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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?
A guest post by Anne, an Anglo-Israeli writer who blogs at Anne’s Opinions
It’s Naqba Day, and the Guardian is certainly not one to miss an opportunity to undermine Israel’s legitimacy. Yesterday’s contribution to this commemoration was an article by Khaled Diab. (Diab is a regular contributor to ‘Comment is Free’, and is a staunch supporter of the one-state solution.)
The general premise of Diab’s ’Comment is Free’ essay sounds fair enough, titled “Palestinians must prioritise people over lost land”, with the sub-title “Nakba day reminds Palestinians that dreaming of the right of return stands in the way of securing more vital rights”.
However, as we read through the essay the position suggested by the title (and some of the opening text) is undermined quite egregiously. He begins with an appeal to the emotions of the reader with an evocative story of a Palestinian grandmother who experienced the events of 1948:
“Perhaps few recall it better than my Palestinian neighbour, a sprightly great-grandmother who turned 90 this year. Born at the start of the British mandate to a prominent Jerusalem family, she gave birth to her second child just months before Israel’s declaration of independence. At first, she and her family were determined to stay put during the civil war that broke out following the UN vote to partition Palestine.
Then the Deir Yassin massacre occurred, leading to general panic among the Palestinian population. Fearing for the safety of their family, my neighbour and her husband packed a couple of suitcases and sought temporary refuge in Amman, then a tiny backwater of just 33,000 inhabitants.”
Deir Yassin is one of those “clashes of narratives” that are at the root of Palestinian hostility towards Israel, and which will never be agreed upon by both sides. The article points the reader to the Wikipedia entry for Deir Yassin but one can gain a much more balanced understanding of the event from the Jewish Virtual Library.
Regardless of the facts and numbers of casualties at Deir Yassin, the JVL explains that the Arab propaganda about the alleged Jewish violence against Deir Yassin’s residence backfired, thus confirming Diab’s neighbour’s story:
“Contrary to claims from Arab propagandists at the time and some since, no evidence has ever been produced that any women were raped. On the contrary, every villager ever interviewed has denied these allegations. Like many of the claims, this was a deliberate propaganda ploy, but one that backfired. Hazam Nusseibi, who worked for the Palestine Broadcasting Service in 1948, admitted being told by Hussein Khalidi, a Palestinian Arab leader, to fabricate the atrocity claims. Abu Mahmud, a Deir Yassin resident in 1948 told Khalidi “there was no rape,” but Khalidi replied, “We have to say this, so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews.” Nusseibeh told the BBC 50 years later, “This was our biggest mistake. We did not realize how our people would react. As soon as they heard that women had been raped at Deir Yassin, Palestinians fled in terror.”14
Returning to Khaled Diab’s article, we read:
“The family has never managed to regain or be compensated for their house in West Jerusalem but, unlike many others, they managed to return to East Jerusalem and settle just a few miles from their former home. Today, millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants live in neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, while significant Palestinian diasporas are found in Chile, the US, Honduras, Germany and other countries.”
This above paragraph really encapsulates the whole Palestinian “right of return” issue. The family fled due to their own leaders’ propaganda, but managed to return to “just a few miles from their former home”. In this case, why are they still considered refugees?
In this vein, Diab continues:
“Closely related to the Nakba is another political yin-yang: the Palestinian dream, and Israeli nightmare, of return. Palestinians, particularly the disenfranchised inhabitants of refugee camps, have clung on to their dream for the past 64 years. This is most poignantly symbolised by the keys to their former homes which many families have held on to. Politically, this longing has been expressed by Palestinians in their claimed “right of return”, which has been upheld by a number of UN resolutions, including Resolution 194 of 1948.”
However, Resolution 194 does not say what Diab thinks it says. Paragraph 11 states:
“11. Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible;”
It does not mention descendants inheriting the refugee status ad infinitum. And as proof of Israel’s compliance with this article, Diab’s grandmotherly neighbour herself, back in East Jerusalem, is but one confirmation of this fact.
Diab further relates how the Palestinian demand for “right of return” has taken over their political process but comes to the correct conclusion that this is a loser’s game.
“But at a time when the dream of Palestinian return is perhaps more distant than ever, and more and more Palestinians are being pushed off their lands by Israel, why are so many focusing on what to much of the rest of the world seems like a futile quest?
The reasons are complex and include disappointment and frustration at the crushing of the Palestinian dream of self-determination, on the one hand, and the cynical exploitation of identity politics as a substitute for real policies, on the other. Then there is the aggressive expansion of Israeli settlements, ongoing Israeli Nakba denial, as well as Israel’s insistence on a law of return for Jews but no right of return for Palestinians.”
