I'm surveying bloggers on the question, "Is Israel winning the media battle over Jerusalem?" See parts One and Two. And my take?
The battle for Jerusalem ebbs and flows. Busses aren't blowing up. Beit Jala gunmen no longer fire on Gilo. Faisal Husseini, the one Palestinian most adept at spinning Jerusalem, is dead. And how long has it been since Husseini's mansion on Abu Ubaida Street — the Orient House –was in the news?
The North American papers then covering the bus attacks with disjointed moral ambiguity now fight for their very solvency. Local news, the economy and health care get more play than Jerusalem's current issues: Ramat Shlomo, Sheikh Jarrah, the King's Garden national park plans, etc. And the editor's credo, "If it bleeds, it leads," still applies — only it's Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan.
I worry more about the British press. BBC reporter Fayad Abu Shamala is a member of Hamas. Lauren Booth and George Galloway shill for an Iranian regime whose foreign policy is based on messianic nuclear fantasies. The Guardian's vaunted Comment is Free section is a cess pool of venomous anti-Semitic expression. Channel 4 even spun my HonestReporting co-worker and friend, Simon Plosker, as a key figure in a sinister UK Israel lobby.
Today's British college students grew up on a steady diet of Mohammed al-Dura, Jeningrad, and Dave Brown's cartoon of Ariel Sharon eating babies. Is it any wonder that the UK's a hub of the "boycott, divestment, sanctions campaign (BDS) against Israel?
Lest I forget Jerusalem, the UK Advertising Standards Authority recently dived into the fray, ruling that tourism ads can't say that the Western Wall is in Israel. "Misleading," the ASA sniffs.
Did the Orient House open a branch in London?
UPDATE May 12: Don't miss Part Four.
