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We shall be going “off air” for Saturday and Sunday in celebration of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year). To those of you celebrating, we wanted to wish you all a Shana Tova and thanks for all your support and words of encouragement both online and off.
In the spirit of a sweet new year, we leave you with a video from a brand new Israeli initiative called Latma that reminded us of the mindset of many of the contributors, editors and commenters of CiF.
Let us know in the comment thread which contributor/editor/commenter of CiF comes to mind when you watch this video.
We are pleased to announce that Georgina Henry, the Guardian’s executive comment editor and head honcho of CiF, announced today that she has decided to update its talk policy and come clean.
Here’s what Henry had to say [really really important: Georgina, Brian, Exiled and others - before you get your knickers in a twist, please see the note at the bottom of the post]:
OK, so here they are: the updated “community standards and participation guidelines”, aka the talk policy (see below). They were written not by us on Cif but in consultation with our moderators and all those involved in community participation across the site including our good friends Berchmans and LaRit, taking into account the perspectives of community members who share the Guardian World View (aka the GWV) which provides in particular for the denunciation of the State of Israel as the Jewish state.
They comprise 10 guidelines many of which were written to directly answer questions posted on Cif threads.
I hope you’ll agree that the talk policy is clearer and more direct. It boils down to what we’ve always tried to say: help make Cif a welcoming, intelligent place for discussion as long as you subscribe to the GWV; take some responsibility for the quality of this community; don’t be abusive; don’t be offensive; don’t be unpleasant and keep on topic except when it comes to a contributor of a piece that is supportive of the Jewish state or except when it comes to “pro-Israel posters” (many of whom are paid agents or propagandists of the Israeli government).
One new bit is to clarify our approach to comments about us, ie the Guardian and its writers/bloggers – basically, criticism is fine within the confines of the GWV, persistent misrepresentation and smear tactics are not except when it comes to pro-Israel writer/bloggers, pro-Israel posters and our evil-twin CiF Watch.
While there are some on Cif who philosophically object to moderation at all, my sense is that they are in a minority. Most users of the site accept the need for boundaries in the way the conversation is conducted except when it comes to Jewish and Israel-related subjects.
The moderators strive to be as even-handed and consistent as possible when it comes to those that follow the GWV.
Moderators are also human and not infallible. Rather than just crying foul, if it’s clear a mistake has been made, or a comment has come down unnecessarily (and you’ve looked at the talk policy and honestly cannot for the life of you work out why), flag it up to them and they’ll take a look except that if you are pro-Israel poster we’ll just give you the run around. There is now a dedicated email address for you to contact the cif moderators: cif.moderation@guardian.co.uk – hint if you don’t subscribe to the GWV don’t bother us.
Another complaint is lack of transparency. I think we do need to be clearer about both the process by which posters who break the talk policy move from deletion to pre-moderation to banning, or about how to complain/appeal if it happens to you and you disagree with the decision.
Posters who keep flouting the talk policy by refusing to subscribe to the GWV will be moved into premoderation. They should take that as a warning that a banning is on the horizon and is a real possibility if they don’t make more effort to respect and adhere to the GWV. They are given several chances to stop being troublesome before they’re banned except that if you’re a pro-Israel poster we reserve the right to arbitrarily ban you for whatever reason we see fit.
Another issue is the unfairness of permanent bannings for long-time posters. We’ve put a bit into the FAQs about that, here’s what it says.
Q: If I’ve been banned, can I come back if I say I’m sorry?
A: A user can be reinstated if the moderation team are confident that he or she understands the cause of their suspension (i.e. failure to subscribe to the GWV), agrees to abide by the site’s community standards in accordance with the GWV and will be able to contribute reasonably and sociably to the conversation in future by praising anti-Israel writers and denouncing “pro-Israel” posters as paid agents or propagandists of the Israeli state.
Finally, a clarification about what our name actually means. As you know, we named this site Comment is free in deference to the Guardian’s legendary editor, CP Scott, whose bearded face stares out at you from our front page badge. It has been claimed by the Zionist apologists that CP Scott was a Zionist. This is simply not true and it is quite Orwellian to suggest otherwise.
As long as we stay within the confines of the GWV, his famous 1921 essay on journalism is still a guiding text for our newspaper. But when he used the phrase “comment is free but facts are sacred”, he was trying to define what he thought the role of comment, or opinion pieces, in newspapers should be.
What he wasn’t doing was making an anti-censorship point about free speech, or an ironic point about free, ie not paid for, content and as long as you subscribe to the GWV all comment is free.
Reading your comments to us on moderation, it’s clear how many of you are here because you enjoy and value the GWV community you’ve created around the content we’re publishing. Leaving aside the question of whether you value the content as much as we do, in the end, this is a shared enterprise: it’s not us against you, or you against us except when it comes to the Jewish people and Israel: it’s us AND you in pursuit of the day that all Jews have assimilated into non-existence and the Jewish state no longer exists.
Community standards and participation guidelines
There are 10 simple guidelines which we expect all participants in the community areas of guardian.co.uk to abide by, all of which directly inform our approach to community moderation. These apply across the site, while moderation decisions are also informed by the context in which comments are made.
1. We welcome debate and dissent provided our authors and posters accept that Israel is the Great Satan and the Jewish state should be denounced at every opportunity; that anyone alleging antisemitism is only trying to suppress this fact; Seamus Milne, Seth Freedman, Berchmans, Ken Livingstone, Hugo Chavez, Imanutjob, Tony Benn and most importantly the Guardian are infallibile; and Obama is a lackey of the Israel lobby so the US cannot be trusted (collectively known as the “Guardian World View” or “GWV” for short). The key to maintaining guardian.co.uk as an inviting space is to focus on intelligent discussion of the GWV.
2. We acknowledge criticism of the articles we publish, but will not allow any criticism of the Guardian and our ‘journalists’ to be published on our website. For the sake of robust debate, we will distinguish between those supportive of the GWV and those that oppose it.
3. We understand that people often feel strongly about issues debated on the site, but in the case of expressing support of Israel (also known as “hasbara”) and crying antisemitism, should you be so rash as to express this, we will consider removing your posts and your posting rights. Please respect the views and beliefs of those who accept the GWV and take the time and trouble to spread it.
4. We reserve the right to redirect or curtail conversations which descend into flame-wars based on opposition to the GWV. We encourage you to praise the GWV as much as possible and we ask you to report to us any comments that seek to refute the GWV.
5. We will not tolerate criticism of the GWV or other forms of comment, or contributions that could be interpreted as such. We recognise the difference between criticising a particular government, organisation, community or belief and attacking the GWV.
6. We will not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia or other forms of hate-speech, or contributions that could be interpreted as such unless directed in a sufficiently concealed fashion and accords with the GWV. We recognise the difference between criticising a particular government, organisation, community or belief and attacking people on the basis of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation and yet we will apply our own standards whenever we so wish.
6. We will remove any content that may put us in legal jeopardy. Postings defamatory of Jews, Israel or neocons are an exception to this rule since we know that Jews, Israelis and neocons will never threaten to blow up our office.
7. We will remove any posts that are obviously commercial or otherwise spam-like. The exception is posts supporting antisemitic plays – such as Seven Jewish Children – or organisations such as B’Tselem, HRW or the PSC (particularly the Islington branch). Also posts supporting Seth Freedman’s book as he needs to sell the other copy.
8. Keep it relevant. We know that some conversations can be wide-ranging, but if you post something which points out the complete fallacy of a post denigrating Israel or the US it will be deemed “off-topic” and may be removed, in order to keep the thread on track. You will also lose your posting rights or become premoderated (the same thing). We rely on Jewish posters to watch for purported instances of antisemitism as we know they will do it, thus saving us money – which we need to do having taken a bath by betting the wrong way on the dollar/sterling exchange rate.
9. Be aware that you may be misunderstood, so try to be clear about what you are saying, and expect that people may understand your contribution differently than you intended. Remember that text isn’t always a great medium for conversation: tone of voice (sarcasm, humour and so on) doesn’t always come across when using words on a screen. You can help to keep the guardian.co.uk community areas open to all viewpoints by maintaining a constant and running agreement wih the GWV.
