Lerman lectured on ‘The Revival of Jewish Culture in Europe’ at Cambridge University on Feb. 28. I know this because I saw his Tweet to this effect.
Though Lerman is not a frequent Tweeter he found time today to retweet this lovely 140 character ‘meditation’ by David Sheen.
Sheen is referring to Israel’s interior minister, Eli Yishai, and is presumably respondingto news that Yishai recently confirmed that more than 2,000 migrants in Israel have recently been repatriated back to Sudan.
I had never heard of David Sheen, but this Zionism – Nazism analogy was not a one-off, as you can see by looking at hisTweetsfor the day.
In fact, he was kind enough to post the following graphic on his Twitter page to help illustrate the ‘comparison’ between Yishai and Adolf Hitler.
Sheen, a filmmaker, is quite prolific in the social media world, as you can see by the bio on his website.
Here’s a photo of the “documentarian”:
While one of his videos was briefly noted in a Guardian live blog on the Nov. war in Gaza, Sheen hasn’t formally contributed to the Guardian or ‘Comment is Free. However, he has contributed to Mondoweissand Electronic Intifada, and has worked as a reporter and content editor at Haaretz.com.
Lerman, a far-left British Jew who has used his position at ‘Comment is Free’ to justify antisemitism, penned his most recent essay at CiF, titled ‘The abuse of dissenting Jews is shameful‘. In the post, he complained of being ostracized, and smeared by the UK Jewish establishment due ‘merely’ to the fact that he’s an opponent of the Jewish state’s continued existence. He ended with the following flourish:
That dissenting Jews are still demonised is shameful and undermines Jewish pluralism. But it’s manageable. Because the Jewish diaspora’s support matters so much to Israel’s leaders, the quest for serious, open and civil debate among Jews about what is really best for Israel must continue.
Evidently, Lerman’s expansive understanding of what constitutes “civil debate” about Israel includes not only calling for the state’s dissolution, but likening an Israeli government official to a Nazi.
Cross-posted by Petra Marquardt-Bigman, who blogs at ‘The Warped Mirror‘.
Among “pro-Palestinian” activists, the cartoonist Carlos Latuff is a widely admired artist. Like most of his fans, Latuff expresses his support for the Palestinian cause with an intense hatred for Israel, which is reflected in his large output of images comparing Israelto Nazi Germany. Unsurprisingly, Latuff’s achievements also include a winning entry for the 2006 Iranian “International Holocaust Cartoon Contest.”
The fact that comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany are generally regarded as antisemitic doesn’t seem to bother Latuff and his fans – quite the contrary: for them, it’s apparently just another reason for ridicule and amusement.
As you can see in the screenshot of Latuff’s cartoon above, there is an unmistakable SS-symbol next to Rabbi Hier’s head. When I noted this in a tweet, Latuff quickly responded, claiming that I was wrong and that the “bolts are cartoon representation of headache.” To support his claim, he linked to the following picture:
Since Latuff immediately blocked me, he didn’t have to face up and respond to the evidence showing just how flimsy his “headache”-explanation looked.
After all, for somebody like Latuff who works with images, it is hardly credible to claim that he was unaware of the obvious SS-reference in this cartoon. How about this very similar “headache” in an undeniably antisemitic cartoon from 2006?
Screenshot showing part of a Russian cartoon from a report by Tom Gross on anti-Israeli and antisemitic cartoons published in the international media in the summer of 2006
It is also noteworthy that Latuff didn’t link to any of his own images to illustrate his claim that an SS-symbol look-alike was a common cartoon representation of a headache. But his claim is most severely undermined by the fact – illustrated here– that he has made it something of a specialty to work Nazi-symbolism into his cartoons relating to Israel. He now has only himself to blame if it seems that this has become second nature to him.
”Nearly four years ago Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, designed to halt Hamas rocket fire from Gaza. It resulted in some 1,400 Palestinian deaths. For nearly a month that story was never off the front page, and it often led the TV news, here and around the world. There were large and loud public demonstrations. The DEC set up a fund and sought to air a televised appeal, famously refused by the BBC.
There is no such clamour now. The Stop the War Coalition is not summoning thousands to central London to demand an end to the fighting, as it did then. On the contrary, its statements are content simply to oppose western intervention – of which there is next to no prospect – while politely refusing to condemn Assad’s war on his own people. Caryl Churchill has not written a new play, Seven Syrian Children, exploring the curious mindset of the Alawite people that makes them capable of such horrors, the way she rushed to the stage to probe the Jewish psyche in 2009. The slaughter in Syria has similarly failed to movethe poet Tom Paulin to pick up his pen. Apparently, these Syrian deaths are not worthy of artistic note.”
Freedland’s argument is unassailable, and represents a welcome dose of polemical sanity at a media group mired in a culture of obsessive anti-Zionism.
However, also of note was Freedland’s critical reference to the Irish “poet” Tom Paulin.
Freedland links to a vile poem written by Paulin in response to the Al-Durahincident, on Sept. 30, 2000, titled “Killed in Crossfire.” (See a good summary of the Al-Durah hoaxhere.)
First, for some background, here’s a brief collection of quotes by Paulin, courtesy ofCAMERA:
On the validity and existence of the Jewish state:
“An historical obscenity.”
“I never believed that Israel had the right to exist at all.”
“It is an artificial state.”
On Palestinian violence:
“The Palestinians need good anti-tank weapons. They have got to meet force with force. They have to be cunning and forceful.”
On suicide bombers:
“I can understand how suicide bombers feel. It is an expression of deep injustice and tragedy. I think — though — that it is better to resort to conventional guerrilla warfare. I think attacks on civilians in fact boost morale. Hitler bombed London into submission but in fact it created a sense of national solidarity.”
On killing Jews:
“[Brooklyn-born Jewish settlers] should be shot dead. I think they are Nazis, racists, I feel nothing but hatred for them.”
The particular poetical smearby Paulin which Freedland linked to in his recent essay explicitly compared Zionism with Nazism.
However, even more noteworthy was the site where the poem appeared in 2001.
Interestingly, these days, reader comments below the line at ‘Comment is Free’ which accuse Zionists of being Nazis will typically be deleted by CiF moderators, as such insidious antisemitic defamations are deemed inconsistent with the Guardian’s “community standards”.
Evidently, in years prior, such ‘observations’ were not only judged to be morally acceptable by Guardian editors, but worthy of cultural merit.
“As newspaper editors go, Abdel Bari Atwan gets more than the average amount of prominence. Given the nature of his political views, he gets a surprisingly respectable degree of respect from such mainstream media channels as NPR, Sky News, CNN and the BBC (who call him Abdel-Bari Atwan) which have hosted him frequently and which, for reasons which can only leave us wondering, present him as an objective observer on events in this part of the world…”
We then quoted a small handful of offensive, racist and/or hate-based statements attributed to Atwan over a period of some years. (There are plenty to choose from.) We ended this way:
“Atwan said the March 2008 point-blank, cold-blooded shooting-massacre by a Palestinian Arab gunman of eight unarmed high school students, most of them aged 15 or 16, at Jerusalem’s Mercaz HaRav yeshiva “was justified“… Atwan says the celebrations in Gaza that followed the massacre symbolized “the courage of the Palestinian nation.” [Source: The Jerusalem Post] Depending on where you stand, justifying a terrorist massacre is not the worst of crimes. On the other hand, given what is at stake when it comes to defeating the practitioners of terror and their supporters, is Abdel Bari Atwan the kind of person who should be given public platforms in highly prominent settings? Or is Abdel Bari Atwan simply the innocent victim of some atrocious misquoting?”
To be blunt, any intelligent observer reviewing the work product of this toxic man realizes it’s not about misquoting. On his Wikipedia page, there’s this revealing anecdote:
“Following an October 2003 article in which Atwan claimed that the U.S. is to blame for the Arab world’s hatred of it, a Yemenite journalist and columnist for the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Munir Al-Mawari, stated: “The Abd Al Bari Atwan [appearing] on CNN is completely different from the Abdel Bari Atwan on the Al Jazeera network or in his Al Quds Al Arabi daily. On CNN, Atwan speaks solemnly and with total composure, presenting rational and balanced views. This is in complete contrast with his fuming appearances on Al Jazeera and in Al Quds Al Arabi, in which he whips up the emotions of multitudes of viewers and readers.” [Wikipedia's source]
Now, today, there’s a report [Times of Israel] that Atwan’s London-based daily paper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, one of the world’s leading Arab-language dailies and a news channel that focuses on Palestinian issues (the name literally means ‘Arab Jerusalem’), has run an editorial entitled “The only thing left is to send them to the gas ovens.”
