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Guardian’s Conal Urquhart lies about “unarmed” Mavi Marmara terrorists

May 25, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , | by | 7 comments

The Guardian’s coverage of the incident which occurred on May 31st 2010 on board the Mavi Marmara – an organized effort by the Islamist organisation known as the IHH  to break Israel’s blockade against weapons smuggling into Gaza – was characteristically obsessive and one-sided.  

It included 71 separate pieces (reports and commentary placed on their special Gaza Flotilla page) published on the first four days following the incident and represented a quintessentially Guardian frantic rush to judgement: Israel was guilty of naked aggression against peaceful pro-Palestinian activists.  

Perhaps the most surreal Guardian piece in the days after the incident was the following report, which uncritically reported the sage advice of the sensitive Syrian despot known as Bashar al-Assad meditating upon his vision for peace in the region – harmony he believed was complicated by events on the Mavi Marmara. (Assad, of course, was correct. Over 13,000 Syrian civilians murdered by the regime in Damascus can attest to this fact.) 

Moreover, the long-awaited UN Palmer Report - published in July 2011 – reached conclusions almost completely at odds with the Guardian narrative.  Here are some of the main points of the report:

  • Contrary to a mind-numbing number of accusations in the media that Israel’s blockade of Gaza was “illegal” the Palmer report concluded that the Naval blockade is fully consistent with international law and that IDF Naval forces have the right to stop Gaza-bound ships in international waters.
  • Contrary to claims that the IDF attacked peaceful activists, the reports concluded that when Israeli commandos boarded the main ship they faced “organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers” and were therefore required to use force in order to ensure their own protection.
  • The report concluded that the IHH sponsored flotilla, including the Mavi Marmara, “acted recklessly in attempting to breach the naval blockade.”

However, the Guardian’s Conal Urquhart – in the great tradition of Guardian pro-Palestinian activists – filed the following story unburdened by such quaint journalistic notions as adjusting a long-held narrative based on new information.

In fact, “Israel offers compensation to Mavi Marmara flotilla raid victims” of May 24th 2012, contains one passage completely contradicted by the Palmer Report.

According to Urquhart:

“Turkey cooled diplomatic relations with Israel after nine of its citizens were shot dead by Israeli commandos who landed on the Mavi Marmara to prevent its passage to Gaza. Protesters on the ship repelled the first wave of lightly armed commandos, but then the Israeli soldiers used lethal force against the unarmed passengers to end their resistance.”

This is blatantly untrue.

According to sections 123 and 124 of the Palmer Report:

“It is clear to the Panel that preparations were made by some of the passengers on the Mavi Marmara well in advance to violently resist any boarding attempt. The description given in the Israeli report is consistent with passenger testimonies to the Turkish investigation that describe cutting iron bars from the guard rails of the ship…”

“Furthermore, video footage shows passengers…carrying metal bars, slingshots, chains and staves. That information supports the accounts of violence given by IDF personnel to the Israeli investigation…”

“The Panel accepts, therefore, that soldiers landing from the first helicopter faced significant, organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers when they descended onto the Mavi Marmara. Material before the Panel confirms that this group was armed with iron bars, staves, chains, and slingshots, and there is some indication that they also used knives. Firearms were taken from IDF personnel and passengers disabled at least one by removing the ammunition from it. Two soldiers received gunshot wounds. There is some reason to believe that they may have been shot by passengers,”

It simply doesn’t get more clear than this.

A Guardian reporter tells his readers that passengers on that fateful day of May 31st  were unarmed, peaceful activists – despite definitive evidence that they were armed Islamist terrorists.

I’d recommend Tweeting Mr. Urquhart (@conalu) and asking him about this simply indefensible claim.

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Moral posturing as serious thought: Context-Free essay on migrants in Israel by Seth Freedman

May 24, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , | by | 27 comments

Gidon Ben-Zvi, in a guest post on these pages yesterday titled “Growing pains: The birth of Israel’s illegal immigration crisis” made a few important points:

  • Israel’s illegal African immigration challenge is a recent phenomenon, going back to 2005, after the Egyptian police attacked Sudanese refugees who were camped out in Cairo, demanding asylum. Jerusalem proved generous and word spread that migrants would be greeted hospitably and provided with job opportunities upon arrival in Israel.
  • Since Hosni Mubarak was swept up and out of power during the ‘Arab Spring’, government authority has all but collapsed in the Sinai Peninsula. One by-product of this lawless state of affairs has been a spike of illegal immigration to Israel from Africa. Over the last several months, Israel’s southern border with Egypt, by way of the Sinai, has turned into the primary point of entry for thousands of work-seeking migrants (economic migrants, as opposed to political refugees).

