On the Guardian’s sanctimony over Jerusalem Post’s apology to Norway: pot kettle black

This was posted at Harry’s Place:

Harriet Sherwood in The Guardian reports:

In an unusual move for a newspaper, the Jerusalem Post has published a full-length editorial apologising for a previous editorial which attracted widespread criticism for its comments on last month’s Oslo massacre.

Titled Apology to Norway, Friday’s editorial in Israels leading English-language daily said the original leader column “squarely condemned the attack” in which 77 people were killed by an extreme rightwing gunman acting alone.

She continues [quoting the apology]:

“However, it also, inappropriatelyraised issues that were not directly pertinent, such as the dangers of multiculturalism, European immigration policies and even the Oslo peace process.”

Here is the Guardian one week after 9/11:

I think it is safe to say that apart from three or four Palestinians, everyone is sad to see so many of their fellow humans killed in such horrendous circumstances. That goes for most Muslims and the great majority of those who might have been quite pleased to see the US get a different kind of comeuppance. For this second group, in which I include myself, the unqualified sympathy extended to the victims is underpinned by a feeling that few have dared even to whisper. My next-door neighbour said it, and so did a rogue Palestinian whose views have not yet been censored in the name of “taste”. They are better placed than I am, as a broadsheet commentator, to admit to a part of them that thinks that the US might benefit from an insight into what it feels like to be knocked to your knees by a faceless power deaf to everything but the logic of its own crazed agenda.

And:

When America speaks from its heart, it retreats into a language that none but its true-born citizens can begin to understand. At the root of this is an overwhelming need to control meaning. America can’t let the world speak for itself. It was taken unawares last Tuesday and part of the trauma of that event was the shock of being forced to listen to a message that it hadn’t had time to translate.

Back to Sherwood’s Guardian piece, we then read:

Steve Linde, the Post’s editor-in-chief, swiftly posted an addendum to the online version, clarifying the editorial: “This editorial is not aimed at deflecting attention from the horrific massacre perpetuated in Norway, nor the need to take greater precautions against extremists from all sides.”

That brings to mind a piece published online by the Guardian, one week after four Pakistani terrorists murdered an Orthodox Jewish couple in a Chabad house, which tried desperately to make a political point about Israel. Look how Richard Silverstein morphs the atrocity into a point about Israel:

Therefore, the attack was anti-Israeli, though not necessarily antisemitic. […] What should really be understood is that, as with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, here we have essentially a political/territorial conflict between Pakistan and India over Kashmir that has been turned by Hindu and Muslim extremists on both sides into a religious crusade. […] The same is true of Israel-Palestine. Israel’s nationalist leaders would like nothing more than to piggyback their own cause onto the western jihad against radical Islam.

Read the rest of the post here.

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