Tag Archives: Ha’aretz

Apr 18 2013

CiF Watch prompts correction to Indy post by Matt Hill about Ethiopian contraception

Yesterday, we posted about a commentary at The Independent, written by ‘Liberal Conspiracy’ blogger Matt Hill, on April 16 titled ‘At 65, modern Israel is falling short of Zionism’s most basic goal‘, which included the following passage:

Israel’s story, in brief, might be described as overcoming a horrific infancy to grow rich and successful. But its triumphs have come at a cost. Once full of youthful idealism, today it is cynical, increasingly corrupt, and calloused by hubris. The land of socialist pioneers has become, besides America, the most unequal country in the world. A state established as a home for the homeless now treats immigrants with contempt, as the scandal of its forced sterilisation of Ethiopian women has shown.

However, as we noted in our post, the row which Hill alluded to – based on an Israeli documentary and subsequent reports by Haaretz – merely involved unproven allegations that some Ethiopian women may have been coerced by doctors into receiving a long-lasting popular contraception called Depo-Provera.  

There was never anything resembling “forced sterilisation’ – a term which is commonly defined as ‘a process of permanently ending someone’s ability to reproduce without his or her consent’.

Shortly after our post yesterday we contacted editors at The Independent to object to the misleading term, and today the paper removed the reference to “forces sterilisation” and added this note at the end of Hill’s commentary:

ehtiopian

Indy editors deserve credit for their prompt response after being alerted to this error. 

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Apr 17 2013

Indy blogger Matt Hill engages in reckless smear about “forced sterilisation” in Israel

Matt Hill, a blogger for Liberal Conspiracy, published a piece at The Independent on April 16 titled ‘At 65, modern Israel is falling short of Zionism’s most basic goal‘, which ‘defends’ Israel existence, and even lists a few of its achievements over 65 years of statehood, before the inevitable descent into delegitimization and demonization.

First, Hill praises Israel thusly:

The survivors of Russian pogroms, Nazi genocide and Arab expulsions went on to build a state that defeated its enemies time after time.Today Israel’s GDP per head is close to that of the UK, and it has more scientists and engineers as a proportion of its population than any other country.

But, he then begins lecturing the Jewish state with the following psychological analysis:

But as with people who experience early trauma, the instincts Israel developed in order to survive have often proved its undoing. Having had to fight for its life in its early days, it spawned a military which sees violence as the solution to every problem and has spread its tentacles into every corner of the state. Having arrived as landless immigrants scrabbling for every inch of earth, after 1967 Israelis built settlements…on territories belonging to other peoples. And like a victim of abuse who has learnt never to trust anyone, Israel has too often been incapable of reaching out a hand in peace to its neighbours 

It gets worse:

Israel’s story, in brief, might be described as overcoming a horrific infancy to grow rich and successful. But its triumphs have come at a cost. Once full of youthful idealism, today it is cynical, increasingly corrupt, and calloused by hubris. The land of socialist pioneers has become, besides America, the most unequal country in the world. A state established as a home for the homeless now treats immigrants with contempt, as the scandal of its forced sterilisation of Ethiopian women has shown.

The charge that Israel engaged in “forced sterilisation of Ethiopian women” is a gross mischaracterization of a story which has been circulating since December.

As CAMERA’s Israel director Tamar Sternthal argued at the Algemeiner, even the originally deeply flawed report in Haaretz’t didn’t argue that there was “forced sterilisation”.  They claimed that Israeli doctors allegedly coerced ”some Ethiopian women in transit camps en route to Israel to receive ‘long-lasting contraceptive injections’ as a condition for immigrating”.

Sternthal:

The Ha’aretz stories were based on a Dec. 8, 2012 Israeli broadcast called “Vacuum,” with host Gal Gabai. Ignoring information to the contrary, and placing words in the mouths of her [35 Ethiopian] interviewees, Gabai relentlessly pushed her pre-determined and unsubstantiated thesis that the coerced injections of Depo-Provera, a contraception shot which lasts three months, led to a decrease in the birth rate among Ethiopian immigrants in the last decade.

Sternthal further noted that Gabai “ignored other factors aside from alleged coerced injections which contributed to a lower birth rate” such as “declining birth rates…associated with greater affluence and an improvement in the status of women”.

Additionally, added Sternthal, “Depo-Provera is the most popular birth control method in African countries, including Ethiopia [and] many women prefer the shot, a discreet means of birth control, which can be administered without the knowledge of disapproving husbands.”  As another CAMERA report demonstrated, while some Ethiopian women should likely have been given another contraception instead of Depo-Provera, there is no factual basis supporting the claim of a ‘systematic mechanism’.

Further, the Jan. 27 story in the Independent which Hill linked to about the birth control row – which didn’t once use the term “sterilisation” - mischaracterized the response to the controversy by Israel’s Health Ministry.  The Indy’s Alistair Dawber wrote the following:

Israel has admitted for the first time that it has been giving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants birth-control injections, often without their knowledge or consent.

The government had previously denied the practice but the Israeli Health Ministry’s director-general has now ordered gynaecologists to stop administering the drugs.

As CAMERA demonstrated, the letter by the Israel Health Ministry Director General (Prof. Rami Gamzu), “did not address the circulating charges that Ethiopian women were systematically coerced into taking shots against their will”, but simply instructed all gynecologists “not to renew prescriptions “if for any reason there is concern that they might not understand the ramifications of the treatment.”

Also, claims made by the Israeli documentary which propelled the story that “women who immigrated from Ethiopia…say they were told [by doctors at the Joint Distribution Committee, 'JDC'] that they would not be allowed into Israel unless they agreed to be injected with…Depo-Provera”, were flatly denied by Dr. Rick Hodes, JDC’s Medical Director in Ethiopia in an email to Elder of Zion:

Elder:

“So to be clear, you’re saying that you personally never told any woman that she would have to take Depo-Provera shots in order to immigrate to Israel? The women claim that JDC workers from Israel told them they had to do it. Is that claim to the best of your knowledge false?”

Dr. Hodes replied:

To the best of my knowledge, this claim is 100% false.

Neither myself nor my staff have ever told any women in our program that they should take Depo-Provera for any reason. 100% of Depo-Provera shots are purely voluntary, and may be discontinued (or changed to another method) at any time.

In fact, we don’t have JDC workers from Israel come and tell women these things.

As a Haaretz commentary on Jan. 30 by Allison Kaplan Sommer observed, a story of “insensitivity, cultural condescension and yes, perhaps a certain level of racism” was transformed by some in the media “into some kind of villainous genocidal plot of sterilization aimed at ethnic and racial cleansing.” 

As Elder of Ziyon argued, though “some women may have misunderstood the use of the drug or the options they have for birth control”, there was never any plot by Israeli doctors to sterilize Ethiopian women. 

Whilst other publications have engaged in sloppy reporting over the Ethiopian birth control story, Hill’s charge at the Indy leads the pack by engaging in a reckless, hysterical smear that has absolutely no basis in fact.

