To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #722, 11/2/14
WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: The AP showed its true colors this week in labeling a rabbi advocating prayer rights for both Jews and Muslims on the Temple Mount a “hard-line” activist while pointedly not applying that characterization in that same article to a Palestinian Arab leader who “demanded” Jews be barred altogether from the Temple Mount and called the site’s one-day closure by Israel “a declaration of war against the Palestinians and the entire Arab and Muslim world.” Balanced reporting?
But, first, the time’s come, I think, to begin contrasting (“Kudos”) non-loaded, historically accurate language in Arab-Israeli conflict reporting with (“Klinghoffers”) historically inaccurate pejoratives. Caroline Glick gets Kudos for calling the 1949 armistice lines the 1949 armistice lines, and the AP [surprise?] gets Klinghoffers for linking Israel’s “East” Jerusalem connection to “1967” and for pitting Muslim against just Jewish equities on the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary, omitting the interest of Christians.
A New BSMW Section: Kudos & Klinghoffers
The time has come, long come I think, to contrast through recurring example the objective, historically accurate language used by some writers on the Arab-Israeli conflict with the loaded lexicon of delegitimizing pejoratives used by others, not least the mainstream Western media.
Kudos this week to Caroline Glick (Jerusalem Post, 10/31/14, “Column One: Being Safe While Isolated”) for labeling the 1949 Israel-Jordan ceasefire lines “the 1949 armistice lines,” not “the 1967 lines” or worse “Israel’s 1967 borders.”
Against the opposition of his party and the general public, in 2010 Netanyahu bowed to Obama’s demand and enacted an official 10-month moratorium on Jewish property rights in lands beyond the 1949 armistice lines …. [emphasis added]
Against this, two Klinghoffers [referencing the opera, not the Arab-executed disabled man in the wheelchair] to the AP for two expressions used in Friday’s and Saturday’s articles on Israel’s brief Temple Mount closure to try to calm violence. The first delegitimizes Jews, and the second Christians.
Friday’s AP article (Inq, 10/31/14, A20, AP, “Israel Closes Holy Site After Shooting”) referenced “East Jerusalem, the section of the city captured by Israel in 1967 and claimed by the Palestinians.” Jerusalem’s Jewish connection runs some three thousand years deeper than “1967.” And on Saturday (Inq, 11/1/14, A4, AP, “Israel Reopens Disputed Site”) the AP reinforced its portrayal of Jerusalem equities with
… more and more Jews have been visiting the site [Temple Mount] in recent months, prompting strong opposition from Muslims who fear greater Israeli influence in Jerusalem, amid accelerated Jewish settlement in the Palestinian part of the city.
But it’s not just “more and more Jews” visiting the Temple Mount and “Jewish settlement” in “the Palestinian part of the city” [question-begging, anyone?] that’s disturbing the peace there, as once had, per Saturday’s AP article, “a visit there by then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon in 2000,” which “set off the last Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule.” [It was Ready & Waiting]
Beyond Jews and Muslims, there’s a third group with a stake in the Temple Mount, but you wouldn’t know it from the AP’s listing on Friday and Saturday of the claimants.
AP Friday:
Much of the unrest has centered on the holy site, revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.
AP Saturday:
… the site – known to Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary
Everyone knows that there are about a billion more Muslims than Jews in the world, but what if the AP on Friday and Saturday had said: “… the site – known to Christians and Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary”? Would that have bolstered non-Muslim equities? And the media’s pitting of just Jews against Muslims, to the omission of Christians, extends beyond the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary and to “Israeli influence in Jerusalem, amid accelerated Jewish settlement in the Palestinian part of the city.” It extends to Palestine in its entirety, as Prof. Robert Wilken pointed out in The Land Called Holy (pp. xii):
The Christian religion has a long history in Palestine … the history of indigenous communities whose fortunes have been linked to the many conquerors – Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Turks and Jews – and of national communities from other parts of the world, Copts from Egypt, Armenians, Syrians, Ethiopians, Russians, some of which have uninterrupted histories from antiquity to the present.
