You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Obsession’ tag.
As David T of Harry’s Place observed about Guardian Associate Editor Seumas Milne.
Milne’s greatest contribution to the Guardian Comment Pages has been to turn it into a soapbox for the RESPECT and Stop the War Coalition (StWC) projects: a Red-Green-Brown alliance between Stalinists, Trotskyites, and Islamists associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Milne evidently regarded his appointment to Comment Editor as an opportunity to promote the obnoxious politics of this alignment.
So, it didn’t come as a surprise to see Andrew Murray, of StWC, publish an essay at ‘Comment is Free’, “An attack on Iran must be stopped“, opposing a UK or U.S. attack on Iran to prevent the Islamist regime from attaining nuclear weapons.
What was a bit surprising however, was that Murray, whose essay warns of the threat posed by “Anglo-American aggression addicts” who are “gearing up for yet another crack at winning a senseless war in the Middle East,” didn’t once, in a nearly 700 word essay, mention the word “Israel”. Rather, Murray argued against a war with Iran in the context of what he sees as the folly of the West’s broader war on terror, and U.S./UK military involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Of course, the mere omission of the words “Jews”, “Israel”, “Zionism” or “Lobby” didn’t prevent ‘Comment is Free’ readers to not so gently move the narrative away from military decisions made by UK and U.S. political leaders, and pivot to a more desired target.
Powerful Jewish lobbies in U.S. and UK are pushing Obama to war against Iran (29 Recommends)
Jewish lobby used the Holocaust as an excuse to give Israel the bomb, and developed anti-Islamic ideology to justify aggression against the Arab world. (11 Recommends)
Further, after reading many of the 286 comments in the thread, and noticing a characteristic fixation, I decided to have some fun with the web site Wordle.
The beauty of Wordle is that it allows you to quantify the degree to which comments beneath the line, in any given CiF essay, slant in one particular direction.
Wordle was fed every word from each of the reader comments posted after Murray’s piece and, excluding commonly used words like “the” (and the word “Iran”, because, well, that was what the topic the essay was supposed to address!), churned out the following graphic of the most used words – represented in a size proportional to the frequency of their usage:
Note the enhanced size of Israel (a word used 220 times by CiF commenters), in contrast to words “U.S.” and “UK”.
In fact the words “Jew” “Jews”, or “Jewish” were used more times (42) than the words “U.S.” or “United States” (33).
And, finally, and quite ironically given the following CiF commenter’s malign obsession with the Jewish state, note the moniker above the gigantic “S” in the over-sized word “Israel”. Yup, Berchmans!
Related articles
- Guardian Reader Comment of the Day: Israel Obsession “Rorschach Test” Edition (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s Seumas Milne runs interference for “anti-Imperialist” Islamic Republic of Iran (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s Simon Jenkins suggests Obama’s sanctions against Iran caused by Israel lobby (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s Ewen MacAskill sees Obama’s Israel support, in State of Union, reflecting need of Jews’ money (cifwatch.com)
- CiF piece by Brian Whitaker on “why media believes worst about Iran” draws on conspiracy blog (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian reader comment of the day: On the prospect of a few million dead Israelis (cifwatch.com)
- The Iranian Guardians: CiF readers come out in force to demonize Israel, & defend Islamist regime (cifwatch.com)
- Arun Kundnani, & a Guardian dog-whistle about the injurious effects of a wealthy American Zionist (cifwatch.com)
- More Pro-Iranian “Hasbara” at ‘Comment is Free’ (cifwatch.com)
Ben White
It would be reassuring to be able to write that the latest Ben White screed on ‘Comment is Free’ is the result of misunderstanding, ignorance or shoddy research.
Equally, comfort could perhaps be found were it possible to assign the fact that such crude anti-Israel propaganda passed the inspecting eyes of a Guardian editor to ‘hasn’t got a clue about a far-away place’.
Neither of these statements is, however, true.
Ben White is a prolific and energetic campaigner against Israel’s existence, as CiF Watch readers have known for a long time. The Guardian knows that too and hence the publication of this article amounts to nothing more than collaboration with White’s ugly campaign of incitement.
Let’s have a look at some of White’s recycled claims. He begins by stating that:
“The presence of a few Palestinian members in the Knesset (MKs) is often touted as a sign of Israel’s robust democracy. Yet elected representatives of the Palestinian community inside Israel face growing harassment by the state, by fellow MKs and the media.”
Actually, of the 120 members of the current (18th) Knesset, no fewer than fourteen are of Arab ethnicity. Eleven of them are not mentioned in White’s article, indicating that the vast majority do not, as he terms it, “face harassment”.
