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Via a highly reliable source, there was a truly quality moment at the 2012 Herzliya Conference today – at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) – as the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood evidently unwittingly sat next to Simon Plosker of HonestReporting in the IDC cafeteria.
If you recall, the Guardian was the winner (in a landslide!) of HonestReporting’s 2011 Dishonest Reporter Award – an award attributed to, among other factors: Sherwood’s bizarre and unprofessional diatribe directed towards the Jewish Chronicle’s Stephen Pollard in response to a JC essay she disagreed with, her false claim that the Knesset was built on the ancestral farmland of the abandoned Palestinian village, as well as the journalist’s activist’s fishing expedition on board a Palestinian vessel (more than 3 nautical miles) off the coast of Gaza.
While I’m not sure if Sherwood knew she was seated next to one of her many Zionist nemeses while at the IDC, my guess is that this photo, from a couple of years ago, would accurately represent her possible reaction if so informed.
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- Fatah arrests 8 Hamas members. Israel arrests 1. Which do you think Harriet Sherwood reported? (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood Gets 2012 Off to a Shoddy Start (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian: Geographically Clueless (cifwatch.com)
- Question to Harriet Sherwood: How are Gazans living in sovereign Palestinian state still “refugees”? (cifwatch.com)
- In a landslide, Guardian wins 2011 ‘Dishonest Reporting’ Award! (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood, and the Guardian’s strange fixation on the survival of one Jerusalem bookshop (cifwatch.com)
- The ‘Humanitarian Racism’ of Harriet Sherwood and the Guardian Left (cifwatch.com)
- Israel’s latest cruel, oppressive & shocking violation of international law per Harriet Sherwood: Quarry Mining! (cifwatch.com)
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- Harriet Sherwood’s report on Bedouin copy-pastes UNRWA anti-Israel propaganda (cifwatch.com)
On Jan. 22, the Guardian published Harriet Sherwood’s report, Palestinian children – alone and bewildered in Israel’s Al-Jalame Jail, which included accusations that Israel mistreats Palestinian teens charged with acts of violence, allegations largely based on information provided by one radical, anti-Zionist NGO.
Specifically, Sherwood charged that a substantial percentage of Palestinian children arrested by Israeli soldiers (for acts of violence) have been mistreated while in custody – which, it was claimed, includes physical abuse and long stays of solitary confinement.
In an over 2700 word long report only 230 were devoted to presenting the Israeli side of the story, and even those few passages curiously omitted the following emphatic denial by Israeli Security officials (which was provided to the Guardian prior to publication):
“The claims that Palestinian minors were subject to interrogation techniques that include beatings, prolonged periods in handcuffs, threats, kicks, verbal abuse, humiliation, isolation and prevention of sleep are utterly baseless.”
As HonestReporting noted, Sherwood also severely downplayed the offences Palestinian teens are charged with, which include:
[The recruitment by terrorist organizations...involvement in suicide bomb attacks, Molotov cocktail throwing, stone throwing and stabbing, grenade throwing, the use of explosives, shooting, car bombs, transfer of weapons, kidnapping, rocket launching, as well as assault and murder.
Today, eleven days following Sherwood's smear against Israel, 'Comment is Free' provided Amir Ofek, press attache for the Embassy of Israel in London, the chance to respond.
Ofek, consistent with the information made available to Sherwood prior to publishing her story, strongly refuted allegations that the torture and humiliation of Palestinian suspects was permitted, and categorically denied that "solitary confinement in order to induce a confession" is employed - all of which, Ofek argued, severely undermines the veracity of the Guardian report.
Moreover, while Sherwood provided meager space for the Israeli side of the story in her original report, she didn't see fit to include any information on the severity of the crimes Palestinian teens were arrested for, choosing instead to focus on the "emotional scars" inflicted upon those in custody.
As Ofek noted about the horrific nature of the atrocities that minors, some as young as 12, can be arrested for:
Hakim Awad, 17, is a minor. Last March he and his 18-year-old cousin, Amjad, brutally murdered the Fogel family while they slept. No mercy was shown to three-month-old Hadas, her two brothers (aged four and 11) and their parents. The scene of the crime, including the severed head of a toddler, left even the most experienced of police officers devastated. The duo proudly confessed to their killings, and they have shown no subsequent remorse.
Ofek added:
Between 2000-04, 292 minors took part in terrorist activities...Ismail Tsabaj, 12, Azi Mostafa, 13, and Yousuf Basam, 14, were sent by Hamas on a mission chillingly similar to the one involving the Fogels, aiming to penetrate a Jewish home at night and slaughter a family in their beds. In this case, the IDF fortunately stopped them in time.
Ofek further noted that Sherwood's dismissive claim that "most [Palestinian children arrested] are accused of throwing stones at soldiers or settlers”, shows a “bewildering disregard for the damage that throwing stones…can cause”, before adding:
“Judah Shoham never reached the age of many of these minors, as he was killed by Palestinians throwing stones, aged just five months. Similarly, Jonathan Palmer never reached his second birthday; he was killed with his father [Asher] when stones were hurled at their car last October.”
Indeed, most tellingly, while Sherwood’s report not only named the Palestinian teens who alleged Israeli mistreatment (and even included an eleven minute video of the teens telling their story), a search of the Guardian’s website didn’t turn up even one mention of the Israelis – Jonathan (Yonatan) Palmer and his father, Asher – murdered by Palestinian teen “rock throwers” who Ofek referred to.
The only mention of the deadly act of terrorism by Palestinian teens at all was a throw-away passage buried in a story about a mosque vandalized in Northern Israel, on Oct. 3., and a supremely callous characterization by Harriet Sherwood in a story titled “Israel approves new settler homes in East Jerusalem“, which referred to the victims in passing as a “Jewish settler and his son.” [emphasis added]
Wrote Sherwood of the Palestinian teens arrested by Israeli soldiers in her Jan 22 report:
“Following detention many children exhibit symptoms of trauma: nightmares, mistrust of others, fear of the future, feelings of helplessness and worthlessness, obsessive compulsive behaviour, bed-wetting, aggression, withdrawal and lack of motivation.”
