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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’.
Why it should have taken two writers – both Observer ‘chief reporter’ Tracy McVeigh and Guardian Jerusalem correspondent Harriet Sherwood – to put together what is in fact no more than a re-hash of a ‘Boycott Israel Network’ press release is anyone’s guess. But it apparently did, and the result is this so-called article from April 29th on the subject of the Co-operative Group’s decision to boycott not only Israeli firms located over the green line, but also those with any connections to other businesses in those areas.
The section from the BIN press release which McVeigh and Sherwood neglected to include provides background information on how this decision on the part of the Co-op came about.
“The announcement by the Co-op came just before their Regional AGMs, due to take place over the next two weeks, and where motions on this issue have been submitted for discussion. For months Co-op members have been highlighting their concerns about trade with complicit companies through co-ordinated letter-writing and discussions with local offices.”
For those unfamiliar with the Co-op’s structure and the manner in which that lends itself to easy manipulation by pressure groups, here is a brief primer. Anyone over the age of 16 can become a member of the Co-op for £1. Most of those who join do so for the offers, discounts and end of year dividends, but it is also possible for them to set up local members’ groups and the Co-op actually assigns funding to enable their meetings.
The nature and purpose of each local group depends very much upon the members. Some might choose to go in for tasting the supermarket’s new range of wines at their meetings. Others may decide to recruit more new members at a local gala or engage in some kind of charity work. Still others may decide to liaise between the Co-op and the local community on a transition town-style green agenda – for example persuading their local Co-op to abandon the use of plastic bags or recycle food waste as compost.
The local groups send representatives to regional meetings, which in turn send representation to national level meetings. Thus, anyone committed enough to put in the time and effort can promote a specific agenda and influence the Co-op’s operations at both local and national level.
And that is precisely how this latest (and the previous, less far-reaching) boycott decision came about. Around 2008 the Co-op was identified by anti-Israel campaigners – in particular members of the PSC – as a ‘soft’ target. They became members, set up local groups and began pushing their agenda up the ladder. That task was not particularly difficult; the vast majority of Co-op members do not attend meetings and even those who do are often quite relieved to find that someone else is willing to spend time going to regional AGMs.
The project was made even easier by the fact that, unable to compete with Britain’s big supermarket chains on price or quality, the Co-op markets itself as the progressive ‘ethical’ alternative.
Sherwood and McVeigh quote one Hilary Smith in their article, describing her as “Co-op member and Boycott Israel Network (BIN) agricultural trade campaign co-ordinator”. The Boycott Israel Network of course involves itself in far more than just supermarket boycotts.
Smith is also a member of Sheffield PSC and Sheffield BDS and active in the ‘Coordin8‘ lobbying network (her regional organizer is recent failed ‘flytilla’ participant and would-be fixer of online polls Terry Gallogly of York PSC). In 2009 she was to be found addressing students occupying Sheffield University on behalf of Sheffield PSC and is apparently not averse to the libeling of Israel as an ‘apartheid’ state.
In February of this year Smith took part in an ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ event at Sheffield University which also featured a speaker from ‘Who Profits‘, (a ‘Coalition of Women for Peace‘ offshoot) who was described in the promotional material as coming “from Haifa in the occupied territories”. That negation of Israel’s existence is of course an underlying principle of the BDS movement.
In addition to her above activities, Hilary Smith is also a ‘volunteer international coordinator’ for the ‘Free Gaza’ movement ‘. Here she is reporting on a ‘Free Gaza’ speaking tour of the UK. Here she is acting as official contact and spokesperson for UK Free Gaza in 2009. Here she is posting information about the 2010 flotilla on the UK Trade Union movement’s ‘Labournet‘ site and here complaining to the BBC about its coverage of the Mavi Marmara incident and its portrayal of the ‘Free Gaza’ movement. Ahead of the 2008 flotilla organized by ‘Free Gaza’, Smith chaired a press conference held in London.
The participants in one of the 2008 jaunts organized by ‘Free Gaza’ did reach their destination and were received (and presented with medals) by leaders of Hamas, – the terrorist organization designated by the UK government which ‘Free Gaza’ enables and supports.
Activists in the ‘Free Gaza’ movement are very aware of the legal implications of their actions, as this briefing document – seized aboard a ‘Free Gaza’ ship – indicates.
For the source of the above document and more information on the ‘Free Gaza’ movement, its ties to Hamas and other designated terror-connected organizations such as the IHH and its roots in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), see here.
The management of the Co-operative Group may not be aware that it has in fact been manipulated into this latest boycott move by subscribers to a political campaign which works towards the rather less than ethical ultimate aim of wiping a sovereign country off the map and often collaborates with designated terror organisations in order to do so.
On the other hand, the Co-op might simply not care. After all, this is the same organization which (rather hilariously, given its advertising spiel on ‘ethical banking‘) provides banking services to George Galloway’s ‘Viva Palestina‘ – which is at this very moment on yet another Hamas-supporting road-trip and travelling via Syria, where the incumbent dictator (for whom Galloway has such admiration) is still slaughtering civilians in their thousands.
This new boycott move by the Co-operative Group should actually be seen as very useful on a number of fronts.
It exposes the way in which it is laughably easy for very small numbers of energetic activists to dictate the agendas of large organizations in the UK. We have seen it happen in British churches, universities and trade unions – now it is the turn of the co-operative movement.
It also points a spotlight on the discrepancies between the ‘ethical’ image the Co-op likes to project for PR purposes and its actual practice. Let’s face it; the £350,000 worth of trade affected by this boycott is negligible (barely the price of a modest Tel Aviv apartment), but the move does highlight once again how the Co-op is apparently willing to overlook the terror-sympathetic connections (and real aims) of clients and campaigning members in order to curry favor with a perceived ’progressive’ client base.
The move also serves to highlight the manner in which UK-based anti-Israel campaigners have in the last decade or so managed to bring their message into the mainstream at local levels. Using letters to local newspapers, occasional PSC or ‘Friends of Palestine’ stalls and demonstrations, co-opting the support of churches and various specific interest groups, they have ensured that although the vast majority of the population understands little or nothing about the Arab-Israeli conflict, many are nonetheless convinced that they are capable of making ethical judgments about it.
Of course most British citizens will find this move by the Co-op somewhat less than ethical, if not downright abhorrent. The good news is that due to the company’s structure, they can do something about it by using exactly the same methods as employed by BDS activists in order to reverse the agenda.
Related articles
- Harriet Sherwood on the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike – high on pathos, low on fact. (cifwatch.com)
- Feeble reasons not to boycott the Guardian (cifwatch.com)
Like this:
Foreign correspondents are in the position of being able to influence on a daily basis how others perceive the country in which they work. Not only do they shape that country’s image in the eyes of general foreign audiences, but their reporting also affects the attitudes and decisions of policy makers. As political and governmental decisions are often – and perhaps increasingly – influenced by the amount of media attention a certain subject gets, a foreign correspondent’s decision to report or not to report a particular news story has more gravity than just the telling of the story itself.
Taking the month now ending as a random example, analysis of the Guardian’s coverage of Israel on its dedicated page in the World News section shows that out of 60 items published between April 1st and 29th, seven dealt with the subject of Habima’s appearance at the Globe Theatre.
A further 11 items were published on the subject of Gunter Grass and his controversial poem. Nine items touched on the subject of Iran’s nuclear project, three were related to Raed Salah’s immigration tribunal in the UK, five concerned the Danish ISM activist hit by an Israeli officer and a further five touched on aspects of what the Guardian Style Guide terms as settlements and settlers; Jews living over the ‘green line’.
Other subjects tackled include the Israeli version of ‘Big Brother’, Saturday bus services, the gas pipeline from Egypt to Israel (2 articles), the ‘flytilla’ (2 articles), illegal migrants from Africa, Holocaust Memorial Day (3 items), Easter, and hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners (2 articles).
On the Israel page of ‘Comment is Free‘, seven articles were published during April – reflecting the same themes as above.
Pessach, Memorial Day and Independence Day (all of which took place in April) were not covered, despite their importance to anyone hoping to understand Israel.
Neither did the Guardian report on any of the following events:
“On the morning of April 2 a 65 year-old ultra-Orthodox Jewish man was attacked by a young Arab man wielding an axe. The attack took place near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. The victim, who had been on his way to the Western Wall to pray, sustained minor injuries and was evacuated to a hospital for medical treatment.”
“On the evening of April 2 stones were thrown at a bus near Beit Horon, an Israeli village to the northwest of Jerusalem. Two women suffered minor injuries and were evacuated to a hospital for further treatment.”
(source)
“On the night of April 4 residents of Eilat heard explosions throughout the city. Searches conducted by the Israeli security forces discovered the remains of two 122mm Grad rockets, two of three launched at Eilat from the Sinai Peninsula. The rockets fell in open areas near residential structures. There were no casualties, but a number of residents were treated for shock.”
“On the morning of April 8 two long-range rockets landed near the city of Netivot. There were no casualties and no damage was done.”
“On the evening of April 8 a rocket landed in an open area near the city of Sderot. There were no casualties and no damage was done.”
(source)
“On the night of April 15 two rockets fell in open areas in the western Negev. There were no casualties.”
“On April 11, IDF military police detained a Palestinian at the Beqa’ot checkpoint in the Jordan Valley. He was found to be carrying seven improvised IEDs, three knives and bullets. He was transferred to the security forces for questioning.”
“The Egyptian and Palestinian media reported that the Egyptian security forces had stopped a vehicle in the northern Sinai Peninsula driven by an Egyptian and carrying three Palestinians who had illegally entered Egyptian territory on April 13. The three admitted that they had been en route to Libya to buy weapons to smuggle into the Gaza Strip through the tunnels. The interrogation conducted by the Egyptian security forces in El-Arish revealed that the three were residents of Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip and belonged to the Salah al-Din Brigades, the military-terrorist wing of the Popular Resistance Committees.”
(source)
“Rocket fire from the Gaza Strip targeting the western Negev continues. One rocket hit was identified in an open area. There were no casualties and no damage was done.”
“On April 19 in Jerusalem a 20 year-old yeshiva student was stabbed in the stomach, incurring serious wounds. Two young Arab men were detained as suspects. The initial investigation revealed that the motive for the attack was apparently nationalistic.”
“On April 21 Israel border policemen saw two Palestinians about 17 years old alighting from a taxi at the Tapuach junction (south of Nablus), carrying a suspicious-looking bag. The policemen ordered them to halt but the two turned and ran. The youths, both residents of the Balata refugee camp near Nablus, were found to be carrying four IEDs, a gun and ammunition.”
The IEDs and weapons found in the possession of the two Palestinians
(Israel Border Police Media Office, April 21, 2012)
“There has recently been a rise in the number of stones and Molotov cocktails thrown at Israeli vehicles south of Jerusalem in the Gush Etzion district; on April 19 there were five such attacks. In one instance Palestinian youths threw stones and rocks at an Israel car at the Gush Etzion junction. One of the rocks hit the car and shattered the front windshield. Riding in the car were a couple and their two-year old son.”
(source)
“The Mount of Olives in Eastern Jerusalem was the scene of an attack on Sunday night [April 15th], as 7 molotov cocktails or “firebombs” were hurled at Jewish homes in the neighborhood of Maale HaZeitim.”
(source)
“Three separate attacks in Jerusalem Thursday, [April 26th] left 4 people injured.
