Following adisturbingly high number of Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israelis in recent months, including the lethal stabbing assault of a 32-year-old Israeli man in the northern West Bank on Tuesday, Israeli defense officials have expressed concerns that the conflict could lead to a Third Intifada.
Whilst recent violence by Palestinians has involved rock throwing, knife attacks, shootings and the hurling of fire bombs, the fear that such a coordinated outbreak of Palestinian violence could include suicide bombings – which caused so much death and carnage during the Second Intifada – was amplified by a new Pew poll released on April 30.
The new ‘Pew Research Center Survey of Muslims around the Globe‘ finds that Muslim support for suicide bombing in the Palestinian territories is the highest among the the twenty countries surveyed – with 40% of Palestinians agreeing that ‘suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are often/sometimes justified’.
Here’s the Pew graphic illustrating the data:
Additional poll findings on Palestinian opinion includes the following:
Homosexuality: 89% of Palestinians think it’s immoral.
Women’s rights: 89% of Palestinians think women must always “obey” their husband.
Sharia Law: 89% favor the imposition of Sharia Law into their society.
Honor killings: 45% of Palestinians think it’s sometimes justifiable.
Whilst the Guardian’s Ewan MacAskill did briefly note, in passing, the findings on Palestinian support for suicide bombing, in a broader April 30 report which centered on the moderate views of American Muslims, the report was not tagged with the term ‘Palestinian territories‘ – nor did it appear on the Israel, Palestinian territories, or Gaza pages.
Moreover, whilst Harriet Sherwood did recently take a tepid step towards acknowledgingthe problem of Palestinian incitement, it seems unlikely that she will properly incorporate this disturbing new data into future reports on violence in the region.
As we’ve argued repeatedly on this blog, it is impossible to honestly debate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without an honest assessment of Palestinian values and social mores, which are, by any measure, on the extremist right end of the political spectrum and, it would seem, irreconcilable with the ideals of peace and coexistence.
The narrative regarding the deadly terrorist attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012, which the MSM and the Guardian advanced, but which soon was proved to be completely erroneous, suggested that an obscure anti-Muslim film – which, it was claimed, was produced by an Israeli Jew – triggered a “spontaneous” protest outside the embassy, leading to an assault which left four people dead, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.
It soon became apparent that the film – which was actually created by a Coptic Christian – had absolutely nothing to do with the attack.
It is now known that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was a premeditated act of terrorism committed by al Qaeda-linked terrorists.
On September 28, 2000, an Israeli Jew was blamed for inciting what would become known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada – a brutal five-year campaign of Palestinian terrorism, directed largely against Jewish civilians, which claimed over 1,100 innocent lives and injured thousands more.
The Intifada was defined by the hideous tactic of suicide bombing, in which the Palestinian terrorists detonated explosive belts in crowded public places (in order to maximize the loss of life), sending thousands of pieces of shrapnel tearing into human limbs and organs.
On March 27, 2002, a Palestinian suicide bomber named Abdel-Basset Odeh murdered 30 people at a Seder meal at the Park Hotel in Netanya, including several Holocaust survivors
Most who truly understand the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict would have known already that Yasser Arafat started the Second Intifada, but the latest admission by Arafat’s widow, Suha, about the origins of the Intifada – which she similarly acknowledged last year - serves to completely discredit those who continue denying the obvious.
“Yasser Arafat had made a decision to launch the Intifada. Immediately after the failure of the Camp David [negotiations], I met him in Paris upon his return, in July 2001 [sic]. Camp David has failed, and he said to me: “You should remain in Paris.” I asked him why, and he said: “Because I am going to start an Intifada. They want me to betray the Palestinian cause. They want me to give up on our principles, and I will not do so. I do not want Zahwa’s friends in the future to say that Yasser Arafat abandoned the Palestinian cause and principles. I might be martyred, but I shall bequeath our historical heritage to Zahwa [Arafat's daughter] and to the children of Palestine.”
Indeed, among the more common erroneous narratives advanced by the mainstream media (and,of course, the Guardian) is that Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, “sparked” the Second Intifada and that the Intifada began organically – lies repeated so often that causal observers could be forgiven for believing them.
However, commentators of good faith can no longer make such a claim.
Arguing that an Israeli Jew sparked the Second Intifada, however, often serves a broader polemical objective: to deny Palestinian terrorists, and their leaders, moral responsibility for the five-year war of terror against Israeli civilians, and its injurious political consequences, in a manner consistent with an anti-Zionist narrative which rarely assigns such moral agency to the Palestinians under any circumstances.
The claim that, in 2000, Jews incited Palestinians to kill Jews, like so much of what passes for conventional wisdom about the conflict, is a total lie.
According to Romney, the Palestinians are committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel and have no interest in peace;
She then adds, in a manner suggesting that the Guardian Jerusalem correspondent may be auditioning for a future role as spokesperson for the Palestinians:
His characterisation of the Palestinians is wrong. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation, acknowledged as the “sole legitimate representative” of the Palestinian people, recognises the right of Israel “to exist in peace and security”. The Palestinian leadership is committed to a negotiated solution and opposes armed struggle.
One statement purportedly attesting to the Palestinians’ peaceful ways?
Well, that’s enough proof for her!
Such parroting of Fatah ‘hasbara’ is remarkable even for Sherwood, whose sympathy for the Palestinian cause is rarely ever disguised.
Whatever Palestinian leaders say occasionally in public (in English), the role of a reporter is, of course, to see through such unserious platitudes, and Sherwood, in her latest report, doesn’t even go through the motions of such basic fact checking.
If Sherwood would have done so much as search Google she would have determined that Fatah – who attempted or carried out (through various terror groups affiliated with its movement) more than 1,500 attacks during the Second Intifada - has never changed itschartersupporting terrorism and rejecting Israel’s right to exist.
Fatah has not changed to its internal charter calling for the “complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence” through violence.” (Article 12). Other articles which still stand include:
Article 17, which states: “Armed public revolution is the inevitable method to liberating Palestine.”
Article 19, which states that “armed revolution is a decisive factor in the liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence, and this struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated.”
In addition, Fatah:
Still refuses to accept Israel as a Jewish state and insist on the right to resettle millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants within Israel’s pre-67 borders.
Denies Israel’s Jewish history, condemning its “falsification” of history, calls for ”the return of Palestinian sovereignty over the whole of the soil the city of Jerusalem” and insists on the evacuation of Jewish communities in Jerusalem.
Continues to endorse the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade – responsible for numerous suicide bombings and terrorist attacks– as its armed wing.
If Sherwood had an interest in objectively analyzing Romney’s claims, she could have easily come across mounds of evidence attesting to a Palestinian political culture which glorifies terrorism, promotes antisemitism and rejects the very idea of peace and co-existence with the Zionists.
“Since the Palestinian Authority was established it has systematically indoctrinated young and old to hate Israelis and Jews. Using media, education, and cultural structures that it controls, the PA has actively promoted religious hatred, demonization, conspiracy libels, etc. These are packaged to present Israelis and Jews as endangering Palestinians, Arabs, and all humanity. This ongoing campaign has so successfully instilled hatred that fighting, murder and even suicide terror against Israelis and Jews are seen by the majority of Palestinians as justified self-defense and as Allah’s will. The PA presents Jews as possessing inherently evil traits. Jews are said to be treacherous, corrupt, deceitful and unfaithful by nature. These Jewish “attributes” and traditions are presented as the unchangeable nature of Jews. Forgeries and fiction masquerading as history are used to document and support the libel that Judaism is in essence racist and evil. Jews are said to be planning and executing heinous crimes, including burning Palestinians in ovens, murder, using prisoners for Nazi-like experiments, and more.
Palestinian daily: Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 6, 2008,
The PMW report continues:
“The PA assigns responsibility to the Jews for all the problems in the world: Wars, conflicts and civil wars are all said to be triggered by Jews. Indeed, the oppression suffered by Jews throughout history is presented as the legitimate response of nations seeking revenge for the injury caused them by the Jews living among them. The creation of the State of Israel is said to have been a European plot, in order to be rid of their Jews and save Europe from the evil of Jewish presence in their countries.
The Palestinian Authority makes no attempt to educate its people towards peace and coexistence with Israel. On the contrary, from every possible platform it repeatedly rejects Israel’s right to exist, presents the conflict as a religious battle for Islam, depicts the establishment of Israel as an act of imperialism, and perpetuates a picture of the Middle East, both verbally and visually, in which Israel does not exist at all. Israel’s destruction is said to be both inevitable and a Palestinian obligation.
the Palestinian Authority foment violence against Jews and Israelis, presenting it as legitimate and even heroic self-defense.”
Satanic Israeli peace: PA TV broadcast a caricature from the UAE newspaper Al-Ittihad in which Israel is depicted as Death with an olive branch in his mouth - Palestinian TV (Fatah) June 28, 2011
“PA terror promotion takes many forms. Nationalistically, the PA actively elevates violence as a valid and heroic means to achieve political goals, while religiously, fighting and killing Jews has been presented repeatedly by PA religious and academic leaders as Allah’s will. On the social level, Palestinian leaders and society honor even the most loathsome of murderers portraying them as heroes and role models.”
Additionally, Sherwood could have reported a 2012 Palestinian poll indicating that if a presidential election were held today Marwan Barghouti—a terrorist who founded the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades, jailed over his role in directing suicide bombings —would garner the most votes.
She could have also reported the results of another poll in 2010 which found that 59 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank (and 63 percent in Gaza) eventually hope that one state − Palestine − will replace the Jewish state. (The same poll indicated that only 23 percent of Palestinians said they believed in Israel’s right to exist as the national homeland of the Jews.)
She could have noted that 47.5% of Palestiniansstill support terrorist attacks inside pre-1967 Israel.
Or, Sherwood could have cited a 2011 poll indicating that 73% of Palestinians “believe” the Islamic Hadith that preaches it is Islamic destiny to kill Jews.
In fact, a bit of searching on YouTube and the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent may have found the following clip of ‘moderate’ PA leader Mahmoud Abbas admitting that he ordered terrorists to carry out their “operations“.
Later in her Sept. 18 report, Sherwood goes beyond merely shilling for Fatah, and makes a claim about Hamas’ supposed willingness to embrace a ‘peaceful solution’ which their own leaders don’t even pretend to support.
Sherwood:
“The official founding charter of Hamas, the Islamist faction that rules the tiny Gaza Strip, still calls for historic (ie pre-1948) Palestine to be liberated. However, its leaders have repeatedly indicated, albeit sometimes opaquely, that they can live with a Palestinian state within 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.” [emphasis added]
This is simply a lie.
As recently as April 2012, senior Hamas member Mousa Abu Marzook told the Jewish Forward - a leftist publication which would have likely accepted even the most risible claims as to the group’s “moderation” – that Hamas will never recognize Israel as a state, but will only accept a hudna - a tactical temporary cease-fire.
“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad. Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”
Further, the Hamas covenant doesn’t just call for the destruction of the Jewish state, it openly calls for the murder of Jews as such. As recently as last month, the deputy speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Sheik Ahmad Bahr, called for the annihilation of Jews.
A woman doesn’t need permission from her husband, nor a “servant his master’s permission,” in order to engage in jihad, Bahr told his flock. This, he says, is “in order to annihilate those Jews.”
Moreover, if Harriet Sherwood has ever, in her entire career at the Guardian, written a report dealing seriously with Palestinians’ extreme antisemitism – a culture which often promotes the murder of Jews – I’ve never seen it.
The truth is, however, that Harriet Sherwood does not represent an anomaly.
For much of the elite media the Palestinians exist merely as an abstraction. If Israelis continue to be obsessively scrutinized by much of the world – their every act and decision placed under a microscope – the Palestinians are, inversely, one of the least examined, and under-scrutinized, political or national groups.
If Harriet Sherwood and her colleagues were to bookmark Palestinian Media Watch, visit the site regularly and honestly report what Palestinians actually say to each other in Arabic, rather than uncritically accepting the scripted lines they dutifully report to Western journalists, Guardian readers would be unable to continue trumpeting the Palestinian cause with quite the same vigor.
They’d be forced, perhaps, to empathize with Israeli concerns that a future Palestinian state may likely devolve into yet another terrorist run polity, and wouldn’t, in fact, deliver “peace and security”.
In short, such inconvenient facts about the true nature of Palestinian culture would disabuse many of their fanciful notions regarding the “root cause” of the conflict.
In a revealing blog post in 2011, Guardian Assistant Editor Michael White, writing about media self-censorship, made a revealing admission.
White, who’s been with the Guardian for over 30 years, wrote:
[The Guardian has] always sensed liberal, middle class ill-ease in going after stories about immigration, legal or otherwise, about welfare fraud or the less attractive tribal habits of the working class, which is more easily ignored altogether.
Toffs, including royal ones, Christians, especially popes, governments of Israel, and US Republicans are more straightforward targets.
White concluded, thus:
And remember, dear reader, that we are also striving much of the time to tell you what you’d rather know rather than challenge your prejudices or make you cross.”
By exposing Palestinian racism and their culture of violence – thus giving lie the fiction of a peaceful, progressive national liberation movement – the Guardian would be challenging their readers’ considerable prejudices about Jews and Israelis.
In such an extremely unlikely scenario, of course, the institution would actually be able to honestly lay claim to the genuinely liberal values they now so egregiously and consistently undermine.
John Carlin is a journalist and author, whose book ‘Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation’, about the 1995 Rugby World Cup, was the basis for the film Invictus.
He also helped write the script for the film, “Die Hard 4‘.
He has written for many publications, and is a senior international writer for El País, the world’s leading newspaper in the Spanish language.
He’s also been publishing at the Guardian’s blog, ‘Comment is Free’, since 2000.
Fortunately, a fluent Spanish speaker was able to translate one of his recentTweets:
In English, it reads:
“Irrefutable article demonstrating that Holocaust memory is, for the Israeli army, a license to kill Palestinian children”
Which article does Carlin link to, ‘proving’ that Israelis cynically exploit their past suffering to murder kids?
Here it is:
So, what specifically in McGreal’s essaywould lead Mr. Carlin to Tweet such a thing?
Likely, these passages helped:
[Corrie's] death was not arbitrary but one of a pattern of killings as the Israeli army pursued a daily routine of attacks intended to terrorise the Palestinian population of southern Gaza into submission.”
“The case laid bare the state of the collective Israeli military mind, which cast the definition of enemies so widely that children walking down the street were legitimate targets.”
And, finally, where does the Holocaust come in?
