An interesting article on CiF; We can afford to be choosy by Douglas Murray.
Interesting in that it has implicit criticism for CiF itself.
It describes so accurately the Guardian cabal’s fanatical mindset.
CiF has quite a few ‘bees in its bonnet’ but they all crystalise around anything negative about the United States of America while paying very little attention to the negative aspects of virulently anti-US entities like Iran, Syria and North Korea.
Strangely, almost no interest is shown in China, India and Brazil (Ben Whites’s former home). These countries have been ‘fingered’ by inexperienced wannabes to be possible replacements to the superpower United States of America in the not too distant future without any particular speculation on the part of The Guardian about what awaits the Liberal Western Democracies when the US ‘implodes’.
Back to the article; it discusses the part that fanatics play in orientating the perception of the public to this or that occurrence. It also mentions the selective memory processes that will remember this atrocity by that terrorist but forget a different atrocity by another terrorist. There is a lot to be agreed with there. I have no accurate memory of the tens of atrocities committed in Pakistan and Afghanistan over the past five years. Yet I remember clearly the terrorist atrocity in Mumbai because Jews were singled out. I remember the terrorist atrocity in Argentina because a Jewish community was attacked by Iranian terrorists. So does that mean that I can’t really complain when a British racist rants?
Well. Yes I can. The terrorist action at the King David hotel in Jerusalem in the 1940s was the act of a terrorist group unsupported by Ben Gurion who even then, was the accepted leader of the Jewish community (Yishuv) in pre Israel mandated territory. And the action was against British soldiers, not against British civilians. Not that I in any way condone it. The fact is that it simply was not helpful to what followed.
And there we have it. In the Middle East, terrorism is complicating the situation and may bring about a ‘solution’ that will not be beneficial to the Palestinians. Yet the Guardian offers its ‘journalistic stage’ to groups that reject any compromise whatsoever (Hamas and Hezbollah). Even more, it vilifies those groups that may in the future choose compromise over a continued confrontation with a tiger.
To CiF/The Guardian, I say: Israel is not going away. It has survived more than 60 years of terrorist action by Arab states and Arab/Muslim organizations. Its economy is a ‘beacon of light’ for other countries however small. Its democracy, while far from perfect, is ‘up there’ with the leaders of those who profess with pride to be a ‘Western Liberal Democracy’. Its universities speak for themselves, as do its medical system and services. Its legal system is respected by so many including our neighbors.
To CiF/The Guardian, I say: in 40 years time, there will be very few surviving persons who can ‘claim’ to have been ‘expelled by the evil Zionists’. Their number is depleted year by year as I write, by natural means. Compromise is the only way forward. (Hint to the Guardian – that means both sides, not just Israel).
Now, in the past weeks, we have seen some minimal attempt at change on CiF (24 hr I/P threads being an example). I assume that this is due to a greater sensitivity to the widely accepted perception that CiF and by inference, The Guardian, gives a platform to Holocaust deniers and antisemites while claiming not to be antisemitic, only anti-Zionist.
While change is to be welcomed, this does not even begin to scratch the surface. By keeping the coterie of failed wannabe writers to ‘bash Israel’ is just playing to the hate Israel crowd who presumably need a constant stream of anti-Israel invective to survive until the next ‘fix’. And Berchmans and his ilk who have had so many of their comments deleted are still posting, while quality commentators like AKUS are ‘no more’.
Get a grip of yourselves. Your editorial and moderation policy is muddying the waters.
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
28 comments
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December 7, 2009 at 12:09 am
SickFrogman
The terrorist action at the King David hotel
The word “terrorist” is debatable, since the Irgun leadership’s deliberate intent was not to kill but to show the British could not govern and to disrupt the British military administration. That’s why the Irgun’s warning call, though ineffective, was sincere.
