Guardian uses cycling column to “suggest” Palestinians “have been shot from behind and intentionally maimed.”

By Richard Millett

Hot on the heels of the BBC using its cycling report on the Israeli stage of the Giro d’Italia to quote Amnesty International’s accusation that Israel is “trying to ‘sportwash’ its reputation” comes the Guardian’s equally vindictive journalism care of Martha Kelner in Jerusalem.

In her Giro d’Italia report of May 3rd headlined Team Sky accused of deceiving Giro d’Italia organisers over Froome’s status Kelner writes:

kelner

As you can see no link, no evidence at all, just “Amnesty International suggesting”.

Here is how Amnesty has also “suggested”. At its London offices it allowed to be displayed this presumably faked photograph which manipulated a Jewish symbol, with additional Holocaust equivalence, to demonise Israelis (I say “presumably” because I have still to see anything proving it’s real):

qasem

The caption on this photograph displayed at Amnesty’s main offices in London reads: “The soldier, checking student’s ability to bear pain, took a piece of glass and broke it and taking Qasam’s arm, cut into it a Star of David.” The plaster doesn’t even fit properly over the “wound”.

A regular presenter at Amnesty is Ben “I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, yet I can also understand why some are” White. Another presenter has been Ken Loach. It was Loach who last year was asked about a Labour Party event where a discussion took place on whether the Holocaust happened. When asked whether this was acceptable Loach responded “I think history is for us all to discuss, wouldn’t you?” Loach later claimed it was a “confused BBC interview”.

But obviously not content with her May 3rd report Kelner quotes Amnesty yet again in her May 5th report of the race headlined “Chris Froome refuses to press panic button after finding safety in peloton”:

kelner2

There’s the “sportwash” allegation again. Although Kelner did reference race organiser Sylvan Adams who, she writes, “inherited his property company from his father, a Romanian-born Holocaust survivor”, in his criticism of Amnesty for “politicising a sporting event”:

“He said he hoped the event would both encourage more of the population to cycle but also alter the image Israel abroad.

‘The media tend to portray Israel in a one-dimensional fashion, always talking about the conflict, and it’s not the Israel I experience on a daily basis where we all largely get along,’ he said. ‘That’s a story which visitors to Israel grasp but remains a bit of a secret to the wider world.'”

Amnesty has a very cosy relationship with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign which campaigns for the end of Israel via boycott, divestment and sanctions. I have seen emails between Amnesty and the PSC about me with the PSC email to Amnesty signed off “Hope you’re well, and best wishes,” with Amnesty replying “Ha – comical. Yea he has not tweeted about it either – how funny. cheers”. This was when I attended a PSC event and the PSC were emailing Amnesty to tell them I’d been “arrested” at the event, which was yet another fabrication.

This symbiotic relationship between the BBC, The Guardian and Amnesty/PSC has to stop. It’s nothing more than propaganda dressed up as journalism. And Amnesty needs to be investigated by the Charity Commission for its anti-Israel bias continued next week by its takeover of RADA for “commemorating the Palestinian experience of dispossession and loss of a homeland” along with its anti-Israel performers.

Amnesty’s Kristyan Benedict said of the RADA events, “Amnesty International UK is honoured to support this important week of cultural resistance.” But then again Benedict equated Israel with ISIS (he referred to Israel as #JSIL?) and during Israel’s last war against Hamas he joked about three British MPs ordering B52s in a bar. Those three MPs all just happened to be Jewish…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More from Guest/Cross Post
Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *