The Guardian report, through their egregious omission, as well as legitimising a risible comparison between Tamimi and the Pakistani heroine, obfuscated the Palestinian teen’s disturbing support for murdering Israeli civilians – representing yet another example of the media group’s ongoing efforts to whitewash widespread Palestinian support for violence.
Narrowing down an entire year of Guardian anti-Israel reporting on Israel to the seven most egregious examples is not an easy task, but, as a public service to our loyal readers, here are a few errors and lies by their contributors and reporters in 2017 which especially stand out:
The Israeli government now partners with the most powerful country in the world to provide energy for tens of millions of Africans. Yet somehow, there was no coverage of this story in the media. This is a significant development in dealing with a central humanitarian issue that has seen regular coverage over the past few years. Yet when Israel gets involved the pens fall silent. Why? Why is there an aversion to reporting a positive story about Israel?
Given the IDF statement, and the fact that the Hamas health ministry refused to cooperate with the IDF investigation, at the end of the day, media reports that Abu Thuraya was killed by an IDF sniper are based entirely on unsubstantiated Hamas claims.
Regardless of the Guardian writer’s intent, it’s extremely troubling that editors at a self-styled ‘anti-racist’ publication would sanction words which necessarily evoke such a historically toxic, antisemitic calumny while ruminating on the motives of Israeli Jews.
The Dec. 19th article in The Independent failed to provide the Israeli response to the incident, leaving readers with a take on the the death of Ibrahim Abu Thuraya informed entirely by the unsubstantiated claims of Hamas officials.
During his speech in Istanbul, Mahmoud Abbas not only claimed that Jews fabricate their history in the land – reinforcing the Palestinian lie that Jews have no connection to Jerusalem – but that Jews are liars by nature. Remarkably, even UK media outlets which covered Abbas’s Istanbul address and cited some of his remarks (such as the Guardian, Telegraph and Times of London) managed to ignore the antisemitic part.
As Karma Nabulsi’s polemical assault on Jewish national rights in their ancestral homeland again indicates, the Palestinian national movement is governed far more by antipathy towards Jews and propaganda, than by truth, justice or historical accuracy.
An article in the Sunday Times on US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital included the false claim that east Jerusalem Palestinians, who are permanent residents but not citizens, have “no political rights”. After communication with UKMW, editors agreed to amend the passage to reflect the fact that east Jerusalem Palestinians have the right to vote in local elections and to run for city council.
Palestinian leaders demanded that Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital be framed as (another) “death knell” to the peace process, one that shatters the decades long two-state dreams of Palestinians, and that’s exactly what Rafi Sanchez at The Telegraph delivered.
K Media Watch and CAMERA have prompted countless corrections on the same inaccuracy – the claim that Tel Aviv is Israel’s capital. However, it’s particularly interesting that on Thursday, the day in which Donald Trump’s impending decision to officially recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was the big story, the Financial Times joined the list of media outlets who’ve made some version of this error.
The Economist’s claim that the Palestinian Authority President has rejected violence since 2005 fails to pass even minimum critical scrutiny.
As we explained in our complaint to Times editors, the language used by their reporter erroneously suggests that then opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited a uniquely ‘Muslim’ holy site, when in fact his 34 minute tour was to the Temple Mount (Judaism’s holiest site). Though al-Aqsa Mosque is located within the larger Temple Mount compound, Sharon did not visit the mosque itself.
There is a clear picture being presented by the Guardian, whereby the Israeli government is becoming more and more extreme, making life for Israel Arabs a misery with no prospects for improvement. But is this really true? An examination of the record of this government reveals a very different picture – this much maligned government has actually done a very significant amount to improve the lives of Israeli Arabs.
What makes an editor leave in a comment such as “Jewish people are good with money”? And what makes the main presenter not pick up such a comment? This was the scenario in Chris Tarrant’s Extreme Railways shown on Channel 5 on Monday night when Tarrant visited Jordan and Israel. In Jordan he travelled the route of the now defunct Hejaz Railway and visited Petra.
The repeated media lie that ‘Tel Aviv is Israel’s capital’ represents a broader UK media pattern of what we call ‘advocacy journalism’: the belief held by many reporters that they have a moral duty (in the spirit of ‘comforting the afflicted and afflicting the powerful’) to advocate on behalf of Palestinians and give credence to their narrative, a duty which transcends their ethical responsibilities as professional journalists to be objective and tell the truth.
It’s not just that the Guardian gives the erroneous impression that the movement is larger and more influential than it really is. Their contributors, journalists and editors also continually downplay the true goals of BDS, misleadingly casting their leaders as ‘progressives’ who merely seek to end the occupation.
Jackie Walker is the former Vice-Chair of Britain’s far-left group Momentum who was suspended from the Labour Party due to accusations of antisemitism. In the Sunday Observer (sister publication of the Guardian), Alexei Sayle lauded Walker’s play “The Lynching”, a theatrical attempt to justify and explain the views that made her controversial.
Once again, the Guardian has erased a chapter within the well-documented ethnic cleansing of over 800,000 Jews from Arab countries in the mid 20th century. The latest example involves the history of Jews in Iraq, in the context of a short review by their film critic Peter Bradshaw of Fiona Murphy’s documentary ‘Remembering Baghdad’.
Would the Daily Mail ever describe an attack in London by black men on a Jewish man as a ‘black attack’ or highlight the attacker’s skin colour in the headline? Unless there’s recently been a spate of such acts of violence in London by orthodox Jews, we fail to see why the religion of these alleged attackers is pertinent to the story at all.
UK Media Watch, a CAMERA affiliate
BBC Watch, a sister site of UK Media Watch
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