Guardian website contributor says that recalcitrant Israeli settlers should be “slaughtered” in latest example of a new phenomenon in Great Britain
One of the new realities of the internet age for the mainstream media is that the distinction between an opinion piece and the readers’ comments which come below it is increasingly blurred. This is all the more so for interactive sites such as the Guardian’s immensely popular Comment is free (Cif) site where regular “below the line” contributors are now as much a part of the overall experience as the commentary to which they are responding. Such contributors help create the kind of interactive community which has become the new holy grail of online news and comment services.
So, when it comes to the Guardian’s notoriously vicious stance against the state of Israel it is hardly suprising that the community that has been created draws from among the foulest and most bigoted of the Jewish state’s numerous opponents. As an example, consider the following comment by regular below-the-line contributor William Bapthorpe which was brought to my attention by the invaluable media watchdog service CiF Watch. Referring to the settlers, in a thread following an article by Nicholas Blincoe, he said:
“Sadly, there’s only one way to deal with these religiously motivated maniacs who think their superstitious beliefs trump international law. 1. We ask them to leave their squats, kindly. 2. If they don’t, we force them to [leave] at gunpoint. 3. If they still refuse, they must be slaughtered, every last man woman and child.” (My italics)
If this were simply an isolated incident it would not be worth remarking on. Every website attracts its share of oddballs. But CiF Watch, which was set up last year to monitor a Guardian online community that attracts more than 30 million visits a month, provides reams of this sort of thing suggesting that at the intersection between the technological innovations of the new media and an ideological edifice which makes a fetish of demonising the most important Jewish project of our time an entirely new phenomenon has now emerged in Great Britain.
That phenomenon is nothing less than a self-confident community of anti-Semitic bigots right inside the mainstream of the British media. To be sure, the Guardian’s editorial team is aware of its legal obligations not to promote racial hatred, let alone incitement to murder. (Most contributors have cottoned on and use the familiar code words: “Zionist”, “lobbyist”, “neo-con” etc instead of “Jew”).
The comment referred to above was later removed though, according to CiF Watch, William Bapthorpe was not banned from further participation — a revealing stance by the editors since contributors are frequently banned merely for voicing politely worded comments which oppose the demonisation of Israel.
But the fate of one individual is of far less significance than the broader trend of which he is a part. For the dog-whistle incitement which has created this appalling community of anti-Semites comes from the relentless campaign against Israel which has been waged by the Guardian’s very own stable of writers. It is they who have set the tone with defamatory references to “apartheid” and, pace Slavoj Zizek in an article last August, even to Nazi Germany. It is they who whitewash the anti-Semitism which runs rife in Palestinian and Arab political culture. It is they who divorce all Israeli actions from the context in which they occur. It is they who deligitimise the Jewish state at every turn.
And they do all that while observing their best behaviour. That is what they feel confident about saying in public, fully trained to be aware of what the law will allow and what it will not.
But in the new age of the interactive website community what they will not say above the line now finds its vocal expression below the line from members of their very own community who feel somewhat less constrained.
The distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is of course a fine one. As I argue in my recent book, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel, it is in any case specious to suggest that bigotry against the State of Israel is somehow acceptable, while old-fashioned anti-Semitism is not. Bigotry is bigotry regardless of what it is directed against.
And here’s the rub. The frantic and furious attempts by Guardian writers to defend themselves against charges of anti-Semitism on the grounds that their campaign of hatred is only being waged against Israel and not against Jews as such represents a fatal flaw in their claim to a rational political morality.
They legitimise and perpetuate bigotry of one sort, and then wax innocent in the presence of a related bigotry which emerges as the inevitable consequence of precisely what they themselves have legitimised and perpetuated.
In the analogue age it was possible to preserve the fiction. But no more. The digital age has revealed many things about the state of our media. The Guardian’s dirty little secret is just one of them.
To read the Cif Watch take on the Bapthorpe affair, click here:
To read about and/or purchase my book, A State Beyond the Pale, click here:
Tags: Israel
January 12th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
I’m no great fan of the religious, ‘ideological’ settlers, in fact I think they’ve done a great deal of damage. But this insistence that a future Palestine has to be ‘Judenrein’ is pure Nazism. Young Bapthorpe would have had fun in the SS.
January 12th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
I suggest readers who are horrified by WilliamBapthorpe’s comment, and who know from experience that far milder comments about Islam have led to banning by the Guardian, search out his comments, and use the abuse button to post the following on every single comment:
Why has this person not been banned?
WilliamBapthorpe
6 Jan 2010, 1:08PM
1. We ask them to leave their squats, kindly. 2. If they don’t, we force them to at gunpoint. 3. If they still refuse, they must be slaughtered, every last man, woman and child.