The piece is unsigned, but the Twitter handle of editor-in-chief Atwan (@abdelbariatwan) appears at the bottom. He dominates the paper as its editor since 1989. Here’s a taste:
‘The Israeli army, through its inhumane treatment of over two million Palestinians besieged by land, sea and air, reminds us of similar treatment by the Nazi army of Jewish inmates in the Nazi camps. The only difference is that the Israeli army hasn’t sent the Palestinians to the gas ovens, at least not yet’
Holding out Israel’s defence forces as equivalent to the Nazis, and their intentions as genocidal, is not his invention. Other foaming-at-the-mouth polemicists and unadorned antisemites do it a lot and have done for years. And as our title suggests, we’re not attacking Atwan here. The man is what he is.
What we are taking this opportunity to criticize, this time with the disgusting Nazi analogy of today’s Atwan editorial in mind, is the way in which this unpleasant individual with his noxious views continues to be given public platforms in respectable places.
We think this can only be because the people in those places (a) don’t know what he writes in Arabic, (b) don’t care or (c) share Atwan’s self-opinion (on his website) that this is actually a function of his “lively and passionate debating style“.
Examples of the respectable places that give Abdel Bari Atwan a platform? His website lists some of them here: BBC News (as recently as two weeks ago); Al Jazeerah; BBC Dateline; BBC News Review; RT (“Russia Today”); Chatham House London. His website describes him as “a regular contributor to a number of UK, US, Middle Eastern and Turkish publications including ‘The Guardian’, ‘The Scottish Herald’, ‘Gulf News’ and ‘Star Gazet’“.
These are the people who need to be criticized. We don’t say Atwan should be shut up or shut out. Many of us live in free societies, and obnoxious views like his are part of the price. What we do say is that presenting him as a sober and objective stakeholder in the robust public marketplace of ideas is irresponsible, dishonest and disingenuous.
His viewpoints on terrorism alone should have taken out of the mainstream broadcast media years ago. The fact that he keeps on popping up suggests a serious degree of systemic prejudice at work inside Bush House and other such places of huge global influence.
CiF Watch’sprofile on ‘Comment is Free’ contributor John Pilger sums up the Australian journalist and documentary maker, thus:
John Pilger is a darling of the extreme Left, and, perhaps, one of the most vociferous demonizers of the Jewish state in the mainstream media. In his writings on “Palestine”, he regularly equates Israel to Nazi Germany, propagates the “Israel lobby” and Jewish conspiracy lie, accuses Israel of practicing racism and ethnic cleansing and regards Israel as the most dangerous country in the world (after the United States).
In fact according to Pilger “the Zionist state remains the cause of more regional grievance and sheer terror than all the Muslim states combined.”
So, given Pilger’s deep-seated hatred for the Jewish state, the following lie in his most recent CiF piece is not surprising.
Pilger’s piece, ‘Julia Gillard is no feminist hero‘, Oct. 15, represents a broad critique of Australia’s Prime Minister, but also includes this passage:
“A passionate supporter of the Israeli state, Gillard in 2009 went on a junket to Israel arranged by the Australian Israel Cultural Exchange during which she refused to condemn Israel’s blood-fresh massacre of 1,400 mostly women and children in Gaza.”
In fact, even the link Pilger uses in his piece – a reportby Harriet Sherwood in 2009 – doesn’t support the stats he cites.
While Sherwood’s report lists statistics (from the NGO Gaza Community Health Programme) on the number of children (under 18) killed in Cast Lead, nowhere does she cite the number of women killed.
B’tselem reportsthat 452 of the 1387 Palestinian casualties were children or women. So, even assuming B’tselem is correct – and Israeli figures, by the way, significantly contradict B’tselem’s findings – Pilger’s claim that those killed in the Gaza War were “mostly women and children” is simply a lie.
Given Pilger’s animosity towards Jews and Israel, we’re not surprised that he would engage in such disinformation.
However, aren’t we to assume that ‘Comment is Free’ editors at least engage in basic fact checking before essays are published?
The Guardian Readers Editor, Chris Elliott, can be contacted at this email:
Naomi Foyle, Rachel Shabi, Bidisha, Miranda Pennell, Selma Dabbagh last night.
The London Middle East Institute (LMEI), which is based at the School of Oriental and African Studies, used to give serious lectures. Not any more. The recently establishedCentre for Palestine Studies (CPS) now sits like a cuckoo in the nest of the LMEI.
Last night the first LMEI lecture of the new academic year was presented under the auspices of CPS. Palestine Now: Writers Respond was all about attacking Israel; nothing about studying the Palestinians.
Bidisha (The Guardian), Rachel Shabi (The Guardian), Selma Dabbagh (author), Miranda Pennell (film-maker) and Naomi Foyle (British Writers in Support of Palestine) had simply come to talk about how to fight for “the Palestinian cause” and against “Hasbarah”.
New students heard calls for the destruction of Israel dressed up as justice for the Palestinians, racist calls to boycott Israel and a totally gratuitous Holocaust analogy. Shame on LMEI for allowing this.
Dabbagh, Pennell and Foyle said they supported BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) against Israel.
Dabbagh explained that she writes in order to get more people involved in the Palestinian cause and told of how she refused to speak at Jewish Book Week (JBW), when asked to, because of its Israeli government funding.
Bidisha suggested it might have been better for Dabbagh to go to JBW and get her message across to the audience, but Dabbagh said she felt she couldn’t break the call to boycott Israel.
Dabbagh, who is also a lawyer, has been living in Bahrain from where she said she has been helping to sue, not the Bahrain police, but the British police!
Bemusingly, Shabi said that she agreed with the ‘D’ of BDS (divestment) but not the ‘B’ (cultural boycott) which she viewed as a “witch-hunt”. Bidisha said she was equally “ambivalent” about the boycott.
During the Q&A I asked whether any of the panelists had accepted funding from a government whose actions they disagreed with and what the panelists were doing about the oppression of gays, women and dissidents under Hamas rule. I said BDS was racist and that it calls for the destruction of Israel by demanding “the return of Palestinian refugees”.
Naomi Foyle refused to accept that Israel would be destroyed by BDS. Using a crude Holocaust analogy she explained:
“After the Holocaust Jews, who suffered in the Holocaust, were allowed reparations. They had their property returned to them. They were allowed to sue. Of course they were allowed to do it. That was their right. The Palestinian refugees, whose population has mushroomed, are living in squalid conditions, horrendous conditions with no passports, no freedom of movement, no sanitation, no hospital care. These people have keys to their family homes and their right to these family homes must be recognised. Once that right is recognised then the negotiations can begin on what this means for Israel as a state; whether it will become one state, whether it will become a secular state. No one is calling for the destruction of Israel. Is South Africa destroyed now because the blacks in South Africa have human rights? Israel is being asked to evolve.”
Obviously Israel would be destroyed as a Jewish state, but it would have been decent for another panelist to have pointed out to Foyle that it was slightly impossible for 6,000,000 Jews to have had their property returned because they were actually dead, having been murdered by the Nazis. However, no one uttered a word; not even Shabi.
And ignoring that more than 50 rockets had landed in Israel on Monday alone without condemnation from any quarter Foyle stated:
“Palestine is shrinking by the day. We have to say no, we have to put moral pressure on. Palestinians haven’t been allowed, in international opinion, to fight back with armed resistance. That’s been a complete disaster for them.”
Foyle continued that BDS doesn’t call for Israelis to go unfunded by the Israeli government, as “that’s their right as taxpayers”. She said it merely calls for Israelis not to leave Israel to perform and for performers not to go to Israel.
She said she had taken funding from the Canadian and British governments to support her writing and education, and then added:
“If there was a boycott of Great Britain that had any hope of helping the people of Afghanistan or Iraq and all I was being asked to do was not travel abroad to a foreign festival; it’s a no brainer.”
This all goes to show that boycotting Israel has nothing to do with objecting to settlements. It is a racist boycott of Israel per se.
