Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #688, 3/9/14

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #688, 3/9/14

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Thanks in part to Putin invading Crimea, our Philly Inquirer (“Inq”) ran only a 5-paragraph page 9 article on Netanyahu’s visit to Obama that took place on Monday. More revealing of what may have transpired at that Monday meeting was an interview of the President on what he planned to tell Bibi that Bloomberg News published on Sunday. What has that to do with an Inq-focused pro-Israel media watch? Well, I’ll tell you.

This Week Not In The Inq: Our President’s Misquotes of Hillel and History
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Obama met with Netanyahu on Monday this week, but thanks in part to Putin you’d hardly know what thoughts they exchanged from reading the Inq’s 5-paragraph page 9 AP article Tuesday (Inq, Tuesday, 3/4/14, A9, AP, “Obama is Pressing Netanyahu on Talks”). More revealing of what may have transpired at Monday’s meeting was a pre-meeting three thousand three hundred and forty-five comments’ generating article by Jeffrey Goldberg on what Obama was planning to tell Bibi that Bloomberg News published on Sunday.

What’s the media watch relevance? The unquestioned presumption underlying Western reporting of the Arab-Israeli conflict is that Israeli presence beyond “the 1967 borders” in “the West Bank” and, to many, “East Jerusalem,” is “occupation.” Effectively countering anti-Israel media bias begins with challenging that unquestioned presumption and making the case that the Jewish people has legal and historical rights there, as at least Israeli cabinet minister Bennett and Israel’s pending Levy Commission Report have done. Sunday’s Bloomberg article makes clear that the President of the United States is among those who unquestioningly accept the media presumption that Israeli presence beyond the 1949 Israel-Jordan military ceasefire lines is “Israeli occupation.”

Obama on Hillel

In telling interviewer Goldberg that the time has come for Israel’s leader “to make very difficult choices,” Obama said that his message to Netanyahu would be this:

If not now, when? And if not you, Mr. Prime Minister, then who?

There are more English translations of the great ancient sage Hillel’s timeless wisdom than spellings of Hanukah, but they agree that the famous quotation begins:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? . . . .

One cannot help wondering, had the President understood that that’s how Hillel’s wise counsel begins, followed immediately by “But being for myself, if I am for myself only….” [emphasis added? I wonder] whether he would have pressed it, in arguing for “very difficult” territorial concessions, upon the leader of a tiny nation surrounded by unstable enemies whose internally warring factions agree on only one thing – the utter annihilation of his tiny land.

Obama on “Occupation”

In the course of telling interviewer Goldberg what he was planning to say to visiting Israeli premier Netanyahu, President Obama said he’d tell Bibi (emphasis added):

“There comes a point where you can’t manage this anymore, and then you start having to make very difficult choices,” Obama said. “Do you resign yourself to what amounts to a permanent occupation of the West Bank? Is that the character of Israel as a state for a long period of time?” . . . .

Twice the President used the expression “aggressive settlement construction,” (emphasis added), in the context of warning that “if Palestinians come to believe that the possibility of a contiguous sovereign Palestinian state is no longer within reach, then our ability to manage the international fallout is going to be limited.”

When President Obama spoke to the whole world from Cairo in 2009, he not only associated Jewish homeland roots with persecution of the Diaspora, but told the world: “It is easy to point fingers – for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought by Israel’s founding.” (emphasis added)

The bottom line of this week’s Goldberg interview is that the President places the onus for peace process breakthrough on Netanyahu. Goldberg:

Obama made it clear that he views Abbas as the most politically moderate leader the Palestinians may ever have. It seemed obvious to me that the president believes that the next move is Netanyahu’s. (emphasis added)

Abbas: No recognition of Jewish state . . . “1967 borders” . . . judenrein Arab state in the “West Bank” and “East Jerusalem” (all of it) . . . inundation of inside-the-green-line Israel with millions of Arabs under “the right of return.” “Moderate!?” Maybe in the sense that one star in a far-away galaxy is closer to earth than another.

But I think the next move is ours: to contest this entire vocabulary, this Arab-narrative perspective, this mindset, pervasive in Mideast reporting,

*** that Palestinian Arabs are “the Palestinians”;

*** that Judea-Samaria is “the West Bank”;

*** that the core of Jerusalem is “East Jerusalem,” the Inq’s foreign affairs columnist’s “Arab East Jerusalem”;

*** that the 1948 Arab invasion for Israel’s destruction [thrown back and then some by a homeland army of homeland Jews] was “Palestinians’ displacement brought by Israel’s founding”;

*** that the 1949 ceasefire lines are “Israel’s 1967 borders”;

*** that Jewish presence beyond them, not only in “the West Bank” but in Jerusalem that’s had a Jewish majority since 19th century Turkish rule, is “occupation” of “the Palestinian territories”;

*** and that Jews residing in these Jewish homeland places are alien “settlers.”

The Missing Link

Last week I pointed you Gentle Readers to a non-existent link on Algemeiner.com to Lee’s and my article summarizing the Jews’ continuous post-biblical presence that Parkes said wrote the Zionists’ “real title deeds.” This seems to me the heart of the matter, our historical as well as legal presence in what the world (including us) calls the “Palestine” of “the Palestinians.” So here’s a new link that linked when I wrote this:

http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/02/26/forgotten-even-by-us-judaisms-historic-ties-to-israel/

If it doesn’t work, go to algemeiner.com [well worth going there anyway], click on “Commentary,” then on “Opinion,” and scroll down through the descending-date article list to February 26, for our article titled “Forgotten Even By Us: ….” Leave a comment if you like.

Sunday’s ZOA Election Article

Friday, Algemeiner posted Lee’s and my article arguing for Mort Klein’s re-election as the venerable Zionist Organization of America’s national president. Here’s the link that worked when I wrote this:

http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/03/07/mort-kleins-continued-leadership-is-vital-to-keep-zoa-strong-and-effective/

The first reader comment called the ZOA “useless and a joke.” There may be more now.

Regards,
Jerry