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Today, the Guardian saw fit to publish an essay at CiF by Musa Abumarzuq, the deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau (Welcome Hamas’s reconciliation with Fatah, May 24), an organization which openly supports the murder of Israeli civilians, calls for the Jewish state’s complete annihilation, and cites, in their very founding charter, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to “prove” that there is a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.
Indeed, Abumarzuq complained bitterly, in his post, that the U.S. President is opposed to his group’s terrorist acts.
If you recall, just last week a morally outraged Harriet Sherwood called the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, to berate him over his paper’s decision to publish an essay by Geoffrey Alderman, which characterized the death of Hamas supporter Vittorio Arrigoni as a cause to celebrate – which begs the question: What are Sherwood’s thoughts over her employer’s decision to publish an official communique by an anti-Semitic, misogynistic, Islamist terrorist movement?
Is she equally as outraged at Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, and similarly berating him for giving license to a hateful and reactionary movement?
Is she outraged at the thought that a spokesperson for the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood was given a platform to assert his inalienable right to engage in violence against innocent Israeli civilians?
In Sherwood’s phone call to Pollard, she asked hysterically: ”But you’re the editor! You must think it worth publishing’.
So, in the spirit of moral consistency, I wonder if Sherwood is on the phone with Rusbridger as we speak, demanding that he account for his decision to publish such insidious terrorist propaganda.
If so, I sure hope she remembered to tape the conversation with her digital recorder.
The object of Harriet Sherwood's outrage, Professor Geoffrey Alderman
A legitimate voice at Comment is Free
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- In defense of Geoffrey Alderman (cifwatch.com)
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- L’Affair Sherwood just got more interesting (Guardian reporter engages in possibly illegal phone recording) (cifwatch.com)
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Just to reiterate, the murder of Vittorio Arrigoni at the hands of an al-Qaida affiliated group was a horrific act committed by vile terrorists, but its necessary to disabuse those, like the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood, from the utterly ridiculous notion that Arrigoni was anything resembling a “Peace Activist”.
In addition to the FB images we already posted and described, here are some of the more “progressive” images posted on his site:
Yes, those dastardly Jews: murdering babies, ruining Christmas, and arresting Jesus Christ himself – all in the mind of Harriet Sherwood’s “Peace Activist”.
Harriet Sherwood’s rhetorical assault on Geoffrey Alderman today seems to have achieved some success in that it temporarily revived her, up until now, entirely moribund blog.
Her “View from Jerusalem” has been a spectacular failure to date, with one post garnering an embarrassingly meager 3 comments. Today’s post, from her “apolitical” blog, “Historian writes of ‘pleasure’ at murder of pro-Palestinian activist”, elicited 370 comments, many which were simply vicious towards Alderman, Zionism, and the Jewish community who supports Israel, proving once again that posting polemical attacks on Israel or her supporters is a tried and true method to get the attention and gain the admiration of the Guardian Left.
Here are a few samples:
This is a classic case of projection, imputing in Zionists, not the radical Islamists who seek Israel’s destruction, the belief in a “divine right to rule and kill those who disagree.” (177 Recommends)
Israel’s supporters (Jews) are “violent, aggressive, fanatic, bigoted, and uncharitable who defend the indefensible.” (150 Recommends)
Zionists like Alderman appear to be the real terrorists (225 Recommends)
Alderman is a “disgusting human being”. (164 Recommends)
Alderman is an “evil” and “warped” man who takes pleasure in the murder of Palestinian children, in contrast to Arrigoni, who was a “charitable” “peace activist” (129 Recommends)
Zionism is an act of violence against Judaism.
L’Affair Sherwood has just gotten more interesting.
As we posted yesterday, Sherwood berated JC Editor, Stephen Pollard, for publishing a piece by Geoffrey Alderman last week expressing relief over the death of Vittorio Arrigoni - ISM activist, evident supporter of Hamas, and anti-Semite - who has been comically characterized by the Guardian and much of the mainstream media as a “peace activist“.
