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As I noted about the blog when they were first included as part of the Guardian Comment Network, The Arabist devotes an entire page of pejorative characterizations of AIPAC, called “AIPAC Logo Remakes”, several advancing anti-Semitic narratives, such as the charge of Dual Loyalty against American Jews who support Israel, as well as the suggestion that organized Jewry “buys” the U.S. Congress.
While the blog largely deals with issues relating to the larger Arab world, and has devoted much coverage to recent “Arab Spring” events, their views on Israel are evident merely by looking at their blogroll – where you can find links to such prolific Israel haters as Ali Abunimah, Helena Cobban, Juan Cole, Max Blumenthal, and, most interestingly, the blog of Guardian Editor, Brian Whitaker.
Today at The Arabist one of their most frequent bloggers, Issandre El Amrani, an Egyptian journalist and al-Jazeera commentator, blogged to request support for a film project he’s backing called “Roadmap to Apartheid”, and embeds a brief promo clip along with a link to the film’s site.
The film goes well beyond merely labeling Israel as an Apartheid state, but equates the Israeli government as morally equivalent to the Apartheid regime in South Africa by using frame after frame of images which show, side by side, depictions of brutality meted out to Blacks under Apartheid in S. Africa next to “similar” looking scenes from Israel – and also includes clips which clearly glorify Palestinian violence.
The film goes beyond mere agitprop to outright incitement – a narrative which portrays Israel as a state which, like S. African before it, must be taken down.
Here are a few images from the film, which you can see at their blog.
Yeah, I know. The film’s producers and supporters are not hateful, anti-Israel extremists.
They’re just “human rights activists”.
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- On CiF Watch and the fight against contemporary anti-Semitism (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian partners with blog which promotes anti-Semitic imagery (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian or Gaza TV News? Harriet Sherwood continues to run interference for Hamas apologists (cifwatch.com)
- Perfect illustration of Guardian’s biased moderation when dealing with Israel related reader comments (cifwatch.com)
- U.S. “slavish subservience to Israel” Update (cifwatch.com)
- Requisite photo of Palestinians behind bars accompanies “report” by Harriet Sherwood on anti-BDS bill (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade, Ha’aretz and the political pathos of the radical left (cifwatch.com)
- Israel section of the Guardian’s online bookshop includes a work by David Duke’s favorite Jew (cifwatch.com)
- At the Guardian, it’s Sheikh Raed Salah – O – Mania! (cifwatch.com)
- Conal Urquhart quotes Ben White as a source in Guardian’s second whitewash of anti-Semitic preacher (cifwatch.com)
- CiF, Henning Mankell, and the audacity of evil (cifwatch.com)
In November of 2009, CiF Watch exposed (Guardian moderator) “BellaM” engaging in an ad hominem attack on Melanie Phillips in her capacity as a Guardian staff member:
As we noted, “Her comment spurred post after post of mouth-frothing denunciation of Melanie Phillips in the now infamous Ed Husain thread that we reported on in our post Two Minutes Hate: Melanie Phillips bashing on the Ed Husain thread.”
Further, we noted, the the real name of “BellaM” turned out to be Isabella Mackie, and that Mackie was the maiden name of the wife of none other than Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger. Isabella Mackie used her mother’s surname when taking a job at the Guardian’s website to disguise the fact that she was the daughter of the paper’s editor, Alan Rusbridger.
As The Jewish Chronicle reported at the time, the Guardian issued an official statement acknowledging that BellaM’s actions were inappropriate and noted that they “reminded BellaM of the paper’s guidelines that staff posting on the site ‘should uphold a high standard of civility and avoid any behaviour that might bring the Guardian’s good name into disrepute’”. [emphasis mine]
So, given this background, it was intriguing to see the Guardian’s recent report on Phillips’ counter-attack against those (in the blogosphere and on Twitter) attaching some sort of significance to the fact that she was mentioned in the purported manifesto of Norway terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik - a list which also includes Winston Churchill, Bernard Lewis, Edmund Burke, Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, John Locke, and George Orwell.
