Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #728, 12/14/14

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #728, 12/14/14

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: “Year-end review” season opens mid-December, which BSMW has observed over the years by summarizing the ending year’s mainstream media mis-coverage of Israel as purveyed in the Philly Inquirer, aspect-by-aspect. But this year, let’s look back at it another way, month-by-month, instead of by coverage category. This, I think, will give you a sense, across all aspects of Arab-Israeli conflict reporting, of just how doggedly the MSM and Inq purvey their partisanship to Western newspaper readers.

This Year In The Inq: Wander Through “Highlights” With Me

“Palestinian Farmers” versus “Settlers”: A January 14 Philly Inquirer (“Inq”) AP article on a confrontation between Jews and Arabs in Judea-Samaria illustrated vividly how the mainstream media (“MSM”) employs contrasting connotations of ordinary words to portray Arabs as natives and Jews as aliens in Judea-Samaria. Per the AP, the confrontation began with the Jews attacking the Arabs, and ended with the Arabs chasing and capturing the Jews. Here are the terms it employed (emphasis added):

Paragraph 1: “Palestinians on Tuesday chased and grabbed more than a dozen Israeli settlers who witnesses said had attacked Palestinian farmers near a West Bank village.” Pars. 2 and 3 referred to the Jews as “settlers” four times, and to the Arabs twice as “people.” Par. 4 referenced “attacks by militant settlers on Palestinians” and said “settlers were captured and held by Palestinians.” Par. 5 called the confrontation “a stone-throwing clash between settlers and Palestinian farmers.” Par.6 identified “the West Bank village” where the incident occurred, according to a member of the “village council.” Par. 7 said “settlers” attacked “farmers in an olive grove,” injuring “a Palestinian boy,” and that the “farmers called for reinforcements and about 100 youths arrived from the village.” Par. 8 added: “The settlers ran away and the villagers gave chase” said a “village resident.” Par. 9 said some of “the settlers” sought cover near the edge of a “village,” and par. 10 said “villagers” caught them and held them along with other “settlers” they’d chased down. I really liked that one, “the settlers ran away and the villagers gave chase, said a village resident.”

See also Inq photo caption June 16: “Israeli soldiers search the West Bank village of Beit Einun, near Hebron. They were looking for three teenagers who went missing near a settlement.” (emphasis added)

Misleading Headline: “Israel – Canadian Premier Heckled”: On January 21, the Inq ran a short AP piece on Canadian Prime Minister Harper’s visit to Israel. What would you glean just from the Inq’s headline: “Israel – Canadian Premier Heckled”? Doubtless, that his message was popularly rejected to the extent of personal insult. On the contrary, he told the Israeli Knesset: “Our view on Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is absolute and non-negotiable…. we refuse to single out Israel for criticism on the international stage.… Most disgracefully of all, some openly call Israel an apartheid state.” The Knesset, on behalf of Israel’s people, gave Canadian P.M. Harper a standing ovation. A couple Arab members of Israel’s Knesset heckled him.

Misportrayal of History: “Seized”: A January 31 Inq LA Times article referenced “… Maale Adumim, a Jewish settlement on land that Israel seized [emphasis added by me, but not as much as by them] in the 1967 war.” Tell that to Jews who remember how we feared for Israel’s survival as Arab nations marshaled armies on Israel’s “Auschwitz” ceasefire lines and issued blood-curdling cries for Israel’s annihilation just before these “seizures” by Israel.

Ms. Rubin’s Word Choices: The Inq’s house foreign affairs columnist, Trudy Rubin, a professional wordsmith by trade, used these loaded terms in her February 13 Inq “Worldview” column: “occupy … occupation … West Bank settlements … the Palestinians … pre-1967 borders.” We’ve chronicled these and other misleading pejoratives in her column over the years.

