Good, Bad and Ugly (Guardian/BBC/Israel)

As you might have heard, I'm leaving the Guardian next year for the Times, having finally been convinced that my evil populist philistinism has no place in a publication read by so many all-round, top-drawer plaster saints. (Well, that and the massive wad they've waved at me.) Once there, I will compose as many love letters to the likes of Mr Murdoch and Pres Bush as my black little heart desires, leaving those who have always objected to my presence on such a fine liberal newspaper as this to read only writers they agree with, with no chance of spoiled digestion as the muesli goes down the wrong way if I so much as murmur about bringing back hanging. (Public.)

Not only do I admire the Guardian, I also find it fun to read, which in a way is more of a compliment. But if there is one issue that has made me feel less loyal to my newspaper over the past year, it has been what I, as a non-Jew, perceive to be a quite striking bias against the state of Israel. Which, for all its faults, is the only country in that Barren region that you or I, or any feminist, atheist, homosexual or trade unionist, could bear to live under.

I find this hard to accept because, crucially, I don't swallow the modern liberal line that anti-Zionism is entirely different from anti-semitism; the first good, the other bad.
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mbig said:

A recent string, and several over the past, have made this an issue. And it's always been one to me. This goes for other British press and other European and American Press, and even Israeli and Arab Press. But I'd like to limit this to the the British press for this string as otherwise this could really sprawl. Though if someone has some commentary on other significant Bias in the EU press, it would fit here as well.

I have found the two in the title to be anti-Israel and Pro-Arab. The BBC may have improved a little since the Balen Report they refused to release lest it tell us the obvious.
Guardian is perhaps the most anti-Israel Major daily in the Western world. Over the years, vicious articles by the likes of Chris McGreal have left me wondering if that wasn't the UK pen name of Louis Farrakhan. (or Amira Hass)

From the inside, indeed published in Guardian:

Good, bad and ugly
Julie Burchill
29 Nov 2003
Julie Burchill: Good, bad and ugly | Life and style | The Guardian

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Burchill has spoken repeatedly and frankly of her relationship with drugs, writing that she had "put enough toot up my admittedly sizeable snout to stun the entire Colombian armed forces".[1] She declared that "As one who suffered from chronic shyness and a low boredom threshold ... I simply can't imagine that I could have ever had any kind of social life without [cocaine], let alone have reigned as Queen of the Groucho Club for a good part of the '80s and '90s."[1]

In 1999, Burchill 'found God', and became a Lutheran[6] and later a "self-confessed Christian Zionist".[7] In June 2007,she announced that she would undertake a theology degree,[8] although she subsequently decided to do voluntary work instead as a way to learn more about Christianity.[2] She has volunteered in a local RNIB home.[4] In June 2009 The Jewish Chronicle reported that she had become a Friend of Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue and was considering again a conversion to Judaism.[9] Reported as having attended Shabbat services for a month, and learning Hebrew, Burchill now describing herself as an "ex-christian", pointed out that she had been pondering on her conversion since the age of 25.[9] Burchill said that "At a time of rising and increasingly vicious anti-semitism from both left and right, becoming Jewish especially appeals to me. ... Added to the fact that I admire Israel so much, it does seem to make sense – assuming of course that the Jews will have me."[7]

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alexa said:

You know perfectly well that many Jewish people write articles in the Guardian.

It is a Liberal Newspaper.

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Gardener said:

The guardian is not a liberal newspaper, it is a leftist newspaper.

If it was liberal, it would not appeal to the haters like it does.

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Gardener said:

The guardian is not a liberal newspaper, it is a leftist newspaper.

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Tashah said:

I never read the Guardian anymore for the same reason I never read Ha’aretz anymore and would never elect to live in Berkley.

Generally speaking, too far to the left for my political sensibility.

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gunner said:

Can the paper not be 'leftist' and 'liberal' ?

Paul

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The British paper The Guardian – which one would just dismiss as an irrelevant left-wing rag, except that it is the overwhelming paper of choice for British teachers and for news staff at the BBC, the world’s largest broadcasting network, who are “inspired” by Guardian stories on a daily basis in their broadcasts – is no friend of Israel and the Jews, as I have noted before.

