The Guardian’s initial report that Stephen Hawking was boycotting Israel was published on May 8.
The statistics in the first row in the table below were derived by a survey of the Guardian’s Israel page between May 8 and May 16 – the date of their last Hawking related entry. The second row’s numbers were gathered by a simple word count of the text.
The third row’s data was derived by Intel.
On May 11th – three days after its initial publication of Stephen Hawking’s decision to pull out of a conference in Israel – we noted that the Guardian had already published eight items on the subject.
Since then the tally of Hawking-related items on the Guardian’s ‘Israel’ page has risen to twelve, with an article criticising Hawking’s decision by Steve Caplan published in the Guardian’s science section on May 13th and an article of the opposing opinion on same date in the same section by Hilary Rose and Steven Rose, who are of course among the founding members of BRICUP – the organisation which seems to have played an instrumental part in Hawking’s decision. Two additional letters on the subject were published on May 14th and yet another on May 16th.
And yet – nine days and twelve features later – the Guardian still has not found the time or the inclination to inform its readers of the real nature and aims of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement of which BRICUP is part.
“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.”
A key element of the BDS campaign is the rejection of what is called ‘normalisation’: a term which relates to any activity which promotes dialogue, co-existence or joint Israeli –Palestinian projects. An example of such rejection was recently highlighted when Fatah activists threatened Palestinian teenagers who had taken part in an EU-backed football match together with Israeli youths.
“But as soon as photos of the Palestinian and Israeli players appeared on a number of websites, Fatah activists denounced the event as a form of “normalization” with Israel.
Several Fatah activists posted threatening messages on the Internet against the Palestinian boys and girls who participated in the tournament.”
The accepted mainstream view of the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is one of two states – Palestinian and Israeli – existing side by side, hopefully in peace and co-operation. That view has been the aspiration of the international community and majority Israeli opinion for many years now and considerable efforts have been invested in trying to bring it about. It is, however, perfectly clear that peaceful co-existence cannot grow from the rejection of dialogue and co-operation – either on the football field, at academic conferences or elsewhere.
The fringe BDS movement, in common with other elements in the region such as Islamist extremists, rejects the widely held, normative aspiration of a two-state solution. The Guardian’s failure to make that point clear to readers of the barrage of articles promoting Hawking’s adoption of the minority, rejectionist view suggests identification with and empathy for the fringe elements seeking to undermine the accepted route to peace. Is that really the stance a true “Left liberal voice” would be taking?
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.
Though original reports yesterday that Stephen Hawking cancelled his planned Israel trip in order to express support for the academic boycott were (as we reported earlier today) flatly denied by Tim Holt, Acting Director of Communications at Cambridge and Hawking’s spokesperson, Holt recently informed us via an email of the following new statement just released by the University:
“We have now received confirmation from Professor Hawking’s office that a letter was sent on Friday to the Israeli President’s office regarding his decision not to attend the Presidential Conference, based on advice from Palestinian academics that he should respect the boycott.
“We had understood previously that his decision was based purely on health grounds having been advised by doctors not to fly.”
Last night, May 8, the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood and Matthew Kelman ‘broke’ a story claiming that Stephen Hawking was joining the academic boycott of Israel, and that he was “pulling out of a conference hosted by Israeli president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem as a protest at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.”
The report, based it seems on claims made by British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), was picked up by news sites around the world, was featured prominently on the Guardian website and was followed up with a poll asking readers if they agreed with Hawking ”decision” to boycott Israel.
Here’s how the Guardian’s Israel page looks at the time of this post:
As you can see, the original story was read by quite a few Guardian readers:
There was just one problem.
The Guardian evidently didn’t check their facts, as information has been released strongly suggesting that the world-renowned theoretical physicist and former Professor at Cambridge pulled out of the Israeli academic conference purely for health reasons.
The Commentator reported the following:
…a Cambridge university spokesperson has confirmed to The Commentator that there was a “misunderstanding” this past weekend, and that Prof. Hawking had pulled out of the conference for medical reasons. A University spokesman said: “Professor Hawking will not be attending the conference in Israel in June for health reasons – his doctors have advised against him flying.”
Further, a spokesman for Cambridge University sent the following email to a CiF Watch reader in response to an inquiry, which is consistent with the following story in the Cambridge News:
The only questions which seems to remain is how long it will take for the Guardian to issue a mea culpa on their faux scoop.
Update: The Guardian’s Matthew Kalman is now claiming that the Cambridge denial is untrue, and that Hawking indeed supports the boycott.
Update II: It now appears that the original denial by Hawkings spokesperson was not accurate, and that Hawking indeed cancelled his trip as an expression of support for the boycott of Israel.
One of the more insidious elements of the BDS movement is the supremely dishonest racial narrative which suggests, in varying degrees of explicitness, that Zionism is a racist movement in which ‘white’ privileged European interlopers continue to displace indigenous Palestinians ‘of color’.
Whilst the racial demographics of Israel alone disproves the fiction of a ‘caucasian nation’, facts clearly have never been an obstacle to those intent on demonizing the Jewish state.
Yemeni Jews arrive in Israel, 2009
Aryella Moreh, a Jew of color whose mother was a refugee from Iran, addresses the racial dynamic of the BDS movement (at Berkeley and elsewhere) head-on in an eloquent and inspired essay published on May 6 at the Daily Californian – the student run newspaper at UC Berkeley:
I come from a family of refugees. My mother was younger than I am now when she was forced to flee for her life from the Islamic Revolution of Iran. My mother recalls being forced to sit in the back of her classroom along with a group of young Jewish children during her school years.
When my mother went to buy groceries in the market, she was not allowed to touch the produce because she was considered a “dirty Jew.” These are only a few indicators of the systematic oppression of the Iranian Jews, some of the oldest inhabitants of Persia. At the age of 20, she was forced to abandon her life in Iran as her family was scattered across the world. My grandmother, Mamanjani, was never allowed to return home because of her active involvement in Jewish organizations. Though she had no ties to any other government, she was warned not to go home for fear of execution without trial. Despite calling Persia home for 2,500 years, in 1979, my family and many Jewish families like my own were forced to forced to flee their homes. My family’s home, business and property was confiscated. We were torn from our homes, forced to flee to whichever country would take us in.
