Tag Archives: Chris McGreal

Apr 14 2013

The Guardian continues to yawn over Palestinians summarily executed in Gaza

A couple of days following the start of the November war between Israel and Hamas, masked Palestinian gunmen in Gaza publicly executed seven Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel – a story which was widely covered.   

According to Palestinian witnesses, at around noon on Nov. 16 a van stopped at a Gaza City intersection, and several masked men pushed seven suspected ‘informers’ out of the vehicle.  The gunmen then ordered them to lie face down in the street and shot them all in the head.  Shortly after the killing, a mob surrounded the corpses and some in the crowd “stomped and spat on the bodies”, while others kicked the head of one of the dead men.

One of the corpses was tied to a motorcycle and dragged through the streets as people reportedly screamed, “God is Great!”.

Palestinian gunmen ride motorcycles as they drag the body of a man, who was suspected of working for Israel, in Gaza City

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“They should have been killed in a more brutal fashion so others don’t even think about working with the occupation,” said one of the Palestinian bystanders.

The victims allegedly had notices tied around their necks saying they had been killed by Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades - Hamas’s ‘armed wing’.

In stark contrast to the Guardian’s intense coverage of the 8 day war – which included an official Guardian editorial, frequent updates at their ‘Middle East Live blog‘, and direct reporting from Gaza City by Harriet Sherwood and Chris McGreal - their only stand alone story about this brutal extra-judicial killing was an anonymous AP story on Nov. 20.

Additionally, the Guardian has also thus far failed to cover a recent report by Human Rights Watch (widely reported in the mainstream media) condemning Hamas for failing to investigate the Nov. 16 summary executions.  HRW noted that Hamas’s failure to investigate “the brazen murders” make “a mockery of its claims that it’s upholding the rule of law in Gaza”. 

Whilst the suggestion that Hamas would ever conduct a fair inquiry into human rights violations committed by its own military is of course absurd, the Guardian’s lack of interest in the savage murder of seven Gazans – particularly in contrast to their intense focus on Palestinian terrorists imprisoned by Israel who engage in hunger strikes - continues to make a mockery of claims that their concern for Palestinian rights is principled, and not largely inspired by an animus towards Israel.

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Mar 24 2013

Unrepentant: The Guardian’s latest Mavi Marmara propaganda

Though Israel’s Turkel Commission report and the UN Palmer Committee report, which both investigated the May 31, 2010 incident on board the Turkish (MV Mavi Marmara) flotilla to Gaza, in which nine passengers were killed and ten Israeli soldiers injured, differed on some key determinations, they overlapped on three main conclusions:

  • Contrary to a mind-numbing number of accusations that Israel’s blockade of Gaza was “illegal” both reports concluded that the IDF blockade is fully consistent with international law, and that IDF Naval forces have the right to stop Gaza-bound ships in international waters.
  • Contrary to reports that the IDF attacked “peaceful” activists, both reports concluded that when Israeli commandos boarded the ship they faced “organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers” (many of whom were linked to Hamas and other Islamist terror groups) and were therefore required to use force for their own protection.
  • The IHH sponsored flotilla “acted recklessly in attempting to breach the naval blockade.”

These facts of course made a mockery of the Guardian’s obsessive coverage of the Mavi Marmara violence – which included no less than 71 separate reports and commentaries in a period of only four days following the incident – and their frantic rush to judgement.  A June 1 cartoon by the Guardian’s Steve Bell was indicative of the overall Guardian narrative automatically imputing Israeli guilt and malevolence:

Steve-Bell-comment-cartoo-007

Whilst the Guardian’s Chris McGreal did report on the Palmer Commission findings on Sept 1, 2011, an official Guardian editorial published a few days later only grudgingly noted that the UN report determined that Israel’s blockade was in fact legal, and it failed to mention the more important conclusions regarding flotilla activist culpability for the violence. Instead, it focused on the question of whether Israel would offer an apology to the Turkish government:

Here’s the key passage:

In the end, that report, which criticised Israel for using excessive force but upheld its right to blockade Gaza, was itself leaked. In offering regret and compensation but refusing to apologise, Binyamin Netanyahu’s government made a conscious decision: once again Israel chose a tactical victory over a strategic relationship.

Recently, the Turks and the Guardian got what they wished for.  On Friday, March 22 it was reported that a phone call by Israeli PM Netanyahu to Turkey’s PM Erdogan included an expression of Israeli regret for the loss of Turkish life and an apology for any mistakes which led to their deaths – part of a US brokered agreement which reportedly dealt with issues such as compensation, normalized diplomatic ties and a cancellation of legal steps against IDF soldiers.

The Guardian’s report on the apology, ‘Netanyahu apologizes to Turkish PM for Israeli role in Gaza flotilla raid’, by Harriet Sherwood and Ewen MacAskill, included the following video.

Interestingly, missing from the video was the following evidently insignificant segment (which you should have seen immediately following the opening 12 seconds of the Guardian clip) showing Israeli soldiers being brutally beaten by passengers who were armed with sticks, iron bars and knives:


The selectively edited clip of the incident (as with the subsequent text by Sherwood and MacAskill) would leave the reader unaware that Israeli soldiers, who were enforcing a legal blockade against Hamas, were ambushed by terror-abetting activists determined to instigate a bloody confrontation.

The video, as with the Guardian’s coverage of the incident and it’s aftermath, more resembles the propaganda of pro-flotilla activists than anything approaching serious journalism.  

