Report documents Guardian’s consistent promotion of commentators who reject Israel’s right to exist

A large H/T goes out to our friends at Just Journalism for publishing a well-documented report which empirically demonstrates what this blog is continually exposing: the Guardian’s continuing assault, through editorials and commentary, on Israel’s very legitimacy.  

Just Journalism’s six-month study of the comment pieces by Israelis and Palestinians that appeared in the Guardian is a qualitative and quantitative analysis that documents how “The Guardian instinctively promotes the views of those who oppose the very concept of two states for two peoples.”

Regarding their report, Just Journalism’s Media Analyst, Chris Dyszyński, says:

‘The Guardian has long been associated with its endorsement of the Palestinian cause, and its criticism of the occupation. However, this new report suggests that the real sticking point for the paper is not the number of settlements in the West Bank, but Israel’s very nature as a national home for the Jewish people. While you would expect ‘the world’s leading liberal voice’ to endorse Israeli concessions in the name of the two state solution – and to promote the views of liberal Israelis who don’t believe their government is doing enough for that solution – it seems perverse to overwhelmingly plump for Palestinians who don’t share that view. The decision to repeatedly offer a platform to signed-up Hamas members is the logical, if distasteful, outcome of its preference for those who fundamentally disagree with Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.’ [emphasis mine]

Here’s the executive summary:

• The Guardian published more op-eds by Palestinians than by Israelis during the first half of 2011, with eleven comment pieces by nine Palestinian contributors in comparison with six by four Israelis
• Three of the Palestinians who contributed op-eds during this period were either members of Hamas or strongly affiliated with it, and have endorsed  terrorist attacks
• Four further Palestinians were secular nationalists who also reject Israel’s legitimacy and endorse policies that would turn it into an Arab majority state
• All of the Israelis given op-eds are associated with the left-wing of Israeli politics that supports the concessions needed to create a Palestinian state in order to facilitate two states for two peoples
• The majority of comment pieces by Israeli contributors dealt with the repercussions of the Arab Spring, rather than directly with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself.

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