Diab’s recitation of Israel’s “crimes” is repeating the failed propaganda exercise of the Palestinians’ early leaders in 1948. There is no “aggressive expansion of Israeli settlements” since no new settlements have been set up since the mid-1990s. Any new settlement building is done within settlements’ boundaries, and therefore does not encroach on any further land.
Further, Diab’s reference to what he characterizes as Israeli “Nakba denial” necessarily evokes “Holocaust denial”, a hyperbolic and completely unserious historical comparison.
As for Israel’s “insistence” on the Law of Return, that is a direct outcome of (and reaction to) 2,000 years of persecution throughout the world, both in the Western Christian world and the Eastern Moslem world, culminating in the Holocaust. If Israel were to be overrun tomorrow, 6 million Jews would be easy prey with nowhere to go, and politically persecuted Jews in the diaspora would, once again, have no place to take refuge.
Diab is now building up to the main thrust of his article, their treatment at the hands of their fellow Arabs, although he cannot resist a malicious dig at Israel once again:
“However, the trouble is that this fixation on return focuses aspirations on a remote, distant and perhaps unattainable goal, while drawing attention and energy away from the very real issues facing Palestinians across the region. Not only does Israel disenfranchise and discriminate against the Palestinian populations under its control, especially in the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians in many Arab countries are denied their rights too. [emphasis added]
Perhaps the starkest example is Lebanon where, on the back of fears of upsetting the small country’s fragile sectarian balance, some 400,000 Palestinian refugees, many of whom were born in Lebanon, are deprived of numerous basic rights – including citizenship, public healthcare and access to numerous professions – and forced to live in what are effectively ghettos, otherwise known as refugee camps. Jordan has done more than others to integrate dispossessed Palestinians by granting most of them citizenship but, even there, Palestinians still face a certain amount of discrimination and some of them have been made stateless again.
Though the status of Palestinians in many Arab countries is partly a product of classic xenophobia and a reluctance, as they see it, to pay for Israel’s crimes, much of this marginalisation stems from Palestinian and Arab fears that integrating refugees would hurt their political quest for nationhood and the ever-elusive return. But what this traditional equation overlooks is that a nation is not the land – which has been declared so “sacred” by both Israelis and Palestinians alike that any number of generations is worth sacrificing at its divine altar – but the sum of its people. [emphasis added]
So this Nakba day, 15 May, it is time for Palestinians to prioritise the people over their lost land, and to campaign, wherever they now live, for their full civil, social and economic rights and their cultural right to be recognised as a distinct community.”
I would say that it’s about time an Arab commentator stated this clearly.
Diab continues:
“That is not to say that Palestinians should forget the Nakba. Just like Jews mourned their “exile” for centuries, Palestinians have a right to keep the memory of their dispossession alive, though this is likely to become more spiritual and symbolic with the passing of each generation. And perhaps, counterintuitively for us today, as Palestinians cement their identity as a people without a land, they may, in a more tolerant and inclusive future, also start performing a kind of Palestinian version of Aliyah to a land with two peoples.” [emphasis added]
This co-opting of Jewish methods for mourning, commemorating the Destruction and Diaspora, and the 2,000 year-old Jewish wish to make “Aliyah” suggests a determined effort to construct a historical understanding necessary to one day supplant the Jewish nation itself.
Furthermore, with the innocuous little phrase “a land with two peoples”, Diab has managed to slyly insert a “one-state solution” proposal by the back door. This does not bode well for a future of peace and co-existence.
Diab is correct that the Palestinians must let go of their insistence on “right of return” because it is recognized as a non-starter. He is also very right in drawing attention to the miserable treatment the Palestinians receive at the hands of their brethren. However, aiming for a one-state solution will not bring the Palestinians any closer to a state of their own.
Related articles
- European conference organised by ‘Palestinian Return Centre’ launches new initiative. (cifwatch.com)
- Who’s afraid of Richard Millett? (cifwatch.com)
Richard Millett was called a “typical Israeli” last night at an SOAS Palestine Society event in London.
(The event included a presentation by Abdel Bari Atwan – a ‘Comment is Free’ contributor who can be seen here explaining that if Iranian missiles hit Tel Aviv he would “dance in [London's] Trafalgar Square” and here praising a terrorist attack against Israeli civilians.)
If you’re wondering whether the abuse hurled at Richard was racist, simply replace “Israeli” with any other identity and repeat the charge. ”You’re a typical Arab.” “You’re at typical Black,” etc.
