Tag Archives: Ali Abunimah

May 21 2013

Glenn Greenwald doubles down on claim that pro-Israel factions nixed Massad essay (Updated)

See update below.

As we reported yesterday, Glenn Greenwald Tweeted his outrage after Al Jazeera recently published and then deleted an appallingly antisemitic essay by Joseph Massad – titled, ‘Last of the Semites’ – which you can read here. Massad’s nearly 4000 word attack on Jews and the Jewish state explicitly advanced the argument that there is an “ideological similitude” between Zionism and Nazism and, in sum, was difficult to distinguish from the bile found on extremist websites.

Greenwald expressed his outrage over the removal of Massad’s pseudo intellectual assault against Jews, thusly:

As we noted, the identity of Greenwald’s “usual suspects” wasn’t difficult to determine, as he linked to a predictable take on the Massad row by Ali Abunimah at Electronic Intifada which accused the Qatari-based media group of caving in to “Zionists extremists” – naming the Jewish trio of  Jeffrey Goldberg, John Podhoretz and Rahm Emmanuel.

Though Greenwald refused to answer our query, during a Twitter exchange, asking him to clarify his allegation against “the usual suspects”, we didn’t have to wait long to receive an answer, as the ‘Comment is Free’ columnist addressed the topic in his latest post titled ‘Al Jazeera deletes its own controversial op-ed, then refuses to comment‘.

The fact that Greenwald, per the title, was indeed unable to get a clear answer from Al Jazeera on why they removed Massad’s essay didn’t represent a significant obstacle in his determination to reach a ‘conclusion’ about the media group’s decision.  After addressing the “controversial” nature of Massad’s Zionism-Nazi allegations – writing: “I’m not expressing any views here on the merit of Massad’s arguments because that’s irrelevant to the issue” – he then pivoted to the question of who was to blame for the stifling of Joseph Massad. 

Greenwald writes the following:

I spent much of the weekend emailing various Al Jazeera officials for comment, to no avail. Everyone either ignored my multiple inquires or said they were barred from commenting and referred me to the head of the outlet’s PR department, who never responded.’

Greenwald, further into his post, begins to reveal “information” he was able to receive from unnamed ‘sources’:

Al Jazeera’s deletion of this Op-Ed, and especially its refusal to provide any explanation for what happened here, is significant beyond just this one episode. Several people who work for the outlet, none of whom was willing to speak for attribution due to fear of retaliation by the network’s officials, say that Al Jazeera officials have become much more cautious and fearful ever since they purchased Current TV last December for $500 million and prepared to enter the US television market under the brand name “Al Jazeera America”

Greenwald then expands on the cause of the Arab news outlet’s new-found caution.

In particular, these sources say, the primary impetus for the removal of the Op-Ed came from Ehab al-Shihabi, who was recently named to head the American TV network. They say that he is petrified that angering “pro-Israel” factions in the US will bolster the perception of Al Jazeera as both anti-American and anti-Israel, thus dooming the network with both corporate advertisers and cable carriers and render it radioactive among mainstream politicians. Al-Shihabi, they say, went to the network’s top executive in Doha, Director-General Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani, and demanded the removal of the Massad Op-Ed.

…

The question is whether this can continue now that Al Jazeera is seeking to establish a serious TV presence in the US. The Qatari regime is a close American ally, hosting several vital US military assets used to wage the war in Iraq. But the regime has come under criticism from US officials and “pro-Israel” commentators for its support of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. It is hard to see how a US television network owned by the regime in Qatar will regularly broadcast journalism that is truly adversarial to its close ally, the US government, or air commentary that offends influential political factions in the US.

As we’ve documented continually, this particular accusation is par for the course for Greenwald, who has shown himself to be seemingly obsessed with the alleged power of “influential” “pro-Israel factions” in the US.

Here are a few examples from his former blog at Salon:

“So absolute has the Israel-centric stranglehold on American policy been that the US Government has made it illegal to broadcast Hezbollah television stations…”

“Not even our Constitution’s First Amendment has been a match for the endless exploitation of American policy, law and resources [by the Israel lobby] to target and punish Israel’s enemies.”

“Meanwhile, one of the many Israel-Firsters in the U.S. Congress — Rep. Anthony Weiner, last seen lambasting President Obama for daring to publicly mention a difference between the U.S. and Israel — today not only defended Israel’s attack (obviously) but also, revealingly,pronounced:  ”Even if we are the only country on earth that sees the facts here, the United States should stand up for Israel.”  In other words:  who cares how isolated it makes us or what harm we suffer?”

“It is simply true that there are large and extremely influential Jewish donor groups which are agitating for a U.S. war against Iran, and that is the case because those groups are devoted to promoting Israel’s interests…”

And, it is simply true that the ideological territory which Glenn Greenwald claims routinely endorses tropes about the injurious influence of Jewish power which share a long and toxic antisemitic pedigree. 

UPDATE: This evening Al Jazeera reposted the Massad piece, which prompted Greenwald to Tweet the following:

Al Jazeera editors explained their decision to republish Massad’s hateful screed thusly:

After publication, many questions arose about the article’s content. In addition, the article was deemed to be similar in argument to Massad’s previous column, “ Zionism, anti-Semitism and colonialism“, published on these pages in December.

We should have handled this better, and we have learned lessons that will enable us to maintain the highest standards of journalistic integrity.

Our guiding principle has always been “the opinion and other opinion”. Our pages have always been – and will always be – open to the most thought-provoking thinkers and writers from across the globe.

Al Jazeera does not submit to pressure regardless of circumstance, and our history is full of examples where we were faced with extremely tough choices but never gave in. This is the secret to our success.

Evidently, those “influential” “pro-Israel factions” aren’t so influential after all!

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May 20 2013

An ugly disgusting rant: Joseph Massad and Glenn Greenwald attack ‘the usual Jewish suspects’

Shortly after Julie Burchill’s January commentary, titled ‘Transsexuals should cut it out‘, at the Observer was completely removed after thousands of readers complained that her piece was bigoted towards transsexuals, the Observer’s decision was defended by their readers’ editor,  Stephen Pritchard.  

Pritchard called the decision a rational one, based on his contention that Burchill’s essay was “needlessly offensive” and “gratuitously insulting”.

Though some in the media were highly critical of the decision by the Observer (a Guardian sister publication) to pull Burchill’s piece, Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian’s putative defender of free speech, was mostly silent on the Burchill Affair.  Indeed, his Tweet, on Jan 13, shortly after Burchill’s piece was published should give some indication as to why.

