Guardian scrubs reference to ‘Jewish political establishment’ with no explanation

This essay was written by Raheem Kassam & Harry Cole for The Commentator

[Note: CiF Watch recently published posts pertaining to Hugh Muir, the Guardian writer who’s the subject of the following Commentator essay, following Muir’s smear of Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard. (See here and here) – A.L.]

The original text in print. Something that editor’s can’t delete

It seems that ever-wrong British newspaper The Guardian has made yet another blunder in what can only be described as a serious and continued internal confusion over ‘the Jews’. The Guardianself-admittedly has form with ingrained anti-Semitism within the rank and file.

Following the Labour mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone’s loss to Boris Johnson last night, the print edition of The Guardian asserted that it was Ken’s own baggage that brought him down. We couldn’t agree more, but on a scan through the article and as highlighted by various people on Twitter this morning, we found this:

“How much damage did he [Ken] inflict by failing to make peace with the Jewish political establishment…”

This could be interpreted quite innocuously at first, or conversely, be read into as The Guardian tarring the entire British political establishment as Jewish run. But putting the quote in context regarding Ken’s Nazi insult to Jewish reporter Oliver Finegold and the ’embrace of Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi’ we see further into what The Guardianis getting at.

This appears to be a case of foot-in-mouth disease once again, painting an image of a London Jewry led by a cabal of high-power, high-profile men and women pulling the strings over every Jew in London, and quite possibly non-Jews like us as well. “Vote as we say!” The Guardian might imagine, “Or you’ll lose our your invite to the annual London Jewish gathering where we all talk about Iran and read passages from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion!” The Guardian has adopted a tone in its writing about British Jewry that actually, unintentionally, lampoons their own approach to this small but diverse community.

Perhaps we jest too much though and this was a perfectly okay thing to say. Why then, did The Guardian choose to scrub the text ‘Jewish political establishment’ from the article on its website, without a hint of an admission, and replace it with the term ‘Jewish communal leadership’? Perhaps an editor at The Guardian took one look at the sentence, spat out his bagel and demanded a retraction? But there’s no such retraction on the website itself, and trying to erase from existence what found its way into the print edition is a faux pas more befitting Johann Hari than Alan Rusbridger. Or is it?

Read rest of the essay here.

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