Tag Archives: Harriet Sherwood

May 15 2013

Guardian’s Sherwood self-conscripts to PR campaign for Israeli law breaker

At first glance, Harriet Sherwood’s sympathetic show-casing of an Israeli law-breaker (“Israel jails conscientious objector Natan Blanc for tenth time“, May 13th, 2013) might look like just another one of her ‘Jerusalem gossip column‘ type articles focusing on domestic Israeli events which have no relevance as far as the vast majority of Guardian readers are concerned. 

But in that article we discover that this is the second time in six weeks that Sherwood has written about the same nineteen year-old from Haifa who, in violation of Israeli law, is refusing to do his military service. 

That is undoubtedly strange.  After all, Israel is far from unique in having a law of universal conscription –  so do Denmark, Greece, Norway, Austria, Finland and Cyprus, to name but a few – but we do not see two Guardian articles in six weeks profiling one Finnish draft dodger. Neither can Sherwood’s observation in her April 1st article that “There is a prison library, but no gym” in the military prison where Blanc has been interred be said to be the most pressing of human rights issues in the Middle East at present. 

So the obvious questions arising in this writer’s mind was why would Harriet Sherwood be taking such a close interest in Natan Blanc in particular and who else is promoting this story, which has barely registered on the radar of domestic Israeli news coverage? And this is where the real story behind Sherwood’s story gets interesting. 

A search, particularly in Hebrew, reveals that Blanc’s case is being very energetically promoted by a plethora of fringe far-Left Israeli organisations and NGOs including Amnesty International Israel, ‘New Profile‘, ‘Kibush‘ , the student section of the political party ‘Hadash‘ and – first and foremost – the anti-conscription group ‘Yesh Gvul‘ which has organized a publicity campaign and rallies in the vicinity of the military prison in which Blanc has been held – with the participation on at least one occasion of flotilla participant and Warsaw Ghetto vandaliser Yonatan Shapira. 

Securing an English language article on the subject of Natan Blanc in a foreign media outlet such as the Guardian would no doubt be seen as something of an achievement to the organisers of this PR campaign. Securing two such items in less than six weeks must make them believe that Hannukah has come early.

It is time for Harriet Sherwood to come clean about her (ironic) self-conscription to a campaign promoting and aggrandising a law-breaker and about the nature of her contacts with the far-Left – and often anti-Zionist – groups which encourage other Israeli youths to break Israeli conscription law.  

 

May 13 2013

Harriet Sherwood’s Jerusalem gossip column

An article by Harriet Sherwood entitled  ”Netanyahu flies into turbulence over $127,000 bed on plane“, which appeared in the Guardian on May 12th, once again gives the impression that some of that paper’s correspondents in Israel would perhaps feel more at home scribbling for a gossip column than having to trouble themselves with the heavier geo-political factors at play in the region.

If – like the vast majority of Guardian readers – you are not an Israeli tax-payer, there is no earthly reason why the story of $127,000 spent on in-flight sleeping arrangements for the Israeli Prime Minister should interest you. If you are an Israeli tax-payer, then you would have already heard or read that item of news being dissected from every possible angle by local media organisations for two days prior to the publication of Sherwood’s article.

So what do we learn from Sherwood’s report? Well, we can tell that some kind soul seems to have translated items on the subject from Yediot Aharonot and Channel 10 for Ms. Sherwood, but that she can copy/paste bits from a Jerusalem Post article in English all by herself. We also learn that Sherwood is apparently oblivious to the long-running animosity between Channel 10 – which broke the story – and Israel’s Prime Minister.

In addition, we see that Sherwood’s report on the number of people attending protest rallies against the budget on Saturday night appears to be rather generous. 

“The revelation comes amid growing resentment over an austerity budget proposed by the finance minister Yair Lapid, a former TV personality who won popular support in January’s election by promising to champion Israel’s financially squeezed middle class. Up to 15,000 people demonstrated in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other cities on Saturday night in an echo of the massive social justice protests that swept the country two years ago.”

According to Ynet, a total of 12,000 people protested in the country as a whole. Ha’aretz reports 10,000 in Tel Aviv, 400 in Jerusalem, 200 in Haifa and 300 in Ramat Gan, whilst the Times of Israel puts the numbers at 10,000 in Tel Aviv and “hundreds” elsewhere. Yes, 12,000 is technically “up to 15,000″, just as £25 is ‘from £1.99′ but nevertheless, upping the number by 25% of the most generous estimates around is still disingenuous.  

Interestingly for someone apparently so fascinated by Israeli domestic politics, Sherwood did not bother to report on the remarks made by the new Finance Minister relating to the new budget. 

“Addressing allegations that his proposal would hurt his middle-class constituents and deliver yet more hardship to those to whom he’d promised an improvement, he wrote, ”These are fair questions that I would like to answer.” The budget cuts, he continued, were “just the first step,” which would quickly pass, followed by economic reforms that would lower the cost of living and “improve the life of the working man.” […]

 “So yes, the middle class is hurt, I don’t deny that for a minute, but at least this time it’s not the only class whose pockets are targeted,” Lapid said. He urged the public to exercise patience and wait for the reforms that would improve the people’s lives.

“I’ve been finance minister for a month and a half, during which I had to prepare a budget to close a monstrous deficit of NIS 35 billion. But even in the current budget we have created a string of programs that will fundamentally transform the economy. There will be a revolution in housing, in the job market, in the high costs of living. Can all this be accomplished in six weeks? Of course not,” he continued, likening the budget cuts to “an emergency maneuver to stop the bleeding.” “

Were Sherwood based in Luxembourg or Monte Carlo, we might be able to understand the ‘slow news day’ reasons for a six hundred and thirty-eight word article based on a local interest story which will be of little consequence to the majority of its readers. But she isn’t, and there is no such thing as a slow news day in the Middle East. 

May 11 2013

Guardian’s BDS promotion fails to tell readers what it really is

The Guardian’s coverage of Stephen Hawking’s decision to withdraw from a conference in Israel has so far included no fewer than eight items in three days.

