The Guardian’s initial report that Stephen Hawking was boycotting Israel was published on May 8.
The statistics in the first row in the table below were derived by a survey of the Guardian’s Israel page between May 8 and May 16 – the date of their last Hawking related entry. The second row’s numbers were gathered by a simple word count of the text.
The third row’s data was derived by Intel.
At first glance, Harriet Sherwood’s sympathetic show-casing of an Israeli law-breaker (“Israel jails conscientious objector Natan Blanc for tenth time“, May 13th, 2013) might look like just another one of her ‘Jerusalem gossip column‘ type articles focusing on domestic Israeli events which have no relevance as far as the vast majority of Guardian readers are concerned.
But in that article we discover that this is the second time in six weeks that Sherwood has written about the same nineteen year-old from Haifa who, in violation of Israeli law, is refusing to do his military service.
That is undoubtedly strange. After all, Israel is far from unique in having a law of universal conscription – so do Denmark, Greece, Norway, Austria, Finland and Cyprus, to name but a few – but we do not see two Guardian articles in six weeks profiling one Finnish draft dodger. Neither can Sherwood’s observation in her April 1st article that “There is a prison library, but no gym” in the military prison where Blanc has been interred be said to be the most pressing of human rights issues in the Middle East at present. 
So the obvious questions arising in this writer’s mind was why would Harriet Sherwood be taking such a close interest in Natan Blanc in particular and who else is promoting this story, which has barely registered on the radar of domestic Israeli news coverage? And this is where the real story behind Sherwood’s story gets interesting.
A search, particularly in Hebrew, reveals that Blanc’s case is being very energetically promoted by a plethora of fringe far-Left Israeli organisations and NGOs including Amnesty International Israel, ‘New Profile‘, ‘Kibush‘ , the student section of the political party ‘Hadash‘ and – first and foremost – the anti-conscription group ‘Yesh Gvul‘ which has organized a publicity campaign and rallies in the vicinity of the military prison in which Blanc has been held – with the participation on at least one occasion of flotilla participant and Warsaw Ghetto vandaliser Yonatan Shapira.
Securing an English language article on the subject of Natan Blanc in a foreign media outlet such as the Guardian would no doubt be seen as something of an achievement to the organisers of this PR campaign. Securing two such items in less than six weeks must make them believe that Hannukah has come early.
It is time for Harriet Sherwood to come clean about her (ironic) self-conscription to a campaign promoting and aggrandising a law-breaker and about the nature of her contacts with the far-Left – and often anti-Zionist – groups which encourage other Israeli youths to break Israeli conscription law.
Patrick Seale
Whilst even before the state of Israel was reborn antisemitic demagogues like Henry Ford and Father Charles Coughlin characterized American Jews as disloyal “fifth columnists” who were pushing the U.S. to war for financial reasons, even after the war any temporary post-Holocaust taboos on the imputation of such malevolence to Jews soon were eroded.
Paul Findley, a former U.S. Congressman whose book They Dare to Speak Out, an attack on the ‘pernicious’ influence of the “Israel lobby,” became a bestseller in 1985. And, a couple of decades later academics considered to be foreign policy “realists”, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, became popular within anti-Zionist circles after their publication of ’The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy’. The book warned of the “stranglehold” which the Israel “Lobby” exercises over Congress; of their “manipulation of the media” and efforts to “squelch debate”. They also argued that the 2003 Iraq war wouldn’t have been possible without the influence of Israel and the American Israel lobby.
While paleoconservative commentators in the mid to late 2000s have unsurprisingly also championed this narrative – Pat Buchanan wrote in 2008 that “Israel and its Fifth Column in [Washington , DC] seek to stampede us into war with Iran” – some liberal columnists have engaged in similar rhetoric. For instance, columnist Joe Klein asserted in his TIME blog that Jewish neoconservatives “plumped” for the war in Iraq and are now doing the same for “an even more foolish assault on Iran” with the goal of making the world “safe for Israel.”
Additionally, Guardian contributors have advanced the specious claim that Israel, or the Israel lobby, are primarily responsible for US sanctions against Iran, and represent a powerful and dangerous force pushing the US to outright war against the Islamic Republic. Such narratives, with varying degrees of explicitness, have been advanced by, among other CiF contributors, veteran Guardian journalists Simon Tisdall and Simon Jenkins, and the paper’s associate editor, Seumas Milne. And, of course, Glenn Greenwald has been the most explicit promoter of the ‘Jewish necon’ cabal to take the country to war against Iran’ meme, arguing the following at his previous blog at Salon.com in 2007.
It is simply true that there are large and extremely influential Jewish donor groups which are agitating for a U.S. war against Iran, and that is the case because those groups are devoted to promoting Israel’s interests and they perceive it to be in Israel’s interests for the U.S. to militarily confront Iran.
Turning to the crisis in Syria, whilst we recently commented on suggestions made by Robert Fisk at the Indy that recent Israeli strikes on weapons in Syria intended for Hezbollah was an act which would recklessly push ‘the West’ into the Syrian war, a recent commentary by occasional Guardian contributor Patrick Seale, writing in ‘Middle East Online‘, takes Fisk’s hysterical claim a few steps further.
He writes:
On April 23, a senior Israeli officer, Brig Gen Utai Brun, head of research at army intelligence, made a serious accusation against Syria. In a lecture at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, he declared: “To the best of our professional understanding, the Syrian regime has used lethal chemical weapons against gunmen in a series of incidents in recent months…” General Brun gave no evidence for his accusation and produced no physical proof, but he added that the Israel Defence Forces believed Syria had used the nerve agent sarin on several occasions, including a specific attack on March 19.
In addition to Seale’s erroneous suggestion that it was Israel alone which charged Syria with using chemical weapons – French and British intelligence claimed on April 18 (several days before the Israeli claims cited by Seale) that “there is credible evidence that Syria has fired chemical weapons” – his argument that such charges are without “proof” is contradicted by recent statements by the Obama Administration charging Assad with using such weapons.
