One sentence by the Guardian's Mid-East editor explains their coverage of the war

 To date, the Guardian’s coverage of the war has revealed the following:

  • A focus on claims of Israeli war crimes, and silence concerning Hamas’s widespread (and well-documented) illegal use of human shields.
  • The acceptance of Palestinians claims (about the number of civilians casualties, for instance) at face value.
  • A dearth of commentaries (at their blog, Comment is Free, political cartoons, etc.) that are critical of Hamas.

Indeed, one sentence in a July 23rd article (UN human rights body to investigate claims of Israeli violations in Gaza) written by the Guardian’s Middle East editor, Ian Black, arguably helps explains at least the last dynamic we cited.
While providing analysis on the predictable decision by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) “to launch an international inquiry into violations” against Israel, Black makes the following observation about demands to end Israel’s blockade.  

“Pillay [the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights] also called for an end to the blockade of Gaza, the underlying reason for the conflict and an issue that will have to be tackled if any ceasefire is to endure.”

So, Israel’s legal Naval blockade of weapons to Gaza, according to the Guardian’s senior Middle East editor, represents the “underlying reason for the conflict” between Israel and Hamas!  
Does it really need to be pointed out that the blockade is meant to curtail the terrorist group’s capacity to import deadly weapons into the strip and that, in lieu of such restrictions, Hamas would be free to acquire even more accurate and deadly weapons than they’re using in the current war?
Does Black honestly believe that Hamas leaders truly only desire an end to the blockade in order to provide a better standards of living for Gazans?
Does Black not know that Hamas has diverted tens of millions of dollars in imported cement and other construction materials (supposedly meant for “humanitarian projects” such as roads, schools and clinics) to construct terror tunnels and other weapons of war?
However, beyond the specifics of the blockade and Black’s absurd reduction of the conflict, it’s amazing that such putatively sophisticated journalists fail to understand the blockade is the result of Hamas’s aggression, not its cause.  
It all seems to come down to an intellectually crippling political correctness which insists upon imputing reasonableness to even the most malevolent political actors.
Such absurd moral equivalencies are what drive Guardian editors to continually fail to even note that the Sunni Islamist group (the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood) is an extremist organization, one which oppresses women and gays, shuns democratic values, rejects the very idea of peace with the Jewish State, and promotes the most virulent form of antisemitism, which includes explicit incitement to engage in the mass murder of Jews.
Hamas’s reactionary politics  – their contempt for modern notions of tolerance, freedom, individual rights and the sanctity of human life – is of course the underlying cause of the conflict, and it continually baffles us how such putatively anti-racists can’t morally distinguish between antisemitic extremists and the Jews they’re trying so desperately to kill. 

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