You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October 2009.
This is a cross-post from Yaacov Lozowick’s Ruminations (for those of you not familiar with Yaacov Lozowick, he is the author of the highly recommended book, Right to Exist, A Moral Defense of Israel’s Wars and has written prolifically about antisemitism at the Guardian – if you click here you’ll find a veritable treasure trove of over two years worth of posts)
A few days ago CiF Watch posted a piece about the followup at CiF to an article by Harold Evans. It’s an interesting story for the way it demonstrates three layers of anti-Jewish animosity at the Guardian.
The first is the editorial level of the paper: what get’s published in it. Any long-term reader of the Guardian will recognize that it’s editors really don’t like Israel. Really really. Yet they’re not Nazis, they’re not even Hamas, which means not only that they don’t hate Jews in Manchester, they don’t even automatically hate everything about Israel. Sometimes the remains of their Enlightenment conditioning shine through, and they’ll see Israel in a rational light. Often not, of course, but it can happen. One remnant of this is their insistence on the occaisional airing even of a pro-Israel piece on their pages or on CiF. The Evans column that launched our story was one such: veteran British journalist Harold Evans described the Goldstone Report for the travesty it is.
Then there’s the level of The Guardian’s readership, or at least the segment of it that leaves comments on CiF. A few of them are valiant folks trying to stem the tide by leaving rational comments based upon reality (irrespective of their conclusions: I’m not saying that rational thought must inevitably lead one to agree with a particular political viewpoint). Most commenters at CiF, however, are stark raving mad. They also hate Israel, America, and anyone who doesn’t join them in this hate, such as a venerable Old Boy Englishman such as Harold Evans. They have not the slightest interest in facts, save as clubs to beat the Jews with -and they’re impartial to the factuality of the facts.
This makes CiF Exhibition A for anyone trying to document the state of Jew hatred in the early 21st century. Such people and such ideas exist out there, make no mistake about it.
Then there’s the intermediate level, between the editors of The Guardian and the cesspool of the commenters. This is the level of the CiF moderators, Guardian employees of a lower rank than the editors, who decide which comments are too injurious to remain posted – and by default, what is acceptable and may remain. Because of their existence, The Guardian owns all the content of CiF, above and below the line; feverish hate-filled rantings posted by commenters and not removed by the moderators have been actively condoned by the Guardian staff.
One of the important services of the CiF Watch group is that they’re collecting and documenting the actions of the Guardian moderators. They’re capturing copies of comments before the moderators delete them. This means we get to see the comments that are so extreme and offensive even the Guardian staff can’t live with them – so that’s valuable and interesting. It also means we get to see what sort of rational and fact-based position is routinely deleted for not adhering close enough to the Guardian party line. This is where the mediators show the true colors of the editors: an occasional pro-Israel column can be tolerated, but only to a limited degree. Fig leaves, yes; full-blown debate and airing of counter arguments, not acceptable.
CiF Watch recently established a Twitter account.
If you’re interested in finding out the latest goings on at ‘Comment is Free’ and have a Twitter account, follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cifwatch.
You can be guaranteed one thing: there’s never a dull moment as the Guardian sinks deeper into the cesspit that it has dug for itself.
‘Comment is Free’ is no stranger to Holocaust denial. We recently reported how on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, the Guardianistas were running amok denying the Holocaust when the Guardian reported Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial at the Al Quds day events.
And Holocaust denial is not confined to “below the line” in the comment threads. Seumas Milne, the former Comment Editor, and regular contributor to Comment is Free is on record for shamelessly defending Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial and the Guardian regularly publishes articles by Ben White who has in the past flirted with Holocaust denial and whose antisemitic book, “Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide”, includes an essay on Zionism by Holocaust denier, Roger Garaudy, in its ‘select bibliography’.
So when the Guardian published on Comment is Free “I knew the day of ‘Holocaust” debate would come. Just not in my lifetime” by Jonathan Freedland it should come as no surprise that the comment thread devolved into Holocaust denial. As an aside this begs the question as to why such a misleading title was chosen given the real substance of the article was about the Conservative Party’s purported alliances with far-right groups in Europe.
Before examining some of the comments, a word or two about Holocaust denial is in order. Holocaust denial is defined as the “assert[ion] that the murder of approximately six million Jews during World War II never occurred and that the Germans are victims of a Zionist plot to extort vast sums of money from them on the basis of a hoax.” Holocaust denial is insidiously antisemitic and takes many forms. It includes claims that the six million number is grossly exaggerated, genocide was never carried out using tools of mass murder, survivor testimony is unreliable, the Holocaust is a myth spread by the Jews to enable the creation of a Jewish homeland and the fate of the Jews was no different to that of other people that suffered during World War II. The goal of Holocaust denial is to rehabilitate Nazi ideology and in the context of Israel (and most relevant to ‘Comment is Free’) to delegitimize one of the powerful justifications for its existence.
As Holocaust Denial on Trial succinctly puts it “[u]nder the guise of a reasonable person’s search for truth, Holocaust deniers spread falsehoods and misinformation that appears reasonable to the uninformed reader.” It is in comment threads of ‘Comment is Free’ where commenters find fertile ground to spread the lies and falsehoods of Holocaust denial safe in the knowledge that other than the most blatant forms of Holocaust denial such comments will evade the delete button of the moderators.
Turning to the Freedland thread. Let me start off with this interesting observation from chiefwiley, one of the earlier commenters.
chiefwiley
20 Oct 09, 8:42pm
It should be interesting to see who is lurking out there to “revisit” the holocaust right here at the Guardian. Are the moderators ready for it?
Indeed so and as chiefwiley was typing away his comment the first one to come out of the woodwork was by IllegalCombatAnt that literally set the tone for the entire thread, surviving deletion for at least 16 hours and garnering at least 70 recommendations:
IllegalCombatAnt
20 Oct 09, 8:42pm
Why is it that we are not allowed to debate the Holocaust?
Why is it that academics who try to do so have their funding cut off or lose their tenures?
Who came up with the 6 million figure?
Then you have this undeleted comment with 33 recommendations:
RepublicanStones
20 Oct 09, 11:41pm
How come the ADL are so ready to criticise the Tories on this, but there were rather muted back in the late 80s when real anti-semites who were active in WW2 were found to be employed by Bush the first in his Ethnic Outreach Committee? They referred to the anti-semitism espoused by those guys as ‘antique and anemic’. But the Tories align themselves with people less unsavoury and the ADL are up in arms.
Furthermore, why do some insist on preventing freedom of speech regarding this horrific event? There is no question, millions of jews, romanies, poles and thousands of homosexuals and handicapped people perished, but unless you allow freedom of speech surrounding this event, you’re never going to know who the loony bins are. Also the continued inflation of holocaust survivors by the likes of the Israeli Prime Ministers Office, does not do anything to dispel the revisionists.
And there is this undeleted comment with 108 recommendations:
MMeister
20 Oct 09, 11:51pm
It shouldnt be a ‘crime’ to deny anything. What is this 1984? Thought crime?
Why is it that we are not allowed to debate the Holocaust?
To this day people still debate whether evolution still exists. But they’re never sent to jail for it. Its all rather fishy. A bit like the Red Cross Report from 1947 which had a much smaller figure in the ‘tragedic deaths’ column.
And then there is this one, also undeleted receiving a whopping 116 recommendations:
PhilipD
21 Oct 09, 12:20am
Great article, and I agree with most of it but…. well, I have a problem with your last paragraph:
The strange thing is, I always knew that one day, when every last survivor was gone, there would be “debate” about the Holocaust. Claims that were once deemed shameful – questioning the veracity of documented events – would become somehow acceptable. But I never imagined that I would live to see that grim day for myself. Yet here it is: right here, right now.
Of course the nutcases and bigots who deny the historical reality of the murder of millions of jews must be rejected and marginalised in any civilized society. But I do have a problem with the notion that any topic, even one as loaded as the Holocaust must be immune from serious discussion. As this terrific article in the New York Review of Books indicates, the slaughter that took place in eastern Europe was indeed a very complex phenomenon, with many peoples (including those of Latvia) subject to repeated waves of genocide from both Nazis and Communists. Even the notion that the Holocaust was somehow uniquely a Jewish tragedy should be subject to historical inquiry – by some measures, the Roma suffered an even greater loss of life (as a proportion of the pre war population). The genocides that took place in the Carpathians of islamic peoples by Stalin were also on a near Holocaust scale. It is a serious subject, and we must make a clear distinction between Holocaust denial and its roots in anti-semitism, while allowing historians and others to seriously debate the issue without fear of being labeled a Nazi if they say something which doesn’t quite follow the established narrative.
And here’s yet another. Also undeleted with only 39 recommendations this time.
sherlock001
21 Oct 09, 1:55am
If we are going to charge the Germans with the unique monstrosity of using homicidal gassing chambers to kill millions of innocent victims, we should be willing to allow examination of the history of that monstrosity in the routine way that all other historical issues are examined. But taboo, censorship, prosecution and imprisonment are routinely used to prevent such a historical examination. How could a case buttressed by hard facts possibly be endangered by kooks and anti-Semites? Most of Europe has already criminalized doubting the Holocaust. It is a crime even to confirm that it happened but to conclude that less than 6 million Jews were murdered. Why is the Holocaust a subject that is off limits to examination?
Then we have Teacup, a well-known antisemitic commenter (as we established here), with the strangest justification of Holocaust denial that I’ve ever come across:
Teacup
21 Oct 09, 5:27am (about 7 hours ago)
Jonathan,
While I appreciate how painful a debate on the Holocaust can be to survivours and their families, surely you are not advocating the criminalisation of debate? If nothing else, open debate can help identify the cranks and the prejudiced, and provide a relatively harmless outlet for anti-Jewish sentiments. Before I get e-mud thrown at me for that last sentence, there is a big gap between bad-mouthing a community and actually harming them.
There is nothing new or strange about politics bringing about strange bedfellows. The recourse is obvious – campaign to ensure that they do not ascend to office until they have seen the error of their ways. Your article has set that ball rolling.
It really does take a sick and twisted mind to think that open debate about Holocaust denial is a “relatively harmless outlet for anti-Jewish sentiments”. Then again this is one of the Guardian’s protected and this is ‘Comment is Free’. Needless to say this comment was not deleted.
We then have this gem from FelixKrull, again undeleted.
FelixKrull
21 Oct 09, 7:14am
Why is it that we are not allowed to debate the Holocaust?
I second that question.
As for the Holocaust, a German crime againsrthumanity, sure it happened , but why is any attempt to review the accuracy of the official, jewish-sponsored version immediately labelled as “Holocaust denial”?
And that one too.
Why do you want to re-examine the Holocaust?
Because the examination has so far been based largely on wartime propaganda. Largely, mind you, before you cry ‘denier’.
What do you think the motive is that lies behind Holocaust denial?
Brain damage, probably. But we’re not talking about Holocaust denial, are we, rather than revisionism, a re-examination of history based upon the wealth of information about the matter that has come to light since the Standard Model of the Holocaust was written sometimes in the early seventies.
And if IllegalComabatAnt’s antisemitic bona fides were not clear from his first comment on the thread, there’s this undeleted comment:
IllegalCombatAnt
21 Oct 09, 8:30am
Teacup 21 Oct 09, 7:39am
Anybody,
What is an “anorak issue”?
Teacup, I assume you know that an anorak is an item of apparel. They are commonly associated with trainspotters, people who meticulously record details of trains.
An anorak is therefore a person immersed in the minutiae of any issue – the subtext is that they are boring and pedantic. A bit like many of the unwelcome visitors to CiF from Giyus and other such places.
And for those not fluent in Guardianspeak, “Giyus” is a deeply offensive slur against Jewish supporters of Israel suggesting that they are propagandists (a slur that is encouraged by none other than the Guardian’s very own commissioning editor of ‘Comment is Free’, Brian Whitaker).
