Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #721, 10/26/14

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #721, 10/26/14

Swift Reaction to AP Headline Shows, Perhaps, We’re No Longer Averting Our Eyes

The on-line and hardcopy Jewish newspaper Algemeiner ran an article Thursday (10/23/14) (emphasis added):

Associated Press Assailed for Headline “Israeli Police Shoot Man in East Jerusalem” Following Infant’s Death in Terror Attack

To its credit, if it did so consciously, the Philly Inquirer, the principal object of the wrath of this weekly media watch, ran Bloomberg News, instead of its accustomed AP, Thursday on this attack, which the Inq headlined honestly

Attack By Car Kills Israeli Infant
A Palestinian crashed into a Jerusalem train station, injuring 8 other people. He was shot dead trying to flee.

The good omen I see in Algemeiner’s article is its reporting that not just major media watchers, CAMERA and the Wiesenthal Center, but “an angry response on Twitter,” immediately met the AP’s headline, causing the AP, seemingly begrudgingly, to change it successively from

“Israeli Police Shoot Man in East Jerusalem”

to

“Car Slams into East Jerusalem Train Station”

to

“Palestinian Kills Baby at Jerusalem Station”

Perhaps, this shows an awakening on our side both to the magnitude of the mainstream media’s headline mockery of the Jewish homeland of Israel and to the effect of our making response to it.

In that light, let’s look at some of the Israel news mis-headlining that has won our hometown Inq Klinghofers – coveted prestigious awards bestowed by the Metropolitan Opera upon media raising of misreporting on Israel to an art form – and ask ourselves whether we should have made clearer to the Inq at the time that its headlining fell short of balanced reporting. (Emphasis added throughout):

*** One Inq instance that would have made the AP this week proud was its headlining of a 4/29/08 AP article that reported that “the Israeli army shot four Palestinian militants who were trying to plant explosives near the Gaza Strip border fence,” quoting Hamas calling them its members “on a jihad mission.” Our Inq headlined: “Israeli Army Shoots Four Palestinians.”

*** Our Inq has been less graphic than “Israeli Army Shoots” on occasion in headlining Arabs on jihad missions murdering Israelis in Israel. A 4/16/08 Inq AP article reported that two Israeli factory guards had been shot dead by a Palestinian Arab whom “a spokesman for Islamic Jihad” said had snuck into Israel and reached the plant in a border industrial zone in which “Israeli factories employ Palestinians.” The Inq headlined “Two Israeli Factory Guards Die.”
*** And the Inq deserved a Met Klinghofer Award for its wholesome headline description of this gentle soul. On 2/15/11, Israel protested Jordan’s announcement that it might release from prison a Jordanian soldier who, in 1997, had shot fourteen eighth-grade Jewish schoolgirls on a peace-park outing on the Israeli-Jordanian border, murdering seven and wounding the others. The Inq could have headlined its news article (A.P, 2/16/11) ”Israel Rejects Call To Free Murderer of Seven Israeli Schoolgirls.” The Inq did headline: “Israel Rejects Call To Free Soldier.”

*** Another instance of the Inq using a headline euphemism for a vicious Arab attacker of Israeli civilians, including the most innocent and vulnerable: A 6/16/08 Inq AP article reported that for the remains of two dead Israeli soldiers, Israel agreed to exchange (and later did exchange) an Arab infiltrator who’d attacked an apartment building in Israel, killing a 28 year-old man and his 5 year-old daughter, whose head he “repeatedly smashed against a rock before crushing her skull with a rifle butt.” (“The child’s mother, who was hiding in a crawl space, accidentally smothered her other daughter while trying to silence the 2-year-old’s cries.”) Inq headline: “Israel May Exchange Guerrilla For 2 Soldiers.”

