89.66% of Jewish Exponent Poll Participants Call MSM Israel Coverage “Unfair / Imbalanced,” But What Can We Grassroots Do About It?
#1325 June 7, 2026
Ok, so a poll this week shows our U.S. Jewish grassroots recognizes the reality of anti-Israel media bias. But, alas, given the self-destructive terminology of many of our major organizations, it rests with us grassroots to confront it.
89.66% of Jewish Exponent Poll Participants Call MSM Israel Coverage “Unfair/Imbalanced,” But What Can We Grassroots Do About It?
Philadelphia’s Jewish Exponent’s weekly poll this week asked
“How would you describe the mainstream media’s coverage of Israel?
“(a) Fair/balanced
“(b) Unfair/imbalanced”
When I voted the results were
“(a) Fair/balanced 10.34%
“(b) Unfair/imbalanced” 89.66%
Perhaps this will surprise you, but I see in this recognition at least a start of good news. A quarter-century ago, when I began these weekly emails expressly as an Israel-defending “media watch,” our community didn’t see the mainstream media this way. But at least I wasn’t alone. That same year, perhaps in exasperation, Jonathan Tobin, the then-editor of that then community-owned same Jewish Exponent, titled one week’s lead editorial “Media Bias – It’s Real.”
Despite the constant good work of CAMERA and Honest Reporting, mainstream media malreporting on Israel doesn’t just go on unabated, it gets worse. I divide this bias into two levels – errors and omissions in reporting the facts of individual news stories, and the terminology in which the media habitually reports all Israel news.
In these weekly emails, I generally focus on the latter, and over the years I’ve pleaded with us ordinary grassroots Jews to cease using ourselves the whole loaded lexicon of pejoratives delegitimizing our people’s homeland of Israel. In this too, this particular week, I have an ally.
Philly ZOA’s Executive Director Steve Feldman had a Facebook post this week calling on us to carefully consider the Israel-related terms that we use:
“Nomenclature and terminology and our own word choices when we write or post are vitally important — especially when we are out-numbered and outspent by a magnitude of a billion in a propaganda-driven, manipulative information war.
“Our words are our ammo — hypersonic missiles, basic bullets or outright blanks — depending on our choices. Each word conveys a thought or a concept, or clarifies or muddies, or reinforces a fact or a lie. Intelligent people are responsible for our nouns (proper or not) our verbs, our modifiers; our tenses; whether we are in active voice or passive; and whether we help our cause or that of those who want to persecute or annihilate us.
“Even when we are quoting something or someone verbatim who uses poor word choices, we can and we must parenthetically correct poor word choices.
“Our role in the information war is serious, and we have the potential to open minds and eyes … or reaffirm the lies of our many enemies. Choose — and write/speak — wisely.” [emphasis added]
[There followed a reply exchange between Steve and me in which he reiterated that his post was to warn “Jews/supporters of Israel who themselves use self-destructive nomenclature” that they’re reaffirming our enemies’ lies, with which, citing examples, I entirely agreed.]
There’s a whole loaded lexicon out there of slurs falsely delegitimizing our Jewish people’s homeland of Israel, but some of these pejoratives are more delegitimizing than others, the most deadly poisonous being those that seek to undermine public perception of our very homeland claim. Don’t use these poisonous terms.
The Associated Press is a prime perpetrator of anti-Jewish homeland onc-sidedness with its insistent “Israeli-occupied West Bank.” In 1950, invader [Trans-]Jordan rechristened as “West Bank” what had been known throughout history (including by the UN in 1947) as Judea-Samaria, and when the media slyly tells the world’s news readers that “Judea-Samaria is the biblical name for the West Bank,” it’s leaving out 3,000 years.
Shades of the “Holy Roman Empire,” what the world, starting with the UN, miscalls “occupied Palestinian territory” is neither “occupied” nor “Palestinian” nor a “territory.”
Historic Jerusalem, thrice Jewish homeland state capital with renewed Jewish majority since 1800’s Turkish misrule, and the land of Israel’s Jewish and Christian holy site-filled biblical hill country heartland, none of which the world’s precious “Palestinians” have ever ruled ever, are historically ours and legally mandated as such by the Palestine Mandate.
The 1967-obliterated 1949 Israel-Jordan ceasefire lines, never among the Holy Land’s holy places, weren’t marked by natural geographical features, but just snaked through the countryside and Jerusalem indicating where Israeli and Jordanian armies then stood. Resurrecting the 1949 lines would render our Jewish national home a militarily indefensible Jewishly meaningless Jewish national ghetto.
The point I would drive home to you, my fellow U.S. Jewish grassroots, is that waging this terminology war for Americans’ perception of Israel rests in the hands of us U.S. Jewish grassroots.
On February 6, 2024, the ZOA issued a press release, condemning the policies and terminology of a new statement by America’s largest Jewish religious movement, which the ZOA titled as follows:
“ZOA Condemns URJ Head Rick Jacobs & Other Reform Jewish Leaders’ Statement Demanding a Palestinian State/etc. – Rewards Massacre, Endangers Israel, Defames Israel, Will Lead to More Anti-Israel Terror”
Focus on the terminology the Reform leaders’ statement used:
*** condemning Israel’s “ongoing West Bank occupation”
*** demanding “halting the construction of West Bank settlements”
*** “denying the Palestinians’ right to self-determination” [they’re the majority in three-quarters of Mandated Palestine, judenrein Jordan]
*** calling for establishing a western Palestine “Palestinian state,” even though it will “pose serious short-term security threats to Israel,” but these “will be addressed in any peace accords.”
*** calling for U.S. “opposing any efforts toward unilateral annexation by Israel of areas of the West Bank.”
Alas, the U.S. Reform movement’s not alone. In April 2019 nine huge American Jewish organizations – ADL, Ameinu, ARZA, Central Conference of American Rabbis, Jewish Women International, Israel Policy Forum, MERCAZ USA, National Council of Jewish Women, Rabbinical Assembly, Union for Reform Judaism and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism – wrote President Trump urging “Two-States” with borders that would “hew precisely to the 1967 borders” save for agreed “territorial adjustments,” and to oppose “annexation by Israel of any territory in the West Bank.”
Adamantly opposed as I am to “the two-state solution,” I find it even more reprehensible that nine major American Jewish organizations would couch their advocacy of such catastrophe in calling the 1949 ceasefire lines, expressly declared in their defining document not to be political borders, “the 1967 borders,” and to call application of Israeli sovereignty to Judea-Samaria “annexation by Israel of any territory in the West Bank.”
Bottom Line
As Steve Feldman put it this week to our U.S. Jewish grassroots:
“Our role in the information war is serious, and we have the potential to open minds and eyes … or reaffirm the lies of our many enemies. Choose — and write/speak — wisely.”
Email from Henry Frank:
HENRY: Jerry, Hi. I have a running response whenever the US Navy “christens” a new ship. There are official, non-denominational names for the ceremony when launching a ship. It’s down to about 50/50 of misusing “christen.” So, e.g.: “In 1950, invader [Trans-]Jordan re[named] as ‘West Bank.’” Progress!
ME: Hi, Henry, you touch on a subtle point. As I quoted Steve Feldman this week, “Each word conveys a thought or a concept.” Truth to tell, I used “rechristened … Holy Land holy places … resurrected” in this week’s email to hint to Christians that their heritage along with ours is being hijacked by Muslims renaming and claiming it. Jerry
Email from Stu Bykofsky:
STU: For what it’s worth, your arguments have led make to at least qualify the “West Bank” as so-called, or, depending on context, the Biblical Judea and Samaria.
ME: Hi, Stu. What’s it worth? Coming from one with whom I at times respectfully disagree about Israel, it’s worth a great deal. But nudger I am, I’d push this further. “Depending on context” in unarguable cases went out of style in Philadelphia with championing genocide-of-Jews. And indeed “Judea and Samaria” are biblical names, but hung around for 3000 years, including by UN [!] in 1947.
Email from Jeff Ludwig:
JEFF: Excellent points throughout including those made by Steve Feldman. However, much of the criticism of Israel is not, I think, based on distortions of interpretations of geography or history, but at a deeper level anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism is a spiritual problem. When have the Jewish people just been accepted, welcomed, and appreciated by non-Jews in this world?
Christianity originated with the Jews, and the understanding that there is a God-given moral law that is the underpinning of all blessed civilization drives the Evil One crazy. He is the snake of Genesis; he is Pontius Pilate of the New Testament who sends Jesus to be crucified. Romans chapters 9, 10, 11 in the New Testament reminds the Christian believers that Gentile followers of Y’shua Hamaschiach (Jesus Christ) are branches that have been grafted into the tree of Judaism and thus should never have disdain for the Yehudim. Many Christians often talk about God’s love love love, but deny that sinful thoughts and desires still live in their own beings. They would have to admit that according to their own Bible writings, hostility towards Jews is sinful, that hostility towards Israel is a marker of that sinfulness, and that repentance is needed before they can properly understand the role of Jews and Israel in history.
Again, thank you for another penetrating issue of Here and Now!!
ME: Hi, Jeff. Thanks very much for these insights. I fully agree today’s Israel-bashing frenzy has deeper roots than history and geography-grounded claims. So alas I’d answer your rhetorical question “When have the Jewish people just been accepted, welcomed, and appreciated by non-Jews in this world?” with “Nowhere, never.”
Take Europe for example, Over the centuries EVERY device of ethnic cleansing – Pale of Settlement, Ghetto, Holocaust, Inquisition, forced removal from place to place, Pogrom – was devised in good old Christian Europe expressly for Jews, the ultimate irony being that on the Holocaust’s eve when the Germans were willing to let the Jews out, the British then and continuing through and even after the Holocaust, with antisemitism still rampant in Europe, vehemently strove to keep the Jews in.
Today’s State of Israel wasn’t “created because of the Holocaust,” but every self-respecting Jew in the world rightly and rightfully sees our homeland’s Ingathering of Our Exiles as national embodiment of Never Again.
JEFF: The never ending Jew-bashing throughout history and Jewish survival despite the never ending hostility is really amazing! I recall discussing this very theme with my friends on our front porch in SW Philly when we were growing up (age ten or twelve as I recall). And I’m just as amazed today —perhaps more so— than I was then. Thanks for your response, and have a great week. Baruchas and shalom, Jeff.
Email from Dr. Nelson Hendler:
Jerome: About time to stop wringing your hands and do something. The American Jews are like the German Jews of the 1930s…it couldn’t happen to us…
You have to keep making more and more “Germany of the 1930s” comparisons for the dunderheaded American Jews who don’t think anything can happen to them. How can 3,000,000 Jews in New York let Mamdami get elected to anything?
The Arabs have a great expression…don’t let the nose of the camel under the tent, or pretty soon you will have the whole camel inside.
By our naive behavior, we have let racists, anti-Semites hold public office.
Everything is about money. Boycott any news media who is anti-Israel or any business. Don’t send a penny to the Democratic party or Black Lives Matter, or Southern Poverty Law. Don’t support a university who allows propaganda to be taught on campus. Become as vocal as the Moslem and black groups…. get media attention. And get training in firearms. not alarmist…only realistic.
Keep up the good work.
ME: Hi, Nelson. Thanks very much for these warnings, with which I agree.
We “dunderheaded American Jews” as you call us have to grasp not just that “it can happen here” but that it has and DOES happen here.
*** Wyman’s “Abandonment of the Jews” lays out how the U.S. joined Britain during the Holocaust NOT to save the Jews.
*** If not for Eddie Jacobson and Dr. Weizmann, a Jew that he liked and one he respected, Truman might well not have bucked the State Dept. and supported partition in the UN in 1947, without which it would not have happened.
*** And having so supported it, the US embargoed arms to Israel in 1948, with the British arming the Arabs while blocking arms to the Jews all the way until May 15, and then silently watching the Egyptian army approach Tel Aviv but instantly threatening to intervene for the Arabs the day Israel late in the war set foot in Sinai to evict the Egyptian army from Gaza and the Negev, causing the IDF to retreat.
*** When I read in Bibi’s book that the U,S. had not just abstained on UNSC 2334 calling historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria “occupied Palestinian territory” and for reversal of the Six Day War, rendering our Jewish national home a Jewish national ghetto, but that Obama had FOMENTED it on his way out the door, I swore I’d voted for my last Dem. Re your camel nose warning, I voted in 2024 that easier a Kamala will go through the eye of a needle than the Dems will reverse their anti-Jewish homeland stand on 2334.