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On the first day of the Jewish New Year, Harriet Sherwood was quick off the mark in filing her bid for the highly contested title of ‘Useful Idiot 5772′.
Although there are still twelve months to go and the competition – particularly from her Guardian colleagues – is likely to be fierce, Sherwood may well succeed in holding off the opposition with this masterpiece of the abandonment of critical thinking.
In a ‘copy/paste’ – style offering which faithfully regurgitates selected passages from a so-called ‘report‘ by the Applied Research Centre Jerusalem and the Palestinian Ministry of National Economy, Sherwood seeks to tug the readers’ heart-strings with pathos-laden accounts of how prosperous the inhabitants of PA controlled regions would be were it not for….(drum roll)…..the occupation.
Even if Sherwood did not actually bother to read past the executive summary, her warning bells should have been ringing by paragraph three. There the mask of objective research already slips when the author cannot resist using the phrase “unchanged colonial attitude of Israel” alongside an unreferenced and totally irrelevant quote from Yitzhak Rabin in the pre-Oslo days. By paragraph five, with the use of the phrase “the colonial paradigm of the Israeli occupation”, any self-respecting and conscientious journalist would have been reaching for his or her copy of the professional code of ethics, but not dear Harriet.
“Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist’s credibility. Members of the Society share a dedication to ethical behavior and adopt this code to declare the Society’s principles and standards of practice.”
“Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.
Journalists should: — Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible.”
Did Sherwood test the accuracy of the information in the report?
Obviously not.
Had she done so, she would have been obliged to point out that the entire document is merely yet another tedious exercise in blaming Israel for situations brought about at least in part by Palestinian decisions. In the section on water, for example, she would have brought to her readers’ attention some of the many examples of Palestinian mismanagement including the failure to execute projects granted the relevant permissions over a decade ago, along with the fact that projects in areas A and B do not even require Israeli permission as they come under the PA’s jurisdiction.
In the section on materials, journalistic balance would have required that Sherwood point out that materials such as Nitrogen-based fertilizers, Glycerin and Hydrogen Peroxide can be used to manufacture explosives (as experience in her own country has shown) and that lathes are used by the rocket manufacturers in Gaza to produce Kassam missiles.
Instead, we get the following gem: (emphasis mine)
“Restrictions on the import to both the West Bank and Gaza of goods deemed as “dual use”, such as chemicals and fertilisers which Israel says could be used in the manufacture of weapons, had severely affected manufacturing and agriculture.”
Relating to the part of the report which addresses freedom of movement for people and goods, a responsible journalist would have pointed out that the current restrictions were implemented only after the terror war launched by the PA against Israeli civilians in October 2000 and would have detailed the reasons for both the partial blockade on Gaza and Operation Cast Lead.
Sherwood, however, not only fails completely to bring the other side of the story through her own initiative, she also neglects to adhere to yet another clause in her professional code of ethics:
“— Diligently seek out subjects of news stories to give them the opportunity to respond to allegations of wrongdoing.”
Furthermore, Sherwood has – as usual – omitted to include any background material on her sources and in this case presents a highly politicized ‘think tank‘ which is involved in the BDS campaign as though it were some kind of objective body. This too contradicts the journalistic code.
“— Identify sources whenever feasible. The public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources’ reliability.”
A short Google search should have indicated to Sherwood that the ARCJ’s entire raison d’etre is anything but objective and that its reports must therefore be at best considered politically motivated.
Like love, political ideology is of course famously blind and even more so if its adherent is on a mission to persuade an audience of the merits and justice of a cause which – to put it mildly – requires a certain abandonment of discerning judgment in order to swallow the propaganda employed to further it. On this count too, Sherwood fails to live up to her own profession’s ethical code which demands of journalists that they:
“— Examine their own cultural values and avoid imposing those values on others.”
This article is shoddy work even by Sherwood’s pretty vertically challenged standards, but her inability – or unwillingness – to engage in anything approaching critical thinking means that we can doubtless have every confidence that during the coming year she will manage to outdo even herself.
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On Wednesday, with Rosh Hashanah fast approaching, Jews were treated to another variation of the lie periodically perpetuated by the media that there are roads, parks, or recreation in Israel for Jews-only – tropes meant to evoke the broader narrative of an inherently racist Jewish state.
While there’s much about the piece which deserves fisking, the following passage from Sherwood’s latest story, “Palestinian children woken up in night to be photographed by soldiers“, Sept. 28, deserves speical scrutiny.
I went to Nabi Saleh earlier this week, a West Bank village which has been the scene of weekly protests over a nearby spring for almost two years.
It’s a small village of around 550 residents and the spring is located on land that the Palestinians say is privately owned. But settlers from Halamish [known as "Neve Tzuf", located in the southwestern Samarian hills to the north of Ramallah, 10.7 kilometers east of the Green line], across the valley, began construction work in 2008 to turn the spring into a picnic site and leisure attraction for Jews only.
As CAMERA has pointed out regarding other media outlets who spread the lie of “Jews-only” roads (many of whom indeed later corrected their stories), there are no such religiously restricted sites anywhere in Israel. All public accommodations are open to all Israeli citizens and residentsof all religions and ethnicities.
