Tag Archives: Islamism

May 23 2013

Guardian buries the lead about extremists who likely influenced Woolwich terrorist

Yesterday, in a savage terror attack, a British soldier (named Lee Rigby) was hacked to death in Woolwich, south-east London, by two men – including one British-born man who has been identified as 29-year-old Michael Olumide Adebolajo.

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Terrorist suspect, Michael Olumide Adebolajo, moments after the attack

An otherwise interesting May 23 Guardian report on the alleged radicalization of the suspect, who is reportedly a convert to Islam, included a staggering understatement about the Islamist preacher who may have influenced his path to extremism.

Here are the relevant passages:

Counter-terrorism officers and the security services are examining Adebolajo’s links to the banned extremist group al-Muhajiroun. It is understood he was radicalised around 10 years ago, changing his name to Mujaahid, which means “one who engages in jihad”.

Friends at his school said they knew nothing of his conversion to Islam.

The Guardian understands that both Adebolajo and the other suspect have featured in counter-terrorism investigations over the last eight years, the Guardian understands.

But it is understood that, while they were known to the police and security services, they were considered peripheral figures among the many extremists whose activities cross the radar of investigators.

Adebolajo was frequently seen in Woolwich handing out Islamist literature in the High Street.

Anjem Choudary, the former leader of al-Muhajiroun, has confirmed that he knew Adebolajo, who was pictured on video in the immediate aftermath of the horrific killing waving a cleaver with bloodied hands.

Choudary said Mujaahid had converted to Islam in 2003 and was a British-born Nigerian. He said he had attended meetings of al-Muhajiroun from around 2005-11, but stopped attending the meetings, and those its successor organisations, two years ago.

At the meetings he heard an interpretation of Islam preached by the group’s founder, Omar Bakri Mohammed, which many Muslims would consider extreme.

Choudary said: “He was on our ideological wave-length.“

Leaving aside the fact that the Guardian buried the lead – the fact that the terrorist was evidently ideologically in line with Choudary’s extremism – the Guardian report, by ,  and , makes almost no mention of why both Choudary and Bakri are ‘considered’ extremists.  

So, here’s a brief backgrounder. 

Anjem Choudary

Here’s a photo of Anjem Choudray, a British born former solicitor, as head of a the banned group ‘Islam4UK’ which he formed after its predecessor, al-Muhajiroun, was banned, holding a news conference in London in 2010:

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On the terrorist attack yesterday:

  • On his Twitter feed yesterday and today, Choudary seemed to justify the hacking death of a British soldier as a natural reaction to a British regime which kills Muslims.

On major terror attacks:

  • He has praised the terrorists involved in the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the 7/7 bombings in London.

General views on British soldiers:

  • Especially relevant in the context of the terror attack yesterday (which, again, targeted a British soldier), Choudary’s group previously incited against British soldiers, calling them “brutal murderers” and “cowards.  Group members have even yelled “butchers” at British troops returning home from Afghanistan.

Sharia Law:

  • Choudary strongly believes in the implementation of Sharia Law, in its entirety, in the UK. He advocated setting up Sharia Law controlled zones in British cities.

Gays:

  • Choudary has sanctioned the stoning to death of gays.

Misc:

  • In 2005, after the UK tightened immigration rules to prevent Omar Bakri Mohammed from re-entering the country, the Guardian published a letter by Choudary praising Bakri.
london-muslim-extremist-1-2-09

Islam4UK march in 2010

Omar Bakri Muhammad

Here’s Omar Bakri Muhammad addressing an Al-Muhajiron rally in Trafalgar Square, London 2003:

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The Syrian born Islamist Bakri helped to build Hizb ut-Tahrir in the UK before leaving the group and heading to Al-Muhajiroun, until its banning by UK authorities in 2004.  He left the UK shortly after the 7/7 bombings (which he expressed support for), and it was later revealed that quite a few of his followers had taken part in suicide bombings or had become close to Al-Qaeda and its network.

Here are some additional facts on Bakri:

On his ties to Bin Laden:

  • Bakri claimed, in the past, to be the spokesman of Osama bin Laden’s “International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders” which was established in 1996.  Al-Ahram Weekly reported that Bakri was known for his connections with bin Laden, whom he described as the leader of all Islamist movements.

On the “right” to kill innocents – including innocent Muslims – for Jihad:

  • Bakri has justified his movement’s “right” to sacrifice whomever it sees fit in order to advance their cause, even Muslim children and women.

On their “right” to assassinate British leaders:

  • In the early 90s, Bakri was questioned by MI5 following a claim that he had called for the assassination of then-Prime Minister John Major. Bakri reportedly said: “Major is a legitimate target. If anyone gets the opportunity to assassinate him, I don’t think they should save it. It is our Islamic duty and we will celebrate his death.”

Jihadist training camps:

  • Bakri acknowledged that he was involved in financing training for volunteers sent to the U.S. He explained that his “Jihad network”  was designed to train Islamists to fight in Chechnya, “Palestine”, Kashmir or South Lebanon.

On a global Islamic state:

  • Bakri hasreportedly called for the establishment of a global Islamic regime called Al-Khilafa, starting in the UK.

On Jews and Israel:

  • Bakri was responsible for a leaflet and poster campaign which had the message: “Kill the Jews“.

Bakri told protesters at a violent demonstration outside the London Central Mosque in Regent Park in 2000, “All Israeli targets are legitimate for you. All Israelis must be destroyed.”

On Gays:

  • Bakri called for the death of playwright Terence McNally for portraying Jesus Christ, considered by Islam to be a prophet, as gay in his play Corpus Christi. Bakri also reportedly urged all gays to throw themselves from a London bridge.

More detailed information on the ideology and background of the Islamist leaders who allegedly radicalized the Woolwich terrorist can be found at MEMRI. 

May 20 2013

An ugly disgusting rant: Joseph Massad and Glenn Greenwald attack ‘the usual Jewish suspects’

Shortly after Julie Burchill’s January commentary, titled ‘Transsexuals should cut it out‘, at the Observer was completely removed after thousands of readers complained that her piece was bigoted towards transsexuals, the Observer’s decision was defended by their readers’ editor,  Stephen Pritchard.  

Pritchard called the decision a rational one, based on his contention that Burchill’s essay was “needlessly offensive” and “gratuitously insulting”.

Though some in the media were highly critical of the decision by the Observer (a Guardian sister publication) to pull Burchill’s piece, Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian’s putative defender of free speech, was mostly silent on the Burchill Affair.  Indeed, his Tweet, on Jan 13, shortly after Burchill’s piece was published should give some indication as to why.

‘An ugly disgusting rant’ would certainly be one way to characterize Joseph Massad’s despicable essay in Al Jazeera on May 14, which argued the following:

  • Zionism not only equals racism, but the ideology itself is antisemitic.
  • Zionists cooperated and collaborated with the Nazis during the 30s and 40s.
  • Zionism should be understood as the fulfillment of the Nazis’ dream, and that the there is a strong “ideological similitude” between the two movements.

As Petra Marquardt-Bigman has argued, the writings of Massad (who has contributed to ‘Comment is Free‘ and Electronic Intifada) can easily be confused with material found on extremist racist websites.

There is one exception to this paradigm, however. Massad is of Palestinian origin, so his otherwise boilerplate extreme right narrative about Israel and Jews is compromised a bit by these howlers:

  • Unlike Zionists, who, by virtue of their Zionism, are antisemitic, “Palestinians have remained unconvinced and steadfast in their resistance to anti-Semitism“.
  • Unlike ‘Zionist anti-Semites’, “the Palestinian people have mounted a major struggle against…anti-Semitic incitement”.

