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Graphic from Guardian’s “Style Guide” for journalists
As Akus and Hadar recently reported, the Guardian “Style Guide” not only advises their journalists against writing that Israel’s capital is Jerusalem, but actually encourages them to lie by insisting that Tel Aviv is, in fact, the nation’s capital. (This inversion, as Akus noted, resulted in the Guardian changing a photo caption which “incorrectly” stated that Jerusalem was the Israeli capital and, per the Style Guide, definitively (mis) informed readers that Tel Aviv holds that designation.)
Text from Guardian Style Guide
While the international community generally doesn’t officially recognize Jerusalem as the Jewish state’s capital (due to the absurd political pieties honored by decision makers regarding the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict), neither do they designate Tel Aviv with this status. Typical is the U.S. State Department’s page on Israel, which contains this:
The footnote is here:
Note that the State Department doesn’t tell Americans that Tel Aviv is Israel’s capital, merely that this is where they currently maintain the U.S. embassy.
Subsequently, it’s been difficult not to read the paper’s reports on Israel without wondering if they were thoroughly proofread by the Guardian’s Glavit editors to ensure ideological stylistic purity.
A report in the Guardian’s Sports section on May 2nd, 50 stunning Olympic moments number 26: The terrorist outrage in Munich in 1972,originally caught my eye because of the headline, as it is extremely rare for a Guardian leader to characterize Palestinian terrorism so “subjectively”, as an “outrage”. But, stranger still is that a “loaded” word such as “terrorism” was used at all to describe the murder of eleven innocent Israelis.
Indeed, the Guardian Style Guide has this to say about “Terrorism”.
terrorism, terrorists:
A terrorist act is directed against victims chosen either randomly or as symbols of what is being opposed (eg workers in the World Trade Centre, tourists in Bali, Spanish commuters). It is designed to create a state of terror in the minds of a particular group of people or the public as a whole for political or social ends.
Does having a good cause make a difference? The UN says no: “Criminal acts calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public are in any circumstances unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or other nature that may be invoked to justify them.”
Whatever one’s political sympathies, suicide bombers, the 9/11 attackers and most paramilitary groups can all reasonably be regarded as terrorists (or at least groups some of whose members perpetrate terrorist acts).
Nonetheless we need to be very careful about using the term: it is still a subjective judgment – one person’s terrorist may be another person’s freedom fighter, and there are former “terrorists” holding elected office in many parts of the world.
Often, alternatives such as militants, radicals, separatists, etc, may be more appropriate and less controversial, but this is a difficult area: references to the “resistance”, for example, imply more sympathy to a cause than calling such fighters “insurgents”. The most important thing is that, in news reporting, we are not seen – because of the language we use – to be taking sides. [emphasis added]
Beyond the moral muddle created by the definition (yes, even when an act can reasonably be described as “terrorism”, please avoid using the term?!), it’s simply risible that the Guardian is evidently concerned that its readers may think the Guardian is “taking sides” in the Israeli Palestinian Conflict.
Indeed, Harriet Sherwood, so at pains to maintain her, um, “impartiality”, strenuously avoids the “T” word when reporting on the region, opting instead for the Guardian recommended term “militant”.
However, not only did the May 2 Guardian piece on the 1972 attack use the word “terrorism” in the headline, but the essay (by sport subeditor, Simon Burton) contained no less than 26 uses of the word terror, terrorism, or terrorist(s), to characterize the Munich Massacre.
The fact is that Burton’s over 3000 word report on those two fateful days in Munich is actually quite non-ideological for a Guardian piece pertaining to Israel or Israelis, which of course means that Harriet Sherwood’s job (as the paper’s correspondent for the city which is certainly not Israel’s capital) is safe and secure.
Related articles
- More from the Guardian ‘Style Guide’. (cifwatch.com)
- You may need to read this twice – the Guardian Denies that Jerusalem is Israel’s Capital. (cifwatch.com)
- Jenin. Ten Years Since Something That Never Happened: A Learning Moment for the Guardian (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood feels Islamic Jihad terrorist’s pain (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood again takes up the cause of innocent Palestinian “baker”, Khader Adnan (cifwatch.com)
- What the Guardian won’t report and the influence on perceptions of Israel. (cifwatch.com)
- What Harriet Sherwood won’t report: Journalist arrested by PA for criticizing Abbas on Facebook (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian – twisting, turning and spinning as it covers for Palestinian terrorism (cifwatch.com)
- European conference organised by ‘Palestinian Return Centre’ launches new initiative. (cifwatch.com)
- Phoebe Greenwood manages to vilify Israel in story about tragic auto accident (cifwatch.com)
Last weekend the tenth ‘Palestinians in Europe’ conference – this year sponsored by Tunisian interim president Monsef Marzouki – was held in Copenhagen. The event was co-organised by the Palestinian Forum in Denmark and the Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) of London which is a permanent organiser of the annual event.
The conference’s president was Majed al Zeer of the PRC and also of the Hamas-linked European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza (ECESG) which was set up by the Muslim Brotherhood’s European arm in 2007 and takes part in organizing the various flotillas, including the fatal one of 2010.
The Palestinian Return Centre is a Hamas-supporting organization which promotes the ‘right of return’ for Palestinian refugees and is banned in Israel due to its links with a terrorist organisation. Besides its General Director al Zeer, others of its staff are well-known for their anti-Israel activities.
PRC spokesman and chair of trustees Zaher al Birawi recently acted as spokesman for the ‘Global March to Jerusalem’. He has also functioned as spokesman for George Galloway’s ‘Viva Palestina’ convoys, is an official of the Palestinian Forum in Britain and trustee of a UK charity named ‘Education Aid for Palestinians’ which is a member of the Hamas-supporting ‘Union of Good‘.
The PRC’s operational director, Arafat Madi Shoukri, is also connected to the ECESG as well as director of the Brussels-based European parliament lobbying group called the ‘Council for European Palestinian Relations‘. Ghassan Faour – a trustee of the PRC – is also linked to the UK charity ‘Interpal’ which is a member of the ‘Union of Good’. Another PRC trustee Majdi Akeel – a known Hamas activist and also connected to ‘Interpal’– was mentioned in the Holy Land Foundation trial in the US. The PRC’s senior researcher and editor, Daoud Abdallah, is also the director of MEMO and well-known as a signatory of the Istanbul Declaration.
Speakers at the recent conference included former British MP and Minister Clare Short (also a patron of ICHAD UK and an activist with the ECESG, as well as a member of the advisory board of Res Publica) and leader of the Palestinian party ‘al Mubadara’ (aka Palestinian National Initiative) Mustafa Barghouti who was recently involved in the organization of both the ‘Global March to Jerusalem‘ and the ‘Welcome to Palestine’ flytilla.
According to a ‘Union of Good’-linked website:
“The Conference called on the Arab countries and the countries sponsoring Palestinian refugees to improve these refugees’ conditions reminding the Europeans of their historical responsibility for the Palestinian problem, and stressing on the steadfastness and great sacrifices of the Palestinians people to defend their land.
The conference’s organizers also launched an initiative in which many European Communities will take part entitled “the wall and settlements’ removal” and aiming at pressuring “Israel”.
Meanwhile, a number of participants in the conference agreed unanimously on the key issues that must be supported, most importantly opposing the Judaization of AlQuds, the Palestinian prisoners’ issue and the internal situation stating that these issues can be solved only after a Palestinian reconciliation.”
The conference launched a new PR initiative on the subject of Palestinian prisoners, claiming that:
“Thousands of Palestinian and Arab prisoners are deprived of their basic freedom and incarcerated in Israeli prisons, lacking the basic standards required in any jail. They have endured many unjust practises (sic) inflicted by the Israeli government which is violating its own commitment to International law and Charters of Human Rights. These violations are committed with total impunity and International accountability.”
Given some of the recent media coverage on the subject of the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike, we may well assume that the campaign is already in full swing.
Related articles
- Jenny Tonge & the Hamas Lobby (cifwatch.com)
- CiF Watch Special Report on extremists behind ‘Global March to Jerusalem’: Pt 2, Europe Chapter (cifwatch.com)
- CiF Watch Special Report: Extremists & terror supporters organizing ‘Global March to Jerusalem’ (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood on the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike – high on pathos, low on fact. (cifwatch.com)
- CiF Watch Special Report: Latest Assault on Israel’s legitimacy, ‘Air Flotilla 2′, April 15th, 2012 (cifwatch.com)
The Guardian’s sports section is currently running a series entitled ’50 stunning Olympic moments’.
The placing of an article about the murders of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 games under that heading may well be considered a failure of judgment and good taste, but the article itself is very competent – especially in highlighting the gross failures of the both the German and Olympic authorities throughout and after the terror attack.
