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The Guardian shows itself at its hyperbolic worst when it warns (or, threatens) that the Israeli Knesset’s treatment of Haneen Zoabi, a Knesset Member who joined the Gaza flotilla, “could ignite a third intifada.”
To remind the reader, Zoabi is the Israeli MK who voluntarily joined the Gaza “aid” flotilla, thus choosing to associate herself with IHH – a group with a radical Islamic anti-Western orientation, and one which supports Hamas and, at least in the past, even global jihad elements.
It is safe to say that many other nations would have charged Zoabi with treason for openly aiding and abetting their enemies. However, as a citizen of the democratic Israeli state, Zoabi kept her seat in the Knesset and was merely stripped of three parliamentary privileges– a fact that didn’t stop The Guardian from framing the issue as “symptomatic of a broader campaign to undermine [the Arab] community.”
The Guardian uncritically quotes Zoabi: “We accepted a democratic, liberal state, we voted for the Knesset. But …we are the litmus test of the whole problem. If Israel does not recognise this, conditions will deteriorate towards a third intifada.”
Yet, in the next sentence, we are told that Zoabi rejects any suggestion that Israel’s Arab citizens supported violence and that she opposes the suggestion by jailed Hamas leader Mohammed Arman, in a book smuggled out of his Israeli jail, that the role of Palestinian citizens of Israel would be to “harass the occupiers, disrupt their daily routine and undermine their confidence”.
Also, in a classic example of The Guardian’s mote-and-beamery, the article uncritically repeats Zoabi’s charge that Israel’s democratic legislature, where she (to this day) reserves the right to participate in votes on every serious issue facing the nation, is itself “anti-democratic.” Naturally, the Guardian carefully ignores the inherent contradiction of Zoabi’s stance – her criticism of Israel’s democracy in the context of the inherently totalitarian and theocratic (not to mention, misogynistic) orientation of the Islamist groups which she tacitly endorsed by her involvement with the flotilla.
Guardian readers are coolly, and quite nonchalantly, informed of Zoabi’s accusation – or, it would seem, “professional diagnosis” – that Israel suffers from “collective psychosis” and that the Israeli “regime….trades on fear and paranoia.”
Of course, characterizing a citizen who openly identifies and cooperates with the enemies of her own state into a victim of discrimination – and hyperbolically repeating irresponsible and dangerous threats of an impending violent uprising would seem pretty consistent with an institution which trades “on fear and paranoia.”
This is a cross-post by David Harris, Executive Director of The American Jewish Committee. His essay appeared in The Huffington Post.
You just can’t contain your rage against Israel, can you?
A mere mention of Israel and you’re out of the starting gate in record time with another tirade accusing it, and its defenders, of every conceivable evil in the world – from Nazism to Apartheid, from blood libel to mass murder.
The facts be damned–they only get in the way of your outrageous assertions and gross distortions. You follow the approach recommended by Lenin: “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
Your narrative is pre-cooked, airtight, and impervious to reason. It’s filled with a hatred of Israel that eludes logical explanation, a blindness that shuts out any contrary evidence.
For you, Israel can do no right other than to close up shop and call it quits, while the Palestinians, your hallowed victims on a pedestal, can do no wrong.
Strikingly, all this is done in the name of such vaunted values as democracy, legitimacy, and an end to occupation.
Yet you interpret and apply those values in rather strange ways.
Take democracy.
Israel is a democracy. Much as you may breathlessly try to dismiss the notion, it’s a fact.
Israel has free and fair elections, smooth transfers of power, and an independent judiciary. It has a wide array of political parties, a freewheeling parliament, including members who have openly cavorted with the country’s enemies, and a feisty press. It has a well-developed civil society and countless human-rights and civil-rights groups. It protects freedom of worship for all. It has a vibrant gay community. It has strong labor unions. And minority communities enjoy legal protections.
This must read, by Donald Snyder of The Forward, published recently in Haaretz, focuses on Muslim anti-Semitism in Malmo, Sweden’s third largest city. However, the piece focuses on the broader European phenomenon of increasing hostility towards Jews and, most frightening, included these passages:
A continent-wide study, conducted by the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence at the University of Bielefeld in Germany, released in December 2009, found that 45.7% of the Europeans surveyed agree somewhat or strongly with the following statement: “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians.” And 37.4% agreed with this statement: “Considering Israel’s policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews.”
