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A guest post by Anne, an Anglo-Israeli writer who blogs at Anne’s Opinions
It’s Naqba Day, and the Guardian is certainly not one to miss an opportunity to undermine Israel’s legitimacy. Yesterday’s contribution to this commemoration was an article by Khaled Diab. (Diab is a regular contributor to ‘Comment is Free’, and is a staunch supporter of the one-state solution.)
The general premise of Diab’s ’Comment is Free’ essay sounds fair enough, titled “Palestinians must prioritise people over lost land”, with the sub-title “Nakba day reminds Palestinians that dreaming of the right of return stands in the way of securing more vital rights”.
However, as we read through the essay the position suggested by the title (and some of the opening text) is undermined quite egregiously. He begins with an appeal to the emotions of the reader with an evocative story of a Palestinian grandmother who experienced the events of 1948:
“Perhaps few recall it better than my Palestinian neighbour, a sprightly great-grandmother who turned 90 this year. Born at the start of the British mandate to a prominent Jerusalem family, she gave birth to her second child just months before Israel’s declaration of independence. At first, she and her family were determined to stay put during the civil war that broke out following the UN vote to partition Palestine.
Then the Deir Yassin massacre occurred, leading to general panic among the Palestinian population. Fearing for the safety of their family, my neighbour and her husband packed a couple of suitcases and sought temporary refuge in Amman, then a tiny backwater of just 33,000 inhabitants.”
Deir Yassin is one of those “clashes of narratives” that are at the root of Palestinian hostility towards Israel, and which will never be agreed upon by both sides. The article points the reader to the Wikipedia entry for Deir Yassin but one can gain a much more balanced understanding of the event from the Jewish Virtual Library.
Regardless of the facts and numbers of casualties at Deir Yassin, the JVL explains that the Arab propaganda about the alleged Jewish violence against Deir Yassin’s residence backfired, thus confirming Diab’s neighbour’s story:
“Contrary to claims from Arab propagandists at the time and some since, no evidence has ever been produced that any women were raped. On the contrary, every villager ever interviewed has denied these allegations. Like many of the claims, this was a deliberate propaganda ploy, but one that backfired. Hazam Nusseibi, who worked for the Palestine Broadcasting Service in 1948, admitted being told by Hussein Khalidi, a Palestinian Arab leader, to fabricate the atrocity claims. Abu Mahmud, a Deir Yassin resident in 1948 told Khalidi “there was no rape,” but Khalidi replied, “We have to say this, so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews.” Nusseibeh told the BBC 50 years later, “This was our biggest mistake. We did not realize how our people would react. As soon as they heard that women had been raped at Deir Yassin, Palestinians fled in terror.”14
Returning to Khaled Diab’s article, we read:
“The family has never managed to regain or be compensated for their house in West Jerusalem but, unlike many others, they managed to return to East Jerusalem and settle just a few miles from their former home. Today, millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants live in neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, while significant Palestinian diasporas are found in Chile, the US, Honduras, Germany and other countries.”
This above paragraph really encapsulates the whole Palestinian “right of return” issue. The family fled due to their own leaders’ propaganda, but managed to return to “just a few miles from their former home”. In this case, why are they still considered refugees?
In this vein, Diab continues:
“Closely related to the Nakba is another political yin-yang: the Palestinian dream, and Israeli nightmare, of return. Palestinians, particularly the disenfranchised inhabitants of refugee camps, have clung on to their dream for the past 64 years. This is most poignantly symbolised by the keys to their former homes which many families have held on to. Politically, this longing has been expressed by Palestinians in their claimed “right of return”, which has been upheld by a number of UN resolutions, including Resolution 194 of 1948.”
However, Resolution 194 does not say what Diab thinks it says. Paragraph 11 states:
“11. Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible;”
It does not mention descendants inheriting the refugee status ad infinitum. And as proof of Israel’s compliance with this article, Diab’s grandmotherly neighbour herself, back in East Jerusalem, is but one confirmation of this fact.
Diab further relates how the Palestinian demand for “right of return” has taken over their political process but comes to the correct conclusion that this is a loser’s game.
“But at a time when the dream of Palestinian return is perhaps more distant than ever, and more and more Palestinians are being pushed off their lands by Israel, why are so many focusing on what to much of the rest of the world seems like a futile quest?
The reasons are complex and include disappointment and frustration at the crushing of the Palestinian dream of self-determination, on the one hand, and the cynical exploitation of identity politics as a substitute for real policies, on the other. Then there is the aggressive expansion of Israeli settlements, ongoing Israeli Nakba denial, as well as Israel’s insistence on a law of return for Jews but no right of return for Palestinians.”
Diab’s recitation of Israel’s “crimes” is repeating the failed propaganda exercise of the Palestinians’ early leaders in 1948. There is no “aggressive expansion of Israeli settlements” since no new settlements have been set up since the mid-1990s. Any new settlement building is done within settlements’ boundaries, and therefore does not encroach on any further land.
Further, Diab’s reference to what he characterizes as Israeli “Nakba denial” necessarily evokes “Holocaust denial”, a hyperbolic and completely unserious historical comparison.
As for Israel’s “insistence” on the Law of Return, that is a direct outcome of (and reaction to) 2,000 years of persecution throughout the world, both in the Western Christian world and the Eastern Moslem world, culminating in the Holocaust. If Israel were to be overrun tomorrow, 6 million Jews would be easy prey with nowhere to go, and politically persecuted Jews in the diaspora would, once again, have no place to take refuge.
Diab is now building up to the main thrust of his article, their treatment at the hands of their fellow Arabs, although he cannot resist a malicious dig at Israel once again:
“However, the trouble is that this fixation on return focuses aspirations on a remote, distant and perhaps unattainable goal, while drawing attention and energy away from the very real issues facing Palestinians across the region. Not only does Israel disenfranchise and discriminate against the Palestinian populations under its control, especially in the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians in many Arab countries are denied their rights too. [emphasis added]
Perhaps the starkest example is Lebanon where, on the back of fears of upsetting the small country’s fragile sectarian balance, some 400,000 Palestinian refugees, many of whom were born in Lebanon, are deprived of numerous basic rights – including citizenship, public healthcare and access to numerous professions – and forced to live in what are effectively ghettos, otherwise known as refugee camps. Jordan has done more than others to integrate dispossessed Palestinians by granting most of them citizenship but, even there, Palestinians still face a certain amount of discrimination and some of them have been made stateless again.
