Guardian defence & security correspondent endorses book by extremist Jeff Halper

Richard Norton-Taylor is a Guardian defence and security correspondent and until recently was the paper’s security editor. He currently edits the Guardian Defence and Security blog with Ewen MacAskill. Norton-Taylor’s latest post at the blog (‘Spies, resistance and maps: seven books that spill secrets, Jan. 26.) consists of recommended books, including this curious entry:

In War Against The People, Jeff Halper (Pluto Press) chronicles the way Israel applies surveillance technology to monitor the Palestinians. 

Any book by Jeff Halper would seem like an odd choice for the Guardian’s security correspondent for a number of reasons. 

First, he’s a retired lecturer in anthropology, and it’s unclear what his credentials are to critically examine Israeli security policy.

Additionally, he is an extreme anti-Zionist ideologue.  

Halper is the co-founder and former longtime director of the radical NGO, Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD). He supports BDS, defends Palestinian terror, has accused Israel of “genocide” and opposes the continued existence of a Jewish state within any borders.

Here’s the video book trailer by Halper.  

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3S_UdmHA7E]

(See part 2 of the video here.)

Especially noteworthy in the video is the convoluted reason given for why Israel doesn’t end the occupation. Halper argues that the West Bank is a “laboratory” where Israel develops weapons and security systems. These techniques for “control and pacification” of masses of marginalized people, he claims, are exported to countries to control their own ‘restive’ populations, what Halper refers to as the “global pacification industry”.

That such pseudo-intellectual radical agitprop was endorsed by the Guardian’s specialist on international security issues represents further evidence of the media group’s continued embrace of the radical left fringe of British opinion.

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