Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #725, 11/23/14

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #725, 11/23/14

This Week In The Inq: Headline Identified Neither Murderers Nor Victims

“Palestinians Kill Four Jerusalem Worshipers.” Not too bad for our hometown Philadelphia Inquirer’s (“Inq’s”) headline of its McClatchy article Wednesday (Inq, Wed, 11/19/14, A1, 8) that led:

Two Palestinians wielding meat cleavers and a pistol attacked Jewish worshipers Tuesday at a Jerusalem synagogue during morning prayers, killing four rabbis and a police officer and wounding five others before they were shot dead by police ….

This active voice-beginning [“Palestinians Kill …”] Inq headline doubtless got across to most readers that these four killed “Jerusalem worshipers” were not themselves “Palestinians” but Israeli Jews. And while one might construct a headline – e.g., “Meat Cleaver-Wielding Palestinians Kill 4 Rabbis at Jerusalem Synagogue Morning Prayers” – that would have included seven meaningfully descriptive words – “meat cleaver-wielding … rabbis … synagogue … morning prayers” used by the Inq’s wire service in that news article’s lede, “Palestinians Kill Four Jerusalem Worshipers” is fairer than many on Arabs-killing-Israelis we’ve seen in our Inq.

So why am I railing against how our Inq headlined Wednesday’s article? Because “Palestinians Kill Four Jerusalem Worshipers” was the Inq’s headline Wednesday on the article’s continuation page A8. Here’s our Inq’s top-of-the-front-page headline Wednesday on A1:

4 Jerusalem Worshipers Slain

Neither the nationalities of the murderers [Palestinian Arabs] or victims [morning prayer-observing rabbis in a synagogue], nor the grisly nature of the crime [pistol and meat cleaver-wielding slaughter of four and wounding of five] was mentioned in this passive voice framing.

“4 Jerusalem Worshipers Slain” was followed by a mixed active-passive voice sub-head (the active voice referencing Israeli police killing Arabs, the passive voice referencing an Israeli policeman having “died”)”:

Police shot two cousins who rampaged in a synagogue. An officer also died.

Perhaps you recall a similarly classic fact-elucidating Inq headline a few years ago of an unidentified “gunman” having slaughtered 8 unidentified “seminary students” in Jerusalem:

Inq headline, Friday, 3/7/08, A1, NY Times: Caption above photo: “Carnage at a Jerusalem Seminary,” headline: “Gunman Opens Fire, Kills Eight Students”

(BSMW’s Alert that week noted that fellow media-watcher Dr. Bruce Epstein correctly diagnosed a similarly defective headline to that story in the St. Petersburg [Florida] Times: “Murderer not identified as a Palestinian, Victims not identified as Israeli.”)

Also This Week In The Inq: “Jewish State” Bill “Adds Complication”

On Monday this week (Inq, Mon, 11/17/14, A8) the Inq ran an AP news squib which the Inq headlined: “Israel: Amid Tension, Premier To Push Jewish-State Bill.”

The 3-paragraph AP article, the first two of which dealt with an Israeli man having been stabbed in the back in Jerusalem apparently by an Arab assailant, went on in paragraph three that

Also Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he’s pushing forward a bill that enshrines in law that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, adding a complication to tense relations with Arab-Israelis and Palestinians. [emphasis added]

Israel “adding a complication” by asserting its Jewish State character is again nothing new.

Section “K – Killing the Peace Process” of Lee’s and my book, Pressing Israel: Media Bias Exposed from A-to-Z, noted: “The L.A. Times (10/24/10, Inq., A3) suggested, using the media ventriloquism dummy “some see,” that P.M. Netanyahu’s insistence that Palestinian Arabs recognize Israel as a Jewish state served only as a distraction from ‘settlements’:

Some see Netanyahu’s actions as a tactical move designed to put Palestinians on the defensive, paint them as rejectionists and divert attention from Israel’s controversial settlement construction in the West Bank, which has thrown peace talks into crisis. [emphasis added]

The Inquirer’s headline left off the fig-leaf qualifier “some see”:

A New Stumbling Block to Mideast Peace Talks; Israel Presses Palestinians to Recognize “Jewish” State. [emphasis added]

The two-fold misimpression conveyed this week by the AP and Inq, that “amid tension,” Israel is “adding a complication” to Arab-Jewish relations by stating its status as a Jewish state, and Inq-and-source prior suggestions that Jewish state recognition is both new and disingenuous [“a tactical move to divert attention”] completely distorts who’s for, and who’s against, the U.S. vision of “two states for two peoples.” Here’s the reality (emphasis added throughout):

U.S. Excerpt from U.S. State Department “On-The-Record Briefing” by United States Special Envoy Mitchell, Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt September 14, 2010:

We have said many times that our vision is for a two-state solution that includes a Jewish democratic state of Israel.

“Two states for two peoples” was reiterated by U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N. Susan E. Rice in her address to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on December 14, 2011:

There is no substitute for direct, face-to-face negotiations. The goal remains a lasting peace: two states for two peoples, Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of Palestine as the homeland of the Palestinian people ….

Israel: Israeli P.M. Netanyahu’s statement to the Cabinet meeting on April 20, 2009:

We insist that the Palestinians — in any diplomatic settlement with us – will recognize the State of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people. The entire international community demands that we recognize the principle of two states for two peoples and we are discovering that this is two states but not for two peoples but two states for one people, or two states for a people-and-a-half.

Excerpt from Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor’s address to the U.N. Security Council, July 26, 2011, (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs):

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has stated openly and repeatedly that we will accept a Palestinian state, alongside a Jewish state. Yet, the Palestinian leadership has not done the same. They will not tell their own people that they accept a Jewish State….

Palestinian Arabs: On the very day, September 23, 2011, that Abbas addressed the United Nations, seeking U.N. recognition of a western Palestine Arab state, YNetNews.com quoted Abbas:
“They talk to us about the Jewish state, but I respond to them with a final answer: We shall not recognize a Jewish state,” Abbas said in a meeting with some 200 senior representatives of the Palestinian community in the US, shortly before taking the podium and delivering a speech at the United Nations General Assembly.
Caroline Glick’s Jerusalem Post column (Townhall.com, 8/5/11) quoted a senior P.A. negotiator’s statement showing clearly that Palestinian Arabs understand exactly what the U.S. and Israel mean by “two states for two peoples,” and that they expressly reject it.

Israel has no one to negotiate with because the Palestinians reject Israel’s right to exist. This much was made clear yet again last month when senior PA “negotiator” Nabil Sha’ath said in an interview with Arabic News Broadcast, “The story of ‘two states for two peoples’ means that there will be a Jewish people over there and a Palestinian people here. We will never accept this.”

One news service that reported on the resolutions that Fatah adopted at is 2009 General Assembly was TomGrossMedia.com (8/11/09), “As Fatah Radicalizes, Peace Prospects Dim”:

A further resolution explicitly said Fatah would oppose recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

As for media portrayal of Israel this week “adding a complication amid tension,” earlier injecting “a new stumbling block to divert attention” from post-1967 “settlements,” it was British Foreign Secretary Bevin, no friend of the Jews, who, in addressing Parliament in 1947, stated as clearly as anyone that Jews re-establishing our Jewish State is not some new Israeli ploy, but what the Arab-Jewish Palestine conflict has always been about. Bevin:

There are in Palestine about 1,200,000 Arabs [Katz and others say too high] and 600,000 Jews.  For the Jews, the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish state. For the Arabs the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine.” (Great Britain, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, vol. 433, col. 988, quoted in Bell, Terror Out of Zion, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1977, p. 188)

Regards,
Jerry