Anti-Israel activists neatly try to evade accusations of racism by claiming that “Palestinian society” has called for BDS. In reality, such a call has merely come from a large group of tiny anti-Israel NGOs posing as “Palestinian society”.
Shabi, who described herself as a British/Israeli/Iraqi, then told of her research for her book which involved her seeing how easy it is to buy a house in a settlement and how she had to perfect a “back story” to do this. She said she knew her back story was perfect when her neighbour asked why she was disguised as a “British Jewish religious tourist”.
Meanwhile, Dabbagh admitted that she was “uncomfortable with the way women and gays are treated by Hamas”, but blamed Israel’s “siege” for keeping Hamas in power.
And Bidusha, addressing me directly, said that Palestinian children are brutalised by “the siege of Gaza”. I replied that Egypt is also conducting “the siege”. She had no answer.
As for the future, Shabi concluded that there was already “one-state on the ground” and the discussion in Israel was now just centred around whether it will be a left-wing or right-wing state. This is, of course, pure fantasy from Shabi.
While this brainwashing of new students was taking place a brave girl, Malala Yousufzai, who is 14, was still recovering in hospital after being shot in the neck and head by the Taliban for standing up for women’s education in Pakistan.
SOAS’ students should look to the likes of Yousufzai, not to phony human rights activists, for inspiration in fighting against real injustice.
“Insulting religions, faiths, or religious symbols cannot in any way be a part of freedom of belief or freedom of expression.”
Religious lesson in official PA daily:
“The struggle between truth and falsehood is as ancient as life upon this earth… The conflict between us and the Jews is not a conflict about land and borders, but rather a conflict about faith and existence.”
In response to the film depicting Islam’s prophet Muhammad negatively, using terms like “child molester” and “murderous thug,” Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas “condemned the insult to [Islam's] prophet” and added that he rejects “freedom of belief or freedom of expression when it comes to criticizing religion.”
Mahmoud Abbas’ condemnation of the defamation of Islam contrasts the PA policy of defamation of Judaism, demonization of Jews and promotion of Antisemitism, all of which are integral messages expressed by PA leaders and transmitted through the structures under their control.
Recent examples of this policy can be found in all areas of PA expression. The moderator at a Fatah ceremony demonized Jews as “the descendants of the apes and pigs.” A PA TV narrator said that Jews praying at the Western Wall are “sin and filth.” Senior PA official Jibril Rajoub referred to Jews as “Satans” and “Zionist sons of bitches” on PA TV. The PA Mufti and other religious leaders have defined Jews as the “enemy of Allah,” even preaching the following Hadith in PA TV sermons: “The Prophet says: ‘You shall fight the Jews and kill them.’” Indeed, what these and many other examples document is that in the PA, not only is demonization of Jews and Judaism common practice, it is also sometimes promoted as a religious Islamic imperative.
Significantly, the PA’s promotion of hatred of Jews is not limited to religious leaders and PA officials. PA TV featured young girls on children’s programs saying that Jews and Christians are “inferior and smaller, more cowardly and despised” and that “our enemy, Zion, is Satan with a tail.” Following classical European Antisemitism, a history program on PA TV taught that “Jews are hated in every society in which they have lived, because of their behavior relating to their great love of money.” The official PA daily on Israel’s independence day said Israel’s goal was to turn a “Jewish monarchy in Palestine into a basis for their [the Jews'] eternal rule over the world, that others, ‘goyim’ [non-Jews], must submit to their will.” (See details and many more sources below.)
The hypocrisy of the PA is evident. Abbas condemns the recent video about Muhammad and states that “insulting religions, faiths, or religious symbols” is not protected “freedom of expression.” At the same time, his own government’s policy is to indoctrinate Palestinians to hate Jews and to defame Judaism.
PA Chairman Abbas condemned defaming Islam and religion:
“President [Mahmoud Abbas] again condemned the insult to [Islam's] prophet Muhammad. He said… that from a religious, human, and moral point of view we cannot accept this insult, since it is a blatant attack on the entire belief system and the sensitivities of more than a billion Muslims in the world. President Abbas added that insulting religions, faiths, or religious symbols cannot in any way be a part of freedom of belief or freedom of expression…”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 17, 2012]
PA defames Judaism and Jews:
PMW has collected 25 representative examples of this hate speech from PA and Fatah leaders, spokespeople, children’s programs and official media. Most are from 2012 and 2011.
These examples appear first as short quotes and are followed by their full contexts and sources.
Additional documentation can be found on PMW’s website, including hate speech during the PA terror campaign (the Intifada 2000-2005), when PA religious leaders repeatedly called for thekilling of Jews as an Islamic demand.
Young girl on PA TV children’s program
“Jews and Christians are “inferior and smaller, more cowardly and despised.”
Moderator at Fatah ceremony
“Our war with the descendants of the apes and pigs (i.e., Jews) is a war of religion and faith.”
History program on PA TV
“The Jews are hated in every society in which they have lived, because of their behavior relating to their great love of money… This is how they harmed the societies that embraced them.”
PA TV narrator, on Jerusalem
“The light rain [in Jerusalem] cleanses the steps of the foreigners [Jews] so that the feet [of Muslims] in prayer will not step on impurity.”
Official PA daily’s religious lesson by Sheikh Ishaq Feleifel
The Jews’ “evilnature is drawn from Adam’s first son [who murdered his brother].”
PA TV Friday sermon
“These new Mongols…the Jews, the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger, the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger! Enemies of humanity in general, and of Palestinians in particular… Our enmity with the Jews is a matter of faith, more than an enmity because of occupation and the land… Even if donkeys would cease to bray, dogs cease to bark, wolves cease to howl and snakes to bite, the Jews would not cease to harbor hatred towards Muslims. … The Prophet says: ‘You shall fight the Jews and kill them.’”
PA TV narrator, documentary on Jerusalem
“From the balcony of our home, look out over [Islamic] holiness (visual: Western Wall) and on sin and filth (visual: Jews praying at the Western Wall).”
PA Mufti Muhammad Hussein
“The enemies of Allah [the Jews], who have violated all faith and religious laws, and even deviated from their humanity.“
Official PA daily columnist on religion Sheikh Taleb Al-Silwadi
“Allah’s enemies, the children of Zion.”
Young girl on PA TV children’s program
“Our enemy, Zion, is Satan with a tail.”
Senior PA official Jibril Rajoub
“We are prepared to bring the Executive Committee in helicopters… so they will see no Jews, no Satans, no Zionist sons of bitches.”
PA Mufti Muhammad Hussein
“The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call: ‘Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’”
Official PA daily:
“There is no limit to the greed of the Jews.”
Fatah official on PA TV
“The Jews were murderers of prophets.”
Official PA daily’s religious lesson by Sheikh Ishaq Feleifel
“The conflict between us and the Jews is not a conflict about land and borders, but rather a conflict about faith and existence.”
Official PA daily on Israel’s Independence Day
“Zionism is an extreme religious ideology whose aim is political hegemony and the transformation of a Jewish monarchy in Palestine into a basis for their eternal rule over the world, that others, “goyim” [non-Jews], must submit to their will.”
PA daily quotes children’s march-chant:
“Jews, Jews! Your holiday is the Holiday of the Apes.”
Palestinian actor in PA TV interview
“The Jew doesn’t have a bent nose, and isn’t cowardly, and is not interested only in accumulating money. Of course, he is interested in accumulating money – the Jews throughout history, and in the religions, and the Quran tells us about the Jews and their worry over money.”
Official PA daily
“The rabbis of death and the promoters of pagan Zionist thought have continued to spew their poison among the Jews, in order to stir up and rouse feelings of animosity and hatred against the Palestinians.”
Chief Justice of PA Religious Court
“Concerning the Jews, the Holy Quran says that they lack understanding, are void of wisdom, know nothing, violate agreements, etc. However, the Jews were known – it was known about them throughout history – that they make false claims, lies, forgery, slander, and fabrications.”