Whilst there were no Tweets by Greenwald expressing outrage over Massad’s pseudo intellectual racist assault against Jews, the decision by Al Jazeera to remove the Massad article from their site sent Greenwald into a fury:

In case there is any doubt who Greenwald is referring to by “the usual suspects“, in the Tweet he links to a piece criticizing AJ’s decision (and defending Massad) by Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada – whose support for Massad is not surprising as he advanced the Zionism = Nazism narrative in a Tweet in 2010 – which accused Al Jazeera of caving in to “Zionists extremist” Jews, such as Jeffrey Goldberg, John Podhoretz and Rahm Emmanuel.

It really takes a mind occupied by the most crude antisemitic stereotypes about the danger of Jewish power to conjure a scenario by which a Qatari based pro-Sunni Islamist media group was strong-armed by a small gang of powerful Jews into censoring an otherwise meritorious essay.   

Greenwald is a Jew by birth, and though we don’t possess some sort of piercing mentalism which would allow us to see the bigotry which may lurk in his soul, it should be clear to anyone who has seriously studied the “liberal” Guardian’ commentator that his moral sensibilities are – at the very least – compromised by a callous indifference to even the most explicit and malicious expressions of Jew hatred. 

Apr 28 2013

Glenn Greenwald on the sage foreign policy wisdom of the ‘Underwear Bomber’

Glenn Greenwald’s response to the terrorist attack in Boston should come as no surprise to those familiar with his ‘Comment is Free’ blog, and his previous blog at Salon.com.

In addition to smearing as ‘Islamophobic’ anyone who suggested, in the early hours and days of the investigation into the attack which left 3 dead and over 200 injured, that the culprits may be Islamists, his reaction once it seemed clear that the terrorists were radicalized Chechnyan Muslims was to argue, in a fashion similar to Richard Falk, that such attacks should ‘inspire’ us to reflect on US policy in the Mid-East.

Greenwald’s April 24 post at ‘Comment is Free’, entitled ‘The same motive cited for anti-US terrorism is cited over and over‘, provides another good example of such reasoning.

Greenwald writes thusly:

In the last several years, there have been four other serious attempted or successful attacks on US soil by Muslims, and in every case, they emphatically all say the same thing: that they were motivated by the continuous, horrific violence brought by the US and its allies to the Muslim world – violence which routinely kills and oppresses innocent men, women and children.

He then quotes the complaints against US foreign policy expressed by several convicted Islamist terrorists, such as Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American convicted of an attempted bombing attack at Times Square in 2010, Nidal Hasan, who will soon stand trial in a military court for the Fort Hood massacre, as well as the ”Underwear Bomber”, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

bomberGreenwald cites the following grievances of Abdulmutallab, which he expressed in a US court before pleading guilty of trying to murder hundreds of people on board Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day in 2009:

I had an agreement with at least one person to attack the United States in retaliation for US support of Israel and in retaliation of the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Palestine, especially in the blockade of Gaza, and in retaliation for the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and beyond, most of them women, children, and noncombatants.”

Greenwald, while making it clear that violence is still not justified, added the following:

But it is nonetheless vital to understand why there are so many people who want to attack the US as opposed to, say, Peru, or South Africa, or Brazil, or Mexico, or Japan, or Portugal.

…

…so many Americans, westerners, Christians and Jews love to run around insisting that the only real cause for Muslim attacks on the US is that the attackers have this primitive, brutal, savage, uncivilized religion (Islam) that makes them do it.

…

As the attackers themselves make as clear as they can, it’s not religious fanaticism but rather political grievance that motivates these attacks. Religious conviction may make them more willing to fight (as it does for many in the west), but the motive is anger over what is being done by the US and its allies to Muslims.

…

it’s crucial to understand this causation because it’s often asked “what can we do to stop Terrorism?” The answer is right in front of our faces: we could stop embracing the polices in that part of the world which fuel anti-American hatred and trigger the desire for vengeance and return violence.

However, to add some context to Greenwald’s explanation of ‘why they hate us’, here’s a relevant passage from the court transcript at Abdulmutallab’s sentencing.

Defendant poses a significant, ongoing threat to the safety of American citizens everywhere. As noted previously, in pleading guilty, defendant reiterated that it is his religious belief that the Koran obliges “every able Muslim to participate in jihad and fight in the way of Allah, those who fight you, and kill them wherever you find them,” and that “participation in jihad against the United States is considered among the most virtuous of deeds in Islam and is highly encouraged in the Koran.”

The court sentencing document continues to explain what inspired him to jihad:

In August 2009, defendant left Dubai, where he had been taking graduate classes, and traveled to Yemen. For several years, defendant had been following the online teachings of Anwar Awlaki, and he went to Yemen to try to meet him in order to discuss the possibility of becoming involved in jihad.

Anwar Awlaki was the American and Yemeni Imam, killed in a US drone strike in 2011, who U.S. government officials believe was an al-Qaeda regional commander, and a senior ‘talent recruiter’ and motivator for the terrorist group – and who is believed to have influenced the jihadist rampage of the Fort Hood shooter.

Here’s an additional passage from Abdulmutallab’s sentencing:

Defendant by that time had become committed in his own mind to carrying out an act of jihad, and was contemplating “martyrdom;” i.e., a suicide operation in which he and others would be killed. Once in Yemen, defendant visited mosques and asked people he met if they knew how he could meet Awlaki.

…

Thereafter, defendant received a text message from Awlaki telling defendant to call him, which defendant did.

…

Defendant took several days to write his message to Awlaki, telling him of his desire to become involved in jihad, and seeking Awlaki’s guidance. After receiving defendant’s message, Awlaki sent defendant a response, telling him that Awlaki would find a way for defendant to become involved in jihad.

So, in short, the ‘Underwear Bomber’ sought out the advice of a senior leader of an Islamist movement which calls for global jihad, seeks states governed by religious autocracies similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan, advocates death for homosexuality, and believes Jews are the embodiment of evil.

The suggestion that we should listen to the foreign policy ‘analysis’ of such homicidal jihadists is akin to imputing wisdom to the suicidal rants of conspiracists and radical cults – as if we should see the “revolutionary mass suicide” initiated by Jim Jones as a learning moment about the need for “social justice”, or that the US should incorporate the militia movement-inspired complaints of Timothy McVeigh into federal policy.

The ideological proclivity of some on the far-left to empathize with those, like Abdulmutallab, who willfully embrace the most violent, reactionary and racist movements in the world represents a dynamic as dangerous as it is baffling. 

Related articles
Apr 23 2013

Glenn Greenwald condemns the word ‘terrorism’ as racially-loaded

Our recent posts about the Guardian’s appalling use, on at least two separate occasions, of the term “political prisoner” to characterize violent Palestinian terrorists who murdered, or attempted to murder, innocent civilians weren’t exercises in rhetorical nitpicking.  Rather, our efforts to secure the definition of the term – which reasonable people intuitively understand as ‘those who are imprisoned for their political beliefs’ - represents an attempt to fight back against the manipulation of language, in service of an extreme ideological agenda, by the Guardian and their fellow travelers.

Similarly, Glenn Greenwald’s ongoing war against the term terrorism, which most who are not influenced by the far-left understand broadly to refer to  ‘premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents’ (or some variation of this), should be understood as a broader battle against common sense and moral sobriety.

Here is a passage from his latest post at ‘Comment is Free’, on April 22, entitled ‘Why is Boston “terrorism” but not Aurora, Sandy Hook, Tuscon, and Columbine?:

The word “terrorism” is, at this point, one of the most potent in our political lexicon: it single-handedly ends debates, ratchets up fear levels, and justifies almost anything the government wants to do in its name. It’s hard not to suspect that the only thing distinguishing the Boston attack from Tucson, Aurora, Sandy Hook and Columbine (to say nothing of the US “shock and awe” attack on Baghdad and the mass killings in Fallujah) is that the accused Boston attackers are Muslim and the other perpetrators are not. As usual, what terrorism really means in American discourse – its operational meaning – is: violence by Muslims against Americans and their allies.

