In a little town near Bethlehem, the Associated Press rewrites Palestinian and Jewish history, both ancient and modern.
The Associated Press’ Jan. 21 article on Israel’s move to legalize the Yatziv outpost as a recognized settlement notes that “fittingly, the new settlement’s name means ‘stable’ in Hebrew,” (“Israel’s settler movement takes victory lap as a sparse outpost becomes a settlement within a month”). Unfortunately, AP’s reporting on the disputed site flounders in factual instability.
Thus, regarding the site’s location, near the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, Julie Frankel erroneously reports: “The site was converted into a military base after the Netanyahu government came to power in 2009.”
The site was not “converted” into a military base after Netanyahu returned to power in 2009. In fact, prior to 1967, the site was a military base — first Jordanian, then Israeli for decades — and was abandoned by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) only in 2006. In 2010, the IDF returned to its base which it had abandoned four years earlier.
As Walla reported in 2010 when the IDF moved back into the abandoned military post:
The IDF is expected to return to the “Shdema” base which it abandoned several years ago, and to populate it, Walla News learned today (Wednesday). Since its abandonment the base became a point of dispute between the settlers and Palestinians residing in the nearby town of Beit Sahour. The base, which was abandoned in 2006, had been populated and used for tanks. Given its location in Area C, the Palestinians requested to build a hospital there, and even recruited international aid organizations to assist.
About two years ago, settlers from the area began coming to the abandoned base every Friday and requested to establish there a Jewish center, in order to prevent the Palestinians from controlling the site, as they put it. The settlers’ arrival at the abandoned base, where remains from the soldiers’ living quarters and lookout points still stand, became a point of conflict between them and the Beit Sahour residents and human rights organizations. The hill upon which the base is located is considered a strategic point, which look out over Beit Sahour and the Bethlehem periphery, as well as on the Har Homa-Gush Etzion road. [Translated by CAMERA.]
POICA (“Monitoring Israeli Colonization Activity in the Palestinian Territories“) confirms that the site was a Jordanian army base prior to 1967, at which point the IDF took it over and used the site for the same purpose.
Notably, not even the anti-Israel POICA website claimed that Osh Gharab, as the site is known in Arabic, was privately owned by Palestinian Arabs.
Ignoring the past presence of a Jordanian army base on the site, AP’s Frankel quotes without challenge the false claim of ancient Palestinian ownership of the site, stating:
The land now home to Yatziv was originally owned by Palestinians from Beit Sahour, said the town’s mayor, Elias Isseid.
“These lands have been owned by families from Beit Sahour since ancient times,” he said.
Yet, according to the Forefathers Orthodox Church of Beit Sahour, families from the community did not own land in Beit Sahour, or nearby Osh Gharab, in ancient times. Rather, the church recounts:
In the mid-thirteenth century, Beit Sahour was nearly uninhabited except for some shepherds, watchmen and farmers working for land owners who resided predominantly in Bethlehem.
In other words, according to the church, the few who did live in Beit Sahour in the thirteenth century were not landowners.
The Palestinian Arab presence in Beit Sahour grew dramatically after the 1920s. According to the 1922 census of the British Mandate of Palestine, Beit Sahour’s population stood at 1,519 individuals, most Christians and the rest Muslims. By 1952, the population grew to just over 5000, according to The Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem, a Palestinian organization.
When it comes to Jewish history, the Orthodox Church of Beit Sahour is also more forthcoming than the AP on the facts. AP depicts the site’s importance in Jewish history as a disputed claim at best.
Thus, Frankel reports the site’s historical Jewish significance as an unverified Jewish claim:
Settlers had long set their sights on the hilltop, thanks to its position in a line of settlements surrounding Jerusalem and because they said it was significant to Jewish history. [Emphasis added.]
Moreover, later in the article, she quotes a former American official who falsely stated that the site has no Jewish significance:
It was “interesting” that settlers had “no religious, legal, or … security claim to that land,” wrote consulate staffer Matt Fuller at the time, in an email he shared with the AP. “They just don’t want the Palestinians to have it — and for a hospital no less — a hospital that would mean fewer permits for entry to Jerusalem for treatment.” [Emphasis added.]
But with more insight and/or honesty than either AP or Matt Fuller, the Orthodox Church website recounts:
First inhabited by the Canaanite tribes during the Bronze Age during 3000 B.C., then by the profit [sic] Jacob after the death of his wife Rachel, in the mid eighth century, who died near Bethlehem, where Jacob buried her, while delivering their son Benjamin. It is said that Jacob had dug the well known today in the town as the well of the Virgin Mary.
Bo’ez [sic] met his wife Ruth in the fields of Beit Sahour, where they got married and from their descendants came King David, who’s the forefather of Jesus Christ.
From the Jewish patriarch-matriarch couple, biblical Ruth and ancient Jewish landowner Boaz to the reestablished IDF military post in modern times, Associated Press consistently conceals and concocts the facts.
With research by Darcie Grunblatt.