To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #698, 5/18/14
WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: “Nakba Day” is as good an annual occurrence as any to judge the mainstream media’s progress, if any, toward balanced reporting on Israel. The AP this week in the Inq referenced “Palestinians’ displacement by the war that followed Israel’s 1948 creation” [Israel wasn’t “created” in 1948], without referencing the Arab-Israeli conflict’s Jewish refugees from Arab lands. And it quoted Abbas’ “Nakba Day” speech that “there is no homeland for Palestinians except Palestine,” without quoting a Jew [e.g., Bibi’s May 15 statement] on Israel as the Jewish people’s state.
This Week In The Inq: Balanced “Nakba Day” Coverage Still Has Long Way To Go
Our Philadelphia Inquirer (“Inq”) ran an AP article Friday (Inq, Fri, 5/16/14, A4, AP) reporting in lede paragraph 1 that on Wednesday “Palestinians marked their uprooting during the war over Israel’s 1948 creation ….” The time has come for Western Jews to contest the mainstream Western media’s persistent mischaracterizing of 1948 events as “Palestinians’ uprooting” in a “war over Israel’s creation” or “founding.”
Israelis themselves, of course, call the 1948 war their “War of Independence,” not of “Creation & Founding,” as though artificial, imposed from outside, and without prior presence. The media too understands this distinction, having referred to Syria and Lebanon having “gained independence” (AP, 8/13/08, Inq, A4), “won their independence” (Chicago Tribune, 8/14/08, Inq, A1), and to India and Pakistan having “won their independence” (AP, 8/14/07, Inq) in that same period, in contradistinction to having been “created and founded” like Israel.
Friday’s Inq’s AP article had further Arab narrative references. Paragraph 5 said” Paragraph 6:
“Palestinians marched in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to commemorate their displacement in the Mideast war over Israel’s 1948 creation.
Sirens wailed at noon in Ramallah and elsewhere in the West Bank for 66 seconds to symbolize the number of years since the Nakba – Arabic for catastrophe – the term Palestinians use to describe their displacement.
Paragraph 7, however, hints at what happened: “Israel defeated the armies of surrounding Arab states that had attacked after the Jewish state was declared in 1948.” No small accomplishment for an enemy-surrounded tiny state that had just been “created & founded,” though the media doesn’t explain how this improbability happened. Hint: It hadn’t just been “created & founded.”
Glaringly absent from the Inq’s Friday AP article were [a] that those Arab states that invaded for Israel’s destruction encouraged Arabs to leave, and [b] that the 1948 war and its aftermath saw more indigenously Middle Eastern Jews displaced from vast Arab and other Muslim lands than Arabs left tiny Israel, and that Israel absorbed the bulk of these Jews. Relevant to Western newspaper readers’ understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict’s refugee, not “Palestinian refugee,” issue?
Friday’s Inq’s AP article exacerbated its Arab-Israeli conflict refugee issue imbalance by [a] stating as unquestioned fact that “more than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced out during the fighting, according to the U.N.,” and [b] that “the dispute over the fate of the Palestinian refugees remains at the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict.” Samuel Katz argued persuasively in Battleground, citing British statistics, that there were less than a half-million, not “more than 700,000” Arab refugees. And “at the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict” is both sides’, not just “Palestinian” (who weren’t even called “the Palestinians” yet) refugees.
The article’s one-sentence paragraph 11 contained the AP’s reporting on the Israeli view of the refugee issue at the core of the conflict: “Israel opposes a mass return of the Palestinians, fearing it would dilute the state’s Jewish majority.” The average reader would say – and I believe the AP and Inq appreciate this – well, if these “the Palestinians” had been subjected to one-sided “uprooting” (par. 1), “displacement” (par. 5), “displacement” (par. 6), being “forced out” (par. 7) from Palestine “during the war over Israel’s 1948 creation” (par. 1), “in the Mideast war over Israel’s 1948 creation” (par. 5),” then if these Palestinians’ right of return to Palestine undoes that 1948-created-state’s Jewish majority, that’s just too bad for that 1948-created state’s Jews.
Western newspaper readers are entitled to be told that the Jewish state wasn’t “created in 1948” and that Arabs weren’t “forced out” in a war over its “creation.” They’re entitled to be told that “the Palestinians” had not ruled one inch of western Palestine for one day in history, while modern Israel is the third Jewish state there, and is western Palestine’s next native state after Jewish Judaea, every ruler in between having been a foreign invader, and mostly non-Arab at that; that the Jerusalem that “the Palestinians” claim as their capital has been the capital only of three Jewish states, and has had a renewed Jewish majority since the mid-1800’s; that the San Remo agreement apportioning the old Ottoman empire awarded Palestine to the Jews, and that an existing Arab state, Jordan, with a Palestinian Arab majority, by 1948 occupied 78% of that; that remaining (western) Palestine’s 1948 population was less than two million, a good third of it Jews; that Palestinian Arabs joined in that 1948 war for Israel’s destruction, and that the non-fighters amongst them were encouraged by the invading Arabs to leave; and that more Mideast Jews left vast Muslim lands in that war and its wake than Arabs (who weren’t called “the Palestinians” yet) left tiny Israel.
But the pinnacle of the Inq’s AP article’s one-sidedness came in its final-paragraph one-sided quotation of Abbas’ “Nakba Day” (my quotes around ‘Nakba Day,’ not the Inq’s or AP’s) address: “It is time for the leadership of Israel to understand that there is no homeland for the Palestinians except Palestine ….”
That there’s another side to this, which a balanced article would have included, might have occurred even to an Inq and AP. There is Jordan, carved from the very Palestine Mandate, with its Palestinian Arab majority. On the other hand, tiny Israel, 22% of the Palestine Mandate, where Jews had been twice sovereign before, is the only homeland state of the Jews. Balanced reporting demanded AP and Inq reference to both of these historical facts.
But none of this lets us off the hook.
For years, the mainstream Western media, virtually all of it, festooned its Arab-Israeli conflict reporting with references to “millions of Palestinian refugees from Israel’s creation,” or “war that followed Israel’s creation.” The “millions” are gone now (and who knows what permanent damage it left), thanks to Israel advocates’ protests. But “Palestinians’ uprooting during the war over Israel’s 1948 creation” (e.g., AP, this week in the Inq), sans reference to that era’s Israel-absorbed Jewish refugees from Arab lands, remains. And as an added Nakba Day bonus this year, we have the AP in the Inq quoting Abbas on western Palestine being the only homeland of “the Palestinians,” to the accompaniment of [a] “West Bank” sirens’ 66-seconds’ wailing over Israel’s 66 years of statehood [so much for “settlements” being the peace-blockage] and [b] AP utter silence on that same land constituting the thrice-sovereign homeland of Jews.
Regards,
Jerry