You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Gilad Shalit’ tag.
H/T Margie
Guardian Readers’ Editor Chris Elliott, in his quasi mea culpa, “On Averting Accusations of antisemitism“, wrote:
Three times in the last nine months I have upheld complaints against language within articles that I agreed could be read as antisemitic...Two weeks ago a columnist used the term “the chosen” in an item on the release of Gilad Shalit, which brought more than 40 complaints to the Guardian, and an apology from the columnist the following week. “Chosenness”, in Jewish theology, tends to refer to the sense in which Jews are “burdened” by religious responsibilities; it has never meant that the Jews are better than anyone else. Historically it has been antisemites, not Jews, who have read “chosen” as code for Jewish supremacism.
The columnist Elliott was referring to is Deborah Orr, who contemptuously referred to Jews’ supposed racist belief in their own superiority, in a bizarre missive which imputed bigotry to Israel in the context of the prisoner release deal to free Gilad Shalit.
Wrote Orr:
“…there is something abject in [Hamas's] eagerness to accept a transfer that tacitly acknowledges what so many Zionists believe – that the lives of the chosen are of hugely greater consequence than those of their unfortunate neighbors.”
Though Orr’s “apology” was far from adequate or honest, the incident at least set a precedent at the Guardian regarding the antisemitic pedigree, and unacceptability, of such tropes.
More recently, the Guardian removed a passage from Khaled Diab’s CiF essay after we alerted them about a similarly pejorative characterization of Jews as ‘chosen people’ – a quote, included by Diab, in support of his broader narrative of Israeli bigotry, by none other than Gilad Atzmon.
Yesterday, Feb 15, in a characteristically ugly anti-American, anti-Zionist polemic by Noam Chomsky, The Imperial Way: The American Decline in Perspective, Part 2, there was this passage:
Christian Zionism in Britain and the US long preceded Jewish Zionism, and has been a significant elite phenomenon with clear policy implications (including the Balfour Declaration, which drew from it). When General Allenby conquered Jerusalem during the first world war, he was hailed in the American press as Richard the Lion-Hearted, who had at last won the Crusades and driven the pagans out of the Holy Land.
The next step was for the Chosen People to return to the land promised to them by the Lord. Articulating a common elite view, President Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes, described Jewish colonization of Palestine as an achievement “without comparison in the history of the human race”. [emphasis added]
While it’s not surprising that Chomsky - an outspoken opponent of Israel’s existence who has likened Zionism to Nazism and expressed support for Hezbollah - would engage in such anti-Jewish vitriol, its instructive to note that the seemingly sincere call by Chris Elliott on how the Guardian can “avert accusations of antisemitism” evidently hasn’t been taken seriously by his paper’s contributors and editors.
Related articles
- Following our post & complaint, Guardian amends Khaled Diab’s CiF essay: Removes Atzmon passage (cifwatch.com)
- The apology to the Jewish people Deborah Orr should have written (cifwatch.com)
- Gilad Atzmon takes aim at CiF Watch, accusing us of running “a Jewish supremacist site”! (cifwatch.com)
- You know you’re an antisemitic Guardian reader when…you defend Gilad Atzmon (cifwatch.com)
- The continuing notoriety of Guardian journalist Deborah Orr’s perverse antisemitic logic (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian, Khaled Diab and the Gilad Atzmon antisemitism test (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr Tweet of the day: Jews are “not allowed” to “not allow people to be critical” of Israel (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian vindicates CiF Watch (cifwatch.com)
In September 2010 I wrote here about the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and it’s too ready inclination of sympathy towards Hamas, to the extent that it gave sanctuary to three wanted Hamas fugitives, Ahmad Attoun, Khaled Abu-Arafa and Muhammad Totah.
The three had been ordered to leave East Jerusalem having had their residency permits revoked when they refused to renounce their ties with Hamas. As I noted in my previous article, the Hamas members were openly supported by Uri Avneri and others on the extreme left in Israel, who visited them at the ICRC’s headquarters in the Sheikh Jarrah building in East Jerusalem.
The Red Cross, despite their statement that the Israeli police could have arrested them whenever they wanted, aided and abetted them to break Israeli law by making them comfortable there.
According to the Jerusalem Post (Hamas MPs hiding in E. Jerusalem Red Cross arrested, Jan. 23) all of the fugitives were provided with a room inside the building where they could sleep and keep their belongings, a bathroom, and electricity for their protest tent together with a water cooler. Readers will agree that these are hardly the actions of unwilling hosts towards wanted men. We are told that the men met with overseas dignitaries, and even held a press conference there. Family members came daily to bring food and clothing. All this is in contrast to the ICRC’s passivity and its lack of effort to gain access to Gilad Shalit while he was being held by Hamas.
It seemed then that the ICRC’s house guests, like the fish in the proverb, would soon begin to smell but it transpired not. Ahmad Attoun was arrested several months ago, having been lured onto the street by Israeli police.
The police seemed unsure what to do about Abu-Arafa and Totah, but undercover police finally went into the building and arrested the two, who put up no resistance.
It seems that the ICRC’s actions are the only things that smell, because, in spite of its protestations that it is involved only in humanitarian issues, it did not force these Hamas supporters to leave their premises.
Its “we are involved only in humanitarian efforts” excuse also rings rather hollow in the light of recent revelations that it has provided first aid training to the Taliban, the impact of which it tried to minimise by staying that it had also provided training to Afghani civilians “to ensure that everyone is treated humanely” and …”as fairly as possible.”
People might wonder, and rightly, whether that first aid to non-combatants included how to relieve the pain and prevent further harm to people who have had a limb chopped off or acid thrown in their faces.
Now I would not put it past the Taliban to have the cheek to demand/request these favours from the politically and morally paralysed – oops, I mean “neutral” – ICRC, but the moral equivalence which accompanied the meeting of that demand/request beggars belief, as do the ICRC’s excuses for providing it.
Related articles
- Question to Harriet Sherwood: How are Gazans living in sovereign Palestinian state still “refugees”? (cifwatch.com)
- On fish and House Guests (cifwatch.com)
A guest post by Marc
Amongst the names of Palestinian prisoners freed by Israel in the second wave of releases in exchange for Gilad Shalit was a man named Tastos Zaki Husni Sultan.
(Full list available here and in English here though only the Hebrew actually states the crimes they were indicted for).
I remember well the day we arrested him in his home town Nablus. Though it wasn’t what he eventually was convicted of, we were told at the time by the Shin Bet that the main reason he was important to the terrorist networks was that he was the link between Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and Hezbollah.