The Likud party includes in its Knesset members Ayoub Kara, a former deputy speaker of the house who also sat in the 15th and 16th Knessets. Kadima has Majalli Wahabi, also a former deputy speaker and acting President who was once a member of the Likud and has served in the two previous parliaments. Ta’al has Dr. Ahmed Tibi – now serving his fourth term. Labour includes Raleb Majadele – the first Arab Muslim Minister who is currently in his third term as a Knesset member. Yisrael Beiteinu includes Hamad Amar and the United Arab list has Ibrahim Sarsur, Masud Ghnaim and Taleb el Sana who is currently in the Knesset for the sixth time. Hadash is represented by Afu Agbaria, Hana Sweid and Mohamed Barakeh – also a former deputy speaker now in his fourth term of office. Balad has Said Nafa, Jamal Zahalka – on his third term – and Haneen Zouabi.
All of these representatives took an oath of office upon entering the Knesset. That oath states:
“I pledge myself to bear allegiance to the State of Israel and faithfully to discharge my mandate in the Knesset”.
Indeed, like most citizens of democracies the world over, Israelis expect their lawmakers – regardless of ethnicity – first and foremost to uphold the country’s constitution and its laws. If they do not, then democracy is a sham. In the cases of the three Knesset members named by White, there have been alleged breaches of laws made in the parliament in which they sit.
Mohammed Barakeh of the communist party Hadash faces charges of assault. The fact that the incidents took place at demonstrations would presumably not excuse the alleged slapping of a policeman or choking of a soldier in any democratic country in which assault is a criminal act. Mr. Barakeh, incidentally, is a graduate of Tel Aviv University; hardly a mark of the downtrodden and persecuted.
Said Naffaa of Balad was indicted on suspicion of breaking the law which prohibits visiting an enemy state without the advance permission of the Ministry of the Interior. That law too of course applies to all Israeli citizens, regardless of religion or ethnicity. In addition he is suspected of having met with members of two terrorist organisations.
Haneen Zoabi – also a member of the anti-Zionist party Balad and a graduate of both Haifa University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem – is most infamous for her co-operation with the IHH (banned in Israel due to its connections to the Union of Good and Hamas) during the 2010 incident and her involvement in assaults on Israel’s legitimacy such as the Russell Tribunal on Palestine.
White’s concluding paragraph states that:
“Thus, as Palestinian citizens work for an end to decades of ethno-religious discrimination, a clear message is being sent through the targeting of their political leadership. The threat that is deemed intolerable by the state is devastatingly simple: the demand for equality.”
There are indeed citizens of all ethnicities and religions in Israel working hard to close the gaps and improve the situation of its minorities. Some of them can be found in the Knesset. They are the majority of diligent Arab MKs – ignored by Ben White – who loyally serve their communities within the framework of the law and, whilst upholding their voluntarily given oath of allegiance to the state, work for equal rights and opportunities for all.
As a distant relative of Haneen Zoabi complained last year:
“She and her party colleagues never deal with what matters to us,”
“They are always dealing with the rights of the Palestinians, but what does that have to do with us? We need infrastructure, education, and our salaries to arrive on time. They don’t do anything, while the Likud is actually trying to help us.”
Rather than indicating persecution of Arab members of the Knesset, the three MKs championed by White serve to highlight the fact that all citizens of Israel are equal in the eyes of the law. In a true democracy, equality includes both rights and obligations – which cannot suddenly be shelved when it comes to prosecution for breaking the law.
But of course Ben White does not actually want people such as Zoabi, Naffaa and Barakeh to be bound by full equality with their counterparts of other ethnicities. He believes that those who actively work towards the dissolution of the State of Israel and sometimes co-operate with some of its most violent enemies should not simply get their day in court like anyone else, but should be permitted to carry on unhindered.
And if Israeli society balks at the transgressions of those using its very democracy to try to bring about its demise, White will play the ethno-religious card and scuttle to the pages of the Guardian or the New Statesman shouting ‘persecution!’ That very same tactic has long been used successfully by Islamists in White’s native country in order to deflect criticism of a whole host of problems within British society.
Fortunately, Israeli society is not yet cowed by so-called ‘progressives’ and ‘liberals’ who are prepared to sacrifice their collective values on the rotting altar of misguided political correctness.
Related articles
- (Ben) White Wash at Amnesty (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian welcomes back Ben White, tireless campaigner for the end of the Jewish state (cifwatch.com)
- Deputy Editor of ‘Comment is Free’ expresses concern for Ben White’s reputation on Twitter (cifwatch.com)
- Is it possible to understand Ben White’s antisemitism? CiF again sanctions opposition to peace with Israel (cifwatch.com)
- Ben White Backgrounder at CiF Watch
There was nothing especially interesting about Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman’s recent essay, “Running for president or for an Oscar – which is the bigger waste of money?”.
Freeman cheekily, if cynically, compared the vast sums of money spent on both the Oscars and the U.S. Presidential Campaign, conjuring “shadowy menacing puppet masters” controlling both outcomes – Harvey Weinstein, Karl Rove, the Koch Brothers, Super PACs, etc. – as if to ask “why bother paying attention to either contest”?
Freeman’s commentary elicited a few sober, if satirical, comments beneath the line, inspiring the Guardian journalist to cheerfully comment, “Thanks everyone! What nice comments so far. 2012 is starting off very kindly on CiF, I must say.”
