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This was written by our friend Chas Newkey-Burden, and originally posted at his blog, OyVaGoy
It is Holocaust Memorial Day [today]. You can read more about this year’s theme here.
On days such as this I am reminded of the words of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel who wrote the following:
‘What cannot help but astound us is that the Hasidim remained the Hasidim inside the ghetto walls, inside the death camps. In the shadow of the executioner, they celebrated life. Startled Germans whispered to each other of Jews dancing in the cattle cars rolling towards Birkenau; Hasidim ushering in Simchat Torah. And there were those who in Block 57 at Auschwitz tried to make me join in their fervent singing. Were these miracles?’
What a passage: it is haunting and inspiring, harrowing and uplifting all at once. Similar emotions are provoked by a recording made at Bergen-Belsen shortly after it was liberated in April 1945. It includes weary Jewish survivors singing Hativkah (The Hope), the song that became the national anthem of the state of Israel. You can find a link to the recording on the right-hand side of this page. (Or, see YouTube clip below)
‘Never despair! Never! It is forbidden to give up hope,’ wrote Rabbi Nachman, a century before any of these events took place. These are wise words, yet not always easy to live up to.
Yet consider the Hasidim who celebrated life in the death camps, and the survivors who sang of hope at Bergen-Belsen. Stories such as these remind me how even in the darkest moments it is possible, and essential, to maintain hope.
On Jan. 9, the Palestinian Times reported that Fatah arrested 8 Hamas members, including a journalist, in the West Bank over several days. The report also alleged that Fatah arbitrarily extended the detention of other Hamas members, and of firing a teacher who is a member of the group.
Fatah arresting Hamas members in the West Bank
On Jan. 19th, Israel arrested one Hamas member Aziz Dweik , on suspicion of involvement with terrorist activity.
On Jan. 20th, Harriet Sherwood rushed to advocate on behalf of the Hamas terrorist arrested by Israel, posting a piece titled “Israeli jails Palestinian parliament speaker without trial“. However, further in the article, even Sherwood acknowledges that Dweik is a Parliament speaker in name only, as the Palestinian Legislative Council has not sat since the summer of 2007, when Hamas – which had won elections the previous year – took control of Gaza in a bloody battle with Fatah.
The Guardian also posted a video on Jan. 20 championing the cause of the Hamas speaker of the non-existent Parliament.
Yet, strangely absent from the Guardian’s Israel, Palestinian Territories, or Gaza pages are any mention whatsoever of Fatah’s arrest of eight Hamas members. Nor mentioned, in service of providing background to Sherwood’s story, was the fact that in 2008 PA security forces aligned with Abbas arrested hundreds of Hamas members and supporters and, further, in 2009, nearly all Hamas-controlled municipal officials were replaced by Fatah officials.
Context similarly missing from Sherwood’s report is the fact that Hamas arrested thousands of Fatah loyalists in Gaza in 2010 alone, including PA legislators. And, a report in the Palestinian Press as recently as Dec. 30, 2o11 noted that such arrests of Fatah members continued through 2011.
Sherwood characterized the arrest of Dweik as an effort by Israel “to undermine democratic institutions in Palestine”, and hinder reconciliation between the two groups.
Yet, the Palestinians, by any measure, have failed miserably on their own at establishing anything resembling genuinely democratic institutions, as President Mahmoud Abbas is currently serving the seventh year of a four year term, and, per Freedom House, the PA is listed as “not free“.
“In the Palestinian Authority administered territories, political rights rating declined from 5 to 6 [7 is the worst score] due to the expiration of President Mahmoud Abbas four-year term in January 2009, the ongoing lack of a functioning elected legislature, and an edict allowing the removal of elected municipal governments in the West Bank.”
So, while the arrest of one Hamas member by Israel elicits a storm of criticism by the Guardian, scores of arrests by Fatah of Hamas officials, and Hamas members by Fatah officials, is evidently considered insignificant to contextualizing the lack of a functioning democracy in the Palestinian controlled territories.
More broadly, both this latest report, and Sherwood’s continuing reports from the region, seem to possess a unique capacity to blame Israel in some manner for every conceivable Palestinian failure, while similarly denying Palestinians basic moral agency (the definition of liberal racism) – a journalistic dynamic which prevents honest reporting on the I-P Conflict.
Related articles
- Question to Harriet Sherwood: How are Gazans living in sovereign Palestinian state still “refugees”? (cifwatch.com)
- The ‘Humanitarian Racism’ of Harriet Sherwood and the Guardian Left (cifwatch.com)
- Hamas, Harriet Sherwood and the Guardian Left’s continuing antisemitic sins of omission (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood Gets 2012 Off to a Shoddy Start (cifwatch.com)
This is cross posted by Benjamin Weinthal, and originally published at the Jerusalem Post
There has been a wave of violence targeting Iranian and Syrian Christians over the past month, say Christian news reports.
In addition, Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who has been on death row since 2010 for seeking to register his home-based church, refused to renounce his Christian beliefs in exchange for his release from prison.
He was also jailed for questioning the role of Islam as the dominant form of religious instruction in his children’s school.
According to a report on the website of the International Christian news agencyBosNewsLife, “Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani has rejected an offer to be released from prison if he publicly acknowledges Islam’s prophet Mohammed as ‘a messenger sent by God,’ well-informed Christians and rights activists said” earlier this month.
While Iran’s opaque judicial system coupled with the lack of access for most Western media makes it difficult to verify the new coercion against Nadarkhani, the reports are considered reasonable in light of the Iranian regime’s intense crackdown on its Christian population over the years.