A Jewish family was assaulted by Arab teenagers in eastern Jerusalem, leaving three of the family members injured and in need of medical treatment.
In the Old City of Jerusalem, an 11 year old boy was injured when Arabs began throwing rocks near Israeli Jews in the area. The boy was hit in the head and also received medical help following the incident.
The last attack to occur happened late Thursday night when an Orthodox man was attacked by two Arab youths, who fled the scene on foot before causing any physical harm. Police have arrested a suspect in the case and are reportedly looking for another.”
(source)
“An Israeli cab driver heading from Tel Aviv to Kfar Saba – a 14.5 mile trip – was stabbed several times overnight by an Arab man described by police as being in the country illegally.”
(source)
It is expensive to keep a permanent correspondent in a foreign country and that expense might well be queried if its only outcome is to produce multiple versions of the same carefully selected items in order to cultivate a tailored view of the country covered.
But the stories untold are just as relevant as the ones which do get published. It is, for example, much easier for both British politicians and members of the general public to voice criticism of Israel’s checkpoints and security barrier as impediments to free movement if neither they nor the people listening to them know anything about attempts to smuggle IEDs, guns and knives intended to kill civilians through those checkpoints.
The Guardian’s placing of a total black-out on the reporting of rocket fire into Israel from Gaza (unless Israel reacts), ‘cold weapon’ terror attacks on Israeli civilians and attempted armed infiltrations into Israel from Palestinian Authority-controlled areas is an additional method of influencing foreign perceptions of Israel which should not be underestimated.
Related articles
- Guardian’s “relative calm” in Israel continues, 130 rockets fired from Gaza in last 30 hours (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s biased coverage of terrorist hostilities in Israel’s south: Numbers, headlines and photos (cifwatch.com)
- Photos the Guardian won’t publish: Israeli communities under siege from Gaza rocket fire (cifwatch.com)
- The Washington Post’s Coverage of Israel: Slouching towards the Guardian at Easter (cifwatch.com)
Like this:
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?”
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, (1949), pt. 1, ch. 3)
Next month will mark the second anniversary of Harriet Sherwood’s arrival in Israel. Those two years have made no noticeable difference to her reporting – suggesting that Sherwood’s tendency to blindly reproduce frequently unsubstantiated claims made by various individuals or organisations (often with a lot more to them than Sherwood chooses to inform her readers) is more a matter of method than lack of knowledge or experience.
As we saw just a couple of months ago in the Guardian’s coverage of Khader Adnan’s hunger strike, what Sherwood (and others) omit from their reports is often just as critical to the overall picture as the words they do choose to write. Thus Adnan – an Islamic Jihad activist seen on record recruiting suicide bombers – became ‘a baker‘ as far as Guardian readers were concerned, whilst the victims of his ‘militant group‘ (as Sherwood elected to term a proscribed terrorist organisation) remained outside the sphere of Guardian readers’ awareness.
Now Sherwood is at it again, with an article from April 26th on the subject of the latest round of hunger strikes by Palestinian security prisoners held in Israeli prisons. In it, she covers two specific prisoners; Bilal Diab (aged 27 from the village of Ra’ei, south-west of Jenin) and Tha’er Halahleh (aged 34 from Hevron and one of the leaders of the hunger strike).
What Sherwood refrains from informing her readers is that – like Khader Adnan – both men are members of the Islamic Jihad.
Bilal Diab
Tha’er Halahleh
Sherwood quotes ‘Addameer’ in her article, describing it as a ‘prisoners’ rights group’ but declining to mention the organisation’s political aspects and its use of Palestinian prisoners as a means of political leverage.
This interview (worth reading in its entirety) with Addameer legal researcher Mourad Jadallah gives an idea of the group’s political affiliations and the significance of the subject of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons in internal Palestinian political power struggles.
Asa Winstanley: Palestinian hunger strikes seems to have developed a lot recently. It’s an old tactic, but there seems to be a new focus on it.
Mourad Jadallah: We have days for hunger strike for prisoners from Fatah and [then] twenty other days for prisoners from the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], which means that also the prisoners’ movement is not united like it was [in the past]. So what happened outside the prisons is reflected inside the prisons’ movement.
AW: The factional divisions you mean?
MJ: Yeah. Like today — this is something we don’t want to talk about but maybe for The Electronic Intifada we can say [that] until today we are not sure that the prisoners of Fatah will participate [in the hunger strike starting tomorrow].
……
This is one side of how we can explain all these hunger strikes in the prison. From one side, the peace process failed to release the prisoners … And the other side, you have the [prisoners] exchange. Most of the prisoners released … they are affiliated to Hamas. So the other prisoners said, OK, what we have [are] political factions who just look out for their own prisoners and if we are from other parties nobody will ask for us and the peace process can’t release all the prisoners … The prisoners decided and they understood that they have to fight for themselves.
AW: Most of the prisoners released in the exchange were from Hamas?
MJ: Especially in the first phase of the release — 80 percent of them were from Hamas.
AW: Why was that?
MJ: This is what Hamas wanted, and also the majority of prisoners today, they belong to Hamas. This is the reality even after the exchange. And we know that Fatah and the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization], when they release the prisoners, they look for the Fatah prisoners, they want to keep this legitimacy at least in the eyes of the Fatah prisoners.
So everyone is saying, OK, Hamas succeeded to release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners — 80 percent of the first phase, which is like 450, they were Hamas. And the others, who were serving short sentences, were from different parties. So maybe it’s time for others to do the same as Hamas and release their prisoners.
… Since the beginning of the year there have been some short hunger strikes … Then suddenly you have the PFLP prisoners who went on an open hunger strike for twenty days, then Hamas came and did the prisoner swap … And then Khader Adnan put all the focus on Islamic Jihad. So you have a competition between the political parties. At some point you have the focus on the Fatah prisoners.