Additional examples of PA’s Antisemitic hate speech and sources of all items cited in brief above:
Jews /Israelis are “Allah’s enemies”
Sheikh Taleb Al-Silwadi, columnist on religious affairs in the official PA daily:
“One of the established facts is that the voice of falsehood does not rebel [against the truth] except where those who hold the truth [Muslims] forego their truth. Then there becomes room for falsehood, such that it can kill, behave violently, spill blood, and desecrate sacred things. That is what Allah’s enemies, the children of Zion, are doing before the eyes and ears of the entire world.”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 1, 2012]
PA children taught to hate Jews and Christians: Jews and Christians are “inferior and smaller, more cowardly and despised”
Girl: Christians and Jews “are inferior and smaller, more cowardly and despised. They are remnants of the [Christian] crusaders and Khaibar (i.e., Jewish village destroyed by Muslims in 629)…”
[PA TV (Fatah), May 11 and June 2, 2012]
PA children taught to hate Jews
Young girl Lina: ”Our enemy, Zion, is Satan with a tail…”
[PA TV (Fatah), May 8, 2012]
PA children taught to hate Jews
Young girl Laila: ”Our enemy, Zion, is Satan with a tail…”
[PA TV (Fatah), April 7, 2012]
Senior PA official Jibril Rajoub says Jews are “Satans” and “Zionist sons of bitches”
“We are prepared to bring the Executive Committee in helicopters… so they will see no Jews, no Satans, no Zionist sons of bitches.”
[PA TV (Fatah), May 17, 2012]
Moderator at Fatah ceremony: Jews are “descendants of the apes and pigs”
“Our war with the descendants of the apes and pigs (i.e., Jews) is a war of religion and faith. Long Live Fatah!”
[PA TV (Fatah), Jan. 9, 2012]
PA Mufti Muhammad Hussein:
“The reliable Hadith (tradition attributed to Muhammad), [found] in the two reliable collections, Bukhari and Muslim, says: “The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call: ‘Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’”
[PA TV (Fatah), Jan. 9, 2012]
Official PA daily: “There is no limit to the greed of the Jews”
“Anyone with eyes in his head sees that there is no limit to the greed of the Jews… The nibbling away at the body [land] by the Jews continues at all levels.”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 30, 2011]
PA TV documentary on Jerusalem: Rain cleanses Jerusalem of Jews’ impurity so Muslims can pray
“The golden dome [of the mosque] shines with colors of the sky, with the white of clouds, while the joyous holiday [Eid Al-Adha] is good to the residents. The light rain cleanses the steps of the foreigners [Jews] so that the feet [of Muslims] in prayer will not step on impurity.”
[PA TV (Fatah), Nov. 6, 2011]
Kids’ hate speech against Jews at PA Arafat memorial broadcast 3 years in a row
Girl: ”He [Arafat] was our former president… The Jews poisoned him and I hate them very much. Allah will repay them what they deserve.” Boy: ”He [Arafat] died from poisoning by the Jews. Well, I don’t know what he died from, but I know it was by the Jews.”
Fatah official: Jews are “murderers of prophets,” so Jews are prone to murder
Secretary of Fatah branch in Jerusalem, Omar Shalabi, about the killing of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin: Shalabi: ”If the Jews were murderers of prophets, why shouldn’t they murder a Prime Minister who signed a peace agreement?!”
[PA TV (Fatah), Nov. 11, 2011]
Op-ed in official PA daily: “The hatred towards Israeli Jews is not related to racist discrimination” – it’s because they deserve it
“The hatred towards Israeli Jews is not related to racist discrimination, and there is no nation, people, or country which started any hatred against them. It is the Jews who have always started every struggle and hostility; they view themselves as better than all the nations and more honored than all the peoples (since they are God’s Chosen People). They call everyone else ‘goyim’ [lit. 'nations'], who are below them in every respect. Moreover, they view themselves as deserving of all the goodness, glory and power on earth, and believe that they should attain ownership of the property of every non-Jew, in every way. Therefore, in every country where they live, we see that they seek to distinguish themselves from its inhabitants. They are concentrated in their own neighborhoods, and want everyone who lives with them to become their supporters. One of the things which stir up the nations against the Jews and plants [feelings] in their hearts against them is their tricks, which people understand…”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 2, 2011]
Official PA daily’s religious lesson: Judaism is a “distorted, corrupted, falsified religion”
Sheikh Ishaq Feleifel teaches religion:
“The struggle between truth and falsehood is as ancient as life upon this earth… yet the mighty Islam, from the breaking of its dawn and the spreading of its light up until our time, has been targeted by its enemies… the enemies have announced in a clear and provocative manner their despicable and terrible plot. Sixty-three years ago, the Israeli Prime Minister, Ben Gurion, stood at the UN after the entire world granted recognition to the malignant cancerous growth known as the State of Israel… The Prime Minister of this destructive cancerous growth stood up to declare the religion of the Jews in Palestine to the entire world. I hope that the [Islamic] nation will study this faith in order to know with certainty that the Jews talk, in conferences and in negotiations, only through their distorted, corrupted, falsified religion… The conflict between us and the Jews is not a conflict about land and borders, but rather a conflict aboutfaith and existence.”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 3, 2011]
Official PA daily’s religious lesson: “[The Jews'] evil nature is drawn from Adam’s first son” who murdered his brother
Sheikh Ishaq Feleifel teaches religion:
“In this lesson I wanted to talk about Cain and Abel – that’s the first story on earth, whose victim was Abel, at the hands of his brother Cain – because this story shows a similarity to the Jews and their crimes… The Jews, by throwing off their yoke, followed in the footsteps of the first person on earth who threw off the yoke of Allah. Their [the Jews'] evil nature is drawn from Adam’s first son [who murdered his brother].”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 13, 2011]
Official PA daily on Israel’s Independence Day: Zionism is a religious Jewish plan to rule over the non- Jewish world, and “Goyim [non-Jews] must submit to their will”
“The source of the name ‘Zionism’ is ‘Mount Zion’, one of the four mountains upon which the city of Jerusalem was founded. The Jews believe that their God lives there. Zionism is an extreme religious ideology whose aim is political hegemony and the transformation of a Jewish monarchy in Palestine into a basis for their eternal rule over the world, that others, “goyim” [non-Jews], must submit to their will, which is drawn from thewill of God.”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 15, 2011]
Official PA daily quotes children: “Jews, Jews! Your holiday [Passover] is the Holiday of Apes”
“The spring carnival has retained its [Palestinian] flavor in towns such as Bethlehem, Beit Sahour and Ramallah… with the demonstrations of the Scouts, songs, dances, and popular Palestinian hymns about Christian-Islamic unity and internal Christian unity. These hymns carry meaningful messages, in response to the Israeli prohibition [to enter Jerusalem], as seen in the calls of the youth who lead the procession of light, waving swords and not caring if anyone accuses them of Antisemitism: … ‘Our Lord, Jesus Christ, Christ redeemed us, with his blood he bought us, and today we are joyous while the Jews are sad,’ and, ‘Jews, Jews! Your holiday is the Holiday of the Apes, while our holiday is the Holiday of the Christ.’”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 19, 2011]
Palestinian actor in PA TV interview: Quran says Jews worry over money
Abd Al-Rahman Abu Al-Qasem, Palestinian actor living in Syria:
“Thirty or forty years ago, we presented the Jew in the theater as someone with a bent nose who lends [money] with interest and who understands nothing except money matters, and is cowardly, ugly, interested only in collecting money and controlling the people around him. However, this is not accurate or correct: The Jew doesn’t have a bent nose, and isn’t cowardly, and is not interested only in accumulating money. Of course, he is interested in accumulating money – the Jews throughout history, and in the religions, and the Quran tells us about the Jews and their worryover money.”
[PA TV (Fatah), Feb. 27, 2011]
Official PA daily’s headline: “Zionism reproduces the Holocaust”
“Day by day, Zionist racism is becoming more firmly and clearly entrenched in Israeli society… The rabbis of death and the promoters of pagan Zionist thought have continued to spew their poison among the Jews, in order to stir up and rouse feelings of animosity and hatred against the Palestinians, since the European and American forces of evil facilitated for them the [fulfillment of the] idea of the ‘national home’, in order to be rid of them and to remove from the European [social] fabric the results and implications of the Holocaust which they carried out against the Jews of Europe in Nazi Germany.”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 19, 2011]
History program on PA TV: Jews’ money lending “Shylock” behavior caused Antisemitism
Jordanian academic Arafat Hijazi:
“150 years ago, when there were no Jews in Palestine, the Jews were in Europe, in Eastern Europe, but the Jews suffered from persecution by the European nations. The reason was that they [the Jews] would harm the people of the lands in which they lived. They had a problem: Wherever they went, they were expelled, and were imprisoned.”
Jordanian academic Muhammad Dohal:
“The Jews are hated in every society in which they have lived, because of their behavior relating to their great love of money. Their behavior led to [Shakespeare's] famous story, the story of Shylock about money lending, which clings to the Jews. This is how they harmed the societies that embraced them, including the Palestinian society, the Arab-Palestinian society.”
[PA TV (Fatah), Oct. 17, 2010]
PA TV: Jews praying at the Western Wall is “sin and filth” – broadcast 2 years in a row
PA TV narrator: ”They [Israelis] know for certain that our [Palestinian] roots are deeper than their false history. We, from the balcony of our home, look out over [Islamic] holiness and on sin and filth [Jews praying at the Western Wall].”
[PA TV (Fatah), Sept. 10, 2010 and Aug. 10, 2011]
PA Mufti: Jews are “enemies of Allah” who “deviated from their humanity”
Muhammad Hussein, Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine:
“The Al-Aqsa Mosque is threatened by the plans of the enemies of Allah [the Jews], who have violated all faith and religious laws, and even deviated from their humanity.“
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 26, 2010]
PA TV: Don’t threaten kids with monsters, demons and Jews
PA cleric: ”Bringing up children with fear, anxiety and panic, scaring them when they cry – once by mentioning a monster, another time a scarecrow or a thief, and some other time a Jew, a demon, or the sound of the wind and other things, in order to silence them. Then the child grows up as a coward.”
[PA TV (Fatah), April 23, 2010]
Jews are “enemies of Allah,” “enemies of humanity,” and “the Prophet says… ‘fight the Jews and kill them’”
The following are excerpts of a PA TV Friday sermon from a mosque that was broadcast on PA TV: “The loathsome occupation in Palestine – its land and its holy places – by these new Mongols and what they are perpetrating upon this holy, blessed and pure land…The Jews, the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger, the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger! Enemies of humanity in general, and of Palestinians in particular… Our enmity with the Jews is a matter of faith, more than an enmity because of occupation and the land… Oh Muslims! The Jews are the Jews. The Jews are the Jews. Even if donkeys would cease to bray, dogs cease to bark, wolves cease to howl and snakes to bite, the Jews would not cease to harbor hatred towards Muslims. The Prophet said that if two Jews would be alone with a Muslim, they would think only of killing him… The Prophet says: ‘You shall fight the Jews and kill them, until the tree and the stone will speak and say: ‘Oh Muslim, Oh servant of Allah’ – the tree and the stone will not say, ‘Oh Arab,’ they will say, ‘Oh Muslim’. And they will not say, ‘Where are the millions?’ and will not say, ‘Where is the Arab nation?’ Rather, they will say, ‘Oh Muslim, Oh servant of Allah – there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’…”
[PA TV (Fatah), Jan. 29, 2010]
PA Chief Justice of Religious Court: Quran says Jews are evil
Dr. Tayseer Al-Tamimi, PA Chief Justice of Religious Court, and Chairman of Supreme Council of Islamic Law: “Concerning the Jews, the Holy Quran says that they lack understanding, are void of wisdom, know nothing, violate agreements, etc. However, the Jews were known – it was known about them throughout history – that they make false claims, lies, forgery, slander, and fabrications, in order to justify their aggression, land theft, defilement of holy sites, appropriation of land, destruction of homes, murder of children, women, and the elderly.”
[PA TV (Fatah), June 9, 2009]
Official PA daily: Jews are sadists and liars
“[In his lecture, Dr. Yunes Amr, President of Al-Quds Open University] addressed the subject of ‘Jerusalem, capital of Arab culture,’ the characteristics of the Jews – their lies and their sadism.”
Tom Gross wrote the following, in a recent post, about the non-existent “Israeli Jew” backed by non-existent “rich Jewish financiers” responsible for the YouTube video clip called the “Innocence of Muslims.”
Even after most Western news outlets corrected themselves last Thursday, a small minority of Western news columnists with a track record of attacking Israel continued to state that an Israeli Jew was behind the film.
Unsurprisingly, the media in the Arab world and Iran have continued this theme…blaming Jews for the anti-Islam film “Innocence of Muslims.”
Here are a handful of the hateful cartoons in the Arab media, echoing these false accusations about the film, which didn’t inspire Jews to riot, engage in violence, nor the storm embassies of countries where such antisemitic depictions were sanctioned.
United Arab Emirates paper, Al-Bayan, Sept. 16, 2012: The caption reads “A joint vision of the production”
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
The Qatari paper Ar-Raya, Sept. 16, 2012. Note the stars of David on the filmmaker’s shirtsleeves. The caption reads: “The Killing of the US Ambassador in Libya.”
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
The Omani paper, Al-Watan, Sept. 18, 2012: The movie clapboard says: “The film: Innocence of Muslims; Produced by The devil,” and the Jew is saying “Action”
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
The official PA daily published this cartoon on Aug. 23 that depicts Israel as a demonized religious Jew holding a knife dripping with blood. Obama to Jew holding a knife dripping with blood: “Don’t be afraid. There are no pictures or articles about you.”.
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
Iran’s Fars News Agency, Sept. 2012. Jewish devil
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
Fars News Agency, Sept. 2012. The Jewish serpent is being led by Satan.
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
Finally, going beyond the current controversy over ‘The innocence of Muslims”, here are a couple of Arab “classics”.
Blood-drinking Jews are frequently portrayed in the Arab media. Shown here is one published in the Egyptian paper, Al Ahram in April 2001, showing an Arab placed into a flattening mill by two Israeli soldiers. Arab blood pours out & two Jews drink the blood laughingly.
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is shown drinking from a goblet labeled “The Palestinian Children’s Blood.”
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
This cartoon, with text in English designed for a foreign audience, was posted on the official website of the Palestinian Authority State on April 6, 2003
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
As Joel Kotek wrote in an essay published at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs:
The main recurrent motif in Arab cartoons concerning Israel is “the devilish Jew.” This image conveys the idea that Jews behave like Nazis, kill children and love blood.
Palestinian cartoonists often place emphasis on the anti-Semitic accusation of “ritual murder” of children. This is underscored by their claim that Israelis target Palestinian children. To dehumanize Jews, Arab cartoonists often depict them as malevolent creatures: spiders, vampires or octopuses.
Here’s one last cartoon, which is cruel beyond words.
This cartoon, of Hitler and Anne Frank, was published in 2006 on the website of the Arab-European League (AEL), founded by Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese born Belgian Muslim leader
Aftermath: No riots, no injuries, no deaths.
Finally, these cartoons are anything but anomalies.
There are thousands upon thousands of such hideously antisemitic depictions of Jews in the Arab media (in newspapers, magazines, and books), many of which can be found at the sites of Palestinian Media Watch,MEMRI andADL.
The Guardian, as with most of the “mainstream” media, all but ignores such expressions of extreme hatred towards Jews in the Arab world.
Harriet Sherwood, on Aug. 28, filed three stories on the Rachel Corrie verdict, and quoted the Corrie family lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein, in each one. (Emphases in all quotes have been added.)
Hussein Abu Hussein, the Corrie family’s lawyer, said the ruling sent “a very dangerous message and precedent that there are no restrictions on Israeli military behaviour in Gaza and the West Bank”. The ruling would “close the doors of justice to civilian victims”, including foreigners, and “expand a legal black hole” in which Israel seeks to evade responsibility for its actions.
The verdict, he said, was “yet another example of where impunity has prevailed over accountability and fairness. We knew from the beginning that we had an uphill battle to get truthful answers and justice, but we are convinced that this verdict distorts the strong evidence presented in court, and contradicts fundamental principles of international law with regard to protection of human rights defenders. In denying justice in Rachel Corrie’s killing, this verdict speaks to the systemic failure to hold the Israeli military accountable for continuing violations of basic human rights.”
Hussein Abu Hussein, the family’s lawyer, said: “This verdict is yet another example of where impunity has prevailed over accountability and fairness. Rachel Corrie was killed while non-violently protesting home demolitions and injustice in Gaza, and today, this court has given its stamp of approval to flawed and illegal practices that failed to protect civilian life.
“We knew from the beginning that we had an uphill battle to get truthful answers and justice, but we are convinced that this verdict distorts the strong evidence presented in court, and contradicts fundamental principles of international law with regard to protection of human rights defenders. In denying justice in Rachel Corrie’s killing, this verdict speaks to the systemic failure to hold the Israeli military accountable for continuing violations of basic human rights.“
After the ruling was read out by the judge, the family’s lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein, said: “We knew from the beginning that we had an uphill battle to get truthful answers and justice. But we are concerned that this verdict denies the strong evidence and contradicts the principles of international law.“
Further, in a New York Times story on Aug. 28, Abu Hussein was quoted, thus:
It’s a black day for activists of human rights and people who believe in values of dignity. We believe this decision is a bad decision for all of us – civilians first of all, and peace activists.”
So, based on the quotes in Sherwood’s stories, it would seem that Mr. Abu Hussein is a man of peace, with a passion for fairness, justice, moral accountability, human dignity and just plain decency.
Well, Palestinian Media Watch released a statement made by Abu Hussein last month that reveals another side of him.
Let’s go to the video:
So, just to clarify, Abu Hussein is a liberal activist, and defender of human dignity…who simultaneously believes that Nazi Germany was arguably more morally legitimate than Israel – a wretched monster of a state which needs to be crushed.
They sure don’t make “peace activists” like they used to.
Note: an update to this post appears at the bottom.
On June 22 Richard Sudan, a blogger at The Independent, published a post (“Note to refugees from South Sudan: Israel is for the white man“) claiming that Israel’s Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, had said “Israel is for the white man”, thus conveying to readers the impression that Yishai (who happens to be of Tunisian descent) is a white racist.
Sudan actually evoked a Nazi analogy by suggesting that Yishai’s comments represented evidence that Zionism advances a form of “superior race theory”.
However, leaving aside Sudan’s insidious moral analogy, we pointed out (in apost at the time), that the quote was false, and was, in fact, the result of an appalling twisting of what Yishai did say.
Sudan claimed that Yishai said “Israel is for the white man”.
However, Yishai did say, in an interview in Ma’arivabout Sudanese refugees entering Israel, the following:
“Most of the [migrants] who come here are Muslims who think this country doesn’t belong to us, to the white man. Some of them have said so openly on television”
Yishai was not stating his own view’s on Israel but, rather, his belief regarding the views of others - some of whom (he claimed) had declared their opinions on TV.
Jonathan Hoffman complained about the misquote to The Independent, and they agreed to amend the opening paragraph of the blog posting “so that it contains the full quote”.
“Most of the people who come here are Muslims who think this country doesn’t belong to us, to the white man.
However, they did not include the subsequent sentence from Yishai’s quote: “Some of them have said so openly on television”. Neither did they change the horribly misleading title of of Sudan’s post:
And, The Independent similarly didn’t alter Sudan’s deceitful contextualization of the quote in the closing sentence of the post:
“The perception of an emerging ethnic cleansing policy ensuring that Israel remains ‘For the white man’ will evidently continue.”
The Commission’s decision, in the case of Hoffman vs. The Independent, included the following (with emphases added):
The complainant considered that the newspaper had reported comments made by Eli Yishai in an inaccurate, misleading and distorted manner, and had failed to remedy this breach in a sufficient manner.
Under the terms of Clause 1 (Accuracy), “the press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information” and, further, “the press, whilst free to be partisan, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact”.
The Commission noted that the article in question was not a news report, but rather a blog piece which was clearly marked at the top as being an “opinion” piece. The author of the blog was entitled to express his views and interpretation of the comments made by Eli Yishai, and readers of the piece would understand that the blog was reflective of the author’s opinions. Nonetheless, although the genre of the article was clearly distinguished as an opinion piece, the newspaper was still required to distinguish between fact and comment within the piece.
In the original version of the article, the opening paragraph had served as a follow on to the headline, therefore suggesting that Eli Yishai had explicitly stated as his position “Israel is for the white man”. It had not included the longer quote or made clear that this was the author’s interpretation of the comment made by Israel’s interior minister. While the author was entitled to express his interpretation of the comment – that it revealed Mr Yishai’s own views on who Israel “belonged to” – it was incumbent on the newspaper to distinguish his interpretation as an opinion. In the view of the Commission, the newspaper had failed to do this, therefore potentially misleading readers. This raised a breach of Clause 1 (i) and (iii) of the Editors’ Code of Practice. The newspaper was accordingly required under Clause 1 (ii) to correct the misleading impression created, promptly and with due prominence.
…
The newspaper had, before the complaint was made to the PCC, amended the opening paragraph to include the full sentence from which the author made his interpretation: “Most of the people [immigrants] coming here are Muslims who think the land doesn’t belong to us, to the white man”. It had then offered to publish a footnote recording this alteration. In the view of the Commission, the actions taken and offered would amount to sufficient compliance with Clause 1 (ii).
Here is the footnote as it now appears at the end of Sudan’s post:
The Commission acknowledged that the complainant did not consider that these actions were sufficient on the following grounds: the headline remained misleading; the end of the article would continue to mislead readers; and the quote was not full, as it failed to include the additional sentence “Some of them have said so openly on television”.
As previously noted, the author was entitled to express his interpretation of the comment made by Eli Yishai, provided it was distinguished as such. While the complainant evidently strongly disagreed with the interpretation expressed in the blog – instead holding the view the comment just repeated the views of Muslim immigrants and did not reveal the minister’s own opinion – the author had a right to express his view. Given that the article now included the full sentence from which the author had taken his interpretation, the Commission could not agree that readers would be misled by the headline or final sentence. They would see the full sentence and be able to form their own view as to whether they agreed with the author’s interpretation.
The Commission could not therefore agree that the headline and the final sentence of the amended article would significantly mislead readers so as to raise a breach of Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Code.
But, the key additional sentence, “Some of them have said so openly on television”, which could provide the reader with a clear indication that Yishai was characterizing the migrants’ attitudes, and not his own, was still omitted.
And the PCC indeed acknowledged Hoffman’s concerns:
The complainant considered that the absence of the subsequent sentence “Some of them have said so openly on television” rendered the article inaccurate and misleading. The complainant said that this was central in distinguishing the comment as being an expression of the views held by others rather than an expression of the speaker’s own views.
The PCC then proceeded with the following obfuscation:
The Commission noted that the preceding sentence, which had already been added to the article, already reported his comment that he was repeating the view of the Muslim immigrants: “Most of the people [immigrants] coming here are Muslims who think the land doesn’t belong to us, to the white man”. The Commission could not agree that the absence of the following sentence [Some of them have said so openly on television] rendered the article inaccurate, misleading, or distorted. There was no breach of the Code on this point.
Finally, the complainant considered that it was inaccurate for the footnote to refer to the “full quote”. Given that the article had been amended to include the full sentence on which the author had based his interpretation and that the Commission did not consider that the absence of the second sentence was misleading, the Commission could not agree that the wording of the footnote was significantly inaccurate or misleading. There was no breach of Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Code in this regard.
The fact is that it is impossible to read even Richard Sudan’s slightly amended post and not come away with the false impression that Yishai and, by inference, Zionists more broadly, believe that Israel is “for the white man”.
Yishai, who, like roughly 50% of Israeli Jews, is a ‘Jew of color’, simply did not advance such a racist notion.
The episode represents yet another troubling example of a toothless PCC unwilling to hold the British press accountable to basic standards of truth and accuracy.
Update, 8th August 2012:
Jonathan Hoffman commented: “If there was an Olympic gold medal for verbal gymnastics, the PCC would have no competition. This case proves yet again that the PCC is either unable or unwilling to act against deliberate smears of Israel and its leaders.”
Mainstream left-wing antisemites do not, typically, explicitly accuse Jews of engaging in global conspiracies.
They do not, typically, explicitly advance the narrative of the duplicitous money-grubbing Jew.
They do not, as such, advance the ancient antisemitic blood libel.
And they typically do not, per se, warn their readers of the injurious effects of Jewish power on society.
Nor do they deny the Holocaust.
However, as this blog is continually demonstrating, the most egregious antisemitic sin of far left broadsheets such as the Guardian is their legitimization – even praise – for antisemites who do advance such racist calumnies about the Jewish people.
The Guardian’s recent editorial in praise of Alexander Cockburn (In praise of the Cockburns, July 23rd) represents a perfect example.
In the editorial, the Cockburns (Alexander and his father and brother) are characterized as “…aristocratic radicals” who “have been pillars of progressive journalism for decades.” Here’s the editorial in its entirety.
“When distinguished sons and daughters follow distinguished parents it is easy to mutter about charmed circles. Yet there are genuine family talents that span the generations. The Huxleys and Freuds are examples, and the death of Alexander Cockburn is a reminder that the Cockburns are another. These radical aristocrats – or aristocratic radicals – have been pillars of progressive journalism for decades. Claud Cockburn, although not without some blind spots, battered at received wisdom in the 1930s. His sons, Alexander and Andrew, continued the tradition in the United States, Alexander indicating that continuity by calling one of his columns Beat the Devil, from the title of his father’s novel. Here, Patrick Cockburn has been for years one of the best Middle East reporters and analysts. Alexander’s writing has been praised as the key to “a life of joyful and creative resistance” – a fine phrase that could well be applied to them all.” [emphasis added]
To be begin with, Claud Cockburn joinedthe Communist Party and “worked closely with the Soviet agents who orchestrated both acts of violence against the anti-Stalinist left and the propaganda which whitewashed those acts.” He could easily be characterized as an “intellectual hatchet man for Stalin”. (Note that in 1936, Harry Pollitt, then General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, asked Cockburn to cover the Spanish Civil War. ”Harry Pollitt” would later become the nom de guerre of Seumas Milne – prior to joining the Guardian – in his days working for the pro-Stalinist paper, Straight Left.)
Regarding Alexander Cockburn’s site, that paragon of progressive thought known as CounterPunch:
Counterpunch has repeatedly run articles by prolific antisemite,Gilad Atzmon. Briefly, Atzmon has questioned whether the Holocaust occurred, while simultaneously arguing that, if Hitler’s genocide did occur, it can partly be explained by Jews’ villainous behavior. Atzmon also explicitly charged that Jews are indeed trying to take over the world, and has endorsed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, arguingabout the document that “it is impossible to ignore its prophetic qualities and its capacity to describe” later Jewish behavior.
Counterpunchpublished an article by Alison Weir which alleges that the blood libel, (the charge that Jews ritually murdered gentiles), is true and is related to the false reports, in 2009, regarding Israeli thefts of human organs from Palestinians.
CounterPunch published a rant by Jennifer Loewenstein, about a “Gazan Holocaust”, which included a passage referring to Israelis as “Neo-Jewish Masters” who used the Gaza war as a “pretext to carry out mass murder of the Arab Untermenschen.”
As Adam Holland observed, specifically regarding the Alison Weir blood libel charge, but also serving as relevant understanding of the ideology of CounterPunch and Cockburn:
“It is outrageous that they would present the anti-Semitism of the middle ages as progressive…portraying [Jews] as intrinsically reactionary and criminal. In doing this, Counterpunch has turned the definitions of “progressive” and “reactionary” on their heads.”
I can’t think of a better characterization of the Guardian Left: an institution which continually turns definitions of “progressive” and “reactionary” upside down.
Finally, at times we’re asked why precisely we charge the Guardian with promoting antisemitism. We are also similarly challenged by well-meaning commentators who suggest that we may, at times, overstate the case regarding the institution’s Judeophobic sympathies.
Well, if you are among such critics, the Guardian’s characterization of CounterPunch – whose unapologetic vilification of Jews is simply part of their ideological DNA – as “progressive” should serve as a poignant illustration of the Guardian Group’s Jewish problem and, indeed, a vindication of the mission of this blog.
Recent press attention has focused on the repatriation of illegal African migrants from Israel. Reuters, the Associated Press, AFP, and UPI have disseminated stories. The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Financial Times, ABC, CNN, CBC, BBC and others have added their own reports.
None of this coverage has been complete. None has explained the context and difficult challenges facing Israel as a result of large-scale illegal immigration, particularly by non-Jews. Most of the media have depicted Israel as “rounding up,” “cracking down on,” “detaining,” “deporting,” “expelling,” and treating the migrants “like animals.”
But few media reports have been more offensive than a post on the blog of the reflexively anti-Israel British newspaper, The Independent. In his article, “Note to refugees from South Sudan: Israel is for the white man,” Richard Sudan tars Israel as openly racist and fascist, saying:
The continual persecution of the Palestinians, politically and ideologically, the military court system, and now the emerging negative view of non-white people should outline clearly what the overriding Israeli government consensus is. The superior race theory is one that we’ve seen in the past, and is the hallmark of theories centered on a perspective viewed through the prism of eugenics. Those theories are dangerous and they need to be relegated to the past-along with Zionism.
Richard Sudan ignores that Israel, alone among the nations, went out of its way to take in as free citizens black Africans — Ethiopian Jews airlifted in the 1980s and ’90s. In his efforts to falsely cast Israel as a racist state, he inadvertently betrays his own bias and either ignorance or dishonesty. He argues that Eritreans, South Sudanese, Ivorians and especially Palestinians have the right to be in Israel yet, according to his reasoning, only the Jews do not.
Whether overt, like Richard Sudan’s blog post, or more subtle, media coverage has framed Israel’s repatriation of illegal migrants incompletely, inaccurately and unfairly.
A Washington Postblog on the subject was peppered with words like “deportation” and “expulsion,”using the more apt term “repatriation” only once. And Isabel Kershner couldn’t resist a Holocaust reference in her New York Times article:
But the government clampdown is also ripping at Israel’s soul. For some, the connotations of roundups and the prospect of mass detentions cut too close to the bone.
“I feel I am in a movie in Germany, circa 1933 or 1936,” said Orly Feldheim, 46, a daughter of Holocaust survivors, as she doled out food last week to a long line of immigrants…
Does Feldheim mean to imply that those she’s assisting are in danger of being sent to Israeli death camps? By relaying this quote, does Kershner seek to conjure this idea? Inclusion of such misguided hyperbole distorts the news report.
International Law
There are an estimated 45,000-60,000 people currently living in Israel illegally, mostly from Eritrea and South Sudan. Some of them would be considered refugees by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR):
The 1951 Refugee Convention establishing UNHCR spells out that a refugee is someone who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.”
Many others would not be considered refugees, but instead migrants:
Migrants, especially economic migrants, choose to move in order to improve the future prospects of themselves and their families. Refugees have to move if they are to save their lives or preserve their freedom.
Only refugees have protected status under international law and the preferred outcome for them is to be repatriated. According to theUNHCR Handbook for Repatriation and Reintegration Activities, “The UN General Assembly (GA) has repeatedly affirmed UNHCR’s function of promoting/facilitating the voluntary repatriation of refugees.”
In all of the above cases U.N. member countries,through the UNHCR, funded in large part by the United States, pick up the tab. But in Israel’s case, the people of Israel are paying — adult migrantsreportedlyreceived $1,300 each and children $650 each. In the non-Israeli cases, repatriated refugees received much less, only a few hundred dollars each.
However, the main thing that differentiates the repatriation of refugees from other countries from the repatriation of refugees from Israel is that there’s no outrage about it. Only Israel is singled out for widespread coverage, much of it tilted to the negative by repeated omissions.
The History
The press has overlooked Israeli history, ignoring Operation Moses, Operation Joshua and Operation Solomon; herculean efforts by the government of Israel to bring Ethiopian Jews, black Ethiopian Jews, to Israel. In a recent article in The Jerusalem Post, journalist Ayanawo Fareda Sanbatu, who came to Israel in Operation Solomon wrote:
The relationship began with Menachem Begin’s note to the Mossad, “bring me the Ethiopian Jews,” and it was translated into action as Israel sent operators into enemy lands to help the Ethiopian Jews. In the middle of the night many Jews left their villages and, without maps but only faith to guide us, we walked through the hills and deserts of Ethiopia and Sudan to freedom. This helped unite us with the living Zion.
Never before had black Africans been taken from Africa, not from freedom to slavery but from slavery to freedom. No other nation has ever done that. Only Israel.
