Tag Archives: Jerusalem

May 20 2013

Harriet Sherwood gets it right about settlers and violence

We’ve recently been noticing a slight improvement in the quality of reporting by the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent, Harriet Sherwood – a slight but noticeable movement towards greater balance in her characterization of Israel and Israelis.

  • On Dec 7, we noted that, in a report on Israeli “settlements”, she accurately characterized Israeli disillusionment with the the land for peace logic underlying Oslo, and the general national concern over the rise of radical Islamist parties in the region, and concluded her report by quoting a truly moderate and representative Israeli commentator.
  • On Jan. 7 we observed how Sherwood again devoted considerable space, in a pre-election report which focused on Naftali Bennett, to two moderate Israeli voices who contextualized the support for Bennett’s Bayit Yehudi Party in a clear, fair and balanced manner.
  • And, on April 29, we commended both Sherwood and Phoebe Greenwood for reporting on incitement and indoctrination in Palestinian society.

The latest example of Sherwood’s tentative steps towards objective journalism can be found in a report on May 16, titled ‘Israel to approve four unauthorized West Banks settler posts‘, which focused on Israeli government approval for the construction of 300 homes in the community of Beit El – across the green line, 7.5 km north of Ramallah – in the context of a reported uptick in “settler” violence against Palestinians and their property, which she detailed thusly:

Meanwhile, attacks by settlers on Palestinians and their property have risen since the murder of Eviator Borovzky, 30, in the West Bank just over a fortnight ago.

This week, Muslim graves in the village of Sawiya have been vandalised, wheat fields near the village of Beit Furik have been torched, and 1,200 olive saplings near Akraba have been uprooted, according to Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official who monitors settler attacks.

The latest development was the targeting of Palestinian schools, he said. An attempt to set fire to a school in Ein Yabous village was thwarted this week by security guards, and settlers had thrown stones at school buses. “People are really upset and frightened,” he said.

Graffiti was sprayed on the walls of a mosque and several cars were torched in Umm al-Qutuf, an Arab village in Israel near the Green Line, Israel Radio reported. The public security minister, Yitzhak Aharonovich, viewed the attacks with gravity and said police were hunting for those responsible.

  However, then there was this sentence several passages down:

About half a million settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, of whom a tiny minority engage in violent attacks on Palestinians.

We have criticized Sherwood quite often for passages which depict “settlers” – Jews who live on the other side of the 1949 armistice lines - in Hebron and elsewhere in a manner which bears little resemblance to the complex reality of their lives.  So, we are heartened that, with this one simple sentence, she seems to have acknowledged a degree of nuance which challenges the myopic, jaundiced and often bigoted  narrative about Israel and Israelis which so often passes for genuine journalism at the ideological place known as the Guardian Left.

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May 19 2013

Quick stats on the Guardian’s coverage of Stephen Hawking boycott story

The Guardian’s initial report that Stephen Hawking was boycotting Israel was published on May 8.

The statistics in the first row in the table below were derived by a survey of the Guardian’s Israel page between May 8 and May 16 – the date of their last Hawking related entry. The second row’s numbers were gathered by a simple word count of the text. 

numbers

The third row’s data was derived by Intel.

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May 8 2013

The Guardian got it wrong: Stephen Hawking is NOT boycotting Israel (Updated)

Last night, May 8, the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood and Matthew Kelman ‘broke’ a story claiming that Stephen Hawking was joining the academic boycott of Israel, and that he was “pulling out of a conference hosted by Israeli president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem as a protest at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.”

The report, based it seems on claims made by British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), was picked up by news sites around the world, was featured prominently on the Guardian website and was followed up with a poll asking readers if they agreed with Hawking ”decision” to boycott Israel.  

Here’s how the Guardian’s Israel page looks at the time of this post:

hawking

As you can see, the original story was read by quite a few Guardian readers:

hawking

There was just one problem.

The Guardian evidently didn’t check their facts, as information has been released strongly suggesting that the world-renowned theoretical physicist and former Professor at Cambridge pulled out of the Israeli academic conference purely for health reasons.  

The Commentator reported the following:

…a Cambridge university spokesperson has confirmed to The Commentator that there was a “misunderstanding” this past weekend, and that Prof. Hawking had pulled out of the conference for medical reasons. A University spokesman said: “Professor Hawking will not be attending the conference in Israel in June for health reasons – his doctors have advised against him flying.”

Further, a spokesman for Cambridge University sent the following email to a CiF Watch reader in response to an inquiry, which is consistent with the following story in the Cambridge News:

email

The only questions which seems to remain is how long it will take for the Guardian to issue a mea culpa on their faux scoop.

Update: The Guardian’s Matthew Kalman is now claiming that the Cambridge denial is untrue, and that Hawking indeed supports the boycott.

Update II: It now appears that the original denial by Hawkings spokesperson was not accurate, and that Hawking indeed cancelled his trip as an expression of support for the boycott of Israel.   

May 8 2013

Myths and Facts about Jerusalem on the day Israelis celebrate the city’s reunification

I took the following photo of the Kotel in the Old City of Jerusalem a few months ago.

