"Shit the Guardian is Burning"

“Shit the Guardian is Burning” were the ending words of the “Guardians of Iran” an article by The Alchemist published on CiF Watch yesterday and I cannot think of a more apt way to describe the anti-Israel vitriol that was pouring out of the Harold Evans thread yesterday.
In ‘A moral atrocity’, Harold Evans wrote an article highly critical of the Goldstone report which, rightly so, lambasted Britain for its failure to vote against the endorsement of the report in the UNHRC and exposed the double standards being applied to Israel.
Rather than comment on the merits of the article, the comment thread instantly became alit with comment after comment dripping with poisonous anti-Israel hatred so much so that it would put your typical Stormfront comment thread to shame.
Sam McGeesSmoke, one of the first commenters, set the tone of the thread with this.

SamMcGeesSmoke
20 Oct 09, 8:10am

I was hoping for some incisive analysis from a great editor but he’s obviously just had a boozy lunch with the Israeli ambassador and written this directly afterwards
[recreated from sodabicarb’s comment 20 Oct 09, 8.41am]

Inspired by SamMcGeesSmoke’s comment, Weeper, Gareth 100 and JedFanshaw joined in with these comments:

Weeper

20 Oct 09, 10:24am

I stopped reading after the first paragraph, which makes clear that the Grauniad is giving space to yet another paid Israel apologist. What a clown!

Gareth100

20 Oct 09, 10:50am

I had a lot of time for Harold Evans back in the seventies with his inspired time at the Times, however advanced age seems to have withered his critical faculties. This piece could have been dictated to him word by word by Mark Regev. It’s such a shame that this mendacious piece adds a stain to an otherwise great reputation.

JedFanshaw

20 Oct 09, 12:01pm

Harold
how good of you to put your name to an article written by the Israeli Ministry of Propanganda

well done, old chap!

Of course accusing those adopting a pro-Israel stance of being paid agents of the Jewish state is standard fare for Guardianistas. But hey what else do you expect when the commissioning editor of ‘Comment is Free’, Brian Whitaker, has himself made the very same accusation in the past.
Then there were the comments from the Guardinistas questioning how it was that the Guardian had the audacity to publish a pro-Israel article. It being such a rare instance on ‘Comment is Free’ you can hardly blame their poor polluted little souls.

Moeran

20 Oct 09, 8:11am
Why did The Guardian choose to publish theses racist calumnies?
[recreated from millfield’s 20 Oct 09, 8.50am comment – that was deleted without trace]

kikatrixx

20 Oct 09, 10:50am

who is this guy?
I’ve never read anything so lacking in balance.
Guardian – what the heck is this?

Goto100

20 Oct 09, 9:25am
I’m sorry, but if you moderate extreme comments then the above “article” is equally, if not more deserving of deletion. Quite simply bollocks from start to finish. Please get rid of it and apologise.

IllegalCombatAnt

20 Oct 09, 12:20pm

After this travesty of an article the Guardian needs to restore some balance.
I’m sure Mullah Omar could be prevailed upon to share his views on the Palestine/Israel issue.
[Grauniad mods – IllegalComabatAnt appears to be an incarnation of Talknic]

20 Oct 09, 12:46pm
I think the Guardian should have looked more closely at this article, it’s almost a word for word copy of the points on the Israeli governments’ propaganda site, this is not the work of the alleged author it is pure Israeli generated propaganda and not worthy of an opinion piece.
If you check out more or less ANY political blog in the US, you will see adverts everywhere with bright orange animated text highlighting “THE TRUTH ABOUT GAZA”. I saw the adverts on the Huffington Post yesterday, I clicked through and it’s goes to Israel’s ministry of information website. On this site it raises the same utterly ridiculous points that the shill Harold Evans has raised. It’s in almost the exact same order, I really think the Guardian should either take down this willfully in-accurate comment piece or at least point to where the information has been plucked (I could suggest a few places).
If you do go to the Israeli propaganda site, don’t bother leaving feedback as you get a 404 error, all I said is “you bunch of f*******g liars” and I would say the same to Evans without using “bunch”.
And I think finally, we should heap praise on the UN and Goldstone for saying what the moral world believes. ISRAEL COMMITS WAR CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY. Said loud and proud because it’s the UNDENIABLE TRUTH.

