Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #714, 9/7/14

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #714, 9/7/14

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Four Philly Inquirer (“Inq”) news articles this week dwelled on Israel’s “expropriation” of about a thousand acres of “West Bank land.” Two of them identified these acres as in Gush Etzion, but none of the four told readers anything about the Jewish people’s pre-1948 connection to that site, or, of course, that the Jewish-origin name, Judea-Samaria, of “the West Bank” remained in use all through history until the mid-twentieth century. I end with my [awaiting moderation] reply to a comment on Lee’s and my “13 Phrases” Algemeiner article made by a reader this week.

This Week In The Inq: Why We Have To Stop Saying “Settlements” and “West Bank”

Between Monday and Friday, our hometown Philly Inquirer found space for five full Israel news articles this week in the Inq, two leading with and two including Israel’s “appropriation” (Tuesday), “expropriation” (Monday, Wednesday and Thursday), of (Tuesday lede) “nearly 1,000 acres of land in the West Bank to prepare for further settlement construction.”

You need to get a feel for how adequately the Inq’s four articles this week characterized the actual depth of Jewish connection to – i.e., historical and legal ownership equity in – this “West Bank” land. And then you need to ask yourself how well we’re doing in supplying the public this missing Jewish homeland equity information by ourselves couching our case in the very terms deliberately designed to delegitimize it. (And, as it happens, there was a “revival” of Lee’s and my July 7 “Israel’s Supporters Must Stop Using These 13 Phrases” article on Algemeiner this week, culminating in a reader’s comment on this very point on which my response, as I write this, “awaits moderation.”)

*** Monday’s Inq’s AP article (9/1/14, A4) cited Israel linking the “expropriation” to the abduction and murder of three Israeli teens, and that “the expropriated land is in Gush Etzion, an area near Jerusalem where the teens were abducted. Israel hopes to keep the area under any future peace deal with the Palestinians.”

*** Tuesday’s Inq’s McClatchy article (9/2/14, A4) stated that Israel “had declared nearly 1,000 acres as ‘state land’ after determining that the areas were not privately owned,” and that “the land is near a cluster of Israeli settlements south of Bethlehem, known as the Etzion Bloc, where the three Israeli teenagers were abducted, and adjacent to several Palestinian villages.”

*** Wednesday’s Inq’s AP article (9/3/14, A5) said “the expropriation of about 1,000 acres of West Bank land could help clear the way for new Jewish settlement construction.”

*** Thursday’s Inq’s Bloomberg article (9/4/14, A14): “Earlier this week, the Defense Ministry announced the expropriation of 1,000 acres of West Bank land to build more settlement homes, a move Palestinians denounced as a land grab.”

What to make of all this?

More should have been said Monday about Gush Etzion than “Israel hopes to keep” it. There’s a fair amount of equity behind that “hope.” As Jonathan Tobin pointed out that day in a Commentary article: “… contrary to the narrative that Jews are ‘stealing’ Arab land, Gush Etzion was actually populated and owned by Jews” before the 1948 war. It was uprooted by invading Transjordan, some of its surviving residents were captured by Jordan and others massacred by Palestinian Arabs. Gush Etzion was the first area that Israel repopulated after the 1967 war, and, as Tobin stated, “in every peace plan, whether put forward by Israel’s government or its left-wing opponents, the bloc remains part of Israel, a reality that most Palestinians accept.”

Tuesday’s McClatchy piece contains yet another pointed media same-sentence contrast between “Israeli settlements” and nearby “Palestinian villages.”

Webster defines “expropriate” as “to take (land, etc.) from the owner, esp. for public use.” It’s use in Wednesday’s article’s sentence

The expropriation of about 1,000 acres of West Bank land could help clear the way for new Jewish settlement construction

begs the ownership question. Government declaration of land as vacant and therefore state-owned constitutes a taking of that land from a private owner only if the land was in fact owned and not vacant, which as Tuesday’s article noted, is open to Arabs to contest in what Tobin credibly called Israel’s independent courts.

Thursday’s quote of Palestinian Arabs calling Israel’s declaration of these Gush Etzion acres as state-owned an Israeli “land grab” should have been paired with an Israeli’s citation of thrice-sovereign Jewish historical presence, absence of Palestinian Arab sovereignty ever, and modern recognition of the Jewish historical connection in the San Remo Treaty and Palestine Mandate.

Given the Western media’s not just obsession, but slanted obsession with Israel, we have to make the Jewish homeland case to the world as clearly and effectively as we can. In that vein, on July 7, my “Pressing Israel: Media Bias Exposed From A-to-Z” co-author, Lee Bender, and I had an opinion article on Algemeiner.com titled “Israel’s Supporters Must Stop Using These 13 Phrases.” It had a pretty good run on Algemeiner’s Commentary | Opinion page’s “most read” list. Then, it faded, as all Algemeiner Commentary | Opinion articles of course do, except the one titled “Analysis: Arab Sex & Terror.”

But this week, for some reason, “13 Phrases” has had a reprise, resurrection, revival. It climbed back up that top 4 ladder, and for a couple heady days even knocked “Arab Sex & Terror” down to number 2. [Maybe you missed “Arab Sex & Terror” when it ran in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The Inq headlined it “Arab Celibacy & Militancy.”]

In any case, I need to leave you with a comment on one of our Don’t-Use 13 phrases an Algemeiner reader posted this week, and my reply, which at this writing, you can’t yet see because it’s still in the halfway state of “awaiting moderation.”

Algemeiner reader, September 3:

Just one nuance:

Writing or saying “Judea and Samaria” instead of “West Bank (Judea & Samaria)” is a sure ticket to getting blank stares or aggressive dismissal. If we want to communicate, what we say has to be hearable.

Me (awaiting moderation), September 4:

Will people who greet our use of “Judea-Samaria” with “aggressive dismissal” be more receptive to our position that this is disputed, not occupied, territory if we ourselves use the Jewish equity-denigrating “West Bank”?

The historical Jewish-origin names “Samaria and Judea” remained in use through the mid-twentieth century – including by the U.N. itself in 1947. Israel is the land’s next native state after ancient Jewish Judaea, and our historical connection was recognized by the San Remo Treaty and Palestine Mandate. Palestinian Arabs have not ruled Judea-Samaria for one day in history.

Our Jewish homeland case made in self-respecting terms will be heard by people willing to hear.

Regards,
Jerry