Ben-Zvi was responding to a May 20th report by Harriet Sherwood titled “Israeli PM: illegal African immigrants threaten identity of Jewish state” which was characteristically devoid of such context – instead playing the ‘Jewish state should be held to the higher standard’ card, ending thusly:

“Amid the anti-immigration clamour, some Israelis have argued that, in the light of Jewish history, their state should be sympathetic and welcoming to those fleeing persecution.”

Seth Freedman’s piece - Israeli politicians are fanning the flames of anti-migrant tension - includes fair criticism of some unnecessarily hyperbolic rhetoric from a couple of Israeli politicians but, true to form for many Israeli Left commentators on the pages of CiF, Freedman’s rhetorical excesses are numerous and include the following:

  • Framing Israeli policies he finds disagreeable in the most extreme, unserious manner 
  • Imputing anti-black racism to Israel
  • A  failure to offer a concrete policy alternatives to a vexing political problem
  • Transparent moral posturing (Freedman is ‘the good Jew’) 
Framing Israeli policies he finds disagreeable in the most extreme terms:
 
The first dynamic is apparent in the opening passage, which quotes a counter protester at an anti-immigrant march in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, May 22nd, which tragically turned violent. 

“In 1936 my grandfather stood against the fascists in Cable Street. Today I did the same in Tel Aviv.” After five years on frontlines, Nic Schlagman is used to untrammelled hostility towards the African refugees and migrants with whom he works, but he says the situation has never been as critical as it is at present.”

The comparison to Blackshirts in London (circa 1936), in the context of a growing Nazi-inspired fascist movement throughout Europe, is morally, historically and intellectually unserious. It represents one of those rhetorical perversions which says more about those advancing the analogy (or those uncritically repeating it) than the analogy itself.  (See CiF commentator Mya Guarnieri hysterically advancing the narrative that Israel is moving in a “fascist” direction, here and here.)

Imputing racism: 

 There was this passage by Freedman:

“The climate of fear amongst the African community is at fever pitch,” [Nic] Schlagman said. “Mothers pulled their kids off the streets in anticipation of the marchers arriving, and everyone’s saying it’s only a matter of time until someone gets killed.” The spectre of such violence is hardly unfounded…[and] has revealed the level of hate coursing through the veins of Israelis furious at the influx of non-Jewish Africans into their country.” [emphasis added]

The accusation of racism against Israelis is of the most facile and lazy arguments employed in the anti-Zionist arsenal.  Israelis, like people in many states in the world, are of course struggling with the dilemma of balancing humanitarian concerns with the requirements of national cohesion and economic security. Concerns about unlimited immigration do not suggest that Israelis have “hate coursing through their veins”.  

Twenty percent of Israelis are Arab and among Jewish Israelis, roughly half are ‘Jews of color’ – that is Jews from the Middle East, North Africa (or Ethiopia). So, there is simply no rational reason to believe that the reaction to the influx of illegal immigrants would be any different in they were not from Africa.

 
A  failure to offer a concrete policy alternative to a vexing political problem:
 
In 900 words of criticism, Freedman fails to include anything resembling a concrete suggestion regarding how Israel should deal with the influx of immigrants. Freedman doesn’t even acknowledge the scope of the problem, nor is there a single policy proposal or a passage devoted to what he believes should be done by the Israeli Knesset in order to develop a codified series of laws and regulations to handle the influx of African migrants.  Such journalistic Israel critics are continually defined by their failure to offer real-world alternatives in addition to their scathing and often scurrilous critiques of the state, and its foreign and domestic policies.
 
Transparent moral posturing (Freedman is ‘the good Jew’):
 
Freedman is an Israeli Jew, and leverages that fact to opine at ‘Comment is Free’ quite effectively. His critiques of Israel are leveled, ostensibly, as is the case with so many other CiF commentators, ‘As-a-Jew’.
 
Indeed, a necessary corollary to the former principle (Israel’s critics’ failure to offer any specific alternatives to the government policies they’re admonishing) is the dynamic I’ve expanded upon previously: the vanity and moral posturing of placing oneself above the fray; beyond the day-to-day real life and necessarily imperfect decisions of a modern democratic nation-state.
 
To be clear, those Israelis using irresponsible, incendiary rhetoric against illegal immigrants should rightly face social opprobrium and, if the facts warrant it, even be arrested under Israel’s anti-incitement laws.
 
However, the Jewish state need not be held to a higher standard than other states similarly dealing with the moral dilemma of economic migrants crossing its borders.  
 
Finally, commentators like Freedman (and his Jewish fellow political travelers at the Guardian) need desperately to see Israel through a more mature, sober lens, and avoid the endless hyperbole, clichés and posturing. 
 

Ultimately, they fail to recognize a vital political and moral truth: in responsible statecraft rarely is there the luxury of making choices which will lead to perfect justice for all concerned.

Rather, with every serious decision in front of her, Israel (like all nations) must carefully weigh the costs and benefits of various possible actions and try to make the decisions which are most likely to result in a positive outcome for as many of her citizens as possible.  The perfect will always remain the natural and mortal enemy of the good. 


 
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Guardian defames Israel with wild, unsubstantiated charge on Palestinians disabled by IDF

May 23, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , , , | by | 17 comments

‘Activist Journalism’ – in the anti-Zionist context – refers to the capacity to frame any event in the Jewish state in a manner consistent with a pre-determined narrative.

So, any isolated case of injustice is reported as evidence of the state’s alleged systemic and institutional racism or oppression, while counter evidence – indicating that the behavior in question may represent the exception and not the rule – is typically ignored. 

For instance, the Guardian will report a Palestinian civilian death in Gaza during an IDF anti-terror operation but largely fail to note the context of Hamas terror or the remarkable care Israel takes to avoid non-combatant deaths – including precision bombing of terrorist targets which often results in far better outcomes in comparison to other armies’ military operations around the world.

Of the 100 Gazans killed in IDF anti-terror operations in 2011, 91 were terrorists and 9 were civilians. That is a civilian to combatant death ratio of roughly 1 to 10.

This contrasts quite dramatically with the average civilian to combatant death ratio in recent conflicts involving NATO forces in Iraq and Afghanistan: There, NATO had a 3 to 1 ratio (i.e. there were 3 civilian deaths for every 1 combatant death).

Similarly, Israel has been accused on the pages of the Guardian of making it very difficult for Palestinians in Gaza to receive medical care, often with the particular circumstances of each decision ignored, along with that of the broader context of a state which – though at war against a terror movement which calls for Israel’s destruction – still allows thousands of Palestinians (100,000 in 2011) to receive medical care in its hospitals.  

Harriet Sherwood’s latest report is an even more egregious illustration of such journalistic bias. Her report entitled “Palestinian Paralympians visit Jerusalem holy site” of  May 21st, (tucked away in the sports section of the Guardian), had it been based on the raw facts, could have fairly advanced the following narrative:

Israel, though in a state of war with a Hamas government which does not recognise its right to exist and launches hundreds of deadly projectiles into its cities each year, still allowed – on humanitarian grounds – disabled Palestinian athletes (who are competing in the Paralympics in London this summer) to visit al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.  

But, we’re talking about Harriet Sherwood, after all, and so Israel was not credited.  Instead she wrote:

“The distance between Gaza City and Jerusalem is less than 50 miles, but one that is near-impossible for most Palestinians in the tiny enclave to undertake. But Qadoom was one of nine athletes and coaches – four of whom will compete in the Paralympics in London this summer – to visit the holy site on Monday, courtesy of the British consulate in Jerusalem” [emphasis added]

Unreported by Sherwood is the fact that for years there has been an unofficial boycott of Jerusalem by Arab states to protest Israeli control of the city.

Sherwood continues:

“Officials from the British consulate applied to Israel for exit permits on the group’s behalf in March. Confirmation for the nine finally came on Thursday, but there was still a six-hour wait at the Erez crossing.”

Then Sherwood’s tale devolves even further. She quotes a paralympian, Hatam Zakut, who says:

“We consider ourselves representatives of all disabled athletes in Gaza. Thanks to the Israelis, there are a lot of us.”  