In an e-mail to The Jerusalem Post on Sunday, Giulio Meotti, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio and author of the book A New Shoah, wrote “After the ethnic cleansing of Jews in 1948 from the Arab countries, Islamic fundamentalism is now trying to push away the Christians from the region. They want to establish a pure Islamic environment and the mass exodus already began under our noses.”
Meanwhile, the Pakistan Christian Post wrote last week on its website, “The Christian community in Syria has been hit by a series of kidnappings and brutal murders; 100 Christians have now been killed since the anti-government unrest began. A reliable source in the country, who cannot be identified for their own safety, told Barnabas Aid that children were being especially targeted by the kidnappers, who, if they do not receive the ransom demanded, kill the victim.”
The Pakistan Christian Post website noted “Two Christians were killed on January 15 as they waited for bread at a bakery. Another Christian, aged 40 with two young children, was shot dead by three armed attackers while he was driving a vehicle.”
The Post could not independently verify these allegations.
Meotti, the Italian Journalist who has written extensively on Christians in the Mideast region, told the Post “In Syria Christians will be persecuted after Assad’s eventual fall, since they were the most loyal allies of the Baathist regime. Christians will be slaughtered or squeezed. From Cairo to Damascus, Arab Christian era is near to its end everywhere.”
Many critics of Assad’s regime, however, view Assad as exploiting sectarian conflicts in Syria to solidify his repressive security apparatus, which has resulted in the killings of over 5,000 pro-democracy supporters in Syria.
“Of course Assad is using the power of fear to manipulate the Christians. He is directing these bishops and patriarchs to say what suits him,” Pascal Gollnisch, a Catholic priest and director of l’Oeuvre d’Orient, told the French news organization F24 in December.
The Paris-based organization seeks to shield Christians from persecution mainly in the Middle East region and is part of the Archdiocese of Paris.
Christians make up 10 percent of Syria’s 22 million population.
Clifford D. May, the president of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former New York Times reporter, has long argued the persecution of Christians in numerous Muslim-majority countries is the most pressing news story ignored by the mainstream media.
He told the Post “If the situation were reversed, if such a war were being waged against Muslims, it would be the top story in every newspaper, the most urgent item at the UN, the highest priority of all the big-league human-rights groups.”
The US-based media watchdog organization the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) held on Saturday a conference titled “The Persecuted Church: Christian Believers in Peril in the Middle East.”
Dr. Richard Landes, an associate professor of history and director and cofounder of the Center of Millennial Studies at Boston University, who spoke at the CAMERA event, wrote the Post on Sunday: “there’s a bizarre, eery, indeed terrible (a-)symmetry between the nearly hysterical concern of the media and the ‘progressive’ NGOs etc. about Israeli violations of the Palestinian ‘human rights’ and the nearly total silence about the horrendous things happening to Christians in Muslim majority countries, not necessarily at the hands of their neighbors but of Salafists, Jihadis, etc.”
Landes added that “it all illustrates Charles Jacobs’ notion of human rights complex – the thing that gets western ‘human rights’ folk indignant has nothing to do with the victims of their sufferings, but the [perpetrators]. If white, hysteria; if of color, embarrassed silence.
“There’s a racism inherent in this – we don’t expect anything from people of color, we hold whites to a much higher standard – and the result is that truly horrendous stuff gets ignored.”
There has been a wave of violence targeting Iranian and Syrian Christians over the past month, say Christian news reports.
In addition, Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who has been on death row since 2010 for seeking to register his home-based church, refused to renounce his Christian beliefs in exchange for his release from prison. He was also jailed for questioning the role of Islam as the dominant form of religious instruction in his children’s school.
According to a report on the website of the International Christian news agencyBosNewsLife, “Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani has rejected an offer to be released from prison if he publicly acknowledges Islam’s prophet Mohammed as ‘a messenger sent by God,’ well-informed Christians and rights activists said” earlier this month.
While Iran’s opaque judicial system coupled with the lack of access for most Western media makes it difficult to verify the new coercion against Nadarkhani, the reports are considered reasonable in light of the Iranian regime’s intense crackdown on its Christian population over the years.
In an e-mail to The Jerusalem Post on Sunday, Giulio Meotti, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio and author of the book A New Shoah, wrote “After the ethnic cleansing of Jews in 1948 from the Arab countries, Islamic fundamentalism is now trying to push away the Christians from the region. They want to establish a pure Islamic environment and the mass exodus already began under our noses.”
Meanwhile, the Pakistan Christian Post wrote last week on its website, “The Christian community in Syria has been hit by a series of kidnappings and brutal murders; 100 Christians have now been killed since the anti-government unrest began. A reliable source in the country, who cannot be identified for their own safety, told Barnabas Aid that children were being especially targeted by the kidnappers, who, if they do not receive the ransom demanded, kill the victim.”
The Pakistan Christian Post website noted “Two Christians were killed on January 15 as they waited for bread at a bakery. Another Christian, aged 40 with two young children, was shot dead by three armed attackers while he was driving a vehicle.”
The Post could not independently verify these allegations.
Meotti, the Italian Journalist who has written extensively on Christians in the Mideast region, told the Post “In Syria Christians will be persecuted after Assad’s eventual fall, since they were the most loyal allies of the Baathist regime. Christians will be slaughtered or squeezed. From Cairo to Damascus, Arab Christian era is near to its end everywhere.”
Many critics of Assad’s regime, however, view Assad as exploiting sectarian conflicts in Syria to solidify his repressive security apparatus, which has resulted in the killings of over 5,000 pro-democracy supporters in Syria.
“Of course Assad is using the power of fear to manipulate the Christians. He is directing these bishops and patriarchs to say what suits him,” Pascal Gollnisch, a Catholic priest and director of l’Oeuvre d’Orient, told the French news organization F24 in December.
