To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #689, 3/16/14
WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Part 2 this week is on what you subscribers signed up for – credit-crowing Arabs in Gaza launching “the largest rocket barrage since 2012” at civilians in Israel, Israel responding against terrorist sites, and our Moral Equivalinq headlining sans any distinction “Israel Fires Back After Gaza Barrage.”
But first, as optional reading, my “reflections” on this past week’s national ZOA convention in Philly, particularly on reports by three leaders – Sharona, Susan and Jeff – on three fronts on which that organization stands up for Israel and us. Ask yourself, Is this so very “right-wing”?
This Week in Philadelphia: Reflections on the Zionist Organization’s Convention
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Note that I said “reflections,” not “report.” I’d be as non-partisan in reporting on a contest over Mort Klein’s re-election as ZOA national president as the Inq et ilk are in reporting on the Arab campaign to delegitimize Israel. So, a disclosure for the record: I’m as mesmerized by Mort as most Jews are by Obama.
One meaningful thing was just being there. During the day-and-a-half’s business sessions, I sat next to Neal and Cherie from Michigan. At dinner I sat next to David from Brooklyn. During the breaks I talked with leaders and fellow delegates from all over.
When Mort Klein took over as ZOA president two decades ago, the organization was in dire financial and structural straits. To say that he “turned it around” is wider of the mark than just understatement. Today this strong organization that speaks out consistently and by me soundly on issues affecting Israel and us, and is active on many fronts, is, one can say fairly, the house that Mort built.
Sharona heads the ZOA’s college student support office, or something to that effect. Not much older than the college kids she helps challenge “boycott-divest-and-sanction” the Jewish state, “Israel Apartheid Week” and other vicious campaigns on college campuses, Sharona enlists leaders among the students on campuses, educates them with facts refuting the canards against Israel, and organizes ZOA-sponsored Israel trips where groups of college kids see the truth there themselves. Her report included a video of one such multi-college student group trip.
Susan, an attorney, heads the ZOA’s Center for Law and Justice. Activities referenced in her report ranged from involvement in Supreme Court cases on stating Israel as the birthplace of Americans born in Jerusalem and relocation of America’s Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem to taking action for a lone Jewish student in a rural school district in Maine who was being bullied because he was the only Jewish kid in the school.
Jeff heads the ZOA’s office in Jerusalem. He gave two reports. One, during the business session, was on his co-leadership with Arlene Kushner, known to readers of this media watch, of the broad-based effort in Israel to get the government to adopt the Levy Commission Report that, based on strong legal analysis, refutes that Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria is “occupation.” (Related: Retired Israel Supreme Court Justice Levy died this week, and President Obama, according to last Sunday’s Bloomberg News Goldberg interview, planned to ask Bibi this week whether Israel intends “permanent occupation of the West Bank.”)
Jeff gave a second report around ten o’clock Sunday night – at the end of a long exhausting day of many reports (one more of which is mentioned below), candidates’ speeches and an election, which Mort won resoundingly, ending a draining, to say no more, election campaign, and much other stuff. It was well worth attending. Jeff gave a slide-illustrated presentation of his involvement in protecting the historic Mt. of Olives Jewish cemetery and visitors to it from the Jewish people’s stone-throwing, Jewish grave-desecrating Jerusalem peace partners.
Following the election on Sunday afternoon, the ZOA turned Lee and me loose to give a Powerpoint presentation, “Stop Using Toxic Terms that Poison Israel,” based on our talk on our media bias book, Pressing Israel. We’ve been privileged to talk to thirty-some groups – synagogue groups, Christian groups, briefly to the directors of Philly’s Jewish Federation, and, as the man who introduced us singled out, a cigar club. And now we’ve given it in The House That Mort Built.
This Week In The Inq: “Israel Fires Back After Gaza Barrage”
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How many things wrong can we find with the Inq’s headline
Israel Fires Back after Gaza Barrage
to its 8-paragraph page A12 AP news article Thursday (Inq, Thu, 3/13/14, A12, AP)?
[1] Not Just a Rocket Barrage: It wasn’t just, ho-hum, a page 12-worthy lobbing of another couple rockets at Israelis from Gaza. From the Inq’s AP article’s lead paragraph 1: “The Israeli military said it was the largest rocket barrage since 2012.” The British paper The Telegraph, in the text of its article Wednesday, left out “Israel said”: “Militants fired as many as 50 missiles from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, in the biggest single attack in two years.” The Inq’s headline should have said not just “Gaza Barrage” but “Biggest Gaza Barrage in Two Years.”
