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Compare and contrast: Guardian coverage of demonstrations in Israel and Greece.

May 26, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | by | 2 comments

This week we witnessed a much reported demonstration in south Tel Aviv pertaining to the subject of the influx of illegal migrants into one of the poorest areas in Israel. As ever, the situation is significantly more nuanced than the Guardian’s editors would have us believe – as reflected in the commentary of veteran Israeli journalist Ben Dror Yamini on the subject. 

“It was all known. It was all expected. A violent incident was a matter of time. Sentences such as “South Tel Aviv neighbourhoods becoming a pressure cooker” have been written more and more in recent weeks. This week it happened. A justified and legitimate demonstration, which was directed against government neglect, was turned by a few tens of people into a hooligans’ parade. It is a miracle that the events did not end in bloodshed. That could happen.  

This is the hour of the hitch-hikers. From Left and from Right. The former spread tales that if we would only conquer racism, and turn the refugees into new immigrants, they would become honest and contributing citizens. For a small proportion of them – annoying and inciting; mostly anarchists – there is in the background the ideology which wants to crush the state of Israel as the Jewish state. The infiltrators are yet another means by which to achieve that aim. From the Right step up to the line the inciters who suffer from pure racism – including racism against colour – and direct the anger towards the infiltrators themselves. 

And in the background are to be found the residents of the neighbourhoods of south Tel Aviv, Ashdod and Eilat. They are the victims. Because the infiltrators who arrive here, from the moment of their arrival, raise their standard of living by ten degrees. Even when they are sleeping in public parks. And only the residents of the weak neighbourhoods are paying the price. They alone. Everyone is wise at their expense. The human-rights workers are causing more and more infiltrators to arrive in exactly the same neighbourhoods which are already exploding from the pressure. They don’t pay any price. They load them onto the weak. And the weak are exploding. Just exploding. Their children’s education is worse. The fear on the streets is greater. Quality of life plummets to new lows. And when they try to cry out, they are called racists. And then the activists from the Right arrive, with matches in places already saturated with petrol. Afterwards we all wonder about the explosion.” 

The incidents which took place on the night of May 23rd in south Tel Aviv were the subject of no fewer than three Guardian articles. 

The first, by Conal Urquhart, was headlined “African asylum seekers injured in Tel Aviv race riots”. Only in the ninth paragraph (out of ten) did Urquhart get round to hinting – albeit very superficially – that there may actually be more sides to the story than pure ‘race riots’. 

“Some work illegally and the majority live in the poorest areas of Tel Aviv where they find themselves in competition with working class Israelis mostly from a Middle Eastern or north African background. The sparse greens and parks of south Tel Aviv are dominated by the African migrants who sleep there at night.“

The second article dedicated by the Guardian to the subject was Seth Freedman’s polemic (addressed by Adam Levick here). Freedman also employed the term ‘race riots’ and referred to “the level of hate coursing through the veins of Israelis furious at the influx of non-Jewish Africans into their country”. His article closed with the warning that “Israeli opponents of such base racism must act now”: again presenting a one-dimensional view of the story. 

The third article on the subject published on the same day as the previous two came from Harriet Sherwood. It too focused exclusively upon the reprehensible acts of violence which took place and it too failed to provide any information on the broader context of the events or to examine the reasons why the residents of south Tel Aviv (the majority of whom did not participate in the violence) felt compelled to voice their opinions on the streets in the first place. 

But Israel is not the only country struggling with the effects of uncontrollable immigration and Tel Aviv was not the only place in which a demonstration turned violent this week. 

In Patras, Greece, local residents and supporters of the far-Right ‘Golden Dawn’ party – which gained considerable support in the recent Greek elections – stormed a factory in which migrants were sheltering on two consecutive days after a local man was allegedly  stabbed and killed by an Afghani immigrant, resulting in clashes between demonstrators and police. 

The Guardian dedicated one article to these incidents. 

In that story there were no ‘race riots’ – instead there were “anti-immigrant protests”. No ‘asaGreek’ was summoned to chastise his countrymen for the “hate coursing through their veins” and nobody was accused of “base racism”. There were no dire warnings about the collapse of Greek democracy and nowhere was it implied that the Greek demonstrators (even those among them who support an extreme-right party) were motivated by a racism which infects their society as a whole. 

The sharp contrast between the style and volume of the Guardian’s reporting on two similar incidents which took place almost at the same time is an excellent indicator of the fact that when it comes to Israel, reporting the actual news is frequently of minor concern. Too often, it is the opportunity which that news may provide to advance an agenda which is seized at the detriment of providing Guardian readers with a ‘fair and balanced’ view of events. 

Moral posturing as serious thought: Context-Free essay on migrants in Israel by Seth Freedman

May 24, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , | by | 27 comments

Gidon Ben-Zvi, in a guest post on these pages yesterday titled “Growing pains: The birth of Israel’s illegal immigration crisis” made a few important points:

  • Israel’s illegal African immigration challenge is a recent phenomenon, going back to 2005, after the Egyptian police attacked Sudanese refugees who were camped out in Cairo, demanding asylum. Jerusalem proved generous and word spread that migrants would be greeted hospitably and provided with job opportunities upon arrival in Israel.
  • Since Hosni Mubarak was swept up and out of power during the ‘Arab Spring’, government authority has all but collapsed in the Sinai Peninsula. One by-product of this lawless state of affairs has been a spike of illegal immigration to Israel from Africa. Over the last several months, Israel’s southern border with Egypt, by way of the Sinai, has turned into the primary point of entry for thousands of work-seeking migrants (economic migrants, as opposed to political refugees).

Ben-Zvi was responding to a May 20th report by Harriet Sherwood titled “Israeli PM: illegal African immigrants threaten identity of Jewish state” which was characteristically devoid of such context – instead playing the ‘Jewish state should be held to the higher standard’ card, ending thusly:

“Amid the anti-immigration clamour, some Israelis have argued that, in the light of Jewish history, their state should be sympathetic and welcoming to those fleeing persecution.”