January 12th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
For more of this Islamic ranting try the link.
From yestedays Telegraph.
Substitute ‘dirty jew’ with ‘dirty muslim’ and what would happen?
“F-OFF YOU SATANIC MONEY-WORSHIPING,
JESUS KILLING DIRTY JEW !!!
termin8rx on Jan 11th, 2010 at 3:01 am
Report comment ”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/janetdaley/100021881/islam4uk-decides-to-avoid-public-humiliation/
January 12th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Robin, you are a truly righteous person. Thank you for drawing attention to this criminal activity against Jews. Let us wait to see whether the Director of Public Prosecutions will take any action. I will not hold my breath.
January 12th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Robin, I note your strenuous effort to paint the Guardian and Comment is free’s users as a united community of committed antisemites, but – apart from the fact that that is a ludicrously distorted picture – you offer no substantiating evidence, aside from a comment on a thread that was promptly deleted by our moderators. Perhaps you don’t see the irony, but is it not a little perverse that sites such as your blog or Cif Watch therefore host an antisemitic remark which Cif has deleted?
There is, further, nothing ‘revealing’ about the fact that William Bapthorpe (the commenter concerned) has not been instantly banned. Our standard moderation procedure places all offenders against our community guidelines indefinitely on probation, where they lose posting rights, prior to any further action – whether that is subsequent banning or retrusting.
As for contributors being ‘frequently banned merely for voicing politely worded comments which oppose the demonisation of Israel’, I would love to be presented with a single instance (since I note you do not offer one). As you and I have discussed, you yourself have an open invitation to contribute to Cif.
But as you blur the distinction here between above the line contributors and below the line commenters, I am not clear which you are referring to. In the case of the former, the idea that any contributor is ‘banned’ for expressing pro-Israeli sentiments is manifest nonsense; in the case of the latter, moderators do not exercise any such political or editorial judgment, merely a technical one – so if pro-Israel posts have been deleted, it will simply have been because they were themselves abusive or, possibly, because they referred to an earlier comment which was deleted (this is standard moderation procedure).
The idea, moreover, that Cif (or the Guardian more generally) is waging a ‘campaign of hatred’ against Israel is demonstrably untrue. A cursory glance at our Middle East subsite (www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/middleeast) reveals that, coincidentally over the period of the first anniversary of operation Cast Lead, Cif has had a troubling obsession with … Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen etc.
We work hard to maintain a wide range of voices on all topics, with an appropriate editorial balance. We also work hard, with our team of moderators, to eliminate all and any instances of hate speech or abusiveness posted on threads. In both cases (above and below the line), this includes vigilance and sensitivity in our coverage of Israel and the Middle East. The notion that we enable and abet ‘bigotry’ is so far wide of the mark, Robin, that, frankly, it damages your authority and credibility as a journalist and author in promoting it.
Regards, Matt
January 12th, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Is it not about time that some kind of class action is taken out against the Guardian for dissemination of religious hatred? The above comment (as well as many others) now certainly fit within the remit of the law as it is drafted.
January 12th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
On ‘progressive’ blogs (whatever that means) such as Glenn Greenwald/Salon, contributors who OBJECT to antisemitic hate speech are deleted and/or banned outright.
January 12th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
Yaacov, it is hard to avoid the concern that Bapthorpe is only giving voice to the subconscious view – and subconscious agenda – held by the majority of Guardianistas and by Guardian management.
One wonders if the further agenda is to prevent Israel from defending itself and so contribute to the same objective (of eliminating Israel and Judaism).
January 12th, 2010 at 7:39 pm
The distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is of course a fine one. As I argue in my recent book, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel, it is in any case specious to suggest that bigotry against the State of Israel is somehow acceptable, while old-fashioned anti-Semitism is not. Bigotry is bigotry regardless of what it is directed against.
A brilliant argument. Why should bigotry against Israelis be any more acceptable than bigotry against Jews or Irish or Italians?
Is your book available in the USA?
January 12th, 2010 at 10:08 pm
Matt why do you maintain this fiction that CIF does not have an anti-Israel and antisemitic agenda? It is all documented on CiFWatch.com and in my 2008 paper:
http://www.zionismontheweb.org/CommentIsFree_ParliamentASCttee_July08.pdf
You don’t fool anyone.
January 12th, 2010 at 10:14 pm
If Matt Seaton truly believed his own argument can stand up to open debate and scrutiny, he would have responded directly on the CiFWatch site, or would have offered the CiFWatch site a column in the print and online Guardian.
