Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #723, 11/9/14

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #723, 11/9/14

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: [1] Two Inq headlines this week say a lot. One was “Israel: Police Shoot Israeli-Arab Man,” without mentioning that he came at them with a knife. The other, heading an AP article leading “A Hamas extremist slammed a minivan into a crowd waiting for a train Wednesday in Jerusalem,” killing one and wounding 14, was “Jerusalem Attack Kills One,” identifying neither perpetrator nor victim, with facts in a smaller sub-head.

[2] Twice this week, the AP called Jewish Jerusalem neighborhoods over the old 1949 ceasefire lines “settlements.” And [3] while, in a sense, Jews may be Temple Mount “visitors,” not permitted by Israel to pray there, their presence is not that of by-Muslims’-leave tourists, and though the media does not present it that way, Abbas’ call to bar Jews is the status quo threat.

[1] This Week In The Inq: Israel-Shoots-Arab-Man vs Attack-Kills-One Headlines

On the surface level, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s (Inq’s) international news-in-brief squib headline this morning (Inq, Sun, 9/9/14, A6)

Israel: Police Shoot Israeli-Arab Man, Triggering Riots

seems simply another instance of media misportrayal of Israel as the aggressor. This morning’s brief Bloomberg News article which this Inq headline graced led (emphasis added)

Police shot and killed an Israeli Arab man who attacked officers with a knife, setting off riots outside his village in northern Israel.

Certainly, the text of that brief Bloomberg article, the record on which the Inq fashioned its headline, required reference to the Israeli-Arab man as the attacker, particularly given the Inq’s headline kicker of the police’s shooting of that man as “triggering riots.”

But this is not simply another case of our Inq, e.g., headlining (4/29/08) as “Israeli Army Shoots Four Palestinians” an AP article reporting (emphasis added): “The Israeli army shot four Palestinian militants who were trying to plant explosives near the Gaza Strip border fence,” and quoted Hamas calling them its members “on a jihad mission.”

This morning’s Inq article did not reference a video of the event that’s attracting much media comment on the internet. Even HonestReporting says the “video raised questions” about the police’s account. It does show the man running at the police van with a knife or other object, and banging on its windows, apparently with no effect. Officers then exit the van with guns drawn and appear to shoot the man as he began running away. It may be a case in which police shot when not at that moment under deadly threat, and this is under official Israeli investigation.

But this police action “triggered riots” only in the sense of fueling riots that were already raging all week, incited by Arab leaders, blame for which our Inq and its mainstream media sources did not lay at the feet of its causers. Only Israel got Inq headline blame for “triggering riots.”

In a “Behind the Headlines” press release Wednesday (11/5/14), the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the points:

The Palestinians have carried out three terrorist attacks in Jerusalem in less than two weeks and instigated numerous riots on the Temple Mount since the summer. Incitement and the glorification of terrorists have played an important role in triggering the violence and in encouraging further attacks.

Among the attacks cited by the Ministry is the one on Wednesday this week “when a Palestinian deliberately rammed his commercial van into two separate crowds of Israelis near a light-rail train station and then attacked passers-by with a metal pole.” The Inq’s AP article Thursday (11/6/14, A4) quoted Hamas saying “the attack, the second of its kind in two weeks, was meant to protect” the Mount and its mosques. The AP lede captured a sense of what happened:

“A Hamas extremist slammed a minivan into a crowd waiting for a train Wednesday in Jerusalem, killing one person and wounding 13 in a midday attack that raised fears of worsening violence ….”

If you were expecting an Inq headline of “Hamas Slams Van into Jerusalem Crowd, Killing 1, Wounding 13, Raising Fears of Worsening Violence,” what you got was, sans mention of who did what to whom,

Jerusalem Attack Kills One

relegating to a much smaller sub-headline “A Hamas extremist drove a minivan into a crowd waiting for a train, also injuring 13 people.” And even the sub-head substituted the colorless “drove” for “slammed” used by AP in its lede.

