jordanian armies in 1949 was superseded and consigned to history’s dustbin by the renewed fighting between the same parties and their infinitely less perilous to Israel ceasefire positions in 1967. Yet the media touts those old 1949 ceasefire lines as “Israel’s 1967 borders.”

*** “Rein In Militants”: President Bush’s “Performance-Based Road-Map To A Two-State Solution” doesn’t call for Palestinian Arabs “to rein in militants,” as the media often misportrays it. The “road map” uses forms of the term “terror” over and over, and the media euphemism “militants” not at all.

“East Jerusalem”: Another misleading media term we take up in our Powerpoint talk is “East Jerusalem,” sometimes even “traditionally Arab East Jerusalem,” even just “Arab East Jerusalem” (e.g., the Inq’s Trudy Rubin). HonestReporting.com has an excellent short video on “East” Jerusalem, which existed for 19 of the past 3,000 years, the 1948-67 period of the Jordanian invasion and seizure. In the past 3,000 years, Jerusalem has been three native states’ capital – Judah, Judaea and Israel, all Jewish, and has had a renewed Jewish majority since 19th century Ottoman rule. Yet the media insistently uses “East” Jerusalem now, calling Jewish presence there “settlements.”

“Israel was Created and Founded in 1948”

During the Q & A period following our talk, attendees sometimes express frustration at attempting to get across in a few sentences to Christians and even Jews unfamiliar with Jewish homeland history the strength of the Jews’ historical claim to the land of Israel.

Step One is not to try to convince folks of the legitimacy of “Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.” Use the non-loaded historically grounded place names – Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria – and “communities,” not “Jewish settlements” versus “Palestinian neighborhoods and villages.”

Step Two is to shun the media’s characterizations of Israel as a post-Holocaust implant in the Mideast that was artificially “created” and “founded” in “1948.” It was a homeland Jewish army that threw back and then some the instant invasion in 1948 of five Arab states. Pre-Holocaust 20th century documents, San Remo and the Palestine Mandate for reconstituting the Jewish National Home and “close settlement of Jews on the land,” show international recognition of the Jewish people’s historical claim. At least three Israeli premiers – Begin, Sharon and Netanyahu – have stated the Jews’ unbroken physical homeland presence since biblical times, as have widely-read authors historian James Parkes, Joan Peters and Samuel Katz. Israel’s post-1948-war absorption of more indigenous Middle Eastern Jews from vast Muslim lands, many with millennia-Mideast roots, than Arabs left tiny Israel further strengthens the land of Israel’s Mideast roots.

It would be nice if the media stopped saying “West Bank … East Jerusalem … Jewish settlements vs. Palestinian villages … Israel’s 1948 creation and founding” and all the other Jewish homeland-delegitimizing loaded terms. Don’t hold your breath. But don’t divert your eyes from this media malpractice either. Through our own consistent use of self-respecting, historically-grounded terms – Judea and Samaria, Jerusalem without “Arab East” qualifiers, Jewish communities, not Jewish settlements, etc. – we can vividly draw the contrast between historically valid terms and Jewish homeland-delegitimizing loaded terms used by both the Jewish people’s enemies and mainstream Western media.

Regards,
Jerry