Tag Archives: Ehud Olmert

Feb 10 2013

Racism in football, Israel and Egypt: Contrast in Guardian coverage

Israel

The Guardian has devoted five separate stories (including three videos) in their coverage of recent acts of anti-Muslim racism by fans of the Israeli football team, Beitar Jerusalem, who are unhappy with the club’s decision to sign two Chechen Muslim players.

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fiveA few additional facts:

  • “Beitar’s owner, Arcadia Gaydamak, refused to bow to the fans’ pressure. “As far as I’m concerned, there is no difference between a Jewish player and a Muslim player…”
  • “Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Friday’s apparent arson attack was “shameful”, adding: “The Jewish people, [who have] suffered boycotts and persecution, should be a light unto other nations.”"
  • “President Shimon Peres said the entire country was shocked, and former prime minister Ehud Olmert, a Beitar fan for more than 40 years, said that he would no longer attend matches because of fans’ behaviour.”
  • “Israel’s attorney general, Yehuda Weinstein, said police would take action against any “manifestation of [racism] that crosses the line into a criminal act”. The Israeli Football Association imposed a 50,000 shekels (£8,595) fine on the club for the racist slogans of its fans and ordered the closure of the eastern stand of its stadium, where hardcore fans congregate, for five matches.”

Egypt:

On April 6, 2011, scores of football fans in Egypt hurled gigantic banners with the words:

One Nation for a new Holocaust [against the Jews].

There are no Jews on any of Egypt’s football teams, and there are merely three dozen Jewish citizens left in the entire country.  (There were over 75,000 in 1948.)

More importantly, in contrast to the reaction in Israel:

  • Is it even conceivable that Egyptian authorities investigated those who hurled the antisemitic banners on April 6?
  • Will criminal hate crime charges be brought against the culprits?
  • Have any Egyptian public officials denounced such an ugly display of racism by Egyptian football fans?
  • Are ordinary Egyptian citizens outraged by such despicable behavior?

While the questions above are largely rhetorical, there is one important question which we no longer even need to ask, as the answer was found by a web and Lexis-Nexus search: 

The Guardian didn’t devote even one story to the pro-genocide messages at an Egypt football stadium on April 6, 2011.

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Aug 15 2011

Jews build homes in Israel: Harriet Sherwood and the political orthodoxy of the Guardian Left

Harriet Sherwood’s report, Israel go-ahead for West Bank settler homes dents peace hopes, represents an exquisite example of how clichés and anti-Zionist tropes have taken the place of objective analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

Sherwood opens her report:

The Israeli government has authorised the construction of 277 homes in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, a move that will diminish the prospects for a resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians.

Israel is determined to annex such a large settlement, but the Palestinians and many in the international community argue that it would cut the West Bank nearly in two, making a contiguous Palestinian state almost impossible.

But, this is just unimaginably uniformed or intentionally misleading, as the following map – which represents the offer made to the Palestinians by Israeli PM Ehud Olmert in 2008 – indicates.

The boundaries of the proposed map, which we posted previously, doesn’t at all cut the proposed Palestinian state in two and is clearly contiguous. (Red arrow points to Ariel)

Here’s a close up of Ariel, arrow in red:

In fact, such a two-state solution would, by Sherwood’s logic, had cut Israel in two, insofar as Israel’s narrowest point (arrow in red) would be far narrower than the length between even the expanded region of Ariel and the eastern end of the Palestinian border.

In fact, the original UN partition plan of 1947 completely cut Israel in two – a plan which Israel still accepted but the Arabs rejected.

The fact is that an additional 227 homes in Ariel aren’t even remotely injurious to the prospects of a two-state solution.

A few clicks on Google and Harriet Sherwood could have reached the same conclusion.

But, when you’re ideologically conditioned to see Jewish homes across the quite arbitrary Green Line as an “impediment to peace”, rather than engaging in a sober analysis of the particular territorial issues at play, the conclusions that Sherwood reaches are simply inevitable – and represents the absurdity of Guardian Left political orthodoxy parading as unconventional wisdom.

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Jan 25 2011

How the Guardian Helped Kill the Peace Process

This is cross posted by Emanuele Ottolenghi at Contentions, the blog of Commentary Magazine.

As Alana noted yesterday, the extent of Palestinian concessions during peace talks, once made public, has seriously damaged PA leaders — and the State Department has weighed, noting that things are now going to be even harder than they were already.

The immediate fallout from the leaks should raise a number of important questions for the Guardian, but judging by the way it is spinning the story, it is hard to believe introspection is coming.

First, the Guardian appears shocked and angered by the extent of Palestinian concessions on settlements and yet blames Israel for the subsequent impasse on account of … settlements!

As Noah pointed out, if the main cause for lack of progress in the past 24 months was Palestinian insistence on an Israeli settlement freeze, one that included Jerusalem, as a precondition for talks — and this, thanks to U.S. backing — the papers reveal that it was merely a cynical pretext for the Palestinians’ not resuming talks once Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu took power. Otherwise, why make a sacred cow of something they had already conceded before? The answer may be that the Palestinians neither accepted nor rejected the Olmert offer but, rather, regarded it as still on the table, allowing them time to see if Olmert was going to survive politically. With Olmert (and Livni) out and Obama in, then, the Palestinians may have concluded that a better deal could be had with a more sympathetic U.S. administration in place. This is consistent with Palestinian behavior historically and a tried-and-tested recipe for disaster for their aspirations.

In his Guardian op-ed on the leaks, Jonathan Freedland wrote that:

Surely international opinion will see concrete proof of how far the Palestinians have been willing to go, ready to move up to and beyond their “red lines,” conceding ground that would once have been unthinkable — none more so than on Jerusalem. In the blame game that has long attended Middle East diplomacy, this could see a shift in the Palestinians’ favour. The effect of these papers on Israel will be the reverse.

What Freedland is telling us is not what might happen but rather what he ardently wishes would happen. He may be right, of course — but it is not like Israel was basking in the light of international favor before the leaks!

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