Sky News Foreign Editor Tim Marshall is one of the few commentators who consistently draws upon his wealth of knowledge to give fair and balanced insight into the Mideast conflict. Marshall's latest blog post is worthy of reaching a wider audience:
Thirty Palestinians killed. Women and children caught in the crossfire. Missiles fired at a Mosque. Muslim prisoners 'executed' in cold blood. A massacre. Media restrictions.
A familiar tale? Indeed. International outrage and demonstrations in the streets of London? Nope.
And why might that be? Why it's simple. The Palestinians were killed by Palestinians and, it would appear from the lack of reaction that in those circumstances their lives are cheap, but when they are killed by Israelis it is an outrage.
Marshall goes on to describe the events that took place earlier in August when Hamas forces launched an assault on supporters of the Jund Ansar Allah group. A video broadcast on Israel Channel 2 showed Hamas executing its prisoners in cold blood. (Click on the image below to view the video and see Ha'aretz for more background.)
Marshall concludes:
And where is the outrage about these murders? The marches, the petitions, the calls for a boycott, the conspiracy theory of a war against Muslims, ad infinitum? I hear just the wind blowing across the freshly dug graves. Because unless the Israelis kill them, people don't care.
Indeed, while Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, The Guardian, BBC and media commentators such as Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Johann Hari are quick to pounce on alleged Israeli misdemeanours, where is their outrage now? Could double standards possibly be at work?
Read Marshall's full blog post
here and contribute to the message board discussion at the bottom of his blog.
GUARDIAN AMENDS NAZI REFERENCE
HR UK and others criticised
Slavoj Zizek's recent commentary in The Guardian, which, amongst other things, included the statement:
one day, the world will awake and discover that there is no more Palestinian West Bank, that the land is Palestinian-frei, and that we must accept the fact.
The term "Palestinian-frei" is an inverted reference to the Nazi term Judenfrei and is part of Zizek's attempt to equate Israel with the Nazis.
The Guardian evidently agreed that this terminology should not have been used and a note at the bottom of the online version now reads:
This article was amended on 20 August 2009. The online version originally referred to "Palestinian-frei", while the print version had been edited to say "Palestinian-free". This editing change should have been applied to the online version. This has now been done.
However, while the change is welcome, as Harry's Place notes, there are still plenty of other "problematic cliches" in Zizek's piece as The Guardian continues its penchant for publishing Israel-Nazi analogies. CIF WATCH WEBSITE LAUNCHED
The Guardian's Comment is Free site is a constant source of anti-Israel commentary where far too many postings descend from anti-Zionism into anti-Semitic incitement and demonisation. Following Jonathan Hoffman's parliamentary submission (PDF format) into anti-Semitism on CiF, a new website - CiF Watch - has been launched. According to its mission statement: We at CiF Watch hold the Guardian directly responsible for openly facilitating and encouraging such a platform in which antisemitism can thrive.
As one of the most popular mainstream news sources in the world, the Guardian has an elevated responsibility to ensure that it presents a balanced picture of the Israel/Palestinian conflict in accordance with prevailing journalistic standards and to implement a zero-tolerance moderation policy to identify and remove antisemitism from its comment threads.
By documenting and exposing antisemitism on 'Comment is Free', we at CiF Watch are committed to holding the Guardian accountable for its complicity in spreading hate-speech.
We wish CiF Watch every success and encourage HR UK subscribers to get involved.