‘An ugly disgusting rant’ would certainly be one way to characterize Joseph Massad’s despicable essay in Al Jazeera on May 14, which argued the following:

  • Zionism not only equals racism, but the ideology itself is antisemitic.
  • Zionists cooperated and collaborated with the Nazis during the 30s and 40s.
  • Zionism should be understood as the fulfillment of the Nazis’ dream, and that the there is a strong “ideological similitude” between the two movements.

As Petra Marquardt-Bigman has argued, the writings of Massad (who has contributed to ‘Comment is Free‘ and Electronic Intifada) can easily be confused with material found on extremist racist websites.

There is one exception to this paradigm, however. Massad is of Palestinian origin, so his otherwise boilerplate extreme right narrative about Israel and Jews is compromised a bit by these howlers:

  • Unlike Zionists, who, by virtue of their Zionism, are antisemitic, “Palestinians have remained unconvinced and steadfast in their resistance to anti-Semitism“.
  • Unlike ‘Zionist anti-Semites’, “the Palestinian people have mounted a major struggle against…anti-Semitic incitement”.

Whilst there were no Tweets by Greenwald expressing outrage over Massad’s pseudo intellectual racist assault against Jews, the decision by Al Jazeera to remove the Massad article from their site sent Greenwald into a fury:

In case there is any doubt who Greenwald is referring to by “the usual suspects“, in the Tweet he links to a piece criticizing AJ’s decision (and defending Massad) by Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada – whose support for Massad is not surprising as he advanced the Zionism = Nazism narrative in a Tweet in 2010 – which accused Al Jazeera of caving in to “Zionists extremist” Jews, such as Jeffrey Goldberg, John Podhoretz and Rahm Emmanuel.

It really takes a mind occupied by the most crude antisemitic stereotypes about the danger of Jewish power to conjure a scenario by which a Qatari based pro-Sunni Islamist media group was strong-armed by a small gang of powerful Jews into censoring an otherwise meritorious essay.   

Greenwald is a Jew by birth, and though we don’t possess some sort of piercing mentalism which would allow us to see the bigotry which may lurk in his soul, it should be clear to anyone who has seriously studied the “liberal” Guardian’ commentator that his moral sensibilities are – at the very least – compromised by a callous indifference to even the most explicit and malicious expressions of Jew hatred. 

May 11 2013

Guardian’s BDS promotion fails to tell readers what it really is

The Guardian’s coverage of Stephen Hawking’s decision to withdraw from a conference in Israel has so far included no fewer than eight items in three days.

The initial report by Harriet Sherwood and Matthew Kalman – published on May 8th – was followed by a sensationalist Guardian poll on the subject and another article by Sherwood on the same day. The next day – May 9th – Sherwood and Kalman were joined by Sam Jones to produce an additional report which includes quotes from Omar Barghouti and Samia al Botmeh, without making it clear that the latter is a member of PACBI – the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel – and a policy advisor for Al Shabaka. 

Also on May 9th, the Guardian published an article by Jennifer Lipman criticising Hawking’s decision and a piece by Ali Abunimah – also of Al Shabaka – in its support. On May 10th yet another article by Harriet Sherwood, together with Robert Booth, appeared on the Guardian’s pages and that was accompanied by the publication of four letters on the subject – three of which supported Hawking’s decision. 

Throughout all that plethora of coverage, the Guardian has made no effort whatsoever to explain to its readers the aims of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign and the ideology which steers quotees such as Barghouti and al Botmeh or contributor Abunimah.

Ironically, the nearest thing to such an explanation comes in Abunimah’s article where he states: 

“The Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) aims to change this dynamic. It puts the initiative back in the hands of Palestinians. The goal is to build pressure on Israel to respect the rights of all Palestinians by ending its occupation and blockade of the West Bank and Gaza Strip; respecting the rights of Palestinian refugees who are currently excluded from returning to their homes just because they are not Jews; and abolishing all forms of discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel.”

Couched in the fashionable, yet much abused, language of “universal human rights”, Abunimah’s flowery yet anodyne description will do little to help readers understand that the ultimate product of the BDS delegitimisation campaign – if allowed to succeed – will be the denial of the basic human right of self-determination to Jews.

“PACBI leads the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel, but of course its real aim is not merely to persuade musicians to refuse to appear in Tel Aviv or to encourage people not to buy Israeli goods.  The bottom line of all the PACBI rhetoric is that with its uncompromising demand for the ‘right of return’ for Palestinian refugees to places west of the ‘green line’, it aspires to eliminate Israel as the Jewish state in precisely the same manner as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad do.  Members of PACBI, including the suited academics at Birzeit, may not be building bombs, firing rockets or strapping on suicide belts, but their ultimate aims are identical to those who do.”

The leaders of the BDS movement are ‘one-staters’: their ultimate hope is not to see the Israeli state and a Palestinian state existing peacefully side by side. Their aim – which is entirely transparent to those not dazzled by the faux human rights rhetoric – is one Palestinian state ‘from the river to the sea’, with – at best – a minority Jewish group making up part of its population. It is therefore not surprising that in 2010 an Al Shabaka policy brief opened with the following question:

“Many commentators expect the direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians to fail. But there is a much worse scenario: What if they “succeed?” “

It is, of course, the Guardian’s prerogative to promote the BDS campaign’s latest high-profile ‘poster boy’ as much as it likes, but in the name of common or garden honesty it should at least have the courage of its ‘feel good’ convictions to explain to its readers the precise nature of the discriminatory, antisemitic, anti-peace ideology (which stands in direct opposition to international efforts to bring the Arab-Israeli conflict to a peaceful conclusion) which the Guardian appears to have etched upon its banner. 

Apr 2 2013

William Sutcliffe’s Guardian-approved anti-Israel propaganda for teens

Alison Flood’s March 31 Guardian/Observer report on a new novel by William Sutcliffe about the Israeli ‘occupation’ includes a quote by the self-described Jewish atheist which encapsulates how the most facile understandings of both the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the broader political realities of our day often pass for serious commentary.

‘…the story of our era is the divide between the haves and the have-nots, and it seemed the wall in the West Bank was very specific to that situation, but also symbolic of other things happening elsewhere”.

As befits such platitudinous prose, Sutcliffe’s new work is targeted towards a less mature audience.

teens

Flood’s review and interview begins thusly:

Pitched as a fable, his crossover novel is set in a city split in two by a vast wall. On one side live the privileged, the occupiers – and our hero Joshua. On the other live the desperate, the occupied, and when Joshua, hunting for his lost football, discovers a tunnel that leads under the wall, he sets in action a series of dreadful consequences. Without making it explicit, it soon becomes clear that this is the West Bank, that Joshua, 13, is Jewish, and that Leila, the girl who saves his life on the other side of the wall, is Palestinian.

