Tag Archives: Phoebe Greenwood

Apr 29 2013

Harriet Sherwood and Phoebe Greenwood take steps towards understanding Palestinian incitement

gaza_2548597bThe failure of many to truly understand the ‘root causes’ of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and accurately contextualize news in the region is based in part on the MSM’s general tendency to ignore or significantly downplay the pervasive antisemitism and anti-Zionist agitation within Palestinian society.

This blog’s ‘What the Guardian won’t report‘ series often focuses on such disturbing stories about the official Palestinian glorification of violence, racist indoctrination of their children and other such grossly underreported examples of the reactionary Palestinian political ethos which ‘genuine’ advocates for peace can not reasonably ignore.

Whilst reasonable people can argue over what degree such Palestinian incitement represents an impediment to peace relative to other factors, such as the issue of Israeli “settlements”, the Guardian’s obsessive focus on the latter and their almost total silence about the former serves to grossly misinform their readers on the politics of the region.

As such, it was encouraging to read a recent story by the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood, entitled ’Gaza schoolboys being trained to use Kalashnikovs‘, April 28, which reports on news that Hamas is now providing Gaza schools with military training for young boys.  The program, which includes the use of firearms and explosives, will likely be extended to girls next year.

Sherwood even quotes Al Mezan, a Gaza-based “human rights organisation”, criticizing the program thusly:

“It’s unbelievable. Hamas has been cutting sports activities in schools for the past six years, saying there is no time in the curriculum, but now they find the time to have military training inside schools,”

Additionally, on the very same day that Sherwood filed her story, Phoebe Greenwood published a piece at The Telegraph entitled ‘Hamas teaches Palestinian schoolboys to how to fire Kalashnikovs’ – a report which is especially noteworthy in the context of a CiF Watch post back in 2011 which noted Greenwood’s skepticism over ‘claims’ made by Israeli officials regarding Palestinian incitement. 

Though both reports are problematic in many respects, and indeed ignore the broader problem of Palestinian incitement in both the West Bank and Gaza, it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

Further, we can at least hope that Sherwood and Greenwood will follow-up on their stories and continue to inform their readers on the pathos within Palestinian political culture which inspires the constant vilification of Israel and dehumanization of Jews - a dynamic which makes most Israelis wary of the conventional wisdom which uncritically accepts that a two-state solution will necessarily result in peace.

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Apr 22 2013

The Palestinian Marathon and Phoebe Greenwood’s selective credulity.

The Guardian published a story on April 21 by Phoebe Greenwood entitled ‘First Bethlehem marathon staged in howling wind and rain‘, which focused on the putative challenges faced by Palestinians in organizing their first-ever full marathon.

Greenwood’s report includes the following passages:

A Palestinian city encircled by Israeli settlements, bypass roads connecting the settlements and checkpoints, Bethlehem cannot offer an uninterrupted 42.2km full marathon course. The 26 competitors who ran the full race were required to make two circuits of the city along a course that passed through two refugee camps, alongside the Israeli separation wall, turned back on itself at a checkpoint and finished back at the Church of the Nativity.

“In any other country, a marathon runs from point A to point B. In the West Bank, we have to run from point A to point A.  It’s around 40km from Bethlehem to Hebron but runners would have to cross the Israeli settler roads, and that could never happen,” said Xavier Abu Eid, a Palestinian government spokesperson and native Bethlehemite.

Xavier Abu Eid is, according to his short bio at ‘This Week in Palestine’, a “Palestinian-Chilean student of political science and Vice President of the General Union of Palestine Students in Chile”.  He’s also a marathon participant.

Xavier to the left

Xavier Abu Eid is seen on the left

Greenwood naturally lets Abu Eid’s claim about the ‘atypically circuitous route’ of the marathon go unchallenged.

However, a quick glance at the Palestinian Marathon route in contrast with Israel’s annual Jerusalem Marathon undermines Abu Eid’s suggestion.

First, here’s the Palestinian marathon map, according to their own website:

RunCourse_Red-1024x730

As you can see, the route begins near the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, then travels north before heading southwest towards Al Khader – where runners then turn around and run back towards the Bethlehem starting line.  Participants who did the half marathon ran one (roughly 21 km) Bethlehem-to-Al Khader loop, while those running the full marathon (42.2 k) ran two such loops.  

Now, here’s a map illustrating the route of the Jerusalem marathon:

jlem

As you can see (by following the race which begins by the black arrow), the 42K run begins by circling Givat Ram before, in a far less than direct route, heading towards Hebrew University’s Mt. Scopus Campus, where the runner doubles back (along some of the same route) to the finish line, which is positioned roughly 500 meters across from the original starting line.

(See black arrow indicating the start of the race, as well as numbers showing the path.)  

Additionally, the Tel Aviv Marathon doesn’t employ a direct route from “point A to point B” – but similarly requires that runners turn back at a certain point, and run a second time along part of the same route to reach the finish line.

Of course, it was just one throwaway line by the Palestinian spokesperson – but its significance transcends the minutiae of the specific claim.

In late 2011 we posted about a Tweet by Greenwood indicating her skepticism over a comment by then Israeli Vice Prime Minister (now Defense Minister) Moshe Ya’alon about incitement, racism and the glorification of terrorism in Palestinian school textbooks.  As we noted at the time, evidence regarding such hate education by the Palestinian Authority is extremely well-documented by sites such as Palestinian Media Watch, and its difficult to understand how a professional reporter could seriously question the veracity of such reports.

For those who carefully follow the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it’s very difficult not to observe the credulity of reporters at the Guardian and elsewhere in the face of even the most flippant and often unserious Palestinian statements, in contrast with their extreme skepticism when they cite even the most intuitive and empirically based Israeli claims.

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Mar 2 2013

Will Guardian report on Palestinian prisoner who died in ‘Palestinian Authority’ prison?

H/T This Ongoing War

On Feb. 25 we commented on the Guardian’s coverage of the death of Arafat Jaradat in an Israeli prison.  

Phoebe Greenwood led her Feb. 24 Guardian report with completely unsubstantiated claims by the Palestinian Authority that Jaradat, an Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade member who was arrested on Feb. 18 due to his alleged involvement in a rock-throwing attack that injured an Israeli, died as the result of torture.  

Jaradat’s death, and subsequent funeral, inspired several days of rioting in the West Bank. 