And the Holocaust denial continues with these two comments, again both undeleted:
Weeper
21 Oct 09, 8:39am
We are allowed to discuss the Armenian holocaust, the native American Indian holocaust, the Bengal famine (holocaust), and every other one, but not THE Holocaust.
-
Why not?
-
For example, if those who allege that gas could not have been used at Auschwitz could be disproved, then they would shut up for all time. If not, then we need to know why this “fact” was broadcast in the first place.
-
Also, I’d like to know where the figure of 6 million came from, just as I’d like to know how many people have died since Iraq was invaded in 2003.
-
All this is healthy enquiry, I don’t see why people cry “holocaust denier” if I want to find out more.duppyconqueror
21 Oct 09, 9:54am
I was educated on the holocaust with stories of jews being made into bars of soap by the Nazis.
However concentration camp inmates were not made into bars of soap.
even the holocaust museum in israel now accepts this.but to claim so in the past would have raised accusations of holocaust denial.
Then there is this one that provides an interesting insight into the utter ignorance of the Guardianista:
newone
21 Oct 09, 6:41pm
I have to agree with the comment that anyone who dares to even question the “Holocaust” is a anti-semitic and is to be hounded out of existence.
The real problem is they want to hijack the word “holocaust”. You could describe the murder and slaughter of the millions of Russians as a “holocaust” but because in a sense it has been copyrighted by the Holocaust people, you are not allowed to have a Russian Holocaust.
And what would a Holocaust denial thread be without mention of the great hero of the Guardianistas, Norman Finkelstein:
david119
21 Oct 09, 10:14am
On the face of it I can’t disagree with Jonathan Freedland.
But Jonathan is also a well know Zionist and I sense another agenda lurking beneath a literal reading of his text.
I have to agree with Norman Finkelstein, whose parents were both Holocaust survivors, that the “Holocaust industry” has corrupted Jewish culture and the authentic memory of the Holocaust.
So I have to wonder what was the real reason for this piece.
David Cameron is a leading member of “Conservative Friends of Israel”, not a very likely candidate for a closet anti-Semite.
If Jonathan Freedland came out strongly in favour of the Goldstone report, I might take his concerns about “anti-Semitism” in Eastern Europe a bit more seriously.
In fact the thread was dripping with so much Holocaust denial/revisionism that Jonathan Freedland felt compellled to make the following comment:
“Several posters here seem to be under the impression that I want to “criminalise” debate on the Holocaust. Wrong. I am not calling for debate on any topic to be banned; for the record, I have always opposed laws outlawing Holocaust denial.
But while I don’t believe in making such things illegal, I do deplore the notion — supported in several comments here — that the documented facts of the Holocaust should have their veracity questioned.”
Yet Freedland is clearly oblivious to the fact that he created this mess in the first place because of his ill thought out and reckless choice of title for his article: “I knew the day of ‘Holocaust” debate would come. Just not in my lifetime”.
And what would a Guardian Holocaust denial thread be without strict enforcement of the Guardian World View. Here’s an on the money comment from Duballiland:
Duballiland
21 Oct 09, 9:09am
What amazes me is that this paper which spends so much time vilifying Israel making endless attempts to undermine it is so ready to play the J card when it might help them stop a Conservative Government coming to power.
It would appear that the left does love and will stand by Jews, but only dead ones.
Let me leave you with this parting comment from josecher:
josecher
21 Oct 09, 12:09pm
Why is it that we are not allowed to debate the Holocaust?
Why is it that academics who try to do so have their funding cut off or lose their tenures?
Who came up with the 6 million figure?
At what point exactly did cif start to become infested with nazis?
When I last looked, the above comment had received 70 recommendations – 70 holocaust deniers/apologists on the Guardian’s forum? What the hell is going on?
So Georgina, Matt and Brian, for the umpteenth time what are you going to do about this? The above is just a sampling of the Holocaust denial on ‘Comment is Free’. As I said yesterday in my post, you should be utterly ashamed of yourselves for having created this and what is worse you do absolutely nothing about this.
Yesterday, we were graced with the presence of none other than Georgina Henry on the Michael Lerner thread. For those of you that don’t know, Georgina is head of ‘Comment is Free’ and responsible for the cesspool of antisemitism that it has become.
Lerner, a relatively new member of the Guardian’s coterie of House Jews (but well known in anti-Zionist circles), penned a piece entitled “A war crime whitewash” which carried the byline:
The global choir of ethical cretins who condemn Goldstone’s Gaza report do Israel no favours
A charge that was repeated in the article itself.
As speedkermit pointed out “[p]eople have been moderated om this site for using the word cretin as an insult, so I think it’s a bit hypocritical for the Guardian to run it in an article.”
So in jumps Georgina with this:
GeorginaHenry
21 Oct 09, 12:34pm
Thanks to those of you who have raised the issue of Michael Lerner’s use of the phrase “choir of ethical cretins”. The intention was clearly not to offend in that he was using it in its colloquial sense, and in a general way. But I have asked the editor of the Guardian’s style guide (where the word is currently not mentioned) whether guidance should be included on its use. Since we’ve taken the point on board, perhaps the thread could now concentrate on debating the merits of his argument.
Staff Sorry but I think the intention was quite clearly to offend and Lerner was apparently taking lead from the commenters on the Evans thread the day before.
But I think the more interesting point here is how Georgina sees fit to put an abrupt stop to legitimate critique of the Guardian’s double standards rushing to the defense of Lerner yet she is deafeningly silent when it comes to the endless stream of antisemitic comments in ‘Comment is Free’.
“Shit the Guardian is Burning” were the ending words of the “Guardians of Iran” an article by The Alchemist published on CiF Watch yesterday and I cannot think of a more apt way to describe the anti-Israel vitriol that was pouring out of the Harold Evans thread yesterday.
In ‘A moral atrocity’, Harold Evans wrote an article highly critical of the Goldstone report which, rightly so, lambasted Britain for its failure to vote against the endorsement of the report in the UNHRC and exposed the double standards being applied to Israel.
Rather than comment on the merits of the article, the comment thread instantly became alit with comment after comment dripping with poisonous anti-Israel hatred so much so that it would put your typical Stormfront comment thread to shame.
Sam McGeesSmoke, one of the first commenters, set the tone of the thread with this.
SamMcGeesSmoke
20 Oct 09, 8:10amI was hoping for some incisive analysis from a great editor but he’s obviously just had a boozy lunch with the Israeli ambassador and written this directly afterwards
[recreated from sodabicarb’s comment 20 Oct 09, 8.41am]
Inspired by SamMcGeesSmoke’s comment, Weeper, Gareth 100 and JedFanshaw joined in with these comments:
Weeper
20 Oct 09, 10:24am
I stopped reading after the first paragraph, which makes clear that the Grauniad is giving space to yet another paid Israel apologist. What a clown!
Gareth100
20 Oct 09, 10:50am
I had a lot of time for Harold Evans back in the seventies with his inspired time at the Times, however advanced age seems to have withered his critical faculties. This piece could have been dictated to him word by word by Mark Regev. It’s such a shame that this mendacious piece adds a stain to an otherwise great reputation.
JedFanshaw
20 Oct 09, 12:01pm
Harold
how good of you to put your name to an article written by the Israeli Ministry of Propangandawell done, old chap!
Of course accusing those adopting a pro-Israel stance of being paid agents of the Jewish state is standard fare for Guardianistas. But hey what else do you expect when the commissioning editor of ‘Comment is Free’, Brian Whitaker, has himself made the very same accusation in the past.
Then there were the comments from the Guardinistas questioning how it was that the Guardian had the audacity to publish a pro-Israel article. It being such a rare instance on ‘Comment is Free’ you can hardly blame their poor polluted little souls.
Moeran
20 Oct 09, 8:11am
Why did The Guardian choose to publish theses racist calumnies?
[recreated from millfield’s 20 Oct 09, 8.50am comment – that was deleted without trace]
kikatrixx
20 Oct 09, 10:50am
who is this guy?
I’ve never read anything so lacking in balance.
Guardian – what the heck is this?Goto100
20 Oct 09, 9:25am
I’m sorry, but if you moderate extreme comments then the above “article” is equally, if not more deserving of deletion. Quite simply bollocks from start to finish. Please get rid of it and apologise.
IllegalCombatAnt
20 Oct 09, 12:20pm
After this travesty of an article the Guardian needs to restore some balance.
I’m sure Mullah Omar could be prevailed upon to share his views on the Palestine/Israel issue.
[Grauniad mods - IllegalComabatAnt appears to be an incarnation of Talknic]
20 Oct 09, 12:46pm
I think the Guardian should have looked more closely at this article, it’s almost a word for word copy of the points on the Israeli governments’ propaganda site, this is not the work of the alleged author it is pure Israeli generated propaganda and not worthy of an opinion piece.
If you check out more or less ANY political blog in the US, you will see adverts everywhere with bright orange animated text highlighting “THE TRUTH ABOUT GAZA”. I saw the adverts on the Huffington Post yesterday, I clicked through and it’s goes to Israel’s ministry of information website. On this site it raises the same utterly ridiculous points that the shill Harold Evans has raised. It’s in almost the exact same order, I really think the Guardian should either take down this willfully in-accurate comment piece or at least point to where the information has been plucked (I could suggest a few places).
If you do go to the Israeli propaganda site, don’t bother leaving feedback as you get a 404 error, all I said is “you bunch of f*******g liars” and I would say the same to Evans without using “bunch”.
And I think finally, we should heap praise on the UN and Goldstone for saying what the moral world believes. ISRAEL COMMITS WAR CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY. Said loud and proud because it’s the UNDENIABLE TRUTH.
20 Oct 09, 3:01pm
Harold Evans said: “well, go through the practices of all 25 states voting to refer Israel to the security council for the Gaza war, and you have to acknowledge they know a lot about the abuse of humans.”
So it’s al lright for Israel to do these things because everyone else is just as bad?
Are you seriously forwarding that as any sort of argument? The last time I heard something similar was in the playground….”well, those boys over there are doing it as well.”
This article and Joseph Harker’s racist screed both on the same day. Is the Guardian pre-emptively trying to outdo Griffin’s scheduled ‘Question Time’ appearance?
Then there are those commenters that engaged in ad hominem attacks on the author of the article.
osamabinbush
20 Oct 09, 10:01am
Harold Evans – who is this idiot?
come on there has to be some limit to being shameless. Even Goebells will feel proud of this sort of shit being written.
petrifiedprozac
20 Oct 09, 8:57am
Harold Evans, you have lost the plot and need a brain transplant. How have you managed such a long career in journalism with such distortions. You obviously spent most of your time writing for the American equaivalent of Pravda.
A country that used the full might of a state of the art military against a rag bag enemy and killing so many women, children and old men in the process, was always going to be accused of war crimes. Even as the Gaza offencize was going on, one could clearly see the criminal negligence that was taking place.
As for Gaza not being occupied, it was effectively turned into a prison camp. If Gaza was free, Palestinians would be allowed to come and go at will, run an airport and a seaport. The Israelis allowed nothing such and even rationed fuel and other resources.
Shame on you.
20 Oct 09, 12:53pmThe reason Britain is in the shambles it’s in, is because of fools like Evans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Evans
For God’s sake, fuck off and leave us in peace, fool!
20 Oct 09, 1:10pmsydk
This arsehole sold us out to the Yanks.
The guy is a traitor to the British nation.
Poodles like Blair worked in the poluted space that spy’s Evans created.
Mr Evans has been living in the USA for so long he is beginning to believe all the pro israel bumf that the US media churns out every day. Either that or he is going senile.
I’ve not read such nonsense from a respected journalist for years.
Then you have the demonize Israel crew. Here’s a sampling:
Papalagi
20 Oct 09, 8:20am
the author speaks about tolerance of extrajudicial killings, the evictions of 800,000, rape and cruel treatment of prisoners; and finally torture.
I believe that all this is or has been practiced in Israel. Does the author want links about that?