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As Israel today celebrates Yom Yerushalayim – the 46th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem on the 28th of Iyar – it is important to understand the myths and facts regarding the capital of the Jewish state.

CAMERA has an excellent backgrounder on Jerusalem, here, and Eli Hertz, at ‘Myths and Facts‘, has a brief but important page on the history of the political exploitation of the city by Arab leaders, here.  

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Apr 24 2013

The Indy’s Alistair Dawber whitewashes terrorist crimes of Samer Issawi

An April 23 story in The Independent, written by the paper’s Jerusalem correspondent Alistair Dawber, entitled Palestinian prisoner gives up 250 day hunger strike after deal with Israel, begins with a photo of the joyful parents of the convicted Palestinian terrorist in question, Samer Issawi, celebrating their son’s decision to end his hunger strike.

samer

Dawber begins his story thusly:

One of the most high profile Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel has put an end to a 250-day hunger strike after reaching a deal with the Jewish state that will see him serve another eight months in jail.

Samer Issawi was sustained by vitamins and other supplements throughout his protest during which time he refused regular food and turned down a proposal to exile him. His cause has been taken up enthusiastically by Palestinians, many of whom consider the so-called security prisoners as national heroes. Throughout the West Bank and Gaza, several people have been seen wearing T-shirts emblazoned with Issawi’s face.

Dawber is correct that Palestinians and their political leaders routinely characterize even the most malevolent  terrorists in a manner which would lead some to believe they are civil rights martyrs and not cold-blooded killers – a disturbing dynamic which Palestinian Media Watch demonstrates continually.

In fact, some of the runners in the Palestinian Marathon on April 21 wore Samer Issawi t-shirts.

Palestine Marathon, Bethlehem, West Bank, 21.4.2013

Marathon runner on the left seen wearing Samer Issawi t-shirt

Additionally, the “so-called” security prisoners cum “national heroes” Dawber is referring to are the more than 4,800 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails who have been convicted of serious violent crimes, and include the following:

  • Masterminds who ‘organized’ terror attacks which killed Israelis
  • ‘Specialists’ who prepared the explosives used during such deadly attacks
  • Recruiters of suicide bombers
  • Senior members of terrorist Palestinian organizations

Further in the story, Dawber provides a bit of background on the hunger-striking Palestinian prisoner. 

Issawi, 32, was initially sentenced to 30 years in 2002 for, according to Israel, making pipe bombs during the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising. He was released in 2011 as part of the deal to release the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was freed by Hamas after five years being held in Gaza. Issawi was one of 1,027 Palestinians to be freed as part of the deal.

However, Issawi didn’t merely make pipe bombs.

Per Capt. Eytan Buchman, an IDF spokesman, as reported by CAMERA:

Issawi was convicted of multiple crimes which included five counts of attempted murder. This included four shootings, between July 2001 and February 2002, in which Issawi and his accomplices fired an AK-47 on police cars and buses travelling between Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem. In one attack, a policeman was injured and required surgery. On October 30, 2001, Issawi, together with an accomplice, fired at two students walking from the Hebrew University campus to their car in a nearby parking lot. In another case, Issawi provided guns and explosive devices to a terror squad, which then fired on a bus. Finally, in December 2001, Issawi ordered an attack on security personnel at Hebrew University, providing a terror squad with a pistol and a pipe bomb. Two of the squad members tracked security personnel but didn’t carry out the attack.

Issawi didn’t play merely a ‘supporting role’ in terror attacks, but, rather, was directly responsible for firing an automatic weapon at innocent Israeli civilians with the hope of murdering as many of them as possible – and was responsible for ordering additional lethal attacks on other Israelis.

Remarkably, even an AP story published on April 23 in the Guardian about the end of the Palestinian’s hunger strike included information on Issawi’s attempted murder of Israeli students at Hebrew University – a telling fact, and one which places Alistair Dawber whitewash of the terrorist’s crimes in even clearer context.     

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Apr 15 2013

Glenn Greenwald and Israel’s booming anti-Zionism tourism trade

Glenn Greenwald’s ‘Comment is Free’ post on April 13 concerns a bill circulating through the US Congress which would allow Israel into America’s “visa waiver program”, permitting Israel to join with 37 other countries whose citizens are permitted to travel to the US without a visa.  The bill evidently includes a clause which would allow Israel’s entrance into the visa waiver program with the stipulation that Israel won’t have to allow in US citizens who may ”jeopardize the security of the State of Israel”, while otherwise ensuring that reciprocal travel privileges are extended to all.

Greenwald’s antagonists in the tale are AIPAC and the bill’s supporters in Congress, who he accuses of prioritizing the interests of Israel over those of US citizens. His protagonists, opposing the bill, include Mike Coogan of the US Campaign to End Israeli Occupation, and Mitchell Plitnick, former Director of the US Office of B’Tselem, 

Greenwald characterizes the bill as “pro-discrimination”, and quotes Ron Kampeas claiming that the clause will allow Israel to continue the ‘practice of routinely refusing to allow Americans of Arab ethnicity or Muslim backgrounds to enter their country’.  However, other than one anecdotal example of a Palestinian-American evidently being denied entrance into Israel, neither Greenwald nor Kampeas cite statistics to demonstrate a pattern of such discrimination, nor explore the question of how many were denied entry for legitimate security reasons.  