Of course, Richard is not an Israeli. He’s a British Jew who routinely defends Israel and Jews at events hosted by the most hostile anti-Zionist, pro-Islamist (and often antisemitic) activists. His blog posts are frequently personal reports, using both photos and videos compiled while monitoring events hosted by the UK’s ubiquitous array of groups hostile to Israel’s existence.
His reports unambiguously demonstrate the illiberal nature of much of the pro-Palestinian movement. One post shows Baroness Jenny Tonge praising Hamas leaders at a Palestinian Return Centre event, another post details a confrontation with a Holocaust denier who attended a Palestinian Solidarity event and yet another recounts a PSC event at which Jews were compared to Nazis.
It’s quite telling that the incident began last night when participants objected to Richard filming their public event (where no restrictions on such recordings were in place and, as Richard noted, others were filming the event). What did they have to fear from a lone Jewish blogger who was merely attempting to disseminate information about what was said by a few pro-Palestinian activists?
One of the biggest scandals of the Guardian’s coverage of Israel and the Palestinians is the dishonest manner in which they frame the debate: a binarism which imputes good will and progressivism to nearly anyone claiming to advocate on behalf of the Palestinians on one hand and racism (or at least illiberality) to those unapologetically advocating for the Jewish state.
Perhaps Richard Millett is feared so much because he consistently gives lie to this absurd moral paradigm.
Related articles
This is a cross-post from Richard Millett’s Blog
When I went to last night’s Palestine Society event at SOAS (public advertisement above) the audience was greeted with this slide when we entered the Khalili Lecture Theatre:
The slide that greeted us in the KLT at SOAS last night.
Before journalist Abdel Bari Atwan or Oxford University’s Dr. Karma Nebulsi spoke we were shown a film. Here is the eight seconds I was able to film before I felt some quite sharp prods in my shoulder while being ordered to stop filming:
Next I am told “You’re a typical Israeli, you know that”, which I took as a racist comment:
Next I am told to stop filming and recording by the chairperson before a rather large chap who had subsequently seated himself in front of me got up, turned around and tried to grab my camera, leaving me with a throbbing finger, before making off with my rucksack:
In the act of snatching the rucksack my phone, glasses case, pens and voice recorder ended up all over the floor and under the seats in front of me. I had to kneel to pick everything up, but I’m still missing a pen.
The audience started to taunt me and slow hand clap. Bari Atwan remained silent throughout while Nebulsi had the nerve to accuse me of being disruptive. Bizarrely, she offered to escort me outside to retrieve my rucksack but I refused to leave until my stuff was returned. At no stage did anyone in the 40 strong audience come to my defence in any way:
Eventually, SOAS security retrieved my rucksack and, suprisingly, my coat, which must have been removed by someone from behind me while I wasn’t looking. My coat had my keys in it:
After my coat and rucksack had been returned and after I had managed to retrieve most of my belongings from the floor and from under the seats I left.
To say I felt shaken and pretty distressed is the least of it.
I have turned off the comments just for this blog as I don’t wish to have prejudiced anything that may or may not happen but if anyone can help me with the names of any of those in the clips above then I would be very grateful.
Also, I’d be interested in knowing the translation of the Arabic on the slide above.
My email is richardblog@live.co.uk
Ali Abunimah is a Palestinian-American journalist, former ‘Comment is Free’ contributor and leader of the BDS movement who The Jewish Daily Forward designated a “rock star“.
Abunimah, who’s an opponent of the existence of a Jewish state within any borders, has characterized Israel as a“supremacist” state, and approvingly cited those who compare Israeli behavior to that of Nazi Germany.
Abunimah is also co-founder of the site, Electronic Intifada.
Abunimah, not surprisingly, isn’t quite able to contain his rage against the Zionist menace on Twitter.
While following the hashtag on the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike (#palhunger) I came across the following pithy Tweets by Abunimah.
(Abunimah has blocked me from viewing his Tweets due to past Zionist apostasies, but those not banished can see his feed, here).
But, that Tweet was an exercise in self-restraint and sobriety compared to this:
Yeah, he’s got our number. Imprisoning Palestinians is the Zionist ‘reason d’être’, our founding principle, our driving passion.
We’re not motivated by the age-old Jewish desire to be ‘a free people in a free land’. That whole thing about “Jewish self-determinism” is just a convenient ruse.
Abunimah SO sees through us.
Related articles
H/T Margie
Peter Bradshaw wrote a largely positive review of Sasha Baron Cohen’s new film, The Dictator, in the Guardian, May 10.
Bradshaw wrote:
“Baron Cohen plays General Aladeen, the tyrannical ruler of the oil-rich north African rogue state Wadiya, who is intensely irritated by the western powers’ infatuation with the Arab spring.”
