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On March 12th Harriet Sherwood filed a report from Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip which dealt extensively with the death of 15 year-old Nayif Qarmout.
Since her arrival in the region, one of the hallmarks of Sherwood’s reporting from the Middle East has been her unquestioning repetition of versions of stories told to her by partisan sources and the presentation of hearsay as fact. Typically, in this report Sherwood stated:
“The boys had set off for school but spotted some militants running away after firing a rocket. They went to investigate the launcher – perhaps out of simple teenage curiosity, perhaps to see if there was something they could salvage for sale. Then an explosion killed Nayif and injured five others.”
In the next sentence, Sherwood added:
“Israel denied it had carried out an air strike.”
Revealingly, she made no attempt to expand upon the Israeli announcement or to investigate the possibility that Qarmout might not have died as a result of an air strike, despite the fact that at the time of the publication of her report an AFP journalist on the scene had already reported that there was no evidence of such a strike.
“According to an AFP correspondent at the scene, there were no signs of any impact on the ground which could have been caused by a missile, with the most likely cause of his death being some kind of explosive device he was carrying.
The victim lost his legs in the blast and his body was covered with shrapnel wounds, he said.”
Pictures from the scene appear to support the opinion of the AFP reporter and the BBC also pointed to the lack of evidence of an Israeli strike.
Sherwood, however, continued her report by stating that:
“Nayif was one of 23 Palestinians killed since Friday in an escalating round of attack and counter-attack between militants in Gaza and the Israeli military.”
And later:
“Five civilians – two teenage boys, two men in their 60s and a woman aged 30 – are among the Gaza dead, since Israel assassinated a militant leader in order, it says, to prevent an attack aimed at its citizens.”
Sherwood not only neglected to inform her readers that the vast majority of those killed in the Gaza Strip were terrorists actively involved in shooting missiles at Israeli civilians (continuing to employ the sickening euphemism ‘militants’ to describe terrorists carrying out war crimes), but also failed to provide accurate background for the killing of Popular Resistance Committees leader Zuhir al Qaisi and the terror attack he and his organization were about to perpetrate.
Rather than lazily parroting the claims of Qarmout’s family and friends, any reporter worth their salt would have investigated the possibility raised by the AFP reporter that the youth’s injuries suggest that he may have been carrying an explosive device. It is, of course, common knowledge that terrorist groups – including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is one of the main players in this latest round of violence – recruit child soldiers.
Another potential factor totally ignored by Sherwood in her reports of civilian casualties in Gaza is the frequent falling short of rockets aimed at Israeli towns and villages. It is estimated that since the latest barrage began last Friday, some 50 rockets launched by the PRC or PIJ have landed inside the Gaza Strip, endangering the civilian population there.
Sherwood’s highly emotive and superficial reporting is, of course, not benign. Unknown numbers of readers now believe that Nayif Qarmout was killed in an Israeli air strike despite there being no proof of that claim.
The question which Harriet Sherwood and her editors need to answer is why they chose to publish this non-evidence-based report when information pointing to its unreliability was already available and why no qualifying update has (at the time of writing) yet been added to Sherwood’s article.
Related articles
Since Friday, March 9, when hostilities between Israel and terrorists in Gaza began – upon the IDF’s disruption of a Popular Resistance Committee planned multi-pronged terror attack on Israel’s south, the Guardian has devoted 8 stories to the issue.
Total words and stories: 4485 words in eight separate pieces (including a video story)
Headlines sympathetic to Gaza/Palestinians: 7
Headlines sympathetic to Israel: 0 (One was neutral)
Story photos sympathetic to Gaza/Palestinians: 7
Story photos sympathetic to Israel: 1
Number of passages in the eight stories clearly sympathetic to Palestinians: 22
Number of passages in the eight stories clearly sympathetic to Israelis: 12
What the Guardian didn’t report or severely downplayed:
Number of rockets fired from Gaza since Friday: 303
Number of Israelis injured since start of hostilities: 17
Number of Palestinian terrorists killed since the start of hostilities out of 24 total deaths:20 (Civilian to Combatant ratio of 4 to 20) H/T Challah Hu Akbar
Average civilian to combatant death ratio in recent conflicts involving the U.S. or NATO forces: 3 to 1 (3 civilian deaths for every one combatant death)
Number of Israeli citizens who spent the weekend on high alert, with alarm sirens regularly warning people to rush to bomb shelters: Over 1 million
Who has been responsible for most of the rocket attacks on Israeli civilians? Popular Resistance Committee and Islamic Jihad. (both funded by Iran, and the former controlled by Hamas)
Stated goals of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Popular Resistance Committees: The destruction of Israel.
Most cynical and cruel Palestinian attack since Friday not reported by the Guardian: Kerem Shalom incident
(Two vehicles en-route to delivering humanitarian goods to the Gaza Strip were struck by three mortars on Monday morning close to the Kerem Shalom crossing. Activity at the crossing was only temporarily suspended, with the decision made to continue operations at the crossing. Despite escalating rocket fire in recent days, the Kerem Shalom and Erez crossings continued to function, with over 180 trucks with aid transferred to Gaza on Sunday.)
Finally, here are the photos and headlines which accompanied the eight Guardian stories:
Related articles
A guest post by Geary
Harriet Sherwood’s latest report contains the tellingly typical sentence:
The weekend death and injury toll was the highest since Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s three-week military assault on Gaza just over three years ago. [emphasis added]
Note “assault” (that is “thuggish behaviour”) and “on Gaza”. Not on Hamas, mind, but on Gaza.
I say typical because this is the usual wording carefully selected by Guardian writers to describe Cast Lead. A glance through the newspaper archives for 2010 reveals the following (my italics):
Cast Lead Israel’s military offensive against Gaza
Israel’s Cast Lead offensive in which 1400 Palestinians were killed
Operation Cast Lead (the attack on Gaza)
… the anniversary of Cast Lead, the war on Gaza.
Not once is any context given, no reason, no mention of Hamas or rockets. Just a mindless war on Gaza.
How did the other UK so-called quality report Operation Cast Lead in relation to Gaza? The Telegraph, not sharing the Guardian’s Israel obsession, mentions it just twice and in the most neutral of fashions:
Israel’s controversial military offensive in Gaza
have been fired by Islamist groups in Gaza [into Israel] since Israel’s offensive, known as Cast Lead, was concluded.
The Times* has five mentions, some neutral:
Israel was conducting Operation Cast Lead into Gaza
But in others there appears at first sight to be a similar tone to the Guardian:
… Israel’s three-week Israeli assault on Gaza
… the devastation of Operation Cast Lead when Israel killed about 1400 Palestinians
But the impression is soon dispelled if one reads on. The Times, being a proper newspaper, gives context. The two extracts above are part of the following wider picture:
… a three-week Israeli assault on Gaza in response to Hamas rocket attacks
In Gaza, Iran’s other protégé, Hamas, is risking a new war with Israel, two years after the devastation of Operation Cast Lead when Israel killed about 1400 Palestinians in an attempt to end Palestinian rocket fire into southern Israel and topple the Islamists who rule the country.
Would the likes of Sherwood write of “Britain’s assault on Libya” or “the UK’s war on Afghanistan”? Of course not. But with Israel anything goes. And the first thing to go is journalistic integrity.
(*Times’ pay wall prevents direct link to stories noted)
UPDATE:
The Times has recently been caught using a blatantly false caption about Israel’s Iron Dome system – used to protect Israeli communities in the south from Gaza rocket barrages. See the Honest Reporting expose, here.
Related articles
- Question to Harriet Sherwood: How are Gazans living in sovereign Palestinian state still “refugees”? (cifwatch.com)
- Arthur Nelsen’s Occupied Mind: Why the Guardian Left can’t take Arab antisemitism seriously (cifwatch.com)
- Jenny Tonge rants about the Holocaust and idolises Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh. (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s “relative calm” in Israel continues, 130 rockets fired from Gaza in last 30 hours (cifwatch.com)
The latest Guardian/AP stories on violence in Israel’s south are typical of such reports on terror from Gaza, which typically achieve the following (in the headline, text and photos): A blurring of cause and effect; Characterizing Israeli targeting of terrorists who are planning (or about to launch) attacks as “an escalation”; An emphasis on the deaths of Palestinian “militants”; And severely downplaying the Gaza rocket fire and resulting Israeli casualties.
First, Israel kills leader of Palestinian militants behind Shalit kidnapping“, March 9:
The report begins:
An Israeli airstrike has killed the commander of the militant group behind the abduction of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was held captive for more than five years and freed in a prisoner swap for more than 1,000 Palestinians.
The midday attack marked the highest profile Israeli strike against the coastal strip in several months and immediately set off a violent escalation after a period of relative calm. [emphasis added]
Later in the piece (five passages down) we learn that Zuhair al-Qaissi, the commander of the armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committee, was targeted due to IDF intelligence that his group was planning a combined terror attack that was to take place via Sinai in the coming days, but the headline would lead you to believe the attack was revenge for the Shalit kidnapping.
According to the IDF, the planned terror attack was apparently going to include infiltration into Israel at several locations, the planting of explosive devices, and a possible abduction.
About that “relative calm”: As of Friday, when the Guardian/AP story was posted, there had been over 90 rockets launched from Gaza into Israel in the previous 69 days. (See our blog’s rocket counter on the left side of the page for frequent updates.)
By what conceivable standard would such an assault be considered “relative calm”?
Today, the Guardian had a new story, “At least 15 killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza“:
The story begins by noting that “Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip have killed at least 15 people in an escalation of the worst clashes with Palestinian militants so far this year” [emphasis added], while barely noting that all those killed were terrorists – a civilian to combatant ratio of 0:15.
Remarkably, nowhere in latest update is it reported that eight Israelis were injured (one critically) by shrapnel caused by the Hamas rocket fire. In the Eshkol Regional Council, a 40-year-old man was seriously injured from rocket shrapnel, a second man was moderately injured by shrapnel in his stomach, and a third was lightly injured. Paramedics said the injured were foreign workers.
Nor, does the Guardian find it worth reporting that more than 500,000 Israelis are currently forced to stay in bomb shelters.
since Friday, 130 rockets were fired into Israel, into the cities of Ashdod, Be’ersheba, Yavne, Netivot and Ashkelon; as well as into the Eshkol and Shaár Ha’Negev regional councils.
As I finished writing the last sentence, my wife told me she just got off the phone with our Aunt and Uncle in Ashkelon to see if they were okay, and, that the call had to be cut short due to the rocket sirens which went off in the city as they were talking, forcing them to go to the bomb shelter in the building.
Damage caused by rockets fired from Gaza
A guest post by Hadar Sela, a freelance Anglo Israeli writer
Jenny Tonge (far left) with Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh (third from left)
The recent tirade by Baroness Jenny Tonge – which resulted in her removal from the Liberal Democrats Party – included one of her more recurrent themes; the so-called ‘Israel lobby’.
Tonge said that Americans would tell “the Israel lobby in the USA: enough is enough” and accounts by those present at the event report that:
“Tonge, who describes herself as an “ethnic Christian” started by telling the audience to beware of the Israel lobby because “once they have decided to go for you, they will go for you. I bear the scars”. She cited the notorious writings of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, which have been widely discredited for effectively alleging a Jewish conspiracy – a charge that the authors have strenuously denied.”
This, of course, is not a new theme for Jenny Tonge. In 2006 she opined:
“The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the Western World, its financial grips. I think they’ve probably got a certain grip on our party”.
It is therefore interesting to note that on Baroness Tonge’s newly updated profile page on the House of Lords website she declares two overseas trips within the last few months, both paid for by the Council for European Palestinian Relations.
Visit to Cairo and Gaza, 20-25 November 2011; travel expenses and accommodation paid by Council for European Palestinian Relations (based in Brussels)
Visit to Qatar, 8-10 January 2012, for discussions with Crown Prince; cost of accommodation and travel met by Council for European/Palestine Relations (based in Brussels)
The Council for European Palestinian Relations (CEPR) declares itself to be an “independent non-profit and non-partisan” organization registered in Belgium (BE 0828.629.725) and with an office in London.
It appears on the Transparency Register of the Joint Secretariat of the European Parliament and European Commission (no. 60576433-83). According to that register we see that in the financial year 2010/2011 the CEPR had a total budget of 155,000 Euros, all of which came from donations, although no information is available as to the identity of the donors.
The CEPR declares on the register and on its website that:
“The CEPR is funded by individual donations from around the world in compliance with Belgian and UK legal requirements. It does not accept funds from any individuals or bodies whose objectives are inimical to the interests of peace and justice.”
So far, the CEPR perhaps sounds like any other lobbyist body, but the interesting aspects of this organization begin to come to light when one takes a look at the personalities behind it.
The Director of CEPR is Dr. Arafat Shoukri (aka Arafat Madi Mahmoud Shukri). Shoukri is also Operational Director with the Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) – a Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood affiliated organization based in London which is outlawed in Israel due to its clear links to Hamas.
Several of the PRC’s senior figures are Hamas activists who found refuge in the UK. Founded by Salman Abu Sitta in 1996, the PRC was born out of rejection of the Oslo Accords, denial of Israel’s right to exist and the agenda of ‘right of return’ for millions of Palestinian refugees to Israel, effectively annihilating the Jewish state. Its funding is not transparent.
Other PRC board members are connected to charities linked to the Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘Union of Good’ umbrella organization – illegal in Israel and the United States due to its fundraising activities for Hamas. Several prominent PRC activists took part in the infamous ‘Durban Conference’ in 2001.
Since 2003 the PRC has organized an annual ‘Conference of Palestinians in Europe’ which is attended by figures from Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood along with representatives of their supporting organisations. Ismail Haniyeh – unable to travel to the conferences in person due to a European travel ban – has on several occasions addressed the conference by video link.
Arafat Shoukri is also chair of the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza (ECESG) which was established by the Muslim Brotherhood’s European arm – the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe (FIOE) in 2007 and shares the same London offices as the PRC. The ECESG is one of the coalition of groups which organizes the various flotillas aimed at breaking Israel’s maritime embargo on Gaza which was established in order to prevent the smuggling of weapons to Hamas. Jenny Tonge is a “supporting VIP” of the ECESG.
