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Mya Guarnieri’s recent article on CiF prompted me, not for the first time, to ask myself just what makes her ( and others like her who sometimes grace the pages of CiF) qualified to analyse events in Israel according to ‘Guardian think’. A Master of Fine Arts degree from Florida State University is no doubt a worthy achievement in itself, but it hardly seems to be the natural qualification of choice to be demanded from a person engaging in analysis of one of the more politically and historically complicated regions of the world.
Like Seth Freedman with his background in the London stock market and Rachel Shabi with her degree in politics and literature, Guarnieri’s major qualification as far as the Guardian is concerned appears to be that she relatively recently relocated to Tel Aviv-Yaffo. But that in itself is obviously not enough to secure a column on CiF – otherwise we would have several hundred newish residents of Israel’s second city furiously scribbling away on behalf of the Guardian. The point seems to be that the English-speaking new immigrant should be able to combine a familiar Anglo-centric view of Israel which the Guardian reader will not find remotely challenging, together with the moral justification of being a Jewish Israeli in order to deflect criticism of anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic bias.
And thus the reports the reader is served by writers such as Guarnieri, Shabi and Freedman are like choosing a kosher McDonald’s hamburger in a region rich with unfamiliar, exotic food. It may be kosher, but it’s still a hamburger; it has no connection to the deep-rooted traditions and culture of the region. It doesn’t reflect anything of the environment in which it is served – instead it keeps the consumer safely within the confines of known and comfortable reference points. It is neither challenging nor outlook-broadening. It demands nothing of the reader other than to file yet another already anticipated experience in the memory file labelled ‘Israel’.
Like all fast-food, this junk journalism can become addictive, both to the consumer and the producer. A perusal of Guarnieri’s blog shows that since its establishment in April 2008, she has been churning out the same old stuff again and again for outlets such as Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, Ma’an and, of course, CiF. She also contributes to sites which explicitly call for the end of the Jewish state such as Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada. Her promotion of the one-state ‘solution’ and her recurrent theme of Israel as an ever-more totalitarian and fascist state no doubt go down well with the audiences at those outlets, but that doesn’t make her material any more representative of what really goes on in the country which for some reason she has chosen to live than a McDonald’s hamburger eaten between the cramped and bustling market stalls of shouk Hacarmel.
A guest post by AKUS
The Guardian has become notorious for the dissemination of anti-Israeli articles. Many contain factual errors, some outright lies, but we never see significant attempts by the Guardian to correct its errors. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are about the year that has passed, and the year ahead. We examine our souls and our conduct towards others, and ask forgiveness for our sins and faults. It is time for the Guardian to conduct a “cheshbon nefesh” – an accounting of one’s conscience – for the New Year. I will be even more specific – it is time for the Guardian’s Jewish writers to issue apologies for the attacks against Israel that they have largely led on the Guardian’s website.
This year, once again, we have had several egregious and inflammatory articles run by the Guardian. Perhaps the worst was a story about rape in Israel that that was picked up by the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood on July 21st and repeated on July 25th in more detail as Saber Kushour: ‘My conviction for “rape by deception” has ruined my life’ . The articles built on extraordinary claims made largely by Israel’s home-grown hater, Gideon Levy, of Israeli racism when an Arab was apparently found to have committed “rape by deception”.
Rachel Shabi had no trouble using this issue on July 23rd as the “hook” for an article with the attention-grabbing headline Israel turns on its own. Shabi’s article played to all the tropes so beloved by the Guardian’s Israel haters (Israel as a racist, violent, European, Mizrachi- and Arab hating implant in the Islamic world). But it was her brief reference to the rape case (“and now a Palestinian man from Jerusalem has just been convicted of rape after pretending to be Jewish and having consensual sex. This verdict, in effect turning the obfuscation of race into a criminal offence, also reveals the extent to which Israelis consider Palestinians to be abhorrent”) that resulted in the extraordinarily large number of 591 comments below the line:
Arch Israel-hater JRuskin (formerly Moeran) was quick to pick up on the allusion to the rape case:
Readers will doubtless remember the oodles of moral indignation which saturated the pages of CiF back in July when both Harriet Sherwood and Rachel Shabi ascribed racist motives to the verdict of a court case in Israel in which an Arab man was convicted of rape by deception. At the time Shabi declared that:
“This verdict, in effect turning the obfuscation of race into a criminal offence, also reveals the extent to which Israelis consider Palestinians to be abhorrent.”
