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It’s getting near that time of year when people in the UK, fed up of their dank, grey winter, begin flicking through holiday brochures and the travel supplements in their weekend newspapers, dreaming of a warm and exciting destination for their summer break.
Sarah Irving - Former ISM activist
As may be expected, the Guardian’s travel section also contains articles on a variety of tempting destinations. Las Vegas, Spain, Turkey and the Red Sea to to name but a few, and this week there’s also an article by the author of the newly published Bradt Guide to Palestine, Sarah Irving, on its top 10 attractions.
The vast majority of readers of the article will of course be unfamiliar with the region and may therefore not pick up onIrving’s distinctly partisan style or the inaccuracies in her article and, one can only assume, her book.
Already in her introduction,Irving makes much of potential travel difficulties visited on the unsuspecting voyager by the Israeli authorities. Of course she makes no mention of why inconveniences such as checkpoints or airport security checks may be necessary in order to protect the lives of tourists just as much as Israelis.
Irving then proceeds to give her recommendations for places to visit. Sebastia becomes a site of “Hellenic watchtowers, ruined Samaritan palaces and crumbling Byzantine churches” along with “Islamic shrines”: no mention of the history before the relatively late naming of the town Sebastia after Augustus Caesar, which includes the archeological excavations of the royal citadel and kings of Israel, including Ahab, between 880 and 721 BCE.
Next, Irving moves on to the Dome of the Rock which, despite this being a guide to Palestine, is of course situated in Israel. The only clue the reader might get about that fact is her claim that the site is “[u]sually closed for Islamic holidays, Jewish holidays, Fri/Sat (except Muslim worshippers), and whenever the Israeli authorities consider there to be a security risk.“ Ah, those unpredictable and hysterical Israelis again!
Northwards to Jenin and Irving cannot resist yet another context-free remark: “this bustling town, sadly better known for the Israeli army’s massive 2002 attack on the refugee camp.” Of course one does have to admit that Jenin’s other title as terror capital of the Palestinian Territories is somewhat less likely to draw in the crowds.
Next Irving manages to turn Abraham, after whom a hiking trail is named, into “the Prophet Abraham”, and to skip meticulously over any Jewish history in Taibeh or Jericholiable to distract the reader, before arriving in Hevron. The tomb of Abraham and the other patriarchs at Machpela is not recommended to visitors – presumably because that would not fit into the narrative – but she does manage the by now obligatory mention of wicked Israelis. “Many [shops] have closed, shut by Israeli military order to protect the settlers who have occupied parts of the city, or because the settler threat makes business unviable.” In fact, rather than having ‘occupied’ it, the Jews living in Hevron do so under the terms of the Oslo Accords signed by the representatives of the Palestinian people.
Irving’s attention turns next to Acco – or as she for some reason calls it ‘Akka’. Acco is of course situated in Israel, but Irving gets round this by informing her readers that “The new Bradt guide also covers areas of Israel that are home to large numbers of Palestinians and where their culture survives.” The Arabs living in Acco are Israeli Arabs – who chose not to leave Israel during the War of Independence in 1948.
It is clear that far from being a ‘travel guide’, Irving’s book is actually a political polemic.
Why Bradt should have selected such an obviously biased author to write a guide which appears to attempt to erase Jewish history from Judea and Samaria (unless in the form of context-free references to contemporary security issues) is a mystery.
A quick Google search would have shown Bradt’s editors that Sarah Irving has a very rich history of her own.
In 2002 she visited the Palestinian territories as a member of the International Solidarity Movement. She writes for ‘Electronic Intifada‘ (among others) and also maintains her own fiercely anti-Israel blog. She has co-written a book (promoted by the ISM) about Operation Cast Lead which she describes as “the massive Israeli invasion in December 2008 and January 2009, when 1,400 people were killed, mainly children and other civilians.”
As is well known, Hamas itself has admitted that over half the casualties were members of its own terrorist organization which had fired rockets at Israeli civilians for years before the Israeli military operation.
Currently Irving is writing a biography of the hijacker and terrorist Leila Khaled, also to be published by the same Pluto Press which includes Gilad Atzmon in its stable of reviewers, and runs a blog dedicated to Leila Khaled.
Irving’s ‘understanding’ and ‘expertise’ on the Middle Eastis summed up here in her own wors:
“On a wider political scale, it’s impossible to disconnect the West’s support for Israel and our governments’ apparent blindness to Israeli human rights abuses and also to the massive theft of land for settlements, the discrimination meted out to Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and Palestinian citizens of Israel, from issues like control of the Middle East and its oil, racism and anti-Islamism, and global hatred and hostility which feed religious fundamentalism – Christian and Jewish as well as Islamic.”
Obviously, this article byIrving calls into question the reliability of this particular Bradt travel guide as far as genuine tourists are concerned but it also prompts one to wonder if their previous publications also cater exclusively to the terror-chic market.
That the Guardian’s travel editor apparently saw nothing unprofessional in publishing an article and promoting so blatantly faulted a book by a terrorist-supporting writer indicates that readers need to regard its travel recommendations with considerable caution.
(h/t Infinity)
H/T Margie
When it comes to reports about Israel at the Guardian, their inventory of misleading anti-Israel images are clearly quite abundant.
Indeed, the Guardian received an Honest Reporting ”2010 Dishonest Reporting Award“ due to this memorable photo, and accompanying headline:
Eyewitness: Palestinian youth run down
In addition to the curious fact, noted by HR, that the camermen (among others) just happened to be “in the right place at the right time”, the fact that an innocent Israeli motorist was trying desperately to avoid harm, from a pre-planned ambush by seven rock throwing Palestinians, evidently wasn’t a compelling enough narrative.
