Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #706, 7/13/14

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #706, 7/13/14

This Week In The Inq: MSM Misportrayal of What’s Going On

Israel didn’t develop and deploy Iron Dome only this past week to protect civilians in its cities from counter-attack while it launched an aggressive attack upon Gaza . It developed and deployed Iron Dome over a period of years because of Arab rocketing of Israeli civilians in towns and cities in Israel. What happened this week is that Israelis reached the point at which living with less-than-a-minute code red alarms, even under an increasingly-deployed Iron Dome umbrella, had exceeded any rational standard of tolerable. Israel is striking back in force against terrorists endlessly and increasingly widely targeting Israeli civilians in Israeli towns and cities with military battlefield rockets. That’s the fact.

It’s further the fact that the “international community” has appealed for a “cease-fire,” for which neither side is ready, and which would hardly enable Israel to retire Iron Dome.

From a media watch perspective, the issue is what sense of this reality – Israel finally seeking to stop terrorists’ endless rocketing of civilians in Israel – is the Western media purveying to readers, e.g., by the AP on the front page of this morning’s Inq (Phila. Inquirer, Sun, 7/13/14, A1, 14, AP, “Call For Gaza Truce Unheeded,” emphasis added throughout, but not by much).

[A] This morning’s Inq’s page A1 AP article lede:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Ignoring international appeals for a cease-fire, Israel on Saturday widened its range of Gaza bombing targets to civilian institutions with suspected Hamas ties and announced it would hit northern Gaza “with great force” to prevent rocket attacks from there on Israel. More than 156 Palestinians have been killed in five days of bombardment.

*** There’sa not one word in this lede paragraph 1 about Hamas “ignoring international appeals for a cease-fire,” just Israel, or on what Hamas has been doing during these “five days of [Israeli] bombardment.” [Hamas launched “nearly 700 rockets and mortars at Israel during the week, and said it wouldn’t be the first to cease fire,” not that you glean an inkling of that in lede paragraph 1. You have to wait for that until paragraph 9 on continuation page A14.]

*** There’s no mention either in this lede paragraph 1 of Hamas targeting Israeli civilians as such, just of Israel targeting “civilian institutions suspected” of links to Hamas.

*** Nor, alongside the AP-Inq count of Gaza dead, is there any mention that the only reason there aren’t [till now] Israeli civilians dead is because of Iron Dome’s interception of Hamas missiles intentionally aimed at civilians in towns and cities in Israel. Comparative death count is not a standard of moral equivalence. Whom the two sides aim at and give warning to is a standard.

[B] The AP devoted paragraph 2 exclusively to Arab-claimed damage details of Israeli action in Gaza, including having hit a home for the disabled, “flattened” the home of Gaza’s police chief and damaged a nearby mosque as prayers ended, killing 18, a paragraph which, troublingly, was repeated almost verbatim in a Fox News report to which, as noted at the foot, “AP contributed.” At least some reference should have been made that this paragraph 2 mosque claim is contested and there’s considerably more to it. An American Jewish community professional who visits Israel frequently and has a sober view of what’s happening emailed me and others this morning:

Note that the IDF hit a Mosque yesterday which was a storehouse for rockets and Fifteen terrorists were killed, but our news media will just report “15 Palestinians killed” as they already have done. (it was not during a time for prayers at the Mosque).

[C] Paragraphs 3 and 4 noted that the UN has called for a ceasefire, but that neither side has “signaled a willingness to stop.” Nice of the AP and Inq not to have included both sides in their “ignoring international appeals” lede.

[D] The AP referred in paragraph 5 to Israel having “carried out more than 1,200 air strikes to try to diminish Hamas’ ability to fire rockets at Israel.” It’s good the AP admits that there’s legitimate purpose for Israel acting in Gaza, but Hamas doesn’t fire rockets, as the Inq and its sources habitually vaguely put it, “at Israel.” It fires them at men, women and children civilians in towns and cities in Israel.

[E] Paragraph 6 referenced Israel’s warning to civilians in northern Gaza to leave, as Israel was about “to attack there with great force,” given “a very large concentration of Hamas efforts in that area,” and paragraph 7 to Hamas urging residents to ignore Israel’s warning. Paragraph 12 says “Critics said Israel’s heavy bombardment of one of the most densely populated territories in the world is itself the main factor putting civilians at risk,” and quotes a member of “the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem” that Hamas’ use of human shields “does not give Israel the excuse to violate international humanitarian law as well,” but what is Israel to do? The media needs to lay the blame on rockets-at-civilians-launching Hamas, which uses homes and mosques for its terror, uses human shields, and devotes its considerable excavating energies and resources not to building bomb shelters for its people but terror-facilitating tunnels under its borders with Israel and Egypt.

[F] Paragraph 8 reiterated, for any who didn’t get it the first time, Israel hitting the police chief’s house and the mosque, per an Hamas official, again without any question.

[G] Paragraph 9 [the jump to continuation page A14 was made in paragraph 5] got around to referencing what “Meanwhile, Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza,” has been up to this week. Hamas “fired nearly 700 rockets and mortars at Israel during the week, and said it wouldn’t be the first to cease fire.” Nice of the AP and Inq to omit Hamas “wouldn’t be the first to cease fire” from paragraph 1, and again to call its rocketing directed vaguely “at Israel.”

[H] Paragraph 10 led: “In a sign that the conflict might widen, Israel fired into Lebanon late Saturday in response to two rockets fired from there at northern Israel.” Note here again the AP leading with Israel’s response and here linking it, not the rocketing to which Israel was responding, as “the sign that the conflict might widen.” (And the racketeers weren’t aiming “at northern Israel” but at people in it.)

[I] Paragraph 11 cites Israel claiming “self-defense against rockets that have disrupted life across much of the country,” which along with a reference in paragraph 23 (of 23) that “On Saturday, air raid sirens went off in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israel’s two largest cities,” and the references to Hamas firing rockets “on Israel” in paragraph 1, “at Israel” in paragraphs 4 and 9, and “at northern Israel” in paragraph 10, are this morning’s Inq’s AP article’s only references to damage, none of them specific, in Israel.

By contrast, this Inq AP news article cites

*** Israel bombing “civilian institutions with suspected Hamas ties” in paragraph 1;

*** Israel bombing a home for the disabled, the Gaza police chief’s home and a mosque in paragraph 2;

*** again, Israel bombing the police chief’s home and mosque in paragraph 8;

*** Israel bombing a center for the physically and mentally disabled in paragraphs 14 and 15 (down to the “pulling out” from “the pile of rubble” of “a folded-up wheelchair and a children’s workbook”);

*** the inclusion of a nephew of a Hamas leader in the dead in paragraph 18;

*** Israel bombing “dozens of homes it [Israel] says are used by Hamas for military purposes” in paragraph 19, with a woman resident crying “Am I a terrorist?” in paragraph 20;

*** a 4-year-old child in a Gaza hospital in paragraph 21, with members of her family killed in paragraph 22; and

*** an Inq photo of “an Israeli bombardment on Gaza,” with the caption kicker “One strike hit a center for disabled people, killing two.”

This Week On Algemeiner: “Israel’s Supporters Must Stop Using These 13 Phrases”

On Monday, which seems a while ago now, www.algemeiner.com posted an article by Lee Bender and me listing 13 commonly used Jewish homeland-delegitimizing expressions which we Jews ourselves unthinkingly use. We won’t get the media to unload its loaded lexicon that laces its Israel reporting. What we can do, by cleansing our own mouths, is set up a clear contrast between historically accurate terminology and that which the Western media, along with Israel’s and the Jewish people’s enemies, incessantly use.

Go there and read this. Click Commentary, then Opinion. BTW, Algemeiner’s a site well worth going to regularly for latest news and commentary on Israel. So far, our article’s readers have left 40 comments. The first 39 are pretty good. (The last begins “Lies.”) If you like, leave a comment of your own.

Regards,
Jerry