Though the status of Palestinians in many Arab countries is partly a product of classic xenophobia and a reluctance, as they see it, to pay for Israel’s crimes, much of this marginalisation stems from Palestinian and Arab fears that integrating refugees would hurt their political quest for nationhood and the ever-elusive return. But what this traditional equation overlooks is that a nation is not the land – which has been declared so “sacred” by both Israelis and Palestinians alike that any number of generations is worth sacrificing at its divine altar – but the sum of its people. [emphasis added]
So this Nakba day, 15 May, it is time for Palestinians to prioritise the people over their lost land, and to campaign, wherever they now live, for their full civil, social and economic rights and their cultural right to be recognised as a distinct community.”
I would say that it’s about time an Arab commentator stated this clearly.
Diab continues:
“That is not to say that Palestinians should forget the Nakba. Just like Jews mourned their “exile” for centuries, Palestinians have a right to keep the memory of their dispossession alive, though this is likely to become more spiritual and symbolic with the passing of each generation. And perhaps, counterintuitively for us today, as Palestinians cement their identity as a people without a land, they may, in a more tolerant and inclusive future, also start performing a kind of Palestinian version of Aliyah to a land with two peoples.” [emphasis added]
This co-opting of Jewish methods for mourning, commemorating the Destruction and Diaspora, and the 2,000 year-old Jewish wish to make “Aliyah” suggests a determined effort to construct a historical understanding necessary to one day supplant the Jewish nation itself.
Furthermore, with the innocuous little phrase “a land with two peoples”, Diab has managed to slyly insert a “one-state solution” proposal by the back door. This does not bode well for a future of peace and co-existence.
Diab is correct that the Palestinians must let go of their insistence on “right of return” because it is recognized as a non-starter. He is also very right in drawing attention to the miserable treatment the Palestinians receive at the hands of their brethren. However, aiming for a one-state solution will not bring the Palestinians any closer to a state of their own.
Related articles
- European conference organised by ‘Palestinian Return Centre’ launches new initiative. (cifwatch.com)
- Who’s afraid of Richard Millett? (cifwatch.com)
Richard Millett was called a “typical Israeli” last night at an SOAS Palestine Society event in London.
(The event included a presentation by Abdel Bari Atwan – a ‘Comment is Free’ contributor who can be seen here explaining that if Iranian missiles hit Tel Aviv he would “dance in [London's] Trafalgar Square” and here praising a terrorist attack against Israeli civilians.)
If you’re wondering whether the abuse hurled at Richard was racist, simply replace “Israeli” with any other identity and repeat the charge. ”You’re a typical Arab.” “You’re at typical Black,” etc.
Of course, Richard is not an Israeli. He’s a British Jew who routinely defends Israel and Jews at events hosted by the most hostile anti-Zionist, pro-Islamist (and often antisemitic) activists. His blog posts are frequently personal reports, using both photos and videos compiled while monitoring events hosted by the UK’s ubiquitous array of groups hostile to Israel’s existence.
His reports unambiguously demonstrate the illiberal nature of much of the pro-Palestinian movement. One post shows Baroness Jenny Tonge praising Hamas leaders at a Palestinian Return Centre event, another post details a confrontation with a Holocaust denier who attended a Palestinian Solidarity event and yet another recounts a PSC event at which Jews were compared to Nazis.
It’s quite telling that the incident began last night when participants objected to Richard filming their public event (where no restrictions on such recordings were in place and, as Richard noted, others were filming the event). What did they have to fear from a lone Jewish blogger who was merely attempting to disseminate information about what was said by a few pro-Palestinian activists?
One of the biggest scandals of the Guardian’s coverage of Israel and the Palestinians is the dishonest manner in which they frame the debate: a binarism which imputes good will and progressivism to nearly anyone claiming to advocate on behalf of the Palestinians on one hand and racism (or at least illiberality) to those unapologetically advocating for the Jewish state.
Perhaps Richard Millett is feared so much because he consistently gives lie to this absurd moral paradigm.
Related articles
Ali Abunimah is a Palestinian-American journalist, former ‘Comment is Free’ contributor and leader of the BDS movement who The Jewish Daily Forward designated a “rock star“.
Abunimah, who’s an opponent of the existence of a Jewish state within any borders, has characterized Israel as a“supremacist” state, and approvingly cited those who compare Israeli behavior to that of Nazi Germany.
Abunimah is also co-founder of the site, Electronic Intifada.
Abunimah, not surprisingly, isn’t quite able to contain his rage against the Zionist menace on Twitter.
While following the hashtag on the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike (#palhunger) I came across the following pithy Tweets by Abunimah.
(Abunimah has blocked me from viewing his Tweets due to past Zionist apostasies, but those not banished can see his feed, here).
But, that Tweet was an exercise in self-restraint and sobriety compared to this:
Yeah, he’s got our number. Imprisoning Palestinians is the Zionist ‘reason d’être’, our founding principle, our driving passion.
We’re not motivated by the age-old Jewish desire to be ‘a free people in a free land’. That whole thing about “Jewish self-determinism” is just a convenient ruse.
Abunimah SO sees through us.
Related articles
Weapons found in Palestinian terror suspect’s home, near Hebron, January 2012
Yesterday we commented on an Observer editorial which harshly condemned Israel for the use of administrative detention to detain suspected terrorists: “Observer op-ed on ‘hunger strikers’ exposes double standards on administrative detention coverage“.
In addition to the failure of The Observer (sister publication of The Guardian) to provide context on the use of such practices by other democracies and its failing to acknowledge that many of those held have already engaged in terror activities, the editorial made this astonishingly inaccurate claim:
“Indeed, according to the UN’s special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, over the past year the number of administrative detentions has almost doubled despite the period of relative peace in Israel.” [emphasis mine]
First, it evidently never occurs to Guardian Group journalists that the degree to which there has been a decrease in the number of major terror attacks may have something to do with preventative anti-terror procedures, including administrative detention.