The media also ignores the history of theVietnamese “Boat People.” After the United States retreated from South Vietnam and North Vietnamese communists took over, hundreds of thousands fled to escape persecution and oppression. Many took to small, rickety boats, braving the weather and the threat of pirates. Countless thousands perished.
On June 10, 1977, an Israeli cargo ship en route to Japan crossed paths with a boat carrying 66 Vietnamese refugees. Their SOS signals had been ignored by passing East German, Norwegian, Japanese, and Panamanian boats. The Israeli captain and crew offered food and water and brought the passengers aboard. Neither Hong Kong, then ruled by Great Britain, nor Taiwan would accept the refugees so the Israeli ship transported them to Israel where Prime Minister Menachem Begin authorized their Israeli citizenship. Between 1977 and 1979, Israel welcomed over three hundred Vietnamese refugees.
What precisely gives rise within that country’s public sphere to the malign hatred of the one majority Jewish nation in the world? What makes self-described “sensible”, “cultured”, “tolerant” and “sensitive souls” lose all sense of moral proportion when contemplating, obsessing over (and typically, wildly inflating) every conceivable Jewish sin?
Sudan, in a post at The Independent titled “Note to refugees from South Sudan: Israel is for the white man“, June 22nd, takes one comment from Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai (which appears racist, but is based on a quite egregious mistranslation from the original Hebrew) and uses it as the scare headline.
He introduces his post thus:
“['Israel is for the white man'] were the astonishing words uttered by Israel’s interior minister Eli Yishai in an interview recently in which he outlined the Israeli government’s view of African migrants.”
Sudan links to a piece atElectronic Intifada, which in turn links to a Ha’aretz piece, which references an interview Yishai gave in Hebrew inMaariv.
Here’s the Hebrew:
Here’s the translation of the first two sentences by CiF Watch’s Hadar Sela.
“Most of the people who come here are Muslims who think this country doesn’t belong to us, to the white man. Some of them have said so openly on television.”
It’s clear that – whatever Yishai’s broader point – he is talking about the way (according to his view) Muslims think of “whites”, and is certainly not saying that “Israel is for the white man”.
Also, a bit research would have led Sudan to discover another little nugget of information contradicting his predetermined anti-Zionist thesis: Yishai himself was born toTunisian parents. That is, the white racist antagonist in Sudan’s tale is actually Sephardi rather than ”white”!
However, the moral nadir of Sudan’s article is yet to come.
Perhaps it is fair to ask whether the editor at The Independent who reviewed Sudan’s post so much as winced, let alone considered revising or deleting the following passage (in a piece critical of Israel’s handling of Sudanese migrants).
“The continual persecution of the Palestinians, politically and ideologically, the military court system, and now the emerging negative view of non-white peopleshould outline clearly what the overriding Israeli government consensus is. The superior race theory is one that we’ve seen in the past, and is the hallmark of theories centered on a perspective viewed through the prism of eugenics. Those theories are dangerous and they need to be relegated to the past-along with Zionism.” [emphasis added]
The writer’s contempt for the Jewish state is palpable and he is quite clear in arguing that Zionism is a dangerous, supremacist ideology based on “eugenics” and, similar to other such ideologies based on racial purity in the 20th century, should be relegated to the dustbin of history.
Sudan, cognitively inebriated with Judeophobic inspired contempt, is evidently unburdened by the simple fact that – contrary to his working theory of Zionist white supremacism - over half of Israelis are non-white (making Israel a far more racially diverse nation than the UK). This supremely inconvenient fact is one which fellow adherents to the hideous charge of “Supremacism” against Jews and/or Israelis (such as David Duke and Gilad Atzmon) similarly fail to note.
However, Sudan’s morally grotesque screed on Jewish villainy need not be further fisked, scrutinized or analyzed.
Beyond Sudan’s prose, tropes and simply fantastical political musings, the larger question remains:
How is it that a “respectable” British newspaper saw fit to publish a commentary likening Jewish nationalism – a movement embraced by Israel’s six million Jewish inhabitants and the overwhelming majority of Jews in the diaspora – to a Nazi-style, racial supremacist menace whose eradication is nothing short of an ethical imperative?
The corollary of such political calculus would suggest that all Israeli Jews – insofar as they represent an organic and immutable obstacle to peace and progress – are fair game to all who seek, by means violent or otherwise, the end of the Jewish state.
The Independent has crossed a dangerous line – the legitimization of extreme racist polemic hitherto assigned to the unserious fringes of the blogosphere – and it needs desperately to be held accountable for its acquiescence in the face of such visceral antisemitic malice.
(The event included a presentation by Abdel Bari Atwan – a ‘Comment is Free’ contributor who can be seenhere explaining that if Iranian missiles hit Tel Aviv he would “dance in [London's] Trafalgar Square” and here praising a terrorist attack against Israeli civilians.)
If you’re wondering whether the abuse hurled at Richard was racist, simply replace “Israeli” with any other identity and repeat the charge. ”You’re a typical Arab.” “You’re at typical Black,” etc.
Of course, Richard is not an Israeli. He’s a British Jew who routinely defends Israel and Jews at events hosted by the most hostile anti-Zionist, pro-Islamist (and often antisemitic) activists. His blog posts are frequently personal reports, using both photos and videos compiled while monitoring events hosted by the UK’s ubiquitous array of groups hostile to Israel’s existence.
His reports unambiguously demonstrate the illiberal nature of much of the pro-Palestinian movement. One post shows Baroness Jenny Tonge praising Hamas leaders at a Palestinian Return Centre event, another post details a confrontation with a Holocaust denier who attended a Palestinian Solidarity event and yet another recounts a PSC event at whichJews were compared to Nazis.
It’s quite telling that the incident began last night when participants objected to Richard filming their public event (where no restrictions on such recordings were in place and, as Richard noted, others were filming the event). What did they have to fear from a lone Jewish blogger who was merely attempting to disseminate information about what was said by a few pro-Palestinian activists?
One of the biggest scandals of the Guardian’s coverage of Israel and the Palestinians is the dishonest manner in which they frame the debate: a binarism which imputes good will and progressivism to nearly anyone claiming to advocate on behalf of the Palestinians on one hand and racism (or at least illiberality) to those unapologetically advocating for the Jewish state.
Perhaps Richard Millett is feared so much because he consistently gives lie to this absurd moral paradigm.
Peter Bradshaw wrote a largely positive reviewof Sasha Baron Cohen’s new film, The Dictator, in the Guardian, May 10.
Bradshaw wrote:
“Baron Cohen plays General Aladeen, the tyrannical ruler of the oil-rich north African rogue state Wadiya, who is intensely irritated by the western powers’ infatuation with the Arab spring.”
“[Aladeen] exerts a grotesque, Orwellian power and abolishes hundreds of words in the Adiyan dictionary.”
“His confrontation with Washington has reached a crisis after a speech in which he announced Wadiya was just months away from enriching uranium, and then corpsed and giggled uncontrollably when trying to claim that this was for ‘clean energy purposes’.”
Bradshaw comments:
“[The film] does…deliver laughs and weapons-grade offensiveness.”
“It is relentlessly immature and I was often reminded of the cheerfully reprehensible Kentucky Fried Movie in the 70s, a film unashamedly low in nutritional value. But it was very funny and so is this. The Dictator isn’t going to win awards and it isn’t as hip as Borat. Big goofy outrageous laughs is what it has to offer.”
Evidently, one reader (someone using the moniker ATTW) wasn’t amused, and wrote this comment:
Unpacking this comment (which has thus far garnered 39 ‘Recommends’):
Conflating of Jews with Israelis: Cohen, a British Jew, is immediately tied to Israel. (Also, see this CW post about a similarly bigoted attack on Cohen by the Guardian’s Michael White.)
Classic projection: The suggestion that Israel is an extreme anti-Arab, anti-Islamic country is a perfect moral inversion in light of the Arab world’s malign obsession with Jews and Israel, and endemic culture of antisemitism. It takes a lot of ideological conditioning to see the last 64 years as the Israeli/Jewish war against the Arab/Islamic world.
Thinly veiled Nazi analogy: The reader sees a Jew mocking Arab dictators as somehow analogous to Germans mocking Jews in the years leading up to the Holocaust.
This off-topic, gratuitously anti-Zionist (and ad hominem) attack on Cohen has not been deleted by CiF moderators.