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Mar 21 2013

Following CiF Watch post, Guardian amends false Jewish demography claim

corrections to storiesWe posted yesterday about a March 19 Guardian report by Chris McGreal, ‘Obama urged: act tough on Israel or risk collapse of a two-state solution‘, which contained an egregious error regarding the Jewish population in Israel.

In the context of warning about the ‘urgent need’ to quickly create a Palestinian state, McGreal grossly mischaracterized a recent study on Jewish demography.

Here’s the passage:

Others have pointed up a recent Hebrew University demographic study, which showed that Jews are now in a minority in the occupied territories – suggesting that Israel’s democratic and Jewish character are threatened by its reluctance to give up territory to an independent Palestine.

We noted that even causal Israel observers would surely know that Jews are of course a minority in “occupied territories” and have been so since Israel’s founding. Further, in locating the Hebrew University professor who he was citing, we demonstrated that the demographic study in question was in fact only claiming that Jews are a minority (relative to non-Jews) in the historic land of Israel – from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, including Gaza, the West Bank and Israel proper.  (As we noted, the political significance of citing the Jewish population within these territorial parameters, which includes Gaza, is uncertain.)

McGreal either conflated the data, or, at least by inference, was characterizing all of Israel (including the state within pre-67 boundaries) as ‘occupied’ Palestinian territory.

Roughly eight hours after our post, which we Tweeted directly to McGreal, the Guardian revised their erroneous claim (which was also originally included in the caption of the accompanying photo) and noted the error.

Here’s the editor’s note:

correctionWhilst in unclear how an “editing error” could explain the original misleading claim, we’re pleased of course whenever the Guardian is prodded into recognizing a factual error and acts promptly to correct it. 

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Mar 20 2013

The Guardian’s Chris McGreal flubs Jewish demography

The Guardian’s Chris McGreal published ‘Obama urged: act tough on Israel or risk collapse of a two-state solution‘ on March 19, which contained two signature McGreal tactics. First, there is the suggestion of faux concern by the Guardian reporter, in the context of discussing a two-state solution, that Israel must be ‘saved from itself’, citing “growing warnings” from unnamed Zionist supporters. Also, he again advances his false claim (see also here) that Netanyahu didn’t in fact agree to a 10-month settlement freeze in 2009.

But then there was this especially curious passage:

Others have pointed up a recent Hebrew University demographic study, which showed that Jews are now in a minority in the occupied territories – suggesting that Israel’s democratic and Jewish character are threatened by its reluctance to give up territory to an independent Palestine.

His claim was further illustrated in the accompanying photo caption:

caption

As would be obvious to even the causal Israel observer, of course, Jews are a minority in “occupied territories” and have been so since Israel’s founding.  There are no Jews in Gaza, roughly 325,000 Jews in the West Bank, and another roughly 190,000 in eastern Jerusalem. If you include Golan (another 19,000) that’s 537,000 Jews.  Since the non-Jewish population of of the West Bank is over 2.5 million, you don’t need a demographic study to conclude that Jews are a minority. 

So, while it’s difficult to know for sure what McGreal is referring to, he may have been eluding to a recently cited study by Sergio DellaPergola, a Hebrew University professor and expert on Israeli population studies.  However, McGreal, at the very least, evidently flubbed the data.  DellaPergola was citing the population of Jews relative to non-Jews in the entire historic land of Israel – from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, including Gaza, the West Bank and Israel proper – a politically meaningless stat, and certainly not consistent with McGreal’s characterization of the area as the “occupied territories”.  

Here’s a passage from a story about the issue in The Atlantic:

The statistics DellaPergola assembled are clear and their implications are frightening. Right now, the total number of Jews and Arabs living under Israeli rule in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza is just under 12 million people. At the moment, a shade under 50 percent of the population is Jewish.

Chris McGreal evidently conflated the data, confusing the Jewish population in the ‘occupied territories’ (in which they’re obviously a minority), with the total Jewish population the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel within the green line. 

Of course, there is one additional explanation for McGreal’s curious passage about “Jews now [being] a minority in the occupied territories“.  Such a passage would follow only if he considers all of Israel ‘occupied Palestinian territory’.

So, which one is it:

1. McGreal comically misunderstood the data?

2. McGreal understood the data (concerning the Jewish population in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank), but he embraces the claims made routinely by Palestinian extremists (and some “moderate” Palestinians) that all of Israel is ‘occupied’ Palestinian land?

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Whilst the former seems more likely, we wouldn’t put it past him to be implicitly endorsing the ‘Greater Palestine’ argument in the latter. 

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Mar 4 2013

Is the Guardian awol at #AIPAC2013?

Last year, the Guardian’s Chris McGreal, their Washington correspondent (previously assigned to Jerusalem) who was singled out by the CST in their 2011 report on antisemitic discourse in the UK, covered the annual AIPAC conference, published several reports and tweeted his contempt for the ‘power’ of the pro-Israel lobby with abandon.

Here’s one of his tweets:

Here’s one of his retweets:

This year, however, there has been no sign of the Guardian’s journalistic/activist footprint at the 2013 AIPAC Conference in Washington.  (McGreal is still reporting on US politics, but now appears to be stationed in Portland, Oregon. However, a quick glimpse at his Tweets indicate he still has Israel on his mind.)