As Sherwood continually demonstrates, the “trauma” suffered by family and friends mourning the loss of Israeli victims of terror (such as Asher and Yonatan Palmer) is simply not part of the narrative.
Palestinian teens profiled in Sherwood's report
Not seen in the Guardian: Asher Hillel Palmer, 25, and his one-year-old son Yonatan, victims of terror committed by Palestinian teens
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Opponents of the Jewish state’s existence – such as CiF contributors Ali Abunimah, Tel Aviv University student Omar Barghouti, and Ahmed Moor - will be converging on my native city of Philadelphia (at the University of Pennsylvania) on February 4th and 5th for a BDS Conference.
As our friend and ally Jon, of the anti-BDS blog, Divest This!, put it:
“An international lineup of BDS advocates will meet, greet and try to breathe life in a ‘movement’ that has yet to achieve a single major victory after more than a decade of effort.”
Divest This! has even created a unique page to combat the Philly event, titled “PennBDS-Oy!”
Since I know a few of the local Philly anti-Zionist Jews who will likely participate in the conference on how best to isolate my nation, and, in the off-chance they read this post, here’s some advice.
As always, you will fail miserably at your efforts.
Not only does Philly have an especially well-organized pro-Israel community, which includes college Zionist activists, my friend Lori Lowenthal Marcus and her group Z Street, and my former colleagues at the local office of the Anti-Defamation League, but, more broadly, Israel, my new country, has one weapon which we’ll continue to deploy that you have no answer to: Our success.
In addition to our undeniable regional advantage in every conceivable democratic category, we continue to achieve economically, academically and socially to a degree remarkably disproportionate to our size.
Though our right to exist as a Jewish state is axiomatic and unreserved – and we need not demonstrate our utility to gain the privilege granted to all other nations unconditionally – our achievements stand as a testament to what you’re up against when you engage in cognitive warfare against us.
Israel has the 2nd highest ratio of university degrees in the world, produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin, has the largest number of startup companies than any other country except the U.S., and has the largest number (per capita) of biotech companies.
What we may lack in natural resources we more than make up for in grit, determination, and hard work.
Further, unlike our Arab neighbors, our liberal values are consistently demonstrated by our free and fair elections, our independent judiciary, our democratic legislature (which even grants rights to political parties opposed to our existence), our free and feisty press, and the rights afforded to women, religious minorities, and the LGBT community.
My nation – the first sovereign Jewish state in 2000 years – is a proud, robust, dynamic, and thriving pluralistic democratic Jewish state, and there is little you can do to thwart our will to survive.
Finally, here’s a small reminder of what a small group of thoughtful, committed supporters of the Jewish state can do in the face of a coordinated anti-Zionist campaign:
Am Y’srael Chai! (The Jewish nation lives).
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There was nothing especially interesting about Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman’s recent essay, “Running for president or for an Oscar – which is the bigger waste of money?”.
Freeman cheekily, if cynically, compared the vast sums of money spent on both the Oscars and the U.S. Presidential Campaign, conjuring “shadowy menacing puppet masters” controlling both outcomes – Harvey Weinstein, Karl Rove, the Koch Brothers, Super PACs, etc. – as if to ask “why bother paying attention to either contest”?
Freeman’s commentary elicited a few sober, if satirical, comments beneath the line, inspiring the Guardian journalist to cheerfully comment, “Thanks everyone! What nice comments so far. 2012 is starting off very kindly on CiF, I must say.”
Alas, the decency level soon declined, as one commenter felt the need to respond to the erstwhile humorist, thusly:
Of course, it would be easy to dismiss the reader’s Israel ‘Obsessive Compulsive Disorder’ as just a stray ‘off-topic’ comment, except that, as you can see, the comment received 50 “Recommends” by fellow Guardianistas (in a post which has thus far only generated 59 comments), and hasn’t been deleted. So, presumably, it isn’t deemed unrelated to Hadley’s commentary by CiF Moderators.
Moreover, any good student of CiF America knows, per two recent commentaries (here and here) on the undue influence of one American “Israel-Firster” named Sheldon Adelson, precisely what kind of “shadowy puppet master” controls the U.S. political system.
The degree to which some CiF readers are capable of explaining so many unpleasant political dynamics, in either the Middle East or the U.S., in a manner which imputes maximum malice to Jews, Zionists or Israel can be nearly comical, but is often not unrelated to the Guardian’s continuing legitimization of such obsessions.
Guardian commentators know their audience’s biases, they know them well, and they continually aim to please.
In politics it’s typically known as “playing to your base”.
Say you chose to use the vacation portal on the Guardian’s website to plan a long deserved get-away for you and your family, and you’re considering a certain 8,000 square mile modern state off the Mediterranean, in order to enjoy this country’s unique variety of cosmopolitan urban areas, beaches and mountains, as well as the unparalleled variety of religious landmarks in the land where monotheism was born.
So, you go to the Guardian’s Holiday Offers page, and use the search function to find your preferred country.
Except, well, you can’t quite find your destination of choice.
You find a few of its neighbors, such as Egypt, and, further see 110 nations represented, yet not the precise place you’re looking for, despite the fact that you’re pretty confident its’ been around for 63 or so odd years.
Then you happen to come across what seems to be a new nation which, based on your understanding of the world, you thought designated an entire region rather than a sovereign state. It’s called “Middle East”.
So, hoping that this will lead you where you want to go, you click the link which takes you here: a destination known as “Jerusalem, Galilee & the Dead Sea”.
This seems to be the country you want to visit, and the description helpfully notes that the tour takes you to Jerusalem and the Sea of Galilee.
Then you click on the “Included” tab, and this is what you see:
Again, getting warmer: Tel Aviv, Caesarea, Acre, Masada, the Western Wall, the Dead Sea, and Yad Vashem.
And, while the itinerary in the next tab helpfully outlines your day-to-day excursions to the places above, all in all, in over 1100 words of text describing this exotic excursion, there’s strangely no mention of the nation you’re visiting.
No doubt, this curious omission must simply represent an honest editorial oversight.
So, “Middle East” / “Jerusalem, Galilee, and Dead Sea”, or whatever to call this dynamic oasis in the desert, here I come!
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An exquisite convergence of anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism appeared in ‘Comment is Free’ today, written by Mark Weisbrot, perhaps the most prolific among CiF’s core of extreme left commentators.
Weisbrot’s sophistication and erudition, when expounding upon the U.S war against sadistic Taliban terrorists, was on display in his previous CiF entry, where he thriftily and pithily summed up the US campaign as “soldiers pissing on corpses [and] drones slaughtering civilians”.
He characterized the U.S. war against terrorism more broadly as arguably indicative of “a crusade against the Muslim world” – agitprop which seems to slip off Weisbrot’s tongue with the ease of someone schooled in the Noam Chomsky school of tyranny apologetics.
And, as I noted previously, Weisbrot quite explicitly accused the U.S. of committing a “Holocaust” in Iraq, accusing critics of such a characterization as guilty of “Holocaust Denial”.
Naturally, as part of his broader anti-American ideological package, Weisbrot is necessarily as hostile to Israel as he is sympathetic to Arab despots.
Weisbrot – whose output of anti-Zionist and (mostly) anti-American vitriol, at Znet and CiF, is quite impressive – today published “Why American ‘democracy’ promotion rings hollow“, Jan. 31.
While the broader narrative, mocking American democracy promotion in the Arab world is itself a work of political sophistry worthy of scrutiny, the following passage about Israel is a much repeated, if banal, narrative within Guardian-Left circles, and represents yet another casual assault on the Jewish state’s legitimacy.
Write’s Weisbrot:
Nowhere is [the hypocritical U.S. claim to promote democracy] more obvious than in the Middle East, where the US government’s policy of collaboration with Israel’s denial of Palestinian national rights has put it at odds with populations throughout the region. As a result, Washington fears democracy in many countries because it will inevitably lead to more governments taking the side of the Palestinians,
The notion that the Arab world, which continues to be defined by increasing intolerance towards religious and ethnic minorities, extreme antisemitism, and the denial of basic human rights – in stark contrast with Israel’s unique and enduring democratic prowess - possesses any moral credibility in denouncing the U.S. is a political inversion of the first order.
Arabs of Palestinian origin, whose rights are systematically denied throughout the (non-Jewish) Middle East, have become the propaganda tool of choice for far left ideologues such as Weisbrot – activists who similarly fail to mention the absence of such democratic values in Palestinian ruled territory.
The reason why Western liberals fear the upheavals in the Arab world is the increasingly clear slouch towards Islamist political movements which are, by definition, decidedly reactionary and illiberal, and at odds with true democratic values.
The romaticization of the Arab Spring, the edifice of a “democratic” revolution, is becoming increasingly difficult for those who claim intellectual integrity to maintain.
The Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists in Egypt, the Enhada Party in Tunisia, or major parties vying for power in Libya, can largely be defined (or may likely, one day, be defined) by a greater adherence to (in spirit or letter) Sharia law, and an atavistic, ideological antisemitism which bears little if any connection to the plight of the Palestinians.
As a report on antisemitism in the Arab world in the context of the ‘Arab Spring”, written by scholars at the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University, noted:
[While] the popular uprisings in the Arab world do not represent a general change in attitude towards Israel, Zionism and the Jews it seems the anti-Semitic discourse and incitement have become more extreme and violent,”
Charges of an international Jewish conspiracy have been a central motif in the anti-Semitic propaganda that has accompanied the Arab Spring uprisings. This motif has been emphasized in each of the countries especially by way of pointing a blaming finger towards Israel, Zionism and Jews conspiring against Arabs and Muslims
Of course, the continuing Arab antipathy towards Jews is not at all surprising to those who study the politics of the region, and the habitual denial of this endemic Judeophobic dynamic by Guardian reporters and commentators is documented continually on the pages of this blog.
But the mere ubiquity of voices like Weisbrot, at ‘Comment is Free’, who are willfully blind to the most malign anti-Jewish racism, makes it no less deserving of critical scrutiny, nor, especially, any less morally repugnant.
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- Reinforcing Prejudices: Mark Weisbrot’s subtle meditation at CiF on why America is so vile (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian publishes letter by supporter of Gilad Atzmon, refuses to publish rebuttal (cifwatch.com)
- The Perils of Self-Deception on the Root Cause of Antisemitism (cifwatch.com)
- Arun Kundnani, & a Guardian dog-whistle about the injurious effects of a wealthy American Zionist (cifwatch.com)
- The ‘Humanitarian Racism’ of Harriet Sherwood and the Guardian Left (cifwatch.com)
H/T Dave
Thanks to the internet, nothing really ever disappears.
As such, here’s a screen capture of a Guardian report on Jan. 30 titled “Bahrain has failed to adopt reform: So why is the Grand Prix going ahead?“, which is no longer on their site.
A rather important story for genuine human rights activists in the Arab world, don’t you think? The arrest and torture of human rights activists and political dissidents: Apartheid practiced against an indigenous population; a complete lack of due process, and outrage by activists at the attempt to legitimize such a despotic regime by allowing them to host an internationally prestigious sporting event?