The Guardian published two stories on Jaradat’s death in two days.

pal prisoner

We noted in our post that Israeli pathologists involved in Jaradat’s autopsy were awaiting the results of tests which would help determine the cause of the death and whether there was any credence to charges that he was tortured.

On Thursday, Feb. 28, Israeli authorities published the first results of the pathologists’ tests. 

Times of Israel wrote the following:

The preliminary results of Arafat Jaradat’s autopsy reveal no signs of violence or poisoning, Israeli pathologists revealed Thursday, contradicting previous statements by a Palestinian doctor who attended the procedure.

…

A team of Israeli doctors headed by Professor Yehuda Hiss of the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute, Professor Arnon Afek, the Health Ministry’s Director of Health Administration, and Professor Iris Barshack, chief pathologist at the Sheba Medical Center, reported based on an examination of microscopic remains from the late Jaradat’s body that “no evidence was found of poisoning and no evidence was found of physical violence. According to a statement by the Health Ministry, Jaradat’s internal bleeding and fractured bones were characteristic of the 50 minutes of resuscitation attempts made by prison staff and emergency response staff to save his life. The forensic institute will continue to conduct examinations in order to determine Jaradat’s cause of death.”

Whilst the question of whether Greenwood, or anyone else at the Guardian, will update the story on Jaradat to include the latest evidence regarding his death is worth raising, another parallel event has occurred which may serve as an effective barometer on the consistency of the Guardian’s coverage. 

The following was reported at Ma’an News Agency on May 1.

A prisoner being held in a Palestinian Authority jail in Jericho died on Friday, a senior Palestinian official said.

Ayman Mohammad Sharif Samara, 40, died while being detained on charges of assault, Palestinian Authority attorney general Muhammad Abdul-Ghani al-Uweiwi told Ma’an.

He was arrested on Friday and transferred to a nearby hospital, where he passed away, al-Uweiwi said.

The PA attorney general denied that the prisoner was tortured or beaten during interrogations and said that an autopsy would be performed and the results made public once completed.

In addition to the question of whether Ayman Mohammad Sharif Samara will get a “hero’s welcome” by Palestinians after his funeral, it will be interesting to see if the Guardian devotes any coverage at all to the Palestinian prisoner’s death while in Palestinian Authority custody.

You may wish to Tweet the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood, or Phoebe Greenwood, to pique their interest in the story.

UPDATE: An AP feed on the Guardian’s site carried this report on the death of Samara.

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Feb 28 2013

The Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood cites Richard Silverstein…problems ensue

The question of what blogs and Twitter accounts journalists cum propagandists follow is always an interesting one – and one of the more under-explored dynamics which can help explain some of the more hysterical anti-Israel coverage in the mainstream media (and in the Guardian).

So, for instance, we weren’t surprised when Harriet Sherwood cited a quote by Joseph Dana (Sherwood referred to the anti-Israel activist as a “journalist”) in an effort to contextualize Netanyahu’s speech at the UN in late September, or when, in 2011, she characterized the slain International Solidarity Movement volunteer, Vittorio Arrigoni, as a “peace activist“.  Indeed, both incidents only confirmed what we knew about where the Guardian Jerusalem correspondent’s political sympathies lie. 

In the time Phoebe Greenwood has recently spent filling in for Harriet Sherwood (who’s evidently been ‘away from her desk’ for the past couple of weeks) she has cited the observations of two blogs whose editors explicitly call for a one-state solution – Ali Abunimah’s Electronic Intifada in a Feb. 18 report and, most recently, Richard Silverstein’s ‘Tikun Olam’, in a Feb. 27 Guardian report titled ‘Second Laptop Stolen from Israeli nuclear chief‘. 

Silverstein and Greenwood

Silverstein and Greenwood

Greenwood’s story, about a burglary at the home of the head of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, Shaul Horev, two nights ago, included the assertion that, among the items stolen from Horev’s home was a laptop – though other news sources are now reporting that a laptop was not in fact stolen.  While facts regarding the case are still sketchy, Greenwood attempted to frame the story for readers in the following paragraph:

The blogger Richard Silverstein pointed out the irony that Israel had previously claimed to have obtained secrets about Iran’s nuclear programme from a stolen laptop which it used as evidence of Iran’s ambitions for nuclear weapons – claims now widely believed to be untrue

Whilst you can gain a glimpse into Silverstein’s troubled relationship with facts – and his rush to publish faux “scoops” - here, I decided to check the particular assertion, cited by Greenwood, on his blog to see if there was any truth to it. 

Silverstein, who updated his original Feb. 26 post the following day to note that his initial report that a laptop was stolen from Horev appears to be untrue, nonetheless engages in the kind of Schadenfreude-inspired stream of consciousness blogging rampage which is a trademark of the anti-Zionist American Jewish left.

His post includes the following passages:

Israel boasts of its military and intelligence advantages over its enemies. It can, so the story goes, penetrate the most secure defenses of its enemies. Israel, on the other hand, is impregnable. It’s security assets are secure.  What’s important about this story is that Israel is beset by a major case of hubris. It creates a narrative that arrogates to itself permanent domination over its enemies. It foresees no weaknesses, no vulnerabilities. Except when there are.

There is another delicious irony in this scandal. Israel, several years ago persuaded the world that an allegedly stolen Iranian laptop containing top-secret documents about its nuclear weapons program had mysteriously come into its possession. The laptop was a fraud as was its supposed theft.

A brief check of the link he provided demonstrates that his suggestion of Israeli duplicity, regarding a laptop purporting to contain secret documents, is itself a fraud.

The link takes us to a 2008 post at the site anti-war.com, titled ‘Iran Nuke Laptop Data Came from Terror Group‘.

However, the post, by Gareth Porter, only claims that the “George W. Bush administration has long pushed the “laptop documents” – 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop – as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon.” Further, Porter notes that “German officials have identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK)”.

Whilst the post includes idle speculation that Israel may have known about the “laptop documents”, it goes on to add that Israeli intelligence had “chosen not to reveal it to the public”.  Additionally, other more mainstream media outlets, such as the New York Times, which reported on the story, similarly claimed that it was US officials who lobbied the international community that the documents were authentic.  The NYT piece, ‘Relying on Computer, US seeks to prove Iran’s nuclear aims’, barely even mentioned Israel in any context.