But moreover, while the kind of large-scale deadly suicide attacks Israel experienced during the 2nd Intifada have thankfully decreased dramatically, Palestinian terrorists’ attempts to launch such attacks have not waned.
As I noted in the previous post, there are dozens of terror attacks in Israeli each month (see official Israeli terror statistics here), most of which the Guardian (and the majority of the mainstream media) fails to report.
In addition to rockets fired into Israeli towns from Gaza ( 627 deadly projectiles were fired in 2011 and 272 so far in 2012), here are a few recent attempted attacks, thankfully thwarted by the IDF, which belie the claim that there has been “relative peace” in Israel.
- January 2: IDF force captured 2 Palestinian men carrying illegal guns. The two were taken in for investigation near Nablus while the M-16 rifle, an Uzi, and matching ammunition they carried were confiscated by security forces.
- January 15: IDF forces uncovered a hunting rifle and a shotgun in a Palestinian’s house in the village of Dahariya, near Hebron. The man was known to the police on previous charges of criminal violence.
- February 21: A powerful explosive device was uncovered along the Israel-Egypt border. Israeli forces saw a man hurling a suspicious bag and immediately fleeing the scene. The explosive was detonated in a controlled manner. No one was hurt.
- April 11: IDF forces stopped a would-be bomber over Passover at a checkpoint east of Nablus, northern Samaria. The terrorist was carrying improvised explosive devices, three knives and 50 bullets.
- April 21: 2 Palestinian teens carrying bombs and guns were nabbed by Israeli forces. They were apprehended near Tapuach junction with 5 pipe bombs, a gun, and ammo.
- April 24: IDF forces uncovered 4 improvised bombs on two Palestinians at a crossing north of Jericho. The bombs were found in the men’s bags and detonated safely.
- April 28: IDF forces nabbed 2 terrorists with 4 pipe bombs as they were trying to smuggle explosives through a checkpoint in northern Samaria.
- May 7: Israeli forces arrested 17-year-old Palestinian for carrying 3 pipe bombs. The teen was detained near Tapuach junction, a known hot spot for terror attacks.
- May 10: Israeli forces arrested 2 Palestinians carrying 2 explosive devices and 3 prepped firebombs near Tapuach Junction, again.
There is one thing, of course, that all of these thwarted Palestinian terror attacks (against innocent Israeli civilians) have in common:
They weren’t reported by the Guardian.
Related articles
The Guardian’s coverage of Israel’s administrative detention of a Palestinian “baker” (who, in his spare time, found time to ‘volunteer’ for Palestinian Islamic Jihad) named Khader Adnan was as one-sided as it was obsessive. They published five separate pieces (over a ten-day period) sympathetic to a terrorist (who went on a hunger strike to protest his detention) held due to his involvement in a movement responsible for terror attacks claiming over 200 Israeli lives since the 1990s.
(The “baker” can be seen in this video imploring his fellow Palestinians to carry out more suicide attacks against Israelis.)
Yesterday, May 12, The Observer (The Guardian’s sister publication) published an official editorial titled “Hunger strikers expose an inhuman system“.
The editorial begins:
“The disclosure that six of almost 1,600 Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike to protest against the Israeli policy of “administrative detention” are close to death has profound implications for Israel and for the stalled Middle East peace process. The rule of law and fair and proper judicial processes, where those accused of a crime may be charged and are guaranteed an opportunity to speak in their own defence in open court, is a key human right that a properly functioning democracy should guarantee even in a troubled period of peacetime.”
Vital context ignored by the editorial includes the fact that administrative detention is a practice inspired by the recognition that the criminal law’s reliance on strict rules of evidence are not suited to handle the challenges presented by terrorism. The reasoning behind administrative detention often is based upon fear that the suspect is likely to pose a threat in the near future. So, it is meant to be preventive in nature rather than punitive.
The administrative detention practice used to imprison Adnan is a judicial method similarly employed by other democratic states around the world, including the the EU, UK – and the U.S.
In fact, Israeli detainees are allowed judicial review, generally within eight days, while in the UK the length of time (which was 28 days until 2011) is now two weeks. The U.S. can hold terror suspects indefinitely.
A U.S. Homeland Security Affairs report concluded that (for these and other reasons) Israel’s use of administrative detention is more respectful of prisoners’ rights than in the U.S. and Britain.
Further, while Israel uses administrative detention purely to prevent acts of terror against its citizens, many countries in the EU use this type of detention for asylum seekers and illegal immigrants.
The Observer editorial continues:
“Indeed, according to the UN’s special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, over the past year the number of administrative detentions has almost doubled despite the period of relative peace in Israel.”
Much like Harriet Sherwood’s false claims that rockets have only “sporadically” been fired into Israel (when, actually, 627 deadly projectiles were fired at Israeli towns in 2011 alone), the notion that Israel has “relative peace” is profoundly misleading.
In addition to rockets from Gaza, each month there are typically dozens of terror attacks in Israel proper as well as in the West Bank. Here’s a breakdown of terror attacks in Israel for the month of April, 2012, most of which never get reported by the MSM.
West Bank and Jerusalem – 60 attacks: 2 explosive devices; 2 small arm shootings; 2 stabbing (in Jerusalem); 54 firebombs (22 in Jerusalem).
Green Line – 1 stabbing attack (in Kfar Saba).
The Observer editorial further warns:
“There is an evident risk of violence for both Israelis and Palestinians should any of the hunger strikers die.”
And, there is a much greater risk that Israeli civilians will die if the Palestinian terrorists are released, a humanitarian concern the author of this polemic clearly did not consider.
The Observer editorial continues by issuing a further warning to Israel on why they must give in to the terrorists’ demands.
“At a time when more and more observers are increasingly convinced that the two-state solution is failing, the nonviolence of this hunger strike is already deeply suggestive of what a Palestinian civil rights movement might look like – should Palestinians abandon the demand for their own self-determination and, instead, insist on full equality within a binational state.”