It enters the picture in the following passage from McGreal’s piece, citing instances of Palestinian children killed during the 2nd Intifada, which McGreal employs to argue that Rachel Corrie’s killing was consistent with a pattern of IDF behavior.
The Israeli military commander in southern Gaza at the time was Colonel Pinhas “Pinky” Zuaretz. A few weeks after Corrie’s death, I (as the Guardian’s correspondent in Israel) spoke to him about how it was that so many children were shot by Israeli soldiers at times when there was no combat [during the Second Intifada] . His explanation was chilling.
…
“Every name of a child here, it makes me feel bad because it’s the fault of my soldiers. I need to learn and see the mistakes of my troops,” he said. But Zuaretz was not going to do anything about it; and by the end of the interview, he was casting the killings as an unfortunate part of the struggle for Israel’s very survival.
“I remember the Holocaust. We have a choice, to fight the terrorists or to face being consumed by the flames again,” he said.
So, there you have it: Everything John Carlin needed to know about Israel but, until McGreal’s ‘revelations’, was afraid to ask.
And, of course, we have what we need to know about Chris McGreal’s latest anti-Zionist formula: The exploitation of Rachel Corrie’s death, a choice quote, and examples of Palestinian casualties during the Second Intifada to prove his conclusion that the Jewish state hides behind the Holocaust to intentionally kill Palestinian children with impunity.
John Carlin didn’t need a dog whistle to hear McGreal’s hideous defamation of the Jewish state.
Conventional wisdom – as advanced by the mainstream media (MSM) including the Guardian – regarding the factors representing the main obstacles to ending the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict rarely faces much critical scrutiny. Indeed, assumptions regarding the primacy of issues such as “settlements” and “the occupation” are often impervious to contradictory evidence.
Here are a few facts which, if more widely disseminated, would at least allow for a more honest debate about the conflict.
Settlements
Percentage of West Bank land inhabited by Israeli “settlers”, per even Palestinian sources:1.1 %.
Occupation
Percentage of Palestinians in West Bank under Palestinian civilian rule:Between96 and98%.
Palestinian’s want peace?
Percentage of Palestinians who accept Israel’s right to exist: 23%.
Palestinian support for terrorism
Percentage of Palestinians who support suicide bombing: 68% (Highest percentage of any nation/polity in the Arab world).
Palestinian antisemitism
Percentage of Palestinians who openly express an unfavorable view of Jews (and not merely Israelis): 97%.
“Expansionist” Israel
Percentage of land from which Israel withdrew in the 45 years since the Six Day War: More thantwo-thirds. (Sinai, Gaza, South Lebanon and much of the West Bank)
Logic of land for peace:
Israel withdrew from 100% of South Lebanon in 2000, 100% of Gaza in 2005 and 40% of the West Bank under the Oslo Accords.
Contrary to expectations, Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon dramatically strengthened the political influence and military capacity of Hezbollah and arguably led to the Second Lebanon War.
Similarly, Israeli withdrawal from Gaza resulted in the territory being taken over by Hamas, more than 8,000 rockets fired at Israeli communities and, ultimately, the Gaza War.
Israel’s military pullout from much of the West Bank created a vacuum which was filled by Palestinian terrorists, thus creating the dynamics which prepared the ground for the 2nd Intifada.
Lessons learned:
Finally, whilst none of these facts should necessarily preclude negotiations between the two parties, it is vital that the clichés, distortions and outright lies about what truly prevents a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian (and Israeli-Arab) Conflict be abandoned and a more sober, and factual, understanding of the moral and political dynamics embraced.
These have included the accusation that he was poisoned by Polonium 210, the same substance which killed Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. The Polonium theory was also advanced, for example, by antisemiticextremistIsrael Shamirin 2006.
Interestingly, a report in 2005 by The New York Times (which had access to Arafat’s medical records) concluded that he died of “a stroke that resulted from a bleeding disorder caused by an unknown infection,” but noted that the “findings argued strongly against poisoning”.
However, just yesterday, July 4, Al-Jazeera revived the story, and claimed that the results of “a 9 month investigation” of the death of Arafat “uncovered radioactive polonium on [Arafat’s] final belongings,” a story which has spread across the web.
Of course, many of us at CiF Watch have been more concerned with the absence of information, in most of the coverage of these “revelations”, regarding Arafat’s death toll – the casualties resulting from a terrorist war against innocent civilians which he helped to revolutionize.
So, yesterday, we Tweeted the following which, as of this post, has been ReTweeted 88 times:
Hopefully, the success of our (under 140 character) observation about the legacy of Arafat indicates that the notoriety of the man (known as “The Father of Modern Terrorism“) will not soon be forgotten.
Today there are some 50 barriers and fences in the world. Bill Clinton, who came to power promising “a bridge to the 21st century,” gave the US the wall with Mexico; Spain built fences to keep out Moroccans; India is walling off Kashmir and Bangladesh; South and North Korea share the most heavily fortified border in the world.
Elsewhere, Saudi Arabia has an epic wall project; the glitz, wealthy Arab sheikhdoms are closing the border with dirt-poor Oman; Russia is considering walling off Chechnya; Western Sahara has “the Wall of Shame”; Cyprus is entirely divided by walls; Belfast is a fenced city of brick, iron and steel barriers, and even the ultra-liberal Nederlands built a fence around the Hook of Holland.
But only Israel’s barriers have been condemned by the International Court of Justice, only Israel’s fences have received round-the-clock coverage on CNN and front page stories on the New York Times, only Israel’s checkpoints are turned into the meccas of “peace” activists and are condemned by Western public opinion as an instrument of harassment used to subjugate a proud “native” people, whose only crime is wanting freedom, or “liberation.”
While foreign fences keep out livestock and refugees from neighboring countries, only Israel’s fences and checkpoints have a truly humanitarian reason: to secure the civilian population’s right to life. Only in Israel barbed wire, patrol roads, sand tracking paths, video cameras and electronic sensors are used to prevent a restaurant, a shopping mall or a hotel from being turned into carpets of human bodies.
Paradoxically, barriers have been anathema to Jews since 1179, when the Vatican Council established the medieval ghettos throughout Europe. Yet very soon, the Jewish State will be enclosed by steel and concrete. Israel is erecting another fence to protect its civilian population from terrorist fire. After Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights, Gaza and the Egyptian border, it’s the turn of Metulla, the northern city hit by Hezbollah rockets and where Yasser Arafat’s killers murdered tourists and students.
Vital anti-terrorism instrument
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government just removed several roadblocks in the territories to ease Palestinian daily life. It’s a difficult decision, as in the past Israelis have been killed after checkpoints were removed. Since 2008, Israel removed some 30 checkpoints throughout the territories, leaving 11, mostly located along the Green Line.
None of the other fenced countries have infiltrators with the “holy” purpose of killing people. Tijuana, the symbol of the wall dividing US and Mexico, is not Qalqilya, a Palestinian city 15 kilometers from Tel Aviv, ringed by a fence and checkpoints. It’s Qalqilya, not Tijuana, that has been called the “Paradise Hotel”, because the city was used by suicide terrorists as the jumping off point into Israel. It’s from Qalqilya, not Tijuana, that terrorists can bomb Tel Aviv’s Azrieli towers, which can be seen from the city’s hills.
The checkpoints, Israel’s most common barriers, are its most vital and disruptive counterterrorism instrument. Unlike Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, which today is a monument to oppression’s defiance, Israel’s checkpoints are a symbol of life. According to the IDF, some 30% of Israel’s counterterrorism arrests took place at the roadblocks.
