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Ali Abunimah is a Palestinian-American journalist, former ‘Comment is Free’ contributor and leader of the BDS movement who The Jewish Daily Forward designated a “rock star“.
Abunimah, who’s an opponent of the existence of a Jewish state within any borders, has characterized Israel as a“supremacist” state, and approvingly cited those who compare Israeli behavior to that of Nazi Germany.
Abunimah is also co-founder of the site, Electronic Intifada.
Abunimah, not surprisingly, isn’t quite able to contain his rage against the Zionist menace on Twitter.
While following the hashtag on the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike (#palhunger) I came across the following pithy Tweets by Abunimah.
(Abunimah has blocked me from viewing his Tweets due to past Zionist apostasies, but those not banished can see his feed, here).
But, that Tweet was an exercise in self-restraint and sobriety compared to this:
Yeah, he’s got our number. Imprisoning Palestinians is the Zionist ‘reason d’être’, our founding principle, our driving passion.
We’re not motivated by the age-old Jewish desire to be ‘a free people in a free land’. That whole thing about “Jewish self-determinism” is just a convenient ruse.
Abunimah SO sees through us.
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Weapons found in Palestinian terror suspect’s home, near Hebron, January 2012
Yesterday we commented on an Observer editorial which harshly condemned Israel for the use of administrative detention to detain suspected terrorists: “Observer op-ed on ‘hunger strikers’ exposes double standards on administrative detention coverage“.
In addition to the failure of The Observer (sister publication of The Guardian) to provide context on the use of such practices by other democracies and its failing to acknowledge that many of those held have already engaged in terror activities, the editorial made this astonishingly inaccurate claim:
“Indeed, according to the UN’s special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, over the past year the number of administrative detentions has almost doubled despite the period of relative peace in Israel.” [emphasis mine]
First, it evidently never occurs to Guardian Group journalists that the degree to which there has been a decrease in the number of major terror attacks may have something to do with preventative anti-terror procedures, including administrative detention.
But moreover, while the kind of large-scale deadly suicide attacks Israel experienced during the 2nd Intifada have thankfully decreased dramatically, Palestinian terrorists’ attempts to launch such attacks have not waned.
As I noted in the previous post, there are dozens of terror attacks in Israeli each month (see official Israeli terror statistics here), most of which the Guardian (and the majority of the mainstream media) fails to report.
In addition to rockets fired into Israeli towns from Gaza ( 627 deadly projectiles were fired in 2011 and 272 so far in 2012), here are a few recent attempted attacks, thankfully thwarted by the IDF, which belie the claim that there has been “relative peace” in Israel.
- January 2: IDF force captured 2 Palestinian men carrying illegal guns. The two were taken in for investigation near Nablus while the M-16 rifle, an Uzi, and matching ammunition they carried were confiscated by security forces.
- January 15: IDF forces uncovered a hunting rifle and a shotgun in a Palestinian’s house in the village of Dahariya, near Hebron. The man was known to the police on previous charges of criminal violence.
- February 21: A powerful explosive device was uncovered along the Israel-Egypt border. Israeli forces saw a man hurling a suspicious bag and immediately fleeing the scene. The explosive was detonated in a controlled manner. No one was hurt.
- April 11: IDF forces stopped a would-be bomber over Passover at a checkpoint east of Nablus, northern Samaria. The terrorist was carrying improvised explosive devices, three knives and 50 bullets.
- April 21: 2 Palestinian teens carrying bombs and guns were nabbed by Israeli forces. They were apprehended near Tapuach junction with 5 pipe bombs, a gun, and ammo.
- April 24: IDF forces uncovered 4 improvised bombs on two Palestinians at a crossing north of Jericho. The bombs were found in the men’s bags and detonated safely.
- April 28: IDF forces nabbed 2 terrorists with 4 pipe bombs as they were trying to smuggle explosives through a checkpoint in northern Samaria.
- May 7: Israeli forces arrested 17-year-old Palestinian for carrying 3 pipe bombs. The teen was detained near Tapuach junction, a known hot spot for terror attacks.
- May 10: Israeli forces arrested 2 Palestinians carrying 2 explosive devices and 3 prepped firebombs near Tapuach Junction, again.
There is one thing, of course, that all of these thwarted Palestinian terror attacks (against innocent Israeli civilians) have in common:
They weren’t reported by the Guardian.
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It must have been an extremely slow day at the Israel desk of AP on May 8, as I’m still at a loss to understand this headline and “story“.
Here’s the headline:
Now, here’s the, um, story.
That’s right. The text in the story is exactly the same eleven words used in the headline.
I could be reading too much into this but we can only hope that this is part of a larger Guardian Group business plan to cut costs (in light of a £58.6 million operating loss during FY2011) by using wire services (like AP) more, and on-the-ground “reporters” (like Harriet Sherwood) less.