The cover art chosen to illustrate the story of “privileged” Jews and “desperate” Palestinians is thoroughly consistent such an obtuse paradigm: An olive tree encircled with barbed wire, juxtaposed with a title evoking the morality tale Sutcliffe is demanding the young reader to imagine.

wall

What finally pushed the writer to commence the project?  Flood explains:

“…he heard about PalFest, Palestine’s annual travelling festival of literature, and decided he needed to travel to the region. He’d been to Israel before, but after experiencing PalFest, “everything I thought I knew about Israel was shattered.”

As CiF Watch has noted (here and here), Palfest (the Palestine Festival of Literature) is the (partially UK-funded) anti-Israel advocacy vehicle which has included a significant proportion of participating writers (and ‘recommended authors) who have been featured in the Guardian or ‘Comment is Free’ – including Ali Abunimah, Ben White, and Ghada Karmi.

Sutcliffe’s commentary on the ‘revelatory’ benefits of his Palfest journey continues:  

 He’d been to Israel before, but after experiencing PalFest, “everything I thought I knew about Israel was shattered. Seeing a military occupation up close, seeing a small number of people with guns telling a large number without guns what to do… it was so much more brutal than I thought it could be.”

It’s unclear where precisely Sutcliffe ventured in the West Bank, but it’s curious that in his apparently serious overall examination and research of the region he somehow failed to learn of the ubiquity of Palestinians ‘with guns‘, explosives and other weaponry – ‘activists’ who are of course waiting for the opportunity to deploy such lethal instruments of terror against Israeli civilians without guns.

Archive: Weaponry Uncovered in Palestinian's Home

Weaponry Uncovered by the IDF in a Palestinian’s Home, 2012

To critics who may question Sutcliffe’s expertise on such a subject, his answer is as follows:

“it’s reportage – which is why I went out of my way with the two research trips”.

Yet, Sutcliffe’s reporting cum ‘activist tourism’ left him unable to grasp the most elementary story about the fence which divides Palestine and Israel, the muse which inspired his Middle East tale: That there once was a time when the borders dividing the two peoples were porous, when a genuine peace seemed, to some, to be within reach – an ideal which was shattered by an onslaught of snipers, bombings and suicide belts.  

The security fence about which he writes was born of shrapnel, savagely fired, coursing through organs and limbs, tearing apart bodies, and shattering lives.   

Flood then adds the following:

[Sutcliffe] is also playing on another familiar children’s literary motif – that of the portal from the mundane to a world of fantasy. “What’s happening in this book is a kid living in a complete fantasy, who discovers a portal to reality. I’m taking the cliché and turning it upside down,” he says. “I’ve been with the settlers… and I think they are living in a world of complete fantasy.”

However, as one ‘Comment is Free’ critic recently and quite keenly observed about such lazy depictions:   

‘Whilst Palestinians have names, faces and form – their injured children…blazoned across headlines – Israelis are faceless, without history or family. They are not cute or charming or tragic. They are not gifted musicians or parlour comedians.  Israelis are just, coldly and callously, ‘Israelis’, unnamed, numbered and otherwise ignored, unless they are ‘settlers’ or soldiers, when they are as if motherless, amorphous.

In his evocation of Israeli caricatures, unrecognizable as they are crude, it is  Sutcliffe who conjures the most risible and fantastical tale.

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Mar 22 2013

Guardian Mid-East editor legitimizes the political pornography of Ali Abunimah

The Guardian’s Middle East Editor, Ian Black, provided an analysis of President Obama’s March 21 speech in Jerusalem (titled ‘Obama shows emotional and political intelligence with Jerusalem speech‘) which represents a good example the Guardian Left tendency to impute ‘authenticity’ to the most radical and uncompromising activists.  

This journalistic tick can be seen, for instance, in Harriet Sherwood’s decision to award ‘progressive’ Hechsher labels to both Joseph Dana and slain terror-abetting anti-Israel campaigner, Vittorio Arrigoni. 

Such political posturing also colored their coverage of the so-called ‘Palestine Papers’ in 2011, where Mahmoud Abbas’s putative flexibility during negotiations with Israel over the refugee issue was characterized as ”craven” – as ”selling out” Palestinian rights – in a series of reports which seemed to reflect the media group’s attempt to ‘out-Palestinian’ the Palestinians themselves. 

Their institutional tendency to promote a radical chic (and even terrorist-chic) brand is also evident in their frequent decisions to publish Islamist extremists, and the dearth of space they provide to peaceful and truly moderate two-state proponents.

In his March 21 report Black praised Obama’s speech at the Jerusalem Convention Center as “appealing to ordinary Israelis over the heads of their political leaders”, and as representing “a smart combination of emotional and political intelligence in pressing the buttons that matter to mainstream Jewish opinion in Israel.”

Palestinians, however, observed Black, were not impressed.  He noted that some Palestinians complained that Obama’s speech lacked depth or substance, before citing a critique by Ali Abunimah, the American born, Ivy League educated son of a Jordanian diplomat who founded ‘Electronic Intifada’ (EI) – and who, from his home in Chicago, engages in hate-filled ”commentary” about the Jewish state with abandon.

ali

Indeed, the Tweets by Abunimah (a former ‘Comment is Free’ contributor) cited in the following passage by Black are a fair representation of the activist’s social media style.

Black writes the following: 

Ali Abunimah, an outspoken critic of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and a supporter of the one-state solution, tweeted in anger: “Palestinians yearning for peace live in a tough neighborhood, surrounded by racist settlers and a murderous US-backed sectarian ‘army.’ Obama’s ‘history’ of Israel is as delusional as his US history which still praises slave-owning, slave-raping founding fathers. This speech will drive liberal Zionists wild because it legitimizes their segregationist desires & dresses them up as ‘peace’ & ‘democracy.’”

The text cited, however, represents several separate Abunimah Tweets.  So, for clarity, here are the three (140 character or so) ‘meditations’ by Abunimah which the Guardian Middle East editor evidently found elucidating. 

Here are a few additional Tweets that day by Abunimah not cited by Black:

Zionist psychopaths: 

Israel slaughters children:

Israel is a “supremacist” state:

Though Abunimah blocks many pro-Israel activists from following him, it still isn’t difficult to locate his Twitter paper trail – which includes a tweet concerning the murder of Israelis by Hezbollah terrorists in Bulgaria in 2012, which clearly suggested a Mossad conspiracy,  and another one calling for Palestinians to start a 3rd Intifada.

