To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #685, 2/16/14
>>> Note change of email address: jverlin1234@verizon.net <<< This Week In The Inq: House Columnist’s Worldview Begs Fundamental Contested Issue = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = The worldview the Philadelphia Inquirer’s house foreign affairs columnist Trudy Rubin espouses in her “Worldview” column this week in the Inq (Thursday, 2/13/14, “Worldview: Kerry’s Obsession,” ed page A17), highlighting her interview of an Israeli MK “visiting Philadelphia on a tour arranged by the liberal Jewish group J Street,” begs one of the Arab-Israeli conflict’s fundamental issues. Ms. Rubin writes that like visiting Israeli MK Amram Mitzna, Sec. Kerry recently raised the real prospect if Israel continues to occupy – and settle – the West Bank, with no further talks on two states and no political rights for Palestinians that it will seem “to the world” that Israel “will look like South African apartheid redux.” She goes on to warn that “if the occupation continues indefinitely” foreign aid to the PA will dry up and “Israel will become legally responsible for keeping the West Bank afloat.” One Kerry framework plan Ms. Rubin says both sides might accept is “a demilitarized Palestinian state along pre-1967 borders, with territorial swaps so Israel can keep large West Bank settlements.” There are, of course, no “pre-1967 borders” between Israel and “the Palestinians” or anyone else, just 1949 military ceasefire lines between the armies of Israel and invading Jordan, but it will be a non-snowy day in Philadelphia on which Ms. Rubin refers to them as such. But the fundamental question that the Inq’s house columnist begs against us is whether the Jewish people arguably has equity in Judea-Samaria beyond those 1949 lines which the Jewish state may be entitled to keep without offering “the Palestinians” quid-pro-quo “territorial swaps.” Ms. Rubin’s Inq-house-columnist worldview is that Israeli presence there is so inarguably “occupation” that any claims of Jewish rights there don’t deserve the dignity of being debated. Working backwards, there is first the pending Levy Commission Report, citing legal and historical grounds on which Jewish Judea-Samaria presence is not “occupation.” And there’s the response to CNN by Israeli MK Bennett, not invited to tour here by J Street, that “occupation” may be “an international term,” as CNN’s Christianne Amanpour put it, “but I object to it.” And then there is post-1967 War UN resolution 242, which specifically did not require Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 ceasefire lines, and did not call for Israel offering any “territorial swaps.” And there is the recent comment of Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister quoted in a week ago Thursday’s Daily Alert. Asked whether “Jewish communities located beyond the Arab-Israeli 1949 armistice lines are illegal,” she responded: “I would like to see which international law has declared them illegal.” The Daily Alert’s summary of the Australian Canberra Times article continued: “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.” And, finally, for all the Palestinian Arabs’ preposterous claims to be Canaanites, Jewish homeland history happened. Modern Israel is the land’s next native state after Jewish Judaea. Every ruler in between was a foreign invader, not Palestinian Arab, and indeed foreign Arab for only part of the time between the Arab invasion of 638 that defeated the Romans’ European Christian Byzantine heirs and the European Christian Crusader invasion of 1099. Neither the Mamluks nor Turks who ruled after the Crusaders into the 20th century were Arab. So is the Jewish claim to Judea-Samaria so baseless, so utterly devoid of historical and legal substance, that a Western newspaper house foreign affairs columnist can fairly ignore it, along with even the historical name of the place, which even the UN itself used in its partition resolution of 1947 – “the hill country of Samaria and Judea” –, and write simply that Israel “continues to occupy – and settle – the West Bank,” a Jewish homeland-delegitimizing place name that invading Jordan invented in 1950? BTW: Ironically, if anybody today has “Canaanite” roots, it’s not Arabs but Jews. Original Israelite presence has been traced back to the Late Bronze/Iron I Age transition, c. 1200 BCE, in (guess where) the Judea and Samaria hills, but archeologists are divided into “Conquest” and “Indigenous