We were also told that he would be armed and ready to fight when we came for him. He was convicted for (forgive the direct translations from the Hebrew):
“Firing at people, throwing Molotov cocktails, membership in an unknown terrorist organization, providing shelter to terrorists.”
The mission resulted in the arrest of both Tastos and another terrorist named Jamal Sa’adon.
Both were among the top 5 most wanted terrorists in the city and we had rehearsed the operation that would ultimately result in their capture many times. It was in 2004 (when I was approaching the end of my service) that that we grabbed them. We had already aborted the operation in various stages of carrying it out many times due to last-minute intelligence telling us that he was no longer in the hideout we were targeting.
The operation was considered so sensitive that military vehicles had been forbidden from driving past the apartment block that his family lived in for fear that it would spook him from returning there and ruin our chances of picking him up.
We were guarding the settlement of Migdalim when we were told to get our body armour on and pile into the vehicles. I didn’t think that the op was going to go ahead after it had already been aborted so many times, but the drivers gunned their engines and we were off. I waited for the mission to be aborted right up until the point that the vehicles stopped outside the building and we launched out into the hostile territory outside.
Once the residents of the block had been brought out of the building the search team went in, and no one was under any doubt that this man would come quietly. I spotted a hand emerge from the building to close a window when everyone was supposed to be outside. The squad commander directed the search team to an apartment they had already searched.
After the 2nd unsuccessful search they took no chances, and threw in a grenade.
Once the noise of the explosion died down the search team could hear muffled cries of surrender coming from somewhere deep within. A hand emerged from a kitchen cabinet that was only waist-high. The terrorists had pulled a small brick out of the back of this cabinet and squeezed into a tiny hollow that they had carved out behind it.
We had only expected to find Tastos, so Sa’adon was an extra surprise, who had previously spent 17 years in an Israeli prison.
After serving that term, he murdered the son of the mayor of Nablus by mistake while trying to kill the mayor – who he evidently considered to be too moderate. The list of his crimes was endless and he was not one of those released in the deal for Shalit.
Tastos had been a wanted man in the Casbah of Nablus for years prior to finally being captured. He had been responsible for terror attacks that had undoubtedly resulted in deaths of innocent civilians, and provided a level of technical sophistication to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade that allowed them to perpetrate attacks and gain information that otherwise wouldn’t have been available to them.
But when the army came for him, when he was looking death in the face, he knew better than the fellow terrorists he inspired and so chose prison instead – despite the fact that he was armed when he surrendered.
Tastos is just one out of a thousand people who have now been thrown back into the mix for Gilad Shalit.
There is no right or wrong answer to the question of whether it was worth it or not.
The whole country breathed a collective sigh of relief when Gilad came home and now we all just have to wait and see what damage terrorists like Tastos may do.
Related articles
- Lost in anti-Zionist translation? Guardian’s McGreal repeats mistranslated answers of Shalit in Arab interview (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian Letters Editor abets distortion of Gilad Shalit’s comments about Palestinian prisoners (cifwatch.com)
- Why is anti-Israel extremist Gary Spedding affiliated with Holocaust Memorial Day Trust? (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian publishes letters arguing Shalit’s release (in exchange for 1027 terrorists) is unfair to Hamas (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s Middle East Editor, Ian Black, equates Gilad Shalit with Palestinian terrorists (cifwatch.com)
- Arnold & Frimet Roth, whose daughter Malka was murdered by terrorists in 2001, responds to Shalit news (cifwatch.com)
I couldn’t help but enjoy reading the latest update by HonestReporting, which listed their top 5 most read stories of 2011, and see that their coverage of Guardian journalist Deborah Orr’s odious take on Israel’s prisoner release deal with Hamas made the list!.
Here’s HonestReporting’s commentary as the story unfolded (See CiF Watch commentary on Orr in the “Recommended Links” section below):
Over the years, we’ve covered some vicious and despicable pieces in the media, many of them published in The Guardian. But amongst the many commentaries and analyses of the Gilad Shalit prisoner deal, one by Deborah Orr in The Guardian’s print edition really plumbs the depths.
Orr writes:
All this, I fear, is simply an indication of how inured the world has become to the obscene idea that Israeli lives are more important than Palestinian lives. Netanyahu argues that he acted because he values Shalit’s life so greatly.
Yet who is surprised really, to learn that Netanyahu sees one Israeli’s freedom as a fair exchange for the freedom of so many Palestinians? Likewise, Hamas wished to use their human bargaining chip to gain release for as many Palestinians as they could. They don’t have much to bargain with.
Is Orr really suggesting that Israel’s desire to get back one of its soldiers at such a high price is driven by some racist sense of valuing Israeli or Jewish life above all others? Apparently so:
At the same time, however, there is something abject in their eagerness to accept a transfer that tacitly acknowledges what so many Zionists believe – that the lives of the chosen are of hugely greater consequence than those of their unfortunate neighbours.
The abuse of the concept of the “chosen people” refers specifically to Jews and is commonly employed by anti-Semites to falsely assert that Jews claim to be superior to non-Jews not only in a theological sense but also in a racial one.
As Joseph Telushkin asks:
Does Judaism believe that chosenness endows Jews with special rights in the way racist ideologies endow those born into the “right race”? Not at all. The most famous verse in the Bible on the subject of chosenness says the precise opposite: “You alone have I singled out of all the families of the earth. That is why I call you to account for all your iniquities” (Amos 3:2). Chosenness is so unconnected to any notion of race that Jews believe that the Messiah himself will descend from Ruth, a non-Jewish woman who converted to Judaism.
The fact that Israel values the life of a solitary individual so much that it is prepared to release hundreds of Palestinians responsible for some of the most appalling terrorist outrages instead tells us how much Israel values human life. This overwhelming desire to return one of its own people is a value to be proud of.
Orr appears to be distressed at the implication of a deal that sees one Jew as the equivalent of 1000 Arabs. If this is the case, then Orr would be better directing her ire at Hamas for demanding and setting such an unbalanced equivalence.
That Deborah Orr is prepared to descend to the depths of anti-Semitism to claim that Israel is motivated by racism says much about her own warped values. That The Guardian was prepared to publish such an obscene commentary merely confirms the publication’s vicious anti-Israel bent.