10. The platform is ours, but the conversation belongs to everybody who identifies with the GWV. We want this to be a welcoming space for any discussion aligned with the GWV, and we expect participants to help us achieve this by notifying us of potential problems and helping each other to keep conversations on track and appropriately fawning. If you spot something problematic in community interaction areas, please report it. If it is about Israel then we will take it as support for the problematic comment.
————————-
Note the entire post above is a PARODY. See also our Fair Use Notice.
As if it was not enough that the pages of ‘Comment is Free’ featured last week an article by the noxious Antony Lerman essentially telling us that no Jews is no big deal, to drive the point home, the Guardian editors unleashed Dimi Reider from its arsenal of ‘useful idiots’ with an article entitled Mixed Messages on Jewish Marriage.
The pretext this time was an advertisement by the Jewish Agency that sought to stem the tide of Jewish assimilation. According to Reider, “[i]nstead of reaching out in dialogue, the ad attacks millions of people who decided to share their lives with a Jew.”
I saw the ad and frankly don’t see what all the fuss is about – its a well known fact that assimilation rates in the US (the largest diaspora community) stand at approximately 50% and its effects on Jewish continuity are devastating.
As Yaacov Lozowick aptly pointed out
“if you understand Hebrew you may agree that it doesn’t say much of what its detractors say it says. But that, of course, is standard: most reportage about Israel is non-factual, so why should this be any different?”
Anyway, the crux of the Dhimmi piece ends on this note which forms the thrust of his meandering article:
“It’s time for young Jews living abroad to proudly state that whether they are supportive or critical of Israel, they don’t have to be Israeli to be Jewish, and they don’t need Israel to tell them how to be Jewish. Moreover, it needs to be said – loud and clear – that while there is nothing wrong with seeking a partner who shares your heritage or faith, there is absolutely nothing wrong, and certainly nothing self-destructive, in marrying someone outside your community.”
Lets ponder on that for a moment. In essence what Reider is really saying is that Zionism should not form part of the Jewish identity, and if that was not destructive enough to the Jewish people, Jews should not shy away from assimilating into non-existence.
What is striking here is that most articles on CiF pick up one of those two themes but here, not missing a beat, we have both rolled into one: not only should the Jewish state disappear into non-existence but so should the Jewish people.
So what kind of reactions do you think there were in the comment thread to the Jewish Agency’s attempts to prevent assimilation?
Well there’s this from AzuraTheBlueDevil:
16 Sep 09, 4:53pm
It’s racism, pure and simple.
And then there is this from MilesSmiles:
16 Sep 09, 5:50pm
I would be happy for my son or daughter to marry a person of Jewish background, provided they were not expected to convert, but I’m told that many Jewish parents think this would be a disaster and even, in extreme cases, disown their children
That’s the dirty little secret. There’s a lot of racism there and it is never confronted.
LibertarianSW joins the fray with this gem:
16 Sep 09, 8:00pm
The Torah is clear: No marriage with Gentiles ……
And there’s this from RfSS (which is the only one deleted out of the collection above) (hat tip AKUS for posting on CiF Watch)
17 Sep 09, 2:06am
I’m getting sooo fed up with this whole jew-thing, day in, day out, always these jews.
Well RfSS may actually have a point. But who have we to blame? Ah well you need not look any further than the Dhimmi thread where you have, yes you guessed it, our flavor of the month good old Brian Whitaker trying desperately to prove that the Guardian is not obsessive about the Jooos by citing the following stats:
16 Sep 09, 6:02pm Cif Middle East article count:
Iraq 1,708
Israel 1,496
Iran 865
Afghanistan 654
Lebanon 285
Syria 236
Egypt 166
Saudi 93
Libya 57There’s a Gaza section with 348 articles but as far as I can see most of them are tagged “Israel” too.
This is an absolutely staggering statistic – approximately one quarter of articles on the Middle East are about Israel according to Whitaker’s own self-admission. Yet Israel has a population that consitutes approximately 2% of the entire Middle East and is but one of 16 countries in that region, and this does not even factor in countries in the “Greater Middle East” such as Libya which Whitaker includes in his stats above.
Of course, as SergioBramsole notes “[t]his does not tell the whole story… Israel-related pieces on CiF get on average 200-300 “comments”, and 9 in 10 or thereabout have “negative” connotations.”
Well negative connotations is putting it rather mildly but I’m sure that if SergioBramsole had used stronger language, it would have certainly earned him a deletion.
Recently we pointed out how Brian Whitaker – commissioning editor of CiF – slurs pro-Israel posters there.
Unfortunately this is not surprising. Whitaker is the Guardian’s leading Arabist. He was the author of the famous “Selected MEMRI” article in 2002.
In that piece, Whitaker attempted to demonstrate that MEMRI was not only guilty of faulty translation but was also a propaganda arm of Zionist interest colluding in the dusty back rooms of some Washington lobby. He tried to debunk a story about Saddam Hussein ordering the ears of deserters to be cut off. This has been related by a former Iraqi Army Medical officer.
Needless to say, soon after the article was published, the Guardian was forced to backtrack. Indeed Saddam had given orders for ears to be severed. The correction is at the bottom of the archived article.
“In an article headed Atrocity stories regain currency, page 13, August 8, and in an article headed Selective Memri on the Guardian website, we referred to Dr Adil Awadh, an Iraqi doctor who alleged that Saddam Hussein had ordered doctors to amputate the ears of soldiers who deserted. Dr Awadh has asked us to make it clear that he has no connection with Memri (Middle East Media Research Institute), and that he did not authorise its translation of parts of an article by him. He is no longer a member of the Iraqi National Accord (INA). He is an independent member of the Iraqi National Congress (INC). His reference to orders by Saddam Hussein to cut off the ears of deserters has been supported by evidence from other sources.”
It is a question in itself why Whitaker would want to research and dispel such a story to begin with. After all, it is one of hundreds evidencing the morbid brutality of Iraq’s former dictator. Perhaps Whitaker wanted to dispel the notion that Saddam was a maniacal sadist and thus should have been left to stay. Who knows. It is now history – as is Saddam Hussein.
Also in the article, Whitaker quotes Ibrahim Hooper, the executive director of CAIR, which has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and was an unindicted co-conspirator with the Holy Land Foundation, a US local branch of Hamas which was shut down shortly after 9/11 for terror funding linked to the Gaza Islamist group.
So Whitaker parades Hooper to try to demonstrate the fallibility of MEMRI:
“Memri’s intent is to find the worst possible quotes from the Muslim world and disseminate them as widely as possible.”
Those words become the thrust of the article.
The irony of quoting an individual from an organization which has refused to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, to denounce MEMRI, is only lost on the avid readers of CiF and perhaps of Whitaker’s other endeavour, Al-Bab
“Al-Bab aims to introduce non-Arabs to the Arabs and their culture. Western explorers of the 18th and 19th centuries portrayed the Arab world as a strange, exotic and sometimes terrifying place. Al-Bab seeks to portray the Arab world neither as an object of fear nor as a cultural curiosity – fascinating though it may be.”
Shooting the messenger is an old tactic, already well dealt with seven years ago here.
But shooting from such a frail glass house as Whitaker’s seems blatantly hypocritical, as outlined on Grasshoppa also in 2002 (near bottom, scroll down to August 13 2002).
It seems that Whitaker’s research into MEMRI is about as thorough as his research into pro-Israeli posters on CiF.
Last week Whitaker was back again, posting once more to denounce pro-Israeli posters. This time the issue was Human Rights Watch and whether they receive Saudi funding or not.
BrianWhit
10 Sep 09, 1:54pm
Staff
Are you suggesting that HRW is not heavily biased against Israel?
MiltonKeenest:
Yes. HRW, by the nature of its work, gets complaints from all sides – which probably demonstrates that it is doing its job quite well. In the Arab countries people complain that HRW is a pro-Israel organisation.
True, that HRW doesn’t get funded by the Kingdom of SA. Also true they are not funded by the Nazis either, yet their head military expert deployed to investigate Gaza is a Nazi fetishist. Or politely, Nazi memorabilia collector, who doesn’t even shy away from wearing a sweatshirt sporting the Iron Cross.
Perhaps Arab countries still consider HRW to be “pro-Israeli” but I am not convinced anybody else would.