The story quotes Phillips:
“A concerned reader has sent me a post by Sunny Hundal on the Liberal Conspiracy blog,” Phillips wrote. “Hundal brings us what he clearly considers to be the most important news about the Norwegian atrocity. This is that, in the ‘manifesto’ reportedly published by the terrorist suspect Anders Behring Breivik, two of my articles are quoted.
“Golly. Is Hundal suggesting that my writing provoked the mass murder of some 93 Norwegians? Doubtless with one eye on the law of libel, he piously avers: ‘There is no suggestion that his actions were inspired by Melanie Phillips, nor am I making that claim’.”
Phillips is further quoted:
“”In fact, there are only two references to me or my work in its 1,500 pages … Why has he singled me out in this way? It looks like yet another crude attempt to smear me. … The supposed beliefs of Norway massacre’s perpetrator has got the left in general wetting itself in delirium at this apparently heaven-sent opportunity to take down those who fight for life, liberty and western civilisation against those who would destroy it.”
So, yes, the Guardian quoted Phillips fairly, and didn’t in any way legitimize the lunacy of suggestions that her writings somehow influenced the Norway shooter’s actions.
Finally, however, not mentioned in the otherwise fair piece was the fact that the blog in question, Liberal Conspiracy, which smeared Phillips, also just happens to be part of the elite group of partner blogs within the Guardian’s Comment Network, and the particular blogger at Liberal Conspiracy who wrote the post, Sunny Hundal, also just happens to be a Guardian contributor.
I can only wonder what BellaM thinks of all of this.
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- Should the British Spectator Bow to Lawfare? (cifwatch.com)
- Without a trace: CiF completely purges comment from thread (cifwatch.com)
- A curious deletion by the ‘Guardians of Hamas’ (cifwatch.com)
- Curious deletions under Greg Philo’s surreal assertion, at CiF, that UK journalists are afraid to criticize Israel (cifwatch.com)
- The AV Referendum and Planet Guardian (cifwatch.com)
John Whitbeck would seem like an extremist to most – as he’s a full-fledged 9/11 Conspiracy Theorist, and an anti-Semite who characterized Israel as a “racial-supremicist, settler-colonial experiment” which should, of course, be annihilated.
Naturally, he was deemed perfectly respectable by Comment is Free, and published a post there in January, (see our posts here, here , here, & here) called, “On Palestine, the US is a rogue state“, in which he decried America’s “slavish subservience to Israel.”
After a complaint by the CST, the words “slavish” was removed but the phrase “subservience to Israel” remained.
Undeterred, Whitbeck, an international lawyer, presented a paper to an official UN Conference, in March of this year, in support of Latin American and Caribbean nations recognizing Palestine, which included the text from his CiF piece, and which included the original wording regarding “slavish” subservience to Israel. Whitbeck helpfully listed the publications who cross-posted the essay – which included radical anti-Zionist, and often anti-Semitic, fringe far-left magazines such as Counterpunch and Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, the Palestine Chronicle, as well as Arab papers such as the Jordan Times, Arab News, Al-Ahram Weekly, whose editorial lines aren’t difficult to imagine.
Whitbeck came to mind today when I read a report about an Iranian poster, making the rounds in the nation whose leaders continue to dream of a world without Zionism, which depicts U.S. leaders as slaves to Israel.
Click To Enlarge
Of course, the anti-Semitic motif of non-Jewish U.S. political leaders being controlled by Israel and her Jewish supporters is quite common in the Arab and Muslim media, but it’s always worth noting when the anti-Semitic orientation of the Red-Green Alliance can be so clearly illustrated.
John Whitbeck’s CiF essay continues to represent exhibit A in this dangerous ideological convergence.
