To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@comcast.net
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #681, 1/19/14
Yaalon’s Gall Is Divided Into Three Parts: Only One Made It This Week Into The Inq
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OK, Israeli Defense Minister Gen. Moshe Yaalon might have expressed what he said about American Secretary of State Kerry’s Arab-Israeli peace pursuit efforts less bluntly, but the AP this week in the Inq (Inq Wed, 1/15/14, AP, “Israeli Defense Chief Comments Spark Spat with U.S.”) should have focused on the whole story, not just one-third.
[1] The U.S. expressing displeasure over an Israeli official’s remarks on U.S. efforts toward Palestinian Arab-Israeli peace was fair fodder for an AP news article, but to present a fair and complete picture to readers, a news article thereon should have further included [2] Palestinian Arabs’ views on those U.S. efforts for peace between them and Israelis, and also [3] some reference to the real world reality as well as to the political politeness of the Israeli’s remarks.
Inq AP Article Omitted Far Fiercer Palestinian Arab Criticism of Kerry
The AP reported that “Yaalon called Kerry ‘obsessive’ and ‘messianic,’ and dismissed Kerry’s security plan as worthless.” But as the Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh pointed out Thursday:
It is interesting how one comment from an Israeli minister has managed to strain relations between the U.S. and Israel, while fiery rhetoric and street demonstrations against Kerry and Obama in the Palestinian territories and Arab capitals are completely ignored by Washington.
Toameh goes on to cite P.A. officials and others “denouncing Kerry almost on a daily basis over the past few weeks,” and a street demonstration in Ramallah chanting “Oh Kerry, you coward, you have no room in Palestine.” The JPost titled Toameh’s article “Kerry’s Peace Process Double Standards,” but the balanced reporting issue for the AP’s Wednesday article is broader: Regardless whether the State Dept. reacted to the Arab criticism or not, should a news article on an Israeli criticizing Kerry make reference to, or ignore, Palestinian Arab criticism of Kerry on the same subject, especially when that Arab criticism is far more “offensive and inappropriate,” as the U.S. called the Israeli’s criticism, than the Israeli’s?
AP Article’s Focus on Political Politeness Distracted Readers from Comment’s Correctness
Herb Keinon’s “Lessons to be Learned from the Kerry-Ya’alon Incident” article in Thursday’s Jerusalem Post put it this way: “Through it all, what was lost was what Ya’alon said . . . .”
Citing Fouad Ajami in last week’s Wall Street Journal – “The ground burns in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Borders are being contested, and militant Islamists have all but overwhelmed secular authorities” – Keinon wrote Thursday that Yaalon is “neither illegitimate nor crazy” in calling Kerry, who just conducted his tenth “expedition” to Israelis and Palestinian Arabs, “obsessive” and approaching the issue “like someone on a messianic mission.” Keinon added that Yaalon’s “job” as Israel’s Defense Minister is to voice his reservations about an “international force” guarding Israel’s longest, narrowest border.
Keinon ended: “But no one should be mistaken: What Ya’alon said rather inelegantly, many other Israelis – both inside and outside the corridors of power – are thinking.”
The AP and Inq owed something more to Inq readers this week than just informing them of U.S. displeasure at the supposed gall of an Israeli official calling the U.S. Secretary of State “obsessive” and “messianic,” and on a “naïve and foolhardy” mission. Beyond that this Israeli’s criticism of Kerry was mild compared to Palestinian Arab-expressed disdain for him and his mission, the AP and Inq owed readers some reference to the justification, from Israelis’ perspective, of their Defense Minister’s concerns over the peace process.
But in the end, the AP and Inq owe readers a frank account of the peace process demands of the Arafat-successor whom they have repeatedly characterized to American newspaper readers as “moderate”: “the 1967 borders,” as he insistently calls them, i.e., the entirety of Judea, Samaria and heart of Jerusalem, cleansed of Israelis, with an ‘East’ Jerusalem, meaning the heart of Jerusalem, capital … non-recognition of even shrunken ‘green line’ Israel¸ a fraction of a fraction of the original Palestine Mandate with its Jewish National Home, as the Jewish state … and extinction even of that through its inundation by millions of Arabs under “the right of return.” And the media calls this Palestinian Arab acceptance of a “two-state” solution.
Regards,
Jerry