Instead, Greenwald cites this passage from a US travel advisory:

Some US citizens holding Israeli nationality, possessing a Palestinian identity card, or of Arab or Muslim origin have experienced significant difficulties in entering or exiting Israel or the West Bank.

Not content with the advisory’s carefully worded message regarding the “difficulties” which “some” US citizens have evidently faced “in entering or exiting Israel or the West Bank”, Greenwald further claims that “Israel also bars those who are critical of Israeli actions or supportive of Palestinian rights“.

Greenwald provides exactly two examples, in the links embedded in the text, to back up his definitive statement that “Israel bars” critics of Israel – a 2008 case involving Norman Finkelstein (which was related to his contact with Hezbollah) and a 2010 case involving Noam Chomsky.

Note that Greenwald didn’t merely claim that “Israel has barred some who are critical of Israeli actions”, or similarly restrained language, but rather suggested a pattern of barring critics of Israel – a claim which is contradicted by, among other factors, the fact Israel is saturated with pro-Palestinian activists (and critical journalists) from other countries.   

“Progressive” tours for foreigners wishing to see Israel through a pro-Palestinian perspective include the following:

  • Alternative Tours: “Operating out of the Jerusalem Hotel (near Damascus Gate), Alternative Tours offers trips in and around Jerusalem as well as to various West Bank cities, including Bethlehem, Jericho, Hebron, Nablus and Qalqiliya. The tours include stops at religious and historical sites and visits with local institutions and people”.

Here’s the image on their home page to get a sense of their priorities:

firstpage3

  • Alternative Tourism Group (ATG): “ATG is a Palestinian NGO that specializes in touring that critically examines the history and politics of The Holy Land.  ATG is founded on the tenets of justice tourism, which are based on the goals of economic benefit for the local population, environmental protection, productive exchanges between host and guest through one-on-one interactions, and political/historical education.  Tours visit Palestinian and Israeli cities and villages, settlements, refugee camps, and/or Bedouin camps, and can include conversations with leading activists and educators, as well as interfaith encounters”.

ATG also explains on their website that foreign tourists will see Israeli ‘Apartheid’ and ‘Colonialism’ first hand.

On ATG’s page with ‘Practical Info‘ for foreign participants, there’s no warning for travellers on restrictions imposed on their entry by Israeli authorities, and the following photo appears on their site, showing a group of ATG participants in a Palestinian village planting olive trees:

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  • Breaking the Silence: BtS, active in promoting “war crimes” charges against Israel after the Gaza war in 2009, is “comprised of veteran Israeli soldiers, and leads tours to Hebron as well as to South Hebron Hills”.

Here’s the image on the website of BtS (an Israeli NGO generously funded by the European Union) advertising their Passover tour of Israel.

passover

  • Holy Land Trust: HLT “offers study tours of the West Bank and Israeli cities, including: Ramallah, Jericho, Bethlehem, Beer Sheva, Nazareth, Israeli settlements, and Palestinian refugee camps.  You will have the opportunity to meeting with community leaders, politicians, and activists on both sides of the conflict”.

Registration is now open for Holy Land Trust’s 2013 Summer ‘Palestine Encounter’.  

Evidently, these 2012 participants of the summer ‘encounter’ had no difficulty entering the country:

western_wall

  • Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD): ICAHD, an NGO which uses rhetoric including accusations of “ethnic cleansing,” “genocide,” “collective punishment,” and “apartheid” against Israel, ”offers tours that trace the separation barrier and the roads and tunnels separating the settlements from Palestinian cities and villages, and visit the sites of demolished homes in East Jerusalem”.  Twice a year, “ICAHD offers an intensive ten-day study trip in which participants have the opportunity to meet people from both sides of the divide and gain in-depth knowledge on the latest analysis of the conflict”. 
Jeff Halper leads an ICAHD Jerusalem Tour

ICAHD director Jeff Halper leads a tour

  • Palestinian Solidarity Project (PSP): “PSP offers “one-day trips focusing on settlement, land confiscation, nonviolent resistance, and prisoner issues in the Beit Ommar area.”

The page at PSP where the following photo of pro-Palestinian activists planting olive trees appears notes that ”a group of 25 internationals accompanied by two farmers went to the farm land of Ali Ayad Awad, which lies beside the barrier fence on the north side of Karmie Tzur settlement.”

