Financial Times website gives platform for anti-Semitic bigotry following rare piece supporting Israel
One consequence of traditional media’s move to online platforms is that the threads which follow many articles are now open to readers to make comments of their own. This not only provides an insight into the kind of people who are attracted to a given article, it also places a responsibility on newspapers to police their websites in order to prevent libellous, bigoted or racist opinions from becoming associated with them.
Few issues reveal the nature of the problem more starkly than the Israel-Palestine conflict where extreme hostility to the Jewish state now masquerades as “normal” commentary in much of the British media. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that fanatics and open anti-Semites feel they have licence to let rip.
The Guardian, of course, has come in for much criticism in this respect but equally egregious in its attitude to Israel has been the Financial Times which is rapidly acquiring a reputation as one of the most rabidly anti-Israeli outlets in the English speaking world’s mainstream press. Following a rare pro-Israel piece by the historian Andrew Roberts in the comment section of the newspaper earlier in the week, the online threads have featured some of the vilest anti-Semitic bigotry to have been sanctioned by a British newspaper for quite some time.
I quote eight examples below to illustrate both the tone and the content of what has appeared. Some clearly attempt to equate Israel with Nazi Germany by reference to the “abused” having become “the abusers”. Others are obsessed with the “Jewish” character of Israel. One (in an irony that would certainly escape him) appears to allege a Jewish conspiracy with the notion that Mossad has taken over the FT newsroom since that is the only explanation for the appearance of a very rare piece of pro-Israeli writing. One refers obliquely to the “chosen people”. Another describes as “laughable” the ancient Jewish presence in the Middle East.
As you read these contributions on the FT’s website, please note that they have been up for several days now. In other words, the FT must know about them and we must therefore conclude that they see no problem with them.
Once again, they all refer to Roberts’ article. Here they are, unedited:
1) nizar alshubaily | March 4 8:16am | Permalink
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Israel murdered Palestinians and stole their land. Israel continues to murder to keep the land it stole. Now Israel murders even more to eradicate any witness to its crime. The world’s greatest genocide attempt is being perpetrated on TV and no ones does anything about it. Gaza has become history’s largest concentration camp.
The Abused have become the Abusers.
2) ricardogf | March 3 9:57pm | Permalink
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Another pathetic display of bigotry right here on FT…if such biased articles continue to appear on this renowned publication (already filled with disproportionally high contributions by those on the zionist side), I will definitely cancel my subscription (as I did with The Economist and their warmongering articles on Iran). The sheer legal basis for the creation of Israel CAN and MUST be discussed in order to understand why “terrorism” exists in the first place. But instead of extending my opposition to this repugnant piece of fake journalism, I can only provide you with a simple analogy:
Is it terrorism when a thief invades my house, kills my family and ends up complaining to the “police” after I try defend my place against him and his criminal acts? Now transport yourselves to years and years and years of ethnic cleansing, bulldozing of homes, killing of unarmed civilians in filthy refugee camps and use of prohibited weapons. Add to that the stockpiling of ilegally obtained and undeclared nuclear weapons, the official statement that a certain State is “Jewish” (probably the most blatantly racist qualification ever to grace the constitutional texts of a single State) and HAS to preserve its “jewishness”, or the catastrophe brought about by a colonial power that was too incompetent and biased to ensure a home to the REAL inhabitants of Palestine.
In other words, another sad example of rabid, supremacist zionism in its worst form. Israel is NOT above the law, Israel is NOT morally superior to any other State, Israel DESERVES to pay for its crimes…enough said.
3) Richard Ramos | March 3 5:16pm | Permalink
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the choosen tribe…and loving it.
4) Roland | March 3 2:17pm | Permalink
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So wrong, so inaccurate, such a filthy piece of pro zionist propaganda. Too painful a subject to laugh.
5) nizar alshubaily | March 4 10:22am | Permalink
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@Maggie
Gaza is their land, so is the rest of Palestine which was
stolen by European immigrants who claimed it as theirs. We
will not make it easy for thieves to steal what is ours.
That’s why.
I know too much history to be fooled by any claim of
ownership of the land by Jews.
Show me the ownership receipt from God.
6) Justin Purcell | March 3 9:41am | Permalink
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The current plight of people in the West Bank Gaza with the lack of basic facilities makes this article even more repugnant. Has the abused become the abuser?
7)belkacem mensouri | March 3 9:20am | Permalink
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Hello,
We didnot know that some Mossad elements joined the FT newsroom.
We clearly received your pro-Zionist point of view.
8) Constance Blackwell | March 2 8:51pm | Permalink
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I could not agree more. Israeli Zionists, not all Israelis are extreme Zionists, brought terrorism to the Middle East - why do other middle eastern states want the Atomic bomb - because of Israel - - balance of terror -
Israel justifies its extreme Zionist claims on the laughable idea that 2500 years ago some people who called themselves part of the Jewish religion lived somewhere for 400 or so years - how silly is that.