Though these experiences define me, some students on our campus seem to think my history does not count. During the “divestment” meeting two weeks ago, Students for Justice in Palestine tweeted about those opposed to divestment: “the Zizis are literally white people crying about their privilege, lol.” Apparently, Zizi is SJP shorthand for Zionist. And later, Daily Cal Blogger Noah Kulwin discussed a clear division he seems to see between “students of color” and “Jewish students,” implying that Jewish students like me cannot be considered students of color. I am here to address ignorance about what truly defines the Jewish people. Amid claims — or rather accusations — of “privilege” or the inability of Jews to understand the plight of “colored people,” I realized many people on this campus are unaware of who the Jewish people actually are.
We encourage you to read the rest of Moreh’s passionate plea, by clicking here.
Also, you can learn more about the broader issue of Jewish refugees from Muslim and Arab lands here and here.
The following is a guest post by Jon from ‘Divest This!’
Paraphrasing from one of the greatest responses to criticism ever:
I am sitting in the smallest room of my house with the UC Berkeley Student Senate divestment resolution in front of me. Soon, it shall be behind me.
Honestly, could anything possibly demonstrate the impotence and moral bankruptcy of the BDS “movement” better than the mayhem the boycotters have been causing up and down the West Coast over the last two months in their frantic effort to get student governments to pass divestment resolutions that – win or lose – are ignored by nearly everyone?
UC Berkley: Pro-Divestment Rally, 2010
Even the BDSers themselves have been decrying why the few votes that have gone their way are barely being noticed in the Jewish press, much less the mainstream media.
But if they had thought about it for a moment, the response (or lack thereof) to these latest student government shenanigans (vs. the massive coverage divestments votes received when this same game played out in Berkeley in 2010) was entirely predictable.
For student government boycott and divestment votes have no political meaning whatsoever if they cannot be claimed to represent the broad opinion of the student body. And while enough confusion surrounded where the student body stood on the Middle East conflict in 2010 to justify concerns that a “Yes” vote could be convincingly presented as representing student opinion, three years later everyone understands that these votes mean nothing of the kind.
How do we know this? Well even putting aside statements by school administrators condemning the votes and assuring everyone they will be completely ignored (since that just represents the views of “The Man”), every school where this subject has been fought out included heated all-night debates between opposing sides (which alone demonstrates lack of consensus even among people passionate about the subject).
At most schools, divestment was voted down (sometimes for the third or fourth time in as many years). But in the few cases where the boycotters managed to eke out a “Yes” vote, those decisions were immediately condemned by student leaders, editorials and letters to the editor in the student paper. Which simply demonstrates that while some BDS groups have managed to figure out how to get their supporters elected to student government (where they could bully their colleagues during grueling all-nighters), the notion that these votes represent anything even remotely resembling student consensus is laughable.
The BDSers demonstrate their own understanding of this lack of broad support whenever they try to sneak their measures in through the back door (as they did at UC Riverside in March). For whenever their measures are exposed to the light of day, they tend to be voted down or reversed (as they were at Riverside which threw out their earlier divestment vote a month later in open debate).
And one need only look at Berkeley’s latest “Yes” vote to see how Pyrrhic even a non-backdoor victory is for the BDSers. For in order to get their vote passed, the local Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) group had to basically throw the BDS movement under the bus, insisting that their motion had absolutely nothing to do with the international organization which calls for the very things students were being asked to vote for. And even this peculiar vote was challenged for being taken against student government rules (which led to it being watered down still further). Making matters stranger still is this story of a student leader’s attempt to blackmail the President of the Student Senate, offering to drop a lawsuit against him if he chose not to veto the divestment measure (as the previous Student Senate President had done in 2010).
To some of us, that last story mostly raises questions about the nature of a UC student government that seems to spend so much time suing, prosecuting and impeaching its members rather than organizing the next sock hop or condom drive. But what is unimpeachable is that statements made by a body that behaves in such undemocratic ways is hardly in a position to cast moral aspersions on the Jewish state that anyone else needs to take seriously (given that they are neither a representation of student opinion, nor the result of just and thoughtful deliberation).
Fortunately, the BDSers themselves have taught us again and again how to best deal with student government resolutions of this type. For year after year, in student council after student council, divestment resolutions have been voted down again and again. And each and every one of these votes was immediately ignored by the boycotters who refused to take them as representing student opinion against their cause, or the final word on the issue.
So if Students for Justice in Palestine are allowed to embrace the notion that votes rejecting their opinions carry no weight and have no meaning, why shouldn’t the rest of us follow their lead and do the same?
The following was written by Bataween, and originally published on April 7 at ‘Point of No Return‘ - a blog about Middle East’s forgotten Jewish refugees.
However, I was surprised that the Middle East ranks so high on your list of priorities that directly after you had announced news of your cancer, The Guardian chose to print a piece about your personal boycott of Israel. In it you wrote:
“The particular tragedy of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people is that nobody seems to have learned anything. Israel itself was brought into being partly as a belated and guilty attempt by the world community to help compensate for its complicity in, or at least its inability to prevent, the catastrophic crime of the Holocaust. Of all people, the Jewish people ought to know how it feels to be persecuted en masse, to be punished collectively and to be treated as less than human. For the Israeli state and the collective of often unlikely bedfellows who support it so unquestioningly throughout the world to pursue and support the inhumane treatment of the Palestinian people – forced so brutally off their land in 1948 and still under attack today – to be so blind to the idea that injustice is injustice, regardless not just on whom it is visited, but by whom as well, is one of the defining iniquities of our age, and powerfully implies a shamingly low upper limit on the extent of our species’ moral intelligence.
The solution to the dispossession and persecution of one people can never be to dispossess and persecute another. When we do this, or participate in this, or even just allow this to happen without criticism or resistance, we only help ensure further injustice, oppression, intolerance, cruelty and violence in the future.”
We’ve heard it all before from your fellow boycotters of Israel: scores of trendy opinion-formers, academics and artistes. They actually believe that neat paradox: a persecuted people is now persecuting another. Don’t the Jews of all people know any better?