I’ve scoured the Guardian and ‘Comment is Free’ and couldn’t find a thing. I placed “AIPAC” in their search engine and came up with seven hits for January, but nothing since Jan. 20 – a piece by Harriet Sherwood.

One possibly complicating factor may be the fact that Glenn Greenwald, one of those who, even by Guardian standards, most acutely suffers from Israel-lobby-phobia, is on vacation.  Similarly, Harriet Sherwood appears to have been away from her desk, as she hasn’t published since Feb. 17.

The conference, which began on March 3, ends tomorrow so it’s possible there’s something in the works but, given the Guardian’s fixation on Jewish power, it’s surprising they’ve been silent until now.

If any of our fellow ‘hasbarafia’ friends see any sign of the Guardian at the ‘Zionist Lair’ in DC, in the social media (or anywhere in print or online), please let us know.

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Feb 27 2013

CiF Watch complaint to PCC prompts Guardian to begrudgingly revise Rachel Corrie op-ed

The Guardian’s coverage of the culmination of the civil law suit brought by the parents of Rachel Corrie – a verdict which was handed down in Haifa on August 28th, 2012 – was characteristically obsessive, tendentious and breezily unconcerned with the facts.

The Guardian’s coverage of the Israeli court ruling dismissing the Corrie’s suit – which included several reports by Harriet Sherwood, a deeply offensive cartoon, and an especially malign piece by Chris McGreal - culminated in an official Guardian editorial, titled ‘Rachel Corrie: A memory which refuses to die‘. 

The editorial, which was dripping with contempt, included this passage on the ruling:

“Perpetuating the myth that her death was a tragic accident, the judge did not deviate from the official line.”

The Guardian seemed to all but ignore the evidence – if indeed the author(s) of the editorial even bothered to read the English summary which was posted online the same day the ruling was issued - presented in the trial, and the judge’s statements, which led to the the newspaper stating unequivocally that:

“Rachel Corrie died trying to protect a Palestinian home from demolition.” 

However, the Court of Law in Haifa, Israel, which heard the case presented by Rachel Corrie’s family, ruled otherwise. In his verdict, Judge Oded Gershon rejected the claim that Ms. Corrie had been protecting a house from demolition at the time of her death.

The judge ruled as follows: 

The mission of the IDF force on the day of the incident was solely to clear the ground. This clearing and leveling included leveling the ground and clearing it of brush in order to expose hiding places used by terrorists, who would sneak out from these areas and place explosive devices with the intent of harming IDF soldiers. There was an urgency to carrying out this mission so that IDF look-outs could observe the area and locate terrorists thereby preventing explosive devices from being buried. The mission did not include, in any way, the demolition of homes. The action conducted by the IDF forces was done at real risk to the lives of the soldiers. Less than one hour before the incident that is the focus of this lawsuit, a live hand-grenade was thrown at the IDF forces.

All the above information was provided to Chris Elliott, Readers’ Editor of the Guardian, by my colleague Hadar Sela, in a series of communications  beginning on August 30th 2012. Mr Elliott, however, chose not to make a correction, which prompted CiF Watch to bring the matter before the UK Press Complaints Commission. 

Sela argued that Guardian’s statement that “Rachel Corrie died trying to protect a Palestinian home from demolition” had been proven to be untrue in a court of law prior to the editorial being published.

After many months, and a series of correspondences between Sela, the PCC and Guardian editors stubbornly resistant to admitting error, the Guardian begrudgingly agreed to amend their editorial to acknowledge that the Israeli court ruling contradicted claims that Corrie was preventing a home demolition on that day.

pcc

Whilst the result is far from ideal, it’s important that the Guardian was forced to acknowledge that an Israeli judicial proceeding heard evidence, engaged in serious deliberations, and came to a conclusion at odds with the lethal narratives about the Jewish state routinely advanced by Palestinian activists that the paper unquestioningly accepted as fact in their editorial.  

Indeed, it’s worth noting anytime the Guardian is forced to deviate from their ‘official line’ on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

(Additionally, a CiF Watch complaint to the Telegraph – which repeated the same error about Corrie’s actions on the day she was killed, and used a photo which the caption falsely claimed was taken “moments before she died”, by Adrian Blomfield - was revised, and then, at some point, completely removed from their site.)

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Jan 11 2013

Guardian headline tidies up inconvenient quote by nominee for Defense Secretary

While reasonable people can, of course, disagree over the merits of Chuck Hagel’s nomination for US Defense Secretary, a Guardian headline used for Chris McGreal’s latest story (Jan. 7) on the row blatantly distorts a relevant quote by the Nebraska Senator in a manner which has the effect of misleading readers.

Here’s the quote  by Hagel which some opponents of his nomination have cited as cause for concern.

“The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here [in Washington, DC].”

Interestingly, given his own history of using language which evokes Judeophobic stereotypes, McGreal contextualizes the quote quite fairly – and even acknowledges the danger of employing antisemitic rhetoric which warns of the danger posed by Jewish power.

McGreal writes:

“Hagel later apologised for the use of the term “Jewish lobby” [when he spoke of the influence of the lobby on Congress] saying he should have said “pro-Israel lobby”, an issue of particular sensitivity because it touches on antisemitic tropes about Jewish control, but also because it is inaccurate, given the wider support for Israel among Americans, notably Christian evangelicals.”

In addition, the actual quote by Hagel is accurately cited in McGreal’s report.  