Alas, the decency level soon declined, as one commenter felt the need to respond to the erstwhile humorist, thusly:
Of course, it would be easy to dismiss the reader’s Israel ‘Obsessive Compulsive Disorder’ as just a stray ‘off-topic’ comment, except that, as you can see, the comment received 50 “Recommends” by fellow Guardianistas (in a post which has thus far only generated 59 comments), and hasn’t been deleted. So, presumably, it isn’t deemed unrelated to Hadley’s commentary by CiF Moderators.
Moreover, any good student of CiF America knows, per two recent commentaries (here and here) on the undue influence of one American “Israel-Firster” named Sheldon Adelson, precisely what kind of “shadowy puppet master” controls the U.S. political system.
The degree to which some CiF readers are capable of explaining so many unpleasant political dynamics, in either the Middle East or the U.S., in a manner which imputes maximum malice to Jews, Zionists or Israel can be nearly comical, but is often not unrelated to the Guardian’s continuing legitimization of such obsessions.
Guardian commentators know their audience’s biases, they know them well, and they continually aim to please.
In politics it’s typically known as “playing to your base”.
David Wearing, who has contributed eight times to CiF since 2009, has a Guardian profile which notes he is a PhD candidate in political science at UCL, studying Britain’s response to the Arab Spring, and is also a co-editor at New Left Project.
Briefly, New Left Project includes, as one of its “Friend” sites, the radical Left online magazine, Znet, where Wearing also has contributed.
An indication of how radical Znet Magazine is can be found by looking at one their regular contributors, James Petras, whose antisemitism is well-documented, explicit and extreme. Here’s one of hundreds of quotes from his book, The Power of Israel in the U.S:
In this passage from his book (which I reviewed in-depth here) Petras suggests that Jews represent the greatest threat to humanity.
“The worse crimes are committed by those who claim to be a divinely chosen people, a people with righteous claims of supreme victimhood. Righteous victimology, linked to ethno-religious loyalties and directed by fanatical civilian militarists with advanced weaponry, is the greatest threat to world peace and humanity”.
(Note that this isn’t a stray comment beneath the line, but, rather, the observation of a regular contributor to a magazine David Wearing’s site recommends.)
But, back to Wearing, whose Twitter feed I recently started following along with others associated with the Guardian.
Yesterday, he Tweeted four reasons why Israel is subject to particular focus in the world.
Here’s one:
Intrigued by Wearing’s insistence that “a huge propaganda campaign whitewashing Israeli crimes cannot go unchallenged”, I Tweeted him a follow-up question:
So, the Guardian political commentator is among those who genuinely believe that Israel is protected from its fair share of criticism (by a “huge propaganda campaign”), and that he is in the vanguard of a brave few who dare challenge Zionist power.
Evidently, Wearing hasn’t checked his paper’s own data store which would indicate that, far from escaping its fair share of criticism, Israel receives grossly disproportionate coverage at the Guardian in comparison to other nations.
Also, Israel’s huge propaganda machine, led by the dreaded AIPAC, has somehow not managed to stifle similarly disproportionate criticism at the UN, where, since 2006, more than 80% of all condemnatory resolutions meted out by their human rights body have been against Israel.
Nor has the power of the Israel lobby Wearing warns of spared Israel from obsessive critical scrutiny by large and powerful NGOs (like Human Rights Watch) in relation to nations with far worse human rights records.
Moreover, the subtext of Wearing’s Tweets is especially troubling, and yet all too familiar to those of us who monitor such narratives at the Guardian and Comment is Free: That there’s something unique, or even sinister, about a nation or its supporters engaging in public relations to advance their cause – as if Zionists and Zionists alone engage in a spirited and robust defense of their interests.
There are roughly 14 million Jews in the world (or 2/10 of 1% of the total population), and one majority Jewish state (out of 193), and the suggestion that the political advocacy of such a tiny minority represents a threat to “liberal” values demonstrates just how distorted the term has become within the (Guardian Left) ideological territory David Wearing claims.
Related articles
- Guardian anti-Israel propaganda photo of the day (Palestinian children edition) (cifwatch.com)
- War Horse writer (& CiF contributor) Michael Morpurgo: Israel shoots Palestinian children ‘like a video game’ (cifwatch.com)
- Palestinian Guardian propaganda photo of the day (Soldier vs. child) (cifwatch.com)
- Deputy Editor of ‘Comment is Free’ expresses concern for Ben White’s “reputation” on Twitter (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood’s report on Bedouin copy-pastes UNRWA anti-Israel propaganda (cifwatch.com)
- Flagman: Arab ‘Spring’, the Guardian & the glorification of a nation’s anti-Zionist obsession (cifwatch.com)
Early in 2011, we noted the following from a site called Views of the World:
To understand how British people perceive the events on the globe, one can look at how frequently a country has been mentioned in major news stories. The following map does exactly this by visualising the number of news items on the website of the British Newspaper The Guardian (data derived from their Data store).