The Paris-based organization seeks to shield Christians from persecution mainly in the Middle East region and is part of the Archdiocese of Paris.
Christians make up 10 percent of Syria’s 22 million population.
Clifford D. May, the president of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former New York Times reporter, has long argued the persecution of Christians in numerous Muslim-majority countries is the most pressing news story ignored by the mainstream media.
He told the Post “If the situation were reversed, if such a war were being waged against Muslims, it would be the top story in every newspaper, the most urgent item at the UN, the highest priority of all the big-league human-rights groups.”
The US-based media watchdog organization the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) held on Saturday a conference titled “The Persecuted Church: Christian Believers in Peril in the Middle East.”
Dr. Richard Landes, an associate professor of history and director and cofounder of the Center of Millennial Studies at Boston University, who spoke at the CAMERA event, wrote the Post on Sunday: “there’s a bizarre, eery, indeed terrible (a-)symmetry between the nearly hysterical concern of the media and the ‘progressive’ NGOs etc. about Israeli violations of the Palestinian ‘human rights’ and the nearly total silence about the horrendous things happening to Christians in Muslim majority countries, not necessarily at the hands of their neighbors but of Salafists, Jihadis, etc.”
Landes added that “it all illustrates Charles Jacobs’ notion of human rights complex – the thing that gets western ‘human rights’ folk indignant has nothing to do with the victims of their sufferings, but the [perpetrators]. If white, hysteria; if of color, embarrassed silence.
“There’s a racism inherent in this – we don’t expect anything from people of color, we hold whites to a much higher standard – and the result is that truly horrendous stuff gets ignored.”
A guest post by Richard Millett
I have an admission to make. You see the place where I live, and in fact the place where I am writing this piece, I have no rights to. That’s right I’m a trespasser, a squatter, a thief, or whatever you think is an appropriate word for a rogue such as me.
You see it all happened about 20 years ago. I had nowhere that I really wanted to live until I spied a nice little place in a London suburb one night. The light was on and pensioners Roberta and George Smith had just settled down to watch Coronation Street with a hot cup of cocoa in their hands.
As soon as they became engrossed in Corrie I barged in and told them to leave. I gave them 10 minutes to pack up their belongings and get the hell out.
I have been living here ever since and very nice it is too. The local council has passed a motion that the Smiths have a “right of return”, but I refuse to budge. You see it isn’t my fault, I tell the council. The problem is I’m Jewish and that is what us Jews do. If there is something we want, we just take it.
I mean we did it in 1948 too, I tell them. There was this already fully functioning state called Palestine full of millions and millions of people who had lived there since the dinosaurs, and the Jews (who hadn’t lived there since the dinosaurs) suddenly appeared from absolutely nowhere and took over their houses, farms and businesses and told them to get the hell out.
But it wasn’t those Jews’ fault either, I said. Just like a Tourette’s sufferer can’t help himself when swearing so us Jews just can’t stop ourselves from thieving.
Thanks to Nicholas Lezard, literary critic for The Guardian, I have recently discovered an explanation for all this; thieving might actually be in our DNA.
Lezard has uncovered a dirty little secret that has been kept hidden from us Jews and which explains a lot; one of our great forefathers, Moses, was a bit of a tea-leaf himself.
In his Guardian review (Jan. 3) of Intolerable Tongues, which describes Dr Donald McCollum’s journey through British Mandate Palestine towards the end of the 1930s, a novel by Ellis Sharp (and which is classed as “history” by The Guardian), Lezard concludes:
“And beneath all this rumbles history – not only that which is yet to come for the area, but all that has gone before. ‘I have always found it a bit rum that Moses parcelled out land that already belonged to others,’ muses McCollum at one point, which might seem like a piece of thumpingly unsubtle irony; but then sometimes that’s how history works, and it’s important to be reminded of it from time to time.” (added emphasis by me)
So now, thanks to Lezard, the truth is out; Moses, like me and probably you if you are Jewish, also stole land that wasn’t his.
You see when Moses led the Jews out of slavery in Egypt he led them to this already fully functioning state called Canaan full of millions and millions of people who had lived there since the dinosaurs and the Jews suddenly appeared from absolutely nowhere and took over their houses, farms and businesses and told them to get the hell out…..
A guest post by Sam Westrop (A version of this essay originally appeared in the Jerusalem Post)
In 2000, Norman Finkelstein published his book, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitations of Jewish Suffering, which posited that the accepted account of the Holocaust is merely a Zionist narrative, which is cynically used to justify putative Israeli ‘cruelties’. Finkelstein frequently invokes his family’s suffering during the Holocaust as a premise to sanitise his obsessive demonisation of Israel, and frequent use of antisemitic tropes.
Finkelstein’s method is not lost on a new breed of anti-Israel activists, who often employ the memory of the Holocaust to sanitise their abhorrent views on living Jews.
Enter Gary Spedding.
Garry Spedding
Spedding is chair of the Queen’s University Belfast Palestine Solidarity Society, the group which orchestrated the attack upon Solon Solomon, a former legal adviser to the Knesset Foreign Affairs committee, who was invited to speak to law school students at Queen’s University. Solomon was heckled by members of the university’s Palestine Solidarity Society (PSS) and the youth wing of Sinn Féin (the political wing of the Irish terrorist organisation the IRA) during a lecture, and the protesters then attacked the car in which Solomon escaped, attempting to smash its windows.