January 12th, 2010 at 10:36 pm
In response to Seaton:
A poster on CiFWatch stated the matter well:
The Guardian’s actions and editorial policy not only endorse anti-Semitism in practise but actively encourage it and wage a war of either physical or cultural annihilation against Jews and the Jewish identity.
January 12th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
Excuse me, Matt Seaton, but which planet have you beamed in from?
Today’s not so little incident from the egregious Bapthorpe is the result of your deliberate cultivation of a climate of Israel-hatred above the line which often results in barely-concealed Jew-hatred below it from the usual suspects whom you would not dream of banning, and yet you ban pro-Israel posters (many of whom happen to be Jewish) at the drop of a hat!
Your blog allowed incitement towards killing Jews, Matt Seaton, to remain online for long enough for other blogs, eg CiF Watch, to pick it up.
You say “..As for contributors being ‘frequently banned merely for voicing politely worded comments which oppose the demonisation of Israel’, I would love to be presented with a single instance (since I note you do not offer one). As you and I have discussed, you yourself have an open invitation to contribute to Cif…”
You banned me, Matt Seaton for far, far less than you allow WilliamBapthorpe to continue posting. I opposed your allowing Hamas terrorists and apologists for them to post on CiF. Hamas hates Jews doesn’t it? I opposed their Jew-hatred, politely and assertively. I did not call for all of them to be killed or for any of them to be harmed. But I was banned permanently from CiF.
“The idea, moreover, that Cif (or the Guardian more generally) is waging a ‘campaign of hatred’ against Israel is demonstrably untrue.”
I have this strange sensation of sinking into an alternative reality Matt Seaton. Demonstrate for us HOW it is untrue (given the number of ill-researched, badly constructed articles which are economical with the facts about Israel which you commission for CiF).
“We work hard to maintain a wide range of voices on all topics, with an appropriate editorial balance..”
You may work hard but not on this. If there is such a “wide range of voices on all topics” why is CiF so obsessed with the Israel-Palestine issue? Why are there so few articles by comparison about the appalling human rights in Saudi and under Hamas in Gaza? Why are there not frequent articles about the continued breaches of the cease fire by Hamas, and their effects on the citizens of Sderot and the surrounding areas?
“…this includes vigilance and sensitivity in our coverage of Israel and the Middle East…”
See my previous question and again, no it doesn’t. You are much less sensitive to Israeli opinion than you are to anti-Israel opinion. This is reflected by the heavy emphasis on anti-Israel articles, Matt Seaton (note: above the line by means of the articles) which makes it easy for people like WilliamBapthorpe to publish his incitement to murder and other egregious nonsense below the line.
“… The notion that we enable and abet ‘bigotry’ is so far wide of the mark, Robin, that, frankly, it damages your authority and credibility as a journalist and author in promoting it…”
Now you are becoming hysterical Matt Seaton. Of course CiF aids and abets bigotry! It publishes ill-researched anti-Israel opinion as hard fact and such editorial ineptitude , as I have already written, opens the door to the hatred below the line. Your moderators show their bias time and time again.
And the sentence above to Robin puts paid entirely to whatever shreds of credibility you and CiF might ever have had.
January 12th, 2010 at 11:56 pm
Banned by CiF but NOT for incitement to murder.
Matt Seaton says “..We also work hard, with our team of moderators, to eliminate all and any instances of hate speech or abusiveness posted on threads. In both cases (above and below the line), this includes vigilance and sensitivity in our coverage of Israel and the Middle East…”
Matt Seaton does no such thing. He thinks that because he says he does (and probably believes it himself, poor thing) we will believe him too.
Matt Seaton. Can you give us a breakdown of the number of articles published on CiF in 2009 about
Israel/Palestine/Gaza
Human rights abuses in the Arab world
Human rights abuses of Palestinians by Hamas in Gaza
The infringements of children’s human rights by Hamas
The crisis in Darfur
The quality of life for Israeli civilians who are still being shelled by Hamas in Sderot
Take your time….
January 13th, 2010 at 12:14 am
Matt Seaton, do you include BellaM, daughter of your editor and slanderer of Melanie Phillips in your presentation of fair moderators at your Israel bashing rag?
January 13th, 2010 at 5:15 am
Matt Seaton
Does the name Teherankid77 rings any bell? You know the outright anti-semite poster who had been comissioned by CIF to write above the line too? You explained this with problems in communacations – the comissioning editors and the moderators were working in two different buildings (and obviously didn’t speak with each other). Now I have to say that you must be working on a different planet…
You banned a poster simply because reacting to Moeran’s (he is naturally an active member of your community until this day) Jenin libels – the fellow brought up Rusbridger’s apologies in Israel regarding the matter.
