Guardian’s PaliLeaks unleashes disturbing volume of hate in reader comment section

One of the more telling aspects of the way the Guardian covered the shooting in Arizona – which targeted congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and left six dead – was the way in which they used the deadly attack to demonize their political opponents.  Like much of the American hard left, the Guardian concluded that the attack was motivated by “inflammatory right-wing rhetoric”, without the slightest evidence that the shooter, Jared Loughner, was a fan of the conservative talk show hosts and politicians being mentioned.  Of course the mere death of evidence wouldn’t stop CiF’s Michael Tomasky from assigning such blame, acknowledging that “it can’t really and truly be proved”, before insisting, “but everyone knows.”

Those who read this blog regularly are fully aware of the time we spend documenting the hate and vitriol directed against Jews and Israel in the comment section of CiF which is unleashed by Guardian stories even tangentially related to Israel.  As we’ve noted previously, the Community Security Trust has named the Guardian as a major purveyor of antisemitic rhetoric in the British mainstream media in their 2007 and 2008 reports.

As CiF Watch actually takes empirical evidence seriously, we’ve taken the time to document “what everyone knows”: that the Guardian’s recent PaliLeaks reports have unleashed a wave of hate – towards Jews and Israel – below the the line that reaches new depths.

As you read the comments below, elicited from the Jan. 24 Guardian piece “Papers reveal how Palestinian leaders gave up fight over refugees,” please also note how many fellow Guardian readers recommend the remarks.

We posted previously on this comment about Israel’s unique evil, which still hasn’t been deleted, and has now garnered 870 Recommends:

Accusation that Israel is engaged in Ethnic Cleansing (506 Recommends)

Israel and the U.S. are the true rogue states in the world (484 Recommends).  Also, see our posts (here, here, and here) on John Whitbeck’s CiF piece, “On Palestine, the U.S. is a rogue state.”

Pro-Hamas comment (261 Recommends):

“Wealthy U.S. Jewish people” are to blame. (371 Recommends):

Reader now hates Israel and the U.S. even more than he/she used to (225 Recommends):

More general hate: (480 Recommends):

The Guardian has now freed the reader to condemn Israel’s “ethno-religious purity.” (187 Recommends)

Israel and the U.S. are terrorist states, similar to fascist war-mongering regimes of past. (155 Recommends).

Israel is evil, Zionism needs to be defeated, like fascism before it. (44 Recommends):

Israel wants to cleans the country of non-Jews to maintain its purity. (44 Recommends):

Israel is a barbaric country.

While I don’t think the commentary above requires much more contextualizing, I will simply add that it cannot be reasonably claimed that the Guardian (who has a professional staff of moderators) isn’t aware of the bile their hostility towards the Jewish state elicits. So, assuming they do know that their commentary nurtures and engenders such hate, we’re left with one depressing question: Do they even care?

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