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  • Zochrot: Zochrot is an NGO which promotes the unlimited Palestinian ‘right of return’ and, “through tours of destroyed Palestinian villages in Israel (from 1948), aims to introduce the Palestinian Nakba into the collective consciousness.  Tours are led by Palestinian refugees and their families in conjunction with Zochrot staff.”
zochrot

Zochrot tour in the West Bank

ism

Here are two ISM activists who got past Israeli border control and arrived ‘safely’ at their destination (posing with Palestinian terrorists):

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While it’s impossible to know how many of the record 3.5 millions tourists who visited Israel in 2012 (who brought $4.6 billion into the Israeli economy) were anti-Zionist activists, it seems that, contrary to Greenwald’s claims, foreign travelers who are “critical of Israeli actions” or “supportive of Palestinian rights” don’t have too hard of a time gaining entry into the state.  

If there is a concerted effort by Israeli authorities to bar anti-Zionist activists from entering the country, they’re obviously doing a very poor job.

(This post was updated several hours after publication, and an incorrect statistic originally cited was removed. – A.L.)

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Apr 3 2013

Will the Guardian be inspired by AP and stop referring to Jews as “illegal”?

H/T Yisrael Medad

Associated Press, one of the largest news agencies in the world, will no longer use the term “illegal immigrant” to describe those who migrate to a country in violation of their immigration laws, their Executive Vice President announced on Tuesday.

Their style guide will no longer permit the term ‘illegal immigrant’ or the use of ‘illegal’ to describe a person.  It will now only use of the word “illegal” to describe an action, such as “living in or migrating to a country illegally”.

It is believed that most of the 1400 U.S. newspapers which use AP will likely follow their decision on the use of such a loaded term and will, for instance, stop referring to the millions of unauthorized Latino migrants to the US as “illegal”.   

ABC reported the following:

…most of America’s top college newspapersand major TV networks, including ABC, NBC and CNN, have vowed to stop using the term. Nearly half of Latino voters polled last year in a Fox News Latino survey said that they find the term “illegal immigrant” offensive. A coalition of linguists also came together last year to pressure media companies to drop “illegal immigrant,” calling it “neither neutral nor accurate.”

Whilst many Americans are applauding the decision by AP as a victory for accuracy and diversity, we can only wonder whether serious news organizations – and the Guardian – will similarly drop the loaded and value-laden term “illegal settler” to characterize Jews who, consistent with the parameters of the Mandate for Palestine, live beyond the 1949 armistice lines (in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem).

An "illegal" Israeli settler boy, Purim 2011

An “illegal” Israeli settler boy in the historic Jewish city of Hebron, Purim 2011

A quick search of the Guardian’s site shows a few references to such ‘illegal’ Israelis.

Guardian film critic Philip French wrote the following in his Oct. 21, 2012 review of the documentary ’5 Broken Cameras’:

Behind this pair, but no less endangered, is Emad, recording some of the fiercest footage of assaults and atrocities on the West Bank that I’ve ever seen, as well as the arson wreaked on Palestinian olive groves by illegal Jewish settlers.

A July 24, 2012 story by Phoebe Greenwood on Palestinians facing eviction from ‘unauthorized’ homes in the southern Hebron hills included this variation of the charge:

Hila Gurani, the state’s attorney, wrote that the second intifada and the second Lebanon war exposed gaps in IDF preparation that requires more extensive training in firing zones, which the illegal Hebron residents are preventing  

And, a report by Nicholas Watt about the call by some within the UK Labour Party to label products which are produced in the West Bank included this passage:

Labour is opposed to boycotting Israeli goods but [Yvette] Cooper believes consumers should be informed whether products are produced by illegal settlers.

Moreover, a Google search using the words “illegal Israeli settlers” turns up 727,000 hits, and included references to the proscribed Jew in many “mainstream” publications. (Obviously, another variation of these specific words, in a different order, would likely produce further examples.)

The implications are fascinating. 

If, for instance, we use AP’s logic as a guide, and only use the term “illegal” to describe an action, shouldn’t the Guardian and other sites stop referring to Jewish communities and homes in places like Ariel, Ma’ale Adumim and eastern Jerusalem as “illegal”?  If so, we might one day look back at the ubiquitous use of such subjective terminology (there were more than 5,000 references to “illegal settlements” at the Guardian’s site) as an embarrassing chapter in their paper’s history.

Whatever the Guardian editorial position on the desirability of a future Palestinian state which may include most of Judea and Samaria, we can hope that they’ll catch up with the times, heed their liberal calling and stop labelling – in one manner or another – hundreds of thousands of Jews residing within the boundaries of their historic homeland as “illegal”.   

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Mar 22 2013

Guardian Mid-East editor legitimizes the political pornography of Ali Abunimah

The Guardian’s Middle East Editor, Ian Black, provided an analysis of President Obama’s March 21 speech in Jerusalem (titled ‘Obama shows emotional and political intelligence with Jerusalem speech‘) which represents a good example the Guardian Left tendency to impute ‘authenticity’ to the most radical and uncompromising activists.  

This journalistic tick can be seen, for instance, in Harriet Sherwood’s decision to award ‘progressive’ Hechsher labels to both Joseph Dana and slain terror-abetting anti-Israel campaigner, Vittorio Arrigoni. 

Such political posturing also colored their coverage of the so-called ‘Palestine Papers’ in 2011, where Mahmoud Abbas’s putative flexibility during negotiations with Israel over the refugee issue was characterized as ”craven” – as ”selling out” Palestinian rights – in a series of reports which seemed to reflect the media group’s attempt to ‘out-Palestinian’ the Palestinians themselves. 