For the Guardian, such messy details can never get in the way of tales of Israeli villainy, especially those involving the infliction of harm upon Palestinian children.
A Guardian report by Chris McGreal, “UN vote on Palestinian state put off amid lack of support“, Nov. 11, included the following photo:
I must admit, the propaganda value is simply off the charts: Israeli soldiers juxtaposed with an innocent Palestinian boy holding a sign with an image of Mahmoud Abbas, which included text asking, in Dickensian fashion, “Please sir, I want a state”.
Of course, my guess is that the Palestinian Authority rejected text, to accompany the graphic, of Abbas’s quote from a recent speech, reported by the PA news agency, accusing settlers of releasing trained wild hogs to attack Palestinian Arabs.
And, they likely similarly rejected one of the many Abbas quotes insisting that he will never recognize a Jewish state; his praise for Hamas’s kidnapping of Gilad Shalit and support for armed “resistance”, or his administration’s refusal to allow Palestinian refugees to settle in, and become citizens of, a new Palestinian state.
It’s likely that the PA rejected the following, which more accurately reflects the politics of a “President” now in the sixth year of a four year term.
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- Guardian Newspeak pro-Palestinian Headline of the Day (cifwatch.com)
- Lost in anti-Zionist translation? Guardian’s McGreal repeats mistranslated answers of Shalit in Arab interview (cifwatch.com)
- What the Guardian won’t report: Freed Palestinian terrorist implores Gaza children to follow her example (cifwatch.com)
- The anatomy of an internet myth: Guardian helps spread bizarre rumor of Israeli villainy (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s Chris McGreal accuses former US President of “slavishly” succumbing to pro-Israel pressure (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian responds to CiF Watch complaint, amends article charging US of “slavish” support for Israel (cifwatch.com)
A guest post by Dexter Van Zile
Ali Abunimah, Ilan Pappe, and Sophia Deeg
By now, it’s reasonable to conclude that famed revisionist historian Ilan Pappé has transgressed the sacred ground between quotation marks by inventing a quote and attributing it to Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion. It’s also reasonable to conclude that his publisher, Oneworld Publications and his colleagues at the University of Exeter will fail to hold him account for his actions.
The quote in question appeared in an article Pappé wrote for the Autumn 2006 issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies and in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oneworld Publications) that came out a few weeks later. In these texts, Pappé reported that in a 1937 letter to his son, Ben-Gurion declared:
“The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as war.”
Historian Benny Morris declared that the quote was an invention in December 2006. He did not challenge Pappé directly, but journalist Johan Hari used the quote to assail Israel in a commentary that appeared in The Independent soon after it appeared in print twice under Pappé’s name.
In declaring the quote an invention, Morris was on solid ground. The quote does not appear in any of the references that Pappé cited for it. In Ethnic Cleansing, Pappé cites the July 12, 1937 entry in Ben-Gurion’s journal and page 220 of the August-September issue of New Judea, a newsletter published by the World Zionist Organization. The quote appears nowhere in these texts, nor does it appear in the source he references in the article appearing in the Journal of Palestine Studies, a book by Charles D. Smith.
Morris’ statement that the quote attributed to Ben-Gurion was an “invention” should have prompted Pappé to either provide an accurate, verifiable source for the quote or to issue a retraction to prevent others from using it. Instead, the quote lingered on – without correction or retraction – in the fever swamp of anti-Zionist commentary.
It eventually made its way into With God on Our Side, an anti-Israel documentary produced by Porter Speakman, Jr. in 2010. (One of the main commentators in this movie is Rev. Stephen Sizer. Sizer is well known to readers of CIF Watch, Harry’s Place, Seismic Shock and to fans of his appearances on Iranian state television.)
To his credit, Speakman was the first person to issue a correction regarding the quote. After challenges from CAMERA, Speakman acknowledged that the quote in question did not appear in the original sources that Pappé cited and stated it would not appear in future editions of the movie
It took a few months for Speakman to finally respond to a factual challenge, but he did the right thing. And to its credit, the Journal of Palestine Studies is taking a closer look at Pappé’s 2006 article, but is apparently having a tough time getting a hold of the historian himself.
This is no surprise. Pappé has ignored repeated inquires from CAMERA about the quote.
Pappé’s silence on this matter is inexcusable.
Six years on, it’s time for an accounting.
Pappé needs to admit the quote is a fake, or pull a rabbit out of a hat and provide an actual, verifiable source for the statement he attributed to David Ben-Gurion.
The space between quotation marks is sacred ground and needs to be treated as such.
If Pappé does not come clean, his colleagues at the University of Exeter need to challenge him to do, as do his publishers at Oneworld Publications, which needs to expunge this quote from its text.
To fail to do so would indicate the publishing house seeks to profit from a fabrication.
Dexter Van Zile is a researcher at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).
Related articles
- Israel section of the Guardian’s online bookshop includes a work by David Duke’s favorite Jew (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian correspondent’s wish for the Jewish state? That it kindly cease to exist (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian correspondent inspired by Arab resolve to overcome Zionism & Jewish Supremacism (cifwatch.com)
If the debate within the mainstream media over Tony Kushner’s honorary degree at CUNY was informed by facts, and even the most rudimentary journalistic research, his ongoing obfuscation regarding his well-documented history of animosity towards the very existence of Israel would have been exposed and the Guardian’s current cause celebre would be shamed accordingly.