20 Oct 09, 3:01pm
Harold Evans said: “well, go through the practices of all 25 states voting to refer Israel to the security council for the Gaza war, and you have to acknowledge they know a lot about the abuse of humans.”
So it’s al lright for Israel to do these things because everyone else is just as bad?
Are you seriously forwarding that as any sort of argument? The last time I heard something similar was in the playground….”well, those boys over there are doing it as well.”
This article and Joseph Harker’s racist screed both on the same day. Is the Guardian pre-emptively trying to outdo Griffin’s scheduled ‘Question Time’ appearance?

Then there are those commenters that engaged in ad hominem attacks on the author of the article.

osamabinbush

20 Oct 09, 10:01am

Harold Evans – who is this idiot?
come on there has to be some limit to being shameless. Even Goebells will feel proud of this sort of shit being written.

petrifiedprozac

20 Oct 09, 8:57am

Harold Evans, you have lost the plot and need a brain transplant. How have you managed such a long career in journalism with such distortions. You obviously spent most of your time writing for the American equaivalent of Pravda.
A country that used the full might of a state of the art military against a rag bag enemy and killing so many women, children and old men in the process, was always going to be accused of war crimes. Even as the Gaza offencize was going on, one could clearly see the criminal negligence that was taking place.
As for Gaza not being occupied, it was effectively turned into a prison camp. If Gaza was free, Palestinians would be allowed to come and go at will, run an airport and a seaport. The Israelis allowed nothing such and even rationed fuel and other resources.

Shame on you.


20 Oct 09, 12:53pm
The reason Britain is in the shambles it’s in, is because of fools like Evans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Evans
For God’s sake, fuck off and leave us in peace, fool!


20 Oct 09, 1:10pm
sydk
This arsehole sold us out to the Yanks.
The guy is a traitor to the British nation.
Poodles like Blair worked in the poluted space that spy’s Evans created.

redbigbill

20 Oct 09, 1:35pm

Mr Evans has been living in the USA for so long he is beginning to believe all the pro israel bumf that the US media churns out every day. Either that or he is going senile.
I’ve not read such nonsense from a respected journalist for years.

Then you have the demonize Israel crew. Here’s a sampling:

Papalagi

20 Oct 09, 8:20am
the author speaks about tolerance of extrajudicial killings, the evictions of 800,000, rape and cruel treatment of prisoners; and finally torture.
I believe that all this is or has been practiced in Israel. Does the author want links about that?

JumpingFrank

20 Oct 09, 8:23am

Harold, you lost me at “the aggressor, Hamas, and punish the defender, Israel.”. For 60 years the state of Israel has oppressed Palestinians. They do indeed in law and spirit occupy Palestine, both the West Bank and Gaza. They may have withdrawn, but control access to the sea, the borders, and the airspace. Hamas are just the most recent incarnation of Palestinian resistance to Israeli oppression. Your article cobbles together racism, lies and interestingly enough the word morality. For SHAME.

KrustytheKlown

20 Oct 09, 9:27am

to do what the Israelis did – take a piece of land and build a model state.
I[‘m assuming what you meant to say was ‘steal a piece of land and build a terror state’.

evanj

20 Oct 09, 10:15am
‘No dobut there were blunders’.
No there weren’t.
It wasn’t defensive and it wasn’t a war. It was strategic, planned, and a massacre. another one.
This piece, as others have highlighted, manages to pack more lies into a short space as to be a masterpiece.
It should be in school readers, with the simple instruction, ‘discuss’.
The mouth drops, one gasps yet again in disbelief.
The great lie that is Israel is up their with Stalinist communism.
except the dupes of the latter didn’t get such privileged access to the media.
Apart from the ongoing disaster that is daily life for Palestinians, the abomination that is Israel poisons everything it touches, not least a significant section of global Jewry itself.
Out damned spot.

