The Guardian’s initial report that Stephen Hawking was boycotting Israel was published on May 8.
The statistics in the first row in the table below were derived by a survey of the Guardian’s Israel page between May 8 and May 16 – the date of their last Hawking related entry. The second row’s numbers were gathered by a simple word count of the text.
The third row’s data was derived by Intel.
Hadar Sela recently commented on Harriet Sherwood’s report in the Guardian (“Gaza gastronomy”, May 14) which focused on a food collective in Gaza called Zeitun, as well as a recently published book titled ‘The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey‘ co-written by Maggie Schmitt and ‘Comment is Free’ contributor Laila Haddad.
In addition to the important questions raised by Sela about Haddad – a one-stater who has previously ‘informed’ readers at ‘Comment is Free’ that Gaza is worse than a prison camp, and has used Electronic Intifada to warn of an impending “Gaza genocide” – the Guardian report is notable for the following claims made by Sherwood in the context of explaining the broader challenges of cooking in the Palestinian run territory:
In Gaza, almost 1 million people – more than half the population – receive basic food assistance from the United Nations. The 13 women of the Zeitun Kitchen co-operative [a women's co-operative, which caters for weddings and family parties in Gaza] have learned to adapt to the privations of life in Gaza: shortages of power and cooking oil; Israel’s ban on many foodstuffs during the three years in which a stringent blockade was in place; the fluctuations in black market supplies through the tunnels to Egypt; the destruction of and restrictions on access to prime agricultural land; the imposition of strict limits on how far from shore Gaza’s fishermen can lower their nets.
Olive oil is just one example. An essential ingredient in most Palestinian dishes, the uprooting of olive trees in both Gaza and the West Bank has made the once-abundant oil prohibitively expensive for many families. Now it is often used just to dress a dish, rather than create it.
So, is there a shortage of olives or olive oil in Gaza, as Sherwood contends?
An increase in Palestinian olive trees:
An increase in olive oil production
A surplus of olive oil:
Exports of olives and olive oil
Data suggests that olive oil prices have recently decreased in Gaza.
So, not only is there no evidence to support Harriet Sherwood’s claim that there is a shortage of olive oil in Gaza (and related higher prices) due to ”the uprooting of olive trees” by Israel, but PCBS data suggests an abundant supply of olives and olive oil in the West Bank and Gaza, and that prices, if anything, may have fallen a bit from 2011 levels.
Once again, it seems likely that the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent relied solely on anecdotal evidence from ‘Palestinian sources‘, without fact-checking the specific claims using readily available open source information.
May 8th was Jerusalem Day (Yom Yerushalayim) in Israel, but since we didn’t post an edition of ‘Sounds Israeli‘ on the Saturday following the holiday, we’re now presenting Naomi Shemer’s classic musical tribute to the reunification of Jerusalem, ‘Jerusalem of Gold’ (Yerushalayim Shel Zahav), as performed by the late Israeli singer Ofra Haza in 1998.
Patrick Seale
Whilst even before the state of Israel was reborn antisemitic demagogues like Henry Ford and Father Charles Coughlin characterized American Jews as disloyal “fifth columnists” who were pushing the U.S. to war for financial reasons, even after the war any temporary post-Holocaust taboos on the imputation of such malevolence to Jews soon were eroded.
Paul Findley, a former U.S. Congressman whose book They Dare to Speak Out, an attack on the ‘pernicious’ influence of the “Israel lobby,” became a bestseller in 1985. And, a couple of decades later academics considered to be foreign policy “realists”, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, became popular within anti-Zionist circles after their publication of ’The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy’. The book warned of the “stranglehold” which the Israel “Lobby” exercises over Congress; of their “manipulation of the media” and efforts to “squelch debate”. They also argued that the 2003 Iraq war wouldn’t have been possible without the influence of Israel and the American Israel lobby.
While paleoconservative commentators in the mid to late 2000s have unsurprisingly also championed this narrative – Pat Buchanan wrote in 2008 that “Israel and its Fifth Column in [Washington , DC] seek to stampede us into war with Iran” – some liberal columnists have engaged in similar rhetoric. For instance, columnist Joe Klein asserted in his TIME blog that Jewish neoconservatives “plumped” for the war in Iraq and are now doing the same for “an even more foolish assault on Iran” with the goal of making the world “safe for Israel.”