While CUNY recently decided to go ahead and award the degree to Kushner, The Guardian has published no less than eight separate pieces on the row, the latest of which, by Amy Goodman, writing in CiF, (Tony Kushner: an angel in America), quotes the playwright as telling her that,
“the full extent of the things that I’ve said about the state of Israel that would in fact make it clear to the board that I am in no way an enemy of the state of Israel, that I am, in fact, a vocal and ardent supporter of the state of Israel.” [emphasis mine]
As I noted in a previous post, Kushner’s current claims are undeniably contradicted by his past statements, none of which, as far as I can tell, he ever retracted – and all of which Amy Goodman, if she any interest in attempting to corroborate his assertions, could have easily obtained.
They include several comments, in writings and in interviews, where Kushner clearly, and without qualification, expressed his view that Israel should never have come into existence and has made it clear that he is “not a Zionist” – suggesting that he doesn’t support the existence of a sovereign Jewish state within any borders.
He also has leveled quite vicious invectives against the Jewish state and her supporters: accusing Israel of committing acts of “ethnic cleansing”, “savagery” and “barbarism”, and characterizing Jewish Zionists as being among “the most repulsive members of the Jewish community.”
While I’m under no illusions regarding the Guardian’s capacity to report on any story in which Israel or her supporters can be defamed with anything approaching fairness or decency, I would hope that there are still those in the mainstream media who value objectivity and journalistic integrity and will consider holding Kushner accountable for his continuing misrepresentation regarding his quite prolific anti-Zionist record.
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Two rockets exploded in Beersheba on Wednesday morning, and ten mortar shells fell in Shaar Hanegev and Eshkol Regional Councils, injuring one Israeli, adding to the more than 50 mortars and rockets fired into Israel over the weekend, and bringing the total number of projectiles launched from Gaza since Friday to 71 – by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Yet, the Guardian continues to largely ignore the Palestinian escalation, and indeed saw fit to publish two stories on Israel’s retaliation and resulting casualties: Yesterday, they posted, “Eight killed on Israeli strikes on Gaza”, and “Israeli air strikes wound 19 in Gaza” was reported on Monday.”
Most telling was this line from Monday’s report:
“Hamas has stepped up rocket fire at Israel after a lengthy hiatus since the war of two years ago…”
Except that there has been no hiatus.
While the quantity was reduced dramatically since Cast Lead, there were still over 100 rockets fired into Israel in 2009 (following the conclusion of the war in January) and more than 100 in 2010. So far in 2011, 156 projectiles (rockets or mortars) were fired into Israel from Gaza.
What country in the world would consider over 100 rockets fired into their country in three consecutive years to be a “hiatus”?
In nearly 250 news stories on the Guardian’s Israel page so far in 2011,only one led with a headline about Hamas rocket fire (See update below).
As I’ve noted elsewhere, the Guardian’s Palestinians (not the real ones, but merely the abstraction in their political imagination) are always weak, passive and acted upon (the bigotry of low expectations), while their mythical Israelis inversely are malevolent and powerful, and the only political players in their drama who are assigned moral agency (the bigotry of exceedingly high expectations).
Such egregious double standards continue to represent one of the more defining features of the Guardian Left.
(Update after initial posting: The Guardian, for the first time this year, actually did publish a story today which which accurately reported the fact that Israeli communities in the south have been on the receiving end of a barrage of rockets from Gaza, and contained a headline without a qualifier to contort the causality. The story, “Gaza militants’ rockets strike cities deep into Israel“, did add the erroneous claim that such rocket fire largely ceased since the end of Cast Lead, but did at least accurately report the sequence of events, and should be noted.)
One used to be able to associate the dear old BBC with good old British fair play – you know the sort of thing, balanced reporting, the right to reply, offering all sides of every argument, and so on. Not so as far as Israel is concerned. The ongoing BBC series “Letters to the Arab World”, in a glaring admission of bias, once again stifles Israel’s voice.
This morning I listened to BBC Radio 4′s latest Letter to the Arab World from Rajah Sadeh, a Palestinian from Ramallah, to a friend in Egypt.
I really did try to hear him out. The letter was poetic enough, but hardly balanced. Sadeh waxed lyrical about Tahrir Square and the fight for “democracy” (but made no mention of, for example, the mayhem there or the rape of Lara Logan, which even the Guardian admitted was a brutal assault) and got so carried away that it included a description of the togetherness of modern Egyptians with the Muslim Brotherhood. He wanted the same for his country. He seemed proud that he had participated in the Intifada, although he didn’t describe exactly how, but he gave no indication where he stood in relation to the suicide murder and terror his people had initiated then and since before the beginning of the Jewish state.
This combination of magical thinking and selectivity irritated me. His broadcast was infuriating in terms of what it left out – the PA anti-Semitic incitement and glorification of terrorism whilst mouthing platitudes about peace. Further, at a time when decent people are shocked and disgusted by the murder, by Palestinian terrorists, of members of the Fogel family, his failure to acknowledge that such terror is principally to blame for his people’s suffering represents a glaring moral abdication.
Like it or not, Israel lives among Arab nations, and yet the BBC has made another glaring admission of bias by not allowing a letter from one of her writers to the Arab people.
That imbalance needs to be redressed. The following letter to a Palestinian neighbour from Yossi Klein Halevi, written before the 1st Intifada but very relevant today, would be an excellent addition, but would no doubt be more than the BBC could cope with because it is dignified, measured, and lacking in self-pity or overblown rhetoric, and it goes against the BBC’s avowed pro-Arab stance. I reproduce what I believe are the best parts of it here in full, because its poetry deserves to be remembered, but please read the full version!