Israel improved the quality of life at the checkpoints with bathrooms and shaded areas. But Palestinian terrorists then deliberately took advantage of it. In 2004 a Palestinian woman killed four Israelis at a checkpoint in Gaza by pretending to be disabled. Because of her condition, the soldiers performed their security checks without first using a metal detector. She then detonated her explosive device.
It’s true that everyone who goes through a checkpoint is treated as an enemy. It’s true that checkpoints are an insult to Palestinian daily life. But without the checkpoints, fences, roadblocks and barriers Israel would never be able to exist.
Explosive belts and bombs are regularly detected at the checkpoints, but Western media outlets usually don’t report it.
Today it’s only because of these symbols of security that Israelis are no longer assailed by suicide bombings and shootings like they were during the height of the second Intifada.
We can draw the same lesson from the embassies’ metal detector, Ben Gurion Airport’s strict security procedures, the guards at the entrance to Tel Aviv’s shopping malls, the so-called “apartheid wall,” and the nuclear plant in Dimona. If the Arabs disarm, there will be peace; but if Israel disarms, there will be another Holocaust.
Giulio Meotti, a journalist with Il Foglio, is the author of the book A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel’s Victims of Terrorism
[While I read the Guardian everyday now, I wasn't so "privileged" back during the Palestinian wave of terror known as the Second Intifada. While I did know that the Guardian made a morally incomprehensible comparison between Jenin (Israel's Operation Defensive Shield) and 9/11, I didn't realize that they never published an apology, even after the narrative of "Jenin Massacre" was definitively disproven. This essay at Harry's Place, (which they submitted to, and was rejected by, editors at Comment is Free), thoroughly fisking the Guardian's coverage of the battle of Jenin, is simply required reading for anyone wishing to understand their institutional anti—Israel journalistic malice — AL]
For two full weeks in April of 2002, the Guardian ran wild with lurid tales of an Israeli massacre in the Palestinian city of Jenin on the West Bank — a massacre that never happened. The misrepresentations and outright fabrications have never been properly addressed in the ten ensuing years, as though the Guardian’s editors believe nothing more than some hasty reporting and bad sourcing happened. But the reportorial failings were far too systematic to be so dismissed, and until the Guardian conducts a thorough investigation of its own errors and publishes a detailed account to its readers, its integrity on Israel-Palestine will continue to be called into question.
First the facts: On the heels of a thirty-day Palestinian suicide bombing campaign in Israeli cities which included thirteen deadly attacks (imagine thirteen 7/7’s in one month), Israel embarked on a military offensive in the West Bank. The fiercest fighting in this offensive occurred in the refugee camp just outside the West Bank town of Jenin, the launching point for 30 Palestinian suicide bombers in the year and half previous (seven were caught before they could blow themselves up; the other 23 succeeded in carrying out their attacks). In this battle, which lasted less than a week, 23 Israeli soldiers were killed as well as 52 Palestinians, of whom at most 14 were civilians (there is some marginal dispute about that last figure).
There was nothing extraordinary in this battle or in these numbers. Looking back, what is extraordinary is that Ariel Sharon’s Israel sat through 18 months of Palestinian suicide terror before embarking on even this military offensive. Seamus Milne assured readers on April 10 of the ‘futility’ of this military response, though with the benefit of hindsight we can clearly see this battle as the turning point in the struggle to end suicide terror on Israel’s streets. Milne referred to ‘hundreds’ killed, ‘evidence of atrocities,’ and ‘state terror.’ Not to be outdone, Suzanne Goldenberg reported from Jenin’s ‘lunar landscape’ of ‘a silent wasteland, permeated with the stench of rotting corpses and cordite.’ She found ‘convincing accounts’ of summary executions, though let’s be honest and concede that it’s not generally difficult to convinceGoldenberg of Israeli villainy. In the next day’s report from Jenin, a frustrated Goldenbergreportedthat the morgue in Jenin had ‘just 16 bodies’ after ‘only two bodies [were] plucked from the wreckage.’ This didn’t cause her to doubt for a moment that there were hundreds more buried beneath or to hesitate in reporting from a Palestinian source that bodies may have been transported ‘to a special zone in Israel.’ Brian Whitaker and Chris McGreal weighed in with their own equallytendentious and equally flawedreporting the following week.
If there was one event that made the Second Intifada more deadly than it might otherwise have been, it was the apparent shooting of Mohammed Al Durrah (Al Dura/al Durah) on September 30th, 2000 that was filmed by Arab cameraman Talal abu Rahmah on behalf of France 2 TV producer Charles Enderlin. This was the few seconds of video that showed the boy cowering with his father behind a barrel at the Nitzanim junction in Gaza in a video and an image that have become infamous.
The accusation to this day surfaces constantly on the internet and doubtless in Islamic media even though it has been conclusively shown to have been impossible for Israeli soldiers to have shot the boy or his father from their position.
In fact, it has never been proven that al Durrah was actually killed (there was never a body produced).
If al Durrah was shot it has been conclusively shown to have been done by Palestinians firing at the two from virtually point-blank range behind the cameraman abu Rahmah.
The two were completely shielded from Israeli bullets by the barrel behind which they were cowering and exposed to bullets from the Palestinian position. However, even the boy’s death is disputed since he is shown moving after he is supposedly killed and there is a strong suspicion that the whole thing was a Pallywood production in which the father had agreed to act due to a previous encounter with Hamas (and this is where the latest news surfaces – see below).
Abu Rahmah was brought in to do the filming, and Enderlin was only too happy to get the results and edit them for maximum effect. There is an excellent video reconstruction of the events on YouTube, if you can ignore the disgusting comments below the video by those who either will not accept the truth or want to continue to use the event to libel Israel, at Birth of an Icon.
France 2, Abu Rahma and Enderlin consistently denied faking the scene by selectively filming then editing the few seconds of the action that they showed. Their version is widely available on the Internet to this day.
As more doubts about the events that day surfaced (even the IDF accepted the initial reports), the father, Jamal al Durrah, paraded scars he claimed were the results of the Israeli bullets that hit him in an effort to persuade the public of his and the France2’s version of events. In fact, he became something of a cause célèbre, trotted out routinely at anti-Israeli events and in anti-Israeli media.
As it happened, an Israel orthopedic surgeon, Dr. David Yehuda of Tel Hashomer Hospital became aware of these claims, and the case rang a bell with him. When he checked his records, he found that he had treated Jamal Al Durrah for wounds inflicted upon him by Hamas in 1994 when they suspected him of collaborating with Israel! The scars al Durrah paraded were from the wounds inflicted by Hamas and the subsequent surgery. (There is some confusion in the press as to the doctor’s correct name as both names – “Yehuda” and “David” – could be first or last names. In Israel people are sometimes addressed by last name first, rather than the usual way. He appears in the media as both Yehuda David and David Yehuda).
In fact, the suspicion has been raised that Jamal al Durrah agreed to act in the Pallywood production to “repay his debt”, so to speak, to Hamas, for his previous actions.
Jamal al Durrah then sued Dr. Yehuda and a French magazine that published his story for libel in France in 2008. Of course, it is rather unclear how a semi-illiterate Gazan could have done this. It appears he was funded by an unknown source. Like Enderlin in the Karsenty libel case (see additional material below), on April 29th, 2011 al Durrah won his suit despite the evidence of Dr. Yehuda’s medical records! Dr. Yehuda was ordered to pay thousands of Euros in damages.
