The Guardian’s initial report that Stephen Hawking was boycotting Israel was published on May 8.
The statistics in the first row in the table below were derived by a survey of the Guardian’s Israel page between May 8 and May 16 – the date of their last Hawking related entry. The second row’s numbers were gathered by a simple word count of the text.
The third row’s data was derived by Intel.
Though original reports yesterday that Stephen Hawking cancelled his planned Israel trip in order to express support for the academic boycott were (as we reported earlier today) flatly denied by Tim Holt, Acting Director of Communications at Cambridge and Hawking’s spokesperson, Holt recently informed us via an email of the following new statement just released by the University:
“We have now received confirmation from Professor Hawking’s office that a letter was sent on Friday to the Israeli President’s office regarding his decision not to attend the Presidential Conference, based on advice from Palestinian academics that he should respect the boycott.
“We had understood previously that his decision was based purely on health grounds having been advised by doctors not to fly.”
Last night, May 8, the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood and Matthew Kelman ‘broke’ a story claiming that Stephen Hawking was joining the academic boycott of Israel, and that he was “pulling out of a conference hosted by Israeli president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem as a protest at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.”
The report, based it seems on claims made by British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), was picked up by news sites around the world, was featured prominently on the Guardian website and was followed up with a poll asking readers if they agreed with Hawking ”decision” to boycott Israel.
Here’s how the Guardian’s Israel page looks at the time of this post:
As you can see, the original story was read by quite a few Guardian readers:
There was just one problem.
The Guardian evidently didn’t check their facts, as information has been released strongly suggesting that the world-renowned theoretical physicist and former Professor at Cambridge pulled out of the Israeli academic conference purely for health reasons.
The Commentator reported the following:
…a Cambridge university spokesperson has confirmed to The Commentator that there was a “misunderstanding” this past weekend, and that Prof. Hawking had pulled out of the conference for medical reasons. A University spokesman said: “Professor Hawking will not be attending the conference in Israel in June for health reasons – his doctors have advised against him flying.”
Further, a spokesman for Cambridge University sent the following email to a CiF Watch reader in response to an inquiry, which is consistent with the following story in the Cambridge News:
The only questions which seems to remain is how long it will take for the Guardian to issue a mea culpa on their faux scoop.
Update: The Guardian’s Matthew Kalman is now claiming that the Cambridge denial is untrue, and that Hawking indeed supports the boycott.
Update II: It now appears that the original denial by Hawkings spokesperson was not accurate, and that Hawking indeed cancelled his trip as an expression of support for the boycott of Israel.
Israel
The Guardian has devoted five separate stories (including three videos) in their coverage of recent acts of anti-Muslim racism by fans of the Israeli football team, Beitar Jerusalem, who are unhappy with the club’s decision to sign two Chechen Muslim players.
A few additional facts:
Egypt:
On April 6, 2011, scores of football fans in Egypt hurled gigantic banners with the words:
One Nation for a new Holocaust [against the Jews].
There are no Jews on any of Egypt’s football teams, and there are merely three dozen Jewish citizens left in the entire country. (There were over 75,000 in 1948.)
More importantly, in contrast to the reaction in Israel:
While the questions above are largely rhetorical, there is one important question which we no longer even need to ask, as the answer was found by a web and Lexis-Nexus search:
The Guardian didn’t devote even one story to the pro-genocide messages at an Egypt football stadium on April 6, 2011.
IDF strikes on Nov. 18 knocked out the Hamas television stations Al Aqsa and Al Quds in Gaza, but Hamas leaders were likely not too concerned, and knew they could always count on Plan B: Propagandizing at the Guardian.
In fact, later that same day, Nov. 18, a ’Comment is Free’ essay by the deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau, Musa Abumarzuq, was published – one out of several members of the Islamist terror group who has been published by the paper which aspires to be the ‘world’s leading liberal voice’.
Other than Abumarzuq, who published a previous essay at CiF in 2011, the list includes Hamas ‘Prime Minister’ Ismail Haniyeh, their head of international relations Osama Hamdan, and their ‘advisor‘, Azzam Tamimi.
Abumarzuq’s piece, ‘We in the Gaza Strip will not die in silence‘, is full of unserious, vitriolic claims befitting a group whose founding charter cites the antisemitic forgery ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ as “proof” that Jews indeed are trying to take over the world.
However, Abumarzuq also advances a narrative of Israeli villainy which had already found fertile ground within the Guardian coven of “journalists” and commentators. Echoing the “analysis” of Harriet Sherwood, Simon Tisdall, Ahdaf Soueif, and Jonathan Freedland, on the “real reasons” for Israeli operation ‘Pillar of Defense’, the Hamas apparatchik writes the following:
“With the approach of the Israeli elections, the Israeli prime minister,Binyamin Netanyahu, wanted to trade with the blood of the Palestinians, especially after his alliance with the ultra-extremist Avigdor Lieberman failed to boost his popularity in the polls as he’d expected. This is not the first time the Israelis have launched a war for electoral gain. Shimon Peres did it to Lebanon in 1996 and the Olmert-Livni-Barak alliance did it to Gaza in 2008.”
Interestingly, Abumarzuq’s rhetoric is restrained compared to Ahdaf Soueif (a frequent CiF contributor) who, in her piece, literally accused Israeli leaders of murdering Palestinian children for political gain.
Turning to the issue of supreme concern to the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, “human rights”, Abumarzuq complains thus:
“The human rights that Europe claims to defend all over the world are denied to the Palestinian people.”
Which freedoms are cruelly denied to Palestinians, per Abumarzuq?
“The right of people to resist occupation and confront aggression is guaranteed to all peoples; but if Palestinians seek to exercise this right it immediately becomes terrorism and for this they must be persecuted.”
Yes, of course. The Palestinians’ ‘universal’ right of “resistance”, murdering civilians with impunity, is stymied by their cruel Jewish oppressors.
Abumarzuq then adds the following:
“The Israeli military attacks on Gaza did not stop after the last Gaza war. Since 2009, 271 Palestinians have been killed, compared to three Israeli deaths.”
The numbers he cites about Israeli deaths are incorrect.
There have been 3 Israeli deaths since Nov. 14, when operation ‘Pillar of Defense’ began, but the Israeli death toll from Gaza terror attacks since 2009 is 13, not 3.
While you can contact the Guardian’s readers’ editor, Chris Elliott, at readers@guardian.co.uk, to request that Abumarzuq’s lie be corrected, perhaps you should consider asking Mr. Elliott a more pertinent question:
How does he reconcile the ‘progressive’ politics he and the paper he works for evidently aspire to with their decision to continue providing a platform to violent religious extremists who represent ultra right-wing values on issues such as democracy, freedom of the press, the rights of women, gays, and religious minorities?
Though I don’t expect anything resembling an honest answer from Elliott, he and his colleagues need to be confronted with the mounting evidence of their supreme moral hypocrisy.
Cross posted by Dr. Martin Sherman, and originally published at the Jerusalem Post on April 6.
(Editor’s note: While CiF Watch doesn’t necessarily endorse the views expressed by Sherman, his commentary, fisking the premises behind most 2-state solution proposals, is thoughtful, politically and morally sober, and needs to be taken seriously.)
“If a Palestinian state is established, it will be armed to the teeth. Within it there will be bases of the most extreme terrorist forces, who will be equipped with anti-tank and anti-aircraft shoulder-launched rockets, which will endanger not only random passers-by, but also every airplane and helicopter taking off in the skies of Israel and every vehicle traveling along the major traffic routes in the coastal plain.
Even if the Palestinians agree that their state have no army or weapons, who can guarantee that a Palestinian army would not be mustered later to encamp at the gates of Jerusalem and the approaches to the [coastal] lowlands.”
– Shimon Peres
My column last week was largely a historical account of the monumental failure of the endeavor to implement a two-state approach following the 1993 Oslo Agreements. This column will focus more on some of the conceptual defects and inconsistencies that made past failure – and will make future failure –inevitable.
