Guardian at it again. This time cell phone advert provides licence to attack Israel
I know that it is no laughing matter, but one could be forgiven for falling on the floor in hysterics over this one. It’s the sheer opportunism: the abandonment of all pretence that this is anything other than a systematic and carefully coordinated campaign of demonisation.
The Guardian’s latest screed against Israel is on the subject of a cell phone advertisement on Israeli TV. The advert, put out by the Israeli mobile phone company Cellcom, uses the security barrier between Israel proper and the West Bank as its setting. In the words of, Seth Freedman, the commentary’s author:
“The advert begins with a football sailing over the barrier and landing on a military jeep on the Israeli side of the de facto border, prompting a brief moment of panic among the troops, before they realise it is a harmless object. They decide to kick it back over the wall, then – when the ball flies back over to them once more – realise they have a game on their hands, and call up reinforcements to join in the kickabout.”
Freedman’s objection is predictable:
“Their 50-second long commercial debuted on Israeli screens in the same week that the fifth anniversary of the [International Court of Justice] ruling declaring the wall illegal was reached, adding insult to the injury caused by the content of the commercial itself.”
The rest is all obvious. Cellcom’s advert is a metaphor for wider Israeli contempt for the Palestinians, international law, basic standards of decent behaviour etc etc. All the standard stuff. Actually, the ICJ ruling was an advisory ruling and has no force in international law. But the content of the article does not really concern me and neither does the author.
Rather, the point is that the Guardian’s editorial team has obviously decided that any stick, any stick whatsoever, will do. I have used the word “obsession” before about the Guardian’s attitude to the Jewish state. But in all honesty, can there be any doubt about the matter?
As I noted in a previous entry, on Friday the paper ran not one but two anti-Israeli op-eds: two in the same day! On saturday a whole day went by without a commentary attacking Israel. Since the paper doesn’t publish on Sunday, that was 48 hours without so much as an apartheid analogy. Someone must have come into work this morning in a state of detox. You can imagine the scene: trembling fingers over the keyboard; sweat pouring off the editor’s brow; his voice booming across the newsroom: “Find me an Israel hater and find me one now!”
As I said above, I should not be making light of this. The Guardian is the house journal of Britain’s opinion forming establishment and this is a sickness. But sometimes you have to laugh, if only not cry.
To read the full article, click here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/20/cellcom-advert-israel-palestinians
July 20th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
[Get a life] Leftist group upset over cute Celcom ad featuring IDF soldiers playing soccer with Palestinians over separation fence. (To tell you the truth, cute ad)
http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com/2009/07/get-life-leftist-group-upset-over-cute.html