Wilken sums up (p. 23) that Palestine has strong historical and demographic, along with religious, links to the West, and is “not simply a distant chapter in the fortunes of the ancient Near East.” Our failure as Jews, capped by our own crowning of current area Arabs as “The Palestinians,” has been our failing to get through to the West that we, of all peoples on earth, have the strongest of Palestine “uninterrupted histories from antiquity to the present,” and that Palestine has never been as Arab as Arabia. The only time in history, except 1949-67, in which even foreign Arabs have ruled Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria were between foreign Arabs’ defeat of European Christians in 636 and their own defeat by European Christians in 1099. And modern Israel is Palestine’s, the land of Israel’s, next native state after European-defeated (66-70 and 132-35 CE) Jewish Judaea.
The upshot of all of this is that, Kudos, Caroline Glick is right on in calling the 1949 ceasefire lines the 1949 ceasefire lines, no holier than the 1967 ceasefire lines, and, Klinghoffers, the AP is wrong in linking Jewish connection to Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria to “their capture by Israel in 1967,” and in pitting Muslims against Jews, to the exclusion of Christians, as parties to the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary, Jerusalem “influence” and Palestine conflict.
This Week In The Inq: “Palestinian Worshipers” versus “Hard-line Jewish Activist”
Saturday’s AP article pointedly contrasted “Palestinian worshipers” on the Temple Mount with “a hard-line Jewish activist” who has “campaigned for more Jewish access to the site, a cherished cause for religious nationalists [emphasis added] who resent Israel’s longstanding prohibition on allowing Jews to pray there.” Both Friday’s and Saturday’s AP articles were about a Palestinian Arab’s attempted assassination of Rabbi Glick and its aftermath.
The AP Saturday withheld applying “hard-line” to Abbas, though it quoted him calling Israel’s one-day full closure of the Mount “a declaration of war against the Palestinians and the entire Arab and Muslim world,” and as having “demanded Jews be barred from the site and urged Palestinians to guard the compound from visiting Jews, whom he called a ‘herd of cattle.’”
Now, let’s look at how the Jerusalem Post’s editorial on Friday characterized this murderously attacked Rabbi Glick, whom the AP, reporting from Jerusalem, the next day, did call “hard-line.” JP:
What makes this crime all the more tragic was the fact that Glick, who is a vocal activist for the right of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, is also a strong defender of Muslims’ right to freedom of religious expression on what they call Haram-a-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary.
To the AP this week in the Inq et ilk, it’s Rabbi Glick who is “hard-line,” but not Palestinian Authority President Abbas, whom that very article cited as having “demanded” that “visiting Jews” be “barred from the site,” not just not be allowed to pray there, and who called the site’s one day closure by Israel “a declaration of war against the Palestinians and the entire Arab and Muslim world.” Does that seem to you balanced reporting?
Time To Do Something About It?
The very first week of Brith Sholom Media Watch, 722 weeks ago, a person whom I finally got to subscribe resisted at first because he said he knew that the media was horrible on Israel, but e couldn’t do anything about it. And over the course of those weeks, I’ve gotten “unsubscribe” emails telling me “the Inquirers of the world will never change, so give it up.” Well, we did meet with two of the Inquirer’s editors (who’ve replaced each other with more rapidity than Presidents of the Palestinian Authority), and gotten a couple concessions described in these media watches. But I think those unsubcribers were right in that the mainstream media won’t change in its derisive disdain for the Jewish homeland of Israel. So be it. BSMW’s mission is not to the Inqs. It’s to us. E.g., “Let’s ourselves stop mouthing the dirty words – all of them.” And let’s lean on Jewish leaders and pundits to stop.
But there is, perhaps, now a chance to do more than that. It may be feasible to start directly bringing, first to us Israel news junkies and then to a broader public, a news article originating source, like an AP, reporting on breaking news in Israel, from on the ground in Israel, that doesn’t share the mainstream Western media’s derisive lexicon and biased perspective. I’ll let you know if I get anywhere with it.
We really ought to try to do something.
Regards,
Jerry