The israeli war with France and England to take the Suez canel not only did not make Israel less safe but it cause the massive expulsion of people of the Jewish religion from the Magreb and other middle eastern states - it isolated a Jewish state rather than made it stronger - what would the middle east be like of the wealthy Jewish and Christian merchants were back where they were then - there certainly have been more trade and less zenobia by all -
I once stood in the Negev with a Palistinian Christian driver and he showed me an empty road. What is that I asked - it is the road from Egypt to Damascus -
what do those Israelis who seem to be mostly from Russia think they are doing - showing the old KGB they can do it better.
Constance Blackwell
London-
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To read an in depth report on the FT’s bias against Israel, click here:
March 5th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
Robin:
Its interesting to see the exact same phenomenon in the Financial Times as we witness in Comment is Free time and again of a pro-Israel commentator writing an article sending the below the line commenters into an apoplectic rage.
It really goes to show just how far removed these commenters are from reality and the extent to which the public debate on Israel has been poisoned.
March 5th, 2010 at 9:33 pm
Does anyone take the blurtings of these ignorant, semi-literate fools seriously ? Anyone with half a brain must see straight away that they’re all complete pillocks.
If the FT is happy to have this stuff on its website, then it really has gone down the pan.
Instead of “No FT, no comment”, it’s now “No FT, thank god”.
March 6th, 2010 at 12:58 am
I would often question the editors of ‘progressive’ publications how they felt about cheapening the names and reputations with openly unabiguous calls for genocide from their own readers. I was never able to get a coherent answer other then some bland proclamation about free speech, ignoring of course the reality that counterclaims are routinely censored. So I’m left with the conclusion that antisemitism is their default position. I have never been corrected on the point by the very people I made the claim against. It’s really that simple.
March 6th, 2010 at 7:04 am
There is an infinite amount of this anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic bilge online. I’ve spent a lot of time involved in websites inundated with it, eg Spengler’s forum at Asia Times and have emerged heartened by finding that not one single ‘critique’ of Israel is based on facts or logic. These people are simply either aggressive propagandists or fools who swallow propaganda uncritically. Yes, their nonsense sucks in more fools and harms Israel, but rather than ignore or suppress them, let’s engage and defeat them by enlightening the enlightenable and undermining the diehards. I’ve been able to turn the slightly more rational and questioning, if utterly ignorant, ones toward a much more reasonable position, and have almost always driven the diehards to either ‘publicly’ expose their lack of justification or the simple hatred motivating them. Such close intellectual combat is necessary to turn this aggressive, relentlessly propagated and massively sponsored tide of filth; but Israel and its allies should also be focusing on a similar global campaign: facts, facts, facts, and logic, logic, logic. If only the media would allow true argument to happen instead of themselves all too often adopting or favouring an unjustified Israel-bashing position.
March 6th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
Here is my recent letter that the FT failed to publish:
David Gardner (February 26th) writes of Israel as a ‘rogue state’ because of Mossad’s (presumed) assassination of a terrorist leader responsible for arms smuggling into Gaza. If Osama Bin Laden had been the victim and US or UK special forces the perpetrator, would he call those countries ‘rogue states’? I think not. And to cite the Goldstone Report in his support is thoroughly disingenuous. As Abba Eban (former Foreign Minister of Israel, died 2002) said: “If Algeria introduced a UN resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.”
March 6th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
The British print media has been in deep decline since the advent of the internet, with The Guardian, especially, losing money hand-over-fist. Some of these newspapers are bound to fail soon, as can be seen by the plummeting of the once-proud London Evening Standard into a freebie.
The shrieking anti-semitic hysteria of several newspapers in print and on-line, (led by The Guardian, Independent and Financial Times,) might indicate which ones will be the first papers to make it to Carey Street. After all, Jews have been the metaphorical canary in the coal mine since Biblical times. One wonders if the bookies will now be giving shortening odds on the Financial Times to fail first.
March 7th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
i enjoy your writing style :-)
March 7th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
After checking out the piece and the full array of responses, I think a caveat is in order: yes, counter and be aghast at the frothing antisemites but beware of positive selection. The crazies accounted for a small selection of the responses; the other commenters either commended the article (the majority, I think) or kept their criticism within civil bounds — possibly more civil than those of a corresponding debate in Ha’aretz. The piece above raked the muck and ignored the rest, muddying the truth.
Robin Shepherd says: You are entitled to your opinion, but I find it extraordinary. The fact that there were also supportive comments is irrelevant. The moderaters at the FT left vile anti-Semitic comments up on their website for days on end. I suspect you would not be so charitable if such comments had been posted on a major international news site and had been made about black people. Or would you have said: “Oh well, most people didn’t use the ‘N’ word so it just muddies the truth to talk about the ones that did”?????
