The lie that keeps creeping into the mainstream: now Israel is accused of genocide in the Big Issue

'During the trial Osmond cited cited the words of Rachel Corrie - the US activist who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah in 2003 - as inspiration, specifically her diary entry: "I'm witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I'm really scared, this has to stop. I think it's it's a good idea for all of us to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop."' (the emphasis is mine; for the trial in question see this and - deserving a companion post in its own right - this)

Let's keep this simple. First point: Corrie's words are simply untrue - still as untrue now as when she wrote them. Untrue by any definition of the word "genocide" that does not reduce it to a Zimbabwean dollar of political discourse, that does not leave us needing a new word to describe the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

Second point: it is no small matter to make a false allegation of genocide specifically against a state founded as a home for a people who have suffered the real thing. "Offensive" is a grossly overused word which I do not resort to lightly, but if ever there was a case to which it was appropriate, this is it.

Third point: the quote is from an article in The Big Issue (July 26 - August 1 2010, p. 25).

There is nothing in the article that questions the truth of Corrie's allegation. On the contrary, the passage quoted is immediately followed by allegations of war crimes committed against civilians by Israeli forces in Gaza. And let us be absolutely clear about this: I am not denying that any war crimes were committed in Gaza, but even if it were true that the Israelis had deliberately attacked a hospital and UN compounds, "genocide" is not a synonym for "war crimes".

The article is also notable for containing not the slightest hint that anyone other than Israel and its allies bears any responsibility either for the fighting in Gaza or for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole. The only points at which it provides anything remotely resembling balance are where it concedes that there is actually no proof that the arms firm EDO MBM supplies Israel at all, let alone supplying kit for use in war crimes. I suspect we have the magazine's lawyers to thank for this.

None of this is surprising given that one of the co-authors is Richard Purssell. He is a long-standing member of the International Solidarity Movement, the group to which Rachel Corrie belonged. In fact, he was with her when she died. I know this because I have googled him, not because The Big Issue told me. Evidently the reader was not meant to think that the article was partisan. The other co-author is a journalism lecturer and evidently knows a trick or two.

Let there be no misunderstanding: whilst I think that diary entry paints Rachel Corrie in a very unattractive light, and I see no reason to doubt that the primary cause of her death was her own foolhardiness, her death was untimely, unmerited and tragic. However, it doesn't make her use of the "g" word any whit more justifiable. Or rather, it shouldn't do - but it's always fascinating to see how religious patterns of thought persist among the theoretically most secular-minded of people. Corrie, we are to understand, speaks from beyond the grave with the moral authority of the martyr (as the early Church knew, the best martyrs are young and female).

A good gauge of how justifiable the charge of genocide is the fact that even the ISM don't - at least officially - make that accusation. They prefer the still highly contestable but comparatively speaking reasonable charge that Israel has created an apartheid system.

So have they written to the Big Issue dissociating themselves from Corrie's claim? Are they moving to expel Richard Purssell? If they have, it will give me great pleasure to withdraw what follows. But I'm not expecting anything of the sort before the inauguration of porcine aviation.


If you hold an extreme and irrational belief which you would like to insert into the mainstream of political discourse, what is the best way of going about it? Guerrila tactics are likely to serve you better than conventional ones. Don't issue a manifesto and get imbroiled in arguments in which the weakness of your case will be exposed. No, let Rachel the martyr state your case for you, for nobody can start an argument with a martyr. Dress up your propaganda as an objective news feature, and get it published in a magazine sold by homeless people. For who will want to hear that the Big Issue is not on the side of the angels?

The lie is worthy of Der Stürmer (for, huff and puff as you may, it is a lie specifically about Jews). But was Der Stürmer ever half as a slick?

As for the Big Issue, I would hope they could be induced to feel ashamed of themselves. My fear, though, is that we have already passed beyond that point.

Wall balls auf Deutsch

It's bad enough when a C of E bishop likens the Israeli security barrier to the Berlin Wall, but at least you can put it down to ignorance. That becomes harder when the parallel is drawn by a group of German bishops, one of them a cardinal. And when their appetite for dodgy historical analogies proves so insatiable that they can't even resist the 'Israelis are Nazis' one, things start to look very worrying indeed.

Read more here and here (the latter with some comments from yours truly, including an evaluation of the Pope's address at Auschwitz last year).

Thank goodness, the Nazi analogy has been pointedly repudiated by Cardinal Lehmann, Chairman of the German Bishops' Conference (in German here).

Cardinal Meisner used to be Bishop of the divided city of Berlin, so he knows perfectly well that the Berlin Wall was never meant to defend anyone or anything other than the communist elite and their bankrupt system. So the force of his analogy is clearly to imply that the Israeli barrier is equally irrelevant to genuine security considerations. Even Baroness Tonge knows better than that - it keeps terrorists out, 'forcing' them to go and do their stuff in Iraq instead.

