Johann Hari

There is a fanatical pressure group in the US called 'Honest Reorting' who believe they are pro-Israeli. In fact, they are advocate a course of action - endless occupation of Palestinian lands, and military aggression - that is profoundly endangering Israel's existence in the long-term.

They have printed an astonishingly dishonest reaction to my recent Bethlehem article. You can read it at:

http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/Bethlehem_-_Abusing_the_Christmas_Story.asp

You can read a factual rebuttal of them at:

http://dishonestreporting.blogspot.com/2006/12/dec-25-media-critique-bethlehem-abusing.html

Worse, a supposedly reputable newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, printed an equally egregious misrepresentation of the article I wrote about how Israel's rejection of democratically elected Palestinian governments as "too extreme" simply produces movements that are more extreme still.

Caroline Glick, in her Post column (unfortnately not on line), summarises my view as follows:

"[Writers like this] assume that Palestinian society will never be anything but a jihadist society."

This is simply a flat-out lie. In the article, I say precisely the opposite:

"There is still – still – a majority in Palestine for peaceful coexistence with Israel, with 67 percent supporting the Hamas proposal for a 40-year hudna." I stress repeatedly that a clear majority of Palestinians oppose jihadism and Talibanism.

Glick continues:

"Although Hari clearly shares this defeatist view he inadvertently demonstrated that it is wrong and counterproductive. Hari quoted 29-year-old Basa Abu-Jased whose Internet cafe in Gaza's Jabalya refugee camp was firebombed by jihadists. Abu-Jased expressed his despair and frustration at the emerging Islamist state in Gaza saying 'Of course women are frightened now. Even as a man I am really frightened! I used to sit on the street and talk to women. Now I won't do it. You don't know what's going to happen.'

What Abu-Jased and his friends need most desperately is for someone to offer them the opportunity to support something other than competing terrorist organizations."

As Glick must know if she has even basic reading comprehension skills, the point I was making was precisely that Abu-Jased and the people of Gaza desperately need an alternative to growing fundamentalism - and every single Gazan liberal I met (literally every single one) agreed that the best way to choke off fundamentalism was to end the Israeli occupation. (If you think the occupation of Gaza has ended, you should check out the new report by B'tselem showing that deaths have trebled there in the past year). They all believed that the savagery of the occupation was radicalising a minority of the population, making them think constantly about death and making the arguments of the most deranged groups seem more appealing.

For Glick to use the words of these people to argue for more and longer Israeli occupation - as she does - is one of the most repellent pieces of journalistic misrepresentation I have ever read.

Oh, and another example of outright lies from supposedly pro-Israel groups, this time by Joseph Farrah, can be read at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53560

He summarizes my Bethlehem story (which has been authenticated by the United Nations and Israeli human rights group B'tselem) by saying it is about "an Arab woman who claims she was stopped from entering Israel to deliver her twins and forced to go 20 minutes in another direction to an Arab hospital."

This can only be deliberate deception. Look back at my story. Fadia Jemal was +not+ trying to get to an Israeli hospital; she was trying to get to a Palestinian hospital in Bethlehem, from her home very nearby. She was +not+ 'stopped from entering Israel'; she was stopped from going to one part of the West Bank to another. (At no point did she even consider entering Israel; she would not have been allowed in without prior and elaborate permission, as anybody who knows anything about life in the Occupied Territories knows).

She was +not+ 'forced to go 20 minutes in another direction to an Arab hospital'. She was held for hours at a checkpoint that was preventing her from leaving her village and going to any hospital at all. This caused her baby to die.

Farrah's summary is a tissue of lies, from beginning to end. And he accuses me of writing "the worst form of propaganda"!

The wall of distortion you confront when trying to honestly describe life in the Occupied Territories shouldn't shock me, I suppose. But I didn't expect the lies to be quite so blatant.