Here’s another quote by Greenwald, in a post at Salon.com in 2011:

Terrorism has no objective meaning and, at least in American political discourse, has come functionally to mean: violence committed by Muslims whom the West dislikes, no matter the cause or the target. 

Here’s a quote by Greenwald in a post at Salon.com from 2010:

The term [terrorism] now has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity.  It has really come to mean:  ”a Muslim who fights against or even expresses hostility towards the United States, Israel and their allies.”

If we’re really going to vest virtually unlimited power in the Government to do anything it wants to people they call “Terrorists”, we ought at least to have a common understanding of what the term means.  But there is none.  It’s just become a malleable, all-justifying term to allow the U.S. Government carte blanche to do whatever it wants to Muslims it does not like or who do not like it (i.e., The Terrorists).  It’s really more of a hypnotic mantra than an actual word:  its mere utterance causes the nation blindly to cheer on whatever is done against the Muslims who are so labeled.

Greenwald is attempting to essentially proscribe the word ‘terrorism’ as politically loaded, subjective, prejudiced – arguing that the urge we have to condemn such willful and intentional attacks against innocent civilians, by using such clear moral language, is necessarily compromised by a deep-seated racial animus.

First, it needs to be pointed out that Greenwald’s specific claim about the term’s “operational” use is easily refuted by the simple fact that the media, civil rights groups and federal authorities also refer to political violence which is not committed by Muslims, or Islamist groups, as “terrorism”.  Examples of groups the FBI labels terrorists, for instance, include violent anti-government right-wing groups, environmental and animal rights extremists, Sovereign citizens movements, anarchist groups, white supremacists - and even fringe extremists such as the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski.

Greenwald’s mantra that terrorism is only used in reference to Muslims has no basis in fact.

Moreover, in addition to Greenwald’s specious implicit claim that use of the term “terrorism” is racially loaded, there is another factor involved – one which those on the Guardian-style Left often try desperately to avoid acknowledging in their reports and commentaries:  That while, of course, the overwhelming majority of Muslims aren’t extremists or terrorists, empirical evidence regarding the disproportionate percentage of terrorist acts committed by those influenced by radical interpretations of Islam is undeniable.

 According to the National Counter-Terrorism Center, over the past several years the overwhelming majority of terrorist-related fatalities world-wide were the result of attacks by Islamist (Sunni) extremists.

nctc

Fatalities from terrorism, charted by ideology of perpetrator: NCTC Chart, 2011 (Last year data was available)

Not only are such facts concerning Islamist terrorism uncontroversial to most people, but, interestingly, even a large majority (60%) of American Muslims polled by Pew Global in 2011 stated that they were either “Very” or “Somewhat” concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism in the U.S.  Would Greenwald suggest that even American Muslims are influenced by “Islamophobia”?

Ultimately, what Greenwald is, in effect, doing is attempting to stifle debate about the very real threat to our values posed by Islamist extremism – attempting to convince the overwhelming majority of non-ideological Americans to doubt what they know instinctively (and empirically) to be the truth.

As students of Soviet history, and communist movements more broadly, can attest to, propagandistic attempts to radically change politics by perverting ordinary language has a long and decidedly reactionary pedigree – one which genuine progressives need to furiously and passionately resist. 

Related articles
Apr 17 2013

Benghazi to Boston: Glenn Greenwald’s hypocrisy in condemning ‘rush to judgement’ over marathon attack

In response to the bomb attack at the Boston Marathon on Monday which killed three people and injured more than 175, Glenn Greenwald did what he does best: vilifying America and warning about racist-inspired assumptions regarding the religious identity of terrorist perpetrators.  

In his CiF commentary, ‘The Boston bombing produces familiar and revealing reactions’, April 16, Greenwald lectures Americans outraged by the assault that they are in no position to make judgements in light of the “horrific, civilian-slaughtering attacks that the US has been bringing to countries in the Muslim world over and over and over again for the last decade“

Greenwald is of course largely referring to the US military’s drone campaign against Islamist terrorists - in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere - who plot attacks against innocent American civilians.  (The use of such unmanned aerial assaults against enemy combatants is supported by most Americans, but has become something of a negative obsession for Greenwald and other Guardian commentators.)

Additionally, Greenwald spends a large percentage of his column condemning those on Twitter and elsewhere in the traditional and social media for their alleged ‘rush to judgment’ over the suspected perpetrator(s) of the Boston attack:

The rush, one might say the eagerness, to conclude that the attackers were Muslim was palpable and unseemly, even without any real evidence. The New York Post quickly claimed that the prime suspect was a Saudi national (while also inaccurately reporting that 12 people had been confirmed dead). The Post’s insinuation of responsibility was also suggested on CNN by Former Bush Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend (“We know that there is one Saudi national who was wounded in the leg who is being spoken to”). Former Democratic Rep. Jane Harman went on CNN to grossly speculate that Muslim groups were behind the attack. 

Wild, unverified accusations with “zero evidence” singling out a minority group for responsibility over a deadly act of violence?  That sounds familiar.

Indeed, the day after the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate compound in Benghazi which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, Greenwald, in a post titled ‘The tragic consulate killings in Lybia and America’s hierarchy of human life‘, wrote the following:

Protesters attacked the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya on Tuesday night and killed four Americans, including the US ambassador, Chris Stevens. The attacks were triggered by rage over an amateurish and deeply hateful film about Islam that depicted the Prophet Muhammad as, among other things, a child molester advocate, a bloodthirsty goon, a bumbling idiot, and a promiscuous, philandering leech. A 13-minute trailer was uploaded to YouTube and then quickly circulated in the Muslim world, sparking widespread anger (the US embassy in Cairo was also attacked).

Further, Greenwald repeated completely unverified (and ultimately false) claims that the film-maker (Sam Bacile) was “an Israeli real estate developer living in California” and that he had made the film with “the help of 100 Jewish donors.”

Greenwald’s wild speculation about the cause of the attack, and the putative Israeli and Jewish connection (also parroted by the Guardian’s Julian Borger and Caroline Davies), however, was completely unfounded.

  • On Sept. 12, reports already began to appear contradicting claims that Bacile was an Israeli Jew.  And, a day later it was confirmed that he was an Egyptian Christian. 
  • The Guardian was forced to correct Greenwald’s false claim about the Jewish identity of the film-maker

Reports regarding the importance of an obscure, low-budget anti-Muslim film represented merely a ruse, designed to divert the attention of those in the media already ideologically inclined to blame Jews, Israel and the West for deadly Islamist terror attacks. 

Greenwald’s ‘shock’ over the ‘racist’ rush to judgement of those who disseminated unconfirmed reports that the terrorist attack in Boston was committed by al-Qaeda (or other Islamist terror groups) again demonstrates the Guardian contributor’s stunning moral hypocrisy.

Related articles
Jan 15 2013

At the Guardian, the French kill Islamist militants, while Israelis kill children.

H/T Gilad

The contrasts in language, tone and narrative focus between a report by Harriet Sherwood on Israel’s November conflict with Hamas and a recent Guardian report on the French war against Islamists in Mali represent an exquisite illustration of the paper’s egregious double standards. 

Headlines:

Here’s the headline and strapline for the Nov.18 report (and the still shot from the accompanying video) by Sherwood about one day’s fighting in a 8 day Israeli war against a radical terrorist regime on its border who had fired thousands of missiles at Israeli civilians :

gaza

Now here’s the headline and strapline from a Jan. 14 Guardian report (and still shot from accompanying video) by Afua Hirsch and Nick Hopkins about the current French war in a former colony located thousands 0f miles from Paris – waged, in part, to prevent a terrorist state from forming “at the door of Europe“:

mali

In Sherwood’s report, the deaths of Palestinian children represent the overwhelming narrative focus.  The fact that the IDF was attempting to target Hamas terrorists is only mentioned in the strap line, and even then is qualified with the word “believed”.