Sherwood and her co-writer quoted Ha’aretz correspondent (and part-time Palestine Solidarity Campaign groupie ) Gideon Levy:
“Gideon Levy, a liberal Israeli commentator, was quoted as saying: ‘I would like to raise only one question with the judge. What if this guy had been a Jew who pretended to be a Muslim and had sex with a Muslim woman?
‘Would he have been convicted of rape? The answer is: of course not.’”
Adding for good measure:
“Arabs constitute about 20% of Israel‘s population, but relationships between Jews and Arabs are rare. There are few mixed neighbourhoods or towns, and Arabs suffer routine discrimination.”
Well now the full details of the case have come to light due to the publicity ban on the victim’s testimony having been lifted and they indicate an entirely different situation to the one so enthusiastically promoted by Sherwood and Shabi.
Last Friday, Ha’aretz – the newspaper which first broke the story as an example of Israeli ‘racism’ – published the updated details of the case on its website, but in Hebrew only. Interestingly, this time around they have apparently been too busy to provide an English translation. Fortunately, the enterprising Elizabeth Tsurkov has done the work for them and the English version can be read here. Read it for yourself, but, the long and short of it is that racism had nothing to do with it. The “Rape by deception” case turns out to have actually been a “brutal rape of a vulnerable and abused woman.”
This is a guest post by AKUS
The world media – well, actually, pretty much the Guardian and sister paper the Observer – are agog with the latest story from Israel.
A female soldier named Eden Abergil posted a picture of herself on Facebook with two handcuffed Arab prisoners. Despite the Guardian’s attempt to play to the Arab street by allowing the tireless Jewish defamer of Israel, Rachel Shabi, to link the images to the infamous Abu Ghraib pictures in two articles, the prisoners were not being subjected to Abu Ghraib style humiliation. They were not the object of evil buffoonery to which Gilad Shalit has been subjected by Hamas. It was a stupid thing for Abergil to take the picture, and even more so to post it on Facebook. Her action was condemned immediately by the IDF.
Of course, this was a huge opportunity for the Guardian to make the leap from one foolish young woman to promoting the idea that there is a veritable photofest taking place among Israelis serving in the army– which is most young Israelis. Abergil’s “crime”, in reality, was that she was not in the slightest repentant about serving in order to protect Israel from murderous Palestinian terrorists. The Guardian immediately dispatched its crack team of anti-Israeli muckrakers to find nine more examples for a photo gallery, citing “Breaking the Silence” to claim that such pictures are “widespread” (“See more of the Israeli soldiers’ ‘trophy’ photos”) and say something terrible about Israel.
Following Shabi’s lead, the Guardian/Observer’s Harriet Sherwood, eagerly scrounging for news around the fringes of an Israeli society she cannot understand and quite obviously hates, has found (or, more likely, is regurgitating reports from Israeli press or blogs) two Israeli women who served and were horribly shaken by their experiences – Inbar Michelzon and Dana Golan. Sherwood presents them as examples of a sort of brave and no longer silent minority among Israelis for “speaking out”.
What Sherwood seems unable to comprehend or prefers to overlook with a total lack of empathy for the situation in which young Israelis find themselves, is that the experiences related by Abergil, at one end of the spectrum, and Michelzon and Golan at the other end, are part and parcel of a country that is trying to maintain a relatively normal life in an environment where its citizens are daily threatened with rockets, mortars and shameless calls for their extermination. The stories she presents and the arguments about “peace” and “occupation” are hammered out around the kitchen table on a daily basis in every home in Israel – the homes to which she unlikely to ever be invited. After months in Israel, Sherwood has not managed to write a single article that reports a direct, cited, interaction that she has held with Israelis– everything she has written is a digest of second-hand news or reportage from briefings she has attended.