There's been one suicide bombing in Israel so far this year, claiming three lives in Eilat (it would have been many more but for the presence of mind of the motorist who unwittingly gave the bomber a lift). Eilat is on the border with Jordan. There is no barrier between Israel and Jordan.

If building a wall were a practicable way of preventing things like this from happening, could Cardinal Meisner or anyone else seriously doubt that it would be morally justified?

Livingstone's Syndrome

Today's case of Livingstone's Syndrome (a close relation of Tourette's Syndrome, in which the sufferer experiences an overwhelming compulsion to tell Jews they are Nazis): hard on the heels of Lidice comes the Warsaw Ghetto:

'But destroying the only power source for a trapped and defenseless civilian population is an unprecedented step toward barbarity. It reeks, ironically, of the Warsaw Ghetto. As we flutter our hands about tectonic political change, we must take pause: in the eyes of history, what is happening in Gaza may come to eclipse them all.'

So tell us all about Israel's secret plans to ship the entire population of Gaza off to extermination camps, why don't you? Or maybe this alone is sufficient to substantiate the charge of Nazi-style inhumanity:

'And no radios, television, cell phones, or laptops...'

This garbage emanated from Counterpunch, which is where it should stay. Where it doesn't belong is on Independent Catholic News, which has seen fit to quote an extract. To be fair they've left out the Warsaw Ghetto bit; I'd like to to think this was attributable to a sense of decency, but their track record makes this somewhat doubtful. If not Livingstone's Syndrome, then at least an acute case of Christian Aiditis...

Scrolling through ICN's headlines, I counted 14 features on the Holy Land between 1 June and 6 July. Apart from two neutral statements from the Vatican, all have an anti-Israel spin, presenting the Palestinians alone as innocent victims of the conflict. None focuses on terrorism, indeed the nearest any of them come to an explicit acknowledgment that it is an issue at all is this:-

'Israel froze VAT and customs taxes owed to the Palestinian Authority when Hamas, which has been labelled a terrorist organisation by the United States and other countries, was elected to power and continued to refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist. Hamas will also not lay down its weapons in what it says is an armed struggle for liberation of its still-occupied territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.' (from)

So, terrorism or liberation struggle: take your pick as to how you want to 'label' the targetted killing of hundreds of civilians. Let's not be prescriptive here.

In the same period ICN carried one feature on Darfur.

As Christian Attitudes notes, a 2002 piece by the anti-Semite who goes under the pseudonym Israel Shamir is still in the ICN archive. The coverage of the alleged massacre at Jenin in the same year is also revealing. This appeared on 15 April 2002:

'Christian Aid [who else?] has received reports of Palestinian bodies being dumped in mass graves by Israeli soldiers, outside Jenin refugee camp, in the West Bank.'

The UN report published on 1 August finally placed it beyond doubt that these 'reports' were quite simply lies. You might think that, having given credence to this latter-day blood libel, ICN would have felt they had a duty to set the record straight. But you'd be wrong.

I'm pretty sure that the Pope is not much more impressed by this kind of thing than I am. There are times when one could wish he had as much authority over his flock as some of his predecessors.

Imagining massacres

'One might have thought Israel would have learned enough from history to know collective punishment is rarely effective. That was the lesson of the Second World War, when German attempts to cow the Czechs by the mass execution of the inhabitants of Lidice, for example, had the opposite effect.'

So begins a leader in today's Independent. If you fancy paying a quid to read the whole of it, the best of British to you.

Israeli forces have, as I write, killed five 'militants' and attacked infrastructure, the latter causing considerable hardship to Palestinian civilians, among whom are children and adults who do not condone terrorist murders of Israeli civilians. The wisdom and humanity of these actions is open to question, however sorely provoked Israel has been.

But since there has been nothing remotely resembling a mass execution, what purpose does the Lidice reference serve, other than to subliminally reinforce the 'Israelis are Nazis' equation?

Or maybe to express the unconscious wish that Israel should present its critics with a really juicy massacre. I've not forgotten how uncritically the Independent relayed reports of a massacre of (at least) Lidice proportions at Jenin, or how grudgingly it conceded that it had been feeding its readers propagandist lies. The incident was one of the key experiences that eventually led me to create this blog. [The BBC was no better: the day after the UN confirmed that the '500 killed' claim was fantasy, it quoted a Palestinian gunman who repeated the claim, without feeling it necessary to contest it.]

Actually, the Middle East did experience a mass execution over the weekend. Where are the indignant editorials in the Indie and the Grauniad, where are the tear-jerking accounts of shattered families from the BBC? Nowhere, of course. Wrong kind of massacre.