Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #726, 11/30/14

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #726, 11/30/14
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #726, 11/30/14

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Two pieces attract attention of pro-Israel media watchers This Week In The Inq. One is a contrast in headline specificity regarding who did what to whom from what the Inq headlined last week on meat cleaver-wielding Palestinian Arabs slaughtering four rabbis in a Jerusalem synagogue. The other is on AP and Inq use of “Israeli occupation” as a statement of fact. Re the latter, a pair of Algemeiner.com articles this week, on Abbas reiterating refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and on some more of the dirty words we ourselves have to cease using, merit attention.

This Week In The Inq: “Israeli Troops Wound Italian”

Compare these two headlines that appeared a week apart in the Philadelphia Inquirer (“Inq”).

Last week (Inq, Wed, 11/19/14, A1), for Palestinian Arabs rampaging in a Jerusalem synagogue with meat cleavers and guns during morning prayers, slaughtering four rabbis in a blood-soaked prayer shawls scene:

4 Jerusalem Worshipers Slain

Versus this week (Inq Sat, 11/29/14, A4), for the IDF wounding an Italian participant in a Palestinian Arab Samaria demonstration “after tear gas and other crowd-control measures failed to stop them from burning tires and throwing rocks”:

Israeli Troops Wound Italian

Last week’s Inq headline mentioned neither meat cleaver-wielding Palestinian Arab murderers nor Israeli rabbi victims (three of whom were joint Israeli-American citizens). Yet last week’s murderers being Palestinian Arab, and last week’s murder victims being not generically “Jerusalem worshipers” but Jewish rabbis, was at least as relevant to reader grasping of an article’s core from its headline as the particular participant in a Palestinian Arab rock-throwing demonstration this week, one of two demonstrators who were injured and taken to hospitals, being Italian.

Indeed, substantially more relevant. The “4 Jerusalem worshipers” were singled out by Palestinian Arab attackers not because they were generically “Jerusalem worshipers,” but because they were Jerusalem rabbis, while there is no claim that this particular demonstrator was singled this week by the IDF in the rock-throwing crowd because he didn’t look “Palestinian.”

This particular contrast in headlines, not a big deal as a single instance, is one more example of Inq headline imbalance in Arab-Israeli conflict reporting. We collected many examples under “H – Headlines, Not Always What Happened” in Pressing Israel: Media Bias Exposed From A-to-Z. To cite just one telling three-days-apart headlining contrast that captures the Inq’s imbalance neatly:

On 4/29/08, the Inq ran an AP article reporting 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.” The Inq headlined: “Israeli Army Shoots Four Palestinians.”

Three days earlier (4/26/08), the Inq carried an AP article reporting 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.” Our Inq headlined: “Two Israeli Factory Guards Die.”

This Week In The Inq: “… deadline to end the Israeli occupation”

This morning’s (Inq Sun, 11/30/14, A6, AP, “Abbas To Seek U.N. Resolution”) Inq ran a brief AP article on Abbas renewing his threat to ask the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution “setting a November 2016 deadline to end the Israeli occupation.” Inq photo caption: “Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas wants to end Israeli occupation.”

“Israeli occupation” is stated here as a flat statement of fact by the AP and the Inq. But the AP and Inq are not alone in so viewing Jewish presence in Palestine beyond the 1949 Israel-Jordan military ceasefire lines. Most of the world agrees with them, which is largely our fault for ourselves mouthing the very terms that paint Jewish presence beyond the 1949 lines as illegitimate, and not making the case from Jewish homeland history and 20th century international documents – San Remo and the Palestine Mandate – for the Jewish National Home.

On that subject there are at least two relevant articles right now on Algemeiner.com. One, in the News section dated yesterday, is “Abbas Reiterates Refusal To Recognize Israel As Jewish State.” Since Abbas said that at a formal Cairo meeting of the Arab League, this reiteration, which is a flat rejection of the U.S, vision of “two states for two peoples,” ought to have been reported upon this week in the Inq, especially given Monday’s (Inq, Mon 11/24/14, AP) Inq AP article, “Israeli Cabinet Approves Jewish Nationality Bill.”

The second piece, in Algemeiner’s Blog section, is “Words Matter: How Vocabulary Defines the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” It’s a good article, singling out “West Bank … Settlements … Green Line/1967 Lines … East Jerusalem … Militants … Palestinian Bedouin … Haram al-Sharif” for analysis. There are a couple readers’ comments, one by me, in which I argue that it’s pointless for us to go part way – e.g., referencing “Palestinian population centers” in “Judea and Samaria” – as one person quoted in the article does –; that we need to contend against all the delegitimizing terms, and reclaim our equity in terms unjustly wrested from us, most fundamentally “Palestine” and “Palestinian.” Go to www.algemeiner.com and see what you think.

Regards,
Jerry