And then my MEMRI was once again refreshed, but this time by none other than the famous Jonathan Cook, CiF contributor and has featured on more than one occasion on David Duke’s website. [Warning: neo-fascist/neo-Nazi web site, racist filth, be warned]
Ironically it is through the prism of Jonathan Cook that we are allowed to peek into the coulisses of CiF Management.
It appears that Cook penned a piece for CiF furthering the blood libel allegations regarding the IDF trafficking in stolen Palestinian organs but was rejected by Georgina Henry for lack of verifiable facts.
So Cook published his correspondence with Henry alleging that she was acting under the fear of appearing antisemitic:
…”Baffled by the reasoning provided by Henry in her rejection email, I engaged her in correspondence. Her initial willingness to respond looks generous but actually is driven, I suspect, by the need to persuade me, a former Guardian journalist, and herself that she is doing a reasonable thing in refusing my article. My polite but irritating suggestions that her own words imply that she is rejecting the piece not on its merits but out of fear of the expected backlash, as well as my requests that she explain which facts in the story need “100% independent verification” (a very unusual demand of an opinion piece), quickly lead her to shut down the debate..
So was this an opinion piece?
Judge for yourselves here .
The interesting anecdote in Cook’s correspondence with Henry is Whitaker who, according to Cook, has supported running the piece in CiF:
…Brian Whitaker, who had first received the piece and is the paper’s former Middle East editor, clearly like it and told me “we’re minded to use it”. But suggesting doubts about whether his own judgment would accord with that of the site’s executives, he warned that the issue was “a hot potato” and a decision would have to wait because “a couple of people are on holiday”.
“Hot potato”. That’s one way of saying it for sure.
So let me get this.
Whitaker attempts to take apart posters for being speculative about HRW and attempts to discredit MEMRI for the same reason but has no problem publishing a piece which is not only pure speculation, or opinion, as Jonathan Cook calls it, but rides on the nastiest of conspiracy theories written about Israel in a long time. One which alleges that Israelis harvest and trade in organs of Palestinians.
On a side note: If one’s opinion is that Israel is trafficking in stolen organs from Palestinians they kill, what does that say of the opinion holder?
Moving on.
For an editor who came to the rescue of Saddam Hussein when it was alleged that he was mutilating Iraqis coming out to support a blood libel piece, which, even by the view of its author is speculative, is a bit rich.
It is also very telling of the mindset at the Guardian where the default position seems to be to debunk allegations about the likes of Saddam Hussein (or Ahmedinejad) and to support the most outlandish and hostile speculations about Israel at the highest corridors of the editorial board.
I never would have thought I would be commending Georgina Henry on CiF Watch but it seems this time she did the sensible thing. Though I am not sure whether she did this out of fear of criticism as Cook alleges or out of common decency and journalistic ethic.
“It’s a sensitive issue, because it requires 100 per cent satisfaction at our end that it will stand up to scrutiny. You will be the first to accept that anything you write will be combed through minutely by Israel supporters for evidence of bias and/or anti-semitism. For that reason, everything about this story would have to be independently checked by a Guardian reporter and I don’t have the resources on Cif to do that. I can, as I said, put you in touch with Rory McCarthy, our correspondent in Jerusalem, via the news desk. “
So I guess we await the News piece from the Guardian about the matter.
So far no story has surfaced, probably because no facts were uncovered to support the piece.
“Please don’t jump to other conclusions like the worst of the conspiracy theorists on the threads on the I/P articles we carry. I hardly think you can accuse the Guardian or Comment is free of shying away from controversy.”
Well, it looks like Henry is also aware of the swamp creatures surfacing regularly on CiF threads. But Whitaker, who posts semi-regularly on threads attacking pro-Israeli posters, seems to either like these nature expeditions or wants to feed the wildlife like the misguided tourists feeding animals despite the signs warning otherwise.
The problem though, is that he is supposed to be one of the game wardens.
Since Tuesday, the blogosphere has been alight with revelations that Mark Garlasco, Human Rights Watch’s senior military advisor, is an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia.
While being such a collector and actually being a Nazi sympathizer are not necessarily synonymous, one really has to wonder in the case of Garlasco who has written a 430 page book on flak badges, has had rather dubious conversations online and is photographed proudly wearing a sweatshirt bearing the iron cross. As Lucy Lips over at Harry’s Place said quoting the Elder of Ziyon:
Spin it as you want, there is something unpleasant and unnerving about Garlasco’s focus on Israel and his fixation with Nazi iconography. The Elder of Ziyon puts it well:
“It is extraordinarily bad taste and truly offensive that the same person who habitually castigates the Jewish state to a worldwide audience has a creepy obsession with the symbols of those who tried to destroy all Jews.”
It is against this background, one day after the Garlasco story broke, that Brian Whitaker, commissioning editor of Comment is Free, interjected himself on a Seth Freedman thread discussing a B’tselem report by challenging a (now deleted) post by FoolMeOnce as follows:
09 Sep 09, 4:37pm
One of HRW’s major financial backers is… wait for it… Saudi Arabia.
FoolMeOnce: No it’s not. You should read your links properly.
Now we don’t have a copy of FoolMeOnce’s post or the links that Whitaker referred to because the moderators deleted the comment (now there’s a surprise!) but from Whitaker’s response, it appears that FoolMeOnce was referring to the controversy surrounding Human Rights Watch’s alleged attempts to solicit funds from wealthy Saudi Arabians by highlighting HRW’s demonization of Israel.
Indeed, Sabraguy picked up on this and stated the following:
BrianWhit
You grace us with your presence on this thread to protest that Saudi Arabia is not a financial backer of Human Rights Watch.
However, Arab News reported that Hassan Elmasry, a member of HRW’s International Board of Directors has been attempting to solicit funds in Saudi.
“We call businessmen in Saudi Arabia and the Arab world to support HRW by sending donations,” Elmasry said.
They aslo report that HRW presented a documentary to the Saudis and
spoke on the report they compiled on Israel violating human rights and international law during its war on Gaza earlier this year.
I guess it would be OK then for HRW to solicit funds in Israel by bragging about the human rights abuses they document in Arab countries?
To which Whitaker responded as follows:
Sabraguy:
There’s a big different between collecting donations from individual Saudis and from the Saudi government. The commenter’s post was intended to smear HRW by claiming it’s heavily dependent on Saudi government funds – which is obviously rubbish.
Funny that because if you read what Human Rights Watch says itself regarding its visit to Saudi Arabia,
[t]he roughly 50 guests at the reception in Riyadh included three with governmental affiliations: the spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior; the deputy head of the Human Rights Commission, a governmental organization; and a member of the Shura Council, a government-appointed consultative body.
Now HRW does go on to say that none of those government affiliated persons were ever solicited for funds but then contradicts itself by admitting that at the reception it “did ask for funds to support Human Rights Watch’s work both in the region and worldwide.” And in any case as Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor observes “its only defense has been an absurd attempt to cast a distinction between soliciting Saudi officials and prominent members of society who owe their very position to the regime.”
Anyway, Whitaker’s defense of Human Rights Watch does not end there. The next day, Whitaker makes the following statement in response to, yes you guessed it, another deleted comment, this time by MiltonKeenest:
Are you suggesting that HRW is not heavily biased against Israel?
MiltonKeenest:
Yes. HRW, by the nature of its work, gets complaints from all sides – which probably demonstrates that it is doing its job quite well. In the Arab countries people complain that HRW is a pro-Israel organisation.
Come again. Is Whitaker really suggesting that Human Rights Watch is not heavily biased against Israel because people in the Arab world claim it is a “pro-Israel organisation”. The likes of Norman Finkelstein and Jonathan Cook also harbor similar beliefs about Human Rights Watch, but do we really take what they say at face value?
And its not as if the Garlasco affair and the Saudi financing scandal have occured in isolation. Human Rights Watch’s bias against Israel is well documented, for example, here, here, here and here.
Anyway, coming back to Whitaker’s intervention on the Freedman thread. You’ve really got to wonder what it is that motivates him to run to the defense of Human Rights Watch in the knee jerk manner that he did – yes he may have been responding to what he perceived as factual inaccuracies or exaggerations but it is not as if that doesn’t happen all the time in I/P threads. And this is certainly not the first time that Whitaker has intervened in an I/P thread so obtusely (see our recent post “How Low Will They Go? Pro-Israel Posters Accused of Being on Israeli Government Payroll“.