The initial report by Harriet Sherwood and Matthew Kalman – published on May 8th – was followed by a sensationalist Guardian poll on the subject and another article by Sherwood on the same day. The next day – May 9th – Sherwood and Kalman were joined by Sam Jones to produce an additional report which includes quotes from Omar Barghouti and Samia al Botmeh, without making it clear that the latter is a member of PACBI – the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel – and a policy advisor for Al Shabaka. 

Also on May 9th, the Guardian published an article by Jennifer Lipman criticising Hawking’s decision and a piece by Ali Abunimah – also of Al Shabaka – in its support. On May 10th yet another article by Harriet Sherwood, together with Robert Booth, appeared on the Guardian’s pages and that was accompanied by the publication of four letters on the subject – three of which supported Hawking’s decision. 

Throughout all that plethora of coverage, the Guardian has made no effort whatsoever to explain to its readers the aims of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign and the ideology which steers quotees such as Barghouti and al Botmeh or contributor Abunimah.

Ironically, the nearest thing to such an explanation comes in Abunimah’s article where he states: 

“The Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) aims to change this dynamic. It puts the initiative back in the hands of Palestinians. The goal is to build pressure on Israel to respect the rights of all Palestinians by ending its occupation and blockade of the West Bank and Gaza Strip; respecting the rights of Palestinian refugees who are currently excluded from returning to their homes just because they are not Jews; and abolishing all forms of discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel.”

Couched in the fashionable, yet much abused, language of “universal human rights”, Abunimah’s flowery yet anodyne description will do little to help readers understand that the ultimate product of the BDS delegitimisation campaign – if allowed to succeed – will be the denial of the basic human right of self-determination to Jews.

“PACBI leads the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel, but of course its real aim is not merely to persuade musicians to refuse to appear in Tel Aviv or to encourage people not to buy Israeli goods.  The bottom line of all the PACBI rhetoric is that with its uncompromising demand for the ‘right of return’ for Palestinian refugees to places west of the ‘green line’, it aspires to eliminate Israel as the Jewish state in precisely the same manner as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad do.  Members of PACBI, including the suited academics at Birzeit, may not be building bombs, firing rockets or strapping on suicide belts, but their ultimate aims are identical to those who do.”

The leaders of the BDS movement are ‘one-staters’: their ultimate hope is not to see the Israeli state and a Palestinian state existing peacefully side by side. Their aim – which is entirely transparent to those not dazzled by the faux human rights rhetoric – is one Palestinian state ‘from the river to the sea’, with – at best – a minority Jewish group making up part of its population. It is therefore not surprising that in 2010 an Al Shabaka policy brief opened with the following question:

“Many commentators expect the direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians to fail. But there is a much worse scenario: What if they “succeed?” “

It is, of course, the Guardian’s prerogative to promote the BDS campaign’s latest high-profile ‘poster boy’ as much as it likes, but in the name of common or garden honesty it should at least have the courage of its ‘feel good’ convictions to explain to its readers the precise nature of the discriminatory, antisemitic, anti-peace ideology (which stands in direct opposition to international efforts to bring the Arab-Israeli conflict to a peaceful conclusion) which the Guardian appears to have etched upon its banner. 

Apr 30 2013

The Guardian: Where Jews are “hardline”, while Hamas tries to ‘rein in extremists’.

In an April 7 post, we asked how many of the roughly 800 Jews currently living in the ancient city of Hebron Harriet Sherwood had spoken to or interviewed.  Our interest in the Guardian Jerusalem correspondent’s familiarity with Hebron’s Jews was piqued by the following sentence in her April 4 report about an outbreak of violence in the West Bank – including in Israelis cities such as Hebron.

After the funeral Palestinian youths threw stones at Israeli soldiers close to an extremist Jewish settlement in the heart of the city. The Israeli military responded with teargas, stun grenades and rubber bullets

We noted that by referring to a community of hundreds of Israelis as “extremists”, Sherwood was lazily imputing widespread fanaticism without evidence – and, more broadly, conveying a message that there’s something radical or extreme about the desire to maintain even a small Jewish presence in Hebron, the oldest Jewish community in the world.

Our April 7 post is relevant in contextualizing Sherwood’s report on today’s terrorist attack in the West Bank – in which a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli man to death, then grabbed his weapon and fired at nearby border police.

Sherwood begins her piece, entitled ‘Israeli security forces deployed in West Bank after settler is stabbed to death‘, April 30, with the following information, which includes a curious reference to the victim’s home town:

Large numbers of Israeli security forces have been deployed in the West Bank after an Israeli settler was stabbed to death by a Palestinian amid fears that the killing could trigger widespread confrontations.

Eviatar Borovzky, 30, a father of five children and a part-time security guard at the hardline settlement of Yitzhar, near Nablus, died of his wounds at the scene of the attack.

Even if the contention that some Jews who live in Yitzhar are “hardline” has merit, it’s unclear what significance the politics of the victim’s home city has in understanding the attack, anymore than the fact that the terrorist suspect is reportedly from a city (Tulkarem) where several deadly terrorist attacks have originated would have relevance.

Sherwood’s report also included the following:

Around the same time [as the attack on Borovzky],an Israeli air strike killed an alleged Palestinian militant in Gaza in the first targeted assassination since the eight-day war last November. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said Haitham Masshal, 24, had been involved in a recent rocket attack on the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat. It described him as a “Global-Jihad-affiliated terrorist” and said he had “acted in different Jihad Salafi terror organisations and over the past few years has been a key terror figure”.

…

Hamas, the Islamist organisation which controls Gaza, has observed the ceasefire agreement that ended November’s conflict. However, in the past two months there has been renewed intermittent rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, blamed on small extremist organisations that Hamas is trying to rein in.

So, according to Sherwood, Hamas is trying to “rein in” extremism in Gaza.

Briefly:

  • Hamas is recognized as a terrorist movement by the US, EU, Canada, Japan, the U.K., and Australia.
  • Hamas’s founding charter cites the wisdom of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to “prove” that Jews are indeed trying to take over the world.
  • Hamas has carried out hundreds of deadly terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.
  • Hamas leaders have called for genocide against the Jews.