(Update: Following our communication with The Independent, Hill’s reference to “forced sterilisation” was removed and the the original passage revised.)

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Mar 5 2013

‘Comment is Free’ contributor Antony Lerman plays ‘Israel-Nazi’ card

Antony Lerman is a ’Comment is Free’ contributor. 

lerman

Lerman lectured on ‘The Revival of Jewish Culture in Europe’ at Cambridge University on Feb. 28.  I know this because I saw his Tweet to this effect.

Though Lerman is not a frequent Tweeter he found time today to retweet this lovely 140 character ‘meditation’ by David Sheen.

lerman

Sheen is referring to Israel’s interior minister, Eli Yishai, and is presumably responding to news that Yishai recently confirmed that more than 2,000 migrants in Israel have recently been repatriated back to Sudan.

I had never heard of David Sheen, but this Zionism – Nazism analogy was not a one-off, as you can see by looking at his Tweets for the day.

In fact, he was kind enough to post the following graphic on his Twitter page to help illustrate the ‘comparison’ between Yishai and Adolf Hitler.

img

Sheen, a filmmaker, is quite prolific in the social media world, as you can see by the bio on his website.

sheen

Here’s a photo of the “documentarian”:

3_davidsheen

While one of his videos was briefly noted in a Guardian live blog on the Nov. war in Gaza, Sheen hasn’t formally contributed to the Guardian or ‘Comment is Free.  However, he has contributed to Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada, and has worked as a reporter and content editor at Haaretz.com.

Lerman, a far-left British Jew who has used his position at ‘Comment is Free’ to justify antisemitism, penned his most recent essay at CiF, titled ‘The abuse of dissenting Jews is shameful‘.  In the post, he complained of being ostracized, and smeared by the UK Jewish establishment due ‘merely’ to the fact that he’s an opponent of the Jewish state’s continued existence.  He ended with the following flourish:

That dissenting Jews are still demonised is shameful and undermines Jewish pluralism. But it’s manageable. Because the Jewish diaspora’s support matters so much to Israel’s leaders, the quest for serious, open and civil debate among Jews about what is really best for Israel must continue.

Evidently, Lerman’s expansive understanding of what constitutes “civil debate” about Israel includes not only calling for the state’s dissolution, but likening an Israeli government official to a Nazi.

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Feb 17 2013

Peter Beaumont’s “unnamed source” affirms Guardian narrative about ‘Prisoner X’

Observer foreign affairs editor Peter Beaumont just published his seventh report over the course of three days on Prisoner X – a man believed to have been an Australian-Israeli Mossad agent jailed by Israel because he was about to reveal state secrets to Australian authorities or the media, who committed suicide in his cell in 2010.

His latest piece, co-authored with Phoebe Greenwood, on Feb. 16 is titled ‘Israeli government to compensate family of Prisoner X‘, and is based on “an unnamed source” quoted in Haaretz, claiming a compensation deal was agreed to following the conclusion of an inquiry into the death of the prisoner (aka, Ben Zygier).

Beaumont’s latest post attempts to buttress the narrative, advanced in his other reports on Prisoner X, that Israel behaved in a manner inconsistent with democratic norms.  As we noted previously, one of Beaumont’s reports from Feb. 14 includes the following passage, citing the analysis of unnamed commentators:

“The latest revelations come amid a growing outcry over the case in Israel, with some comparing the treatment of Zygier to that meted out in the Soviet Union or Argentina and Chile under their military dictatorships.”

In his latest report, he cites an “unnamed source“, thus:

“According to one unnamed source familiar with the Zygier case who spoke the YNet website: “When an Israeli is detained for security offences, a process begins, but no one knows how it will end. He disappears into interrogation rooms, and no one knows where he is. They do it using two tools: A gag order and an injunction that prevents the detainee from meeting with an attorney.”

However, contrary to the claims made by the source cited by Beaumont, not only did the detainee in this case meet with his attorney (Avigdor Feldman), but did so, according to an official at the State Prosecutor’s Office quoted in the same Feb 15. Ynet story Beaumont cited, “within days” of being incarcerated.

The official at the State Prosecutor’s Office added the following: 

 ”…the picture painted by the media is far from reality. There are no ‘prisoners x’ in the State of Israel…It’s an expression taken from dictatorships where people were made to disappear without having seen a lawyer or family. There was no such thing here.”

In the past 25 years there were very few cases in which it was decided for security reasons to hold prisoners under pseudonyms.

In those cases, as in this particular case, the families were immediately made aware of the arrest and within a number of days the prisoner was given access to legal counsel. As in regular cases, there was due criminal process with the prisoner able to petition the court like any other inmate.”

Consistent with this Israeli official’s argument, a definitive study in ‘Homeland Security Affairs’ determined that, regarding issues “such as how long an individual can be detained without access to counsel for purposes of interrogation”, Israel “provides more overall due process and substantive rights to [security] detainees than America’s years of incommunicado and indefinite executive detention”.

To serious journalists, providing readers with relevant context and a comparative political or legal analysis of the issue matters.

Beaumont’s story, on the other hand, like so many other reports about Israel written by his fellow Guardian Group ‘journavists‘, cited only those “sources”  who confirmed his desired political narrative.

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Jan 28 2013

Matt Seaton’s caricature of courage

The highly criticized cartoon published in The Sunday Times on Holocaust Memorial Day – depicting mangled, tortured Palestinians being buried over with bricks laid by the bloody trowel of a sinister Israeli leader – was defended by  in Haaretz on Jan. 28 as “grossly unfair” but “not antisemitic”.

Here’s the cartoon by Gerald Scarfe that we posted about yesterday, and which The Sunday Times editor has since defended as “typically robust“.

content_photo-2

While much has been written about the cartoon – and the timing of its publication – the Haaretz contributor offers a dissenting view, one which, though I believe to be misguided, is nonetheless clearly thought through, well-informed and serious.

However, one particular word used by a Guardian editor on Twitter to characterize Pfeffer’s defense of Scarfe’s work caught my eye.

Here’s the Tweet by Matt Seaton, the Guardian’s editor of the US edition of ‘Comment is Free’.

Seaton’s Tweet, suggesting that it took ‘courage’ for Pfeffer to defend Scarfe, represents a good illustration of the moral conceit often displayed by such contrarians – those whose opinions about Israel, antisemitism and other issues place them outside the mainstream of Jewish opinion and thus must face some level of opprobrium for their views. 

However, whether we’re discussing Peter Beinart’s advocacy for boycotting Israeli companies across the green line, Ben Murane struggling with the ‘chauvinism’ of Jewish particularism, or even Antony Lerman’s polemical assaults against the very right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, the truth is that such Jews can confidently dissent from mainstream opinion with impunity.

Similarly, the only penalty that the contributor for the leftist Israeli daily will have to face for arguing that Jews, and others, are mistaken in their characterization of the Scarfe cartoon as antisemitic is, of course, dissenting opinions from those who take issue with his view.

Writers who trade in unpopular ideas within the political safety net that liberal, democratic societies provide them shouldn’t be so thin-skinned as to expect that freedom of speech requires freedom from criticism, and so vain as to fancy themselves, or their political fellow travelers, courageous for having to withstand such critiques.

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Jan 13 2013

How big is E-1? The geographic reality of an alleged “impediment to peace”

A guest post by AKUS

There’s been a lot of talk at the Guardian – and in the mainstream media - about the tiny area of land (known as ’E-1′) outside Jerusalem (encompassing a mere 12 square kilometers of land out of more than 5,600 square kilometers of territory in the West Bank), so I thought it might be worth putting it in perspective:

Here’s a map showing E-1 taken from Ha’aretz (Q&A: What is area E-1, anyway?) which has the advantage of showing E-1 in bright red:

1

Here is the same image overlaid on a true map of Jerusalem and surroundings.  The guide in the bottom left hand corner gives a better idea of the distances and area involved – about 2 miles/4km from central Jerusalem, and between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim:

2

For clarity, here is the E-1 area extracted from the map provided by Ha’aretz and overlaid on the same map of Jerusalem and surroundings:

3

By way of comparison, here is the E-1 area overlaid on a map of Manhattan – it is less than 4 times larger than Central Park:

4

To make the scale of E-1 a little more obvious, let’s zoom out to include most of Manhattan and surroundings:

5

And here is E-1 overlaid on a portion of the map of Israel to the same scale:

6

Is the world-wide fuss over an area between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim, less than four times the size of Central Park, and a fraction of the size of Manhattan, that the Palestinians know will be included in the area of Israel if an agreement is ever reached, really worth making?

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Nov 21 2012

Terrorist attack in Tel Aviv injures 21

Per the Jerusalem Post.

“A terrorist blew up [the #142] bus on Shaul Hamelech Street in Tel Aviv around noon Wednesday.

Police confirmed that the explosion was a terrorist attack, although Channel 2 reported that it was not a suicide bombing and thus police were searching the area for additional explosive devises.

Channel 2 reported that police arrested a suspect near the Ramat Gan diamond exchange, who they believe may be carrying an explosive device. Police believe a female terrorist may still be at large in the area, armed with explosives.”

Haaretz is reporting 21 injuries.

Celebratory gunfire was heard in Gaza in reaction to the attack, which was praised by Hamas.

Nov 4 2012

Indy report on ‘apartheid’ poll illustrated with photo showing Palestinian kids seemingly behind bars

On June 27, Honest Reporting revealed The Independent‘s use of the following photo to illustrate a particularly critical story on the Israeli treatment of Palestinian child detainees.

HR noted that the photo above represented an example that featured in their Shattered Lens study on photo bias, in this case “the use of bars to portray Palestinians as “prisoners” of Israeli occupation and brutality.”

HR wrote:

“[The photo from 2010 was] one example of how wire agency photographers resort to using camera angles and staging techniques to present a distorted picture of a given situation. In the example above, it is clear that the photographer used this technique to project an image of Gazan children imprisoned. However, the sequence of photos taken from the same scene at the time illustrates how the effect was achieved.”


“What we see above is a tiny group of Palestinian children arriving at what appears to be a pre-planned photo-op outside the Gaza industrial area presumably organized by Hamas. The photographer either willingly colludes with Hamas or is used.Next, the children have been positioned behind a gate to give the effect of a prison.”

“However, using a great deal of skill to get the right position with the right lens from the right angle, the photographer manages to create an impression of many more than the several children in the actual shot.”

This photo fraud came to mind when reading a more recent Indy report, ‘The new Israeli apartheid: poll reveals widespread Jewish support for policy of discrimination against Arab minority‘, by Catrina Stewart regarding the poll about alleged Israeli ‘apartheid’ written by Gideon Levy at Haaretz.  

Stewart’s story on the widely discredited story by Levy – which elicited a retraction from Haaretz – was not the most egregious example of misleading coverage of the poll, though it did, nonetheless, convey the false impression that Israelis support ‘apartheid-like’ policies against Arabs.  The Indy report also severely downplayed results which demonstrated that a large majority of Israelis don’t, in fact, support denying the vote to Palestinians.

However, the photo they used to illustrate the story indicates that the Indy learned nothing from their previous use of misleading imagery.

 

(The photo has no caption.)

Palestinian children are seemingly behind bars yet again, superbly illustrating the Indy’s desired narrative of oppressed Arabs.

However, upon doing a bit of research, it turns out that the photo was taken in Gaza, and the children are looking at the body of a Palestinian terrorist (killed after IDF forces retaliated against rocket attacks near Beit Lahiya) through the window of a hospital morgue on Oct. 22.

Here’s the photo and caption at Yahoo.

While the image selected by Indy editors has little, if anything, to do with the story it purports to illustrate, the broader truth is that the Palestinian children appearing in the photo are indeed prisoners – held captive to a life of backwardness, religious extremism, violence and racism by the very Palestinians they’re seen peering at.

Now, there’s a narrative you’d likely never see advanced in the Indy or Guardian. 

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Nov 1 2012

The Guardian ‘would’ be commended if its revision of Sherwood’s apartheid smear were substantive

On Oct. 23, we posted about a characteristic smear of Israel by Harriet Sherwood, based on distorted poll results – suggesting Israeli support for apartheid – egregiously misinterpreted by the original reporter covering the story, Gideon Levy of Haaretz.

Sherwood’s story contained this title  ’Israeli poll finds majority in favor of ‘apartheid’ policies‘, conveying to readers the idea that Israelis indeed support apartheid.  

The text in Sherwood’s story echoed this title, beginning thus:

“More than two-thirds of Israeli Jews say that 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank should be denied the right to vote if the area was annexed by Israel, in effect endorsing an apartheid state…” [emphasis added]

However, Sherwood failed to acknowledge the vital other poll results demonstrating that only 38 percent of the Israelis surveyed want Israel to annex some of the territories in the first place.

The suggestion that most Israelis support denying Palestinians the right to vote in Israel is necessarily undermined by this additional information which Harriet Sherwood did not report.

It would be more accurate to report that only a minority of Israelis would deny the vote to Palestinians, and then only in a hypothetical scenario which most Israelis don’t wish to see happen.

As Yehuda Ben-Meir wrote in Haaretz, Most of us don’t want apartheid, Oct. 28, after having compared the article’s conclusions with the survey’s findings:

“[Israelis] oppose the annexation of territories. That’s the survey’s most important finding, and its conclusion is exactly the opposite of what’s written in the [Haaretz] headline.”

…

the…majority [of Israelis are] also unwilling to live in a country with an “apartheid regime,” so it opposes the annexation of territories. That’s the survey’s most important finding…”

Further, Haaretz issued a retraction. Here it is, translated from Hebrew by CAMERA.

“The wording of the front-page headline, “The majority of Israelis support apartheid in Israel” (Ha’aretz, Oct. 23), did not accurately reflect the findings of the Dialog poll. The question to which most respondents answered in the negative did not relate to the current situation, but to a hypothetical situation in the future: “If Israel annexes territories in Judea and Samaria, in your opinion, should 2.5 million Palestinians be given the right to vote for the Knesset?” 

Additionally, even the Haaretz journalist who published the story, Gideon Levy, offered this retraction:

“Most Israelis do support apartheid, but only if the occupied territories are annexed; and most Israelis oppose such annexation. Haaretz explained this in a clarification published in the Hebrew edition on Sunday.” [emphasis added] 

Nowhere does the Guardian cite the extremely vital qualification that most Israelis, in fact, DO NOT SUPPORT annexation. Evidently in response to criticism of Sherwood’s incredibly misleading story, and the accompanying headline, the Guardian, on Oct. 30, issued this correction:
So, the title was changed from the original…
…to this:

Nothing in the the story’s text was changed, and there’s still nothing to inform readers that a majority of Israelis don’t support annexation and, thus, by logical inference, a majority DO NOT support denying Palestinians the right to vote.

If the Guardian had made such a substance change – providing the public with information necessary to properly understand and contextualize the poll – they would resemble a serious newspaper rather than an anti-Zionist propaganda sheet.

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Oct 28 2012

Ha’aretz’s Apartheid Campaign Against Israel

Cross posted by Yishai Goldflam at CAMERA  (This is a translated version of the original which appeared at CAMERA’s Hebrew site, Presspectiva.)

Amidst its financial hardships and declining Israeli readership, the Israeli daily, Ha’aretz, has upped its anti-Israel advocacy, engaging in a campaign to promote the apartheid canard about Israel. First, Akiva Eldar falsely alleged that the Israeli government had acknowledged Jews as the minority population residing between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, a claim he was forced to correct. Then Gideon Levy wrote an article bearing the sinister headline, “Survey: Most Israeli Jews support apartheid regime in Israel.”

The online versions in English and Hebrew were subsequently changed slightly. And the print edition’s English headline was “Survey: Most Israeli Jews advocate discrimination against Arabs.”  This story was followed the next day by an article that attempted to solidify as fact supposed Jewish support for an apartheid regime, with the headline, “Arab MKs: Israeli Jews’ support of apartheid is not surprising.”

Levy’s article claimed that according to a recent survey the majority of Israelis not only support apartheid, but also hold racist views towards Israeli Arabs and believe that apartheid already exists today in Israel. Predictably, the story spread like wildfire and was quoted in major media outlets such as London’s The Guardian and The Independent, Toronto’s Globe and Mail, Agence-France Presse, and dozens of other sites, blogs and forums.

Pro- and anti-Israel activists have spent the past two days debating the reliability of the survey, its wording and meaning, as well as the accuracy of Gideon Levy’s article publicizing the poll. But most of those involved in the debate did not see the complete, original survey because it was not published anywhere, including in Levy’s article. One notable exception was this in-depth analysis by Avi Mayer which relied upon the original poll. CAMERA/Presspectiva obtained a copy of the original survey, and compared it to Levy’s article and Ha’aretz’s headline to see whether or not they accurately reflected the survey.

Unsurprisingly, Levy’s article was full of omissions and distortions. He apparently ignored the data that did not suit him and emphasized those that were in accord with his own well-known anti-Israel world view. At times, he completely reversed the survey’s findings. The sensational headline represents, at best, Levy’s interpretation of the survey and does not represent objective, factual reporting.

It also appears that the survey itself has its own share of problems – including the lack of clarity and hypothetical nature of the questions, no definition of terms that were used, limited answer choices, no correction for confounding factors, and general lack of explanation about what exactly was meant by the questions.

Yet even on the assumption that the survey was a valid one that was appropriately conducted, the results neither justify Ha’aretz’s bombastic headlines, which seem to be part of a campaign to damage and delegitimize the Jewish state, nor the article itself that cherry-picks or otherwise misrepresents the results in order to reach the predetermined conclusion of the headline.

Levy Distorts

Levy’s striking misrepresentations included the following:

A sweeping 74 percent majority is in favor of separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. A quarter – 24 percent – believe separate roads are “a good situation” and 50 percent believe they are “a necessary situation.”

Levy conveniently omitted the original question and answers from the survey. They were:

17. In the territories, there are some roads where travel is permitted only to Israelis and others where travel is permitted only to Palestinians. Which of the following opinions are closest to your own: A. It is a good situation. B. It is not a good situation, but what can you do? C. It is not a good situation and it needs to be stopped.

24% – it is a good situation.

50% – it is not a good situation, but there is nothing that can be done.

17% – it is not a good situation and it needs to be stopped

If the answers are divided according to those who see it as “good” and those who see it as “not good,” then 67% see it as a bad situation. But Levy did not bother to inform reader that the 50% of those who saw separate roads as “necessary” saw it as an undesirable situation.

When a “minority” becomes a “majority”

Levy devoted much of his fiery wrath to the alleged racism of Israeli Jews toward Israeli Arabs, but here too he distorted the results in order to make his case. Already in the third sentence of the article, he wrote:

A majority of Israeli Jews also explicitly favors discrimination against the state’s Arab citizens…

Levy misled his readers. There are five questions in the survey relating to discrimination against Arabs. Below are the questions and results:

4. In your opinion, is it desirable or undesirable for Jews to receive priority over Arabs in government hiring? a
59% – desirable; 34% undesirable
 
5. In your opinion, is it desirable to enact a law that prevents Israeli Arabs from voting in the Knesset?
33% – desirable; 59% undesirable
 
7. Do you agree or disagree with the argument that the state needs to care more for its Jewish citizens than its Arab citizens?
49% – agree; 49% – disagree
 
8. Would it bother you if in your place of abode, for example in your apartment building, an Arab family also lived there?
42% – it would bother me; 53% – it would not bother me
 
9. Would it bother you if in one of your children’s classrooms at school, there were also Arab children?
42% – it would bother me; 49% – it would not bother me

Does the overall picture obtained from these results support Levy’s characterization of most Israeli Jews favoring discrimination against Israeli-Arabs? On the contrary. Most people reading these results would perceive just the opposite, that a majority of Israelis do not support discrimination against Arabs.

Moreover, there are confounding factors here that skew the numbers, making the majority a smaller one than might be expected.  For example, the highest percentages of negative answers to the questions about Arab children sharing a class room with their children and Arab families living in the same apartment building came from the group that self-identified as ultra-Orthodox Jews. This community tends to insulate their families from the outside world and would be expected to just as readily answer that they would not want their children sharing a classroom with secular Jews, or that they would want all their neighbors to share their same values and strictures. This artificially confounds the data. Israeli society is certainly not perfect, but it is a far cry from Levy’s misrepresentation that most Israeli Jews openly and explicitly favor discrimination against Arabs.

Levy’s misrepresentation was even worse in the commentary accompanying the main article, where he wrote: 

Most Israelis do not want Arab voters for the Knesset, nor Arab neighbors at home, nor Arab students near the bookcases of Jewish texts in Jewish schools that teach Jewish heritage. And our camp will be pure, as pure of Arabs as possible and perhaps even more.

