Jan 22 2013

The Guardian gets it wrong: Exit polls indicate no rightward political shift in Israel

If exit polls (as reported by Times of Israel and other media outlets) turn out to be accurate, the Guardian mantra – parroted by nearly every commentator and reporter who’s been providing ‘analysis’ on the Israeli elections – warning of a hard and dangerous shift to the right will prove to have been entirely inaccurate.

In the final days before the vote, the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent Harriet Sherwood seemed certain that the elections would bring “a more hawkish and pro-settler government“, and Guardian Middle East Editor Ian Black warned that “Netanyahu [was] poised to…head a more right-wing and uncompromising government than Israel has ever seen before“.

Rachel Shabi predicted that Israel would elect “the most right-wing government in its history“, while Jonathan Freedland expressed gloom that diaspora Jews would have to watch “the centre of gravity…shift so far rightward [in Israel] that Netanyahu and even Lieberman will look moderate by comparison.”

However, based on preliminary reports, not only does it appear that there has been absolutely no rightward shift, but the makeup of the next Knesset may be slightly more left than the current one.

While in 2009 the right-wing bloc bested the center-left bloc by 65-55, the tallies released tonight after polls closed in Israel at 10 PM showed that the new Knesset will have a narrower (61-59) right-bloc advantage.

Screenshot from Israel’s Channel 2, showing 61-59 right-left split based on exit polling

According various exit polls, the top three parties will be Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu with 31 Knesset seats, the centrist Yesh Atid with 19, and the leftist Labor Party with between 16-18. The rightist party, Jewish Home, headed by Naftali Bennett, came in fourth and will have 13 or 14, while Shas, the ultra-orthodox party, came in fifth with 12.

Some Israeli commentators are already predicting that Binyamin Netanyahu will attempt to form a centrist or even a right-center-left coalition.

Though the final results aren’t expected to be announced until the early hours of Wednesday, a few things are certain:

The Guardian invested heavily in promoting their desired political narrative of a Jewish state lurching dangerously towards the right.

They got it completely wrong.

They will learn absolutely nothing from their egregious miscalculation.

Racist double standards watch: Guardian ignores Palestinians’ extreme right drift (cifwatch.com)
Harriet Sherwood ‘forgets’ to note place of relative Jewish significance in Jerusalem (cifwatch.com)

Jan 21 2013

Harriet Sherwood ‘forgets’ to note place of relative Jewish significance in Jerusalem

Harriet Sherwood’s latest report, ‘Israeli elections set to amplify religious voice in Knesset‘, Jan. 21, highlights commentators predicting that Knesset representation for religiously observant Jews will likely increase following the Jan. 22 election.

While Sherwood’s report represents the latest in a string of Guardian news stories and commentaries suggesting a ‘rightward’ electoral shift in the Jewish state, one passage in particular stood out:

“Binyamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, currently in an electoral alliance with the former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, is also expected to be more hardline rightwing in the next parliament. Among those expecting to become new members of the Knesset is Moshe Feiglin, who this month proposed that the Israeli government pay Palestinians in the West Bank $500,000 a family to leave. “This is the perfect solution for us,” he said.

Feiglin, a hardline settler from Karnei Shomron in the West Bank, was recently arrested for praying near the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque. Israeli law forbids Jews from praying at the compound.”

Yes, why indeed would a religious Israeli Jew be provocatively praying “near the the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque” in Jerusalem?

Could there be a place of Jewish religious significance near these sacred Islamic sites?

Indeed, yes there is.

A little place known as ‘The Temple Mount’, or Har Habayit, is identified in Jewish (and Islamic) tradition as the area of Mount Moriah where Abraham offered up his son in sacrifice, and it is where the Second Temple stood between roughly 515 BCE until 70 CE.

It is universally recognized as the holiest site in Judaism.

Millions pray each year at the Western Wall (a retaining wall initiated by King Herod) due to its close proximity to the original Temple.

Though Israel does not allow non-Muslim prayer on the Temple Mount to avoid offending Muslims (which is indeed why Feiglin was arrested), it strains credulity to imagine that Sherwood, who’s been the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent since 2010, just innocently forgot to mention the Jewish significance of the site where the Israeli MK was praying.

While we have credited Sherwood for her few recent minimal steps towards more balanced reporting, this glaring omission again demonstrates the degree to which her view from Jerusalem is still egregiously skewed by a knee-jerk anti-Israel bias.

CAMERA backgrounder on the Temple Mount

Jul 14 2011

In a separate development…Harriet Sherwood tries to connect the dots

What do the following have in common?

