Five lies (not counting distortions and errors) in Guardian op-ed claiming ‘Christians being driven out of the holy land’. - by Adam Levick

...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.

Adam Levick..
UK Media Watch..
07 January '18..

A Guardian op-ed by Theophilos III, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, (“Christians are at risk of being driven out of the Holy Land”, Jan. 7th) is full of errors, lies and distortions:

Lie #1

“there is a threat…to the religious status quo, a threat instigated by radical settlers in and around Jerusalem, the heart of Christianity.

Theophilos’s assertion that “radical settlers” threaten the religious status quo in Jerusalem is not true, as later in the article we learn that the “radical settlers” are Jews who buy property in east Jerusalem. However, Jewish groups purchasing land in (east) Jerusalem do not threaten the “status quo”, at least in regards to what that term typically refers to: access to holy sites, such as the Temple Mount. (Alternatively, if he’s not referring to the status quo at holy sites, he could be making a morally troubling argument that any Jew who moves into areas of the city where Jews were ethnically cleansed and forbidden to live under Jordanian rule is itself a violation of the ‘status quo’.)

Also, note how he characterises Jerusalem as “the heart of Christianity”, but fails, in this paragraph or anywhere throughout the op-ed, to acknowledge the Jewish connection to the city.

Lie #2

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Using Mein Kampf to Assault Israel - by Simon Plosker

...Mason is right to lament the hatred that is spreading on social media platforms and the consequences of hate speech as evidenced by Mein Kampf. By falsely singling out Israel as the most prominent example of this, Mason has revealed where the real hatred lies.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
12 January '16..

The UK Channel 4’s Paul Mason has penned an opinion piece in The Guardian titled “As Mein Kampf returns to Germany, the world is again awash with hatred.” As Hitler’s Mein Kampf is republished in Germany following its copyright expiration (albeit annotated with critical context), it appears eminently reasonable on the part of Mason to look back in history how in a short period of time from penning his racist screed, Hitler went from a fringe extremist to the Nazi leader who unleashed war and genocide on the world.

It is also perfectly legitimate to relate this to current events. Mason writes:

Since 1945, every generation in the educated world has been taught “the lessons” of the rise of Nazism. But surveying the world at the start of 2016 it seems as if we have been learning the wrong lessons. The world is awash with hatred. And since around a quarter of its inhabitants have mobile social media accounts we are leaving a very detailed evidential trail about its spread.

But then comes the nasty surprise:

Israeli social media, for example, has been, since the 2014 Gaza conflict, gripped with narratives of race hate towards Arabs. This, in turn, has fuelled a growing attack on Israeli Jewish human rights organisations; the government is forcing them to declare their “foreign funding”. Now, amid the rising hate speech, the Jerusalem offices of prominent human rights group B’Tselem have gone up in flames – the result, says the group, of an arson attack.

Is it a coincidence that Mason has singled out Israel as the first example of what he believes to be rising hatred and racism? It is a commonly used rhetorical weapon employed by Israel-haters to single out the Jewish people as having failed to learn the lessons of the Holocaust by treating Palestinians in the same way or worse than the Nazis treated the Jews.

Whether consciously or subconsciously, Mason is expressing the view that Jewish Israelis have not learned the lessons of the rise of Nazism.

Discovering the T-Word — When the Suspects are Jews

...I can’t think of any any examples of Palestinian terror attacks that The Guardian ever labeled as terror. Ali Dawabsha certainly was a terror victim, but I’d like someone at the paper to explain why Israelis like Danny Gonen are not to cite just one example. The Guardian won’t call Palestinian violence terror any more than it’ll call the people responsible for Ali Dawabsha’s death freedom fighters.

Pesach Benson..
Honest Reporting..
03 August '15..

Big Media’s looking at Israeli measures to fight Jewish extremism and to find the terrorists responsible for firebombing the Dawabsha family home. Ali Dawabsha, an 18-month-old burned to death; his parents and four-year-old brother are fighting for their lives.

In a separate incident one day earlier, six people marching in Jerusalem’s gay pride parade were stabbed. One victim, Shira Banks, died of her wounds yesterday. Dramatic photos caught an Israeli man, Yishai Shlissel, thrusting a knife at people before being subdued by police.