March 7th, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Similar rabid comments can be found in any Israel related article in the Huffington Post, and many (most?) articles in the New York Times. Unlike Naftush’s comment, in the HP and NYTs, the overwhelming majority of comments are virulently anti-Israel. It’s frightening, and shockingly hypocritical.
March 7th, 2010 at 10:46 pm
J. Isaacs - not that I don’t share your sentiment and wishful thinking but based on what I heard a few years ago - in the USA market it is said that it has become quite successful while its circulation going down considerably in Britain - I somewhat question that. Unfortunately. So what’s the real truth about the FT’s viability?
March 7th, 2010 at 11:26 pm
It is not surprising these days that racist comments appear on newspaper blogs. After all, anyone with an internet connection can post vile obscenities all over the internet.
The real issue here is that the FT’s failure to moderate these disgusting comments, renders it complicit in spreading anti-semitic bigotry. A revolting and shameful attitude for a mainstream newspaper in a civilized country.
Now, the FT should be asked to issue an apology for permitting hate speech on its website. Second, the FT should ban all commenters guilty of racist abuse. All contributors to their message boards are required to register, so that should present no practical problem.
It would be good if the FT could be brought to account for its actions. I am not sure whether comments on the FT site are pre-moderated. If they are, then the PCC would consider them to have undergone an editorial process, and they could then be the subject of a formal complaint. I would dearly love to see that happen; the FT wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.
March 8th, 2010 at 8:57 am
Newspapers are on the way out. Evening Standard is a freebee and has disappeared from the newspaper shops. The Guardian and Observer have financial problems. The need more readers and there are minority groups and others who may be roped into becoming readers. When Countries and by implication newspapers get into a financial fix where can they find a cause and more customers?
March 8th, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Maybe time to start FTwatch?
March 8th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
Gabor. Sorry I have not worked out how to type an umlaut or accent on your name yet. Unfortunately, what you heard a few years ago is not the state of play today. For example Facebook and Twitter did not exist a few years ago, and look at the numbers of their subscribers now.
Virtually all UK newspapers show declining year-on-year circulations. Murdoch says he will introduce a pay-to-view service for The Times online in October. We shall see if this rescues the print version of The Times. But it is clear that the US market, which already has The Wall Street Journal, together with a very competitive European edition is not bolstering the Financial Times circulation sufficiently to halt its decline in the UK. Meanwhile, the backdrop of the recession is highly unlikely to make Brits buy more newspapers or advertisers increase their budgets.
At a guess, first to go will be The Guardian. A new Conservative government might withdraw government advertising as part of its programme of cuts, which is currently propping The Guardian up, together with revenue from the group magazine Autotrader and venture capital group Apax Partners.
The Guardian or Observer might then either fold into another paper if there are any assets worth saving, or simply vanish. Possibly The Financial Times might garner a few more anti-semitic readers as a short-term result, but this is by no means certain for a specifically financial paper. More likely, The Morning Star or Sunday Sport will attract any reader residue, but the general trend towards obsolescence is clear.
March 8th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Further to my comment (#8) and Robin Shepherd’s response: Although not in the trenches as you are, I regularly visit and occasionally comment at response boards of Israeli and European sites and Youtube, and an accustomed to triggering boatloads of bilge with every pro-Israel comment. The Israeli sites in particular routinely leave opinion pieces and their “talkbacks” online for days on end, with the weight of comment tilted to the obscenely hostile. By that standard, the rational comments on the FT piece held their own and I respectfully submit that one whoselects only the bile overexposes the film.
March 8th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
When I read the kind of drivel Robin cites above, I cannot help but think that the vast quantities are symptomatic two things — that you can subscribe to most articles at no cost and the amount of free time the people who offer these kinds of opinions have to haunt various blogs. Once people have to pay a fee to read an on-line article, you’ll see a sharp decline in uninformed hate speech passing for free speech.
March 8th, 2010 at 10:19 pm
Mr. Shepherd’s splendid book, ‘A State Beyond The Pale,’ should be mandatory reading for these people whose anti semitic bigotry often makes the poisonous rantings of the Nazi gutter press publication, Völkischer Beobachter, seem like enlightened political comment in comparison. Of course, many would emerge from such a reading unchastened and unrepentant, but that would merely confirm their chronic incapacity for objective, rational, reflective analysis as well as their visceral, illogical loathing for the State of Israel, a truly democratic advanced open society surrounded by backward authoritarian tyrannies whose own human rights track record barely left the starting gate.
March 8th, 2010 at 11:36 pm
J Isaacs, thank you for the update. But the Guardian’s copy numbers is how much, some 300.000? And the Independent’s? (This later was said to be very successful when 4-5 years ago it changed to the tabloid forat from the broadsheet. Do you wantto say that it only temporarily raised its circulatin numbers?) That seems to be pretty huge even if the Daily Telegraph has twice as many (as the Guardian) I reckon!
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