It seems to me that Whitaker has a certain sensitivity to uncomfortable truths being exposed by “pro-Israel” groups when it comes to those organizations that are dear to his heart. But heh I’m just speculating.
Antony Lerman has an article on CiF criticising the use of the phrase ”the silent Holocaust” to describe assimilation of Jews.
The first point to make (a point which would be instantly deleted on CiF) is the utter hypocrisy of Lerman’s criticism of the use of Nazi analogies:
But if we pause to think of the suffering of a dying Jewish child in the ghetto and a dying Palestinian child in Gaza, who would dare to suggest that their suffering is any different.
Second, if Jews took Lerman’s advice to stop worrying about antisemitism then there could well be a lot fewer of them:
I sense that so much of the Jewish world is more comfortable with an identifiable enemy that hates us than with a multicultural society that welcomes Jews on equal terms.
Third, nearly half of American Jews are marrying non-Jews. When a Jewish man marries a non-Jewish woman, the children are not Jewish according to Jewish law which is matrilineal.
If Lerman could be bothered to do the maths (does he know Excel?), he would see that with half of Jewish men marrying out and assuming 2 children per couple, within ten generations the Jewish population falls by 94%.
Of course he has no suggestion as to how this self-imposed near-extinction can be avoided.
But then all his recent work suggests that he considers it no big deal …….
So what happens in the comment thread when CiF rolls out its token pro-Israel contributor, Benny Morris, who has the chutzpah to suggest that the core problem in the I/P conflict is the Palestinian rejection of a Jewish state?
Yes you got it – all hell breaks loose!
Hitting the nail on the head, Jubilation1 makes the following observation:
“The ”Israel always wrong” crowd is here in force today scared into shrill defensiveness by the authoritative voice of one of the historians that they idolized and quoted here without ceasing as long as his message was what they sought. Now that the picture that Benny Morris presents is not to their liking they are as proactive in dissociating themselves from him as they were active in claiming him in the past
The facts do not matter: it is the end of the Jewish state that they seek.”
So here are a small sampling of comments from the Morris thread to give a sense of the shrill voices denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination, virtually all of which at this time of writing are undeleted:
Starting off with alemild:
11 Sep 09, 11:03am
Benny Morris,
The major problem is that the two-headed Palestinian national movement is averse to sharing Palestine with the Jews and endorsing a solution based on two states for two peoples.
the major problem is the whole principle of the Jewish state, that is a state designed for Jews and to exclude non-Jews as citizens. It is a principle of Separate Development much like Apartheid in South Africa.
Israel, you can’t have it both ways. Either you support separate development and as a consequence accept states that exclude Jews from citizenship or you join the civilised world and allow citizenship on the basis of a persons humanity…and not based on their mothers religion.
Then we have aradi44 weighing in:
11 Sep 09, 2:48pm
Benny Morris is a type of scholarly historian whose wisdom fails when it comes to an overall sense of objectivity; when push comes to shove he errs graciously on the side of his own prejudices. This commentary is a stunning example in which once the veneer of his chosen discipline is stripped away, it turns into a rant about the failure of Palestinian leadership; a rant which comes off the pens and out of the mouths of all variety of Zionists and for which academic credentials are quite unnecessary. In theory it espouses rational argument but in practice it is little more than the unfocused racism that is more and more imbedded in the political life of Israeli society.
Not to be outdone, Papalagi shares with us his pearls of wisdom on the subject:
11 Sep 09, 2:51pm
There are some people who say no to the right of return. They say that Palestinian refugees don’t have the right to return to their homes in Israel. Those same people say no to a one state solution because they don’t want to live in a state together with Palestinians. Those people don’t use to say anthing at all against the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Palestine.
Those same people think that the Palestinians were wrong if they didn’t want to see many more Zionist settlers coming to their country which didn’t want to live together with them in any case.
So, for those people the Palestinians dont’ have the right of return, they should not be allowed to live in a state with the Jews, but those same people think that the Zionists had the right to come to Palestine and to settle there against the wishes of the Palestinians. And I must say, the conflicts originated at the moment that the Palestinians begun to understand what were the intentions of the ZIonists (I quoted above several passages about that), and that the Zionists wanted the land for them and to get the Palestinians out of their lands. The origin of the conflict was the way the Palestinians were being treated by the Zionists. This has not changed until today.
And if alemild’s rejection of the Jewish state wasn’t clear enough from his 11.03am post, then there’s this:
11 Sep 09, 2:51pm
MiltonKeenest
…They will never accept a Jewish Zionist Liberal Western Democratic state…
why does anyone have to accept a State who citizenship is determined by what religion he happens to be?
Even you don’t care less about the Jewish state, imagine if your own child returned home to tell you that he’d been refused citizenship on the grounds that wasn’t the right religion! That he, as a human being, wasn’t sufficiently worthy ….because of his religion.
Were living in the 21st century, stop living in ‘gangs’, grow up and get used to it.
Then we have meacuba joining the fray with a not so subtle attack on the “Chosen People”:
11 Sep 09, 3:11pm
I find it paradoxical -if not absolutely cynical- that Israel, which allows any Canadian- or U.S.-born Jewish citizen the right to “return”, and to participate in the takeover of more Palestinian land in Jerusalem and the West Bank, categorically rejects the right to return of Palestinians who were violently evicted from their own country, their villages destroyed and their olive orchards ripped up. A process that continues to this day.
While any criticism of Israel is automatically branded an expression of anti-semitism, it is useful to recall that anthropologically and linguistically, the semitic peoples include…the Phoenicians, the Aramic, and…the Arabs.
Israel has no moral grounds to be playing the offended virgins, or to be hectoring the rest of the world.
Ah, the burdens of being the Chosen People.
And eyeing an opportunity to drive home more denial of the Jewish right to self-determination we have this from ibrows:
11 Sep 09, 3:31pm
Jubilation1
But there are two major problems with creating a Jewish state, 1) it is built on land that is home to many Palestinians that are not Jewish, and 2) how does a Jewish state differ greatly from the problems of many Islamic states? in priniciple it is the same and has the same problems such as rights for minorities and persecution of those not accepting the state faith.
And on a bit of a roll with his Chosen People comment meacuba drops this one:
11 Sep 09, 4:14pm
The heavens will fall when the Israeli government is not subject to the blackmail of the orthodox and ultra-orthodox micro-parties in the Knesset. A friend from Israel told me that his taxes go to pay for subsidies to these fanatics, so that, instead of working, they can dedicate their lives to studying the Talmud. What other country in the world subsidizes the settlements of religious minorities?
If Israel has the right to be considered a Jewish state, why shouln’t Iran be accepted as an Islamic state? Or is there such a principle as the separation of Church and State? Why not call the U-S. a Christian fundamentalist state, now that we’re at it?
Ah, contradictions, contradictions.
By the by, I am not at all in thrall with the Arab dictatorships or Sharia law (as medieval as the Orthodox Jews…).
Israel exists, accepted. Now, let’s accept the right of the Palestinian people to have their country, not a patchwork of townships separated by roads they are not allowed to travel on, and by Israeli settlements that make a mockery of any poltical geography.
In any event, Israel, as much as any country, is in need of serious reform.
Finally, we have Ilan (a/k/a Mark Elf) with this:
11 Sep 09, 7:05pm
I won’t be the first to point out that, contrary to Benny Morris’s assertion, the zionists did not accept partition of Palestine “in principle”. They accepted it *in words* only. David Ben Gurion admitted as much at least twice in writing and no doubt more times in speech.
Benny Morris, even when he was a new historian, has always tried to play down the zionists’ territorial and ethnic cleansing ambitions whilst being an extremely disingenuous advocate for both.
It is typical of the casual racism of zionists that Benny Morris describes the Palestinians’ right of return as a “battering ram”. It is a right and the denial of that right serves to underline the sheer lack of legitimacy of the zionist project of establishing and maintaining a Jewish state in Palestine.