In the report by Hirsch and Hopkins, on the other hand, we are informed via the headline that militants are killed, while the deaths of Mali children are only noted at the end of the strap line.

Videos:

Further, the contrast in videos used by Guardian editors to illustrate each story is also quite remarkable.

First, here’s the video used in Sherwood’s report: 

The emphasis is clearly on Palestinian civilian casualties.  Also, as you watch the last few seconds of the video note how the narrator explains the contrasting loss of life in Gaza and Israel: She explains that “fifty Palestinian civilians” had been “killed” in the war, while “three Israelis lost their lives“. 

Now, here’s the video used to illustrate the story about Mali.

The first thing we see is a French military aircraft.  And, throughout the film there is no mention of the loss of Mali civilian lives as the result of French bombing.

Text:

Additionally, the contrasting narrative focus of each story couldn’t be more stark.

Here are the first two paragraphs of Sherwood’s report:

“At least 11 members of one family, including five women and four children, were killed when Israel bombed a house in Gaza City on Sunday as the five-day-old war claimed more civilian lives with no sign of a let-up in the intense bombardment.

The air strike flattened the home of the Dalou family in the Sheikh Radwan district of Gaza City, causing the biggest death toll in a single incident since the offensive began last Wednesday.”

Now, here are the first two paragraphs of the report on Mali.

“Islamist militants are fleeing major towns in northern Mali after two days of air strikes by French troops, which sources say have left scores of rebels dead.

French fighter jets have pounded insurgent training camps, arms and oil depots as the French defence ministry confirmed reports of Islamist deaths, together with at least 11 civilians including three children.”

Consistent with the headlines and straplines, the text in the report on Gaza focuses on the death Palestinian children, while the report on Mali emphasizes the deaths of Islamist militants – and Mali civilian casualties are only mentioned at the very end of the last sentence.

Moreover, out of 28 total paragraphs in the report on the war in Mali, only 7 (25%) touch on the fate of Mali civilians.

In the report on the Gaza war, out of 24 paragraphs, 15 (63%) focus on the threat to Palestinian civilians.

Finally, while the Jan. 14 Guardian report is only one example of the paper’s coverage of the French war, is there even a possibility that the suffering of civilians in the West African nation will be a significant focus of their future coverage?

While unchallenged lethal narratives about Israel ensure that media groups like the Guardian will continue to meticulously report the details of every Palestinian civilian death as the result of IDF operations against Hamas, such selective humanitarianism will prevent readers from ever learning the names of African children killed by French airstrikes against Islamists in Mali, seeing heartbreaking photos of their bodies on Twitter, or reading tragic accounts of suffering by their grieving parents.

Related articles
Dec 9 2012

Guardian editorial takes the side of Morsi (or Mubarak?)

To get an idea of just how outrageous a recent Guardian editorial (on Dec. 7) defending President Morsi and criticizing the liberal opposition truly was, here are two tweets by commentators with otherwise unimpeachable Guardian Left credentials:

Here’s Guardian Cairo correspondent Jack Shenker.

Here’s ‘Comment is Free’ contributor Rachel Shabi:

Here are a few excerpts of the Guardian editorial in question:

[The crisis in Egypt] is not about the proposed constitution,

…

[The opposition is engaged in] a power battle in which the aim is to unseat a democratically elected president, and to prevent a referendum and fresh parliamentary elections being held, both of which Islamists stand a good chance of winning. Morsi, for his part, is determined that both polls be held as soon as possible to reaffirm the popular mandate which he still thinks he has.

…

The opposition on the other hand has never accepted the results of freely held elections, parliamentary or presidential, and is doing everything to stop new ones being held

So, the Guardian, when faced with a choice between a Muslim Brotherhood which is ideologically opposed to true democracy and individual freedoms – a political predisposition clearly on display in Morsi’s recent decision to assume dictatorial powers - and a political opposition which is at least marginally progressive, chose the reactionary Islamists.

The following post by a Lebanese writer, who blogs at Karl reMarks, is titled ‘The Guardian’s Editorial on Egypt Re-Imagined‘, and is based on the same Dec. 7 Guardian editorial re-imagined as if it were written in January 2011, with minor changes like replacing Morsi with Mubarak.

As the crisis in Egypt develops, it is becoming increasingly clear what it is not about. It is not about the elections, or the economic crisis, or Egypt’s relationship with Israel. Nor is it about the arrangements for a successor to the president. Nor even is it about the temporary but absolute powers that the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, assumed for himself – for a mere thirty years, and which will lapse the moment the Egyptian people stop making a fuss.

Urging the opposition to shun dialogue, Mohamed ElBaradei said that Mubarak had lost his legitimacy. So the target of the opposition is not the constitution, or the emergency law, but Mubarak himself. What follows is a power battle in which the aim is to unseat a democratically elected president, with 88.6% of the vote, and to prevent fresh parliamentary elections being held, both of which the ruling NDP stand a good chance of winning. Mubarak, for his part, is determined that both polls be held as soon as possible to reaffirm the popular mandate which he still thinks he has.

In weighing who occupies the moral high ground, let us start with what happened on Wednesday night. That is when the crisis, sparked by yet another Mubarak decree when he was at the height of his domestic popularity over the role he played in stopping the yet another Israeli assault on Gaza, turned violent. The NDP party sanctioned a violent assault on a peaceful encampment of opposition supporters in Tahrir Square. But lethal force came later, and the NDP was its principle victims. NDP offices were attacked up and down the country, while no other party offices were touched. This does not fit the opposition’s narrative to be the victims of state violence. Both sides are victims of violence and the real perpetrators are their common enemy.

Mubarak undoubtedly made grave mistakes. In pre-empting decisions by the courts to derail his reforms, his decrees were cast too wide. His laws have many faults, although none are set in stone. The opposition on the other hand has never accepted the results of freely held elections, parliamentary or presidential, and is doing everything to stop new ones being held.

The Guardian is not only supporting a racist, antisemitic, anti-Christian, anti-West Islamist movement, but are remaining loyal even when a more liberal alternative is possible. 

You don’t need to agree with our critique of the paper’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict to acknowledge that the ‘Guardian Left’ ideology in many ways resembles the reactionary right more than anything truly progressive?

Dec 9 2012

Guardian photo caption invents an Israeli airstrike in Gaza

 

The Guardian published a post on Dec. 8 which contained 19 photos taken in Gaza on the day the Islamist terror group ‘celebrated’ their 25th anniversary: Khaled Meshaal attends Hamas anniversary rally in Gaza – in pictures. 

header

Here’s one of the photos they included, taken by Reuters photographer Mohammed Salam.

Members of Hamas security forces stand guard

Here’s the caption:

caption

According to the caption, the building in the photo was destroyed by an Israeli strike during the Dec. 8 rally.

However, there have been no Israeli air strikes in Gaza since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas went into effect on Nov. 21.

There have been a few violent border incidents and Gaza fishermen were arrested by the Israeli Navy on Nov. 28, but there have been no reports of airstrikes on Dec. 8, or on any day after the ceasefire - even on the website of Hamas.

Even the most minimal fact checking would have disproven the “witness” claim.

Please consider emailing Guardian readers’ editor Chris Elliott to seek a correction.

reader@guardian.co.uk

 

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Nov 5 2012

The Muslim Brotherhood are turning into Leninists in Islamist dress. Egypt is in real trouble

(Alan Johnson’s essays on the the dangers posed by the rise of Islamism are truly in a league of their own.  And, his most recent analysis, published on Nov. 5 at The Telegraph and excerpted below, is clearly no exception.  A.L.)

Hardliners are gaining the upper hand in Egypt

Paul Berman, the New York intellectual, is perhaps the most penetrating and imaginative essayist writing about Islamist movements and ideas alive today. In 2010 he published The Flight of the Intellectuals, a stylish account of the Muslim Brotherhood: the Islamist political movement founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna (known in Arabic as al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen). According to Berman, the party was shaped decisively in both its ideology and organisational methods by mid-century European totalitarianism and was a politically hardened, ideologically driven and anti-Semitic movement. It was from this inconvenient truth that much of the western media and many public intellectuals were in flight.

When I praised Berman’s insights to a group of normally super-astute democracy promotion analysts in DC, to my surprise most took the view that Berman’s thesis was “crazy” and that the Muslim Brotherhood were really like the Christian Democracy in Europe; they had confessional roots, for sure, but were pragmatic folk and could be a force for “moderation”. I responded that the Brotherhood was exactly like the CDU – apart from its party structure, ideology, rhetoric, policy, and goals.

Back in 2010 ours was an academic argument. Well, not any more. The Brotherhood will dominate the region’s politics over the next decade. It is already regnant in Egypt, the most populous Arab country and the intellectual fulcrum of both the Arab and Muslim worlds, after sweeping to power earlier this year by winning the parliamentary and presidential elections, marginalising the secular democrats and knocking the military off their perch. In Tunisia the Brotherhood sits in government in the form of Rachid Ghannouchi’s Ennahda. The Justice and Construction Party (JCP) in Libya only won 17 of the 80 seats available for parties in the elections for Libya’s 200-strong national congress in July, but hopes to do better next time (the Brotherhood is very patient). The Syrian branch will be a force in any post-Assad regime (in the early 1980s the Syrian branch conducted an armed rebellion) and in Jordan it grows in strength. Hamas, of course, is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

READ THE REST OF THE ESSAY, HERE.

Oct 23 2012

Raed Salah’s latest: Muslim demography will free USA and Europe from Zionist slavery

Cross posted by Mark Gardner at the CST

Sheikh Raed Salah has triumphantly declared that Muslim birth rates will free Islam-hating Europeans and Americans from “mental subjugation”, and enslavement to“global Zionism” , “Protestant Zionism” and “the Crusader hatred”. The speech was recently broadcast on Al Jazeera and an excerpt has been translated by MEMRI. It lasts just over 3 minutes and should be viewed here:

First, the quickest of recaps: Salah is an Israeli citizen and leading Islamist activist who entered Britain in June 2011, despite having been banned as ‘not conducive to the public good’. Lionised by the Guardian and the usual suspects, Salah was very briefly imprisoned before losing his first appeal against deportation. He won his second appeal in April 2012, then promptly left the UK.

The case, like that of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, typified how UK Jewish concerns about overseas Islamists are traduced by the anti-Israel mob. For example, none of Salah’s many defenders have yet explicitly acknowledged that the judge who granted his appeal, did so despite having found that he had repeated the Blood Libel. (Yes, that Blood Libel – the one about Christian children’s blood and matzos. See judgement, sections 57, 58 and 59.) Most disgracefully, this includes his champions at the Guardian.

This footage is the kind of wild rhetoric that renders Salah’s presence here as not conducive to the UK public good, and in breach of Home Office guidelines against extremist preaching: regardless of whether or not one believes him to be an out-and-out Jew-hater.

It begins with Salah declaring:

…you haters, you midgets, you little insolent people – whether in America, in France, or in Denmark – listen to us, so we can show you who you really are.

You are slaves to global Zionism. You are slaves to Protestant Zionism. You are slaves to the Crusader hatred.

You should know that we are coming to you with the compassion of Islam to deliver you from the ignominy of your slavery.

This continues an intensifying trend in both leftist and Islamist circles, whereby anti-Muslim hate is blamed upon the mind-bending power of Zionism. We saw it, for example, in the case of Norwegian mass murderer, Anders Breivik. The potential impact of such a narrative upon inter-communal relations is obvious: as is the underlying belief in a Zionist conspiracy that holds entire continents in mental slavery.

It is disgusting that Jewish concerns about such hatreds should be treated with contempt.

Next, Salah exults:

“You should know that Muhammad is the most popular name in Asia. Muhammad is also the most popular name in Africa. Very soon, Muhammad will be the most popular name in Europe.

…I say to you who harbor hatred towards the Messenger of Allah that it will not be long before Allah grants us victory over you. Then, when you ask us, terrified and afraid, what we will do to you, we will say to you: You are free to go, because our goal is to shatter the subjugation of your minds to the enterprise of Herzl and David Ben Gurion.”

Watch the speech and how it is delivered. Consider Salah’s increasingly feverish triumphalism as he yells about Muhammad becoming the most popular name in Europe. If others had made such a speech, in such a manner, we can well imagine how it would have been correctly publicised and condemned by the Guardian, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Robert Lambert, David Miller, Victoria Brittain etc and their pals in the UK Muslim Brotherhood. Instead, they will likely note that Salah’s speech has been translated by an Israeli outfit – and that will be the target of their outrage.

Finally, the Guardian has still not told its readers that Salah’s UK arrest came shortly before he was due to brief some of its senior staff. Had the briefing happened, it is unlikely that Salah would have mentioned midgets enslaved to “global” and/or“Protestant” Zionism, or that he would have gone off on a triumphalist Islamist rant about Muhammad being the most popular name in Africa, Asia and (soon) Europe.

Nevertheless, if the Guardian’s staff, or Corbyn etc, want to know about Salah, his ideology, and why Jews and non-Jews, (including even Zionists and Conservative Home Secretaries), have every right to be concerned about him, then they should watch the video. Of course, this won’t change their behaviour in the slightest: so perhaps they could consider the potential racist backlash against ordinary European Muslims, should Salah’s kind of Islamist demographic threat rhetoric become the norm.

The likeliest outcome: a memo to Salah from the UK Muslim Brotherhood, saying,‘with respect, try not to give the game away when TV cameras are present…as you well know, the Zionists are watching’.

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Sep 26 2012

Guardian on British plans for Sinai

We have often commented on the subject of the Guardian’s tendency to place articles with only the most flimsy of connections to Israel on the ‘Israel’ page of its ‘World News’ section. An article published on the ‘Egypt’ page on September 26th appears to be an example of the opposite: one which actually does have a connection to Israel, but was not placed on that page. 

Written by the Guardian’s chief political correspondent Nicholas Watt, the article’s oddness is not confined to the rather glaring spelling mistake in its strapline (later repeated in the body of the report itself). 

Without any accompanying comment, Nicholas Watt apparently repeats the words of a “senior British government source”, informing readers that:

“Britain is to provide military advice to the Egyptian government to help it crack down on militants in the Sinai Peninsula who are destabilising relations with neighbouring Israel.

In his first meeting with the Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi in New York, David Cameron will announce that Britain’s most senior military figure will travel to Cairo. General Sir David Richards, the chief of the defence staff, will lead a British effort that will also see a stabilisation team despatched to Egypt. The team, which will mainly consist of field experts from the Department for International Development, will advise on how to ween Bedouin tribes in Sinai away from smuggling.”

[Emphasis added.]

Those of us concerned about the future of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty in general and in particular the terror attacks emanating from the extremists’ paradise which the Sinai Peninsula has become in recent years – and all the more so since the advent of Egypt’s ‘Arab Spring’ – may just have found a new worry to add to our list. 

Not only does the British government appear to believe that the main problem in that lawless territory is ‘militancy’ caused by engagement in ‘smuggling’, but the Guardian seems quite happy to go along uncritically with that theory too.

Watt states that:

“Morsi’s move against militants in Sinai was seen as a particularly positive signal because Israel was acutely nervous about the election of an Islamist president in Egypt.” 