Sherwood is unable to comprehend the unique circumstances in which these three find themselves, unlike anything faced by young woman of similar age in their peaceful Western societies, using professional armies that wage war against enemies half a world away. Pretending that Israel is not at war is quite easy for a reporter on an expense account living in Jerusalem’s hotels, but is something brought home to every family whose members serve for years in regular service, then for weeks each year in reserves. These three women played an active part in ensuring the safety of other Israeli citizens, both Arab and Jew, that is experienced by many Israelis who are face to face with the reality of Hamas along with suicide bombers and snipers from Gaza and the West bank. They were not shop-girls in Oxford Street trying to deal with some difficult customers.
If Sherwood would get the three young woman in a room together, rather than reprinting excerpts from the English language Israeli press or English language Israeli blogosphere, I am sure she would find that there is one thing on which the three will agree – they want the fighting to stop, and everyone, on both sides, to just get on with their lives. Then Sherwood could go home, since she is oblivious to the real life that Israelis live while each, in turn, keeps the enemy at bay.
The breaking of the story about Eden Abergil’s now infamous Facebook photographs prompted not one but two articles by Rachel Shabi in the space of as many days.
Let’s make it clear right from the start; there is no excusing Abergil’s actions and the photographs demonstrated her lack of sensitivity and lack of respect, both for the Palestinians photographed and for herself. But from there to the type of conclusions which Shabi would have her reader reach, the road is very long. And, the generous use of quotations from figures belonging to assorted organisations renowned for employing frequent double standards, and engaging in extreme bias, against Israel indicates Shabi’s desire to make the most of this incident to promote her shameless stereotyping, and smearing, of Israeli society.
Shabi conscripts Dr. Ishai Menuchin , CEO of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), and a founding member and former spokesman of ‘Yesh Gvul’: an organisation which engages in the encouragement of refusal to serve in the Israeli army despite the obligation to do so under Israeli law. Menuchin thinks that conscientious objectors are “heroes” and that the main reason for the continued Israeli/Palestinian dispute and for terror attacks is “the occupation”. In Shabi’s article he is quoted as saying:
“These cruel pictures reflect Israel’s ongoing objectification of Palestinians and complete disregard of their humanity and of their human rights, and especially their right to privacy.”
Menuchin ascribes Eden’s behaviour to:
“an Israeli military culture that brings young Israelis to systematically violate the basic rights of Palestinians”.
This statement of course puts a blanket stereotype upon Israeli society. Menuchin is not saying here that some Israelis objectify Palestinians and disregard their human rights; he is saying that all Israelis do so – and, furthermore, the use of the word ‘systematically’ implies an organized system, method and plan. This assertion is of course very far removed from the truth, both in terms of the civilian and military laws and the IDF’s code of conduct and in terms of the reality which exists on the ground.
In her second article Shabi quotes Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative (aka MIFTAH) – an organization which routinely describes Israel as an ‘apartheid state’ and Palestinian terrorists as ‘activists’ .
“This is not very different to what was exposed at Abu Ghraib in Iraq,” said Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative. “It is not an individual act, or a personal act or a lack of judgment, but a part of the constant racist behaviour that is implanted in the Israeli army and a whole philosophy of discrimination against Arabs and Palestinians. The most important characteristic of this treatment is humiliation.”
This is a guest post by AKUS
In April, Israeli Nurse wrote of the impending changes at the Guardian, following the departure of Georgina Henry to the “Culture” section of the Guardian, which apparently was in need of extra clicks that can only be ensured by posting the anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian articles that are so successful in bringing out the Israel-bashers on CiF’s Middle East section.