An additional aspect connecting this latest round of hunger strikes to its many predecessors -which Sherwood also completely ignores – is its role in the ongoing attempt by some Palestinian groups (including organizations such as Addameer) to have people serving sentences due to convictions for terrorism recognized as political prisoners. In fact, as Addameer’s director Sahar Francis states in this article, they already view all Palestinian security prisoners as ‘political’ – even leaders of terrorist groups such as Ahmed Sa’adat of the PFLP and those convicted of acts of terror.
Sherwood’s next quote in her article comes from Shawan Jabarin of Al Haq. As was previously pointed out by CiF Watch when Sherwood wrote a puff piece about ‘Defence of Children International – Palestine’ in January 2012, Jabarin (who sits on the board of DCI-Pal together with Sahar Francis of Addameer) is linked to the proscribed terrorist organization the PFLP.
In June 2007 the Israeli Supreme Court noted that:
“[Jabarin] is apparently active as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in part of his hours of activity he is the director of a human rights organisation, and in another part he is an activist in a terrorist organisation which does not shy away from acts of murder and attempted murder, which have nothing to do with rights, and, on the contrary, deny the most basic right of all, the most fundamental of fundamental rights, without which there are no other rights – the right to life.”
If – as with almost everything she writes about – Sherwood were not so busy endeavoring to reduce the subject to simplistic concepts of innocent, helpless Palestinians and bad, powerful Israelis, she might have been able to broaden her readers’ knowledge on the subject of these repeated hunger strikes as part of a comprehensive strategy to try to secure the release of prisoners.
She could have pointed out the connections between the well-organized strikes and the calls by Khaled Mashaal and other prominent members of Hamas such as Ismail Haniyeh, Ahmed Bahar and Ismail Radwan to kidnap more Israeli soldiers as a ‘second front’ in the bid for the release of convicted terrorists from Israeli prisons.
She might have mentioned the statements by Issa Qaraqa (PA Minister of Prisoner Affairs) and PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi on the subject of the coordinated hunger strike – both of which called for ‘internationalization’ of the issue – adding further evidence to the fact that rather than some kind of spontaneous reaction to specific grievances, the strike is part of a co-ordinated political campaign, as the between Hamas and Fatah leaders in its promotion also indicates.
“Hamas political chief Khaled Mashaal and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas spoke by telephone Thursday about rallying Palestinians to support Palestinian prisoners in their hunger strike against certain Israeli prison policies, such as administrative detention, Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported Friday, citing a Hamas statement.
The two also discussed tactical strategy for emphasizing the hunger strike and prisoner issues on the public relations and diplomatic fronts.”
But unfortunately for anyone who actually relies upon the Guardian for news and information about what goes on in Israel, they will learn nothing of the wider context of the hunger strikes in Israeli prisons because Harriet Sherwood apparently deems it unnecessary for readers to be aware of the connections of her subjects and interviewees to terror groups or the political campaigns of which the strikes are part and parcel.
Instead, she’s busy piling on the pathos; slowly but steadily narrowing her readers’ range of thought in true Newspeak fashion.
Related articles
- Harriet Sherwood again takes up the cause of innocent Palestinian “baker”, Khader Adnan (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood feels Islamic Jihad terrorist’s pain (cifwatch.com)
- Video of Harriet Sherwood’s Palestinian “Baker”, Khader Adnan, calling for suicide bombing (cifwatch.com)
Like this:
Harriet Sherwood’s story on April 4, Israel evicts settlers from Hebron house, reported on the forced removal, by Israeli security personnel, of a Jewish family from a house in Hebron yesterday – a home they claimed to have purchased legally. (According to Israeli authorities, the family had failed to obtain the required permit to purchase property.)
Sherwood’s report included these lines:
Israeli security forces have evicted a group of hardline settlers from a Palestinian house in Hebron,
About 500 hardline settlers live in a closed military zone in the heart of Hebron, protected by a large military presence.
Sherwood’s previous report, on April 3, prior to the eviction, included this headline:
That report included this:
The Israeli prime minister has intervened to prevent the eviction of hardline Jewish settlers from a house in the tense West Bank city of Hebron…
What is a “hardline settler”?
Well, in the context of Hebron it refers to Jews who live in perhaps the oldest Jewish community in the world, which dates back to Biblical times – 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 were forced to flee — that the city became temporarily “free” of Jews.
Under Jordanian control from 1949 to 1967 Jews were not allowed to enter the Tomb of the Patriarchs, and authorities undertook a systematic campaign to obliterate evidence of the 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.
After the 1967 Six-Day War, the Jewish community of Hebron was re-established, and today the city has approximately 500 Jews (who live there consistent with the terms of the Oslo accords accepted by the PA) and 150,000 Arab residents.
Calling Jews currently living or wishing to live in Hebron “settlers” necessarily implies that they are colonizing land with which they have no connection.
Worse, referring to such Israelis as “hardline settlers”, as Sherwood does, suggests that there’s something radical or extreme about the desire not to keep the city completely free of Jews.
Hardline Jewish settler boy in Hebron on Purim
Such characterizations demonstrate either intellectually laziness or – more likely – ideologically-inspired, completely ahistorical, propaganda.
Related articles
H/T Jeremy
It’s impossible to read the following story, as reported by Sky News, without recalling the Guardian’s advocacy on behalf of Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist Khader Adnan, whose administrative detention by Israeli authorities made him a cause celeb among the anti-Israel ‘journavist’ community.
The Guardian published five separate sympathetic pieces about Adnan (including a risible CiF essay by his wife who characterized the spokesperson for a group responsible for terror attacks which murdered hundreds of Israelis as “selfless”) who they comically referred to as a Palestinian “baker”.