Here is Shoukri being interviewed in his ECESG capacity prior to the tragic 2010 flotilla:
The CEPR website is registered to ‘Save Gaza’, which was the address of the apparently now defunct ECESG website still promoted on the ECESG Facebook account.
Arafat Shoukri attended the recent ‘Conference for the Defence of Al Quds’ in Qatar, (also attended by Yusuf Qaradawi of the Muslim Brotherhood) which came to the conclusion that “the Israelis have no heritage in Al-Quds”.
Assistant to the Director at CEPR is Ramy Abdu (aka Rami Salah Ismail Abdo) who at least until 2011 was (and may still be) also the ECESG spokesman. In 2009 Abdu left his native Gaza (where he acted as spokesman for the pro-Hamas ‘Popular Committee Against the Siege’) and moved to Manchester to study at MMU. He also became an ECESG co-ordinator. Here is Abdu being interviewed in his previous role with the PCAS.
James Tuite is the Parliamentary Officer of the CEPR and as such is active at the European Parliament in Brussels and presumably in initiatives such as this.
Dimitris Bouris is the CEPR Research Assistant. Examples of his writing and research can be seen here and here.
Stuart Reigeluth is Communications Officer for the CEPR. He holds a Master’s degree in Palestinian poetry from the American University in Beirut and also writes for several outlets including the Gulf News, the Daily Star, the Palestine-Israel Journal and Electronic Intifada.
Unsurprisingly, Reigeluth has also contributed articles to the antisemitic ‘Palestine Telegraph‘ which is run by Sameh Habeeb (aka Sameh Akram Subhi Habib – also originally from Gaza) who is also connected to both the Palestinian Return Centre and the ECESG, having acted as the latter’s spokesman during its 2009 aid convoy. Jenny Tonge was patron of the Palestine Telegraph until she resigned after it posted a David Duke video.
Julian Memetaj is listed as Communications Assistant on the CEPR website. In this recent article (written together with Reigeluth) he states that “Jewish Israelis are xenophobic towards Arabs”.
Ayman Abuawwad (also Abu Awad) is not listed on the website, but is sometimes described as Information Officer in press releases and articles put out on behalf of the CEPR. He is also apparently connected to the ECESG.
Further indication of the close level of co-operation between the CEPR and the other organisations with which so many of its staff are involved can be seen in their joint projects.
In 2011 the CEPR and the PRC together took a group of Parliamentarians from Britain and Europe – lead by Sir Gerald Kaufman – to Lebanon where they met representatives of the PFLP-GC and Osama Hamdan of Hamas. (Both these organisations are proscribed terror groups in the EU). Majid al Zeer of the PRC (a known Hamas operative) and Arafat Shoukri of the CEPR were also present in the delegation.
Also in 2011 a joint CEPR/ECESG project took a group of 50 Parliamentarians to Gaza, where they met with Ismail Haniyeh among others.
Whilst it is unsurprising to say the least that Jenny Tonge would collaborate with such a thinly veiled Hamas lobby as the Council for European Palestinian Relations, some of the many other members of both Houses of Parliament who have taken part in CEPR trips might care to ask themselves exactly where the money for their travel expenses originated and whether or not their allowing themselves to be lobbied by an organisation with such clear links to a terrorist organisation their own government has proscribed is appropriate.
The European and British Parliaments – which allow the CEPR to lobby on their premises – would also be wise to verify that organisation’s claim that it “does not accept funds from any individuals or bodies whose objectives are inimical to the interests of peace and justice”.
Related articles
- Guardian’s Michael White defends Jenny Tonge’s anti-Israel fantasy, ignores O’Keefe’s Nazi analogy (cifwatch.com)
- Jenny Tonge rants about the Holocaust and idolises Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh. (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Global March to Jerusalem’ Update: Quarrels within anti-Zionist ‘Sunni-Shia/Red-Green’ Alliance? (cifwatch.com)
Like this:
The Tweets by Chris Gunness, spokesperson for UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency), are worth following for those Twitterers amongst you interested in gleaning insights into the mind of those in the Palestinian Refugee industry.
Gunness has nary an unkind word for Hamas, the authoritarian Palestinian leadership in Gaza representing the only government in the world led by a recognized terrorist movement, yet continually imputes guilt to Israel for engaging in efforts to stop the flow of rockets to the strip, 676 of which were fired last year from the territory.
Here’s a quote by Gunness in a 2011 Guardian piece, which interprets Israeli efforts to prevent deadly arms from reaching Hamas as systemic cruelty, whose intent is to sow misery upon innocent civilians.
“It is hard to understand the logic of a man-made policy which deliberately impoverishes so many and condemns hundreds of thousands of potentially productive people to a life of destitution.”