“[Aladeen] exerts a grotesque, Orwellian power and abolishes hundreds of words in the Adiyan dictionary.”
“His confrontation with Washington has reached a crisis after a speech in which he announced Wadiya was just months away from enriching uranium, and then corpsed and giggled uncontrollably when trying to claim that this was for ‘clean energy purposes’.”
Bradshaw comments:
“[The film] does…deliver laughs and weapons-grade offensiveness.”
“It is relentlessly immature and I was often reminded of the cheerfully reprehensible Kentucky Fried Movie in the 70s, a film unashamedly low in nutritional value. But it was very funny and so is this. The Dictator isn’t going to win awards and it isn’t as hip as Borat. Big goofy outrageous laughs is what it has to offer.”
Evidently, one reader (someone using the moniker ATTW) wasn’t amused, and wrote this comment:
Unpacking this comment (which has thus far garnered 39 ‘Recommends’):
- Conflating of Jews with Israelis: Cohen, a British Jew, is immediately tied to Israel. (Also, see this CW post about a similarly bigoted attack on Cohen by the Guardian’s Michael White.)
- Classic projection: The suggestion that Israel is an extreme anti-Arab, anti-Islamic country is a perfect moral inversion in light of the Arab world’s malign obsession with Jews and Israel, and endemic culture of antisemitism. It takes a lot of ideological conditioning to see the last 64 years as the Israeli/Jewish war against the Arab/Islamic world.
- Thinly veiled Nazi analogy: The reader sees a Jew mocking Arab dictators as somehow analogous to Germans mocking Jews in the years leading up to the Holocaust.
This off-topic, gratuitously anti-Zionist (and ad hominem) attack on Cohen has not been deleted by CiF moderators.
Related articles
- CiF reader sees Zionist fingerprints in international condemnation of Syria (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian reader’s thinly veiled threat against Jews doesn’t result in suspension of user privileges (cifwatch.com)
- CiF reader comment of the day: How the Israel lobby defeated Ken Livingstone (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Comment is Free’ reader Zionism = Nazism comment of the day (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian readers and their inalienable right to make Israel-Nazi analogies (cifwatch.com)
Jasmin Ramsey’s profile at the Guardian
The contemporary manifestation of classic antisemitic narratives regarding the injurious effects of Jewish power often include the suggestion that Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own nation. Such commentary also typically imputes enormous power to Jews who typically represent a tiny fraction of the overall population.
Such a synthesis of disloyalty on one hand and exaggerated power on the other allows the accuser to charge the Jewish community (or those lobbying on behalf of Jewish interests) of working to undermine their nation.
You don’t have to believe in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to see the hand of Jewry behind undesirable political developments, such as the suggestion (popular several years ago) that Jews working in various positions for former President Bush were responsible for his administration’s decision to invade Iraq.
As Lee Smith observed:
“According to this theory, administration principals like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, and the president—policymakers with actual decision-making power—were merely instruments in the control of vast Zionist networks.”
In many European countries the percentage of citizens who believe Europe’s Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own country, and/or have too much power, often exceeds 50%.
The following (Washington’s war of words against Iran, May 8) by CiF contributor Jasmin Ramsey, is a textbook example of the increasing tendency of the Guardian style left to blame organized pro-Israel Jewry for any political phenomena they find displeasing in the United States.
Ramsey, it should be noted, blogs at LobeLog.com - the site of Jim Lobe. Lobe writes about a number of topics but “exposing” the Israel lobby is a special focus of his, as can be seen by his posts at sites such as Electronic Intifada. Ramsey herself has posted at Mondoweiss and routinely opines on the threat posed by the Israel lobby at publications such as Al Jazeera.
Ramsey suggests, in her CiF essay, that the President of the United States is not responsible for his own policy regarding Iran, assigning blame instead to a more desirable target.
Her essay, which argues against both economic sanctions and military intervention, includes these passages:
“No single influential figure has made [a U.S.] war with Iran seem like a prospect more than Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu… who inspired more standing ovations during a May 2011 hardline speech to Congress (29 in total) than Obama did during his state of union address in January of that year, and it has been Congress that has been pushing forward the harshest measures against Iran.”
“…discussions of sanctions by the administration remain heavily focused on the punitive element – in response to ongoing pressure from Israel and a seemingly pro-Netanyahu Congress.”
...In the face of intense pressure from Israel and Congress during the influential Aipac conference in March, Obama bragged about imposing “unprecedented, crippling sanctions” on Iran which he said is now “feeling the bite”. [emphasis added]
Ramsey’s argument: Obama’s punitive measures against Iran were enacted not as the result of a rational policy debate within his administration regarding what’s in the best interest of the U.S. but, rather, in response to pressure from the Jewish state and its pro-Netanyahu supporters in Congress.