Their institutional tendency to promote a radical chic (and even terrorist-chic) brand is also evident in their frequent decisions to publish Islamist extremists, and the dearth of space they provide to peaceful and truly moderate two-state proponents.

In his March 21 report Black praised Obama’s speech at the Jerusalem Convention Center as “appealing to ordinary Israelis over the heads of their political leaders”, and as representing “a smart combination of emotional and political intelligence in pressing the buttons that matter to mainstream Jewish opinion in Israel.”

Palestinians, however, observed Black, were not impressed.  He noted that some Palestinians complained that Obama’s speech lacked depth or substance, before citing a critique by Ali Abunimah, the American born, Ivy League educated son of a Jordanian diplomat who founded ‘Electronic Intifada’ (EI) – and who, from his home in Chicago, engages in hate-filled ”commentary” about the Jewish state with abandon.

ali

Indeed, the Tweets by Abunimah (a former ‘Comment is Free’ contributor) cited in the following passage by Black are a fair representation of the activist’s social media style.

Black writes the following: 

Ali Abunimah, an outspoken critic of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and a supporter of the one-state solution, tweeted in anger: “Palestinians yearning for peace live in a tough neighborhood, surrounded by racist settlers and a murderous US-backed sectarian ‘army.’ Obama’s ‘history’ of Israel is as delusional as his US history which still praises slave-owning, slave-raping founding fathers. This speech will drive liberal Zionists wild because it legitimizes their segregationist desires & dresses them up as ‘peace’ & ‘democracy.’”

The text cited, however, represents several separate Abunimah Tweets.  So, for clarity, here are the three (140 character or so) ‘meditations’ by Abunimah which the Guardian Middle East editor evidently found elucidating. 

Here are a few additional Tweets that day by Abunimah not cited by Black:

Zionist psychopaths: 

Israel slaughters children:

Israel is a “supremacist” state:

Though Abunimah blocks many pro-Israel activists from following him, it still isn’t difficult to locate his Twitter paper trail – which includes a tweet concerning the murder of Israelis by Hezbollah terrorists in Bulgaria in 2012, which clearly suggested a Mossad conspiracy,  and another one calling for Palestinians to start a 3rd Intifada.

However, Abunimah is no mere American pro-Palestinian activist.  He’s defended Hamas and has flirted with insidious Israel-Nazi analogies – once even Tweeting the following: 

nazi

The fact that the Guardian’s Middle East editor – who undoubtedly could have found a more moderate, lucid and truly peace-seeking pro-Palestinian critic to cite – decided to hitch his wagon to Abunimah’s hateful political brand is an apt commentary on the Guardian’s continuing  fealty to the most belligerent voices in the region.

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Mar 14 2013

A nation so racist that the cinematic depiction of Jews is deemed a security risk

The most egregious example of bias against Israel demonstrated by the mainstream media is the dynamic by which they quickly frame events in the state in a manner consistent with the most unserious caricatures – narratives which impute the worst faith, the most malicious motivations, and often devoid of relevant context.

In such a journalistic paradigm, a street fight between Jewish and Arab teens becomes fodder for an ‘examination‘ of institutional Israeli racism, some Jewish soccer hooligans expressing bigotry towards Muslims suggests the urgent need that Israelis engage in national ‘soul-searching‘, a question of whether Ethiopian immigrants to Israel were provided enough information on a contraceptive injection morphs into a systemic attempt to reduce the black population; and the introduction of new bus lines to serve Palestinians who work in Israel is framed as an insidious form of segregation.

In all these examples, the prejudiced actions of a few Israelis, or policies which may have the effect of being injurious to minority groups in the state, are exploited by Israel’s critics to suggest a ‘dangerous lurch right’, or to suggest that there is something fundamentally wrong – immutable and beyond repair – with the state or indeed with the idea of Zionism itself.

When pro-Israel bloggers and advocates attempt to refute such charges by demonstrating racial diversity in Israel, mainstream acceptance towards sexual minorities, and other examples of the state’s liberal advantages, it is often portrayed as propaganda – a cynical attempt to ‘wash over‘ its fundamental moral flaws.

If such hyper criticism of Israel by activists and journalists reflected a commitment to truly universal values, in which all people – and certainly all governments in the Middle East – were held to the same standard, such scrutiny would of course be justifiable.  However, coverage of the region by the MSM and especially the Guardian shows that even the most outrageous displays of Arab racism are unreported, dramatically downplayed, and rarely contextualized as indicating a national or regional pathos.

So, while the Guardian provided saturation coverage of the bigoted reaction by some football hooligans to the introduction of two Muslim players to the Beitar Jerusalem team, an Egyptian football match in which fans hung banners explicitly calling for anther Holocaust against Jews went unreported.

