JRV1287

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Wednesday night in Philly, ZOA’s Mort Klein called on Israelis to go on offense by deservedly demonizing their foes. Instead, we too often demonize ourselves.  Here, in the shadow of the UN about to “recognize a Palestinian State,” is an example, an Israeli paper’s news article demonizing our people’s homeland and us.

Armed with my new long-needed hearing aids, I sat next to a fellow Israel-supporting grassrootsnik at Wednesday night’s inspiring Philly ZOA gala, where we agreed we could listen to national ZOA president Mort Klein championing our people and homeland all night. One point Mort made was that beyond defending against the lies – “genocide … apartheid” etc. – being told worldwide, including right now at the UN, Israel needs to go on offense and start demonizing its richly deserving to be demonized foes. 

Alas, instead, not just far-out self-proclaimed anti-Zionists but organizations and people seen as mainstream in our peoplehood, knowingly or not, too often demonize us.  Let me give you one example this week, a major Israeli newspaper’s article this month using terminology describable only as Israel-bashing. 

As Israel-supporting American Jews, we must not only be outspoken in condemning our people’s own media self-disrespectfully mouthing our enemies’ slurs, but recognizing how pervasive these pejoratives have become in public speech, consciously avoid unthinkingly using them ourselves. So join me in perusing this illustrative news article.

Times of Israel on September 11 ran a news article headlined ‘There Will Be No Palestinian State’: Netanyahu Signs Plan for E1 Settlement Expansion. Without exception, every word choice this news article made shamefully chose our enemies’ loaded pejorative, not straightforward fact. 

Start with that headline itself.  “Settlement” is a dirty word.  The one time I caught my hometown paper, the Philly Inquirer, referencing an Israeli assault on “Palestinian settlements,” it instantly withdrew it in a “Clearing the Record,” correcting that those attacks “were directed at Palestinian towns and refugee camps.”  Actually, those attacks were directed at terrorists IN those Palestinian towns and refugee camps, but such a detail might have cleared the record too clearly.

TOI sub-headlined:

 “PM declares ‘this place belongs to us’ during signing ceremony in Maale Adumim, as Smotrich vows that the next step is annexation of the West Bank.” [emphasis added]

“West Bank,” coined by invader Jordan in 1950 to disassociate what had been Jewish from Jews, isn’t a synonym of “Judea and Samaria,” Hebrew origin names in use for three thousand years, including by the UN itself in 1947. It’s an antonym. 

And “annex,” Webster-defined as “to incorporate into a state territory of another state,” isn’t exactly what TOI sub-headlined that “Smotrich vowed,” which it reiterated him having “averred” in the article text:

  “Speaking at Thursday’s ceremony, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich averred that Israel will soon celebrate the annexation of the West Bank.”

Here, in TOI’s own very next paragraph, is what Smotrich actually “vowed” and “averred”:

“‘The prime minister told me ‘I’m staying here to hear what you have to say, and I know what you intend to say,’ said Smotrich. ‘Prime Minister, all of us, soon, will thank you and congratulate and celebrate together the application of sovereignty throughout Judea and Samaria,’ he added, using the biblical name for the West Bank.” [emphasis added]

“Application of sovereignty,” applying your law to what’s yours, is the opposite of incorporating territory of another state, and “Judea and Samaria” isn’t just “the biblical name for the West Bank.”

Elsewhere in the article, TOI referred to “E1,” where the new housing units are to be built, as “a new neighborhood of Maale Adumim on the western side of the city, just east of East Jerusalem.” [emphasis added] 

There is no capital-E “East” Jerusalem.  TOI’s reference is to a supposed present succession by Palestinian Arabs, who’ve never ruled Jerusalem ever themselves, to long-gone Jordanian seizure of part of Jerusalem in 1948 until evicted by Israel in 1967, a brief span of 19 years ended more than a half-century ago. 

The only previous Arab rule of Jerusalem was that of foreign Arab dynasties between 638 and 1099, between rules of European Byzantines and of European Crusaders, and much of that time under the thumb of the Turks.

Jerusalem has been three native states’ capital in the past 3,000 years, all of them Jewish, has had a renewed Jewish majority since pre-Zionist 1800’s Ottoman Turkish rule, and is the heart of Palestine west of the River, not the eastern part, the only part the of the Palestine Mandate Britain was authorized in the Mandate to excise from the reconstituted Jewish national home and give to Arabs.

Times of Israel wasn’t done.  It noted that “a number of right-wing ministers have called in recent weeks for the annexation of parts or all of the West Bank” as a response to western governments intending “to recognize the State of Palestine” this month in the UN.  But it cited “Israeli NGO Peace Now,” which “monitors settlement activity in the West Bank,” as calling the E1 housing plan “deadly for the future of Israel and for any chance of achieving a peaceful [?] two-state solution,” without calling Peace Now “left-wing,” or by its Hebrew name, realistically “Aliv Hashalom Achshav.”

And, as a final dig, TOI ended: “The West Bank is home to around three million Palestinians, as well as about 500,000 Israeli settlers.”  I.e.,

*** Judea-Samaria’s the “West Bank,” not the “Judea-Samaria” it’s been called for three millennia, and part of the Mandate’s “Jewish national home”; and

*** Palestinians (my guess is fewer, and we’re Palestinians too) are “home” there, but Israelis (my guess is more) are alien “settlers.”

[emphasis added above, but not by much] 

So “Annexation … settlers and settlements … West Bank … biblical name … East Jerusalem … right-wing,” talk about us demonizing ourselves. All that’s in just one Israeli paper news article.

Regards,

Jerry