There are no suspects yet in the arson attack, but the timing of the two incidents has stirred Israeli introspection. Part of the Israeli conversation is about the use of the word “terror.” As David Graham explained in the pages of The Atlantic, there are legal and financial ramifications when an attack is labeled “terror.”

Unfortunately, the mainstream media has shied away from using words like terror or terrorists when talking about Palestinian suicide attacks, drive-by shootings, stabbings, fire bombings, etc. targeting Israelis. The approach to the t-word was summed up in an post-9/11 internal Reuters memo by Stephen Jukes, who was then the wire service’s global news editor.

We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word terrorist.

Thus, papers have used words like “militants” or “activists.” Or, in the rare instance when terror appeared in a headline , it would be within quote marks — as if editors wanted to make clear they hold their noses at the word or express some skepticism about the attack.

For years, HonestReporting campaigned for the mainstream media to call terror by its name.

Most Western papers following up on the Dawabsha aftermath have not used the word terror.

On one hand, it’s morally wrong to not call the attack on the Dawabsha’s home terror. But on the other hand, journalism’s kid-glove treatment of the word has been generally consistent. Take, for example, this Washington Post headline which put terror in quote marks:

Interestingly, it wasn’t just the t-word that was in quote marks, but “Jewish terror.” Perhaps the Post isn’t ready to assume that the perpetrators were Jewish?

Another Guardian essay falsely charging Israel with ethnically cleansing Jerusalem Palestinians

...Finally, the charge that Palestinians are being ethnically cleansed from east Jerusalem is easily contradicted by population statistics. Whereas in 2007 there were 208,000 Palestinians in east Jerusalem, today there are roughly 293,000. So, over the course of merely seven years, the Palestinian population of east Jerusalem has increased by over 40%.

Adam Levick..
ukmediawatch.org..
19 April '15..

There are multiple distortions, errors and misrepresentations of fact throughout an 1800 word essay published by Teju Cole at The Guardian on April 17th, titled ‘Slow violence, cold violence – Teju Cole on East Jerusalem‘. However, the most egregiously false charge leveled at Israel by Cole – a writer and literary critic who has contributed to the New York Times, New Yorker, Financial Times, and The Atlantic – is that Palestinians are being ethnically cleansed from Jerusalem.

Here are the relevant passages.

As in other neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem – Har Homa, the Old City, Mount Scopus, Jaffa Gate – there is a policy at work in Sheikh Jarrah. This policy is two-fold. The first is the systematic removal of Palestinian Arabs, either by banishing individuals on the basis of paperwork, or by taking over or destroying their homes by court order.

…

The second aspect of the policy is the systematic increase of the Jewish populations of these neighbourhoods

This two-fold policy, of pushing out Palestinian Arabs and filling the land with Israeli Jews, is recognised by all the parties involved. And for such a policy, the term “ethnic cleansing” is not too strong: it is in fact the only accurate description.

First, it’s important to note that Jews were the ones ethnically cleansed from east Jerusalem following the Jordanian occupation of that section of the city in the aftermath the 1948 war. That’s the only reason why east Jerusalem was – for the first time in the city’s history – Jew-free between 1949 and 1967, thus giving rise to the media misnomer of a “historically Arab east Jerusalem”.

(Continue Reading)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, 
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Guardian headline titled ‘Palestinian terrorists attempted to kill thousands of Israeli civilians in 2014′?

We of course don’t ever expect to see a Guardian headline titled ‘Palestinian terrorists attempted to kill thousands of Israeli civilians in 2014′, because, as former AP correspondent Matt Friedman argued, the media operate under the assumption that the only party that matters in covering the conflict is Israel, and thus Palestinians can only exist as passive victims of Israeli aggression.

Adam Levick..
ukmediawatch.org..
30 March '15..

The belief, held by the overwhelming majority of Jewish Britons, that the UK media’s coverage of Israel fuels antisemitism, is largely based on the manner in which headlines, text and imagery in reports on Palestinian casualties imputes Israeli guilt (and malevolence) by failing to provide balance and relevant context.

A March 27th Guardian article by Mairav Zonszein (a contributor for the far-left web magazine +972) represents a prime example of this consistent journalistic failure.