What really pains me is that you will be going to your death without knowing how wrong you have been. Israel is full of people - Jewish people – persecuted simply for being Jews and expelled from land and property they have lived on since time immemorial by Arabs.This is a truth that even Jews from Europe haven’t grasped. The Arabs did this barely three years after the monumental tragedy of the Holocaust, in which the Palestinian leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem, among other Arabs, was complicit. The Mufti plotted the extermination of the Jews of the region well before Israel was established. Arabs and radical Muslims have been seeking to destroy the Jewish state ever since.
To illustrate my point, on the eve of Yom HaShoah, when Israel marks the anniversary of the Holocaust, let me quote Aharon, an Iraqi Jew you won’t have heard of, who wrote a chapter in a book* you won’t have heard of either:
“Two thousand years of persecution, execution and forced conversion culminated in Hitler’s Final Solution, a solution which wiped out nearly half the world’s Jewish population. And this was followed by, and compounded by the ethnic cleansing by the Arab Countries of all their Jewish populations. Both events took place on the watch of the civilised world which responded by a deafening silence. Jews therefore feel themselves to be permanent refugees even after the rise of the State of Israel which is now anyway precariously balanced within the vast Muslim Middle East.”
At the end it was the Arab world, not Hitler that executed their final solution, and no power can move the clock back. That is why today it is worrying Israelis and Jews alike that what happened in Germany under the Nazis in the early 1930s is being re-enacted in a startlingly similar way again in Europe today. Every aspect of life in Israel, its people, its institutions, its places of learning, even its acclaimed courts of justice are being demonized. Recently this demonizing has been organized and reinforced by concerted bans and boycotts here in Europe in protest, they say, against the occupation of Palestinian lands to which the majority of the citizens of Israel are opposed. All this sends shivers in the hearts of Jews everywhere reminding them of the anti-Semitic demonizing propaganda of the 1930s, which was the precursor of, and prepared the ground for the Holocaust. As Condoleezza Rice, the American Secretary of State, stated recently: Anti-Semitism is not just a historical fact but a current event.
“The Arab World has played and continues to play its active part too in the Jewish tragedy. During World War II they made Jewish life in their midst a living hell. By the early 1950’s when the safe haven of Israel opened, some 900,000 Jews were ethnically cleansed to Israel from Arab countries leaving all Arab countries what the Nazis called “Judenrein”, lands clean of Jews. Therefore what the Nazis failed to do, the Arab countries accomplished and perpetuated. And the world accepts that as normal.
“These 900,000 Jewish refugees are forgotten because Israel did not leave them in camps to rot and did not ask the UN to set up agencies to serve to perpetuate their misery and status as refugees. With help from Jews worldwide these Jewish refugees with their bare hands gave themselves dignity, security and a future in stark contrast to the way rich, very rich, Arabs treated the then 700,000 Palestinian refugees and disgracefully continue to treat their descendants today.
“I was a victim and a witness of this ethnic cleansing. My personal story tells it all. I wanted so much to be part of my country Iraq and to participate actively in its revival after World War II. When I finished my pre-university studies in Iraq and secured a place with various universities in England and France to continue my studies the Iraqi authorities refused point-blank to allow me to travel. Why? Because I was a Jew. And as a result of accumulations of other violent events around the Jewish community I could see that there was no way to be both Jewish and Iraqi. So I took the only way I could that was still open for me out of the country. Together with about twenty desperate Jews, we managed to cross the borders of Iraq into Iran in the north, literally on foot. We got there from Baghdad in a truck.
“The truck driver had managed to bribe the border guards to close their eyes as we were nearing the border, pretending to be carrying cattle from one town to another. At the last-minute, after the truck was approaching the border, some border police started shooting, probably only to justify their surprise to see that the cattle had turned into human beings, but more likely because the bribe was not big enough to go round. The driver left us in the middle of nowhere pointing to us the direction to the Iranian borders. I was young, barely 19 years old at that time. Fleeing Iraq, in my case via Iran, whose people I will always be indebted to for their hospitality and safe passage at my desperate time of need, I arrived at the absorption centre in Israel in 1949 by air from Tehran. I found there a mixture of people all dejected all helpless. My fellow refugees from Arab countries were desperately trying to rebuild their lives out of nothing in a land of nothing.”
But it was the sight of the remnants of the Holocaust camps that broke my heart and my spirit. I saw frightened shadows of human beings dazed, confused and broken trying to regain their existence as humans. But worst of all instead of hatred, rage and bitterness I found many trying to remove the concentration camp numbers on their arms feeling guilty of being alive and ashamed of not having put up a fight before allowing themselves to be led as sheep to the Gas chambers. It is the combined images of the ethnically cleansed Arab Jews who lost their countries, and the Holocaust remnants of European Jews who lost their dignity, that are engraved in my being and in the mind of every Jew who says “never again”. That is why Israelis feel the need to keep their citizen army and even their nuclear shield not because they are on a Samson-like suicidal mission. It is because they are determined to live with pride and dignity denied to them in those dark days of the 30s and 40s. And this time, if they must die, they want to die fighting.”
And so, Iain, by blindly aligning yourself with the Palestinian cause, you are siding, not with innocent victims, but with some among them who would commit a second Shoah if they could.
Palestinian Authority TV, Jan 20, 2010
If they haven’t fulfilled that intention, it is only because the Jews of Israel have been strong enough to thwart it. It is they, not the Israelis, who nurse in their children with hate.
Sorry if self-defence is so very unpopular in your postmodern world, Iain. As someone once remarked: “it is better to be unpopular than dead.”
*From Chapter 14: The Prophet of the Libyan Desert by Max Melli, Vladimir Pavlinic and Aharon Nathan (Amazon and bookshops)
The following was written by David Hirsh at Engage, and is being cross posted here with his permission.
What would you do [if you only had a year to live]? You’d do the important things, right?
Iain Banks decided to have the stupid things he’d written about Jews re-published in the Guardian.