Although Georgina Henry was a hard act to follow for sheer malice and double-talk, the Guardian appears to have scored a home-run with the idea of bringing in a feminist Jewish editor to replace Georgina – Katharina Viner (see also ‘She never hated men’ – “But the death at the age of 58 of ‘the most maligned feminist on the planet’ has deprived feminism of its last truly challenging voice, says Katharine Viner”).
We now have a female as-a-Jew leading the charge for endless articles intended to delegitimize and denigrate Israel. Viner sees herself as the torchbearer for Rachel Corrie, the American inadvertently killed as she tried to protect an arms-smuggling tunnel with her body in Gaza.
Viner has quickly equipped herself with a stable of equally biased, fringe female Jewish contributors. There is the deplorably uninformed Mizrachi Shabi. Viner introduced us to new face on the block (see the parrot on Viner’s shoulder), Florida native Guarnieri,(“a Tel Aviv based journalist”), an ultra-leftist new arrival in Israel thoroughly disgraced in her CiF debut by chortling CiFers when she revealed a total lack of understanding of the issue of global foreign worker regulations – and Israel’s adherence to widely accepted policies. A US native, and now, apparently, Israeli immigrant taking advantage of the right-of-return to condemn her new country, as-a-Jew Guernieri performed the remarkable feat of avoiding any mention of what is happening to Mexicans back home in Arizona in her eagerness to condemn Israel for proposing to implement the same rules applied across the Western world.
Rachel Shabi’s latest CiF offering represents yet another effort to find evidence in support of preconceived conclusions – namely, the imminent demise of Israeli democracy.
As ‘evidence’ of Israel’s impending decent into totalitarianism, she utilizes all the hyperbole in her arsenal, providing “examples” free of even the most rudimentary context or perspective.
First, she cites the mysterious “disappearances” of Arab Israelis at the hands of the “secret police,” ignoring quite well-known facts – reported by Israel’s free, and quite feisty, media – concerning the men in question. Amir Makhoul currently awaits trial on what appears to be quite credible charges of spying for the Iranian-backed terrorist group, Hizbollah, whilst Omar Saeed was sentenced to 7 months in prison after accepting a plea bargain.
Next, Shabi cites the case of MK Haneen Zouabi (Balad) who did indeed have some of her parliamentary privileges removed after taking part in the May 31st “Free Gaza” flotilla – sponsored by a group (IHH) with known terrorist affiliations. One wonders how British MPs or U.S. Senators would react to one of their colleagues travelling to Afghanistan to aid the Taliban in its campaign against NATO. Would they make do with the partial removal of Parliamentary privileges? Perhaps more pertinently, how would the Lebanese or Syrian parliaments react to one of their members travelling abroad to help Israel?
FAQs
Q: I’m a new immigrant to Israel from an English-speaking country, with no transferable skills. What’s the best way for me to get ahead?
A: Welcome to Israel! The traditional way to make a new life in Israel is to first attend Ulpan for at least six months and learn the language. Then, as time goes by and your command of the language improves, it is possible to take the courses and exams necessary to convert foreign qualifications into those recognised in Israel, or alternatively to learn a new profession.
However, pioneers in the field have recently shown that there is actually no need to waste one’s time on such a lengthy and antiquated process: if you are capable of stringing a few words together in your native language, the world is your oyster. Unprecedented opportunities exist in the field of journalism and no previous experience is required. Inspiring examples such as Seth Freedman, Rachel Shabi and Mya Guarneiri have proved that it’s not how well you write, but the political narrative you advance, that really matters.
Q: Don’t I need to have some sort of qualifications or experience in order to become a journalist and isn’t there a lot of competition?
A: Absolutely not. If you take care to stick to the correct subject material, the market is virtually unlimited and constantly expanding. Outlets such as the Guardian, the Huffington Post, Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss and Richard Silverstein will be only too happy to print anything you can come up with, as long as it meets the basic condition of painting Israel in the worse possible light.