“[There is] quite a high level of anti-Semitism that is hidden beneath critics of Israel’s policies,” said Beate Kupper, one of the study’s principal researchers, in a telephone interview with the Forward, citing this data and a tendency to “blame Jews in general for Israel’s policies.”
Kupper said that in places where there is a strong taboo against expressions of anti-Semitism, such as Germany, “Criticism of Israel is a great way to express your anti-Semitism in an indirect way.”
The anti-Semitism, and extreme anti-Israel bias, at The Guardian – which this blog primarily focuses on – clearly is part of a much larger ideological trend spreading across the Continent. Those of us who consistently express alarm over what we perceive to be the increasing respectability of classic anti-Semitic tropes – and yet have to endure complaints that the Jewish community always “exaggerates” the extent of the problem – would (unfortunately) seem to be vindicated by the results of this study.
If we’ve learned anything from history it’s that Jewish safety – indeed, Jewish freedom – can not be taken for granted, not now, not ever.
Read the full essay, here.
Video, courtesy of Israel Matsav.
It has been demonstrated in recent years that the Palestinians receive more humanitarian aid per capita from the international community than any other country in the world. The misuse of such aid isn’t just a tragedy for the Palestinian community. Because, every dollar misused by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority is money which could have been spent on other dire humanitarian crises around the globe – victims of abject poverty, disease, and violence who, for some reason, apparently aren’t deemed as worthy of the developed world’s significant largess.
I have never heard of Marie Dhumières but her recent piece contains boilerplate CiF tropes about the root cause of the West’s conflict with radical Islam, and I suspect we’ll be hearing more from her.
We are informed by Ms. Dhumières that her column was inspired by her curiosity regarding the English translations used in film about the Israeli attacks on Gaza in Cast Lead.
The film Ms. Dhumières refers to is called “To Shoot an Elephant,” and was produced by what was clearly a journalistic dream team – which consisted of members of the Free Gaza Movement and “activists” from the International Solidarity Movement.
Dhumières reflects: “I couldn’t help thinking that, when translated literally into English, [certain] expressions [heard in the film make Arabs sound] like fundamentalists – in the eyes of those who have a tendency to jump to quick conclusions…”
Such suggestions, that the West is too quick to jump to conclusions based on an inadequate understanding of the cultural context, or poor translation, brought to mind this report from Harry’s Place, about abuse hurled at Danny Ayalon, the then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, by a Muslim student at Oxford University.
According to the Muslim student, Mr Ayalon misconstrued what he meant. Although Mr Ayalon heard ”Itbah al Yahud” (slaughter the Jews) shouted at him in Arabic, in fact he got it all wrong. No, what was actually shouted, according to Noor Rashid, who shouted it, was “Khaybar ya Yahud“ (so beloved of the sing-along sailors of the Mavi Marmara) which was meant to remind Mr. Ayalon of the massacre of the Jews of Khaybar by Mohammed in the seventh century.
This was displayed, among the many posters and artwork, in the Gilad Shalit tent outside the Prime Minister's residence in Jerusalem
Occasionally, thinly veiled covers for anti-Semitic invectives wear down, and the explicit hate is laid bare for all to see. Many of us have noted a disturbing ideological trend, in which classic anti-Semitic tropes about the dangers of Jewish power and influence in politics have become increasingly popular by some on the Left - rendering such bigotry nearly banal within some circles.
Typically, this narrative is advanced using the rhetoric of human rights and anti-imperialism, and carefully avoids making such charges against Jews as such – referring instead to the injurious effects of the “Israel Lobby.”
Glenn Greenwald, who blogs at Salon.com, (and is a member in good standing of the Walt and Mearsheimer brigade of “dissidents” who bravely “expose” the injurious effects of the organized Jewish community on the American body politic) has honed such furtive rhetoric to an art.