Letter to a Palestinian Neighbor
by Yossi Klein HaleviOnce before the Terror War, a time that seems now to belong not just technically but substantively to another millennium, I undertook a one-man pilgrimage into your mosques and churches seeking to know you in your intimate spiritual moments. I went as a believing Jew praying and meditating with you wherever you allowed me to enter into your devotional life. My intention was to transcend however briefly the political abyss between us by experiencing together something of presence of God. And I wanted to learn how to feel comfortable in the Middle East’s religious cultures because I believed that the Jewish homecoming would be complete only when the Jewish state were no longer in exile from the Middle East. …..
The dark side of the Muslim reconciliation with death of course are the suicide bombers. But I learned too that acceptance of mortality can be the basis for a religious language of reconciliation. Repeatedly Palestinians would say to me, “Why are you and I arguing over who owns the land when in the end the land will own us both?” That wise ability to place our earthly claims and struggles in the context of our shared condition of mortality gave me hope that peace between us may someday be possible.
But I learned too during numerous candid conversations with Palestinians at all levels of society that in practice few within your nation are willing to concede that I have a legitimate claim to any part of this land. I will cite one telling example. During my journey into Islam in Gaza I met General Nasser Youssef (who at the time of our meeting was head of one of the Palestinian security forces and is now the PA Interior Minister). At one point during our conversation I asked the general to describe his vision of the relations between a Jewish state and a Palestinian state after we signed a peace agreement.
“Let’s assume,” I said, “that Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders uproots the settlements and redivides Jerusalem: What then?” He replied that once the refugees begin returning to the area so many would gravitate to those areas in Israel where their families once lived that eventually we would realize there was no need for an artificial border between Israel and Palestine. The next step continued the general was that the two states would merge. “And then we’ll invite Jordan to join our federation. And Iraq and Syria. Why not? We’ll show the whole world what a beautiful country Jews and Arabs can create together.”
“But,” I asked the general, “Aren’t we negotiating today over a two-state solution?” ”Yes,” he replied, “as an interim step.” And then he added, “You aren’t separate from us; you are part of us. Just as there are Muslim Arabs and Christian Arabs, you are Jewish Arabs.”
This story is particularly relevant because General Youssef is widely known as a moderate deeply opposed to terror as counter-productive to the Palestinian cause. And so what I learned in my journeys into your society is that moderation means one thing on the Israeli side and quite another on the Palestinian side. …
My journey into the faiths of my neighbors was part of a much broader attempt among Israelis begun during the first intifada to understand your narrative how the conflict looks through your eyes. Your society on the other hand has made virtually no effort to understand our narrative.
Instead you have developed what can be called a culture of denial that denies the most basic truths of the Jewish story. According to this culture of denial which is widespread not only among your people but throughout the Arab world there was no Temple in Jerusalem no ancient Jewish presence in the land no Holocaust. Nowhere is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as popular as in the Arab world which has also become the international center for Holocaust denial.
The real problem then is not terrorism which is only a symptom for a deeper affront: your assault on my history and identity your refusal to allow me to define myself which is a form of intellectual terror. In your society’s official embrace through media and schools and mosques of the culture of denial you have tried to reinvent us to redefine us out of our national existence. ….
You have always found ample justification for saying no to compromise. And from your point of view you had absolute justice on your side. But with each violent rejection of an international attempt to end the conflict the map of potential Palestine has gotten smaller. In 1937 you were offered 80 percent of the land; in 1947 45 percent; in 2000 22 percent. And now that self-destructive pattern has once again played itself out in the Terror War; with unilateral withdrawal and the fence the map of potential Palestine has just gotten smaller.
A majority of Israelis I am convinced are ready in principle to make previously unthinkable concessions to end the conflict. Yet that same majority is likewise convinced that no matter what concessions we offer we will not win peace and legitimacy in return. For that reason I believe that the onus for ending this conflict has now shifted to your side. Many Israelis have made the conceptual breakthrough necessary for peace between us; but we will remain entrenched behind our fence until we sense a shift in attitudes on your side. …The tragedy of our conflict is that history gave each of us no choice. The logic of our history demanded our return here — and not just because we were persecuted in exile but because exile from this land was always seen by Jews as an unnatural condition a spiritual offense against Judaism’s deepest sense of itself. Yet just as the logic of our history impelled us to return so the logic of your history impelled you to resist our return. ….
Having been privileged to spend time among you I know that most of you are not Nazis just as I know that most of us are not colonialists. We are two traumatized peoples who tragically have projected their most demonic images onto the other. In withdrawing from Gaza we have begun our territorial contraction. Yet can your side stop actively dreaming of destroying us — through terror demographics the Muslim bomb? Can you accept the moral legitimacy — not just temporary political necessity – of a two-state solution?
I wrote above that your people has made “virtually no effort” to understand who we Jews are. One remarkable exception was a pilgrimage of Palestinian Israelis to Auschwitz two years ago. For Palestinian citizens of Israel to reach out to Jews at the height of the intifada was the deepest expression of the generosity of Arab culture. I was privileged to be among the Jewish participants in that Arab initiative. We stood at the crematorium Arabs and Jews holding each other in silence facing the abyss together. At that moment anything seemed possible between us.
Lately perhaps because of the terror lull I have been thinking again about that journey and about the journey I took into your devotional life….. I approached you then b’gova einayim without apology for my presence here or dismissal of your presence. And that is how I dream of being with you again: as fellow indigenous sons of this land which one day will claim us both.
I had the “pleasure” of meeting Susan Abulhawa while monitoring a Friends of Sabeel conference outside Philadelphia in 2008, during a breakout session on Defeating the Zionist Narrative – where I was subsequently “outed”, by Adam Horowitz (now of Mondoweiss fame) from the American Friends Service Committee, as a “Zionist.”