As Pollard noted, simply publishing Alderman’s essay didn’t necessarily mean he supported it, a fact that a reporter for the Guardian – who has often published essays by Islamists who openly seek the murder of Jews, and even published a letter during the Palestine Papers openly justifying the murder of Jewish men, women, and children by Palestinian terrorists – should surely understand.
But, it get’s more interesting. Per Pollard’s blog today:
UPDATE: Ms Sherwood left me a voicemail after seeing my initial post, complaining that she did not scream. And you know what, listening to the conversation, it’s a fair point and I’m happy to change that. It felt like screaming to me as her voice was very loud on my phone. I’ve edited the post to take that out. I’ve also changed the post so that it’s made up of verbatim quotes, now that I have been able to transcribe the conversation.
How did I listen to it? Because she recorded it. She casually dropped into the voicemail the news that she had an MP3 of it.
At no point did she tell me that she was recording it. So she has broken the law. What a fantastic piece of Guardian hypocrisy, to (rightly) lead the charge against phone tapping but then to break the law so casually in recording our conversation.
Sherwood is simply out of control. Not only has she demonstrated that she sympathizes with the most ardent, vile Israel haters – destroying any semblance of claim to journalistic objectivity – but she may have violated UK law recording of the call with Pollard without his permission.
In her blog today, Sherwood again defended Arrigoni against charges that he was anti-Semitic. How does she know this? Well, for one, she sought the sage advice of Jeff Halper, ICAHD director, and proponent of a one-state solution who employs the Nazi analogy in characterizing Israel’s behavior.
However, in her rigorous research into the question of Arrigoni’s feelings towards Jews, she apparently didn’t bother to look at his Facebook page, where she could have found the following:
Or this:
Or this:
Yes, I think that when you support Hamas, post a picture which says “No dogs or Israelis allowed”, as well as cartoons showing the Jewish state characterized with a blood drenched Magen David, apprehending Jesus Christ and murdering Santa Claus, that qualifies as anti-Semitic.
Sherwood’s profound moral confusion is expressed even more clearly in the closing passage of her blog:
“Scenes of Palestinian militants handing out sweets to celebrate suicide bombings or other deadly attacks are familiar – and sickening.
Now Alderman’s rejoicing in the death of a pro-Palestinian activist seems to me a new and repugnant development.”
That Sherwood is evidently more bothered by one insult to a radical anti-Israel activist than by her paper’s continuing tendency to grant license to writers who are affiliated with, or support, terrorist groups who seeks Israel’s annihilation speaks volumes of Sherwood’s radical pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel political orientation, and it simply can no longer reasonably be suggested that she is a journalist in any real sense of the word.
She is, like so many of her colleagues at the Guardian, an anti-Israel activist posing as a journalist.
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- Harriet Sherwood’s tastes in anti-Israel propaganda (cifwatch.com)
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(Note: On 20 September 2010 Professor Geoffrey Alderman was invited to take part in a panel discussion ["Conflict in the Middle East"] as part of the Belfast Festival, held annually under the auspices of Queen’s University, Belfast; on 15 October, three days before the panel was due to meet, this invitation was withdrawn. Professor Alderman is the Michael Gross Professor of Politics & Contemporary History at the University of Buckingham, England. Further information about him may be found at: www.geoffreyalderman.com .)
See CiF Watch posts about the incident, here and here.
“CONFLICT IN THE MIDDLE EAST”
THE BELFAST FESTIVAL, 18 OCTOBER 2010
FURTHER STATEMENT BY PROFESSOR GEOFFREY ALDERMAN
The following further statement is issued by Professor Geoffrey Alderman:
On 28 October I received from the Vice-Chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast, Professor Peter Gregson, an email endorsing, on behalf of the University, the “full and unreserved apology” I had received orally from the Director of the Belfast Festival, Mr Graeme Farrow.