I guess it was lost on the author that the only reason such prisoners affiliated with violent terrorist movements are behaving ‘non-violently’ is the fact that they’re incarcerated and unarmed. Further, ignored in the passage is the fact that the overwhelming majority of the terror suspects subscribe to an ideology intrinsically opposed to mere “self-determination” and hostile to the existence of a Jewish state within any borders.
The “non-violent” Palestinian prisoners currently engaged in a hunger strike include the following suspects, who were re-arrested by Israeli authorities for continued terrorist activity after being released in the Shalit deal:
Abbas al-Sayyid – Senior activist in Hamas. He was sentenced to 35 life sentences for his role in the terrorist attack in the Park Hotel terror attack in Netanya on Passover evening 2002 which killed 30. After he was arrested, he confessed during questioning by the GSS (General Security Service) that he organized and led the terrorist attack, and even afterwards he sought two more explosive belts to commit additional attacks. His arrest prevented a number of planned attacks on Israeli citizens.
Muhannad Shrim – Senior activist in Hamas and al-Sayyis’ assistant. He was sentenced to 29 life sentences for his involvement in the deadly“Park Hotel” terrorist attack in 2002, which killed 30 and injured 160. During questioning after he was arrested, he told police how he transported the terrorist bomber from his apartment before the attack.
Jamal al-Hor – Hamas activist who was sentenced to five life sentences forterrorist attacks and involvement in murder. Among other things, he was involved in the planning of the attack at “Café Apropo” in Tel Aviv with other members of a terrorist cell he founded which came to be known as the “Tzurif squad”. Three young women in their early 30’s were killed, one of whom was in her third month of pregnancy, and 48 others injured.
Wajdi Joda – Head of the ‘Democratic Front’ in the Nablus region. Joda personally recruited the terrorist who committed the suicide attack at Geha interchange on December 25, 2003. In the attack, four Israeli civilians were killed, among them three women and 21 injured, when the bomber blew himself up at a bus stop in the evening.
Finally, the editorial claims that they oppose the use of administrative detention by all countries. Yet, a quick search of the Guardian’s website demonstrates a disproportionate focus on Israel. Out of 13 total references to “administrative detention” on their site in 2012, in some critical or pejorative manner, only one didn’t focus on Israel.
The subtext of the Observer editorial, suggesting that releasing dangerous terrorists from prison will help the ‘peace process’, is only exceeded in absurdity and cynicism by the Guardian Group’s evidently serious suggestion that they aren’t obsessively critical of the Jewish state.
Related articles
- We know they’re hungry…but for what, exactly? (This Ongoing War)
- Abdullah Barghouti: Poster Boy For Palestinian Hunger Strike–And Murderer Of 66 Jews #PalHunger
- Propaganda by wife of Islamic Jihad terrorist, Khadr Adnan: Courtesy of the Guardian (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood feels Islamic Jihad terrorist’s pain (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood celebrates ‘Int’l Women’s Day’ by championing the cause of Islamic Jihad terrorist (cifwatch.com)
On March 17th we posted a piece (“Lost in anti-Zionist translation? Guardian misquotes Noam Shalit on Palestinian hostage taking“) which noted that the Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood cited an incorrect translation of a Noam Shalit interview on Israeli TV.
According to Greenwood Shalit stated, in the context of discussing his son’s recent release after five-years of captivity by Hamas, that he would kidnap Israeli soldiers if he were a Palestinian.
JTA had a Hebrew-speaking colleague track down the interview with Israel’s Channel 10 and it turns out Shalit didn’t say that at all.
Here’s a transcript (translated from Hebrew) of what Shalit actually said:
Q: If you were a Hamasnik, would you abduct an Israeli soldier?
Shalit: I don’t know but maybe I would fight IDF forces in a different way, I don’t know.
Clearly, Shalit didn’t say that he would kidnap an Israeli soldier if he were a Palestinian, as Greenwood claimed. He essentially suggested that he didn’t know exactly what he would do if he were a Palestinian, while stating that (if he were Palestinian) he might have tried to fight the Israeli army “in a different way.”
In the Guardian’s ‘Corrections and clarifications’ section today, there was this.
Those of you fluent in Hebrew may want to read the text of the interview at the Israeli site here and let us know whether the incorrect translation could have been an honest “misinterpretation”.
Jasmin Ramsey’s profile at the Guardian
The contemporary manifestation of classic antisemitic narratives regarding the injurious effects of Jewish power often include the suggestion that Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own nation. Such commentary also typically imputes enormous power to Jews who typically represent a tiny fraction of the overall population.
Such a synthesis of disloyalty on one hand and exaggerated power on the other allows the accuser to charge the Jewish community (or those lobbying on behalf of Jewish interests) of working to undermine their nation.
You don’t have to believe in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to see the hand of Jewry behind undesirable political developments, such as the suggestion (popular several years ago) that Jews working in various positions for former President Bush were responsible for his administration’s decision to invade Iraq.
As Lee Smith observed:
“According to this theory, administration principals like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, and the president—policymakers with actual decision-making power—were merely instruments in the control of vast Zionist networks.”
In many European countries the percentage of citizens who believe Europe’s Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own country, and/or have too much power, often exceeds 50%.
The following (Washington’s war of words against Iran, May 8) by CiF contributor Jasmin Ramsey, is a textbook example of the increasing tendency of the Guardian style left to blame organized pro-Israel Jewry for any political phenomena they find displeasing in the United States.
Ramsey, it should be noted, blogs at LobeLog.com - the site of Jim Lobe. Lobe writes about a number of topics but “exposing” the Israel lobby is a special focus of his, as can be seen by his posts at sites such as Electronic Intifada. Ramsey herself has posted at Mondoweiss and routinely opines on the threat posed by the Israel lobby at publications such as Al Jazeera.
Ramsey suggests, in her CiF essay, that the President of the United States is not responsible for his own policy regarding Iran, assigning blame instead to a more desirable target.