“A sporting boycott of Israel would make relatively little difference to the self-esteem of Israelis in comparison to South Africa; an intellectual and cultural one might help make all the difference…”
Yes, because white South Africans only care about Rugby while Jews spend their time with their noses in a book…Mike Cushman came up with this one ages ago: “Universities are to Israel what the springboks were to South Africa: the symbol of their national identity.” And Tom (Israeli archeologists are nastier than Nazi killers) Hickey too: “we are speaking of a culture, both in Israel and in the long history of the Jewish diaspora, in which education and scholarship are held in high regard. That is why an academic boycott might have a desirable political effect in Israel, an effect that might not be expected elsewhere…”
“Israel and its apologists can’t have it both ways, though: if they’re going to make the rather hysterical claim that any and every criticism of Israeli domestic or foreign policy amounts to antisemitism, they have to accept that this claimed, if specious, indivisibility provides an opportunity for what they claim to be the censure of one to function as the condemnation of the other.”
Jews as hysterical? People who say that “every criticism” is antisemitic? Classic Livingstone Formulation… The conflation of criticism with demonization combined with the charge of raising antisemitism in bad faith in order to silence “critics”.
“Of all people, the Jewish people ought to know how it feels to be persecuted en masse, to be punished collectively and to be treated as less than human.” [ach you know what comes next...]
The Jews should know better? The Jews should have learnt more at Auschwitz? Well, take your pick. Chris Davies?Jacqueline Rose, Desmond Tutu? “My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short. Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the downtrodden?”
Why does everybody who comes up with this garbage think they’re really clever, brave and original to have thought of it?
Iain Banks’ illness is terrible news for a talented writer, a man who always seemed to be one of the good guys. I’m sad that he thinks that this clichéd, dangerous and stereotyped nonsense is the most important thing that he should do now.
H/T Yisrael Medad
Associated Press, one of the largest news agencies in the world, will no longer use the term “illegal immigrant” to describe those who migrate to a country in violation of their immigration laws, their Executive Vice President announced on Tuesday.
Their style guide will no longer permit the term ‘illegal immigrant’ or the use of ‘illegal’ to describe a person. It will now only use of the word “illegal” to describe an action, such as “living in or migrating to a country illegally”.
It is believed that most of the 1400 U.S. newspapers which use AP will likely follow their decision on the use of such a loaded term and will, for instance, stop referring to the millions of unauthorized Latino migrants to the US as “illegal”.
ABC reported the following:
…most of America’s top college newspapersand major TV networks, including ABC, NBC and CNN, have vowed to stop using the term. Nearly half of Latino voters polled last year in a Fox News Latino survey said that they find the term “illegal immigrant” offensive. A coalition of linguists also came together last year to pressure media companies to drop “illegal immigrant,” calling it “neither neutral nor accurate.”
Whilst many Americans are applauding the decision by AP as a victory for accuracy and diversity, we can only wonder whether serious news organizations – and the Guardian – will similarly drop the loaded and value-laden term “illegal settler” to characterize Jews who, consistent with the parameters of the Mandate for Palestine, live beyond the 1949 armistice lines (in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem).
An “illegal” Israeli settler boy in the historic Jewish city of Hebron, Purim 2011
A quick search of the Guardian’s site shows a few references to such ‘illegal’ Israelis.
Guardian film critic Philip French wrote the following in his Oct. 21, 2012 review of the documentary ’5 Broken Cameras’:
Behind this pair, but no less endangered, is Emad, recording some of the fiercest footage of assaults and atrocities on the West Bank that I’ve ever seen, as well as the arson wreaked on Palestinian olive groves by illegal Jewish settlers.
A July 24, 2012 story by Phoebe Greenwood on Palestinians facing eviction from ‘unauthorized’ homes in the southern Hebron hills included this variation of the charge:
Hila Gurani, the state’s attorney, wrote that the second intifada and the second Lebanon war exposed gaps in IDF preparation that requires more extensive training in firing zones, which the illegal Hebron residents are preventing
And, a report by Nicholas Watt about the call by some within the UK Labour Party to label products which are produced in the West Bank included this passage:
Labour is opposed to boycotting Israeli goods but [Yvette] Cooper believes consumers should be informed whether products are produced by illegal settlers.
Moreover, a Google search using the words “illegal Israeli settlers” turns up 727,000 hits, and included references to the proscribed Jew in many “mainstream” publications. (Obviously, another variation of these specific words, in a different order, would likely produce further examples.)
The implications are fascinating.
If, for instance, we use AP’s logic as a guide, and only use the term “illegal” to describe an action, shouldn’t the Guardian and other sites stop referring to Jewish communities and homes in places like Ariel, Ma’ale Adumim and eastern Jerusalem as “illegal”? If so, we might one day look back at the ubiquitous use of such subjective terminology (there were more than 5,000 references to “illegal settlements” at the Guardian’s site) as an embarrassing chapter in their paper’s history.
Whatever the Guardian editorial position on the desirability of a future Palestinian state which may include most of Judea and Samaria, we can hope that they’ll catch up with the times, heed their liberal calling and stop labelling – in one manner or another – hundreds of thousands of Jews residing within the boundaries of their historic homeland as “illegal”.
On March 29 we commented on a ruling by London’s Central Employment Tribunal which rejected Ronnie Fraser’s charge of institutional antisemitism against the University and College Union (UCU).
Fraser had charged the UCU with fostering an atmosphere of antisemitism which created an ‘intimidating’, ‘hostile’, ‘humiliating’, and ‘offensive’ work environment’ for Jews – citing, in part, the union’s decision to reject the EU Working Definition of Antisemitism on the grounds that it had the effect of ‘silencing debate on Israel’.
The EU working definition (as it pertains to Israel and Zionism) characterizes the following as antisemitic: denying the Jewish state the right to exist, applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not demanded of any other democratic nation, using the symbols associated with classic antisemitism (such as blood libels) to characterize Israel or Israelis, holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel, and drawing comparisons of Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
UCU motion rejecting EU Working Definition of Antisemitism
Further, as David Hirsh detailed in a superb post at Engage yesterday, in addition to the UCU’s rejection of the EU working definition, there were a number of other incidents representing a culture whereby “antisemitism was accepted as normal within the union” – many of which Hirsh outlined:
In 2006 Ronnie Fraser stood as a delegate to NATFHE conference (a predecessor to UCU). It was said at the regional meeting that Fraser could not be a delegate because he was a Zionist and therefore a racist. NATFHE held an investigation and found that this statement had not been antisemitic.
Israel has been relentlessly condemned at every UCU Congress, often by motions to boycott Israel. There were no motions to boycott any other states.
The Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism reported that the boycott debates were likely to cause difficulties for Jewish academics and students, to exclude Jews from academic life and to have a detrimental effect on Jewish Studies. UCU responded that these allegations were made to stop people from criticizing Israel. 76 members of the UCU published a critique of the union’s response, but the union took no notice. John Mann MP told the Tribunal that UCU had been unique among those criticized by the inquiry in its refusal to listen.
Sean Wallis, a local UCU official, said that anti-boycott lawyers were financed by “bank balances from Lehman Brothers that can’t be tracked down”. Ronnie Fraser asked him whether he had indeed made this antisemitic claim. Wallis admitted having said it. But it was Fraser who, for the crime of asking, was found to have violated union rules concerning “rude or offensive communications”.
Gert Weisskirchen, responsible for combating antisemitism for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) asked the union leadership for a meeting to discuss antisemitism relating to the boycott. The union did not meet with him. When 39 union members protested publicly, the union ignored them.
The union invited South African Trade Unionist Bongani Masuku to speak at a pro-boycott conference in London. Masuku was known to be under investigation by the South African Human Rights Commission for antisemitic hate speech. Here is an example of what he had said: “Bongani says hi to you all as we struggle to liberate Palestine from the racists, fascists and Zionists who belong to the era of their friend Hitler! We must not apologise, every Zionist must be made to drink the bitter medicine they are feeding our brothers and sisters in Palestine”. Masuku also said that vigilante action would be taken against Jewish families suspected of having members serving in the Israeli military, and that Jews who continued to stand up for Israel should “not just be encouraged but forced to leave South Africa” The union ought to have known Masuku’s record. Ronnie Fraser told the union about Masuku’s record. Masuku was found guilty in South Africa of hate speech before speaking as a guest of UCU. And months later, UCU Congress explicitly rejected a motion to dissociate itself from Masuku’s “repugnant views”.
The Activists’ List is an email list hosted by the union.
Ronnie Fraser argued on the list that there was no absolute blockade of Gaza. In response, another union member said that he was like the Nazis at Theresenstadt. The union found that there was nothing inappropriate about this comment.
Josh Robinson put together a detailed formal complaint about antisemitic language being employed by union members on the list. He documented how people who opposed antisemitism on the activists’ list were routinely accused of being: deranged, crazy, nutters; Israeli agents; hysterical; dishonest; twisted; rotten Zionists; less than human; believers in a promised land; motivated by the fairy story of the Old Testament; genocidal; accepting of the murder of innocents; racist; pro-apartheid; supporters of ethnic cleansing; Nazis. The Holocaust was referred to as an ‘attempted genocide’. There followed volleys of insults made against those who raised concerns about this description of the Shoah. The formal complaint was given to Tom Hickey to adjudicate. Hickey himself, the Tribunal was told, had said that Israel is “more insidious and in some sense almost nastier” than Nazi Germany. In the end, nobody even bothered to tell Robinson that his complaint had been dismissed.
A number of other people made similarly careful formal complaints. The union did not once, ever, find that anything complained of was antisemitic.
A significant number of union members resigned over the issue of antisemitism. Congress voted down a motion to investigate these resignations. There was no mechanism for counting resignations over antisemitism, and such resignations were instead counted as being because of disagreements over the Middle East.
People who complained about antisemitism in the union were routinely confronted with accusations that they spoke in bad faith. They were told that they were making it up in order to try to silence criticism of Israel. They were accused of ‘crying antisemitism’.
In court Sally Hunt, the General Secretary of the union was asked hypothetically: “If somebody said ‘if you want to understand the Jews, read Mein Kampf’, would that be antisemitic?” She answered that it would not necessarily be antisemitic.
Astonishingly, not only did the Tribunal rule that these incidents did not represent antisemitism, but, in a close approximation of the Livingstone Formulation, outrageously accused Fraser and his 34 witnesses of trying to ‘intimidate’ and ‘silence’ critics of Israel with an invented accusation of antisemitism.
May the examples cited above, of the undeniable racism suffered by Jewish members of the UCU, serve to shame those who have been critical of Fraser and his supporters – some of whom have even suggested that the UK Jewish community should never have taken on the fight in the first place.
Fraser, and those who had his back, should be admired for acting on principle, morality, and justice – and continue to deserve our unqualified support.
You can read the rest of Hirsh’s masterful response to the Tribunal’s outrageous ruling here.
I first met Ronnie Fraser, director of Academic Friends of Israel, in 2011 at the Big Tent for Israel conference in Manchester. He attended a panel session I participated in on Israel Advocacy and asked a very pointed question about the limits of engaging with anti-Zionists, which elicited a broader discussion regarding whether it is worth civilly debating with those who would deny Jews the right to statehood.
Fraser’s decision to take on the British academic establishment suggested that he, for one, clearly knew the answer to this question.
In 2011 Fraser took legal action against the University and College Union (UCU) in the UK in the face of what he argued was institutional antisemitism, which included the union’s decision to reject the EU Working Definition of Antisemitism on the grounds that it had the effect of ‘silencing debate on Israel’.
Here are the relevant Israel related passages from the EU working definition of Antisemitism, much of which the UCU evidently objected to:
As David Hirsh argued on the UCU decision to reject the EU working definition:
“…the disavowal of the EUMC definition allows the union to carry on treating ‘Zionists’ as disloyal, singling out Israel and only Israel for boycott, holding Israeli universities and scholars responsible for their government, and allowing ‘Zionist’ union members to be denounced as Nazis or supporters of apartheid.
Israel murders children? Israel controls US foreign policy? Star of David = Swastika stuck on your office door? Jews invent antisemitism to delegitimise criticism of Israel? Host a man found guilty of hate speech by the South African Human Rights commission? Exclude nobody but Israelis from the global academic community? All of these are considered, implicitly by UCU motions, and clearly by UCU norms, to constitute ‘criticism of Israel’ and so are defined, in practice, as not being antisemitic.”