However, even his respectable veneer has occasionally been eroded. In 2007, he said
“…the influence of self-proclaimed “pro-Israeli” American Jewish groups in helping to push the country into what looks more and more every day to be an inevitable conflict with Iran is very significant and cannot be ignored.”
Antony Lerman, writing in Comment is Free, in defense of C4s documentary which “investigated” The Israel Lobby, stated cooly that wealthy British Jews are indeed linked to “payments of large sums of money to politicians, power and influence.”
And, as any reader of CiF Watch is well aware, reader comment threads in response to almost any Israel-related essay at Comment is Free often reveal a slew of vile accusations that the UK is held captive by the organized Jewish community.
Oliver Stone – film-maker, conspiracy enthusiast, and ardent defender of South American Narco-Terrorist Movements - has recently “revealed” the real reason there is so much “talk” about Jewish victims of The Holocaust. (Hint: It apparently has nothing to do with natural human compassion for the millions of innocent victims, which included 1.5 million children, slaughtered by the Nazi regime.)
Courtesy of Elder of Ziyon
Rachel Shabi’s latest CiF offering represents yet another effort to find evidence in support of preconceived conclusions – namely, the imminent demise of Israeli democracy.
As ‘evidence’ of Israel’s impending decent into totalitarianism, she utilizes all the hyperbole in her arsenal, providing “examples” free of even the most rudimentary context or perspective.
First, she cites the mysterious “disappearances” of Arab Israelis at the hands of the “secret police,” ignoring quite well-known facts – reported by Israel’s free, and quite feisty, media – concerning the men in question. Amir Makhoul currently awaits trial on what appears to be quite credible charges of spying for the Iranian-backed terrorist group, Hizbollah, whilst Omar Saeed was sentenced to 7 months in prison after accepting a plea bargain.
Next, Shabi cites the case of MK Haneen Zouabi (Balad) who did indeed have some of her parliamentary privileges removed after taking part in the May 31st “Free Gaza” flotilla – sponsored by a group (IHH) with known terrorist affiliations. One wonders how British MPs or U.S. Senators would react to one of their colleagues travelling to Afghanistan to aid the Taliban in its campaign against NATO. Would they make do with the partial removal of Parliamentary privileges? Perhaps more pertinently, how would the Lebanese or Syrian parliaments react to one of their members travelling abroad to help Israel?
This is a cross-post from the blog, Brothers of Judea, a site which combats anti-Semitism and anti-Israel hate speech at The Huffington Post.
I made some comments on Mr. Krinsky’s recent article that I thought might be worth sharing in this medium. If you haven’t already read the article, use the link above to get the gist of it.:
Mr. Krinsky, there’s ONE simple reason why leftists are anti-Israel: They have swallowed the Palestinian narrative whole.
Around the time of the 1980s, a shift occurred in Arab-Israeli relations. The Arabs changed their rhetoric from “rah, rah, rah, we’re going to destroy the Zionist entity” to “Oh, the mean old Zionist entity is attacking us for no reason.” They began to shift their role in the conflict from attacker and victimizer to victim. And no group did this more effectively than the Palestinians.
The left bought this line hook, line and sinker. They completely believe the idea that the Palestinians are innocent victims and Israel is the cruel aggressor. They are so invested in this worldview that any evidence that deviates from this narrative, such as historical facts like the Hebron Massacre and the Palestinian rejection of the 1948 plan or modern events like rejections of negotiations and suicide bombings, are either Zionist propaganda which couldn’t possibly be true or completely justified because of Israel’s behavior. You would think the left would have an open mind to all sources of information, but in this case they are willing to make an exception.
The entire system of leftist morality is built upon victim and victimizer. If you’re on the left, you root for the victim, no questions asked. In the I/P conflict, there’s no question who’s the victim and who’s the victimizer, the Palestinians are brown, poor, and less armed, the Israelis are strong and white. Done.
This is a guest post by Geary
Nobody’s perfect and every country has its dirty linen; Israel is no exception. But even the most distracted visitor to CiF won’t have failed to notice how the Guardian gets its rocks off by sniffing around – quite exceptionally – for Israel’s. If it can’t find any, it’ll employ one of its crew of “As-a-Jews” to wash some in public (if you’ve ever thought, for instance, “What is the point of Seth Freedman?”, now you know). But should you point out on CiF that many of Israel’s sworn enemies never ever wash their smalls and that the stench cries out to heaven, you will – as sure as paint dries – be accused of whataboutery.