Additionally, Guardian contributors have advanced the specious claim that Israel, or the Israel lobby, are primarily responsible for US sanctions against Iran, and represent a powerful and dangerous force pushing the US to outright war against the Islamic Republic. Such narratives, with varying degrees of explicitness, have been advanced by, among other CiF contributors, veteran Guardian journalists Simon Tisdall and Simon Jenkins, and the paper’s associate editor, Seumas Milne. And, of course, Glenn Greenwald has been the most explicit promoter of the ‘Jewish necon’ cabal to take the country to war against Iran’ meme, arguing the following at his previous blog at Salon.com in 2007.
It is simply true that there are large and extremely influential Jewish donor groups which are agitating for a U.S. war against Iran, and that is the case because those groups are devoted to promoting Israel’s interests and they perceive it to be in Israel’s interests for the U.S. to militarily confront Iran.
Turning to the crisis in Syria, whilst we recently commented on suggestions made by Robert Fisk at the Indy that recent Israeli strikes on weapons in Syria intended for Hezbollah was an act which would recklessly push ‘the West’ into the Syrian war, a recent commentary by occasional Guardian contributor Patrick Seale, writing in ‘Middle East Online‘, takes Fisk’s hysterical claim a few steps further.
He writes:
On April 23, a senior Israeli officer, Brig Gen Utai Brun, head of research at army intelligence, made a serious accusation against Syria. In a lecture at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, he declared: “To the best of our professional understanding, the Syrian regime has used lethal chemical weapons against gunmen in a series of incidents in recent months…” General Brun gave no evidence for his accusation and produced no physical proof, but he added that the Israel Defence Forces believed Syria had used the nerve agent sarin on several occasions, including a specific attack on March 19.
In addition to Seale’s erroneous suggestion that it was Israel alone which charged Syria with using chemical weapons – French and British intelligence claimed on April 18 (several days before the Israeli claims cited by Seale) that “there is credible evidence that Syria has fired chemical weapons” – his argument that such charges are without “proof” is contradicted by recent statements by the Obama Administration charging Assad with using such weapons.
Seale’s commentary continues:
As it happened, [Israeli] General Brun made his accusation against Syria during a three-day visit to Israel by America’s new Defence Secretary, Chuck Hagel — a man whose appointment Israel’s supporters in the United States had sought to prevent. Some Jewish organisations had come close to calling him anti-Semitic. Only by eating humble pie did Hagel manage to have his appointment confirmed. He now clearly hopes to put an end to his quarrel with America’s pro-Israeli lobby.
On this his first visit to Israel as Defence Secretary, he announced that Israel was to receive a rich haul of advanced U.S. weapons — air refuelling tankers, cutting-edge radar and the V-22 Osprey ‘tiltrotor’ aircraft, an advanced plane so far denied to all other US allies. But Hagel’s generous gesture was to no avail.
Seale’s facile logic assumes that the decision by the US Defense Department to sell Israel advanced weaponry – which was part of a broader Middle East arms package which included weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – must be the result, not of deliberations by the national security apparatus of the Obama administration, but of Secretary Hagel’s wish to mollify the pro-Israel lobby.
Seale then jumps to his broader conclusion:
Although Israel was evidently delighted with the weapons, this did not inhibit it from accusing Syria of using chemical weapons — clearly in the hope of provoking a U.S. attack on that country.
…
Hagel was angry that Israel was putting pressure on the United States to intervene in Syria. The Israeli authorities may well have thought that Hagel, still recovering from the beating pro-Israelis had given him in Washington, would not dare dispute Israel’s assessment
Finally, Seale makes this extraordinary leap:
By insisting that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons, General Brun’s aim seems to have been to persuade the United States to destroy both the Syrian regime and its Hezbollah ally
Interestingly, however, while some anti-Zionists have indeed accused Israel of siding with the rebels, many others have made the opposite claim – that Israel is siding with Assad and against the revolution in order to maintain relative peace on their northern border. The failure of anti-Israel propagandists to stay on message aside, Israel has continually made it clear both in word and in deed that it is not at war with Syria, but primarily concerned with the threat posed by Hezbollah – an Iranian backed heavily armed Shiite Islamist terror group occupying large swaths of Lebanon.
