UK Indo’s Johann Hari feels hurt by critics. Awwww…
It’s hard to fathom the arrogance of the man. Johann Hari’s reporting in the UK Independent of Israel is incomparably slanted and decontextualised. Now he has the gall to cry foul - that criticisms of him are unfair and vicious:
In the US and Britain, there is a campaign to smear anybody who tries to describe the plight of the Palestinian people. It is an attempt to intimidate and silence – and to a large degree, it works. There is nobody these self-appointed spokesmen for Israel will not attack as anti-Jewish: liberal Jews, rabbis, even Holocaust survivors.
My own case isn’t especially important, but it illustrates how the wider process of intimidation works. I have worked undercover at both the Finsbury Park mosque and among neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers to expose the Jew-hatred there; when I went on the Islam Channel to challenge the anti-Semitism of Islamists, I received a rash of death threats calling me “a Jew-lover”, “a Zionist-homo pig” and more.
Ah, but wait. I have also reported from Gaza and the West Bank. Last week, I wrote an article that described how untreated sewage was being pumped from illegal Israeli settlements on to Palestinian land, contaminating their reservoirs. This isn’t controversial. It has been documented by Friends of the Earth, and I have seen it with my own eyes.
The response? There was little attempt to dispute the facts I offered. Instead, some of the most high profile “pro-Israel” writers and media monitoring groups – including Honest Reporting and Camera – said I an anti-Jewish bigot akin to Joseph Goebbels and Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh, while Melanie Phillips even linked the stabbing of two Jewish people in North London to articles like mine. Vast numbers of e-mails came flooding in calling for me to be sacked.
Any attempt to describe accurately the situation for Palestinians is met like this. If you recount the pumping of sewage onto Palestinian land, “Honest Reporting” claims you are reviving the anti-Semitic myth of Jews “poisoning the wells.” If you interview a woman whose baby died in 2002 because she was detained – in labour – by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint within the West Bank, “Honest Reporting” will say you didn’t explain “the real cause”: the election of Hamas in, um, 2006. And on, and on….
j.hari@independent.co.uk
Please read the article in full. His habit of making a point about criticisms of him being unfair, but quickly slipping on to another point, without defending his assertions with proof are manifold - such as the “poisoning of the wells” example. And using an editor of Ha’aretz as an objective Israeli standpoint if like, well, claiming a columnist from the UK Independent is representative of British political opinion…
As we reported recently, Honest Reporting analysed in a - dare we say? - objective and factual manner, and found Hari sadly wanting. If he can’t handle such criticism, he shouldn’t be a reporter. Or is it that he just cannot comprehend how his angle is seen by so many as grossly unrepresentative of life in Israel?
Finally, always remember that Israelis and Jews are so vocal in their criticism of people like Hari because people like Hari exist. No country has its internal and external policies analysed by the media, NGOs and super-national agencies, remotely close to the degree and volume that Israel endures. What’s most revealing about Hari’s hurt is that he is shocked that supporters of Israel won’t take his opinions lying down.
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