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In fisking Conal Urquhart’s report for the Guardian on the Jerusalem terrorist attack on March 23, I noted a few of the more important rules such journalists employ to downplay Palestinian violence (4 simple Guardian rules for journalists reporting a terrorist attack in Jerusalem). One of these rules included:
Use passive language which may obscure the fact that an intentional act of violence was perpetrated by specific Palestinian terrorists against innocent Israeli civilians:
For instance, the opening passage of Urquhart’s March 23 dispatch from Jerusalem included this:
“A bus has exploded opposite the central station in Jerusalem, killing one woman and injuring at least 25 people, four of them seriously.”
As I noted at the time, the bus just didn’t magically explode. Rather, a terrorist planted a bomb laced with shrapnel in a crowded civilian area, in the hopes of killing and maiming as many Israeli men, women, and children as possible.
However, in making the case I failed to add one additional important caveat to this principle, which is also relevant to photo captions: Such rhetorical tricks – meant to blur causation – are typically not employed when characterizing Israeli acts.
So, in the Guardian’s (Reuters) report on April 10 regarding the barrage of rockets fired by Palestinian terrorists into Israel over the last several days, “Israel and Hamas call for calm after Gaza violence”, used this photo and caption:
In addition to the fact that the image merely shows the trail of the rocket, from a distance, and not the damage it caused, also note the language:
“A rocket is launched from Gaza”
There’s no indication of a human actor, yet alone mention of those responsible: “Hamas” or “Palestinian terrorists”, nor that such rockets are intentionally aimed at Israeli civilian communities.
However, in Conal Urquhart’s subsequent dispatch in the Guardian, titled “Israel and Hamas step back from major Gaza confrontation”, April 10, there was this:
In addition to the up close view of damage in Gaza, which just happens to come across a small Palestinian child, also note the contrast in captions with the previous photo:
The caption of the previous photo noted that a rocket was launched, whereas in this one we are informed that the damaged was caused by an Israeli air strike. And, while it does note that the Israeli strike was in retaliation against an anti-tank missile attack on an Israeli school bus, there is no mention of who launched the attack, despite the fact that Hamas had already claimed responsibility for the attack.
The contrasting photos and captions serve as another illustration of the faceless, amorphous Israeli conjured consistently by Guardian reporting, which continues to stand in stark contrast with their colorful and often evocative portrayals of Palestinian suffering – a journalistic double standard driven by ideology and, therefore, immune to the cognitive correcting mechanisms of facts or new information.
Freedom House recently released its 2010 survey of freedom in the world, and the results are relatively intuitive, unless of course, you’re someone who actually takes the Guardian’s coverage of the Middle East seriously.
Here’s Freedom House’s categories:
A Free country, according to Freedom House, is one where there is broad scope for open political competition, a climate of respect for civil liberties, significant independent civic life, and independent media. (Green: That tiny patch of land next to Egypt, which you can hardly see)
Partly Free countries are characterized by some restrictions on political rights and civil liberties, often in a context of corruption, weak rule of law, ethnic strife, or civil war. (Yellow: Lebanon, Morocco, and Kuwait)
A Not Free country is one where basic political rights are absent, and basic civil liberties are widely and systematically denied. (Lavender: Every other country)
Click to Enlarge
Just one more thing:
As we noted previously, out of 198 nations listed by the Guardian in their “Top Countries by Tags” post, Israel, the only free country in the Middle East, came in as the sixth most frequently covered country in the region.
For some reason, the appalling dearth of political freedom in Western Sahara, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Oman, U.A.E., Qatar, Bahrain, Iran, and Gaza didn’t interest Guardian editors as much as the imperfections of the only country which is truly free in the Middle East.
Any questions?
This is cross posted by David Matas, and was originally published on the website of the group, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries. It is a response to Rachel Shabi’s article: ‘The problem with Israel’s Jewish ‘refugee’ initiative‘ in the December 16th edition of the Guardian. (See our post on Shabi’s piece, here.)