Adding to Zaku’s vague charge, Sherwood writes:

“[In fact] tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are disabled as a result of Israeli military operations.”

“Tens of thousands…”?

There is no source provided to back up Sherwood’s outrageous claim, but after doing a bit of research I found an official United Nations report on Operation Cast Lead – the war in Gaza with the most casualties in recent history.

Per the UN report, there were an estimated 600 Palestinians disabled as a result of injuries sustained during Cast Lead.

While no figures seem to be available on the total number of people disabled in Gaza as a result of conflicts with Israel, a report by the Gaza Ministry of Public Works and Housing, in August 2009 (seven months after Cast Lead), placed the total figure of all disabled Palestinians in Gaza – for all reasons – at 19,763.  

In fact, the only reference this definitive report makes to Israel is this line on page 2:

“The increasing in injured people due to Israeli continuous aggressions [sic] led to an obvious increase in number of disabled”

So while there are – according to the official agency in Gaza responsible for collating this data – just under twenty thousand disabled Palestinians in total in Gaza, even the Hamas-run ministry does not attempt to quantify the percentage of this total who were disabled due to IDF military actions, let alone make the claim that “tens of thousands” were disabled by Israeli military operations”. 

So, where did Harriet Sherwood get this number?

We’ll likely never know.

But this is no minor question.

Harriet Sherwood is the Jerusalem correspondent for one of the more influential liberal English-language broadsheets and what she reports as fact necessarily has an impact on how millions of readers filter the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Most importantly, such reports greatly influence their readers’ degree of moral sympathy towards Jews’ defense of their right to self-determination in a region resistant to this supremely modest aspiration.

The additional moral issue pertains to the very real world impact Sherwood’s reports have on the Arab world – serving to fuel antipathy towards the Jewish state.

Finally, and no less important, Harriet Sherwood is a professional journalist and therefore owes her readers more than hearsay and half-truths. 

Even as a blogger – one with unapologetic and transparent pro-Zionist sympathies – I would never make a specific statistical claim without a link leading to a credible source.

It speaks volumes about the Guardian that their reporters are evidently not held accountable to such basic professional standards.  

 

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The racism of no expectations: The Guardian’s coverage of the Palestinians (A six month review)

May 22, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , | by | 18 comments

Who are the Palestinians?

If Israelis represent the most obsessively and disproportionately covered national group on the pages of the Guardian, the Palestinians represent their antithesis.

While every conceivable flaw in Israeli society is reported ad nauseam in the news section (and ‘Comment is Free’) there is an egregious dearth of critical coverage of Palestinian politics, culture and society.  Instead, the familiar facile moral binarism, which posits Palestinians as victims of Israeli villainy, overwhelmingly frames the coverage.

The questions which are almost never asked by Guardian reporters and commentators include:

  • What is the Palestinians’ guiding moral ethos? 
  • Which political principles and traditions would inform a future Palestinian state? 
  • If the Palestinians achieve political independence, how will they treat their citizens? Will the state be truly democratic? What rights will be guaranteed for political, religious, ethnic and sexual minorities?

The last six months of coverage of Palestinian society by the Guardian (consistent, it seems, with coverage prior to the period under examination) provides almost no insight into these vital questions.

In short, the Guardian’s Palestinians are abstractions (void of any flaws, nuance or complexity) and protagonists – morally juxtaposed with their Israeli antagonists.  The Palestinians never act. They are always acted upon.

The Palestinian page of the Guardian, in 183 stories and commentaries going back six months, from November 22nd 2011 to May 21st 2012, reveals a few patterns:

  • Most stories on the ‘Palestinian’ page are merely cross posted from the ‘Israel’ page, and often have little to do with Palestinians, their society, or government. This is especially curious in light of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians are governed by Palestinians: all of Gaza, and in Areas A (civilly and militarily) and B (civilly) of the West Bank.
  • The number of stories or commentaries devoted to critiquing or analyzing government policies in Gaza or the PA: 7 out of 183  (here,  here, here, here, here, here, here)
  • Number of stories focused on acts or attempted acts of terrorism against Israelis: 0 out of 183  (In fairness, there were several stories reporting on the barrage of rocket attacks from Gaza in March, but none were framed as terrorists attacks against Israeli civilians as such, and all emphasized Israel’s retaliatory attacks and the resulting Palestinian casualties.)