Her essay, which argues against both economic sanctions and military intervention, includes these passages:
“No single influential figure has made [a U.S.] war with Iran seem like a prospect more than Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu… who inspired more standing ovations during a May 2011 hardline speech to Congress (29 in total) than Obama did during his state of union address in January of that year, and it has been Congress that has been pushing forward the harshest measures against Iran.”
“…discussions of sanctions by the administration remain heavily focused on the punitive element – in response to ongoing pressure from Israel and a seemingly pro-Netanyahu Congress.”
...In the face of intense pressure from Israel and Congress during the influential Aipac conference in March, Obama bragged about imposing “unprecedented, crippling sanctions” on Iran which he said is now “feeling the bite”. [emphasis added]
Ramsey’s argument: Obama’s punitive measures against Iran were enacted not as the result of a rational policy debate within his administration regarding what’s in the best interest of the U.S. but, rather, in response to pressure from the Jewish state and its pro-Netanyahu supporters in Congress.
The commander-in-chief of the strongest nation on earth is putty in the hands of the Jewish state and it’s American “amen corner“.
Ramsey continues with her case that neocons and/or the Israel lobby exercises a dangerous degree of influence over U.S. foreign policy:
“Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a neoconservative-dominated thinktank composed of well-known hawks, has been analogizing sanctions as “silver shrapnel” that that can “injure” Iran for years. Frequently quoted in the media, Dubowitz recently boasted to a Canadian newspaper that the FDD has shared six reports exclusively with the Obama administration and congressional committees advocating harsher sanctions on Iran.”
“[Grecht was] Formerly a director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which is best-known for its influence over the Bush administration’s Iraq policy.” [emphasis added]
Conspiracy theories, whether antisemitic or not, are often motivated by intellectual laziness and the need to find a common thread (or root cause) that explains complicated (often unrelated) political problems.
Just as critics of the Israel lobby fail to note that support for Israel among the American electorate is overwhelming (demonstrating that support for the Jewish state in congress merely reflects mainstream public opinion on the issue), those who see the lobby’s influence in Obama’s tough sanctions against Iran similarly don’t consider that such policies reflect the views of most Americans.
Ramsey’s logic, so typical of those who advance such calumnies, can be boiled down to this:
A) A Non Jewish political leader in the U.S. or Europe supports a foreign policy position.
B) Jews, Zionists and/or the Israeli government previously advocated or lobbied for that same position.
Therefore, (A) must be the result of (B).
However, as the Guardian is continually demonstrating, the absence of facts, evidence or even a coherent argument has never been an obstacle for those committed to the pseudo science of Judeophobic logic.
David Wearing’s recent ‘Comment is Free’ essay (Bahrain may not be Syria, but that’s no reason for activists to turn a blind eye, May 8th) addresses what he feels is the tendency of nations to deflect criticism about their human rights records by pointing to far worse abuses in other countries.
“One recurring theme in the efforts to deflect criticism of the [The Bahrain Grand Prix] was the line that there are worse places than Bahrain. Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmad Al Khalifa, the regime’s foreign minister, tweeted: “If any here to cover ugly bloody confrontations, go to Syria…”
It didn’t take long, however, for Wearing to pivot to his desired target, Israel.
“The retort…that worse things are happening elsewhere, also happens to be a favourite of the Israeli state and its defenders.
Activists and journalists who draw attention to Israeli human rights abuses are by now well accustomed to hearing this argument being made, sometimes with the accompanying insinuation that Israel is being “singled out” for more sinister reasons.”
Of course, by “sinister reasons” he’s referring to charges that the obsessive critiques of the Jewish state frequently include tropes which recall antisemitic narratives – often regarding the dangerous power of organized Jewry.
A case in point is this Tweet by Wearing himself in January, which was one of several Tweets justifying why Israel is the subject of such intense media focus.
Oh yes, that “huge propaganda campaign”. A nation vigorously defending itself from criticism is, per Wearing and his political fellow travelers, a uniquely Zionist practice.
As I was curious to learn more about this “huge” hasbara subterfuge, I Tweeted him back.
Wearing’s reply:
So, Wearing is among those ‘Comment is Free’ contributors who genuinely believe that Israel is protected from its fair share of criticism (by a “huge propaganda campaign”), and that he is in the vanguard of a brave few who dare challenge Zionist power. Evidently, Wearing hasn’t checked the Guardian’s own data store which would indicate that, far from escaping its fair share of criticism, Israel receives grossly disproportionate coverage at the paper in comparison to other nations.
Turning back to Wearing’s latest essay, he writes:
“There is no serious doubt about the fact that both Israel and Bahrain have very poor human rights records…”
Suggesting a similarity in the human rights records of Bahrain and Israel is simply an unserious proposition. As Freedom House reports year after year, Israel is the only nation in the Middle East listed as democratic and “Free”.
Here’s Freedom House’s evaluation of human rights and freedom in Bahrain. Note, that six is the worse human rights score a country can receive, and one is the best.
Here’s what Freedom House wrote about Bahrain:
“The al-Khalifa family, which belongs to Bahrain’s Sunni Muslim minority, has ruled the Shiite-majority country for more than two centuries.
Bahrain is not an electoral democracy. The 2002 constitution gives the king power over the executive, legislative, and judicial authorities. He appoints cabinet ministers and members of the 40-seat Consultative Council, the upper house of the National Assembly.
formal political parties are illegal,
Freedom of expression is restricted, and the authorities routinely harass activists who criticize them publicly. The government owns all broadcast media outlets, and the private owners of the three main newspapers have close ties to the government. Self-censorship is encouraged by the vaguely worded 2002 Press Law, which allows the state to imprison journalists for criticizing the king or Islam…[emphasis added]
Citizens must obtain a license to hold demonstrations, which are banned from sunrise to sunset in any public arena. Police regularly use violence to break up political protests, most of which occur in Shiite villages.
Bahrain received a [human rights] downward trend arrow due to an intensified crackdown on members of the Shiite Muslim majority in 2010, including assaults and arrests of dozens of activists and journalists, as well as reports of widespread torture of political prisoners.”
And, here’s Freedom House’s rating of Israel’s human rights record:
Freedom House noted the following:
“Israel is an electoral democracy.
