Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #717, 9/28/14

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #717, 9/28/14

This Week Twice In The Inq: The Next Cute AP Israel-Delegitimizing Expression

Twice this week in the Inq (and most everyplace else), one time in a full bylined article and again in a news-in-brief squib, the ubiquitous AP used an expression that completely begs/forecloses/shuts off any question in uncritical readers’ minds that the Jewish people through Israel has any equity in the Land of Israel beyond the 1949 Israel-Jordan ceasefire’s “green” line.

The imbalance here is media framing of the Arab-Israeli conflict’s central issue in the same way that Abbas did Friday at the U.N. It’s one thing for Abbas to demand a western Palestine Arab state on every inch beyond the 1949 “green” line, which this week he did. It’s another for the western media to frame the Arab-Israeli conflict’s fundamental question in terms of “setting a deadline for an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian lands,” which this week it did. The western media’s job was not to paraphrase Abbas, but to tell readers that Judea-Samaria and the heart of Jerusalem are completely contested between Jews and Arabs and that these are disputed, not “Palestinian” lands.

First, here’s Abbas, declaring Friday at the U.N. what a Times of Israel article yesterday described as setting as a pre-condition for renewed negotiations an “agreed objective” of establishing a western Palestine Arab state on every inch beyond the “green” line:

It is impossible, and I repeat – it is impossible – to return to the cycle of negotiations that failed to deal with the substance of the matter and the fundamental question. There is neither credibility nor seriousness in negotiations in which Israel predetermines the results via its settlement activities and the occupation’s brutality. There is no meaning or value in negotiations for which the agreed objective is not ending the Israeli occupation and achieving the independence of the State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital on the entire Palestinian Territory occupied in the 1967 war. And, there is no value in negotiations which are not linked to a firm timetable for the implementation of this goal.

The time has come to end this settlement occupation.

[#1] Now here’s the lede of yesterday’s Inq’s AP article on Abbas’ Friday U.N. speech (Inq, Sat, 9/27/14, A4, AP, “Abbas Seeks U.N. Tactical Aid,” sub-head: “Palestinian Leader Also Accused Israel of War Crimes”):

… Mahmoud Abbas said Friday that he would ask the U.N. Security Council to dictate the ground rules for any talks with Israel, including setting a deadline for an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian lands. [emphasis added]

The Times of Israel and Israel Hayom both reported this morning that Bibi is coming to New York for his U.N. speech Monday charged to rebut Abbas’ IDF “war crimes” accusations, but note that the Inq’s headline – “Abbas Seeks U.N. Tactical Aid” – echoed its AP article’s lede in referencing the U.N.-forcing-an- Israeli-withdrawal aspect of Abbas’ speech, relegating to the sub-head Abbas “also” accusing Israel of war crimes.

And note also that the Inq’s caption to its accompanying photo of Abbas at the U.N.’s marble podium [ok, I was expecting “Smoke Rises Over Gaza City”] likewise dwelt on Abbas seeking to use the U.N. as a lever to force a complete Israeli withdrawal:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas asks the U.N. to set a deadline for Israel’s pullout from lands captured in 1967.

[#2] This morning’s Inq (Sun, 9/28/14, A6, “Around-the-World”) included an AP squib that the 57-member (but of 1 variety when it comes to us) Organization of Islamic Cooperation has been “lobbying” the Palestinian Authority to join the International Criminal Court “to prosecute Israeli political and military leaders” for “war crimes.” The AP squib quoted the IOC’s head that the 57-country-strong organization “strongly supports Abbas’ plan to ask the U.N. Security Council to impose a deadline for an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian lands” [emphasis added].

This expression, “an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian lands,” twice used by the AP this week in the Inq, begs the question of whose lands they are. The Jews have very substantial claims to these lands, which comprise what were still known as Judea-Samaria, not “the West Bank,” and as Jerusalem, not “East Jerusalem,” through the mid-twentieth century; are part of the land in which modern Israel is the next native state after Jewish Judaea (every intervening ruler having been a foreign empire invader); and include the heart of a Jerusalem that in the past three thousand years has been the capital of three native states, all Jewish, has had a renewed Jewish majority since nineteenth century Turkish rule, and which Palestinian Arabs have not ruled for one day in history.

Instead of saying “Palestinian lands” (twice) and “lands captured [by Israel] in 1967,” the AP and Inq should have told readers this week that Abbas wants the U.N. to demand Israeli withdrawal from “western Palestine areas rich in both Jewish and Arab history and claimed by both Jews and Arabs.”

A Loose String: So What Part of Palestine is Actually Contested Between Jews and Arabs?

Still, there’s a loose string here: What part of Palestine is actually contested between Jews and Arabs? Abbas had a couple run-on sentences to say about that in his U.N. speech on Friday, both claiming Palestinian Arab equity inside the “green” line.

One dealt with Arab refugees and U.N. resolution 194. Mr. Moderate is not content with “ending the Israeli occupation” and creating “the State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, over the entire territory occupied in 1967.” He added, in the same sentence demanding these things, “and reaching a just and agreed upon solution to the plight of the Palestinian refugees on the basis of resolution 194 [which Arabs interpret to mean “return” to Israel].”

In the second, Abbas vowed at the U.N. on Friday:

… we will maintain the traditions of our national struggle established by the Palestinian fedayeen and to which we committed ourselves since the onset of the Palestinian revolution in early 1965.

In 1965, of course, there was no “Palestinian Territory occupied in 1967” by “the racist occupying power … colonial occupying power … racist occupying state,” terms of endearment applied to Israel by its Peace Partner Friday before the U.N. Nor was there any “Palestine” outside the “green” line for Abbas’ “Palestine Liberation Organization” to Liberate when it was founded in 1964.

The media should make known to western publics, which don’t know or appreciate this, that of the territory originally embraced in the post-Ottoman empire Palestine Mandate, with its Jewish National Home, 78% became an Arab state without any Jews, but with a majority population of Palestinian Arabs, and that western Palestine, the remaining 22% of the Mandate, an almost infinitesimal fraction of “the Arab Mideast,” has been and is the homeland of Jews.

This Week on the Front Page of the Inq: Mr. Matza

Inveterate Inq-watcher that I am, I could not help noticing that adorning the top of page 1 of this morning’s Inq was an article from Honduras by veteran, prize-winning Inquirer Staff Writer Michael Matza. The early years of this media watch were largely consumed in contesting the work product of the Inq’s then only-such-place-in-the-world Philadelphia Inquirer Jerusalem News Bureau, of which Mr. Matza was for a long-time the chief.

When I had the privilege of giving a talk on my book “Israel 3000 Years” to a JCC in suburban New York, mine was one of two books on that night’s program. The other was authored by Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin and her fellow journalist husband. They based their book on their intifada-including 8-year stay in Jerusalem. In a personal conversation, they spoke very highly of Mr. Matza, and mentioned him as a journalist-in-Jerusalem friend in their book. Mr. Matza writes very well and is doubtless a valuable asset of the Inq’s. I have only one wish for him – any place on the planet but Palestine.

Regards,
Jerry