More, then, is the pity that the author – Simon Burnton – chose to end a lengthy, informative and well-written piece with the following unfortunate sentence, for which he was duly taken to task by commenters below the line.
“Away from the Olympic gaze, meanwhile, Palestinians continue to die for their cause, and Israelis for theirs.”
But still, we are in the realms of taste and decency here, just as we were in July 2010 when the Guardian chose to run an obituary for the mastermind of the Munich attack – Abu Daoud – in which the terrorist was described as:
“Mohammed Daoud Oudeh (Abu Daoud), guerrilla leader, teacher and lawyer, born 1937; died 3 July 2010″.
However, even the Guardian’s sports section is not immune to the malaise of racist stereotyping as so often seen at ‘Comment is Free’.
Related articles
- ‘Comment is Free’ places obituary for Israeli PM’s father on ‘Palestinian Territories’ page. (cifwatch.com)
- Mehdi Hasan croons the Iran chorus on ‘Comment is Free’. (cifwatch.com)
- Faces of the IDF & faces of stereotypes: Countering the Guardian’s crude caricature of Israelis (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian, Raed Salah and Yom HaShoah. (cifwatch.com)
- Anti-Zionist propaganda as literary criticism: How the Guardian demonizes Israel without really trying (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Elder of Ziyon’ responds to the Guardian’s Ben White on BDS. (cifwatch.com)
- CST secures amendments on the ‘Comment is Free’ website. (cifwatch.com)
- New Think Tank Formed to Combat Campus Antisemitism (cifwatch.com)
- You may need to read this twice – the Guardian Denies that Jerusalem is Israel’s Capital. (cifwatch.com)
Why it should have taken two writers – both Observer ‘chief reporter’ Tracy McVeigh and Guardian Jerusalem correspondent Harriet Sherwood – to put together what is in fact no more than a re-hash of a ‘Boycott Israel Network’ press release is anyone’s guess. But it apparently did, and the result is this so-called article from April 29th on the subject of the Co-operative Group’s decision to boycott not only Israeli firms located over the green line, but also those with any connections to other businesses in those areas.
The section from the BIN press release which McVeigh and Sherwood neglected to include provides background information on how this decision on the part of the Co-op came about.
“The announcement by the Co-op came just before their Regional AGMs, due to take place over the next two weeks, and where motions on this issue have been submitted for discussion. For months Co-op members have been highlighting their concerns about trade with complicit companies through co-ordinated letter-writing and discussions with local offices.”
For those unfamiliar with the Co-op’s structure and the manner in which that lends itself to easy manipulation by pressure groups, here is a brief primer. Anyone over the age of 16 can become a member of the Co-op for £1. Most of those who join do so for the offers, discounts and end of year dividends, but it is also possible for them to set up local members’ groups and the Co-op actually assigns funding to enable their meetings.
The nature and purpose of each local group depends very much upon the members. Some might choose to go in for tasting the supermarket’s new range of wines at their meetings. Others may decide to recruit more new members at a local gala or engage in some kind of charity work. Still others may decide to liaise between the Co-op and the local community on a transition town-style green agenda – for example persuading their local Co-op to abandon the use of plastic bags or recycle food waste as compost.
The local groups send representatives to regional meetings, which in turn send representation to national level meetings. Thus, anyone committed enough to put in the time and effort can promote a specific agenda and influence the Co-op’s operations at both local and national level.
And that is precisely how this latest (and the previous, less far-reaching) boycott decision came about. Around 2008 the Co-op was identified by anti-Israel campaigners – in particular members of the PSC – as a ‘soft’ target. They became members, set up local groups and began pushing their agenda up the ladder. That task was not particularly difficult; the vast majority of Co-op members do not attend meetings and even those who do are often quite relieved to find that someone else is willing to spend time going to regional AGMs.
The project was made even easier by the fact that, unable to compete with Britain’s big supermarket chains on price or quality, the Co-op markets itself as the progressive ‘ethical’ alternative.
Sherwood and McVeigh quote one Hilary Smith in their article, describing her as “Co-op member and Boycott Israel Network (BIN) agricultural trade campaign co-ordinator”. The Boycott Israel Network of course involves itself in far more than just supermarket boycotts.
Smith is also a member of Sheffield PSC and Sheffield BDS and active in the ‘Coordin8‘ lobbying network (her regional organizer is recent failed ‘flytilla’ participant and would-be fixer of online polls Terry Gallogly of York PSC). In 2009 she was to be found addressing students occupying Sheffield University on behalf of Sheffield PSC and is apparently not averse to the libeling of Israel as an ‘apartheid’ state.
In February of this year Smith took part in an ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ event at Sheffield University which also featured a speaker from ‘Who Profits‘, (a ‘Coalition of Women for Peace‘ offshoot) who was described in the promotional material as coming “from Haifa in the occupied territories”. That negation of Israel’s existence is of course an underlying principle of the BDS movement.
In addition to her above activities, Hilary Smith is also a ‘volunteer international coordinator’ for the ‘Free Gaza’ movement ‘. Here she is reporting on a ‘Free Gaza’ speaking tour of the UK. Here she is acting as official contact and spokesperson for UK Free Gaza in 2009. Here she is posting information about the 2010 flotilla on the UK Trade Union movement’s ‘Labournet‘ site and here complaining to the BBC about its coverage of the Mavi Marmara incident and its portrayal of the ‘Free Gaza’ movement. Ahead of the 2008 flotilla organized by ‘Free Gaza’, Smith chaired a press conference held in London.
The participants in one of the 2008 jaunts organized by ‘Free Gaza’ did reach their destination and were received (and presented with medals) by leaders of Hamas, – the terrorist organization designated by the UK government which ‘Free Gaza’ enables and supports.
Activists in the ‘Free Gaza’ movement are very aware of the legal implications of their actions, as this briefing document – seized aboard a ‘Free Gaza’ ship – indicates.
For the source of the above document and more information on the ‘Free Gaza’ movement, its ties to Hamas and other designated terror-connected organizations such as the IHH and its roots in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), see here.
The management of the Co-operative Group may not be aware that it has in fact been manipulated into this latest boycott move by subscribers to a political campaign which works towards the rather less than ethical ultimate aim of wiping a sovereign country off the map and often collaborates with designated terror organisations in order to do so.
On the other hand, the Co-op might simply not care. After all, this is the same organization which (rather hilariously, given its advertising spiel on ‘ethical banking‘) provides banking services to George Galloway’s ‘Viva Palestina‘ – which is at this very moment on yet another Hamas-supporting road-trip and travelling via Syria, where the incumbent dictator (for whom Galloway has such admiration) is still slaughtering civilians in their thousands.
This new boycott move by the Co-operative Group should actually be seen as very useful on a number of fronts.
It exposes the way in which it is laughably easy for very small numbers of energetic activists to dictate the agendas of large organizations in the UK. We have seen it happen in British churches, universities and trade unions – now it is the turn of the co-operative movement.
It also points a spotlight on the discrepancies between the ‘ethical’ image the Co-op likes to project for PR purposes and its actual practice. Let’s face it; the £350,000 worth of trade affected by this boycott is negligible (barely the price of a modest Tel Aviv apartment), but the move does highlight once again how the Co-op is apparently willing to overlook the terror-sympathetic connections (and real aims) of clients and campaigning members in order to curry favor with a perceived ’progressive’ client base.
The move also serves to highlight the manner in which UK-based anti-Israel campaigners have in the last decade or so managed to bring their message into the mainstream at local levels. Using letters to local newspapers, occasional PSC or ‘Friends of Palestine’ stalls and demonstrations, co-opting the support of churches and various specific interest groups, they have ensured that although the vast majority of the population understands little or nothing about the Arab-Israeli conflict, many are nonetheless convinced that they are capable of making ethical judgments about it.
Of course most British citizens will find this move by the Co-op somewhat less than ethical, if not downright abhorrent. The good news is that due to the company’s structure, they can do something about it by using exactly the same methods as employed by BDS activists in order to reverse the agenda.
Related articles
- Harriet Sherwood on the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike – high on pathos, low on fact. (cifwatch.com)
- Feeble reasons not to boycott the Guardian (cifwatch.com)
Like this:
Foreign correspondents are in the position of being able to influence on a daily basis how others perceive the country in which they work. Not only do they shape that country’s image in the eyes of general foreign audiences, but their reporting also affects the attitudes and decisions of policy makers. As political and governmental decisions are often – and perhaps increasingly – influenced by the amount of media attention a certain subject gets, a foreign correspondent’s decision to report or not to report a particular news story has more gravity than just the telling of the story itself.