We’ve recently been treated to the spectacle of one Mya Guarnieri (who?- quite) using Israel’s immigration policy – a carbon copy of that of most European countries, even though Israel inhabits a rather more dangerous part of the world – as proof of the unique “inhumanity” of the country. Come again? I hear you say. We’re talking about a region of the world where it’s common practise to sequester migrant’s passports, beat them, even keep them under lock and key, where expulsion without recourse is quite normal. But should you think to write this on CiF, you will be accused of whataboutery: “Don’t come up with ‘what about Saudi?’ or ‘what about Lebanon?’ – it’s Israel we’re currently (as ever) dumping on”.
This is a cross-post from the blog, This Ongoing War. (This blog is not part of the activity of the Malki Foundation, founded in 2001 by Frimet and Arnold Roth of Jerusalem. But it is inspired by the same tragic circumstances.The Malki Foundation is a memorial to the life of Malka Chana Roth, Frimet and Arnold’s daughter, who was murdered at the age of 15 in a Hamas terrorist massacre in Jerusalem. Beyond its function as a remembrance of a life lost, the Foundation provides daily support to over two thousand Israeli families of every ethnic and religious background for at-home care for seriously disabled children.)
Occasionally, the active role taken by reporters, editors and newspapers in soft-pedaling the terrorism that afflicts so many lives in this area (and specifically the lives of my wife and children and me) is so outrageous that you need to take a slow breath and start thinking about what to do about it. The British newspaper The Guardian provides a case in point today.
Though she’s said to be based in Jerusalem where we live, we don’t claim to know Harriet Sherwood. Hers is the name on this scandalous piece of agenda-pushing. She may be a nice and balanced individual with a commitment to objective reporting. Or she might be someone with strong political views that animate the reporting she writes in the pages of this influential paper. Let’s look.
Start with the headline, which a Guardian sub-editor presumably contributed. Notice the word militant, which is British journalistic code for terrorist, is in quotation marks. Why? We already know many politically motivated news channels malevolently propagate the notion that the Israelis kill innocents and cover this up by claiming they were terrorists. Is that what happened here? No, it’s not. The terrorist group called Islamic Jihad claimed this dead man as one of theirs. A Maan Palestinian news agency report today (it’s here) reports that Islamic Jihad said he died while performing a “Jihadist mission”. We should believe them.
The only doubt about whether the dead man was a terrorist is in the minds of The Guardian’s people. That is not how news should be reported.
The article gives this context:
Following the three-week war in Gaza in 2008-9, the Israelis established a 300m-wide “buffer zone” on Palestinian land abutting the hi-tech security fence that marks the border. The aim was to prevent militants from firing rockets into Israel or launching attacks on military posts. Palestinians were warned that anyone entering the buffer zone would be shot dead. The zone has swallowed 30% of Gaza’s arable agricultural land, and many farmers have been forced to abandon their crops.
This is a MUST-READ by Lee Smith at the American Jewish publication, Tablet Magazine, entitled: Mainstreaming Hate. Though his piece focuses on anti-Semitic comments by readers at American blogs and magazines – and how such hate appears not to concern the editors of these publications – his thesis should resonate with CiF Watch readers who continue to be concerned with similar vitriol being expressed at The Guardian’s blog.
One reason for the surge of public criticism of Israel over the last decade is the increasing interest of American media consumers in the Middle East as U.S. involvement in the region deepened after Sept. 11. The other reason is the triumph of the Internet, which lends itself to anti-Semitic narratives. The genius of the web is its interconnectedness, the facility with which it is capable of making links based on other links, which allows a chain of unbroken and unsubstantiated rumor and innuendo to acquire the stature of fact.
