Guardian’s coverage is effectively pro-Hamas

The Guardian on Friday joined such human rights luminaries as Iran and Hamas in lauding South Africa for bringing a case to the ICJ accusing Israel of genocide in its military response to the Oct. 7 massacre.  Not that we’re at all surprised that the outlet would do so. After all, they’ve published dozens of articles and op-eds since then accusing or legitimising such charges against Israel – with the first such charge being published a mere seven days after the mass murder, rape, torture and mutilation of Israeli men, women and children by the antisemitic terror group.

In addition to two op-eds they’ve published supporting South Africa’s accusations, they published an official editorial (Guardian View on Israel and the allegations of genocide: A case that needs to be heard, Jan. 11) which begins its argument against thusly:

The evidence of [Israeli] war crimes – ranging from indifference to the mass killing of civilians to using starvation as a weapon – has mounted by the day. .

Here, the Guardian is framing as true the false allegations of South Africa that Israel is intentionally using starving as a weapon.  This ignores evidence contradicting the claim, as you can see here in our colleague’s evisceration of these charges by an NGO, and by virtue of the fact that there is no limit on the amount of food and other aid entering Gaza. In fact, there is reportedly more food entering Gaza than before the war.

The Guardian also conveniently ignores evidence of Hamas stealing food and other humanitarian aid.

The editorial continues.

Israel will lay out its case to the UN’s highest court on Friday. However, its immediate response was not to contest the evidence, but to attack South Africa as acting as “the legal wing of Hamas” and committing “blood libel”.

Accusations that South Africa is acting as “the legal wing of Hamas” is not mere hyperbole given that the government has effectively expressed solidarity with Hamas on multiple occasions since Oct. 7, support which included hosting a Hamas delegation in Cape Town last month.  Moreover, the country’s president President, Cyril Ramaphosa, mirroring Hamas propaganda, alleged that Palestinians have lived under occupation for “almost 75 years” – meaning, even before Jerusalem’s control of disputed territories following the Six Day War.

More evidence that the ANC-led government is aligned with Hamas can be found in the country’s actual complaint, which requests a provisional measure calling on Israel to unilaterally and immediately suspend its military operations, before, evidently, even the Israeli hostages are released.  They also allege that, under international law, Israel has no right of self-defence against Hamas – evidently unmoved by the fact that Hamas has pledged to repeat their Oct. 7th pogrom again and again if given the chance.

The Guardian editorial continues:

In addition to the bombing, which has killed at least 23,570 people according to Palestinian authorities, mostly women and children, South Africa’s lawyers cited bodily and mental harm including through the blocking of life-saving aid.

The “authorities” whose death count they cite are of course Hamas authorities, and the figures don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. They also don’t include the number of putative civilians who were nonetheless involved in military activities at the time of their deaths, or those killed by misfired terrorist rockets.  Further, when the Guardian/Hamas uses the word “children”, they’re including Hamas or PIJ terrorists aged 15, 16 or 17.  Naturally, the editorial also neglects to include Israel estimates that around 10,000 of those killed were terrorists.

As you can see, they also give credibility to false claims that Israel is blocking life-saving aid.

The editorial also adds the following, in an attempt to show ‘intent’ to commit genocide by Israeli leaders:

They [South Africa] argue that there is “chilling, overwhelming and incontrovertible” evidence of intent, citing statements by Mr Netanyahu and other ministers and key figures that dehumanise Palestinians or refuse to distinguish between Hamas fighters and civilians. The prime minister and others have invoked the Old Testament tale of Amalek: God commanded Saul to kill its people without sparing anyone. The defence minister, Yoav Gallant, spoke of “human animals”

The Guardian is being dishonest.

In the Oct. 28th speech by Netanyahu in question, he also said “IDF does everything to avoid harming noncombatants” and that the army was calling on the civilian population to evacuate to safe areas in Gaza.  Further, Gallant spoke of “human animals” two days after the worst antisemitic atrocity since the Holocaust, and there’s no indication that he was referring to anyone else other than the perpetrators of that barbaric massacre.  Further evidence of the unserious nature of the accusation – which editors omitted in order to advance their pre-determined conclusion of Israeli guilt – is that the IDF has consistently mitigated civilian harm in Gaza by warning of attacks in advance, thus forfeiting the strategic advantage, working with hospitals to provide assistance and urging evacuations in advance of military operations.