Moreover, by UNRWA’s expansive definition of what constitutes a Palestinian refugee, based on a quote from the same Guardian piece, 1.5 million Palestinians living in a Palestinian run polity in Gaza are still considered “refugees”.
Further, as research by NGO Monitor has demonstrated, UNRWA funds (almost entirely provided by voluntary contributions from governments and the European Union) “are often used for UNRWA schools and other facilities…[which] teach hatred and encourage incitement, [and] the evidence demonstrates that UNRWA staff allowed terror related activities in its camps [in Gaza and the West Bank].”
I have found nothing Gunness has written or Tweeted suggesting he is aware or concerned about such incitement, which provides context for this recent Tweet about Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada, and CiF contributor through 2009.
Boy, where to begin?
Abunimah is an American pro-Palestinian activist who opposes the Jewish state’s existence, and who has not hesitated to compare Israel to South African apartheid and even Nazi Germany - describing Gaza as a “ghetto” and a “concentration camp” and arguing that “Zionism is not atonement for the Holocaust, but its continuation in spirit.”
Abunimah has also characterized the Jewish state as “supremacist”, echoing a trope popularized by, among others, David Duke and Gilad Atzmon, and has also described Israeli policy towards Palestinians as “potentially genocidal”.
Further, Abunimah has suggested that suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism by Hamas and Hezbollah against Israeli civilians could justly be seen as legitimate to the degree such tactics resemble ”other nationalist movements facing foreign occupation”.
So, the anti-racist Ali Abunimah is a proponent of the demise of the Jewish state – a nation which he has characterized as “supremacist”, potentially genocidal, and even Nazi-like – and has sought to justify terrorism against Jewish civilians.
If your name is Chris Gunness, it’s all apparently enough to make you giggle.
Related articles
- Ali Abunimah Tweets for a third violent Intifada (cifwatch.com)
- Note to Philly BDS Activists: You will fail. (cifwatch.com)
This is cross posted by Richard Millett
This map, without Israel, took pride of place behind all the speakers.
Last night the Palestine Solidarity Campaign revealed the horrors of what life would be like for British Jews under Labour. The Jew killing Hamas machine would become regulars to Downing Street.
But, first, a love letter.
At the PSC event about Gaza, held at Conway Hall (which is owned by the South Place Ethical Society), actorvist Leigh Outram read the following from Love Letters to Gaza (see clip 1 below). The boat mentioned is the Audacity of Hope:
What can a poem do?
Create awareness?
Light a fire?
A fire to fire the boat to sea.There was no fire at Auschwitz
To stop the poison gas until
The fire part of the western world destroyed the evil of the Nazi state,
And Israel came into being because the will was there.It is not now the Nazi state but Israel that blocks the seas.
It is not Auschwitz that stops the ship that carries hope and messages,
But those that might have died there.So let this poem drive the Hope that heads for Gaza.
The victims are now the torturers.
Freedom must be for all not just the victorsWhose victory brings forgetfulness of what they suffered once now brought to others.
Maybe Ms Outram hasn’t visited Auschwitz and seen the gas chambers and the ovens or the pictures of naked Jewish women huddling together in front of a pit before being shot. Maybe she doesn’t know that one million Jewish children died in The Holocaust.
This is the true Holocaust industry, a term coined by Norman Finklestein, where the likes of Ms Outram get paid for minimalising the horrors of Auschwitz by comparing it to Gaza. But Outram set the theme for the evening.
The Love Letter read out by Tracy-Ann Woods (clip 2) described the Palestinians as “hated simply for being who they are” and that read out by Clare Quinn (clip 3) described Israel as “dying”. Ahmed Masoud, who has written for the BBC, compared Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto. Another activist (clip 4) said “no oppression or injustice has ever gone without falling. The apartheid regime ended, the collapse of Nazism…”
Meanwhile, Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Andy Slaughter, the Shadow Justice Minister, sat on stage applauding and when it came to speak everyone stood in front of map of Palestine, where there was no Israel.
Of Hamas Slaughter said (clip 5):
“They recognise a Palestinian state on ’67 borders, which is to effectively recognise the state of Israel. Now I think if that is not enough for the Americans or Israelis then I think we are playing games because those concessions are considerable concessions and they are the right concessions to make.”
This from a potential Justice Minister. Except recognition of a Palestinian state is not recognition of Israel. A small swing from the Conservatives to Labour in 2015 and the Liberal Democrats could ditch the Tories. A Lib/Lab coalition would be the perfect storm for Israel and British Jews with Hamas becoming regular visitors to Number 10.
Slaughter has already met Hamas and the Labour Party offered no comment.
Corbyn (clip 6) finished off the evening calling for some potentially five million Palestinians to be allowed into Israel, effectively turning it into yet another Arab state while taking the benefits of the Israelis’ hard work builing up a successful country.
