Today's NYTimes English Instruction Lesson

New York Times' Isabel Kershner reports:

three men armed with guns and knives attacked Israeli police officers early Friday in the vicinity of what Jews call the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, Jerusalem’s holiest site for both faiths and an emotional and volatile focal point of the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Well, actually Christians know the site as the Temple Mount as well.  There was no mosque there or any Islamic structure until over 600 years after the Second Temple was destroyed. Jesus visited the Temple, not some Muslim Sanctuary.

Why not simply write - instead of injecting in a straightforward news item a NYT's semantic bias - this: 

"in the vicinity of the Temple Mount also called the Haram A-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary)"?

Or this

"in the vicinity of the Temple Mount also known to the Muslims as Bayt Al-Maqdas [House of the Temple], which they call the Haram A-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary)"?

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Isabel Kershner and the Bible (and Media Bias)

Here's from the NYTimes' Isabel Kershner:

“The principle that has guided me is to strengthen Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria,’’ Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said later Wednesday, using the biblical names for the West Bank.

Well, let's go linguistic on this.

First off, we know the term "West Bank" is not Biblical. Nor medieval. It stems from 1950 when King Abdallah I, having illegally occupied the area of Judea and Samaria, then annexed it and attached to his kingdom by the river. Seeking a good sell, he called that act the "unification of the two banks".

Secondly, as I pointed out previously, once in 2008 already, and another time this past January, the real most recent names of the region are inded Judea and Samaria (and Gaza, funny how she doesn't write "Gaza" is a Biblical name when writing about that area, except, I guess, when mentioning Jews. Arabs get a free pass to use "Gaza") *.

And third, following from that last bit, since we know that "Palestine" in a geo-political sense, stems from the Roman usage in the post-Bar Kochba Revolt period after 135 CE, why doesn't she write: "Palestine, the Latin term for Judea" or something similar. After all, if the paper is to be 'correct', to be reflective of history, why not?

Or are Jews to be singled out for special linguistic treatment?

Perhaps CAMERA or another media-monitoring group would take this on?


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* P.S.

a) in the 1947 UN Partition Plan boundaries - The boundary of the hill country of Samaria and Judea starts on the Jordan River at the Wadi Malih south-east of Beisan and runs......From here it follows the northern and eastern boundaries of the village of Ar'ara, rejoining the Haifa-Samaria district boundary at Wadi'Ara...

b) Encyclopedia Britannica - Judaea, also spelled Judea, or Judah, Hebrew Yehudaḥ, the southernmost of the three traditional divisions of ancient Palestine; the other two were Galilee in the north and Samaria in the centre. No clearly marked boundary divided Judaea from Samaria, but the town of Beersheba was traditionally the southernmost limit...The name Judaea is still used to describe approximately the same area in modern Israel.

c) more - Some examples of reference works using the names Judea and Samaria: •A map published by the US State Department designating the Middle East’s “Military Situation” on July 18, 1948 calls the “Arab held” area north of Jerusalem “Samaria”; •In A Survey of Palestine prepared by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in December 1945 and January 1946 the authors used the titles “Judea” and “Samaria” as a matter of course when referring to what later became the “West Bank” •Every edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, up to the latest (1994) writes extensively concerning the areas politically called the West Bank, and calls them by their historically accurate names: Samaria and Judea. The fact that the “West Bank” is not mentioned once in the 1954 edition

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We Want Isabel! We Want Isabel!

We want Isabel Kershner of the New York Times to be as professional as a reporter can.

She reported today on the results of yesterday's demos on the Golan Heights that:

By nightfall, the Syrian news agency SANA reported that 22 protesters had been killed and more than 350 had been wounded. Israeli officials said that they had no information on casualties but suggested that the Syrian figures were exaggerated.

Now, newspapers do quote official government sources, and unofficial sources and plain advocacy groups.

But we want Isabel to be the best - because the NYTimes is the "best", or it thinks so - and so, we kindly request that next time, Isabel stand near the border so she can see both sides, definitely with binoculars, and she herself should count.  That's the most reliable way.  Or, at the very least, why not a NYT reporter on the Syrian side?

This may be dangerous but that's what we expect from reporters.  That's what the behavior of reporters in Libya is like.  In Yemen.  In Bahrain.  In Egypt - and on the Golan Heights, I doubt she'll suffer sexual assault.
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