To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #693, 4/13/14
WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Spurred by audience reaction to Gov. Christie’s “occupied territories” reference last week at the Republican Jewish Coalition, the JTA ran a pair of opposing op-eds this week on that expression. Given the Inq’s quiescence on Israel this week [but see last week’s #692 on its multiple references last week to Israel’s “West Bank occupation”], let’s see from these op-eds how far we’ve come in contending against the essence of anti-Israel media bias, loaded terms designed to delegitimize the Jewish homeland of Israel.
This Week in the JTA: Opposing Op-eds on “Occupied Territories”
If you read Lee Bender’s and my book, Pressing Israel, on anti-Israel media bias, you’ll see some bitter criticism of deeply misleading expressions used in news reporting by a venerable news source on Jewish affairs, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, known as JTA: “1967 borders . . . Palestinians dispersed after the creation of Israel in 1948 . . . Palestinians who fled or were chased from their homes upon Israel’s creation.” This week, however, the JTA did the Jewish people a service in running on its website a pair of opposing op-eds on “occupied territories” by a pair of Jewish authors fully qualified to present their respective positions. By me, the essence of fighting anti-Israel media bias is contending against loaded expressions intentionally designed to delegitimize the Jewish homeland of Israel, so this week that our hometown Philly Inquirer (Inq) mostly left us alone, let’s look at the arguments in this pair of op-eds.
Tuesday, April 8’s JTA “Op-Ed: The West Bank is Under Military Occupation, and That’s a Fact,” was penned by Jessica Montell, executive director of the pointedly-named “B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.” (Well, they might have called themselves ‘The Zionist Entity Information Center …’)
The thrust of their argument is that “all Palestinians – including those living in Area A under the nominal control of the Palestinian Authority – are subject to the jurisdiction of the Israeli military,” that “millions of Palestinians have lived for almost half a century under military rule, denied basic rights and subject to the whims of a government that did not elect and have no ability to influence.” The B’Tselem director concludes that for peace efforts to have any hope of success, “we must first of all call it like it is.”
Indeed, we must. But writing, as this op-ed does, that
Acknowledging that the West Bank is presently subject to military occupation is not at all a statement of policy. It is a statement of fact
does not by the author simply saying so transform her statement using that loaded expression “military occupation” from a statement of judgmental opinion into a statement of fact.
Israeli diplomat Alan Baker, a member of the Levy Commission that issued a report that Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria is not occupation, wrote Tuesday’s opposing JTA op-ed: “Op-Ed: ‘Occupied Territories’ is a Flawed and Biased Term.” Baker:
The expressions ‘occupied territory’ and ‘occupied Palestinian territory’ are political terms frequently used in nonbinding political resolutions, principally in the U.N. General Assembly, representing nothing more than the political viewpoint of the majority of states voting in favor of such resolutions. . . .
International law relates to occupation of foreign territory from a ‘prior legitimate sovereign,’ and these areas never constituted the legitimate sovereign territory of Jordan or Egypt. Hence, the accepted international law definition of ‘occupation’ of territory cannot be attributed to Israel’s status in these areas.
So work back to that “prior legitimate sovereign” whose sovereignty in Judea-Samaria was not “foreign occupation” but indigenous rule. Before today’s Israel, whose capital is Jerusalem (except for those who decide for the Jews that it’s “Tel Aviv,” and those in Gaza who think it’s Sderot) was 1948-67 Transjordan, preceded, working back, by the Ottoman empire, non-Arab Mamluk empire, Kurdish Ayyubid empire, Crusaders, Fatimid-Abbasid-Ommayad empires, Byzantine empire, and empire of the Romans, which vanquished Judaea, a Jerusalem-capitaled kingdom of Jews.
Both op-eds’ takeoff point was New Jersey Gov. Christie’s recent address to the Republican Jewish Coalition in which he drew a negative response for using “occupied territories.” Among the objectors was ZOA National President Morton Klein. Baker’s op-ed noted that Jon Stewart of ‘The Daily Show,’ for one, “ridiculed” such criticism, insisting that the phrase “occupied territories” is “widely accepted” and accurate. Kudos for Klein in my book, reminding me of Israeli cabinet minister Bennett responding not long ago to CNN’s correspondent Amanpour remark to him “‘occupied territories’ is an international term, Mr. Bennett” by telling her, “I know it is, and I object to it.” If Bennett and Klein are in the forefront of an awakening by Israeli and Diaspora Jews to the Western media’s long joinder in the loaded lexicon of the Jewish homeland’s delegitimization, it will mark a welcome self-respecting change for a people that not that many years ago shamefully averted its eyes from years of the media’s “millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants.”
But before we start patting ourselves on the back over our newfound vigilance against terms designed to delegitimize us, recognize that we have a long ways to go. B’Tselem’s “call it like it is” executive director wrote in her Tuesday op-ed that “calling this area Judea and Samaria tells us nothing about the applicable legal framework.” On the contrary, calling it “Judea and Samaria” tells us just as much as calling it “West Bank,” her name for it in her title and text of her op-ed. Indeed, “Judea-Samaria” tells us more than “West Bank,” because from ancient times through the middle of the 20th century, “Judea-Samaria” was a statement of fact, not a “statement of policy,” to borrow a phrase from B’Tselem’s director. In her Tuesday op-ed, she relegates “Judea and Samaria” to “the biblical names,” ignoring that they were the actual names used until after their seizure in 1948 by Jordan, including by the UN – “the hill country of Samaria and Judea” – in its attempted partition resolution in 1947.
Baker’s op-ed touches upon the expression “1967 lines” [not to say, as the media sometimes says, “Israel’s 1967 borders”], which he rightly defines as “the 1949 armistice demarcation lines,” as being “equally flawed and misleading,” attempts “to prejudge an open negotiation issue.”
Baker concludes:
Efforts by leading elements in the international community to assign the territory to the Palestinians, prior to a successful conclusion of the negotiating process, or to deny the rights and status of Israel, demonstrate nothing more than political ignorance and bias.
Ok, Bennett, Klein and Baker’s objections to “occupied territories,” in the face of media and other ridicule, are welcome wholesome developments, but ask yourself this: Given that even the UN in 1947 called Palestine’s Jews and Arabs “the two Palestinian peoples,” how effectively are we advancing our cause by calling ourselves “settlers” in the disputed portions of a Palestine we’re disputing with people whom we ourselves now call “the Palestinians”?
Eileen and I extend to all of you our best wishes for a warm and meaningful Passover or Easter commemoration.
Regards,
Jerry