Of course if you happen to have studied creative writing at some non-exclusive academic establishment this can only help, as you will sometimes find it necessary to rely more upon fiction than the available hard facts. The key words to get into every article are ‘racist’, ‘apartheid’, ‘far-right settlers’ and ‘so-called democracy’. There is little to fear as far as a drying-up of the market is concerned; great care is being taken by a number of elements in the region, in collaboration with respected international bodies, to make sure that the present commercial climate is perpetuated for as long as possible.
July 7th saw Rachel Shabi propping up notions of Palestinian victimhood yet again, this time by resurrecting the decade-old canard of Camp David being a ‘trap’ which undermined the peace process as often propagated by various Palestinian leaders , as well as by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley .
Shabi’s revisionist view (which rejects the well-documented history of what actually occurred at Camp David), is best viewed in the context of the extensive commentary about the talks provided by the man who was actually the chief U.S. negotiator and Special Envoy to the Region – Dennis Ross. In an interview with Fox News in 2002, Ross went into great detail about the reasons for the collapse of the Camp David talks (July 11 to 24, 2000) and the subsequent initiatives.
DENNIS ROSS: Let me give you the sequence, because I think it puts all this in perspective.
Number one, at Camp David we did not put a comprehensive set of ideas on the table. We put ideas on the table that would have affected the borders and would have affected Jerusalem.
Arafat could not accept any of that. In fact, during the 15 days there, he never himself raised a single idea. His negotiators did, to be fair to them, but he didn’t. The only new idea he raised at Camp David was that the temple didn’t exist in Jerusalem, it existed in Nablus.
BRIT HUME (FOX News Chief Political Correspondent): This is the temple where Ariel Sharon paid a visit, which was used as a kind of pre-text for the beginning of the new intifada, correct?
DENNIS ROSS: This is the core of the Jewish faith.
BRIT HUME: Right.
DENNIS ROSS: So he was denying the core of the Jewish faith there. After the summit, he immediately came back to us and he said, “We need to have another summit,” to which we said, “We just shot our wad. We got a no from you. You’re prepared actually do a deal before we go back to something like that.”
He agreed to set up a private channel between his people and the Israelis, which I joined at the end of August. And there were serious discussions that went on, and we were poised to present our ideas the end of September, which is when the intifada erupted. He knew we were poised to present the ideas. His own people were telling him they looked good. And we asked him to intervene to ensure there wouldn’t be violence after the Sharon visit, the day after. He said he would. He didn’t lift a finger.
DENNIS ROSS: The ideas were presented on December 23 by the president, and they basically said the following: On borders, there would be about a 5 percent annexation in the West Bank for the Israelis and a 2 percent swap. So there would be a net 97 percent of the territory that would go to the Palestinians.
On Jerusalem, the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem would become the capital of the Palestinian state.
On the issue of refugees, there would be a right of return for the refugees to their own state, not to Israel, but there would also be a fund of $30 billion internationally that would be put together for either compensation or to cover repatriation, resettlement, rehabilitation costs.
And when it came to security, there would be an international presence, in place of the Israelis, in the Jordan Valley.
These were ideas that were comprehensive, unprecedented, stretched very far, represented a culmination of an effort in our best judgment as to what each side could accept after thousands of hours of debate, discussion with each side.
FRED BARNES (FOX News Contributor): Now, Palestinian officials say to this day that Arafat said yes.
DENNIS ROSS: Arafat came to the White House on January 2. Met with the president, and I was there in the Oval Office. He said yes, and then he added reservations that basically meant he rejected every single one of the things he was supposed to give.
BRIT HUME: What was he supposed to give?
DENNIS ROSS: He supposed to give, on Jerusalem, the idea that there would be for the Israelis sovereignty over the Western Wall, which would cover the areas that are of religious significance to Israel. He rejected that.
BRIT HUME: He rejected their being able to have that?
DENNIS ROSS: He rejected that.
He rejected the idea on the refugees. He said we need a whole new formula, as if what we had presented was non-existent.
He rejected the basic ideas on security. He wouldn’t even countenance the idea that the Israelis would be able to operate in Palestinian airspace.