One nation of the world, we noted, was a bit enlarged, owing to the fact that stories tagged “Israel” represented the 5th highest country in the Guardian for 2010 (1,008 stories in all).
Well, the newest results for such country tags have just been reported by the Guardian, and, in 2011, Israel again was the continuing object of their obsession, coming in 6th (1,005 stories in all). Here is a partial snapshot of their list, noting the top 21 nations by tags.
What particularly stands out is that Israel, a stable democracy, was covered more than war-torn Afghanistan, Syria (in a year which saw brutal violence in what may be the beginning of regime change), Greece (hit by nothing short of an economic Tsunami), Iraq (a year where terrorism and related inter-sectarian violence still claimed over 4,000 lives), Pakistan (where civil war in the northwest region of the country resulted in over 6000 dead for the year), and Tunisia (where longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted in a revolution)
Even further down on the list are country’s you’d expect to receive more coverage: Turkey (326 tags), Sudan (173 tags), Bahrain (348 tags, despite an uprising against the government which resulted in many dead and several thousand arrests).
Further, as we noted in last year’s post, Israel is a nation of 7.8 million citizens, representing a little over 1/10 of 1% of the world population, and is situated on roughly 21,00 square kilometers of land which represents a bit over 1/100 of 1% of the world’s total.
Of course, the Guardian isn’t the only media group which devotes such disproportionate coverage to Israel.
However, as the institution represents the most hostile anti-Zionist voice in the Anglo world, at least, among widely read publications (with the possible exception of Al Jazeera), their malign obsession continues to represent a serious front in the cognitive war against the Jewish state.
Related articles
- Jews to build new bridge. Guardian characterizes it as a provocation. (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian welcomes back Ben White, tireless campaigner for the end of the Jewish State (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr Tweet of the day: Jews are “not allowed” to “not allow people to be critical” of Israel (cifwatch.com)
- CiF’s Rachel Shabi, Israeli democracy and the rank dishonesty of the anti-Zionist Left (cifwatch.com)
- Israel’s Ambassador to UK singles out Guardian’s Deborah Orr for criticism at Manchester conference (cifwatch.com)
- Tin-Pot Pravda: Guardian editorial scolds Israel for taking Iranian nuclear threat seriously (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s Simon Jenkins suggests Obama’s sanctions against Iran caused by Israel lobby (cifwatch.com)
- Hamas, Harriet Sherwood and the Guardian Left’s continuing antisemitic sins of omission (cifwatch.com)
Our post yesterday attempted to get the Guardian’s Deborah Orr to issue a more genuine apology for her mocking and distorted characterization of Jews as “the chosen” people in an Oct. Guardian piece on the deal to release Gilad Shalit.
In her original column – for which she ultimately wrote a quasi apology which didn’t address her most egregious passages – Orr essentially argued that the release of 1027 terrorist prisoners by Israel in exchange for one Israeli is evidence of the Jewish state’s racism, a racism, she implied, which is embedded in Judaism itself.
We posted our request to Orr to issue a more sincere apology following a Twitter exchange in which she challenged us to offer our views on what she should have written, and added that she’d read it and consider endorsing it.
Well, after Tweeting our post (with text of an apology we hoped she’d consider issuing) directly to Orr, she responded in a way clearly showing her lack of remorse for advancing the toxic idea that “chosenness” indicated Jewish racism or a sense of supremacism – a Judeophobic trope which, we added, is typically advanced by antisemitic extremists.
After a series of exchanges there was this Tweet by Orr:
I included this Tweet (before her answer to our direct question) because I think it gets to the heart of the matter regarding a UK liberal intelligentsia (and I use that term lightly) who truly believes that there’s a dearth of criticism regarding Israel, and that powerful pro-Israel Jews are attempting to silence the debate.
Evidently, Orr is unaware of her own paper’s obsessive negative coverage of the Jewish state – Israel represents the fifth most covered country in the world by the Guardian, based on their own data – nor the fact that such hyper criticism is leveled on the website of a broadsheet which garners tens of millions of unique visitors a month.
If Zionist Jews were indeed attempting to muzzle criticism of Israel then a brief survey of the quantity and degree of such fierce opprobrium towards the Jewish state (found both on blogs and in the MSM) would clearly indicate that we are failing spectacularly at such efforts.
Finally, Orr’s reply, to our Tweet asking her to endorse the apology we wrote, was this.
Yes, Deborah, you continue to make your views quite clear.
Related articles
- The Guardian’s abusive Deborah Orr (cifwatch.com)
- The apology to the Jewish people Deborah Orr should have written (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr “chosen people” update:Israel to free 25 Egyptians for 1 Jew, thus Jews 25 X more valuable than Egyptians (cifwatch.com)
- Jewish supremacism revisited: And, Deborah Orr’s faulty memory (cifwatch.com)
- On the explicit antisemitism of the Guardian’s Deborah Orr (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr’s Disgusting Excuse For an “Apology” (cifwatch.com)
- Current-day antisemitism obsessed with concept of Jews as the chosen people (cifwatch.com)
A guest post by Geary
In the first part we saw how Harriet Sherwood fulfils her brief of Israel and (Jewish) Israeli bashing in both her choice of what to write about and the way she writes about it.