However, Abunimah is no mere American pro-Palestinian activist.  He’s defended Hamas and has flirted with insidious Israel-Nazi analogies – once even Tweeting the following: 

nazi

The fact that the Guardian’s Middle East editor – who undoubtedly could have found a more moderate, lucid and truly peace-seeking pro-Palestinian critic to cite – decided to hitch his wagon to Abunimah’s hateful political brand is an apt commentary on the Guardian’s continuing  fealty to the most belligerent voices in the region.

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Feb 28 2013

The Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood cites Richard Silverstein…problems ensue

The question of what blogs and Twitter accounts journalists cum propagandists follow is always an interesting one – and one of the more under-explored dynamics which can help explain some of the more hysterical anti-Israel coverage in the mainstream media (and in the Guardian).

So, for instance, we weren’t surprised when Harriet Sherwood cited a quote by Joseph Dana (Sherwood referred to the anti-Israel activist as a “journalist”) in an effort to contextualize Netanyahu’s speech at the UN in late September, or when, in 2011, she characterized the slain International Solidarity Movement volunteer, Vittorio Arrigoni, as a “peace activist“.  Indeed, both incidents only confirmed what we knew about where the Guardian Jerusalem correspondent’s political sympathies lie. 

In the time Phoebe Greenwood has recently spent filling in for Harriet Sherwood (who’s evidently been ‘away from her desk’ for the past couple of weeks) she has cited the observations of two blogs whose editors explicitly call for a one-state solution – Ali Abunimah’s Electronic Intifada in a Feb. 18 report and, most recently, Richard Silverstein’s ‘Tikun Olam’, in a Feb. 27 Guardian report titled ‘Second Laptop Stolen from Israeli nuclear chief‘. 

Silverstein and Greenwood

Silverstein and Greenwood

Greenwood’s story, about a burglary at the home of the head of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, Shaul Horev, two nights ago, included the assertion that, among the items stolen from Horev’s home was a laptop – though other news sources are now reporting that a laptop was not in fact stolen.  While facts regarding the case are still sketchy, Greenwood attempted to frame the story for readers in the following paragraph:

The blogger Richard Silverstein pointed out the irony that Israel had previously claimed to have obtained secrets about Iran’s nuclear programme from a stolen laptop which it used as evidence of Iran’s ambitions for nuclear weapons – claims now widely believed to be untrue

Whilst you can gain a glimpse into Silverstein’s troubled relationship with facts – and his rush to publish faux “scoops” - here, I decided to check the particular assertion, cited by Greenwood, on his blog to see if there was any truth to it. 

Silverstein, who updated his original Feb. 26 post the following day to note that his initial report that a laptop was stolen from Horev appears to be untrue, nonetheless engages in the kind of Schadenfreude-inspired stream of consciousness blogging rampage which is a trademark of the anti-Zionist American Jewish left.

His post includes the following passages:

Israel boasts of its military and intelligence advantages over its enemies. It can, so the story goes, penetrate the most secure defenses of its enemies. Israel, on the other hand, is impregnable. It’s security assets are secure.  What’s important about this story is that Israel is beset by a major case of hubris. It creates a narrative that arrogates to itself permanent domination over its enemies. It foresees no weaknesses, no vulnerabilities. Except when there are.

There is another delicious irony in this scandal. Israel, several years ago persuaded the world that an allegedly stolen Iranian laptop containing top-secret documents about its nuclear weapons program had mysteriously come into its possession. The laptop was a fraud as was its supposed theft.

A brief check of the link he provided demonstrates that his suggestion of Israeli duplicity, regarding a laptop purporting to contain secret documents, is itself a fraud.

The link takes us to a 2008 post at the site anti-war.com, titled ‘Iran Nuke Laptop Data Came from Terror Group‘.

However, the post, by Gareth Porter, only claims that the “George W. Bush administration has long pushed the “laptop documents” – 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop – as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon.” Further, Porter notes that “German officials have identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK)”.

Whilst the post includes idle speculation that Israel may have known about the “laptop documents”, it goes on to add that Israeli intelligence had “chosen not to reveal it to the public”.  Additionally, other more mainstream media outlets, such as the New York Times, which reported on the story, similarly claimed that it was US officials who lobbied the international community that the documents were authentic.  The NYT piece, ‘Relying on Computer, US seeks to prove Iran’s nuclear aims’, barely even mentioned Israel in any context.

Silverstein’s claim that Israel had attempted to “persuade the world” that the laptop documents represented a smoking gun regarding Iranian nuclear intentions appears to be completely untrue.

So, did Greenwood even bother to check the link in Silverstein’s post before publishing her report?

However, if your goal on any given report about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is to impute maximum malice to the Jewish state, bothersome issues such as the veracity of your sources are necessarily of less importance than advancing the desired narrative.  

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Sep 29 2012

Antony Loewenstein imagines a Hamas-approved future ‘After Zionism’

On August 14th I attended a book launch for ‘After Zionism‘, at the Educational Bookshop in Jerusalem, which featured three of the book’s contributor’s: Diana Butto, Joseph Dana and Antony Loewenstein.   

(In addition to Butto, Dana and Loewenstein, contributors to the book include Israeli BDS activist Omar Barghouti, Jonathan Cook, Jeremiah Haber, ICAHD’s Jeff Halper, Ghada Karmi, Saree Makdisi, John Mearsheimer, Ilan Pappe, Sara Roy and Phil Weiss of Mondoweiss.)

Here’s a photo I took at the event.

From left to right: Diana Butto, Antony Loewenstein and Joseph Dana

Butto is a Palestinian lawyer, former Berzeit University Professor, and former legal adviser to the PLO negotiating team. At one point during the Q&A of the Jerusalem launch Butto condemned the Palestinian Authority for cooperating with Israeli security, thus denying Palestinians the possibility of engaging in “resistance”.

Dana, an American Jew who (at some point in his life) had a political epiphany and, in his words, “broke free of the Zionist indoctrination program“, has contributed to the site +972 and now evidently lives in Ramallah where he claims he is now free to explore his Jewish identity. During the talk Dana evoked the South African model in characterizing how Israel will eventually implode and, at on point, without a hint of irony, mocked Israelis’ “siege mentality”, while simultaneously calling for the state’s destruction. 

Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney-based Jewish anti-Zionist commentator who often warns of the danger posed by the organized Jewish community in his country.  For instance, he has called for a public inquiry into the alleged power and influence of the Jewish lobby in Australia, and once warned that “old, connected Jewish men” are demanding the Australian government’s “blind dedication to the Jewish state.”

