HR Comment: Righting a Capital Offense
August 14, 2012 13:23 by Simon PloskerThis opinion piece by Simon Plosker, HonestReporting’s Managing Editor, was originally published in the Jerusalem Post.
When HonestReporting filed a complaint with the UK’s Press Complaints Commission in response to The Guardian’s labeling of Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital, we did so expecting accuracy and common sense to prevail.
Outrageously, the PCC not only ruled in favor of The Guardian but actually went as far as to unilaterally declare that Tel Aviv was Israel’s legitimate capital, based mainly on the fact that many foreign embassies are located there.
Institutions not located in Tel Aviv include the Knesset, the Supreme Court, Bank of Israel and most government ministries.
The ruling even ignored Israel’s own declaration of Jerusalem as its eternal capital.
While the Guardian’s original “capital offense” could be viewed as yet another example of the newspaper’s animosity towards Israel, the PCC ruling demonstrated just how far beyond rational discourse any discussion on Israel appears to have gone in the UK.
The PCC offered no recourse for appeal.
On principle, however, we couldn’t let the PCC’s bizarre ruling stand. Risking potentially high legal costs but motivated by our desire to see truth prevail, HonestReporting initiated legal proceedings using some of the best legal professionals with the aim of taking the PCC all the way to a judicial review.
The Guardian has become the world’s third most read newspaper website, with 30.4 million readers in June 2012, according to industry analyst ComScore. The newspaper’s print edition may not be particularly large by UK media standards, but its readers are typically influential liberal and left-leaning elites in politics, academia and other media such as the BBC.
Put simply, the Guardian’s anti-Israel bias has a hugely significant reach and influence that cannot be ignored.
Israel has too often been the victim of “lawfare,” whereby the legal system is employed to delegitimize Israel, abusing concepts of international and humanitarian law.
But lawfare can work both ways.
With a watertight case at our disposal, we worked closely with Trevor Asserson, a distinguished lawyer previously responsible for a number of critical studies of the BBC’s Israel coverage, and his legal team.
And we won.
This article is continued on Page 2
HR Comment: Righting a Capital Offense | Blogs about Israel aggregation
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Aug 14, 2012
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Adrian
9:12 pm
Aug 14, 2012
Kol Hakavod to HR. You weren’t the only people who took up the matter but you were by far and away the most succesful.
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jeb stuart
4:25 pm
Aug 14, 2012
Congrats on reporting well done. One reason why Englands Jewish subjects may not have thought it a reasonable effort to fight the BBC’s false statement; is the effect of shariah law’s pervasiveness in that country. American media failed to cover the onset of the Arab Spring, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and even now we may be witnessing the MB’s claim on Gaza on the Egytpian border; we certainly feel the threat of shariah in our failed press coverage which regularly fails to disclose the breadth of the Brotherhoods shariah law advocation and threat to all non-muslims and moderates. A Wait lets see what happens approach is reckless and Obama’s submission overt.
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Simon Shiels
7:30 pm
Aug 14, 2012
Jeb much as they want to the Sharia law is not pervasive in the UK officially (the UK not just England which is part of the UK). They try to practise privately but thank God the Judiciary still does have precedence over what certain parts of the Muslim community like to think is their ‘law of the land’ .
Now if you were to have said that the British Establishment and certain prominent parts of the Media bend over backwards to avoid saying anything disparaging about Islam even when its adherents are being just about anti West and anti democratic as you could get I would have to agree strongly with you.
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Dennis Levene
4:27 pm
Aug 14, 2012
You might well ask why so few Jewish organisations/people in general are so apathetic with regard to similar matters..
For instance, I regularly email my Member of Parliament to make him aware of issues and ask him to make representations – when I copy these emails to friends and acquaintances I get minimal feedback other than an occasional “well done”, and when I suggest that they email their own MP – zilch……
Is there some psychological reason for this reluctance? The “don’t make waves” syndrome?