That is very different from the usual meaning of “terrorist” – namely, deliberate intent to kill as many – and as many civiians – as possible.
in Jerusalem in the 1940s was the act of a terrorist group unsupported by Ben Gurion who even then, was the accepted leader of the Jewish community (Yishuv) in pre Israel mandated territory.
Generally true.
And the action was against British soldiers, not against British civilians.
True. The area was so wellfortified that it was known as “Bevingrad”.
The fact is that it simply was not helpful to what followed.
Debatable. One could argue it did eventually achieve its purpose of getting the British to leave.
December 7, 2009 at 1:08 am
Margie
Truly a well of sense, this excellent article shows the mindset that drives the Guardianistas, the obsession with one tiny country that could magnify a sneeze into swine flu and a single case of swine flu into an epidemic. The classic case is Jenin – the ”Massacre” where the imagined smell of decaying bodies was so all-pervasive that it reached a journalist sitting in an office in London
This is the obsession that ignores the accomplishments of Israel whose creativity and contributions to humanity in the short 60 years of its strife torn life would have caused any other country to be encouraged, honoured and respected. Instead, jealous academicians trumpet their intention to boycott it.. Could lack of graciousness be the problem? Is it all indeed envy run wild?
December 7, 2009 at 2:22 am
Israelinurse
Call me an old cynic, but I put the latest minimal changes down to financial pressures rather than some Damascene moment.
December 7, 2009 at 4:15 am
JerusalemMite
Israelinurse
Call me an old cynic, but I put the latest minimal changes down to financial pressures rather than some Damascene moment.
Well. If one considers that the ‘comment’ rate has dropped substantially since the 24 hr threads appeared, one can assume that the hit rate has dropped substantially too.
The premium that advertisers have to pay would almost certainly be based on hits and these seem to have dropped substantially.
I would further assume that comments on this forum, (CW), are comments that CIF ‘misses’. A direct result of their manipulative ‘moderation’ policy and the timely appearance on the ‘scene’ of CIFWatch.
The Guardian may have been forced to balance getting more hits with a growing public perception that the paper’s management are obsessive extreme lefties who are on a crusade to try to delete the one Western Liberal Democracy from the Middle Eastern map.
December 7, 2009 at 4:57 am
Richard
Israelinurse, you said “Call me an old cynic, but I put the latest minimal changes down to financial pressures rather than some Damascene moment.”
Well if that’s true then maybe an organized campaign similar to that against the Berkely Daily Planet in which revenues dropped 60%.
http://www.berkeleyside.com/2009/11/28/is-the-daily-planet-anti-semitic-the-new-york-times-takes-a-look/
They call it an issue of free speech. I say that media can be used unethically as a weapon in an ideological battle. Much like the Guardian repeatedly and directly accusing Israel of war crimes without it proven in a court of law. Just because CIF hosts blogs and makes the Guardian think that they’re not responsible for “opinions,” we all know that opinions are like ass holes, and the guarian has dozens of them writing in CIF. Excuse me if I offend someone.
The freedom of speech issue means that you can air your opinion, but ust like you cannot accuse someone of rape or murder without proof without fear of consequences, the same can be said in the case of war crimes charges against Israel. For it brands both the state of Israel and Israelis with a mark that is then impossible to remove no matter what is proven.
I once speculated that a country can sue a newspaper for libel based on exactly this argument (click my username to read the blog post), and I firmly believe that a population can and should take action if they have been libelled based on racist or populist feelings, and not based on facts.
With this in mind, there is much that can be done. Its definitely something to consider.
December 7, 2009 at 5:06 am
Margie in Tel Aviv
Richard I was told that the Berkeley anti-Semitic rag reduced its staff of reporters from three members to one and soon that one will be out of a job
December 7, 2009 at 5:39 am
exiledlondoner
Richard,
“I once speculated that a country can sue a newspaper for libel based on exactly this argument, and I firmly believe that a population can and should take action if they have been libelled based on racist or populist feelings, and not based on facts.”