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- Guardian reader off-topic anti-Israel hate of the day (cifwatch.com)
- What the Guardian won’t report: Latest Pew Study demonstrates anti-Semitism in many Arab countries is universal (cifwatch.com)
- CiF contributor & anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist advising UN on recognition of a Palestinian State (cifwatch.com)
- Perfect illustration of Guardian’s biased moderation when dealing with Israel related reader comments (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland is mugged by the reality of BDS movement’s malevolence (cifwatch.com)
- On CiF Watch and the fight against contemporary anti-Semitism (cifwatch.com)
Harriet Sherwood’s reports on Israel and the Palestinians for the Guardian possess a degree of ideological uniformity which would have pleased Soviet propagandists during the height of the former totalitarian regime’s anti-Zionist crusade.
Sherwood’s most recent dispatch, on her personal involvement with efforts by anti-Israel activists to provoke a confrontation with the Israeli Navy, could have been produced and edited by Gaza TV News, Hamas, or at least by the terrorist group’s apologists – those on board the vessel which organized Sherwood’s junket: Civil Peace Service Gaza (CPSG), which is made up of groups such as International Solidarity Movement, Code Pink, European Jews for a Just Peace (headed by Dror Feiler), Free Gaza’ and the Popular Struggle Co-ordination Committee - all of whom, to varying degrees, legitimize or openly support the quite illiberal political aspiration of bringing about Israel’s demise, and who Sherwood characterized (using perfect Newspeak) as a “human rights groups“.
Indeed, her post, “Gaza fishermen swamped by Israeli gunboats and water cannons“, July 24, contained a video narrated by a Brit who intoned with the monotone gravity of a correspondent reporting on the blitzkrieg of London on the “harrowing” water assault on the vessels (who were significantly beyond the 3 nautical mile limit) by the Israeli Navy which left several passengers shockingly, umm, ”drenched”!
The post itself is classic Sherwood – accepting at face value claims by Palestinian fishermen that their “livelihood” is demolished by the Israeli blockade, ignoring the context of Hamas terror, and dismissing the Israeli justification for the limit by placing both references to Israel’s security concerns in quotations.
Not in quotations however, and without a hyperlink citing a source, was her casual allegation that the United Nations and human rights organisations say the fishing restriction is collective punishment in violation of international law.
Sherwood also uncritically quotes an official from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights - an EU funded NGO which regularly describes Israel’s policies as “apartheid” and accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing - characterizing the broader Israeli blockade of arms as “illegal”, a claim which can no longer credibly be made in light of the United Nations Report‘s conclusion that the blockade is perfectly in accordance with international law.
More broadly, evidence relating to the propaganda value of Sherwood’s report can be found in the following images.
London:
While the movement behind Gaza TV News is less than clear, the fact that they cross-posted Sherwood’s dispatch verbatim from her Guardian report piqued my interest, and, in the course of my research, came across their Facebook page:
And, lo and behold, one of the few pages Gaza TV News “likes” just happen to be CPSG, the group who organized Sherwood’s voyage.
If you’re the member of CPSG who organized Sherwood’s fishing trip, you are, no doubt, gleaming right about now.
The word “dupe” simply doesn’t do justice to Sherwood’s continuing acquiescence to radical anti-Israel “activists”.
This is cross posted at Backspin, the blog of Honest Reporting.
Here’s a new canard leveled against Israel: Many Christians living in the Holy Land have to convert to Islam or to a different Christian denomination in order to obtain a divorce.
So claims Jill Hamilton in a shocking commentary published in The Guardian‘s print edition:
In Israel, Christians come under 10 personal status codes: Latin Catholic, Melkite, Maronite, Syrian Catholic, Armenian Catholic, Chaldean, Anglican, Greek Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox and Armenian. Some can divorce; others cannot. Some codes give equality; others do not.
In the Holy Land, Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans can only separate; to remarry they first have to convert to Greek Orthodox or Islam to obtain a divorce. Annulment is possible, but there are only about five cases finalised in the region annually . . . .