Having said that, Morris may well be right that the two state solution cannot work. Maybe if Israel would settle down to being a state for Israelis it would work but Israel insists on being a state for the Jewish people as a whole and not for the people who come from there or even who live there now. This means that Israel is in an on-going state of population transfer – Jews in, non-Jews out. There is no other state in the world established on that basis and there is no legitimate reason why there should be even one state established on that basis.
So after reading through all these insightful comments, who do you think we should we award the coveted Second Berchman’s Award to?
Well Dan Rickman, CiF’s most recently anointed useful idiot, is at it again taking aim at orthodox Judaism.
The first point to take issue with on Dan Rickman’s piece, is in the sub-heading itself, namely, “fundamentalist currents have moved Orthodox Judaism in the UK to the right”.
This statement represents a failure to understand what is actually happening within British Jewry, namely that there has been an upsurge of interest in authentic Judaism amongst all sections of the community and across the age divide. The core beliefs expounded by orthodox Judaism have not changed, indeed, may not change.
This upsurge is the raison d’etre for Rickman’s article, and is at the core of his annoyance—he dislikes the return to orthodox values, and dresses this up using specious arguments.
A true definition of the word “fundamentalism” is given by one dictionary as “a strict adherence to any set of basic ideas or principles”, which is a good starting point from which to deconstruct Rickman’s tendentious article.
As no rational person could argue against the idea that it is bad to adhere strictly to principles which are inherently good, Rickman’s only way forward is to undermine the principles of orthodox Judaism themselves, in order to “prove” his point.
Here, he is on dangerous ground, for anyone with any knowledge at all of the genuine article, will immediately recognise the gross inaccuracies, mischievous assertions and indeed oft-repeated, hoary old chestnuts on which he bases his ”argument”.
Let us examine some of these in more depth.
He states that orthodox Jewish “fundamentalists” essentially reject modernity and secular knowledge where it clashes with their beliefs, which are themselves based on a literalist approach to the sources (incluing Maimonides’ 13 principles of faith).
The whole point is that there is no contradiction between orthodoxy and modern scientific beliefs. Let him give but one example, but of course, he is very coy about specifics because he cannot.
The recent strictly orthodox Nobel prize winners in the science disciplines are testament to that. It is inconceivable that such people would compromise scientific truths to accomodate their religious beliefs.
The statement that the vogue for the Intelligent Design theory has been incorporated into modern orthodox teaching is untrue, and certainly false that outreach organisations, like Aish, give seminars on it.
It has been rejected as scientifically wrong and rejected by orthodox scientific experts.
One powerful example of how orthodox rabbinic ruling has not only accomodated the most recent scientific advances as “kosher” but is actually in the forefront of liberal values, is in the realm of embryo research and cutting edge experimentation. It is deemed not only acceptable, but desirable, at a time when some atheists fear it who invoke the “slippery slope” argument.
When Rickman mentions Maimonides to try to win his case, he neglects to say that the latter, a distinguished physician of the day, himself wrestled with the apparent contradictions between the Aristotlean views and Judaism, but then held that these are dealt with by a thorough understanding of the texts, as opposed to just a superficial reading.
Neither does he mention the most important contribution that authentic Judaism bequeathed to the world, namely, that of the ethical values that make human beings into civilised beings, i.e. the laws governing the codes of behaviour that make life tolerable, indeed, even pleasant.
These values are not innate to human thinking, but had to be taught. The idea that Judaism is a fossilised faith stuck in a trough of hard-line, inflexible beliefs is the impression that Rickman wishes to foist upon his readers.
Even he must surely know that Judaism is based on the ancient tradition of the “oral law”. This means that the written law, ie. The Pentateuch, is never taken at face value, but rather viewed as a multi-dimensional expression of divine will. The Talmud, which is a commentary of the oral law, contains volume upon volume of argument by earlier and later commentators, so that the laws we hold today are those decided by the majority of the qualified opinions of the day.
Indeed, in the tractate of Baba Kama in the Talmud, it explicitly states that it is forbidden to misrepresent Judaism, no matter how noble the intention.
The idea that orthodox Jewish “fundamentalists” essentially reject modernity and secular knowledge where it clashes with their beliefs is most obviously seen to be false is in the embodiment of the personality of Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who is highly educated and widely respected both in the secular and Jewish worlds, and finds no conflict between them—just the contrary—each complements and enriches the other.
When Rickman says that Orthodox Jews continues to believe that the Torah was divinely ordained, and this is supposedly contrary to ‘evidence from modern Biblical scholarship’, he omits to say that such ‘proof’ is not exactly something one could demonstrate in a laboratory, and so will always remain questionable. In any case what harm is there if people believe that it was divinely ordained?
Finally, in his attempt to demonise orthodox Judaism as a backward, unforgiving creed, best relegated to history, he writes that
“fundamentalism encourages a totalitarian rather than a democratic mindset, which is characterised by rejection of enlightenment values, which is at the core of a wider challenge to western democratic society”.
In so doing, he wickedly draws a false equivalence between the “fundamentalism” of different faiths and creeds.
No-one could argue that, say, Buddhist fundamentalism could ever pose a danger to anyone, which is what Rickman wishes to taint Judaism with, i.e. its supposed threat to peace and civilised values. Let him ponder which “fundamentalism” is truly evil and a real threat to humanity, on the 8th. anniversary of 9/11, but we can wait a long time before he does, or before CiF would publish if he did.
Oh dear. It looks as though the wind has changed direction. Seth Freedman is at it again at “the other place.”
Look at the opening paragraph:
“Gone are the days when history was written solely by the victors. In today’s democratised climate of instantly disseminated words and images, those on either side of a battlefield have the potential to feed facts and figures to media outlets around the world, or to pass on video footage and photographs that their opponents might prefer never saw the light of day.”
What’s this? “democratised climate???” On ‘Comment is Free’??? And “facts and figures”withal! I particularly like the bit above about video footage and photographs that their opponents might prefer never saw the light of day. (Freedman has obviously forgotten “Green Helmet’s” cynically manipulative play acting and lies about the injured of Qana in the last Lebanon war and the deliberately doctored camera footage on Reuters at that time. No, this naïf actually believes that the camera never ever lies!)
And then he refers to a new document by B’Tselem and yes, we are again playing the numbers game about the dead in the Gaza war. Of course Freedman clings to B’Tselem like a drowning man to a life raft – this is ‘Comment is Free ‘after all – and says that B’Tselem is completely open and has nothing to hide, unlike the IDF. And he gets at least one thing right – people will probably criticise the report (and rightly so because B’Tselem is hardly neutral is it?).
Our Freedman, however, is not fond of any sort of criticism and so, true to form, he rubbishes the rejoinders to B’Tselem’s report:
“….In the political cauldron of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the question of “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” has been turned into a cottage industry, with layer upon layer of self-styled watchmen declaring themselves – and only themselves – to be in possession of the pure, unadulterated truth….”
Oh, really? Doesn’t that apply equally to his articles on ‘Comment is Free’ and to this one about B’Tselem? For those readers who don’t have Latin, see below. For myself, I think Freedman lifted this from some “quotable quotes” website or other in an attempt to lend his work more gravitas.
And the column goes downhill from there. We then get Freedman quoting from another of his own Comment is Free articles to shore up equally tendentious arguments in a circular fashion (ie Freedman says this is true because Freedman said so before). However, he does try to redeem himself in the current one by informing us that B’Tselem says that Hamas’ shelling of Israeli civilians is a war crime.
So what are we to make of all this? What are we to make of the reworking of the same old “Israel is bad” theme from another of ‘Comment is Free’s ‘house Jews? It is well known that if one goes out as a reporter expecting to find wrongdoing one will find it, whereas to go out with an open mind brings one closer to what Freedman refers to as the unadulterated truth.
We know that B’Tselem has biases but Freedman gives us no indication that he knows this as well, or perhaps he is selective in the “truth” he himself writes about. He is merely reverting to type – he criticises the NGOs who he knows will criticise B’Tselem’s report in almost the same way as comments critical of his views are swiftly deleted from his articles on ‘Comment is Free’. He quotes Latin at us about the “cottage industry” of those who are self-styled keepers of the pure unadulterated truth, and yet he is apparently oblivious of the fact that he writes regularly for a blog which silences anyone who disagrees with his or its “truth” about his adopted country.