What is amazing about the above paragraph is that Levy chose precisely the three examples that demonstrate the opposite of the scenario he describes. Unfortunately, readers horrified at the “findings” described by Levy do not possess the tools to see that the author was deceiving them, because the results of the survey were not included.

The issue of Levy’s selective reporting is evident throughout the article, in which he introduced the “negative” data without mentioning the “positive” data.

For example, when he wrote that “a third of the respondents support a law that would prevent Israeli Arabs from voting for the Knesset, ” he did not bother to mention that 59% oppose such a law.

Similarly, when Levy wrote that “36 percent support transferring some of the Arab towns from Israel to the PA, in exchange for keeping some of the West Bank settlements,” he did not bother to note that even more– 48% – oppose it. And when he wrote that “42 percent don’t want to live in the same building with Arabs and 42 percent don’t want their children in the same class with Arab children,” he did not bother to note that even more – 53% and 49% respectively – would not mind.

The headline in Ha’aretz’s print edition trumpeted that “Most Israeli Jews advocate discrimination against Arabs” – a conclusion clearly not borne out by the results of the survey. But this was evidently of no concern to editors who opted for a sensational headline that presented Israel in the worst possible light, no matter how false it was.

Support for Apartheid?

The subject of apartheid – the focus of Ha’aretz’s headline and on which Levy places his primary emphasis, as well as the charge that was disseminated around the world – takes up just 3 out of the 17 questions in the survey and is divided into two separate allegations by Levy:

a) the majority of Israelis support an apartheid regime; and

b) most Israelis think that Israel is already an apartheid state

Levy shares an honest point acknowledged by the pollsters that provides a key to understanding the problematic nature of the above allegations:

The survey conductors say perhaps the term “apartheid” was not clear enough to some interviewees.

Indeed, in the three questions dealing with the concept of apartheid, there is no definition or explanation of what is meant by the term “apartheid.” This raises the question of how the pollsters concluded, on the one hand, that the respondents “support apartheid” even while admitting that the term may not have been clear to the respondents. This logical failure would have raised a red flag to responsible journalists. That it did not give Levy reason to pause is testament to his lack of journalistic ethics.

Levy began the article by stating:

Most of the Jewish public in Israel supports the establishment of an apartheid regime in Israel if it formally annexes the West Bank.

It is an emphatic conclusion, but not what was asked in the survey. The only question addressing annexation of the territories was Question 16:

16. If Israel annexes the territories of Judea and Samaria, in your opinion, is it necessary to give 2.5 million Palestinians the right to vote in the Knesset?

While 69% of respondents answered no, the survey’s question addressed a hypothetical scenario that had no bearing on the current situation. Moreover, there were more interviewees who responded that they oppose annexation than those who responded that they support it (48% oppose, 38% support). In other words, almost half the respondents were forced to choose an answer about a hypothetical scenario that they explicitly oppose. Yet Ha’aretz’s online edition turned this finding into a headline without noting that it only described a hypothetical scenario that was already widely rejected by respondents. The online headline was subsequently changed to include the word “would” presumably to account for the hypothetical nature of the result: “Survey: Most Israeli Jews would support apartheid regime in Israel” but the damage wrought by the original headline had already been done, demonstrating the success of Ha’aretz’s apparent campaign to portray Israeli Jews as racists who support apartheid.

What about the claim that the majority of Israelis believe that an apartheid regime already exists in the country? Levy wrote:

Although the territories have not been annexed, most of the Jewish public (58 percent ) already believes Israel practices apartheid against Arabs.

This is what the survey says:

11. Which of the following opinions is closest to yours? A. There is no apartheid at all in Israel. B. There is apartheid in some areas. C. There is apartheid in many areas.

31% – There is no apartheid at all in Israel.

39% – There is apartheid in some areas.

19% – There is apartheid in many areas.

Beyond Levy’s ignoring of the survey’s nuance, with his blanket assertion that Israel “practices apartheid against Arabs,” are the problems inherent in the survey question itself – which Levy similarly ignores. What is “apartheid in some areas” or “apartheid in many areas”? The term “apartheid,” contrary to its superficial use in the survey, and contrary to the concept of “discrimination” has a very clear and precise meaning: According to the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, it refers to “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” (See more at “Israeli Apartheid Week“)

There is no such thing as “some” apartheid. There is either apartheid or no apartheid. Apartheid is not simply discrimination – the sort that exists in almost every country around the world including Israel, which is precisely why the term was created specifically to describe South Africa’s regime.

Anyone who understands the meaning of the word “apartheid” cannot reliably answer such an illogical question that seeks to reveal whether Israel practices apartheid “in some areas” or “in many areas.” Of even greater concern is the impact of Levy’s assertion “that 58% of Israeli citizens support apartheid” on those readers in London, New York, or Berlin who actually know what real apartheid is.

Despite the fact, that by any parameter, there is no connection between any Israeli policy and the South African apartheid regime, international activists are currently attempting to brand Israel with this smear in order to convince good and caring people that Israel is a second South Africa and should be treated as such – with boycott, divestment and sanctions. The Ha’aretz articles of the last few days indicate that the Israeli paper, too, seeks to demonize Israel as apartheid.

The fact that the survey question did not define “apartheid” or explain to respondents the difference between “apartheid” and “discrimination,” and the fact that the pollsters admitted that the term was not clear to all respondents suggests that respondents took the term “apartheid” to mean “discrimination” and understood it as simply a synonym for the latter. Moreover, the absurd response options of apartheid in “some” areas or in “many” areas also would suggest that the poll writers, intentionally or not, misled respondents into thinking that “apartheid” is interchangeable with “discrimination.” This is a plausible interpretation of the data that Levy chose to ignore.

It is difficult to overestimate the damage done to Israel by Ha’aretz’s sensational headlines and reporting. Instead of engaging in serious and balanced social criticism based on the findings of the survey, Ha’aretz chose instead to export Gideon Levy’s hysteria and obsession in the form of distorted headlines and an inaccurate story.

Ha’aretz’s campaign is transparent. Last week the paper falsely reported that the Israeli government admits to apartheid, this week it wrongly reported that the Israelis themselves admit to apartheid. Foreign journalists, ambassadors, diplomats, and policymakers around the world should take note. While Ha’aretz might have been perceived as a serious and reliable inside source of news about Israel, it is becoming increasingly clear that it nothing more than a tool for anti-Israel activists.

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Oct 23 2012

Harriet Sherwood cherry picks results of poll to smear Israel with ‘apartheid’ label

H/T Simon Plosker

Harriet Sherwood’s latest report, Oct. 23, contains a dramatic headline, ’Israeli poll finds majority in favor of ‘apartheid’ policies.

