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This week we witnessed a much reported demonstration in south Tel Aviv pertaining to the subject of the influx of illegal migrants into one of the poorest areas in Israel. As ever, the situation is significantly more nuanced than the Guardian’s editors would have us believe – as reflected in the commentary of veteran Israeli journalist Ben Dror Yamini on the subject.
“It was all known. It was all expected. A violent incident was a matter of time. Sentences such as “South Tel Aviv neighbourhoods becoming a pressure cooker” have been written more and more in recent weeks. This week it happened. A justified and legitimate demonstration, which was directed against government neglect, was turned by a few tens of people into a hooligans’ parade. It is a miracle that the events did not end in bloodshed. That could happen.
This is the hour of the hitch-hikers. From Left and from Right. The former spread tales that if we would only conquer racism, and turn the refugees into new immigrants, they would become honest and contributing citizens. For a small proportion of them – annoying and inciting; mostly anarchists – there is in the background the ideology which wants to crush the state of Israel as the Jewish state. The infiltrators are yet another means by which to achieve that aim. From the Right step up to the line the inciters who suffer from pure racism – including racism against colour – and direct the anger towards the infiltrators themselves.
And in the background are to be found the residents of the neighbourhoods of south Tel Aviv, Ashdod and Eilat. They are the victims. Because the infiltrators who arrive here, from the moment of their arrival, raise their standard of living by ten degrees. Even when they are sleeping in public parks. And only the residents of the weak neighbourhoods are paying the price. They alone. Everyone is wise at their expense. The human-rights workers are causing more and more infiltrators to arrive in exactly the same neighbourhoods which are already exploding from the pressure. They don’t pay any price. They load them onto the weak. And the weak are exploding. Just exploding. Their children’s education is worse. The fear on the streets is greater. Quality of life plummets to new lows. And when they try to cry out, they are called racists. And then the activists from the Right arrive, with matches in places already saturated with petrol. Afterwards we all wonder about the explosion.”
The incidents which took place on the night of May 23rd in south Tel Aviv were the subject of no fewer than three Guardian articles.
The first, by Conal Urquhart, was headlined “African asylum seekers injured in Tel Aviv race riots”. Only in the ninth paragraph (out of ten) did Urquhart get round to hinting – albeit very superficially – that there may actually be more sides to the story than pure ‘race riots’.
“Some work illegally and the majority live in the poorest areas of Tel Aviv where they find themselves in competition with working class Israelis mostly from a Middle Eastern or north African background. The sparse greens and parks of south Tel Aviv are dominated by the African migrants who sleep there at night.“
The second article dedicated by the Guardian to the subject was Seth Freedman’s polemic (addressed by Adam Levick here). Freedman also employed the term ‘race riots’ and referred to “the level of hate coursing through the veins of Israelis furious at the influx of non-Jewish Africans into their country”. His article closed with the warning that “Israeli opponents of such base racism must act now”: again presenting a one-dimensional view of the story.
The third article on the subject published on the same day as the previous two came from Harriet Sherwood. It too focused exclusively upon the reprehensible acts of violence which took place and it too failed to provide any information on the broader context of the events or to examine the reasons why the residents of south Tel Aviv (the majority of whom did not participate in the violence) felt compelled to voice their opinions on the streets in the first place.
But Israel is not the only country struggling with the effects of uncontrollable immigration and Tel Aviv was not the only place in which a demonstration turned violent this week.
In Patras, Greece, local residents and supporters of the far-Right ‘Golden Dawn’ party – which gained considerable support in the recent Greek elections – stormed a factory in which migrants were sheltering on two consecutive days after a local man was allegedly stabbed and killed by an Afghani immigrant, resulting in clashes between demonstrators and police.
The Guardian dedicated one article to these incidents.
In that story there were no ‘race riots’ – instead there were “anti-immigrant protests”. No ‘asaGreek’ was summoned to chastise his countrymen for the “hate coursing through their veins” and nobody was accused of “base racism”. There were no dire warnings about the collapse of Greek democracy and nowhere was it implied that the Greek demonstrators (even those among them who support an extreme-right party) were motivated by a racism which infects their society as a whole.
The sharp contrast between the style and volume of the Guardian’s reporting on two similar incidents which took place almost at the same time is an excellent indicator of the fact that when it comes to Israel, reporting the actual news is frequently of minor concern. Too often, it is the opportunity which that news may provide to advance an agenda which is seized at the detriment of providing Guardian readers with a ‘fair and balanced’ view of events.
Like this:
The Guardian’s coverage of the incident which occurred on May 31st 2010 on board the Mavi Marmara – an organized effort by the Islamist organisation known as the IHH to break Israel’s blockade against weapons smuggling into Gaza – was characteristically obsessive and one-sided.
It included 71 separate pieces (reports and commentary placed on their special Gaza Flotilla page) published on the first four days following the incident and represented a quintessentially Guardian frantic rush to judgement: Israel was guilty of naked aggression against peaceful pro-Palestinian activists.