But if Arab Christians had the same legal rights as their Muslim neighbours and fellow Christians in the west, there would be no need for conversions.
If Hamilton did her homework, she would discover that Israel gives autonomy to each of these communities, respecting their rules and authorities on matters of personal status. (Israel only steps in to enforce human rights or civil rights such as in cases of wife-beating, child marriage, etc.)
Denominations have varying outlooks and rules on divorce; couples choosing to fast-track a divorce by converting aren’t Israel’s concern. If Hamilton wants to take issue with denominational differences over divorce, that’s a discussion for the clergy, not the Israeli government.
Hamilton is misleading, and scandalously so.
She’s also divorced from reality.
It may be my own gallows humor, but I sometimes almost find it amusing to see how long it takes for a CiF piece that doesn’t pertain to Jews or Israel to elicit a Guardian reader comment which, with varying degrees of rhetorical dexterity, manages to bring the discussion to the former or the latter.
As such, it only took 27 minutes from the time Nick Cohen’s recent CiF piece (A chance to drag ourselves out of the gutter, July 24), which commented on the fallout from the Murdoch scandal and what the event portends for the future of the media in the UK (and wasn’t even peripherally about Israel or the Middle East) was open to comments to produce this, which quickly accumulated 29 Recommends:
I reported the comment as off-topic but so far it still remains.
Further, a commenter with the moniker “HushedSilence” objected to Pindi’s comment, contributing the following:
And, then, this mild rebuke of Pindi’s hateful diatribe is deleted by CiF moderators:
So, our persistent HushedSilence then accurately observed the following:
An interesting insight into their moderation policy, indeed.
We’ll see if HushedSilence’s observation stays or is ultimately deleted by CiF moderators, but our saga doesn’t end there.
For good measure. Pindi added the following, which, as of this post, hasn’t been deleted, arguing that Cohen beats the drums in support of military involvement in the Middle East (presumably NATO involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan) which is in league with Nazi war crimes:
I guess for a paper whose editors evidently consider the explicit anti-Semitism of James Petras and Israel Shahak to be legitimate progressive thought the suggestion, by a CiF reader, that the UK is “killing Muslims and destroying their countries…to protect Israel” and that Nick Cohen cheer leads for NATO military involvement in the Middle East which is morally equivalent to Nazi war crimes may actually seem plausible.
(UPDATE: HushedSilence’s comment critical of CiF’s moderation process was indeed removed, as was, interestingly, the off topic vitriol by Pindi.)
- Curious deletions under Greg Philo’s surreal assertion, at CiF, that UK journalists are afraid to criticize Israel (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian reader off-topic anti-Israel hate of the day (cifwatch.com)
- Israel section of the Guardian’s online bookshop includes a work by David Duke’s favorite Jew (cifwatch.com)
- Disturbing amount of anti-Semitism by Guardian readers following CiF piece about Israeli PM’s speech (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian commenter gets banned after noting racist record of HRW’s Joe Stork (cifwatch.com)
- Curious deletion by Guardian comment moderators in Demjanjuk thread (cifwatch.com)
The Guardian has an online store which includes a books section.
So, I wondered, what, pray tell, did the world’s leading liberal voice offer about Israel, and upon a brief search found a few interesting titles:
More Bad News From Israel, by Greg Philo.
Philo, as we’ve noted, has warned darkly at CiF that the UK media is afraid to criticize Israel due to the Jewish state’s powerful and dangerous PR machine, and participated in a conference organized by the openly pro-Hamas group, MEMO.
Image and Reality of the Israel – Palestine Conflict by Norman Finkelstein.
Finkelstein is on record supporting Hezbollah as a legitimate resistance movement, suggested that the U.S. deserved the attacks on 9/11 and that “some things bin Laden says are true”, and “the U.S. qualifies as the main terrorist government in the world today.” In his book, The Holocaust Industry, Finkelstein said, the Holocaust “has been used to justify criminal policies of the Israeli state and U.S. support for these policies….The Zionists indeed learnt well from the Nazis. So well that it seems that their morally repugnant treatment of the Palestinians, and their attempts to destroy Palestinian society within Israel and the occupied territories, reveals them as basically Nazis with beards and black hats.”
