To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@comcast.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #669, 10/27/13
Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers:
Tireless Israel advocate Mike Perloff sent out an email last week, attaching his superlative 88-page Terminology Guide for “Avoiding Damaging Words in the Battle of Narratives” in the Arab-Israeli conflict, subtitled “A Guide for Making Intelligent Choices.” Yes, it is. If you’d like a pdf copy, email me. I and the other recipients have Mike’s permission “to distribute the Terminology Guide as you deem appropriate.”
Right now, though, I’d direct your attention to points Mike made in his covering email:
*** “… the primary purpose of the Terminology Guide is to reduce incidents of counter-productive terminology used by people who are already pro-Israel ….”
*** “A secondary purpose is to provide rationale for those who have decided that the terminology battle is already lost to reexamine their decision. They should choose not to leave it to Israel’s detractors to define the choice of words used by diplomats, academics, and media to communicate about the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
*** “The struggle over terminology begins with our own spokespersons, advocates and media specialists.”
*** “I hope this helps.”
Indeed, it does, but there are, I think, two further points to be made.
[1] EVERYBODY But Us Appreciates That Word Choices Matter
Everybody, everybody, but us appreciates that word choices matter. E.g.:
*** Palestinian Arabs: Erekat: “We want a clear recognition of the two-state solution and the 1967 borders” (quoted in Jerusalem Post, 1/10/10); Abbas: “the 1967 border” (AP, Inq, 10/18/10); Abbas: “Jerusalem must return to our sovereignty” (quoted in 2007 Ami Isseroff article on Zionism-Israel.com)
*** United Nations: “The world has condemned Israel’s settlement plans in East Jerusalem…. Let us be clear: All settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory and must be stopped.” (U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, quoted AP in Inq, 3/21/10)
*** McClatchy Newspapers This Week In The Inq (Inq, Fri, Oct 25, 2013, A5): “Right-wing Israeli settlers” in “the West Bank” vs. “the Palestinians”; “the [Al-Aqsa] mosque is Islam’s third-holiest shrine, abutting the Western Wall, probably Judaism’s holiest site.”
[Not exactly. Compare, This Week, www.CAMERA.org, 10/27/13: “CIF Watch, a CAMERA affiliate, has prompted a correction on an Oct. 23 article at The Telegraph which had incorrectly identified the Western Wall as Judaism’s holiest site. While it is the holiest site at which Jewish prayer is permitted, the Temple Mount is Judaism’s most sacred site.”]
*** Mainstream Western media: “Jewish and Palestinian states” (McClatchy, Inq, 5/8/08; AP, Inq, 2/28/09; AP, Inq, 3/16/08); “Arab East Jerusalem” (AP, Inq, 3/24/05; Knight-Ridder, Inq, 9/5/04); “East Jerusalem and the West Bank, occupied territory” (AP, Inq, 4/5/11); “the Palestinian territories” (LA Times, Inq, 3/13/11), “areas occupied in 1967” (LA Times, Inq, 12/10/10); “U.N. proposed separate Jewish and Palestinian states” (McClatchy, Inq, 5/8/08; AP, Inq, 2/28/09)
*** Inq house foreign affairs columnist, Trudy Rubin: “Jewish settlements on the West Bank and in suburbs of Jerusalem beyond Israel’s 1967 borders” (Inq, 11/11/10); “Arab East Jerusalem” (Inq, 12/6/12, Inq, 3/18/10); “the 1967 borders” (Inq, 2/17/13, three times; Inq, 4/7/11, twice)
*** J Street, in separate from Philadelphia Jewish community joint letter criticizing “BDS” conference at Penn: “We too oppose the occupation of the West Bank and the expansion and entrenchment of settlements there.”
How often I’ve cringed, and occasionally reluctantly reported in this media watch, “our own spokespersons, advocates and media specialists,” to cite Mike Perloff’s terminology war leaders, using these very terms which were designed by our foes to delegitimize us. And I expect you’ve cringed too.
[2] It Begins With the Jewish Grassroots
Which brings us to the second further point needing elucidating. I’d go one step deeper than Mike, who wrote: “The struggle over terminology begins with our own spokespersons, advocates and media specialists.”
The raison d’etre of this media watch for lo these past 669 weeks has been that the struggle over terminology begins, not with our stars but with ourselves, those whom Bill O’Reilly refers to (as affectionately as Bill O’Reilly gets) as “the folks,” in our case grassroots Diaspora Jews to whom Israel is the Jewish homeland in the same sense as Ireland is to America’s Irish (and not just on St. Patrick’s Day), Italy is to America’s Italians, and so forth. If WE Jewish grassroots call Jews in the heart of historic Jerusalem “settlers,” Judea and Samaria “the West Bank,” the 1949 Israel-Jordan ceasefire lines “Israel’s 1967 borders,” etc., etc., who are we to demand that our own exponents, not to say the mainstream Western media, stop?
Lee and I have now given some two dozen of our Powerpoint talks, including two this past week, on Pressing Israel, our book about media bias. We’ve spoken to Jewish and Christian groups, religious school kids, and in a smoke-filled room (a much better forum for nominating a President). Repeatedly, we’ve been asked: “What can we do?”
We push the answer past writing letters to the editor about inaccuracies in this story or that. Lee likes to say: “If we forfeit the language, we forfeit our heritage.” So we say, we start by washing out our own mouths. Then we lean on our spokespersons, advocates and media specialists to stop using these terms designed to demean us. And then, with some groundwork credibility, we lean on the media.
Does this make sense to you? If so, Mike Perloff’s Terminology Guide, his Guide for Making Intelligent Choices, becomes to you meaningful, and, thanks to the marvel of pdf email attachments, one free click away. Email me if you’d like one.
Regards,
Jerry