Fair enough.

However, here’s the Guardian headline for McGreal’s report:

McGreal

No, it’s clearly not antisemitic to merely acknowledge that the pro-Israel lobby has a powerful voice.

However, that’s not what Hagel said.

A Guardian editor used inverted quotes in order to paraphrase the senator’s words in a manner which make them more palatable and less offensive.

What the editor did, in effect, was to run interference for a politician the paper has framed as the protagonist in a battle against pro-Israel advocates who wish to ”stifle debate” about Israel.

This is not journalism but, rather, advocacy: another example of a paper which continually distorts information to suit a particular ideological agenda.

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Jan 9 2013

Guardian’s anti-Zionist propagandist, Chris McGreal, responds to CiF Watch.

After consistently demonstrating the journalistic malice of Guardian reporter Chris McGreal, we were finally able to draw him out.

Our latest post about McGreal – a reporter singled out by the Community Security Trust in their 2011 report on antisemitic discourse – was titled ‘The Guardian’s lethal narrative about snipers who murder innocent children‘, and focused on two reports conjuring the image of IDF soldiers deliberately murdering innocent and defenseless Palestinian children.

We pointed to two stories by McGreal, in 2005 and 2012, which advanced this narrative, with the former being much more explicit.  Here are the relevant passages from the 2005 story, ‘Snipers with Children in their sites‘:

“It was the shooting of Asma Mughayar that swept away any lingering doubts I had about how it is the Israeli army kills so many Palestinian children and civilians.

Asma, 16, and her younger brother, Ahmad, were collecting laundry from the roof of their home in the south of the Gaza Strip in May last year when they were felled by an Israeli army sniper. Neither child was armed or threatening the soldier, who fired unseen through a hole punched in the wall of a neighbouring block of flats.

…

the army changed its account and claimed the pair were killed by a Palestinian, though there was persuasive evidence pointing to the Israeli sniper’s nest.

…

In southern Gaza, the killings take place in a climate that amounts to a form of terror against the population. Random fire into Rafah and Khan Yunis has claimed hundreds of lives, including five children shot as they sat at their school desks.Many others have died when the snipers must have known who was in their sights – children playing football, sitting outside home, walking back from school.”

We noted both the paucity of evidence in McGreal’s reports and the irresponsibility of advancing such a lethal narrative, that the Jewish state engages in the wanton murder of children, which his reports serve to reinforce – tales of Zionist savagery which, most recently, fueled the murderous rampage, at a Jewish school in Toulouse, of French Jihadist Mohammed Merah.

Yesterday, McGreal responded to our latest post in the comment section, thus.

mcgreal

McGreal links to his July 28, 2003 report, titled in a manner which speaks volumes about how the Guardian reporter views Israelis:

headline

The quote, by the father of one of the Palestinian victims named in McGreal’s report which most clearly illustrates the tone of the piece is this one:

“Almost every day here the Israelis shoot at random, so when you hear it you get inside as quickly as possible.”

That isn’t just a quote.

It’s a perfect example of the ideologically inspired anti-Zionist narrative which McGreal, and his Guardian colleagues, continue attempting to advance.

Here are a few of his examples, in the 2003 Guardian story, which McGreal uses to attempt to demonstrate that IDF snipers murder Palestinian kids.

1. Huda Darwish.

McGreal wrote:

“Weeks passed and another Israeli bullet shattered the life of another young Palestinian girl. Huda Darwish was sitting at her school desk when a cluster of shots ripped through the top of a tree outside her classroom and buried themselves in the wall. But one ricocheted off the window frame, smashed through the glass and lodged in the 12-year-old girl’s brain.”

First, not even the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights - a radical, pro-terror organization – has suggested that Darwish was deliberately shot.

PCHR writes the following:

“Also in March 2004, Huda Darwish, 13, a student in a UNRWA preparatory school, was wounded by a live bullet in the head and lost her eyesight.”

Further, a BBC report by Alan Johnston in 2004, about Palestinian casualties in Gaza, noted that “The shooting [in which Darwish was shot] began when Palestinian militants who oppose the Israeli occupation of Gaza launched a series of missiles at a nearby Jewish settlement”.

For some reason, Chris McGreal decided not to include that bit of information – due, it would seem, to the fact that such context would necessarily undermine his overall narrative of Israeli snipers deliberately murdering Palestinian children.

2. Khalil al-Mughrabi

McGreal wrote:

“The case of Khalil al-Mughrabi is telling. The 11-year-old was shot dead in Rafah by the Israeli army two years ago as he played football with a group of friends near the security fence.”

While McGreal notes a report on the incident by the NGO, B’tselem, he fails to report that, while the facts of the case are highly in dispute, nobody was refuting that the incident occurred in the midst of an IDF response to violent Palestinian rioting, which included the use of grenades against Israeli soldiers.

Again, why else would McGreal decide not to include such relevant context other than the fact that it would have undermined his preconceived conclusions that Israelis deliberately murder Palestinian children?

3. Mahmoud Kabaha

McGreal wrote:

“And children continue to die, even after the ceasefire declared by Hamas and other groups at the end of June. On Friday, a soldier at a West Bank checkpoint shot dead a four-year-old boy, Ghassan Kabaha, and wounded his two young sisters after “accidentally” letting loose at a car with a burst of machine-gun fire from his armoured vehicle.”