A boy can dream can’t he?
Related articles
- Guardian “journalist” Style Guide related dilemmas: Palestinian “Terrorism” edition (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood feels Islamic Jihad terrorist’s pain (cifwatch.com)
- Should the Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood be sacked? (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian corrects story with false translation of Noam Shalit interview after his son’s release (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian removes letter on Jews’ ‘Ghetto’ mentality: Runs afoul of their “editorial guidelines” (cifwatch.com)
- You may need to read this twice – the Guardian Denies that Jerusalem is Israel’s Capital. (cifwatch.com)
The Guardian’s coverage of Israel’s administrative detention of a Palestinian “baker” (who, in his spare time, found time to ‘volunteer’ for Palestinian Islamic Jihad) named Khader Adnan was as one-sided as it was obsessive. They published five separate pieces (over a ten-day period) sympathetic to a terrorist (who went on a hunger strike to protest his detention) held due to his involvement in a movement responsible for terror attacks claiming over 200 Israeli lives since the 1990s.
(The “baker” can be seen in this video imploring his fellow Palestinians to carry out more suicide attacks against Israelis.)
Yesterday, May 12, The Observer (The Guardian’s sister publication) published an official editorial titled “Hunger strikers expose an inhuman system“.
The editorial begins:
“The disclosure that six of almost 1,600 Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike to protest against the Israeli policy of “administrative detention” are close to death has profound implications for Israel and for the stalled Middle East peace process. The rule of law and fair and proper judicial processes, where those accused of a crime may be charged and are guaranteed an opportunity to speak in their own defence in open court, is a key human right that a properly functioning democracy should guarantee even in a troubled period of peacetime.”
Vital context ignored by the editorial includes the fact that administrative detention is a practice inspired by the recognition that the criminal law’s reliance on strict rules of evidence are not suited to handle the challenges presented by terrorism. The reasoning behind administrative detention often is based upon fear that the suspect is likely to pose a threat in the near future. So, it is meant to be preventive in nature rather than punitive.
The administrative detention practice used to imprison Adnan is a judicial method similarly employed by other democratic states around the world, including the the EU, UK – and the U.S.
In fact, Israeli detainees are allowed judicial review, generally within eight days, while in the UK the length of time (which was 28 days until 2011) is now two weeks. The U.S. can hold terror suspects indefinitely.
A U.S. Homeland Security Affairs report concluded that (for these and other reasons) Israel’s use of administrative detention is more respectful of prisoners’ rights than in the U.S. and Britain.
Further, while Israel uses administrative detention purely to prevent acts of terror against its citizens, many countries in the EU use this type of detention for asylum seekers and illegal immigrants.
The Observer editorial continues:
“Indeed, according to the UN’s special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, over the past year the number of administrative detentions has almost doubled despite the period of relative peace in Israel.”
Much like Harriet Sherwood’s false claims that rockets have only “sporadically” been fired into Israel (when, actually, 627 deadly projectiles were fired at Israeli towns in 2011 alone), the notion that Israel has “relative peace” is profoundly misleading.
In addition to rockets from Gaza, each month there are typically dozens of terror attacks in Israel proper as well as in the West Bank. Here’s a breakdown of terror attacks in Israel for the month of April, 2012, most of which never get reported by the MSM.
West Bank and Jerusalem – 60 attacks: 2 explosive devices; 2 small arm shootings; 2 stabbing (in Jerusalem); 54 firebombs (22 in Jerusalem).
Green Line – 1 stabbing attack (in Kfar Saba).
The Observer editorial further warns:
“There is an evident risk of violence for both Israelis and Palestinians should any of the hunger strikers die.”
And, there is a much greater risk that Israeli civilians will die if the Palestinian terrorists are released, a humanitarian concern the author of this polemic clearly did not consider.
The Observer editorial continues by issuing a further warning to Israel on why they must give in to the terrorists’ demands.
“At a time when more and more observers are increasingly convinced that the two-state solution is failing, the nonviolence of this hunger strike is already deeply suggestive of what a Palestinian civil rights movement might look like – should Palestinians abandon the demand for their own self-determination and, instead, insist on full equality within a binational state.”
I guess it was lost on the author that the only reason such prisoners affiliated with violent terrorist movements are behaving ‘non-violently’ is the fact that they’re incarcerated and unarmed. Further, ignored in the passage is the fact that the overwhelming majority of the terror suspects subscribe to an ideology intrinsically opposed to mere “self-determination” and hostile to the existence of a Jewish state within any borders.