Moreover, you’d be hard pressed to find a commentator or analyst other than Seale who has seriously argued that Israel is deviously trying to provoke the US into a Middle East war against its will. Seal’s accusation that Israel is “provoking” the US to “destroy” both the Syrian regime and Hezbollah is pure fantasy, concocted by a lazy and easily suggestible mind mired in historically based conspiratorial notions imputing enormous power to both the Jewish state and its supporters in the US.
Though original reports yesterday that Stephen Hawking cancelled his planned Israel trip in order to express support for the academic boycott were (as we reported earlier today) flatly denied by Tim Holt, Acting Director of Communications at Cambridge and Hawking’s spokesperson, Holt recently informed us via an email of the following new statement just released by the University:
“We have now received confirmation from Professor Hawking’s office that a letter was sent on Friday to the Israeli President’s office regarding his decision not to attend the Presidential Conference, based on advice from Palestinian academics that he should respect the boycott.
“We had understood previously that his decision was based purely on health grounds having been advised by doctors not to fly.”
Last night, May 8, the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood and Matthew Kelman ‘broke’ a story claiming that Stephen Hawking was joining the academic boycott of Israel, and that he was “pulling out of a conference hosted by Israeli president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem as a protest at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.”
The report, based it seems on claims made by British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), was picked up by news sites around the world, was featured prominently on the Guardian website and was followed up with a poll asking readers if they agreed with Hawking ”decision” to boycott Israel.
Here’s how the Guardian’s Israel page looks at the time of this post:
As you can see, the original story was read by quite a few Guardian readers:
There was just one problem.
The Guardian evidently didn’t check their facts, as information has been released strongly suggesting that the world-renowned theoretical physicist and former Professor at Cambridge pulled out of the Israeli academic conference purely for health reasons.
The Commentator reported the following:
…a Cambridge university spokesperson has confirmed to The Commentator that there was a “misunderstanding” this past weekend, and that Prof. Hawking had pulled out of the conference for medical reasons. A University spokesman said: “Professor Hawking will not be attending the conference in Israel in June for health reasons – his doctors have advised against him flying.”
Further, a spokesman for Cambridge University sent the following email to a CiF Watch reader in response to an inquiry, which is consistent with the following story in the Cambridge News:
The only questions which seems to remain is how long it will take for the Guardian to issue a mea culpa on their faux scoop.
Update: The Guardian’s Matthew Kalman is now claiming that the Cambridge denial is untrue, and that Hawking indeed supports the boycott.
Update II: It now appears that the original denial by Hawkings spokesperson was not accurate, and that Hawking indeed cancelled his trip as an expression of support for the boycott of Israel.
I took the following photo of the Kotel in the Old City of Jerusalem a few months ago.
As Israel today celebrates Yom Yerushalayim – the 46th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem on the 28th of Iyar – it is important to understand the myths and facts regarding the capital of the Jewish state.
CAMERA has an excellent backgrounder on Jerusalem, here, and Eli Hertz, at ‘Myths and Facts‘, has a brief but important page on the history of the political exploitation of the city by Arab leaders, here.
One of the more insidious elements of the BDS movement is the supremely dishonest racial narrative which suggests, in varying degrees of explicitness, that Zionism is a racist movement in which ‘white’ privileged European interlopers continue to displace indigenous Palestinians ‘of color’.
Whilst the racial demographics of Israel alone disproves the fiction of a ‘caucasian nation’, facts clearly have never been an obstacle to those intent on demonizing the Jewish state.
Yemeni Jews arrive in Israel, 2009
Aryella Moreh, a Jew of color whose mother was a refugee from Iran, addresses the racial dynamic of the BDS movement (at Berkeley and elsewhere) head-on in an eloquent and inspired essay published on May 6 at the Daily Californian – the student run newspaper at UC Berkeley:
I come from a family of refugees. My mother was younger than I am now when she was forced to flee for her life from the Islamic Revolution of Iran. My mother recalls being forced to sit in the back of her classroom along with a group of young Jewish children during her school years.
