Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #671, 11/10/13

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@comcast.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #671, 11/10/13
 
 
WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: The first step in combating anti-Israel media bias more effectively is understanding clearly the message that the misleading coverage is intending to convey. Consummate communicator Dore Gold this week wrote in Israel Hayom on the international effort to misportray the 1949 Israel-Jordan ceasefire line as Israel’s “1967 borders” to which Israel should have to return, contrary to what U.N. Resolution 242 had established. Gold called on Israel to assert what 242 said.
 
The New York Times this week, as the Inquirer has done on other occasions, referenced those “1967 borders” in the context of a current talks’ borders basis. The media should inform Western readers of the mere military ceasefire line significance of the 1949 lines and that 242 did not make them the basis for final borders, but called for “secure and recognized borders” for Israel.
 
 
Step 1 in Countering Anti-Israel Media Bias: Recognizing What’s Going On Here
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The New York Times reported on Tuesday (11/5/13) that U.S. Secretary of State Kerry on Monday
 
… denied reports in Israel’s news media that the United States was working on its own plan for a Palestinian state, based on the borders before the 1967 war, to present in January if there is no breakthrough in the talks by then. “There is no other plan at this point in time,” Mr. Kerry said, choosing his words carefully in a clearly fluid situation.
 
Mr. Kerry indubitably “chose his words carefully” in saying the U.S. is presenting no Arab-Israeli peace plan of its own “at this point in time.” But he wasn’t the only one. The New York Times chose its own words carefully in characterizing the reported U.S. plan as “based on the borders before the 1967 war.” As Dore Gold wrote in Friday’s Israel Hayom, there are no such borders, never were.
 
But what we grassroots Israel advocates have to understand, if we’re going to begin finally fighting anti-Israel media bias effectively, is that bad as the international effort to delegitimize the Jewish homeland actually is, the mainstream Western media at times makes it worse.
 
In his article Friday (11/8/13), Gold quotes the same language in the 1949 Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement that BSMW has quoted too, that the line that document drew was expressly declared therein to be a military ceasefire line without prejudice to either side’s political claims. In his article Friday, which he titled “The Assault On Resolution 242,” Gold shows in deep detail the “enormous significance” of the U.N.’s post-1967 war resolution not requiring Israel to withdraw completely back to that 9-miles-wide in critical parts 1949 ceasefire line that wasn’t a political border, but only to “secure and recognized borders.”
 
Gold makes two further points of fundamental significance:
 
* that “according to Resolution 242, Israel was entitled to this territory without having to pay for it with its own pre-1967 territory. There were no land swaps in Resolution 242”; and
 
* that Resolution 242 intentionally “said nothing about Jerusalem.”
 
Gold cites Rabin, a month before he was killed in 1995, declaring “We will not return to the June 4, 1967, lines” and that Israel would retain “a united Jerusalem.”
 
Gold describes international “efforts underway over the years to erode” the extent-of-Israeli-withdrawal significance of 242, and ends by calling on Israel’s government to make the 242 case in the current negotiations:
 
As Israel engages in the current sensitive talks with the Palestinians, it is imperative that it recall its legal rights, especially to those states who voted for Resolution 242 but now demand that Israel withdraw to the 1967 [i.e, 1949] lines, contrary to what the U.N. originally established.
 
 
The New York Times did its readers and historical accuracy, as well as Israel and Israel’s supporters, a disservice this week in mischaracterizing the reported U.S. peace plan as “based on the borders [not ceasefire lines] before the 1967 war.”
 
Our hometown Philadelphia Inquirer (“Inq”) has done worse.
 
In reporting upon President Obama’s May 19, 2011, statement at the U.S. State Department:
 
I believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines [emphasis added] with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both sides
 
The Inq headlined (5/20/11): “Obama Maps a Peace Path: In a major speech, he said a starting point for Israeli-Palestinian talks should be the borders [emphasis added] set before the 1967 war. Netanyahu criticized the idea.” The Inq’s so-headlined front page Tribune Washington Bureau piece stated:
 
But immediately, it was the Israelis who reacted more negatively, focusing on Obama’s declaration that the starting point of the negotiations should be Israel’s borders prior to the 1967 war. [N.B., the President had used the word “lines,” not “borders.”] (emphasis added)
 
In an earlier “Worldview” op-ed column (11/11/10), Inquirer in-house world affairs columnist Trudy Rubin referenced Israel’s decisions to build new homes “in Jewish settlements on the West Bank and in suburbs of Jerusalem beyond Israel’s 1967 borders.”
 
Media mischaracterization of the 1949 Israel-Jordan ceasefire line as “Israel’s 1967 borders” suppresses reader recognition of U.N. Resolution 242’s “enormous significance,” as Dore Gold put it Friday, that the old 1949 ceasefire line was not a political border to which Israel is bound to retreat.
 
 
 
BSMW Exclusive: Leaked NSA Recording of Peace Plan Kerry to Present Israel
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Let’s end with something, so to speak, lighter. BSMW has learned the contents of what Tuesday’s New York Times called Israeli media reports that the U.S. is working on a peace plan of its own Kerry will put to Israel in January. Kerry:
 
“Listen, Bibi: If you like your homeland you can keep your homeland (provided, of course, it hasn’t changed at all since the 1949 Israel-Jordan ceasefire).
 
“If your homeland has changed, well then, yours was a sub-standard homeland anyway, and now you can pick and choose from among great shiny new ones on our U.S. State Department website, JewishHomelandsRUs.gov (just as soon as we get it running).
 
“Now here’s a quick glimpse of these sparkling new Jewish homeland plans:
 
“[1] The Uganda Plan. Brought to you by The United Kingdom of the Falkland Islands and Rock of Gibraltar. Has that warm, fuzzy Homeland feel about it, doesn’t it?
 
[2] The comprehensive, all-in-one, Pale of Settlement-Ghetto-Holocaust-Inquisition-Pogrom Plan. Talk about Dhimmitude, this historic plan underwritten by a consortium of the European Union & Putin combines all the ethnic minority features ever devised in the heartland of Europe, indeed first and foremost for Jews. You’ll love it there!
 
[3] My favorite, of course, the shiny new Kerried-Israel Plan, based on an old Saudi family recipe. And finally
 
[4] The Iran Plan. You’ll get a Bang for your buck out of that one!
 
 
Regards,
Jerry