#839 1/29/17 This Week: Illustration of What Ordinary Folks Absorb From Media Misportrayal of Jewish State

 

This Week:  Illustration of What Ordinary Folks Absorb From Media Misportrayal of Jewish State”

There was a reader’s letter in my hometown paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Thursday, which the Inq titled

“Israel Forcing Out Palestinians.”

The reader’s letter led off that “the occupied Palestinian territories are being riddled with Jewish settlements to the point of eliminating any real two-state settlement,” expressly citing the Inq’s AP article Wednesday (1/25/17, A6), banner-headlined by the Inq across the top of the 5-column-wide page:

“Israel Approves New Settler Homes”

The reader concluded his letter by warning that “Israel will further displace the Arab population and assert itself as a Jewish state,” but what will really be “a colonial occupier apartheid state.”

What gives ordinary Americans not ethnically-linked to the Mideast (the Inq’s letter writer’s name is Smith) understandings that Judea, Samaria and historic Jerusalem are “occupied Palestinian territories” being “riddled with Jewish settlements,” and that Israel seeks to “further displace the Arab population” and “assert itself as a Jewish state,” but is instead becoming “a colonial occupier apartheid state”?  [emphasis added throughout this #839]

Well, we could start with that Inq AP article Wednesday that was cited in the reader’s letter on Thursday.  It led: “Israel said Tuesday it approved 2,500 new settler homes in the West Bank ….”  It referred to “the West Bank” and “East Jerusalem” as areas “captured by Israel in the 1967 war,” as though the Jewish people had no prior connection with “the West Bank” and “East Jerusalem.”  And it referred to Israel as having just “approved nearly 600 settler homes in East Jerusalem.”

And the Inq’s letter writer might have gotten some of his understanding of respective Arab and Jewish equities in Judea, Samaria and historic Jerusalem from the Inq’s other Israel AP article this week, on Monday (1/23/17, A4), which referenced Netanyahu “gearing up plans to expand settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem,” and further down that “Israeli hardline leaders make no secret they will push for aggressive action in the occupied West Bank.”

[But before we get too exercised over the AP reporting Netanyahyu “gearing up,” the AP prefaced that expression with “Israeli media” reporting that “Netanyahu was gearing up ….”]

The bottom line of this week’s Inquirer letter writer’s exposure to these and other Jewish homeland delegitimizing terms is that people like him who are continually presented with these terms come to believe that Israel is “a colonial occupier apartheid state” displacing “the Arab population” – the Inq titled his letter “Israel Forcing Out Palestinians” – to “assert itself as a Jewish state.”

We can’t effectively confront this poisoning of Western people’s perceptions piecemeal, picking and choosing which delegitimizing terms to protest.  The “Palestinians” and their supporters present a complete picture, a consistent narrative of an indigenous Palestinian population being pushed out by occupier, colonial, outsider settler Jews asserting a Jewish state.

An effective Jewish reponse has to jettison Jewish joinder in this complete picture’s complete set of components.  As an example of going only half-way, The Times of Israel this week had an article on Bibi’s building plans, leading that “he will soon announce expanded construction in the settlement blocs and ease all building restrictions in East Jerusalem.”  It says further down that while much of the international community regards Jewish housing in East Jerusalem to be “settlements,” Israel regards them as “neighborhoods.”  You can’t, as this article did, concede that  Ma’ale Adumim is “a West Bank settlement on the outskirts of Jerusalem” without many people seeing little difference – outskirts, shmoutskirts –  between Jewish presence in an East Jerusalem suburb captured by Israel in 1967 and in an East Jerusalem captured by Israel in 1967.

We have to throw away ALL of it – “West Bank … East Jerusalem … captured by Israel in 1967 … occupied … settlements … [Palestinian Arabs as] the Palestinians.

But even that’s insufficient.  We have to replace it in Western people’s perception with the three- millennia homeland connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, including Judea, Samaria and historic Jerusalem, including the Yishuv’s continuous post-biblical presence all through the continuously foreign rule centuries leading to modern Israel becoming the land of Israel’s next native state after Roman-destroyed Jewish Judaea.

If Hillel were alive today and just witnessed the United Nations, with Western joinder, having successively abolished the historical Jewish and Christian names of their holy land holy places,  and then declared every inch of that land beyond the old long-obliterated 1949 Israel-Jordan military ceasefire lines – Judea, Samaria, historic Jerusalem – “occupied Palestinian territory,” is there a doubt he would put to us, “And if not now, when?”