At the event in Jerusalem he squarely blamed diaspora Jews for “enabling” Zionism, an ideology which he believes should (to paraphrase the loosely translated words of one prolific world leader) “vanish from the pages of time” – a sentiment he repeated in a ‘Comment is Free’ essay published on Yom Kippur (Sept. 26).

In his CiF piece Loewenstein argued that “growing numbers of Palestinians under occupation are talking about adopting the one-state solution and pressuring their leaders to follow“.

He also added the following on the evidently unstoppable momentum of his bold proposal:

“The status quo is beginning to crumble, though, with senior PA officials now talking about abandoning the two-state idea and pushing for a one-state equation. Hamas concurs.“ [emphasis added]

Yes, Hamas, which cites the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ in their founding charter, and openly supports the the murder of Jews – and not merely Israelis – grants their political hechsher.  One can assume that it’s only a matter of time before Jews world-wide will see the wisdom of the Islamist terror group’s enlightened ideology.

Loewenstein may be a marginal figure but his brand of “social justice” is quite ubiquitous among self-styled Jewish anti-Zionist progressives and, like so many Jewish enemies of Israel, is not self-hating but, rather, actually fancies himself a ‘better Jew‘.

He once wrote the following:

“I feel incredibly Jewish and am very proud of my religion’s dissenting traditions. I write extensively about Israel and the Palestinians precisely because I care deeply about the fate of the Jewish people, not because I want to shun my background.”

His love is so great that he believes in a final political solution which would potentially place six million Israeli souls in the hands of a hostile majority.

Arabs – who expelled the overwhelming majority of their Jewish citizens (from lands where they had lived for centuries), and today are compromised by endemic antisemitism - would, we are to believe, live in harmony with their Jewish neighbors, and benevolently rule over Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

While Loewenstein represents a crude caricature of genuine progressive sensibilities, the Guardian, by continuing to legitimize the extremely dangerous, typically malevolent (if incredibly unserious) proposal that Jews be forced to relinquish their hard-fought freedom and political independence, positions itself squarely within the moral plane of antisemitism.

Aug 27 2012

CiF moderators delete comments noting Guardian’s moral hypocrisy over Trevino Tweet

H/T Margie

The following CiF comment, beneath the line of a post by Guardian Readers’ Editor Chris Elliott’s on the Trevino affair, pointed out the hypocrisy of the outrage over Trevino’s one Tweet, in the context of the Guardian’s licensing of racist extremists who advocate terror. (See AKUS’s take on Elliott’s defense, here)

The comment was deleted by ‘Comment is Free’ moderators, so ‘Henrybrav’ posted it again. It was then deleted without a trace, and ‘Henrybrav‘ informed us that he was put on pre-moderation.

Then, ‘Henrybrav’ re-registered as ‘Bravhenry’ and re-posted the same comment, including text informing readers that he (‘Henrybrav’) had been put on pre-moderation, and that he did not expect his comment (as ’Bravhenry’) to stay up for long. He also suggested that other commenters should ask the same question.

That comment was quickly deleted, and ‘Bravhenry’ was banned completely.

As you may recall, our August 21st post pointed out that off-topic and quite vicious ad hominem attacks against Josh Trevino (accusing him of advocating murder) beneath the line of his inaugural post at CiF, by the likes of Ali Abunimah and Ben White, were not deleted by CiF moderators.

So, it seems that it is okay for CiF commenters to impute the absolute worst motives to pro-Israel commentators, but forbidden to point out the moral hypocrisy of Guardian editors – which – in its most egregious manifestation – includes legitimizing the voices of Islamist terror.

The Trevino episode continues to demonstrate the Guardian’s true illiberal nature – as well as the boundless hubris and hypocrisy exhibited by their editors.

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Aug 27 2012

The Guardian’s Pathetic Excuse for Firing Joshua Treviño

A guest post by AKUS

Since we are now supposed to believe that the Guardian’s entire case for firing Josh Treviño rests on the basis of an undisclosed conflict of interest, I wish to make a full disclosure before continuing:

“I had never heard of Treviño before this, to the best of my knowledge. I have never read anything by him, not even his articles in the Guardian.”

There – now we’ve got that out-of-the-way  let’s turn our attention to Chris Elliott’s bizarre attempt to brush this scandal under the carpet: The readers’ editor on… the bruising fallout from a writer’s offensive tweet.


Actually, we don’t really need to read any further than this strap line to understand why Treviño was pink-slipped. Clearly, it was the “almost 200 complaints” the Guardian received from its loyal if rapidly shrinking readership, and not the excuse given – that he omitted to reveal a conflict of interest

What seems to have been overlooked in the commentary about this affair is that in order to justify the dismissal the Guardian seized on a complaint from an undisclosed source about lack of disclosure on another topic altogether that pre-dated Treviño’s new role as a contract columnist by 18 months:

“There was a second complaint on Thursday 23 August received by senior editorial staff in the US and referred to the readers’ editor. This concerns another blogpost Treviño had written as a contributor to the Guardian’s US site – before he was on contract – on 28 February 2011 about a Republican congressman’s inquiry into Islamic radicalisation, which quoted the Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak.”

Quite simply, the Guardian built a case for caving in to the Electronic Intifada and Palestinian Solidarity Campaign mob by noting Treviño did not footnote an article written some 18 months earlier (NOT the recent article) that had nothing to do with his first article under contract.

The Guardian states: 

“[Treviño] had been a consultant for an agency retained by Malaysian business interests and ran a website called Malaysia Matters, which should have led to a footnote disclosing the relationship.” 

Good Lord! Treviño quoted the Malaysian prime minister 18 months before he was contracted “on the eve of the Republican convention and in the middle of an already vicious and highly partisan election campaign, [to] explain and analyse the politics of the US Republican party.” Nothing to do with Malaysia. They simply were handed a hook to hang him on by their undisclosed source that they used to pretend they were not caving in to anti-Israeli bigots.

Had Treviño continued writing for the Guardian he might even have quoted a Republican without adding a footnote that he was a US citizen or Republican, thus once again breaching the Guardian’s “necessarily broad” guidelines, as Treviño put it in the joint statement he released with the Guardian.

Just to make sure they dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s, the Guardian has updated Treviño’s 2011 article:

But what was the horrifying quote from the Malaysian PM that Treviño used without disclosing his conflict of interest?

In fact, the “conflict of interest” was so tenuous as to be essentially non-existent. You couldn’t make this up – the man who anti-Israeli activists Ben White and Ali Abunimah and the rest of them fought to have dismissed called for the US Congress to view Muslims and Islam in a more positive light!

