Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #682, 1/26/14

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@comcast.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #682, 1/26/14

This Week In The Inq: Inq Israel Articles Said Less About Israel than About MSM and Inq
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You can read the Inq’s mainstream media news squibs on Israel this week for what they say about Israel, and/or for what they say about the MSM and the Inq.

This Week in the Inq: “ISRAEL – Canadian Premier Heckled”

Stephen Harper, ,Prime Minister of Canada, a Western democracy with a land mass a zillion times Israel’s, visited Israel and delivered a ringing address to the Knesset Monday, garnering a standing ovation. Among the newsworthy things Canada’s Prime Minister said:

Our view on Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is absolute and non-negotiable….

… we refuse to single out Israel for criticism on the international stage.

… Most disgracefully of all, some openly call Israel an apartheid state.

… And we understand that Israelis live with this impossible calculus: If you act to defend yourselves, you will suffer widespread condemnation over and over again. But, should you fail to act, you alone will suffer the consequence of your inaction, and that consequence will be final, your destruction.

It was at the “apartheid” point that two Arab members of Israel’s parliament, per Politics-Canada, “started yelling and waving their hands, then stormed out of the Knesset. The remaining Knesset members then rose in a lengthy standing ovation for Harper.”

The Inq ran a one-paragraph “Around the World” AP squib Tuesday (Inq, Tue, 1/21/14, A6, AP), which led that the Canadian PM “got a taste of Israel’s rough-and-tumble parliament when he was heckled by Arab lawmakers.” The squib went on to mention that Harper was “praising Israel” and condemning boycotts and “apartheid” claims, and ended that “after the outburst, Harper received a standing ovation from other parliamentarians.”

The international news story here was the Prime Minister of Canada calling “Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state absolute and non-negotiable,” stating Canada’s refusal to join in “singling out Israel for criticism on the international stage,” denouncing claims that Israel (Arab MPs and all) is an “apartheid state,” and recognizing that “if you act to defend yourselves, you will suffer widespread condemnation, over and over again.” Instead, the AP let a pair of this Jewish state’s Arab Knesset members hijack this news story with outbursts.

In headlining this squib “ISRAEL – Canadian Premier Heckled,” and not “Canada PM: Israel’s Right to Exist as Jewish State ‘Absolute and Non-Negotiable’,” the Inq served as these Arab hijackers’ willing executioner.

Let the record show, though, that in his Philly.com blog, one Inqnik, the Daily News’ Stu Bykofsky, saw Harper’s Knesset appearance for what it was, and told readers so:
Speaking to the Israeli Knesset on what is Martin Luther King Jr. day in the States (Rev. King was a Zionist, which means those who believe the Jewish people are entitled to a homeland) Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper laid down a gripping declaration of why Canada does, and the West should, embrace the Jewish state.
Mostly, it was a shared belief in justice, freedom and democracy, something absent in the rest of the Middle East (and much of the world).

This Week in the Inq: “ISRAEL – Targeted Killing Attempted”

Further with regard to Canadian PM Harper’s reference to what happens when Israelis defend themselves, the Inq ran, in its “Around the World” news squibs, on Monday (Inq, Mon, 1/20/14, A14) a one-paragraph Washington Post piece on Israel firing a missile at a Gazan on a motorcycle whom it held “responsible for a recent series of rockets fired from Gaza,” wounding the man. In MSM physics of Mideast cause-and-effect, it was this “first targeted killing attempt by Israel in Gaza since April,” not that “recent series [emphasis added] of rockets fired from Gaza” at people in Israel, that “signals rising tensions between Gaza militants and Israeli forces in recent days.”

The Inq might have headlined this article “Israel Targets Gazan Held Responsible for Recent Series of Rocket Attacks,” but actually headlined “ISRAEL – Targeted Killing Attempted,” sans mention of “of whom” or “why.”

Lest you think this an insignificant incident, Thursday the Inq ran an AP “Around the World” squib (Inq, Thu, 1/23/14, A6, AP), headlined: “ISRAEL – Agency: Al-Qaeda Plot Foiled.” Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency said the “advanced” [AP’s quotes] plot targeted the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and other targets by Palestinian Arabs who “were recruited by an operative based in the Gaza Strip who worked for al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.”