Regarding the death of the four-year old boy named Mahmoud Kabaha  (who he incorrectly identifies as Ghassan Kabaha, the name of the town’s mayor), this was indeed a case of extreme negligence, but certainly not intent or policy.  The IDF not only immediately expressed regret over the incident, but investigated, court-marshaled and convicted the soldier.

Indeed, evidence that the shooting was the result of misconduct on behalf of one soldier, and not IDF policy, can be concluded by a New York Times report that the other soldiers in the unit, “beat the one who fired the machine gun because they were so angry at him.”

Again, such vital context can’t be part of McGreal’s reports, as such context would undermine his claim that Israelis deliberately murder Palestinian children.

4. Yousef Abu Jaza[r]

“Among the latest victims of apparently indiscriminate shooting were three teenagers and an eight-year-old, Yousef Abu Jazar, hit in the knee when soldiers shot at a group of children playing football in Khan Yunis.”

McGreal seems to be relying on nothing more than a short dispatch from PCHR on July 3, 2003 which reads like it’s out of a Hamas propaganda communique:

“At approximately 17:00, Israeli soldiers in a military location known as “al-Nouria,” located between “Gani Tal” and “Neve Dekalim” settlement, west of Khan Yunis, opened fire at a number of Palestinian children who were playing football in a nearby yard. Two Palestinian civilians, including a child [Yousef Faraj Mohammed Abu Jazar, 8] were wounded.”

You’d think that an incident in which Israeli forces literally opened fire on children playing football in Gaza would have been widely reported.  Yet, beyond the PCHR, there appears to be no mention of the purported attack.

5. Haneen Abu Sitta

McGreal writes:

“Haneen Abu Sitta, 12, was killed while walking home after school near the fence with a Jewish settlement in southern Gaza.”

Other than McGreal’s report, the only evidence seems to consist of a claim made by the PA observer at the UN in 2003.

Here’s the text from the PA observer testimony at the UN which preceded naming those who had purportedly recently been killed by the IDF.

“The Israeli occupation authorities persist in their daily aggressions, attacks, humiliation, war crimes, State-sponsored terrorism and systematic human rights violations against the Palestinian people. They continue to use more excessive and indiscriminate force, causing more deaths, wounds and humiliation to tens of families on a daily basis. Every single day, tens of Palestinian families mourn their beloved who have perished under Israeli fire just because they happened to be inside their homes when Israeli forces start shelling, for no reason, peaceful homes, or just because they went out to go to their work or school, or to buy basic means of subsistence for their children. Nobody is spared by Israeli fire, be they elderly, women, children, or even newborn babies.”

Could McGreal’s credulousness in the face of such propaganda be such that, as a reporter, he truly believes that such risible charges genuinely reflect reality?

In short, McGreal pieced together a few unrelated incidents of Palestinians killed or injured during a myriad of different circumstances over several years, omitted any evidence contradicting his desired narrative, and completely erased the context of Palestinian terrorism to impute unimaginable malevolence to Israeli soldiers.

As we wrote in our earlier post, what Chris McGreal engages in is not journalism.

McGreal is an ideologue drawn to extreme left agitprop who trades in crude anti-Zionist propaganda.

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Jan 8 2013

The Guardian’s lethal narrative about snipers who murder innocent children.

On Mar 26, 2001, an Israeli named Shalhevet Pass, age 10 months, was killed by Palestinian sniper fire at the entrance to the Avraham Avinu neighborhood in Hebron. Shalhevet was shot in the brain, while in her stroller - with her parents by her side.  

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Shalhevet Pass

Chillingly, an investigation ruled that the the infant was shot deliberately.

The Jewish baby was one of dozens of Israelis who have been murdered as the result of Palestinian sniper fire emanating from Gaza or the West Bank since the early 90s.

Pass’s murder came to mind when I first read a 2012 report by the Guardian’s Chris McGreal suggesting that IDF soldiers deliberately took aim at Palestinian kids – a narrative of Israeli cruelty which actually paled in comparison to a 2005 story he wrote which was even more explicit in evoking the image of such sadistic villainy.

In ‘Rachel Corrie verdict exposes Israeli military mindset‘, Aug. 28, McGreal, in an effort to contextualize the death of Rachel Corrie, and dismissal of the Corrie family lawsuit, as symptomatic of something much darker, argued that “the state of the collective Israeli military mind…cast the definition of enemies so widely that children walking down the street were legitimate targets if they crossed a red line that was invisible to everyone but the soldiers looking at it.”

McGreal’s 2005 Guardian report – cross posted at one well-known conspiracy site – was titled in a manner leaving nothing to the imagination:

snipers

Here are some passages from McGreal’s tale.

“It was the shooting of Asma Mughayar that swept away any lingering doubts I had about how it is the Israeli army kills so many Palestinian children and civilians.

Asma, 16, and her younger brother, Ahmad, were collecting laundry from the roof of their home in the south of the Gaza Strip in May last year when they were felled by an Israeli army sniper. Neither child was armed or threatening the soldier, who fired unseen through a hole punched in the wall of a neighbouring block of flats.

…

the army changed its account and claimed the pair were killed by a Palestinian, though there was persuasive evidence pointing to the Israeli sniper’s nest.

…

In southern Gaza, the killings take place in a climate that amounts to a form of terror against the population. Random fire into Rafah and Khan Yunis has claimed hundreds of lives, including five children shot as they sat at their school desks.Many others have died when the snipers must have known who was in their sights – children playing football, sitting outside home, walking back from school.”