Fraser, a Jewish UCU member, initiated legal action arguing that the atmosphere of antisemitism created an ‘intimidating’, ‘hostile’, ‘humiliating’, ‘offensive’ work environment’ for him.
A few days ago, the Employment Tribunal dismissed his claim:
Ronnie Fraser’s personal statement on the tribunal’s dismissal of his claim against the UCU reads as follows:
I am naturally disappointed by the decision of the Employment Tribunal to dismiss my claim of harassment against the University and College Union (UCU). I am however very grateful that the hearing provided us with the opportunity to raise and discuss in great detail the issues of discrimination and antisemitism which are so important to Anglo Jewry.
I believe that the many witnesses we called were able to provide evidence to the tribunal of an intolerable atmosphere over a number of years and that the UCU did nothing to stop these institutionally anti-Semitic acts taking place.
Having read the judgment there are two points which greatly concern me. The first is ”a belief in the Zionist project or an attachment to Israel cannot amount to a protected characteristic. It is not intrinsically a part of Jewishness…” (para 150). For the court to say that as Jews we do not have an attachment to Israel is disappointing considering we have been yearning for Israel for 2000 years and it has been in our prayers all that time. The second point highlighted the need for Anglo-Jewry to urgently adopt and publicise its own definition of antisemitism.
As a member of the Board of Deputies I intend to campaign for us as a community to accept a definition of Jewishness which includes a connection with Israel and the adoption of a definition of anti-Semitism.
I would like to thank my wife, my family, my witnesses, and all those who supported my action both from within the Jewish community and elsewhere for their incredible support and understanding over the last two years.
I would also like to thank my solicitor Anthony Julius and all the staff of Mishcon De Reya for all their magnificent work and support.
Ronnie Fraser may have lost one legal battle but, in boldly challenging those intoxicated by hatred towards the only Jewish homeland that ever was and ever will be, he hopefully will inspire others to continue the broader fight.
The economic, social, academic and political exclusion of millions of Jews from the international community, in the form of boycotts or other such codified restrictions, has a dark and dangerous history, and is anathema to progressivism and equality even broadly understood.
Further, questioning the Jewish state’s right to live, whether such a rejection of Jewish self-determination is couched as a “one-state solution” or by other such euphemisms, represents an assault on Jews’ political rights, an ominous threat to their physical safety, and should be seen by genuine anti-racists as morally beyond the pale.
Jews in the UK and elsewhere need to see in Fraser’s refusal to bow down, in the face of a reactionary assault by the British elite against fundamental Jewish rights, the broader truth that equality for Jewish minorities which is contingent upon passing a political litmus test – implicitly requiring that they morally distance themselves from fellow Jews in the only state with a Jewish majority - is not ‘equality’ at all.
Those “who wish to ensure that the Jewish liberation movement is more than a passing phenomenon”, Hadar Sela has forcefully argued, “must take responsibility for it and ownership of it”, and “stop being nice, polite and passive” in the face of such determined malevolence.
It is a fool’s errand to civilly debate with those who advocate for the erosion of Jews’ inalienable right to equality. So, let Ronnie Fraser remind Jews around the world that they must reject the political urge to “get along to go along”, that they will never truly be free until all Jews are truly free, and, most urgently, on the necessity of understanding the historical and moral imperative that there are some things in life worth fighting for.
This letter was written by Rabbi Dr. Yakov Nagen, head of the Kollel at Yeshivat Otniel, and is being published at CW with his permission.
Dear Harriet,
Yakov Nagen
I am sorry I have taken so long to respond to your request to meet. I have given the matter great thought and ultimately have decided against meeting. I have even surprised myself by this decision, as essentially I believe that meetings are opportunities to overcome alienation, enable mutual understanding and most significantly create a human connection between the parties. Accordingly I have participated in interfaith dialogue with Muslim leaders; meetings that often give me hope that one day there will be peace in the Holy land.
Nevertheless, as you are a representative ofThe Guardian, I deem it correct to refuse collaboration on any level. After what I have written above, I feel a necessity to explain this position.
I imagine you are aware of the claim in the report commissioned by the E.U. monitoring center on Racism and Xenophobia that for ”many British Jews, the British media’s reporting on Israel is spiced with a tone of animosity, as to smell of anti-Semitism. This is above all the case with the Guardian and The Independent“. I know also that your paper has denied these charges and defends the legitimacy of its criticizing of Israel.
The role of the press is indeed to criticize, to highlight injustices throughout the world and thereby create a better, more humane world. Often, journalists have been exceptionally courageous in speaking truth to power. An outstanding example in our times is the Russian journalists who have critiqued the Putin regime, incurring great personal risk.
Certainly, the role of the press when relating to complex conflict in the Middle East is to present multiple viewpoints and it is legitimate to criticize and disagree with Israeli, or for that matter, Arab polices.
I therefore will attempt to distinguish between legitimate criticism and pernicious anti-Semitism.
I could dispute the many particular critiques of Israel and argue why each is a distortion, but that would miss the point, mistaking the trees for the forest. The heart of the issue is that even if all the critiques were valid, and they are not, I would still paraphrase Shakespeare that, “something is rotten in the state of England”.
Even if it were correct that the steps taken by Israel to stop the murderous attacks, including incessant missile attacks, on its citizens have been excessive; even if it were correct that despite the offers to solve the conflict (that Israel has accepted and the Palestinians rejected) – including Camp David, the Clinton Proposals, Taba, or more recently and more generously, Olmert’s offers to Abu Mazen - the onus for the deadlock in the peace process still remains on the Israeli side; even if all this were true, it does not come close to explaining the unique position that Israel has achieved among nations.
It is delegitimized and demonized. With all the evil in the world, how is it the focus of a conference on racism at Durban is Israel? That the focus of the U.N.’s condemnations are invariably Israel? That in Britain, the land of The Guardian, the zeal to boycott by academics, trade unions, artists and media - of all the nations on the earth - invariably focuses on Israel? What causes the level of hostility reported not only by Israelis visiting Britain, but also by native British Jews?
Tibet and Palestine – a Tale of Two Nations
As a former foreign editor of The Guardian, you must know the truth, that by any standard Israel’s alleged “crimes” pale in comparison with those of so many nations in the world in which we live.