Justice for Jewish refugees from Arab countries should, it seems, be an uncontroversial position. Who, after all, favours injustice?
Yet, Rachel Shabi in an opinion piece in the Guardian on December 16th, 2010 under the title “The problem with Israel’s Jewish ‘refugee’ initiative” labelled the call for justice as “cheap political point-scoring.” That is an odd response to a call for justice. Shabi does not claim that there was no injustice, no history of mistreatment of Jews from Arab countries. She acknowledges that Jewish properties and possessions in Arab countries were impounded, that Arab governments sacrificed Jewish communities for short term political expediency.
Shabi does not claim that the call for justice arose recently. She dates it from the 1970s, though, in fact, it existed long before that. Shabi questions the sincerity of those who call for justice, Israeli deputy foreign Minister Danny Ayalon and the organization Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC), arguing that neither is “genuinely concerned” with justice for Jews form Arab countries because they have not proposed “setting up heritage centres to commemorate Jewish life in Arab lands”. Yet, JJAC has proposed exactly that for many years. For instance, in November 2004, JJAC issued a statement calling for “Building a Museum to preserve and portray the vibrant, 2,300 year heritage and history of the Jewish Community of Libya”.
Shabi also charges the advocates with insincerity because of their attempt “to corral the subject into the frame of Palestinian refugee claims”. Yet, equality is an element of justice. When there are two victims, both similarly victimized, then both should receive justice. When one does and the other does not, the victim without redress is doubly victimized, the first time by the original injustice, the second time by the inequality of treatment.
Shabi argues that there is a difference between Palestinian and Jewish refugees because some Jewish refugees do not like being called refugees but rather would prefer to be described as being “uprooted” from Arab lands. This argument is terminological flim flam. Moreover, it ignores the history of Palestinian refugees. For decades, Palestinians rejected the refugee label. The PLO objected as late as 1974, to the component of the 1967 UN Resolution 242 which calls for “a just settlement of the refugee problem” not because it recognizes, by implication, that Jews from Arab countries were also refugees, but rather because, so the PLO said it “deals with their (the PLO’S) cause as a refugee problem”. Palestinian refugee rights did not arise for the first time when Palestinians, relatively late in their history, embraced the refugee label. Nor do Jewish refugee rights cease to exist for those Jewish refugees who reject the refugee label. Human rights are inalienable.
Like this:
Earlier this week the Guardian reported on the sentencing of a British student to 32 months of imprisonment after he was found guilty of throwing an empty fire extinguisher during a protest in London against the proposed rise in university tuition fees.
Several interesting points arise from this report; not least the objective and fact-based style in which it is written and the complete non-acceptance on the part of the British police and judicial system of violence as a legitimate form of protest. The presiding judge was reported as stating that:
“It is deeply regrettable, indeed a shocking thing, for a court to have to sentence a young man such as you to a substantial term of custody, but the courts have a duty to provide the community with such protection from violence as they can, and this means sending out a very clear message to anyone minded to behave in this way that an offence of this seriousness will not be tolerated.”
“The right of peaceful protest is a precious one. Those who abuse it and use the occasion to indulge in serious violence must expect a lengthy sentence of immediate custody.”
“If ever a case calls for a deterrent sentence, this is it. I wish to stress, however, that this is not a case of making an example of you alone. Anyone who behaves in this way and comes before the courts must expect a long sentence of custody.”
The Metropolitan Police’s head of public order was quoted as saying that:
“We all recognise and respect the fundamental right to peaceful protest. That is why we go to such lengths to engage with demonstration organisers before and during these events.”
“What we, the police, and those who live and work in London cannot and will not tolerate is violence against members of the public or police officers, or damage to property.”
We can only speculate as to what would have been the reaction of this British court had the student actually injured anyone or had he been involved not in a one-off incident, but in regular and repeated acts of similar violence over a number of years, but it seems reasonable to assume that either scenario would not have been taken lightly.
