Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #639, 3/31/13

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@comcast.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #639, 3/31/13

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: The Inq’s Ms. Rubin did a column this week that attributed initiation of the “sharp slide” in Turkish-Israeli relations to a context-less “2008 Israeli invasion of Gaza.” Three sentences later, Ms. Ruin mentioned “rocket attacks on Israeli towns by Hamas from Gaza,” and made that mention in the context of Israelis’ pique at the Turkish PM for not criticizing such rocketing, not as the cause and justification of Israel’s 2008 ground action in Gaza. The service Ms. Rubin rendered this week was shining light on the Inq’s coverage of that 2008 Arab-Israeli fighting, which fits a long pattern of Inq et ilk misportrayal of Israel as the aggressor and downplaying terrorists’ attacks on Israeli civilians.

This Week In The Inq: The Inq’s Two-Edged Sword of Arab-Israeli Fighting Imbalance
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The opening scene of the “The Hound of The Baskervilles” has Holmes and Watson at their breakfast table pondering the walking stick, engraved to a Dr. Mortimer “by his friends at the CCH,” that their unexpected visitor the evening before had absent-mindedly left rather than his visiting card when he found them not home. Holmes has Watson attempt “to reconstruct the man by an examination of it,” and then thanks Watson for being “a conductor of light” through stating fallacies that illuminated the truth.

The Inq’s house foreign affairs columnist Trudy Rubin did an op-ed on Thursday (Inq, Thu, 3/28/13, A19, “Mideast Lesson on Leadership”), crediting President Obama for getting Netanyahu to apologize to Turkey for “operational errors” in stopping a Turkish ship trying to breach Israel’s naval Gaza blockade back in 2010. The media watch aspect is the light Ms. Rubin throws on the two-edged sword of imbalance the Inq wields in portraying Arab-Israeli fighting. The Inq portrays Israeli defensive actions as attacks and invasions and downplays Arab terror targeting Israeli civilians.

Ms. Rubin wrote in Thursday’s op-ed that Turkish-Israeli relations “had already begun their sharp slide after the 2008 Israeli invasion of Gaza. The attack ended personal efforts by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to restart peace talks between Israel and Syria.” [emphasis added throughout] Israelis, for their part, Ms. Rubin added three sentences later, “were outraged that the Turkish leader never criticized rocket attacks on Israeli towns by Hamas from Gaza.”

Brith Sholom Media Watch #375 of March 9, 2008, addressed Ms. Rubin’s Inq’s headlining of that 2008 “Israeli invasion of Gaza,” that Israeli “attack” on Gaza. The Inq portrayed that Israeli action as so seemingly unjustified that it drove Peace Partner Abbas into suspending Palestinian Arabs’ peace talks with Israel.

Inq headline, A1, Monday, March 3, 2008:

Mideast Peace Talks Off; Palestinians Suspend Discussions; Israel Vows to Keep Up Gaza Attacks; Condoleeza Rice is Due in the Region This Week

Inq headline, A3, Wednesday, March 6, 2008:

Abbas Declines To Set Time for Resuming Talks; He Met With Rice, Who Pushed for the Resumption of Negotiations Broken Off Over Israel’s Incursion Into Gaza

Inq headline, A2, Thursday, March 7, 2008:

Mideast Peace Talks Back On Track, Rice Says In Visit to Region; Abbas Had Halted Them After Israel’s Incursion into Gaza; No Date for a Restart was Announced

Dr. Watson did a better job of describing the unknown Dr. Mortimer than Ms. Rubin did of describing Israel’s 2008 “invasion of Gaza” this Thursday or the Inq did in its week of headlining that “incursion,” those Israeli “attacks” on Gaza that Israel “vowed to keep up,” back in 2008.

What the Inq didn’t mention in its 2008 week of headlines was that Hamas had escalated from lobbing small Qassam rockets at the nearby town of Sderot [grounds indeed for an incursion to stop it] to launching big Grad rockets at the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Others took notice. Among the twelve pages of Conf. of Presidents Daily Alert news squibs that I printed that week:

Fifty Palestinian Rockets Bombard Israel, Israeli Killed at Sapir College, Ashkelon Hospital Targeted [2/28/08, three days before the Inq headlined: “Israel Vows To Keep Up Gaza Attacks”]

Ashkelon Residents Realize: We’re Just Like Sderot [2/28/08]

Editorial in Haaretz [not the most ‘militant’ of Israeli newspapers, 2/28/08]: The dozens of rockets that were fired Wednesday from Gaza – one of which killed Roni Yihye – have placed the I.D.F. on the threshold of a major raid into the Palestinian territory. Responsibility for the escalation lies entirely with the Palestinian side: the Hamas government.