In addition to the misleading headline, the accompanying text provides almost no background on the circumstances surrounding the more than 2,000 Palestinian fatalities.

(Continue Reading)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, 
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Getting the 'State Land' Story Right - USA Today 1, The Guardian 0

...As USA Today tells readers, “the Gush Etzion bloc’s core communities [in the West bank] were founded before Israel’s establishment in 1948 on land purchased by Jews in the 1920s and 1930s. “Arab soldiers destroyed the communities when they fought against Israel's founding during the 1948 war”

Eric Rozenman..
CAMERA Snapshots..
18 September '14..

News media often refer erroneously to the West Bank as “Palestinian land” or “Palestinian territory” and Israeli acquisition or development there often get reported as “land grabs.” For example:

Referring to Israel’s decision to declare almost 1,000 acres adjacent to the West Bank community of Gva’ot as state land, The Guardian (U.K.) wrote, “Israel has published tenders to build 283 homes in a West Bank settlement, days after announcing its biggest land grab on occupied Palestinian territory [emphases added] for three decades.” (“Israel to build 283 homes in West Bank”, Sept. 5, 2014)

USA Today, by contrast, eschewed hyperbole for context. Special Correspondent Michele Chabin reported of Gva’ot and the newly-designated state land that “this community of 17 Israeli families, apartments for disabled adults, a school for disabled children, several horses and a petting zoo is accustomed to solitude. So [Rachel] Pomerantz, who rents a small prefab home here, was surprised by the sudden international attention on the settlement since … the Israeli government announced it would designate a swath of land next to Gva'ot as state-owned property.”

Gva’ot is close to the 1949 Israeli-Jordanian armistice line and the adjacent 988 acres at the center of the media-diplomatic dust-up lie between it and the Gush Etzion settlement bloc just south of Jerusalem. As USA Today tells readers, “the Gush Etzion bloc’s core communities [in the West bank] were founded before Israel’s establishment in 1948 on land purchased by Jews in the 1920s and 1930s.

“Arab soldiers destroyed the communities when they fought against Israel's founding during the 1948 war” (“Quiet strip of land, a loud dispute”, USA Today, Sept. 5, 2014)

Guardian assails Australia’s right to dissent on Jerusalem

...Additionally, Israel is the only recognized nation with a legitimate claim to the West Bank (including Jerusalem) – territory which was, for hundreds of years, until the end of World War I, the equivalent of a province in the Ottoman Empire. The territory never had any unique national standing other than as the future Jewish national homeland as stipulated by the League of Nations.

Adam Levick..
CiF Watch..
12 June '14..
h/t to international law expert, Eugene Kontorovich..

Though Guardian contributors often complain that pro-Israel forces instill a ‘enforced orthodoxy‘ over the debate about Israel in the media and in Western capitals, they suddenly lose their passion for dissent when encountering views at odds with the Palestinian narrative on the disputed territories in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Thus, shortly after the Australian Attorney General issued a statement declaring that the government would no longer refer to east Jerusalem as “occupied” – arguing that the term is “freighted with pejorative implications” – the Guardian published their predictable denunciation in the form of an op-ed by a lawyer (and anti-Israel campaigner) named Ben Saul.

Saul begins by complaining that “Australia’s new view” on Jerusalem “corrodes the international rule of law and violates Australia’s international law obligations”. He then cites international legal conclusions which purportedly back up the claim that east Jerusalem is “occupied” – including the 2004 opinion of International Court of Justice (ICJ), which he even acknowledges was only an ‘advisory’ opinion – and therefore is not binding on Israel, let alone Australia.

Further, despite their position on east Jerusalem, Australia’s policy vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict has not undergone a substantive change. They merely decided to avoid using a term they believe is unhelpful in the context of efforts to reach a two state solution. As Australia’s Ambassador to Israel, Dave Sharma, explained (per an article by Yair Rosenberg at Tablet) in response to questions about the Attorney General’s decision, “the government’s policy hasn’t changed at all”. Sharma also noted that the Australian position is still that “final status issues as identified by Oslo—and that includes the status of Jerusalem, borders, right of return—are all amenable only to political negotiations and a political solution”.

Rosenberg summed it up thusly: In other words, Australia’s policy is not intended to endorse one side over the other, but rather to maintain neutrality and avoid prejudging the outcome of negotiations.

Later in his Guardian op-ed, Saul misrepresents a key element of the history of the city.

In the 1967 war, Israel displaced prior Jordanian control over east Jerusalem. Jordan’s claim was contested by Israel. Jordan’s claim was contested by Israel. Jordan later renounced its claim in favour of the Palestinian right of self-determination.

However, his claim that Jordan’s legal claim on east Jerusalem “was contested by Israel” is extraordinarily misleading. In fact, their annexation of east Jerusalem was universally rejected by the international community, with the lone exception of Pakistan (Great Britain accepted the annexation of the West Bank, but not east Jerusalem). Also of interest, though almost every country in the world refused to recognize Jordanian sovereignty over Jerusalem, we could find no evidence than any country officially referred to it – between 1949 and 1967 – as “occupied”.

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Why was a Jewish man murdered near Hebron? The Guardian has absolutely no idea

...I’ll be strong for the children, because that’s what Baruch would have wanted. We should also be thankful for the miracle that my children and I survived. We will stay strong and God willing, my children will grow and succeed, and that will be my victory against the terrorists,” said the mother, whose condition is defined as moderate. “I have two bullet wounds and a fractured rib.”

Adam Levick..
CiF Watch..
16 April '14..

To understand the latest report by Peter Beaumont (the Guardian’s new Jerusalem correspondent), it’s necessary to comprehend the Guardian’s view of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, in which Israelis represent privileged Western colonialists, and are almost completely the guilty party, while Palestinians are the weak, the dispossessed and colonized – and are almost entirely the victims.

Since their journalistic ethos seems inspired by a desire to, as one Guardian journalist phrased it, ‘comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable’, even the most brutal Palestinian terror attacks will necessarily be framed in a manner which robs Israeli victims of their humanity, and obfuscates the malevolence of the Palestinian perpetrator.

To wit, a April 14 story by Beaumont on a deadly terrorist attack near Hebron, on the eve of Passover, in which a Jewish man (Baruch Mizrachi) was killed, and his wife (Hadas) and children injured by Palestinian sniper fire, is notable for the absence of the words “terrorist” or even “militant”, its subtle attempts to downplay the deadly assault and the suggestion that the motive for the attack is ‘unclear’.

The story, titled ‘Israeli man killed and family members hurt as car fired on in West Bank‘, begins thusly:

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out! 
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Once again disguising the reality of unrecognized Bedouin “villages” at the Guardian

...The Guardian once again is trying to promote the idea that these are Bedouin living in little villages that are the equivalent of the quaint villages one sees in reruns of “Midsommer Murders”. The reality, however, is far different.

AKUS..
CiF Watch..
01 December '13..

On Nov. 28th the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent Harriett Sherwood ‘reported‘ on a letter (published at the Guardian on the same day) signed by 50 public figures such as “Antony Gormley, the actor Julie Christie, the film director Mike Leigh and the musician Brian Eno” (and Jenny Tonge) opposing an Israeli plan to remove up to 70,000 Palestinian Bedouins from ‘their historic desert land’.

Sherwood quotes the letter thus:

The eviction and destruction of about 35 “unrecognised” villages in the Negev desert will, the letter says, “mean the forced displacement of Palestinians from their homes and land, and systematic discrimination and separation.”

Leaving aside the absurd idea that people who had till quite recent times led itinerant lives moving across vast distances of the Middle East with no fixed national identity can be now labeled “Palestinian Bedouin” like politically correct produce in an organic food co-op, the article (and letter) conjure up visions of camel-riding nomads being forced to fold their goat-skin tents and leave from vast stretches of Sahara-like dunes.

The Guardian once again is trying to promote the idea that these are Bedouin living in little villages that are the equivalent of the quaint villages one sees in reruns of “Midsommer Murders”. The reality, however, is far different.

(Continue)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out! 
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Between a rock(et) and a hard place

Melanie Phillips..
melaniephillips.com..
18 November '12..

In Israel, an enormous call-up of reservists suggests that a ground invasion of Gaza is imminent – and this morning’s further attacks on Tel Aviv make that more likely still. The prospect of a ground invasion fills Israelis with dread. A ground invasion means that Israeli soldiers will go into Gaza street by street and house by house to destroy the rocket launchers, rockets and ammunition dumps where they have been stored. Many have been situated in residential neighbourhoods, for two reasons: first, to deter the Israel Defence Force from attacking them for fear of killing civilians as a consequence; and second, to ensure that many Gazan civilians are indeed killed, thus guaranteeing an international outcry so that Israel will be forced to stop its operation to destroy these weapons.

Such a ground operation, where from past experience many of these places have been booby-trapped, carry the certainty of a high casualty rate among the Israeli soldiers.

That is why Israel today waits in dread. People in Britain and elsewhere who have the luxury of living in a country that has not been under existential attack for six decades have absolutely no idea of the extraordinary pressure under which so many Israeli families live. Their children are conscripted into the armed forces because Israel is under permanent threat of attack by an Arab and Muslim world which is determined to wipe Israel off the map.

( Part 2 ) Israel Made Me Set Myself on Fire

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting/Backspin..
04 September '12..

On September 3, we noted The Guardian’s report that an unemployed Gaza man had died after setting himself alight, apparently in protest over his family’s dire living conditions.

For Harriet Sherwood, it was all too easy to lead the reader to hold Israel responsible for the young man’s plight simply by drawing attention to the Israeli blockade of Gaza. No consideration that Hamas rule over the territory could be in any way a factor in Gaza’s social and economic issues.

But it wasn’t just Hamas that Sherwood omitted. An Associated Press story fills in some of the blanks (emphasis added):

The family lived in a seaside slum in Gaza City. Of four children, two worked part time as cleaners. The father told Palestinian news service Maan his son sold bags of potato chips on the street sometimes, but he was frequently harassed by Hamas police. …

Of Course! Israel Made Me Set Myself on Fire

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting/Backspin..
03 September '12..

The Guardian reports that an unemployed Gaza man has died after setting himself alight, apparently in protest over his family’s dire living conditions.

Harriet Sherwood expands on Gaza’s woes including unemployment, population growth and “Overcrowding, lengthy and frequent power cuts, unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation and inadequate medical care”.

Up until this point, there is no mention of who or what may be responsible. But then comes the rub:

Honest Reporting - Righting a capital offense

Simon Plosker..
Op-Ed Contributor/JPost..
12 August '12..

When HonestReporting filed a complaint with the UK’s Press Complaints Commission in response to The Guardian’s labeling of Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital, we did so expecting accuracy and common sense to prevail.

Outrageously, the PCC not only ruled in favor of The Guardian but actually went as far as to unilaterally declare that Tel Aviv was Israel’s legitimate capital, based mainly on the fact that many foreign embassies are located there.

Institutions not located in Tel Aviv include the Knesset, the Supreme Court, Bank of Israel and most government ministries.

The ruling even ignored Israel’s own declaration of Jerusalem as its eternal capital.

While the Guardian’s original “capital offense” could be viewed as yet another example of the newspaper’s animosity towards Israel, the PCC ruling demonstrated just how far beyond rational discourse any discussion on Israel appears to have gone in the UK.

The PCC offered no recourse for appeal.

On principle, however, we couldn’t let the PCC’s bizarre ruling stand. Risking potentially high legal costs but motivated by our desire to see truth prevail, HonestReporting initiated legal proceedings using some of the best legal professionals with the aim of taking the PCC all the way to a judicial review.

Tel Aviv is Capital of Israel? HonestReporting Forces Guardian to Retract Claim

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
08 August '12..





While we were asking the residents of Tel Aviv where they considered Israel’s capital to be, there has been much activity behind the scenes. In a significant achievement for HonestReporting, The Guardian has retracted its claim that Tel Aviv is the capital of Israel, writing unequivocally on Wednesday:

we accept that it is wrong to state that Tel Aviv – the country’s financial and diplomatic centre – is the capital.

Back in May, The Guardian posted a photo of passengers on Jerusalem’s light rail observing a minute’s silence for Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. The caption, however, prompted a “correction” from The Guardian, which had originally (and correctly) referred to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital:

The caption on a photograph featuring passengers on a tram in Jerusalem observing a two-minute silence for Yom HaShoah, a day of remembrance for the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust, wrongly referred to the city as the Israeli capital. The Guardian style guide states: “Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel; Tel Aviv is” (Eyewitness, 20 April, page 24).

Believing The Guardian to be in clear breach of the UK Press Complaints Commission clause on accuracy, HonestReporting submitted an official complaint. To our and every sensible person’s astonishment, the PCC ruled in favor of The Guardian, stating that the newspaper was entitled to refer to Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital and was not in breach of accuracy clauses.

Late Breaking News: Israel Made Me Beat My Wife, Part 2

Pesach Benson..
Honest Reporting/Backspin..
02 August '12..

Good thing The Guardian published its piece blaming Israel for Palestinian wife-beating yesterday. Had the story waited another day, it would’ve directly competed with an ugly murder demolishing the paper’s it’s-all-Israel’s-fault mentality.

Nancy Zaboun, a 27-year-old Palestinian mother of three was killed by her husband. In Bethlehem’s busy open air market. Eyewitnesses — and there were plenty — were horrified as Shadi Abedallah slashed his wife’s throat.

Associated Press notes plenty of contributing factors. Note the absence of hot-button excuses like “the occupation.”

(+Video) HamasCare: Blame Israel

Pesach Benson..
Honest Reporting/Backspin..
11 July '12..




Gaza’s children deserve better health care, and I wish their medical care could somehow be separated from the security situation.

But if The Guardian’s going to break out the violins, I think it’s warped to film a video in — of all places – the Rantisi Pediatric Hospital for Children. The hospital’s named for Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas terror leader and pediatrician who ultimately found himself on the wrong end of a 2004 Israeli air strike. One man’s targeted assassination is another man’s assisted martyrdom.

Here’s The Guardian’s video.



The Rantisi name represents everything warped about Palestinian health care. It doesn’t take a surgeon general’s warning to know that suicide bombings are bad for your health, but Dr. Rantisi dispatched them by the dozens. And The Guardian’s own Rantisi obituary noted that he condoned killing Israeli children:

Once, the former pediatric doctor said he condoned the murder of Israeli children, if that would secure the future of young Palestinians.

Other great moments in HamasCare:

1) Wafa al Bis trying to blow herself up in an Israeli hospital
2) Hamas leaders hiding in bunkers under Shifa Hospital
3) Hamas stealing donated medicine
4) Inflating casualty counts
5) Freeloading Red Cross protection
6) Smuggling gunmen and rockets in ambulances
7) Abusing Israeli medical permits
8) Shelling the Erez crossing during a medical transfer.

Need I go on?

Link: http://honestreporting.com/blame-israel-for-hamascare/

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.
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Levick - Lies through statistics: Harriet Sherwood’s master class in shoddy journalism

Adam Levick..
CiF Watch..
27 May '12..

On May 23rd, we commented on a Guardian report by Harriet Sherwood titled “Palestinian Paralympians visit Jerusalem holy site”, May 21st, about disabled athletes from Gaza (who are going to compete in the Paralympics in London this summer) visiting the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

However, this was anything but a ‘feel good’ story about sport transcending politics or a humanitarian decision by Israel to allow citizens of a state whose government literally seeks their destruction to enter their capital.

Nobody familiar with Sherwood’s crude Israeli caricature could possibly expect the story to be framed in such a morally intuitive fashion.

The narrative pivoted from a sports human interest story to anti-Israel agitprop when Sherwood quoted a paralympian Hatam Zakut who said:

“We consider ourselves representatives of all disabled athletes in Gaza. Thanks to the Israelis, there are a lot of us.”

Adding to Zakut’s vague charge, Sherwood wrote:

“[In fact] tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are disabled as a result of Israeli military operations.”

Levick - Tin-Pot Pravda: Guardian editorial scolds Israel for taking Iranian nuclear threat seriously

Adam Levick
CiF Watch
06 November '11

I’m not sure which is more interesting, the very notion of the Guardian giving national security advice to Israel “Israel is unwise to raise the nuclear stakes“, Nov. 6, or the following passage in the editorial which represents one of the most surreal understatements I’ve read in a long time.

The Guardian, after sternly lecturing Israel on the folly of even considering a preemptive attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, writes:

“It is true that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has voiced a profound antipathy for Israel, which has been interpreted in many quarters as threatening the existence of the Jewish state.”

So, Ahmadinejad has voiced an “antipathy” towards Israel “which has been interpreted…as threatening the existence” of Israel”?!

In fact, Ahmadinejad has repeatedly and quite explicitly called for its destruction, has engaged in crude antisemitism, and called the Holocaust “a myth”.

Here are just a few examples:

(Read full "Tin-Pot Pravda: Guardian editorial scolds Israel ...")

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Levick - Israel, Likudniks & their enablers:

The Guardian’s Ian Williams takes a brave stand against Zionism!

Adam Levick
CiF Watch
02 November '11

If Ian Williams didn’t exist we’d very much have to invent him, as his musings about the villainy of Israel and her Jewish supporters – and America’s craven submission to the wishes of “the Lobby” – represent the Guardian Left’s bigotries in all of its pseudo-progressive glory.

Like any Guardianista in good standing, Williams - who once praised, in a 2010 Guardian essay, late Hezbollah spiritual leader, and Holocaust denier, Hussein Fadhallah, as, yes, a “liberal” – is continually outraged by the reactionary forces of the American pro-Israel community, an anger he expressed in the following witticism, in a Jan. 2011 CiF anti-Israel polemic:

“Obama…must face not only a rabidly pro-Israeli Republican party but also a majority of his own party that would sign up to a resolution declaring the moon to be made of blue cheese if the Israeli lobby demanded it.”

Williams’ quote, seriously suggesting that Israel is shielded from its fair share of critical scrutiny, brought to mind a quote by Israel’s former UN Ambassador, Abba Eban, who dryly observed that “If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions” – the dairy-free moral inverse of Williams’ grave concerns about Zionist influence.

Williams January CiF piece also included the careful observation that American supporters of Netanyahu are obviously all anti-Muslim racists, while also evoking antisemitic stereotypes of the ruthless, money-grubbing Jew.

[Zionists such as] Irving Moskowitz…[who] recycles the proceeds of inner-city gambling in the US to buy and demolish property in East Jerusalem, such as the Shepherd Hotel….”

In fairness, only an “edgy” and truly pithy Brit, such as Williams, can impute greed, racism and Zionist colonialism to an American Jew in so few words.

(Read full "Israel, Likudniks & their enablers: The Guardian’s Ian Williams takes a brave stand against Zionism!")

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CiF Watch - Jonathan Freedland’s Intifada delusions.

Memorial for the 16 Israelis killed
in first suicide attack of 1st Intifada,
 in 1989. The attack occurred
 when the 405 bus from Tel Aviv
 to Jerusalem was forced off
 the road by a Palestinian terrorist
 named Abd al-Hadi Ghanayem.
 Ghanayem is to be released in
 the deal for Gilad Shalit.

Israelinurse
CiF Watch
27 October '11

It was disappointing to say the least to see that in his October 25th article on CiF Jonathan Freedland appears to have succumbed to the myth of a non-violent First Intifada.

“ There is hopeful talk of a “Palestinian spring”, a popular movement demanding independence that world opinion would find hard to oppose, one inspired by the first, stone-throwing intifada begun in 1987 rather than by the murderous second one that began in 2000. Such an uprising would also put pressure on the Israeli government to make the concessions necessary for peace, much as the first intifada pushed Israel into the Madrid and Oslo processes.”

Ironically, the event which seems to have prompted Freedland’s article is the release of Gilad Shalit in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, several of whom were serving sentences as a result of having been convicted for rather more than ‘stone-throwing’ during the First Intifada.

Whilst it is of course true that the Second Intifada was considerably more violent than the first one, (partly at least due to the fact that by September 2000 the Palestinian terror organisations had much easier access to weapons as a result of the Oslo process), it is by no means accurate to claim that the First Intifada was not ‘murderous’, both in its intent and results.

The First Intifada began on December 9th 1987, but its end is more difficult to date. Some sources define it as ending with the Madrid Conference of October 1991. Others consider it to have continued until the signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993. Between December 1987 and September 1993, Palestinian terrorists carried out some 3,600 attacks with Molotov cocktails, 100 attacks with hand grenades and 600 attacks with guns or explosives. Below is a partial list of some of the events which Freedland and others who attempt to airbrush the First Intifada prefer to ignore.

(Read full "Jonathan Freedland’s Intifada delusions")

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