Guardian anti-Zionist bias watch: Low hanging fruit edition

As I prepare my presentation on the media assault on Israel’s legitimacy, at the Big Tent for Israel Conference in Manchester tomorrow, the following passages from a report on the kangaroo court known as The Russell Tribunal on Palestine, by NGO Monitor, are just priceless.

On November 5-6, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP) held a session in Cape Town, South Africa. The session was convened, under the façade of a legal framework, ostensibly to consider “Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people fits the international legal definitions of the crime of apartheid.”

During the proceedings, these individuals demonized Israel and denied Jewish self-determination.

Israeli MK Haneen Zoabi declared that “I would say, there was no justification for Zionist projects and to have a Jewish state in my homeland.

Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) greatly distorted history in alleging that “We will not forget that the Israeli trade union federation Histadrut, which serves the racist Israeli state and the Jewish working class like White trade unions in South Africa served the racist state and the White working class, actively collaborated with the South African apartheid state.”

The legal farce included “jurors” who had all previously declared Israel guilty of “apartheid”: Alice Walker narrated a documentary film about Israel entitled  a “Roadmap to Apartheid”; Ronnie Kasrils, among other attacks, published an op-ed entitled “Israel 2007:Worse than Apartheid”; José Antonio Martín Pallín, stated, “Everyone knows that the State of Israel is an artificial ad hoc creation” 

On media coverage of RToP, NGOM notes:

A series of op-eds and editorials attacked the Tribunal: Russell Tribunal a ‘kangaroo court’ (Times Online, Nov. 7, 2011); Lurid political theatre (The Citizen, Nov. 7, 2011);Demonisation and provocation (Business Day, Nov. 7, 2011), The Russell Tribunal onPalestine dishonours victims of apartheid (Mail & Guardian, Nov. 4, 2011); Lies told about Israel are beyond belief ([South Africa’s] Mail & Guardian, October 30, 2011).

Of course, there were one or two exceptions to the otherwise universal opprobrium:

This PR stunt was a total failure; none of its stated objectives was achieved. The RToP failed to garner positive international media attention other than a single opinion piece placed in the Guardian [here]and coverage in Al-Jazeera. 

To be fair, the RToP website cited another “news source”, under the section on favorable press in the UK, in addition to the Guardian: PressTVthe state controlled propaganda tool of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Who needs satirical take-downs of the institutional anti-Zionist bias of “the world’s leading liberal voice” when they seem all too eager to devolve into such (evidently unintentional) self-parody?

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