Two kinds of ‘two-staters’
In principle there are two categories of “two-staters:” (a) Those who insist that in their version of a two-state solution, “secure/defensible” borders for Israel are an indispensable imperative; and (b) Those for whom “secure/defensible” borders appear to be consideration of minor–if any–significance in their vision of the two-state arrangement.
Arguably one of the most eminent spokesmen for the first category is Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz; while the second category includes figures such as Peter Beinart, and groups such as J-Street and the Geneva initiative, endorsing the Obama-prescription that the frontiers of the Palestinian state be based on the indefensible 1967-lines with “agreed” (read “minor/cosmetic”) land swaps.
To assess the ramifications of these two schools of thought (or rather “wishful thinking”), it is necessary to comprehend clearly the geo-political significance of the territory ear-marked by them for the putative Palestinian state east of the 1967 frontier.
This is crucial for a responsible risk-assessment on the part of anyone professing pro- Israel credentials. For one would hope that– whatever their political proclivities – they would be mindful not only of the cost of error, but also of the probability of success, of any proposed policy option–particularly in the light of the failed optimism of the past.
‘An arrow aimed at Israel’s heart’
“An arrow-head aimed at Israel’s very heart with all the force of the Arab world behind.”
These words, conveying the danger entailed in the establishment of a Palestinian state, are not those of a radical right-wing rejectionist, but of 2006 Israel Prize (Law) laureate, Prof. Amnon Rubinstein, who served as an MK – and education minister–for the dovish Meretz party.
They are of course very apt, for as I have reiterated in previous columns, any territorial configuration even remotely acceptable to even the most moderate of Palestinians would allow them topographical command the all of the following: Most major airfields in the country (civilian and military) – including the only international airport;
• Major sea ports and naval bases;
• Vital infrastructure systems/installations;
• The sweet water system;
• Main land (road and rail) transportation axes –including the Trans-Israel Highway;
• Principal power plants;
• The nation’s parliament, crucial centers of government and military command; • Eighty percent of the civilian population and of the commercial activity in the country.
All of these would be in range of weapons being used today against Israel from territory transferred to Palestinian control–making the notion of “demilitarization” largely irrelevant (something on which I will elaborate in a future column).
Peril presaged
This ominous prospect can no longer be dismissed as “right-wing scaremongering,” for it reflects no more than proven past precedents.
Indeed it was clearly predicted in vivid detail by none other than Nobel laureate Shimon Peres who expressed his skepticism regarding the credibility of any prospective peace partner. In a more perceptive era, before of political correctness eclipsed political truth and facts succumbed to fads, he cautioned:
“The demilitarization of the West Bank seems a dubious remedy. The major issue is not [reaching] an agreement on demilitarization, but ensuring its actual implementation in practice. The number of agreements which the Arabs have violated is no less than number which they have kept.”
Presciently, he warned that if a Palestinian state were established:
“in a short space of time, an infrastructure for waging war will be set up in Judea, Samaria [note the non-compliance with the newly proposed “Beinartian” terminology] and the Gaza Strip. Israel will have problems in preserving day-to-day security….
In time of war, the frontiers of the Palestinian state will constitute an excellent staging point for mobile forces to mount attacks on infrastructure installations vital for Israel’s existence, to impede the freedom of action of the Israeli air-force in the skies over Israel, and to cause bloodshed among the population.”
In similar vein – and similarly prior to the advent of Oslo-mania, which relegated common sense to “rejectionism”– Amnon Rubinstein cautioned”
“Israel will neither be able to exist nor to prosper if its urban centers, its vulnerable airport and its roads, are shelled….
This is the terrible danger involved in the establishment of a third independent sovereign state between us and the Jordan River.
What are ‘secure borders’?
It is the combination of geographic proximity to, and topographical dominance over, Israel’s urban megatropolis in the coastal plain that makes a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria so potentially perilous. It is this fact – with all its politically incorrect ramifications– that has brought a host of security experts – Israeli and American – to the conclusion that for Israel to maintain secure borders it must retain control of wide swathes of territory between the 1967 Green Line and the Jordan River.