"Muslims Only" highway in Saudi Arabia the Guardian will never report
As CAMERA noted:
The “Jewish-only”…canard has long been trumpeted by ideologues — Jewish and otherwise — seeking to spread misinformation about Israel. But responsible media outlets, which strive to adhere to journalistic guidelines calling for accuracy, have largely managed to avoid echoing the false claim. [emphasis mine]
Note that CAMERA referred to responsible media outlets, a category which necessarily excludes the Guardian.
Note also that CAMERA referred to journalists committed to accuracy and avoiding false claims, which clearly leaves out Harriet Sherwood.
Moreover, Sherwood’s reference to “Jews only” public accommodations clearly evokes historical comparisons with “whites only” accommodations in the racially segregated pre-civil rights era American South, as well as such racial discrimination in Apartheid South Africa.
While Palestinian leaders openly acknowledge that the future Palestinian state will be completely free of Jews, 25% of Israeli citizens are not Jewish, and yet are afforded the same democratic rights as Jews.
The infamous “Zionism is Racism” UN Resolution of 1975 may have been repealed in 1991 but the spirit of the resolution’s odious moral inversion – which turns a blind eye to the endemic anti-Jewish racism in the Palestinian and Arab world yet obsessively singles out Jewish nationalism for opprobrium – habitually colors Harriet Sherwood’s coverage of Israel.
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H/T Gavin
Here’s the Israeli holiday classic, ”B’Rosh Hashanah”, written by legendary songstress Neomi Shemer.
A guest post by Yitzchak Besser
Yom Kippur in Jerusalem, where the city sits in quiet contemplation, is still breathtaking after more than two millennia of practice. And experiencing the new year on Rosh Hashana with friends and family in the Jewish capital, feeling the kindness and community of a city filled with people celebrating the same holiday as you – that is something which I as a new immigrant still treasure. Then there’s Succot, where people come down from their spiritual high on Yom Kippur and embrace the joy of the holiday season. Quite literally, there was partying in the street and songs in the air.
But there’s one landmark – or rather time-marked, I suppose – day in the Jewish month of festivals which has quietly gone unnoticed. This should come as no surprise; it happens every year. It’s a low-key day in the hectic hustle and bustle of the action-packed month.
That day is Tzom Gedaliah (The Fast of Gedaliah), a day of mourning on the third day of the month, following the celebrations of the New Year. Yet who are we mourning? In fact, nowhere else in the Jewish calendar do we mourn for a single man. Moreover, why Gedaliah? There’s no Tzom Moses or Tzom Solomon, no Fast of Abraham or Fast of Daniel. So what’s Gedaliah got that they don’t?
The truth of the matter was that Gedaliah was a political appointee. In 597 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar and his armies conquered Israel. In order to keep the Jewish populace under control, Nebucahdnezzar brought their leaders to Babylon as captives. He believed that the lower classes would be powerless without someone to guide them. Realizing that his newly acquired territory would need some form of government, Nebuchadnezzar appointed Gedaliah as his governor, safe in the knowledge that he came not from a priestly background nor was he a son of the ruling house of David. While Jewish, Gedaliah did not pose any threat as an upstart leader riling up the locals to overthrow their Babylonian taskmasters.
Unfortunately, Nebuchadnezzar did not count on political subterfuges within the Jewish camp. A Jew of Davidic lineage assassinated Gedaliah in a bid for control over the capital. He and his supporters only later understood the infeasibility of their plans and the likelihood that rather than power, they should have expected a violent reprisal from Babylon. They fled to Egypt out of fear for their lives.
The Babylonians decided that it was too dangerous – politically or otherwise – to leave any vestige of power in the hands of the Jews so they took the last tattered traces of independence from our upstart ancestors. After Gedaliah’s death, Nebuchadnezzar appointed a pagan in his place, though not before taking another large contingency of captives back to Babylon.
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:
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
Why weren’t these deleted? CiF essay about Rosh Hashana elicits antisemitic comments
October 2, 2011 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: Antisemitism, Biased Moderation, Guardian, Rosh Hashanah | by Adam Levick | 7 comments
There is one thing which is certain when reading comments beneath the line at Comment is Free.
Any use of the word “Jew” or “Israel” in even the most apolitical context within CiF commentaries will almost always elicit animosity, in some form or another, from CiF readers, towards Jews or Judaism.
Rabbi Naftali Brawer’s CiF essay, “Today is the time to ask what we are needed for, not what we need“, Sept. 30, is a case in point.
The fact that Brawer’s lucid meditation on the significance of the Jewish New Year – which suggests that this is a time for all people to ask what unique purpose they have in life – isn’t even remotely political presented no obstacle for CiF readers incensed by the mere suggestion of Judaism’s value.
First, there’s this completely off topic attack on Jewish tradition, which still hasn’t been deleted by CiF Moderators.
Then there was the suggestion, by another CiF commenter, of the problem of Jewish supremacism which also has not been deleted, despite being hateful, off topic and, as you’ll see, based on one single sentence from Brawer’s essay taken completely out of context.
Here is the full passage, from Brawer’s essay, which contains the sentence the CiF reader decided to focus on.
So, do CiF moderators believe that the issue of “Jewish supremacism” is a legitimate question, and consistent with Guardian community standards?
Based on at least one Guardian report, by David Hearst, the answer would appear to be in the affirmative.
Some frank clarity on this topic is overdue.
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