UPDATE
Writing in a Guardian commentary in the October 26 print edition, it is clear at whom Jonathan Freedland is aiming this paragraph:
It should go without saying that Israelis would have preferred a one-to-one exchange, releasing a single Palestinian prisoner, rather than more than a thousand – many of them guilty of horrendous acts of violence – in return for Shalit. But, contrary to what some have suggested, it was Hamas, not Israel, that set that 1:1000 exchange rate; it was Hamas, not Israel, who decided that the freedom of a single Israeli was worth the freedom of a thousand Palestinians.
Still no sign, however, of The Guardian publishing any proper rebuttals of Deborah Orr, either in its opinion section or on the letters page.
UPDATE 2 – DEBORAH ORR RESPONDS
The intense criticism and the deluge of emails from HonestReporting subscribers and other concerned parties to The Guardian has had some effect. The October 27 print edition contains a response from none other than Deborah Orr herself.
See our Special Update – Deborah Orr’s Disgusting Excuse For an Apology
Related articles
- Jewish supremacism revisited: And, Deborah Orr’s faulty memory (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr “chosen people” update:Israel to free 25 Egyptians for 1 Jew, thus Jews 25 X more valuable than Egyptians (cifwatch.com)
- In a landslide, Guardian wins 2011 ‘Dishonest Reporting’ Award! (cifwatch.com)
- The apology to the Jewish people Deborah Orr should have written (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr’s Disgusting Excuse For an “Apology” (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian’s abusive Deborah Orr (cifwatch.com)
- On the explicit antisemitism of the Guardian’s Deborah Orr (cifwatch.com)
This is cross posted by our good friend, Richard Millet
Last night I was enjoying the warm glow of first night Chanukah, having lit the candles and having gone to a public lighting (see my clip above), when later in the evening I read a tweet from Richard Burden MP, Labour MP for Northfield, which simply stated “Happy #Hanukkah everybody”.
Mr Burden is no friend of Israel so why is he wishing Jews a “Happy Hanukkah”, I thought. Many of Burden’s tweets (or retweets) are aimed at demonising the Jewish state.
He has recently been demanding, via Twitter, that Israel release all Palestinian “child prisoners” and when I asked him who he classed as a “child” he answered anyone “under 18″.
Now, as you can imagine, even a Palestinian aged 16 or 17 is capable of inflicting severe casualties on Israel’s civilian population.
So can a “child” like Izzedine Abu Sneineh who was arrested when 15 and convicted of “weapons training; attempted murder” and possession of “weapons/ammo/explosives” (as you can see from Elder of Ziyon’s link the New York Times wrongly reported that Sneineh was arrested for throwing stones and hanging Palestinian flags).
Abu Sneineh was freed in the second tranche of Palestinian prisoners as agreed in the Gilad Shalit exchange deal.
When I asked Burden what he thought of Sneineh’s release and whether Britain should also release ALL of its prisoners who were under 18 he simply referred me to his previous answers to my questions.
These answers, via Twitter, were:
I looked at DCI_Palestine, an “NGO devoted to defending the rights of children living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 1992″ (www.dci-pal.org) and read a description of the arrest of 16-year-old Rasheed J by the IDF. It was, allegedly, a brutal arrest in which Rashid J spent many days in isolation and was told that:
‘You Arabs like to fuck camels and donkeys and go to brothels to fuck whores. You have no honour because your mother’s a whore.’
This would be unforgivable if it were true but it is uncorroborated and I just don’t believe it based on many similar lies.
The other main accusation in the piece about Rasheed J’s arrest is that Palestinian prisoners, like Rasheed J, are kept in custody in Israel “in violation of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits transfer out of occupied territory”.
But who, with any properly constituted legal authority, has declared it “occupied territory” for the purposes of Article 76? No one. This is because there is no Palestine and so Palestine cannot be “occupied”. Article 76 is, therefore, totally irrelevant.
Furthermore, Burden likes to retweet a horrendous story about Israel, whether it’s true or not.
On 16th December he retweeted The Guardian’s story that Israel had hastened the death of the Palestinian Ambassador to the UK’s wife by forcing her back to Jerusalem to renew her residency rights while she was undergoing treatment for cancer, despite denials by Israeli officials that this was the case.
The allegation levelled at Israel was that she became “infected by a virus on her plane journey back to London in May and died three months later”; basically, Israel was now responsible for her sad demise.
In fact, as CiF Watch states, the reason for her visit to Israel was to “seek a second opinion on her condition from doctors at Hadassah Hospital”.
So does anyone really believe that Burden sincerely wishes Jewish people a “Happy Hanukkah” when the rest of the time he makes every effort to demonise the Jewish state with its five and a quarter million Jews, some of our family and friends included, while calling for the release of Palestinians like Abu Sneineh who planned their murder?
Related articles
- The anatomy of a Guardian smear against Israel (cifwatch.com)
This is cross posted by our friends at HonestReporting.
It was a landslide.
HonestReporting readers were asked to choose this year’s Dishonest Reporting Award, and they spoke out — with a vengeance we haven’t seen for nominations in previous years.
In comments on our website, our Facebook community, and in emails, accusations of anti-Semitism turned the heat up on an annual discussion normally about imbalanced stories, spin games, and journalistic naiveté.
“The Guardian, for sure.”
“Nobody comes even close to their level of plain antisemitism.”
“. . . they seem to have a consistent system of bashing Israel. ”
“Al-Guardian has to win; it’s almost impossible to be more biased than it is.”
The Guardian’s skewed news and commentary have a wide reach. In May alone, its web site drew in 50 million unique readers.
This paper systematically dislikes Israel. The sheer volume of The Guardian’s deliberately vicious output in 2011 necessitated a top 10 list of reasons it deserves the 2011 Dishonest Reporting Award.
Top 10 Reasons The Guardian Won the Dishonest Reporting Award
1. An Anti-Semitic Response to Gilad Shalit Swap
Deborah Orr
Responding to the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap, Deborah Orr said the disproportionate number of freed Palestinians for one soldier reflected the Jewish state’s “obscene idea that Israeli lives are more important than Palestinian lives,” and that “the lives of the chosen are of hugely greater consequence than those of their unfortunate neighbours.”
Never mind that the disproportionate nature of the exchange was at the insistence of Hamas, or the fact that choseness actually refers to responsibility, not superiority.
HonestReporting was copied in on more than 500 complaints to The Guardian. The result?
Orr made a mealy-mouthed apology, but readers’ editor Chris Elliott acknowledged the presence of anti-Semitism in The Guardian, but didn’t directly judge Orr. Elliott appeared more concerned about the effects of anti-Semitism on the paper’s reputation than about the anti-Semitism itself.