When some rabbis in Safed encouraged Jews not to rent property to Arabs (an act universally condemned by Israeli leaders), ‘Comment is Free’ published a piece characterizing the event as nothing short of an example of a rising tide of fascism.  However, news that the President of Egypt had called Jews ‘sons of apes and pigs‘ and called on the country to nurture their children on antisemitic hate was only mentioned in passing in Guardian reports about other topics – and wasn’t the subject of righteous condemnation by contributors or editors.

The most recent example of the Guardian downplaying a story about institutional racism in Egyptian society involves the country’s decision to ban a film about Egypt’s Jews on ‘national security’ grounds. The film, ‘Jews of Egypt‘, according to the director, attempts to document the history of the Jewish community in Egypt, and “to understand the change in the identity of the Egyptian society that turned from a society full of tolerance and acceptance of one another…into a society that rejects the others”

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The ancient Jewish community of Egypt, which totaled nearly 80,000 citizens in 1948, is now practically extinct - the result of state sponsored ethnic cleansing in the late 40s and early 50s which included the seizure of Jews’ assets and property, the revocation of their citizenship, arbitrary imprisonment, torture and pogroms.

Whilst the question of how the mere cinematic depiction of Egypt’s Jewish community could possibly represent a security threat is a staggering one, and what the film’s censorship’s portends for other minorities in the country a serious subject, the first indication that the Guardian will not be taking the broader implications of the ban seriously is that news of the decision was covered, not by their Middle East editor, or another political analyst, but by their film critic Ben Child.

ben child

Child is out of his depth on the issue and the report fails to explore the most intuitive questions about what this official act of censorship implies about a nation evidently in complete denial about the fact that, due to state-sanctioned racist politics and official incitement over the course of little more than fifty years, they’ve eradicated a Jewish community which dated back to biblical times.

If Egyptians were held to the same moral standard as Israelis, critical, progressive minds would be demanding that Egyptians come to terms with their antisemitic history, that a national soul-searching is in order to account for racism so endemic that the President of the country can publicly lecture about the importance of passing down antisemitic values to the next generation of children and not the slightest national shame or outrage ensues.

As progressives won’t demand such a moral accounting of the ‘Egyptian soul’, nothing will change and nothing will be learned. The injurious effects of the hard bigotry of no expectations will continue to prevent a ‘Arab Spring’ worth its name from ever taking root.

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Mar 10 2013

Are Israeli “settlements” illegal under international law?

The Guardian refrain that Jewish communities across the green line (including “East” Jerusalem) represent ‘a violation of international law’ is repeated so often that even those who don’t possess even the slightest antipathy towards Israel could be forgiven for uncritically accepting this as fact.

Reports alleging the “illegality” of such settlements – in the Guardian, as well as in the mainstream media – often don’t even bother citing a source for such an international adjudication, as no such determination has ever been reached or definitively codified.

Eric Rozenman, the Washington DC director of CAMERA, in an essay published today, March 9, at the Washington Times, delves into the relevant legal precedents, as well as the pertinent historical background, and concludes that settlements are not, in fact, illegal under international law.  

Mandate for Palestine

Even those who passionately oppose the existence, and growth, of Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria should read and seriously consider Rozenman’s  thoughtful analysis, titled ‘Ban Ki-Moon is wrong about Israeli settlements‘. 

Mar 10 2013

Misleading Guardian caption below photo of Israeli injured by Palestinian rioters

On Friday, March 8, hundreds of Palestinians emerged from prayers at the al-Aqsa Mosque to throw rocks and petrol bombs at Israeli security personnel stationed near the entrance of the compound.

Eleven policemen were injured during the violence, including one Israeli who was injured by a molotov cocktail thrown at officers by Palestinians, reportedly from inside the mosque. 

Police dispersed the rioters using stun grenades and other non-violent crowd control measures.

The Guardian’s ‘Picture Desk Live’ published the following photo shortly after the Friday riots showing the officer who was set on fire.

Mideast Israel Palestinans

Here’s the Guardian caption:

caption

Note that the Israeli policeman is described as “injured”, with no text indicating that he was injured by a Palestinian who intentionally hurled an incendiary device in his direction. (Other news sites which published photos of the injured Israeli managed to explain that the injury was indeed caused by Palestinians.) 

Another glaring distortion is achieved by the caption’s blurred causation. Readers are informed only that “clashes broke out”, without assigning blame, as if there was any doubt that it was Palestinian ‘worshipers’ who initiated the violence. 

A twenty-eight word caption: so much obfuscation. 

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Mar 5 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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UNRWA website

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Feb 27 2013

Cruel siege on Gaza by neighboring state: Tunnels, flooded with raw sewage, now to be destroyed

The smuggling tunnels linking Gaza to Egypt are a security threat and must be destroyed, a Jerusalem Cairo court ruled on Tuesday, responding to a petition brought by a group of activists in the wake of rocket firing and cross border attacks on Israel a cross-border attack, by jihadist elements who infiltrated from Gaza through the tunnels, that killed 16 Egyptian border guards in August.

