Writing in the latest edition of the New Statesman, columnist John Pilger launches a scathing diatribe against British PM Tony Blair’s Mideast policies, blaming him for the proliferation of home-grown terrorists and “collusion with the Israeli state in its deliberate, criminal attacks on civilians.” Indeed, Pilger takes the opportunity to viciously attack Israel, describing it as a “racist regime” of “Biblio-ethnic cleansers”.
To back up his case, Pilger relies on quotes that he attributes to Israeli leaders:
“We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population,” said Israel’s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.
In fact, this fabricated quote is attributed by a number of anti-Israel websites to Israeli Northern District Commissioner Israel Koenig. Even then, as CAMERA points out:
The Koenig Report or “memorandum” as it is sometimes referred to, was a private document of recommendations written in 1975 by civil servant Israel Koenig, the Interior Ministry’s official in charge of the Galilee, to alter the demographic balance of the region in favor of the Jews. The recommendations were rejected by then Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, denounced by senior Cabinet ministers and rued by then foreign minister Yigal Alon who expressed great regret that the recommendations were ever written….As controversial as Koenig’s proposals were at the time, however, there was absolutely no suggestion of using “terror,” “assassination,” “intimidation” or “land confiscations.”
In another quote, Pilger claims that Ariel Sharon said:
It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion … that there can be no Zionism, colonisation or Jewish state without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.
Yet again, Pilger has falsely attributed a quote. In this case a simple Google search reveals that even anti-Israel websites claim that this quote is from Yoram Bar Porath in Yediot Aahronot of 14 July 1972. In others, it has simply been updated and attributed to Ariel Sharon decades later with the sole intent of promoting demonisation of Israel, a trap that Pilger is evidently only too pleased to fall into.
Pilger’s false attribution of quotes is not the first example of this in the media. To emphasise the seriousness of this misdemeanour, Denver’s Rocky Mountain News International Editor Holger Jensen was forced to resign in 2002 following his failure to verify quotes wrongly attributed to Ariel Sharon.
Pilger continues his ranting, referring to “Sharon’s bloody invasion of the West Bank” in 2001, conveniently ignoring the devastating wave of terrorism against Israeli civilians that led to Operation Defensive Shield that year. Finally, in a grotesque inversion of history, Pilger, attacking the British government’s foreign policy and attitude towards Muslims, states:
Go into Muslim areas and you will be struck by a fear reminiscent of the anti-Semitic nightmare of the Jews in the 1930s…
Is Pilger really comparing the treatment of British Muslims to that meted out to the Jews by Hitler’s Nazi regime? Does Tony Blair really intend to curtail the democratic rights of British Muslims, sponsor a Kristallnacht and, perhaps later, the mass extermination of Muslims everywhere? Only in the warped imagination of John Pilger we suspect.
Letters to the New Statesman.
BBC ENDANGERING CHILDREN?
Despite the recent accusations of stage managed photos during the Lebanon conflict, the BBC has apparently taken things to a new level. Martin Asser reports from Bint Jebeil (emphasis added):
When Um Ali Mihdi returned to her home in the southern Lebanese city of Bint Jbeil two days ago, she found a 1,000lb (450kg) Israeli bomb lying unexploded in her living room.The shell is huge, bigger than the young boy pushed forward to stand reluctantly next to it while we get our cameras out and record the scene for posterity.
“AN IMPRESSIONISTIC PHRASE”?
Many subscribers contacted the BBC following HonestReporting UK’s exposure of Orla Guerin’s attempt to exaggerate the level of damage in a Lebanese village. The BBC’s response, however, surprised even us with its poor effort to exonerate Guerin’s report. Part of the standard e-mail sent to complainants is produced below. We leave it to you to judge:
I appreciate that you felt a recent BBC News report from Orla Guerin was biased against Israel.
I should state that Orla Guerin’s report on the 14th August from Bint Jbeil in Southern Lebanon made clear at the start that she was reporting on the perspective of Lebanese people returning home in their thousands.
She reported: “I haven’t seen a single building that isn’t damaged in some way. Many have been flattened. Many have been singed. This town has really been wiped out.”
Orla did not say that every building had been wiped out. She was using an impressionistic phrase implying extreme damage which is justified by the scale of what she saw.
HonestReporting UK encourages subscribers to continue to follow up on this issue. Comments to BBC Complaints.
to media bias.