Nanome

20 Oct 09, 10:53am
I do not normally complain about being censored by the mods, there is, when all is said and done, no point. However I cannot see how it is illegitimate to make a psychiatric diagnosis of a nation. If one were to say that Stalin´s Russia was suffering from paranoia caught from its leader, or to say that Japan in 1942 was suffering from a psychosis engendered by the sanctification of the nation, people might disagree but they could hardly deny me the right to make the hypothesis. I cannot see therefore how I can be criticised for claiming that Israel, as a nation, is suffering from a paranoid psychosis engendered by its attempts to justify its original taking of Palestinian land and the removal of its peoples, and that this psychosis, if not dealt with, will lead to the complete appropriation of Palestinian land and the subjugation of its people. Argue against my thesis by all means, but censorship?

Moeran

20 Oct 09, 11:32am

It is time for epidermoid to grasp the fact that people burned to death or dismembered as a punishment for the leaders are victims; that children tortured and abused are victims, whether or not they threw a stone at an APC, that the dispossessed…..

I’m wasting my time, aren’t I? They’re Palestinians. Not like us.

And then we have the trope that “rabbis in the army encourage soldiers to show little or no mercy to Gazan civilians”.

bergamo

20 Oct 09, 8:34am
Israel holds thousands of Palestinians in jail without trial for years.
Israel has allowed rabbis in the army to encourage soldiers to show little or no mercy to Gazan civilians, and preaching what anywhere else would be called racist propaganda.
Israel denies its own citizens, mostly of course of Arab descent, the right to marry a Palestinian and take him or her to live in Israel.
In Israel police have tried to stamp out opposition to Cast Lead violently.
The chances of an Israeli killing or otherwise harming a Palestinian being brought to justice are much less than those of a Palestinian doing the same to an Israeli.
Where is, pray, Mr. Evans, your vaunted independent judiciary?
And insofar as Italy’s courageous stance, as an Italian, let me remind you Italy sides always with the powerful. Its sucking up to the USA has been heard from Udine to Catania.

And here is one that takes a dig at the “God’s chosen people”. But rest assured they really mean those pesky Zionists – its Guardianspeak you know.

SELAVY

20 Oct 09, 8:46am
Brigadier Barking
***A summary of the above article:
Other countries also commit atrocities therefore:
1. It’s OK if we do too.
2. It’s not fair to point out that we do too.
3. If they do why can’t we?
4. Waaah, waaah everyone’s against us!! ***
Yes, as usual.
Plus the subtext : “As God’s Chosen People” we can treat other nations and people with utter contempt.The laws of the world do not apply to us.

And where would CiF be without special mention of the GIYUS brigade?

Ozleftie

20 Oct 09, 8:48am

Before reading this article, I always regarded Mr Evans as a courageous and independent thinker, even something of a journalistic hero with his great work at the pre-Murdoch Sunday Times. Unfortunately for me, he has now shredded that reputation with this utterly dishonest and highly blinkered piece of Zionist mendacity.
Perhaps Mr Evans has spent too long in New York, socialising exclusively with the GIYUS brigade over there and thus losing all semblance of journalistic impartiality when it comes to Israel in favour of outrageous Zionist hasbara.

And here is an example of how Guardianistas display utter disdain for Jewish life:

MilesSmiles

20 Oct 09, 9:05am

Well how facetious is that? If teh 8 year old boy is firing rockets at you or your kin that have the potential to kill you I suppose would give him an indulgent pat on his head and apologise to him for being in his range of fire!!!
Since, 7500 rockets have been fired for a total kill count of 15 people, giving a 0.2% chance of being killed, I think I’d probably moon him for fun.

And here’s one minimalizing the Holocaust (a form of Holocaust denial):

euanramsay

20 Oct 09, 9:46am

this is the moral equivalent of holocaust denial

And here is something totally off-topic. Well on second thoughts no since it’s a Jew-bashing thread.