Likely never to grace the pages of the Guardian, nor interest their Israel correspondent Harriet Sherwood, is the story of two Palestinian journalists arrested by the PA for criticizing Palestinian leadership.
Per Sky News:
Tarek Khamis, who works for a West Bank news agency, was detained by Palestinian security forces in Ramallah after he used the social networking site to condemn the arrest of another local journalist and blogger.
Esmat Abdel Khalik is being held in solitary confinement after she accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of being a “traitor” on her Facebook page.
A spokesman for the Palestinian Authority said Ms Abdel Khalik was being held for “extending her tongue” against the elected Palestinian leadership.
In a sign of a deliberate crackdown against local reporters, a third Palestinian journalist was arrested last week after writing an article alleging corruption in the Palestinian diplomatic mission in France.
Youssef al Sahyeb has been charged with slander and defamation after a complaint lodged by the Palestinian foreign minister Riad Malki. The reporter was released on $7000 (£4,400) bail after protests by fellow journalists in the West Bank.
The Arabic Network for Human Rightshas accused the Palestinian Authority of “assaulting the freedom of expression in the Palestinian territories”.
“Journalists are entitled to express their opinions without fear of being imprisoned and harassed,” the organisation said in a statement.
The Palestinian Authority has denied claims that it has set up a special unit to monitor blogs and social network postings.
Press freedom is meant to be protected under Palestinian law but the legislation allows for journalists to be prosecuted for activities which threaten “Palestinian unity or values”.
If you go to the Palestinian Territories page of the Guardian there’s no report on this flagrant assault on freedom of the press in PA.
Do I even have to ask what kind of coverage the Guardian would provide if Israel arrested Ha’aretz (or +972) journalists for criticizing Prime Minister Netanyahu?
Of course, such a scenario is inconceivable, as journalists here routinely engage in the most scurrilous critiques of Israeli leaders with complete impunity.
Moreover, those on the left who passionately advocate for the creation of a Palestinian state strangely never seem bothered by such stories – political phenomena in the PA which demonstrates their decidedly illiberal political culture.
Can any true progressive sincerely argue at this point that the new nation of “Palestine” will be even marginally democratic, pluralistic, or tolerant?
UPDATE, April 4. Per Challah Hu Akbar:
On Thursday, Abdel Khalik’s detention was extended for 15 days and she was put into solitary confinement. Ma’an News Agency now reports that, according to a member of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, Khaleq was transferred, on Tuesday, to a hospital after her health deteriorated.
Related articles
- Harriet Sherwood celebrates ‘Int’l Women’s Day’ by championing the cause of Islamic Jihad terrorist (cifwatch.com)
- Fatah arrests 8 Hamas members. Israel arrests 1. Which do you think Harriet Sherwood reported? (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood Gets 2012 Off to a Shoddy Start (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood again takes up the cause of innocent Palestinian “baker”, Khader Adnan (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood feels Islamic Jihad terrorist’s pain (cifwatch.com)
- Video of Harriet Sherwood’s Palestinian “Baker”, Khader Adnan, calling for suicide bombing (cifwatch.com)
- Propaganda by wife of Islamic Jihad terrorist, Khadr Adnan: Courtesy of the Guardian (cifwatch.com)
- What Peter Beinart won’t report: PA TV thanks Palestinian children for fertilizing land with blood (cifwatch.com)
Cross posted by Anne, who blogs at Anne’s Opinions
Harriet Sherwood, the Guardian’s official Jerusalem correspondent, has produced a strange article which both sneers at and condemns Israel’s border fences on ALL its borders (not just the West Bank), citing “critics who call it a sign of weakness” and yet brings no evidence that her point is valid besides the opinion of one Israeli op-ed writer from Ynet.
The article is accompanied by a graphic (below) of Israel’s borders, captioned “Israel’s barriers”. Besides the slanted headline, the graphic actually emphasizes Israel’s vulnerability, especially when taken together with the smaller inset picture beside it, showing Israel’s tiny size in relation to the rest of the vast Middle East.
And now let us analyse the “facts” as seen by Sherwood and her “critics” (as I pointed out above, in fact one only critic):
It cuts a steel swath through the stark wilderness where Israel and Egypt meet, glinting in the desert sun as it snakes across barren hills and sandy plateaus. Wielding blowtorches at the base of the five-metre-high (16ft) barrier are some of the very men the border fence is in part designed to keep out: illegal immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, now working as cheap construction labour for Israeli contractors.
So Sherwood objects to Israel employing illegal immigrants. I wonder how she would react if Israel refused these immigrants any employment at all.
Israel’s newest frontier fence is being erected at high-speed along the 150-mile boundary between the Sinai and Negev deserts. Its construction, due to be completed by the end of this year, was accelerated after last summer’s cross-border attack in which eight Israelis were killed, and amid rising alarm about the number of refugees crossing into the Jewish state.
Once it is finished, Israel will be almost completely enclosed by steel, barbed wire and concrete, leaving only the southern border with Jordan between the Dead and Red Seas without a physical barrier. That, too, may be fenced in the future.
The government says fences along its actual and claimed borders are necessary as deterrents against terrorism and illegal infiltration. Regional upheavals over the past year – particularly in Egypt and Syria – have added to Israel’s sense of being, in Defence Minister Ehud Barak’s old phrase, a “villa in the jungle”.
But in a scathing commentary in Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s biggest-selling newspaper, respected defence analyst Alex Fishman recently wrote: “We have become a nation that imprisons itself behind fences, which huddles terrified behind defensive shields.” It was, he said, a “national mental illness”.
