On CNN, Jack Cafferty called East Jerusalem "disputed." The other day the Washington Post referred to East Jerusalem as "disputed." As Susie Kneedler reminds us often, it’s not "disputed." Henry Norr is on the case, in this letter to National Public Radio:
During the "Week in Review" segment of this morning’s "Weekend Edition Saturday" show, Ron Elving referred at least twice to East Jerusalem as a "disputed" area. "Disputed" is the term the Israeli government and its advocates use and actively promote as an alternative to "occupied," in hopes they can get out of the legal implications of occupation.
But the U.S. government, the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the European Union, the UK, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, among other entities, all reject the Israeli usage and consistently use the term "occupied" in reference to East Jerusalem, as well as the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights. (As it happens, the U.S. Department of State issued its annual report on human rights in "Israel and the occupied territories," including East Jerusalem in the latter category, just two days ago).
Because these terms have clear, well established, and important legal and political meanings, choosing between them is not an innocent stylistic question. Why does NPR’s Senior Washington Editor adopt Israeli usage, rather than that of our own government, the UN, and most of the rest of the world? I think you owe your listeners a correction on this matter.
It reminds me of the dispute over Iraq’s relationship to Kuwait 20 years ago. After Iraq invaded, Saddam declared that Kuwait was Iraq’s 19th province. So there was a “dispute” between Iraq, which claimed sovereignty over Kuwait, and the rest of the world, which considered Kuwait an independent country.
East Jerusalem is not disputed, nor occupied – reclaimed!…
On the other hand, if the Turks cannot reclaim back their territories they owned before WW1 by virtue of capitulation or conquest, why are we forcing the Israelis on the Occupied territories after the 1967 and 1973 wars? Do we instigate that the Turks remained the right to fight back again for Ottoman domains they lost during WW1 which were apportioned as Jordanian and Syrians territories? These are real security issues in the pursuit of permanent peace in the middle east.
In the brief and misleading US TV news shows recently the term “disputed” has been used consistently–I have yet to hear the term “occupied.” Is it the same in Europe? In Canada? How does S America News lable it?
The widespread use of the phrase “disputed territories” throughout the American media is no accident – it’s the product of a concerted campaign on the part of the Zionists. See, for example, the position paper on precisely this issue published in 2001 by Sharon adviser Dore Gold – link to jcpa.org
. The notion that the territories Israel took over in 1967 don’t meet the legal definition of occupied territories has virtually no support among authorities on international law – except the Israelis and their backers here. Even the US judge who was the one dissenter against the International Court of Justice’s decision that the separation wall is illegal agreed that the territories are occupied in the legal sense.
The use of the term “disputed” is partisan reporting and needs to be called out by all of us with letters and emails directed at any organisation who employs it. The ICJ in 2004 on the Wall is a very good reference – specifically Paragraph 78. It’s available as a PDF here:
link to icj-cij.org
Deliberately vague reporting on what is a remarkably uncomplicated conflict has much to answer for. Once the public understands the basic situation they support the Palestinians. I think that’s one of the reasons why describing the situation as Apartheid is eliciting such a strong response from Israels defenders: it cuts to the heart of the matter and is utterly indefensible.
A more compact version of that URL:
link to bit.ly
The CBC has also started using “disputed”, such as in this story:
link to cbc.ca
Please write to the Ombudsman and let them know the above information:
link to cbc.ca
Folks, please write to the LAT about this too: readers.representative@latimes.com
or post comments here: link to latimesblogs.latimes.com
The following stories used ‘disputed’ too:
link to latimes.com
link to latimes.com
It gets worse.
The hacks at the BBC call East Jerusalem the part that “Palestinians want as the future capital of a Palestinian state”. It’s as though international law has no bearing on this issue. The problem here, as the BBC wants its viewers to believe, is that those Palestinians are yet again making the same pesky demands.
When reporting about Israel, the BBC refers to incidents as facts: “Today, two Israeli soldiers were injured….”
When reporting about the occupied territories it changes to hearsay: “Palestinians SAY that Israeli warplanes bombed…..”
Folks, please write to the LAT about this too: readers.representative AT latimes.com
or post comments here: link to latimesblogs.latimes.com
One of the stories using ‘disputed’ too:
link to latimes.com
On the other hand I disagree with your contentions over the terms – disputed, or occupied…
After I read all the UN Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine Press Release (1947) [
The fault of the Balfour Declaration was its hypocrisy, conscious hypocrisy I think, in suggesting that the British Empire would support the demands of Weizmann and suchlike without compromising the rights of others, which was impossible. One of the most disgraceful acts in the history of my dear country.
There is no right for anyone to partition a country without majority consent of the people living there and the pretension to having this right is a disgraceful episode in the history of the UN, making utter nonsense of the idea of ruling a country as a trustee or benevolent guardian of its inhabitants.
MHughes976, would you agree Sykes-Picot is hypocrisy also?
Sykes-Picot was a secret agreement, so not internally hypocritical in the same sense of the Declaration, where the ‘others’ rights’ clause was completely public but neither seriously meant, as I understand, nor objectively possible. The problem was already compounded by the private diplomacy of T.E.Lawrence and Henry MacMahon and was to be made worse by further public declarations around the end of the war in favour of Arab self-determination. You may say, I suppose, that Arab self-determination was in itself not objectively possible in all the circumstances.
SP did conflict with other inter-governmental promises, I agree, and ‘hung like a millstone’, said Lord Curzon, around British necks. (Margaret Macmillan, Peacemakers (very useful book) p.393.)