In addition to the Guardian’s institutional hostility to Israel, while contextualizing the Guardian over the last two years – and consistent with the results of this review – I have often been struck by their reporters’ stunning lack of intellectual curiosity concerning the actual values, mores, politics, culture, and ethics of living, breathing Palestinians.

The corollary of this professional abdication (their cognitive blind spot) is that such journalists often completely fail to assign to the people living in the Palestinians territories the moral agency generally associated with those deemed as genuine equals.

A more exquisite expression of racism would be difficult to find. 

(Note: Here are screen shots of all the headlines, with story captions, in the six-month period covered in this report.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Hamas’ Hope & Change party aims to stop the “Judaization” of Jerusalem

May 21, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , | by | 2 comments

There’s just so much unintentional comedy in this “report” at Al-Qassam, the English website of the military wing of Hamas, titled “The storming of the Aqsa Mosque sets off alarm bells“, May 21, I’ll post a screen shot of the entire post for your enjoyment.

One question:

How does the ‘Change and Reform’ wing of Hamas – a movement which cites the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, calls for the annihilation of Israel and the murder of Jews in its founding charter – differ from the more ‘conservative wing?

What the Guardian won’t report: Attempted Palestinian kidnapping of Israeli mother & child

May 21, 2012 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | by | 59 comments

Harriet Sherwood just published a story (Israeli settlers filmed firing gun at Palestinians, May 21), which included a video posted on YouTube providing little context, about Israelis from Yitzhar firing at Palestinians in the Arab town of Asira al-Qibliya - an incident currently being investigated by the IDF.

While the Guardian wasted no time running with the story above, despite the paucity of facts, the following frightening tale of Palestinians terrorizing an Israeli mother and her child will likely never find its way to the pages of the Guardian, as Harriet Sherwood’s narrative of the region rarely allows for such unambiguous tales of Jewish victimhood.

The following was reported in Ynet, per information recently released by the Shin Bet, Israel’s security service:

Some two months ago Palestinians attempted to kidnap Yael Shahak and her daughter, who was eight years old at the time, when they were driving to the Beit El area in the West Bank.

Yael Shahak and her daughter

On Sunday [May 20] , after the Palestinians accused of the attempted kidnapping…were indicted, Yael recalled the incident.

“One of them took a wrench which he used to shatter the car’s front windshield. At that moment I understood that they were going to kill me and my daughter that we would come out of this dead or handicapped.”

One night in March, Shahak and her daughter were on their way home from an event in central Israel. “We got onto the Beit El access road and a few minutes later, after one of the bends in the road, I noticed a car standing at the side of the road,” she recalled.

“…I honked my horn and then they zigzagged in front of me. The spot was one where you could not bypass or evade the car in front of you, so I drove behind them and tried to avoid them.”

But the Palestinians would not give up. “They saw me backing up so they also backed up. That’s when the penny dropped that I had a problem,” she said. “I tried to escape but they wouldn’t let me move to the side of the road. Eventually they stopped and stood right in front of my vehicle.

“I saw four men in front of me, I was frightened by the fact that they were all men – that was before I even paid attention to whether they were Arabs or not.

One of the men walked up to Shahak’s window while the other three surrounded the car. “The terrorist who came up to my window signaled me to open it.

“The doors and windows were locked so [he tried] to convince me to open the window and [I] tried to tell him that I want to continue on my way. It was all done with hand signals and looks. Then at some point the look in his eyes changed and he became crazed.”

That is when the violence started. “After several blows to the windshield, with all the glass flying at me, he suddenly stopped. At the time I didn’t understand why and it was only after the fact that I realized that they saw an [Israeli vehicle] coming from the direction of Beit El.”

“The terrorists [then] fled…”

“I will never forget the look on the terrorist’s face…” 

“That night [my daughter] cried with me…”

There were nine members – Palestinians from the Ramallah area – in the terror cell responsible for the attempted kidnapping of Shahak and her daughter,  which was headed by Mouhmad Ramdan (22) of al-Bira.

Some of the terrorists (affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) are being held in Israel while others are in the custody of the Palestinian Authority.

Suspect Mouhmad Ramdan

According to the Shin Bet, the terrorists were trying to kidnap Shahak and her daughter in order to use them as bargaining chips in prisoner exchanges.

