Which anti-Israel blogs do Guardian editors read?

Which anti-Israel blogs do the Guardian’s editors read? Whilst the comprehensive answer to that question remains a mystery, we may have been privy to a little insight on that subject this weekend.

On April 24th an article was published on CiF by one Mohammed Talat. All well and good, except that the very same article appeared four days previously on the virulently anti-Israel blog ‘Mondoweiss’. Different title, a few minor editorial changes, but essentially this is exactly the same piece.

Who is Mohammed Talat? According to his CiF bio, he is “an assistant professor of civil engineering at Cairo University and a UC Berkeley alumnus”.  If he is the same Mohammed Talat as this one, (as appears to be the case) then he is also a member of the benign-sounding ‘March 9th Movement for Egyptian University Independence’.  Hamdy Qandil, founder of the March 9th movement, is a supporter of Hamas and Hizbollah and an opponent of normalisation with Israel. Dr. Mohammed Abdul-Ghar, its leader, is also an official of the National Association of Change which advises Mohamed ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood.

For the fortunate few who have yet to become acquainted with the ‘Mondoweiss’ blog, it describes itself thus:

Mondoweiss is a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective.

It has four principal aims:

  1. To publish important developments touching on Israel/Palestine, the American Jewish community and the shifting debate over US foreign policy in a timely fashion.
  2. To publish a diversity of voices to promote dialogue on these important issues.
  3. To foster the movement for greater fairness and justice for Palestinians in American foreign policy.
  4. To offer alternatives to pro-Zionist ideology as a basis for American Jewish identity.

Biography

This blog is maintained by Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz. Weiss is 55 and lives in New York state. Horowitz is 37 and lives in New York City.

We maintain this blog because of 9/11, Iraq, Gaza, the Nakba, the struggling people of Israel and Palestine, and our Jewish background.

So ‘progressive’ is the anti-Zionist fringe blog ‘Mondoweiss’ that it promotes BDS and its high priest Omar Barghouti, is a major advocate of the Goldstone Report and has defended Max Blumenthal, who recently threw in his lot with the Iranian government’s ‘Press TV’, and routinely advances anti-Semitic tropes about the injurious effects of Jewish power on American foreign policy.

In fact, it is precisely the sort of far Left anti-Zionist port of call that is a gift that keeps on giving to those who aspire to undermine the legitimacy of the State of Israel, particularly if some self-flagellating faux-kosher back-up is required.

 So it would probably have been more surprising to discover that Guardian staff were not reading this blog, but the question that remains is why CiF gave no credit to ‘Mondoweiss’ for this article by Talat. Surely they can’t be worried that their reading habits would make them a laughing-stock among their own audience?   

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