Taking the month now ending as a random example, analysis of the Guardian’s coverage of Israel on its dedicated page in the World News section shows that out of 60 items published between April 1st and 29th, seven dealt with the subject of Habima’s appearance at the Globe Theatre.
A further 11 items were published on the subject of Gunter Grass and his controversial poem. Nine items touched on the subject of Iran’s nuclear project, three were related to Raed Salah’s immigration tribunal in the UK, five concerned the Danish ISM activist hit by an Israeli officer and a further five touched on aspects of what the Guardian Style Guide terms as settlements and settlers; Jews living over the ‘green line’.
Other subjects tackled include the Israeli version of ‘Big Brother’, Saturday bus services, the gas pipeline from Egypt to Israel (2 articles), the ‘flytilla’ (2 articles), illegal migrants from Africa, Holocaust Memorial Day (3 items), Easter, and hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners (2 articles).
On the Israel page of ‘Comment is Free‘, seven articles were published during April – reflecting the same themes as above.
Pessach, Memorial Day and Independence Day (all of which took place in April) were not covered, despite their importance to anyone hoping to understand Israel.
Neither did the Guardian report on any of the following events:
“On the morning of April 2 a 65 year-old ultra-Orthodox Jewish man was attacked by a young Arab man wielding an axe. The attack took place near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. The victim, who had been on his way to the Western Wall to pray, sustained minor injuries and was evacuated to a hospital for medical treatment.”
“On the evening of April 2 stones were thrown at a bus near Beit Horon, an Israeli village to the northwest of Jerusalem. Two women suffered minor injuries and were evacuated to a hospital for further treatment.”
(source)
“On the night of April 4 residents of Eilat heard explosions throughout the city. Searches conducted by the Israeli security forces discovered the remains of two 122mm Grad rockets, two of three launched at Eilat from the Sinai Peninsula. The rockets fell in open areas near residential structures. There were no casualties, but a number of residents were treated for shock.”
“On the morning of April 8 two long-range rockets landed near the city of Netivot. There were no casualties and no damage was done.”
“On the evening of April 8 a rocket landed in an open area near the city of Sderot. There were no casualties and no damage was done.”
(source)
“On the night of April 15 two rockets fell in open areas in the western Negev. There were no casualties.”
“On April 11, IDF military police detained a Palestinian at the Beqa’ot checkpoint in the Jordan Valley. He was found to be carrying seven improvised IEDs, three knives and bullets. He was transferred to the security forces for questioning.”
“The Egyptian and Palestinian media reported that the Egyptian security forces had stopped a vehicle in the northern Sinai Peninsula driven by an Egyptian and carrying three Palestinians who had illegally entered Egyptian territory on April 13. The three admitted that they had been en route to Libya to buy weapons to smuggle into the Gaza Strip through the tunnels. The interrogation conducted by the Egyptian security forces in El-Arish revealed that the three were residents of Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip and belonged to the Salah al-Din Brigades, the military-terrorist wing of the Popular Resistance Committees.”
(source)
“Rocket fire from the Gaza Strip targeting the western Negev continues. One rocket hit was identified in an open area. There were no casualties and no damage was done.”
“On April 19 in Jerusalem a 20 year-old yeshiva student was stabbed in the stomach, incurring serious wounds. Two young Arab men were detained as suspects. The initial investigation revealed that the motive for the attack was apparently nationalistic.”
“On April 21 Israel border policemen saw two Palestinians about 17 years old alighting from a taxi at the Tapuach junction (south of Nablus), carrying a suspicious-looking bag. The policemen ordered them to halt but the two turned and ran. The youths, both residents of the Balata refugee camp near Nablus, were found to be carrying four IEDs, a gun and ammunition.”
The IEDs and weapons found in the possession of the two Palestinians
(Israel Border Police Media Office, April 21, 2012)
“There has recently been a rise in the number of stones and Molotov cocktails thrown at Israeli vehicles south of Jerusalem in the Gush Etzion district; on April 19 there were five such attacks. In one instance Palestinian youths threw stones and rocks at an Israel car at the Gush Etzion junction. One of the rocks hit the car and shattered the front windshield. Riding in the car were a couple and their two-year old son.”
(source)
“The Mount of Olives in Eastern Jerusalem was the scene of an attack on Sunday night [April 15th], as 7 molotov cocktails or “firebombs” were hurled at Jewish homes in the neighborhood of Maale HaZeitim.”
(source)
“Three separate attacks in Jerusalem Thursday, [April 26th] left 4 people injured.
A Jewish family was assaulted by Arab teenagers in eastern Jerusalem, leaving three of the family members injured and in need of medical treatment.
In the Old City of Jerusalem, an 11 year old boy was injured when Arabs began throwing rocks near Israeli Jews in the area. The boy was hit in the head and also received medical help following the incident.
The last attack to occur happened late Thursday night when an Orthodox man was attacked by two Arab youths, who fled the scene on foot before causing any physical harm. Police have arrested a suspect in the case and are reportedly looking for another.”
(source)
“An Israeli cab driver heading from Tel Aviv to Kfar Saba – a 14.5 mile trip – was stabbed several times overnight by an Arab man described by police as being in the country illegally.”
(source)
It is expensive to keep a permanent correspondent in a foreign country and that expense might well be queried if its only outcome is to produce multiple versions of the same carefully selected items in order to cultivate a tailored view of the country covered.
But the stories untold are just as relevant as the ones which do get published. It is, for example, much easier for both British politicians and members of the general public to voice criticism of Israel’s checkpoints and security barrier as impediments to free movement if neither they nor the people listening to them know anything about attempts to smuggle IEDs, guns and knives intended to kill civilians through those checkpoints.
The Guardian’s placing of a total black-out on the reporting of rocket fire into Israel from Gaza (unless Israel reacts), ‘cold weapon’ terror attacks on Israeli civilians and attempted armed infiltrations into Israel from Palestinian Authority-controlled areas is an additional method of influencing foreign perceptions of Israel which should not be underestimated.
Related articles
- Guardian’s “relative calm” in Israel continues, 130 rockets fired from Gaza in last 30 hours (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s biased coverage of terrorist hostilities in Israel’s south: Numbers, headlines and photos (cifwatch.com)
- Photos the Guardian won’t publish: Israeli communities under siege from Gaza rocket fire (cifwatch.com)
- The Washington Post’s Coverage of Israel: Slouching towards the Guardian at Easter (cifwatch.com)
Like this:
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?”
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, (1949), pt. 1, ch. 3)
Next month will mark the second anniversary of Harriet Sherwood’s arrival in Israel. Those two years have made no noticeable difference to her reporting – suggesting that Sherwood’s tendency to blindly reproduce frequently unsubstantiated claims made by various individuals or organisations (often with a lot more to them than Sherwood chooses to inform her readers) is more a matter of method than lack of knowledge or experience.
As we saw just a couple of months ago in the Guardian’s coverage of Khader Adnan’s hunger strike, what Sherwood (and others) omit from their reports is often just as critical to the overall picture as the words they do choose to write. Thus Adnan – an Islamic Jihad activist seen on record recruiting suicide bombers – became ‘a baker‘ as far as Guardian readers were concerned, whilst the victims of his ‘militant group‘ (as Sherwood elected to term a proscribed terrorist organisation) remained outside the sphere of Guardian readers’ awareness.
Now Sherwood is at it again, with an article from April 26th on the subject of the latest round of hunger strikes by Palestinian security prisoners held in Israeli prisons. In it, she covers two specific prisoners; Bilal Diab (aged 27 from the village of Ra’ei, south-west of Jenin) and Tha’er Halahleh (aged 34 from Hevron and one of the leaders of the hunger strike).
What Sherwood refrains from informing her readers is that – like Khader Adnan – both men are members of the Islamic Jihad.
Bilal Diab
Tha’er Halahleh
Sherwood quotes ‘Addameer’ in her article, describing it as a ‘prisoners’ rights group’ but declining to mention the organisation’s political aspects and its use of Palestinian prisoners as a means of political leverage.
This interview (worth reading in its entirety) with Addameer legal researcher Mourad Jadallah gives an idea of the group’s political affiliations and the significance of the subject of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons in internal Palestinian political power struggles.
Asa Winstanley: Palestinian hunger strikes seems to have developed a lot recently. It’s an old tactic, but there seems to be a new focus on it.
Mourad Jadallah: We have days for hunger strike for prisoners from Fatah and [then] twenty other days for prisoners from the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], which means that also the prisoners’ movement is not united like it was [in the past]. So what happened outside the prisons is reflected inside the prisons’ movement.
AW: The factional divisions you mean?