When my mother went to buy groceries in the market, she was not allowed to touch the produce because she was considered a “dirty Jew.” These are only a few indicators of the systematic oppression of the Iranian Jews, some of the oldest inhabitants of Persia. At the age of 20, she was forced to abandon her life in Iran as her family was scattered across the world. My grandmother, Mamanjani, was never allowed to return home because of her active involvement in Jewish organizations. Though she had no ties to any other government, she was warned not to go home for fear of execution without trial. Despite calling Persia home for 2,500 years, in 1979, my family and many Jewish families like my own were forced to forced to flee their homes. My family’s home, business and property was confiscated. We were torn from our homes, forced to flee to whichever country would take us in.
Though these experiences define me, some students on our campus seem to think my history does not count. During the “divestment” meeting two weeks ago, Students for Justice in Palestine tweeted about those opposed to divestment: “the Zizis are literally white people crying about their privilege, lol.” Apparently, Zizi is SJP shorthand for Zionist. And later, Daily Cal Blogger Noah Kulwin discussed a clear division he seems to see between “students of color” and “Jewish students,” implying that Jewish students like me cannot be considered students of color. I am here to address ignorance about what truly defines the Jewish people. Amid claims — or rather accusations — of “privilege” or the inability of Jews to understand the plight of “colored people,” I realized many people on this campus are unaware of who the Jewish people actually are.
We encourage you to read the rest of Moreh’s passionate plea, by clicking here.
Also, you can learn more about the broader issue of Jewish refugees from Muslim and Arab lands here and here.
- “The outgoing Salon blogger can’t seem to have an honest discussion without accusing his debate partners of malicious motives”. (Foreign Policy Magazine, Aug. 16, 2012,
Glenn Greenwald doesn’t seem much interested in the vexing moral questions naturally elicited by the ongoing bloodbath in Syria. The Arab dictator’s bombing of civilians, and the routine use of torture, summary executions, and sexual violence against women and children by troops and ethnic groups loyal to the regime don’t weigh heavily on his conscience.
And, whilst the putative topic of Glenn Greenwald latest CiF piece would suggest an interest in Israel’s recent, brief military foray into the conflict, he characteristically doesn’t attempt to engage in anything approaching serious critical scrutiny over IAF operations to destroy sophisticated Iranian made weaponry heading to Hezbollah. Similarly, he doesn’t bother devoting space in his column calculating the political, military and political factors at play in the regional threat faced by the Jewish state from Bashar al-Assad and his Shiite Islamist allies, Hezbollah and Iran.
Additionally, Greenwald doesn’t take a stab at weighing the costs and benefits of Israeli military action relative to the alternative of simply allowing the illegal militia occupying much of Lebanon – which has already accumulated an arsenal of thousands of sophisticated rockets – free rein to further threaten Israeli communities, and what remains of Lebanon’s tattered national sovereignty.
Indeed, in reading Glenn Greenwald it seems clear that he doesn’t much fancy such serious, critical analyses of the real and often vexing political and moral decisions faced by democratically elected heads of state.
Greenwald’s inspiration – the blogging muse which constantly ignites his frenetic prose – lay in deconstructing the confidence and righteousness of democracy’s defenders, and those otherwise possessed with the moral clarity which he seems to so detest.
He informs us in quite vivid language, yet in tellingly vague military terms, about of the damage caused by Israel’s bombs - which he notes are “massive” - and the IDF’s military objective communicated by “Israeli defenders” – and, evidently, only “Israeli defenders” – of targeting weapons provided by Iran that were to end up in the hands of Hezbollah.
And, he then – again, avoiding directly weighing in on the policy decision at hand – evokes a straw man while lashing out at supporters of Israel’s action.
Because people who cheer for military action by their side like to pretend that they’re something more than primitive “might-makes-right” tribalists, the claim is being hauled out that Israel’s actions are justified by the “principle” that it has the right to defend itself from foreign weapons in the hands of hostile forces.
