John R. Cohn: An Annapolis Media Guide

John R. Cohn is a physician and professor at Thomas Jefferson University. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

http://www.philly.com/dailynews/opinion/20071109_An_Annapolis_media_guide.html

THE BALLYHOOED Mideast “peace conference” in Annapolis is approaching, and pundits are jumping in like players on a loose football. Here’s a guide to help readers follow it.

Peace: Dictionary.com defines it as “the normal, nonwarring condition of a nation, group of nations, or the world.”

Peace process: Defined as “the diplomatic and political efforts to negotiate a resolution to a conflict.” “Peace process” is not the same as peace.

Refugee: Defined as “a person who flees for refuge or safety, esp. to a foreign country, as in time of political upheaval, war, etc.”

The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees: This U.N. document directs “That Governments continue to receive refugees in their territories… in order that these refugees may find asylum and the possibility of resettlement.” Israel resettled nearly 600,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries, compared to the 472,000 Arabs that the U.N. mediator on Palestine said fled Israel in 1948. Nobody speaks of “Jewish refugees” since they have been resettled.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR): Helped resettle 50 million other refugees in the last five decades. The 1951 refugee convention states that it “does not apply to… refugees from Palestine who receive protection or assistance from the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).”

UNRWA: Boasts it “is unique in terms of its long-standing commitment to one group of refugees and its contributions to the welfare and human development of four generations of Palestine refugees.”

Its definition of a “refugee” also covers “descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948.” Resettlement is not part of “welfare and human development,” and those refugees and their descendants aren’t resettled by their protectors at UNRWA.

With friends like this, who needs enemies?: See UNRWA.

Madrid Conference: Part of the “peace process.” The U.S., under Secretary of State James Baker, the Soviet Union, European Community, Israel, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the “Palestinians” met in Madrid in October 1991. The PLO leadership, including Yasir Arafat, was still in Tunis, and the administered territories were in a relative state of peace. Less than a decade later, Arafat’s war to destroy Israel, the “second intifada,” was underway, with death and destruction on both sides.

Israel Lobby: Alleged to control U.S. foreign policy by those who want to pressure Israel. There are no reports of riots, car bombings or beheadings of journalists by these “lobbyists,” yet they are said to exercise control over U.S. officials, including Republicans, despite Jewish voters’ traditional support of Democrats.

Palestine: A name given to a region of the Middle East. The Roman Empire, following the destruction of Judea, renamed the area Syria Palestina.

In 1517, it was conquered by the Turkish Ottomans, and, in 1917, the British took over the Palestinian Mandate from the defeated Turks. The British created out of the eastern 80 percent of the Palestine Mandate what is today Jordan, and the remainder was to be divided between Arabs and Jews.

In 1948, Israel accepted partition. Arab states invaded, other Arabs fled to get out of the way.

Palestinian lands: Whatever the speaker intends. There are no recognized international borders for this state that never existed.

Occupied territories: Arab Palestinians consider all the land west of the Jordan River, including Israel, to be occupied territory, “an indivisible part of the Arab homeland.” (See Hamas charter, Palestinian National Charter.)

Palestinians: A name formerly given to Jews of the region, it now refers to Arabs who are descendants of people who lived in the western 20 percent of the British mandate. They have repeatedly refused statehood for nearly 60 years since that also included self-determination for Jews and the continued existence of the state of Israel. *

AUTHOR

John R. Cohn

John R. Cohn, Thomas Jefferson University, SPME Board of Directors

John R. Cohn, M.D., is a physician at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital (TJUH), in Philadelphia, PA, where he is the chief of the adult allergy and immunology section and Professor of Medicine. He is the immediate past president of the medical staff at TJUH.

In his Israel advocacy work he is a prolific letter writer whose letters and columns have been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Jerusalem Post, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Haaretz, the Jewish Exponent, Lancet (an international medical journal based in the UK), and others. He was CAMERA’s “Letter Writer of the year” in 2003. He maintains a large email distribution of the original essays which he authors on various Israel-related topics.

He has spoken for numerous Jewish organizations, including Hadassah, the Philadelphia Jewish Federation and to a student group at Oxford University (UK). He and his wife were honored by Israel Bonds.

He wrote the monograph: “Advocating for Israel: A Resource Guide” for the 2010 CAMERA conference. It is valuable resource for all interested in maximizing their effectiveness in correcting the endless errors of fact and omission in our mainstream media. One piece of very valuable advice that he offers to other letter writers is: “Journalists and media are not our enemies, even those we don't agree with". Particularly for those of us in the academic community he urges a respectful and educational approach to journalists who have taken a wayward course.

In addition to the SPME board, Dr. Cohn is a member of a variety of professional and Jewish organizations, including serving on the boards of Hillel of Greater Philadelphia, the CAMERA regional advisory board, and Allergists for Israel (American allergists helping the Israeli allergist community). In the past he served on the board of the Philadelphia ADL. He participated in the 2010 CAMERA conference (“War by Other Means,” Boston University) where he led a panel with students on “Getting the Message Out,” and a break-out session called “Getting Published in the Mainstream Media.”

He is married, has three children and one grandchild. He belongs to two synagogues--he says with a chuckle, "So I always have one not to go to". He has been to Israel many times, including as a visiting professor at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. His first trip was at age 10, when Jerusalem was still a divided city; and he remembers vividly standing before the Mandelbaum Gate, wondering why he could not go through it to the Old City on the other side.

He adroitly balances his wide-ranging volunteer activities on behalf of Israel with his broad and complex medical and teaching practice (including authoring numerous professional publications) while successfully maintaining good relations with a broad spectrum of Jewish community leaders and organizations -- no small feat.

Regarding his involvement with SPME, Dr. Cohn acknowledged first and foremost SPME’s Immediate Past President, Professor Ed Beck. Dr. Cohn has long perceived that under Professor Beck’s guidance, SPME has been doing an essential job on college campuses; so he was honored when Professor Beck invited him to join the board.

He finds it easy to support and be active in SPME because being a Jewish American and a supporter of Israel presents no conflict due to the congruence of both countries’ interests, policies and priorities. It is clear that Israel’s cause is not a parochial issue. It is a just cause and its advocacy is advocacy for justice.

For Dr. Cohn, the need for SPME is clear. The resources of those who speak out on behalf of Israel are dwarfed by the funding sources available to those who seek to denigrate Israel. Israel's supporters don’t have large oil fields to underwrite their work. And the campus is a critical arena for work today on behalf of Israel, because this generation’s students are next generation’s leaders.

For advancing SPME’s work in the future, he would like to see the continued development of academically sound analyses to counter the prevailing anti-Israel ideology of all too much academic research and teaching on campuses and in professional fields today. He points to Lancet’s creation of a “Lancet Palestinian Health Alliance,” which asserts that Israel is to blame for poor health care for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The documented reality, however, is that life expectancy, infant mortality and other measures of health are better for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza than in many of the countries so critical of Israel This is in large part thanks to Israel.

Dr. Cohn asserts that we need more research, analysis and publications to counteract such misleading allegations.

Read all stories by John R. Cohn