After being contacted about the attack, Spedding stated he does ‘not condone violence’, yet is evidently proud of his relationship with Holy Land Trust Director, Sami Awad - characterizing him as his ”Best Friend, Mentor, colleague and leader” - who certainly does not condemn terrorist violence. Wrote Awad:
“[non-violent resistance] is not a substitute for the armed struggle. This is not a method for normalization with the occupation. Our goal is to revive the popular resistance until every person is involved in dismantling the occupation.”
Spedding’s mentor Awad has also hosted the extremist Greek Orthodox priest Atallah Hanna – who can be seen here condemning the “Satanic” and diabolical Zionism, and promising that Palestine will be free “from the river to the sea”- at the Holy Land Trust.
Sami Awad and Atallah Hanna
In fact, both Sami Awad and Atallah Hanna have defended the quite reactionary Raed Salah, and Hanna has expressed support for suicide bombings.
Further, about Awad, Spedding has written:
“Sami you have taught me so much and I hope that I have represented you in a good way in my writings, you are a light to me in this time much as Jesus Christ is a light for all of us! … My deepest love goes out to you, my thanks and appreciation nothing can really substantiate in words what you mean to the people here or what you mean to me!”
Spedding also has echoed Deborah Orr’s claims that Jewish supremacism guided Israel’s deal with Hamas to exchange over 1000 Palestinian terrorists to secure the release of Gilad Shalit. :
“There is a point that needs addressing in the use of language by media outlets because of the specifics in the deal surrounding Shalit’s release especially in the mainstream media in the USA and Israel reporting along the lines of ’1000 or more terrorists to be exchanged in prisoner swap for Gilad Shalit’ this viewpoint is highly inaccurate it degrades the Palestinian prisoners being swapped for Gilad Shalit whilst reinforcing the current view among many right wing Zionists and their supporters that 1 jewish life is of more value than say 1000 Arab lives which is incredibly racist in and of itself.”
Spedding also wrote this about the brutal murder of the Fogel family:
“The J’post article sickening invokes the cloudy and unclear death of the Fogel family an attack which I have the report and pictures of in my email inbox from the day after it happened. I find it sick that the J’post is still using this attack for political gain suggesting Palestinians are to blame when there has been no further information, news or otherwise released about the murders since the IDF conveniently caught two Palestinians kept them in torture for a month until they ‘confessed’ and then announced they had caught the killers despite the evidence and speculation of it being the work of a migrant worker from asia.”
This was published months after the murders, when it was clear that Palestinian terrorists were responsible for the murders. The theory about a migrant worker was put forth by the Palestinian Authority’s propaganda unit, and was discounted as agitprop months before Spedding’s comments.
Finally, here’s Spedding expressing support for Finkelstein’s unique understanding of Israel.
“Ah but Anny, I do live in Palestine and i know a lot about this conflict! accusing people of not knowing about the conflict by the way just because they don’t live there is silly really, theres countless middle east experts who don’t live in Israel who know about the conflict in great detail, my friend Norman Finkelstein for one…. i would agree with my friend Norman Finkelstein when he describes Israel as a lunatic state.”
And, evidently inspired by Finkelstein’s example of invoking the memory of the Holocaust in the service of legitimizing extreme anti-Israel politics, Spedding has recently decided to volunteer with Holocaust Memorial Day Trust - a charity which works to raise awareness of Holocaust Memorial Day.
Interestingly in the context of Finkelstein’s critique of the “accepted” Zionist account of the Holocaust in Israel as a ploy “to justify putative Israeli ‘cruelties”, Spedding’s flirtation with antisemities and proponents of terror attacks against Jews would suggest this his association with such a Shoah remembrance organization is itself a supremely cynical attempt to sanitize his alliances with those possessing a decidedly Judeophobic orientation.
You can visit the FB page of Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (or email them at enquiries@hmd.org.uk) if you wish to express your displeasure with their association with Spedding, whose presence is an insult and abuse of genuine Holocaust memory.
Related articles
- Simon Wiesenthal Center’s 2011 Top 10 anti-Israel and antisemitic slurs (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian gratuitous anti-Israel photo of the day (& a story about the photojournalist behind the lens) (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian, PalFest and the ‘culture’ of anti-Israel activism (cifwatch.com)
- Tell us why you love Israel…in as many words as you like! #WhyILoveIsrael (cifwatch.com)
- The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman and the Guardian’s increasing notoriety (cifwatch.com)
- Antisemites, terror supporters, & Holocaust deniers: aka, just another Palestinian Solidarity Campaign event (cifwatch.com)
I was thinking of how best to convey sincere Christmas greetings to our many wonderful Christian friends and then suddenly remembered my fond memories growing up in America watching the film “It’s a wonderful life“, with James Stewart, each year on December 25th.
No matter how many times I see the movie, it never fails to evoke a profound appreciation for all of those to whom the commemoration of Christ’s birth evokes the hope, wonder and ineffable beauty of life’s second chances.
Here’s the ending to one of the best movies of all time.
Merry Christmas!
A Guardian Archive story (which they republished today) from 1995, titled “Big day in the little town of Bethlehem” begins with the following celebratory passage:
There will be no star over Bethlehem this Christmas. The Israeli flag, which has flown over Manger Square for 28 years, was lowered yesterday for the last time, as the town was handed over to the Palestinian self-rule authority.
As the last small contingent of paramilitary forces moved out, Manger Square was filled with wildly celebrating crowds
On the outside a thick crust of spectators responded gleefully to every [sign of Israeli withdrawal]
Jewish withdrawal from Christian Bethlehem: What’s there not to love?
Brown continues:
Last year the mayor of Bethlehem threatened to cancel Christmas because the Israelis would not let him fly one small Palestinian flag from the town hall. Now, the hall and most neighbouring buildings are all but obliterated by the national colours.