The “non-violent” Palestinian prisoners currently engaged in a hunger strike include the following suspects, who were re-arrested by Israeli authorities for continued terrorist activity after being released in the Shalit deal:
Abbas al-Sayyid – Senior activist in Hamas. He was sentenced to 35 life sentences for his role in the terrorist attack in the Park Hotel terror attack in Netanya on Passover evening 2002 which killed 30. After he was arrested, he confessed during questioning by the GSS (General Security Service) that he organized and led the terrorist attack, and even afterwards he sought two more explosive belts to commit additional attacks. His arrest prevented a number of planned attacks on Israeli citizens.
Muhannad Shrim – Senior activist in Hamas and al-Sayyis’ assistant. He was sentenced to 29 life sentences for his involvement in the deadly“Park Hotel” terrorist attack in 2002, which killed 30 and injured 160. During questioning after he was arrested, he told police how he transported the terrorist bomber from his apartment before the attack.
Jamal al-Hor – Hamas activist who was sentenced to five life sentences forterrorist attacks and involvement in murder. Among other things, he was involved in the planning of the attack at “Café Apropo” in Tel Aviv with other members of a terrorist cell he founded which came to be known as the “Tzurif squad”. Three young women in their early 30’s were killed, one of whom was in her third month of pregnancy, and 48 others injured.
Wajdi Joda – Head of the ‘Democratic Front’ in the Nablus region. Joda personally recruited the terrorist who committed the suicide attack at Geha interchange on December 25, 2003. In the attack, four Israeli civilians were killed, among them three women and 21 injured, when the bomber blew himself up at a bus stop in the evening.
Finally, the editorial claims that they oppose the use of administrative detention by all countries. Yet, a quick search of the Guardian’s website demonstrates a disproportionate focus on Israel. Out of 13 total references to “administrative detention” on their site in 2012, in some critical or pejorative manner, only one didn’t focus on Israel.
The subtext of the Observer editorial, suggesting that releasing dangerous terrorists from prison will help the ‘peace process’, is only exceeded in absurdity and cynicism by the Guardian Group’s evidently serious suggestion that they aren’t obsessively critical of the Jewish state.
Related articles
- We know they’re hungry…but for what, exactly? (This Ongoing War)
- Abdullah Barghouti: Poster Boy For Palestinian Hunger Strike–And Murderer Of 66 Jews #PalHunger
- Propaganda by wife of Islamic Jihad terrorist, Khadr Adnan: Courtesy of the Guardian (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood feels Islamic Jihad terrorist’s pain (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood celebrates ‘Int’l Women’s Day’ by championing the cause of Islamic Jihad terrorist (cifwatch.com)
The Guardian published a photo story, Gaza’s children reveal their hopes and fears, May 11, about drawings by children from the Gaza town of al-Zarqa which are currently on display at the East London Mosque. The show is sponsored by Oxfam GB.
The piece can be found on the Guardian’s ‘Global Development’ page.
The Guardian characterizes the art as an expression of the childrens’ “collective yearning for a clean, safe neighborhood”.
The drawings are accompanied by a quote from the child artist explaining his or her inspiration.
A few of the children were curiously quite on-message.
A Palestinian boy, 11, named Amani explained that the following was motivated by his wish that he no had longer had to “live under occupation.” [emphasis added]
A Palestinian child, eight, named Rouane was responsible for the following drawing and is quoted as explaining: “I’d love to have a cleaner and safe neighborhood and a nice countryside and uninterrupted electricity.”
A Palestinian child named Amal, nine, responsible for the following drawing, complained of life “under siege“.
At the very least it seems improbable th Palestinian children (aged 8 to 11) typically use political vocabulary which, when translated from Arabic to English, just so happens to be exactly the same as what is typically employed by anti-Israel activists.
If there indeed was some “adult interference” in these attributions it wouldn’t be the first time a display of drawings allegedly created by Palestinian children was fraudulent.
Elder of Ziyon posted in 2011 (The fake child artists of Gaza) about another exhibit by Gazan children in the same town (al-Zarqa), documenting their experiences during the Gaza war, which were allegedly culled from art therapy sessions at Gaza children’s centers.
The drawings include one of a bomb painted with American and Israeli flags crashing into a street filled with dead bodies and IDF missiles targeting innocent civilians and destroying a mosque.
As Elder noted, the picture above from the exhibit was clearly based on an image by antisemitic artist Carlos Latuff:
Elder observed:
“[The drawings] look like they were done by adults trying to draw in a childish style. The symbolism, the coloring and the motifs seem, at the very least, to have been heavily prompted by adults.
Kids don’t come up with this stuff on their own.”