Perhaps there needs to be a determined, in-depth look at this problem, by someone with “clout” as we say.
We should not leave it up to HP, CiFWATCH, HarrysPlace etc etc. – it is quite shameful
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Jonathan Gerard
4:55 pm
Aug 14, 2012
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logdon
5:13 pm
Aug 14, 2012
A nation decides it’s own capital city. Period.
I am British and feel absolutely disgusted at the creeping anti-semitism which is promoted by both the shariah compliant BBC and Guardian alike.
Then when the police ignore rape of underage girls because those gross perps were Muslims it doubles down my disdain and amplifies in my mind why Jew hate is on the rise.
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CCZ
5:27 pm
Aug 14, 2012
Good point. If we recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, before you know it, we’ll be expected to recognize London as capital of the UK, Washington as the US capital, and Cairo as Egypt’s capial. Who knows where it will stop.
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Gábor Fränkl
5:16 pm
Aug 14, 2012
WELL DONE!!!
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David Kravitz
5:43 pm
Aug 14, 2012
Why didn’t I complain to the PCC on this issue?
Over the years I have registered complaints with this organization on several issues, all relating to Israel, Zionism or Antisemitism in the British press. Not one has been upheld and the stated fact that the PCC is independent is a joke. Look at the make-up of the panel that investigates complaints and you see the problem.
Unlike Honest Reporting, I do not have the resources or money to pursue the matter. So well done HR and I will continue to complain in the future.
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B. Dunkin
5:53 pm
Aug 14, 2012
I believe the lack of support has to do with a hesitation by many of not wanting to make a scene in the wider community in which they live. I find this attitude more prevalent in Europe than in North America.
It is important to discern between raising an important issue tactfully and just making noise. This cause as you rightfully point it, did not involve protests on Downing Street. Too many people have become so comfortable with their own position in society that they forget about doing what’s right even if it means a bit of discomfort.
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Peter Cohen
2:01 am
Aug 15, 2012
Australia is another country where Jews are more inclined to make a stand. As a result our parliamentarians requested a minutes silence at the Olympics and the main parties have agreed to oppose BDS. The difference may be historical. Australians, unless they are aborigines cannot claim “purity” of race so that minorities do not have the same pressure to fit in.
Also Jews were amongst the First Fleet, and amongst the founders of Adelaide and Melbourne so they have an automatic right to be there.
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Victor Redlick
5:57 pm
Aug 14, 2012
Where are all the other European media, nations’ leaders, brilliant Nobel Prize winning minds and homegrown Jewish organizations indigenously rooted throughout the continent ? Are they in some sort of a lifelong stupor when so obviously confronted with their own destruction and that of an entire global society? It can be referred to as apathy, as it is commonly. I’m more inclined to strongly consider it wilful blindness attributed to the genuinely ugly side of sometime unfathomable human frailty. As valorous as it is for HR to be the interim hero here, it is even a bigger disgrace that those who have an inarguably greater ability and influence to confront the wrong grotesquely didn’t.
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L.Billinkoff
6:10 pm
Aug 14, 2012
The retraction by the Guardian is highly over-rated.
They still haven’t acknowledged that Jerusalem is the capital.
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Lawrence J. Goldstein
6:16 pm
Aug 14, 2012
Advocacy and advocates often often find few “speak up” supporters but many silently rooting lamb-like fans. This is a fact of life and results from most folks leaving it to someone else because they are lazy, won’t take any risk, don’t want to be marked as a complainer and plainly more mice than men. You please continue to do what is right and necessary to put the dishonest and the hateful enimies of truth in their place. It will enable you to not only stand tall among men and media beel to feel terrific about yourself. Well done vs. the Guradian!
Thank G-d for folks such as you who stand up for right and truth and reversing wrongs.