But what does Ms Sherwood get up to when there is absolutely sweet FA going on?
Well she rakes muck. Any chance to revisit Cast Lead or, as Harriet calls it, “Israel’s three-week assault on Gaza” is taken with relish (“assault” again with its overtones of mindless and reckless violence).
When two soldiers were disciplined for asking a boy to open bags in case they contained bombs (they didn’t and no-one got hurt), Harriet, instead of lauding a system which calls its military to account even in wartime, is miffed they weren’t jailed for life.
And when really, really, really nothing is going on, Harriet puts on her Jane Austen hat and serves up a human-interest narrative, one in which Israel somehow comes up smelling of dog-do. My guess is that she’d really like to give up hustling her writing talent for the editorial pimps back home and become a sentimental novelist.
Here is some of her, if not finest, most memorable purple prose. First off, the “three-hens- in-a-coop” scoop:
“Three hens confined to a small wire coop in a battery farm in central Israel have become the stars of a 24-hour web feed aimed at drawing attention to the plight of caged chickens ahead of a parliamentary vote today. The chickens, who barely have room to move inside their cage, are forced to peck for food through wire mesh.”
Heartless Israeli bastards, keeping chickens in an open-air prison. Next up:
“Sixty-three-year-old Ahmed Bargouth sits in the shade of a walnut tree and contemplates the view before him. Across the valley is Jerusalem’s zoo, which his grandchildren have never been able to visit, although they have watched animals through binoculars.”
Oh spare my aching heart-strings. Children and animals. Thing is, Harriet, if Arafat hadn’t launched his intifada bloodbath, the Palestinian kids and animals could meet no problem. But my favourite is this. We’re back in Gaza yet again –Israel is blockading it, if you hadn’t already gathered:
Manal Hassan plucks a date biscuit from an industrial tray, breaks it in half to inspect the filling, and discards it with a shrug. “You see, they allow in dates, but not date paste,” she says, referring to Israel’s ongoing economic blockade of the Gaza Strip.
No date paste? Can you imagine? Alas, man’s intolerable inhumanity to man. (Aside: why on earth should Israel need to export dates to Gaza? And is it beyond the ingenuity of the Gazans to squash them into paste? Sherwood unwittingly depicts her subjects as lazy and stupid).
Another weapon in Sherwood’s armoury is the delegitimation of Israeli voices: never trust a word an Israeli says. Remember the flotilla?
Gaza flotilla assault: Turkish jihadis bent on violence attacked troops,Israel claims: Three killed were ‘ready for martyrdom’, paper says. Military says video shows troops coming under fire.
“Israel claims” … “Military says”. Luckily the jihadis had made videos in which they expressed their vows of violence and even the BBC investigation, and more recently the Palmer Report, concluded that the Israeli boarders had been met with deadly aggression. In the same vein:
Israel agreed to deliver the aid after the flotilla attack ended in the deaths of nine pro-Palestinian activists. But construction materials, which Israel claims could be seized by militants for use in making weapons and building underground bunkers, were excluded.
What weapons? Show me the bunkers. And no Sherwood year would be complete without at least one piece commemorating Rachel Corrie:
Soldier in bulldozer ‘did not see’ Rachel Corrie, he tells court
But since he’s an Israeli, he must be lying. Of course, journalism is full of according to and so-and-so claims, but how-on-earth then do we get:
The golden Dome of the Rock, the revered and iconic Muslim site from where the Prophet Mohammed began his ascent to heaven, gleams high above the Wailing (or Western) Wall.
Not “is said to have begun” or “the faithful believe he began”. Is Sherwood a believer?
But, in my humble view, what makes Sherwood’s such piss-poor journalism are not these many sins of commission, but those of omission.
It’s all the things she won’t or can’t tell us, the net effect of which is to cement all the Zionophobic misconceptions and downright lies about the region and the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians. Though we get full details of each and every “crime” committed by the IDF or Jewish settlers, the nearest we come to a negative story about Hamas is one in which some heavies come and shut down a rapper’s gig.
As for the legendary corruption of the PA (even Sherwood must notice all those blacked-out limos gliding through the West bank roads), well, you would search through her pieces in vain. Well, she might have to put in some research there, to which she has a certified allergy. It has to be said that she is not alone on this.
The BBC’s Jeremy al-Bowen is no better. A correspondent can say what they please about Israel and, with very few exceptions, nothing happens. Criticise Hamas or Fatah and the best thing that can happen to you is not being allowed back into Gaza or the West Bank, which sort of puts the mockers on your career.
