Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #724, 11/16/14

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #724, 11/16/14

This Week In The Inq: “Israeli settlement construction in east Jerusalem”

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s (“Inq’s”) AP article Thursday (Inq, 11/13/14, A10, AP, “Israel Approves New Homes”) included among factors cited as contributing to recent Jerusalem violence

continued Israeli settlement construction in east Jerusalem

By contrast, the Times of Israel this morning (11/16/14) quoted Foreign Minister Lieberman as having told his visiting German counterpart today:

We will never accept the definition of building in Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem as settlement activity.

This Israeli position, of course, is neither right-wing nor new. This media watch has quoted similar sentiments by Jews as diverse in political view as Israeli P.M. Netanyahu and the American Reform movement’s Rabbi Yoffie.

Given that “settlements” is a dirty word (the one time I saw the Inq use it of Palestinian Arabs (4/14/02), it instantly withdrew it in a “Clearing the Record”), the AP and Inq are taking the Arab side here in using “settlements” in referring to Jews residing in the heart of Jerusalem.

There were a few stabs at balance in this Thursday AP article – it mentioned that city officials had approved 174 homes “for construction in an Arab neighborhood” along with the “200 homes in a Jewish area,” that that Jewish area, Ramot, is “already home to about 70,000 people,” and that “most Israelis assume the area will remain part of Israel under any future peace agreement,” so Israelis do not see the announcement as provocative but “relatively harmless.”

But what’s missing here is that Palestinian Arabs, who “claim East Jerusalem as their capital” and “consider all Israeli construction there to be illegal settlement activity,” have not ruled Jerusalem (“East” or otherwise) for one day in history, and that except for invading Jordan’s rule of part of the city from 1948 to1967, the only time in history when even foreign Arabs ruled Jerusalem was between 638 and 1099, much of that under the thumb of the Turks.

What’s further missing is that in the last three thousand years Jerusalem has been the capital of three native states – Judah, Judaea and Israel, all Jewish – and that Israel is the land’s next native state after Jewish Judaea, every ruler in between having been a foreign empire invader.

And what’s further missing is that Jerusalem has had a renewed Jewish majority since pre-Zionist 19th century Turkish rule times.

This is the information Western newspaper readers need to read and assess, along with being told over and over by Arabs and the AP that Jews, of all peoples, are “settlers” in the heart of Jerusalem. Instead they were just told, once again, in Thursday’s AP article that “Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967,” as though there were no prior Jewish connection.

And all of this passes for “balanced” reporting.

Editorial: Getting Our Own Act Together in Making Our Jerusalem Case

A comment made by the AP at the foot of Thursday’s article, and thoughts in an article in today’s Israel Hayom by Zalman Shoval, reveal the gravity of the Jerusalem demographics struggle in which Jews and Arabs are locked.

The AP ended its article: “About 200,000 Jewish Israelis live in developments that ring East Jerusalem to help cement Israeli control.” Zalman Shoval, citing Arab encirclement and siege of Jerusalem in the 1948 war and threat of that in the 1967 war, wrote that Israel

has made the strategic decision to never go back to a situation whereby an enemy can lay siege to Jerusalem from all sides or even sever it from the rest of the country . . . . Israel, through its various governments, made the decision and followed through, and one of the primary means it employed, and continues to employ, is ‘enveloping’ Jerusalem with Jewish neighborhoods and communities in order to break the Palestinian continuity surrounding it. The Palestinians understand this exceedingly well, which is why they object to Israeli construction in these places.

By me, the “Palestinians” object to Jewish construction in Brooklyn, but it is what Shoval says at the end of his article with which I take issue (and hence call this addendum “editorial”). In criticizing Israel’s failure to articulate adequately the strategic need for over-the-green-line Jewish Jerusalem neighborhoods, Shoval assigns as one of the reasons:

Extreme right-wing circles object, in principle and ideologically, to using the security argument in relation to construction and other initiatives in Judea and Samaria, and in Jerusalem, explaining it is essentially our historical right and does not require pragmatic and even security-related embellishments.

This is a mistake – and while this historical right doesn’t need to be questioned, presenting the fundamental security aspects regarding the various Jerusalem envelope neighborhoods certainly cannot detract from the justness of our position, rather the opposite.

This reminds me of the way the media explains Jewish resistance to “the right of return” – Israel would cease being a Jewish state. I can just hear the world saying, “But if they have no right to it being a Jewish state, and these Arabs have a ‘right of return,’ then that’s just too bad for the Jews and their Jewish state.” The answer to the ‘right of return’ is we do have a right to our Jewish state, historically and legally, and Jerusalem is our homeland’s capital, and therefore we have the right to secure and defend it. Our historical and security cases are compatible, but it is the former that challenges the Arab and AP claim that Jews, of all peoples on earth, are “settlers” in the heart of Jerusalem.

Regards,
Jerry