Michael Deas (clip 7), Palestinian BDS National Committee, attempted to paint Israel as being undemocratic, but he was soon followed by Kika Markham (clip 8), the widow of Corin Redgrave, who read an extract from a role she performed as Haaretz journalist Amira Hass in which Hass talks of Israel in the most despicable terms.
A country that allows Hass and Haaretz to attack it so regularly cannot be anything but democratic. There isn’t something even near the equivalent of Haaretz for the Palestinians and that speaks volumes.
Photos:
Jon McKenna, Tracy-Ann Wood, Leigh Outram, Laura Freeman watching Clare Quinn spew poison about the Jewish state.
Clip 1 – Leigh Outram (compares Auschwitz to Gaza)
Clip 2 – Tracy-Ann Woods (“Palestinians hated for who they are”)
Clip 3 – Clare Quinn (“Israel is dying”)
Clip 4 – Activist (likens Israel to the Nazis)
Clip 5 – Andy Slaughter MP (“Hamas recognises Israel”)
Clip 6 – Jeremy Corbyn MP (“Palestinian refugees” will go to Israel)
Clip 7 – Michael Deas (“Israel is not democratic”)
Clip 8 – Kika Markham (acts as Haaretz’s Amira Hass)
Earlier today, the IDF targeted a Palestinian terrorist squad that was planting an explosive device near the security fence in the northern Gaza Strip. Hits were confirmed, causing an explosion originating from the bomb the terrorists attempted to plant.
The Guardian chose to cover the terrorist incident by posting a video titled “Two Palestinians killed on Gaza-Israel border” and a photo in their continuing series of “24 hours in pictures (The best images from around the world)“.
Here’s the video:
Here’s the photo:
The caption:
Beit Hanoun, Gaza: Palestinians look through a hospital window at the body of a man killed in an Israeli attack.
Here’s a photo you won’t see at the Guardian – a disguised explosive found near a Gaza security fence on January 4th.
The goal, of course, as with all such explosive devices planted by Gaza terrorists at the border fence, is to kill and maim as many Israelis as possible.
Hamas’s military website, Al-Qassam, has already pronounced the two terrorists as “martyrs”.
Related articles
- #PropagandaWaves: The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade or the ‘Free Gaza’ Movement? (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian Warning: 24 hrs in photos gallery contains ‘highly distressing’ images [& HIGHLY misleading] (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood legitimizes Gazans’ complaints that they can’t enter Israel to sue the Jewish state (cifwatch.com)
- Hamas, Harriet Sherwood and the Guardian Left’s continuing antisemitic sins of omission (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian interactive map rewrites Israeli-Arab history (cifwatch.com)
- What the Guardian won’t report: Freed Palestinian terrorist implores Gaza children to follow her example (cifwatch.com)
This is cross posted by Richard Millett
Mads Gilbert and Jenny Tonge last night in Parliament.
Last night yet another hate-meeting took place in Parliament with the Palestine Return Centre holding an event “to commemorate the memory of Palestinian victims over the past six decades especially the last war in Gaza”. (Here is what the PRC is all about. It makes unpleasant reading for Jews).
Jenny Tonge was there ranting about how the Palestinians weren’t responsible for the Holocaust and asking “how can the Israelis treat the Palestinians the way they do after what happened in the Holocaust”.
She criticised the power of the “Israel lobby” and held up a magazine with Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh on the front cover and proceeded to idolise him.
She told us about a Palestinian fishing-boat which was boarded by the Israeli navy off Gaza. She said the Palestinian fishermen had their hands bound behind their backs and were forced to swim to the Israeli boat.
And she spoke about why she thinks she comes in for such heavy criticism and put this down to the fact that she stands up for the Palestinians and criticises Israel. The latter, she thinks, is viewed as being anti-Semitic.
When challenged by Jonathan Hoffman to give an example of when criticism of Israel has been called anti-Semitic she said she could give “many examples”, but failed to come through with even one. Here’s the action:
We also heard from Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian anesthesiologist, who gave us the names of Palestinian children who had been killed or who had horrendous injuries. He spent most of last night trying to flog his book about it all called Eyes on Gaza. Available from all good retailers.
We heard from Manal Timraz. Manal lost 15 members of her family during Operation Cast Lead, 11 of which were aged between twelve and two, and has lost another four since. After asking us to stand for a minute’s silence she emotionally outlined how the only way forward is a one-state-solution.
She lives in England next to a Jewish woman who “didn’t steal my land and I didn’t steal her’s”.
Gilbert had called for an academic boycott of Israel and during the Q&A I asked him how he could propose such an obviously racist policy and whether he used any Israeli products himself.