Dr. Yehuda vowed to fight back, and on Wednesday, February 15th 2012 the French Supreme Court acquitted him of slandering al Durrah. Another of the lies has been exposed, and it is now even less clear that either al-Durrah – son or father – was actually wounded or killed that day.
Another brick has been torn down from the wall of lies, falsehoods, edited film, and propaganda that has been erected around this patently falsified event in order to demonize Israel. Nevertheless, until a French court forces Enderlin to release the entire film clip, and rules on the actual complaint that the footage was doctored to create a false impression, this affair will continue to damage Israel’s image.
——-
Additional background:
Richard Landes is probably the most important voice tracking the whole affair (see this page on his blog, Al Durah Affair: The Dossier). There also is a chronology of events atLandes’ site.
“On 31 October 2003, I sat down in the France 2 studios in Jerusalem and watched the rushes with Charles Enderlin and his Israeli cameraman, who happened to have been in Ramallah with him on 30 September 2000. That was when the shingles fell from my eyes.
“Much of the footage had a familiar quality: it resembled the footage I had seen in Shahaf’s studio, either boring or staged. At one point a Palestinian adult grabbed his leg as if he’d been shot and limped badly. Here, for the ‘scene’ to work, a half-dozen others should have picked him up and run him past cameras to an ambulance. But only kids gathered around him who were too small to pick him up. The man shooed them away, looked around, realized no one’s coming, and walked away without a limp.
“Enderlin’s Israeli cameraman laughed. When I asked why, he said, ‘It seems staged.’ I replied, ‘Everything seems staged.’ And then the other shoe dropped. ‘Oh, they do that all the time,’ Enderlin offered helpfully, ‘it’s a cultural thing; they exaggerate.’ ‘But if they do it all the time, why couldn’t they have done it with al-Dura?’ ‘Oh, they’re not good enough for that.’
“At that moment I realized the full-double-extent of the problem: Palestinians stage all the time, and Western journalists have no trouble with that. Any serious journalist who had a cameraman who filmed extensive staged scenes for him should either have told him that was unacceptable or fired him. Enderlin, the dean of Middle East journalism, had been working with Abu Rahma for more than a decade at this point, and he clearly had done neither. On the contrary, he told everyone that Abu Rahma was a superb journalist who met all the Western professional standards.”
Philippe Karsenty took up the issue in France and was fined 1 Euro and costs in 2006 when he was sued by France 2 for disputing their presentation andthe judge awarded the libel case to France 2.
“German filmmaker Esther Schapira releases her film, “Three Bullets and a Dead Child: Who Shot Mohammed al-Dura?” in which she concludes that Israeli bullets could not have killed the boy. France 2, sister station of the German ARD which produced the film, refuses to air it.”
Not to be outdone by France 2, as Landes notes, Suzanne Goldenberg, of the Guardian (UK) and the primary source of another outrageous libel, the so-called “Jenin Massacre”, “ published a lengthy article titled ‘The Making of a Martyr,’ in which Mohammed is eulogized and Israelis demonized”.
Being a useful Jewish reporter no doubt increased the impact of both her reports. Other networks, notably CNN, did much the same. Given the Guardian’s wide circulation among the left and Islamists who wish to delegitimize Israel, Goldenberg’s article was one that had great impact among the many reports on this affair and is still frequently referenced and has never been corrected or retracted by the Guardian.
One of the most powerful descriptions of the miscarriage of justice in France in the Karsenty trial and the way the French media establishment tried to protect Enderlin as one of their own even when they knew the facts is “L’affaire Enderlin” written by Anne-Elizabeth Moutet at The Weekly Standard:
You could see Palestinians being carried on stretchers into ambulances, then coming out again unharmed, all in a kind of carnival atmosphere, with kids throwing stones and making faces at the camera, despite what was supposed to be a tense situation. The tape showed occasional gunshots, not continuous firing. From the general horsing around captured on film by Abu Rahmeh, Mena concluded that the whole scene must have been staged.
CiF Watch has commented on the issue several times, and cross-posted a very compelling essayby David Solway about Karsenty.
Finally, here’s a great video about L’Affair Al-Durrah by Richard Landes.
Lara Pawson’s CiF essay on Oct. 20, “When a white face becomes the face of the Congo“, is a perfect illustration of the egregious double standards, operating under a veneer of anti-racism, which continues to deny moral agency to those categorized (often arbitrarily) as “people of color”.
Indeed, such reasoning, where victim and perpetrator in the Middle East is pre-assigned, continues to skew the Guardian’s coverage of Israel and the Middle East.
Pawson opens her essay as follows:
“We have learned a lot about the 25-year-old Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit since his arrival in Egypt on Tuesday. We know the name of his father, Noam Shalit, his mother, Aviva Shalit, and that of his hometown, Mitzpe Hila. We know he was wearing a black baseball cap and a grey shirt when he was handed over to the Egyptian authorities. We know that despite looking gaunt, medical experts have judged him in good health. We also know the sound of this young man’s voice and what he said to journalists before finally returning home.”
Pawson then complains:
“What do we know about the 1,027 Palestinians for whom Shalit was exchanged? Can you name a single one? Beyond a summary of the crimes for which they were convicted in Israel, we know little else.”
Does Pawson really want to find out more about the terrorist history of such released prisoners? Not likely.
But, if she truly wants to know more about such faceless Palestinians, here’s a summary of the five top released terrorists, along with the Israeli victims of their ruthless acts.
YEHYA SINWAR
The 49-year-old Gaza native, who is generally considered the most senior prisoner released,helped establish Hamas’s military wing in Gaza — including an internal security network that killed Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel — and was serving four life sentences for his involvement in the 1994 kidnapping and murder of Israeli soldier Nachshon Wachsman. According to Al Jazeera, Sinwar’s brother, Mohammed, may have helped engineer Hamas’s abduction of Gilad Shalit. Upon returning home to Gaza, Yehya Sinwar stated that capturing Israeli soldiers was the best way to free Palestinian prisoners. “For the prisoner, capturing an Israeli soldier is the best news in the universe, because he knows that a glimmer of hope has been opened for him,” he declared, per the New York Times.
WALID ANAJAS
The 31-year-old Hamas operative was serving 36 life sentences for his role in suicide bombings at Jerusalem’s Café Moment (11 killed) and the Rishon LeZion pool hall (16 killed) in 2002 during the Second Intifada.
Here are the Israeli victims of Anajas’s actions:
HUSAM BADRAN
The Hamas military leader helped plan many of the deadliest suicide bombings of the Second Intifada, including 2001 attacks on a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem (15 killed) and a disco near the Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv (21 killed), and 2002 attacks on a Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya (30 killed) and the Matza restaurant in Haifa (15 killed). Israel has decided to relocate Badran, who was serving over 17 years in prison, abroad rather than return him to the West Bank.
On June 1, 2001, a Hamas suicide bomber blew himself up outside a discotheque on a beachfront in Tel Aviv, Israel, killing 21 teenagers and injuring 132.
Here are the Israeli victims of Badran’s acts:
Israeli victims of suicide attack in 2001 at discoteque
More Israeli victims of discotheque bombing
Passover massacre
Here are the Israeli victims of the Passover massacre:
Israeli victims of Passover massacre
Suicide bombing in Matza Restaurant in Haifa (Mar 31, 2002)
Here are the Israeli victims.