Apartheid Israel, by Uri Davis
While the title speaks for itself, the Guardian’s helpful intro informs us that “Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has violated most UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. This up-to-date analysis of the inherent racism in the legal foundations of the State of Israel gives a sense of new emerging anti-Zionist currents within Israel/Palestine.”
Israel/Palestine Question, by Ilan Pappe.
Ilan Pappé is the Israeli-born political science professor and historian who has been behind the attempt by the UK Association of University Teachers’ (AUT) to blacklist Israeli universities. Pappe is a proud post-modern historian who admits that, facts are irrelevant when it comes to the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. “Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts, Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers,” Pappe said in an interview with the French newspaper Le Soir, Nov. 29, 1999.
Power of Israel in the United States, by James Petras
I’ve reviewed this book for a previous employer, and, in addition to being a well-known 9/11 conspiracy theorist, calling Petras a mere anti-Semite simply doesn’t do justice to his open malice towards Jews. He accuses Amercian Jews of dominating political life of the United States, a community which is not only more loyal to Israel than their own country, but represents, he asserts, nothing short of a fifth column. Petras also portrays Israel as a Nazi-like state which represents the biggest single threat to peace, human rights, and democracy around the globe. Here are two quotes of literally dozens you can find here: (Petras).
“At a time when Israel was killing children in the streets of Rajah and destroying hundreds of homes under the horrified eyes of the entire civilized world…US Congressional leaders and the two major Presidential candidates pledged unconditional support to Israel, evoking the bloodthirsty cheers of investment brokers, dentist, doctors, lawyers the cream of the cream of American Jewish society.“
“The hidden horror and the voices of dissent of many US citizens are stifled by the overbearing dominance of the Jewish monopoly of the mass media.”
Finally, the Guardian offers its readers “Jewish History, Jewish Religion” by the Jew most preferred by anti-Semitic white supremacists, Israel Shahak.
David Duke is the former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and perhaps the most famous American white supremacist today. On the website of his book, Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening to the Jewish Question, Duke notes that his book “is dedicated to the memory of…an Israeli Professor, Dr. Israel Shahak. Dr. Shahak believed that Jewish Supremacism has greatly harmed the Palestinian people as well as the non-Jewish community the world over. He offered strong evidence that Jewish radicals have waged an unrelenting ethnic war against Gentiles since the days of their sojourn in Egypt.”
Commented scholar Paul Bagdanor:
“Israel Shahak was a professor of organic chemistry. In his spare time he was a disseminator of antisemitic lies. Almost every falsehood invoked by the Nazis to justify the Holocaust was eventually ratified by this tenured academic at one of Israel’s most prestigious institutions.
According to Shahak, the Jews think of nothing but making money for the benefit of the Jewish state (“The force of Jewish devotion in assembling money is thought to be infinite”). According to Shahak, the Jews plan to dominate much of the world through an Israeli empire.”
He announced that “Israeli Jews, and with them most Jews throughout the world, are undergoing a process of Nazification.” He asserted that the Nuremberg Laws “are infinitely more moderate than the ‘Gentile’ regulations in Talmudic Law.” And he defamed “the Jewish establishment in the USA and its intellectual slaves,” adding that “Jewish terror is very kosher in the USA!”
The Guardian is not Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble. Their limited collection represents what the Guardian considers recommended reading on any given subject. As such, their online bookstore’s Israel section has the effect of informing their no doubt erudite readers that works by malicious and vile anti-Semites are consistent with their understanding of liberal values.
As I’ve noted previously, though Guardian editors may not hold anti-Semitic views themselves, they certainly have an appalling habit of legitimizing those who do.