I have accepted this apology.
I can confirm that the events that resulted in my being “disinvited” from participation in a panel discussion ["Conflict in the Middle East"] that took place as part of the Belfast Festival on 18 October are being investigated by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in accordance with their procedures, and I await the outcome of this investigation.
I am grateful for the tremendous support I have received over this matter, especially from the Northern Ireland Friends of Israel, from Professor Lord Bew (of Queen’s University) and from Mr. Nelson McCausland, Northern Ireland’s Minister of Culture.
London 1 November 2010
Per CiF Watch’s post from yesterday: I just got off the phone with Professor Geoffrey Alderman to get his personal reactions to the outrageous snubbing he received from the Director of the Belfast Festival, Mr. Graeme Farrow, who disinvited him from a panel convened to discuss “Conflict in the Middle East.” The discussion was part of the 2010 Belfast Festival (held under the auspices of Queen’s University Belfast). The withdrawal of the invitation, per Alderman, was due solely to objections by the other radical left panelists, Avi Shlaim and Beverly Milton-Edwards.
Professor Alderman - author, co-author and editor of some 15 books, including Modern British Jewry - only had a few minutes to talk, but told me that he clearly intends to pursue the matter further, and is still quite outraged and saddened by the treatment he received. He noted that he’s given a couple of newspaper and radio interviews on the incident, and characterized the Belfast press a quite sympathetic to his cause – as Northern Ireland, for obvious historic reasons, takes issues of censorship, and the stifling of debate, quite seriously. Indeed, their laws (much like in the U.S.) vigorously protect freedom of speech. He also informed me that he met, today, with a “high-level” civil servant within the Northern Ireland Assembly, and that he has reason to believe that a full investigation into the university’s actions may ensue – as Queen’s University receives significant funding from the government.
Alderman also noted how interesting it is that, though the other professors on the panel apparently had veto rights over his appearance, he wasn’t given the same prerogatives over the appearances of Professors Shlaim and Milton-Edwards. Alderman made it clear to me, however, that, even if allowed to object to his co-panelists he wouldn’t have exercised that right – as he believes fully in free and open debate (even with those he has a profound ideological difference with). It is important to note the Shlaim is not only on the far left side of the political spectrum, but is someone who has said (link above):
“Zionism today is the real enemy of the Jews…It is the enemy because it fuels the flames of virulent and sometimes violent anti-Semitism. Israel’s policies are the cause.”
Also worth noting: the other co-panelist, Prof Milton-Edwards (according to Melanie Phillips, per above link), “described Hamas in glowing terms as a ‘Muslim national movement’ which was trying to bring law and order in Gaza by cracking down on antisocial and unIslamic menaces like drug or alcohol abuse, and which promoted the rights of Muslim women, including talking about the dangers posed to them by the ‘Israeli occupation.”
That, Alderman told me, was the broader issue which disturbed him even more than the personal insult. Why, he asked, are those who clearly posses so much visceral hostility towards Israel often afraid to engage with those with whom they disagree? Further, he pondered, why would a university, of all places – dedicated primarily, one would presume, to the free pursuit of knowledge – be a party to The Belfast Festival leadership’s clear violation of such principles?
After my conversation with Mr. Alderman, I contacted Queen’s University for comment, and was assured I’d receive a call back from someone within the administration leadership with an official comment. We’ll continue to keep you posted as events develop.
I sometimes wonder whether there is such an entity as a journalist’s mind (and I mean other than as an oxymoron). Since the advent of CiF Watch this blog has been collecting and collating evidence to show that the peculiar mindset of the Israel-hating journalist does exist, that it has found welcome on CiF where often its products seem to reflect how divorced from reality is its possessor.
