The defense of The Goldstone Report published in the Guardian, written by three of its authors - Hina Jilani, Christine Chinkin and Desmond Travers – in response to Richard Goldstone’s retraction of the most serious charges contained in the document, produced a large amount of hateful comments by Guardian readers beneath the line. Here is a sample:
The following reference to “Israel-firsters” is a thinly veiled charge of dual loyalty to those in the diaspora who defend Israel, and is a narrative advanced routinely by those on the paleoconservative right – such as Pat Buchanan. (86 Recommends)
Goldstone recanted due to Zionist pressure. Also, Israel is an inherently racist state. (80 Recommends)
Hamas is more moral than Israel, who intentionally shoots children.
Israel engages in the mass murder of civilians with the most lethal weapons ever developed.
Goldstone gave in to Zionist pressure.
Goldstone was bullied by Jews to change his report. Israel is an Apartheid state.
Elected officials and the media are under the spell of the organized Jewish community.
Zionism is racism. Refers to the “Zionist mentality”.
Israel is based on ethnic cleansing and racism.
Israel is based on ethnic cleansing. Arabs would welcome the hundreds of thousands of Jews, who they expelled, back with open arms if Israel changed its behavior.
Original Zionists were all terrorists. Jews are supremacists who think they have a divine right to be treated better than others.
Israeli snipers target Palestinian children who are merely collecting rubble.
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
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Hadar Sela
18 comments
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April 14, 2011 at 6:01 pm
Abban Aziz
So bizarre. I have yet to see an anti-Israel activist “silenced” by Zionist pressure.
If that were the case the Guardian wouldn’t be so popular. Any criticism of those who attack Israel relentlessly is responded with victimhood and personal attacks, not cordial responses.
Will the Guardian ever publish Israel’s refutations of the Goldstone Report? Or will they continue to claim innocence instead of engaging in honest discussion?
Oh, I guess it is much easier to just pull the “blame the Jew” card rather then truly standing behind your baseless accusations.
April 14, 2011 at 6:20 pm
Serjew
It is obvious that those hyenas act as totally predictable side-kicks to each and every anti-Israel scheisse published by Der Scheisse Guardian.
April 14, 2011 at 7:09 pm
EricD
Is it possible to get a rough idea about the percentages of these most extreme comments? It’s rather sad that the moderator allows them at all. When one comprehends the rage exhibited, it’s easier to understand how such people can otherwise enable those who commit atrocities against civilians and their own citizens. These haters are a most illiberal lot, falsely trying to pass themselves off as the guardians of human rights.
April 14, 2011 at 10:54 pm
benorr
Unless we get more pro-Israeli posters on to CiF we will be constantly behind the eight ball.This anti-Israel mob have the stage to themselves,they can write any lies or exaggerations that they like and don’t get deleted.
There are far too few pro-Israeli posters that do go on to CiF,and it’s an uphill battle,for the few that try to stop this deluge of animosity,and hostility towards Israel.
Get your friends,family,your graddmother and whoever to go on to CiF and post there,and don’t forget to press the Report Abuse button.
BTW Berchmans is getting worse,with his fetishes (this time it was with cement mixers).Bloody pervert.
April 14, 2011 at 11:09 pm
Serjew
Posting at Cif is a waste of time and energy. That space was taylor-made to be a hate-fest sewage forum. The best thing to do is what CiFwatch has been doing, namely, exposing those hypocritical haters for what they are.
April 14, 2011 at 11:09 pm
benorr
Worktimesurfer is just one among those that accuse the IDF of targeting children,the other one is JRuskin.
These two sound like two miserable old farts that have a lot of time on their hands.
You can bet your socks that these two posters read the posts on CiFWatch.
April 15, 2011 at 4:30 am
Alex
Guardian tries to bury the story about Kidanpped Italian pro Palestinian activist that was kidnapped and murdered in Gaza .
Their headline is in the bottom of the front page and says
Body of Italian activist found in Gaza
If anyone actually manages to read it while glancing through would probably assume he was killed by some Israeli bombardment.
Lets compare what a headline with no agenda would have looked like.
CNN: Kidnapped Italian activist killed in Gaza
Sky News: Kidnapped Italian Activist Found Dead In Gaza
BBC: Italian activist killed in Gaza (but they show a photo of his bleeding blind folded face).
Yahoo news : Kidnapped Italian activist found dead in Gaza
MSNBC: Al-Qaida ally kills pro-Palestinian activist in Gaza
Washington Post: Abducted Italian found hanged in Gaza City
See any diffrence?
Usually all stories about Palestine are also in the Israel section not this one.
April 15, 2011 at 4:44 am
Arabella Meller
Ho hum how boring. The same old insults. They’re too lazy to think up anything else. That’s what happens when you subsist for generations on UNWRA welfare.
April 15, 2011 at 5:33 am
Derek Pasquill
There is probably only one rational response to the Guardian readers highlighted above:
German: The Jews are responsible for the world’s suffering.
Jew: And also the bicyclists.
German: Why the bicyclists?
Jew: Why the Jews?
April 15, 2011 at 6:06 am
FoolMeOnce
Alex
“Body of Italian activist found in Gaza”
Yes, Adam Levick wrote here about this phenomena a few days ago. Its Israel who does the killing and bombing, always in a “massive” and “pounding” way, while victims of Arab atrocities just happen to be “found”, miraculously slain, and rockets shoot themselves out of Gaza, and buses spontaneously combust, allegedly, according to Israel.
Absolute scum these people, no two ways around it.