*** Like the AP, our hometown Inq has experienced the need to clarify headlines. Back in the early days of this media watch (7/12/01), the Inq ran an AP article that “a doctor said” that an Israeli checkpoint delay in an Arab woman in labor reaching a medical clinic caused the death of her newborn. Disregarding the qualifying factor “a doctor said,” the Inq headlined “Birth – and Death – at Israeli Checkpoint; A Palestinian Newborn Died After an Hour-long Delay.” That evening, the A.P. corrected its initial version, which the Inq ran the next day, leading: “Israeli soldiers did not bar a Palestinian woman in labor from passing an Israeli checkpoint, her relatives said Thursday, contradicting initial claims by two Palestinian doctors who blamed a checkpoint delay for the newborn’s death.” The A.P.’s own corrected headline was “Relatives of Woman who Gave Birth at Israeli Checkpoint Say They Were Not Held Up By Troops.” The Inq’s headline next day? “Story Shifts on Baby Born at Checkpoint.” How wonderfully informative to those who’d absorbed the first headline blaming Israel.

*** Sometimes the imbalance lurks in contrast of specificity between headlines. During this summer’s Israel-Hamas war, the media reported that “tens of thousands” of both Gaza Arabs and Israeli Jews fled homes in active fire zones. The Inq headlined 7/14/14: “Tens of Thousands Flee Homes in Gaza,” continuation page headline “Thousands Flee Homes in Gaza.” By contrast, on 8/26/14, the Inq headlined a story on “tens of thousands of Israelis” fleeing southern Israel: “Israelis Leaving Gaza Border.” These Israelis were fleeing their homes in Israel, not “leaving the Gaza border.” (And, btw, the Inq accompanied both of its articles on Gazans and Israelis fleeing their homes with photos of Gaza, as it did its 7/23/14 article on a long mile-away rocket causing avoidance of Israel’s airport, as well.)

*** Another instance of the Inq mislabeling violence against Israeli civilians in Israel as violence “on the border” occurred 8/18/11, when terrorists infiltrating from Sinai slaughtered six and wounded 30 civilians in cars and buses on Israel’s inside-Israel Eilat-Beersheba road. The IDF pursued the attackers back into Egypt, killing four. The Inq’s NY Times news article called the attack “the most serious on Israel from Egyptian territory in decades.” The Inq headlined: “Day of Killings on Israeli Border.” No it wasn’t.

These example Inq headlines reveal less reality about Israel and Arab-Israeli conflict than they do about that newspaper and Western media of which it’s a mainstream example. And that these example Inq headlines have gone on for as long as they have, and not been met with the “angry response on Twitter” and elsewhere that greeted the AP’s “Israeli Police Shoot Man in East Jerusalem” headline this week, suggests that the next time the Inq perpetrates such egregious headline or other anti-Israel imbalance, supporters of Israel should not silently acquiesce in it.

And, by me, these mocking headlines reveal something deeper, a mainstream Western media derisive disdain for the Jewish homeland of Israel that’s very long-standing, strongly held and manifested, most deeply of all, by an entire Israel reporting lexicon composed of pejoratives. Job One, for us, is shunning this loaded lexicon, all of it.

This Week In The Inq: Two Israel Articles, Two References to “captured by Israel in 1967”
The Inq ran two full articles on Israel this week. Both used the same endlessly-used misleading media expression tying Jewish equity in Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria to their “capture by Israel in 1967.”

Inq, Thursday, 10/23/14, A12, Bloomberg News: “… east Jerusalem, captured by Israel from Jordan, along with the West Bank, in a 1967 war.”

Inq, Friday, 10/24/14, A12, AP: “… east Jerusalem, the section of the holy city captured by Israel in 1967 and claimed by the Palestinians as their capital.”

It’s time for the mainstream media to tell mainstream media readers that these “Palestinians” have not ruled “their claimed capital” for one day in history; that Jews have been the majority, and Muslims the minority, population in that city that’s been the capital of three states, all of them Jewish, since nineteenth century Ottoman times; and that except for invading Tranjordan’s 19-year seizure of part of the city that ended almost a half-century ago, the only time in history that even foreign Arabs ruled Jerusalem was between 636 and 1099.

What sense of that is purveyed by “captured by Israel in 1967”?

Regards,
Jerry