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Dear Linda,
I was deeply moved by your article so kindly printed in The Guardian’s sister newspaper, HaAretz in Israel. I subscribe to HaAretz with great reluctance because I feel that the newspaper has become more and more manipulative in the last few years perhaps taking its lead from its sister, The Guardian.
I no longer trust HaAretz’s news items. I no longer trust its polls. I suspect them all of being politically contrived to make me dissatisfied with the present Israeli government. This is a complete waste of time as it is preaching to the converted. What really annoys me is the unrepentant misrepresentation and omission that I find so common in your newspaper, The Guardian, being duplicated in HaAretz. I call The Guardian a newspaper out of habit but, in truth, it is no longer a newspaper. It is just the propaganda organ of a dedicated group of extreme “progressives” riding on the back of a once proud newspaper which proposed an alternative left agenda.
How they ever got control is beyond me.
Unfortunately, in Israel, the choice of newspapers is very limited Linda. If there were a good center left newspaper I would with great joy cancel my subscription to HaAretz.
As to your article:
‘Israel has failed to convince the public in Europe that those on board included terrorists smuggling arms to Hamas, and that they attacked the Israeli commandos first.’
This is plainly untrue Linda. Israel has never claimed that the flotilla was carrying arms for delivery to Hamas. It has said that if the flotilla succeeds in its stated aims of breaking the blockade, the ships that follow will have Iranian, Syrian and North Korean armaments which will be used to strike at Israel’s population.
HateAnythingJewish
29 Jan 2010, 8:37AM
Israel is a shitbag. Zionists kill Palestinian babies. Israelis harvest (human) organs. Zionists are like Nazis. Zionists target civilians. Israel is an Apartheid state. Gaza is one huge concentration camp. George Galloway is my hero. People are starving in Gaza. Palestinian terrorism is ‘goodliness’ because Israel occupies territory belonging to the Palestinians. Obama is a Jewish pawn. Hillary Clinton is a Jewish pawn. Israel is not a real democracy. Zealot Jews control Israel. Neocons are dumb Jews. Palestinians and all Arabs are not responsible for their actions because they were subservient to colonialists. Islamic Terrorism is the result of the actions of colonialists. The EU and the USA must sign up to cleaning up the atmosphere but China can continue as she wishes because she is basically a counterweight to US domination of the world. Ahmedinejad is bad in his attitude to homosexuals and women but otherwise he is all goodness and anti USA. Saudi Arabia is evil and bad. The Taliban are really good people but we don’t really appreciate their attitude to women, homosexuals, dissention, governance and education. The US is the greatest evil in the world today. Russia will one day return to true and righteous Stalinism. Socialism is the only good form of governance. Market driven economies are bad, bad, and bad again. Banks are evil. Islamist terrorism in the UK is understandable because the UK is killing Muslims in Iraq. Muslims are killing Muslims in Darfur and Iraq but this is ok because …. because …. Well. Because.
A letter from Wyrian Bittiker to the author of the above comment
Dear HateAnythingJewish,
Thank for your above comment. We at The Nuardiag are very, very impressed.
My name is Wyrian Bittiker and I am responsible for the rank absence of any intellectual content on our blog site.
I would formally like to invite you to write a post about Israel. As you obviously are aware, we, at The Nuardiag are on a crusade to destroy the one Western Liberal Democracy in the Middle East. Anything will be utilized from a dog fouling a pavement in Tel Aviv to an overheard comment by a Zionist Entity functionary who was muttering expletives to an Arab Israeli waiter who had spilt boiling hot soup into his lap while trying to stab him with a knife.
Posts along these and similar lines are very welcome.
The post should be between 150 to 600 words long and, if we accept it, you will be paid 75 British Pounds which will be delivered to you by post in crumpled 5 pound notes.
Please don’t feel any embarrassment at your singular lack of literary talent. This could not be of less interest to us and you will find yourself to be very much at home in our resident assortment of Jewish and Israeli social rejects who concoct posts for us. What we are basically interested in is your personal deviant interpretation of day to day occurrences within the Zionist Entity in Palestine and the wider Jewish world.
Given the absence of any intellectual depth of many of our readers and commenters, we would remind you that only polarised views (which show that Israel is guilty of whatever you are charging her of), are acceptable. Any mention of conflicting interpretations of the incident that you are presenting is strongly discouraged, since they will almost certainly confuse our loyal and regular readers. We do not want to cause them to actually peruse independently the situation and so, drive them away.
HITS MEAN MORE ADVERTISING REVENUE!
We look forward to a long and mutually debilitating relationship as you help us maintain an ongoing demonization of the Zionist Entity and what is really going on in Gaza and elsewhere in the region.
Your truly
Wyrian Bittiker
Being a confirmed leftist, I feel sure that the issues addressed by Colin Shindler in his recent article How the Left turned on Israel will be examined from many perspectives. Not sure that I agree or disagree with all of what the writer has written but I feel that it is in many ways, not relevant to many left leaning persons.
Most ‘lefties’, most but not all, see the US as the reason for most of the turbulence in the world today. Not all but most. They cannot contemplate any US actions without relating to oil. It is an imprinted path in their mind and they find great difficulty even considering any other path to explain the reasons for the US actions. Similar to their attitude to any foreign actions by the UK with the EU. You find the commenters of CI(F) always returning to the mantra of ‘the US seeking to control oil supplies.’ They cannot quite accept that the US acted in Bosnia and Kosovo without any relationship to oil. Such is their narrow minded view of the world.
We are pleased to announce that Georgina Henry, the Guardian’s executive comment editor and head honcho of CiF, announced today that she has decided to update its talk policy and come clean.
Here’s what Henry had to say [really really important: Georgina, Brian, Exiled and others - before you get your knickers in a twist, please see the note at the bottom of the post]:
OK, so here they are: the updated “community standards and participation guidelines”, aka the talk policy (see below). They were written not by us on Cif but in consultation with our moderators and all those involved in community participation across the site including our good friends Berchmans and LaRit, taking into account the perspectives of community members who share the Guardian World View (aka the GWV) which provides in particular for the denunciation of the State of Israel as the Jewish state.
They comprise 10 guidelines many of which were written to directly answer questions posted on Cif threads.
I hope you’ll agree that the talk policy is clearer and more direct. It boils down to what we’ve always tried to say: help make Cif a welcoming, intelligent place for discussion as long as you subscribe to the GWV; take some responsibility for the quality of this community; don’t be abusive; don’t be offensive; don’t be unpleasant and keep on topic except when it comes to a contributor of a piece that is supportive of the Jewish state or except when it comes to “pro-Israel posters” (many of whom are paid agents or propagandists of the Israeli government).
One new bit is to clarify our approach to comments about us, ie the Guardian and its writers/bloggers – basically, criticism is fine within the confines of the GWV, persistent misrepresentation and smear tactics are not except when it comes to pro-Israel writer/bloggers, pro-Israel posters and our evil-twin CiF Watch.
While there are some on Cif who philosophically object to moderation at all, my sense is that they are in a minority. Most users of the site accept the need for boundaries in the way the conversation is conducted except when it comes to Jewish and Israel-related subjects.
The moderators strive to be as even-handed and consistent as possible when it comes to those that follow the GWV.
Moderators are also human and not infallible. Rather than just crying foul, if it’s clear a mistake has been made, or a comment has come down unnecessarily (and you’ve looked at the talk policy and honestly cannot for the life of you work out why), flag it up to them and they’ll take a look except that if you are pro-Israel poster we’ll just give you the run around. There is now a dedicated email address for you to contact the cif moderators: cif.moderation@guardian.co.uk – hint if you don’t subscribe to the GWV don’t bother us.
Another complaint is lack of transparency. I think we do need to be clearer about both the process by which posters who break the talk policy move from deletion to pre-moderation to banning, or about how to complain/appeal if it happens to you and you disagree with the decision.
Posters who keep flouting the talk policy by refusing to subscribe to the GWV will be moved into premoderation. They should take that as a warning that a banning is on the horizon and is a real possibility if they don’t make more effort to respect and adhere to the GWV. They are given several chances to stop being troublesome before they’re banned except that if you’re a pro-Israel poster we reserve the right to arbitrarily ban you for whatever reason we see fit.
Another issue is the unfairness of permanent bannings for long-time posters. We’ve put a bit into the FAQs about that, here’s what it says.
Q: If I’ve been banned, can I come back if I say I’m sorry?
A: A user can be reinstated if the moderation team are confident that he or she understands the cause of their suspension (i.e. failure to subscribe to the GWV), agrees to abide by the site’s community standards in accordance with the GWV and will be able to contribute reasonably and sociably to the conversation in future by praising anti-Israel writers and denouncing “pro-Israel” posters as paid agents or propagandists of the Israeli state.
Finally, a clarification about what our name actually means. As you know, we named this site Comment is free in deference to the Guardian’s legendary editor, CP Scott, whose bearded face stares out at you from our front page badge. It has been claimed by the Zionist apologists that CP Scott was a Zionist. This is simply not true and it is quite Orwellian to suggest otherwise.
As long as we stay within the confines of the GWV, his famous 1921 essay on journalism is still a guiding text for our newspaper. But when he used the phrase “comment is free but facts are sacred”, he was trying to define what he thought the role of comment, or opinion pieces, in newspapers should be.
What he wasn’t doing was making an anti-censorship point about free speech, or an ironic point about free, ie not paid for, content and as long as you subscribe to the GWV all comment is free.
Reading your comments to us on moderation, it’s clear how many of you are here because you enjoy and value the GWV community you’ve created around the content we’re publishing. Leaving aside the question of whether you value the content as much as we do, in the end, this is a shared enterprise: it’s not us against you, or you against us except when it comes to the Jewish people and Israel: it’s us AND you in pursuit of the day that all Jews have assimilated into non-existence and the Jewish state no longer exists.
Community standards and participation guidelines
There are 10 simple guidelines which we expect all participants in the community areas of guardian.co.uk to abide by, all of which directly inform our approach to community moderation. These apply across the site, while moderation decisions are also informed by the context in which comments are made.
1. We welcome debate and dissent provided our authors and posters accept that Israel is the Great Satan and the Jewish state should be denounced at every opportunity; that anyone alleging antisemitism is only trying to suppress this fact; Seamus Milne, Seth Freedman, Berchmans, Ken Livingstone, Hugo Chavez, Imanutjob, Tony Benn and most importantly the Guardian are infallibile; and Obama is a lackey of the Israel lobby so the US cannot be trusted (collectively known as the “Guardian World View” or “GWV” for short). The key to maintaining guardian.co.uk as an inviting space is to focus on intelligent discussion of the GWV.
2. We acknowledge criticism of the articles we publish, but will not allow any criticism of the Guardian and our ‘journalists’ to be published on our website. For the sake of robust debate, we will distinguish between those supportive of the GWV and those that oppose it.
3. We understand that people often feel strongly about issues debated on the site, but in the case of expressing support of Israel (also known as “hasbara”) and crying antisemitism, should you be so rash as to express this, we will consider removing your posts and your posting rights. Please respect the views and beliefs of those who accept the GWV and take the time and trouble to spread it.
4. We reserve the right to redirect or curtail conversations which descend into flame-wars based on opposition to the GWV. We encourage you to praise the GWV as much as possible and we ask you to report to us any comments that seek to refute the GWV.
5. We will not tolerate criticism of the GWV or other forms of comment, or contributions that could be interpreted as such. We recognise the difference between criticising a particular government, organisation, community or belief and attacking the GWV.
6. We will not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia or other forms of hate-speech, or contributions that could be interpreted as such unless directed in a sufficiently concealed fashion and accords with the GWV. We recognise the difference between criticising a particular government, organisation, community or belief and attacking people on the basis of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation and yet we will apply our own standards whenever we so wish.
6. We will remove any content that may put us in legal jeopardy. Postings defamatory of Jews, Israel or neocons are an exception to this rule since we know that Jews, Israelis and neocons will never threaten to blow up our office.
7. We will remove any posts that are obviously commercial or otherwise spam-like. The exception is posts supporting antisemitic plays – such as Seven Jewish Children – or organisations such as B’Tselem, HRW or the PSC (particularly the Islington branch). Also posts supporting Seth Freedman’s book as he needs to sell the other copy.
8. Keep it relevant. We know that some conversations can be wide-ranging, but if you post something which points out the complete fallacy of a post denigrating Israel or the US it will be deemed “off-topic” and may be removed, in order to keep the thread on track. You will also lose your posting rights or become premoderated (the same thing). We rely on Jewish posters to watch for purported instances of antisemitism as we know they will do it, thus saving us money – which we need to do having taken a bath by betting the wrong way on the dollar/sterling exchange rate.
9. Be aware that you may be misunderstood, so try to be clear about what you are saying, and expect that people may understand your contribution differently than you intended. Remember that text isn’t always a great medium for conversation: tone of voice (sarcasm, humour and so on) doesn’t always come across when using words on a screen. You can help to keep the guardian.co.uk community areas open to all viewpoints by maintaining a constant and running agreement wih the GWV.
10. The platform is ours, but the conversation belongs to everybody who identifies with the GWV. We want this to be a welcoming space for any discussion aligned with the GWV, and we expect participants to help us achieve this by notifying us of potential problems and helping each other to keep conversations on track and appropriately fawning. If you spot something problematic in community interaction areas, please report it. If it is about Israel then we will take it as support for the problematic comment.
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Note the entire post above is a PARODY. See also our Fair Use Notice.
One of the most prevalent problems with ‘Comment is Free’ is that CiF moderators often delete posts simply because they disagree with the pro-Israeli views expressed there. For the poster it causes much frustration at having taken the time to write a comment only to have it deleted and it leaves anti-Israel and, worse still, antisemitic positions on the thread unchallenged.
The following is a list of instructions that you might want to follow before you press the <Post Comment> button on CiF.
1. Open up Notepad, MS Word or any other word processor document ready to copy/paste your post to.
2. Copy/paste the post directly from the text box provided by CiF BEFORE you press the <Post Comment> button.
3. If the comment appears on the thread, copy/paste it from the thread itself instead of the ‘raw text’ in the previous step (make sure to include the time of the post and name of poster). [Note that if you are pre-moderated (you do not receive advance warning about this) it is important to follow step #2 before posting a comment - if you do not there is no way of retrieving your post once you click <Post Comment>].
4. Save the document with a name that you will easily recognize in the future to locate the document. This repository document can easily be used to store a large number of your comments.
5. Post the deleted comment on a relevant comment thread at CiF Watch or simply email us a copy of the deleted comment at contactus@cifwatch.com for consideration.
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
Georgina and Matt; a reality check
December 6, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: Antisemitism, Comment is Free, Guardian | by WellofSense | 28 comments
An interesting article on CiF; We can afford to be choosy by Douglas Murray.
Interesting in that it has implicit criticism for CiF itself.
It describes so accurately the Guardian cabal’s fanatical mindset.
CiF has quite a few ‘bees in its bonnet’ but they all crystalise around anything negative about the United States of America while paying very little attention to the negative aspects of virulently anti-US entities like Iran, Syria and North Korea.
Strangely, almost no interest is shown in China, India and Brazil (Ben Whites’s former home). These countries have been ‘fingered’ by inexperienced wannabes to be possible replacements to the superpower United States of America in the not too distant future without any particular speculation on the part of The Guardian about what awaits the Liberal Western Democracies when the US ‘implodes’.
Back to the article; it discusses the part that fanatics play in orientating the perception of the public to this or that occurrence. It also mentions the selective memory processes that will remember this atrocity by that terrorist but forget a different atrocity by another terrorist. There is a lot to be agreed with there. I have no accurate memory of the tens of atrocities committed in Pakistan and Afghanistan over the past five years. Yet I remember clearly the terrorist atrocity in Mumbai because Jews were singled out. I remember the terrorist atrocity in Argentina because a Jewish community was attacked by Iranian terrorists. So does that mean that I can’t really complain when a British racist rants?
Well. Yes I can. The terrorist action at the King David hotel in Jerusalem in the 1940s was the act of a terrorist group unsupported by Ben Gurion who even then, was the accepted leader of the Jewish community (Yishuv) in pre Israel mandated territory. And the action was against British soldiers, not against British civilians. Not that I in any way condone it. The fact is that it simply was not helpful to what followed.
And there we have it. In the Middle East, terrorism is complicating the situation and may bring about a ‘solution’ that will not be beneficial to the Palestinians. Yet the Guardian offers its ‘journalistic stage’ to groups that reject any compromise whatsoever (Hamas and Hezbollah). Even more, it vilifies those groups that may in the future choose compromise over a continued confrontation with a tiger.
To CiF/The Guardian, I say: Israel is not going away. It has survived more than 60 years of terrorist action by Arab states and Arab/Muslim organizations. Its economy is a ‘beacon of light’ for other countries however small. Its democracy, while far from perfect, is ‘up there’ with the leaders of those who profess with pride to be a ‘Western Liberal Democracy’. Its universities speak for themselves, as do its medical system and services. Its legal system is respected by so many including our neighbors.
To CiF/The Guardian, I say: in 40 years time, there will be very few surviving persons who can ‘claim’ to have been ‘expelled by the evil Zionists’. Their number is depleted year by year as I write, by natural means. Compromise is the only way forward. (Hint to the Guardian – that means both sides, not just Israel).
Now, in the past weeks, we have seen some minimal attempt at change on CiF (24 hr I/P threads being an example). I assume that this is due to a greater sensitivity to the widely accepted perception that CiF and by inference, The Guardian, gives a platform to Holocaust deniers and antisemites while claiming not to be antisemitic, only anti-Zionist.
While change is to be welcomed, this does not even begin to scratch the surface. By keeping the coterie of failed wannabe writers to ‘bash Israel’ is just playing to the hate Israel crowd who presumably need a constant stream of anti-Israel invective to survive until the next ‘fix’. And Berchmans and his ilk who have had so many of their comments deleted are still posting, while quality commentators like AKUS are ‘no more’.
Get a grip of yourselves. Your editorial and moderation policy is muddying the waters.
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