Ron Aviel
Orly Ofir
Ofer Ron,
Anat Ron
Shimon Koren
Ran Koren
Gal Koren
Adi Shiran
Shimon Shiran
Suheil Adawi
Moshe Levin
Danielle Menchel
Ya'akov Shani
Daniel Carlos Wegman
Carlos Yerushalmi
AHLAM TAMIMI
The 30-year-old former television reporter helped plan and carry out the Sbarro pizzeria bombing, driving the suicide bomber, and the bomb, to the restaurant. Frimet Roth, the mother of a 15-year-old victim, wrote an editorial in Haaretz over the weekend criticizing the Israeli government for releasing Tamimi, whoexpressed no remorse for participating in the bombing in 2006 and has since vowed to carry out a similar attack if she has the chance.
Israeli victims of Tamimi’s act:
ABED EL-AZIZ SALHA
In 2000, a 20-year-old Salha arrived at a Ramallah police station where two Israeli reservists had been taken and beaten by a mob after they mistakenly drove their car into the West Bank city. As Haaretz tells it, Salha removed a knife from the back of one of the soldiers and stabbed him three more times. He then proudly waved his bloodied hands outside the window in what was one of the most horrifying images of the Second Intifada. He was sentenced to life in prison and will be relocated to Gaza
ABED EL-AZIZ SALHA holds his bloodstained hands aloft for the baying mob below
IDF Reservists Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossef Avrahami: Israeli victims of the Ramallah lynching
Pawson’s perverse logic concludes:
[The way the stories are told by the MSM] tell us who holds power and how it is reproduced, and how closely today’s hierarchies are connected to centuries of history. They remind us that we have created a world in which a thousand Palestinians are equal to one Israeli.
No, actually, something closer to the opposite is true. The reason why the media has provided a few sympathetic portrayals of Gilad Shalit is because, unlike the Palestinian terrorists noted above, he was being held captive for five years yet hadn’t committed a crime of any sort.
The insistence of Pawson and her political fellow travelers to deny moral agency to the Palestinian terrorists who murdered so many Israeli civilians – and, upon their release, have vowed to commit more acts of violence – suggests a two-tier system of ethics and justice: one for Israelis (for whom they assign maximum moral responsibility), and another for Palestinians (whose crimes they minimize, rationalize, or simply ignore).
It is this profound moral pathos (which informs such blatant liberal racism) that, more than anything else, continues to define the rigid ideology known as the Guardian left.
This is cross posted from the site, Missing Peace, and serves as a rebuttal to Harriet Sherwood’s report, “Israel approves new settler homes in East Jerusalem, Sept. 27., which characterized the plan to build new apartments in Israel’s capital as “provocative” and a threat to peace.
A new international outcry about the latest building plan in Jerusalem has led toa mini crisis in German Israeli relations.
Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly called Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in order to criticize a building plan in the Gilo neighborhood. Last week the plan received initial approval from the Jerusalem district planning and building committee of the Israeli Interior Ministry.
Earlier Merkel’s spokesman had expressed doubts about Netanyahu’s seriousness in regard to new negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.
Merkel wasn’t the only European leader to criticize Israel for approving the building plan, which will provide 1100 much needed new apartments to the population of Jerusalem.
EU commissioner Catherine Ashton also joined the chorus and called the plan ‘provocative’ and even urged Israel to ‘reverse its plans’.
Aside from the fact that these criticizers are totally ignorant when it comes to some of the most basic facts about Jerusalem and Gilo, there is also the deafening silence in light of Palestinian intransigence and blatant violations of signed peace accords.
Recently PA president Mahmoud Abbas, officially announcing the Palestinian statehood bid – which by the way constitutes a violation of the Oslo accords - delivered a speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations, that wasfull of distortions and incitement against Israel.
He received applause.
Similarly Senior Fatah official Abbas Zaki last week openly declared that the PA attempts to obtain full UN membership, were in fact meant as a next step towards the establishment of a Palestinian state in place of Israel.
No international outcry followed.
But let us return to the claim that the building of 1100 units in Gilo threatens peace or even the peace negotiations.
Here are seven facts everyone making claims like these should know:
1. Gilo is not a settlement. The Jerusalem neighborhood, situated roughly one kilometer beyond the 1948 armistice (Green) line, was mainly built on land that was purchased by Jews before World War 2. After 1967 when Israel in fact recaptured Gilo, additional land was sold to Israelis by Jabra Hamis the former mayor of Beit Jallah . The same land was later used for building projects in Gilo.The status of Jerusalem was left out of the 1947 partition plan and out of the Oslo accords. Jerusalem has had an overwhelming Jewish majority since the second half of the 19th century and has always been the capital of Israel.
2. Final status talks between Israel and the PA always focused on keeping Gilo and other Jewish neighborhoods beyond the Green Line within Israel.
3. Israel never committed itself to a building halt in Jerusalem. The city is suffering from a severe housing crisis caused by a lack of building due to political pressure and a shortage of available land in West Jerusalem, where the city borders one of Israel’s most important nature reserves. As a result rent for an average three room apartment in a Jewish neighborhood has skyrocketed to 900 $ a month. Compare that to the 220 $ for an average three room apartment in a Palestinian town on the West Bank.
4. The approval of the building plan by the Israeli Interior Ministry does not mean that building will start tomorrow. The process of building a neighborhood in Israel can take up to ten years from the moment a plan is submitted for initial approval to the first of a series committees dealing with building plans.
5. The particular plan in Gilo deals with building within the current neighborhood, as is shown on the maps below. Most of the building will take place in parts of the Gilo Forest on land situated between two ‘peninsula’s’ on the west side of Gilo, opposite land within the Green line where the Jerusalem Zoo and the Central Train Station are located.
6. No Arab village on the southern or eastern side of Gilo is threatened by the building plan, nor are the planned units ‘encroaching’ on land owned by Arabs.
7. Gilo is the only Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem directly bordering an area under PA control. The strategic importance of Gilo to the security of Jerusalem became clear during the Second Intifada, when Palestinian terrorists conducted daily shooting attacks on the neighborhood from BeitJallah. As a result houses on the east side of Gilo had to be fortified. In the end a huge wall was built to protect Gilo against incoming fire from Beit Jallah.
Meanwhile Danny Ayalon Israel’s deputy Foreign Minister criticized the foreign intervention in building affairs in Jerusalem and said that the condemnations only serve the Palestinian agenda of making preconditions to complicate future peace negotiations.
Indeed, the way large parts of the international community react to building in the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem has taken the form of a Pavlovian response in which rationality doesn’t matter anymore.
Apparently all that counts is to make clear that, contrary to the historical and legal Jewish claim on the whole of Jerusalem, Israel has no business in the parts of Jerusalem that where illegally occupied by Jordan during the war of independence in 1948.
google map of Gilo showing the area's where the building is scheduled (D,E,F)
Her profile of the Palestinian “man on the street” includes the following:
For those unaware, the al-Quds Brigade is the military wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), an Islamist group designated by the U.S., the EU, the UK, Japan, Canada, and Australia as a terrorist movement.