McGreal provided no source for the fantastical story – which was, perhaps, inspired by dispatches in 2001 from Gaza by the discredited American reporter Chris Hedges - and certainly nothing resembling actual evidence that Israeli snipers fired on Palestinian children.

Of course, the most iconic image, preceding the reports by McGreal and Hedges, purporting to characterize unimaginable Israeli malevolence – that Israelis deliberately kill innocent and defenseless children - was the reported death, in Sept of 2000, of Mohammed al-Durrah.

The incident – illustrated by a video purportedly showing a father standing by impotently as the Israelis shot down, in cold blood, his terrified son – was quickly framed in the West  as a justifiable source of outrage for “a beleaguered Palestinian people fighting for their independence“.

Despite the fact that the evidence of the case overwhelmingly demonstrates that al-Durrah was almost certainly not shot by Israelis, and, in fact, in all likelihood, was not shot at all, what Shelby Steele describes as poetic truths triumphed over the empirical evidence, and a lethal narrative about Zionist brutality, which continues to incite Jihadists to this day, emerged victorious.

This one incident became an icon of hatred towards Israel.  

Countries had postage stamps honoring al-Durrah. Daniel Pearl was killed to avenge his “death”. Osama Bin Laden used the incident to incite before 9/11, and town squares & academies have been named after him.  Al-Durrah was even referred to in the Arab media as “a tiny sleeping Jesus“.

In short, he became a poster child for the Intifada, and as proof of Zionist malice.

More recently, a French Jihadist named Muhammad Merah murdered Jewish school-girls in cold blood outside their school in Toulouse to avenge the murder of Palestinian children at the hands of Israeli soldiers. 

Yet, how many people in the West even know the name ‘Shalhevet Pass’?

Indeed, no matter how absurd the charges that the IDF targets innocent Palestinian kids, such morally reckless narratives evoking the specter of unimaginable Jewish malevolence has become so ingrained in the Islamist and extreme-left imagination that the facts regarding such libels have become largely irrelevant.

Richard Landes explained the significance of the media’s unfathomable credulity in the face of such crude propaganda, thus:

“One of the key functions of the mainstream news media is to serve as a dialysis machine, filtering out the poisons that can weaken the civil polities in which they operate. At least in the Arab-Israeli conflict, they have, alas, played the role of injecting the poisons of lethal narratives into the information stream of the West.” 

When Chris McGreal conjures the grotesque image of bloodthirsty IDF soldiers ruthlessly taking aim at innocent Palestinian children, the already powerful Judeophobic antipathy – nurtured continually in the Middle East – becomes that much more impenetrable, and violence directed at Israeli and non-Israeli Jews that much more probable.

Related articles

Dec 19 2012

A Guardian journalist conjures Israeli “snipers with children in their sights”

Here’s a quote from a report by Guardian “journalist” Chris McGreal, ‘Rachel Corrie verdict exposes Israeli military mindset‘, on Aug. 28.

“…the state of the collective Israeli military mind…cast the definition of enemies so widely that children walking down the street were legitimate targets if they crossed a red line that was invisible to everyone but the soldiers looking at it on their maps.”

mcgreal

To learn about McGreal’s mindset, see the links below, and read the section about the Guardian in CST’s 2011 Report on Antisemitic Rhetoric in the UK.

However, while McGreal’s views on Israel are well-known, I was curious to see if this particularly insidious accusation, that the IDF targets Palestinian kids, was a one-off, and after  brief search found a piece he wrote in 2005 which was even more explicit.

Here are some excerpts from a 2005 McGreal piece titled “Snipers with children in their sights“:

“It was the shooting of Asma Mughayar that swept away any lingering doubts I had about how it is the Israeli army kills so many Palestinian children and civilians.

Asma, 16, and her younger brother, Ahmad, were collecting laundry from the roof of their home in the south of the Gaza Strip in May last year when they were felled by an Israeli army sniper. Neither child was armed or threatening the soldier, who fired unseen through a hole punched in the wall of a neighbouring block of flats.

…

the army changed its account and claimed the pair were killed by a Palestinian, though there was persuasive evidence pointing to the Israeli sniper’s nest.

…

In southern Gaza, the killings take place in a climate that amounts to a form of terror against the population. Random fire into Rafah and Khan Yunis has claimed hundreds of lives, including five children shot as they sat at their school desks.Many others have died when the snipers must have known who was in their sights – children playing football, sitting outside home, walking back from school.”

The last passage (which quite predictably doesn’t even contain a link to a source) is astonishing, and begins to explain McGreal’s obsessive hatred for the Jewish state.

McGreal genuinely seems to believe that sadistic Israeli “snipers” intentionally fire at Palestinian children who are playing football or while they sit at their school desks.  

He doesn’t just dislike Israel, or disagree with Israeli government policy regarding the Palestinians.

The Guardian journalist seems to agree with the most unhinged extremists in the region – those who believe as an article of faith that Israelis are simply monsters.

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Dec 18 2012

Guardian fails to take home top prize at 2012 Dishonest Reporting Awards

It just wasn’t their year.

Oh, how they tried to repeat the performance which earned them the 2011 HonestReporting ‘Dishonest Reporting Award‘, but it simply wasn’t to be.