The commander-in-chief of the strongest nation on earth is putty in the hands of the Jewish state and it’s American “amen corner“.
Ramsey continues with her case that neocons and/or the Israel lobby exercises a dangerous degree of influence over U.S. foreign policy:
“Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a neoconservative-dominated thinktank composed of well-known hawks, has been analogizing sanctions as “silver shrapnel” that that can “injure” Iran for years. Frequently quoted in the media, Dubowitz recently boasted to a Canadian newspaper that the FDD has shared six reports exclusively with the Obama administration and congressional committees advocating harsher sanctions on Iran.”
“[Grecht was] Formerly a director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which is best-known for its influence over the Bush administration’s Iraq policy.” [emphasis added]
Conspiracy theories, whether antisemitic or not, are often motivated by intellectual laziness and the need to find a common thread (or root cause) that explains complicated (often unrelated) political problems.
Just as critics of the Israel lobby fail to note that support for Israel among the American electorate is overwhelming (demonstrating that support for the Jewish state in congress merely reflects mainstream public opinion on the issue), those who see the lobby’s influence in Obama’s tough sanctions against Iran similarly don’t consider that such policies reflect the views of most Americans.
Ramsey’s logic, so typical of those who advance such calumnies, can be boiled down to this:
A) A Non Jewish political leader in the U.S. or Europe supports a foreign policy position.
B) Jews, Zionists and/or the Israeli government previously advocated or lobbied for that same position.
Therefore, (A) must be the result of (B).
However, as the Guardian is continually demonstrating, the absence of facts, evidence or even a coherent argument has never been an obstacle for those committed to the pseudo science of Judeophobic logic.
David Wearing’s recent ‘Comment is Free’ essay (Bahrain may not be Syria, but that’s no reason for activists to turn a blind eye, May 8th) addresses what he feels is the tendency of nations to deflect criticism about their human rights records by pointing to far worse abuses in other countries.
“One recurring theme in the efforts to deflect criticism of the [The Bahrain Grand Prix] was the line that there are worse places than Bahrain. Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmad Al Khalifa, the regime’s foreign minister, tweeted: “If any here to cover ugly bloody confrontations, go to Syria…”
It didn’t take long, however, for Wearing to pivot to his desired target, Israel.
“The retort…that worse things are happening elsewhere, also happens to be a favourite of the Israeli state and its defenders.
Activists and journalists who draw attention to Israeli human rights abuses are by now well accustomed to hearing this argument being made, sometimes with the accompanying insinuation that Israel is being “singled out” for more sinister reasons.”
Of course, by “sinister reasons” he’s referring to charges that the obsessive critiques of the Jewish state frequently include tropes which recall antisemitic narratives – often regarding the dangerous power of organized Jewry.
A case in point is this Tweet by Wearing himself in January, which was one of several Tweets justifying why Israel is the subject of such intense media focus.
Oh yes, that “huge propaganda campaign”. A nation vigorously defending itself from criticism is, per Wearing and his political fellow travelers, a uniquely Zionist practice.
As I was curious to learn more about this “huge” hasbara subterfuge, I Tweeted him back.
Wearing’s reply:
So, Wearing is among those ‘Comment is Free’ contributors who genuinely believe that Israel is protected from its fair share of criticism (by a “huge propaganda campaign”), and that he is in the vanguard of a brave few who dare challenge Zionist power. Evidently, Wearing hasn’t checked the Guardian’s own data store which would indicate that, far from escaping its fair share of criticism, Israel receives grossly disproportionate coverage at the paper in comparison to other nations.
Turning back to Wearing’s latest essay, he writes:
“There is no serious doubt about the fact that both Israel and Bahrain have very poor human rights records…”
Suggesting a similarity in the human rights records of Bahrain and Israel is simply an unserious proposition. As Freedom House reports year after year, Israel is the only nation in the Middle East listed as democratic and “Free”.
Here’s Freedom House’s evaluation of human rights and freedom in Bahrain. Note, that six is the worse human rights score a country can receive, and one is the best.
Here’s what Freedom House wrote about Bahrain:
“The al-Khalifa family, which belongs to Bahrain’s Sunni Muslim minority, has ruled the Shiite-majority country for more than two centuries.