A Palestinian smuggler moves refrigerators through a tunnel from Egypt to the Gaza Strip under the border in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. (Photo: AP)

A Palestinian smuggler moves refrigerators through a tunnel from Egypt into Gaza under the border in Rafah. (Photo: AP)

The Israeli Egyptian court ruling makes it obligatory that the government destroy the tunnels, according to Reuters.

Israel Egypt cannot tolerate a porous border that will continue to destabilize the Sinai Peninsula, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s national security adviser reportedly said.

Gaza, home to roughly 1.7 million people, has lived with border restrictions since Hamas’s violent takeover of the territory in 2007. Smuggling under the 15-kilometer border has circumvented official crossings and bypassed restrictions for many years.

Restrictions on the influx of goods into the territory has prompted Palestinians in Gaza to smuggle in luxury goods, weapons and cash through the illegal tunnels. Hamas officials are known to collect fees from tunnel operators.

An estimated 30% of goods that reach Gaza come through the tunnels

An Israeli Egyptian lawyer, Wael Hamdy, instigated the case because he was “worried about the state of national security” in his country after terror attacks prompted by lawlessness in the Sinai desert region.

The lawyer also said that, in addition to recent efforts by Jerusalem the Muslim Brotherhood-led government in Cairo to close some tunnels,  Israel Egypt has recently resorted to other draconian and inhumane measures such flooding some of the more than 2000 active tunnels with raw sewage.

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The systematic siege on Gaza’s lifeline to the outside world has been met with  fierce condemnation silence from pro-Palestinian groups, assorted “human rights” organizations and, even more strangely, the Guardian.

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Guardian Gaza page, Feb. 27, 2013

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Feb 20 2013

Updates to post on ‘Women of the Wall’ & alleged gender segregation in Petah Tikva

This story has been updated below

On Feb. 19, we posted about Harriet Sherwood’s Feb. 17 Guardian report, ‘Sarah Silverman tweet puts women’s Western Wall protest in global spotlight‘, which focused on a protest by an Israeli group (‘Women of the Wall’) against restrictions imposed on women who pray at the Kotel in Jerusalem.

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Western Wall (Kotel) in Jerusalem

We noted that such protests resonate with a lot of Israelis who object to Haredi hegemony over religious practices in the state, but examined the following quote in the Guardian story for accuracy.

Despite some notable legal victories, “this is still a huge issue”, said [Anat] Hoffman, who is also director of [IRAC] the Israel Religious Action Centre [and chairperson of 'Women of the Wall'], which campaigns against segregation and the exclusion of women. “Every day we get calls reporting things to us. Just yesterday, we heard that the water-drinking fountains at Petah Tikva cemetery have been segregated.”

IRAC is the legal and advocacy arm of the Reform Judaism movement in Israel.

Due to the fact that Hoffman evidently didn’t provide the source of her claim to Sherwood, we did our own investigation, and contacted an Israeli blogger named Anne, a resident of Petah Tikva [a city in central Israel, 10.6 km east of Tel Aviv], who investigated the matter personally.

Anne wrote the following:

I got [to the cemetery in Petah Tikvah] during a funeral (so I visited my grandmother’s grave while I was there) and then wandered around and took photos of the taps. First of all, there are no “drinking fountains” at the cemetery. I don’t think any cemetery has these.  What they do have are taps to ritually wash your hands when leaving the cemetery (Netilat Yadayim). As you can see (in the photos), there were men and women washing hands together. The second set of taps are located outside the men’s toilets but are certainly used by both men and women. As you can see, there is no sign at all about separation, and I have washed my hands there many times. The “wall” dividing the two sides is simply to allow more taps in one small area.

So, contrary to the claim made by Hoffman there are no gender segregated “drinking fountains” in the Petah Tikva cemetery, and likely no “drinking fountains” at all.  Further, the ritual hand washing taps, as Anne noted, are not segregated by gender.

However, this morning, we were contacted by a CiF Watch reader who supports the mission of the Israeli Religious Action Centre, and had emailed the group to seek comment on the claim made by their director.  Here’s their reply:

 It seemed Anat did confuse the cities when she said it was Petah Tikva. The city where we found the gender segregated washing station was in Kiryat Gat [a city in southern Israel, 56 km south of Tel Aviv]. I have attached a picture below. This will be corrected and in past and for all future statements on the issue.

Here’s the photo they sent.

Seperate washing stations

So, there appears to indeed be separate men’s and women’s ritual hand washing stations at the cemetery in Kiryat Gat. 

Though the connection between this particular gender separation practice at one Israeli cemetery and the restrictions imposed on women who pray at the Kotel is debatable, there’s a larger point to be made about Hoffman’s gaffe.

Though she was born in Jerusalem, Anat Hoffman spent time in the US (she earned her undergraduate degree from UCLA) and speaks flawless English.

Whilst conflating Petah Tikva with Kiryat Gat does not represent a major substantive error, Hoffman would likely be familiar with the ritual washing practice at Jewish cemeteries (symbolizing the dissociation from the impurity of death), and it therefore seems reasonable to ask why – unless Sherwood quoted her incorrectly – she would mistake a drinking fountain with a ritual hand-washing station.