Trevino wrote:

“Consider, too, what Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak told me this past Wednesday in Istanbul (from where I am writing), when we discussed the Muslim Brotherhood in a group conversation about Islam and democracy [see footnote (i.e., the new Guardian footnote)].

The Brotherhood, said the PM, “shouldn’t be part of the [democratic] process as long as they don’t reject violence and extremism … Anyone who wants to be part of the political process should adopt values that are compatible with democracy.”

That’s a Muslim democratic head of state affirming some very Burkean basic principles. We shouldn’t fall prey to the conceit that Muslims abroad speak for Muslims at home, nor vice versa – but might Congressman King’s hearings note that there are grounds for optimism in both camps?”

Noam Cohen, writing for the New York Times, noted the irony of Abunimah’s success in shooting Muslims in the foot in The Guardian Backtracks From a Bold Move in Hiring.

“The post that caused Mr. Treviño’s departure was in fact a defense of American Muslims against Congressional hearings, a bit of irony not lost on Mr. Abunimah. When asked if having The Guardian part ways with Mr. Treviño over an article sympathetic to Muslims was akin to convicting Al Capone on tax evasion (my clarification of the appropriateness of this particular metaphor will appear next week), Mr. Abunimah said the thought had already come up among his friends.

Nevertheless, there was only happiness on Mr. Abunimah’s blog that The Guardian “has done the right thing.”

Janine Gibson, editor-in-chief of Guardian US (the Guardian has layers of  bureaucracy that the USSR would have envied), apparently dissatisfied with Chris Elliott’s honest revelation of the real reason for dropping Treviño had this to say in a final attempt to pretend it all did not happen the way it so obviously did:

“This has been an eye-opening week. We knew that there are dangers inherent in attempting to be fair-minded and allow our opponents as well as our friends a voice and we have learned several lessons. But I hope we will continue to try and find ways to engage with honestly held philosophies and opinions.”

Not so eye-opening for those of us who have had the jaw-dropping experience of watching a paper once known for its willingness to tolerate the opinions of others ban and dismiss all those who disagree with its Stalinist line.

Treviño joins alumni like Melanie Phillips and Julie Burchill in the honorable list of those who are personae non grata at the Guardian because they support Israel. Treviño was kicked out simply because the Guardian could not bring itself to live up to its founder’s philosophy and protect him from the Electronic Intifada unleashed upon him.

Since Elliott, at least, clearly understands why he was forced to drop Treviño, if he finds his backbone I would not be surprised if he resigned after this shameful episode. But the Guardian has no shame, facts are no longer sacred, the voices of opponents must be crushed, and that may be too much to expect.

Footnote: I have never run a website that consulted for anybody that was retained by somebody. Or whatever.

 

Aug 26 2012

Background on Glenn Greenwald for Guardian readers: ‘sock puppets’ & ‘smart spam’

While the Guardian claimed they cut their ties with Josh Trevino over an ethical breach, the bullying by anti-Zionist extremists such as Ali Abunimah, who objected to Trevino’s unapologetic opposition to Islamist terrorists and their supporters, was clearly the main reason.

Either way, I thought it would be fair to provide an occasional glimpse into the background of Glenn Greenwald, the other U.S. contributor who the Guardian hired along with Trevino.

While we will spend a good deal of time, in subsequent posts, exposing Greenwald’s history of extreme anti-Zionist (and anti-American) commentary, including explicitly antisemitic narratives about the injurious effects of Jewish power on US policy, here’s a glimpse into an almost comical ethical breach by Greenwald which caused quite a stir back in 2006.

(First, a “sock puppet” in internet-speak is a reference to a false identity assumed by a member of an online community who spoke about himself while pretending to be another person.)

Here’s a good summary of the Greenwald ‘sock puppet’ scandal, as reported by the blog, ‘Ace of Spades‘.

“Shawn (at the blog, ‘Sky is Red’), started the ball rolling by noting that many of Glenn Greenwald’s on-line defenders seemed to use very similar language, causing suspicion that these fake internet posters, or “sock-puppets,” were actually Glenn Greenwald himself.

A poster calling himself “Ellison,” defending Greenwald on this site, is found, conclusively, to have the same IP as Glenn Greenwald himself, posting on Patterico’s site. (Note: This article is written humorously, and is very long, because half of it is jokes. A briefer digest is available at Patterico’s, if you just want to get to the point. Read Patterico for the digest, read me for the jokes.)

Then more sock-puppets — “Thomas Ellers,” “Ryan,” and “Wilson” — were discovered on other websites, all somehow using Greenwald’s IP address.

Greenwald denies the charges with a vague insinuation his “magic friend” is obsessively trolling rightwing sites defending him under assumed names.

Another sock-puppet discovered, again obsessively defending Glenn Greenwald, this time under the name “Rick Ellensburg.” Worse yet, “Rick Ellensburg” is shown to use many of the same tics in writing style as Glenn Greenwald. (And of course he shares Greenwald’s IP as well.)

Even worse– the final nail in the coffin. While the previous post demonstrated “Rick Ellensburg” regurgitating Glenn Greenwald’s arguments, in his writing style, a closer examination shows he also PRE-gurgitates Glenn Greenwald’s arguments, writing comments very similar to Glenn Greenwald posts the day before Glenn Greenwald actually writes them on his blog.

Additional similarities in the writing style of Glenn Greenwald and his sock-puppets discovered, further undermining the already-preposterous claim that it is his “Magic Boyfriend” writing these posts.”

You can see a more thorough post on Greenwald’s sock puppetry at the blog, Patternico’s Pontifications.

Image courtesy of Patternico blog

Further, a few years later another incident occurred which raised questions about Greenwald’s relationship with the truth.

In 2010, blogger Adam Holland revealed that Greenwald ‘Liked’ conspiracy monger Alan Hart on his Facebook page.

As Holland noted, Hart believes (among other crazy conspiracy theories) “that, on 9/11, Israeli agents controlled the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center via remote control devices hidden in cell phones”, and  ”that Israel stole nuclear weapons from a U.S. military base and intends to use them to destroy an American city.”

Greenwald responded at Holland’s blog, thus:

Holland replied to Greenwald’s bizarre reply by noting the following:

“Greenwald’s Facebook “likes” — the ones that all allegedly resulted from spam — included several anti-Zionists of an unsavory nature (Cynthia McKinney and Lew Rockwell stand out) but no Zionists.

He’s now taken the list from public to private on his profile. Or the Magical Mystery anti-Zionist Facebook spam is attacking again.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had mystery spam click a page ‘Like’ on Facebook which I didn’t approve.

