Economist turns on Palestinians who seeks co-existence

It’s increasingly difficult to distinguish between openly pro-Palestinian sites and British media outlets which are supposed to operate within the boundaries of professional journalism. Let’s put it this way: If we were to read the text of a recent Economist article without knowing which outlet published it, and were asked if it was published by Al Jazeera or a mainstream British outlet, we might very well have thought it was the former.

For starters, given that the piece (“Palestine is unrecognisable on the ground“, Sept. 17) – which, as is the outlet’s tradition, has no byline, but, in our view, was likely written by Nicolas Pelham – is putatively about the diminishing chances of a Palestinian state, you’d suspect that Hamas’s Oct. 7th massacre, and the impact the seismic event has on Israel and the region, would be front and center in their analysis.

You’d be mistaken, however.

The word “Hamas” isn’t introduced until the fourteenth paragraph, and the group’s barbaric mass murder, rape, torture and mutilation in southern Israel is only briefly mentioned in the seventeenth paragraph – and even then, not in relation to its impact on Israeli attitudes towards – or the practicality of – two-states. Moreover, the word “terrorism” is only used twice: once in reference to Israeli terrorism, and the other when referring to false Israeli claims about Palestinian support for terror.

The Economist’s erasure of Palestinian terror, and Hamas’s historic efforts to undermine the hope for true peace, further reinforces the truth of Shany Mor’s axiom that, in the eyes of much of the media class, “no Palestinian action is ever connected to any Palestinian outcome”.

Thus, in the opening paragraph, when the Economist briefly explains why hopes for a Palestinian state have all but disappeared, they write that “Israel’s army has reduced Gaza to an occupied wasteland“, as if the inhumanity of the antisemitic mass atrocity carried out two years ago by Hamas, and their subsequent human shield/human sacrifice strategy, has absolutely nothing to do with the current condition of the Palestinian-controlled territory.

That first paragraph also cites, as a factor in the decreasing likelihood of the two-state paradigm, Israel’s “starving the Palestinian administration of the taxes that keep it alive“, which they expand upon later in the article when we’re told that “Israel’s…government has blocked the transfer of those funds“, requiring the PA to “cut employee salaries in half or more and is behind in paying them” and that “to save money the PA delayed opening the schools…[and] told functionaries and security forces to work a two-day week“.

This propagandistic series of words is designed to obfuscate Jerusalem’s decision to freeze the transfer of tax revenue to the PA due to their long-time policy of paying Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons and their families – a fact which even the Turkish controlled media acknowledges. Mahmoud Abbas’ insistence on funding the ‘Pay to Slay’ programme is why they’ve been forced to cut down classroom hours and have reduced PA employees’ work week.

Later, after observing that Ramallah “feels like a Potemkin village“, readers are told that “Most nights Israeli soldiers conduct raids” in the city.

The egregiousness of the omission in these sentences regarding the reason “Israeli soldiers conduct raids” can’t be overstated.

The “raids” are anti-terror operations targeting Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other West Bank terror cells that have carried out, or were in various stages in plans to carry out, deadly attacks on Israelis – a terror campaign which, crucially, began surging before Oct. 7th, 2023. The fact that there are hundreds of such attacks each month by these violent extremist groups would come as a huge surprise to most news consumers, as a tiny fraction of all terror incidents are typically reported.

An additional Economist claim, under the subheading “Your Land is My Land“, representing another example of how the article omits historical context that would undermine the desired narrative, is that “Palestine’s hypothetical capital, East Jerusalem, was annexed 45 years ago…”. Any serious discussion of “East Jerusalem” would note, however, that, if Palestinian leaders hadn’t rejected Israeli peace offers in 2000/2001 and 2008, that area of the city, which, let’s remember, was illegally occupied (and rendered Jew-free) by Jordan from 1949-67, would currently be the Palestinian capital.

Another particularly revealing piece of fiction is when Mahmoud Abbas is blamed by the Economist writer – who seems to fancy himself more Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves – for not being sufficiently sympathetic to Gazans: “Any standing the PA might once have had has been eroded by its reticence over Gaza. “[Abbas] had no word of sympathy or sorrow for the suffering of ordinary Gazans,” said a shocked Western commentator who met Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, on a recent foreign tour”.

In fact, Abbas’s first official statement, on Oct. 7th, while Hamas’s barbarous assault was unfolding, was to proclaim “the right of the Palestinian people to defend themselves against the terrorism of settlers and the occupation forces“, and to express his solidarity with Gaza civilians. While his subsequent messaging has been inconsistent, in June of 2024 Abbas again lauded the Oct. 7th massacre, before adding that “As important as the goals that Hamas attempted to achieve through this attack may have been, they are not comparable to the damages and heavy losses that the Gaza Strip residents… have suffered“.

Further, let’s remember that Abbas’ record of anti-Jewish racism is well–documented, and includes his claim, during a speech in Aug. 2023 to senior members of his Fatah movement, that Adolf Hitler killed European Jews not because of antisemitism, but because of their “social functions” in society, such as money lending. The previous year, during a news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Abbas accused Israel of having committed “50 Holocausts” against the Palestinians since 1947 – a remark that was condemned around the world.

The Economist piece then observes that “Even as Western governments promise statehood, Palestinians increasingly despair of its realisation. The devastation of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza has taught most Palestinians the futility of armed resistance”. This outrageously suggests that Palestinian terror, including, it seems, Oct. 7th, represents an attempt to achieve statehood, rather than to destroy any hopes for regional peace, and, worse, that the only moral problem with savagely attacking Jewish men, women and children is not the violence and cruelty itself, but its ineffectiveness.

Elsewhere, the Economist journalist, in his own voice, describes those Palestinians who wish accommodation with Israel as “Working With the Enemy“. The “enemies” in question are Sheikh Wadee al-Jaabari of Hebron and 20 other local sheikhs who announced in July their plans to secede from the PA, join the Abraham Accords, and recognize the Jewish state, in exchange for Israeli recognition of “the Emirate of Hebron as the Representative of the Arab residents in the Hebron District.”

Accepting Israel as a Jewish state, the Wall Street Journal – the outlet which broke the story – observed, “goes further than the Palestinian Authority ever has, and sweeps aside decades of rejectionism“. Yet, the Economist frames the plan through the lens of Israeli “subjugation”, which some Palestinians may feel compelled to choose as an alternative to “the sacking of Gaza“.

Regardless of whether the plan is realistic, the fact that the Economist views any Palestinian vision of coexistence with Israel as a betrayal of the Palestinian people and their cause represents another example of the moral corruption that has infected the British media in the aftermath of the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust.