(This article also appears at CiFWatch)
Meet Abu Jindal and Abu Nizar. Up until fairly recent times they might have been fixing cars for Israelis. Nizar’s father even “had good things to say about the Israelis he knew”.
But those days are long gone and now Nizar, the son, has little problem with the rockets he fires into Israel causing civilian casualties “such as the three who died…from rockets fired from Gaza in recent round of fighting.” For Nizar “there is no such thing as a civilian on the other side.”
So what makes it so easy for Nizar and Jindal to murder innocent Israeli men, women and children?
Judging from Chris McGreal’s piece, Gaza’s cycle of aggression shapes new generations more militant than the last published in last Friday’s Guardian, it’s all Israel’s fault with Nizar and Jindal having little, if any, responsibility for their terrorist activities.
McGreal describes their, apparently, violent childhoods that led to Nizar and Jindal firing rockets from Gaza and, possibly, murdering the three above-mentioned “civilians” Ahron Smadga, Yitzchak Amselam and 25 year-old Mira Scharf in Kiryat Malachi. Scharf was pregnant.
Sickeningly, McGreal allows Nizar and Jindal the space in his piece to excuse themselves as mere victims, the implication being that the real criminals were Smadga, Amselam, Scharf and Scharf’s unborn child who weren’t “civilians”.
Incidentally, Scharf had recently returned to Israel to give birth and to attend the memorial service of her friends the Holtzbergs who were murdered in the 2008 Mumbai massacre. They all died on the same day of the Hebrew calendar four years apart.
Jindal and Nizar belong to the designated terrorist group Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and McGreal’s piece attempts to evoke much sympathy for them. Jindal says:
“The Israelis have always killed children in Gaza. They came here to kill children during this [latest] war. Our children see it.”
Nizar claims his schoolfriends “were killed by an Apache helicopter”.
Even McGreal, not content with describing Israeli “machine gun fire that shredded (Palestinian) homes”, describes how Palestinian children:
“worshipped ‘martyrs’, whether they were suicide bombers who killed Israelis on buses in Jerusalem, armed men fighting Israeli soldiers, or the children shot at their school desks in Gaza by Israeli gunfire.” (my emphasis)
Neither Nizar’s school friends shot from the sky, nor McGreal’s school children shot at their school desks are named. Conveniently, no evidence is offered. The unsubstantiated accusations are just thrown in.
In case the reader doesn’t quite understand that these are attempted justifications for Jindal and Nizar slaughtering innocent Israelis McGreal decides to import two old Guardian pieces of his. These pieces give the views of two child psychologists in an attempt to help solidify the images of Jindal and Nizar as helpless victims.
In the piece from 2004 Usama Freona claimed “The levels of violence children are exposed to is horrific…Most of them were crying and shaking when they were speaking about their experiences”. In the 2009 piece Dr Abdel Aziz Mousa Thabet claimed that due to the traumatising effect of violence on children “they become fighters”.
That these two vile terrorists might be committed to the destruction of Israel and murder of its Jewish inhabitants on purely ideological grounds isn’t considered.
Incredibly, McGreal’s piece on Dr Thabet still describes 12 year-old Mohammed al-Dura as being shot dead by Israeli gunfire despite it having since been proved that al-Dura was more likely to have died from Palestinian gunfire. McGreal is obviously keen in prolonging this blood libel.
McGreal admits that Palestinian children are sometimes taught in their schools and mosques to despise Jews but he sees that, mainly, as an excuse used by Israelis to absolve themselves of blame for why each generation of Palestinians seems more militant and violent.
Abu Nizar concludes “The end of Israel is getting closer”.
Next week The Guardian will be running a full-page piece on McGreal’s interview with two Al Qaida “fighters”. The “fighters” explain why they are at ease with their fellow Islamists slaughtering 52 British citizens in the London bus and tube bombings of 2005 and why, for them, there is no such thing as a British civilian.
Or, maybe, The Guardian won’t run it. Maybe for The Guardian only the slaughter of innocent Israeli men, women and children (and unborn babies) can be explained with such apparent ease: No Israeli is a civilian and, so, murders of them can be justified.
RichardMillett's Blog 
I’m certainly no admirer of McGreal but actually this piece of his made perfect sense to me. You have taken lines from it out of context to justify your preconception (that McGreal is antisemitic) and that he is against Israel. Altogether your blog is as unhelpful as any polemic.
I disagree. It’s part of the cycle of nonsense that the Guardian keeps putting out. My father had fond memories of the media and reporters, but I have nothing but contempt for McGreal. Perhaps, should he be so unlucky to “make” someone lose their moral compass, he would having none but himself to blame for someone lobbing mortars at his home and children.
Of course anyone reading such an apologetic might think that violence is the only solution and that it has been endorsed by the Guardian.
Those who argue in favour of anarchy should think twice about the immorality that they condone.
It may not be antisemitism per se in a classic sense, hatred of Jews for religious or ethnic reasons. Yet there is an imaginative fabrication, conflation of the record and an incitement towards hatred that is unmistakeably evil and corrupt.
