This is a guest post by Margie in Tel Aviv

Part of the Guardian World View (GWV) is that it is permissible to accuse the Israelis of anything that happens to pop into one’s head without examining it for truth or actuality. We had an example of that when Michael White of the Guardian made, in passing in an interview on the BBC, a statement without foundation about people murdering each other a great deal in Israel.

Here is an example of how this sort of behaviour has a ripple effect. This is a comment found in the thread following Yoav Shamir’s defence of his documentary, Defamation.

oldonmk2

25 Jan 2010, 3:29PM

Zamalek

As usual the Palestinian right to drive along route 443 trumps Israeli rights to drive along the road without being blown up or shot at.

So Israeli rights to use a highway, trumps Palestinian rights to travel in their own land! Not even apartheid South Africa denied blacks the right to travel along its highways! The Ulster govt never denied Catholics the right to use roads.

The not to be shot at requires the law enforcement authorities to take action to prosecute offenders, not blanket bans based on race or religion. this provides the evidence that Israel IS a racist state.

Zionists believe they are above the law. Robert Maxwell stole millions from UK pension funds, and donated the money to Israel. There has been no expression of regret or apology from Israel, nor one penny returned!
Israeli intelligence organizations carry out assinations anywhere they chose. Not even apologising when the kill an innocent Italian waiter, by mistake. These kind of acts create ill feelings among non-jews, and are an embarrasment to the diaspora.

The bottom line is that the Zionists were allowed to enter a country where they had no business, and drive out the legitimate population by terror, with the connivance of a foreign occupier. Probably a much higher percent of Palestinians are genetic descendants of the original Hebrew nation, than are the settles from Europe and the USA etc. Zionism is a mirror image of nazism.

The problem is as with Hitlers gang they cannot see the other as an equal human being, only as an “untermensch” without rights.

This is a free association posting of a person I had never noticed before, answering Zamalek’s description of the fact that despite the danger involved, the Palestinians have once again been allowed to travel on route 433 by the Israeli High Court on the basis of legality. Oldonmk2, typically of the kind of person we are discussing, does not bother to examine the facts of the case or to use references but assumes blithely that it is because people are not Jews they had been barred from using the highway. He seems to think that the original provision barred people according to ‘race or religion’ without taking into account that more than twenty percent of Israelis are of a minority race or religion and yet are not barred from travelling on route 433 on those grounds.

Those barred were Palestinians – people of a different nationality, to prevent terrorist acts such as the one attempted by those who planted an inexpertly improvised explosive device (IED) on the side of route 443 set to explode at peak hour, with a little explanatory note attached explaining its manufacture by Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the Alla Abu Sharifa Unit.

Reflexively without thought or proof, oldonmk2 compares Israel to South Africa and finds Israel lacking.

Robert Maxwell, the British millionaire, “had used hundreds of millions of pounds from his companies’ pension funds to shore up the shares of the Mirror Group, to save his companies from bankruptcy. Eventually, the pension funds were replenished with monies from investment banks Shearson Lehman and Goldman Sachs, as well as the British government.”  However the accusation by oldonmk2 presumably on the basis of the fact that Maxwell was a Jew is that the money from the pension funds was given to Israel. Proof? There is no proof. Who needs proof when we are dealing with Israel?

Our intrepid liar talks of Israel’s intelligence organisations killing an innocent Italian waiter, by mistake. The waiter in question was an Algerian-born Moroccan citizen in fact. Far from not apologising, in 1996, the Israeli government paid compensation equal to US$283,000 split between Bouchiki’s wife and daughter, and a separate settlement of US$118,000 to a son from a previous marriage.

His imagination and perhaps his education by the media is shown most clearly by his description of how Israel was created. Apparently this person has never heard of the UN or that they voted to grant Israel a state in the Palestinian Mandate territory. He says that Jews, who have lived continuously in Israel for millennia had ‘no business’ there, that they drove out the ‘legitimate population’ by terror, with the connivance of a foreign occupier – and here he has lost me completely. All his other lies and inventions have some grounding in the popular accounts, the media or even the hate sites, but who or what is this ‘foreign occupier’?

He has obviously half-read half-understood the results of some genetic studies and on that basis feels himself qualified to comment on the genetic heritage of Jews and Palestinians and to draw conclusions.

His statement that ‘Zionism is a mirror image of nazism’ is the antisemites’ creed.

This kind of comment, attributing all sorts of crimes to Israel without investigation and without examination is not limited to commenters on CiF. The media are rife with this kind of unexamined, unfair, unbalanced assumption.

Let me leave you with an example. Veteran political reporter Christine Amanpour finds it natural to say that Israel practises waterboarding without a smidgeon of proof. If she does it, why shouldn’t others?