Regarding the final bullet point, here’s one example: Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior leader and co-founder of Hamas, is seen in this video waxing eloquently (on Al-Aqsa TV in 2010) about the the Jews’ future in the Middle East:

No, there’s clearly nothing “extremist” or “hardline” about that!

Related articles
Apr 29 2013

Harriet Sherwood and Phoebe Greenwood take steps towards understanding Palestinian incitement

gaza_2548597bThe failure of many to truly understand the ‘root causes’ of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and accurately contextualize news in the region is based in part on the MSM’s general tendency to ignore or significantly downplay the pervasive antisemitism and anti-Zionist agitation within Palestinian society.

This blog’s ‘What the Guardian won’t report‘ series often focuses on such disturbing stories about the official Palestinian glorification of violence, racist indoctrination of their children and other such grossly underreported examples of the reactionary Palestinian political ethos which ‘genuine’ advocates for peace can not reasonably ignore.

Whilst reasonable people can argue over what degree such Palestinian incitement represents an impediment to peace relative to other factors, such as the issue of Israeli “settlements”, the Guardian’s obsessive focus on the latter and their almost total silence about the former serves to grossly misinform their readers on the politics of the region.

As such, it was encouraging to read a recent story by the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood, entitled ’Gaza schoolboys being trained to use Kalashnikovs‘, April 28, which reports on news that Hamas is now providing Gaza schools with military training for young boys.  The program, which includes the use of firearms and explosives, will likely be extended to girls next year.

Sherwood even quotes Al Mezan, a Gaza-based “human rights organisation”, criticizing the program thusly:

“It’s unbelievable. Hamas has been cutting sports activities in schools for the past six years, saying there is no time in the curriculum, but now they find the time to have military training inside schools,”

Additionally, on the very same day that Sherwood filed her story, Phoebe Greenwood published a piece at The Telegraph entitled ‘Hamas teaches Palestinian schoolboys to how to fire Kalashnikovs’ – a report which is especially noteworthy in the context of a CiF Watch post back in 2011 which noted Greenwood’s skepticism over ‘claims’ made by Israeli officials regarding Palestinian incitement. 

Though both reports are problematic in many respects, and indeed ignore the broader problem of Palestinian incitement in both the West Bank and Gaza, it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

Further, we can at least hope that Sherwood and Greenwood will follow-up on their stories and continue to inform their readers on the pathos within Palestinian political culture which inspires the constant vilification of Israel and dehumanization of Jews - a dynamic which makes most Israelis wary of the conventional wisdom which uncritically accepts that a two-state solution will necessarily result in peace.

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Apr 18 2013

The Guardian refers to Palestinian terrorist Samer Issawi as a “political prisoner”.

Last week, we posted about an April 9 story by Harriet Sherwood which reported on recent efforts by US Secretary of State John Kerry to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Sherwood’s story included  details about some of the concessions demanded by PA President Mahmoud Abbas before he will agree to resume negotiations with Israel, and included the following sentence:

The Palestinians also want the release of 123 political prisoners who have been in jail since before the Oslo accords were signed almost 20 years ago, and for Israel to present a map showing proposed borders. [emphasis added]

As we demonstrated, however, most of the 123 Palestinians she alluded to (whose release Abbas has been demanding since last year), were convicted for their involvement in deadly terror attacks. Sherwood’s characterization of the 123 Palestinians as “political prisoners” – suggesting that they were imprisoned merely for their beliefs – is erroneous.  We also observed that Sherwood was evoking the Palestinian narrative which insists that even “compatriots convicted of deadly terrorist acts [are] political prisoners and fighters for the Palestinian cause”.

Sherwood’s latest, ‘EU urged to secure Palestinian prisoner’s release from Israeli jail‘, April 17, again advances this misleading narrative in a report on recent demands by Saeb Erekat that Palestinian prisoner Samer Issawi – who’s been on a hunger strike to protest his detention – should be released.

Here’s the photo the Guardian used to illustrate the story:

Samer Issawi protest

Here’s the Guardian’s photo caption:

Protesters in London hold up posters calling for freedom of Palestinian political prisoners including hunger striker Samer Issawi.

Issawi – who was freed by Israel in 2011 as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange, but recently re-arrested for violating his release conditions - was originally sentenced to 26 years in prison for his involvement in a series of violent terror attacks, including indiscriminately firing an assault rifle at public buses, and manufacturing and distributing pipe bombs used in attacks on Israeli civilians.

A “political prisoner” is a person ‘imprisoned for their political beliefs or actions’.

No reasonable person can characterize Issawi’s crimes in a manner which fits that definition.

It is indeed that simple. 

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Apr 14 2013

The Guardian continues to yawn over Palestinians summarily executed in Gaza

A couple of days following the start of the November war between Israel and Hamas, masked Palestinian gunmen in Gaza publicly executed seven Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel – a story which was widely covered.   

According to Palestinian witnesses, at around noon on Nov. 16 a van stopped at a Gaza City intersection, and several masked men pushed seven suspected ‘informers’ out of the vehicle.  The gunmen then ordered them to lie face down in the street and shot them all in the head.  Shortly after the killing, a mob surrounded the corpses and some in the crowd “stomped and spat on the bodies”, while others kicked the head of one of the dead men.

One of the corpses was tied to a motorcycle and dragged through the streets as people reportedly screamed, “God is Great!”.

Palestinian gunmen ride motorcycles as they drag the body of a man, who was suspected of working for Israel, in Gaza City

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“They should have been killed in a more brutal fashion so others don’t even think about working with the occupation,” said one of the Palestinian bystanders.

The victims allegedly had notices tied around their necks saying they had been killed by Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades - Hamas’s ‘armed wing’.

In stark contrast to the Guardian’s intense coverage of the 8 day war – which included an official Guardian editorial, frequent updates at their ‘Middle East Live blog‘, and direct reporting from Gaza City by Harriet Sherwood and Chris McGreal - their only stand alone story about this brutal extra-judicial killing was an anonymous AP story on Nov. 20.