Seth Freedman’s piece - Israeli politicians are fanning the flames of anti-migrant tension - includes fair criticism of some unnecessarily hyperbolic rhetoric from a couple of Israeli politicians but, true to form for many Israeli Left commentators on the pages of CiF, Freedman’s rhetorical excesses are numerous and include the following:

  • Framing Israeli policies he finds disagreeable in the most extreme, unserious manner 
  • Imputing anti-black racism to Israel
  • A  failure to offer a concrete policy alternatives to a vexing political problem
  • Transparent moral posturing (Freedman is ‘the good Jew’) 
Framing Israeli policies he finds disagreeable in the most extreme terms:
 
The first dynamic is apparent in the opening passage, which quotes a counter protester at an anti-immigrant march in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, May 22nd, which tragically turned violent. 

“In 1936 my grandfather stood against the fascists in Cable Street. Today I did the same in Tel Aviv.” After five years on frontlines, Nic Schlagman is used to untrammelled hostility towards the African refugees and migrants with whom he works, but he says the situation has never been as critical as it is at present.”

The comparison to Blackshirts in London (circa 1936), in the context of a growing Nazi-inspired fascist movement throughout Europe, is morally, historically and intellectually unserious. It represents one of those rhetorical perversions which says more about those advancing the analogy (or those uncritically repeating it) than the analogy itself.  (See CiF commentator Mya Guarnieri hysterically advancing the narrative that Israel is moving in a “fascist” direction, here and here.)

Imputing racism: 

 There was this passage by Freedman:

“The climate of fear amongst the African community is at fever pitch,” [Nic] Schlagman said. “Mothers pulled their kids off the streets in anticipation of the marchers arriving, and everyone’s saying it’s only a matter of time until someone gets killed.” The spectre of such violence is hardly unfounded…[and] has revealed the level of hate coursing through the veins of Israelis furious at the influx of non-Jewish Africans into their country.” [emphasis added]

The accusation of racism against Israelis is of the most facile and lazy arguments employed in the anti-Zionist arsenal.  Israelis, like people in many states in the world, are of course struggling with the dilemma of balancing humanitarian concerns with the requirements of national cohesion and economic security. Concerns about unlimited immigration do not suggest that Israelis have “hate coursing through their veins”.  

Twenty percent of Israelis are Arab and among Jewish Israelis, roughly half are ‘Jews of color’ – that is Jews from the Middle East, North Africa (or Ethiopia). So, there is simply no rational reason to believe that the reaction to the influx of illegal immigrants would be any different in they were not from Africa.

 
A  failure to offer a concrete policy alternative to a vexing political problem:
 
In 900 words of criticism, Freedman fails to include anything resembling a concrete suggestion regarding how Israel should deal with the influx of immigrants. Freedman doesn’t even acknowledge the scope of the problem, nor is there a single policy proposal or a passage devoted to what he believes should be done by the Israeli Knesset in order to develop a codified series of laws and regulations to handle the influx of African migrants.  Such journalistic Israel critics are continually defined by their failure to offer real-world alternatives in addition to their scathing and often scurrilous critiques of the state, and its foreign and domestic policies.
 
Transparent moral posturing (Freedman is ‘the good Jew’):
 
Freedman is an Israeli Jew, and leverages that fact to opine at ‘Comment is Free’ quite effectively. His critiques of Israel are leveled, ostensibly, as is the case with so many other CiF commentators, ‘As-a-Jew’.
 
Indeed, a necessary corollary to the former principle (Israel’s critics’ failure to offer any specific alternatives to the government policies they’re admonishing) is the dynamic I’ve expanded upon previously: the vanity and moral posturing of placing oneself above the fray; beyond the day-to-day real life and necessarily imperfect decisions of a modern democratic nation-state.
 
To be clear, those Israelis using irresponsible, incendiary rhetoric against illegal immigrants should rightly face social opprobrium and, if the facts warrant it, even be arrested under Israel’s anti-incitement laws.
 
However, the Jewish state need not be held to a higher standard than other states similarly dealing with the moral dilemma of economic migrants crossing its borders.  
 
Finally, commentators like Freedman (and his Jewish fellow political travelers at the Guardian) need desperately to see Israel through a more mature, sober lens, and avoid the endless hyperbole, clichés and posturing. 
 

Ultimately, they fail to recognize a vital political and moral truth: in responsible statecraft rarely is there the luxury of making choices which will lead to perfect justice for all concerned.

Rather, with every serious decision in front of her, Israel (like all nations) must carefully weigh the costs and benefits of various possible actions and try to make the decisions which are most likely to result in a positive outcome for as many of her citizens as possible.  The perfect will always remain the natural and mortal enemy of the good. 


 
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Growing Pains: the Birth of Israel’s Illegal Immigration Crisis

May 23, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , | by | 26 comments

A guest post by Gidon Ben-Zvi, an Anglo-Israeli freelance writer

A recent piece in the Guardian, Isareli PM: illigal African immigrants threaten identity of Jewish state, May 20, describing the simmering issue of Israel’s African migrants, included the following passage:

“Amid the anti-immigration clamour, some Israelis have argued that, in the light of Jewish history, their state should be sympathetic and welcoming to those fleeing persecution.”

To quote the sadistic prison captain in ‘Cool Hand Luke’:

“What we’ve got here is…. failure to communicate.”

To diffuse the powder keg that Israeli cities with relatively high African populations are now sitting on, the intellectual cobwebs regarding refugees and migrants need to be swiftly cleaned out and a rapidly metastasizing groupthink ought be remedied by way of a realistic appraisal of alternatives.

Unlike the situation in other relatively well-off countries, Israel’s illegal immigration challenge is a recent phenomenon. The influx of Africans can be traced to 2005, after the Egyptian police attacked Sudanese refugees who were camped out in Cairo and demanded asylum. Jerusalem proved generous and word spread that migrants would be greeted hospitably and provided with job opportunities upon arrival in the State of Israel.

Since Hosni Mubarak was swept up and out of power during the twilight of moderation known as the ‘Arab Spring’, government authority has all but collapsed in the Sinai Peninsula. One byproduct of this lawless state of affairs has been a spike in the rate of illegal immigration to Israel from Africa. Over the last several months, Israel’s southern border with Egypt, by way of the Sinai, has turned into the primary point of entry for thousands of work-seeking migrants.  

While some of these fortune seekers are refugees, the vast majority are illegal infiltrators who are, along with drugs and weapons, smuggled into Israel by Bedouin tribesmen. Furthermore, while many illegal immigrants seek asylum status under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of the United Nations, only a fraction of all the illegal immigrants are actually eligible for this status.

