UPDATE
Shortly following our complaint, the Daily Mail has made a shocking edit to Peter Oborne’s article, adding the words “according to a number of respectable sources” to justify the blatantly antisemitic allegation promoted by Oborne.
The Daily Mail’s reaction is almost as sickening as Oborne’s original offense.
The official visit of future British monarch, Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, to Israel has, so far, been a very positive event. It’s disappointing then to see British journalist and commentator Peter Oborne using this opportunity to write a nasty anti-Israel piece in the Daily Mail.
It’s disgusting, however to see Oborne spreading blatant antisemitism:
Yes, you read that correctly – Oborne is charging Israeli settlers with poisoning Palestinian wells, which he claims to have personally witnessed.
Jews poisoning the wells is a classic antisemitic canard that dates back to Medieval European times when Jews were accused of being responsible for spreading disease such as the Black Death. This in turn led to massacres of Jewish communities.
As for the accusation that Israeli settlers of taking the best agricultural land and depriving Palestinians of water, this is a falsehood. (Israeli tech turns barren land into thriving agricultural areas while Israel actually supplies Palestinians with water and prevents them from wrecking their own and Israel’s supplies.)
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Oborne makes this antisemitic claim only a few years after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas retracted the very same charge made in a June 23, 2016 speech to the European Parliament.
As the JPost reported:
The PA president had made the unsubstantiated charge in an address Thursday to the European Parliament, prompting harsh condemnation from Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accusing Abbas of propagating blood libel, referring to anti-Semitic allegations against Jews that arose in the Middle Ages.
The retraction, which was issued by the Palestine Liberation Organization, which Abbas chairs, said Abbas “rejected all claims that accuse him and the Palestinian people of offending the Jewish religion.”
“After it has become evident that the alleged statements by a rabbi on poisoning Palestinian wells, which were reported by various media outlets, are baseless, President Mahmoud Abbas has affirmed that he didn’t intend to do harm to Judaism or to offend Jewish people around the world,” the statement read.
So rather than witnessing Israeli settlers poisoning Palestinian wells, it appears that Oborne took his cue from an unsubstantiated blood libel that Abbas later retracted.
Either way, if Mahmoud Abbas has seen fit to retract a blatant antisemitic canard, a similar retraction and apology is the least that we should expect from Peter Oborne.
In the interests of full disclosure – when it comes to Oborne, HonestReporting has history. Back in 2009, Oborne presented an episode of the Channel 4 investigative program Dispatches. The broadcast examined “one of the most powerful and influential political lobbies in Britain, which is working in support of the interests of the State of Israel”, directly attacking and smearing HonestReporting in the process.
Oborne and his cameraman even burst into HonestReporting’s Jerusalem office, with the camera rolling, looking for evidence of HonestReporting’s involvement in a shadowy “Israel lobby” operating in UK politics and media. Needless to say, Oborne’s conspiracy theories did not lead anywhere.
This latest incident does nothing to dispel the impression that Peter Oborne is nothing more than a disgusting bigot.
HonestReporting has lodged an official complaint. Please also take action and send your complaints to the Daily Mail – https://www.readerseditor.dmgmedia.co.uk/contact