Undeterred, I remained in the session and, thankfully, was able to glean some vital insights into how the anti-Israel left advances their cause and agitates against the existence of the Jewish state.
I can still recall the feeling of that lion’s den, of preparing for battle after being “accused” of the sin of Zionism, and how effortlessly (even artfully) the pejorative use of that term rolled off the tongue of my interlocutors on that mild spring day.
The Feb 26th Guardian review of Abulhawa’s novel, Mornings in Jenin, by Nicola Barr, contained this introductory passage:
In the 1948 nakba, the “catastrophe” that was the invasion of Palestine leading to the founding of Israel, a baby boy is snatched from his Palestinian mother by an Israeli soldier and delivered to his wife, to be brought up hating Palestinians. Then he meets his twin brother. It’s a simple and artful conceit to humanise the cruelty of the Palestinian plight. And interestingly, Abulhawa chooses not to make it the centre of her novel. Rather, Mornings in Jenin is the story of Amal, the twin boys’ sister. Orphaned and injured in the 1967 war, she leaves the Jenin refugee camp in which she has grown up for a Jerusalem orphanage, and then faces her early adult years alone in Pennsylvania. She becomes Amy (“Amal without the hope”), and on her return to Lebanon falls in love, only to meet with further tragedy and heartbreak. This is a brave, sad book that tells the story of a nation and a people through tales of ordinary lives lived in extraordinary circumstances. Unsensational, at times even artless, it has a documentary feel that allows events to speak for themselves, and is all the more moving for it. [emphasis mine]
While the demonization of Israel, and Israelis, in Abulhawa’s novel (based on that snippet), requires little analysis, the Guardian writer’s casual assertion that Israel’s birth was the result of the “invasion” of “Palestine” is one of those reckless throw-away lines which – I recall – Abulhawa herself advanced in service of defeating the “Zionist narrative” during our previous encounter.
Of course, there was not, in 1948 (nor at any time in history), a state of “Palestine.”
The land she speaks of - occupied by the British until 1948, and by the Ottoman Turkish Empire before WWI – was invaded by five Arab armies on the day Israel declared independence on the tiny portion of their ancient homeland where they were legally entitled to do so by virtue of UN Resolution 181, which created two states, one Jewish, one Arab (Palestinian).
UN Partition Plan of 1947. Jewish area in blue, Arab (Palestinian) area in orange
The “invasion” which Barr speaks of consisted of a combined force of armies from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, and Egypt who rejected Jewish sovereignty in the region within any borders, and launched their assault in hopes of destroying the nascent Jewish state on the day of its birth.
The stubborn refusal of Israelis (three years after one our of every three Jews were murdered in the Holocaust) to meekly accept the fate wished upon them by the Arab world resulted in their survival within slightly more defensible boundaries (The 1949 Armistice Lines), new borders which contained ample territory for a Palestinian state – a nation, which, for some reason, Arab governments who took control of this territory (Jordan and Egypt) showed absolutely no interest in creating in the subsequent 18 years they had control of this land.
While the Guardian shouldn’t be expected to, heaven forbid, advance the “Zionist narrative”, they should be expected to at least avoid the reckless disregard for fundamental historical truths concerning Israel’s birth, and Palestinian statelessness.
However, while its vital that those with the interest and strength to resist such relentless efforts to undermine Israel’s legitimacy grapple with, and master, such facts, I honestly, at this stage, no longer expect Guardian writers to take my concerns about the historical inaccuracies about Israel’s creation which they continually peddle seriously.
I am, after all, a Zionist.
This review of Peter Kosminsky’s “The Promise” was written by CiF Watch reader, D. Gold
Channel 4’s The Promise, its dramatization of the events leading up to the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, juxtaposed with a portrayal of the current situation, was captivating viewing. In terms of a gripping story, excellent acting and directing, as a production it had the full package. There was just one thing that let it down – the film’s brazen attempt to re-write history, in what could be characterized as a daring ideological raid against facts, context, and history.
Towards the end of episode three it descends into its most flagrant abuse of history, as it depicts Israeli children throwing stones at Palestinians. Of course there is some element of truth to accusations against Israel as well as against Palestinians, but the sheer audacity of the programme to imply that children throwing stones is an Israeli phenomenon would be amusing were it not so serious. Palestinians have been known for years not to just give their children stones to throw, but guns and detonation devices.
As the final episode begins, the civil war of 1947-1948 comes into focus, naturally without perspective or facts to accompany it. The historical record shows that when the Arabs rejected, and the Jews accepted, the two state solution proposed by the UN in 1947, violent actions were launched by Israel’s enemies. Among the first victims of this assault were Israeli passengers of a bus massacred by a group of Arabs from Jaffa.
Yet as Erin’s grandfather tries desperately to save a Palestinian family and a child in particular, we are reminded that the Arabs are nowhere near Israel and that the Israelis are trying to take strategic sites such as ports. As it is said during the episode, “if we don’t leave there will be nothing left to defend by the time the Arab armies get here.”
This was of course a strange portrayal of a conflict in which Israel was attacked first. Who does Kosminsky think attacked Israel – the invisible Arab army of Jaffa? Once again, the show finds itself fighting against history itself. Not a surprise though when you consider that the first episode recounted the history of Arabs and Jews living side by side in the area for a thousand years without mentioning that Jews were the indigenous population of the land which later became known as Palestine.