I think the original article helps explain the hatred. It doesn’t justify it. McGreal isn’t saying, as you seem to be saying he is, that it’s ok to kill Jews because they are mistreating Palestinians. He’s saying that these people think all Israelis/Jews are trying to kill them. If that IS what they think, then we should be doing something to convince them otherwise instead of continuing to give their corrupt leaders the opportunity to stay in power (with all the financial and other rewards that brings to those few people).
Of course, one of the ways we keep Hamas in power is by making the Palestinian people think that they need the military ‘defence’ that Hamas offers. It’s the same way Hamas keeps Netanyahu in power (though please don’t say I’m making any moral equivalence here).
What McGreal does is an antisemitic per se lecture of events, starting the circle of violence with Israel and the retaliations with Hamas. It is partisan and an d as it is systematic with McGreal, it is also antisemitic. Obviously, Mr. Millet is not the only one to criticise McGreal for precisely that:
http://cifwatch.com/2012/11/29/cst-report-on-antisemitic-discourse-slams-the-guardian-singles-out-orr-and-mcgreal/
There is a mindset adopted by people like McGreal that appears to believe that Israelis are not actually human.
How else can he identify with people who glorify in the deaths of ordinary men, women and children, with the excuse that none are civilians. How otherwise can you justify the actions of psychopaths – people who do not understand or connect with other human beings.
On reflection, and with atrocities like the Fobels in mind, have the Palestinians cultured an entire generation of psychopaths?
Israelis are invaders from Eastern Europe. They live on land that belongs to another people, They willhave to return the land ti the legitimate owners by hook or by crook.
KA
Arabs are invaders from Arabia. They live on land that belongs to other people.
Jews were in Israel BEFORE the prophet “mohammed” came on the scene.
Happy Eternal Nakba (the so called Nakba being the failure of five invading Arab armies, none of which was the army of a “palestine”, to defeat the Israels and continue the Holocaust).
Rather hysterical response and distasteful reference to the Nakba.Is this all you can muster to support your argument?
________________________________
pratvile,
Your “nakba”? The failure of five Arab armies, NONE of which was the army of “palestine”, to murder the “sons of pigs and dogs:, just 3 years after the end of the Holocaust?
Yes. Happy ETERNAL NAKBA!
Khalid,
Are you the hook or the crook?
Only kidding. As ever it’s wonderful to hear you and I hope that the weather is as sunny in Hebron is as sunny as here and more importantly that the glorious Palestinian Authority isn’t torturing you too much. I’m guessing that being locked up in a dark place for all that time – having things done to you – can’t be much fun at the best of times, but at least if the Israeli “invaders from Eastern Europe” are doing it one can claim to be a local hero. You must be feeling pretty daft being persecuted by the leadership of your own cause.
I also note that you believe Al-Jazeera to be Zionist controlled. Maybe you’d like to take advantage of Richard’s hospitality on this excellent blog to elaborate on this fascinating thesis?
Finally, if we don’t speak till then, have a great virtual independence day! You guys deserve it.
And if ever you’re in the neighborhood, please drop in. I’ve just made fresh humus (authentic East-European invader cuisine).
“Israelis are invaders from Eastern Europe.” – brainless nonsense. Do Yemenite Jews come from Europe? What about Iraqi Jews?
This guy has trouble with reality. Jews originate from the Middle East for the most part and after 2000 years of exile, it still shows in their genes.
Shlomo Sand was ridiculed by genetic science and those who gave him a prize were shown to be politically-motivated, if not just racists.
Yes, Jose. Sand is an idiot, a French cinema historian with nil qualification in ethnology, genetics and Jewish history. One of those ‘revisionists’ who really are just not very bright attention-seeking adolescents. And yes, Jews in general originate in the ME.
I was simply mocking what’s-his-face in terms that even he (maybe!) could understand.
I understood perfectly your answer to we-know-who. I was just repeating the usual rebuttal of Sand’s stupidities.
@amayreh2008
Muslims are invaders in Europe. By guile and by stealth they live on land that belongs to another people. They will have to return the land to the legitimate owners, by hook or by crook.
Or, another POV: they are legitimate immigrants, as are we all at some point. Rather than urging for their ethnic cleansing, as Arabs have done for generations, we should accept their presence and learn to live with one another. So remember – tolerance should be a two way street.
First step in being able to morally survive mass assassination is to be able to dismiss the victims as non-human, non-deserving to live. Those who comment here to confirm McGreal are part of the same antisemitic PER SE scheme: show that Jews can be assassinated with moral impunity.
Yes, it is antisemitism PER SE. Without that kind of ‘moral assassination’, genocide of Jews would be impossible.
There needs to be a mass BDS of the guardian and any company that advertises in its racist, fascist pages.
By the way, the Khazar legends have been proven wrong by genetics, and Shlomo Sand’s politically-motivated myths borrowed from a novelist proven wrong. Ashkenazi people overwhelmingly come from ME ancestry and are genetically closer to Sephardic people that both of them are to the population among which they lived for centuries.
Arabs are indeed invaders everywhere, except in the Arabic peninsula. Should we suggest that they return where they came from, as they tell the Jews, while having forced one million of them to exile, depriving them of their possessions and citizenship?
Spain now offers a “right of return” to those who can prove their Spanish roots. When will Arabs welcome Jews back?