Press freedom is respected in Israel, and the media are vibrant and independent. All Israeli newspapers are privately owned and freely criticize government policy.
Freedoms of assembly and association are respected. Israel hosts an active civil society, and demonstrations are widely permitted.
Workers may join unions of their choice and have the right to strike and bargain collectively
The judiciary is independent and regularly rules against the government.
Women have achieved substantial parity at almost all levels of Israeli society.”
Wearing continues:
“Whether states [other than Israel] do worse things is largely beside the point…”
Actually, this is precisely the point: the stunning intellectual failure of many within the activist left (including much of the NGO community) to distinguish between flaws in liberal, democratic states and institutional and systemic human rights violations which infect societies governed by despots and tyrants.
Human Rights Watch founder Robert Bernstein wrote the following in a 2009 NYT essay:
“At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them — through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform.
That is why we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and undemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights. We wanted to prevent the Soviet Union and its followers from playing a moral equivalence game with the West
When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies.
Nowhere is this more evident than in its work in the Middle East. The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.
Only by returning to its founding mission and the spirit of humility that animated it can Human Rights Watch resurrect itself as a moral force in the Middle East and throughout the world.”
While Bernstein was focusing narrowly on Human Rights Watch his commentary is just as apt in addressing how much of the activist left fails to acknowledge the vital distinction between open and closed societies, has abandoned any claim to principled human rights advocacy and has descended into the abyss of moral equivalence.
The question of whether or not the malign obsession with the Jewish state in the media and “human rights” community is motivated by antisemitism can often be a distraction from the larger issue concerning the moral and intellectual seriousness of leftist critiques of Israel.
A left which can’t distinguish between democracies and tyrannies or, at least, routinely engages in rhetorical obfuscations to blur such profound differences, is no longer entitled to claim the mantle of liberalism or progressivism, even narrowly defined.
As such, David Wearing’s recent commentary is a perfect illustration of a dynamic this blog is continually revealing: the Guardian’s abandonment of anything resembling principled liberal thought.
A guest post by Fritz Wunderlich, loyal CiF Watch reader
[Editor's Note: We often get emails from supporters who ask us to publish posts about antisemitism and the assault on Israel's legitimacy at newspapers and sites other than the Guardian. While we typically don't have much time to devote to monitoring other media, Mr. Wunderlich offered to introduce our readers to what he felt was an institutional bias against Israel (and the state's supporters) at the site, OpenDemocracy, and we agreed.]
OpenDemocracy (OD) is a UK-based “progressive” site for opinion and news about international affairs, politics, and culture. OD was founded in 2000 by Anthony Barnett, David Hayes, Susan Richards and Paul Hilder. OD has been funded by a number of philanthropic organisations, including the Ford Foundation, the Atlantic Philanthropies, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, and others.
This is not a general assessment of OD, but merely a snapshot meant to address what I feel is OD’s institutional hostility towards Israel and climate of tolerance towards thinly veiled anti-Semitic tropes employed by commenters. While promoting the values of free speech this e-zine often doesn’t hesitate to censor voices which challenge its bias.
To begin with I initially visited OD when I was under the impression that it was another outlet for thoughtful, reasoned debate. But I soon discovered it was something completely different.
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OD claims to advocate free speech, but not personal abuse. However, the working reality is different.
In addition to the downright anti-Semitic comments at OD, those who raise objections to the dominant anti-Zionist narrative are often mocked or ridiculed.
When you challenge the dominant Palestinian narrative you’re often called a racist, fascist and so on. Or, classic anti-Zionist invectives are employed, such as ‘Israel is a colonial power’, ‘terrorism is legitimate resistance’, ‘Israel is an apartheid system’, ‘Zionism is a racist ideology’, and ‘the Jewish state has no moral legitimacy’.
Both the editors at OD, and most commenters, don’t like the concept of a nation-state, (especially the Jewish one), at all. However, when I’ve asked why contributors and commenters support Palestinian nationalism, they often respond by arguing that such oppressed people are entitled to be nationalistic under their particular circumstances.
Many commenters consider themselves advocates of all peace seeking Israelis and Palestinians, complain vociferously about racist Zionists and constantly denounce Israel as the main obstacle to peace in the region, a terror state and so on.
Here are a few comments worth noting: (None of these have been deleted by OD moderators.)
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When I comment about anti-Semitism (or simply lies and smears about Zionists) below the line at OD the moderators typically dismiss the complaint and my post is typically deleted while the offensive comments are not. I’ve even written to the editors, which typically elicits a less than serious and thorough response.
Unsurprisingly, OD mainly publishes articles (above the line) criticizing and demonizing Israel, by writers such as (former CiF contributor) Antony Lerman, Paul Pogers, and a Palestinian named Sameh Habeeb.
Finally, here are some essays at OD by Habeeb, who is the founder of The Palestine Telegraph. If you recall, The Palestine Telegraph made news in 2010 when they posted a video message on their home page by former KKK leader David Duke calling Israel a terrorist state.
(Remarkably, this was too much for even Baroness Jenny Tonge, who subsequently withdrew her patronage of the paper.)
Related articles
- Deborah Orr Tweet defends ‘chosen people’ essay, complains about Zionists’ sense of victimhood (cifwatch.com)
- Muslim Anti-Semitism, Israel, and the Dynamics of Self-Destructive Scapegoating (cifwatch.com)
- Anti-Zionism is Racism (An essay by Judea Pearl) (cifwatch.com)
- The stylish appeal of BDS movement’s tireless campaign to erode the Jewish state’s legitimacy (cifwatch.com)
- CiF Watch Global Zionist Subterfuge Update: Our blog welcomes 3 new international readers (cifwatch.com)
This is cross posted by Zach at Huffington Post Monitor.
Gilad Atzmon found this video of Omar Barghouti (who you probably know from his boycott work) putting his foot squarely in his mouth:
The video is only a minute long but there is oh so much information packed into it. For example Barghouti declares that he won’t be lectured on violence by a “white person” why? Because “the white race is the most violent in history of mankind.” Isn’t that special.