When any paper’s public editor acknowledges anti-Semitism, that should raise red flags.
2. PaliLeaks
PLO documents on a decade of peace talks (The Palestine Papers, a.k.a. PaliLeaks) were leaked to The Guardian and Al-Jazeera. But the revelations — that Israel was actually serious about peace — sorely disappointed the editors.
In response, the editorial team displayed their objective detachment with a staff editorial that was “more Palestinian than the Palestinians.”
In The Guardian’s own words, PA negotiators were “craven” bootlickers who “conspire to build a puppet state in Palestine, at best authoritarian, at worst a surrogate for an occupying force.”
The Guardian also gave an op-ed platform to the Hamas chief of international relations, Osama Hamdan (more on the issue of giving an editorial soapbox to terror below) and published a controversial letter by Ted Honderich which legitimized and justified Palestinian terror. Thatletter sparked such outrage, readers’ editor Chris Elliott was compelled to weigh in — ultimately defending the decision to publish it.
Furthermore, the paper issued a correction for a quote box attributed to Tzipi Livni after editors conceded that the former foreign minister’s quote “was cut in a way that may have given a misleading impression.”
Overall, David Landau, Haaretz’s former chief editor, hit the nail on the head when he described The Guardian’s PaliLeaks presentation as “intended to poison the Palestinians against their leaders.”
3. Soapbox for Terror
Musa Abu Marzuq
Palestinian reconciliation efforts were on and off (mostly off) throughout the year. At one point, The Guardian gave Hamas spinmeister Musa Abu Marzuq the legitimacy of an op-ed soapbox.
Israel Law Center director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner told HonestReporting that newspapers which give terror groups like Hamas prominent op-ed bylines are skating on very thin legal ice. The op-ed is free publicity, which facilitates the terror organization’s PR:
Legally speaking, it would seem that there is not much difference between outlaw regimes like Iran and Syria, which illegally provide material support and resources to terrorist organizations, and liberal media outlets which provide millions of dollars in free advertising and access to groups like Hamas when they publish their leaders’ dangerous messages.
As mentioned above, The Guardian also gave a soapbox to Osama Hamdan who discussed the Hamas response to the PaliLeaks affair.
4. Fishing for A Story
Correspondent Harriet Sherwood spent a day in July reporting and tweeting from a Gaza fishing boat testing the Israeli navy’s enforcement of a three-mile limit.
None of Sherwood’s 46 tweets acknowledged maritime arms smuggling as the reason for the naval restrictions. Four months before the jolly jaunt, the Israeli navy intercepted the Victoria, which was carrying anti-ship missiles, mortar shells, radar systems, and more.
Considering that Sherwood’s ditzy 2011 journalism included a claim that the Knesset is built on the ancestral farmland of the abandoned Palestinian village of Lifta (we debunked that false claim), and an airheaded look at an abandoned airplane (resolved by a reader’s biting comment), be thankful The Guardian left the Victoria story for AP.
5. Judge Richard Goldstone
Richard Goldstone
In a Washington Post op-ed, Judge Richard Goldstone backtracked on the UN report into Operation Cast Lead which he headed. His mea culpa specifically stated, “civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy” and accepted that the casualty figures were not as high as his report indicated.
The Guardian reacted with an arrogant, intellectually dishonest staff editorial denying that the Goldstone report ever accused Israel of deliberately attacking civilians in the first place.
As for the casualty numbers, the paper insisted on using the inflated casualty figures Goldstone disavowed — without explaining why. HonestReporting took apart that editorial in more depth.
6. Jawaher Abu Rahma
Palestinians claimed that Jawaher Abu Rahma died of tear gas inhalation at a demonstration in Bil’in.
Harriet Sherwood’s coverage compared Abu Rahma to Mohammed al-Dura, the 12 year-old Palestinian whose video (itself debunked) elevated the boy to iconic martyr status. Her report was also accompanied by Abu Rahma’s Red Crescent emergency case form, a CT scan and hospital report.
Lay readers can’t be expected to understand the meaning of these reports, but they did serve The Guardian’s purpose: disingenuously blaming Israel.
- The Palestinian medical report indicated no clear cause of death.
- Statements about tear gas inhalation were based on the family’s claims, not on any empirical determination.
- No post-mortem was performed.
In fact, an IDF investigation found that Abu Rahma died because of Palestinian medical malpractice.
Reporter Ana Carbajosa published a Jan. 9 puff piece interview with Abu Rahma’s mother giving further credibility to the Palestinian accusations.
7. A Bizarre Harangue
Jerusalem correspondent Harriet Sherwood displayed some of the groupthink we long suspected goes on at The Guardian with one unusually long and shrill telephone conversation in May.
The topic: Vittorio Arrigoni, a member of the International Solidarity Movement in Gaza who was kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian Salafists. Was it fair to label Arrigoni as an “activist?” There was a lot of debate. After the Jewish Chronicle published one forceful commentary, JC editor Stephen Pollard received a phone call from a very irate Sherwood.
She’s entitled to her views, but what Pollard described was a shocking inability to “agree to disagree.”
I pointed out again that I don’t agree with all the columns in the JC.
This came as a big shock to her: ‘But you’re defending your printing of the piece!’
‘Of course I am. I edit the paper.’ I replied.
There’s more, but you get the full drift.
Utterly bizarre. Or maybe not, given what she writes in the Guardian.
Harriet Sherwood and Stephen Pollard
8. The Palmer Report on the Mavi Marmara
When the UN’s Palmer report vindicated the legality of Israel’s Gaza blockade, a Guardian staff-editorial rebuked the inquiry simply because the findings contradicted an array of UN documents already bashing Israel:
The Palmer panel’s finding went against every statement the UN secretary-general has made about Gaza, the Goldstone report and a report by the UN human rights council in September. If, as Palmer found, the siege is legal in international law, the occupation is too. This must be challenged in court.
Does The Guardian tolerate no dissent from its warped worldview? Must it obtain court rulings validating every criticism of Israel?
9. Quantifying the Spin
A print edition op-ed by Greg Philo, the research director of Glasgow University Media Unit, claimed to quantifiably prove that Israeli spin doctors have hijacked the Mideast narrative in media coverage.
HonestReporting addressed the commentary in more detail, pointing out, among other things, that A) Philo ignored hundreds of rockets fired during the course of a six-month cease-fire, B) denied Israel the right to defend its citizens from terror, and C) appearances at pro-Hamas forums belie Philo’s neutral academic persona.