You know when you fly into Israel today you go to Ben Gurion. You fly in over the West Bank because you can’t – there’s no space through otherwise. He rejected that.
So every single one of the ideas that was asked of him he rejected.
This is a cross-post from Missing Peace
The Guardian in England presented an article by Rachel Shabi titled “Israel’s Apartheid Road”.
Once again the Guardian proved to be obsessed with the apartheid comparison. Shabi succeeded in twisting the facts in order to reach the inevitable conclusion that the opening of the road to Palestinians is in fact a continuation of – in her words- “segregationist policy” by Israel.
Amazingly, Dutch reporter Conny Mus of RTL 4 Television managed to scoop the Guardian this time. In a report that was broadcasted on Dutch television at May 5 he resorted to outright lies about the situation on road 443. Where Shabi defended the murders of innocent Israeli citizens on road 443, Mus didn’t even bother to mention that as the reason for the closure of the road eight years ago.
He presented the closure as an ordinary measure to punish the Palestinians.
Mus, who holds the prestigious position of Chairman of the Foreign Press Agency is relatively unknown in Israel. Over time, he has become increasingly hostile to Israel in his reports.
In this report about road 443 however, he crossed all lines and proved he is unfit to bear the title of journalist let alone to be the chairman of the FPA.
The attacks on road 443
Road 443 which only partly cuts through the West Bank has been closed to Palestinian cars from 2002. This happened after six Israeli citizens had been murdered in their cars by Palestinian terrorists, who fled to Ramallah.
- December 22 2000 Eli Cohen (30) was murdered on road 443
- January 15 2001 Yoella Chen (47) was shot at and killed at a gas station next to road 443
- July 26 2001 Ronen Landau (17) was critically wounded and died later.
- August 25 2001 Doron Sueri, Sharon and Yaniv Ben-Shalom were killed in a hail of bullets, their two baby daughters were wounded but survived the attack.
This is a guest post from Davka
Last week some 100,000 orthodox Jews paraded through the streets of Jerusalem in support of parents wishing to set up a breakaway ‘Ashkenazi’ ultra-orthodox school in the town of Emmanuel – one of the largest demonstrations ever held in Israel.
Like much of the liberal press in Israel and abroad, Rachel Shabi’s Comment is Free piece has spun the Emmanuel affair as an example of ‘discrimination on grounds of skin colour’. While there is never any justification for racism, It is much more complex than that. Some 25 parents who are being ordered to jail for contempt of court are themselves Sephardi, indicating that the affair has more to do with fanatical religious observance than racism.
The tired old charge that this is another example of the ‘Ashkenazi’ establishment ‘s institutionalised discrmination against disadvantaged Sephardim no longer sticks: the Israeli establishment has long ceased to be Ashkenazi, and ethnic differences, with intermarriage running at 25 percent, are increasingly blurred. Jews from Arab and Muslim countries are not some marginalised minority. They account for fifty percent of the population. Sephardim or Mizrahim are broadly represented, have achieved high office in government and have held every ministerial post except prime minister. Neither does the accusation that Israel is hypocritically doing nothing to combat discrimination hold water: plenty of NGOS are working in Israel to bridge the economic and educational gap.
Let’s get some sense of perspective: the Emmanuel affair is a controversy that concerns an ultra-ultra-orthodox sect, the Slonim Hassidim. It affects the extreme ultra-orthodox fringe of Israeli society, one of the few sectors where Ashkenazi-Sephardi differences still matter. It is irrelevant to the vast majority of Israelis.
Cultural differences seem to be the main factor here – while more traditionally observant than Ashkenazim, Sephardim have always been more open to outside influences, while ultra-orthodox Ashkenazim have tended to look inward and cut themselves off from the outside world.
Maimonides, the great medieval rabbi and philosopher, was also physician to Saladdin. This sort of typical Sephardi synthesis of the spiritual and the worldly never existed in the shtetls of eastern Europe. Had Maimonides been alive today, he might well have used the internet and watched TV.