April 15, 2011 at 6:12 am
FoolMeOnce
benorr
JRuskin AKA Moeron claims to be a retired schoolmaster (its always something like that, isn’t it?) A lot of them are retired from what I’ve gathered, apparently with too much time for bitter reflection.
Speaking of which, I found the poster by the name FalseConsciousness (at least he’s honest) who’s been awfully loud on CiF over the years to be very big on HuffingtonPost these days.
These people, given the size of the Arab and left-leaning world, are remarkably few, but remarkably loud and ugly.
April 15, 2011 at 6:52 am
guardian reader
I haven’t read the ‘hateful comments’ quoted above. I have read: the Goldstone Report, Goldstone’s op-ed, the McGowan Davis report into follow-up investigations of alleged crimes and today’s article by the other three Goldstone Report authors. Surely the key questions are:
1) Is the Goldstone Report still valid?
I have seen nothing to suggest otherwise. One of your comments calls for publicity for Israel’s refutation of Goldstone. I have seen lots of Israeli abuse directed at Goldstone (the man and his report) but very little detailed analysis from an Israeli point of view. Please point me to it.
2) Does the op-ed change things?
Well, no. Goldstone says he would write it differently now but he doesn’t really say why. He quotes McGowan Davis on Israeli investigation of specific incidents. He doesn’t mention that McGowan Davis is highly critical of delays and lack of transparency in the investigative process or that there have been just two convictions arising from 400 investigations in two years.
3) Is Goldstone right to say targeting of civilians was not policy?
We don’t know. McGowan Davis does say that there has been no independent investigation of high level policy decisions (such as targeting), so where does Goldstone get his information from?
April 15, 2011 at 7:41 am
Alex
FoolMeOnce
I complain about it in CIF and my comment was deleted very shortly after.
They have now changed the headline to “Italian activist murdered by Islamists”
I guess I wasn’t the only one complaining.
April 15, 2011 at 12:38 pm
pretzelberg
Given that Spatial accuses Israel of using “the most lethal weapons ever developed”, perhaps they’re a time traveller from the 1930s.
April 15, 2011 at 7:13 pm
Abban Aziz
@ Guardian Reader
“I have seen nothing to suggest otherwise. One of your comments calls for publicity for Israel’s refutation of Goldstone. I have seen lots of Israeli abuse directed at Goldstone (the man and his report) but very little detailed analysis from an Israeli point of view. Please point me to it.”
Yes, Israel spent more than a year reviewing every baseless accusation leveled against the IDF and sent a 40+ page rebutable enumerating each and every accusation. The abuse you say Goldstone has received is naturally the focused point of those who support him. The Goldstone Report was debunked almost immediately after it was released by a string of experts and tactical professors.
But crap newspapers like the Guardian prefer to rely on strawman arguments like the crazy Zionist lobby out to stifle Goldstone.
Here is the analysis:
http://www.mfa.gov.il/NR/rdonlyres/8E841A98-1755-413D-A1D2-8B30F64022BE/0/GazaOperationInvestigationsUpdate.pdf
The thesis of the goldstone report was that Israel deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians. Of course this wasn’t true and Hamas later admitted this wasn’t true, satellite footage shows this isn’t true and Palestinian casualties show this isn’t true.
Read read read:
http://www.mfa.gov.il/NR/rdonlyres/8E841A98-1755-413D-A1D2-8B30F64022BE/0/GazaOperationInvestigationsUpdate.pdf
Of course it might seem difficult to understand considering the lack of emotion and buzzwords used. Facts, figures, statistics – too much for enraged leftists.
April 16, 2011 at 1:52 am
John
Abban Aziz
Of course it might seem difficult to understand considering the lack of emotion and buzzwords used. Facts, figures, statistics – too much for enraged leftists.
Bang on.
Also – guardianreader can add to his/her education by reading reading reading Yaacov Lozowick: A Careful, Critical Reading of the Goldstone Report:
https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AY5gJhLdDCqqZGd4c2h0czZfNjZjbjlueHZneA&hl=en.
The hacks at the Guardian and elsewhere could also do with doing more studying and less preaching.
April 16, 2011 at 2:14 am
Abban Aziz
Great link John. Read it.
April 16, 2011 at 2:51 am
John
Lozowick’s “Reading Israel’s Official Report on the Gaza Incursion” – only 20 pages guardianreader/ Guardian readers/Guardian hacks! – summarises the MFA 164 page report (referred to by Abban Aziz above) here:
https://docs.google.com/View?id=dgxshts6_60dzqxdngv
As evidence of the iron law that Israel is a ‘special case’, international law Professor Malcolm Shaw, was one of the signatories to a letter published (where else?) in the Guardian which had this to say about Gaza/Cast Lead:
“….Attacks deliberately aimed at the civilian population and civilian objects, by any means, are prohibited, as are attacks that do not discriminate between civilians and combatants, or which are likely to cause harm to civilians that is excessive when compared to the military advantage sought by the attack….”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/14/gaza-israel-palestine-letters
Now compare and contrast with what he now says re. the NATO/UK assisted ‘rebels’ in Libya on the Today programme on 28 March:
Justin Webb: “What if it wasn’t as simple as that; what if they were attacking a place where civilians were?”,
Shaw: “Well that’s where we are into that phrase ‘civilian populated areas’. If they were attacking military personnel, combatants who were intermixed with civilians then I think we are in that unfortunate but legitimate area of humanitarian law.”
Webb: “So it would be allowed?
Shaw: “Yes, any attack on military personnel, facilities, objectives is permitted even if there may be collateral civilian damage – what you can’t do is attack purely civilian targets or personnel”.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9438000/9438193.stm
Shaw now sees nuance and context.