The highlights of the poll reported by Sherwood, and based on a Ha’aretz article by Gideon Levy which cited the results of polling conducted by a group called Dialog, are as follows: (Graph from Ha’aretz)

Critical omission by Sherwood on the findings:

Here’s the opening passage of Sherwood’s story:

“More than two-thirds of Israeli Jews say that 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank should be denied the right to vote if the area was annexed by Israel, in effect endorsing an apartheid state…” [emphasis added]

However, Sherwood failed to acknowledge that only 38 percent of the Jewish public wants Israel to annex the territories with settlements on them in the first place, which is arguably the most important stat, as many of the subsequent questions, such as the one highlighted by Sherwood, pertain to a scenario where such annexation occurs. The fact that a majority of Israelis do not express support for annexation renders the subsequent questions extremely less meaningful, and her conclusion about Israeli support for ‘apartheid’ dishonest.

A few additional observations.

  • The sample size of the Dialog poll is 503 (out of a Jewish population of over 6 million), which is problematic. Further, since there is no link to the full poll it’s not possible to judge the methodology.
  • Levy admits that “the survey conductors said that the term ‘apartheid’ “was not clear enough to some interviewees”, which may explain the following additional quote by Levy about the results: “39 percent believe apartheid is practiced “in a few fields”; 19 percent believe “there’s apartheid in many fields” and 11 percent do not know.”  Further, it’s unclear how ‘apartheid’ – widely understood as a systemic policy of separation based on race – could be characterized as a dynamic localized in certain fields. It seems possible that Israelis were expressing their belief that “discrimination” occurs in certain fields, which is a far different phenomenon than ‘apartheid’.
  • Sherwood writes that “58% believe Israel already practices apartheid against Palestinians”, a number, it seems, based on Levy’s report, cited above.  As I noted in the previous bullet, this is extremely problematic conclusion, based on what may be an unclear understanding of what the word ‘apartheid’ meant in the context it was being used.

Palestinian Context

The most glaring omission by Sherwood is her broader failure, in this or other reports alleging Israeli racism, to provide similar data indicating the political views of Palestinians.  This is part of a larger problem within the Guardian’s coverage of the region, which consistently fails to rigorously examine Palestinian society and mores.

As such, the following Palestinian poll results should at least serve to provide a bit of context to contrast the recent polling on Israelis.

  • 54% support armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel? (Harry Truman Research Institute/PCPSR, March 1-7, 2009
  •  64% support launching rockets from the Gaza Strip against Israeli towns and cities such as Sderot and Ashkelon? (Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, March 13-15, 2008)
  • 60% of Palestinians eventually hope that one state − Palestine − will replace the Jewish state. Only 23 percent of Palestinians said they believed in Israel’s right to exist as the national homeland of the Jews.  (Based on a poll in 2010)
  • 47.5% of Palestinians still support terrorist attacks inside pre-1967 Israel. (2012 PSR Survey)
  • 73% of Palestinians “believe” the Islamic Hadith that preaches it is Islamic destiny to kill Jews. (2011 poll)

Of course, there is as good of a chance Sherwood would report these disturbing findings about Palestinian racism, support for violence, and intransigence as the chance she would avoid skewing the results of an Israeli poll in a misleading manner which shows Israelis in the worst possible light. 

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Sep 6 2012

Guardian’s Roy Greenslade invents a ‘freedom of the press’ bogeyman

Also appearing on the ‘Israel’ page of the Guardian’s ‘World News’ section, a September 4th post on Roy Greenslade’s media blog, headlined ” Israeli judge to reporter – state security matters more than press freedom” goes on to declare that:

“An Israeli court has ruled that state security is more important than freedom of the press and the public’s right to know”.

Sounds awful, doesn’t it? Most readers would immediately conjure up images of far-away dark regimes in which valiant journalists selflessly battle overpowering government repression in order to bring the truth to light for the sake of an uninformed and oppressed public. 

That may be what Roy Greenslade believes, and it certainly would not be the first time he has gone down similar routes. It may even be what he would like his readers to believe – which could explain his somewhat selective (to say the least) reporting of the Uri Blau case in general and his sentencing in particular. 

So let’s take a look at what the judge really said, according to sources in the language in which he actually said it. 

The Israeli website Walla! reports as follows: (emphasis added)

“The Magistrates Court in Tel Aviv today (Monday) gave a sentence of four months of community service to “Ha’aretz” journalist Uri Blau, who pleaded guilty and was convicted in July within the framework of a plea bargain of holding classified information, after he received around 1,800 classified documents, which were copied by Anat Kam, whilst she was a soldier in the office of the Major General of Central Command.”(…..)

” “The security of a country [depends upon] its ability to protect its military secrets” wrote the Judge Ido Druiyan in the verdict. “The exposure of such secrets exposes the country to the schemes of its enemies, on the way revealing strong and weak points, military and other plans, and negates the potential of surprise in the case of a pre-planned attack where that is necessary”. The judge agreed with the definition of the prosecution that the documents which Blau circulated were a ticking bomb, even if they were not held with the intention of harming state security: “How easy it is to hack into a computer, steal and make copies of such material”. “

“In the verdict the Judge also addressed [the subject of] the importance of investigative journalism and wrote: “If we compare state security with the freedom of the press and the right of the public to know as absolute values, the value of state security will be greater if only for the simple reason that without the safe existence of the state and its citizens, the press and the public will also not exist”. Together with that, he explained that the court balances between the values and stressed that the material with which Blau dealt is of the highest public importance. “The enormous importance of the security systems and the character of their activity affords in Israel a special urgency and importance to their being the active subject of lively public and political debate”. He also wrote that “The free activity of investigative journalism is among the bases of democracy because without real information the public is exposed to the destructive harm of wild demagoguery, malicious lies and deliberate concealment“. “

“Judge Druiyan added that “The state recognizes the special standing of the journalist and is prepared to tolerate the gap between precise enforcement of the law and between the restraint dictated by the recognition in this country of investigative journalism. That gap is the breathing space of the democracy“. ” (….)

The Walla! article further reminds us that: 

“Blau published at the time articles on targeted assassinations which were carried out in the territories, and were based on the documents he received from Kam. After the publication of the articles, he signed an agreement with the General Security services, within the framework of which he passed over to the security services 50 documents, and his computer was destroyed. After the arrest of Kam, it became clear that he held hundreds of additional documents, some classified as secret and top-secret. With the breaking of the Kam affair, he left the country for a number of months and upon his return was questioned. “

“The prosecutor in the trial, Lawyer Dassi Forer of the Tel Aviv District Advocacy, said at the stage of arguments for sentencing that her decision to present an indictment came about after much deliberation, because of the importance of free media.”

So, as we see yet again (if we are feeling charitable), a Guardian writer’s prejudices and pre-conceived opinions regarding Israel in general and its judicial system in particular – coupled with a lack of serious research – prevent that newspaper from presenting to its readers a fair and balanced account of events. 

Were one in a less generous mood, one might alternatively raise questions regarding the professor of journalism Roy Greenslade’s own commitment  to the public’s “right to know” the whole story, rather than just cherry-picked items selected to advance an agenda. 

Jun 28 2012

The media lie of “Jews only” roads in Israel

The following is an English translation of an essay published in the Hebrew edition of Ha’aretz by Yishai Goldflam, director of Presspectiva – a site dedicated to ensuring accuracy and responsibility in the Israeli media.