Oh yes, the Latin: quis custodiet ipsos custodes means “Who guards the guardians?” In this instance, in the sense that Freedman means it and particularly in the case of Comment is Free, he might have more honestly written (as one self-styled guardian of “the truth”) quis custodiet ipsum Custodem - “Who guards The Guardian?”
This is a guest post from Bataween of Point of No Return
It’s easier to condemn Comment is Free for what it does than for its sins of omission. And for a site that focuses disproportionately on Middle Eastern issues, CiF is remarkably coy about the forgotten Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
There were more Jewish refugees fleeing from Arab countries after 1948 than Palestinian Arabs from Israel. There were more of them, they lost more and suffered more.
But only rarely have Jewish refugees been the subject of attention at Comment is Free. Coinciding with a conference in London in June 2008, Matt Seaton allowed Lyn Julius to put the case for Jewish refugees. But he also got David Cesarani, an academic not known for his expertise in this field, bizarrely to argue that Jews who fled Arab countries should not have their suffering compared to ‘the misery of the Palestinians’. Rachel Shabi, the Guardian’s pet Mizrahi, was then wheeled out to deny that Jewish refugees were refugees at all – in fact most were Zionists who left of their own free will – an argument which she contradicts in some of her other writings. It’s a classic CiF strategy: obscure, confuse, and de-construct historical fact.
The denial of what is being increasingly becoming known as the ‘Jewish naqba’ is central to the Guardian’s agenda.
On no account must the ‘de facto’ exchange between roughly equal numbers of Arab and Jewish refugees be permitted to challenge the Palestinians’ exclusive claim to victimhood.
On no account must the successful integration of the majority of Jewish refugees in Israel and elsewhere be mentioned. This would undermine the ‘sacred’ right of return of Palestinian refugees to Israel. It would be disastrous if the reader twigged that Palestinian refugees could just as easily be resettled – if not more easily – in Arab host countries.
On no account must the idea that the Jews in Israel are anything other than ‘white’ interlopers from Europe, engaged in a colonial adventure in Palestine, be challenged. The whole edifice of Guardian groupthink crumbles once you introduce the notion that around half the population of Israeli Jews come from ‘indigenous’ communities in the ‘Arab’ world predating Islam by 1,000 years.
Commenters on CiF fervently believe that Jews only came to Israel from Arab countries as immigrants, or were forced to flee by ’Zionist bombs’. This ‘Zionist conspiracy’ conveniently lets Arab governments off the hook for the state-sanctioned persecution of their Jews.
Some commenters admit that violence and Arab antisemitism did force the Jews out, but that it was an ’excusable backlash’ provoked by Israel’s creation. Before 1948, Jews and Muslims ‘lived in perfect harmony’. The word ‘dhimmi’ – the condition of institutionalised humiliation of 14 centuries of Jewish and Christian life under Islam – is virtually unknown on CiF.
On the rare occasions that Jews from Arab countries feature on Comment is Free, they do so as ‘Arab Jews or Jewish Arabs’ – fellow victims of the ruling Ashkenazim, united in discrimination with the Palestinians. It is Zionism which has driven an artificial wedge between ‘Arab Jews’ and ‘Muslim Arabs’. (See the writings of Khaled Diab here and discussed here and Rachel Shabi here) Yet another reason for CiF to endorse the one-state solution, where the Jews can revert to the idyll of their minority existence in Arab lands.
Jewish refugees are at the heart of the Middle East conflict. Stuck in its one-sided cheerleading for Palestinian refugees, by its ‘Jewish naqba denial’, the Guardian is skewing the ‘narrative’. Surely its readers deserve better?
This is a guest post by AKUS (who for those that don’t know is a recently banned “below the line” pro-Israel commenter from CiF)
There are many aspects of the Guardian’s treatment of Israel, via its “Comment is Free” (CiF) website, that are troubling, but the most odious is the way it attracts articles and postings that deal with Israel, Jews, or Judaism that use analogies drawn from or related to Nazism.
A few examples I collected just from the thread on David Cesarani’s The Vatican must search its soul over Jews from May 13, 2009 dealing with the visit of the Pope to Israel demonstrate the issue with startling clarity:
“The only conclusion to draw is that these people believe their suffering is somehow more significant than other people in the rest of the world.” Gondwanaland 13 May 09, 10:55pm
“I am sick and tired of all this Jewish rancor [pure Hitler/Goebbels/Aryan brotherhood]. To be amenable to what? To Israel? A State that resembles so much the Nazis?” Brunomex 14 May 09, 12:52am (deleted comment)
Comment deleted, but the point at issue is the way the site draws someone like this – who would normally confine his comments to some kind of antisemitic hate site.
“Almost every religion, race, belief etc in existence gets articles here at the Guardian criticising them except for the people of Judaism. The Guardian’s impartiality will be under question while they maintain such a policy of exceptionalism, it’s not like there is a dearth of historical evidence for terrible historical deeds committed by Jews” 56000xp 13 May 09, 9:50pm (deleted comment)
Almost, but not quite, funny, considering the Guardian’s obsession with Jews and its multiple attacks on Israel every week (typically a dozen articles a week on CiF and the main pages about Jews, Israel and Judaism, almost always negative, and a few weeks ago reaching a new high of about twenty six articles in one week).
Jonathan Hoffman documented dozens of examples in his submission Antisemitism on Guardian “Comment is Free”.
So, on the one hand we have a moderated site where some effort is made to remove particularly odious comments, but on the other hand there is something about this site and its choice of topics and contributors that attracts authors and commenters who frequently compare Israelis to Nazis, come close to holocaust denial, and demonstrate all the symptoms of classic antisemitism.
One might wonder why the Guardian’s obsession with Jews, Israel, and Judaism exists. Perhaps it is best explained by this excerpt from an Interview with Robert Solomon Wistrich, Antisemitism Embedded in British Culture in which it is stated:
“In the UK the anti-Zionist narrative probably has greater legitimacy than in any other Western society. Anti-Semitism of the “anti-Zionist” variety has achieved such resonance, particularly in elite opinion, that various British media are leaders in this field. Successive British governments neither share nor have encouraged such attitudes-least of all Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. They have shown concern over antisemitism and the boycott movement and tried to counteract them. However, Trotskyites who infiltrated the Labour Party and the trade unions in the 1980s have been an important factor in spreading poisonous attitudes. The BBC has also played a role in stimulating pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli attitudes over the years.”
Anyone who doubts that similar throwbacks to the 1930’s have infiltrated the Guardian need only read a few pieces by Seamus Milne or John Pilger at the Guardian’s site. This attitude lends itself to the use of familiar tropes from that period – condemnation of Israel as a “colonialist” or “imperialist” enterprise (where is the Israeli mother country or empire?), as a “fascist”, i.e., “Nazi”, state, the attempt to define Gaza as a “concentration camp” (an indirect form of holocaust denial by diminution of the real nature of the actual concentration camps) and so on and so forth. Aided and abetted by the bizarre left-wing attempt to reconcile its values with those of Islamic extremism and harness both to the attacks on Israel.
A notable example of the automatic use of Nazi analogies that pass unnoticed by the editorial staff was in the recent article by Slavoj Zizek that included the phrase “Palestinian-frei”. This brought one of the few retractions we have seen on CIF or by the Guardian:
“This article was amended on 20 August 2009. The online version originally referred to “Palestinian-frei”, while the print version had been edited to say “Palestinian-free”. This editing change should have been applied to the online version. This has now been done.”
The other hidden memes in Zizek’s article, especially the description of Gaza as a concentration camp and the smooth transition to “Palestinian-frei”, were brilliantly dissected by Judy of Adloyada in August where she points out:
“Routinely, the words “concentration camp” refer to the concentration camps run by the Nazis either directly or indirectly for the purpose of imprisoning and either preparing for or directly exterminating the Jews and the other designated groups the Nazis set out to murder or otherwise do to death. …
For a start, no concentration camp anywhere, ever, at any time has had inmates who are armed with military hardware. Let alone armed with machine guns, grenade launchers and rockets. Let alone regularly having an organised externally independently financed regime which has forces which use those arms to launch attacks on the nation supposedly imprisoning them, as well as on their own opponents. …
Because Professor Zizek then goes on to state that, by what he claims are processes of stealth, the West Bank (not, you note, Gaza) “will become Palestinian-frei”. What is this German-derived neologism but an unmistakable analogy to the Nazi policy of eliminating in its entirety the Jewish presence in any area it controlled, which it termed making it “Judenfrei” or “Judenrein”?”