Such a story, which holds Arab rulers accountable for their continued violations of basic human rights, and make a mockery of the spirit of the much vaunted “Arab Spring”, is very much outside the box given the Guardian’s Judeocentric view of human rights abuses in the region.
However, when you go to the link now, this is what you find:
What happened? Well, per the report’s authors, Nabeel Rajab and John Lubbock, the Guardian is being threatened with legal action by Bahrain.
Here’s Lubbock’s Tweet:
Truly remarkable. An institution which prides itself on “speaking truth to power” caves to pressure from a Bahrain PR Firm (perhaps the PR firm responsible for promoting the Grand Prix event?), or the regime itself, and completely removes a piece critical of the country.
The hypocrisy is stunning.
While, based on Lubbock’s Tweets, it appears that the piece may be re-posted in some form, can anyone remember a similar case involving Israel, where the Guardian removed a defamatory piece about the Jewish state due to threats from the Israeli government, or even following substantial evidence of factual errors?
Yes, it’s a rhetorical question.
This blog’s “What the Guardian wont’ report” posts typically highlight news which we feel is vital to accurately understanding the Israeli-Palestinian (and Israeli-Islamist) Conflict, but which doesn’t comport to the Guardian’s political narrative and so is ignored by their reporters covering the region.
As such, it is impossible to engage in a rational debate about the root cause of the conflict without acknowledging the degree to which antisemitism and the glorification of violence against Jews permeates Palestinian society and, moreover, how such culturally normative racism represents one of the greatest impediments to peace.
At the end of the day, if Israelis aren’t reasonably sure that a future Palestinian state will accept the existence of a Jewish state, and will inculcate their children with the values of peace, tolerance and pluralism, most will continue to be skeptical of further territorial concessions which could strengthen the most malevolent Palestinian political movements.
The significance of the following story simply cannot be dismissed or rationalized by anyone sincerely passionate about promoting peace in the region.
As you recall, on March 11, 2011, five members of the Fogel family were killed in their home in the town of Itamar by Palestinian terrorists from the Awad family. Hakim Awad led the attack, killing the parents Ehud and Ruth and three of their children, aged 11 years, 4 years, and 2 months.
Per Palestinian Media Watch (PMW):
Official Palestinian Authority TV broadcast greetings to the murderers of the Fogel family from the relatives of the killers and from the PA TV host.
The weekly PA TV program For You dedicated to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons let the mother and aunt of one of the murderers praise the terrorists as “heroes.” After the mother of the murderer Hakim Awad explained how she is prevented from visiting her son for security reasons, the PA TV host said: “Go ahead, sister, we can convey your voice.”
On the phone, Hakim Awad’s mother “blesses” her “dear son,” and despite the fact that participants in this TV program normally do not mention the terror attacks for which their relatives are serving time, the mother mentions that her son is the one who “carried out the operation in Itamar and sentenced to 5 life sentences,” referring to her son’s brutal killings in the town Itamar.
Hakim Awad’s aunt also participated in the program and referred to the terrorists involved in the killings as “heroes,” calling Hakim Awad “the hero, the legend.” This prompted the PA TV host to add: “We, for our part, also convey our greetings to them.” [emphasis added]
As PMW noted, it was Hakim Awad who killed Ehud and Ruth Fogel and their young children by stabbing them repeatedly with a knife.
Ruth Fogel, 35, Udi Fogel, 36, and their children Elad, 4, three-month-old Hadas, and Yoav, 11
I suggest that you consider sharing the following video of the Palestinian program described above not as “hasbara”, but merely to reach those who are still open minded, so they might ponder the injurious impact of such morally toxic messages within Palestinian society on the peace process.
The program, about which neither Harriet Sherwood nor Phoebe Greenwood will ever report, was broadcast on official state-run Palestinian TV on January 19, and repeated again on January 21.
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Inspired by Arun Kundnani’s scare story about the toxicity of Jewish money (“Newt Gingrich’s agenda-setting big donor“, Jan. 27) were a few predictable reader comments.
The text in quotes below are from another reader comment which “beachbear2012″ was responding to. Please note the final passage of the comment by “beachbear2012″, which helpfully fleshes out the full scope of the conspiratorial plot. And, when reading, remember, it’s Zionists he/she hates not Jews.
But, the following “truth-telling” comment about Jewish subterfuge (which received 12 “Recommends” before being deleted), posted under Paul Harris’s piece on Adelson, “Secrets of the billionaire backing Gingrich’s shot at the White House“, serves to make “beachbear2012″ seem downright philosemitic.
CLICK TO ENLARGE
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- Arun Kundnani, & a Guardian dog-whistle about the injurious effects of a wealthy American Zionist (cifwatch.com)
- Why weren’t these deleted? CiF essay about Rosh Hashana elicits antisemitic comments (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s Ewen MacAskill sees Obama’s Israel support, in State of Union, reflecting need of Jews’ money (cifwatch.com)
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Arun Kundnani at Islamic Human Rights Commission Event
The 2012 Presidential Republican Primaries have just gotten started, and the Guardian has found their villain:
A ”secretive”, pro-Israel, bullying, racist Jewish billionaire exercising a nefarious influence on the American political process.
His name is Sheldon Adelson, and, in nearly 3000 words in two separate Guardian reports (both published on Jan. 28,), Paul Harris and Arun Kundnani have played to their Guardian base with the unmistakable evocation of the injurious effects of (Zionist) Jewish money on the American body politic.
Harris’s “The Secrets of the billionaire bankrolling Gingrich’s shot at the White House“, warning of a Jewish billionaire attempting to purchase the outcome of the U.S. elections, contains tropes similarly found in Arun’s piece, but Arun‘s account of Adelson, in ”Newt Gingrich’s agenda-setting big donor“, represents a far more egregious polemical assault on pro-Israel American Jewry.