Do there exist roads in Judea and Samaria that are designated for “Jews only”? Are Christians and Muslims really prohibited from traveling on roads across the Green Line?

This charge, which is often voiced in these parts, including in [Ha'aretz], provokes condemnation of Israel’s alleged racism — and is simply untrue. There appears to be a terminology confusion that produces a factual error that harms legitimate discussion and criticism of Israeli actions. 

Here are the facts: the state did, indeed, impose restrictions on certain roads in Judea and Samaria several years ago and did not allow Palestinians to travel on them, especially after the eruption of the second intifada. But most of the restrictions were already removed in 2009. Today, most West Bank roads are open to the majority of the Palestinian population. And even at the time those roads were restricted for Israeli use, they were never restricted to Israeli Jews alone. The  roads were open to all Israeli citizens – Muslims, Christians, Druze and Circassians. There was never a religious or ethnic-based separation on the roads of Judea and Samaria.

Actually this fact is crystal clear to anyone who has ever been to the area. Only someone who has never traveled in territory over the Green Line could possibly believe the claim that there exist roads for only Jews. Today, one can see license plates of Palestinians from Jenin to Hebron, on bypass roads that were allegedly built for Jews only (for example, the  Qalqilya bypass, the southern Nablus bypass, and the Ramallah bypass roads), as well as on main roads like Route 505 leading to Ariel – a road that was labeled  at least twice in this paper [Ha'aretz] “an apartheid road for Jews only.”

The Associated Press published  a correction in January 2010 stating, “These roads are open to all Israeli citizens, including Arabs,  foreigners and tourists.” Similar corrections were published on  CNN, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe. But the journalistic responsibility and  professionalism demonstrated by the world’s leading media outlets apparently made no impression on the Israeli media, which even today continues to air this false charge.

Beyond the error itself, the claim of “Jews-only” roads impairs reasonable discussion about Israeli actions. While it is possible to debate and criticize the (real) restrictions imposed on  Palestinians (all Palestinians, not just Muslims) on some West Bank roads during a specific time period, Israel and her supporters are forced to address this bogus claim of ethnic-religious separation on these roads.

Raising this claim, particularly in the Israeli media, grants it validity. Anti-Israel activists, too ignorant and lazy to substantiate their own charges, wave around “facts” they find in Israeli newspapers that supposedly “prove” the racism of the State of Israel and justify their own attacks on her. It’s hardly surprising this mendacious claim has become a major weapon in the attempt to brand Israel an “apartheid state.” Thus, irresponsible journalists and publicists contribute to the distortion of the domestic and international discussion about Israel.

Many media outlets in the world have already acknowledged their mistake and corrected it.  Is the Israeli media capable of meeting the accepted standards of  journalistic integrity?

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Jun 24 2012

Columnist for Ha’aretz, a Guardian protege paper, seeks Alice Walker’s wisdom on Israeli racism

Here’s a multiple choice question:

Maya Sela, literary correspondent for Ha’aretz, penned an essay for ‘Comment is Free’ (Alice Walker’s ‘The Color Purple” should be read in Israel, June 22nd) opposing the American writer’s decision not to allow her novel to be translated into Hebrew (a boycott against the entire Hebrew speaking country) because:

A) Singling out Israel for BDS (Boycotts, Divestment, Sanctions) is morally hypocritical and inherently racist.

B) Alice Walker is an antisemite with no moral authority by which to lecture the Jewish state and indeed has engaged in Judeophobic narratives including the following: evoking the ancient decide charge by conflating the “persecuted” Palestinians with Jesus Christ, advancing the odious charge that Israel’s sins can arguably be compared to those of Nazi Germany, and morally legitimizing a Palestinian women who prayed that God would protect her from the Jews.

C) Whatever her literary talents, many of Walker’s political views are facile and downright juvenile and she represents an embarrassment to serious left-wing critics of Israel. For instance, she believes that Israel is the greatest terrorist organization in the world and has referred to Jews who live across the green line as being on a par with the KKK.

D) Preventing Israelis from reading ‘The Color Purple’ denies Jews Walker’s liberating wisdom on how to combat their nation’s “primitive”, “sick” and “extensive” racism”.

If you guessed (D), you’re correct.

Sela begins by arguing:

“[BDS supporters like Walker] are feeding the flames of a lingering sense of victimhood. Victimhood is one of those mental constructs that is hard for Israelis to rid themselves of – and therefore, one which the Israeli establishment itself nurtures because it is convenient.”

The Ha’aretz ideological bubble which Sela inhabits is evidently as blind to the ugly reality concerning very real regional enemies possessing undeniable malevolence (insatiable antisemitism, a collective desire to wipe Israel from the map, and terrorist movements on its borders which launch hundreds of rockets into its towns each year) as it is to the circular logic it often peddles.  

What Sela is essentially saying is that singling out the democratic Jewish state for sanction doesn’t suggest that Israel is the victim of a malicious movement intent on isolating it from the community of nations but rather that it erroneously reinforces the nation’s belief that it is being victimized.  For Sela, the BDS movement is convenient for Israelis because, on some psychological level, it allows them to nurture the evidently fantastical notion that antisemitism (in its classic and anti-Zionist manifestations) is a malign and dangerous force.

Sela continues:

“Walker, of all people, who has confronted racism and written a powerful fictional critique of it, is preventing Israelis from being exposed to the very kind of literary work that is crucial for them to read….”

Whatever the powerful truths about the evils of racism imparted the book ‘The Color Purple’, Sela doesn’t offer her Ha’aretz readers so much as a clue regarding Walker’s profound blind spot when it comes to Israelis. Walker’s anti-racist street cred is necessarily eroded by an acquiescence to the most crude, often unintelligible, hate speech about Jews as such.  

Ultimately, Walker is only granted political legitimacy and moral authority by virtue of the failure of journalists like Sela to take her task (or even minimally hold her accountable) over this visceral loathing she seems to possess for one nation: the particular Jewish inhabitants of the state of Israel.

Walker may have confronted racism in her own life but when it comes to Jews, she has come to represent the hate which hate creates.

Sela concludes:

 ”It is precisely here in Israel that her voice needs to be heard, and in Hebrew.

[Walker should] have found that the occupation is only one of our problems. Perhaps it’s the most acute of our problems, but the manifestations of racism in Israeli life are far more extensive than solely attitudes towards the Palestinians. The incarceration and deportation of African migrants living in Israel…is eliciting unprecedented racism from Israelis…

Something inside us is sick.” [emphasis mine]

Perhaps the most acute pathos of the Israeli left is the failure to even marginally comprehend the ethical imperative of political and moral proportion. It is representative of a Western left, more broadly, which routinely engages in self-flagellation over every imaginable societal sin, without acknowledging that such social imperfections pale in comparison their profound progressive virtues and undeniable liberal advantages over the non-democratic world.

