Despite the fact that Burke acknowledges that “the emergence of terrorism as we know it today” begun “in the second half of the 19th century”, his historical overview of modern terror somehow manages to avoid any mention of Palestinian attacks against Jews in Israeli cities, or Palestinian attacks on Jewish targets in Western cities.
“Despite being engaged in nearly perpetual conflict with Palestinians over the division of land, Israel has developed into an economic hub in the 69 years of its existence. The densely populated country has focused on growing its high-tech industry, a change from its agricultural roots. Israel has one of the fastest growing GDPs of the 25 richest countries, increasing 4% in 2016.”
Netanyahu’s trip to India reveals two sides of Israel that do not receive enough media attention – Israel as a partner in solving the major humanitarian issues of the day, and Israel as a country that is quite popular in many parts of the world – facts which contradict the simplistic, one-sided narrative often presented by foreign journalists covering the region.
Macintyre, the Indy’s former Jerusalem correspondent, said that Hamas were “a relatively pragmatic Islamist regime”, suggested Gazans are free to criticise the regime, and that the terror group’s building of tunnels was “testament to their hard work and ingenuity”.
Whilst Fisk’s criticism of Ross’s AIPAC connections is legitimate (as are questions about Jared Kushner’s Israeli financial and business ties), questioning the loyalty of Ross and the other Jewish peace negotiators – suggesting they can’t be trusted to negotiate fairly with the Palestinians because of their faith – crosses the line.
There are good humanitarian-based arguments for maintaining current UNRWA funding until a long-term solution can be found, but there can be no serious argument to maintain the fiction that there are over 5 million actual Palestinian refugees and that these non-refugees of Palestinian descent should be “repatriated” to a place they never once stepped foot.
It is entirely logical for Israel to not allow BDS activists into the country. It is not because they are documenting human rights violations – human rights organisations work freely in Israel. It is because they have made the choice to join a movement whose stated aim is to harm Israel. Why do such people have the right to enter the country they seek to harm?
There seems to be no limit to the lengths the Guardian will go to ignore, obfuscate or excuse Palestinian extremism, incitement or historical revisionism. Their former Middle East Editor, Ian Black, provided his take on Mahmoud Abbas’s recent speech in Ramallah and characteristically airbrushed the most indefensible parts in order to maintain the narrative of a ‘moderate’, even “principled” Palestinian President.
An op-ed in The Guardian by radical anti-Israel activist, and Code Pink co-founder, Medea Benjamin, included the outrageous claim that Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian teen who was captured on video assaulting an Israeli soldier, was a “PEACEFUL human rights activist”.
Following communication with UK Media Watch, the Guardian agreed to amend the sentence and remove the word “peaceful”.
The low lights of a diatribe against the world in Ramallah last night by the Palestinian “president”, who today celebrated the 12th year of a 4 year term, included his characterisation of Israel as a European “colonialist project, which has nothing to do with the Jews”. Thus far, among UK media outlets, only The Telegraph covered Abbas’s speech. However, their article ignored his antisemitic smear.
Following communication between UKMW and the Guardian, their editors also agreed to change their caption beneath the photo, used to illustrate a recent article (Israel imposes travel ban on 20 foreign NGOs over boycott movement, Jan. 7th), to reflect the more accurate translation of the Arabic sign.
Contrary to what Rehman and countless other Guardian contributors and journalist have alleged, BDS is not a ‘progressive’ civil rights movement, but represents quite the opposite: a regressive campaign by radical activists, all of whom share an unhealthy fixation on the ‘sins’ committed by a historically oppressed minority, and some of whom openly seek to turn back the clock on Jewish civil rights by denying Jews, and only Jews, the right to self-determination and freedom
In addition to the incendiary, hateful, anti-historial and intellectually unserious nature of the charge that Israeli “atrocities” against Palestinians are anywhere in the same moral universe as Nazi atrocities against the Jews, such comparisons of are defined as a form of antisemitism by the EU Parliament and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, of which Ireland is a member.
Though we’re of course accustomed to errors, distortions and omissions in Guardian op-eds about Israel, this piece by the Orthodox Patriarch, suggesting some sort of sinister Jewish plot to ethnically cleans Christians from the holy land, rises to a whole other level of dishonesty.
An Independent article on the death of a Palestinian man on the Gaza border, during clashes with Israeli soldiers last month, included a passage suggesting that his death evokes Israel’s “killing”, in 2000, of a 12 year old Palestinian boy named Mohammed Al Durah. However, the article erroneously suggested that Israel’s responsibility for the young boy’s death was an indisputable fact.
Within the media echo chamber where Harriet Sherwood operates, the question of what Palestinians actually believe about peace and violence is far less important than the role assigned to them in a drama where the antagonists and protagonists have been pre-determined.
UK Media Watch prompted a correction to a Daily Mail article which reported, as if it’s a fact, Gaza Health Ministry claims that Israel killed Ibrahim Abu Thuraya during violent protests on the Gaza border last month. The new article has several additional sentences outlining the IDF statement which casts serious doubt about these Palestinian claims.
The Guardian report, through their egregious omission, as well as legitimising a risible comparison between Tamimi and the Pakistani heroine, obfuscated the Palestinian teen’s disturbing support for murdering Israeli civilians – representing yet another example of the media group’s ongoing efforts to whitewash widespread Palestinian support for violence.
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