Greenwald then descends further into the absurd:
Or, for that matter, if Syria this week attacks a US military base on US soil and incidentally kills some American civilians (as Nidal Hasan did), and then cites as justification the fact that the US has been aiding Syrian rebels, would any establishment US journalist or political official argue that this was remotely justified?
Of course, Nidal Hasan didn’t “incidentally” kill some American civilians. He entered the Soldier Readiness Processing Center in Fort Hood, TX in 2009 and, armed with several high-caliber assault rifles, shouted “Allahu Akbar!” while open firing on a room crammed with fellow soldiers. Hasan “sprayed bullets at soldiers in a fanlike motion” before aiming at individual soldiers. Nidal didn’t attack a “military base”, but engaged in a cold-blooded execution of as many people as possible.
Greenwald’s contemptuous critique continues:
Few things are more ludicrous than the attempt by advocates of US and Israeli militarism to pretend that they’re applying anything remotely resembling “principles”. Their only cognizable “principle” is rank tribalism: My Side is superior, and therefore we are entitled to do things that Our Enemies are not
One could say quite reasonably that this is the pure expression of the crux of US political discourse on such matters: they must abide by rules from which we’re immune, because we’re superior. So much of the pseudo-high-minded theorizing emanating from DC think thanks and US media outlets boils down to this adolescent, self-praising, tribalistic license: we have the right to do X, but they do not.
…
This whole debate would be much more tolerable if it were at least honestly acknowledged that what is driving the discussion are tribalistic notions of entitlement and nothing more noble.
Greenwald, a review of his posts on the subject of terrorism suggests, doesn’t merely advance the post-modern cliché that ‘one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter‘, but believes that the term “terrorism” is racially loaded and that the suggestion of serious moral distinctions between political actors represents an expression of primitive triumphalism.
Greenwald not only isn’t prepared to acknowledge that regimes in Damascus, Khartoum, Pyongyang, or Tehran (for instance) may have less regard for human rights than those in Washington, D.C. or Jerusalem, but that those possessing such beliefs are necessarily compromised by intellectually and morally debilitating ethnocentric biases.
As such, for Greenwald, the suggestion of considerable moral differences between Syria and Israel is necessarily loaded with the pathos of ”tribalistic license”.
A review of his latest post, as well as much of his work to date, demonstrates that he’s not prepared to engage in serious thinking regarding the threats posed in the region by the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis. Nor does he possess the capacity to conduct a broader analysis of the Middle East – in the context of the Arab upheavals in general and the Syrian war in particular – and dissect the continuing democracy deficit in the region.
In his latest 800 word diatribe against Israel’s “supporters”, Greenwald doesn’t even briefly suggest why Israel’s limited military operation in Syria wasn’t justified, because such quotidian concerns – relating to how citizens of democratic nations can most effectively, and most ethically, defend themselves from hostile state and non-state actors – don’t seem to much interest him.
For a careful, sober political survey of the Israeli-Arab (and Israeli-Islamist) conflict, and the broader issues concerning the “Arab Spring”, you’ll have to seek the commentary of serious analysts - those more concerned with honestly assessing the political dynamics of the region than with engaging in ad hominem and often hysterical attacks against their opponents.
It seems that the ethically challenged British ‘journalist’ Robert Fisk wanted desperately to impute the worst motives to Israel in analyzing reports of up to a dozen IAF strikes over the last few days on advanced Syrian weapons to prevent their transfer to Hezbollah. However, the weakness of his latest essay suggests that he may have found the case against Israel’s sober decision not to allow Iranian made Fateh-110 missiles to fall into the hands of the Shiite terror movement allied with Bashar al-Assad was simply too difficult.
File photo of the Iranian made Fateh 110 missile, which Israel reportedly targeted in raids into Syria over the weekend.
Facts have not served much of an obstacle for Fisk in the past when desiring a particular conclusion to a story, and his May 5 piece in the Indy – implicitly suggesting that Israel is dragging unwilling, ineffectual Western governments into foreign wars - seems to be no exception.
He begins by expressing skepticism over the ‘official’ reason for Israel’s reported raid on Bashar al-Assad’s weapons and military facilities:
The story is already familiar: the Israelis wanted to prevent a shipment of Iranian-made Fateh-110 missiles reaching Hezbollah in Lebanon; they were being sent by the Syrian government. According, at least, to a ‘Western intelligence source’. Anonymous, of course. And it opens the old question: why when the Syrian regime is fighting for its life would it send advanced missiles out of Syria?