CetCenseo

20 Oct 09, 10:00am

The US has a powerful Israeli lobby. We have a powerful Islamic lobby. It would be nice if American and British foreign policy was built for Americans and Britons.

Then we have one of the most idiotic comments by Dan Rickman (a/k/a Leftwingorthodoxjew) – we don’t call him a useful idiot for nothing!

Leftwingorthodoxjew

20 Oct 09, 9:32am

Contributor
SELAVY
Plus the subtext : “As God’s Chosen People” we can treat other nations and people with utter contempt.The laws of the world do not apply to us.
I didn’t like this article either but writing nonsense such as this doesn’t help anyone – it reads as an attack on all Jews which I presume you don’t mean? [emphasis added] The concept of Jews being a Chosen People is a basic part of Judaism and one which has been misused and misunderstood time and again – how does it help anyone in the I/P conflict to perpetuate misunderstandings – this is what the extremists want.
MilesSmiles
Since, 7500 rockets have been fired for a total kill count of 15 people, giving a 0.2% chance of being killed, I think I’d probably moon him for fun.
even assuming you figures are accurate (which I am not sure they are) try and apply some imagination to the situation people are in.
The issue as ever is that there are extremists on all sides of the I/P conflict who want to use the atrocities or perceived atrocities of the other side to justify increasingly extreme measures and deeper misunderstanding. They do this because they don’t want any resolution other than complete victory which is almost certainly unattainable. As such, they are very good at making the world in their own image and sowing despair rather than hope.
The question for people commenting here is how do progressive forces help counter this sort of thing? I see a lot of propaganda of all sorts here but very little constructive criticism or suggestions. There has been fault and failure on all sides – however Nazi analogies don’t help understanding. What is required is some honest assessment which becomes almost impossible in the heat and light generated by propagandists

Well I have news for you Dan, when Selavy refers to “God’s Chosen People” he, she or it means you just like the rest of us. Don’t be so bloody naïve. And what’s more if he, she or it reserved the “God’s Chosen People” comment for Zionists like myself you should just as equally take offense to that. The fact that you are trying to exempt yourself from Selavy’s obviously racist slur is very telling.
And what would a CiF thread be without enforcement of the GWV? Here are a selection of pro-Israel comments on the thread that were deleted (all of anotherdayanother’s comments were deleted without trace) leaving only a few solitary pro-Israel comments standing among a sea of anti-Israel comments.

NoOneCares

20 Oct 09, 8:38am

BaraLawr said “You should not complain that Israel is held to higher standard than China, Egypt and Nigeria. It is supposed to be a fully developed democracy.”
You must compare Israel.
But you see, there’s a problem with this formula. You want to compare Israel with other democratic nations, I’m all for it. So I’ll tell you what, you find a democratic nation which has been under attack for 60 years, whether it be wars with nations or terrorist organizations. Whose civilian population is regularly under missile attack, who for years lived through the horror of sending their children to school and pizza parlors with smart bombs walking the street, and I’ll be glad to make that comparison.
Because to compare Israel with other democratic nations like the US or UK, in which people that don’t like you peacefully (not so peacefully anymore) protest in the streets with placards and write letter campaigns, is like comparing pre-meditated murder to a ride in the bumper cars at your local fourth of July carnival. You see, Israel isn’t facing protesters with placards, they are facing terrorists with missles who have already declared to the world their intention, to kill Israelis, and with a fanatic nation, Iran, who has proudly declared they have signed up 100,000 volunteers to be suicide bombers that will be parachuted into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to massacre innocent Israelis.
Does Israel really want to be compared to maniacs like these? To organizations that use the murder of innocents as a weapon? To terrorist governments that attack another nation from behind their own civilians? To dictatorial regimes run by religious fanatics that conduct wholesale slaughter on their own population?
And I say without any hesitation, a definitive yes!
Israel is a Middle Eastern nation surrounded by countries that have attacked it for 60 years. It is now surrounded by proxy armies that have been purposely built and trained to attack and kill Israelis. It is not negotiating a trade union issue as might happen between Italy and the UK. Israel is not trying to negotiate a economic stimulus to assist its population in preserving their jobs throughout the economic downturn, it is fighting to protect the lives of its citizens.
So I say yes! Compare us with Iran, compare us with Hezbollah, and compare us with Hamas. There’s certainly no justifiable reason for comparing us with Belgium, where their biggest worry is the rampant pedophilia and abuse of children by entire communities, or to the Spanish who’s biggest worry is about what time to take their siesta, most of which have probably never even met a Jew.
Israel must be compared to these other nations it is up against. Yes, it is a democracy, yes it must do its best to be an upstanding citizen of the world community, to be sensitive to innocent civilians and do its best to find peaceful solutions to its conflicts, but as much as Israel has in common with many of these nations, a democratic government, freedom for its citizens, it has one major thing in common in common with the nations surrounding it, missles and bullets and their desire to kill Israelis and reap destruction in any way shape or form opportunity provides.
And the stopping of missles from raining on our children is more important to us than trade union disagreements and yes, the economic downturn.
In no uncertain terms, compare Israel with these undemocratic, oppressive and murderous regimes, be proud of it. Announce it to everyone in the world, let them know and understand that as much as they think conflicts need to be solved peacefully, and as much as we agree with that, the decision is up to the person that chooses to use their body as a human bomb, and not up to the person who wants to sit around a table and negotiate.