MJ: Yeah. Like today — this is something we don’t want to talk about but maybe for The Electronic Intifada we can say [that] until today we are not sure that the prisoners of Fatah will participate [in the hunger strike starting tomorrow].
……
This is one side of how we can explain all these hunger strikes in the prison. From one side, the peace process failed to release the prisoners … And the other side, you have the [prisoners] exchange. Most of the prisoners released … they are affiliated to Hamas. So the other prisoners said, OK, what we have [are] political factions who just look out for their own prisoners and if we are from other parties nobody will ask for us and the peace process can’t release all the prisoners … The prisoners decided and they understood that they have to fight for themselves.
AW: Most of the prisoners released in the exchange were from Hamas?
MJ: Especially in the first phase of the release — 80 percent of them were from Hamas.
AW: Why was that?
MJ: This is what Hamas wanted, and also the majority of prisoners today, they belong to Hamas. This is the reality even after the exchange. And we know that Fatah and the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization], when they release the prisoners, they look for the Fatah prisoners, they want to keep this legitimacy at least in the eyes of the Fatah prisoners.
So everyone is saying, OK, Hamas succeeded to release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners — 80 percent of the first phase, which is like 450, they were Hamas. And the others, who were serving short sentences, were from different parties. So maybe it’s time for others to do the same as Hamas and release their prisoners.
… Since the beginning of the year there have been some short hunger strikes … Then suddenly you have the PFLP prisoners who went on an open hunger strike for twenty days, then Hamas came and did the prisoner swap … And then Khader Adnan put all the focus on Islamic Jihad. So you have a competition between the political parties. At some point you have the focus on the Fatah prisoners.
An additional aspect connecting this latest round of hunger strikes to its many predecessors -which Sherwood also completely ignores – is its role in the ongoing attempt by some Palestinian groups (including organizations such as Addameer) to have people serving sentences due to convictions for terrorism recognized as political prisoners. In fact, as Addameer’s director Sahar Francis states in this article, they already view all Palestinian security prisoners as ‘political’ – even leaders of terrorist groups such as Ahmed Sa’adat of the PFLP and those convicted of acts of terror.
Sherwood’s next quote in her article comes from Shawan Jabarin of Al Haq. As was previously pointed out by CiF Watch when Sherwood wrote a puff piece about ‘Defence of Children International – Palestine’ in January 2012, Jabarin (who sits on the board of DCI-Pal together with Sahar Francis of Addameer) is linked to the proscribed terrorist organization the PFLP.
In June 2007 the Israeli Supreme Court noted that:
“[Jabarin] is apparently active as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in part of his hours of activity he is the director of a human rights organisation, and in another part he is an activist in a terrorist organisation which does not shy away from acts of murder and attempted murder, which have nothing to do with rights, and, on the contrary, deny the most basic right of all, the most fundamental of fundamental rights, without which there are no other rights – the right to life.”
If – as with almost everything she writes about – Sherwood were not so busy endeavoring to reduce the subject to simplistic concepts of innocent, helpless Palestinians and bad, powerful Israelis, she might have been able to broaden her readers’ knowledge on the subject of these repeated hunger strikes as part of a comprehensive strategy to try to secure the release of prisoners.
She could have pointed out the connections between the well-organized strikes and the calls by Khaled Mashaal and other prominent members of Hamas such as Ismail Haniyeh, Ahmed Bahar and Ismail Radwan to kidnap more Israeli soldiers as a ‘second front’ in the bid for the release of convicted terrorists from Israeli prisons.
She might have mentioned the statements by Issa Qaraqa (PA Minister of Prisoner Affairs) and PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi on the subject of the coordinated hunger strike – both of which called for ‘internationalization’ of the issue – adding further evidence to the fact that rather than some kind of spontaneous reaction to specific grievances, the strike is part of a co-ordinated political campaign, as the between Hamas and Fatah leaders in its promotion also indicates.
“Hamas political chief Khaled Mashaal and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas spoke by telephone Thursday about rallying Palestinians to support Palestinian prisoners in their hunger strike against certain Israeli prison policies, such as administrative detention, Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported Friday, citing a Hamas statement.
The two also discussed tactical strategy for emphasizing the hunger strike and prisoner issues on the public relations and diplomatic fronts.”
But unfortunately for anyone who actually relies upon the Guardian for news and information about what goes on in Israel, they will learn nothing of the wider context of the hunger strikes in Israeli prisons because Harriet Sherwood apparently deems it unnecessary for readers to be aware of the connections of her subjects and interviewees to terror groups or the political campaigns of which the strikes are part and parcel.
Instead, she’s busy piling on the pathos; slowly but steadily narrowing her readers’ range of thought in true Newspeak fashion.
Related articles
- Harriet Sherwood again takes up the cause of innocent Palestinian “baker”, Khader Adnan (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood feels Islamic Jihad terrorist’s pain (cifwatch.com)
- Video of Harriet Sherwood’s Palestinian “Baker”, Khader Adnan, calling for suicide bombing (cifwatch.com)
Like this:
Ten years ago, as part of the commemorations on Memorial Day (Yom HaZikaron), the IDF radio station Galei Tzahal initiated a project entitled “Soon We Will Become a Song” in which prominent Israeli musicians volunteer to write scores for and perform songs written by soldiers who fell in the line of duty.
This song –‘Nothing’s gonna hurt me’ – was written by Lieutenant Erez Shtark and is performed by Knessiat HaSechel.
Erez, from Kiryat Ata, was 21 when he and 72 others were killed on the evening of February 4th, 1997 in a crash between two helicopters in northern Israel. Eight Yasur crew members were transporting 65 soldiers to active duty in Lebanon in the two helicopters, as transport by road had been deemed unsafe due to the prevalence of Hizballah roadside bombs. There were no survivors when the two aircraft crashed over Moshav Sha’ar Yishuv and Kibbutz Dafna.
At the memorial near Sha’ar Yishuv, 73 standing stones commemorate the soldiers who came from cities, towns, villages, moshavim and kibbutzim all over Israel. Religious and secular, Jew, Bedouin and Druze are all united by the fact that they lost their lives defending their country.
In the past year 126 new names have been added to the list of 22,993 soldiers who gave their lives in defence of our country and the 2,477 civilian victims of terror atrocities. Today we remember them all, and think of their families - Israelis from all backgrounds bound together by loss.
May their memories be blessed יהי זכרם ברוך
Related articles
- From Staring to Praying. (cifwatch.com)
- Toulouse widow lights candle at Israel memorial ceremony (thejc.com)
Like this:
A guest post by Anne, who blogs at Anne’s Opinions
Last week the Guardian slaked its anti-Israel obsession with an article written by Phoebe Greenwood focusing on a proposed detention center for refugees and illegal infiltrators into Israel.
The tone of the article is immediately apparent with the title “Huge detention centre to be Israel’s latest weapon in migration battle“. The use of the contentious word “weapon”, the lack of the word “illegal” in referring to the migrants reflect the automatic bias of the Guardian against even the most innocuous Israeli acts.
Addressing the article itself (all highlights are mine), it begins innocuously enough:
A vast detention complex is rising from the sandy grounds of Ktzi’ot prison in the Negev desert, close to Israel‘s border with Egypt, which will become the world’s largest holding facility for asylum seekers and migrants.
When it is completed, at an initial cost of £58m to the Israeli government, it will be capable of holding up to 11,000 people.
Greenwood then immediately takes on a sneering tone towards Israels’ very real concerns about illegal immigration, implicitly accusing PM Binyamin Netanyahu and his coalition of paranoia:
Despite unprecedented protests at rising costs of living, and increased threats to national security in a volatile, post-Arab spring Middle East, immigration is of such paramount importance to Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition that it has skimmed a minimum of 2% from every ministry’s budget to fund the construction and start-up costs of the building.
Despite Greenwood returning to factual reporting for a couple of paragraphs, quoting Israeli government spokesmen and officials about the numbers and implications of illegal immigration, she returns to her disdainful attitude towards Israel’s legislation:
In January, the Knesset passed a controversial bill categorising anyone attempting to enter the country through its southern border as an “infiltrator” who can be detained for three years – longer if they are from a “hostile state” such as Sudan.
“If we find any bona fide refugees, some will be able to stay and others will be sent to a third country that accepts refugees,” said Regev.
Greenwood goes on to compare the numbers of refugees allowed in to the UK with the numbers allowed in by Israel, ignoring the vast differences between the two nations. For instance, Britain does not have any hostile nations on its borders, let alone the 4 or 5 bordering Israel, not counting the assorted terrorist organizations, all of whom have an interest in flooding Israel with refugees, both to hamper it economically and socially, and in order to smuggle in terrorists amongst the refugees.
