Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #654, 7/14/13

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@comcast.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #654, 7/14/13

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: The Inq ignored Israel this week, so let’s step back and look at the Arab and Jewish Palestine equities purveyed by the media’s lexicon. An Israeli general remarked recently that Arabs see Israel as “an alien element” in the Mideast. It’s this same image that mainstream media wordsmiths purvey to the West. The answer is not only for we ourselves to cease using these terms, as I harangue you Gentle Readers most weeks, but for us to get off our duffs and affirmatively make the case that the Jewish state, twice sovereign as such in ancient times, and populated by a Jewish people that never left its homeland or region, is the least alien of all Middle East states.

OK, let’s use this break to look at what anti-Israel media bias fundamentally does.

In an opinion piece last month in the Jerusalem Post (6/8/13, “Will Kerry’s Frantic Shuttle Diplomacy Bring Peace”), Herb Keinon quoted an Israeli general that there’s a growing “feeling among the Arab masses that Israel is an alien element in the region.” Can you blame the Arab masses? They probably subscribe to the Inq or its ilk. Every one of the media’s incessantly and exclusively used dirty words – “West Bank … East Jerusalem … settlers and settlements … 1948 creation and founding of Israel … occupied territories … Palestinian territories … Palestinian State … The Palestinians” – uniformly purvey one purposeful perception: that Israel is an alien element in the Mideast..

For you Gentle Readers willing to go along for the trip, here’s a whirlwind tour of the Jewish people’s connection to Palestine [btw, not a dirty word; the Romans were referencing the already-long-gone Philistines, not Arafat’s ancestors]. Let’s begin with a why-it’s-important quote from an Israeli you might not think thought of such things:

The Jewish people was born as a people 4,000 years ago, and as a matter of fact, never left. There were Jews that never left this country. And that one must understand…. For years we talked mostly about security. I think that this approach was a mistake…. I think that Israel made a mistake and I include myself in one of those not to speak about Jewish rights over this country. It’s painful…. We speak about the history of the Jewish people. And the Jewish people have existed for 4,000 years and never left this country. (emphasis added)

These were the words of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to the Foreign Press Corps, January 11, 2004. One might quibble whether Jewish peoplehood began with Abraham in the early second millennium BCE or a few hundred years later with Moses, but archeologists (who are divided over significant aspects of ancient Israel) are agreed that Israelite presence in the Judean and Samarian hills began when they arrived or arose there in the Late Bronze – Iron I Age transition, c. 1200 BCE.

Biblical Israel

Ancient Israelite history, including in Jerusalem, happened. King David, evidenced inter alia by a foreign king’s “House of David” inscription, was more real than King Arthur. The First and Second Temples successively stood for a millennium. The Maccabees really did wrest back Jewish independence from Alexander’s Seleucid successors, and Judaea did go on to fight four wars, including two very big ones, against Rome. (“Many also of the Romans were slain in the [Bar Kochba] war. Wherefore Hadrian, in writing to the Senate, would not use the Emperor’s wonted opening form of words, ‘I and the army are well’” – Dio Cassius.)

Roman-Byzantine Era

Jimmy Carter to the contrary notwithstanding, the Romans did not “exile almost all” of Judaea’s surviving Jews. Witness the Mishnah and Palestinian Talmud, Roman-Byzantine era synagogues unearthed all over the land, and Roman recognition of the Patriarch as head of the homeland Jewish community until his 5th century dismissal, presumably for violating a no-new-synagogues law. Half-a-millennium after ancient Judaea’s destruction, 20,000 or more homeland Jews fought in their own self-mustered battalions alongside the invading Persians against the hated Romans’ Byzantine heirs.

Muslim Dynasty Era

The Yishuv [homeland Jewish community] aided the 638-invading Arab-led Muslims, and received rewards in Hebron and Jerusalem. Foreign Muslim rule went through three dynasties, control of which progressively faded from Arab to Turk. Archeologist Bahat includes a map in his book, The Forgotten Generations: Twenty Centuries of Jewish Life in the Holy Land, showing some 100 9th century homeland Jewish communities.

Crusader Era

The Crusaders of 1099 recorded of their fight in Jerusalem:

And here, in front of us, were the foreigners, Jew, Turk, and Arab, fighting for their lives with sling-stones, with catapults, with fire and venom . . . and when the end came upon the foreigners, they withdrew from one battlefront, only to find a second battlefront facing them. And though there was terror on all sides, none put down his sword; the Turk, the Arab, and the Jew were among the fallen. The Jew is the last to fall.