Theoretically a country could bring a case for libel (much as a commercial business could), though I don’t think that an individual citizen could, unless they could show they had personally been libeled.
The chances of it ever happening for accusations of war crimes is however pretty slight. In order to have any realistic chance of succeeding, they would have to allow all of the relevent witnesses to take the stand – in the case of cast lead, political, military and physical witnesses – and be subject to cross examination.
Then there comes the question “what if they fail?”
Libel law is unusual in the fact that the onus of proof falls on the defendent, but if the court finds in their favour, then the reputation of the plaintif is generally destroyed, and they become, in effect, guilty of the charges.
Given the amount of effort Israel goes to in order to keep its actions out of any non-Israeli court, I find it unlikely that it would allow such a case to go ahead.
December 7, 2009 at 6:03 am
cityca
Good article by Douglas Murray – thanks to WellofSense for commenting on it. As I can no longer post to CiF without premoderation which mostly means my posts disappear, I rarely bother visiting that site and rely on feedback from CiFWatch to find out what’s happening there.
I tend to agree with Israelinurse – its an economic change of heart, not an ethical one.
I was however very taken by Richard’s argument. I saw that your website started dealing with this back in January. Have you been able to take this any further forward, i.e. have you had discussions with lawyers either in Israel, the US or UK to explore this possibility?
I’ve just been on Chas N-B’s website, Oy Va Goy and re-reading his comments about the hypocrisy in the media makes me think that if we are to counter the overwhelming media bias against Israel, nothing gets people’s attention nowadays that the prospect of an expensive legal case, which results in a crippling final judgement.
There must be any number of lawyers, sympathetic to Israel’s case who might usefully make just such an argument in court. If none have come forward, don’t they believe it can be done?
Any thoughts?
December 7, 2009 at 6:05 am
Richard
Hi exiledlondoner,
I agree, I have no doubt that the libel issue in itself would be tricky if not impossible to pursue.
Though I also believe that if these claims can be proven to have encouraged millitants to continue to attack Israelis, and perpetuate the war, then there may be a case for individuals that were impacted in the war, whether they were physically injured, emotionally injured, or had their property destroyed, to make a claim in litigation.
With that in mind, class action lawsuits in which thousands if not tens of thousands of Israelis could contribute each a small amount of money to hire counsel and pursue these claims.
I know a person that did the research in the Arab press for the case against the Arab Bank, in which they proved that the Arab Bank was facilitating the payment to the families of “Shahids,” and were sued for aiding and abetting Palestinian terrorists. http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-13185358.html. I’ll bet the same strategy could be used here.
Of course finding that connection would be difficult. Though I have no doubt that if the Arab press were scoured (much like it was with the case against the Arab bank) those looking could find Hamas and Hebzulla militants parroting the cries of war crimes and using it as part of their reasoning for attacking Israeli (civillians).
December 7, 2009 at 6:11 am
sababa
Israelinurse, I guess we can only speculate as to what prompted the changes at Cif, but the slashing of debate time for the I/P threads is definitely drastic: they are now supposedly open for 24 hours, but it seems it’s more like just 12 hours or so, because they also close them for the night, i.e. British nighttime. One outcome is that American readers have hardly any chance to comment, and even Europeans only if they can take the time during the day. So nothing advantageous for Cif, because it means fewer comments, and if they want to keep their I/P keyboard warrior brigade happy, they have to commission now more articles to have something open for debate every day or so. I would imagine that this is an attempt to react to the criticism on this site, and perhaps they also realized that it was kind of odd that a British site would be so heavily dominated by I/P debates.
And the changes don’t end with that, because it seems there are definitely fewer of Seth Freedman’s variations on the same old theme; Silverstein also seems semi-retired, and they haven’t taken on any new Israel basher, which can hardly be due to lack of options.
December 7, 2009 at 6:27 am
getafirmgrip
get a grip of yourselves.
These two Georgina and Matt,should definitely get a grip of themselves.It’s a great way for these two to relieve their tensions,once these two get a firm grip of themselves.
December 7, 2009 at 6:33 am
Serendipity
This is a very good article, WellofSense, although when you say:
“…Compromise is the only way forward. (Hint to the Guardian – that means both sides, not just Israel)…
I believe you to be asking the impossible from the Arab/Muslim side. Tarek Heggy writes about “Our need for a culture of compromise” at
http://www.mideastweb.org/compromise.htm
In the article Heggy points up the influence of language on Arab/Muslim thought and psychology. He says:
“..Although Islamic scripture is totally compatible with a culture characterized by compromise, Muslim history (especially its Arab chapter) has proceeded in a spirit that is antithetical to the notion of compromise. Our recent history is made up largely of losses which could have been avoided had we had not persistently rejected the notion of compromise as tantamount to submission, retreat, surrender, capitulation and even, as some of our more fiery orators put it, as a form of bondage to the will of others...”
Heggy is a renowned Muslim philosopher and a great thinker and although this article is from 2002, its central thesis still obtains. There must be many like Heggy but not enough to influence centuries of closed-mindedness, no doubt born of a deep sense of inferiority, in which a people can be led to do the equivalent of cutting off their own noses to spite their faces rather than engage in compromise which would ensure a lasting peace and a positive future for their children. Arabs/Muslims are sorely in need of “both/and” thinking rather than the “either/or” which leads them into wars which accomplish nothing.
SickFrogman, I agree with your post. The Irgun, as you say, wanted to undermine the British administration and the deaths were not intended, whereas in the muqawama climate of wilful murder and maximum possible psychological warfare, Islamist terrorists deliberately target the maximum number of civilians. Thus the two are not comparable.
December 7, 2009 at 6:48 am
exiledlondoner
Hi Richard,
While I understand where you’re coming from, I can’t see how the Israeli Government would let such an action get past stage one.
They could of course persue it in the Israeli courts, but I doubt if the IG would want such a case to proceed there (it would give the defence a free platform), and anyway, getting anyone to defend the action would be impossible. No foreign news organisation is likely to accept Israeli Jurisdiction over an article published in the UK or US.
If they persued it in any other courts, they would open up those courts to anyone who wanted to make a claim against the Israeli Government. The Israeli Government maintains that foreign courts have no jurisdiction over either Israel or the occupied territories, so would be very unlikely to allow any class action to break that basic principle.
As for any evidence that Hamas or Hezbollah were influenced by the foreign press – I think that’s a dead end. Even if they could find, for example, a Hamas publication repeating something in the foreign press, they would then have to prove a couple of issues.
1) That it was libelous – what was written was untrue.
2) That it was damaging – that it somehow caused the readers to act worse than they otherwise would have.
Proving number one would be nigh on impossible, unless all parties were willing to cooperate. Proving number two is, if anything, even more difficult, given who you are dealing with – how does one show that murderous extremists were subject to malign influence?
December 7, 2009 at 6:48 am
Margie in Tel Aviv
Whatever the immediate cause, it is to be hoped the Guardian is going the way of Time Magazine, which no longer has a Middle East comment section.
December 7, 2009 at 7:12 am
Richard
exiledlondoner, you said “While I understand where you’re coming from, I can’t see how the Israeli Government would let such an action get past stage one.”
But this has nothing to do with the Israeli government. Israeli citizens that have been harmed by missles could themselves directly sue papers like the Guardian, that arguably conducted a campaign of incitement against Israel during a war with an international terrorist organization and encouraged the bombing of innocent civlillians.
Neither would it be conducted in Israeli courts. The lawsuits could be brought up for example in the british courts, by British Israeli citizens.
I think all of your arguments are valid. However I don’t think a guarantee of victory in the courts is necessary. A long, drawn out lawsuit by a large group of individuals (in the case perhaps British Israelis), that would be expensive for the newspaper would make them think twice in the future about publishing heresay and borderline incitement.
In this case, English Israelis would have every right to sue for damages in a british court of law. It wouldn’t be frivolous for there is a basis for the claim. The press would make it a freedom of speech issue, but the fact that libelous, unfounded claims were regularly published as fact in the Guardian is itself problematic, and would very possibly lead to some form of backlash or censure.
December 7, 2009 at 10:39 am
mostly harmless
waaat! no comment on seth’s article over the weekend???? he got over 50 comments – not good for the pretty graph
December 7, 2009 at 10:56 am
JerusalemMite
mostly harmless – waaat! no comment on seth’s article over the weekend???? he got over 50 comments – not good for the pretty graph
Surely its the quality that counts.
And CIF would be hard pressed to compete with CIFWatch where quality is concerned.
December 7, 2009 at 11:06 am
JerusalemMite
Richard
I think all of your arguments are valid. However I don’t think a guarantee of victory in the courts is necessary. A long, drawn out lawsuit by a large group of individuals (in the case perhaps British Israelis), that would be expensive for the newspaper would make them think twice in the future about publishing heresay and borderline incitement
When contemplating legal action along the line that you are suggesting, there are other things to consider way beyond winning and one of them is the resultant public perception that such a trial may generate.
At the moment, the quality of content on this site is very encouraging along with intelligent discussion. This may be the way to bring about change at the editorial management at The Guardian.
Apart from falling revenues.
And nobody can ever really know if the content of this site is a major influence on advertisers and subscribers to the Guardian.
We can just hope.
December 7, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Callie Ewing
Let’s remember that the Guardian editorials have not changed their stripes. The most recent editorial was a huge one, dominating the whole editorial page. It was a one sided lecture at Israel and ended by saying that only “relentless pressure” on Israel could lead to peace. By peace, the Guardian said Israel must withdraw from any and all lands or waters won in the 1967 and allowing most Palestinians in Lebanon and elsewhere to “return”. There was not one sentence in the editorial criticizing Hamas for its rule over Gaza or for Hezbollah for hijacking Lebanon. Only Israel, in the obsessive and bizarre world of the Guardian’s editorial writers, needs to be “pressured relentlessly”.
It is crystal clear that the Guardian cares about Israel only because Israel’s citizens (most of them) are Jews. This makes the Guardian editors crazy. I also think that the Guardian editors still resent that Harold Abrahams, a Jew, represented the UK in the 1924 olympics.
December 7, 2009 at 2:25 pm
sababa
JerusalemMite, I agree that legal action is a problematic way. It seems to me that certainly in Britain, libel laws are often used by unsavory characters to prevent anyone writing about them; among those who profit are all sorts of Islamists, and I think there was one case where somebody had a well-researched book on the Saudi lobby which publishers didn’t want to get near, because they were worried about getting hit by law suits.
Given how expensive law suits are, I could imagine that whoever contemplates them in order to address media bias would be better off to invest probably just a fraction of what a law suit costs into setting up e.g. a site like this one that highlights the bias day in and day out. Imagine, if this site had money, they could perhaps even run ads like “don’t believe everything you read about Israel on Cif” (or a host of other outlets, for that matter) and this could persuade at least some of the marginally open-minded to get a “second opinion” so to speak. That could even be a great way to provide a counterweight to the often lamented polarization of our times.
December 7, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Margie in Tel Aviv
Sababa and JerusalemMite while having a court case is complicated and dicey a high profile complaint to the police with accompanying articles in blogs and newspapers would be very bad publicity for a newspaper that considers itself to be respectable. It might allow the Guardian to see itself in perspective and give it a rather necessary shock.
The kind of people that their anti-Israeli articles encourage are not real do-gooders or in the business for human rights. Otherwise they would have been very happy to read articles that talk of the good that Israel does in the field of medicine and the results of research, which the Guardian doesn’t publish anyway. Many of them buzz around looking for dirt to throw at Israel and some are not shy of making it up
December 7, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Israelinurse
JerusalemMite (4:15) – I hope you’re right and my cynicism is misplaced!
Isn’t there some sort of EU ruling that the EU is resposible for its citizens’ safety no matter where they are in the world? I remember reading a while ago that a group of Israeli/EU passport holders from the Sderot area were taking the EU to court regarding the EU’s apparent obligation under that ruling to provide them with shelters against Hamas rockets. By the same principle, surely one could argue that a newspaper published in the EU cannot incite racial hatred and/or publish hate speech against citizens of the EU no matter where they live as this endangers their safety?
December 7, 2009 at 5:19 pm
AKUS
Those arguing against a court case should consider that it is not about winning, but about tying up resources at the Guardian (and other places like the PSC, or War on Want), win or lose.
There may be legalities which make it impossible to win the case, but we know that the law and justice are two separate issues which do not always run parallel. Jews may not get justice, but they can use the law to make themselves a real and expensive nuisance to the Guardian through repeated lawsuits based on the articles, comments, and so forth.
It means the British Jewish community will have to pay up for the privilege of fighting for themselves and Israel, but they are on a one-way ticket to a pretty nasty situation if they do nothing.
December 7, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Israelinurse
Akus – that just isn’t going to happen, no matter how bad it gets. The British Jewish experience is very specific and markedly different and its dynamics affect the way the community (and I don’t think it can even be described as one community) acts and reacts.
December 7, 2009 at 6:01 pm
cityca
Israelinurse and AKUS
Israelinurse is 100% correct. There is simply not the groundswell of opinion to drive a sufficient number of British Jews to put their hands in their pockets or even to take an interest in doing same.
The young, while not disaffected, have other priorities and are very hard to get motivated with any such actions. Many older/middle aged people are equally happy to vacation in Israel but otherwise, uninterested in political activity.
The recent small demos in London you’ve read about are attended mainly by non-Jewish friends of Israel. In spite of what you read here and elsewhere, it is still remarkably comfortable and unthreatening to live as a Jew in the UK, and I imagine that people have become complacent. The UK is not France, where in some places, to live as a Jew can be deadly.
The leadership of UK Jewry is often described as complacent or ineffectual or determined not to give offence. If so, it very much reflects its membership.
That said, I’d love it if one of the many prominent Jewish law firms or better still, non Jewish law firms declared their intention to monitor and assess the output of the Guardian and the BBC and hold them to account for what they print or broadcast.
Now that’s what I’d like for Chanukah (my daughter asked me yesterday).
December 7, 2009 at 9:36 pm
SickFrogman
That said, I’d love it if one of the many prominent Jewish law firms or better still, non Jewish law firms declared their intention to monitor and assess the output of the Guardian and the BBC and hold them to account for what they print or broadcast.
The most effective lever is the Israeli government denyng both organsations press privileges, treating them as lobbying or propaganda or political organisations instead, with limited rights for the entry of personnel to Israel and limited access to Isaeli government officials and to Israeli technical facilities.
December 8, 2009 at 5:07 am
Israelinurse
I think Israel should have a visa system of entry like the US -that way she’d know who was coming in and for what purpose. I’m sick to death of PSC activists here telling me that they’ve visited ‘Palestine’ – conveniently ignoring the fact that they used the services of BG airport – and then coming back to the UK with numerous ‘eyewitness’ accounts which anyone who knows the area can immediately tell are a load of codswallop. There’s one guy in this town who travels to a certain village in the WB at least twice a year and sends back heart-wrenching accounts of Israeli soldiers poisoning wells etc. to the town’s website. There’s no earthly reason a person like that should be given an entry visa.
December 8, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Steven
The Irgun was not a terrorist group, and the King David Hotel was not a civilian target.
This is a poor article which promotes distortions.