But Watt fails to point out that the new Egyptian president has so far largely confined his ‘move against militants’ to incidents in which Egyptian security forces or officials were attacked, displaying somewhat less commitment when Israeli civilians or soldiers have been targeted in cross-border incidents.

Watt also (apparently like the British government) completely ignores the fact that the terrorists (let’s call a spade a spade) in Sinai have Salafist ideological brothers holding the second largest number of seats in the Egyptian parliament as a result of the ‘Arab Spring’ – a factor which is bound to influence both Egyptian domestic and foreign policy.  

In fact, a recent statement by Egypt’s foreign minister appears to suggest that David Cameron’s plans may be less than welcome. 

“The situation in Sinai is an internal affair not up for discussions in international arenas, either at the United Nations Security Council or elsewhere, said Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr.

The situation is Sinai has no affect (sic) on international security and safety, Amr said in press statements Thursday 20/09/2012.

Egypt has told and will continue to tell the UNSC that the situation in Sinai is an internal issue not open for discussion, Amr said in response to a letter sent by Israel to the UN body criticizing the management of Sinai.”

Watt continues: 

“The UN, EU, US and Russia, which oversee the Middle East peace process, fear that instability in the Sinai Peninsula could disrupt the Camp David accords which led to demilitarisation of the area after the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Israel withdrew its forces from the peninsula on the understanding that it would be a non-military zone.”

Leaving aside the rather dodgy time frame (The Camp David Accords were signed almost 6 years after the 1973 war), it should be obvious that Israel did not withdraw from Sinai on an ‘understanding’, but under the terms of a written, signed treaty which lays out the terms of demilitarization in both words and maps. 

Both the Guardian’s chief political correspondent and – more worryingly – the British government do not appear to appreciate that Israeli concerns over the current volatile situation in Sinai extend to far more than the Bedouin drugs and arms smuggling gangs and people traffickers – to whom the Egyptian authorities have traditionally turned a blind eye. 

Without concurrent massive – and long overdue – Egyptian investment in the Sinai Peninsula, the disarming of militias, the ousting of foreign terrorist organisations and the  stemming of the flow of lucrative African migrants into Sinai, ‘weaning’ the Sinai Bedouin from their traditional livelihood of smuggling is liable to be a futile – if not impossible – exercise. 

The main issue at hand is not only whether the new Egyptian government has the economic ability to make the changes necessary, but also whether or not it has the will. Despite three decades of neglect under the previous Egyptian regime, during which smuggling also flourished, the Sinai/Israel border was, for the most part, a fairly quiet one. 

The recent deterioration in the security situation necessitates serious questions: perhaps uncomfortable ones as far as Western governments (and journalists) apparently unable to see anything other than the wonders of the ‘Arab Spring’ are concerned.

 Nevertheless, if the Israel/Egypt peace treaty is to continue to be upheld, responsible parties will also be examining the possibility that a new Egyptian president who ran for election on a blatantly Islamist platform and has since embraced Hamas and the Iranian regime might perhaps be somewhat less than wholly committed to the principles of Camp David, including demilitarization. 

They would then examine the additional possibility that continued unrest in the Sinai Peninsula might actually not go against the purposes of someone eager to change the status quo, but unable to take direct action due to an overwhelming reliance upon foreign aid. 

These questions (and many others concerning issues such as the nature of the as yet unwritten constitution and freedom of the press) are of the sort one would expect Western governments – and supposedly politically savvy journalists – to be asking before they rather condescendingly rush in to promote less than three months of Morsi’s presidency as ‘impressive’ on the basis of the fact that – in acting against armed terrorists on his own territory – he has been doing his job. 

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Sep 23 2012

Ayaan Hirsi Ali speaks truth to Islamist power and calls out Western appeasement

The following essay, published at Newsweek and The Daily Beast by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is a must-read for those genuinely interested in understanding what’s at stake in the West’s largely craven reaction to the murder, by Libyan Islamists, of U.S. Ambassador Chris Steven, and the deadly riots throughout the Muslim world following the release of a video critical of Islam.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, and escaped an arranged marriage by immigrating to the Netherlands in 1992. She served as a member of the Dutch parliament from 2003 to 2006 and is currently a fellow of the Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard University - Adam Levick

It is a strange and bitter coincidence that the latest eruption of violent Islamic indignation takes place just as Salman Rushdie publishes his new book, Joseph Anton: A Memoir, about his life under the fatwa.

In 23 years not much has changed.

Islam’s rage reared its ugly head again last week. The American ambassador to Libya and three of his staff members were murdered by a raging mob in Benghazi, Libya, possibly under the cover of protests against a film mocking the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.

They were killed on the watch of the democratic government they helped to install. This government was either negligent or complicit in their murders. And that forces the U.S. to confront a stark, unwelcome reality.

Until recently, it was completely justifiable to feel sorry for the masses in Libya because they suffered under the thumb of a cruel dictator. But now they are no longer subjects; they are citizens. They have the opportunity to elect a government and build a society of their choice. Will they follow the lead of the Egyptian people and elect a government that stands for ideals diametrically opposed to those upheld by the United States? They might. But if they do, we should not consider them stupid or infantile. We should recognize that they have made a free choice—a choice to reject freedom as the West understands it.

How should American leaders respond? What should they say and do, for example, when a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s newly elected ruling party, demands a formal apology from the United States government and urges that the “madmen” behind the Muhammad video be prosecuted, in violation of the First Amendment? If the U.S. follows the example of Europe over the last two decades, it will bend over backward to avoid further offense. And that would be a grave mistake—for the West no less than for those Muslims struggling to build a brighter future.

For a homicidal few in the Muslim world, life itself has less value than religious icons, such as the prophet or the Quran. These few are indifferent to the particular motives or arguments behind any perceived insult to their faith. They do not care about an individual’s political alignment, gender, religion, or occupation. They do not care whether the provocation comes from serious literature or a stupid movie. All that matters is the intolerable nature of the insult.

The riots in Muslim countries—and the so-called demonstrations by some Muslims in Western countries—that invariably accompany such provocations have the appearance of spontaneity. But they are often carefully planned in advance. In the aftermath of last week’s conflagration, the State Department and Pentagon were investigating if it was just such a coordinated, planned assault.

The Muslim men and women (and yes, there are plenty of women) who support—whether actively or passively—the idea that blasphemers deserve to suffer punishment are not a fringe group. On the contrary, they represent the mainstream of contemporary Islam. Of course, there are many Muslims and ex-Muslims, in Libya, Egypt, and elsewhere, who unambiguously condemn not only the murders and riots, as well as the idea that dissenters from this mainstream should be punished. But they are marginalized and all too often indirectly held responsible for the very provocation. In the age of globalization and mass immigration, such intolerance has crossed borders and become the defining characteristic of Islam.

Map of Protests

And the defining characteristic of the Western response? As Rushdie’s memoir makes clear, it is the utterly incoherent tendency to simultaneously defend free speech—and to condemn its results.

I know something about the subject. In 1989, when I was 19, I piously, even gleefully, participated in a rally in Kenya to burn Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses. I had never read it.

Later, having fled an arranged marriage to the Netherlands, I broke from fundamentalism. By the time of Sept. 11, 2001, I still considered myself a Muslim, though a passive one; I believed the principles but not the practice. After learning that it was Muslims who had hijacked airplanes and flown them into buildings in New York and Washington, I called for fellow believers to reflect on how our religion could have inspired these atrocious acts. A few months later, I confessed in a television interview that I had been secularized.

READ THE REST OF THE ESSAY, HERE.

Sep 21 2012

Conspiracy theory about Jewish donors funding anti-Islam film is variation on ancient theme.

A version of this essay, written by Joseph Weissman, was published at The JC.


On the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, the American diplomat to Libya Chris Stevens was murdered by Islamists in Libya. Coincidentally, protests flared throughout many Muslim-majority states in protest at a film trailer “The Innocence of Muslims” which insulted Mohammed and the Muslim faith, casting both in a negative light. 

The murder of Mr Stevens has since been shown to have been pre-planned, and therefore separate from the protests surrounding the fourteen-minute-long YouTube video. Yet this past week, many within the mainstream media and within social media apportioned heavy blame for the murder of Ambassador Stevens, to the apparent provocation of The Innocence of Muslims.

Attention turned from the motives, background and identity of the murderers, to the motives, background and identity of the filmmaker. The YouTube user had uploaded his video using the name “sambacile”.

Hours after the murder in Libya, “Sam Bacile” identified himself to reporters as an Israeli Jew, claiming that his film project had been enabled by one hundred Jewish donors, who had contributed five million dollars to the film collectively. The Wall Street Journal – a usually balanced and trustworthy news source on the Middle East – first presented Bacile as an Israeli Jew.

The assertion that the director and his benefactors were rich Jews, rapidly spread across the internet. There were many obvious problems with this theory. The trailer began depicting a slaughter of Christians. Crosses featured prominently throughout the film.

A huge wooden cross was used as a backdrop, to a key scene involving an actor portraying Mohammed. It was not possible that the film should have cost five million dollars to make, given the obvious use of cheap backdrops, the poor acting, and the farcical dubbing. The trailer consisted of key parts of different scenes linked together, without any voiceover, textual effects or music which would really make it look like an actual trailer.

All this prompted a Channel 4 reporter to quip that the film was so poor, that if they existed, the Jewish donors might want their money back.

Whilst these mysterious donors – always alleged and never confirmed – continued to be mentioned amongst the images of burning effigies, the angry rioters, and obituarial clips of Ambassador Stevens, it became evermore unsettling to see how readily Bacile’s lie was believed.

It seems incredible, now, that people could possibly have thought that the film project and its  director were Jewish, and that rich Jews would spend so much money-making this film, which seemingly led to so much chaos. Why would news outlets as lofty as the BBC, repeat Bacile’s unsubstantiated claims? There were so many clear signs that the Jewish link was untrue.

The film looked like it cost a few thousand dollars to make, at most. Yet people believed that it cost millions, because of the added detail of the Jewish donors. Unfortunately, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, if you removed the Jewish donors, no-one would believe it cost five million dollars. This is because there is an unsettling assumption lurking in some parts of Western society, which casts Jews as rich, politically powerful, and highly motivated to push their own agendas, to the detriment of others. Jewish avarice and obsession with money can be a casual topic of humour in Britain.

Through these jokes, we get an insight into how some people perceive Jews.

If we hear such a joke, we might be tempted to think nothing of it. But when we see people readily believing that Jews could spend thousands of pounds on pamphlets, or millions on amateur Youtube films, we realise that we are dealing with an issue that goes way beyond humour. We should remember that antisemitic ideas about Jews being rich or obsessed with money, have existed for centuries. It would be dangerous to assume they have disappeared suddenly.

To do so would be to ignore a mountain of concerning evidence.

For its part, The Guardian carried a headline labelling Bacile an “Israeli director”, again mentioning the omnipresent “Jewish donors” within its article. When Bacile was shown to have Coptic rather than Jewish connections, The Guardian did not alter its headline.  Why would The Guardian hold to a false idea, even when it has been proven to be false?

Just days earlier, The Guardian had made claims about Jewish donors in a different setting. In a news piece about the Democratic convention re-affirming its support for Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, published on September 6th, you could read matter-of-factly: “Jewish donors, particularly in New York, and pro-Israeli lobby groups are generous supporters not only to Obama but to individual senators and members of the House, who are also facing election in November.”

There are donors of all colours and creed to American politicians, so it is remarkable that The Guardian should choose to focus on the Jews. If unaware of political donors of other ethnic and religious backgrounds, readers might conclude from this article that rich Jews act as a hidden hand behind American politics.

So when “Sam Bacile” began to spin yarns of a hundred rich Jewish donors financing his project, the idea struck a chord with those who tacitly accept theories about rich Jewish money leading to unrest in the Middle East.

It is tempting to feel incredulous, and to laugh and mock the absurdity of educated people so readily believing a lie about Jews. Yet there is a clear enough pattern emerging, which ought to concern us more than it amuses us. 

Earlier this year, the Anglican Church voted at their annual Synod to support the anti-Israel religious and political group Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), which is run by the World Council of Churches. Duly, Jewish deputies and community leaders expressed their concerns to the Synod.

In doing so, they were met with accusations from vicars, of “powerful lobbies” seeking to influence the Synod. Significantly, the proposer of the pro-EAPPI motion John Dinnen, claimed that an unremarkable A4 protest leaflet “must have cost £1,000”. The unspoken assumption was clear. The fingerprints of collective Jewish financial and political efforts were evidence that the case against the EAPPI motion was corrupted in its origin. Clearly the leaflet did not cost a thousand pounds, just as the Innocence of Muslims film trailer did not cost five million dollars.

When Ken Livingstone campaigned to become London mayor back in May, he expressed his belief that Jews would not vote for him because they are rich, and the rich vote for the Tories.

In the end, Livingstone lost by just over 60,000 votes. In the aftermath, some gleefully suggested that if Ken had not alienated so many with his unfair comments about Jews being rich, he might have run Boris Johnson far closer. However, it seemed unfathomable as to why Livingstone would deliberately risk upsetting voters, just to make his point about Jewish money.

In a documentary commissioned by Channel 4, Peter Oborne asked who funded the website CiF Watch, which holds the Guardian to account over its coverage on Israel. CiF Watch is a blog about a specialist subject, and to that extent, it is unremarkable. Bloggers set up blogs on all sorts of specialist subjects, from football teams, to musicians they like, to political causes. 

Set to sinister music, Oborne imagined CiF Watch to be part of an organised Israel lobby exercises “financial muscle” that holds sway over the BBC and Parliament. It was not enough that a few “mysterious” bloggers could just be people with a particular interest, but Oborne had to tell us that one of the CiF Watch bloggers lived in New York, and that he had upset a Guardian journalist by explaining what he thought was anti-Semitism.

When free-to-run blogs are seen as part of a collective financial project to undermine British politics, it is clear how absurd the lie about rich Jews really is.

In the wrong hands, the lie can prove fatal. 24-year-old Ilan Halimi was kidnapped in 2006, in France. Halimi’s kidnappers tried to extort money from his family. They thought that the young Jew was rich, as he was from a Moroccan Jewish family. However, Halimi’s family was of the same wealth as the families of kidnappers. When no ransom money could be provided, he was tortured to death and murdered.

The infamous Hamas charter asserts that the Jews, “with their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press […] they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein […] they formed secret societies [..]for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests.”

When we see Westerners march in solidarity with Hamas, we should not assume that they do so whilst ignoring these unsavoury parts of the Hamas charter. It is far more likely, that Hamas accusations about Jewish money chime with something about Jews that many educated people quite readily believe.

In this context, surely the media has a responsibility not to sustain prejudices, but rather to challenge them. Yet in recent years, we have seen a more subtle version of this concept, slowly creeping into mainstream political thinking.

The respectable version of the theory that Jews are rich and that their influence poisons politics, is that there is an “Israel lobby”, which seeks to sway leaders in the USA into taking pro-Israel positions.

This was the theory of American academics Mearsheimer and Walt, which quickly became popular amongst many left-wing British academics. So when John Mearsheimer expressed support for Gilad Atzmon by endorsing his book, and then defending his decision on Stephen Walt’s blog, it seemed shocking. Atzmon’s writings were overtly anti-Semitic.