Is the following Guardian headline even conceivable?

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A Baaaad Man! The Guardian’s scary Bibi

May 20, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , , | by | 22 comments

Harriet Sherwood’s latest report, Israeli PM: illegal African immigrants threaten identity of state, May 20, is notable not for the story, concerning Israel’s efforts to stem illegal immigration, nor for the narrative, which suggests racist motives, but due to the photo of PM Netanyahu.

In fact, the photo (of an angry “right wing” Bibi) was used in a July, 2011, Guardian story.

A November 2011 Sherwood report used another angry photo of Bibi…

…which was recycled from a  report in August, 2011.

As a point of comparison, here’s a photo of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a ‘Comment is Free’ commentary from March, 2012.

Finally, here is a photo from a Guardian report, of a gentle, kindly and loving soul (aka, Raed Salah) who, in his spare time, recites poems advancing the ancient antisemitic blood libel.

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Jerusalem: The Media Myth of Two Cities

May 20, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: | by | 6 comments

As HonestReporting observed:

“The history of Jerusalem did not start in 1967. Thousands of years of Jewish history took place in what is now called “Arab East Jerusalem.” Only when the Jewish residents were driven from their homes in 1948 [by Jordanian forces] was the city divided between East and West.”

This HR video shows the reality of Jerusalem, which today is celebrating 45 years of reunification.

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Video: The secret of Israel’s success

May 19, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: | by | 15 comments

The following 40 minutes will be time well spent.

The film “Israel Inside: How a Small Nation Makes a Big Difference“ is a documentary which explores Israeli society from a humanistic, psychological and social perspective. The film avoids politics, instead telling the story of a people whose resilience has propelled a nation to the forefront of innovation in science, medicine and technology.

The film explores the question:

What underlying growth factors have given rise to this small nation’s triumph over adversity?

See film by going to this site.

Political loyalty & its discontents: A thoughtful CiF reader examines a vexing dilemma

May 18, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , | by | 13 comments

Occasionally we come across a reader comment beneath the line of a ‘Comment is Free’ essay which is not only worth recommending, but thoughtful enough to post and meditate upon. 

The essay in question which elicited the comment, “So, you think reason guides your politics? Think again“, May 17, by Simon Jenkins, (which explores what factors motivate our political thought process), represents a rare display of intellectual complexity at an institution often identified as much by a mind numbing uniformity as by a particular political brand.

Writes Jenkins:

“Most people buy a newspaper not to be prised from their settled opinion but to find it confirmed and comforted. They would not be dragged from it by wild horses, let alone the old nag of reason. A newspaper is their tribal notice board, their badge, their identity.”

While Jenkins’ piece does succumb to the chic appeal of (political) biological determinism, his effort represents serious thought, and is refreshingly free of hyperbole or moral posturing.

The essay also inspired this comment, very much worth examining, briefly giving voice to the dilemmas of Zionists who are forced to choose between principles and the comforts of political group identity.

I’d like to hear others’ opinions, both on the specific issue of being a Zionist within political spheres hostile to Jewish nationalism, as well as the broader theme of retaining independence of mind in the context of group demands.    

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Leader of ‘Stop BDS at Park Slope Coop’ campaign (& CiF Watch reader) featured on Daily Show

May 18, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , | by | 24 comments

I recently noticed the moniker of the following commenter, beneath the line of a CiF Watch post about the Guardian’s coverage of the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike, “Observer op-ed on ‘hunger strikers’ exposes double standards on administrative detention issue“, May 13:

I replied and asked whether this commenter was indeed part of the successful efforts to defeat a BDS movement which targeted a coop in Brooklyn.

First, it’s always nice to be compared favorably to Elder and DivestThis! 

But, briefly, for those unfamiliar with the BDS battle in Brooklyn’s upscale Park Slope neighborhood, here’s a quick summary. 

On March 27, following a long and heated political battle lasting many months, members of the Park Slope Food Coop soundly rejected a proposal that asked the full 16,000-member market to boycott products made in Israel, turning aside the proposal after a 90-minute debate.  (The Park Slope coop, one of the oldest and largest in the U.S., carries Israeli hummus, a seltzer water maker, organic paprika, two styles of kosher marshmallows and three varieties of tapenade and pesto.)