Their goal is the destruction of Israel and its replacement with an Islamist state. While PIJ is primarily interested in a Jihad for destroying Israel, it also opposes “moderate” Arab governments, whom they see as being insufficiently Islamic and too Western.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad
PIJ was formed in 1979 by Islamic fundamentalists who had split from the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza whom they deemed too moderate.
Here is Sherwood’s profile of Abu Ahmed, which, we are told, is not his real name.
His family came to Gaza City in 1948 as refugees from Beit Jirja, a village that has now been absorbed into the Israeli town of Sderot, a town just across the border at which his fellow militants regularly fire rockets.
Get it? Ahmed’s fellow militants‘ firing of rockets at Israeli civilians in Sderot (and, we are to believe, only at Sderot) is a perfectly reasonable response to the fact that 63 years ago Israel took control of the city.
He joined the Islamic Jihad movement when he was at high school, but it was only during the second intifada that he became active in the group’s militant wing, al-Quds Brigade.
Yes, we all remember our high school days, don’t we? Some people joined the chess team, others played sports, but Ahmed instead decided on the “political wing” of a terrorist group committed to the destruction of the Jewish state. Who are we to judge?
Ahmed:
“I believe military action [is] the only way to liberate our land,” he explains. “I saw we had two choices, victoryormartyrdom.”
Yes, because, either way, he wins!
Continues Sherwood:
Ahmed keeps a low profile for fear of being targeted by the Israeli Defence Forces in retaliation for the regular rocket attacks on civilians in southern Israel. But even as a father, personal safety is a sacrifice he’s happy to make.
“There is no conflict between being a militant and a father,” he says. “We are ready to sacrifice even our family. My eldest son is 13 now, but I would prefer him to be educated and go to university first. The educated militant is better than the uneducated militant.“
Ahmed clearly loves his family so much he’s even willing to sacrifice his sons’ lives to give his people a world without Israel. And, of course, an educated Shahid is naturally always preferable to an ignorant Shahid.
Sherwood concludes by quoting Ahmed, thusly:
“I think if we united our nation’s efforts, the people of Israel would flee. And when there is no Israel, there will be peace all over the world. Jews are trouble-makers.”
So, Abu Ahmed is living proof that you actually don’t need to read the Guardian to understand that Jews are trouble makers and that Israel’s destruction would bring world peace and harmony.
The beautiful thing about language is that so much meaning depends on the turn of a phrase, a slight grammatical alteration, or the choice of one word over another.
While the Guardian has mastered modern day anti-Israel newspeak better than most, much of the mainstream media is equally as adept at the sometimes arduous task of avoiding directly assigning moral agency to Palestinian terrorists or, alternatively, assigning humanity to their Jewish victims.
The Guardian’s Conal Urquhart is a master at such ideologically driven rhetorical tricks – a talent which was on full display in his report on the Jerusalem terrorist attack back in March – in which a terrorist planted a bomb laced with shrapnel at a crowded bus station, killing a woman and injuring dozens. Urquhart informed us alternately, in the same article, that “a bomb exploded” and, then, that “a bus exploded”, without once suggesting that an act of terrorism was intentionally committed by someone, nor noting that the attack on innocent Israeli civilians was quite obviously the work of a terrorist or even the more politically correct “militant”.
“Israel began building the barrier in late 2002 to keep out Palestinian attackers amid a wave of suicide bombers targeting its cities. It says the structure is needed to keep militants from reaching Israeli population centres.”
In addition to the skillful avoidance of the word terrorist anywhere in the passage, note that these faceless suicide bombers were merely “targeting”, rather than successfully murdering, not Israeli civilians, but, rather, “its cities”.
No, it shouldn’t need repeating, but in the age of delegitimization, where every conceivable tool is employed to avoid casting Israelis as victims, and Palestinian terrorists as perpetrators, the following can’t be repeated enough.
The 2nd Intifada was a coordinated effort by Palestinian terrorists to kill as many innocent Israeli men, women, and children as their shrapnel ridden explosives could achieve – a murderous onslaught which successfully claimed over 1,000 lives and maimed thousands more. ”Cities” weren’t the target. Jews were.
Israel’s security fence represented the efforts of a democracy under siege to do what any nation facing such a threat would attempt: to protect its civilians from the terrorists’ murderous designs.
In the cognitive war against Israel words matter dearly, and its vital, if we are to win this war, that we not allow this steady drip of political propaganda to go unchallenged.
“Welcome to hell,” says a graffiti painted in the road to Jenin, the capital of “Palestinian martyrs.” Thirty suicide bombers have come from this city in the West Bank. Here, the Israeli army fought one of its hardest battles, making its way through whole streets booby-trapped with explosives.
This is the same city where Israeli director and actor Juliano Mer-Khamis was killed by a terrorist last week. Mer had chosen Jenin to build his utopia of tolerance. His life and death is the biggest tragedy of modern pacifism. The Islamists made no secret of their hostility to the “deviant” art of Mer-Khamis, who liked to call himself “100% Jew and 100% Palestinian.”
Mer’s lineage comprises the entire history of Israel’s anti-Zionist Left. He was the son of an Arab Christian who was among the founders of the Communist Party, the Red Bolshevik utopia that rejected the Zionist plan, was loyal to Moscow and pushed for a bi-national state.
The director’s Jewish mother was a pacifist icon, Arna Mer, who during the Intifada went to Jenin to create the “Theater of the Stones”, an experimental group for Palestinian children where Mer-Khamis also worked.
Arna Mer won the “Alternative Nobel Prize” given annually by the Swedish Parliament to humanitarian activists. She preferred to be called “Palestinian,” not Jew or Israeli. She was arrested several times during riots protesting Israeli policy in the Territories. She said that “Zionism is a racist ideology.”
Yet all of Mer-Khamis’ pacifism, idealism and radicalism did not protect him from the genocidal ideology that Israel had to confront since its foundation. Just like Massoud Mahlouf Allon, an observant Jewish immigrant from Morocco, wasn’t spared by the terrorists because he was giving blankets to poor Palestinians. And how can we forget all the Israeli kibbutzniks and pacifists decimated in buses and cafés during the Second Intifada?
The above attacks were all the more chilling because the victims were people willing to give up land for the sake of coexistence; they believed in a moral, just, democratic, egalitarian, better Israel.
Indiscriminate anti-Jew hatred
On March 5, 2003, a suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus approaching University of Haifa, killing 17 people and seriously injuring dozens more. This university has a high proportion from the Muslim and Christian communities among its 13,000 students and on its faculty. Like the killing of Mer-Khamis, the bombing was intended to destroy the very idea of coexistence. Abigail Litle was returning home when she was killed. She was part of an Arab-Jewish project for peace.
Two brutal sets of murders took place in November 2002 within a few days of each other. Twelve Israelis were murdered in Hebron; and gunmen entered Kibbutz Metzer, killing five people. Terrorist bullets didn’t differentiate between religious settlers in Hebron and dovish liberals in Metzer. The victims in Hebron were all adults; in Metzer, a mother and her two young children were murdered in cold blood. In Hebron, many of the victims were soldiers; in Metzer, the victims were all civilians.
The irony is that the kibbutz had long promoted coexistence with the surrounding Arab villages. Arab children came to Metzer to play basketball and use the swimming pool. Like Mer-Khamis, the kibbutz opposed the building of a security fence between Israel proper and the West Bank. Kibbutz members said the fence would deprive the Arab farmers of access to some of their fields, which are in Israel proper.
