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When Israel engages in peaceful, legal housing construction in Jerusalem or the territories, it's headline news in the Philadelphia media. But what happens when Palestinian Arabs engage in illegal housing construction? The Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported on March 25, 1998, that inspectors from Israel's Interior Ministry recently found 1,291 construction violations in Jerusalem, "mostly in east Jerusalem," that is, in Arab neighborhoods. "In most cases, the east Jerusalem violations consist of the illegal construction of entire buildings and floors, while those in [Jewish neighborhoods of] western Jerusalem are mostly additions of a room or a balcony," according to the report. The latest Arab construction violations "come on top of thousands of east Jerusalem building violations uncovered by the Jerusalem Municipality inspector," Ha'aretz noted. Unfortunately, neither the earlier violations nor the latest ones seem to interest the Philadelphia media.
Yasir Arafat's hate speech is another topic Philadelphia's newspapers seldom cover. In the latest outburst, Arafat's official Palestinian Authority newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah, in its edition of March 25, 1998, published an article which declared: "Washington's decisions are not made in the White House, which is busy cleaning up its bedrooms, but in the offices of Netanyahu, who is feverishly trying to recruit America and its allies to serve the hated agenda of Torah." It was just the latest in a long stream of anti-American and anti-Jewish statements from Arafat's official media. The Israeli Government Press Office regularly documents such statements and distributes them to the world media, including our Philadelphia media. Yet for some reason, such statements are not considered newsworthy to our city's editors.
If Israeli Jewish terrorists were carrying out daily rock-throwing attacks on Arab traffic, wounding and maiming --and sometimes killing-- innocent Arab motorists, you can be bet it would be front-page news in the Philadelphia Inquirer. But when Arabs are the culprits and Jews are the victims, nobody seems interested. Eliezer Frenkel, an elderly resident of the Israeli city of Rishon L'Tzion, was severely injured when he was attacked by Arab rock-throwers while traveling to the northern Jerusalem suburb of Atarot on April 3, 1998. As of this writing --five days after the attack-- he is still unconscious and hospitalized in the intensive care unit of Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital, fighting for his life. When will the Inquirer tell its readers about Frenkel and the other Israeli victims of Arab rock-throwing--including the eight Israelis who have been killed in such attacks ...?
Another important piece of news that has been ignored by the Philadelphia media is the March 1998 poll of American Jewish opinion, sponsored by the American Jewish Committee. The poll found most American Jews oppose U.S. pressure on Israel; most support "the Netanyahu government's current handling of the peace negotiations with the Arabs"; 94% say that Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, "are not doing enough to control terrorist activity against Israel by Hamas and other Palestinian extremist groups"; 80% said Arafat must change the PLO Covenant (which still calls for Israel's destruction) "as a condition for further progress in the peace process"; 68% said they agree that "The goal of the Arabs is not the return of occupied territories but rather the destruction of Israel"; and only 3% believe Arafat "strongly supports" peace with Israel. One wonders how the Philadelphia media would have handled the story if it had reported that most American Jews think highly of Arafat and want Israel to give him more land. Does the reporting of some news depend on whether or not that news happens to coincide with the editors' personal opinions?