Yes, the Jews who almost stole Christmas.
Finally, Brown acknowledges Christian fears of Muslim rule:
There has been speculation that the coming of the PLO to Bethlehem will speed the exodus of Christians from the West Bank. But there was little sign of rivalry yesterday. Samir Sharer, one local Christian, said he was convinced that this year’s Christmas would be joyful. “Everything will be OK…”
As we can be assured that a follow-up report by the Guardian won’t be forthcoming, here are the sad demographic facts of Christian life under Palestinian/ Muslim rule.
Due primarily to religious persecution, the Christian population in the Palestinian Territories has dropped dramatically.
For instance, the persecution of Christians in Bethlehem has caused the population to slump to 7,500 from 20,000 in 1995, the year the IDF left the city. (Since Israel’s withdrawal Bethlehem and its surroundings also became hotbeds for Hamas and Islamic Jihad supporters and members.)
Today, Christians make up just 1% of the mainly Muslim population of the Palestinian territories, down from around 10% in 1948.
Inversely, the Christian population in Israel proper has risen from 34,000 in 1948 to over 150,000 today.
That the only growing Christian population in the entire Middle East exists in the sole country in which Islam does not prevail is essential to understanding the fate of Christianity in that part of the world – context about the contrasting religious freedom, tolerance and democratic values in the only Jewish state the Guardian will never report.
Related articles
- The anatomy of a Guardian smear against Israel (cifwatch.com)
- Jews to build new bridge. Guardian characterizes it as a provocation. (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian discovers the injustice of denying people the right to national self-determination (cifwatch.com)
- An alternative tour of Palestine for Guardian readers (cifwatch.com)
This is cross posted by our good friend, Richard Millet
Last night I was enjoying the warm glow of first night Chanukah, having lit the candles and having gone to a public lighting (see my clip above), when later in the evening I read a tweet from Richard Burden MP, Labour MP for Northfield, which simply stated “Happy #Hanukkah everybody”.
Mr Burden is no friend of Israel so why is he wishing Jews a “Happy Hanukkah”, I thought. Many of Burden’s tweets (or retweets) are aimed at demonising the Jewish state.
He has recently been demanding, via Twitter, that Israel release all Palestinian “child prisoners” and when I asked him who he classed as a “child” he answered anyone “under 18″.
Now, as you can imagine, even a Palestinian aged 16 or 17 is capable of inflicting severe casualties on Israel’s civilian population.
So can a “child” like Izzedine Abu Sneineh who was arrested when 15 and convicted of “weapons training; attempted murder” and possession of “weapons/ammo/explosives” (as you can see from Elder of Ziyon’s link the New York Times wrongly reported that Sneineh was arrested for throwing stones and hanging Palestinian flags).
Abu Sneineh was freed in the second tranche of Palestinian prisoners as agreed in the Gilad Shalit exchange deal.
When I asked Burden what he thought of Sneineh’s release and whether Britain should also release ALL of its prisoners who were under 18 he simply referred me to his previous answers to my questions.
These answers, via Twitter, were:
I looked at DCI_Palestine, an “NGO devoted to defending the rights of children living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 1992″ (www.dci-pal.org) and read a description of the arrest of 16-year-old Rasheed J by the IDF. It was, allegedly, a brutal arrest in which Rashid J spent many days in isolation and was told that:
‘You Arabs like to fuck camels and donkeys and go to brothels to fuck whores. You have no honour because your mother’s a whore.’
This would be unforgivable if it were true but it is uncorroborated and I just don’t believe it based on many similar lies.
The other main accusation in the piece about Rasheed J’s arrest is that Palestinian prisoners, like Rasheed J, are kept in custody in Israel “in violation of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits transfer out of occupied territory”.
But who, with any properly constituted legal authority, has declared it “occupied territory” for the purposes of Article 76? No one. This is because there is no Palestine and so Palestine cannot be “occupied”. Article 76 is, therefore, totally irrelevant.
Furthermore, Burden likes to retweet a horrendous story about Israel, whether it’s true or not.
On 16th December he retweeted The Guardian’s story that Israel had hastened the death of the Palestinian Ambassador to the UK’s wife by forcing her back to Jerusalem to renew her residency rights while she was undergoing treatment for cancer, despite denials by Israeli officials that this was the case.
The allegation levelled at Israel was that she became “infected by a virus on her plane journey back to London in May and died three months later”; basically, Israel was now responsible for her sad demise.
In fact, as CiF Watch states, the reason for her visit to Israel was to “seek a second opinion on her condition from doctors at Hadassah Hospital”.
So does anyone really believe that Burden sincerely wishes Jewish people a “Happy Hanukkah” when the rest of the time he makes every effort to demonise the Jewish state with its five and a quarter million Jews, some of our family and friends included, while calling for the release of Palestinians like Abu Sneineh who planned their murder?
Related articles
- The anatomy of a Guardian smear against Israel (cifwatch.com)
A guest post by AKUS
Citizens of most countries are often identified by country of origin, ethnicity, religion, or race. In America, for example, we commonly refer to Irish Americans, or Hispanics, or Catholics, or Asians. But it takes the Guardian to invent an entirely new kind of British citizenship, driven by its warped views about the Middle East.
When ‘Comment is Free’ was at its worst in its obsessively negative coverage of Israel, it was edited by Georgina Henry. This woman parlayed her fanatical and obsessive hatred of anything to do with Israel and passionate admiration for anything that can be ascribed to Palestinians to an endless stream of negative articles about Israel, preferably written by disaffected “as-a-Jews”.