Related articles
- Guardian’s biased coverage of terrorist hostilities in Israel’s south: Numbers, headlines and photos (cifwatch.com)
- What the Guardian won’t report: Palestinians continue to laud Itamar Massacre terrorists (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian corrects story with false translation of Noam Shalit interview after his son’s release (cifwatch.com)
- Should the Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood be sacked? (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Elder of Ziyon’ responds to the Guardian’s Ben White on BDS. (cifwatch.com)
- The relative relevance of a search on the Guardian website (cifwatch.com)
- Should we laugh or cry over Catherine Ashton’s remarks about Toulouse massacre? (cifwatch.com)
H/T Margie
Peter Bradshaw wrote a largely positive review of Sasha Baron Cohen’s new film, The Dictator, in the Guardian, May 10.
Bradshaw wrote:
“Baron Cohen plays General Aladeen, the tyrannical ruler of the oil-rich north African rogue state Wadiya, who is intensely irritated by the western powers’ infatuation with the Arab spring.”
“[Aladeen] exerts a grotesque, Orwellian power and abolishes hundreds of words in the Adiyan dictionary.”
“His confrontation with Washington has reached a crisis after a speech in which he announced Wadiya was just months away from enriching uranium, and then corpsed and giggled uncontrollably when trying to claim that this was for ‘clean energy purposes’.”
Bradshaw comments:
“[The film] does…deliver laughs and weapons-grade offensiveness.”
“It is relentlessly immature and I was often reminded of the cheerfully reprehensible Kentucky Fried Movie in the 70s, a film unashamedly low in nutritional value. But it was very funny and so is this. The Dictator isn’t going to win awards and it isn’t as hip as Borat. Big goofy outrageous laughs is what it has to offer.”
Evidently, one reader (someone using the moniker ATTW) wasn’t amused, and wrote this comment:
Unpacking this comment (which has thus far garnered 39 ‘Recommends’):
- Conflating of Jews with Israelis: Cohen, a British Jew, is immediately tied to Israel. (Also, see this CW post about a similarly bigoted attack on Cohen by the Guardian’s Michael White.)
- Classic projection: The suggestion that Israel is an extreme anti-Arab, anti-Islamic country is a perfect moral inversion in light of the Arab world’s malign obsession with Jews and Israel, and endemic culture of antisemitism. It takes a lot of ideological conditioning to see the last 64 years as the Israeli/Jewish war against the Arab/Islamic world.
- Thinly veiled Nazi analogy: The reader sees a Jew mocking Arab dictators as somehow analogous to Germans mocking Jews in the years leading up to the Holocaust.
This off-topic, gratuitously anti-Zionist (and ad hominem) attack on Cohen has not been deleted by CiF moderators.
Related articles
- CiF reader sees Zionist fingerprints in international condemnation of Syria (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian reader’s thinly veiled threat against Jews doesn’t result in suspension of user privileges (cifwatch.com)
- CiF reader comment of the day: How the Israel lobby defeated Ken Livingstone (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Comment is Free’ reader Zionism = Nazism comment of the day (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian readers and their inalienable right to make Israel-Nazi analogies (cifwatch.com)
On March 17th we posted a piece (“Lost in anti-Zionist translation? Guardian misquotes Noam Shalit on Palestinian hostage taking“) which noted that the Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood cited an incorrect translation of a Noam Shalit interview on Israeli TV.
According to Greenwood Shalit stated, in the context of discussing his son’s recent release after five-years of captivity by Hamas, that he would kidnap Israeli soldiers if he were a Palestinian.
JTA had a Hebrew-speaking colleague track down the interview with Israel’s Channel 10 and it turns out Shalit didn’t say that at all.
Here’s a transcript (translated from Hebrew) of what Shalit actually said:
Q: If you were a Hamasnik, would you abduct an Israeli soldier?
Shalit: I don’t know but maybe I would fight IDF forces in a different way, I don’t know.
Clearly, Shalit didn’t say that he would kidnap an Israeli soldier if he were a Palestinian, as Greenwood claimed. He essentially suggested that he didn’t know exactly what he would do if he were a Palestinian, while stating that (if he were Palestinian) he might have tried to fight the Israeli army “in a different way.”
In the Guardian’s ‘Corrections and clarifications’ section today, there was this.
Those of you fluent in Hebrew may want to read the text of the interview at the Israeli site here and let us know whether the incorrect translation could have been an honest “misinterpretation”.
Beinartism (Read this post by our friends at Fresno Zionism to get up to speed on the term.)
Thursday, May 3, 2012. Philadelphia:
Me: “Can I please have a bag for my kippah? I live overseas and don’t want it to get lost on the trip back.”
Sales attendant: “Sure. Where do you live overseas?”
Me: “Israel.”
Sales attendant (after a brief pause and a troubled look): “What do you think about the Palestinian issue ?”
Me: “What do you mean?”
Sales attendant: “Do you think they deserve a state? Because I believe they deserve a state.”
Me: “Well, many Israelis are concerned that a new Palestinian state wouldn’t in fact bring peace and may only lead to more terrorist attacks and, as in Gaza, give rise to a government led by a radical, undemocratic and violent movement.”
