Over the two centuries since The Guardian was first published, it has made some frankly awful mistakes. From featuring poisonous cartoons dripping with antisemitic imagery to obstinately insisting on referring to Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital in spite of the facts, the Guardian has amassed an extensive catalog of errors ranging from the daft to the nasty to the categorically hateful.
None of those has been deemed one of the Guardian’s “worst errors of judgment” over 200 years. Not one.
But supporting Israel’s creation has.
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To mark the occasion of 200 years since the first edition of the Guardian was printed, a series of articles under the banner of “Guardian 200” has been commissioned, highlighting the paper’s roots, its direction, and the impact it has had on the world. Among them, a piece by Randeep Ramesh, is entitled, “What we got wrong: the Guardian’s worst errors of judgment over 200 years.”
Numerous examples of poor decision-making in the editorial department are cited. For example, burying the sinking of the Titanic down in page 9 in 1912, advocating for the use of asbestos fifteen years later in 1927, and supporting the right of the southern US states to secede in order to form a free Confederacy.
And then, amongst all these examples of shockingly poor thinking, the Guardian’s support for the creation is listed (emphasis added):
When Arthur Balfour, then Britain’s foreign secretary, promised 104 years ago to help establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, his words changed the world. The Guardian of 1917 supported, celebrated and could even be said to have helped facilitate the Balfour declaration. Scott was a supporter of Zionism and this blinded him to Palestinian rights. In 1917 he wrote a leader on the day the Balfour declaration was announced, in which he dismissed any other claim to the Holy Land, saying: ‘The existing Arab population of Palestine is small and at a low stage of civilisation.’ Whatever else can be said, Israel today is not the country the Guardian foresaw or would have wanted.”
There’s so much to say, but the first thing that stands out really is the simplest: Because Israel is not precisely the kind of state the Guardian “would have wanted”, it should not exist?!
As Avi Mayer succinctly put it: “If a Jewish state had been born then, in 1917 there may never have been a Holocaust. Would they have regretted that too?”
Disgusting: @Guardian expresses regret for having supported Israel's creation, listing it as one of the paper's "worst errors of judgment over 200 years."
If a Jewish state had been born then, in 1917, there may never have been a Holocaust.
Would they have regretted that too? pic.twitter.com/Y3EJgiNXf6
— Avi Mayer (@AviMayer) May 7, 2021
The suggestion that advancing the cause of the birth of Israel is somehow something to be regretted is genuinely shocking when one takes into account the events of the following three decades.
While Israel is not perfect, and struggles with an array of social and racial issues, it remains a beacon of tolerance and democracy in the Middle East. Israeli Arabs can and do reach the top echelons of the justice system and politics, are making inroads in the IDF, and even the captain of the Israeli national football team is an Arab.
After centuries of persecution as often unwanted guests in other lands, the Jews re-established their national home in 1948. This is something to be celebrated. Unfortunately, many of Israel’s neighbours continue to refuse to accept its legitimacy. To this day, the Palestinians aim to violently overthrow Israel rather than live alongside it in peace and harmony. As a result, Israel has been forced to wage numerous wars over the course of its 73-year existence, and is confronted with horrific acts of terrorism.
No other liberal democracy in the world faces the threats — both internal and external — that Israel does.
And yet Israelis still talk about wishing to make peace with the Palestinians. It may not be the state that Guardian writers would like it to be, but then again its neighbours aren’t Sweden, Holland or Switzerland. Israel was born in a crucible of fire, and even now the country can be shut down by rocket fire almost at any given moment.
Of course, if the Guardian really wanted to engage in some introspection regarding Israel, it could come clean and admit that its repeated promotion of BDS, denial of Israel’s right to self-defence, propagation of outrageous smears against Israel, support for Jeremy Corbyn’s antisemitic Labour Party and accompanying gaslighting of worried Jews, and allowing convicted terrorists a platform to spread their bile all constituted truly unforgivable terrors.
We won’t hold our breath.