He had claimed that modern Jews were the living embodiment of Fagin and Shylock, and that the Jews had effectively caused the Second World War by declaring war on Nazi Germany and seeking to boycott Nazi products. Mearsheimer had supported Atzmon’s writings, as if they were respectable. All of a sudden, the gap between intellectual Leftist anti-Zionism, and crude, aggressive antisemitism seemed infinitesimally small.

We will have to come to terms with the uncomfortable and distressing fact that in the twenty-first century, ludicrous claims about Jewish money and influence are a fact of life. The conspiracy theory about a hundred Jewish donors is the latest variation on this theme.

 Media outlets are only tempted to publish wild ideas about Jewish money, because they are readily believed within wider society. The longer this vicious circle continues, the more Jews will be forced into a corner, bound and trapped by the stereotypes which are readily thrust upon them.

Related articles
Sep 14 2012

Guardian spices up coverage of MENA riots with incitement against Israelis and Jews.

The Guardian’s coverage of the riots and attacks on American and other Western diplomatic missions , as well as other targets, currently taking place throughout the Middle East and North Africa began on Tuesday, September 11th, with a video (sourced from Reuters) of what it termed ‘protestors’ at the US embassy in Cairo. 

At 23:30 BST that night the Guardian published an article by Associated Press in Cairo on the events at the US embassy which also included the same video and raised the subject of the film supposedly responsible for triggering the riots. On Wednesday September 12th, the Guardian published another video, this time of the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya in which, it later emerged, Ambassador Stevens and other US citizens were killed. The video’s strap-line declared that: 

“The violence is in response to an unspecified American film protesters say is blasphemous”

By 11:09 am BST, the Guardian had gone from “unspecified American film” to declaring – in an article by AP – that the film’s director was Israeli. 

Interestingly, here in the Middle East itself, there were no reports at that time of Israeli involvement in the making of the film: that notion appears to have been generated in the West, solely on the basis of the anonymous AP report, although the theme was later adopted by interested parties.  

By Wednesday morning US time, (roughly three hours after the publication of the Guardian article) the Wall Street Journal – which had originally run the AP story suggesting Israeli involvement – was backtracking. 

“On Wednesday, a records search turned up no references to any men in the U.S. by the name Sam Bacile. Israeli officials said they haven’t found any records of an Israeli by that name. The Journal was unable to reach the telephone number again and as of Wednesday, it had been disconnected.

The cellphone number used Tuesday was registered to a user at a home in Cerritos, Calif., where one of the residents was listed in public records as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula.”

By this time, other media outlets too had realized that the supposed Israeli connection to the film was a hoax. Even Al Jazeera had managed to get the story straight by early Wednesday morning. 

” “Bacile” is now reportedly in hiding, even though reports suggest that the name is merely cover for a larger group, or a pseudonym for someone who may be neither Israeli nor Jewish – but who cited such an identify to inflame tensions.”

By Thursday, it was quite clear that there was no Israeli involvement whatsoever in the making of the film. 

However, that inflammatory – and untrue – headline still stands at the Guardian – appearing, among other places, under the ‘Islam’ category in its ‘World News’ section. 

Later on Wednesday, at 15:10 BST, the Guardian published another article by Caroline Davies, which repeated the same – and by then, obviously untrue – information regarding the film-maker’s supposed nationality.

At 15:35 BST, Julian Borger weighed in – also promoting the unproven involvement of “100 unnamed Jewish donors” in the making of the film and claiming that “Bacile still insisted that the movie would help Israel”. 

At 16:55 BST on Wednesday, Glenn Greenwald joined the fray, also pushing the already discredited Israeli angle of the story. Two days later, an editor’s note was added to his article. 

“Editor’s note: this article was amended on 14 September. The original stated that the producer of the film was Sam Bacile, an Israeli real estate developer living in California and that he had made the film with the help of 100 Jewish donors. This assertion was based on an Associated Press report that was published in Haaretz”. 

At 20:00 BST on Wednesday, Julian Borger was back with a rehashed version of his earlier piece which still contained unnecessary speculations about Israeli and Jewish involvement in the making of the film. That piece is also still featured as “Top Story” on several of the Guardian’s ‘World News’ pages. 

At 20:23 BST, the Guardian published an article by Rory Carroll, which was still pushing the “100 Jewish donors” line:

“Bacile wrote and directed the film purportedly with $5m (£3m) donated by 100 unnamed Jewish backers. The goal was to show “Islam is a cancer”, he told the Wall Street Journal.”

At 17:00 BST on Thursday, September 13th – well over 24 hours after the ‘Israeli connection’ to the film had been debunked – the Guardian rolled out veteran anti-Israel agitator Max Blumenthal (no stranger to online incendiary films himself) who, despite the fact that the story clearly lacked legs, wrote the following: (emphasis added)

“Bacile told the Associated Press that he was a Jewish Israeli real estate developer living in California. He said that he raised $5m for the production of the film from “100 Jewish donors”, an unusual claim echoing Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style fantasies. Unfortunately, the extensive history of Israeli and ultra-Zionist funding and promotion of Islamophobic propaganda in the United States provided Bacile’s remarkable statement with the ring of truth.“

Only at 18:44 BST on Thursday, September 13th did the Guardian begin to set the record straight with an article by Rory Carroll. But by that time, of course, millions of Guardian readers had been spoon-fed with 31 hours-worth of defamatory untruths. 

There are several things which are deeply disturbing about the Guardian’s behavior on this story. One is the emphasis it has put on 14 minutes of puerile, badly produced hate speech as the ‘reason’ for the mass ‘rent a mob’ rioting throughout the Middle East and North Africa. That emphasis is particularly misguided and misleading in light of the fact that the attacks on the US missions in Cairo and Benghazi appear to have been pre-planned to coincide with the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. 

No less disturbing is the Guardian’s promotion of fictitious Israeli and Jewish involvement in the production of the film. Not only did the Guardian obviously fail completely to fact check the AP report it originally published, but even when the unreliability of that report came to light, it continued to push that version of the story because it dovetailed with the Guardian’s own existing prejudices. 

If the West should have learned anything over the past few days, it is that rumour – however ridiculous and unfounded – can be a very dangerous and even lethal thing in this part of the world. Whilst some people at the Guardian may find it useful or amusing to promote unsubstantiated rumours which they have clearly not bothered to fact-check, that is not the type of reckless incitement one expects from a responsible, respectable or serious mainstream media outlet. 

The Guardian must therefore promptly issue a prominent correction on each and every one of those articles citing, referring to or inspired by the irresponsible AP report, making it very clear that its reports were misleading, unfounded and untruthful. 

If it has the necessary conscience and guts, the Guardian will also admit to gross professional negligence.

Sep 11 2012

On the anniversary of 9/11: A note with five words & two numbers, but conveying so much pain

H/T Shai

Among the nearly 3000 people who were murdered by al-Qaeda terrorists on September 11, 2001, was Stamford, CT resident Randolph (Randy) Scott, a husband and father of three.  Scott was killed when United Airlines Flight 175 flew into the World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m., near the floors of the offices where he worked.

 

Scott’s family believed he had died instantly.

However, ten years after the attack, a note thrown out the window of the South Tower shortly after impact – discovered by a guard near another building and eventually placed on display at a 9/11 museum – was identified, using DNA tests on blood found on the paper, as having been written by Scott minutes before he perished.

The following was reported by the Stamford Advocate today:

“I spent 10 years hoping that Randy wasn’t trapped in that building,” Randy’s widow Denise, 57, said recently during an interview in her Stamford home with two of her three daughters, Rebecca, 29, and Alexandra, 22.

“I thought he was killed instantly,” Rebecca interjected.

Randy Scott’s daughters fought tears as his message again triggered new mental images.

In a steady tone, their mother explained the power of the note. “You don’t want them to suffer. They’re trapped in a burning building. It’s just an unspeakable horror.”

…

“It tells people the story of the day,” Denise said.

In just five words and two numbers.

Randolph Scott