He said that the accusation that he was “a racist” was “absolutely preposterous” (I didn’t call him “a racist”) and said that he used computers without Intel chips. He then accused me of “smiling and laughing arrogantly” while Manal was speaking. I was smiling, but only at Manal’s suggestion that Jonathan go to the West Bank with her to drink tea “like a Palestinian”.
Gilbert further rejected accusations of anti-Semitism, eventhough none were made, with:
“If you want to look for anti-Semitism don’t look among us because we are profoundly anti-racist”.
He’s even friends with a Canadian Jew!
But how can anyone seriously claim to be “profoundly anti-racist” while hero-worshipping a self-confessed Jew hater (see Hamas Charter) like Ismail Haniyeh?
Here is the Q&A footage. First you hear PRC’s Sameh Habeeb, then Manal Timraz, then Mads Gilbert (from 4 mins. 15 secs.) and, finally, Jenny Tonge again, who, sadly, wasn’t impressed with me or Jonathan:
Additional photo:
British Palestinian Manal Timraz speaking last night.
This is cross posted by Richard Millett
War Horse writer Michael Morpurgo:
The film of War Horse, adapted from the novel by Michael Morpurgo (Contributor to ‘Comment is Free’), has just been released in the UK.
But as well as horses being killed on screen there is something else for filmgoers to cry into their popcorn over. Morpurgo is happy to repeat vicious lies about Israel without seeming to bother checking facts.
Last February Morpurgo was given the honour of reciting the Richard Dimbleby lecture, which has been delivered by an influential figure every year since 1972, and he chose to speak on the lack of childrens’ rights around the world. He pointed out that 8 million children a year die before the age of 5. As he said, “that’s a holocaust of children every year”. He also mentioned that “69 million children never go to school” and that “3.5 million children in our own country are still mired in poverty”.
Most of those 8 million children die from AIDS, war, malaria, malnutrition and other diseases in Africa. But Morpurgo failed to say anything about that instead choosing to spend a large portion of this high profile speech on the darlings of the left, the Palestinians, and invoking the modern day version of the anti-Semitic blood libel. He relied on statements of those with an anti-Israel agenda.
He said he went to Jordan 10 years ago and met Jordanian children “about eighty per cent of whom are Palestinian refugees”. They are not refugees by any normal definition, but are simply born and bred Jordanians.
He mentioned a teenage girl who said:
“I want to tell you something real and true. My family lives here in Jordan, but I do not belong here. I belong in Palestine. It is my home but I can’t live there because it is occupied.”
Obviously, her “Palestine” means Israel and this was a call for the destruction of the Jewish state with its hidden aspiration for all Palestinians to head for Israel and turn it into another Arab state.
Morpurgo soon mentioned Gaza and repeated Israel-hating Amnesty International’s figure that 300 children were killed during Operation Cast Lead. But Amnesty and the United Nations class a child as being “under 18″. So a 17-year-old Hamas fighter pointing a gun at an Israeli soldier being shot dead in self-defence is classed as “a child”.
Morpurgo also gave the impression that from the moment he entered Gaza to the moment he exited it two days later that the Israelis were hell-bent on killing Palestinian children.
No sooner did he enter Gaza when:
“Halfway down I heard the sound of a shot being fired – it sounded to a country boy like me as if someone was shooting rabbits. All around young Palestinian boys were racing around on their donkeys and carts whooping and shrieking. I had no idea what they were doing at the time. I was in another world. I didn’t know who was doing the shooting. In this other world I went the next day to visit a hospital for malnourished babies and then on to a project for blind children.”
On his way out of Gaza he described how “earlier that morning, before I got there it seems, some of the scavengers had ventured too close to the wall and had been fired at and wounded”, and while he was waiting to leave:
“It was then I heard shots, then screaming, saw the kids running to help their wounded friends. Now I really was outside the comfort zone of fiction. A doctor from Medicins sans Frontieres, waiting there with me, told me that the shots were probably not fired by marksmen from the watchtowers on the wall, but that these scavengers were sometimes targeted, remotely, electronically from Tel Aviv, which was miles away – ‘Spot and Strike,’ they call it. Like a video game – a virtual shooting. I don’t know if these claims are true but I do know the shots were real, there was blood, the boy’s trousers were soaked in it, the bullets were real. I saw him close to, saw his agony as the cart rushed by me.”
So there you have it, the modern day reincarnation of the anti-Semitic blood libel. In the old days this involved the accusation that Jews abducted and slaughtered non-Jewish children and used their blood in religious rituals. Nowadays it is Israelis, or Jewish Israelis to be more precise, who, allegedly, just kill them “like a video game”.
Morpurgo admitted that he didn’t know if the claims by a doctor from Medicins sans Frontieres that the shots came remotely from Tel Aviv were true, but he made them anyway. For Morpurgo it doesn’t matter because it sounds like a wonderfully sad story, which he is in the business of telling.