Henry was shunted aside to the seemingly innocuous siding of the Guardian’s culture section. However, even there she has made it the Guardian’s business to puff up any and everything that could remotely be considered “Palestinian culture”. That is, “culture” emanating from the area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River that excludes anything that could be construed in a positive sense about Israeli culture.
In its eagerness to over-emphasize the contributions of “Palestinian culture” to the world, and Britain in particular, the culture department at the Guardian has created a new category of British citizen. No longer is it enough for a British writer to merely be “from Palestine” or “of Palestinian origin” or “born in Palestine”.
No, looking at the article published on December 21, 2011, Selma Dabbagh’s top 10 stories of reluctant revolutionaries , we learn that Selma Dabbagh is not merely British, nor merely Palestinian, nor even “former Palestinian”, nor “born in Palestine” (she was actually born in Scotland to a Scottish mother – see below). Dabbagh is a member of an entirely new category of British citizenry.
Selma Dabbagh, according to the Guardian,” is a British Palestinian writer of fiction based in London”.
So let me see if I understand this. Suppose, for example, frequent Guardian contributor and British citizen Jonathan Freedland, who always has a great deal to write and say about Jews and Israel, had actually been born in Israel. Would his Guardian bio read: “Jonathan Freedland is a British Israeli based in London”?
I think not.
If, like me, you had never heard of Selma Dabbagh before this, you can find a more thorough bio in a review of her book by Metro news.
The review reveals that this “British Palestinian” has only a generational connection to “Palestine”. UNRWA’s definition that the child of a Palestinian refugee and their children, down the generations forever, will be considered Palestinian refugees forms the basis for her claim to be a Palestinian. Her father was one of those (generally wealthier) Arabs who fled to the West during the 1947-1948 fighting, landing up and marrying, apparently, in Scotland.
“Part of the Palestinian diaspora by birth, she was born in Scotland to a British mother and a Palestinian father”.
Moreover:
While she spent time in the West Bank in her twenties, she has never been to Gaza. ‘My Gaza is an imagined place,’ she says. ‘A place constructed from exile.’ Dabbagh grew up in many places (‘I think I’ve moved 30 times’), but spent her teenage years in Kuwait.
Not surprising, a review by the Independent notes the vagueness of her description of an imagined Israeli attack in Gaza:
The story centres around a pair of twenty-something boy-and-girl twins, Iman and Rashid. We first meet them in Gaza in the midst of an Israeli barrage (although the precise details of place and political context are curiously obscured).
Of course, she was well taught to regard Israel as evil:
‘One of the first things we did in geography class was scribble out the word Israel on the map and replace it with Occupied Palestine,’ she says.
‘When I first went to Israel I almost expected the ground to cave in. I remember being very shocked by seeing roller skaters in Tel Aviv. The normality of this evil other.’
Just in case her Palestinian street cred is not enough she has to make sure her readers know where she stands by comparing Israel to Nazi Germany as the review of her book by the Independent notes:
She also has an authoritative university professor make the lazily racist – and quite inexcusable – comparison between the Nazis and the Jewish pioneers who founded the state of Israel (he says that the Jews used “the same tactics against the Arabs” as the Nazis had used against them). This claim is offensive rubbish, and one which the author makes no attempt to defuse.
No wonder the Guardian Culture section adores her.
Related articles
- The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins is tired of our “obsession” with Nazism and the Holocaust (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian discovers the injustice of denying people the right to national self-determination (cifwatch.com)
- Palestinian Guardian propaganda photo of the day (Soldier vs. child) (cifwatch.com)
- An alternative tour of Palestine for Guardian readers (cifwatch.com)
- UK philosopher Ted Honderich repeats his Guardian refrain that Palestinians have the right to murder Israelis (cifwatch.com)
- A small victory against Palestinians’ continuing “mission” to wipe Israel off the map (cifwatch.com)
- What the Guardian won’t report: Palestine will be Jew-free (cifwatch.com)
- Newt Gingrich, the Guardian, and the invention of a moral outrage. (cifwatch.com)
Friends,
CiF Watch has developed a reputation as the leading monitor of the Guardian, and its blog ‘Comment is Free’, exposing and combating their assault on Israel’s legitimacy, and tolerance of antisemitism.
So, if you believe that this blog’s mission is valuable, please consider a donation in support of our Chanukah 2011 Appeal, which seeks to raise $10,000 to support our hard-hitting essays and reporting (directly from Israel) which helps hold the Guardian accountable.
Donations are made through our fiscal sponsor, Myths and Facts, Inc., a private 501(c)(3) not for profit.
Click this link to make a tax-deductible donation to CiF Watch.
Some highlights from 2011:
1.CiF Watch is ranked 23 in the Technorati Top 100 World Political Blogs category, with only two other overtly pro-Israel blogs ranking higher.
2. CiF Watch was responsible for having the new Gilad Atzmon book removed from the on-line bookstore of the Guardian and causing the Guardian much embarrassment in the process.
3. CiF Watch was at the forefront of taking Guardian columnist Deborah Orr to task over her use of the antisemitic chosen people trope, which resulted in an apology from the columnist and favorable publicity for CiF Watch.
4. Evidence that the Guardian takes our criticisms seriously can be found in a recent essay by the paper’s readers’ editor, Chris Elliott, titled “on averting the charge of antisemitism”. Elliott wrote: “organizations monitoring the Guardian’s coverage examine the language in articles (and the comments posted underneath them on-line) as closely as the facts.” – a clear reference to our blog. This Guardian mea culpa was reported by The Commentator, The Jewish Chronicle, Honest Reporting, and Ha’aretz.
As our reputation, web traffic and social media presence have grown, we still rely on our faithful friends (who have followed us since our inception) to continue fighting the good fight against antisemitism: a bigotry which Professor Robert Wistrich has characterized as “the world’s longest hatred.”