[2] This Week In The Inq: “East Jerusalem Settlements”

Twice this week in the Inq the AP referred to Jewish Jerusalem neighborhoods over the 1949 ceasefire line that divided the city as “Jewish settlements.”

AP in Inq, Tue 11/4/14, A6: “Israeli officials pushed forward Monday with plans to build new apartments in an east Jerusalem settlement ….”

AP in Inq, Thu 11/6/14, A4: “… stepped-up Jewish settlement construction in the eastern sector [of Jerusalem]”

Simply put: If we are serious in contending that the Jewish people has a unique proprietary claim to Jerusalem, we really have to stop acquiescing in the world calling us “East Jerusalem Jewish settlers.”

[3] This Week In The Inq: Media Misassignment of Status Quo Threat

In last week’s #722 I railed against the AP in the Inq (11/1/14) applying “hard-line” to assassination attempt victim Rabbi Glick, who advocates allowance of both Muslim and Jewish prayer on the Mount, while not applying that label to Palestinian Authority President Abbas, whom that AP article quoted as 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.’”

What’s further troubling about this article, and three more AP articles this week in the Inq, is the expression “Jewish visitors,” “visiting Jews.” It is true, as this Monday’s (11/3/14, A6) Inq AP article states, that “after east Jerusalem’s capture by Israel in 1967, Jews were allowed to visit but not to pray there.” But given, as that article also says, that the site is sacred to both Muslims and Jews, the distinction drawn last Saturday between “Palestinian worshipers” and “visiting Jews,” and in this week’s three AP references to “visiting Jews” (Monday), “Jewish visitors” (AP in Inq Friday, 11/7/14, A14), and again “Jewish visitors” (AP in Inq Saturday, 11/8/14, A4), conveys a perception that these visiting Jews, these Jewish visitors, come there as by-Muslims’-leave tourists. Jews are not tourists on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. That Israel prohibits Jews from praying there is not because Israel concedes that only Muslims have a right to pray there. We have to come up with a replacement for “visit” [Webster: “1 to go or come to see, 2 to stay with as a guest”] that doesn’t connote going and coming, staying with as a guest. Jews are at home there – the antithesis of coming and going as a guest.

And the AP is simplistic in attributing the current violence to Muslim reaction to supposed provocation of “more and more” Temple Mount “Jewish visitors.” The attempted status quo change is Muslims trying to bar Jews from the Temple Mount altogether.

The AP’s article Friday tells readers: “The unrest was triggered [emphasis added] by Muslim fears of Jewish encroachment at the sacred site.” A week ago Saturday’s (11/1/14, A4) AP article put it:

… more and more Jews have been visiting the site [Temple Mount] in recent months, prompting [emphasis added] strong opposition from Muslims who fear greater Israeli influence in Jerusalem, amid accelerated Jewish settlement in the Palestinian part of the city.

This too is a reversal of the reality. This Wednesday’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs release stated:

“Israel has made no move to change the decades-old status-quo on the Temple Mount, to which the Government of Israel is committed….

In contrast, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and his ‘unity government’ partner Hamas are operating to undermine the status-quo on the Temple Mount, inciting riots to inflame tensions.

Among the incitements the Ministry cited are transforming the Al Aqsa mosque into a base for attacks using flammable weapons; Abbas having “said that all means must be used to prevent Jews from going up to the Temple Mount”; and Abbas having sent “a condolence letter” [emphasis original] “to the family of the terrorist who shot Yehuda Glick.”

So it’s not a case, as the AP said this week, of “unrest was triggered by Muslim fears of Jewish encroachment at the sacred site,” and last week of “more and more Jews” visiting the site “prompting strong opposition from Muslims,” but of the reverse, of “the Palestinians’” leader having “demanded,” as the AP put last Saturday, that “Jews be barred from the site and urged Palestinians to guard the compound from visiting Jews.”

Regards,
Jerry