Related articles
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- If they’re Jews send them back! (cifwatch.com)
- Mondoweiss or David Duke? Raed Salah’s defenders reach a new low. (cifwatch.com)
- What the Guardian won’t report: 73% of Palestinians agree with quote from Hamas charter about the need to kill Jews (cifwatch.com)
- Hateful Guardian reader comments about Jews & Israel beneath Daniel Levy’s celebration of Hamas (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian’s obsession with Israel and the conflicts not covered (cifwatch.com)
- Disturbing amount of anti-Semitism by Guardian readers following CiF piece about Israeli PM’s speech (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade, Ha’aretz and the political pathos of the radical left (cifwatch.com)
No, I shouldn’t have to post about this. In a world where political correctness and ideology didn’t hold sway over often unpleasant realities about the nature of anti-Semitism in our day, the results in the following poll would be widely reported, and answers would be demanded of the groups shown, once again, to possess an animosity towards Jews that can only be described as shameful – a word which also could be used to characterize those who fancy themselves enlightened, sensitive souls and yet continually turn a blind eye to such bigotry.
The important factor when considering the validity of polls is whether the results of any given study can be duplicated. That is, it’s one thing if one poll demonstrates a certain tendency but quite another when subsequent polls produce the same or similar results. As such, during U.S. elections, you often see (in the months leading up to the Presidential election) the results from polls, conducted each week, gauging the likelihood that voters will vote for a particular candidate. The result of such methodology is that you can see trends and test for the overall accuracy of the results.
Pew Global just released a poll on Muslim-Western attitudes which compares the results from their 2006 study. Among the views explored was attitudes towards Jews – in the U.S., Spain, Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Israel, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, The Palestinian Territories, Indonesia and Pakistan.
While the U.S. leads in the percentage of citizens who have favorable attitudes towards Jews (82%), the nations where favorable attitudes towards Jews are in the single digits – mirroring the results of the same poll in 2006 – are the Muslim, or mostly Muslim, nations: Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, The Palestinian Territories, Indonesia, and Pakistan.
Here are the results:
Further results show:
- An overwhelming percentage (over 90%) of citizens of these Muslim nations believe that, of all the major faiths, Judaism is the most violent religion.
- Muslims in the predominantly Muslim countries surveyed are more likely to associate negative characteristics with Westerners than non-Muslims are to associate them with Muslims.
- When asked about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, few among the Muslim publics surveyed believe these acts were carried out by groups of Arabs.
In a world where many continually claim that there isn’t a necessary relationship between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism – with the former being perfectly acceptable but the latter intolerable – the poll results pertaining to Muslim hostility towards Jews (and not merely Israelis) would seem to present a valid moral test to those who claim to be genuinely outraged when confronted with evidence of undeniable, explicit anti-Semitism.
In other words, we can expect the chilling results of this poll, demonstrating once again that anti-Semitism in the Muslim world is at epidemic proportions, to be completely ignored by the Guardian.
Related articles
- Harriet Sherwood Selective Outrage Watch: Hamas Edition (cifwatch.com)
- On the anniversary of Mein Kampf: Anti-Semitism, “the hate that dares not speak its name.” (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood, and the Guardian’s continuing ideologically inspired sins of omission (cifwatch.com)
- On CiF Watch and the fight against contemporary anti-Semitism (cifwatch.com)
- Peace: Harriet Sherwood’s Palestinian Caricature (cifwatch.com)
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Guest/Cross Post
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10 West Bank facts that Harriet Sherwood will never report
July 26, 2011 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: anti-Zionism, Danny Ayalon, Delegitimization, Judea and Samaria Area, StandWithUs, West Bank | by Adam Levick | 4 comments
This 2-minute StandWithUs video contains more facts about the history of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) than most people have probably ever heard, and represents (along with “The Truth about the West Bank” video we posted last week) a greater effort by the pro-Israel community to finally refute the lies, distortions and historical fallacies about the territory which are continually advanced, as if by rote, by the Guardian and most of the mainstream media.
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