The most recent study, updated in 2011, authored by five former IDF generals – including a former chief of staff and the current national security adviser–stipulated that “secure borders” necessitate Israeli control of the highlands in the West Bank, the Jordan Valley and the entire air space from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.
This coincides in large measure with Yitzhak Rabin’s vision of the permanent solution with Palestinians, articulated in his last address to the Knesset, a month prior to his assassination. In the speech, significantly delivered after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and being feted around the world as a valiant warrior for peace, Rabin proclaimed that
“…the security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.”
He endorsed the retention of Israeli sovereignty over large tracts of land on the highlands including the settlements of “Gush Etzion, Efrat, Beitar and other communities… which are east of what was the “Green Line” and urged:
“…the establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria [again note the noncompliance with the newly proposed “Beinartian” terminology].”
242 and ‘secure borders’
This prescription for “secure borders” presented by an array of Israeli experts – with nary a radical right-wing religious rejectionist among them –closely reflects the findings of an earlier study of Israel’s security requirements, made by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The study was referred to in an article published in 1993 by Eugene Rostow, former US under-secretary of state and one of the principal authors of UN Security Council Resolution 242. According to Rostow:
“[The study] is useful in interpreting Resolution 242 because it reveals… what the US government had in mind in pushing the resolution through.”
He went on to observe:
“[t]he study advised …that the security of Israel required Israel to receive [substantial] parts of the territory of the West Bank as essential to its defense”
And, he pointed to the wide-ranging consensus on this, remarked:
“In fact, all the studies of the Israeli security problem reached the same conclusion – from the security point of view, Israel must hold the high points in the West Bank and areas along the Jordan River.”
He summed up stating:
“I do not know if the Joint Chiefs of Staff would draw a different map today, but I doubt is very much.”
Findings of subsequent studies provide strong support for his assessment.
Clueless, conniving, corrupt?
What does all this mean for the two previously delineated categories of “two-staters”? It perhaps simpler to begin with the second category–those who minimize (or disregard) the issue of “secure borders” for the Jewish state and are willing to accept withdrawal to the 1967 “Auschwitz” borders – with or without minimal adjustments.
Clearly in light of the potential perils these lines portend for Israel, this is a proposal comprises – at best – a gamble of epic proportions.
Its endorsement portrays its proponents as either clueless, conniving or corrupt: clueless because they are unaware of the mortal dangers their suggested policy entails; conniving because – although they may be aware of these dangers – they persist in collaborating with Israel’s adversaries to advance their pernicious agenda – equipped with nothing more than naiveté and alleged goodwill (read “wishful thinking”) to prevent the lethal consequences of their implausible political credo; corrupt because are advancing a policy that clearly menaces the security of Israel and safety Israelis in exchange for benefits – material or otherwise – from foreign sources with interests often divergent from those of Israel.
Of course, there is always an outside chance that the Hamas and Islamic Jihad will miraculously morph into a benign liberal social-democratic party, but are these “ two-staters” seriously suggesting that we “bet the farm” on that? Are the “enlightened” proponents of this version of the two-state paradigm suggesting that Israel base its policy on the wildly improbable? Surely prudence dictates heeding the accumulated lessons of past experience and the proven patterns of previous behavior?
Insincere or inconsistent
The other class of “ two-staters ”–t hose who claim they insist on “secure borders”– are if anything, more exasperating. Take, for example, the following excerpt from Dershowitz’s The Case for Peace, which shows that he is keenly aware not only of dangers that might arise from a Palestinian state but that the Palestinian signatory to any “two-state” agreement would be powerless to ensure his contractual commitments, even if he sincerely wished to:
A Palestinian state will not soon secure the monopoly on the use of arms. Terrorists organizations and militias – such as Hamas, Al-Aqasa Martyrs Brigades, Islamic Jihad and others – will continue to have access to weapons of all kinds. Even if the Palestinian state renounced all support for terrorism, other states, most particularly Syrian and Iran, will likely continue to arm terrorist groups dedicated to Israel’s destruction. Nor is it out of the question that someday Hamas might gain control over the Palestinian government, either by means of a coup, or an election, or some such combination of both. Israel cannot be asked to accept a fully militarized Hamas state on its vulnerable borders.