In response, segments of the Israeli political establishment have been roused into action. Knesset member Danny Danon is pushing for a bill that would lead to the deportation of half the illegal migrants within a year and 80 percent within two years. And Interior Minister Eli Yishai recently proclaimed that most of the African refugees should “…be put into holding cells or jails…and then given a grant and sent back…” to their countries of origin.

Is this any way for the Middle East’s only true democracy to treat the most vulnerable segment of its society?  And doesn’t Israel have a special moral obligation, in light of Jewish history, to be sympathetic and “..welcoming of those fleeing persecution…”?

No, it does not.

For one thing, it’s important to consider the impact of illegal immigration on Israeli society’s most vulnerable members: native-born Israelis and legal immigrants with low skills and low levels of education.

Academics, media elites, lawyers, human rights activists and other professionals have the sweet luxury of claiming the moral high ground on the illegal immigration debate: their livelihoods aren’t on the chopping block; their opportunities for advancement aren’t being increasingly scuttled.

The plight of immigrants seeking refuge from some of the most forsaken corners on earth is a moveable tragedy worthy of our sympathy and outrage. Yet, Israeli society’s first and primary responsibility is to its legal citizens and immigrants.

Furthermore, the economics of allowing illegal immigrants to remain under the charge of local municipalities in particular and the Israeli government as a whole, which would have to maintain services such as law enforcement, health care, housing, and schooling, is prohibitive. Israel is not France and it simply doesn’t have the means to provide for the welfare of tens of thousands of migrants.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that African refugees will be treated with humanity, explaining that “… we will continue to care for refugees, but they make up a minimal part of the human wave. Entire populations are starting to move, and if we don’t act to stop this we will be flooded.”

Yet, how does Israel counteract this ‘human wave’?

There has been much talk and uneven implementation of plans to complete the Egyptian border fence, expand detention centers and increase policing of companies that do violence to the law by hiring undocumented workers.

The concept of detention camps in a Jewish state has been greeted with grave misgivings and gratuitous moralizing by large swaths of the international human rights community.

However, it bears reminding that these facilities will include classrooms, places of worship, community centers, medical centers and outdoor recreation areas.

No solution will be comprehensively effective and every solution will likely evoke the slippery law of unintended consequences. Yet, Israel’s much touted economic miracle, given official sanction when the country joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2010, has apparently brought with it a slew of ‘first world injuries’. Israel’s high standard of living and open society, in a region distressingly devoid of both, has ignited the imagination of fleeing Eritreans, Sudanese and citizens of other economically deprived peoples.

In the name of true moral equivalence, Israel should be allowed to deal with this internal crisis without being held to a unique standard that is apparently the special legacy of Jewish history to the modern Jewish state.  

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Guardian defames Israel with wild, unsubstantiated charge on Palestinians disabled by IDF

May 23, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , , , | by | 17 comments

‘Activist Journalism’ – in the anti-Zionist context – refers to the capacity to frame any event in the Jewish state in a manner consistent with a pre-determined narrative.

So, any isolated case of injustice is reported as evidence of the state’s alleged systemic and institutional racism or oppression, while counter evidence – indicating that the behavior in question may represent the exception and not the rule – is typically ignored. 

For instance, the Guardian will report a Palestinian civilian death in Gaza during an IDF anti-terror operation but largely fail to note the context of Hamas terror or the remarkable care Israel takes to avoid non-combatant deaths – including precision bombing of terrorist targets which often results in far better outcomes in comparison to other armies’ military operations around the world.

Of the 100 Gazans killed in IDF anti-terror operations in 2011, 91 were terrorists and 9 were civilians. That is a civilian to combatant death ratio of roughly 1 to 10.

This contrasts quite dramatically with the average civilian to combatant death ratio in recent conflicts involving NATO forces in Iraq and Afghanistan: There, NATO had a 3 to 1 ratio (i.e. there were 3 civilian deaths for every 1 combatant death).

Similarly, Israel has been accused on the pages of the Guardian of making it very difficult for Palestinians in Gaza to receive medical care, often with the particular circumstances of each decision ignored, along with that of the broader context of a state which – though at war against a terror movement which calls for Israel’s destruction – still allows thousands of Palestinians (100,000 in 2011) to receive medical care in its hospitals.  

Harriet Sherwood’s latest report is an even more egregious illustration of such journalistic bias. Her report entitled “Palestinian Paralympians visit Jerusalem holy site” of  May 21st, (tucked away in the sports section of the Guardian), had it been based on the raw facts, could have fairly advanced the following narrative:

Israel, though in a state of war with a Hamas government which does not recognise its right to exist and launches hundreds of deadly projectiles into its cities each year, still allowed – on humanitarian grounds – disabled Palestinian athletes (who are competing in the Paralympics in London this summer) to visit al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.  

But, we’re talking about Harriet Sherwood, after all, and so Israel was not credited.  Instead she wrote:

“The distance between Gaza City and Jerusalem is less than 50 miles, but one that is near-impossible for most Palestinians in the tiny enclave to undertake. But Qadoom was one of nine athletes and coaches – four of whom will compete in the Paralympics in London this summer – to visit the holy site on Monday, courtesy of the British consulate in Jerusalem” [emphasis added]

Unreported by Sherwood is the fact that for years there has been an unofficial boycott of Jerusalem by Arab states to protest Israeli control of the city.

Sherwood continues:

“Officials from the British consulate applied to Israel for exit permits on the group’s behalf in March. Confirmation for the nine finally came on Thursday, but there was still a six-hour wait at the Erez crossing.”

Then Sherwood’s tale devolves even further. She quotes a paralympian, Hatam Zakut, who says:

“We consider ourselves representatives of all disabled athletes in Gaza. Thanks to the Israelis, there are a lot of us.”  

Adding to Zaku’s vague charge, Sherwood writes:

“[In fact] tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are disabled as a result of Israeli military operations.”

“Tens of thousands…”?

There is no source provided to back up Sherwood’s outrageous claim, but after doing a bit of research I found an official United Nations report on Operation Cast Lead – the war in Gaza with the most casualties in recent history.

Per the UN report, there were an estimated 600 Palestinians disabled as a result of injuries sustained during Cast Lead.

While no figures seem to be available on the total number of people disabled in Gaza as a result of conflicts with Israel, a report by the Gaza Ministry of Public Works and Housing, in August 2009 (seven months after Cast Lead), placed the total figure of all disabled Palestinians in Gaza – for all reasons – at 19,763.  