Sales attendant: “Well, I just believe that the Palestinians deserve a state.”
Me: “And I just replied to your question.”
This exchange, on my last day visiting my family in Philadelphia, didn’t take place in just any old Judaica store. It took place between me and a middle-aged Jewish woman who worked in the gift shop of the newly opened National Museum of American Jewish History, across from the Liberty Bell in the city’s historic district.
I had been in the U.S. for nine days prior to this encounter and never received similar queries from anyone else when I mentioned in passing, in the context of the conversation, that I was from Philly but now a citizen of Israel.
To my family and close friends back in the U.S. my Israeli citizenship is a source of pride, and a topic of conversation which typically revolves around my day-to-day life in Jerusalem, my job, whether my Hebrew has improved and suchlike.
The woman I encountered, however, conveyed a palpable discomfort at my first mention of the “I” word.
I couldn’t stop wondering if it was even conceivable that she would have challenged a Turkish visitor to the museum to defend their policy towards the Kurds. Or would she have challenged a Chinese visitor she just met to a debate about Tibet? Would she have begun a conversation with a guest to her shop from a European nation with troops in Afghanistan or Iraq how they felt about high civilian casualty numbers?
This question actually wasn’t even about Israel. It was about her ― an act of morally posturing. She was setting herself apart from me.
She didn’t attempt to refute the brief argument I presented regarding Israel’s security concerns, but simply repeated what she “believed”. It wasn’t really a conversation at all.
So convinced are such people, with something approaching a secular faith, that peace would be the inevitable result of Israeli withdrawals from the disputed territories they often can’t be bothered to defend their premise. Their argument – any serious observer of the region would have to admit – has at the very least been called into question following the results of Israeli withdrawals from southern Lebanon and Gaza.
While it’s possible the saleswoman I encountered never read Peter Beinart’s recent musings on the Israeli Palestinian Conflict, she certainly shares much of the former New Republic editor’s hubris.
Indeed, the most gnawing omission in Beinart’s original essay on (as he titled his subsequent book) “the crisis of American Zionism” – published at The New York Review of Books under the title “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment” – is that it doesn’t mention what should be expected of Palestinians at all. In fact, Beinart only refers to Palestinians a few times, and always as passive actors.
He writes of the urgent need to promote a “Zionism that recognized Palestinians as deserving of dignity and capable of peace”, and commends Jews (like himself) deeply devoted to human rights for all people, Palestinians included”. [emphasis added]
In the spirit of my interlocutor’s query, Beinart, in his more than 4500 word essay, did not (even in passing) meditate upon the security implications of his proposals.
If Israelis are to take criticism by Jewish Americans seriously we must first be convinced that their opinions are informed by a rigorous and morally sober understanding of the political realities of the region in which we live. As such, perhaps we can expect a bit of humility in the face of the ascendancy of Hezbollah and Hamas following our experiment with the “Land for Peace’ formula in 2000 and 2005. And I think we can be forgiven for asking why they believe a future Palestinian state will necessarily produce peace, tolerance and co existence ― values clearly lacking in the political cultures in Gaza and the PA.
I truly want to believe that such critics are motivated by more than just moral vanity, but the longer I live in the Jewish state (especially in the midst of an ‘Arab Spring’ which hasn’t produced a thaw in our neighbors’ antipathy towards our very presence) the harder it is to take their desperate desire to ‘save us from ourselves’ seriously.
Israelis – who will have to suffer the real world consequences of any future peace agreement – aren’t in any way asking for ‘uncritical support’ from American Jews: only that the premises of their critiques be supportable.
And, finally, if you work at a Jewish institution and meet someone from Israel please consider being as polite and courteous as you would with a visitor from any other country. You may want to make friendly small talk. And, if you absolutely must discuss the politics of his or her country then, whatever you ask, at least be open-minded and truly listen to the answer.
I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
Related articles
- Comment is Free, Jane Eisner & a modest question for Peter Beinart & the American Jewish Left (cifwatch.com)
- What Peter Beinart won’t report: PA TV thanks Palestinian children for fertilizing land with blood (cifwatch.com)
- Peter Beinart and the Crisis of American Jewish Liberalism (cifwatch.com)
- As events refute their dogmatic doctrine ‘two-staters’ are looking more like ‘flat-earthers’ (cifwatch.com)
Jasmin Ramsey’s profile at the Guardian
The contemporary manifestation of classic antisemitic narratives regarding the injurious effects of Jewish power often include the suggestion that Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own nation. Such commentary also typically imputes enormous power to Jews who typically represent a tiny fraction of the overall population.
Such a synthesis of disloyalty on one hand and exaggerated power on the other allows the accuser to charge the Jewish community (or those lobbying on behalf of Jewish interests) of working to undermine their nation.