Arun begins his critique of Adleson’s substantial donations to the Gingrich campaign by attempting to explain his motives, complaining that the New York Times and others in the MSM have been less than direct, and even coy, about Adelsons’ political views.
Writes Arun:
[The NYT] ignored the fact that the Adelson [family] uses their wealth to fund rightwing groups in Israel and anti-Muslim campaigns within the U.S.
Adelson is a friend of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu… [and] has also funded the leading pro-Israel lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)…known for its strong and effective advocacy of Israel’s interests.
Arun’s caricature of Adelson couldn’t be clearer: A wealthy American Jew attempting to manipulate the U.S. political system to promote not American but, rather, Israel’s interests.
He continues:
[Adelson] also reportedly supports the Clarion Fund, which produces scare-mongering films advancing the conspiracy theory that Muslims seek to impose sharia law in America.
One of the Clarion Fund’s films, “Obsession“, which I’ve seen, at odds with Arun’s characterization, does not contain anti-Muslim racism, and certainly does not trade in conspiracy theories. The film opens with a very clear explanation that their focus is not on the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world, but merely on Islamists who espouse radical and violent views.
Indeed, the video largely consists of clips of Islamists on Arab TV (in their own words) advancing hate and inciting their followers to launch a global Jihad.
The suggestion there’s something bigoted about warning of the very real threats posed by radical Islam is one of the moral signatures of the Guardian Left – those who genuinely seem more concerned with the “agenda” of Zionist Jews than with proponents of a reactionary, violent, and theocratic movement inherently at odds with progressive values.
Arun continues:
While Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have also declared their strong support for Israel, only Gingrich has embraced a vision of civilizational conflict between the west and Islam – a convenient narrative for the right in Israel, which fears growing international support for the human rights of Palestinians, and would prefer Americans to think of Israel as a bastion of western values threatened by Islamic barbarism.
Right out of the Guardian commentary playbook, Arun sows doubt on the morally intuitive understanding that Israel is indeed a bastion of liberal democratic values and human rights in a region awash in repression and religious totalitarianism.
Is it even debatable that the “human rights of Palestinians” continue to be abrogated by their decidedly reactionary Islamist leaders in Gaza?
What possible defense could Arun mount to evidence that the rights of women, gays, political dissidents and religious minorities are routinely violated in the Palestinian Territories?
Interestingly, Arun, a Soros fellow, has appeared at events about Islamophobia sponsored by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC).
To those unaware about the IHRC’s understanding of human rights, here’s Douglas Murray, former director of the Centre for Social Cohesion:
[The IHRC] campaigns for imprisoned extremists such as the “Blind Sheikh”, Omar Abdel Rahman, currently serving a life sentence in the US for his part in the first blowing-up of the World Trade Centre in 1993. The IHRC’s chairman, Massoud Shadjareh criticised the prosecution of Abu Hamza in 2006, claiming that the conviction created “an environment that can only further alienate the Muslim community”. Shadjareh has called Zionism a racist ideology, and, in a 2006 demonstration in London, called for support for Hezbollah. The IHRC also organises the annual al-Quds day parade in London – an event instituted by that well-known champion of human rights, Ayatollah Khomeini.
Arun also appeared in 2006 UK forum titled “Racism, Liberty and the war on terror”, whose co-panelists included a who’s who of Islamists and their supporters, including Moazzam Begg, former Taliban supporter and al-Qaeda member, and Salma Yaqoob, the former vice-chair, of the Respect Party who described the 7/7 terror attacks as reprisal attacks against American aggression.
Arun is an editor at the journal, ‘Race and Class’, which frequently publishes essays by those opposed to Israel’s existence, including one by Hilary and Steven Rose which championed the virtues of a complete cultural and academic boycott of Israel.
Arun has also, in an interview, spoken favorably of Islamist thinkers like Hassan al-Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood), Tariq Ramadan (a proponent of Islamism who happens to be the grandson of al-Banna) and Sayyid Qutb (the Islamist writer who’s been credited with inspiring the ideology of Islamist groups like al-Qaeda).
Moreover, in the Marxist-inspired, ideological spirit of Guardian Associate Editor Seumas Milne, Arun has derided the West’s war against Islamist terrorism as nothing more than another form of “neo-colonialism“.
Finally, and arguably the most chilling passages in his ’Comment is Free’ piece, Arun concludes:
The number of Americans holding [Adelson's pro-Israel anti-Islamist] views [are] declining. One index of this shifting mood was the that the standing ovation Netanyahu received at Congress was “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby”, implying that money rather than shared values underlies the special relationship. Yet there remains a reluctance to fully discuss these issues for fear of fueling the old hate libels about Jewish money controlling world events. This is a real concern: antisemitism continues to be central to much far-right ideology in the US and Europe. Equally, though, we should not be discouraged from properly scrutinising the millions of dollars being spent to advance the career of a politician who promotes conspiracy theories about a Muslim takeover of America and is running for the presidential nomination while espousing a Greater Israel agenda. [emphasis added]
Arun here is marveling, indeed celebrating, the American lurch towards the mainstreaming of classic antisemitic tropes; seeing its resurgence as a hopeful, indeed progressive, indicator of the changing political climate: The fear of American Jews loyal not to their own country, but to a “greater Israel”.
Arun is speaking truth to power, bucking the politically fashionable concerns of a resurgent antisemitism.
But, perhaps Arun’s greatest conceit, and most deceitful narrative, involves the suggestion that antisemitism “continues to be central to much far-right ideology in the US and Europe”.
Is there really anyone who’s intellectually and morally serious who believes that Judeophobia is an ideological vice primarily found on the right?
Can anyone aware of the malign, often annihilationist, anti-Jewish rhetoric emanating from the Middle East – in their media, popular culture, and during sermons delivered in mosques located in Cairo, Damascus, Riyadh, Gaza City, and Ramallah – honestly suggest that the the most serious, pervasive and endemic antisemitism in our day lay not in the Islamic world?