Well, for starters, Iran and Hezbollah have both backed President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war, a conflict, now in its third year, which has claimed over 70,000 lives and produced over one million refugees. But as fighting between forces loyal to the Assad regime and the rebels escalates, Assad has a powerful interest in facilitating the delivery of advanced weapons to Hezbollah in case he loses his grip on power and it becomes more difficult for the regime to channel weapons from Iran directly to Damascus.
Additionally, some analysts have argued that an even more heavily armed Hezbollah could become a powerful ally for Assad if he is forced to leave Damascus and take refuge in the Hezbollah-controlled northern Bekaa Valley.
Later, Fisk gets to the central thesis of his polemic:
Much more important, however, is the salient fact that Israel has now intervened in the Syrian war. It may say it was only aiming at weapons destined for the Hezbollah – but these were weapons also being used against rebel forces in Syria. By diminishing the regime’s supply of these weapons, it is therefore helping the rebels overthrow Bashar al-Assad. And since Israel regards itself as a Western nation – best friend and best US military ally in the Middle East, etc, etc – this means that “we” are now involved in the war, directly and from the air.
Fisk’s specious logic nearly “Fisks” itself, as his entire argument – that Israel has dragged the West into a foreign war – seems largely based on the following argument cum non-sequitur:
1. Israel has attacked arms caches in Syria
2. Israel regards itself as a Western nation.
3. Therefore, Israel has dragged the West into the Syrian war.
The Indy contributor offers nothing else to suggest that Israeli strikes to prevent the transfer of deadly weapons to Syria has any influence whatsoever on the current debate in the US, or within other Western nations, over whether to intervene militarily in the civil war.
Of course, in addition to the speciousness of his logic, Fisk is essentially parroting Assad talking points – which, notably, was also employed in a highly misleading headline chosen by a major UK news corporation - that Israel is acting in alliance with “Islamist terrorists” to overthrow the regime, a charge so unserious that even Guardian Middle East Editor Ian Black dismissed it as “lacking any evidence”.
Finally, Fisk complains thusly:
Let’s see if the US and the EU condemn Israel’s air attacks. I doubt it. Which would mean, if we are silent, that we approve of them.
However, Fisk’s suggestion that the US has been “silent” on the reported attacks is flatly untrue.
President Obama stated, after news of IAF strikes on Syria was first reported, that Israel was justified to guard “against the transfer of advanced weaponry to terror groups like Hezbollah” and suggested that there is considerable US-Israeli coordination regarding the threat of weapons transfers in Syria – a clear expression of support for Israel’s right to self-defense which was also echoed yesterday by UK foreign secretary William Hague.
One of the few places outside of the Syrian propaganda ministry where Israel’s decision to prevent Hezbollah – an Iranian backed illegal militia which occupies large swaths of Lebanon – from acquiring more deadly weaponry represents a ‘dangerous provocation’ which may ignite another Western war in the Mid-East is the mind of Robert Fisk.
In April it was announced that an Egyptian woman named Mona Seif was a finalist for the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders – a prize established in 1993 to honour those “who demonstrate exceptional courage in defending and promoting human rights”. A jury, composed of officials from several NGOs, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, selects the winner.
On May 1 UN Watch issued the following statement:
UN Watch today called on the juryof the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, comprised of Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and eight other NGOs, and chaired by Hans Thoolen, to cancel its nomination of Mona Seif, an Egyptian activist who openly advocates terrorism and war crimes, as a top contender for the 2013 prize.
Further, the United Nations watchdog organization wasn’t alone in their condemnation of Seif, as the nomination was also fiercely criticized by such notable Egyptian human rights activists as Maikel Nabil and Amr Bakly.
On May 3, the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald – parroting the predictable narrative of Electronic Intifada – tweeted the following:
On the predictable smear campaign against Egyptian activist & hero @monasosh is.gd/pCx6u1- is.gd/QQc7mE
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 3, 2013
First, neither report which Greenwald linked to in his Tweet (which included a post by the virulently anti-Israel NY Times commentator Robert Mackey) demonstrated that Seif’s positions were unfairly characterized by UN Watch.