This is where Sherwood’s prejudices shine through. In her words, the Israeli government “claims” – always the sneering dismissive tone when quoting Israeli officials. But all credibility is given to one obscure reporter. Do we really need to care that deeply what one commentator in one Israeli newspaper has to say? Does Mr. Fishman address himself to the reality in which his own country finds itself – surrounded on all sides by hostile nations and terrorist entities, all sworn to eliminate Israel, and who have attempted to do so multiple times. How about talking to the families of the victims of those terrorist attacks that took place at that very border spot precisely because there was no border fence in place.
The latest stretch, along what the Israeli military calls the new “hot border” with Egypt, from the Red Sea almost to the Mediterranean, consists of latticed steel, topped and edged with razor wire, extending at least two metres below ground and in some sections reaching seven metres above ground. Ditches and observation posts with cameras and antennae will line the route.
An electronic pulse will run through the fence, setting off an alarm on contact that will allow the Israeli army to locate the exact spot of attempted infiltration. On the Israeli side, a sandy tracking path will show the footprints of interlopers, and an asphalt military patrol road will give unhindered access to army units.
I’m delighted to hear how well-armed the new border fence will be. It’s about time.
[...]
The smuggling of immigrants was a major factor in the decision to build the fence. According to Lieutenant Colonel Yoav Tilan of the Israeli Defence Forces, 16,000 people – originating mainly from Eritrea and Sudan – crossed the border illegally in 2011 in “an industry of crime”. But the “constant, daily threat” of terrorism and the smuggling of drugs are also important factors, he said.
I cannot see why there would be anything for either Sherwood or Fishman to object to. Every other country in similar geo-political circumstances constructs similar border fences. I would refer you to the US-Mexico border fence; the Saudi-Yemen border barrier; the Bangladesh-India border; the Chinese-N. Korea border, and of course how could we forget the Egypt-Gaza border?
About seven miles short of the Mediterranean, the southern barrier will meet the fence Israel has built around Gaza. It runs for 32 miles, with a buffer zone, which Palestinians are forbidden from entering, extending up to 1,000 metres inside the narrow Gaza Strip, swallowing prime agricultural land. The fence has kept Palestinians inside Gaza but has not stopped rockets being fired by militants into Israel, nor did it prevent the cross-border kidnap of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006.
The failure of the border to stop rockets from being fired or the kidnapping of Shalit is not a reason to take down the border fence. On the contrary, it is a prime motivator to strengthen the border.
As to Sherwood’s snide little reference to the border fence swallowing prime agricultural land, I cannot testify as to the quality of the land, but since the Palestinians were handed Gaza on a plate, with all its greenhouses and farms intact, and these were destroyed the very next day by the activists terrorists of Hamas, they obviously do not care very much for agriculture.
At the northern end of the country, a fence built in the 1970s along the boundary with Lebanon was reconstructed, and in some places its route adjusted, after Israel withdrew its forces in 2000 following a 22-year occupation. It did not prevent the killing of five Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah militants in a cross-border ambush in 2006, nor the firing of thousands of rockets during the ensuing 34-day war.
Once again, the fact that the border fence did not prevent either missiles or a kidnapping is not a reason for its dismantling but for its strengthening.
Last month, Israel confirmed plans to replace the fence with a five-metre-high wall for half-a-mile stretch around the town of Metula, which is situated on a finger of Israeli territory and surrounded by Lebanon on three sides. Just a few hundred metres from Metula’s supermarket, civilian traffic and UN armoured cars travel along a Lebanese road. According to Fishman, the new wall is intended to deter anti-tank missiles and sniper fire, but locals also speak of a flourishing drug-smuggling trade along this stretch of the border.
Excellent! I’m all in favour of a stronger border fence.
Further east, an Israeli fence sits on the ceasefire line drawn at the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur war, running between the Golan Heights, which Israel has occupied for almost 45 years, and Syria. Hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators breached the fence last May, in the Golan and along the Lebanese border. Around a dozen people were killed and scores injured when the IDF opened fire.
Sherwood is referring to the “Naqsa Day” border breaches, and with a little research she would discover that the “pro-Palestinian demonstrators” were no such thing at all; rather, they were in it for a quick buck, since they themselves revealed that they were paid by Syria and Hezbollah to invade Israel’s borders.
Sherwood continues with her whine about Israel’s dastardly borders, always sitting on prime agricultural or fertile land until she comes to her main gripe: the Separation Wall.
Around a third of the way down this stretch, the fence abuts the infamous huge steel-and-concrete West Bank barrier. This runs along or inside the 1949 armistice line, or Green Line, swallowing up tracts of Palestinian agricultural land, slicing through communities and separating farmers from their fields and olive trees. Israel says the barrier is a security measure that has deterred suicide bombers, but many believe it marks the boundaries of a future Palestinian state, taking around 12% of the West Bank on to the Israeli side. About two-thirds of its 465-mile length is complete, mostly as a steel fence with wide exclusion zones on either side.
Around 10%, mainly in urban areas, is a bleak, imposing eight-metre-high concrete wall.
Either it is a huge concrete and steel barrier or it is a steel fence. She really ought to make up her mind, and I can help her along with that.
Sherwood:
The international court of justice ruled the barrier illegal under international law in 2004.
However, the ICJ’s ruling is non-binding, and, as the dissenting American Judge Buergenthal wrote in his statement:
[...] I am compelled to vote against the Court’s findings on the merits because
the Court did not have before it the requisite factual basis for its sweeping
findings; it should therefore have declined to hear the case
In other words, the ICJ heard a case put before it without all the relevant information. Some balanced justice!
Harriet Sherwood continues citing Alex Fishman:
[...Israel's only open border, through the Arava desert from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea resort of Eilat, may be fenced in the future, according to Fishman.
"The moment the border with Egypt is sealed off, the drug dealers, human traffickers and terrorists will take a longer route, go through Sinai into Jordan, and from there infiltrate Israel. The defence ministry and the IDF are already planning to... erect a fence in the Arava too, along the border with Jordan," he wrote. Then Israel "will have finished our disengagement from the Middle East".
