According to The Independent:
Today, Palestinian activists were scathing about the Pope’s plans to make the first visit by a pontiff to the tomb of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, the political movement that established Israel and displaced the Palestinians.
As a political movement and an ideology, Zionism was neither about, nor was responsible for, displacing Palestinians. It seems that The Independent’s reporter Ben Lynfield is identifying with the comments of BDS activist Omar Barghouti, who is quoted in the article referring to Zionism as:
a patently racist ideology that has served to enable and justify the ethnic cleansing of most of the indigenous people of Palestine.
If Lynfield holds that the entire raison d’etre behind Israel’s guiding Zionist ideology was to remove the Palestinians from the land then it is questionable whether he is capable of reporting from the region in an objective manner.
It seems that The Independent cannot differentiate opinion from news.
