Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #684, 2/9/14

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net) <=== note change Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #684, 2/9/14 This Week in the Daily Alert (Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu & Fri): Israel as the Jewish State = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = MSM on “Israel as Jewish State” vs “Settlements” as the Peace Process “Stumbling Block” Under “K – Killing the Peace Process,” in “Pressing Israel – Media Bias Exposed From A-to-Z,” Lee and I list ten ways in which the media mis-describes Israeli action/non-action as damaging prospects for peace. Number 1 is “Israeli Insistence on ‘Jewish State’ Recognition is ‘A New Stumbling Block.’” The example we cite is the Los Angeles Times (Inq, 10/24/10, A3) casting doubts on the sincerity of Israel’s prime minister’s insistence that his country’s peace partner recognize Israel’s status as the Jewish state: Some see Netanyahu’s actions as a tactical move designed to put Palestinians on the defensive, paint them as rejectionists and divert attention from Israel’s controversial settlement construction in the West Bank, which has thrown peace talks into crisis. In headlining this LA Times article, the Philly Inquirer, our hometown member of this Delegitiming Duo, left off the LA Times’ fig leaf “Some see”: A New Stumbling Block to Mideast Peace Talks; Israel Presses Palestinians to Recognize ‘Jewish’ State Nice of the LA Times and Inq to decide for their readers in a news article what it is – “settlement construction in the West Bank,” not rejection of the other side’s raison d’etre – that’s the peace prospects killer. This is not just these newspapers’ opinion, but an opinion contradicted by historical fact. Not only is “Israel as the Jewish state” not “new,” but Arab rejection of it has always been the real stumbling block. British Foreign Secretary Bevin to Parliament back in 1947: There are in Palestine about 1,200,000 Arabs [Katz argued too high] and 600,000 Jews. For the Jews, the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish state. For the Arabs the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine. [quoted in Bell, “Terror Out of Zion,” p. 188] Fast forward to 2014. Monday, Feb 3 Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organization’s Daily Alert [www.dailyalert.org, recommended] summary of Jerusalem Post article: “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a dispute over territory, but over the Palestinian refusal to accept Israel as a Jewish state and to declare an end to the conflict, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon told the Munich Security Conference in Germany on Sunday….” And, btw, those for whom the essential point of principle is to resist to the last establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine have their own idea of what sort of sovereignty Palestine should have. Palestine Basic Law, adopted in 2002 to guide the Palestinian Authority until it achieves a sovereign state: Article 4: 1. Islam is the official religion of Palestine. Respect and sanctity of all other heavenly religions shall be maintained. 2. The principles of Islamic Shari’a shall be the main source of legislation. 3. Arabic shall be the official language. The next time you catch the mainstream Western media telling readers in news articles that “settlements” (i.e., just building by Jews in disputed territories, building by Arabs there is ok) is the big peace settlement blocker, reflect on what Bevin said decades ago and Ya’alon said this week, and on what Israeli Ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer told USA Today this week (Daily Alert, Tuesday): “The refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state means they [Palestinian Arabs] want a Palestinian state not to end the conflict, but to continue the conflict.” And don’t take this as just the position of “the Netanyahu administration.” Daily Alert, Wednesday, summarizing Jerusalem Post: “As part of a framework agreement with the Palestinians, 77% of Israeli Jews believe it is important that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people ….” Friday’s Daily Alert’s summary of a Maariv article quoted Israeli opposition leader, Labor Party chairman Herzog: “I think that the demand for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the Jewish homeland as part of a final agreement is correct and I support it,” he said, citing the UN Partition resolution, “which would have seen two states – one of them a Jewish state.” And Thursday’s Daily Alert summarized an Australian Canberra Times article quoting that nation’s Foreign Affairs Minister being asked whether “Jewish communities located beyond the Arab-Israeli 1949 armistice lines are illegal” [historically accurate language you’re unlikely to see in the Inq], to which she responded: “I would like to see which international law has declared them illegal.” The summary added: “The original international decision at the 1920 San Remo Conference earmarking this territory for Jewish settlement has never been superseded by an internationally binding agreement.” You Decide: Who’s the Extremist – Erekat and the PA or Me? I will concede that among the advocates on our side for ditching the self-delegitimizing terms that we use, I’m an extremist. I’m for ditching all of them, every last one – “West Bank … East Jerusalem … settlers and settlements … occupied territories … Palestinian territories … 1967 borders … 1948 creation and founding of Israel [as though artificially and out-of-the-blue] … the war that followed Israel’s creation and attendant [seemingly one-sided] displacement of Palestinian Arabs … seized by Israel in 1967 … [even] The Palestinians.” In our own writings and speech we should replace every one of these MSM-foisted pejoratives with non-loaded terms that in fact are far more solidly historically grounded. Lest you be tempted to view my views as extreme, consider this Palestinian Arab official’s statement quoted by the distinguished Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, summarized in this Monday’s Daily Alert: Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat claimed on Jan. 31 that the Palestinians cannot accept Israel as the Jewish state because they lived in the region long before the Jews. Erekat was promoting the well-known Palestinian narrative that they are the native population, while the Jews are latecomers who only arrived in the last hundred years…. Note that they’re not saying that we’re not the real Jews whom the Romans “exiled in 135,” but that Jewish homeland history – Temple Mount, Western Wall and all – never happened. Think of the implications not just for Jews, but Christianity. So who’s the extremist – the propagators of “the Palestinian narrative” or me? This JCPA article goes on just to scratch the surface of the evidence documenting Jewish homeland history in biblical times and thence from Hadrian to Herzl. All of us need to become more familiar, and to make the Western world more familiar, with all of this Jewish homeland history. Historian Parkes was right when he wrote that the continuous tenacious presence of the homeland Yishuv wrote the Zionists’ “real title deeded.” (Verlin, “Israel 3000 Years, www.pavilionpress.com and Amazon) And then maybe we’ll be a little more comfortable calling the heart of Jerusalem just Jerusalem, not East Jerusalem; Judea and Samaria “Judea and Samaria,” not “the West Bank”; and Palestinian Arabs “Palestinian Arabs,” not “The Palestinians.” Regards, Jerry