Seale’s commentary continues:
As it happened, [Israeli] General Brun made his accusation against Syria during a three-day visit to Israel by America’s new Defence Secretary, Chuck Hagel — a man whose appointment Israel’s supporters in the United States had sought to prevent. Some Jewish organisations had come close to calling him anti-Semitic. Only by eating humble pie did Hagel manage to have his appointment confirmed. He now clearly hopes to put an end to his quarrel with America’s pro-Israeli lobby.
On this his first visit to Israel as Defence Secretary, he announced that Israel was to receive a rich haul of advanced U.S. weapons — air refuelling tankers, cutting-edge radar and the V-22 Osprey ‘tiltrotor’ aircraft, an advanced plane so far denied to all other US allies. But Hagel’s generous gesture was to no avail.
Seale’s facile logic assumes that the decision by the US Defense Department to sell Israel advanced weaponry – which was part of a broader Middle East arms package which included weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – must be the result, not of deliberations by the national security apparatus of the Obama administration, but of Secretary Hagel’s wish to mollify the pro-Israel lobby.
Seale then jumps to his broader conclusion:
Although Israel was evidently delighted with the weapons, this did not inhibit it from accusing Syria of using chemical weapons — clearly in the hope of provoking a U.S. attack on that country.
…
Hagel was angry that Israel was putting pressure on the United States to intervene in Syria. The Israeli authorities may well have thought that Hagel, still recovering from the beating pro-Israelis had given him in Washington, would not dare dispute Israel’s assessment
Finally, Seale makes this extraordinary leap:
By insisting that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons, General Brun’s aim seems to have been to persuade the United States to destroy both the Syrian regime and its Hezbollah ally
Interestingly, however, while some anti-Zionists have indeed accused Israel of siding with the rebels, many others have made the opposite claim – that Israel is siding with Assad and against the revolution in order to maintain relative peace on their northern border. The failure of anti-Israel propagandists to stay on message aside, Israel has continually made it clear both in word and in deed that it is not at war with Syria, but primarily concerned with the threat posed by Hezbollah – an Iranian backed heavily armed Shiite Islamist terror group occupying large swaths of Lebanon.
Moreover, you’d be hard pressed to find a commentator or analyst other than Seale who has seriously argued that Israel is deviously trying to provoke the US into a Middle East war against its will. Seal’s accusation that Israel is “provoking” the US to “destroy” both the Syrian regime and Hezbollah is pure fantasy, concocted by a lazy and easily suggestible mind mired in historically based conspiratorial notions imputing enormous power to both the Jewish state and its supporters in the US.
Last night, May 8, the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood and Matthew Kelman ‘broke’ a story claiming that Stephen Hawking was joining the academic boycott of Israel, and that he was “pulling out of a conference hosted by Israeli president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem as a protest at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.”
The report, based it seems on claims made by British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), was picked up by news sites around the world, was featured prominently on the Guardian website and was followed up with a poll asking readers if they agreed with Hawking ”decision” to boycott Israel.
Here’s how the Guardian’s Israel page looks at the time of this post:
As you can see, the original story was read by quite a few Guardian readers:
There was just one problem.
The Guardian evidently didn’t check their facts, as information has been released strongly suggesting that the world-renowned theoretical physicist and former Professor at Cambridge pulled out of the Israeli academic conference purely for health reasons.
The Commentator reported the following:
…a Cambridge university spokesperson has confirmed to The Commentator that there was a “misunderstanding” this past weekend, and that Prof. Hawking had pulled out of the conference for medical reasons. A University spokesman said: “Professor Hawking will not be attending the conference in Israel in June for health reasons – his doctors have advised against him flying.”
Further, a spokesman for Cambridge University sent the following email to a CiF Watch reader in response to an inquiry, which is consistent with the following story in the Cambridge News:
The only questions which seems to remain is how long it will take for the Guardian to issue a mea culpa on their faux scoop.
Update: The Guardian’s Matthew Kalman is now claiming that the Cambridge denial is untrue, and that Hawking indeed supports the boycott.
Update II: It now appears that the original denial by Hawkings spokesperson was not accurate, and that Hawking indeed cancelled his trip as an expression of support for the boycott of Israel.
One of the more insidious elements of the BDS movement is the supremely dishonest racial narrative which suggests, in varying degrees of explicitness, that Zionism is a racist movement in which ‘white’ privileged European interlopers continue to displace indigenous Palestinians ‘of color’.
Whilst the racial demographics of Israel alone disproves the fiction of a ‘caucasian nation’, facts clearly have never been an obstacle to those intent on demonizing the Jewish state.
Yemeni Jews arrive in Israel, 2009
Aryella Moreh, a Jew of color whose mother was a refugee from Iran, addresses the racial dynamic of the BDS movement (at Berkeley and elsewhere) head-on in an eloquent and inspired essay published on May 6 at the Daily Californian – the student run newspaper at UC Berkeley:
I come from a family of refugees. My mother was younger than I am now when she was forced to flee for her life from the Islamic Revolution of Iran. My mother recalls being forced to sit in the back of her classroom along with a group of young Jewish children during her school years.
When my mother went to buy groceries in the market, she was not allowed to touch the produce because she was considered a “dirty Jew.” These are only a few indicators of the systematic oppression of the Iranian Jews, some of the oldest inhabitants of Persia. At the age of 20, she was forced to abandon her life in Iran as her family was scattered across the world. My grandmother, Mamanjani, was never allowed to return home because of her active involvement in Jewish organizations. Though she had no ties to any other government, she was warned not to go home for fear of execution without trial. Despite calling Persia home for 2,500 years, in 1979, my family and many Jewish families like my own were forced to forced to flee their homes. My family’s home, business and property was confiscated. We were torn from our homes, forced to flee to whichever country would take us in.
