The Guardian continues to run interference for the radical antisemitic preacher, Raed Salah

H/T Harry’s Place and Margie

The Guardian’s capacity to cover up clear and undeniable evidence of Islamist antisemitism has no limits.

In “May warned of weak case against Sheikh Raed Salah“, Sept. 26, the Guardian’s David Hearst suggests that the case against Raed Salah’s political extremism and antisemitism is quite weak, and is owed largely to efforts by the UK Jewish community.

Writes Hearst:

Emails seen by the Guardian, show that UK Home Secretary Theresa] May was determined to find a reason to exclude [Raed] Salah, before the evidence against him had been verified.

Just 17 minutes after receiving a report on the activist, prepared by Michael Whine of the Community Security Trust, a UK charity monitoring antisemitism, Faye Johnson, private secretary to the home secretary, emailed about a parliamentary event Salah was due to attend.

“Is there anything that we can do to prevent him from attending (eg could we exclude him on the grounds of unacceptable behaviour?)” she wrote. Whine’s report said Salah’s record of provocative statements carried a risk that his presence in the UK could have “a radicalising impact” on his audiences. [emphasis mine]

Added Hearst:

“Saleh’s legal team say the quotes he is alleged to have said and written were doctored to make them sound antisemitic.

The Home Office presented four allegations of antisemitism against him, all drawn from the Israeli press: [emphasis mine]

The doctored quotes have been repeated by the Israel’s press, pro-Israeli websites, two British newspapers and the CST.

In a classic ad hominem attack, Hearst insinuates that the fact that the quotes were reported by the UK Jewish community and “the Israel’s press” [sic], “pro-Israeli websites, two British newspapers and the CST” undermine their credibility. 

In fact, the site which reported Salah’s comments, MEMRI, is a widely respected organization which provides English translations from the Arabic, Persian, Urdu-Pashtu, and Turkish media.

The credibility of of MEMRI’s translations has never been seriously questioned and, indeed, the organization routinely assists U.S. federal and local governments (as well as the U.S. military) in their counter-terrorism efforts. 

As such, MEMRI reported the following about an article written by Raed Salah, in which he advanced the classic 9/11 antisemitic conspiracy theory:

Raed Salah wrote in Saut Al-Haqq Wa-Al-Hurriyya, “A suitable way was found to warn the 4,000 Jews who work every day at the Twin Towers to be absent from their work on September 11, 2001, and this is really what happened! Were 4,000 Jewish clerks absent [from their jobs] by chance, or was there another reason? At the same time, no such warning reached the 2,000 Muslims who worked every day in the Twin Towers, and therefore there were hundreds of Muslim victims.”

In a sermon in 2007, as reported by the Israeli left newspaper, Ha’aretz, Salah said:

“We have never allowed ourselves to knead [the dough for] the bread that breaks the fast in the holy month of Ramadan with children’s blood,” he said. “Whoever wants a more thorough explanation, let him ask what used to happen to some children in Europe, whose blood was mixed in with the dough of the [Jewish] holy bread.”

Most dishonestly, Hearst writes that “Salah has served two terms of imprisonment in Israel, two years for funding proscribed charities”.

Of course, one of the “charities” Hearst alludes to is Hamas – a group which cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in its very founding charter to “prove” that Jews are trying to take over the world, is dedicated to Israelis destruction, and is designated as a terrorist group by the U.S., EU, UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, and even Jordan.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniya holds a portrait of Sheikh Raed Salah, after the Islamist leader was arrested in London

Further, Salah, in 2007, incited Palestinians to engage in violence under the pretense that Israeli authorities were going to destroy the he Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Salah has also defended honor killings and said that homosexuality is “a great crime”, adding: “such phenomena signal the start of the collapse of every society. Those who believe in Allah know that behavior of that kind brings his wrath and is liable to cause the worst things to happen.”

During the space of about one week, in late June and early July, and again, more recently (Sept. 20th), the Guardian devoted eight posts (stories, commentary, and letters) to the UK’s decision to detain Salah – all of which, like Hearst’s latest piece, were sympathetic to the radical preacher.

After Salah was detained by UK authorities in late June, Salah’s Islamic Movement blamed the “Jewish lobby” for the arrest, which they said served to protect the “Zionist narrative.”

David Hearst’s latest apologia for the Islamic extremist preacher – which, tellingly, was published verbatim at the site of “Friends of Al-Aqsa“, a pro-Hamas UK organization which advocates Israel’s elimination – demonstrates that such antisemitic conspiratorial narratives continue to find fertile ground on the pages of the Guardian.

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