1. The recent anti-BDS bill which passed in the Knesset.

2. A proposal to give Israeli MKs some say in Israeli Supreme Court nominations.

3. Israeli nursery school students singing the national anthem.

Well, it depends on who you ask.

If you’re Harriet Sherwood, and you’re trying desperately to advance the narrative of an Israeli society moving to the extreme right, all three are not separate phenomena but interconnected political components which are part of a larger whole.

Sherwood’s latest dispatch, Israel’s boycott ban draws fire from law professors, which includes a requisite photo of a furious, downright scary, looking Netanyahu, returns to the political terrain she visited only yesterday - which included a quote suggesting that the anti-BDS law was evidence that “Fascism at its worst is raging [in Israel]“ - noting that, while the Prime Minister defended the bill, it continues to be condemned by an increasing number of prominent Israelis, before pivoting to the following (related?) legislation.

“Two rightwing members of the Knesset announced on Wednesday they would present a further bill allowing the Knesset to veto supreme court appointments.”

While Sherwood acknowledges that this proposal didn’t have wide support and would likely not be adopted, her attempt to contextualize that legislative proposal as part of a wider right-wing trend is spurious.

In the U.S., for instance, while the President proposes nominees for the Supreme Court, they must be approved by the Senate (first the Judiciary Committee, then the full Senate) – one of the “checks and balances” which represent an important component of America’s democracy.

In Israel’s current system the President appoints Supreme Court nominees upon the advice of the Judges Nominations Committee – which is composed of three Justices of the Supreme Court, two Ministers (one of them being the Minister of Justice), two Members of the Knesset and two representatives of the Israel Bar Association.

It’s hard to understand how vesting in elected members of the Knesset the power to veto a Supreme Court nominee could be considered illiberal, or right wing.

Finally, her concluding paragraph contains information even more tangential to the story she’s ostensibly reporting.

“In a separate development, nursery schools in Israel are to be required to raise the Israeli flag and sing the national anthem at least once a week to strengthen children’s Zionist values.”

Unless Sherwood meant to say, “In a separate AND COMPLETELY UNRELATED development”, I honestly don’t know what ties in the last passage with rest of the report.

But, of course, I’m not being completely sincere, as I fully understand that she’s trying to characterize the new requirement by the education ministry as another sign of Israel’s lurch to the far right.

I hope I can be forgiven for, again, citing my own background in a quite democratic country to contextualize this completely innocuous “development”, but, in the public school I went to in Philadelphia, we recited the Pledge of Allegiance, while placing our hands on our hearts and facing the American Flag, every day – a national custom deemed helpful in inculcating students with important civic values, such as patriotism, and has been controversial only on the fringes of American society.

Moreover, as I read that last add-on I decided to have some fun and see if I could top Sherwood with an even more egregious effort to tie together a fact completely irrelevant to the anti-BDS legislation.

How about this as an alternative ending to Sherwood’s story to replace the throw away passage about Israeli children being “required” to sing the national anthem once a week?

In a separate development, Guardian News and Media (GNM) announced that The Guardian and its sister paper, The Observer, had lost £33m in cash terms last year after failing to staunch losses that ran to £34.4m the year before.

What’s the connection? Exactly. Absolutely nothing.

Harriet Sherwood, and the Guardian’s continuing ideologically inspired sins of omission (cifwatch.com)
Harriet Sherwood’s post critical of Israel’s proposed anti-BDS legislation fails to note EU and US precedents (cifwatch.com)
Harriet Sherwood and the political hysteria of the Guardian Left (cifwatch.com)
On Sherwood’s implosion (cifwatch.com)
Guardian contributor characterizes proponents of Israel’s anti-BDS bill as supporters of “totalitarianism” (cifwatch.com)
Harriet Sherwood story in Guardian quotes Richard Falk in accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing (cifwatch.com)
Harriet Sherwood erroneously places Knesset on Arab Farmland (cifwatch.com)
Fool’s Prophecy: Harriet Sherwood’s latest compelling tale of Israeli oppression…that hasn’t yet happened (cifwatch.com)

Jun 3 2010

How To Make An Ugly Story Even Uglier to Fit Your Agenda

This is a cross-post from Backspin

The Guardian posted footage of yesterday’s scuffle in the Knesset.

It’s a legitimate story when Israel’s parliament has an ugly moment. But The Guardian misrepresents the story by making it even uglier.

How?

The video specifically highlights that Israeli Arab MKs were ejected despite the fact that there were a total of 10 MKs ejected during the session — mostly Jews.

It seems to me that The Guardian is singling out the ejection of Arab MKs to push an agenda that Israel discriminates. You’ll have to see the Jerusalem Post for the context The Guardian lacks.