Though these experiences define me, some students on our campus seem to think my history does not count. During the “divestment” meeting two weeks ago, Students for Justice in Palestine tweeted about those opposed to divestment: “the Zizis are literally white people crying about their privilege, lol.” Apparently, Zizi is SJP shorthand for Zionist. And later, Daily Cal Blogger Noah Kulwin discussed a clear division he seems to see between “students of color” and “Jewish students,” implying that Jewish students like me cannot be considered students of color. I am here to address ignorance about what truly defines the Jewish people. Amid claims — or rather accusations — of “privilege” or the inability of Jews to understand the plight of “colored people,” I realized many people on this campus are unaware of who the Jewish people actually are.
We encourage you to read the rest of Moreh’s passionate plea, by clicking here.
Also, you can learn more about the broader issue of Jewish refugees from Muslim and Arab lands here and here.
- “The outgoing Salon blogger can’t seem to have an honest discussion without accusing his debate partners of malicious motives”. (Foreign Policy Magazine, Aug. 16, 2012,
Glenn Greenwald doesn’t seem much interested in the vexing moral questions naturally elicited by the ongoing bloodbath in Syria. The Arab dictator’s bombing of civilians, and the routine use of torture, summary executions, and sexual violence against women and children by troops and ethnic groups loyal to the regime don’t weigh heavily on his conscience.
And, whilst the putative topic of Glenn Greenwald latest CiF piece would suggest an interest in Israel’s recent, brief military foray into the conflict, he characteristically doesn’t attempt to engage in anything approaching serious critical scrutiny over IAF operations to destroy sophisticated Iranian made weaponry heading to Hezbollah. Similarly, he doesn’t bother devoting space in his column calculating the political, military and political factors at play in the regional threat faced by the Jewish state from Bashar al-Assad and his Shiite Islamist allies, Hezbollah and Iran.
Additionally, Greenwald doesn’t take a stab at weighing the costs and benefits of Israeli military action relative to the alternative of simply allowing the illegal militia occupying much of Lebanon – which has already accumulated an arsenal of thousands of sophisticated rockets – free rein to further threaten Israeli communities, and what remains of Lebanon’s tattered national sovereignty.
Indeed, in reading Glenn Greenwald it seems clear that he doesn’t much fancy such serious, critical analyses of the real and often vexing political and moral decisions faced by democratically elected heads of state.
Greenwald’s inspiration – the blogging muse which constantly ignites his frenetic prose – lay in deconstructing the confidence and righteousness of democracy’s defenders, and those otherwise possessed with the moral clarity which he seems to so detest.
He informs us in quite vivid language, yet in tellingly vague military terms, about of the damage caused by Israel’s bombs - which he notes are “massive” - and the IDF’s military objective communicated by “Israeli defenders” – and, evidently, only “Israeli defenders” – of targeting weapons provided by Iran that were to end up in the hands of Hezbollah.
And, he then – again, avoiding directly weighing in on the policy decision at hand – evokes a straw man while lashing out at supporters of Israel’s action.
Because people who cheer for military action by their side like to pretend that they’re something more than primitive “might-makes-right” tribalists, the claim is being hauled out that Israel’s actions are justified by the “principle” that it has the right to defend itself from foreign weapons in the hands of hostile forces.
Greenwald then descends further into the absurd:
Or, for that matter, if Syria this week attacks a US military base on US soil and incidentally kills some American civilians (as Nidal Hasan did), and then cites as justification the fact that the US has been aiding Syrian rebels, would any establishment US journalist or political official argue that this was remotely justified?
Of course, Nidal Hasan didn’t “incidentally” kill some American civilians. He entered the Soldier Readiness Processing Center in Fort Hood, TX in 2009 and, armed with several high-caliber assault rifles, shouted “Allahu Akbar!” while open firing on a room crammed with fellow soldiers. Hasan “sprayed bullets at soldiers in a fanlike motion” before aiming at individual soldiers. Nidal didn’t attack a “military base”, but engaged in a cold-blooded execution of as many people as possible.
Greenwald’s contemptuous critique continues:
Few things are more ludicrous than the attempt by advocates of US and Israeli militarism to pretend that they’re applying anything remotely resembling “principles”. Their only cognizable “principle” is rank tribalism: My Side is superior, and therefore we are entitled to do things that Our Enemies are not
One could say quite reasonably that this is the pure expression of the crux of US political discourse on such matters: they must abide by rules from which we’re immune, because we’re superior. So much of the pseudo-high-minded theorizing emanating from DC think thanks and US media outlets boils down to this adolescent, self-praising, tribalistic license: we have the right to do X, but they do not.
…
This whole debate would be much more tolerable if it were at least honestly acknowledged that what is driving the discussion are tribalistic notions of entitlement and nothing more noble.
Greenwald, a review of his posts on the subject of terrorism suggests, doesn’t merely advance the post-modern cliché that ‘one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter‘, but believes that the term “terrorism” is racially loaded and that the suggestion of serious moral distinctions between political actors represents an expression of primitive triumphalism.
Greenwald not only isn’t prepared to acknowledge that regimes in Damascus, Khartoum, Pyongyang, or Tehran (for instance) may have less regard for human rights than those in Washington, D.C. or Jerusalem, but that those possessing such beliefs are necessarily compromised by intellectually and morally debilitating ethnocentric biases.
As such, for Greenwald, the suggestion of considerable moral differences between Syria and Israel is necessarily loaded with the pathos of ”tribalistic license”.
A review of his latest post, as well as much of his work to date, demonstrates that he’s not prepared to engage in serious thinking regarding the threats posed in the region by the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis. Nor does he possess the capacity to conduct a broader analysis of the Middle East – in the context of the Arab upheavals in general and the Syrian war in particular – and dissect the continuing democracy deficit in the region.