And where’s anything, anything at all which contrasts the melodrama-narrative of Israel, stage villain, Palestine, evicted waif? Sherwood is happy to repeat (twice) hyperbolic nonsense such as “siege of Gaza” but does she ever tell us how Israel supplies Gaza with most of its electricity along with so much more aid? Or how Israel provides the West Bank with much more water than it is obliged to do under the Oslo agreements (whilst Jordan breaches the agreements by supplying none)? Largely because the PA is too busy organising money transfers to Switzerland to be arsed to drill into the available aquifers. How about one of those human-interest stories about one of the 180,000 Palestinians treated in an Israeli hospital in 2010? We do however find this:
East Jerusalem’s classroom crisis
Harriet Sherwood, Jerusalem
Almost half the Palestinian children in East Jerusalem have to attend private or unofficial schools because of a lack of facilities, according to a report published yesterday.
This is a fair story and the Jerusalem authorities, along with the PA, have a case to answer. But what is the wider picture? As usual, it’s unresearched by our blinkered reporter, but education in the West Bank and Gaza is actually a heartening success story. Female literacy – in my modest opinion one of the two most important indices of development and well-being, along with life expectancy – stands at 99% of the population, according to the World Bank.
That’s on a par with stinking-rich Gulf States like Qatar. Egypt is at 80%, whilst Yemen hovers around 70% but there, of course, they keep their women in social bondage. Little credit to Hamas or the PA, they inherited an excellent schooling system from the previous Israeli governance and many schools are currently run by UNWRA.
But what’s the clincher. How do we really know that Sherwood is totally unfit for purpose? Let me put it this way. How often in 2010 did she mention Syria,Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, the foci of this year’s uprisings?
Well, Egypt got two stories, both on a fatal shark attack at Sharm-el-Sheikh. Even Harriet could not quite manage to pin that one on the Zionists. All the rest not a single mention, nada, silence of the grave. She and her friend Bowen were too busy rifling throughIsrael’s lightly-soiled linen to lift their noses and smell the revolution in the air (I nicked that from Bob Dylan).
But she’s not entirely to blame. Imagine the reaction in London if she filed a story about Tunisia in 2010. How many Guardian readers gave a toss about Tunisia, how many could even find Bahrain on a map? “Harriet. What are you playing at, woman? Tunisia, FFS??? Give us another story on Gaza.”
And so, I’m afraid, all in all, the best that can be said about Harriet Sherwood is that at least she isn’t Chris McGreal.
While Israel’s Turkel Commission Report and the UN Palmer Report differ on some key determinations, they do clearly overlap on three main conclusions pertaining to the May 31 incident on board the Mavi Marmara:
- Contrary to a mind-numbing number of accusations that Israel’s blockade of Gaza is “illegal” both reports conclude that the Naval blockade is fully consistent with international law, and that IDF Naval forces have the right to stop Gaza-bound ships in international waters.
- Contrary to reports that the IDF attacked peaceful activists, both reports concluded that when Israeli commandos boarded the main ship they faced “organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers” and were therefore required to use force for their own protection.
- The IHH sponsored flotilla, Mavi Marmara, “acted recklessly in attempting to breach the naval blockade.”
In the light of these established facts, I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at the Guardian’s obsessive coverage of the incident – which included 71 separate pieces (reports and commentary which were placed on their special Gaza Flotilla page) over the course of the first four days following the incident – and their frantic rush to judgement.
The famous Israeli ‘Tsabar’, צבר or Sabra, after which native-born Israelis are named
Anniversaries are always a time for taking stock and so at this juncture we should probably note the fact that – although still far from perfect – it can be said that there has been some improvement in the Guardian’s moderation of comments on ‘Comment is Free’, including the closure of threads at night when presumably fewer personnel are available to deal with offensive comments.
However, we note that increasing numbers of Israel-related articles are appearing without comments at all, which in some instances may be a blessing, but also prevents readers from correcting the erroneous claims of some of CiF’s writers.
There appears to have been little done in the way of injecting balance into the sheer proportion of articles dealing with Israel-related subjects. That, presumably, is partly a result of the fact that the Guardian elects to keep a full-time correspondent in safe and comfortable Jerusalem rather than in Damascus or Beirut: bread and butter must, after all, be earned.
Nevertheless, the Guardian’s focus on Israel compared to the rest of the Middle East is still obsessive and clearly - to borrow a word much beloved at CiF HQ – disproportionate.
Moreover, the continued commissioning of CiF articles from members and supporters of terrorist organisations as well as writers who are active in trying to bring about the dissolution of the Jewish state is an especially dangerous dynamic.
In addition to our monitoring of CiF articles and comments, we at CiF Watch are constantly debating among ourselves how to make our site more useful to you the reader, so this is your opportunity to tell us what you would like to see.
Do you find our running news updates on incidents such as deteriorations in the security situation or cross-border infiltrations useful?
Are there subjects about which you would like more background information in order to help you in composing your own comments on CiF or elsewhere?
Are our ‘information packs’ on subjects such as the organisations and people behind the flotillas or the Methodist BDS decision useful to you?
