During that four-week period, 58 articles appeared on the ‘Israel’ page of the World News section on the Guardian’s website. Two of those actually appear twice, so in fact we are addressing 56 articles, eleven of which also appeared on the ‘Israel’ page of ‘Comment is Free’. 

Three items dealt with the subject of boycotts against Israeli targets whilst three others were obituaries. One article pertained to literature and one other was a video report in Jon Ronson’s series about ‘astroturfing’. 

Six articles dealt with the Iranian nuclear issue and two pertained to the subject of the British government’s reaction to a hypothetical Israeli military strike on Iran. 

Two articles speculating about early elections in Israel were followed by five articles about the Kadima party’s joining the coalition government. 

One article contained archive material concerning the Manchester Guardian’s coverage of Israel’s declaration of Independence in 1948 whilst four items dealt with the subject of events on Nakba Day 2012. Five articles were published on the subject of the Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike whilst a further four dealt with subjects which can be classified as carrying a theme of ‘Israeli authorities against Palestinians’. 

Two articles were connected to the subject of the Olympics – one concerning the IOC refusal to mark the Munich terror attack and the other about disabled Palestinian Olympians. Two items related to the Israeli TV series ‘Hatufim’ – one of which still carries the spelling mistake “Israeil” in its by-line. 

Four articles (three of which appeared on the same day) were about the subject of illegal migrants in Israel, one dealt with the subject of the Mavi Marmara flotilla and potential compensation arrangements and two articles can be classified as relating to ‘settlements’ or ‘settlers’. 

Six items appearing on the ‘Israel’ page have little if any connection to Israel, including one about the Hamas clamp-down on the ‘Palfest’ event in Gaza, one about Palestinian Authority actions against Palestinian journalists, one about human rights in Bahrain and another concerning Egypt and Saudi Arabia. 

So what did the Guardian choose not to report during the same period of time? A partial list includes the following: 

On April 30^th a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip fell near the town of Sderot. (source)

On May 1^st shots were fired from the Gaza Strip at Israeli soldiers engaged in routine activities on the Israeli side of the border fence. During the week May 2^nd to May 8^th, two rockets and one mortar fired from Gaza hit the western Negev.(source)

On May 3^rd, two Palestinians carrying knives and explosives were arrested at Tapuach Junction. Later the same night, a Palestinian carrying a knife tried to infiltrate the village of Elon Moreh. 

On May 7^th, Israeli soldiers thwarted an attempt to smuggle weapons through the Kalandia checkpoint. On the same day, a Palestinian carrying three pipe bombs was apprehended near Tapuach Junction. 

During the week May 9^th to May 15^th, one rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit the western Negev. On May 10^th Egyptian security forces apprehended three vehicles containing weapons – including 40 anti-tank missiles – being smuggled from Libya. (source)

Also on May 10^th, two Palestinians carrying pipe bombs and fire bombs were arrested by the Border Police near Tapuach Junction. 

On May 20^th a Palestinian tried to stab a soldier at a roadblock. During the preceding month, three Israeli civilians were wounded in stabbing attacks. Information concerning the apprehension of a Ramallah area based terror cell which planned to abduct Israeli civilians was made public, including details of attempted kidnappings: 

“During March 2012 the cell tried to abduct an Israeli several times:

• The afternoon of March 11, 2012: Members of the cell attacked an Israeli driver on the road between the village of Rantis and Kiryat Sefer (northeast of Ramallah), near Beit Arieh. They blocked the car and tried to drag the driver out, but he escaped.
• March 12, 2012: Members of the cell attacked an Israeli woman driving along the road to the village of Ma’ale Lavonah in southern Samaria. They blocked the car and used various blunt objects in an attempt to shatter the front windshield. The driver escaped in her car.
• The night of March 15, 2012: Cell operatives attacked an Israeli woman driving with her infant daughter from Givat Assaf (north of Ramallah) to Beit El. They blocked the car and shattered the front windshield but fled when another Israeli vehicle approached.
• During March the cell tried to abduct Israeli civilian hitchhikers from the gas station at the village of Mishor Adumim, east of Jerusalem. They stopped their car and one of the Israelis almost got in, but a friend prevented him.”

Wishing all our readers celebrating Shavuot a happy holiday. Here’s a special version of the traditional song ‘Our Baskets on Our Shoulders’ to go with the greeting: Saleinu al Ktefeinu by Shevet Yehuda. 

Hag Sameach! 

