Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #644, 5/5/13

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@comcast.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #644, 5/5/13

BBC’s Answer To BSMW Reader This Week: These are the Words That Jews Use
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A BSMW reader emailed the BBC this week about terms that it used in a story about a father of five who was murdered this week for no reason other than that he was a Jew in Samaria. The BBC emailed him back, quoting similar language in Israeli news articles. Similar language likewise appeared in the Washington Post’s article on that murder this week in the Inq.

Here’s the final paragraph of last week’s BSMW #643: “… when we’ve self-respectingly and historically accurately cleaned up our own speech as grassroots Diaspora Jews, we can credibly lean on our pundits and public spokespersons to cease using these self-denigrating terms. And then we can credibly lean on the media to cease using them too.”

WP This Week In The Inq: “Palestinian Stabs West Bank Jewish Settler”

Wednesday’s Inq’s Washington Post article (Inq, Wed, 5/1/13, A4, WP) led:

A Palestinian stabbed a Jewish settler to death in the West Bank on Tuesday . . . .

Paragraph 5 identified the victim as a 31-year-old father of five. “He was killed as he stood at a hitchhiking stop at a major road junction.”

What if this Inq Washington Post article had instead led: “In an unprovoked murderous attack, an Arab stabbed a 31-year-old Jewish father of five to death on Tuesday as he stood at a major road junction in Arab-Israeli-disputed Samaria”? Language like that throughout the article would have objectively described the victim and perpetrator, the crime committed, the places in which Jews and Arabs live in the region, and the name of the region itself.

Victim and Perpetrator: Instead of objectively identifying the victim and perpetrator, respectively, as “a Jew” and “an Arab,” the WP article used the doubly-loaded identifiers “a Jewish settler” and “a Palestinian.” “Settler” conveys the value judgment of “outside intruder,” whereas “Palestinian,” given that the place is called “Palestine,” conveys the value judgment “rightful inhabitant.” As USA Today acknowledged in a 9/20/11 article, “Jews have lived in ‘Judea and Samaria,’ the biblical name [and the name everyone including the UN used through 1947] for the West Bank, for thousands of years.” Should we concede that Jews there are “settlers,” and only Arabs belong there, because 65 years ago invading Jordan seized and held the region it renamed “West Bank” for 19 years?

Crime Committed: Reflect on the criminal deed here. The Jew was simply standing at a road junction in a place disputed between Jews and Arabs. On the basis of his belief that Jews don’t belong there, the Arab stabbed him to death. This would be a hate-crime, terrorism, someplace else. Neither “hate-crime” nor “murder” nor “terror,” not even “militancy,” made the Inq’s WP article Wednesday, which just called the murderous attack a “killing” (par. 1) and the Israeli as “killed” (par.5).

Places Where Jews and Arabs Live: What if, instead of contrasting “the settlement of Yitzhar, near Nablus, in the northern West Bank,” where the victim worked (par. 5, emphasis added), with “farmland near villages around Yitzhar” which the “retaliating settlers torched” (par. 7, emphasis added), the WP and Inq had even-handedly called both Jewish and Arab communities in disputed Judea-Samaria “villages”?

Arab-Israeli-Disputed Judea-Samaria vs. “West Bank”: Using “Judea-Samaria” would have employed a regional name with thousands of years of historical usage that’s utterly lacking in “West Bank,” which Jordan invented, post-invasion and seizure, in 1951. And calling that region “disputed” would have acknowledged the reality of the conflicting claims that perpetuating the almost half-century gone invader’s name doesn’t.

Lew and the BBC

A BSMW reader named Lew and I go back a long way. We joined Brith Sholom’s Cardozo Lodge at the same time in 1965. The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) did a story this week similar to Wednesday’s Washington Post’s. Lew sent them an email:

How come an Israeli citizen (killed in cold blood) living in Judea-Samaria, which has been a home to Jews since biblical days, is described as a ‘settler’ while an Arab terrorist is called a ‘Palestinian’ – not even a militant? Are you aware that both the Arabs and Jews who are native to Israel are Palestinians? When Israel was given its independence by the UN there was a reference to two states, Jewish and Arab. No mention was made about a Jewish and Palestinian state since they were all Palestinians.

Your job is to report the news, not put a bias slant to it.

BBC:

Dear Sir or Madam,

Thank you for your comments regarding this report
http:www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22349239

We used the word ‘settler’ because it is, in the first instance, the word that most accurately and completely describes the victim of Tuesday’s attack. Obviously, lower down in the report, we give more detail on the victim.

‘Israeli’ is wrong here because it does not indicate that Eviator Borovzky lived in the West Bank. Under international law, the West Bank is occupied territories and Israelis who live there are therefore settlers. This in no way mitigates or justifies an act of murder. We are, for a general international news audience, trying to be as clear as possible about who killed whom and where. All three leading international news agencies – Reuters, the Associated Press and AFP – used exactly the same phrasing as we did.

The Israeli English language news site YNet used the word ‘settler’ as we did in this context. The headline to a report on 30 April read: ‘Settlers throw stones, burn fields after terror attack.’ It continued: ‘A few hours after a Palestinian terrorist murdered Jewish settler Eviatar Borovsky in the northern West Bank Tuesday morning, dozens of settlers hurled stones at Palestinian vehicles near the village of Hawara.
(http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4374261,00.HTML)

Several readers complained that we did not refer to the Palestinian attacker as an activist, militant or terrorist. We are not aware of anything that indicates that the attacker belonged to a political or armed Palestinian group.

Best regards,
Middle East Desk
BBC News website

Lew:

Thank you for your answer, but why would the attacker have to belong to a group to be considered a terrorist? Aren’t the bombers at the Boston Marathon called terrorists? They have not yet been shown to belong to any group.

Lew to BSMW:

Answer from BBC and my reply back to them. Jerry – I think this proves what you been saying that we, ourselves, are partially at fault for using improper names when referring to the West Bank and Settlers.

… and “Palestinian” and “militants” and “occupied territories and “East” Jerusalem and “1967 borders” etc., etc.

See, e.g., the Levy Report for the case that Judea and Samaria are disputed, not “occupied” territories, contrary to the BBC’s: “Under international law, the West Bank is occupied territories and Israelis who live there are therefore settlers.”

That a BBC can justify its use of Jewish homeland-disparaging terms by citing the Jewish press [lower-case ‘p’, Lori] using them is depressing. But it tells grassroots Jews in these days of fundamental upheaval in the Mideast where contesting conclusions conveyed by such terms – “Under international law, the West Bank is occupied territories and Israelis who live there are therefore settlers” – must begin. If not with us, whom, and if not now, when?

Regards,
Jerry