Does Fishman really want these terrorists, drug smugglers and human traffickers entering Israel freely?
Sherwood:
Israel is not alone in erecting barriers: fences exist or are being built or are planned along other countries' borders, mostly to counter illegal immigration and drug smuggling. But even the most heavily militarised borders fail to completely stop terrorism, smuggling and people determined to reach a better life.
And yet no one calls for their dismantling or ridicules their existence.
Sherwood:
[...]
But, the IDF admits, the barrier is not infallible. In the expectation that smugglers and militants will dig tunnels, cut steel and seek alternative routes, the fence is reinforced with armed patrols, surveillance, intelligence-gathering and trackers.
According to Fishman, all this is symptomatic of the Israeli psyche. Every fence and wall, he told the Guardian, was built for a valid reason. “Every decision was the right decision for its moment. But it’s like pieces of a puzzle – you don’t know what will be the picture at the end, but then when you see the whole picture, it shocks you.
He’s correct there. The picture is certainly shocking when you realise that most of Israel’s immediate neighbours are either in a permanent state of war with it, or are encouraging and sponsoring terrorist proxies.
The last word goes to Alex Fishman who concludes:
“We have become a nation that is burying itself behind walls, behind fences. It shows we are going much more towards isolation. Mine is a very patriotic standpoint – and my disappointment comes from this patriotic standpoint. A fence is a kind of weakness. I’m not a psychiatrist but it shows something of the mentality of a nation.”
No Mr. Fishman. We have become a nation buried behind walls because of the seemingly immutable hatred of Israel possessed by our neighbours. I do believe you are patriotic but also seem incapable of recognizing even the most intuitive regional political realities – determined to see things not as they are but as you want them to be.
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On March 12th Harriet Sherwood filed a report from Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip which dealt extensively with the death of 15 year-old Nayif Qarmout.
Since her arrival in the region, one of the hallmarks of Sherwood’s reporting from the Middle East has been her unquestioning repetition of versions of stories told to her by partisan sources and the presentation of hearsay as fact. Typically, in this report Sherwood stated:
“The boys had set off for school but spotted some militants running away after firing a rocket. They went to investigate the launcher – perhaps out of simple teenage curiosity, perhaps to see if there was something they could salvage for sale. Then an explosion killed Nayif and injured five others.”
In the next sentence, Sherwood added:
“Israel denied it had carried out an air strike.”
Revealingly, she made no attempt to expand upon the Israeli announcement or to investigate the possibility that Qarmout might not have died as a result of an air strike, despite the fact that at the time of the publication of her report an AFP journalist on the scene had already reported that there was no evidence of such a strike.
“According to an AFP correspondent at the scene, there were no signs of any impact on the ground which could have been caused by a missile, with the most likely cause of his death being some kind of explosive device he was carrying.
The victim lost his legs in the blast and his body was covered with shrapnel wounds, he said.”
Pictures from the scene appear to support the opinion of the AFP reporter and the BBC also pointed to the lack of evidence of an Israeli strike.
Sherwood, however, continued her report by stating that:
“Nayif was one of 23 Palestinians killed since Friday in an escalating round of attack and counter-attack between militants in Gaza and the Israeli military.”
And later:
“Five civilians – two teenage boys, two men in their 60s and a woman aged 30 – are among the Gaza dead, since Israel assassinated a militant leader in order, it says, to prevent an attack aimed at its citizens.”
Sherwood not only neglected to inform her readers that the vast majority of those killed in the Gaza Strip were terrorists actively involved in shooting missiles at Israeli civilians (continuing to employ the sickening euphemism ‘militants’ to describe terrorists carrying out war crimes), but also failed to provide accurate background for the killing of Popular Resistance Committees leader Zuhir al Qaisi and the terror attack he and his organization were about to perpetrate.
Rather than lazily parroting the claims of Qarmout’s family and friends, any reporter worth their salt would have investigated the possibility raised by the AFP reporter that the youth’s injuries suggest that he may have been carrying an explosive device. It is, of course, common knowledge that terrorist groups – including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is one of the main players in this latest round of violence – recruit child soldiers.
Another potential factor totally ignored by Sherwood in her reports of civilian casualties in Gaza is the frequent falling short of rockets aimed at Israeli towns and villages. It is estimated that since the latest barrage began last Friday, some 50 rockets launched by the PRC or PIJ have landed inside the Gaza Strip, endangering the civilian population there.
Sherwood’s highly emotive and superficial reporting is, of course, not benign. Unknown numbers of readers now believe that Nayif Qarmout was killed in an Israeli air strike despite there being no proof of that claim.
The question which Harriet Sherwood and her editors need to answer is why they chose to publish this non-evidence-based report when information pointing to its unreliability was already available and why no qualifying update has (at the time of writing) yet been added to Sherwood’s article.
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Since Friday, March 9, when hostilities between Israel and terrorists in Gaza began – upon the IDF’s disruption of a Popular Resistance Committee planned multi-pronged terror attack on Israel’s south, the Guardian has devoted 8 stories to the issue.