Incredulously, during one scene, the programme dramatizes an Israeli soldiers taking a girl from her home to be used as a human shield. The irony here is obvious but requires repetition. Hamas place missiles and rocket launchers near schools, hospitals, and other highly densely populated areas, in order to maximise the impact of Israeli self-defence against their rockets. Israel’s army, portrayed in this drama as unspeakably evil, are the only army in the world who have long practised warning civilians in advance of the areas and places that will be bombed. In fact, Israel goes to incredible lengths not to cause civilian casualties; such as sending in soldiers to fight hand to hand rather than launch air strikes against targets, as in Jenin in 2002. Yet there are scenes where Israeli soldiers fire into a home unannounced and without warning. To suggest that Israel uses Palestinians as human shields is the epitome of the programme’s inversion of reality.
Perhaps most chilling of all is the sight towards the end of an innocent Palestinian child being killed trying to escape the fighting – a sight that would shock anyone, but, due to the lack of context or any supporting historical context , seems to have been created in the imagination of Peter Kosminsky, and is, perhaps, the lowest point of the film, one which evokes the historical narrative of Jews who delight in killing innocent non-Jewish children.
Indeed, the cause of the historical falsehoods are enunciated by Kosminsky himself. In a long list of groups and people consulted, Kosminsky cites Palestinians and Israelis, but only Israelis from groups such as Breaking the Silence, who have a stated agenda to expose corruption in the Israeli army. By his own admission he has only sought the views of those who will be critical of Israel, and none who will defend it.
Ultimately my post is not a defence of Israel as such. Rather, it is a defence of history, without which justice – a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict – is unlikely to ever be realized.
Kosminsky’s “drama” is in conflict with history itself. We are all entitled to our views, regardless of how far-fetched or implausible, but no one is entitled to rewrite the historical record. The Promise is a well produced, superbly acted and elaborate work of historical vandalism.
With much of the Arab world currently in dramatic turmoil, news from Israel has taken something of a back seat on the pages of CiF lately, but Harriet Sherwood sought to remedy that on March 1st with her ‘report’ from Al Arakib. Like Bil’in, Al Arakib has been deliberately engineered by interested parties into becoming a focal point of pilgrimage for activists belonging to left-wing extremist organisations and their entourage of foreign correspondent camp-followers.
And what a faithful camp-follower Sherwood proves herself to be! Unquestioningly she parrots the party line, according to which Israel destroys time after time a Bedouin village inhabited by noble nomads for generations, uprooting trees and murdering chickens (again!) along the way. She does not even attempt to inject any sense of balance or objectivity into this article by offering the point of view of, say, the Israeli judicial system which has been dealing with the subject of Al Arakib for well over a decade. She does not even bother to point out that unproved Bedouin claims to the land have become a political issue which extends far beyond the Negev and has come to represent the entire conflict in one small micro-climate.
Instead, she backs up her emotionally-loaded polemics with quotations from Oren Yiftachel and one of the ‘residents’ of Al Arakib (more of that later), Aziz Sayah Abu Mdagen.
Oren Yiftachel holds a day job at Ben Gurion University, specialising in political geography. He is also the co-chair of B’Tselem and has created controversy by calling for international sanctions against Israel during Operation Cast Lead and supporting a Palestinian ‘right of return’. He calls the country which pays his salary a ‘jailer state’ and claims that
“Palestinian violence, and particularly the shelling from Gaza should also be perceived as a prison uprising, currently suppressed with terror by the Israeli state, which kills many more civilians and creates infinitely more damage than the initial act of resistance.”
In other words, if a journalist were looking for an objective and politically unbiased source through which to expand his or her understanding of the events in Al Arakib, Oren Yiftachel who, like his colleague Neve Gordon has been heavily instrumental in the politicising of this land dispute, is not the person on whom to rely.
Let’s face it; anybody who can talk about “Jewish trees” with a straight face is not to be taken seriously. Someone who trots out slogans such as ‘Judaisation of the Negev’ clearly has a whole crate of axes to grind seeing as the Negev lies undisputedly within Israeli territory. But seeing as those axes are ones to which Sherwood is sympathetic, she ignores the warning signs and proceeds to quote Yiftachel as though he were some kind of objective authority.
As CiF Watch readers will be aware, we have covered the subject of the Al Arakib dispute quite extensively in the past due to the Guardian’s making it something of a ‘cause celebre’.
In July 2010 we responded to an article from Neve Gordon on the same subject, but obviously Harriet Sherwood did not bother to read the either the Court decisions or the background information on land disputes included in that article. In August 2010 Akus highlighted the Guardian’s double standards on this issue and later that month we posted a translation of an article from an Israeli newspaper which exposes the fact that the so-called ‘residents’ of Al Arakib actually own extensive properties in the nearby Bedouin city of Rahat.
What a pity then that Harriet Sherwood apparently did not read our article. She could have avoided looking so silly had she asked her interviewee Aziz Sayah Abu Mdagen (sometimes spelt Madiram or Mudigam) to show her round his family home in neighbourhood 25 of Rahat, just a short way from Al Arakib, instead of obediently revelling in the radical-chic ecstasy of writing emotive descriptions of dead chickens, uprooted trees and piled-up mattresses that nobody needs to sleep on because they own villas with bedrooms in Rahat.
It is more than apparent that like many of her countrymen before her, Sherwood is dazzled by romantic ideas of tent-living, goat-herding, camel-riding hospitable Bedouin living eco-friendly low-tech lives in the desert. To many of her readers, these people represent a fashionable innocence they themselves feel deprived of by modern life in the West. And if these noble Bedouin conveniently double-up as pawns in their political crusades against the State of Israel, then that is even better.
