Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #736, 2/8/15

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #736, 2/8/15

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Our hometown Philly Inquirer (Inq) ran two AP articles this week of particular interest to pro-Israel media watchers. One was a three-paragraph squib on the Houthis’ takeover of Yemen. The AP’s full article, not in the Inq, referenced “their slogan” – “Death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews ….” Inq readers conditioned to believe that ending “Israel’s West Bank occupation” will bring peace to the region should have been given this yet-more evidence that the Arab-Jewish conflict, which of course pre-dated “occupation,” runs deeper than that.

The Inq’s second article was about political implications here and in Israel of Bibi addressing the Congress. The only Jewish group quoted on Jews and the GOP was “the liberal pro-Israel group J Street.” The article characterized Bibi as fearing that the emerging nuclear Iran deal may allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons “eventually.” It didn’t mention, which a Washington Post editorial Thursday did, Iran’s “declared goal of eliminating Israel,” which gives an Israeli P.M. reason to address an American Congress on an emerging American-negotiated Iran nuclear deal which the Washington Post editorialized “raises major concerns.”

Missing from News Articles This Week In The Inq: [1] “Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse on the Jews ….”; [2] “Emerging Iran Nuclear Deal Raises Major Concerns”

Our Philadelphia Inquirer (Inq) covered, after a fashion, two major Iran-and-Israel-related world developments this week, but the public didn’t get a full and fair presentation of either.

[1] The Shiite Takeover of Yemen

The AP headlined a Friday (2/6/15) 21-paragraph article, not in the Inq: “Shiite Rebels Take Power in Yemen, Fan Fears of Civil War.” The Inq on Saturday (2/7/15, A4) ran a 3-paragraph “Around the World” AP squib, less dramatically headlined “Yemen: Rebels Dissolve Parliament.” Paragraph 3 acknowledged what’s at stake: “The unrest could strengthen Yemen’s al-Qaeda branch, considered the world’s most dangerous wing of the terror movement, and complicate U.S. counterterrorism operations.” Not mentioned Friday, but not lost on America-reliant folks in the Mideast, was that the Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, have under house arrest Yemen’s deposed president, whom the New York Times in the past couple weeks had called “pro-American” (1/27/15), “American-backed” (1/22/15).

But what are the Houthis to us, that we should lose sleep over their Yemen coup? Ask rather, what are we to them. Per the AP’s full Friday article, their supporters in Yemen “exploded firecrackers and waved banners bearing their slogan ‘Death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews and victory to Islam.’” Charming folks, actually, and nice of them to remember us Jews in “their slogan.” And a sobering reminder to those Westerners who did get to read this full AP report that, as ex-AP reporter Matti Friedman said in a January 26 London speech, defining the Arab-Jewish conflict as about “occupation” is simplistic. Friedman:

The occupation is not the conflict, which, of course predates the occupation. It is a symptom of the conflict, a conflict that would remain even if the symptom were somehow solved. . . .

Half of the Jews in Israel are there because their families were forced from their homes in the 20th century not by Christians in Europe, but by Muslims in the Middle East. Israel currently has Hezbollah on its northern border, alQaeda on its northeastern and southern borders, and Hamas in Gaza. None of these groups seek an end to the occupation, but rather openly wish to destroy Israel.

It’s important that Western publics understand this reality, that the enmity would not end with driving Israel back to the ceasefire lines of 1949, even with inundating that little remaining sliver of the original Palestine Mandate for the Jewish National Home with millions of Muslim Arabs, and throwing the Jews out of the heart of Jerusalem. Westerners would have gotten more of a taste of the Arab-Jewish Palestine conflict’s depth and non-simplicity had the Inq’s abbreviated Saturday version of Friday’s full AP article on the Houthis’ takeover of Yemen included “their slogan” “Death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews and victory to Islam.”

[2] The Nuclear Negotiations with Iran

This morning (Inq, Sun, 2/8/15, A19, AP) the Inq ran an across-the-page-top article on the on-going nuclear negotiations with Iran, devoted entirely to political aspects of the Israeli Prime Minister’s impending March speech to the Congress: “Democrats, GOP Spar Over Netanyahu Speech,” sub-head: “President Obama objects to the invitation, and his party hopes to limit any harm to U.S.-Israeli ties.”

Beyond distracting public attention from the crucial core issue of where those Iran negotiations are heading, which a Washington Post editorial Thursday headlined “raises major concerns,” the Inq’s AP article this morning raises concerns of its own. For one thing, it characterized Israel’s P.M. as saying that the emerging deal “could make it easier for Iran eventually to develop nuclear weapons.” Not “eventually,” but very quickly, is Israel’s fear.
Secondly, the only U.S. Jewish group quoted was “the liberal pro-Israel group J Street,” hardly representative of American Jewry. At the least, given that the issue on which J Street was quoted was on whether the Obama-Bibi relationship might drive more Jews to the GOP, a differently-thinking group, say the Republican Jewish Coalition, should have been quoted for balance.

Inquirer readers would have been better-served by an Inq article focusing on what the Washington Post’s Thursday (2/5/15) editorial called three major concerns about the emerging Iran deal raised by “numerous members of Congress, former secretaries of state and officials of allied governments.” As “summed up” by the WP’s editorial:

First, a process that began with the goal of eliminating Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons has evolved into a plan to tolerate and temporarily [n.b.] restrict that capability.

Second, in the course of the negotiations, the Obama administration has declined to counter increasingly aggressive efforts by Iran to extend its influence across the Middle East and seems ready to concede Tehran a place as a regional power at the expense of Israel and other U.S. allies.

Finally, the Obama administration is signaling that it will seek to implement any deal it strikes with Iran – including the suspension of sanctions that were originally imposed by Congress – without a vote by either chamber. Instead, an accord that would have far-reaching implications for nuclear proliferation and U.S. national security would be imposed unilaterally by a president with less than two years left in his term.

As for Israel’s Prime Minister addressing the U.S. Congress on Iran, there’s no need to ask what’s Hecuba to him. The Post’s editorial referenced Iran’s “declared goal of eliminating Israel.” And as with the Inq’s AP article on the “death to Israel, a curse on the Jews” Houthis, whom the Post editorial called “a Tehran-sponsored militia” that “recently overthrew the U.S.-backed government of Yemen,” even an Inq article focusing on political aspects here and in Israel of Bibi addressing the Congress ought to have included reference to Israel’s enemy’s expressed threat to Israel’s existence. “Politics” is a side-show to that.

Regards,
Jerry