Silverstein’s claim that Israel had attempted to “persuade the world” that the laptop documents represented a smoking gun regarding Iranian nuclear intentions appears to be completely untrue.

So, did Greenwood even bother to check the link in Silverstein’s post before publishing her report?

However, if your goal on any given report about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is to impute maximum malice to the Jewish state, bothersome issues such as the veracity of your sources are necessarily of less importance than advancing the desired narrative.  

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Feb 25 2013

The Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood ignores Arafat Jaradat’s terror affiliation

Israeli pathologists involved in the autopsy of a Palestinian prisoner named Arafat Jaradat, who died in Megiddo Prison on Saturday, are awaiting the results of toxicology tests (that might take weeks to receive) which may definitively determine the cause of death.

The death of Jaradat, who was arrested on Feb. 18 after residents in his West Bank village reported that he “was involved in a rock-throwing attack” that injured an Israeli, sparked rioting in Hebron and other cities in the West Bank – a characteristic rush to judgement by Palestinian radicals which mirrors the journalistic rush to judgement by Phoebe Greenwood.

Greenwood led her Feb. 24 Guardian report with unsubstantiated claims by the Palestinian Authority that Jaradat died as the result of torture.

greenwoodHere’s how the story is presented on the Guardian’s home page, employing inverted quotes around the words “tortured in prison” and deleting the qualifier, “says Palestinian Authority”.

Hebron

Greenwood’s piece begins thusly:

A Palestinian prisoner whose death in Israeli custody fanned violent clashes across the West Bank over the weekend was tortured before he died, the Palestinian Authority has said.

The results of an autopsy conducted in Tel Aviv were revealed at a press conference in Ramallah on Sunday evening after a day of angry protests across the West Bank and Gaza in which dozens were injured.

The findings contradict the Israeli prison service’s claim that Arafat Jaradat died on Saturday from a cardiac arrest.

A Palestinian doctor’s investigations found that while Jaradat’s arteries were clear, the state of his body suggested he had been beaten in the days before his death.

It isn’t until the fifth paragraph that the Israeli version is emphasized.

That contrasts with an Israeli health ministry statement that said that the autopsy found “no signs of external trauma … apart from those pertaining to resuscitation [attempts] and a small graze on the right side of his chest”.

It said: “No evidence of disease was found during the autopsy. Two internal hemorrhages were detected, one on the shoulder and one on the right side of the chest. Two ribs were broken, which may indicate resuscitation attempts. The initial findings cannot determine the cause of death. At this stage, until microscopic and toxicology reports are in, the cause of death cannot be tied to the autopsy findings.”

Then, we’re treated to Greenwood’s selective bio of Jaradat.

The 30-year-old, a petrol station worker and father of two, was arrested on 18 February in relation to a stone-throwing incident in November during which an Israeli was slightly injured. [emphasis added]

However, unbeknownst to those who depend on the Guardian as their source for information on events in the Palestinian territories, when Jaradat wasn’t working in a petrol station and providing for his two children, he was evidently involved in other, far less noble pursuits.

According to multiple sources, including even the BBC and Arab sites such as Ahram Online, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, Jaradat was a member of Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade – the terror group affiliated with Fatah.

Here’s the relevant passage from Ahram:

“Al Aqsa brigades, the armed wing of the Fatah national liberation movement, mourns with all pride its hero, the martyr of freedom, the prisoner Arafat Jaradat,” the statement said, in reference to Jaradat’s membership of the group.

Here’s Al Jazeera:

Palestinians said Jaradat was a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement.

Remarkably, even Wafa, the official Palestinian Authority news agency, reported on Jaradat’s ‘suspected’ affiliation:

Violent clashes with Israeli soldiers broke out after the death of prisoner Arafat Jaradat, a father of three and charged of affiliation with al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, in Megiddo Israeli prison Saturday as a result to possible torture during interrogation.

Whilst the PA’s motivation for propagandizing about Jaradat’s death is clear – and thoroughly consistent with what many believe has been their tacit encouragement for the increasing number of violent Palestinian confrontations with the IDF in recent weeks – Greenwood’s putative role as a professional journalist requires that she avoid ideologically inspired, selective reporting.  

Though we likely won’t learn the cause of Jaradat’s death for weeks, until that time we can be assured that subsequent Guardian reports on the incident will continue to ignore information which interferes with desired narratives invariably showing the deceased Palestinian prisoner in the most favorable light.

Related articles
Aug 2 2012

Overview of Guardian coverage of Israel, July 2012

An overview of the Guardian’s coverage of Israel for the month of July 2012 indicates yet again that a significant proportion of items placed of the ‘Israel page‘ of both CiF and the Guardian World news section actually have little to do with Israel.

It also shows once more that the choice of subjects not covered is no less significant than the stories which are run. 

On the Israel page of ‘Comment is Free‘ (which is still for some reason headed by a now one year old article by Sam Bahour ), nine new items appeared during July. Of those, only four are directly related to Israel, with two pertaining to the IOC’s refusal to hold a minute of silence for the Israeli athletes murdered at the Munich Olympics, one concerning the social protests in Israel and one about the Church of England’s decision to support EAPPI.

Of the rest, two are actually about Syria and three (including a cartoon) are assorted interpretations of the US Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney’s short visit to Israel. 

The same nine items are also included on the Israel page of the Guardian’s World News section, where 73 articles appeared in total between July 1st and July 31st. There too, a proportion of the articles actually have little direct connection to Israel. 

Eight of them are about Syria, three about Iran, two about Eritrea, two about cyber espionage and two about healthcare issues in the Gaza Strip. Two items relate to the release of the PIJ member Mahmoud Sarsak, whose cause was widely championed by the Guardian, and one relates to family visits for Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel. One photo gallery item has Ramadan as its subject. 

One item concerns the visit of US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta to Israel and no fewer than 11 items (two of which are repeated, making 13) relate to the Romney visit. 

Four items pertain to the Olympic issue, two to the EU-Israel ACAA, one to the Church of England and of two obituaries appearing in the month of July, one is about Yitzhak Shamir, and the other a French actress named Tsilla Chelton who happens to have been born in Jerusalem 29 years before Israel existed. 

Of the articles which can be described as relating to Israeli politics, three relate to the subject of the Tal Law and the coalition, one to the plea bargain by Uri Blau, one to the trial of Ehud Olmert and six to the social protests. 