Total words and stories: 4485 words in eight separate pieces (including a video story)
Headlines sympathetic to Gaza/Palestinians: 7
Headlines sympathetic to Israel: 0 (One was neutral)
Story photos sympathetic to Gaza/Palestinians: 7
Story photos sympathetic to Israel: 1
Number of passages in the eight stories clearly sympathetic to Palestinians: 22
Number of passages in the eight stories clearly sympathetic to Israelis: 12
What the Guardian didn’t report or severely downplayed:
Number of rockets fired from Gaza since Friday: 303
Number of Israelis injured since start of hostilities: 17
Number of Palestinian terrorists killed since the start of hostilities out of 24 total deaths:20 (Civilian to Combatant ratio of 4 to 20) H/T Challah Hu Akbar
Average civilian to combatant death ratio in recent conflicts involving the U.S. or NATO forces: 3 to 1 (3 civilian deaths for every one combatant death)
Number of Israeli citizens who spent the weekend on high alert, with alarm sirens regularly warning people to rush to bomb shelters: Over 1 million
Who has been responsible for most of the rocket attacks on Israeli civilians? Popular Resistance Committee and Islamic Jihad. (both funded by Iran, and the former controlled by Hamas)
Stated goals of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Popular Resistance Committees: The destruction of Israel.
Most cynical and cruel Palestinian attack since Friday not reported by the Guardian: Kerem Shalom incident
(Two vehicles en-route to delivering humanitarian goods to the Gaza Strip were struck by three mortars on Monday morning close to the Kerem Shalom crossing. Activity at the crossing was only temporarily suspended, with the decision made to continue operations at the crossing. Despite escalating rocket fire in recent days, the Kerem Shalom and Erez crossings continued to function, with over 180 trucks with aid transferred to Gaza on Sunday.)
Finally, here are the photos and headlines which accompanied the eight Guardian stories:
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A guest post by Geary
Harriet Sherwood’s latest report contains the tellingly typical sentence:
The weekend death and injury toll was the highest since Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s three-week military assault on Gaza just over three years ago. [emphasis added]
Note “assault” (that is “thuggish behaviour”) and “on Gaza”. Not on Hamas, mind, but on Gaza.
I say typical because this is the usual wording carefully selected by Guardian writers to describe Cast Lead. A glance through the newspaper archives for 2010 reveals the following (my italics):
Cast Lead Israel’s military offensive against Gaza
Israel’s Cast Lead offensive in which 1400 Palestinians were killed
Operation Cast Lead (the attack on Gaza)
… the anniversary of Cast Lead, the war on Gaza.
Not once is any context given, no reason, no mention of Hamas or rockets. Just a mindless war on Gaza.
How did the other UK so-called quality report Operation Cast Lead in relation to Gaza? The Telegraph, not sharing the Guardian’s Israel obsession, mentions it just twice and in the most neutral of fashions:
Israel’s controversial military offensive in Gaza
have been fired by Islamist groups in Gaza [into Israel] since Israel’s offensive, known as Cast Lead, was concluded.
The Times* has five mentions, some neutral:
Israel was conducting Operation Cast Lead into Gaza
But in others there appears at first sight to be a similar tone to the Guardian:
… Israel’s three-week Israeli assault on Gaza
… the devastation of Operation Cast Lead when Israel killed about 1400 Palestinians
But the impression is soon dispelled if one reads on. The Times, being a proper newspaper, gives context. The two extracts above are part of the following wider picture:
… a three-week Israeli assault on Gaza in response to Hamas rocket attacks
In Gaza, Iran’s other protégé, Hamas, is risking a new war with Israel, two years after the devastation of Operation Cast Lead when Israel killed about 1400 Palestinians in an attempt to end Palestinian rocket fire into southern Israel and topple the Islamists who rule the country.
Would the likes of Sherwood write of “Britain’s assault on Libya” or “the UK’s war on Afghanistan”? Of course not. But with Israel anything goes. And the first thing to go is journalistic integrity.
(*Times’ pay wall prevents direct link to stories noted)
UPDATE:
The Times has recently been caught using a blatantly false caption about Israel’s Iron Dome system – used to protect Israeli communities in the south from Gaza rocket barrages. See the Honest Reporting expose, here.
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A guest post by AKUS
The Guardian has cancelled its plans to hold a global memorial service that would demonstrate the unspeakable cruelty of Israel towards chickens.
The plan, hatched, so to speak, by Harriet (ChickenLady) Sherwood was to be conducted in the Guardian’s London headquarters, with video links to Sherwood in Jerusalem and Chris McGreal in Washington, DC. and broadcast over YouTube and the BBC with an uplink to Al Jazeera
Seamus Milne was to provide kaddish by singing the Chicken Internationale:
Stand up, cooped up of the Earth
Stand up, prisoners of the coops
Reason thunders in its volcano
This is the eruption of the end
Of the past let us make a clean slate
Enslaved chickens, stand up, stand up
While Mr. Milne was intoning the kaddish, a picture of chickens cooped up in Beijing provided by the ChickenLady was to be broadcast to demonstrate the evils of chicken-raising in Israel:
The picture below from another unnamed Asian country was to be used to illustrate the horror of the way chickens are relentlessly slaughtered by Israel. Even though this also has nothing to do with Israeli chickens it clearly makes the point about Israeli cruelty to chickens:
At the last moment the global memorial service was cancelled when Ma’ariv reported that the dead were Israeli chickens killed by one of the few Palestinian Grad rockets fired from Gaza that Iron Dome failed to intercept. It was felt that revealing the source of the rocket and the nationality of the dead would be damaging to the call for a one-state solution for all chickens.
A message intercepted by Chickileaks reveals that the next article on Comment is Free will point out that “Only one hundred and twenty of the thousands of rockets Hamas has have been fired at random into Israeli civilian centers so far in response to at least six carefully focused Israeli air raids, and Hamas’ restraint is to be commended”.
According to the Chickileaks e-mail Sherwood is refusing to return to Gaza to look for dead Arab chickens until Israel “ends its relentless, disproportionate and unfair reprisals” for rocket attacks into its towns so that the ceremony can be reinstated .
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Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
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Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
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: BDS, Boycott, Delegitimization, Guardian, Harriet Sherwood, Israel, Moty Cristal, NHS, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Racism, Trade Unions, TUC, UNISON | by Hadar Sela | 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.
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