To bring one example: In the context of my belief in interfaith dialogue, I have spent time in Dharmasala, India with Tibetan refugees. In Dharmasala there is a museum that details the ongoing horrors of the Chinese occupation of Tibet, including the systematic erasing of religion and culture, and the mass settlements of native Chinese in Tibet to erase demographically any possibility of Tibetan independence.
To the best of my knowledge, Tibet’s agenda is not the annihilation of China nor was the Chinese invasion of Tibet incurred in response to attacks designed to destroy China.
Furthermore, the Tibetans have not been offered, as have the Palestinians, a state with 95% of Tibet plus land exchanges for most of the remaining five percent.
In fact the Dalai Lama’s modest hope is to achieve some level of cultural autonomy for Tibet and for that miniscule reason, China pressures world leaders not to meet him.
The occupation of Tibet is only one of the myriad human rights violations of China. But, of course, China is certainly a much more significant trade partner with Britain and has more extensive cultural and academic exchanges with Britain than does Israel, not to mention their recent hosting of the Olympic games.
Why do the forces in Britain crusading against Israel not call for the delegitimization and boycott of China? Could it be that the Tibetans are less worthy of empathy than the Palestinians? That would be hard to admit, so the one solution that explains this aberration, why the focus and zeal of venomous animosity is aimed on Israel and not China, is that the Chinese, as opposed to the Israelis, are not Jewish.
Thousands of years of murderous European persecution of Jews has metamorphosed into their peculiar relationship to the one Jewish state, which,against all odds and with much hope, the Jewish people have restored in their homeland.
I would like to point out that the Tibetans themselves see Israel and not the Palestinians as the parallel to their situation. Students of mine who have served in the educational corps of the Israel army have told me of summer camps organized for Tibetan children sent to Israel by the Dalai Lama, in order to instill them with hope, so they can see that a nation driven from its land can dream and return home.
To return to the point, with regard to the Jewish people, there is a convergence of three remarkable realities: The same nation that has undergone thousands of years of murderous persecution is the same nation that today remains unique in its being under explicit threats of physical annihilation. It is the same nation that is unique in being condemned and delegitimized.
Is this truly merely a remarkable coincidence? Or are all three, part and parcel of the same phenomena?
The deadly price of modern anti-Semitism
I would like to share with you what for me, on a personal level, are some of the bitter fruits of this animosity to Israel.
Again and again, foreign pressure forces Israel to forego steps necessary to protect its citizens from murderous attacks. Yesterday, we commemorated the Hebrew date on which, seven years ago, Aviad Mansur, the son of a dear friend and neighbor, was murdered together with a friend in a drive-by shooting by terrorist Arabs near our community. Shortly afterwards, three more children from our area were murdered in yet another drive-by shooting by terrorist Arabs.
The writing was on the wall, because giving in to international pressure, Israel had removed several checkpoints in our area despite the army’s view that they were necessary to prevent terror.
I remember the first years of the second intifada when each month was worse than the one before, reaching a hundred victims a month in April 2002. Up until that month, Israel had restrained from entering the Palestinian cities in Area A as a result of the constant international pressure on it. However, after the massacre at the Passover Seder in Netanya, Israel launched the campaign, Homat Magen [Defensive Shield], that ultimately turned the tide, stopping almost all of the terror attacks by eradicating terror at the source. For this Israel, of course, underwent harsh international condemnation.
For many, Homat Magen, came too late. This included my beloved student, the newlywed Avi Sabag, who shortly after calling his wife to say he would be home in a few minutes was murdered right outside our community – just two days before the massacre at Netanya. This also includes the four students in my school who were murdered in the middle of the Shabbat meal during a terror attack on my school, after Homat Magen began, but before its aims were achieved.
The list is long, but I will not burden you with the so many more names I could add.
The choice of violence by the Palestinian Arabs was not through lack of options. In the various offers, from Camp David, Clinton’s proposals, Taba etc, the Palestinian Arabs rejected an independent state on 100% of Gaza, 95% of the ‘West Bank’ with land exchanges and a land connection between Gaza and the ‘West Bank’ to make up for the remainder. The capital included East Jerusalem, including Judaism’s most sacred site, the Temple Mount.
The Palestinian Arab decision to turn to violence would therefore seem inexplicable, as certainly they were no match for the Israel army. However, they correctly assessed the situation, deciding that they could reject the offers, turn to violence and massacres and the result would be the increasing isolation of Israel. The predictions were that constant terror would leave Israel isolated and unable to respond – and that result would bring Israel to its knees.
It is just too bad George Orwell isn’t alive to write a satire about this reality, a reality in which when from the adjacent Arab Villages, Palestinian Arabs began shooting constantly at the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, European “peace” activists flocked to be human shields – not in Gilo to protect the Jews, but in the villages that initiated the shooting.
Moving to more recent events, I opposed the forced expulsion of all Jews from Gaza on moral grounds, although I confess I naively assumed that there would be quiet on the border after the withdrawal, but again the Palestinian assessment that violence pays proves itself correct. Missile attacks against Israel ultimately forced it to respond by a ground attack on Gaza and the result is again not condemnation of the Palestinians, but increased Israeli isolation and delegitimization.
Much of the European press, and in particular the paper you represent, instead of being a force for peace, is a force that has continuously fueled this conflict. The losers, in addition to the Jews, are the Palestinian Arabs who have lost opportunities to achieve better lives.
In conclusion, I choose to register my protest of the dark truth underlying the mindset that The Guardian represents by refusing your request to meet.
You mentioned that you search for a variety of viewpoints. You are welcome to publish this letter in The Guardian.
Over the course of several days the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald penned two long essays (and a short post), encompassing over 6,275 words, much of which attacked straw men, engaged in profound distortions, and included classic Greenwald vitriol and hyperbole.
The two full length pieces (which, not surprisingly, given that the topic is Israel, have already elicited nearly 2500 reader comments) are titled, Brooklyn College’s academic freedom increasingly threatened over Israel event, Feb 2, and ‘NYC officials threaten funding of Brooklyn College over Israel event‘, Feb 4., and a multi-topic post which included his first commentary on the Brooklyn College row, on Feb. 29.