JumpingFrank
20 Oct 09, 8:23am
Harold, you lost me at “the aggressor, Hamas, and punish the defender, Israel.”. For 60 years the state of Israel has oppressed Palestinians. They do indeed in law and spirit occupy Palestine, both the West Bank and Gaza. They may have withdrawn, but control access to the sea, the borders, and the airspace. Hamas are just the most recent incarnation of Palestinian resistance to Israeli oppression. Your article cobbles together racism, lies and interestingly enough the word morality. For SHAME.
KrustytheKlown
20 Oct 09, 9:27am
to do what the Israelis did – take a piece of land and build a model state.
I['m assuming what you meant to say was 'steal a piece of land and build a terror state'.
evanj
20 Oct 09, 10:15am
'No dobut there were blunders'.
No there weren't.
It wasn't defensive and it wasn't a war. It was strategic, planned, and a massacre. another one.
This piece, as others have highlighted, manages to pack more lies into a short space as to be a masterpiece.
It should be in school readers, with the simple instruction, 'discuss'.
The mouth drops, one gasps yet again in disbelief.
The great lie that is Israel is up their with Stalinist communism.
except the dupes of the latter didn't get such privileged access to the media.
Apart from the ongoing disaster that is daily life for Palestinians, the abomination that is Israel poisons everything it touches, not least a significant section of global Jewry itself.
Out damned spot.Nanome
20 Oct 09, 10:53am
I do not normally complain about being censored by the mods, there is, when all is said and done, no point. However I cannot see how it is illegitimate to make a psychiatric diagnosis of a nation. If one were to say that Stalin´s Russia was suffering from paranoia caught from its leader, or to say that Japan in 1942 was suffering from a psychosis engendered by the sanctification of the nation, people might disagree but they could hardly deny me the right to make the hypothesis. I cannot see therefore how I can be criticised for claiming that Israel, as a nation, is suffering from a paranoid psychosis engendered by its attempts to justify its original taking of Palestinian land and the removal of its peoples, and that this psychosis, if not dealt with, will lead to the complete appropriation of Palestinian land and the subjugation of its people. Argue against my thesis by all means, but censorship?
It is time for epidermoid to grasp the fact that people burned to death or dismembered as a punishment for the leaders are victims; that children tortured and abused are victims, whether or not they threw a stone at an APC, that the dispossessed.....
I'm wasting my time, aren't I? They're Palestinians. Not like us.
And then we have the trope that “rabbis in the army encourage soldiers to show little or no mercy to Gazan civilians”.
bergamo
20 Oct 09, 8:34am
Israel holds thousands of Palestinians in jail without trial for years.
Israel has allowed rabbis in the army to encourage soldiers to show little or no mercy to Gazan civilians, and preaching what anywhere else would be called racist propaganda.
Israel denies its own citizens, mostly of course of Arab descent, the right to marry a Palestinian and take him or her to live in Israel.
In Israel police have tried to stamp out opposition to Cast Lead violently.
The chances of an Israeli killing or otherwise harming a Palestinian being brought to justice are much less than those of a Palestinian doing the same to an Israeli.
Where is, pray, Mr. Evans, your vaunted independent judiciary?
And insofar as Italy's courageous stance, as an Italian, let me remind you Italy sides always with the powerful. Its sucking up to the USA has been heard from Udine to Catania.
And here is one that takes a dig at the “God’s chosen people”. But rest assured they really mean those pesky Zionists - its Guardianspeak you know.
SELAVY
20 Oct 09, 8:46am
Brigadier Barking
***A summary of the above article:
Other countries also commit atrocities therefore:
1. It's OK if we do too.
2. It's not fair to point out that we do too.
3. If they do why can't we?
4. Waaah, waaah everyone's against us!! ***
Yes, as usual.
Plus the subtext : "As God's Chosen People" we can treat other nations and people with utter contempt.The laws of the world do not apply to us.
And where would CiF be without special mention of the GIYUS brigade?
Ozleftie
20 Oct 09, 8:48am
Before reading this article, I always regarded Mr Evans as a courageous and independent thinker, even something of a journalistic hero with his great work at the pre-Murdoch Sunday Times. Unfortunately for me, he has now shredded that reputation with this utterly dishonest and highly blinkered piece of Zionist mendacity.
Perhaps Mr Evans has spent too long in New York, socialising exclusively with the GIYUS brigade over there and thus losing all semblance of journalistic impartiality when it comes to Israel in favour of outrageous Zionist hasbara.
And here is an example of how Guardianistas display utter disdain for Jewish life:
MilesSmiles
20 Oct 09, 9:05am
Well how facetious is that? If teh 8 year old boy is firing rockets at you or your kin that have the potential to kill you I suppose would give him an indulgent pat on his head and apologise to him for being in his range of fire!!!
Since, 7500 rockets have been fired for a total kill count of 15 people, giving a 0.2% chance of being killed, I think I'd probably moon him for fun.
And here's one minimalizing the Holocaust (a form of Holocaust denial):
euanramsay
20 Oct 09, 9:46am
this is the moral equivalent of holocaust denial
And here is something totally off-topic. Well on second thoughts no since it’s a Jew-bashing thread.
CetCenseo
20 Oct 09, 10:00am
The US has a powerful Israeli lobby. We have a powerful Islamic lobby. It would be nice if American and British foreign policy was built for Americans and Britons.
Then we have one of the most idiotic comments by Dan Rickman (a/k/a Leftwingorthodoxjew) - we don't call him a useful idiot for nothing!
Leftwingorthodoxjew
20 Oct 09, 9:32am
Contributor
SELAVY
Plus the subtext : "As God's Chosen People" we can treat other nations and people with utter contempt.The laws of the world do not apply to us.
I didn't like this article either but writing nonsense such as this doesn't help anyone - it reads as an attack on all Jews which I presume you don't mean? [emphasis added] The concept of Jews being a Chosen People is a basic part of Judaism and one which has been misused and misunderstood time and again – how does it help anyone in the I/P conflict to perpetuate misunderstandings – this is what the extremists want.
MilesSmiles
Since, 7500 rockets have been fired for a total kill count of 15 people, giving a 0.2% chance of being killed, I think I’d probably moon him for fun.
even assuming you figures are accurate (which I am not sure they are) try and apply some imagination to the situation people are in.
The issue as ever is that there are extremists on all sides of the I/P conflict who want to use the atrocities or perceived atrocities of the other side to justify increasingly extreme measures and deeper misunderstanding. They do this because they don’t want any resolution other than complete victory which is almost certainly unattainable. As such, they are very good at making the world in their own image and sowing despair rather than hope.
The question for people commenting here is how do progressive forces help counter this sort of thing? I see a lot of propaganda of all sorts here but very little constructive criticism or suggestions. There has been fault and failure on all sides – however Nazi analogies don’t help understanding. What is required is some honest assessment which becomes almost impossible in the heat and light generated by propagandists
Well I have news for you Dan, when Selavy refers to “God’s Chosen People” he, she or it means you just like the rest of us. Don’t be so bloody naïve. And what’s more if he, she or it reserved the “God’s Chosen People” comment for Zionists like myself you should just as equally take offense to that. The fact that you are trying to exempt yourself from Selavy’s obviously racist slur is very telling.
And what would a CiF thread be without enforcement of the GWV? Here are a selection of pro-Israel comments on the thread that were deleted (all of anotherdayanother’s comments were deleted without trace) leaving only a few solitary pro-Israel comments standing among a sea of anti-Israel comments.
NoOneCares
20 Oct 09, 8:38am
BaraLawr said “You should not complain that Israel is held to higher standard than China, Egypt and Nigeria. It is supposed to be a fully developed democracy.”
But you see, there’s a problem with this formula. You want to compare Israel with other democratic nations, I’m all for it. So I’ll tell you what, you find a democratic nation which has been under attack for 60 years, whether it be wars with nations or terrorist organizations. Whose civilian population is regularly under missile attack, who for years lived through the horror of sending their children to school and pizza parlors with smart bombs walking the street, and I’ll be glad to make that comparison.
Because to compare Israel with other democratic nations like the US or UK, in which people that don’t like you peacefully (not so peacefully anymore) protest in the streets with placards and write letter campaigns, is like comparing pre-meditated murder to a ride in the bumper cars at your local fourth of July carnival. You see, Israel isn’t facing protesters with placards, they are facing terrorists with missles who have already declared to the world their intention, to kill Israelis, and with a fanatic nation, Iran, who has proudly declared they have signed up 100,000 volunteers to be suicide bombers that will be parachuted into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to massacre innocent Israelis.
Does Israel really want to be compared to maniacs like these? To organizations that use the murder of innocents as a weapon? To terrorist governments that attack another nation from behind their own civilians? To dictatorial regimes run by religious fanatics that conduct wholesale slaughter on their own population?
And I say without any hesitation, a definitive yes!
Israel is a Middle Eastern nation surrounded by countries that have attacked it for 60 years. It is now surrounded by proxy armies that have been purposely built and trained to attack and kill Israelis. It is not negotiating a trade union issue as might happen between Italy and the UK. Israel is not trying to negotiate a economic stimulus to assist its population in preserving their jobs throughout the economic downturn, it is fighting to protect the lives of its citizens.
So I say yes! Compare us with Iran, compare us with Hezbollah, and compare us with Hamas. There’s certainly no justifiable reason for comparing us with Belgium, where their biggest worry is the rampant pedophilia and abuse of children by entire communities, or to the Spanish who’s biggest worry is about what time to take their siesta, most of which have probably never even met a Jew.
Israel must be compared to these other nations it is up against. Yes, it is a democracy, yes it must do its best to be an upstanding citizen of the world community, to be sensitive to innocent civilians and do its best to find peaceful solutions to its conflicts, but as much as Israel has in common with many of these nations, a democratic government, freedom for its citizens, it has one major thing in common in common with the nations surrounding it, missles and bullets and their desire to kill Israelis and reap destruction in any way shape or form opportunity provides.
And the stopping of missles from raining on our children is more important to us than trade union disagreements and yes, the economic downturn.
In no uncertain terms, compare Israel with these undemocratic, oppressive and murderous regimes, be proud of it. Announce it to everyone in the world, let them know and understand that as much as they think conflicts need to be solved peacefully, and as much as we agree with that, the decision is up to the person that chooses to use their body as a human bomb, and not up to the person who wants to sit around a table and negotiate.
anotherdayanother
20 Oct 09, 9:25am
Papalagi said “What you say makes very little sense. Israel not only answered to attacks, Israel provoked attacks according to a few Israeli authors like Uri Avnery, Ran HaCohen, Gideon Levy. “
Yes Papalagi, we understand you only quote those Israeli writers that think that Israel should not be a Jewish state and therefore in its currentl form needs to be destroyed, just of like you.
anotherdayanother
20 Oct 09, 9:57am
JennM provides us the answer as to why everyone is so ignorant on the conflict. She said “
“All I saw were the cluster bombs that killed so many, and also the horrible death toll for the Palestinians that far outweighs anything the Hamas inflicted on Isreal.”
She didn’t see the 12,000 missles falling in Israel for 8 years. She doesn’t want to see the terror Israeli children live in. She doesn’t want to see the death and destruction caused by missles and suicide bombers.
She only chooses to see the suffering of the Palestinians, with no connection to exactly why they are suffering. With no connection to the methods used by hamas, the democratically elected Palestinian government.
Pyrrhonist
20 Oct 09, 11:19am
Badgermania
“Fool”, “gangster”-no ad hominem attacks at all, then?At least the BNP openly says they don’t like Jews-with most of the posters here try to cover their tracks with pseudo-humanitarian pseudo-progressive garbage. And they are probably whingeing about Griffin. Hypocrites.anotherdayanother
20 Oct 09, 12:22pm
JedFanshaw said “It’s a great shame the The Grauniad can’t display the posts in the colour they are written in – then we’d all see that you write with green ink”
No Jed, the real shame is that they refuse the publish comments that don’t agree with their own political agenda and delete them into eternity in order to push their own, narrow political agenda, and work as a mouthpiece for extremists .