But the greatest trick the Guardian has up its sleeve is the establishment of a stable of five or so “house Jews” eager to demonstrate that they, “unlike all those other Jews”, are really on the “right side” of the I/P conflict by frequently contributing articles attacking Israel. These special Jews, including a few Israelis, claim to carry the flame of Jewish Universalism which represents “true Jewish values” and which particularly requires putting an end, one way or another, to the existence of the State of Israel. They claim to speak “As-a-Jew”, therefore presenting a position unassailable by charges of antisemitism, and giving implied authority to the Guardian’s positions.
An example of the Guardian’s use of Jews to defend the indefensible analogy between Israel and Nazism is the article by Antony Lerman to explain why the Pat Oliphant cartoon that Lerman himself describes as follows is not antisemitic:
“The cartoon shows a headless Nazi-like, goose-stepping, jackbooted figure, with one arm raised and outstretched, holding a sword, and the other wheeling a head in the form of a Star of David – one side of which is a wide-open mouth, equipped with vicious teeth, about to devour a very small, fleeing refugee-like female figure holding a baby. The word “Gaza” is emblazoned on her cloak.”
Twisting and turning through a page of rather incoherent justifications and attacks against the ADL and Abe Foxman, and with a tip of the hat to another well-known fiercely anti-Israel IJV contributor to CIF, Brian Klug, he finally tries to claim that this cartoon, which he has so graphically and accurately described, is anything but antisemitic, and those claiming that it is makes it harder to defend against unspecified “genuine instances of anti-Semitism”. What else could this cartoon be but antisemitic, when Lerman himself recognizes the attempt to conflate Israel and Israeli with Nazi Germany and Nazis?
As nauseating as this attempt either to curry favor or willingness to be used as a useful idiot may be, what is worse is that these house Jews provide some of the worst examples of the use of Nazi imagery which even the Guardian would remove if written by other than a Jewish author (see the retraction relating to the Zizek article, above).
Since Seth Freedman is probably the worst offender in this respect, and also has claimed to be under contract to the Guardian (which promotes his two poorly selling books on their web site), it’s worth examining some of the excesses evident in his articles, though he is far from alone. The Guardian publishes one or two of his articles a week without removing the Nazi imagery they often contain.
Freedman’s articles demonstrate either apparent ignorance of the provenance of some of his nasty comments and the horrifying historical baggage they carry with them or, worse, the deliberate use of Nazi imagery to attract the attention he apparently craves to whip up the anti-Israel mob.
For example, in an article last week purporting to support the release of Gilad Shalit from his cruel captivity by Hamas, he uses a loaded phrase to say that Hamas can justify the cruelty of Shalit’s captivity due to Israel’s behavior – a claim he would never make in reverse:
“If Israel’s behaviour is whiter than white, it will be far harder for Palestinian radicals to justify their own illegal acts of war.”
The phrase “whiter than white” goes back to old advertisements for Persil, the laundry powder developed in the early 1900’s and its use in this sort of analogy has a long and ignoble history.
One use is connected to Nazis, perhaps buried in Freedman’s subconscious after hearing it used by adults as he grew up due to its prevalence after WW II. When Nazis were being smuggled out of Germany to work in the US or the USSR, a clean file – a “Persil” or “Persilshein” that washes everything clean – was created for them – a faked file or identity that was “whiter than white”. “Persil Germans” were rehabilitated Germans. Jokes about “Persil” have been also long been used by racists in the USA to denigrate African Americans and can be found on many racist web-sites.
Freedman’s use of Nazi imagery to describe Israelis has been common and more blatant in his other contributions to CiF. Some prior examples of his Nazi imagery whose provenance he must surely recognize are:
- the reference to Israelis ” having to don jackboots and maraud across the West Bank ” he used to compare Israeli soldiers to Nazis (Israeli soldiers of course wear no such footgear, as he well knows from his brief military service in the IDF);
- comparing Israeli immigration policy to the Hitlerian creation of a category of “untermenschen”:
“Mirroring Hitler’s assertion that anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent was to be considered untermenschen”;
- adopting the Hitlerian description of Jews having a special disease or being a virus or cancer, and transferring it to references to Israeli Jews. Change the word “Jew” to “Israeli” in the following from “The Roots of Nazi Psychology: Hitler’s Utopian Barbarism”, Jay Y. Gonen and then compare it with the two examples below:
“The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revolutions that have taken place in the world. The battle in which we are engaged to-day is of the same sort as the battle waged during the last century, by Pasteur and Koch. How many diseases have their origin in the Jewish virus! .. We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew.” Adolph Hitler, Hitler’s Secret Conversations
“the malignant disease coursing through Israel’s psyche” Seth Freedman, The immeasurable toll of war
“Because that way lies a sickness as virulent and destructive to society as any strain of cancer” Seth Freedman, Two Tier Israel
The impact of this imagery, now “permitted” since it can be traced to a Jewish source, rather than an obvious antisemite, can be seen by its adoption by some who comment on the threads that accompany the articles CiF commissions or chooses to publish on request. Here is an example from the promising and quite balanced article by Ziad Asali, If you build it, the state will come, where a commenter on the associated thread compares Israeli settlers to a “tumour” and then adds in by association the common attempt on CiF to brand the IDF as “thugs” or worse and Israel as an apartheid state:
“I wish the Palestinian people well, but Netanyahu will encourage more settlers, masquerading as “natural growth” (more like a tumour!) in the West Bank. Then there are those apartheid roads that out-apartheid white-ruled South Africa, check posts, IDF thugs.” Teacup 04 Sep 09, 10:44am
While I am sure the Guardian would immediately remove the Hitler quote, the fact that it leaves Nazi imagery and phrases like “whiter than white”, or “malignant disease” and “virulent sickness” or Teacup’s “tumour”, or initially permitted Zizek’s “Palestinian-frei”, cannot be coincidental. It is reasonable to ask, therefore, if the use of these analogies is either a deliberate attempt to slip in antisemitic memes under the guise of protesting against Israeli policies – which, as is often done in Israel itself, could be legitimate without the use of these hidden memes – or is so deeply ingrained in the psyche of some contributors, commenters and editors that it passes unnoticed – except as a kind of bait that attracts and authenticates those wishing to draw the obvious false parallels such words create between Israel and Nazi Germany.
Whatever the reason, it is time for the Guardian to do something about it.
Ben White, CiF’s resident Hamas shill and antisemitism justifier is coming to Canada to join the Towards the Dignity of Difference, “Neither a Clash of Civilizations or End of History” conference coming up at the University of Alberta in Edmonton from October 2-4, 2009.
He will be speaking at the section called Dialogue and resistance – mutually exclusive or parallel tracks? Global civil society engages with Palestine/Israel which is described in the following terms:
Since the 1990s and the Oslo peace process there has been a growth in the number of NGOs in the West – as well as on the ground in Palestine/Israel – who have invested in what has been described as a ‘peace industry’. Dialogue between Jews and Palestinians is encouraged, and boycotts are considered ‘extremist’ or unhelpful. Meanwhile, in the last few years, a significant section of Palestinian society has officially called for what is known as BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) to be adopted by governments and global civil society as a way of pressuring Israel to comply with international law and enable Palestinian rights to be realised. Does dialogue work – or is it more a matter of what kind of dialogue? Are dialogue and tactics like BDS mutually exclusive? What are the main obstacles to a just peace in Palestine/Israel?”
So predictably, Ben White will be promoting the boycott-divestment movement as opposed to the approach promoting dialogue. Nothing new for those familiar with his diatribes on CiF.
He will be joined in this section by Dr. Moustafa Abu Sway, a Professor from Al Quds University of Jerusalem and a known Hamas supporter. Militant Islam Monitor says the following about the “Peace Professor”:
“During the years 1997 to 2002 one can follow Abu Sway’s continuous connection with two known Hamas leaders Sheik Jamal Hamimi, and Hasan Yousef, both of whom are linked to terrorist funding . Hasan Yousef runs the Zakat “charity” department at Al Quds University. Below are photos showing Abu Sway seated next to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. This proves that he is considered a significant figure by the PA and by the Hamas political and ‘spiritual’ leadership .”