Perhaps the most surreal Guardian piece in the days after the incident was the following report, which uncritically reported the sage advice of the sensitive Syrian despot known as Bashar al-Assad meditating upon his vision for peace in the region – harmony he believed was complicated by events on the Mavi Marmara. (Assad, of course, was correct. Over 13,000 Syrian civilians murdered by the regime in Damascus can attest to this fact.)
Moreover, the long-awaited UN Palmer Report - published in July 2011 – reached conclusions almost completely at odds with the Guardian narrative. Here are some of the main points of the report:
- Contrary to a mind-numbing number of accusations in the media that Israel’s blockade of Gaza was “illegal” the Palmer report concluded that the Naval blockade is fully consistent with international law and that IDF Naval forces have the right to stop Gaza-bound ships in international waters.
- Contrary to claims that the IDF attacked peaceful activists, the reports concluded that when Israeli commandos boarded the main ship they faced “organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers” and were therefore required to use force in order to ensure their own protection.
- The report concluded that the IHH sponsored flotilla, including the Mavi Marmara, “acted recklessly in attempting to breach the naval blockade.”
However, the Guardian’s Conal Urquhart – in the great tradition of Guardian pro-Palestinian activists – filed the following story unburdened by such quaint journalistic notions as adjusting a long-held narrative based on new information.
In fact, “Israel offers compensation to Mavi Marmara flotilla raid victims” of May 24th 2012, contains one passage completely contradicted by the Palmer Report.
According to Urquhart:
“Turkey cooled diplomatic relations with Israel after nine of its citizens were shot dead by Israeli commandos who landed on the Mavi Marmara to prevent its passage to Gaza. Protesters on the ship repelled the first wave of lightly armed commandos, but then the Israeli soldiers used lethal force against the unarmed passengers to end their resistance.”
This is blatantly untrue.
According to sections 123 and 124 of the Palmer Report:
“It is clear to the Panel that preparations were made by some of the passengers on the Mavi Marmara well in advance to violently resist any boarding attempt. The description given in the Israeli report is consistent with passenger testimonies to the Turkish investigation that describe cutting iron bars from the guard rails of the ship…”
“Furthermore, video footage shows passengers…carrying metal bars, slingshots, chains and staves. That information supports the accounts of violence given by IDF personnel to the Israeli investigation…”
“The Panel accepts, therefore, that soldiers landing from the first helicopter faced significant, organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers when they descended onto the Mavi Marmara. Material before the Panel confirms that this group was armed with iron bars, staves, chains, and slingshots, and there is some indication that they also used knives. Firearms were taken from IDF personnel and passengers disabled at least one by removing the ammunition from it. Two soldiers received gunshot wounds. There is some reason to believe that they may have been shot by passengers,”
It simply doesn’t get more clear than this.
A Guardian reporter tells his readers that passengers on that fateful day of May 31st were unarmed, peaceful activists – despite definitive evidence that they were armed Islamist terrorists.
I’d recommend Tweeting Mr. Urquhart (@conalu) and asking him about this simply indefensible claim.
Related articles
A guest post by Gidon Ben-Zvi, an Anglo-Israeli freelance writer
A recent piece in the Guardian, Isareli PM: illigal African immigrants threaten identity of Jewish state, May 20, describing the simmering issue of Israel’s African migrants, included the following passage:
“Amid the anti-immigration clamour, some Israelis have argued that, in the light of Jewish history, their state should be sympathetic and welcoming to those fleeing persecution.”
To quote the sadistic prison captain in ‘Cool Hand Luke’:
“What we’ve got here is…. failure to communicate.”
To diffuse the powder keg that Israeli cities with relatively high African populations are now sitting on, the intellectual cobwebs regarding refugees and migrants need to be swiftly cleaned out and a rapidly metastasizing groupthink ought be remedied by way of a realistic appraisal of alternatives.
Unlike the situation in other relatively well-off countries, Israel’s illegal immigration challenge is a recent phenomenon. The influx of Africans can be traced to 2005, after the Egyptian police attacked Sudanese refugees who were camped out in Cairo and demanded asylum. Jerusalem proved generous and word spread that migrants would be greeted hospitably and provided with job opportunities upon arrival in the State of Israel.
Since Hosni Mubarak was swept up and out of power during the twilight of moderation known as the ‘Arab Spring’, government authority has all but collapsed in the Sinai Peninsula. One byproduct of this lawless state of affairs has been a spike in the rate of illegal immigration to Israel from Africa. Over the last several months, Israel’s southern border with Egypt, by way of the Sinai, has turned into the primary point of entry for thousands of work-seeking migrants.
While some of these fortune seekers are refugees, the vast majority are illegal infiltrators who are, along with drugs and weapons, smuggled into Israel by Bedouin tribesmen. Furthermore, while many illegal immigrants seek asylum status under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of the United Nations, only a fraction of all the illegal immigrants are actually eligible for this status.