“The Jews almost single-handedly defended Haifa against the Crusaders, holding out in the besieged town for a whole month” [Katz, Battleground, p. 90]. Prof. Benzion Dinur, in the Ben-Gurion-edited The Jews in Their Land: “… there is no reason to suppose that Jerusalem and Haifa were exceptional places.”

And as for whether, a millennium after ancient Israel’s destruction, the land itself had become someplace else, we have the testimony of an Anglo-Saxon pilgrim, Saewulf, who came on the Crusaders’ heels in 1102, referencing “the region called Judea” between the Jordan and Sea. [Wright, Early Travels in Palestine, pp. 36-45]

Mamluk Era

The Crusaders were defeated by Turks led by Saladin, a Kurd [Parkes, Whose Land?, p. 80], and following Mongol and other invasions, Turk and Circassian Mamluks ruled the region, first from Turkey and then from Egypt, from 1260 to 1516, some 250 years. I summarize some of what we know about the Mamluk era Yishuv at pages 114- 118 of my book Israel 3,000 Years, including a reference by a 14th century visiting Verona monk to “a long-established Jewish community at the foot of Mount Zion in the area known as the Jewish Quarter”; and the writings of Rabbi Ovadiah and of a 15th century Christian pilgrim who wrote of “not many Christians, but many Jews” in Jerusalem, who claim the Holy Land and “refuse to leave.” The Jews lived in other cities, the center being Acre, and in Galilee and the south.

Ottoman Era

Then came 400 years, 1517 to 1917, of Palestine’s rule by the Ottoman Turks. The Yishuv lived in its four holy cities, Jerusalem, Safad, Tiberias and Hebron, and in Galilee and the south in the Ottoman era. Jews re-attained a never-since-relinquished plurality and then majority in Jerusalem during pre-Zionist 19th century Ottoman rule.

Israel, the Land’s Next Native State after Judaea

In 1948, the reborn Jewish state of Israel became the Land of Israel’s and Jerusalem’s next native state after Jewish Judaea. All of the rulers in between were foreigners – Romans-Byzantines, briefly Persians, Muslim dynasties fading from Arab to Turk, Crusaders, briefly Ayyubids (Saladin), Mamluks and finally Turks.

Israel’s Absorption of Middle East’s Indigenous Jews

A second well-spring of indigenous Jewishness of Israel likewise giving the lie to the canard that the Jewish state (of all states in the region) is “an alien element in the region” is that from ancient times Jews have lived throughout the Mideast. A greater number of indigenously Middle Eastern Jews, many from communities with ancient roots, fled vast Muslim lands, mostly to Israel, in the 20th century than Arabs left tiny Israel.

Our ‘Real Title Deeds’ and How We Should Reference Them

In the mid-20th century, British theologian and historian James Parkes pointed out the significance of the Yishuv’s post-biblical presence. That continuous presence, he wrote [Whose Land? p. 266], “all through the centuries, and in spite of every discouragement,” wrote the Zionists’ “real title deeds.”

Twentieth-century international forums and documents, including San Remo and the League of Nations’ Palestine Mandate, recognized the historical Jewish connection to Palestine and the Jewish people’s right to reconstitute there their Jewish National Home.

We make a great mistake in we ourselves using terms deliberately designed to delegitimize the Jewish homeland connection to Israel, putting our own hecksher upon them. These terms are not written in stone, and “Judea and Samaria” are not “the biblical names,” as the media has called them, for “the West Bank.”

(1) The United Nations in its Partition Resolution in 1947 did not refer to “the West Bank.” It referenced “the hill country of Samaria and Judea.”

(2) The UN didn’t seek to partition Palestine between “Palestinians” and Jews or anyone else. It referenced over and over “the Jewish State” and “the Arab State.”

(3) The UN didn’t call Palestine’s Arabs “The Palestinians.” It called Palestine’s Jews and Arabs “the two Palestinian peoples.”

Should we do less?

Regards,
Jerry

= = = = = =

Your mouse wants to take you to www.pavilionpress.com, home of my Israel 3,000 Years and Lee’s and my Pressing Israel: Media Bias Exposed From A-to-Z. Give it a hand. j