The Guardian is a newspaper where one finds lectures to others about what they write and the people they promote. A recent example is Roy Greenslade telling off the proprietor of the Daily Star in February:
Desmond ought to think very carefully about letting the Star use far right politics to build sales.
He should remember what happened in those societies across Europe in the 1930s where Jewish minorities were demonised in the media for their religious beliefs.
In the orginal version Greenslade said this:
Desmond ought to think very carefully about letting the Star use far right politics to build sales. As a Jew, he may well have negative views of Muslims. But, as a Jew, he should also remember what happened in those societies across Europe in the 1930s where Jewish minorities were demonised in the media for their religious beliefs.
A contrite Mr Greenslade told the JC he was pleased the line had been taken down. He said: “How stupid. I didn’t meant that and I don’t know what I was thinking.
“It’s contradictory, isn’t it. There I was going on about stereotypes and I immediately stepped into a stereotype.”
Mr Greenslade described the generalisation as was “so far from what I believe” and said he tried to be extremely fair when it came to coverage of sensitive issues of religion.
He added: “I sometimes wonder at myself.”
Forget wonder. It is time for the paper to lecture itself.
Yesterday The Guardian published an article by Daud Abdullah where he spins the results of a poll that he commissioned on European views on Israel-Palestine. Abdullah’s aim, as ever, is to increase hostility to Israel.
Yes, it’s the Daud Abdullah of Istanbul declaration infamy. If you have never seen the implacable jihadi anger of that document, which Abdullah signed, you should read it (pdf). It was the issue of an extremist meeting in Turkey in February 2009 where “speaker after speaker called for jihad against Israel in support of Hamas”, according to the BBC.
The declaration is emblematic of Daud Abdullah’s politics.
If you want to learn more about those politics, look no further than his Middle East Monitor (MEMO) project. It is a pro-Hamas propaganda platform. Notably, Abdullah’s deputy at MEMO is Ibrahim Hewitt, the head of Interpal, the British charity that serves Hamas.
Just last week MEMO published a piece by Khalid Amayreh, the latest of dozens by this Israel hater and antisemite. It will certainly give you a good picture of messages Daud Abdullah likes.
Amayreh’s piece is titled “Netanyahu’s lebensraum”. This is typical. He has quite a penchant for Israelis-are-Nazis slurs.
Amayreh gets stuck in fast, insisting lying Jews are no people:
Sometimes, they allude to imagined historical rights as if these pathological liars from Eastern Europe, who lie as much as they breath oxygen, had any truly historical rights in the land of Palestine.
Sometimes, they speak of Jewish continuity as if these Khazari racists had any biological connection with Jacob and the ancient children of Israel, most of whose descendants had long converted to Islam and Christianity. Fortunately, there are Israeli historians, like Shlomo Sand, who deny any concept of the so-called Jewish peoplehood.
Israel must be attacked, even if millions die:
We Muslims have a long score to settle with Netanyahu and his thuggish state, a score that must be settled in full.
Sallahuddin al Ayyoubi waited many years before he finally wrested Palestine and especially Jerusalem from the hands of the Crusades. History must repeat itself and if millions need to be sacrificed in order to redeem and deliver the Aqsa Mosque form the sinful hands of Zionism, then be it.
Zionism is a “cancer” which must be “eradicated”:
Zionism is much more than criminal and nefarious. It is also genocidal, racist, rapacious, covetous, and of course utterly mendacious. Zionism is expansionistic, very much like a malignant cancer. This is why, no people on earth can remain safe if living with or next to Zionism. In other words, if you don’t eradicate Zionism, Zionism will eradicate you.
Like the Istanbul declaration signatories, Amayreh says all of Israel must be taken:
There will come a day when not only the Jordan Valley but the rest of Palestine shall be liberated from the sinful and arrogant hands of Zionism
Then he engages in some absurd scaremongering:
In the final analysis, the Zionist brat would like to see the entirety of Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, northern Saudi Arabia, northern Egypt and the islands of Crete and Cyprus as parts of the Land of Israel. They want to have a state from the Nile to the Euphrates with security and defence zones.
In other words, they want to replace the Arab-Muslim peoples of the Middle East in order to create a Hebrew empire.
In addition to The Guardian, here are a few more people who seem to be quite happy to be associated with MEMO’s mission – its “honorary advisers”:
– Dr Salman Abu Sita, Palestinian author and member of the Palestinian National Council
– Lord Nazir Ahmed of Rotherham, member of The House of Lords
– Baroness Jennifer Tonge of Kew, member of The House of Lords
– Dr Maria Holt, Lecturer of Democracy and Islam in the Centre for the Study of Democracy in the University of Westminster
– Oliver McTernan, Co-Founder and Director of the Forward Thinking organisation
– Professor Tariq Ramadan, Professor at Oxford University
I am sure Roy Greenslade will write a stern letter to each and every one of them first thing tomorrow morning.