In response, segments of the Israeli political establishment have been roused into action. Knesset member Danny Danon is pushing for a bill that would lead to the deportation of half the illegal migrants within a year and 80 percent within two years. And Interior Minister Eli Yishai recently proclaimed that most of the African refugees should “…be put into holding cells or jails…and then given a grant and sent back…” to their countries of origin.
Is this any way for the Middle East’s only true democracy to treat the most vulnerable segment of its society? And doesn’t Israel have a special moral obligation, in light of Jewish history, to be sympathetic and “..welcoming of those fleeing persecution…”?
No, it does not.
For one thing, it’s important to consider the impact of illegal immigration on Israeli society’s most vulnerable members: native-born Israelis and legal immigrants with low skills and low levels of education.
Academics, media elites, lawyers, human rights activists and other professionals have the sweet luxury of claiming the moral high ground on the illegal immigration debate: their livelihoods aren’t on the chopping block; their opportunities for advancement aren’t being increasingly scuttled.
The plight of immigrants seeking refuge from some of the most forsaken corners on earth is a moveable tragedy worthy of our sympathy and outrage. Yet, Israeli society’s first and primary responsibility is to its legal citizens and immigrants.
Furthermore, the economics of allowing illegal immigrants to remain under the charge of local municipalities in particular and the Israeli government as a whole, which would have to maintain services such as law enforcement, health care, housing, and schooling, is prohibitive. Israel is not France and it simply doesn’t have the means to provide for the welfare of tens of thousands of migrants.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that African refugees will be treated with humanity, explaining that “… we will continue to care for refugees, but they make up a minimal part of the human wave. Entire populations are starting to move, and if we don’t act to stop this we will be flooded.”
Yet, how does Israel counteract this ‘human wave’?
There has been much talk and uneven implementation of plans to complete the Egyptian border fence, expand detention centers and increase policing of companies that do violence to the law by hiring undocumented workers.
The concept of detention camps in a Jewish state has been greeted with grave misgivings and gratuitous moralizing by large swaths of the international human rights community.
However, it bears reminding that these facilities will include classrooms, places of worship, community centers, medical centers and outdoor recreation areas.
No solution will be comprehensively effective and every solution will likely evoke the slippery law of unintended consequences. Yet, Israel’s much touted economic miracle, given official sanction when the country joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2010, has apparently brought with it a slew of ‘first world injuries’. Israel’s high standard of living and open society, in a region distressingly devoid of both, has ignited the imagination of fleeing Eritreans, Sudanese and citizens of other economically deprived peoples.
In the name of true moral equivalence, Israel should be allowed to deal with this internal crisis without being held to a unique standard that is apparently the special legacy of Jewish history to the modern Jewish state.
Related articles
- Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood obsesses, imputes racism, over Israeli construction of detention facility (cifwatch.com)
Like this:
‘Activist Journalism’ – in the anti-Zionist context – refers to the capacity to frame any event in the Jewish state in a manner consistent with a pre-determined narrative.
So, any isolated case of injustice is reported as evidence of the state’s alleged systemic and institutional racism or oppression, while counter evidence – indicating that the behavior in question may represent the exception and not the rule – is typically ignored.
For instance, the Guardian will report a Palestinian civilian death in Gaza during an IDF anti-terror operation but largely fail to note the context of Hamas terror or the remarkable care Israel takes to avoid non-combatant deaths – including precision bombing of terrorist targets which often results in far better outcomes in comparison to other armies’ military operations around the world.
Of the 100 Gazans killed in IDF anti-terror operations in 2011, 91 were terrorists and 9 were civilians. That is a civilian to combatant death ratio of roughly 1 to 10.
This contrasts quite dramatically with the average civilian to combatant death ratio in recent conflicts involving NATO forces in Iraq and Afghanistan: There, NATO had a 3 to 1 ratio (i.e. there were 3 civilian deaths for every 1 combatant death).
Similarly, Israel has been accused on the pages of the Guardian of making it very difficult for Palestinians in Gaza to receive medical care, often with the particular circumstances of each decision ignored, along with that of the broader context of a state which – though at war against a terror movement which calls for Israel’s destruction – still allows thousands of Palestinians (100,000 in 2011) to receive medical care in its hospitals.
Harriet Sherwood’s latest report is an even more egregious illustration of such journalistic bias. Her report entitled “Palestinian Paralympians visit Jerusalem holy site” of May 21st, (tucked away in the sports section of the Guardian), had it been based on the raw facts, could have fairly advanced the following narrative:
Israel, though in a state of war with a Hamas government which does not recognise its right to exist and launches hundreds of deadly projectiles into its cities each year, still allowed – on humanitarian grounds – disabled Palestinian athletes (who are competing in the Paralympics in London this summer) to visit al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.
But, we’re talking about Harriet Sherwood, after all, and so Israel was not credited. Instead she wrote:
“The distance between Gaza City and Jerusalem is less than 50 miles, but one that is near-impossible for most Palestinians in the tiny enclave to undertake. But Qadoom was one of nine athletes and coaches – four of whom will compete in the Paralympics in London this summer – to visit the holy site on Monday, courtesy of the British consulate in Jerusalem” [emphasis added]
Unreported by Sherwood is the fact that for years there has been an unofficial boycott of Jerusalem by Arab states to protest Israeli control of the city.