January 13th, 2010 at 5:28 am
Matt Seaton – As for contributors being ‘frequently banned merely for voicing politely worded comments which oppose the demonisation of Israel’, I would love to be presented with a single instance (since I note you do not offer one). As you and I have discussed, you yourself have an open invitation to contribute to Cif.
The case of AKUS comes to mind. Please share with us why AKUS is not posting anymore. At least, I no longer see him on CIF. But he is on CIFWatch so he has not died.
I never saw an abusive or racist comment of his. He was certainly in opposition to the Guardian World View. At least as it relates to Israel. But I never saw anything that contravenes the community standards.
So please. Show me that the CIF is not cynically using the published Community Standards as a front to ban effective commenters who are not aligned with the GWV.
January 13th, 2010 at 8:39 am
I was banned for fair comment about Israel
January 13th, 2010 at 9:44 am
Did Matt Seaton write all that BS with a straight face,or was he smirking when he wrote it..After all the guy does have form……
January 13th, 2010 at 11:03 am
Since you have Matt Seaton’s attention here in public I would very much like an answer to a question that has been puzzling me for some time. Much is said in criticism of Israel – as a citizen of that country I believe that constructive criticism is all to the good and welcome it. It is the destructive criticism I object to. However, there is another side of Israel that the Guardian seems to refuse to admit to. There is the Israel that in sixty years of constant warfare has become the only first world state in the Middle East, with a list of accomplishments that many a larger and better established state would envy. Why is it that each and every comment to this effect is immediately deleted? I understand that sometimes the useful off-topic rule may be applied but when countering destructive criticism this kind of information is valid and relevant and even then, it is deleted.
I can point to tens of thousands of entries with negative criticism of Israel but there is not one entry that I have seen to the effect that I have described above.
January 13th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Matt Seaton writes:
“In both cases (above and below the line), this includes vigilance and sensitivity in our coverage of Israel and the Middle East”
An example of that “sensitivity” at the Guardian:
Video: Seven Jewish Children
“Watch Jennie Stoller perform Caryl Churchill’s play, Seven Jewish Children, which was written in response to the situation in Gaza in January this year”
(Please note: As this a blatantly anti-Semitic play, I have not provided a link. — Joshua)
January 13th, 2010 at 12:38 pm
“Excuse me, Matt Seaton, but which planet have you beamed in from?”
January 13th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Mr Seaton
You just don’t get it do you?
Had William Bapthorpe written that “religiously motivated Palestinians who bombard Israeli civilians with rockets should be slaughtered every last man, woman and child” we both know he would have been banned immediately.
You write “Perhaps you don’t see the irony, but is it not a little perverse that sites such as your blog or Cif Watch therefore host an antisemitic remark which Cif has deleted?”
This might be regarded as a masterly stroke of rhetoric in a schoolboy debating society, but surely such puerile tactics are unworthy of a serious journalist – especially considering the sensitivity of the topic under discussion. It sounds as if Robin has rattled your cage.
Many people have come to believe, with good reason, that CIF is contributing to an atmosphere of general anti-semitism in the UK.
Cif’s relentless negativity about Israel, its use of coded language, its double standards, its reliance on a stable of anti-Israel journalists, and now its refusal to ban a poster advocating the murder of Jewish settler families, reveal a disturbing pattern of demonization.
It is sad that you cannot, or will not, see this.
January 13th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
I remember as a kid, the first time I picked up a copy of the Guardian, I read an article about how Jews control US foreign policy. I couldn’t believe my eyes! That was back in the 90′s. Nothing’s changed…
January 13th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
I have been banned twice from cif and trust me i did a lot less then call for the murder of human beings.
Quite simply the guardian anti Israel, perhaps once in a million years they will look at an Arab country.
I think that they just hate israel and dont want to give it a fair chance. I guess they all have been to fancy universities and are above everyone else?
January 13th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Herzl’s daughter, you say “The Guardian’s actions and editorial policy not only endorse anti-Semitism in practise but actively encourage it and wage a war of either physical or cultural annihilation against Jews and the Jewish identity.”
Essentially I agree but am curious by what you mean by cultural annihilation. My feeling is that the logical conclusion of the Guardian’s views is the physical persecution of Jews, whether in the UK or elsewhere outside Israel, because they commit the heinous crime of supporting Israel – another way of saying that the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is a false one
January 13th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Good post, Matt Seaton.
January 13th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
You know Mr Seaton, the Macpherson report didn’t slam the London Metropolitan Police for being a ‘united community of committed racists’. No, that would be ridiculous. It pointed out the insidious nature of its bigotry, whereby complaints of prejudice and discrimination made against some of its officers in the treatment of black people were ignored, defended or ridiculed because of the institutional racism inherent within the force itself.