The following is a short walk down memory lane, taking Georgina Henry’s swan song as a comparator and as evidence of the vast acreage between the good that she and her coven think CiF has achieved under her leadership, as opposed to CiF’s contribution to the sum total hatred in the world with her at the helm. Buckle up. Here we go:
Georgina Henry on 18th May 2010: ”…You’ll probably agree if you look at our commissions in our first week, that – to coin a phrase – things could only get better…”
CiFWatch: Well, we could most certainly agree, but they didn’t. Instead they got steadily and nastily worse. Embedded among those first commissions was an indication of what was to become Georgina’s relentless obsession, the demonisation of Israel, using the tactic that CiF still employs today although it has been undermined again and again – antisemitism under the false flag of antizionism. We could not know then what we know now and even had we known it what could we, so used to being accused of exaggerating when we called antisemitism for what it was, possibly have done about it? Many of us had grown up regarding the Guardian as one of the best newspapers in the UK. How naïve we were to expect CiF to reflect C P Scott’s “Comment is free but facts are sacred!”
Georgina Henry (same date): “…Oh, and we didn’t have any moderators – and I wasn’t too sure what they did anyway.
“I’ve been trying to make up for this slow start ever since. And it is this, the growing understanding of what community really means – how it changes journalism and journalists – that has been the greatest lesson Cif has taught me….”
CiFWatch: We have news for Henry and her followers – CiF still isn’t too sure what moderators do, except that is, delete posts arbitrarily because they challenge the Guardian World View that Israel is uniquely evil and the Palestinians are the only victims in a conflict they themselves play the most significant part in perpetuating. Henry has been instrumental in shoring up that view by commissioning more anti-Israel articles than pro-Israel, and by indulging and furthering the co-dependent shoring up of the myth that Palestinians alone are victims or are wronged. People who live in the real world know that this is not true.
However, to twist the truth cynically and deliberately, as CiF routinely did under Henry’s command, and by not allowing many of those who could inform people of that truth to post it beneath the line (many who contribute to CiF Watch are “refugees” who fell foul of CiF’s bizarre moderation policy and were banned), is beneath contempt. Equally contemptible was that Henry commissioned articles from Jew-hating terrorists from Hamas and their Islamist sympathising supporters here as well from Leftist Israel haters. Also, to further twist the knife, there were articles from Theobald Jews, commissioned no doubt to give CiF’s Israel-hating ethos a specious credibility.
This is a guest post by Professor Geoffrey Alderman
CiF Watch aficionados may be aware that I am currently involved in a spat with CiF resulting from Matt Seaton’s ultimatum to me, that if I write for CifWatch I shall be barred from writing for CiF, coupled with the sanction of “pre-moderation” that has apparently been imposed on me for allegedly comparing Palestinians to Nazis in a CiF thread dating from 22 January last.
Just for the record, I did no such thing. During the course of an online discussion on the balance to be struck between compassion for one’s fellow human beings and the need to destroy an enemy intent on destroying oneself, I indicated that the fact that the Nazis were human beings did not deter the wartime allies from destroying the Nazi state. I might have added that the destruction of the Nazi state undoubtedly involved the killing of innocents – think of the children burnt alive during the RAF’s attack on the port of Hamburg in 1943, or the deaths by drowning caused by “Operation Chastise” – the attack on the Ruhr dams (the famous “Dambusters” raid) the same year.[1]
Whether by accident or design, the CiF censors interpreted this analogy as a comparison, and (without giving me the right to defend myself first) summarily sentenced me to be “pre-moderated” – a sort of probationary status. Matt Seaton himself appears to have been unnerved by this, because as soon as the sentence had been imposed he emailed me “to say that our moderators report that they have had to place your posting in ‘premod’ because of a rather intemperate remark comparing Palestinians to Nazis … I hope the mods will swiftly be able to restore you to full rights.”
Well, Matt, they haven’t – yet. But, be that as it may, just suppose, purely for the sake of argument, that I had compared Palestinians to Nazis. Would there have been any possible justification for such a statement? I think there might have been.
