Perfect illustration of Guardian’s biased moderation when dealing with Israel related reader comments

It may be my own gallows humor, but I sometimes almost find it amusing to see how long it takes for a CiF piece that doesn’t pertain to Jews or Israel to elicit a Guardian reader comment which, with varying degrees of rhetorical dexterity, manages to bring the discussion to the former or the latter.

As such, it only took 27 minutes from the time Nick Cohen’s recent CiF piece (A chance to drag ourselves out of the gutter, July 24), which commented on the fallout from the Murdoch scandal and what the event portends for the future of the media in the UK (and wasn’t even peripherally about Israel or the Middle East) was open to comments to produce this, which quickly accumulated 29 Recommends:

I reported the comment as off-topic but so far it still remains. 

Further, a commenter with the moniker “HushedSilence” objected to Pindi’s comment, contributing the following:

And, then, this mild rebuke of Pindi’s hateful diatribe is deleted by CiF moderators:

So, our persistent HushedSilence then accurately observed the following:

An interesting insight into their moderation policy, indeed.

We’ll see if HushedSilence’s observation stays or is ultimately deleted by CiF moderators, but our saga doesn’t end there.

For good measure. Pindi added the following, which, as of this post, hasn’t been deleted, arguing that Cohen beats the drums in support of military involvement in the Middle East (presumably NATO involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan) which is in league with Nazi war crimes:

I guess for a paper whose editors evidently consider the explicit anti-Semitism of James Petras and Israel Shahak to be legitimate progressive thought the suggestion, by a CiF reader, that the UK is “killing Muslims and destroying their countries…to protect Israel” and that Nick Cohen cheer leads  for NATO military involvement in the Middle East which is morally equivalent to Nazi war crimes may actually seem plausible.

(UPDATE: HushedSilence’s comment critical of CiF’s  moderation process was indeed removed, as was, interestingly, the off topic vitriol by Pindi.) 

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