Bahrain is not an electoral democracy. The 2002 constitution gives the king power over the executive, legislative, and judicial authorities. He appoints cabinet ministers and members of the 40-seat Consultative Council, the upper house of the National Assembly.
formal political parties are illegal,
Freedom of expression is restricted, and the authorities routinely harass activists who criticize them publicly. The government owns all broadcast media outlets, and the private owners of the three main newspapers have close ties to the government. Self-censorship is encouraged by the vaguely worded 2002 Press Law, which allows the state to imprison journalists for criticizing the king or Islam…[emphasis added]
Citizens must obtain a license to hold demonstrations, which are banned from sunrise to sunset in any public arena. Police regularly use violence to break up political protests, most of which occur in Shiite villages.
Bahrain received a [human rights] downward trend arrow due to an intensified crackdown on members of the Shiite Muslim majority in 2010, including assaults and arrests of dozens of activists and journalists, as well as reports of widespread torture of political prisoners.”
And, here’s Freedom House’s rating of Israel’s human rights record:
Freedom House noted the following:
“Israel is an electoral democracy.
Press freedom is respected in Israel, and the media are vibrant and independent. All Israeli newspapers are privately owned and freely criticize government policy.
Freedoms of assembly and association are respected. Israel hosts an active civil society, and demonstrations are widely permitted.
Workers may join unions of their choice and have the right to strike and bargain collectively
The judiciary is independent and regularly rules against the government.
Women have achieved substantial parity at almost all levels of Israeli society.”
Wearing continues:
“Whether states [other than Israel] do worse things is largely beside the point…”
Actually, this is precisely the point: the stunning intellectual failure of many within the activist left (including much of the NGO community) to distinguish between flaws in liberal, democratic states and institutional and systemic human rights violations which infect societies governed by despots and tyrants.
Human Rights Watch founder Robert Bernstein wrote the following in a 2009 NYT essay:
“At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them — through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform.
That is why we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and undemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights. We wanted to prevent the Soviet Union and its followers from playing a moral equivalence game with the West
When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies.
Nowhere is this more evident than in its work in the Middle East. The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.
Only by returning to its founding mission and the spirit of humility that animated it can Human Rights Watch resurrect itself as a moral force in the Middle East and throughout the world.”
While Bernstein was focusing narrowly on Human Rights Watch his commentary is just as apt in addressing how much of the activist left fails to acknowledge the vital distinction between open and closed societies, has abandoned any claim to principled human rights advocacy and has descended into the abyss of moral equivalence.
The question of whether or not the malign obsession with the Jewish state in the media and “human rights” community is motivated by antisemitism can often be a distraction from the larger issue concerning the moral and intellectual seriousness of leftist critiques of Israel.
A left which can’t distinguish between democracies and tyrannies or, at least, routinely engages in rhetorical obfuscations to blur such profound differences, is no longer entitled to claim the mantle of liberalism or progressivism, even narrowly defined.
As such, David Wearing’s recent commentary is a perfect illustration of a dynamic this blog is continually revealing: the Guardian’s abandonment of anything resembling principled liberal thought.
Ynet recently published a story - “Shin Bet seeks to raze Itamar terrorists home” – which reports on a recommendation presented to Israel’s defense minister to approve the demolition of the homes of Amjad and Hakim Awad, who were responsible for Fogel family massacre in Itamar over a year ago.
Ynet notes:
“According to the recommendation the houses in the village of Awarta should be destroyed as part of the deterrence mechanism against Palestinian families who give refuge to members of the family involved in terrorism.”
While we covered the brutal attack on the Fogel family last year, I had forgotten that the Palestinians’ families had indeed hidden evidence (including the weapon used in the deadly terrorist act) and aided the two murderers in covering up their tracks.
Further, we published two subsequent unsettling posts about Itamar; one about the hideous behavior of the killers’ family who, according to a Ynet report in October, mocked and taunted the surviving Fogel children on the day they came to the village for the olive harvest.
Tamar Fogel
The other troubling report - cross posted by Giulio Meotti – focused on the Israeli court‘s sentencing of Hakim Awad to five life sentences for the murder of five members of the Fogel family.
Meotti wrote:
“Ruth Fogel was in the bathroom when Awad killed her husband Udi and their three-month-old daughter Hadas, slitting their throats as they lay in bed. Awad slaughtered Ruth as she came out of the bathroom. Then he moved into a bedroom where Ruth and Udi’s sons Yoav (11) and Elad (4) were sleeping. He then slit their throats.”
Referring to Awad’s behaviour in court, Meotti added:
“In court, Awad always smiled at the camera…Awad said he has “no regrets” and flashed the “V” sign for victory while he was leaving the courthouse. “I am a person like you, I have no mental condition, I never had a serious illness,” Awad said to the judges. His smile was sincere.”