One Side of Two-Sided Issue: Inq’s February 17 AP article: “The fate of the Palestinian refugees is one of the most emotional issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” (emphasis added). Israel formally recognized this month that what ex-APnik Matti Friedman rightly calls the “Israel-Arab” or “Jewish-Arab,” not “Israeli-Palestinian” conflict, generated more Jewish refugees from vast Muslim lands, mostly absorbed by Israel, than Arabs left tiny Israel.

Misleading Headline: “Israel Fires Back”: The Inq headlined its March 13 AP article: “Israel Fires Back After Gaza Barrage.” It wasn’t just a ho-hum Gaza barrage. The Inq’s own AP article’s lede included: “The Israeli military said it was the largest barrage since 2012.” That was the newsworthy headline, not “Israel Fires Back” at attack initiators not even named in the headline. And the Inq exuding moral equivalence here sucked. Its AP article led: “Extremists in the Gaza Strip fired dozens of rockets Wednesday into southern Israel, sending civilians [emphasis added by me, not the Inq] to bomb shelters ….”, and reported that eight hit “populated areas.” It quoted a Gaza health official that Israel “targeted training sites used by Islamic Jihad and Hamas,” and Netanyahu as having “vowed to continue striking the rocket-launcher squads.”

“Two Jewish Settlements in the Occupied West Bank”: Inq’s March 20 Reuters article: “Israel’s Jerusalem municipality approved building plans on Wednesday for 184 new homes in two Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank … [emphasis added]. These communities, Har Homa and Pisgat Ze’ev, are in Jerusalem, not Judea-Samaria. Israel hotly contests calling over-the-long-gone-1949-ceasefire-line Jewish Jerusalem communities “settlements” (and ought to contest calling Judea-Samaria Jewish communities “settlements”), and neither “east” Jerusalem nor Judea-Samaria are “occupied.” And the Inq here wasn’t “only publishing Reuters.” It headlined: “Israel: Building Plans Approved in Two Jewish Settlements.”

Misstating History: “Israel’s 1948 Creation”: Inq’s May 16 AP article: “Palestinians marked their uprooting during the war over Israel’s 1948 creation.” Again: “Palestinians marched in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to commemorate their displacement in the Mideast war over Israel’s 1948 creation.” Enough of this media spin that Israel was “created” and “founded,” as though artificially ex nihilo “in 1948.” It gained its independence that year, just as this same mainstream has described Syria and Lebanon, India and Pakistan having done in that same era. And enough of this “Palestinians’ displacement in the war over Israel’s creation.” Palestinian Arabs were part of that war, mainly left under their Arab allies’ inducement, and were exceeded in number by Israel-absorbed Jewish refugees from Muslim lands from that war.

Reversal of Genealogy: “The southern West Bank area that Israel calls Gush Etzyon”: The Inq’s June 14 LA Times article referenced “the southern West Bank area that Israel calls Gush Etzyon.” Gush Etzyon was created by Jews in 1927. Judea-Samaria was rechristened “West Bank” by the invader, Transjordan, in 1950.

Israel as Side Rejecting Ceasefire: Inq AP article lede July 13: “GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Ignoring international appeals for a cease-fire, Israel on Saturday widened its range of Gaza bombing targets ….” That was on the Inq’s front page. Paragraph 9 on continuation page 14: “[Hamas launched] “nearly 700 rockets and mortars at Israel during the week, and said it wouldn’t be the first to cease fire.”

Inq’s Israel-Hamas War Photo Captions Were Almost All of Damage in Gaza: The vast majority of Inq photos were of damage in Gaza, to the exclusion of Israeli civilians frantically running with mere seconds’ warning to bomb shelters, crouching with little kids by cars on the roadside, etc. The last week of July, the Inq ran 8 photos of Gaza, and three of Israelis, two of which were of IDF tanks and the third of a soldier who’d later been killed in combat. But the Inq didn’t stop there. Its July 23 photo accompanying its article on Israel’s airport being shunned internationally after a rocket landed a mile away was of damage in Gaza. The Inq headlined July 14 “Tens of thousands flee homes in Gaza,” but on August 26 it headlined its AP article that “tens of thousands of Israelis have fled” homes in southern Israel as “Israelis Leaving Southern Border.” The Inq’s photo accompanying these “tens of thousands” of Israelis fleeing their in-Israel homes? Damage in Gaza.