In his latest 800 word diatribe against Israel’s “supporters”, Greenwald doesn’t even briefly suggest why Israel’s limited military operation in Syria wasn’t justified, because such quotidian concerns – relating to how citizens of democratic nations can most effectively, and most ethically, defend themselves from hostile state and non-state actors – don’t seem to much interest him.
For a careful, sober political survey of the Israeli-Arab (and Israeli-Islamist) conflict, and the broader issues concerning the “Arab Spring”, you’ll have to seek the commentary of serious analysts - those more concerned with honestly assessing the political dynamics of the region than with engaging in ad hominem and often hysterical attacks against their opponents.
A guest post by AKUS
The reader comment below (beneath the line of a Guardian editorial on the Syrian crisis), which suggests that Israel should be destroyed by arming its enemies with nuclear weapons, has remained up so far for almost 12 hours.
At least one commenter has complained to the Guardian with no results – almost 12 hours later.
Those familiar with CiF Watch would of course understand that this one example is indicative of a broader problem at ‘Comment is Free’. As we’ve shown in countless posts, CiF moderators often demonstrate egregious double standards when determining which comments get deleted – decisions purportedly based on whether such comments violate their ‘Community Standards‘.
UPDATE: Shortly after our post, the comment was deleted by ‘CiF’ moderators.
It seems that the ethically challenged British ‘journalist’ Robert Fisk wanted desperately to impute the worst motives to Israel in analyzing reports of up to a dozen IAF strikes over the last few days on advanced Syrian weapons to prevent their transfer to Hezbollah. However, the weakness of his latest essay suggests that he may have found the case against Israel’s sober decision not to allow Iranian made Fateh-110 missiles to fall into the hands of the Shiite terror movement allied with Bashar al-Assad was simply too difficult.
File photo of the Iranian made Fateh 110 missile, which Israel reportedly targeted in raids into Syria over the weekend.
Facts have not served much of an obstacle for Fisk in the past when desiring a particular conclusion to a story, and his May 5 piece in the Indy – implicitly suggesting that Israel is dragging unwilling, ineffectual Western governments into foreign wars - seems to be no exception.
He begins by expressing skepticism over the ‘official’ reason for Israel’s reported raid on Bashar al-Assad’s weapons and military facilities:
The story is already familiar: the Israelis wanted to prevent a shipment of Iranian-made Fateh-110 missiles reaching Hezbollah in Lebanon; they were being sent by the Syrian government. According, at least, to a ‘Western intelligence source’. Anonymous, of course. And it opens the old question: why when the Syrian regime is fighting for its life would it send advanced missiles out of Syria?
Well, for starters, Iran and Hezbollah have both backed President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war, a conflict, now in its third year, which has claimed over 70,000 lives and produced over one million refugees. But as fighting between forces loyal to the Assad regime and the rebels escalates, Assad has a powerful interest in facilitating the delivery of advanced weapons to Hezbollah in case he loses his grip on power and it becomes more difficult for the regime to channel weapons from Iran directly to Damascus.
Additionally, some analysts have argued that an even more heavily armed Hezbollah could become a powerful ally for Assad if he is forced to leave Damascus and take refuge in the Hezbollah-controlled northern Bekaa Valley.
Later, Fisk gets to the central thesis of his polemic:
Much more important, however, is the salient fact that Israel has now intervened in the Syrian war. It may say it was only aiming at weapons destined for the Hezbollah – but these were weapons also being used against rebel forces in Syria. By diminishing the regime’s supply of these weapons, it is therefore helping the rebels overthrow Bashar al-Assad. And since Israel regards itself as a Western nation – best friend and best US military ally in the Middle East, etc, etc – this means that “we” are now involved in the war, directly and from the air.
Fisk’s specious logic nearly “Fisks” itself, as his entire argument – that Israel has dragged the West into a foreign war – seems largely based on the following argument cum non-sequitur:
1. Israel has attacked arms caches in Syria
2. Israel regards itself as a Western nation.
3. Therefore, Israel has dragged the West into the Syrian war.
The Indy contributor offers nothing else to suggest that Israeli strikes to prevent the transfer of deadly weapons to Syria has any influence whatsoever on the current debate in the US, or within other Western nations, over whether to intervene militarily in the civil war.
Of course, in addition to the speciousness of his logic, Fisk is essentially parroting Assad talking points – which, notably, was also employed in a highly misleading headline chosen by a major UK news corporation - that Israel is acting in alliance with “Islamist terrorists” to overthrow the regime, a charge so unserious that even Guardian Middle East Editor Ian Black dismissed it as “lacking any evidence”.
Finally, Fisk complains thusly:
Let’s see if the US and the EU condemn Israel’s air attacks. I doubt it. Which would mean, if we are silent, that we approve of them.
However, Fisk’s suggestion that the US has been “silent” on the reported attacks is flatly untrue.
President Obama stated, after news of IAF strikes on Syria was first reported, that Israel was justified to guard “against the transfer of advanced weaponry to terror groups like Hezbollah” and suggested that there is considerable US-Israeli coordination regarding the threat of weapons transfers in Syria – a clear expression of support for Israel’s right to self-defense which was also echoed yesterday by UK foreign secretary William Hague.
One of the few places outside of the Syrian propaganda ministry where Israel’s decision to prevent Hezbollah – an Iranian backed illegal militia which occupies large swaths of Lebanon – from acquiring more deadly weaponry represents a ‘dangerous provocation’ which may ignite another Western war in the Mid-East is the mind of Robert Fisk.
The following is a guest post by Jon from ‘Divest This!’
Paraphrasing from one of the greatest responses to criticism ever:
I am sitting in the smallest room of my house with the UC Berkeley Student Senate divestment resolution in front of me. Soon, it shall be behind me.
Honestly, could anything possibly demonstrate the impotence and moral bankruptcy of the BDS “movement” better than the mayhem the boycotters have been causing up and down the West Coast over the last two months in their frantic effort to get student governments to pass divestment resolutions that – win or lose – are ignored by nearly everyone?
UC Berkley: Pro-Divestment Rally, 2010
Even the BDSers themselves have been decrying why the few votes that have gone their way are barely being noticed in the Jewish press, much less the mainstream media.
But if they had thought about it for a moment, the response (or lack thereof) to these latest student government shenanigans (vs. the massive coverage divestments votes received when this same game played out in Berkeley in 2010) was entirely predictable.
For student government boycott and divestment votes have no political meaning whatsoever if they cannot be claimed to represent the broad opinion of the student body. And while enough confusion surrounded where the student body stood on the Middle East conflict in 2010 to justify concerns that a “Yes” vote could be convincingly presented as representing student opinion, three years later everyone understands that these votes mean nothing of the kind.
How do we know this? Well even putting aside statements by school administrators condemning the votes and assuring everyone they will be completely ignored (since that just represents the views of “The Man”), every school where this subject has been fought out included heated all-night debates between opposing sides (which alone demonstrates lack of consensus even among people passionate about the subject).
At most schools, divestment was voted down (sometimes for the third or fourth time in as many years). But in the few cases where the boycotters managed to eke out a “Yes” vote, those decisions were immediately condemned by student leaders, editorials and letters to the editor in the student paper. Which simply demonstrates that while some BDS groups have managed to figure out how to get their supporters elected to student government (where they could bully their colleagues during grueling all-nighters), the notion that these votes represent anything even remotely resembling student consensus is laughable.
The BDSers demonstrate their own understanding of this lack of broad support whenever they try to sneak their measures in through the back door (as they did at UC Riverside in March). For whenever their measures are exposed to the light of day, they tend to be voted down or reversed (as they were at Riverside which threw out their earlier divestment vote a month later in open debate).
And one need only look at Berkeley’s latest “Yes” vote to see how Pyrrhic even a non-backdoor victory is for the BDSers. For in order to get their vote passed, the local Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) group had to basically throw the BDS movement under the bus, insisting that their motion had absolutely nothing to do with the international organization which calls for the very things students were being asked to vote for. And even this peculiar vote was challenged for being taken against student government rules (which led to it being watered down still further). Making matters stranger still is this story of a student leader’s attempt to blackmail the President of the Student Senate, offering to drop a lawsuit against him if he chose not to veto the divestment measure (as the previous Student Senate President had done in 2010).
To some of us, that last story mostly raises questions about the nature of a UC student government that seems to spend so much time suing, prosecuting and impeaching its members rather than organizing the next sock hop or condom drive. But what is unimpeachable is that statements made by a body that behaves in such undemocratic ways is hardly in a position to cast moral aspersions on the Jewish state that anyone else needs to take seriously (given that they are neither a representation of student opinion, nor the result of just and thoughtful deliberation).
Fortunately, the BDSers themselves have taught us again and again how to best deal with student government resolutions of this type. For year after year, in student council after student council, divestment resolutions have been voted down again and again. And each and every one of these votes was immediately ignored by the boycotters who refused to take them as representing student opinion against their cause, or the final word on the issue.
So if Students for Justice in Palestine are allowed to embrace the notion that votes rejecting their opinions carry no weight and have no meaning, why shouldn’t the rest of us follow their lead and do the same?
In April it was announced that an Egyptian woman named Mona Seif was a finalist for the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders – a prize established in 1993 to honour those “who demonstrate exceptional courage in defending and promoting human rights”. A jury, composed of officials from several NGOs, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, selects the winner.
On May 1 UN Watch issued the following statement:
UN Watch today called on the juryof the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, comprised of Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and eight other NGOs, and chaired by Hans Thoolen, to cancel its nomination of Mona Seif, an Egyptian activist who openly advocates terrorism and war crimes, as a top contender for the 2013 prize.
Further, the United Nations watchdog organization wasn’t alone in their condemnation of Seif, as the nomination was also fiercely criticized by such notable Egyptian human rights activists as Maikel Nabil and Amr Bakly.
On May 3, the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald – parroting the predictable narrative of Electronic Intifada – tweeted the following:
On the predictable smear campaign against Egyptian activist & hero @monasosh is.gd/pCx6u1- is.gd/QQc7mE
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 3, 2013
First, neither report which Greenwald linked to in his Tweet (which included a post by the virulently anti-Israel NY Times commentator Robert Mackey) demonstrated that Seif’s positions were unfairly characterized by UN Watch.
Moreover, as we’ve noted previously, Greenwald’s expansive definition of the word “smear” seems to include factually based claims about those whose political orientation he happens to be in alignment with, and this particular Tweet would suggest that he simply didn’t conduct serious research into Seif’s background before expressing his outrage at her opponents.
UN Watch’s evidence consists of the several quite unambiguous Tweets by Seif demonstrating that she did in fact defend Palestinian terrorism, including rocket attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas.
Here are a few examples of Seif’s decidedly selective regard for human rights:
Support for Islamist terrorists involved with blowing up Egyptian gas pipelines to Israel:
We the Egyptian ppl DO NOT WANT OUR GAS TO BE EXPORTED TO ISRAEL.Sinai ppl are our heroes everytime they blow up the pipelines#FuckISrael
— Mona Seif (@Monasosh) July 6, 2011
Here, Seif requests the services of one of the more prolific antisemitic cartoonists, Carlos Latuff:
@carloslatuff we need a cartoon for our masked heroes who Blow up Pipe lines exporting gas to Israel 4 consecutive times now
— Mona Seif (@Monasosh) July 15, 2011
The following was Tweeted by Seif after Amnesty International called on both Hamas and Israel to stop attacks on civilians during the recent war in Gaza.
@amnesty you don’t ask an occupied nation to stop their “Resistance” to end violence!!!SHAME ON YOU!
— Mona Seif (@Monasosh) November 16, 2012
Why is @amnesty tweeting abt what’s happening in #Gaza and putting the Zionist Occupier on same ground as Palestinian Resistance?!!!
