The Guardian’s anti-Israel bigotry has come into sharp focus once again with a report by Just Journalism comparing British media coverage of Britain’s military operations in Afghanistan with Israel’s military operations in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.
According to the report,
The Guardian notably published the results of a month-long investigation in Gaza in March 2009. Diplomatic editor Julian Borger and correspondent Clancy Chassay claimed to have ‘compiled detailed evidence of alleged war crimes committed by Israel during the 23-day offensive in the Gaza Strip’. A key claim of the investigation concerned the use of drones in military operations:
‘Israel has pioneered a new type of all-seeing precision weapon: the armed drone. The capabilities of this hunter-killer, which can track a person walking along a street and strike with precision, are a military secret. To use these weapons against civilians is a war crime. But a Guardian investigation has uncovered evidence from the Israeli military themselves, that proves just how clearly these weapons can see. So why did one of these drones kill an entire family having tea in their courtyard?’
Yet during the same month as the investigation in Gaza, the Guardian also reported about civilian deaths caused by the US military’s use of drones in the border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan – but without raising the spectre of war crimes in that context, let alone embarking on an investigation. William Dalrymple wrote in the newspaper’s G2 supplement:
‘The tribal areas have never been fully under the control of any Pakistani government, and have always been unruly, but they have now been radicalised as never before. The rain of armaments from US drones and Pakistani ground forces, which have caused extensive civilian casualties, daily add a steady stream of angry foot soldiers to the insurgency.’
The double standards at play in this example above are manifest and as we know from the articles that appear in “Comment is Free” and in other sections of the Guardian this is only the tip of the iceberg.
To read the rest of the report, click here.