Sherwood continues:
“Officials from the British consulate applied to Israel for exit permits on the group’s behalf in March. Confirmation for the nine finally came on Thursday, but there was still a six-hour wait at the Erez crossing.”
Then Sherwood’s tale devolves even further. She quotes a paralympian, Hatam Zakut, who says:
“We consider ourselves representatives of all disabled athletes in Gaza. Thanks to the Israelis, there are a lot of us.”
Adding to Zaku’s vague charge, Sherwood writes:
“[In fact] tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are disabled as a result of Israeli military operations.”
“Tens of thousands…”?
There is no source provided to back up Sherwood’s outrageous claim, but after doing a bit of research I found an official United Nations report on Operation Cast Lead – the war in Gaza with the most casualties in recent history.
Per the UN report, there were an estimated 600 Palestinians disabled as a result of injuries sustained during Cast Lead.
While no figures seem to be available on the total number of people disabled in Gaza as a result of conflicts with Israel, a report by the Gaza Ministry of Public Works and Housing, in August 2009 (seven months after Cast Lead), placed the total figure of all disabled Palestinians in Gaza – for all reasons – at 19,763.
In fact, the only reference this definitive report makes to Israel is this line on page 2:
“The increasing in injured people due to Israeli continuous aggressions [sic] led to an obvious increase in number of disabled”
So while there are – according to the official agency in Gaza responsible for collating this data – just under twenty thousand disabled Palestinians in total in Gaza, even the Hamas-run ministry does not attempt to quantify the percentage of this total who were disabled due to IDF military actions, let alone make the claim that “tens of thousands” were disabled by Israeli military operations”.
So, where did Harriet Sherwood get this number?
We’ll likely never know.
But this is no minor question.
Harriet Sherwood is the Jerusalem correspondent for one of the more influential liberal English-language broadsheets and what she reports as fact necessarily has an impact on how millions of readers filter the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Most importantly, such reports greatly influence their readers’ degree of moral sympathy towards Jews’ defense of their right to self-determination in a region resistant to this supremely modest aspiration.
The additional moral issue pertains to the very real world impact Sherwood’s reports have on the Arab world – serving to fuel antipathy towards the Jewish state.
Finally, and no less important, Harriet Sherwood is a professional journalist and therefore owes her readers more than hearsay and half-truths.
Even as a blogger – one with unapologetic and transparent pro-Zionist sympathies – I would never make a specific statistical claim without a link leading to a credible source.
It speaks volumes about the Guardian that their reporters are evidently not held accountable to such basic professional standards.
Related articles
- The racism of no expectations: The Palestinians on the pages of the Guardian (A six month review) (cifwatch.com)
- What the Guardian won’t report: Attempted Palestinian kidnapping of Israeli mother & baby (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood’s continuing advocacy journalism on behalf of Palestinian terror suspects (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian photo story on Gaza drawings by Palestinian who are children curiously on-message (cifwatch.com)
- Contrary to what The Observer claims, there has not been “relative peace” in Israel (cifwatch.com)
- Suzanne Goldenberg avoids mentioning her Jenin lies at the Guardian Open Weekend (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood legitimizes characterization of Israel’s border fences as ‘sign of weakness’ (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s biased coverage of terrorist hostilities in Israel’s south: Numbers, headlines and photos (cifwatch.com)
Who are the Palestinians?
If Israelis represent the most obsessively and disproportionately covered national group on the pages of the Guardian, the Palestinians represent their antithesis.
While every conceivable flaw in Israeli society is reported ad nauseam in the news section (and ‘Comment is Free’) there is an egregious dearth of critical coverage of Palestinian politics, culture and society. Instead, the familiar facile moral binarism, which posits Palestinians as victims of Israeli villainy, overwhelmingly frames the coverage.
The questions which are almost never asked by Guardian reporters and commentators include:
- What is the Palestinians’ guiding moral ethos?
- Which political principles and traditions would inform a future Palestinian state?
- If the Palestinians achieve political independence, how will they treat their citizens? Will the state be truly democratic? What rights will be guaranteed for political, religious, ethnic and sexual minorities?
The last six months of coverage of Palestinian society by the Guardian (consistent, it seems, with coverage prior to the period under examination) provides almost no insight into these vital questions.
In short, the Guardian’s Palestinians are abstractions (void of any flaws, nuance or complexity) and protagonists – morally juxtaposed with their Israeli antagonists. The Palestinians never act. They are always acted upon.
The Palestinian page of the Guardian, in 183 stories and commentaries going back six months, from November 22nd 2011 to May 21st 2012, reveals a few patterns:
- Most stories on the ‘Palestinian’ page are merely cross posted from the ‘Israel’ page, and often have little to do with Palestinians, their society, or government. This is especially curious in light of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians are governed by Palestinians: all of Gaza, and in Areas A (civilly and militarily) and B (civilly) of the West Bank.