She then evokes an emotive tale of a teenage refugee from Sudan:
Mubarak, 18, arrived in 2009. He fled Darfur in western Sudan when the Janjaweed militia destroyed his village. The militiamen pursued families as they fled to nearby villages, looking for children to fight with them. His parents told him to run for his life.
He was 15 when he arrived in Israel and was held at a detention camp for women and children for 22 days, with up to 30 children in one small tent. He says the days in detention were the longest of his life.
“I didn’t know what would happen to me. No one said when I was going to be let out. That was the worst thing, not knowing. When you aren’t able to move, to go anywhere, you have too much time to think,” he said. “It’s not a good place to be. To think people would be staying there for three years, they would all be driven crazy. We are refugees. We aren’t supposed to be in jail.”
But Mubarak is not recognised as a refugee in Israel. Immigrants from Sudan and Eritrea are currently offered “group protection”, which means they cannot be sent back to their home countries – but nor are they afforded any rights or state support.
Yes, Mubarak’s story is indeed very sad, but this all ignores the unfortunately very real risk that refugees from countries hostile to Israel may include terrorists in disguise. Phoebe Greenwood does not see fit to include any reaction from Israel’s defence and security echelon who could give some much-needed background and context to Israel’s fears. For example in this Ynet article from last year:
The IDF officers told Netanyahu that al-Qaeda and its offshoots may attempt to send Sudanese refugees across the Egyptian border and into Israel with the aim of setting up terror cells in the Jewish state.
A senior military official told the PM that the terror group may attempt to recruit people in Sudan and train them. Al-Qaeda will then have the recruits infiltrate Israel, set up terror cells and recruit other refugees to carry out attacks in Israel, according to the army official.
Netanyahu was told that the past four years have seen 20 attempts by terrorists to infiltrate Israel through the breached Egyptian border.
Returning to the Guardian’s article, Greenwood allows Israel’s authorities to defend the quality of the centre (the new detention facility will have libraries, teachers, day care, basketball courts and several hairdressing salons) but cannot resist the hectoring derision from human rights group and of course, good old Amnesty with its in-built bias against Israel:
Following pressure from human rights groups, the space allocated per person has been increased from 2.5 square metres to 4.9, including bathrooms. According to EU standards, the “desirable” size is 7 square metres. A high-ranking official involved with overseeing construction of the centre says: “It will be very comfortable. But at the end of the day, we are dealing with people who have entered Israel illegally. I am not making them a hotel – although it’s not too far from one.”
Amnesty Israel’s position is that however much the conditions are improved, the prolonged detention of refugees is still illegal. “Detention should never be used as a deterrent. Asylum seekers should not be treated as criminals,” it argues.
The article concludes with a complaint from Israel’s civil rights organization:
Oded Feller, a lawyer for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, is among the activists opposed to the construction of the Ktzi’ot complex. Detention centres, he argues, are places where asylum applications are processed and people should be held only for a matter of months.
“It doesn’t matter if they have places to learn and play, they will be held there,” said Feller. “It will be a prison for people from Africa. The Israeli government is building a refugee camp, not a detention centre.“
I can’t see that there is much difference and I don’t understand what Feller’s complaint is. Does he really want Israel flooded with hundreds of thousands of foreign migrants with all the economic, social and security problems that will accompany them?
Besides the egregious tone of this article, we have to wonder once again at the Guardian’s microscopic focus on every action and decision by Israel’s authorities. Does the Guardian bring as much outrage and faux-concern for the well-being of refugees who are trying to enter Britain for example?
How many articles have there been on Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre? A simple search of the Guardian shows no opinion pieces and only a couple of news items since 2010! In fact there are several refugee and migrant detention and removal centres throughout Britain, but none of these provoke the same outrage as does one single such centre in Israel.
Let’s also examine other refugee centers around the world and how the Guardian reports on them. The Guardian itself published an article this month on “Asylum seekers around the world – where did they come from and where are they going?”. Interestingly, Israel is not mentioned in the entire article. Obviously it is not such a huge refugee detaining center as one would imagine from Greenwood’s article.
A search of the “refugees” tag in the Guardian reveals that there is very little negative reporting of any refugee detainment center anywhere in the world besides Israel.
I eagerly await an outraged and emotional articles from the Guardian on the United States Immigrant Detention Centers, the various European immigrant detention centers in Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Ukraine (besides the UK), not to mention Australia.
The implication in Phoebe Greenwood’s article that Israel’s detention centre is somehow inhumane and racist portrays once again the bias that is inherent in Guardian reporting on Israel.
When one considers the fact that there is hardly a country without an illegal immigrant detention centre, plus the numbers of migrants relative to population size and the regional and geopolitical facts on the ground in Israel, one can only but shake one’s head in dismay once again at the Guardian’s obsessive focus on the Jewish state.
Related articles
- Phoebe Greenwood manages to vilify Israel in story about tragic auto accident (cifwatch.com)
- Lost in anti-Zionist translation? Guardian misquotes Noam Shalit on Palestinian hostage taking (cifwatch.com)
- The Washington Post’s Coverage of Israel: Slouching towards the Guardian at Easter (cifwatch.com)
- Flagman: Arab ‘Spring’, the Guardian & the glorification of a nation’s anti-Zionist obsession (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian removes letter on Jews’ ‘Ghetto’ mentality: Runs afoul of their “editorial guidelines” (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian contributor David Wearing’s Twitter pic: The Israeli Grinch who steals Christmas (cifwatch.com)
- Suzanne Goldenberg avoids mentioning her Jenin lies at the Guardian Open Weekend (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s duty to Jews on Yom HaShoah? Don’t publish accusations that we’re “supremacists”! (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood runs interference for Global March to Jerusalem organizers and rioters (cifwatch.com)
Like this:
A whole nation is at this moment remembering the slaughter of two-thirds of its members’ population in Europe.
That genocide was fuelled and enabled by the spreading of a racist supremacist ideology which sought to rid its subscribers’ country from ‘contamination’ by Jews.
That ideology was propagated in the minds of another nation by the spreading of false tales about Jewish evil-doing and coordinated scheming and by the dehumanisation of Jews to such a degree that even if they did not directly take part, millions stood by and watched as one of the most shocking events in human history took place.
Barely had the strains of the memorial siren which was sounded this morning all over Israel as a mark of respect for the six million victims of racist hatred faded away, when the Guardian chose to publish an article on its ‘Comment is Free’ website penned by Raed Salah – a man who holds beliefs and ideologies virtually indistinguishable from those which caused the events that siren commemorates.
The editors of the Guardian have fought in Raed Salah’s corner ever since the affair began.
Now, once again, their immature “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” stance has caused them to tarnish the battered reputation of a once respected newspaper (and prove themselves to be eminently lacking in taste) by publishing Salah’s bizarre claims of being the victim of a “smear campaign” by “Israel’s cheerleaders in Britain” and that his anti-Semitic ‘poem’ “had been doctored” in order to frame him.
Those editors also permit Salah to launch a tirade of lies and distortions on everything from marriage laws, municipal and government budgets and equal pay laws to the well-worn subject on Guardian pages of Al Arakib and deliberate misrepresentation of the Balfour Declaration.
More gravely still, they allow Salah an unfettered platform from which to make the ridiculous – and dangerous – claims that official Israeli policy includes transfer and ethnic cleansing and that Israel is destroying the al Aqsa mosque.
There can be little doubt that some at the Guardian actually subscribe to at least parts of the genre of lies propagated by Raed Salah. There can be even less doubt that those who do not must be so intimidated by the prevailing organisational culture that they cannot curb the publication of such a blatantly outrageous article by a religious supremacist and separatist who subscribes to Hamas ideologies and aspirations alarmingly similar to the one the victims of which are being commemorated today.
Raed Salah has made a career out of extremism and incitement. That is who he is and what he does. However uncomfortable it may be, it is necessary to admit that – as his planned speaking tour proves – there is an audience for that kind of extremism in the United Kingdom as well as the Middle East.
But extremists do not get very far without the middle-men who re-package and re-brand their ideas and move them into the mainstream.
There are too many of these middle-men in Britain today.
Some of them sit in the House of Lords and in Parliament whilst others hold office in churches or so-called human rights organisations and charities.
Still more are members of Trade Unions, the academia or the media.
These people take the lies and dehumanisation of extremists such as Raed Salah and wrap them in a veneer made possible by their own standing which allows pernicious ideas to be spread to a general public which would otherwise not come into contact with them.
This is not to suggest that the editors of the Guardian and others are plotting a new genocide against the Jews. Indeed they would doubtless be horrified by the very suggestion. But what they are doing by uncritically publishing and promoting the lies and libels of extremists such as Salah and various Hamas functionaries and supporters is shifting hate-speech against Jews and Israelis alike into the realm of mainstream opinion.