Moreover, as we’ve noted previously, Greenwald’s expansive definition of the word “smear” seems to include factually based claims about those whose political orientation he happens to be in alignment with, and this particular Tweet would suggest that he simply didn’t conduct serious research into Seif’s background before expressing his outrage at her opponents.
UN Watch’s evidence consists of the several quite unambiguous Tweets by Seif demonstrating that she did in fact defend Palestinian terrorism, including rocket attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas.
Here are a few examples of Seif’s decidedly selective regard for human rights:
Support for Islamist terrorists involved with blowing up Egyptian gas pipelines to Israel:
We the Egyptian ppl DO NOT WANT OUR GAS TO BE EXPORTED TO ISRAEL.Sinai ppl are our heroes everytime they blow up the pipelines#FuckISrael
— Mona Seif (@Monasosh) July 6, 2011
Here, Seif requests the services of one of the more prolific antisemitic cartoonists, Carlos Latuff:
@carloslatuff we need a cartoon for our masked heroes who Blow up Pipe lines exporting gas to Israel 4 consecutive times now
— Mona Seif (@Monasosh) July 15, 2011
The following was Tweeted by Seif after Amnesty International called on both Hamas and Israel to stop attacks on civilians during the recent war in Gaza.
@amnesty you don’t ask an occupied nation to stop their “Resistance” to end violence!!!SHAME ON YOU!
— Mona Seif (@Monasosh) November 16, 2012
Why is @amnesty tweeting abt what’s happening in #Gaza and putting the Zionist Occupier on same ground as Palestinian Resistance?!!!
— Mona Seif (@Monasosh) November 16, 2012
@aidaseif @amnesty & @hrw r leading a shameful campaign asking Palestinians under occupation & non stop air strikes 2 stop their resistance!
— Mona Seif (@Monasosh) November 20, 2012
Finally, just in case there was any doubt regarding her position, Seif Tweeted the following just a few days ago, after the row erupted.
i support a nation’s right to resist occupation! Sending me tweets calling me a terrorist wont change the fact that real terrorist is Israel
— Mona Seif (@Monasosh) April 30, 2013
And, Glenn Greenwald’s patently dishonest Tweets accusing UN Watch of of engaging in a “smear” campaign won’t change the fact that Mona Seif is an open and evidently proud supporter of terrorism against Israelis.
I had the pleasure of seeing the band Shotei Hanevuah (Fools of Prophecy) perform live during my first and only trip to Israel prior to making Aliyah, and I’ll likely forever associate their sound – a fusion of dub reggae, hip-hop, dance and eastern Mediterranean music - with the magical time when I first fell in love with Eretz Yisrael.
Here’s a very raw version of their hit song ‘Ein Ani‘, performed in front of an IDF unit in 2012.
A Palestinian boy named Mohammed Al-Farra, now 3 1/2, was born in Khan Younis, Gaza with a genetic disease which led to amputations of his feet and hands, and left him with a compromised immune system and other debilitating conditions.
Though the boy naturally became completely dependent on others, his parents abandoned him and the Palestinian government refused to pay for his medical care. So, he now lives at Safra Children’s Hospital, in the Israeli city of Ramat Gan, where doctors began treating him when he was just an infant.
Mohammed spends his days undergoing treatment, getting around in a tiny wheelchair and learning how to use prosthetic limbs – and is cared for by his 55-year-old grandfather, Hamouda. The Israeli doctors have reportedly grown quite attached to the boy, and fundraise to cover the cost of his care, and which also allows him and his grandfather to live in the pediatric ward.
Hamouda Al-Farra puts his grandson Mohammed in a wheelchair in the Tel Hashomer Hospital
A recent report on the young disabled Palestinian boy in AP noted the following, which, though quite moving, wouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has spent any time in Israeli hospitals.
On a recent day at the children’s hospital, patients and medics chatted in Hebrew and Arabic. Women in Muslim headscarves strolled in a corridor. An Orthodox Jewish woman affectionately patted Mohammed on his head. She nodded kindly at al-Farra.