As far back as 2003, David Brooks, writing in the Weekly Standard, was among the first to note the resurgence of anti-Semitism, “the socialism of fools,” in polite conversation, as conspiracy theorists peddled the idea that Jewish-American officials and their colleagues in the media had pressed the United States into making war with Iraq to serve the interests of Israel. From blogs and bulletin boards, Jew-baiting soon entered the mainstream publishing industry, most famously with the publication of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer’s The Israel Lobby. The two authors argue that there exists a group of U.S. officials, journalists, and activists—housed at institutions from The New York Times to AIPAC—who intentionally deceived the American public and subverted “true” U.S. interests on behalf of the Jewish state. As reviewers noted, the bulk of the book’s research was based on secondary sources, most of which came from the web.
If not quite as popular as adult-content sites, the anti-Israel blogosphere is a dirty little thrill that major U.S. media outfits have mainstreamed for the masses, the intellectual equivalent of the topless “Page Three” girls that British tabloids use to boost circulation. Among the dozens of blogs and websites obsessed with Israel and the machinations of the U.S. Israel lobby, Phillip Weiss’ Mondoweiss (a project of The Nation Institute), Glenn Greenwald’s blog on Salon, and Stephen Walt’s blog on ForeignPolicy.com (owned by The Washington Post Company) sit atop the junk-heap.
See full essay, at Tablet Magazine’s site.
(An important post at Elder of Ziyon about the alleged Israeli strike, during Cast Lead, on the El Bader flour mill)
We have discussed the El Bader flour mill a number of times in context of the Goldstone Report and other NGOs.
The IDF report in January, 2010 concluded that there was no airstrike, as Goldstone had asserted (against his own evidence!) and that the mill was only hit by a tank shell during active fighting.
Since then, the UN asserted that it had evidence of a 500 lb. bomb, and HRW released a video (apparently the UN video) of the El Bader mill taken a few weeks after Cast Lead that seemed to show this bomb sitting on the floor of the mill:
According to The Guardian, this was the front part of an MK82 aircraft dropped bomb and was found on the first floor.
Because of this new evidence, the IDF reopened its investigation as to whether there was any aerial bombing of the mill.
After months of exhaustive investigation, a new IDF report concludes that it was right all along, and that there was no bomb dropped on the flour mill:
See the rest of the post at Elder of Ziyon’s site
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
ANTI-ZIONIST AND ANTISEMITIC DISCOURSE ON THE GUARDIAN’S COMMENT IS FREE WEBSITE
July 27, 2010 in Uncategorized | Tags: Antisemitism, Biased Moderation, Comment is Free, Deleted Comments, Distortion, Guardian | by Guest/Cross Post | 25 comments
This comprehensive analysis of The Guardian’s Comment is Free website was written by Hadar Sela at the MERIA Journal, published by The Gloria Center (Global Research in International Affairs)
The British newspaper, the Guardian, has been described as waging a high-priority campaign against Israel in its pages and on its popular website. Does the evidence available–especially regarding the latter–support this opinion, and if so, in what way does this bias express itself, how far-reaching are its effects and consequences, and what–if anything–can be done to counteract it?
The Guardian is Britain’s third most read newspaper after the Daily Telegraph and the Times. As is the case with many newspapers, the sales of its print edition are declining: In January 2009, its daily circulation was 358,844 (a drop of 5.17 percent from January 2008) and by March 2010, its daily circulation had fallen further to 283,063. However, this trend has been offset by the Guardian’s decision to expand the publication of all its material, together with that of its sibling paper, the Observer, online without charge. In January 2010, the Guardian’s website was the most popular of all UK newspaper sites, with some 37 million unique users per month, 12.6 million of whom were British. In 2008, it was runner-up in the “Webby Awards” for the best political blog, and in 2009, the guardian.co.uk site won the “best newspaper” category in those same awards.
Describing itself as “the world’s leading Liberal voice,” the Guardian takes a left-of-center stance. A poll by MORI in April to June 2000 showed that 80 percent of the Guardian’s readers were Labour voters. A 2005 poll by the same organization indicated that 48 percent of Guardian readers voted Labour and 34 percent voted Liberal Democrat. In the same year, Sir Max Hastings was quoted as saying “I write for the Guardian because it is read by the new establishment.” In the 2010 UK elections, the Guardian backed the Liberal Democrat party, which for the first time in its history gained a foothold in British government.
See the full essay here.
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