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This is cross posted from at Snapshot, the blog of CAMERA
[Note: This CAMERA post is consistent with their current efforts to analyse NY Times' coverage of the Palestinian prisoner issue numerically, by quantifying their tendency to use certain words, phrases, and themes (and cite certain facts) over others. CiF Watch has also recently published a post similarly providing a textual analysis of Harriet Sherwood's report on the Palestinian prisoner issue. - A.L. ]
NYT Jerusalem correspondent, Jodi Rudoren
Even before Jodi Rudoren began her tenure as the New York Times‘ bureau chief in Jerusalem, serious concerns were raised about her objectivity.
Here at Snapshots we said, “Only time will tell whether [those] concerns will be borne out.”
Unfortunately, judging by Rudoren’s recent story about Palestinian prisoners on a hunger strike, published online on May 3 and in print the following day, those concerns are certainly being borne out.
You can read some criticism of the story here, here and here. Below we take a look at the piece by the numbers:
• Number of quoted words by Palestinian supporters of Palestinian prisoners: 269
• Number of quoted words by Israelis explaining the rationale behind administrative detention (or anything else): 0
• Number of words by Rudoren (or anyone else) discussing Israeli rationale behind administrative detention: 0
• Number of paragraphs before Rudoren gets around to letting readers know that the stars of her article are members of Islamic Jihad: 14
• Countries and groups that list Islamic Jihad as a terrorist organization include: The United States, Canada, The European Union, The United Kingdom and Australia.
• Rudoren’s description of Islamic Jihad: “a radical and militant Palestinian faction.”
• Number of other articles in May 4 edition of the New York Times that use the words “terrorist,” “terrorist organization,” terrorist network” or “terrorist attack” to describe non-Palestiniangroups, individuals and attacks: 6
• Number of people murdered by Islamic Jihad: Hundreds
• Number of rockets fired at Israeli cities and towns by Islamic Jihad: Hundreds
• Number of references in the article to those attacks: 0
• Number of days after extremist activist Ali Abunimah complained to Rudoren on Twitter about lack of coverage of the prisoners’ hunger striker before Rudoren authored what Abunimah endorsed as her “must read” report: 4
Related articles
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)
A guest post by AKUS
In the articles ‘Lost in anti-Zionist translation? Guardian misquotes Noam Shalit on Palestinian hostage taking‘ and ‘Guardian corrects story with false translation of Noam Shalit interview after his son’s release‘ CiF Watch exposed the errors in the recent by Phoebe Greenwood article that was corrected:
New headline:
Old headline:
Greenwood’s article was based on an incredibly rude interview carried out by Israeli journalist Amnon Levi of Israel’s “Channel 10″.
Noam Shalit with Amnon Levi of nana 10 – Channel 10
Having watched the interview (in Hebrew) it’s clear that only Amnon Levi and his cameraman were present with Noam Shalit. The interview was taped in Shalit’s house in Mitzpe Hila – in the Shalit’s kitchen, actually.
So Greenwood’s article, with the misleading quotation, was written after reading a translated transcript of the interview. (In a different article about Noam Shalit’s entry into Israeli politics, Harriet Sherwood says she interviewed Shalit in Jerusalem on Monday – presumably May 7th, 2012).
It is an interesting commentary on the low standard of Guardian journalistic ethics that Greenwood, while acknowledging that the interview was taped, does not point out that she was not there.
“Speaking to a television interviewer in the kitchen of the Shalit family home, a familiar backdrop for the Israeli public from the family’s five-year campaign for their son’s release, Shalit was subject to repeated questioning attempting to pin him down on his political policies.”
The Guardian and Greenwood do not acknowledge her source, nor that she, for all intents and purposes, provided a translated transcription of Shalit’s comments lifted from the interview plus her own views about them.
In fact, Greenwood’s article is about as close to plagiarism dished up as journalism as one can get. In another time and at another paper I suspect she would have been sacked.