Origin” camps. The latter believe that the people who became the kingdoms of Israel and Judah arose not from outsider invasion of Canaan, but from sedentarizing Canaanite pastoral nomads (Finkelstein) or lowland Canaanite farmers who migrated up into the hills (e.g., Dever). As Finkelstein put it in “The Bible Unearthed”: “The early Israelites were – irony of ironies – themselves originally Canaanites!” I cite all this in my book “Israel 3000 Years.” The debate and discoveries continue. Either way, Jews have far deeper roots in Judea-Samaria, and in Jerusalem, and in the rest of their homeland, than do today’s Palestinian Arabs. (On our origins, I’m rooting for Joshua.) What Ms. Rubin Understands That We Don’t: The Words You Use Matter The loaded terms – “occupy ... occupation … West Bank settlements … the Palestinians … pre-1967 borders” – that Ms. Rubin, a wordsmith by profession, used in this week’s Inq Worldview column paint her worldview for readers. That she consciously chooses her terms is manifested by the consistency of her word choices. We should emulate her conscious consistency. Some samples (emphasis added): “1967 Borders” * Rubin, Inq, Worldview, 2/7/13: “1967 borders” three times. * Rubin, Inq, Worldview, 4/7/11: “[The 2002 ‘Arab Peace Initiative’] called on all Arab states to recognize Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders and a settlement of the Palestinian refugee issue on which both sides agree.” And “[A plan proposed by some Israelis] reminds us that the only territorial basis for an Israeli-Palestinians peace is the 1967 borders with small adjustments.” * Rubin, Inq, Worldview, 11/11/10: Israel’s decisions to build new homes “in Jewish settlements on the West Bank and in suburbs of Jerusalem beyond Israel’s 1967 borders” is “insulting” and evince “disrespect the Israeli government has shown Obama.” “East Jerusalem, Arab East Jerusalem” * Rubin, Inq, Worldview, 12/16/12: Israel building Jewish housing in the E-1 area between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim “would rule out any possibility of making Arab East Jerusalem the capital of a future Palestinian state.” * Rubin, Inq, Worldview, 4/7/11: upper-cased-E “East Jerusalem” four times * Rubin, Inq, Worldview, 3/18/10: “Continued building in and around Arab East Jerusalem makes it impossible for this part of the city to become – as it must in any peace settlement – the capital of a Palestinian state.” Changing “Judea and Samaria” to “West Bank” * Compare these two texts. A July 13, 2012, English translation, purporting to be “from the original and authoritative Hebrew text,” of “the “Conclusions and Recommendations” of “The Commission to Examine the Status of Building in Judea and Samaria” (the “Levy Commission”) uses the expression “Judea and Samaria” fifteen times, and the expression “West Bank” not at all. But sixteen times in her Inq Worldview column condemning the Levy Commission’s report (7/12/12, A2), headlined “A Wrong Course for Israel in West Bank; Netanyahu’s panel’s ideas aim to back settlements, but they pose trouble for the nation and the peace process,” Ms. Rubin, used, exclusively, the expression “West Bank.” * See also: Rubin, Inq, Worldview, 12/6/12: “[Israel building in E-1 between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem would] effectively bisect the West Bank”; Rubin, Inq Worldview, 2/17/13: “[Bibi’s potential coalition partners] want to annex much of the West Bank”; Rubin, Inq, Worldview, 4/7/11: “West Bank” 5 times, “Judea and Samaria” 0 times. “The Palestinian Refugee Issue” (It’s a two-sided refugee issue) * Rubin, Inq, Worldview, 4/7/11: “[The 2002 ‘Arab Peace Initiative’] called on all Arab states to recognize Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders and a settlement of the Palestinian refugee issue on which both sides agree.” “Palestinian Refugee Camps” * Rubin, Inq, Worldview, 11/28/10: “… a Palestinian Arab living “in his family’s comfortable rowhouse in the Al-Arroub refugee camp near Hebron.” “Returning West Bank and East Jerusalem to Abbas” * Rubin, Inq, Worldview, 8/1/13: “Abbas is already too weak, and the Arab world too fragmented to back him. Even were Netanyahu inclined to confront the settlers and return most of the West Bank and East Jerusalem (which he has shown no interest in doing), the Arab world’s convulsions would make him hesitate.” [Israel took these areas from the invader Jordan, not Palestinian Arabs, which has never ruled them] Regards, Jerry