“Vast Majority” of Gaza Casualties were Civilian: Despite documented Israeli insistence that half the casualties in Gaza were combatants, the Inq and its sources reiterated (e.g., September 19, October 2) that the “vast majority” of Gazans killed were civilians. Contrast that Israel’s Iron Dome is deployed to protect major cities, and McClatchy and the Inq quoting “a Hamas official” on August 8, “Our fingers are on the trigger, and our rockets are trained on Tel Aviv.” Military target, nu?

Question-begging: “Deadline for Israeli Withdrawal from Palestinian Lands,” for Ending Israel’s “Occupation”: Inq September 27 AP article: “Mahmoud Abbas said Friday that he would ask the U.N. Security Council to dictate the ground rules for any talks with Israel, including setting a deadline for an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian lands.” (emphasis added) It gets better: Inq’s October 17 AP article: “[Abbas seeking UN Security Council resolution] setting November 2016 as the deadline for ending Israel’s occupation of lands sought for a Palestinian state.” (emphasis added) See also November 30 AP in the Inq 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” and Inq photo caption: “Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas wants to end Israeli occupation.”

More on “east” Jerusalem “Jewish Settlements”: Again on November 4, 6 and 13, the AP in the Inq referred, as flat statements of fact, to Jewish presence over the 1949 ceasefire line in Jerusalem to be that of “Jewish settlements”: “Israeli officials pushed forward Monday with plans to build new apartments in an east Jerusalem settlement ….”; “… stepped-up Jewish settlement construction in the eastern sector [of Jerusalem]”; and “continued Israeli settlement construction in east Jerusalem.” Compare Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman to his German counterpart in Times of Israel, November 16: “We will never accept the definition of building in Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem as settlement activity.”

Misleading Headline: “4 Jerusalem Worshipers Slain”: What’s wrong with this November 19 Inq headline – “Palestinians Kill 4 Jerusalem Worshipers” – for meat cleaver-wielding Palestinian Arabs breaking into a Jerusalem synagogue and slaughtering four rabbis at morning prayers? Well, the Inq might have said “rabbis” and “meat cleaver-wielding,” and conveyed a sense of the blood-soaked scene, but all-in-all, not too bad for an Inq. But, alas, that was the Inq’s headline back on continuation page 8. The Inq’s front page headline – “4 Jerusalem Worshipers Slain” – identified neither perpetrators nor victims. Compare the specificity and voice of the Inq’s headline November 29, in which a participant in a rock-throwing Palestinian Arab crowd was wounded by the IDF happened to be Italian: “Israeli Troops Wound Italian.” Compare that while the wounded Italian participant in the Palestinian rock-throwing crowd was not singled out for wounding by the IDF because he didn’t look “Palestinian,” the four meat-cleavered worshipers ten days earlier had been singled out, not because they were “Jerusalem Worshipers,” but because they were Jerusalem Rabbis.

And, Finally (as of this writing), “Jewish State Bill “Adds Complication”: Nobody, least of the all the Inq and AP, goes around saying that Abbas reiterating over and over “We will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state” adds complications to peace-making. But let Israel supplement 3,000 years of homeland Jewish history, San Remo, the Palestine Mandate, the Partition resolution, etc, introduce a bill about being the one Jewish state on a planet with an organization of 57 Muslim states plus a western Palestine entity with a Basic Law that “Islam is the official religion in Palestine” with Islamic Shari’a principles “the main source of legislation,” and the AP in the Inq November 17 calls this Israel “adding a complication to tense relations with Arab-Israelis and Palestinians.”

How’s this for a New Year’s Resolution: “I will stop using the delegitimizing terms in the mainstream western media’s loaded lexicon for Israel reporting; I will lean on Jewish leaders and pundits to cease using these terms, all of them; and then I will lean on the media to clean up its lexicon”?

Regards,
Jerry