Arun’s profound moral obfuscation about Islam’s Jewish problem, couched in an essay itself laden with classic Judeophobic tropes regarding the corrosive effects of Jews’ money, represents a supremely cynical moral inversion.
Yet, Arun’s polemical assault on the motives and loyalties of American Jews represents the kind of bigoted propaganda continually, and audaciously, couched in progressive terms at the ideological space known as the Guardian Left.
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As I’ve noted on several occasions, the allegations by Guardian reporters that Jews living anywhere beyond the green line (that is, where Jews have lived for centuries, with the exception of the period between 1949 and 1967) are in violation of international law are leveled as frequently as they are lazily. Such reports rarely even bother inserting a hyperlink to a source on the adjudication of the illegality of such Israeli communities.
Charges have been legitimized by the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood that Jerusalem’s light rail line – which audaciously serves both Arab and Jewish neighborhoods – is arguably a violation of international law.
Israelis attempting to violate international law by boarding Jerusalem's Light Rail
And, more recently, Israeli quarry mining in the West Bank, which provides economic activity and employment for Jews and Palestinians alike, was characterized in a report by Harriet Sherwood similarly as a possibly ‘illegal” act per international law.
Internationally outlawed economic activity: Quarry Mining
And, until recently, I thought the most surreal accusation that Israel was in violation of international law was when the Jewish state stood accused, by the NGO Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, of committing a WAR CRIME when they, in 2010, reopened a synagogue in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter, which had been destroyed by the Jordanians following the the 1948 War.
Synagogue in historically Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem: Violation of International Law
However, the following report by International Middle East Media Center truly jumps the shark with such accusations.
Their story, titled “International media complicit in legitimization of Israeli settlements“, Jan. 27, by Alessandra Bajec, includes the following:
Unbelievable, but true: over 70 journalists from international mainstream media took part in a tour through Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank last Thursday 19th… guests of the Head of the Samaria Regional Council Gershon Mesika and the Minister of Information and Diaspora Yuli Edelstein.
Participants included journalists from well-known media outlets such as the British Guardian, the Reuters news agency, as well as reporters from France, Poland, China, Germany, South America, the United States, Radio London and several TV stations from Russia.
Bajec can hardly contain her rage:
What calls immediate attention is the very fact that a (large) delegation of international media professionals went on a tour around Israeli settlements, all deemed illegal under international law. In other words, a host of media people, from the same countries that condemn illegal settlements in occupied Palestine, partook in something that essentially breaks international law.
The simple act of touring settlements in occupied Palestinian territory is an affront to international law…international media buying into a tour of this kind shows that they are complicit in covering up Israel’s war crimes.
Who’s to blame for such a journalistic apostasy, per Bajec? Yeah, you guessed it:
…pro-Israel lobbies and Zionist networks…and the Israel influenced mainstream news agencies for whom they work [which] made them turn a blind eye on the topical settlement issue…
While I really wish I knew which Guardian journalist participated in the tour and, thus, flagrantly violated international law, I guess, any way you look at it, it’s becoming harder and harder to avoid reaching the conclusion that the Guardian Group is merely another tool of the international Zionist network.
Journalists' partaking in an internationally illegal meal in Shomron Region
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Back in April I posted about a report by the Guardian’s Conal Urquhart (who was briefly filling in for the paper’s Jerusalem correspondent Harriet Sherwood) titled “Israeli authors join campaign to keep Arab bookseller in the country, April 3, which warned that a bookshop at the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem was in danger of closing.
The story focused on the shop’s owner, Munther Fahmi, who was in danger of losing his Israeli residency.
Fahmi was born in 1954 in the “East” section of Jerusalem then under Jordanian control, and moved to the U.S. when he was 21 where he lived for nearly 20 years. Upon his return to Israel in the 90s, and opening the bookshop, Fahmi had been living on temporary tourism visas, which, recently, was in danger of not being renewed. (Fahmi’s parents, like many Arabs in East Jerusalem, had declined Israel’s offer of citizenship following the Six Day War.)
Urquhart characterized the dispute, in his April report, over Fahmi’s residency status as politically motivated, and quoted an Israeli journalist claiming that the dispute was “symptomatic of the chauvinistic and intolerant behaviour” (towards Palestinians) displayed by Israel’s current government.
Well, evidently Israel’s chauvinism and intolerance was short-lived, as yesterday, Jan. 27, Harriet Sherwood reported, in “Palestinian bookshop owner celebrates Jerusalem residency ruling“, that Fahmi had been granted a two-year residency extension which his lawyers were confident would likely lead to permanent residency status.
Of course, the broader political narrative advanced by Urquhart and Sherwood is itself highly misleading, suggesting that Palestinians (non-citizens) who have residency status are exceptional in the threat they face in losing their status if out of the country for an extended time. In the U.S., for instance, absences of one year or more can result in the loss of permanent resident status.
But, such immigration and residency issues aside, the significance imputed to Fahmi’s bookshop – which Sherwood described as a “celebrated Jerusalem bookshop patronised by politicians, diplomats, authors and activists” - is difficult to comprehend.
Indeed, back in April, Urquhart characterized the bookshop as arguably “the only decent English-language bookshop in the country.”
Further, Urquhart, in stressing how vital the bookshop was, uncritically included Fahmi’s specious claim that is was very “hard [in Israel] to get English-language books [and that] many Israeli authors who wrote in English could not sell their books in their own country.”
However, the suggestion that there is a paucity of English books in Israel (or that Israeli authors writing in English can’t sell their books here) should strike anyone who lives, or has spent any time, in the nation – where shops offering new and used English books are abundant – as especially peculiar.
