Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #737, 2/15/15

To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #737, 2/15/15

This Week In The Inq: “… another shooting NEAR a synagogue” [not exactly]

Perhaps, you don’t know about Tom Gross, of tomgrossmedia.com, a ray of light in the darkness. I didn’t until August 2009, when he was one of the few media voices to report honestly on what happened at Fatah’s “General Assembly” in Bethlehem that month. By way of introduction of Tom, who wrote something today bearing on what the New York Times, AP and Inq told the world this morning about what happened yesterday, here’s the difference between what Tom Gross and just a couple other sources reported to the world about that 2009 Fatah confab versus the version perpetrated, e.g., by the AP in my hometown Philadelphia Inquirer (Inq).

Here’s how I began BSMW #452 of 8/23/09 (emphasis added):

The Inq’s AP article earlier this month on the Fatah General Assembly in Bethlehem (AP in Inq, Wed., Aug 12, 2009, A8) perpetrated a classic case of purveying one-sided opinion-laced propaganda in the guise of reporting the news.
Beneath a 6-column, across the top of the page Inq headline heralding “Fatah Election Brings New Faces and Fresh Hopes,” the Inq’s opinion-laced AP news section article, not even fig-leafed “Analysis,” led off that “according to unofficial results released yesterday,” Fatah had elected a “rejuvenated” leadership “that will likely bring the mainstream Palestinian movement more in line with President Obama’s vision for an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement” (all in par. 1) in pointed contradistinction to “a reluctant Israel” and Hamas, which “pose formidable obstacles to a peace pact” (par. 2).
Without referencing a single resolution adopted by that Fatah General Assembly, the Very Business of that General Assembly, the AP and Inq did find space to call Fatah “mainstream” again (par. 6), and to tell readers that “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu takes a hard line toward the Palestinians,” and that Obama had “wrung from Netanyahu a reluctant endorsement of creation of a Palestinian state” (par. 8).
Commenting that it wasn’t hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys from “news” reporting like that, I asked “But what if the AP and Inq HAD included references to those Fatah General Assembly resolutions in that “news” article contrasting “mainstream” (par. 1), “mainstream” (par. 6) Fatah against “formidable-obstacle-to-a-peace-pact” (par. 2), “reluctant” (par. 2), “hard line” (par. 8), “reluctant” (par. 8) Israel?

I went on to quote some of those Fatah-passed resolutions, cited in the Conf. of Presidents’ Daily Alerts from the few sources that did report them, prominent among which was a, new to me, tomgrossmedia.com:

*** One, citing TomGrossMedia.com, extracted in the Conf of Presidents’ 8/14/09 Daily Alert: “Another resolution decreed that placing both east and west Jerusalem under Palestinian control is a ‘red line’ that is non-negotiable.”

*** A second, citing TomGrossMedia.com, extracted in Conf of Presidents’ Daily Alert, 8/14/09: “A resolution approved by the assembly stated that Fatah will not give up the armed struggle until all the descendants of those claiming to be of Palestinian Arab origin can live inside Israel.”

*** A third, from 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.

This morning, February 15, 2015, some half-dozen years later, Tom Gross, of tomgrossmedia.com, commented in his Weekly Standard blog on the New York Times’ website’s reporting of yesterday’s terror attacks in Denmark, one of which was at a synagogue while a bat mitzvah, attended by 80, many young people, was going on. Tom criticizes the Times’ lengthy article for not mentioning “anti-Semitism,” while saying “anti-Muslim sentiment is rising in Europe.” Gross goes on:

Nor does the New York Times mention the bat mitzvah. There are not so many Jews in Denmark and not many bat mitzvahs – it seems the terrorist had done his research carefully. Yet the New York Times website home page says, at the time of writing, that the shooting was ‘near a synagogue.’ It wasn’t near a synagogue. It was at a synagogue. The synagogue was the target. Which is why a Jew guarding the synagogue was shot dead….

Now, then, the AP this Sunday AM (Inq, Sun, 2/15/15, A6, AP, “Denmark Shooting Called Terror Attack”). This was an 11-paragraph across-the-top-of-the-page article, devoted to the two shootings, possibly by the same person, yesterday in Copenhagen. The first was at a cultural center, killing one attendee and wounding three police officers, during an event featuring “an artist who had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad.” Eleven of the article’s twelve paragraphs were devoted to that. Paragraph 2, alone, dealt with the second attack, in which a person guarding the site was killed and two police officers were wounded. Paragraph 2 described that second attack as “near a synagogue.”

Dear AP and Inq:

It wasn’t near a synagogue. It was at a synagogue. The synagogue was the target. Which is why a Jew guarding the synagogue was shot dead….

Does any of this matter? Tom Gross thinks it does. Immediately after that above-quote, he went on:

With the New York Times’ reporting, one starts to understand how Obama and his spokespeople could say the kosher attack in Paris was ‘random’ even though the perpetrator – interviewed on French radio during the attack – proudly boasted that he had come all the way across Paris in order to kill Jews gathering before the sabbath.

This Week on Algemeiner: Our Answer to Challenger of Our “Four Facts”

Maybe this doesn’t bear directly on the media bias watching you BSMW subscribers signed up for, but I would argue it does. Last June 26, Lee Bender and I had an article posted on algemeiner.com titled “Four Facts that Everyone Should Know About the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” [In retrospect, I don’t remember whether it was us or our editor who came up with that title, but today at least I agree with ex-AP reporter, now bias revealer, that “Arab-Israeli conflict” describes it more accurately.] It received some two-dozen, mostly favorable, reader comments at the time. On Monday this week, an anguished reader posted a new comment, that her shul newsletter reprinted this column, and received a “vitriolic” letter from a member. “Can you address his counter-arguments?”

Our four facts, which we claimed accurate understanding of which would increase people’s support for our Jewish homeland of Israel, were: [1] We Jews never left; [2] Jews have a stronger claim than Arabs to the name “Palestinian”; [3] that there are no such places as “the West Bank” and “East Jerusalem”; and [4] that “the Arab-Jewish conflict created more Jewish than Arab refugees.”

We posted our reply as a reply to that latest comment. If you’d like to see it, and perhaps add a comment of your own, go to Alegemeier.com, enter “Verlin” in the search box at the top just to the right of the date, and scroll down to our June 26 “Four Facts” article.

Countering the mainstream Western media’s anti-Israel bias isn’t only about trying to get Western journalists to abandon their imbalance, but to counter in the perceptions of Western publics, including those of many Jews, the damage that media imbalance inflicts. Our “Four Facts” Algemeiner article attempted to do that. As does, of course, the media watch.

Regards,
Jerry