Another guest speaker speaking along with White is Dr. Ghada Hashem Talhami from Lake Forest University. While she’s on break from writing about Palestinian and Arab women’s issues, she is busy claiming that Israel is a terrorist state and is the driving force in the “Clash of Civilizations” discourse.
Her conference page outlines this pretty well:
“The Clash of Civilizations” purveyors of continuing and future bloody confrontations between the West and the Islamic world have succeeded in impressing upon the Western mind the essential violent nature of Islam. In this context the struggle against terrorism has been reduced to the struggle to save Western civilization, consistently represented by the US and Israel, from the non-Judaeo-Christian barbarians at the gate. This paper will argue that Israel as a state routinely condones official terrorism even in open debates of the Knesset. Some of Israel’s prominent historians of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict like Benny Morris advocate a pre-emptive form of state terrorism. The endorsement of a violent solution to this conflict was always supported by the US which views global terrorism through the same lenses like Israel. The US has also resorted to redesigning the world and its security organizations in a manner compatible with its own understanding of this problem (which is based on the Israeli view recall!). According to Professor Mahmood Mamdani of Columbia University, the world is now living under a new “Humanitarian World Order” perpetrated through the US-controlled Security Council which selectively condemns some types of terror, as in Darfur, and ignores others. This paper will conclude with a plea for a universal definition of terror and a unified campaign against it.”
At Qumsiyeh, Human Rights Web, in a review of Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle, by Mazin B. Qumsieh, Talhami endorses the argument that Palestinians are the descendants of the Canaanites along with the Jews, thus the rightful inheritors of the land. Interestingly, the Qumsiyeh webpage (in which the Talhami review appears) has for background the map of Israel without the borders of the West Bank and Gaza and this is not because this source supports the Israeli Right wing “greater Israel” position.
So judging from this, Ben White is in good company. Sitting between a Hamas activist and a supposed feminist who has no trouble sitting next to a Hamas activist herself and who believes in a one-state based on Canaanite heritage (despite being from Jordan herself). Or perhaps, Ben will sit between them so that no sensitivities are disturbed.
Anything for peace…as they say.
The estimable Andre Oboler has a new article on Harry’s Place, about Holocaust Denial on Facebook.
Oboler’s piece was turned down by CiF because “I think it’s really going over the same ground as your last piece”. The last piece is here.
Even if it were true, this rejection demonstrates how sloped the Guardian’s playing-field is between articles which are pro-Israel or attack antisemitism and articles which do the opposite. Just go through Antony Lerman’s articles on CIF, for example. Count the number of articles where he (implicitly or explicitly) attacks the EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism for including some aspects of discourse about Israel. Here are just three examples: 24 July and 4 May and 2 April.
It isn’t even true that Oboler’s new piece covers the same ground as his last piece. There is important new material there – such as spelling out why Holocaust Denial is wrong.
What do you think?
This is not the only case in recent months where CiF has rejected a perfectly good article on Israel or antisemitism (maybe you know of the cases we have in mind).
It’s not as if there is a glut of such articles on CiF…
On 28 August it was the 23rd birthday of Gilad Shalit, the young Israeli soldier who was captured from inside Israel on 25 June 2006 and has since been held captive by Hamas without any of the rights normally accorded to prisoners of war.
Seth Freedman wrote about Gilad on CIF yesterday. The line he took is entirely predictable: Israel had it coming:
Whether or not efforts are successful to bring Shalit home alive and well, future kidnappings will only be prevented once and for all when Palestinian militants are denied the fuel for their fundamentalist fires. If Israel’s behaviour is whiter than white, it will be far harder for Palestinian radicals to justify their own illegal acts of war; until then, there will be more Gilad Shalits snatched ….
Here at CifWatch we had to hold our noses when we read Seth Freedman’s article. For you don’t have to look very hard to see that he does nothing to oppose the kind of people (here we call them terrorists, unlike CIF and the BBC where they are ‘militants’) who captured Shalit. In fact he opens the door to terrorism. Only a few days ago he whitewashed Fatah. And he regularly advocates the end of the Jewish State1 – how many Israelis (Jews and non-Jews alike) would have to die in the Armageddon that would be needed to achieve that?
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1 Eg here is what he wrote on 26 June 2008: “but surely if there was no zionism, there’d be no objection to letting the palestinians be part of the future state, and hence they’d not be “the same battered Palestinian population on its doorstep”. once you remove zionism from the equation, the rest of the racist policies currently in place ought to collapse like a house of cards, and the country becomes a democratic state for all its citizens.”
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
Lerman in la-la land
September 16, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: Antony Lerman, Biased Moderation, Brian Whitaker, Deleted Comments | by Louise | 65 comments
There’s none so fervent as the proselyte. Antony Lerman has turned full circle and is now a fervent and embittered enemy of Israel and mainstream Judaism who says that there are some Jews who welcome antisemitism. On Tuesday his CiF article discussed the recent criticism of the NGO ‘Human Rights Watch’. But instead of offering an analysis of the criticism, Lerman simply used it as a hook for despicable, libellous and completely unsubstantiated allegations about Jews. Let’s call a spade a spade – when viewed against the backdrop of his recent writings, that’s antisemitic and he is a nasty antisemite.
Look at some of the allegations in the article, none of which Lerman substantiates:
And Lerman has the brazen audacity to rope in René Cassin – a Jew who was one of the prime drafters of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights – in support of these libellous smears.
So bad is the article that the Guardian was forced to correct two factual errors in it (see the italicised text at the bottom of the article). NGO Monitor posted as follows and forced a retraction:
Amusingly, one of the anti-Israel posters observed that Lerman was in fact ”conflating [NGO Monitor] with the equally risible CIFWatch”! Whether that’s the case or not is neither here nor there but its simply astounding that both Lerman and the Guardian editors made such a blunder and that the Guardian published such mendacious statements about NGO Monitor and the estimable Professor Steinberg. But then again this is the Guardian and we know that the commissioning editor, Brian Whitaker, will not stand for a bad word about Human Rights Watch and has a track record of getting things wrong.
In any case, it goes without saying that Lerman completely ignores the very real concerns about the impartiality of some NGOs when it comes to Israel, as related by NGO Monitor about Garlasco
Not only does Garlasco collect Nazi memorabilia, he also claims to love to wear Nazi leather jackets, wore a shirt with the Iron Cross (nearly 5 million Iron Cross medals were awarded by the Nazis in World War Two and the symbol was so tainted that postwar Germany shunned it until 2007), wrote a 430-page book about Nazi symbols and regularly attends conventions and on line blogs with other “enthusiasts” on the same subject.
(Note that contrary to Lerman’s allegation, NGO Monitor does not call Garlasco an antisemite!)
And turning to the UN enquiry into Gaza, although Judge Goldstone’s (the Chair of the enquiry) probity is unquestioned, there is undeniable evidence that Professor Christine Chinkin, a member of the enquiry, had made up her mind that Israel was in the wrong well before she accepted the post. Lerman criticises Israel for not co-operating with the enquiry. Would he stand trial before a blatantly based jury then? Quite apart from the Chinkin issue, the reasons why Israel did not cooperate with the enquiry are spelled out in the Israel UN Ambassador’s letter near the end of the 575 page UN Report.
Goldstone did extend the mandate of the enquiry to include Hamas’ violations of human rights. But all the history of the UN Human Rights Committee (remember Ahmadinejad’s tirade in Geneva at Durban 2) and its membership suggests that Israel was right not to cooperate – there was no hope of a fair hearing or assessment.
But Lerman doesn’t go into any of this. All he wants is a stick with which to beat mainstream Jews. No wonder he cannot find anyone – apart from the Comment is Free editors, who adore antisemitic Jews in the way that Victorian sideshow owners adored freaks or Henry VIII adored bears – to publish his bile.
And the sideshow doesn’t end there.
Two comments by Petra Marquart-Bigman were deleted from the thread by the CiF Moderators. One is reproduced below. Does anyone have the vaguest idea why it should have been deleted – apart of course from the fact that it rips Lerman to shreds?
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