I came to this determination about the grossly inflated significance of Fahmi’s shop while visiting the store in April, but I decided to return (cell phone camera in hand) to demonstrate to those who haven’t been to the shop why I remain curious about all the press the story is receiving.
Here’s a photo I took yesterday of the bookshop, which is roughly the size of the bedroom in my Jerusalem apartment.
This photo captures the entire size of the store, with the exception of a bookshelf to the left of the woman pictured
Further, I observed in my original post that Urquhart’s characterization of the shop as “a haven of tolerance for scholars in a bitterly divided city” seemed at odds with the works they carried, which, for instance, included, as their sole book about the Holocaust, Norman Finkelstein’s notorious “The Holocaust Industry”.
But, I decided before leaving this time to pay closer attention to the fifteen or so books in the shop’s display window, to see what Fahmi was promoting to facilitate tolerance and harmony in this “bitterly divided city”, as bookshops typically use such retail window space to promote books which sell briskly, or possess a unique, or important, literary quality.
Here’s what I found.
As an Israeli, I’m certainly relieved at the reprieve for this literary oasis in the otherwise barren Israeli intellectual landscape - a mecca of ‘peace and co-existence’ which will also certainly never be accused of surrendering to Jewish supremacism.
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The Community Security Trust (CST) is an organization which provides physical security, training and advice for the protection of British Jews; assists victims of antisemitism and monitors antisemitic activities and incidents in the UK.
CST recently noted that “the Guardian has chosen to mark Holocaust Memorial Day by attacking the funding provided by the government to pay for security guarding at Jewish state schools in England and Wales.”
A Guardian report by Rob Evans titled “Michael Grove criticized for awarding public funds to organization he advised“, Jan. 27, cited criticism by the group Spinwatch that “Michael Gove, the education secretary, awarded £2m of public money to an organisation that he promoted as an adviser for four years”.
As CST noted on their site, “The Guardian story is misleading as it suggests that the money provided by the Department for Education pays for CST to provide security at Jewish schools…[while] the funds are “merely administered by CST and distributed in full to the Jewish schools who then use it to employ their own security guards” (not from CST).
CST added further:
“[CST] does not keep any of the grant money and there is no allowance made for CST’s staff time in administering the funds to each school. In the end the project actually costs CST money, the exact opposite of the impression given by the Guardian. If the Guardian had contacted CST for comment before running the story, we could have explained all of this to them.”
Moreover, the funding from the UK Department of Education only accounts for a fraction of the total costs associated with the CST’s work to secure over 300 synagogues, over 120 Jewish schools, more than 1000 Jewish communal organisations and buildings; and nearly 1000 communal events, from antisemitic attacks and potential acts of terrorism.
Further, CST noted, “the overwhelming bulk of CST’s funding is provided by voluntary donations from the UK Jewish community”.
In 2010, there were 639 reported incidents of antisemitism in the UK, the second highest since the CST began keeping records in 1984, which included 58 incidents targeting Jewish schools, students, or teachers.
UPDATE 1: After a complaint from CST, the Guardian has now added a paragraph near the end of their article which reads:
“All the money is distributed by the trust to the schools which then employ the security guards. As the trust’s role is essentially administrative, none of the money is retained by the trust or pays for any of the trust’s work.”
However, the acknowledgement that the grant does not pay for CST’s work isn’t reflected in the headline or opening paragraph of the article, which have not been amended.
UPDATE 2: Harry’s Place has some fascinating information on the background of David Miller, the Spinwatch official who brought the complaint to the Guardian’s attention in the first place. Seems like the crusader for ethics and transparency has a soft spot for antisemites. (See here.)
When I originally wrote about an essay at ‘Comment is Free’ by Wajahat Ali titled, “Fighting the defamation of Muslim Americans“, in August, I wasn’t as aware with the left-wing think tank, Center for American Progress (CAP), which published the report on Islamophobia that Ali co-authored and introduced in his post.
I did note suspicion about the the CAP report, as it included in their list of those guilty of disseminating anti-Muslim bigotry – titled “Fear, Inc. Exposing the Islamophobia Network in America” – a vast network of institutions which included Fox News, The National Review, and the Washington Times, Middle East Scholar Daniel Pipes, and Terrorism expert Steve Emerson.
But the recent scandal, involving bloggers associated with CAP engaging in antisemitic rhetoric, places Ali’s report, and his contribution to CiF, in a different light.
Briefly, for those unaware, CAP is a Washington-based policy organization that serves as a source of ideas for the Democratic party, and is very influential among policy makers in the Obama White House. The controversy arose when it was discovered that Zaid Jilani, who blogged for CAP’s ThinkProgress website, used Twitter to call US supporters of the Jewish state “Israel Firsters” – evoking the classic (typically far right) antisemitic narrative that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than to their own country.
Maryland historian Jeffrey Herf, who has authored books on anti-Semitism, expressed concern that such dual-loyalty conspiracy theories, which typically existed mainly on “the far Left and far Right of American politics” may be seeping into the center of American politics.
Further, Matt Duss, CAP’s Middle East Progress director, wrote on ThinkProgress that “the entire Israeli occupation” of the Gaza Strip is “a moral abomination” comparable to the former Jim Crow South in the US.
The Jerusalem Post obtained an e-mail in January in which Faiz Shakir, editor-in-chief of ThinkProgress, acknowledged that Jilani’s words charging supporters of Israel with dual-loyalty was “terrible anti-Semitic language.”
The think tank has been engulfed in the affair since December, resulting in strong condemnations from civil rights organizations, and resulted in a White House Jewish affairs official terming the situation at CAP to be “troubling.”
But, perhaps more concerning than antisemitic terms being employed by commentators association with CAP, is the background of the activist, Wajahat Ali, they chose to ally themselves with in the 40 page report on anti-Muslim racism.
As I observed previously, Ali has demonstrated a tendency to engage in accusations of “Islamophobia” quite liberally.