This is cross posted from Jonathan Hoffman’s blog on the the JC website
The story so far: In last week’s JC, Professor Geoffrey Alderman revealed that Matt Seaton, editor of Guardian “Comment Is Free” (CIF), had given him a ‘gun at head’ ultimatum: choose between writing for CiFWatch (the brilliant forensic website that keeps tabs on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias on CIF) and CIF. In addition Alderman related that he was being premoderated by CIF (in CIFspeak “premoderating” is pretty much a synonym for “banning”). Further, he wrote “the fact is that the anti-Zionist contributions to CiF far outweigh the pro-Zionist ones”. Of the articles published on CIF he wrote “slowly but surely, CIF … has become a platform for the crudest propaganda that can only have been intended to foster a hatred of the Jewish state.“
Matt Seaton promptly demanded the “right of reply” in the JC. Quite why – when he has his own newspaper in which to “reply” – is unclear. It suggests an Editor who is profoundly unsure of his ground. Today his reply was published, but the JC gave Alderman the chance of a rejoinder.
Matt Seaton justified the premoderation by the risible claim that Professor Alderman had compared Palestinians to Nazis. A word of background: the comment in question was in the thread below an article by Seth Freedman on 22 January about the connection between Israel’s rescue work in Haiti and its alleged lack of concern for the Palestinians in Gaza. Alderman’s comment was deleted but in his rejoinder, he says that Seaton’s assertion is both “incorrect and mischievous”: he entered a debate on the balance between compassion for fellow human beings and the need to fight an enemy, arguing that “the fact that Nazis were human beings did not deter the wartime allies from destroying the Nazi state. I made an analogy, not a comparison”.
Apparently, a certain someone is a bit bent out of shape as a result of revelations of how threats were made against Professor Geoffrey Alderman for writing for CiF Watch, as was reported by Professor Alderman in this week’s Jewish Chronicle.
Ahh. The hallowed right of reply. Just like the one that you gave to Robin Shepherd when Antony Lerman misrepresented Shepherd’s excellent book, A State Beyond the Pale?
Matt, your chutzpah knows no bounds and you should be utterly ashamed of yourself.
All I can say is that the chickens are coming home to roost and that if the Guardian was run like any normal organization, you, Georgina and Brian would all have been slung out onto the streets a long time ago.
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Feeble reasons not to boycott the Guardian
January 27, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: Antisemitism, Comment is Free, Guardian, Geoffrey Alderman, Delegitimization, anti-Zionism, Board of Deputies of British Jews | by Guest/Cross Post | 37 comments
The following was written by Geoffrey Alderman, and published yesterday at The JC
The proposal, tabled by Zionist Federation vice-president Jonathan Hoffman, had already been rejected by the Board’s defence division but the division’s own alternative motion (a wrecking tactic if you ask me), noting the paper’s “continued biased and anti-Israel reporting”, and deploring the lack of action by the Press Complaints Commission, was also rejected.
So, apart from rejecting both propositions, the Board did precisely nothing.
But my concern today is not with the Guardian (for which I have written in the past), or with the concept of a free press – an argument that was, I gather, deployed by opponents of Hoffman’s initiative. My concern is with the Board.
We can argue whether the Guardian really is an antisemitic newspaper and whether – if so – an Anglo-Jewish boycott of it would do any good. In the 1930s, there was a highly effective Jewish-led boycott of the pro-fascist Rothermere press. Lord Rothermere was a supporter of Oswald Mosley. Jewish companies were persuaded to withhold their advertising patronage from his newspapers. Rothermere soon came to heel, signalling that he had done so by ordering the papers to run articles praising the Jewish contribution to British life.
So the “boycott” was highly effective. But this took place three-quarters and more of a century ago, before the internet age. I rarely buy the Guardian, preferring for a variety of reasons (not primarily economic) to read it online. Much of its advertising is placed by international conglomerates which, however “Jewish” some of them might appear, would be unlikely, in today’s economic climate, to forego exposure to make a political point.
Read the rest of the essay, here.
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