“It was all known. It was all expected. A violent incident was a matter of time. Sentences such as “South Tel Aviv neighbourhoods becoming a pressure cooker” have been written more and more in recent weeks. This week it happened. A justified and legitimate demonstration, which was directed against government neglect, was turned by a few tens of people into a hooligans’ parade. It is a miracle that the events did not end in bloodshed. That could happen.  

This is the hour of the hitch-hikers. From Left and from Right. The former spread tales that if we would only conquer racism, and turn the refugees into new immigrants, they would become honest and contributing citizens. For a small proportion of them – annoying and inciting; mostly anarchists – there is in the background the ideology which wants to crush the state of Israel as the Jewish state. The infiltrators are yet another means by which to achieve that aim. From the Right step up to the line the inciters who suffer from pure racism – including racism against colour – and direct the anger towards the infiltrators themselves. 

And in the background are to be found the residents of the neighbourhoods of south Tel Aviv, Ashdod and Eilat. They are the victims. Because the infiltrators who arrive here, from the moment of their arrival, raise their standard of living by ten degrees. Even when they are sleeping in public parks. And only the residents of the weak neighbourhoods are paying the price. They alone. Everyone is wise at their expense. The human-rights workers are causing more and more infiltrators to arrive in exactly the same neighbourhoods which are already exploding from the pressure. They don’t pay any price. They load them onto the weak. And the weak are exploding. Just exploding. Their children’s education is worse. The fear on the streets is greater. Quality of life plummets to new lows. And when they try to cry out, they are called racists. And then the activists from the Right arrive, with matches in places already saturated with petrol. Afterwards we all wonder about the explosion.” 

The incidents which took place on the night of May 23^rd in south Tel Aviv were the subject of no fewer than three Guardian articles. 

The first, by Conal Urquhart, was headlined “African asylum seekers injured in Tel Aviv race riots”. Only in the ninth paragraph (out of ten) did Urquhart get round to hinting – albeit very superficially – that there may actually be more sides to the story than pure ‘race riots’. 

“Some work illegally and the majority live in the poorest areas of Tel Aviv where they find themselves in competition with working class Israelis mostly from a Middle Eastern or north African background. The sparse greens and parks of south Tel Aviv are dominated by the African migrants who sleep there at night.“

The second article dedicated by the Guardian to the subject was Seth Freedman’s polemic (addressed by Adam Levick here). Freedman also employed the term ‘race riots’ and referred to “the level of hate coursing through the veins of Israelis furious at the influx of non-Jewish Africans into their country”. His article closed with the warning that “Israeli opponents of such base racism must act now”: again presenting a one-dimensional view of the story. 

The third article on the subject published on the same day as the previous two came from Harriet Sherwood. It too focused exclusively upon the reprehensible acts of violence which took place and it too failed to provide any information on the broader context of the events or to examine the reasons why the residents of south Tel Aviv (the majority of whom did not participate in the violence) felt compelled to voice their opinions on the streets in the first place. 

But Israel is not the only country struggling with the effects of uncontrollable immigration and Tel Aviv was not the only place in which a demonstration turned violent this week. 

In Patras, Greece, local residents and supporters of the far-Right ‘Golden Dawn’ party – which gained considerable support in the recent Greek elections – stormed a factory in which migrants were sheltering on two consecutive days after a local man was allegedly  stabbed and killed by an Afghani immigrant, resulting in clashes between demonstrators and police. 

The Guardian dedicated one article to these incidents. 

In that story there were no ‘race riots’ – instead there were “anti-immigrant protests”. No ‘asaGreek’ was summoned to chastise his countrymen for the “hate coursing through their veins” and nobody was accused of “base racism”. There were no dire warnings about the collapse of Greek democracy and nowhere was it implied that the Greek demonstrators (even those among them who support an extreme-right party) were motivated by a racism which infects their society as a whole. 

The sharp contrast between the style and volume of the Guardian’s reporting on two similar incidents which took place almost at the same time is an excellent indicator of the fact that when it comes to Israel, reporting the actual news is frequently of minor concern. Too often, it is the opportunity which that news may provide to advance an agenda which is seized at the detriment of providing Guardian readers with a ‘fair and balanced’ view of events. 

The revival of Jewish agricultural activity in the land of Israel played a major role in the ideology of the early Zionists of the Second Aliya and one of the most important places associated with that revival is Hatzer Kinneret (Kinneret Courtyard) near the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee. 

Established in 1908 upon the recommendation of Arthur Ruppin, its purpose was to train Jewish agricultural labourers, but it also became an ideological laboratory from which grew the Labour Zionist and Socialist Zionist movements, the kvutza, the kibbutz and the moshav as well as the Haganah and the Mashbir co-operative wholesale association.

Its residents included important figures in Israel’s history (many of whom are buried nearby in the pantheons of Socialist Zionism; the graveyards of Kinneret and Degania – the first kvutza) such as AD Gordon, Berl Katznelson , Zalman Shazar and Rachel Bluwstein Sela – better known as Rachel the poetess – who was a pupil at Hana Maisel’s ‘young women’s farm’ in Hatzer Kinneret. 

In the mid-1970s the by then unused site fell into disrepair, but recently it has been beautifully reconstructed by the Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites in co-operation with the Jordan Valley Council. Hana Maisel’s revitalised vegetable garden and the corner of the arched communal dining room allocated to AD Gordon as a place to write are just some of the many things of interest which it is possible see on one of the tours available. For anyone interested in the history of Zionism and its connections to the beginnings of modern Israel’s agricultural renaissance, this newly and lovingly restored site is a must-see. 

AD Gordon’s grave, Degania

Arthur Ruppin’s grave, Degania

A war is brewing on Capitol Hill. And while wars tend to create refugees, this one may result in fewer of them.

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) is trying to get a handle on the real number of Palestinian refugees in the Middle East — a move that could result in a change of status for millions of Palestinians. His proposed language for the 2013 foreign appropriations bill would require the U.S. government to confirm just how many Palestinians currently served by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) — the body taskedwith providing assistance, protection, and advocacy for Palestinian refugees — are actually refugees. The bill, slated for markup on May 22, would challenge the status of the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of Palestinian refugees — a great many of whom claim to be refugees despite the fact that they were never personally displaced in the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars.

The aim of this proposed legislation, Kirk’s office explains, is not to deprive Palestinians who live in poverty of essential services, but to tackle one of the thorniest issues of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: the “right of return.” The dominant Palestinian narrative is that all of the refugees of the Israeli-Palestinian wars have a right to go back, and that this right is not negotiable. But here’s the rub: By UNRWA’s own count, the number of Palestinians who describe themselves as refugees has skyrocketed from 750,000 in 1950 to 5 million today. As a result, the refugee issue has been an immovable obstacle in round after round of negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.

How have these numbers swelled, particularly as the Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes in 1948 and 1967 grew old and died? This question lies at the crux of the Kirk amendment. And the answer is UNRWA.

The knock on UNRWA is that it exists to perpetuate the refugee problem, not solve it. It was UNRWA that bestowed refugee status upon “descendants of refugees,” regardless of how much time had elapsed. As a result, the Palestinian refugee population has grown seven-fold since the start of the Arab-Israeli conflict. As one study projects, if descendants maintain their current status, the number of “refugees” in 2020 will be 6.4 million — despite the fact that few of the actual, displaced Palestinians will still be alive. In 2050, that number will reach 14.7 million.

UNRWA, which calls for a “just and durable“ solution to the refugee problem, has unquestionably been a silent partner to the Palestinian leadership. The agency’s administration fully understands that if Israel accepted the PLO’s demand, it would be demographic suicide. As Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas himself has admitted, asking the Jewish state to repatriate 5 million Palestinians “would mean the end of Israel.”

UNRWA’s warts notwithstanding, American taxpayers have rewarded it year after year. In the 2011 fiscal year, U.S. assistance to UNRWA stood at $249.4 million. Total contributions since its founding in 1949 amount to a staggering $4.4 billion.

In recent years, politicians and policy wonks, including one former UNRWA administrator, have called for UNRWA reform. The agency hasn’t merely demurred; it has girded for battle. UNRWA set up shop in Washington with two Hill-savvy professionals, despite the fact that its operations are entirely based in the Middle East, anticipating the need for what looks a full-scale lobby effort to defend its mission. The agency even toyed with changing its name last year in an attempt to burnish its image in the West.

UNRWA’s time to defend itself has unquestionably arrived. The Kirk amendment would require the secretary of state to report to Congress on how many Palestinians serviced by UNRWA are true refugees from wars past — those who could prove that they were personally displaced. That number is believed to be closer to 30,000 people. This new tally would then become the focus of America’s assistance to UNRWA for refugee issues.

Despite congressional Republicans’ current fervor to rein in America’s out-of-control debt, the bill’s proponents do not call for a full cutoff to the descendants. Rather, they seek to ensure that UNRWA services keep flowing to those who are needy. The United States would simply not view them as refugees — just people living in the West Bank or Gaza and below the poverty line.