anotherdayanother

20 Oct 09, 9:25am

Papalagi said “What you say makes very little sense. Israel not only answered to attacks, Israel provoked attacks according to a few Israeli authors like Uri Avnery, Ran HaCohen, Gideon Levy. “
Yes Papalagi, we understand you only quote those Israeli writers that think that Israel should not be a Jewish state and therefore in its currentl form needs to be destroyed, just of like you.

anotherdayanother

20 Oct 09, 9:57am

JennM provides us the answer as to why everyone is so ignorant on the conflict. She said “
“All I saw were the cluster bombs that killed so many, and also the horrible death toll for the Palestinians that far outweighs anything the Hamas inflicted on Isreal.”
She didn’t see the 12,000 missles falling in Israel for 8 years. She doesn’t want to see the terror Israeli children live in. She doesn’t want to see the death and destruction caused by missles and suicide bombers.
She only chooses to see the suffering of the Palestinians, with no connection to exactly why they are suffering. With no connection to the methods used by hamas, the democratically elected Palestinian government.

Pyrrhonist

20 Oct 09, 11:19am

Badgermania
“Fool”, “gangster”-no ad hominem attacks at all, then?At least the BNP openly says they don’t like Jews-with most of the posters here try to cover their tracks with pseudo-humanitarian pseudo-progressive garbage. And they are probably whingeing about Griffin. Hypocrites.

anotherdayanother

20 Oct 09, 12:22pm
JedFanshaw said “It’s a great shame the The Grauniad can’t display the posts in the colour they are written in – then we’d all see that you write with green ink”
No Jed, the real shame is that they refuse the publish comments that don’t agree with their own political agenda and delete them into eternity in order to push their own, narrow political agenda, and work as a mouthpiece for extremists .

20 Oct 09, 1:04pm
As usual Israel is being accused here of defending itself,this is an alien concept to certain posters here that Israel is capable of or should defend itself,in their minds Israel should have sat tight forever, and let the thousands upon thousands of missiles rain down on it’s women and children’s heads.
Hamas has learned a very good and useful lesson from Cast Lead,they learned that for every one their blood thirsty actions against the State of Israel,there will a very forceful and immediate reaction from the IDF.

And if you’ve managed to wade through all of this, let me end with a parting comment from efficacious:

efficacious

20 Oct 09, 11:48am

This just goes to show that there are posters here who just can’t handle the truth,especially when the truth is about Israel.
They are so used to articles that show Israel in a bad light that the truth about Israel just doesn’t register with them.
A well written,truthful,pragmatic,and most important a sober article

So Georgina, Matt and Brian what do you have to say then? Where’s your zero tolerance for antisemitism?
This is the monster you have created and you should all be utterly ashamed of yourselves.

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