Since Oct. 7th, 2023, the Guardian, institutionally unable to see Palestinians as anything other than victims, began almost immediately to spin Hamas’s barbaric antisemitic murder spree as a story about Israel’s ‘disproportionate’ response to the attack. As we documented at the time, beginning a mere week after the massacre, and before the IDF launched their ground invasion, the outlet published 11 pieces over a two week period promoting the libel that Israel was embarking on a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide”.
In addition to their promotion of that specific Palestinian talking point, their coverage – as we’ve shown in countless posts – has been effectively pro-Hamas. This includes their uncritical promotion of practically every unevidenced libel against Israel, while rendering the terror group which carried out the grotesque mass murder, rape, sexual mutilation and torture of Jews, and which, during the ensuing war, intentionally put Gaza civilians in harm’s way by their systemic use of human shields, practically invisible.
However, we’ve recently noticed that their standard formulation when mentioning Palestinian and Israeli casualties appears to be changing. Typically, at some point in even their most biased, one-sided reports, it’s noted that the war started when 1,200 were killed in Israel, and 250 taken hostage, during the Oct. 7th Hamas attacks, after which they cite the Palestinian death toll – albeit, one which usually omits that the figures are provided by Hamas.
Of late, even this minimal information on Hamas’s unprovoked, antisemitic atrocity which largely targeted civilians, isn’t now always provided.
An article by Jenna Amatulli (“The Oscars were silent on Trump, diverging from protests of past years“, March 3) included the following:
But the mention of politics [at the Oscars] or anything other than the wildfires stopped there. There were few mentions of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – an act that recently saw its third anniversary and has prompted the largest refugee crisis since the second world war – and even fewer of the crisis in Gaza, which has seen its death toll of Palestinians exceed 45,000 since 7 October 2023.
Note how the the Israeli death toll, as well as the fact that Hamas massacre started the “crisis” which resulted in the casualties, is erased.
The Guardian published another piece that same day by Benjamin Lee (“No Other Land directors criticise US as they accept documentary Oscar: ‘US foreign policy is helping block the path’ to peace“, March 3) which used the following formulation in reference to Hamas’s unprovoked war of aggression against the Jewish state:
Since the Hamas attack on 7 October, Israeli forces have killed at least 48,200 Palestinians while forcibly displacing 2 million survivors.
Note that no information on the number of Israelis murdered that day is provided, while the alleged Palestinian death toll is cited, along with the insinuation that Israel has committed genocide by the writer’s use of the word “survivors” to refer to displaced Palestinians.
Late last month, they published an article by Marina Dunbar (“New York governor orders removal of Palestinian studies job posting at Cuny“, Feb. 26) which actually erased Hamas from the war entirely.
Palestine studies has grown as an academic discipline in response to the campus protests that rocked the US after 7 October attacks and Israel’s ensuing bombardment of Gaza.
We asked the journalist, on X, why she didn’t mention the proscribed terror group that perpetrated the “attacks”, and she replied by referring us to the Guardian Readers’ Editor – an office which is completely unresponsive most the time.
Additionally, earlier that month, the outlet engaged in outright Oct. 7th massacre erasure, in a piece by their former Jerusalem correspondent Oliver Holmes (“‘Waterfront property’: what are Trump’s real estate interests in Palestine?“, Feb. 5) which included the following:
Nearly 60 years after Israel captured and occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, it is fighting allegations of apartheid in the West Bank and genocide in Gaza, where it has killed nearly 50,000 people.
We did complain to the Guardian’s Readers’ Editor about this article, arguing that the omission of the crucial context regarding the Hamas massacre which prompted the war, and the ensuing alleged number of Gazan deaths, represents a clear and egregious violation of the Accuracy Clause of the Editors’ Code. Thus far, the office has failed to respond.
Further, as the outlet isn’t regulated by IPSO, and instead – like the BBC – ‘grades its own homework’, we have no further recourse.
In addition to their cruel indifference to the victims of the worst antisemitic atrocity since the Holocaust, the Guardian is completely unaccountable.
Can not Camera refer The Grauniad’s consistent illegal support for the proscribed terrorist organisation, Hamas, to the police – for investigation into this specific crime ?