Image from site of Jewlicious

In fact, the commenter above is none other than Barbara Mazor of More Hummus, Please - the Park Slope resident who led the anti-BDS fight.  

Mazor’s blog, following the BDS fail, noted the heavy publicity surrounding the debate.

“The Coop vote became quite a media sensation, including a segment from the Daily Show. We filmed this a few weeks before the vote (on Ta’anit Esther and Purim), but it aired the night of the vote. Since we already knew the referendum was defeated by the time we viewed it, I enjoyed it doubly.”

You can see the Daily Show clip (which includes interviews, by the Daily Show’s Samantha B., of both Mazor and a humorless pro-BDS activist named Liz Roberts) at Mazor’s blog, by clicking here.

While, true to form for the Daily Show, both sides are the object of some mockery, those of you familiar with the comic style of Jon Stewart’s show will know who comes out looking worse.  

As a commenter at DivestThis! observed about the segment:

“It was clear from the cutting that Barbara Mazor of More Hummus, Please (the lady who led the anti-BDS fight) represented the sane side of the argument.

When Comedy Central makes you out to be “less” crazy, it’s a clear win.”

The BDS movement: a fringe group of extremists obsessed with the single minded goal of eroding the Jewish state’s legitimacy and crippling its economy, which has chalked up failure after failure, while causing no discernible injurious economic impact.

It would be hard for anyone not to appear “less crazy”!

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‘Comment is Free’ cheeky reader comment of the day: On Sharon, babies and Semitic tendencies

May 17, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , | by | 18 comments

H/T Margie

There were over 300 comments beneath the line of Stuart Jeffries’ review of Sasha Baron Cohen’s movie, The Dictator (Guardian, May 15).

More than a few readers were evidently angered that Cohen, a Jew, had the temerity to mock Arab dictators.  Here is the comment of one outraged reader (rayhanania), which garnered 308 ‘Recommends’. 

This commenter is possibly the same Ray Hanania (an Arab American journalist and comedian) who was quoted in Jeffries’ review arguing:

“Baron Cohen could be far more effective if he turned his comedic talents inwards and portrayed someone like…prime minister…Netanyahu or even rightwing foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman.”

Another reader, agreeing with the suggestion (by rayhanania) that Jews would never, ever be subjected to crude ethnic stereotypes, strayed into different territory.

The reader was referring to this notorious cartoon (appearing in The Independent in 2003) which he/she characterized as garnering a “great deal of support from the Jewish community”.

Then, there was this cheeky reply:

I think many of us have a relative who can’t control such, um, ‘impulses’.

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Harriet Sherwood’s Munich Massacre story follows Guardian rule on obscuring Palestinian terrorism

May 16, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , | by | 15 comments

My post on March 23rd, 2011 – following a terrorist bombing in Jerusalem which killed one woman and injured dozens – critiqued coverage of the attack by the Guardian’s Conal Urquhart (who was filling in for Harriet Sherwood). The post was titled “Four simple Guardian rules for journalists reporting a terrorist attack in Israel.”

I noted that Urquhart seemed to be at pains to avoid characterizing the violence as a terrorist act.  

This passage, from his initial report on the attack (close to Jerusalem’s main conference hall and central bus station), represents a prime example.

“A bus has exploded opposite the central station in Jerusalem, killing one woman and injuring at least 25 people, four of them seriously.” [emphasis added]

Of course, the bus didn’t “explode”.

A bomb was placed by a terrorist in a trash can, near a crowded bus stop, with the intent of killing Israelis. Some on an Egged bus which had stopped to pick up passengers there were injured (along with others closer to the bomb) as a result of the blast.

Further, in contextualizing Urquhart’s work with other Guardian reports about Palestinian terrorism, I arrived at what appeared to be a few of the Guardian Group’s guiding principles.

One of the rules which Guardian journalists often observe pertains to intentionally unclear causation:

They use passive language which may obscure the fact that an intentional act of violence was perpetrated by a Palestinian terrorist against innocent Israeli civilians.

Harriet Sherwood recently published a report, titled “London 2012 Olympics: IOC rejects silence for Munich victims” (May 15th), which is quite consistent with the Guardian rule detailed above.

Sherwood writes:

“The Munich attack began in the early hours of 5 September 1972, when eight members of the Palestinian military organisation Black September infiltrated the Olympic village, and took 11 members of the Israeli team hostage. The attackers demanded the release of 234 Palestinian prisoners in return for the hostages’ release.