In many ways, this is a stunning admission for a “two-stater.”
Given the clear recognition of the potential dangers, several trenchant questions arise: In light of the plausible scenarios he himself raises, what are the geographical parameters that Dershowitz proposes to provide Israel with “secure borders”? What Palestinian could survive–politically or physically–the wrath of his rivals, were he to accede to frontiers that would provide Israel with “secure” borders that even remotely approach the parameters set out by military experts? And if such borders are politically unfeasible, why advocate entering into an arrangement with some Palestinian counterpart who – by Dershowitz’s own admission – may not be able to prevent the onset of situations which – by Dershowitz’s own admission – are intolerable…and far from improbable.
So is it just me or are “secure-border-two-staters” seriously advancing a policy that is either unattainable politically or unachievable geographically? And if so, why? Are they being mindfully insincere or mindless inconsistent?
To be continued…
Much of which needs to be said about the dangerous and detrimental delusion of the two-state paradigm, and the corrosive consequences it has had on Israel, its national security, its diplomatic standing, its international legitimacy and the level and vibrancy of its public discourse, has still been left unsaid.
Indeed, as time goes by and events consistently refute their dogmatic doctrine, “ two-staters ”– seemingly oblivious to the facts and dismissive of the dangers – are looking more and more like “flat-eathers.”
But as Pessah is almost upon us and as I do not wish to incur the wrath of my very patient editor, I will defer further discussion for a future opportunity.
A guest post by AKUS
Although the BBC has since updated its site with additional news from Israel and Syria, this morning I was struck by the way it reported on events in two Middle Eastern cities.
The BBC noted that that Israeli President Shimon Peres is supporting a rally to condemn violence by a small group of extremist ultra-Orthodox Jews in the Israeli town of Bet Shemesh. Simultaneously, it carried a report on the visit by Arab League observers to the battle-scarred town of Homs.
But look at how two events are headlined by the BBC:
On the one hand, Bet Shemesh, where indeed some unpleasant but hardly deadly events have recently occurred, is a hotbed of “extremism”:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16338376
Shimon Peres urges Israelis to rally against extremism
On the other hand, Homs, where dozens of Syrian citizens are being murdered by government forces, is merely “restive”:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16340299
Syria unrest: Arab League monitors visit restive Homs
Another example of fair and balanced reporting by the BBC, and the way language is used to keep a firm finger on the scales when dealing with anything in the Middle East.
This is cross posted by Simon Plosker at the blog of Honest Reporting
RSS feeds often publish the first version of an article without any subsequent updates or corrections. I was surprised to see the author of a report from Syria on my Israel news feed from The Guardian:
Yes, the author is one “Shimon Peres”.
A look at the full article on The Guardian website reveals that the author is actually Nour Ali, a pseudonym for a journalist in Damascus.
Is The Guardian really that obsessed by Israel that the first pseudonym they came up with was that of Israel’s president?
A good barometer of the degree to which Guardian readers’ hatred for Israel is, characteristic of most bigotries, immutable, and not tied to specific Israeli policies nor tied to the behavior of particular Israeli politicians is the reaction to the CiF commentary by the Israeli leader perhaps most associated with the desire for peace and reconciliation, President Shimon Peres.
In a commentary titled “We in Israel welcome the Arab spring“, Peres’s plea that the Arab world turn their back on decades of tyranny and turn instead to a more tolerant, liberal, and democratic culture, was met with a staggering amount hostility and hatred by Guardian readers.