— Mona Seif (@Monasosh) November 16, 2012
@aidaseif @amnesty & @hrw r leading a shameful campaign asking Palestinians under occupation & non stop air strikes 2 stop their resistance!
— Mona Seif (@Monasosh) November 20, 2012
Finally, just in case there was any doubt regarding her position, Seif Tweeted the following just a few days ago, after the row erupted.
i support a nation’s right to resist occupation! Sending me tweets calling me a terrorist wont change the fact that real terrorist is Israel
— Mona Seif (@Monasosh) April 30, 2013
And, Glenn Greenwald’s patently dishonest Tweets accusing UN Watch of of engaging in a “smear” campaign won’t change the fact that Mona Seif is an open and evidently proud supporter of terrorism against Israelis.
In an April 7 post, we asked how many of the roughly 800 Jews currently living in the ancient city of Hebron Harriet Sherwood had spoken to or interviewed. Our interest in the Guardian Jerusalem correspondent’s familiarity with Hebron’s Jews was piqued by the following sentence in her April 4 report about an outbreak of violence in the West Bank – including in Israelis cities such as Hebron.
After the funeral Palestinian youths threw stones at Israeli soldiers close to an extremist Jewish settlement in the heart of the city. The Israeli military responded with teargas, stun grenades and rubber bullets
We noted that by referring to a community of hundreds of Israelis as “extremists”, Sherwood was lazily imputing widespread fanaticism without evidence – and, more broadly, conveying a message that there’s something radical or extreme about the desire to maintain even a small Jewish presence in Hebron, the oldest Jewish community in the world.
Our April 7 post is relevant in contextualizing Sherwood’s report on today’s terrorist attack in the West Bank – in which a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli man to death, then grabbed his weapon and fired at nearby border police.
Sherwood begins her piece, entitled ‘Israeli security forces deployed in West Bank after settler is stabbed to death‘, April 30, with the following information, which includes a curious reference to the victim’s home town:
Large numbers of Israeli security forces have been deployed in the West Bank after an Israeli settler was stabbed to death by a Palestinian amid fears that the killing could trigger widespread confrontations.
Eviatar Borovzky, 30, a father of five children and a part-time security guard at the hardline settlement of Yitzhar, near Nablus, died of his wounds at the scene of the attack.
Even if the contention that some Jews who live in Yitzhar are “hardline” has merit, it’s unclear what significance the politics of the victim’s home city has in understanding the attack, anymore than the fact that the terrorist suspect is reportedly from a city (Tulkarem) where several deadly terrorist attacks have originated would have relevance.
Sherwood’s report also included the following:
Around the same time [as the attack on Borovzky],an Israeli air strike killed an alleged Palestinian militant in Gaza in the first targeted assassination since the eight-day war last November. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said Haitham Masshal, 24, had been involved in a recent rocket attack on the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat. It described him as a “Global-Jihad-affiliated terrorist” and said he had “acted in different Jihad Salafi terror organisations and over the past few years has been a key terror figure”.
…
Hamas, the Islamist organisation which controls Gaza, has observed the ceasefire agreement that ended November’s conflict. However, in the past two months there has been renewed intermittent rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, blamed on small extremist organisations that Hamas is trying to rein in.
So, according to Sherwood, Hamas is trying to “rein in” extremism in Gaza.
Briefly:
Regarding the final bullet point, here’s one example: Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior leader and co-founder of Hamas, is seen in this video waxing eloquently (on Al-Aqsa TV in 2010) about the the Jews’ future in the Middle East:
No, there’s clearly nothing “extremist” or “hardline” about that!
Dear Mr. Norton Taylor,
I read your article with great interest, but I must say I was rather appalled to read your following claim:
“The documents, which have a remarkable contemporary resonance, reveal how British officials looked on as Jewish settlers took over more and more Arab land.”
This statement is extremely misleading, evoking an image that Jewish government or other entity was forcing Arabs off their lands in large numbers. This picture is false.
It is well documented that, during the British Mandate, Jews in fact acquired very little settled Arab land. All Jewish land acquisitions were commercial, land purchased from willing sellers (and often at exorbitant prices). The Jews, being politically powerless, had no means to compel Arabs to sell their lands. Moreover, a vast majority of these purchases involved unused lands in sparsely settled areas, e.g. the Jezreel and Hefer valleys, swampy areas that the Arabs tended to avoid. The Jews, in turn, avoided moving into heavily populated areas. That is why to this day Arab and Jewish population concentrations are in different parts of the country (e.g, the West Bank and the Coastal plain).
There are many books that describe these issues, a particularly good one is “From Time Immemorial” by Joan Peters.
Even today, when there is a Jewish government which can and does exercise its power regarding the controversial settlements policy in the West Bank, most of these were likewise built on uninhabited stretches of land. Generally, Arabs were not expelled in order to create these towns.
Another severely erroneous statement in your article was this:
“In the weeks leading up to the partition of Palestine in 1948, when Britain gave up its UN mandate, Jewish terrorist groups were mounting increasing attacks on UK forces and Arab fighters, the Colonial Office papers show.”
It is not clear what time period is meant here. If the reference is prior to November 29, 1947 (the UN Partition Plan vote) then it is true that some Jews did engage in “terrorism” and Jewish forces did attack British forces (which the British always called “terrorism” even the targets were legitimate military targets and no British soldiers were killed). But there was also plenty of Arab terrorism, meaning the random murder of unarmed Jews and Britons that had occurred during the same time. The British, too, engaged in “terrorism” of their own from time to time (see the book “Major Farran’s Hat“). Singling Jews out as “terrorists” is grossly misleading.
If the reference is to the period between November 29, 1947 and May 15, 1948, then the statement is a flat-out lie. Arab forces attacked Jews all across Palestine the very next day after the UN vote. Dozens of Jews were killed immediately, the Jews tried to organize to defend themselves. Since the British were leaving, and the Jews had their hands full just protecting themselves from the Arabs, all anti-British operations ceased. I am not aware of a single significant incident of Jews attacking Britons during this time period.