As we should all (Guardian editors included) know by now and as we are reminded today, Yom HaShoah, such hate-speech does not exist in a vacuum.
“The power of the media to create and destroy fundamental human values comes with great responsibility. Those who control the media are accountable for its consequences.”
Related articles
- Yom HaShoah: ‘Unto every person there is a name’. (cifwatch.com)
- Why is the ‘liberal’ Guardian still rooting for a reactionary antisemitic Islamist named Raed Salah? (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood cynically exploits a Holocaust survivor on Yom HaShoah to criticize Israel (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian again defends Islamist antisemite Raed Salah, attacks Community Security Trust (cifwatch.com)
Cross posted by Raheem Kassam atThe Commentator
Noam Chomsky and Ross Caputi
The title of this piece is a summary of events that no doubt sensationally portrays what has happened between the Guardian, Tarek Mehanna and Ross Caputi. But this scenario is worthy of serious contemplation for the security services, justice system and for all the individuals involved.
To bring you up to speed, Tarek Mehanna was recently found guilty of conspiracy to kill Americans overseas and of giving material support for terrorism.
He was sentenced to 17 years in prison. While his lawyers tried to represent him as a modern day Martin Luther King or even more spuriously, Nelson Mandela – a jury of his peers returned the verdict of ‘guilty’, acknowledging his role in criminal conduct.
It is reported that Mehanna travelled to Yemen in December 2004 to seek training at a terrorist camp, after which he planned to go to Iraq and fight against U.S soldiers. The judge in the case stated that he was “concerned about the defendant’s apparent absence of remorse” and when Mehanna was sent down, his family and friends delivered him a standing ovation.
I have my own concern about lack of remorse based on a recent Guardian Comment is Free article written by an Iraq War veteran who, as free as he walks, insists that what he did in Fallujah was ‘terrorism’ and writes openly in the Guardian, “I, too, support the right of Muslims to defend themselves against US troops, even if that means they have to kill them.”
This shocking statement from Ross Caputi is the kind of dangerous nonsense from someone tied up with the Stop The War Coalition, who recently introduced Noam Chomsky at an event and who seems to have become a Guardian poster boy since his article entitled, ‘I am sorry for the role I played in Fallujah’.
Firstly, if Caputi is indeed adamant about his role in ‘terrorism’ then one wonders why he hasn’t marched himself down to the local police station, courtroom or military tribunal demanding the ‘justice’ he so vehemently campaigns for on behalf of convicted terrorists. It seems the Iraq vet thinks he can alleviate this double standard by writing a groveling letter of apology to The Guardian, where he apologises for attacking Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaeda operatives who he claims were ‘defending their city’. In reality, these groups were attacking as many Iraqi civilians and security forces as they were coalition forces in the city and just to be clear, The Guardian is not, despite what its editors may think, a part of the justice system or somewhere Caputi should be able to alleviate his guilt publicly.
Next, Caputi goes on to write about the murder of his friends in a romantic fashion – glorifying their killers, “How can I begrudge the resistance in Fallujah for killing my friends?” He classes himself as an ‘invader’ and ‘aggressor’ but makes no mention of the fact that it was al-Qaeda who fought in amongst civilians, oppressing them, using home and mosques and civilian areas as munitions stores. I’m inclined to agree with one of his opening statements where he claims he had no idea what was going on in Fallujah – it appears he still does not.
By no means am I excusing the killing of civilians and the use of depleted uranium or white phosphorus as weapons, by the way. But it is important to keep a level head on these issues and perhaps through no fault of his own and some would argue understandably, Caputi cannot. When reading his work, it is evident to anyone with even a vague sense of the importance of factual evidence and strategic realities that Caputi cannot reconcile the geopolitical and moral imperatives with the memory of the war in his own mind.
He links to the ‘Iraq Body Count’ website which in fact does little to back up his claims that U.S. troops were mainly to blame for civilian deaths. They played a major role for reasons given earlier, as well heavy-fire tactics used during the invasion years – but insurgents and post-invasion criminal violence caused the lions share of civilian deaths. The website, the very same that Tony Blair cites in his recent memoir, states, “Killings by anti-occupation forces, crime and unknown agents have shown a steady rise over the entire period”. Yet these are the forces that Caputi supports when he writes, “I’m not afraid to profess my support for Tarek Mehanna, or to advocate for his ideas”.
Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. sentenced Tarek Mehanna to 17 years in prison (less than the 25 called for by the prosecution) and while Ross Caputi’s confused and dangerous rants can be dismissed as the misguided, angry and stress-related consequences of war, it is less apparent why The Guardian should see fit to print such a piece which not only advocates terrorism and supports a convict, but is also factually flawed and fuels incitement to violence against foreign troops abroad.
Even one of the more sympathetic jurors who laments Mehanna’s long prison sentence acknowledges that he was a radical obsessed with violence, jihad and on the killing of U.S. troops. Perhaps Caputi’s defense of Mehanna would be less robust if it had been he that was targeted – or perhaps in such an extreme case, it would have driven him even further.
But ‘free speech’ is always the elephant in the room in cases like this. What is to stop The Guardian, Ross Caputi or even Tarek Mehanna from speaking their minds on such issues – even if it leaves the bitterest of tastes in our mouths?
The legal implications are complex, but in Britain, Caputi’s statements of support for Mehanna, including we assume from his words, his trip to Yemen and interest in fighting in ‘the resistance’ in Iraq is not just endorsement of terrorism but also proliferation, glorification and tantamount to incitement. His piece supports the killing of American soldiers abroad and could indeed be criminal under USC 2339A – ‘providing material support to terrorists’ and in Britain ‘inciting murder for terrorist purposes overseas’.
In Mehanna’s case under U.S. law, a 1969 Supreme Court case which the ‘Brandenburg test’ is derived from sets a precedent. For criminality of speech to be inferred, you have to be able to show that it would lead to ‘imminent lawless action’. Mehanna’s defence argued that he did not do this, but rather he was prosecuted for conspiring to kill American soldiers and supporting Al-Qaeda – far more heinous crimes.
The question now arises of what happens to Caputi, since it was he himself writing in the Guardian Comment Is Free (America) who originally wrote, “I have done everything that Tarek Mehanna has done, and there are only two possibilities as to why I am not sitting in a cell with him: first, the FBI is incompetent and hasn’t been able to smoke me out; second, the US judicial system would never dream of violating my freedom of speech because I am white and I am a veteran of the occupation of Iraq.”
Here, Caputi sets himself up as a hero – his status as a veteran of the war in Iraq he argues, precluding him from the arms of the law. Neither of the stated reasons is accurate, as Caputi did not travel to Yemen looking for terrorist training, nor did he conspire to assist al-Qaeda. To the best of our knowledge, he also never conspired to kill American soldiers overseas – unless he knows something we don’t know? However he does raise a valid point. Since he is in fact, openly inciting terrorist acts abroad, what do British and American courts intend to do about it?
Typically, going after someone like Caputi would not be worth the time and money it would the government to prosecute him, even if they could be sure of a conviction. What makes this incident even more telling for the rational amongst us is Caputi’s own admission of being somewhat of a less than perfect soldier – not the ‘hero’ the FBI would have to think he was in order to, as he asserts, violate his freedom of speech. In fact, reading his blog it is easy to see that Caputi is indeed not the prim and proper Iraq veteran he masquerades as, nor was he privy to the kind of primary source information one might think The Guardian editors would look into:
“My unit got called into Camp Fallujah a couple of weeks before the 2nd assault. I was a buck private at the time and had recently been demoted for a number of charges from underage drinking to theft to general conduct unbecoming of a Marine. I was even moved out of my old infantry platoon because I just was not listening to anyone in charge of me, and they made me the Company Commander’s radio operator instead.”
This Chomsky-fanatic, who has only just surfaced in the mainstream, poses a serious threat to rational and evidence-based discourse about the war in Iraq, its consequences and the ongoing terrorist threat. Since he’s so adamant that he was a terrorist in Fallujah – I’m tempted to suggest that Caputi should be frog-marched to the nearest courtroom and forced to stand trial under his own admission of guilt. The reality is though, as he conveniently leaves out of his Guardian articles, he was scarcely ever around to witness what happened. “Most of the time” he admits, “I was perfectly safe with the officers, and there was no fighting within my immediate vicinity”.
Raheem Kassam is the Executive Editor of The Commentator. He tweets at @RaheemJKassam
Related articles
Guardian Weekly Letters, 20 April 2012 included this:
So, what seems to be an attempt by Israel to protect its citizens from thousands of terrorist infiltrations from the Palestinian territories, Gaza, Sinai and Lebanon is really only a sign that Jews are stuck in an atavistic ghetto mentality.
