Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #640, 4/7/13

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin,Editor (jverlin1234@comcast.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #640, 4/7/13

This Week In The Inq [and give it credit]: “A Four-Month Mitzvah”
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

If you have HBO, you might want to watch a new documentary, “50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus” being telecast Monday night. An article about it – “A Four-Month Mitzvah; In 1939, a Philadelphia couple left their comfort zone to save Jewish children in Vienna. HBO’s ’50 Children’ tells the story” – ran on pages C1 and C2 Wednesday (4/3/13) This Week In The Inq.

The now century old, Philly-based independent fraternal order Brith Sholom, which claims responsibility, as the saying goes, for among other things this media watch, was the organization involved in this effort, as the Inquirer’s article and HBO program and book on which it is based describe. The effort was conceived and executed by Brith Sholom leaders, Gilbert Kraus of Philadelphia and Louis Levine of New York, the Grand Master. And when the 50 children arrived in New York, and we have a priceless photo showing a bunch of kids in 1939 clothing staring over a steamship’s rail at the Statue of Liberty, they were whisked to Camp Sholom, a summer camp maintained by Brith Sholom outside Philadelphia, until they could be placed with families. Some were eventually reunited with surviving parents.

All this was before my time in Brith Sholom. As a kid I attended annual picnics and spent a few summers at Camp Sholom, and we knew vaguely that something extraordinary had occurred there a few years before. There’s a large picture frame with fading photos of 50 kids in our office, but over the years the kids and order largely lost track of each other. In 2003, when I had the honor to serve as Brith Sholom’s president, we started a website in hopes of attracting young members. I haven’t forgotten the very first email we got: “Dear Brith Sholom, I was one of the fifty children . . . . “ We had a “reunion” weekend in Philly, and it was something. As it did this week, the Inquirer had beautifully written up the story a few weeks before, and its reporter movingly spoke at our dinner, A couple years later, a photo of the fifty kids taking the pledge of allegiance at Camp Sholom showed up at a photo exhibit in Los Angeles. One of the attendees stood up and said: “I was one of the kids in that photo.” Another added: “I later purchased the camp from the group that took it.” One of those fifty kids, now 83-year-old Kurt Herman (who can still hit a hundred foul shots in a row – eat your heart out, Mr. President), featured in the documentary and Inquirer article, served a decade ago as president of Brith Sholom’s oldest surviving lodge, Kraus-Pearlstein Lodge #8, named after Gilbert Kraus’ father. As the order’s then president, I had the privilege of installing Kurt as Kraus Lodge president. “Well, Kurt, if you knew that someday you’d end up as a Brith Sholom Lodge president, would you have still got on the boat?” “Yes, I would.” I think he meant it.

This Week In The Inq: “Gaza Truce At Risk as Fire Traded” [Not Exactly]
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

On Thursday of this week, the Inq ran a Los Angeles Times article (Inq, Thu, 4/4/13, A13) which the Inq headlined: “Gaza Truce At Risk as Fire Traded.” Morally equivalent expressions such as “Fire Traded” and the like are Inq-Speak for Arab terrorists firing at civilians in Israel and Israel responding against the terrorists.

See, e.g., Inq headline 8/19/11: “Day of Killings on Israeli Border.” Terrorists had crossed INTO Israel from Sinai, and attacked cars and buses on Israel’s Eilat-Beersheva road, murdering eight and wounding 30 Israelis. Israel’s military struck back at the attackers, killing a few of them. But to the Inq, this terrorist carnage IN Israel, and Israel’s response against the terrorists, was “Day of Killings ON Israeli Border.” [emphasis added throughout]

The “Fire Traded” that transpired this week, per the Inq’s so-headlined LA Times article, was “militants fired projectiles into southern Israel, and the Israel Defense Forces RESPONDED with air strikes against two targets in northern Gaza.” “At civilians in southern Israel” would have been more accurate, but give the LA Times a modicum of credit for saying the IDF “responded” and not “retaliated,” as though the IDF had tit-for-tat targeted Arab civilians.

But the LA Times’ balance didn’t last. It continued:

The exchanges marked the first air strike by Israel into Gaza since an eight-day offensive in November that led to the deaths of at least 168 Palestinians and six Israelis.

What actually “led to the deaths” of those Arabs and Jews was not an Israeli “offensive” but Arabs incessantly firing rockets at civilians in Israel from Gaza and Israel eventually, as it must periodically, responding by going into Gaza to stop it. But Arab-initiated cause-and-effect doesn’t compute in Los Angeles Times and Philadelphia Inquirer physics.

This Week In The Inq: “Israel’s Founding in 1948” [Not Exactly]
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

An Inq photo caption in an article about Jerusalem This Week In The Inq showed “A Turkish-period building in the Musrara neighborhood, which was a scene of warfare after Israel’s founding in 1948.”

Nice of the Inq to associate warfare, without mentioning any of the other parties to it, with “Israel’s founding in 1948.” Israel wasn’t “founded,” as though ex nihilo, “in 1948.” Proof enough of this is that in that otherwise-undescribed “warfare” this newly-“founded” nation’s existing army threw back and then some the instant-after-independence invasion by five Arab states’ armies.

The “creation” and “founding” of Israel, “the war that followed Israel’s creation,” the seemingly-exclusively Arab [“Palestinian”] refugees of that “war that followed Israel’s creation,” without the Arab parties to that war even named, was standard fare for the Inq et ilk for years. I thought we were finally past it. But, That’s Not All, Folks.

Regards,
Jerry