You don’t have to believe in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to see the hand of Jewry behind undesirable political developments, such as the suggestion (popular several years ago) that Jews working in various positions for former President Bush were responsible for his administration’s decision to invade Iraq.
As Lee Smith observed:
“According to this theory, administration principals like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, and the president—policymakers with actual decision-making power—were merely instruments in the control of vast Zionist networks.”
In many European countries the percentage of citizens who believe Europe’s Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own country, and/or have too much power, often exceeds 50%.
The following (Washington’s war of words against Iran, May 8) by CiF contributor Jasmin Ramsey, is a textbook example of the increasing tendency of the Guardian style left to blame organized pro-Israel Jewry for any political phenomena they find displeasing in the United States.
Ramsey, it should be noted, blogs at LobeLog.com - the site of Jim Lobe. Lobe writes about a number of topics but “exposing” the Israel lobby is a special focus of his, as can be seen by his posts at sites such as Electronic Intifada. Ramsey herself has posted at Mondoweiss and routinely opines on the threat posed by the Israel lobby at publications such as Al Jazeera.
Ramsey suggests, in her CiF essay, that the President of the United States is not responsible for his own policy regarding Iran, assigning blame instead to a more desirable target.
Her essay, which argues against both economic sanctions and military intervention, includes these passages:
“No single influential figure has made [a U.S.] war with Iran seem like a prospect more than Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu… who inspired more standing ovations during a May 2011 hardline speech to Congress (29 in total) than Obama did during his state of union address in January of that year, and it has been Congress that has been pushing forward the harshest measures against Iran.”
“…discussions of sanctions by the administration remain heavily focused on the punitive element – in response to ongoing pressure from Israel and a seemingly pro-Netanyahu Congress.”
...In the face of intense pressure from Israel and Congress during the influential Aipac conference in March, Obama bragged about imposing “unprecedented, crippling sanctions” on Iran which he said is now “feeling the bite”. [emphasis added]
Ramsey’s argument: Obama’s punitive measures against Iran were enacted not as the result of a rational policy debate within his administration regarding what’s in the best interest of the U.S. but, rather, in response to pressure from the Jewish state and its pro-Netanyahu supporters in Congress.
The commander-in-chief of the strongest nation on earth is putty in the hands of the Jewish state and it’s American “amen corner“.
Ramsey continues with her case that neocons and/or the Israel lobby exercises a dangerous degree of influence over U.S. foreign policy:
“Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a neoconservative-dominated thinktank composed of well-known hawks, has been analogizing sanctions as “silver shrapnel” that that can “injure” Iran for years. Frequently quoted in the media, Dubowitz recently boasted to a Canadian newspaper that the FDD has shared six reports exclusively with the Obama administration and congressional committees advocating harsher sanctions on Iran.”
“[Grecht was] Formerly a director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which is best-known for its influence over the Bush administration’s Iraq policy.” [emphasis added]
Conspiracy theories, whether antisemitic or not, are often motivated by intellectual laziness and the need to find a common thread (or root cause) that explains complicated (often unrelated) political problems.
Just as critics of the Israel lobby fail to note that support for Israel among the American electorate is overwhelming (demonstrating that support for the Jewish state in congress merely reflects mainstream public opinion on the issue), those who see the lobby’s influence in Obama’s tough sanctions against Iran similarly don’t consider that such policies reflect the views of most Americans.
Ramsey’s logic, so typical of those who advance such calumnies, can be boiled down to this:
A) A Non Jewish political leader in the U.S. or Europe supports a foreign policy position.
B) Jews, Zionists and/or the Israeli government previously advocated or lobbied for that same position.
Therefore, (A) must be the result of (B).
However, as the Guardian is continually demonstrating, the absence of facts, evidence or even a coherent argument has never been an obstacle for those committed to the pseudo science of Judeophobic logic.
Per JTA:
“Organizers of a rowing competition for the disabled in Italy apparently didn’t take into consideration the possibility that the Israeli contender, Moran Samuel, would win the competition, and they forgot to bring the CD with the national anthem, “Hatikvah,” to the awards ceremony. Moran took the microphone from the master of ceremonies and belted a dazzling a cappella rendition of the Israeli national anthem.”
To see the entire video of Samuel singing Hatikvah open this link and scroll down to second clip.
(Update: A friend commented that the original song being played really was a version of Hatikvah, one which I’ve never heard with an extremely long introduction.)
Related articles
- Israeli para-Athlete Moran Samuel wins gold, saves the day with her own rendition of ‘Hatikvah’ (blogs.jta.org)
- Champion rower can sing, too (timesofisrael.com)
Like this:
David Wearing’s recent ‘Comment is Free’ essay (Bahrain may not be Syria, but that’s no reason for activists to turn a blind eye, May 8th) addresses what he feels is the tendency of nations to deflect criticism about their human rights records by pointing to far worse abuses in other countries.