In fact, the only reference this definitive report makes to Israel is this line on page 2:

“The increasing in injured people due to Israeli continuous aggressions [sic] led to an obvious increase in number of disabled”

So while there are – according to the official agency in Gaza responsible for collating this data – just under twenty thousand disabled Palestinians in total in Gaza, even the Hamas-run ministry does not attempt to quantify the percentage of this total who were disabled due to IDF military actions, let alone make the claim that “tens of thousands” were disabled by Israeli military operations”. 

So, where did Harriet Sherwood get this number?

We’ll likely never know.

But this is no minor question.

Harriet Sherwood is the Jerusalem correspondent for one of the more influential liberal English-language broadsheets and what she reports as fact necessarily has an impact on how millions of readers filter the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Most importantly, such reports greatly influence their readers’ degree of moral sympathy towards Jews’ defense of their right to self-determination in a region resistant to this supremely modest aspiration.

The additional moral issue pertains to the very real world impact Sherwood’s reports have on the Arab world – serving to fuel antipathy towards the Jewish state.

Finally, and no less important, Harriet Sherwood is a professional journalist and therefore owes her readers more than hearsay and half-truths. 

Even as a blogger – one with unapologetic and transparent pro-Zionist sympathies – I would never make a specific statistical claim without a link leading to a credible source.

It speaks volumes about the Guardian that their reporters are evidently not held accountable to such basic professional standards.  

 

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What the Guardian won’t report: Attempted Palestinian kidnapping of Israeli mother & child

May 21, 2012 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | by | 59 comments

Harriet Sherwood just published a story (Israeli settlers filmed firing gun at Palestinians, May 21), which included a video posted on YouTube providing little context, about Israelis from Yitzhar firing at Palestinians in the Arab town of Asira al-Qibliya - an incident currently being investigated by the IDF.

While the Guardian wasted no time running with the story above, despite the paucity of facts, the following frightening tale of Palestinians terrorizing an Israeli mother and her child will likely never find its way to the pages of the Guardian, as Harriet Sherwood’s narrative of the region rarely allows for such unambiguous tales of Jewish victimhood.

The following was reported in Ynet, per information recently released by the Shin Bet, Israel’s security service:

Some two months ago Palestinians attempted to kidnap Yael Shahak and her daughter, who was eight years old at the time, when they were driving to the Beit El area in the West Bank.

Yael Shahak and her daughter

On Sunday [May 20] , after the Palestinians accused of the attempted kidnapping…were indicted, Yael recalled the incident.

“One of them took a wrench which he used to shatter the car’s front windshield. At that moment I understood that they were going to kill me and my daughter that we would come out of this dead or handicapped.”

One night in March, Shahak and her daughter were on their way home from an event in central Israel. “We got onto the Beit El access road and a few minutes later, after one of the bends in the road, I noticed a car standing at the side of the road,” she recalled.

“…I honked my horn and then they zigzagged in front of me. The spot was one where you could not bypass or evade the car in front of you, so I drove behind them and tried to avoid them.”

But the Palestinians would not give up. “They saw me backing up so they also backed up. That’s when the penny dropped that I had a problem,” she said. “I tried to escape but they wouldn’t let me move to the side of the road. Eventually they stopped and stood right in front of my vehicle.

“I saw four men in front of me, I was frightened by the fact that they were all men – that was before I even paid attention to whether they were Arabs or not.

One of the men walked up to Shahak’s window while the other three surrounded the car. “The terrorist who came up to my window signaled me to open it.

“The doors and windows were locked so [he tried] to convince me to open the window and [I] tried to tell him that I want to continue on my way. It was all done with hand signals and looks. Then at some point the look in his eyes changed and he became crazed.”

That is when the violence started. “After several blows to the windshield, with all the glass flying at me, he suddenly stopped. At the time I didn’t understand why and it was only after the fact that I realized that they saw an [Israeli vehicle] coming from the direction of Beit El.”

“The terrorists [then] fled…”

“I will never forget the look on the terrorist’s face…” 

“That night [my daughter] cried with me…”

There were nine members – Palestinians from the Ramallah area – in the terror cell responsible for the attempted kidnapping of Shahak and her daughter,  which was headed by Mouhmad Ramdan (22) of al-Bira.

Some of the terrorists (affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) are being held in Israel while others are in the custody of the Palestinian Authority.

Suspect Mouhmad Ramdan

According to the Shin Bet, the terrorists were trying to kidnap Shahak and her daughter in order to use them as bargaining chips in prisoner exchanges.

Is the following Guardian headline even conceivable?

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A Baaaad Man! The Guardian’s scary Bibi

May 20, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , , | by | 22 comments

Harriet Sherwood’s latest report, Israeli PM: illegal African immigrants threaten identity of state, May 20, is notable not for the story, concerning Israel’s efforts to stem illegal immigration, nor for the narrative, which suggests racist motives, but due to the photo of PM Netanyahu.

In fact, the photo (of an angry “right wing” Bibi) was used in a July, 2011, Guardian story.

A November 2011 Sherwood report used another angry photo of Bibi…

…which was recycled from a  report in August, 2011.

As a point of comparison, here’s a photo of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a ‘Comment is Free’ commentary from March, 2012.

Finally, here is a photo from a Guardian report, of a gentle, kindly and loving soul (aka, Raed Salah) who, in his spare time, recites poems advancing the ancient antisemitic blood libel.

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Harriet Sherwood’s Munich Massacre story follows Guardian rule on obscuring Palestinian terrorism

May 16, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , | by | 15 comments

My post on March 23rd, 2011 – following a terrorist bombing in Jerusalem which killed one woman and injured dozens – critiqued coverage of the attack by the Guardian’s Conal Urquhart (who was filling in for Harriet Sherwood). The post was titled “Four simple Guardian rules for journalists reporting a terrorist attack in Israel.”

I noted that Urquhart seemed to be at pains to avoid characterizing the violence as a terrorist act.  

This passage, from his initial report on the attack (close to Jerusalem’s main conference hall and central bus station), represents a prime example.

“A bus has exploded opposite the central station in Jerusalem, killing one woman and injuring at least 25 people, four of them seriously.” [emphasis added]

Of course, the bus didn’t “explode”.

A bomb was placed by a terrorist in a trash can, near a crowded bus stop, with the intent of killing Israelis. Some on an Egged bus which had stopped to pick up passengers there were injured (along with others closer to the bomb) as a result of the blast.