The British, on the other hand, continued to severely oppress the Jews and prevent them from acquiring the necessary arms to defend themselves. Moreover, many Britons openly aligned themselves with Arabs and some participated in anti-Jewish terror (e.g, the February, 1948 bombing of Ben Yehudah Street in Jerusalem).
The very characterization of Jews as “terrorists” and the Arabs as “fighters” when it was Arab terrorist violence that launched the 1947-48 war to start with reveals a deep prejudice that belies any semblance of objective reporting.
Thank you for your attention. I look forward to your response.
David Shayne
The failure of many to truly understand the ‘root causes’ of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and accurately contextualize news in the region is based in part on the MSM’s general tendency to ignore or significantly downplay the pervasive antisemitism and anti-Zionist agitation within Palestinian society.
This blog’s ‘What the Guardian won’t report‘ series often focuses on such disturbing stories about the official Palestinian glorification of violence, racist indoctrination of their children and other such grossly underreported examples of the reactionary Palestinian political ethos which ‘genuine’ advocates for peace can not reasonably ignore.
Whilst reasonable people can argue over what degree such Palestinian incitement represents an impediment to peace relative to other factors, such as the issue of Israeli “settlements”, the Guardian’s obsessive focus on the latter and their almost total silence about the former serves to grossly misinform their readers on the politics of the region.
As such, it was encouraging to read a recent story by the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood, entitled ’Gaza schoolboys being trained to use Kalashnikovs‘, April 28, which reports on news that Hamas is now providing Gaza schools with military training for young boys. The program, which includes the use of firearms and explosives, will likely be extended to girls next year.
Sherwood even quotes Al Mezan, a Gaza-based “human rights organisation”, criticizing the program thusly:
“It’s unbelievable. Hamas has been cutting sports activities in schools for the past six years, saying there is no time in the curriculum, but now they find the time to have military training inside schools,”
Additionally, on the very same day that Sherwood filed her story, Phoebe Greenwood published a piece at The Telegraph entitled ‘Hamas teaches Palestinian schoolboys to how to fire Kalashnikovs’ – a report which is especially noteworthy in the context of a CiF Watch post back in 2011 which noted Greenwood’s skepticism over ‘claims’ made by Israeli officials regarding Palestinian incitement.
Though both reports are problematic in many respects, and indeed ignore the broader problem of Palestinian incitement in both the West Bank and Gaza, it’s certainly a step in the right direction.
Further, we can at least hope that Sherwood and Greenwood will follow-up on their stories and continue to inform their readers on the pathos within Palestinian political culture which inspires the constant vilification of Israel and dehumanization of Jews - a dynamic which makes most Israelis wary of the conventional wisdom which uncritically accepts that a two-state solution will necessarily result in peace.
The following is a first person account by Richard Millett
Ilan Pappe, Peter Kosminsky, Jon Snow, Karma Nabulsi, Rosemary Hollis at LSE.
On Friday (April 26) Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow was at the London School of Economics to chair a panel of hardcore anti-Israel polemicists but as I was questioning him face to face about his own use of the term “the Jewish lobby” he violently grabbed my mobile phone attempting to dislodge it from my hand accusing me of trying to secretly record our conversation.
He then repeatedly called me “a creep” and claimed a breach of his human rights.
He had been explaining to me (Clip 1 below) that “the Jewish lobby” is a common term in America. I asked him if he would use the term “the Muslim lobby” to which he replied that he would.
This was how the event itself was described:
On this panel discussion, chaired by Jon Snow of Channel 4 News, the speakers will discuss aspects of the current situation in Palestine, including: Palestinian domestic politics, Israel’s position, the international dimension of the impasse and the insights into the conflict provided by film-making.
I went mainly to hear Peter Kosminsky, director of Channel 4′s drama series The Promise which portrayed Jews in British Mandate Palestine and contemporary Israel by using anti-Semitic stereotypes. For example, Israeli Jews were shown to be stunningly wealthy, and there were lines like these spoken by a British soldier:
“The Jews and Arabs have been living here in relative harmony for years. But our victory over the Germans has turned the trickle of Jews coming to this land into a flood. You must understand, the Jews see it as their holy land. But the Arabs, who have been here for over a thousand years, see them as stealing their land. Our job is to keep the two sides apart…..”
And:
“After Bergen-Belsen, I thought that the Jews deserved a state, but now I’m not so sure…. Their precious state has been born in violence and cruelty to its neighbours, and I’m not sure I want it to prosper….”
Last night Kosminsky said that after the series had aired:
“Nothing prepared me for the level of vitriol that was going to drop on me from the Zionist lobby…personal, vicious stuff came my way….If I choose to criticise my country, and I often do, nobody calls me ‘a racist’. They accept that it’s a legitimate thing in a free society to criticise the political and diplomatic behaviour, the domestic and foreign policies of a sovereign state. It just means that you disagree with its political behaviour. But if you’re Jewish, as I am, and you criticise the domestic and/or foreign policy of the sovereign state of Israel you are immediately called an anti-Semite. Very clever isn’t it.” (Clip 2)
No it’s not clever actually because Kosminsky doesn’t just “disagree with its political behaviour”. He disagrees with Israel’s existence and calls for Jews in Israel to be boycotted (presumably he doesn’t wish those of other religions in Israel to be boycotted). He said:
“the boycott creates so much anger in Israelis. They really hate the idea, particularly the academic boycott, which suggests to me it would probably be quite effective. So I think, yes, we should do it.” (Clip 3)
I hear the Nazis also boycotted Jews. In the 1930s it was considered anti-Semitic but apparently in 2013 it isn’t.