“One recurring theme in the efforts to deflect criticism of the [The Bahrain Grand Prix] was the line that there are worse places than Bahrain. Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmad Al Khalifa, the regime’s foreign minister, tweeted: “If any here to cover ugly bloody confrontations, go to Syria…”
It didn’t take long, however, for Wearing to pivot to his desired target, Israel.
“The retort…that worse things are happening elsewhere, also happens to be a favourite of the Israeli state and its defenders.
Activists and journalists who draw attention to Israeli human rights abuses are by now well accustomed to hearing this argument being made, sometimes with the accompanying insinuation that Israel is being “singled out” for more sinister reasons.”
Of course, by “sinister reasons” he’s referring to charges that the obsessive critiques of the Jewish state frequently include tropes which recall antisemitic narratives – often regarding the dangerous power of organized Jewry.
A case in point is this Tweet by Wearing himself in January, which was one of several Tweets justifying why Israel is the subject of such intense media focus.
Oh yes, that “huge propaganda campaign”. A nation vigorously defending itself from criticism is, per Wearing and his political fellow travelers, a uniquely Zionist practice.
As I was curious to learn more about this “huge” hasbara subterfuge, I Tweeted him back.
Wearing’s reply:
So, Wearing is among those ‘Comment is Free’ contributors who genuinely believe that Israel is protected from its fair share of criticism (by a “huge propaganda campaign”), and that he is in the vanguard of a brave few who dare challenge Zionist power. Evidently, Wearing hasn’t checked the Guardian’s own data store which would indicate that, far from escaping its fair share of criticism, Israel receives grossly disproportionate coverage at the paper in comparison to other nations.
Turning back to Wearing’s latest essay, he writes:
“There is no serious doubt about the fact that both Israel and Bahrain have very poor human rights records…”
Suggesting a similarity in the human rights records of Bahrain and Israel is simply an unserious proposition. As Freedom House reports year after year, Israel is the only nation in the Middle East listed as democratic and “Free”.
Here’s Freedom House’s evaluation of human rights and freedom in Bahrain. Note, that six is the worse human rights score a country can receive, and one is the best.
Here’s what Freedom House wrote about Bahrain:
“The al-Khalifa family, which belongs to Bahrain’s Sunni Muslim minority, has ruled the Shiite-majority country for more than two centuries.
Bahrain is not an electoral democracy. The 2002 constitution gives the king power over the executive, legislative, and judicial authorities. He appoints cabinet ministers and members of the 40-seat Consultative Council, the upper house of the National Assembly.
formal political parties are illegal,
Freedom of expression is restricted, and the authorities routinely harass activists who criticize them publicly. The government owns all broadcast media outlets, and the private owners of the three main newspapers have close ties to the government. Self-censorship is encouraged by the vaguely worded 2002 Press Law, which allows the state to imprison journalists for criticizing the king or Islam…[emphasis added]
Citizens must obtain a license to hold demonstrations, which are banned from sunrise to sunset in any public arena. Police regularly use violence to break up political protests, most of which occur in Shiite villages.
Bahrain received a [human rights] downward trend arrow due to an intensified crackdown on members of the Shiite Muslim majority in 2010, including assaults and arrests of dozens of activists and journalists, as well as reports of widespread torture of political prisoners.”
And, here’s Freedom House’s rating of Israel’s human rights record:
Freedom House noted the following:
“Israel is an electoral democracy.
Press freedom is respected in Israel, and the media are vibrant and independent. All Israeli newspapers are privately owned and freely criticize government policy.
Freedoms of assembly and association are respected. Israel hosts an active civil society, and demonstrations are widely permitted.
Workers may join unions of their choice and have the right to strike and bargain collectively
The judiciary is independent and regularly rules against the government.
Women have achieved substantial parity at almost all levels of Israeli society.”
Wearing continues:
“Whether states [other than Israel] do worse things is largely beside the point…”
Actually, this is precisely the point: the stunning intellectual failure of many within the activist left (including much of the NGO community) to distinguish between flaws in liberal, democratic states and institutional and systemic human rights violations which infect societies governed by despots and tyrants.
Human Rights Watch founder Robert Bernstein wrote the following in a 2009 NYT essay:
“At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them — through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform.
That is why we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and undemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights. We wanted to prevent the Soviet Union and its followers from playing a moral equivalence game with the West
When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies.
Nowhere is this more evident than in its work in the Middle East. The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.
Only by returning to its founding mission and the spirit of humility that animated it can Human Rights Watch resurrect itself as a moral force in the Middle East and throughout the world.”