But now it has wiped Israel off the Nobel Prize map, much as Iranian despot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would like to wipe Israel off the real map.

To accompany their story about Barack Obama winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, The Guardian posted on their website what they claimed was “every peace prize winner ever,” stating that the information came from the website Nobelprize.org. But guess whose names The Guardian took off the list, KGB-style, hoping no-one would notice? All three Israelis who have won the peace prize: Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.

Following outrage in Britain, including online articles on the websites of the conservative-leaning Daily Telegraph and Spectator (why are most anti-Semites on the Left these days?), The Guardian slipped the Israeli names back on to their list.

The Guardian had no trouble keeping FW De Klerk, the last president of Apartheid South Africa, on their original list. It is only the Jews – and their achievements – which they tried to wipe off the map.

And this from a paper whose motto is “Facts are sacred”. Of course The Guardian – like several other prominent European papers – misleads readers about Israel on a regular basis by omitting crucial information that portrays Israelis in a positive light.

This time it was caught red-handed, as the (London) Jewish Chronicle and the Harry’s Place blog managed to upload The Guardian’s Israel-free Nobel list before The Guardian slipped the names back in.

Below, The Guardian omitted Israeli political leaders Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, who won the peace prize jointly with Yasser Arafat in 1994.
(Incidentally The Guardian forgot to remove the word “Israel” when removing the names of the Israeli winners):
[Illustration of such in Link]
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So, presto! In October 2009 Simon Rogers of the Guardian finally eradicated Israel. How did he do this?

The day after Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the Guardian decided to publish a chart showing the nations and people who had won the prize in the past century.
To the utter disbelief of those who saw it, the list omitted the Israeli names.
There was Yasser Arafat in 1994, clearly listed as a winner from a country that does not actually exist, “Palestine,” but there was no Shimon Peres or Yitzhak Rabin of Israel.

There was Anwar Sadat of Egypt, but no Menachem Begin of Israel.
The aforesaid Israelis had worked as tirelessly as their Muslim counterparts to forge a new generation of peace and prosperity amongst the warring nations. Who could forget Prime Minister Rabin’s impassioned speech about “no more blood and tears,” as he signed agreement after agreement with his nation’s former enemies?
Who could forget the embrace of Egyptian President Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Begin — a sight no one would have believed possible just a few years before they signed the historic Camp David Accords? It was this scenario that was to cost Sadat his life. It was the handshake in the Rose Garden of the White House that would lose Rabin his life.
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What I do like about this staggering omission is that it corroborated my belief that Israel hatred in the liberal press is obsessional. The Nobel omissions corroborate Julie Burchill’s courageous journalism protesting what she perceived as the “vile anti-Semitism” around her during her departure from the Guardian-Observer.
People who have scoffed that Julie Burchill and I see an anti-Semite and Israel-hater in every corner can now please be silent. In National Review Online Tom Gross reported that the Guardian “has wiped Israel off the Nobel Prize map, much as Iranian despot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would like to wipe Israel off the real map.”.....

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mbig said:

Tom Gross: Britain's Guardian newspaper tries to airbrush Israelis out of the Nobel Prize map

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"..In January 2001 the Guardian ran an editorial entitled “Israel Simply Has No Right to Exist” by Faisal Bodi.
The author, one of a long list of anti-Israel journalists employed by the paper, has been ubiquitous over the years in his relentless attacks on the Jewish state and in his complaints about rampant Islamophobia. Among the more memorable nuggets from his missive were: “There is no moral case for the existence of Israel.” Bodi reminds us that a few years before the 2001 article he had incurred the wrath of the Anglo-Jewish community by saying in his student union newsletter that “the sympathy evoked by the Holocaust was a very handy cover for Israeli atrocities.”

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Tashah said:

Lol. I remember that shoddy journalism. Besondere Behandlung. Not subtle at all.

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"....In the past year I have noticed that my very occasional sojourns into the Guardian’s “Comment Is Free” discussion have been Deleted by the moderator when saying something as innocuous as: “The Palestinians, perennially complaining about lack of opportunity, have had next door to them for sixty-one years an example of a people who rose from oppression and created a high-tech democracy where gays can march and women do as they please without fear of being stoned to death.” Unless you live on Mars you will be aware that it is obviously not in the Guardian’s house style to laud the achievements of tiny, oil-impoverished Israel..