Are there aspects of Israel or Israeli life about which you would like more background?
What would you consider useful information in the run-up to a possible Palestinian declaration of independence next month?
So, please tell us in the comments what shape you would like CiF Watch to take as it enters its third year, and of course raise a glass – L’Haim – to life!
The pro-Israel blogosphere was not only commenting on the Aug. 7th Guardian story by Paul Lewis with the quite telling reference - later amended per our complaints – to Hasidic Jews which had nothing to do with the story, but, in true CiF Watch tradition, also engaging in some good old-fashioned mockery as well.
A friendly blog decided to illustrate how those not obsessed with Jews see the world vs how the Guardian sees the world.
The first image footage from a normal video.
And, now here’s the same scene when viewed through the Guardian’s video lens after their Jew-enhancing software is activated.
It’s amazing what ideologically-inspired technology can do these days.
Per our earlier post, I was able to read through Guardian correspondent Paul Lewis’s reports on the UK Riots to confirm that his reference to Hasidic Jews indeed represented the only time he noted the race, religion, or ethnicity of rioters, looters, or bystanders (13 articles and 12000 words).
However, our blog’s resources are limited so we’d like to ask you, loyal CiF Watch reader, for some help.
In addition to the reports by Lewis, the Guardian has devoted an enormous amount of space to coverage of the riots and we humbly ask your assistance in scouring through their news reports and Live Blog coverage to see if you can find out if, other than Hasidic Jews, any other race, ethnicity, or national background is mentioned in the context of the riots.
Here’s their UK Riots page.
If you find anything to disprove my working hypothesis that Jews are the only minority group mentioned, please provide the relevant link in our comment section.
Thanks!
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The Guardian, in a story about Israel that I simply can’t defend, recently noted:
UK’s Foreign Office has warned Britons holidaying in Israel this Fall that eating in public during Yom Kippur, or conspicuously violating the laws of Shabbat in religious neighborhoods, could land a fine, or imprisonment for repeat offenders. The new guidance says “failure to comply” with local customs “could result in arrest” and that “discretion should be exercised” even in the case of children over 13, pregnant women and nursing mothers. Israeli police have said that non-Jews will receive one warning before arrest.
The Foreign Office advice reads:
“Do not eat in public during the Jewish fast day (including in your car). This is considered highly disrespectful.”
“The majority of eating and drinking establishments will be closed, but you can find some coffee houses with screens that are intended to allow people to eat during the daytime away from public view.”
Its “British Behaviour Abroad” report, based on consular statistics, found that of the 20 countries in the world with the largest British expatriate populations, Britons were more likely to be arrested in Israel than in any other country covered in the report except Thailand.
This is largely because the Israeli laws and customs are very different to those in the UK. There may be serious penalties for doing something that might not be illegal in the UK,” said the Foreign Office. Last month a British woman living in Jerusalem was fined 350 Shekels – around $100 – for insulting Zionism.
Sean Tipton, from the Association of British Travel Agents, recommended that holidaymakers study the Foreign Office advice.
He said:
“In addition, we will be reminding ABTA members who sell trips to Israel to signpost their customers to this information. However, whilst we fully understand and appreciate the importance of the Jewish high holy days, we would strongly recommend that the Israeli authorities practise these enforcement measures with a degree of sensitivity and discretion so as to avoid causing unwarranted distress to foreign visitors and the risk of significant damage to their tourist industry.”
Major hotels in Israel are also working to help their guests stay within the law. The Jerusalem Tourism board is issuing a new booklet “to communicate to non-Jewish guests the etiquette surrounding such an important religious time”.
Finally, I neglected a couple of important facts about the Guardian report. First, the country which the UK Foreign Office issued a warning about was Dubai, and not Israel. Second, the holiday which visitors can be arrested is not Yom Kippur, but the month-long Muslim Holiday of Ramadan. Oh, and of course the Brit mentioned, who was issued the fine, per a previous passage was penalized, not for insulting Zionism, but for insulting Islam on Facebook.
As I was reading that Brits could face arrest, fine and/or imprisonment for violating Muslim religious laws, I was imagining the CiF headlines if such intolerance were suddenly codified in Israel.
New Israeli laws forcing non-Jews to abide by Jewish rituals signifies a growing tide of religious fascism in the country.
Or
New Israeli laws constraining freedom of religious expression, the latest in a series of outrageously discriminatory and exclusionary laws enacted over the past year.”
“Human Rights NGOs issue urgent statements condemning new Israeli laws a violation of fundamental human rights, and another in a serious of bills eroding the countries religious tolerance.”
We’d also no doubt have a perfunctory photo of a menacing looking Orthodox Jew, or a quite scary looking Israeli leader to illustrate the malevolence of the prohibitions - such as this photo of Bibi which accompanied in one of Harriet Sherwood’s hysterical warnings over recent anti-BDS legislation (and that simply chilling rule requiring kindergarten students to sing the national anthem once a week).
