Guardian back on Israeli apartheid theme
You really do have to take your hat off to the Guardian. Its (clearly coordinated) campaign of agitprop against Israel knows no limits. The sheer relentlessness of the assault has no parallel for any state in the world. It is a non-stop stream of commentaries designed to demean and degrade, with the very occasional (and token) counterpoint thrown in to conjur the illusion of balance. Today, without using the term itself, we are back on the apartheid theme.
An (anonymous!) Jewish Israeli married to a an Israeli Arab has been given a slot to denounce a “new government policy” announced by Israeli Housing Minister Ariel Atias. Atias, calmly described by the author as “a racist religious fanatic”, recently expressed his view that town-planning policy in the Galilee should address the demographic balance in the region where the Arab presence is expanding.
According to the author:
“He pointed to last year’s Jewish-Arab riots in Akko as proof that we just don’t get along. Atias said he intends to formulate and implement housing policies that create and perpetuate separate townships for Jews and Arabs.”
Now, there are elements of truth in that statement — Atias did refer to Akko and he does argue for more Jewish neighbourhoods — but the overall message conveyed is deeply misleading.
A report from the ynetnews.com website (see link below) provides some broader context to the minister’s remarks and to the controversy it has aroused. In that report there is a quote from the Arab leader of the far-Left Hadash party Mohammad Barakeh which was omitted in the Guardian commentary but which puts an entirely different gloss on the overall picture presented.
Barakeh is quoted as saying in response to Atias’s remarks:
“The government and everyone in it must realize that Arabs are living in their homeland and they have no other. If there is any foreign element in the Galilee, it is not the Arabs.”
The construction “not the Arabs” is obviously code for “the Jews”. But the inference from a leading Israeli Arab that the Jews are a “foreign element” gives the game away. Both sides, not one, see this as a battle of identities and loyalties. There are also myriad examples (obviously omitted from the commentary) of extreme anti-Semitic beliefs held by Israeli Arabs. In a recent poll, conducted by Haifa University, 41 percent of Israeli Arabs admitted to being Holocaust deniers while 46 percent could not agree to the statement that Israel has a right to exist at all. To put it mildly such attitudes among Israeli Arabs do not create a great basis for good neighbourliness.
This does not mean that Atias is right in his suggestions — and that is what they are: this is not, contrary to what is said, “government policy”. The housing policy of a sovereign foreign state does not concern me except in so far as it illustrates a broader picture about Israeli society and the wider conflict in the Middle East.
The Guardian, of course, would immediately retort that Atias’s remarks illustrate precisely the kind of bigger picture that we need to know about: Israel is a racist, segregationist, apartheid state. The sole purpose of running the commentary was to convey that message.
It is a slippery and disingenuous strategy revealed as such by the broader context about Arab-Israeli attitudes and behaviour which is conspicuously airbrushed out of the story.
Israeli Jews do not view Arabs as racially inferior in the manner that white South Africans viewed blacks. To level the charge of racism is grossly defamatory. Indeed, most of the brute racism lies on the Arab side and not the Jewish side.
The fact is that land, loyalties, ethnic and religious identities as well as the demographic balance form the core issues at the heart of this conflict. A sober and intelligent discussion of these matters would reveal complexities that are unlikely to please either side.
But a sober and intelligent discussion is not what we have been given. Indeed, it is not what we will ever get until the anti-Israeli hysteria coursing through the veins of Britain’s opinion forming establishment is finally put aside.
For the Guardian commentary, click here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/30/israel-housing-separate-arabs-jews?commentpage=2
For the ynet story, click here:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3740637,00.html
July 17th, 2009 at 10:55 am
http://www.zionismontheweb.org/CommentIsFree_ParliamentASCttee_July08.pdf
El Grauniad is unrelenting in its Israel-bashing. But let’s not take away this totem pole from the unreconstructed Left. It’s the only rallying point they’ve got.
July 17th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
I agree Robin that this is a clearly coordinated campaign. What else can explain article after article that questions Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
July 17th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
The Guardian’s negative obsession with ‘Jewish’ Israel has become legendary. One wonders who are the subscribers to the newspaper that so obviously distorts all reports originating in Israel or pertaining to the Arab/Israeli conflict.
The Guardian management seems to have made a conscious decision to side with any group, however outrageous, as long as it is anti Western. This includes the demonic regime in Iran and the ‘socialist’ government of Venezuela.