Though we may never learn what caused Ibrahim Abu Thuraya’s death on the Gaza border last December, the media’s immediate rush to judgement – presuming Israeli guilt whilst ignoring evidence undermining such accusations – once again demonstrates their institutional failure to subject Palestinian claims to the same degree of skepticism and critical scrutiny that Israeli claims are almost always subjected to.
In fairness, the Guardian – over the last few years – has been a bit more vigilant in avoiding antisemitic language, and we’re certainly glad that their editorial position on the antisemitism scandal currently engulfing the Labour Party is morally clear. However, it would benefit their readers – and help contextualise the problem of antisemitism on the British Left – if senior editors would show a bit more self-reflection by acknowledging their own troubling history of sanctioning toxic rhetoric historically used by anti-Semites.
We contacted editors, who upheld our complaint and amended the passage to note that Tamimi will be released in five months to take into account the time she already served.
Maybe the story that best captures the disconnect between the media portrayal of Israel, and the actual picture of Israel, is the fact that for a fifth year in a row, Israel was named by the UN the 11th happiest country in the world. The appraisal of Israel as a place of doom and gloom is not shared by Israelis themselves (and that includes Jews and Arabs).
The claim by the Indy journalist that Fatah as founded to promote the creation of a Palestinian state shouldn’t be seen as merely a one-off factual error, but, rather, an example of a larger media pattern of casting Palestinians as the reasonable party in the dispute by obfuscating undeniable evidence demonstrating their long history of terror, extremism, and rejectionism.
By linking to Murray’s wild, completely unsubstantiated and incendiary charges, and uncritically citing it as grounds for readers to be skeptical of the government’s assessment, the Guardian has legitimised a full-out anti-Israel conspiracy theory – the kind of malign, obsessive and often delusional Israel root-cause explanations for international events which continues to fuel antisemitism in the UK.
Whilst it’s true that MOST of the more than 325,00 Arabs living in the city are permanent residents, thousands are full Israeli citizens. Roughly 7 percent of the city’s Arabs (more than 20,000 people) are Israeli citizens and have the same rights (including the right to vote in national elections) as all other citizens.
The suggestion that Tamimi, who was arrested for assaulting an Israeli soldier and for incitement, by endorsing (on video) armed “resistance”, is a “political prisoner” is beyond absurd. The term “political prisoner” is as codified as pertaining only to those detained in violation of “freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of expression and information, freedom of assembly and association”.
Contrary to Robert Fisk’s claim, Yasser Arafat was offered was a contiguous state encompassing Gaza, east Jerusalem and considerably more than 90 percent of the West Bank. And, it’s not the “American media” making this “claim”. It’s three of the principle players during negotiations – Bill Clinton, his chief peace negotiator Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, then the US Ambassador to Israel.
This conclusion that the flight of Arabs from Haifa was instigated by the Arab leadership, and not by the Hagana, isn’t just reached by Karsh, but by historian Benny Morris, and even radical anti-Israel historian Illan Pappe, who acknowledged that “Jewish troops had no clear intention of provoking an Arab exodus” and that “their military strategy was not calculated to produce such an outcome”.
In addition to being an “acclaimed Palestinian writer”, Ghassan Kanafi was also a high-ranking member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group. Kanafi was the right hand man to the group’s leader George Habash and met with members of the Japanese Red Army who murdered 26 people in the Lod Airport Massacre in 1972.
A recent Observer editorial is critical of Obama’s decision not to bomb Assad in 2013, but there is just one thing the editorial does not mention –that Observer editors, at the time, encouraged Obama NOT to take action.
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