Your paper acts in exactly the same way when dealing with the legitimate concerns of the Jewish community. To open your defence of the Guardian in this way is an indictment against your unwillingness or inability to face the criticisms made against you honestly and fairly.
January 13th, 2010 at 8:02 pm
dholliday, what are you smoking and please may I have some?
January 13th, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Doc Holliday, is that you at 5.19pm? I thought you had died of consumption or syphilis in Glenwood Springs, Colorado in 1887. Perhaps it is your ghost or avatar.
January 14th, 2010 at 5:36 am
Herzel’s Daughter,
I don’t know where you live, but I live in the United States and order books from Amazon.co.uk all the time. If you have an account with Amazon your information will transfer and ordering from the UK Amazon is a snap. I often don’t want to wait until a British book is published here, and some books which I want to read never are, so I get them in the mail.
January 14th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
I have written on CiFWatch about The brainwashing of Britain regarding Israel, and the Guardian’s role in promoting every negative angle about Israel it can find.
We now have two stunning examples associated with the Guardian in a very short space of time – Michael White, a Guardian editor, who tossed out the infamous phrase “of course, in Israel they murder each other a lot”, and WilliamBapthorpe’s infamous call for the slaughter of every Jewish man, woman and child on the West Bank.
Little further proof is needed, in my opinion, of what is happening in Britain, and the Guardian’s central role in this developing frenzy of hatred towards Israel. However, I am sure that in short order more will be provided, because this has become the Guardian’s World View, its weltanshaung, and it can no more avoid these kinds of comments by its staff, contributors, and commenters than a leopard can change its spots.
Surely some governmental body in England needs to start examining what is going on at the Guardian. Britain, I understand, has laws against hate speech, and has even proscribed certain groups, such as the one that tried to march recently, Islam4uk.
Its time to pull back the covers at the Guardian and take a look at what is lurking beneath.
January 14th, 2010 at 11:34 pm
Where’s Matt Seaton gone? Why is he afraid to speak to his critics?
January 14th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
I was banned for disagreeing with George Galloway, who is of course, famous for his pro-Hamas, anti-Israel rhetoric.
I wonder if there was a link.
I never was given a satisfactory explanation to why I was banned.
PeterParker – still living long and prospering.
January 14th, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Clap Hammer Says:
“The case of AKUS comes to mind. Please share with us why AKUS is not posting anymore.”
Absolutely. I remember AKUS now and again getting “emotional” – but I never saw anything justifying a ban.
JeremyHP Says:
“I was banned for fair comment about Israel”
You, on the other hand, are a different case. I can well imagine you getting banned for hate speech.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
One doesn’t have to be pro-Israel to have one’s comments deleted from CiF; merely expressing an opinion not in accord with the Guardian’s idea of political correctness is enough.
On my last foray on CiF, I posted a comment which teased the George Galloway supporters who considered him to be doing a good job as an MP and a human rights activist and referred to the Telegraph review on MP’s expenses which labelled him as the MP giving least value for money. This post was deleted within a very short time.
Second time round, I cut and pasted verbatim from the Telegraph those paragraphs dealing with Galloway’s expenses claims- all factual I may say- but this too, was not allowed to remain.
As time has gone on, Comment is Free has become less and less “free” and could be renamed Censorship is Free, any semblance of honest debate vanishing, leaving the site a sort of private club for posters who all share the same socio-political outlook. Really boring.
January 25th, 2010 at 11:11 pm
This is a brief response to The Guardian/CiF’s Matt Seaton (Comment #5 above) of January 12th, 2010 at 4:25 pm, in which Matt writes “As for contributors being ‘frequently banned merely for voicing politely worded comments which oppose the demonisation of Israel’, I would love to be presented with a single instance (since I note you do not offer one).”
Matt will then perhaps love this one, deleted from The Guardian’s CiF, which was posted by commentator ‘TheVoiceOfIsrael’ and which I reproduced in my own column in the Jerusalem Post online on March 24, 2009, entitled “The response ‘The Guardian’ wouldn’t print” (see: http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/point/entry/the_response_they_wouldn_t).
Matt then commented below my JP column (Comment #35): “I don’t know why ‘TheVoiceofIsrael’ post was removed by moderators, if you’re quoting it in full and accurately, and I will seek clarification.”
I, for one, am unaware of the results of Matt’s efforts to seek clarification, but I am sure that many readers would still be interested in hearing about it.
August 26th, 2010 at 9:47 pm
Great post, I concur completely and appreciate the time you took to write it. Cheers!