While Bernstein was focusing narrowly on Human Rights Watch his commentary is just as apt in addressing how much of the activist left fails to acknowledge the vital distinction between open and closed societies, has abandoned any claim to principled human rights advocacy and has descended into the abyss of moral equivalence.
The question of whether or not the malign obsession with the Jewish state in the media and “human rights” community is motivated by antisemitism can often be a distraction from the larger issue concerning the moral and intellectual seriousness of leftist critiques of Israel.
A left which can’t distinguish between democracies and tyrannies or, at least, routinely engages in rhetorical obfuscations to blur such profound differences, is no longer entitled to claim the mantle of liberalism or progressivism, even narrowly defined.
As such, David Wearing’s recent commentary is a perfect illustration of a dynamic this blog is continually revealing: the Guardian’s abandonment of anything resembling principled liberal thought.
Ynet recently published a story - “Shin Bet seeks to raze Itamar terrorists home” – which reports on a recommendation presented to Israel’s defense minister to approve the demolition of the homes of Amjad and Hakim Awad, who were responsible for Fogel family massacre in Itamar over a year ago.
Ynet notes:
“According to the recommendation the houses in the village of Awarta should be destroyed as part of the deterrence mechanism against Palestinian families who give refuge to members of the family involved in terrorism.”
While we covered the brutal attack on the Fogel family last year, I had forgotten that the Palestinians’ families had indeed hidden evidence (including the weapon used in the deadly terrorist act) and aided the two murderers in covering up their tracks.
Further, we published two subsequent unsettling posts about Itamar; one about the hideous behavior of the killers’ family who, according to a Ynet report in October, mocked and taunted the surviving Fogel children on the day they came to the village for the olive harvest.
Tamar Fogel
The other troubling report - cross posted by Giulio Meotti – focused on the Israeli court‘s sentencing of Hakim Awad to five life sentences for the murder of five members of the Fogel family.
Meotti wrote:
“Ruth Fogel was in the bathroom when Awad killed her husband Udi and their three-month-old daughter Hadas, slitting their throats as they lay in bed. Awad slaughtered Ruth as she came out of the bathroom. Then he moved into a bedroom where Ruth and Udi’s sons Yoav (11) and Elad (4) were sleeping. He then slit their throats.”
Referring to Awad’s behaviour in court, Meotti added:
“In court, Awad always smiled at the camera…Awad said he has “no regrets” and flashed the “V” sign for victory while he was leaving the courthouse. “I am a person like you, I have no mental condition, I never had a serious illness,” Awad said to the judges. His smile was sincere.”
Hakim Awad in court
Further, a few months ago Palestinian Media Watch reported that the PA’s official television channel, on a program devoted to Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israeli jails, the PA’s official television channel featured a telephone interview with the mother and aunt of one of the murderers of the Fogel family. The mother praised her son and said that he was one of the two who had carried out the “operation at Itamar.” Hakim Awad’s aunt called him a “hero and legend.” The program was broadcast twice (PMW, January 29, 2012).
However, in addition to the lack of remorse by the killer, the cruelty of his family towards young Tamar and the cover up by Awad’s relatives, the Ynet story cited above also included this, which suggests that killer’s families aren’t the only Palestinians who to have engaged in such reprehensible moral behavior after the massacre.
Ynet:
“At first, Awarta village chiefs denied any connection between their village and the Itamar massacre but at the same time, after their arrest, the two murderers became idols in their village, according to defense establishment sources, with support banners and their pictures hung up throughout Awarta.” [emphasis added]
In reading the Guardian’s coverage of the region, I’m often struck by the manner in which reports on Israel often lack any resemblance to the nation in which I live. Indeed, Harriet Sherwood’s reports should be seen as part of a broader mission to find evidence in support of her preconceived ideologically driven view of the region.
Political phenomena which fall outside the desired narrative are either downplayed or ignored. Similarly, Palestinians appear in the Guardian’s tales of the region largely as abstractions: poor, downtrodden, dispossessed, victims void of nuance or (often) any sense of moral agency.
All of this explains this fictitious headline accompanying a Sherwood report published shortly after the massacre:
Sherwood’s story didn’t even attempt to support (in the subsequent text) the assertion that Palestinians (living in Awarta and elsewhere) were morally outraged by the terrorist act – likely because little if any genuine outrage was actually expressed.
In fact, a poll conducted last May (2011) in the West Bank, Gaza and E. Jerusalem demonstrated that nearly one-third of Palestinians explicitly support the murder of the Fogels.
Clearly, even the most undeniable evidence that the killer’s family and their broader community continue to the laud the behavior of Amjad and Hakim Awad will never find its way to the pages of the Guardian.
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
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: Abdel Bari-Atwan, anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Baroness Jenny Tonge, BDS, Comment is Free, Delegitimization, Guardian, Nazi Analogies, Richard Millett, Terrorism | by Adam Levick | 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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