For instance, he leveled the charge of Islamophobia against the U.S. government in the context of the FBI prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for the “charity” group’s ties to terrorism – a prosecution which resulted in five convictions, including “conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, providing material support to a foreign terrorist, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.”
Further, a little more research into the background of Wajahat Ali reveals that the author holds some decidedly illiberal views about another historically oppressed minority.
Ali is a contributor to the radical anti-Zionist site, Counterpunch, where, in one essay, he likened Israel to Apartheid in S. African, and characterized the Gaza war as an “Israeli blitzkrieg that repeatedly bombards a beleaguered Palestinian refugee population.” Ali also published, in Counterpunch, an extremely sympathetic interview with Norman Finkelstein, about “The Holocaust Industry” – a book which characterizes Israelis as “basically Nazis with beards and black hats”.
Essays at Ali’s own blog, Goatmilk: An intellectual playground, are often cross posted at the English Website of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and, additionally, he was a board member of the Muslim Students Association, an organization established by members of the MB.
Further, Ali clearly demonstrates a propensity to use his “intellectual playground” to promote voices hostile to Jews and opposed to Israel’ existence.
On June of 2010, he included in his blog, as the “Essay of the week”, a cross-post of a piece by Ilan Pappe, the universally discredited radical Israeli “historian” who advocates the end of the Jewish state. Pappe, in the essay, commenting broadly about Israel in the aftermath of the May, 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, accused the state of practicing ethnic cleansing, and opined that “only sustained pressure by Western governments [similar to the pressure placed on S. Africa] will drive the message home that the strategy of force [and] oppression are not accepted morally or politically by the world to which Israel wants to belong.”
In April of 2009, Ali posted a piece by Sasha Rabkin titled, “A Jewish American man’s defense of self-hatred” which characterized Zionism as an “identity centered on racism, military might, ["fascism"] and occupation,” and later characterized Jewish Zionist identity as a “Judaism devoid of soul and love and oppressing the most occupied people in the world”. He also characterized Israel’s War of Independence as an act of “genocide” against Arabs.
Rabkin’s defense of Jewish self-hatred, which Ali evidently endorses, concludes with this passage:
“the two main forces of the 20th century who sought to separate Jews were the Nazis and the Zionists. This is not to fully equate the two. There are obvious differences. But, both sought to single out the Jews, to show them as special and in need of segregation. They both contributed to the death of Jews. Most importantly, they both have sequestered Jewish identity in a militarized, confrontational and racist corner.
Finally, Ali’s thoughts on the CAP “Israel Firsters” row, can possibly be explained by his retweet of a Max Blumenthal Tweet.
The link leads to a Glenn Greenwald post, “The ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign against CAP and Media Matters rolls on“.
Greenwald, who himself trades in antisemitic tropes about dual loyalty with abandon, summed up the CAP controversy thusly.
This is a truly disgusting spectacle: these [CAP] commentators…are being publicly smeared early in their careers as anti-Semites as part of a coordinated, ongoing campaign planned by Josh Block and carried out by numerous journalists with large media platforms, and aided and abetted by Jewish groups trading on their credibility to suppress debate….about crucial policy matters in the U.S.,
And, I simply can’t imagine why anyone would find such tropes about the injurious effects of Jewish power, and the disloyalty of “Israel-Firsters”, by CAP bloggers, authors, and their supporters to be antisemitic!?
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Guardian readers skew conversation about UK, U.S. & Iran in a decidedly Semitic direction
February 4, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Berchmans, Comment is Free, Guardian, Jewish Conspiracy, Obsession, Seumas Milne, Stop the War Coalition | by Adam Levick | 2 comments
As David T of Harry’s Place observed about Guardian Associate Editor Seumas Milne.
So, it didn’t come as a surprise to see Andrew Murray, of StWC, publish an essay at ‘Comment is Free’, “An attack on Iran must be stopped“, opposing a UK or U.S. attack on Iran to prevent the Islamist regime from attaining nuclear weapons.
What was a bit surprising however, was that Murray, whose essay warns of the threat posed by “Anglo-American aggression addicts” who are “gearing up for yet another crack at winning a senseless war in the Middle East,” didn’t once, in a nearly 700 word essay, mention the word “Israel”. Rather, Murray argued against a war with Iran in the context of what he sees as the folly of the West’s broader war on terror, and U.S./UK military involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Of course, the mere omission of the words “Jews”, “Israel”, “Zionism” or “Lobby” didn’t prevent ‘Comment is Free’ readers to not so gently move the narrative away from military decisions made by UK and U.S. political leaders, and pivot to a more desired target.
Powerful Jewish lobbies in U.S. and UK are pushing Obama to war against Iran (29 Recommends)
Jewish lobby used the Holocaust as an excuse to give Israel the bomb, and developed anti-Islamic ideology to justify aggression against the Arab world. (11 Recommends)
Further, after reading many of the 286 comments in the thread, and noticing a characteristic fixation, I decided to have some fun with the web site Wordle.
The beauty of Wordle is that it allows you to quantify the degree to which comments beneath the line, in any given CiF essay, slant in one particular direction.
Wordle was fed every word from each of the reader comments posted after Murray’s piece and, excluding commonly used words like “the” (and the word “Iran”, because, well, that was what the topic the essay was supposed to address!), churned out the following graphic of the most used words – represented in a size proportional to the frequency of their usage:
Note the enhanced size of Israel (a word used 220 times by CiF commenters), in contrast to words “U.S.” and “UK”.
In fact the words “Jew” “Jews”, or “Jewish” were used more times (42) than the words “U.S.” or “United States” (33).
And, finally, and quite ironically given the following CiF commenter’s malign obsession with the Jewish state, note the moniker above the gigantic “S” in the over-sized word “Israel”. Yup, Berchmans!
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