20 Oct 09, 1:04pm
As usual Israel is being accused here of defending itself,this is an alien concept to certain posters here that Israel is capable of or should defend itself,in their minds Israel should have sat tight forever, and let the thousands upon thousands of missiles rain down on it’s women and children’s heads.
Hamas has learned a very good and useful lesson from Cast Lead,they learned that for every one their blood thirsty actions against the State of Israel,there will a very forceful and immediate reaction from the IDF.
And if you’ve managed to wade through all of this, let me end with a parting comment from efficacious:
efficacious
20 Oct 09, 11:48am
This just goes to show that there are posters here who just can’t handle the truth,especially when the truth is about Israel.
They are so used to articles that show Israel in a bad light that the truth about Israel just doesn’t register with them.
A well written,truthful,pragmatic,and most important a sober article
So Georgina, Matt and Brian what do you have to say then? Where’s your zero tolerance for antisemitism?
This is the monster you have created and you should all be utterly ashamed of yourselves.
Yaacov Lozowick is reporting that Richard Silverstein will no longer be writing for CiF which explains why we haven’t had to endure his anti-Israel screeds for a while.
Commenting over at Yaacov Lozowick’s Ruminations, AKUS sums things up nicely with this:
Silverstein’s articles were by far the lowest quality of the articles that day in and day out condemn Israel on the Guardian’s website.
Since I savaged Silverstein very thoroughly on CiF (as he claims to want to “savage” Tom Friedman – Tom will no doubt be trembling at the thought of this unknown crustacean from Seattle nipping at his heels), pointing out the numerous errors, the outright lies, etc. in article after article I would like to think that even the dim bulbs who run CiF may have realised that the man is simply stupid and a liability to any attempt to present CiF as some kind of intelligent forum.
I was amused by one of the comments on his cry-baby piece about “quitting” CiF (did he quit or was he “quitted”? More the latter, apparently!!) from someone who claimed he stopped writing because the fees he was paid dropped. Brian Whitaker, Silverstein’s CiF “editor”, made a false claim that the pro-Israeli commentators were paid shills of the Israeli Government (would it were so – I could have retired on my earnings before banning). Yet here we have proof, if it were needed, that Silverstein was a paid shill of the Israel bashing Guardian – but, as is the fate of all proles working under a Stalinist regime, there eventually comes a time when one is led to the cellars at Lubyanka or sent in a cattle car to the Gulag.
Silverstein will not be missed, except by those like me who got pleasure out of debunking his simple-minded rubbish.
Update
Apparently Brian Whitaker called Silverstein to convince him to stay. Those dim bulbs grow even dimmer. Here’s Silverstein in his own words:
[UPDATE: I'm pleased to say that my editor has contacted me and asked me to continue to write for CiF. He had not read my e mail and did not know I had withdrawn from writing for the Guardian. This is an outcome that pleases me. So you'll be seeing that Friedman piece in print in the near future plus coverage of the J Street conference at CiF.]
Since the ascent of lunatic madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency of the Islamic terrorist republic of Iran, the Guardian has been the leading mainstream voice in defending the Iranian regime.
Starting with a series of denials regarding statements made by the mad leader on the Holocaust and on the elimination of Israel, they wanted to create the impression that mad Mahmoud may not have really said “wipe off the map” or may not have really denied the Holocaust.
Israel has been baring the brunt of demonization while Iran enjoys the support of an intellectually grotesque and dishonest campaign from the Guardian resulting in articles like “Iran needs the bomb” by media critic David Cox and Jonathan Cook’s piece explaining how happy Iranian Jews are at home (a piece also featured on David Duke’s site [Warning: neo-fascist/neo-Nazi web site, racist filth]). Amazingly, the Guardian even allowed suspected regime agents to ascend to contributor status only to cause embarrassment for the publication when one of these contributors started to leave the verbal padded room to come out and allege Jewish conspiracies infiltrating the UK government. Tehrankind77 was a mere preview of what was to come.
But this past summer has created a real dilemma for Guardinistas. Iran’s regime has been rejected by its own people. The regime went crazy, and as crazy regimes usually and unpredictably do, it started to brutalize its people while the world watched in horror as Iranian students were beaten, stabbed and crushed by Bassij militiamen, or worse, shot in plain sight bleeding away on the sidewalk.
The Guardian started to split from within. The reporting side of the paper did a great job exposing the morbid horrors this regime meted out on its citizens while CiF splintered between the apologists who couldn’t believe that their beloved anti-Israel nation has embarrassed them and the reporters who understood that Iran has crossed some, yet still unspecified Rubicon.
So they started to allege foreign intelligence plots being behind the revolt, basically becoming regime mouthpieces. There were also those who, basing it on their western Bolshevik heritage, started to allege that the revolt was only the expression of rich bourgeois kids under the influence of corrupting Western powers while the real man of the people, Ahmadinejad, was denied his democratic victory. Such was the ridiculous yet frightening explanation of Seumas Milne, the Guardian’s resident Stalinist. Milne also defended the Holocaust denial of the Iranian state as “nothing controversial” in the context of Middle Eastern discourse. He also called western delegates racists for having walked out on the mad president’s speech in Geneva. But as the new revolution gained prominence, fewer and fewer came to the defense of this evil regime.
Then came Obama, Sarkozy and the UN. Iran was caught red-handed building another nuclear site.
Wow.
Leftist softies like Simon Tisdall called it what this was: Iran caught red handed. But the old defenders of the genocidal goals of the Mahdi Cult have resurfaced. This time as often as posters. Case in point was Brian Whitaker who started an ideological decline of late, losing his bearings to put it mildly, by wondering into conspiracy land alleging first that Jewish posters on CiF were Israeli agents and later claiming that this new discovery in a long line of lies by Iran regarding its nuclear program, was again a conspiracy of Western intelligence agencies. As if the Iranians’ reputation preceding this was indication of any other plausible possibility.
Remember, this was after the brutal and often on-camera repression of Iranians during the summer. The rapes and the shootings of protesters.
Still, the crowd, who previously wanted us to believe Ahmadinejad didn’t deny the Holocaust and didn’t say “wipe off the map” was back again, coming to the defense of this menacing regime almost in a concerted effort.
A series of articles ran on CiF, notably an editorial claiming that no military action and no sanctions should be applied in light of the new discovery of another hidden power plant. Only talking.
Talking to liars is the solution according to the Guardian.
The editorial also stated that while Israel has the right to defend itself, it does not in this case because the consequences would have an effect on others as well.
Or something like that.
But the editorial would not be truly visible had it not been preceded by another piece by Stephen Kinzer. The same Kinzer who, on the anniversary of the murder of Bobby Kennedy, ran a eulogy of his killer Sirhan Sirhan whom he characterized as a disappointed weeping victim of the USA’s betrayal of the Palestinians, basically blaming Israel and the Jews for the death of Kennedy at the hands of an Arab assassin who incidentally also shot 4 other people that day, killed the hopes of the Democrats and helped usher in the Nixon presidency. So deep was his conspiracy theory disguised under the literary pretense of a failed novelist, he ended up looking like some third rate Middle East expert enamored with Islam and its false promise of a possible modern world with Islam as its central influence.
Stephen Kinzer, a former NY Times reporter, has been writing a steady trickle of articles, usually lobbying for Turkey as the absolute necessary addition to the EU, or alluding to Iran as some be all and end all solution to the whole Middle East stability “thing”. Needless to say, Kinzer, like many others in coup de foudre with Islamic culture, has started to internalize their myths and through his pretended Middle East scholarly approach to political fantasy journalism, he started repeating them as if those myths were historical reality.
Did I say failed novelist yet?
George Bush, like him or hate him, had excellent nicknames for leaders. For example, he called Hugo Chavez “Castro without brains”. Kinzer is a sort of Seymour Hersh without intellect. While Hersh is informative, if in nothing else but in shedding light on some of the more socially accepted conspiracy theories, Kinzer just creates them and informs nothing of value. In fact, he is a perfect example of a Guardian regular: positing false theories and floating in imagination land, seeing the good in evil and laying the blame on those he criticizes and vilifies when his theories fall short of reality or fall flat altogether.
Case in point, his recent piece My dinner with Ahmedinejad. In this otherwise incomprehensible piece, believe me I tried hard to understand what it was about beside his usual twisting together of feelings of fear and admiration, he explains that while he sat with monsters before, some enlightenment did come to him as he was dining with Mad Mahmoud.
Nothing more came out of the piece aside from explaining that the West’s problems vis a vis Iran are more cultural, thus the negotiations with Iran should be delegated to some old school, and in his view, aged diplomats, who sat with Kinzer at the table breaking bread with Ahmadinejad. This was after the again massive walkout from Mad Mahmoud’s speech at the UN and his repeated Holocaust denial and allegations on Larry King that Neda Sultan was shot by “foreign agents”.
I often think that to some of the liberal cultural elite inhabiting the rent controlled yet still exorbitantly expensive Manhattan apartments, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a sort of rare, believed to be extinct, yet colorful exotic bird. Hauled back from some far away and scarcely mapped jungle to the enjoyment of watchers fascinated by his supposedly extinct features presented in defiance of previous scholarly work.
- “Look he denies the Holocaust and believes in the end of the world on the heaps of dead Jewish bodies while he smiles and commands many of the poor and downtrodden in the third world.”
-”How fascinating, how dangerously cute”.
-”Can I feed him?”
-”Oh sure just attend his dinner galas, tea will be served and perhaps some Iranian caviar. The Russians cheated out on us of late, Putin wants money for every ounce. “
The exotic Shoah bird flies again. But they try their their best to deny it, probably thinking it is some acid flashback from ’69 and their radical days.
Alas, no Iran defense would be complete without the rolling out of the real float parade. So here comes George Galloway (again).
This time, now that his anti–Iran benefactor Saddam has died, George has become a host of a talk show on Iran’s state Press TV which ran the most ridiculous propaganda during the Iranian protests and regularly runs Jewish conspiracies and Hezbollah hero stories. He of course defended the Iranian elections on more than one occasion. No shocker there.
Out he comes on the pages of the Guardian once more.
George alleges that Iran is not working on the bomb, but Sarkozy and Merkel have become Bushists and are plotting to destroy the true nation of universal resistance, Iran, as it is trying to fight for global justice.
This was the essence of his latest speech meant for a rally but probably ending up as a Guardian post. The formats have been interchangeable for a while. Just take off those paragraph ending chants, add some references to one’s self and voila, a Galloway piece for the Guardian is born.
Needless to say, the thread became yet another episode of Monsters with the usual fans of George coming out of the woodwork praising his courage and resolve, while posts alluding to his treasonous hypocrisy and defense of totalitarian terror were deleted and even forewarned by the new and improved moderation which now warns followers to stay on plot or else.
The thread was shut within less than 24 hours, faster than the newest Ben White scribble praising Hamas which usually holds the shut down speed records.
These shut downs have now become symptomatic of a blog which has been caught between its own monster creations and those who call them out for inviting them in with pieces which would make great comedy, were they not in the defense of real monsters staring down real history.
This is why I suppose the Guardian started to hustle the dreamers of a nuclear free world. They do not defend the monsters but defend their own surreal ideals.
Enter Hans Blix. Or as I like to recall him, Hansa Briex. Somehow his most famous moment was indeed in Team America World Police. Not to be a spoiler, but Blix dies in the movie, gets eaten by the pet sharks of KimJong Il, who mocks him for his naiveté and sends him plunging into his shark tank. I still giggle at the memory of that scene, which encapsulated the whole “negotiating with evil madmen” doctrine. Not that there weren’t more serious lessons: Yalta, Munich and Arafat come to mind but still Brixie drove it home without the death of innocents. So Blix comes out on CiF arguing for a nuclear free Middle East. He is basing this on Obama’s famous but now increasingly dangerous speech from Prague where he called for a nuclear free world. A stance Obama repeated at the UN while he was already sitting on the evidence of Iran’s new October surprise, the hidden Qum facility.