Several articles concern the IDF: one article is about gender equality in the Israeli army, four relate to various clashes between the army and Palestinians, and one rather bizarre piece predicts a ‘mutiny’ in the IDF.

Social and cultural themed articles include one on the Israeli TV series ‘Hatufim’, one on the singer Rita, one about kibbutzim and two concerning ‘settlements’.

Six items relate to the terror attack in Bulgaria, including two video reports. 

Events during July apparently not considered news-worthy by Guardian reporters include the sentencing of a former Hamas commander to 54 consecutive life sentences due to his involvement in the murders of 46 Israelis during the second Intifada. Also ignored were the violent demonstrations in Ramallah protesting a proposed visit by Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz aimed at jump-starting peace talks and an Iranian-funded project in Gaza which will provide housing for Palestinian terrorists released under the terms of the Shalit deal. 

Militia-style activities and indoctrination at Hamas-run summer camps for children in the Gaza Strip did not catch the attention of either Harriet Sherwood or Phoebe Greenwood, and neither did the Palestinian Islamic Jihad- related aspect of Mahmoud Sarsak’s homecoming or a flag-trampling rally held in Gaza by the Hamas-linked group ‘Palestinian Sons of Freedom’. 

Palestinian terrorist operatives march over the American and Israeli flags (PALDF forum website, July 7, 2012)

Palestinian terrorist operatives march over the American and Israeli flags (PALDF forum website, July 7, 2012)

Similarly, the arrest of a PFLP terror cell went unreported by the Guardian, as did the upcoming trial in Cyprus of a Swedish national suspected to be linked to Hizballah whilst planning terror attacks against Israelis.  An attack on a bus carrying soldiers near Eilat was also ignored, as was a shooting incident near Yad Mordechai and news of protests by Christians in Gaza over forced conversions. 

Given Harriet Sherwood’s penchant for Gaza-located nuptials, it was surprising to see that she passed up the opportunity to cover a Palestinian Islamic Jihad mass wedding financed by the IHH. Likewise ignored were the PIJ’s departure from Syria (and relocation to Iran) and the appearance of Hamas leader and sometime Guardian writer Khaled Misha’al at the Al Nahada conference in Tunisia, where of course he met the father of another Guardian writer. 

The firing into Israel of nineteen rockets and one mortar from the Gaza Strip during July did not – once again – prompt Harriet Sherwood to visit Sderot or any of the other communities close to the border area. Neither did she elect to cover some rather disturbing news a lot closer to home:

  ”According to the Israel Security Agency, during the first half of 2012 there was a significant increase in the amount of “grassroots” terrorism in Jerusalem. It included mainly incidents of stabbing/personal attacks, as well as Molotov cocktails and stones thrown at Israeli civilians and members of the Israeli security forces. There were three cases of stabbing and/or other personal attacks, more than 70 Molotov cocktails were thrown, and there were hundreds of cases of stone-throwing. The attacks wounded 29 Israelis, 13 of them members of the security forces (Israel Security Agency website, July 2012).

An examination of events over the past year indicates three focal primary friction points in the Jerusalem region:

The A-Tour/Mount of Olives area east of the Old City

The Issawiya area northeast of the Old City

The neighborhoods of Ras al-Amud and Silwan southeast of the Old City”

‘Good news’ stories are also ignored by the Guardian’s reporters in many instances. A half-yearly report indicating that agricultural exports from Gaza rose by 86% compared to the previous year, unemployment in the Strip is slightly down and income has risen received no attention, and neither did the efforts made by the IDF and Israeli authorities to ensure smooth travelling in honour of Ramadan. 

As in we saw in previous months, the Guardian’s choice of which subject matter to ignore is a major factor in shaping the manner in which its readers perceive Israel as a whole and the Arab-Israeli conflict specifically. 

Related articles
Jul 24 2012

The Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood dramatically inflates the number Israeli settlements (Updated)

Though we already posted about Phoebe Greenwood’s July 23 report concerning the EU’s upgrade of Israel’s trading and diplomatic status, EU move to upgrade relations with Israel, I recently recognized a glaring error in the following passage from her piece:

“As recently as 8 June, [Catherine Ashton] issued a statement deploring Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s decision to build an additional 800 settlements in occupied territory – compensation for the 17 Israeli families the country’s high court had ordered to be removed from the Migron settlement.” [emphasis added]

What Greenwood was evidently referring to are 800 new HOMES which Israel recently announced they plan to build – in the existing Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa (see here and here) – and not 800 new “SETTLEMENTS“.

Indeed, there are – even according to the far left, anti-settlement Israeli group Peace Now - 120 ”settlements” in total in Judea and Samaria, and another 12 in “East” Jerusalem. 

I contacted the Guardian’s Readers’ Editor seeking a correction.

UPDATE: The Guardian has amended their article to correct the mistake. They’ve added this:

 

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Jun 27 2012

Life, death and terror on Israel’s Route 60: Phoebe Greenwood’s contrasting moral sympathy

The murder, September 23rd, 2011:

On September 23rd, 2011, Asher Palmer buckled his infant son Yonatan into the car and drove from Kiryat Arba heading to Jerusalem to meet his pregnant wife at her parents’ Jerusalem home, where they were to spend Shabbat. 

The twenty-five year old Israeli man was driving on Route 60 (a south-north intercity road in Israel that stretches from Beersheba to Nazareth) between the Jewish communities of Kiryat Arba and Karmei Tzur when several large rocks – thrown by Palestinians waiting nearby – crashed through their windshield, causing Asher to lose control and the car to overturn.

Asher and Yonatan were pronounced dead at the scene.  The police said that the front window was shattered and a large rock was found inside the car with Palmer’s blood on it.

Two Palestinian citizens from Halhoul were arrested a couple of weeks later (by the Shin Bet) and admitted to throwing a rock that caused the fatal crash. The two were also investigated  for the possibility that they were behind 17 other similar attempts to kill Israeli drivers.

Remarkably, IDF figures revealed that the month during which the Palmers were attacked had been the most violent month in the previous year and a half in terms of rock throwing in the West Bank.  There were a staggering 498 incidents of rocks being thrown at Israeli vehicles in September 2011 alone.

Phoebe Greenwood, who has been contributing to the Guardian from Israel and the Palestinian territories since January 2011 did not report the story.

In fact, there were only two brief mentions of this deadly act of terrorism at the Guardian. One was a throw-away passage buried in an AP story about a mosque vandalized in Northern Israel, on October 3rd, and the other was a reference to the attack by Harriet Sherwood, (in a piece titled “Israel approves new settler homes in East Jerusalem“), which callously referred to the victims in passing as a “settler and his son.” [emphasis added]

Here is the Guardian headline and photo in Sherwood’s story which mentioned the attack.

And, here’s the headline and photo from the AP story:

A total of eighty-eight words in the Guardian have been devoted to the terror attack. There has been no mention of the names of the victims and no follow-up report on the arrest of the two Palestinians.

The accident, February 16th, 2012:

A bus carrying children and their teachers from a kindergarten in Shuafat refugee camp (on an expedition to a park near Ramallah) was struck head-on by a truck travelling in the opposite direction, during a heavy rain, and forced off the road on a section of Route 60 ten minutes from Qalandiya . Nine children and the driver of the bus were killed in the crash. Thirty more children were injured.  Several Palestinian children are still receiving care at Israeli hospitals for burns and post accident trauma.

The exact sequence of events leading to the crash is not in doubt, though there is an investigation being conducted by the PA over what was perceived as the relatively slow emergency response to the accident.

In two reports (one for The Telegraph and one for the Guardian) Phoebe Greenwood has devoted 1444 words to the bus accident. The latest, in the Guardian, June 26th, included this scare title: “West Bank’s route 60 a ‘road of death‘ for Palestinian children” and was placed in the Global Development (Global Road Safety in Focus) section of the site. [emphasis added]

Here is the headline and accompanying photo:

Characteristically, Greenwood has focused much of her writing on Israel’s perceived role in the accident.

In The Telegraph, Greenwood cited a couple of hateful comments about the Palestinian victims, within one Israeli Facebook thread beneath a link to a story about the accident from the site of Walla, to contextualize the story, suggesting, evidently, that such views were indicative of Israeli sentiment.

Greenwood also wrote that “roads open to Palestinian drivers in the occupied West Bank are notoriously dangerous…” – a theme she explored in greater detail in her June 26th Guardian story, where she wrote:

“Many Palestinian roads are unpaved and take circuitous routes to avoid the separation wall [checkpoints] and settlements….”

“Mohammed Shtayeh, the Palestinian Authority’s minister for homes and public works until 2010, says the Israeli authorities’ refusal to allow the Palestinian Authority to repair and maintain roads running through Area C can be linked to a rise in road accidents in the West Bank.”

Greenwood fails to provide any context regarding Palestinian acts of terror (which prompted the construction both the security fence and checkpoints) which, since the Oslo Accords in 1993 through the 2nd Intifada, claimed nearly 1400 Israeli lives.

But beyond such insinuations, much of Greenwood’s Guardian piece reads as simple human interest story and devotes quite a bit of space to the pain expressed by two Palestinian mothers – one who lost a five-year old so and another whose daughter is lying in a drug-induced coma at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, after suffering burns to 75% of her body.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with a reporter based in the region attempting to humanize and provide color to the often abstract contentious political issues involving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. 

Indeed, Greenwood’s empathy towards the Palestinian victims of February’s fatal bus accident was evident throughout her reports.

In her Guardian piece, she observed:

“…it is still difficult…for all the parents whose children were killed or injured in the inferno on the West Bank’s route 60 – to identify who is to blame.”

However, in contrast, Asher’s wife Puah Palmer and his parents Moshe and Molly know precisely who is to blame for their devastating loss: two Palestinian terrorists who were intent on taking Israeli lives and apparently unmoved by the possibility that the act of terror they were committing could take the life of a baby.   

Has Greenwood ever considered talking to the surviving family and friends of Asher and Yonatan Palmer in Kiryat Arba – to give voice to their pain, grief and anger?

It is really difficult to read the Guardian each day, observing its egregious lack of empathy towards Israeli victims of terror and its continuing sins of omission regarding the Palestinian perpetrators without coming to the conclusion that, at the paper, Israeli Jewish life is cheap and the lives of “settlers’” even cheaper.

Asher and Yonatan Palmer

Related articles
May 11 2012

Should the Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood be sacked?

A guest post by AKUS

In the articles ‘Lost in anti-Zionist translation? Guardian misquotes Noam Shalit on Palestinian hostage taking‘ and ‘Guardian corrects story with false translation of Noam Shalit interview after his son’s release‘ CiF Watch exposed the errors in the recent by Phoebe Greenwood article that was corrected:

New headline:

Old headline:

Greenwood’s article was based on an incredibly rude interview carried out by Israeli journalist Amnon Levi of Israel’s “Channel 10″.

Noam Shalit with Amnon Levi of nana 10 – Channel 10

Having watched the interview (in Hebrew) it’s clear that only Amnon Levi and his cameraman were present with Noam Shalit. The interview was taped in Shalit’s house in Mitzpe Hila – in the Shalit’s kitchen, actually.

So Greenwood’s article, with the misleading quotation, was written after reading a translated transcript of the interview. (In a different article about Noam Shalit’s entry into Israeli politics, Harriet Sherwood says she interviewed Shalit in Jerusalem on Monday – presumably May 7th, 2012).

It is an interesting commentary on the low standard of Guardian journalistic ethics that Greenwood, while acknowledging that the interview was taped, does not point out that she was not there.

“Speaking to a television interviewer in the kitchen of the Shalit family home, a familiar backdrop for the Israeli public from the family’s five-year campaign for their son’s release, Shalit was subject to repeated questioning attempting to pin him down on his political policies.”

The Guardian and Greenwood do not acknowledge her source, nor that she, for all intents and purposes, provided a translated transcription of Shalit’s comments lifted from the interview plus her own views about them.

In fact, Greenwood’s article is about as close to plagiarism dished up as journalism as one can get. In another time and at another paper I suspect she would have been sacked.

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May 10 2012

Guardian corrects story with false translation of Noam Shalit interview after his son’s release

On March 17th we posted a piece (“Lost in anti-Zionist translation? Guardian misquotes Noam Shalit on Palestinian hostage taking“) which noted that the Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood cited an incorrect translation of a Noam Shalit interview on Israeli TV.

According to Greenwood Shalit stated, in the context of discussing his son’s recent release after five-years of captivity by Hamas, that he would kidnap Israeli soldiers if he were a Palestinian.

JTA had a Hebrew-speaking colleague track down the interview with Israel’s Channel 10 and it turns out Shalit didn’t say that at all.