Morpurgo did make a weak attempt at partiality with the following:
“I know Hamas rockets had been landing in Israel for a very long time and that Israeli children have been dying there too. And I know it is absolutely the right of every nation to defend itself.So most certainly the Israelis have had their reasons. But I’m sure that most of them believe as we all do that a child’s life in particular is precious, any child’s life. Yet Palestinian children died. Collateral damage, some might call it.”
He mentioned his visit to a village where “Arab and Jewish children play together and learn together”, but this mention of “Jewish children” should raise alarm bells. Why were the Israeli children described by him in terms of their religion and not their nationality, unlike the Arab children?
But if Morpurgo was really concerned about the rights of Palestinian children he would have highlighted the child abuse prevalent in Palestinian society where children are used as human shields by Hamas, where Hamas destroys childrens’ summer camps in Gaza and where television programmes are regularly aired by the Palestinian Authority on which children claim a desire to grow up to become martyrs.
Instead he chose to believe the propaganda of those who have their own financial interests in spreading lies about Israel and his words should have been prefaced with the following announcement:
“No facts were checked in the making of this speech”.
What a waste of an important speech last February. Instead of bravely speaking up for Palestinian children like he could have, Michael Morpurgo probably only succeeded in adding a little more hatred of Jews into the world.
If you happened to come across the Dec. 28th edition of the Guardian’s ‘24 hours in pictures” (A selection of the best images from around the world), you would have been warned in advance by editors that “this gallery contains images that some viewers may find distressing.”
Indeed, the fifth photo is quite disturbing, as it shows a dead Palestinian man.
The caption noted:
Gaza Strip: People stand next to the body of a Palestinian killed in an explosion. (Photograph: Mohammed Salem/Reuters)
My first thoughts upon reading the caption were that, by explosion, they either were referring to one of those euphemistic terrorist “work accidents” in Gaza, or, rather, a strike by IDF forces against terror targets in the Strip. However, regarding the latter possibility, it seemed quite strange that the Guardian would miss an opportunity to assign blame to Israel by use of such vague language.
So, upon searching the image I quickly was able to learn the identity of the Palestinian in the photo.
He appears to be Abdullah Telbani, a Global Jihad, Al Qaeda-affiliated, terrorist.
Reports suggest that Telbani was killed by IDF forces before he could carry out a terrorist attack from the Egyptian Sinai, as well as with rocket and IED attacks along the Israeli-Gaza border – an attack which was believed to be imminent.
A Reuters account similarly characterized Telbani as being ”linked to a loose network of ultra-conservative Salafis who profess allegiance to al Qaeda.”
One report noted that Telbani saw Hamas as too moderate, “and…at times chafed against Hamas ceasefire efforts.”
Here’s another picture of Palestinians carrying a dead body identified as Telbani, and one more, here.
Further, if you Google the photographer with his new organization, “Mohammed Salem Reuters“, you’ll find that Salem is a photo activist who specializes in glamorizing Palestinian terrorists.
So, no doubt, the average Guardian reader, per the photo, likely either was unclear about the circumstances of Telbani’s death by “an explosion”, or, more likely, assumed that Telbani was simply another Palestinian (possibly civilian) victim of Israeli military aggression.
Of course, if the editor who wrote the caption took his journalistic responsibilities seriously, the caption would have had to include something like this:
“People stand next to the body of an Al-Qaeda affiliated Jihadist, whose plans to kill innocent Israelis in a cross border terror attack were thwarted by the IDF.”
However, as such text would clearly be inconsistent with the Guardian narrative on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, a deliberately vague and highly misleading caption had to suffice.
#GuardianPropagandaPhoto
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‘Comment is Free’ writer praises Hamas for limiting its acts of terror to ‘only’ Israeli Jews
March 16, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Comment is Free, Delegitimization, Gaza, Guardian, Hamas, Iran, Ismail Haniyeh, Terrorism | by Adam Levick | 5 comments
H/T Mark
The first indication that the essay by Tareq Baconi, “Hamas is making a tactical appeal to the grassroots“, CiF, March 8, was going to represent yet another example of a Guardian whitewash of a terrorist group committed to the Jewish state’s destruction was the accompanying photo.
The beloved Ismail Haniyeh, a true man of the people.
But, it gets much worse.
Baconi writes:
Hamas: Authentic, boldly asserting its independence from imperial powers while engaging in terrorism.
Fatah: A pawn of the U.S. and Israel.
Baconi continues:
Please read the above passages over.
The euphemisms are meant to communicate the following:
Yes, “resistance” means murderous terror attacks.
Yes, “historic Palestine” means the entire nation of Israel.
And, yes, ‘Comment is Free’ published a commentary suggesting that brutal terrorist attacks against Israelis are consistent with the responsible and admirable behavior of a legitimate “resistance” movement.
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