The reality of Bedouin life is of course very different from Sherwood’s puerile fantasies. Not only do most of them today live in urban environments just like anyone else, but they also enjoy the advantages of modern life such as transport and technology, along with benefits such as education, healthcare, social services, potable water and sewage disposal which nomadic life did not furnish. Not that all is entirely rosy, of course, but Sherwood would not risk spoiling the romantic notions in her readers’ minds – or her own – by reporting on subjects such as a recent attempted ‘honour killing’ in Rahat (not, unfortunately, a rare incident in some sections of Israeli society), the recent murder of a young man from Rahat by two of his classmates or the destruction of 3,000 trees late last year, allegedly by two Bedouin and possibly as ‘revenge’ for the incidents at Al Arakib.
An even more revealing indictment of Sherwood’s clear bias and employment of events at Al Arakib as a means of attacking Israel’s legitimacy is the fact that this week also saw violent clashes at Havat Gilad when representatives of the Civil Authority and police arrived there to destroy illegally built constructions on exactly the same legal basis as the demolitions at Al Arakib. The difference is, of course, that the residents of Havat Gilad are Jewish (and ‘settlers’ too) and so Harriet Sherwood is nowhere on the horizon and the Guardian will not be commissioning an article from Neve Gordon or any other members of its stable of ‘tame’ Israelis.
If incidents cannot be spun and employed against Israel, the faithful camp-followers are not interested. Not only is that not ‘fair and balanced’; it isn’t even reporting. It is unadulterated political propaganda in the very worst Soviet tradition and journalists who willingly prostitute their profession by co-operating with that have no grounds on which to claim accolades as ‘the world’s leading liberal voice’.
H/T Just Journalism
Buried in their “Corrections and Clarifications” section, the Guardian has acknowledged the following about a January 24th “Palestine Papers” report about former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, in a box titled “What they said…”
A quote by Tzipi Livni, Israel’s former foreign minister, within a panel that formed part of the Palestine papers, was cut in a way that may have given a misleading impression. The quote appeared as: “The Israel policy is to take more and more land day after day and that at the end of the day we’ll say that it is impossible, we already have the land and cannot create the state.” [emphasis mine]
The Guardian continues:
To clarify, the full quote is: “I understand the sentiments of the Palestinians when they see the settlements being built. The meaning from the Palestinian perspective is that Israel takes more land, that the Palestinian state will be impossible, the Israel policy is to take more and more land day after day and that at the end of the day we’ll say that it is impossible, we already have the land and cannot create the state.” (What they said … 24 January, page 4.)
The wording “MAY” have been misleading?!
Falsely characterizing the words of an Israeli leader, who was merely musing on how the Palestinians themselves may view Israeli settlements, in a way that not only makes it seem as if such views are her own, but, indeed, represent official Israeli policy, is much more than misleading. Its journalistic malpractice, and represents more evidence confirming our view that the story of the “Palestine Papers” was not about the notes themselves but, rather, about a newspaper whose rigid ideology informs almost every aspect of their journalism – where facts and quotes are always subservient to an overtly anti-Israel political agenda.
(See previous CW post on another highly misleading characterization of Livni’s words in a separate “Palestine Papers” story in the Guardian, here)
This is cross posted at the blog of CAMERA, Snapshots.
As we point out in our recent article about the leaked Palestinian Authority documents, the Guardian — one of the two media organizations that publicized the documents — falsely claims that the documents “reveal” Palestinian acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state. A Guardian headline reads: “Palestinian negotiators accept Jewish state, papers reveal.”
But the article itself says no such thing. Rather, it quotes a Palestinian negotiator telling his Israeli counterpart, “If you want to call your state the Jewish state of Israel you can call it what you want.”
Far from being a revelation, this echoes a formula that has been publicly and repeatedly invoked by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. (For example, Abbas has said: “You can call yourselves as you like, but I don’t accept it and I say so publicly.”) And the very document cited by the Guardian actually shows the Palestinians repeatedly refusing to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state, rejecting “two states for two peoples,” and even seeming to reject the very idea of a Jewish people. Lest there be any doubt, in the following meeting between the negotiators the argument about recognition of Israel as the Jewish state continued, with the Palestinians continuing to adamantly insist they will not offer such recognition.
Plus ça change…. The newspaper, in fact, has a history of falsifying Palestinian positions regarding Israel.
On June 21, 2006, the Guardian headline “Hamas performs about-turn on Israeli state” was followed by the subhead “Document recognises Israel’s right to exist.” A version of the article published the next day was even more egregiously wrong: “Climbdown as Hamas agrees to Israeli state: Negotiator says group recognises right to exist”
And a few days later, the same author, Chris McGreal, penned a piece entitled “Hamas takes step to recognise Israel.”
Hamas, of course, never accepted any document that recognized Israel’s right to exist, and its vocal rejection of Israel’s right to exist has continued unabated.
It was no surprise to those who follow the organization, then, when a Hamas leader, in language typical of the organization, described Israel in October 2006 as a “cancer that must be pulled out by its roots.” But what a surprise it must have been to Guardian readers when the newspaper acknowledged in a December 2006 headline, “Hamas: we will never recognise Israel.”
H/T Elder of Ziyon:
More and more, the story of the Palestine Papers is not what may have been revealed in the negotiations but, rather, the Guardian’s capacity to distort almost any nugget of information in a way which confirms their worldview.
In “Papers reveal how Palestinian leaders gave up fight over refugees” written by Ian Black and Seumas Milne – another perfect example of what Melanie Phillips aptly termed the Guardian’s tendency to try to seem “more Palestinian than the Palestinians” – was this:
[Tzipi] Livni told Palestinian negotiators in 2007 that she was against international law and insisted that it could not be included in terms of reference for the talks: “I was the minister of justice”, she said. “But I am against law – international law in particular.”
