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Fiona Maddocks’ report, “The Best classical music of 2011“, Observer, Dec. 11, began her take on the best classical performances as follows:
This year’s riots and protests to some degree penetrated the usually self-contained world of music. When word spread that the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra would play at the BBC Proms, everyone anticipated trouble. It proved the case. Hecklers shouted in the Royal Albert Hall, bringing the Radio 3 live broadcast to a halt. Players from the London Philharmonic Orchestra, among several signatories of a letter to a national newspaper protesting at the Israel concert, were suspended, generating a second level of heated debate which is still, if behind the scenes, working itself out.
Other visiting orchestras brought purely musical pleasures…
Yes, those Israelis. Bringing trouble wherever they go.
In fact the only ones causing trouble were the Palestine Solidarity Campaign anti-Israel activists, and their few fellow political travelers, who somehow found it progressive to boycott a performance by Israeli musicians.
A handful of London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) musicians joined in calls for a cultural boycott of the Jewish state, expressing their view that the performance by the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) should have been cancelled.
Specifically, the musicians signed a letter as members of the LPO denouncing the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra as “an instrument of the country’s propaganda,” echoing Sarah Colborne, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) who characterized the Israel’s Orchestra as an organization which lends ”strategic support to Israel’s occupation.”
Yes, classical musicians performing for the national orchestra of the Jewish state are truly just another insidious element of Zionist oppression.
PSC, for those unaware, is an organisation which continually has demonstrated itself compromised by the explicit expressions of antisemitism of its “activists” and leaders; a group so “progressive” that it invited the extremist Islamist preacher, Sheikh Raed Salah, to speak – a man who was convicted for funding Hamas, who repeatedly incited his followers to violence, and who called homosexuality “a crime” that starts “the collapse of every society”.
However, as Richard Millet noted about the shameful disruptions at the Proms in contrast with the musical pleasure appreciated by the overwhelming majority of the London audience:
The band played on, the audience inside the Royal Albert Hall loved it and screamed “More!”,
#BDSFAIL
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H/T Margie
So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot. – George Orwell
No, that’s certainly not true of all left-wing thought, but certainly the Guardian variety.
Robin Shepherd recently observed the following in response to an Observer editorial (which argued that the only possible moral position is to support Palestinian UDI) and commenting more broadly on the Guardian group’s pro-Palestinian advocacy:
Anyone but a fool can see that this is a blatant attempt to avoid direct negotiations with Israel so as to obviate the need for the kind of concessions that meaningful negotiations always entail….And anyone but…an implacable anti-Zionist can see that the whole enterprise is fraught with extreme dangers both for Israel itself and for the peace and stability of the entire region. [emphasis mine]
Indeed, whether providing moral sanction to the UK riots or glorifying Palestinian violence, the Guardian has repeatedly demonstrated that they can’t be bothered with such quotidian concerns as the real world consequences of their positions.
Here are a few images from the Guardian’s glorious Palestinian campaign for statehood, as seen on their Israel page.
The last photo, accompanying a pro-Palestinian statehood commentary at CiF, likely is just a reminder, for the really dense, of who precisely are the people standing in the way of the Palestinians’ quest for freedom and justice.
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- What the Guardian won’t report about Palestinian Independence: It wouldn’t solve the refugee problem (cifwatch.com)
- The anatomy of an internet myth: Guardian helps spread bizarre rumor of Israeli villainy (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian Newspeak pro-Palestinian Headline of the Day (cifwatch.com)
- Robin Shepherd: Guardian group leads UK charge on reckless Palestinian bid for unilateral statehood (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian live blog on Abbas’s UN statehood efforts quotes Palestinian waiting to “launch third intifada” (cifwatch.com)
- Photo of a 16 month old Israeli baby injured by Palestinian rocks that the Guardian would never post (cifwatch.com)
My late Great Aunt Isabel used to say that if one has nothing intelligent to contribute to a discussion, it is better to remain silent and keep everyone guessing rather than open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.