In the Emmanuel case, the ultra-orthodox Ashkenazi parents’ main gripe seems to be that the Sephardi girls, by and large, are not observant enough for their standards. It may all boil down to something as basic as whether the girls are being corrupted by watching TV at home, or whether they keep their blouses buttoned up to the top.
However, the intervention of the Israeli courts has polarised opinion, and politicised an issue that should and could have been settled well away from the glare of international publicity. They are right to insist that a state-funded school must abide by non-discriminatory admissions criteria. But the Israeli Supreme Court should be criticised for handing down draconian jail sentences and insisting on their enforcement. Their heavy-handed approach has only created martyrs. It has forced a confrontation between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’. No one doubts that this serious social faultline in Israeli society needs urgent attention. The ultra-orthodox are one of the fastest growing sectors, but are resented by secular Israelis for not serving in the army or holding down productive jobs.
The very root of the problem, highlighted by the Emmanuel affair, is this: the Sephardi orthodox simply do not have an adequate educational infrastructure of their own. Although the religious Sephardi party Shas has improved matters, Sephardim, driven out from Arab countries in the last 50 years, are still suffering the effects of the destruction of their orthodox heritage. That’s why many ultra-orthodox Sephardim have adopted Yiddish and Ashkenazi orthodox customs – they have become ‘lithuanianised’, as the academic Shmuel Trigano puts it. Religious Sephardim need to be empowered to teach their own Sephardi rich culture and brand of orthodoxy.
The Slonim Hassidim should be encouraged to set up their own private school. This school would have every right to its own admissions policy, but not at the Israeli taxpayer’s expense. This is broadly the line taken by the Sephardi orthodox party Shas . As one secular professor has pointed out, nobody objected to Shas setting up its own Sephardi-only schools: it’s positive discrimination, not racism.
An article such as that written by Rachel Shabi on CiF on April 17th shows not only the true colours of its writer, but also those of some of the commentators below the line and the newspaper which agrees to publish such a piece. Certainly, Shabi appears to agree with the graffiti she quotes:
“Maybe that’s one of the reasons why the graffiti in Nablus urges resistance to the “fake, American-imposed government”. By opting to be the preferred government of the Middle East quartet and Israel, by complying with all those accompanying, belittling and disempowering demands, the PA is backed into a corner – and it will take more than small tactical shifts to clean up its contaminated image.”
The ‘makeover’ actions of the PA which Shabi cites with approval are no less curious. She praises the PA for sending officials to the weekly Bil’in and Na’alin demonstrations against the anti-terrorist barrier, which of course frequently descends into violence and criminal damage. She praises the increase in support for “some models of popular resistance” and the move to boycott goods produced in Judea and Samaria, the prevention of employment of Palestinians by Israelis in the same area, and even the ban on Israeli SIM. In fact for Shabi and those she chooses to quote as supposed authorities on the subject, these actions do not appear to be far reaching enough.
Unsurprisingly, Shabi’s article set the resident CiF btl advocates of BDS into action.
17 Apr 2010, 1:01PM
Meanwhile, the PA has launched a campaign to boycott settlement goods ? “Your Conscience, Your Choice
The PA may not be able to cook the stew, they haven’t got the pot. But Boycott is the one effective thing we can all do to bring things forward, because forward it must be, not this stagnation under an ever more aggressive Israel expansion.
Boycott means small things like the boycott of H&M and more important things like to stop Israel’s membership of the OECD.
This is a guest post by AKUS
After a long hiatus on CiF – perhaps due to the revelations that Shabi’s knowledge of Mizrachi Jews and Israeli geography fall even below the Guardian’s low standards for contributors trying to blacken Israel’s name – Rachel Shabi is back, this time mourning the plight of ‘Israel’s ‘targeted citizens‘ – a deliberately inflammatory heading taken from a film prepared by Adalah referring to Israel’s Arab minority and a tribute to the Guardian’s campaign to create a completely mythical version of what Israel really is. We can now add ‘incitement’ as well as ‘ignorance’ to Shabi’s unimpressive resume, which includes, incredibly, 89 articles authored or co-authored for the Guardian since 2000, starting with ‘If you don’t eat your ice cream, you can’t have your broccoli’.