This blog’s dogged determination to take on the Guardian continues to demonstrate what the powerless few can do against the powerful many – genuine grassroots activism at its finest.
Adam Levick
Jerusalem, Israel
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(1) Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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(3) Email us at contactus@cifwatch.com if you see something in the Guardian that makes your blood boil
In response to a characteristically odious Twitter campaign by anti-Israel activists using the hashtag #Israelkills, a very successful counter pro-Israel campaign was launched with the hashtag #IsraelLoves.
So, I began thinking that we often need to stop playing defense to the vicious and, often, morally unserious charges of anti-Zionists.
Further, though going on the offense against our bigoted enemies certainly has its place, we should spend more time stating simply and clearly why we passionately, and without qualifications, defend Israel and the inalienable rights of the Jewish people:
Tell us why you love Israel.
Below is a great video of pro-Israel (#IsraelLoves) Tweets to set the tone.
And, while you can certainly Tweet your response to us (@cifwatch) using the hashtag #WhyILoveIsrael if you’d like, if you don’t want to be constrained by the character limits imposed by Twitter, please use as much space as required to express what Israel means to you in our comment section.
The commentary chosen by our esteemed group of judges (CiF Watch volunteers) to be the most eloquent and inspiring will be published at this blog as a stand alone post – using your own name or, if you choose, under a pseudonym.
(Entries must be submitted by Thursday, Dec. 29, at midnight.)
Am Y’srael Chai!
One of the most surreal accusations against Israel I’ve read was leveled in 2010, when, nearly 43 years after Israel reclaimed Jerusalem following the Six Day War, the newly rebuilt Hurva Synagogue was dedicated – a synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City which had been destroyed twice, in 1721 by Arabs, and then by Jordanians shortly after the 1948 War.
On March 15, 2010, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) condemned the rededication of the Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem as a “war crime,” and called on EU member states to boycott Israeli goods in protest.
Characterizing the rededication of a previously destroyed synagogue as a war crime, it seemed to me then, was simply beyond moral comprehension.
I think, however, that a recent story by Harriet Sherwood, Israel faces legal challenges on block of Palestinians exiting Gaza to sue state, Dec. 1, is nearly as incomprehensible.
Sherwood begins:
“An Israeli human rights organisation [Adalah] has launched a legal challenge to the state’s policy of denying Palestinians permission to leave Gaza to pursue claims for damages resulting from military action, which has led to dozens of cases being dismissed by the Israeli courts.
[Gazan] plaintiffs ‘live in Gaza City and are unable to enter Israel. Therefore, they cannot hold meetings with their lawyer or sign various documents in front of him. They cannot stand before the court to give their testimony, to prove their case…’”
Among the list of “plaintiffs” unable to sue Israel are Gazans who were injured, or people whose relatives were killed, during the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 2004.
Briefly, Ahmed Yassin founded the Islamic Organization in 1979 (which explicitly called for Israel’s destruction). However, he is best known as the founder of Hamas in 1987, a group which gained popular support in Gaza because of its refusal to accept Israel’s existence – and adopted a covenant advancing antisemitic theories of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and a call to wage war against the Jews.
Though receiving two life sentences in Israeli courts in 1989 for planning terrorist attacks, and the abduction of Israeli soldiers (including the abduction and murder of IDF soldier Ilan Sa’adon), Yassin was released in a prisoner exchange deal in 1997.
During the 2nd Intifada, Yassin directed Hamas’ terrorist activity – including suicide bombing against innocent civilians.
On March 22, 2004, Yassin was killed in an Israeli helicopter missile strike on his car in the northern Gaza Strip.
The argument that those injured (or relatives of those killed) as the result of Yassin’s killing should be able to sue the IDF in Israeli courts seems about as reasonable as suggesting that Pakistanis accidentally killed during US drone strikes on senior al Qaeda leaders in the mountains of Waziristan should have the right to sue the US government.
Would the US Justice Department even entertain the notion that such “plaintiffs” should have access to US courts to file lawsuits against the nation’s leaders?
Well, Gaza is a hostile territory whose despotic government is openly at war with Israel and the notion that Gazans should enjoy the fruits of democratic institutions of a nation their government is attempting to destroy beggars the imagination.
I suppose, by such logic, Israelis maimed (or relatives of Israelis killed) by rocket attacks from Gaza should have access to courts in Gaza City, in order to sue Hamas government and military leaders.
That, Adalah – an NGO, generously funded by the EU and NIF, which calls for a one state solution – is championing the cause of such Palestinians’ “rights” is, indeed, no more surprising than the legitimization of such incomprehensible legal and moral reasoning by the Jerusalem correspondent of a paper in a class of its own in the continuing media assault on Israel’s legitimacy.
Related articles
- Harriet Sherwood’s latest Guardian report on terror attacks from Gaza redefines the word “Sporadic” (cifwatch.com)
- Peace activist’s home vandalized with death threats: Harriet Sherwood blames Bibi (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian headline and report on Lebanese terrorist rocket fire into Israel blurs causation (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood report accuses Israel of contaminating Gaza’s beaches (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood: Terror Propagandist. (cifwatch.com)
- 15 seconds in Sderot: An open letter to Harriet Sherwood, the Guardian’s Jerusalem, Israel correspondent (cifwatch.com)
- The Israeli humanity, and terrorist malice, which Harriet Sherwood will never report (cifwatch.com)
Image from antisemitic site which states: UK Foreign Office has been under Zionist influence for decades
As is the case in the majority of Israeli homes, Friday is cleaning-up day in the Israelinurse household.