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The daughter of the editor of the Guardian, BellaM — Isabella Mackie — has been identified as the poster of a controversial comment on a website she was moderating.

According to the website, CiF Watch — set up specifically to monitor incidents of anti-Israel bias on the Guardian's Comment is Free site — BellaM intervened in a series of posts that followed an article by the Muslim writer Ed Husain, attacking the columnist Melanie Phillips.

BellaM is employed as a staff moderator on Comment is Free. Her job includes deleting comments which are offensive or libellous. But in the course of moderating the comments on the Husain article, she decided to make her own contribution.

She wrote of Ms Phillips: "I imagine she's like that character in Little Britain who is violently sick every time she hears the words 'black' or 'gay.' Except for Melanie, the word would be 'Muslim.'

In the wake of BellaM's post, there was, it is understood, an embarrassing internal row in the Guardian. Though she was not disciplined, she was, as the JC reports today, "reminded of the paper's guidelines that staff posting on the site should uphold a high standard of civility and avoid any behaviour that brings the Guardian's good name into disrepute."

BellaM, according to CiF Watch, is actually Isabella Mackie. Mackie is the maiden name of editor Alan Rusbridger's wife.

A Private Eye report noted that "Isabella Mackie, a recent graduate, had the grace to use her mother’s surname when taking a job on the Guardian’s website to disguise the act that she is the daughter of the paper’s editor, Alan Rusbridger."

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So frequent, and so rabid, is the antisemitism which the Guardian allows on its Comment Is Free site that it often passes without further ado. But it shouldn't. The Guardian's comments section has become a shockingly blatant bulletin board of antisemitism.

Some of the comments after this piece are entirely unambiguous antisemitic rantings, and the Guardian hasn't lifted a finger to deal with them, despite being alterted to them hours ago. I'm going to print a lengthy sample just to show how relentless it is, and how incredible it is that the Guardian is allowing this sort of thing to be published under its auspices. It can't, as it has before, claim that the odd comment has snuck through. The entire comments section after this piece is suffused with it:

"'Mr Cockburn, you are a courageous and an excellent writer who is absolutely spot on. Is it pure coincidence that both Perle and Wolfowitz plus others of their neocon cronies are Jews, some of them with Israeli passports?
Could they have been doing Israel's bidding, diverting and corrupting US policy to suit Israel's murderous agenda? Perhaps acting to influence the simpletons Bush and Rumsfield and then turning against them as Perle did, when his mission was accomplished. Talk about rats abandoning ship!
How has the same Jewish/Zionist manipulation through Lord Levy and his money raising efforts in the Jewish community influenced British policy? Is that why Blair and Brown always attend the Friends of Israel annual rally where they drink the Toast to the President of Israel? Can we now have another article Mr. Cockburn, on the Israeli/Jewish malign influence on British politics through the Jewish fifth columnists in the UK?'

'Wolfowitz is Jewish isn't he?.....​

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alexa said:

I'll leave you far righties to you party.

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Tashah said:

hat's your perception. According to the American methodology I am almost smack dab in the center lane... a Centrist.

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mbig said:

Can a paper be Anti-Israel and anti-semitic?

KGB-style, The Guardian removes Israelis from Nobel Prize winners list
Tom Gross/NRO
October 10, 2009


The Guardian Wipes Israel Off the Nobel Prize Map
Peace Prize winners Begin, Peres, and Rabin are erased from a list published by the increasingly anti-Semitic paper.
Pajamas Media The Guardian Wipes Israel Off the Nobel Prize Map

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Tashah said:

That's your perception. According to the American methodology I am almost smack dab in the center lane... a Centrist.

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gunner said:

Can the paper not be 'leftist' and 'liberal' ?

Paul

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alexa said:

I'll leave you far righties to you party.

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digsbe said:

I wonder, are there still any Israeli-supporting major media outlets and politicians in the UK? It seems as if their media and government is becoming increasingly anti-Israel and pro-Arab/Palestinian. It's truly a shame, because it seems as if my country (America) is following in the UK's footsteps regarding Israel. In my opinion, I think the Obama administration and the UK are doing this to have better relations with the Arab world. It's sad to see the global community acting like bullies on a playground. 2 of the children (America and the UK) want to befriend the local bullies, and in order to do that they must participate in bullying a nation they already all pick on shamefully (Israel). I fear that my nation and the UK are becoming nations of appeasement and not nations of principals. We must stand with Israel and denounce the crimes and inhumane abuse of the Arab world.

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Gardener said:

Is it the guardian that creates such delusional reactions or something else?

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alexa said:

Do you ever write anything of content. If you are a liberal, a liberal is a black and white poster who accuses everyone who does not have the same opinion as them as being leftist.

The Guardian itself as Paul has said is one of the most respected newspapers in the UK. The very paper which was recommended to me by my Jewish tutor when doing my degree.

The 'American Guardian' I know nothing about and I believe it no longer is in existence.

As many people have said left politics in the US is more right than our most right, apart from the BNP. Agree with the BNP possibly?

If people continue to call middle of the road UK newspapers and people 'leftist; or 'too leftist' and start having a party about this then it is correct for me as a UK citizen to point out their position.

The Guardian is I would say more Liberal than left and that will be associated with it's position on Israel.

But how silly, how pathetic. People wish to ridicule a paper read by a high percentage of academics in the UK and indeed both read and contributed to by a good selection of our Jewish population and believe that this is saying anything other than their own position.


If you want to say you hate the UK, just say it. We will not be bothered at all.

Just skimming what MBig has said, well Melanie Philips, not only super right but spread lies to all the Tabloids on Lord Ahmid and certainly some time ago seemed to be doing the BNP's job for them. All this stuff MBig comes up with is just regurgitated rubbish that is why I like most posters rarely read what he says.

Otherwise just admit how right you are and stop pretending you are the only Liberal on any board on the internet.

and as for these pathetic suggestions that someone only ever gets ideas from one place, get a life.

This thread was set up as a bait. Like I said, time to leave your far righties to your party. Some of us have more interesting things to do.

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IS SOMETHING HAPPENING IN SUDAN?

The BBC efforts not to “offend” Arabs extremists even extend to their reports on ethnic cleansing and genocide. On both the occasions in the last week when I heard BBC World Service Radio refer to the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Sudan, the BBC took scrupulous care to avoid saying who the perpetrators were (they are Arab militias) and who the victims are (hundreds of thousands of Black Sudanese Africans – Moslems, Christians and Animists). The BBC didn’t make any mention whatever of the long history of mass slavery in Sudan, carried out by Arabs with non-Arabs as their victims; nor of the scorched earth policies, and systematic rape being carried out there by Arabs.

Yet in one of these very same news bulletins, the BBC mentioned that “settlers” in Gaza were “Jewish” and the land they were settling is “Palestinian”....

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SO HAMAS ARE NOT GUILTY?

But then Hamas..... appear to enjoy a certain degree of Sympathy at the BBC, which throughout the past four years of Israeli-Palestinian violence has constantly tried to obscure the true nature of the group by using misleading language.

There are innumerable examples of this; they occur almost daily.
“Over the years, Hamas has been blamed for scores of suicide attacks on Israel,” says the BBC, thereby trying to Suggest to listeners and viewers that Hamas has perhaps been wrongly accused of such attacks (even though Hamas itself has proudly and repeatedly claimed responsibility for them in mass celebratory rallies in Gaza, Jenin and elsewhere.)

Two Palestinian gunmen opened fire indiscriminately in the heart of the northern Israeli town of Afula, killing two young Israeli civilians and wounding over 50 others. They themselves were then shot dead by Israeli policemen. The headline on the BBC website read: “Four Die in Israel Shooting Rampage,” suggesting that four innocent people had died, possibly at the hands of the Israelis.'...

Some of the foreign BBC staff are quite open about their sympathies for Hamas. The senior BBC Arabic Service correspondent in the Gaza Strip, Fayad Abu Shamala, told a Hamas rally on May 6, 2001 (attended by the then Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin) that journalists and media organizations in Gaza, including the BBC, are “waging the campaign [of resistance/terror against Israel] shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people.”

The best the BBC could do in response to requests from Israel that they distance themselves from these remarks at the time, was to issue a statement saying, “Fayad’s remarks were made in a private capacity. His reports have always matched the best standards of balance required by the BBC.” Indeed, today, three years later, the BBC is continuing to use Abu Shamala as much as ever....

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A MINUTE’S SILENCE FOR SHEIKH YASSIN

Back in London, BBC staff are careful to promote Sympathy for Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups in more subtle ways. Dr Jenny Tonge, a Liberal Democrat Member of the British Parliament, declared in January that she would consider becoming a suicide bomber if she were Palestinian (and subsequently led a minute’s silence in March – in the House of Commons no less – for the deceased Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin, who issued orders for dozens of suicide attacks against Israeli civilians). Since then, Dr Tonge’s invitations to appear on BBC have noticeably increased.

She was sacked by the Liberal Democrat party leader as parliamentary spokesman for children’s issues for these remarks, but this hasn’t bothered the BBC, who now invite her on both radio and TV to discuss the Middle East.

In one case, in February, BBC Radio 4’s Flagship morning news program “Today” actually sent her off to “Palestine” (at the BBC’s expense), after which they broadcast her “diary,” in which she further defamed Israel and reiterated her sympathy for suicide bombing. She has also repeated her support for suicide bombers on air on the BBC on other occasions.

Similarly, there is the case of Oxford university literature lecturer Tom Paulin – who among other things has compared Jewish settlers to Nazis, has said they should be “shot dead,” compared the Israeli army to Hitler’s SS, and said he could “understand how suicide bombers feel.” He continues to be invited as a regular guest commentator by the BBC; indeed, he is one of the two or three most frequent contributors to their most widely screened program on the arts.

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DON’T MENTION LIMB AMPTUTATION

Those who dare criticize Arab extremism are dealt with somewhat differently by the BBC.

For example, Robert Kilroy-Silk – who does not appear on BBC news but hosted a daytime chat show – was immediately taken off air after he had the temerity to write in a non-BBC newspaper article in January that Arabs were “suicide bombers, limb amputators, women repressors.” He swiftly apologized and the newspaper in question acknowledged that he had written “Arab governments” and this was inadvertently changed to “Arabs” as a result of an editing error. But Kilroy-Silk was rapidly sacked by the BBC nevertheless.

However, Kilroy-Silk’s remarks – as many Arab moderates who welcomed them///

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“THE STUFF OF LEGENDS”

The BBC rarely misses an opportunity to denigrate Israel or its prime minister. One program even staged a mock “war crimes” trial for Ariel Sharon. (The BBC verdict – that Sharon has a case to answer – was never in doubt).

Yasser Arafat, though, receives a very different treatment. One particularly cosmetic exercise was a 30-minute BBC profile of Arafat which described him as a “hero,” and “an icon,” and spoke of him as having “performer’s flair,” and “charisma and style” and “personal courage” and being “the stuff of legends”. Adjectives applied to him included “clever,” “respectable,” and “triumphant.” He was also inaccurately referred to as “President.” [2]

This was broadcast on 5 July 2002 – just two weeks after President Bush had called for a change in Palestinian leadership following revelations about Arafat’s links with suicide terror attacks. But then the BBC knew that they would get this kind of approach when they asked the notoriously anti-Israeli journalist, Suzanne Goldenberg (formerly Jerusalem correspondent for the London Guardian, now the Guardian’s Washington correspondent) to make the program.

A particularly blatant example of bias, perhaps, but not an isolated one. The BBC rarely mention Arafat’s dictatorial rule, his endemic corruption, or the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade..........

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Gardener said:

The term "liberal" has an actual meaning that the vast majority of leftists do not live up to by a long shot. In fact, with so many representing almost the antithesis of liberalism, the hard left shares more in common with the hard right when it comes to intolerance, fundamentalism and support for totalitarianism.

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gunner said:

Why has it got to be, any view that differs from your believe, must be by default 'hard left' or extreme left, never just left of centre. By definition the 'hard left' has to be the fringe element of the 'left' so numerically the minority of the 'left' as a whole.

The Guardian is indeed 'left of centre' [as Alexa's link suggests]but can in no way be ascribed the position of extreme left.



Paul

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gunner said:

Can the paper not be 'leftist' and 'liberal' ?

Paul

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