The idea of separate drinking fountains (broadly speaking) evokes, for many, a very particular historical association  - particularly to Americans.

If the Reform Movement wishes to effectively advocate for an end to Orthodox control of religious life in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the state, and also be taken seriously as a proudly Zionist movement, it seems fair to expect their spokespeople to exercise care in avoiding imprecise, inflammatory language which could aggravate the already volatile secular-religious divide in the Jewish state.

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Homepage of ‘Women of the Wall’

UPDATE: A reader in the comment section of our original post on this issue found a recent Ynet article from Feb. 11 (in Hebrew) reporting that, following complaints by some of the clientele at the cemetery about the segregated washing stations, the sign was removed (by orders of the Ministry of Religious Affairs) and the policy ended.  

UPDATE 2:  Thanks to a reader for pointing out that I incorrectly wrote that Anat Hoffman was a rabbi. She is not. The post has been corrected.  

Related articles
Feb 20 2013

Information about Samer al-Issawi not provided by the Guardian

A Feb. 19 blurb in the Guardian’s ongoing series of posts in their ’Middle East Live’ blog noted that “Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails declared a one-day fast today in solidarity with four inmates whose hunger strike has fueled anti-Israel protests in the occupied West Bank”.

The story then quoted Reuters, thus:

Samer al-Issawi, one of the four Palestinians who have been on hunger strike, has been refusing food, intermittently, for more than 200 days. His family says his health has deteriorated sharply.

The prisoners’ campaign for better conditions and against detention without trial has touched off violent protests over the past several weeks outside an Israeli military prison and in West Bank towns.

In the Gaza Strip, the Islamic Jihad group said a truce with Israel that ended eight days of fighting in November could unravel if any hunger striker died. 

The Palestinian Prisoners Club, which looks after the welfare of inmates and their families, said 800 prisoners were taking part in the day-long fast. 

Additionally, a Feb. 15 edition of the Guardian’s ‘Picture Desk Live’ included a photo of a Palestinian in eastern Jerusalem detained while throwing stones at Israeli police during a protest against the imprisonment of Issawi. Here’s the caption they used:

A Palestinian with marks of pepper spray on his face is detained by Israeli border policemen who suspect him of throwing stones during clashes at a protest in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Issawiya. Clashes broke out as residents protested calling for the release of Samer al-Issawi, a hunger-striking Palestinian prisoner.

As Issawi prepares to become the latest Palestinian cause celebre (see Richard Millett’s report on a pro-Issawi protest in Trafalgar Square in London) here’s some interesting information about the prisoner recently reported by Tamar Sternthal at CAMERA.

Who is Samer Issawi and why had he been imprisoned?

According to the Israel Prison Service, Samer Issawi of Issawiyeh, Jerusalem was arrested in April 2002 and sentenced to 26 years for attempted murder, belonging to an unrecognized (terror) organization, military training, and possession of weapons, arms and explosive materials. Issawi (identification number 037274735) was one of the 477 Palestinian prisoners released in the first stage of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in October 2011. (The Prison Service lists him as Samir Tariq Ahmad Muhammad. Multiple names are not uncommon among Palestinians. The date of his arrest, birth, his sentence term and the terms of his release are consistent with the details provided about Samer Issawi in media reports.)

Here’s additional information on Issawi’s terror activities that Capt. Eytan Buchman, an IDF spokesman, provided to CAMERA:

Issawi was convicted of multiple crimes which included five counts of attempted murder. This included four shootings, between July 2001 and February 2002, in which Issawi and his accomplices fired on police cars and buses travelling between Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem. In one attack, a policeman was injured and required surgery. On October 30, 2001, Issawi, together with an accomplice, fired at two students walking from the Hebrew University campus to their car in a nearby parking lot. In another case, Issawi provided guns and explosive devices to a terror squad, which then fired on a bus. Finally, in December 2001, Issawi ordered an attack on security personnel at Hebrew University, providing a terror squad with a pistol and a pipe bomb. Two of the squad members tracked security personnel but didn’t carry out the attack.

Issawi was re-arrested in July 2102 for reportedly violating one of the conditions of his release.

Sternthal also cited an October 2011 letter to the editor of the Guardian by Amir Ofek of the Israeli embassy in London which criticized the paper for failing to provide information about Issawi’s terror activities in a photo of him they used (in the print edition of the paper).

Ofek wrote the following:

Your centrefold (19 October) carries a double-spread photograph of released prisoner Samer Tareq al-Issawi in a cheering crowd, after being freed under the terms of the deal to release Gilad Shalit. It is important to point out the grave terrorism offences of which Al-Issawi was convicted, including firing a gun at a civilian vehicle in October 2001, indiscriminately firing an AK47 assault rifle at civilian buses, and manufacturing and distributing pipe bombs used in attacks on Israeli civilians.

Since it’s likely that the Guardian (and groups like the Palestinian Prisoners Club) will continue to characterize Issawi as a Palestinian martyr, it’s important to keep in mind that the “hunger striker” is not a ‘civil rights activist’ but, rather, a convicted terrorist who devoted his time attempting to murder Israeli civilians.