Additionally, the Guardian has also thus far failed to cover a recent report by Human Rights Watch (widely reported in the mainstream media) condemning Hamas for failing to investigate the Nov. 16 summary executions.  HRW noted that Hamas’s failure to investigate “the brazen murders” make “a mockery of its claims that it’s upholding the rule of law in Gaza”. 

Whilst the suggestion that Hamas would ever conduct a fair inquiry into human rights violations committed by its own military is of course absurd, the Guardian’s lack of interest in the savage murder of seven Gazans – particularly in contrast to their intense focus on Palestinian terrorists imprisoned by Israel who engage in hunger strikes - continues to make a mockery of claims that their concern for Palestinian rights is principled, and not largely inspired by an animus towards Israel.

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Apr 10 2013

Harriet Sherwood refers to jailed Palestinians who Abbas wants released as “political prisoners”

Harriet Sherwood’s April 9 report, about recent efforts by US Secretary of State John Kerry to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, included several passages about concessions demanded of Israel by Mahmoud Abbas before he will agree to resume negotiations.

Ahead of a three-hour session with Kerry on Tuesday morning, Netanyahu stated that he was “determined not only to resume the peace process with the Palestinians, but to make a serious effort to end this conflict once and for all”.

But he has refused to meet the Palestinians’ key precondition of freezing settlement expansion, although it is thought that Israel may avoid announcing any new construction projects in the coming weeks.

The Palestinians also want the release of 123 political prisoners who have been in jail since before the Oslo accords were signed almost 20 years ago, and for Israel to present a map showing proposed borders. [emphasis added]

However, according to reports, most of the 123 Palestinians she’s alluding to (whose release Abbas has been demanding since last year), were convicted for their involvement in deadly terror attacks. Sherwood’s characterization of the 123 Palestinians as “political prisoners” – suggesting that they were imprisoned merely for their beliefs – is not true. 

For instance, one of the pre-Oslo prisoners evidently on the list presented by Abbas – and dutifully characterized as a “political prisoner” by the NGOs Adalah and Addameer - is Walid Dakka (alternately spelled as “Daka” or “Dakah”).  Dakka is an Israeli Arab (“Palestinian citizen of Israel”) who was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1986 (later reduced to 35-40 years) for his involvement in a PFLP cell which kidnapped and murdered an Israeli soldier named Moshe Tamam two years earlier.

On the road between Neurim and Netanya near Havazelet Hasharon, Moshe Tamam’s family built a monument in his honor:

tamam1

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The inscription reads:

“A memorial for our son the soldier, the beloved and dear Tamam Moshe. We will remember him forever. Born on June 13, 1965 in Havazelet , Hasharon. He was kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by terrorists. He was only 19 years old. 

‘A gazelle lies slain on your heights,  O Israel. How the mighty have fallen!’”  [2nd Samuel, chapter 1, verse 19]

If you’re wondering why Sherwood decided to use such language about Palestinian prisoners, the following passage – from a recent NYT story about Maysara Abu Hamdiya, the convicted terrorist who died of cancer on April 2 - may shed some light:

Prisoners in Israeli custody hold an honored place in Palestinian society, with many Palestinians regarding even compatriots convicted of deadly terrorist acts as political prisoners and fighters for the Palestinian cause. 

Sherwood was, intentionally or otherwise, legitimizing the Palestinian narrative which glorifies terrorists and consistently characterizes even those prisoners convicted of the most gruesome crimes as ‘victims’ of Israeli oppression. 

Related articles
Apr 8 2013

Guardian continues pushing false narrative of Israel’s ‘lurch towards the right’.

On Jan. 22, shortly after exit polls were published on the evening of the Israeli election, we published a post demonstrating that the Guardian’s predictions prior to the election – warning of a dangerous shift to the right – were proven entirely inaccurate.

Scare passages from their “analysts” before Israelis went to the polls included predictions of “a more hawkish and pro-settler government“, “a more right-wing and uncompromising government than Israel has ever seen before“, and ”the most right-wing government in its history“

The Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent Harriet Sherwood predicted that “Netanyahu’s parliamentary group will be markedly more rightwing after 22 January.”

When all the votes were counted, it was confirmed that the country had moved slightly to the left in comparison to the 2009 results, and the government formed by Binyamin Netanyahu and presented to President Peres on Feb. 22 - comprised of Likud-Israel Beiteinu, Yesh Atid, Jewish Home, and Hatnua (Tzipi Livni’s party) – represented, broadly speaking, a centrist coalition.

The Guardian invested heavily in promoting their desired political narrative of a Jewish state lurching to the far right, and they got it completely wrong. 

Whilst we didn’t expect a mea culpa from the Guardian, their March 17 editorial on Obama’s visit to Israel, which lamented the ‘dim prospects’ for a breakthrough in peace negotiations, made a quite telling mistake – conveniently omitting one member of the new government.  The editorial misled readers by claiming that the coalition was composed of ”the Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu bloc: Yesh Atid, founded by former TV personality Yair Lapid; and Jewish Home, a party linked to the West Bank settler movement led by Naftali Bennett” – leaving out Tzipi Livni (Hutna), whose aggressive position on the need to resume peace talks would have undermined their desired narrative.  

The editorial was only adjusted to reflect reality when CiF Watch contacted Guardian editors and alerted them to the mistake.

The Guardian error, it should be noted, was especially egregious in light of the fact Livni, who led negotiations with Abbas while serving as foreign minister under Ehud Olmert, will be in Bibi’s inner cabinet, a member of the security cabinet and will lead a small team of “personally appointed staff into peace talks with the Palestinians”.

Harriet Sherwood’s latest report on efforts by US Secretary of State John Kerry to revive peace talks, ‘John Kerry returns to Middle East amid lowered expectations’, similarly demonstrates an unwillingness to acknowledge the profound errors in predictions that she, and her Guardian colleagues, confidently offered in the weeks leading to the election.