Mr. Elliot,
Regarding Mya Guarnieri’s recent post at CiF, Israeli rabbis’ racist decree strikes at the soul of Judaism, CiF Watch seeks a correction pertaining to the last sentence in the following passage:
“It could be argued that those who signed the proclamation – a group of men who are distorting Judaism to the point that I refuse to acknowledge them as rabbis – are extremists, that they don’t represent the majority. Even if that is true, it doesn’t change the fact that many are government employees. And, so far, the state has done nothing to put them in check.”
Also, note the sub-title:
“Telling Jews not to rent houses to Arabs is religious fascism. So far, the state has failed to intervene.”
As I pointed out in my post at CiF Watch yesterday, government officials have, indeed, acted and quite emphatically condemned the rabbi’s bigoted remarks before Guarnieri’s story went to print. – a fact which Ms. Guarnieri should have been aware of.
As your own correspondent, Harriet Sherwood, noted in her Dec. 2 piece, Denounced as a traitor: The Holocaust Survivor who rents rooms to Israeli-Arabs:
- “Now an Israeli cabinet minister is calling for Eliyahu to be removed from his post. Avishay Braverman, the minister for minority affairs, last week lodged a formal complaint with the justice ministry, saying Eliyahu’s “continual incitement against the Arabs in the Galilee harms the fabric of relations between Jews and Arabs and does not serve the interests of the state”.
The Israeli paper, Ha’aretz, reported the following on Dec. 7, the day before Guarnieri’s story appeared:
- Prime Minister Netanyahu emphasized that “Such things cannot be said, not about Jews and not about Arabs. They cannot be said in any democratic country, and especially not in a Jewish and democratic one. The state of Israel rejects these sayings.”
- Education Minister Gideon Saar also related to the rabbis’ letter, saying that “the Torah commands one to have good relations with Gentiles.”
Also, on Dec. 8, the day Guarnieri’s story was posted, this was published at Ha’aretz:
- Israeli President Shimon Peres harshly condemned the rabbis’ petition, stating, “the state of Israel is composed of Jewish citizens and non-Jewish citizens, and we all have the same rights…this fundamental right is engraved in our Declaration of Independence, as well as in legislation forged in the Knesset.”
We seek a correction from Ms. Guarnieri, noting that her initial claim regarding Israeli government silence over the remarks in question was not accurate.
Please also note that, in the absence of a correction to the piece within 24 hours, we are prepared to file an official complaint with the PCC – which states the following:
- The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures.
- A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion once recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and – where appropriate – an apology published.
We look forward to your reply.
Sincerely,
A. Levick
Managing Editor
CiF Watch
adamlevick@cifwatch.com
Harriet Sherwood
November 25th marked six months since Harriet Sherwood’s arrival in Jerusalem to take up her new role as the Guardian’s foreign correspondent in Israel. This presents an appropriate opportunity to review her performance so far and determine whether she has lived up to her own expectations as set out in three ‘mission statement’ articles she wrote before and after her arrival.
In an article from 2006 Sherwood, whilst filling the role of Foreign Editor at the Guardian, laid out her vision for reporting from Jerusalem, stating that
“The first thing we need to be absolutely sure of is the purpose of our news reporting from the region. Our correspondents are there to give our readers accurate information about Israel-Palestine. We are not there to bat for one side or the other, but to report on the situation on the ground as we find it.”
“We should aim for balance in our overall coverage, not in each individual story; it’s the batting average that counts.”
On June 14th 2010 Sherwood once again wrote about her aspirations; this time from the point of view of a foreign correspondent on the ground:
“…..the Guardian must be bold, distinctive, thoughtful and original as well as, of course, covering the “news”, ie reacting to events. Foreign correspondents – expensive assets – should be encouraged to spend a large proportion of their time in the field, finding things out, talking to people, reporting what they see.
They shouldn’t spend all their time covering the same ground as everyone else; and they shouldn’t be chained to their laptops, essentially rewriting news agency material.”
By September 27th 2010, Sherwood was writing about “the realities of reporting in the field”:
“And the wire services do provide comprehensive, rapidly updated and usually accurate coverage of the main news events on a given day. So a correspondent’s role is surely to go beyond that, to dig out the stories that aren’t immediate “news”, to provide context and analysis, to allow those whose voices are routinely drowned out by the big “players” to be heard.”
In order to be able to quantify Sherwood’s ‘batting average’ there is no way other than to plough through the 138 or so relevant articles she has published since her arrival in Israel both in the Guardian and its sister paper, The Observer.
I categorized them into four groups:
1) Articles which present Israel in a balanced, realistic and objective manner.
2) Articles which present Israel in a non-balanced, pejorative and subjective manner.
3) Articles which present both sides of a story.
4) Articles with a positive slant, exclusively about Palestinian-related subjects.
Excluding several articles which were not relevant to the analysis due to their subject matter, the results were as follows:
Category 1) – one article
Category 2) – 79 articles
Category 3) – 36 articles
Category 4) – 11 articles
Like this:
Per Elder of Ziyon:
In a recent speech (in Arabic, but you can use Google translate to verify), Mahmoud Abbas said,
“We must…recall the outstanding [early] leadership of the Palestinian people, the Grand Mufti of Palestine-Haj Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, who sponsored the struggle from the beginning, and sponsored the struggle and displacement for the cause and died away from his home.”
As Elder noted:
“The Mufti was a rabid Jew-hater who was the driving force behind not only the 1929 massacres in Jerusalem and Hebron but also the 1936-39 riots that resulted in the deaths of hundreds. He moved to Germany during World War II, hoping that Hitler would win and allow to him murder every Jewish man, woman and child in Palestine, and proposing plans to do exactly that.”
See more on the Mufti’s relationship with Hitler, here.
This is cross posted by Matthew Ackerman, a Middle East Analyst at The David Project.
For years, because of the numerical superiority brought to bear by Arab League and Organization of the Islamic Conference member states, the UN has pushed out a regular stream of anti-Israel resolutions, working papers, statements, and related flotsam designed to defame the Jewish state. From 2003 until today, more than 40% of human rights resolutions passed by all UN bodies have focused on Israel, an extraordinary figure.
Although now it can seem difficult to believe, the same was not always the case with human rights organizations and related prizes and other goodies governments and other bodies hand out in support of individuals fighting oppression and injustice around the world. And while we seem to live in a world in which the existence of a range of these kinds of organizations is taken for granted, it’s important to remember that they are nearly all of relatively recent birth. The most important of these organizations in the US, for example, is Human Rights Watch. It was founded only in 1978, and has only in the past 10 years made Israel a primary focus of its work.
HRW is instructive in other regards as well. It was founded as Helsinki Watch and designed to monitor the compliance of the Soviet Union and its satellites behind the Iron Curtain with theHelsinki Accords, signed in 1975, with specific provisions guaranteeing freedom of expression and religion to individuals in communist countries. So like other human rights organizations, its moral authority grew almost entirely out of its ability to cast a spotlight on the abuses of oppressive regimes.
But with the collapse of communism in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, it became an organization in search of a mission. It found it by widening its scope to include things like criticism of the Allied bombing campaign in the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 and highlighting the problem of unexploded land mines, which in the 1990’s was a Western cause célèbre, not least because of the interest in the effort showed by the late Princess Diana. That work even won HRW a Nobel Peace Prize, which is a direct ticket to international notoriety and, of equal importance, greater funding dollars.
The Guardian editorial from October 11th leaves the reader in absolutely no doubt as to where the loyalties of the management of that newspaper lie with regard to the existence of the Jewish state. When dissected, the strident objections raised to a proposed amendment of Israel’s Law of Citizenship reveal an ideological commitment to the creation of conditions which would promote the Palestinian ‘right of return’ as a means of bringing about Israel’s demise. They also provide evidence of an anodyne willful blindness regarding the political situation which exists under the Guardian’s own nose in the United Kingdom and much of the rest of Europe.
In typical Guardian style, the editorial declares as fact numerous putative points in order to lead the reader to the desired conclusions.
“There are two narratives at work in Israel that have a bearing on the capacity of its leaders to negotiate the creation of an independent Palestinian state next to it. The first is official and intended for external consumption. It is the one that claims Israel is ready to sit down with the Palestinians in direct talks without preconditions and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, should not have wasted so much of the 10 month partial freeze on settlement building before he did so. On Saturday, America was given another month by the Arab League to persuade Binyamin Netanyahu’s government to halt settlement building, the bare minimum required for talks to continue.”
In other words, the Guardian has decided that the Israelis have one narrative for foreign audiences and another, presumably the authentic one, for internal use. This figment of Guardian imagination has no bearing on reality and of course conveniently ignores almost 20 years of prior peace negotiations. Revealingly, it also completely overlooks the fact that for much of the last two decades, it has been the Palestinians who repeatedly put out conflicting messages for foreign and domestic audiences; a practice continuing to this day. Then there is the interesting description of a continued building freeze as a ‘bare minimum’ requirement for the continuation of talks. Taking into account that at no other time in the past 20 years has construction by Israelis prevented the Palestinians from negotiating; it is clear that this current insistence is nothing but an excuse for procrastination.
“There is however a second narrative, which could be called business as usual, and it has nothing to do with occupation, Iran’s nuclear programme, Hizbullah’s rocket arsenal, or any threat which could be called existential. This was evident in all its glory yesterday when the Israeli cabinet approved a measure requiring candidates for Israeli citizenship to pledge loyalty to “the state of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state”. The naturalisation oath would not apply to Jews, who are granted automatic citizenship under the law of return, so it is, by definition, discriminatory. The existing text binds individuals to declare their loyalty to the state of Israel. The new version requires future citizens to declare their loyalty not just to a state but an ideology, one specifically designed to exclude one fifth of its citizens who see themselves as Palestinian.”
Here, the Guardian is making the highly offensive and inaccurate suggestion that Israel’s main, albeit concealed, preoccupation is discrimination against its non-Jewish citizens. Had whoever wrote this editorial bothered to read the Israeli Declaration of Independence and familiarize him or herself with Israel’s basic laws, the depth of the inaccuracy of this suggestion would be abundantly apparent. Obviously, the temptation to present Jewish Israelis as racists was too great to resist. Obviously too, whoever wrote this buys into, and wishes to promote, the disgusting and erroneous narrative of Israel as an ‘apartheid’ state.
This is cross-posted at FresnoZionism
Dr. Fred Gottheil
I and others have often written that many ‘critics’ of Israel who purport to be concerned with issues of human rights, fairness, racism and so on actually have a different agenda. We’ve claimed that they are more concerned with demonizing the Jewish state than helping its alleged ‘victims’.
Sometimes it’s not hard to show that ‘non-political’ human rights groups, for example, actually have a financial interest in bashing Israel. For example, there is the case of Human Rights Watch fund-raising in Saudi Arabia, or the huge sums donated to extremist non-governmental organizations in Israel by the European Union.
But what about the legions of anti-Israel academics who are always prepared to bash Israel in the vilest terms? They claim to be motivated by concern for human rights — but are they?
Now Fred Gottheil, a professor of Economics at the University of Illinois, has devised an empirical test to find out. Dr. Gottheil took the case of a petition addressed to President Obama after the Gaza war in December-January 2008-9:
[Dr. David C.] Lloyd’s petition was notable not only for its criticism of Israeli policy — that is standard fare among the set of academics who subscribe to a post-colonial view of the world — but rather for its demonizing of the Jewish state.
His technique was anything but novel. It associated Israel with pre-Mandela South Africa. Lloyd’s South African-linking brushstrokes were many and crude, citing “collective punishment,” “apartheid regime,” “racist regime,” “besieged Bantustans,” “crimes against humanity,” and “ethnocidal atrocities.” These were layered on his fact-distorting canvas like icing on a poisoned cake.
The petition was signed by nine hundred academics, mostly in the US. Gottheil decided to test their commitment to human rights:
But accepting as genuine the petitioners’ stated goal of seeking social justice in the Middle East, I thought it fitting to contact the signatories of the Lloyd petition to offer them yet another opportunity to express their commitment to social justice in the region, this time by endorsing a Statement of Concern regarding human rights abuses practiced against gays and lesbians and against women in general in many of the Middle Eastern countries, including the territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The idea was really uncomplicated: Since they expressed a concern about social injustice in Israel, they might also be willing to express their concern about human rights abuses practiced against women, gays, and lesbians in other parts of the Middle East.
The detailed material for this Statement of Concern was gathered from sources as widespread as U.N. agencies, survey research units, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, scholarly journals, and social justice-related NGOs such as Asylum-Law and Human Rights Watch.
The Statement provided evidence of both the practice and the condoning of the practice by religious, political, and even academic authorities of honor-killing, wife-beating, and female genital mutilations. Documentation was offered for specific countries, for specific practices, and referred to specific authorities condoning the practices identified.
The breaking of the story about Eden Abergil’s now infamous Facebook photographs prompted not one but two articles by Rachel Shabi in the space of as many days.
Let’s make it clear right from the start; there is no excusing Abergil’s actions and the photographs demonstrated her lack of sensitivity and lack of respect, both for the Palestinians photographed and for herself. But from there to the type of conclusions which Shabi would have her reader reach, the road is very long. And, the generous use of quotations from figures belonging to assorted organisations renowned for employing frequent double standards, and engaging in extreme bias, against Israel indicates Shabi’s desire to make the most of this incident to promote her shameless stereotyping, and smearing, of Israeli society.
Shabi conscripts Dr. Ishai Menuchin , CEO of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), and a founding member and former spokesman of ‘Yesh Gvul’: an organisation which engages in the encouragement of refusal to serve in the Israeli army despite the obligation to do so under Israeli law. Menuchin thinks that conscientious objectors are “heroes” and that the main reason for the continued Israeli/Palestinian dispute and for terror attacks is “the occupation”. In Shabi’s article he is quoted as saying:
“These cruel pictures reflect Israel’s ongoing objectification of Palestinians and complete disregard of their humanity and of their human rights, and especially their right to privacy.”
Menuchin ascribes Eden’s behaviour to:
“an Israeli military culture that brings young Israelis to systematically violate the basic rights of Palestinians”.
This statement of course puts a blanket stereotype upon Israeli society. Menuchin is not saying here that some Israelis objectify Palestinians and disregard their human rights; he is saying that all Israelis do so – and, furthermore, the use of the word ‘systematically’ implies an organized system, method and plan. This assertion is of course very far removed from the truth, both in terms of the civilian and military laws and the IDF’s code of conduct and in terms of the reality which exists on the ground.
In her second article Shabi quotes Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative (aka MIFTAH) – an organization which routinely describes Israel as an ‘apartheid state’ and Palestinian terrorists as ‘activists’ .
“This is not very different to what was exposed at Abu Ghraib in Iraq,” said Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative. “It is not an individual act, or a personal act or a lack of judgment, but a part of the constant racist behaviour that is implanted in the Israeli army and a whole philosophy of discrimination against Arabs and Palestinians. The most important characteristic of this treatment is humiliation.”
This is a guest post by AKUS
For a couple of years, before the Guardian saw fit to ban me for reasons never explained, I, like many others, spent quite some time on CiF pointing out the enormous disparity between the Guardian’s obsession with the Palestinians and its almost total silence regarding far greater tragedies elsewhere. This, of course, is dismissed by the faithful as “whataboutery”, no matter how true and how disastrous for needier causes that could do with the publicity. One of the consequences of the obsession with Gaza by the Guardian and other media has been the diversion of aid in almost unimaginable amounts to the Palestinians that could usefully have been deployed elsewhere.
Recently things have changed somewhat with the emergence of a growing number of well-publicized luxury facilities in Gaza and the West Bank. The unintended consequence of the recent appearances of publicity videos showing world-class water parks, swimming pools, hotels and restaurants has been a number of articles in mainstream media like this one rethinking the received version of the Palestinians as the world’s worst-off people.
Information is pouring out of Gaza and the West Bank in the media and on the Internet showing that the image that the Guardian tries to project more than any other paper is simply and, I believe, deliberately wrong. A Mövenpick Hotel Ramallah to open in third quarter of this year is one of the latest examples. Frankly, this is a good thing – people enjoying themselves at water parks or slurping down a sundae at Mövenpick are less likely to want to sign up for a course in Suicide Belt Making 101.
How does this relate to Pakistan? Well, the flooding there, which has reached biblical proportions, has produced a refugee community that far exceeds the 700,000 Arabs who fled Israel 60 years ago who originally claimed refugee status, and even those descendents who, three generations later, still claim it. The estimate now runs to about 14 million Pakistanis displaced and entire communities simply washed away, as can be seen in these horrific pictures. Pakistan has immediately turned to the US for assistance – to the country that only a few days ago it was bitterly complaining about as a result of the wikileaks saga. The Washington Post estimates that billions of dollars will be needed for reconstruction.
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
Double standards in reporting of destruction of religious sites in Middle East by Guardian and other UK Media
June 15, 2011 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: BBC, Double Standards, Guardian, Just Journalism | by Adam Levick | 3 comments
This was published by Just Journalism
This is all that remains of a 400 year old Shiite Mosque in Bahrain, destroyed in Feb. by Saudi-backed Bahraini forces
The destruction of property of religious or cultural significance is an emotive issue wherever it takes place. Yet, in the Middle East, some cases receive more media attention than others. Recent destruction of Muslim places of worship by Arab regimes in Syria and Bahrain has attracted no media condemnation, in stark contrast with any hint of disrespect shown by Israel to buildings of significance to Muslims or Christians.
Today, The Guardian, The Independent, the BBC and The Daily Telegraph all carried articles reporting that yesterday, suspected settlers attempted to set fire to a mosque in the West Bank village of Al-Mughayyir.
Destruction and desecration of mosques during Arab Spring
Shia Mosques bulldozed in Bahrain
Since the start of the Arab Spring demonstrations in Bahrain in March, it is thought that 27 Shia mosques have been razed by the Sunni authorities. These demolitions have generated no headlines in the British broadsheets or on the BBC News website, and only received minimal reference in news and comment on events in Bahrain.
US President Barack Obama referenced the demolitions in his 19 May Middle East policy speech; however, this did not raise the profile of the phenomenon in the British media. The BBC News website, which produced a transcript of the Obama speech, with analysis, did not devote any further comment to Obama’s assertion that, ‘Shia must never have their mosques destroyed in Bahrain.’
The mosque demolitions were cited in passing in lists of violations taking place in Bahrain in one article in The Independent, and one in The Guardian.
On 11 May, Christian Science Monitor published ‘Bahrain’s Sunni rulers target Shiite mosques’, charting the policy of destruction carried out and includes details of how in the village of Aali ‘only bulldozer tracks remain’ where the Amir Mohammed Braighi mosque had stood ‘for more than 400 years’.
A resident of another village, Nwaidrat, where a mosque was allegedly razed by the regime, is quoted expressing his sorrow and distress:
Journalist Roy Gutman, of McClatchy Newspapers writes:
He also cites the Bahraini justice minister claiming, ‘These are not mosques. These are illegal buildings’.
Read rest of essay, here.
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