But funding for the future would not be guaranteed. As Kirk’s office explains, Congress will soon need to consider tough questions, like whether U.S. taxpayers should be footing the bill for welfare programs in the West Bank and Gaza, or whether such services should be provided by the Palestinian Authority.

The fact that this language has made it to mark-up is nothing short of remarkable. The Israelis have historically avoided locking horns with UNRWA at all costs. In fact, they have quietly lobbied against UNRWA reform in the past. As one Israeli official confided, the Israel Defense Forces don’t want to risk being saddled with providing services to the refugees in the West Bank and Gaza should UNRWA unravel. Indeed, one of the Israelis’ primary purposes in signing the Oslo Accords and supporting the creation of the Palestinian Authority was to ensure that they were no longer saddled with the responsibility of providing services to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

But today, with the peace process moribund, if not dead, the Israelis believe that UNRWA reform could serve as a defibrillator of sorts. By tackling one of the toughest challenges of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict without the bedlam that typically accompanies bilateral negotiations, there would theoretically be one less sticking point when the stars align again for diplomacy. Under the leadership of Knesset member Einat Wilf, this idea now has the backing of the prime minister’s office, the Ministry of Defense, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In Washington, a coalition is still forming. Rep. Howard Berman (D- CA), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, broadly backs this idea but has yet to introduce language on the House side. However, bipartisanship may not be enough: The State Department, which pledged an additional $10 million in UNRWA in March, is expected to put up a fight. The legislation would undoubtedly anger some of Washington’s Arab allies, and Foggy Bottom tries to avoid that at all costs.

But such grumblings will likely pale in comparison to the expected outcry in the West Bank, Gaza, and the Palestinian refugee camps in neighboring Arab countries. The refugee narrative is a sacred one in Palestinian political culture. Palestinian leaders will not simply table it because Congress passes new legislation. Rather, it’s a fair bet they will mobilize. When UNRWA merely mulled a name change in July 2011, Palestinians organized protests and sit-ins. Proposing real changes to UNRWA could even prompt violence.

In short, the Kirk legislation would strip Palestinian the descendants of their political symbolism. It would be a landmark for this generations-old conflict, but whether it paves the way for peace or conflict remains to be seen. There are few more potent symbols of the Palestinian cause. Don’t expect Palestinians to give it up easily.

Related articles

• 2 Tweets by Guardian’s Liz Ford which speak volumes about the Palestinian “refugee” fraud (cifwatch.com)
• Nakba: The Catastrophe of Lost Opportunities (cifwatch.com)

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

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

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

• Contrary to a mind-numbing number of accusations in the media that Israel’s blockade of Gaza was “illegal” the Palmer report concluded that the Naval blockade is fully consistent with international law and that IDF Naval forces have the right to stop Gaza-bound ships in international waters.

• Contrary to claims that the IDF attacked peaceful activists, the reports concluded that when Israeli commandos boarded the main ship they faced “organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers” and were therefore required to use force in order to ensure their own protection.

• The report concluded that the IHH sponsored flotilla, including the Mavi Marmara, “acted recklessly in attempting to breach the naval blockade.”

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

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

According to Urquhart:

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

This is blatantly untrue.

According to sections 123 and 124 of the Palmer Report:

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

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

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

It simply doesn’t get more clear than this.

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

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

Related articles

• Why is the Guardian afraid to expose their readers to the truth about Global March to Jerusalem? (cifwatch.com)
• Harriet Sherwood’s Munich Massacre story follows Guardian rule on obscuring Palestinian terrorism (cifwatch.com)

Posing for daddy

Last night 50 Palestine Solidarity Campaign protesters marched through Brent Street in Hendon, an area of London where many British Jews and Israelis live, before congregating outside a hotel where Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman was due to speak.

The protesters spent the evening calling for Israel’s destruction, while being met with chants aimed back at them of “Fascist scum, off our streets” by the 100 or so pro-Israel supporters who had come out on a lovely summer’s evening to see what all the fuss was about.

Hendon rarely witnesses such excitement but had a fascist group wanted to march through an area of London while calling for the destruction of a country from where another minority group living in England originates there’s a good chance they wouldn’t have been allowed to.

Some PSC protesters couldn’t resist bringing their very young children along for an indoctrination session. One father tried to get his young son and daughter to pose in front of the “Jews are in exile” sign paraded by the Neturei Karta (see photo above). Such an evening’s entertainment is cheaper than taking them to the cinema, I guess.

Finally, the PSC protesters were given a police escort back to Hendon Central station as you can see in this clip where one protester, the kid in the black top, is articulating himself in the aggressive manner one has come to expect. If anyone can lip read please let me know what he is saying (richardblog@live.co.uk). I know it isn’t pretty.

Also, at about 2 minutes in another PSC protester gives a salute. Does anyone know its origins? Thanks.

Here are some more photos:

Who’s going to shoot first, me or him?

Not a pretty sight. At least tuck your shirt in!

Am Ysrael Chai

Yup, it’s all the Jews fault as usual, obviously.

Daddy lines up his children for that mantlepiece shot.

Oh dear, son looking pretty disinterested.

yeah man

More Am Y’srael

And more

I didn’t realise these were taking place in Israel in 2013, so thanks!

You mean free the Palestinians from their Hamas thugs.

What is it about Israel being a Jewish state that brings him here?

Saying evening prayers in front of those that despise you. Beautiful.

Related articles

• Richard Millett SOAS Update (cifwatch.com)
• Who’s afraid of Richard Millett? (cifwatch.com)
• Brainwashing children to hate Israel: The Palestine Solidarity Campaign way (cifwatch.com)
• Mavi Marmara’s Ken O’Keefe compares Jews to Nazis at Middlesex Univ. Event: The Footage. (cifwatch.com)
• Camera grabbed, rucksack snatched and racially abused at SOAS (cifwatch.com)
• Moral posturing as serious thought: Context-Free essay on migrants in Israel by Seth Freedman (cifwatch.com)

• Israel’s illegal African immigration challenge is a recent phenomenon, going back to 2005, after the Egyptian police attacked Sudanese refugees who were camped out in Cairo, demanding asylum. Jerusalem proved generous and word spread that migrants would be greeted hospitably and provided with job opportunities upon arrival in Israel.

• Since Hosni Mubarak was swept up and out of power during the ‘Arab Spring’, government authority has all but collapsed in the Sinai Peninsula. One by-product of this lawless state of affairs has been a spike of illegal immigration to Israel from Africa. Over the last several months, Israel’s southern border with Egypt, by way of the Sinai, has turned into the primary point of entry for thousands of work-seeking migrants (economic migrants, as opposed to political refugees).

•  A large number are illegal infiltrators who are, along with drugs and weapons, smuggled into Israel by Bedouin tribesmen.

• It’s important to consider the impact of illegal immigration on Israeli society’s most vulnerable members: native-born Israelis and legal immigrants with low skills and low levels of education.

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

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

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

• Framing Israeli policies he finds disagreeable in the most extreme, unserious manner 
• Imputing anti-black racism to Israel
• A  failure to offer a concrete policy alternatives to a vexing political problem
• Transparent moral posturing (Freedman is ‘the good Jew’) 

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

Imputing racism: 

Related articles

• Seth Freedman’s attack on Israel’s Jewish nature: Classically Guardian egregious absence of context (cifwatch.com)
• Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood obsesses, imputes racism, over Israeli construction of detention facility (cifwatch.com)
• Growing Pains: the Birth of Israel’s Illegal Immigration Crisis (cifwatch.com)
• A Baaaad Man! The Guardian’s angry Bibi (cifwatch.com)
• Deborah Orr Tweet defends ‘chosen people’ essay, complains about Zionists’ sense of victimhood (cifwatch.com)

A recent piece in the Guardian, Isareli PM: illigal African immigrants threaten identity of Jewish state, May 20, describing the simmering issue of Israel’s African migrants, included the following passage:

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

To quote the sadistic prison captain in ‘Cool Hand Luke’:

“What we’ve got here is…. failure to communicate.”

To diffuse the powder keg that Israeli cities with relatively high African populations are now sitting on, the intellectual cobwebs regarding refugees and migrants need to be swiftly cleaned out and a rapidly metastasizing groupthink ought be remedied by way of a realistic appraisal of alternatives.

Unlike the situation in other relatively well-off countries, Israel’s illegal immigration challenge is a recent phenomenon. The influx of Africans can be traced to 2005, after the Egyptian police attacked Sudanese refugees who were camped out in Cairo and demanded asylum. Jerusalem proved generous and word spread that migrants would be greeted hospitably and provided with job opportunities upon arrival in the State of Israel.

Since Hosni Mubarak was swept up and out of power during the twilight of moderation known as the ‘Arab Spring’, government authority has all but collapsed in the Sinai Peninsula. One byproduct of this lawless state of affairs has been a spike in the rate of illegal immigration to Israel from Africa. Over the last several months, Israel’s southern border with Egypt, by way of the Sinai, has turned into the primary point of entry for thousands of work-seeking migrants.  

While some of these fortune seekers are refugees, the vast majority are illegal infiltrators who are, along with drugs and weapons, smuggled into Israel by Bedouin tribesmen. Furthermore, while many illegal immigrants seek asylum status under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of the United Nations, only a fraction of all the illegal immigrants are actually eligible for this status.

In response, segments of the Israeli political establishment have been roused into action. Knesset member Danny Danon is pushing for a bill that would lead to the deportation of half the illegal migrants within a year and 80 percent within two years. And Interior Minister Eli Yishai recently proclaimed that most of the African refugees should “…be put into holding cells or jails…and then given a grant and sent back…” to their countries of origin.

Is this any way for the Middle East’s only true democracy to treat the most vulnerable segment of its society?  And doesn’t Israel have a special moral obligation, in light of Jewish history, to be sympathetic and “..welcoming of those fleeing persecution…”?

No, it does not.

For one thing, it’s important to consider the impact of illegal immigration on Israeli society’s most vulnerable members: native-born Israelis and legal immigrants with low skills and low levels of education.

Academics, media elites, lawyers, human rights activists and other professionals have the sweet luxury of claiming the moral high ground on the illegal immigration debate: their livelihoods aren’t on the chopping block; their opportunities for advancement aren’t being increasingly scuttled.

The plight of immigrants seeking refuge from some of the most forsaken corners on earth is a moveable tragedy worthy of our sympathy and outrage. Yet, Israeli society’s first and primary responsibility is to its legal citizens and immigrants.

Furthermore, the economics of allowing illegal immigrants to remain under the charge of local municipalities in particular and the Israeli government as a whole, which would have to maintain services such as law enforcement, health care, housing, and schooling, is prohibitive. Israel is not France and it simply doesn’t have the means to provide for the welfare of tens of thousands of migrants.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that African refugees will be treated with humanity, explaining that “… we will continue to care for refugees, but they make up a minimal part of the human wave. Entire populations are starting to move, and if we don’t act to stop this we will be flooded.”

Yet, how does Israel counteract this ‘human wave’?

There has been much talk and uneven implementation of plans to complete the Egyptian border fence, expand detention centers and increase policing of companies that do violence to the law by hiring undocumented workers.

The concept of detention camps in a Jewish state has been greeted with grave misgivings and gratuitous moralizing by large swaths of the international human rights community.

However, it bears reminding that these facilities will include classrooms, places of worship, community centers, medical centers and outdoor recreation areas.

No solution will be comprehensively effective and every solution will likely evoke the slippery law of unintended consequences. Yet, Israel’s much touted economic miracle, given official sanction when the country joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2010, has apparently brought with it a slew of ‘first world injuries’. Israel’s high standard of living and open society, in a region distressingly devoid of both, has ignited the imagination of fleeing Eritreans, Sudanese and citizens of other economically deprived peoples.

In the name of true moral equivalence, Israel should be allowed to deal with this internal crisis without being held to a unique standard that is apparently the special legacy of Jewish history to the modern Jewish state.  

Related articles

• Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood obsesses, imputes racism, over Israeli construction of detention facility (cifwatch.com)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sherwood continues:

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

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

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

Adding to Zaku’s vague charge, Sherwood writes:

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

“Tens of thousands…”?

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, where did Harriet Sherwood get this number?

We’ll likely never know.

But this is no minor question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related articles

• The racism of no expectations: The Palestinians on the pages of the Guardian (A six month review) (cifwatch.com)
• What the Guardian won’t report: Attempted Palestinian kidnapping of Israeli mother & baby (cifwatch.com)
• Harriet Sherwood’s continuing advocacy journalism on behalf of Palestinian terror suspects (cifwatch.com)
• Guardian photo story on Gaza drawings by Palestinian who are children curiously on-message (cifwatch.com)
• Contrary to what The Observer claims, there has not been “relative peace” in Israel (cifwatch.com)
• Suzanne Goldenberg avoids mentioning her Jenin lies at the Guardian Open Weekend (cifwatch.com)
• Harriet Sherwood legitimizes characterization of Israel’s border fences as ‘sign of weakness’ (cifwatch.com)
• Guardian’s biased coverage of terrorist hostilities in Israel’s south: Numbers, headlines and photos (cifwatch.com)

Thank you very much for all the support I received in light of last Monday’s Palestine Society event at SOAS when I was manhandled and told I was a “typical Israeli”, even though I am a proud Brit.

I received incredible emails from all over the world with people appreciating my attempts to cover anti-Israel meetings in London and appalled by my treatment.

I received emails from those who completely disagree with my views on Israel, but were still appalled by the way I was dealt with.

I never got to the bottom of why I was called a “typical Israeli”. Only that student knows what was in his mind.

I had a very constructive chat with SOAS who said they had been inundated with emails from both sides but who wanted to continue to welcome me to SOAS and they said they will be reviewing their filming policy.

Much has been made of my not applying for consent to film, but when I was thudded in the shoulder from behind and shouted at to stop filming I wasn’t asked whether I had been granted such permission by SOAS. As it happens I didn’t know there was a filming policy as it has never been mentioned at any SOAS event I have attended (and I have attended a fair few).

There was also at least one other person filming who, it seems, didn’t have the required permission either. Meanwhile, I always see students filming on their IPhones.

And, unless I nodded off temporarily, none of the required announcements in accordance with the filming policy were made at the start of last Monday’s meeting by the organisers themselves!

I believe that in a public space such as a university freedom of speech is commensurate with a right to cover that freedom of speech without fear or hindrance. No one should be disallowed from filming solely because of their political views.

I was targeted last Monday night because of my political views. No one else filming would have been roughed up like that. And I have never disrupted an event, despite what is being put about by my detractors.

Sadly, SOAS students, it seems, have received a highly defamatory and incendiary statement from the SOAS Student Union on behalf of the Palestine Society, which has potential repercussions for my personal safety at SOAS and which was sent to me by a concerned SOAS student. One of the paragraphs states of me:

“By now, we are well aware of his intentions. He first provokes, intimidates and insults (including racially) speakers, organisers or members of the audience and violates generally accepted conventions of public meetings.”

This is reminiscent of another SOAS talk I attended on 16th April about Israel’s Arab minority where I wasn’t even filming. At the talk I was verbally insulted by Gilbert Achcar, a SOAS lecturer, who, after I had asked a perfectly reasonable question during the Q&A, told the room that I was a “professional disruptor”, that had he known I was coming he would have barred me from attending and that I had left insulting remarks on his answering machine. He then told me to get out.

Of course I didn’t leave messages on his machine. I wouldn’t even dream of it.

Aggressive targeting of those supportive of Israel is not confined to university campuses. At the beginning of the year I was put through a torrid few months when Peter Scott and Salim Alam of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign tried to have me prosecuted for harassment because of some videos and photos I posted of them demonstrating against Veolia outside the Natural History Museum in December.

I was at a reasonable distance while filming their political activism but I ended up being called into Notting Hill Police Station to be questioned about my filming and what I had written on my blog. Scott and Alam seemed to have failed to tell the police that I and others are constantly filmed and photographed for their anti-Israel blog.

To my relief the police eventually decided against any further action, but had it come to court the following footage might have made interesting viewing. It shows Salim Alam outside the now defunct Ahava shop in Covent Garden getting up close and personal to the camera of Roy from Campaign4Truth who was filming legally but still, as you can see, gets his camera whacked by one of Alam’s colleagues:

Related articles

• Camera grabbed, rucksack snatched and racially abused at SOAS (cifwatch.com)
• Who’s afraid of Richard Millett? (cifwatch.com)
• Chair of Manchester Palestine Solidarity Campaign declares Israeli Hoopoe birds ‘Aves non gratae’. (cifwatch.com)
• Video: The secret of Israel’s success (cifwatch.com)

Who are the Palestinians?

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

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

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

• What is the Palestinians’ guiding moral ethos? 

• Which political principles and traditions would inform a future Palestinian state? 

• If the Palestinians achieve political independence, how will they treat their citizens? Will the state be truly democratic? What rights will be guaranteed for political, religious, ethnic and sexual minorities?

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

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

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

• Most stories on the ‘Palestinian’ page are merely cross posted from the ‘Israel’ page, and often have little to do with Palestinians, their society, or government. This is especially curious in light of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians are governed by Palestinians: all of Gaza, and in Areas A (civilly and militarily) and B (civilly) of the West Bank.

• The number of stories or commentaries devoted to critiquing or analyzing government policies in Gaza or the PA: 7 out of 183  (here,  here, here, here, here, here, here)

• Number of stories focused on human rights abuses against Palestinians by the governments of Gaza and the PA: 4 out of 183  (here, here, here & here).

• Number of stories about Palestinian antisemitism or other racism/intolerance: 0 out of 183

• Number of stories focused on acts or attempted acts of terrorism against Israelis: 0 out of 183  (In fairness, there were several stories reporting on the barrage of rocket attacks from Gaza in March, but none were framed as terrorists attacks against Israeli civilians as such, and all emphasized Israel’s retaliatory attacks and the resulting Palestinian casualties.)

Related articles

• CiF’s Khaled Diab decries Palestinian fixation on ‘right of return’, but still seeks one state solution (cifwatch.com)
• What the Guardian won’t report: Attempted Palestinian kidnapping of Israeli mother & baby (cifwatch.com)
• What the Guardian won’t report: Palestinians continue to laud Itamar Massacre terrorists (cifwatch.com)
• Harriet Sherwood’s continuing advocacy journalism on behalf of Palestinian terror suspects (cifwatch.com)
• Observer op-ed on ‘hunger strikers’ exposes double standards on administrative detention coverage (cifwatch.com)
• Guardian corrects story with false translation of Noam Shalit interview after his son’s release (cifwatch.com)
• Who’s afraid of Richard Millett? (cifwatch.com)
• Contrary to what The Observer claims, there has not been “relative peace” in Israel (cifwatch.com)
• Guardian photo story on Gaza drawings by Palestinian who are children curiously on-message (cifwatch.com)

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

One question:

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

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

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

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

Yael Shahak and her daughter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The terrorists [then] fled…”

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

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

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

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

Suspect Mouhmad Ramdan

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

Is the following Guardian headline even conceivable?

Related articles

• Guardian corrects story with false translation of Noam Shalit interview after his son’s release (cifwatch.com)
• What the Guardian won’t report: Palestinians continue to laud Itamar Massacre terrorists (cifwatch.com)
• Lost in anti-Zionist translation? Guardian misquotes Noam Shalit on Palestinian hostage taking (cifwatch.com)
• Harriet Sherwood’s Munich Massacre story follows Guardian rule on obscuring Palestinian terrorism (cifwatch.com)

News item:

“The queues of cars waiting to cross from the tiny 2.6 sq mile territory into [the neighboring country] have lengthened dramatically in the last week, as … border patrols have been ordered to make things more difficult for motorists and workers, increasing security checks in a move condemned … as “childish”.

No, this is not from another article about the attempt to prevent terrorists entering Jerusalem.  Nor is the territory in question “Al Kuds”.

It is Jabal Tariq – i.e. Gibraltar – and the neighboring country manning the checkpoints is, of course, Spain. And where better to read about the issue of checkpoints than in The Observer: Gibraltar’s jubilee party sends signal to Madrid .

The reason for the Spanish crackdown is the celebration of the British Monarch’s Jubilee. The Jubilee is being celebrated with particular emphasis in Gibraltar, which was ceded under the Treaty of Utrecht to the British in 1713 by the Dutch, who won the War of the Spanish Succession – whatever that was – which probably had a lot to do with royal jewels and possibly ‘strategic marriage’.

Even worse – Gibraltar – I meant to say the fourth most sacred rock in Islam, Jabal Tariq – was  captured from the Caliphate by the Spanish in 1462 – almost 700 years ago.

Of course, history would not be the same without the Jews.  Yes, it appears to be the case that the Spanish used their mandatory powers to sell the holy territory of Jabal Tariq to Jews in 1474.  

I am not about to check the following, except to note that Spain pulled a particularly dirty trick on the Jews two years later in 1476. In fact, Spain should be using the UN and EU and UNHRC and Amnesty International to force Britain to hand over גברלטר  to those to whom Spain sold it then stole it back.

After the conquest, King Henry IV assumed the title of King of Gibraltar, establishing it as part of the municipal area of the Campo Llano de Gibraltar. Six years later Gibraltar was restored to the Duke of Medina Sidonia who sold it in 1474 to a group of Jewish conversos from Cordova and Seville in exchange for maintaining the garrison of the town for two years, after which time the 4,350 Jews were expelled by the Duke as part of the Inquisition.

But as we celebrate Jerusalem Day, the next time the a member of Spanish government  has something to say about checkpoints, or Catherine Ashton has something to say about the “occupation”, I will grimly mutter “Tariq Jabal and Utrecht”.

And if, 700 years from now, anti-Zionist activists are still trying to divide Jerusalem (or call it Al Kuds), or the EU is still going on about the plight of the millions of stateless Palestinian refugees and UNRWA’s budget has swallowed up more resources which could be  better spent on developing countries, I hope there will be some blogger also whispering the magic words on Jerusalem Day: “A Tariq Jabal and Utrecht to your Al Kuds and Oslo”.