Earlier, we cross posted Elder’s piece on the Guardian white wash of the anti-Semitic Islamist preacher,  Raed Salah (the leader of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel who spent two years in jail after confessing to funding Hamas) which noted that 6 of the 13 paragraphs of the piece (on Salah’s recent arrest in the UK) was devoted towards defending the radical preacher, and not one fact, from easily available evidence with anyone who has access to Google, of the grotesquely anti-Semitic sermons he’s given – including a 2007 speech where he reportedly accused Jews of using children’s blood to bake bread.

Not content with that blatantly misleading article, by Alan Travis, the Guardian provided Conal Urquhart an opportunity to pen an even more ideologically driven apologia for Salah, who quoted one of the most obsessively anti-Israel activists in UK, Ben White, as a source for story – describing the author of the book “Israel Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide” merely as “a writer and activist.” Urquhart quotes White as saying:

“The same government that sent police to arrest a Palestinian civil society leader from his hotel bedroom is changing UK legislation explicitly to facilitate the entry of accused Israeli war criminals,”

Salah, the “Palestinian civil society leader” who White contrasts favorable with Israel’s democratic leaders, said the following in 2007 which led to his arrest for incitement:

“We have never allowed ourselves to knead [the dough for] the bread that breaks the fast in the holy month of Ramadan with children’s blood…Whoever wants a more thorough explanation, let him ask what used to happen to some children in Europe, whose blood was mixed in with the dough of the [Jewish] holy bread.”

Salah also referred to Osama Bin Laden as a martyr and, according to The JC, Salah called Jews “butchers of pregnant women and babies”, and said “the Creator meant for [Jews] to be monkeys and losers.”

Of course, White, who has expressed sympathy for those who are anti-Semitic, would naturally view Salah with sympathy, and it’s only natural that Urquhart would quote him as a reliable source.

Urquhart’s journalistic malfeasance, however, hits a crescendo when, from the second to the last paragraph, he characterizes the hate preacher merely as someone “is despised by Israel’s right-wing.”

Evidently, you have to be on the “right-wing” to morally object to a vile bigot who advances the most crude and odious anti-Semitic narratives.  It’s as if, for activists at the Guardian like Urquhart, mouthing support for the rights of Palestinians automatically inoculates you from charges of racism.

Pro-Palestinian activism by Guardian reporters is so uncontroversial that they largely don’t even attempt to hide their political sympathies.

While of course not all anti-Israel bias is informed by hatred of Jews, it is beyond doubt that the institutional bias against Israel at the Guardian is often informed by a willingness to turn a blind eye to clear and unmistakable evidence of even the most explicit anti-Semitism.

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