10. London Riots
As London boiled over in August riots, one report in The Guardian didn’t bother to mention the race, religion, or ethnicity of anyone — except for a reference to a group of Hasidic Jews jeering the police.
When CiF Watch cried foul, The Guardian amended its article.
* * *
All these were just 10 of the most noteworthy examples of The Guardian’s obtuse brand of journalism HonestReporting observed.
On the macro level, the now-defunct Just Journalism (pdf) published a scathing report on The Guardian’s external op-eds over the first half of the year. Among its primary findings: more op-eds were published by Palestinians than by Israelis; all the Israelis given op-ed space were associated with the left-wing of Israeli politics. And three of the Palestinian contributors were either members of Hamas or strongly affiliated with it.
If the readers’ editor is really concerned about al-Guardian being perceived as an anti-Semitic newspaper, Chris Elliott should have some sleepless nights when he assesses the paper’s overall Mideast content from 2011.
Can the paper get any worse in 2012? Only time will tell.
Related articles
- Deborah Orr’s Disgusting Excuse For an “Apology” (cifwatch.com)
- The apology to the Jewish people Deborah Orr should have written (cifwatch.com)
- Jewish supremacism revisited: And, Deborah Orr’s faulty memory (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr “chosen people” update:Israel to free 25 Egyptians for 1 Jew, thus Jews 25 X more valuable than Egyptians (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian issues ‘progressive in good standing’ card to Carlos Latuff: racist and anti-Semite (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian anti-Israel propaganda photo of the day (Palestinian children edition) (cifwatch.com)
- UK philosopher Ted Honderich repeats his Guardian refrain that Palestinians have the right to murder Israelis (cifwatch.com)
- Israel’s Ambassador to UK singles out Guardian’s Deborah Orr for criticism at Manchester conference (cifwatch.com)
While delivering an impassioned speech to the more than 700 attendees assembled at the Big Tent for Israel conference in Manchester on Sunday, Israel’s new Ambassador to the UK, Daniel Taub, singled out the Guardian’s Deborah Orr as an especially egregious example of the media assault on Israel’s legitimacy.
Taub specifically mentioned Orr’s October 19th column in the Guardian, during the course of his keynote speech, paying particular attention to the following passage about Israel’s prisoner swap with Hamas to gain the release of Gilad Shalit:
“…there is something abject in [Hamas's] eagerness to accept a transfer that tacitly acknowledges what so many Zionists believe – that the lives of the chosen are of hugely greater consequence than those of their unfortunate neighbors.”
The Guardian’s disproportionate role in the delegitimization of Israel was also the focus of presentations delivered by several panelists in the two conference sessions which I participated in, including Jonathan Hoffman, Richard Millett, and Michael Weiss (of the Henry Jackson Society).
The event was inspired in large measure by a Reut Institute report which highlighted London as the international “Hub of Hubs” of the campaign of Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) whose express purpose is to challenge and undermine the legitimacy and existence of the State of Israel.
While news of the Guardian’s notoriety in the UK is always welcomed, the fact that Orr’s contemptuous swipe at Zionist Jews continues to be the focus of so much opprobrium is especially heartening given her subsequent non-apology, and unwillingness to engage in anything resembling actual reflection.
Related articles
- Israel ambassador leads speakers at Big Tent (The JC)
- CiF Watch @ ‘Big Tent for Israel’ conference in Manchester, Nov. 27th (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr’s Disgusting Excuse For an “Apology” (cifwatch.com)
- Jewish supremacism revisited: And, Deborah Orr’s faulty memory (cifwatch.com)
- The apology to the Jewish people Deborah Orr should have written (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr “chosen people” update:Israel to free 25 Egyptians for 1 Jew, thus Jews 25 X more valuable than Egyptians (cifwatch.com)
- On the explicit antisemitism of the Guardian’s Deborah Orr (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian’s abusive Deborah Orr (cifwatch.com)
Message from Managing Editor, Adam Levick
Friends,
The recent admission by Guardian Readers’ Editor Chris Elliott, “On averting accusations of antisemitism“, Nov. 6, was quite astonishing, and stands as a clear vindication of CiF Watch’s efforts.
Elliott’s post, which received a considerable amount of press coverage (including reports and commentary at Ha’aretz, The Commentator, Harry’s Place, and The Jewish Chronicle) sought to address “complaints that [the Guardian] is carrying material that… lapses into language resonant of antisemitism or is antisemitic”, citing “organisations monitoring their coverage”.
While the post didn’t go nearly far enough in acknowledging the degree of antisemitism found at the Guardian, the fact that they evidently felt the need to respond to the criticisms which our blog, and many other concerned parties, have leveled demonstrates that they take our critiques seriously.
Moreover, Elliott specifically addressed Guardian ”reporters, writers and editors”, imploring them to be “more vigilant to ensure our voice in the debate is not diminished because our reputation has been tarnished.”
Acknowledging the important role of CiF Watch in shining a spotlight on The Guardian, political commentator Robin Shepherd commented that “with the alarming increase of anti-Jewish racism and bigotry emanating from The Guardian, a newspaper which styles itself as the world’s leading liberal voice, the work of media monitors like CiF Watch becomes all the more invaluable to hold The Guardian to account.”
However, as I noted in a CiF Watch post on Elliott’s admission, our work monitoring the Guardian and ‘Comment is Free’ for antisemitism, dedicated to the proposition that hatred against Jews is never justified, (and is inherently inconsistent with genuine liberal thought) continues unabated.
Featured posts
The Guardian vindicates CiF Watch
While the Guardian media group is a long way from taking the steps necessary to truly change a culture which tolerates outright antisemitism, and is viscerally and disproportionately hostile to the Jewish state, their Readers’ Editor’s recent admission that their reporters, editors and writers need to be more careful about employing Judeophobic narratives represents a remarkable mea culpa from an institution which has shown itself to be remarkably thin skinned, and resistant to true introspection.
Guardian contributor Gail Simmons’s tweets about the Nazism of Zionism
In researching the background of a new Guardian contributor, writing about her experiences in the Palestinian Territories, we came across Simmons’s tweets, one of which leveled the odious charge that Zionism was morally similar to Nazism. It says a lot about the politics of the Guardian Left that a commentator possessing such malevolence would even be considered for a position writing for “the world’s leading liberal voice”. CiF Watch’s post on Simmons’s tweet was noted in a report by the UK Jewish Chronicle.