On America’s support for Israel and the similarity of the creation of both countries he said:
“this is why America finds it so hard to take a stand against the illegality and the disgusting behaviour of the state of Israel, because that’s how they (the Americans) came into existence, guys!” (clip 4)
There was also a lengthy discussion on how much Jews were hated by America and Britain, this being the main driver by these countries to create Israel in order to get Jews to go there instead.
Kosminsky put it like this:
“America was very keen to strong-arm Britain into accepting a Jewish-controlled state in what had been Palestine because…they really didn’t want any more Jews in New York, please.” (clip 4 also)
As for Rosemary Hollis, former director of research at Chatham House, she claimed that at the same time Lord Balfour was drafting the Balfour Declaration he was also driving anti-Jewish immigration legislation through Parliament. (clip 5)
Hollis also claimed that it wasn’t the Jews that invented Jewish nationalism but “the Europeans”. She said “it was the Europeans who decided somehow that Judaism was something above and beyond a religion”. Incredible! Who was Theodore Herzl anyway and that book he published in 1896. Der Judenstaat, anyone?
Jon Snow didn’t hold back either but suggested that Britain might well have delayed bombing the railway lines to the concentration camps because of Britain’s hatred of Jews. (clip 6)
Snow had also started the evening claiming that there was “Palestine fatigue” in the media (clip 7).
Palestine fatigue! Has he not picked up The Independent or The Guardian recently or watched his own beloved Channel 4 which aired The Promise and many other programes about the Palestinians including one being aired while we were at the event!
To round things off nicely Ilan Pappe implicitly compared Israel to Nazi Germany (clip 8). He said Israel is beginning to look like “your own worst enemy” in its obsession with having as many Jews in Israel as possible.
Meanwhile, Karma Nabulsi spent most of the evening calling for the so-called “right of return”, commonly known as a pretext to the demographic destruction of the Jewish state. Nothing new there then from ex-PLO Ms Nabulsi.
(Read Jonathan Hoffman’s account of the event here)
Clips from the event (customer warning: may contain anti-Semitism)
Clip 1:
(Snow mentions “the Jewish lobby” at 1 min 34 secs.)
Clip 2:
Clip 3:
Clip 4:
Clip 5:
Clip 6:
Clip 7:
Clip 8:
UN official Richard Falk, a self-professed believer in 9/11 conspiracy theories, has been widely condemned for arguing that the Boston terror attack was the result of US foreign policy, as well as Obama’s recent trip to Israel, in a commentary in the April 21 edition of Foreign Policy Journal.
Falk said the Boston Marathon bombings – which killed three and injured over 180 – were “expected” given Washington’s ongoing policies around the world, especially its support for Israel and its military involvement in the Middle East.
“The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance…the United States has been fortunate not to experience worse blowbacks,” wrote Falk
Falk added the following on the Boston attacks:
“It is horrible, but we in this country should not be too surprised, given our drone attacks that have killed women and children attending weddings and funerals in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
American leaders, argued Falk towards the end of his Foreign Policy Journal essay, “don’t have the courage to connect some of these dots.”
It’s interesting that, up until now, it seems that even the most ardent critics of American foreign policy haven’t attributed blame to the U.S. for the Boston Marathon bombings, and, encouragingly, the comments by Falk (who also has a history of antisemitism) elicited a strong rebuke from, among others, US Ambassador Susan Rice.
American politicians may not, as Falk complained, have the “courage to connect the dots“, but the Guardian’s associate editor Seumas Milne seems to, as least based on his recent ‘Comment is Free’ entry on April 23. Though his piece deals with the ‘scandal’ of the continuing use of Guantánamo Bay to hold enemy combatants, Milne was able to seamlessly tie in the Boston bombing towards the end of his essay, where he wrote the following:
We don’t yet know the motivations of the two men accused of carrying out last week’s atrocity in Boston, which killed three people and seriously injured many more. But we do know that 61 were killed the same day in bomb attacks in Iraq that were blamed on al-Qaida, brought to the country by the US-British invasion. And 16 were killed in Pakistan the following day in a suicide attack claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, which mushroomed as a result of the invasion of Afghanistan.
What is certain is that so long as the US and its allies intervene, occupy and wage war across the Arab and Muslim world – whether directly or by proxy, with daisy cuttersor drones – such outrages [such as the Boston attack] will continue. It’s the logic of a war of terror without end.
So, although Milne evidently “doesn’t yet know the motivations of the two men accused of carrying out last week’s atrocity in Boston”, he does know enough about the attack to claim that such “outrages” will continue “so long as US and its allies intervene, occupy and wage war across the Arab and Muslim world”.
The only surprise about Milne’s decision to publish an essay implicitly blaming American policy in the Middle East for the deadly attacks targeting innocent American citizens by two Islamist-inspired terrorists is that he waited over a week since the bombing to do so.
If you recall, a mere two days after the 9/11 attacks which killed nearly 3000 Americans, Milne complained, at ‘Comment is Free’, that “most Americans simply don’t get…why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world”.
Milne expressed bitterness that only a minority of Americans were likely to “make the connection between what has been visited upon them and what their government has visited upon large parts of the world”, though it was vital they “make that connection…if such tragedies are not to be repeated.”
He added that the US was “reaping a dragon’s teeth harvest” it had itself sowed.
Although the Guardian associate editor hasn’t gone so far as to claim, as Falk has, that 9/11 was an inside job, Milne and his political allies on the far left who continually blame the US and its support for Israel – for deadly attacks targeting its civilians by reactionary and malevolent Islamist terrorists are advancing an equally insidious lie, one which obfuscates cause and effect and blurs the ethical distinction between victim and perpetrator.
Whilst 9/11 conspiracy theories are rightly mocked as a vice of the intellectually deficient, and the mendacious propaganda of extremists, the moral ‘trooferism’ of those whose contempt for America, Israel and the West inspires such a spectacular misunderstanding of the civilizational dividing lines in our time should similarly be named and shamed as the dangerous political charlatans they are.
