Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

156 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
In July of 2008, immediately following an incident in which a Palestinian
Arab used a bulldozer to kill three Israelis on a public street in Jerusalem
and injure dozens more, many news outlets blamed the man’s outrage
on “the occupation.” The New York Times noted that “Caterpillar equipment
has a special resonance among Palestinians. Human rights activists have
lobbied the company to stop selling its heavy vehicles to the Israeli military
out of concern that they have been used to demolish Palestinian homes,
uproot orchards and construct Jewish settlements in occupied land.” 63
The Reuters news agency contrasted Israel’s supposed oppression of
West Bank and Gaza residents generally with its alleged maltreatment of
Jerusalem Arabs: “Unlike Palestinians in the blockaded Gaza Strip and in
the occupied West Bank, those living in occupied east Jerusalem have free
access to the Jewish west of the city and to Israel.” 64
Can the word “occupied” be fairly applied to a territory from which
Israel made a unilateral withdrawal, as it did from the Gaza Strip in 2005?
Or to the West Bank, over which Israel still exercises extensive authority,
the result of a successful war of self-defense in 1967 and pending negotiations
to resolve its status according to U.N. Security Council Resolutions
242 and 338? 65
versary; For Palestinians, a Nakba,” New York Times, May 18, 2008, p. 13 (Israel’s
continued occupation of the remaining portions of Palestine, in the West Bank and
Gaza).
63. Isabel Kershner, “Palestinian Rams Construction Vehicle Into Traffic, Killing
3,” New York Times, July 3, 2008, p. 6.
64. The BBC’s coverage of the bulldozer attack elicited an apology from its
news editor, who explained his decision not to air footage that showed the killing of
the terrorist in the bulldozer, saying that the video images failed to strike the right
editorial balance. Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick noted that the bulldozer
attack was only the second Palestinian attack on Israelis to be preserved on
film—the first was the bloody lynching of two IDF reservists in the first days of the
second intifada in 2000. Both cases, she added, drew apologies from the networks
that showed them. “To maintain the narratives the right editorial balance between
the demands of accuracy and the potential impact on the program’s audience, is one
that engenders the belief that Israel is either morally indistinguishable from the
Palestinians, or that Israel is morally inferior to the Palestinians.” Caroline Glick,
“The Media and Enduring Narrative,” Jerusalem Post, July 8, 2008, p. 15.
65. According to both the League of Nations’ and the United Nations’ Palestine
Mandates, Israel is the legitimate military occupational authority on the West Bank.
It is also a legitimate claimant to disputed territory. See Evelyn Gordon, “Israel’s
Image–Why the All-Time Low?,” Jerusalem Post, June 8, 2006, p. 15.