Guardian publishes letters legitimizing terrorism & evoking Israel-Nazi analogy

Before posting two of the letters that Guardian editors decided to publish, on July 30, first let’s look at the headline.
headline
Again, remember that these are not simply comments below the line, but letters to the editor that Guardian editors believed had merit, and provided “historical context” to help understand the conflict.
Moral justification of Palestinian terrorism / Genocide charge.
letter 1
A few observations: First, the letter is comparing Israel’s war against Hamas (and, presumably their conflict with the Palestinians more broadly) with genocides in the Balkans, Rwanda and Sudan.  However, what particularly stands out is the implicit justification of Palestinian terrorism. Of course, we should remember that the Guardian has, on several occasions, amplified and legitimized voices which justified, on moral grounds, the Palestinians’ right to murder Israelis.

  • In 2011, the Guardian published a letter by a British philosophy professor which explicitly defended the right of Palestinians to murder Israeli civilians in terror attacks – an editorial decision which was actually defended by their readers’ editor following the uproar which ensued.
  • Also in 2011, the Guardian editorialized about the ‘Arab Spring’, and actually praised the Palestinians for launching intifadas.
  • In 2012, during the war in Gaza, Associate Editor Seumas Milne wrote an op-ed  of Hamas terrorists to launch terror attacks against Israelis, and argued that Israel has no such moral right to defend itself.
  • On July 16, 2014, Seumas Milne again revisited the same topic in a column about the current war in Gaza, and reiterated his belief that Palestinians have the right to engage in deadly acts of terrorism, while Israelis have no such right to defend themselves against Hamas.
  • On July 25th, a Guardian journalist and British priest named Giles Fraser published a column which defended, on moral grounds, ‘just’ acts of Palestinian terrorism.

We should point out that there is absolutely no international law which legally codifies the right to commit terrorism.
Israel-Nazi analogy
There was one more letter worth examining, one which evoked Nazi Germany in contextualizing Israeli crimes.
second letter
We have deconstructed such comparisons in the past, but let’s suggest to Mr. McCulloch that the only relevant analogy to Nazi Germany in the current conflict is that the world is once again silent in the face of expressions of openly genocidal Jew-hatred by Islamist extremists such as Hamas.  And, if anyone out there believes our characterization of Hamas is over-the-top, here’s a speech delivered by Mahmoud al-Zahar, senior leader and co-founder of the group, on Al-Aqsa TV in 2010:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UT6grrx8do]
If you’d like a more recent example, here’s Hamas’s Friday Sermon which aired on Al Aqsa TV on July 25th.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7WAoczRV_k]
Of course, as anyone who has taken the time to look at sites such as Palestinian Media Watch and MEMRI would surely know, homicidal (and often genocidal) antisemitism is not the exception within Palestinian society.
Those in the Western media who legitimize narratives suggesting that Israelis are engaged in a project akin to genocide against Palestinians, thus justifying acts of violent resistance, are engaging in a profound historical inversion – blinded perhaps by a far-left ideology which can’t morally distinguish between antisemitic extremists and the Jews they’re trying to kill. 

 

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