Related articles
- Guardian corrects story with false translation of Noam Shalit interview after his son’s release (cifwatch.com)
- Lost in anti-Zionist translation? Guardian misquotes Noam Shalit on Palestinian hostage taking (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr Tweet defends ‘chosen people’ essay, complains about Zionists’ sense of victimhood (cifwatch.com)
Like this:
H/T Margie
Peter Bradshaw wrote a largely positive review of Sasha Baron Cohen’s new film, The Dictator, in the Guardian, May 10.
Bradshaw wrote:
“Baron Cohen plays General Aladeen, the tyrannical ruler of the oil-rich north African rogue state Wadiya, who is intensely irritated by the western powers’ infatuation with the Arab spring.”
“[Aladeen] exerts a grotesque, Orwellian power and abolishes hundreds of words in the Adiyan dictionary.”
“His confrontation with Washington has reached a crisis after a speech in which he announced Wadiya was just months away from enriching uranium, and then corpsed and giggled uncontrollably when trying to claim that this was for ‘clean energy purposes’.”
Bradshaw comments:
“[The film] does…deliver laughs and weapons-grade offensiveness.”
“It is relentlessly immature and I was often reminded of the cheerfully reprehensible Kentucky Fried Movie in the 70s, a film unashamedly low in nutritional value. But it was very funny and so is this. The Dictator isn’t going to win awards and it isn’t as hip as Borat. Big goofy outrageous laughs is what it has to offer.”
Evidently, one reader (someone using the moniker ATTW) wasn’t amused, and wrote this comment:
Unpacking this comment (which has thus far garnered 39 ‘Recommends’):
- Conflating of Jews with Israelis: Cohen, a British Jew, is immediately tied to Israel. (Also, see this CW post about a similarly bigoted attack on Cohen by the Guardian’s Michael White.)
- Classic projection: The suggestion that Israel is an extreme anti-Arab, anti-Islamic country is a perfect moral inversion in light of the Arab world’s malign obsession with Jews and Israel, and endemic culture of antisemitism. It takes a lot of ideological conditioning to see the last 64 years as the Israeli/Jewish war against the Arab/Islamic world.
- Thinly veiled Nazi analogy: The reader sees a Jew mocking Arab dictators as somehow analogous to Germans mocking Jews in the years leading up to the Holocaust.
This off-topic, gratuitously anti-Zionist (and ad hominem) attack on Cohen has not been deleted by CiF moderators.
Related articles
- CiF reader sees Zionist fingerprints in international condemnation of Syria (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian reader’s thinly veiled threat against Jews doesn’t result in suspension of user privileges (cifwatch.com)
- CiF reader comment of the day: How the Israel lobby defeated Ken Livingstone (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Comment is Free’ reader Zionism = Nazism comment of the day (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian readers and their inalienable right to make Israel-Nazi analogies (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”.
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)
Hawkeye
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Telling the Truth
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Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
Chair of Manchester Palestine Solidarity Campaign declares Israeli Hoopoe birds ‘Aves non gratae’.
May 17, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: anti-Zionism, BDS, Boycott, Communist Party of Great Britain, Delegitimization, Hoopoes, International Solidarity Movement, Morning Star, Palestine Solidarity Campaign | by Hadar Sela | 18 comments
photo: Israel Fichman
Courtesy of the anti-racist website ‘Engage’, here’s a funny-but-true story to ease us into the weekend.
It appears that the British publication the ‘Morning Star‘ – originally the organ of the Communist Party of Great Britain – recently ran a quiz in which one of the questions concerned Israel’s national bird, the Hoopoe.
This apparent counter-revolutionary faux pas resulted in two indignant letters to the newspaper from two senior members of the Manchester Palestine Solidarity Campaign who, despite their being married to each other, obviously do not deal in philatelic skimping when it comes to advancing the workers’ cause.
And there’s a sequel; read the rest here.
This rather Voldemortesque (he-whose-name-shall-not–be-spoken) approach to the world is of course thoroughly in keeping with the institutional culture of fringe movements of single-issue obsessives, the members of which frequently appear to be vying with each other for the title of how to appear…well… most mad.
Perhaps Linda Clair will be disappointed, but I am obliged to report that the pair of Hoopoes which live in my back garden seemed remarkably unperturbed when informed this morning of their new ‘Aves non grata’ status.
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