Instead, the 500 word report, (filed under the category of UK News) by Guardian’s religious correspondent, Riazat Butt, reports the story quite matter-of-factly, as if she was reporting on a warning by Dubai authorities to take precautions in light of the emirate’s extreme Summer heat.
Indeed, the Guardian report also includes this professional, quite stunning, photo which could have been provided by the Dubai Tourism Board.
Moreover, is there really any doubt that this will be the last report on Dubai’s culture of intolerance?
No, unlike such stories about Israel, which would likely be reported continually and include straight news stories covering every considerable negative angle of the bill, and CiF commentaries with hyperbolic warnings about Israel’s descent into totalitarianism, Butt’s report likely will represent the last such dispatch on the quite audacious and seemingly illiberal requirement that non-Muslims abide by Muslim laws.
And, whatever gives CiF Watch the nutty idea that the Guardian employs egregious double standards when reporting on the Middle East?
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- What the Guardian won’t report about growing up Palestinian under the Israeli “Occupation” (cifwatch.com)
- Perfect illustration of Guardian’s biased moderation when dealing with Israel related reader comments (cifwatch.com)
- Hamas and the Guardian – doing what comes naturally? (cifwatch.com)
- Peter Beaumont is concerned that Israel isn’t criticized enough. Yes, really. (cifwatch.com)
- Devastating report issued which clearly demonstrates the Guardian’s obsession with Israel (cifwatch.com)
- Requisite photo of Palestinians behind bars accompanies “report” by Harriet Sherwood on anti-BDS bill (cifwatch.com)
- Raed Salah Week continues at the Guardian, offering the sage analysis of Noam Chomsky (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian’s obsession with Israel and the conflicts not covered (cifwatch.com)
This is cross posted by Simon Plosker at the blog of Honest Reporting
RSS feeds often publish the first version of an article without any subsequent updates or corrections. I was surprised to see the author of a report from Syria on my Israel news feed from The Guardian:
Yes, the author is one “Shimon Peres”.
A look at the full article on The Guardian website reveals that the author is actually Nour Ali, a pseudonym for a journalist in Damascus.
Is The Guardian really that obsessed by Israel that the first pseudonym they came up with was that of Israel’s president?
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
Glowing Guardian profile of Jacqueline Rose, bold analyst of Zionism’s psychosis
February 5, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Comment is Free, Guardian, Jacqueline Rose, Nazi Analogies, Obsession | by Adam Levick | 45 comments
Stuart Jeffries’ profile of Jacqueline Rose, “Jacqueline Rose: a life in writing“, Guardian, Feb. 3, begins with a subtitle which manages to convey in less than 20 words much of what you need to know of Rose’s pseudo psychoanalysis of Zionism and the Jewish people.
To understand why Rose is indeed talking about Zionist Jews being “psychically and politically finished” due to an “identity” of “victimhood”, you need to read a few of her choice musings on Israel and Jewry, but the answer is clear by the sixth passage of Jeffries’ essay.
After introducing Rose (recent author of, Proust Among the Nations: From Dreyfus to the Middle East) as a feminist, and “fearless” “psychoanalytic critic“…“ready to battle against those who hate her for daring to psychoanalyze Israel” [emphasis added], Jeffries quotes the author’s analysis of Israel:
Such a psychoanalysis of the Jewish state is nothing, however, compared to Rose’s previous diagnoses.
In her book, Question of Zion, Rose wrote, “We take Zionism to be a form of collective insanity” (p. 17), and suggests that those who embrace it are part of a group neurosis.
As Alvin Rosenfeld noted, in Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Antisemitism, Rose’s lexicon for Zionism and its errant ways in “Question of Zionism” include: “bloody,” “cataclysmic,” “cruel,” “deadly,” “apocalyptic,” “blind,” “crazy,” “delusional,” “defiled,” “demonic,” “fanatical,” “insane,” and “mad.”
Zionism appears, to Rose, to be nightmarish, ruthless and deranged, and specifically asks how “Israel [could] inscribe at its heart the very version of nationhood from which the Jewish people had to flee”?
To dispel any doubt that Rose is indeed evoking Nazism, she has written:
Ukraine 1942: Holocaust photo of German soldier shooting a Jewish woman and her young child which Jacqueline Rose is referring to.
Continuing with Rose’s theme of the traumatized, crazed Zionist Jew, Jeffries writes:
Jeffries then quotes Rose describing her family’s evidently distorted, obtuse and myopic post-Holocaust traditional Judaism:
Adds Jeffries:
A kosher kitchen and the desire to marry within the faith!
Respect for religious tradition, and a passion for Jewish continuity (a few years after the horrors of the Shoah): Clearly evidence of an entrenched, defensive, and traumatized people.
Jeffries concludes:
And, as a Jewish writer who can – in an academic’s literary erudition, and a psychoanalyst’s cool, dispassionate sophistication – deride Zionism as a mental disorder, while boldly likening elements of the Jewish state’s ethos to Nazism, the Guardian will not soon be saying goodbye to Jacqueline Rose.
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