The Guardian then continues in its deception by purporting to ‘prove’ Israeli leaders’ geocidal intent.

Mr Netanyahu’s 11th hour announcement that Israel had no intention of displacing civilians permanently, and was fighting Hamas and not Palestinians, was entirely cynical – and arguably irrelevant: much of Gaza is now uninhabitable.

The claim that “much of Gaza is now inhabitable” doesn’t prove anything, and it certainly doesn’t show that a few stray comments in fact mean that the state is engaged in genocide.

Much of the country’s infrastructure has been damaged as the result of Hamas’s cruel and illegal decision to place key military assets all over the country, in homes, schools, mosques, hospitals and within other sites considered civilian infrastructure, as well as their booby-trapping of buildings.  The fact that the Guardian doesn’t even once call out the proscribed terror group’s role in the suffering of civilians in the territory is just another example of the outlet’s refusal to assign Palestinian leaders agency.

Naturally, the Guardian also gives South Africa’s glaring lack of moral credibility on the issue of genocide a pass.  This was most profoundly illustrated by the government’s failure to abide by their obligations to the ICC by deciding not to arrest Omar al-Bashir when he visited the nation for a summit of African leaders in 2015. The court issued a warrant in 2009 for the Sudanese leader on charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity for his involvement the war in Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of people were killed and more than two million displaced.

As we argued a couple of weeks into the war, the Guardian’s coverage of events following Oct. 7 has demonstrated that, instead of re-evaluating their full-throated support for the Palestinians cause in light of the barbaric massacre of Jewish innocents, which included the rape and sexual mutilation of Israeli women and children, by a group openly committed to the annihilation – that is genocide – of the Jewish state, they only doubled-down on their malign obsession.

Tellingly, the very first op-ed they published following the attacks, by Dafna Baram on Oct. 11, including language serving to justify – or, at the very least ‘contextualise’ – the slaughter.

What we couldn’t imagine, but always knew: that if you keep 2 million people in the largest concentration camp on Earth and bomb to death thousands of them on occasion, you create a volcano that is bound to erupt in your face one day, causing horrific atrocities in its wake.

Here’s some context. As Yaari Cohen warns in the X thread below, the images and videos of the Hamas massacre shared here are extremely graphic. Yet, since the Guardian devotes little if any serious attention to the bestial behavior by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, including against children (also, viewer discretion), it is – in light of South Africa’s context-free and unserious accusations – important to see why Israel is at war, and who they’re at war against.

🚨Extreme Viewer Discretion, Extreme Trigger Warning🚨

Following the poll I posted and several requests over the past couple of weeks, and in light of the ongoing shameful ICJ proceedings, I've decided to create a master thread to document all the evidence of the October 7…

— Yaari Cohen (@YaariCohen) January 11, 2024

Moreover, not only have the few decent journalists with any influence at the Guardian apparently stayed silent in face of the outlet’s reaction to the terrorist atrocities, which instead of triggering a recoiling from the Palestinian cause “lead to an even greater revulsion at the [Jewish] victims”, hatred which has likely contributed to the surge of antisemitism in the UK since Oct. 7, but some have even added fuel to the fire. 

We’ve been monitoring the Guardian for fourteen years, and thought we couldn’t be shocked anymore by the depths of their institutional animosity to the world’s only Jewish state.  Yet, since Oct. 7, which will go down as one of the darkest days in Jewish history, they’ve proven themselves even more hostile to Israel, and indifferent to Jewish suffering and Hamas’s annihilationist antisemitism, than we would have imagined.

We’re not saying that the management and staff support Hamas’s project. But, it is unquestionable that their coverage since the sadistic and savage antisemitic atrocity has been effectively pro-Hamas. As an institution, they are, at this point, beyond moral redemption.

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