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Chris Edwards
6:17 pm
Aug 14, 2012
When I saw this I thought the left were showing their true agenda , if they had pulled it off then the left elite would feel to give the rest of Jerusalem to the Mohammedans .
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Lauro Brand
6:37 pm
Aug 14, 2012
As a Brazilian Jew, and an outsider to this British issue, I happen to be at the right time and place, when I spent this last Tisha BeAv Shabbat, that happen to be also the 2012 Olympics oppening, at the Marble Arch Sinagogue, and feel the intrinsic discomfort and deception of the local jewish community with the general British community and its own failure in dealing with this situation. The Chief Rabbi’s open letter, read on all sinagogues at Shabat morning, marked strongly this point. Its about time to the jewish people and its leadership worldwide to stand up on this issues, as HR exemplairy did, geting out of its comfort zone, and give proper attention and SUPPORT for the organizations that CAN and are willing to face this challenges, like Honest Reporting and Shurat HaDin do! Chears !
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Mosh L
7:01 pm
Aug 14, 2012
The BBC takes pretty much the same position as the Guardian. Whilst being careful to be correct it pointedly avoids describing Jerusalem as the capital. I have made my complaints.
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Geoff H-T
8:17 pm
Aug 14, 2012
Just a question. Does this matter in truth to indigenous Anglo-Jewry? Or US Jewry? Or Brazilian Jewry? It seems not really as I’m not aware of any serious reaction from any of them. Still, if we want blessing, we should stand up for Israel when we can.There are too many problems in Israeli press.
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rodney allsworth
12:15 am
Aug 15, 2012
that you tell us-the case continues- is comforting, and this- By eliminating Israel’s second city, by default there can be only one place that could be considered the capital.–is very telling to me, first the case must go to an immutable decision for one and all to understand the issue. second that the left wants to eliminate Jerusalem is simply to make it available to western minds that when the push for the Muslim mosques on top of the temple ruins to be the basis of ownership of the city’s temple and therefore the city starts in ernest the western mind will be tempered to accommodate a lie, this is true, role reversal,lawfare,deception,and a takeover of Jerusalem.
rod qld
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HR Comment: Righting a Capital Offense | The Conservative Papers
2:02 am
Aug 15, 2012
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iris claire blutreich
4:23 am
Aug 15, 2012
Defining Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in the world’s consciousness is most important. Why because it informs the world of how Jews speak of themselves …antisemitism has at its core, others defining us. Until we control the naming process, we will continue to be mistreated. Sticks and stones may break my bones and WORDS WILL ALWAYS HARM US. FIRST COME THE WORDS – THE DEGRADATION – FOLLOWED BY IT BEING ALL RIGHT AND ACCEPTABLE TO ROB, MAIM AND MURDER. WHAT DO THEY WANT? TO ACT AS IF THEY ARE INNOCENT OF ANY ULTERIOR MOTIVES, TO MAKE WHAT THEY DO APPEAR AS A MISUNDERSTANDING BUT IT IS CALCULATED TO DISCREDIT AND FINALLY DESTROY. JEWS WHO IGNORE THIS FORM OF WARFARE ARE DOING IT AT THE PERIL OF ISRAEL AND ALL JEWS.
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Adam
8:43 am
Aug 15, 2012
What I find most disturbing about this story is not the refusal to recognize Israel’s true capital (admittedly a political hot potato), but the Guardian’s insistence on Tel Aviv, and even more so, the PCC’s initial acquittal. These positions speak volumes about a willingness to create facts and defend themselves from the truth.
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Meg Sadoc
2:08 pm
Aug 15, 2012
Jerusalem is and always will be the eternal capital of Israel. Problems with this truth arise when hidden agendas are threatened by this simple fact. Many anti Semetic nations are rearing up their ugly heads when Jerusalem is even mentioned as Israel’s capital. Nations without much backbone bend backwards so as not to offend the enemies of Israel. At the end of the day we can take comfort in the fact that truth prevails if it is persued.
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