Further, in contextualizing Urquhart’s work with other Guardian reports about Palestinian terrorism, I arrived at what appeared to be a few of the Guardian Group’s guiding principles.

One of the rules which Guardian journalists often observe pertains to intentionally unclear causation:

They use passive language which may obscure the fact that an intentional act of violence was perpetrated by a Palestinian terrorist against innocent Israeli civilians.

Harriet Sherwood recently published a report, titled “London 2012 Olympics: IOC rejects silence for Munich victims” (May 15th), which is quite consistent with the Guardian rule detailed above.

Sherwood writes:

“The Munich attack began in the early hours of 5 September 1972, when eight members of the Palestinian military organisation Black September infiltrated the Olympic village, and took 11 members of the Israeli team hostage. The attackers demanded the release of 234 Palestinian prisoners in return for the hostages’ release.

By just after midnight, all 11 athletes, five attackers and a German police officer were dead.” [emphasis added]

By midnight, they were dead. Not “killed“ but “dead“. Sherwood fails to distinguish between victim and perpetrator, and offers no further explanation about how the Israeli hostages lost their lives.

In fact, the Israeli athletes were murdered brutally and quite deliberately by Palestinian Black September terrorists.

Recently the Guardian published a thorough, well-researched and clear account of the murder of Israeli athletes in Munich.  It was written by sports editor Simon Burnton and titled, “50 stunning Olympic moments No 26: The terrorist outrage in Munich in 1972“.  Evidently it takes a sports writer to report on Palestinian terrorism without ideological blinders.

Burton recounts how, on the last day of the crisis, nine of the eleven Israelis were killed while on helicopters (with their captors) at the runway of Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base near Munich. The terrorists were hoping for a deal, whereby they would fly to safety in Egypt, until negotiations with German authorities broke down.

“…a terrorist threw a grenade into one of the helicopters, killing all but one of the four hostages on board. Another terrorist sprayed the second helicopter with bullets, killing the five tied together there. The final hostage, David Berger, died of smoke inhalation before he could be rescued.”

However, per Burton, two of the Israelis were killed in the athletes’ residence on the first day of the crisis. 

“In all 12 hostages were taken, but as the wrestlers were led downstairs to join the coaches one of them, Gad Zabari, managed to escape, with the assistance of the wounded [Moshe] Weinberg. The latter was shot dead and his body thrown, naked, on to the street. The remaining 10 were shepherded into a single bedroom, where the weightlifter Yossef Romano attempted to overcome one of the intruders. He too was shot, apparently castrated and left to bleed to death on the floor.” [emphasis added]

The brutality was beyond description.

Harriet Sherwood’s rhetorical obfuscation is all too predictable. 

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Harriet Sherwood’s continuing advocacy journalism on behalf of Palestinian terror suspects

May 14, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , | by | 7 comments

Those reading Harriet Sherwood’s latest two advocacy pieces, Israel warned of volatile situation as Palestinian hunger strikers near death, and Administrative detention the key to Palestinian hunger strikes, (posted at the Guardian on May 13th) could almost be forgiven for believing that Israel imprisons Palestinians either arbitrarily or to suppress their political beliefs.

While you can read our blog’s substantive critiques of the Guardian Group’s sympathetic coverage of Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strikes (here, here, here, here, & here), the following represents a summary of Harriet Sherwood’s latest two reports:

Passages which represent, or are sympathetic to, the Palestinian prisoners’ side of the story: 20

Passages which represent, or are sympathetic to, the Israeli side of the story: 4

Use of the words “terror”, “terrorism”, “terrorist” (or even the Guardian Style Guide preferred word, “militant”) to characterize the suspects in Israeli custody, or in any context at all: 0

Passages offering context concerning the use of administrative detention by other democratic states: 0

Most incendiary, unserious or hyperbolic quotes included in Sherwood’s report:

Sherwood quotes from a letter written by a Palestinian prisoner to his daughter:

“…You will know that your father did not tolerate injustice and submission and that he would never accept insult and compromise, and that he is going through a hunger strike to protest against the Jewish state that wants to turn us into humiliated slaves…” [emphasis added]

Sherwood also quotes an Israeli MK:

Jamal Zahalka, a member of the Israeli parliament, told a solidarity rally in Jaffa: “If one of the striking prisoners dies, a third intifada [uprising] will break out.” [emphasis added]

And if the “striking” prisoners are released they are highly likely to continue their involvement with terrorist movements intent on launching lethal attacks against Israeli civilians: a real world consequence of treating violent extremists as human rights activists which the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent never seems to consider.

(The media just reported that the prisoners have ended their hunger strike, after both sides agreed to an Egyptian brokered deal.)

Related articles

Eleven words: Shortest Guardian story on Israel ever?

May 13, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , | by | 6 comments

It must have been an extremely slow day at the Israel desk of AP on May 8, as I’m still at a loss to understand this headline and “story“.

Here’s the headline:

Now, here’s the, um, story.

That’s right. The text in the story is exactly the same eleven words used in the headline.

I could be reading too much into this but we can only hope that this is part of a larger Guardian Group business plan to cut costs (in light of a  £58.6 million operating loss during FY2011) by using wire services (like AP) more, and on-the-ground “reporters” (like Harriet Sherwood) less.

A boy can dream can’t he?

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Should the Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood be sacked?

May 11, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , | by | 7 comments

A guest post by AKUS

In the articles ‘Lost in anti-Zionist translation? Guardian misquotes Noam Shalit on Palestinian hostage taking‘ and ‘Guardian corrects story with false translation of Noam Shalit interview after his son’s release‘ CiF Watch exposed the errors in the recent by Phoebe Greenwood article that was corrected:

New headline:

Old headline:

Greenwood’s article was based on an incredibly rude interview carried out by Israeli journalist Amnon Levi of Israel’s “Channel 10″.

Noam Shalit with Amnon Levi of nana 10 – Channel 10

Having watched the interview (in Hebrew) it’s clear that only Amnon Levi and his cameraman were present with Noam Shalit. The interview was taped in Shalit’s house in Mitzpe Hila – in the Shalit’s kitchen, actually.

So Greenwood’s article, with the misleading quotation, was written after reading a translated transcript of the interview. (In a different article about Noam Shalit’s entry into Israeli politics, Harriet Sherwood says she interviewed Shalit in Jerusalem on Monday – presumably May 7th, 2012).

