Harriet Sherwood’s latest article (Palestinians plan fresh protests to mark war anniversary, May 22) needs to be contextualized by noting that a Guardian editorial two days ago characterized the deadly Palestinian intifada from 2000 – 2004 (which killed over a thousand innocent Israeli civilians, and maimed thousands more) as a gift to the Arab world – a lesson on how to properly “mount insurrections”.
It also needs repeating that the same paper, during the Palestine Papers series, referred to the mere suggestion of Palestinian compromise as “craven”, published an essay by a Hamas member containing thinly veiled threats of a return the death and carnage of the 2nd Intifada, and published a letter by a professor morally justifying such attacks on Jewish men, women, and children.
There is clearly a pattern here. And, even the most cursory review of the Guardian’s obsessive coverage of Israel points to a proclivity to glorify Palestinian violence to achieve political ends.
So when reading Harriet Sherwood’s latest report, where she speaks of the possibility, on June 5, of more organized attempts, similar to the events of May 15th, to breach Israel’s borders its hard not to detect in her prose a note of approval.
How else to interpret her characterization of the provocations – orchestrated by Iran and Syria – as “grassroots” protests inspired by disillusion over “Israel’s rejection on Friday of Barack Obama’s explicit backing for a Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders”? As if Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians who stormed the borders, and Palestinians who violently rioted in E. Jerusalem and Qalandiya, on May 15 were passionate believers in the “peace process” who were merely frustrated by the lack of progress.
Sherwood characterizes the thousands who stormed Israel’s border on May 15th in an attempt to violate the Jewish state’s sovereignty as “peaceful protests”, before noting:
“As the prospects for peace talks recede further, some observers predict support for protests will swell as Palestinians take inspiration from the uprisings that have swept the region since the start of the year….Some forecast a “third intifada” as frustration mounts.” [emphasis mine]
By conflating the Arab protests against tyrannical regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Syria with democratic Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, and by framing the rioting on Israel’s borders, and in Jerusalem, as a righteous insurrection inspired by proponents of peace frustrated by Israeli intransigence, she’s doing more than advancing a facile and entirely misleading journalistic narrative.
Sherwood is tipping her hand on how she would likely cover the outbreak of another violent terrorist onslaught against Israeli civilians.
Her editors are on record as viewing such violent insurrections as something noble, to be admired and emulated, and she’s merely lending her moral support in advance to “the cause.”
Related articles
- The Guardian: The Palestinians taught the Arab world how to mount intifadas (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood’s tastes in anti-Israel propaganda (cifwatch.com)
- Vicious hate unleashed by Guardian readers inspired by Harriet Sherwood’s attack on Geoffrey Alderman (cifwatch.com)
- L’Affair Sherwood just got more interesting (Guardian reporter engages in possibly illegal phone recording) (cifwatch.com)
- On Sherwood’s implosion (cifwatch.com)