Whichever editor of the Guardian’s sister paper, The Observer, wrote the June 6th editorial, he or she seems to have been deprived of an Aunt Isabel. Whilst there was nothing remotely surprising in the editorial’s content, its approach serves as a graphic illustration of the rather impressive ability of so many journalists within the Guardian stable to pontificate in a pseudo-authoritative manner about that of which they have dangerously limited understanding and in addition provides us with yet another insight into the tacky simplicity of the Guardian World View.
The editorial calls for an end to the Israeli blockade on Gaza, using several arguments as supposed justification for this course of action. The so-called ‘moral’ arguments include claims of collective punishment, 10% malnutrition among Gazans, inflated prices and ‘crushing unemployment’. As we are well aware, the distribution of aid and resources within Gaza is neither egalitarian nor straightforward. A recent article in Der Spiegel offered interesting insight into how things are actually managed on the ground there.
“People who are not in with Hamas don’t see any of the relief goods or the gifts of money,” Khadar says. On the sand dune where his house once perched, there is now an emergency shelter. The shelter is made of concrete blocks that Khadar dug from the rubble, and the roof is the canvas of a tent that provided the family with shelter for the first summer after the war. “Hamas supporters get prefabricated housing, furnishings and paid work. We get nothing,” Khadar complains.
We can probably safely assume that the Observer editorial of February 21st was not actually intended to be a comedy piece, but the nameless armchair general/diplomat who wrote it certainly achieved that effect. Its anachronistic patronising tone coupled with the irony that a writer from the Guardian group – undoubtedly the main stream media’s foremost de-legitimiser of the world’s one and only Jewish state – should instruct Israel to basically calm down and listen to her elders and betters was quite hilarious, but at the same time a sad indication of just how far removed from reality the writer (and his/her newspaper) is.
The editorial opened with yet another attempt to attribute the apparent execution of Mahmoud al Mabhouh to Israel, despite the fact that with every press release from the Dubai police this is looking further from being the case. Then, some pseudo-psychology supposedly explaining the ‘fears’ and ‘paranoia’ behind Israeli policy; obviously it has not occurred to the writer that after 62 years of an Israeli state in the Middle East we might have a rather better understanding of our neighbours than the average Fleet Street journalist.
“The diplomatic challenge is to help Israel grasp how its failure even to engage with international opinion risks an isolation which will make the country much less secure.”
How are we to define ‘international opinion’? Is the writer’s intention the Muslim bloc dominated UNHRC? The sometimes frankly ridiculous EU? The USA? Or (heaven help us!) the opinions of Guardian readers and journalists? Leaving aside the fact that there cannot be said to exist a homogenous opinion held by all, our armchair general seems to think that whatever it is, ‘international opinion’ must be just and correct. Unfortunately, history has proved time and time again that the Jews cannot rely upon international appraisal of right and wrong for their safety. From Evian to Bermuda, through the 1948 American embargo on arms and Heath’s Yom Kippur embargo to name but a few, the international community’s record is sadly lacking.
Even at this very moment, the international community is allowing Hizbollah to stockpile vast amounts of Iranian weaponry under its collective nose and in direct contravention of its own UN resolution 1701. Right now the international community is failing to come up with any viable solutions to the problem of Iranian nuclear armament. For the past 44 months the International Red Cross has failed to oblige Hamas to comply with international conventions regarding prisoners of war in the case of Gilad Shalit. For eight years prior to Operation Cast Lead the international community ignored Israel’s repeated appeals regarding Hamas rocket fire on Sderot and its environs. Just this week UN envoy Serry made statements regarding the preservation of heritage sites in Hebron and Bethlehem which can only encourage those for whom ridding Judea & Samaria of Jews is merely the first step in their aspirations. If these are examples of the effects ‘international opinion’, then it is obviously both a fickle and dangerous thing.
Earlier this week, AKUS wrote a humorous piece mocking how Theobald Jew, Rachel Shabi, failed to get even the most basic facts right in her atrocious coverage of the murder of Meir Chai and the Israeli response.
HonestReportingUK has also picked up on the shabby reporting of Rachel Shabi including her mischaraterization of Modi’in as a settlement.