Though the Guardian failed to take home the top prize this year, they did receive less high-profile awards for their denial of reality itself (Biggest Train Wreck Over Principle: The Guardian, and UK Press Complaints Commission) by telling readers that Tel Aviv was Israel’s capital, as well one for most antisemitic cartoon (Most Anti-Semitic-Themed Cartoon: Steve Bell, The Guardian) for a depiction of feckless, slavish British leaders being controlled like a puppet by Israel’s Prime Minister.

While this year’s winner, Haaretz’s Gideon Levy, indeed deserves credit for a very compelling polemical performance in attempting to convince readers that Israelis support apartheid, the Guardian’s body of deceit for the year was, at least in the eyes of this blogger,  impressive nonetheless.

The Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, interviewed after being informed by HonestReporting’s judges that their media group lost the coveted award, said the following:

“Though it’s rare for a media institution to take home two Dishonest Reporting prizes in a row, we really thought our overall anti-Israel bias was the most effective in a very crowded anti-Zionist field, and should have won.  In addition to elevating Tel Aviv to the status of Israel’s capital, and publishing a cartoon indistinguishable from what’s found in the most Judeophobic Arab media, I’m also quite proud of the work done by Chris McGreal, whose characterization of the US relationship with Israel as ‘slave-like’ earned him a coveted spot in CST’s 2011 Report on Antisemitic Discourse. 

And, naturally, we thought that the buzz over Deborah Orr’s pejorative reference to Jews as ‘The Chosen People’ would also get the judges attention. 

Overall we had a great year of obsessively dishonest reporting about Jews and Israel and, while we congratulate Gideon Levy for his simply sublime smear of the Jewish state, we respectfully believe that the award academy overlooked our overall body of work. After all, we literally wrote the book on how to avoid reporting fairly about Israel and making antisemitism respectable among the liberal elite.”

academy

Rusbridger and Levy react to Dishonest Reporting Award announcement

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Dec 16 2012

Chris McGreal vs. Harriet Sherwood on Israel’s 2009 settlement construction freeze

mcgreal and sherwood

As we reported on Nov. 8, Chris McGreal’s post-election analysis, Obama’s in-tray – Israel/Palestine, Nov. 7, included this passage:

“Obama sought to pressure the Israeli prime minister to halt Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, at their first meeting in the spring of 2009. Netanyahu not only resisted but humiliated the president by publicly lecturing him about Jewish history.” [emphasis on all quotes are added]

McGreal’s latest post, ‘International criminal court is a lever for Palestinians on Israeli settlements‘, Dec. 15, repeats the historical revisionism suggesting that Israel did not in fact implement a temporary settlement freeze.

“An ICC ruling in favour of the Palestinians might have another effect. When Obama first came to power four years ago, he attempted to strong-arm Netanyahu into taking an agreement with the Palestinians seriously. The president began by demanding a total freeze on settlement construction. The Israeli prime minister outmanoeuvred and humiliated Obama, and carried on as before.”  

Not only is it untrue that “Netanyahu “resisted” Obama’s request, but, in fact, the 10-month Israeli freeze on new construction in the West Bank, declared in Nov. 2009, was reported by the Guardian (and through wire services on their site) as an uncontroversial fact.

Tellingly, Harriet Sherwood, the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent, has also unambiguously reported Israel’s 10-month freeze in reports continually over the past few years.

Here’s Sherwood on Nov. 9, 2010, in ‘Israeli plan to build hundreds of homes in West Bank settlement risks US anger‘:

“The Ariel and East Jerusalem proposals came six weeks after the end of a 10-month partial freeze on settlement construction.”

Here’s Sherwood, on July 5, 2010, reporting on US pressure to extend the 10-month freeze on settlement construction, titled ‘US to press Binyamin Netanyahu to extend freeze on settlements‘:

“The 10-month moratorium, which excludes building in East Jerusalem, is due to end at around the same time as the four-month period set for proximity talks comes to an end.

…

And Settlement Watch, an Israeli organisation, said that preparations are being made for a massive construction boom this autumn on the assumption the moratorium will be lifted.

…

The freeze, which began last November, was wrung out of Netanyahu by the White House after months of negotiation and against the opposition of the prime minister’s rightwing coalition partners.”

Here’s Sherwood on Nov. 10, 2010, in ‘Israeli settlement plan sparks international outrage‘:

“The Ariel and East Jerusalem proposals come six weeks after the end of the 10-month partial freeze on settlement construction.”

Here’s Sherwood, on March 13, 2011, reporting on the Israeli response to the murder of five members of a Jewish family in Itamar, in ‘Israel to expand settlements after family killing‘:

 ”Israel is to build hundreds of homes in West Bank settlements in response to the murder of five members of a Jewish settler family…

…

The homes are to be built in the large settlement blocks which Israel expects to keep under any peace agreement with the Palestinians. It is the biggest tranche of construction announced since the end of the settlement freeze almost six months ago.”

Here’s Sherwood on July 26, 2012, in ‘Population of Jewish settlements in West Bank up 15,000 in a year‘:

“A 10-month partial freeze on settlement expansion came to an end almost two years ago, since when there have been no meaningful talks.”

Here’s a passage in a report by Sherwood on Oct. 22, 2012, in ‘Israel’s cranes reprove Barack Obama’s failure to pursue two-state solution‘.

