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Aryeh Green recalled his frustration hearing a prominent reporter refer to the Qassam rockets being shot by Hamas into Israel as "homemade."

The right phrasing, according to Green, would recognize "that these are destructive missiles, not just some grandma at home baking cookies."

So Green, director of MediaCentral, arranged a briefing with the reporter -- CNN's Anderson Cooper -- at a local police station to show the difference between Qassams and the more advanced Katyusha rockets. Subsequently, Cooper began to describe Qassams as manufactured in "basement workshops," or "home factories."

At Congregation Anshe Chesed in Linden on March 11, Green spoke about Israel's portrayal in the international media during a talk co-sponsored by the synagogue and the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey.

Green began by describing the "very jarring" experience of reading a McClatchy news service report on the Israeli Interior Minister's controversial announcement of new building permits during Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel last week.

The article described the proposed construction as being located in a "settlement bloc in mostly Arab East Jerusalem."

"Never have I heard of a Jerusalem neighborhood referred to as being in disputed territory," Green said.

"There is no geographical entity that legitimately can be called East Jerusalem," he said, noting that such a statement would be analogous to labeling a portion of New Jersey as East New Jersey.

MediaCentral is a non-governmental organization in Israel that works with foreign correspondents assigned to the region "to help them get the story right," Green said.

Green explained that his organization differs from those like the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), Honest Reporting, and the Jewish federations' Community Relations Councils, that collectively focus on monitoring anti-Israeli bias in the media.

"While criticism is crucial, monitoring and criticizing the media when they get something wrong is important, but it's not enough," Green said.

Green said that in establishing MediaCentral he decided to pursue the "radical idea" that "in addition to the monitor-mechanism, we can try to get the story right in the first place."

Green acknowledged that he was "initially skeptical" that such a project would prove successful, unsure if media outlets would be willing to seek help from the same people who had previously been criticizing them.

His skepticism was allayed, however, after a conversation with the bureau chief of a major newswire, when the journalist told him that the Palestinians "embrace us and that's something you Israelis don't do."

"From that point on, we took a radically different approach to improve Israel's image in the media," he said, noting that the organization's motto is "embracing the journalist."

According to Green, the Western media have adapted the Palestinian narrative in portraying the region, partly because Palestinian groups more actively court the press.

"The general framing of the conflict that the Palestinians are the victims and the Israelis are the oppressors," he said.

This framing, he explained, can be seen when Israel's "security barrier" is labeled a "wall" or an "apartheid wall," even though 94 percent is a chain-link fence; when Palestinian terrorist attacks are equated with the Israeli response; when Arab leaders are described as "moderate" while their Israeli counterparts are labeled as "right-wing" or "hawks"; or when settlements and "the occupation" are attributed as the primary obstacles to peace.

"We should not be surprised when President Obama and his administration or European leaders focus on settlements" Green said.

The true obstacle to peace, Green suggested, is the "Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian leaderships' refusal to accept the legitimacy of the existence of a Jewish state," and their rejection of a connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel.

"The media for the last 30 years has consistently adapted the language and terminology of the Arab and Muslim rejectionists," Green said, "and this has become normal in the international community."

Green explained that his organization seeks to form relationships with foreign correspondents that report on the region and "slowly, gently expanding the lens by which they see the region" in order to change the language and terminology they use.

He recalled a conversation with The New York Time's Jerusalem Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner about his use of the term "right-wing" as shorthand to describe Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

This term in Israeli political culture, Green explained, denotes a person who rejects outright Palestinian statehood, which, he noted, does not accurately characterize Netanyahu, who has come out publicly in support of a two-state solution.

As a result of this conversation, Green said, the New York Times began to use the word "conservative" to describe the prime minister, which he said lacks the pejorative connation that the term "right-wing" carries for the paper's readership.

Green said that MediaCentral works under the assumption that "accuracy is Israel's best ally."

"We didn't create another hasbara organization, we are not talking about advocacy, we're talking about accuracy," he said.