As usual with articles on CiF, it is always important to dig behind the spin and see what really underpins the prejudice that is being fed to the readers.
Adalah is an organization ostensibly dedicated to defending Arab minority rights in Israel, but, in reality, its primary purpose is to propose the dismantling of Israel as a Jewish state and blacken Israel’s name internationally. For example, Adalah is firmly on the “apartheid” bandwagon:
Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid? A re-assessment of Israel’s practices in the OPT under international law: “Professor Dugard posed the question: “Israel is clearly in military occupation of the OPT. At the same time, elements of the occupation constitute forms of colonialism and of apartheid, which are contrary to international law.” Etc. etc.
Moreover, Adalah has developed its own version of a Democratic Constitution for Israel that in its Introduction immediately references apartheid-era South Africa as an example – or the example – of what Israel is like. Par. 4 of Chapter One essentially lays down the PLO’s approach to Israel. It proposes to use of the Right of Return to turn Israel into an Arab-majority state, links the “Nakba” to the “Occupation” since Adalah does not, in fact distinguish between Israel and the Occupied Territories despite defining Israel’s borders as the pre-1967 Green Line in opposition to UNSCR 242 and the various boundary adjustments that have been discussed between Israel and its neighbors including Syria:
“the State of Israel must recognize its responsibility for past injustices suffered by the Palestinian people, both before and after its establishment. The State of Israel must recognize, therefore, its responsibility for the injustices of the Nakba and the Occupation; recognize the right of return of the Palestinian refugees based on UN Resolution 194; recognize the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination; and withdraw from all of the territories occupied in 1967.”
(Note, by the way, the statement that Israel must recognize even injustices incurred by even BEFORE its founding – i.e., under Ottoman and British rule).
Par. 5 attempts to enshrine the idea that Arab citizens of Israel are not, in fact Israelis – they are Palestinian Arabs:
“The Palestinian Arab citizens of the State of Israel have lived in their homeland for innumerable generations”
This is a guest post from AKUS
Rachel Shabi has become notorious for the errors and fallacies in the articles she submits to the Guardian. A number of sites that keep an eye on its endless negative articles about Israel have forced a retraction for errors committed by her, and an unnamed editor.
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
Rachel Shabi’s appalling lack of empathy for Jews expelled from Arab lands
December 17, 2010 in Uncategorized | Tags: Comment is Free, Danny Ayalon, Guardian, Guest Post, Jewish Refugees, Point of No Return, Rachel Shabi, Saeb Erekat | by Guest/Cross Post | 37 comments
The following is a guest post by Bataween of Point of No Return
Turning up the volume on Jewish refugees has shaken avowed anti-Zionists like Ms Shabi out of their comfort zone: a second set of refugees, they fear, has popped up to challenge the Palestinians’ hitherto exclusive monopoly on victimhood. Except that these Jewish refugees have not suddenly popped up. They and their descendants comprise 50 percent of Israel’s Jewish population. They have been in the background all along, these silent, reproachful reminders of a great and unacknowledged historical injustice. Just because the Arab world has chosen to deny or falsify their narrative, the media have chosen to ignore them, and successive Israeli governments have made the monumental mistake of not making a public issue of them – does not mean that these Jews do not deserve recognition and redress.
Even as Saeb Erekat insists that there will be no peace without justice for Palestinian refugees, so can there be no meaningful peace without recognition for the 800,000 Jews driven out of Arab countries. In fact, addressing the suffering of both sets of refugees is more likely to lead to a lasting peace.
In truth, Jewish refugees, even if not explicitly stated as such, have been on the international agenda from the word go. UN GA 194, UN SC Resolution 242, international and bilateral agreements all address a just settlement of the ‘refugee problem,’ without specifying whether the refugees are Jewish or Arab.
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