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A guest post by AKUS

The heavily critiqued commentary by the wife of terrorist Khadar Adnan (My husband, Khadar Adnan has shed a light on Israel’s disregard for human rights, CiF, Feb. 22) drew two unusual interventions by Becky Gardiner, who’s described as “the editor of the Guardian comment pages”.  (I take it, in passing, that this abbreviated description of what once included the words ‘Comment is Free’ can be considered recognition of what we have all known for some time –“Comment is Free” may adorn the masthead, but free comment is not allowed).

Dozens of angry, cynical, and shocked comments were deleted by the moderators (others completely vanished without a trace) in a counterattack on commenters. Their efforts were apparently designed to remove any reference they could find to the video of Adnan in the BTL comments that showed him calling for volunteers to become suicide bombers, or referring to him as a terrorist:

The disgust shown by dozens of commenters and the incredible number of deletions used to try to control the horrified crowd must have caused a panic at Guardian HQ. When the clamor of commenters asking why it had been published and why the Guardian supported a terrorist reached uncontrollable levels, Becky Gardiner, editor of the Comment pages, decided it was time to step in.

Rather than stepping in, she stepped right into it, up to her eyebrows, with the following ludicrous attempt to defend her decision to publish (commission?) the article:

Gardiner’s comment was such a transparent attempt to deflect the criticism by spinning the rationale behind this article and twisting the argument to one of a fair trial that it drew howls of cynical laughter from readers other than the 22 sycophants who were loudly praising this terrorist wife and her husband.

There were ten responses to her post. Three were immediately deleted. Here are samples from the responses to her attempt to justify the article by invoking “interesting to hear … comment from a variety of perspectives” and, apropos nothing relevant to the criticism, “the right of everyone to a fair trial” (which Israeli body responsible for Adnan’s detention said he would not get a fair trial?).

• Perhaps one of Osama Bin Laden’s wives could do a piece next week?
• I’m still waiting for a piece by a member of the EDL however.
• I’m sure Assad’s wife Asma would be interested in submitting a comment piece – it could be called ‘ A wife’s perspective- Syria-the Untold Story’ .
• What I do despise though, and what makes me despair of this paper is that you are apparently planning to publish the – uncommented – piece in the print version of you paper. Are you sure The Guardian still has a grip w.r.t. what it actually wants to stand for?
• Well I don’t normally comment on I/P keech but this is a stonker of a stinker.

This comment stood out:

Gardiner has never apparently heard that when you are in a hole you should stop digging. Or, possibly she is so brainwashed with the Guardian warped world view she genuinely does not understand that praising terrorists just because they attack Israel is unacceptable. So she tried again after “external” took her to task:

And, of course, what Adnan is said to have done, and we have a video of him doing just that, is at the very least inciting others to terrorism.

Gardiner then made the following utterly incredible response, breathtaking in its falsehood and awe-inspiring in her belief that readers would accept her claim that the Guardian “wouldn’t simply repeat allegation made on the internet”

This brought down the house:

• … most readers will always be disgusted by puff-pieces for people who advocate violence and murder against innocent civilians.
• Becky, when can we expect similar articles of wives of people also held in prison without charge in the UK?
• Did I read right? The Guardian does not use material gleaned from the Internet? Most CiF articles contain allegations, suppositions, theories, quotes and all sorts of other screeds obtainable from internet sites.

No one asked her to “repeat the allegations made on the internet. The Guardian should have left the video and references to  Adnan’s terrorist career to speak for themselves.

Of course, you need only look at the rolling ME blog to see video after video from the internet posted there. Neither the Guardian nor I have the slightest reason to doubt the validity of the allegations against Assad that these videos and commentary provide. We have had a year of videos and blogs from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria showing the violence there and the allegations against this or that politician or person, all quite acceptable, and eagerly published by the Guardian. The allegations made against Tony Blair in the Guardian could fill a telephone directory. The vicious article condemning Israeli politicians are left standing.

But when it comes to a terrorist who belongs to a jihadi group dedicated by its own platform to the destruction of Israel and the murder of its Jews, is videoed calling for suicide bomb volunteers to kill Israelis wherever they can, a different and higher standard is suddenly applied.

Gardiner could not even bring herself to wimp out by writing “alleged” terrorist, but had to continue to twist and turn in the gale of criticism, and try to spin the story and lie about her motives in a way that only the most utterly naïve or biased could accept. She apparently believes that if the lie is big enough, and repeated often enough, even others than Berchmans will eventually believe it.

Related articles

• Propaganda by wife of Islamic Jihad terrorist, Khadr Adnan: Courtesy of the Guardian (cifwatch.com)
• Video of Harriet Sherwood’s Palestinian “Baker”, Khader Adnan, calling for suicide bombing (cifwatch.com)
• Harriet Sherwood feels Islamic Jihad terrorist’s pain (cifwatch.com)
• Harriet Sherwood again takes up the cause of innocent Palestinian “baker”, Khader Adnan (cifwatch.com)
• Guardian’s sympathy towards Khadr Adnan & indifference to his terror group’s victims, by the numbers (cifwatch.com)