Dec 11 2011

Breathtaking Hypocrisy Watch: Per Guardian/AP, Palestinians accuse Gingrich of ‘Incitement’


Say what you will about Newt Gingrich’s remarks during a U.S. interview that Palestinians are an invented people, but the following passage from a Guardian/AP report, “Gingrich stands by ‘invented’ people remark“, December 11, truly delves the depths of hypocrisy.

“Palestinian officials reacted furiously Saturday to Gingrich’s earlier comments, accusing the Republican presidential hopeful of incitement and staging a “cheap stunt” to court the Jewish vote.”

So, the Palestinians, who consistently deny the Jewish connection to Israel; deny Israel’s right to exist, promote terrorism and glorify terrorists who murder innocent Jews; promote virulent antisemitism in their schools, mosques, and popular media; and deny the Holocaust suddenly have discovered the dangers of incitement!

Here’s just one of thousands of examples of antisemitic incitement documented by sites such as Palestinian Media Watch.

This, from Hamas TV, is a music video showing a young daughter of suicide terrorist promising to follow in her mother’s footsteps.

On a hunch, I placed the terms “Palestinian incitement” in the Guardian’s search engine, and got all of 6 hits going back to 2001.

Indeed, when Chris Elliott issued his quasi mea culpa, “On averting accusations of antisemitism” in Nov., warning Guardian writers to avoid using language which is ”resonant of antisemitism”, he only addressed a small part of the overall problem at his paper.

A problem at the Guardian and ‘Comment is Free’ much more egregious than expressions of explicit antisemitism by their writers is the paper’s recurring tendency to avoid reporting the well-documented antisemitic record of the “progressive” protagonists of their reports and commentaries – particularly, but not exclusively, pertaining to the Arab/Muslim/Palestinian world.

As such, the Guardian’s continuing antisemitic sins of omission when promoting the Palestinian cause represents the nadir of such journalistic dishonesty, and prevents any realistic understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian (and Israeli-Islamist) Conflict.

Contrary to the comments by U.S. Ambassador Howard Gutman last week about Muslim antisemitism, such hatred towards Jews isn’t created by the conflict, it is the root cause of the conflict.

Palestinian complaints of incitement about the comments of one American politician are as dishonest as they are supremely cynical.

(UPDATE: A new Guardian report on the row over Gingrich’s comments quotes chief Palestinian negotiator and serial liar Saeb Erekat – also see here - complaining that the comments were “an incitement to terror.”)

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22 comments on “Breathtaking Hypocrisy Watch: Per Guardian/AP, Palestinians accuse Gingrich of ‘Incitement’”

  1. What struck me was a report of yesterday’s debate in the Jerusalem Post where Romney accused Gingrich of incendiary words in a boiling pot– the words being, ”invented people”. Apart from the bad fit of that strange metaphor I don’t recall that the Guardian had said anything of that kind about Obama when he ventured to express his new ideas about Israel. Just sticking to recent incendiary words: settlement freeze and 67 lines were hardly calculated to cool any conflagration and the Guardian is still selling them enthusiastically at every opportunity.

    .

  3. Given that Arafat himself knew that a Palestinian people were notional and the concept had been advanced to undermine the state of Israel, these people are either selectively amnesiac or utterly ignorant.

    On March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview with Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here’s what he said:

    “The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan…”

    Breathtaking stupidity and ignorance on the part of the Guardian which conveniently forgets to mention this statement and would no doubt delete any post which referred to it.

  5. How soon before Newt puts out a “clarification”?

    These are politicians we’re talking about, they are good at speaking from two mouths.

  7. At last someone had the guts to come out and say what a lot of people knew and are thinking.

    As to inciting the palestinians,there is no need to incite them,they are in a constant state of incitement.

    There is a great article on Israel21c that there being a significant positive change in Israel’s branding.Good news.

    We should send that article to the Guardian,it’s going to ruin their day.

  8. The sooner that Obama goes the better.He would be competing with Jimmah Carter as to who was or is the worst American president.

    It really pisses off the Guardian that there is someone of authority who sees and cuts through their BS,and tells it as is.

    No prizes for guessing who will be (besides Israel of course) the next hate target of the Guardian….

  10. Good piece – But the most important point is that every time the Palestinians’ acuse someone of incitement to violence, it is an implicit threat: “you do anything to displease us and we will resort to extreme violence”.

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