Dangerous speech because ever since he spoke those words, the chorus to disarm Israel (on the extreme Left) has started hitting the high notes.
So Blix argues that Israel should basically disarm so that all other Middle East states could follow suit. Hardly a new idea. Probably one which Iran has planned at the outset. Figuring that even if they may not go through with their nuclear ambitions, they will try to leverage their behavior to extract some Western concession around the idea that “all should disarm” for the “sake of our children’s future” and while we’re at it why not of course start with Israel.
I mean who else right?
Blix’s new inspiration would have been more original had Mohamed El Baradei not already communicated the same view sitting next to the Iranian delegation recently where he argued that Israel presents the greatest security threat to the region.
Wow. It is great to know that he was once again, dispatched by Obama and the Security Council to look into that Qum thing. After all he has only withheld evidence twice from the EU and the Americans about what he found in Iran.
Wink wink. He is an “inspector”. He is looking out for us all.
The farce is starting to become old like Benny Hill chasing girls in garter belts around a fake clinic. But it seems, still entertainment for recent Nobel Prize winners basking in the world’s newly found cult of personality.
So the circle is almost complete. The Iranian nuclear issue is really about Israel. This is the Guardian World View. As those posting and reading CiF for a few years already know, it is (and was) about Israel not Iran and its messianic maniacal leaders who shoot their own people and deny the Holocaust as a matter of foreign policy.
On a side note, Holocaust denial and spreading Jewish conspiracy theory have been Iran’s major contributions to world culture and to the advancement of scholarship in recent years.
But Kinzer would say:
“A Great Culture, can I have some more of that Caviar?”
Israel is the danger and Iran, well, they either are not building the bomb as Whitaker would want us believe or needs the bomb as David Cox argued bluntly a couple of years ago.
But wait. There was another report from the Guardian about Hugo Chavez.
Hugo Hugo what would the Guardian be without you.
The great hero of the Euro Left was joking about building nukes for Iran. It was Guardian humor I suppose.
I mean, what crazy fool would think Chavez, dictator of a country rich with uranium, supporter of Iran and provider of real estate for Hezbollah and the Al Quds Militia, is helping Iran in either skirting sanctions or supplying their nuclear effort materially. Needless to say, this thread also brought out the real comics of CiF.
Who says humor isn’t the great healer.
Here’s a sample of the offering from that thread buried quickly from view:
SeanThorp (111 recommends) …Thank God the Russians and Chinese are thus far resisting the Zionist and Western hysteria. Sanctions on Iraq killed at least half a million children and all the mainstream British political parties are shaping up to do the same to Iran. Why should UK foreign policy be led by a rouge state like Israel? Why would the people of the UK vote for that…
There is more but you get the idea. These posts were not moderated for days despite the turbo moderation installed of late. I guess this turbo moderator acts also as an engine filter, programmed to detect defense against antisemitism and Islamic bigotry but letting through any other pollutant.
The only advice I can give to the Guardian, old advice but worth repeating, is:
If you play with fire, you can get either burned or not. But if you play with shit, you certainly will stink and be stained.
“Shit, the Guardian is burning”
What happens when you deprive the Guardianistas for more than two days of an I/P thread from ‘Comment is Free’ to vent their Jew-hatred?
You get a toxic mix of antisemitism that is made up of the following ingredients:
You start off by pouring in a generous shot of Israel demonization.
MilesSmiles
18 Oct 09, 3:54pm
I think Israel’s strategy is quite clear. Ratchet up the use of force until Palestinians simply leave. An intifada would suit them nicely, it would just be an opportunity for another Gaza. After all, nothing really happened over Lebanon either. It’s sort of “we’ll keep going as long as we can get away with it”.
As usual the Americans are a sheep in clown’s clothing when it comes to the Middle East.
Then you throw in some false accusations of ethnic cleansing.
mc98
18 Oct 09, 4:02pm
The extreme zionists now seem to have things all their own way as they continue with the cleansing plan. Since they never come under any pressure to change their ways and agree to a way forward things will just continue downhill towards yet more conflict. Very sad really but unless real pressure is applied to the hardliners in Israel and the US the Middle East is going to get nowhere.
Add an argument for the “one state solution”.
david119
18 Oct 09, 4:30pm
An Administration that voted against the Goldstone report is not going to have the guts to stand up to the most “liberal” Zionist let alone the current Israeli regime.
Without any effective pressure from America, the Zionists will make excuses and steal more and more land.
We have passed the point where a viable two state settlement is possible.
One person one vote in a Unified State and a Palestinian right of return is the only long term solution.
Shake it up with spurious allegations of racism, genocide and more ethnic cleansing.
18 Oct 09, 4:44pm
The only way to avoid another Israeli Jew massacre of the Palestinians is for Pres. Obama to use the leverage the US has over Israel to resolve the conflict between Jews and Palestinians. Afterall, the US created this conflict by keeping Israel in existence with US aid, weapons, support, and veto protection, and turning a blind eye to Israel’s apartheid policies, racism, land stealing, genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Now, it is incumbent upon the US to be an honest broker for once and resolve the conflict it created. It won’t be easy but anything less should require top US and Israeli officials to stand before the Hague for charges of Warcrimes and Crimes against Humanity.
Add another shot of Israel demonization.
zatar
18 Oct 09, 6:33pm
As usual some of the players, like US and Israel, in the “roadmap to nowhere” are successfully keeping up the status quo that enables Israel to continue it’s butchery and landgrabbing under the cover of phony democracy. There will never any peace because Israel simply don’t want peace. I wonder why we don’t hear about sanctions and violent measures that West readily uses against some countries, ever mentioned in case of violent Israel.
Mix in the denial of a right to a Jewish state.
lovemymod
18 Oct 09, 8:20pm
In 1966, there were no Jews living on the West Bank. By 2009, there are close to 500,000 in all occupied territories.
occupied territories? Israel is an occupied territory.
Add a splash more demonization.
Garak
18 Oct 09, 8:54pm
The US can’t be refusing to deal with Hamas because it supports terrorism. Israel was born of terror. Israeli historians have made this abundantly clear. Hamas can only dream of having as much blood on its hands as do Zionists like Ben Gurion, Begin, Shamir, and Sharon.
The US needs to deal as directly with Hamas as it does with terrorists in the Isareli gov’t.
And finally garnish with some Jewish conspiracy theory.
zendancer
18 Oct 09, 9:04pm
@ bootboys
You forgot the Chief Rabbi of New York/New York Banking Houses (Goldman Sachs) who are the most powerful/ political group in America.All Presidential candidates must come to an accomodation with the above “Lobby,” or feel the heat of their opponent receiving a huge inflow of contribution dollars ,for their campaign.Guess what they want for their support? Up the coast in Boston the Irish Lobby do the same thing ,only their power is waning rapidly.The Kennedys have lost their way.
The best thing is that this is meant to be a big secret,no one talks about their influence but,votes in the U.N. are a clear sign that the US President has to pay “tribute” to them to keep his place.
And if you want to savor these individual ingredients, all but one of them is available for consumption on the Tisdall thread at the time of writing.
Stormfront eat drink your heart out!
As we recently reported, Comment is Free now permits commenters to upload pictures that appear in the posts of the comment threads.
In response to this development, Cityca, who like AKUS and many others was banned for his pro-Israel stance on CiF, has designed a “badge of honor” for those that have been banned by CiF. If you wish to use the “badge of honor” as your picture on CiF, simply right click on the image below and save it to your desktop and then follow the Guardian’s instructions for uploading pictures when editing your user profile.
According to Matt Seaton, “we at the Guardian believe in equality and democracy in all things, even avatars” so based on that you should not have to worry about the Guardian censoring the use of the “badge of honor” !
This is a guest post by AKUS
An unlikely Jew has pulled down the Gazan temple on the heads of those he would claim to support. I refer, of course, to Goldstone, and the own-goal the UNHRC has scored with his biased report.
This is not a critique of the fatally flawed Goldstone report itself, which has been ably carried out by many more competent experts than me and which could be continued pointlessly ad infinitum. Even the announcement advertising the discussion of the report this week and the terms of reference for the “fact-finding mission” reveal the bizarre world which the UNHRC inhabits which makes such discussions essentially meaningless and certainly fruitless:
The holding of the Special Session comes at the request of Palestine.
There is no such country as “Palestine”. In the Draft Resolution the word “Palestine” is given an asterisk, and a footnote explains that it is a “Non-Member State of the Human Rights Council”. In fact, it is a non-state, non-member of the Human Rights Council.
The Human Rights Council’s Resolution January 2009 S-9/1 that gave rise to the Goldstone investigation reveals the bias inherent in the investigation and the report:
Cuba, Egypt (on behalf of the Arab and African Groups), Pakistan (on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference): draft resolution S-9/1.
The grave violations of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly due to the recent Israeli military attacks against the occupied Gaza Strip…
Gaza is not, of course, occupied and Egypt, one of the sponsors, holds the southern border of Gaza closed and generally prevents movement of Palestinians in and out of Gaza. Pakistan’s response to this week’s string of terror bombings may not fully comply with the spirit of the Goldstone report either.
The subsequent announcement of the International Independent Fact-finding mission “….an independent fact-finding mission to investigate international human rights and humanitarian law violations related to the recent conflict in the Gaza Strip” immediately assumed such violations had taken place – not even the typically wimpy term “alleged violations” was allowed to provide wiggle room to possibly derail the commission from its appointed task of condemning Israel.
Indeed, although attention has been focused on the issue of Gaza in the Council’s deliberations this week, the final Resolution reads like a grab-bag of every complaint that could ever have been thrown at Israel, especially with any connection to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.
If anything could demonstrate the truly Oz-like world of UN politics, today’s news brings the following stunning item in Ha’aretz – Goldstone criticized the UNHRC’s endorsement of his own report!!
South African jurist Richard Goldstone, who headed a United Nations investigation into the conduct of Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas during Israel’s offensive in Gaza last winter, criticized on Friday the United Nations Human Rights Council’s decision to endorse the report his commission had compiled.
According to the Washington Post, “The resolution did not mention Hamas by name, though it did condemn “all targeting of civilians,” a clause apparently added after Goldstone publicly criticized the exclusion of the Islamist group from the text”. A day late, and a mile short, this “as-a-Jew” defender of the human rights of everyone except Jews suddenly realized what a Judas sheep he had become.
There is, in fact, no need to read the report in order to anticipate its methods and conclusions. It is more interesting to look at how it has been received, and what actions will be taken as a result.
The UNHRC comprises only forty seven of the UN’s member states on a multi-year rotating basis. It was primarily powerful Western countries sitting on the Council that voted and lobbied against the endorsement of the report and the resolution that calls on the United Nations to refer Israel to the International Court of Justice if it does not investigate alleged violations of international law on its own.
The countries that voted against the resolution included the U.S., Italy, Holland, Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine. Britain and France are represented on the Council and lobbied against adoption of the resolution, then “did not vote” – apparently there is a difference between “abstaining” and “not voting”. Twenty five members voted in favor of the resolution, eleven abstained and five “did not vote”.*
Several of those voting in favor read like a rogue’s gallery of some of the worst human rights abusers in the world – notably China and Russia as two of the more important states. The Washington Post article further indicates that there is little enthusiasm among the Western powers for “support[ing] prosecution by the international court if Israel does not act”.
Rather than delving into the numerous errors and fabrications in the report that have already been pointed out, I find it interesting to examine the reasons for the largely Western backlash against the report. What are the reasons for the broad consensus among Western nations that this report was, in fact, highly damaging to the ability of countries faced with enemies similar to the Hamas to successfully prosecute asymmetrical warfare? By reducing the Council’s ability to deal fairly with asymmetrical terrorism, the UNHRC has scored an “own goal” which further diminishes it already low credibility.
