Media’s Judea-Samaria: Woefully incomplete
The Intermountain Jewish News had a wonderful editorial the other day on the potential of the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria for peace and coexistence. In part, it read:
“Hamas is tied up in knots over the fact that Israelis and Palestinians can and do work together. This is not peace on the political level, to be sure, but if political peace is to come, it can only be sustained by peace on the human level. In Barkan, peace was, and remains, on the human level, the murderous act of the terrorist notwithstanding.”
And it reminded Hamas that “each Palestinian terrorist attack results in another Israeli settlement, or in another expansion of an existing settlement. The only way for Palestinian terrorists to slow Israeli settlement expansion is to come the peace table.”
The media reports little of what actually happens in Judea and Samaria except violence — but there is good news there. There are almost 20,000 Arab workers in Jewish businesses, earning, in most cases, twice what they would earn at local jobs. Israeli and Palestinian Authority ambulances and paramedic crews treat all injured, no matter what origin. There is much that is upbeat and positive.
One of the more aggressive pro-Palestinian promotional activist groups, the International Solidarity Movement, uploaded a report on Oct. 8 highlighting an event at As-Sawiya, in the Palestinian Authority’s Nablus District. It informed readers that Israeli soldiers, a policeman, and one Israeli civilian “harassed a group of Palestinian and international olive pickers at the village, [and] security vehicles from the nearby settlement of Alia arrived, too.”
I am not familiar with the name “Alia,” and was further intrigued when this claim was put forth: “As-Sawiya is slowly being surrounded by Alia as it expands along three sides of the village and encroaches on its land. The particular area being harvested yesterday was among the closest to the Alia settlement.”
So, where is “Alia”? Thanks to Google Maps, a search for As-Sawiya reveals that it is just north of Shiloh. “Alia” must be Eli.
Let’s look at the map. You almost do not have to know how to read to realize by looking at it that Eli is what is surrounded by Arab villages. In fact, just southeast of Qabalan is Talfit, a village whose name derives from “Tel” (hill) and “Fit,” which comes from the Roman Emperor who ruled there during the Roman period. The source informs us that the village was established in 1900; that is, less than a century ago.
I was wondering how many people reading that report, or how many college students, would know that Palestinian Authority religious judge Sheikh Muhannad Abu Al-Rumi delivered a Friday sermon there on Oct. 5. His language might not be acceptable to certain pro-Palestinian advocates, although I fear fewer and fewer would be upset at him for saying that the liberation of Palestine and departure of the Jews constitute a “divine decree,” that the Jews are “foreigners” who falsify history and “dance over the blood and body parts of others.” And, he added, “each and every instance of global corruption is sanctioned by their rabbis.”
Moving to larger issues, he continued, “The liberation of this land is a tenet of our faith, which will be realized in spite of everybody … Palestine, with its bride Jerusalem, is Arab and Islamic. There is really no need for us to prove the city’s Arab identity. These matters are indisputable.”
Earlier this week, the world was informed of an archaeological discovery. A column drum, a cylindrical stone block that had been repurposed from an earlier building, was found. It likely dates from the last quarter-century B.C., during Herod’s reign, and it has the oldest known instance of the word “Jerusalem” spelled out in full carved on it. The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced that whereas earlier inscriptions had the name Jerusalem spelled either “Yerushalem” or “Shalem,” this find has it as “Yerushalayim,” as it is spelled in today’s Hebrew.
Reflecting on the words of Judge Abu Al-Rumi and his claim of indisputability regarding “Palestine,” I am thinking that perhaps we may yet find a stone with “Filastin” on it, maybe even from 5,000 years ago.
If the media are not focused on the whole picture, most of it good and positive, and if they cannot report the truth of today’s or yesterday’s events, how can we who are the subjects of their reporting ever proceed forward towards peace and coexistence?
Yisrael Medad is an American-born Israeli journalist and political commentator.