Sherwood’s report includes the following passages:

Kerry is believed to be keen to dust off the 11-year-old Arab (or Saudi) peace plan, under which regional states would normalise relations with Israel in return for the establishment of a Palestinian state. And he is likely to ask Turkey to play an active role in any revived process.

It all seems reasonably promising on paper, but the reality on the ground looks rather different.

The new Israeli government, sworn in two days before Obama’s visit, is a rightwing pro-settler coalition

In the spirit of the Guardian editorial from March 22, Sherwood conveniently omitted the presence of center-left parties (Yesh Atid and Hatnua) in Bibi’s 68 seat coalition – a government which, for only the third time since 1977, excludes ultra-orthodox parties.

Whilst terms such as “right”, “left” and “center” are, in fairness, fraught with problems, it’s interesting to observe that the decidedly liberal Jewish newspaper, The Forward’, for instance, saw fit to characterize the new government, in a March 14 report, as  ’reflecting a shift to the centre’.

In fact, even Al-Jazeera, on March 15, in a story titled ‘Turbulent road ahead for Netanyahu coalition‘, avoided characterizing the new government in such deceptively monolithic terms.  Instead, they wrote that the “Centre-right [Israeli] government set to be formed in Israel seems wired for dysfunction”, and noted the ideological split represented by the four party coalition.

In our election eve post we predicted that the Guardian would likely learn nothing from their journalistic miscalculation about the political trajectory of the Jewish state – that, once again, nothing would be learned which could serve to lessen the grip of their hubris, the rigidity of their ideology. 

It doesn’t provide any comfort to note that our suspicions appear to have been valid.

Related articles
Apr 7 2013

The Guardian’s lazy, pejorative characterization of Jews in Hebron

How many of the roughly 800 Jews living in the ancient city of Hebron has Harriet Sherwood interviewed?

My curiosity regarding the Guardian Jerusalem correspondent’s familiarity with Hebron’s Jews was piqued by the following sentence in her April 4 report about recent violence in the West Bank (after “five months of calm“) following the death of convicted Palestinian terrorist Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, titled ‘Palestinian protesters clash with Israeli soldiers in West Bank‘:

After the funeral Palestinian youths threw stones at Israeli soldiers close to an extremist Jewish settlement in the heart of the city. The Israeli military responded with teargas, stun grenades and rubber bullets

Hebron’s Jewish community, which currently includes some “90 families and 200-350 yeshiva students”, is perhaps the oldest Jewish community in the world (dating back to Biblical times) and is designated as the second holiest city in Judaism, containing sites of historical significance such as the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

Jews have lived in Hebron almost continuously throughout the Byzantine, Arab, Mameluke, and Ottoman periods, and it was only in 1929 — as a result of an Arab pogrom in which 67 Jews were murdered and the remainder forced to flee — that the city became temporarily free of Jews.

Under Jordanian control from 1949 to 1967 Jews not only were not allowed to live in Hebron but were barred from entering the Tomb of the Patriarchs, while authorities undertook a systematic campaign to obliterate any evidence of Jewish history in the city.  They “razed the Jewish Quarter, desecrated the Jewish cemetery and built an animal pen on the ruins of the Avraham Avinu synagogue”.

Shortly following Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, the Jewish community of Hebron was re-established, and today – consistent with the terms of the 1997 Hebron Agreement signed by the Palestinian Authority - is comprised of  two sections – H1 and H2.  H1 is all Palestinian (population apx. 120,000), while the city’s entire Jewish population resides in H2 (a geographical unit which is also home to 30,000 Palestinians).

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Jews in Hebron

Whilst Hebron is of course positioned on the ‘other side’ of the 1949 armistice lines (the green line), characterizing Jews who currently live in Hebron as “settlers” falsely suggests that they are interlopers, colonizing land with which they have no connection.  Worse, referring to a community of hundreds of Israelis as “extremists”, as Sherwood does, imputes widespread fanaticism without even a hint of evidence – conveying a message that there’s something radical or extreme about the desire to maintain even a small Jewish presence in the city.

Moreover, would the Guardian ever countenance such a negative characterization of residents within a Palestinian Arab city – even for places which have generated a large proportion of terrorist acts?

Try sounding these hypothetical sentences out in your head and decide whether they could conceivably ever be published at the Guardian in any context:

In 2002 Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield, which included a large anti-terror operation in the “extremist” Palestinian city of Jenin.

Or, how about this:

A rocket was fired into Israel today from Gaza City, “the extremist Palestinian city“.

Each example cites Palestinian towns where, by any standard, there has been a disproportionate amount of terrorist activity.  Yet, is there any doubt that the Guardian would never, under any circumstances, make such a huge generalization about every inhabitant of these cities?

Whilst it would of course be fair – based on the context and information in a particular story – to refer to specific Jews (or specific Jewish groups) within Hebron or other ‘settlements’ as “extremist” (as Sherwood did in an Aug. 12 report about Jews who physically attacked Palestinians for nationalist motives) stereotyping an entire community of Jews with such a pejorative is inaccurate, illiberal and intellectually lazy. 

Apr 5 2013

What Harriet Sherwood’s “five months of calm” in Israel actually looks like.

Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, a Palestinian who was serving a life term for recruiting a terrorist to carry out a suicide attack against Israeli civilians inside a crowded Jerusalem cafe in 2002, died of cancer on Tuesday. 

(Dozens of people at the Caffit Cafe on Emek Refaim were spared death or injury when the bomber’s suicide belt failed to detonate.)

Despite the fact that the convicted terrorist – who was diagnosed with advanced cancer of the esophagus in February - had been treated by Israel’s top oncology doctors at Beersheba’s Soroka Hospital, his death was immediately used by the Palestinian Authority to stoke violence in the West Bank.  President Mahmoud Abbas, and Minister of Prisoner Affairs Issa Qaraqe, among others, immediately accused Israel of medical negligence.

In addition to riots by prisoners in Israeli jails which ensued after Hamdiyeh’s death, Palestinians have been violently taking to the streets in Hebron and throughout the West Bank and throwing rocks and explosives at Israeli soldiers.  Israeli civilian vehicles have also increasingly come under attack on roads in the West Bank since Tuesday.