It is an interesting commentary on the low standard of Guardian journalistic ethics that Greenwood, while acknowledging that the interview was taped, does not point out that she was not there.

“Speaking to a television interviewer in the kitchen of the Shalit family home, a familiar backdrop for the Israeli public from the family’s five-year campaign for their son’s release, Shalit was subject to repeated questioning attempting to pin him down on his political policies.”

The Guardian and Greenwood do not acknowledge her source, nor that she, for all intents and purposes, provided a translated transcription of Shalit’s comments lifted from the interview plus her own views about them.

In fact, Greenwood’s article is about as close to plagiarism dished up as journalism as one can get. In another time and at another paper I suspect she would have been sacked.

Related articles

What the Guardian won’t report: Palestinians continue to laud Itamar Massacre terrorists

May 8, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | by | 5 comments

Ynet recently published a story - “Shin Bet seeks to raze Itamar terrorists home” – which reports on a recommendation presented to Israel’s defense minister to approve the demolition of the homes of  Amjad and Hakim Awad, who were responsible for Fogel family massacre in Itamar over a year ago.

Ynet notes:

“According to the recommendation the houses in the village of Awarta should be destroyed as part of the deterrence mechanism against Palestinian families who give refuge to members of the family involved in terrorism.”

While we covered the brutal attack on the Fogel family last year, I had forgotten that the Palestinians’ families had indeed hidden evidence (including the weapon used in the deadly terrorist act) and aided the two murderers in covering up their tracks.

Further, we published two subsequent unsettling posts about Itamar; one about the hideous behavior of the killers’ family who, according to a Ynet report in October, mocked and taunted the surviving Fogel children on the day they came to the village for the olive harvest.

Tamar Fogel

The other troubling report - cross posted by Giulio Meotti – focused on the Israeli court‘s sentencing of Hakim Awad to five life sentences for the murder of five members of the Fogel family.

Meotti wrote:

“Ruth Fogel was in the bathroom when Awad killed her husband Udi and their three-month-old daughter Hadas, slitting their throats as they lay in bed. Awad slaughtered Ruth as she came out of the bathroom. Then he moved into a bedroom where Ruth and Udi’s sons Yoav (11) and Elad (4) were sleeping. He then slit their throats.”

Referring to Awad’s behaviour in court, Meotti added:

“In court, Awad always smiled at the camera…Awad said he has “no regrets” and flashed the “V” sign for victory while he was leaving the courthouse. “I am a person like you, I have no mental condition, I never had a serious illness,” Awad said to the judges. His smile was sincere.”

Hakim Awad in court

Further, a few months ago Palestinian Media Watch reported that the PA’s official television channel, on a program devoted to Palestinian terrorists  imprisoned in Israeli jails, the PA’s official television channel featured a telephone interview with the mother and aunt of one of the murderers of the Fogel family. The mother praised her son and said that he was one of the two who had carried out the “operation at Itamar.” Hakim Awad’s aunt called him a “hero and legend.” The program was broadcast twice (PMW, January 29, 2012).

However, in addition to the lack of remorse by the killer, the cruelty of his family towards young Tamar and the cover up by Awad’s relatives, the Ynet story cited above also included this, which suggests that killer’s families aren’t the only Palestinians who to have engaged in such reprehensible moral behavior after the massacre.

Ynet: 

“At first, Awarta village chiefs denied any connection between their village and the Itamar massacre but at the same time, after their arrest, the two murderers became idols in their village, according to defense establishment sources, with support banners and their pictures hung up throughout Awarta.” [emphasis added]

In reading the Guardian’s coverage of the region, I’m often struck by the manner in which reports on Israel often lack any resemblance to the nation in which I live.  Indeed, Harriet Sherwood’s reports should be seen as part of a broader mission to find evidence in support of her preconceived ideologically driven view of the region.

Political phenomena which fall outside the desired narrative are either downplayed or ignored.  Similarly, Palestinians appear in the Guardian’s tales of the region largely as abstractions: poor, downtrodden, dispossessed, victims void of nuance or (often) any sense of moral agency.

All of  this explains this fictitious headline accompanying a Sherwood report published shortly after the massacre:

Sherwood’s story didn’t even attempt to support (in the subsequent text) the assertion that Palestinians (living in Awarta and elsewhere) were morally outraged by the terrorist act – likely because little if any genuine outrage was actually expressed.

In fact, a poll conducted last May (2011) in the West Bank, Gaza and E. Jerusalem demonstrated that nearly one-third of Palestinians explicitly support the murder of the Fogels.

Clearly, even the most undeniable evidence that the killer’s family and their broader community continue to the laud the behavior of Amjad and Hakim Awad will never find its way to the pages of the Guardian.

Related articles

Guardian “journalist” Style Guide related dilemmas: Palestinian “Terrorism” edition

May 6, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , | by | 4 comments

Graphic from Guardian’s “Style Guide” for journalists

As Akus and Hadar recently reported, the Guardian “Style Guide” not only advises their journalists against writing that Israel’s capital is Jerusalem, but actually encourages them to lie by insisting that Tel Aviv is, in fact, the nation’s capital.  (This inversion, as Akus noted, resulted in the Guardian changing a photo caption which “incorrectly” stated that Jerusalem was the Israeli capital and, per the Style Guide, definitively (mis) informed readers that Tel Aviv holds that designation.)

Text from Guardian Style Guide

While the international community generally doesn’t officially recognize Jerusalem as the Jewish state’s capital (due to the absurd political pieties honored by decision makers regarding the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict), neither do they designate Tel Aviv with this status.  Typical is the U.S. State Department’s page on Israel, which contains this:

The footnote is here:

Note that the State Department doesn’t tell Americans that Tel Aviv is Israel’s capital, merely that this is where they currently maintain the U.S. embassy.

Subsequently, it’s been difficult not to read the paper’s reports on Israel without wondering if they were thoroughly proofread by the Guardian’s Glavit editors to ensure ideological stylistic purity.

A report in the Guardian’s Sports section on May 2nd, 50 stunning Olympic moments number 26: The terrorist outrage in Munich in 1972,originally caught my eye because of the headline, as it is extremely rare for a Guardian leader to characterize Palestinian terrorism so “subjectively”, as an “outrage”.  But, stranger still is that a “loaded” word such as “terrorism” was used at all to describe the murder of eleven innocent Israelis.