The empathy-evil continuum and Hamas’ treatment of Gilad Shalit
A guest post by Medusa explores the appalling lack of basic human empathy which informed Hamas’s abduction and appalling treatment of Gilad Shalit.
Harriet Sherwood’s latest report on rocket attacks from Gaza redefines the word “sporadic”.
A guest post by Akus comments on Guardian Jerusalem Correspondent Harriet Sherwood’s Orwellian use of the word “sporadic” to characterize Gaza rocket fire – which, in the month of August alone, included 170 deadly projectiles fired at Israeli communities.
Jonathan Freedland’s intifada delusions.
Israelinurse adeptly dissects the erroneous characterization, by the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland, of the mythical “non-violent” first Intifada.
CiF Watch in the news
CiF Watch post wins political essay contest at popular political website, The Propagandist.
The post, ’Better Jews. The Moral Vanity of Israel’s Leftist Jewish Critics‘, won first prize at The Propagandist’s 2nd Annual Political Essay contest.
Adam Levick’s essay on the Guardian’s admission regarding antisemitism was published by the UK Jewish Chronicle.
What Can You Do?
There are 3 simple actions you can take to make our work more effective:
(1) Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
(2) Forward this newsletter to at least 5 friends and as many others by clicking here.
(3) Email us at contactus@cifwatch.com if you see something in the Guardian that makes your blood boil.
Since the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners from Israel in exchange for Gilad Shalit, Palestinian Media Watch has documented that Palestinian Authority leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas, as well as the official PA media, have glorified some of the terrorists who committed the most lethal attacks against Israeli civilians.
Among the recently released prisoners was Ahlam Tamimi, the terrorist who chose the place and led a suicide bomber to the Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem in August 2001, who murdered 15 people in his attack, 7 of them children.
Tamimi has repeatedly stated that she does not regret her involvement in the terror attack and, since her release, has appeared in several interviews, in which she has repeated this.
Here’s a Jordanian website broadcast of an interview with her.
If you want to know how Tamimi’s new freedom (and appalling lack of remorse) affects the families of those who lost loved ones in the Sbarro attack, I’d suggest reading the following post by Arnold and Frimet Roth, whose daughter Malki was murdered by Tamimi.
In a piece titled, “A monster walks the streets and she has many accomplices“, the Roths, at their blog, This Ongoing War, write:
“This person murdered fifteen people, most of them children, all of them Jewish. A sixteenth woman, a young mother, was left unconscious and vegetative from the day of the terrorist attack until today; the woman’s two-year old daughter has grown up motherless. And more than 130 people were left maimed and wounded, along with several hundred families, ours among them, who were and are devastated.”
“The injustice of this person’s freedom, and the hypocrisy of those who fail to scream out against it, overwhelm us. They choke us.”
Yes, the hypocrisy of those who aren’t genuinely outraged by Tamimi’s release, and by the Palestinians’ veneration of such hideous and loathsome people, is morally appalling beyond what any words could adequately express.
Related articles
- The Hostage-Prisoner Exchange and the world of imaginative sympathy (cifwatch.com)
- Frimet Roth responds to Guardian story sympathetic to terrorist responsible for her daughter’s murder (cifwatch.com)
- Arnold & Frimet Roth, whose daughter Malka was murdered by terrorists in 2001, responds to Shalit news (cifwatch.com)
- When white faces at the Guardian refuse to treat non-white faces as moral equals (cifwatch.com)
- If Arnold Roth held a news conference at the American Colony Hotel, would the Guardian cover it? (cifwatch.com)
- A nightmare that never ends (cifwatch.com)
- What the Guardian won’t report. Terrorist responsible for Sbarro massacre: “I’d do it again.” (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian publishes letters arguing Shalit’s release (in exchange for 1027 terrorists) is unfair to Hamas (cifwatch.com)
- Tyranny of victimhood: Why the Guardian gives a free ride to reactionary Palestinian movement (cifwatch.com)
Our post yesterday attempted to get the Guardian’s Deborah Orr to issue a more genuine apology for her mocking and distorted characterization of Jews as “the chosen” people in an Oct. Guardian piece on the deal to release Gilad Shalit.
In her original column – for which she ultimately wrote a quasi apology which didn’t address her most egregious passages – Orr essentially argued that the release of 1027 terrorist prisoners by Israel in exchange for one Israeli is evidence of the Jewish state’s racism, a racism, she implied, which is embedded in Judaism itself.
We posted our request to Orr to issue a more sincere apology following a Twitter exchange in which she challenged us to offer our views on what she should have written, and added that she’d read it and consider endorsing it.
Well, after Tweeting our post (with text of an apology we hoped she’d consider issuing) directly to Orr, she responded in a way clearly showing her lack of remorse for advancing the toxic idea that “chosenness” indicated Jewish racism or a sense of supremacism – a Judeophobic trope which, we added, is typically advanced by antisemitic extremists.
After a series of exchanges there was this Tweet by Orr:
I included this Tweet (before her answer to our direct question) because I think it gets to the heart of the matter regarding a UK liberal intelligentsia (and I use that term lightly) who truly believes that there’s a dearth of criticism regarding Israel, and that powerful pro-Israel Jews are attempting to silence the debate.
Evidently, Orr is unaware of her own paper’s obsessive negative coverage of the Jewish state – Israel represents the fifth most covered country in the world by the Guardian, based on their own data – nor the fact that such hyper criticism is leveled on the website of a broadsheet which garners tens of millions of unique visitors a month.
If Zionist Jews were indeed attempting to muzzle criticism of Israel then a brief survey of the quantity and degree of such fierce opprobrium towards the Jewish state (found both on blogs and in the MSM) would clearly indicate that we are failing spectacularly at such efforts.
Finally, Orr’s reply, to our Tweet asking her to endorse the apology we wrote, was this.
Yes, Deborah, you continue to make your views quite clear.
Related articles
- The Guardian’s abusive Deborah Orr (cifwatch.com)
- The apology to the Jewish people Deborah Orr should have written (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr “chosen people” update:Israel to free 25 Egyptians for 1 Jew, thus Jews 25 X more valuable than Egyptians (cifwatch.com)
- Jewish supremacism revisited: And, Deborah Orr’s faulty memory (cifwatch.com)
- On the explicit antisemitism of the Guardian’s Deborah Orr (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr’s Disgusting Excuse For an “Apology” (cifwatch.com)
- Current-day antisemitism obsessed with concept of Jews as the chosen people (cifwatch.com)
Guardian journalist Deborah Orr may have felt the need, or perhaps was required, to issue a quasi apology in response to the criticism which followed her Oct. 19th Guardian polemic, “Is an Israeli life really more important than a Palestinians’s?”