However, this radical pacifism did not shelter the kibbutz from the crime inflicted that horrible night that resembles the butchering of the Fogels in Itamar. The little ones in Metzer were shot in the head, murdered in their beds, dressed in their pajamas and hugging their teddy bears. They died in the arms of their mother, who was trying to protect them.
When Arna Mer-Khamis started her experimental theater, it comprised six Palestinian boys. Five of them have died as suicide bombers and “martyrs.” Now the black hole of hatred has also swallowed up the beautiful Israeli son of this dark utopia.
Mer-Khamis’ body was transferred through a checkpoint to Israeli authorities. It was his sad return to reality. The ancient Greek Thucydides said that it is normal for children to bury their parents, but parents burying children contravene the laws of nature and anger the gods. That’s the most important and saddest difference between Israel and the rest of the “civilized world.” Hatred doesn’t differentiate among Jewish targets.
March 21st saw the publication on ‘Comment is Free’ of a video interview with Omar Barghouti – a leading light in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.
The video is attributed to Christian Bennet and Mustafa Khalili (yes, apparently it took two of them to make this) – both video producers employed by the Guardian. Khalili, according to hisTwitter account, seems to be a BDS advocate.
He is also the man who, after Operation Cast Lead, sent out an e-mail to bloggers offering them Guardian-made films (which he was apparently involved in making) of alleged Israeli war crimes for use on their blogs. Yes, folks – that’s the ‘fair and balanced’ Guardian in action again.
Dear Friends
I am writing to you from Guardian Films the documentary arm of the Guardian Newspaper to bring to your attention a series of films we have produced on alleged war crimes committed by Israel during the 23-day offensive against Gaza earlier this year.
The films focus on three separate cases of alleged war crimes; (1) The use of Palestinian children as human shields. (2) The systematic targeting of medics and hospitals by the Israeli Army. (3) The use of state of the art precision weapons such as UAV aircraft to fire on groups of unarmed civilians.
Three documentaries produced by Guardian Films and Clancy Chassay made during a month-long investigation add weight to calls this week for a full inquiry into the events surrounding Operation Cast Lead, which was aimed at Hamas, but which left over 1400 Palestinians dead – around 300 known to be children.
[photos and link omitted] ….
We are requesting from you all where possible to please embed a link to our ‘Gaza War Crimes’ page on your blog and web sites.
Look forward to hearing from you soon With Kindest Regards ….
Mustafa Khalili
Previously a photo-journalist, Khalili collaboratedwith the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Muslim Brotherhood-linked, Hizbollah supporting, Iran groupie, faux human rights outfit known as the Islamic Human Rights Commission at an event in late 2010 to mark “10 years since the the Al-Aqsa / Second Intifada against the zionist (sic)-apartheid state”.
So now that we have established Khalili’s motives in promoting Barghouti in the so-called British mainstream media, let’s take a look at the video itself.
Barghouti claims that the aim of BDS is to ‘end the occupation’, and dismantle the ‘wall’ and ‘settlements’, as well as to put an end to ‘racial discrimination inside Israel’ itself.
Of course he fails to mention that the ‘occupation’ was well on its way to being ended and settlements dismantled when, according to the Oslo agreements of the early 1990s, Israel pulled out of substantial areas of Judea and Samaria and that further stages in that agreement were only halted by the decision of the Palestinian leadership to embark upon the second Intifada in 2000. Naturally too, he neglects to point out the connection between the construction of the anti-terrorist fence and the indiscriminate murder of well over a thousand Israeli civilians during the Intifada years.
As for any racial discrimination inside Israel itself; that is certainly not enshrined within nor supported by Israeli law and any discrimination which does occur –whilst always to be condemned – is no different to that in dozens of other developed Western countries against which Barghouti and company are not organizing a campaign of BDS. That, of course, puts paid to Barghouti’s later claim that his organization is ‘not singling out Israel’.
Barghouti goes on to state that another aim of the BDS campaign is to secure the ‘right of return’ to Israel for Palestinian refugees.
As we are well aware, this is politically correct code for the annihilation of Israel as a Jewish state: the denial of the rights of the Jewish people to self-determination. The EUMC Working Definition defines this as anti-Semitic.
“Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”
Despite this fact, Barghouti goes to great pains to stress that the BDS movement is not anti-Semitic and defines such accusations as ‘false’.
Barghouti claims that the BDS movement seeks to bring the ‘human rights under international law of the Palestinian people to the fore’. Unfortunately, the human rights of the Palestinian people are abused to a great extent by both the Palestinian National Authority and Hamas – a subject upon which Barghouti is interestingly silent.
In Gaza, journalists are harassed and beaten by Hamas. Women have seen a serious deterioration in their rights, Christians and homosexuals are persecuted and political opponents of the regime tortured and killed. In Fatah-controlled areas, the situation on some fronts may be a little better, but there is nofreedom of the press or freedom of assembly, political opponents are imprisoned and tortured there too and gays and Christians suffer persecution. Were Barghouti really concerned with the human rights of the Palestinian people, he would surely begin his campaign at home in Ramallah.
Continuing his context-free propaganda fest, Barghouti mentions 1,500 ‘predominantly civilian’ casualties during Operation Cast Lead, which is of course a grossly inaccurate statement. He bemoans the destruction of mosques in Gaza, but fails to mention that weapons were being stored in those places of worship. He claims that he is ‘not calling for any special treatment of Israel’, but the very nature of his organization does precisely that. He even appears to be infected by some sort of delusions of grandeur when he states that ‘no Israeli government is amenable to reform’. It is, of course, the sole prerogative of the Israeli people to make changes within the Israeli government – not that of the international community, ‘civil society’ or any opportunist activist who is not a citizen of that country.
In addition to being an ideologically-driven liar, Barghouti is of course also a massive hypocrite of the worst kind. As is well-known, he enjoys the privilege of being a doctoral student at Tel Aviv University where his rather lengthy studies are financed in part by the tax payers of the very nation he campaigns to eliminate.
It was obvious even before the ‘Palestine Papers’ affair that the Guardian has long since ceased to merely report the news; it now favours a more active role in creating the news – and the side upon which it has come down is not that of a negotiated two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but the side supported by Omar Barghouti and his associates in organizations such as PACBI and Al Shabaka. That side is one which is dedicated to scuppering any meaningful negotiation and compromise which would lead to a peaceful resolution to the problems. It is also one which denounces the Palestinian Authority as ‘traitors’ to ‘the cause’ because they negotiate with Israel.
The aim of such organizations is the elimination of Israel as the world’s one and only Jewish state, and the Guardian’s collaboration with such organizations is no less dangerous or offensive than its frequent promotion of Hamas.
The promotion of this video interview with Barghouti is propaganda of the most despicable kind. It has nothing to do with ‘freedom of expression’ or ‘the right of the public to know’, but belongs firmly in the category of ‘the right to spread and promote lies’.
One would expect that from dyed in the wool agitators such as Omar Barghouti and Mustafa Khalili. One has even come to expect it from various Guardian editors and reporters. It would be very interesting, however, to know if members of the board and the trustees of the Guardian Media Group are equally at ease with this bizarre, off the wall editorial line which hardly compliments the Guardian’s self-declared aim to be the ‘world’s leading liberal voice’.
For rather than maintaining its position as a member of the respected mainstream media, the Guardian is looking ever increasingly similar to those niche rags touted by members of the oddball Socialist Workers’ Party on London’s street corners.