Indeed, the Guardian Style Guide has this to say about “Terrorism”.

terrorism, terrorists:

A terrorist act is directed against victims chosen either randomly or as symbols of what is being opposed (eg workers in the World Trade Centre, tourists in Bali, Spanish commuters). It is designed to create a state of terror in the minds of a particular group of people or the public as a whole for political or social ends.

Does having a good cause make a difference? The UN says no: “Criminal acts calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public are in any circumstances unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or other nature that may be invoked to justify them.”

Whatever one’s political sympathies, suicide bombers, the 9/11 attackers and most paramilitary groups can all reasonably be regarded as terrorists (or at least groups some of whose members perpetrate terrorist acts).

Nonetheless we need to be very careful about using the term: it is still a subjective judgment – one person’s terrorist may be another person’s freedom fighter, and there are former “terrorists” holding elected office in many parts of the world. 

Often, alternatives such as militants, radicals, separatists, etc, may be more appropriate and less controversial, but this is a difficult area: references to the “resistance”, for example, imply more sympathy to a cause than calling such fighters “insurgents”. The most important  thing is that, in news reporting, we are not seen – because of the language we use – to be taking sides. [emphasis added]

Beyond the moral muddle created by the definition (yes, even when an act can reasonably be described as “terrorism”, please avoid using the term?!), it’s simply risible that the Guardian is evidently concerned that its readers may think the Guardian is “taking sides” in the Israeli Palestinian Conflict.

Indeed, Harriet Sherwood, so at pains to maintain her, um, “impartiality”, strenuously avoids the “T” word when reporting on the region, opting instead for the Guardian recommended term “militant”.

However, not only did the May 2 Guardian piece on the 1972 attack use the word “terrorism” in the headline, but the essay (by sport subeditor, Simon Burton) contained no less than 26 uses of the word terror, terrorism, or terrorist(s), to characterize the Munich Massacre.

The fact is that Burton’s over 3000 word report on those two fateful days in Munich is actually quite non-ideological for a Guardian piece pertaining to Israel or Israelis, which of course means that Harriet Sherwood’s job (as the paper’s correspondent for the city which is certainly not Israel’s capital) is safe and secure.  

Related articles

The Commentator picks up BBC fact-check fail.

May 4, 2012 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | by | 3 comments

The now one year-old (congratulations all!) news and commentary site The Commentator brings us the story of a report by the BBC’s Middle East correspondent Yolande Knell which includes lengthy quotes from a source whose name she could not even get right. 

This is a screenshot of the original, which was later amended following the article in The Commentator:

‘Robert’ Falk is, of course, the infamous Richard Falk. Despite his position since 2008 as ‘UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian Territories’, he makes no pretence of objectivity. Here  is Falk on his personal blog expressing support for the 2010 Stuttgart Declaration which opposes a two-state solution and at the bottom line calls for the eradication of Israel.

As The Commentator points out, his anti-Israel ‘CV’ includes much more.

“In a nutshell, Falk is so hostile to Israel that he’s a de facto anti-Israel activist. But even that fails to do justice to the sheer viciousness of his diatribes against the Jewish state. Here’s just a smattering of examples of his approach. First there are the suggested comparisons with Nazi Germany. He has sometimes claimed that he doesn’t quite mean it literally. On others he has talked of Israeli policies as “genocidal”.

He’s ambivalent about Hamas as a terrorist outfit. His language about Israel is peppered with references to “apartheid“, “criminality“, “collective punishment“ and so on. The picture is clear enough.”

Read the whole article here.

So if the BBC could not get Falk’s name right, does that also mean that they failed to run a background check on his suitability as a quotable source before publishing an article relying so heavily upon his opinions? 

And why (just like the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood only a few days ago) did Yolande Knell fail to point out that the two Palestinian prisoners named in her article – Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahla (Tha’er Halahleh) – are Islamic Jihad activists? 

In Hebrew there is a useful phrase: ‘Itonut mita’am’ – עיתונות מטעם – which translates as ‘media on behalf of’. The British public funding the BBC through its compulsory license fee may well ask on behalf of whom or what. 

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Another day: another Harriet Sherwood report on another British boycott.

May 2, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | by | 35 comments

The Guardian’s ‘World News’ Israel page carries a report by Harriet Sherwood on yet another British boycott – this time of an Israeli simply because he is…Israeli. 

The story goes briefly like this. Professor Moty Cristal – an expert in conflict resolution and founder & CEO of Nest Consulting – had been invited to address a seminar on conflict resolution to be held by the NHS Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust on May 8th. 

Last Friday he was informed by e-mail from the company organising the seminar that the invitation had been withdrawn at the demand of the trade union UNISON – Britain’s largest union of public sector employees with some 1.3 million members. 

According to Sherwood’s article:

“The session was cancelled, said the email, “on the grounds that it is Unison’s policy and also that of the Trades Union Congress to support the Palestinian people”.“

“A spokeswoman for Unison confirmed that its members had requested that Cristal’s invitation be withdrawn. The union’s policy was to support a boycott of goods and services from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank rather than “a direct boycott of all Israeli people”, she said.”

“But, she added, “we are supportive of people in Palestine. The trade union movement has a long history of international solidarity. Our members would find it difficult to be lectured in conflict resolution by someone from Israel.” “

According to UNISON’s regional secretary Kevin Nelson:

“UNISON’s local representatives at the Manchester Mental Health & Social Care Trust did request that the decision to invite Mr Moti Cristal to facilitate a Partnership Workshop on 8th May 2012 be reversed.”

“Explaining the decision, Mr Nelson said: “It was considered that the decision to invite a prominent Israeli negotiator would be unacceptable given UNISON and TUC policy on the Middle East conflict, the irrelevance of the speaker to working relationships within a local NHS Trust and the inappropriateness of funding an international speaker at times of such austerity, when front line staff in the trust are at risk of redundancy.”

According to a report in Ha’aretz: 

“Senior UNISON officials who were contacted by Haaretz were unaware of the decision, indicating that it was most likely reached following pressure by local officials in Manchester. At last year’s UNISON conference, the Manchester Hospitals branch of the union demanded a boycott, with branch secretary Frances Kelly saying that “it is time all world organizations decided to boycott all Israeli institutions implicated in the occupation and its practices.” “

Mr Cristal’s reaction to his dis-invitation was very much to the point:

“Values-wise, unlike you, I am confident that the only way to resolve conflicts, let alone the Israeli-Palestinian one, is through effective communication and constructive dialogue, rather than violence or boycotts.”

