Evelyn Gordon: The Mainstream Media’s Misdirection on Jerusalem
Mainstream media outlets like to complain about “fake news” emanating from sources other than themselves, but the mainstream media itself has taken fake news to new heights in its recent coverage of Jerusalem. Leading media outlets have asserted, inter alia, that Jews never cared about Jerusalem until a few decades ago, that Jews didn’t live in East Jerusalem before 1967, and that Jordan protected freedom of worship in the city.CAMERA: To the Editor: Re “Does Mr. Trump Want Mideast Peace?” (editorial, Dec. 6):
Exhibit A is the New York Times’ mind-boggling backgrounder on Jerusalem, which “informs” readers that Jews didn’t really care about the city until “hard-line religious nationalism” came into vogue a few decades ago. To produce this flat-out lie, the reporters omit crucial facts, downplay those they can’t omit and rely heavily on Arabs–who have made a fetish of denying Jewish links to Jerusalem for decades–to tell their readers what Jews think (though, naturally, they also found some Jews to echo these claims). Thus, for instance, they paraphrase historian Issam Nasser as saying, “The early Israeli state was hesitant to focus too much on Jerusalem,” while Prof. Rashid Khalidi asserts that post-1967, “Jerusalem became the center of a cultlike devotion that had not really existed previously.”
To support this idea, the reporters omit almost any fact that might contradict it. Readers are never told, for instance, that Israel’s founding fathers–the ones who ostensibly had little interest in Jerusalem–fought some of the bloodiest battles of the War of Independence in an effort to save the city from its Arab besiegers.They even took the extraordinary step, after repeated failures to open the road to Jerusalem militarily, of building an entirely new road through very difficult terrain to relieve the siege.
Readers also aren’t told that Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, repeatedly stressed Jerusalem’s importance, declaring it “the heart of the State of Israel,” which “Israelis will give their lives” to keep, because for Israel, “there has always been and always will be one capital only.” And they’re certainly never told that the devotion to Jerusalem Khalidi deems of such recent vintage actually dates back 3,000 years, to the First Temple, and that throughout two millennia of exile, Jews prayed facing Jerusalem and begged God to restore them to their holy city.
But on the rare occasions when the reporters can’t omit an inconvenient fact, they shout, like the Wizard of Oz, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” Thus, the Times’ reporters do concede the pesky fact that Israel’s founding fathers–those same people who ostensibly didn’t care about Jerusalem–relocated Israel’s capital to the city the moment it was safe to do so, a few months after the war ended, and even codified this decision in legislation. But the information is hidden in a parenthetical aside: Jerusalem’s “western half became part of the new state of Israel (and its capital, under an Israeli law passed in 1950).”
Unfortunately, this backgrounder was no aberration. Just a few days later, a Times editorial asserted that “East Jerusalem was exclusively Arab in 1967, but Israel has steadily built settlements there, placing some 200,000 of its citizens among the Arab population and complicating any possible peace agreement.” You’d never know from reading this that east Jerusalem was “exclusively Arab” in 1967 only because Jordan had ethnically cleansed every last Jew from the area 19 years earlier. Prior to this ethnic cleansing, Jews had not only lived there almost continuously for 3,000 years but constituted an absolute majority of the city’s residents for the past century. Still, one can understand the paper’s dilemma. It might be difficult to explain to readers why the Times, which normally condemns ethnic cleansing, suddenly condones it when the victims are Jews; much better to simply conceal the fact that it ever happened.
In making the case against President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, you say, “East Jerusalem was exclusively Arab in 1967.” The language risks severely misleading readers, as it suggests that this ethnic “exclusivity” was an intrinsic and even desirable part of the area’s character before 1967.Dr. Mordechai Kedar: Trump, Jerusalem, Arabs, Muslims
But eastern Jerusalem was empty of Jews for a mere 19 years. When Jordan’s Arab Legion conquered the Old City, its Jewish Quarter and surrounding neighborhoods, it forced out every Jewish man, woman and child. Before that, Jews were a large and integral part of what is now called East Jerusalem, and at times were the majority population.
The situation between 1948 and 1967 was not the norm, but an aberrant blip on the timeline of Judaism’s holiest city and a result of ethnic cleansing.
Arafat's followers know that if they succeed in moving Jerusalem outside the borders of Israel, a large number of Jews are going to lose all hope and leave Israel for the countries from which they or their parents came. This will mean the beginning of the end for the Zionist enterprise, because there is no Zionism without Zion. That's why they expend so much energy on Jerusalem, taking advantage of the fact that if most countries do not recognize Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel, Jerusalem becomes the weak link in the chain holding Israel together.
Arafat attempted to frighten the Israeli with the slogan: "A million shaheeds will march on Jerusalem," meaning that millions are willing to jput their lives on the line in order to free the city from the clutches of the Zionists. This mantra has been internalized in Islamic society and can be heard at anti-Israel demonstrations all over the world.
In comes Trump and recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital city, giving the Palestinian nationalist narrative a hard blow and Israel a kind of insurance policy. This maddens all the Arabs who flourished on the dream of destroying Israel during the golden Oslo Agreement years, because it has now becme clear that a very powerful nation, the USA, does not see itself a partner in that dream and is even willing to act against it.
The Arabs , in general, and particularly the Palestiinians, can already picture the dominos falling. The Czech Republic, Hungary and other important states plan to move their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as Israel's capital. They noticed that in April of this year, eight months ago, even Russian President Vladimir Putin declared his recognition of Western Jerusalem as Israel's capital city. There was no outcry, verbal or otherwise, in response to Putin's declaration, for one simple reason: The Arabs are deathly afraid of Putin, after he made crystal clear to what lengths he is willing to go during the war in Syria, and they carefully refrain from reacting to his statements or decisions.
Conclusions:
For both religious and nationalistic reasons, the Arabs and Muslims are incapable of accepting Israel as the Jewish State.
The question we are forced to ask ourselves is whether we in Israel, Jews and Christians, are going to recognize the Muslim and Arab problem , but tell them in no uncertain terms that "Jerusalem belongs to the Jews and you are going to have to learn to live with it" or are going to give in to the Arab and Muslim dreamers who are incapable of accepting a reality in which the Jewish religions is alive and well.