By just after midnight, all 11 athletes, five attackers and a German police officer were dead.” [emphasis added]

By midnight, they were dead. Not “killed“ but “dead“. Sherwood fails to distinguish between victim and perpetrator, and offers no further explanation about how the Israeli hostages lost their lives.

In fact, the Israeli athletes were murdered brutally and quite deliberately by Palestinian Black September terrorists.

Recently the Guardian published a thorough, well-researched and clear account of the murder of Israeli athletes in Munich.  It was written by sports editor Simon Burnton and titled, “50 stunning Olympic moments No 26: The terrorist outrage in Munich in 1972“.  Evidently it takes a sports writer to report on Palestinian terrorism without ideological blinders.

Burton recounts how, on the last day of the crisis, nine of the eleven Israelis were killed while on helicopters (with their captors) at the runway of Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base near Munich. The terrorists were hoping for a deal, whereby they would fly to safety in Egypt, until negotiations with German authorities broke down.

“…a terrorist threw a grenade into one of the helicopters, killing all but one of the four hostages on board. Another terrorist sprayed the second helicopter with bullets, killing the five tied together there. The final hostage, David Berger, died of smoke inhalation before he could be rescued.”

However, per Burton, two of the Israelis were killed in the athletes’ residence on the first day of the crisis. 

“In all 12 hostages were taken, but as the wrestlers were led downstairs to join the coaches one of them, Gad Zabari, managed to escape, with the assistance of the wounded [Moshe] Weinberg. The latter was shot dead and his body thrown, naked, on to the street. The remaining 10 were shepherded into a single bedroom, where the weightlifter Yossef Romano attempted to overcome one of the intruders. He too was shot, apparently castrated and left to bleed to death on the floor.” [emphasis added]

The brutality was beyond description.

Harriet Sherwood’s rhetorical obfuscation is all too predictable. 

Related articles

The Manchester Guardian in 1948, covering the birth of Israel

May 15, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: | by | 27 comments

Yesterday (May 14th), the Guardian republished their original coverage of the establishment of Israel in 1948.

Here are the Guardian reports from that day in 1948:

The main story.

The leader:

I’m very interested to hear readers’ thoughts on these Guardian reports in the context of the paper’s coverage of Israel today.

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Who’s afraid of Richard Millett?

May 15, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | by | 75 comments

Richard Millett was called a “typical Israeli” last night at an SOAS Palestine Society event in London.

(The event included a presentation by Abdel Bari Atwan – a ‘Comment is Free’ contributor who can be seen here explaining that if Iranian missiles hit Tel Aviv he would “dance in [London's] Trafalgar Square” and here praising a terrorist attack against Israeli civilians.)

If you’re wondering whether the abuse hurled at Richard was racist, simply replace “Israeli” with any other identity and repeat the charge.  ”You’re a typical Arab.” “You’re at typical Black,” etc.

Of course, Richard is not an Israeli.  He’s a British Jew who routinely defends Israel and Jews at events hosted by the most hostile anti-Zionist, pro-Islamist (and often antisemitic) activists. His blog posts are frequently personal reports, using both photos and videos compiled while  monitoring events hosted by the UK’s ubiquitous array of groups hostile to Israel’s existence.

His reports unambiguously demonstrate the illiberal nature of much of the pro-Palestinian movement. One post shows Baroness Jenny Tonge praising Hamas leaders at a Palestinian Return Centre event, another post details a confrontation with a Holocaust denier who attended a Palestinian Solidarity event and yet another recounts a PSC event at which Jews were compared to Nazis.

It’s quite telling that the incident began last night when participants objected to Richard filming their public event (where no restrictions on such recordings were in place and, as Richard noted, others were filming the event).  What did they have to fear from a lone Jewish blogger who was merely attempting to disseminate information about what was said by a few pro-Palestinian activists?

One of the biggest scandals of the Guardian’s coverage of Israel and the Palestinians is the dishonest manner in which they frame the debate: a binarism which imputes good will and progressivism to nearly anyone claiming to advocate on behalf of the Palestinians on one hand and racism (or at least illiberality) to those unapologetically advocating for the Jewish state.

Perhaps Richard Millett is feared so much because he consistently gives lie to this absurd moral paradigm.  

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