In fact the UNISON members of Manchester NHS seem to have deprived themselves and others of hearing a very interesting speaker. 

In September 2009 the Trades Union Congress (TUC) adopted a motion to boycott Israeli goods produced over the ‘green line’. The original motion, proposed by the Fire Brigades Union and supported by UNISON and UNITE, had called for a total boycott of Israeli goods. 

Notably, the final resolution adopted by the TUC included the following statement: 

“To increase the pressure for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories, and the removal of the separation wall and the illegal settlements, we will support a boycott (where trade union members should not put their own jobs at risk by refusing to deal with such products) of those goods and agricultural products that originate in illegal settlements – through developing an effective, targeted consumer-led boycott campaign working closely with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign – and campaign for disinvestment by companies associated with the occupation as well as engaged in building the separation wall.”

“We reiterate our encouragement to unions to affiliate to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and to raise greater awareness of the issues.”

The references to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign are significant. UNISON’s former leader, Rodney Bickerstaffe (now president of ‘War on Want‘) is a patron of the PSC, as are Bob Crowe of the RMT union and Keith Sonnet – Deputy General Secretary of UNISON. The PSC’s chairman, Hugh Lanning, is also Deputy General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), with his bio on its website stating that:

 “Hugh is also Chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and was instrumental in the landmark decision taken by the TUC to support the boycott campaign of settlement goods.”

As is unfortunately the case with many other British unions, the symbiotic relationship between UNISON and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign is illustrated by this call on the UNISON website for its members to pressure MEPs to oppose trade agreements with Israel as part of a PSC campaign. In 2010 UNISON sent a delegation to the Middle East – its report can be read here. 

So what has all this to do with the unions’ traditional role in protecting and enhancing workers’ rights? Absolutely nothing. As one blogger put it in 2009: 

“Is not the TUC supposed to be a union of unions to co-ordinate the efforts of skilled workers to gain recognition from employers and to ensure rights to workers?

What does this have to do with condemning sovereign nations? Why should they have a Middle East policy at all? Do they have an Africa policy? An Asia policy? A North American policy? An Antarctica policy?

Ah, no. 

As is the case with the Co-operative Group’s new boycott, this is yet another example of a small number of extremist activists exploiting the structure of existing institutions in order to promote an anti-Israel agenda. There are now some 17 different unions affiliated to the PSC. 

The boycotting of Moty Cristal cannot even be claimed to be based on anything to do with the ‘green line’ -  it is purely a reaction to his nationality and therefore racism proper. 

One would expect that a Left-leaning liberal newspaper such as the Guardian claims to be would have something of consequence to say both about that and trade unionists who appear to have little interest in the people they are really supposed to represent. 


Related articles

Mehdi Hasan croons the Iran chorus on ‘Comment is Free’.

May 1, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: , , , , , | by | 1 comment

Over on ‘Comment is Free’ the New Statesman’s Mehdi Hasan is faithfully crooning the Guardian’s latest refrain (entitled ‘Only ultra-hawkish right-wingers like Netanyahu think Iran is a problem’) with backing vocals from Harriet Sherwood – in stereo. 

Last week it was Israeli Chief of Staff Benny Gantz who was conjured up to provide ‘evidence’ for the Guardian’s newest pet theory. This week it is former Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin, a whole bunch of other ex-spooks, opposition leader Shaul Mofaz and the great Israeli public. 

Diskin is, of course, entitled – and perhaps even obliged – to voice his opinions (although naturally, Hasan appears to have carefully selected the specific lines which fit his own agenda). That’s the joy of a true democracy – and particularly one with independent and free-thinking media. Everyone can say whatever they feel. It doesn’t follow that they are automatically right – or wrong. 

And just because a few of Diskin’s utterances happen to dove-tail with Mehdi Hasan’s agenda does not grant ‘etched in stone’ status to either the latter’s writings or the former’s opinions. The trouble with Guardian commentary on this subject is that the personal animosity of many of its writers towards the current Israeli government is so blatantly obvious that it colours their analysis with a subjectivity which, when taken together in context with the Guardian’s overall record on the Iranian nuclear issue, renders it almost comic.

At that same Friday ‘pensioners’ parliament‘ known as ‘Forum Majdi’, held fortnightly in a Kfar Saba restaurant, Yuval Diskin also made the following remarks about last summer’s social protests in Israel:

“What’s the difference between the revolutionaries – in quotation marks – of Rothschild Avenue and those in Tahrir Square? There’s a small but significant difference between them – the folks in Tahrir Square were prepared to pay a price and the folks on Rothschild Avenue, not so much.” 

“The minute the folks had finished crapping in the yards of all the neighbours on Rothschild – summer was over and they went back to the universities.”

It will be interesting to see whether the Guardian affords quite so much hallowed (dare one even say ‘messianic’?) stature to Diskin’s words on this subject as it does to some of his other opinions. 

Yuval Diskin at ‘Forum Majdi’, 27th April 2012

But let’s say for the sake of argument that Diskin and the Guardian are right and Netanyahu and Barak are not up to handling the Iranian issue properly. What is the next logical step? A banana republic-type coup led by Diskin and other unelected ex-secret service types? Much as that possibility might appeal to the Seumas Milnes of this world, that’s not how things are done round here. 

No; the next step would be elections, in which the Israeli public, with which Mehdi Hasan is newly enamoured, could elect people they do trust to lead them through this tricky period of their history. 

Well, it seems that possibility may just have come closer, but perhaps so has the probability that the Guardian will soon fall out of love with the Israeli public again because the latest polls suggest that Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud party would gain 3 more seats than it currently holds in the Knesset. 

Some might say that kind of knocks the bottom out of the Guardian’s latest pet theory. 

Anyway, here’s the take on the Diskin affair by one British journalist who isn’t confined to the Guardian’s echo-chamber interpretations.

PS: are there any Israeli journalists reading who would like to write an op-ed (or twelve) about the ‘messianic rhetoric’ and ‘alarmist policies’ of David Cameron’s ‘right-wing’, ‘ultra-hawkish’ government which reportedly intends to place surface to air missiles on the roofs of London apartment buildings during the Olympics? 

If there are – and seeing as that acme of tastefulness known as the Guardian Style Guide apparently does not frown upon using foreign prime ministers’ nick names – they should probably know that among his are ‘call me Dave’ and ‘Flashman’. 


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