David Wearing, who has contributed eight times to CiF since 2009, has a Guardian profile which notes he is a PhD candidate in political science at UCL, studying Britain’s response to the Arab Spring, and is also a co-editor at New Left Project.

Briefly, New Left Project includes, as one of its “Friend” sites, the radical Left online magazine, Znet, where Wearing also has contributed.

An indication of how radical Znet Magazine is can be found by looking at one their regular contributors, James Petras, whose antisemitism is well-documented, explicit and extreme.  Here’s one of hundreds of quotes from his book, The Power of Israel in the U.S:

In this passage from his book (which I reviewed in-depth here) Petras suggests that Jews represent the greatest threat to humanity.

“The worse crimes are committed by those who claim to be a divinely chosen people, a people with righteous claims of supreme victimhood.   Righteous victimology, linked to ethno-religious loyalties and directed by fanatical civilian militarists with advanced weaponry, is the greatest threat to world peace and humanity”.

(Note that this isn’t a stray comment beneath the line, but, rather, the observation of a regular contributor to a magazine David Wearing’s site recommends.)

But, back to Wearing, whose Twitter feed I recently started following along with others associated with the Guardian.

Yesterday, he Tweeted four reasons why Israel is subject to particular focus in the world.

Here’s one:

Another reason:

Another:

And, this:

Intrigued by Wearing’s insistence that “a huge propaganda campaign whitewashing Israeli crimes cannot go unchallenged”, I Tweeted him a follow-up question:

His reply:

So, the Guardian political commentator is among those who genuinely believe that Israel is protected from its fair share of criticism (by a “huge propaganda campaign”), and that he is in the vanguard of a brave few who dare challenge Zionist power.

Evidently, Wearing hasn’t checked his paper’s own data store which would indicate that, far from escaping its fair share of criticism, Israel receives grossly disproportionate coverage at the Guardian in comparison to other nations.

Also, Israel’s huge propaganda machine, led by the dreaded AIPAC, has somehow not managed to stifle similarly disproportionate criticism at the UN, where, since 2006,  more than 80% of all condemnatory resolutions meted out by their human rights body have been against Israel.

Nor has the power of the Israel lobby Wearing warns of spared Israel from obsessive critical scrutiny by large and powerful NGOs (like Human Rights Watch) in relation to nations with far worse human rights records.

Moreover, the subtext of Wearing’s Tweets is especially troubling, and yet all too familiar to those of us who monitor such narratives at the Guardian and Comment is Free: That there’s something unique, or even sinister, about a nation or its supporters engaging in public relations to advance their cause – as if Zionists and Zionists alone engage in a spirited and robust defense of their interests.    

There are roughly 14 million Jews in the world (or 2/10 of 1% of the total population), and one majority Jewish state (out of 193), and the suggestion that the political advocacy of such a tiny minority represents a threat to “liberal” values demonstrates just how distorted the term has become within the (Guardian Left) ideological territory David Wearing claims. 

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