This is the “sickness” which, as much as any other factor, continues to define the hard left: “intellectuals” who cannot distinguish between free nations consisting of imperfect citizens with ethnocentric biases and the capacity for toxic rhetoric (but where such behavior typically elicits social opprobrium) and nations where racism, intolerance (and violence) directed against “the other” is normative, and encouraged by the state, religious leaders, the media and popular culture.  

Guardian protegés such as Ha’aretz journalist Maya Sela are also plagued by an acute moral myopia – the willingness to bestow liberal anti-racist credentials to nearly anyone who fancies themselves anti-Zionist.

A genuine intellectual left – one with a serious moral claim to that mantle – would immediately exclude any “activist” from the progressive community who, like Walker, engages in tropes about Jews which are indistinguishable from those employed by the extreme right. 

Alice Walker is no anti-racist and Jews need not take seriously her self-righteous, and supremely hubristic, lectures on intolerance.

A genuinely progressive Israeli voice would understand this intuitive truth.       

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Apr 26 2012

Guardian writers and pro-Iranian propaganda.

As all regular readers of the Guardian and its ‘Comment is Free’ website are aware, that paper long since chose to take a ‘Stop the War Coalition’-style stance on the subject of pre-emptive intervention in Iran’s nuclear programme. 

Dozens of articles have been published on the subject, the vast majority of which have argued in one form or another against a pro-active approach and promoted a benign view of both the Iranian regime and its nuclear aspirations.

On April 25th two articles were published – one by Julian Borger and the other by Saeed Kamali Dehghan – on exactly the same subject; interpretations of an interview given by the Israeli Chief of Staff to the Ha’aretz newspaper.  

Julian Borger’s piece runs with the headline “Israel army chief contradicts Netanyahu on Iran” and he uses one quote out of a very long interview as a basis for the overall impression his article attempts to make: an implication that the Israeli Prime Minister is over-reacting to the Iranian threat. In other words, Borger uses Gantz’s words to try to lend legitimacy the Guardian view of the benign nature of the Iranian nuclear programme. 

Saeed Kamali Dehghan’s headline goes even further: “Israeli military chief: Iran will not decide to make nuclear weapons” and he too stresses an alleged dissonance between the views of Gantz and those of Binyamin Netanyahu. 

Obviously, it is necessary to take Lt. Gen. Gantz’s words in the context of the entire interview rather than cherry-picking quotes perceived as convenient back-up to a specific agenda. The original Hebrew version of the interview is here. The relevant sections of the English-language translation are as follows: 

“If Iran goes nuclear it will have negative dimensions for the world, for the region, for the freedom of action Iran will permit itself,” Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz told Haaretz in an Independence Day interview.

That freedom of action might be expressed “against us, via the force Iran will project toward its clients: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Islamic Jihad in Gaza. And there’s also the potential for an existential threat. If they have a bomb, we are the only country in the world that someone calls for its destruction and also builds devices with which to bomb us. But despair not. We are a temperate state. The State of Israel is the strongest in the region and will remain so. Decisions can and must be made carefully, out of historic responsibility but without hysteria,” Gantz said.

…….

Asked whether 2012 is also decisive for Iran, Gantz shies from the term. “Clearly, the more the Iranians progress the worse the situation is. This is a critical year, but not necessarily ‘go, no-go.’ The problem doesn’t necessarily stop on December 31, 2012. We’re in a period when something must happen: Either Iran takes its nuclear program to a civilian footing only or the world, perhaps we too, will have to do something. We’re closer to the end of the discussions than the middle.”

Gantz says the international pressure on Iran, in the form of diplomatic and economic sanctions, is beginning to bear fruit. “I also expect that someone is building operational tools of some sort, just in case. The military option is the last chronologically but the first in terms of its credibility. If it’s not credible it has no meaning. We are preparing for it in a credible manner. That’s my job, as a military man.”

Iran, Gantz says, “is going step by step to the place where it will be able to decide whether to manufacture a nuclear bomb. It hasn’t yet decided whether to go the extra mile.”

As long as its facilities are not bomb-proof, “the program is too vulnerable, in Iran’s view. If the supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wants, he will advance it to the acquisition of a nuclear bomb, but the decision must first be taken. It will happen if Khamenei judges that he is invulnerable to a response. I believe he would be making an enormous mistake, and I don’t think he will want to go the extra mile. I think the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people. But I agree that such a capability, in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists who at particular moments could make different calculations, is dangerous.”

About three months ago Gantz’s U.S. counterpart, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, visited Israel as his guest. “We speak a great deal with the Americans. It’s not on the level of a discussion, where I want something concrete and he forbids it. We are partners. We and the United States have a large common alignment of interests and relations, but America looks at America and Israel [looks at] Israel. We aren’t two oceans away from the problem – we live here with our civilians, our women and our children, so we interpret the extent of the urgency differently. America says its piece openly, and what it says in the media is also said behind closed doors. It cannot be translated into lights, red or green, because no one is asking them anything in that regard.”

Gantz knows that in the event of another war he will face time pressures as a result of enemy operations against the home front. The IDF will have to bring massive force to bear from the outset, employing most of the means at its disposal quickly and without hesitation or delay.

Ground operations, long-distance fire and in-depth operations as well?

“I don’t pretend to determine that now. I am preparing for full deployment of our capabilities. The political leadership will have to take courageous, painful decisions. There are a certain number of critical decisions in a war. The chief of staff makes about 10 of these in his sphere of responsibility in wartime, and the political leadership makes about half this number.”

These decisions, Gantz knows, will be made under a barrage of rockets and missiles against civilian areas.

In light of the Arab Spring, Israel’s military preparedness must now include a much greater and more varied range of arenas and possibilities.

“I don’t know what will happen in Syria, but presumably the Golan Heights won’t be as quiet as before. I cannot remove Syria from the military equation, nor Lebanon. I assume that if there are terror threats from the Golan or Lebanon I’ll have to take action. I cannot do everything by ‘stand-off’ [remote]. The enemy’s fire capabilities have developed at every distance, four or five times what they were in the Second Lebanon War and four or five times compared to the Gaza Strip before Operation Cast Lead, not to mention the new ground-to-air missile in Syria. I go to sleep with the understanding that what we did in the recent long and comprehensive exercises could happen in reality.”

So, as is apparent after reading a more extended version of the interview, the IDF Chief of Staff is in fact far from writing off the Iranian nuclear threat and/or dangers from Iran’s various proxies in the region and his appraisal of the situation is nowhere near as far removed from that of the Israeli Prime Minister as the Guardian’s writers would have us believe.

In addition, Borger’s claim that “Gantz all but calls on Netanyahu to calm down” is shown to be no more than a figment of his own imagination and wishful thinking. The Israeli Prime Minister’s name is not even mentioned by Lt. Gen. Gantz and as anyone familiar with Israel’s highest-ranking officer knows, if he did have anything to say to Mr Netanyahu, it is highly unlikely that would be done via the pages of Ha’aretz.  

Julian Borger and Saeed Kamali Dehghan once again illustrate Guardian propaganda - the systematic spreading of information and/or disinformation, usually to promote a specific political viewpoint - in its most transparent form.