Here’s a transcript (translated from Hebrew) of what Shalit actually said:

Q: If you were a Hamasnik, would you abduct an Israeli soldier?

Shalit: I don’t know but maybe I would fight IDF forces in a different way, I don’t know.

Clearly, Shalit didn’t say that he would kidnap an Israeli soldier if he were a Palestinian, as Greenwood claimed.  He essentially suggested that he didn’t know exactly what he would do if he were a Palestinian, while stating that (if he were Palestinian) he might have tried to fight the Israeli army “in a different way.” 

In the Guardian’s ‘Corrections and clarifications’ section today, there was this.

Those of you fluent in Hebrew may want to read the text of the interview at the Israeli site here and let us know whether the incorrect translation could have been an honest “misinterpretation”. 

Mar 30 2012

Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood runs interference for Global March to Jerusalem organizers and rioters

The Guardian’s Middle East Live blog today includes coverage of the Global March to Jerusalem provocations by the paper’s correspondent, Phoebe Greenwood, who’s filling in for Harriet Sherwood.

Here’s her dispatch from this morning at Qalandiya.

Palestinian boys have started arriving at the blockades. Jabai, 19, has come from Nablus to join the protest. “Today is different than any other Friday demonstration,” he says. “Many more people are coming”.

And what of organisers’ hopes that the demonstrations will be peaceful? “No, we want to throw stones and break things”, says Jabai, highlighting the difference between Palestinian activists and the frustrated youth who come to demonstrate anger.

Anyone who’s been following our blog’s reports about GMJ would have to understand how absurd it is to claim that the organizers (made up of Islamist terrorist groups and their supporters) are hoping for a series of peaceful protests.  

While I can cite a plethora of examples, here are recent comments by Feroze Mithiborwala, a member of both the GMJ International Executive Committee and its International Central Committee, regarding Israel’s preparations to prevent GMJ provocations.

“Israel has gone crazy, and they are acting no different than Nazi’s. Our response to them is a response of bravery. We are ready for martyrdom for our Palestinian brothers.” 

As the GMJ leader prepared his cadre of fellow “activists” for martyrdom, GMJ participant and member of the SE Asia caravan Mansour Kiaei from Iran – who, as has previously been pointed out, describes himself on his Twitter account as a ‘human rights activist’ – Tweeted the following:

Meanwhile in Qalandiya, where Palestinians have been rioting (including hurling stones and exlosives at an IDF post) Greenwood reports:

Israeli soldiers firing volley of teargas canisters into air over advancing protesters led by Frank Romano waving a huge Palestinian flag. At least 23 people have now been taken away with injuries in what are turning into pretty serious clashes at Qalandiya.

Greenwood’s “peaceful” GMJ members and organizers, and Israelis firing tear gas at Palestinian protesters who are merely waving a flag: classic Guardian political fiction masquerading as serious journalism. 

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Mar 17 2012

Lost in anti-Zionist translation? Guardian misquotes Noam Shalit on Palestinian hostage taking

Phoebe Greenwood, writing for the Guardian on March 16, claimed, in a sensational headline and accompanying text in the lead passage, that Noam Shalit, the father of the Israeli soldier (Gilad Shalit) held hostage for five years by Hamas, said (during an interview with Israeli TV) that “he would kidnap Israeli soldiers if he were a Palestinian.”

Well, JTA had a Hebrew-speaking colleague track down the interview with Israel’s Channel 10 and it turns out Shalit didn’t say that at all.

Here’s a transcript (translated from Hebrew) of what Shalit actually said:

Q. So you support talking to Hamas?

Shalit: I support talking to anyone.

Q. Including Hamas?

Shalit: Including Hamas. Everyone who wants to talk with us.

Q. As a Knesset member, would you go out tomorrow to talk with [Hamas Prime Minister Ismail] Haniyeh?

Shalit: Haniyeh’s not yet ready to recognize us. Unfortunately, it hasn’t happened yet.

Q. And if he recognizes us?

Shalit: If and when we get the bridge, we’ll cross it. Of course.

Q. That is, even if the kidnappers of Gilad themselves one day are senior officials in the Palestinian administration and agree to recognize Israel, you would sit with them as an Israeli Knesset member.

Shalit: Presumably — I said that if they change their ways and are prepared to recognize us and recognize that there is a Jewish state, that there’s Israel, there’s the State of Israel, yes, and they stop the war against then yes – absolutely.

Q. Shake his hand?

Shalit: Yes.

Shalit: How did Barak say? If I were Palestinian, it’s possible I too would be a terrorist or a freedom fighter — how they call them — or something else.

Q: If you were a Hamasnik, would you abduct an Israeli soldier?

Shalit: I don’t know but maybe I would fight IDF forces in a different way, I don’t know.

Q: But you don’t rule it out.

Shalit: If I were a Palestinian?

Q: Yes, abducting a soldier to release prisoners.

Shalit: We also kidnapped British officers way back when, when we were fighting for our freedom.

Clearly, Shalit didn’t say that he would kidnap an Israeli soldier if he were a Palestinian, as Greenwood definitively claimed.  He essentially suggested that he didn’t know exactly what he would do if he were a Palestinian, while stating that (if he were Palestinian) he might have tried to fight the Israeli army “in a different way.” 

Shalit, during the interview, also evidently said (as reported by The JC) that the Prime Minister should have imposed financial sanctions on Gaza while his son in captivity. He said:

”As soon as they capture an Israeli soldier and are not willing to release him and asking for such a price, you should put the pressure on them, including stopping the transfer of money.”

So, its clear that Shalit gave an equivocal, nuanced and, at times, somewhat contradictory answer to the question of Palestinian hostage taking.

But, the Guardian’s Greenwood, and her editors, either didn’t attempt to get an accurate Hebrew translation, or simply decided to go with the most sensational, pro-Palestinian, narrative possible.

The Guardian headline is egregiously misleading, and yet thoroughly consistent with a media group continually in search of “evidence” to buttress their a priori anti-Israel conclusions – reports which often seem intent on suggesting a moral equivalence between Israel and her terrorist enemies.

Similarly, recall a Guardian report, back when Gilad Shalit was released from Gaza in Oct. 2011, focusing on a gaunt, weary, and beleaguered Shalit who was forced to endure an interview on Egyptian TV shortly before his release to Israel.  