- The number of stories or commentaries devoted to critiquing or analyzing government policies in Gaza or the PA: 7 out of 183 (here, here, here, here, here, here, here)
- Number of stories focused on human rights abuses against Palestinians by the governments of Gaza and the PA: 4 out of 183 (here, here, here & here).
- Number of stories about Palestinian antisemitism or other racism/intolerance: 0 out of 183
- Number of stories focused on acts or attempted acts of terrorism against Israelis: 0 out of 183 (In fairness, there were several stories reporting on the barrage of rocket attacks from Gaza in March, but none were framed as terrorists attacks against Israeli civilians as such, and all emphasized Israel’s retaliatory attacks and the resulting Palestinian casualties.)
- Number of stories about Palestinian glorification of terrorists and terrorism: 0 out of 183
In addition to the Guardian’s institutional hostility to Israel, while contextualizing the Guardian over the last two years – and consistent with the results of this review – I have often been struck by their reporters’ stunning lack of intellectual curiosity concerning the actual values, mores, politics, culture, and ethics of living, breathing Palestinians.
The corollary of this professional abdication (their cognitive blind spot) is that such journalists often completely fail to assign to the people living in the Palestinians territories the moral agency generally associated with those deemed as genuine equals.
A more exquisite expression of racism would be difficult to find.
(Note: Here are screen shots of all the headlines, with story captions, in the six-month period covered in this report.)
Harriet Sherwood just published a story (Israeli settlers filmed firing gun at Palestinians, May 21), which included a video posted on YouTube providing little context, about Israelis from Yitzhar firing at Palestinians in the Arab town of Asira al-Qibliya - an incident currently being investigated by the IDF.
While the Guardian wasted no time running with the story above, despite the paucity of facts, the following frightening tale of Palestinians terrorizing an Israeli mother and her child will likely never find its way to the pages of the Guardian, as Harriet Sherwood’s narrative of the region rarely allows for such unambiguous tales of Jewish victimhood.
The following was reported in Ynet, per information recently released by the Shin Bet, Israel’s security service:
Some two months ago Palestinians attempted to kidnap Yael Shahak and her daughter, who was eight years old at the time, when they were driving to the Beit El area in the West Bank.
Yael Shahak and her daughter
On Sunday [May 20] , after the Palestinians accused of the attempted kidnapping…were indicted, Yael recalled the incident.
“One of them took a wrench which he used to shatter the car’s front windshield. At that moment I understood that they were going to kill me and my daughter that we would come out of this dead or handicapped.”
One night in March, Shahak and her daughter were on their way home from an event in central Israel. “We got onto the Beit El access road and a few minutes later, after one of the bends in the road, I noticed a car standing at the side of the road,” she recalled.
“…I honked my horn and then they zigzagged in front of me. The spot was one where you could not bypass or evade the car in front of you, so I drove behind them and tried to avoid them.”
But the Palestinians would not give up. “They saw me backing up so they also backed up. That’s when the penny dropped that I had a problem,” she said. “I tried to escape but they wouldn’t let me move to the side of the road. Eventually they stopped and stood right in front of my vehicle.
“I saw four men in front of me, I was frightened by the fact that they were all men – that was before I even paid attention to whether they were Arabs or not.
One of the men walked up to Shahak’s window while the other three surrounded the car. “The terrorist who came up to my window signaled me to open it.
“The doors and windows were locked so [he tried] to convince me to open the window and [I] tried to tell him that I want to continue on my way. It was all done with hand signals and looks. Then at some point the look in his eyes changed and he became crazed.”
That is when the violence started. “After several blows to the windshield, with all the glass flying at me, he suddenly stopped. At the time I didn’t understand why and it was only after the fact that I realized that they saw an [Israeli vehicle] coming from the direction of Beit El.”
“The terrorists [then] fled…”
“I will never forget the look on the terrorist’s face…”
“That night [my daughter] cried with me…”
There were nine members – Palestinians from the Ramallah area – in the terror cell responsible for the attempted kidnapping of Shahak and her daughter, which was headed by Mouhmad Ramdan (22) of al-Bira.
Some of the terrorists (affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) are being held in Israel while others are in the custody of the Palestinian Authority.
Suspect Mouhmad Ramdan
According to the Shin Bet, the terrorists were trying to kidnap Shahak and her daughter in order to use them as bargaining chips in prisoner exchanges.
Is the following Guardian headline even conceivable?
Related articles
- Guardian corrects story with false translation of Noam Shalit interview after his son’s release (cifwatch.com)
- What the Guardian won’t report: Palestinians continue to laud Itamar Massacre terrorists (cifwatch.com)
- Lost in anti-Zionist translation? Guardian misquotes Noam Shalit on Palestinian hostage taking (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood’s Munich Massacre story follows Guardian rule on obscuring Palestinian terrorism (cifwatch.com)
A guest post by AKUS
News item:
“The queues of cars waiting to cross from the tiny 2.6 sq mile territory into [the neighboring country] have lengthened dramatically in the last week, as … border patrols have been ordered to make things more difficult for motorists and workers, increasing security checks in a move condemned … as “childish”.
No, this is not from another article about the attempt to prevent terrorists entering Jerusalem. Nor is the territory in question “Al Kuds”.
It is Jabal Tariq – i.e. Gibraltar – and the neighboring country manning the checkpoints is, of course, Spain. And where better to read about the issue of checkpoints than in The Observer: Gibraltar’s jubilee party sends signal to Madrid .
The reason for the Spanish crackdown is the celebration of the British Monarch’s Jubilee. The Jubilee is being celebrated with particular emphasis in Gibraltar, which was ceded under the Treaty of Utrecht to the British in 1713 by the Dutch, who won the War of the Spanish Succession – whatever that was – which probably had a lot to do with royal jewels and possibly ‘strategic marriage’.
Even worse – Gibraltar – I meant to say the fourth most sacred rock in Islam, Jabal Tariq – was captured from the Caliphate by the Spanish in 1462 – almost 700 years ago.
Of course, history would not be the same without the Jews. Yes, it appears to be the case that the Spanish used their mandatory powers to sell the holy territory of Jabal Tariq to Jews in 1474.
I am not about to check the following, except to note that Spain pulled a particularly dirty trick on the Jews two years later in 1476. In fact, Spain should be using the UN and EU and UNHRC and Amnesty International to force Britain to hand over גברלטר to those to whom Spain sold it then stole it back.
After the conquest, King Henry IV assumed the title of King of Gibraltar, establishing it as part of the municipal area of the Campo Llano de Gibraltar. Six years later Gibraltar was restored to the Duke of Medina Sidonia who sold it in 1474 to a group of Jewish conversos from Cordova and Seville in exchange for maintaining the garrison of the town for two years, after which time the 4,350 Jews were expelled by the Duke as part of the Inquisition.
But as we celebrate Jerusalem Day, the next time the a member of Spanish government has something to say about checkpoints, or Catherine Ashton has something to say about the “occupation”, I will grimly mutter “Tariq Jabal and Utrecht”.
And if, 700 years from now, anti-Zionist activists are still trying to divide Jerusalem (or call it Al Kuds), or the EU is still going on about the plight of the millions of stateless Palestinian refugees and UNRWA’s budget has swallowed up more resources which could be better spent on developing countries, I hope there will be some blogger also whispering the magic words on Jerusalem Day: “A Tariq Jabal and Utrecht to your Al Kuds and Oslo”.
Harriet Sherwood’s latest report, Israeli PM: illegal African immigrants threaten identity of state, May 20, is notable not for the story, concerning Israel’s efforts to stem illegal immigration, nor for the narrative, which suggests racist motives, but due to the photo of PM Netanyahu.
In fact, the photo (of an angry “right wing” Bibi) was used in a July, 2011, Guardian story.
A November 2011 Sherwood report used another angry photo of Bibi…
…which was recycled from a report in August, 2011.
As a point of comparison, here’s a photo of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a ‘Comment is Free’ commentary from March, 2012.
Finally, here is a photo from a Guardian report, of a gentle, kindly and loving soul (aka, Raed Salah) who, in his spare time, recites poems advancing the ancient antisemitic blood libel.
Related articles
- ‘Comment is Free’ writer praises Hamas for limiting its acts of terror to ‘only’ Israeli Jews (cifwatch.com)
- Mehdi Hasan croons the Iran chorus on ‘Comment is Free’. (cifwatch.com)
Like this:
Occasionally we come across a reader comment beneath the line of a ‘Comment is Free’ essay which is not only worth recommending, but thoughtful enough to post and meditate upon.
The essay in question which elicited the comment, “So, you think reason guides your politics? Think again“, May 17, by Simon Jenkins, (which explores what factors motivate our political thought process), represents a rare display of intellectual complexity at an institution often identified as much by a mind numbing uniformity as by a particular political brand.
Writes Jenkins:
“Most people buy a newspaper not to be prised from their settled opinion but to find it confirmed and comforted. They would not be dragged from it by wild horses, let alone the old nag of reason. A newspaper is their tribal notice board, their badge, their identity.”
While Jenkins’ piece does succumb to the chic appeal of (political) biological determinism, his effort represents serious thought, and is refreshingly free of hyperbole or moral posturing.
The essay also inspired this comment, very much worth examining, briefly giving voice to the dilemmas of Zionists who are forced to choose between principles and the comforts of political group identity.
I’d like to hear others’ opinions, both on the specific issue of being a Zionist within political spheres hostile to Jewish nationalism, as well as the broader theme of retaining independence of mind in the context of group demands.