“On the Israeli side, Obama said the US did not accept the legitimacy of Jewish settlements. “It is time for these settlements to stop,” he said bluntly.There followed protracted negotiations between the US and Israeli governments which resulted, in November 2009, in Netanyahu reluctantly acceding to a temporary construction freeze in West Bank settlements.”

Here’s Sherwood on Oct. 30, 2012, in ‘EU urged to re-think trade deals with Israeli settlements in West Bank‘:

“Settlement growth has accelerated in the past two years, since the end of the temporary construction freeze brokered by the US.”

So, which Guardian reporter is correct?

Was there a settlement freeze, or did Netanyahu resist Obama’s request for the temporary halt in construction across the green line?

Of course, the fact that it’s difficult to find a reporter other than McGreal, working for the Guardian or any other paper, who has argued that Israel didn’t in fact agree to a construction freeze would seem to vindicate Sherwood.

As I’ve noted previously, Chris McGreal is perfectly entitled to dislike Israel and take the side of the Palestinians.  However, as a professional journalist, he is not free to lie or misrepresent the facts to suit his ideological agenda.

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Dec 12 2012

Chris McGreal makes 3rd unforced error in story on footballers signing anti-Israel petition

The Guardian’s Chris McGreal (recently singled out in a CST Report on Antisemitic Discourse) recently published a story about a petition signed by some footballers calling for European football’s governing body to cancel Israel’s hosting of a 2013 European competition in response to the Gaza war.  (‘Footballers condemn plans to hold U21 European Championship in Israel‘, Guardian, Nov. 30)

However, after a CiF Watch post demonstrated that two of the footballers cited by McGreal as signing the petition - former Chelsea player Didier Drogba and Newcastle midfielder Yohan Cabaye - flatly denied signing it, the Guardian revised McGreal’s piece accordingly, and noted the following on their corrections page.

correction

Well, it looks like the Guardian’s ‘Corrections’ editor will have more work to do, as the Daily Mail is reporting that another footballer cited by McGreal, Chelsea forward Eden Hazard, has also denied signing the petition.

The Daily Mail’s Charles Sale wrote:

“Hazard had not contributed to the petition. His agent John Bico said: ‘Eden never speaks about his political opinions and he certainly never signed anything.’” 

You can email Guardian readers’ editor Chris Elliott (reader@guardian.co.uk), and Tweet Chris McGreal (@ChrisMcGreal), to point out the additional error. 

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Dec 4 2012

Two footballers cited by Chris McGreal as endorsers of anti-Israel petition flatly deny signing it

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

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:

fb

While you’re at it, you can also Tweet Chris McGreal @ChrisMcGreal and ask that he revise his report accordingly.

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Dec 3 2012

Paul Harris misleads on Israel’s commitment to freeze settlements under 2002 ‘Roadmap’

Paul Harris’s Dec. 1 Guardian piece, ‘Clinton and Hague attack Israel decision to build new settlements‘, reported on Netanyahu’s decision to approve the planning process for construction of 3,000 homes on land East of Jerusalem.

Harris, in an effort to contextualize Israeli plans to proceed with new construction, included the following claim, near the end of his report:

“Israel agreed to freeze settlement construction under the Roadmap For Peace plan in 2002. But it has failed to comply with that commitment despite repeated and widespread international condemnation.”

Harris’s claim is, at best, highly misleading.

Originally, Israel, under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, specifically rejected the elements of the Road Map (proposed by President Bush in 2002) which required Israel to halt settlement construction – a fact widely reported in the media at the time.

However, even when Israel announced, later than month, that they accepted, in principle, the goals of road map, they added a list of reservations. One of these reservations stipulated that, while they would “discuss” the issue of a settlement freeze and removing illegal outposts, any such Israeli concessions would be contingent upon the Palestinians combating terror, putting an end to incitement and educating their people for peace.  

Specifically, regarding the “settlement freeze”, the Israelis also explicitly asserted their continued right to settlement development within the existing communities - a partial freeze measure, again, only to commence when the Palestinians began fighting terror and working to end incitement.  

In 2004 the 2nd Intifada was still raging, and there was indication that the Palestinian requirement was being fulfilled.

So, the settlement freeze was part of a larger ‘road map’, implemented by a U.S. President no longer in office, was only partial to begin with and was contingent upon reciprocal Palestinian behavior in honoring their commitment to end terror – a relevant factor given that the Intifada didn’t end until February, 2005.

It’s also odd of Harris to cite a peace proposal from 2002, the terms of which were, at best, unclear, in light of President Obama’s more recent request, in 2009, which Netanyahu agreed to, for a 10 month freeze in construction to advance the peace process.

So, Harris’s claim, that Israel agreed to the freeze, and that they failed to comply with it, is, at best, extremely misleading.

…

One final note: A Sky News report published on Dec. 1, more than an hour before Harris’s piece was originally published at the Guardian, includes some of the same exact language about Israel’s alleged failure to abide by an agreement to freeze construction in 2002:

Sky News, 17:05, Saturday December 1, 2012:

“Israel agreed to freeze settlement construction under the Roadmap for Peace plan in 2002 but has failed to comply with that commitment.”

Paul Harris at the Guardian, 18.28, Saturday 1 December 2012:

Israel agreed to freeze settlement construction under the Roadmap For Peace plan in 2002. But it has failed to comply with that commitment…

Is it a coincidence that both Harris and the (uncredited) Sky News report used the precise same 22 words in a row in similar stories filed within an hour and  half of one another?

Perhaps.