Hakim Awad in court
Further, a few months ago Palestinian Media Watch reported that the PA’s official television channel, on a program devoted to Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israeli jails, the PA’s official television channel featured a telephone interview with the mother and aunt of one of the murderers of the Fogel family. The mother praised her son and said that he was one of the two who had carried out the “operation at Itamar.” Hakim Awad’s aunt called him a “hero and legend.” The program was broadcast twice (PMW, January 29, 2012).
However, in addition to the lack of remorse by the killer, the cruelty of his family towards young Tamar and the cover up by Awad’s relatives, the Ynet story cited above also included this, which suggests that killer’s families aren’t the only Palestinians who to have engaged in such reprehensible moral behavior after the massacre.
Ynet:
“At first, Awarta village chiefs denied any connection between their village and the Itamar massacre but at the same time, after their arrest, the two murderers became idols in their village, according to defense establishment sources, with support banners and their pictures hung up throughout Awarta.” [emphasis added]
In reading the Guardian’s coverage of the region, I’m often struck by the manner in which reports on Israel often lack any resemblance to the nation in which I live. Indeed, Harriet Sherwood’s reports should be seen as part of a broader mission to find evidence in support of her preconceived ideologically driven view of the region.
Political phenomena which fall outside the desired narrative are either downplayed or ignored. Similarly, Palestinians appear in the Guardian’s tales of the region largely as abstractions: poor, downtrodden, dispossessed, victims void of nuance or (often) any sense of moral agency.
All of this explains this fictitious headline accompanying a Sherwood report published shortly after the massacre:
Sherwood’s story didn’t even attempt to support (in the subsequent text) the assertion that Palestinians (living in Awarta and elsewhere) were morally outraged by the terrorist act – likely because little if any genuine outrage was actually expressed.
In fact, a poll conducted last May (2011) in the West Bank, Gaza and E. Jerusalem demonstrated that nearly one-third of Palestinians explicitly support the murder of the Fogels.
Clearly, even the most undeniable evidence that the killer’s family and their broader community continue to the laud the behavior of Amjad and Hakim Awad will never find its way to the pages of the Guardian.
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A guest post by Fritz Wunderlich, loyal CiF Watch reader
[Editor's Note: We often get emails from supporters who ask us to publish posts about antisemitism and the assault on Israel's legitimacy at newspapers and sites other than the Guardian. While we typically don't have much time to devote to monitoring other media, Mr. Wunderlich offered to introduce our readers to what he felt was an institutional bias against Israel (and the state's supporters) at the site, OpenDemocracy, and we agreed.]
OpenDemocracy (OD) is a UK-based “progressive” site for opinion and news about international affairs, politics, and culture. OD was founded in 2000 by Anthony Barnett, David Hayes, Susan Richards and Paul Hilder. OD has been funded by a number of philanthropic organisations, including the Ford Foundation, the Atlantic Philanthropies, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, and others.
This is not a general assessment of OD, but merely a snapshot meant to address what I feel is OD’s institutional hostility towards Israel and climate of tolerance towards thinly veiled anti-Semitic tropes employed by commenters. While promoting the values of free speech this e-zine often doesn’t hesitate to censor voices which challenge its bias.
To begin with I initially visited OD when I was under the impression that it was another outlet for thoughtful, reasoned debate. But I soon discovered it was something completely different.
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OD claims to advocate free speech, but not personal abuse. However, the working reality is different.
In addition to the downright anti-Semitic comments at OD, those who raise objections to the dominant anti-Zionist narrative are often mocked or ridiculed.
When you challenge the dominant Palestinian narrative you’re often called a racist, fascist and so on. Or, classic anti-Zionist invectives are employed, such as ‘Israel is a colonial power’, ‘terrorism is legitimate resistance’, ‘Israel is an apartheid system’, ‘Zionism is a racist ideology’, and ‘the Jewish state has no moral legitimacy’.
Both the editors at OD, and most commenters, don’t like the concept of a nation-state, (especially the Jewish one), at all. However, when I’ve asked why contributors and commenters support Palestinian nationalism, they often respond by arguing that such oppressed people are entitled to be nationalistic under their particular circumstances.
Many commenters consider themselves advocates of all peace seeking Israelis and Palestinians, complain vociferously about racist Zionists and constantly denounce Israel as the main obstacle to peace in the region, a terror state and so on.
Here are a few comments worth noting: (None of these have been deleted by OD moderators.)
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When I comment about anti-Semitism (or simply lies and smears about Zionists) below the line at OD the moderators typically dismiss the complaint and my post is typically deleted while the offensive comments are not. I’ve even written to the editors, which typically elicits a less than serious and thorough response.
