We recently commented on a Guardian article published on Aug. 24th which perversely portrayed the radical, regressive anti-Zionist group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) as the victim of a smear campaign by a pro-Israeli group putatively funded by Sheldon Adelson.
However, since we published our post, we learned of one other major problem with the report (by the Guardian’s Sam Levin) besides its whitewashing of SJP – one which undermines the entire premise of the report.
Per the JTA:
An anti-BDS group founded by casino magnate Sheldon Adelson did not fund a poster campaign targeting pro-Palestinian student activists as “Jew haters” and terrorists’ allies, contrary to a report in a major newspaper, the group said.
The Maccabee Task Force in a statement issued late Wednesday called the report in the Los Angeles Times “completely false,” saying the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a conservative foundation based in Los Angeles, confirmed that it did not use funds from a task force grant to pay for the controversial campaign.
“Earlier this week a surprising report surfaced in the media that a modest grant approved by the Maccabee Task Force to the David Horowitz Freedom Center had been used to fund a poster campaign that targeted student activists,” the statement said. “The Maccabee Task Force never authorized or approved such a poster campaign. And the David Horowitz Freedom Center has since confirmed that it never used our funds for this campaign. In short, the newspaper report was completely false.”
Sometime after this denial by the Adelson-funded Maccabee Task Force that they financed a poster campaign (called “Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus”) targeting pro-Palestinian activists, the Guardian added this addendum to their article:
The fact that the Adelson-funded group evidently does NOT fund the Stop the Jew Hatred poster campaign isn’t merely a tiny detail in a larger story. It’s pretty much the entire story.
Remarkably, the headline and opening passage in the article have not been amended to reflect the Maccabee group’s denial.
Here’s the headline and strapline:
Here’s the opening passage:
Sheldon Adelson, the Nevada casino mogul and conservative mega-donor, is leading a campaign against pro-Palestine groups on US college campuses and has funded a group that has publicly accused individual students of supporting terrorism and promoting “Jew Hatred”.
Though the poster campaign is indeed offensive, few Guardian readers would be interested in a project launched by the little known David Horowitz Freedom Center without Jewish, octogenarian, pro-Israel billionaire funder to serve as the villain of the tale.
Now that Adelson is no longer a character in the pro-Palestinian drama, the story itself falls apart – which likely explains the decision by editors to leave the erroneous headline and opening passage uncorrected.