The problem of asymmetrical warfare has been developing for a long time. Mao’s injunction that “The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea” sums up the strategy concisely and indirectly demonstrates the problem facing the forces opposed to guerilla or terrorist groups. How does one catch the right fish in one’s net, while not inflicting harm on the other fish?
Israel has faced the problem in a particularly difficult and nasty form, with the use by Palestinian terrorists and Hizbollah in Lebanon of their population among whom they live as human shields. The principle under which Hamas and Hizbollah operate, like other terror or separatist groups elsewhere is to wage warfare from among a civilian population, perhaps even one that does not wish to participate in the terrorists’ risky adventure, among whom they hide their munitions and from among whom they launch the rockets and carry out attacks on Israel. They invite retaliation knowing that even if they lose some of their own, the chances are high that many of the other civilian “fish” will be killed and wounded. This provides superb propaganda opportunities for the terrorists.
This is the core of the new “asymmetrical warfare” – if the more powerful opponent (Israel) responds, it loses the PR war due to the automatic outcry of a knee-jerk Western liberal public conditioned to feel guilt over “civilian casualties” (unless inflicted by one non-Western group upon another as is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) without worrying about the causes. If Israel does not respond, it loses the actual war and has to allow indiscriminate slaughter of its own civilians.
To a large extent, for most of the last 10 or 20 years, Israel has been able to reduce the collateral damage through the use of excellent on-the-ground intelligence and advanced technology. As a result, it is able to identify and surgically remove terrorists with limited collateral damage. Nevertheless, the Guardian and media sharing the GWV have created a cause célèbre around the resultant death of any civilians accidentally killed who were being used by chance or on purpose as human shields as the terrorists “swim” among them. During “Cast Lead”, the problem was greatly magnified despite all efforts to reduce collateral damage. On the other hand, the Guardian and others like it demonstrate no such false sympathy for the hundreds and thousands of Moslems killed by other Moslems day in and day out – in fact, the CIF moderators have always removed any references to lists of such internecine attacks in their constant attempts to show the “brighter side” of a supposedly peaceful Islam.
Britain faced the problem of asymmetrical warfare in Ireland during the uprisings under leaders such as Michael Collins, in South Africa with the Boers, and in India before Gandhi’s “passive resistance”. The British response was simply to use brute force to suppress the uprisings, and on the whole they could get away with it (for a time) thanks to a combination of the British public’s jingoism and the far less developed media of the time. Today, we see similar problems in Iraq and Afghanistan for the US, UK and NATO. In Europe countries such as Spain have to deal still with the Basques, and the problem of Moslem terrorism throughout Europe is real and increasing – how does one extract the jihadi from his broader community without alienating or damaging that community?
Yet another complication is the fact that the conventions that have been drafted to reduce collateral civilian damage in conflicts between nation-states are being applied selectively to certain asymmetrical conflicts, such as Israel’s actions against Hamas and Hizbollah. Thus, we hear much about “international law” and the “Geneva Conventions”, which are then applied solely to the stronger party – the nation-state – in this case, Israel. The idea of applying international law to Hamas or similar groups is shrugged off, since the proponents of “international law” understand that there is no chance of a group like Hamas of adhering to such “law” or “conventions” and no way to bring them to book. The UNHRC believes it can bring Israelis to court, but it knows that it cannot do the same for Hamas violators of human rights – for example, those who ordered and carried out the incessant rocket attacks against civilians in the towns and settlements around Gaza.
Where does this leave the powerful countries dealing with terrorism, separatism, and a variety of “isms” all of which are using the idea of asymmetrical warfare to gain media attention and the support of a gullible Western public? For, although countries like Russia and China face the same problem their citizens seem little worried by, say, Chechnya or the fate of the Uyghurs. They may even be pleased that their diplomats have yet another stick with which to beat the West.
This is where Goldstone and his commission scored an own goal. If the Western countries facing asymmetrical warfare – for example, in Afghanistan, or Iraq – were to subject themselves to the same biased scrutiny as Goldstone inflicted on Israel, they would at best have to leave Iraq and Afghanistan immediately, and at worst send their military leaders and politicians to stand trial in a court convened by countries whose record on human rights is generally disgusting. They will take care that this does not happen.
The following report is a tragic-comic example of an attempt to follow Israel’s lead in warning civilians of an impending attack by distributing warning leaflets from the air:
A box of leaflets dropped by an RAF plane in Afghanistan landed on and killed a young girl, the Ministry of Defence said.
The box should have broken apart in mid-air but struck the young girl intact. She was taken to a hospital in Kandahar where she died. The leaflets were dropped over a rural area of Helmand province by an RAF C130 Hercules on June 23.
Will that pilot, his commander, or members of the British Government be ever brought to trial? Perhaps, if the Goldstone report’s recommendations were adopted. In fact, of course, never.
In fact, rather than creating a climate of condemnation, Goldstone is more likely to have created a conspiracy of silence – there are too many countries facing current or perceived future enemies using asymmetrical warfare, not only in remote places like Afghanistan and the Waziri region of Pakistan, even from within Europe (e.g., Germany) , the UK , the US, Australia , Turkey, India and so on.
Thus, for fear of finding themselves next in the dock as a result of condemning Israel for what they are doing on a far larger scale – you cannot compare a 3-4 week assault on Gaza with years of grinding havoc and mayhem in Iraq and Afghanistan – I expect countries such as the US, UK, and most European countries to distance themselves from the Goldstone report. They know only too well that they are fighting wars similar to those faced by Israel – and that they are not nearly as good at avoiding civilian casualties as Israel is. The death toll they have inflicted on helpless civilians dwarfs anything Israel can be accused of.
The Goldstone Commission has actually weakened what little bite “international law” has. By creating a biased report that all but ignores the provocations Israel faced for years and taking extreme positions regarding inevitable civilian causalities that are part and parcel of the strategy of groups like Hamas, by insisting on the need to punish those carrying out a legitimate operation in self defense, Goldstone kicked the ball squarely back through the goalposts of the UNHRC. There cannot be a diplomat at today’s meeting who is not wondering whether, in similar circumstances, it would be he or she that would be led to the guillotine, and his or her head that the rabid crowd would be demanding.
The result will be the quiet shelving of the report after the appropriate diplomatic Kaddish is said over it.
—————-
* In favor: (25) – Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Djbouti, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia.
Against: (6) – US, Italy, Holland, Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine.
Abstaining: (11) – Belgium, Bosnia, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gabon, Japan, Mexico, Norway, South Korea, Slovenia, Uruguay.
Did not vote: (5) – Britain, France, Madagascar, Kyrgyzstan and Angola did not vote.
In the 1960s the Soviet government under Nikita Kruschev ushered in the era of “punitive psychology.” It attempted to silence dissent and disagreement with its policies by labelling the dissenters criminally insane, incarcerating them in mental hospitals and forcing strong psychotropic medication and electroconvulsive therapy on them. Within that lexicon of the Soviet regime, any disagreement became “mad” rather than only “bad,” no doubt starting from the premise that no-one takes seriously what a “mad” person says. The world condemned the USSR for these deliberate human rights abuses.
It is hardly surprising, although it is disturbing, to note that a more subtle but no less insidious variant of this attempt to use alleged mental health abuses (this time of Palestinians) is trying to become acceptable as another avenue for the demonisation of Israel and silencing those who speak out in her support.
Tony Lerman writes on Comment is Free about Psychoactive, an organisation which has laudable enough aims on the surface – to examine the psychological effects of the Israel/Palestine conflict on the antagonists and intends to hold a conference at Birkbeck College in London.
However, if we look more closely at Pscychoactive’s web page we see that it is predominantly concerned with the psychological effects of violence on Palestinians and that should alert the reader to its real agenda. Nowhere, for example, are mentioned the psychological effects on Israeli civilians of the continued shelling of Sderot and surrounding areas by the “democratically elected” Hamas and its ignominious fellow travellers long before Cast Lead. Nor does it examine the effects on the developing psyches of Palestinian children and young people as a result of Hamas deliberately placing them in danger by using them as human shields, and teaching them in its schools and kindergartens that the apotheosis of their existence is to commit suicide among Israeli Jews.
Lerman’s article is the usual one-sided opinion piece, and too short to look at all sides of this debate even adequately, much less to do it justice but it is, after all, published on Comment is Free. In true Lerman/CiF fashion he quotes only from the sources which shore up his misguided views.
He is no psychologist either, which of course begs the question as to why he dares to broach the topic at all. True, he admits that
“..any discussion of the Israel-Palestine conflict which tries to take a psychological or psychoanalytical approach is bound to enter very difficult mental territory and also to attract some scepticism from those who see the problems as essentially political and requiring political solutions…”
nevertheless he tries, and very ineptly to lead us up that primrose path.
Lerman refers to Professor Uri Hadar of Tel Aviv University, an Israeli psychologist, who sought to explain “Israeli brutality towards Palestinians and what enables it..” but Lerman studiously avoids any mention of the extensive Israeli and other research into the effects of suicide terror on Israeli civilians. He also fails to tell us that Hadar is a radical anti-Zionist and is among the 500 signatories to an anti-Israel petition of 5th January 2009, in which may be seen:
“…It is the signatories’ belief that Israel’s atrocities will not cease without a massive intervention by the international community…”
Neither does Lerman tell us that Prof Lynne Segal, the organiser of this conference, is a member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians, nor that the conference at Birkbeck on 16 October will be sponsored by Independent Jewish Voices, which according to Melanie Phillips is a front for advancing anti-Zionist agenda.
Lerman is of course writing “as-a-Jew” and in doing so he does not hesitate to wheel out the opinions of any other Jews which he can bend to his tendentious argument. He has become infamous of late for his selectivity in quoting his sources – notable was his omission of the first part of the title of Robin Shepherd’s “A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with the Jews” in one of his previous articles, so that he could pour undeserved scorn on the author and the erudite arguments in it. Readers will remember the response to Robin Shepherd by Comment is Free’s Editors, when Shepherd asked for the right to reply. Given Lerman’s record, therefore, readers may do well to question whether these people actually said what Lerman attributed to them or whether he is being selective yet again.
We also have echoes of the statement by disgraced Labour MP, Shahid Malik, (erroneous and offensive in equal measure) that Muslims are the new Jews, when Lerman quotes Primo Levi’s “Everybody is somebody’s Jew…”
I doubt that I am alone in feeling profoundly uncomfortable about the ease with which some members of the professions feel constrained to denigrate Israel for her misdeeds, real or imagined, on the world stage, as if their professional status alone is enough to underwrite the legitimacy of those claims.
The trailblazers in this are Physicians for Human Rights, one of whose more infamous stories dealt with the alleged death from cancer of Muhammad al-Harrani, which was said to have occurred because he was kept waiting in Gaza for chemotherapy. The story was untrue but this did not prevent the denunciation by Physicians for Human Rights of Israel’s Shin Bet for allowing this to happen. The organisation was informed of the man’s death by the grieving brother. A week later, however, he was found alive. The brother had lied. He didn’t want the patient vetted first, since he was suspected of terrorism. Shin Bet rebuked the Physicians for not checking the story.
Since Cast Lead, psychotherapy has also jumped on the bandwagon in the shape of a particularly egregious and intellectually dishonest article in the March 2009 issue of “Therapy Today”, the monthly journal of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, entitled “To Resist is to Exist.” The two authors, Martin Kemp and Eliana Pinto, joined a “fact finding mission” to Gaza the bias of which was summed up as follows by Irwin J Mansdorf of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East:
“..To blindly accept the assertion of intentional Israeli oppression against Palestinians as fact and to then offer a banal and baseless psychodynamic interpretation that cites European treatment of the Jews as being related to it not only stretches the bounds of acceptable scientific discourse, it also defames and insults the experience of so many Jews that have either personally been victims of this terrible injustice or have parents and relatives who have. Nowhere is the history of the conflict presented by Kemp and Pinto. Nowhere do they note that for many Palestinians, including the Hamas party that rules Gaza, the entire state of Israel and not only the West Bank is ‘occupied’. …”
Nowhere in their reply in a later edition of “Therapy Today” did Kemp and Pinto acknowledge that they had taken on board any criticisms of their article. They showed no consciousness of the hurt and distress they had caused by their one-sided reporting and neither did they evidence that they had accepted and understood the meaning of the suffering of the residents of southern Israel as a result of shelling from Gaza.
