Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #652, 6/30/13

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@comcast.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #652, 6/30/13

This Week In The Inq: Delegitimization At Its Most Deadly
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If the Associated Press, America’s main news source of newspaper news, had set out this week to write two news articles depicting Arabs as the unquestioned rightful owners of Judea, Samaria and “east” Jerusalem, and Jews there as recently arriving outsiders, it could hardly have done better than the equities images it purveyed in the two AP articles that appeared Thursday and Friday This Week In The Inq. [emphasis added throughout]

Inq Thursday, 6/27/13: “Israel OKs Settlements”

There are at least four balanced reporting deficiencies with the Philadelphia Inquirer’s AP Israel article Thursday (Inq, Thu, 6/27/13, A5, AP):

[1] 69 homes in one place as “Settlements” [plural]: The Inq headlined this news article across three columns: “Israel OKs Settlements.” But Israel wasn’t inundating the land here with new “settlements.” It was advancing plans to build 69 homes for Jews in one place in Jerusalem, Har Homa, a neighborhood that had been mostly purchased by Jews after the First World War (see [4] below).

The Inq hysterically headlining “Israel Okays Settlements” for those 69 homes in Har Homa, a long-Jewish-owned area in a city in which Jews have deeper roots than any other people on earth, was a bit of a headlining stretch, even in Inq-speak.

[2] “Jewish settlements” versus “Palestinian Neighborhoods”: But still more deeply imbalanced Thursday is the Inq and AP branding Jewish Jerusalem neighborhoods across the old 1949 ceasefire line “settlements,” while in that same news article calling Arab neighborhoods there “neighborhoods.”

Paragraph 1 of Thursday’s AP article led off by calling Har Homa “a contentious east Jerusalem settlement.” Balanced reporting would have been “a contested Jerusalem neighborhood,” not “a contentious east Jerusalem settlement.” But the AP reserved “neighborhood” for its reference in paragraph 6 to the same committee that approved the 69 Jewish Har Homa homes having at the same meeting “also approved 22 homes in Arab neighborhoods of the city.”

[3] The media taking sides in the Name War: A big thrust of this media watch is that Diaspora and even Israeli Jews gratuitously validate incessant Western media use of Jewish homeland-delegitimizing terms by passive acquiescence and even by ourselves using them, putting our hecksher upon them. But one put-down of Jews, at least, in which Israel’s government and Jews of all political stripes expressly and emphatically do not acquiesce is calling Jews anywhere in Jerusalem “settlers.” When the media adopts this Jews-in-Jerusalem put-down in the face of this express and emphatic Jewish rejection, the media’s taking sides in the conflict.

Netanyahu told AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) in March 2010:

The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It’s our capital.

This view is held also by the majority of Diaspora Jewry, regardless of political persuasion and religious movement. In that same month of March, 2010, the now-retired leader of the liberal Union of Reform Judaism, which represents America’s million Reform Jews, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, told an assembly of URJ leaders:

The Union of Reform Judaism, like most American Jewish organizations, supports a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty.

This means that we believe housing units constructed in Jerusalem by Israel are not settlements and they are not illegal….

All right, Yoffie appended advocating a “temporary moratorium,” that “a great many things that are legal are not prudent or wise,” but the balanced reporting issue here is not whether Israel okaying homes for Jews in Har Homa, as it did this week, is prudent or wise, but whether those Jewish Har Homa Jerusalem homes are in a “settlement.”

(BTW, for liberals who are horrified over Big Bad Bibi approving plans for 69 homes for Jews in Har Homa, Jewish Virtual Library points out (“Har Homa”) that “the original decision to go forward with construction on Har Homa was made by Labor Prime Minister Shimon Peres in 1996.”).

[4] Insistently misstating “east” Jerusalem’s Jewish connection: Thursday’s Inq’s AP article’s sole reference to how Jews came into possession of Har Homa, this “contentious east Jerusalem Jewish settlement” (lead par. 1), is to it being in “the West Bank and east Jerusalem, areas captured by Israel in 1967” (par. 3).

The mainstream Western media’s insistent dating of Israel’s connection to Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem’s historic heart as “the West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands captured by Israel in 1967” is, yes, less derisive than the expression the MSM used to wallow in, “lands Israel seized in 1967,” but it’s still a grave distortion of history.