Also since Tuesday, terrorist organisations in Gaza have launched missiles at Israeli communities for the third time since the eight-day November war ended.  For three straight days, rockets were fired from Gaza, with two rockets exploding in open areas near Sderot on Wednesday “triggering alerts and sending frightened families fleeing for shelter”.  Additionally on Wednesday, a global jihadi group in Gaza  targeted Sderot with rocket fire just as parents were bringing their children to school. Fortunately, there were no injuries stemming from the attacks.

In response, the Israeli Air Force struck two terror targets in the Gaza Strip, representing the first Israeli response to Gaza rocket fire since the end of the November war in Gaza.  The IAF didn’t respond to a rocket attack launched from Gaza on March 21 during President Obama’s visit to Israel, which ended up striking an Israeli nursery school in Sderot (which was closed for the holidays), nor to a Feb. 26  Gaza missile fired towards the town of Ashkelon.

Rocket believed fired last month during Obama visit; kindergarten had been closed for Passover holiday, delaying discovery. (Photo courtesy of Sderot Media Center)

Rocket believed fired last month during Obama visit; kindergarten had been closed for Passover holiday, delaying discovery. (Photo courtesy of Sderot Media Center)

The recent violence was reported by Harriet Sherwood in the Guardian on April 4th.

Her report, from Hebron, was titled ‘Palestinian protesters clash with Israeli soldiers in West Bank‘, and contained the following strap line:

Clashes come as militants fire rockets at Israel for third day, sparking fears of fresh wave of violence after five months of calm

Sherwood echoed the narrative advanced in the strap line in her second paragraph:

Palestinian protesters clashed with soldiers after thousands of mourners turned out for the funerals of a 64-year-old cancer-stricken prisoner and two teenage boys shot dead by the Israeli military, the latest sign of the increasing turbulence across the West Bank.

Meanwhile Gaza militants fired rockets towards Israel for the third consecutive day in a move that threatens to trigger a fresh cycle of violence after almost five months of calm since the eight-day war last November.

Whilst some narratives about the conflict are open to interpretation, it really is difficult to understand how a professional journalist covering the region can honestly characterize the months since the November war as “calm”.

The following is terror data was compiled by the Israel Security Agency, but many of the attacks listed were also reported in the media at the time:

  • In March 2013 there were 125 terror attacks, with most of the attacks executed in the form of firebombs. Six Israelis were injured: five citizens and one security officer. Five of them were injured by firebombs (a security officer in Judea on March 3, and 4 Israelis on the Trans-Samaria Highway on March 14), and one citizen was shot (March 18) near a gas station in Kedumim (West Bank).
  • In Feb 2013, there were 139 terror attacks. Again, most attacks were in the form of firebombs. Three Israelis – one civilian and two security officers – were injured. They were all wounded during separate stone hurling and firebombing incidents during rioting in Jerusalem and the West Bank. The civilian was injured in Bitunya / Binyamin area (21 Feb.), and the two security officers were injured in Issawiya / Jerusalem (9 Feb.) and in Hebron (22 Feb.).
  • In January 2013, there were 83 terror attacks: Three Israelis were injured: an Israeli citizen was moderately injured in a stabbing attack in the West Bank (January 29), and two security officers were injured by a firebomb near Al Aroub (January 3) and by stone-throwing in the nearby area of Rachel’s Tomb (January 13).
  • In December 2012 there were 112 terror attacks. Three Israeli security officials were injured: two were stabbed in the West Bank (December 3), one was run over by car in Jerusalem (December 23).

It was difficult to gather information on terror attacks which may have occurred in the last nine days of November (after the Nov. 21 ceasefire), but, even assuming for the sake of argument that there were no attacks during that period, in the four-months beginning in December there were 459 terror attacks – a fact which definitively undermines Sherwood’s characterization of life in Israel during that time. 

One of the victims of Palestinian terrorism during this period, 3-year-old Adele Biton, is still fighting for her life in an Israeli hospital – weeks after the car she was travelling in with her mother and two sisters was hit by Palestinian rock throwers.  The rocks caused the car to swerve, and it rammed into a truck parked on the side of the road. 

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Adele Biton

Though her mother and siblings were also injured in the attack, Adele suffered severe trauma and is still listed in critical condition.

Mar 31 2013

What the Guardian didn’t tell you about Palestinian youths arrested in Hebron

On March 20, the Guardian’s ongoing Middle East Live blog included a dispatch titled ‘Children Arrested“.

Here is the complete forty-eight word post – which included a B’Tselem video:

The Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, has uploaded new footage of appearing to show Israeli soldiers arresting Palestinian children, some as young as eight, in Hebron.

It demanded an emergency intervention by the authorities to secure the release of some of the children it claims are still detained.

Here is the B’Tselem video they showed:

Further, if you open the video in YouTube, and look at B’Tselem’s description, here’s what you’ll read:

B’Tselem this morning urgently contacted the Army’s Legal Advisor for Judea and Samaria, demanding his emergency intervention regarding the detention of numerous children, including some as young as 8 to 10 years old, by the Israeli military this morning in Hebron. Preliminary information received this morning indicates that Soldiers detained or arrested over twenty minors on their way to school. About ten of them were released. The video was filmed by an international activist.

The Guardian reader – as well as those who came across the story on B’Tselem’s YouTube Channel, and at other news sites which reported the story - would be forgiven for believing that Israeli security forces arbitrarily arrested innocent Palestinian children on their way to school.

However, here’s the rest of the story – the full picture which the Guardian will likely never report:

Per IDF Spokesperson Barak Raz:

On the morning of March 20, 2013, following near daily rock throwing at civilians passing by and security forces positioned in the area, the perpetrators of the rock throwing were apprehended and detained during such an incident. 27 were detained, of whom 7 were transferred to the police and 20 were released.

Contrary to reports and footage of children being “arrested on their way to school,” THIS is the complete picture of what really happened and what, in fact, led to that arrest .