Unsurprisingly, OD mainly publishes articles (above the line) criticizing and demonizing Israel, by writers such as (former CiF contributor) Antony Lerman, Paul Pogers, and a Palestinian named Sameh Habeeb.
Finally, here are some essays at OD by Habeeb, who is the founder of The Palestine Telegraph. If you recall, The Palestine Telegraph made news in 2010 when they posted a video message on their home page by former KKK leader David Duke calling Israel a terrorist state.
(Remarkably, this was too much for even Baroness Jenny Tonge, who subsequently withdrew her patronage of the paper.)
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- Deborah Orr Tweet defends ‘chosen people’ essay, complains about Zionists’ sense of victimhood (cifwatch.com)
- Muslim Anti-Semitism, Israel, and the Dynamics of Self-Destructive Scapegoating (cifwatch.com)
- Anti-Zionism is Racism (An essay by Judea Pearl) (cifwatch.com)
- The stylish appeal of BDS movement’s tireless campaign to erode the Jewish state’s legitimacy (cifwatch.com)
- CiF Watch Global Zionist Subterfuge Update: Our blog welcomes 3 new international readers (cifwatch.com)
This is cross posted by Zach at Huffington Post Monitor.
Gilad Atzmon found this video of Omar Barghouti (who you probably know from his boycott work) putting his foot squarely in his mouth:
The video is only a minute long but there is oh so much information packed into it. For example Barghouti declares that he won’t be lectured on violence by a “white person” why? Because “the white race is the most violent in history of mankind.” Isn’t that special.
Atzmon found the video from Deliberation, which is a left-wing site. Deliberation had some uncomfortable questions as well:
“But there is also another acute question that deserves our immediate attention. Why exactly the ‘socialist’ crowd in Chicago is so exited by Barghouti’s Racist remark? Is it possible that our so-called ‘progressive’ panthers have changed their spots, are they now in favour if [sic] racism?
“I guess that Ben White, another spokesman for the BDS movement, may have an answer to offer. In a recent New Statesman article he foolishly admitted that that BDS “is a strategy, not a principle.”
“I guess that this is indeed very concerning about the BDS . It is not principled at all. A BDS prominent leader happens to spread racist remarks while enrolling to a ‘Zionist’ academic institute which he expects us to boycott. Another BDS prominent spokesman admits that the BDS is “not principled”. Meanwhile in the UK BDS attempts to destroy Israeli Habima theatre but does nothing to promote a Palestinian theatre from Ramallah. As the BDS buying itself a name of a dedicated book burning institution, we learn that trade between Israel and Britain grew last year by 34%.
“If BDS is an important humanitarian call and, we in Deliberation believe it is, it better be managed and represented by people who are slightly more principled and certainly more clever and astute.
I would say of course that BDS has been racist from it’s very beginning. This latest admission by Barghouti only helps to prove it.
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- The stylish appeal of BDS movement’s tireless campaign to erode the Jewish state’s legitimacy (cifwatch.com)
- Note to Philly BDS Activists: You will fail. (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Airflotilla 2′ & “normal,average Europeans” (cifwatch.com)
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H/T Margie
Call it Israel Derangement Syndrome, or Reductio ad Israelum, or what you will, but the capacity of Israel’s critics to find a Jewish/Zionist connection to any political phenomenon they find displeasing is constantly on display below the line at ‘Comment is Free’.
Dave Hill’s CiF commentary (So, Boris Johnson remains mayor and it’s not all Ken Livingstone’s fault, May 4) elicited over six hundred comments, many of which touched on Livingstone’s relationship with the UK Jewish community.
The following, by a commenter using the moniker “brothermacdub“, was deleted by moderators, but you can see text from the post cited by “Kawtara1″ (which begins, “Typical response from the lobby” and ends,”swing an election”.), quoted before offering his/her response.
So, London’s Jews, who are more loyal to a foreign power than the UK, singlehandedly defeated the former mayor who should nonetheless be proud that he didn’t give in to the “hateful Israel lobby”.
Interestingly, the suggestion that Jews swung the mayoral election for Boris Johnson was advanced in a letter published by the Guardian today, albeit by someone seemingly friendly to UK’s Jews.
At the very least, the letter represents a rather curious editorial decision.
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- Deborah Orr Tweet defends ‘chosen people’ essay, complains about Zionists’ sense of victimhood (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian reader on those uppity British Jews exercizing their political rights (cifwatch.com)
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Richard Millett’s latest Dispatch: Battle of Brent Street
May 24, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Cross Post, Guest Post, Neturei Karta, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, PSC, Richard Millett | by Guest/Cross Post | 20 comments
Cross posted by our friend, Richard Millett
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.
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