[2] Perpetrators Left Out of Headline: I’m told that in the Journalism 101 news story checklist – who, what, when, where, how, why – “who” is at the top of the list. The Inq’s AP article cited the perpetrators of this biggest rocket attack in two years, Islamic Jihad and Popular Resistance Committees, claiming credit in paragraph six. These known perpetrators should have at least shared headline billing with Israel this week in the Inq.
[3] Inq’s Headline Led “Israel Fires Back”: Our beloved Inq’s headline not only downplayed the biggest rocket attack from Gaza in two years as “Gaza Barrage,” and left out who did it, leaving Israel as the lone party named in its headline, but framed the headline to lead and emphasize “Israel Fires Back” – “Israel Fires Back After Gaza Barrage.”
[4] Inq’s Headline Wrongly Exuded Moral Equivalence of “Gaza Barrage” and “Israel Fires Back”: The Inq’s AP news article led: “Extremists in the Gaza Strip fired dozens of rockets Wednesday into southern Israel, sending civilians to bomb shelters ….” It reported in paragraph four that of 30 rockets fired in one two-hour period, eight hit “populated areas,” and in paragraph five cited an Israeli official that “one rocket exploded near a gas station and another near a public library.” By contrast, paragraph two reported: “The Israeli military said its aircraft targeted 29 terror sites in the Gaza Strip ….” Paragraph three quoted a Gaza health official that Israel “targeted training sites used by Islamic Jihad and Hamas,” and paragraph eight quoted Netanyahu as having “vowed to continue striking the rocket-launcher squads.”
There is a vast gulf between the two sides’ actions here that’s totally suppressed by the Inq’s moral equivalence exuding headline “Israel Fires Back After Gaza Barrage.” The British newspaper The Telegraph, quoting the country’s prime minister reacting to this rocketing occurring during his visit to Israel, got it right:
David Cameron Condemns ‘Barbaric’ Missile Attack on Israel
Prime Minister David Cameron condemns “indiscriminate” attack as 50 missiles from Gaza Strip fired into southern Israel during official visit
David Cameron tonight condemned a “barbaric” missile attack on Israel that struck on the first day of his visit to the country.
Militants fired as many as 50 missiles from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, in the biggest single attack in two years….
A Look-back that’s Revealing
A reader, Julia, sent me an email this week appending an August 9, 2006, Washington Post AP article that I’d happened to quote from a different news source in that week’s BSMW #293. It sheds some light on how our beloved Inq et ilk will likely react when things grow quite hot again between Israel and the “militants” in Gaza and Lebanon.
Back in August 2006, when Hezbollah was raining rockets down upon Haifa, an AP article in the Washington Post (I quoted it from a different news outlet) quoted Hezbollah leader Nasrallah:
“I have a special message to the Arabs of Haifa, to your martyrs and to your wounded. I call on you to leave this city. I hope you do this … Please leave so we don’t shed your blood, which is our blood,” Nasrallah said.
The Inq that same week ran a McClatchy article, as a news article, not as “Analysis,” not as “Opinion,” by Dion Nissenbaum of McClatchy (late of the late, if not lamented, Knight-Ridder), titled “Israel’s Response to Hezbollah Questioned” (Inq, Mon, 8/7/06, A6). That McClatchy article that week in the Inq asked: “Is Israel’s overpowering military action against Hezbollah a reasonable response to the militant group’s July 12 ambush, in which two Israeli soldiers were captured and three killed?” There’d been a lot more, of course, to Hezbollah’s conflict with Israel than that single ambush. But it would be difficult to conceive of a more blatant targeting of an Israeli city’s Jewish civilians than warning that city’s Arabs (who’d heard that message before): “Please leave so we don’t spill your blood.” Maybe next time the Inq will run as a news article: “Hezbollah’s Targeting of Jewish Civilians in Haifa Questioned.”
Regards,
Jerry
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If you’d like to take a look at our books, Pressing Israel: Media Bias Exposed From A-to-Z, and Israel 3000 Years: The Jewish People’s 3000 Year Presence in Palestine log onto our publisher’s website, www.pavilionpress.com.