As we said that morning, this arrest was carried out in real-time during an incident of rock throwing, and following similar incidents that had occurred almost daily.

Unfortunately, we experienced technical difficulties that morning with retrieving the footage, but we did make it very clear that footage made available from that incident only showed the arrest, and not what had led to it. The fact that we had such footage was also made very clear that morning, despite the claims that were made.

Here’s the video Barak posted:

For those still under the illusion that rock throwing is not a serious matter, recall that  just yesterday, March 30, a 4-year-old boy was wounded when the car he was traveling in was pelted by rocks on Route 60 near Efrat.

On March 14, an Israeli woman and her daughters, ages 3, 4 and 5, were injured after a car accident in the West Bank caused by rocks thrown by Palestinians. The 3-year-old – whose injuries were the most critical – was not breathing when medics arrived at the scene, and had to be resuscitated with a mouth-to-mouth procedure.  The Five Palestinian suspects arrested by Israeli security forces, and who all confessed to the attack, were 16 and 17-year-old youths from Kfar Haras.

On January 16, “an Israeli child was injured when Palestinians heaved a rock through the windshield of the car he was riding in”.

Rocks result 2

Child injured in rock attack

In December, 2012, Palestinians threw rocks at a car on Route 505. One of the rocks − which was a full 12 centimeters wide and 19 centimeters long − “shattered the windshield and struck a 12-year-old girl, breaking her skull.”

One of the most serious recent attacks occurred in Sept. of 2011 when Palestinians rock throwers caused a crash which killed Asher Hillel Palmer, 25, and his one-year-old son Yonatan near Kiryat Arba.  

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The wreckage of the car Asher Palmer and his son were traveling in when they were killed in 2011.

The story about the murder of Jonathan and Asher was all but buried by the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent, Harriet Sherwood, who, in a report which focused mainly on another incident, referred to the victims not by their names, but as “a settler and his infant son.”

Israeli security officials have noted an increase in recent months of such attacks against Israeli civilian targets and vehicles.  In 2013 there has already been 1,195 incidents of rock throwing. 

Four out of the six Israelis murdered by Arab rock throwers since 2000 were children. 

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Mar 21 2013

Harriet Sherwood on today’s Palestinian rocket attack: An error & an improvement

Earlier today Palestinian terrorists in Gaza fired four Kassam rockets at Israel, triggering red alert sirens throughout the south.  One rocket landed in a residential courtyard in Sderot, seen here:

rocketAt 10:26 GMT, the Guardian’s Live Blog on President Obama’s visit to Israel included the following dispatch by Harriet Sherwood.

Two rockets fired from Gaza landed in Sderot, an Israeli city in southern Israel, this morning. It was the first time that militants in Gaza have fired rockets since a truce ended the eight-day mini-war, Operation Pillar of Defence, in November.

According to Israel’s Army Radio, one of the rockets exploded in the yard of the Haziza family. The mother of the family, Sara, said: “Let Obama come and see how people live, we build houses and villas but we live inside a cage, in a protected room. Nothing is worth it for us. Let Obama come and see how an eight-year old girl has to run to a protected room that is completely open, and how I can’t close the door of the protected room.”

Obama referred to the southern Israel city, which he visited before becoming president, in his short speech on arrival in Israel, saying: “I’ve stood in Sderot, and met with children who simply want to grow up free from fear.”

There were no casualties, and no immediate claim of responsibility. [emphasis added]

First, it is important to note that Sherwood’s brief post represents an improvement in comparison to how the Guardian typically covers news of such terrorist attacks. She personalized the Israeli victims, noting the name of the family whose home was nearly hit, and even included a quote by the mother of the family.  (For additional posts on Sherwood’s improvement in covering the region, see here and here.)

However, Sherwood made an error. Today’s rocket attacks were not the first since the end of ‘Pillar of Defense’.

On Dec. 23, 2012, Palestinians in Gaza fired a rocket aimed at Israel (but which didn’t reach the Israeli side of the border).  

Additionally, on Feb. 26, 2013, Palestinians fired an M-75 rocket at the city of Ashkelon.  (The rocket fell on a road south of the city.) Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the terrorist group associated with the party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah, claimed responsibility for the attack.  The group reportedly stated that the attack was a response to the death of Al Aqsa Brigades member Arafat Jaradat while in Israeli custody. 

Of further interest in the context of Sherwood’s omission, the the Guardian’s  actually reported the Feb 26 rocket attack on Ashkelon, on that day’s edition of their ongoing Middle East ‘Live Blog’.

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Mar 8 2013

Guardian & BBC got the death of Omar Misharawi wrong: But, nothing will change.

They all got the story wrong.

The Washington Post, The Daily Mail, The Sun, The Telegraph, The Huffington Post, MSN, Yahoo, CBC News, and, of course, the BBC and the Guardian (among others), all accused Israel of firing a missile, during the November Gaza war, at a house east of Gaza City which killed the 11 month old son of BBC Arabic journalist Jihad Misharawi and his sister-in-law. (Misharawi’s brother also later died of wounds suffered in the blast.)

Here’s the Guardian’s Roy Greenslade on Nov. 15.

roy

Greenslade opens with the following:

The 11-month-old son of a BBC staffer was killed yesterday during an air strike by the Israeli army on the Gaza strip.

Here’s a Nov. 15 Guardian report by Paul Owens and Tom McCarthy:

owens

Note: Guardian caption is incorrect. The infant’s name is Omar. Ahmad is the brother of Jihad Misharawi.

The story began thusly:

A grim new feud opened up on social media on Thursday as pictures were traded of babies who died or were injured during the conflict in Gaza.

Pictures emerged of BBC cameraman Jihad Misharawi’s 11-month-old son Omar, who was killed on Wednesday during an Israeli attack. Misharawi’s sister-in-law also died in the strike on Gaza City, and his brother was seriously injured.

Harriet Sherwood reported the following on Dec. 11, in a follow-up on the aftermath of the war:

harriet

Of course, the death of an infant is always a horrible tragedy and anyone would be moved by images of Jihad Misharawi’s unimaginable grief.