But in order for copious amounts of ‘economica’ (bleach), furniture polish and floor shampoo to do their magic, I have to prepare myself with two cups of coffee in rapid succession – usually consumed whilst trying to determine how many of the offspring will be home for dinner, checking e-mails and having a quick browse of the news online.
The third load of laundry is now hanging out to dry, the kitchen sparkles, the spicy pumpkin and tomato sauce for tonight’s kubbeh is bubbling away on the hob and sunlight filtering through the pomegranate tree outside the south-facing living room window makes dancing dappled shapes on a shiny terrazzo floor.
But throughout the polishing, wiping, scrubbing, chopping and mopping I’ve been troubled by one more thing I feel needs clearing up: a Tweet I noticed during morning coffee.
It refers to the story which broke yesterday regarding the questioning, by British MP Paul Flynn, of the national loyalties of the UK ambassador to Israel, and was sent by another MP who, to the best of my knowledge, has an impeccable record on the subject of anti-racism. That makes it all the more puzzling to me.
Tweet by MP Rob Halfon
Paul Flynn accused the British Ambassador, who happens to be Jewish, of being incapable of doing his job properly because of dual loyalties – a classic antisemitic trope, as is Flynn’s additional assertion – according to the JC – that Mr Gould does not have the required “roots in the UK”.
So Robert Halfon’s Tweet and the article on his blog are somewhat confusing from my point of view. Have we reached a point at which people – not least public figures – can make antisemitic accusations whilst secure in the knowledge that their reputations will remain squeaky clean?
If so, it wouldn’t exactly be a precedent in British politics. I’m sure many readers remember the remarks made by former Labour Minister Ben Bradshaw in 2009 regarding seemingly irresistible pressures supposedly applied to the BBC by Israel.
My personal view is that someone who is a genuine anti-racist would not have been susceptible to the kind of smears brought up by Giblin and Bartolotti against Ambassador Gould and would most probably have bothered to inform himself of the backgrounds and motivations of the accusers. A genuine anti-racist would certainly not have repeated such an obviously anti-Semitic trope in a Parliamentary Select Committee.
But the bigger question here is this: does the employment of anti-Semitic dialogue make one an anti-Semite or not? I think it does, but if not – what are the criteria necessary in 21st century Britain for someone to be defined as anti-Semitic?
I’d be very interested to hear what readers think.
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
Democracy deficits & moral deficits: The mindless anti-Zionism of CiF contributor Mark Weisbrot
January 31, 2012 in Uncategorized | Tags: anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Arab Spring, Comment is Free, Delegitimization, Holocaust Denial, Marc Weisbrot, Terrorism | by Adam Levick | 16 comments
Weisbrot’s sophistication and erudition, when expounding upon the U.S war against sadistic Taliban terrorists, was on display in his previous CiF entry, where he thriftily and pithily summed up the US campaign as “soldiers pissing on corpses [and] drones slaughtering civilians”.
He characterized the U.S. war against terrorism more broadly as arguably indicative of “a crusade against the Muslim world” – agitprop which seems to slip off Weisbrot’s tongue with the ease of someone schooled in the Noam Chomsky school of tyranny apologetics.
And, as I noted previously, Weisbrot quite explicitly accused the U.S. of committing a “Holocaust” in Iraq, accusing critics of such a characterization as guilty of “Holocaust Denial”.
Naturally, as part of his broader anti-American ideological package, Weisbrot is necessarily as hostile to Israel as he is sympathetic to Arab despots.
Weisbrot – whose output of anti-Zionist and (mostly) anti-American vitriol, at Znet and CiF, is quite impressive – today published “Why American ‘democracy’ promotion rings hollow“, Jan. 31.
While the broader narrative, mocking American democracy promotion in the Arab world is itself a work of political sophistry worthy of scrutiny, the following passage about Israel is a much repeated, if banal, narrative within Guardian-Left circles, and represents yet another casual assault on the Jewish state’s legitimacy.
Write’s Weisbrot:
The notion that the Arab world, which continues to be defined by increasing intolerance towards religious and ethnic minorities, extreme antisemitism, and the denial of basic human rights – in stark contrast with Israel’s unique and enduring democratic prowess - possesses any moral credibility in denouncing the U.S. is a political inversion of the first order.
Arabs of Palestinian origin, whose rights are systematically denied throughout the (non-Jewish) Middle East, have become the propaganda tool of choice for far left ideologues such as Weisbrot – activists who similarly fail to mention the absence of such democratic values in Palestinian ruled territory.
The reason why Western liberals fear the upheavals in the Arab world is the increasingly clear slouch towards Islamist political movements which are, by definition, decidedly reactionary and illiberal, and at odds with true democratic values.
The romaticization of the Arab Spring, the edifice of a “democratic” revolution, is becoming increasingly difficult for those who claim intellectual integrity to maintain.
The Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists in Egypt, the Enhada Party in Tunisia, or major parties vying for power in Libya, can largely be defined (or may likely, one day, be defined) by a greater adherence to (in spirit or letter) Sharia law, and an atavistic, ideological antisemitism which bears little if any connection to the plight of the Palestinians.
As a report on antisemitism in the Arab world in the context of the ‘Arab Spring”, written by scholars at the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University, noted:
Of course, the continuing Arab antipathy towards Jews is not at all surprising to those who study the politics of the region, and the habitual denial of this endemic Judeophobic dynamic by Guardian reporters and commentators is documented continually on the pages of this blog.
But the mere ubiquity of voices like Weisbrot, at ‘Comment is Free’, who are willfully blind to the most malign anti-Jewish racism, makes it no less deserving of critical scrutiny, nor, especially, any less morally repugnant.
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