Gaza, indeed, has been heating up, including by rocketing of Ashkelon, and what Canadian PM Harper had to say about world reaction to Israelis’ defending themselves may once again come into play in the Inq, just as it did when Israeli Ashkelon residents first came to realize “We’re just like Sderot.” Several times in this media watch starting with BSMW #375 of March 9, 2008, I’ve recounted how when Israel that month went into Gaza to stop Hamas escalating from lobbing small rockets at Sderot to Grads at Ashkelon, the Inq’s week of headlines mentioned Hamas, escalation and Ashkelon not at all, but three times harped on Abbas [self-]righteously suspending peace talks over “Israel’s Incursion into Gaza.”

Now, how did Canadian PM Harper put it? “If you act to defend yourselves, you will suffer widespread condemnation over and over again.”

This Week on Algemeiner.Com: Two Articles by Lee and Me

I’d only occasionally visited www.algemeiner.com before Lee Bender and I had a chat with one of that remarkable site’s reporters at the table the ZOA kindly gave us to offer our “Pressing Israel” book at its dinner at which it presented awards to Gov. Huckabee and Cong, Bachman this fall in New York. Here’s the top of what you see when you go there and click “About Us”:

The fastest growing Jewish newspaper in America, the NEW Algemeiner serves as a valiant media voice addressing the most compelling issues of our time, with vision, integrity and moral clarity.

The NEW Algemeiner is a pioneering newspaper, setting trends while offering stimulating content, breaking news, and insightful analysis into events of our times.

I go there a lot now. OK, especially that week in December when it ran Lee’s and my “Media Lexicon Poisons Public Perception of Israel” piece (that made Elder of Ziyon and the Daily Alert), and twice as much this week when it ran two pieces by Lee and me (one of which also made this morning’s Elder of Ziyon Daily News). Here’s its two-paragraph extract:

The ’Homeland’ is the Homeland History Exhibit’s Rightful Home

Few realize that in 1948 modern Israel became the land’s next native state after Jewish Judaea, which Rome finally vanquished in the year 135. Every intervening ruler was a foreign invader. And few realize that all through those long dark foreign rule centuries the Jews, as such, remained in the land

Israeli premiers Begin, Sharon and Netanyahu referenced the Jews’ continuous presence and its significance, but 20th century British historian James Parkes put it best: the “heroic endurance of those who had maintained a Jewish presence in The Land all through the centuries, and in spite of every discouragement,” wrote the Zionists’ “real title deeds.” Yet, as Katz wrote in his Introduction to Battleground, even knowledgeable people are startled to learn of “the gap between what is generally known and the facts of the continuity of Jewish life in Palestine since the destruction of the Second Temple.” Here’s a quick look at those facts.

If I had to sum up in two paragraphs the immense damage done by the mainstream media’s misportrayal of Israel, it would be obfuscation of people’s, including Jewish people’s, perception and appreciation of the Jewish people’s uninterrupted homeland history, including through physical presence, for the past three millennia. I’d go with those two paragraphs.

Take a look on www.algemeiner.com at Lee’s and my article from which those two paragraphs are excerpted. It goes on, while you stand on one leg, to cite the evidence for that continuous Jewish presence during the Roman-Byzantine, Muslim dynasty, Crusader, Mamluk and Turk foreign rule centuries. If these quick references to what historian Parkes rightly called the Yishuv’s “heroic endurance, in spite of every discouragement,” seems to you worth knowing something more about, I commend to you my book, “Israel 3000 Years: The Jewish People’s 3000 Year Presence in Palestine” (Amazon or from the publisher, www.pavilionpress.com)

But connecting the homeland Jewish presence dots between Hadrian and Herzl is just part 2 of the book. When I sent the manuscript with the book’s opening scene set in the Second Temple’s smoking ruins to my long-suffering non-vanity publisher, he fired back, “but what about King David, and all of that stuff?” What about that, indeed? It’s more than prologue, it’s what Parkes’ “heroic endurance” is all about. So chapter 1 became chapter 4, and chapter 1 now begins with an invitation to the reader to join me, starting in the Late Bronze-Iron I Age transition, the time of Joshua or, if you will, of the “Conquest” versus “Indigenous Origin” debate, in this deepest of quests for peoplehood roots.

Regards,
Jerry