Chris McGreal, whose reports of the Hebrew interview with Shalit seem to have been at least partially based on Tweets in English he read throughout the Q&A, by those watching the Egyptian TV interview, wrote:

[Shalit] was asked whether, now that he was free, he would campaign for the release of remaining Palestinian prisoners. He said it would make him very happy to see all Palestinian prisoners released.

But, as Ynet and other media noted.

Asked whether he will campaign for the release of the other Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, Shalit said “I would be happy if they are released, on condition that they stop fighting against Israel.”

That enormous qualifier was somehow omitted by McGreal – a report never revised despite our complaint to Guardian editors – in a manner not disimilar to Greenwood’s gross mischaracterization of what Noam Shalit said more recently.

As I’ve written before, but what can’t repeated often enough, the Guardian can not reasonably be seen a serious newspaper in any real sense of the word.

Rather, the institution represents far left political activism under the guise of journalism.

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Feb 17 2012

Phoebe Greenwood manages to vilify Israel in story about tragic auto accident

Confirmation Bias: The habit of favoring information that confirms what you believe, whether it’s true or not, and ignoring the rest.

One of the most consistent habits of Guardian reporters is their ability to vilify Israel in response to almost any story about the country.

A case in point is the tragic accident yesterday, which killed ten and injured 40 others, when a bus carrying Palestinian children (from a kindergarten in the Palestinian territories) and a truck collided in Adam Square in northern Jerusalem.  Israeli Magen David Adom and Palestinian Red Crescent teams were working together on the rescue operation, and Israeli and Palestinian police are similarly collaborating on the subsequent investigation.

An initial investigation indicated that the truck or the bus had veered from the oncoming lane, probably due to inclement weather, Army Radio reported.

Yet, Phoebe Greenwood, the Guardian stringer based in Israel for the past eight months (who has yeoman’s work delegitimizing the Jewish state while filling in for Harriet Sherwood) was able to frame even this tragic auto accident in a manner consistent with a broader anti-Israel narrative.

Her story on the accident for The Telegraph, Palestinians mourn death of ten children in bus crash, Feb. 16, included this passage in the penultimate paragraph:

Ahe gleeful reaction of several Israelis on Twitter has provoked disgust and outrage on social media sites.

One tweet posted by Ajali Cali read, “Great, less terrorists” while another tweeter named Itai Viltzig said: “Thank God [these are] Palestinians. I hope every day there is a bus like this [that crashes].” [emphasis added]

First, it turns out that the offensive comments weren’t Tweets, but rather a couple of comments within one Facebook thread beneath a link to a story about the accident from the site of Walla.

More broadly, there are 3.4 million Facebook users in Israel, and it seems relevant to ask how precisely a couple of stray hateful comments (in one FB thread) is news worthy, yet alone represents a dynamic that is in any way relevant to properly contextualizing the story?

But, the most outrageous facet of Greenwood’s gratuitous focus on a few Israeli FB comments is the deafening silence, by both Greenwood and Sherwood, in face of a Palestinian culture saturated with antisemitic incitement not only “beneath the line” at social media sites, but by the official state controlled media, as well as political and religious leaders.  

The Palestinian culture of hate towards Jews – and not merely Israelis – is well-documented and impossible not to acknowledge except for those willfully blind to the phenomenon.  

To cite just one of countless examples of the consequences of such incitement – a culture which routinely honors terrorists – nearly one-third of Palestinians polled expressed SUPPORT for the terror attack last year in Itamar, in which two Palestinians broke into a Jewish home and butchered five members of the Fogel family, including three children, ages 10, 4, and 3 months.

Interestingly, Greenwood not only doesn’t find such disturbing realities about Palestinian culture to be newsworthy (based on her reports), but evidently is skeptical that such incitement even occurs. Here’s a Tweet by Greenwood in December about statements by Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon that Palestinian textbooks promote terror.

As I posted at the time, all Greenwood would had to have done is go to the site of Palestinian Media Watch to read a comprehensive report on the incontrovertible evidence regarding the glorification of violence against Israelis in PA textbooks.

But, as with so many of her colleagues, Greenwood’s liberal racism, which compromises any claim to objective journalism, necessitates that Palestinians are never held accountable for such an endemic antisemitic culture – a vital political dynamic, in accurately understanding the politics of the region, that the Guardian will never report.  

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Dec 30 2011

Medical Misdirection in The Guardian

This was published at HonestReporting by Simon Plosker

As NGO Monitor has extensively detailed, Physicians For Human Rights (Israel) has a radical political agenda far removed from simple medical matters. It’s therefore no surprise that the organization provides the main body of an article in The Guardian that claims:

“Palestinian patients and business people hoping to leave the Gaza Strip are being asked to collaborate with Israel in exchange for an exit permit”.

According to PHR:

172 people, mostly men aged 18 to 40, were called for interrogation by the Shabak, Israel’s internal intelligence agency, last month. Some who attended interviews were granted exit permits.

Putting this figure into perspective, in August 2011 alone, 1522 permits were granted for medical treatment to residents of Gaza (762 patients and 760 for accompanying individuals). In one week in December 2011, 330 patients and accompanying individuals crossed into Israel and the West Bank via the Erez Crossing.

Not to mention that there is nothing to stop Gazans from crossing into Egypt for medical treatment. After all, Israel is under no obligation other than humanitarian concerns, to treat Gazans in Israeli hospitals where Jews and Arabs are treated equally by both Jewish and Arab medical staff based solely on medical and not political concerns.

Israel’s security services would not be doing their jobs properly if extreme caution was not exercised in giving out permits to Gazan patients. While The Guardian is happy to publish a story accusing Israel of abusing the right to healthcare, it would do well to remember the real abuse of medical permits.

For example, Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss (recently released as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner deal) was caught attempting to smuggle a suicide bomb belt through Erez taking advantage of her medical permit for hospital treatment at Soroka Hospital in Israel. Indeed, Wafa actually intended to blow herself up in the very hospital that had given her treatment.

Al-Biss caught at the Erez Crossing

The MFA details other examples of Palestinians abusing the medical permit system.

Nobody said that the task of accumulating human intelligence from Gaza is a pleasant business. It is, however, necessary. That this story appears in The Guardian courtesy of PHR-I is merely the result of the unholy and symbiotic relationship between anti-Israel journalists and anti-Israel NGOs.