The military use of white phosphorous, as a smoke screen, is legal and has been used by NATO forces during recent campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet the word is part of the arsenal of anti-Israel agitprop with the implicit suggestion that Israel’s use of the weapon was illegal. Note how causally the commenter employs the term to impute malice – as if its use in Israel’s war against Hamas during Cast Lead was the reason why there’s a “psychological divide” between Israelis and Palestinians. (361 Recommends)
The ideological arsenal of the anti-Israel Guardian Left often includes the absurd argument that Israel’s economic prowess is merely the result of U.S. Aid, ignoring that the aid is a tiny percentage of Israel’s overall budget (Egypt receives far more aid as a percentage of GNP) and that all such military aid Israel receives from the U.S. must be used to purchase weaponry from U.S. defense contractors – an amount that actually represents a tiny fraction of Israel’s overall budget. (261 Recommends)
Israel has been guilty of not compromising (presumably with the Arab world) since its very founding. (189 Recommends)
Israel’s very founding was a “land grab”. (283 Recommends)
Israel murders Palestinian children (242 Recommends)
Israel is an illegitimate “colonial outpost”. (208 Recommends)
Female IDF soldiers point there automatic weapons in the fact of Palestinian children just for fun. (323 Recommends)
Israeli is an oppressive, apartheid state, and agent of the U.S. (277 Recommends)
Israel “ethnically cleans” Arabs. Israel should no longer exist. (119 Recommends)
Israel’s economic success is merely driven by weapons of destruction.
Israel is an apartheid state.
Israel should return to “1947″ borders, and allow “right of return” (euphemism for the end of Israel).
Israel is a state based on ethnic cleansing, and is not a democracy. (47 Recommends)
Israel has no right to exist, and is merely an apartheid Kafkaesque regime. (68 Recommends)
Israel has no moral right to exist. (66 Recommends)
Suicide bombing against citizens of the oppressive Israeli state is justified.
Israel is not a democracy and has no right to exist. (29 Recommends)
Israel has bombed orphanages. (54 Recommends)
Israel has attempted to bomb Palestinians back to the “stone age”. Settler are fascists. (34 Recommends)
Shimon Peres has committed “crimes against humanity”. Israel moral legitimacy is tainted by the blood of Arab children. (30 Recommends)
Israel is an apartheid, racist state, which ethnically cleansed Palestinians. (45 Recommends)
Israel kills innocent Palestinian children. (36 Recommends)
Israelis (including Peres) are fascists. (20 Recommends)
Israel’s creation was an act of terrorism and ethnic cleansing. (51 Recommends)
Quotes Illan Pappe in claiming that Israel ethnically cleansed 250,000 Palestinians while the British were still there, before the the 1948 war. (71 Recommends)
Israel is doomed for destruction due to their colonial project. (36 Recommends)
I just had to find a way to post this photo of Muammar Gaddafi donning such an elaborate (Purim inspired?) outfit but didn’t know how to contextualize it in a way which was a least tangentially related to the Guardian.
And then I had a brainstorm (or, at least an amusing thought):
Maybe John Galliano’s anti-Semitic pro-Hitler outburst (initially defended as simply implausible by Guardian fashion editor, Jess Cartner-Morely), was really just a case of a dedicated artist immersing himself in Nazi culture in advance of releasing his latest Ruthless-Dictator Chic line – a line modeled by none other than Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi!
Alas, I just came across this quote by the octogenarian Israeli President Shimon Peres, who, prior to my relatively obvious observation, also linked John Galliano’s remarks with the Libya dictator, saying:
“Who needs this Gaddafi? I think he should have gone to work at Dior. He changes his outfit everyday, investing thousands of dollars in strange hats, crappy dresses, wasting his money… Who needs him? You tell me, what for?”
Or, on the other hand, maybe Gaddafi is simply displaying what the Francophile Cartner-Morely would no doubt describe as his Bon Viveur!
Here’s a comment from yesterday’s Adam Levick thread.
Though Shimon Peres is not mentioned in the comment above, it is clear from the comment below that the person that Matzpen thinks should be “put against the wall” is Shimon Peres.
Oh and Matzpen’s comment is undeleted despite the inexplicable deletion of numerous pro-Israel comments from the same thread.
Update
After over 27 hours, the comment was deleted, no doubt because of this posting.
So much for being able to remove these type of comments in 7 minutes. Unsurprisingly, Matzpen has not been banned for making such comment for as we learnt in the Bapthorpe affair, you still remain within the circle of trust for a number of weeks even if you advocate the murder of Jews.
