The Guardian’s institutional hostility to Israel is in part driven by their near obsession with the plight of the Palestinians – a story almost always framed, regardless of the facts, in terms of the latter’s suffering at the hands of the former. This disproportionate focus was evident in our review of their ‘Photos of the Week‘ series, which they describe as “The best photographs in news and culture from around the world”.
Our survey of this series since March 31st – when the Hamas-led ‘Great March of Return’ began – found that 31 photos depicted scenes from the weekly Gaza border riots.
(This count doesn’t include photos related to other non-protest related Gaza violence – such as IDF responses to Hamas rocket attacks – or events in the West Bank. If we were to include such photos, the count would be significantly higher.)
In contrast, the Guardian published a mere 21 photos depicting the Syrian Civil War over the same 10 month period.
To get a sense of the scale of this imbalance, note that the Gaza riots have claimed 209 Palestinian lives, whilst roughly 16,000 Syrians died during that time, with another 800,000 or so driven from their homes (extrapolating from 2018 totals as reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights).
Additionally, whilst four photos from the Gaza riots were used by Guardian editors as their featured photo of the week, no Syrian photos were featured.
Here are the 31 photos from Gaza – most of which, as you’ll see, clearly portray the rioters in a sympathetic, even noble, light.
Jan. 12, 2019
This caption, and many others, falsely frame the protests as a legitimate demand for the ‘right of return’ to “their homeland”, and ignore the fact that these violent protests are orchestrated by Hamas, an internationally proscribed terror group.
Dec. 15, 2018
This propagandistic photo turns the IDF’s attempted use of non-lethal force against rioters approaching the border into something sinister.
Dec. 8, 2018
Here’s more unintelligible language about Palestinian refugees, obfuscating the fact that there are only an estimated 20,000 or so actual Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war still alive.
Nov. 10, 2018.
Note how the goal of the protests is different in this caption. We’re informed here that it’s about the blockade, not the ‘right of return’.
Nov. 3, 2018
Oct. 20, 2018
Oct. 6, 2018
Sept. 29, 2018
Sept. 15
Sept. 15, 2018
The photo actually represents an example of the Palestinians’ cynical use of children as human shields during the riots – a dynamic the British media has almost entirely ignored.
Sept. 8, 2018
Sept. 8, 2018
Sept. 1, 2018
More language on the Palestinians’ (non-existent) “right” of return.
July 7, 2018
June 23, 2018
June 16, 2018
June 9, 2018
June 2, 2018
May 26, 2018
More “right of return” language.
May 19, 2018
Another photo showing that Palestinians brought children close enough to the protests to be exposed to tear gas. Indeed, as you can see, children featured heavily in the photo series. In contrast, the role of Hamas and other terror groups in organising and carrying out the violence was ignored.
May 12, 2018
May 12, 2018
More ‘right of return’ language.
May 5, 2018
More highly misleading language on Palestinian ‘refugees’.
May 5, 2018
April 28, 2018
April 28, 2018
April 21, 2018
April 14, 2018
April 14, 2018
Women featured heavily in the Guardian’s photos.
April 7, 2018
April 7, 2018
More ‘right of return’ language in a caption accompanying an evocative photo of a Palestinian child ‘protester’.
Related Articles
- Guardian’s hatred of Israel reaches new low (UK Media Watch)
- More inaccurate and context-free Gaza framing on BBC Radio 4 (BBC Watch)
- Martin Luther King on Peace, Israeli Security and Zionism (CAMERA)
- An insider’s guide to the most important story on earth (TABLET)