Hamouda Al-Farra holds his grandson Mohammed as they speak with Israeli doctor Raz Somech
In 2012, Israeli authorities approved 91.5 percent of applications from Gaza to receive medical care in Israel, a year in which a total of 219,469 Palestinian patients from the West Bank and Gaza received treatment in Israeli hospitals - a number which includes over 20,000 children.
Earlier today we posted about a Guardian video which purported to show Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians, following the murder of 32-year-old Evyatar Borovsky by a Fatah affiliated terrorist at a bus stop in the West Bank on Tuesday, but which didn’t in fact include any clips of Jewish violence.
As we noted, there were indeed multiple reports elsewhere of retaliatory attacks (including rock throwing) by Jews against Palestinians in the area near where the terrorist attack occurred, but the Guardian video on May 1 – though titled ‘Jewish settlers attack Palestinians in the West Bank‘ – simply included short clips of Israeli soldiers using crowd control measures against Palestinians near the village of Orif.
However, upon looking at the film again, we noticed something else – an opening still shot of what appears to be an Israeli rock thrower which doesn’t actually appear anywhere in the actual video.
Here’s how the video is presented on the side of the Guardian’s Israel page. Notice the rock-thrower wearing a blue shirt.
When you open the link you also briefly see the rock thrower:
After a few seconds however, the image above disappears and the full video begins.
Here’s the video again.
Nowhere in the video does the (presumably Israeli) rock thrower in the blue shirt appear. And, whilst we were unable to find the video corresponding to this particular still shot, if you Google the title you can find other uploads of the video which appear on YouTube without the mysterious rock-thrower.
Original Guardian video at top. Seen below is the very same video, uploaded by another YouTube user.
It seems that the image in question was spliced from a completely different video and added by Guardian editors to the May 1 video report to buttress the narrative.
In fairness, this technique is used in other Guardian videos (and on other news sites). Nonetheless, in this particular case it seems highly misleading – especially in light of the fact that, as we noted, the video itself contains no footage whatsoever of Israelis throwing rocks or otherwise attacking Palestinians, despite its quite explicit title to that effect.
I guess the more accurate title for the video which editors could have used, ‘Various clips and still shots which, when spliced together, still only suggest Israeli settler violence to the trained Guardian reader’, wasn’t quite as catchy.
Following the murder of an Israeli man, 32-year-old Evyatar Borovsky, by a Palestinian terrorist in a stabbing attack at a bus stop in the northern West Bank on Tuesday, the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood reported on the incident, as well as on subsequent retaliatory attacks by “Jewish settlers”.
The Jewish ‘attacks’ evidently occurred near the Yitzhar community where Borovsky lived, as well as in the Palestinian villages of Burin, Hawara, and Orif – and a nearby highway (route 60). According to multiple reports, some Israelis threw rocks at Palestinians and some set Palestinian fields ablaze.
The claim that there were some retaliatory attacks by Jews following Borovsky’s murder doesn’t appear to be in doubt.
However, the Guardian also published a video story on May 1, with the following title:
Here’s the video caption:
A group of masked Jewish settlers set fire to a house and fields across villages in the West Bank before attacking Palestinians. Palestinian villagers clash with the settlers on a hill overlooking the village of Orif. Israeli soldiers arrive to disperse the crowd with stun grenades. The attack was in retaliation to the killing of Israeli settler Eviatar [sic] Borovsky
However, upon viewing the one minute and six second Guardian video, we couldn’t help but notice the absence of any clips actually showing ‘Jewish settlers attacking Palestinians’, despite text on the bottom of the screen at various moments stating that such attacks were taking place.
Here’s the video in its entirety.
Here’s what we just saw:
Here’s what we did not see, despite claims made in the title and accompanying text:
Whilst the events described by the Guardian may have indeed occurred, the video they produced and posted certainly did not present any visual evidence to buttress these claims.
Though there have been far more egregious examples of ‘Pallywood‘ in action (i.e., intentionally misleading or doctored Palestinian film footage; and the staging of certain scenes) it is reasonable to ask why the Guardian editor who published this video failed to engage in basic journalistic critical scrutiny of what the clips were claiming to document.