However,  as with any story deemed worthy of attention by professional journalists, facts matter – and, in contrast with the MSM, others in the blogosphere were skeptical about the veracity of the accepted narrative. 

Elder of Ziyon and BBC Watch (and other blogs) were among those who examined the evidence and suggested the possibility that Omar Misharawi was killed by an errant Palestinian rocket.  

Elder noted that “the hole in the ceiling look a lot like what Qassam rocket damage looks like when they hit homes in Israel” and that the photos of the building where the child was killed looked nothing like the damage to Gaza buildings from Israeli airstrikes.

BBC Watch’s Hadar Sela noted, on Nov. 25, that the “BBC has doggedly avoided conducting any sort of investigation whatsoever into the subject of Palestinians killed or injured by at least 152 known shortfalls of rockets fired by [Palestinian] terrorists during [the Gaza war].”

Their skepticism was well-founded.

On March 6th 2013 the UNHRC issued an advance version of its report on the November war and Elder of Ziyon thoroughly read the whole thing. The report states on page 14 that a UN investigation found that:

“On 14 November, a woman, her 11-month-old infant, and an 18-year-old adult in Al-Zaitoun were killed by what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of Israel.” [emphasis added]

A Palestinian rocket killed baby Omar, Hiba (the sister-in-law of Jihad) and Ahmed (Jihad’s brother who later succumbed to his wounds).

Whether or not the BBC, Guardian and others will revise their stories to note that Gaza terrorists (and not the IDF) were responsible for the death of Omar, Hiba and Ahmed Misharawi, Sela made the following point:

It is impossible to undo the extensive damage done by the BBC with this story. No apology or correction can now erase it from the internet or from the memories of the countless people who read it or heard it.

Sela, in her Nov. 25 post, argued that, “The tragic story of Omar Misharawi [was] used and abused to advance a very specific narrative of Israel as a killer of children.”

In short, when it comes to the activist media’s mad rush to judgement on every alleged Israeli sin, regardless of whether new facts contradicting the original conclusions are eventually revealed, nothing will be learned.  

Lethal Narratives concerning the Jewish state’s ‘villainy’ will continue unabated.

Nothing will change. 

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Mar 5 2013

Sunset over Gaza: A story about Palestinian misogyny Harriet Sherwood won’t report

The Guardian’s obsessively critical coverage of Israel contrasts greatly with the paucity of substantive stories at the paper about Gaza and the Palestinian territories, other than reports which can characterize Palestinians as being acted upon by Israelis.  Rarely are there reports which frame the Palestinians as complex, imperfect political actors in full possession of moral agency – a good illustration of the liberal racism which inspires so much of their institutionally skewed coverage of the region.   

While every perceived violation of Palestinian human rights by the Israeli government is reported, the routine disregard for the basic human rights of Palestinian women, gays and minorities (and Palestinian journalists) by Palestinian leaders is rarely reported.

Additionally, when Palestinians aren’t portrayed as victims, as such, they are idealized – their culture and land is idealized and romanticized.

The following picture was posted by Harriet Sherwood, the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent, on Twitter in early February:

So, while it’s clear that Sherwood spends time on the ground in Gaza, her journalistic myopia is often on display in the stories she chooses to report, and those she chooses not to.

A recent example of a story, about Palestinians who criticize Hamas or the Palestinian Authority often risking arrest or violence, which Harriet Sherwood ignored, was reported by Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, at Gatestone Institute.

Toameh noted that “physical attacks on Palestinian journalists in Gaza are not uncommon”, and that just last month “a Palestinian Authority court sentenced 26-year-old Anas Said Awwad to one year in prison for insulting President Mahmoud Abbas on Facebook.”

Toameh went on to reveal that Palestinian journalists he spoke to wanted the “the world to know that the crackdown on freedom of expression in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip is designed to hide the fact that Palestinians are governed by two repressive regimes that have no respect for human rights and democracy.”  

Regarding the rights of women, Sherwood was one of the contributors in a Guardian report about International Women’s Day published on March 8, 2012, titled “International Women’s Day highlights hurdles obstructing women“.  Yet, she used her space not to report on the culture of misogyny within the Palestinian run territories, but, rather, to focus attention on Israel’s detention of a female Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist named Hana Shalabi.  Meanwhile, as we noted at the time, across the green line, and well beyond Sherwood’s moral sympathy, the Palestinian Authority, using a clause in the Jordanian penal code still in effect in the West Bank, often exempts men from being punished for killing a female relative if she has brought dishonor to the family.

Given Sherwood’s track record, it is likely she will similarly ignore recent news that the UNRWA sponsored 2013 Gaza Marathon (a charity event to raise money for programs aiding the children of Gaza), which was due to be held on April 10, has been cancelled following a decision by Hamas not to allow women to participate.

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UNRWA website

Hamas has been cracking down on women’s rights (and all behavior it deems contrary to Islam) since taking over Gaza in 2007.

Finally, it’s interesting to note that Sherwood reported on the 2012 Gaza Marathon in a piece titled “Palestinian runner uses Gaza marathon to prepare for 2012 Olympics’, so she’s clearly familiar with the annual competition. Her report in 2012 began thusly:

Bahaa al-Farra will rise early on Thursday morning, pull on his running shoes and Lycra, and join hundreds of others taking part in the second Gaza marathon, spanning the length of the tiny Palestinian enclave.

For many, including around 2,000 children expected to run the course in 1km relays, it is a day of fun, a break in the bleak daily routine of life in Gaza. Others, mainly visitors from abroad, will be making political statements about the continued blockade by Israel.

As UNRWA’s decision to cancel this year’s marathon, due to the egregious misogyny of Hamas leaders, can’t be blamed on Israel or the blockade, the Guardian’s correspondent for the region will likely not deem such a story worth reporting.

UPDATE: There’s still no word from Harriet Sherwood, but a Guardian report on the marathon cancellation (authored by Phoebe Greenwood and ) has been published here.

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