In her apology she wrote:
“Last week, I upset a lot of people by suggesting Zionists saw themselves as “chosen”. My words were badly chosen and poorly used.”
However, this is far less than accurate as she was clearly suggesting that Jews, as such, and not merely “Zionists” – insofar as Israel is understood as the state of the Jewish people – saw themselves as chosen.
Indeed her original post expressed disgust at the prisoner exchange which freed Gilad Shalit, not out of concern that hundreds of unrepentant terrorists were released for one Israeli soldier – and, indeed, the post was accompanied with a celebratory photo of a released female terrorist who tried to carry out a 2004 suicide bombing - but because, in her moral calculus, such a deal demonstrated Israeli racism.
Unfortunately, much of Orr’s apology largely fails to address the most serious issue with her original Guardian piece.
In the essay, she rails against “the obscene idea that Israeli lives are more important than Palestinian lives”, before concluding contemptuously that “so many Zionists believe…that the lives of the chosen are of hugely greater consequence than those of their unfortunate neighbours.” [emphasis mine]
What Orr suggested can be summed up as follows:
The release of 1027 terrorist prisoners by Israel in exchange for one Israeli is evidence of the Jewish state’s racism (or feeling of supremacy), a racism embedded in Judaism itself.
CiF Watch recently got into a Twitter exchange with Orr, and asked if she would issue a more thorough apology, addressing the argument she actually made.
Here was her response:
Ok, I’ll take a stab at it. Here’s the apology which we’d like to see Orr sign.
In an Oct. 19th Guardian piece, I made the indefensible argument that Israel’s prisoner deal with Hamas, which secured the release of Gilad Shalit in exchange for over a thousand Palestinian prisoners (many who committed or planned terrorist acts), was evidence of the racist belief by Jews that they are “the chosen people”.
I know now both that such an asymmetrical prisoner deal between Hamas and Israel merely reflected the former’s better negotiating position, and says nothing whatsoever about the morality of Israel, who, obviously, would have preferred to secure Shalit’s release without having to release even one Palestinian prisoner.
More importantly, I now understand the odious history of the distorted narrative of Jews as “the chosen people”.
I realize the truth of what Guardian Readers’ Editor Chris Elliott recently wrote: “Chosenness”, in Jewish theology, tends to refer to the sense in which Jews are “burdened” by religious responsibilities; it has never meant that the Jews are better than anyone else. Historically it has been antisemites, not Jews, who have read “chosen” as code for Jewish supremacism.”
I regret having used a trope which evokes historical antisemitic narratives and understand the following:
‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, the most widely distributed antisemitic forgery in history is premised partly on the idea of Jews’ “chosenness”.
I know now that a distortion of the idea of Jews’ “chosenness” is a widely used theme in perhaps the most popular antisemitic site on the web, Jew Watch.
Finally, I’ve learned that the most well-known white supremacist in the U.S., David Duke, uses the theme of Jews’ “chosenness” to prove that Jews are the most racist people on the planet in his book “Jewish Supremacism”.
In short, such distortions of Jews’ understanding of their identity, and of Judaism itself, are quite dangerous and should be strenuously avoided by those who consider themselves anti-racists.
As an anti-racist, I will, of course, strenuously refrain from advancing such inaccurate, and harmful, stereotypes in the future.
Ms. Orr: It would certainly be heartening to see you dissociate yourself, without qualifications, from such toxic narratives about Jews and agree to endorse this proposed apology.
Related articles
- Jewish supremacism revisited: And, Deborah Orr’s faulty memory (cifwatch.com)
- On the explicit antisemitism of the Guardian’s Deborah Orr (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr “chosen people” update:Israel to free 25 Egyptians for 1 Jew, thus Jews 25 X more valuable than Egyptians (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr’s Disgusting Excuse For an “Apology” (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian’s abusive Deborah Orr (cifwatch.com)
Hamas Produced Poster
The last month has seen momentous events in Israel following the release of Gilad Shalit from his captivity by Hamas. His freedom, bought as a result of Israel’s agreement to the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, was controversial to say the least, but that is not the main topic of this article.
Instead I believe it would be useful to expand on the circumstances and conditions under which Gilad Shalit may well have been held and view Shalit’s treatment by Hamas through the lens of Professor Simon Baron-Cohen’s Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty.
Baron-Cohen makes clear that he does not accept the concept of “evil”, rather he argues that what we come to perceive as “evil” is a complete failure of empathic attunement on the part of the wrongdoer. I admire Baron-Cohen’s work and his attempts to redefine evil. I can see why he has taken the approach that he has and it is an exciting theory, but I do not agree that it can be applied to the rationale for the behaviour of entities like Hamas. I shall explain why below.
Baron-Cohen’s book is, among other things, an excellent introduction for the layman to the extent to which the brain is thought to influence behaviour. He posits the existence of an empathy circuit which can be assessed on MRI scans, and which, if the circuit is damaged by injury or fails to develop because of childhood abuse, actually shows deficit. Baron-Cohen is himself a world-renowned expert in the study of autistic spectrum disorders and Asperger’s Syndrome, both of which may be perceived, albeit very simplistically as I describe it here, as a profound inability on the part of the suffer to empathise or to apprehend how another person might think or feel, a deficit which affects all facets of their lives.
Empathy, as Baron-Cohen defines it, is our ability to identify what somebody else is thinking or feeling, and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion. Thus Baron-Cohen suggests that there are two stages in empathy – recognition and response. A sufficiently empathic person can therefore recognise when someone is upset, for example, and in some cases even feel upset themselves and react and perhaps act with appropriate sympathy. A person who possesses what Baron-Cohen calls zero degrees of empathy lacks either recognition of emotion in others, or the capability for appropriate response, or both.
The total absence of empathy is not necessarily evil but I argue that in certain circumstances it can facilitate evil acts. The capability to feel empathy fluctuates in and between individuals. I have said above that people with Asperger’s or on the autism spectrum may have great difficulty in apprehending how others feel, and of course they cannot be blamed for that. However, what about others who know very well how their victim feels when they ill-treat him but do not care about or even enjoy the pain they cause? Like Baron-Cohen, I would classify such people as psychopaths who are not only immoral but also amoral. However, whereas Baron-Cohen advocates understanding their behaviour, I do not.
Unless one is a research or academic psychologist or psychiatrist, there is little to be gained from it. Such evil intent and action on the part of Hamas and its fellow Islamists is felt on to a mass scale towards Israel and its Jews, and is almost identical to that of the Nazis for Jews, and that needs to be fought against. Merely understanding it and reframing it as total lack of empathy cannot save the lives of those at whom it is directed. Such reframing also conflates the possible explanation for the behaviour with the results of that behaviour.
I shall never forget how frail, unwell and emaciated Gilad Shalit looked on his release, in comparison with the healthy, well-fed Palestinian prisoners released by Israel. What can have motivated such treatment of Shalit? One clue lies in the statement in 2009 of Abu Marzuk, deputy chief of the Hamas Political Ministry. Marzuk said he was not interested in Shalit’s well-being, and added: ”We are not giving him any special guard since he is as good as a cat or less.” (emphasis added).
Here is as frank an admission as any of the psychopathy of Hamas and the utter degradation of any humanity and complete absence of empathy in its treatment of Gilad Shalit, and on many occasions towards its own people. Psychopaths may often have a history of torturing animals for pleasure. Gilad Shalit’s presentation on his release evidenced that he had been kept in conditions of extreme privation and that Hamas had indeed perceived him as being less than an animal.
As further proof, I invite you to cast your minds back to the egregious celebration by Hamas in Gaza of their 21st anniversary, in which a crowd of thousands mocked a Hamas member dressed up as Gilad Shalit who begged and pleaded to be set free and said that he missed his mother and father. Did any of these have any creature feeling or empathy for the suffering of Gilad Shalit of his parents? If so, why add to their misery? Did they have the ability, in the terms of Baron-Cohen’s definition, to identify what the Shalit parents might be thinking or feeling, and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion? To argue that they had zero degrees of empathy may well have provided sufficient explanation for their behaviour, but that behaviour was evil.
Here is a test for your own empathic attunement. Remember to try to empathise:
- How might Gilad Shalit’s parents have felt when they heard about this?
- Did Hamas have any reservations about causing anguish to Gilad Shalit’s parents? Do you think they were aware of that anguish?
- Why do you think so? Why not?
- How might those who organised this travesty have felt while it was going on? Was Gilad Shalit a flesh and blood person to them or an object to be used for propaganda?
- Why has not the Israeli government treated Palestinian prisoners in like terms? What do you think stops them from doing that and why did that not stop Hamas?
- In the light of what we have seen of the treatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails what is the main difference between the Israeli view of Palestinian prisoners and Hamas’ view of Gilad Shalit?
The willingness of Hamas to inculcate hatred and the wish for painful “glorious” death even into the very young, adds to the evidence for the existence of mass psychopathy within the organisation. It goes against every law of nature to endanger one’s own children deliberately. It is, quite literally, dysfunctional and it murders the nation’s future.
Therefore, in spite of Baron-Cohen’s analysis that the Hamas animals who exhibit such utter degradation of any humanity in their behaviour towards Gilad Shalit, and on many occasions towards their own people, show zero degrees of empathy rather than are evil, I have to conclude that they are psychopaths by his own definition. Although they are indeed utterly lacking in empathy, to persist in defining what is essentially evil in their behaviour in such terms is to resort to mere semantics and almost to absolve them from guilt and blame for that behaviour. Also, for me to remove the label of evil from them implies that I believe that they are capable of change and being reasoned with. I do not. It is evident that there is a total and deeply atavistic lack of creature feeling in them, otherwise they could not have treated Gilad Shalit as they did and for as long as they did.
Therefore Israel must continue to counter this evil with all the force it can muster whenever it rears its ugly head, all the while knowing that, given its past showing, Hamas cannot somehow miraculously be forced to change into a trustworthy peace partner which will mean it no harm. That is an invidious position to be in, but the psychological victory of getting its son back alive sends a positive message to its people.
Addendum: The Israeli decision about exchange to get its son home is not without precedent and I found the following curiously comforting. An analogy can be drawn between the following account from Roman times particularly in regard to the state of the released Palestinian prisoners and their use to their murderous masters after many years of living in comparative luxury in Israeli prisons:
The Roman senator, Regulus, (c307 BC – c250 BC) foresaw the effects of the exchange when the Carthaginians sent him on his own recognisance back to Rome to negotiate his release and that of other Roman captives in exchange for peace. The poet, Horace (writing in 23 BC) bewailed the fact that Romans could be captured and yet endure living a normal life in the country of their captors. Horace has Regulus encouraging the Roman Senate to reject the terms for the release of the prisoners, because the freed Roman soldiers, rather than fighting all the more fiercely because of their captivity, would be degraded and worthless as fighting men.
May this also prove to be the case in respect of the freed Palestinians and their use to Hamas.
Related articles
- Guardian Letters Editor abets distortion of Gilad Shalit’s comments about Palestinian prisoners (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr “chosen people” update:Israel to free 25 Egyptians for 1 Jew, thus Jews 25 X more valuable than Egyptians (cifwatch.com)
- Jewish supremacism revisited: And, Deborah Orr’s faulty memory (cifwatch.com)
- Shalit after Hamas captivity vs Palestinian terrorists after Israeli incarceration: A visual/moral contrast (cifwatch.com)
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
Clip of Israeli Amb to UK, Daniel Taub, blasting Deborah Orr at ‘Big Tent for Zionism’ conference
February 22, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: Antisemitism, BDS, Big Tent for Zionism, Comment is Free, Daniel Taub, Deborah Orr, Delegitimization, Gilad Shalit, Guardian, Manchester | by Adam Levick | 27 comments
One of the many highlights at the Nov. 27 Big Tent for Israel Conference (on combating delegimization) I attended, and participated in, was listening to the keynote speech delivered by Israel’s Ambassador to the UK, Daniel Taub.
Taub blasted the Guardian’s Deborah Orr regarding her hideous commentary on the Gilad Shalit prisoner release deal – in the context of his broader critique of delegitimization in the British media.
Speaking to a 700-strong audience in Manchester, the ambassador’s speech represented a call to arms, arguing that anti-Israel campaigns that delegitimize Israel opened a “new front for Israel” in the UK and were “a serious problem for those institutions and organizations which allow it to fester.”
Here’s a clip of the particular segment of his speech where he singles out the Guardian.
And, here’s Taub’s entire presentation.
Related articles
Share this: