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Media's Lexicon Poisons Public Perceptions of Israel


(Algemeiner) Lee S. Bender and Jerome R. Verlin - Western media participates in the delegitimization campaign against Israel by lacing its reporting with loaded terms: "Palestinian" - UN Resolution 181 in 1947 did not attempt to partition Palestine "between Palestinians and Jews." It referred to "the Jewish State" and "the Arab State," and expressed hope for cooperation "between the two Palestinian peoples." "East Jerusalem" - The Jewish connection with "East Jerusalem" extends back to King David. Over the ensuing 3,000 years, the city has been the capital of three native states - Judah, Judea, and Israel. The two Jewish temples stood as Jerusalem centerpieces for a millennium. Throughout two millennia of foreign rule, Jews relentlessly returned to Jerusalem whenever the foreign invaders exiled them, again becoming Jerusalem's majority during 19th century Ottoman rule. Throughout those millennia, nobody called Jews in Jerusalem "settlers." "West Bank" - Judea and Samaria are not the biblical names for the West Bank. These Hebrew-origin names remained in use all through post-biblical times. It was invading Jordan that renamed Judea-Samaria as "the West Bank" in 1950 to expunge its connection with Jews. Jordan is the "East Bank." "Settlements" - Israel has strong historical and, under the 1922 San Remo Conference which enshrined the 1917 Balfour Declaration, compelling legal claims to this hill country heartland, which it captured in a defensive war in 1967, not from a nation with internationally recognized title but from the 1948 invader Transjordan. Given Israel's undeniable historical and legal claims to Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem, it is offensive to state that Jews who live there are in "settlements," while Arabs live in nearby "neighborhoods, towns, and villages." "War of Independence" - The 1948 war was a multi-nation invasion by partition-rejecting Arab states aimed at Israel's destruction, not the media's "war that followed Israel's creation."
2013-12-27 00:00:00
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