It seems, therefore, that unless Psychoactive takes extreme care (which does not look at all likely from the impression given by its web page and the acknowledged bias of its prime movers) it will tread the same weary path of mindless condemnation of Israel as do Physicians for Human Rights and professionally-accredited counsellors like Kemp and Pinto.
Israel’s detractors care little about the untruths or distortions they make use of in their indecent haste to excoriate her.
That being the case, it is a forlorn hope indeed to expect anything other from Tony Lerman and Comment is Free.
This is a guest post from AKUS
I read The dark side of Abe Hayeem by Dov of dayvidsayffer.com on CiF Watch with great interest, and applaud every word. I want to add some more, focusing on Hayeem’s strange obsessiveness and the distortions in his article, so typical of what appears on CiF.
The whole of Hayeem’s article in the Guardian and the premise that drives Hayeem are totally bizarre. One cannot imagine a similar article being written about any other city in the world, no matter how long their history and how blood-drenched their streets. The crime of Tel Aviv’s success, however, appears to be a worthy target for the Guardian’s condemnation. So they round up self-styled “architect” Abe Hayeem for the attack.
(I have spent an hour looking for any signs at all on the internet of Hayeem’s architectural creations, and have not found a single mention of his work. His name is splashed all over the net typically as “Jewish-British architect Abe Hayeem” or “Abe Hayeem, director of Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine”, but I cannot find a single example of his actual architecture).
I live in the US. I do not rush around trying to find a blog to publish an article on “the dark side of London” or the “dark side of Moscow” because the British or the Russian Embassy holds an exhibition showing the best sides of London or Moscow, both of which surely have their “dark sides”. Only when an exhibition is created showing the truly remarkable – miraculous is not too strong a word – growth and success of the vibrant, exciting new city of Tel Aviv after only 100 years do the knee-jerk reflexes of the obsessed Israel-bashers spring into action.
In many ways, this article demonstrates the strange sickness that drives people like Hayeem and his fellow ex-Iraqi Jew Rachel Shabi – an obsession with demonizing a country which they seem to hate with a passion not reserved for any other, including, oddly enough, the very country that tossed them and their families out – Iraq.
I have an image of the Hayeem and Shabi families sitting around the dining room table in London, mourning the fact that one can’t get true Iraqi humus and pita in “exile”, recounting their fantasies of the golden days in Iraq and incessantly blaming Israel for the fact that they cannot return to the country that they had to leave in fear for their lives.
Hayeem even goes so far as to recall how he and his family got on so well with their Moslem neighbors – and then blames Israel because the Iraqis threw the Jews out!! A version, I suppose, of the Stockholm syndrome. His good neighbors were merely helpless actors in a Mossad plot:
Regarding Iraqi Jews, my family loved living in Iraq and spoke fondly of their Arab neighbors. Iraqi Jews always regretted leaving. It is well known how Mossad agents stirred up trouble, to the extent of bombing the Baghdad Synagogue, to frighten Iraqi Jews into leaving.
Israel’s agenda was to create the flight of Arab Jews, to act as a quid pro quo for ethnically cleansing the Palestinians. Many Arab countries like Libya and Morocco tried to stop their Jews from leaving.
What an interesting turn of phrase – and “many Arab countries tried to stop their Jews from leaving”.
Many – but not, apparently Iraq, and with little success – those damn Jews just insisted on getting up and leaving paradise.
“Their Jews” – the Jews they “owned”?
“Stop from leaving” – they were all leaving because the Mossad “stirred up trouble” – in Iraq”? They also had no will of their own and could not rely on the goodwill of their neighbors?
What, after all, is the horrendous crime committed by Tel Aviv and its inhabitants?
The city grew, and flourished, despite wars, despite being bombed by the Egyptians, despite being built on sand dunes where no sensible person would have paid a dollar for the unusable land – whether Hayeem likes to admit it or not. It grew so much that – gasp! horrors! – it absorbed a few miserable nearby Arab villages and their dilapidated hovels into its municipal territory. A “crime” only the Jews could commit, apparently – despite the fact that “as-an-Architect” Hayeem must know that this has happened all over the world, throughout history, to any metropolitan area.
It is the galling success of the Zionist enterprise, and, in this case, this city of Tel Aviv which never existed prior to 1909 that really hurts the Israel-basing misanthropes like Hayeem and Shabi that rush to find fault with every Israeli success. The most cursory inspection of photographs of pre-Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and the reports of those like David Ben Gurion arriving there shows nothing but a dilapidated, dingy, run-down, crumbling set of buildings alongside a little harbor that was almost useless for anything but small fishing boats.
Yet Hayeem, quoting Yonathan Mendel, miraculously transforms Jaffa in 1909 from a miserable little seaside village forgotten in Palestine to a “Palestinian city” even before the Palestinians learned from Arafat to call themselves “Palestinians”, carefully conflating it with the much improved situation is achieved due to the flourishing sister-city next door:
probably the most prosperous and cosmopolitan of all Palestinian cities, with a port, an industry (Jaffa oranges), an international school system and a lively cultural life.
In fact – most likely not, until Tel Aviv was funded and eventually created, the market for goods and labor that allowed Jaffa to start growing after a millennium of somnolence.
The “Jaffa oranges” owe their success to –the Templars and – Jewish settlers of mandatory Palestine:
The first fruits to carry the “Jaffa orange” brand were from an agricultural colony of the Temple Society in Sarona (commonly pronounced Sharona, est. 1871).
According to the Hope Simpson Royal Commission Report of 1930,
The cultivation of the orange, introduced by the Arabs before the commencement of Jewish settlement, has developed to a very great extent in consequence of that settlement [i.e., the Zionist settlers working the land; emphasis added]. There is no doubt that the pitch of perfection to which the technique of plantation and cultivation of the orange and grape-fruit have been brought in Palestine is due to the scientific methods of the Jewish agriculturist. [emphasis added]
Take a look at this map of Jaffa and environs from 1912.
The “industry of “Jaffa Oranges” was simply the few groves of oranges visible in the map, a fraction of what later became, in fact, a major export industry for the Yishuv and Israel due to those Jewish improvements in the quality and yield mentioned in the Simpson report and at the time of Tel Aviv’s founding was little more than a substance crop. The river you see is the Yarkon – el Awja in Arabic, and just north of it is Sheikh Munis, mentioned by Hayeem, now buried under Ramat Aviv, and if there was no traffic, about a 10 minute drive from central Tel Aviv. Once again, the tiny scale of geography in Israel is lost in Hayeem’s article. Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city, would fit very comfortably in any of the world’s major metropolises.
Then look at this photograph
or this photograph from a similar period
and this view of the “port” showing, probably, Andromeda’s Rocks.
Not exactly a picture of a “prosperous and cosmopolitan” “city” that Hayeem paints (a miserable, run down sea-side village was the reality).
It was the establishment of its sister city, Tel Aviv and the rest of the Yishuv enterprise which resulted in enormous economic benefits to Jaffa as they did throughout Mandate Palestine. Rather than condemning Tel Aviv, Hayeem should have come to praise it – Jaffa’s spectacular growth, like so much of the Arab areas in mandatory Palestine, was a direct consequence of Jewish immigration and the rapidly growing economy in the area as a result!
Hayeem sneaks in the usual myth about Jews and Arabs living happily together (under the Ottomans, no less!!) – Jews become “Palestinian Jews” living in Jaffa, to make sure we understand that the entire area now known as Israel is really “Palestine” – with the exception, of course, of Jordan, which in fact really is “Palestine” as envisaged and set up by the British Colonial Office!!
For an excellent example of how unhappily the two communities in fact lived together in 1921 – 12 years after the founding of Tel Aviv, see here. This report includes the following:
The riot resulted in the deaths of 47 Jews and 48 Arabs, with 146 Jews and 73 Arabs being wounded. Most Arab casualties resulted from clashes with British forces attempting to restore order.
Thousands of Jewish residents of Jaffa fled for Tel Aviv and were temporarily housed in tent camps on the beach. Tel Aviv had been previously lobbying for independent status [and] became a separate city due in part to the riots. However Tel Aviv was still dependent on Jaffa [it had only been founded two years earlier], which supplied it with food, services, and was the place of employment for most residents of the new city.
Finally, we have the usual cry of one of the Guardian’s “as-a-Jews” – the attempt to draw a line between “good Jews” and those nasty “Zionist Jews”. He refers to the “Palestinian Jews” as a sort of “good Jew” – we are intended to believe that these are dark-skinned Jews happily living with their Arab neighbors, since, according to Hayeem, it was those “other Jews” who are the evil ones – the Jews who founded Tel Aviv are “white European Jews” indulging in a “colonial enterprise” – by buying 12 acres of some unoccupied sand-dunes. This of course plays to another of the favorite exiled-British Iraqi Jewish themes – the ill-treatment of Mizrachi Jews by their Ashkenazi cousins so celebrated by Shabi.
Well, I could go on and on – the whole article is a tissue of lies, fabrications, and baseless insinuations strung together by a desperate Israel-basher, seeking any stick with which to beat Israel – especially for its successes.
This is a guest post from Dov of dayvidsaffer.com
In an article that would not be out of place were it published by the Institute for Historical Review, the Guardian enlists the services of Abe Hayeem to further its campaign to de-legitimise Israel. Hayeem has all the right credentials for the job, he’s Jewish, hates Israel, is involved with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and is a founder of Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, so in Guardian speak he’s the ideal type of Jew.
In his article “The dark side of Tel Aviv” Hayeem paints a picture of a city that was built on colonialism and conquest, a city that ethnically cleansed itself of its Arab residents, a city that quite frankly bares no resemblance to the one that gave shelter to the thousands of Jews who fled Jaffa for a quieter life during the days of the British mandate.
There are huge problems with his article, from the very first sentence, so much so that I feel compelled, as the child of a Tel Avivi, to correct his opening statement. “Tel Aviv”, he claims is , “a city said to date from 1909″ is typical Guardian speak. His intonation here is to challenge the very history of the area. It is not “said”, it was. Whilst his revisionist history might claim otherwise, Tel Aviv WAS founded in 1909, by a number of Jews who had a year earlier bought 12 acres of dunes north east of Jaffa, with the aim of building a garden suburb on the outskirts of the pre-biblical city.
Hayeem then goes on to claim:
While there is much on the surface that makes Tel Aviv enticing, this picture must be not be allowed to mask the dark underlying history of ethnic cleansing and land expropriation on which Tel Aviv was built. . .
In reality neither ethnic cleansing nor land expropriation took place. The fledgling city continued to grow on bought land until 1917 when the Turks expelled all the Jews from the area. But as his audience is the Guardian, no need to let facts get in the way of a good story.
And telling stories is something Hayeem is very good at. A few years ago he set up an organisation called Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine. The Independent ran a glowing piece on this organisation that held its first meeting in the office of Lord Richard Rogers, who, apparently gave a ten minute welcome before excusing himself from the meeting. The group’s beliefs are laid out on their website are defined as:
We share the international condemnation of the continuing annexation and fragmentation of Palestinian land through the expansion of illegal settlements and outposts and the construction of the Separation Wall in defiance of international law.
We hold all design and construction professionals involved in projects that appropriate land and natural resources from Palestinian territory to be complicit in social, political and economic oppression, and to be in violation of their professional ethics.
