Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #707, 7/20/14

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #707, 7/20/14

This Week In The Inq: Misportraying Israel as Side Defying Ceasefire Calls

Twice this week, the Philly Inquirer and its mainstream news sources misportrayed Israel as the side rejecting international calls for an Israel-Gaza ceasefire, while that was very much not the actual case.

#1: Inq, Sun, 7/13: “Ignoring international appeals for a cease-fire, Israel ….”

Last Sunday’s Inq (7/13/14,A1, AP) headlined on its front page

Call for Gaza Truce Unheeded

The much smaller sub-head followed up by leading with “Israel” expanding its target area, and referenced Hamas only indirectly in “neither side” had ceased fire, from which readers could fairly surmise that Hamas was simply forced by Israel’s actions into defense. Inq sub-head:

Israel expanded its target area and urged evacuations. Neither side has ceased fire. (emphasis added throughout)

Any remaining doubt as to which side, per the media, was not Heeding that Call For Gaza Truce was dispelled by the Inq’s AP article’s 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” ….

Paragraph 3 reiterated “So far, neither Israel nor Gaza’s Hamas rulers have signaled a willingness to stop,” but it was paragraph 9, buried on continuation page A14, that got around to telling readers the relationship between Hamas and “Call For Gaza Truce Unheeded”:

Meanwhile, Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, fired nearly 700 rockets and mortars at Israel during the week and said it wouldn’t be the first to cease fire.

Inq readers were entitled to have been told by the AP and Inq about Hamas saying “it wouldn’t be the first to cease fire” in that lede beginning “Ignoring calls for a cease-fire….,” beneath a headline “Call For Gaza Truce Unheeded,” not just “Ignoring international appeals for a cease-fire, Israel ….”

And as for that AP-Inq lede reference to Israel targeting “civilian institutions with suspected Hamas ties,” that absent lede reference to Hamas should have included that Hamas incessantly targets Israeli civilian institutions with its rocketry. Instead, the media in this very article referenced Hamas as firing rockets impersonally “on Israel” (paragraph 1), “at Israel” (par. 5), “at Israel” (par. 9), but what these Hamas rockets are targeting “on” and “at” Israel are indeed civilian targets – Israeli towns and cities, or more accurately, Israeli men, women and children civilians in these towns and cities in Israel.

#2: Inq, Wed, 7/16: “Netanyahu threatened a wider war as Egypt’s proposal for a Gaza cease-fire unraveled” [not exactly]

The Inq headlined its front-page Washington Post article Wednesday (Inq, Wed, 7/16/14, A1, WP):

“Hamas … Will Pay the Price”

It sub-headlined:

Netanyahu threatened a wider war as Egypt’s proposal for a Gaza cease-fire unraveled

Egypt’s cease-fire proposal didn’t “unravel” exactly, even though the AP’s lede said it “ended before it had even begun,” and paragraph 2 referred to its “unraveling.” What really happened began to be told in paragraph 3:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the military authorization to use “full force” against militants in Gaza and vowed that Hamas and its allies would suffer for

[jump, for readers who made it, to continuation of article on page A10]

their decision not to halt their rocket fire into Israel.

“Hamas chose to continue fighting and will pay the price for that decision,” Netanyahu said in a televised address Tuesday evening. “When there is no cease-fire, our answer is fire.”

Paragraph 8:

Israel’s security cabinet approved the deal Monday morning, and Israel stopped firing into Gaza at 9 a.m. local time. But Hamas officials balked at the proposal ….

Paragraph 13:

By not agreeing to the truce deal, Hamas has taken some of the international pressure off Israel ….

Oh, and the Inq’s continuation headline on page A10?

Israel Pledges a Wider War as Hamas Rejects a Truce

Give the Inq a smidgeon of integrity for that, though it belonged at the top of its article above the fold on A1. But what really “unraveled” here was any semblance of Inq et ilk balanced reporting.

Ms. Rubin’s “Awful Truths About Gaza War”

The Inq’s house foreign affairs columnist, Trudy Rubin, wrote a “Worldview” column with that title on Thursday (Inq, Thu, 7/17/14, A14).

She wrote that until the current round, “Hamas hadn’t fired a rocket from Gaza since Israel’s last punitive attack in November 2012, and had suppressed fire from smaller jihadi groups since then.” Well, not exactly. Hamas is Gaza’s government, and here’s a sampling from a dailyalert.org “rocket” search of how effectively Gaza’s government’s “rocket prevention” squads have prevented folks from firing rockets at adjacent countries from within its borders, or, as Ms. Rubin put, “suppressed fire from smaller jihadi groups,” in 2014 and 2013.

Hamas Behind Rocket Barrage on Israel Jul-01-2014
Responding to Palestinian Rocket Fire, Israel Air Force Strikes 34 Targets in Gaza Jul-01-2014
Gaza Rocket Ignites Sderot Plastics Factory Jun-30-2014
Gaza Rocket Misfires, Kills Palestinian Girl Jun-25-2014
Palestinian Rocket Hits Home in Kibbutz, Israel Air Force Strikes Gaza in Response Jun-19-2014
Iron Dome Intercepts Rockets Launched Toward Ashkelon Jun-16-2014
Israel, U.S. Call on Abbas to Act Against Rocket Fire Jun-12-2014
Israel Responds to Rocket Fire From Gaza, Shelling From Syria Jun-02-2014
Yahva Ayyash Brigades Claims New Rocket Attacks Against Israel Apr-23-2014
Gaza Rocket Salvo Hits Israel Apr-22-2014
Palestinians in Gaza Fire Four Rockets at Israel Apr-04-2014
Rocket Fire From Gaza Continued Thursday Mar-14-2014
Gaza Militants Fire Rocket Barrage at Southern Israel Mar-13-2014
IDF Responds After Palestinians Fire 60 Rockets at Israel Mar-13-2014
Hamas Unveils Rocket Statue in Gaza City Mar-12-2014
Israel Strikes Targets in Gaza in Response to Rocket Fire Feb-11-2014
Rocket Fire From Gaza on Israel Continues Feb-07-2014
Attacks From Gaza Skyrocket in January Feb-04-2014
Israel Retaliates For Gaza Rocket Attack Jan-31-2014
Israel Warns Hamas Over Upsurge in Rocket Fire From Gaza Jan-17-2014
Palestinian Rocket Barrage on Ashkelon Blocked by Israeli Missile Defenses Jan-16-2014
Palestinians in Gaza Fire Rocket at Ashkelon Dec-26-2013
Palestinians in Gaza Fire Rocket at Israel Dec-23-2013
Palestinian Rocket Fired at Ashkelon Intercepted Oct-28-2013
IDF Strikes Rocket Launchers in Gaza [in response to rocket attack] Aug-14-2013
Gaza Rocket Hits Israel as Talks Resume Jul-31-2013
Israel Demands UN Condemn Gaza Rocket Fire Jun-28-2013
Rockets Fired From Gaza at Israel, Two Intercepted by Iron Dome Jun-24-2013
Gaza Develops Underground Rocket Launch Network Jun-07-2013
IDF Targets Gaza Terror Sites in Response to Rocket Fire Apr-03-2013
Gaza Rocket Hits Sderot During Obama Visit Apr-03-2013
Islamist Group Says It Fired Rockets at Israel From Gaza Mar-22-2013
Gaza Palestinians Fire Rocket at Ashkelon Feb-26-2013

Ms. Rubin further opined that “the ever-growing settlement network that crisscrosses the West Bank has convinced Palestinians that Israel will never accept a Palestinian state.” Israel has a peace treaty with a Palestinian state (i.e., an Arab state, with no Jews in it, carved from the Palestine Mandate, the majority of whose citizens are not Hashemites but Palestinian Arabs), and Ms. Rubin doesn’t mention that even “moderate” Abbas rejects a Palestinian Jewish state. And as for Israel’s “ever-growing settlement network that crisscrosses the West Bank,” the undertaking’s a little more modest than “crisscrossing,” and it hasn’t grown externally at all for many years. And if you believe, as many including me do, that Judea-Samaria, and what Ms. Rubin calls “Arab East Jerusalem” is not “Israeli-occupied Palestinian land” but contested between Arabs and Jews, what right do the Arabs have to build there and Jews not?

Editorial: A Distressing Email from a Young Jew

A friend of mine sent around an email this week that a friend of his just-past college-age son had sent him, claiming that “virtually all of Israel” is “stolen land” that Jews had taken from “Palestinians.” I saw a couple replies suggesting efforts that might be made to try to regain the soul of this young man. That would be good, if we could do it, but I’d give such an effort a lower priority than strengthening the bond to our people of young people who haven’t been lost. Birthright-Israel is excellent, but there’s something each of us grassroots Jews individually needs to do.

It’s on algemeiner.com. Click Commentary, then Opinion, and read Lee’s and my article, “Israel’s Supporters Must Stop Using These 13 Phrases.” It’s had a remarkably long run at the top of Algemeiner’s “Most Read in Opinion” section, and for those of you who remember from last week’s media watch, this week I answered the Algemeiner reader who last week commented “Lies.” Leave a comment of your own if you like (e.g., “Truth”).

The reason we ourselves have to stop repeating these Jewish homeland-delegitimizing terms so favored by mainstream Western media writers is because of the answer to the question of who lost us the soul of this kid who’s a friend of my friend’s son: We did.

Regards,
Jerry