AP and International Herald Tribune, 2/29/08: The Israeli city of Ashkelon (pop. 120,000), located 17 kilometers (11 miles) from Gaza, was hit by several Iranian-made Grad (Katyusha) rockets on Thursday, fired by Hamas militants in Gaza. One hit an apartment building, slicing through the roof and three floors below, and another landed near a school, wounding a 17-year-old girl.

Friday, 2/29/08: Ten Palestinian Rockets Hit Ashkelon.

All this a few days preceding the Inq’s run of headlines featuring: “Israel Vows To Keep Up Gaza Attacks”

On March 3, 2008, the very day the Inq headlined “Mideast Peace Talks Off; Palestinians Suspend Discussions; Israel Vows To Keep Up Gaza Attacks,” the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued this assessment:

The 122 mm. Grad rockets (also known as Katyushas) fired from Hamas-controlled Gaza against the Israeli city of Ashkelon are a standard military artillery weapon, equipped with a weapons-grade high explosive fragmentation warhead. The range of the rockets fired against Ashkelon is over 20 km, an upgraded capability which places about a quarter of a million Israeli civilians in constant danger of Hamas attack.

The light conducted by Ms. Rubin this week shone on the Inq’s contrasting portrayal of the two sides’ actions in Israel’s response to Hamas’ escalation in rocketing civilians in Israel in 2008, an escalation that has continued and now brings most Israelis in range of rockets from Gaza. See the Israeli Foreign Ministry map in the attached Powerpoint.

Part of a Pattern

Krauthammer is credited with claiming that Israel’s enemies aim is to deprive Israel of every means of defense. They get a boost from the two-edged sword of imbalance the mainstream media wields in portraying Arab-Israeli fighting. The Inq et ilk have ridiculed even Israeli pinpoint targeting of terrorists who prey on Israeli civilians. BSMW issues have cited, e.g., an Inq wire service calling its targeting years ago of a key perpetrator of the Dolphin Disco, Sbarro Pizza and other mass-murder bombings an “unrepentant” Israel’s “assassination” of a “military leader” of Hamas. And when, two months after the Inq itself had published an Hamas leader’s open call for female “suicide” bombers because Israel was stopping the male ones, Israel took him out, the Inq ran an editorial cartoon of Israel strangling the peace dove and an op-ed page headline: “Did Peace Die Along With Sheikh Yassin?” BSMW asked [rhetorically], did medical ethics die with Mengele? Israel got blamed in the Inq for “fueling a bitterness” by not more quickly repatriating “suicide” bombers’ remains [as if Israel’s Arab peace partners join Israeli volunteers and sanitation workers in scraping up little bits and pieces of blown-up and incinerated Jews from the gutters].

On the other side of the sword, when Palestinian Arab terrorists exploded and incinerated civilian Jerusalem buses two days in a row and vowed to continue such carnage, the Inq headlined: “… and Militants Promise More.” The “Road Map” uses forms of “terror” over and over, and “militants” not at all, but that hasn’t stopped the Inq et ilk from telling the public the Road Map calls on the Palestinian Authority “to rein in militants.” When Islamic Jihad claimed credit for an Arab sneaking into Israel and shooting dead two Israeli factory guards at an industrial park near the green line at which Israeli factories employed Palestinian Arabs, the Inq headlined “Two Israeli Factory Guards Die.”

A few years ago, when I was a guest on the local ZOA’s late lamented radio show, I was asked whether I believed the Inq’s Israel coverage has changed over the years. I replied that it has become less intense. The era in which the Inq ran the AP, Knight-Ridder and its own Jerusalem Bureau often on the same day is over. The loaded language, etc., continues. But when Arab-Israeli fighting occurs, the two-sided misportrayal of prominently portraying Israel as the aggressor and of downplaying terror directed at Israeli civilians resurfaces in all its damaging imbalance.

Regards,
Jerry