The only problem here is that Hayeem and his merry band of followers see all of Israel as Palestinian land – to his credit however Lord Rogers has distanced himself from the group for various reasons that Adloyada goes into in some depth. The APJP on its home page talks about Palestine and the Occupied Territories, and as the maps on their home page show us they claim that most of Palestine is now occupied. Amazingly, although unsurprisingly, this group of planners fail to mention that prior to 1917 ‘historic’ Palestine also included the land mass known as today as Jordan, for had they actually included it, their whole basic claim of colonialism would be diminished.
But I digress, which is actually easy to do when discussing Hayeem! To prove his credentials, in the article Hayeem challenges the real historiography of the city whilst laying baseless and unfounded claims, which are only verified by groups that have been involved with trying to re-write the history of the region. He quotes organisations in his article as Israeli whilst omitting to inform the ever so uninformed Guardian readers that, for example, Zochrot, solely espouse a Palestinian narrative, so much so that the url uses the term nakba.
But, as Ami Issaroff has noted, re-writing the narrative on Tel Aviv is all the rage right now after Naomi Klein, Danny Glover, Eve Ensler and a few other Hollywood luvvies pushed for a boycott of the Toronto film festival because festival organisers were going to show a number of Israeli films at the City to City event, which this year was celebrating Tel Aviv’s centennial. And after all, if Hollywood luvvies are in on the act why should the Guardian not join in with the fun?
I found this solitary letter from a human rights lawyer who deals principally with alleged infringements of Palestinian human rights, together with a rather selective and lame response, lurking among the online letters to Guardian Unlimited of 6th October 2009. Of course no comments were allowed. The title of the letter gives us a clue about the intentions and political bent of the first contributor – none other than Daniel Machover, a human rights lawyer and British/Israeli citizen who joined the ranks of the ignominious when he tried and failed to effect the arrest of Maj-Gen. (res.) Doron Almog, in London, for alleged war crimes. (Machover was awarded the title of “Mamzer of the Month” for that little escapade by the Lion of Zion blog in February 2008).
Of course the good news is that the Goldstone Report, another plunge into the depths of ignominy, this time by a judge who is a Jew and who, according to his family, “loves Israel”, will not now be presented to the UN Human Rights Council.
I hope that readers will bear with me if I, unlike our counterparts on the dark side, take some time to contextualise why the removal of the Goldstone Report from the UN agenda (although it was as a result of American intervention) is at least a small step towards restoring a sense of ethical conduct and perhaps lessening bias against Israel at the UN:
We know that Goldstone was not the first to be asked to head up the UN mission to investigate alleged war crimes by Israel in Gaza in 2008/2009. Mary Robinson, the former Irish President and hardly an unbiased critic of Israel refused it, saying that it smacked more of politics than of human rights. Goldstone was reported to have said that he was “shocked” that he had been invited to head the mission but he nevertheless undertook the task. He is quoted by Richard Landes to have said:
“…I accepted because my fellow commissioners are professionals committed to an objective, fact-based investigation…
It is now widely accepted that (given the makeup of the UN Human Rights Committee) Goldstone was invited because he was a Jew and that the mission’s findings against Israel were a “done deal” before its visit to Gaza.
The neutrality of the mission was compromised before it began which is one reason for Israel’s refusal to co-operate with it. Professor Christine Chinkin, one of the members, had been a signatory to an open letter in “The Times Online” which made clear her anti-Israel bias. Goldstone knew this but would not recuse her or himself resign from the mission.
It is also known that the mission was accompanied throughout its visit to Gaza by Hamas officials.
During the Commission’s five-month investigation, a handful of Israelis were allowed a few hours to testify about Hamas terror attacks. Photos taken while an Israeli described their ordeal show Richard Goldstone taking a nap!
The Israeli Government’s initial response to the report from this spurious and relentlessly biased “fact-finding” mission was published on 29th September 2009, and contained the following paragraphs which summed up its opinion of it:
[3] … the Report advances a narrative which ignores the threats to Israeli civilians, as well as Israel’s extensive diplomatic and political efforts to avoid the outbreak of hostilities. In this narrative self defense finds no place – Israel’s defensive operation was nothing other than a “deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population” (¶ 1690(2)1).
4. In support of this vicious and unfounded assertion, the Report has no qualms about bending both facts and law. In the spirit of the one-sided mandate it was given by the HRC resolution, and the clearly stated political prejudices of some of its Members, the Mission carefully selected its witnesses and the incidents it chose to investigate for clearly political ends. Yet even within this self-selected body of evidence, the Report engages in creative editing, misrepresentations of facts and law, and repeatedly adopts evidentiary double standards, attributing credibility to every anti-Israel allegation and invariably dismissing evidence that indicates any wrongdoing by Hamas. [emphasis added]
In light of the foregoing, you would hope that any self-respecting international body, or a thinking individual would agree that any resolutions or motions of censure which might result from such a travesty should not be countenanced by a UN committee. In the case of the Guardian in general however, (note, the article was not published on CiF) you would be very, very wrong.
For we have Daniel Machover, another darling of the anti-Israel establishment who is a member of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights inveighing against this “unfairness.” Machover writes of accountability for the victims of Gaza, carefully ignoring (as of course did the Goldstone mission itself) the evidence of experts such as Col Richard Kemp who could testify about the lengths to which the IDF were prepared to go and did go to avoid civilian casualties wherever possible. Dr. Mirela Siderer testified about her experience of being shelled, only for that testimony to be almost ignored.
Machover quotes Goldstone’s accusation against the IDF of war crimes and “possible crimes against humanity” and says that “Goldstone’s words cannot be improved on.” (They can and were; indeed Goldstone himself subsequently backtracked in respect of the allegations against Israel of war crimes. Interviewed on CNN, Goldstone said that despite the report, Israel’s actions could not be compared to war crimes around the world that have taken place in recent years, such as those committed in Yugoslavia. “I don’t like making comparisons,” he said, (which of course begs the question as to why the mission which bears his name did and so erroneously).
But wait … what’s this? At the end of the article is a shorter statement by one Adam Glantz of Hendon, Viriginia, US, which says among other things that the Goldstone report is “less than half a story” because it does not investigate Hamas’ excesses. Mr Glantz fails to mention the evidentiary double standards and the misrepresentations of law and fact which fatally compromise the rigour and honesty of the Goldstone report which Machover wants us to accept and take action on. Perhaps Mr Glantz was not allowed to do so – this is, of course, Guardian On Line. Who, indeed, is Adam Glanz? The article gives no biography for him. Is he somehow meant to act as spokesman for us all, and to lessen criticism of The Guardian’s inherent anti-Israel bias? (Note to Guardian Editors – that will not work!)
Perhaps readers would like to share their opinions about what action should be taken on the Goldstone Report. My own suggestion is none at all. It should be allowed to rot alongside all the other biased decisions against Israel which have disgraced the UN since Israel’s inception. Goldstone himself has been shunned by his own community for the shameful way in which he conducted the enquiry. He will have to work hard to become acceptable and believable again to them and to his colleagues.
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
The CiF Routine
October 24, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: Antisemitism, Biased Moderation, Comment is Free, Guardian, Michael Lerner, Obsession, Richard Goldstone | by Maimon | 19 comments
CiF-veterans knew what to expect when the Guardian published Harold Evans’ critique of the Goldstone report, which Evans condemned as “A moral atrocity”. Obviously, this sound verdict could only elicit howls of protest by the assorted antisemites and Israel-bashers who are drawn to Cif for their daily fix of “down-with-Israel” delirium.
And it was equally obvious that CiF wouldn’t wait long to provide what the crowds were clamoring for: The next day, Michael Lerner – excuse me: RABBI Michael Lerner – dismissed Evans’ piece as a “screed” and opined that the “global choir of ethical cretins who condemn Goldstone’s Gaza report do Israel no favours.” If you are offended by the “ethical cretins”, you simply demonstrate your inability to appreciate political correctness a la GWV, and in any case, Georgina Henry herself made an appearance to assure everyone that it wasn’t meant “to offend”, it was just “colloquial” and “general”, and the “Guardian’s style guide” (oh-la-la) would ponder the question just how stylish Rabbi Lerner’s general colloquialism/colloquial generalism really truly was.
Naturally, the commentariat adored the good Rabbi’s pious pc-stylishness, but just to be on the safe side and to really make up for allowing Evans to call a spade a spade, CiF also wheeled in none other than Richard Goldstone himself.
True to form, Goldstone opened his piece with the bold claim: “Five weeks after the release of the report of the fact-finding mission on Gaza, there has been no attempt by any of its critics to come to grips with its substance.” Well, it’s not the first time Goldstone makes a claim that would be kind of difficult to support by facts: Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has set up a website that perhaps doesn’t quite “come to grips” with the “substance” of the Goldstone report, but it does show that there isn’t all that much “substance” to it, and a group of bloggers have set up a website that offers many detailed and devastating rebuttals of Goldstone’s report from a variety of sources.
And then there is of course this authoritative verdict about the Goldstone report: “If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.” Quite so.
Oh, you wonder who said this? Well, this is the eminently venerable (?) Judge Goldstone judging the Goldstone report in a recent interview with the Forward…
And Goldstone was good enough to elaborate why his report wasn’t really worth all that much: referring to a similar report that had been prepared in the 1990s for Yugoslavia, Goldstone reminisced:
You see how simple it is: Richard Goldstone wouldn’t be embarrassed if it turned out that the outrageous accusations he leveled against Israel and the IDF were shown to be baseless. And you know what: Richard Goldstone is right. Frivolous accusations against Israel is all that it takes – they quickly take on the aura of “facts” and dominate the headlines for weeks and months on end, generating floods of enraged comments and talkbacks demonizing Israel, and when it turns out that there was no evidence to back up the allegations, it won’t be much more than an obscure news item placed in a not too conspicuous spot. We have been through this, and there is a good name for it: the “Jenin massacre syndrome”.
Remember Jenin? Back then, a Guardian editorial opined that “Israel’s actions in Jenin were every bit as repellent as Osama Bin Laden’s attack on New York on September 11.” That was in April 2002. But what do you know: it took just some six years, and presto, there was this follow-up – in the Jerusalem Post: “‘Guardian’ editor apologizes for Jenin editorial.”
This belated apology came during a session at the 2008 Jewish Book Week, where Alan Rusbridger even said that Israel is a “moral necessity” – which is obviously a view that would be news to most Guardian/CiF readers who come to the site because it can always be relied on to describe whatever Israel did and didn’t do as “repellent”. And whoever doesn’t agree can be dismissed as an “ethical cretin”.
The poisonous atmosphere that is thus created is not unique to the Guardian or CiF, but it is of course their editorial choice to endorse and reinforce this kind of atmosphere through a relentlessly negative coverage of all things Israeli and, by inevitable extension, of many things Jewish. As Mark Gardner emphasized in a recent post on the CTS blog:
Mark Gardner makes this point in his analysis of the undignified reaction of Human Rights Watch (HRW) to the criticism of the organization by its founder and long-time chairman, Robert Bernstein, who recently wrote in the New York Times:
HRW is for sure not the only organization that “has lost critical perspective” when it comes to Israel, and the evasions and distortions that Mark Gardner highlights in HRW’s response to Bernstein’s criticism will be familiar to anyone who has followed a few debates on CiF’s Israel-related threads. Indeed, as Mark Gardner points out:
CiF is certainly among the “media that share HRW’s milieu”: on CiF, the “antagonistic pro-Israel lobbyists” are dismissed as the GIYUS brigade, or the paid-per-comment Hasbara rent-a-crowd; the “pro-Israel snake in the grass” is easily translated into something “colloquial” and “general” like the “global choir of ethical cretins”; and if “Jews who don’t spend half their lives condemning Israel” want to raise any concerns about this kind of atmosphere – well, tough luck: they will find out that Jews who don’t spend half their lives condemning Israel are not entitled to have any valid concerns when it comes to anything even remotely related to Israel.
Share this:
Like this: