Inspired by our friends at TheBrothersofJudea who track antisemitsm at the Huffington Post, we have collated some statistical data for the month of March to demonstrate the extent of the anti-Israel bias and Israel-obsession at “Comment is Free”.
As can be seen below, of the twenty-seven articles in “Comment is Free: Middle East” on Israel in the month of March, nineteen of them harbored anti-Israel bias in varying degrees. Among the slate of anti-Israel articles there was one by anti-Zionist, Abe Hayeem attacking the Jewish right of return, a piece by Oliver Miles, the former UK ambassador who objected to the presence of two eminent Jewish historians on the Iraq War Enquiry Panel, two articles supporting the engagement of the Jew-hating terrorist group, Hamas, and two articles touting the launch of the anti-Zionist news outlet, JNews. In addition, the roster of anti-Israel articles featured several pieces on the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador for Israel’s purported role in the assassination of a senior member of Hamas and the growing tension between Netanyahu and the Obama administration.
And when we compare Israel articles as a whole with articles relating to the other 16 countries in the region in “Comment is Free: Middle East” we discover that over 40% of the articles in March covered Israel. This in a month when Yemen declared an end to its six-year conflict with Houthis fighters, terrorist attacks in Iraq killed scores of innocents, elections took place in Iraq, clashes broke out between Coptic Christians and Muslims in Egypt, the Arab League held its annual summit in Libya, mass arrests of terrorists were made in Saudi Arabia, Tantawi, Sunni Islam’s top cleric, died and in Iran the Persian new year was celebrated.
In this final pie chart you can see how the negative portrayal of Israel fits into “Comment is Free: Middle East” as a whole.
In a letter to the Jewish Chronicle on February 19 responding to my article in the Jewish Chronicle, outgoing editors, Matt Seaton and Georgina Henry, wrote:
[W]e remain resolutely committed to the CP Scott-inspired tradition of fairness and balance, and publishing a broad range of views (on the Middle East, as on all topics).
In the words of Geoffrey Alderman, “Pull the other one Matt”.