Thankfully, for every story such as this one, there are many more such as that of Israeli doctors saving the life of a Palestinian baby thanks to open-heart surgery – just the sort of news that you won’t ever see in The Guardian.

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Dec 29 2011

The Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood gambles with Palestinian lives.

About 90 minutes before the Guardian put up Phoebe Greenwood’s latest screed on its ‘World News – Gaza’ section on December 28th another barrage of Kassam rockets rudely awoke the sleeping Israeli civilians living in the region surrounding the Gaza Strip. Eight hours later, a second barrage targeted the same area, endangering children setting out to school at that time and bringing the total number of rockets fired from Gaza this month alone to 46 and this year to 682.

Predictably however, dedicated follower of fashion Phoebe Greenwood deftly airbrushed out the decade-long ongoing war crimes against Israeli civilians by the plethora of terror organisations based in Gaza, ignoring the rockets completely and suggesting that suicide bombings are a thing of the past. Her story concentrates purely on hearsay accounts of Palestinian suffering as recounted to her by a representative of a politically motivated NGO and fails even to afford the accused the right of reply.

There is, of course, nothing surprising about that. Greenwood’s polemic would be considerably less effective both as a tear-jerker for Western audiences and a public relations exercise for PHR were she to provide her readers with the context of the challenges of providing humanitarian assistance to the population of a region in which terrorists trying to infiltrate Israel’s borders mingle indistinguishably with civilians and have a history of exploiting  medical permits to facilitate attacks.  

Equally, her objective would not have been served by detailing the process by which patients from Gaza are permitted to enter Israel in order to receive medical treatment – a process in which the Palestinian Authority also takes part.

The website of CoGAT includes information which clearly outlines the criteria for entry to Israel from Gaza for various reasons. On the subject of patients seeking medical care in Israel the guidelines are as follows:

“Medical Treatment- Entry to Israel for the purpose of medical treatment is permitted, as well as for the purpose of passage to Judea & Samaria or abroad [for medical reasons], in accordance with requests from the Palestinian Health Co-ordinator who works within the framework of the Palestinian Civilian Committee and is responsible for the prioritisation of requests, categorisation of their urgency and their referral to the [Israeli] Office of Co-ordination and Communication in order to facilitate the reception of life-saving medical treatment or medical treatment essential for the preservation of quality of life, all on condition that the required treatment is not available in the Gaza Strip.

It is to be stressed that payment for the medical care is transferred from the Palestinian Authority directly to the hospitals in Israel and therefore the Palestinian Authority demands that its permission for the patient’s entry into Israel for treatment is issued in advance. (In many cases the Palestinian Authority prefers to take care of a patient in the Gaza Strip or PA-controlled areas of Judea & Samaria due to the high costs of treatment in Israel). “

With regard to entry to Israel from the Gaza Strip for business purposes, the CoGAT guidelines are as follows:

Entry of merchants and business people – The entry of 70 merchants per day (to Israel, Judea & Samaria and abroad) is permitted. The entry is subject to a request from the Palestinian Civilian Committee and to the applicant being a high-level trader whose entry to Israel would contribute to economic improvement in the Gaza Strip and who deals in the trade of goods permitted for entry into Gaza at the time of the request. 

In other words, it is entirely possible that the reasons for the two cases of refused entry into Israel which Greenwood cites in her article may be a lot more complicated than her default ‘Israel behaving badly’ pastiche would have us believe. It could well be that Ahmad Hamada did not receive the prior consent of the Palestinian Authority to pay for his treatment or that the Palestinian Civilian Committee did not consider his case untreatable in Gaza. It could be that the Palestinian Civilian Committee did not consider Ramez Kaloub to meet the required entry criteria or that either or both men have some sort of security issues on their record.

We will likely never know the full background to these stories because Greenwood did not apparently bother to contact either the Palestinian Civilian Committee or CoGAT as any investigative reporter worth the title would have done. Instead, she merely reproduced second-hand hearsay fed to her by a very interested party: one of many who seem to think that passage from the terrorist-run enclave of the Gaza Strip should be as unrestricted as the crossing of the border between Belgium and France, despite the clear danger that would present to Israeli civilians.

Beyond the shoddy workmanship there is, however, a more sinister side to Greenwood’s self-interested rant. As she casually mentions in passing (apparently seeing no reason to distract her readers by elaborating), “[i]t is Hamas policy to execute collaborators”.  Those executions of course take place in vigilante fashion, without anything resembling a fair trial or due judicial process.

Greenwood’s thoughtless parroting of PHR’s unproven claim to the effect that Gaza Strip residents who agree to become collaborators are more likely to get permission to travel to Israel is therefore potentially lethal and highly irresponsible.

Every year thousands of Palestinians from Gaza and PA-controlled areas find themselves in need of Israeli medical care as anyone who has ever spent time in an Israeli hospital knows. According to the latest figures from CoGAT, 35,000 Palestinians travelled from the Gaza Strip into Israel during 2011. 20,000 of those made the crossing for medical reasons. The other 15,000 entered Israel for reasons of business, sport, art or religion. That’s almost a hundred people a day and does not include Palestinians entering Israel from the PA controlled areas of Judea & Samaria. Almost half of the operations performed every year by the Israeli charity ‘Save a Child’s Heart‘ are on Palestinian children. Palestinian doctors travel to Israel for conferences , conventions and seminars vital to their professional development.

The attempt by a politically motivated NGO in collaboration with an equally politically motivated journalist to suggest that these thousands of patients and other travelers are potentially traitors to their own people is despicable and calls into question both the ‘humanitarian’ credentials of PHR and the ethics of a journalist willing to endanger the lives of others for the sake of a story which fits her personal agenda and that of the paper for which she writes.

It may seem as though it would be difficult for either PHR or Phoebe Greenwood to sink much lower, but with her obvious willingness to gamble with the fate both of Palestinians in need of medical treatment in Israel and Israelis at risk from terrorists seeking to enter Israel under the premise of medical or business visits, Greenwood is clearly capable of plumbing every and any depth, just as long as her story portrays Israel in a bad light.

That, of course, makes her a propagandist rather than a journalist: a fact perhaps recognized by whichever Guardian editor decided that this article would be better without comments and corrections from the public at large.

Update: the figures at the head of this article are no longer accurate due to the fact that whilst it was being written another rocket from Gaza exploded near a rural community in Southern Israel at the time when local children were arriving home from school.

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