Moreover, in the two incidents covered in this post, Greenwald’s explanations seem, at best, extremely implausible: ‘magical friends obsessively trolling right-wing sites’ and ‘mystery anti-Zionist Facebook spam’!

Stay tuned. It’s likely that the ethically challenged Greenwald may be the gift who keeps on giving. 

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Aug 26 2012

My ‘Times of Israel’ post: In firing Treviño, Guardian’s hypocrisy laid bare

The following was published today at Times of Israel.

The Guardian’s August 15 announcement that Joshua Treviño would be joining its US politics team provoked predictable outrage by some of the most virulent Israel-haters.

One of the first screeds published on the appointment of Treviño was by “one-stater” racist Ali Abunimah, himself a contributor at the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” through June 2009, who wrote a piece for Al Jazeera, as well as several others at his own Electronic Intifada site, to protest the Guardian’s apostasy.

MJ Rosenberg and Richard Silverstein also condemned the appointment.

On August 19, the Guardian published a letter criticizing the appointment of Treviño, by a who’s who of anti-Israel campaigners, chastising the Guardian for employing someone they characterized as holding “extremist views.”

The main complaint of all Treviño’s critics is the now-famous flotilla-related tweet by Treviño in June 2011 – 106 characters which, according to Abunimah and his anti-Zionist friends, represent “incitement to murder:”

The hypocrisy of this group of hardcore Israel-haters and apologists for Islamist extremists — who comically wear the mantle of “anti-racists” — is staggering.

None of these sensitive souls was the least bit bothered by “Comment is Free” publishing, for instance, Azzam Tamimi – who supports suicide bombing against Israelis. Indeed, in 2011, Guardian editors published a letter by a UK professor explicitly endorsing, on ethical grounds, deadly terrorist attacks by Palestinians on Israeli civilians — a decision which was later defended by Guardian readers’ editor Chris Elliott.

Read the rest of the essay, here.

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Aug 24 2012

Guardian caves in to bullying on Josh Trevino

A joint press statement just published announced that Joshua Trevino and the Guardian “have mutually agreed to go [their] separate ways”.

So, the Guardian has rounded off a week and a half of despicable treatment of a new employee (including a torrent of deliberately un-moderated abuse under his debut article) by caving in to the organised bullying campaign executed by Ali Abunimah and his minions.

Joshua Trevino

Whilst the press statement regarding the Guardian’s parting of ways with Joshua Trevino cites another patently ridiculous reason for the termination of what could possibly be the shortest contract in the history of journalism, it is all too obvious that the real background is the recent high-profile – and often vicious – campaign against Trevino. 

Strikingly, the Guardian does not even have the guts to admit that it has succumbed to the pressures of extremists and instead, cynically contrives a breach of conflict of interest under its editorial code as the pretext for terminating Trevino while ignoring  the real reason behind his termination. 

No doubt Abunimah and company will soon be crowing from the rooftops, but their ‘victory’ is a Pyrrhic one because it has exposed once and for all the fact that their favourite Trojan horse of terror-condoning extremism in the guise of a mainstream media outlet is susceptible to pressures from a tiny, but vocal, minority which includes Hamas supporters, terror excusers and racists. 

One doubts very much that the majority of the Guardian’s already drastically dwindling print readership will be content with the knowledge that freedom of speech in their newspaper of choice is dictated by a tiny cult of extremist cranks. Not only has Ali Abunimah succeeded in exposing the sad truth that comment is anything but free, he has in addition proved that facts are far from sacred. 

He has also exposed himself and his fellow travellers for the crude bullies that they are. Had Josh Trevino tweeted anti-Semitic comparisons between Israel and the Nazi regime, support for a proscribed terror organisation or the annihilation of a certain sovereign state, he would have kept his job and inevitably become a darling of the anti-Israel crowd.

Instead, Abunimah has made a mockery of the right to freedom of expression by insisting that anyone who holds opinions different to his own not only forfeits the right to be heard, but also forfeits the right to employment – at least at a newspaper which anti-Israel campaigners appear (not without reason) to think they control.  

One cannot but conclude that ultimately, Joshua Trevino will thank his lucky stars that he got out of an association with a media outlet which meekly allows itself to be dictated to by the likes of Ali Abunimah. But this whole mismanaged farce also makes one wonder about the current quality of relations between the Editor of CiF America, Matt Seaton and  Guardian US Editor in Chief, Janine Gibson (who only ten days ago was proudly announcing the addition of Trevino to the US team) and their London-based colleagues who so clearly and very publicly undermined that acquisition by publishing the letter of complaint headed by Sarah Colborne of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.  

After all, the bottom line of this story is not about a writer named Joshua Trevino, but about the Stalinesque silencing of certain brands of opinion by intolerant extremist bullies.  

Aug 21 2012

Ben White, Ali Abunimah and ‘Comment is Free’ moderators’ egregious double standards

The Guardian’s ‘10 Simple Guidelines‘ for commenting beneath the line include the following:

1. We welcome debate and dissent, but personal attacks (on authors, other users or any individual), persistent trolling and mindless abuse will not be tolerated. The key to maintaining the Guardian website as an inviting space is to focus on intelligent discussion of topics.

8. Keep it relevant. We know that some conversations can be wide-ranging, but if you post something which is unrelated to the original topic (“off-topic”) then it may be removed, in order to keep the thread on track. This also applies to queries or comments about moderation, which should not be posted as comments.

Simple, no? Guardian readers must keep their comments on-topic and free of personal attacks against the author.

However, evidently Guardian moderators can make exceptions depending on the particular Guardian commenter.

The inaugural post at Josh Trevino’s new column on American politics at ‘Comment is Free’ (‘On politics, power and persuasion’, August 20th) was titled ‘Romney-Ryan, counterintuitive champions of Medicare‘ and elicited the following comments from professional Israel hater and friend of antisemites the world-over, Ben White. (Links to comments are here and here.)

White, of course, is referring to the row – which we’ve been covering – over a couple of Tweets by Trevino relating to the terrorist linked Mavi Marmara.

About 20 minutes later, Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the blog which instigated the row and a person whose Tweets have included support for the launching of a violent Third Intifada, endorsement of the Israel-Nazi analogy and, most recently, a bizarre conspiracy theory, commented thus:

So then someone named ‘Adam Levick’ weighed in, asking if moderators would delete White’s comments, which clearly ran afoul of the Guardian’s ‘community standards’. 

Within about 10 minutes the comment disappeared without a trace.