There’s a bit more pedigree, for instance, to Har Homa’s Jewish connection. A previous burst of Arab and media Har Homa hysteria occurred in 2010. On that occasion, Israel Matzav wrote that while a third of the Har Homa area is owned by Arabs, “two-thirds of Har Homa is on land purchased by Jews after the First World War,” i.e., almost a century ago now. Jerusalem at that time, and for decades before that, had a clear Jewish majority, as it does now.

Why a Jews-Only Building Freeze Is Delegitimization At Its Most Deadly

I titled this BSMW #652 “Delegitimization At Its Most Deadly.” For that’s what’s going on here – a one-way freeze-squeeze on Israel and Jews. Thursday’s Inq’s AP article’s lead paragraph 1 direly warned Inq et ilk readers that Israel announcing “plans to build dozens of homes in a contentious east Jerusalem settlement” is “casting a cloud over an upcoming peace mission by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.”

We’ve seen this before. In Lee’s and my book on anti-Israel media bias “from A-to-Z,” we dedicate the letter “K” to 10 ways the MSM depicts Israel as “Killing the Peace Process.” Here’s numbers 3, 4, 5 and 6 (in the book, all have examples):

(3) Israel Continuing To Build Homes for Jews in Jerusalem is ‘Latest Setback’ for Peace

(4) Israel Restating ‘Longstanding’ Positions ‘Undermines’ Peace Efforts

(5) Israel Making a ‘Move’ (that Wasn’t a Move), Not Making a Move, Hurts Peace Talks

(6) Israel’s Willingness for Talks with No ‘Pre-Conditions’ Blocks ‘Imminent Breakthrough’ While Palestinian Arab-Demanded ‘Pre-Conditions’ are Ignored

Talk about Israel “casting a cloud” over Kerry’s peace mission [AP lede Thursday], the Times of Israel is reporting Saturday, 6/29/13, that the Palestinian Arabs say they “won’t enter talks unless Netanyahu halts settlement construction and accepts pre-1967 lines.” Not much left to talk about after that, is there? Well, there’s still “the right of return.”

But focus just on that Jews-only building freeze. On Thursday of this week (6/27/13), Eli Hertz put its implications this way:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s calls for a freeze on Jewish construction in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem while Arab construction, which far exceeds Jewish development continues unfettered – are clearly biased.

Hertz cited a former Israeli policy planning official that “the tempo of Arab construction is ‘more than 10 times the number of buildings under construction than those approved’” by the Israeli government for Jews across the old green line.

Now, reduce just the Jewish building tempo to zero. Then watch what happens over time, as the Arabs sit back and watch it, in “the West Bank” and “East Jerusalem.”

Inq Friday, 6/28/13: “McDonald’s Opts Out in West Bank”

As if we needed a second case this week of the Western media begging the question of Arab vs. Jewish over-the-1949 ceasefire line Palestine equities, we got a super-sized one on Friday (Inq, Fri, 6/28/13, A4, AP, “McDonald’s Opts Out in West Bank.”

The AP here led with “the McDonald’s restaurant chain” having “declined to open a branch in a West Bank Jewish settlement,” thereby “adding a prominent name to an international movement to boycott Israel’s settlements.” The article indirectly quoted a spokeswoman for the Peace Now-founder franchisee of McDonald’s Israel that it had turned down an Ariel mall’s request for a Mickey D’s “because the owner of McDonald’s Israel has a policy of staying out of the occupied territories.” She said that “the decision was not coordinated with McDonald’s U.S. headquarters,” which put it: “Our partner in Israel has determined that this particular location is not part of his growth plan.” The AP didn’t include whether Ronald himself smiled when he said this, but if not then the AP shouldn’t have claimed in its lede that “the McDonald’s restaurant chain” had added its prominent name to an international boycott movement.

In any case, the lesson for pro-Israel media watchers is that both the AP and this Peace Nownik could have used the history-validated term “Judea and Samaria” and not the politically-loaded “the occupied territories,” but chose not to do so. Another instance showing that everybody but pro-Israel Jews weighs the words that they use. Fries with that?

Regards,
Jerry