When the Media Disregards Rule of Law For Palestinian “Human Rights” Narrative

...what’s more compelling – the dry legal case and the status of Area C, under full Israeli civil and military control as agreed under the Oslo process, or a story of Israeli soldiers and settlers evicting poor Bedouin farmers from their homes. Unfortunately we already know the answer. That doesn’t, however, make it right.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
30 August '16..

Nothing fits the media framing of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict better than supposedly impoverished Palestinians defending their homes and property from IDF bulldozers sent to clear them out of “their lands.” Add a neighboring Jewish settlement to the mix, some criticism from the international community and you get the perfect storm.

Even armed with facts to back up its case, Israel can almost never win in the eyes of the media where emotional impact always trumps cold, hard facts. So a photo of an elderly Palestinian woman or a small child standing next to the rubble of what they claimed to be their home will always take priority over an Israeli court document rendering that home as illegally built.

In every respect, the framework and language of “human rights” beats the rule of law. And if you believe that Israel’s control over any part of Judea and Samaria/ the West Bank is illegal or illegitimate then the rule of law becomes an irrelevance.

The Palestinians and so-called human rights organizations know the impact of negative publicity for Israel and the damage that can be inflicted through stories such as that of the Palestinian village of Susiya as featured in the Washington Post and an op-ed from a UN official in The Guardian.

(Continue to Full Article)

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The Truth About Susiya: Slandering Israel for Abiding by the Rule of Law

...While Ben-Meir may disagree politically with the decision to allow Jews to live in this territory, Jews have legal, historical, and moral rights to do so. When Jewish homes are determined to have been illegally built, they are demolished. This is called the rule of law. Ben-Meir accuses Netanyahu of defying “the basic tenets of human decency.” He distorts the facts in order to slander Israel for abiding by the rule of law, an endangered species in the Middle East. The truth, however, is that Israel and its legal system stand as an oasis of democracy and freedom in a region on fire.

Ari Briggs..
Algemeiner..
09 August '15..

Daniel Patrick Moynihan once famously stated, “You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.” This rebuke is an appropriate response to Alon Ben-Meir’s post, “The Dismantling of Susiya is an Israeli Injustice.”

In his apparent eagerness to condemn the “inhuman action” of demolishing an illegal Arab encampment, and to attack the “moral decadence” of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government, he has created a fictitious scenario that maligns Israel.

Here is the truth.

Fact: The residents of the illegal encampment, which has come to be called “Ancient Arab Susiya,” illegally and systematically put up most of the structures on that “ancient” encampment between 2011 and 2013.

Fact: This case of illegal building has been before the Supreme Court of Israel for close to 15 years, and the claims of these Palestinian squatters have repeatedly been rejected. Ben-Meir fails to mention the extensive litigation before the High Court of Justice. During all of the litigation, the Arab residents have failed to show any proof of valid ownership of the land and even if they did, all land in that area is zoned agricultural land only and they have no rights to build on it. Instead, illegal construction has taken place for the duration of the judicial process, in blatant defiance of court orders.

Arab residents have joined the Susiya encampment knowing full well of pending court orders. It should also be noted that these residents are being assisted by the NGO Rabbis for Human Rights, which, although registered in Israel, is heavily funded by foreign countries including Germany, Spain, Sweden, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the EU.

Fact: As captured by aerial photos, this “ancient city” has sprouted from 4-5 temporary structures to today’s encampment of 64, with more than 30 of them having been built between 2011-2013.