On some psychological level, Jews evidently internalized the mores of European ghetto life, antisemitic legal requirements dictating where they could live, and are, subconsciously, attempting to recreate the glory days of 15th century Venice and 20th century Lodz and Warsaw. Hamas and Hezbollah just provide a convenient pretext!
If this letter was chosen by Guardian editors as especially meritorious, out of all which were submitted, I can only imagine what they rejected.
Related articles
- Snapshot of bias: Guardian’s Israel page is seeing double…no, triple (cifwatch.com)
- Jenin. Ten Years Since Something That Never Happened: A Learning Moment for the Guardian (cifwatch.com)
- Letter published in the Guardian: “We welcome Israel’s national theatre” (cifwatch.com)
- Suzanne Goldenberg avoids mentioning her Jenin lies at the Guardian Open Weekend (cifwatch.com)
- Seth Freedman’s attack on Israel’s Jewish nature: Classically Guardian egregious absence of context (cifwatch.com)
- Former Nazi Gunter Grass & ‘liberal’ broadsheet called the Guardian (Analysis of coverage) (cifwatch.com)
- Israel to revoke citizenship of 1.6 million Palestinian Arabs! By ‘Israel’ I mean Jordan, so Guardian yawns (cifwatch.com)
- Perpetrators as victims: Seumas Milne ignores Islamist-inspired antisemitism of Toulouse massacre (cifwatch.com)
- Faces of the IDF & faces of stereotypes: Countering the Guardian’s crude caricature of Israelis (cifwatch.com)
A guest post by AKUS
Goldenberg with Guardian's Middle East editor Ian Black at 'Open Weekend' 2012
While looking once again at the disgusting role the Guardian, and, in particular, Suzanne Goldenberg, played in disseminating the lies about the so-called “Jenin massacre” I came across a videoclip of a workshop held by the Guardian for the paying faithful (Weekend pass: £60) called the frontline debate at Guardian Open Weekend. The Guardian lined up Suzanne Goldenberg, Emma Graham-Harrison (just recruited from Reuters), Martin Chulov, and Ian Black, in what they referred to as a “debate” moderated by Lindsay Hilsum (International Editor for Channel 4 News and frequent contributor to the Guardian and Observer – 2002 TV story of the year runner up for Jenin reporting) for this event.
Actually, it was not a debate – it was a panel discussion and exercise in group-think amongst an incestuous group of mainly Israel-bashing reporters who have known each other for decades, with the exception of Graham-Harrison who seemed a little uncertain about her role in the event. There was no debate, there were no opposing views about anything, and it was attended by,I would estimate from the videocam pictures, as perhaps 20 Guardianista groupies.
If you do not think “groupies” is a fair term to describe the attendees, and have the energy to watch it all the way through, you will see one middle-aged person, worried about the digital age, expressing her undying love for the print version of the Guardian (“I’m an avid consumer of the print version. God, I love the print version. It gives me an enormous amount of pleasure every day”). I was left wondering what strange views of the world this woman must have, since reading every word, every day, in a paper like the Guardian, must surely create an alternative world view that most of us outside the Guardian bubble can hardly begin to comprehend.
Well, feeding straight into the carefully-crafted GWV of people like this we had the Goldenberg view of the ME. She managed to refer to the Middle East (Israel and Iraq were once her beats) without once mentioning her despicable role in creating the Jenin massacre libel (along with, of course, Brian Whitaker and the entire stable of anti-Israeli Guardian journalists, including weekend panelist Ian Black).
Goldenberg, like Judge Goldstein for his Gaza report, should never be forgiven for the damage she did to Israel with her reporting about Jenin. While she and the Guardian were not the only sources of the libels, and the BBC and CNN have much to answer for, her articles set the tone. In 2002, after leaving Israel for the US (see below), she won Journalist of the Year award with the BBC’s John Kampfner for her reporting from Israel and his from Gaza– awards, surely, in a minor way, as little deserved and cynical as Yasser Arafat’s Nobel Peace prize.
On the Guardian’s website, Goldenberg is shown as the Guardian’s “US Environment Correspondent”. Links to her other reporting activities avoid a link to her reports from Israel.
She left Israel after then head of the Israeli government press office , Daniel Seaman, denied her access to Israeli briefings after accusing her (and several other reporters) of acquiescing to control of her reporting by Yasser Arafat in order for her to get access to West Bank and Gazan sources (“fixers”). The manipulation of journalists and media in this way by the PA has been extensively documented by Stephanie Gutmann in her important book, “The Other War”. Although Rusbridger denied this was the reason for Goldenberg’s withdrawal, clearly she was no longer useful in her position in Jerusalem. The Guardian has never retracted her reports and has never apologized in print for its coverage of the battle in Jenin. Rusbridger has only made a verbal retraction in a barely noticed comment on March 3rd, 2008 (six years later!) at the Jewish Book Week’s closing session in London.
There are two clips recording her comments that the Guardian extracted from the panel discussion. The first is:
In which she recounts how sad she was when, as a result of the first intifada, barriers went up between Jerusalem and Ramallah, due to the mistrust between Israelis and West Bank Arabs. She ignores the horror, deaths, and brutality of the suicide bombings. Her theme for the weekend was “How the contacts (between Israelis and Palestinians) withered and how that fed the conflict” – never mentioning how her virulent reporting contributed to the bitterness.
The second refers to her shameless attitude to misreporting and creating the news:
‘Your job is to make people connect to the story’ – video
“I can’t predict accurately what will make a big impact and what will not”.
Fair enough, if what she reported is really what happened. But in fact the hallmark of her reporting from Israel, culminating in her lies about what happened in Jenin as a result of the second intifada, was the creation of a story with “big impact” by grabbing onto and reporting every rumor and lie spread by the likes of Saeeb Erekat and other Palestinians such as Nabil Shaath without any serious attempt at corroboration from the IDF.
Israel’s Defensive Shield operation in Jenin ran from April 1 – April 11, 2002. In an article from April 9, Toll of the bloody battle of Jenin, she recounted the fierce opposition met by Israeli forces. The article carries the almost certainly incorrect sub-header
“Suzanne Goldenberg in the West Bank town that has seen a ‘victory’ for militiamen bought at the terrible price of 13 Israelis and 100 Palestinians dead”
Since reporters were not allowed in by Israel, she herself wrote
What little independent information has trickled out of the camp has arrived through the accounts of Palestinian men, who were detained and released by the invading Israeli forces, or through sporadic telephone phone calls with residents of Jenin camp and town.
But as time went by, to get the “impact” she needed and make “make people connect to the story”, the description of events became more and more reliant on the wild exaggerations of the PA spokesmen.
For example, in the article Disaster zone hides final death toll, even when it was apparent that the death toll in Jenin was dozens and not hundreds, and even she referred to only 16 confirmed Arab deaths (later to rise to 52) she continued beating the drum of anti-Israeli lies.
She continued the attempt to give the impression of hundreds of innocents had been massacred. To help “people connect to the story” and give it “impact”, she added unsubstantiated “accounts” of “scores of bodies beneath the ruins”:
There are also accounts of scores of bodies beneath the ruins – especially at the centre of the camp where some 200 homes were crushed by Israeli army bulldozers – reputedly with people inside – in a frenzied demolition campaign on the last two days of fighting.
As her stories developed, references to Israeli casualties disappeared, and from the start there was no context provided by mentioning the reason for the Defensive Shield action, of which Jenin was one battle, (increasing terrorist attacks culminating in the real massacre of innocents at the Park Hotel Seder). In fact, Goldenberg is credited with only one article about the Park Hotel massacre, Suicide bomb kills 16 Israelis in hotel, co-written with Graham Usher while she was in Beirut. She was reporting there on a now long-forgotten meeting where the Saudis laid out their peace plan while preventing Arafat from participating by satellite link. She reported, ironically in light of the events we are witnessing in Syria a decade later, contemporaneously (March 27, 2002) with the Park Hotel massacre:
“Syria’s Bashar Assad called on Arab leaders to support the Palestinian uprising, and condemned the Jewish state as a “living example” of terrorism.”
The Guardian reader was left with the utterly false impression that what happened in Jenin was an event at least on the scale of a Bosnia visited for no reason at all on defenseless, peaceful people. In fact, the claim was immediately uncritically repeated by the Guardian’s own Jonathan Freedland, writing from London – Parallel universes– who compared the Jenin battle to the Christian massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila:
The streets are strewn with corpses, and there are more underneath the wreckage. Palestinians say bodies were piled up and taken away in trucks; that men were lined up, thinking they were under arrest, and shot; that homes were hit by helicopter gunships even as civilians cowered inside. Among the dead are the elderly and the very young, left to die, it is said, because no ambulance was allowed to get near. For Palestinians, Jenin 2002 is a tragedy on a par with Beirut 1982, when Christian Phalangists massacred hundreds in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, unhindered by the Israeli army which then ruled the city.