The Observer (which is owned by the Grauniad) has to date failed to issue a correction. As HonestReportingUK recommends its readers:
Rachel Shabi’s article fails to meet journalistic standards and basic requirements for accuracy. At a very minimum The Observer should publish a correction concerning the location and status of Modi’in.
Please demand that The Observer takes the appropriate action by sending your comments to its readers’ editor – reader@observer.co.uk
We ask that you do the same.
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Observer op-ed on ‘hunger strikers’ exposes double standards on administrative detention coverage
May 13, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: Administrative detention, anti-Zionism, Comment is Free, Delegitimization, Guardian, Observer, Palestinian prisoners in Israel, Terrorism | by Adam Levick | 10 comments
The Guardian’s coverage of Israel’s administrative detention of a Palestinian “baker” (who, in his spare time, found time to ‘volunteer’ for Palestinian Islamic Jihad) named Khader Adnan was as one-sided as it was obsessive. They published five separate pieces (over a ten-day period) sympathetic to a terrorist (who went on a hunger strike to protest his detention) held due to his involvement in a movement responsible for terror attacks claiming over 200 Israeli lives since the 1990s.
(The “baker” can be seen in this video imploring his fellow Palestinians to carry out more suicide attacks against Israelis.)
Yesterday, May 12, The Observer (The Guardian’s sister publication) published an official editorial titled “Hunger strikers expose an inhuman system“.
The editorial begins:
Vital context ignored by the editorial includes the fact that administrative detention is a practice inspired by the recognition that the criminal law’s reliance on strict rules of evidence are not suited to handle the challenges presented by terrorism. The reasoning behind administrative detention often is based upon fear that the suspect is likely to pose a threat in the near future. So, it is meant to be preventive in nature rather than punitive.
The administrative detention practice used to imprison Adnan is a judicial method similarly employed by other democratic states around the world, including the the EU, UK – and the U.S.
In fact, Israeli detainees are allowed judicial review, generally within eight days, while in the UK the length of time (which was 28 days until 2011) is now two weeks. The U.S. can hold terror suspects indefinitely.
A U.S. Homeland Security Affairs report concluded that (for these and other reasons) Israel’s use of administrative detention is more respectful of prisoners’ rights than in the U.S. and Britain.
Further, while Israel uses administrative detention purely to prevent acts of terror against its citizens, many countries in the EU use this type of detention for asylum seekers and illegal immigrants.
The Observer editorial continues:
Much like Harriet Sherwood’s false claims that rockets have only “sporadically” been fired into Israel (when, actually, 627 deadly projectiles were fired at Israeli towns in 2011 alone), the notion that Israel has “relative peace” is profoundly misleading.
In addition to rockets from Gaza, each month there are typically dozens of terror attacks in Israel proper as well as in the West Bank. Here’s a breakdown of terror attacks in Israel for the month of April, 2012, most of which never get reported by the MSM.
The Observer editorial further warns:
And, there is a much greater risk that Israeli civilians will die if the Palestinian terrorists are released, a humanitarian concern the author of this polemic clearly did not consider.
The Observer editorial continues by issuing a further warning to Israel on why they must give in to the terrorists’ demands.
I guess it was lost on the author that the only reason such prisoners affiliated with violent terrorist movements are behaving ‘non-violently’ is the fact that they’re incarcerated and unarmed. Further, ignored in the passage is the fact that the overwhelming majority of the terror suspects subscribe to an ideology intrinsically opposed to mere “self-determination” and hostile to the existence of a Jewish state within any borders.
The “non-violent” Palestinian prisoners currently engaged in a hunger strike include the following suspects, who were re-arrested by Israeli authorities for continued terrorist activity after being released in the Shalit deal:
Finally, the editorial claims that they oppose the use of administrative detention by all countries. Yet, a quick search of the Guardian’s website demonstrates a disproportionate focus on Israel. Out of 13 total references to “administrative detention” on their site in 2012, in some critical or pejorative manner, only one didn’t focus on Israel.
The subtext of the Observer editorial, suggesting that releasing dangerous terrorists from prison will help the ‘peace process’, is only exceeded in absurdity and cynicism by the Guardian Group’s evidently serious suggestion that they aren’t obsessively critical of the Jewish state.
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