Except that, as the following transcript shows, the document clearly contradicts this characterization of Livni’s’ remarks.
Livni opens the meeting: I would like to suggest that we will continue according to what I tried to at the beginning of the session yesterday, but unfortunately while doing so we ended up in some sort of a discussion. At the end of today’s meeting the minimum that is required is some sense of the six or seven points that you stated that need to be in the document. Just [a] list [of] what is agreed or not agreed. Put aside the core issues for now, just have a list of agreed and not agreed, in points. If we have this agreement… let’s not include the areas of disagreement now.
Ahmed Qurei: We can finish tonight the subjects – the preamble. What are the components. Not the language or the nice words etc. We should focus on three things in the preamble. One is the terms of reference [“TOR”]. The three core elements in addition to the [nice] language. One is the TOR. Second is the 2 state solution. Third is the Roadmap [“RM”]. Is there anything to be added to the preamble?
Livni: No – it’s ok. And what we called before some good words. The basic idea of where we are going. End of conflict, [the goal is] to find a way to do so… something like this.
So if you want to summarize the positions, this is something we did in our former conversation. When it comes to the TOR we want reference to 242, 338, the RM and other agreements agreed between the two sides. You added, and this is the problem, the API [Arab Peace Initiative], international law, 1515, 1397, and 194. And we wanted the three principles of the Quartet.
[more discussion of what should be included in the Terms of Reference and Preamble for the document]
Qurei: International law?
Livni: NO. I was the Minister of Justice. I am a lawyer…But I am against law — international law in particular. Law in general.
If we want to make the agreement smaller, can we just drop some of these issues? Like international law, this will make the agreements easier.
Livni’s “I am against law” remark is merely signaling that she does not want any reference to legal issues, or international law, in the joint (ceremonial) statement, so that a final peace agreement will be easier to achieve.
In other words, the Guardian buried the lead of this particular story which should have read something like: “Document shows Tzipi Livni flexible, and committed to achieving a peace deal.”
Beyond burying the lead, the Palestine Papers reveal the Guardian doing what they do best: burying facts which contradict their preconceived conclusions.
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Israel fires back at Harriet Sherwood over allegations that Palestinian kids were mistreated
February 2, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: anti-Zionism, Comment is Free, Delegitimization, Distortion, Guardian, Hamas, Harriet Sherwood, HonestReporting, Jonathan Palmer | by Adam Levick | 22 comments
On Jan. 22, the Guardian published Harriet Sherwood’s report, Palestinian children – alone and bewildered in Israel’s Al-Jalame Jail, which included accusations that Israel mistreats Palestinian teens charged with acts of violence, allegations largely based on information provided by one radical, anti-Zionist NGO.
Specifically, Sherwood charged that a substantial percentage of Palestinian children arrested by Israeli soldiers (for acts of violence) have been mistreated while in custody – which, it was claimed, includes physical abuse and long stays of solitary confinement.
In an over 2700 word long report only 230 were devoted to presenting the Israeli side of the story, and even those few passages curiously omitted the following emphatic denial by Israeli Security officials (which was provided to the Guardian prior to publication):
As HonestReporting noted, Sherwood also severely downplayed the offences Palestinian teens are charged with, which include:
Today, eleven days following Sherwood's smear against Israel, 'Comment is Free' provided Amir Ofek, press attache for the Embassy of Israel in London, the chance to respond.
Ofek, consistent with the information made available to Sherwood prior to publishing her story, strongly refuted allegations that the torture and humiliation of Palestinian suspects was permitted, and categorically denied that "solitary confinement in order to induce a confession" is employed - all of which, Ofek argued, severely undermines the veracity of the Guardian report.
Moreover, while Sherwood provided meager space for the Israeli side of the story in her original report, she didn't see fit to include any information on the severity of the crimes Palestinian teens were arrested for, choosing instead to focus on the "emotional scars" inflicted upon those in custody.
As Ofek noted about the horrific nature of the atrocities that minors, some as young as 12, can be arrested for:
Ofek added:
Ofek further noted that Sherwood's dismissive claim that "most [Palestinian children arrested] are accused of throwing stones at soldiers or settlers”, shows a “bewildering disregard for the damage that throwing stones…can cause”, before adding:
Indeed, most tellingly, while Sherwood’s report not only named the Palestinian teens who alleged Israeli mistreatment (and even included an eleven minute video of the teens telling their story), a search of the Guardian’s website didn’t turn up even one mention of the Israelis – Jonathan (Yonatan) Palmer and his father, Asher – murdered by Palestinian teen “rock throwers” who Ofek referred to.
The only mention of the deadly act of terrorism by Palestinian teens at all was a throw-away passage buried in a story about a mosque vandalized in Northern Israel, on Oct. 3., and a supremely callous characterization by Harriet Sherwood in a story titled “Israel approves new settler homes in East Jerusalem“, which referred to the victims in passing as a “Jewish settler and his son.” [emphasis added]
Wrote Sherwood of the Palestinian teens arrested by Israeli soldiers in her Jan 22 report:
As Sherwood continually demonstrates, the “trauma” suffered by family and friends mourning the loss of Israeli victims of terror (such as Asher and Yonatan Palmer) is simply not part of the narrative.
Palestinian teens profiled in Sherwood's report
Not seen in the Guardian: Asher Hillel Palmer, 25, and his one-year-old son Yonatan, victims of terror committed by Palestinian teens
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