An account of the battle on Wikipedia, adds information which provides context for the limited number of civilian casualties. This background was not mentioned by Goldenberg, who, like other journalists, was not allowed access until after the fighting had ended:
According to Efraim Karsh, before the fighting started, the IDF used loudspeakers broadcasting in Arabic to urge the locals to evacuate the camp, and he estimates that some 11,000 left. Stephanie Gutmann also noted that the IDF used bullhorns and announcements in Arabic to inform the residents of the invasion, and that the troops massed outside the camp for a day because of rain. She estimated that 1,200 remained in the camp, but that it was impossible to tell how many of them were fighters. After the battle, Israeli intelligence estimated that half the population of noncombatants had left before the invasion, and 90% had done so by the third day, leaving around 1,300 people. Others estimated that 4,000 people had remained in the camp. Some camp residents reported hearing the Israeli calls to evacuate, while others said they did not. Many thousands did leave the camp, with women and children usually permitted to move into the villages in the surrounding hills or the neighbouring city. However, the men who left were almost all temporarily detained. Instructed by Israeli soldiers to strip before they were taken away, journalists who entered Jenin following the invasion remarked that heaps of discarded clothing in the ruined streets showed where they were taken into custody.
Not a word of this was ever reported by Goldenberg, nor, as far as I have been able to discover, by the Guardian.
Ian Black, also on the panel, co-authored which indicates how quickly the media disinformation had infected the political ranks in Europe, and repeated the exaggerations of the Palestinian Authority:
A senior Palestinian, Nabil Shaath, accused Israel of carrying out summary executions and removing corpses in refrigerated trucks. He said close to 500 people had been killed. Israel says 70 Palestinian fighters died in the fighting. “The Israeli army took six days to complete its massacre in Jenin and six days to clean it up,” Mr Shaath said.
In a speech published by then editor of Ha’aretz, Hanoch Marmori about a Jenin-inspired libel, the Abu Ali affair, Digging beneath the surface in the Middle East conflict , Marmori said:
While preparing this address, I made some inquiries about Abu Ali’s case. First, final numbers indicate that three children and four women were killed during the fighting in the Jenin refugee camp. Second, Abu Ali’s children were not among them. And third, the [influential European] magazine did not bother to tell its readers of this relatively happy end to its story. Perhaps because they are tired of writing editor’s notes on Middle East stories.
The past 20 months of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have created a real crisis of values for journalism. I believe I can compress the enormous volume of coverage and comment into four fundamental sins: obsessiveness, prejudice, condescension and ignorance. The story of Abu Ali conveniently exemplifies all four.
…
One day, historians examining this period of crisis will have to consider the circular process by which the media were transformed from observers to participants. From covering the story to playing a major part in it, to stimulating and sometimes agitating the environment for their own media purposes. The media in this cruel Israeli-Palestinian conflict are like a very rich junkie, who parks his Mercedes on the high street of a slum. You can be sure that in no time at all, everyone will be out there, pushing a whole variety of merchandise.
Change “Mercedes” to “Rolls Royce” and you have an excellent summary of the way Goldenberg covered, and the Guardian with Harriet Sherwood and Phoebe Greenwood continues to cover, the Israel beat. There are no apologies, no retractions, just an on-going effort to shovel the suspect merchandise to their loving groupies.
—
Apropos the panel discussion, Robin Shepherd’s “Commentator” had this interesting article:
4. GUARDIAN TO CHARGE 9K FOR JOURNALISM COURSE
The Kraken isn’t going away without a fight.
Having made losses before tax of £33million last year, Guardian News and Media had already announced plans for a possible Hotel Guardianista ventureNow, it seems, education is their next port of call with the group looking at plans to start a digital journalism course.
Seeing as its current crop of hacks is incapable of presenting well-reasoned journalism, one has to wonder what’ll be on the syllabus – presumably tips on how to obfuscate a lost back-and-forth in order to evade embarrassment in a manner that would leave even Harry Houdini scratching his head.
And what’ll the damage be? £9000 per year.
Perhaps now its readers will be weaned off their current force-fed diet of attacks on rising tuition fees…
Related articles
- Jenin. Ten Years Since Something That Never Happened: A Learning Moment for the Guardian (cifwatch.com)
- Another blow against propagandists still advancing the Al-Durrah Hoax (cifwatch.com)
- Why is the ‘liberal’ Guardian still rooting for a reactionary antisemitic Islamist named Raed Salah? (cifwatch.com)
Like this:
[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 Goldenberg reported that 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 equally tendentious and equally flawed reporting the following week.
Read the rest of the essay here.
Related articles:
- What the Guardian won’t report: Planned terrorist attack in Israel blocked by quick thinking at checkpoint (cifwatch.com)
- When in Guardianspeak is a massacre a “massacre”?
- Why is the ‘liberal’ Guardian still rooting for a reactionary antisemitic Islamist named Raed Salah? (cifwatch.com)
- Israel to revoke citizenship of 1.6 million Palestinian Arabs! By ‘Israel’ I mean Jordan, so Guardian yawns (cifwatch.com)
- What Harriet Sherwood won’t report: Journalist arrested by PA for criticizing Abbas on Facebook (cifwatch.com)
- Another blow against propagandists still advancing the Al-Durrah Hoax (cifwatch.com)
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What the Guardian won’t report: Palestinians continue to laud Itamar Massacre terrorists
May 8, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Awarta, Fogel, Fogel family massacre, Guardian, Harriet Sherwood, Itamar, Palestinian Media Watch, Terrorism | by Adam Levick | 5 comments
Ynet recently published a story - “Shin Bet seeks to raze Itamar terrorists home” – which reports on a recommendation presented to Israel’s defense minister to approve the demolition of the homes of Amjad and Hakim Awad, who were responsible for Fogel family massacre in Itamar over a year ago.
Ynet notes:
While we covered the brutal attack on the Fogel family last year, I had forgotten that the Palestinians’ families had indeed hidden evidence (including the weapon used in the deadly terrorist act) and aided the two murderers in covering up their tracks.
Further, we published two subsequent unsettling posts about Itamar; one about the hideous behavior of the killers’ family who, according to a Ynet report in October, mocked and taunted the surviving Fogel children on the day they came to the village for the olive harvest.
Tamar Fogel
The other troubling report - cross posted by Giulio Meotti – focused on the Israeli court‘s sentencing of Hakim Awad to five life sentences for the murder of five members of the Fogel family.
Meotti wrote:
Referring to Awad’s behaviour in court, Meotti added:
Hakim Awad in court
Further, a few months ago Palestinian Media Watch reported that the PA’s official television channel, on a program devoted to Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israeli jails, the PA’s official television channel featured a telephone interview with the mother and aunt of one of the murderers of the Fogel family. The mother praised her son and said that he was one of the two who had carried out the “operation at Itamar.” Hakim Awad’s aunt called him a “hero and legend.” The program was broadcast twice (PMW, January 29, 2012).
However, in addition to the lack of remorse by the killer, the cruelty of his family towards young Tamar and the cover up by Awad’s relatives, the Ynet story cited above also included this, which suggests that killer’s families aren’t the only Palestinians who to have engaged in such reprehensible moral behavior after the massacre.
Ynet:
In reading the Guardian’s coverage of the region, I’m often struck by the manner in which reports on Israel often lack any resemblance to the nation in which I live. Indeed, Harriet Sherwood’s reports should be seen as part of a broader mission to find evidence in support of her preconceived ideologically driven view of the region.
Political phenomena which fall outside the desired narrative are either downplayed or ignored. Similarly, Palestinians appear in the Guardian’s tales of the region largely as abstractions: poor, downtrodden, dispossessed, victims void of nuance or (often) any sense of moral agency.
All of this explains this fictitious headline accompanying a Sherwood report published shortly after the massacre:
Sherwood’s story didn’t even attempt to support (in the subsequent text) the assertion that Palestinians (living in Awarta and elsewhere) were morally outraged by the terrorist act – likely because little if any genuine outrage was actually expressed.
In fact, a poll conducted last May (2011) in the West Bank, Gaza and E. Jerusalem demonstrated that nearly one-third of Palestinians explicitly support the murder of the Fogels.
Clearly, even the most undeniable evidence that the killer’s family and their broader community continue to the laud the behavior of Amjad and Hakim Awad will never find its way to the pages of the Guardian.
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