Atzmon found the video from Deliberation, which is a left-wing site. Deliberation had some uncomfortable questions as well:
“But there is also another acute question that deserves our immediate attention. Why exactly the ‘socialist’ crowd in Chicago is so exited by Barghouti’s Racist remark? Is it possible that our so-called ‘progressive’ panthers have changed their spots, are they now in favour if [sic] racism?
“I guess that Ben White, another spokesman for the BDS movement, may have an answer to offer. In a recent New Statesman article he foolishly admitted that that BDS “is a strategy, not a principle.”
“I guess that this is indeed very concerning about the BDS . It is not principled at all. A BDS prominent leader happens to spread racist remarks while enrolling to a ‘Zionist’ academic institute which he expects us to boycott. Another BDS prominent spokesman admits that the BDS is “not principled”. Meanwhile in the UK BDS attempts to destroy Israeli Habima theatre but does nothing to promote a Palestinian theatre from Ramallah. As the BDS buying itself a name of a dedicated book burning institution, we learn that trade between Israel and Britain grew last year by 34%.
“If BDS is an important humanitarian call and, we in Deliberation believe it is, it better be managed and represented by people who are slightly more principled and certainly more clever and astute.
I would say of course that BDS has been racist from it’s very beginning. This latest admission by Barghouti only helps to prove it.
Related articles
- The stylish appeal of BDS movement’s tireless campaign to erode the Jewish state’s legitimacy (cifwatch.com)
- Note to Philly BDS Activists: You will fail. (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Airflotilla 2′ & “normal,average Europeans” (cifwatch.com)
Like this:
H/T Margie
Call it Israel Derangement Syndrome, or Reductio ad Israelum, or what you will, but the capacity of Israel’s critics to find a Jewish/Zionist connection to any political phenomenon they find displeasing is constantly on display below the line at ‘Comment is Free’.
Dave Hill’s CiF commentary (So, Boris Johnson remains mayor and it’s not all Ken Livingstone’s fault, May 4) elicited over six hundred comments, many of which touched on Livingstone’s relationship with the UK Jewish community.
The following, by a commenter using the moniker “brothermacdub“, was deleted by moderators, but you can see text from the post cited by “Kawtara1″ (which begins, “Typical response from the lobby” and ends,”swing an election”.), quoted before offering his/her response.
So, London’s Jews, who are more loyal to a foreign power than the UK, singlehandedly defeated the former mayor who should nonetheless be proud that he didn’t give in to the “hateful Israel lobby”.
Interestingly, the suggestion that Jews swung the mayoral election for Boris Johnson was advanced in a letter published by the Guardian today, albeit by someone seemingly friendly to UK’s Jews.
At the very least, the letter represents a rather curious editorial decision.
Related articles
- Guardian scrubs reference to ‘Jewish political establishment’ with no explanation (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr Tweet defends ‘chosen people’ essay, complains about Zionists’ sense of victimhood (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian reader on those uppity British Jews exercizing their political rights (cifwatch.com)
A guest post by Gidon Ben-Zvi
Those who seek to destroy Israel by a thousand cuts scored a much publicized victory when The Co-operative Group, the UK’s fifth largest food retailer, announced (in late April) that it would “no longer engage with any supplier of produce known to be sourcing from the Israeli settlements”.
A major battle was won in the just war to free the Palestinian people, or so goes the self-congratulatory bloviating of a small but vociferous clan of activists.
Better still, this hard-fought victory of right over might was achieved without a single shot being fired. Non-violent protest at its most effective, no?
Let’s put to rest the canard that the BDS Israel campaign is in any way non-violent. Prominent British lawyer Anthony Julius, in his ‘Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England’, describes the inherently violent nature of boycott campaigns:
“The boycotted person is pushed away by the general horror and common hate…It is a denial amongst other things, of the boycotted person’s freedom of expression….To limit or deny self-expression is thus an attack at the root of what it is to be human.”
Long before Jordan’s West Bank became Israeli-occupied Palestine, there was the Arab economic boycott of Israel, one component of a decades-long effort to eviscerate the Jewish state. And today, the song remains the same, with the BDS Israel movement not merely advocating policy change, but actively campaigning to purge Israel, both within and without the ‘Green Line’, of every last vestige of Jewish character and sovereignty.
BDS Israel is a soft war that perverts the sincere, commendable desire of students, artists and others for social justice into a movement that espouses a simplistic, distorted view of the Middle East in general and Israel in particular. By equating democratic Israel with Apartheid South Africa, BDS Israel proponents seek to fill a yawning chasm of ignorance with their own corrosive biases regarding Israel.
Once a foundation of fiction is laid, it becomes easy to build the case for isolating Israel by conjuring up the specters of discrimination, oppression and colonialism from the dark annals of human history. The ‘Never Again’ battle cry is thus hurled like a boomerang back at the most persecuted people in history. And voila, the dismantling of the Jewish State becomes as noble an aim as was that of dismantling Apartheid South Africa.
These people of good conscience who seek to do nothing more than end Israeli repression and Israeli war crimes are worthy of further examination. According to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, many of the non government organizations that are spearheading the effort to end Israel’s colonization of Palestinian land are ‘either fictional, non-existent, and even, in some cases, front-organizations for Hamas and other terror groups.’
Had The Co-operative Group been better informed, it may have sought to dole out its misguided brand of social justice at such perennial human rights violators as Sudan, Syria, Iran, or Zimbabwe.
If The Co-operative Group had the support of Palestinian rights in mind, it may have thought twice before targeting the Middle East’s only true democracy, undergirded by a robust freedom of the press and an active, independent judiciary that helps ensure the equality of all Israel’s citizens – Jew, Muslim and Christian.
If the Co-operative Group wants to fix the Middle East, it can start with the tyrannical regime in Hamas-ruled Gaza. And yet the Co-operative Group chose to single out Israel. What drives the normally rational to such distraction when Israelis introduced into the conversation?
BDS Israel was conceived at the 2001 Durban Conference on Racism, where Israel was singled as the only nation earth that warranted the imposition of boycotts, divestment and sanctions.
