The Guardian’s hatred of Israel presents itself in many ways.
One is their pattern of uncritically promoting radical, anti-Zionist NGOs, while failing to critically scrutinise their anti-Israel accusations. The outlet’s willingness to promote ‘reports’ and charges demonising the Jewish state at times even extends to groups with ties to antisemitism and terrorism, such as when Chris McGreal cited the Hamas–affiliated Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (EMHRM) in a Guardian article charging the IDF with intentionally murdering Palestinian children.
The piece by McGreal evoked the antisemitic blood libel, which is not surprising given EMHRM’s own antisemitic history, which includes promoting the libel that Israeli soldiers steal Palestinian organs, and the fact that their director tweeted that “Israel has an insatiable appetite for drinking the blood of Palestinian children”.
The latest example of the outlet’s willingness to malign Israel by uncritically reporting the claims of a terror-linked, antisemitic organisation is an article by their international correspondent Julian Borger (“Israeli minister met David Lammy on ‘private visit’ to UK, Foreign Office says, April 16). The piece devotes the first two paragraphs describing the nature of the visit by Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, before pivoting to a campaign to have Sa’ar arrested and prosecuted by “war crimes” by the Brussels-based Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF).
Borger’s writes that the Belgium-based HRF has been “accused” of expressing public support for Hezbollah and Hamas, and that the group has been “criticised in Israel for its legal pursuit of Israeli soldiers when they travel abroad”. However, the Guardian reporter omits the most damning evidence against HRF demonstrating that their terror support is not merely an accusation, while devoting much the article legitimising their wild allegations.
As even Ha’aretz acknowledged, Dyab Abou Jahjah and Karim Hassoun, the founders of HRF, are Islamist extremists who have not only expressed support for Hezbollah, but have “been put on a U.S. list of people required to undergo special security checks before flights, or are prevented from boarding flights to the United States or flights over it – a subset of the U.S. list of terror suspects”.
He was also banned from entering Britain on allegations that he was an extremist, a decision he blamed on “the lobbying of the Zionists”, and was also investigated in Belgium regarding allegations that he incited ethnic riots.
Abou Jahjah, who grew up in Lebanon, described the 9/11 attacks as “sweet revenge“, celebrated Palestinian terrorism “at all costs” after an attack that killed Israelis, told The New York Times that in the early 2000s he received military training from Hezbollah, and he regularly published articles at an outlet affiliated with the terror group.
Abou Jahjah – who is reportedly linked, by family and business ties, to several actors designated as part of Hezbollah’s terror funding network – also justified the October 7 massacre, including denying that Hamas committed any rapes or “systematic slaughter”.
From his Facebook account:
From his Twitter account:
On September 20th, 2024, Abou Jahjah tweeted that “Hezbollah is not a terrorist organisation”, and, a week later, when Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s leader, was killed, tweeted a eulogy, praising Nasrallah as a “a historic leader of the resistance”.
Also, the day after Israel killed Hamas leader and architect of the October 7 attacks, Yahya Sinwar, Abou Jahjah eulogized him as well, calling him a “resistance leader” who “showed the way.”
Following the November 2024 pogrom in Amsterdam against visiting Israeli football fans, HRF filed a complaint against the Israeli fans, claiming “incitement to hatred,” “genocidal rhetoric,” “hate speech,” and “property destruction.”
In fact, their extremism goes back many years.
In 2010, a Dutch court fined the Arab-European League (AEL), which was founded and led by Abou Jahjah and his HRF colleague Karim Hassoun, for publishing an antisemitic cartoon alleging that the “Holocaust was fabricated by Jews”. Another revolting cartoon published by the group led by Abou Jahjah and Hassoun portrayed Hitler in bed with Anne Frank, with the caption “write this one in your diary Anne!
In 2005, Abou Jahjah defended former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s call for Israel to be wiped off the map, writing that “his position on this matter is the only possible moral one.”
Further, in 2015, Karim Hassoun (Abou Jahha’s colleague) publicly mourned the death of Hezbollah’s Samir Kuntar, who brutally murdered an Israeli family, including a four-year old girl, in northern Israel in 1979, and, last year, tweeted the following:
Finally, if you go to HRF’s site, you’ll see that their case against Israel’s foreign minister is completely non-existent, and is nothing more than a one-page propaganda sheet that any truly serious media outlet would dismiss out of hand. Yet, the Guardian’s Julian Borger promoted this agitprop, compiled by an organisation whose leaders, we’ve shown, have repeatedly expressed support for terror groups proscribed by the British government, and have promoted vile antisemitism.
When it comes to Israel, the Guardian is not a news organisation in any serious sense of the term, but a disseminator of anti-Zionist hate and propaganda that continues to fuel antisemitism in Britain.
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