Related articles
- ‘Comment is Free’ reader Zionism = Nazism comment of the day (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Comment is Free’ cheeky reader comment of the day: On Sharon, babies and Semitic tendencies (cifwatch.com)
- CiF reader comment of the day: How the Israel lobby defeated Ken Livingstone (cifwatch.com)
- The anti-Zionist malice of ‘Comment is Free’ contributor Mya Guarnieri (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian reader’s thinly veiled threat against Jews doesn’t result in suspension of user privileges (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian & Richard Silverstein’s battle to see who can most smear the UK Jewish community (cifwatch.com)
- Berchmans or Ben White? Deep thoughts at ‘Comment is Free’ on why Jews are hated (cifwatch.com)
- The stealth Zionism of ‘Comment is Free’ contributor Naomi Wolf? (cifwatch.com)
H/T Margie
There were over 300 comments beneath the line of Stuart Jeffries’ review of Sasha Baron Cohen’s movie, The Dictator (Guardian, May 15).
More than a few readers were evidently angered that Cohen, a Jew, had the temerity to mock Arab dictators. Here is the comment of one outraged reader (rayhanania), which garnered 308 ‘Recommends’.
This commenter is possibly the same Ray Hanania (an Arab American journalist and comedian) who was quoted in Jeffries’ review arguing:
“Baron Cohen could be far more effective if he turned his comedic talents inwards and portrayed someone like…prime minister…Netanyahu or even rightwing foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman.”
Another reader, agreeing with the suggestion (by rayhanania) that Jews would never, ever be subjected to crude ethnic stereotypes, strayed into different territory.
The reader was referring to this notorious cartoon (appearing in The Independent in 2003) which he/she characterized as garnering a “great deal of support from the Jewish community”.
Then, there was this cheeky reply:
I think many of us have a relative who can’t control such, um, ‘impulses’.
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My post on March 23rd, 2011 – following a terrorist bombing in Jerusalem which killed one woman and injured dozens – critiqued coverage of the attack by the Guardian’s Conal Urquhart (who was filling in for Harriet Sherwood). The post was titled “Four simple Guardian rules for journalists reporting a terrorist attack in Israel.”
I noted that Urquhart seemed to be at pains to avoid characterizing the violence as a terrorist act.
This passage, from his initial report on the attack (close to Jerusalem’s main conference hall and central bus station), represents a prime example.
“A bus has exploded opposite the central station in Jerusalem, killing one woman and injuring at least 25 people, four of them seriously.” [emphasis added]
Of course, the bus didn’t “explode”.
A bomb was placed by a terrorist in a trash can, near a crowded bus stop, with the intent of killing Israelis. Some on an Egged bus which had stopped to pick up passengers there were injured (along with others closer to the bomb) as a result of the blast.
Further, in contextualizing Urquhart’s work with other Guardian reports about Palestinian terrorism, I arrived at what appeared to be a few of the Guardian Group’s guiding principles.
One of the rules which Guardian journalists often observe pertains to intentionally unclear causation:
They use passive language which may obscure the fact that an intentional act of violence was perpetrated by a Palestinian terrorist against innocent Israeli civilians.
Harriet Sherwood recently published a report, titled “London 2012 Olympics: IOC rejects silence for Munich victims” (May 15th), which is quite consistent with the Guardian rule detailed above.
Sherwood writes:
“The Munich attack began in the early hours of 5 September 1972, when eight members of the Palestinian military organisation Black September infiltrated the Olympic village, and took 11 members of the Israeli team hostage. The attackers demanded the release of 234 Palestinian prisoners in return for the hostages’ release.
By just after midnight, all 11 athletes, five attackers and a German police officer were dead.” [emphasis added]
By midnight, they were dead. Not “killed“ but “dead“. Sherwood fails to distinguish between victim and perpetrator, and offers no further explanation about how the Israeli hostages lost their lives.
In fact, the Israeli athletes were murdered brutally and quite deliberately by Palestinian Black September terrorists.
Recently the Guardian published a thorough, well-researched and clear account of the murder of Israeli athletes in Munich. It was written by sports editor Simon Burnton and titled, “50 stunning Olympic moments No 26: The terrorist outrage in Munich in 1972“. Evidently it takes a sports writer to report on Palestinian terrorism without ideological blinders.
Burton recounts how, on the last day of the crisis, nine of the eleven Israelis were killed while on helicopters (with their captors) at the runway of Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base near Munich. The terrorists were hoping for a deal, whereby they would fly to safety in Egypt, until negotiations with German authorities broke down.
“…a terrorist threw a grenade into one of the helicopters, killing all but one of the four hostages on board. Another terrorist sprayed the second helicopter with bullets, killing the five tied together there. The final hostage, David Berger, died of smoke inhalation before he could be rescued.”
However, per Burton, two of the Israelis were killed in the athletes’ residence on the first day of the crisis.
“In all 12 hostages were taken, but as the wrestlers were led downstairs to join the coaches one of them, Gad Zabari, managed to escape, with the assistance of the wounded [Moshe] Weinberg. The latter was shot dead and his body thrown, naked, on to the street. The remaining 10 were shepherded into a single bedroom, where the weightlifter Yossef Romano attempted to overcome one of the intruders. He too was shot, apparently castrated and left to bleed to death on the floor.” [emphasis added]
The brutality was beyond description.
Harriet Sherwood’s rhetorical obfuscation is all too predictable.
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Yesterday (May 14th), the Guardian republished their original coverage of the establishment of Israel in 1948.
Here are the Guardian reports from that day in 1948:
The main story.
The leader:
I’m very interested to hear readers’ thoughts on these Guardian reports in the context of the paper’s coverage of Israel today.
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Hadar Sela
Overview of Guardian coverage of Israel: April 30th to May 27th 2012.
May 27, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: BDS, Boycott, Comment is Free, Delegitimization, Distortion, Gaza, Guardian, Iran, Israel, Terrorism | by Hadar Sela | 1 comment
Last month we published a review of the Guardian’s coverage of events in Israel during April, highlighting the subjects it chose to address and – no less important – those it did not. Several readers suggested that this should become a regular exercise, so here is a breakdown of the subjects tackled during the period from April 30th to May 27th 2012.
During that four-week period, 58 articles appeared on the ‘Israel’ page of the World News section on the Guardian’s website. Two of those actually appear twice, so in fact we are addressing 56 articles, eleven of which also appeared on the ‘Israel’ page of ‘Comment is Free’.
Three items dealt with the subject of boycotts against Israeli targets whilst three others were obituaries. One article pertained to literature and one other was a video report in Jon Ronson’s series about ‘astroturfing’.
Six articles dealt with the Iranian nuclear issue and two pertained to the subject of the British government’s reaction to a hypothetical Israeli military strike on Iran.
Two articles speculating about early elections in Israel were followed by five articles about the Kadima party’s joining the coalition government.
One article contained archive material concerning the Manchester Guardian’s coverage of Israel’s declaration of Independence in 1948 whilst four items dealt with the subject of events on Nakba Day 2012. Five articles were published on the subject of the Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike whilst a further four dealt with subjects which can be classified as carrying a theme of ‘Israeli authorities against Palestinians’.
Two articles were connected to the subject of the Olympics – one concerning the IOC refusal to mark the Munich terror attack and the other about disabled Palestinian Olympians. Two items related to the Israeli TV series ‘Hatufim’ – one of which still carries the spelling mistake “Israeil” in its by-line.
Four articles (three of which appeared on the same day) were about the subject of illegal migrants in Israel, one dealt with the subject of the Mavi Marmara flotilla and potential compensation arrangements and two articles can be classified as relating to ‘settlements’ or ‘settlers’.
Six items appearing on the ‘Israel’ page have little if any connection to Israel, including one about the Hamas clamp-down on the ‘Palfest’ event in Gaza, one about Palestinian Authority actions against Palestinian journalists, one about human rights in Bahrain and another concerning Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
So what did the Guardian choose not to report during the same period of time? A partial list includes the following:
On April 30th a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip fell near the town of Sderot. (source)
On May 1st shots were fired from the Gaza Strip at Israeli soldiers engaged in routine activities on the Israeli side of the border fence. During the week May 2nd to May 8th, two rockets and one mortar fired from Gaza hit the western Negev.(source)
On May 3rd, two Palestinians carrying knives and explosives were arrested at Tapuach Junction. Later the same night, a Palestinian carrying a knife tried to infiltrate the village of Elon Moreh.
On May 7th, Israeli soldiers thwarted an attempt to smuggle weapons through the Kalandia checkpoint. On the same day, a Palestinian carrying three pipe bombs was apprehended near Tapuach Junction.
During the week May 9th to May 15th, one rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit the western Negev. On May 10th Egyptian security forces apprehended three vehicles containing weapons – including 40 anti-tank missiles – being smuggled from Libya. (source)
Also on May 10th, two Palestinians carrying pipe bombs and fire bombs were arrested by the Border Police near Tapuach Junction.
On May 20th a Palestinian tried to stab a soldier at a roadblock. During the preceding month, three Israeli civilians were wounded in stabbing attacks. Information concerning the apprehension of a Ramallah area based terror cell which planned to abduct Israeli civilians was made public, including details of attempted kidnappings:
“During March 2012 the cell tried to abduct an Israeli several times:
(source)
In addition, incidents of rock-throwing at Israeli vehicles continued throughout the month.
As we saw in the previous review, the Guardian’s coverage of Israel goes out of its way to avoid any mention of the daily threats posed to Israeli civilians. Whilst Guardian readers world-wide may now be familiar with the TV drama ‘Hatufim’ the paper does not inform them about real-life attempts to kidnap Israelis. The same readers now know all about the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike, but little or nothing about the type of ongoing terror activities which lead to the arrests of Palestinians. Whilst the subject of building in towns and villages beyond the ‘green line’ is covered, an attempt by an armed Palestinian to infiltrate one of those villages is ignored.
Once again, the Israel-related news which Guardian editors elect to avoid telling their readers is no less significant than the stories they do choose to tell.
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