Subsequent attempts by this commenter to inquire about the comments of Abunimah elicited this message:

That’s right. The user privileges of ‘Adam Levick’ were suspended for what was evidently ‘Comment is Free’ apostasy, while the comments by White and Abunimah cited above have, as of the time of writing, not been deleted. 

If you want to complain about the Guardian’s double standards – and failure to abide by their own rules – please consider emailing or Tweeting ’Comment is Free’ editor Becky Gardiner.

becky.gardiner@guardian.co.uk 

@becky_gardiner

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Aug 20 2012

Guardian’s handling of Josh Trevino story exposes its fault lines.

According to an article by Helen Lewis in the New Statesman, the Guardian’s handling of the disproportionately vocal protestations from a small group of well-known anti-Israel activists (with Ali Abunimah at the helm) to the appointment of Joshua Trevino as part of its US team, is becoming downright bizarre. 

Lewis recounts Abunimah’s version of the story (as previously discussed here), including the amended press release which apparently went from describing Trevino as a member of the editorial team to a member of the commentary team. 

“As this screen capture shows, the Guardian edited its original press release. This is the new one:

Today the Guardian announced the addition of Josh Treviño to its commentary team in the United States. Formerly of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Treviño will be the newest commentator for the Guardian‘s growing US politics team through his column On Politics & Persuasion which launches on Monday 20 August.

And this is the old one:

Today the Guardian announced the addition of Josh Treviño to their editorial team. Formerly of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Treviño will be the newest Correspondent for the Guardian’s growing US politics team through his column “On Politics & Persuasion” which launches on Monday, August 20.”

Lewis then approached the Guardian herself:

“I contacted the Guardian, and a spokesperson told me “this really was just a straightforward error, albeit an unfortunate one”, adding:

I can confirm that there has been no change in Josh Trevino’s terms of employment – the contract has not been altered and he has most certainly not been “demoted” as some articles have suggested. In fact, a simple mistake was made in the press release and this was later corrected. It was clumsy but there is no change to Josh’s position.”

Ah! So it’s all down to an administrative mistake. Well, I suppose the Guardian would very much like everyone to believe that, but such a claim does nothing to explain Trevino’s clarification article on the subject of his flotilla Tweet which appeared on August 16th – the day after Ali Abunimah began  his campaign against Trevino with his first post on the subject at ‘electronic Intifada’. 

Had the Guardian itself considered Trevino’s Tweet problematic, surely either Trevino would not have been hired in the first place or an article of clarification would have appeared before or in conjunction with the press release of August 15th announcing his new position. 

But neither of those scenarios took place, which appears to indicate that the Guardian did not view Trevino’s appointment as a ‘hot potato’ until Abunimah began his crusade, with others soon tagging along. Only then did the damage control begin, in the form of the revised press release, the clarification article, the publishing of a letter protesting its own hiring policy and now, per Lewis, the “error” story. 

It is all too apparent that not only does the Guardian (or at least parts of its editorial team) not have the courage of its own convictions, but that it has allowed itself to be influenced and dictated to by an anti-Israel lobby determined to scupper the appointment of a writer it considers to be too ‘pro-Israel’, even though he was hired to write about a subject completely unrelated to the Middle East.  

Put in simple terms, the Guardian has reduced itself to the level of a phone-in reality show in which audience participation dictates who stays and who goes. 

Of course the Guardian’s track record shows no comparable sensitivity to public opinion when protests are voiced concerning anti-Israel contributors – even when they are members of a proscribed terror organization. 

But at least one thing is now crystal clear: for some reason the Guardian ascribes importance to the opinions of a bunch of fringe campaigners who aspire to bring about the dismantling of a UN member state and thereby deny one nation alone the right to self-determination. 

Be that because of an organizational culture of sympathy for that ideology or out of fear of losing its niche as the anti-Israel campaigner’s paper of choice, the fact remains that the Josh Trevino story has placed a useful spotlight on the Guardian’s fault lines. 

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Aug 20 2012

Josh Trevino Guardian gig outs Ali Abunimah’s double standards.

Ali Abunimah’s sanctimonious hissy fit regarding the Guardian’s hiring of Joshua Trevino continues. He is now on his fourth article on the subject – one at Al Jazeera and three on his own ‘electronic Intifada‘ site. 

Abunimah opened his Al Jazeera article of August 18th with these words:

“Something has gone badly wrong at The Guardian. In the name of “robust debate”, the venerable left-leaning liberal newspaper has effectively given its stamp of approval to speech that goes beyond mere hate, speech that clearly crosses the line into incitement to murder unarmed civilians and journalists. What lies behind this worrying development, and what does it tell us about the state of media in general?”

Do Abunimah’s words indeed reveal a specific moral stance from which is derived genuine concern for the health of the media? In order to make a judgment on that, one must also ask what Abunimah would have to say about someone who wrote the following words:

“Isn’t it the time for a popular Palestinian revolution in the form of a third intifada?”

As is well known, over 1,000 Israeli civilians (Jews and Arabs alike) were murdered during the second Intifada – with thousands more injured and often disabled for life. The person who wrote those words is therefore calling for the renewal of attacks upon unarmed civilians of all ages and creeds – in other words; incitement to indiscriminate maiming and murder. 

Surely Ali Abunimah would condemn such a call. According to his words above, he definitely would not approve of that person writing for a “venerable left-leaning liberal newspaper”. 

Or would he? 

The truth is that – like the signatories of the indignant letter to the Guardian published on August 19th – Ali Abunimah is not really worried by the content (as he chooses to interpret it) of Josh Trevino’s Tweet. What actually concerns Abunimah and his fellow travelers is who is doing the Tweeting. As long as the writer is in their camp, Abunimah et al can blithely contextualise all manner of indiscretions. 

Neither he, nor any others among the now selectively outraged, was anywhere on the horizon when, in January 2011, the Guardian published a letter from UCL professor Ted Honderich which specifically promoted moral justification for Palestinian terrorism against Israelis. 

The absence of any anguished articles on ‘electronic Intifada’ regarding that letter indicates that Abunimah did not consider it enough of a “worrying development” to merit condemnation of either the writer or the newspaper which published it. “The state of the media in general” was apparently not compromised in Abunimah’s view by the justification of indiscriminate murder of civilians in Israel. 

 Ali Abunimah and a whole host of opportunistically outraged objectors to Josh Trevino’s position at the Guardian have demonstrated their double standards with remarkable clarity during the past few days. Their objections are rooted solely in the fact that they perceive Trevino as being in the ‘wrong’ camp – and that remains blatantly obvious no matter how many ‘moral’ decorations they use to try to camouflage their hypocrisy.