Factual errors/errors of omission
A good example of a Greenwald distortion can seen early in this opening passage on Feb. 4:
“On Tuesday, I wrote about a brewing controversy that was threatening the academic freedom of Brooklyn College (see Item 7). The controversy was triggered by the sponsorship of the school’s Political Science department of an event, scheduled for 7 February, featuring two advocates of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) aimed at stopping Israeli oppression of the Palestinians [one speaker is a Palestinian (Omar Barghouti) and the other a Jewish American (philosopher Judith Butler)]“
It is simply a lie to claim that Barghouti and Butler merely aim to stop the oppression, as they are both are on record supporting the use of BDS as part of their larger goal to rid the Middle East of the Jewish state. Further, Barghouti, when not studying at Tel Aviv University, supports an academic boycott of Israel – a ban on professors due to their national origin which would certainly seem quite inconsistent with the spirit of academic freedom.
Second, despite Greenwald’s hysterical claims, there is no threat to academic freedom at Brooklyn College. Most critics have merely objected to the fact that the political science department endorsed the BDS event and that it was going to be a one-sided debate.
In fact, one of the most prominent activists criticizing the event, Alan Dershowitz, said quite clearly that “of course, the event should go forward.”
Hysterical, unsupportable claims
His Jan. 29 piece includes this classic Greenwald scare quote:
“It doesn’t matter what you think of the BDS movement. This is all part of a pernicious trend to ban controversial ideas from the place they should be most freely discussed: colleges and universities.
…
Indeed, this current controversy is a replica of the most extreme efforts by official authoritarians to suppress ideas they dislike.”
Again, contrary to what Greenwald is claiming, the event at Brooklyn College is not going to be banned. Further, to suggest that there is some “pernicious trend” of banning controversial speakers on college campuses ( which evokes censorship by “authoritarians”) is simply absurd.
Smearing his critics: Imputing the motives and tactics of BDS critics:
His Feb. 4 piece includes this:
“Plainly, this entire controversy has only one “principle” and one purpose: to threaten, intimidate and bully professors, school administrators and academic institutions out of any involvement in criticisms of Israel.”
This is a classic Greenwald tick. When pro-Israel advocates who Greenwald dislikes engage in free speech, and participate in the political process, they are always characterized by Greenwald acting dishonorably: “threatening”, “bullying” and “intimidating”. Also, note the misleading sentence at the end: falsely suggesting again that critics of the BDS event are trying to cancel the event. They clearly are not.
Martyrs: Defending antisemites and racists as victims:
Here, Greenwald trots out some of his favorite martyrs, victims of the coordinated campaign by pro-Israel advocates to ‘stifle debate about Israel’.
“In sum, the ugly lynch mob now assembled against Brooklyn College and its academic event is all too familiar in the US when it comes to criticism of and activism against Israeli government policy. Indeed, in the US, there are few more efficient ways to have your reputation and career as a politician or academic destroyed than by saying something perceived as critical of Israel. This is not news. Ask Chas Freeman. Or Ocatavia Nasr. Or Finkelstein. Or Juan Cole. Or Stephen Walt. Or Chuck Hagel.”
Career’s ruined? Really?
Finally, it’s not surprising that Greenwald would sympathize with Chas Freeman, as Greenwald himself has engaged in similar antisemitic narratives on his blog. Here are just a few.
- “Large and extremely influential Jewish donor groups are the ones agitating for a US war against Iran, and that is the case because those groups are devoted to promoting Israel’s interests.”
- 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.”
- “The real goal [of the Israel lobby], as always, was to ensure that there is no debate over America’s indescribably self-destructive, blind support for Israeli actions. [Charles] Freeman’s critics may have scored a short-term victory in that regard, but the more obvious it becomes what is really driving these scandals, the more difficult it will be to maintain this suffocating control over American debates and American policy.”
No doubt, Greenwald would accuse this Zionist blog of engaging in “McCarthyite smears and “stifling debate” by revealing accurate quotes demonstrating his decidedly illiberal, Judeophobic and borderline conspiratorial musings.
H/T Raphael
The Guardian’s Chris McGreal published a story (‘Footballers condemn plans to hold U21 European Championship in Israel‘) on Nov. 30 about a petition signed by some footballers calling for European football’s governing body to cancel Israel’s hosting of an important 2013 European competition in response to the recent Gaza war.
McGreal’s piece begins, thus:
“A group of Premier League footballers and players in other major European leagues have condemned plans to hold the Under-21 European championship in Israel next year, saying it will be seen as a “reward” for this month’s assault on Gaza in which young people playing football were killed when a sports stadium was bombed.
The signatories, who include Eden Hazard of Chelsea, Abou Diaby of Arsenal and five Newcastle players – Papiss Cissé, Cheick Tioté, Sylvain Marveaux, Yohan Cabaye and Demba Ba – also criticised Israel’s continued detention without charge or trial of two Palestinian footballers.
Several former Premier League players have also signed the letter, including Didier Drogba and Frédéric Kanouté, both of whom now play in China. Players with QPR, Stoke, Blackburn and Ipswich are among the signatories along with footballers in France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Turkey.”
While you can read our post about the broader issue of McGreal’s lack of interest in the fact that Hamas used the Gaza sports stadium in question as a rocket launching site during the war, at least two of the players cited by McGreal in this latest report have flatly denied signing the petition.
Former Chelsea player Didier Drogba denied signing the petition, and wrote the following on Twitter: “Please note I did not sign this petition or give my support to this initiative.”
Additionally, Newcastle midfielder Yohan Cabaye says he, too, didn’t sign the anti-Israel petition. According to the Daily Reporter, Cabaye says that he “has never been a signatory” to the campaign.
The petition appears to have been organized by former Tottenham and Sevilla striker Frederic Kanoute, whose personal website lists 62 players (including Drogba and Cabaye) allegedly supporting the anti-Israel action.
You can Tweet Fredric Kanoute @FredricKanoute and ask that he remove the names of Drogba and Cabaye from his site.
Also, Kanoute has an open Facebook page, which means that you can comment beneath links he shares, such as this one:
While you’re at it, you can also Tweet Chris McGreal @ChrisMcGreal and ask that he revise his report accordingly.