Next, such Palestinian luminaries as Omar Barghouti, who studies at Tel Aviv University, stepped in to act as midwives, bringing BDS Israel into existence. Barghouti has openly and repeatedly called for a one state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In other words, this founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) supports the destruction of Israel.
Finally, BDS Israel was nurtured and grew loud and fat thanks to the round-the-clock care of a cabal of guilt-stricken Western academics. Pacifist and post-modernist in their view of the world, these leading intellectual lights look back in shame at the behavior of the colonists towards the colonized. Decades later, this guilt manifests itself by way of sympathy for oppressed nations demanding self-determination.
Yet, for all of BDS Israel’s sound and fury, the movement’s leaders have precious little to point to by way of concrete accomplishments, which in itself points to a fetishizing of style over substance, of political grandstanding over principled protest.
To date, Israeli foreign exports are soaring and the Tel Aviv Stock exchange has more than doubled in the last two years. As such, the BDS movement has had no discernible impact on the Israeli economy.
Still, the guerilla chic appeal of BDS Israel all but ensures that a persistent, overblown coverage of this rather inane movement will continue well into the future.
Apparently, movements for social justice only become fashionable if they are loudly anti-Western, superficially pro-democratic yet remarkably mute when it comes to the vast majority of crimes against humanity inflicted by the once colonized against their own people.
Related articles
- ‘Elder of Ziyon’ responds to the Guardian’s Ben White on BDS. (cifwatch.com)
- Would a Jewish Supporter of BDS Boycott this Israeli Company? (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian, the Boycotters’ press release, the Co-op and the Hamas link. (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr Tweet defends ‘chosen people’ essay, complains about Zionists’ sense of victimhood (cifwatch.com)
- Another day: another Harriet Sherwood report on another British boycott. (cifwatch.com)
- Comment is Free, Jane Eisner & a modest question for Peter Beinart & the American Jewish Left (cifwatch.com)
- Would a Jewish Supporter of BDS Boycott this Israeli Company? (cifwatch.com)
- BDS-promoting Palestine Festival of Literature supported by British public funding. (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Elder of Ziyon’ responds to the Guardian’s Ben White on BDS. (cifwatch.com)
- Another day: another Harriet Sherwood report on another British boycott. (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian, the Boycotters’ press release, the Co-op and the Hamas link. (cifwatch.com)
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Guardian letters page publishes a diversity of opinion on why Israel is cruel & oppressive
May 16, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: anti-Zionism, BDS, Boycott, Comment is Free, Daniel Taub, Delegitimization, Ernest Rodker, Guardian, Lord Andrew Phillips, Mordechai Vanunu, Proposals for a Palestinian state, West Bank | by Guest/Cross Post | 17 comments
This is cross posted from Anne’s Opinions
In yesterday’s Guardian letters page (May 15) the decision was unanimous. Israel is guilty.
The first letter is from Lord Andrew Phillips. Before reading it you should know that Lord Phillips has previous “form” on Israel. He has claimed that “America is in the grip of the well-organized Jewish Lobby“, and he once chaired an event organized by MEMO, a Hamas-supporting group.
The basis for today’s letter was a ‘Comment is Free’ column (May 8) objecting to the proposed boycott of Israel by the TUC and other UK unions.
Phillips writes:
Actually, according to these maps produced by the BBC (whom one could hardly accuse of being biased towards Israel) the following conclusion is drawn:
According to this AIJAC report the number is probably less:
Back to Phillips’ letter:
Again, lots of emotive words with no facts to back any of them. He does not even explain what double standards he is talking about.
Phillips continues:
Annexation program? The only area captured in 1967 that has been annexed is “East” Jerusalem, i.e. the part of Jerusalem that was originally home to thousands of Jews until they were expelled by the Jordanians in 1948.
The next letter on the page is from a Sylvia Cohen, who writes to express support for the boycott of Israel’s Habima Theatre (a bit late now that the boycott has been rejected). Again, Ms. Cohen has “form” on Israel with at least two previous letters in the Guardian, one rejecting any celebration of Israel’s birth, as the Jewish state was “founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land.”
The third letter was written by Ernest Rodker. Again, Mr. Rodker is no ordinary outraged citizen. He is the UK spokesman for the Israeli man convicted of treason, Mordechai Vanunu. (He can be seen here being interviewed by Iranian Press TV.)
His letter is a farrago of lies, exaggerations and outright propaganda. He writes:
While I’m not sure which human rights organizations have attempted to quantify Israel’s level of “vindictiveness”, the suggestion that the Jewish state is among the most oppressive in the region is simply risible. (See this report by Freedom House for a definitive analysis of Israel’s human rights record.)
Rodker continues:
“Thousands of Palestinians imprisoned”? Wrong. Even B’Tselem has the number at 308. Assassinations of suspects not proven guilty? By “suspects” perhaps he’s referring to the targeted killing of terrorists in neighboring Gaza involved in the planning or execution of attacks against Israelis, a practice the U.S. has been using quite liberally to kill terrorists thousands of miles away from its shores, in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The final letter is by Karl Sabbagh, a Palestinian-British writer, who comments:
WhyBecause boycotts have a publicity appeal which have everything to do with delegitimization and nothing to do with practicalities.
Sabbagh goes on to list some companies who have withdrawn from collaboration with Israel under pressure from BDS groups, but the immediate victims of these boycotts and economic blackmail are the Palestinians themselves. If Sabbagh would ever come to Israel he would see that the trains (from which Deutsche Bahn were pressured to withdraw) are running (not on time, this is Israel after all), the electricity (from which Veolia was pressurized to withdraw) is humming and Israel’s economy continues to thrive. The BDS-ers are certainly not having it all their way, as the site “Divest This!” explains.
Sabbagh concludes:
He may claim proudly to be a Palestinian, but he lives in Britain and will not feel the effect of boycotts on himself or his family. He is ready to sacrifice his co-nationals on the altar of his radical-chic “right-on” mentality.
These four letters illustrate more clearly than any textual analysis the Guardian’s World View - showing Israel in the worst light possible, exaggerating every conceivable sin, and belittling Israel’s undeniable progressive and democratic advantages.
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